FLOSS Weekly 698 Transcript

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Doc Searls (00:00:00):
This is Floss Weekly I'm Doc Searls this week, Dan Lynch. And I talked to Miguel de Kaza, one of the earliest and biggest and most important figures in the history of Linux and much else he did did bono before that one of the fathers who can know him, but he's been involved with Microsoft. He looks ahead of everything. He has some incredibly original takes on cryptocurrency on why big companies are good and not just bad on what E legislation is doing. That's coming along. That may make all of our lives miserable while opening up the markets inside of app stores. It's just incredible stuff. The guy is awesome, and that is coming up. Next.

Announcer (00:00:54):
Podcasts you love, From people you trust. This is TWiT

Doc Searls (00:01:01):
This is floss. Weekly episode 6 98 recorded Wednesday, September 14th, 2022, Miguel de Icaza this episode of Floss Weekly is brought to you by I R L an original podcast from Mozilla. I R L is a show for people who build AI and people who develop tech policies posted by Bridget Todd. This season of IRL looks at AI in real life search for IRL in your podcast player and by it pro TV, give your team an engaging it development platform to level up their skills. Volume discounts. Start at five seats, go to it. pro.tv/TWiT. Make sure to mention TWI 30 to your it pro TV account executive and get 30% off or more on a business plan. Hello, again, everybody everywhere in the world. I am Doc Searls. This is plus weekly and we're off to a late start today. So I wanna hurry up and introduce my co-host Dan Lynch himself. There he is with his music gear off to his left and his hat on and his red matching red suspenders and headphones.

Dan Lynch (00:02:19):
And it also matches the mic pop cover that I've got as well. Oh's red around here. Everything's red. It's my favorite color. Yeah, it's great to be back anyway.

Doc Searls (00:02:29):
Yes it is. And what does this say on your shirt? It's just a little bit cut off there. OG.

Dan Lynch (00:02:33):
Oh, camp. It's an event I hang on.

Doc Searls (00:02:36):
Oh, sure. Okay. There you go. Oh, right. Aug is and Forbis and the rest.

Dan Lynch (00:02:40):
That's the one. Yeah. That's the one as in Forbis. Yeah.

Doc Searls (00:02:44):
Yeah. So our guest today is mcg Miguel Kaza, who we've both talked to in the past, I think. And yeah, he's famous and great. And I'd wanted Terry more, except I just want to get him on show. So we're off to a late start. Yeah. So Miguel is famous for OME. Zamarin working on and off for Microsoft founded the.net foundation, sort of an open source Abra of.net and other things Microsoft are doing, I think is one of the greatest ambassadors that Microsoft has ever had as well as Linux. And the other things he's thinks he's founded. So da is muted. The back channel is saying, am I

Speaker 5 (00:03:43):
Can hear you.

Doc Searls (00:03:43):
I can hear you. Okay. So the back channel doesn't know what it's talking about. Okay, great. So Miguel, welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (00:03:50):
Thank you very much, Doc. How's it going, Terry?

Doc Searls (00:03:53):
That's great to be here. There's an office. You called messy, but isn't I,

Speaker 5 (00:03:58):
Well, yeah, no, you don't get to see the back.

Doc Searls (00:04:05):
Where are you? Roughly speaking? Are you?

Speaker 5 (00:04:07):
I am in Boston.

Doc Searls (00:04:09):
You're in Boston. Excellent. Yes. I, I I'm. I miss Boston. If I had one place I could choose out of all the places I have lived. That would be my first choice. Oh,

Speaker 5 (00:04:21):
This is suck. OK.

Doc Searls (00:04:22):
Doesn't suck being in Santa Barbara or in Bloomington, Indiana, which is where I am now. Okay. I'm stationed here for a couple of years but it's great to have you on so we could go in a couple things. One is I'd like to visit. You were in and out of Microsoft. You left briefly. I know there's a lot. You can't talk about what can you talk about?

Speaker 5 (00:04:45):
Well I did, I've only been at Microsoft once they acquired our company in 2016 and I stayed up until March. And at the beginning I kept doing the job that I was doing before, which was working on Zin, mobile developer tools do net. It was a very exciting time. And the last couple of years I spent them working on AI and a bunch of things that are not public yet. So I can't really discuss, but I was lucky to be at Microsoft during this period where Satya NAELA was driving a major cultural change of the company. And it was fascinating to watch. It was fascinating to watch. How do you steer a company of that size towards new businesses and also new principles? So I live in awe and I left in awe. I was impressed with what they were doing but I wanted to do my own thing and also take a big break. Been working since I was 17 years old and I need a big break and spend some time with the family and kids. So I'll do something soon not fully decided yet, but there was a great time at Microsoft. I had fun and it was a little bit difficult to leave, but I wanted my big break.

Dan Lynch (00:06:21):
Excellent. It's like, you deserve a break and we wait to see what comes next. That would be interesting. So Miguel, I'm interested in, you've been involved with open source and free software for a very long time and it's changed a lot in that time. And I'm curious how you think today's kind of open source world is different from how it started or how do you see it now? The kind of big picture has open source really changed that much.

Speaker 5 (00:06:49):
Well, I think when we started or at least when I joined the project and I was not even some of, I was even on the early patch, I kind of joined in 1992 and this had already been going for a while. Richard Staman had launched this organized effort to build a OS from scratch. But I think that the big difference is that back in the day we have had found a cause and there was both a lot of promise. There was this amazing feeling of collaboration. And I like to describe Linux probably as the first and probably biggest success of the internet and what humans together can achieve. And so there was this very powerful filling a sense of duty I would say, or at least, and I feel a lot of people felt that way about promoting open source about trying to change existing business models about trying to improve our industry.

