Ep. 062 - The decade in review - top 10 best and worst tech of the 2010s

Well, everyone else is doing a decade in review, so why not Bob & Kevin! Be sure to like, follow, subscribe or whatever the heck you need to do on your podcast listening platform of choice! Help us kick this show into high gear. Follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/bobandkevinshow and enjoy the show transcript below from our friends at https://otter.ai/

Kevin 0:00
So we're back Holy crap, it's the year 2020

Bob 0:05
I have so much disappointment about the statement of year 2020 I just can't even not really about the year itself or anything that it may or may not bring but you know there's just a lot of bullshit flying around right now about not just New Year new me. new decade new me whatever they're saying. I have no idea.

Kevin 0:24
Yeah, this is the time of year when you start thinking, Man, maybe I should lose some weight. And of course, you know, even if you do lose weight, it finds you because the only thing that really works is changing the whole lifestyle thing like I don't know living to a state with mountains and hiking all the time. Hey, let me tell you that doesn't take off wait either, by the way, damn it. Oh, that stinks. So according to Back to the Future to in 1989 in the year 2015. Not only will the Cubs win the World Series, which was almost accurate as off by like one year, but we'd be flying around in our automobiles, Bob, are we there yet?

Bob 1:05
Well, depends which call flying around.

Yeah, we have some autonomous features and functionality in some of our vehicles. We even kind of have hovery skate boardy things. Not really though.

Kevin 1:23
I don't know. So it's been a few weeks since we had a pod. We've had a few holidays. Today, as I saw on the internet is the Monday-ist Thursday of the entire year, and it certainly felt that way.

Bob 1:37
This whole holiday break has been the shittiest shitty of anything. You could just fill in the blank Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

Kevin 1:45
but did you acquire or partake in anything? especially notable over the holidays?

Bob 1:54
I had two have my three kids home so that was kind of cool. would have been nice to be 3-for-3 Um, didn't really get any tech related gifts were really minimizing the whole Christmas thing. got this cool piece of artwork though, that I was looking at and my kids noticed that I was looking at it and they bought it for me

Kevin 2:12
so awesome. So is it hanging in said, domicile,

Bob 2:18
it is prominently displayed in the dining area. It is a collection of hand crafted pine trees they are I think they're created with a arc welder to actually cut out the metal and then uses some kind of patina technique to give them a cool bluish green tint. They're pretty awesome. How

Kevin 2:42
about you? Um, yeah, so we are highly evolved. People as a couple my wife and I that is we don't buy each other gifts so usually tend to buy the kids some gifts. We've decided to go on a vacation few weeks after the holiday so that was part of their gift and then The fun thing I got to play with over the last week or so is a vinyl cutter that was not a part of Christmas. It was just one of those things sitting in a box that nobody

Bob 3:08
I can't believe you had one of those and no one was using it. That's crazy.

Kevin 3:12
Well, my wife's very into scrapbooking and she actually bought it for herself. And then once I learned we had set thing in our possession, boom, started using it and I've already made some stickers and tried screen printing with making it a laser cut stencils, some really cool things you can do.

Bob 3:32
So I've seen pictures and some of this stuff looks pretty big. What's that? Like? I don't really know much about vinyl cutters and maybe some of our listeners don't. What? Yeah, but I saw his and hers above your bathroom. That's pretty big.

Kevin 3:47
Yeah, so out of the box, so I have the cricket or we have I like it's mine now. Okay, we've got That's beautiful. Yeah, we've got the Cricut Explore air. I'm looking at it here it is on my desk. So possession is nine tenths of the law. So, out of the box, it cuts a 12 by 12 piece of vinyl if you want, and then it goes up to 12 by 24. If you buy a optional mat, which I've totally bought, and then really the sky's the limit because if you need something bigger than that, and you're using cricket, he just basically print it in sections and you put it together.

Bob 4:26
So you tile it out. Hmm,

Kevin 4:27
yeah, so the his and hers that you can find on my Instagram and or my Twitter account. Yeah. You probably won't go look for it. But I'm just saying the his and hers are one piece each and they are fairly large or like,

Bob 4:41
Oh, those are 1pm or one piece each. Yep.

So they worked probably on the 12 by 24.

Kevin 4:46
Yes, that is correct. And I've since printed, some stickers, some JavaScript stickers. It's great for like laptop stuff. I'm showing Bob here some stickers to the camera. I've made one here for one of my kids. gran starion Yep, and I made him a white and black version. I made a an airborne patch because I was in airborne in the army here this is gonna go to my car and if you notice, what Bob can see is that you can have multiple colors which is really cool. You just layer them on there you cut them in you cut you know one color then you cut the other color then you put them on top of each other. It's pretty cool.

Bob 5:23
Is any of this computer driven or is this all manual?

Kevin 5:27
Well, the cutting in the designing is all computer driven.

Bob 5:46
how much is a cricket runya

Kevin 5:48
that's a 200 bucks and there's different versions like version one back in the day you got like Nintendo cartridges. were basically you know you had to buy this cartridge from the local craft store. Plug it in like a video game. Then you get to choose, you know, from an enumerated list of things and is kind of shitty after a while because you're like, but I want to print this custom thing. Oh, here comes version two points version 2.0 is like, hey, we've got this app. And all you basically need is a transparent background. png file. And there we go. And then there's a ton of videos on YouTube to kind of get you going. And holy crap. I'm like, pretty excited. I'm not gonna lie. You appear to be having

Bob 6:30
fun with it, because I see lots of pictures. And sorry, you answer you said you're integrating that with your screen printing as well.

Kevin 6:37
So yeah, I guess I guess I haven't really talked about screen printing on the show. So I do screen printing. It's kind of like my analog hobby when I just want to get away from the digital world. And so there's many ways to screen printing Bobby, you said you use the screen for maybe you still do, but not still, but used to that there's three primary ways and the first way I I learned was you buy this thing called an emulsion sheet which is pre coated and it's sensitive to sunlight. You print something on a transparency, plop it on top, go out in the sun for a minute, and then you wash it out. And it works actually really well. One drawback there is you can't keep tension on it. So you know, it's guys drawbacks, but it's very easy to burn. The second is the traditional way, which is you, you.

Grape, I guess is the right or you go a screen, a traditional screen squeegee the screen. Well,

Bob 7:33
now before you get to the squeegee, you kind of said that most of you put the emotion on the squeegee to so

Kevin 7:39
well that's the thing I've got. It's like it's called a scoop coder. So you scoop code it and then that's like a

Bob 7:45
net sloshing around.

Kevin 7:46
You've got to do it in a dark room. So I've had to put together a makeshift dark room and a half and I had to buy red lights and everything. And then I had to build and I'm going to show Bob this. I don't know if you can see it right at the end of my desk here right radio. I know right? The end of my desk is it Hey, this houses my undeveloped screens because it's light sensitive. And so I turn all the lights out usually at night time and then I expose them with UV light. So that's method to method three to bring it back to the cricket is to vinyl cut something and then just apply it right to the screen but you do it in reverse and put it on the bottom side. And then you just squeegee it through. Now I think that's brilliant. Now each way actually has their pros and cons. Do you think that the vinyl cut way is like well, why wouldn't you always do that just less mess easy. The drawback is if you have very fine detail, the vinyl cutter isn't the best solution for that. Really? Yes, you'll want to go traditional in the ocean with the UV light or the or the first method.

Bob 8:45
Did I see that you did our logo as a final cut as well did and that turned out

Kevin 8:49
really freakin well. So if you want like a car sticker. Oh, that's great. Yes.

Bob 8:54
Oh shit. Yeah. Did you remake the did you make the audio waves or was that right from the logo? That

Kevin 8:59
is right. Right from the audio, I did not remake anything.

Bob 9:02
Damn, that did look good. I'm actually if anyone's interested in checking that out. Did you share that on the show Tweeter,

Kevin 9:09
I you know, I have no idea anymore. We have so many accounts, both personal and professional podcasting accounts that it's

Bob 9:17
really hard to keep track of super, super professional podcasting accounts. So, um, before we get into the meat of the show, this is kind of like a little transitional thing. Speaking of the show social media. One of the show New Year's resolutions that I've made for myself is to try to be more engaged in the marketing of the show. So I want to share with listeners since we're less than 10 minutes in and maybe most of you are still here, our primary platform appears to be looking back at the 2019 stats, Spotify. So if you are on Spotify, please I think they have a follow button and using that follow button actually subscribe to the podcast but then also helps Spotify algorithm determine where to show our podcast is recommended to some folks that may not have heard us in the past couple years. So that's pretty

Kevin 10:12
good do that. That'd be very that's a great resolution. I have traditionally stayed away from resolutions but I did give myself some. So a little more personal info about me. I am a arms dealer of Lego so

Bob 10:28
You scared the shit out of me for a second.

