Joe Rogan doesn’t have a podcast

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Joe Rogan used to have one of the most popular podcasts on the internet, but in mid-2020 he signed an exclusive deal with Spotify, reportedly for $100M.

Therein lies the problem.

I don’t fault Joe for taking the deal. If Spotify offered me $100M for almost anything, I’d do it. However, I love the open nature of the internet, and this is another little thing that is making the internet crumble a bit more.

As it’s core, a podcast is just another type of RSS feed. By design, RSS feeds are completely free to create and consume, and they’re part of what make the internet great.

With a traditional podcast, anyone can make a show, and anyone can sign up to listen to any show they want. It’s perfect. With Joe Rogan, though, that’s no longer the case. His show is still free, but you need to be on Spotify to listen to it. There is no more RSS feed, so there is no more podcast. Call it a “web show” or whatever you want, but it’s no longer a “podcast”.

You can’t listen to it on Apple podcasts, or Google, or Pocket Casts, or any of the hundreds of other applications that can pull literally any other podcast. Your only choice is to use Spotify for it.

I don’t fault Spotify — they’re trying to gain a bigger audience.

I don’t fault Joe — it’s $100M, after all.

I don’t listen to his show anyhow (quite a huge time commitment), but that’s not really the point. I just don’t like the precedent, as it’s yet another small blow to the open nature of the internet.

Making RSS about people

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I’ve been talking about RSS feeds for about 13 years now, and have been using them much longer than that. I recently suggested that most everyone should be using them, and you can see how they fit into my larger system here.

That said, I’m constantly adjusting how I use them, which is part of the benefit of them. You can control exactly which sources reach you and which don’t, with no filters or algorithms in the way, so I frequently tweak who I follow and who I don’t.

To that end, I recently made two big changes.

Cut out some noisemakers

The first thing I did was cut out some of the sources that publish a lot of content, specifically TechCrunch and Lifehacker. Both sites put out great content, but just SO much of it. Any big story that I might pick up from them I’ll likely see elsewhere, so I’ve removed them both for now. So far I’m very pleased with that decision.

Added more humans

At the same time, I’ve started adding more humans to my feeds — people that I respect and follow. I’m enjoying their content, but this is where the beauty of RSS really kicks in.

If they post something, I see it.

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If they stop posting, it doesn’t affect me. It’s not like I have to go to their sites periodically to see what’s new; they simply have nothing in my reader.

Some good folks to follow

That said, here are a few people you should consider adding to your reader. If they keep posting regularly, you’ll get great content. If they don’t, no worries.

I still follow quite a few larger companies so I can stay current on my various interests, but I’m really enjoying seeing more solo bloggers popping up again.

What other blogs do you think are must-follow?

Beat Saber is a fun workout

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I heard about Beat Saber a few years ago — think “Guitar Hero” but you swing virtual light sabers at notes instead of playing them on a plastic guitar.

My wife got me an Oculus Quest 2 for my birthday a few weeks ago, which is a VR headset with a few controllers, and it’s one of the main systems that Beat Saber supports.

Here’s a quick video that shows a bit about how the game works:

While it’s intended for fun, and it is, it can be quite a good workout too. I’ve been looking some something low-impact to do on days between my Zwift runs, and this is a good one to mix in. It’s literally no impact on the legs, but a great cardio workout once you get good enough at it.

Be an expert

I’ve only been at it for a few days, so I’m not too skilled in the game yet. The general consensus is that you should be at “expert” level (4th out of 5 levels) to make it engaging enough to be a decent workout. I’ll get there eventually.

To really take it to another level, here is “JoshDub” playing on Expert+, with a neat green screen (and some software tricks) to make for a very impressive video:

This isn’t a game you can just pick up for most video game systems, but if you ever look into one of the VR systems (which are getting less expensive and better every year), this is worth picking up.

Thomas Edison was bad at math

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Thomas Edison was famously bad at math (he said he had a “distaste” for it), but math was essential to much of the work he did. Rather than force himself to learn it better, he focused where he excelled, and hired mathematicians to assist with his work.

Who built your mouse?

