Voxels

Hi, I'm Sonic.

And you know what? You know, I think I have a headphone problem.

Oh, is this what you're starting with? Okay, so what headphone problem do you have?

You ever like, you know, go to a restaurant or maybe like you go to the grocery store, right?

And there's like a new kind of like drink there and you're like, you know, instead of buying like

a 12-pack, I guess I buy like six of each flavor, right? You know, and then you gotta like figure

out which one it is and you just go through each individual flavor and you like one thing about

each flavor, but there's not like a perfect one. And if you try and mix them together,

it's just going to get gross. Right, right. So you just haven't found the perfect headphone.

There's like something to like in every kind of headphones. So you're just like,

I got to sample the collection of the market of headphones. I see. Okay.

Exactly. Exactly. And see, you know, we don't talk about computers here, but I'm breaking that rule.

Breaking that rule for a good five minutes, talk about headphones, which,

what's a computer, right? I mean, it has an ARM processor in it. Most headphones have like some

kind of like, is it ARM? It has to be risk-based. It's like, yeah, some kind of like Qualcomm

chipset and a lot of ones or the integrated ones. Yeah. I mean, it's not, I don't think it's like a

full on full on computer, like in a laptop or a desktop. It's more simple than that. I don't

think it's like just like a digital signal processor, right? There's like a Bluetooth

antenna, the Bluetooth chip, right? A Bluetooth chipset.

Maybe like a SIP versus an SOC, right? System in package versus like a system on chip.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a, it's a very specialized system. Like it's not, it's not like

a general purpose computer. So yes, there are computers in there.

But yeah, so like, you know, as, as anyone who's followed me, I've mastered on for far too long,

has known, I like posting about getting new headphones and trying them out and being like,

this is great for two weeks and two weeks later being like, this is shit. You know, it's very much,

you know, we all need therapy, right? I'm struggling here. I was debating switching to

Android because the Sony XM5's bad name are actually really good, but I don't get my

notifications read out loud. And I was like, if I bought a pick, so I wouldn't have that problem.

And a lot of you there are probably listening saying that's really irrational, but listen,

it makes sense to me and that's what matters. But because they have like the best fit out of

any of the earbuds I've used, cause I'm like, you can wear AirPods Pro all day, but for me,

they just fall out cause they don't fit my ears. So these ones like actually fit great noise

cancellation, sound great, but because platform ecosystem bullshit, I'm completely locked out from

integrating in any way to the platform I use. Right. Right. Yeah. I think you blame Apple for

that one. And also, yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's like, that's going to be eternal, like sort

of like, there's no perfect, like there's no like headphone that has like everything you possibly

want. Like, you know, like if I, if I, if I could wear like my Sennheiser's that I'm wearing right

now, all of the place I would wear, but they're like not portable. They're, they're like, they're

like they're made for studio mastering. Right. They're like, they're kind of unwieldy in that

way. And also like, I wouldn't want to wear them outside. But you know, I wish I could,

because they're like, the audio quality is perfect, but the portability is, you know,

that kind of thing. No, I get that. I get that. But the reason I bring this up is, is that I want

to share love for the Linkbuds because no one talks about them. Yeah. You probably ignore the

message I sent to you, but have you seen these freaking headphones and how weird they are?

They're donut shaped. Yeah. I mean, they're like earbuds, like they're donut shaped earbuds.

They're cute. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if I would buy them just because they're cute, but

they do seem nice. I mean, they don't go in your ears and sometimes it's nice to not have that

feeling. You know what I mean? Like this one is just more of like around the house cleaning. Like

I don't really need noise cancellation if I'm cleaning my house. I guess maybe like vacuum

cleaner, but that's weird. I don't know. Like, like cleaning just and it's running on ANC just

so I could vacuum. Like I don't, I listen, I know some people cannot deal with that kind of noise,

so I respect it. But, but yeah. That's my audio corner this week. The reason I brought it back is

because this is less boring or almost as boring as what happened at the Xbox showcase.

That's true. And that's, that's a great segue. Great segue. So, following up from the

Microsoft news discussion that we had sort of like the pre-cor, like sort of like the discussion of

like, what is Microsoft going to do? And what we got out of Microsoft was, was a fucking podcast,

which is, which is already a bad sign. Like it's already a bad side where the company is doing like

a press release in the form of a podcast. And you know, they're not going to say anything. And

that's, that's what happens here. Like I don't think Phil Spencer actually says much worthy,

like much like actual substance, like there's not much actual substance.

So what the actual substance is, is there is four, four games, right? Four games that are going to be

coming for Xbox, like former ex, going to be former exclusives that they're going to be coming to

PlayStation. So we have Pentiment, we have HiFi Rush, Sea of Thieves and Grounded, right? So those

are like the four titles. Are all of these coming to Switch or I think only some of these are coming

to Switch and some of them are like, I don't know, coming to PlayStation. I know there was a Nintendo

Direct. >> Pentiment and, Pentiment and Sea of Thieves, no sorry, Pentiment and fuck, what is

the other one that's coming to Switch? It is, yes, Grounded. Grounded and Pentiment are coming to

Switch and then all four are going to PS5 and they are all already available on PC.