Kevin 10:31
I buy sell Lego and that's kind of a finicky thing because you know, you just got to pick out the right one then you basically turn around keep them for a while and you sell them

but what I learned with that experiences

Wow, it is really awesome to make money while you sleep. And I've tried six ways from Sunday to to make money in software like an open source projects making this little library that is that is a tough business. So selling frickin Legos has made Like a million times more money than any software gig I've tried to do on the side, just putting that out there. So the problem with Lego is, is, well, eventually you run out of the good stuff. So I've been into woodworking slash screen printing for the last four or five, six months. And that's where my future efforts are going to continue. And I'm going to open up an Etsy store and I'm going to sell a bunch of woodworking stuff. And I like to really bore the shit out of people by posting all my projects that I have on Instagram often

Bob 11:35
No, I love it because I'm not as artistic as I used to be. And it's cool to see you making stuff. I mean, I'm, I'm super engaged with all of my friends that do creative things outside of code. Because I don't do that much creatively outside of code. Well, except maybe podcast.

Kevin 11:54
I've definitely I'm at peace with the idea that I'm a creative person, but I don't necessarily have to do In the digital realm, and so I really really, really like balancing my digital creativity with analog creativity. So I played music play guitar, I

Bob 12:10
I draw I you know, I fabric Kevin does all the show artwork in case anybody didn't know that. Yes,

Kevin 12:16
stick figure art is harder than it looks.

Bob 12:21
Especially when you have an annoying co host. It's like, Can you make it look like this?

Kevin 12:25
Yes. So yeah, the creativity thing. That's kind of my resolution thing, but in so expect more show swag. Bob and Kevin show branded show swag that you probably can't buy because you probably don't want to buy it. But

Bob 12:41
I might have but if you're good listeners and drop us some lines on social media, maybe you'll just could

Kevin 12:47
Yeah,

Bob 12:48
possibly get some and then

Kevin 12:50
I've done a lot of signs that. So confession time Kevin really likes Pinterest and from what I understand That's that's, you know, takes a lot of courage sticks, you know, to say that so I really like Pinterest and I steal all my great woodworking ideas from there. There I said it.

Bob 13:10
You use it as your creative Muse you don't steal? Yeah,

Kevin 13:13
I liked you could be my marketing manager if this ever goes anywhere.

Bob 13:18
I like it. I don't think you're going to need one. I think the shop speaks for itself. Well, alright, so we've talked a little bit about some resolutions. And I think that it's a very popular, hip trendy thing for shows like ours to take a look back at the prior year and technology or whatever the topic of conversation is, but since we did turn that big decade clock, I think we turned the decade clock. I think there's debate on that as well. But everyone's saying we turn the decade clock. So I think we're going to take a little bit of a look back at the the decade in tech.

Kevin 13:56
Does that sound about right? Yeah. So the other day, I think we'd agreed upon some ground rules on what should we freakin talk about in our New Year's episode? And you didn't follow any of the ground rules? Oh, we'll see. We'll see. So the rules were that we had to come up with the 10 best and 10 worst things and or releases or objects tech related in the last decade. Right. That was kind of the right rules.

Bob 14:22
Yeah. And a little glimpse behind the curtain for those of you who listen, and we probably mentioned this before, this show is not highly scripted at all. And when we do come up with topics like this, we don't share like our our conversations during the day get very awkward because we want to talk about this stuff, but we can't. So I have no idea what Kevin's top 10 and top 10 lists are and he has no idea what mine are. But I'm actually pretty excited to see if there's any overlap at all. In which would be even the most entertaining is if I have something on the good list. He has it on the bad. Or vice versa. Like,

Kevin 15:03
it's like the naughty and nice list.

Bob 15:05
Yes. So So where do we want to start? Let's hear let's just so I did rank Where did you rank yours? I don't know how heavy my writer rank in descending order from 10 to one, I have two honorable mentions in each category. All right,

Kevin 15:19
very good. Let's just give me your 10th best technology of the 2010s.

Bob 15:25
What should I do my honorable mentions first because they're outside the top 10?

Kevin 15:31
Uh, no. Give me

Bob 15:33
the Oh, we're going to close out with those after we get the number one. Yes. So we're doing the positive ones first.

Kevin 15:39
Let's go back and forth. So we'll do a best one will do this one and then so Okay.

Bob 15:45
All right. So this one is going to be my number 10 of the most positive things and tech from the last decade. For me, I said the rise of music subscription services and the end of the CD and Digital piracy era I key cuz full disclosure, I used to sometimes stumble across music that I didn't own prior to the 2010s

Kevin 16:11
that's, that's interesting because

look, are you including or maybe you don't want to tell me streaming video as well

Bob 16:20
and this this is specifically to get it so so I was kind of looking at personal things so as well as like big industries the

Kevin 16:28
streaming is huge and it's such a strange concept to no longer have a tangible piece of music like an album if you are does an album even exist anymore.

Bob 16:41
Yeah, actually really cool. hipsters will release their albums on vinyl on very limited release, although it has been increasing in popularity again. But this has been a very big conversation in our house over the holidays to with the digital music, because nobody actually owns the music anymore. So David, for the most part, David Neil

Kevin 17:00
Also known as at Reverend geek, he was on one of the early Bob and Kevin show, YouTube additions. He tweeted the other day is like, hey, CDs, it's kind of like an offline version of Spotify just laughed my ass off. So,

Bob 17:16
but it's not, though, because the CD doesn't know what you want to hear next.

Kevin 17:20
There's no algorithm,

Bob 17:22
right? There's no algorithm on the disk. Okay,

Kevin 17:25
well, you can burn your own playlist. So I guess there's, there's some in there,

Bob 17:29
I know. But think about it. So we went through that evolution where you had a bunch of CDs that you purchased at the store, then you digitize those CDs. And then you took those CDs in major own mix CDs. So think about how much waste we've,

Kevin 17:46
I don't know, not prevented, but ceased to create because of this movement, but that or do we just move it because now everything's streamed and you have to create the energy to move the bits each and every time

Bob 18:00
Yeah, but the internet was gonna do that anyway. But it

Kevin 18:03
didn't need to do this.

Pick a song over and over and over and over and over and over again and it never downloads anyway,

Bob 18:10
that's what bandwidth is about. Alright, so let me throw that was my number 10. What was yours?

Kevin 18:15
My number 10 Best thing was the iPad slash smartphone. So I realized that's a very broad category.

Bob 18:23
I like where you're going with that though, because phones have basically become iPads lately.

Kevin 18:26
Well, the iPad was released in 2010. And full disclosure, I made a lot of fun of it at the time because I'm like, this is stupid. This will never work. There's no keyboard oh my gosh, why would she do there's no apps you know, live to do them. I was wrong. I am raising my hand for the camera here. I was wrong. And then smartphones themselves I worked at a wireless carrier, a Verizon Wireless carrier, and I was a part of the retail side of moving a bunch of smartphones to the public. I realized the iPhone was invested in 2007. But I really don't think it took off until Android was released, which was in that neighborhood. I'd have to have the internet we don't have and can't afford look that up. But I do remember at the time blackberry happened to be king,

Bob 19:17
right? Hey, oh, god, you're gonna laugh so hard. This is the best radio ever got. I can't wait, keep going.

Kevin 19:23
Well, I was just gonna mention Whatever happened to hard Qwerty keyboards on the phones. Well, they lost to the soft screen. So what do you think?

Bob 19:33
Well, I think that that's a great number 10 for the positives. Do you want to hear my number 10 for the negative laid on me. Listeners at home, this is not scripted by number 10 for some of the downside things, I guess this actually could be spent as a positive people who should not have been making phones like Facebook, Amazon, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone Those are all really bad smartphones of the 20.

Kevin 20:04
Well, I allow me to split hairs. blackberry was the jam. So if you want a corporate email on your phone, Blackberry was it. I mean, even President Obama was like, give me my crackberry

Bob 20:19
it was, but very early on in the 2010s. blackberry was already in the throes of like the death throes the last twitches of life where they came out with their tablet. I can't remember what they called it, but it was you know, they were trying to revive their, their smartphone presence and they just couldn't do it. So I totally

Kevin 20:41
missed by I totally missed Windows Phone but I wouldn't say I missed it. Or do miss it. Blackberry. I think they tried to come out with a soft screen again. Bob, Bob's holding up his

Bob 20:54
apparently I my windows 8.1 phone that I still have because it runs like a beat

Kevin 21:00
So in Facebook, do they actually have a smartphone?

Bob 21:04
So Facebook was toying with the idea of a smartphone and what they did instead of making the hardware, they came out with a basically a flavor of Android that they tried to distribute on pre made devices and, like a lot of Facebook things it didn't.

Kevin 21:21
While we're talking Facebook up a quick reminder that my particular version of Android cannot uninstall Facebook. I can only disable it. Thanks, Mark, because I didn't need that 300 mega space on my phone anyway, right.

Bob 21:36
I'm gonna make a quick prediction here that Facebook is going to come up in this conversation more than what can I do my

Kevin 21:41
number 10 then Hell yeah. Number 10. Worst thing the bad thing was the bad yeah, bad things. Facebook acquires Instagram in 2012

Bob 21:53
Wow, that was still that was wet number 10. For you. Wow. It's it's in this list is gonna get into

Kevin 22:00
Yeah the list is young. So yeah so in in 2012 I don't know that any of us including the FTC, or whatever government agency overlords you know, mergers and stuff like that. I don't think they necessarily saw future things like surveillance state 2016 election, Cambridge Analytica, yada yada yada in 2012. So yeah, sure, why not? You got money, they, you can buy them great. And nobody really understood how the filter bubbles and how speech was going to be shaped in 2019 2020. Well, pick a year.