Speaker 5 (00:08:01):
So that level of excitement well, some of it still permeates, I think is very different. Now I think that today we understand it. We sort of take it for granted. It's very clinical, right? <laugh> it is very clinical, very clean. We know what it is and it has changed. It has changed. And I think it's great. It's been embraced by everybody. I mean, when Google first embraced Linux, right? I remember when Google launched and it was a great search engine and they had a dedicated Google search for Linux subjects. I don't know if you remember this, but they had a dedicated Google world just for Linux topics. It felt like a major endorsement having a company that knew what was happening and kind of acknowledged the existence of open source and made it front and center. And now everybody does it. If you're not doing Linux or open source, you're doing something very wrong or, you know, probably don't know how to operate a phone.

Speaker 5 (00:09:14):
So it has changed a lot. And purely from an nostalgia point of view, I would love to get back that feeling and excitement that we had back in that time around changing the world. And I think that newer generations are definitely doing things like that in new spaces. I think AI is full of those places and people excited about the mission. Sadly <laugh> I think that the crypto world <laugh> is the cryptocurrency world has that level of excitement. Although I think that fundamentally it is a broken system, so yeah, I think it has changed a lot. It has changed tremendously and I think it's for the better. So it's very mature now we know what it is. I love it.

Dan Lynch (00:10:11):
Yeah. So you said crypto, was it crypto? You said, oh, cryptocurrency and all that kind of stuff you think is fundamentally broken. Is that right? Is that what you said? So I'm interested to hear why. Okay. That's interesting. So why do you think that?

Speaker 5 (00:10:27):
I mean, the popularity of cryptocurrencies comes from in having a foot in multiple worlds and it's a piece of technology. It's a piece of finance, it's a piece of ideology. And if you're not very well versed in all these things, it's easy to take other pitches for granted. And I think that's happening with cryptocurrencies. It's a complicated space with a bunch of interesting bumper sticker slogans that are easy to assimilate, but they're fundamentally on sound. And let me explain to you what I think by it's on sound cryptocurrencies at the end of the day are what finance people called a private currency. And a way of thinking about this is when you go to a casino, you don't really use your dollars. You exchange your dollars at the casino for their tokens, and then you use those tokens inside. And then at the end of the day, you go and exchange whatever tokens you have left for your dollars and you leave the place. So the cryptocurrencies have been sold on all kinds of grounds and they'll solve inflation.

Speaker 5 (00:11:54):
There's a bed against inflation. It's a silver currency. No more money can be printed, that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, it's a private currency, very much like a casino one, and it is still bound by the external currencies. So at some point you need to cash out of this world. And at some point you do need to cash in into this thing. So I think that the problem is that most people really don't have a good sense for what the role of money is the role of currency, why states print or do not print money? Also, I don't think that mean most people think that taxes are really what are funding the federal government.

Speaker 5 (00:12:42):
So there's a bunch of disconnects like that. And I think that a lot of people have fell for this. And then I think that that was an initial wave. And then there was a secondary wave where all of these a lot of creative users of cryptocurrencies they gave me five Ponzi and they made it look like you could make money easily. So this second wave, I think was incredibly toxic and incredibly damaging for a lot of people because a lot of people bought into this thing as if it was a real investment asset. So my issue really comes down to a lot of people, not understanding it at the end of the day, it is a private currency system. And no matter what you do come April 15, right? <laugh> on April 15, you gotta do turn whatever barter you did in the street. <laugh> financial transactions, foreign transactions investments in foreign banks or at home into us dollars to pay your taxes. And I don't think that a lot of people realize the nature of money and they've been kind of tricked into believ cryptocurrency itself anyways. And it's a shame that the most brilliant minds and young people got kind of sucked into this when there's so many other interesting problems to solve in the world.

Doc Searls (00:14:12):
Oh boy, this topic is good for an entire show. And I love that metaphor. I mean, I've heard the casino comparison before because you're taking chances that was kind of the casino thing <affirmative> but

Speaker 5 (00:14:29):
Really

Doc Searls (00:14:29):
A great metaphor that it is a private currency of not, and a way it is. It's certainly private to whatever cryptocurrency you're talking about, whether it's bitch Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of the lesser ones and private companies have emerged to more or less run your life through these things. And we could go further into that or into some other adjacent topic. But first I need to let people know that this episode of plus weekly is brought to you by IRL and original podcast or Mozilla. IL is a show for people who build AI and people who develop tech policies. It's hosted by Bridget Todd and the season. IRL looks at AI in real life, looking at things like who can AI help, who can harm. It, features conversations with people who are working to build more trustworthy AI. For example, there's an episode about how our world is mapped with AI, how the data that's missing from those maps tells as much of a story as the maps themselves to hear about all the people who are working to fill those gaps and take control of the data.

Doc Searls (00:15:37):
There's another episode of a gig workers who depend on apps for their livelihood. That one looks at how they're pushing back against algorithms that control how much they get paid and seeking new ways to gain power over data to create better working conditions for political junkies. There are episodes about the role that AI plays when it comes to the spread of misinformation and hate speech around elections, which is a huge concern for democracies around the world. The one about gig workers is interesting to me because in a way I'm one of those <laugh>. But the interesting thing to me about it is the algorithms where these are impenetrable in some ways. And can you open the source of algorithms in a way? Can you look at them? In most cases we cannot. And even if we can, we don't know what the effects of them are.

