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About IvanIvan Pepelnjak, CCIE#1354 Emeritus, is an independent network architect, blogger, and webinar author at ipSpace.net. He's been designing and implementing large-scale service provider and enterprise networks as well as teaching and writing books about advanced internetworking technologies since 1990.https://www.ipspace.net/About_Ivan_PepelnjakLinks:ipSpace.net: https://ipspace.net TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by my friends at ThinkstCanary. Most companies find out way too late that they've been breached. ThinksCanary changes this and I love how they do it. Deploy canaries and canary tokens in minutes and then forget about them. What's great is the attackers tip their hand by touching them, giving you one alert, when it matters. I use it myself and I only remember this when I get the weekly update with a “we're still here, so you're aware” from them. It's glorious! There is zero admin overhead  to this, there are effectively no false positives unless I do something foolish. Canaries are deployed and loved on all seven continents. You can check out what people are saying at canary.love. And, their Kub config canary token is new and completely free as well. You can do an awful lot without paying them a dime, which is one of the things I love about them. It is useful stuff and not an, “ohh, I wish I had money.” It is speculator! Take a look; that's canary.love because it's genuinely rare to find a security product that people talk about in terms of love. It really is a unique thing to see. Canary.love. Thank you to ThinkstCanary for their support of my ridiculous, ridiculous non-sense.  Corey: Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code they write, but also the containers and cloud infrastructure their apps run on. And a big part of that responsibility is app security — from code to cloud.That's where Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are, finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, repos, and pipelines. And Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like CodePipeline, EKS, ECR, etc., etc., etc., you get the picture! Deploy on AWS. Secure with Snyk. Learn more at snyk.io/scream. That's S-N-Y-K-dot-I-O/scream. Because they have not yet purchased a vowel.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I have an interesting and storied career path. I dabbled in security engineering slash InfoSec for a while before I realized that being crappy to people in the community wasn't really my thing; I was a grumpy Unix systems administrator because it's not like there's a second kind of those out there; and I dabbled ever so briefly in the wide world of network administration slash network engineering slash plugging the computers in to make them talk to one another, ideally correctly. But I was always a dabbler. When it comes time to have deep conversations about networking, I immediately tag out and look to an expert. My guest today is one such person. Ivan Pepelnjak is oh so many things. He's a CCIE emeritus, and well, let's start there. Ivan, welcome to the show.Ivan: Thanks for having me. And oh, by the way, I have to tell people that I was a VAX/VMS administrator in those days.Corey: Oh, yes the VAX/VMS world was fascinating. I talked—Ivan: Yes.Corey: —to a company that was finally emulating them on physical cards because that was the only way to get them there. Do you refer to them as VAXen, or VAXes, or how did you wind up referring—Ivan: VAXes.Corey: VAXes. Okay, I was on the other side of that with the inappropriately pluralizing anything that ends with an X with an en—‘boxen' and the rest. And that's why I had no friends for many years.Ivan: You do know what the first VAX was, right?Corey: I do not.Ivan: It was a Swedish Hoover company.Corey: Ooh.Ivan: And they had a trademark dispute with Digital over the name, and then they settled that.Corey: You describe yourself in your bio as a CCIE Emeritus, and you give the number—which is low—number 1354. Now, I've talked about certifications on this show in the context of the modern era, and whether it makes sense to get cloud certifications or not. But this is from a different time. Understand that for many listeners, these stories might be older than you are in some cases, and that's okay. But Cisco at one point, believe it or not, was a shining beacon of the industry, the kind of place that people wanted to work at, and their certification path was no joke.I got my CCNA from them—Cisco Certified Network Administrator—and that was basically a byproduct of learning how networks worked. There are several more tiers beyond that, culminating in the CCIE, which stands for Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert, or am I misremembering?Ivan: No, no, that's it.Corey: Perfect. And that was known as the doctorate of networking in many circles for many years. Back in those days, if you had a CCIE, you are guaranteed to be making an awful lot of money at basically any company you wanted to because you knew how networking—Ivan: In the US.Corey: —worked. Well, in the US. True. There's always the interesting stories of working in places that are trying to go with the lowest bidder for networking gear, and you wind up spending weeks on end trying to figure out why things are breaking intermittently, and only to find out at the end that someone saved 20 bucks by buying cheap patch cables. I digress, and I still have the scars from those.But it was fascinating in those days because there was a lab component of getting those tests. There were constant rumors that in the middle of the night, during the two-day certification exam, they would come in and mess with the lab and things you'd set up—Ivan: That's totally true.Corey: —you'd have to fix it the following day. That is true?Ivan: Yeah. So, in the good old days, when the lab was still physical, they would even turn the connectors around so that they would look like they would be plugged in, but obviously there was no signal coming through. And they would mess up the jumpers on the line cards and all that stuff. So, when you got your broken lab, you really had to work hard, you know, from the physical layer, from the jumpers, and they would mess up your config and everything else. It was, you know, the real deal. The thing you would experience in real world with, uh, underqualified technicians putting stuff together. Let's put it this way.Corey: I don't wish to besmirch our brethren working in the data centers, but having worked with folks who did some hilariously awful things with cabling, and how having been one of those people myself from time to time, it's hard to have sympathy when you just spent hours chasing it down. But to be clear, the CCIE is one of those things where in a certain era, if you're trying to have an argument on the internet with someone about how networks work and their responses, “Well, I'm a CCIE.” Yeah, the conversation was over at that point. I'm not one to appeal to authority on stuff like that very often, but it's the equivalent of arguing about medicine with a practicing doctor. It's the same type of story; it is someone where if they're wrong, it's going to be in the very fringes or the nuances, back in this era. Today, I cannot speak to the quality of CCIEs. I'm not attempting to besmirch any of them. But I'm also not endorsing that certification the way I once did.Ivan: Yeah, well, I totally agree with you. When this became, you know, a mass certification, the reason it became a mass certification is because reseller discounts are tied to reseller status, which is tied to the number of CCIEs they have, it became, you know, this, well, still high-end, but commodity that you simply had to get to remain employed because your employer needed the extra two point discount.Corey: It used to be that the prerequisite for getting the certification was beyond other certifications was, you spent five or six years working on things.Ivan: Well, that was what gave you the experience you needed because in those days, there were no boot camps. Today, you have [crosstalk 00:06:06]—Corey: Now, there's boot camp [crosstalk 00:06:07] things where it's we're going to train you for four straight weeks of nothing but this, teach to the test, and okay.Ivan: Yeah. No, it's even worse, there were rumors that some of these boot camps in some parts of the world that shall remain unnamed, were actually teaching you how to type in the commands from the actual lab.Corey: Even better.Ivan: Yeah. You don't have to think. You don't have to remember. You just have to type in the commands you've learned. You're done.Corey: There's an arc to the value of a certification. It comes out; no one knows what the hell it is. And suddenly it's, great, you can use that to really identify what's great and what isn't. And then it goes at some point down into the point where it becomes commoditized and you need it for partner requirements and the rest. And at that point, it is no longer something that is a reliable signal of anything other than that someone spent some time and/or money.Ivan: Well, are you talking about bachelor degree now?Corey: What—no, I don't have one of those either. I have—Ivan: [laugh].Corey: —an eighth grade education because I'm about as good of an academic as it probably sounds like I am. But the thing that really differentiated in my world, the difference between what I was doing in the network engineering sense, and the things that folks like you who were actually, you know, professionals rather than enthusiastic amateurs took into account was that I was always working inside of the LAN—Local Area Network—inside of a data center. Cool, everything here inside the cage, I can make a talk to each other, I can screw up the switching fabric, et cetera, et cetera. I didn't deal with any of the WAN—Wide Area Network—think ‘internet' in some cases. And at that point, we're talking about things like BGP, or OSPF in some parts of the world, or RIP. Or RIPv2 if you make terrible life choices.But BGP is the routing protocol that more or less powers the internet. At the time of this recording, we're a couple weeks past a BGP… kerfuffle that took Facebook down for a number of hours, during which time the internet was terrific. I wish they could do that more often, in fact; it was almost like a holiday. It was fantastic. I took my elderly relatives out and got them vaccinated. It was glorious.Now, we're back to having Facebook and, terrific. The problem I have whenever something like this happens is there's a whole bunch of crappy explainers out there of, “What is BGP and how might it work?” And people have angry opinions about all of these things. So instead, I prefer to talk to you. Given that you are a networking trainer, you have taught people about these things, you have written books, you have operated large—scale environments—Ivan: I even developed a BGP course for Cisco.Corey: You taught it for Cisco, of all places—Ivan: Yeah. [laugh].Corey: —back when that was impressive, and awesome and not a has-been. It's honestly, I feel like I could go there and still wind up going back in time, and still, it's the same Cisco in some respects: ‘evolve or die dinosaur,' and they got frozen in amber. But let's start at the very beginning. What is BGP?Ivan: Well, you know, when the internet was young, they figured out that we aren't all friends on the internet anymore. And I want to control what I tell you, and you want to control what you tell me. And furthermore, I want to control what I believe from what you're telling me. So, we needed a protocol that would implement policy, where I could say, “I will only announce my customers to you, but not what I've heard from Verizon.” And you will do the same.And then I would say, “Well, but I don't want to hear about that customer of yours because he's also my customer.” So, we need some sort of policy. And so they invented a protocol where you will tell me what you have, I will tell you what I have and then we would both choose what we want to believe and follow those paths to forward traffic. And so BGP was born.Corey: On some level, it seems like it's this faraway thing to people like me because I have a residential internet connection and I am not generally allowed to make my own BGP announcements to the greater world. Even when I was working in data centers, very often the BGP was handled by our upstream provider, or very occasionally by a router they would drop in with the easiest maintenance instructions in the world for me of, “Step one, make sure it has power. Step two, never touch it. Step three, we'd prefer if you don't even look at it and remain at least 20 feet away to keep from bringing your aura near anything we care about.” And that's basically how you should do with me in the context of hardware. So, it was always this arcane magic thing.Ivan: Well, it's not. You know, it's like power transmission: when you know enough about it, it stops being magic. It's technology, it's a bit more complicated than some other stuff. It's way less complicated than some other stuff, like quantum physics, but still, it's so rarely used that it gets this aura of being mysterious. And then of course, everyone starts getting their opinion, particularly the graduates of the Facebook Academy.And yes, it is true that usually BGP would be used between service providers, so whenever, you know, we are big enough to need policy, if you just need one uplink, there is no policy there. You either use the uplink or you don't use the uplink. If you want to have two different links to two different points of presence or to two different service providers, then you're already in the policy land. Do I prefer one provider over the other? Do I want to announce some things to one provider but other things to the other? Do I want to take local customers from both providers because I want to, you know, have lower latency because they are local customers? Or do I want to use one solely as the backup link because I paid so little for that link that I know it's shitty.So, you need all that policy stuff, and to do that, you really need BGP. There is no other routing protocol in the world where you could implement that sort of policy because everything else is concerned mostly with, let's figure out as fast as possible, what is reachable and how to get there. And BGP is like, “Hey, slow down. There's policy.”Corey: Yeah. In the context of someone whose primary interaction with networks is their home internet, where there's a single cable coming in from the outside world, you plug it into a device, maybe yours, maybe ISPs, maybe we don't care. That's sort of the end of it. But think in terms of large interchanges, where there are multiple redundant networks to get from here to somewhere else; which one should traffic go down at any given point in time? Which networks are reachable on the other end of various distant links? That's the sort of problem that BGP is very good at addressing and what it was built for. If you're running BGP internally, in a small network, consider not doing exactly that.Ivan: Well, I've seen two use cases—well, three use cases for people running BGP internally.Corey: Okay, this I want to hear because I was always told, “No touch ‘em.” But you know, I'm about to learn something. That's why I'm talking to you.Ivan: The first one was multinationals who needed policy.Corey: Yes. Many multi-site environments, large-scale companies that have redundant links, they're trying to run full mesh in some cases, or partial mesh where—between a bunch of facilities.Ivan: In this case, it was multiple continents and really expensive transcontinental links. And it was, I don't want to go from Europe to Sydney over US; I want to go over Middle East. And to implement that type of policy, you have to split, you know, the whole network into regions, and then each region is what BGP calls an autonomous system, so that it gets its stack, its autonomous system number and then you can do policy on that saying, “Well, I will not announce Asian routes to Europe through US, or I will make them less preferred so that if the Middle East region goes down, I can still reach Asia through US but preferably, I will not go there.”The second one is yet again, large networks where they had too many prefixes for something like OSPF to carry, and so their OSPF was breaking down and the only way to solve that was to go to something that was designed to scale better, which was BGP.And third one is if you want to implement some of the stuff that was designed for service providers, initially, like, VPNs, layer two or layer three, then BGP becomes this kitchen sink protocol. You know, it's like using Route 53 as a database; we're using BGP to carry any information anyone ever wants to carry around. I'm just waiting for someone to design JSON in BGP RFC and then we are, you know… where we need to be.Corey: I feel on some level, like, BGP gets relatively unfair criticism because the only time it really intrudes on the general awareness is when something has happened and it breaks. This is sort of the quintessential network or systems—or, honestly, computer—type of issue. It's either invisible, or you're getting screamed at because something isn't working. It's almost like a utility. On some level. When you turn on a faucet, you don't wonder whether water is going to come out this time, but if it doesn't, there's hell to pay.Ivan: Unless it's brown.Corey: Well, there is that. Let's stay away from that particular direction; there's a beautiful metaphor, probably involving IBM, if we do. So, the challenge, too, when you look at it is that it's this weird, esoteric thing that isn't super well understood. And as soon as it breaks, everyone wants to know more about it. And then in full on charging to the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve, it's, “Well, that doesn't sound hard. Why are they so bad at it? I would be able to run this better than they could.” I assure you, you can't. This stuff is complicated; it is nuanced; it's difficult. But the common question is, why is this so fragile and able to easily break? I'm going to turn that around. How is it that something that is this esoteric and touches so many different things works as well as it does?Ivan: Yeah, it's a miracle, particularly considering how crappy the things are configured around the world.Corey: There have been periodic outages of sites when some ISP sends out a bad BGP announcement and their upstream doesn't suppress it because hey, you misconfigured things, and suddenly half the internet believes oh, YouTube now lives in this tiny place halfway around the world rather than where it is currently being Anycasted from.Ivan: Called Pakistan, to be precise.Corey: Exact—there was an actual incident there; we are not dunking on Pakistan as an example of a faraway place. No, no, an Pakistani ISP wound up doing exactly this and taking YouTube down for an afternoon a while back. It's a common problem.Ivan: Yeah, the problem was that they tried to stop local users accessing YouTube. And they figured out that, you know, YouTube, is announcing this prefix and if they would announce to more specific prefixes, then you know, they would attract the traffic and the local users wouldn't be able to reach YouTube. Perfect. But that leaked.Corey: If you wind up saying that, all right, the entire internet is available on this interface, and a small network of 256 nodes available on the second interface, the most specific route always wins. That's why the default route or route of last resort is the entire internet. And if you don't know where to send it, throw it down this direction. That is usually, in most home environments, the gateway that then hands it up to your ISP, where they inspect it and do all kinds of fun things to sell ads to you, and then eventually get it to where it's going.This gets complicated at these higher levels. And I have sympathy for the technical aspects of what happened at Facebook; no sympathy whatsoever for the company itself because they basically do far more harm than they do good and I've been very upfront about that. But I want to talk to you as well about something that—people are going to be convinced I'm taking this in my database direction, but I assure you I'm not—DNS. What is the relationship between BGP and DNS? Which sounds like a strange question, sometimes.Ivan: There is none.Corey: Excellent.Ivan: It's just that different large-scale properties decided to implement the global load-balancing global optimal access to their servers in different ways. So, Cloudflare is a typical example of someone who is doing Anycast, they are announcing the same networks, the same prefixes, from hundreds locations around the world. So, BGP will take care that you always get to the close Cloudflare [unintelligible 00:18:46]. And that's it. That's how they work. No magic. Facebook didn't believe in the power of Anycast when they started designing their service. So, what they're doing is they have DNS servers around the world, and the DNS servers serve the local region, if you wish. And that DNS server then decides what facebook.com really stands for. So, if you query for facebook.com, you'll get a different answer in Europe than in US.Corey: Just a slight diversion on what Anycast is. If I ping Google's public resolver 8.8.8.8—easy to remember—from my computer right now, the packet gets there and back in about five milliseconds.Wherever you are listening to this, if you were to try that same thing you'd see something roughly similar. Now, one of two things is happening; either Google has found a way to break the laws of physics and get traffic to a central point faster than light for the 8.8.8.8 that I'm talking to and the one that you are talking to are not in fact the same computer.Ivan: Well, by the way, it's 13 milliseconds for me. And between you and me, it's 200 millisecond. So yes, they are cheating.Corey: Just a little bit. Or unless they tunneled through the earth rather than having to bounce it off of satellites and through cables.Ivan: No, even that wouldn't work.Corey: That's what the quantum computers are for. I always wondered. Now, we know.Ivan: Yeah. They're entangling the replies in advance, and that's how it works. Yeah, you're right.Corey: Please continue. I just wanted to clarify that point because I got that one hilariously wrong once upon a time and was extremely confused for about six months.Ivan: Yeah. It's something that no one ever thinks about unless, you know, you're really running large-scale DNS because honestly, root DNS servers were Anycasted for ages. You think they're like 12 different root DNS servers; in reality, there are, like, 300 instances hidden behind those 12 addresses.Corey: And fun trivia fact; the reason there are 12 addresses is because any more than that would no longer fit within the 512 byte limit of a UDP packet without truncating.Ivan: Thanks for that. I didn't know that.Corey: Of course. Now, EDNS extensions that you go out with a larger [unintelligible 00:21:03], but you can't guarantee that's going to hit. And what happens when you receive a UDP packet—when you receive a DNS result with a truncate flag set on the UDP packet? It is left to the client. It can either use the partial result, or it can try and re-establish over a TCP connection.That is one of those weird trivia questions they love to ask in sysadmin interviews, but it's yeah, fundamentally, if you're doing something that requires the root nameservers, you don't really want to start going down those arcane paths; you want it to just be something that fits in a single packet not require a whole bunch of computational overhead.Ivan: Yeah, and even within those 300 instances, there are multiple servers listening to the same IP address and… incoming packets are just sprayed across those servers, and whichever one gets the packet replies to it. And because it's UDP, it's one packet in one packet out. Problem solved. It all works. People thought that this doesn't work for TCP because, you know, you need a whole session, so you need to establish the session, you send the request, you get the reply, there are acknowledgements, all that stuff.Turns out that there is almost never two ways to get to a certain destination across the internet from you. So, people thought that, you know, this wouldn't work because half of your packets will end in San Francisco, and half of the packets will end in San Jose, for example. Doesn't work that way.Corey: Why not?Ivan: Well, because the global Internet is so diverse that you almost never get two equal cost paths to two different destinations because it would be San Francisco and San Jose announcing 8.8.8.8 and it would be a miracle if you would be sitting just in the middle so that the first packet would go to San Francisco, the second one would go to San Jose, and you know, back and forth. That never happens. That's why Cloudflare makes it work by analysing the same prefix throughout the world.Corey: So, I just learned something new about how routing announcements work, an aspect of BGP, and you a few minutes ago learned something about the UDP size limit and the root name servers. BGP and DNS are two of the oldest protocols in existence. You and I are also decades into our careers. If someone is starting out their career today, working in a cloud-y environment, there are very few network-centric roles because cloud providers handle a lot of this for us. Given these protocols are so foundational to what goes on and they're as old as they are, are we as an industry slash sector slash engineers losing the skills to effectively deploy and manage these things?Ivan: Yes. The same problem that you have in any other sufficiently developed technology area. How many people can build power lines? How many people can write a compiler? How many people can design a new CPU? How many people can design a new motherboard?I mean, when I was 18 years old, I was wire wrapping my own motherboard, with 8-bit processor. You can't do that today. You know, as the technology is evolving and maturing, it's no longer fun, it's no longer sexy, it stops being a hobby, and so it bifurcates into users and people who know about stuff. And it's really hard to bridge the gap from one to the other. So, in the end, you have, like, this 20 [graybeard 00:24:36] people who know everything about the technology, and the youngsters have no idea. And when these people die, don't ask me [laugh] how we'll get any further on.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at CloudAcademy. That's right, they have a different lab challenge up for you called, “Code Red: Repair an AWS Environment with a Linux Bastion Host.” What does it do? Well, its going to assess your ability to troubleshoot AWS networking and security issues in a production like environment. Well, kind of, its not quite like production because some exec is not standing over your shoulder, wetting themselves while screaming. But..ya know, you can pretend in fact I'm reasonably certain you can retain someone specifically for that purpose should you so choose. If you are the first prize winner who completes all four challenges with the fastest time, you'll win a thousand bucks. If you haven't started yet you can still complete all four challenges between now and December 3rd to be eligible for the grand prize. There's only a few days left until the whole thing ends, so I would get on it now. Visit cloudacademy.com/corey. That's cloudacademy.com/C-O-R-E-Y, for god's sake don't drop the “E” that drives me nuts, and thank you again to Cloud Academy for not only promoting my ridiculous non sense but for continuing to help teach people how to work in this ridiculous environment.Corey: On some level, it feels like it's a bit of a down the stack analogy for what happened to me early in my career. My first systems administration job was running a large-scale email system. So, it was a hobby that I was interested in. I basically bluffed my way into working at a university for a year—thanks, Chapman; I appreciate that [laugh]—and it was great, but it was also pretty clear to me that with the rise of things like hosted email, Gmail, and whatnot, it was not going to be the future of what the present day at that point looked like, which was most large companies needed an email administrator. Those jobs were dwindling.Now, if you want to be an email systems administrator, there are maybe a dozen companies or so that can really use that skill set and everyone else just outsources that said, at those companies like Google and Microsoft, there are some incredibly gifted email administrators who are phenomenal at understanding every nuance of this. Do you think that is what we're going to see in the world of running BGP at large scale, where a few companies really need to know how this stuff works and everyone else just sort of smiles, nods and rolls with it?Ivan: Absolutely. We're already there. Because, you know, if I'm an end customer, and I need BGP because I have to uplinks to two ISPs, that's really easy. I mean, there are a few tricks you should follow and hopefully, some of the guardrails will be built into network operating systems so that you will really have to configure explicitly that you want to leak [unintelligible 00:26:15] between Verizon and AT&T, which is great fun if you have too low-speed links to both of them and now you're becoming transit between the two, which did happen to Verizon; that's why I'm mentioning them. Sorry, guys.Anyway, if you are a small guy and you just need two uplinks, and maybe do a bit of policy, that's easy and that's achievable, let's say with some Google and paste, and throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. On the other hand, what the large-scale providers—like for example Facebook because we were talking about them—are doing is, like, light years away. It's like comparing me turning on the light bulb and someone running, you know, nuclear reactor.Corey: Yeah, you kind of want the experts running some aspects on that. Honestly, in my case, you probably want someone more competent flipping the light switch, too. But that's why I have IoT devices here that power my lights, it on the one hand, keeps me from hurting myself on the other leads to a nice seasonal feel because my house is freaking haunted.Ivan: So, coming back to Facebook, they have these DNS servers all around the world and they don't want everyone else to freak out when one of these DNS servers goes away. So, that's why they're using the same IP address for all the DNS servers sitting anywhere in the world. So, the name server for facebook.com is the same worldwide. But it's different machines and they will give you different answers when you ask, “Where is facebook.com?”I will get a European answer, you will get a US answer, someone in Asia will get whatever. And so they're using BGP to advertise the DNS servers to the world so that everyone gets to the closest DNS server. And now it doesn't make sense, right, for the DNS server to say, “Hey, come to European Facebook,” if European Facebook tends to be down. So, if their DNS server discovers that it cannot reach the servers in the data center, it stops advertising itself with BGP.Why would BGP? Because that's the only thing it can do. That's the only protocol where I can tell you, “Hey, I know about this prefix. You really should send the traffic to me.” And that's what happened to Facebook.They bricked their backbone—whatever they did; they never told—and so their DNS server said, “Gee, I can't reach the data center. I better stop announcing that I'm a DNS server because obviously I am disconnected from the rest of Facebook.” And that happens to all DNS servers because, you know, the backbone was bricked. And so they just, you know, [unintelligible 00:29:03] from the internet, they've stopped advertising themselves, and so we thought that there was no DNS server for Facebook. Because no DNS server was able to reach their core, and so all DNS servers were like, “Gee, I better get off this because, you know, I have no clue what's going on.”So, everything was working fine. Everything was there. It's just that they didn't want to talk to us because they couldn't reach the backend servers. And of course, people blamed DNS first because the DNS servers weren't working. Of course they weren't. And then they blame the BGP because it must be BGP if it isn't DNS. But it's like, you know, you're blaming headache and muscle cramps and high fever, but in fact you have flu.Corey: For almost any other company that wasn't Facebook, this would have been a less severe outage just because most companies are interdependent on each other companies to run infrastructure. When Facebook itself has evolved the way that it has, everything that they use internally runs on the same systems, so they wound up almost with a bootstrapping problem. An example of this in more prosaic terms are okay, the data center had a power outage. Okay, now I need to power up all the systems again and the physical servers I'm trying to turn on need to talk to a DNS server to finish booting but the DNS server is a VM that lives on those physical servers. Uh-oh. Now, I'm in trouble. That is a overly simplified and real example of what Facebook encountered trying to get back into this, to my understanding.Ivan: Yes, so it was worse than that. It looks like, you know, even out-of-band management access didn't work, which to me would suggest that out-of-band management was using authentication servers that were down. People couldn't even log to Zoom because Zoom was using single-sign-on based on facebook.com, and facebook.com was down so they couldn't even make Zoom calls or open Google Docs or whatever. There were rumors that there was a certain hardware tool with a rotating blade that was used to get into a data center and unbrick a box. But those rumors were vehemently denied, so who knows?Corey: The idea of having someone trying to physically break into a data center in order to power things back up is hilarious, but it does lead to an interesting question, which is in this world of cloud computing, there are a lot of people in the physical data centers themselves, but they don't have access, in most cases to log into any of the boxes. One of the most naive things I see all the time is, “Oh well, the cloud provider can read all of your data.” No, they can't. These things are audited. And yeah, theoretically, if they're lying outright, and somehow have falsified all of the third-party audit stuff that has been reported and are willing to completely destroy their business when it gets out—and I assure you, it would—yeah, theoretically, that's there. There is an element of trust here. But I've had to answer a couple of journalists questions recently of, “Oh, is AWS going to start scanning all customer content?” No, they physically cannot do it because there are many ways you can configure things where they cannot see it. And that's exactly what we want.Ivan: Yeah, like a disk encryption.Corey: Exactly. Disk encryption, KMS on some level, using—rolling your own, et cetera, et cetera. They use a lot of the same systems we do. The point being, though, is that people in the data centers do not even have logging rights to any of these nodes for the physical machines, in some cases, let alone the customer tenants on top of those things. So, on some level, you wind up with people building these systems that run on top of these computers, and they've never set foot in one of the data centers.That seems ridiculous to me as someone who came up visiting data centers because I had to know where things were when they were working so I could put them back that way when they broke later. But that's not necessary anymore.Ivan: Yeah. And that's the problem that Facebook was facing with that outage because you start believing that certain systems will always work. And when those systems break down, you're totally cut off. And then—oh, there was an article in ACM Queue long while ago where they were discussing, you know, the results of simulated failures, not real ones, and there were hilarious things like phone directory was offline because it wasn't on UPS and so they didn't know whom to call. Or alerts couldn't be diverted to a different data center because the management station for alert configuration was offline because it wasn't on UPS.Or, you know the one, right, where in New York, they placed the gas pump in the basement, and the diesel generators were on the top floor, and the hurricane came in and they had to carry gas manually, all the way up to the top floor because the gas pump in the basement just stopped working. It was flooded. So, they did everything right, just the fuel wouldn't come to the diesel generators.Corey: It's always the stuff that is under the hood on these things that you can't make sense of. One of the biggest things I did when I was evaluating data center sites was I'd get a one-line diagram—which is an electrical layout of the entire facility—great. I talked to the folks running it. Now, let's take a walk and tour it. Hmmm, okay. You show four transformers on your one-line diagram. I see two transformers and two empty concrete pads. It's an aspirational one-line diagram. It's a joke that makes it a one-liner diagram and it's not very funny. So it's, okay if I can't trust you for those little things, that's a problem.Ivan: Yeah, well, I have another funny story like that. We had two power feeds coming into the house plus the diesel generator, and it was, you know, the properly tested every month diesel generator. And then they were doing some maintenance and they told us in advance that they will cut both power feeds at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning.And guess what? The diesel generator didn't start. Half an hour later UPS was empty, we were totally dead in water with quadruple redundancy because you can't get someone it's 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning to press that button on the diesel generator. In half an hour.Corey: That is unfortunate.Ivan: Yeah, but that's how the world works. [laugh].Corey: So, it's been fantastic reminding myself of some of the things I've forgotten because let's be clear, in working with cloud, a lot of this stuff is completely abstracted away. I don't have to care about most of these things anymore. Now, there's a small team of people that AWS who very much has to care; if they don't, I will say mean things to them on Twitter, if I let my HugOps position slip up just a smidgen. But they do such a good job at this that we don't have problems like this, almost ever, to the point where when it does happen, it's noteworthy. It's been fun talking to you about this just because it's a trip down a memory lane that is a lot more aligned with the things that are there and we tend not to think about them. It's almost a How it's Made episode.Ivan: Yeah. And don't be so relaxed regarding the cloud networking because, you know, if you don't go full serverless with nothing on-premises, you know what protocol you're running between on-premises and the cloud on direct connect? It's called BGP.Corey: Ah. You know, I did not know that. I've done some ridiculous IPsec pairings over those things, and was extremely unhappy for a while afterwards, but I never got to the BGP piece of it. Makes sense.Ivan: Yeah, even over IPsec if you want to have any dynamic failover, or multiple sites, or anything, it's [BP 00:36:56].Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to go through all this with me. If people want to learn more about how you view these things, learn more things from you, as I'd strongly recommend they should if they're even slightly interested by the conversation we've had, where can they find you?Ivan: Well, just go to ipspace.net and start exploring. There's the blog with thousands of blog entries, some of them snarkier than others. Then there are, like, 200 webinars, short snippets of a few hours of—Corey: It's like a one man version of re:Invent. My God.Ivan: Yeah, sort of. But I've been working on this for ten years, and they do it every year, so I can't produce the content at their speed. And then there are three different full-blown courses. Some of them are just, you know, the materials from the webinars, plus guest speakers plus hands-on exercises, plus I personally review all the stuff people submit, and they cover data centers, and automation, and public clouds.Corey: Fantastic. And we will, of course, put links to that into the [show notes 00:38:01]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Ivan: Oh, it's been such a huge pleasure. It's always great talking with you. Thank you.Corey: It really is. Thank you once again. Ivan Pepelnjak network architect and oh so much more. CCIE #1354 Emeritus. And read the bio; it's well worth it. I am Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice and a comment formatted as a RIPv2 announcement.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The Duke Blue Devils suffered their first loss of the season Tuesday night in Columbus to the Ohio State Buckeyes, and we recap what went wrong on Episode 364. The #1 ranking will only sit next to Duke's name for a few more days after what was a sloppy game full of uncharacteristic mistakes. We start with the headlines and the good, and the good centers around the captain, Wendell Moore. We also talk about free throw shooting and using this loss as a learning opportunity for the rest of the season. After the break, we get into the bad, of which there's quite a bit that we discuss. Poor perimeter shooting, foul trouble, sloppy play, and fatigue all contributed to the loss. After we discuss the bad, we name our unanimous Player of the Week. Keep the emails coming! DBR Podcast at Gmail dot com is how you can reach us to ask questions or give your feedback of the show or anything we discuss. We love hearing from you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Set up Microsoft Teams Essentials, our new most affordable option. Get the best of Teams with easy instant meetings for anyone — whether they have Teams or not. The Microsoft Teams Essentials experience starts at just $4 per user per month with no meeting time limits. Jeremy Chapman, Microsoft 365 Director, walks you through step-by-step setup options. • Sync your existing calendar with Teams. Configure email to be delivered to both Google and Microsoft services with dual delivery. • Use Teams without migrating your mailboxes to the cloud. Allow read and write access across calendars in your on-prem mailboxes when using Microsoft Exchange. • Experience rich online meetings with video and voice, chat-based collaboration with everyone on your team, your customers, or your partners • Easily share your screen or other content with anyone in the meeting, and work simultaneously on documents in the Microsoft Office experience. ► QUICK LINKS: 00:00 - Introduction 01:31 - Setup options 02:19 - Paths to deploy Teams Essentials 04:07 - Walk through configuration 05:42 - Sync calendars with Teams 09:18 - Route mail from Microsoft 365 to Gmail 10:17 - Set up mail flow rules 11:34 - Wrap up ► Link References: Check out setup options and sign up for the service at https://aka.ms/TeamsPlans Find a Microsoft certified partner near you at https://aka.ms/PartnerFinder If you are the partner or looking to tackle this yourself, go to https://aka.ms/ExchangeHybridCalendar To learn more, check out https://aka.ms/TeamsEssentials ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? We are Microsoft's official video series for IT. You can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at #Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries?sub_confirmation=1 Join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen via podcast here: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/website ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ 

It's another episode of Roach Koach! This week it's all about Who's Tweeting, as Lorin and Matt go over your feedback, questions and recommendations. Topics discussed:-New Slipknot and Corey's new mask-New music from Prison and the joys of chunky soup-Strong Rumors vs Juicy Rumors-KEYCHAIN-Old Dogs, New Tricks-Darkotica Cincinatti-and feedback on our Bonus Limp Bizkit Still Sucks episode!Take a listen!Rate and review Roach Koach on iTunes! We'd appreciate it! Questions about the show? Have album recommendations? Just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you! Contact the show @RoachKoach on Twitter, Roach Koach on Facebook , Roach Koach on Instagram, or send an email to RoachKoachPodcast at Gmail. Support the show over on our Patreon.

Blind Abilities presents a new iPhone101 series entitled: "Managing Mail Messages and Accounts in iOS - Adding, Retrieving and  Deleting, Oh My!” This new series provides various in depth demonstrations aimed at giving you the tools to effectively manage your email in an organized and efficient manner. Pete Lane walks us through each step of these processes with snappy and thorough presentations.  Part 6 Adding a brand new Gmail account to the iPhone, going into the Google.com web site, choosing an email address, and adding it to the phone. Enjoy this peppy and informative presentation in which Blind Abilities offers another educational gem in its iPhone 101 library of demonstrations.   Step-by-Step Process: Note: This process is very similar to the process presented in our previous episode for adding an existing Gmail account, except that you must choose the new email address you wish to use. If you are creating a new Gmail account, we suggest that you choose several potential new email addresses in case your favorites are already taken and therefore rejected by Google. This scenario is covered below in step 5. Ask Siri to open the “Settings” app, or perform a single-finger double-tap on the App icon. Flick down to “Mail” and perform a single-finger double-tap, then flick down and single-finger double-tap to select “Accounts. Flick down and perform a single-finger double-tap on “Add Account”. Select the email account service you wish to add by performing a Single-finger double-tap on that item in the list: iCloud, Exchange, Google / Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook.com / Hotmail, or “Other”. If you choose to add a Gmail account, single-finger double-tap on Google. In this case iOS will immediately prompt you to go to Google.com to sign in and register the email account. Single-finger double-tap on “Continue” to proceed to the web site. Since you are creating a brand new Gmail account, swipe right, past the sign-in elements, skip the “next” button and single-finger double-tap on “create account button". Follow the prompts: type in your first and last name, birth date and gender, and then choose and type in the email address and login information requested. Since this is a new account, the address and password will be one you choose yourself, so think about this ahead of time. Also, you will be given a couple of email addresses to select if you so choose, but if you prefer using one of your own,  keep in mind that  many common addresses may no longer be available. Because someone else has already selected them.  In this case, Google will reject them so be ready to try another one. This may happen several times. You will now be prompted to provide your cellular phone number so Google can contact you when needed. Once you agree and type in your phone number, you will immediately be sent a six-digit security code via text message. Be ready for this as you are given a short, 30 second time frame to retrieve and enter it. Note: Dictation does not behave well in these text fields, so be prepared to type-in the information using your onscreen or bluetooth keyboard. After providing your phone number and entering the security code, you will be presented a “Save” button, single-finger double-tap. You will then move back to the previous screen showing your email accounts, including the newly added account. You can also return to your Mail App to verify that the new account is listed there as well. Congratulations, you have finished creating a new email address! Be sure to check out all the iPhone101/QuickByte demos on Blind Abilities. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

No invitation, no problem. Join us at Nina Riva's Mansion as we discuss Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid! Listen as we discuss our thoughts and take a deep dive into the family drama.    Our book next Month is Paper Girls Vol 1 by Brian K Vaughan so read along!   Hit us up on Instagram/Twitter or Gmail (below) with any and all of your thoughts on this week's episode and check out our TikTok for more Bookends content. Enjoy and join us next week for more book-talk! Instagram: Bookends_With_Friends TikTok: bookendswithfriendspod Email: BookendsWithFriends@gmail.com Twitter: @BookendsPod

