There's No Place Like The Metaverse

[00:00:00] David: Sweet. Welcome to this week on planet internet, a hacker noon podcast. I'm David. And today we have Richard from engineering and Amy from the internet. Welcome. Thank you. How are your days going? They're going pretty good. It's very important stuff. All right, today, we're going to talk about zoom, zoom in court, zoom, bombing spirit airlines and travel industry and something called the ownership economy.

So I will share my screen for all of our audio listeners

Amy: video listener. How do you lose listeners? Won't appreciate you sharing your screen.

David: So our first article today is. From C N [00:01:00] B, C and many other places covered this zoom reaches an $85 million sediment over user privacy and hackers zoom bombing.

And for those of you who have been living under a rock, or haven't been zoom bombed before the Wikipedia definition is. Unwanted disruptive intrusion, generally internet trolls into a video conference call and a typical zoom bombing incident. A teleconferencing session is hijacked by the insertion of a material that is lewd, obscene, racist, homophobic.

I don't even know if I should say all of these words typically resolving in the shutdown of a session. And that term popularized last year, because of COVID-19 forced many to stay at home and video conference became used large at scale. Some perspective on the background of what is this cost, how much, what does 85 million mean?

Zoom as a whole, it looks like they made about 2.6, [00:02:00] 5 billion last year. And then the year before that 6 23. 623 million. So pretty big jump from the pandemic. And I imagine it's going to keep going up. So yeah, four X, but when you think of 85, even before the jump, you're looking at, a couple of percent of their revenue.

It's not like this is a notable thing. It is, but it is, 85 million divided by 2.6, 5 billion. It's not really changing the bottom line. But it is interesting to see the platform held liable for other users of using it. I'll let I'll pass this one off to the two of you.

Amy: Excellent.

We've never been zoom bombed before, at least not in the duration that I've been working with hacker noon before. But what if zoom bombing became like a business technique? Hear me out on it. We started hacking people's zooms and then just being like while I'm weird, do you want to become a hacker named contributor?

Viable [00:03:00] business

David: strategy. It's pretty low stakes bombing, lots of risks for little rewards.

Amy: I'm not really that big of an internet troll though. So I don't really know what else I would zoom bomb about.

David: Here's more about the cost penalty here, subscribers and the proposed class action would be eligible for 15% refunds on their core subscriptions or $25 cash. Whichever is larger. Other than receive.

Up to $15. So it's really a pretty, when you have a lot of users, 85 looks like a lot, but it's okay, it's one hour of minimum wage. If you pull all these boots, that'll take you over an hour. You can get you $15. I

Amy: think they need to be spending more on this area.

David: I don't know. What do you think, Richard?

I was just thinking

Richard: like everyone was getting all upset [00:04:00] about how none of the money was going to going back to users. Like I think a year ago there was some other issue, with the end-to-end encryption was another thing that they got in trouble with. I knew like none of the money that they were being fine.

It was just all going to go to the FCC. I think so. It's, I guess it's a step in the right direction, but I wonder where they do come up with this value. And is it more about zoom bombing or is it the, your data being leaked and where do yeah. How do you come up with a dollar amount to compensate

Amy: someone for that, that it quote unquote violates user privacy, which just, it's just people joining your zoom call.

Richard: The other thing is that they're sending all his data to like Facebook and Google, they have all sorts of trackers in there.

David: Sure. I think it's a great point that even if the money is small, at least it's going to the users and not the government. That's a, that does feel like a real step in the right direction. It's also notable that this is settling a lawsuit, so this is getting away. [00:05:00] Future claims are being gone. So I don't know how much they want of like other problems getting out of yeah.

That's

Richard: so what if this happens, right? Because they said they've changed like their, their practices, they're getting rid of some of these trackers, which I think is probably the bigger issue, right? Selling your data they're exempt from any more lawsuits of this

David: type. I guess maybe this type that happened in this period, they're also seeking another 21 million for legal fees.

Okay. The company had 497,000 customers with more than 10 employees in April, up from 81,000 in January, 2020. This is changing our culture. They have ridden the wave. Have you too, have either of you ever been paid in a class action lawsuit? Like from any of these companies? No.