Doc Searls (00:16:25):
When you write code, you kind of know what the effects are gonna be. Algorithms have all these secondary tertiary and coronary effects that fan out and you don't know what's gonna happen. So that's an interesting topic. So search for IRL in your podcast player will also include a link in the show. Notes might thank to IRL for their support. So you wanna go any further on this one or should we get to some of the, on the crypto one? I mean, blew my mind with that one. I think our own back channel of in a similar way, it's kind of wait a minute. That's an obvious metaphor, but I hadn't caught it before. Maybe cuz it's people, it kind of travels as public, but it's really, it's private. I think everybody wants to decentralize. It looks like, Hey, it's decentralizing, we're putting on a blockchain. Everybody keeps part of the database here. It's a duplicated be database. We all have possession of some of that. And therefore it's ours, but instead it's actually our being used by something that's inherently private.

Speaker 5 (00:17:28):
And I think that this is interesting, right? Because what you're describing is essentially we get so caught up on the mechanics and people develop so much expertise on how this thing works. Then the mechanics of the consensus algorithms and who's doing and the double chain and the speed and the energy consumption, they get caught up on all those things. And it is almost like becoming an expert at a sport and memorizing every element of a baseball player. And I don't know what they're called, but they're people that recite games and they know exactly what transpired. So I think that a lot of passion is spent into this. And at some point the fundamental problem is that there's a disconnect with the fundamental economics of it. And by the time that you get to understand this thing, you are so bought to this lifestyle and so bought to the mechanics and the knowledge that you've gained, that you try to find a justification or try to find why this makes sense.

Speaker 5 (00:18:43):
And I think that that is where it breaks. And I mean, when I was a kid, I remember asking my dad where does money come from? And he gave me something about, well, it's gold and every dollar is back by some gold. And I was never satisfied with the answer, but why is it gold? And if we want more gold, do we have more money? So I lived for, I would say most of my adult life, not really understanding why money was valuable. And I listen the podcasts, I listen to the American life one on money. I was like, okay, I get it. But I get it. And I think it was some about 10 years ago or so, or maybe eight years or so. I found this blog, I believe it was called the economic perspectives. I, I'm not sure, but it was essentially a bunch of folks that were explaining where money comes from and explains why there's value in money and why do we seek money?

Speaker 5 (00:19:54):
And the theory as, and the theory that explains how this system works is very interesting because it's not difficult to understand that is the interesting piece. It has a couple of first principles where they describe our economic system. And once you understand that, and it can be explained in a couple of hours or, you know, can grab a book and read it in a couple of days a lot of this economic thinking unlocks. So the magic or this magic, this almost impenetrable thing that my dad couldn't explain 40 years ago when I was a kid becomes very easy to explain. It's called modern monetary theories. The is a thing and my dad is a physicist. So I always thought of my dad, the smartest guy in the world. And when it came to money, he didn't really knew what it was. And it would take me about 30 or 40 years to eventually discover where it came from. And I wish that other people had that same epiphany that I had seven or three years ago.

Dan Lynch (00:21:09):
So this discussion reminds me of a friend of mine, wants to explained quantitative easing to me by saying, all money is imaginary. And now they've imagined some more basically how quantitative easing works essentially. Yeah. So anyway while we're talking about, I know people in the IRC are matter about blockchain and they wanna talk about, it's a bit of a drinking game they have going on when we mention blockchain. So I'll try not to mention it too much, but the technical side of it. So a few people have mentioned in there, things like web three, which I think you have some feelings about. So what do you think about web three and using this kind of blockchain technology for something different?

Speaker 5 (00:21:49):
Well, I am definitely on the camp. I think that one, once they realize that this currency really didn't fly, they need to find ways of make it useful. And I think that they're trying all kinds of things and I have yet to see anything that the blockchain can do. I mean, at the end of the day, I think that the value uses for something like the blockchain are probably 1% of what is being advertised. So it's almost like a statistical error, but they've put a lot of money to this. There's a lot of money at stake here. There's investments, there's people savings. There's a lot of people that have horses in the race. And they're trying to find a way for more people to put in money and sadly without getting into the details and the specifics, this entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. And again, I'm gonna paint with a very thick brush is essentially techno pons, right? And what you do need is you do need to get more people getting more of this drug cryptocurrencies and putting more money behind this. So you can get out. So wet three for everything that I've seen on wet three and every pitch that I tried to listen to, they're trying desperately to give it a purpose to something it's a solution looking for a problem.

Speaker 5 (00:23:28):
And I have yet to see anything in this space that doesn't make that criteria. And I think that there's just a ton of vested interest in trying to make it happen. And I don't think it's gonna happen. Eventually we're gonna run out of people with disposable income or people that can be tricked into this. And a lot of people are gonna get harmed on the process. And <laugh>, I don't like this, right? I don't like this.