Bob 22:38
So you're so funny. God, this is the best. I knew this was going to be great.

Kevin 22:42
So what do you think? hasman number 10.

Bob 22:46
Number. Yeah, that's very interesting that that's your number 10 because you kind of bit off a lot there. So I'm very curious to hear what 931 are for the bad. Well,

Kevin 22:57
yeah, I may have tipped my hand a little bit. But let's let's go with your number nine, what's your number nine.

Bob 23:02
Okay thing. So number nine positives. It's funny that you said iPad was your number 10. Number nine for me was the Microsoft Surface Book. Because in the surface the surface line of products from Microsoft, very much along the same lines, full functional computing with detachable screens in still very pop powerful graphics processing and overall CPU not just the GPU so I love my Surface Book. I have one personally and one professionally, and they're talking about getting new machines at work. Luckily, we've already run the disclaimer If not, I'll drop it in here as well. But I don't want a new one. I don't want a new machine. I like my surface. Wow. So Microsoft for as much as they struggle. I feel like in various consumer based hardwares and software's windows 10 and Surface line we're pretty big in the 2010s for me so I think so

Kevin 24:04
I've never had a surface but here's what grinds my gears with when with with Microsoft Surface before the Microsoft Surface that you're talking about debuted Microsoft had another surface Do you remember that at all?

Bob 24:19
Well, I think they have the I would guess they call it the they don't call it the plain vanilla but they do have just the surface period. And it you know, has a type of cover and Nope, nope, nope.

Kevin 24:30
Other surface so in 2011 I went to Indianapolis, Indiana to the Gen Con board game convention. Yeah, nerd alert.

Bob 24:40
Right. So we need to alert nerd alert drop right.

Kevin 24:44
So back then Microsoft had a product called surface but it was a table that was so thick of the screen is the table top and you can put things on it and it would you know like capacitive touch, you would know what's on it and then they would it was really good. Cool, but they totally went away from that. So,

Bob 25:03
yeah, I wish I wish they would go back. Maybe they'll bring it back maybe. All right. Are you ready? So that was my nine, number nine positive. So your number nine positive is

Kevin 25:12
Azure, AWS slash cloud, the cloud, all the things now this is cloud computing, cloud computing, right? And this is very near and dear to my like, daily professional life, because one of the worst things that I can imagine as a web developer is on premise hosting. You know, yeah, on one hand, you're like, yeah, I have control the box, I can do whatever. But with AWS and Azure, there's this concept of server less, which, by the way, it's still

Bob 25:42
a real server, right? It's in a box, which

Kevin 25:44
it's terrible naming when they say server lists it, explaining it to non tech people. Oh, so there's no server. No, there is a server, it's just virtualized. Anyway, I digress. So but it's really changed my day to day job. It's really enabled this thing called DevOps automation, and it's really changed. Like the landscape of everyone because it what it does, what it does is it lowers the bar, you know, expose the CD ends to Joe developer, Jane developer. It does all these things. So you mentioned earlier music streaming, I humbly think that the cloud revolution helped enable the streaming revolution. What do you think?

Bob 26:23
Oh, I think so much of that is dead on, you know, physical boxes. Don't really, I mean, I'm sure they exist. I'm sure there's tons of them out there still. But yeah, that platform, the whole idea of that distributed computing that is easily accessible and the, you know, the front end that they've given all that stuff with the front end tool, so it's not all command line stuff. Yeah. It's pretty amazing.

Kevin 26:50
Yeah. And AWS started because they basically had an internal need and then they just said, Hey, wouldn't be cool if we just sold some of our capacity. I don't know. Azure has a similar history but I thought that is some of the best ways to create tech you know, create a business which is solve a real problem and then see if you can make it generic and or you know, you know, abstracted if you will, so that was mine. Which guy

Bob 27:19
so, we're on so my it's my number nine bad one, right? Yes. Okay, so I kind of went off the beaten path a little bit on this one. This is kind of more of a pet peeve than a so my number nine is bad Kickstarter tech launches. And the one that really comes to mind from the 2010s is the the coolest cooler, which was the cooler that was just trying to be way too many things than just a cooler. I think it had streamable music it had multiple USB chargers speakers on board. It had everything Swiss Army knife

Kevin 27:58
or cooler Right.

Bob 27:59
Yeah. But for a fucking cooler so

I think that paved the way for a bunch of people to be like, Hey, I know this crazy thing that's a bunch of things taper to other things and let's start a Kickstarter for it. And that got really annoying. So

Kevin 28:15
full disclosure, I think in 2013 or 14 I was part of a Kickstarter campaign totally failed. But that reminds me because this isn't on any of my list. I'm glad you brought this one up. Because Patreon, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe. Those are the ones just off the top my head. Everyone in their brother and sister are holding their hand out going Hey, give me money. Why? Because of an idea. Okay, well,

Bob 28:48
or I can't make rent. here's the kicker. Here's a good one for I can't make rent this month. Yeah.

Kevin 28:54
Yeah. So I still like being, you know, contributing when I can can do a charity I'm mostly I can contribute my time not so much money. Every time I see a Patreon for somebody I know, we call it the Tupperware problems, like, I gotta buy at least two bowls, you know, a salad bowl with the leg, make sure you get the lids, otherwise, you know, he's gonna be pissed. And you know, I want to be friends still. And so we call it the Tupperware party, Bob and I do and it's really hard because you look, as a creator, we're Bob and I are both creators, we look and go, I look at all these great, you know, people doing great things and getting Patreon. But then it's like the top 1% It feels like that's, that's actually getting somewhere on these platforms. And then there's everyone else. So Kickstarter sells you this dream and with the 1% actually doing it and they collect, you know, the funds underneath as a fee. So I really look at that stuff and go on. That's just, I don't even know what to call it's not really snake oil, but it's definitely like Same shit different, you know method here where, hey, we're just trying to separate people from money, right?

Bob 30:06
Well, my boys bless their hearts. They're both big fans of Kickstarter type projects. And they are just now receiving stuff that they invested in when they were in their mid teens. And they're both in their 20s

Kevin 30:23
man, also not a super long game. I guess I won't tell you what's not on my list just in case it's still on your list. All right, let me go with my number nine and you'll be like we're What?

The Video Game fortnight This is on my negative list.

Bob 30:38
Oh, that's so funny.

Kevin 30:42
Video Game my mind. So go ahead. So I put fortnite on there. Mostly

Bob 30:46
for shit. No, I did put a video game on mine. Well, I'm

Kevin 30:51
so fortnite just the way

it affects all the kids. All the children in my orbit. my nieces, my nephews, my own kids. These people are dicted listen Like a real drug and on top of that, it pretty much shut down every other video game except for maybe Minecraft and untitled goose game. Alright, so there's like three video games left in the world because of fortnight has just totally come in steamrolled everything. And they have this concept of V bucks, where, you know, the kids are like, Hey, can we get or can we get a gift card for Microsoft so we can apply it to our Xbox so we can basically just give it away. I'm like, Oh my god, this is this is life. And then there's like this internal gambling addiction that they all have, because you can get these llamas and these crates and you get this random thing that comes out. And while I'm on the gambling thing, my girls who don't play fortnight as much they do play fortnight. They have toys like lol dolls are familiar lol dolls. It so so. So if you go to Walmart or any retailer, they'll have them so it's a sealed box opaque. You can't see what's in it. The whole idea is you got to buy it to see what's in it and it plays on these like human emotions. curiosity. Anyway, so number nine is fortnight for me What am I?

Bob 32:08
Oh, that is a great

so now we're to my number eight.

Kevin 32:13
Number eight positive

Bob 32:14
number eight positive and I lied and I want to stress again this is not scripted, we did not see each other's list. My number eight positive tech from the 2010s is Minecraft because it's a family focused gaming adventure and you can play it with your kids and actually with my kids, I taught them how to manage their own minecraft server so they weren't out there messing around with the general public so taught them how to give server line commands basically through the through the Minecraft thing so this is so funny that you were fortnight and now I'm on Minecraft so

Kevin 32:56
okay so interesting sacred you're picking Minecraft Yes, Minecraft

Bob 33:02
positive. Oh, okay.

Kevin 33:03
Yeah so Minecraft I think has replaced Lego and a lot of housecalls for sure yeah

Bob 33:09
digital Lego without a doubt yeah and when I again

Kevin 33:12
another thing I was totally wrong on with Minecraft cuz I see it I'm like what the hell is this shit The graphics are terrible right you know it's very blocky no kids gonna like this right they're just gonna be like oh well you know give me like Call of Duty or something with high end graphics but actually I kind of like Minecraft because it It stimulates creativity and building and whatnot.

Bob 33:38
Yep, that's pretty much why I was coming in at number eight for me of the 2010 Alright, so

Kevin 33:42
my number eight you'll probably snicker a little bit is crypto slash blockchain.

