[0:02] Rafe, do you know what the price of a chimney is? I don't know what the price of a chimney is, Ben It's nothing, it's on the house Actually, that's not the answer It's actually the priceis through the roof Good, good What do you call a three-eyed pig? Oinky-oinky or something Pig!  
Oh, okay, great Lovely, thank you Yeah, I mean, it's honestly my favourite time of year When Ben tells his jokes I mean, on the plus side, they haven't got like a Christmas or a New Yeartheme.  
I was going to say, where are the Christmas? Have you got some coming up, Rafe? You got a cracker joke?  
My boss came up to me. He said, where have you been? I've been trying to find you all morning. I said, good employees are hard to find.  
What do cows say on New Year's Eve? Happy Moon Year.  
That's really weak, Rafe. And I say that from a position of being in a glass house.  
Okay, right. Ready? Shall we? Yes. Okay. Come on.  
  
[0:58] Music.   
  
[1:14] Hello and welcome to 361, a podcast about mobile technology and the world around it. My name's Ben Smith. I'm Rich Blanford. And I'm Ewan McLeod.  
This is Season 21, Episode 7. And as we relax on the sofas by the fireplace between Christmas and New Year, We're catching up on correspondence from listeners and covering all thosetopics we missed throughout 2023.  
  
[1:34] Music.   
  
[1:47] Welcome back, chaps. How are you doing? Rocking. Good, thank you, Ben. Good. Ewan McLeod back in the UK.  
Currently. Ralph Blanford coming to us from his palace in central London, as ever. That's right. We'll do the social stuff later on. So, happy Christmas.  
And if you're celebrating, happy Christmas and certainly happy new year to everyone.  
Lovely. This episode's going to go out sometime between Christmas and new year, we hope. All being well, fingers crossed.  
So, we are having a relaxed week this week as we recover from our turkey and too much much food and presents and things sausage rolls famously sausage rolls in your house you'remcleod bit of a magazine show this week a bit of a mix of that's right topics and stuff and to anyone thinking hang on a minute where was the christmas buying guide where was thechristmas party episode uh yes I think in order to enjoy these things you have to do them sparingly and so this year we deliberately were disorganized and didn't everybody else is doing iti think it's quite smart you know just skip a little bit yeah right change it up a little bit yeah it's It's very on-brand for our Christmas episodes to be a week after Christmas.  
  
[2:50] That's very on-brand for us. Okay, let's crack on. Yes. So a whole hodgepodge of topics to talk about this evening. We're going to cover off each one just for a few minutes.  
A whole bunch of things that I've wanted to talk about for ages or things that have occurred in the news recently, but they're not big enough for whole episodes yet.  
Right. So you, McLeod, I'd like you to pick me a random number between one and ten, please. Six. Okay.  
One, two, three, four, five, six. Excellent.  
Item six is beeper mini we want to have a quick chat about that i'll fill in the obvious bit that everyone knows and then we'll turn to ralph blanford for the big brain explanation beeper areuh.  
  
[3:27] Music.   
  
[3:35] Something that looks a bit like a BlackBerry with some interesting hardware and stuff, and that's all great.  
But I was a little bit surprised when they announced a commercial product, Beeper Mini, and Beeper Mini is, at the time of recording, an iMessage client for Android.  
Obviously, lots of Android users, particularly in the US, where iMessage is much more prevalent than where we are here, where people use WhatsApp and various other messengers.  
It's an iMessage client for Android.  
It obviously notably solves that problem in a way that's different to a couple of the other companies which announced that they had that capability recently nearly all of the other peoplewho've launched these services basically have a mac in a data center and you give them your passwords and they proxy those messages backwards and forwards which is a truly awfulidea because you're basically handing the keys to your iCloud account over to that organization don't do that don't do that come on beeper mini did a very very technically clever thing ofeffectively tricking iMessage into believing that this Android device was an Apple device and engaging with it.  
And at the time of recording, they've launched a commercial service.  
Apple shut them down once. We don't know what they changed at this stage in order to block the service.  
And it's since been reinstated, albeit working slightly differently.  
  
[4:52] So there you go. There's the quick version. Rafe Blanford, first of all, say things well why does this matter i think there's a bit of context here about why everyone is so desperate toget my message on android i mean i think it's the blue bubble versus the green bubble thing that when on an iphone you can see the difference between someone who's on imessage versussomeone who's on sms and it's interesting apple recently also announced they'll be supporting rcs as well which is another protocol for doing messaging and it's almost almost like aperception thing that you're seen as the poor relative if you have the green rather than the blue bubbles.  
So there's kind of like that perception thing. But there is genuinely a security thing as well in that iMessage is encrypted end to end.  
  
[5:38] And I think increasingly people are concerned about privacy and then people getting access to their messages and SMSs I mean, by sort of the way it's designed back from the 1980s,fundamentally insecure.  
I think that is less important and more it's about people don't want to be seen as, I guess, second class citizens when they're communicating with kind of friends.  
And so having the benefits of it are probably more about the perception between people sending messages than anything else.  
Because there are other features in iMessage, you know, the apps and the kind of way it deals with media and things like that.  
But I would say they're very much a secondary consideration, but that's kind of a user research of one, if you will.  
  
[6:23] Ewan, you're back in the UK now, but you're Mr. International Travel for us.  
And so if we just look at it through a UK lens.  
  
[6:31] I don't feel that in the UK there's a sort of, apart from possibly the perception thing that Rafe was talking about, that there's a burning desire for people to use iMessage on Android.  
Because in the UK particularly, but in many other geographies as well, people are using Signal or Facebook or WhatsApp or something, and it's become established enough thateverybody has it.  
And for me, the test is, where do all of the social groups communicate?  
So, my son's football team, the school class parents, the people on our road, we all use WhatsApp groups as a way to communicate.  
And no one questions whether you have WhatsApp anymore. It's kind of past that line.  
But in the US, there's sort of less penetration of those kind of apps.  
And so people more frequently, I think, use SMS as that kind of default messaging service.  
So what about, you know, kind of Oman and the Middle East and places like that?  
You know, what do people use there? Famously, when I'm on stage talking in Oman or in Bahrain, as I was doing recently, these countries, they run on WhatsApp, right?  
And interestingly here, all of us are iPhone.  
I mean, I have an Android as well. I'm sorry to hear that.  
  
[7:38] Right. But why don't we use iMessage? Because we don't use iMessage.  
So I think it's a valid issue for some demographics, you know, where you've got five people on an iPhone, three people on an Android or vice versa, whatever.  
And it's just annoying that they can't just all text together because the default is and you see many, I'm seeing this with my tweens, teens.  
  
[8:02] You know, they're starting off with iMessage because that's the messaging feature on the phone.  
That's how they start, right? And then we're saying, oh, you might want to try WhatsApp. And they go, oh no, Snapchat.  
  
