Conferences and tech giants, free shit that isn’t actually free, and the MH370.
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Conferences and tech giants, free shit that isn’t actually free, and the MH370.
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Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Geoff 0:06
And welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast. I’m your co host, Geoff. And as always, I’m here with Georgie.
Georgie 0:13
I’m back, even though I never really went.
Geoff 0:16
Yeah.
Georgie 0:16
According to this podcast.
Geoff 0:18
Nobody knows. Let us, fill us in.
Georgie 0:21
Okay, we had our company Dev camp. So I was up in the Hunter Valley for like, a few days.
Geoff 0:25
I mean, even before that.
Georgie 0:26
Even before that I was at home, you know, listening to my own voice.
Geoff 0:31
Yeah.
Georgie 0:31
On this podcast.
Geoff 0:33
I did get asked whether or not I listen to my own podcast, and I’m like, no—
Georgie 0:36
Oh, yeah.
Geoff 0:37
I don’t listen to my own podcast.
Georgie 0:40
Interesting. Well, I listen to it when we when I want to edit, like the transcripts. And I’ve kind of gotten used to the sound of my own voice. Which reminds me that just actually, before we got on this call, a Reel came up on Instagram of someone who has been doing their own podcast since 2009. They also, I think, they were asked, like, do you like the sound of your own voice? And they said, oh, I actually struggled with this. I tried to mask like, when I started recording, podcast episodes, I tried to maskh how my voice really sounded.
Geoff 1:16
Oh.
Georgie 1:16
Over time. Yeah, over time they got they got over that. And I actually kind of resonated with that. Because when I started doing public speaking, I really hated the sound of my own voice. And it was very awkward listening back to it. But now I actually think listening to our episodes has made me more used to, and actually not mind, the sound of my voice.
Geoff 1:39
It’s like, I don’t know, is it like body dysmorphia? But with your voice?
Georgie 1:43
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that the person actually touched on. Actually, I forgot his name, but his podcast is “head on fire”. And he was saying, as as a gay guy, this was quite difficult for him as well. Because you know, people would leave hate comments going, “oh, my god, your voice”, and make fun of him.
Geoff 2:03
Yeah that’s rough.
Georgie 2:04
He also, he also mentioned body dysmorphia, as well. He mentioned something about his, he didn’t like the shape of his nose. And then a photographer, sort of like, got a candid picture of him like slightly side on and that really changed—but it actually positively changed his mindset, because he was like, oh, I actually, I don’t mind how my nose looks there. And so he said, his suggestion was if you feel the same, try and like really immerse yourself in in your voice in photos of yourself. Take selfies, like listen to your voice and kind of, yeah, come to—well, he used the phrase “fall in love”, like fall in love with, like, how you are so yeah.
Geoff 2:46
I recently watched something or read something about how body like body positivity is actually turning a little bit toxic. Almost as toxic as body negativity. So really, people should be striving for body neutrality.
Georgie 3:04
Yeah, that’s true.
Geoff 3:06
And I think that’s kind of me. I’m kind of like neutral about most of the things, I don’t necessarily dislike dislike my voice. I don’t like listening to my voice. But it’s not like I would, I don’t know, I don’t hate it. I just find it uncomfortable listening to myself. Like, I wouldn’t go as far as trying to, you know, tune my voice up or tune my voice down. Like, I wouldn’t try like—
Georgie 3:32
Masking it?
Geoff 3:33
Mess with it, masking it. But yeah, I feel like, it seems like the best way is to actually just come to a neutral position about you yourself. Because I think maybe they think that positivity just leads you to hype yourself up. Or something here. What’s the, to sum it up, “body positivity encourages you to feel beautiful, love your body at any size, but you should focus on how your daily habits make you feel rather than on how you look”.
Georgie 3:59
Yeah. And I think this light relates to a lot of stuff in the fitness space where people, I actually saw another related video on Instagram, where a woman had been doing a lot of exercise for 10 years after being in chronic pain. I think she might have been an accident, there was not much about that. That wasn’t really the point. And people would say, “oh, it’s not working”. Because she didn’t have the sort of like societal ideal thin body kind of thing. She said, “Well, you know what, it is working, because I can do”—and there are all these videos of her like snowboarding, skiing, and doing yoga and dance. And she said “I focus on what my body can do for me and what it’s capable of, not how it looks”. And so the working out is helping because look at all this shit I can do.
Geoff 4:43
Yeah, I guess it’s kind of like Marie Kondo and her position—
Georgie 4:48
Spark joy. Oh, you mean, the, yeah, yeah.
Geoff 4:51
And she’s, like she’s quit. I think we’ve talked about in a previous episode. She’s, she’s quit the whole KonMari thing for herself. But it’s just because hey, the kids spark more joy than than cleaning. So—
Georgie 5:05
Yeah.
Geoff 5:06
It’s like, just be you know, happy that your your your body can do X things is kind of an interesting take as well. But yeah, you went to you went to your Devcamp thing, we don’t have to go too far into what—
Georgie 5:23
Yeah.
Geoff 5:24
Devcamp is, or maybe people are interested, up to you?