Bob 33:51
So this is your number eight positive Oh,

Kevin 33:53
oh, I'm sorry. This is my negative shoot.

Bob 33:58
No, that's why

Kevin 34:00
I totally messed up. So all right,

I'm gonna I'll come back to my number eight positive

because I've already tipped my hand. So my number eight negative is crypto blockchain because as of right now, I don't think crypto blockchain has changed the world because that's basically what all the crypto slash blockchain people are saying, Oh, we got a blockchain all the thing it will change the face of insert industry, crypto currency, it will change the face of whatever. I'm still waiting for it to change any part of my life. Bob, what part of your life has it changed?

Bob 34:35
Um, I think the only thing that it's really affected is our podcasting because of the Libra kinds of Libra crypto trying to desperately make its way to market. We did do that experiment a couple years back with investing in crypto and tracking the markets. So but that was more just fun. And I Still have not recouped from where we invested.

Kevin 35:03
Yeah, you and I totally hit the apex of crypto hey look at all this great stuff happening in crypto let's invest and the good thing I sold out right, I am out for save whatever 15 bucks a Bitcoin was worth a few months ago.

Bob 35:19
Yeah, I'm still in. I'm still in.

Kevin 35:22
Yeah, we're such suckers, man.

Such suckers. Alright, so that was my number eight negative. Do you want me to catch up and just do my number eight positive and then we'll Yeah, we'll just flip it so you do your number a positive so my number eight positive is SpaceX reusable rockets. Wow. So you and I had a live stream of the Falcon Heavy launch which highlighted the landing of the booster rockets and that was in 2017. We had my kids.

Bob 35:56
They got two out of three on that one, right?

Kevin 35:59
Something like that. But it looked like a frickin science fiction alien invasion movie, which was awesome.

Bob 36:07
Suit I got choked up.

Kevin 36:09
Oh, me too. And to this day every time they stick the landing, which is it pretty much every

Bob 36:14
time now it's regular now. Yeah,

Kevin 36:16
that's, that's awesome. I think one of the rockets that went up recently was like its fourth or fifth flight. And that's gotta save money somewhere. And I've heard a lot of people say, Oh, it won't be financially feasible still, you just gotta throw those away and start over. But I think they're starting to prove that wrong. What do you think?

Bob 36:35
Yeah, no, I think they're getting financial benefit with the multi launch multi land for sure. That's how they're able to really kind of like supplement the starlink programs. So yeah, the reusable rockets. That's brilliant. Yeah. So and for the most part right now, those are 100%. unmanned trips, right?

Kevin 36:55
Yeah. They are testing the ability to send up manned crew and they've had some success recently, because right now we're actually dependent on Russia of all people to send people up the space station. And I will be in Florida in a couple months and trying to catch a falcon nine launch for the starlink program but that's about like thread that needle at this point.

Bob 37:21
Right You showed me the schedule it looks like it's not going to happen while you're there.

Kevin 37:25
You know, I don't know the schedule enough to know that maybe I'm just looking too far out and they're just gonna fill the schedule or or what have you, but I'm excited. My kids are too They want to see it.

Bob 37:35
That would be awesome.

Kevin 37:36
Yes. All right. We're up to your number eight. Worst, my number. My number eight bad. Yes.

Bob 37:44
This could be a trip down memory lane for some not a positive one. Kevin, did you ever hear of the lytro camera back in the 2010 never heard of it. It is a light Field Camera. And it was supposed to revolutionized digital photography. And it looked like a rectangular tube. But what the camera did it was supposed to capture the infinity of the light that created an image. So you could capture that photograph doing air quotes. And then you could do it ever you wanted to with after that, because it had infinite resolution. That's interesting. So,

Kevin 38:28
yeah, it failed, by the way. So have you ever been in photography?

Bob 38:33
I yeah, I actually do love photography. And I should love to

Kevin 38:37
talk. So when you focus on a certain spot it becomes or there's a certain spot of moving the focal length and you'll hit what's called the hyper focal distance. And everything beyond that point is in focus. It's just like, we can take a picture of a mountain range and it's like, why is that always in vice, the background noise and focus because you've got the focal length, that's the hyperfocal distance, anything in front of You start getting the beaucaire or Boca or however you want to pronounce it. I don't even know what the real word way of pronouncing that is.

Bob 39:07
But it's I'm not that big in photography,

Kevin 39:09
but to get the subject in focus in the background out of focus. So anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sounds interesting. But you said it totally failed.

Bob 39:17
Yeah, first of all, they were super expensive. And the UX, the form factor for the device itself was just very clunky. So, but it was something at the time, I was very into photography and spending money on lenses and things like that, and was very excited about but there was no way I could afford it. When it came out. They came up with a better form factor, but it was still like over 1600 dollars. I think at the time, well,

Kevin 39:47
you know what, there's a there's a thing called the iPhone 11. That's got about three cameras on it, and it's a little less than that. So

Bob 39:54
right and you can totally adjust that bootcut whatever it is, too. So yeah.

Kevin 39:59
Interesting.

Bob 40:01
All right, but yeah, so that was yet some of these are very personal to me. So this is pretty fun.

Kevin 40:07
I'm glad I didn't bet money if what your number eight was eight would be all right, my number seven positive is 3d printing slash CNC slash vinyl cutting.

Bob 40:22
Man, I'm so glad you hit that market too.

Kevin 40:24
So 3d printing for me it's very cool. I've seen people make just some ridiculously cool things are basically like hey, yeah, we'll take one of those it's sort of like the the real life replicator from Star Trek shout out to start a supplemental. We need a nice here we need to eventually do this crossover episode

Bob 40:43
crossover coming soon.

Kevin 40:44
Yes. So that's what I think a 3d printer does. My vinyl cutter is that 2d printer very cool. In I've also seen that they can 3d print organs now which is like totally mind blowing like, hey, can 3d print a new heart and stuff They're printing.

Bob 41:00
Yeah, they're printing meat too, which is really weird.

Kevin 41:04
So I think 3d printing is still early, but I think it has a lot of promise. I've seen 3d printed houses out of concrete, you know, for in developing countries, just they can just set up a machine and it prints overnight. Yeah, just mind boggling. So what do you think?

Bob 41:21
Yeah, I think that that's a really good one. I actually did not touch upon 3d printing. But it's funny that you brought it up because my wife the other day was asking if 3d printers were getting cheaper, and so I thought that was really like that was a bizarre, surreal moment in the baby bar household that she was even considering 3d 3d printing. I like the aspect of 3d printing as well as like printing pieces or tools to do things without having to go to the store to purchase tools. I think that's pretty cool as well.

Kevin 41:54
Yeah. Yeah. I played the game civilization quite often. And one of the technologies that you can unlock is called replaceable parts, you know, like preceeds. Like, it's like Civil War era type thing where you could start, you know, fixing things rather than just having to craft it from A to Z every time well give me a couple of these parts, and then we're back to New. So I see the 3d printer is an extension of replaceable parts. And not that I think a hardware store is going to go out of business anytime soon. But when 3d printers become more ubiquitous, that might change.

Bob 42:30
Well didn't one of the like space shuttle missions or some space mission space station, maybe even they were able to 3d print a wrench that helped them out in a situation or something like that

Kevin 42:42
sounds familiar, but I can't recall the exact one. All right, we got anyway. Yeah, that's a great, well gotta move on. I say what's your number seven positive

Bob 42:51
by number seven positive is pretty interesting because I think you've already alluded to this, but number seven positive was cable cutting with streaming services like Sling TV. And we've talked about this on the show several times where I think in the early 2010s when this started to happen, it was meant to be a very positive thing. But now with every service jumping on the streaming subscription bandwagon, really if you add them all back together, it probably costs more than traditional cable

Kevin 43:22
and it has the side effect of putting us into an additional filter bubble. We haven't really talked about filter bubbles on this episode just yet, but you know, you're in your platform, you're in your channels and you're you know, you're on Netflix. I cord cut in 2012 off of DirecTV and my wife was pissed she's like, I want my whatever that we remember DVR. I mean, back then, you had to DVR things now. Everything's on demand. I mean, just the world has changed so much.

Bob 43:51
Yeah, we need my family off. DVR was a very interesting experience to the cord cutting. So

Kevin 43:56
yeah, I like it. I guess now we can transition to My number seven worst and it is crisper. Are you familiar with crisper?

Bob 44:07
The DNA editor

Kevin 44:08
so I would like to bundle this with DNA testing as well. So there's a Netflix series I forget what it's called, but it follows how crisper works and things like that. And I don't even want to you know, it's not a religious thing and nothing like that. I just think it's a bad idea to fuck with nature,

Bob 44:26
right? Oh, I think gene editing is a terrible idea.

Kevin 44:29
Yeah, um, the The one thing I think is is way more acceptable is GMOs. You know, if we can make corn feed us more and you know, whatever, that's fine but trying to alter somebody's intellect I color you know, the frick people aren't frickin ecommerce items. I mean, I guess you are in some countries, which is very sad. But so, you know, you don't order your children often many right?

