More tech layoffs as AI takes hold | Ep. 146
more Tech layoffs indicate a couple of disturbing Trends the doomsayers might be right in that AI is going to be taking your job we're going to look at this possibility along with other Tech news of the week in this episode of today and [Music] Tech hi everybody Welcome to today and Tech I'm Keith Shaw the guy behind the glowing monitors is Chris hello Chris hey how's it going it's going well and joining me again guest co-host is Brandon man he is the co-founder of the mangrove Collective and CTO at glassos hello Brandon from the West Coast hello ke I feel like you're our West Coast correspondent now your your your thumb is on the the heartbeat of Silicon Valley culture which is great because we need that from the East Coast here big shoes to fill but I'll do my best uh you we were off for a week so uh because Brandon had a vacation time um and so he looks tan rested and and and ready to go here right yes can wait all right so the big the big news of of last week and and this week was we saw another wave of layoffs in the technology and Automotive space uh Tesla Tesla rivian Google take to interactive and Best Buy were among the companies that have eliminated significant number of their employees but the reasons that are given are different so we're going to group them into two different reasons so first off let's let's start with the big one Tesla has laid off more than 10% of its Workforce or plans to at some point and they've lost a lot of their top Executives uh this came because uh a few weeks after it reported its first year-over-year decline in vehicle delivery since 2020 Tesla is now planning to lay off over 10% of its Global Workforce according to an internal companywide email that works out to about 14,000 of the 14,475 employees that Tesla reported in his latest annual earnings um and at the moment it's not clear which teams of Tesla will be impacted uh if you go to that layoffs FYI site and you look at the numbers of of of employees that were being released like the 14,000 is now the biggest one of the last since the pandemic I think um so it is the the biggest single company layoff if they get to all 14,000 people um Elon Musk actually did confirm that um the layoffs would happen there's an interesting quote in this story where he says uh the musk said about every five years we need to reorganize and streamline the company for the next phase of growth that could just be corporate speak because it could be corporate speak it's like we're not laying off because electri vehicle demand has gone down um but oh like you know making it almost feel like it's a normal part of the company's lifespan is that every 5 years you have to go through I find I don't know I find that very awkward CU I feel like you should be aiming to do the opposite wouldn't you when you want to try grow yeah you should be hiring every five years grow your footprint new tier yeah yeah grow your product um which you know they very M they very well may be growing their product yes but when he says about every 5 years we need to reorganize streamline the company for the next phase of growth I don't know I just feel like I just feel like what this what he might be trying to say in Disguise is we need to reorganize and streamline the company to fit in the current economic climate could be maybe because I I I I just again I just find that hard to believe after every five years we need a we need a chop and it's like well why would you want to work there if every 5 years you're going to yeah I mean that that company culture would just be like oh wow I got to be on on my toes and isn't it a wouldn't that be a subtle dig at your hiring practices like if like if you can't find people to grow the company it's almost like you're if you're growing a plant every five years you have to like trim the yeah it's like I pr the plant or the fat I don't want to work at a company for just 5 years I mean maybe there are people that are that that do want to do that but it's like I want to really you know maximize potential there and it's like about every five years I just find that I just find it weird but hey he's Elon Musk maybe he knows something we don't I don't know maybe there's some sort of secret algorithm to this hiring process thing he knows or I don't know I don't know yeah I thought the interesting part it felt like this was some like Twitter hiring or more on the software side that was leaking into the physical world and into the automotive every five years turn over the restructuring given how thing fast things move in software those are some cycles that we are definitely used to and we've been conditioned work within but seeing it happen in automotive and More Physical goods and more Hardware side I think that's very different I I just think I mean the the big reason obviously is because demand has gone down for electric vehicles over the last couple of years it could be that yeah and maybe it's just because there's more competition out there now on the market I mean rivan does really well I mean everywhere you look there's a rivan except for the fact that rivan is also going to call 1% of it Workforce so maybe it is maybe it is just there's not that much of a demand that they that they thought that there would be I don't know yeah I mean Tesla also had issues with its cyber truck I saw you saw a couple of those articles where um deliveries were delayed and then there were some rumors that the gas P was it the accelerator something was falling off of the accelerator the you know the thing you push oh yeah um that's such a technical term uh so there were rumors of that and so that's slowing deliveries and that's that can't be good news um but yeah so so at least those two groups of layoffs the Tesla ones and the rivan ones were because of lower demand and so but then the other two that I want to talk about Google is the f is the first one um they're basically restructuring their Finance team as part of an AI shift the CFO told employees in a memo alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Pat said in a memo Wednesday or this last week that Google is restructuring its Finance organization a move that will include layoffs and relocations as the company pushes resources to favor investments in artificial intelligence now if you're saying the the the loud part out loud wait the the truth out loud what's that phrase quiet part out loud yes you're saying the quiet part out loud it's like we're putting so much money into AI that we can't afford some of your the finance employees so bye um well the tell tell me if this quote makes it sound like you know okay so here's the quote the tech sector is in the midst of a tremendous platform form shift with AI uh as a company this means we have the opportunity to make more helpful products for billions of users and provide faster solutions to our customers but it also means we collectively have to make tough decisions including