Georgie 5:26
Oh, well, it’s fun. It’s like, I guess I can just sum it up as a company off-site. It’s like an event that happens away from the office. And the idea is to get you to connect with people like team building activities, also have some of the people that company, do some talks like a little conference. So it’s sort of like a big team bonding event. Because when you’re in the office, it’s just you’re used to that space, you’re comfortable, whatever. So it’s sort of like to break away from that, and also have it in somewhere that’s, I wouldn’t say unfamiliar, but just somewhere different to a really encourage, like connection. So that was fun. That was successful. I’ve been organise, helping organise that with a bunch of other people since 20—well, I say since 2019, but 2019, we had, we had one after like three years of not having one, we had to kind of argue that case to the CTO at the time. And say this is this is worth spending money on like, this is the value people got out of it, we actually interviewed people, quote, unquote, interviewed or spoke to people who had been with the company for a long time and been to ones in like 2014, which was before my time. 2016, which was organised by someone who had since left, and we had to sort of argue the case for why this is valuable, what people got out of it, based on people’s experiences. And then we had one in 2020, because it went so well, and COVID happened. So we didn’t get an opportunity to have one until this year, which we had to start organising in like November last year. But it went really well. It went really well. We’re gonna have like, I’m saying this, like, now, but it will probably already happen by the time we publish this, we’re gonna have like a, like a retrospective of what happened as well, because I think it was, it’s quite useful to have those support whoever might be organising it in the future, like what we learned, I think one of the biggest things is we had in the past like a double like stream, like two streams of talks. But the the kind of disadvantages of that were people felt like they had to pick between talks. It sounds cool, like at a real conference, you have that. But for a small, for a company, it’s like a small crowd. And I remember my boss had to do this talk. And I mean, I was there because I was emceeing in that room. But he did this talk. And there were only five people there because everybody else had gone to the other talk that was happening at the same time. So all this work goes into a speaker’s talk and, and then that happens, it’s kind of disappointing. So we stuck with like, a single a single track this time. So that was that was good.
Geoff 8:10
Yeah, I went to Web Directions, which is like the more I guess, bigger, bigger sized version of that where many people fly in from all over the country to come to this conference, multiple streams, we’re talking designers, product stream, code stream, the thing that’s actually quite interesting, they split up the like, front end stream into like a React specific framework stream. And I I remember talking to someone about this and how they just found that the the front end developers stream was being overrun with React talks. So they had to give it its own stream.
Georgie 8:55
Oh my god.
Geoff 8:55
So that other front end things can come through, like I guess, performance and accessibility and cool CSS stuff. So, so yeah, it’s so many streams, and my god, it was just really hard to get to all of them. You, doesn’t really have the same problem as yours. Because there’s like 1000 like 1000 people that—
Georgie 9:14
So there’s a lot, yeah.
Geoff 9:15
Yeah, there’s just there’s way too many people, even even if people were to like skip out on one thing, they would they would still be over half the room like filled in every instance.
Georgie 9:27
Yeah.
Geoff 9:28
But man that really like took it out of me. I don’t think I had been to a conference in a while. And, and my brain just like shut down after the event after the first day. The second day, I was like, meh, meh this, meh that, maybe not, just hung out with people. Yeah. Not really hung out with people, just hung out outside. Yeah.
Georgie 9:53
Yeah, so taking like from experiences like that. I think that’s what sort of like encouraged us to move in what like, certain directions is like when you’re at a real conference, like a, like a big, like a large scale one, you almost feel pretty burned out from talks. So we tried to factor in as much free time as we could but not make it feel like we were just going for a fucking holiday. Yeah, because—
Geoff 10:19
It’s like the lunches you have and you just talk about something about work, just to make it work related.
Georgie 10:24
Oh my god no.
Geoff 10:24
And then you just keep walking. Just keep like, casual.
Georgie 10:27
Yeah, no, I hate like, I really don’t like when we go for like a lunch or like a team lunch and we go out somewhere else away from the office. And you just talk about work. Like, please talk about something else. I mean, I get, I think, yeah.
Geoff 10:41
Well, there’s lunches that where you go out and you want to have a good time and you like, but you need to say something about work so that you can expense it. We used to do that.
Georgie 10:50
Oh, are you serious, no, just expense it anyway.
Geoff 10:53
It’s like, oh, yeah, just to make this little work related. Here’s like, some presentation that we need to keep everyone like, across—
Georgie 11:00
Nope.
Geoff 11:00
Some kind of thing.
Georgie 11:01
Gross.
Geoff 11:01
And then after that, you just keep keep going. It’s kind of like tricking you into a free lunch.
Georgie 11:08
Yeah. Well see, that’s the thing we had to also do with Devcamp is make sure that there wasn’t too much free time. So that still like, say, yeah, this is worth this is worth, yeah, it’s work related. And it’s worth the money. We’re paying for this. And you’re not just paying for us to like, bum.
Geoff 11:27
Yeah, just bum around.
Georgie 11:28
Yeah.
Geoff 11:28
Actually thinking of that. So when I went to the Gold Coast, it was we’re basically using my dad’s Marriott points. He had bought a timeshare. For those who don’t know, he bought a timeshare. No joke. This was like, man, it’s got to be at least two decades ago. How old was I? What, two decades ago?
Georgie 11:50
Did you say he had a timeshare in the US?
Geoff 11:53
Eighteen, seven, seven, seventeen, years ago? Yeah, almost two decades ago. He bought a timeshare. And obviously during COVID he couldn’t cash in any of his timeshare points. So he had just like garnered a whole amount. He he’s already like, plan a four or five country around the world trip. And he was like, I still haven’t used all my points and they’re gonna expire. So he was like, here is—I don’t know if we talked about this on the pod actually.