Bob 44:57
Yeah, and I can really can't imagine a society where you Would I mean, that's definitely a black mirror up. So

Kevin 45:02
for sure, well, I mean, I could definitely, you know, play antagonistic to myself. People would say, Well, Kevin, we can eliminate cancer, we can eliminate whatever, whatever. But you and I are coders what happens when we fix bugs Bob?

Bob 45:17
New bugs have Thank you.

Kevin 45:20
cancer, but you're gonna create God knows what

literally God knows wouldn't be the only one who knows what. And maybe that wipes this all out. Period.

Bob 45:28
Right. It's just a cascade of it's just a bit. It's a cascade of bad consequences.

Kevin 45:33
Yeah, so.

All right, well, so I think the pendulum has now swung your number six.

Bob 45:41
Good. Now I think we're on my saddle bag. Right.

Kevin 45:44
Say it's good thing. We should call it a good thing. We're calling this out because I can't even count the 10 apparently.

Bob 45:49
That's okay. Number seven bad is Google in perpetual beta throughout the 20 times, and then the ultimate bait and switch where free services no longer We're free services. That one's pretty self explanatory. I think we hate all the big tech giants with equal

Kevin 46:07
disregard. So I'm familiar with the website, killed by Google. com.

Bob 46:14
I'm pretty sure we brought it up. And when you're talking about all the companies

Kevin 46:16
are also actually brought this up just for this episode. And I did not know two things on here are actually already scheduled for the X number one is Angular JS be one that is no longer supported, as of one year from now, so in one year for using Angular one dot, whatever, and I realized that's very nerdy and very like specific to coding and I am trying not to go down specific things here. But Angular JS is an older but super popular thing that we used

Bob 46:49
to go super stable.

Kevin 46:50
Yes, absolutely. I

Bob 46:51
don't know why they fucked with the law.

Kevin 46:53
Well, reasons right. Then here's the one that I was like. Are you kidding me? Google Hangouts is being

Bob 47:01
I did hear that they were sundowning that, but I think they're just giving it a different name to be on it.

Kevin 47:06
Yeah, apparently it's going to be called shit. I don't sit here, it's gonna be part of the G Suite. So maybe it's just, they're just not making direct money on because people just use hangouts for random garden variety shit. And that probably costs money. Right?

Bob 47:22
Right. And they want to bring it into G Suite because G Suite is not one of their paid things. Yeah, so that's

Kevin 47:27
kind of another 12 months according to kill by Google, but killed by Google is kind of a fun website because he just I mean, it's a lot of scrolling a lot of vertical scrolling of Holy shit. All of that is now dead. And while the lay person could probably care less than we do, but Bob and I, you know, when when we're asked to integrate with service x, I don't know about you, Bob. But when it's owned by Google, I go, Oh, well, how long do we even have left with whatever this is,

Bob 47:58
right. It's a Total question mark for sure.

Kevin 48:01
hate it. And I, you mentioned google maps that totally did a bait and switch on that. I'm trying to get Google out of my life, if you will. I'm actually using DuckDuckGo lot more. And if you do like a search on DuckDuckGo, and like directions, it's actually powered by Apple Maps, which is kind of an interesting twist on things. Oh, boy. Apparently, I don't know if I like that. I haven't really used Apple Maps. I heard it was really bad. And they've made improvements and I'm know apple.

Bob 48:36
I think they bought ways one of them bought ways Google or Apple to go. Okay, Google that. Okay. Yeah,

Kevin 48:41
that was unceremoniously explained to me the other day when I was like, why is Google Maps and way so similar? Whatever ignorant thing I said. Okay, so, so your number six positive, that's what we're up to. And then I know this is gonna be real nerdy, so I'll try to keep up light for the general listener. hub picks the number one spot over there the decade to become the go to place to dump your source code.

Bob 49:08
Now, I think that's a good one.

Kevin 49:10
Now, why does that matter? Well, I can tell you it prior to the 2010s. Source Control was very optional. And a lot of people may say, Yeah, right, not where we work. But let me tell you, I worked a lot of places, and it was copy paste, and you do control C, Control V, that's your backup. And they said, you know, it just put the little numbers that Windows does, you know, 123 as you control C, Control V. So GitHub really changed it. There was a bunch of competitors, and there still are subversion, whatnot, and then Microsoft bought them. So that was kind of a big deal that happened recently. And why does this matter? Well, GitHub is very known for open source and basically, the open source revolution. I'm going to try to put that in here as well. It's a big deal for both programmers and non programmers why is it important for non programmers? Because the programmers can bring you things that they couldn't before. What do you think?

Bob 50:08
Yeah, and I think it's a great learning tool opportunity for developers and non developers alike. If you're interested in getting into code. GitHub being basically the open source, you know, realm, you can, you can just pick up a lot of great grades. I'm sure you can pick up a lot of garbage too, but there's a lot of good stuff out there.

Kevin 50:27
So okay, where does that leave us? Which list are you on? Remember now?

Bob 50:32
That was your number six positive so it's time for my number six positive and I think this one will be brief. I think slack is my number six positive and its ability to kind of almost fulfill the Facebook mission of bringing people together without necessarily all the ads in bullshit stuff that I'm sure we'll talk about a little later.

Kevin 50:58
So yeah, slack is my number six. Good. So when I worked at the first agency I worked at we were an early adopter of slack. So slack was created in 2012. We start using in 2013. And, and at at the time, it's like, yes, it's cool, but I thought it was just yet another thing that you know, was out there. But it's really changed things because it's dead simple. It's web based. It pretty much killed off things. And it'll probably laugh AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, remember, I mean, you'd have to have all of those installed. Because depending on who you want to talk to, right?

Bob 51:34
Yes. Do you remember that one that pulled them all together? I can't think of the name of it now. But there was like a universal chat app that you basically registered all your other accounts through and you could use it Damn it. I can't remember it was called

Kevin 51:46
it sounds sketchy price stores your password.

Bob 51:49
Yeah, there was all kinds of shitty stuff with that, but it was a trillion trillion Pro. I love to trillion.

Alright, so let's see. Where's an hour back to the bad? Right? Okay, so

Kevin 52:03
so my number six, and this is going to be specific. But Oracle sued Google because of Android, the API's and aerosol. Yeah. And that's still being litigated. And it's for like billions of dollars and Oracle is one the initial judgment, and Google's appealing. But the real trouble with this isn't the money that's changing hands, because you and I wouldn't say it anyway. It's doesn't have anything to do with us. But it set the precedent that the API signatures I believe, is, and I could have this totally wrong, but the API signature think of the interfaces as copyrightable. Not the implementation, but just having a method named void save or something.

Bob 52:42
Yeah, see, that's crap. That's like, I don't know. That's like trademarking toilet paper. Yeah.

Kevin 52:48
So, speaking of frivolous patents, I should maybe I put that in that maybe that's the overarching theme here. somebody tried to claim that the shaft car was their patented invention and in fact, I believe they actually got the patent, and Newegg contested it because this guy is like hey, Newegg. And if you're not familiar Newegg. They're like a computer retailer. You owe us a bunch of money because you have a shopping cart completely like was like, you know, you can't patent the mouse click. The shopping cart is obvious. So, patent trolls and whatnot. I just hate that kind of stuff. So we put that in there too. What do you think?

Bob 53:29
Well, I think that's great. I yeah, there's so many shitty things that apparently happened in 2010.

Kevin 53:34
And we're only halfway done.

Bob 53:37
So my number six is going to be super quick because we've already touched on it. My number six of the not so great tech would be the crypto craze. Bitcoin was pre 2010. But a theorem kind of brought wallet, online trading all that kind of good stuff to the forefront because it was something other than just Bitcoin. It's a mess.

Kevin 53:57
So that's a good one.

I'll just quickly transition to my number five positive and I'll just throw it out there as the gig economy so if you're a god damn

magician, car driver whatnot the power

is is did you

Bob 54:17
say magician? Yeah

Kevin 54:18
because the reason I said I'm watching on Netflix it's

Bob 54:22
Oh my son watches that one the magician's right

Kevin 54:24
well, there's a button no not not that one's on CW but there was one on Netflix. It's called, like, magic for humans or something. And it's like he actually mentioned in there the gig economy, you can basically get anyone to do anything on the internet these days. Whether it's, you know, back in the day when you're growing up, it's like, you can hire a band, you know, you have this like sketchy part of Craigslist. Well, that's come out and they're their apps. I mean, when I was at your there's an app for that when I was at your place, you had like three or four options of people who will bring you food to your house. Yeah, guess how many cats Has well we still have pizza hut and Papa John's that's about it and I don't think this qualifies gig economy, right?

Bob 55:07
Nope, not so. Alright, so that was your number five good? Yes. My number five good basically encompasses a lot of stuff we talked about today 4g LTE networks that came of age in the 2000s which made a lot of this digital communication streaming from your phones possible so

Kevin 55:30
that figure that was a really big that might be on my list that might be on my list of the a quick one. Okay, so 4g definitely did change it and I'm patiently frickin waiting for 5g because while sometimes I will use my 4g hotspot do work and or do a podcast with you. 5g is where I think I need to be for the whole house because I don't think my 4g phones gonna handle that.

Bob 55:57
So now melted.

Kevin 55:59
Yes. So that's good. Alright, moving along here.

