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2:07

Hey there, cyber listeners. Matthew here. Just really

2:09

quickly want to give you some context for this episode just

2:11

in case you didn't hear the first part.

2:13

This is the second part of a long conversation

2:16

that Emily and I recorded with longtime

2:19

motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Kepler. He

2:22

has left.

2:23

He's got his own thing going on now. Maybe you've heard

2:25

of it. But before

2:27

we left, we made him tell

2:29

us all the deep, dirty secrets of motherboard.

2:33

Lot of great stories in this one. So

2:35

to kind of set it up where

2:37

we are here, he had just finished

2:40

telling us a story about one

2:42

of the motherboard's earliest controversies, which

2:44

happened when he was in an HR

2:47

meeting, learning how to do his job. He came out, he

2:49

had a bunch of calls from Disney. If

2:51

you want to hear that story, go back and listen to

2:53

the first episode.

2:55

Let's get into a different controversy.

2:58

One that ties into a movie that's out

3:00

in theaters right now. It's a

3:02

unique

3:05

system. I know this.

3:07

It's how the files of the whole park, it

3:18

tells her everything. Sir,

3:21

he's uploading the virus. Eagle one,

3:23

the package is being delivered. Can

3:29

we talk about another time someone got mad at us? Yeah, let's

3:31

move on. That's much, this one's

3:33

much funnier. So

3:37

there's a movie coming out. Perhaps you've heard of it. The

3:40

Gran Turismo, the movie movie

3:43

directed by Neil Blomkamp. We

3:47

have done some work. With this

3:49

director before. Former friend

3:51

of motherboard. Former friend of motherboard.

3:54

Now arch nemesis, Neil

3:57

Blomkamp.

3:58

Uh, it. is pulling up

4:00

the article now. Yeah, I'm trying. Do you want

4:02

me to pull up the YouTube video? Yeah, yeah, I think we can, we

4:05

should, we can watch the video, right Shirley? We

4:08

have that ability. Can

4:11

you, while she's pulling it up, Jason, can you set up

4:14

what we're about to watch? Yeah, so

4:16

Neil Blomkamp is the director of District 9

4:20

and a bunch of other movies that

4:22

are very motherboardy. Like we would always

4:24

talk about like, is this motherboardy and motherboardy

4:27

means like, kind of like dystopian, utopian,

4:29

sci-fi, like edgy,

4:32

blah, blah, blah. And it's like District 9

4:35

super motherboardy because it's about aliens

4:38

being like living in this concentration

4:43

camp, essentially, in South Africa,

4:45

if I recall correctly, very deep. Yeah.

4:48

We were trying

4:51

to figure out how to make,

4:53

at the time, Motherboard made a lot of YouTube videos,

4:55

documentaries that were super expensive

4:58

to make and super time consuming to

5:00

make.

5:00

And by that,

5:03

I mean, cost tens of thousands

5:05

of dollars. We would send people into the

5:07

field for months, not months, for

5:09

like, you know, a while, and then they would spend

5:11

like months in edit. And they

5:14

were and are fantastic

5:16

pieces of journalism,

5:17

but we weren't able to like make enough of

5:20

them because they were so expensive and

5:22

resource intensive, etc. So we

5:24

came up with this idea. This was before

5:27

I was EIC, I believe, but I was like

5:29

involved in this whole thing.

5:31

We came up with this idea called

5:33

Pilot Week, where we would

5:35

film five different shows

5:38

that were going to be like,

5:40

quote unquote, easier to make. Although once

5:42

you see this, this was like not at all easy to

5:44

make and was expensive and was in the

5:46

field. So I'm not sure what we were thinking, but

5:49

they were supposed to be like videos that we could like

5:51

film in our office and turn around quickly,

5:54

like shorter, easier videos.

5:58

And one of the ideas was, was for this

6:00

thing called technocatharsis, where

6:03

famous people destroyed technology

6:06

that was ruining their lives. And

6:08

by that, things that were really stressing

6:10

them out.

6:11

And in this case, Neil Blomkamp

6:14

agreed to participate.

6:15

And I don't remember the exact specifics,

6:18

but it was more or less like, I spend

6:20

so much time looking at my computer, let's

6:22

destroy it. I don't like

6:25

all the time I spend on my computer, I want to

6:27

be more

6:28

in tune with what's real

6:30

life. So let's do this video, which are

6:33

going to play. Let's take a look. Let's

6:34

roll the clip. It's like two and a half

6:36

minutes long. I think let's just watch through it and

6:38

then we'll talk about it after it's over. Oh, can

6:43

you hear it? Or let me sorry, let

6:46

me restart it. Give me one second guys.

6:48

Sorry. All good. And if you're listening to

6:51

the podcast of this afterwards, we will put

6:53

the link in the show. Yes. Okay.

6:55

Playing. Hi, I'm

6:57

Neil Blomkamp and I have a ton of computers and

7:00

a monitor strapped to the front of this Hummer and I'm about

7:02

to smash them to pieces. Welcome

7:04

to Techno Catharsis.

7:06

Fuck the

7:10

monitor.

7:13

I'm Neil Blomkamp. I'm the director behind

7:15

District 9, Elysium and Chappie. Elysium

7:19

all is going to be so good. I'm going to be a woman in my life, are

7:21

taking too much time. So it's

7:24

a need to want to cleanse them out

7:26

of my immediate space. I

7:29

admire the technology and I

7:31

admire that it's able to kind of help people, you

7:34

know,

7:34

do a lot more with their lives.

7:37

But it also, if you don't control

7:39

it, it ends up taking

7:41

everything from you and you just sit in front of it all

7:43

day. And I've mentally decided to not do that

7:45

anymore. So I want to, I want

7:48

to destroy it. We're just

7:50

looking for the perfect area to

7:52

smash the monitor and the laptops. This

7:54

looks pretty interesting here.

8:04

There's listening at home, the monitor

8:07

is strapped to the front of the Hummer. Yeah,

8:10

I

8:13

think we're good. And

8:20

he drove it in the morning. I

8:25

feel like they got what they deserve. Now

8:31

he's just driving around for the monitor. They

8:33

kill a hatred for the monitor, so it's good

8:35

to see it gone. That's

8:51

my favorite part.

8:51

It's so good. The monitor

8:55

is pretty faithful, but it took

8:57

a lot of time for me. And

8:59

two laptops that have also stuck numerous

9:02

hours. So the new time

9:05

to be spent without computers is upon me.

9:08

I feel like there's been a catharsis.

9:13

I feel like there's really a catharsis that's also

9:15

really good. Yeah.

9:21

So we

9:23

published this video as

9:26

well as four others that are like most

9:29

of them are pretty goofy. And

9:33

one, our audience hated

9:36

it. They were so mad. They

9:39

were really, really mad. They

9:42

were like, what is this? Why is this so low quality? Which

9:45

is crazy because that is pretty high quality

9:47

video. A lot going on there. I thought it was

9:49

good. It has a beginning, middle, and

9:52

he explains why he's doing this.

9:54

Yeah, we're in the field. I have no idea

9:56

how much that costs to make, but it's not an easy thing to make.

9:59

And I don't know if it was

10:01

like, because our audience didn't

10:03

like it or just because he didn't like it,

10:06

but like Neil Blomkamp did not like

10:08

that video and was like very mad

10:11

that

10:12

he participated.

10:16

And I wasn't

10:19

the subject of like the angry

10:21

emails, but it's

10:24

like we're such big fans of

10:26

him. The vibes were very good.

10:29

We're very happy about

10:31

how this turned out. We thought it was cool.

10:34

We thought it had, you know, it's silly, but

10:36

we thought it had something to say about how like much

10:38

time we were spending on devices and all that.

10:41

And then also it's like, you know, you don't want to be wasteful,

10:43

but the computers were no longer working.

10:46

And it's like we've done a lot about recycling

10:48

and e-waste and so on and so forth. And it's

10:50

like, it's not good, but

10:51

it's also like,

10:53

I don't know what happened to the computers in the end. We

10:56

framed them actually, or not frame

10:58

them, but they were like in our office for

11:00

a while. They

11:02

became like art pieces, you know,

11:05

just like in the grand scheme of things, like relatively

11:09

harmless video. But it

11:12

was very mad, very, very

11:14

mad, like no longer friends with us mad.