Steph gives an update about RSpec focus and how she often forgets to remove the focus feature from tests. She figured out two solutions: one using Rubocop, and the other from a Twitter user, suggesting using a GitHub gist. She also suggests that if you're one of those people who misses being in an office environment, you check out soundofcolleagues.com for ambient office noise selection. Chris has been struggling to actually do any coding and is adjusting to doing more product management and shares some strategies that have been helping him. They answer a listener question about dealing with large pull requests and how it's hard to recognize a good seam to break them up when you are in the thick of one. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Twitter note re: rspec-retry (https://twitter.com/jasonrudolph/status/1458416077726158852) soundofcolleagues.com (https://soundofcolleagues.com) mailcheck (https://github.com/mailcheck/mailcheck) Inertia.js (https://inertiajs.com/) Svelte (https://svelte.dev/) devise (https://github.com/heartcombo/devise) clearance (https://github.com/thoughtbot/clearance) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: CHRIS: One day, I'll grow up. It's fine. I look forward to that day. But today, I don't think it's that day. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, what's new in your world? STEPH: Hey, Chris. Well, in some fun news, Utah started his professional training as of this morning, which I'm very excited about. Because we've been working with him to work on being good with walking on a leash, FYI, he's not, [laughs] and also being good about not jumping on people. And essentially, being a really good roommate. And he started training today, and we are using an e-collar, which initially I was really hesitant about because I don't want it to hurt him in any way. But now that I have felt the e-collar myself and we've had a first day with it, it's going super well. I'm very excited for where this is headed. CHRIS: That's very exciting. When does he start paying rent? STEPH: Ooh. I'll have to check with him, or I guess I have set those boundaries. That's my job. CHRIS: I just figured that's a core part of being a good roommate. But maybe we've got baby steps or doggy steps to get there. But that's exciting. I'm glad [laughs] that the first day of training is going well. STEPH: Yeah, it's going great. And the place that we're going to the trainer they have horses, and mules, and goats. And so now I have a very cute video of him trying to play with a goat, and the goat was having none of it. But it's still all very cute. In tech-related news, I have an update for when you and I were recently chatting about the RSpec focus and how I mentioned that I often forget to remove the focus feature from tests. And so then that goes up to a PR, and I have to rely on a kind human to let me know, and then I remove it. Or worst-case scenario, it gets merged into the main branch. And for anyone that's not on Twitter, I just wanted to share an update because I also shared something there. But the resolution for what I was looking for there's already a rule that's written into Rubocop, but it's specifically written in the Rubocop RSpec codebase. And with that rule, you can essentially just say, hey, let me know anytime that a test is using the focus metadata, and then make sure to let me know and fail. And then if you don't want to actually include all of Rubocop into your project because Rubocop is pretty opinionated, you can still add Rubocop to your project, but you can specifically add Rubocop RSpec, and then you can say, hey, all other rules disabled by default, but then you can enable that specific rule. So then, that way, you will catch all of your focus tests. There's also another approach that someone on Twitter shared with us recently from Marz Drel. And Marz shared specifically a really nice simple GitHub Gist that documents or exemplifies that you can add an environment variable that checks to say, hey, if we're in CI mode, then add a before hook. And then that before hook will look for any examples that are using that focus metadata, and then it's going to raise. And then if we're not in CI mode, then don't do anything, don't raise, and carry on. And that's just a really nice simple addition if someone didn't want to pull in Rubocop into their project. CHRIS: Both of those definitely sound like great options. I don't think we have Rubocop on the current project that I'm working on. But I think the RSpec focus thing, the metadata one, seems like it'll work great. More generally, I just want to thank folks out there who listen to the show and then write back in like, "Hey, this is probably what you want." There was a similar thread that someone shared around the RSpec::Retry stuff that I was talking about recently and the failure mode there and trying to get that into the Junit Reporter. And so they had some suggestions around that. Jason Rudolph on Twitter reached out, sharing just his initial exploration and thoughts on how it might be possible to extend the XML reports that are generated and capture a flaky test in that way. So that's really interesting. And again, just really love that folks are listening to the things that we say and then even adding on to them and continuing the conversation. So thanks to everybody for sharing those things. STEPH: Yeah, it's incredibly helpful. And then one other fun thing that I'd love to share, and I found this out from someone else at thoughtbot because they had shared it recently. But it's a neat website called soundofcolleagues.com. And I know you've got your laptop in front of you. So if you'll go visit it, it'll be neat to see as we're talking through it. For anyone else that wants to pull it up, too, we'll include a link in the show notes. But it's a neat project that someone started where you can bump up the sounds that you would normally hear in an office. So maybe you want to bump up background noise of people or an open window. There's one specifically for printers and a coffee machine, and keyboards are on there as well. [laughs] I have discovered I am partial open window and partial rain, although rain is just always my go-to. I like the sound of rain for when I'm working. CHRIS: Gentle rain is definitely nice white noise in general. I've seen this for coffee shops, but I haven't seen the particular one. Also, yes, I definitely know how to spell the word colleague on the first of three tries. Definitely didn't have to rely on Google for that one. But yeah, nice site there. I enjoy that. STEPH: I tried the keyboard option that's on there because I was like, oh yeah, I'm totally going to be into this. This is going to be my jam. I don't think it is because I realized that I'm very biased. I like the sound of my own keyboard. So I had to shush the other one and just listen to the rain and the open window. But that's some of the fun things that are going on in my world today. What's new in your world? CHRIS: I'm just now spending a moment with the keyboard sound. It's a very muted keyboard. I want a little more clackety. STEPH: A little more clackety? CHRIS: I was assuming it would be too much clackety, and that would be the problem. But it sounds more mushy. Maybe we can pipe in some of the sound here [laughs] at this point. Or we can link to these sounds, and everyone can dial up the keyboards to 100. But I, too, am partial to the sounds of my own keyboard. But what's new in my world? This past week and I think probably even a little bit more of the prior week, I've been noticing that I've been struggling to actually do any coding, which has been interesting to observe. And again, trying to observe it, not necessarily judge it, although if that's not the thing that we want to be doing, then try and improve that. But mostly trying to observe what's going on, what is taking my time. A lot of it is product management type work. So I am spending a good amount of time trying to gather the different voices and understand what is the work to be done, and then shape that into the backlog and make sure that that's clear and ready for the team to pick up. And then, thankfully, the other two developers that are working on the project are fantastically prolific. So they're often very quickly working through the work that has been set up in front of them. And so I'm trying to then be proactive and respond to the code. But there's almost a cycle to it where I'm just staying out in front of them, but they're catching up with everything that's going on. So it's something that I'm trying again to be intentional about, name, share some of that back up with the group. If there are things that I'm doing that I don't uniquely need to be doing, then let's share as much of that knowledge as possible. But one thing that I will say is the product management, shaping the backlog work is exhausting. I am astonished by just how drained I am at the end of the day. And I'm like, I don't even really feel like I did anything. I didn't write any code, but I am just completely spent. And there really is something to when the work is clear, just doing the work, I can actually find energizing. And it's fun, and I can get in flow state. And sometimes, I'll be drained in a certain way. But the work of taking a bunch of different slack threads, and communications, and meetings, and synthesizing that down, and then determining what the work needs to look like moving forward, and providing enough clarity but then not over constraining and not providing too much clarity. And there are so many micro-decisions that are being made in there. And I'm just spent at the end of the day, and I have so much...I've always had a lot of respect for product managers and folks that are existing in that interstitial space and trying to make sense of the noise, especially of a growing company, but all the more so this week as I've been feeling some of that myself. STEPH: I totally agree. I have felt that having a strong product manager really makes or breaks a project for me where even though having technical leadership is really nice, I'd prefer someone that's really strong at the product knowledge and then helping direct where the product is headed. That is incredibly helpful. Like you mentioned, the work is exhausting. There's someone that joined the thoughtbot team fairly recently, and I was chatting with them about what type of projects they would be interested in working on. And one of their responses was, "I'd love to work on a project with a strong product manager because I have been doing that a fair amount for recent years. And I would love to get back to just focusing on coding." And so I think they enjoyed some of the work, but they just recognize it's exhausting. And I'd really like to just get back to writing code for a while. CHRIS: Yeah, I'm definitely in that space. And I think there's a ton of value to spending a little bit of time, like having any developer at some point in their career spend a little bit of time managing the backlog, and you will learn a bunch from that. But I'm also in the space of I would love to just turn on some music and code for a while. That sounds fun. There's a lot of work to be done right now. I'd love to just be in there doing the work. But sometimes, out of necessity, the defining of the work is the thing that's important. And so, I think I've been correctly assessing the most important thing. And that that has consistently for a while now been the defining and responding to the work that's in process as opposed to doing it myself. But, man, I really hope I get to dive back into the code sometime and use my clackety keyboard to its fullest extent. STEPH: Have you found any particular strategies that really help you with the product management work? CHRIS: I will say that I think this is a competency. This is a skillset and a career path that...again, I've been at plenty of organizations that I don't think respected the role as much as it should be. But it's an incredibly hard role and multidisciplinary communication at the core of it. And so I don't think I'm great at it is the thing that I'll say. So everything that follows is just to be clear; I'm not saying that I'm great at this, but I have been doing some of it. So here are some thoughts that I have. I think a lot of it is in reaction to where I felt like the work was clear. So I have a sense of what it looks like when I can go to the backlog, trust that it is in a roughly solid priority order, pick up a piece of work and immediately go to work on it. And understand what are the end-user implications of this piece of work? Where would I start on it like, how technically? What's a rough approach that I would have? And getting that level of specificity just right. So it's not overconstrained, but it's not under constrained. So having experienced that on the developer side, I try and then use that to shape some of the guidance that I'm putting into, say, the Trello tickets that I'm writing up here. We recently introduced Trello epics, which is I want to say like an add-on. And that allows us just the tiniest bit of product management, like one level up. So instead of just having cards and a list that is like, here's the work to be done, we now have an epics list that is separate to it, and it links between a card and its associated epics. So it's like project and action within that project. And just that little touch of structure there has been really, really useful to help look at like, okay, what are the big pieces that we're trying to move? And then how do they break down into the smaller pieces? So a tiny, tiny bit of fanciness in our product management tool, not Jira-like not going in that direction yet for as long as I cannot. But that little bit of structure. And then thinking about what has been useful to me as I pick up tickets. And then, as always, trying to just always be cognizant of what is the user's experience here? What problem am I trying to solve for them? What is their experience going to be? How will they know how to work with this feature? And just always asking that and then framing the work to be done in the context of that. STEPH: I like how you're adamant about a little bit of fanciness but not all the way to Jira-like. I also like how you highlighted end-users. All of that, I think, is awesome when developers are able to expand their role to experience all the other facets of building software. CHRIS: Yeah, definitely. I think that whole list of all of the different facets of where our work interacts with different groups. The more empathy or, the more experience that you can have there, the better that you'll be able to understand how to communicate there, how to express things in terms, et cetera, et cetera. So a huge fan of all of those ideas. I am ready to just get back in the code for a few minutes, though. But for now, for as long as necessary, I'll do some of this work. But I am trying to find my way to other things. In terms of actual feature work that we're working on, one of the things that we're doing right now is restructuring our onboarding. So when a user comes and signs up to the website and then subsequently has to fill out a handful of other forms, there's actually an external system that we've been working with that houses some of the core data of our application. And they have a hosted application form. So we can send the user over to them, and the user fills out the rest of the application on this other system's site. And then they get redirected back to us. And everything's got nice DNS entries for a particular subdomain and whatnot. So it looks roughly consistent. There's some branding. But it's still someone else's UI, essentially. And we were feeling enough pain from that experience. We were like; you know what? It's time. We're going to bring this back in-house. We're going to do all the forms ourselves. We're going to do a nice progressive little progress bar. You can see all the steps as you're going through onboarding. We're just going to own that more because that's a core part of the experience that we're building here. So biting the bullet, deciding to do that. But there's an interesting edge case that we run into, which is we are using Devise for authentication. Totally makes sense. We're in Rails context; there we go. It's the thing to use. But Devise exists in truly the Rails world. So like HTML ERB templates, the controllers have certain expectations as to what's going on. So thus far, we've just let that exist in that world and everything else we're building in Inertia and Svelte. But we're just now starting to feel enough of the pain, and that Devise exists in this other context. And for a while, we just kept saying, "You know what? It's not worth the effort to port it over. It's fine." Because we're using Tailwind, we have a consistent design language that we can use across them. That said, the components are drifting a little bit. And it's like, oh, this one's got a rounded corner like this, and that one's got this color. And we don't have the disabled style. But it is nice that it's not completely distinct. But we have finally decided it is time. We need to port this thing over because we feel like the onboarding and authentication type flows; they're actually a big part of the user experience or at least the first run user experience when someone's signing up to our site. So we want to own that a little bit more. One of the things that I ran into as I was trying to introduce Mailcheck, which is a library that I've talked about, I think in a previous episode...but basically, you can have it observe a field and if someone types in like, user@gmaip.com, you can like, did you mean gmail.com? And then go from there. And I think there's more subtlety. They can maybe even look up MX records and things like that. But basically validate an email address heuristically and offer the nice, very friendly to a user, "Hey, did you mean this instead?" So not a full validation that says, "No, you cannot put your email address," because maybe you have a weird one that sounds like Gmail but isn't. But that's a little bit trickier to implement both on the Devise side and then in any other place that we have an email input. And so what we want to do is port over to Inertia and Svelte, and then everything's in our nice, happy context with all our components and all the other work that we're doing. And it really does just highlight how much I've come to enjoy working with Inertia and Svelte. They are fantastic technologies. And now I just want absolutely everything to be in them. So we're finally going to bite the bullet, and I think port those over a little bit after we get the current batch of work done. But soon, soon, that's the goal. STEPH: I'm having a bit of déjà vu where I feel like there was a project that you were working on that was using Devise, and then removing Devise and replacing it with something else was a challenge. Does that ring a bell? CHRIS: Yes, that is accurate. So I had a project that I worked on where we had both Devise and Clearance was actually what was going on. There were basically two different applications that existed; one was using Clearance, the later one used Devise. But then we folded those two applications back together. And by virtue of that, I tried to unify the authentication schemes, and it was like, nope, not going to happen. And then we didn't. STEPH: And then we didn't. [laughs] I like that ending. CHRIS: Well, sometimes you don't. [laughs] STEPH: Yeah, I love that ending because it reflects reality. Sometimes that just happens. In fact, I'm going to segue for just a moment because you're reminding me that there's something I don't think I've shared with you yet. On my previous project, there was a particular feature. It was a big feature that someone had picked up and worked on. And at one point, we were essentially playing hot potato with this feature because we hadn't gotten it to the point that it was merged. There was too much that was happening in that pull request, although then we ended up merging it. But then we found lots of bugs. And it was just one of those features that we couldn't really get across the finish line. There was always something else that was wrong with it or needed to be done or needed to be considered. And we'd reach that point where Chad Pytel, who is on the project, was like, "We're either going to finish this, or we're going to throw it away." And I felt a little guilty saying this, and I was like, "I vote we throw it away. I have lots of concerns about this. We are essentially reimplementing another complex workflow. But now, we are implementing it pretty differently in another portion of the application. It's going to be hard to manage. The cost of adding this and maintaining this is a really high concern." And so he talked with the rest of the team and came back, and he's like, "Yep, we're going to throw it away." And so then he issued a PR, and we removed it. And it was one of those moments of like; this isn't great because then we have invested hours into this, and now we are taking it away. But it also felt really good that that's always an option. And that was the better option because it was either we're going to continue sinking more time into this, or we can stop it now. And then we can move on to more important work. CHRIS: Sunk costs and all that. STEPH: Yeah. I feel like it's so rare when that really happens because then we just feel dedicated to like, well, we're going to make this valuable to somebody. We're going to keep this. And in this case, we just threw it away. It's very nice. CHRIS: There's a similar anecdote that I remember. Actually, I think it's happened more than once. But very particularly, we were working on a system. And this was with our friend, Matt Sumner, a friend of the show, as well been on a few times. And Matt was working on the project. And we got to a point where we had two competing implementations of a given workflow, and we were opting to go with the new one. But there were folks that were saying, "Let's keep the code around for the old one." And Matt was like, "Absolutely not. If we do that, we might go...no, this will be bad. Then we have to maintain that code. We need to burn the ships," as he said. And he actually named the pull request burn the ships where he just removed all the code. And I was like, I like your style, man. You made a decision here. We collectively made a decision. And then this is a classic Matt Sumner move. But he did the thing that we said we were going to do. And he just held that line. And I really appreciated it. And it's a voice that I have in the back of my head often now, which is just like, no, burn the ships. If we need it, it'll be in Git history. We can recover it. But it's going to need to be handled in the interim. We don't want to have to support that code right now and for however long until we actually decide to remove it from the codebase. So let's get rid of it. And if we really need it, well, then we'll resurrect it, but for now, burn the ships. And I like that. STEPH: I like that too. I think it's one of those areas where it takes experience to feel that pain too. If you're pretty new to writing code, you're going to think, well, we can keep it around. There's no harm. And so it often has to be that sage, that person who's been around long enough and felt some pain from making that decision in prior centuries or years. And he's like, "No, we're not going to do this." The WE collective of developers who have experienced the pain from this understand that that's not a good choice. And so we're going to burn the ships instead. But it is one of those that if you're newer, you won't think that way. And I think that's totally reasonable that you wouldn't think that immediately. CHRIS: I think that tacit knowledge that oh, I've gone through this before, and I've experienced the pain, and now let me tell you about that. And let me try and share that with you because there's always the cost-benefit trade-off. Because if that code stays in the codebase, then we know it works because we've kept it around for that whole time. And so there's a nicety to that, but there's a cost, that maintenance cost. And being able to express that well and being able to say, "I've been here, and let me tell you a tale," but do it in a way that doesn't sound overly condescending or explainy or things like that. I think that's a very subtle skill and a very important one, and frankly, really hard one to get right. I'm not sure I always hit the mark on that where I'm just like, "No, can't do it. It's bad." I think it's very easy to end up in a space where you're just like, "No, it's bad." And they're like, "But why?" And you're like, "Because it's bad. Trust me." It's like, well, I feel like you do need to be able to explain the stories, the experiences that you've had in the past, the anecdotes that you've heard, the blog posts that you've read that have really informed your thinking. But I think that is a big part of what it means to continue on in this profession and be able to do the work and make those subtle trade-offs, and the it depends because, at the end of the day, it all depends. STEPH: Or you just issue a pull request and title it burn the ships. [laughs] CHRIS: Burn the ships. Indeed, that is, in fact an option. And actually, while we're on the topic of pull requests, this might be a perfect segue into a listener question that we have. Mid-roll Ad And now a quick break to hear from today's sponsor, Scout APM. Scout APM is leading-edge application performance monitoring that's designed to help Rails developers quickly find and fix performance issues without having to deal with the headache or overhead of enterprise platform feature bloat. With a developer-centric UI and tracing logic that ties bottlenecks to source code, you can quickly pinpoint and resolve those performance abnormalities like N+1 queries, slow database queries, memory bloat, and much more. Scout's real-time alerting and weekly digest emails let you rest easy knowing Scout's on watch and resolving performance issues before your customers ever see them. Scout has also launched its new error monitoring feature add-on for Python applications. Now you can connect your error reporting and application monitoring data on one platform. See for yourself why developers call Scout their best friend and try our error monitoring and APM free for 14 days; no credit card needed. And as an added-on bonus for Bike Shed listeners, Scout will donate $5 to the open-source project of your choice when you deploy. Learn more at scoutapm.com/bikeshed. That's scoutapm.com/bikeshed. CHRIS: As always, thanks to everyone who sends in listener questions. We so appreciate getting them. They help direct the conversation and give us something to chat about. So this question comes in from Bryan Robles. And Bryan writes in about large pull requests. And Bryan writes in with, "My toxic trait is large pull requests. Any tips on when you get into a place where you're fixing or refactoring something, and it ends up cascading to many more changes than you want it to? I sometimes can go back and break it up. But it's hard to recognize a good seam when you're in the thick of it." So, Steph, what do you think? Large pull requests and finding yourself in them after [laughs] certain amounts of time. STEPH: Yeah, speaking of that knowledge that often comes from experience, this is something that I'm certainly always striving to get better at. I think it does take practice. There are some things that I do that I can share. And I categorize them really into a before, and I guess midway. So there's the before I set sail and set off to deeper waters list that I will think through as I'm starting a new task, and then there's the I'm lost at sea. And then, I need to figure out how I'm going to organize this change. So in the first category, when I'm first starting off a task, I consider what sort of changes need to be made, and are there any obvious roadblocks? So an obvious roadblock may be changing or updating a model that has one relationship, and I need to change it to has many relationships. Or perhaps there's a part of the application that is untested. And before I make any changes, I need to document that existing behavior. And that really falls neatly within Kent Beck's advice where he said, "First make the change easy (warning: this might be hard) and then make the easy change." So I try to think upfront what are some of the small, incremental changes that I can make first that will then make the final change easy? And then I separate that mentally into PRs. Or I may separate it into tickets, whatever is going to help me stay organized and communicate how I'm breaking up that work. And then the other thing that I'll do is I'll consider what's my MVP? So what's my minimum viable pull request? What set of changes include just enough changes to be helpful to users or to other developers? Which, by the way, is also a helpful mindset to have when you're breaking down work into tickets. So, as an example, let's say that I need to fix some bad data that's causing a site to error. So my first step could be to write a task to fix the bad data. And then, step two, prevent bad data from being created. And then probably step three, I need to rerun the task to fix data that was created during step two. But I can think through each of those steps and separate them into different pull requests. And then there may also be the question of well, how small is too small? Like you're saying, what's a minimum viable pull request? How do I know if I am not delivering value? And that one gets a little trickier and vague. But ultimately, I will think, does it pass CI? Is this change deployable? And then I do have to define what value I'm delivering. And I think that's a common area that folks struggle because we'll think of delivering value as delivering a whole new feature or adding complete test coverage for an untested interface. But delivering value doesn't have to represent that end goal. It may be that you added one test for an untested interface. And that's still delivering really great value to your team, same for delivering a feature to a user. You may be able to speak with that wonderful product manager and find what's the smallest bit of value that you can deliver instead of the whole feature set? I think the smallest PR I can think of that I've issued is either fixing a typo or removing a focus metadata from an RSpec test. So that's my starting point. That's the before I set sail. Those are some of the things I think about. I have more for the I'm lost at sea. But what are your thoughts? CHRIS: First, that was a great summary that you gave. So I totally agree with everything that you just said. I think part of the question I would have...So Bryan wrote this in and described this as his toxic trait. So he's identifying this as something that seemingly consistently plagues him. So I would ask, is there a way that you can introduce something? Like, are there natural breaks in your day? And can you ask the question at those breaks? Like, hey, I've been working on a thing for a little while. Is there a version that I could...like, could I close off a body of work at this moment? When you break for lunch, if you go grab coffee in the morning, when you're leaving at the end of the day, use those natural breakpoints. I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say large pull requests. But if those are spanning multiple days, in my mind, if anything starts to span more than a day, I will start to ask that question to myself. And that's a reflex that I built up over time by feeling the pain of large pull requests and putting it up, and feeling apologetic. And then having my colleagues gently, professionally kindly ask me to break it down into smaller pieces. And me saying, "I really don't want it. All right, fine, fine, fine, I'll do it." And then I do it. And it's one of those things that I never want to do in the first place, but I'm always happy to have done after the fact. But it is work. And so, if I can get better at pulling that thinking and pulling that question earlier in the process, that I think is really useful. Similarly, I will try to, again, as friendly as I can; if I notice someone mentioning the same body of work at stand up for a few days, I might gently ask, "Hey, is there a way that we can find a shippable version of a portion of that of a subset? Can we put it up behind a feature flag and get something out there just to try and keep the PR small, et cetera?" And so gently nudge in that direction. And then I think the other side of that is being very okay with one character PRs. Like, that's it. We changed one character. It turns out we need to pluralize that word, or we need one-line changes are great. That's fine. And more pull requests, in my mind, are better than fewer, larger pull requests. And so really embracing that and having that be part of the core conversation and demonstrating that throughout the team is a way to share this idea. So that's perhaps more in the process or person point of view on this as opposed to the technical, but that's part of the consideration that I would have. I am interested, and I'll bounce back to, Steph, what you were saying of now that you're out at sea, what do you do? STEPH: So I need to react positively to some of the things that you just said because you made me think of two things. One of them is I've never had someone say, "Hey, Steph, that PR is too small. Could you add some more changes to it? Could you do some more work?" I have had people say, "Hey, that PR was hard to review." But even then, sometimes getting that feedback from folks is hard because nobody really wants to say, "I had a hard time reviewing your PR." That's something that, over time, you may become really comfortable saying to someone. But I think initially, people don't want to say, "Hey, that was hard to review," or "There were a lot of changes in that. Would you break it down?" Because that's a lot of complex emotions and discussion to have there. But yeah, I just figured I'd share that I have never had someone complain that a PR is too small, and I've issued a single character change. And then I love, love how much you asked the question of what's the problem we're trying to solve? And so there's this ambiguous idea of a large PR. But what does that mean? What are the pain points? What are we actually looking to change about our behavior? And then how is that going to impact or benefit the team or benefit ourselves? And so, going back to the question of how do we measure this? How do I know I'm starting to break up my changes in a helpful way? We may need to circle back to that because I don't have answers to it. But I just really like asking that question. As for the I'm lost at sea part, or maybe you're not lost at sea, but you've caught too many fish, and the fish warden is going to fuss at you if you bring too many fish back to dock. I don't think this is a real nautical example. But here we are. CHRIS: Was that the fish warden? STEPH: Yeah, the fish warden. You know, the fish warden. [laughs] CHRIS: Sure, I do, yeah. Yeah, I know about that, well-versed in fish law. STEPH: [laughs] Got to know your fish law. If we're going to talk about pull requests, you got to introduce fish law. But I'm actually going to quote Joël Quenneville, a fellow thoughtboter, because they shared a thoughtful thread on Twitter that talks a lot about breaking up your changes and how to break up your pull requests and your commits. And I'll be sure to include a link in the show notes because it's really worth reading as there's a lot of knowledge in that thread. But one of the things that Joël says is get comfortable with Git, and it makes a world of difference. In particular, you want to get really good at git add --patch, git reset, and git rebase interactive. And that is so true for me. Once I have gotten really good at using those commands, then I feel like I can break up anything. Because often when I am helping someone break something up, it's often they want to, but they're like, "I don't know how. And this is going to take so much of my time. It doesn't feel efficient and the right thing to do." And they're probably right. If you don't know how to break it up, then it may take you too long. And maybe it's not worth it at that point. But if you can ask a friend, and they can help walk you through this process, or if you can learn on your own, that's going to be a game-changer because you will start to think about how can I separate these commits? And I can reorder them, and then issue separate PRs, or just keep them in separate commits, whatever process you're looking to improve. In fact, there's a really great course on Upcase called Mastering Git written by someone who is co-host of this podcast. And it has a lot of great videos and tutorials that will help you get really good at these Git commands and then will help you split up your commits. CHRIS: Oh yeah, I did do that. Warning: it's like three and a half hours long. But it is broken up into, I believe, 10 or 11 videos. So you can find just the ones that you want. There's a couple in the middle that I think are particularly useful talking about the object model of Git. Git is weird, unfortunately. And so I spent a bunch of time in that course. Also, thank you for the kind words, Steph. [laughs] But I spent a bunch of time in that course trying to make Git less weird or understandable. If you look under the hood, it starts to make more sense. But if you really want to get comfortable with manipulating Git history, which I think is a really useful skill for this conversation that we're having, that's the only way I found to do it, just memorizing the steps. It's always going to feel a little bit foreign. But once you understand the stuff under the hood, that's a really useful thing for being able to manipulate and tease apart a pull request and break it into different things, and port things from one branch to another, and all those fun activities. Yeah, man, that was a bunch of years ago too. I wonder what I look like in it. Huh. STEPH: I really liked that episode, the one you just mentioned, the Git Object Model. Now that you've mentioned it, I remember watching it, and it's very interesting. So yeah, thank you for making all this helpful content for folks. There's also a blog post that we can include in the show notes as well that is a really nice overview of using git interactive, and rebase, and squash and amend those types of behaviors as well. So will be sure to include both so folks can check those out. And then to round things out, one of the other things that I will do is I will ask a friend. I will ask someone for help. So we've talked about some of these behaviors, or some of these processes that we have are really built up from experience and practice. And you can watch a lot of helpful content, and you can read blog posts. But sometimes, it really just takes time to get good at it. I know, as I'd mentioned earlier, I am always still looking to improve this particular skill because I think it's so valuable. And one of the ways I do that is I will just phone a friend. And I'll say, "Hey, can we chat for a bit? I would like to show you my changes. I want to hear from you if you see something in here that's valuable that you think can be shipped independently, so that way we can get it delivered faster." Or it may be a change that's just like a test improvement or something. And we can go ahead and get that immediately released to the team, and it will benefit them. Or you may want to do this at the start of a ticket. If I am new to a project or when I am new to a project, I will often ask someone to break down a ticket with me if I'm feeling a little bit uncertain. Or just say, "Hey, do you see any clean lines of division here? I feel like there's a lot in this ticket. You're more familiar with the codebase. What would you ship? How would you ship this incrementally?" and have someone else walk through the process with you. CHRIS: Yep, the phone a friend and/or, as always, pairing is a wonderful tool in these sorts of situations. The one other thing that comes to mind for me is part of the question was about sometimes it's difficult to find a clear parting line within a larger body of work, within a larger change. And that can definitely be true. I think there are certain standouts of like is this a refactoring that can be shipped separately? Is this a test change that would be useful on its own? Is there a model change that we could break out and have just that go out? So there's a bunch of mechanical questions that we can ask and say; here's categories of things that might fit that bill. But to flip this to the other side, the question was asked by Bryan very much as an I struggle with this thing. This is my toxic trait is the phrase that he used, which I thought was really interesting. And that can be true. This can be something that if you're consistently and uniquely within the team producing these giant PRs and then folks find that difficult to review, then I think that is absolutely something to work on. But if this is something that is happening between members like, other members of the team are also finding that they keep ending up with PRs that are bigger than they expected and taking longer and harder to review, there is a question of is the codebase actually in a shape that makes it harder to do small changes? There's the phrase shotgun surgery, which refers to a codebase that is so entangled and coupled that any change requires modifying ten files just to make one small alteration. And I think that's a worthwhile question to step back and ask, actually, is it not me? Is it actually the codebase? It could be both certainly. But there is a version of your codebase is coupled in a way that means that any even small, tiny change requires touching so many different places in the code. And if that's true, that's at least worth naming and worth highlighting and maybe talking about in retro and saying, hey, this feels like it's true. So maybe we start to get intentional about refactoring, and breaking out, and starting to add those dividing lines within the code such that hopefully, down the road, small changes can, in fact, be small changes. So that is the one last thing that I would consider here. Also, anecdotally, this is just a thing that came to mind. As I've worked with strongly-typed languages, systems that have a compiler, and have a type system, and the ability for the compiler to keep an eye on the whole codebase, I've noticed that it's very easy to do this sort of thing where I just start with one small data model change, and then the compiler is like, oh, you got to go fix it here, and here, and here, and here. And I found that because the compiler is your friend and will just point you to all the places you need to make the change, it is very easy to just keep going because some of that mechanical work is happening on your behalf. And it's a wonderful facet of typed languages and of having a compiler and being able to have that conversation with the compiler. But I found that for me, it is much easier to end up in this mode where I'm like, oh no, this PR is way too large. When I'm working in a system that has types, that has a compiler, that frankly makes it a little bit easier to chase down all the places you need to make a change. So that's also a consideration. It's not necessarily a good or a bad thing, just something that I've observed that feels like it's adjacent to this conversation. But yeah, I think those are my thoughts. STEPH: Yeah, those are great points. I've certainly worked on projects where that felt very true where it's a small change, but it would cascade throughout the project. And all the changes were necessary. It wasn't something that I could split into smaller PRs. So checking if it is the codebase that's really making it hard to have small PRS is a really great idea. CHRIS: Who'd have thunk such a little question could get us rambling for so long? Oh, wait, I would have thunk that. STEPH: And so far, reflecting on the things that we've talked about so far, I think I've talked a good game of where I'm saying, "Oh, I identify the seams upfront, and then I organize and create different tickets." And that is very much not the case. That's the really ideal outcome. But often, I am in the thick of things where like you just said...and it's this moment of, oh, I've done a lot in this PR. And how can I break this up? And that does take time. And it becomes a conversation of trade-off, which is why those Git skills really come in handy because then it will lower the cost of then splitting things out for others. But for people that are struggling with creating smaller PRs, I do think it's very fair to ask your team for help. I think it's also fair that if you issued a large pull request and folks have already reviewed it, and it's gotten approved, and someone makes a comment like, "Oh, this would be great as two PRs instead of one," to say, "Awesome, thank you for letting me know. I will take that forward with me, but I'm not going to do it for this PR." I wouldn't recommend making that a habit. But just know that that is something that you can say to someone to say, "I think this one is good to go at this point. But I will keep that in mind for future PRs. And I may even reach out to you for help if I feel like I'm having trouble splitting up a PR." And bring that person into your progress and use them as an accountability buddy. They can be someone that helps you down that path towards smaller PRs. CHRIS: Yeah, I definitely agree with that, although it becomes a very subtle line. Saying, "Thank you, but no thank you," in a pull request or to feedback is delicate. It's difficult. That's a whole thing. But I agree there have been times where I have either been the one making that decision or suggesting that or being like, "We probably should have broken this up. But we're far enough along now. Let's get this merged. And then we'll iterate on it after the fact." One last thing, actually. I thought I was done, but I have one more thing, which is I feel like there's a strong parallel between test-driven development and this question in that, often, I hear folks saying, "I don't know how to write tests upfront. I don't know how to do that. I know after the fact I can write tests, and I can add them after." And that can definitely be true. It can become more obvious after you've written the code how you could then write a test that would constrain that behavior that would interact with the system. But I think the useful thing that you can do there is take a moment and pause there and say, "Okay, now that I have written the test, what would it look like if I had written this in the first place?" Or if you really want to go for it, throw away the code, try again. Start with the test first and then rebuild it. That's maybe a little much. But that thing of taking these moments of maybe you don't know upfront how to break the work into smaller pieces, but then you get to the end, and you have that conversation with someone. And they highlight where some parting lines would be, or you figure it out after the fact. Stay there in that moment. Meditate on it a bit and try and internalize that knowledge because that's how moving forward, you might know how to do this in the future. So take those moments, whether it be with TDD or with pull requests, or breaking up a ticket into smaller tickets, anything like that. And spend a moment there and try and internalize that knowledge so that you have it proactively moving forward. STEPH: You know how Slack has status? I really like the idea of there being a status that's meditating on...and you can fill it in. And the example that you just provided, meditating on splitting up a pull request or meditating on how to write a test first, [laughs] I think that would be delightful. CHRIS: I, too, think that would be delightful. But with that long, adventurous answer to what seemed like a simple question, and they always do, but here we are, shall we wrap up? STEPH: Let's wrap up. CHRIS: The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. STEPH: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHRIS: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review in iTunes, as it really helps other folks find the show. STEPH: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @_bikeshed or reach me on Twitter @SViccari. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey STEPH: Or you can reach us at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. All: Byeeeeeeeeeee! Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

We're back from the Thanksgiving weekend and we have an action-packed Episode 363 for you! Fresh off the big win against the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the Duke Blue Devils are now #1 in the country and set to play against the Ohio State Buckeyes tomorrow night in Columbus. Jason Evans sits down with Connor Lemons from the Bucketheads Podcast over at Land-Grant Holy Land, the Ohio State SB Nation blog. Connor gives us a brutally honest review of the Buckeyes and what we can expect from them in a preview of tomorrow's game. The preview leads to an overall preview of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. Jason, Sam, and Donald discuss the uphill battle the ACC faces this season in the Challenge with some of the matchups. After the break, Duke is #1, and we discuss the AP poll that was released today. The ACC is represented in the AP poll by Duke and Duke only, leading the crew to say that this ACC-B1G Challenge is a huge opportunity for the ACC to change the narrative around the conference. Finally, we take some time to issue our farewell to Coach David Cutcliffe, who is leaving the Duke Football program after 14 years. Coach Cut instilled a football culture at Duke, and he left Durham much better than he found it. We each say our thanks for everything he gave to Duke, and we opine about possible successors. We continue to get some awesome emails from so many of our listeners, aso keep it coming! Drop us a line at DBR Podcast at Gmail dot com! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A reply-chain incident is reported at a major international furniture and housewares retailer. North Korean operators are phishing for South Korean marks using bogus Samsung recruiting emails as phishbait. Fancy Bear has been seen pawing at Gmail. A regional escalation to civilian targets in the cyber conflict between Iran and Israel. More organizations are added to the US Entity List. Johannes Ullrich looks at decrypting Cobalt Strike. Our own Rick Howard wonders if executive really need to know how to drive that tank. And tension between Russia and Ukraine continues to rise. For links to all of today's stories check out our CyberWire daily news briefing: https://www.thecyberwire.com/newsletters/daily-briefing/10/227

 Are you looking to send lead generation emails to everyone on your database, past clients, or unconverted leads in your CRM? A great email marketing strategy is to send emails that contain details regarding how much their home is worth or if they're interested in getting an offer for their home. In this blog post, we'll guide you through the steps you need to know to set up your magical seller lead generation email.  Sending Out Leads  When you send emails, make sure that you send to warm leads rather than cold ones, and make sure to make it personal. No one wants spam in their emails and everyone knows what a templated email looks like, so don't send out one of those. If it looks like junk mail or if it doesn't look relevant, people are more likely to throw it away or unsubscribe.  Where to Get a List of Emails Before you can send out an email, you need a list of email addresses. These emails can be found from all of your contacts on Outlook, or your Gmail. Proceed to export all the people on your contacts to your email marketing program. Do the same for everyone on your cell phone and put them in a different spreadsheet. Then do the same for your existing CRM, whether you're using Real Geeks or something else. Export everything except anyone who has unsubscribed from emails in that system. Another source is a dialer — these will make calls for you and may lead to people you've spoken to. Export these into another spreadsheet.  Scrubbing Your Emails Next, we need to scrub these emails — use NeverBounce.com to ensure that you don't get bounced emails. This works by providing a ping to the email addresses to see if the actual mailbox works. A $50 subscription will be enough to scrub a couple of thousand emails, and businesses of all sizes use this tool.  Eliminating Duplicates  While you now have 4 to 5 spreadsheets of scrubbed emails, you will probably have a bunch of duplicates too. Use Myemma.com or Zoho Campaigns will help you send your marketing emails. Other tools include MailChimp and Salesforce for the big players. Upload each spreadsheet into your email marketing program so that the system automatically eliminates duplicates of the same email address. Now, you have a scrubbed, no-duplicate list of all your best contacts ready to get an email from you.  What To do When the Domain Name isn't Authenticated  Be sure to do an SPF DKIM Authentication — Google will have a help file on how to set this up. Going through this process will significantly improve the likelihood of sending this email to mailboxes where it would be tagged as spam.  Enjoy Limitless Lead Generation  With the steps above, you should be able to get a wealth of leads from emails sent to your contacts. However, this isn't meant to be done all the time and you can't send out an email every single week. Keep in mind that this method is best used about once a month or once every two months.   You can download a pdf of all the emails from this episode HERE

Bill Frost (SLUGMag.com & X96 Radio From Hell) and Tommy Milagro (SlamWrestling.net) talk It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 15(!), Lost In Space, Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas, Baking It, Dr. Death, Listening to Kenny G, PEN15, The Great British Baking Show: The Holidays, A Clüsterfünke Christmas, La Brea, Cowboy Bebop, The Wheel of Time, Rasslin' News, Bill's December Content Shifter (SLUGMag.com & BillFrost.tv): The Freak Brothers, Hit-Monkey, Hawkeye, Ragdoll, South Park: Post Covid, and more. Drinking: Mojitos with Silver Rum from OFFICIAL TV Tan sponsor Sugar House Distillery.TV Tan will return with all-new episodes in January 2022.* Yell at us: @TVTanPodcast Twitter, Facebook, Gmail.* Rate us: Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Podcasts, Audible, etc.

Blind Abilities presents a new iPhone101 Series entitled: "Managing Mail Messages and Accounts in iOS - Adding, Retrieving and  Deleting, Oh My!”  This new series provides a series of in depth demonstrations aimed at giving you the tools to effectively manage your email in an organized and efficient manner. Pete Lane walks us through each step of these processes with snappy and thorough presentations.  Parts 4 and 5 introduction to the process of deleting an email account from an iOS device. Specifically, Part 4: Using his Gmail accounts as an example, going into the Settings App and deleting it. Part 5 Demonstrates how to add an existing email account to a device, using the previously deleted Gmail account as the example, adding it back to the iPhone and migrating over to the Google.com web site as is required when adding or creating a Gmail account.  Step by Step processes: Part 4 - Deleting an Email account from Your iDevice   . Open your Settings App with a single-finger double-tap, or ask Siri to "open Settings". Then flick right until you arrive at “Mail”, single-finger double-tap. Flick right until you arrive at Accounts, then flick right to the particular account you wish to delete from the list provided (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud…), single-finger double-tap to select. Flick right to “Delete Account”, single-finger double-tap. Note: iOS will alert you that deleting the account will also remove other items from your device, such as, mail, notes or Calendars. Single-finger double-tap to confirm. This completes the deletion of the account from your device. You can verify it by performing a single-finger double-tap on the “Back” button and flick through the remaining list of accounts shown on the previous screen. Note: you can also check by using your App Switcher to toggle over to your Mail app and scroll through the list of Mailboxes listed there. Activate your App Switcher by rotating two fingers, like twisting a bottle-cap, clockwise or counter-clockwise until you hear Voiceover say “Mail”, then perform a single-finger double-tap to open Mail”. Flick to the Mailboxes to verify if the account has been removed.  Part 5: Adding an existing Email Account onto your iDevice: Ask Siri to open the “Settings” app, or perform a single-finger double-tap on the App icon. Flick down to “Mail” and perform a single-finger double-tap, then select “Accounts at the top of the new screen. Flick right to “Add Account”, then perform a single-finger double-tap. Select the email account service you wish to add by performing a Single-finger double-tap on that item in the list: iCloud, Exchange, Google / Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook.com / Hotmail, or “Other”. Note: If you choose to add a Gmail account, you should select Google. In this case iOS will refer you to Google.com to sign in and register the email account. Be ready with your email address and password, your name and gender, as Google will require this information during the process. Type in the email address and login information requested. Note: Dictation does not behave well with these text fields so be prepared to use the onscreen or a blue tooth keyboard. You will now be prompted to provide your cellular phone number so Google can contact you when needed. Once you do so, you will be sent a six-digit security code via text message. Be ready for this as you are given a 30 second time frame to retrieve and enter it quickly in the space provided. After providing your phone number and entering the security code, you will be presented a “Save” button, single-finger double-tap to do so. You will then move back to the previous screen showing your email accounts, including the newly added account. You can also return to your Mail App to verify that the new account is listed there as well. You are done! Congratulations! Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

In This Episode, Dr's J and Santhosh examine a piece of medical furniture you probably haven't thought about in a while. Along the way they cover mecicine chests, household locations of drugs, the essential items for your cabinet, health architecture, expired medications, popular science contests and more! So sit back and relax as we go snooping through your medicine cabinet!Further Reading1) https://www.matteringpress.org/books/boxes/read/boxes-figs-31.xhtml2) https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/60/kastner_day.phpSupport Us spiritually, emotionally or financially here! Twitter: @doctorjcomedy @toshyfro Instagram: @travelmedicinepodcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/28uQe3cYGrTLhP6X0zyEhTFacebook: facebook.com/travelmedicinepodcast Squarespace: travelmedicinepodcast.squarespace.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/travelmedicinepodcast Gmail: travelmedicineinfo@gmail.com