Related, Matt Ridley has a great riff on how there isn’t a single person on earth that can build a computer mouse. Between the plastic, metal, silicon, software, etc, it takes a lot of people to make a relatively simple device. Here’s a quick video of him explaining it:

Websites

You can take it further with websites. I understand WordPress quite well, but I don’t know every bit of it — not even close.

It relies on technologies like PHP and MySQL that I know even less about. A typical website is often running with Apache software on a Linux server, which is essentially where I tap out.

Of course, the hardware of the server itself is a wildly complex beast, at least a few orders of magnitude more complicated than that mouse. Then you have power running to the server, and then that little bit about the entire internet helping to get the bits from the server to you.

Lastly, that doesn’t even touch on everything needed for my computer to function to pull up a website and get editing. Even just pressing a single key on a keyboard creates a tremendous amount of complexity.

But that’s the cool thing — I don’t need to understand every step along the way. I’m interested in it, and learn pieces as I go, but it’d be literally impossible for one person to put it all together.

I’ve been using WordPress for nearly 17 years at this point, but that would all be for naught if I didn’t have a great team to help with design and other website necessities, and then the flurry of technologies (starting with web hosting) below us to make it all happen.

I’m thankful for companies like Flywheel that provide great hosting, and they’re thankful for companies like us that send more websites in their direction. We don’t need to work to become the other company — we can excel in our own lanes.

Having a wide breadth of knowledge is a good thing, and is a big part of reason this blog exists — I always want to be learning. At the end of the day, though, what matters is what you are great at doing so others know who they can turn to when they have a problem that you can solve.

Social media is vapor

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If you’re reading this post in 2021, there is a good chance you found this post via social media. If you’re reading this at some point later, you probably didn’t — at least not from a social post of mine. My posts about it have come and gone, just like millions of other posts every day.

I wrote my first post on this blog nearly 17 years ago, and moved to WordPress on May 24, 2004. There’s no reason to think it won’t exist for at least 20 years more. There are no guarantees, of course, but it seems feasible.

Social media posts, as you know, have a very short life span. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but something you always need to consider. When I first started this blog, Friendster, XING and Myspace were the top social channels. Any content I had published on any of them is long gone by now.

What will the landscape look like 20 years from now? It’s hard to know. Even so, while sites like Facebook and Twitter keep most of your posts forever, finding old posts can be very difficult. Even if they still exist, your older content will be difficult to find.

Still, be social

Social media can be great. While this blog has comments, interactions are fairly rare, and are served much better on a social media platform. If you want to share ideas or news with your friends, social media is excellent.

The problem, as I’ve expressed before, is that social media posts come and go. If you have something worthwhile to say, publish it on your own blog and share that post with the world. This is likely one reason why Seth Godin doesn’t tweet — rather than share quick insights that come and go, he turns his quick thoughts into deeper insights that can stand the test of time.

Beyond that, it’s fairly difficult to back up your social media posts in a way that can be republished. With a blog, you can create a quick, full backup of everything, and move it elsewhere. This blog has been on a number of hosts over the years, but moved without a change in address or even a tiny hiccup. That alone is powerful.

The river

Enjoy social media, but don’t let your insights drift away. Social media is often compared to a river; take a dip when you can, but the content will keep sailing away whether you’re there or not. Those dips are fun, and I’ll continue to pop in frequently, but take the time to set up your own platform that will exist far longer than your social media platform of choice will.

Johannes Gutenberg was the first Steve Jobs

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In learning more about Johannes Gutenberg and his creation of the printing press, the similarities with Steve Jobs and the first Macintosh are remarkable.

Typeface

Both men took a serious stance on high-quality typeface (fonts, essentially), at a place in history when it seemingly didn’t matter. Both men created something spectacular and history-changing, yet were focused on details like precise serifs and line heights when more basic lettering seemingly would have been just fine.

Perfection Everywhere

It went beyond just typefaces, though. Both men were obsessed with the smallest details of their work. Gutenberg invented new types of ink and pressing equipment, while Jobs created a user interface incredibly simpler than anything that had come before. Jobs continued this throughout his career, doing things like famously throwing an iPod prototype into a fish tank to show it could be made a fraction smaller.