>> All right, yeah, yeah. I did play HiFi Rush when it came out last year. It was really,

really good. It was a fantastic game. So I'm looking forward to more people playing HiFi Rush.

It's a great game. That's basically about it. Well, like I, like anything else in that podcast

is just very wishy washy and it's like very much couched and like, yeah, maybe like, you know,

exclusives are not the future of video games for us. Maybe we still got, oh, we still got to make

an Xbox though. Like, you know, but no details about what the next piece of hardware they're

going to be. Obviously they're just like, oh yeah, we're going to make an incredible piece of

hardware. Stay tuned, et cetera. So that's. >> I mean, it's also really gross because how

much it kept talking about growth in it, right? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Like they kept saying, like,

I have a super, Phil Spencer saying growth and I think he said it like over 60 times.

>> In the game as the next video. Yeah. And it's in the context of like a massive amount of layoffs

in not just at Microsoft which did conduct massive layoffs after the acquisition of the Activision

Blizzard King acquisition, a bunch of, thousands of people were laid off. And in the context of

the wider games industry, which has been encountering one of the possibly the worst set of

like worst like conditions for like, like sort of availability of jobs and like people just losing

jobs left and right and studios getting shuttered. Studios laying off like hundreds of people,

you know, just like, of course it's the Embracer group situation where Embracer is just

fucked up and they're just like cutting studios left and right. So it's just like a devastating,

it's a terrible time to be in the, in like the industry proper. Like if you're like a game

developer working in the industry, that was like terrifying, absolutely terrifying. So in that

context, like Microsoft, like Phil Spencer, like talking about the growth of Xbox, the growth of

the great games division or whatever, it's just, it's tasteless, right? Like it's just like, you

know, what like clearly like, you know, it's just, it just seems, comes off as like, like really just kind of tone deaf.

And just like, it's, I don't, not, not feeling great about, about this.

Especially when Xbox makes more money than Windows, like it is the second or third largest org at

Microsoft, right? Like it's AI cloud stuff is the first cause Azure's prints money. And then you're

like enterprise stuff like office 365, those kinds of contracts and then Xbox and then Windows. So it's

not as if that they are shrinking or losing money on, on the entire Xbox project.

No, they're not. It's, it's, it's never a matter of losing money here, but it's kind of, kind of,

sort of corporations. It's about like quarter over quarter growth, right? It's as, that's the word,

whereas the word they use is growth, right? They want the line to keep going up and to make the line

go up, you keep laying off people because you have saturated the market and you can't find growth.

Otherwise you just, you know, but, but your investors, your shareholders are like, where's,

where's the number go up? And, and we have layoffs because, because the layoffs are going to create

the number going up because it will, you know, you reducing your expenses because employment

employee employing a lot of people is, is very expensive and it's probably one of the biggest

expenses that any corporation can have. So they, and, but of course they don't realize that, you

know, like that's the reason the stuff keeps like they keep making money. So anyways, it's, it's,

it's a, it's a long, like it's, we can discuss like the sort of absolute madness of, of, of,

of corporate culture, but yeah this, this, this whole thing was like, this was just like damage

control, right? Like they talked about this on the Aftermath podcast and I'm sure other podcasts

that it felt like this, like there was this whole rumor mill situation going on with a bunch of

rumors about an Xbox fans, hardcore fans being pissed off or whatever. And this was just like,

hey, hey, hey, look we're not, like, we're still in this, like, we're not going anywhere. There's

still going to be Xbox hardware. Like it felt very rushed. It felt like weird to even have this be

in the form of a podcast. Like, I don't know about you, but I don't, this feels like a weird thing to

put on like a podcast. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna say that. What do you mean? We don't, you

know, in the next episode of Oxels, we're not going to be dropping some new business strategy

for y'all. No, unfortunately for y'all with MBAs, we're not, we're not going to be doing that.

So speaking of like, is there anything else that we need to say about this? Is there any,

any other bits that I missed? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a couple, a couple of little,

little bits and pieces I'd want to put you on here. So the first being really that it was a

week showing, not because of the things we've already mentioned, but because they just should

have gone like full balls on the wall and just said it. You got to rip the bandaid off. Like I

said last week, you can't just come through and go ahead and start saying that, "Yes, we're going to

start slowly." And then we might look at other games because you've already opened the door.