11:18

And I don't know if that

11:20

relationship was ever mended, but

11:22

like we never made

11:25

any, well, we

11:28

had five shows for pilot week. One

11:32

was that. Another

11:34

one was this cable access

11:37

type channel called What's

11:40

the Deal With, I believe, or

11:43

whatever happened to or something like that. And

11:45

that was Kaylee Rogers. It was a good

11:48

fun series as well. That

11:50

was an editorial series turned into YouTube videos.

11:54

We did Greatest Moments in Hacking History,

11:56

which is the only one that anyone liked, which

11:58

was an animated version.

11:59

version of it

12:02

was like animated

12:04

video

12:05

of hackers talking

12:08

about their favorite hacks that they had ever

12:10

done. And those all went viral and were good.

12:12

Yeah. Except they were animated and animation

12:14

is like so time consuming.

12:17

Yeah. And expensive. So like

12:19

yet another.

12:21

And then there was two others.

12:23

I forget what one of them was, but

12:25

the other one, and I said I wanted to talk

12:28

about this, so I'm just going to talk about it. Maybe you have

12:30

it

12:30

stuff pulled up for it, but it

12:33

was this series called I will open anything, which

12:35

is was my series. I

12:39

did not know about this. No,

12:41

my idea. And

12:42

I was the star of it.

12:45

This isn't the shit express thing, is it?

12:48

Well it's so a yes

12:50

it is because here's the thing. I did

12:54

a bunch of articles where I would buy

12:56

weird things and have them mailed

12:58

to the office and then I would open them on

13:00

webcam video and upload

13:02

that video to my personal YouTube.

13:05

And those videos repeatedly

13:07

went kind of viral on my own YouTube.

13:10

And we're like, why don't we do it on the motherboard

13:12

YouTube and make it a little bit more like

13:14

an unboxing video, but we're unboxing weird

13:17

stuff. And

13:19

the first one was Fox urine

13:22

that we have on Amazon.

13:25

Can we watch it? Yeah, let's watch

13:27

it. I have not watched in a very long time.

13:29

All right. Baby

13:31

Jason, look at that.

13:42

You're so happy. Look at how happy you are.

13:45

You're so happy. I'm here with motherboard growth

13:47

team member Evan Rogers, and

13:49

we are going to open this box. It's

13:52

pretty rectangular and standard.

13:55

I wouldn't say that there's anything particularly

13:57

notable about this box other than the fact that it's

13:59

a box.

13:59

that it was packaged excellently. No

14:02

fragile signs. No, it doesn't

14:04

seem fragile at all. All right,

14:06

so something hard. That was

14:08

a great sound. Yeah, it feels like

14:11

it's taller than it is wide. Yeah.

14:15

Should we break into this thing? I

14:17

think we should. Okay, got

14:19

to do this with care. The first thing

14:21

I'm noticing is a smell

14:24

emanating from this box. That's

14:27

true. A very strong smell.

14:29

All right, let's see what we've got here. It's

14:32

a bottle. Wild

14:36

meat-fed red fox

14:38

urine. I can't possibly fathom

14:41

why you would, A, send this to

14:43

a tech website, and

14:45

B, what you would do with this. Deer

14:47

hunters use as a masking scent

14:50

by applying around your stand. Because

14:52

fox urinate frequently to mark

14:54

their territory, deer are accustomed to smelling

14:56

their urine, and are not alarmed

14:58

by his presence. So you can cover

15:01

your scent, and also send chill

15:04

vibes out to deer. Exactly.

15:05

They're like, oh, everything's fine.

15:08

Should we open this? The color

15:10

of it. All right. It's

15:13

green. It's

15:16

certainly like rotting eggs, like

15:19

very sulfur-y. Yeah, absolutely.

15:22

It's got a definite... It's

15:24

not unlike pee that you're familiar

15:26

with. I mean, it would be like the

15:29

putrid flesh of a rotting animal,

15:32

and then also like a sycamore tree.

15:35

If I were a hunter,

15:37

I would give this five dirty

15:40

hostel socks, out of a possible five

15:42

dirty hostel socks. But as a

15:45

tech blogger, zero.

15:49

Zero point zero out of five. Anything.

15:52

All units. Zero. What

15:54

about you? This is hurting my face.

16:00

to see if this stuff actually works. You

16:05

monster. Okay,

16:09

so let me talk about this. Oh,

16:11

gross. So

16:15

tell them what you're doing at the end of the video

16:17

for the people listening at home. Gone.

16:20

Now we wait. I'm just spraying it all

16:22

over Brooklyn. I don't know why I did that. It's

16:24

just like fucked up. It

16:27

already smells like

16:28

piss. Fox

16:31

urine smells way different than regular

16:33

pee though. That's the whole conceit.

16:36

It smells horrible. Okay.

16:39

So

16:41

I can see why people didn't like that video because

16:43

it's not very good or entertaining and

16:45

I wasn't very good on camera at the time.

16:49

But we'll

16:51

get into how this originally started.

16:53

But basically we decided to make this and

16:56

we had people on our team just send us weird

16:58

shit. Send me weird shit. And then we decided

17:01

that this was the grossest one, I guess. And

17:04

I opened it in the office

17:06

one day and I believe I had

17:09

like, I think multiple people went

17:11

home because it was too gross

17:13

and it was like hurting their eyes.

17:17

My personal feedback on this video

17:20

now with the

17:23

distance of time is that it's

17:26

way too overproduced. It's

17:28

a little slow. And also,

17:30

I don't

17:32

know, it doesn't have anything to do with tech really, which

17:34

is fine. It doesn't necessarily have to do anything

17:36

to do with tech. But the conceit of the show

17:38

was like, I'm going to open up weird stuff that you can

17:40

buy on the internet or that people show me. And

17:43

this was during peak

17:45

YouTube unboxing gadgets

17:47

where people were unboxing the

17:49

new iPhone and

17:52

making 45 minute videos of them,

17:54

which is of course still a genre, but

17:56

it was like gadget fucking

17:59

YouTube. like we're supposed

18:01

to like be making fun of that. And

18:03

I don't even know if that like came through necessarily.

18:07

It's giving like early buzzfeed a little

18:09

bit and

18:12

less gadget fucker

18:15

like, you know. Dirty,

18:16

yeah. So

18:18

people

18:18

didn't

18:21

like that video. But

18:25

I wanna talk about the first

18:27

one that I ever did, which is

18:29

on a, you know, my

18:32

MacBook webcam. In

18:35

the early days of Bitcoin, I

18:37

found this website on the,

18:39

I don't even think it was on the dark web. I think it was on

18:41

regular web,

18:43

web 2.0 called Shit Express. And

18:49

it was a website that allowed you to anonymously

18:51

send horseshit to anyone in

18:54

exchange for $10 in Bitcoin. And

19:00

I wanted to see if it worked. And it was during

19:02

that period of time where like

19:04

Bitcoin can be used to buy things like

19:07

currency can be exchanged for goods and services,

19:09

which is like not really even the case with Bitcoin

19:11

now. But at the time people were buying drugs with it all

19:13

the time and doing other stuff.

19:15

So I was like, I'm gonna buy this. I didn't have any

19:18

Bitcoin at the time. Some people on motherboard had

19:20

Bitcoin, but I knew that my roommate

19:22

had a bunch of Bitcoin.

19:24

And so I was like, hey, Pete,

19:26

like

19:27

I'm in a Venmo you $10 and you send me $10 of Bitcoin.

19:31

And he did.

19:32

And I bought the Bitcoin. I bought the shit

19:35

and I mailed it to myself to see if it

19:37

would like actually come. I mailed it to the office

19:39

and it came.

19:41

And then I reviewed the service.

19:44

Well, we have the video.

19:47

Let's do that. We like to watch the video. This

19:49

one's short. So yeah, let's do it. Hey

19:53

internet, this is Jason with motherboard.

19:56

We're here to do our first ever unboxing

19:58

video. We have a very.

19:59

cool new product

20:02

from the website Shit Express.

20:04

It looks like a wrap burger from McDonalds.

20:07

It is supposed to be horse

20:09

shit from Slovenia it

20:12

appears. I'm very nervous

20:14

because I'm very excited to see what is

20:16

in here.