Bob 56:03
Number five bad or five bad net

Kevin 56:05
neutrality. So good one net neutrality for the lay person is a topic that came up a couple of years ago, basically the current administration, FCC head said, you know, what, no longer are these protections in place? What protections were they? You say, Kevin? Well, what they are is let's say your internet provider wanted to throttle slow down your Netflix, because you're doing a lot of binge watching or whatever,

Bob 56:36
before net neutrality, or because large corporate interest, wanted more bandwidth and paid for it. That's yourself.

Kevin 56:42
That's it. So So net neutrality protected us. But those rules got rescinded. And now it is possible that you can be throttled unless you pay to play right.

Bob 56:56
Yeah, tinfoil hat guy and me says we've always been throttled.

Kevin 56:59
Yeah. How do you check that right?

Bob 57:02
Yeah, exactly. All right. I think we're back to the positives. Nope. My number five negative. You've just got the ping pong game all wrong. My number five negative. You've already brought it up. Mine was DNA kits for the masses. Yeah, so don't do it. We don't we Yeah, we don't need to be testing our DNA, who who cares? Who cares where we're from? Who cares what we might die? Well,

Kevin 57:24
it's a pseudoscience really Anyway, I've read so many articles were there. Who knows if what the information they're giving you is any were true because you can be, say Jewish as a race or a Jewish as a religion. You can be from the Middle East, but your skin color you know, I mean, there's just so many combinations and it's just doesn't make sense. Plus, the Pentagon just recently put out a warning saying, hey, if your God member you shouldn't be submitting these DNA tests for for security reasons.

Bob 57:59
That's got to be One of the biggest red flags I've ever seen it's just such a data grab so gross right all right, all right, so your number four good one he might

Kevin 58:09
crap your parents, but I'm gonna loop in AI ml and neural nets. Oh wait

Bob 58:16
as a good one

Kevin 58:17
toes you're gonna crap your pants. So actually, this one kind of rides the line for me between good and bad and I've got a few of those. So I was watching the YouTube series that I pass along you which is only three to three episodes before YouTube

Bob 58:33
I was gonna say it's paywalls right only

Kevin 58:35
the first three episodes are free but after that they want money and sorry YouTube, you've already you're already profiting off me somehow someway. But fucking drug dealers. One of the cool things in there was a guy a former Tennessee Titan football player had ALS or has ALS and they use speech recognition type things to help learn how he talks now. Excuse me versus how he used to talk Like press conferences and things like that. And now they can translate him very well. And I was like, that's what ml

Bob 59:07
is. Wait, so they can translate him in his own voice basically. Yes.

Kevin 59:11
So he's very well, that's beautiful. That's cool. He's very difficult to understand in real life now. But they can, they can go both ways they can, okay, he can say something now, and it can just do text, or they can also replay in his own voice, which is amazing. That's pretty awesome. They also have it where somebody has lost a limb and they have the Luke Skywalker hand where you know, you move these things in your arm and it knows then it learns you as a person on how to move it. Because previous attempts at like limbs, specially hands hands are very complicated is well how do we make this work for everyone? Well, you don't that's the problem. Everyone is wired kind of a little bit differently. And if you leverage machine learning, to kind of figure out you know, the nuances A few and hey, that work that didn't and adjust on the fly. That's great. And so that's where I think it's super. That's great noble, where I'm not so hot on AI and machine learning is like self driving cars. I really think that's just you know, I know. That's just a waste of time. You know, we're, you know, I just read the other day, Tesla hat was involved in another autopilot death, you know, where the car was an autopilot and killed some people. So, of course, yeah,

Bob 1:00:30
but still, they've got like, hundreds of thousands to go before that's really an issue.

Kevin 1:00:35
Right? I mean, the the easy defense of that is Yeah, and so and so died from dear, you know, crashes and that's human control. So what's your point carry

Bob 1:00:46
on? Yeah, on that same day, 3000 people probably got killed by regular people driving. So

Kevin 1:00:53
what I'm getting at is, I don't put auto or self driving cars at the top of the machine learning like to do list I put right mbts I put people who have medical, I put that high up. So that's why when I, when I see like, hey, there's this new self driving car and it's blah, blah, blah. I'm like, that's great and all but is that changing humanity? I mean, getting rid of effect. Yes. We're saving you from the tyranny of driving a car. Ooh, you know, that's, that's really not high on my list of things we need.

Bob 1:01:26
I'm telling you though, next year when I get my cyber truck, I'm getting it with the autonomous mode. Alright,

moving on. That is an upgrade.

Kevin 1:01:35
Alright, so we are on Bob's number four positive,

Bob 1:01:39
right my number four positive also spooky. You already had it ride sharing gig economy apps, basically, where's my number four. So Oh, the ability to have a system in your pocket where there's thousands of participants where you can pretty much good anything you need on because they're volunteering to be in the system. So

Kevin 1:01:58
the only notable thing there is With the gig economy comes the obvious potential exploitation by the overlords running the apps. Yes. Lyft Uber, I think are the two that are considering unionizing or you know, there's there's issues there. And then the other one is with YouTube, YouTube's not really a gig economy unless you look at it through the lens of Well, I'm a performer Raiders

Bob 1:02:21
kind of our Yeah,

Kevin 1:02:22
so yeah, so there's exploitation potential there. But

Bob 1:02:28
what I think the technology to make that open for pretty much anyone to participate in that economy is the bonus part. Maybe the way it's executed is not but the ability the technology is open that door.

Kevin 1:02:42
I think that's pretty Yeah. And let me tell you, Airbnb if we're considering that also a gig economy that is a huge huge plus thing I'm, I'm going to Disney World for the second time, or third time with an Airbnb because it's just way better than doing a hotel. So

Bob 1:02:58
we always look for the Yes, Airbnb places to quirkier the quirkier the better. Alright, so your to your number four bad

Kevin 1:03:09
Cambridge Analytica. That's my number four.

Bob 1:03:12
Wow, that's really far out. We thought it'd be higher up. I thought it'd be closer number one

Kevin 1:03:20
yeah, it gets pretty crowded here.

So Cambridge analytic if you're not very up on that there's a Netflix documentary called I think it's the great hack if I'm,

Bob 1:03:31
yeah, okay, I did an episode I

Kevin 1:03:32
did an episode on it. And basically, we're all suckers and it will be a component of one of my to a component of two of my top three negatives here in a bit. But Cambridge Analytica basically exposed how much data is the new oil. I'm channeling my inner Bob Baty buyer right there.

Bob 1:03:56
That's his data is the new oil that is trading. That's right.

Kevin 1:04:00
So I'll just leave it there. I don't have time to explain Cambridge Analytica, I, I don't think you would disagree with you. Maybe you went to high No,

Bob 1:04:07
not at all. No, my it's actually higher up on my list, but I don't disagree at all. My number four bad is an old guy rant. It's Instagram, Snapchat and tick tock. I just can't keep up with all this shit anymore. Like I was very active technology dad, and introduce my kids to Facebook and Twitter and kind of introduced them to Instagram and then Snapchat and tick tock all kind of blossomed on the scene in the 2010s. And I just can't keep up with all the different interfaces and what's the expectation how the content supposed to be formulated and delivered. It's just it's too hard. So that was my number four bad. It's just the rise of all these little micro networks. I still don't understand Instagram Stories dependent and people have explained it to me over and over and over. I just don't get it. I consume them pretty regularly because I think they're a good think they're good platform for consumption. But to have to make an Instagram story I struggle. Yeah, the struggle is real as the kids.

Kevin 1:05:07
Alright, we're back to the positive right?

Bob 1:05:09
Number Three positive for you, Kevin. Number three.

Kevin 1:05:13
Actually, this one's a mixed bag too. But it's gonna be like, Oh, I guess that is the thing, hashtags and the like button.

Bob 1:05:21
So Oh, that's a continuation of my old guy ran. Yeah. So

Kevin 1:05:24
hashtag, you would think that non tech users getting the them to use hashtag would be really difficult. But humans seem to know how to use hashtags nowadays. And the like button while it's positive is is it's a quick feedback. What I don't like about it is the ambiguity of not pushing the button. Does that mean people don't like the post? Or does that mean people haven't seen the post? And that ambiguity is by design, right where it's like, well It's not that people don't like it. Maybe they didn't see it or whatever. What do you think?

Bob 1:06:04
Yeah. Well, that I think that not seeing it, especially with all the stupid algorithms that these different networks have. I think that's a big possibility. I'm always, like perplexed by someone will post something that, especially on Twitter, actually Instagram too. So they'll post something that is actually kind of sad and not positive. But you want to show that you support them somehow. But your only option is to like the fact that they put something really sad there. Yeah. So I do like that Facebook has a little bit more wider range of things.

But yeah, I do struggle with that a little bit.

Kevin 1:06:43
Yeah. Do you think Twitter Instagram will adopt the multiple emoji reaction?

Bob 1:06:50
I don't know. Would Facebook come out and say against Twitter like No, we've patented that.

Kevin 1:06:56
We've patented the for emoji response or whatever it is now.