Right? The door's already open. So now every single time Microsoft announces the exclusive,

what's going to be the article, right? The SEO bait is when does it come to PS5? When does it

come to Switch? That's going to be the conversation every single time. They tried to address it,

but they really did not. Right? They're like, "Well, this is a case by case basis where,

you know, don't expect all the other games to come to it." But guess what? If Sea of Thieves

becomes one of the most played games on PS5, Microsoft's going to bring everything to PS5,

right? If the revenue outweighs the downsides of customer sentiment, especially as they have a

bunch of new people who really like Xbox game studio games on other platforms, what do you do,

piss off the, I don't know, 500 people in a Twitter space who are really into Xbox versus

all the millions of Nintendo and Sony fans you could get? They're like, they're like the Vogue

vocal. Yeah, vocal minority. Yeah. And it's also the context of what we didn't talk about this

two weeks ago, but there was the Sony like investor announcement or whatever, right? There was the

Sony thing from Sony games, right? And the interim CEO of Sony games like was basically like, "What

the fuck are y'all doing? Why are you spending like $500 million on a single video game? Like,

what is going on over here?" This guy just comes in, he's, I forget his names, but he's like from

Sony proper, right? Sony games is like division of like this big Sony multinational corporation.

But so this guy's coming in from Sony proper into Sony games and he's looking at like the numbers

and he's just like, "What is happening? Like, why are we spending so much? And why were the numbers

like this?" And he's just like, "We got to find out. We got to start releasing stuff. We got to

put these games elsewhere to recoup these massive amounts of money that we're spending." So even

over at Sony land, I don't know if this is going to result in an actual... I mean, they're looking

at the success of something like Helldivers 2, right? And- Well, remember, Sony doesn't have any

new first party games coming out until 2025, April. They announced that they're not gonna,

like this is not gonna come out this past year, this year, which is massive because there's like a

full year where Sony's just like not like really like participating in like the AAA space,

like at all, which is kind of crazy. I don't know if that's ever happened before, but like this is

kind of like a weird gap and Nintendo's not gonna like... Nintendo's like gonna release the Switch 2

like next year probably. Didn't they say there was going to be next year? I think they said like-

Yeah, the rumors is that the whatever Switch successor is coming out next year,

which obviously points to just like a mid-year for games, which it doesn't matter, right? Like

you have ups and downs in any media market, movies, books, film, whatever. But the problem

is that it's gonna be a mid-game for years and a game where people are already... Or a year,

rather, where people are already trying to contract hiring, lower headcounts and all that.

So you run into the issue where we're now gonna probably be facing a lot more layoffs because

there's not funding coming in because all the 3 major players are either A, porting their games

elsewhere to PC or to PS5, whatever. I wouldn't be shocked if Sony just this year to try and make

some money has Nixus start porting a lot more games to PC or starts accelerating the PC timelines

like of Helldivers 2 like you're talking about. And Nintendo's basically done with first party

games for the Switch. So it's really what? The third party games and that's not gonna drive

no hardware sales. People buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo's games. They don't really buy them

for whatever third parties. The Princess Peach game is coming out, but I don't think Metroid

Prime 4 or other games are gonna come out until the successor comes through. So you can actually

have a strong library. So I'm just kind of spooked as to what's gonna happen for the rest of the year.

I don't foresee a year where more people keep their jobs than not. Yeah, exactly. It continues

to be kind of a dire projection for this year at least, which is not great. Speaking of,

I think we can at least transition of things that are not great to... Speaking about major

wastes of money rather. Major wastes of time and money. So this game I remember being mildly excited

about like on a E3 like I don't know like seven years ago, five years ago. I remember like there

was a trailer for this game and I remember being like, "Oh, they're gonna like just they're gonna

make like the ship part of Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag into like a whole ass game." And I

was like, "Hell yeah, that was like one of the best parts of Black Flag." Of a bad game.

And I was like, "That's cool. I'm glad that they're making that." But it turns out this game

Skull & Bones has been in development for 11 years, developed at Ubisoft Singapore. And there's a

whole like story, like kind of like a interesting story about this game specifically is that it's

not just been developed for so long and stuck in development hell for so long is that Ubisoft

Singapore is like an interesting case for Ubisoft Studio in the sense that this game specifically

was made with funding from the Singaporean government. I think I'm pretty sure somebody

correct me if I'm wrong because I'm pretty sure the case was that there was some sort of tax deal

or some sort of employment deal with the Singaporean government in regards to this game,

which had stipulated that this game had to come out, right? Like there was some sort of

contractual obligation for them at which meant that even though this game was as we're going to

talk about it, this game is not good. It's not a good game. And it comes out after 11 years of

very extremely messy development to like very mid reviews is that it was basically forced to be

released by contractual obligation with the government, which is just like, I don't think

that's like the first time a video game has to come out because like the government said like,

you signed a deal with us, you have to publish this, you have to release this game or else,

you know, you have to pay all the money back or whatever. Like, I don't know if that's the first

time, but this is that's what happened with Skull and Bones, which I don't know about you. I don't

know. But at this point, I've lost all excitement for this game. Like I was excited for this game

like five years ago. And the time for this game to have come out was like five or seven years ago.

And it's been yeah, yeah, it's, it's not a good game. There's a review on it on Rock Paper

Shotgun. And it's just like a very exceptionally boring like as it as the editor there called it,

exceptionally boring live service like shipping simulator, which I don't know about you, but

even as someone who nominally likes some of the boring shit Ubisoft puts in their games,

it's it's even too much for me. I don't know about you, Christian. I know you're like a known Ubisoft

like game disliker. So what? Christian: I'm not a Ubisoft game disliker.