20:17

Looks like we've got a address

20:20

to me. You can send me mail at that address

20:22

if you want. We've got a customs form

20:25

that says, sorry, it

20:28

says it's a Halloween gag gift. I don't

20:30

know if you can see that there but that's what it says. It

20:33

looks like it came from Slovenia. So

20:36

let's see what's in here. Does

20:42

it smell? I don't

20:44

smell anything yet. It seems like maybe

20:46

it's Tupperware or something.

20:50

Yes, it isn't Tupperware.

20:53

It's a very old package. It's

20:55

in some bubble wrap.

20:58

And here we go. It

21:02

is indeed shit, I believe. The

21:06

bottom of the box says it's horse manure,

21:08

contents 100% organic matter. Wow. Usage, manure

21:12

can be added directly to compost

21:15

or garden. Use it at least three

21:17

weeks before plantation which

21:19

I don't think that's the right use of that word.

21:22

Do not leave in a closed box. Well,

21:25

it's in this which is a closed box and

21:27

it's been a while. Up

21:30

top it says I received a horse shit

21:32

what now?

21:34

At first, think about yourself.

21:37

Someone sent it to you probably because you

21:39

hurt or insulted a person consciously

21:41

or unconsciously. And

21:43

it has a personalized message

21:46

right here that says I hate your

21:48

guts. That was

21:50

the message I wrote to myself. You

21:53

sent yourself shit and it said I hate your guts.

21:56

I did indeed do that. And this

21:58

is completely anonymous.

21:59

I think like 20 bucks

22:02

in Bitcoin so I

22:04

use Bitcoin to buy shit online. It

22:07

was my first ever purchased

22:10

using cryptocurrency I'm

22:13

going to open it now very

22:16

quickly and then probably throw it away Yeah

22:27

Hmm

22:29

that's poop would you like to smell it there? It

22:35

smells like a horse final Yeah,

22:39

yeah, I think that was a success

22:43

So once you buy your own or shit,

22:45

you can go to shit Express comm I

22:47

think was it expressed on the day

22:50

It took about two weeks, which is

22:52

not all that fast. So if you hate

22:55

someone a lot of Slovenia, that's good But

22:59

if it's yes in time go ahead

23:01

and and you know order it it

23:04

comes from Slovenia So, you know customs

23:06

takes a while But yeah, this

23:08

is a great new product and I think I think

23:11

a lot of people will will

23:12

want to order this sort of thing Okay,

23:18

so

23:20

Sorry, you go and then I have a question you

23:22

asked a question first Do

23:24

you know how many Bitcoin?

23:28

$10 $20 was then like how much? According

23:32

to chat $26,000 now

23:36

Okay, cool They answered

23:38

it for us according to chat. What that's how

23:40

much that's how much? Yeah,

23:43

that yeah that that that that Prank

23:46

would be worth $26,000 now So

23:53

Here's a few things that that's yes Lots

23:56

of interesting things about this video many

23:59

like there's a lot long history, long future

24:01

for Shid Express after this. So I wrote

24:03

an article, I embedded it in the article. The

24:06

article went pretty viral, a lot

24:08

of people read it. I think the YouTube video

24:10

has like 100,000 views or something like that.

24:14

The owner of Shid Express

24:16

wrote me a letter saying, thank

24:19

you so much for covering my product. Our

24:21

sales have shot through the roof. And

24:25

he embedded this video

24:27

on shidexpress.com at the top

24:30

of the website. So

24:33

there's that. There's the fact

24:35

that that $10 in Bitcoin was worth like 20,000,

24:38

or that $20 worth of Bitcoin was

24:40

worth like $20,000 several years later that

24:44

I will never get back and that my roommate

24:46

will never get back.

24:47

There's the fact that the amount

24:50

of Bitcoin that was left over

24:52

in my wallet, because I didn't have, I had like

24:54

a tiny fraction left over that

24:57

I was able to see, but I could not access

24:59

was worth like $800 that I've just lost. I

25:02

can't get into it.

25:04

And then there's the fact

25:06

that, first

25:09

of all, Shid Express still exists. This

25:11

was like eight years ago, something

25:13

like that, seven, eight years ago, it still exists.

25:16

It got hacked last year. And

25:19

all of the like senders were doxed.

25:23

Like all of

25:25

the anonymous shit senders,

25:28

like, I mean, a lot of people use fake names

25:30

and emails and stuff, but it's like their emails

25:32

were leaked which is really funny. And I emailed

25:35

the dude and I don't remember what he said,

25:37

but let me see if I can pull it up.

25:39

But yeah,

25:41

like Shid Express, like weirdly,

25:46

weirdly important in my life.

25:50

So info at shidexpress.com. Again,

25:55

welcome to YouTube. And then of course, Good

25:58

night. So the owner

26:00

of Peter, the CEO of Shit Express,

26:03

emailed me in December 2014 and he

26:05

said this, I'll drop

26:07

it in chat. He was like, by the way, I

26:10

wrote about you in my

26:11

blog. No, you can't drop links,

26:13

unfortunately. But if you send

26:15

it to me, I can. You said,

26:17

yeah. It's showing up for me. Well,

26:19

it's not showing up for the rest of us. Am I a shadow

26:21

band? Yeah, you're shadow band in

26:24

the chat. So just

26:26

DM it to me on Slack

26:28

and I'll put it in. Yeah, it just shows

26:31

you. It just shows the three little

26:33

dots. Yeah, it's

26:35

just like dot, dot, dot. So

26:38

it's continued a shadow band, Jason.

26:41

You're just a civilian now, buddy. In September

26:44

of 2022, like years later, I was like,

26:47

hey, dude,

26:48

heard you got hacked.

26:51

Can you tell me about it? And I meant to blog about this,

26:53

but I forgot. He

26:56

said, one, it's still popular. They're getting orders

26:58

every single day. To this

27:00

day, they're getting orders every day.

27:02

He said customers weren't really

27:04

affected by the leak.

27:06

He said, quote, we

27:08

don't possess the customer's information. It

27:10

all stays with the payment processor and crypto

27:13

transactions are 100% anonymous.

27:16

Not gonna,

27:17

I don't know if don't want to unpack that right now. And

27:20

then he said that since they originally

27:22

got hacked by SQL, a SQL

27:25

injection that other people have tried

27:27

to hack them as well. But that quote,

27:30

we just want to do business and have

27:32

fun,

27:33

which is

27:36

how I feel as well. That's

27:43

funny.

27:44

All right, several listeners want to pause there for a break.

27:46

We'll be right back after this.

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30:38

All right, cyber listeners, welcome back. Since

30:41

we're in kind of the controversy, but this

30:43

one's really minor, but it's always struck me as very

30:45

funny and very

30:48

prescient of us and very stupid

30:50

of the critique all

30:52

these years later.

30:54

Motherboard

30:56

was one of the first sites to

30:58

remove its comments section.

31:01

Were you here when that happened or was that like right before

31:03

you?

31:05

No, I was

31:07

here. Do you remember Penny

31:09

Arcade doing a comic where

31:12

they made fun of Motherboard? Yes,

31:15

but I don't remember the comic. Let's

31:19

pull

31:19

it up. Okay, well, we have it. Let's pull it up. This

31:23

is really, this is your life. So,

31:25

oh

31:27

wait, no, sorry, wrong. No, there it is.

31:29

Okay, let me zoom in a little bit. I

31:32

will use Netflix. That's Derek, I believe. Yeah, I think that's

31:34

supposed to be a characterization

31:36

of Derek.

31:38

I'll read it.

31:41

So I wanna, so we got rid

31:43

of the, you guys got rid of the comment section

31:45

like 2015 and I wanna kind

31:47

of talk about that in a second. But the

31:49

immediate reaction from Penny Arcade who

31:52

I guess was a fan,

31:53

maybe, and if you don't know what Penny Arcade

31:55

is, it's

31:58

a video gaming web comic.

31:59

kind of the most successful and popular one.

32:02

So here at Motherboard,

32:05

we're replacing our comments section with something better,

32:07

no comments section. What

32:09

we've learned is that a conversation doesn't need

32:11

two sides. We're providing other

32:13

ways to contact us, ways nobody

32:16

will know about and are much easier to ignore. In

32:18

the end, we just want to hear from you. That's why

32:20

we've made it impossible to speak. If

32:22

only there were some way you could all discuss

32:24

the topic in a convenient place, maybe

32:27

even, I don't know, directly below the article. Honestly,

32:29

I don't even know what to call something like that,

32:32

which is really funny

32:35

now, given what we've

32:37

all learned about each other and how

32:40

we all feel about comments sections

32:42

and Facebook and Twitter in general.