[8:13] Really interesting. No, Snapchat. Okay, right. But if you want to chat to everyone, you could use WhatsApp. So, it's interesting looking at the young, because I'm seeing that with mychildren at the minute, how they're being introduced to messaging.  
But in other countries, especially in the Gulf, where I've been seeing it, in Singapore and so on, it's just everything runs on WhatsApp, right? It isn't an issue.  
You know, what's your WhatsApp? Great, thank you. So, even the Talabat, right, which is the delivery service across the Gulf, all of that is, I mean, they try and put you into their app.  
But generally speaking, it's always, always, always WhatsApp message.  
Please open this gate. you're you know come and pick up your food it's a standard effectively every time you say talibat my brain does taliban and i have to do these mental leaps to tryand work out why you'd be texting the taliban you know i did a linkedin thing the other day i was talking about talibat because talibat launched a card a credit card in uae yeah andsomeone very helpfully sent me a message saying just so you know linkedin has um auto corrected has auto corrected that incorrectly Correctly. You might want to change it as I edited it.  
But I think the concept of WhatsApp, I wonder what our listeners are thinking.  
Because I don't view beeper as a problem or a need. I think it's interesting.  
I mean, I'm surprised that there's enough people to create a market for a $3 a month app.  
  
[9:28] Rafe, I'm also confused why any of this is a thing, because I'm reasonably sure I remember Steve Jobs standing on stage saying he was going to open source this.  
And, you know, Apple have been backsliding on this for, I mean, in excess of a decade. Am I remembering correctly?  
I think there was some conversation about that, but then it rapidly changed.  
And for Apple, it's kind of a lock-in feature.  
And you mentioned groups there. This is actually the key to this.  
I'm not sure that there's that much status going about green and blue bubbles.  
But what happens is if you add an Android or a non-iPhone to a group chat, the functionality of that group chat significantly degrades.  
So you cannot then exchange messages.  
And all you need to do is add one Android person to that.  
So that's what actually drives most of the iMessage conversation.  
  
[10:19] And we kind of largely ignore that because I think people use iMessage more in the UK.  
This is, again, like anecdote. kind of the group messaging tends to happen on those over the top services like whatsapp and everything else so i will just say that i think it's a phenomenonwhere there is that group chat in particular because of the degrade and it's also then like the kind of richness of that and just a little thing like the red status and whether someone's typingand when you've got a rapid group chat going on those things do actually matter so it's quite useful yeah what beeper mini did or as you said they they didn't just fake it they actually kindof reversed engineered the protocol and worked out how to register a phone number with apple servers how to use the push notifications to have everything working and there's been a bitof back and forth making it work but it sort of is interesting to me less about all the details but that there are still services on phones that people kind of want access to that are exclusive tothe operating system and iMessage is one of those ones which is a bit of a moat and or a walled garden for apple that that does make people buy an iPhone over Android.  
And you know, it surprises me that it's not something like Apple TV, or Apple Music, but of course, some of those they have made available on Android, where iMessage, they veryspecifically said, no, we're not going to do that.  
My hot take here is that Apple will shut it down, either technically or legally, and then.  
  
[11:41] Music.   
  
[11:48] Force them to open it up and it'll be a self-defeating what's the word? Is it a Pyrrhic victory?  
That's it. There we go. Yeah. Okay, we should move on. Rafe Blanford, pick a number between 1 and 10.  
Not 6. 5. 5.  
Come on. Not very imaginative. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Really quick one.  
I am wearing my new Apple Watch Ultra 2.  
I'm here to tell you it's good. There you go.  
  
[12:14] That's my review. Why do you like it, Ben? Yeah, is it just heavier?  
It's bigger and heavier and And I've been to the Apple store several times to put it on and to try it on.  
And every time I had decided, no, it's too big, it's too heavy.  
Then I got the opportunity to buy one. Actually, this is secondhand.  
It was unused largely from Apple, a gift somebody didn't want.  
And so I got a bit of a discount and that opened my wallet. And actually having worn it now, I am really impressed with it.  
I find the screen, the brightness and clarity of the screen makes it more usable. Yeah, interesting.  
I could see. I like having the larger amount of widgets.  
And I, in recent months, have been wearing G-Shocks and kind of digital watches more because they were things that I liked and it hasn't felt so massive.  
And actually, oddly, the field loop strap, the kind of the nylon band strap that I've got on here actually is more comfortable for me than silicon bands and other things.  
And I'm finding it actually more comfortable to wear because it sits on top of the wrist and the bands go down the side. So actually it's comfortable.  
I don't think it's great value for money at full retail price, but I really think it indicates what all watches will be soon in terms of it's really quick.  
It's really crisp and clear to use.  
It's obviously, you know, it's really noticeable how much faster and more responsive and usable the apps and the interfaces on this one versus my watch that was a few generations ago youknow it's very noticeable so.  
  
[13:41] Uh thumbs up to that and you're selling it to me actually i like that that sounds yeah i like the sound of that actually it's a good upgrade on your answer there ben because when youwere talking about it before the show you said it's more comfortable and i was prepared to mock you for buying something that has extra features but slightly more comfortable there wego okay ben uh choose a number between one and ten that's not five and six i am going to choose and i'm not even even look at the list now uh two so uh one two oh good okay so i've hadsome correspondence had some emails and by the time this goes out i would have replied to those emails but i also now these emails or is it i mean literally emails well they arrive to meas emails i think they've both come through the website people putting into comments right anyway mark hawkins has written in thank you mark and i'm a pot i'm really sorry that it tookme so long to reply to acknowledge your comment he was responding to the episode we did about two episodes ago about our mobile networks good yet yes he said some nice thingsabout what we said actually he mostly said nice things about what rave said to be honest but i'm gonna ride on race thanks mark appreciate it mark there's two things though i mean he onewas just sort of giving his view on on networks and what he'd buy and he's done the same dance as we have but settled on vodafone where he is and he now uses his MVNOs on Vodafone,but he sort of takes that approach in terms of picking which network he knows works well, and then sort of, it appears to me anyway from what he's written.  
  
[15:07] Music.   
  
[15:17] Of the various networks, and particularly we did that little segment on Vodafone and your gold business, platinum standards, tariffs.  
And so, Rafe, I'll ask you to kick off on this one, but one of the points he was making was, to what extent are people's perceptions of the networks based in the fact of how they actuallyoperate today, and how much is actually perception of the brands as they used to be?  
Like you know oh three is a cheap upstart brand and vodafone is the long established trustworthy one and etc etc because in his post he was also reeling off a whole bunch of brands thathave faded away you know we've lost t-mobile we lost one-to-one marks and spencers in the uk and you know kind of to what extent were people kind of perhaps misjudging the serviceyou'd get based on 10 even 20 years ago which maybe was the last time that they actually searched around for a network it's a great question i mean last time we kind of touched on whatthe networks actually are like and the fact they're sharing networks and all those kind of things but for me this is kind of a brand and marketing question and it's absolutely true to say thatpeople's perception is probably based on something that may be five or even 10 years old like it's very clear from research that that marketing and brand value is established quite early onand then has a very long tail to it.  
  
[16:40] And I think nowhere is that going to be more true than something like mobile networks, where they are talking about different values that they have and whether that's the speed ofthe network or something else.  
And we kind of know there is a lot of similarity, and then we talked about that last time.  
But everyone will say, oh, no, no, I've actually chosen it.  
But they will probably underestimate how much they're impacted by advertising, whether that's TV advertising above the line or the below the line kind of offers that you see in kind ofdirect mail and kind of what would be called base comms.  
But I'd even simplify it even more than that.  
Brands are basically cognitive shortcuts. And what I mean by that is that, you know, with a brand, you kind of use it as a way your brain for shorthand for stories and things that you'vebeen told about.  
Partly that will be your experience and what advertising does is shift that story or your narrative in the brain. So when you hear...  
  
[17:34] Vodafone or O2 or EE, you would immediately associate it with the experiences that you have.  
But those will typically be going back a decade or even more or the advertising that you've seen.  
And it's why companies spend tens or hundreds of millions on advertising.  
And it's not just mobile networks.  
  
[17:54] It's Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Nike and Reebok and Adidas.  
And so I would say Mark's absolutely right people probably are significantly out of date and actually you know the marketing continues to do that because also people take value frombeing associated with it you know they are part of a club or community that's why people do that and i think ewan with his vodafone demonstration kind of was like the perfect example ofthat so thank you for being our case study well can i test something actually because that's something i'd like to double check you and so when i see that consumer targeted advertising foryou know big mobile network and it's sort of get your broadband get your phone stream your movies you know you're an idiot we'll give you a box that does wi-fi in your house and you'retoo stupid to understand how it works and it'll just make all your tablets go faster it'll just work i understand that there are people who don't want to think about making their wi-fi workand so that's a valuable product but when i see see it presented in that kind of, you know, just let us do everything and be glitzy, expensive, you know, perhaps even Hollywood actors orsomething like that, you know, kind of in adverts.  
I actually kind of switch off. I disengage. I don't want to buy from those brands because they're marking themselves out to me as like, we're not for you.  
You know, if you have an opinion about how you want it to work, or if you value speed or quality or something like that, you know, I actually now veer away from those brands.  
  
[19:19] I always felt there was room. I don't know if many people working in the mobile industry agreed with me though, but I felt there was room for a premium.  
  
[19:26] Business service i remember saying look you know it's great that the and this was 10 years ago that there's a child on the bus or a teenager on the bus sitting next to me or near meand they're streaming youtube which was horrific yeah that was just something you didn't do when we were younger because the amount of data you know being sucked across and thenthen the child just goes next next you think do you understand there's pre-caching going on there's a whole lot of network.  
  
[19:56] Gubbing's going on here to make this thing work and you're using your unlimited plan for this ridiculous... My point was, look, this is great that the teenager is doing this, right?  
But hold on a minute. I would like priority above YouTube.  
I remember us talking about three, especially their unlimited plans, but other networks as well, and talking about how it was sort of irresponsible because there was no such thing asunlimited.  
So you were either promising something you couldn't deliver or it was unlimited with a little asterisk and it was kind of unlimited except on Tuesdays except if you're busy and notunlimited to the standard you expect you know kind of thing yeah the best I can come up with and it's a really poor analogy is that in in the UK there's an internet service provider calledAndrews and Arnold and it's very popular with geeks because it's a tiny little provider they They charge quite a premium fee, but they let you use your own gear.  
They let you configure it how you want. You can ring up and you can talk to a techie who will know precisely how you want it.  
If you ring up and say, you know, I've got smart home or I've got automations or I've got something complex, they're not going to say, oh, that's unsupported. They're going to say, oh,great.  
You know, kind of like, do it this way. How can we help you make it work well?  
  
[21:12] They'll offer you bonded lines and they'll offer you 3G and 4G fallbacks and this sort of stuff and that you can configure and that for me like that's the optimum it's like i want tobuy from people who are as picky and as expert or more expert than i am and i think well where would i get my mobile service of that type from yes and there's no equivalent there and it'snot the same they do they do offer right telephony but you you mean the equivalent right but it's not consumer grade you know kind of in my phone type stuff i mean they can and it's notwhat you were asking asking for a more business centric one but it's still somebody who really leans in hard to you know supporting a particular group but again i suppose maybe thedifference here is that they do control enough things in their service that they can provide a differentiated service where the mvno is the only thing that we've found for them todifferentiate on really is pricing and add-on features you know because you're using the masks can i just say is there a wrong answer now is there a wrong answer for a mobile networkchoice?  
Well I think no but I think we covered it in the episode which is it depends where you are because actually.  
  
[22:22] I still stand by, and actually Mark makes the point in the end of his email, he says, I'm going to read it out actually.  
He says, I look forward to you returning to the topic, perhaps with some rave facts on expenditure for mobile networks in different countries.  
I think the basic problem isn't so much planning constraints, because we speculated that you might not be able to build masts in places people needed them, as much as UK networks notinvesting.  
And that was because we talked about how you might build masts, but if you didn't build enough, they were saturated and they were no use to you.  
And I think that's exactly it now, which is depending on what the local restrictions are of masts and the capacity of those masts and the usage, what might be right for me and what mightbe right for you 10 miles down the road are different just because of what service we get.  
What's frustrating and what I can't do though, as the person in my family who has to explain this stuff to other people and advise them on what to get, is I don't know how to say to them,this is how to work it out, except for buy loads of different networks, try them out over several years and see which feels best, which feels like a really unsatisfactory low science answer.  
Okay, we should move on. Back to you, Ewan. Pick a random number that hasn't been chosen before.  
Seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.  
  
[23:38] Okay, cryptically, this item says brain stuff, But since you contributed it, you can start us off here. Captain Brain Stuff.  
So this is my wife, Hetty, who has been saying, you know, it's really important, she says, to keep your brain active as you get older. You know, really important.  
Do you do anything? She's just asking me one day. So, well, Duolingo.  
And she knew off Duolingo. Do you guys know Duolingo?  
Yeah, it's the language learning app, is it? Yeah, language learning app.  
Ages ago about 560 days ago i started about doing arabic on duolingo let's just i thought i'll try this i'll try this and because i was working in oman and i wanted to try and show willingyou know instead of being the the idiot that can't even say sabbalah hair was in a good morning sabah i'll hair right or what the equivalent if you haven't got that wrong please feel free towrite in and tell him i'll forward all those emails salam alaikum alaikum salam right you know You know, that was the limit.  
  
[24:35] You do maybe five, 10 minutes every day. I think that's quite important that you are exercising your brain on a regular basis.  
That was my wife's point. She started this and she's doing way more than me now. She did 15 minutes a day of Duolingo.  
The children use it. It's interesting. Ages ago, I introduced it to my eldest son.  
Both sons played with it. The second one kind of fell off a little while.  
I think he did 100 days in a row.  
You have to try and get streaks, you know, the whole streak thing.  
That's a don't stop right we've paid the 70 or 80 pounds a year for the family account my mother-in-law is using it now every day that's great and is this all learning various differentlanguages so there's a there's a mixture for the last couple of hundred days it's been languages my son is doing german eldest son's doing german and then number two was doing spanish ithink i have varied it sometimes i'll do french like when we go skiing i'll do french sometimes I do Spanish, then I pick up the Arabic again.  
I'm getting really good, genuinely really good at writing and reading Arabic.  
I don't know what the words mean.  
  
[25:39] I'm still having to really, really, really work hard on that.  
But it's certainly keeping me going. I like doing these streaks.  
I'm really enjoying that. But they introduced maths recently, and that I forced myself into. That's been really cool.  
What are two halves plus a so and so, blah, blah, blah. That's great.  
And then my wife is also using the music capability in Duolingo.  
Now, other apps are available. That's just the one that I really quite enjoyed.  
I've used a few others in the past. I like how Duolingo does things.  
My point is, what are you guys doing? Are you doing any kind of, you know, this is good for your brain, something different, keeping things going, little habits like that?  
I've taken an alternative approach, whereas I'm just trying to pickle my brain in as much red wine as possible in the hopes of preserving it for as long as possible.  
No, I'm joking aside. It's one of those things that's been nagging at me that I kind of think I ought to do, do, but don't.  
And actually, since I commute less now, I work in a hybrid role now and work from home far more, I have less commuting time, which was always the obvious time to sort of settle downand do something like this, where you had to have something on your phone to do.  
I suppose what I would say is that in a less structured way, I actually probably watch more YouTube than I do TV now.  
And actually quite a lot of my favourite YouTubers are educational YouTubers.  
And so it's not streaks and that kind of stuff, but actually learning stuff about subjects of interest.  
  
[27:02] For example, there's a great YouTube channel called Map Men, and they make very funny, I mean, it's very light-hearted stuff, very funny videos about maps and the history ofmaps and that kind of stuff.  
And you know it's the kind of the pub quiz questions that you're going to learn and the casual interest kind of stuff also you know i like i love anything that the tom scott produces and hehe had this whole series on youtube about things you might not know okay and again just sort of we'll go somewhere really curious and we'll say look this is what a seed bank looks likethis is what a nuclear bunker looks like you know this is what a world war ii radar installation looked like here was where they tested this thing or that then yeah and kind of i suppose it'skind of of edutainment slightly passive though right you're not actually but definitely that's a that's a very fair criticism but i kind of let myself watch this stuff because it's not the same aswatching a man drive a fast car or talk about a watch i like because that's just kind of do you do that daily are you taking 10 minutes a day to say right i'm going to do this i typically do itlike i'm having my lunch eating a sandwich or something and yeah you'll watch you know watch 15 20 minutes blinkist or imprint or these ones where you get a book in 10 minutes or orsomething like that, right?  
Actually, so you recommended Blinkist, I think, last year around Christmas when you were suggesting sort of gift subscriptions and things.  
And I tried it out, but I mean, and I understand what I'm about to say is nonsensical, but I didn't like it because I thought, oh, I'm missing out on something here.  
Like by getting the book summarised. You summarised it.  
  
[28:31] I'm missing the nuance, the depth, all that kind of stuff. And so instead of getting that sort of subpar reduced quality version of the book.  
  
[28:39] I don't read the book at all, and then I have no version of it whatsoever, which is, you know, is it better or is it worse?  
I don't know. What I have done this year, I've bought lots of books.  
I mean, I have filled a bookcase.  
Have you read any, Mr. Smith? I've read one.  
  
[28:55] Well, look, I think it's great you're supporting the public, and I think you should feel great. It's like having a gym subscription. I've bought the books.  
I've read one. Did you complete that? I used to have two books I didn't read, and now I've got 20.  
I think, to much of your point, though, actually, is I do want to do that because I find learning new subjects, those sorts of things, it is a rewarding, enjoyable thing for me.  
But what I haven't done is nailed that kind of, how do I get my streak?  
And actually maybe using Duolingo, which would make me prioritise it over doing something less rewarding. Rafe Blanford. Come on, Rafe.  
Surely there's nothing left for you to learn. Exactly. Well, I wouldn't say that because I'm curious about everything, but I don't really use one of these kind of brain training apps.  
I mean, there is research that indicates it gives you brain plasticity and all of those good things. You could be like me, Rafe.  
That actually isn't necessarily selling it to everybody on the podcast, but yeah. I mean, I would say that's probably not possible to aspire to that, Ewan.  
Okay. You're such a better person than I am.  
  
[30:03] But actually, the kind of reading things and, you know, because it's so easy to get sucked into, whether that's Instagram, TikTok, which, you know, I'm not going to debate the kindof merits of that, but actually small bits of news.  
I have deleted both because they are horrible time sucks.  
  
[30:19] It's the only way i could make that work in my life yeah yeah and so the thing i you know i'm going to mention it and i mentioned it before reddit where there are a few sub redditsthat i subscribe to that i just feel kind of educate me and it's exactly the same as ben when i'm having a break you know whether that's for lunch or commuting somewhere or whatever ithappens to be that will often be 10-15 minutes of time but in the interest of giving listeners a kind of recommendation i think there are three relatively high quality brain training ones thati have used and enjoyed one of those is uh lumosity and it has sort of 40 games that you can play through and they're all designed around brain training and there is a premiumsubscription which will make you unhappy i believe it's about 10 pounds a month and that gets you a personalized plan so you can improve with targeted bits of your brain there's elevatewhich was apple's app of the year and it's about expanding vocab improving your memory and a few other things and again it's It's kind of gamified, so it's really nice and streaks and all ofthat.  
And then the last one is Peak, which again is sort of more based around kind of mini games.  
But I liked it just because the design was really nicely done.  
And with these things, it's as much the senses for audio and visual as what you're then tapping on screen.  
So it just doesn't become kind of button mashing.  
And Peak is nice because it feels a bit more gamey than some of the others and it doesn't get so repetitive.  
  
[31:47] And again, there's a subscription to get these things because there are a lot of these brain training things that are ad supported.  
And frankly, they annoyed me a lot. I would rather pay for something so that I don't get interrupted.  
Pay for quality. Exactly. Yeah. With you. But that's probably a reflection of the amount of, you know, the time I have.  
But I would definitely recommend or I advocate, you know, doing something that takes you off the, you know, the treadmill sometimes of whatever that happens to be to do somethingsomething that expands your mind, trains it, whatever it is.  
I think there's some good recommendations between the three of us there.  
Yeah, I mean, I deliberately bought paper books because I wanted to put all my devices down and read kind of uninterrupted because I've actually got some professional learning that Ireally want to do soon. Come on, you've got to do it.  
Yeah, I need to get better at it. But I mean, at least now the books are physically closer to me. So that's nice.  
That's great. Now, can we also, I'd like to hear from listeners.  
Yes, definitely. Definitely. I'm going to break the system here, actually, because we'd like to hear from you, but I'd also like to roll this into the next topic that I think we should cover off.We've talked about New Year's resolutions.  
So we're running out of numbers and out of time now. We were just chatting before, starting to think about New Year, fresh start.  
It's always a good time to start with New Year's resolutions.  
I personally, I like New Year's resolutions because I think having a fresh start, a fresh impetus to try something new.  
  
[33:07] You don't have to wait for a new year. It could be Monday morning.  
It could be once a month or whatever.  
But I like the prompt, you know, even for silly reasons to try something different.  
And so I wanted to get from you both sort of things that in a 361 sphere, you know, I'm not interested if you're going to eat more bananas or be nicer to your wife.  
You know, I'm more interested in a 361 sphere about, you know, kind of in terms of tech and that kind of stuff. So you and you're jumping up and down. You can go first.  
Yeah. So I'm going to do two. So one is, I do think you should do some kind of brainy thing, right? Start.  
Or actually, for you, Ben, I would strongly suggest, why don't you read a flipping book?  
There you go. Come on. Come on, right? They're sitting there. Sitting there.  
Maybe you need Habitify or one of these apps that says, now is time for you to spend 10 minutes.  
And now you're helping because actually, one of the things I really dislike about this time of year when other podcasts are talking about, you know, kind of starting afresh and all this kindof stuff.  
I really hate cases where the recommendation is try harder.  
Oh, come on. Like if you've gone a whole year and you haven't exercised, read the book that you wanted to, done the thing you wanted to, you know, it's not just absence of effort.  
There's some other impediment there and it might be inside your head. Start today.  
Yeah. That's it. Just start. All right. Then my second one, and this is do look at your subscriptions.  
  
[34:28] Yes. Look at your subscriptions. The other day I thought, I don't need this now TV. The children were watching way too much movies, or too many movies on with Now TV.  
That's the Sky subscription, the streaming version of Sky. Yeah, exactly.  
And I logged on to it and I said, right, okay, cancel the movies thing, because we didn't need this.  
And we cancelled the other thing, there's a sports thing we didn't need.  
And I thought, okay, the main TV aspect, I'll cancel that, don't need it.  
And at that point, I said, are you actually sure?  
  
[34:56] I said, yeah, yeah, I'm sure. and then they did the oh look uh we'll give you three months for not much yeah slightly for 10% off or something not very good i said no next cancelokay all right so you're absolutely sure yes cancel and then they said okay how about six months half price or something like that i went yes so what i've done i've set the calendar entry toremind me to go in and cancel again if you are subscribing to stuff i did this with dashlane as well think carefully but i didn't automatically renew Dashlane right I didn't that's mypassword you use one password I think yes I do yeah so I use Dashlane but I didn't automatically renew it, Because it's the same cost, same cost, same cost. I stopped.  
And then now they've sent me, because they're about to lose me as a customer, they sent me a 50% discount for the year.  
That's interesting because a lot of time people are saying, oh, you know, use this tool or use this technique to eliminate subscriptions.  
  
[35:48] But you're saying, you know, kind of, you don't necessarily want to eliminate them. Just don't auto-renew and you might actually get what you wanted cheaper.  
One newspaper, right? I did think, if you asked me at gunpoint, how much are you paying? I'd say £7 a month. Yeah, for this newspaper, right?  
And then I look and it's 29, 29, it used to be seven, right?  
It used to be seven when you started, yeah.  
Yeah, and it's going, then I go cancel and they make it very difficult to cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel, right?  
And then, then I do a new one and it's, I don't know, one pound for six months or something, you know, crazy.  
So I do think it's worthwhile looking at the subscription creep.  
  
[36:28] And the interesting, the one thing I've not touched, Apple, right?  
Zero negotiation, Apple.  
  
[36:33] Right that's just a deal what i do like though actually is the one of the reasons i prefer to get my subscriptions through apple even sometimes actually when they're a little moreexpensive is i love the ease with which you can manage the subscriptions i know stop exactly that's a very good point i can cancel them but also i had a shocker recently where i cancelleda subscription so something auto renewed and i kicked myself because i hadn't intended to auto renew it and i was wasted money right because i don't use this service very much and itwas just money down the the drain and it was a 12 month upfront subscription so i just bought a whole year i didn't want so i went in and i said well what i'm going to do is because i'vebought that year and paid for it i'll cancel that subscription now and so it won't auto renew in the year ahead and i'll have this service you know and i might use it i'll deal with it i mightuse it but i won't use it enough to justify and because it wasn't through apple and i cancelled it i lost this service immediately immediately so i paid a whole year subscription i was a weekinto that subscription and the cancellation took immediate effect and i lost access to that service and so you know i really like the fact that with apple i kind of can rely on i know how it'sgoing to behave and i'm sure if i paid more attention i could have worked that out for myself with this one but again you want to be able to kind of get on with your life and move on yes ido like that technique also because you you are the proponent of subscribe to this service, subscribe to that service.  
  
[37:57] So at least now you can argue that you're getting it marginally cheaper.  
Well, I just, yeah, I think I want to pay.  
I always like when Ben says, no, vote with your money, right?  
  
[38:06] So yes, I will upgrade. I will be the premium guy. But come on, let's not take it too far, guys, because £7 to £29, come on.  
Right, okay, let's hear some other- Blanford. Yeah, Blanford, New Year's resolution suggestions.  
I have had a Zoe box looking at me guiltily for the last four months and I have got my muffins in the freezer. What is a Zoe box?  
What is that? And Zoe is a...  
  
[38:32] Health wellness monitoring and kit to kind of get you eating better and it sent off various tests and it came out of the same brand as stuff with monitoring covid and so i picked it upa few months ago and have the kind of monitoring and the test ready to go and i was just a bit busy when it arrived so i put the muffins which they get you to eat to kind of set yourbaseline for food going in and the the tests that they're going to do in the freezer so my new year's resolution is i am going to go through the zoe program and try and improve my diet andwellness and health that goes alongside that oh i keep getting youtube ads with that guy and that's back to my comment earlier about mobile networks it's almost the thing that stopped mesubscribing is the quantity and slickness of the ads because i'm thinking is it is it really real i'm really glad that you are going to try it because i'm really interested and the thing you andthat really sparked me on this one is it's not just tests and sort of feedback you've actually got like a blood glucose monitoring thing it's you know the gizmo that they give diabetics whothat monitors with their phone and you can track you know kind of continuously track your blood glucose level oh my god you gotta do a poop sample well i don't think you have to poopon anything this sample collects your poop sample at home oh fair well this this really is uh this really is breaking news.  
Sorry to anyone who was having their breakfast as I was listening to the podcast.  
  
[39:58] But the one I was impressed by, though, was I'd read lots of people who had had huge health benefits from tracking blood sugar levels because you eat something and it spikes yourblood sugar and it's really bad for you, but you don't necessarily know which foods have that effect.  
You probably guessed the Mars bar is bad for you or the chocolate bar, but actually that thing that you thought was healthy but actually isn't because you bought it from the shop and didn'tread the ingredients carefully and it's full of sugar or fruit juice or whatever.  
Ever read lots of people getting on really well with that so i'd be really interested to see how rafe gets on right rafe do it because we yeah we want to know are you going to have the i don'tknow what the proper words are but the gizmo that you sort of stab into your arm yes i did a year and kind of got the premium version so you've got it and you haven't done anything no ihaven't are you paying for it the way it works is you have a testing kit that you do initially including including what then referred to the glucose monitoring yeah and that's why you alsoeat a kind of standard set of muffins i think it's three times on your first day to establish that baseline and then it will monitor you as you eat other food and it will tell you what food isgood for you and there is a subscription i think it's initially i've got for three months where you can then record what you're eating and it will tell you how you feel and what it actuallydoes is when you eat something, it will show you your body's response to doing that thanks to the monitoring.  
  
[41:23] And so it will tell you what are good foods for you and what are bad foods, what's giving you energy and various other things.  
I sort of went into it having done some research long enough ago that's like, oh, this is interesting.  
It does seem that there's some rigor, but I've now forgotten about all of it.  
So it's going to be a fun thing to explore and I will report back in a future episode.  
I am never going to persuade my wife that my new health and fitness regime, measuring all this science, starts with me eating an entire day's worth of muffins.  
She's going to see that one coming a mile off. Right. The one problem I've got here, apart from the.  
  
[41:54] P-double-o-p thing is it doesn't say how much it costs i don't like that i really don't like that you've got to go through the whole flippant thing right to then then they'll say okay nowit costs what rave what what 500 quid what i think it's 200 pounds for the initial kit and then it's sort of about maybe 40 pounds a month for the ongoing service subscription what are youhiding that you can't just say this how much it costs that is quite a lot but i guess it's also how much you might spend on a gym or something so i'm just trying to rationalize i don't thinkthere's a yeah i think you've got to do a proper test here right and i know obviously you know there's cost involved science pounds i don't mind the cost the issue is explain it yeah so youhave to go through the whole process i presume because i'm walking it through in the website you know to then then say okay right now and this is how much it costs right and rafe hashelped say it's 200 something well rafe let's put a pin in that and come back to it in a future episode right do it now do the the test Rafe we want to know about all the poop stuff wellbecause I want to hear about that I think that actually there's some real value there but people listening to the podcast might be interested in systems like this maybe not Zoe but there aresome other competing products and you know is it good does it work is this the new Rafe thing should we do an episode where he collects all the stuff no my mind boggles let's move onquickly okay so you haven't asked but I'm going to tell you so my one is as we get towards the end of the year my to-do list you You know I'm a big fan of lists and personal organisation.  
  
[43:19] That kind of stuff, and it's all got a bit out of control, a bit out of hand, lots of loose ends and lists of lists and things.  
And so it's time for a bit of a clean-up. But rather than just, well, as I said to you earlier, I don't like the answer, just be try harder.  
You know, kind of start over and try harder. What I'm going to try next year is something that's been repeatedly recommended in loads of different places I've been doing some reading on,And that's not to have a to-do list on its own, but to start to practice something called time blocking.  
So that is writing out all the things you need to do in time.  
Various priorities and however you might manage your list in a normal way and i've got you know i've got a technique i like that i kind of learned about and read from a book butpomodoro you know 15 minutes 10 minutes go that is an approach i like there's a system called getting things done which kind of gets you to sort of gtd gtd certain processes at certaintimes of the day it and it's not magic you still have to do the thing but i like the rigor of kind of being prompted to do do the right thing at the right time because I need that. So what do Ido next?  
But the big difference is I have found recently, particularly because, again, it's funny, because I'm not traveling, commuting anymore, I used to do that, look at my list, manage my stuff,move this around, do my daily.  
  
[44:38] Sort out my to-do list.  
That time's gone now and I tend to stand up out of my desk and walk away.  
And so that maintenance time, by accident, has fallen out of my diary.  
And so time blocking is about taking your to-do list and sort of starting to plan when you're going to do these activities so it's almost like some people call it like booking a meeting withyourself to say well here's my diary for the day and here are the meetings i've got with other people but my most important thing is to write that report so i'm going to put two hours thismorning in my diary to write that report and so i know what i'm going to do right so i'm no longer just sitting and looking at a big long list of tasks where I might choose to do somethingthat's easy but not important or something that I prefer in a fun but not urgent.  
But also, I don't know about you guys, but when I look at my list, I've often got so many things to do, some work stuff, personal stuff, family stuff, community stuff I might be doing.  
  
[45:36] And you kind of get overwhelmed because you've never actually paused to say, do I actually have enough time to do all these things?  
You know, when I look at all these lists, I've got, you know, kind of 48 hours of work to do in every 24 hours day.  
And so the idea of actually saying, I'm going to attribute blocks of time in my calendar to this, means that you're actually starting to be realistic to say, well, actually, these things are nevergoing to get done.  
So perhaps I'll start to decline them or I'll ask for help in work or something like that.  
Again, I mean, none of these things are a golden bullet, but it's a nice additional incremental step on having a task list and managing it well that I think is going to work well.  
Well, I have to say, one of the reasons I also prompted to do this is that my current favorite task manager, I use Todoist, has just added calendar functionality this year and has started toadd some features with task durations, which sounds a bit nerdy, but is effectively the kind of the plumbing that you need to start to do time blocking.  
And they've also got a roadmap where they're going to start to support more of these sorts of things.  
Both they integrate with Google Calendar if you use that, but also they're talking about having their own calendar in time. So now's a great time to be thinking about that.  
And actually, oftentimes I find with things like this, simply pausing to think about what you're doing and why is in itself beneficial, even if the technique you choose isn't any better thananother one you might chance upon.  
  
[47:02] Simply trying to get better is better than not. That's my resolution for next year. Rock on.  
Yeah. It's not very exciting, but I do like Todoist and it's dead handy and it's easy to do now so i think simple tools to make this stuff better okay let's move on then we have only a fewminutes left and a handful of topics and i'm going to be dictator ben and i'm going to insist that the last two that we do are in this order so another email because when people write in theydeserve some airtime yes they do definitely this is even worse than Marx.  
Matt Lacey wrote in ages ago and will by this point have had a fulsome apology for this tardiness of my response.  
Matt wrote in after we did the social media episode, and he was asking about Twitter. Yes.  
And I think, you know, we've talked enough about Twitter, so we won't cover any more on that.  
But I think Matt raised a really interesting question, which we hadn't sort of really covered on the episode, which was, he said, the current leadership of Twitter talk about wanting to makeit an everything app.  
Right. X, the everything app, is this idea.  
  
[48:11] And he was basically asking whether we thought that was a goer or not.  
Do we think that that is a realistic prospect?  
Is that something that's appealing, or is that something that we think could be successful?  
And I suppose where I'd start with is the example that people often give is things like WeChat in China, which, again, Rafe, I'm going to let you keep me straight here, but it's a messagingapp.  
You can do comma stuff through it. I think you can look up information.  
It's everything. It's literally everything, right? So when we say an everything app, it's not exaggerating.  
Exaggerating it really does allow people to conduct you know all kinds of important aspects of their life so first of all have i characterized wechat correctly i mean i think so it started kindof like as a chat thing but probably what's become critical is that you can use it to pay for things and that was done using qr codes and now as a result it's kind of used for messaging socialmedia payments subscriptions food delivery utility bills plane train tickets and so that's why it's kind of got this everything app and owned by tech giant tencent which is probably one ofthe important reasons it's been able to gain that traction and to give you a sense of how big it is there are times that you get blocked from using it and i'm not going to get into the policy ofanything like that but people talk about it being like having digital death and like having your internet switched off because it's so core to how many of those things work and like we arenot not China experts, but there is enough reading out there to say that it has become a thing.  
  
[49:39] And I mean, Ewan has alluded to this in some of the Middle Eastern countries that he's visited, where certain apps have become pretty critical for paying for services and things.  
And I think what all of these everything apps have in common is there's kind of a payment at the heart.  
And people have talked about Venmo in the States and X for Twitter being linked to the original PayPal PayPal and Musk wanting to go back to that payment thing.  
And that's where kind of everything apps have come from.  
And so jumping onto the second part of Matt's question then, Ewan, do you think that Twitter or indeed any app could become an everything app in the markets where we spend our time?  
So Western Europe, North America, places like that, because it's noticeable that for whatever reason, there are everything apps in other markets, but they haven't travelled into to the UK,for example.  
I think you do need a force of personality, right, and money.  
  
[50:35] Because this stuff, especially anything to do with the payments, is quite complex.  
But if you have a force of personality and you can say whatever you like about Mr.  
Musk, and many opinions are available, but he's got stuff moving and he has a track record of getting stuff done, I think I would be open to it. Certainly open to it.  
And this everything, it would be really interesting if, for example, they did go through the process and make it that you can pay anyone on Twitter.  
You can send money to anybody on Twitter.  
For example, right, or anyone with, you know, any UK person can send money to a US person via X.  
I could see them doing that. And I could see people going, well, I don't really know, but I did actually send $100 to him, and it was really quick and easy.  
And I'm not sure about this, but I start using it. So I do think there is possibilities, right?  
I think, you know, with that, get it done right now.  
Oh, it's going to cost a lot of money. There's the money. Do it.  
Yeah, I think that could be interesting.  
I have two reservations. One, briefly recaps my feelings on Elon Musk, which is that he doesn't tend to prioritise trust and safety and those sorts of things.  
And that's the sort of thing I'd be looking for in an app that started to introduce payments or commerce or any of those things that Rafe listed off for WeChat.  
But then I was thinking also, a kind of.  
  
[51:57] For better or worse, have got used to shopping around. Like I use my Monzo account, I use TransferWise, I use American Express for financial services sometimes.  
When I need to make transactions or I need to do finance stuff, I've got loads and loads of apps available to me.  
And I kind of don't default to sort of just thinking, I want one.  
  
[52:18] Rafe, I was thinking about how we collect money for the community group that I'm part of, which was buying some presents for Christmas.  
And you know some people were sending money via monzo because they were a monzo and they could do a bank transfer but with the ease of not needing bank codes because you coulduse your phone's contacts other people were already on paypal and they knew how to do that it was a real mishmash but absolutely nobody in that conversation tried to say oh you knowdownload a new app and set up a new banking relationship it was all just trying to basically accepting that people had what they had and and you know you'd work around that and so youknow has the the ship sailed for an everything app in our market?  
I think so. Never say never, but this has been a kind of a mega trend that's been talked about for the last three or four years with WeChat.  
I think what people forget is that WeChat formed in a market that was still kind of nascent 10 years ago where you were on maybe devices that weren't as powerful.  
So there were space concerns and everything like that.  
And actually WeChat reached market saturation in the same way that WhatsApp has in the UK through chat and then added stuff.  
So it doesn't feel like the kind of conditions or the context are quite there, whether that's for X or for something else.  
But one thing I have learned is like that can change very quickly if you find the right hook.  
So I wouldn't rule it out altogether, but it just doesn't feel like those conditions are going to exist in the markets, both because of saturation points and kind of maturity. Yeah.  
  
[53:47] And I think there's also a kind of a user expectation thing.  
WeChat got to the point where Chinese consumers presumably expected to be able to get stuff through there.  
And that required a certain sacrifice of the user experience for some brands.  
  
[54:00] I think most brands here would be very reluctant to give up that level of control, whether it was to X and Elon Musk or someone else.  
They've invested in their own app. So for me, the everything app in the Western markets, it's probably the smartphone operating system themselves.  
And actually the bigger threat is more things being put into the operating system and I think you can look at apple pay and google pay and the way those evolved and you look at the applecard and how that's become a store of value and how that could be used for doing payments in the future and even kind of the mapping applications have become kind of aggregators forthe on-demand ubers bolts etc of this world and so I kind of expect more to go into the operating system in themselves and through coming back to a point we made earlier that may getantitrust and regulators involved yeah and so that seems to me a more likely scenario than an upstart or even established app suddenly becoming the everything app but you know could ithappen in the business world you could argue that microsoft are kind of getting there with office in the way that could develop in the future could be a different twist on what theeverything app might look like specifically going back to twitter as well I mean we're all very exposed to twitter because we were were heavy Twitter users and have been soaked in itsince day one.  
But if I think about the commerce payments or that kind of stuff, I wonder if anybody stands a better chance of being an everything app in our market. It's Facebook.  
  
[55:24] Because the number of Facebook users versus Twitter users in my life is vastly, vastly more Facebook users.  
  
[55:32] Yes, we've had that, Ben. Went.  
  
[55:35] When? I mean, the whole of the Middle East, the countries are effectively, businesses run on WhatsApp, apart from the payment bit, because they haven't got anything out of thedoor yet. No, and I mean, they're slow, but I mean, look what happened.  
They saw an opportunity with the faltering of Twitter and they launched Threads.  
I don't know if they've done a good or a bad job, but I think the point is that they've got loads and loads more users.  
And if they decided to launch something, they could launch it to many millions more users than Twitter could, even before it had its massive decline in use.  
So I suppose my answer to you, Matt, is I'm not really feeling it, but I think probably Ewan is a little bit more swayed.  
  
[56:13] We are nearly completely out of time so we had Humane and the AI pin was still on our list and we haven't got to that unfortunately we can do that in a sentence each come on wellI actually think I'd like to give it more than a sentence so we're going to save that over to give it a whole episode of its own I think it would be interesting I want to cover AI new deviceschat GPT chat GPT and basically things that are computing devices that are not smartphones I think that would be a really interesting episode we'll do that in the new year for those thatwere listening last episode which would have gone out a couple weeks ago I raved about cars electric cars and those sorts of things electric car update the electric car that I said I reallyliked and was really good it has gone back to its leasing company and you will be delighted to know that having expounded long and loud about how all the traditional car manufacturerswere having their lunches eaten by all these brands which had got far ahead on on electric vehicles.  
I'm now driving an electric BMW. Oh, okay. So, yeah. Right, well, we need to discuss that.  
We'll cover it off, and we will revisit it in a future episode, but the Smith household is now besowed with an i4, a BMW i4, which is an electric family saloon, and I was very…  
  
[57:27] Aware when we were choosing that that it might be compromised because it's a vehicle that is available both as a gas vehicle and an electric vehicle yes and I have to say that myprobably not very demanding usage of it has not found that at all it's really really good and actually for this audience particularly what I've noticed is that of all of the manufacturers i'vetried thus far bmw's in car entertainment experience has the best integration with CarPlay that I've ever used The key for my car is now in my Apple Wallet, so I can open and drive my carjust with the key out of Apple Wallet with the NFC.  
When I start to run low on charge and I'm in CarPlay, the car sends a notification through CarPlay to the phone, and you can navigate to charging points in Apple Maps.  
It doesn't bump you out to the native BMW route finder, and there's lots and lots more information going backwards and forwards. I mean, I know that in most cases, people using CarPlayare just sort of remotely viewing the screen on their phone to do navigation.  
Yes, basically, yeah. But there's lots of additional information.  
  
[58:33] And what's really fascinating, actually, is that when you're navigating through the menu system of the car, you normally see all the apps that the car has, all the rubbish apps thatyou never use.  
And then the thing that says CarPlay, and then you press that, and then there are the apps that you really want to use.  
And in the BMW system, all of the CarPlay apps that you have are surfaced in their system.  
So I can set up shortcuts and open them from menu items and set them up as widgets on my dashboard.  
Actually, like, you know, kind of with the same prominence as if they were BMW-provided apps, which is really cool their icons come through and everything as well it's very impressiveso I mean it won't be the right vehicle for everyone but actually just from a apple user from an integration point of view I was greatly impressed so there you go let's do more than that wewill revisit that but yes a lot more time has passed since the recording of these two episodes but yeah everything I said about south korean cars I think it still stands but.  
  
[59:30] For reasons I'll explain later I have a bmw okay I'm now back to driving a German traditional manufacturing vehicle.  
Awesome. Okay, gents, we are out of time. 2023 has been a bit of a hodgepodge for us.  
We've had a very inconsistent recording schedule, lots of disruption and changes in our various personal lives.  
I'm hoping that 2024 proves to be a little calmer and a little more predictable for all of us.  
So we're going to have a couple of weeks off over New Year and we'll be back in January with the next episode.  
And as ever, we would really welcome your feedback if you have any time during the holiday period to catch up on episodes and you've got any thoughts feedback you'd like to give us I'llprobably respond more quickly than I have to previous correspondents so please write in use the website 361podcast.com you can find us on mastodon at 361podcast at mastodon.social ifthat's a mouthful just go to the website and there are links there for all of our social presence if you really would like to you can send us a private email as well and all the information isavailable on the website, Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. Likewise.  
Thank you. Brave plan for spoken up. Lovely. And see you again in 2024. Bring it on. Bye bye.  
  
[1:00:45] There we go. Right. Cars, yeah. Not going to talk about it lots more, but I really think that the ability to make good in-car software, I know we said this in the episode, the abilityto make good in-car software.  
He can still hear me. He's got his wireless headphones on. I thought we were recording a post-show, but, you know, well, it's not like Ralph Blanford's been bought off.  
Well, just for the listeners, Blanford just waved and then I think he's gone to the restroom, as we would say in America. He's gone for a little rest.  
Yes. Yeah. Oh, he's back. That's better. Could you hear us while you were busy? Yes.  
I enjoyed my commentary. Thank you for that.  
  
[1:01:26] Alright, so, post-show, what were we talking about? What did Father Christmas bring you? Headache.  
I believe Father Christmas might be bringing me a Concord Lego set.  
Ooh. Ooh, very nice. So, the grown-ups in our family don't really do Christmas presents, so So we tend to focus on the kids, but we have some new gaming console things coming into thehouse for Christmas this year. Xbox?  
No, we went PlayStation, actually. Cool. Because I think there's probably not a lot to choose, but we are big into FIFA, or it's not FIFA anymore, it's FC24, because FIFA and EA Sportshad a falling out, and that's the extent of the gaming industry commentary I'm prepared to do.  
But he and his friends all like to play FIFA football, And so we've done that, and I hope I don't live to regret it, because I'm obviously going to spend the rest of my life now doingPlayStation technical support on why doesn't this multiplayer game work.  
Well, look, if you need any assistance, let me know, because I've been doing it for quite a long time. Yes.  
I do both. We have Xbox and PlayStation, because do you remember the PlayStation stopped working?  
We were a PlayStation household that stopped working, genuinely. Right.  
And then we went and got an Xbox console.  
  
[1:02:40] And then the PlayStation magically did, actually. I just thought, oh, randomly, just before I throw it out, before I go and try and get it fixed.  
Oh, it is working. I had some hard disk fault.  
So we have both now. So Archie Elders, he does Xbox, typically, and then Freddy does PlayStation.  
Yeah, we can do some gaming together. There you go. Well, yes.  
I don't have time to read my books, and I definitely don't have time to start gaming.  
Yeah. To date, we've been a Switch household, and that's been just about right, because Mario games, like I said, were the right age group for us.  
But yes we're growing up growing up exactly yeah fortnight bring it on right then I think that's enough post-show chat I don't think we've got anything anymore but we don't need no don'teven mind we've got loads I've just got one more resolution for new year's oh yes we recalled one of these and I want ewan to just end up trying to do zero takes but 20 takes later justfailing miserably that's not a resolution that's an aspiration, Can you cut something together like that, Mark? That can't be allowed. That can't be allowed.  
Anyone else makes a mistake, you've got to do the whole thing again.  
Yeah. I can just… Mark, can you just cut that?  
What is this? It's called double standard urine. You just have to deal with it sometimes. I think that's what's happening here. Right.