I'm I think you're first and foremost full of shit when it comes to the Assassin's Creed franchise,

because it's a bad franchise. Most of the games are not good. And I've wasted more money than on

Ubisoft games with your fucking recommendation. So get fucked first and foremost. But at the same

time before anyone long term listeners, you know, judge me. Yes, I did spend $100 of my own money on

Division. I was in a bad place in my life at that point. And I know better now. But so with

Skull & Bones, here's the thing. Why is this not free to play? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why

it's not free to play. I think it's because Ubisoft is just like, I don't know man, we gotta make some

money out of this. Like, it's what what what would you make more money on it's ship skins, or $70 up

front? I don't know, man. It's it seems I mean, don't give yourself probably both. Well, yeah,

I mean, I'm pretty sure both Yeah, but like, I don't know, it probably should have been free to

play. But free to play. This being free to play does not like really redeem it's being like,

extremely boring and bad. I think like it wouldn't fix that. I don't think right. But at least it

would make it like slightly more palatable. Like if you're just playing this as a free to play game,

it's like a $70 title, which also Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot called this a quadruple A title

to signify that this was like, somehow like even better than like the truth to quote unquote,

triple A signifier that we attached to like, big budget blockbuster video games. That it's it was

somehow more more than that. And this was a quadruple A video game. I just for this to come

out and be like this is just like, I don't it's just I don't know it's funny or not. But it's

sad. I think it's just sad that we're getting this. Hey, but at least it came out. Which,

which is something beyond good and evil two is never going to come out. I don't think. So there's

that but oh my god, that game still exists. Right? Are they still asking people to submit music and

art for free? No idea. So this is the thing with Beyond Good and Evil 2 is that it's just

really strange is that there was that there was that trailer that came out like an E3 like a few

things like three years I don't forget like three years ago. There was this whole thing where they

were like, yeah, they were asking people to submit like, I don't know art for the game or whatever.

And we have not heard a single thing from you some about it. Like the director of the game left the

person who was like the biggest champion of Beyond Good and Evil like I think the guy who like was

on the original like the director who directed like I think the original Beyond Good and Evil was

like what left Ubisoft and so I nobody knows what's going on with Beyond Good and Evil 2. It's just

like a complete mystery. Ubisoft has not announced like a cancellation or what they're gonna release

something. It's just zero. So at least this game it finally came out even in this terrible state

but Beyond Good and Evil 2 is I don't think it's gonna happen. I think that game's good and dead

unfortunately. So yeah that's Skull and Bones. I am not going to play this actually because I am

I love myself. I don't want to expose myself to this. Like there's nothing good here. There's

absolutely not even like oh I can't be like oh maybe the narrative is good. Narrative is

horseshit garbage. Like there's no Assassin's Creed bullshit to sort of you know hook me either.

So like there is absolutely zero reason for me to play this game even on like I don't know like a

$20 for a single month of like Ubisoft Plus is not worth my time. Wait Ubisoft Plus is $20 fucking

dollars? Yeah I mean 20 Canadian dollars mind you. That's what I meant by that. It costs like 20

Canadian dollars I'm pretty sure. $20 Canadian dollars a month. Oh so like five American dollars

got it. No it's like 15 or 10 or whatever. So yeah so it's not worth that. It's not worth

anybody's time really unless you just really really want like a mindless like absolutely mindless like

boring ass Ubisoft game. To which I say just to which I say go play Far Cry instead. At least

that one is slightly more entertaining. The Far Cry games are probably better suited for that if

you want to if you want that kind of Ubisoft sort of Ubisoft fluff I guess. But yeah this one is not

this one is not good unfortunately. So let's talk about let's talk about media. The media ecosystem

speaking of things that are not things not good right. This has been an episode of things that are

in in dire shape. We talked about the video games industry. We talked about Skull & Bows,

both of which are in bad shape. My headphone purchasing hobby. All things that are in dire

need of intervention. Yeah so speaking of the online media news ecosystem has taken a major

loss I suppose this this week. Vice.com is fundamentally no more. It was announced that

basically what they're doing is they're laying off basically almost their entire basically staff and

that they're gonna like do some sort of weird social media consulting thing. It's just really

bizarre. Like vice.com is not gonna publish any more new articles or content basically.

Like they're just not vice.com as a thing is dead dead. So which is unfortunate. Like that is

like I don't know I don't know about your like it's like people vice.com has always been like

this media entity in the background like sort of motherboard and my relation with it has always

been waypoint. Like I've never really interacted with most of vice's other sort of media properties

like motherboard or or cyber or whatever else like vice news and and all that. Like I never

really interacted with that but like waypoint was the way I interacted with vice's sort of

media structure but waypoint has I mean waypoint has been dead for a while now. And

that is remapped radio and of course a lot of people for motherboard there are three people

from motherboard left two four four four media right and there are some people from they were

all from motherboard all four of them all four of them were once working for vice all four of them

right all of them all of them all of them for vice for motherboard and they and they left to

four four four media which there's gonna be a link to a blog on on fourfourmedia.co about sort of like

you know them talking about like their feelings on like what happened and what not and

and it's truly like tragic that I think as Jason says that there's like so much journalism that

that vice journalists did over the years that's like really really important and good journalism

that's just kind of I don't know hope it gets archived but like who knows like at this at this

point it's like nothing is just like some stuff is just gonna be lost forever so that's that's not

good that sucks and of course there's gonna be layoffs that means it's already happened this

thing right I don't know if it's already happened or it's gonna happen but they're gonna lay off

hundreds of people so 900 or more is what they said and of course the executives took a multi-million

dollar paydays before the before the bankruptcy was announced yeah before the bankruptcy yes

I remember I think Rob and Patrick talking about this on one of the early episodes of Remap Radio

how like you know they were struggling to get their severances and meanwhile these executives

had paid themselves like hundreds thousands of dollars and like and it is just disgusting it's

honestly truly just terrible what happened with Vice here just absolutely terrible management

from from from the top just and this is sort of like I think I think you recently sent me an

article about this this this independent site struggling on google right what is it called

house fresh house fresh I'm gonna just put the link in here because I think it's like in the

context of this with these like big media corps sort of getting hollowed out essentially like

they're they're like they're like not hiring as many people they're fired they're laying off

people they're they're replacing they're replacing what what creative juice that they had with you

know just lomg generated garbage right and they're just flooding the they're flooding search engines

with with affluent horse shit and which and which means that it is really really hard to find

anything like vice the 404 media people have talked about this like they had this whole whole

blog post about you know give us your email address because that's the only way we can like

directly send you our articles and like it's basically impossible to like find stuff otherwise

on search engines anymore because it's just filled with garbage so like the media ecosystem online

media ecosystem like and search engines just like a dire absolutely like horrendous like situation

nothing is good here um the market the ad market is like kind of yeah it's it's it's not good so

so is there like i mean the only silver lining here is that we have some news sites coming out

of like the ashes of like the you know depth of these like big media conglomerates you know we

have sites like aftermath we have sites like 404 media uh remap radio uh um i i i linked to another

one what was it called it was called uh rascals rascals yes rascals dot news which is uh which is

like a niche sort of niche news site for uh tabletop uh rpgs and though like that kind of

thing is like happening and i hope that succeeds long term it's hard to say really like how long

like these things can really sustain themselves and i hope they sustain themselves for a long

time but it is you know that's the only silver lining this year uh so what are your thoughts

i know i've been going off for for a minute here so uh what do you what are you what are you

thinking so first and foremost you know solidarity to anyone at vice who you know is basically

getting fucked over by this i doubt any of y'all will get severance like there's a lot of labor

cases i imagine the future for y'all um hopefully you do land on your feet but i think there's a

broader point of i don't know because we have we've said like remap 404 aftermath rascals all

of them that are popping up which i support and they're all doing a small headcount reader

supported model which i also fuck with but it's kind of the the issue we run into with app store

subscriptions where there's like fatigue after a while like i don't i can't subscribe i can't pay

for all these blogs even though i'd want to right like it's i actually cannot pay for all of them

so what i'm curious on is like the app the the ad market rather is collapsing right now a lot of

people wanting to do subscription stuff like what's the how does that work out is is it that

we have just a few small sites that work well with subscriptions and the rest of them just kind of go

away or is it that we have a lot of plentiful sites with with a small amount of subscribers

but people who are happy to pay for that specific content and and we have a thriving immediate

ecosystem that way i i think we're gonna see that i think for at least for at least for the next i

say five years or so like i think there is niche niche audiences like you know sites like rascal

news or defector or gotham nyc uh those kind of like subscription funded sites i think those have

enough of uh enough of a niche right uh like enough of a sort of base of people who are willing to

pay for it and supported that even though you know it's not going to be massive they're not going to

have they're not going to have massive head counts they're not going to become a massive media

conglomerate right but i think they're going to be able to at least be more sustainable than i i i

think uh what was there before like these these massive media conglomerates are just never going

to be never gonna because they keep chasing like trends and they keep trying to like do weird shit

that doesn't work spending vast amounts of money on absolute horseshit uh and it doesn't work out

for them right so and then they're just but this if you have these small teams as you mentioned

small teams with a niche subscription funded with the loyal subscription base i think i think it's

possible i think it's it's doable long term uh i mean i hope it is at least because otherwise it's

uh very depressing to think otherwise uh that is uh there's not oh so i'm i'm just glad that

we're leasing like uh this happened and i hope this keeps going uh it's yeah otherwise it's yeah

i get it i i get it i'm hopeful too it's just i don't to expand even more on this i guess if we

look at just the overall media ecosystem right now especially with how social was driving a lot

of traffic right facebook notoriously lied everyone about video and caused a bunch of hiring and fake

investment end up with a bunch of layoffs and in that cycle i'm curious on how and i am sorry i'm

gonna try my best and not sound like a like a web 3 bro right now but i am curious on moving away

towards right traditional social platforms right and if having a more not direct consumer but like

direct audience model where all these sites can hook into like activity pub stuff or rss right

just any open standard and and and directly have content delivered to people that way um i'm

curious if that'll help with the issues of that we're having at google right where you know if i

follow someone mastered on i will see their post maybe i follow too many people so it's hard for

me to keep up but like assuming they're the servers are fettering of each other the post

will be delivered and i i guess i'm curious if that will help this issue um a lot of sites have

not plugged in yet i know um what's it called flipboard has full activity pub integration

uh wordpress has a plugin for it but wordpress the ceo is currently having a meltdown over trans

girls on tumblr i heard oh it's not not yeah um um so i don't know i don't know about wordpress

right now but um ghost i don't think if ghost has an activity pub maybe they do have one but i know

i don't think ghost has native um activity pub uh support so i i guess i'm just curious if like

more of these sites maybe might look towards that but then again these are all the people who use

like co-hosts and stuff which no disrespect to you but co-hosts is bad i love how you preface that

with no disrespect but cost is bad um i i don't i don't know if you want to expand on that like

do you want to expand on why you think co-hosts do i want to expand on why i don't like co-hosts yes

i do i do want to expand on why i don't like co-hosts so why i don't like co-host is because

co-host is it's twitter but soft right it's like it's twitter but comfy i don't want that right

it's like the whole twitter was a hellscape and and it was uh probably contributed more to the

collective demise of humanity than we want to admit and and and i let me stop memeing so to

to give you a serious answer i think it is unimaginative it is just the same thing but with

um you know with more moderation which some people want i guess right some some people want but i i

mean uh tumblr is is tumblr is the equivalent of co-host is basically like tumblr but with like

better modern better managed i suppose better i don't know uh i i the thing is with co-host is

that i don't think it will last five like five more years i i'm very good you know what coast

reminds me of actually i don't mean to cut you off it reminds me of elo remember elo yes oh god

yeah um elo the the quote-unquote i mean the apple bloggers love that love that one right um no app.net

too oh that was app.net oh my god all these dead yes app.net but and then there's elo see that's

the problem we like that's the problem when it centralizes i could start saying elo app.net glass

um shout out diaspora that that tenco is federated i guess it actually probably still exists but

there's so many like these centralized like social media replacement sites and my root my main issue

with co-host is it's a centralization of it we what has stood the test of time email rss still

like even those sites like are moving most sites still have an rss feed because a lot of uh

cms is turned on by default and people are not nerdy enough to know if they should turn it off

or not but it's very few protocols that um have stood the test of time and it's all because

centralization and that's why i think that co-host is not built to last just because it content

moderation at scale doesn't work and is the fediverse method of having a bunch of volunteers

moderate good probably not but at least i could donate to the people who run my instance so i'm

like doing my part uh i have a lot of thoughts on like the sustainability of the fediverse

when it comes to moderation i fundamentally think it's i mean it's built on top of extremely

uncompensated labor uh including myself uh and i spent uh i don't know if you if you were hit by

this but the spam wave i'm sure you saw people talking about this there was a massive spam wave

over the past week done by some kids basically having a fight uh over on discord uh they decided

to spam the head of our civil right uh which led to like upstream changing the default uh

signup setting to be required approvals which i i think should have always been the case but here we

are uh so yeah i don't so the reason i think co-host is not sustainable is because it's it's i

mean it's for a very basic reason the last time they talked about their financials they were

spending ridiculous amounts of money and not making enough to cover their costs even break even

uh and that is fundamentally going to be the problem uh it's as simple as that they're not

gonna last because they're gonna run out of money uh that's basically what i'm what i'm thinking

like they're gonna get run out of money and if they're not gonna sell the thing to anybody it's

it's just gonna get shut down and that's my reason like i am on co-host i have dabbled with it a bit

i sometimes there are some people on co-host that are there on the on co-host so you kind of

interact with them there but like long term i know the co-host is gonna just not be possible to

sustain itself i mean i hope i'm wrong but it's it seems doesn't seem uh likely uh maybe a more

gamer friendly way of phrasing this for people who listen who might not uh be that familiar with the

mastodon or the social media moderation side of things you could probably describe co-host and

discord's business model in kind of the same way and that's really scary oh i i see what you mean

like it's it's based on fake money right like like money that isn't there eventually coming to prop

up a really expensive service to run yeah it is it is that's that's my that's my concern with co-host

is that it's not sustainable long term um and and to make it sustainable long term would require

the service to change dramatically and i think that's just not uh feasible either like to make

the service profitable is you have to make every member pay for it which is just not going to happen

like that is just fundamentally not going to happen even on the fediverse like even on an

instance with like a hundred users maybe you'll have like 20 30 users donating to them and that's

that's like you know so it's just like it's just not going to work out i did just the math it's

just not going to work out there like the the financial map there is it's just just income and

expenses is just not going to work uh so that's i mean we're we're just we're just out here just

fucking uh i hope like people who who are listening to this like who are co-hosts i hope you don't

take this as like like us like i don't know about you but i don't like i don't like hate co-host or

anything i just i just think that it is not fundamentally not a model that's doable long

term uh which i think the way we'll say this is like listen if you're on course and your friends

are there have fun just archive your data because one day historically speaking right and we're like

six for six now on these platforms you're either going to end up one day with all of your data

deleted because it got sold to some random third-party company decided to shut it down

or being owned by verizon and i don't know which one is worse um yeah that's none of those none of

those so i'll just say your backup like if you put your writing on co-hosts please have a local

copy of it publish it elsewhere you don't get a blog uh publish it elsewhere you know keep a text

copy of it on your machine back it up on on onto a cloud service because uh nothing is forever

um especially not a service like that uh so just especially given that vice might randomly go down

nothing is forever on the internet how long until bitrod happens and all there's dead links on vice

and images that don't load uh that is i'm sure that's not gonna that's gonna happen very soon

so uh maybe maybe we talk about something less i don't know actually maybe not less dire so one

of the books here is uh is is pretty dire um do you have any media to suggest to people before

i go to my book corner uh do you have it i don't remember did we did i recommend yeet last week i

gotta check the website i think yeet was after this um let me go my reading recommendations it

was yes i was that Mexican OT so i gotta i got a hot music recommendation for y'all before i crack

open a beer while sad i talk about books um so it is 2093 by yeet um i don't i'm not really like a

like a what the hell just happened sorry my headphones just did the play pause noise that's

so weird okay so let me go back to the headphone corner for a minute to explain why i'm spooked out

so the Sony link butts have a wide tap feature where if you tap your your actual cheekbone

that's what does play and pause right i just like smiled and it thought i did a tap of my cheek

technology gentlemen uh that's technology for you um anyways so yeet 2093 part two um with the only

good Drake feature the entire year basically it's like um autotuned edm with rapping which would

sound bad but for some reason it goes really hard and i think it's mostly because of how dirty the

mixing is like i i'm what do you mean by dirty like it's just like it's not mixed well the drums

are clipping on purpose like it's like you know like the drums are clipping on purpose and i uh i

fuck with it there's no lyrical substance i guess it's just like a dude being like i go hard in the

paint like 5 000 times um but you know here's the thing all right sometimes you need ignorant music

you know sometimes you just need some music that has no substance and just goes hard yeah i got

you yeah it's like when you listen to like i don't know like don talliver um no disrespect to don

talliver like his music is just extremely like background music to me because it's just like you

know you're just vibing no like it's just vibes vibes music exactly uh which which i haven't i

haven't listened to it yet maybe i listen to it today i think i mean this good time is ready put

on the hi-fi headphones yeah put it on put it on my side as you do you know listen even if this

might that might be more of a spicy comment than anything else about coho's bro yeah um i just

any any music that i listen to that i'm like trying to understand like i'm gonna put on the

good headphones for it just doesn't matter the production quote-unquote deserves it or not like

i don't i don't think this this is like gonna be like steely dams aja like people are gonna use it

to test their headphones or whatever but uh like you know i'm still gonna listen to it with the

good headphones because i want to feel how the crimey production on it you know gotta gotta

listen to the bad clipping drums and whatever uh so so that's listen listen dude when when

clipping set that piano on fire for 10 minutes straight you're using the hi-fi headphones right

yo that shit was fire that shit was fire bro that that was literally fine shut the fuck up

shut the fuck up quite literally fire uh that was speaking about things that burn talk about your

books oh jesus christ man uh uh so okay uh two books uh as as usual i did over the last uh

two weeks i read two books as that one does uh so the first one is the adventures of amina al

serafy by shannon chakraborty uh and uh shannon chakraborty is like a like a fantasy writer uh

this is also like a historical fantasy uh set like a thousand years before the before their

like uh before one of their other books the city of brass uh which i did read i read city of brass

in 2022 and i thought it was just like a little too long and also like it was filled with too

much world building this one is a lot more fun uh it's like a pirate adventure historical fantasy uh

really really fun and uh the characters are really well written uh like interesting fun characters

and it's just like good time uh i don't know if i'll i don't think it needs like a sequel or

anything i think i just think by its standalone book it works really well uh so that's uh you

know the adventures of uh amina al serafy the second one on the other hand is uh not fun i

would have used the word fun to describe this i don't know if you've heard of this book uh

it got a lot of critical acclaim when it came out uh babel by rf clong um it is another historical

fantasy i suppose dealing with very heavy topics topics like uh colonialism uh racism uh

the uh the inherent privilege of higher education uh at all that the building of empire imperialism

uh the violence required to subvert colonialism and etc it's it's a really like it's it's a very

intense book uh not not something to read uh not a light read for sure it's a long book too it's

it's a long ass book uh i i'd say i i i uh it gave me a lot to think about uh that's for sure

i don't know if i'd call it a book i enjoyed but it's a book i i'm glad i read because it definitely

like you know one of those books that makes you think about a lot of different topics uh and then

so that's that's babel by rf kuang uh uh recommend both of those depending on your mood uh so that's

uh that's my book corner uh i did watch a movie but i am not ready to talk about that one yet i

haven't published my review of it yet i did finish infinite wealth and before we close this out i do

want to talk about that a little bit so uh long another long ass video game uh really quite good

uh there were definitely some flaws in it for sure i think part of the the narrative the way

was split into two sections especially with kiryu and uh ichiban's narratives being sort of separate

narratives here sort of melded together i think like one of the narratives is much the kiryu

narrative is much much stronger than whatever was going on with with ichiban uh but to otherwise it's

i think it's a very very strong entry in like these like a dragon slash yakuza series i'm just

glad like you know rgg is making these kind of games because like these kind of games are like

kind of unique like what i just i just like like just the way they write their games and like way

they make these games it's uh it's very interesting uh so question are you do you do you play any of

the yakuza games i don't remember actually i actually can contribute to this conversation

because i was watching an anime girl play it yesterday on youtube wait you're watching

somebody play infinite wealth on youtube okay yeah yeah one of the hololive streamers was uh

was playing infinite wealth so basically what i um i basically saw the chapter where

where you're trying to find ichiban's mom i guess yes yes i mean that's yeah that's and you go to

the orphanage that was the part of the game i saw from it the combat actually looks fun um if i if

i picked this game up i would do nothing with the karaoke side games i feel like that's what i would

do all day every day there's a lot of mini games like that's one of the some of the hallmarks of

yakuza is that uh there's a lot of these small mini games there's this obvious karaoke there's

mahjong there's shogi uh you can you can play like uh baseball in a way like you go to these like uh

you can play all these like old sega games uh there's like a sega arcade thing within the game

right you can play these like old sega games within within this video game so you can like

play a video game and with infinite well especially i talk about this in my review they they put in

like and in two big mini games this time uh one was called sujimon which is uh which is basically

a like a pokemon clone uh like an entire ass pokemon clone within this game uh and the other

one is don't know island which is an entire as like animal crossing clone um which like they

put in a lot of effort into these and i'm just thinking over here that i feel like they just kind

of like they're not they're fine but they're like i feel like they kind of bloat the game a little

bit like they feel kind of unnecessary in a way i feel like the mini games as they were before were

fight and i don't think we needed like sujimon and don't know island to really make this game i don't

think it like really makes the game better in my opinion but you know people some people you know

kind of want to play love playing these mini games so that's that's kind of the appeal there but but

yeah um have you considered like i don't know if you like this kind of game these are like uh like

at least in the like a dragon games uh so far they are like sort of turn-based rbgs of the combat

would you consider playing like yakuza like a dragon which is like the game before this like

i think that would be a pretty good start for you um i mean remember i beat persona 5 so i'm not

against turn-based games yeah i think it would be up your alley personally uh i don't know if

how you feel about the narrative stuff but uh it might be interested uh maybe it's it's probably

might be better i think i'd pick it up if it's on games pass like i'll probably wait until it's on

games pass to try out uh if it comes to games pass uh i definitely suggest people start with like

like a dragon uh with with yakuza like a dragon um i don't know uh some people might say you start

with yakuza 0 but the problem with that is that um all these games are long as fuck bro like they're

they're long games not i mean the rpg ones are longer but like even the action like the beat 'em

up games are long as fuck so they're like long narrative heavy games so it takes a long time to

actually play through all of them so um i would still say yakuza 0 is like if you really want to

like you know dive into the series like yakuza 0 is like the place to start and if you like yakuza

0's sort of narrative style uh you know keep playing like you yakuza kiwami 1 and yakuza

kiwami 2 uh then you can like play like yakuza like a dragon and like a dragon infinite wealth

um so there's a lot of game there if you really want to dive in so that's my that's my take uh

let's wrap this up uh do uh as always uh feedback uh questions comments please your impassionate

defenses of cohost.org uh please uh send those to feedback@voxels.fm uh i'm sure we will read them

uh and hopefully respond to them uh on for two weeks from now if you do send them in before then

um and you can find me on mastodon at packagek.net tinforward.social and my website sothixsafe.com

christian where do where do people fudge you on the internet something about starting a vtuber

collective for fun i mean like i have branding for it and you know i'm at like i unironically

kind of think i want to push for this just for just for fun right like a knife is having like

a business venture but more of like a you know loosely collective uh loosely yeah creative like

collective right just like a fun branding stuff because you know like i i need more hobbies you

know i got this podcast but um you know i need more stuff to do in my free time that's that's

productive right and not just getting lit or whatever um and yeah you know i'm gonna get the

podcast work i i know how to run websites so if you want to run a vtuber collective like hey hit

me up um you know why not why why not why not be in the most one of the most drama filled spaces on

the internet and tackle it with the power of the fediverse but anyways you can find me um pushing

that ideal on everyone at lo-fi carrots at mstdn plus because i'll find me on my website which i

think i need to renew the wordpress plan for at chose to find out website but yeah all right uh

goodbye until until next time see ya bye