32:44

And I just, like, no

32:47

comic has aged more poorly. Well, I'm sure

32:49

there are. But that comic has aged pretty poorly.

32:52

And I just kind of wanted you

32:54

to talk about the

32:55

different, different era of the internet

32:57

and, like, why would you get

33:00

rid of a comment section? What was going on online

33:02

at the time? And Emily, I know you've got some context as

33:05

well for that.

33:09

So

33:13

I didn't make this decision, but I supported

33:15

it at the time. It was like I really wanted them to

33:17

be turned off because the comments were terrible.

33:21

I think that I might get some

33:23

specifics here wrong.

33:26

But at the time, we had DISCUS

33:28

comments, which is D-I-S-Q-U-S,

33:31

I believe, which is like a third party

33:33

plug-in

33:35

that went beneath each article. And

33:37

the conceit with DISCUS is

33:39

that you had a DISCUS account, and then

33:41

you could comment on any website

33:44

that had DISCUS comments. So it's like your account

33:46

on Motherboard would have been the same account that you would

33:48

have on, like, you

33:49

know, Politico or something.

33:53

And I believe you could leave comments

33:55

as a guest as well.

33:58

That said, DISCUS, please. This was

34:00

a fucking trash fire of a

34:04

piece of software.

34:05

I don't know if it still exists, but it's like up

34:08

right up there with like,

34:10

some like

34:12

expense reporting software,

34:14

concur another garbage fire piece of

34:17

software. In just

34:19

terms of like usability for one, I

34:21

think it loaded really slow.

34:23

It did. The

34:25

main thing is like one, it was full of spam, like

34:28

tons and tons and tons and tons of

34:30

spam. So it made the

34:32

articles look spammy, the website

34:34

looks spammy. Second of all,

34:36

people were just like dickheads

34:39

in the comments, they were really mean. And

34:41

it's like one thing for someone

34:44

to disagree with you or like point

34:47

out something wrong, but like we had

34:49

people who were like harassing women on staff,

34:51

we had people who were posting threats,

34:53

we had people who were just like

34:56

trolling us constantly and being assholes

34:58

in addition to tons and tons of spam.

35:01

And it's like, it also had really terrible

35:03

moderation tools. So it was really hard to

35:05

like delete these comments and stuff.

35:08

And it's like, Emily, I think you're gonna give like broader context

35:10

to how it sort of works. Like

35:13

internet wide, but eventually

35:15

it was like, look, like we can't moderate these.

35:17

And like 1% of them are useful in

35:19

any way, shape or form. And

35:23

so Derek

35:24

decided to get rid of them.

35:27

It was definitely like a really good decision at

35:29

the time. It made our lives a lot better. We

35:31

stopped getting harassment and stuff like that. And

35:33

we've replaced them with a letter to the editor

35:35

system where people were able to send

35:38

us emails. Like we opened up an email

35:40

thing and then we would write

35:42

responses to those emails. So we replaced

35:44

with like a mailbag thing.

35:46

I think in retrospect,

35:48

no issues. Yeah,

35:53

we've got all of our old letters to the editor

35:55

sections that

35:58

we used to do.

35:59

Yeah.

35:59

The issue is people stopped

36:02

sending them after a while, even though we

36:04

were soliciting them. It

36:06

was really fun for a few months, and

36:08

then people stopped sending them.

36:10

Two, a lot of other places got rid of comments

36:13

also. And then three,

36:15

and it's like this is old internet,

36:18

but not having

36:21

comments. It

36:28

was the right decision at the time. Yeah,

36:30

absolutely. Having comments made it kind of difficult

36:33

for us to build a community.

36:36

And we didn't have Twitch at the time.

36:38

It's nice to be on Twitch and be able to talk

36:40

directly to readers. And some people are asking

36:42

questions that I will try to answer at some point, but

36:45

it's like,

36:47

it would have been nice to have a functional comment

36:49

section where people could get to know us and

36:51

we could get to know the readers. And that's

36:54

a very good model that can lead

36:56

to subscriptions and

36:59

other sorts of community building

37:01

and monetization and stuff. And it's like

37:03

New Media has had a really hard time

37:06

making

37:06

ends meet. It would have been nice to have

37:09

a functioning community. But at

37:11

that time, it was impossible to build

37:13

one through Discus because Discus was a trash

37:15

fire.

37:17

Anyways, Emily. Yeah,

37:19

so I want to, there are a couple of different

37:21

angles that I want to talk about this from. One,

37:23

I'll start with a comment from the

37:26

slow knife who says spam and

37:28

reactionary hate is hard. That's

37:30

a gif of a cat. So I don't know what word that's supposed

37:33

to be. It's hard to, I

37:35

assume, watch constantly

37:37

without, consistently without paying social

37:40

media folk. And that's like exhausting. And

37:42

as a social media editor, yes. A

37:45

lot of what people were

37:47

talking about when social media editors

37:48

started becoming a thing, which

37:55

I would say is like around in and

37:57

around that time, maybe a little bit earlier when.

37:59

you know, media companies started taking social

38:02

more seriously. Hard to clean.

38:04

Thank you. Thank you.

38:06

It

38:10

becomes a question of, okay, so what is

38:12

the scope of a job like this? Is

38:15

a job managing community? Is a job

38:17

making content to put on social? Is a

38:20

job a little bit of both?

38:21

And a lot of people have different responses

38:24

to those questions, but my feeling is that those are two very

38:26

different skill sets.

38:28

And, you know, especially

38:31

we've, you know, lived through an era where

38:34

we've seen, and this is taking it to an

38:36

extreme, but seeing what kind of content moderation

38:38

has to happen on a social

38:41

network like Facebook and who ends up being responsible

38:43

for doing a lot of that content moderation,

38:46

which ends up being

38:47

like people who are underpaid, typically

38:50

overseas and are

38:52

having to watch and read and

38:55

see horrific things so

38:57

that we ideally is like regular

38:59

users of a website won't have to, but

39:01

it ends up leading to a lot of trauma for them and

39:04

they are not,

39:05

you know,

39:06

they're not treated with the

39:08

kind of care that a job

39:10

like that needs to have.

39:14

And so that actually ended up being

39:16

a big problem for Jezebel,

39:19

which is under the geo media

39:21

slash GMG slash Gawker media,

39:24

whatever you want to call it, umbrella of websites

39:26

where this actually preceded the

39:30

motherboard comment section turning off, which if we

39:32

could just, there's an article that I want to just pull up

39:34

real fast. And

39:37

it's called, we have a

39:39

rape gift problem and Gawker media won't do

39:41

anything about it. And this

39:44

is basically, so if you're familiar,

39:47

Gawker and whatever

39:50

geo media uses this, a

39:52

CMS that they made themselves called

39:54

Kindra, which has a comment system like

39:57

within, like that

39:59

they built.

39:59

themselves.

40:02

And so it's

40:04

like always really been a big like, place

40:07

for people to comment. There's a lot of like

40:09

people have been there since like, I don't know, 2010, maybe earlier.

40:15

And used to be able to put

40:17

gifts and they're basically used to be just be like

40:19

a wild wild west of things

40:21

within that comment section, one

40:23

of them being rape gifts, especially on Jezebel, which

40:25

is the feminist sub brand

40:28

there. And yeah,

40:30

Gawker didn't do anything about it.

40:32

They didn't take the people there seriously

40:35

when this was raised as a problem. And

40:39

this actually ended up

40:41

leading to the formation of the first

40:43

digital media union. This is one

40:45

of the main issues that led

40:47

to the creation of the Gawker union,

40:50

which there's a bit

40:52

of there's a bit of

40:54

like contesting between if it was vice or if it

40:56

was Gawker, that was the first to unionize. But

40:59

it was definitely Gawker. It was Gawker.

41:01

But yeah,

41:04

so the comment section

41:07

and like how readers

41:10

interact with the website

41:12

and with writers ended up becoming

41:15

a huge issue and a huge,

41:17

you know, I'm

41:20

trying to look for the words right now, but it's not

41:22

coming to me, but it became like a huge workplace

41:24

safety issue. And

41:27

no one needs to be processing that

41:30

kind of visual every

41:32

day just as part of their job,

41:35

especially if their job is like reporting

41:37

on,

41:38

you know, feminist issues

41:40

and politics and this kind of thing. And then you

41:43

know, every day, at the bottom

41:45

of that article, there's going to be rape rape

41:48

gifts and rape threats. And

41:51

there's no like you can turn that off. Like there's so many

41:53

other options, right? Yeah.