Power to the people

The inventions of both men were in large part to help give a voice to people that otherwise wouldn’t. In the 1400’s, the church had the loudest voice of all, and Gutenberg helped to level that field. In the late 1900’s, Jobs helped usher in the computer revolution, eventually leading to everything we see today.

Failure wasn’t failure

In the end, both men were so obsessed with the perfection of their creation that it led to financial ruin. Jobs recovered, but Gutenberg never did.

But to them, it wasn’t really failure. I’m sure they would have preferred to have been more financially healthy after the creation of their machines, but it was the machines themselves that set them in leagues of their own.

Gutenberg is still everywhere

Amazingly enough, we still see evidence of Gutenberg today. One of the first blogging platforms was Movable Type, which is the style of machine that Gutenberg created. Of course, you also have WordPress, which itself is a nod back in time, and the latest version of their editor is simply known as “Gutenberg“.

To dig deeper into the history of the printing press, Stephen Fry’s look into Gutenberg’s past is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen on the subject, and I encourage you to watch it at some point.

Night shift all day long

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A popular feature that has found it’s way to all major operating system (not only Windows and Mac, but iPhone, Android and others) is “night shift” mode, where your display shifts to show more colors from the warmer end of the spectrum, with less blue light.

When you first enable it, most systems default to turning night shift mode on at sunset, so the lack of blue light will help you sleep better. The science is incredibly divided on the benefits of this, though I personally find my eyes more relaxed when looking at a warm-shifted screen.

Glasses

Another way to tackle this is with blue light-filtered glasses. Almost every major eyewear company offers them, with similar results. Rather than change your screen settings, you can just wear these glasses.

As a glasses-wearer, I considered this approach. Instead, I did something different — I set all of my screens to be in “night shift” mode 24/7.

Setting night shift

I’ve set this up on my two Windows computers, my various Chromebooks, my Pixel 5 and my iPad. They all handle it slightly differently, but with roughly the same result. The only tricky part is that some systems won’t let you just turn it on 24/7 — it has to be a daily schedule. In those cases, I have it turn on at 4:00am, and then turn off at 3:59am, essentially making it work 24/7.

Not for designers

The one caveat to changing the color temperature of your devices is that, of course, the colors are less accurate. If you’re a designer, or someone that has a reason to need to see precise colors, this approach probably isn’t a good one to take. In that case, I’d likely suggest getting blue light filter glasses so you can wear them to avoid strain, but then take them off when you need to see accurate colors.

Have you tried using night shift 24/7? How’d it work out for you?

Escape into brain.fm

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I’ve been trying to read more over the past year, and for the most part have been pretty successful. Much of that is due to simply making it a higher priority, but some tools have helped along the way — a big one is brain.fm.

The app is essentially just specially-created music that you listen to that helps you focus. Along with helping you focus, it can also help drown out extra noises around you, so it’s kind of a win-win.

The info on their site sounds a little hokey, but it really works. Here’s what they have to say:

Brain.fm holds patents on key processes for creating functional music, including technology to elicit strong neural phase locking—allowing populations of neurons to engage in various kinds of coordinated activity—and technology to remove distraction in sound.

This makes our music unique, purpose-built to steer you into a desired mental state. In other words, we’ve found new ways to create music that helps you do what you need to do.

That sounds messy, but it works! When I put on brain.fm to read a book or to take a clarity break, it really helps me tune out and zone in.

The cost

The big downside to brain.fm is the cost. It’s not outrageous, at $6.99/mo, but there are a lot of free options out there. I actually canceled my subscription for a while, but eventually came back because I found it to be superior and worth the $7 a month.

Your other options

Beyond special tools like Brain.fm, you can look on YouTube or Spotify or whatever you like to use and you’ll generally find two other directions you can go.

Binaural Beats: This is somewhat similar science as brain.fm, though this is focused on giving you slightly different sounds in each ear. It works well, but my problem is that most of the tracks I find are pretty short and the song switching is a hiccup I don’t care for. The brain.fm sessions can go 90 minutes at a stretch, which is excellent.