Georgie 12:22
We talked about that he has a timeshare and we were kind of shitting on timeshares.
Geoff 12:26
Yeah, so anyways, I took it we took the timeshare, we took timeshare points to go to the Gold Coast. And the funny thing is they call they called us up, this is the part I’m pretty sure we talked about, but they called us up, the hotel called us up and said would you would you be interested in like, all like a free free lunch? Is it free lunch? And free something else? I’m pretty sure there was like that, like maybe upwards to five to $1,000 worth of free stuff. And I was like, yep, sounds good. Because we were members, quote unquote, members, of this timeshare thing. And they’re like, cool. So all you need is three hours of your time to attend this symposium on timeshares. And I—
Georgie 13:18
Oh my god, yeah.
Geoff 13:20
I no joke sat there and thought about all it’s like, three, three hours. Is it really that bad? Three hours, $1,000 worth of free stuff. Like, I don’t know, some kind of buffet thing. And then I realised, wait, who the hell has three hours in their holiday time to sit down in this symposium?
Georgie 13:39
But you have to do that, to redeem the—
Geoff 13:42
Yeah, to get the free stuff, like that. They they’re basically wine and dine you to get you to listen to this symposium.
Georgie 13:49
Okay, tell, like, let me know. I like what would you rather do that? Or just pay for the fucking buffet thing? Just drop like, a few hundred bucks, a thousand dollars.
Geoff 14:03
I mean, was it something else? I can’t remember what—
Georgie 14:06
Did you think about how much you get paid? An hour? Like, is this worth my?
Geoff 14:12
No, I thought you know what, it’s free stuff. And you know what, it’ll cost me about, it cost me three hours of my life. And I’m pretty sure for three hours of our time is nowhere near 500 to $1,000. Unless you are being paid... oh back in 2018, 2019, React contractors, developers, I’m pretty sure we’re being paid $1,000 a day to—
Georgie 14:38
Wow.
Geoff 14:39
To go, so I heavily considered that path. Anyways, it’s still nowhere near at an hourly rate of $1,000, would be crazy wouldn’t it?
Georgie 14:49
Yeah, no.
Geoff 14:50
I wouldn’t, I cannot imagine—
Georgie 14:52
But you’re not getting money.
Geoff 14:53
What kind of work?
Georgie 14:54
You’re not getting the money in this, you’re getting the thing. It’s saying it’s worth $1,000, but what is it worth to you? So hang on, did you end up doing?
Geoff 15:01
No, no, of course not.
Georgie 15:03
This is just, OK, so we can talk about it, we can discuss it. Yeah. All right.
Geoff 15:08
Um...
Georgie 15:08
You’re not getting the actual money. I—
Geoff 15:10
That’s true.
Georgie 15:12
Nope.
Geoff 15:12
No.
Georgie 15:13
If I was getting, if I was getting $1,000, and they said, You’re going to sit for like a basically a three hour lecture, I may consider it because—
Geoff 15:22
Cash monies?
Georgie 15:23
I don’t know, I think for me, like, what I’d probably do, as long as I don’t have to participate in this symposium. If I just have to listen, I would honestly probably tune out in my head start solving like problems or like planning what I’m gonna do later.
Geoff 15:38
Yeah.
Georgie 15:38
Have a little daydream. I dunno, I probably would be bored out, bored out of my ass after like, the first hour.
Geoff 15:44
Yeah. We were watching a King of Queens. And an episode where the main characters go on this holiday, that supposedly all expense paid, like sleep night, nights at that at that chalet, or that hotel or something like that. Free, free food. Everything’s paid for, as long as they go to the symposium, right? Similar symposium.
Georgie 16:09
Like three hours?
Geoff 16:10
Something like that.
Georgie 16:11
Okay, a long event. Yeah.
Geoff 16:13
Maybe it’s long. Maybe it’s longer. Maybe it’s over a couple of days. That’s why they would pay for your nights there, to attend every day, which would be brutal, right?
Georgie 16:22
Oh you’d be drained at the end of like, a few days listening to this BS, you’re not interested in.
Geoff 16:26
Yeah, it wouldn’t be a holiday.
Georgie 16:28
No.
Geoff 16:29
Anyways, so the characters—and this is like a comedy sitcom type show—the characters are like, kind of in line to check in. And the, another couple have come up behind them. And they’re just laughing like, oh, yeah, we’re just here to get the free shit. Don’t worry about the bloody symposium. And, and the main character turns around goes, “hey, yeah, we’re doing the same thing. It’s gonna be awesome”. And I called it right there and then, I said, “that lady that was talking shit about, that just came up. Is the owner of the of this symposium, like the whole program”. They’re like,
Georgie 17:05
Yeah, you guessed just then?
Geoff 17:07
Yeah I guessed just right there.
Georgie 17:08
(laughs)
Geoff 17:08
I was just like, that’s it. They gotta be they gotta be the run, people—
Georgie 17:12
Trying to get—
Geoff 17:12
People running it.
Georgie 17:13
Oh my god.
Geoff 17:14
So yeah. So yeah—
Georgie 17:15
So what happened at the end of, the rest of the episode?
Geoff 17:15
I honestly can’t remember. They did find it out eventually, they found out like, oh, because obviously they go to a symposium and that lady they were just talking to stands up and starts addressing the crowd. They’re like shit, we just told them, we’re here to steal all their free shit? Ah, yeah. Sometimes my partner just turns to me, and goes, “how do you get the plot to these things?” And I’m like, I dunno.