41:55

So to have someone just their

41:57

ways. Sorry, go ahead. No,

42:00

no, just to have management done, have absolutely

42:02

no movement on that. It's pretty

42:05

wild. Sorry.

42:08

Gust was almost about to walk over. So many, there

42:10

are, there are a lot of other options, but

42:13

like this,

42:15

it's, it's terrible, but the

42:17

technology was worse than it's

42:20

like the moderation was worse.

42:22

The commenting platforms are worse.

42:25

There were not as many different options. It's

42:27

like

42:28

Gawker and Jezebel were using Kinjo, which was their

42:30

own in-house thing. So it's like, they have no one but

42:32

themselves to blame. It's like they

42:35

needed to build in the different things, but

42:37

it's like, unless that we were

42:39

going to build our own bespoke commenting

42:41

platform, which was like not really a

42:43

solved problem at that point, it was basically

42:45

like discus and discus was terrible.

42:48

And

42:48

there was some project called like coral project

42:50

that was trying to do comments. And it's like,

42:52

I don't even know how that turned out. It's

42:55

like, you know, there's a lot of websites

42:57

that have comments now or that are bringing back comments

43:00

or have comments only for page subscribers

43:02

or whatever. But, uh, at the time

43:04

there

43:05

were not a lot of paywalled

43:08

websites. And so the idea

43:10

that it's like, let's make people pay to comment. Like

43:12

that wasn't really a thing.

43:14

Um, maybe the New York

43:16

times had a paywall then, but

43:18

I don't even think they had a paywall at this point.

43:21

Um, the extent that it is now. Right.

43:24

So it was kind of just like,

43:27

uh, discus was a trash fire. Kinda

43:29

was not better. And it's like the people who were forced

43:31

to deal with it were the writers often.

43:34

It's not like, you know,

43:36

vice didn't have content

43:38

moderators. Um,

43:41

and yeah, the, on the, on the union

43:44

point, uh, Gawker definitely unionized

43:46

first. Vice may have had

43:48

the first contract

43:50

like signed possibly, but I'm not

43:52

even sure about that,

43:53

but I know this because I was on the organizing

43:56

committee. Like I helped

43:57

organize the vice union originally and

43:59

we were. inspired by the Gawker folks

44:02

who had already been through the process.

44:04

And that was very cool and inspiring

44:07

for us and the unionization process.

44:09

I know that both of you have been very involved in the

44:12

union over the years, but

44:14

that was one of my favorite parts of working

44:16

here as well was going

44:19

through that process. It was very cool. Yeah.

44:23

Yeah, I think I was trying

44:25

to remember because I remember that there was one

44:27

timing discrepancy and I wasn't sure if it

44:29

was ratifying the first contract

44:32

or announcing unionization. So thank you

44:34

for the fact check on that.

44:36

Just

44:38

don't want to take credit, you know, they

44:40

were good, but not that you were. Hamilton

44:42

Nolan going to appear at your house

44:44

knocking on the floor. Yeah.

44:52

Did you ever find out what

44:54

those mystery seeds were? My

45:02

theory is that the mystery seeds were just seeds

45:04

that people ordered during the pandemic and

45:06

that came way later and

45:08

that

45:10

they had forgotten they ordered for

45:12

people who don't know. Yeah.

45:16

Sorry, we're getting into just now. It's

45:19

potpourri time. Yeah. We're

45:21

getting into, yeah, it is very much the

45:23

potpourri. This is a potpourri hour. So

45:26

these are some seeds. Tell us about these

45:29

seeds, Jason.

45:30

Yeah. In like summer 2020,

45:33

there was this panic where

45:36

all these people were getting seeds in the mail from

45:38

China, like seeds to plant in

45:40

the

45:41

ground and people were

45:44

freaking out thinking it was some like Chinese

45:46

scythe op more or less. But that was basically

45:49

how it was pitched in the media. So

45:52

I filed a bunch of Freedom of Information

45:54

Act requests because different

45:57

departments of agriculture for each state

45:59

asked.

45:59

people to write

46:02

in if they had received these mystery seeds.

46:05

I got thousands and thousands of records

46:07

of people complaining to

46:09

their state departments of agriculture

46:11

like, hey, I got these seeds, I'm

46:14

being attacked, et cetera, by China.

46:16

That's what a lot of the vibe of these were.

46:19

I got emails,

46:22

voicemail recordings, photos,

46:24

videos, all of the above. It

46:27

turns out that a lot of the complaints

46:30

were like, I ordered

46:32

these seeds from China,

46:35

and then they came in the mail, and

46:37

now I'm scared. Can

46:40

I read one of these that's in the article?

46:43

Okay, so about a month ago, I did receive

46:46

seeds from China, I guess China because it looks

46:48

like Chinese writing. I thought, oh cool,

46:50

maybe Burgess Seeds or one of the seed companies sent

46:52

me some seeds. And like

46:55

a dumbass, I planted them not knowing that there was a

46:57

problem. A woman in New Mexico said

46:59

in a voicemail, left with the state's Department

47:01

of Agriculture in late July of 2020. And

47:05

now I've been battling this for a couple

47:07

of weeks. Now where I planted them, and

47:09

I remember where I planted them, everything that's in the

47:11

garden where I planted them are having a hard time

47:14

and are starting to die. I really don't

47:16

know what to do at this point. So could someone call

47:18

me back and give me a little bit of direction about this?

47:21

I know I'm a dumbass.

47:22

It's

47:24

beautiful. It's so beautiful.

47:27

It reminds me very much too of, I don't know if you,

47:29

I assume both of you remember this where it was like Honey Nut

47:32

Cheerios was sending out like wildflower

47:34

seed packets a number of years ago, being

47:37

like help honeybees. And then

47:39

a bunch of biologists were like,

47:41

no, that's not what this

47:43

is doing. You're introducing like invasive plant

47:46

species where they aren't necessarily

47:48

supposed to be growing, which is not going to

47:50

be good for the bees.

47:52

Yeah, that was a really good

47:54

one. The Honey Nut Cheerios one. The

47:58

thing that I really liked about this story. It was

48:00

just like, it was

48:03

parks and rec, but real life. We

48:08

have a rich tapestry of

48:10

people in the United States of varying

48:13

degrees of common sense.

48:19

I don't mean this to be mean at all, but

48:21

it's going to sound mean. People

48:24

are like, I ordered these seeds and they came and

48:26

now I'm terrified. I personally

48:28

got them here. And then

48:30

other people were like, oh my God, I got these seeds.

48:32

I was so scared. And then I ate them. People

48:34

were like, I ate the seeds. I planted

48:37

the seeds. I burned the seeds.

48:39

I launched the seeds into space. People

48:42

were just like,

48:44

get these Chinese seeds away from

48:46

me. They were just really off

48:48

the rails. And I'm just like, what is it?

48:50

If I had gotten the seeds or whatever, I would have

48:53

probably put them in the trash and never thought about

48:55

them ever again. Or I would have just put them

48:57

in a closet or whatever.

49:00

We love the good panic. If

49:03

I had ordered them, I would have been like, oh, I got

49:05

the thing that I ordered on the internet. I'm

49:07

glad that it came. I love the

49:10

people who ate the seeds. Yeah,

49:13

that's super fun. I

49:15

guess there's at the front here,

49:18

this looks like pumpkin seeds or some sort of squash

49:20

seeds. I

49:23

would never think to go to the garden

49:25

center, buy a thing of pumpkin seeds

49:27

and roast them myself and be like, wow,

49:30

pumpkin

49:30

seeds. Or I can eat them raw

49:32

because I assume if someone's going to be like, I ate the

49:35

seeds, I'm picturing it fully

49:37

just like undid the Ziploc and

49:39

just threw it back. Just

49:41

like, yeah,

49:42

it's fiber. You

49:44

got to put them in a little bit of oil and some salt.

49:47

A little bit of salt. Yeah. I

49:49

really want to get the full seed

49:52

experience. Exactly.

49:56

So I'm in no rush at all. I

49:58

don't know what. I have a more plant, like,

50:01

am I gonna get peppered with more questions? Or am I?