Dan Lynch (00:24:04):
Yeah. I'm sorry. Sorry, Dan, go on. I didn't mean no,

Doc Searls (00:24:09):
No, you carry on because you is a great thread. I have a slight pivot, but yeah,

Dan Lynch (00:24:14):
No problem. I was just gonna mention that I was reading cuz I knew we might talk about Webre I've gotta be honest. I didn't know much about it. So I did some reading up earlier and I was reading a great, I I'll find the link and put it in the chat for people. There's a really great essay by Moxi Mein spike who does signal and is a great cryptographer and so on about web three and why it's essentially a fallacy, a lot of what claims. So the decentralization, which is the big thing that they all claim kind of falls apart. When you realize that there's only two companies that provide the services to read the Ethereum blockchain that they're using, you can do it yourself. But his argument is people don't wanna run their own servers. End users do not wanna run their own servers. They're not gonna do that. And you can't do what you need to do on a device like a phone, you need a server. So you're gonna go to a company to get that server, which is one of at the moment, two companies. So I'll put the link in just really interesting on the why the whole web three thing kind of feels like a bit of a house card.

Speaker 5 (00:25:15):
Oh absolutely. I'm definitely on that camp. And I don't know if people know this, but there's a great blog called web three is going great. I believe that's the name? <laugh> by Molly white. She's based in Boston. I've never met her, but the website is very good looking and she keeps Documenting <laugh> every one of these things every of these promises when they lo or they're unfulfilled. So it's a great place to catch up on some of these things. But again, I've been trying to look at this as maybe there is something right, I'm a technologist. I love technology. Every time there's a new piece of hardware. I try to get it to mess around with it my message desk on the backs, a bunch of raspberry pies even if I'm not an electronics guy, I like to find out about these things. And I'm afraid that the web three stuff I've looked at, it spent some time on it. It's time. I'm never gonna get back sadly <laugh> but that there's not much there. And I think that at this point, we're rich the point where it is being driven with people with strong economic incentives to get more people to put in money so they can get it out. So I think that disqualifies very much as a very well funded scam.

Doc Searls (00:26:47):
Wow. Okay. So I have a

Speaker 5 (00:26:51):
<laugh> on that note.

Doc Searls (00:26:52):
<laugh> yeah, no, no. I think it's a pull quote for the show. <laugh> here's a slight pivot and it's an interesting <affirmative> thing for me. I was recalling, I was in college in the late 1960s which was interesting for lots of things. The civil rights era anti-war all that stuff. I was very involved in that. I came outta tech in a way cuz there was a ham radio operator, but which is the closest you could get back in those days. But in the summer I sold ice cream from an ice cream truck and I had a coin changer on my belt. Everything was a quarter or less that I sold <affirmative> and in 19, starting in 1964, the us went from all the money that the paper money said payable to the bearer on, in silver, on demand. It was backed by silver. Your dad was talking about your mind money and it was convertible.

Doc Searls (00:27:52):
But if you looked at the site, there's a slot in the change thing. So you could see the quarters. And there were mostly silver. The first year 65 that I did at 65, 60 says 66 through 68. And they were mostly silver for dimes and quarters and they were half. And then very few and I kept all the silver ones and actually exchanged them for, and I gave them to my parents now and as a gift for their anniversary or something like that. And unfortunately later our house is rated and was stolen, but which is sad, <laugh> it wasn't so much rated. There's just somebody broke it and looked where something would likely be hidden and found it there. But here's what I went through at the time mentally, which is that now they were federal reserve notes. I don't even know what it says in our money now, but as trust went from the metal to the government, we started to trust the bigness of the government and where I wanna pivot there is that only governments can make Fiat currency.

Doc Searls (00:28:59):
And I'm wondering, even though they're looking to get into the blockchain based kind. Now every government has substantial. Government is all looking at this and wanting to more or less step in front of it. And I've talked to friends at banks and other places like that that are very familiar with this. So there's a name for it. My wife is actually much more up on this kind of stuff than I am. <affirmative> so kind of wish she was on it, but this is sort reserve note on cash. It goes, an producer is telling us in the back channel and still says that but we're having, we now have a similar trust in big companies, you know, and I mm-hmm <affirmative> think Dan are looking at each other through apple devices. I know aunt is looking through a windows device. These are run by big companies.

Doc Searls (00:29:57):
And I think Dan is probably <laugh> the one Orthodox among looking at us through a Linux device and they all still work this great Dan's nodding. That's cool. He gets the award but we need these big companies for a lot of things. I you've written and talked a bit about this. And I think when you worked on mono and your early Abras of C sharp, I mean everybody's busy in the Linux world, busy crapping all over Microsoft and you looked at what they doing way C Sharp's kind of cool. I remember this, you worked on mono to kind of embrace all that. And that was I think you recognize, and we all recognize at least at an intuitive level that you need the big companies and now clouds have come along. Every everybody's relying on AWS. You know, my server cs.com has been around since 1995. It used to be under my desk. Yes. Then later it was in literally it was a physical thing in a rack at Rackspace because Rackspace was an early sponsor of Linox journal and two Linux journal women married two Rackspace founders actually <laugh>

Speaker 5 (00:31:19):
I did not know that.

Doc Searls (00:31:21):
No. Yeah. Funny thing about ly journal is that this a side point is that nearly a hundred percent of our readers were male and a hundred percent of our executive staff is female. Our managing editor. All of it is pretty funny.

