Florence Ion

This is the Techsploder podcast, conversations with tech professionals about being human in a binary world. Episode 14, Florence Ion. Techsploder is made possible by the financial support of our patrons, like Kevin Silverman, our newest patron. Kevin, good to have you here. If you like what you hear, head on over to patreon.com slash Jason Howell to support the show directly. And thank you for making independent podcasting possible. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Techsploder podcast. I am Jason Howell, your weekly host of this show, where I like to sit down with my friends in technology and talk about their, I've been pitching it to people as their tech origin story. It's almost like we're all like superheroes in the world of tech. And what is our origin story? How did we get here? That's what I like to dive into with the Techsploder podcast. Good to have you here. Good to introduce today's guest, and I have a little bit of a bio, so be patient, Flo. Florence Ion is a technology journalist, podcaster based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently serves as a writer for Gizmodo. You cover a range of tech topics, Android, smart home devices, laptops, mechanical keyboards. She has contributed to publications like Ars Technica, PC World, Android Central over the past decade. Flo was also one of my co-hosts on the All About Android podcast at Twit and continues to podcast weekly with material on RelayFM. Oh, and she loves Tamagotchi, Pokemon, and 90210. All the essentials. Man, you just covered me from top to bottom. Boom. There we go. Yeah. Perfect. Got to give you a grand entrance. You're a special person. Thank you. I know. Well, I mean, thank you for calling me a special person is what I'm going to say. You can know that. I know. You can know that you're special. You deserve it. How are you doing, Flo? It's good to see you. I'm a little flustered, you know, because before we started recording, I was trying to buy tickets. I know. To a Gabber concert. Yeah. It's just very frustrating to think about the world we live in and how everything is just monopolized by one entity. And that there's not much choice, you know? Ticketmaster. Are you talking about Ticketmaster? I'm talking about Ticketmaster, but it could be applied to, you know, Android versus Apple. Yeah, that's true. So I'm trying to make a link. Yeah, I hate Ticketmaster. That's all I'm going to say about that. Ticketmaster has rarely been a shining light in my life. You know what I mean? The good news is Ticketmaster introduces you to opportunities to see bands you want to see, and everything else is bad news. It's expensive. It's difficult to secure the tickets. If you need to get a refund, that's a pain in the butt. It's just a whole bunch of things. And they're not good with data privacy. So anyways, Ticketmaster. That's my... But you know, it's not... What? You. You're not... Well, Flo, it's great to get you here. Textploder is kind of my opportunity to invite my friends to talk a little bit about themselves. And, you know, like I tell everyone that I invite on, it's a no homework type of podcast. We just... kind of have a little bit of a conversation about what led you to what you do and as I said in your bio you do a lot of things you're very involved in in writing and podcasting and everything and I just kind of want to you know have the opportunity to talk about how you got there what First of all, what was your very first opportunity in tech, like from a professional perspective? Like what was the door that opened for you or that you walked through that kind of led you to where you are now? That would be my internship at MacLife Magazine, rest in peace. Back in the day, I did start in magazines, which is something that used to exist back in the 2000s. This is the pre-2010s, pre-iPad. Florence, what is a magazine? So, OK, were you writing for MacLife at that time or were you doing editing? I had an internship where I was just like an editorial intern. So I was coming into the office and just doing very basic admin and things like that. And then I finally got the opportunity to write an article I think it was they had somebody reached out from a PR team about some artist that was using their Mac. It was always like one of those stories back in the day. There were always stories around how creators and creators of then were using Apple products to make things. And that was something. Creatives. Yeah. Creatives. That's what they were back in 2009. Because back then they weren't. Yeah, we didn't have this. Blanket terminology of, oh, you create creative things. You're a creator. Yeah. Yeah. So I ended up interviewing this person and writing a little story. I got paid $250 for it. Cushing. The 500 word article. $250 for 500 words. That sounds pretty good, actually. That was actually pretty good for an intern who had never written anything for a publication before. I was four years into the journalism program. It took me five years to graduate, but that was because of how hard it is to get classes, blah, blah, blah. It's hard working and going to school at the same time. Everyone have grace for people who do not finish in four years, okay? Yeah. Yeah. I don't judge. No, I know. I just want to put it out there. Yeah. I think it's an accomplishment to finish and to complete however you get there. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, so after that opportunity, sorry, I went to- No, no, no. I was just going to say, so that article, I'm curious about the article. Is that online anywhere? Or was it, now you've never been able to find it, do you have it saved off to the side? Not that you need to look at it now, but Like that was like your first, you know, it's almost like, it's almost like you frame that cause like, ah, that was my first, even though you probably read it now and you'd probably cringe at the writing, you know, cause you've come a long way over the years, but that would seem to me to be the kind of thing that like, you know, that's, that's where it all started right there on the wall. Well, it's probably on a PDF somewhere on the far internet because back then the way that you would pirate magazines is somebody would scan it in its entirety. Scan it to PDF. Yeah, and put it on the web. So I remember that I was able to find it. You know, the thing I kick myself for is that I didn't save many physical magazines. I saved the PC Gamers. Where I had my name in the byline because, or in the masthead, because I have an ex-boyfriend that was like really into PC Gamer and I wanted solid receipts that I had done this. See? See? Yeah. That's my name. But I used to be the MacLife ones, which I probably should have because... Well, but you were young then. I didn't have room. You didn't know. You didn't know. You didn't have room for physical media. I would imagine if I was to put myself in your position at that point of my career, I probably wouldn't have known the significance of holding on to it. It wouldn't have occurred to me back then. That's the kind of thing that... later I would look at I've done the same thing with like buzz out loud podcasts from cnet where I didn't hold on to these podcasts for years and years and years just assuming like they were going to be on the internet forever and then cnet dumped the archive and you can only find like a very small portion of them Yeah. And CNET is an entity that that you kind of expected would be would have a. Oh, totally. Right. For a really long time. And also like Buzz Out Loud was such a big thing at the time that I think I naively expected like, oh, well, it will always always be a part of CNET history. So they wouldn't get rid of those things. And sure enough. They did because storage is expensive. I know. Well, and for us, we got folded into the UK division of it. Anyway, but see, this is a good conversation to start off with because it really is about like I've been in this industry through changing mediums. And now I'm at this part of my life where I've been doing this for 15, 16 years and And now there's other changes on the horizon for me. You know, like I've got to start really figuring out how I'm going to use AI to help me become a better journalist. And, you know, how am I going to make use of all this software to make to make content and engage people and, you know, keep my footprint out there? So that's a really good question that you brought up. In this time where AI and large language models and everything have become very much a buzzword, but also to a certain degree, applied pressure on many industries or kind of provided tools that... Either people choose to use them or they don't. But yeah, in the case of writing, there's potentially a lot of benefit to come from that. Are you using them and to what degree? How can they be used responsibly in your mind? there's actually been a lot more conversations around this in the last couple of weeks I've noticed since, you know, it's like summertime, everybody kind of went dormant up here in the Northern hemisphere. And now I'm starting to see social media come back around about this because there's a lot of people who started their own businesses and are afraid that it's some, you know, their niche offering is something that would get replaced by a well-programmed robot. Um, Because it's programmed off of their interactions at the end of the day. But I think the most, how shall I say, the best way for the conversation to really become productive is by talking about how it becomes an aid to everything. So for me, researching has always been a very painstaking thing because I'd have to think about the very right things to Google. I'd have to think about the things to look for. It's not that AI necessary replaces that, but it does help take off some of the brain labor of kind of coming up with that stuff. It most certainly does. And sort of like, and just organize it for you. And I think that... You know, I've always had such a hard time. I've always had such a hard time staying on task because of neurodivergence. And so having a gadget of sorts, a chatbot that would help me essentially do what I already do in my own brain, except it's a computer, so I can't steer it. You know what I mean? Because you could steer your own brain when you're trying to negotiate with yourself. But a computer is not... Believe me, I know. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I can talk myself into the worst idea in the world. I'm going through it right now. There's a microphone I really want and I keep telling myself I want it. I'm like, no, but I can't afford it. But I keep telling myself, oh, but you're going to get it anyways. Yeah. Like, what do you stop it? Like, that would be irresponsible of me to do right now. Yeah. Exactly. I know what you mean. So I've been using it as an aid, you know, mostly right now for grammar checking. Yeah. Mostly for like sometimes this one's been a little harder. I've been trying to use Gemini because I pay for a high tier of workspace. I've been trying to use Gemini to help me search Google better outside of just the pop-up that people have been experiencing. Like I've been going to Gemini.Google.com. Yeah, the GSC, the Google search or the generative search experience. This generative search, right, experience. Yeah. Um, this, this one, I've actually been going and say like, help me plan. So the first way I did it outside of work is I had it help me plan my packing list for this last trip that I took because I was very curious. Okay. How are you going to help me in this situation? And I followed it to a tee. Did you? I did. That's the other part of it is like you can do it and you can look at it and go, oh, that's pretty good. Or do you lean in and trust that it's going to lead you to the right place? And how did it do? So as far as the packing list went. Yeah. Yeah. The information it picked up on that, I gave it all the requisite information it needed to have. So I said, I have a 27 inch suitcase. I am going to be in this country and this country for two weeks. And I need to be able to pack in case there is rain. But I don't want to bring like rain boots. And I need to be able to like you can you can tell it. It's like when you're spitting things out to a friend. Totally. Tell it all pertinent information. If it needs to be considered, just rattle it off. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're spot on. Yeah. So I did that and I ended up exporting the packing list to a Google Doc and then I went in and kind of added a couple extra things. So I made a little extra section for myself because I had to pack like Because I had events to go to, so I had to pack two outfits that had nothing to do with the ones that I would be wearing day in and day out. I ended up being able to pack with enough room to bring back a lot of stuff. Oh, nice. So it was efficient. It was efficient. It told you what to bring and it left some space. Intentionally, did you ask it and make sure that you don't overload me with stuff so I have space to bring stuff back? I'd have to go back through my logs to see if I did that. Or did it just lock into that? I don't think I mentioned that. I think I said so it doesn't – I don't know if I mentioned so it doesn't get too heavy. But generally, I'm always within the weight limit. When I get, when I bring the big suitcase, that's always been like my thing. So I was well within the weight limit. It was at 20 kilograms. Can you pick up the big suitcase and know right off the top, like, oh, that's 50 pounds. I need to take something out. So can I, yeah. 20 kilograms is what I go for. Oh, okay. Because that 30 kilograms, they make you pay. Yeah, you don't want that. Or they make you take stuff out. Okay, so it worked for that. Okay, so that's one example where it works really well. And that's because that was a lot of generalized information. Yeah. A lot of it was subjective information that it took from advice. And so it like ranked that, I'm assuming. Then I went... Then I went to try and use it for. OK, so for the foldable coverage that we had these last couple of weeks. Yeah, I needed to look up some comparison specs and usually what I do, which is very messy. I used to, sometimes I'll have a spreadsheet, right, that I keep updated, but sometimes I just can't like look at it for whatever reason. And so I went to Gemini and I tried to ask it like, give me the differences in display sizes between this and this and this model. but it kept bringing me back all the wrong information. And it was because the information was also being pulled from like rumors and leak posts that were tagged under that entity. Yeah. So when I was looking for like pixel fold information, it was still grabbing information from like old pixel fold leaks that had come out before the phone was announced last year. Those articles are still out there. It's not like once the phone is out. Exactly. Those rumored articles that were published before. How does the LLM know the difference between those two things? They can both supposedly give valid information. So then did you tell it, like correct it and say, leave any leaked or unofficial information out of this? No, I gave up and I went and I made a spreadsheet. I was like, oh God, this is not going to work. That's what I ended up doing. Because I had to fact check everything it sent me, which ended up adding more time. you do have the fact check yeah so yeah I i find in my experience that yeah that it's that it's great for like a starting point like building a skeleton or a skeletal structure of something it's great for and then filling in the actual information and stuff that I either have to fact check or I have to bring in um if I'm completely honest I used perplexity to help build out the bio that I read for you at the top of the episode um However, that's what I used to collect the information. And then I wrote it in my voice. You know what I mean? And I made sure that it was accurate. But yeah, these tools can be really great given, you know, like they have limits. Like you can't fully trust what you're given. You really do have to scrutinize it. Otherwise, you'll end up in an uncomfortable situation. But it's really, it's a time. It can be a very big time saver. It definitely is for me. Well, I'm trying to figure out more ways to use it. I've already talked about on my podcast material. A couple months ago, I talked about how I used it to help me send out emails to parents. Because it's very good at, again, taking in all the subjective ways that society is like, you need to be nice in your writing. And then applying that because... otherwise I will put emotion into what I'm writing even when I don't mean to right so or or sometimes like I I'm very verbose in my writings and and I'll say all this and say all this and you know I might run it through and say all right here's my email keep it in my voice like you know don't don't add anything in that doesn't sound like me based on what you're seeing here But refine this for me because I don't or remove the references to me out of it. I want this to be or to you and make it more to them or everyone. You know what I mean? Things like that, it can do really well with. Yeah. Interesting. Well, that's our AI portion. We don't have to spend the whole time talking about AI because I certainly could. This stuff is really fascinating to me. What computer did you cut your teeth on when you were younger? Macintosh Performa 460. Macintosh Performa 460. 460 I got to take a look at this one uh let's see here do we have a wiki I'm trying to okay I'm gonna drop the every mac link in youtube oh yeah that's that's what I just came up with as well sorry I'm vamping while I get my screen share going here add okay so it was this little dilly bob it's so tiny Right, so that was the Performa itself, right? Like a Mac mini situation and then it had a monitor that sat on top of it. Oh, wow. I remember those. I haven't thought about those in a while. 