50:04

We've literally, I think we've been through,

50:07

it's been over a little over two hours. We've

50:09

been through, I think the big things that

50:13

we wanna talk to you about. We have like, we

50:15

have a whole. We have

50:17

two more pieces

50:19

that are probably worth talking about

50:22

that are just like random. Would love to talk

50:24

a little bit about right to repair.

50:26

Are you saying that you wanna leave us Jason? Is that what

50:28

I'm hearing? I'm not saying

50:31

I wanna leave you. I'm saying that I don't,

50:35

I'm saying that I get very self-conscious

50:37

when I start talking about myself and I like

50:39

talking about myself, but I also don't

50:42

know when it becomes boring. And

50:44

so I don't know how

50:46

much of it is y'all being polite and

50:48

how much of it is like,

50:51

dear God, get me out of here.

50:54

But if you're having fun, I'm having

50:56

fun. I'm happy to keep going. I

50:58

have nothing to do today. I think

51:00

we're. Yeah, beat master has figured out

51:02

our ploy, which is the trick is to make the stream

51:04

last forever so that Jason can never leave.

51:06

Okay. Yeah.

51:09

That's very cute. Thank you. I

51:13

do have a couple more, I

51:15

do have a couple more things I do wanna ask you about before

51:18

we kick you out.

51:20

Someone just

51:22

asked about my exit interview, which I did

51:25

on Wednesday.

51:26

It was fun and a little cathartic,

51:28

but also I'm not

51:30

mad.

51:36

It's like, Vice has been very good to me. I've

51:39

gotten to do a lot of stuff here and

51:44

I'll give this speech at the end, but basically

51:46

it's just like, I've been here for a very long time. So

51:49

it's like, time to do, time to get

51:51

out of here. Not because

51:53

of anything other than just like, 10 years

51:57

is a long time in this industry and

51:59

this company.

51:59

me, which

52:01

we can go back to later. So ask your

52:03

question, Matt.

52:04

This

52:07

is weird. This is just like we were going through your stories

52:10

and I saw this and it was just like, what the fuck I

52:12

what, uh,

52:13

what is it like to go bowling with

52:16

somebody that has a Bola?

52:19

What was, what was, what was the deal

52:21

with this? This

52:24

is why vice is great. It's like, you can write about

52:27

anything. Just some stuff that happens

52:29

to me, things I see on the internet,

52:31

et cetera. So there

52:34

was an, I was in a bowling league in

52:36

Brooklyn when I moved

52:38

there. In the Bola league? Yes.

52:40

I'd never heard the joke.

52:44

So if anyone remembers like the Ebola

52:46

panic of 2014 or 2013, something

52:50

like that, it's like, there's this guy, Craig

52:52

Spencer, who like is super,

52:55

super famous now for his COVID

52:57

stuff. Um, because he's like

53:00

a doctor and a very

53:03

good one seemingly. Uh, but

53:05

he was fighting Ebola in, I

53:09

don't know where he was. He was in West Africa

53:12

obviously, but I don't remember the specific country

53:14

at this point.

53:15

Yeah. Uh, and he came back

53:17

and he tested positive for

53:19

Ebola. And

53:20

that was during a period where everyone

53:22

was like really scared of

53:25

Ebola coming to the United States. I

53:27

believe that the New York case was the first

53:30

one. And then there was like one in Texas

53:32

maybe. And everyone freaked

53:34

the fuck out like really bad.

53:36

Like everyone was like, Oh my God, this is

53:39

crazy. Um,

53:41

and it turned out that

53:44

he didn't test positive for Ebola

53:46

until after he had been back

53:49

in New York for a day or two. And the

53:51

night before he tested positive, he had gone bowling

53:53

at the bowling alley that I

53:56

was in my bowling league at in

53:59

Brooklyn called the gutter. And

54:01

so everyone I went bowling with

54:04

was like, uh, oh, like, do we have a

54:06

bowler? And

54:09

I don't know. So there's

54:12

two bowling alleys right next to each other in Williamsburg

54:14

and Brooklyn. There's Brooklyn bowl and

54:16

there's the gutter. The gutter is

54:18

way better. Fantastic

54:21

place. Very dingy, like

54:24

old bowling alley. They imported

54:26

their lanes from Ohio, I believe. In

54:30

any case,

54:32

our office is nearby or was nearby

54:34

at the time, still is close. So

54:36

the next day I walked over because

54:38

it hadn't been reported

54:41

which Brooklyn bowling alley

54:43

this happened at. But

54:47

Brooklyn bowl was open and

54:49

the gutter had power washers everywhere.

54:52

There's just people blasting

54:55

it with power washers. And

54:57

I was like, okay, I think

54:59

he was at the gutter last night. There's people in

55:01

hazmat suits blasting

55:03

the doors of this place and

55:06

it's closed.

55:08

I just wrote a piece of what

55:10

this was like. And it's like Ebola

55:13

is transmitted via bodily fluids.

55:15

And I knew that at the time, of course.

55:18

And it's like I wasn't bleeding on

55:20

anyone or didn't have any open wounds at

55:22

the bowling alley. But at the same time, bowling

55:25

alley where you're drinking a bunch of beers

55:27

is not

55:29

the most hygienic of places. You're

55:31

sticking fingers and ball and

55:33

stuff. So I think that this article, I don't remember

55:35

who's good or not, but

55:39

I don't remember if it's a good article. I do remember I

55:41

wrote it that night,

55:44

so that I could get out. But I

55:48

was like, oh yeah, all my friends are freaking out. So I was

55:50

like, here's what it's like for everyone to make

55:52

the Ebola joke.

55:59

And Dr. Craig Spencer ended

56:02

up being fine, which is good. And

56:04

now

56:05

he's famous.

56:09

So that's good too. All

56:12

right, I think we're gonna start

56:14

winding up. But before

56:16

we go, you had talked to the beginning about

56:20

how one of the things you're most proud of is the right

56:22

to repair issue.

56:24

And I'm wondering if you can walk me through, I

56:27

know we've talked about some of the stories, but can

56:29

you talk about your history with iFixit

56:31

and why that issue became important

56:34

to you and what it is and kind of where

56:36

we are now. Because where we are now is very different

56:39

from where we are when you started reporting on it, right?

56:43

Yeah. So

56:48

back when I worked at US News and World Report, like

56:50

I mentioned earlier, I went to a

56:53

STEM education conference that we

56:55

threw in Dallas, Texas.

56:58

And it was the first time I ever traveled for

57:01

work, I think. I was like 21, I was 21.

57:06

I was not 20 for

57:08

reasons that are about to become clear. And

57:10

we went to a karaoke bar

57:13

after this conference and I got

57:15

pretty drunk.

57:16

All was fine.

57:18

But when I got back to my hotel, I was watching,

57:21

I believe, the Chappelle show

57:23

and like fell asleep while

57:25

I was watching that. And the next

57:28

morning I woke up and I had kicked my laptop

57:30

off the bed and it landed on a chair

57:33

and the LCD screen of my

57:35

MacBook

57:37

busted and had like these crazy

57:39

rainbows on it and stuff.

57:41

And I was an intern making, I believe,

57:44

$8 an hour or something. And this was like a $1,200 computer.

57:48

And I was like, uh-oh, not good, not

57:50

good. They didn't give me a computer.

57:52

They gave me like a desktop

57:54

computer for use to office,

57:56

but that was my personal laptop.

57:59

I was like, I took it to the Apple store. They're

58:02

like, it's going to be $1,000. I took it to some other

58:05

place and they're like, it's going to be like $800.

58:06

And I was

58:09

like, okay, I can't afford that. That's very bad.

58:11

And I just threw

58:13

a whim, went on eBay, I think.

58:16

And I found an LCD screen

58:18

that was $50. And

58:22

I bought it.

58:24

And I was like, okay,

58:26

we'll see. At least I can try this. And

58:30

it came to my house

58:32

and I found this website called iFixit

58:34

that had detailed instructions of how

58:36

to replace the LCD screen on a MacBook Pro

58:39

or MacBook Air or whatever it was. I think it was a MacBook

58:41

Pro.