Speaker 5 (00:31:36):
I subscribe to that magazine on day one. I probably don't have left it in Mexico, but a friend kept, I hope he still has. It kept all my books. So I hope he still has my Linux magazine. Number

Doc Searls (00:31:50):
One, I have a stack of them in Santa Barbara and I was looking at recently, I think it's a treasure, but where I'm going with this is anyway. Now srls.com is in mm-hmm <affirmative> it's not at AWS, but it's a, it's at a big company server and my mail is handled by Rackspace as well. You knows.com mail all goes through their spam filter, cuz we need them to filter the span. Yes. Most people use Google for that search engines have to be huge. These are utilities in a way, but utilities are closed in some ways as well. But there are virtues to that in a way. And you wrote about this and have talked about it. I think that the fact that apple from the start has worked on it's not just that they position around privacy for marketing purposes, it's that their customers are human beings. <laugh> they're not a business company, especially they don't do much B2B, even though they sell iPads by the zillions for point of sale and stuff like that. They're not a B2B company. They just deal with people for the most part. And we as customers pay them a lot of money and we care about privacy. They care about privacy. So tell us more about where your thinking is on that. And can we ever move past it? Do we wanna move fast past it?

Speaker 5 (00:33:10):
Well, I, I think you just a great quote and I'm gonna let you use it later. I don't wanna steal it, but I think that one thing that bothers me about these big companies is that I would say that today I happen to what the apple leadership is doing in terms of preserving privacy. So I think they're doing great, but companies go through executives change the market changes the government's change legislation changes and the company's morph as a result. So as a system changes the company and their behavior changes. And right now I'm very happy with very happy with apple. I work at Microsoft and I was close enough to the executive sort of level that I'm very happy and confident with Microsoft, but things can change and they can turn for the worst. So I think that the fear is that I would like to live in a world where we didn't depend on individuals or the current market conditions to get the right outcomes.

Speaker 5 (00:34:22):
And I believe that this is a place where there's two components. One would be the big hammer would be to have regulation. And I know a lot of people don't like regulation, but having some sort of regulation that controls these big companies or even small and medium companies. And the other one is we keep talking about the capitalist systems, having these duty to shareholders that their sole objective is to maximize shareholder value. And there's some debate over whether it's an absolute or not, and whether that's the intent. But I think that in addition to having this metric that companies should have a social mission or should have a duty to fulfill. And that they're also rated on that capacity. Sadly, the one note that we have to control the behavior of a company's money. So I don't know how to turn social responsibility into a no right? Whether that's lower taxes, if you do the right thing, will lower your taxes. Or if you do the wrong thing will increase your taxes. Or maybe that's a penalty, but I am happy with some big companies doing certain things and I'm not happy with other big companies doing things that I think should be rectified. And some companies have a mix. Some companies are good in some ways and bad in others. So I wish we didn't have to depend on the Goodwill on the management and the way the wind blows.

Speaker 5 (00:36:13):
So regulation seems like Europe is gonna pass some interesting regulation both for media companies and digital marketplaces. I happen to think that apple is doing a great job, but the European union is probably gonna start to regulate that space as well. I'm not convinced it's the right thing, but it kind of goes along those lines of regulation to ensure that companies have a long term, it's a long term net, good for society.

Doc Searls (00:36:53):
It's interesting. And we're sharing this on the back channel. Steve jobs went out of his way to say he didn't care about shareholders <laugh> and that he was working for the customers and he was working for himself. He was an art guy. He did art. That's what he was about. And I think Apple's success to some degree is dependent on that. I think the ghost of Steve jobs and his taste, I mean, what he said about Microsoft is a really interesting thing. He was interviewed once by Robert ex, as cringingly and Uhhuh in the interview, he leaned back and they asked him what about Microsoft? And he was on unfriendly terms at that time with Microsoft, he later got more friendly again, but he and bill actually liked each other, I think, as human beings, but he <laugh> leaned back. And he said, in four words, it was perfect.

Doc Searls (00:37:43):
He looked like Satan. When he said it, he said they have no taste. And <laugh>, I thought that was just a wickedly, right on comment at that time. And may still be true. I think it's really where they came from. And I think that the DNA of a company matters to some degree. The questions you never ask are the ones that the dead guy on the wall of the lobby would already had the answer for. And I know with yeah, I talked about that once with the guy who was the CEO of Elise, Scott of Walmart, who said that that Sam Walton still ran Walmart, that Sam Walton never wanted to spend more than 1% of their, their bottom line or whatever it was on advertise <affirmative> this is where we're gonna do it. And they never did. Yeah. But

Speaker 5 (00:38:30):
Go ahead. And what you're saying to me, one of the most there's this great book called, I think it's called thinking in systems and it helped me change the way that I see at some of these problems, which the particular case of what you say on Steve jobs, commenting on Microsoft. And they have no taste is not only a matter of hiring a couple of people to get some taste or trying to appoint somebody. I think that what apple has is they've been nurturing a particular way of thinking a particular person, that they hire a particular kind of people that care about certain things. And they've built up this stock. So I don't know if it's DNA more than they have a stock of people that care about this thing. And this is what this book talks about. How do you manage stocks of things?

Speaker 5 (00:39:27):
And in this case, it's people, talent and opinions, and apple has built up the stock of people that care about these particular things. And not everybody cares about the same, but in general strokes, that's what they have hired. And can't just sprinkle a handful of folks on this and completely change the company in a different direction. This is what makes me to me is so exciting about such a cultural direction he's had to in this model of stocks that this book talks about. He's turned off the faucet of certain behaviors and turned on the faucet of other behaviors. He's trying to receive the company. And he takes a very long time to make these changes moving a very, very large boat on the ocean. You can't stop that easily. You can't turn it quickly and it takes time. Now he's not going in the direction of competing with apple for user experience, but he's changing it in ways that I think are net positives for the world and for the company.