Richard: I think I got some free credit report watching when [00:06:00] a was experienced or something had some data leak.

That's about as good

David: as it got for me. Oh, we're going to get to spirit later. How much did you get from them?

Richard: Was expedient or something? Yeah.

David: Okay. What did you get? Was it more than it was basically that they would they'd watch your credit

Richard: score and activity for I don't know, a few years, maybe five years or something like that.

Not bad. I have not received any payouts from a lawsuit. No.

David: I received something like around this amount for LinkedIn back in the day, their growth strategy was when you connected your email, they emailed all of your contacts about LinkedIn. This is the early days of . Yup. Maybe that's not such a good idea.

And I I guess I was in one of those things and then I think. I think I got some money. We'll have to look it up like 10 or $12. And that's why you're still with them there. No, my, my address book, that's how much it's worth right now. You're a

Amy: lifelong user.

[00:07:00] Richard: Yeah. It didn't deter you from stop using it.

That's what I was wondering if that zoom is anyone going to care enough to be like, I don't want

David: to use this anymore? I think, no. I think this is more fitting the bracket of like future tax. It's like you had some sort of minor tax on society and if an effect, like I'm not breaking up with you, but you have to make up for it.

And I'm really small level. So I don't know. It seems petty, but funny,

Amy: If someone had Zimbabwean me, I would be like, yeah, you've convinced me. And that's me to a $25 level. You need to bring me $25 now.

David: No. What accurate with the scarier part is like the worst zoom bombings are, much larger.

They could be, they could zoom mama crime, you zoom bumps someone and it's, there's a crime is happening there. Now we're two levels in does this court case affect the ability to like, try something more serious? I don't know, like zoom now, not liable for the more serious crimes that happen on the platform.

Amy: Facebook is not liable for anything that goes down on Facebook.

[00:08:00] David: Yeah.

All right. Let's move to our next one about a zoo affecting culture as well. And this one is titled the pitfalls of court hearings on zoom. Published by the markup also published on hacker noon. And this goes through what's going on in the court systems and how much were they affected by having to do all this stuff remotely?

There's plenty of funny videos out there about not knowing the camera's on this. This is more of a a more serious take about the tax that it has on these people's lives. Here's a quote here about the dehumanizing effect of video. Video hearings are also putting defendants at a visual and auditory disadvantage research services.

People seem less like people when seen through a screen, like you're looking at us right now. And this has had an impact of the outcomes. Studies have shown that people are more likely to be deported at immigration hearings. If they appear [00:09:00] on video than in person and people applying for asylum are less likely to be granted it over video.

And. Then we have the criminal defense attorney quote, the way to judge credibility is to be in the room with somebody not over camera. Interestingly the defendant is the humanizing one or you're trying to humanize, and then once you go through a screen, now the defendant is the loser is what they argue here.

What do you guys think. I don't know do you guys have you

Richard: had a sense for that intuitively that folks are less like this dehumanizing effect that people are less credible over a video call or a remote company that meets regularly on calls? I can't imagine I've ever perceived it

David: noticeably.

Yeah. But we're meeting because we want to work on the same things these guys are meeting because they have two very different opinions about what happened in the incident. Yeah. I was

Richard: just wondering if that, if it's ever come up or it resonated with you at least.

Amy: I feel like people [00:10:00] definitely hide behind a screen, in the sense of at least text-based commenting of the fact that that's definitely dehumanizing.

People will say a lot more over comments and they would ever in person. So I can imagine that the ability to leave the zoom meeting, or I guess maybe you don't have that in a court system, but in general, the ability to leave a zoom meeting is like, Easier than the ability to leave a in-person conversation.

And so maybe it's more dehumanizing then.

Richard: Yeah. Like this reminds me of that idea that it's like hard to, it's a bit of stretch, but it's I think the cool it's it's hard to hate someone up close, right? Like you do lose like a light. It's hard to like, not care about someone. If you really get in their shoes and understand where they're coming from.

So I think

David: that's like an old idea that comes through here.

Amy: And another thing is video has a beautiful power [00:11:00] of just being able to turn the volume down. I don't really like what you're saying, so we're just going to turn the volume down or mute you and then it's not as much of a problem for me anymore.