About StephanieStephanie Wong is an award-winning speaker, engineer, pageant queen, and hip hop medalist. She is a leader at Google with a mission to blend storytelling and technology to create remarkable developer content. At Google, she's created over 400 videos, blogs, courses, and podcasts that have helped developers globally. You might recognize her as the host of the GCP Podcast. Stephanie is active in her community, fiercely supporting women in tech and mentoring students.Links: Personal Website: https://stephrwong.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephr_wong TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats v-u-l-t-r.com slash screaming.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking, databases, observability, management, and security. And—let me be clear here—it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build. With Always Free, you can do things like run small scale applications or do proof-of-concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free, no asterisk. Start now. Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. One of the things that makes me a little weird in the universe is that I do an awful lot of… let's just call it technology explanation slash exploration in public, and turning it into a bit of a brand-style engagement play. What makes this a little on the weird side is that I don't work for a big company, which grants me a tremendous latitude. I have a whole lot of freedom that lets me be all kinds of different things, and I can't get fired, which is something I'm really good at.Inversely, my guest today is doing something remarkably similar, except she does work for a big company and could theoretically be fired if they were foolish enough to do so. But I don't believe that they are. Stephanie Wong is the head of developer engagement at Google. Stephanie, thank you for volunteering to suffer my slings and arrows about all of this.Stephanie: [laugh]. Thanks so much for having me today, Corey.Corey: So, at a very high level, you're the head of developer engagement, which is a term that I haven't seen a whole lot of. Where does that start and where does that stop?Stephanie: Yeah, so I will say that it's a self-proclaimed title a bit because of the nuance of what I do. I would say at its heart, I am still a part of developer relations. If you've heard of developer advocacy or developer evangelist, I would say this slight difference in shade of what I do is that I focus on scalable content creation and becoming a central figure for our developer audiences to engage and enlighten them with content that, frankly, is remarkable, and that they'd want to share and learn about our technology.Corey: Your bio is fascinating in that it doesn't start with the professional things that most people do with, “This is my title and this is my company,” is usually the first sentence people put in. Yours is, “Stephanie Wong is an award-winning speaker, engineer, pageant queen, and hip hop medalist.” Which is both surprising and more than a little bit refreshing because when I read a bio like that my immediate instinctive reaction is, “Oh, thank God. It's a real person for a change.” I like the idea of bringing the other aspects of what you are other than, “This is what goes on in an IDE, the end,” to your audience.Stephanie: That is exactly the goal that I had when creating that bio because I truly believe in bringing more interdisciplinary and varied backgrounds to technology. I, myself have gone through a very unconventional path to get to where I am today and I think in large part, my background has had a lot to do with my successes, my failures, and really just who I am in tech as an uninhibited and honest, credible person today.Corey: I think that there's a lack of understanding, broadly, in our industry about just how important credibility and authenticity are and even the source of where they come from. There are a lot of folks who are in the DevRel space—devrelopers, as I insist upon calling them, over their protests—where, on some level, the argument is, what is developer relations? “Oh, you work in marketing, but they're scared to tell you,” has been my gag on that one for a while. But they speak from a position of, “I know what's what because I have been in the trenches, working on these large-scale environments as an engineer for the last”—fill in the blank, however long it may have been—“And therefore because I have done things, I am going to tell you how it is.” You explicitly call out that you don't come from the traditional, purely technical background. Where did you come from? It's unlikely that you've sprung fully-formed from the forehead of some god, but again, I'm not entirely sure how Google finds and creates the folks that it winds up advancing, so maybe you did.Stephanie: Well, to tell you the truth. We've all come from divine creatures. And that's where Google sources all employees. So. You know. But—[laugh].Corey: Oh, absolutely. “We climbed to the top of Olympus and then steal fire from the gods.” “It's like, isn't that the origin story of Prometheus?” “Yeah, possibly.” But what is your background? Where did you come from?Stephanie: So, I have grown up, actually, in Silicon Valley, which is a little bit ironic because I didn't go to school for computer science or really had the interest in becoming an engineer in school. I really had no idea.Corey: Even been more ironic than that because most of Silicon Valley appears to never have grown up at all.Stephanie: [laugh]. So, true. Maybe there's a little bit of that with me, too. Everybody has a bit of Peter Pan syndrome here, right? Yeah, I had no idea what I wanted to do in school and I just knew that I had an interest in communicating with one another, and I ended up majoring in communication studies.I thought I wanted to go into the entertainment industry and go into production, which is very different and ended up doing internships at Warner Brothers Records, a YouTube channel for dance—I'm a dancer—and I ended up finding a minor in digital humanities, which is sort of this interdisciplinary minor that combines technology and the humanities space, including literature, history, et cetera. So, that's where I got my start in technology, getting an introduction to information systems and doing analytics, studying social media for certain events around the world. And it wasn't until after school that I realized that I could work in enterprise technology when I got an offer to be a sales engineer. Now, that being said, I had no idea what sales engineering was. I just knew it had something to do with enterprise technology and communications, and I thought it was a good fit for my background.Corey: The thing that I find so interesting about that is that it breaks the mold of what people expect, when, “If someone's going to talk to me about technology—especially coming from a”—it's weird; it's one of the biggest companies on the planet, and people still on some level equate Google with the startup-y mentality of being built in someone's garage. That's an awfully big garage these days, if that's even slightly close to true, which it isn't. But there's this idea of, “Oh, you have to go to Stanford. You have to get a degree in computer science. And then you have to go and do this, this, this, this, and this.”And it's easy to look dismissively at what you're doing. “Communications? Well, all that would teach you to do is communicate to people clearly and effectively. What possible good is that in tech?” As we look around the landscape and figure out exactly why that is so necessary in tech, and also so lacking?Stephanie: Exactly. I do think it's an underrated skill in tech. Maybe it's not so much anymore, but I definitely think that it has been in the past. And even for developers, engineers, data scientists, other technical practitioner, especially as a person in DevRel, I think it's such a valuable skill to be able to communicate complex topics simply and understandably to a wide variety of audiences.Corey: The big question that I have for you because I've talked to an awful lot of folks who are very concerned about the way that they approach developer relations, where—they'll have ratios, for example—where I know someone and he insists that he give one deeply technical talk for every four talks that are not deeply technical, just because he feels the need to re-establish and shore up his technical bona fides. Now, if there's one thing that people on the internet love, it is correcting people on things that are small trivia aspect, or trying to pull out the card that, “Oh, I've worked on this system for longer than you've worked on this system, therefore, you should defer to me.” Do you find that you face headwinds for not having the quote-unquote, “Traditional” engineering technical background?Stephanie: I will say that I do a bit. And I did, I would say when I first joined DevRel, and I don't know if it was much more so that it was being imposed on me or if it was being self-imposed, something that I felt like I needed to prove to gain credibility, not just in my organization, but in the industry at large. And it wasn't until two or three years into it, that I realized that I had a niche myself. It was to create stories with my content that could communicate these concepts to developers just as effectively. And yes, I can still prove that I can go into an hour-long or a 45-minute-long tech talk or a webinar about a topic, but I can also easily create a five to ten-minute video that communicates concepts and inspires audiences just the same, and more importantly, be able to point to resources, code labs, tutorials, GitHub repos, that can allow the audience to be hands-on themselves, too. So really, I think that it was over time that I gained more experience and realized that my skill sets are valuable in a different way, and it's okay to have a different background as long as you bring something to the table.Corey: And I think that it's indisputable that you do. The concept of yours that I've encountered from time to time has always been insightful, it is always been extremely illuminating, and—you wouldn't think of this as worthy of occasion and comment, but I feel it needs to be said anyway—at no point in any of your content did I feel like I was being approached in a condescending way, where at every point it was always about uplifting people to a level of understanding, rather than doing the, “Well, I'm smarter than you and you couldn't possibly understand the things that I've been to.” It is relatable, it is engaging, and you add a very human face to what is admittedly an area of industry that is lacking in a fair bit of human element.Stephanie: Yeah, and I think that's the thing that many folks DevRel continue to underline is the idea of empathy, empathizing with your audiences, empathizing with the developers, the engineers, the data engineers, whoever it is that you're creating content for, it's being in their shoes. But for me, I may not have been in those shoes for years, like many other folks historically have been in for DevRel, but I want to at least go through the journey of learning a new piece of technology. For example, if I'm learning a new platform on Google Cloud, going through the steps of creating a demo, or walking through a tutorial, and then candidly explaining that experience to my audience, or creating a video about it. I really just reject the idea of having ego in tech and I would love to broaden the opportunity for folks who came from a different background like myself. I really want to just represent the new world of technology where it wasn't full of people who may have had the privilege to start coding at a very early age, in their garages.Corey: Yeah, privilege of, in many respects, also that privilege means, “Yes, I had the privilege of not having to have friends and deal with learning to interact with other human beings, which is what empowered me to build this company and have no social skills whatsoever.” It's not the aspirational narrative that we sometimes are asked to believe. You are similar in some respects to a number of things that I do—by which I mean, you do it professionally and well and I do it as basically performance shitpost art—but you're on Twitter, you make videos, you do podcasts, you write long-form and short-form as well. You are sort of all across the content creation spectrum. Which of those things do you prefer to do? Which ones of those are things you find a little bit more… “Well, I have to do it, but it's not my favorite?” Or do you just tend to view it as content is content; you just look at different media to tell your story?Stephanie: Well, I will say any form of content is queen—I'm not going to say king, but—[laugh] content is king, content is queen, it doesn't matter.Corey: Content is a baroness as it turns out.Stephanie: [laugh]. There we go. I have to say, so given my background, I mentioned I was into production and entertainment before, so I've always had a gravitation towards video content. I love tinkering with cameras. Actually, as I got started out at Google Cloud, I was creating scrappy content using webcams and my own audio equipment, and doing my own research, and finding lounges and game rooms to do that, and we would just upload it to our own YouTube channel, which probably wasn't allowed at the time, but hey, we got by with it.And eventually, I got approached by DevRel to start doing it officially on the channel and I was given budget to do it in-studio. And so that was sort of my stepping stone to doing this full-time eventually, which I never foresaw for myself. And so yeah, I have this huge interest in—I'm really engaged with video content, but once I started expanding and realizing that I could repurpose that content for podcasting, I could repurpose it for blogs, then you start to realize that you can shard content and expand your reach exponentially with this. So, that's when I really started to become more active on social media and leverage it to build not just content for Google Cloud, but build my own brand in tech.Corey: That is the inescapable truth of DevRel done right is that as you continue doing it, in time, in your slice of the industry, it is extremely likely that your personal brand eclipses the brand of the company that you represent. And it's in many ways a test of corporate character—if it makes sense—as do how they react to that. I've worked in roles before I started this place where I was starting to dabble with speaking a lot, and there was always a lot of insecurity that I picked up of, “Well, it feels like you're building your personal brand, not advancing the company here, and we as a company do not see the value in you doing that.” Direct quote from the last boss I had. And, well, that partially explains why I'm here, I suppose.But there's insecurity there. I'd see the exact opposite coming out of Google, especially in recent times. There's something almost seems to be a renaissance in Google Cloud, and I'm not sure where it came from. But if I look at it across the board, and you had taken all the labels off of everything, and you had given me a bunch of characteristics about different companies, I would never have guessed that you were describing Google when you're talking about Google Cloud. And perhaps that's unfair, but perceptions shape reality.Stephanie: Yeah, I find that interesting because I think traditionally in DevRel, we've also hired folks for their domain expertise and their brand, depending on what you're representing, whether it's in the Kubernetes space or Python client library that you're supporting. But it seems like, yes, in my case, I've organically started to build my brand while at Google, and Google has been just so spectacular in supporting that for me. But yeah, it's a fine line that I think many people have to walk. It's like, do you want to continue to build your own brand and have that carry forth no matter what company you stay at, or if you decide to leave? Or can you do it hand-in-hand with the company that you're at? For me, I think I can do it hand-in-hand with Google Cloud.Corey: It's taken me a long time to wrap my head around what appears to be a contradiction when I look at Google Cloud, and I think I've mostly figured it out. In the industry, there is a perception that Google as an entity is condescending and sneering toward every other company out there because, “You're Google, you know how to do all these great, amazing things that are global-spanning, and over here at Twitter for Pets, we suck doing these things.” So, Google is always way smarter and way better at this than we could ever hope to be. But that is completely opposed to my personal experiences talking with Google employees. Across the board, I would say that you all are self-effacing to a fault.And I mean that in the sense of having such a limited ego, in some cases, that it's, “Well, I don't want to go out there and do a whole video on this. It's not about me, it's about the technology,” are things that I've had people who work at Google say to me. And I appreciate the sentiment; it's great, but that also feels like it's an aloofness. It also fails to humanize what it is that you're doing. And you are a, I've got to say, a breath of fresh air when it comes to a lot of that because your stories are not just, “Here's how you do a thing. It's awesome. And this is all the intricacies of the API.”And yeah, you get there, but you also contextualize that in a, “Here's why it matters. Here's the problem that solves. Here is the type of customer's problem that this is great for,” rather than starting with YAML and working your way up. It's going the other way, of, “We want to sell some underpants,” or whatever it is the customer is trying to do today. And that is the way that I think is one of the best ways to drive adoption of what's going on because if you get people interested and excited about something—at least in my experience—they're going to figure out how the API works. Badly in many cases, but works. But if you start on the API stuff, it becomes a solution looking for a problem. I like your approach to this.Stephanie: Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think also something that I've continued to focus on is to tell stories across products, and it doesn't necessarily mean within just Google Cloud's ecosystem, but across the industry as well. I think we need to, even at Google, tell a better story across our product space and tie in what developers are currently using. And I think the other thing that I'm trying to work on, too, is contextualizing our products and our launches not just across the industry, but within our product strategy. Where does this tie in? Why does it matter? What is our forward-looking strategy from here? When we're talking about our new data cloud products or analytics, [unintelligible 00:17:21], how does this tie into our API strategy?Corey: And that's the biggest challenge, I think, in the AI space. My argument has been for a while—in fact, I wrote a blog post on it earlier this year—that AI and machine learning is a marvelously executed scam because it's being pushed by cloud providers and the things that you definitely need to do a machine learning experiment are a bunch of compute and a whole bunch of data that has to be stored on something, and wouldn't you know it, y'all sell that by the pound. So, it feels, from a cynical perspective, which I excel at espousing, that approach becomes one of you're effectively selling digital pickaxes into a gold rush. Because I see a lot of stories about machine learning how to do very interesting things that are either highly, highly use-case-specific, which great, that would work well, for me too, if I ever wind up with, you know, a petabyte of people's transaction logs from purchasing coffee at my national chain across the country. Okay, that works for one company, but how many companies look like that?And on the other side of it, “It's oh, here's how we can do a whole bunch of things,” and you peel back the covers a bit, and it looks like, “Oh, but you really taught me here is bias laundering?” And, okay. I think that there's a definite lack around AI and machine learning of telling stories about how this actually matters, what sorts of things people can do with it that aren't incredibly—how do I put this?—niche or a problem in search of a solution?Stephanie: Yeah, I find that there are a couple approaches to creating content around AI and other technologies, too, but one of them being inspirational content, right? Do you want to create something that tells the story of how I created a model that can predict what kind of bakery item this is? And we're going to do it by actually showcasing us creating the outcome. So, that's one that's more like, okay. I don't know how relatable or how appropriate it is for an enterprise use case, but it's inspirational for new developers or next gen developers in the AI space, and I think that can really help a company's brand, too.The other being highly niche for the financial services industry, detecting financial fraud, for example, and that's more industry-focused. I found that they both do well, in different contexts. It really depends on the channel that you're going to display it on. Do you want it to be viral? It really depends on what you're measuring your content for. I'm curious from you, Corey, what you've seen across, as a consumer of content?Corey: What's interesting, at least in my world, is that there seems to be, given that what I'm focusing on first and foremost is the AWS ecosystem, it's not that I know it the best—I do—but at this point, it's basically Stockholm Syndrome where it's… with any technology platform when you've worked with it long enough, you effectively have the most valuable of skill sets around it, which is not knowing how it works, but knowing how it doesn't, knowing what the failure mode is going to look like and how you can work around that and detect it is incredibly helpful. Whereas when you're trying something new, you have to wait until it breaks to find the sharp edges on it. So, there's almost a lock-in through, “We failed you enough times,” story past a certain point. But paying attention to that ecosystem, I find it very disjointed. I find that there are still events that happen and I only find out when the event is starting because someone tweets about it, and for someone who follows 40 different official AWS RSS feeds, to be surprised by something like that tells me, okay, there's not a whole lot of cohesive content strategy here, that is at least making it easy for folks to consume the things that they want, especially in my case where even the very niche nature of what I do, my interest is everything.I have a whole bunch of different filters that look for various keywords and the rest, and of course, I have helpful folks who email me things constantly—please keep it up; I'm a big fan—worst case, I'd rather read something twice than nothing. So, it's helpful to see all of that and understand the different marketing channels, different personas, and the way that content approaches, but I still find things that slip through the cracks every time. The thing that I've learned—and it felt really weird when I started doing it—was, I will tell the same stories repeatedly in different forums, or even the same forum. I could basically read you a Twitter thread from a year ago, word-for-word, and it would blow up bigger than it did the first time. Just because no one reads everything.Stephanie: Exactly.Corey: And I've already told my origin story. You're always new to someone. I've given talks internally at Amazon at various times, and I'm sort of loud and obnoxious, but the first question I love to ask is, “Raise your hand if you've never heard of me until today.” And invariably, over three-quarters of the room raises their hand every single time, which okay, great. I think that's awesome, but it teaches me that I cannot ever expect someone to have, quote-unquote, “Done the reading.”Stephanie: I think the same can be said about the content that I create for the company. You can't assume that people, A) have seen my tweets already or, B) understand this product, even if I've talked about it five times in the past. But yes, I agree. I think that you definitely need to have a content strategy and how you format your content to be more problem-solution-oriented.And so the way that I create content is that I let them fall into three general buckets. One being that it could be termed definition: talking about the basics, laying the foundation of a product, defining terms around a topic. Like, what is App Engine, or Kubeflow 101, or talking about Pub/Sub 101.The second being best practices. So, outlining and explaining the best practices around a topic, how do you design your infrastructure for scale and reliability.And the third being diagnosis: investigating; exploring potential issues, as you said; using scripts; Stackdriver logging, et cetera. And so I just kind of start from there as a starting point. And then I generally follow a very, very effective model. I'm sure you're aware of it, but it's called the five point argument model, where you are essentially telling a story to create a compelling narrative for your audience, regardless of the topic or what bucket that topic falls into.So, you're introducing the problem, you're sort of rising into a point where the climax is the solution. And that's all to build trust with your audience. And as it falls back down, you're giving the results in the conclusion, and that's to inspire action from your audience. So, regardless of what you end up talking about this problem-solution model—I've found at least—has been highly effective. And then in terms of sharing it out, over and over again, over the span of two months, that's how you get the views that you want.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by something new. Cloud Academy is a training platform built on two primary goals. Having the highest quality content in tech and cloud skills, and building a good community the is rich and full of IT and engineering professionals. You wouldn't think those things go together, but sometimes they do. Its both useful for individuals and large enterprises, but here's what makes it new. I don't use that term lightly. Cloud Academy invites you to showcase just how good your AWS skills are. For the next four weeks you'll have a chance to prove yourself. Compete in four unique lab challenges, where they'll be awarding more than $2000 in cash and prizes. I'm not kidding, first place is a thousand bucks. Pre-register for the first challenge now, one that I picked out myself on Amazon SNS image resizing, by visiting cloudacademy.com/corey. C-O-R-E-Y. That's cloudacademy.com/corey. We're gonna have some fun with this one!Corey: See, that's a key difference right there. I don't do anything regular in terms of video as part of my content. And I do it from time to time, but you know, getting gussied up and whatnot is easier than just talking into a microphone. As I record this, it's Friday, I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and I look exactly like the middle-aged dad that I am. And for me at least, a big breakthrough moment was realizing that my audience and I are not always the same.Weird confession for someone in my position: I don't generally listen to podcasts. And the reason behind that is I read very quickly, and even if I speed up a podcast, I'm not going to be able to consume the information nearly as quickly as I could by reading it. That, amongst other reasons, is one of the reasons that every episode of this show has a full transcript attached to it. But I'm not my audience. Other people prefer to learn by listening and there's certainly nothing wrong with that.My other podcast, the AWS Morning Brief, is the spoken word version of the stuff that I put out in my newsletter every week. And that is—it's just a different area for people to consume the content because that's what works for them. I'm not one to judge. The hard part for me was getting over that hump of assuming the audience was like me.Stephanie: Yeah. And I think the other key part of is just mainly consistency. It's putting out the content consistently in different formats because everybody—like you said—has a different learning style. I myself do. I enjoy visual styles.I also enjoy listening to podcasts at 2x speed. [laugh]. So, that's my style. But yeah, consistency is one of the key things in building content, and building an audience, and making sure that you are valuable to your audience. I mean, social media, at the end of the day is about the people that follow you.It's not about yourself. It should never be about yourself. It's about the value that you provide. Especially as somebody who's in DevRel in this position for a larger company, it's really about providing value.Corey: What are the breakthrough moments that I had relatively early in my speaking career—and I think it's clear just from what you've already said that you've had a similar revelation at times—I gave a talk, that was really one of my first talks that went semi-big called, “Terrible Ideas in Git.” It was basically, learn how to use Git via anti-pattern. What it secretly was, was under the hood, I felt it was time I learned Git a bit better than I did, so I pitched it and I got a talk accepted. So well, that's what we call a forcing function. By the time I give that talk, I'd better be [laugh] able to have built a talk that do this intelligently, and we're going to hope for the best.It worked, but the first version of that talk I gave was super deep into the plumbing of Git. And I'm sure that if any of the Git maintainers were in the audience, they would have found it great, but there aren't that many folks out there. I redid the talk and instead approached it from a position of, “You have no idea what Git is. Maybe you've heard of it, but that's as far as it goes.” And then it gets a little deeper there.And I found that making the subject more accessible as opposed to deeper into the weeds of it is almost always the right decision from a content perspective. Because at some level, when you are deep enough into the weeds, the only way you're going to wind up fixing something or having a problem that you run into get resolved, isn't by listening to a podcast or a conference talk; it's by talking to the people who built the thing because at that level, those are the only people who can hang at that level of depth. That stops being fodder for conference talks unless you turn it into an after-action report of here's this really weird thing I learned.Stephanie: Yeah. And you know, to be honest, the one of the most successful pieces of content I've created was about data center security. I visited a data center and I essentially unveiled what our security protocols were. And that wasn't a deeply technical video, but it was fun and engaging and easily understood by the masses. And that's what actually ended up resulting in the highest number of views.On top of that, I'm now creating a video about our subsea fiber optic cables. Finding that having to interview experts from a number of different teams across engineering and our strategic negotiators, it was like a monolith of information that I had to take in. And trying to format that into a five-minute story, I realized that bringing it up a layer of abstraction to help folks understand this at a wider level was actually beneficial. And I think it'll turn into a great piece of content. I'm still working on it now. So, [laugh] we'll see how it turns out.Corey: I'm a big fan of watching people learn and helping them get started. The thing that I think gets lost a lot is it's easy to assume that if I look back in time at myself when I was first starting my professional career two decades ago, that I was exactly like I am now, only slightly more athletic and can walk up a staircase without getting winded. That's never true. It never has been true. I've learned a lot about not just technology but people as I go, and looking at folks are entering the workforce today through the same lens of, “Well, that's not how I would handle that situation.” Yeah, no kidding. I have two decades of battering my head against the sharp edges and leaving dents in things to inform that opinion.No, when I was that age, I would have handled it way worse than whatever it is I'm critiquing at the time. But it's important to me that we wind up building those pathways and building those bridges so that people coming into the space, first, have a clear path to get here, and secondly, have a better time than I ever did. Where does the next generation of talent come from has been a recurring question and a recurring theme on the show.Stephanie: Yeah. And that's exactly why I've been such a fierce supporter of women in tech, and also, again, encouraging a broader community to become a part of technology. Because, as I said, I think we're in the midst of a new era of technology, of people from all these different backgrounds in places that historically have had more remote access to technology, now having the ability to become developers at an early age. So, with my content, that's what I'm hoping to drive to make this information more easily accessible. Even if you don't want to become a Google Cloud engineer, that's totally fine, but if I can help you understand some of the foundational concepts of cloud, then I've done my job well.And then, even with women who are already trying to break into technology or wanting to become a part of it, then I want to be a mentor for them, with my experience not having a technical background and saying yes to opportunities that challenged me and continuing to build my own luck between hard work and new opportunities.Corey: I can't wait to see how this winds up manifesting as we see understandings of what we're offering to customers in different areas in different ways—both in terms of content and terms of technology—how that starts to evolve and shift. I feel like we're at a bit of an inflection point now, where today if I graduate from school and I want to start a business, I have to either find a technical co-founder or I have to go to a boot camp and learn how to code in order to build something. I think that if we can remove that from the equation and move up the stack, sure, you're not going to be able to build the next Google or Pinterest or whatnot from effectively Visual Basic for Interfaces, but you can build an MVP and you can then continue to iterate forward and turn it into something larger down the road. The other part of it, too, is that moving up the stack into more polished solutions rather than here's a bunch of building blocks for platforms, “So, if you want a service to tell you whether there's a picture of a hot dog or not, here's a service that does exactly that.” As opposed to, “Oh, here are the 15 different services, you can bolt together and pay for each one of them and tie it together to something that might possibly work, and if it breaks, you have no idea where to start looking, but here you go.” A packaged solution that solves business problems.Things move up the stack; they do constantly. The fact is that I started my career working in data centers and now I don't go to them at all because—spoiler—Google, and Amazon, and people who are not IBM Cloud can absolutely run those things better than I can. And there's no differentiated value for me in solving those global problems locally. I'd rather let the experts handle stuff like that while I focus on interesting problems that actually affect my business outcome. There's a reason that instead of running all the nonsense for lastweekinaws.com myself because I've worked in large-scale WordPress hosting companies, instead I pay WP Engine to handle it for me, and they, in turn, hosted on top of Google Cloud, but it doesn't matter to me because it's all just a managed service that I pay for. Because me running the website itself adds no value, compared to the shitpost I put on the website, which is where the value derives from. For certain odd values of value.Stephanie: [laugh]. Well, two things there is that I think we actually had a demo created on Google Cloud that did detect hot dogs or not hot dogs using our Vision API, years in the past. So, thanks for reminding me of that one.Corey: Of course.Stephanie: But yeah, I mean, I completely agree with that. I mean, this is constantly a topic in conversation with my team members, and with clients. It's about higher level of abstractions. I just did a video series with our fellow, Eric Brewer, who helped build cloud infrastructure here at Google over the past ten decades. And I asked him what he thought the future of cloud would be in the next ten years, and he mentioned, “It's going to be these higher levels of abstraction, building platforms on top of platforms like Kubernetes, and having more services like Cloud run serverless technologies, et cetera.”But at the same time, I think the value of cloud will continue to be providing optionality for developers to have more opinionated services, services like GKE Autopilot, et cetera, that essentially take away the management of infrastructure or nodes that people don't really want to deal with at the end of the day because it's not going to be a competitive differentiator for developers. They want to focus on building software and focusing on keeping their services up and running. And so yeah, I think the future is going to be that, giving developers flexibility and freedom, and still delivering the best-of-breed technology. If it's covering something like security, that's something that should be baked in as much as possible.Corey: You're absolutely right, first off. I'm also looking beyond it where I want to be able to build a website that is effectively Twitter, only for pets—because that is just a harebrained enough idea to probably raise a $20 million seed round these days—and I just want to be able to have the barks—those are like tweets, only surprisingly less offensive and racist—and have them just be stored somewhere, ideally presumably under the hood somewhere, it's going to be on computers, but whether it's in containers, or whether it's serverless, or however is working is the sort of thing that, “Wow, that seems like an awful lot of nonsense that is not central nor core to my business succeeding or failing.” I would say failing, obviously, except you can lose money at scale with the magic of things like SoftBank. Here we are.And as that continues to grow and scale, sure, at some point I'm going to have bespoke enough needs and a large enough scale where I do have to think about those things, but building the MVP just so I can swindle some VCs is not the sort of thing where I should have to go to that depth. There really should be a golden-path guardrail-style thing that I can effectively drag and drop my way into the next big scam. And that is, I think, the missing piece. And I think that we're not quite ready technologically to get there yet, but I can't shake the feeling and the hope that's where technology is going.Stephanie: Yeah. I think it's where technology is heading, but I think part of the equation is the adoption by our industry, right? Industry adoption of cloud services and whether they're ready to adopt services that are that drag-and-drop, as you say. One thing that I've also been talking a lot about is this idea of service-oriented networking where if you have a service or API-driven environment and you simply want to bring it to cloud—almost a plug-and-play there—you don't really want to deal with a lot of the networking infrastructure, and it'd be great to do something like PrivateLink on AWS, or Private Service Connect on Google Cloud.While those conversations are happening with customers, I'm finding that it's like trying to cross the Grand Canyon. Many enterprise customers are like, “That sounds great, but we have a really complex network topology that we've been sitting on for the past 25 years. Do you really expect that we're going to transition over to something like that?” So, I think it's about providing stepping stones for our customers until they can be ready to adopt a new model.Corey: Yeah. And of course, the part that never gets said out loud but is nonetheless true and at least as big of a deal, “And we have a whole team of people who've built their entire identity around that network because that is what they work on, and they have been ignoring cloud forever, and if we just uplift everything into a cloud where you folks handle that, sure, it's better for the business outcome, but where does that leave them?” So, they've been here for 25 years, and they will spend every scrap of political capital they've managed to accumulate to torpedo a cloud migration. So, any FUD they can find, any horse-trading they can do, anything they can do to obstruct the success of a cloud initiative, they're going to do because people are people, and there is no real plan to mitigate that. There's also the fact that unless there's a clear business value story about a feature velocity increase or opening up new markets, there's also not an incentive to do things to save money. That is never going to be the number one priority in almost any case short of financial disaster at a company because everything they're doing is building out increasing revenue, rather than optimizing what they're already doing.So, there's a whole bunch of political challenges. Honestly, moving the computer stuff from on-premises data centers into a cloud provider is the easiest part of a cloud migration compared to all of the people that are involved.Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, we talked about serverless and all the nice benefits of it, but unless you are more a digitally-born, next-gen developer, it may be a higher burden for you to undertake that migration. That's why we always [laugh] are talking about encouraging people to start with newer surfaces.Corey: Oh, yeah. And that's the trick, too, is if you're trying to learn a new cloud platform these days—first, if you're trying to pick one, I'd be hard-pressed to suggest anything other than Google Cloud, with the possible exception of DigitalOcean, just because the new user experience is so spectacularly good. That was my first real, I guess, part of paying attention to Google Cloud a few years ago, where I was, “All right, I'm going to kick the tires on this and see how terrible this interface is because it's a Google product.” And it was breathtakingly good, which I did not expect. And getting out of the way to empower someone who's new to the platform to do something relatively quickly and straightforwardly is huge. And sure, there's always room to prove, but that is the right area to focus on. It's clear that the right energy was spent in the right places.Stephanie: Yeah. I will say a story that we don't tell quite as well as we should is the One Google story. And I'm not talking about just between Workspace and Google Cloud, but our identity access management and knowing your Google account, which everybody knows. It's not like Microsoft, where you're forced to make an account, or it's not like AWS where you had a billion accounts and you hate them all.Corey: Oh, my God, I dread logging into the AWS console every time because it is such a pain in the ass. I go to cloud.google.com sometimes to check something, it's like, “Oh, right. I have to dig out my credentials.” And, “Where's my YubiKey?” And get it. Like, “Oh. I'm already log—oh. Oh, right. That's right. Google knows how identity works, and they don't actively hate their customers. Okay.” And it's always a breath of fresh air. Though I will say that by far and away, the worst login experience I've seen yet is, of course, Azure.Stephanie: [laugh]. That's exactly right. It's Google account. It's yours. It's personal. It's like an Apple iCloud account. It's one click, you're in, and you have access to all the applications. You know, so it's the same underlying identity structure with Workspace and Gmail, and it's the same org structure, too, across Workspace and Google Cloud. So, it's not just this disingenuous financial bundle between GCP and Workspace; it's really strategic. And it's kind of like the idea of low code or no code. And it looks like that's what the future of cloud will be. It's not just by VMs from us.Corey: Yeah. And there are customers who want to buy VMs and that's great. Speed up what they're doing; don't get in the way of people giving you their money, but if you're starting something net-new, there's probably better ways to do it. So, I want to thank you for taking as much time as you have to wind up going through how you think about, well, the art of storytelling in the world of engineering. If people want to learn more about who you are, what you're up to, and how you approach things, where can they find you?Stephanie: Yeah, so you can head to stephrwong.com where you can see my work and also get in touch with me if you want to collaborate on any content. I'm always, always, always open to that. And my Twitter is @stephr_wong.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:40:03]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.Stephanie: Thanks so much.Corey: Stephanie Wong, head of developer engagement at Google Cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment telling me that the only way to get into tech these days is, in fact, to graduate with a degree from Stanford, and I can take it from you because you work in their admissions office.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

This week on the Roach Koach Podcast we visit the forums to find out all we can about Slavemachine and their album, Disfigured Consciousness. Jenny, Lorin, and Matt dive into the behind the scenes drama of this band, which involves the comment sections of such websites as Rough Edge dot com and Amazon dot com. The Jagermeister tour, snake arms, and “dark riffing” are discussed as the team decides whether Slavemachine deserve a spot in the Nu-Metal Canon. Take a listen!Rate and review Roach Koach on iTunes! We'd appreciate it! Questions about the show? Have album recommendations? Just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you! Contact the show @RoachKoach on Twitter, Roach Koach on Facebook , Roach Koach on Instagram, or send an email to RoachKoachPodcast at Gmail. Support the show over on our Patreon.

 Episode 300 is upon us and as always with these 100 episode anniversaries I do a top 100 list! The time has finally come to countdown my top 100 favorite movies of all time! There a lot of movies in here I love, some of which will probably be surprises and others will be the superhero movies you're all expecting! Thank you for listening!Be sure to Subscribe on iTunes and Stitcher or wherever podcasts are found!Helix Reviews is now on YouTube and Rumble! Check me out!helixreviewspodcast@gmail.comEpisode 300: https://ia601506.us.archive.org/29/items/300-my-top-100-favorite-movies/300%20My%20Top%20100%20Favorite%20Movies.mp3

This new iPhone101 series provides five individual demonstrations aimed at giving you the tools to effectively manage your email in an organized and efficient manner. Pete Lane walks us through each step of these processes in a snappy and thorough presentation.  Parts 1 and 2  An Introduction to various ways to delete individual emails, one at a time or in bulk quantities and then the process of retrieving deleted emails.             Process 1 - How to delete individual emails from your Mail App: Method 1: Open the Mail app by single finger double tapping on the Mail icon or ask Siri to, “Open Mail”. Single finger swipe left to right down to the email you want to delete. Flick up or down to the action item, “Delete”. Single finger double tap. Method 2: If you are reading an email and want to delete it, flick up or down to, “Trash”. Single finger double tap. You will then be placed in the next email message, opened and ready to read. Note: When deleting from an opened email, the app will open the next email automatically. You may or not want desire this action of auto-opening. You can also go back and delete from the email list as in the previous method above. How to delete multiple emails quickly: Open your Mail App with a single-finger double-tap, then flick right and select the account where you wish to delete emails, i.e. Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, etc. - single-finger double-tap. Then flick to the right and perform a single-finger double-tap on the Edit button. This will activate  a Select button. Single-finger double-tap on “Select All”, and proceed to step 3 below. If you do not wish to delete all of your mail messages, flick right and select  each email you wish to delete with a single-finger double-tap. Voiceover will say “selected” for each item you select..  At the bottom of the screen, single-finger double-tap on “Trash” or “Archive” to delete the selected messages. Retrieving Deleted email messages: After opening your Mail app with a single-finger double-tap, flick right until you reach your “Trash folder. This is where your deleted messages have been placed.  Flick right into the list of messages and select those which you wish to retrieve by performing a single-finger double-tap. When all have been selected, perform a 4-finger single-tap towards the bottom of your screen. Flick left with one finger until you reach “Move”, then single-finger double-tap. You will then be placed on the “back” button at the top of your screen. Flick right until you reach “Inbox”. Single-finger double-tap and the messages you have selected will be moved there.  You can verify this by flicking right into your list of messages in the “Inbox” to find they are no longer there.  Stay tuned for more installments in this new iPhone101 series, “Managing email Messages and Accounts”, when we explore how to delete entire accounts from your device,  and add both existing and new email accounts to your iDevice. We hope this will give you a more efficient approach towards managing and working in your Mail app in the future. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-9063 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Más bloqueos en Gmail / más bolas en tu trackball / más puentes en Tor / más urea en nuestros depósitos / más vigilancia en Wikipedia / más seguridad en FIFA Ultimate Team Patrocinador: Llega el Black Friday https://www.pccomponentes.com/black-friday?utm_source=voiceup&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=black-friday-2021-es, y en PcComponentes tienen un Pedazo Catálogo con miles de ofertas. Este Black Friday todas las ofertas en tecnología, electrónica y electrodomésticos en PcComponentes.com https://www.pccomponentes.com/black-friday?utm_source=voiceup&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=black-friday-2021-es. — Te ofrecen hasta el 45% de descuento en cientos de productos, y ofertas flash todos los días con unidades limitadas. Más bloqueos en Gmail / más bolas en tu trackball / más puentes en Tor / más urea en nuestros depósitos / más vigilancia en Wikipedia / más seguridad en FIFA Ultimate Team ⛔ ¿Qué ocurre cuando bloqueas muchas direcciones en Gmail? Google programó su útil sistema de bloqueo para enviar directamente a la basura cualquier email de determinadas direcciones, pero tiene un límite oculto de 1.000 bloqueos https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/11/a-grim-milestone-i-maxed-out-the-number-of-spammy-addresses-gmail-can-block/ a partir del cual dejará de funcionar sin recibir ningún tipo de error o aviso. La compañía estudia si expandirlo.

Bill Frost (SLUGMag.com & X96 Radio From Hell), Tommy Milagro (SlamWrestling.net), and special guest star Dr. Paul "Zil" White (U of U molder of minds) talk Hawkeye, Mayor of Kingstown, Guilty Party, Hanna, The Beatles: Get Back, South Park: Post Covid, Nash Bridges 2.0(?), Hot Zone: Anthrax, Tiger King 2, Cowboy Bebop, Dexter: New Blood, The Freak Brothers, Rasslin' News, WandaVision, The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, Shang-Chi, Star Trek: Prodigy, Jeopardy!, Ghosts, The Problem With Jon Stewart, Hit-Monkey, Succession, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Morning Show, Big Sky, and Invasion. Drinking: Nobel Hefeweizen from OFFICIAL TV Tan sponsor Bohemian Brewery.* Yell at us: @TVTanPodcast Twitter, Facebook, Gmail.* Rate us: Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Podcasts, Audible, etc.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:00:53 - Which book that Charlie Munger had recently said is “one of the best ever written.”06:46 - Whether the best investors truly live by an inner scorecard.11:09 - Whether there is such a thing as the “right background” to become a successful investor.24:36 - Whether concentration indeed is how to become rich and diversification is how to stay rich.32:59 - What will happen to the culture in the value investing community when Buffett and Munger are no longer among us. 43:14 - Who is Matthew McLennan, and why is he one of the most impressive investors in the world. 57:15 - How does William Green invest?01:12:26 - How William Green's relationship is with Guy Spier.01:26:18 - How can we live and invest accordingly to our values? 01:34:54 - Whether we should learn from successful investors who do not have the right values? *Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCESWilliam Green's book, Richer, Wiser, Happier – read reviews of this book.Our conversation with William Green about Richer, Wiser, Happier.Our conversation with William Green about The Great Minds of Investing.Visit William Green's website.Stig's interview with Mohnish Pabrai about Seritage Growth Properties.If you're new to the show and don't know where to begin listening, check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.Identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don't need, want, or simply forgot about with Truebill. You can see eczema on the surface of your skin, but there may also be irritation below that you can't see. Discover Eucrisa as it works both above and below the skin to treat eczema in adults and children 3 months of age and older.You can get a complete home security system starting at just over $100. There are no long-term contracts or commitments. It's a really easy way to start feeling a bit more peace of mind. Get 50% off your next order at SimpliSafe.com/TIP.Protect your online activity TODAY with ExpressVPN, the VPN rated #1 by CNET and Wired, and get an extra 3 months FREE on a one-year package.Get in early on medical technology, breakthroughs in ag-tech and food production, solutions in the multi-billion dollar robotic industry, and so much more with a FREE OurCrowd account. Open yours today.Make it simple to hire and manage remote employees across all 50 states with Justworks.Get $50 off your Drinkworks Home Bar by Keurig this holiday season. Now through December 5, save $50 on the Home Bar at Drinkworks.com.Get access to some of the most sought-after real estate in the U.S. with Crowdstreet.Impress your audience and yourself. Enjoy presentations for free with Canva.Updating your wardrobe or just simply looking for a new fall flannel? Head to Mizzen+Main and use promo code WSB to receive $35 off an order of $125 or more!Be part of the solution by investing in companies that are actively engaged in integrating ESG practices with Desjardins.Stay on top of all your processes - directly inside Gmail with Streak. Get 20% off the Pro plan today.Don't let anything interfere with your happiness or is prevent you from achieving your goals. Allow BetterHELP to help assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. Get 10% off your first month!Transform how you drive business results and connect with customers with Snap AR.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors. HELP US OUT!What do you love about our podcast? Here's our guide on how you can leave a rating and review for the show. We always enjoy reading your comments and feedback!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Dr's J and Santhosh once again perform their bimonthly roundup of medical news, this time with an emphasis on odd solutions. Along the way they cover daylight savings, traditional chinese medicine, cupping and covid, skin patch vaccines, meat allergies a new antibiotic, the importance of bedtime and more! So sit back and relax as we bring you whats new in the world of medical news!Further Readinghttps://www.newscientist.com/article/2296526-covid-19-vaccine-tested-with-suction-technique-similar-to-cupping/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294967-skin-patch-coated-in-covid-19-vaccine-may-work-better-than-injections/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2292543-drug-treatment-for-lyme-disease-could-lead-to-its-eradication/https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/sleep-earlier-heart-disease-11112021/Support Us spiritually, emotionally or financially here! Twitter: @doctorjcomedy @toshyfro Instagram: @travelmedicinepodcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/28uQe3cYGrTLhP6X0zyEhTFacebook: facebook.com/travelmedicinepodcast Squarespace: travelmedicinepodcast.squarespace.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/travelmedicinepodcast Gmail: travelmedicineinfo@gmail.com

The United States Men's National Team has completed another international window of World Cup qualifying, and we recap it on Episode 66 of the SSFC Podcast. First, the USMNT had another magic night in Ohio with a Dos A Cero win over Mexico. We discuss some of the banter and address some of the people who still continued to hate on Gregg Berhalter even after a historic victory, his 3rd over Mexico in 6 months. After the break, we get into the draw down at The Office to Jamaica. While it was a hot and muggy night, the team looked sluggish for most of the match. Still, the draw puts the USMNT in a great position to potentially qualify for the World Cup in January if they can run the table and get some help from others. We encourage you all to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and keep the discussion going on the November window in the comments! If you have questions or topic suggestions, send an email to SSFC Podcast at Gmail dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:01:39 - What the Dollar Milkshake Theory is.31:53 - How the Dollar Milkshake Theory has evolved through Covid.56:50 - The range to watch for the DXY (a.k.a US dollar index) but more importantly at what rate of change.61:49 - How supply shocks could impact the dollar in 2022.And a whole lot more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESDollar Milkshake explained.Santiago Capital Website.Brent Johnson Twitter.Trey Lockerbie Twitter.Preston, Trey & Stig's tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.Identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don't need, want, or simply forgot about with Truebill. You can see eczema on the surface of your skin, but there may also be irritation below that you can't see. Discover Eucrisa as it works both above and below the skin to treat eczema in adults and children 3 months of age and older.You can get a complete home security system starting at just over $100. There are no long-term contracts or commitments. It's a really easy way to start feeling a bit more peace of mind. Get 50% off your next order at SimpliSafe.com/TIP.Protect your online activity TODAY with ExpressVPN, the VPN rated #1 by CNET and Wired, and get an extra 3 months FREE on a one-year package.Get in early on medical technology, breakthroughs in ag-tech and food production, solutions in the multi-billion dollar robotic industry, and so much more with a FREE OurCrowd account. Open yours today.Make it simple to hire and manage remote employees across all 50 states with Justworks.Get $50 off your Drinkworks Home Bar by Keurig this holiday season. Now through December 5, save $50 on the Home Bar at Drinkworks.com.Get access to some of the most sought-after real estate in the U.S. with Crowdstreet.Impress your audience and yourself. Enjoy presentations for free with Canva.Updating your wardrobe or just simply looking for a new fall flannel? Head to Mizzen+Main and use promo code WSB to receive $35 off an order of $125 or more!Be part of the solution by investing in companies that are actively engaged in integrating ESG practices with Desjardins.Stay on top of all your processes - directly inside Gmail with Streak. Get 20% off the Pro plan today.Don't let anything interfere with your happiness or is prevent you from achieving your goals. Allow BetterHELP to help assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. Get 10% off your first month!Transform how you drive business results and connect with customers with Snap AR.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.HELP US OUT!What do you love about our podcast? Here's our guide on how you can leave a rating and review for the show. We always enjoy reading your comments and feedback!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we discuss the humble cursor and its role in affording interactivity in software design. In The Sidebar, we talk about the long term impact of the features we build, the importance of smart defaults, and the value of time well spent in our products.Sponsor:Patreon is hiring product designers in San Francisco and New York City. Today, Patreon is at the heart of the creator economy. In the last 8 years, the product has grown to support more than 250k creators, who are collectively supported by more than 8 million patrons. So far, Patreon has paid out more than $2.5 billion to creators, and are now on pace to pay out over $100 million every month.Patreon's design team is small, but growing. The opportunity for impact on the product, and on millions of creators and patrons around the world, can't be overstated. The team is dedicated to leveling up the craft of Patreon's products, shipping beautiful experiences, and building the best tools to help anyone make a living on the internet.If you're a designer looking for your next level up, get in touch with Patreon's design team and tell them we sent you!Learn more about Patreon's open rolesThe Second Renaissance Is ComingPatreon's Culture DeckPatreon's teamGolden Ratio Supporters:Patreon — Patreon is hiring product designers in San Francisco and New York City to build the future of the creator economy. Join their small team and level up today.Sympli — Designers and developers working together need control over their assets. Sympli tracks every version of every design: no guessing what changed, no lost files or overwritten work, development-ready specs. Learn more at Sympli.io.Play — Play is the first native iOS design tool made for teams creating mobile products. Design, prototype, and collaborate, directly from your phone. With Play you can experience your design as you create it while taking full advantage of native iOS features not found in other design and prototyping tools. Full access invites available for the first 25 people here!The Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.Latest VIP Patrons:Natasha SkovParker GibsonDennis Espino MaravillaYanal TayyemUdochiBenjamin ArteagaMain Topic:This week, we discuss the humble cursor and its role in affording interactivity in software design.Anonymous asks: Hey Brian and Marshall, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the use of the hand pointer cursor icon for clickable elements. Windows, macOS, and HTML seem pretty clear that it is intended only for links which lack the visual affordance that buttons have while Material design and seemingly most web apps embrace the hand for all clickable elements. I haven't found what the official rationale is for using the hand everywhere and I'm also curious what users most expect at this point.The cursor MDN spec.Susan KareWhy is the mouse cursor slightly tilted?Who created the Mac Mickey pointer cursor?Cool Things:Brian shared Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail. It's fast, looks and feels great, and is a worthy replacement for the stock Mail app on macOS.Marshall shared An Evening With Silk Sonic by Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, and Silk Sonic. Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.Design Details on the Web:

This week on the Roach Koach Podcast it's all about Who's Tweeting, as we go over your feedback, recommendations, and questions. Lorin and Matt discuss their love of lists while discussing the Top 10 Nu-Metal Underdogs, go over acoustic album recommendations, convertible music, Don Broco, nu-metal giggles from DED, Charles Mansion's Patreon, and close out with some feedback from our Folder episode. Take a listen!Rate and review Roach Koach on iTunes! We'd appreciate it! Questions about the show? Have album recommendations? Just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you! Contact the show @RoachKoach on Twitter, Roach Koach on Facebook , Roach Koach on Instagram, or send an email to RoachKoachPodcast at Gmail. Support the show over on our Patreon.