Bob 1:07:00
That's interesting. And then you'd have to remember what the equivalency is between the platforms. See, that part just pisses me off.

Kevin 1:07:06
There's there'll be an app for that. Don't worry, old guy rant continues. All right, your number three positive,

Bob 1:07:13
my number three positive. Actually, I struggled putting this as low as number three, I wanted it to be closer to one. But there's so many, I guess I didn't have so many good things. My number three positive was the Apple Watch and fitness trackers in general. Apple Watch kind of came to the largest prominence early in the 2010s. With that whole scheme and the connectivity, I dislike having, it's very futuristic, having all that stuff on your wrist. And I have the mentality where it doesn't consume me even if people in my household think it might. But I have the ability to focus my attention in many different directions. But I like that it's a constant reminder of your activity level and the ability to track it. I think. I love data, which which version

Kevin 1:08:00
do you have?

Bob 1:08:02
I am wearing a four which they discontinued because it was so similar to the five that they launched. So you today you can purchase a three or a five D. So do you have to have your phone close by? Is it near field required? Well, you still get all the functionality of the tracking on the watch so that you can still analyze your heart rate, you can still track a workout. I don't have the LTE version. So if I want interactivity with my phone, yeah, I have to be within Bluetooth range of it. So but it's still a watch. Regardless, I had a Dick Tracy watch, because that's what I think they are. I would prefer that it works by itself. And I don't have one because I'm in the Android side. Well, the LTE is more expensive and I'm a cheapskate. So

Kevin 1:08:48
I think my wife has the LTE version. She's in the apple ecosystem. And I really wish there were some more options and Andrew and I haven't looked for a while. I have a Fitbit That's really nice has nothing to do with my phone or anything. But I think that might be the future innovation where I mean, these phones are huge. And you guys stick them in your pocket, you know, they're just they're just somewhere or you're going to drop them. But I think if if the phones become exclusively wearable, I think that would be huge.

Bob 1:09:21
I think we're going there for sure. All right. So your number three. Good, right. I already did that one. Oh, then you're on number three bad Sorry, I lost track.

Kevin 1:09:34
By number three bad is the 2016 US election I realized that is not a tech topic. It is though, because we were basically compromised in a digital fashion from bad actors around the globe. It's the rise of fake accounts the rise of, of being an expert at being a bully online the expert of inflaming people and the exploitation of filter Bubbles. So I think that for me is one of the largest negatives that I could come up with, even though I have two more ahead of it.

I guess it was the third largest

Bob 1:10:12
thing. Yeah. If you haven't watched the Cambridge analytical special on Netflix, totally encourage you to do so.

Kevin 1:10:20
So, yeah, hopefully, hopefully we won't have a repeat in 2020. But guess what I think, Bob,

Bob 1:10:26
it's already happening. Yeah. Very good. All right. You're not on Facebook. So you don't see the shit show but it's already happening.

Kevin 1:10:32
Well, I I only see the Twitter side and thankfully, I don't see it on Instagram, which is a Facebook property.

Bob 1:10:38
Yeah, but Facebook is the worst. Yeah,

Kevin 1:10:41
I don't doubt

Bob 1:10:42
it. Alright, so where does that leave us is that you're not so my number three bad plays right off of that. Oddly enough, it's weird. It's like we know each other and our friends. Mine is the rise in social media addiction, and the rise of outrage culture, kancil culture, virtual signaling, virtue signaling, and all that. bullshit that goes with all that stuff. So, uh, yeah, social media really big negative, I think for the 2010s and I don't see that ending anytime soon. Uh,

Kevin 1:11:11
there's a, there's a lot of people who are good at psychology on Twitter, they know exactly how to word it. Because, like you said, virtue signaling, you know, I'm going to write this in a way that it'll make me sound superior to everyone else. And somehow, you know, gain sympathy or empathy for just like this negativity to propel yourself forward and people are very good at it.

Bob 1:11:39
Yeah or we all should be doing x y and z but if you dig into the profile the person who posted that they don't do anywhere near x y&z and in another problem is is the fake accounts thing. The person that's

Kevin 1:11:51
you know, we have

certain certain certain group for certain certain certain candidate and they're just flaming Each they're playing both sides. And it's hard to tell what's real, what's not. Side note, Facebook attempts to have a real person behind the username. Twitter does not give quick thoughts on, on whether making it real person would fix any of that.

Bob 1:12:22
No, because it's just kind of like the the spam bot issues with web forms. You know, we found ways to kind of mitigate that. But then people figured out that they can just employ people for pennies on the dollar to be the humans to do the same spam botting and check the box that says I'm not a robot. So the shits gonna go bad either way. All right, let's go back we need to shift to

Kevin 1:12:48
go back to the positive my number two positive is electric vehicles.

Bob 1:12:54
So very interesting.

Kevin 1:12:56
What's even more interesting is we've had electric vehicles for About 100 years now. And if you're a historian of vehicles, you'd you know, find where big oil I'm using air quotes is basically killed off that industry so that we can all have internal combustion engine vehicles and we all like hell yeah, we got muscle cars. I mean, we did it all. But now we're to the point where electric vehicles just kind of makes more sense and it's not even a clower

Bob 1:13:25
the point where the planet is definitely going to die. I was

Kevin 1:13:28
gonna say, I'm actually not into electric vehicles because the plants gonna die. I'm into it first, purely economics. Right and also maintainability and internal combustion engine has a lot of frickin moving parts and explosions under the hood, where no light by design and electric vehicle is literally

Bob 1:13:50
simple in it, but Kevin they catch fire. Well,

Kevin 1:13:54
you know what sort of cars with flammable liquids and so

Bob 1:13:59
that comes Last under the hood

Kevin 1:14:00
right so um I would like to think my next vehicle will be an electric car or vehicle but that's a bold statement however the reason that's I'm in a hybrid right now I'm telling you cyber truck is on my list what I really wish for the future though is the infrastructure because Big Oil had to put in had to solve the their distribution problem to hey you're in the middle of Utah How do you keep going without you know we need fueling stations well we need to figure out a way to have bigger life batteries and Tesla just got this was the patent you know that claiming to have a lot longer battery life but we also need to be able to charge faster or we need to be the ability to swap out batteries rather than go and charge the battery just say hey give me another one and in charge this one and then you pay like a propane fee like you you know changing out your grill propane cylinder you know, here you go. Here's my, my 20 bucks and whatever. So that's my hope and and electric vehicles a huge kind of an allegory or side to this one right? Here is I really wish we could harness the title energy of the moon. You know, when that moon spins around Earth, it does a lot of moving. So the kinetic energy from that and just like turbans underwater, you'd think we would have infinite free electricity at this point. But apparently we haven't figured that out yet.

Bob 1:15:20
It would definitely contribute for sure.

Kevin 1:15:22
So there we go. Evie, that's me. That's my number two.

Bob 1:15:26
My number two positive would be voice assistant services like Amazon, Google. Siri, all those good ones. So.

Kevin 1:15:37
So real quick, there's a lot of positive there in fact that my kids learned that this morning and if you say Alexa fart, she will comply.

Bob 1:15:46
You need to let me try that later. Try that out on the big speaker.

Kevin 1:15:51
It's it makes me giggle.

So there's that and then if I if I go ahead and put on the tin foil hat here and And say well we do invite the surveillance state into our home with all of these things. There's that.

Bob 1:16:09
So we have an episode for that as well. Yeah, once again, I think the big disclaimer on these these lists is I think the underlying technology is the positive the use of that technology is where things get totally sketched out Black Mirror, also know your number too bad.

Kevin 1:16:27
My number too bad.

You are last few ones here definitely gonna overlap. So

as it's written on my,

my little notepad here, mental health connection to technology. So I think technology number three, technology has a huge impact on mental health. And number one is we actually probably get doping mean highs. And then when that doping mean goes away. You are you have a little bit of withdrawal feeling but it also creates these highlight reels like Instagram is really a highlight reel.

The see

the idea that you do or don't get likes, I was talking to a school teacher recently. And she's like, it's actually become a problem where people get social care students are getting social anxiety because they'll post something and get no reactions. Or we are now in a world where are you cool? I don't know, how many followers do you have? Do you have the new iPhone? You know, it's like,

man, when I was growing up, it was

can you catch a football? How tall are you? But now it's what do you possess? What's your status symbols? You know, what's your social network look like? And holy crap. I've seen a lot of people and I really praise them for doing that. Like, hey, I need to take a break from social media. It's, you know, it's getting too much. I just need to take break. I'll see. We'll see you next week. Or I really don't like it. When they pick it. They

Bob 1:17:58
come back when you're ready. Giant the giant dick and me though, says that's virtue signaling as well. Um, Don't you wish you were as strong as I am that I can take a break from social media? All right, that's fair.

Kevin 1:18:11
That's totally fair. You don't have to announce it there. How about that? Right?

Bob 1:18:15
Yeah. Just do it and be quiet about.

Kevin 1:18:17
Yes.

Do you think there's a podcast version of virtue, virtue signaling? And did you just do it, Bob? I'm just asking asking for a friend.