Georgie 17:38
Do you watch a lot of stuff? I guess that’s why.
Geoff 17:41
I think it almost becomes like a yes, sixth sense. When, whenever something too convenient, I think is when something too convenient happens in the show, to make them reveal their ill intention. It’s kind of like they’re being, they’re being trapped. It’s a trap.
Georgie 17:57
Shit.
Geoff 17:59
Yeah.
Georgie 17:59
Okay. But hang on. Didn’t your company pay for you to go to Web Directions?
Geoff 18:04
They did. They did.
Georgie 18:05
So they paid for you to talk and bum, and you just admitted that.
Geoff 18:08
(laughs)
Georgie 18:08
You got so tired that you just—
Geoff 18:10
Yeah, just went for free. No, I, so the deal of my company is that you have to do a Web Direction-esque, like, talk at work at some kind of All Hands. Like—
Georgie 18:26
Yeah. Like lunch and learn or whatever.
Geoff 18:29
We have a front end practice. What would you call it?
Georgie 18:33
Guild.
Geoff 18:36
Not really. Is it a showcase? It’s a talk. It’s something along the lines of, yeah. Everything you’re doing, people are doing in the—
Georgie 18:43
Showcase. Yeah.
Geoff 18:46
So yeah, the ideal is to go and do a talk at one of these. And yeah. So you have gotta pick something from the talks that you can then re share to the rest of the company that didn’t go—
Georgie 19:00
Yeah, so it’s like you got to share something you learned from the event you went to?
Geoff 19:04
Yeah.
Georgie 19:05
As a pay payback, whatever, tax.
Geoff 19:08
Tax return. But yeah, my company has kind of like just reduced, reduced the amount of spending that it’s doing. Yeah, I think is very, like on trend for all the tech companies. If anyone’s seen any news about tech companies and all their layoffs and stuff like that, essentially, the market has turned into more of a productivity angle rather than a growth. I don’t wanna get too heavy into it, but essentially, growth you pour as much money as you can into a company, doesn’t matter how much money they’re making, with the idea that you’ll get all of it back. It’ll pay off big, when you spend big, pay off big, it’s like gambling, essentially. But now, they’re looking hard at books and they’re saying, well, you’re not valued at the amount of money we’re giving you. So you need to prove to us that you are producing the same amount of money.
Georgie 20:00
Interesting.
Geoff 20:01
...as you’re putting into the company, essentially. So yeah. So obviously you’re like, well, hey, we need to become cashflow positive. And we don’t actually can’t justify all these people anymore. So then you get, see, you see all the layoffs.
Georgie 20:18
You know, what’s interesting is we have someone do a talk at our desk. Yeah, we chose them to be like the first speaker of the day.
Geoff 20:25
Ooh, keynote.
Georgie 20:26
Yeah, well, we actually had a keynote the first day by one of our employees who’s been there, like, since—employee number one, basically.
Geoff 20:33
Woah.
Georgie 20:34
But yeah, he was he did a talk about like, the, like, identity of the company. And just like how it’s grown, like grown from like, day one. So some interesting history for a lot of people who are new, but um, the person we have, do the talk on the next day, the first talk on the next day is a tech lead. But he has had a lot of experience with the company as well, I think he’s, I can’t remember how many years but it’s like, I think it’s probably a little over 10 or something. And one of the things that he covered was the, I think it was the Peter Principle? Where he explained that—
Geoff 21:06
Peter principle?
Georgie 21:07
Is it Peter?
Geoff 21:08
Peter Principle... is it not? It’s not the Bus Principle, right?
Georgie 21:14
Bus? No, but—
Geoff 21:16
“In the concept of management developed by Lawrence J Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to a level of respective incompetence. Employees are promoted based on success in previous jobs until they reach a level, which they are no longer competent as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another”.
Georgie 21:34
Actually, this might have not been the exact thing—he did mention this. And there was another principle, but I, oh he was saying something about the Pareto Principle, the 80-20, the 80-20 one, you know how like—
Geoff 21:44
Oh, yeah.
Georgie 21:45
80% of something comes from 20% of the effort, like—
Geoff 21:49
Oh, I’ve never heard that one.
Georgie 21:50
Oh, okay. So it’s kind of like, you know when people body build, and this is just a really like, random example, when people do bodybuilding and they get muscle and swole and shit. They say that 80% is not—oh they say that 20% of like your efforts and your training, whatever, is what adds to 80% of the results. Anyway, he was put it, he was saying, when you think about it in a company that does massive hiring, that’s the that’s like 20% of the people at the company produce most of the work, and therefore they can afford to do these mass layoffs without actually being yeah, affected. So that was that was an interesting perspective.
Geoff 22:32
Yeah. But then like you then you think about, hey, if if 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work, and you massive layoff, what what keeps the 20% who do the 80% of the work from leaving because they’re scared shitless?
Georgie 22:48
Oh, yeah. But that’s a different discussion entirely.
Geoff 22:51
That’s true.
Georgie 22:53
Well, I guess it illustrates that they are valuable then. Because the people that laid off are inval—not invaluable, they’re not valuable.
Geoff 23:00
Yeah, comparatively. Yeah. But yeah, it’s quite interesting. Because so, so yeah, the idea here is that we reduce the amount of needless spending, and work harder with what we have kind of mentality.
Georgie 23:20
Yeah.
Geoff 23:22
So yeah, our company’s kind of not doing layoffs, at least, like for now. So they’re a lot more secure.
Georgie 23:32
Yeah, you would argue that the growth is more to do with like individuals existing at the company, rather than like growing and like, number or size kind of thing.
Geoff 23:39
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting, because I really find this like a bit irksome, because the idea that to show growth, you hire people, and when VCs—
Georgie 23:53
I find it dumb.
Geoff 23:53
That’s like, it’s a dum, yeah, it’s dumb, because like, you’re like, oh, dude, like, we got all this money. And we have to show them that we’re actually doing something with this money that’s going to grow the company. And that equals just like mass hiring, because that’s like the easiest way to burn money. And then when you start looking at what you’re actually producing, then you go well, you know, I think this thing is called the cost per employee or something like that. Not cost per employee cost, like real cost per employee, but more like the, like, the amount of money you spend on an employee and the amount of money, and the money, amount of money they get for you, like the amount of money they—
Georgie 24:35
Generate, so to speak.
Geoff 24:36
Generate. So you say yeah, this, I can’t remember what the principle is called. But yeah, every every employee the amount, like you’re paying them, I don’t know 100k salary, and they’re earning you 102k, right, per year. That’s actually, that’s a net positive on that person, on that employee. But then if you have employees and you have like, I don’t know a billion dollars of employees and all you’re producing is like 500 million that obviously your, your, per employee economy is not a positive. So then you just lay people off until you’re actually cashflow positive.
Georgie 25:18
Very easy compared to just giving someone a pay cut.
Geoff 25:21
Yeah, what’s even easier is just making the weight making the work environment untenable. Unlivable?
Georgie 25:28
Oh so they just, they just leave?
Geoff 25:31
Yeah, so that you get forced—
Georgie 25:32
Why would you fucking do that?
Geoff 25:34
I mean, they’re like—
Georgie 25:35
That’s horrible, that’s just like.
Geoff 25:37
He who shall not be named, that has done everything in the book—
Georgie 25:42
Wait. Who are you talking about?
Geoff 25:43
It’s impossible to go one day without hearing about this, asshole. I think it’s really interesting. His name has turned from something that’s like pretty positive. You could call someone Elon Musk. And you’re like, hey, that’s a pretty good—
Georgie 25:58
Wait, so it’s not Elon Musk?
Geoff 25:59
No, it’s Elon Musk.
Georgie 26:00
(laughs) Yeah. Totes.
Geoff 26:04
But now you call someone Elon Musk is so like, ooh, you just called me a dirty word, like Voldemort.
Georgie 26:11
Yeah.
Geoff 26:13
So, yeah, I mean, like a lot of companies are like, oh, we’ve decided not, we’ve decided to force everyone to come into the office and not to work from home anymore.
Georgie 26:22
Yeah.
Geoff 26:22
And, of course, engineers are gonna look at that and say, well, I can go to that company. And they will give me work from home. And then they just leave. You’re like, hey, I didn’t have to fire anybody.
Georgie 26:33
Yeah, you didn’t actually have to do anything.
Geoff 26:34
You didn’t do anything. But yeah.
Georgie 26:38
I’m glad my company’s not doing that. I mean, we aren’t moving offices, but you know, that they still care about creating an environment that lets us you know, do do our best or whatever.
Geoff 26:50
Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty good. It’s pretty good. What else happened? Oh, yeah, I picked up, I finally picked up the last piece of my suit.
Georgie 27:00
(laughs) Yeah.
Geoff 27:01
I mean, people usually think the suit, well, yeah, the suit is just the jacket and the pants. Apparently.
Georgie 27:07
Do you have like the vest, like?
Geoff 27:09
Oh, that’s—
Georgie 27:10
Optional? Yeah.
Geoff 27:12
Yeah. I have one from a groomsmen outfit.
Georgie 27:17
Yeah.
Geoff 27:18
From back in the day, so I’ve got one of those. But for me, I think the shirt’s part of my suit like if I didn’t have the shirt, then I obviously don’t, can’t wear my suit. Unlike most people who have shirts—
Georgie 27:30
You don’t wear the shirt with anything else, because that’s not really your style.
Geoff 27:33
Yeah. So, shirt, suit. So when was the last time we talked about this car?
Georgie 27:41
Yeah, like, like 5, 6, 7 episodes ago.
Geoff 27:45
Basically, I got all the pieces. I got all the pieces at one point. And they had to take in the pants. Oddly enough, it was too loose.
Georgie 27:55
That’s not odd, that’s just normal, Geoff.
Geoff 27:57
Oh.
Georgie 27:58
Well, actually, you got it, you got it tailor made like.
Geoff 28:00
Yeah. That shirt was the most interesting part though. That’s the most odd part. Because they made it too tight. And I was like, interesting. I don’t think you should actually make shirts to exact measurements.
Georgie 28:15
No. They should have breathing room because you’re gonna lift your arms up, blah blah blah.
Geoff 28:19
So I was quite surprised when I put it on, I was just like, the buttons were like ready to pop off, like I had—
Georgie 28:24
That’s—
Geoff 28:24
Massive pecs.
Georgie 28:25
You know, I hate that. Yeah, yeah, no offense but I see a lot of I see a lot of men who are like, massive pecs, and yeah, and they need, I think they need to get the shirts made for themselves because they clearly, you can tell when they buy one off the rack and and they probably pick the one that was a bit smaller because the one that was the size bigger was probably just too baggy. But I’m like, you don’t look good in like, in a tight shirt. I think it looks really bad. When it’s like tight and pulling at the buttons. That’s just an awful look.
Geoff 28:56
Yeah.
Georgie 28:56
If it’s doing that just get a size up or like if you have problem with that, just get one made, I think.
Geoff 29:02
Yeah, so I picked up so I had to send it back and obviously they couldn’t loosen the shirt so they have to remake the whole thing.
Georgie 29:11
Yeah.
Geoff 29:12
And it was during Chinese New Year. So like that’s when they get all this stuff made. I had to wait ages so only just, is it March? Yes. I found out in January, essentially, January February, February, early Feb that I had to get the shirt entirely remade. So I finally picked it up. Everything fits. So that’s the end of the suit saga and I need to find places to wear it.
Georgie 29:38
Just just wear it out on the street. Just...
Geoff 29:42
Well, a friend of mine is having like they’re they’ve invited me to their kids third birthday I think?
Georgie 29:48
Yeah, is it a little bit fancy?
Geoff 29:49
Like I’ll just wear a suit, I’ll just wear a suit to a three year old’s birthday party.
Georgie 29:55
You can, you can.
Geoff 29:56
It’s not, it’s not fancy.
Georgie 29:58
Speaking of like wearing a suit, it’s too fucking hot to wear a suit but it’s like autumn.
Geoff 30:02
Yeah, it’s like 33 right now. It’s ridiculous. So yeah, what else. Oh, yeah. Did you hear about the, oh this will probably be way out of time.
Georgie 30:14
Who cares.
Geoff 30:14
But in Sydney there was an issue with the train communications?
Georgie 30:19
Yeah, Nick told me, but I was already up in Hunter Valley when this happened. So I was like, heh heh, but he said he was working from home that day. So it didn’t affect him. But everything went down like—
Geoff 30:29
Yeah, horrendous. So partner and I decided to go in on a Wednesday, like every other Wednesday, and it turned out to be a bad day to be there.
Georgie 30:39
Shit.
Geoff 30:40
But I hadn’t heard of it until like, I met up with her at dinner time. And she said something along the lines of, oh, there’s something wrong with the trades between three and four. And I’m like, oh that’s fine. Three and four.
Georgie 30:52
It’s normal!
Geoff 30:52
It’s like six or seven. It’s like six or 7pm now, or like 7:30 or whatever. And so we sat down, and I looked at an Uber. And it was like, oh, yeah, $37 for an Uber home. And then by the time we got up to go, it was $50 for an Uber to get home. And all the trains, they were like two hour delays. Basically, if you stood on a platform, you’re gambling your time. Apparently one of their colleagues got on a train after half hour, which apparently was really good. But we took the $50 Uber, and later on that night, watched the news and apparently Uber—
Georgie 31:35
They said it went up to like $600.
Geoff 31:38
Yeah.
Georgie 31:39
For just like a 16 minute ride or some shit.
Geoff 31:42
Yeah, yes. And it’s so funny the videos—
Georgie 31:45
How does that happen, like how? Like—
Geoff 31:48
Well—
Georgie 31:48
Is that the platform deciding the surcharge based on how popular it is, or is it? And who’s getting that money?
Geoff 31:54
So the video I was watching, the video I was watching was basically like saying there’s a new most hated company in Australia. They’ve unseated, oh which company was it, new Service NSW or something like that, I can’t remember which, like some government entity that everyone hates.
Georgie 32:14
Centrelink?
Geoff 32:15
ATO or Centrelink or something like that.
Georgie 32:17
Yeah.
Geoff 32:19
But apparently, so how I think it works is that it’s just pure, pure demand. Pure, pure economy, what’s it called?
Georgie 32:28
Yeah.
Geoff 32:28
It’s like supply and demand.
Georgie 32:30
Yeah.
Geoff 32:30
Supply is small, demand high. Make prices high.
Georgie 32:33
Because in the moment, it, yeah. Okay.
Geoff 32:37
So of course, Uber can do something about this. But to be honest, what are they going to do? Like it happened on a dime, right? What is Uber gonna do? Like, instantly go to their servers? Like, as soon as news comes up about this, like, oh, no we have to like, fall down the surcharges.
Georgie 32:55
Yeah it was a rare occurrence, right? How often does an entire like rail and transport network like, go down?
Geoff 33:00
Yeah. And it’s not like Uber is connected to the rail and service—
Georgie 33:05
Yeah, and they’re not even connected to Australia. You know what I mean? Like—
Geoff 33:08
Yeah.
Georgie 33:08
It’s not like, it’s not a government entity. Like, yeah, yeah.
Geoff 33:14
This is like, oh, this calls for regulation on Uber’s pricing. And I’m like—
Georgie 33:19
It’s a tech company that’s independent of the whole thing, like, why is it even?
Geoff 33:23
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the correlation between like, oh, they’re price gouging us, and I’m like, well, no? They’re algorithmically according to supply and demand. That’s how much it’s supposed to cost. And sure it could be empathetic and give people their money back but you know, they can’t be in every country all at once, syncing, looking at the news and being oh my god, I gotta give them a tax break. Gotta give them a break them a break. Oh, my god. Anyway.
Georgie 33:54
Yeah, I agree. I actually sort of put it put this kind of stuff down to—I don’t, I’m not shaming anyone for not being in tech. But I think we have an advantage and or a privilege to being in tech that we have an understanding of how like tech companies like work.
Geoff 34:12
Yeah.
Georgie 34:12
And how, yeah, like so. They’re, I think just like the media and whoever reports on this stuff, just they just don’t know, they because they just don’t get it and I don’t know whether to kind of laugh a little bit or, I don’t know, it’s like—
Geoff 34:26
Nervously laugh at—
Georgie 34:27
Nervously laugh, yeah. You remember that um, the person who claimed to be like a security expert who was telling you what kind of passwords to make, and he was just like oh yeah, just change the, change the one, change the “i” to a number one, and like—
Geoff 34:42
I’ve never heard of this buy before.
Georgie 34:45
Man, it was this video where he was talking about passwords and making them more secure and he was just saying put, replace this put a number and open exclamation point at the end, everyone was grilling him, like, yeah.
Geoff 35:01
Yeah, yeah empathising for soft, software, yeah, how software has made. Yeah, we do have that upside. Actually speaking of that, there’s a new Netflix Shorts, short doco series on the—
Georgie 35:18
Oh, you know what’s funny.
Geoff 35:19
MH 370?
Georgie 35:20
We actually cancelled our Netflix subscription last month. And then I went to Devamp and Nick said, hey, I want to watch something on there. I’m just gonna re subscribe. Like for fuck’s sake. It was like, I think it was like a day after the cut off. Anyway, yeah. You said there’s a mini series on the MH, the disappearance of the MH 370.
Geoff 35:41
Yeah. Disappearance of MH 370. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10 years, and I guess, I guess they haven’t really talked about in the last six years to be honest.
Georgie 35:50
No. When did it happen,, like 2014?
Geoff 35:53
Nine years ago, nine years ago, yeah. 2014. March something 2014.
Georgie 35:59
Okay, so what I remember.
Geoff 36:00
Yes.
Georgie 36:01
So when was the series recorded, like filmed?
Geoff 36:03
It was filmed recently, but they, teah, recently, 2023 filmed?
Georgie 36:09
Okay. So very recently, so what I um, the last I heard was there was someone who said they knew where it was, I can’t remember what, he has some like actual experience. As like an engineer or something. And he just by himself figured out where the rest of the—
Geoff 36:26
No way!
Georgie 36:27
Yeah. And I think he said it was off the coast of Perth, like, like he thinks it’s like, on the side of Australia, but close to another, whatever the next country is.
Geoff 36:39
So some, some guy got up and said—
Georgie 36:41
Yeah, and I think this was about one to two years ago, maybe one to three years ago. That was like most recent sort of development. And they they interviewed him on 60 minutes, I think. And he said, yeah, this explain, like, he definitely thinks that the pilot did it. And then just let it run down, all the way down until until it ran out of fuel. And he said, I suspect based on the pieces of the plane that have already been found, that this is where the rest of it is. And he said, I think it’s in this amount of like area, this many whatever square kilometres, 1000s, 10s of 1000s square kilometers. And he said, I think if we can get people to, to like, you know, somehow get funding to search that area, that I believe it’s there. And then I don’t know what’s happened since then. Like, I think the Australian government or, some some authority was like, yeah, okay, well, we’ll consider it, we’ll take this seriously. And then I don’t know what happened.
Geoff 37:35
Yeah, that’s really interesting, the, I think all that this was recorded before that probably? I mean it was two years ago, should have been recorded more or less the same time. The, interestingly enough, it’s like the, there’s a expert that slams the new Netflix series.
Georgie 37:56
Hah. Okay.
Geoff 37:57
But in any case, basically what they went through was, yeah, it was it was pretty comprehensive rundown.
Georgie 38:04
So you watched the whole thing?
Geoff 38:06
Yeah, it was three episodes, each one was about 40 minutes. But essentially, they went from it went missing. And then they covered the fact that they found out that the plane had deviated from its original path. And then they covered that...
Georgie 38:23
You talking about like the Malaysian government or whatever? That they—
Geoff 38:27
Various people figured out... there was a lot of like, people hunting it down. So I can’t quite, I think the Malaysian government found out from a ser—like not a service, a company who, who controls a lot of satellite communications. And they found a ping off the off the airline at a specific location, which—
Georgie 38:55
Did it suggest that—
Geoff 38:56
That showed that it deviated.
Georgie 38:58
Yeah.
Geoff 39:00
Because it had gone off the radar, off the regular radars. So satellite was the only way to do it, I think. Anyways, so after it deviated, it actually... They had a satellite in the area of the Indian Ocean. And they were like, right, we got a ping on this satellite. And it’s basically the entirety of the Indian Ocean. They were like, it could have gone north up to Kazakhstan or whatever. Or it could have gone south into the South Indian Ocean and just like crashed in the middle of the ocean, which is, like you said, right next to—next! This is hundreds of kilometres out from Perth.
Georgie 39:38
Is the closest, closest land.
Geoff 39:40
Closest land. Yeah. So there’s there’s a couple of journalists who were like digging up conspiracy stories like, like, one is that the pilot took it. But—
Georgie 39:53
I don’t think that’s a conspiracy theory. I think a lot of people believe that’s actually what happened.
Geoff 39:57
Yeah, I think the conspiracy here is the fact that, why would, why would the pilot took it and they dug into exactly his family, his background and like, did he have any motive to do it? Like, no one steals an entire plane for no reason.