Speaker 5 (00:40:38):
But yeah, I think apple is unbeatable and it's not just because they came up with a great design for the notch on the phone. They just have a stock of people that care about this at a fundamental level. So today we saw it with the notch and we'll saw it with the braided band or whatever it is. But these are people that think about this day in and day out. And it's an advantage that they're gonna have for a very long time. Anyways. I'm not even sure how we ended up here, but I'm excited about this. I'm excited about this way of thinking about companies and systems and what do you prioritize and what do you encourage? What does the system make easy and what does the system make difficult? And we see it right now, actually with Twitter, if the leaks from the whistleblower are right, and I have no reason to doubt it is that the system encouraged certain behaviors from the management team that were not necessarily the same ones that a security professional cared about. And unless you make a systemic change you're not gonna get the results that you want. So anyways, I'm just asking about that book. It's just very interesting.

Doc Searls (00:42:00):
Oh my gosh. And the say we apple is about art. The system of Microsoft. I think, I don't know if you wanna go into this. We may need to have a different second show <laugh> but I'm remembering, I wrote a book for Microsoft once that was a web TV back in the nineties, when they bought web TV and everybody thought the TV was gonna eat the web rather than the other way around, which was exactly what happened. And I said that that was gonna happen. It was gonna be the other way around. And the guy that worked at my, I worked with at Microsoft said, he said, watch this Microsoft, nobody in Microsoft, can't go a paragraph without saying the word smart that it was all about smart. And it was all about more. What do you call more school that they invented the term campus that, you know, had a campus and you were graded on a curve and you got grades and things like that.

Doc Searls (00:42:52):
And it was started by two smart guys that had perfect S a T scores. <laugh> and that's what it was about. I don't know if you wanna go to that or not. Cause I know Dan has a question queued up and I have to help pay for this show by letting everybody know that this, no, go ahead. A philosophy <laugh> this was episode of philosophy is brought to you by it pro TV, your it team needs the skills and knowledge to ensure that your business is a success. And with it TV more than 80% of users who start a video, actually finish it. It pro TV is engaging and your team will enjoy learning on their platform. Give your team the tools they need to make your business thrive. Courses are entertaining, their binge worthy, keeping your team interested, invested in learning the tech industry is evolving, changing rapidly, and your team needs to be trained today.

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Doc Searls (00:45:27):
Okay. Dan, take it. <laugh>

Dan Lynch (00:45:29):
Yeah. Okay. No worries. Thanks Doc. Yeah. So I know we've kind of talked about this a little bit already, but I wanted to talk a bit about security and distribution models for software and so on. It sounds really boring when I say that, but hopefully won't be that boring. I was reading your blog about the epic games versus apple legal case and all that stuff, which I think is still ongoing at the moment, still rumbling on about app stores and control of app stores and stuff <affirmative> and a lot of people in my kind of Linuxy world will talk about the fact that the app store is just like our old repositories used to be with our package manager and all the rest of it. But I suppose there is a question in here, I promise <laugh>, but I suppose the question is, do you think having one company or one entity in control of what software is allowed to run on a system, does that limit creativity in some way or that kind of hacker culture that we know of?

Speaker 5 (00:46:33):
Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that it does limit the innovation. It limits the things that you can put in. Absolutely. I mean, there is no question that it does limit it. My view in particular with the iPhone and Android is that we are not now asking, well, we're not asking the reality is that the globe, right, humanity now is putting all of their information, private information into these devices. And it is imperative that would protect the integrity of these devices. And we have our bank account information. Some people have affairs that they're keeping from other folks that have business transactions, deals insider information, and everybody's carrying one of these things. So while I understand that you might not be able to run for example, a simulator for the commod 64, with some rums that you downloaded from the internet on the device. And it is a shame.

Speaker 5 (00:47:50):
The good news is that you can get yourself a device that can do that. If you really wanna do this thing, you can get a PC or a Mac or whatever, or a Linux machine and get it. So I think that this is a case where protecting these devices, that almost every human on this planet is more important than the handful of things that are not there, or the innovation that we're missing out. The other component is that hacks are essentially a function of how many hacks, how good the hacks are and what the impact is. It's a function of the market size. And back in 1998, we used to say, Hey, Linux has no viruses. Linux has no bug, right? And we used to think that we were just very secure, but it turns out that it was a function of the market. It was a function of what was the incentives.

Speaker 5 (00:48:51):
If you hack a Linux machine, you probably got nothing but access to an MTP server. Now these days, finding a remote kernel exploit for a Linux machine can get your access to millions of dollars. So the incentives are much higher. So I think that while there is certainly a downside for me as a software developer, I have all my hacks and I will like to run those all the time. In fact, I have an app that apple will not allowed on the app store and I run it locally. And right now it's not even displaying, oh, I have an enabled developer mode on my freshly installer rating system. But I have this little app usually before yesterday when I updated, this was my COVID graphs app. And it's an app to just keep an eye on COVID in Massachusetts and you can change it. You can, but I build it for my own use.

Speaker 5 (00:49:49):
Apple does not allow COVID apps in the store to avoid having to police information. So I picked my data source. I have a script that runs every night, updates it and updates my watch. So every day I can see <laugh> how COVID is doing here. So yes, it limits. I wish I could share this with more people, the source and get how you wanna get it. But yeah, I wish it was accessible to more people, but I think it is the right call because ultimately you are exposing at this point, these billions of people to this thing. So you need to it is one of those things where the benefit for society as a whole is more important than a handful of us wanted to run our personal COVID app on the phone. So now that said like I mentioned, the European union is going to get a heavy hammer to vote Google and apple. And I personally am very scared for this future because despite all the flaws that these stores have today and the hacks that still manage to make it what we're gonna see is a lot of vulnerable people are gonna be targeted by the most efficient scamming machine.

Speaker 5 (00:51:15):
Humanity has ever seen orders on the internet, make hacking from a different concrete, very viable, very low risk with a really high out. So I think that the European legislation that I have, no question will happen will mark the end of these funds as relatively safe devices. And I'm trying to relish this last few months, <laugh> of a stable system for myself and my family. I mean, I think imperative enough, I am securely conscious enough that I don't do many things that my family members do. And I think that they will be the first ones that get hit. People that are not security people and they will be scanned hard. So that's my concern. That's my thing with the apple store. I do not like the world garden. I just had an app. I submitted to apple. They rejected me over so many little things that I was like, Jesus Christ, just let me get it in.

Speaker 5 (00:52:24):
It's finally approved but it was frustrating. But at the end of the day, this funnel shrinking, what they're doing is millions of people have made apps and this funnel, this process, this thing kind of weeds out a lot of problems. It doesn't weed out everything, but it reduces the number of potential attacker of, or people that potentially can scam you. So I do appreciate it. Even if I I'll be the first to complain about app review, those guys are bouncers in a club. I hate those guys. I mean, I don't think anybody in the history of humanity has ever can say one nice thing about a bouncer at a club. And <laugh>, that's what they are but they do help keep the ecosystem safe and it's an incredibly juicy market. So anyways on the one hand, I think the hack me is happy for the EU legislation. The citizen in me is already mourn preemptively the hell that is gonna be unleashed on us. So some good, some bad <affirmative>.

Dan Lynch (00:53:44):
So just for anyone who doesn't know, cause I had to look at this earlier the EU I can't remember the actual name. It's DMA is the

Speaker 5 (00:53:54):
Digital market. Yeah. I think it's digital markets, something digital market act, something like that. Yeah.

Dan Lynch (00:54:01):
Yeah. So this is a ruin that came out of the EU in March, I think of this year and they're gonna basically force companies like apple and Google and others to open up their app stores and other things to out third party developers, basically. So to basically I think what you were saying was remove the bouncer if you like in that analogy and just let anybody right. Open the door and let anybody in. And I suppose the worry is that while we like to believe that everybody's above board and has good intentions, there are certainly people who don't and having no security or having nobody on the door checking that could be an issue. But on the other argument, I suppose there's the argument that it's market forces as well will leave it more open to this kind of market force of demand and popularity. And so on.

Speaker 5 (00:54:58):
The problem with problem with security is that it's not like the problem is that there's really no market force here. Once this is opened, right? You're all you gotta do is straight grandma or a kid. Hey, we have this exclusive game. Wanna try it out and they're gonna try it out. And what comes with a hack inside and the Google and apple will have absolutely no visibility into what this is into what got siloed into what got installed, how much of the system got hacked. And so that's my fear. They're gonna trick a lot of people into installing dub software <laugh> and they're gonna exploit it. But again, I'm mourning it preemptively because I think it's a done deal. I don't think anything is gonna stop it. So it is going to happen. And so I guess we just gotta be prepared to teach your families about these things.

Dan Lynch (00:56:06):
<affirmative>,

Doc Searls (00:56:08):
It's interesting to me that, I mean, you're doing a good job of looking two layers into things and in a similar way to what you were saying earlier about cryptocurrencies that they're inherently private, there's what they're missing with the EU lawmakers are missing is that these in fact are private markets run by companies. I mean, it's another, it's similar in some ways because it isn't the open marketplace. It's two really very right contained data stores. And it is kind of like saying, ignoring the fact that this is a futile system, that they are Lords of a domain where all surfs in there. We could complain about that if we like, but that's the status quo. And by saying, no, you're gonna have to let anybody do any whatever they want inside your feudal system is an issue. I had a different issue with both the GDPR, which I really was enthusiastically behind when it came on.

Doc Searls (00:57:13):
And for that matter, the CCPA in California, which is that they treat users as mere users, as what, in Europe, they call it data subject and the data processors and data controllers were the servers. So I'd like to go to a here's case that I've been making. And I'm curious to run it past you, which is that we made the wrong decision. We in this sort of geeky grand sense among geeks in the early days of the web to get stuck on client server, which might as well be called slave master when we could all be masters of our own servers. That was cool. But now that we're not the status quo became it's up to all the servers of the world to give us whatever freedoms or security or privacy that we want, which is why we have to now thank you lawyers making zillions of dollars, have to check off that we have consented to terms that completely violate the spirit of the GDPR. Well <affirmative> well being its letter. Oh, well we got consent. And in me as there may be a Silicon valley, libertarian geek as well, which says that every new law protects yesterday from last Thursday and <laugh> has to be with us for the next X number of years. And also doesn't appreciate really what works in the thing that you're trying to regulate. And I think that's another of your points, is it not?

