 Also, audio from me would be nice as well. All right, so let's just pretend to start over again. On video, you'll just be like, oh, that was cute. We couldn't hear anyone. Here we go. Hey, and welcome. See, it's not the second time we're doing this to the quarterly hangout and welcome to the behind-the-scenes view of the studio. Yes, there is now audio. This, if you're unfamiliar, is our attempt every three months to actually talk about how the show is doing with you, give you some insight about what we're doing with the show, what we plan to do the show, and get some feedback from you. If you're an analyst at the $20 a month level, you have access to the Slack that's given at the top of the month every month. The analysts can go into the questions section of the Slack and submit questions, bump themselves to the top of the queue. But we also keep an eye on the IRC and on the Discord throughout as well. Guys, how are you doing? Us guys, doing good. Doing good. First time at Tom's new place, and boy, is it nice. Thank you. Yes, I'm glad. First time for me as well. Yeah, well, Tom's only looked here for a couple days. A week, yeah, just a week last night. A week ago last night is when they moved us in. Yeah, we're settling in. Thanks everybody for listening. Glad we got the audio working. And shoot your questions our way. We're gonna start with a little summary of how things are going. Let's start with the bad news, because it's not horrible news. It's just typical bad news. And this is, if you've been following us, you've heard me talk about this before. With Patreon, if you don't have a milestone, the Patreon will tend to hit flat, right? You have to give people a good reason, which is why we do the goal of at least one more Patreon than the month before. And we looked like we're going to hit that if everything stays the way it is. But since a year ago, when we tried to hit 20,000 with Sarah, it's sunk slowly. And that's just the nature of Patreon. People have, the majority of it is financial. I did a breakdown in our producer slack, just for the folks on the team here, of how much it was. And I remember, was it 60% roughly, say they leave because of financial? It was, yeah, I think it was a little over 60. Yeah, so it's mostly people who are like, you know what, I just can't afford to do this anymore. And then, oh yeah, there we go. Some people just don't state a reason. That's the second most popular reason. Then there's a few people, like 8% of the people who answered the question anyway, when they quit, said they were no longer listening. 7% said it was because of the ads. 5% said they only meant to engage for a limited time anyway. Four, seven people over the past three months said that the creators were not engaging like they expected. That one always puzzles me. Not because I don't believe they mean it, but I wonder what they mean. I wonder what they expected that we didn't do. I think part of it is we're not clear on that particular aspect. I guess what we have in mind as engagement might be different from- Well yeah, I guess that's what I agree. And what I'm saying is I wonder what their idea was that we weren't meeting. What did they think we were gonna do that we didn't do? Did they think something more personal where we're kind of- Yeah, I don't know. Well, and tech news, if you're expecting tech news from a lovable people that you see every day and hear every day, if there is a certain kind of tech news that you want us to focus on that we weren't, that would be maybe- I guess maybe- Too many apps. I could also guess that like in the Slack or the Discord, they thought we were gonna be in there more than we are. That's true, right? So maybe they had an expectation they'd be chatting with us every day or just more often than we are. But that's only seven people out of the past quarter. It's not that bad. Three people said they quit because we didn't deliver rewards. That one I can almost guarantee is not true. Like we've never not delivered rewards. So that has to be a misunderstanding of I signed up for the Slack and maybe they didn't realize that it doesn't come until the first of the month when they get charged and they got mad and quit. I don't know. That one always puzzles me but that's only three people too. But the point is pledges have fallen $1,561 year over year. Now that doesn't shock me honestly. One of the reasons we added advertising and talked to you guys on the Hangouts about the possibility of adding advertising to the public feed is to say, look, if you don't wanna give money to Patreon either because of financial reasons, here's a way that you can still be supporting the show by just listening to the show with ads. And maybe that'll help make up the difference and potentially give us some play money, above and beyond what we know we're gonna get from Patreon every month to do some cool stuff. By the way, since we're talking about the year anniversary I bought you a box of burgers, Sarah. Wow. They're very, very small burgers. Okay, thank you very much. They're Japanese, they're actually candy. Burger shaped chocolate cookies. Tom. You should raise it up for the camera. Well, yes, there we are. 170 calories per burger. Like a real burger, except very tiny. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, I know you didn't wanna say big surprise party or anything, but you've definitely raised the quality of our food talk. Oh, well, I hear that. Among the many other things you've brought to the show, so I figured. I just like to talk about it. Every burger, yes, this is good stuff. Did you get these in Japan? No, no, I got those at... It might have been kind of old. I got those very close to home. Today, they're fresh, I just bought them this morning. Beautiful, all right, well, we'll... Fresh burgers for everyone. We'll get into them when I stop drinking my charcoal water. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, the point of saying 1,561 down year over year, our first month of advertising brought in 700. So advertising alone isn't balancing that out yet. It is going to get bigger because the first month is always the slowest month. And the way ACAST works, they don't put an ad in the feed unless they have an ad. And I know the fixer is saying, he has only gotten two ads in the last month. And that's because they only sold two ads to your target because they target it regionally. People in Australia get Australian ads, people in Ohio will get different ads from people in New York, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, well, so for anybody who's like, okay, so did you decide to introduce ads because what's the, what was the thinking there for anybody? Well, yeah, to repeat the idea was we get a certain amount from Patreon and we know to expect that. And it goes down a little bit every month unless we're doing something special. And like I said, we'll get to talking about that idea in a little bit, but it doesn't, it's always spent, right? If we say, if we get to this amount to get Sarah Lane, then we have to use that amount to pay Sarah Lane. If we say, we'll get to this amount to do a special event, we have to use that money for the special event. So we never have money that we can just try something with because you can't, and this is what I found out with the Australia show. If everybody doesn't love the idea, then you can't get enough people to back it to do the idea, but it still might be worth doing. So ads was a way to bring in some extra money that's up to us to decide how to spend. And I think also, in addition to that, it has become a different way to support the show. And I know some people have said, well, you're taking ads so I'm not gonna support you on Patreon anymore. And that's perfectly legitimate. You have the right to say that. I would look at it as, if you wanna listen to the show and not support us on Patreon and listen to ads and you're fine with that, then that's fine. The best way to support the show is to still support us on Patreon. We provide a way to get the show without ads. I have bent over backwards to put the ad-free feed in as many places on Patreon as possible. Maybe that's what the people saying we didn't deliver on promised rewards were mad that I didn't hand it to them personally in their email address. But if you look at any of our posts at all, you should, well, I don't know about easy, but you should be able to find it. And we put it in all of the posts at the beginning of every month. So I think what happens is people are like, yeah, but I don't read Patreon. I'm like, well, okay, then how am I supposed to deliver the reward to you? And if that's the case, anyway. Yeah, so it's still better to support us directly because we get to keep more of that money. The amount that comes from advertising is just gravy, gravy money. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, it's maybe not crazy money, but it does give us the latitude to try what Tom was saying, try new things without necessarily building a goal and setting expectations if we want to see if something works or not before we can fully say commit to it. And that the ad money allows us to like, hey, you know what, let's see how this works. If it works, great. That's why gravy, gravy money. Like we can just, you know, we don't have to eat just mashed potatoes that we got supported on Patreon. We can buy some gravy and put it on the content. I like to think of it as R and D money. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to think of it. I like that too. So yeah, there you go. So if you've got questions in the Slack, if you're an analyst, go throw them in the questions channel. If you're a patron at all, go into the Discord channel and we'll take a look at those. And of course, there's also the IRC is running. There's a few people in there as well like Beatmaster and the Fixer. So let's do that. Doctor actually has put in four questions even though he can't listen live. Sorry, he can't listen live doctor. One, what's the best thing that happened in the last three months, in the last quarter? Is he in terms of like tech news or in terms of the show? I think he means the show. I think part of what I am really, really impressed by is that we were able to keep things running without, not to say that. Oh, when I was traveling, yeah, yeah. We were able like Sarah did a knockout job in the show. Absolutely. Roger's help. My goodness. Let's on. But I'm really impressed because I mean, even with very simple setups, there can always be a hiccup and having a level consistency that we were able to maintain. I am just, I am really proud of that. Yeah. And it takes a village certainly. But I think it also, for me as well, it speaks to our show is not, we have room to play around, but it's a fairly tight ship and we know exactly how long it's gonna be. We know what we start out with. We know the topics we're going to expand on and to take anybody out of that equation requires everybody to recalibrate a little bit. But, and that obviously is something that Tom had built for four years before I even got started here, but that's really impressive to me as well. Even if I feel like, you know, I wish Tom was back, we still know how to do the show. Yeah. The show is the show and you kind of pick up some slack where you can, but it makes my job a lot easier than it would be with a different team. So worm fuzzies. Yeah, no, I can't tell you how nice it was to just sit down in our friend's office in suburban St. Louis or in the Greenville College space that they gave me and just know like, okay, everything else is there. Because the other times I've been on the road and done that, stressful. It is. Because I had to take, and that's my own fault. I took everything on myself in those cases. So having you guys able to run the show perfectly without me and be able to sort of parachute in was I think a leveling up of the show. Sure. I mean, you even did a show from your car. You know, the other time. Well, that was just silly. It's silly, but it worked really well. I mean, and the fact that we had done that week of me traveling made me less stressed that day when they said, hey, we could move you now. And I was like, okay, I'm going to have to break down the studio then. Because I'm like, well, they can do the show without me. We've proven that. That's not even, I'm not even worried about that. And so because I wasn't stressed out about that, I was like, but you know, it'd be funny. Sure. Because I'm carrying all that studio stuff to my car. This is how I got the idea. I'm carrying it all to my car and I'm putting it in my car. And I'm like, I'm not moving my car. And there's an outlet right there. And I have all the stuff. And so I'd slack. What I told these guys is like, this is a really ridiculous idea. It may not work, but here's what I'm planning. And it worked and it was probably the best sounding episode for me. I've done because cars sound great, you know. Looked different, but you didn't really sound any different. Yeah. Yeah. With the proper equipment. But yeah, it's, I think that, and especially all of our regular contributors and just had a lot of good guests over the last three months as well. And everybody brings something to the table every once in a while when somebody has to drop out or maybe there's an audio issue or whatever and it ends up being Tom and Roger and me. We all kind of go like, well, it would be nice if the guest hadn't, you know, I had to go to the doctor, but we like doing the show. Yeah. Three of us sometimes. In fact, I wonder. Because we know how to do it. Let us know what you think people out there, but I wonder if we shouldn't just schedule it that way every once in a while on purpose. Yeah. Just for kicks, you know. Yeah. I mean, certainly, you know, the monthly bonus episode. Well, yeah, the monthly bonus episode. Well, it's always nice to have Scott. Yeah, I know. Scott, it's perfect timing for him too. Yeah. Hey, so we'll get to more questions, keep them coming. But I wanna talk about that sagging Patreon thing. I know it sounds so negative when I say it that way, and I'm not really worried about it, but it is something you always have to fight. And so I'm sort of just opening it up for us to brainstorm and maybe people out there will have ideas too. Like, what are things we can do to maintain interest, make it valuable? I don't want it to just be publicity stunt, you know, vapid stuff. There are a few people who are rightly upset about the, like, I'll eat a tarantula. I didn't eat a tarantula, but... And I totally failed to even go meet a tarantula. But like, what's some legitimate stuff that we could offer as a milestone? Knowing that milestones have to be something that are widely appealing. And are realistic. Yeah, and realistic. And don't cost all the money we make. Like if we say, if we get an extra $5,000 a month, we'll throw a $5,000 party every month and be like, well, okay, then why do that? Cause then you haven't, you haven't, you haven't, increase the resources. And the reason we wanna increase the resources is bring on more contributors, do more DTNS lab shows, stuff like that. Cause right now our next milestone is to do a second round table a month. And I think people like the round table, but they don't like it that much that they're like, oh, I will definitely increase my pledge just for a second version of that. It's like, well, I already got one version. Like it'd be nice to have a second one, but that's not a motivating thing. Like, oh yeah, I'm dying for that. You know, is it something where we give a tangible item like a certain level for... Shipping? Are you involving shipping something? Cause that's, yeah, that becomes a logistical issue. Well, I was thinking what we were thinking last time about basically, you know, having a raffle where we give away like our old... Right, right. Giveaways are problematic. Patreon does not like you to do giveaways as milestones or as rewards. You can do giveaways. They don't mind you doing giveaways, but they don't want it tied to Patreon. Got it. Because that causes them a bunch of legal issues as far as running raffles and contests and everything. And anytime you give people a thing, which isn't a bad idea, it becomes a business in and of itself. It becomes a thing you need more resources and time to ship it unless it's digital. If it's digital, it's not so much. Right. One of the things that I realized that when I joined the team, almost exactly a year ago, a full-time, it was like, all right, and then we'll do a mailbag show. Oh, right, yeah. It's a month, you know? And then, I don't know if it becomes popular, we'll, you know, do it more often. And truly the reason that I haven't been keeping up on that is just kind of lack of free time. Yeah. However, I also feel like since we've started Good Day Internet and there's so much more mailbag content that actually sometimes I have a hard time because I go, oh, well, it's not really appropriate for DTNS because it was about the burger I had in the pre-show, you know what I mean? But there's a lot of mailbag content, more than ever. And that kind of opens up that whole idea again to me. It doesn't mean that I suddenly have more free time. In fact, I have less, but now I'm doing another show. But I think the value of it and sort of the playfulness of some of the stuff that we're getting, it makes me feel like, you know, we should revisit that. Yeah, I like that. And that's a perfect labs example. For sure, for sure. Not that it's gonna be a bunch of fluff, but if you think about the half hour give or take before the show and sometimes after the show that we talk about all sorts of other stuff. And, you know, if you like the team and like to get to know us and we're getting a lot of feedback about that, I hate to just read that quietly between the three of us. Yeah, right. And just never do anything with it because it's an extension of the conversation. Yeah, we should highlight that stuff, I agree, yeah. The Fixer in IRC asked maybe some kind of new bonus show for patron goals. See that, and here's, I don't mean to be the wet blanket but I guess it's my job. That's a great reward and we have that reward for co-executive producer level. We do a bonus show. These are all feeling like rewards for backing. Milestones are, even if you don't give to Patreon, this is something everybody's gonna love, right? Bringing Sarah Lane on the show was an example of that. That was big, that's something people got behind. They're like, oh, I'm excited for that. So not that any of these ideas that we're having are bad. In fact, another bonus kind of show, I'd be like, all right, well, how would that be different than the one we do now? Like we could explore that, but that's not a milestone. That's a reward. What if we start including product or product reviews? Or is that problematic as well? Well, it's a, you know how hard that is, but yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be the daily thing but maybe like bi-weekly, like every two weeks. Okay, now we're getting somewhere, right? We would do something that everybody wants. What is that thing that everybody wants us to do that we don't say we have time to do? And product reviews may be one of those. How do we choose the products? Well, I think what we do is we'd set a milestone level that says we will pay this person, right? Maybe it's Roger. We will add this much, we will add a person to do product reviews. And then that person would be charged with working with our audience to be like, what do you guys want us to review, you know? And start working on relationships to get products and decide do we do NDAs or do we be the product review people that just buy the stuff and say, you know what? You're not gonna get our review first, but it's gonna be untainted. You know, and I'm wondering if what you just mentioned is the better way to go because, you know, we've all been in the industry where we sign the NDA, we see all the stuff before everyone else does. And that gives you time, but at the same time, I notice more than a handful of people have always meant just like, but, you know, I can't get that because that's not available in my store stuff with me. I wanna know what I as Joe consumer or Jane consumer can get. And, you know, it's nice that we have high-end products. I don't have $500 to spend on the video card. What's something I can spend no more than 200 bucks and get pretty good results out of or something. I don't wanna say at like average Joe type of views, but it would be kind of that mentality where it's not the best phone on the market. But hey, you know what? This Moto G, you know, whatever works great. If you wanna, like I got my father-in-law a $200 Moto G, he works for everything he needs. He like lives on the thing, but he didn't need to spend $1,000 for a flagship, you know, a smartphone device where I use average Joe because that's the thing from dodgeball, the average Joe, Jim. Yeah, I mean, hmm. I tend to think that, yes, the non-NDA way is the way that we should go. Just kind of keep us honest. It's straight, it's more straightforward too. It is, yeah. And I think that as far as breaking news, we do a really good job of that. So yeah, if there's something that's going to be new and is hot off the presses, we're going to cover that. Yeah, right. So these are not, you know, product reviews are an extra beyond what we're actually doing as our core mission, which is, you know, bringing you breaking tech news and discussing it. Yeah. It's kind of halfway, I could say it being halfway between your typical CNET, Verge, Engadget type review and the Wire Cutter. Like we wouldn't go that far where they're like, we took 7,000 hours to try every single product in this one category. Like we obviously don't have the resources to do that, but we could sort of say like, hey, this is on the shelves now. We're going to try it and give you our honest opinion about it. I mean, it's kind of weird because that's, you know, one of the things I see often with the reviews is that, you know, they do, and I really appreciate the Wire Cutter does go through like literally hundreds of products to whittle things down. I also look at those sometimes and I'm like, well, that doesn't sound like it was very fun, but I'm glad you did it. I'm glad you put the round up now. But, you know, living with kids now and, you know, and the rest, like certain things start popping up that didn't exist before that I didn't take an account of having kids, like how kid-friendly is this particular device. And that doesn't apply to everyone. But, you know, one reason I moved to the Xbox when the PS4 was, and I mentioned this on good day internet, is that it's just a better media machine for the living room. And it comes with, I mean, I can buy a chat keyboard on the controller instead of just using, you know, just a USB keyboard to it or a Bluetooth keyboard with a PS3 because it's super convenient. If I'm holding a kid in one arm who's crying, I can still do everything I need. And that's like, you know, things you don't necessarily, I mean, it might be more of a parent tech thing, but that's just... Well, and we do have technically parenting with Rich Truffilino. He's had one episode out. So that's a detainees labs thing that's underway. You might wanna like plug into that somehow. Yeah, I mean, like, is that something we could, you know, make a milestone that we can bring, you know, forward where it's, you know... So this is the problem though. Technically parenting as a milestone is appealing to people who are parents. Yes. And a bunch of the audience is like, I don't know, right? So a review show, I don't know if that's massively appealing enough in our audience to go, yes, I will increase in order to do that. But it could be. I think that that's the kind of thing. I'm curious what people think of that out there and also what other ideas like that we could... Beatmaster suggests a food show. Oh, more of that, huh? I don't know if we can talk about food more than we do. No, but what if we did an organized food show rather than the, I'm hungry on talking about burgers, right? Roger, what have you got in your fridge today? Why don't you eat lunch before the show? We could like literally just shoot video of the stuff we're eating and be like, you know, our 10 minute review of, hey, you know, I got this great recipe or I found this great store that does yada yada or there's a great new product in your shelves if you love kombucha and you don't want to spend, you know, more than three bucks. How does that fit into daily tech news show though? Do we have to... Does it? I mean, that's a fair question. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's just like, hey, you guys love this aspect of us. Right, yeah. We're gonna do that. Yeah. The same personalities, you know, we're talking about completely different things. Right. Now, I think that sounds great, but I would, I'd love to get feedback on it. Is that really valuable or does that sound like funny once or twice? Yeah, right. Well, you know, I used to think the food thing was just kind of a lark for people, but people really dig it. Oh yeah. And we just had Michael Wolf on this week. Like his whole shtick is food tech. There's a lot out there. Yeah. Everybody's got an opinion on what they want to eat. And that's one of those things that's pretty universal. Like, it's not like, oh, you're a techie and I don't like, I don't like your soiling. You know, I can only, I only can eat food that I chew with my teeth or something. You know, I think it's broad based enough. Gadget Virtuoso says, how about including Lens Digital Art in a milestone? It is at the advisor level. You get a piece of Lens Digital Art once a month for free. So there you go. So there you go. You didn't even know existed. You know, maybe we should reference that at the, when, on Fridays. We'll just say, hey, and don't forget if you're... Yeah, when Lens on. Yeah. Exactly. Well, I think the reason I hesitate to do that is he makes a point of, you know, promoting his own Patreon where you get his art. And I don't want to step on that. Cause that's kind of his, he doesn't, we don't pay him. It's, you know, he comes on in exchange for the promotion. So maybe we should make that clear too. But... You can probably do both. Yeah. Here's Perk. Here's Milestone. You might not know about it. And also support Lens because he's... And you know, here's an artist. You need someone to draw, do something, whether it's for an anniversary, a school function, you know, whatever. That brings up another aspect of the show that I've been toying around with. And you probably heard me vaguely allude to it a couple of times. I want to encourage and formalize. I'm not even sure how to do this yet. So this is total like brainstorming. Yeah, yeah. I want to encourage people, and this ties into the mailbag side of things, to write in with their insight more and correct each other more. It's no secret. You get the audience you deserve. I have an audience full of people who like to correct me when I get things wrong. I'm self-aware enough to understand why that's happening. But I would like to, first of all, be less like that pedantic person myself, but also channel that energy for good, right? So have somebody who writes in, because a lot of times I'll see somebody write something in and I'll be like, well, I don't want to read this on the show because I'm not sure it's right. And I am the authority. I want to get away from that and say like, I'm not the authority. This person said this, do you work in this industry? You know, and it means that we can't just read every email about the subject because everybody's got an opinion, right? Just like everybody has noses. Every, you know, as the old saying doesn't go, but it's dirty. So that's it. I want to be selective about what emails fall into this category. Like you got to cite your references, you know, show that you're like, oh, I'm knowledgeable. I've been working in this industry. Here's, you can see that. But get folks, because there's plenty of people who want to do that. Get that more formalized and encourage that wheel to turn. We had a little bit of that going this week, I feel like, and now I can't remember what it was. But the emails that you were picking kind of did that. It was about the auto thing. Cause we had Richard on and then we, and we had an email from someone who was explaining that. And then Richard explained his and then someone else added theirs. I love that. I love that one that happens. Well, a lot of that has, it more closely mirrors the kind of news that we are digesting every morning. Anyway, of course you're making sure that if you read something makes sense and was it being, and is this person trustworthy and a authoritative voice and all of that. Right, right, right. But the more that we can have that in a mailbag arena as well, the better. I feel like, our job is ringleader. We're really good at what Sarah just said, which is we can look at what's out there, pick the things that are likely to be most important for you to know, help you understand them in the context of someone who's like, look, I look at this stuff every day. So here's the parts where you can probably believe it. And here's where the parts where you should be skeptical. Like that's what we do, but we don't know. Our job is not to know things. That's the folks in the audience where that's where we can use that is to say, hey, but if you are working in SCADA systems, if you are working in automotive tech, if you're working in biotech and you're like, oh, I actually can explain why that's like that. I love it when that happens. I just wanna see how we can make that happen more. Yeah, help us absorb and pass along. Yeah, we're not the experts. But we can be the ringleaders for the experts to share their expertise, share your expertise with us. Please, especially if you are in fact an expert. We get lots of people who think they're experts. Hopefully we'll be able to solve the difference. Yeah, and we can, we can tell. Yeah, and actually people are pretty good about, I'm no expert, but you know, it's like, okay, well then that's your opinion and that's cool. And that's fun to have too, a lot of times. We have another question from Dr. What's the thing you guys are most excited about going into the next quarter, the next three months? Christmas. At the end of year, we're gonna do the predictions, results and predictions. Yeah. See who is right. So some of mine, I still have a little time. Some of mine have for sure been proven wrong already. But yeah, those are always fun. We're also, you know, we're thinking about CES. Yeah, yes. And you know, funny, we were laughing the other day like, well, that's January. Well, it's October. It's three months away. Right, it's right around the corner, especially with the holiday season. Yes indeed. These tend to go by really quickly. And if you don't want us all three in the same room, up your pledge at patreon.com. Actually, that's probably a horrible way to pitch that because they're like, that sounds hilarious. I'm gonna lower my pledge. We're not gonna do that. It's definitely something that will be on the forefront of our collective minds for the next couple of months, CES. Because it is such a bellwether for what people will be into for the rest of the year. I also, this is a little bit more general news than us specifically, but it's, this has been a very interesting year for, I mean, using Amazon as the most obvious example. Grocery, brick and mortar, it's just kind of, I don't even really know how this is gonna shake out over the next few months, but it certainly has happened quickly. And that started with, I don't know, now my whole foods has Amazon lockers, which I use gladly, although they still don't stock certain things that they used to stock, but that's neither here nor there. That's it, that's for our food show. But yeah, it's kind of the, I see this sort of strange but cool trend happening as far as buying goods and how we're all buying them. And the fact that it's not completely online, it's all swinging the other way. And I look forward to following that trajectory, however it pans out. Retail is always a very fascinating insight on how businesses work. I mean, like all the complaints people make towards online purchase, people used to make about like, there's the new huge new mall, it's taking all the business out of downtown because people can just go to one place, shop for everything they need, get in their car, go home. They don't need to stop by our restaurants or anything. And then restaurants started getting integrated into malls. Before it was just food courts, right? You had your hot dog on the stick, or your Sabarra. That was it. Now you got like full fledged sit down, you make reservation restaurants. And it's- Well, at the same time, the sort of this sort of hand wringing it. Oh, the department stores are failing. Oh no, what does it all mean? Yeah. The pendulum has swung the- Good guys, Circuit City, oh no. They're going out of business. What are we gonna do for electronics? Well, and some of that is overreaction. Some of that is, you know what? Maybe there were too many of those types of stores. Maybe they survived not on actual demand, but on tricking people into buying things they didn't need. I think Circuit City might have, if not survived on that, certainly benefited from that type of behavior. And so maybe we have a more efficient retail market, but that doesn't mean we won't need Best Buy, that we won't need retail stores. And that's what we're seeing Amazon learn. By saying, actually, you know, we do want impulse buys, and that's really hard to do online. Let's have a real store in New York that stocks a bunch of boutique stuff. And that may or may not last, but it's gonna get a lot of interest at least at the beginning. I mean, you know, people still go to car dealerships to look at the car. Yeah, right. Even though you can easily, but you buy car so much easier than ever before, and yet people make it harder on purpose because like, yeah, but I wanna see it. I wanna drive it. I wanna get inside. Well, I'm the weirdo. You know, I'm always talking about this, but I buy almost nothing on Amazon or online, unless I really have to. If I can go somewhere within 10 minutes, and luckily I live in LA, so a lot of things are close. Like I'm going to go to Guitar Center and get the thing that I could probably even get at Amazon for a little bit less because there's something about that experience that makes me feel like I'm being more productive. I like the immediate return because I've done that. Like I go to- Walk out with something. I go to Lowe's, it's like, oh no, this, you know, a water sprinkler valve I bought doesn't work. It's defective. I can go the same day and return it instead of waiting several days for it to make its way through the mail. Yeah, right. Now returning stuff by mail is the worst. Although the post office near me now is much nicer than the one I used to have to go to. Bigger parking lot. They greet you by your first name, Tom. Welcome back. So you just moved into the neighborhood. Welcome. What can we do? No, it wasn't- I was gonna say, that sounds great. Here's your P.O. box. It wasn't quite like that. Yeah. No, my UPS story. I'm talking about the U.S. post office. My UPS story, I'm not even changing even though it's far from me now because they're the best. I love those people. Aura, shout out to Aura who runs the manager. Amazing UPS story. Good mail box stores are hard to find. They really are. I've had at least two or three that just people don't care. I'm sorry, I smashed your monitor that you bought. What are you gonna do about it, man? Yeah, I have these real nice kind of fancy speakers. Anybody who's looked at my Instagram wants to see these speakers. And they're just, they're kind of big and a little long in the tooth. And I have a friend who just bought a house in San Francisco and I said, you know what, you should have these speakers. You just, I don't really want to sell them. I want them to go to a nice home. They're kind of taking up a lot of room and I'm ready to just downsize. I got my Sonos one, I'm good to go. But taking them to the UPS store is like, huh, how do I do that? Yeah. How do I get them there? Yeah. They're very heavy. And heavy. Do I hire a, like a task rabbit? Oh, right. Like I'm gonna ask you guys to help me. But, you know, back in the day when we were all in our 20s and everybody helps each other move. It's like, I would have been like, I'm in Roger, can you please help me with this? Hey, Roger, you still have that pickup, right? Yes. To the UPS store. But I was like, I'm not doing that anymore. Mutual colleague of ours once called me up on the Saturday afternoon. Hey, Roger, you still have that truck? It's like, yeah. Can you help me move this couch? It's like, all right. Right, yeah. Just drop it. I can't do that anymore. I don't have two kids. Don't have the truck anymore, either. You just kind of get to the point where you're like, meh. But yeah, that UPS store, it's not only the, the bull. People are liking this. It's not, it's not a pleasant place. There's always a really long line. If you need a notary, they're always like, at lunch, it's just anyway. Gadget Versio also points out, going back to the idea of a review show. I feel there are so many review shows out there. And that's a really good point. How do you make one that people really want? Because again, Milestone needs to be like, everybody's like, yes, I'm super excited about that. So what is it, that's a hard one to crack. What is it about product? Don't even think about product reviews, but like information about products from working with products that would make you excited. They're like, what nobody tells me is X. You know, what, what is that that we could do? Because I know, I'm trying to think like, there's things people ask. One thing that people ask is investigative reporting. And I'm not saying we'll never do investigative reporting, but we don't right now. That's just not a thing we have the energy for. We don't have the staff for that. But maybe we'll hire someone who does that at some point. I don't know if that's the kind of thing that gets people super excited. Reviews though, products, everybody uses products. What do you want someone to be telling you about products that we, that you're like, what I really like is the way DTNS does it. And if they can do that with products, I'd love it. And what else? I mean, sometimes we get help on how to sort of questions, but that's also hard and something you'd need someone separate for. Yeah, there was web 2088. It's easy to say anonymous. Anonymous. That's a default name. And the IRC was saying like, what about a project where you all get together and create something like a home automation thing or some type of art thing or something online where people can follow along with us. That's a cool idea. Like, so project based product information versus... Like a DIY almost. Yeah. Well, and that can be fun because we can move it around. Like maybe you go help Lamar, I don't know why I'm making it you, but just someone, whoever that is. I can also help Lamar talk. Yes, maybe you go help Lamar, install some stuff. And it's not that Lamar needs the help, but it's like, hey, Lamar is gonna do this project. So we're gonna document him putting it in, right? And he's local. I don't know, there's might be something there. You know, way back in the tech TV days, and I know a lot of folks have been with us since then. We did do, we would do for field one-offs. Yeah. So often when we had a good enough idea like, oh, Leo wants to expand his wifi. Yeah, right. It might seem a little gimmicky, but there's actually a really good payoff that people learn something from that. We could certainly investigate that sort of thing. I have one of the stuff in my house, I need some help. Well, you know, it's interesting, like back when I was doing system back to revision three, the stuff that people really watched the most was the stuff that was low barrier. Like they could do that themselves without having to buy additional tools. DIY, not DIFM. Yeah, so it was very much, well, it was just, you know, I'm not gonna get a power saw or I'm not gonna, you know. So take your miter that you have in the, yeah, no, like I don't have a miter, what do you do? It's like, you know, hey, how do you turn your old PC into a firewall? Huge, because people wouldn't be able to do it because there's low barrier at entry. It's like, I already have an old PC, software is free, I just need time to do it as opposed to like, I need skill sets, like I need to know how to solder, like stuff like that. We did a significant amount of like the soldering stuff. Like people was like, yeah, like it's too much for me to do. If I can follow along. As soon as you make people put goggles on, they don't want to do it. Well, and I think that's one reason why the Gadget Virtuous also said Food Tech episodes because there is a, you know, what we were saying about food before, like everyone likes food, even if it's not the same type of food, it's the same. Everyone eats food. Everyone eats. They eat it all up with their forks. Or do they? Smart chopsticks, yeah. So yeah, maybe something around food, maybe something around products, keep them coming. Like what's that thing that you're all like, you know what you really need to do? Because we like Tom, Roger and Sarah, and we want them to do this, or at least we like DTNS and we want it to do this. When a champion. What is that? What is that thing? The Fixer uses a spork exclusively, living in the future, the Fixer. Well, so, you know, a lot of this is, it's sort of, hey, if you like all of us and we did something that isn't tech news, what would it be? That's great. That's one set of questions. But also, are there more theme shows that we can do that are really part of Daily Tech News Show? And the roundtable does hit on that. But is that something that, if it was a, I don't know, an hour of apps, where we're talking about some things. An hour of apps. That just sounds promotable immediately, right? It's time for an hour of apps. An hour of apps. Get ready, everybody. We're gonna eat well doing it. But that sort of thing. And I'm just kind of... Maybe that's the show, eat well doing it. It's always a different thing. Could be a product review. Could be an hour of apps. It's always, but we're always eating while we do it. It's all of the ideas in one. Which is good time. Getting messy. But those are always... And those videos of people watching eating noodles are huge. Or, yeah, or unpacking what they bought at the mall. I forget what those... The halls, the shopping halls. We could do unboxings, yeah. Unboxings are always fun. That's what Lamar has been building his audience on. People love it. Quite the audience, too. Good on ya, Lamar. So, yeah. As far... I know themes are kind of like, well, that seems sort of obvious. But I know that I... There are certain themes that I would be more into than others, right? Yeah, sure. If it's a soldering show, I'm just gonna sit there patiently and let you guys show me how to do it. Cause I don't know. But if it's an hour of apps, I'll definitely tell you what's on my home screen. And why I like everything. Get your app store ready. It's an hour of apps. It's an hour of apps. An hour of apps while eating wraps. Oh, nice. You know, we could do that. We could do app reviews while we eat. Apps and wraps. Apps and wraps. That's pretty good. Who doesn't love a wrap? Like, who wouldn't want to hear a review from one of us with our mouth full of wrap? Are we wrapping while we're eating wraps? It's, it's, we sit down with hip hop artists and recommend apps for them while eating wraps. Now we're getting somewhere. I think, I think we've hit a milestone. It's definitely a milestone of some type. Permanent on that one. Okay, so let us know. Great idea or greatest idea at feedback at Daily Tech News Show.com. Yeah, no, I, these are all group. These are all good ideas. We just need to keep figuring out like what's the one everybody loves. For instance, video is a good example of one. I bet somebody's already written in already since we started this show. Like do a full video show with, you know, CG using transitions. We had that as our earliest milestone. And here's the problem. The people who want a video show really want it. But not, that's like 20% of you. Like, this is, this is, this is the thing you have to overcome with milestones is it can't just be a good idea because a video, a improved video show is a great idea. It has to be a great idea that 90% want. We, Heather Frank, for instance, doctor says I would like a musical episode. Great idea, not 190%. Probably not. Although who knows, you know, maybe it could be a nice holiday gift for you. Sure. Another show that I do that some of you know of have such a good day that I co-host with, with Heather Frank, we ran into the same issue where one of our kind of like, hey, if we, you know, if we can raise this much money, we're TV producers. We'll make like a nice polished show. Right, right. We can do that. We know how to do that, but we can't do it for free. And just not enough folks have really expressed interest in that because they're like, well, as long as we can hear you. That's why, that's why we put ads in the public feed, right? Because if we build up money from that, then that's the kind of thing we could say, oh, and now we'll improve the video for the people who like the video. Right, right. You know, it's money you have to get from somewhere else. And then it will be worth doing, yeah. It's valuable. I want everyone to want me to have the best, all of our shows to look as high quality as possible. Because again, we all work in TV. And have for a long time, we know how to do it, but I think... Video today, now the standing. Yeah. Gotta... It's a conscious aesthetic choice. Roger just doesn't want to be seen, okay? It's not that he's out of frame. Or you're not in the shot. I actually don't even know where I was. He's been drifting. I'm sorry. I just thought he was hiding. No, I can't get you, yeah. And video's hard. I kind of like this shot today, not because it's a good shot at all, but it really has felt more like us just having a meeting and discussing things because of our arrangement, which I think is really cool. Yeah, it's great. It's wonderful. If only ACE Detect wouldn't swear, DTNS could be a show for Apple streaming service. I actually remember one incident where you said the SH word in a year. And I don't even think you, like... Oh, we got an email about it, too. You weren't trying to... But it was like, you weren't trying to like go crazy and make a change. Yeah, right, right. It just kind of happened. I think we all do a pretty good job. Yeah, I think so, too. We try. And I was thanked by someone for keeping the show family-friendly. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe we could be on Apple TV. Oh, if you want a Cussian version of the show, that's a great one. You know, there are actually people who have written in like, I want you to curse on the show. I can do that for you. In fact, I welcome it. Oh my gosh. The Sailor Edition. I don't know, folks. Are you ready for that, Jelly? Too hot for Patriots. Too hot for Patriots. We'll have a separate Patriot, just for that. It's the entire, it's the exact same show, same rundown, but just filled with blue language. I did not like this new iPhone. I, beep, hey, beep, beep and beep. Yeah, without the... Don't do that, kids. That's no good. We're not gonna do that properly. Wasn't anybody's grandma who emailed about it? It was a father who emailed, so far. But, you know, these things happen. Okay, well, I think we're about done. Thanks everybody for submitting questions, for following along, for hanging out with us. Oh, we got a couple of last minute things here. Gadget Virtuoso brings up one. He's like, stop apologizing for the Amazon Echo and such. It's going to happen. I've actually communicated that to Sarah and Roger, and we need to communicate it better to the other contributors, which is we're gonna still avoid saying the trigger word. But yeah, we don't need to hang a hat on it every time. Be like, oh, the thing who shall be not be named. Because over time, I realized that gets wearing. And T false dad said, I'm ready to increase my Patreon subscription for the profanity edition. All right, all right. So there's one barrier for everyone. So, yeah, so that gets you one minute, one minute per person who increases by a dollar per pledge, per episode. Because we're gonna do a separate Patreon for them. This is not really gonna happen. Just see. I'm like sketching out a strategy. Yeah. You're convincing me, okay, great. All right, thanks everybody for supporting us on Patreon. Thank you. Or even supporting us by listening to the show and telling other people about it. Right now, we are above one more Patreon than last month. So stick with us and tell your friends and have a great quarter. I'll talk to you soon. See you all.