58:42

And

58:45

I believe it took me like 10

58:49

hours because I didn't have any

58:51

of the tools. There's

58:55

a lot of tools that you can use to

58:57

do this more easily, but I used an Exacto

58:59

knife and a

59:01

chef's knife that I found in

59:03

my kitchen to pry

59:05

the screen off,

59:08

which you should not do. Flathead

59:12

screwdriver. And I just was fucking

59:15

with this thing. And I was pulling cords

59:17

out from the motherboard and I was just

59:19

like, this is not going to work.

59:21

There's no way this is going to work.

59:24

And I managed to finally

59:26

get it all put back together. And

59:29

I hit the power button and it turned on

59:31

and it was fine. And I used that computer

59:34

for another five years. And

59:36

I'm like, well, that took a long time and it was

59:38

kind of hard, but I just

59:40

saved $1,000. And

59:44

so that got me into this world where I was

59:46

like, oh, I didn't even know you could fix stuff. Like

59:49

maybe I should learn what this is.

59:52

So I went to this conference

59:54

called the

59:57

Electronic Reuse Conference, I

59:59

believe it's called.

59:59

called ERC. It was in

1:00:03

New Orleans that year. They

1:00:04

still do it. They're doing it in two weeks.

1:00:08

I think in Tampa or somewhere super

1:00:10

cool like that. I

1:00:13

met with Kyle Weems, who's CEO of iFixit,

1:00:15

and he told me about his company and his

1:00:18

origin story and how he got

1:00:20

into it in a semi-similar way

1:00:22

where he was upgrading RAM

1:00:24

and growing up and blah, blah, blah. His

1:00:27

mission was to help everyone fix everything.

1:00:29

I just thought it was very cool because we

1:00:33

look at our technologies

1:00:35

like black boxes, I think.

1:00:38

My dad used to fix everything around the house, still

1:00:40

does. I never learned

1:00:42

how to

1:00:44

do a lot of that stuff just because I was like, oh, he'll

1:00:46

do it. He taught me some stuff.

1:00:51

There weren't a lot of people writing about it or thinking

1:00:53

about it. I wrote a big story about iFixit

1:00:55

and this conference. Since then,

1:00:57

I've

1:00:59

just covered this issue. The issue

1:01:01

is

1:01:02

that

1:01:04

electronics manufacturers don't want you to

1:01:06

be able to fix your things because if

1:01:09

they have a repair monopoly on fixing

1:01:12

an iPhone or whatever, they're making millions

1:01:14

and millions of dollars. We've

1:01:16

seen it with medical equipment. We've seen it with

1:01:18

John Deere tractors. We've seen it with kitchen

1:01:21

appliances. We've seen it with laptops

1:01:23

and phones. The thing

1:01:26

that I always

1:01:29

used to tell people is if you

1:01:31

crack your phone screen, this

1:01:34

was years ago, it was iPhone 6 or 5

1:01:36

or whatever, probably 5.

1:01:38

If you crack your phone screen, the

1:01:40

two screws on the bottom of an iPhone,

1:01:43

which you can see here,

1:01:45

the bottom of the iPhone here, those

1:01:47

are not normal screws. They're

1:01:49

pentalobe screws. They have a star

1:01:51

shape. It's more

1:01:54

common now, but

1:01:57

at the time, you couldn't buy

1:01:59

that. that screwdriver anywhere.

1:02:04

And I fixed it so that screwdriver and

1:02:07

like Apple did that so that people wouldn't like open

1:02:09

up their phone, you know, and they made it that same

1:02:11

screw on the bottom of the MacBooks and so on

1:02:13

and so forth. And it's like, you

1:02:15

could find it, but it's not like something you'd

1:02:17

have lying around your house. And so I

1:02:19

wrote a lot about like that screw and that move

1:02:22

to like make it harder to do this. And

1:02:24

I don't know the like force iPhone upgrade, not

1:02:27

forced, but like the pay as you go sort

1:02:29

of thing and just written a lot about like how

1:02:31

you don't really own the things that you buy anymore.

1:02:34

They're all on subscription plans or, you

1:02:36

know, you there have DRM,

1:02:39

which like won't let you upgrade

1:02:41

them or,

1:02:42

you know, you get software locked out.

1:02:45

So I've written a bunch of stories about this over the years.

1:02:48

We made a series called State of Repair

1:02:50

where we did the tractor hacking one.

1:02:53

Like we found these

1:02:56

farmers who were downloading John

1:02:58

Deere firmware off Pirate Bay and

1:03:00

flashing it to their tractors

1:03:03

using this cable

1:03:06

that they bought on this weird forum

1:03:08

that I went on to, which was cool. And

1:03:12

the reason I'm so proud of it is one, I think

1:03:14

it's an important issue. I think it's cool. I

1:03:16

think it's like,

1:03:18

you know, we're able to

1:03:21

demystify how a lot of this stuff works

1:03:23

because a

1:03:25

lot of

1:03:26

electronics are still just Lego blocks. They're

1:03:29

like small, but and the cords are

1:03:31

small and the chips are small, but they just snap

1:03:33

together. It's like you can do it.

1:03:35

It's not that hard.

1:03:39

But I'm so proud of the work because at the

1:03:41

time I believe there

1:03:43

was like

1:03:45

one state that I was kind of considering

1:03:47

a law that would make it

1:03:49

like a right to repair law where

1:03:53

the manufacturers would have to sell the

1:03:56

parts, the tools and

1:03:59

give out their

1:03:59

repair guides to the public.

1:04:02

And now a few years

1:04:04

later, we have multiple

1:04:06

states that have passed legislation like

1:04:08

Colorado passed legislation recently,

1:04:11

New York passed legislation that was kind of watered

1:04:14

down, but they passed it nonetheless.

1:04:16

Against like,

1:04:19

tons and tons of lobbying from

1:04:21

the electronics manufacturers.

1:04:24

And we've seen companies like Apple and Microsoft

1:04:26

soften their policies. We've

1:04:29

seen right to repair legislation

1:04:32

get considered in like dozens

1:04:34

and dozens of states. Joe

1:04:38

Biden issued an executive order and cited

1:04:40

our reporting, which is cool.

1:04:42

And so I'm proud of it because I feel like

1:04:45

more than anything else that I personally

1:04:47

have worked on, like other people motherboard

1:04:49

have done things that are probably more impactful,

1:04:52

but anything that I have like written myself,

1:04:55

I think it's had probably the most impact. So

1:04:58

I'm very

1:05:00

proud of that. Jason,

1:05:04

final thoughts, any dirt you

1:05:06

want to dish on us as you're

1:05:08

going out the door? Yeah, I'm gonna keep

1:05:10

talking a little bit longer. One other

1:05:13

right to repair thing is there's a sticker on

1:05:15

the bottom of a lot of electronics that say warranty

1:05:18

void if removed. And I wrote an

1:05:20

article about how that's illegal. So

1:05:23

if you ever see a thing that

1:05:25

says warranty void if removed, that's

1:05:27

bullshit.

1:05:28

And to

1:05:30

the FTC issued a bunch of fines about it and

1:05:32

said it's illegal. And that was definitely like

1:05:34

our reporting, which is cool. And Matt, you've done tons

1:05:37

of great right to repair reporting as well,

1:05:39

which I think I like

1:05:41

forced upon you at first and then you kind

1:05:43

of took it from there. But there's

1:05:46

that. I know we've been on for

1:05:48

a very long time. I'm going to talk for another 10

1:05:51

minutes straight and then we can be done. People

1:05:55

ask for dirt about you too.

1:05:57

I don't have a lot of dirt. about

1:06:00

you two. You're

1:06:02

both wonderful people. You're

1:06:05

both very, very good at what you do. You're

1:06:08

both easygoing in a way that's made

1:06:10

my life very easy because

1:06:13

this has been a hard place to work.

1:06:16

And you've gone through

1:06:19

it while still doing

1:06:21

very powerful and good work

1:06:23

generally with a smile and a sense of humor,

1:06:27

which I think is very important and which

1:06:29

I've also tried to bring because it's like

1:06:31

we have pretty cool jobs for

1:06:35

the most part. And you've done

1:06:37

very, very, very, very, very good work and

1:06:39

I'm proud of both of you.

1:06:41

That said, Dish about

1:06:43

Matt, he goes to Chick-fil-A

1:06:46

like way too much. Like Chick-fil-A

1:06:49

perhaps.