Yeah, and I think like to you I feel that since I've been working on hacker noon and maybe been in. Slightly more of a public facing role. I haven't noticed that every so often people will tend to get butt hurt about us, rejecting a story. And that's certainly nature of the game. We have to reject some stories and we.

We publish others, but every once in a while, people will get angry and they'll forget that there's real humans behind the screen and that we're really here and we have lives and we do things and we're people and they like to complain. Yeah. That's very dehumanizing too. So I think yeah, the ability to hide behind the screen and any kind of sense allows people to bring out the worst in themselves for whatever [00:12:00] reason.

David: So sin bag famously coined it as the keyboard gangs. Once they have that keyboard, they're a gangster. You meet them in person.

Amy: Yeah, exactly. You know what I'll say to all of the haters out there, meet me in the streets and me and my fare, my small, tiny visits. I'll fight you.

David: It does

Richard: make you wonder too about folks that just don't have like good. Technically, like how, what kind of a phone or using, what kind of internet connection do you have? It makes you like, wonder why people didn't choose the option of just like finding a way to meet in person in a safe way during the pandemic.

There's, you can move events outdoors into settings like that. I'm surprised that

Amy: very rigid. Don't you think as an industry, I feel, yeah. Yeah. Like even the moving to virtual platform is like revolutionary.

David: Yeah. [00:13:00] So right outside

Amy: Richard.

David: Oh my God. I guess

Richard: I don't know how much more of a stretch it is, but it seems like it's more of a stretch, right?

To put it online, to do it over a phone call.

David: Early pandemic. Like whenever they said non-essential like you can't meet people, a courtroom has how many just between the judges and the cops, like how big is the courtroom already than a defendant? And then two other lawyers it's suddenly you're already at the 10 person limit pretty quickly.

Like in the early days of the pandemic, it was like a 10 person meeting. No way get outta here. You can't do that inside.

Richard: I know, like in the past, like they've just completely adjourned, like all court cases for like months on end with previous pandemics, at least in the United States. But I don't think that's very feasible with some of the cases that they need to resolve sooner than

David: later.

What's the last one, like the Spanish flu or what?

Richard: It's a hundred years ago.

David: I'm

Amy: surprised [00:14:00] that this guy made it through the whole article without referencing the cat zoom law incident, where he was like, I'm not a crowd. I swear. I'm a lawyer he's hiding

David: behind the kid's face.

What we need is

Richard: the metaverse we just, the technology hasn't caught up yet that we don't have our virtual personas. An avatar is where we can really become a cat and full rich detail.

David: That's the problem here. Did you say the gaming metaverse fighting the gaming boom. There you go.

Amy: The court room.

David: Yeah, packer dude is. Now if you submit with gaming metaverse as the tag in your story, you enter into win up to where we got 5,800 a month. We're giving away five winners. Gaming metaverse

Amy: leads to submit a hypothetical story about a [00:15:00] lock or gaming metaverse and we will, I will vote that one. It wasn't

David: that it wasn't a blade runner.

Is that what that one was dread or no? Was it total recall? What was the one more Arnold goes to court and then they send him into the game show. If he gets out the other side, he survived. No idea. All right. Someone else on that?

Richard: I was thinking, judge drive. That sounds way. Cool.

David: All right. That brings us to our next story.

It's about spirit airlines. Has anyone ever written spirit, have you guys written? I don't think so.

Richard: I've heard it. Horror stories about the cramped conditions, for sure. Lots of complaints.

David: Yeah. I've never I've never done it actually, but they have decided to start canceling flights left and right from the article as of Tuesday evening, spirit airlines canceled 60% or 416 of the day's flights due to operational issues that have impacted the [00:16:00] carrier for three consecutive days where they've gone up.

Spirit's official statement on the subject is. We are experienced operational challenges in some areas of our network. Before going to the airport, check your email and flight status here. The fastest way to receive assistance is through web chat. So you can not talk to a human and your flight is most likely canceled.

Also we didn't notify. Let's pick a minute here for the replies, just to see the organic fashion about the news. Thank you. Spirit air. You have left me stranded in the Dominican Republic. For two days, gate agents will call spirit number for assistance. We have been trying for two days, what the fuck is going on and sorry to hear about this, please.

DMS,

Richard: take

David: a closer look

[00:17:00] at the story a little bit. And one of the ironic things is like the layoffs actually, aren't really killing the stock price a year to over the last year. It's still up overall and it's only down 10 or 20%. NASDAQ actually had an article coming out, saying they're getting back on track. And this is they should be a smaller company that runs less airlines.

And like the ones that are getting rid of, or the ones that aren't as profitable. So there's two things going on and they have all their customers hating them, but there's always going to be someone who's the cheapest. Like someone who Nick charges for the penny charges for the bottle of water charges for all of it.

So I think while they're really getting roasted across the internet rightfully and what they're doing is not morally sound, I don't think, but that's their own opinion, stranding all these customers, but I don't think it's going to actually penalize them from a business sense in the longterm.

It's my between the lines reading

Amy: all the time. So are you saying. [00:18:00] That after reading about this 60% cancellation rate, you're ready to book spirit flight.

David: No, I wasn't a spirit flight. If I had a choice, I don't think I would book a spirit flight like in general, just the other airlines all seem better.

But I'm saying there's always going to be someone who's the cheapest airline. It's really hard to get into all these airports and they have the government still paying them a lot of money and they're getting rid of their least efficient flights, I think are going to survive as a business. And I think even though it looks like.

Tanking. I think the business will be fine, but it's just the hurt. A lot of people, there's a lot of people that are being stranded a whole 72 hours later. I finally get connected to a sport agent and look at this. I don't know which emojis the most.

Amy: It was very rare that just today the support numbers are not working very right.

[00:19:00] David: The day we laid off everybody.

Amy: It's insane that they will need to rebrand.

David: I think United, we are getting

Richard: into already though, right? It's nothing's really changed. This has been known about for a

David: decade already. Right? Look at this social media espionage here, United come and canceled my flight while on the way to the airport flying United from now on official United States.

Comes in

Amy: oh, these tweets are great.

David: So what do you, I

Richard: don't know what you can glean from the stock market or the stock price is not changing. We're actually going up. I don't understand stocks and how they go up or down regardless. I don't think they're rooted in any sort of reality anyways.

David: Yeah. That's like the market, the perception.

It's just an aggregate of people buying and [00:20:00] selling. So if you look at five days, which is basically the course of this news, you're going from like 29 to 26. And then you look at them six months ago. This is their six months low, basically, but then you look at a year ago, they were even lower down here.

Amy: Can you Google when the last spirit airline scandal was

David: too many? Yeah.

Amy: Okay. Interesting. That's the kind of company we're

Richard: looking at, but it's 75 bucks to fly across the country all year round. You can't beat it. Crazy

David: service. Yeah. If you only have $80. Like you can get across the country for the money in your pocket.

That's a crazy value prop. So you'll still go

Richard: back to white castle even. No they're running back, the bathroom, like five minutes after they eat, they keep coming back, it's just, it is, it serves a purpose, there is a market always.

[00:21:00] Thank you. Thank you.

David: Okay. I wish you the best of luck. I think, I don't know if I do.

I do. Cheap fights are cool. Maybe the transporter. Do you think we'll get to that in our lifetime to beat the flights? Do you think we'll get a faster commonly available mode of transportation than an airplane before we die? Yeah, no,

Amy: I think so. Oh no, I don't think so.

David: Why not?

Amy: I don't know. How long did it take to develop the airplane?

Richard: It might not be an airplane. Whoa. Wherever the heck you want, 

David: sure. I could be

Richard: in LA right now. If

Amy: I want, I

Richard: can change the background

Amy: the hardest if I wanted to be in the metaverse

[00:22:00] David: who's to say that you're not.

Richard: That are like, some of those high speed trains, tubes underground.

David: Yeah. I wish we had. I want to go to Japan just to ride with the train. You've done it

Amy: before. It's super fast. This is the view train, ship nothing crazy. I did see Mount Fuji from the train though. That was exciting off in the distance. The camera company. What's the real mountain.

Yeah.

David: No, I think you're right. Okay. I'm

Amy: like, no, that's

David: all right. Let's move to our fourth story. This one is titled what we call the ownership economy with brain trust CEO, Adam Jackson. And this interview is a part of our new startup of the year vote. His company is nominated in San Francisco for one of the awards. So he did an interview on hacker noon.