how and where we work to align with our highest priority areas so I think it's because they're putting so much money into into building AI products that they can't so they have to cut back somewhere and so they chose to you know cut within the finance well accountants is that like really going to move the needle that's like you said the Fugler I mean they're put yeah like really they're putting so much money behind AI that they're going to have I mean when they do cut jobs the AI that they're creating is going to fill those jobs well yeah and then this CNBC article says the latest Cuts follow a broader effort by Google to rearrange its Workforce and resources to accommodate further investments in new technologies such as AI as advertising growth slows uh the CEO Sundar I can't remember Pai told employees in January that more job Cuts were likely coming in 2024 though we did not specify which teams would be affected so that's kind of an indication that you know in at least investing in it's not like the AI is directly taking your job it's not like they're saying we're getting rid of you because AI can do your job better but investing in AI yes we need the money you're expensive Mr CPA accountant you're out of here all right and they talk about their H model right so they're moving it talks about their Hub model in that article and how they're moving to the workforces around like all of that accounting all that Finance stuff still needs to get done I the way I read it is that they're moving to Offshore or other lower cost I think I think subtly they'll probably Institute probably some AI tools that might speed up some of those processes and maybe automate internally and you know maybe use the excuse of the layoff at least to subtly indicate that they're going to be doing more AI internally for for those processes or whatever those people were doing yeah I I I know um people say out there that you know AI isn't going to replace your job but I just I feel like it's going to slowly slowly trickle in and yeah you're going to start to notice something and they'll just try to word it so that it sounds different it's like well it's not directly we're not directly replacing you with this but we are adding new tools and those tools will do processes that you were doing and you know efficien efficiency efficiency yeah the smart the smart companies or the smart employees will learn how to use these tools to make themselves more useful and better maybe and you know I don't know it all depends on I guess the company and and how smart they are with with handling all this but here's the other evidence so there were there was a story this week about uh Best Buy getting getting rid of a lot of its Geek Squad employees um and so initially I was going to talk about the the value of the Geek Squad at at Best Buy but now there was another story that came out today basically announcing that they plan on launching an AI powered customer support service a week after conducting Mass layoffs of Geek Squad employees okay so Best Buy is developing the project using Google's Gemini Gemini AI models that's a horrible idea with the goal of launching the AI powered self-service customer support option in late Summer according to the retailer the tool promises to quote greatly improve the experience for Best Buy customers you know what's a great experience for Best Buy customers actually talking to someone at Best Buy or actually talking to an employee who can help you or fix fix things for you um I just want to say I'm such a huge fan of the Greek squad or The Geek Squad and what provide yeah I think that you know from my time in in engineering and software I've worked with a ton of really talented it professionals a number of them have come up through the Geek Squad it's a great way for people to who are you know can get Hands-On technology to learn to interact with the public to make some money um to launch into other technical career so I'm a huge fan of what it sort of provides as a a launching Stone into a career I was really sad to see that this uh was happening and and the direction that Best Buy was taking yeah now there the the story does further say that you know they are saying that it doesn't suggest a complete overlap between the two it notes the AI agent will be accessible VI best bub.com the old mobile app and over the phone uh Geek Squad employees often focus on inhome installs of appliances or repairs of electronics although they can take customer support calls so technically they're not more than that like it's just bad timing I think on the on the on the side of uh of Best Buy home installs and stuff like that n we should be able to bring like if we have an actual like technical error with a computer we should be able to bring it in I don't know I just find that well so from from my perspective I never understood the Geeks Squad from my own technical knowledge but again I've been a technology guy I i' I've installed my own home network I've done all of this stuff but I know that I'm a I'm I'm an outlier in that World um you know the The Geek Squad is more for the people I don't want to say my grandmother or grandmother I think so you know it's the general consumer who's like I I don't want to touch any of this stuff I don't want to learn any of the stuff just install it make sure I know how it works and then if something goes wrong you can fix and that's what the Geek Squad always was um from a consumer standpoint and so um yeah if if those people are gone like how you know an AI is not going to tell my mother-in-law how to basically reboot a router no I mean we so like you're gonna get that call Keith yes I'm the home it guy right so I get the call and and and and for the most part what my mother-in-law has done is instead of trying to fix it or call me she just willingly accept having either a broken iPad or something like that and and it's not until it gets really bad that we go down and and go to our house and fix everything for her so so I I mean deep down I'm actually surprised that Geek Squad still exists still because totally because YouTube okay if you have a question or a problem but what if you can't get connected to the internet well then that's when we go I guess that's when that's when we call you okay but I mean because of you know because of YouTube and the internet well you also have this thing too you have a phone right right yeah you can use a mobile network and when I but whatever but I like it's so easy for anybody to just I mean you can learn how to build your own computer on YouTube you can troubleshoot a lot of things um from influencers on you know influencers on YouTube but I I think if you're you're you know if you're a casual citizen human being or or something like that or you know someone who who's a little bit you know older who isn't familiar with yeah you know how how the internet works you know GE Squad is probably your best bet you know what my favorite YouTube how-to thing is what's that and and you're going to laugh at me probably okay so it's It's All About Auto Repair and auto maintenance for me so I take I took my car to get um uh anyway I I took it to a you know a friend of ours who's a mechanic and he says to me he goes oh uh I couldn't replace the air filter on your car cuz we just couldn't get like they didn't have the the stock in in part they didn't have the part in stock so they did everything else and so I was like oh I'll just go to AutoZone or one of those car you know I'll just pick one up there cuz it was on the way home okay why why are you shaking your head Chris which I shouldn't go to AutoZone well sometimes they don't care OEM parts so he just want to try to get that you know well for an air filter I I'm pretty sure that oh okay it was just an air filter it was just an air filter however when I opened up my trunk or opened up the top of my car I couldn't find where the air filter was so I go on to YouTube and go how do I change the air filter in you know the year of my car and you know instantly on YouTube a thing will pop up and then it says oh okay now I know where because again this you know Honda they cover everything and so you know learning how to basically uncp the thing so that I'm not breaking the car it was it just your cabin air filter no the cabin no that easy that's I could do that without a video no the the the air filter that's in the engine part oh that's easy yeah yeah as long as yeah it's easy to change it once you find out where it is come on Keith you should know this should be instinctual they're all no it's all covered by like you know plastic and even I think the batter is even plastic you know covered now and so they've all you know because you want to protect it from moisture or rain or whatever like traps in all that heat anyway and so this is not the first you know again if you if you go to YouTube to find all that stuff it's a lot easier than trying to like a look it up on your manual or B take it to a shop obviously you're you're not going to do that so yeah um do is there any angle of of how-to stuff Brandon that that you use YouTube for uh definitely the car stuff right as you were going through that I was thinking my windshield wiper Replacements or you know little things I'll I'll order it it'll come to the house and then I'll I'll go down to the garage and try and give it a shot um that's the one that comes the most to mind right now uh I guess maybe some cooking stuff too I was going to bring up cooking see if you do do the cooking stuff yeah I like th those are the two big ones of like oh yeah how do like a hardboiled egg how long do you do it for is it 11 minutes when is it a soft boil do you use ice like yeah see I don't think AI is going to be able to completely replace that video howto part of it I mean they might I mean I I use AI to find out how how long to cook something and what temperature I should cook it at so that I don't get a you know bacteria but other than that you know the I I still like watching a video because again it's specific to my car model for the for the car stuff all right there was one more story of layoffs I wanted to talk about the um take two interactive is laying off about 5% of its Workforce or about 579 workers and canceling several projects now what's interesting about this is that this this was is the publisher of Grand Theft Auto 6 so they're associated with Rockstar Games but they're the ones that are are building the game is that how that works Chris uh publisher yeah yeah they're the publisher okay the news follows claims from CEO Strauss zelnick that the publisher had no plans for layoffs admid its planed cost Reduction Program um basically it expects to incur between $160 $200 million in total charges with $120 million to $140 million related to title cancellations so they're also eliminating some other product that are in development but it's weird to see the developer of you know something that is looking to be the world's biggest game if they get it out next year yeah um because it's been 10 plus years since Grand Theft Auto 5 came out and it's going to be this huge thing so it's weird to see a company that that has such high potential growth down the road um you were watching some videos around this Chris right yeah I mean it's uh it's a little surprising I mean yeah they're going to make probably a couple billion dollars off of GTA 6 it's going to be probably one of the most bought game in history I mean when Rockstar comes out with a game it's finished it's done it's polished yeah to an extent well this was 10 well so 10 years ago that was the case but you know since then we've had 10 10 years of other companies that have screwed up they've had 10 years to make this game and it's like it's probably going to be 10 out of 10 probably just guessing and the other thing too that you have to take into consideration too is they're going to increase the price of this game so it's no longer like I have a feeling it's going to be more than $7 it's probably going to be closer to 80 um just based off of how long it took for them to make this game but not only that I think they have to try to adapt to again the current yeah um would we would we have noticed this story if it came out in a week where you didn't have the Tesla and Google announcements and the other big ones um I mean I mean if you try to stay up to date with the gaming industry I mean I think you would have you would have noticed it but um again can can we can we figure out why they would have done it then or why they were doing this I mean you're really not going to know I mean the only thing they published is you know your atypical corporate boilerplate you know we're trying to align ourselves to be streamlined and you know kind of similar to what Elon said it's your typical corporate speech to say that you know our layoffs are Justified because we need a you know it's for the company and whatnot and maybe it is maybe it isn't I don't think we're ever really going to know but if I were to take a guess I think they're just trying to better align themselves to be able to survive in the in the current you know our current economic situation right uh cuz you know inflation is still there they're still trying to you know the other thing too about Rockstar and I don't think many people think about this but like their their game Life their game cycle their game production cycle is like 5 to eight years yeah it's long yeah you know so it's like they'll release a game one year and then wait 5 6 7 8 years later to make another one it's not like they make one game and then next year they have a new one and then the year after that they make another one so you know I feel like they got to make they got to make some sort of profit in between I mean they do have their live Services right for for their game but still you know it's I I don't know if I were to come up with another you know reason why just pulling something out of my hat maybe it's just because they need to they need to readjust their game cycle or or they just needed the my my feeling is the financial stuff they just needed to show a better profit or a better indicator for whatever uh shareholders they got if they're a public company I mean yeah shareholders yeah could could be shareholders or you know the CEO wants a little more in his pocket yeah you know double double the salary or triple it you know what what bothers me about that is that it feels too easy now for a lot of companies to just go the layoff fruit and that's what's disturbing to me is that you know layoffs for a company always used to be kind of a last resort and now it's starting to feel like especially you get a comment like that from Elon Musk where oh that's just part of our normal five-year cycle like they're trying to make it sound like oh well layoffs are just inevitable part of working I never had to worry about a layoff at a company that I worked at until you know where I was I was 20 years into my career except for the one time that I worked for a newspaper and they shut down the the entire newspaper so that was not like I didn't have to worry cuz everybody was gone at that point yeah um but then you know you start worrying about financial based layoffs and it used to be that was the last resort and now it feels like it's the first option and that's what's disturbing that's what bothers me the part that I don't get is isn't this sort of crunch time in the last year where they're putting everything into this game they're doing testing they're like now is when they need the most people you would think and so as we look back on this if there are issues with the game or it didn't take off and have the fit and finish that Chris was talking about that we've come to expect is this going to be something that we'll be able to point back to and maybe there's some ramifications I I don't know it doesn't the timing doesn't make sense for where they are in development yeah I wouldn't be surprised if at some point you see game developers just in general get together and start to unionize um because for them to keep being I wouldn't say abused but it just seems like common practice that you know layoffs they're just they just keep happening so I wouldn't be surprised if they start to unionize I get I get it like yeah game development you know the industry it's it's a meat grinder it's a meat grinder when you're done with a game when a publisher is done with a game they're moving on to another you know a different game you know they might look for different Talent stuff like that like I get it it's probably a project by project basis but still I mean if that's the case then they should probably try to unionize yeah brand Brandon you were you've you've been involved in a lot of development projects right from from your te role is the is the culture of game development similar to other kind of development areas like if you were just a in a in an IT department or if you were in a group that was developing something that wasn't a game is is it the same cuz because you've he you've heard stories of that whole game culture development where it's you know 70 hour weeks and you're all you're drinking Mountain Dew and Red Bull and all that other stuff to to stay awake is it like that with other groups so so gaming is so interesting as far as a a development culture um it from a management perspective it feels a little bit more predatory mainly because people want to be there you have testers who can go over to their friends because they got an early cut of Zelda and that you know around the neighborhood around the internet makes them gives them you know esteem and and Status yeah so you have this large swath of people that are semi- technical or are technical who are doing the things that they love and they're working for their pastime and so financially it's not usually you know the most rewarding but you get those other sort of less tangible benefits I think there some of the hardest working people in in software development when people have come out of gaming to come work for me or come to you know more traditional software development um they are willing and ready to put in those hours and when they find some of that work life balance like their motor doesn't stop turning um you just get a lot out of those folks and I think they bring a creativity That You Don't See in the financial side or you know Automotive because they used to looking at things not only visually but debugging into the code thinking big world and and through a lot of different scenarios so I'm a big fan of that industry I think from a quality assurance like their testers are some of the best that that that I've had the privilege to work with and um yeah but it is very different than fintech or you know other SAS things as far as how the development goes right I I also think that that might be a nature of of any job that you get if if you're a young person in in the field you go in with an assumption of I'm going to work long hours for low pay just because that's how I'm going to get ahead and maybe that because it was like that for me in the in the journalism industry my first job you know as working at a newspaper I was working 50 to 60 hours a week for for no money but getting that experience and you know doing the grind and realizing like there's a lot of other better jobs out there so when I landed at a job that told me oh yeah you can we're only working 9 to5 you know Monday through Friday I was like holy crap that's great I I I love that because I started because I got married and I started having a family and that kind of stuff I was like yeah that's that's a that's an awesome proposition you mean I don't have to work on a Sunday shift or I don't have to work at a holiday and they were actually apologetic to me because they're like yeah on Thursdays we stay until 7 or 8 I'm like I I was working till midnight half the time at at at my other jobs so do you do you get that do you get that relief from Gamers when they come to work for you oh yeah well and I think what does everybody's parents tell them or you know is some sort of mentor when you start working it's you know do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life and with Gamers they're just going to go home in game anyway like that's all that they want to do and so doesn't feel like work um I think that while while they are relieved what they miss out on is sort of that some of that mission driven the things that they really love and you know they're going to go and try and test the the newest software or the newest game they're going to go out and buy it and be inundated with it so they're going to still get that that adrenaline and and fulfill that need uh it just doesn't come through work anymore right right okay I want to I want to switch gears to uh our our second topic uh which was uh AMD rolled out its latest chips for AIP PCS as competition with Nvidia and Intel heats up uh us chip design for Advanced Micro Devices has unveiled new processors to power Ai and enabled PCS as it seeks to gain leadership in the aipc race against Rivals like Nvidia and Intel uh basically an aipc is a personal computer equipped with processors designed to perform AI tasks such as real-time language translation and summarization so um AMD made a big pretty big splash uh again it's it's it's still a three three company race is that is that fair to say yes okay yep all right yes I'm I just want to make sure I'm not missing a four company um cuz and again so uh the question that I have around this idea of AIP PCS it's really I'm just using that this news as a Launchpad is do you think people from the consumer side or even a business user is going to want aips it feels like the news is is like all right chip makers hey we've got these chips and put them in your PCS and the PC makers are like great we need something new to to to to really try to get sales going and so they put their AP they put these AI PC chips into their PCS and then I think the next step is like you should want one of these and this is going to be great but to be honest I haven't seen that that marketing message yet on why I need to to buy another PC that has AI chips on it um because it's not like you can't like I can use this current PC I have and and do all of those AI things like go to open Ai and and and and you know anthropic and all those other sites to build my wacky picture or chat GPT so I don't think they've made the case yet of like why I'm going to need an aipc smarter faster better it's like yeah we've heard that before or is it just the fact that I'm a Mac guy and maybe I'll just wait for Tim Cook to get up on stage and going reg got AI now haha buy this buy the system I mean you're probably 100% right with apple Apple's going to come out with it Y and then I'm going to get about it they invented Ai and um it's going to be the best AI application we've ever seen and it's going to be the future Y and oh yeah oh oops your feed went oh there we go I'm back um Brandon what I mean am you know again I'm not I'm not fishing for this but am I right uh you know I I don't see the need for consumers to yeah have to have these chips at this point um I I don't really get it outside of marketing um I don't know I I I guess it's cool one interesting thing that this made me think of though right so if you have an entire consumer base that has these underutilized gpus out there is they're going to become a race in order to push things down and you know process locally versus doing it in the cloud to minimize costs and right are we just seeing you know from sort of the bit mining uh you know Bitcoin mining happening elsewhere and is that is that going to Usher this in I don't know what else it could do I don't I don't see a use case right now right and it's the same thing that we saw in the phone in the phone world so Samsung came out with you know their big Galaxy announcement I think from January at CES was oh we've got AI chips on our new Galaxy and again I'm expecting Apple to put it on the new iPhone um i' would be CRA you know it'd be crazy if they didn't um it would be news if they didn't it'd be like oh yeah we're still looking at it we're like okay really why um but you know but the features it's like great that you've got a chip on it but then the features or the apps that they're promoting are well okay so Brandon I'm looking at you now and you've got a little wreath behind you I was like well if I took a photo of you right now I could erase that wreath or if someone's like oh I don't like what's on top of Keith's uh laptop here I can erase this if I'm taking a photo of him um things like that it's the AI photo eraser uh or it's the hey you know Chad GPT will be integrated so that you can now ask a question on your phone I haven't seen a use case for me to jump out and go and buy a phone so it's going to be the same issue with a PC because it always used to be like well there would be an application I would need that you know if I was doing photo editing and video editing that's why you needed a faster computer back in the day um if you were a gamer you you would always go to that you know you're like I need a faster gamer so that I can play um you know what was the game back then you you know because Grand Theft Auto five or whatever yeah yeah so there hasn't there has not yet been a use case for an aipc and I think that could get a lot of Hardware makers in trouble as they release these these these systems unless I'm missing something completely and if you're in marketing and you know what the marketing message is going to be just comment below because I haven't seen any cool marketing messages yet from any of the hardware makers have you have you guys seen anything I mean I I haven't no okay um we'll figure it out and then we'll talk about it once they actually start coming up with these marketing messages exactly okay because even at CES I I think some of the you know the hardware makers their big announcements were yeah were're going to include the chips but then they didn't say what people were going to be using them for and even if it was a lot of processing that needed to be done locally those are still highly specific probably job roles like data scientist or if you're running an AI algorithm you know yeah and that's boring like no one wants to hear about that kind of stuff all right I want to move on to the next story this is this is actually now you said you had a personal uh connection to this story so Amazon sellers have been plagued by a surge and scam returns um Amazon built one of the world's most efficient Delivery Systems yet people regularly ship junk back to Sellers and claim they are returns often with little to no penalty according to merchants Amazon has long believed in a system based on pleasing customers above all including easy returns but that ethos has hurt the merchants who make up most of its online sales return theft represents one sore point in what has become an often contentious relationship between Amazon and its independent sellers um basically sellers count on Amazon to recover money lost from scam returns but they say the time and effort required to submit a retail theft claim is not often worth it because it could take weeks to be processed and even if Amazon accepts it to might not get the full amount back for what the Adam costs many times sellers just say they take the loss so theft comes from both networks of Thieves as well as individuals who knowingly scam retailers the frauds can happen in several forms such as returning used items or shoplifted items to counterfeit products um I didn't realize how big of a problem this was until kind of I read this article so it's basically I could order uh a pair of sneakers um and then deliver the new sneakers and I could say well I didn't like them and I and I return them but I don't return the new sneakers and I just put a couple of old sneakers in and then you know it becomes a it becomes a return scam right that's how that works yep or yes you take in you buy you know the the official item on Amazon from the official seller and then you buy one of the you know outside sellers or counterfeit item and you take the one that you want and you return the counterfeit one in the primary sellers box and you send it back to them oh that's even a better scam sorry uh that that's the one so when I was reading this story I reached out uh my sister has a a great uh business on Amazon where she's building up and and trying to combat this and she was telling me all kinds of horror stories of when this happens how Amazon is not very helpful and how much of the uh impetus to prove fraud and to do this actually falls on the sellers and that there are tools that get taken away if you over report on other people so uh it seems like a really big mess and uh needs some attention I just don't know because Amazon's so customer focused right it's gonna be a priority or not yeah I I just I I find it interesting that there are again if there's a giant enough system that's taking in a lot of money there are probably ways to scam the system and they just won't find the time like they're just like well it's it's just it would take too much effort for us to try to track all these down but in the meantime it does hurt those those independent sellers does your sister feel like she has to be on Amazon in order to kind of like survive the business she's in so it's not like she anywhere else right yeah well we talked so she's on Etsy uh since she's creating her own products she also has her own direct uh store that she tries to get sell through Google or sell direct but 90 plus% of her Revenue takes and comes in through Amazon so that that's where she gets a lot of of all of her her sales from it's super lucrative she can't turn them away um she'd love to but she just wants the system to work better and be more fair um and it's like who do you even talk to Amazon's big and faceless there isn't a liaison right especially for like the makers you know and I think that's where where she's really frustrated yeah yeah I don't know if I would if if I became a maker of some sort not that I have any of those skills um I don't know if I would use Amazon as a as a as a support I mean it's but even doesn't Etsy have this issue too they do yeah I know that that with Etsy I think returns are probably a problem as well um the volume's just a lot smaller yeah yeah um and I'm wondering if this might get in this might get integrated into the FTC lawsuit that they're going after Amazon 4 because I know that a big chunk of that lawsuit is is about how Amazon treats its uh independent Sellers and you can always tell like Amazon does you know they ramp up the pr machine and go look how great you know they they they find sellers on their site that're like that are benefiting from the Amazon relationship but at the same time you've got other stories about how they're basically not helping those independent retailers or smaller ones and and so this I think the answer is somewhere in the middle uh I agree yeah uh all right so speaking of of lawsuits and things like that there's another topic we that we you know the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice dep department is preparing to sue Live Nation yay as soon as next month an antitrust challenge that could spur major changes the biggest name in concert promotion and ticketing um and we can thank Taylor Swift for this uh because of this whole debacle of the ticketing last year it spurred Congressional hearings um that Senate hearing was highly entertaining watching the Live Nation president squirm um through a lot of the testimony it was one of those rare cases where you had Democrats and Republicans kind of agreeing um probably because their sons and daughters and grandkids were like this is a mess and this and we and and anybody who's gone to a concert knows that Live Nation and Ticket Master is a monopoly now it's just a matter of whether of how to prove that um so basically the the the journal reported that they're going to file an Anti-Trust lawsuit against a Ticket Master parent in the coming weeks that would allege the nation's biggest concert promoter has leveraged its dominance in a way that undermined competition for ticketing Live Events uh and the the federal government opted out of trying to block Live Nation and Ticket Masters 2010 merger so I think finally admitting like yeah maybe we shouldn't have done this approval um and I know that from a technology standpoint when when this whole issue came up it was all about the Bots um but we've all learned from this um I think I learned it from the whole PS5 roll out from Sony um you know about scalper Bots and how they were able to get products faster than any any normal human uh the same thing happens in ticketing uh Ticket Master allegedly has this issue you know this this program but the Digger the more you dig deep into it you know when Ticket Master benefits from a resale they get a a cut of it and like well so they're not really going to look at the whole scalper bot issue if they're making some some money on on resales and things like that but um yeah I'm I'm just ha I you know sometimes there's good news in the world when you're talking about some government things and maybe this will lead to some you know better better options for for customers that are going to an event or or a concert so it's about time yeah all right any anything else to add on that you're a big Taylor Swift fan though Chris right absolutely not see the so the only problem with this story is that once they do sue them you're going to have news news articles and headlines that are all going to try to use Taylor Swift lyrics or that's the one thing I hate about this story is that they all try to prove how they are by putting in Taylor Swift lyrics or song titles Taylor Swift Will Taylor Swift will come out and try to save Ticket Master yeah yeah why don't we just let her be in charge of it because apparently everybody loves Taylor Swift so much and you know including my two including two of my you know my two daughters I'm sorry I'm sorry but t-swift music it just all sounds the same to me I know it does to me as well it does to me as well I'm I'm not saying she's a bad singer she's a bad she's not a bad artist and she's a great and she's a great business mind for for doing what she's doing like the whole Taylor's version where she's re-recorded all of her songs because of oh do you know this story I don't again I've got two teenage daughters so this is I hear about this all the time it's fine my entire vacation was nothing but Taylor Swift in an RV for seven days so oh I I got my finger on that pulse yeah like like I don't want to listen to a song about oh you breaking up with your boyfriend or whatever it's like come on that's so high school yeah then yeah and then the fact that it creeped into the NFL season last year kind of irks me a little bit too um but I'm I'm happy for for you know if listen if Taylor Swift has found her her true man like good good for her but she found her boo all right this this episode is just going off the rail so let's finish with um what the the real reason I wanted to talk to you guys this week was Fallout um yeah the Fallout TV series has like exploded I'm a big fan I played Fallout 3 Fallout 4 i' I've dabbled in a couple of the other games love the lore I love the series I love the game so I was very excited when when Amazon said oh we're going to make a TV show out of it and so I've been following this stuff you know for a long time and so I was like I got to look for a story that I could talk about this on on the show and thankfully there was so Fallout has more than doubled its concurrent players on Steam following the re release of Amazon Prime's Blockbuster TV show despite approaching Mo almost a decade old Fallout 4 is currently sitting in steam's top top 20 games by concurrent numbers making it one of the most popular games on Steam this past weekend but it's not just Fallout 4 that senior Resurgence in Resurgence in players Fallout 76 Fallout New Vegas have seen similar number increase in the player base since the TV series debuted uh on April 11th I believe was when they did it um so and and I'm just like everybody else as you know I finished the series and the first thing I thought of and I was even telling this to my son we were watching the show together I said he goes this makes you want to play Fallout again doesn't it Dad I go yes absolutely I want to go back in the problem I've had is that I I redownloaded Fallout 4 and there's a glitch with my DLC so I can't play with the DLC but then I heard that they're going to be doing a nextg update anyway for PS5 owners um so and everybody on April 25th so I'm just going to wait for that I I think what it is is because the show was done so well it reminds you how good The Source material was so it makes you want to go back and experience it again and I myself also went back I have Fallout 4 yeah and uh I'm like wow for a game that was made about 10 years ago it's really good yeah it's incredibly good still hold up right holds up to 20 in 2024 and uh yeah I mean there's really nothing much else to say about it I mean I was surprised how good the show was that's for sure yeah and and and you know you and I have talked before about about video game adaptations and there's a lot of disappointment sometimes where they try to make a like a hollywoodized version of something and they don't get what the the you know essence or the vibe of the game is but after that first episode I was like well they nailed it like they they got the vibe right it it's it's it's not like you didn't get like a dark Fallout you didn't get like a moody type of of post-apocalyptic world it's a world that's that's funny as hell when you're you know lot of the little anecdotes they have during the series is like that that I could see this happening exactly in the game this is a side quest for example when when you know they show something and they make and and but they also don't do a lot of fan service I think this is what the the the Star Wars and Marvel Universe problems they've had is they try too much to do the fan service thing um I like when they do fan service and it's subtle but it's still entertaining for someone who's never seen never played the game and and Brandon like what's your level of Fallout enthusiasm uh so I got swept up in the hype it's I I've noticed that it was coming out I started to see some reviews uh I got to watch the the first episode last night and just totally Blown Away um no no pun intended but um it it was just amazing the World building I never played the games but they were always around and you know see clips and those things but to me like how far have we come since super Mario Brothers 1993 oh man that movie with King Koopa right and like to see where we are now not only the new Super Mario Brothers movie was amazing oh no no no no no no no no come on Brandon no it was awful oh I it was for me I know I know I know I can do you one better I can do you one better all right the HALO Series I haven't watched that yet I don't want to oh so you're saying the Halo SE is is not good oh no I mean any any Halo fan would say don't take your helmet off and what do they do the first episod yeah he takes his freaking helmet off like anyways Brandon just really quickly and I and I know you're a little bit younger than me so I know you've got the Nostalgia for Super Mario more than I do um yes I just think that if you rewatch The Super Mario movie the dialogue is so bad and the the the characters are like I think if you rewatch it with that knowing like this is really bad voice acting and the the voice acting was bad and the dialogue was was awful oh did we lose you uh oh froze I just I was sitting there and Mario oh am I Frozen yeah you're there go you're coming back check check there we go back okay okay uh I I I was just sitting there and I was watching Mario taking train and he was grabbing little mushrooms and jumping and Peach was teaching how him how to do it like this I was s sitting there like in 1985 with the controller in my hand feeling all of those things when I you know crushed my first uh uh Koopa and all those like it was awesome right but that feels more like fan service than than actual development of a plot or characters one 100% okay so given that I think you know the fact that you can still do fan service but then also you know broaden it out to an audience um is what makes Fallout at least exciting for me yeah they done it very smart and tactfully yeah you know instead of just in your face but to EXA what you're saying so one other question I wanted to ask you guys too was um there were some there was some criticism about Amazon releasing all Eight Episodes at once so it was the binge model which I think Netflix made popular most of the Netflix shows Once they started like stranger things all released all at the same time at least the first couple of Seasons but then you started seeing companies releasing their shows in a more episodic format so you might get the first in the first two episodes but then you'd have to wait a week now I'm I'm in that in that generation where I remember that's what you had to do when you watched a regular TV show you would watch it and then you would wait a week and I'm always amazed when I tell my kids about this it's like you know I showed them an episode of of oh God this is going to really age me but Happy Days um or something with a cliffhanger and the Cliffhanger was like at the end of an EP at the end either at the end of an episode and you said well now we have to wait a week like like the old Batman series you know when they were trapped in you know they were about to fall in the blowing pit but then even worse was this was the season finale and you had a cliffhanger then you had to wait four or five months and so the kid and the kids just look at me they're like that just you know I'm sorry Dad stop telling us these horrible stories of your childhood yeah I think it's just a reflection of uh how today's media is sold right cuz like if you think about it really like back in the day when we didn't have streaming services right um in order to see a movie um or a TV show you had to wait right you had to wait till it's in in theater and then if you wanted to buy it on DVD you had to wait till it comes out on DVD and stuff like that but now with streaming it's totally different the business model is so entirely different because now it's a business of audience retention y keeping how do you keep keeping the subscribers exactly how do you keep your your viewers subscribe to your streaming service and so um I I think that's why you're seeing a lot of streaming services now like holding back their episodes like just do one a week because now um it retains that audience longer so that you don't have to produce more content more frequently yeah right and so so why do you think Amazon then released all of all of them all at once instead of instead of doing that model I mean just it's just their choice it's just what they decide to do I mean I think I think you might get people who will want to watch the series The Second Time Around um yeah and maybe that wasn't their goal uh right cuz Amazon is more than just a streaming service they are yeah I mean we all know that yeah but like if you're Hulu or Netflix right that's all you do that's all you do so you know you got to make your uh decisions um accordingly but with Amazon they're probably like H we can afford it just dump it dump it all at once you know people will binge it and a day or two and that's it so yeah I'm I'm kind of in between the two the two spectrums where if you do release episodically I will wait until there's at least three or four episodes that I can watch so that I you know or I wait until the entire series is out and then I'll binge it again or I'll you know but when and when I say binge you know it doesn't mean I'm I'm watching all Eight Episodes at once it's like I'll watch two a night until I'm caught up right and that's more of a style choice because of all the other things I have with the kids and the family and work and things like that so it's somewhere in between that that you know if I know that it's an episodic release I'll wait until there's multiple episodes um because if it's good enough then I'll want to watch that NE next episode if I have the time um but I'm not I'm not opposed to having that whole all of them released all at once CU then I I know that I'll get to the end oh yeah I'm not tost either and especially if it's good yeah you can continue it so I I was weird to see that outrage I wish that Amazon would make up their mind because I like I I Love Invincible right I I I read all the comics I waited for season one forever from Robert Kirkman it came out it took forever season two came out they gave us four episodes and they stopped for three months and now you know they just finished up with two more oh they did a midseason they did a mid-season break yeah yeah that's what they okay yeah I and again it's weird that that enough people have have have noticed that this episodic release well it not only does it feel like more traditional broadcast TV yeah then they've all added advertising now so again we're all going back to that world you know from a financial standpoint of like they can't just keep they can't just rely on the subscriber base they have to now add ads or they have to then you know add those M you know that money Revenue generation and Amazon only did that back in January right that they they added ads back into their their content and so this is of the first or second big releases that they have so maybe that's part of the testing yeah and and then even I think when I was watching an episode they just before you start watching it they give you two ads and they're like this this you know this is now presented ad free what with this ad like it's one of those like presented by Samsung or Walmart or whoever like they put the ad in the beginning but then they won't bother you for the rest of the show whereas other ones will be like every 10 minutes there's another ad which is which feels like you're watching regular TV um that whole thing about churn I think is really interesting cuz I'm I'm now I think a few months ago we were talking about streaming services Chris where we were like I'm going to be the type of person that that's going to be adding and dropping remember we were talking about I was going to cancel and then I'll just wait until the next thing comes around and I think that's because like I'm going to become more proactive if if I'm not using a service and then just wait so you might you might see streaming services try to combat this um yeah we see it in other services um I don't yeah I don't yeah I know if they're going to actually yeah I haven't seen anything yet where they're doing that I mean I wouldn't be surprised if they do but you know how they'll have like oh you you pay this amount per month but you have to pay it annually right I they might I see that with some other subscription Services they give you a discount if you pay a year in advance versus uh just a monthly service fee the reason I say that is that so I I'm doing less and less of that I'm actually saying to myself well there's still enough good content where I'm not going to immediately contact so for example peacock is is my um current issue like I I I was holding on to Peacock and I'm planning on holding it because of they're making the community movie MH so remember that TV show um and and they in April 1 they actually got the rights to it so it went from Netflix over to uh peacock and peacock ha April Fool's jokes but this one was real yeah and then they put on and they put they put the the band episode so they had you know Netflix decided to to there was the episode where they play D and D and because one of the characters was playing a Dr and they're Dark Elves it looked like he was doing blackface and so they you know Sony and uh Netflix they kind of overreacted because even in that episode it was within the context of the game that he was wearing you know he looked like a dark elf not it wasn't an African-American blackface issue was more just he was just role playing the game he was cosplaying um and you know once you saw that episode and knew that then but then you know there was enough outrage from people that were in the cast that said no they shouldn't have done that like so that when it moved over to to Peacock they put that episode back in so got it that was that was exciting for
2024-04-29 19:21