Georgie 40:11
But they found his like, whatever his model—
Geoff 40:13
Oh his simulator?
Georgie 40:15
Whatever suggested he was thinking about, yeah.
Geoff 40:17
Yeah. In any case, so he could have been outside influenced, I’m gonna give him benefit of doubt. Like—
Georgie 40:23
There could have been someone dodgy on the plane.
Geoff 40:26
Yeah, he could have like, he could have been contacted and blackmailed or something like that just to make him do this crazy thing. Because, you know. Any case, of all the evidence about the guy, I can’t say for certain that he seemed like the most likely person. Some other people had America conspiracies, of course.
Georgie 40:46
Yes.
Geoff 40:47
There was something placed in the cargo—allegedly, allegedly—placed in the cargo, that weighed, that weighed like two tonnes or something like that two and a half tons of just electrical equipment. It was classified batteries and radios. So that was a little bit suspicious, it didn’t go scan, it didn’t get scanned before going into the cargo. It was added last minute, it was added, people escorted it into the into the cargo so it wasn’t like like regular luggage.
Georgie 41:19
So it weighed down the plane?
Geoff 41:21
Not so much weighed down. It’s just sort of like it’s a little bit suspicious—
Georgie 41:25
Oh what it was.
Geoff 41:26
What it was. And was it that that caused the fact that the plane needed to deviate?
Georgie 41:33
Yeah.
Geoff 41:33
So at the time, I think the thought was that it could be sat, like highly classified American satellite technology going to China. So being smuggled.
Georgie 41:46
Right.
Geoff 41:47
Someone talked about massive American planes, which can jam signals below them. So they flew above it, jammed the signal, plane goes dark. And well, I don’t quite agree with this theory, but maybe the pilot was contacted by those planes to land so that they could take the cargo, and the guy basically said no, and they shot him out of the sky. Like that.
Georgie 42:13
Oh. Okay.
Geoff 42:14
They clean up and everything, and then all that, all that radio stuff can be can be faked. Like so, so yeah, that’s like the two big theories. Like either a hijacking happened or or pilot could have been the one that took the plane for unknown reasons, or America shot it down. So yeah. This is interesting. The experts slams the new Netflix series. Key message is—
Georgie 42:45
Oh, the one in bold.
Geoff 42:46
Yeah. misinformation and disinformation. Well, then, everybody ignore whatever the hell we talked about.
Georgie 42:55
Edit it out. (laughs)
Geoff 42:58
Yeah, it’s all it’s all conspiracy. If you watch the thing closely, it’s all fabrication. It’s all conspiracy. I wouldn’t call it manipulation, speculation. “Netflix’s entirely speculation, fantasy, questionable sources, but they provide, but they provide no definitive answers to what where and why of 370”. Of course, because no one knows.
Georgie 43:21
No one fucking knows yet. I, when you said, when you introduced it, though, I thought you meant like, there were answers. But—
Geoff 43:27
No!
Georgie 43:27
I feel like I would have heard that by now if there were answers.
Geoff 43:30
Yes. Yeah. Everyone would have known by now if there were answers. I would have started with the answers. Oh, yeah. This guy who goes around collecting like—
Georgie 43:40
The evidence?
Geoff 43:41
The debris. This one was so dodge. Like—
Georgie 43:44
Was this the guy who literally went to everywhere? Around the world?
Geoff 43:48
Yeah.
Georgie 43:49
Looking at what people had found.
Geoff 43:51
It’s really interesting how they described it was this guy. He, like, called up some oceanographers and asked them hey, where would the debris theoretically go? What beaches? And then he went to those beaches. And then he picked up some—
Georgie 44:05
Oh, he did it himself aye.
Geoff 44:07
Yeah.
Georgie 44:08
Yeah. There’s Atlantic like long form. I think it’s on the Atlantic website, long form article, like, huge that has a whole bit about this guy. Like, doing his own shit.
Geoff 44:19
It’s, it’s interesting, because like, if he just called up some oceanographers, like, why hasn’t the authorities called up some oceanographers and gone around and picked up this stuff themselves?
Georgie 44:29
I think it’s like, the whole thing is like, yeah, the funding when people don’t, like authorities don’t care enough or they think it’s not useful.
Geoff 44:37
Oh, not credible.
Georgie 44:39
Yes.
Geoff 44:39
I guess if it’s not credible, then they won’t do it. That’s fair. Anyways, on that note, we’re going to leave you with not really a missing ending, because—
Georgie 44:47
You know what’ll be funny is like, we publish this podcast and it’s been found.
Geoff 44:55
That’ll be like in a couple of weeks. Oops, it’s all it’s all fake. It’s all conspiracy. But not—
Georgie 45:02
I hope they find it in my lifetime?
Geoff 45:04
Yeah.
Georgie 45:04
I just wanna know.
Geoff 45:05
That’d be really interesting. So we won’t, we won’t leave you with a conspiracy. We’re gonna end the episode. What’s it, follow us on @toastroastpod on Twitter.
Georgie 45:18
Oh, yeah, we talked about getting Mastodon. I said it for the lols, maybe, we’ll see. You can find our podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts and the missing plane piece. There are many.
Geoff 45:35
And yeah, see you next Monday. Next, see you next week.
Georgie 45:38
New episodes every week. Every Monday.
Geoff 45:41
Every Monday!
Georgie 45:42
Bye.