One of the more interesting parts of it is this idea of an ownership economy. Actually, it's really [00:23:00] the origin story of startups. It's just what people gravitate towards a lot. So we like to ask that question. Nominees and new contributors. And this guy, his first business, before this was built with daytime talk, show personality, Dr.

Phil, and now he's going on to build a new business with his co-founder Gabe. And they've been building and investing in two-sided web enabled, marketplaces, higher career. And so there, what they love about the business model quote from the story here. Create a trusted place to transact, ensure quality and reputation, build liquidity on both sides to buyers and sellers can meet, discover price and transact a beautiful thing.

He calls it. And now he's trying to take that to the blockchain and basically saying I'm in a lot of talent marketplaces. The intermediary gets too high of a return and too much share for their marketplace. So he's looking at a better way that he calls the ownership economy. And it's a form of network ownership powered by a new technology, [00:24:00] blockchain tokens.

So after reading this story, do you know what the ownership economy is?

Richard: No, it didn't sink

Amy: in, be a test after it.

Richard: Yeah. I get the gist that you are going to like vouch for folks like you do when you on LinkedIn you say this person has certain skills in this area. You're using tokens on the blockchain. So you're in, I don't know, is there actually a value, a cash value behind this or not so much then I think the idea is that it's free right.

To, to vouch for someone into affirm their skills in some some tech area or whatnot. Larger transactions are. Yeah. So

David: It's all about making money at the moment of transaction, right? Transact is this kind of this word he keeps coming back to. And at that point, having split by like a percentage, as opposed to saying the platform, just invents the [00:25:00] terms.

I don't know. What are you

Amy: thinking? This guy is actually going, might be on the podcast at some point. Adam, yes, Adam Jackson, brain trust CEO. It might be on the vodcast at some point which I did not tell you prior to this episode. But I think that this might be something that I might have to ask him about it because yeah, I don't really, not that I don't understand, but I don't understand the relation in the blockchain sense, like I'm putting together the pieces still about the blockchain stuff.

David: Yeah. Like

Richard: from what it sounded like you would say that this person has this set of skills and you're backing it by your use of these tokens on the chain.

David: So

Amy: are you saying that every time you buy a token, your, I guess that's contributing to the ownership economy.

[00:26:00] Richard: Yeah, I don't know.

Do you actually buy the tokens or what? I guess I didn't quite pick that up from this article and there's not a question

David: trust and buy a token access. So get matched to talent. It's really from the positioning of the homepage, it's much more we're here to help you hire and it happens to be powered by blockchain in the model is there's much more of that.

Like in, which is how these companies should be positioning themselves. I think, cause it's I don't care. The customer doesn't care how it's built. They care that it works, how it works.

Amy: Okay.

Richard: So get approved. So that's interesting, right? It's not just going to be like I guess that's always how it works. But there's like a little bit of a walled garden to it, like you have to get approved. So it it's not open right now. And this is another thing.

And

David: there's like a way list, Chucky cheese don't you always have to use like Chucky cheese dollars. Yeah. It was Koreans for sure that I don't know. It feels a little [00:27:00] like that there is a governance, so I guess we could learn the governance section. Have you w what do you, what terms, what economies do you guys with trending economy term, we liked the best.

Here you go. Shortlist passionate economy, creator economy. What do we have here? Ownership economy. And there are these ologists marketing ploys of Hey, the same thing. I don't know. I think if you get deep, like people will say they mean different things, but It feels a little bit like, oh, do you create something?

Okay. You're in the economy. Wasn't that how the economy was before? Like

Amy: yeah, the economy. That's what I like is the ownership economy. Not just the economy.

David: No, but it, the undertones and it implies you to take more ownership of the economy, I think, right? Ownership economy. I said ownership first. So ownership economy, I create stuff.

Creator.

Amy: Creator economy. Okay.

David: I guess it's

Richard: what lowering [00:28:00] the barrier to entry to commerce here on this platform. Normally you'd pay money to one person and they'd go do something on your behalf, but nowadays we're, this looks like we're trying to link people together

David: directly.

Richard: All right. And so there's a equal playing field of being able to use.

Crypto tokens or coins or however they're going to call

David: it. Alright. We clearly don't know this, that well on the podcast.

Amy: He's raised I don't know if this is in total or for this project specifically, but he's raised 165 million in venture capital funding. So the guy knows what he's talking about.

He's got something going on here. I don't know what it is happening.

David: The

Richard: thing about this, like I always wonder about like how do you. Fix your name on the blockchain. If people are saying one thing about you, that's history of it, is that

David: really just there forever? Yeah. If you spell your name wrong, I think you just have to be born again.

There's no renaming process and you can [00:29:00] only

Amy: make

David: it once. Yeah. You just, you have to birth yourself again and then that's one of your nylon. And then you only have how many left, how many Chuck E cheese tokens do you have the block chain? So what is I haven't asked you this maybe I should have before in interviews, have you guys taken any economics classes in your life?

Never.

Amy: I have, I did go to business school. I did not get a degree, but I did go to business school and I took a micro economics class.

David: Sweet.

Amy: We're very Ave like specific economic questions, or just want to know what my level of economic education. Yeah. I

David: thought it was useful to the listeners to understand that

Amy: he did a micro economics 1 0 1 kind of thing.

I've got a baseline understanding.

David: All right. I'll give you one. Here's one economics quiz that I got [00:30:00] wrong, but I still don't know if I got it wrong. This was organizational economics and they say there's a, all of the math is represented by 10 points in a row. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 2 businesses enter the map.

They've selled the exact same thing, and the customer will buy whichever store is closer. So where do the two stores. And so I said, one store would be at two and a half and one store would be at seven and a half. And those stores would get five. They both get half the market share. Correct. Answer in the classes.

They both go to five to compete for the whole 10.

Amy: Yes. But that makes sense. I was actually gonna say, I think that I both are fine and they're both at the same number. At least I. Sweet

David: and natural born capitalist. There we go. Someone wins, right?

Amy: You could also, theoretically they could also both be at one or 10 and then all of the tens have to go into the one.

[00:31:00] Richard: And then you just invent imaginary numbers. Make her own market,

Amy: negative numbers, and then you make your own metaverse and it's whatever you want it to be.

David: All right. Richard metaverse, you're a software engineer. So could you tell us about a language or framework you're currently excited about

Richard: language or framework?

I think the most recent thing that I was interested in exploring more was. Which is where you're like, you're making applications. You like, you're compiling your entire application at a time. So it's like taking this whole idea of a static site

David: even further

Richard: so that

It's, you're basically you're deploying a static site, but a lot of your, a logic for figuring out how things interact in real time is also done ahead of time.

So it's supposed to be very efficient. And I've only played it with it superficially to do something that did not make a lot of use of it. I was basically making a canvas like that 3d game thing that [00:32:00] you're looking at before, but I use spelt to serve that, but it didn't really use a lot of like interaction on the site itself or like much routing to speak of.

So I don't really tap into it too much, but it sounds

David: cool. Cool. And Amy, have you been having any new tech tools or websites that have wow.

Amy: David, I'm glad you asked. I actually just received something in the mail this morning. It is, and we have not discussed this prebiotic. So this is a live extra content.

Excellent. I got this in the mail this morning. This space should be looking device who makes some. Ocean patterns on the ceiling and it is delightful. I didn't know that I needed it so much until it arrived this morning and it is great. It's going to help me with just like [00:33:00] relaxing at night. I feel, you just put it on and just fall asleep to the ocean.

It's beautiful. Should we turn it on? This is probably isn't good podcast content, but I really feel like everyone needs to see this. Wait, let me turn off my. My regular light. It also comes with this remote control. So

Richard: the soundtrack here.

David: Amazon referral link available there. Done. Done.

Amy: Wait. Okay. Check this out. Isn't it. Awesome. Look at the ocean. Relaxing. Yeah, it's just a little like stars. It also can become red or green or why. Very exciting stuff. Obviously I like the blue and white

David: colors must be thrilling for our audio listeners, [00:34:00] but at this point in the podcast, I say, thank you everyone for making it to this point.

And Richard and Amy, and we'll see what happens with spirit airlines. And you've been zoom bombed, hacker noon podcast, peace. Whoa.