460 features, 33 megahertz processor, 68030, four megs of RAM. Oh, boy. Can you believe that? I know. Isn't that crazy? That is so crazy. And an 80 megabyte hard drive, which probably was massive at the time, probably felt like so much space. I still had to use floppies because I didn't want people, I didn't want my parents snooping in on my files. So you wanted to be able to remove them and put them in their own hiding place. Yeah, that's what I did. I had little floppy disks for everything. Right on. So was that like the family computer? The family got it and everybody kind of had time. Okay, so that makes sense that you'd have all of your stuff on a floppy and this is your personalization that you bring to it. Mm-hmm. That's neat. What are some of the things that you did on? I mean, it was manufactured in 93. Is that when you had it? Because this is like, if not pre-internet, right when the internet was starting to kind of really become a thing that was aware. People were more aware of the internet in 93, but it was still early. We got it at the end of 93 because in 94, I was in third grade and I was doing all of my essays on the computer. Some kids were still handwriting their essays, but... I was like, well, I have a computer, so I'm going to print it out because we had a printer as well. Yes, of course. Stylewriter. Stylewriter 2, I believe, was the Apple printer that was paired with it. And it was a big part of like 94 was a big year in terms of tech pop culture. The movies during that year were getting more visually interesting. They were just doing more households were getting computers, more schools had computers and or at least a computer lab. So more people were getting access to this kind of thing. And it felt like that's when it really started to kind of normalize among. Yeah, there it is. The style writer. Funny enough, the HP that I have right now kind of looks like that. The way it the way the little tray comes out. Yeah. Wow, that takes up some space. It did. But I do remember that printer. Yeah. Oh, that era. It was not very good, by the way. Is that a color? The ink bled a lot. It was a black and white printer. Oh, it was black and white. Okay. Wow. I remember the ink would bleed a lot. When I was turning in those assignments, I would touch the type a little too early and then smear it. And so I have a lot of smeared assignments now. Oh, well, at least it wasn't, you know, hard to read handwriting in cursive. And the teacher probably appreciated it regardless. Which they don't make children do anymore. So. Cursive? It depends on the school. Some schools, you know, still stick to it as like an early, like, you know, my daughter's. The man. Write cursive. They went to a Montessori school that taught cursive initially. But I mean, you know, they stopped writing in cursive in like second grade or whatever. It's not the same. Not the way it was when I was a kid. And it sounds like probably you too in school. Um, were your parents like really support, like, were you outwardly interested in technology? I mean, aside from the computer side of things and where your parents, um, you know, did they, how do they feel about that? You know, some parents are like, no, you can't play video games. That's bad. That'll rot your brain. Other parents are like, no, I had video games on this performer. Okay. Most of them were trial or trials of games. Back in the day, you could get by with a trial of a video game. Um, let's see. I had the video game. Okay. So to answer your question about my parents, my father was working in Silicon Valley at the time. He was working in like the clean room labs, literally making wafers. Oh, wow. Okay. Yes. And remember, do you remember in the nineties, there was a very big thing about take your daughter to work day. I mean, I remember that being a thing. Yeah. I don't remember specific to the nineties, but yeah. Well, from what I understand, it kind of it's a thing that kind of stopped. But in the 90s, I remember it being such a thing because it wouldn't just be me out of class. Like it would be a bunch of us girls would be at work with their moms and dads for the day. And so I went to my dad's work a couple of times and he let me play. Mostly what I did was just play with his computer and raid the supply closet for like pencils and notebooks. Yes. Yeah. But I did get to go into the clean room and we always had computers around. And I think it's because my parents... So my dad is like at the cusp of Boomer Gen X and then my mom is Gen X. So I had very young parents. And I think that because... they were kind of young enough to be interested in adopting this, to have seen it kind of becoming a thing. I think that's why our household had an own it, you know, had a, had a focus on getting this stuff in. I mean, yeah, My first computer experience was actually an Apple laptop. I do not remember which one it was. I remember it had the rollerball embedded into the chassis. That was my dad's work computer. Interesting. Oh, my goodness. Those things were chunky. Those things were. They were. Yeah, massive. But at the time, not massive. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were, that was a big deal, but only in retrospect, does it feel chunky at the time? You know, what was that compared to? That was compared to a massive typewriter. Yeah. Yeah. A typewriter or, you know, even the desktop computers, they were massive too. You know, they took up a lot of, a lot of space. Everything was massive. So anything that was portable that you could fold up and potentially put into a backpack, like that was a huge deal. Now they're just like, they're razor thin, not quite, but I mean, they're dang close. It's crazy. Yeah, I... Wow. Okay, so that was... That's kind of how it all got introduced to me. And then, of course, you finally get the computer in the house and you become very obsessed. And so I used to make... All the stuff I could make on, like, Clarisworks was so fun for me. All the different patterns and ways that you could make things. This was all pre-internet, by the way. My favorite games to play were, we had a version of Mahjong, which was really fun. Ah, yes. Yes, you would, you know, match the tiles and then it would make, like, this explosive sound animation. It would