Bob 1:18:27
Yeah. I do it all the time. I'll admit it. So

Kevin 1:18:31
mental health is something I've always struggled with. And technology sort of exploits those flaws sometimes. And it sucks. All right, back to you, Bob. What's your number two shitty thing.

Bob 1:18:45
My number two bad thing. We've already touched on this apps to collect data in the combination for now is that hold the Cambridge analytics thing? Or Cambridge Analytica. So basically coming out with apps that are viral in nature basically designed to help create that 3d avatar that data avatar of, you know, citizens around the globe. So that's my number two

Kevin 1:19:09
took me out to city. It took me a while to figure out that Oh, wait a second. How do you the original way of funding a free app is to have an ad supported and if you didn't want to ad supported the opposite of that was to pay for it. Well enter pick a pick an arbitrary time, some mid 2008, a mining 2010s. Facebook now incentivizes your free apps to to monetize that way. So you have a menu of things that could happen. You could have an app that is ad supported only app that is not ad supported, but it's Facebook supported because they're, they're shoveling all your stuff over the fence to Facebook, or you could have both. And then the third thing you could well there's like three and four here. The third thing you can have is it's you pay for it

and they still send it off

Bob 1:19:58
to Facebook. right and that's the ones will steal your data

Kevin 1:20:01
and that's the was a really pissed me off, especially Amazon. It's like, Wait a second, I'm paying. I'm a Prime member, I'm paying you 120 bucks a year, and you still have these fucking third party cookies that say, Hey, would you like to buy that? Whatever? No, I don't and when I do, I'll come back or I'll buy it Where the fuck I want.

Bob 1:20:20
Okay, but Here, take this music as a trade.

Take these videos as a trade. Oh my gosh, so, okay, so I want to finish on a good note. So we're going to double down and do okay, the bad ones are number one bad ones and then we'll go over to our number one good.

Kevin 1:20:36
How's that? Okay, well, I'll make it real easy on mine. My number one bad one was air quotes surveillance state. So it's basically what we just talked about where the culmination Yeah, yeah, it's, it's the weaponizing and let's just call it for what is the theft of your person, your persona that that of your persona,

in the real problem and

dh David Heinemeier him saying, whatever, sorry, I can't pronounce your name, right? The Ruby on Rails guy was just tweeting recently that, you know, we know it's bad, but why do we still do it? And I'll tell you why. Because there's so many hands in the cookie jar right now that it's become normalized. It's normal to steal data. And once it becomes normalized, go ahead and try to swim against that current because you're gonna have clients that say, Well, I want I want that too. Because the competitors doing this, why can't we do this, Kevin? You and your principles why, what? Why? Why? Why should you restrict me? Because I'm losing an economic advantage here, because over here, they're getting all this great data from Facebook.

Bob 1:21:38
Did you have you watched Have you finished Silicon Valley yet? I haven't yet. Oh, keep that in mind.

Kevin 1:21:46
Maybe I'm just in tune or the red is there in tune with?

Bob 1:21:48
Yeah, well, yeah. It's, it's, it's funny because it's true. Um, so my number one is Facebook in general. But the question I wanted to ask you was, do you Think so we've gone through this top 10 list almost in its entirety for good and bad. Do you think that the combination of all those good and bad things that we've that we've kind of highlighted today actually contribute to your both of our number ones that surveillance state? that such a negative?

Kevin 1:22:17
Yes.

Okay. Terrible radio have one word answer. Yes.

Bob 1:22:23
I think that's really what it boils down to you. I mean, we've covered a lot of ground. So yeah, um, Alright, so let's move to our number one positive. So let's, let's close it out on our number one positive notes. Do you want to go first, do you want to go set up?

Kevin 1:22:36
I'll let you go first. And it's really easy. My number one is actually on your list. And you may be surprised how how high it is, but mine's actually the 4g LTE infrastructure.

Bob 1:22:46
Well, and I debated on that too, because obviously that 4g LTE made most of the stuff we've talked about,

Kevin 1:22:54
yep. Everyone's pockets. It's the enabler of everything else.

Bob 1:23:00
That's a good one. I totally appreciate that. I fanboy it a little bit for number one, basically my number one, tech positive for the 2010s is Elon Musk. Everything that fine young gentleman has done from Tesla SpaceX to the boring company. You name it, even the fucking flame thrower. I'm a giant fan eaten that shit up, aren't you? I am. I think that, you know, the world needs great minds like his. And yeah, sure, he still makes money doing this stuff. But he spends a ton and he's almost single handedly responsible for saving the United States space, you know, space exploration platform, basically, because NASA is they washed out basically in the 2010s. And he helped to bring them back basically.

Kevin 1:23:51
So I look at Elon Musk is sort of the modern day, Thomas Edison, you know, insert inventor here and it's bet there was a large gap between Early 20th century inventors, and what we have today because there was a lot of just Yeah, I don't think a lot of people gave a fuck, you know, we had a lot of words in there, you know, just, you know, a lot of things happen. So, Mr. Musk,

you're not perfect, but damn, you're inspirational.

Bob 1:24:17
Yeah, I mean, you look at the Facebook's of the world, the Googles of the world, you know, the Amazons, the world, the people that are at the helm of those organizations, they're really not, even if they say they're doing it for the betterment of mankind, I don't really see a lot of positives from what they're doing. And I think our lists illustrated that pretty fairly. And I do feel like he's got a little bit of a, at least a for the betterment of mankind, backbone.

Kevin 1:24:45
So

I would like to point out, this is probably going to be the longest podcast date that we've ever done, and it's

Bob 1:24:53
close. It's definitely close. Well,

Kevin 1:24:55
you're gonna give your your honorable mentions and then actually have a list to

Bob 1:25:00
Oh geez. Okay, so really quickly because I know that we're, you know, we are pushing the envelope for length here, my honorable mentions from a negative standpoint, and I think you'll appreciate one of them movie pass is definitely one of my negative honorable mentions had such potential to. I did but it was dumb. And then the Xbox and the Xbox Kinect. I bought one in the early 2010s. And I think that the games total the number of like, in the handfuls and it just was not great. It's kind of like

Kevin 1:25:36
the light gun for the original Nintendo with that guy. You know, they had like, organic still play Duck Hunt, though. Yeah.

Bob 1:25:41
Fair enough. All right. And then my Do you want a guy of positive honor I mentioned him as well. Yeah. The commitment to teaching kids how to code in the 2010s. I feel like that was a really big movement with things like Lego Mindstorms and scratch. So I think that was a good one, and then the Xbox. So I slammed box for the negative, but their adaptive controller that they came out with in the late 2010s the commitment to inclusion in the consumer hardware world which, you know, unless you're building appliances for the differently abled, you know, there's really not much going on in the gaming world for that. So

Kevin 1:26:18
I thought that was pretty Have you actually seen the TV commercials for those controllers? Oh God, they make me ball my face. I was gonna say the same thing. I'm like, man, they're frickin touching is how all right? Yes, they are. Alright, so I'm going to go through it a little differently if you don't mind. I almost got like a timeline, just walk down memory lane of things. So in 2011, we had the first Chromebooks

Bob 1:26:42
in 2012. We had the first Raspberry Pi in 2010. That almost made my list to

Kevin 1:26:47
in 2012. We had windows eight with the Start button fiasco. Alexa fart. All right. Apple Watch was introduced in 2014. Also in 2014, we had the first eight core Intel I seven. Is she fighting? I hear something she did. She did in 2015 we skipped windows nine and went right for Windows 10.

Also in 2015, the alpha

go event which we covered somewhat in our great AI debate, I do believe or at least we had

Bob 1:27:26
talked about in the last episode. Yeah, I think we talked about last episode too, so that has definitely some

Kevin 1:27:32
talking points around it. 20 x I'm gonna go backwards little bit 2010 was when 4g LTE was released. Uber 2011 slack 2012. We did cover that. fortnight was released, I believe in 2017 ish. Wow. Yeah, felt closer. Um, and then 2017 also SpaceX landed their first reusable rockets. And then In 2012, kind of Golden sciency here, the Higgs boson was first discovered at the CERN Super Collider in Europe. Oh man, I thought they did that in Batavia. Do you want to guess when the Amazon Echo first debuted? 15 Yes, correct. 2019 saw the first starlink items go up. Oculus Rift. Pokemon GO Boston Dynamics robots, drones, Siri, and self driving cars. We're all a part of this crazy ass decade. And then one thing that will probably talk about in the future in 2019, Google achieved quantum supremacy Bob, do you even know what the fuck that means? I had to look it up.

Bob 1:28:48
I think they were the first one to actually develop true quantum computing, right?

Kevin 1:28:54
They are but quantum supremacy allegedly means it is that means that this computer can do With a quantum computer that no traditional computer can do as in if you use the regular modern day computer to figure could never complete the right right. It would just take crazy amount of time. So infinity amount of Exactly. And then oh, I did forget the most important one that Trumps all this technology. The Bob & Kevin show started in 2017.

Bob 1:29:24
Ooh, nice. I like that one.

Bob 1:29:30
Well, I can't think of a better way to close it out and that can you I cannot this was a good one. Also the longest one, maybe? Yes. So if you made it to the end, find us on social media. Have a great week, and we're back on a regular schedule.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai