Episode 390: A Festive Merry-Go-Round for the Very Lonely
Back to Work
5by5
4.7 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2018
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Skype gets way too ambitious; sprinkling sauce on a service; a mandatory social network for doorbells; Dan acquires a new deity; some excellent listener follow-up on Computerized Adaptive Testing; Dan takes his boy to see a bona fide cinema classic; Dan has some great TV recommendations; Merlin reports in from the deep weeds of a fraught smart speaker ecosystem.
Links for this episode:
- The Podcast Digest: TPD 156 - Merlin Mann "An Old Man's Reframe"
For the 4 year anniversary episode of TPD, it was my pleasure to have been joined by one of my favorite podcasters of all time - Merlin Mann! I talk with Merlin about his history in podcasting, working with his co-hosts, the difference in his shows and some of his favorite podcasts!
- The Podcast Digest
- Amazon.com: All-new Sonos One - Smart Speaker with Alexa voice control built-In. Compact size with incredible sound for any room. (black): Home Audio & Theater
- The Dude Abiding kit
- 5by5 | Back to Work #389: Butt Baking
- CA Parent Opt-Out
- Chain of Command (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Wikipedia
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) - Wikipedia
- 2001: A Space Odyssey - in-depth analysis - by Rob Ager 2008
- Computerized adaptive testing - Wikipedia
Brought to you by:
Casper (Visit Casper.com/itsyourshow and use the code ITSYOURSHOW for $50 towards select mattresses).
Chegg (For $5 off your first month’s subscription, go to chegg.com/backtowork and use promo code BACKTOWORK).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Dan. Hey, how are you? I'm fine. Are you enjoying the new Skype? Maybe? I got distracted. |
| 0:13.9 | I am on an old Skype, but all of my friends telling me the new Skype is not good. I am 7.59 |
| 0:21.7 | per-end 37. Mine forced me to update. I didn't want it to. I didn't do anything. I just |
| 0:28.1 | went up to version 8.28.0.41. There was nothing that I could do about that. It changed. |
| 0:37.7 | It looks horrible. Yeah, all the slacks on Monarch kind of blown up about this. Did they |
| 0:45.9 | backtrack publicly about how they're going to make it better again? Yeah, they said something |
| 0:54.1 | that they were going to do something to make it better. Yeah. It's how it looks, but it's |
| 1:01.2 | also how it works. I'll just on a podcast a minute ago that I want to tell you about. But the |
| 1:06.5 | guy was telling me that all the audio settings changed or something? Yes. Yeah. The audio |
| 1:12.4 | settings and the way that you configure the audio is different. I get the notion that if |
| 1:19.6 | you build a product that you want to add enhancements and you want to make things better. |
| 1:23.7 | There's nothing about this that seems better. I get the idea that I'm not the target market |
| 1:31.4 | for a Snapchat or something like that, but I use Skype all the time. I was under the impression |
| 1:37.4 | that I understood it. To me, it just looks like now they've made it into just everything |
| 1:43.0 | is sort of big and clumpy and everything is everything in the settings is bold. Everything |
| 1:48.6 | is bold. As they say in the Incredibles, when everything is bold, nothing is. Everything |
| 1:56.4 | is bold. Everything is, and there's no anything that they've done. It's not an improvement, |
| 2:03.2 | but under the audio settings, that's all changed. It's crappy. It's just crappy. It's |
| 2:11.1 | frustrating. I don't want to say I'm still lucky enough to have the old version. I don't |
| 2:16.7 | know why I've been spared so far. Something that we've been seeing for at least 10 years now |
| 2:25.6 | is it feels like when you're not sure what else to do to radically improve your app for the people |
| 2:31.8 | who use it or to attract new people, you just sprinkle on a little bit of social sauce. It feels |
... |
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