Brian and Corey discuss the delays for the release of the Steam Deck and the League of Legends anime, Arcane.Jump ForceSend us your feedback by tweeting to the podcast at @astartingpoint, Corey, or Brian.  Or simply email us at StartingPointFeedback [at] Gmail dot com.Starting Point on Google PlayStarting Point on iTunesStarting Point on StitcherStarting Point on iHeartRadioStarting Point on Amazon PodcastsStarting Point on Spotify

We have a guest! DanTwo is doing a podcast takeover! While DanOne is hitchhiking his way through Florida the legendary Mattie Moon(!) joined the pod to show us how it's done, with both reading AND comedy. On today's episode we're talking audiobooks! We kick it off with some trivia about the origins of audiobooks and then take a deep dive into the art of book listening and comedy. Topics include: favorite places/times/ways to listen to audiobooks, how podcasts are a gateway, genres of audiobooks, favorite reader(s), and our dream audiobook reader. Hit us up on Instagram/Twitter or Gmail (below) and let us know all about your favorite audiobooks, which host should be replaced next, and how badly you want Mattie to return! Thanks for joining us Mattie and as always thank you for our wonderful podcast artwork! Don't forget to check out our TikTok for more Bookends content. Enjoy and join us next week for more book-talk! Instagram: Bookends_With_Friends TikTok: bookendswithfriendspod Email: BookendsWithFriends@gmail.com Twitter: @BookendsPod

You know your favorite brands stand out, but do you know yourself well enough to blend your business & creative persona into cohesive fonts, colors, and branding? If not, Anne & Laya are here to help! In this episode, they'll explain how to put your best virtual foot forward through introspection,crowdsourcing, and (most importantly) acting like the #VOBOSS you already are. More at https://voboss.com/modern-marketing-101-with-laya-hoffman Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here with my very special guest cohost, Laya Hoffman. Laya, thanks for joining me again in this new series on modern mindset. I'm so excited to have you. Laya: Yeah, thanks, Anne. It's been great so far, love being back, and I'm super grateful for the opportunity. Thanks for having me. Anne: Yeah. So we've been talking about modern mindset, and our last few episodes, we're talking about just in general, having a modern mindset towards your business, as well as towards your health. Laya: That's right. Anne: I'm thinking we have to touch upon everyone's Achilles heel. Maybe not everyone's. I mean, I happen to like marketing, but we should talk about a modern marketing mindset because you have a background in marketing. Laya: Yeah, that's right, Anne, I sure do. I'm a former creative marketing agency partner. And, uh, after that I was the vice president of marketing for a major beauty brand that was a global brand and in the professional hair care line. So it's definitely a different field, but a lot of similarities as it pertains to branding identity, marketing, SEO, outreach, and just overall good client engagement in this new modern world. Right? And when we talked about that earlier, it's just, how do you approach that differently? It's a lot different than we were taught in college or in textbooks and things. Anne: Oh, for sure. Laya: You gotta adapt. Anne: And also I think it's important. I think it's great that you have real-world marketing experience from before -- Laya: Sure. Anne: -- and even leading up until modern times, because I think as creatives, if you did not come from that environment, it's hard to know even where to begin for marketing. I mean, that's -- most students that are just starting out when they're talking to me, they're like, oh my God, can you please just tell me, like, how do I even start to market myself? Laya: Sure, sure. Anne: So let's kind of start there. I think that for people just entering into the industry, as well as let's say, industry veterans, we still have to spend a considerable amount of time marketing ourselves because I'm always trying to find that next great client, because today's client is never promised. Laya: Absolutely. And you got to stay fresh and stay current. And a lot of that comes down to knowing who you are as a person, as a creative and what that means as a brand. Right? And so how can you package all your skills and your specialties in this brand? And I got scared by that too, even as an ex-marketer coming into the entrepreneurial space and being a one person show. Anne: Yeah. Laya: It's really hard to talk about yourself, and I can do it for everybody else. I can package everything else in a boat. Talking about yourself feels totally bonkers. Anne: Right? Yeah. Big difference. Laya: And then you figure out your brand, which is a very scary place to sit. And there's a lot of great experts, even in our industry, that focus on that, creating a brand for your voiceover, but you certainly have a great one. And you know, you know, you've got colors, you've got the BOSS vibe, you know, you know what your specialties are. You know what Anne Ganguzza means in the industry because you've done an excellent job branding. And I think -- Anne: Well, thank you. Laya: -- for a lot of us that -- you're welcome -- that's the starting point. And it's kind of a scary place to start, but if you don't know your brand, how you gonna know the next step to market, right? Anne: Yeah. That makes sense. So then the very first step then before you can market something, right, is to really have something to market and to really be fully aware of your brand. And I know that that makes sense, when people come to me also for coaching, whatnot, you have to have a demo, right? You have to have something that you can market and then applying that brand to that product. Laya: Yeah. Anne: And so what are your first steps in branding yourself? It's a tough one, right? Laya: Yeah, it is. It's takes a lot of looking inward. Right? And figuring out if you just sat down with yourself and thought, what do I really like in life? What do I get excited about? What brands do I identify with because I feel like they align with my ethos or my moral compass or how I carry myself in the world? I like to start there because it's a lot easier, again, to identify yourself or where you find a parallel with other like-minded brands or people you look up to, or what have you. That's a great starting point because then you can draw from inspiration. You know, for instance, I like extreme sports, snowboarding. I love connecting in nature. So what are some of those brands I like. What do I love to do on the side? Music, deejaying, parenting, but like in a holistic space, but I'm also very fun. I love color. I love to keep it fresh and like little rock and roll, a little street. So those types of things are kind of where I started to find out how I could position my own brand identity, and then find similarities among brands that I also identify with. Does that make sense? Anne: Absolutely. I think it's also important to engage others maybe in terms of how they perceive your brand. Laya: Great point. Anne: And I know that there's a lot of people that will say, hey, I'm doing some branding work. Can you tell me a little bit about how you hear me, how you see me? Laya: Yes. Anne: What does my voice sound like? What are those adjectives? And interestingly enough, I've done enough of those. I personally haven't done enough of those, but I, I have researched myself, but asking your friends, asking -- Laya: Crowdsourcing, right? Anne: -- I think probably, yeah, absolutely, crowdsourcing. I think that asking your clients, if you have any clients now, how they perceive your voice, if they could describe it. I think that's a, a wonderful place to ask outside of your voiceover friends. I think it's important to try to hit up any clients that you have already and just say, hey, by the way, if you had to describe my voice in three words, what would those words be? Laya: Absolutely. So it's interesting because you can also take your personal interests and then align them with your vocal qualities and you can, and I would even suggest specifically not going to people within the industry, but people that don't normally call these things out. Then you're not hit with the same descriptive word either. Anne: Sure. Exactly. Laya: Right? That's kind of a cool approach to create some sort of amalgamation of where the starting points are for your brand. And then what images do you identify? You know, if you had three emojis that could describe, you know, who you are, what you love -- Anne: Well, that's a good question. Laya: -- you know, what, what are some of those icons look like? You know, just, just, just ideas to get the creativity flowing, to try to create. And it doesn't have to be a moniker or -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- a tag line necessarily. Anne: Exactly. Laya: I think we get really wrapped up in that. It can just be how you want to present yourself in the world in your headshot -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- or with the color scheme on your website. It doesn't have to be super elaborate. It can be, and that's catchy. But I think these days, you don't necessarily need a theme to have a brand about yourself. Anne: yeah. I love that you said you don't need a tagline. I'm like right there with you. And as a matter of fact, I had a tagline like a long time ago when I first started, and it didn't really associate with me at all. It was just kind of just because I felt like I needed to have one. And so I love that you said, I don't think you need to have one, because as a matter of fact today, I don't really have one. If you go to anneganguzza.com, I'm more just about the colors and the fonts and just the, the look of the page and my photos. And I know you also have some really wonderful, expressive colors and photos -- Laya: Hey, thanks. Anne: -- for your brand as well. And I think that that's super effective when somebody comes to your website, and I will say, we have talked about branding, and I think that branding needs to go somewhere. Obviously the first place would be, right, where do people come to find out about you, your website, which is so very, very important and probably your virtual storefront, where everybody kind of gets to know you, that in addition to your social media. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: So that brand can carry over into both your website and your social media. So it's important to have a sense of identity, a sense of who you are, but it's also important for you all to know that it doesn't have to stay that way -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- or it can evolve it. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: My brands have evolved over the years. And if I were to show you what Anne Ganguzza brand looked like even just five years ago, well, a little further, it's completely evolved. Laya: Yeah, me too. Anne: And my colors have changed. Laya: That's right. 'Cause we change, right? Anne: Yup. Laya: Like I wasn't the same person I was 20 years ago -- Anne: Exactly. Laya: -- and I'm definitely not the same talent I was five or 10 years ago, as it, you know, pertains to my business and how I carry myself in the world. We're not even the same cellular composition as we were seven years ago. Anne: Sure. Laya: So that's totally true and something to really drive home, because we get really caught up in it. Do I need a logo? Do I need a tagline? Anne: Yup. Laya: Do I need a theme? Do I -- no! You just need to be you. And you might be similar to anything that identifies with you, but even just clean fonts, modern, clean lines, colors that resonate with you, that make you feel good when you look at what you've created, and if it feels good energetically to you, then that's really all that matters, because that's the most authentic way to connect with others that want to find you, right? So. Anne: I totally agree with that. And I, and I also want to say something about, there's always been this, this mindset, or I'm going to say maybe an older mindset about, do we put photos of ourselves on our websites, because we are voice talent, right? Laya: Yeah. Anne: And we may or may not want to be cast based upon our appearance as we are just voice artists. Right? Laya: Sure. Anne: And I'm that person that says, I want to connect with my client. And I feel like my client can connect with me if they can see a picture of me and not a picture of my logo. Laya: Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely agree with that, Anne. I think if you're comfortable, and you've got pictures that are clear in quality, or maybe you've even invested in some lifestyle photos -- Anne: Right. Laya: -- I had, because I knew that I wanted to put my best self forward, but that you could see it in my eyes who I was, who are, you know, you could see my pride in my eyes and my smile. And I want people to know that when they're working with me. We don't get to meet in person. Like we used to, at least not anymore. So if you're okay with that, then I say, put your face forward. Anne: Yeah. Laya: If you're not proud of that, or if you're not really comfortable and that makes you uncomfortable, then absolutely use something more generic. But I'm about using the face. Anne: Yeah, I am too. And I know for my marketing product, the BOSS Blast, a lot of times I will have my clients give me a headshot, because if that email is going out, I am always of the belief that people want to connect with the person, and they want to be able to hire the person. So whenever possible, I encourage my clients for the BOSS Blast to include their headshots so that we can market those as well. So, yeah, I think that's more of a modern mindset today, especially with all of this chaotic digital information that comes flying at us from every direction. And so with this modern marketing mindset, do you have any ideas, advice about how and where do we market ourselves on social media and what platforms? Laya: Yeah. Great point. Anne: I think for everyone, you have to have a website. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: I think in order to exist as a business in today's digital world, you have to have a website. But what do you think about marketing on social media? 'Cause there's so many platforms, like how do you decide which platform to use, which platform to market on? Laya: Well, that's a great question. And if I could step back even just a snooch, I think the website is key. But before, when I was entering as a full-time talent, I didn't want to put myself out there until I had my package kind of complete, because you really do just get 15 seconds to make your first impression -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- even in the digital space. So it was important to me to have a clear picture where you could see to my eyes, you could have, your icons are all the same. I had a home base, even though at the time, I didn't have a whole lot of content for my website. I built my website myself using the Squarespace platform, and I made sure that my email address wasn't a generic email address. You know, it was my name, and it's tied to my website. It's very inexpensive. There are many, many experts that can help you get there. So leading with like your most professional self, as if, I think the modern mindset is really as if you are already the success that you aspire to be. Anne: Oh, I love that. Laya: You need to act as if, and so even if that is just creating a small minimal package for yourself, which is what your color scheme is, your font or your picture, and you've got a home base with a dedicated email address -- it's not, you know, so-and-so at Gmail -- then, then you're presenting yourself as a pro from the beginning. Anne: I agree. Laya: And that's the important first step, I think. Anne: I do just want to touch on that particular thing. I happen to notice reading some of the threads on Facebook, that there was somebody who said, why is it that I'm seeing all these Gmail addresses? And there were a lot of people who were saying, why? Everybody uses it, and myself, I agree with you. I tend to think if you're a serious business, you're going to have a domain name -- Laya: Right. Anne: -- that is a part of your business. And you should have an email that is part of your business name. Laya: Yes. Anne: And I think if you just like so-and-so VO at Gmail, I think that it doesn't showcase a serious enough business. Laya: It doesn't seem like you're taking your business seriously -- Anne: Yeah, yeah. Laya: -- to me, to me. Anne: Right. Laya: And I say that not just about voice actors, but if I'm hiring a contractor, if I'm hiring -- Anne: Oh, me too. Laya: -- I don't even know, any number of other industries that are self-driven or entrepreneurial. If that person hasn't taken the time to showcase their skills, in this day and age, and taken the $20 a year that it may cost to get them a special domain name and a, you know, an email address that goes with that, what other parts of your business are you not taking this seriously? Our client interaction, my dollars I'm spending on you? That's what that says to me as it pertains to that modern mindset. I think it's just one extra step. Make yourself the pro that you are, or that you aspire to be and fake it 'til you make it, but get, get yourself that package first, before you even think about going on social media and saying, look at me, look what I do here I am. Let me get a new client. I think that's base line one. Anne: You also mentioned too, well, fake it 'til you make it, but having that website, even though you may not have a lot of content to put on that website, I think that's something -- Laya: That's okay. Anne: -- I want to touch on. And yes, I want to tell everybody, all those BOSSes out there, it is okay. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: Everybody starts somewhere. And a lot of people that talk to me, if they're worried about, well, I don't even know what to write. Well, I think that when you're just starting off, you've got to be able to establish your brand, as we've talked about. Also have that product viewers that you can market, which is a great demo, a great sample that showcases your voice. And in terms of the content you're going to put on it, I was always of the, well, I'm manifesting success. Laya: Yes. Anne: So I'm going to create that website. I'm going to create that verbiage as if I am already have been in business for 20 years. Laya: Yes, absolutely. Anne: And so what can you do to fill up that content? There's a good question. What would you do to fill up that content, Laya? Laya: I would tell my story authentically and just, you know, leverage the experience that you have had in life. Maybe it's in the medical industry, maybe it's in marketing, maybe it's in beauty or automotive, or wherever your background sits, there is relevance in your business now. And I think people are more interested than ever to connect with your most authentic self. Anne: Yes, yes. Laya: And so we'll talk about that as it pertains to social media. But you know, even if it's like, I found my love for this and I love being home with my family and I love telling your story, and I'm learning as I go, and I'm investing in myself, and I will take great care in investing in you and your story. Anne: Sure. Laya: And even if it's just a minimal little blurb that just says who you are, where you came from, and why you're here -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- that's okay. You'll be able to build on that as you go -- Anne: Absolutely. Laya: -- you know? Anne: Absolutely. Laya: Hopefully one day you'll be like Anne Ganguzza. You're building a new website. Anne: Yeah. Laya: So lots of content as you develop -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- and you can continue to nurture and grow that. I would say being apart of your website and your content development is a weekly process. I mean, I'm, I always got my hands in my website. You're constantly tweaking and adding. So it doesn't have to be this set in stone thing -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- but even just the basics, your contact information -- Anne: Agreed, agreed. Laya: -- front and center. Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: Your sample demo above the center -- Anne: Above the fold. Above the fold. Laya: Above the fold. And as you go, you can continue to build on that. Anne: Well, and you know, what else I'm going to touch upon too, is a good bio, right? Talking about your space, why you're here, what you're passionate about in terms of how can that passion help the potential client. Laya: Yeah. How can you be in service? Anne: Exactly. Focus on the how you can be of service to them. And also in regards to experience, there's a lot of people say, well, I don't have any experience yet. I have never done a voiceover job. Well, your experience, your life experience -- Laya: That's right. Anne: -- your career experience, a lot of times corporate experience. For me, you know, when I just started off, I had had a lot of experience recording telephony and welcome messages and phone trees. And for me, that was where I was able to put my experience level. You know, I had recorded thousands of telephony and IVR prompts. And so that became part of my experience. Nobody needed to know that I did it for my company -- Laya: Sure. Anne: -- and that they didn't pay me for it because I wasn't lying. Laya: That's not the story. Anne: Right? That's not the story. But I, you know, but I absolutely had voiced thousands of prompts. And so think of what you have already done experience-wise in your life that can lend to your experience that can again be of service to the client. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: And that will be good content. And I love that you said -- Laya: Parenting, but like -- Anne: -- every week keep tweaking it. That's important because we grow, we evolve, and also it keeps your website fresh so that it makes for good SEO as well. Laya: Absolutely. Anne: Things keep changing. So. Laya: Yeah. And we can talk about that in future episodes because SEO is a very, very key part of being found in search, but you don't have to focus on that in the beginning. Anne: No. Laya: Now, if you were, you know, fully established and you already have your content, then I think it's definitely a great time to invest in partners that have current and modern training in SEO and development, because there are a lot of people that you can find that can help supplement your site with blog posts, or maybe you're a great writer already. I know several excellent talent that are phenomenal blog writers and contribute often to their website. That's not me. I'm not the best writer, but it was a, some of my friends like Kelly Buttrick always says, "what you can't do, you can pay somebody else to do." So, you know -- Anne: Ain't that the truth. Laya: -- there's other options. What you're not great at, outsource. Anne: Oh yes. Laya: That's a modern mindset too, for sure. Anne: I love that. Laya: Yeah. You can keep adding to it. It doesn't have to be set in stone, and there's many ways to skin that cat, for sure. Anne: Yeah. The whole outsourcing is another, it's very much a modern mindset -- Laya: Yeah. You don't have to do it all! Anne: -- for voice talent. Laya: Wow, isn't that a revelation? Anne: What doesn't bring you joy, guess what? Laya: Right. Someone else -- brings dollars to somebody else. Anne: Uh, my accountant is very happy that I pay her on a monthly basis -- Laya: Lots of joy. Anne: -- for her to do her job. She loves it. She loves numbers, and I'm like, I am happy to give you joy -- Laya: Yes, exactly. Anne: -- on a monthly basis, and you do what you do best because that is not something that brings me joy. So, and I say over and over again, I think I must have mentioned it at least 20 times on my podcast, that was one of the best investments I ever made -- Laya: Sure. Anne: -- was to outsource my accounting. So. Laya: And that's a great new mindset -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- because we don't have to do it all. Yes, you see all those funny memes about being the entrepreneur, the solopreneur who wears all the hats. Anne: Yeah. Laya: But if some of those hats itch your head and make you crazy -- Anne: Yes! Laya: -- then like kick it off, friend, because somebody else can do that. And honestly -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- your time may be more valuable and better served doing something else in your business. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: So keep that in mind always -- Anne: Yep. Laya: -- whether it's website development or, you know, blog content or anything. Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- accounting, you know, so that's very key. Anne: Doing things that bring you joy. Those will be the things that do not feel like they are work. So let's continue on the modern mindset of the marketing. And I know we can have probably an entire episode on social media, but just to kind of touch upon the subject -- Laya: Sure. Anne: -- platforms. I've always been of the mindset that you want to be on the platforms that your potential client is on. And so -- Laya: I would agree with that, but it is an interesting new dynamic that clients are people and humans too. So they're scrolling and wasting their time on social media -- Anne: Just like we are. Laya: -- just like the rest of u,s and they're scratching their heads. Anne: Yup. Laya: And so it's interesting how you stumble across new clients or new interactions. I think whatever platform you feel most comfortable on is the one that you can put your energy on. Anne: Sure. Laya: For me, I'm a little bit of an older generation, is -- like in my early forties, I can't believe I have to say that, but it's true. TikTok doesn't resonate with me, right, and Snapchat never really resonated with me, but I know tons of talent that have had incredible success and views on TikTok. Look at Heidi Ruin, Atlanta -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- Voiceover Studio, for instance, and that whole like -- Anne: Oh, absolutely. Laya: -- voiceover battle. They saw a huge uptick in views and followers. I don't know if that converted to clients for them. For me. I actually do see client conversion on Instagram, and Facebook -- Anne: Oh, absolutely. Laya: -- and LinkedIn and Twitter. I don't tweet a whole lot, but I make sure that my accounts are linked. So I have presence there. I don't nurture relationships there, because it's not my strong suit on that platform. But I do nurture relationships on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And I derive clients from there because I'm just enjoying their content. I care less about putting mine out there, although I am somewhat consistent. It is a pain in my butt, and I still do it anyway. So I stay relevant, but I think it's most important to engage with them. What are they into? What are they liking? Anne: Sure. Laya: Cheer them on, make a comment in a post and a like on what your clients are most into, and you will stay top of mind just by default. You don't have to be like, "hey, look at me -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- you got another job for me?" No, just cheer them on. That is an authentic way to connect socially. Anne: You know, and it's interesting. Top of mind is so, so important in marketing. And by the way, I just want to add in YouTube -- Laya: Oh yeah. Anne: -- in terms of the social media place where you might want to be, just because of the good SEO value. I've recently started a channel -- Laya: Vimeo too, actually. Anne: Yeah. Recently started a channel where I've got some content out there. I do blog. It is painful for me. It's painful for me. Laya: I feel your pain. Anne: I do it. But there's all sorts of reasons why I go through the pain, because you know, I've got something to say. And even though I'm not the best writer in the world, it's really difficult to find a writer. Although I've searched, trust me, I have searched, not to necessarily outsource, but to at least get a bare bones blog happening for me, from my ideas, but it's difficult because they're not in my head. And so. Laya: And they're not the expert. You are the expert, and your clients and fan base appreciate your expertise and you sharing that expertise as you do on the show and in a blog post. And I think if you take that expertise and pull it into a LinkedIn post, or a tweet, or a Facebook post -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- and somebody identifies with that or shares it with someone, and they see it, that just gives you more credibility. So as long as that comes natural to you, and it's authentic, it's going to resonate with others as well. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad that you, you were talking about being on the platforms that your clients are on because they like to just get sucked in just like the rest of us. Laya: Yeah. Anne: Because I, I noticed recently there's a lot of people are that they're all about LinkedIn. There's so much to talk about with social media -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- with just so many platforms and sometimes not all of the stuff that's flying around there is not healthy at times. And so -- Laya: So you got to manage your borders and boundaries -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- even in social media, for sure. Anne: Absolutely. And there's so many people that are like, okay, I'm just going to do LinkedIn, or I'm just going to do this platform. So I think we only have so many hours in the day. And so I think in terms of, you know, you've got to come up with that balance. You've got to, like I say, listen more than talk a lot of times. And sometimes things like, let's say, videos that you put on YouTube that may or may not talk about your voiceover business, but a passion of yours, similar to a podcast, right, that could be about a passion of yours, by default are helping put your brand out there and helping people, potential clients get to know who you are and keeping you top of mind. And those are, I think important, probably the most important things that your potential client will help keep you top of mind, right? Laya: Absolutely. Anne: If they're watching you on YouTube or they're hearing you on a podcast, and you're not necessarily selling them your voiceover services, but they are getting to know you as a person and then saying, you know what, I'd really like to work with that person -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- because it is a meeting where they're hearing your voice, but you don't have to be like, hey, I'm a voiceover artist. Hire me. Laya: Yeah. You don't have to always be like, look at me and look at what I do for work and my en- -- I mean, some people dedicate their entire Instagram account to their voiceover business or, you know, or only keep it private and don't let their clients in. There's that too. So it's really up to the individual person. For instance, I don't share a lot of my work on Facebook. I'm not very active on Facebook anymore, but it's, I use it as a touch point to connect with my friends and family. Instagram, definitely more work, professional, business heavy, but I also show some of the personality in there. On LinkedIn, I try to keep it more professional -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- less about my personal life. However, I like to share ideas in the industry. If I have nothing to say, I love to share other clients' content, may or may not have anything to do with me, but achievements they've had cheering them on, or advancements in the industry, new technologies, to get the conversation started, and to show my clients or the people that I'm connected with that I am staying top of mind by being relevant and educating myself, and sharing quality content in our same space. And so just depending on which platform you're at and how that feels to you and who your audience is, you kind of can tailor and tweak accordingly. That's my personal strategy. And you know, it works for me. So. Anne: Wow. Good stuff. We could probably talk about this for hours. Laya: And we will. Anne: And we will. Laya: Let's do a social podcast -- a social episode next, I think. Anne: Yes. I think a social episode is absolutely coming up next for us. So in the meantime, BOSSes, try to develop, evolve, create, understand your brand. Make sure you've got something wonderful out there to market yourself and keep that modern mindset while you are doing so. Laya: Yes. Anne: I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor ipDTL, because they are of a modern mindset -- Laya: Absolutely. Anne: -- using the latest technology to allow us to connect like BOSSes. You can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week -- Laya: Yes, thank you. Anne: -- and we will see you next week. All right. Laya: Absolutely. Have a good one, guys. Anne: Bye-bye. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

About MatthewMatthew Prince is co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world's largest networks, which spans more than 200 cities in over 100 countries. Matthew is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, winner of the 2011 Tech Fellow Award, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law. Matthew holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a George F. Baker Scholar and awarded the Dubilier Prize for Entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Illinois Bar, and earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago and B.A. in English Literature and Computer Science from Trinity College. He's also the co-creator of Project Honey Pot, the largest community of webmasters tracking online fraud and abuse.Links: Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com Blog post: https://blog.cloudflare.com/aws-egregious-egress/ Bandwidth Alliance: https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ Announcement of R2: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-r2-object-storage/ Blog.cloudflare.com: https://blog.cloudflare.com Duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Writing ad copy to fit into a 30 second slot is hard, but if anyone can do it the folks at Quali can. Just like their Torque infrastructure automation platform can deliver complex application environments anytime, anywhere, in just seconds instead of hours, days or weeks. Visit Qtorque.io today and learn how you can spin up application environments in about the same amount of time it took you to listen to this ad.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate: is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards, while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other, which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at Honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability, it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. Today, my guest is someone I feel a certain kinship with, if for no other reason than I spend the bulk of my time antagonizing AWS incredibly publicly. And my guest periodically descends into the gutter with me to do the same sort of things. The difference is that I'm a loudmouth with a Twitter account and Matthew Prince is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, which is, of course, publicly traded. Matthew, thank you for deigning to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.Matthew: Corey, it's my pleasure, and appreciate you having me on.Corey: So, I'm mostly being facetious here, but not entirely, in that you have very publicly and repeatedly called out some of the same things I love calling out, which is AWS's frankly egregious egress pricing. In fact, that was a title of a blog post that you folks put out, and it was so well done I'm ashamed I didn't come up with it myself years ago. But it's something that is resonating with a large number of people in very specific circumstances as far as what their company does. Talk to me a little bit about that. Cloudflare is a CDN company and increasingly looking like something beyond that. Where do you stand on this? What got you on this path?Matthew: I was actually searching through really old emails to find something the other day, and I found a message from all the way back in 2009, so actually even before Michelle and I had come up with a name for Cloudflare. We were really just trying to understand the pricing on public clouds and breaking it all down. How much does the compute cost? How much does storage cost? How much does bandwidth cost?And we kept running the numbers over and over and over again, and the storage and compute costs actually seemed relatively reasonable and you could understand it, but the economics behind the bandwidth just made no sense. It was clear that as bandwidth usage grew and you got scale that your costs eventually effectively went to zero. And I think it was that insight that led to us starting Cloudflare. And the self-service plans at Cloudflare have always been unlimited bandwidth, and from the beginning, we didn't charge for bandwidth. People told us at the time we were crazy to not do that, but I think that that realization, that over time and at scale, bandwidth costs do go to zero is really core to who Cloudflare is.Cloudflare launched a little over 11 years ago now, and as we've watched the various public clouds and AWS in particular just really over that same 11 years not only not follow the natural price of bandwidth down, but really hold their costs steady. At some point, we've got a lot of mutual customers and it's a complaint that we hear from our mutual customers all the time, and we decided that we should do something about it. And so that started four years ago, when we launched the Bandwidth Alliance, and worked with almost all the major public clouds with the exception of Amazon, to say that if someone is sending traffic from a public cloud network to Cloudflare's network, we're not going to charge them for the bandwidth. It's going across a piece of fiber optic cable that yeah, there's some cost to put it in place and maybe there's some maintenance costs associated with it, but there's not—Corey: And the equipment at the end costs money, but it's not cloud cost; it just cost on a per second, every hour of your lifetime basis. It's a capital expense that is amortized across a number of years et cetera, et cetera.Matthew: And it's a fixed cost. It's not a variable cost. You put that fiber optic cable and you use a port on a router on each side. There's cost associated with that, but it's relatively de minimis. And so we said, “If it's not costing us anything and it's not costing a cloud provider anything, why are we charging customers for that?”And I think it's an argument that resonated with almost every other provider that was out there. And so Google discounts traffic when it's sent to us, Microsoft discounts traffic when it's sent to us, and we just announced that Oracle has joined this discounting their traffic, which was already some of the most cost-effective bandwidth from any cloud provider.Corey: Oh, yeah. Oracle's fantastic. As you were announced, I believe today, the fact that they're joining the Bandwidth Alliance is both fascinating and also, on some level, “Okay. It doesn't matter as much because their retail starting cost is 10% of Amazon's.” You have to start pushing an awful lot of traffic relative to what you would do AWS before it starts to show up. It's great to see.Matthew: And the fact that they're taking that down to effectively zero if you're using us is even better, right? And I think it again just illustrates how Amazon's really alone in this at being so egregious in how they do that. And it's, when we've done the math to calculate what their markups are, it's almost 80 times what reasonable assumptions on what their wholesale costs are. And so we really do believe in fighting for our customers and being customer-centric, and this seems like a place where—again, Amazon provides an incredible service and so many things, but the data transfer costs are just completely outrageous. And I'm glad that you're calling them out on it, and I'm glad we're calling them out on it and I think increasingly they look isolated and very anti-customer.Corey: What's interesting to me is that ingress to AWS at all the large public tier-one cloud providers is free. Which has led, I think, to the assumption—real or not—that bandwidth doesn't actually cost anything, whereas going outbound, all I can assume is that one day, some Amazon VP was watching a rerun of Meet the Parents and they got to the line where Ben Stiller says, “Oh, you can milk anything with nipples,” and said, “Holy crap. Our customers all have nipples; we can milk them with egress charges.” And here we are. As much as I think the cloud empowers some amazing stuff, the egress charges are very much an Achilles heel to a point where it starts to look like people won't even consider public cloud for certain workloads based upon that.People talk about how Netflix is a great representation of the ideal AWS customers. Yeah, but they don't stream a single byte to customers from AWS. They have their own CDN called Open Connect that they put all around the internet, specifically for that use case because it would bankrupt them otherwise.Matthew: If you're a small customer, bandwidth does cost something because you have to pay someone to do the work of interconnecting with all of the various networks that are out there. If you start to be, though, a large customer—like a Cloudflare, like an AWS, like an Azure—that is sending serious traffic to the internet, then it starts to actually be in the interest of ISPs to directly interconnect with you, and the costs of your bandwidth over time will approach zero. And that's the just economic reality of how bandwidth pricing works. I think that the confusion, to some extent, comes from all of us having bought our own home internet connection. And I think that the fact that you get more bandwidth up in most internet connections, and you get down, people think that there's some physics, which is associated with that.And there are; that turns out just to be the legacy of the cable system that was really designed to send pictures down to your—Corey: It wasn't really a listening post. Yeah.Matthew: Right. And so they have dedicated less capacity for up and again, in-home network connections, that makes a ton of sense, but that's not how internet connections work globally. In fact, you pay—you get a symmetric connection. And so if they can demonstrate that it's free to take the traffic in, we can't figure out any reason that's not simply about customer lock-in; why you would charge to take data out, but you wouldn't charge to put it in. Because actually cost more from writing data to a disk, it costs more than reading it from a disk.And so by all reasonable accounts, if they were actually charging based on what their costs were, they would charge for ingress but they want to charge for egress. But the approach that we've taken is to say, “For standard bandwidth, we just aren't going to charge for it.” And we do charge for if you use our premium routing services, which is something called Argo, but even then it's relatively cheap compared with what is just standard kind of internet connectivity that's out there. And as we see more of the clouds like Microsoft and Google and Oracle show that this is a place where they can be much more customer-centric and customer-friendly, over time I'm hopeful that will put pressure on Amazon and they will eliminate their egress fees.Corey: People also tend to assume that when I talk about this, that I'm somehow complaining about the level of discounting or whatnot, and they yell at me and say, “Oh, well, you should know by now, Corey, that no one at significant scale pays retail pricing.” “Thanks, professor. I appreciate that, but four years ago, or so I sat down with a startup founder who was sketching out the idea for a live video streaming service and said, ‘There's something wrong with my math because if I built this on AWS—which he knew very well, incidentally—it looks like it would cost me at our scale of where we're hoping to hit $65,000 a minute.'” And I checked and yep, sure enough, his math was not wrong, so he obviously did not build his proof of concept on top of AWS. And the last time I checked, they had raised several 100 million dollars in a bunch of different funding rounds.That is a company now that will not be on AWS because it was never an option. I want to talk as well about your announcement of R2, which is just spectacular. It is—please correct me if I get any of this wrong—it's an object store that lives in your existing distributed-points-of-presence-slash-data-centers-slash-colo-slash-a-bunch-of-computers-in-fancy-warehouse-rooms-with-the-lights-are-always-on-And-it's-always-cold-and-noisy. And people can store data there—Matthew: [crosstalk 00:10:23] aisles it's cold; in the other aisles, it's hot. But yes.Corey: Exactly. But it turns out when you lurk around to the hot aisle, that's not where all the buttons are and the things you're able to plug into, so it's freeze or sweat, and there's never a good answer. But it's an object store that costs a fair bit less than retail pricing for Amazon S3, or most other object stores out there. Which, okay, great. That's always good to see competition in the storage space, but specifically, you're not charging any data transfer costs whatsoever for doing this. First, where did this come from?Matthew: So, we needed it ourselves. I think all of the great products at Cloudflare start with an internal need. If you look at why do we build our zero-trust solutions? It's because we said we needed a security solution that was fast and reliable and secure to protect our employees as they were going out and using the internet.Why did we build Cloudflare Workers? Because we needed a very flexible compute platform where we could build systems ourselves. And that's not unique to us. I mean, why did Amazon build AWS? They built it because they needed those tools in order to continue to grow and expand as quickly as possible.And in fact, I think if you look at the products that Google makes that are really great, it ends up being the ones that Google's employees use themselves. Gmail started as Caribou once upon a time, which was their internal email system. And so we needed an object store and the sometimes belligerent CEO of Cloudflare insisted that our team couldn't use any of the public cloud object stores. And so we had to build it.That was the start of it and we've been using it internally for products over time. It powers, for example, Cloudflare Images, it powers a lot of our streaming video services, and it works great. And at some point, we said, “Can we take this and make it available to everyone?” The question that you've asked on Twitter, and I think a lot of people reasonably ask us, “What's the catch?”Corey: Well, in my defense, I think it's fair. There was an example that I gave of, “Okay, I'm going to go ahead and keep—because it's new, I don't trust new object stores. Great. I'm going to do the same experiment twice, keep one the pure AWS story and the other, I'm just going to add Cloudflare R2 to the mix so that I have to transfer out of AWS once.” For a one gigabyte file that gets shared out for a petabyte's worth of bandwidth, on AWS it costs roughly $52,000 to do that. If I go with the R2 solution, it cost me 13 cents, all of which except for a penny-and-a-half are AWS charges. And that just feels—when you're looking at that big of a gap, it's easy to look at that and think, “Okay, someone is trying to swindle me somewhere. And when you can't spot the sucker, it's probably me. What's the catch?”Matthew: I guess it's not really a catch; it's an explanation. We have been able to drive our bandwidth costs down low enough that in that particular use case, we have to store the file, and that, again, that—there's a hard disk in there and we replicate it to make sure that it's available so it's not just one hard disk, but it's multiple hard disks in various places, but that amortized over time, isn't that big a cost. And then bandwidth is effectively zero. And so if we can do that, then that's great.Maybe a different way of framing the question is like, “Why would we do that?” And I think what we see is that there is an opportunity for customers to be able to use the best of various cloud providers and hook the different parts together. So, people talk about multi-cloud all the time, and for a while, the way that I think people thought about that was you take the exact same workload and you run it in Azure and AWS. That turns out not to be—I mean, maybe some people do that, but it's super rare and it's incredibly hard.Corey: It has been a recurring theme of most things I say where, by default, that is one of the dumbest things I can imagine.Matthew: Yeah, that isn't good. But what people do want to do is they want to say, “Listen, there's some really great services that Amazon provides; we want to use those. And there's some really great services that Azure provides, and we want to use those. And Google's got some great machine learning, and so does IBM. And I want to sort of mix and match the various pieces together.”And the challenge in doing that is the egress fees. If everyone just had a detente and said there's going to be no egress fees for us to be able to hook these various [pits 00:14:48] together, then you would be able to take advantage of a lot of the different technologies and we would actually get stronger applications. And so the vision of what we're trying to build is how can we be the fabric that can stitch the various cloud providers together so that you can do that. And when we looked at that, and we said, “Okay, what's the path to getting there?” The big place where there's the just meatiest cost on egress fees is object stores.And so if you could have a centralized object store, and you can say then from that object go use whatever the best service is at Amazon, go use whatever the best service is at Google, go use whatever the best service is at Azure, that then allows, I think, actually people to take advantage of the cloud in a way which is what people really should mean when they talk about multi-cloud. Which is, there should be competition on the various features themselves, and you should be able to pick and choose the best of all of the different bits. And I think we as consumers then benefit from that. And so when we're looking at how we can strategically enable that future, building an object store was a real key part of that, and that's part of what we're doing. Now, how do we make money off of that? Well, there's a little bit off the storage, and again, even [laugh]—Corey: Well, that is the Amazonian answer there. It's like, “Your margin is my opportunity,” is a famous Bezos quote, and I figure you're sitting there saying, “Ah, it would cost $52,000 to do that in Amazon. Ah, we can make a penny-and-a-half.” That's very Amazonian, you could probably get hired over there with that philosophy.Matthew: Yeah. And this is a commodity service, just [laugh] storing data. If you look across the history of what Cloudflare has done, in 2014, we made encryption free because it's absurd to pay for math, right? I mean, it's just crazy right?Corey: Or to pay for security as a value-add. No, that should be baked into whatever you're doing, in an ideal world.Matthew: Domain registration. Like, it's writing something down in a ledger. It's a commodity; of course it should go to whatever the absolute cost is. On the other hand, there are things that we do that aren't commodities where we are able to better protect people because we see so much traffic, and we've built the machine learning models, and we've done those things, and so we charge for those things. So commodities, we think over time, go to effectively, whatever their cost is, and then the value is in the actual intelligent services that are on top of it.But an object store is a commodity and so we should be trying to drive that pricing down. And in the case of bandwidth, it's effectively free for us. And so if we can be that fabric that connects the different class together, I think that makes sense is a strategy for us and that's why R2 made a ton of sense for us to build and to launch.Corey: There seems to be a lack of ability for lots of folks, at least on the internet to imagine a use case other than theirs. I cheated by being a consultant, I get to borrow other people's use cases at a high degree of turnover. But the question I saw raised was, “Well, how many workloads really do that much egress from static objects that don't change? Doesn't sound like there'd be a whole lot of them.” And it's, “Oh, my sweet summer child. Sure, your app doesn't do a lot of that, but let me introduce it to my friends who are hosting videos on their website, for example, or large images that get accessed a whole bunch of times; things that are written once and then read forever by the internet.”Matthew: And we sit in a position where because of the role that Cloudflare plays where we sit in front of a number of these different cloud providers, we could actually look at the use cases and the data, and then build products in order to solve that. And that's why we started with Workers; that's why we then built the KV store that was on top of that; we built object-store next. And so you can see as we're sort of marching through these things, it is very much being informed by the data that we actually see from real customers. And one of the things that I really like about R2 is in exactly the example that you gave where you can keep everything in S3; you can set R2 in front of it and put it in slurp mode, and effectively it just—as those objects get pulled out, it starts storing them there. And so the migration path is super easy; you don't have to actually change anything about your application and will cut your bills substantially.And so I think that's the right thing to enable a multi-cloud world where, again, it's not you're running the exact same workload in different places, but you get to take advantage of the really great tack that all of these companies are building and use that. And then the companies will compete on building that tech well. So, it's not just about how do I get the data in and then kind of underinvest in all of the different services that I provide. It's how can we make sure that on a service-by-service basis, you actually are having real competition over time. And again, I think that's the right thing for customers, and absolutely R2 might not be the right thing for every use case that's out there, but I think that it wi—enabling more competition is going to make the cloud better for everyone.Corey: Oh, yeah. It's always fun hearing it from Amazonians. It's, “You have a service that talks to satellites in orbit. You really think that's a general-purpose thing that every company out there has to deal with?” No. Well, not yet, anyway.It also just feels to me like their transfer approach is antithetical to almost every other aspect of how they have built their cloud. Amazonians have told me repeatedly—I believe them—that their network is effectively magic. The fact that you can get near line rate between any two points without melting various [unintelligible 00:20:14], which shows that there was significant thought, work, effort, planning, technology, et cetera, put into the network. And I don't dispute that. But if I'm trying to build a workload and put it inside of AWS, I can control how it performs tied to budget; I can have a lot of RAM for things that are memory intensive, or I can have a little RAM; I can have great CPU performance or terrible CPU performance.The challenge with data transfer is it is uniformly great. “I want to get that data over there super quickly.” Yeah, awesome. I'm fine paying a premium for that. But I have this pile of data right here. I want to get it over there, ideally by Tuesday. There's no good way to do that, even with their Snowball—or Snow Family devices—when you fill them with data and send them into AWS, yeah, that's great. Then you just pay for the use of the device.Use them to send data out of AWS, they tack on an additional per-gigabyte fee for getting the data out. You're training as a lawyer, you went to the same law school that my wife did, the University of Chicago, which, oh, interesting stories down that path. But if we look at this, my argument is that the way to do an end-run around this is to sue Amazon for something, and then demand access to the data you have living in their environment during discovery. Make them give it to you for free, though, they'd probably find a way to charge it there, too. It's just a complete lack of vision and lack of awareness because it feels like they're milking a cash cow until it dies.Matthew: Yeah, they probably would charge for it and you'd also have to pay a lot of lawyers. So, I'm not sure that's the cost [crosstalk 00:21:44]—Corey: Its only works above certain volumes, I figure.Matthew: I do think that if your pricing strategy is designed to lock people in to prevent competition, then that does create other challenges. And there are certainly some University of Chicago law professors out there that have spent their careers arguing why antitrust laws don't make any sense, but I think that this is definitely one of those areas where you can see very clearly that customers are actually being harmed by the pricing strategy that's there. And the pricing strategy is not tied in any way to the underlying costs which are associated with that. And so I do think that, especially as you see other providers in the space—like Oracle—taking their bandwidth costs to effectively zero, that's the sort of thing that I think will have regulators start to scratch their heads. If tomorrow, AWS took egress costs to zero, and as a result, R2 was not as advantaged as it is today against them, you know, I think there are a lot of people who would say, “Oh, they showed Cloudflare.” I would do a happy dance because that's the best thing [thing they can do 00:22:52] for our customers.Corey: Our long-term goals, it sounds like, are relatively aligned. People think that I want to see AWS reign ascendant; people also say I want to see them burning and crashing into the sea, and neither one of those are true. What I want is, I want someone in a few years from now to be doing a startup and trying to figure out which cloud provider they should pick, and I want that to be a hard decision. Ideally, if you wind up reducing data transfer fees enough, it doesn't even have to be only one. There are stories that starts to turn into an actual realistic multi-cloud story that isn't, at its face, ridiculous. But right now, you have to pick a horse and ride it, for a variety of reasons. And I don't like that.Matthew: It's entirely egress-based. And again, I think that customers are better off if they are able to pick who is the best service at any time. And that is what encourages innovation. And over time, that's even what's good for the various cloud providers because it's what keeps them being valuable and keeps their customers thinking that they're building something which is magical and that they aren't trapped in the decision that they made, which is when we talk to a lot of the customers today, they feel that way. And it's I think part of why something like R2 and something like the Bandwidth Alliance has gotten so much attention because it really touches a nerve on what's frustrating customers today. And if tomorrow Amazon announced that they were eliminating egress fees and going head-to-head with R2, again, I think that's a wonderful outcome. And one that I think is unlikely, but I would celebrate it if it happened.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking databases, observability, management, and security.And - let me be clear here - it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build.With Always Free you can do things like run small scale applications, or do proof of concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free. No asterisk. Start now. Visit https://snark.cloud/oci-free that's https://snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: My favorite is people who don't do research on this stuff. They wind up saying, “Oh, yeah. Cloudflare is saying that bandwidth is a fixed cost. Of course not. They must be losing their shirt on this.”You are a publicly-traded company. Your gross margins are 76% or 77%, depending upon whether we're talking about GAAP or non-GAAP. Point being, you are clearly not selling this at a loss and hoping to make it up in volume. That's what a VC-backed company does. Is something that is real and as accurate.I want to, on some level, I guess, low-key apologize because I keep viewing Cloudflare through a lens that is increasingly inaccurate, which is as a CDN. But you've had Cloudflare Workers for a while, effectively Functions as a Service that run at the edge, which has this magic aura around it, that do various things, which is fascinating to me. You're launching R2; it feels like you are in some ways aiming at becoming a cloud provider, but instead of taking the traditional approach of building it from the region's outward, you're building it from the outward in. Is that a fair characterization?Matthew: I think that's right. I think fundamentally what Cloudflare is, is a network. And I remember early on in the pandemic, we did a series of fireside chats with people we thought we could learn from. And so was everyone from Andre Iguodala, the basketball player, to Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, to we had a [unintelligible 00:25:56] governor and all kinds of things. And we these were just internal on off the record.And I got to do one with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google. And I said, “You know, Eric, one of the things that we struggle with is describing what is Cloudflare.” And without hesitation, he said, “Oh, that's easy. You're the network I plug into and don't have to worry about anything else.” And I think that's better than I could say it, myself, and I think that's what it is that we fundamentally are: we're the network that fits together.Now, it turns out that in the process of being that network and enabling that network, we are going to build things like R2, which start to be an object store and starts to sort of step into some of the cloud provider space. And Workers is really just a way of programming that network in order to do that, but it turns out that there are a bunch of workloads that if you move them into the network itself, make sense—not going to be every workload, but a lot of workloads that makes sense there. And again, I think that you can actually be very bullish on all of the big public cloud providers and bullish on Cloudflare at the same time because what we want to do is enable the ability for people to mix and match, and change, and be the fabric that connects all of those things together. And so over time, if Amazon says, “We're going to drop egress fees,” it may be that R2 isn't a product that exists—I don't think they're going to do that, so I think it's something that is going to be successful for us and get a lot of new users to us—but fundamentally, I think that where the traditional public clouds think of themselves as the place you put data and you process data, I think we think of ourselves as the place you move data. And that's somewhat different.That then translates into it as we're building out the different pieces, where it does feel like we're building from the outside in. And it may be that over time, that put versus move distinction becomes narrower and narrower as we build more and more services like R2, and durable objects, and KV, and we're working on a database, and all those things. And it could be that we converge in a similar place.Corey: One thing I really appreciate about your vision because it is so atypical these days, is that you aren't trying to build the multifunction printer of companies. You are not trying to be all things to all people in every scenario. Which is impossible to do, but companies are still trying their level best to do it. You are staking out the bounds of where you were willing to start and where you're willing to stop, in a variety of different ways. I would be—how do I put it?—surprised if you at some point in the next five years come out with, “And this is our own database that we have built out that directly competes with the following open-source project that we basically have implemented their API and gone down that particular path.” It does not sound like it is in your core wheelhouse at that point. You don't need—to my understanding—to write your own database engine in order to do what you do.Matthew: Maybe. I mean, we actually are kind of working on a database because—Corey: Oh, no, here we go again.Matthew: [laugh]—and yeah—in a couple of different ways. So, the first way is, we want to make sure that if you're using Workers, you can connect to whatever database you want to use anywhere in the world. And that's something that's coming and we'll be there. At the same time, the challenge of distributed computing turns out not to be the computing, it turns out to be the data and figuring out how to—CAP theorem is real, right? Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance; you can pick any two out of the three, but you can't get all three.And so you there's always going to be some trade-off that's there. And so we don't see a lot of good examples. There's some really cool companies that are working on things in the space, but we don't see a lot of really good examples of who has built a database that can be run on a distributed workload system, like Cloudflare to it do well. And so our team internally needs that, and so we're trying to figure out how to build it for ourselves, and I would imagine that after we build it for ourselves—if it works the way we expect it will—that that will then be something that we open up.Our motivation and the way we think about products is we need to build the tools for our own team. Our team itself is customer zero, and then some of those things are very specific to us, but every once in a while, when there are functions that makes sense for others, then we'll build them as well. And that does maybe risk being the multifunction printer, but again, I think that because the customer for that starts with ourselves, that's how we think about it. And if there's someone else's making a great tool, we'll use that. But in this case, we don't see anyone that's built a multi-tenant, globally-distributed, ACID-compliant relational database.Corey: I can't let it pass on challenge. Sure they have, and you're running it yourself. DNS: the finest database in the world. You stuff whatever you want to text records, and now you have taken a finely crafted wrench and turned it into a barely acceptable hammer, which is what I love about doing that terrible approach. Yeah, relational is not going to quite work that way. But—Matthew: Yes. That's a fancy key-value store, right? So—and we've had that for a long time. As we're trying to build those things up, the good news is that, again, we've run data at scale for quite some time and proven that we can do it efficiently and reliably.Corey: There's a lot that can be said about building the things you need to deliver your product to customers. And maybe a database is a poor example here, but I don't see that your motivation in this space is to step into something completely outside your areas of expertise solely because there's money to be made over there. Well, yeah, fortune passes everywhere. The question is, which are you best positioned to wind up delivering an actual transformative solution to that space, and what parts of it are just rent-seeking where it's okay, we're going to go and wherever the money is, we're chasing that down.Matthew: Yeah, we're still a for-profit business, and we've been able to grow revenue well, but I think it is that what motivates us and what drives us comes back to our mission, which is how do you help build a better internet? And you can look at every single thing that we've done, and we try to be very long-term-oriented. So, for instance, when we in 2014 made encryption free, the number one reason at the time, when people upgraded for the free version of our service, the paid version of our service is they got encryption for that. And so it was super scary to say, “Hey, we're going to take the biggest feature and give it away for free,” but it was clearly the direction of history and we wanted to be on the right side of history. And we considered it a bug that the internet wasn't built in an encrypted way from the beginning.So, of course, that was going to head that direction. And so I think that we and then subsequently Let's Encrypt, and a bunch of others have said, it's absurd that you're charging for math. And again, I think that's a good example of how we think about products. And we want to continue to disrupt ourselves and take the things that once upon a time were reserved for our customers that spend $10 million-plus with us, and we want to keep pushing those things down because, over time, the real opportunity is if you do right by customers, there will be plenty of ways that you can earn some of their budget. And again, we think that is the long-term winning strategy.Corey: I would agree with this. You're not out there making sneakers and selling them because you see people spend a lot of money on that; you're delivering value for customers. I say this as one of your paying customers. I have zero problem paying you every month like clockwork, and it is the least cloud-like experience because I know exactly what the bill is going to be in advance, which is apparently not how things should be done in this industry, yadda, yadda, yadda. It is a refreshingly delightful experience every time.The few times I've had challenges with the service, it has almost always been a—I'll call it a documentation gap, where the way it was explained in the formal documentation was not how I conceptualize things, which, again, explaining what these complex things are to folks who are not steeped in certain areas of them is always going to be a challenge. But I cannot think back to a single customer service failure I've had with you folks. I can't look back at any point where you have failed me as a customer, which is a strange thing to say, given how incredibly efficient I am at stumbling over weird bugs.Matthew: Terrific to have you as a customer. We are hardly perfect and we make mistakes, but one of the things I think that we try to do and one of the core values of Cloudflare is transparency. If I think about, like, the original sins of tech, a lot of it is this bizarre secrecy which pervades the entire industry. When we make mistakes, we talk about them, and we explain them. When there's an error, we don't throw up a white page; we put up a page that has our logo on it because we want to own it.And that sometimes gets blowback because you're in front of it, but again, I think it's the right thing to do for customers. And it's and I think it's incredibly important. One of the things that's interesting is you mentioned that you know what your bill is going to be. If you go back and look at the history of hosting on the internet, in the early days of internet hosting, it looks a lot like AWS.Corey: Oh, 95th percentile transit billing; go for one five minutes segment over and boom, your bill explodes. Oh, I remember those days. Unkindly.Matthew: And it was super complicated. And then what happened is the hosting world switched from this incredibly complicated billing to much more simplified, predictable, unlimited bandwidth with maybe some asterisks, but largely that was in place. And then it's strange that Amazon came along and then has brought us back to the more complicated world that's out there. I would have predicted that that's a sine wave—Corey: It has to be. I mean—Matthew: —and it's going to go back and forth over time. But I would have predicted that we would be more in the direction of coming back toward simplify, everything included. And again, I think that's how we've priced our things from the beginning. I'm surprised that it has held on as long as it has, but I do think that there's going to be an opportunity for—and I don't think Amazon will be the leader here, but I think there will be an opportunity for one of the big clouds.And again, I think Oracle is probably doing this the best of any of them right now—to say, “How can we go away from that complexity? How can we make bills predictable? How can we not nickel and dime everything, but allow you to actually forecast and budget?” And it just seems like that's the natural arc of history, and we will head back toward that. And, again, I think we've done our part to push that along. And I'm excited that other cloud providers seem to be thinking about that now as well.Corey: Oh, yeah. What I do with fixing AWS bills is the same thing folks were doing in the 70s and 80s with long-distance bills for companies. We're definitely hitting that sine wave. I know that if I were at AWS in a leadership role, I would be actively embarrassed that the company that is delivering a better customer experience around financial things is Oracle of all companies, given their history of audits and surprising people and the rest. It is ridiculous to me.One last topic that I want to cover with you before we call it an episode is, back in college, you had a thesis that you have done an excellent job of effectively eliminating from the internet. And the theme of this, to my understanding, was that the internet is a fad. And I am so aligned with that because I'm someone who has said for years that emerging technologies are fads. I've said it about cloud, about virtualization, about containers. And I just skipped Kubernetes. And now I'm all-in on serverless, which means, of course it's going to fail because I'm always wrong on these things. But tell me about that.Matthew: When I was seven years old in 1980, my grandmother gave me an Apple ][+ computer for Christmas. And I took to it like a just absolute duck to water and did things that made me very popular in junior high school, like going to computer camp. And my mom used to sign up for continuing education classes at the local university in computer science, and basically sneak me in, and I'd do all the homework and all that. And I remember when I got to college, there was a small group of students that would come around and help other students set their computer up, and I had it all set up and was involved. And so, got pretty deeply involved in the computer science program at college.And then I remember there was a group of three other students—so they were four of us—and they wanted to start an online digital magazine. And at the time, this was pre-web, or right in the early days of the web; it was sort of nineteen… ninety-three. And we built it originally on old Apple technology called HyperCard. And we used to email out the old HyperCard stacks. And the HyperCard stacks kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and we'd send them out to the school so [laugh] that we—so we kept crashing the mail servers.But the college loved this, so they kept buying bigger and bigger mail servers. But they were—at some point, they said, “This won't scale. You got to switch technologies.” And they introduced us to two different groups. One was a printer company based out in San Francisco that had this technology called PDF. And I was a really big fan of PDF. I thought PDF was the future, it was definitely going to be how everything got published.And then the other was this group of dorky graduate students at the University of Illinois that had this thing called a browser, which was super flaky, and crashed all the time, and didn't work. And so of the four of us, I was the one who voted for PDF and the other three were like, “Actually, I think this HTML thing is going to be a hit.” And we built this. We won an award from Wired—which was only a print magazine at the time—that called us the first online-only weekly publication. And it was such a struggle to get anyone to write for it because browsers sucked and, you know, trying to get students on campus, but no one on campus cared.We would get these emails from the other side of the world, where I remember really clearly is this—in broken English—email from Japan saying, “I love the magazine. Please keep writing more for the magazine.” And I remember thinking at the time, “Why do I care if someone in Japan is reading this if the girl down the hall who I have a crush on isn't?” Which is obviously what motivates dorky college students like myself. And at that same time, you saw all of this internet explosion.I remember the moment when Netscape went public and just blew through all the expectations. And it was right around the time I was getting ready to graduate for college, and I was kind of just burned out on the entire thing. And I thought, “If I can't even get anyone to write for this dopey magazine and yet we're winning awards, like, this stuff has to all just be complete garbage.” And so wrote a thesis on—ehh, it was not a very good [laugh] thesis. It's—but one of the things I said was that largely the internet was a fad, and that if it wasn't, that it had some real risks because if you enabled everyone to connect with whatever their weird interests and hobbies were, that you would very quickly fall to the lowest common denominator. And predicted some things that haven't come true. I thought for sure that you would have both a liberal and conservative search engine. And it's a miracle to this day, I think that doesn't exist.Corey: Now, that you said it, of course, it's going to.Matthew: Well, I don't know I've… [sigh] we'll see. But it is pretty amazing that Google has been able to, again, thread that line and stay largely apolitical. I'm surprised there aren't more national search engines; the fact that it only Russia and China have national search engines and France and Germany don't is just strange to me. It seems like if you're controlling the source of truth and how people find it, that seems like something that governments would try and take over. There are some things that in retrospect, look pretty wise, but there were a lot more things that looked really, really stupid. And so I think at some level, I had to build Cloudflare to atone for that stupidity all those years ago.Corey: There's something to be said for looking back and saying, “Yeah, I had an opinion, and with the light of new information, I am changing my opinion.” For some reason, in some circles, it feels like that gets interpreted as a sign of weakness, but I couldn't disagree more, it's, “Well, I had an opinion based upon what I saw at the time. Turns out, I was wrong, and here we are.” I really wish more people were capable of doing that.Matthew: It's one of the things we test for in hiring. And I think the characteristic that describes people who can do that well is really empathy. The understanding that the experiences that you have lead you to have a unique set of insights, but they also create a unique set of blind spots. And it's rare that you find people that are able to do that. And whenever you do—whenever we do we hire them.Corey: To that end, as far as hiring and similar topics go, if people want to learn more about how you view things, and how you see the world, and what you're releasing—maybe even potentially work with you—where can they find you?Matthew: [laugh]. So, the joke, sometimes, internal at Cloudflare is that Cloudflare is a blogging company that runs this global network just to have something to write about. So, I think we're unlike most corporate blogs, which are—if our corporate blog were typical, we'd have articles on, like, “Here are the top six reasons you need a fast website,” which would just be, you know, shoot me. But instead, I think we write about the things that are going on online and our unique view into them. And we have a core value of transparency, so we talk about that. So, if you're interested in Cloudflare, I'd encourage you to—especially if you're of the sort of geekier variety—to check out blog.cloudflare.com, and I think that's a good place to learn about us. And I still write for that occasionally.Corey: You're one of the only non-AWS corporate blogs that I pay attention to, for that exact reason. It is not, “Oh, yay. More content marketing by folks who just feel the need to hit a quota as opposed to talking about something valuable and interesting.” So, it's appreciated.Matthew: The secret to it was we realized at some point that the purpose of the blog wasn't to attract customers, it was to attract potential employees. And it turns out, if you sort of change that focus, then you talk to people like their peers, and it turns out then that the content that you create is much more authentic. And that turns out to be a great way to attract customers as well.Corey: I want to thank you for taking so much time out of your day to speak with me. I really appreciate it.Matthew: Thanks for all you're doing. And we're very aligned, and keep fighting the good fight. And someday, again, we'll eliminate cloud egress fees, and we can share a beer when we do.Corey: I will absolutely be there for it. Matthew, Prince, CEO, and co-founder of Cloudflare. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with a rambling comment explaining that while data packets into a cloud provider are cheap and crappy, the ones being sent to the internet are beautiful, bespoke, unicorn snowflakes, so of course they cost money.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Yes I know I have not been uploading or being very active on my social media accounts. I talk about all that in this update episode. G-MAIL-paranormalpat64@gmail.comTWITER-https://twitter.com/ParanormalPat64INSTAGRAM-https://www.instagram.com/paranormalpat64/IGTV-https://www.instagram.com/paranormalpat64/channel/YOUTUBE-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzCt7c4O-3mG_S1xqFnLwBgFACEBOOK-https://www.facebook.com/Paranormal-Pativity-Podcast-533572677015602/TWITCH-https://www.twitch.tv/solis_64SIPNetwork-http://sipnet.us/

00:00.56 mikebledsoe That's how you already canceled you're bulletproof. 00:01.76 Max Shank It's okay I already canceled myself so well, it's like I found I was putting so much of my identity into this illusion that I had masterfully crafted. On the internet I was like the dark night of fitness I was professional I was like once in a while a little bit funny I used all the big fancy words and I only showed people the exact slice of my life I wanted them to see and I was really good at it too and then I was like man this is a. Probably probably not good long term like this whole this whole reality that we've created where people think oh, that's just that's just max all the time I'm just out there. You know going on vacations and lifting huge things all the time and it's not really.. It's not really very honest. So of course I think we all do to fit in I think that's kind of normal and the best friends you have are the ones you don't have to fake around and truthfully. 00:57.30 mikebledsoe Or you are censoring yourself. It sounds like. 01:15.83 Max Shank I don't really hang out with too many people that I have to um, fake it around which is why I say some horrible things that are also really funny like if you've ever played the game would you rather? that's a really, that's a really good 1 Are you played would you rather. 01:20.66 mikebledsoe Four. 01:30.62 mikebledsoe No. 01:34.00 Max Shank So here's it's a hypothetical game. So for example, would you rather have sex with a goat and have no 1 know about it or have a video of you having sex with a goat that's totally fake, but everyone thinks you did. 01:47.44 mikebledsoe Oh that's a good 1 Yeah ah I'm gonna censor myself on that 1 actually I'm I'm having a hard time because yeah I think I might be on the same page as you on that 1 Ah. 01:56.14 Max Shank I would have sex with the goat. 02:04.99 Max Shank Is because there's still such a social stigma against bestiality right now we're not really enlightened about that. 02:07.50 mikebledsoe Yeah, it's and. 02:13.34 mikebledsoe Ah, well, it's interesting. What you're discussing is self-censorship is ah I hear people say they want to be more Authentic. You know I talk to a lot of people who want to express themselves on the internet and because I think people witnessed me do it and then they're like how do you do it I Want to do it too. And and and I'm definitely somebody Who's who's got a history of censoring myself less So these days than and earlier. But I think people deep down they desire not needing a sensor sensor themselves. They they want to. They want to be widely accepted by everybody but they think that the only way that can happen and it's probably true. The only way you can be popular with everybody is to censor yourself depending on the audience you're talking to and the person you're talking to. 03:03.58 Max Shank It is the most important thing to fit in with the group that you're a part of to fit in with the tribe I mean little kids go Rob seven eleven s and murder people so they can be part of a gang people say things that they don't mean people lie I mean I was a kid once I used to lie. 03:16.69 mikebledsoe Yep. 03:22.26 mikebledsoe Oh yeah. 03:22.93 Max Shank Did you ever lie I was great at it I had like think I had like 50 grandparents die as far as teachers knew growing up. Oh I decided I didn't do my homework a grandparents diet or something like that you know like when your're kid and you find out that lying is a. 03:29.54 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, yeah. 03:42.50 Max Shank Like a ten second uncomfortable experience that can save you like weeks of trouble. Potentially it's it's natural that you would do it and if you're talking about how to like fit in better. Oh my god of course we all do that. 03:49.94 mikebledsoe Yeah. 03:57.67 mikebledsoe Yeah, but would you say that everyone on of about everyone. But I think that everyone gets to a point at some point in their life where they don't want to have to censor themselves anymore and I think that they. When they are at that point the language they use to describe what they desire is they want to be free I Want to be free to express myself and ah and what ends up happening is when someone starts exploring how much they want to express themselves. Find out that they're the only ones that are censoring themselves based on wanting to be accepted by the tribe and the likeability and so I've witnessed a lot of people including myself go through this process where a slowly saying fuck it I don't give a fuck What people think. I'm going to be more honest and then watching watching the polarization happen where some people get become more distant from me the more honest I am and other people getting a lot closer because of how honest I am and it's a it's a filter and it's and it's. 04:57.20 Max Shank And. 05:02.56 Max Shank Well, it's just filter. It's a good thing. It's like panning for gold. 05:09.20 mikebledsoe And it's really served me in a way where I experience my experience of my life is ah very enhanced. It's it's unreal at times. Um, and my sister she came to my birthday party a few weeks ago. And she got to witness my community and she was blown away. She didn't realize that people could be like that. But it really is a result of censoring myself less and attracting those people who and then giving permission to other people. Censor themselves less because I think you and I both say things that in. Probably me more publicly but say things that people turn their heads at and go well that's a crazy thing to say I've never heard anyone say that before or put it that way. Um, and I think I think it gives people permission to go oh if he can do it I can do it too. 05:58.42 Max Shank Totally and. Well and there's something to be said about a frictionless experience like if you're in a situation where I guess what I'm saying is it's easy to put other people at ease with the way that you communicate. Like you don't have to draw attention to things that are like if you see someone who's really overweight. You don't have to draw attention to their fatness. You don't have to just speak whatever you instinctually think so we're always choosing what to say as if. 06:32.71 mikebledsoe Um, yeah, it doesn't mean doesn't mean that. 06:40.10 Max Shank It's important or not important. 06:40.61 mikebledsoe Well I would say it's um, yeah, censorship is a form of filter but it's not the only version of Filter. There's There's the the filter of of ah of response you're being responsible with your words and how people receive them. And so it wouldn't behoove me to go out there and tell everybody exactly what I think and the way that I want to say it now. What I do is I say things say what I believe and what I think in a way in which I know it can be received because there's no point and if I'm just saying. You know if I'm just dropping the truth. Ah the way that I want to be heard and understood I'm just going to sound like a crazy person. 07:27.50 Max Shank Well, you just touched on something that I was thinking which is a good communicator doesn't just communicate the information as simply as possible. He considers who the audience is so it will resonate with them the best. So. 07:40.68 mikebledsoe A. 07:46.26 Max Shank The examples that you use or the language you use I mean you and I both understand the the power of communication and getting a resonant message if you and I were writing an exercise program. For 20 year old men or 50 year old women. The program itself might actually look the same but the way that we present that offer would be monumentally different or at least it should be monumentally different. So it's not just about. 08:18.78 mikebledsoe A. 08:23.98 Max Shank Oh I'm like speaking my truth. It's like well why are you talking at all unless you care about the message being received. 08:30.28 mikebledsoe Yeah, well that but that makes me think of like like ah it it it requiring you to have good communication to get your point across in a way that they can receive it is that is ah a good sense. That's good. Ah. Leadership. That's good communication to have good leadership. You have to have good communication and what I think we're witnessing in our society right now is um, it's laziness I see that that censorship when when censorship is being heavily used. It's ah it's a form of laziness. And it's also um, on that note, what we were just saying too is you have to fit it to your audience. So what ends up happening is the larger the audience the harder it is to be good at communicating with that audience. So we we take the United states of America and there's 3 hundred and fifty million people. You now have to create ah get to communicate the narrative in a way that that impacts all 3 hundred million people is that even lowest common and nomin and is that possible and so. 09:35.80 Max Shank Lowest common denominator. 09:42.63 mikebledsoe And then that's why I mean lowest common denominator is the exact reason why any time the average per we look at what's happening with Mainstream I go they're going right? What's left. They're going left. What's right? Okay, what's going on here because when there's being to the low and lower. Low is coming denominator if you want to be average. That's the that's the perfect advice to take that's the perfect information to consume and to believe if you want to be above average. You have to go the other way and that that can be very uncomfortable but to me I look at the difference between good leadership and and. And poor leadership is that ability to communicate effectively and I just see a lot of laziness and when people say do this because I said so is like okay, you just lost it. 10:29.41 Max Shank Well and the other side of that is that you could say it's not laziness. It's just efficiency because you have to trust like. For example, if I get a plumber over at my house. And I don't know anything about plumbing I have to trust that he's going to do a good job and there is an incentive for him to do good job and maybe there's a contract that says if the pipe explodes he's on the hook for it. So I don't blame people for seeking answers outside themselves because it is way more efficient. However, while it is more efficient. It is also so I think about it in terms of concentration of Power. So if you concentrate power into a single point you can get more penetration which means you can do things much faster like a dictatorship but the trick with concentration. Is. You also give leave yourself open to the fast track for concentration Camps. So it's It's ah it's just exactly so. 11:29.88 mikebledsoe Yeah,, but there's also single single points of Failure. So if you if you concentrate your supply chain and everything's going through 1 2 3 ports or something like that. It only takes 1 person to do something Dumb. And the entire population suffers. 11:51.40 Max Shank Investing is a good example too. You know you have your investment portfolio say you have a million dollars or something like that. Do you put equal amounts into 10 companies equal amounts into 1 hundred companies or do you put it all into 1 company and. If you put it all into 1 company and that 1 just happens to do the best you have made the most that you can possibly make. But if it goes to zero. You've also lost everything so it's a real. It's it's tricky with with concentration of power and I think that's really what this all comes back to. Thomas soul I always go back to because he said what we do is not important. It's who decides what we do who decides? what information should be censored and what information should not be censored and that's that's a worthwhile conversation to have um. I think when it comes to the overarching idea of what is the role of government I like the phrase. The role is not to protect people. It is to protect freedom from coercion. Essentially so we're trying to keep people free. To pursue happiness right? Life liberty and pursuit of happiness that doesn't mean you buy food for everybody. It means that you prevent stealing and coercion and fraud and things like that. 13:18.38 mikebledsoe I think I think it's referred to as negative rights is that the the government and ah you know most people in the world and and Americans are included in this unfortunately the assumption is that they have no rights and all rights are granted by the government and. 13:23.60 Max Shank Ah. 13:36.86 Max Shank It's just the opposite. 13:38.60 mikebledsoe And a place if you're looking at from perspective. What's called well I didn't even hear this term until recently and they go oh yeah, negative rights I go okay that actually makes sense and that is you have the right? you have the right to do anything you want as long as you don't impede on someone else's rights and. Ah, the government's there just to ensure that we don't trample over each other's shit and that means not inhibiting. Someone's pursuit of life liberty happiness upholding um ah property rights essentially so the government is it. It was it was there to protect you know in the very beginning. 14:11.97 Max Shank It's really all it's for. 14:16.80 mikebledsoe Started off with people that knew how to fight and had weapons would protect farmers and they made deals with the farmers so they wouldn't get robbed by these thieves and then they demanded you know a five percent of their rations and then of course that's now if you're an american that's up to 30 something percent. Um, are your rations for to pay for your protection. Um, so it's ah that the benefit that the government gets from from censorship but I see is it's ah just a maintenance of power. So if you're if your job. If you're that person that comes in and says I'm going to protect you and ah and then there becomes there's potential competition for protection then ah you know they've got to do whatever they can do to squash that because they don't they don't want competition for being able to. Ah, protect your property and your life. 15:11.39 Max Shank Right? So kind of tying it back into censorship which is the core discussion today. What are the advantages ofor censorship. How is it good for everybody. 15:23.52 mikebledsoe Yeah, so I went online and I did a search and so I found I found 8 that's right fucking? Well you know that's why I use. Ah, that's why I use a duck duck go. 15:30.23 Max Shank And and somebody chose what results that you were able to see from that search. 15:42.12 mikebledsoe With a vpn so I actually so I take steps personally to reduce how much censorship I'm experiencing from Google That's true. That's true. Yeah. 15:49.21 Max Shank Sometimes the results aren't as good though. That's the problem right now. Sometimes they aren't as good and I I try it with both because I do the same thing. 16:00.83 mikebledsoe Yeah I agree. Ah yeah, so these these are I'll go through the list. Ah 1 is hate speech censorship allows us to reduce hate speech number 2 is protect children which is the ah to me is the number 1 excuse for censorship that. Anytime censorships gets questioned. It's like the last stand you know when you used to? yeah we mean privacy. Oh yeah, yeah, but I think that people want privacy from the government. So. It's kind of like if they're the ones censoring that's people are more likely to. 16:21.90 Max Shank Or privacy. Yeah. 16:35.20 mikebledsoe Give their information to Facebook and they are to government. 16:35.28 Max Shank Oh but what I'm saying is if you convince everybody that it's for the sake of protecting kids from getting raped that they have to look through your phone every day then some people will be okay with that is pretty high level persuasion. It's always kids. 16:45.50 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, so yeah. 16:53.69 Max Shank Always you know, take away the guns cause of the children take away your privacy because of the children take away free speech because of the children won't somebody think of the children. There's a there's a sign in my neighborhood quick tangent that says drive like your kids live here. 17:01.42 mikebledsoe Right? I Wonder how the kids. 17:12.51 mikebledsoe Um, yeah. 17:12.68 Max Shank You know there is There's a road to speed limit sign. But there's this extra sign that someone has put out that says drive like your kids here and what I want to do is put up my own sign that says teach your kids. What a road is oh. 17:30.14 mikebledsoe Ah I. 17:30.83 Max Shank Like what like oh my god that's just ridiculous I understand the concept some helicopter Mom is like worry that their kid will run out in the street. But really if her little kid runs out in the street and it's it's too young to know the difference then she's a bad mom. And if it's old enough to know the difference but she doesn't communicate that then she's also a bad mom. So. Either way, it's that parent's fault just like if you see a fat kid. That's not the kid's faultest. Parent's fault 17:53.83 mikebledsoe Yeah, well. Yeah I want to get in I want to get in the who's who's responsible because I think responsibility is is a good way to ah segue this and into some some actionables by end of this show but I want to hit this the rest of this list so hate speech protect children. Reduce conflict in society which I'm not sure that's actually working ah security to a country's government. Actually what was what was on the internet was security. What was it. Ah. 18:41.54 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah to a country's profile censorship can provide another level of security to a country's profile. Um, which to me again, it's they're not trying to censor and that's basically censoring sensitive. Government documents from being exposed like a wikileaks type of conversation. So Um I I like to point out that a lot of people confuse. Ah your country with your government and these 2 things are separate um and it's interesting to run into a blog where they. And make that collapse distinction ipe. Oh yeah, what was it. 19:18.00 Max Shank Mark Twain had a quote about that a man should be loyal to his country all the time and loyal to his government when they deserve it. 19:28.79 mikebledsoe Yeah, beautiful Mark twain 1 of my favorite authors. Um I p I p for artists and inventors so intellectual property copyright so you can't rip off someone else's work. Ah. 19:32.53 Max Shank No, it's funny guy. 19:40.96 Max Shank And then. 19:45.53 mikebledsoe By the way I think I p the idea of I p is not that old I think it's about 1 hundred years old or something like that. Well at least the modern day I p um because we can copy shit now whereas before it wasn't an issue. Um. 19:50.38 Max Shank Are. 20:04.20 mikebledsoe Stop false content. That's 1 that's probably the most popular 1 that's out right now fake news ah improve quality of information. Basically they said improve ah their exact words for like. 20:07.30 Max Shank Fake news. 20:23.40 mikebledsoe Improve a person's knowledge that 1 kind of made me chuckle. Um and and reduce identity Theft. So All these things sound good at face value Hate speech. Protect children reduce conflict in society security to a country's government I P for artists inventors stop False Content. You want just break each 1 of these down. 20:46.80 Max Shank Sure we could I mean Hate Speech is funny because who who decides where's the line. 20:52.36 mikebledsoe Why I think when you jump right to the end max I think I think that um I mean all this all this comes down to who decides on all these topics is and just so you were saying about Thomas so so soul 21:01.16 Max Shank That's what I do. Um, yeah. Soul Oh My God He's the man you should watch ah the out never mind I'll tell you later it's He's good though. 21:11.96 mikebledsoe Haven't read a ship before I have to check it out. Ah so. 21:20.27 mikebledsoe Cool. Ah yeah, it's like who who decides and I think that ah people tend to treat people who are in office as some type of superior being that knows better than them. And I get talking to people about this and the way they talk about it I'm going Wow You really believe that there are people who I I understand there are these people who are experts but ah the people that you've decided to trust are just people who happen to be in office or were appointed by people who were in office. And're not necessarily. They're the best policy makers. They're the best at creating policy which is making rules for other people to follow, but they're not the best that really anything else. They're really good at control. Oh yeah. 22:06.66 Max Shank I Disagree I Disagree I think they I think you can either do good or you can do well and I think the people who can do well who can play the game who can be charismatic sociopaths who are hungry for more power and willing to distribute it. Are the ones who are in Charge. Definitely not the people who are best at making policies that are effective in improving. Oh well I mean yeah, that's. 22:31.36 mikebledsoe Well I'm not saying good policies I'm just saying ah the creation of policies is about control. 22:41.25 Max Shank True and what I'm saying is the people who hold those positions of power aren't even necessarily the ones who are writing those policies. It's just the ones who are the most power hungry who then hire like lawyers and there's lobbying and stuff like that. So when we ask. Who decides? That's 1 of the big problems mean lobbying is a crazy bad problem right? and we don't have time. We don't have time if I mean if you look at how that works you would. It's almost enough to blow your brains out and be like this is game over like how did this happen. 23:06.95 mikebledsoe Insane. 23:16.84 mikebledsoe Oh. 23:19.32 Max Shank But ah now as far as who decides it's always the people who are the most power hungryngry because by definition they're going to have the biggest incentive to get that power because if you're in that situation. It's painful to not have. That level of power and everything comes back from pain being the primary motivator hunger desire pain all Synonyms. So. It's no surprise that the biggest incentive actually is to maintain that authority and the other. Authority is basically just you must trust me Blindly and it goes back to our 2 common rhetorical fallacies or logical fallacies which are appeal to authority and ad homism attack and they're the 2 arguments. Totally disregard the argument and instead focus on the arguer and this is this is where we get into why it's efficient to just trust somebody else like hey doctor science you you make my health decisions for me. 24:19.55 mikebledsoe Yeah. 24:33.62 Max Shank Is load off my mind so much easier I can understand the desire to do that and it's also so much faster to just write somebody off Oh that guy that guy max he's fucking Crazy. Don't listen to him don't even listen to anything he says he's just a. Crazy Conspiracy Theorist Nut Job Jerk I don't know you get it. 24:57.35 mikebledsoe Yeah, amazing thing about ah I've also got a list of which I want to hit I started a list of basically overt and covert censorship and the the labeling of things is. 25:07.40 Max Shank Ah. 25:15.47 Max Shank Um, how about essential how about essential. 25:16.61 mikebledsoe Ah, very interesting right? Yeah yeah, it's yeah I'd say I'm putting down labeling as censorship I Hate speech. 25:34.25 Max Shank What about it? Ah no, it's not nice, but I don't know people basically will dig their own grave by being hateful. 25:35.72 mikebledsoe Is there anything wrong with it. 25:50.63 mikebledsoe Yeah, that's a very wise place to sit from what about for the fools out there. 25:58.30 Max Shank But for well I don't hate the fools I like fools. Um, once again I don't think there's a problem with ignorance. Nothing wrong with that I'm ignorant about most things arrogance which is like I know what's best for you. 26:00.49 mikebledsoe Um. 26:17.34 Max Shank Instead of I know what's best for me. That's rather problematic and yeah I don't understand the the need or even the definition of hate Speech like could I could I call you a homo but not a fag Just for example. 26:29.38 mikebledsoe Um, well, um, yeah. 26:36.69 Max Shank I like homos frankly I think they're a really exuberant bunch. It seems like they almost ah get a. It seems like they crack the code. You know what? I mean like they get like the mail. 26:50.90 mikebledsoe Oh yeah. 26:55.29 Max Shank Sexual energy. But they also get the feminine like exuberance and they seem a little bit more liberated like it seems like pretty fun Actually I'm not sexually attracted to dudes. But if I were I would have had it would be so easy. 27:03.58 mikebledsoe Yeah. 27:09.79 mikebledsoe You be so good at it. Yeah, so it's um, well I'm reading this book right now the cuddling of the american mind and 1 of the things they talk about is ah they talk about this view that that. 27:13.70 Max Shank And be such a good homo. 27:29.43 mikebledsoe Words are violence and that you know if you so yeah, yeah, well this is this is what's going on in up and they're looking specifically at colleges and academics in academic settings where people are being. 27:32.11 Max Shank Sounds like a collapse distinction. 27:46.61 mikebledsoe Are invited to come speak and then people basically come out and say that this person is causing violence because they're saying something that causes an emotional trigger inside of them so there is this. Ah, there's this thing where people believe that. Ah, how. 27:55.47 Max Shank Ah. 28:06.15 mikebledsoe How they interpret your intention is your intention you're doing this to hurt me. It's like well I'm just speaking words and and so people have have confused ah emotional pain with physical injury. 28:23.11 Max Shank I Think people should be forced to wrestle and do a little boxing growing up so they can understand the distinction between physical violence and I don't actually think that but there's definitely a common nominator in people I've met at least. 28:23.12 mikebledsoe These these are 2 different things. 28:42.00 Max Shank Those who have some experience with martial arts boxing Jujitsu Judo something like that seem to have a much more realistic perception of the world. They seem to have less of this. Fear based lashing out for things that other people just say there's a big difference. Well and don't didn't we like blame Grand Theft Auto for for violence or something like that. 29:04.90 mikebledsoe Yeah, cause they're they're more in touch with cause and effect. 29:18.68 mikebledsoe Oh yeah. 29:20.81 Max Shank Haven't heard about like the hooker murder epidemic that resulted from that probably still way more people die as a result of alcohol but we try to we try to Cherry pick these things and I don't know we're always like fighting each other for a new reason you know the whole. 29:28.49 mikebledsoe Yeah. 29:38.98 Max Shank Idea of hate speech is where do you draw the line like let people say what they want let people um self- select their friend group. You know if if you say ah you know anyone with red hair should be ah shunned from Society. That's that's your opinion. Probably you won't be really popular with red-haired people. But it's like who cares. 30:01.57 mikebledsoe yeah yeah I had this conversation. Um I've had this conversation with my girlfriend a couple times which is like you know she I I ah I'm a fan of freedom so much that sometimes hurt like she's like having to catch up with me. 30:18.33 Max Shank Her her. 30:18.79 mikebledsoe And understanding how how it works and you know and she goes Well, what do you think about like people being able to discriminate on you know who's allowed in their store or not or or ah should someone be able to get fired just because of you know their race and I'm like yeah. I mean people are suing companies for getting fired so but they don't really actually want to work there but you want to work for somebody who's racist but like I think these policies that put people together that would normally not get along. 30:45.10 Max Shank But I. 30:56.15 mikebledsoe Doesn't cause them to actually get along. It's basically forcing people to interact who would who would normally voluntary in voluntarily not interact which could be an argument for reduction in total violence if people just go look you guys are gonna stay over there because I have this worldview and I'm going to stay over here because I have this worldview. 30:56.47 Max Shank The. 31:15.89 mikebledsoe Then Ah, we'd have a lot more peace but I think that. 31:19.40 Max Shank It's like the chess club and the bat the baseball club don't really hang out. 31:21.27 mikebledsoe Right? And so like this this idea that like because that government caused segregation and then all of a sudden ah government becomes the cause for integration and it's in both cases it causes violence. And so I think if you just let people if the government was responsible for segregation which it was and then they just said you know what we're not going to cut no more rules around Segregation Society would a piece of peacefully integrated I believe a lot more quickly and peacefully. Then what we witnessed. Ah, it was extremely violent because it went it just swung from 1 side of the pendulum to another inside of this idea that the government is in ultimate control over who we interact with. 32:11.84 Max Shank Well, and ultimately you can't have a conditional statement for every eventuality back to the whole computer science thing of if this then this if this than this you would just have an even bigger. Book of rules and really the only thing we should be concerned with is coercion right? like it doesn't matter if um, you are a racist like think how hard it is to be a racist you got to carry that hate with you every day. Or or even worse just imagine if you were a pedophile that would be probably like the worst luck of the draw ever and as long as that person doesn't act on that. That's probably just like okay you know what I mean like even. In India for example and I'm just using this example because it's the 1 that is the most inflammatory but in India you have arranged marriage between 30 year old dudes and 12 year old girls all the time that's common practice. But this idea that. We should um basically like minority report people for what they say is problematic like if someone feels a certain way. That's not a crime if someone coerces another person then it is a crime and I think. Extending the jurisdiction. Beyond coercion is a real mistake and that's where you get this more like hive mind Mentality. You get an over concentration of power and no question. There are advantages. To a concentration of power but they're also extreme disadvantages just the same if you are going to put all your eggs in 1 Basket. You know I just remember this video of Mussolini giving a speech and he just raised his fists in the air and goes 1 country 1 decision and everyone's like. Yeah they're so excited that they don't have to make any decisions anymore because he's gonna do all that hard work for him and that is a natural sentiment. We. We want to get we want to get more for less. We don't want to do anything. It's very natural. So. 34:32.56 mikebledsoe Well I think I. 34:41.50 Max Shank We want to be as efficient as possible, but there's a huge cost to that you are putting yourself at risk of total loss rather than diversifying that power along all the people. That's why it's so important to vote with your dollars. 34:57.84 mikebledsoe Yeah, did you listen to that you listen to that rogan I don't listen to a lot of rogan but every once in a while something comes on my radar that that North korean woman. Did you listen that whole episode. Yeah, ah 1 of the things that really struck me with that was. 35:00.85 Max Shank It's an it's a self-correting. 35:08.69 Max Shank Um, yeah I did. 35:17.63 mikebledsoe And think we even talked about this now that I'm thinking about it is she said that when she was exposed to freedom. She had a hard time she if she there was too many choices. There are so many choices to make that within five minutes she had become physically fatigued and mentally for. 35:29.81 Max Shank Yeah. 35:37.53 mikebledsoe Fatigue from being exposed to choice because she didn't have any because Kim jong un was making all the decisions for her. Ah her entire life. So as a 13 year old is just oh what do you want to eat well how many options do I have oh a dozen. 35:45.14 Max Shank Right. 35:55.76 Max Shank What What do you want to watch on Tv tonight you can pick from any of these four hundred thousand view options. Yes to it's too many choices. So that's kind of that's the positive side of distributing those choices. 35:55.97 mikebledsoe Okay, this is this really got difficult. 36:01.89 mikebledsoe Oh my God I can't watch Tv because of that. 36:15.90 Max Shank Like part of the reason family units have often worked so well in the past is because you have what's called comparative advantage. You know the lady um will just alienate all the ladies now too. You know back in the day. The lady would take care of the house and. As a homeowner myself I think that's a super important job taking care of a house is is its own job. Especially if you have kids around women are naturally better at nesting and nurturing the guy goes out. He just focuses on 1 thing which is going. And bringing home the bacon whether he's a farmer or a hunter or ah, a businessman of some kind so divvying up the responsibilities based on ability is super beneficial. So it's natural that you would want to. Get the people who are best at what they do to do the job for you. 37:16.58 mikebledsoe Agreeing. Ah, one last note I want to make on the hate speech is 1 of the things that I've noticed is well yeah, um I think if you say something racist is is the number 1 thing. 37:21.91 Max Shank I Still don't even know what that means was it mean naughty words. 37:33.30 Max Shank Shut up Pinky Shut up pinky. 37:33.28 mikebledsoe Or homophobic or something like that. What's that? yeah so that what? um, well yeah, but well my ah my buddy danny who's from Wahaca he's mexican and they. 37:40.87 Max Shank Um, we're hardly white. Definitely definitely Pink. There. 37:53.17 mikebledsoe He's like I don't know why we're called colored people and you're white you guys change colors all the time you get red you get white. You get like you like you're always changing colors like I'm the same color all the time you're the colored people. Ah but the the thing that's made me. Ah, anytime. 38:01.53 Max Shank Like moon. Yeah. 38:12.60 mikebledsoe Somebody in the last couple of years you know racism has been such ah a prominent conversation in the last couple years is people go oh that person's racist and I go well why? and then ah ah, a lot. Ah a lot of times. There's not a specific instance. They just. 38:24.32 Max Shank It's an ad hom attack. So easy. 38:29.98 mikebledsoe It's become the common narrative that that person's racist and then they'll take words out of context for instance like Trump people say Trump's racist. 38:31.37 Max Shank Um, but the. Or how about any of the many things that I've said on this podcast. There are enough 5 to ten second clips on here that could have me pilloried. Ah. 38:43.51 mikebledsoe And so it's people will go Oh there's there's there's like plot for Trump For instance I'm not a Trump fan didn't vote for him. So ah, that makes me good. Well this is There's my caveat to the this my argument here. 38:53.72 Max Shank That makes you good to to most of the listeners. 39:02.65 mikebledsoe Which is I Also don't think he's racist I don't think he's so many of the things that the media made him out to be and ah and because he did a lot of things that if you look at it policy wise he did a lot of things for the black community if you look at it ah at black and white. On paper. He did more than Barack Obama did for the black community and yet he got painted a racist because who the fuck really knows why that that he was. He's unpopular amongst the elites. That's that's what makes me curious about that guy. Again I'm not a big fan I'm not a Q Andon Person. Ah and it has been interesting to watch people go really pro Trump as much as you know is when they I just feel like there's a big opportunity that was missed and that people are they just shift. Who they think should be the Authority instead of realizing that it's that the authority is ah is a artificial construct. But ah. 40:05.98 Max Shank It's. 40:11.45 Max Shank It's all a means of disqualifying the argument of the individual or hyperqualify hey you know trust Doctor science ah fuck this racist pedophile guy I mean if I ever. 40:17.11 mikebledsoe Oop. 40:22.54 mikebledsoe Um, yeah. 40:26.32 Max Shank Started if I was ever in a race for office I would never discuss the policy of my opponent I Would only say I can't believe that I have to run against such a racist pedophile with a dog fighting ring in his basement I Don't think the American people. Want to have a racist pedophile dog abuser in office am I right? people I would never I would never I would never talk about policy people don't care I would only attack the worst things this guy could do ever. 40:56.98 mikebledsoe Well I mean that this is what happened the narrative in the last election was the Democrats are pedophiles and the republicans are a racist. It's pretty much like that it was just if you really take a step back. You go? Oh yeah, that was. 41:07.92 Max Shank Um, it's just name. It's just name calling. Yeah. 41:16.80 mikebledsoe That was except the only thing was was it was alternative media that was pumping up the pedophilia conversation. It was mainstream media that was pumping up the racist conversation up. Yeah Abc Nbc cnn. 41:24.10 Max Shank Well, what's mainstream just the big the big names. What's funny if you look at the amount of actual viewers now and the amount of traffic people like Joe Rogan actually have way more. Ah. 41:39.25 mikebledsoe Joe Rogan has more gets more downloads than I think all the major news agencies have combined. 41:46.95 Max Shank Well I was talking to a good friend of mine and even he agrees because very mainstream guy you know watching all the different news stations and he's like you know Joe Rogan We agreed has just built up so much credibility because he has done so many hours and so many hours where. 42:06.62 mikebledsoe Um, no yeah I wouldn't want to fight the man. 42:06.69 Max Shank He's not arrogant and I mean maybe about fighting sometimes but he does know a lot about fighting too. No no, no, no, no, no, definitely not I Just mean about like knowing about styles of fighting like he knows so much and sometimes you're like oh really? okay. 42:20.21 mikebledsoe Right? right. 42:26.70 Max Shank But he doesn't Lie. He doesn't try to hide Anything. He's very open about everything so he's actually built up this crazy credibility and that's something super powerful and I'm sure he has some awareness. The clout that he has developed but that's got to be such a ah scary thing at the same time knowing Yeah, it's amazing I Hope he wins. Yeah yeah I Hope he wins. 42:44.50 mikebledsoe Oh I'm sure. Well you hear he's ah he's suing Cnn Yeah I Hope he gets a lot of money out of them. Yeah, but of course Cnn just has a budget for that kind of shit. So. 43:02.20 Max Shank Um, well it's probably being funded by our taxpayer dollars and money that is printed out of thin air I mean you look at the way that well you look at the way that. 43:09.48 mikebledsoe Well pharmaceutical companies I mean yeah, the money the money's going the money's going from them printing it off to the pharmaceutical companies to the news media. That's that's the line of information. That's how the information is flowing right now. And you can tell because Pfizer is fucking advertising like crazy I I can find a super clip where someone put together that super clip which is basically how much Pfizer is advertising on the news where people are going to get information about. 43:32.50 Max Shank I saw. 43:45.94 mikebledsoe How they're going to live their life basically ah and make decisions and what they believe and then everything is advertised. Do you think that if you were 1 a top Journalist for cnn is there any benefit to you ah talking negatively about vaccinations. That's right. 44:01.19 Max Shank Only if I want to lose my job mike. 44:05.87 mikebledsoe So it's sponsors in a way can be a form of censorship. So if say we say we took on a sponsor and this yeah. 44:14.60 Max Shank Of course flaming hot Cheetos get at us. 44:22.45 mikebledsoe We're never going to talk shit about Cheetos if that happens we're only going to talk about how many cheetahs we had over the weekend. How tasty they were. Oh yeah yeah. yeah 44:26.67 Max Shank We might even invent a fat loss diet based on flaming hot cheetos which would be easy to do I think you could eat a diet of like forty percent of your calories. From flaming hot cheetos and still lose weight as long as everything else was dialed in. 44:40.98 mikebledsoe But ah, something something just jumped into my my awareness here that the conversation we've had so far has actually been very dense even though you know you and I are just having fun but I can imagine somebody says hey you need to listen to this show. Check out this show on censorship that mike and Max did and when they're listening. They might if this is the first time they're exposed to this type of conversation could be getting overwhelmed and going oh shit I don't believe anything and I say that because I've I've been in conversations where before where I can. Watch people physically start to contort their body because they realize how much they don't know they they begin to yeah, they begin to realize and what ends up happening is like you can't unknow what you know ah at ah. 45:23.29 Max Shank Well, it's very uncomfortable. 45:33.67 Max Shank If you drink enough booze you can. 45:35.36 mikebledsoe For certain things. Yeah, it's true. But ah you you can't unknow this shit and people get uncomfortable because it it you begin to realize that 1 hundred percent of the responsibility is on your shoulders when you thought that it was on someone else's Shoulders. And that that responsibility is scary and when you take on the responsibility of developing your own Wisdom. It's a lot of work and going back to your efficiency thing. You know people are become very accustomed to a high amount of. Efficiency and um I mean some could blame capitalism for that and because there's this this level of comfort and not having to think and then all of a sudden we lay something out there. So I I bring that up because I want to acknowledge it for anyone who's listening and just say. You know it's okay, it's okay, you go fuck I don't know what to believe anymore. All the information is false. Um, yeah I mean just and I think that way you got to get to that point is understanding that most of what you think is a lie and yeah. 46:47.75 Max Shank I'll simplify it down if you if you don't mind. Yeah, it's I like to take things to the extremes I don't know if you've noticed that about me. But. 46:50.98 mikebledsoe Please. 46:56.53 mikebledsoe Yeah, I'm not accustomed to that type of lifestyle. 47:01.94 Max Shank You're you're more of a middle ground type of guy. Ah, okay, if you had to choose between believing everything you read and see and believing nothing you believe and see then it would be safer to believe nothing so it's safer to believe nothing. And you can be sure that there's always an intent behind every message that you see to persuasion just to get you to buy to try to cry to laugh. Whatever and my my personal it goes back to once again, computer science which is. So heavily logic based I so I still know like almost nothing about it but the concept of trust but verify and that verify is your responsibility.. It's always your responsibility to verify for yourself and you. 47:58.19 mikebledsoe Yeah, well well, there's there's been Ah, there's been a trick played on the common person and that ah ah, the fact, the fact, the fact checkers. The fact checkers. 48:10.15 Max Shank You can't possibly know. 48:16.16 mikebledsoe Are playing the role of verify people think they're verifying by doing a Google search and seeing fact check in the title and then go. 48:21.97 Max Shank No, no, it's your responsibility to verify. You're right though that is a trap. 48:26.72 mikebledsoe But people people think they are verifying when they do that because people will Google and they go well fact check I'm like really yeah. 48:32.20 Max Shank But that's just that's just trusting another guy like so whenever you're thinking about these things. It's best to try to reduce the number of parties involved. So for example, if there are 3 of us you me and some other guy. And some other guy says hey mike if you give me a hundred bucks now I'll give you a thousand next week and then you're like hu and let me verify that and you ask me and I'm like yeah you can trust him that's like basically the same thing it doesn't change anything right. So you have to keep it always does come back to that responsibility is upon the individual and if you take the responsibility which is your ability to respond also away from the individual then you are opening the door for totalitarianism which. There are advantages and disadvantages. You can move much further much faster I think china has gotten a lot more people out of poverty in the last twenty years than before under a form of totalitarianism. But. 49:46.29 mikebledsoe Ah, totalitarianism combined with capitalism. 49:48.28 Max Shank With that concentration right? That's very good point So we have capitalism combined with we have Crony capitalism. 49:57.96 mikebledsoe A. 49:59.32 Max Shank Unfortunately, which is where you're allowed to lobby and make rules that are not the same for everybody and all these backwards incentives. But my point is there are advantages to concentrating power and there are also huge disadvantages and if you blindly follow something you are opening the door. For a very small minority to call the shots for everybody and that's basically what slavery looks like and you might be a happy little slave but you're still not free or responsible for Yourself. You got to follow the money with all this stuff. That's the best. That's the best. 50:28.64 mikebledsoe Um, yeah, yeah. 50:37.20 Max Shank Paper trail or trail crumbs to find out. What's really going on is how's that money changing hands. And yeah, you know what? I've I've gone through a similar thing just back to what you're saying. It's it's super uncomfortable to realize that. Most of what you taught you were taught was a waste of time and most of the information that's been passed off as news has been flagrant lies with only the intention of making you more dependent and ah obedient. You know by Bye bye trust trust trust. 51:14.63 mikebledsoe But ah, 1 of the things you're talking about you've been talking about you know? Ah, it's trusting someone else creates efficiency but also leaves door open for abuse and 1 of the things that I tell people. 51:15.96 Max Shank Right? It's uncomfortable. But. 51:33.50 mikebledsoe When we start talking about where are you getting your information talking about the verify piece where are you getting your information while I'm getting it from this person. My great and you know say they're talking about something like a virus. It's like yeah I'm not a virologist you know I am not going to know a lot about that I would say that I know a lot about health. 51:35.31 Max Shank My. 51:52.30 Max Shank I would say so I'll verify that you know a lot about health fact I fact checked you? Yeah check mark. 51:52.90 mikebledsoe Which I think is really all you gotta know? Ah, yeah, thank you thank you listen to Max folks. He's smart guy. Yeah fact, check complete. So um, my my thing is when I start talking to people about who I listen to so. Yeah I I don't pretend like I've gone out and obtained all the knowledge and wisdom in the world. But what I do is I listen to wise people and ah and I qualify those people is what's the advice they've given over time which I think people have all our time. Even running that filter people don't really remember their their attention spans pretty fucking short. So what is their track record. That's my first thing when it comes to verifying is is what's their track record. Not not what pieces of paper. They've got not what credentials not what are not what are the letters behind their name. My question is. 52:33.20 Max Shank Everybody man 1 52:42.36 Max Shank Community not. 52:49.12 mikebledsoe What's their track record how sort of I'm listening to somebody about Health I Go What's their health like this is why I listen to Paul Check people go you know? Ah, ah you Know'm I'm gonna listen to this person or this person because they have these credentials and I go yeah but Paul check is is a. Great example of this. Not only has he mastered his own health The dude 60 years old and I'm pretty sure he can outlift me ah and he he ah he moves Well he has you know. 53:16.54 Max Shank Ah, well you you don't really prioritize lifting. But that's true. He could. 53:26.98 mikebledsoe Is sex life is vibrant from what I can tell the way he talks about it anyway. Ah the guy. Ah but all the Paul Trek fans are gonna laugh there. Ah but there. 53:30.98 Max Shank Um, I thought I thought you had participated never mind. 53:45.28 mikebledsoe I think we share a lot of the same audience. Um, but but he's got ah, he's got a track record of helping other people and he's mastered in himself and like who else am I who else has done that at 60 53:46.82 Max Shank I Think it's right What you're saying is right? It's about track record. 53:58.13 Max Shank So he walks the walk. He has a track record that you have seen develop over time and also the other thing that I would add to that is the incentive. 53:59.90 mikebledsoe You know Andy's older and he's got. He's got the wisdom on its side that time. 54:14.37 mikebledsoe A. 54:15.31 Max Shank What's the incentive. So when you're trying to um, decipher a new bit of information and part of it is just reducing the total bits. Otherwise you're going to be bombarded with a fire hose but who is to gain from what you're hearing that that is the number 1 question. So take everything else off the table who who gains from this message that you're hearing that is the number 1 thing is incentive and then because that's just about the argument and then the second part is consider the source. So that's where you start seeing. Okay well this person has led me led me the right way for a long time meanwhile the laundry list of lies and misinformation about health from these allegedly trusted entities. Is a mile long I mean how about eggs and it doesn't matter if the intentions are good even intentions. Good bad doesn't matter. It's more about what is the result of those things. So if if you're afraid of fruit because it's got too much sugar. 55:23.79 mikebledsoe What's the outcome does it this kind of goes in and I hate Speech this goes in the hate speech thing because like what people say what they do are different but this where outcome outcome is ah very important here. 55:29.84 Max Shank Yeah, of course like why would we? Well you know for Healthcare like why would we let the people making the decisions about Healthcare have a different plan than they agreed On. That's insanity. That's crazy. They so the people who create policy for Health. Don't use that same plan. Yeah, that's insane. That's insane like where is the Incentive. So. 55:50.00 mikebledsoe That can you repeat that. So the people Oh oh you talk about the medical care. Yeah. 56:06.42 Max Shank Incentive is the number 1 thing considering the source is probably the number 2 thing and then maybe the third thing is just an overall reduction in the amount of bits that you take in and this is tough because Dopamine is all about an external thing. You take in. You're like oh something something from out there to add in to my my self here and it takes you away from potentially creating really valuable projects and the the thing is you don't need to be. Plugged in all the time you don't need to be absorbing every new bit of misinformation out there. In fact, all it does mostly is distract you from what's really important in your life which is nurturing the relationships that you care about or nurturing the projects that you care about. And creating and expressing yourself in different ways and I I really like the simple idea of if you don't express you will feel depressed simple as that and it doesn't matter if you paint or play music or. 57:16.54 mikebledsoe If. 57:23.70 Max Shank Chat with a friend for a few hours or an hour. There are lots of ways to express yourself? Um, but if you're constantly seeking that the feed from outside you're going to become like mentally obese and it's going to be full of toxic bullshit. 57:42.60 mikebledsoe A a. 57:43.54 Max Shank Right? So just to recap its incentive source and then probably reduction would be like the third if I had to pick 3 57:52.27 mikebledsoe I like it. It's a good that's a good ah order to go in you'll you'll ah I think by just applying the first 2 you'll reduce the amount of people you're even looking at or piece information you're you're paying attention to. 58:04.66 Max Shank Oh yeah, people would say that I'm crazy for how little I trust anything I read or see but not nuds. It's true because. 58:12.44 mikebledsoe Um, well I I think that if you've ever gone through the process of questioning what you believe and what you think I think if you've never done that which most people have never sat there and analyzed their own thinking and gone is what I believe actually true. Once you believe once you have had the experience of realizing that most of your thoughts are complete bullshit then you should then understand that everyone else's thoughts are just they probably have the same amount of bullshit running around and most people are just expressing. They're bullshit all the time and the majority of what's flying around is just bullshit. There's very little truth very little truth in there. Totally unintentional. 58:53.92 Max Shank And it's not ah and and it's often not intentional. You know for a long time I I was told the knees should not cross the toes during a squat if you're bending over your back should not bend. 59:10.31 mikebledsoe Yeah, right? yeah. 59:12.36 Max Shank In fact, basically your back should never bend under load is this thing I believed and some people still believe that some people believe the exact opposite of that and and that's okay too. But oh yeah, oh yeah I mean. 59:21.88 mikebledsoe Have you seen this knees over toes guy on Instagram his shit is good and his whole his whole his whole the name of his Instagram is controversial and he's blowing up. It's good. 59:31.36 Max Shank I. Right? It's it's brilliant as brilliant marketing I think it looks mostly sound. Obviously it's not the way that I would approach overall health and fitness. But I think the message is overall good. Which is you're not fragile and it's good to bravely explore these ranges of motion. Um I got did I tell you about the third round monkeys third round monkey rule is perfect for this episode. 59:59.80 mikebledsoe Yeah. 01:00:07.35 mikebledsoe No. 01:00:12.70 Max Shank Its really short. It's not that short, but it's short enough. Yeah, sure. 01:00:13.14 mikebledsoe Do you want to you want to take this show an hour and a half by the typical hour because I I think we have might I've covered like half of what's in my fucking Notebook right now. 01:00:23.80 Max Shank Well, let's let's let it ride but here's an important thing to realize and it's about Mythology. So Third round I have all these that I try to organize stuff. So it's simpler to remember so I have this 1 called Third round monkeys which is about a scientific study. They did. With monkeys in a room with a ladder and a bowl of fruit at the top and so they had like 6 monkeys in there and 1 starts to go up for the fruit and the researchers immediately hose off all the Monkeys. With a fire hose all of them. Not just the 1 who climbed up for it and so then they all stop doing that so they're all just sitting around not going near the ladder because they know they'll get the hose and then they take out half the monkeys and replace them. With new monkeys. So now you have a combined group a and group b 1 of the new monkeys starts climbing up the ladder and 1 of the older ones are the all the older ones start beating it up because they know that if he does that they're all going to get the hose. So then once again, you have this group of like 6 monkeys or so doing nothing then they take away the first monkeys and they add in the third round monkeys same thing. 1 of the new monkeys. Sees a bowl of bananas or fruit or something up there starts going up the ladder and the second round monkeys beat him up mercilessly and so now you have like 6 monkeys not going near the fruit and none of them have seen the fire hose. They don't know why they don't know why they're beating. They're beating these new Monkeys. They just know that if you go up the ladder you get beaten and that's how a lot of information gets transmitted. It's just I was talking with ah my friend victoria. 01:02:31.56 mikebledsoe Bunch of hearsay. 01:02:34.98 Max Shank The other day and we were playing this game called ah fuck that last guy high five that last guy because so many things from the past are amazing. It's incredible and some things. We're just like oh fuck that guy that guy sucks like he really ruined it for everybody else and that's sort of how we have gotten to this point some things you blindly believe but we don't We don't really know why. 01:02:52.94 mikebledsoe E. 01:03:08.53 mikebledsoe Probably most things so lot lot has just been passed down. 01:03:15.45 Max Shank I'm kind of I'm becoming more and more and of of ah, an objectivist but there's a caveat to that because objectivism is like just believing what you can experience firsthand but I also believe there's obvious be way more than that. 01:03:25.25 mikebledsoe Yeah, but also. 01:03:32.18 Max Shank That is beyond my sensory perception. 01:03:33.54 mikebledsoe Well I think I think that the I would say this the way I'm very objective is the way I operate is is I I Really do my best to believe only what I can verify with my own senses and ah everything else. 01:03:52.70 Max Shank Yeah, that's tricky. 01:03:52.13 mikebledsoe Just take with a grain of salt which like maybe maybe and then also you know the way that I think you and I both live our lives is we have done enough reflection to create our ah philosophy and principles in which we live our lives and which means that. I don't have to know that much information you don't have to know that information to make good choices. Ah, and so for instance, the idea of what we see what we witness in nature is what happens anytime we isolate something. We isolate a cell from being able to talk to other cells in the human Body. What happens the cell starts to replicate in a way that causes cancer right? when it can't communicate with the other cells. Yeah it it dies but and and it's. 01:04:40.15 Max Shank Or it dies right? I mean depends on the environment. 01:04:46.35 mikebledsoe And it's attempt to live on it will replicate unhealth in an unhealthy way. Yeah, it'll die or it'll replicate in a cancer way right? has no direction right? It's not getting the right inputs. Um, what's a. 01:04:50.49 Max Shank Um, in in an in a way that is that has no direction. Basically it's like growth without direction bingo. 01:05:05.40 mikebledsoe But guy who described this. He's a really he used to work in cancer and now he he's ah he's 1 these really great docs to listen to. Ah, he's is my name maybe his name will pop into my head here in a minute but ah, ah, but when things are integrated when you integrate something like. A lot of what happens with health is how well things are integrated with each other and in systems support each other and everything is whether the cell or an organ or your joints if you so if you've studied health and you really recognize? oh. And you witness what are the results of isolation and what are this the results of of integration and then you watch that happen socially to what are the results of isolation and what are the results of integration and. Not force integration but just allowing things to integrate naturally. 01:05:58.30 Max Shank No system works in isolation is a phrase for health. 01:06:02.30 mikebledsoe Yeah, and so I don't need to understand all the details of how these people theoretically think this virus works by the way. It's all theory. The basis in which. The virologists are making decisions. It's based on a theory which is called Germ Theory ah that was the 1 Yeah. 01:06:21.75 Max Shank Ah, crap we're gonna get censored now fuck that was it that was the that was the 1 thing you're not allowed to talk about I said fag earlier we were probably gonna be okay with that. It's because those guys can take a joke. 01:06:33.90 mikebledsoe Ah, we definitelin? Yeah, so but ah, you know people people. It's 1 of those things I get in conversation with people I'm like why are you operating from germ theory or are you more familiar with terrain theory. And then people go I don't know what you're talking about I go oh well, do you believe that you know just being exposed to a germ is going to make you sick and like well yeah, that's that's what's happening they go. Okay, then then you're a germ theory person. You don't even know it and yet that's the postulate in which. All these arguments are being made from the idea of isolating yourself. Don't go outside wear a mask stay 6 feet apart. These are all isolated. This isolation makes sense inside of germ theory. But even the person who founded germ theory. Ah, with his name Louis pasture was 1 of the the people who really put germ theory on the map at the end of his life of saying I made a fucking mistake. You know he was the 1 that was in charge of pasteurizing milk. Best of intentions but seti made a mistake so you got this guy that everyone praises for for inventing pasteurization. 01:07:40.77 Max Shank With the best of intentions. 01:07:50.14 Max Shank Ah. 01:07:50.77 mikebledsoe We passed here and yet at the end of his life. He says don't do what I said earlier stay away from it and yet no 1 listens to that. so so um everybody governments medical boards. All these things bought into germ theory and ah. 01:07:56.64 Max Shank What how tricky. 01:08:09.80 mikebledsoe I go back to? Well, what's the result of our medical system operating from ah germ theory. Well what are we produced. We hav

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Are you an investor struggling to communicate efficiently with those involved with your real estate portfolio? Listen in as Heather and Jackie share the best practices for using your email as a to-do list, as well as some cool Gmail features that you're probably unaware of.   WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE How to leverage the ''archive'' Gmail option The secret sauce to draw your property manager's attention A Gmail tool to organize your tasks efficiently A free service to manage your property manager   RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE Boomerang for Gmail   CONNECT WITH US: If you need help with anything in real estate, please email: invest@rpcinvest.com Reach Ron: RP Capital Leave podcast reviews and topic suggestions: iTunes Subscribe and get additional info: Get Real Estate Success

As digital creators, naming our product is sometimes the last and hardest step of launching.Here’s a Magic Formula for naming any product…It’s with M.A.G.I.C.M - Make a Magnetic Reason Why ✨What’s the shorthand, juicy, sexy version of the RESULTS you can deliver with this product? Whenever you’re looking for a reason with your customers, always look for the emotional benefit. Tug at their heart or soothe the soul.And F*cking Sauce it up!Weight Loss = BELLY-SHREDDERReading Speed = MACH-ONE Page-FlipperA - Announce Your Avatar ✨Tell me who this is for and exclude everyone else. Your customers like being in a club all their own, and it makes copywriting SOOO much easier.Crank open that Marketing 102 textbook you had to buy for $450 to find some of those “marketing persona” names.Ex. Soccer Moms, Buff Nerds, IPA EnthusiastsG - Give Them a Goal ✨Your customers are on a journey. Your product is an accelerator to that journey. Now tell them where they’re headed when they use your product.The easy, obvious examples: Feel fit, Lose 10 Pounds, Earn More Income. You get it.I - Indicate A Time Interval ✨Much like in copywriting - time is on your side. Either add some urgency in your product’s name or turn time into your very own benefit.Ex. Earn 10X Income in 10 Days or LessC - Complete with a Container Word ✨Didn’t know what a container word was, but it’s essentially the tack-on word you use to make this product sound more than just a simple PDF or Zoom Link. Action words, bro.Ex. Blueprint, System, Masterclass, Challenge.Credit to Alex Hormozi (@alexhormozi) and his book $100M Offers - https://amzn.to/3C31f7wJordan P. AndersonP.S. - Did you know that you can directly reply to these emails? (All replies are privately sent to my inbox)📧 If you're a Gmail user, this newsletter may automatically get routed to your "Promotions" tab. To avoid this, just drag the newsletter to your "Primary" tab — and you'll never miss a post.100% Typo Guarantee —This message was made with love, not spellcheck. No English teachers were harmed in the making of this email. Subscribe at jordanpanderson.substack.com

Matthew Kepnes runs the popular travel blog, Nomadic Matt, and also writes a successful newsletter. In fact, Matt's newsletter is one of the biggest I've had on the show. His book, How to Travel the World on $50, is a New York Times Best Seller.After a 2005 trip to Thailand, Matt decided to leave his job, finish his MBA, and travel the world. Since then, he's been to nearly 100 countries, and hasn't looked back. Besides being a New York Times best-selling author, Matt's writings have been featured in countless publications. He's a regular speaker at travel trade shows, and is the founder of FLYTE, a non-profit organization that sends students overseas to bring their classroom experience to life.I talk with Matt about his unique approach to running his business. While others are building online courses, Matt has shifted to doing more in-person meetups and events. We talk about his newsletter, and we also talk about growing your Instagram follower count, scaling a business as a solopreneur, and much more.In this episode, you'll learn: When & why you need to start outsourcing day-to-day tasks Matt's email opt-in strategies and tips to get more subscribers The most important metric about your email list How to quickly get more followers on Instagram Links & Resources Blue Ocean Strategy Matador Lonely Planet Blue Ocean Strategy book Pat Flynn Women In Travel Summit Traverse Cheryl Strayed ConvertKit TravelCon FinCon Podcast Movement World Domination Summit Hootsuite Tim Ferriss Seth Godin OptinMonster Seth Godin: This is Marketing Rick Steves Nathan Barry Show on Spotify Nathan Barry Show on Apple Podcasts Matthew Kepnes' Links Matt's website Follow Matt on Twitter Matt's Instagram The Nomadic Network Nomadic Matt Plus Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Matthew:When I started these courses back in 2013, there wasn't a lot of folks. Now you have so many people with courses, so many Instagrammers and TikTokers selling their stuff. It's sort of like, is this worth the time to really invest in it when my heart really isn't in it? How can I maintain 400K in revenue a year? Is that the best use of our resources? The answer is, not really.[00:00:33] Nathan:In this episode, I talk to my long time friend, Matt Kepnes, from Nomadic Matt.Matt's got a travel blog that's wildly popular, and he gets into that—shares all the numbers. He's probably one of the biggest newsletters that I've had on the show, so far.What I love about him, in particular, is how thoughtful he is about his business model.Most people are just adding more courses and figuring out how to grow revenue; honestly, what's now fairly traditional ways, and it's quite effective. Matt takes another approach. He gets into in-person events and meetups. We get to talk about why in a busy, crowded online world, he's actually going offline.I think that Blue Ocean Strategy he references, the popular book by the same title, I think it's interesting, and it's something worth considering when some of the online strategies don't work. We also get into a bunch of other things like growing his newsletter. Like I said, it's quite large.Then, also growing an Instagram following. Instagram is not something that I'm going to actively pursue, but it's interesting hearing his approach of what you do if you're at 5,000 followers on Instagram, and want to grow to 50,000 or more.So, anyway, enjoy the episode.If you could do me a favor and go subscribe on Spotify or iTunes, or wherever you listen if you aren't subscribed already, and then write a review.I check out all the reviews. Really appreciate it. It helps in the rankings, and I'm just looking to grow the show.So, anyway, thanks for tuning in today. Let's go talk to Matt.Matt, welcome to the show.[00:02:06] Matthew:Thanks for having me, Nathan. I've been trying to get on this podcast for ages.[00:02:10] Nathan:Well, don't say that, that'll make people think they can get on just by asking. Really, you came to my house and stayed in my cottage on the farm, and then you're like, “Yo, have me on the podcast!” And that's when I was like, “Absolutely.” But if anyone just asked, that would not be a thing.[00:02:26] Matthew:No, I just mean I finally—I'm excited that I'm worthy enough in my blogging career to be on.[00:02:33] Nathan:Oh, yes.[00:02:35] Matthew:I've made it.[00:02:36] Nathan:Yeah. It's only taken you, what, a decade and a half?[00:02:39] Matthew:13 and a half years. Slow and steady wins the race.[00:02:43] Nathan:That's right.I actually want to start talking about that side of it, because I've been in the blogging world for 11 years now. But even I feel like things changed so much in the first couple of years, even before I entered into the world. So, I'm curious, going back to the early days, what were the prompts for you to come into the blogging world and say, “Hey, I'm going to start publishing online”?[00:03:10] Matthew:Yeah. You know, it was a very haphazard, there was no grand plan. Like I had Zanger when people had Zeno's, which is, you know, a personal blog, way back, you know, 2003, whatever. And so what, I went on my trip around the world in 2006, I just kept updating this Zynga. You know, it was called, Matt goes the world and it was just like, here I am friends here I am.And then, you know, everyone was really excited in the beginning. And then after a while I got sick in my update because the know their back of their office job. So I kinda just forgot about it until I came home and January, 2008 and I need money. And so I started a temp job, and I had a lot of free time and I really just hated being back in the, the office with the walls and everything.And so I was like, I need to earn money to keep traveling. And so I started the website really as with the goal of it being an online resume, you know, it was very bare bones. I used to share a travel news, have an update, like tips and stories from my trip. And then there was a section where we're like, hire me and it had my features and, you know, the guest blogs I did, I used to write for Matador travel.So just as a way to sort of build up, a portfolio of like, Hey, Yeah, freelance writing because I'm wanting to read guidebooks, you know, I wanted to write for lonely planet. That was a dream, right. The guidebooks. And so just the blog was a way to hone my skills and just get in front of editors to be like, Hey look, I do right.You know, here's where I've been, you know, and, and sort of build that base. And eventually that became a thing where I didn't need to freelance. Right.[00:05:03] Nathan:Was it called nomadic Matt from the beginning.[00:05:06] Matthew:He was, yeah. I B two names, nomadic Matt. And that does the world. Right. Because I like the double entendre of it. Right. Even though, but just cause I have a weird sense of humor and all my friends were like, you can't do that one. You gotta do nomadic Matt. It was really good because it's much better brand name, you know, in the long run.But again, I wasn't thinking about that. Right. I wasn't thinking like, oh, I'm going to start this brand. You know, I gotta think of a clever name that people can remember. It was like,Oh a place where people can see my work.[00:05:39] Nathan:Right. Okay. So now 13 and a half years later, what's the, what's the, the blog and newsletter look like. and I want to dive into the business side of it because I think a lot of people build successful newsletters, audience-based businesses, but don't make the leap to like something bigger than themselves.And so I want to dive into all those aspects of it.[00:06:01] Matthew:13 years later, it's seven people. We just hired a new events coordinator to help. my director of events, Erica, coordinate all these virtual in person events that we're going to kick off again. I have a full-time tech guy, a full-time director of content. We changed his title, but like three research assistants, because.I picked a niche that like is always changing. Right. You know, you have a fitness website, how to do a pull up. It's just, that's it,[00:06:37] Nathan:You ranked for that keyword. You're good to go.[00:06:40] Matthew:Yeah. Like how to do a pull up, doesn't change what to do in Paris or the best hospitals in Paris, constantly changing, you know? so it takes three resources, distance.Plus my content guy, me that basically keep up the content and then I have a part-time, graphic designer and part-time social coordinator.[00:07:00] Nathan:Nice. And how many subscribers do you have in the list now?[00:07:03] Matthew:We just called it, so it's a two 50 because we just, cause I haven't shaved it off in like five years or so. So we basically everybody that hasn't opened the email in one year where we're like, you want to be on.And like 2% of them click that button. And then we just got rid of the other 90%. It was like 60,000 names.[00:07:30] Nathan:Yeah. So for everyone listening, two 50 in this case means 250,000.[00:07:35] Matthew:Yeah.[00:07:36] Nathan:Just to clarify, I 7% businesses off of 250 subscribers would be remarkable. That would be just as impressive, but that's not what we're talking about here. going into, so a lot of people, talk about or worry about, should I prune my list or that kind of thing?What were the things that went into that for you? That's a big decision to, to prune 60,000 people off a list.[00:08:00] Matthew:I think it was probably more, maybe I want to say six 60 to 80 I somewhere around there. we were pushing up against our account before I went to the next billing step.So that's always a good impetus to prune the list, but you know, I I've been thinking about it for a while because. You know, I I really want to see what my true open rate.Is You know, like, okay, I have all these people and we were sending it this, I have multiple lists, but the main weekly list was like, 310,000-315,000 but it's been so long since we called and we have so many emails there and I just really wanted to get a true sense of like, what's our active audience.And so between, between that and, pushing up against the next tier price tier. Yeah. it yeah. It's cool to say like, oh, we have 300,000 300, you know, rather than 250,000 Right. But who cares? Right. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a vanity metric, right? Yeah. It sounds cool. I get a million emails. Right. But if you only have a 10% open rate, You really only have 100,000.[00:09:20] Nathan:Right. I think that the times that it matters is maybe when you're selling a book to a publisher and that might be the only time that you like that dead weight and your email us actually helps you.[00:09:33] Matthew:Yeah. Like if you're, or you have a course, you know, are you trying to promote your numbers, but people would probably lie about that stuff too. yeah, so like, it really doesn't matter because all that matters is like, what's your true audience? Like who Who are the people that are really opening your stuff?[00:09:50] Nathan:Yeah. So let's dive into the, well, I guess really quick, I should say I am a hundred percent in the camp of, like delete subscribers, like do that once a year, that kind of thing. Clean up the list, go for the highest number of engaged subscribers, rather than the highest number of subscribers. It's just[00:10:06] Matthew:Right.[00:10:07] Nathan:To track.[00:10:08] Matthew:And, and I think you would know better than me, but isn't this a good. Like signal to Gmail. And you know, when you, you don't have a lot of dead emails, just go into a blank account. It's never getting opened or marked as spam or whatever.[00:10:24] Nathan:Yeah, for sure. Cause a lot of these times, there's a couple of things that happen. One is emails get converted to spam traps. And so it's like say someone's signed up for your email list six years ago And, they haven't logged into that email account for a long time.Google and others will take it and convert it to a spam trap and say, Hey, this email hasn't been logged into in six years.And so anyone sending to it, it's probably not doing legit things now you're over here. Like, no that person signed up for my list, but they're basically like you should have cleaned them off your list years ago. And then if that person were to ever come back and log into that Gmail account, do you remember like, oh, just kidding here, have the, have the email account back, but they're basically using that.And so you can follow all the. Best practices as far as how people join your list. But if you're not cleaning it, then you will still end up getting these like spam hits and, and other things. So you absolutely clean your list. Let's talk the business side, on revenue, I don't know what you want to share on the, on revenue numbers, but I'd love to hear any numbers you're willing to share.And then the breakdown of where that comes from, whether it's membership, courses, conferences, that sort of thing.[00:11:35] Matthew:Yeah.So there's like the pre COVID world and the post COVID world. Right. You know, like,[00:11:40] Nathan:Yes.[00:11:41] Matthew:Cause I work in travel, so like, you know, pre COVID we did over a million and like I was probably gearing up to like in 2020, like one, five, I think I were going to get a little over one five. and again, you know, this is, I work in the budget travel side of things, right.So like it's going to sell a lot of $10 eBooks to get up to seven figures. salary books are 10 bucks. and so. Postcode during COVID week, I think in 2020 made like half a million. and this year we'll probably get up to three quarters,[00:12:23] Nathan:Okay.[00:12:24] Matthew:K.[00:12:25] Nathan:He was coming back,[00:12:26] Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. and I think next year we'll, we'll get back over seven and then basically like how to go from there.You know, so maybe 20, 23, I might get to that one, five that was going to get to in 2020. most of the revenue now comes from ads, and then affiliates. we did, we did do a lot on courses, but then I, one of the things that, you know, a big pandemic that stops your business, allows you to do is really look at the things you're doing because every.Zero. So it's like when we start back up, is this worth investing time in? And so the answer is no. So we dropped down from, I think, peak of doing like $400,000 a year and horses, and this year we'll do maybe 40. and that's mostly because we just leave it up as like, you can buy this, we update it every six months.If it needs, it's basically like a high that blog course get all my numbers and tactics and strategies in there. but we don't offer any support for it. Right. It's just, you're buying information. and so it's very passive in that sense, but it's not like a core business where we're really moving and we were doing this pre COVID is moving into events and membership programs.So like we have pneumatic map plus, which gets you like all our guides, monthly calls and sort of like a Patriot on kind of thing, but like free.[00:14:03] Nathan:That cost.[00:14:04] Matthew:Five to 75 bucks a month, depending on what you want. So it's 5 25, 75. Most people opt for the five, of course. And it's really geared to like, get the five.But you know, that brings now, I think like three or four K a month. and then we have the events, which is donation based, but there's just like another two K a month. And so this is like, since COVID right. So like, that's say call it 50 K a year of, of revenue that we've added in. They didn't exist before.And now I know you're, you can compare that against the loss of the courses, but we had been phasing those out for years. and so that's really where we want to grow is bringing in more, you know, monthly revenue for that. Right. You know, Once we started, it's easy and we're gonna start doing tours again and, you know, so more high value things that don't take as much time.[00:15:08] Nathan:Right. So on the core side, I think a lot of people listening, maybe they have an email list of five, 10, 15,000 subscribers, and they're like, Hey, the next thing is to launch a course. And they're hearing that's where a bunch of the revenue is. And so it's interesting you moving away from that. So let's dive in more.What, what made you look at the core side of your business and say, I don't want to like restart that in a post COVID world.[00:15:33] Matthew:Yeah, there's just, there's a lot of competition, right? So like, I think it was like a blue ocean, red ocean strategy, you know, to think of that book of, you know, Blue Ocean Strategy. Right? One of the reasons we went into events is because a lot of our traffic comes from Google. And so it's a constant battle of always trying to be one or, you know, in the first couple of spots.Right with every blogger in every company with SEO budget, but there's not a lot of people doing in-person events or building sort of a community in the travel space. So I looked at that of being like, okay, there are a lot of people doing courses and they love doing courses and they're great teachers, you know, they're, you know, you get folks who know like path when, you know, low, like everyone, all these teachable folks, you know, they, they love that stuff.That's not where my heart really was. And so thinking of like, this is a red ocean now, because you have, when I started this, these courses back in 2013, there wasn't a lot of folks. Right. But now you have so many people with courses, so many Instagrammers and tic talkers selling their stuff. It's sort of like, is this worth the time.To like really invest in it when my heart really isn't right. Like how can I maintain your 400 K in revenue a year?[00:17:02] Nathan:Right.[00:17:03] Matthew:What's it going to take, you know, is that the best use of our resources? And the answer is not really, you know, let other people do that. Who love it. I mean, you want to buy my information.It's it's solid stuff. Right. Everyone loves the advice, but to really create like a cohort, like your class, which is sort of like the new version of courses, you know, like, whether it's a month or three months, it's sort of like, you go with this like cohort, right. My heart really wasn't into it because we can invest more in doing events and conferences and really in-person stuff.Especially now that everyone's really excited to do stuff in person again, with a lot less competition. It's easy. It's easy to start a course, but there's a lot of capital investment in doing events that we have the resource to do that, you know, somebody with a 10,000 email list might not.[00:18:03] Nathan:I think I see a lot of people going into courses in, particularly as you alluded to cohort based courses where they're doing it, like, Hey, this is a whole class that you're doing, you know, you're doing the fall semester for the month of October or whatever it is, I'm doing it, doing it the first time and really enjoying it because it's a new challenge they're showing up for their audience.It's just, it's super fun on that, doing it for the second time and going, huh? Okay. That was way easier and way less. And then the third time they go, I don't think I want to do this anymore. Like if the money is good and I just don't enjoy showing up at a set time for a zoom call or whatever else. So it's interesting of watching people jump on a bandwagon and some people it works for really well, and that is their strength and they love it.And then other people that I'm going to like, look, the money's good. And this is this just, isn't what I want to spend my time on.[00:19:02] Matthew:Yeah. You know, I've been doing it for, you know, seven, eight years now and I just sort of lost the passion for, you know, I think it's, I like when people take the information, they succeed with it. But I think after a while you start to realize, you know, it's sort of a 90 10 rule, right? You, 90% of your students, aren't really going to do anything with it.And it's not your fault. It's just because they become unmotivated or, you know, so we tried to switch to the cohort based to be like, okay, this is the class weekly, weekly calls.You know, come on, come together and you still get this drop off rate. That's, you know, sort, it gets this hard and you're like, all right, I've been doing this for eight years, you know, like moving on.But I mean, if you have the love for like pat loves it, you know, like you've got a whole team about it, he's got all these cohorts stuff that speaks to him where I think I'd rather do stuff in person that[00:20:01] Nathan:Right.Well, let's talk about the in-person side. Cause you did something that most people think is really cool and almost no one realizes how hard it is. I think I know how hard it is because I've attempted the same thing and that starting at a conference where everyone's like, you have this big online following, like what you just need to, you know, you have hundreds of thousands of people you just need, I don't know, 500 or a thousand of them to show up in a suit, that's gotta be easy.Right. And so they go and sort of conference, it's wildly difficult. And so.[00:20:33] Matthew:Difficult.[00:20:34] Nathan:I'd love to hear what made you want to start the conference and then yeah, how's it. How's it gone so far?[00:20:40] Matthew:Made me want to start the conference was I really don't think there's a good conference in the chapel space. Yeah. And there are good conferences in the travel space that are very niche and narrow. you know, like there's a woman in travel summit.That's really great. There's one in Europe culture verse, which I liked, but that's like a couple of hundred people there. Wasn't like a, something to scale, right. With wits, which is women to travel is like 300 people. There was, this is no thousand person, 2000 parts. And like mega travel conference for media that has done like, you know, the conferences we go to where it's like high level, you know, people coming outside of your immediate niche to talk about business skills.You know, there's, you know, In the conferences, there are, there's always the same travel, like it's me and like these other big names, travel bloggers over and over and over again. I want to take what I've seen and, you know, from social media world to, trafficking conversion, to mastermind talks, you know, to take all these things that I had gone to, we were like, let's bring it together for travel.Let's create a high level, not a cheap, like hundred dollar events, like, you know, with major keynotes who get paid to speak, because you know, in a lot of travel conferences, you don't get paid to speak, right? So you're high. You're going to get, you know, Cheryl strayed that come to your event for free.That's not waking up to do that. You know, I, you know, and while I can get nice deals from my friends, you still got to pay people right. For their time. And, and so that allows us to have a larger pool of people to create the event that I want to do. Because we will also get into the point where why should somebody who's been blogging for five or six years, go to travel blogging conference app when nobody is at a more advanced stage of blogging than you are, you know, nobody understands SEO better than you do, right?So like after a while you get into this, just drop off of people being like, do I want to fly around the world and hang out with my friends? So I wanted to also create an event where that I could go to and learn something is that I knew that would attract some of the other OJI, travel bloggers.[00:23:06] Nathan:Yeah. So how the, how the first one go, like what was easier than you expected and what was much harder than you.[00:23:14] Matthew:The first one went really well. We had 650 people, and you know, the next one we had 800. But now we're closed because of Kobe, but we're going to do one in 20, 22. And hopefully we get 800 again, things that shocked me, people buy tickets and don't show up. Right. That's weird. Right. Cause I was like, okay, we have 700, you know, I expected maybe like a 5% attrition rate, you know?So like I sold my 750 tickets, but then like six 50, those 600 showed up because the other 50 of those speakers, right. I was like, wow, that's a lot of no-shows for not achieving conference, you know? And so we plan, you know, a 10% attrition rate now.[00:24:04] Nathan:And you just mean someone who doesn't even pick up their badge? Not even, they didn't come to share us rates keynote, but just like they didn't show up to anything at the conference.[00:24:13] Matthew:Yeah, they just did not show up to the conference at all, you know? And. So that was a shock me. I mean, I know I work in travel and, you know, people get last minute of press trips or they, you know, they buy their ticket and they can't come cause, or they got stuck in the Seychelles or whatever, but I did not expect such a high level of no-shows. Because the food here's another thing, food costs a lot of money. Right.You know, I, I fully understand why the airlines took one olive out of your salad. Right. Because it's one olive, but times a million people every day it's actually adds up. Right. So like you think, oh, well it drinks five bucks.That's cool. We'll do a happy hour. Okay. Now times that by a thousand drinks Write, you know, times two, because everyone's drinking two or three, at least two. Right. So then you're like, okay, that's a $15,000 bill that you ended up with. you know, when everyone is all set up. Tax and tip hotel.It's crazy. It's like, okay, these fees, you're like, oh, I got to spend this like, yeah. Okay. Here is your lunch bill 50 grand.But then there's this fee that fee, this fee, this fee like Jake had like 65. You're like, all right. I guess I got a budget for that too. So that was, that was really weird. Like high is the lunch cost, $40,000, you know, and actually hotels, overcharge, and they add a bunch of fees and yeah, you can get them pretty quick.[00:25:46] Nathan:So if you were, if I was starting to conference. They have 50,000 people on a email list or a hundred thousand. And I'm like, Matt, I heard you started a conference. I'm going to do it too. What advice do you have for me? Like what are the first things that you'd call out?[00:26:03] Matthew:It's going to cost like three times more than you think. pricing. Where I went wrong in the second year. Right. So like we've lost money the first two years doing it, but I expected to lose money. It wasn't because I was investing in this long-term thing. Right. But we're at where I lost more money on the second year is that I really factor in flights as well as I did, like I kind of low balled it.And so I always think he should. Oh. And I also invited, I kept inviting people without really seeing, like, where was I? on my like speaker fees. Right. So like really creating a budget and then sticking to it. And even if that means not getting some of your dream folks, to a later year, but working up the food and beverage costs first, because you know, you go to the hotel and they're going to say your F and B, you know, is $90,000.And if they never going to hit that, no, you're going to go way. You're going to blow cause you got to get them to say, what are all the fees? You know, like, okay. You know, if I have a 300 person conference and I want to do two lunches, what does that look like?Plus all the taxes and fees,[00:27:23] Nathan:Okay, well, you, the launch price and you'll, you'll pencil that into your spreadsheet and they'll fail to mention that there's mandatory gratuity on top of that and taxes and whatever[00:27:33] Matthew:Yeah,And whatever, you know, plate fee there is. Right. So you gotta factor all that in and then look at what you got left.[00:27:40] Nathan:It's like when you're buying a car and you have to talk in terms of the out the door price in[00:27:45] Matthew:Yeah.[00:27:46] Nathan:The sticker price,[00:27:47] Matthew:Yeah. I made that mistake when I bought my car last year, I was like, oh 17. And I was like, wait, how did 17 go from 17,000 to 22? And like, well,[00:27:56] Nathan:Right.[00:27:57] Matthew:Thing that I was like, ah, okay,[00:28:00] Nathan:Yeah. Do you think w what are some of the opportunities that have come out from running the conference and has it had the effects of your community that you've hoped? It would,[00:28:10] Matthew:You know, this is a very, blogger faced event, you know, more than just travel consumers. but it's definitely allowed me to, you know, meet folks like Cheryl Austrade, you know, great way to meet your heroes. Is there pay them to come speak at a conference? so, you know, I, I know Cheryl, like, that's cool.The becoming more ingrained in sort of the, the PR side and with the demos and the brands, because, you know, on the website, I destination marketing organization.[00:28:44] Nathan:Okay.[00:28:45] Matthew:So they're like, you know, visit, you know, Boise visit Idaho, we call them a DMO. And so like since I don't really do press trips on the website, I don't know a lot of them really well.And so this has been a way to be, become more ingrained on that sort of industry side of events and not live in my own. and that's helpful because now I know all these folks, when we want to have meetups that might be sponsored when I do a consumer event, which is next up. So get these folks to come for that.So it's just really been good, just professionally to meet a lot of people that I would normally just not meet simply because I go to events and they were like, Hey, come to our destination, we'll give you a free trip. And like, you have a policy. And so I don't get invited to as many things as you would think.[00:29:37] Nathan:Yeah. Why, why do you have that policy? What do you like? What's behind it. And why is that different from other travel bloggers?[00:29:45] Matthew:Hi, it mostly stems from my hatred of reciprocity. You know, like if you, if I go on a free trip and it sucks, like I then create, it's awkward. If I have to go like hot, like, Hey, you suck. And I have to write this online. Then it creates a lot of bad blood that gets talked about, you know, it's a very small industry.People move around a lot, so you get less opportunities or I can just go, Hey, I'm not going to write that. And then they feel bad. Cause like, you know, like you're a nice person just doing their job, you know, like it's not your fault. I had a bad time. you know, I did this once with a friend and she gave me a couple of places to stay, at a hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica and chill out and sort of tell was really far out of town.And th the amount it took me to take a taxi back and forth. Like, I could've just got a place right. In the center of San Jose, you know? And so I was like, I really, I just don't think it's a good fit for my Anya. And she was very unhappy about it. I was like, I mean, I could write in, but I have to say that.Right. Yeah. And so I just never wanted to put myself in those situations again. I also think that taking a lot of free travel, like I do budget travel. So you given me a resort like that. Doesn't how does that help my audience? So if I start living this awesome life and getting free stuff, that's great for me, but it's not good for my audience.And so I don't mind taking free tours. Like, let's say I'm going to go to Scotland. Right? I did. This actually was real life example. I wanted to access cause I wanted to write about scotch. So I was like, Hey, I don't want to do like the public tour. you know, that 20 bucks, you know, it's like 10 minutes and you get the, I like, I want to talk to people because I want quotes for articles.I'm going to do like history stuff. So I contacted the Scottish tourism board and they got, got me visited. I that's where I went to. I just love P scotch. and so they got me like private tours. So I can like take notes in such. and they gave me a free accommodation that I was like, I want to be really clear about this.I'm not mentioning this place. And they're like, just, just take it. And so, and I didn't mention it and I didn't mention that, you know, I got access to these, you know, distillers to ask some questions, but it was more about building this article as a journalist than,Hey, I want like free tours, you know, like, I mean, I saved 20 bucks. Right. But the point was, I wanted to learn about the process to write about this story beam. And then they offered me free flights and stuff. It was like, now I just, I just want the tourist, please. Thanks.[00:32:44] Nathan:Yeah, it's interesting of the, what a lot of people would view as the perks to get into travel blogging. Right. I want to get into it because then I'd have these free chips or I can have these offs or whatever else, I guess the right apps you get, no matter what, but, You know that that's the other side of like, everything comes with a cost.And I think it's important to realize what you're doing because you want to versus what you're doing, because now you feel obligated because someone gave you something for free.[00:33:12] Matthew:Yeah. The most thing is I tend to accept our city tourism part, which gets you like free access to museums and stuff. I was like, okay, that's cool.But beyond that, I just, you know, I don't want to get into, like, you want to give me a museum pass. I'm going to see these museums anyway. Sure. I'll save some money and I'll, I'll make a wheel note, but I'm going to no obligation to write about which museum, because I write about the ones I like anyway.So,[00:33:39] Nathan:Right.[00:33:40] Matthew:You know, that's not to me like free travel. That's not what people think of Like the perks of. the job are.[00:33:46] Nathan:I, that was funny. When I learned about the, like the welcome packet that cities will, will give, like the first time I saw it in action was. I went to Chris, Guillebeau's like end of the world party in Norway. and I was hanging out with Benny Lewis there who runs, you know, fluent in three months, a mutual friend of both of ours.You've known him longer than I have, but like, we're both at our check into the hotel and he's got like this whole thing of all these museum passes he's got, and he's just like, yeah, I just emailed the tourism board and said, I was going to say, and they're like, oh, blogger. And they gave him like, you know, access to everything and you only ended up using half of it because we weren't there for that long, but,[00:34:28] Matthew:Yeah. That's great. You should always get these discount cards, like the comparison museum pass or the New York mic go card that will save you a lot of money if you're doing lots of heavy sites in.[00:34:39] Nathan:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. okay. So how does actually let's dive into the COVID side, right? Cause COVID took a hit huge hit on the entire traveling. we saw that just in the like running ConvertKit where, you know, having bloggers in so many different areas, we had a lot of growth because lots of people were stuck at home and start like, I'm going to start a new blog.I'm going to have time to, to work on this or whatever. And it was a lot of cancellations, mostly from the travel industry. If people like, look now that what this 50,000 person list, that was a huge asset is now just a giant liability. because no one's planning trips. How did you navigate that time? And what, like, what's the journey been?You know, the last 18 months, two years,[00:35:28] Matthew:Well first I would say that's really shortsighted of someone canceling their 50,000 person list like[00:35:34] Nathan:I think they were like exporting sitting on it and they're going to come back. But, but I agree. It was very shortsighted.[00:35:39] Matthew:Yeah. Like just like throw it away. 50,000 emails, right. I mean, it was tough in the beginning. You know, we went from like January and February were like best months ever, you know? And like, I mean, even, and then all of a sudden like, like March 13th is like that Friday, you know, it's like everything crashes, like again, like we were on our way to have a banner year, like, like, like hand over fist money, you know?And, and then to being like, how am I going to pay the bills? You know? and so, cause you know, we, haven't sort of the, the overhang from Java con, right. You know, like we didn't make money on the first two years. And year three was the, the breakeven year and travel con was in, Right in the world ended in March.Right. And so I had laid out all, like, you're so close to the event, that's you? That's when you start paying your bills. Right. And the world hits and all the sponsors who, you know, have their money, you know, in the accounting department are like, oh, we're not paying this now. And so you're like, well, I've just paid $80,000 in deposits and all that money that was going to offset.It has gone. and then you have people canceling. A lot of people were really mean about it. They're like, oh, I'm, I'm back now. And we're going to do charge backs, that, you know, you have that overhang and just, you know, fall in revenue it's it was really tough. thank God for government loans, to be quite honest, like I, I went to native through if it wasn't for, all that, because a lot of my.My money was tied up in non-liquid assets. So it wasn't like I could just like sell some socks though, you know, pay the bills. but things have come back a lot. I mean, there's a lot of paint up the man, for travel, I view it like this way, right? You got kids, right. You know, they get in trouble, you take away their toy and then you give them back.Right. Where do they want to do now? They just want to play with that toy even more because it's like, no, it's mine. No one else can have it. And like where you want to do this other toy. No. And so now that the toy of travel is being given back to people like people are like, never again, am I going to miss out on this opportunity to travel on my dream trips?Let's make it happen. So we had a really good summer. I spoke to mediocre fall and winter just as the kids are back in school, people are traveling less, you know, but as more in the world, that? will be good. but again, as I said, at the beginning of this, it's going to take awhile for us to get, to get back to where we were, but there's definitely demand there,[00:38:36] Nathan:When's the next conference when the travel con happening again.[00:38:39] Matthew:April 29th,[00:38:41] Nathan:Okay.[00:38:41] Matthew:22,[00:38:42] Nathan:So what's the how of ticket sales benefit for that? Is there like that pent-up demand showing up and people booking conference tickets or are they kind of like, wait and see, you know, you're not going to cancel this one too kind of thing.[00:38:55] Matthew:Yeah, I mean, we're definitely not canceling it. I mean, the world would have to really end for it. We just launched, this week. So, early October, we just announced our first round of speakers. and we sold like 10 or 15 tickets. I don't expect a lot of people, to buy until the new year I saw this.And the old event, right? Because in the old event we were had in May, 2019. Right. And we announced in the fall, but it wasn't until like, you know, a few months prior that people started buy their ticket. Right. Because they don't know where they're going to be. You know, where are they flying from? What were the COVID rules going to be like, the demand is there.But I, I know people are probably just waiting and seats for their own schedule too, you know? So, but you were against so 800 tickets and honestly, from what I've heard from other events, you know, people are selling out, you know, because there was such demand, like it's not a problem of selling the tickets, so I'm not sure.[00:40:01] Nathan:Yeah, one thing, this is just a question that I'm curious for myself. since I also run a conference, what do you think about conferences that rotate cities or like Mo you know, move from city to city, which we've been to a lot of them that do it. You know, the fin con podcast movement areTwo longer running ones that you and I have both been to. obviously that's what you're doing. The travel column. well, domination summit, which we've both been to a lot, you know, it was like very much it's Portland. It's always Portland. We'll never be anywhere anywhere else. What do you think, why did you chose? Why did you choose the approach that you did in what you think the pros and cons are?[00:40:39] Matthew:Yeah, for, for me it was, you know, we're in travel. I wanted to travel. Right. And plus, you know, I mean, you get up, we get a host, right? So like Memphis is our sponsor. Right. It's in Memphis. Yeah, it was supposed to be in new Orleans. New Orleans was our host sponsor. Right. So moving it from city to city allows us to get, you know, a new host sponsor every year is going to pony up a bunch of money.Right. I don't know how Podcast move into it, but I think if I wasn't in travel and it was more something like traffic and conversion, or maybe we'll domination summit, I would probably do it in the same place over and over again because you get better consistency. you know, one of the things I hate about events is that they move dates and move locations.Right. And, and so it's a little hard to in travel cause you know, COVID really screwed us. Right. But we're moving to being, you know, in the same timeframe, right. We're always going to be in early May. That's where I want to fall into like early may travel car, change the city, but you got the same two-week window, because it's hard to plan, right?So like if you're changing dates in cities, you're, you're just off of a year. So I wanted some consistency, make it easier for people to know, like in their calendar, Java con early Mac, Java con, early Mac, you[00:42:17] Nathan:Yep.[00:42:18] Matthew:It doesn't really work out cause of COVID, but post COVID we're we're moving to that, that, early may[00:42:24] Nathan:Yeah. Okay. So let's talk more about sort of scaling different between different levels of the business. So there's a lot of people who say, all right, 10, 20, 50,000 subscribers, somewhere in there. And it's very much the solopreneur of like, this is, I'm a writer. I just do this myself. Or maybe they, you know, contract out graphic design or a little bit more than that.What were some of the hardest things for you and why and what worked and what didn't when you made the switch from it being nomadic, Matt being just Matt to Matt plus a team.[00:43:00] Matthew:Yeah, it It's definitely hard to give up that control, right. Because you always think no one can do your business better than you can. And I mean, even to this day, I still have issues doing, you know, giving up control. Right.[00:43:14] Nathan:What's something that you don't want to, that you're like still holding onto that, you know, you need to let go of[00:43:19] Matthew:Probably just little things like checking in on people and, you know, Content probably like Content. I'm very specific about my voice, the voice we have. So. But I should let my content, people make the content that I know is fine. but I definitely, probably overly check on my teams to be like, what'd you do today?You know, you know, that kind of stuff. but I did take a vacation recently and I went offline for a week and they didn't run the thing down. So I was like, oh right. That was my like, okay, I can, I can let go. And it's going to be okay. But, so getting comfortable with that much earlier on, I would probably save you a lot of stress and anxiety.I definitely think you should move to at least having somebody, you know, a part-time VA, if you're making over six figures, hire somebody because you know, how are you are not going to go from a 100k to 500k really by yourself? Unless, you know, you just have some crazy funnel that you do, but even the people I know who are solopreneurs, they still have two or three people helping them a little bit part, even if it's just part-time because the more money you make, the more time you have to spend keeping that income up.And so your goal as the creator in the owner should be, how can I grow? How can I make more money? It should not be setting up your WordPress blog. You know, It should not be answering joke emails It should not be, you know, scheduling your social media on Hootsuite, that kind of low level stuff can be done by, you know, a part-time VA And maybe that part-time VA becomes a full-time VA as you scale up more. But you know, if you, you have to free up your time and you're never going to free up your time, if you're spending a lot of that time, scheduling. So you mean that the people I know who have half a million dollar businesses, selling courses, you know, and they're really just a solopreneur.They have somebody do that grunt work, right. Plus if you're making that much money, is that the best use of your time now? Really? Right. So getting somebody to do sort of the admin front work, as soon as you can, even if it's on a part-time basis will allow you to focus on growth marketing, and monetization, which is where you should be like Podcast.This week. I have like four or five podcasts I'm doing, right. You know, that is a good chunk of my week. If I have to spend that time scheduling on social media, you know, or setting up blog posts, like I can do that. And this is where the growth in the audience comes in.[00:46:12] Nathan:Okay. So since we're talking about growth, what are the things that you can tie to the effort that you put in that drives growth? Are there direct things or is it a very indirect unattributable[00:46:27] Matthew:Yeah, I think there's some direct things like, you know, before, you know, asking 10 years ago, I would say guest posting on websites. Right. You write a guest post on like Confederacy's site and boom, tons of traffic. Right. that doesn't exist anymore. I mean, yeah. You can get a lot of traffic, but it's not like the huge windfall it used to be, but it's still good for brand awareness.SEO. Great for links. Right. I would say things today that I can tie directly to stuff Podcast and, Instagram. So doing, like, doing a joint Instagram live with another creator. Right. You know, like me and, you know, it's I know pat. because someone with a big following there, we do, we do a talk, you know, 30 minutes, you know, I can see in my analytics, like a huge spike in my following right after that.And so that's a great way to sort of grow your audience is to do Instagram collabs in just like 30 minutes tops and[00:47:32] Nathan:Podcasts[00:47:33] Matthew:I get a lot of people will be like, I saw you on this podcast. I was like, wow, cool.[00:47:37] Nathan:I always struggle with that of like, of all the activities that you can do. Cause you get to a point where there's just so many opportunities open to you and it's like, which are the best use of time. What should you say yes to, what should you say no to, and I don't know. Do you have a filter along those or do you just, is it just kind of gut-feel[00:47:53] Matthew:I will say yes to any text-based interview, normally it is the same questions over and over again. So I sort of have a lot of canned responses that I can just kind of paste. and tweak But those are links, so I'm like, sure. Yeah. Send your questions over. Cut paste, tweak, you know, you know,[00:48:12] Nathan:Customize[00:48:13] Matthew:Customize a little bit, but you know, how many times do I need to rewrite from scratch?How'd you get into blogging, you know, what's your favorite country, Podcasts I definitely have a bigger filter on like you, I don't do new podcasts.[00:48:27] Nathan:Okay.[00:48:27] Matthew:I know that's like bad. because you know, this new podcast could become the next big thing, but come back to me when you have some following.[00:48:36] Nathan:I like Seth, Godin's rule I'm not on south Dakotan's level by any means, but he says like, come back to me. When you have 100 episodes, I will happily be your 100th interview on your podcast or something[00:48:47] Matthew:Yeah.[00:48:48] Nathan:And he's just like, look, Put in your time and then we'll talk.[00:48:51] Matthew:Yeah, so I like, I don't look for just following, but like again, you know, knowing that people give up on blogs, people give up Podcast too. So. You know, you have to have been doing it for like six months a year, like week a weekly, you know? So I know like this something you care about. and I like to listen because you know, you get a lot of new people and they're not really great.You know, they asked us like a lot of canned questions and you're like, listen, you're taking, you know, an hour, hour and a half of my time. You gotta make it interesting for me.Well, yeah, Podcast. And then for Instagram stories you gotta have, or Instagram lives, either a brand new audience, or if you're in travel, at least 75,000.Cause I have like a one 30, so I want to keep it in the same in a level.[00:49:43] Nathan:Yeah.I know nothing about Instagram and promotions on Instagram and all of that is there. If someone were to, like, in my case, if I came to you and say, Hey, I want to grow my Instagram following. I've got 3000 people or 5,000 people or something like that. And I want to be have 50,000 a year from now.Where would you point me?[00:50:05] Matthew:I would say, do you join Instagram lives with people like once a week, you know, and just, or maybe once a week for you and then go to somebody else on their side once a week. So, and just kind of work your way up, like find people in your, your sort of follower count level, you know? So in this case, I'd probably do, you know, you know, 1000 to 5,000, I would look for in your niche and like get online for 30 minutes and talk about whatever it is you want to talk about and and then go to someone else's channel and do that, and then keep doing that because you'll just see giant spikes and then you can move up the the ladder.Then you have 10,000 followers and someone with 25,000 followers might give you the time of day. And then you talk about that, you know, and you just sort of build awareness because you're always there. You're always around.[00:51:03] Nathan:It's a really good point about the figuring out what those rough bands are and reaching out within those. Because I think a lot of people are like, I'm going to go pitch whoever on doing Instagram live together. And it's like, you have 5,000 and they have 150,000. And like the content might be a perfect fit, but they're most likely going to say no, because you're not[00:51:24] Matthew:Yeah.[00:51:24] Nathan:Driving that much value for, or that many subscribers for their audience.[00:51:29] Matthew:Yeah. You know, and so you, maybe I would, you know, someone was like a finance blogger, and they had like 40,000, 30, 40,000. I'd probably.We do it because people who like to say money, like say money on travel. So it'd be like, there's probably a good fit. And you know, 30,000 people, they might not know me or they have like, like you said, 3000, come back to me, you know, when there's another zero,[00:51:57] Nathan:Right. Well, and then the other thing that's going to be true is if I'm bringing you to, to my audience to share and teach something, if you're using this strategy, like go do another 20 of these or 50 of these, and your pitch will be better. And the way that you teach finance to travel bloggers or whatever else it is, is going to get so much better.[00:52:17] Matthew:Yeah,[00:52:18] Nathan:It's like, I kind of don't want to be your Guinea pig. You know, I don't want my audience to be your Guinea[00:52:23] Matthew:Yeah,[00:52:24] Nathan:Pig for your content. And so just get more experienced and come back.[00:52:28] Matthew:Yeah. And you know, you also gotta think about, you know, people are so time-starved right. You know, when I started blogging, I could. There was no Instagram. There was no Snapchat. There was no Tech-Talk, you know, Twitter was barely a thing. So I didn't have to split my focus on so many different platforms and channels.Right. I can just, alright, I can be on this one blog, but now when people are like, whoa, sorry, I have to like manage all these different social channels and all of these comments in the blog and everything. They not don't have like an hour to give, you know, to just anybody way do you could have before,[00:53:12] Nathan:Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. Okay. So on the email side, specifically, if someone came to you with say 1,000 newsletter subscribers today, and they're like, I want to grow, I mean, you're looking to grow to 5,000. This might be so far removed from where you're at that you're like, I don't even know if that was, you know, a decade ago that I was in that position, but what are you seeing that's working?Where would you point them?[00:53:33] Matthew:What works for us right now? one having email forms everywhere on your site, sidebar, footer, we have one below the content below the content forms, and popups, popups, the work they're really great. we find for really long posts, having a form in the middle of the post converts better than, at the end of the post, because know a A lot of people don't read to the end, but when they get to in the middle you're still there.You know, if you look at heat maps are really long websites, right? You just see that drop-off right. So if all your forms are at the bottom of the page, they're just not getting the visibility, that you need. so middle of the page,[00:54:19] Nathan:Do you play with a lot of different incentives of like, you know, Opt-in for this fee guide, you know, or are you customizing it to something for a particular country or there, the content that they're reading[00:54:30] Matthew:Yeah, so we use OptinMonster for that. and so we have, like, if If you go to our pages that are tagged Europe, you get a whole different set of options. than if you go to Australia, like, and like the incentives are like, you know, best hostels in Europe, you know, best hostels in Australia, right? Like little checklist guides.And I tweak what the copy for that, you know, just to see what wording, will lift up a better conversion rate. But yeah, we definitely, because, you know, we cover so many geographic areas. The needs of someone going to Europe are a little different than somebody going to New Zealand. So we, we definitely customize that kind of messaging. And I think that helps a lot, you know, and definitely customizing messaging as much as possible. Um know, but in terms of just, you know, we can talk about, you know, the market, like how do you word things, but middle pop-ups and mil of blog posts definitely converts the best. And so like that's where we see a lot of growth, as well as, just on Instagram telling people to sign up for my newsletter or Twitter or Facebook, but don't let the algorithm, you know, keep you from your travel tips, sign up now and people do.[00:55:58] Nathan:Okay. And is that like swipe up on stories that you're doing[00:56:02] Matthew:Yeah.[00:56:03] Nathan:You know, on an Instagram live or all the above?[00:56:06] Matthew:All the above.[00:56:07] Nathan:Yeah.[00:56:07] Matthew:You just constantly reminding people to sign up for the list, you know, and. One of the failings of so many important for influencers today is, you know,They always regret everyone as everyone does. They always regret not starting to list, you know? And so, you know, you just got to hammer into people, sign up for the list, sign up for the list, sign up for the list.Yeah. And a lot of the copy is, do you see all my updates? No. Would you like to sign up for this newsletter?[00:56:39] Nathan:Yeah, because everyone knows. I mean, I come across people all the time. It's like, I used to follow them on Instagram. I haven't seen, oh no, I do still follow them on Instagram. Instagram just decided that I apparently didn't engage with their content enough or something.[00:56:53] Matthew:Yeah,[00:56:54] Nathan:So now I no longer see their posts,[00:56:56] Matthew:Yeah. You like, I go, I always go to my like 50 least interacted profiles. Right. And, you know, there are some people that aren't there. I interact with this guy all the time. How is this the least attractive? But that that's Instagram and saying, here are the people we don't show you in your feet.[00:57:13] Nathan:W where do you see that? Is that[00:57:16] Matthew:If you go to your, who you're following, it's it should be up on the top.[00:57:20] Nathan:Hmm. All right. I'll have to look at that.[00:57:22] Matthew:Yeah. I'll send you a screenshot. and so like, that's the algorithm be like, here are the people who you interact with the least, but it's like, no, I, I love their stuff. why why do it take them from me? So,[00:57:36] Nathan:Zuckerberg is like, do you really love their stuff? I just not feeling it.[00:57:40] Matthew:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, it's just, you know, the algorithms are terrible and what I hate and I learned this last year, and this was sort of a unsurprising, but surprising thing is that stories, which used to be like the latest first.[00:57:59] Nathan:Yeah.[00:57:59] Matthew:That is, they have an algorithm for that now, too. And I was like, I, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am surprised.And I'm annoyed by that because like, I liked it when it was just the newest first, but Nope, now that is based on, you know, sort of like Tik TOK thing of like, oh, this story is getting really a lot of interactions. We'll bring it up the front of people's queue or, you know, so it's not just like your first, because you had one, one second ago, you know, like it could, it's based on an algorithm[00:58:35] Nathan:Yeah.And that's how it's all going to go. Facebook did that a lot, you know, with Facebook fan pages back in the day where it used to be fantastic for engagement. And then they were like, yeah, it's fantastic. If you pay us[00:58:46] Matthew:Yeah. And even then it's like, I would pay to boost posts. I was like, great. You saw, I lectured five people. What? I just gave you a hundred bucks and that was. And there was some guy you remember him commenting last year. He was like, whatever happened to this page? I was like, I'm still here. He's like, no, no, no, no.And this isn't a common thread in Facebook. He's like your pages to get a lot more engagement. What happened? I was like, oh, Facebook algorithm. I was like, people just don't see it. Let me tell you where all my analytics side it's like this page. So I have 2000 people. You're like great. 1%, woo[00:59:23] Nathan:Do you do paid advertising? I'd like to get email subscribers.[00:59:28] Matthew:We used to, but, the CPMs went up so much that it wasn't worth the effort. You know, like paying a dollar 52 bucks for an email subscriber, is just a lot of money for, for, for things. We don't mind ties directly. Like we're not taking people through finals buy a course, right? Like just to get rot email, I'm not paying two bucks for.Yeah. And, and so I just, we stopped paying, like during the pandemic, like, June, June of last year, we were like, oh, we're going to take a break. And then we paid somebody to help us for it to make kind of reset it up. But I just had to spend down so much. I was like, you know what, I'm going to turn off for a bit.And yeah, that's been like,[01:00:17] Nathan:Didn't really miss it.[01:00:18] Matthew:Yeah, I looked at the numbers recently cause I was thinking, should we do it? And it's not that big of a difference of just doing it organically on like Instagram stories or just on the page. Right. And I also don't really like giving money to the Zuckerberg empire of VO. I just not a fan of that business.And so like, I know my ad spend is low, but I can't say just. On a rod number. Like it wasn't that big of a deal. Like, you know, like, cause the CPMs were so high, we were having to pay a lot of money. So like we put in like two grand a month and we weren't getting thousands. We getting hundreds of people, you know, I want four for two grand.I want thousands of people.[01:01:06] Nathan:Yeah. For my local newsletter, we're doing paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram and averaging about $2 per subscriber. And that I think now that's considered pretty good. You'd like a lot of, with a broader audience, you'd be at $3 or more per subscriber and it gets expensive pretty fast.[01:01:23] Matthew:Yeah. I mean, but I think at some point you'll just see such diminishing returns that, you know, I mean, how many people are in Boise, can you hit, you know, over and over again?Right.[01:01:35] Nathan:Yep.[01:01:36] Matthew:I, I was just reading Seth Godin's book. This is Marketing. And he said, you know, they talked about ads.You turned off ads when the Content says turn ‘em off. And my Content, I was like, you know, they're not really paying for themselves.[01:01:50] Nathan:Yeah. Let's see. Yeah. You turn that off. Looking forward, maybe like two or three years is that I think your business has fascinating of the approach that you have of taking an online audience, building a real team around it, and then building it into the in-person community. what do you think the business is going to look like in two, three years?Where, where is revenue coming from? What's your vision for the events and meetups and what are the things that like over that time period, they get really excited.[01:02:19] Matthew:Yeah. Two, three years. So we're talking, you know, 20 by 20, 23, most of our revenue coming from stuff in person, you know, having chapters around the world, people pay to go to them. So, you know, it it's like 10 bucks and you can bring your friends for free, right. So it's like five bucks versus. Just for the cost of like hosting events.Right. doing lots of that, doing tours, we're bringing back. and they won't be just with me cause they're community events. Right. So we'll have guides, right. So it's not just, you're coming to travel with me, sort of what Rick, Steve does. Right. You go on and Rick Steves tour, it's his itinerary, but he's not on the tour.Right. He shows up to a couple of them throughout the season when it's not like you don't expect him to be your guide at the time. So moving to that, having a consumer event for like, like a, like a world domination summit, you know, a weekend somewhere just for travel consumers, having an app for both having an app for that company. then online just being a lot of and affiliates and you know, even me. Just even taking away just having this like passive income course, just because, you know, one less thing to worry about. Right.And then travel con, so being around, but actually making money this time.[01:03:47] Nathan:Do you think travel con is going to turn into, I mean, obviously it's a significant amount of revenue, but the expenses are so high. Do you think it will turn into a profitable business[01:03:56] Matthew:Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, a lot of the unprofitability is just comes from the fact that I had no idea where that was doing.[01:04:02] Nathan:Yeah, I know that firsthand from my own conference, so yeah.[01:04:07] Matthew:It was, I didn't realize how quickly expenses gets that. Right. You know, being like, oh, okay. Like my food and beverage budget is 120,000 writing that in there. And then getting $145,000 bill because, oh yeah, it's 120,000 food, but then there's tax fees, which we, you know, all this stuff and like, Okay, well, that's $25,000 off the profit.Right. and so with a better handle of expenses, like we were definitely like this year, we were gonna like reg even, you know, at the very minimum, we'll pre COVID and this year we'll also break break event. Um it's and just keeping a handle on, you know, like, well, how will I don't invite a hundred speakers, you know?And, and be like, oh, I had planned to only budget, you know, 50,000 speaker fees, but now I'm at 80. Okay. Like, handling the cost better. We're good. Now I have a professional events team that kind of slaps me around and it's like, can't spend that money.[01:05:06] Nathan:I know how it is, where I'm like, Hey, what if, and then just like, now[01:05:10] Matthew:Yeah,[01:05:10] Nathan:Love it, but no,[01:05:12] Matthew:Yeah,[01:05:12] Nathan:Don't like, you don't have the budget for it.[01:05:15] Matthew:Yeah. But no, I mean, you know, we used to have a party. And we're getting rid of the second night party because people don't want to go. Like we didn't have a lot of people show up cause like they're out and about on town. So it's like, wow, I just spent, you know, $40,000 for like a third of the conference to come, you know, why not take that money and use it to something that's more valuable for everybody that has more like impact for dollar spent and still not like go over budget.You know, same thing with lunches. We got, we were getting rid of, we're doing one lunch now.You know, cause people don't really care that much, you know, about in[01:06:01] Nathan:Yeah, it's super interesting.Well, I love the vision of where the conference is going, and particularly just the way that the whole community interplays. I think it's been fun watching you figure out what you want your business model to be, because obviously, with a large audience, your business model can be any one of a hundred different variations.I like that you keep iterating on it, and figuring out the community.[01:06:26] Matthew:Yeah, we're definitely going

Bill Frost (SLUGMag.com & X96 Radio From Hell) and Tommy Milagro (SlamWrestling.net) talk Listener Mailbag: The Million Little Things saga recontinues. Michael Che: Shame the Devil, Tiger King 2, Marvel's Hit-Monkey, Music Box: Jagged, Star Trek: Discovery, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Psych 3: This is Gus, The Wheel of Time, Cowboy Bebop, The Great, Saturday Night Live, Yellowstone, Rasslin' News, Bill's new SLUGMag.com Content Shifter column, and What to Watch Harder this week (Dexter: New Blood, Chucky, Ghosts, Guilty Party, Invasion, Acapulco, Inside Job, American Rust, The Freak Brothers, and Succession). Drinking: Huckleberry Lemonade in a can from OFFICIAL TV Tan sponsor Porter's Whiskeys and Ogden's Own. * Yell at us: @TVTanPodcast Twitter, Facebook, Gmail.* Rate us: Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Podcasts, Audible, etc.

The nature of medical practice dictates that we will have tough cases. Patients will die, we will have to deliver bad news, and we will, at some point, make mistakes. We have high expectations of ourselves so when we get figuratively knocked down, how do we get back up? In this episode, performance coach Jason Brooks guides us through strategies for dealing with the emotional and intellectual fallout of a bad case as well as how to re-engage during a shift when the last thing we feel like doing is seeing the next patient.   Guest bio:  Jason Brooks Ph.D. is a performance coach helping healthcare providers, athletes, and other high-level performers live better, work better, and be better. Check him out at Phenomenal Docs and connect with Jason: Facebook, Twitter, email doctorjbro@Gmail.com We discuss: The fact that no matter how good you are in your medical practice, you are not immune to a bad outcome [02:20]; How to manage the sense of failure and the anxiety that naturally occurs when you're faced with the same situation again [04:00]; The importance of getting prepared ahead of time and expecting bad things to happen [06:00]; Channeling the experience into something positive [08:25]; Learning to live with and honor these experiences, rather than dread them [10:00]; Drawing a lesson from a bad event and making a commitment to apply that lesson [16:30]; The value of talking to someone who is able to receive your emotional turmoil in the immediate aftermath of a bad outcome [18:40]; Why we shouldn't think of it as “bouncing back” from a terrible outcome [23:00]; What do you do when you've had a bad outcome, but you don't have the time to process what's happened before your next shift [29:00]; The importance of having a process that you can trust to be effective in helping you shift your attention back to where it needs to be [32:25]; And more. For previous episodes, detailed show notes, or to sign up for our newsletter: https://www.stimuluspodcast.com/. This podcast streams free on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Interested in one-on-one coaching? https://www.stimuluspodcast.com/coaching Follow Rob:  Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.

The nature of medical practice dictates that we will have tough cases. Patients will die, we will have to deliver bad news, and we will, at some point, make mistakes. We have high expectations of ourselves so when we get figuratively knocked down, how do we get back up? In this episode, performance coach Jason Brooks guides us through strategies for dealing with the emotional and intellectual fallout of a bad case as well as how to re-engage during a shift when the last thing we feel like doing is seeing the next patient.   Guest bio:  Jason Brooks Ph.D. is a performance coach helping healthcare providers, athletes, and other high-level performers live better, work better, and be better. Check him out at Phenomenal Docs and connect with Jason: Facebook, Twitter, email doctorjbro@Gmail.com We discuss: The fact that no matter how good you are in your medical practice, you are not immune to a bad outcome [02:20]; How to manage the sense of failure and the anxiety that naturally occurs when you're faced with the same situation again [04:00]; The importance of getting prepared ahead of time and expecting bad things to happen [06:00]; Channeling the experience into something positive [08:25]; Learning to live with and honor these experiences, rather than dread them [10:00]; Drawing a lesson from a bad event and making a commitment to apply that lesson [16:30]; The value of talking to someone who is able to receive your emotional turmoil in the immediate aftermath of a bad outcome [18:40]; Why we shouldn't think of it as “bouncing back” from a terrible outcome [23:00]; What do you do when you've had a bad outcome, but you don't have the time to process what's happened before your next shift [29:00]; The importance of having a process that you can trust to be effective in helping you shift your attention back to where it needs to be [32:25]; And more. For previous episodes, detailed show notes, or to sign up for our newsletter: https://www.stimuluspodcast.com/. This podcast streams free on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Interested in one-on-one coaching? https://www.stimuluspodcast.com/coaching Follow Rob:  Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.

Joy's HP laptop is overheating and is trying to figure out why it's doing that? She tried taking it to a tech support service, and the technician didn't seem to want to help... Rod has a Windows 10 Pro computer and created a Microsoft account. But he's now looking to change his email address and sever all ties to the old email account. How can he do this? Paul has a Pixel 4a phone that he's using to scan books. However with larger books and the Pixel 5a it's causing the images to be distorted. What can he do about that? Ed is blind and uses Siri on the iPhone to help him read stuff, but lately Siri has stopped doing that. What can he do about that? Richard is calling in to see about creating additional tags & labels in his Gmail account. Anne's iPhone 8 has been skipping notifications whenever something happens and seems to be only getting notified when she's in the Messages app. What gives? Plus Chris Marquardt gives some examples about the current assignment "Clear," and Rod Pyle talks about some conferences he attended the past week & some space news! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Chris Marquardt and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: UserWay.org/twit wealthfront.com/twit hover.com/twit

Joy's HP laptop is overheating and is trying to figure out why it's doing that? She tried taking it to a tech support service, and the technician didn't seem to want to help... Rod has a Windows 10 Pro computer and created a Microsoft account. But he's now looking to change his email address and sever all ties to the old email account. How can he do this? Paul has a Pixel 4a phone that he's using to scan books. However with larger books and the Pixel 5a it's causing the images to be distorted. What can he do about that? Ed is blind and uses Siri on the iPhone to help him read stuff, but lately Siri has stopped doing that. What can he do about that? Richard is calling in to see about creating additional tags & labels in his Gmail account. Anne's iPhone 8 has been skipping notifications whenever something happens and seems to be only getting notified when she's in the Messages app. What gives? Plus Chris Marquardt gives some examples about the current assignment "Clear," and Rod Pyle talks about some conferences he attended the past week & some space news! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Chris Marquardt and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: UserWay.org/twit wealthfront.com/twit hover.com/twit

Joy's HP laptop is overheating and is trying to figure out why it's doing that? She tried taking it to a tech support service, and the technician didn't seem to want to help... Rod has a Windows 10 Pro computer and created a Microsoft account. But he's now looking to change his email address and sever all ties to the old email account. How can he do this? Paul has a Pixel 4a phone that he's using to scan books. However with larger books and the Pixel 5a it's causing the images to be distorted. What can he do about that? Ed is blind and uses Siri on the iPhone to help him read stuff, but lately Siri has stopped doing that. What can he do about that? Richard is calling in to see about creating additional tags & labels in his Gmail account. Anne's iPhone 8 has been skipping notifications whenever something happens and seems to be only getting notified when she's in the Messages app. What gives? Plus Chris Marquardt gives some examples about the current assignment "Clear," and Rod Pyle talks about some conferences he attended the past week & some space news! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Chris Marquardt and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: UserWay.org/twit wealthfront.com/twit hover.com/twit

Joy's HP laptop is overheating and is trying to figure out why it's doing that? She tried taking it to a tech support service, and the technician didn't seem to want to help... Rod has a Windows 10 Pro computer and created a Microsoft account. But he's now looking to change his email address and sever all ties to the old email account. How can he do this? Paul has a Pixel 4a phone that he's using to scan books. However with larger books and the Pixel 5a it's causing the images to be distorted. What can he do about that? Ed is blind and uses Siri on the iPhone to help him read stuff, but lately Siri has stopped doing that. What can he do about that? Richard is calling in to see about creating additional tags & labels in his Gmail account. Anne's iPhone 8 has been skipping notifications whenever something happens and seems to be only getting notified when she's in the Messages app. What gives? Plus Chris Marquardt gives some examples about the current assignment "Clear," and Rod Pyle talks about some conferences he attended the past week & some space news! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Chris Marquardt and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: UserWay.org/twit wealthfront.com/twit hover.com/twit

Joy's HP laptop is overheating and is trying to figure out why it's doing that? She tried taking it to a tech support service, and the technician didn't seem to want to help... Rod has a Windows 10 Pro computer and created a Microsoft account. But he's now looking to change his email address and sever all ties to the old email account. How can he do this? Paul has a Pixel 4a phone that he's using to scan books. However with larger books and the Pixel 5a it's causing the images to be distorted. What can he do about that? Ed is blind and uses Siri on the iPhone to help him read stuff, but lately Siri has stopped doing that. What can he do about that? Richard is calling in to see about creating additional tags & labels in his Gmail account. Anne's iPhone 8 has been skipping notifications whenever something happens and seems to be only getting notified when she's in the Messages app. What gives? Plus Chris Marquardt gives some examples about the current assignment "Clear," and Rod Pyle talks about some conferences he attended the past week & some space news! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Chris Marquardt and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: UserWay.org/twit wealthfront.com/twit hover.com/twit

In this episode, Dr's J and Santhosh discuss the eradicated disease, smallpox. Along the way, they cover oneismus and the boston outbreak, ancient chinese variolation, medical etymology, edward jenners milkmaids, supply chain orphans, The Royal Philanthropic vaccine expedition, Sledgehammer smallpox, the final fatality and more! So Sit back and relax as we delve into the details of this destroyed diseaseFurther Readinghttps://www.history.com/news/smallpox-vaccine-onesimus-slave-cotton-matherhttps://pmj.bmj.com/content/84/997/599 Support Us spiritually, emotionally or financially here! Twitter: @doctorjcomedy @toshyfro Instagram: @travelmedicinepodcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/28uQe3cYGrTLhP6X0zyEhTFacebook: facebook.com/travelmedicinepodcast Squarespace: travelmedicinepodcast.squarespace.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/travelmedicinepodcast Gmail: travelmedicineinfo@gmail.com

Lap dances that turn into WWE wrestling moves, gay guys crying because they got turned down at the bar, and being fat now ties to one's gender. It's time for a roast, and no one is off-limits. Owen Shroyer, host of the "War Room," joins the show to laugh, cringe, and roast the people our society would deem “healthy” and normal.  ________________________________________________________________ ⇩ TODAY'S SPONSORS ⇩ UNDERTAC: Men are being inundated with over-priced boxers, designed for testosterone deficient men, but here at Slightly Offens*ve we demand more. That's why we trust UnderTac. Head to http://www.getundertac.com/ for 20% off with the offer code OFFENSIVE20. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. START MAIL: Free email services like Gmail and Yahoo aren't really free, you actually pay with your privacy! Use the email service trusted by the Slightly Offens*ve team to encrypt and protect your emails. Go to https://www.startmail.com/en/offensive/ for 50% off your first year! RELIEFBAND: Politics making you nauseas? Yeah us too...that is until we found Reliefband. Reliefband is a 100% drug free, non-drowsy band that helps relieve nausea and anxiety. If you go to https://www.reliefband.com/ and use promo code OFFENSIVE you'll get 20% off plus free shipping and a 30-day money back guarantee. Get yours now! ________________________________________________________________ Become a subscriber at BlazeTV https://get.blazetv.com/slightly-offensive/ use my code "ELIJAH" to get $10 off a full year ________________________________________________________________ Slightly Offens*ve Merch: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/elijah-schaffer ________________________________________________________________ ⇩ FOLLOW OWEN SHROYER ⇩ RADIO SHOW: https://banned.video/channel/war-room-with-owen-shroyer SUBSCRIBESTAR: https://www.subscribestar.com/owen-shroyer ______________________________________________________________ ➤BOOKINGS/INQUIRIES: ELIJAH@SLIGHTLYOFFENSIVE.COM _________________________________________________________________ ⇩ SOCIAL MEDIA ⇩ ➤ ELI'S LINKTREE https://linktr.ee/elijahschaffer ➤ SAV'S LINKTREE https://linktr.ee/savsays ➤ INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/slightlyoffensive.tv ➤ PARLER https://parler.com/profile/Elijahschaffer/posts ➤ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer ➤ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/officialslightlyoffensive _________________________________________________________________ The Idea Of A Free Society...For Kids! Head to https://teachrealprinciples.com for a unique book series that introduces the important ideas that schools no longer teach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

La escasez de componentes se hace más real que nunca / Huobi se instala en Gibraltar / Ratifican multa a Google / Surface Laptop barata / Seda tecnológica para reducir el calor / YouTube oculta los votos negativos Patrocinador: Pásate a TotalEnergies https://www.totalenergies.es/es/hogares y reduce tu factura de la luz y del gas. En su web https://www.totalenergies.es/es/hogares podrás ver directamente cuánto podrás ahorrar. Tienen un servicio de atención al cliente gratuito y con personas que te entienden. Si te apuntas estos días te ahorrarás un 10% extra en el precio de tu factura https://www.totalenergies.es/es/hogares. La escasez de componentes se hace más real que nunca / Huobi se instala en Gibraltar / Ratifican multa a Google / Surface Laptop barata / Seda tecnológica para reducir el calor / YouTube oculta los votos negativos

About RichardHe's also an instructor at Pluralsight, a frequent public speaker, and the author of multiple books on software design and development. Richard maintains a regularly updated blog (seroter.com) on topics of architecture and solution design and can be found on Twitter as @rseroter. Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/rseroter LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seroter Seroter.com: https://seroter.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats v-u-l-t-r.com slash screaming.Corey: You know how git works right?Announcer: Sorta, kinda, not really Please ask someone else!Corey: Thats all of us. Git is how we build things, and Netlify is one of the best way I've found to build those things quickly for the web. Netlify's git based workflows mean you don't have to play slap and tickle with integrating arcane non-sense and web hooks, which are themselves about as well understood as git. Give them a try and see what folks ranging from my fake Twitter for pets startup, to global fortune 2000 companies are raving about. If you end up talking to them, because you don't have to, they get why self service is important—but if you do, be sure to tell them that I sent you and watch all of the blood drain from their faces instantly. You can find them in the AWS marketplace or at www.netlify.com. N-E-T-L-I-F-Y.comCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Once upon a time back in the days of VH1, which was like MTV except it played music videos, would have a show that was, “Where are they now?” Looking at former celebrities. I will not use the term washed up because that's going to be insulting to my guest.Richard Seroter is a returning guest here on Screaming in the Cloud. We spoke to him a year ago when he was brand new in his role at Google as director of outbound product management. At that point, he basically had stars in his eyes and was aspirational around everything he wanted to achieve. And now it's a year later and he has clearly failed because it's Google. So, outbound products are clearly the things that they are going to be deprecating, and in the past year, I am unaware of a single Google Cloud product that has been outright deprecated. Richard, thank you for joining me, and what do you have to say for yourself?Richard: Yeah, “Where are they now?” I feel like I'm the Leif Garrett of cloud here, joining you. So yes, I'm still here, I'm still alive. A little grayer after twelve months in, but happy to be here chatting cloud, chatting whatever else with you.Corey: I joke a little bit about, “Oh, Google winds up killing things.” And let's be clear, your consumer division which, you know, Google is prone to that. And understanding a company's org chart is a challenge. A year or two ago, I was of the opinion that I didn't need to know anything about Google Cloud because it would probably be deprecated before I really had to know about it. My opinion has evolved considerably based upon a number of things I'm seeing from Google.Let's be clear here, I'm not saying this to shine you on or anything like that; it's instead that I've seen some interesting things coming out of Google that I consider to be the right moves. One example of that is publicly signing multiple ten-year deals with very large, serious institutions like Deutsche Bank, and others. Okay, you don't generally sign contracts with companies of that scale and intend not to live up to them. You're hiring Forrest Brazeal as your head of content for Google Cloud, which is not something you should do lightly, and not something that is a short-term play in any respect. And the customer experience has continued to improve; Google Cloud products have not gotten worse, and I'm seeing in my own customer conversations that discussions about Google Cloud have become significantly less dismissive than they were over the past year. Please go ahead and claim credit for all of that.Richard: Yeah. I mean, the changes a year ago when I joined. So, Thomas Kurian has made a huge impact on some of that. You saw us launch the enterprise APIs thing a while back, which was, “Hey, here's, for the most part, every one of our products that has a fixed API. We're not going to deprecate it without a year's notice, whatever it is. We're not going to make certain types of changes.” Maybe that feels like, “Well, you should have had that before.” All right, all we can do is improve things moving forward. So, I think that was a good change.Corey: Oh, I agree. I think that was a great thing to do. You had something like 80-some-odd percent coverage of Google Cloud services, and great, that's going to only increase with time, I can imagine. But I got a little pushback from a few Googlers for not being more congratulatory towards them for doing this, and look, it's a great thing. Don't get me wrong, but you don't exactly get a whole lot of bonus points and kudos and positive press coverage—not that I'm press—for doing the thing you should have been doing [laugh] all along.It's, “This is great. This is necessary.” And it demonstrates a clear awareness that there was—rightly or wrongly—a perception issue around the platform's longevity and that you've gone significantly out of your way to wind up addressing that in ways that go far beyond just yelling at people on Twitter they don't understand the true philosophy of Google Cloud, which is the right thing to do.Richard: Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, look, the consumer side is very experimental in a lot of cases. I still mourn Google Reader. Like, those things don't matter—Corey: As do we all.Richard: Of course. So, I get that. Google Cloud—and of course we have the same cultural thing, but at the same time, there's a lifecycle management that's different in Google Cloud. We do not deprecate products that much. You know, enterprises make decade-long bets. I can't be swap—changing databases or just turning off messaging things. Instead, we're building a core set of things and making them better.So, I like the fact that we have a pretty stable portfolio that keeps getting a little bit bigger. Not crazy bigger; I like that we're not just throwing everything out there saying, “Rock on.” We have some opinions. But I think that's been a positive trend, customers seem to like that we're making these long-term bets. We're not going anywhere for a long time and our earnings quarter after quarter shows it—boy, this will actually be a profitable business pretty soon.Corey: Oh, yeah. People love to make hay, and by people, I stretch the term slightly and talk about, “Investment analysts say that Google Cloud is terrible because at your last annual report you're losing something like $5 billion a year on Google Cloud.” And everyone looked at me strangely, when I said, “No, this is terrific. What that means is that they're investing in the platform.” Because let's be clear, folks at Google tend to be intelligent, by and large, or at least intelligent enough that they're not going to start selling cloud services for less than it costs to run them.So yeah, it is clearly an investment in the platform and growth of it. The only way it should be turning a profit at this point is if there's no more room to invest that money back into growing the platform, given your market position. I think that's a terrific thing, and I'm not worried at all about it losing money. I don't think anyone should be.Richard: Yeah, I mean, strategically, look, this doesn't have to be the same type of moneymaker that even some other clouds have to be to their portfolio. Look, this is an important part, but you look at those ten-year deals that we've been signing: when you look at Univision, that's a YouTube partnership; you look at Ford that had to do with Android Auto; you look at these others, this is where us being also a consumer and enterprise SaaS company is interesting because this isn't just who's cranking out the best IaaS. I mean, that can be boring stuff over time. It's like, who's actually doing the stuff that maybe makes a traditional company more interesting because they partner on some of those SaaS services. So, those are the sorts of deals and those sorts of arrangements where cloud needs to be awesome, and successful, and make money, doesn't need to be the biggest revenue generator for Google.Corey: So, when we first started talking, you were newly minted as a director of outbound product management. And now, you are not the only one, there are apparently 60 of you there, and I'm no closer to understanding what the role encompasses. What is your remit? Where do you start? Where do you stop?Richard: Yeah, that's a good question. So, there's outbound product management teams, mostly associated with the portfolio area. So network, storage, AI, analytics, database, compute, application modernization-y sort of stuff—which is what I cover—containers, dev tools, serverless. Basically, I am helping make sure the market understands the product and the product understands the market. And not to be totally glib, but a lot of that is, we are amplification.I'm amplifying product out to market, analysts, field people, partners: “Do you understand this thing? Can I help you put this in context?” But then really importantly, I'm trying to help make sure we're also amplifying the market back to our product teams. You're getting real customer feedback: “Do you know what that analyst thinks? Have you heard what happened in the competitive space?”And so sometimes companies seem to miss that, and PMs poke their head up when I'm about to plan a product or I'm about to launch a product because I need some feedback. But keeping that constant pulse on the market, on customers, on what's going on, I think that can be a secret weapon. I'm not sure everybody does that.Corey: Spending as much time as I do on bills, admittedly AWS bills, but this is a pattern that tends to unfold across every provider I've seen. The keynotes are chock-full of awesome managed service announcements, things that are effectively turnkey at further up the stack levels, but the bills invariably look a lot more like, yeah, we spend a bit of money on that and then we run 10,000 virtual instances in a particular environment and we just treat it like it's an extension of our data center. And that's not exciting; that's not fun, quote-unquote, but it's absolutely what customers are doing and I'm not going to sit here and tell them that they're wrong for doing it. That is the hallmark of a terrible consultant of, “I don't understand why you're doing what you're doing, so it must be foolish.” How about you stop and gain some context into why customers do the things that they do?Richard: No, I send around a goofy newsletter every week to a thousand or two people, just on things I'm learning from the field, from customers, trying to make sure we're just thinking bigger. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an idea about modernization is awesome, and I love when people upgrade their software. By the way, most people migration is a heck of a lot easier than if I can just get this into your cloud, yeah love that; that's not the most interesting thing, to move VMs around, but most people in their budget, don't have time to rewrite every Java app to go. Everybody's not changing .NET framework to .NET core.Like, who do I think everybody is? No, I just need to try to get some incremental value first. Yes, then hopefully I'll swap out my self-managed SQL database for a Spanner or a managed service. Of course, I want all of that, but this idea that I can turn my line of business loan processing app into a thousand functions overnight is goofy. So, how are we instead thinking more pragmatically about migration, and then modernizing some of it? But even that sort of mindset, look, Google thinks about innovation modernization first. So, also just trying to help us take a step back and go, “Gosh, what is the normal path? Well, it's a lot of migration first, some modernization, and then there's some steady-state work there.”Corey: One of the things that surprised me the most about Google Cloud in the market, across the board, has been the enthusiastic uptake for enterprise workloads. And by enterprise workloads, I'm talking about things like SAP HANA is doing a whole bunch of deployments there; we're talking Big Iron-style enterprise-y things that, let's be honest, countervene most of the philosophy that Google has always held and espoused publicly, at least on conference stages, about how software should be built. And I thought that would cut against them and make it very difficult for you folks to gain headway in that market and I could not have been more wrong. I'm talking to large enterprises who are enthusiastically talking about Google Cloud. I've got a level with you, compared to a year or two ago, I don't recognize the place.Richard: Mmm. I mean, some of that, honestly, in the conversations I have, and whatever I do a handful of customer calls every week, I think folks still want something familiar, but you're looking for maybe a further step on some of it. And that means, like, yes, is everybody going to offer VMs? Yeah, of course. Is everyone going to have MySQL? Obviously.But if I'm an enterprise and I'm doing these generational bets, can I cheat a little bit, and maybe if I partner with a more of an innovation partner versus maybe just the easy next step, am I buying some more relevance for the long-term? So, am I getting into environment that has some really cool native zero-trust stuff? Am I getting into environment with global backend services and I'm not just stitching together a bunch of regional stuff? How can I cheat by using a more innovation vendor versus just lifting and shifting to what feels like hosted software in another cloud? I'm seeing more of that because these migrations are tough; nobody should be just randomly switching clouds. That's insane.So, can I make, maybe, one of these big bets with somebody who feels like they might actually even improve my business as a whole because I can work with Google Pay and improve how I do mobile payments, or I could do something here with Android? Or, heck, all my developers are using Angular and Flutter; aren't I going to get some benefit from working with Google? So, we're seeing that, kind of, add-on effect of, “Maybe this is a place not just to host my VMs, but to take a generational leap.”Corey: And I think that you're positioning yourselves in a way to do it. Again, talk about things that you wouldn't have expected to come out of Google of all places, but your console experience has been first-rate and has been for a while. The developer experience is awesome; I don't need to learn the intricacies of 12 different services for what I'm trying to do just in order to get something basic up and running. I can stop all the random little billing things in my experimental project with a single click, which that admittedly has a confirm, which you kind of want. But it lets you reason about these things.It lets you get started building something, and there's a consistency and cohesiveness to the console that, again, I am not a graphic designer, by any stretch of the imagination. My most commonly used user interface is a green-screen shell prompt, and then I'm using Vim to wind up writing something horrifying, ideally in Python, but more often in YAML. And that has been my experience, but just clicking around the console, it's clear that there was significant thought put into the design, the user experience, and the way of approaching folks who are starting to look very different, from a user persona perspective.Richard: I can—I mean, I love our user research team; they're actually fun to hang out with and watch what they do, but you have to remember, Google as a company, I don't know, cloud is the first thing we had to sell. Did have to sell Gmail. I remember 15 years ago, people were waiting for invites. And who buys Maps or who buys YouTube? For the most part, we've had to build things that were naturally interesting and easy-to-use because otherwise, you would just switch to anything else because everything was free.So, some of that does infuse Google Cloud, “Let's just make this really easy to use. And let's just make sure that, maybe, you don't hate yourself when you're done jumping into a shell from the middle of the console.” It's like, that should be really easy to do—or upgrade a database, or make changes to things. So, I think some of the things we've learned from the consumer good side, have made their way to how we think of UX and design because maybe this stuff shouldn't be terrible.Corey: There's a trope going around, where I wound up talking about the next million cloud customers. And I'm going to have to write a sequel to it because it turns out that I've made a fundamental error, in that I've accepted the narrative that all of the large cloud vendors are pushing, to the point where I heard from so many folks I just accepted it unthinkingly and uncritically, and that's not what I should be doing. And we'll get to what I was wrong about in a minute, but the thinking goes that the next big growth area is large enterprises, specifically around corporate IT. And those are folks who are used to managing things in a GUI environment—which is fine—and clicking around in web apps. Now, it's easy to sit here on our high horse and say, “Oh, you should learn to write code,” or YAML, which is basically code. Cool.As an individual, I agree, someone should because as soon as they do that, they are now able to go out and take that skill to a more lucrative role. The company then has to backfill someone into the role that they just got promoted out of, and the company still has that dependency. And you cannot succeed in that market with a philosophy of, “Oh, you built something in the console. Now, throw it away and do it right.” Because that is maddening to that user persona. Rightfully so.I'm not that user persona and I find it maddening when I have to keep tripping over that particular thing. How did that come to be, from your perspective? First, do you think that is where the next million cloud customers come from? And have I adequately captured that user persona, or am I completely often the weeds somewhere?Richard: I mean, I shared your post internally when that one came out because that resonated with me of how we were thinking about it. Again, it's easy to think about the cloud-native operators, it's Spotify doing something amazing, or this team at Twitter doing something, or whatever. And it's not even to be disparaging. Like, look, I spent five years in enterprise IT and I was surrounded by operators who had to run dozen different systems; they weren't dedicated to just this thing or that. So, what are the tools that make my life easy?A lot of software just comes with UIs for quick install and upgrades, and how does that logic translate to this cloud world? I think that stuff does matter. How are you meeting these people a little better where they are? I think the hard part that we will always have in every cloud provider is—I think you've said this in different forums, but how do I not sometimes rub the data center on my cloud or vice versa? I also don't want to change the experience so much where I degrade it over the long term, I've actually somehow done something worse.So, can I meet those people where they are? Can we pull some of those experiences in, but not accidentally do something that kind of messes up the cloud experience? I mean, that's a fine line to walk. Does that make sense to you? Do you see where there's a… I don't know, you could accidentally cater to a certain audience too much, and change the experience for the worse?Corey: Yes, and no. My philosophy on it is that you have to meet customers where they are, but only to a point. At some point, what they're asking for becomes actively harmful or disadvantageous to wind up providing for them. “I want you to run my data center for me,” is on some level what some cloud environments look like, and I'm not going to sit here and tell people they're inherently wrong for that. Their big reason for moving to the cloud was because they keep screwing up replacing failed hard drives in their data center, so we're going to put it in the cloud.Is it more expensive that way? Well, sure in terms of actual cash outlay, it almost certainly is, but they're also not going down every month when a drive fails, so once the value of that? It's a capability story. That becomes interesting to me, and I think that trying to sit here in isolation, and say that, “Oh, this application is not how we would build it at Google.” And it's, “Yeah, you're Google. They are insert an entire universe of different industries that look nothing whatsoever like Google.” The constraints are different, the resources are different, and—Richard: Sure.Corey: —their approach to problem-solving are different. When you built out Google, and even when you're building out Google Cloud, look at some of the oldest craftiest stuff you have in your entire all of Google environment, and then remember that there are companies out there that are hundreds of years old. It's a different order of magnitude as far as era, as far as understanding of what's in the environment, and that's okay. It's a very broad and very diverse world.Richard: Yeah. I mean, that's, again, why I've been thinking more about migration than even some of the modernization piece. Should you bring your network architecture from on-prem to the cloud? I mean, I think most cases, no. But I understand sometimes that edge firewall, internal trust model you had on-prem, okay, trying to replicate that.So, yeah, like you say, I want to meet people where they are. Can we at least find some strategic leverage points to upgrade aspects of things as you get to a cloud, to save you from yourself in some places because all of a sudden, you have ten regions and you only had one data center before. So, many more rooms for mistakes. Where are the right guardrails? We're probably more opinionated than others at Google Cloud.I don't really apologize for that completely, but I understand. I mean, I think we've loosened up a lot more than maybe people [laugh] would have thought a few years ago, from being hyper-opinionated on how you run software.Corey: I will actually push back a bit on the idea that you should not replicate your on-premises data center in your cloud environment. Sure, are there more optimal ways to do it that are arguably more secure? Absolutely. But a common failure mode in moving from data center to cloud is, “All right, we're going to start embracing this entirely new cloud networking paradigm.” And it is confusing, and your team that knows how the data center network works really well are suddenly in way over their heads, and they're inadvertently exposing things they don't intend to or causing issues.The hard part is always people, not technology. So, when I glance at an environment and see things like that, perfect example, are there more optimal ways to do it? Oh, from a technology perspective, absolutely. How many engineers are working on that? What's their skill set? What's their position on all this? What else are they working on? Because you're never going to find a team of folks who are world-class experts in every cloud? It doesn't work that way.Richard: No doubt. No doubt, you're right. There's areas where we have to at least have something that's going to look similar, let you replicate aspects of it. I think it's—it'll just be interesting to watch, and I have enough conversations with customers who do ask, “Hey, where are the places we should make certain changes as we evolve?” And maybe they are tactical, and they're not going to be the big strategic redesign their entire thing. But it is good to see people not just trying to shovel everything from one place to the next.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by something new. Cloud Academy is a training platform built on two primary goals. Having the highest quality content in tech and cloud skills, and building a good community the is rich and full of IT and engineering professionals. You wouldn't think those things go together, but sometimes they do. Its both useful for individuals and large enterprises, but here's what makes it new. I don't use that term lightly. Cloud Academy invites you to showcase just how good your AWS skills are. For the next four weeks you'll have a chance to prove yourself. Compete in four unique lab challenges, where they'll be awarding more than $2000 in cash and prizes. I'm not kidding, first place is a thousand bucks. Pre-register for the first challenge now, one that I picked out myself on Amazon SNS image resizing, by visiting cloudacademy.com/corey. C-O-R-E-Y. That's cloudacademy.com/corey. We're gonna have some fun with this one!Corey: Now, to follow up on what I was saying earlier, what I think I've gotten wrong by accepting the industry talking points on is that the next million cloud customers are big enterprises moving from data centers into the cloud. There's money there, don't get me wrong, but there is a larger opportunity in empowering the creation of companies in your environment. And this is what certain large competitors of yours get very wrong, where it's we're going to launch a whole bunch of different services that you get to build yourself from popsicle sticks. Great. That is not useful.But companies that are trying to do interesting things, or people who want to found companies to do interesting things, want something that looks a lot more turnkey. If you are going to be building cloud offerings, that for example, are terrific building blocks for SaaS companies, then it behooves you to do actual investments, rather than just a generic credit offer, into spurring the creation of those types of companies. If you want to build a company that does payroll systems, in a SaaS, cloud way, “Partner with us. Do it here. We will give you a bunch of credits. We will introduce you to your first ten prospective customers.”And effectively actually invest in a company success, as opposed to pitch-deck invest, which is, “Yeah, we'll give you some discounting and some credits, and that's our quote-unquote, ‘investment.'” actually be there with them as a partner. And that's going to take years for folks to wrap their heads around, but I feel like that is the opportunity that is significantly larger, even than the embedded existing IT space because rather than fighting each other for slices of the pie, I'm much more interested in expanding that pie overall. One of my favorite questions to get asked because I think it is so profoundly missing the point is, “Do you think it's possible for Google to go from number three to number two,” or whatever the number happens to be at some point, and my honest, considered answer is, “Who gives a shit?” Because number three, or number five, or number twelve—it doesn't matter to me—is still how many hundreds of billions of dollars in the fullness of time. Let's be real for a minute here; the total addressable market is expanding faster than any cloud or clouds are going to be able to capture all of.Richard: Yeah. Hey, look, whoever who'll be more profitable solving user problems, I really don't care about the final revenue number. I can be the number one cloud tomorrow by making Google Cloud free. What's the point? That's not a sustainable business. So, if you're just going for who can deploy the most VCPUs or who can deploy the most whatever, there's ways to game that. I want to make sure we are just uniquely solving problems better than anybody else.Corey: Sorry, forgive me. I just sort of zoned out for a second there because I'm just so taken aback and shocked by the idea of someone working at a large cloud provider who expresses a philosophy that isn't lying awake at night fretting over the possibility of someone who isn't them as making money somewhere.Richard: [laugh]. I mean, your idea there, it'll be interesting to watch, kind of, the maker's approach of are you enabling that next round of startups, the next round of people who want to take—I mean, honestly, I like the things we're doing building block-wise, even with our AI: we're not just handing you a vision API, we're giving you a loan processing AI that can process certain types of docs, that more packaged version of AI. Same with healthcare, same with whatever. I can imagine certain startups or a company idea going, “Hey, maybe I could disrupt or serve a new market.”I always love what Square did. They've disrupted emerging markets, small merchants here in North America, wherever, where I didn't need a big expensive point of sale system. You just gave me the nice, right building blocks to disrupt and run my business. Maybe Google Cloud can continue to provide better building blocks, but I do like your idea of actually investment zones, getting part of this. Maybe the next million users are founders and it's not just getting into some of these companies with, frankly, 10, 20, 30,000 people in IT.I think there's still plenty of room in these big enterprises to unlock many more of those companies, much more of their business. But to your point, there's a giant market here that we're not all grabbing yet. For crying out loud, there's tons of opportunity out here. This is not zero-sum.Corey: Take it a step further beyond that, and today, if you have someone who's enterprising, early on in their career, maybe they just got out of school, maybe they have just left their job and are ready to snap, or they have some severance money that they want to throw into something. Great. What do they want to do if they have an idea for a company? Well today, that answer looks a lot like, well, time to go to a boot camp and learn to code for six months so you can build a badly done MVP well enough to get off the ground and get some outside investment, and then go from there. Well, what if we cut that part out entirely?What if there were building blocks of I don't need to know or care that there's a database behind it, or what a database looks like. Picture Visual Basic in a web browser for building apps, and just take this bit of information I give you and store it and give it back to me later. Sure, you're going to have some significant challenges in the architecture or something like that as it goes from this thing that I'm talking about as an MVP to something planet-scale—like a Spotify for example—but that's not most businesses, and that's okay. Get out of the way and let people innovate and iterate on what it is they're doing more rapidly, and make it more accessible to teach people. That becomes huge; that gets the infrastructure bits that cloud providers excel at out of the way, and all it really takes is packaging those things into a golden path of what a given company of a particular profile should be doing, if—unless they have reason to deviate from it—and instead of having this giant paradox of choice issue, it's, “Oh, okay, I'll drag-drop, build things accordingly.”And under the hood, it's doing all the configuration of services and that's great. But suddenly, you've made being a founder of a software company—fundamentally—accessible to people who are not themselves software engineers. And I know that's anathema to some people, and I don't even slightly care because I am done with gatekeeping.Richard: Yeah. No, it's exciting if that can pull off. I mean, it's not the years ago where, how much capital was required to find the rack and do all sorts of things with tech, and hire some developers. And it's an amazing time to be software creators, now. The more we can enable that—yeah, I'm along for that journey, sign me up.Corey: I'm looking forward to seeing how it winds up shaking out. So, I want to talk a little bit about the paradox of choice problem that I just mentioned. If you take a look at the various compute services that every cloud provider offers, there are an awful lot of different choices as far as what you can run. There's the VM model, there's containers—if you're in AWS, you have 17 ways to run those—and you wind up—any of the serverless function story, and other things here and there, and managed services, I mean and honestly, Google has a lot of them, nowhere near as many as you do failed messaging products, but still, an awful lot of compute options. How do customers decide?What is the decision criteria that you see? Because the worst answer you can give someone who doesn't really know what they're doing is, “It depends,” because people don't know how to make that decision. It's, “What factors should I consider then, while making that decision?” And the answer has to be something somewhat authoritative because otherwise, they're going to go on the internet and get yelled at by everyone because no one is ever going to agree on this, except that everyone else is wrong.Richard: Mm-hm. Yeah, I mean, on one hand, look, I like that we intentionally have fewer choices than others because I don't think you need 17 ways to run a container. I think that's excessive. I think more than five is probably excessive because as a customer, what is the trade-off? Now, I would argue first off, I don't care if you have a lot of options as a vendor, but boy, the backends of those better be consistent.Meaning if I have a CI/CD tool in my portfolio and it only writes to two of them, shame on me. Then I should make sure that at least CI/CD, identity management, log management, monitoring, arguably your compute runtime should be a late-binding choice. And maybe that's blasphemous because somebody says, “I want to start up front knowing it's a function,” or, “I want to start it's a VM.” How about, as a developer, I couldn't care less. How about I just build cool software and maybe even at deploy time, I say, “This better fits in running in Kubernetes.” “This is better in a virtual machine.”And my cost of changing that later is meaningless because, hey, if it is in the container, I can switch it between three or four different runtimes, the identity management the same, it logs the exact same way, I can deploy CI/CD the same way. So, first off, if those things aren't the same, then the vendor is messing up. So, the customer shouldn't have to pay the cost of that. And then there gets to be other actual criteria. Look, I think you are looking at the workload itself, the team who makes it, and the strategy to figure out the runtime.It's easy for us. Google Compute Engine for VMs, containers go in GKE, managed services that need some containers, there are some apps around them, are Cloud Functions and Cloud Run. Like, it's fairly straightforward and it's going to be an OR situation—or an AND situation not an OR, which is great. But we're at least saying the premium way to run containers in Google Cloud for systems is GKE. There you go. If you do have a bunch of managed services in your architecture and you're stitching them together, then you want more serverless things like Cloud Run and Cloud Functions. And if you want to just really move some existing workload, GCE is your best choice. I like that that's fairly straightforward. There's still going to be some it depends, but it feels better than nine ways to run Kubernetes engines.Corey: I'm sure we'll see them in the fullness of time.Richard: [laugh].Corey: So, talk about Anthos a bit. That was a thing that was announced a while back and it was extraordinarily unclear what it was. And then I looked at the pricing and it was $10,000 a month with a one-year minimum commitment, and is like, “Oh, it's not for me. That's why I don't get it.” And I haven't really looked back at it since. But it is something else now. It almost feels like a wrapper brand, in some respects. How's it going? [unintelligible 00:29:26]?Richard: Yeah. Consumption, we'll talk more upcoming months on some of the adoption, but we're finally getting the hockey stick, which always comes delayed with platforms because nobody adopts platforms quickly. They buy the platform and a year later they start to actually build new development, migrate the things they have. So, we're starting to see the sort of growth. But back to your first point. And I even think I poorly tried to explain it a year ago with you. Basically, look, Anthos is the ability to manage fleets of GKE clusters, wherever they are. I don't care if they're on-prem, I don't care if they're in Google Cloud, I don't care if they're Amazon. We have one customer who only uses Anthos on AWS. Awesome, rock on.So, how do I put GKE clusters everywhere, but then do fleet management because look, some people are doing an app per cluster. They don't want to jam 50 apps in the cluster from different teams because they don't like the idea that this app requires root access; now you can screw around with mine. Or, you didn't update; that broke the cluster. I don't want any of that. So, you're going to see companies more, doing even app per cluster, app per developer per cluster.So, now I have a fleet problem. How do I keep it in sync? How do I make sure policy is consistent? Those sorts of things. So, Anthos is kind of solving the fleet management challenge and replacing people's first-gen app platform.Seeing a lot of those use cases, “Hey, we're retiring our first version of Docker Enterprise, Mesos, Cloud Foundry, even OpenShift,” saying, “All right, now's the time for our next version of our app platform. How about GKE, plus Cloud Run on top of it, plus other stuff?” Sounds good. So, going well is a, sort of—as you mentioned, there's a brand story here, mainly because we've also done two things that probably matter to you. A, we changed the price a lot.No minimum commit, remarkably at 20% of the cost it was when we launched, on purpose because we've gotten better at this. So, much cheaper, no minimum commit, pay as you go. Be on-premises, on bare metal with GKE. Pay by the hour, I don't care; sounds great. So, you can do that sort of stuff.But then more importantly, if you're a GKE customer and you just want config management, service mesh, things like that, now you can buy all of those independently as well. And Anthos is really the brand for fleet management of GKE. And if you're on Google Cloud only, it adds value. If you're off Google Cloud, if you're multi-cloud, I don't care. But I want to manage fleets of compute clusters and create them. We're going to keep doubling down on that.Corey: The big problem historically for understanding a lot of the adoption paradigm of Kubernetes has been that it was, to some extent, a reimagining of how Google ran and built software internally. And I thought at the time, the idea was—from a cynical perspective—that, “All right, well, your crappy apps don't run well on Google-style infrastructure so we're going to teach the entire world how to write software the way that we do.” And then you end up with people running their blog on top of Kubernetes, where it's one of those, like, the first blog post is, like, “How I spent the last 18 months building Kubernetes.” And, okay, that is certainly a philosophy and an approach, but it's almost approaching Windows 95 launch level of hype, where people who didn't own computers were buying copies of it, on some level. And I see the term come up in conversations in places where it absolutely has no place being brought up. “How do I run a Kubernetes cluster inside of my laptop?” And, “It's what you got going on in there, buddy?”Richard: [laugh].Corey: “What do you think you're trying to do here because you just said something that means something that I think is radically different to me than it is to you.” And again, I'm not here to judge other people's workflows; they're all terrible, except for mine, which is an opinion held by everyone about their own workflow. But understanding where people are, figuring out how to get there, how to meet customers where they are and empower them. And despite how heavily Google has been into the Kubernetes universe since its inception, you're very welcoming to companies—and loud-mouth individuals on Twitter—who have no use for Kubernetes. And working through various products you offer, I don't ever feel like a second-class citizen. There's really something impressive about that, of not letting the hype dictate the product and marketing decisions of it.Richard: Yeah, look, I think I tweeted it recently, I think the future of software is managed services with containers in the gap, for the most part. Whereas—if you can use managed services, please do. Use them wherever you can. And if you have to sling some code, maybe put it in a really portable thing that's really easy to run in lots of places. So, I think that's smart.But for us, look, I think we have the best container workflow from dev tools, and build tools, and artifact registries, and runtimes, but plenty of people are running containers, and you shouldn't be running Kubernetes all over the place. That makes sense for the workload, I think it's better than a VM at the retail edge. Can I run a small cluster, instead of a weird point-of-sale Windows app? Maybe. Maybe it makes sense to have a lightweight Kubernetes cluster there for consistency purposes.So, for me, I think it's a great medium for a subset of software. Google Cloud is going to take whatever you got, which is great. I think containers are great, but at the same time, I'm happily going to let you deploy a function that responds to you adding a storage item to a bucket, where at the same time give you a SaaS service that replaces the need for any code. All of those are terrific. So yeah, we love Kubernetes. We think it's great. We're going to be the best version to run it. But that's not going to be your whole universe.Corey: No, and I would argue it absolutely shouldn't be.Richard: [laugh]. Right. Agreed. Now again, for some companies, it's a great replacement for this giant fleet of VMs that all runs at eight percent utilization. Can I stick this into a bunch of high-density clusters? Absolutely you should. You're going to save an absolute fortune doing that and probably pick up some resilience and functionality benefits.But to your point, “Do I want to run a WordPress site in there?” I don't know, probably not. “Do I need to run my own MySQL?” I'd prefer you not do that. So, in a lot of cases, don't use it unless you have to. That should go for all compute nowadays. Use managed services.Corey: I'm a big believer in going down that approach just because it is so much easier than trying to build it yourself from popsicle sticks because you theoretically might have to move it someday in the future, even though you're not.Richard: [laugh]. Right.Corey: And it lets me feel better about a thing that isn't going to be used by anything that I'm doing in the near future. I just don't pretend to get it.Richard: No, I don't install a general purpose electric charger in my garage for any electric car I may get in the future; I charge for the one I have now. I just want it to work for my car; I don't want to plan for some mythical future. So yeah, premature optimization over architecture, or death in IT, especially nowadays where speed matters, don't waste your time building something that can run in nine clouds.Corey: Richard, I want to thank you for coming on again a year later to suffer my slings, arrows, and other various implements of misfortune. If people want to learn more about what you're doing, how you're doing it, possibly to pull a Forrest Brazeal and go work with you, where can they find you?Richard: Yeah, we're a fun place to work. So, you can find me on Twitter at @rseroter—R-S-E-R-O-T-E-R—hang out on LinkedIn, annoy me on my blog seroter.com as I try to at least explore our tech from time to time and mess around with it. But this is a fun place to work. There's a lot of good stuff going on here, and if you work somewhere else, too, we can still be friends.Corey: Thank you so much for your time today. Richard Seroter, director of outbound product management at Google. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment into which you have somehow managed to shove a running container.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The DBR Podcast crew is just as pumped as all of you about the Duke win over the Kentucky Wildcats, so they're here to recap the big dub on Episode 356! We revive our recap format that includes a headline to describe the game. We then get into the good and the bad that we saw last night at the Garden, from Keel Mode and Paolo Banchero to Theo John and Wendell Moore's efforts. We also discuss some of the things that need to be improved, like shooting from the perimeter. After the break, Duke has 2 more games coming up against the Army Black Knights and Campbell Fighting Camels in the friendly confines of Cameron Indoor Stadium. We preview the two opponents and discuss what Duke has to do to win both games in the span of 27 hours. If you're not subscribing to the DBR Podcast, you can! Follow wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review! Also, we love hearing from listeners on what they thought of certain parts of the show. Drop us a line at DBR Podcast at Gmail dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Roach Koach Podcast we follow the vacuum tube to find out all we can about Centox and their self titled album. Jenny, Lorin, and Matt talk about it all this episode, as they dive into the album art, having a liar mouth, low budget music videos with charm, Lorin's continue battle against ghosts, “A funk Pantera”, and decide whether Centox deserves a spot in the Nu-Metal Canon. Take a listen!Rate and review Roach Koach on iTunes! We'd appreciate it! Questions about the show? Have album recommendations? Just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you! Contact the show @RoachKoach on Twitter, Roach Koach on Facebook , Roach Koach on Instagram, or send an email to RoachKoachPodcast at Gmail. Support the show over on our Patreon.