Speaker 5 (00:58:46):
It is. And I think the Europeans, I understand that some of this is some internal lobbying, some external lobbying. And I think that when you listen, you see the returns that apple and Google are making and there are these insane numbers. It is, it's easy to demonize that. And I'm sure that they have no shortage of stories of local European developers that have struggled or have not been given the same rights that apple has, that they would push a law like this. So it is almost like a mob, right? And I don't think that we have really understood the problem. And I think that you summarized it very well, which is we're legislation. We're legislating for problems that we think we have are not fundamentally fixing the fundamental problems. And I think that that is lost in the noise. I mean, I think that apple has been trying to dedicate people, but I think it's a lost, cause I think they're gonna crack this open. So

Doc Searls (01:00:08):
We are down in the short row at the end of the show, actually, pastor, we normally <laugh> normally go are there any questions we haven't asked that you'd like to address in a very brief way? Or we could save it for another show because I want you back so bad. <laugh>

Speaker 5 (01:00:26):
Okay. We can do that. No, I think the only thing I would like to say is I talk about this MMT thing, which I find, even if you're in your almost 50, even if you're at this age, it's a good time to learn how money works. And while I do Stephanie Kelton's book, the deficit myth, she just mentioned that Ray has a new book coming up and I recommended it the other day on my Twitter feed. I'll try to find it and send you a link. But I really think that it is time that for all of us to upgrade our understanding on money, especially when all these interesting people are trying to take it away from us. So I'll send you a link later. I can't remember what it's called.

Doc Searls (01:01:13):
Yeah, please. Do. I love that it's another pull quote. We need to upgrade our understanding of money. Okay. So our last one when we ask everybody, it's kind of a controlled question. What are your favorite text editor in scripting language?

Speaker 5 (01:01:28):
Oh, well I still use EAX so <laugh> all habits die hard. I still use use VI for quick edits. I use visuals via code these days sometimes on and off. I think if I had to pick a favor, it would be EAX and scripting language. I still use Pearl. I know the world has moved to Python and AI is all done in Python, but all habits die hard. I still write my quick hacks in pearls BOS, and I haven't really transitioned to JavaScript. So <laugh>

Doc Searls (01:02:13):
Funny. I was thinking that I think in answers to this question, we could go back and check that Emax is about tied with VI and others of VIM. Okay. So forth, so on and with some very vigorous support <laugh> so, oh really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. <laugh> so

Speaker 5 (01:02:34):
I always have my EEX here.

Doc Searls (01:02:38):
Yeah. Anyways, there's on our back channel. So Miguel has been fantastic having you on the show and we will have to have you back. We said it to almost everybody but I feel like we've left many turns on stone here.

Speaker 5 (01:02:54):
Well, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure talking to you folks.

Doc Searls (01:02:57):
Yeah. Thank you for the time. Likewise. Thanks a lot, man. See you soon have a good one. Yeah. So Dan, that was good. <laugh> to say the least.

Dan Lynch (01:03:08):
Yeah. Fascinating. I mean, as you basically said there, I'm sure we could talk for another two or three hours and still have things to say. So maybe we should do that at a future time.

Doc Searls (01:03:20):
Yeah. I also think one of the things that Miguel said, I think more than once around cryptocurrency and once around what's coming along with the DMA in Europe we're kind of at a threshold time, a liminal time. And in between time right now, I think I'm feeling it right now with we watch housing prices and in the us have peaked and they're starting to get soft. And there are a lot of things that feel like they're ready to crash. To me, felt like online, out at internet advertising has been ready to crash for a long time. I don't know if that ever will, because the illusion of effectiveness is too well supported by numbers, whether they're Fous or not, they they're there and the agencies by them. But I do think something's gonna change. I think we coming up to a point here and there are a number of things that just stuck with me from this show. Yeah.

Dan Lynch (01:04:24):
Yeah. Definitely. It was good to, to get into the economic stuff as well, which is quite interesting. I think we could have talked a lot more about that. We can do that on, I dunno, economics weekly or some of the <laugh> some other shows

Doc Searls (01:04:35):
We need one of those. We need one. Those, well we've gone way over and we need to get to the post show. So thanks to you and we'll see you soon. Everybody

Dan Lynch (01:04:53):
Let's give him a second.

Doc Searls (01:04:53):
Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I forgot the plugs. I forgot the plugs. Cause I I'm so aware of the time plug something Dan, real quick. <laugh>

Dan Lynch (01:05:02):
Yeah. Okay. I

Doc Searls (01:05:03):
Have to plug next to it. Yeah.

Dan Lynch (01:05:05):
I can plug something. So I'm very quickly. I I'm raising money at the moment for a shelter, which is a homeless charity here in the UK and shelter mercy side, particularly, which is the area I live in where local is. Yeah. So there you go. Answer already found it. I'm doing a thing called Kip on the cop, which is we're basically we sleep out for the night and we get sponsorship to do that. So a group of us are gonna sleep rough for the night outside and experience what that's like, which hopefully gives a better understanding, but also to raise money for other people in the area and to help shelter and to do that. So there we go. That's my good deed for a while.

Doc Searls (01:05:46):
That's wonderful. Wonderful. Thanks for that. And I wanna plug next week. We have Andy Parsons coming on he's with the Adobe content authenticity project that is an open source project and has been recommended to us. So that is coming up next week and we will see you then,

Speaker 6 (01:06:06):
Hey, we should talk, see operating system that runs the internet, but game console, cell phones, and maybe even the machine on your desk. And you already knew all that. What you may not know is that TWiT now is a show dedicated to it. The untitled Linux show, whether you're a Lenox, a burgeon CED man, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the club, TWiT discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Lenox skills, and then make sure you subscribe to the club. Twit exclusive untitled Linux show. Wait, you're not a club TWI member yet. We'll go to twit.tv/club twit and sign up. Hope to see you there.