1:06:52

Every Friday I'm just like, Matt, you're

1:06:54

going to Chick-fil-A and he's like, I'm already

1:06:56

there. I'm not sure you're thinking

1:06:58

about it right

1:06:59

now. He's

1:07:02

probably going right after we log off,

1:07:06

which I believe you call it murder chicken

1:07:09

or something like this. Shame chicken.

1:07:12

You're not proud. Shame chicken is what I call it. You're

1:07:14

not proud of this, which it's okay. It's

1:07:18

okay, I'll forgive you for

1:07:20

going there. But there's that.

1:07:24

Emily, I really don't think I have

1:07:26

any embarrassing facts. I

1:07:29

would say that Emily is the ringleader

1:07:32

of Motherboard's Coffee Crew,

1:07:35

which is a Slack channel that we have

1:07:37

for when we have had

1:07:40

way too much coffee and

1:07:41

our

1:07:43

jittery, which I'm

1:07:46

going to have coffee right after this again.

1:07:49

And then post there. Emily

1:07:52

is a huge Swifty, but in a cool way. And

1:07:55

I'm a Swifty too, with Chloe, who

1:07:59

left us recently. and Sam Cole.

1:08:04

I don't think that I have like dirt though.

1:08:06

You're like way too obsessed with

1:08:10

internet celebrities that I've never heard

1:08:12

of. I will say that like deep

1:08:14

in the lore, like really deep in the lore.

1:08:18

That's true.

1:08:20

But

1:08:24

yeah, don't have a bad word to say

1:08:26

about either of you. I don't

1:08:28

think any of you have ever fucked up in

1:08:30

such a way that it's been like a problem

1:08:33

for me, which is good. Thank

1:08:35

you for making my life easy.

1:08:39

Maybe you have, but I've forgotten

1:08:41

at this point and forgiven. We won't break

1:08:43

it up then.

1:08:47

Math files with a lot of typos,

1:08:49

but that's fine. Not my problem.

1:08:55

I got to, you know, we're writing a lot.

1:08:58

It's okay. That's what editors are for

1:09:00

Jason. Yeah. I know he's keeping me on

1:09:02

my toes. That is

1:09:04

consistently like, you know,

1:09:06

this is consistent. It's consistently

1:09:08

like one of the pieces of feedback in the, in like

1:09:11

the yearlies is like, you got

1:09:13

to clean up the copy a little bit.

1:09:16

Oh, I apologize. So I'll just be like

1:09:18

missing words sometimes. And I'm just like,

1:09:21

I'm not sure what is supposed to be here,

1:09:23

but he clearly just kept going, which

1:09:26

is fine. Yeah. Yeah.

1:09:29

So that's you guys. And

1:09:32

I know I've been talking for a very long time, but I'll

1:09:34

just give my farewell here. Thank

1:09:38

you to everyone who

1:09:40

has ever watched anything that we've

1:09:42

done or read our website

1:09:45

or supported us or tweeted about us or

1:09:48

watch this or told your friends about

1:09:50

us. I'm very, very, very,

1:09:52

very, very, very, very thankful. I

1:09:58

don't know how I ended up.

1:09:59

up here, really. I don't

1:10:02

know, like,

1:10:04

very lucky, because there's

1:10:06

not a lot of jobs like this in journalism

1:10:09

and in the world,

1:10:10

where I got like the creativity

1:10:13

to do what I wanted to do

1:10:15

and to hire people who care about the things

1:10:18

that I care about and who are

1:10:21

so passionate and talented

1:10:24

and good people. I

1:10:27

don't think that we've had any shitheads at

1:10:29

motherboard, like people genuinely

1:10:33

like each other and are nice to each other and

1:10:35

are good at their jobs and are nice

1:10:37

to be around. And that's very rare and

1:10:40

very nice. Also,

1:10:41

there's a

1:10:44

lot, a lot,

1:10:46

a lot of people behind the scenes, advice

1:10:49

who don't show up on any of

1:10:51

these Twitch streams or

1:10:55

don't have buy lines or don't

1:10:58

show up on YouTube who

1:11:01

have helped us do what we've done for

1:11:03

so long, which

1:11:05

I cannot even begin to name, but there's

1:11:08

lawyers and there's salespeople and there's

1:11:10

artists and there's, I don't know,

1:11:12

just like a bunch of people who make the company,

1:11:17

make it possible for us to

1:11:19

do what we do. That

1:11:22

said, it's like

1:11:24

obviously not perfect. It's not been perfect,

1:11:27

which I won't go into detail on,

1:11:29

but it's like it's

1:11:31

a complicated and big company

1:11:33

that has problems and has had problems.

1:11:36

And I think

1:11:38

that they'll get figured out at some point.

1:11:40

And I hope that people

1:11:42

get to keep doing the good work that they've

1:11:45

always done. I think

1:11:48

that they'll get back to that at some point.

1:11:51

But this is just to say

1:11:53

I'm very thankful and very happy. I have

1:11:56

no regrets. I'm very proud of what we've

1:11:58

done. I'm not saying

1:11:59

that. sad to be leaving, as

1:12:01

in just like I'm at peace with it. Please

1:12:04

everyone keep supporting motherboard.

1:12:06

It's time for me to do something else. You'll

1:12:11

find out what that is at some later juncture,

1:12:13

but I'm taking a minute, a beat.

1:12:16

I will also figure out what it is. But

1:12:20

anyways, I'm not gonna be gone forever. Motherboards

1:12:23

in good hands.

1:12:25

I don't know, that's it probably, I

1:12:28

guess. Thank you to everyone.

1:12:31

Jason, it's been an honor and a pleasure.

1:12:33

Thank you so much. Truly.

1:12:35

Thank you, Jason, for everything. Yeah.

1:12:39

Wow. You're welcome. All

1:12:42

right, I think we're gonna wrap it up for today. Everybody.

1:12:45

People made me look a lot better than I am. It's

1:12:47

like, it's people, it's like

1:12:49

very talented team made my job easy.

1:12:52

It was not always easy and it was very often

1:12:54

extraordinarily hard, but

1:12:57

for the most part, it's like could not have

1:12:59

done it without like the team.

1:13:02

Bring this the hell out of you, Jason. Thank

1:13:06

you. Well, you

1:13:09

know where to find me. Yeah,

1:13:12

in the ocean off of LA. Yeah,

1:13:16

you know where to find me as long as I don't drown in

1:13:18

this hurricane, but I don't think that will. Yeah,

1:13:20

true. And if you do, we'll

1:13:22

tell you about it here next week now. Well,

1:13:25

we're gonna take a break next week actually

1:13:27

from the stream. Yeah. Sorry everybody.

1:13:30

We're taking

1:13:30

a break next week. Yeah, for hurricane

1:13:33

unrelated purposes, for Emily on

1:13:35

vacation related purposes.

1:13:36

Matthew's gonna chill next week. We

1:13:40

do have like a pretty packed September,

1:13:42

kind of already planned.

1:13:44

Cory Doctor is coming back. Brian Merchant's

1:13:46

gonna come on, talk about Luddites with us.

1:13:49

We've got stuff brewing.

1:13:51

Next week we will be taking a pause though. So

1:13:55

don't look for us next week. We won't be

1:13:57

here, but every week

1:13:59

after that. watching us make

1:14:01

a cup of coffee and think

1:14:03

of us fondly. Please. And

1:14:06

we're going to set up a raid now. We're going

1:14:08

to go raiding somewhere else. We're going

1:14:11

to go to the marine

1:14:13

mammal rescue, all one word.

1:14:18

It is marine mammal

1:14:20

rescue, which I think is

1:14:22

as adorable as it sounds. Exactly.

1:14:24

It's exactly

1:14:26

what you think it is. And in

1:14:28

a way, this is what my vacation is about to look

1:14:30

like.

1:14:30

Oh, oh, it's an otter. They got

1:14:32

otters in there right now. That's, that's the

1:14:35

stuff.

1:14:36

That's beautiful.

1:14:38

All right, everybody. So let's go

1:14:40

queue up to go raiding marine mammal rescue.

1:14:43

And thank you, everybody. Jason, once again,

1:14:46

absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming on and doing the stream

1:14:48

with us. Goodbye,

1:14:51

everyone. Thank you.

1:14:54

Thank you, Drell. Thank you, Ian. Thank

1:14:56

you, Samira. Thank you, Dexter. Thank you,

1:14:58

all the people, Michelle, everyone

1:15:00

who makes this stream happen.

1:15:04

Goodbye.