Video Games: Another popular route to go is video game soundtracks. They tend to have high energy, and more importantly, no lyrics. Some people swear by them. I’ve tried and found them to be pretty good at times, but I again struggled with finding consistent winners.

If you need something like this to help escape distractions while you read or study, brain.fm is worth considering. They have a 3 day free trial — not super long, but enough to at least see what it’s like.

If you use something else that you find works well, please leave a comment and let me know!

We have to do something about it

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Over the past few weeks, the stock market has been in a bit of a frenzy over the mess with GameStop. If you’re not familiar with what’s been going on, this is a good overview.

The problem I’m seeing is a lot of people suggesting “we need to do something“. While perhaps things need to change, quickly making some kind of change could backfire in unexpected ways.

FOSTA-SESTA

It’s similar to the FOSTA-SESTA legislation passed a few years ago to help fight sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is one of those things that “we need to do something” about, so our leaders did “something”. While that legislation indeed removed sex work from some semi-popular websites, it essentially just moved it further underground and has caused a huge uptick in murders.

Techdirt summed it up well in this article, including:

Within one month of FOSTA’s enactment, thirteen sex workers were reported missing, and two were dead from suicide. Sex workers operating independently faced a tremendous and immediate uptick in unwanted solicitation from individuals offering or demanding to traffic them. Numerous others were raped, assaulted, and rendered homeless or unable to feed their children. These egregious acts of violence and economic devastation are directly attributable to FOSTA’s enactment.

So what to do about GameStop?

I don’t have the answer to fix the GameStop situations, but two things come to mind:

  1. It may not need to be fixed. A big reason this happened is because a hedge fund got greedy, so this may just be a great lesson for all of them.
  2. An initial reaction was to take down some of the forums where people gathered to inspire one another to make these purchases and push stock prices higher.

Removing the ability for people to communicate about these things on platforms like Facebook and Reddit may help short-term, but would be awful long term. People won’t stop talking about it; they’ll just move to deeper sites where they’re harder to follow.

It’s like with the FOSTA-SESTA fallout, where police are lamenting that it’s much harder to catch pimps and traffickers now because those conversations have moved to darker corners of the internet.

Backpage was one of the popular sites for those illicit activities, but police were able to use it to catch predators. Now they can’t. Sgt. John Daggy:

“We’ve been a little bit blinded lately because they shut Backpage down. I get the reasoning behind it, and the ethics behind it, however, it has blinded us. We used to look at Backpage as a trap for human traffickers and pimps.”

There may be a good solution to solving the GameStop mess, or maybe there isn’t. Either way, a quick reaction will almost certainly only serve to make things worse.

Needless artificial constraints

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Constraints on your work can be a good thing. In The Practice, Seth Godin devotes an entire section to them. Among other examples, he cites Susan Kare’s work on the original Macintosh and the amazing icons she created while under a 32×32 pixel constraint.

However, there are times when constraints seem arbitrary and unnecessary, a legacy of “that’s how it’s always been”.

YouTube TV

A great example is with YouTube TV. It’s a wonderful service, but has a weird constraint when it comes to rewinding the channel you’re watching.

In the days of physical DVR devices, like TiVo, when you switched to a new channel you couldn’t immediately rewind. You’d need to be on that channel for a while so it could record what it saw, and then you could rewind back to the point you started with (but never any further). This was a constraint brought on by the technology of the time and the fact that it was using your local storage for the video, so it made sense.

YouTube TV has neither of those technical restraints, but the same issue still exists. If you change channels, you can’t rewind to a time prior to when you changed over. This makes no sense. YouTube TV isn’t recording the channel locally for you; they’re really not recording your own copy at all; when you “record” something on there, they just note that your account needs future access to that past show, as likely thousands of others have requested as well.

When you change to view a different channel, Google has long been recording it already and allowing you to view past content should be easy. Instead, they’ve unnecessarily carried on constraints from the past, even though they shouldn’t exist in the present.

Constraints can be a good thing, but creating artificial constraints is generally not something to include.

Update: Oddly enough, Seth Godin’s post today is on the same topic, though with a slightly different spin.