be like, ah, that's so fun. Yeah. Yeah. No, Mahjong was great. Mahjong was, yeah. I played a lot of Mahjong on, I can't remember if it was on my Macintosh, but definitely on my Windows PC, which came after the Macintosh. And then I went back. You remember VET? VET. The game VET. No, I don't. Let me see if I can get you a, let me see if I can get you a list. VET software. So the game was called VET, V-E-T? Mm-hmm. Like Corvette, V-E-T-T-E. Oh, T-T-E. Oh, okay. Oh, Vette with an exclamation point. Oh, Spectrum Hollowbite, 1989 is the era of this game. Okay, so I'm not entirely sure that I remember this, the street race simulation through San Francisco. Yes. This box would get me going. Back in the day, I would have loved to play it. Yes, so this was all about driving a race car around San Francisco. Everything was super poly-shaped. Even the people were just, like, squares with circles for heads. But this was all pre-Grand Theft Auto. Like, I'm sorry, you could run people over and they would scream. It was bad. But it was San Francisco in pure poly, you know, retro-graphic, like... It's very retro core. If you get it emulated, it's extremely retro core. It looked a little different on PC than they did on Mac. It was a little more graphical on PC. Okay. But this is PC, I think, that we're looking at right now. Yeah. And what they would let you do... Yeah, see, the PC one doesn't have... the mac one was special because of how the mac won't look different but what was great about it is it was san francisco so I could drive up the great highway and then it would take you downtown and then it would take you across the golden gate bridge into like a field that was supposed to be marin county like how freaking cool to have that as a kid the first time ever to experience virtual way of going through a city that your parents have driven you to you know what I mean Wow. Okay, so is this – for the video viewers, is this looking a little bit closer to what – Exactly. You see that they have that beginning. Yeah, it has the total Mac kind of vibe to it, the graphics and – Kind of a, kind of a Mac paint quality to it. You know, it's kind of like we got a bunch of people who are really good at Mac paint to make a video game. It was so good. Oh, that looks great. Oh, I would have too. I'm not, I've not heard of this game before. It looks awesome. Play it now. Heck yeah. You know, the game that I played a lot. Oh, sorry. I was just going to say, you used to be able to put in codes to unlock cars besides Corvettes. Oh, that's special. Yes. The game I used to play a lot on the Mac was Shufflepuck Cafe. I don't know if you ever played that one. It was Shufflepuck Cafe. Yeah. We're like, OK, we'll go ahead and search that one. Yes, it was. And because my first Mac, I can't remember the exact model of it, but it was a monochrome. So it was black and white. And yeah, it was just essentially Shufflepuck. Look at those graphics. Look at that. I know. Isn't that fun? I had so much fun playing this game. I love that Mac. Did you ever play Shuffleboard in real life? Like from what you learned from here? Well, I mean, I don't know if it applied to this, but you know, you go into an arcade and they usually have something like this. So I'm sure that they did. But yeah, I played this a lot. Wow. OK, the title imagery for Shufflepuck is quite it looks quite dramatic. There's it does. It's kind of a guy in the middle. There's aliens. It's kind of like a Star Wars cantina sort of quality to it. That's really what it was meant to be in my memory anyways. My memory as a kid. I do have to take a quick break. Then we're going to come back. I love this stuff. I just love diving into nostalgia. It just makes me so happy and makes me feel like a kid again. We're going to talk about some topics that I know are near and dear to Flo's heart. That's coming up in a second. All right, let's talk Tamagotchi because this is a technology because Tamagotchi is a technology, right? Like, you know, it's low tech. It's still tech. It's pretty high tech now. Well, see, this is what I want to talk about, right? Like when you first got into Tamagotchi, I'm guessing you did as a kid or maybe this is something that came later. Like how did the Tamagotchi thing happen? I know it was a trend and it was a trend that was past my age. Like I didn't have that as a kid. But like how did you get into it? So 1996, actually it was 97, 1997. It's 96 is when the Tamagotchi launched in Japan. And then they brought it over here more, more so in 97, 97 is when the like the third party virtual pets were cropping up. And so that summer, this is a whole story. I'm going to make it that summer. My parent, my mom won a trip to Florida from a Snapple bottle cap. Okay. A trip to Florida from a Snapple bottle cap. Correct. So that actually happens. It did in 1997. That's amazing. Yeah. It was like to this very hoity-toity spa. And my parents always joked that the place made them so hungry they would sneak out and go get McDonald's after the dining hall was closed. Because it was like, you know, like 90s. You know, skinny food kind of situation. And so then after that, what happened is they flew us out, kids, to go to Disney World because it was like, ah, let's make a whole trip out of this. And so for some odd reason, I have a very, very vivid memory of we walked into this this shop to look for a film camera because we had an Advantix, a Kodak Advantix 35 millimeter camera, which was the little cartridges that used to be able to just like pop in. And then a motor would load the film instead of you having to physically like move the film and make sure it gets caught in there. Yeah. Yeah. So we had to find a shop that sold it because we had run out of Advantix. My parents didn't bring enough. We were going to Disney world. Yep. There it is. Oh my God. Splashbacks. Yeah, no kidding. Yep. Yep. A load of photo cartridge. Yeah, I remember those days. And so here you're going to want to Google this. So look, look up Dinky Dino. D-I-N-K-Y Dino. Dinky Dino. Okay. That was my first virtual pet. And I bought it at this random shop. The guy just had them behind the counter. And I remember begging my dad, like, oh, my God, Dad, please, please, please, can I get one of those? Everybody is getting these virtual pets. Someone on eBay is selling one for $39.99 used. So does this look like your original? That's it. Wow, and do you still have that one? So, funny you should ask. No, seriously. That's what I do here. Two weeks ago, I mentioned I was in London. I'm first generation born here, so a lot of my extended family is in Romania, as maybe you've heard me mention before. And I met up with one of my cousins in England, and she told me... about all the stuff that came through from us because my parents would just pack up our stuff we were done with and like bring it to romania every summer oh yeah okay yeah dickie dino took a trip overseas yeah dickie dino went to romania and has never been seen again so oh that's too bad that's too bad well you can get another one if you wanted to what color was yours because it wasn't red you were saying no mine was green green okay all right so is dinky dino is that considered that's not considered like a like a authentic tamagotchi that was like a digital friend kind of spin-off of the tamagotchi thing at that point correct correct got it okay yeah But it was, I mean, this is a very popular toy in Japan. It stayed popular in Japan because in, so from 1997 through the mid 2000s, Bandai kept the Tamagotchi brand here alive. back then is when they released the Tamagotchi connection was the first time that you could connect your Tamagotchi to a friend's Tamagotchi and kind of have them visit each other. Wow. That's a big step. It was a very big step. And, but I guess the popularity kind of petered out for a little bit because of the way the internet was coming in and changing how people were gaming and, Right. Why do you need to have this single purpose little plastic toy when we can do everything we ever want? You know, your imagination is the limit on a computer screen or whatever. Exactly. And so Bandai kind of phased out the special Tamagotchi here in the States. They stayed pretty, I think there were a couple of years it was kind of missing, but they kept it going in Japan. Yeah. in the 2010s. And as soon as the 2010s were over, there's this huge blow up of people moving away from the internet, trying to get offline. There's that trope about, oh, I used a flip phone and I found that my life was much more stress-free. We're really like delving into that part of being offline because we've been online so much. And so Bandai was like, this is the opportunity to bring it back into the zeitgeist. And so over the last five years, it's introduced the Tamagotchi pics, which is a lot more for smaller kids. That one has a camera on it, and it just wants you to take pictures of certain colors so that you can make certain items appear more. Yeah. The Pix Party, by the way, is the better version of this. Don't buy this one. There's a joke in the community about this. We hate this one so much. that at the Tamagotchi meetup that I helped plan last month here in the Bay. Of course you did. Somebody dropped one and everybody was like, that's okay. It's the first Tamagotchi picks. Are you, are you a part of a Tamagotchi discord? I'm curious. I am. I'm a part of several, actually. But we do have a Bay Area one that's specific. It's amazing. And we all share, you know, it was good. It was a really incredible event, I have to say. It was really incredible. So 30 people, over 30 people showed up, all ages. That's awesome. And you coordinated this? Yes. Me and my friend, Mark, who I'm going to shout out. That's amazing. Shout out to Mark for helping me plan all this. Good job. We both have Costco cards. So we were like, yeah, we've got Costco cards. We'll bring the snacks. We got pizzas, we got hot dogs and... Sandwiches. Yeah, sandwiches, okay. So we had a picnic, so everybody just kind of like brought stuff to share. We had the Tamagotchi original board game going on a blanket on the floor, and whoever was interested could play that. We had a patching station, so somebody was patching Japanese versions of Tamagotchi and putting English patches on there. Oh. Yeah. So it's no longer just in Japanese. It makes it easier to use the Tomodachi. So were people bringing their Japanese versions to be patched? Yes. They got them as, what, a collectible? And now they can actually use them? So this is the Tamagotchi Smart. How does that work? So this one, it's a little dirty, sorry. So this one came out in Japan in 2021, 22. And it's not on right now because I haven't charged it. But I will show you how the patch was able to be done. So they take these little Tama Smart Cards. that are sold overseas. And so the person just essentially spoofed the patch onto this connection and was just going around and plugging it in and resetting the firmware and getting it, getting the English patch put in that way. So that's what was happening at the Tamagotchi. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's so cool. The other thing people were doing, I'm going to give you some visuals here. So this is the new Tamagotchi Connection. This one came out a couple of weeks ago and it is the reprise of the 2005-2006 release. Because they saw like these got very expensive on the aftermarket. So the original ones of these cost as high as like $200-$300 depending on the rarity. But what you can apparently do is you can unscrew the chassis, take off the top, and actually put a different background. You see how there's like a little background on there? Yes. Yeah, sometimes they have that kind of like faint. So somebody had brought holographic different backings to put on people's Tamagotchis. So there was a station where people were unscrewing their Tamagotchis in the 85-degree heat. That's amazingly nerdy. I love it. There is a group of people and they were all there that were like, this is the right place for me to be right now. I love Tamagotchi. I want to hack it. I want to put my own desktop or my own background wallpaper on these things. That's amazing. Good job. Are you going to do it again next year? Like have a second annual sort of thing? We're doing one every season. Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, and I have to tell you, there's remote, there's other locations that have been started. So there's like a Toronto Tamagotchi group and there's a Las Vegas Tamagotchi group and there's a SoCal Tamagotchi group and there's a London Tamagotchi group. And so we're all meeting with each other on social media because our world is so small anyway on the internet. Yeah, yeah. Everybody, like that's how I met Mark, my friend. I met him through the Tamagotchi subreddit. And when I saw a comment he left about being from the Bay Area, I sent him a DM and was like, will you be my friend? I'm in the Bay Area too. Nobody does Tamagotchi with me here. So. That's awesome. So I found friends. And like I said, it ranges in ages. I mean, I got my eight-year-old neighbor into Tamagotchi. And his mom is borrowing one of my other Tamagotchi units so that they could kind of play together when I'm not there. There were some elderly folk that showed up. And it was just... it was just a really, it was just really nice. It was just really nice. And the power of the internet kind of validated to me because these people could have been anybody, but we just all had the shared love of this thing. And we all just happened to be in the same region. It was beautiful. It was really good. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, I love it. That's so cool. Um, So Tamagotchi, and probably related to this, but I know that you're big into Pokemon for similar reasons or like, you know what I mean? I realize they're totally different, but there's something very similar between these things about these like digital pets or kind of animals with their own personalities and the trading aspect, I guess, is similar between these two. How do you connect those two? I'm actually not so much into the trading part of it. I do have a deck and I do have trading... I do know how to play the trading card game. I actually used to play it very seriously for strategy. But lately, the Pokemon thing, it's kind of like... In our household... Okay, so you know how some households are Disney households? We're a Pokemon household. Got it. Okay. It's just something... we all super enjoy. It's really, it's a really cute thing to have around the house. Every year I buy, every year I buy a new Pokemon Christmas decoration because they will have special annual ones that they put out. So that's my version of the Christmas village. Yep. Yep. You know, it's just a fun way for us in the house to keep our inner child alive. It's a fun thing to share with the kid and, Everybody has their favorite Pokemon in the house. Right. We go out for Pokemon Go walks. Yeah, so you're still playing Pokemon Go. Yes. That would be the technology angle. Okay, so I have a question about that. Yeah. Because Pokemon, as you just said, is a universe in and of itself. You know, you could be all in on Star Wars or Disney or whatever. Pokemon is a universe that I, you know, was definitely not part of my experience growing up. You know, it came later than my childhood. So I have not bought into the universe. But I get it. Like, people are just really, really into it. So, yeah. It has its own universe, and Pokemon Go is probably the closest, or you can correct me if I'm wrong, seems to be the closest kind of real world example of the magic of Pokemon, the thing that everybody who loves Pokemon connects to. Is that the mecha experience for Pokemon users, or could you envision something being better than that, and what would that look like? Would it be like a wearable? You know what I mean? Like a wearable that has all of this stuff so you don't need to use your phone anymore? Would that be an even better version of Pokemon if it was done right? Or is Pokemon Go kind of like a really great kind of real-world example of the magic of Pokemon? Okay, so I think the big one right now is... Okay, so there are all these different ways to be in the Pokemon world. You can play the card game. You can play the original games. You can play the new games on the Switch. Or you can play the games that are on mobile, right? So there's kind of like that's the spectrum of how to get into it. Or you could just be the anime watcher if that's all you want. I pay for something called Pokemon Home. And Pokemon Home is a cloud storage database for your Pokemon. It is not integrated into every single Pokemon franchise available, but currently it works with Pokemon Go and yes, and most of the Switch games. I am still paying for this. Like I it's $15 a year and I'm paying, I'm paying it just to like, keep it going, but I'm really struggling to get the use from it. And so I would like to see more done in this realm where like somebody kind of mentioned in the comments, the phone should be the Pokédex. Like I want the exact situation that's in the anime to be like, in the real fake world. Um, it could be hard to do because Niantic is its own thing with Pokemon go, but right. Pokemon, the Pokemon company has such a tight, tight leash on its IP and anybody who does anything with it, that it would behoove them to just create some sort of universal. Yeah. Go just, I want them to fully lean into the cause play. Just like fully lean in. Let me pretend that this is real. I want it to feel as real as the movie Detective Pikachu did. Was that a good movie? Such a good movie. Such a good movie, by the way. I haven't seen it. My kids have not. It's a really cute movie. And it's got a lot of father-son stuff in it. Yeah, yeah. Like I've heard that it's good. Yeah. It just, it never came up. and now that now they're starting to get older and not be as interested in definitely my older daughter is less and less interested in movies of that kind of genre or whatever the family style movies um savannah might be but we just we are in a pokemon household so it's not something that we've introduced them to really and I went for my third we have with tamagotchi but not so what's that I went for my 33rd birthday to see because the movie debuted on my birthday Oh, yes. It was the same day I interviewed Hiroshi Lockheimer. Dang, that was a big day. It was a big day. I interviewed Hiroshi. He gave me a really nice wooden android. And then I had a Pikachu themed dinner. And then we went and watched Detective Pikachu. And it was your birthday. And then I got pregnant. So that was like the last pre-child birthday. So that's what they used to be like. That's awesome. We are about to run out of time here, but I do want to ask you one last question before we finalize things and then I'll let you go. If technology didn't exist, if this idea of Florence Ion has lived a life where she is connected and dialed into the technology world so much so that it led her to do all these things in her life. If we were in an alternate universe and technology didn't exist, who would adult flow be? What would be your thing? Is there another passion outside of technology that you're like, you know what? That's what I would be doing right now. I would just have gone more fully into the writing part of me. Writing about something else. just write. I just love writing, which is why I was like, let me just become a journalist because that's, I just want to write stuff about stuff. Yeah. And I think I would have maybe been more, I would have felt maybe more brave to do like a fiction situation and like actually make up stories. Oh, okay. Yeah. Versus technology kind of gave me something to focus on. Yeah. With the writing. And so that's why it kind of became like a, a one-two, a paired situation with the writing and the writing and the internet, you know? That's why I'm a blogger now. Do you think you'll ever like write a, would you ever be interested in like writing a book or something like that? Yes. Yes. I've been, the zine that I mentioned in the pre-show. That's right. Was part, it was supposed to, it's, it's supposed to be part of like the creative endeavors that are supposed to eventually lead me there. And, and I also love that we're in this era now where it doesn't matter how old you are. Everybody's pursuing their dreams and passions. So. Yeah. Yeah. There's still time. Good. Yeah. There's always time. Yeah. Right. Florence Aion, I adore you. You're a wonderful human being, and I have had the opportunity to podcast with you for so many years. It turns out we had kind of like a rotating seat on All About Android. You, Gina Trapani, Eileen Rivera, and then Wynn right at the tail end of All About Android, but you were the longest in that seat. You held the seat the longest of any of the others that came before or after you. And you're just wonderful. I love you. You're awesome. Thank you, guys. I love you all so much. Thank you for being here. People can follow your writing on Gizmodo, of course. They can follow your podcasting with Andy and Otko on the Material podcast, Relay FM. Any other things you want to throw out there before we're done? Oh, that Flo everywhere on socials, wherever you want to follow me. So just don't talk to me on X. Well, are you even there? I am, but like, you know, just in case someone needs to reach me because it's a whole professional network thing. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Well, thank you, Flo. I hope you get those tickets and good luck on your fanzine. Thank you. And I can't wait to read it. All right. We'll talk to you later, Flo. all right big thank you to florence ion she is wonderful so happy we had the chance to talk with her today so I hope you learned a little thing something or two about tamagotchi and maybe even uh pokemon and so much more um we do this show based on your support without your support I might not be able to do this show and I want to continue doing this show dang it So if you go to Patreon dot com slash Jason Howell, you can throw your support our way. You get you get things in return. You get ad free versions of the text bloater podcast. You get early access to the videos that I'm producing for the YouTube channel when appropriate. You know, if it's embargoed information or whatever, I have to follow the embargo. But I am posting a lot of those videos at least a day or two early for patrons. You get a Discord community, an exclusive, except for today, I made it, I accidentally opened it up to the public, but it was kind of a good thing because then people got to see it. An exclusive pre-show that only patrons get before the recording of the podcast here, 30 minutes each week, which is a lot of fun. We had a great time today with Flo and Pre-Show. And we also offer the chance to be an executive producer of this show. We have four amazing executive producers, Katie Lake, so wonderful, John Cuney, my good friend, Bill Rutter, Jeffrey Maricini. Y'all support me so, so much by helping out with the Patreon, and I really appreciate it. Patreon.com slash jason. So Jason Howell, one word. We do this show every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern on the TechSploder YouTube channel. And so you can go there. You'll find the live show there. If you subscribe to the podcast, then you don't have to catch the live show if you don't want to. Just make sure you're subscribed and you'll get that. And wherever you're getting this show, like it, rate it, review it, subscribe, wherever you happen to be. I just noticed that the Texploder podcast is on the top 200 technology podcasts in Apple Podcasts, which I was very happy to see. So keep doing what you're doing. Those reviews really help and spreading the word so that we can kind of grow this thing. And you can find everything you need to know at TechSploder.com. That's the single point online to find all the information you need about this show. Thanks again for the appearance of Florence Ayan and for taking time out to join me today. Thank you, Flo. Thank you for watching and listening each and every week. I'm Jason Howell. See you next time on another episode of the TechSploder podcast. Bye, everybody.