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ATP

424: Ethernet Squid

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► - So Casey, I feel like I should buy you a drink or something

00:00:03 ◼   ► because I saw on Twitter earlier today

00:00:06 ◼   ► that you are using watch connectivity

00:00:09 ◼   ► in your new secret app that you haven't told us about yet.

00:00:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, WC stands for water closet.

00:00:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's right, you know, it does.

00:00:17 ◼   ► - It should, it's that good.

00:00:19 ◼   ► So watch connectivity is the framework

00:00:21 ◼   ► with which you need to use to communicate

00:00:23 ◼   ► between a iPhone app and an Apple Watch app.

00:00:27 ◼   ► And I saw you and James Thompson going back and forth

00:00:30 ◼   ► on Twitter earlier today.

00:00:31 ◼   ► By the way, this is a good time to throw in,

00:00:34 ◼   ► I've actually found a wonderful life hack.

00:00:36 ◼   ► The latest version of Tweetbot requires a subscription

00:00:43 ◼   ► to fully unlock all of its features.

00:00:44 ◼   ► They finally moved from paid up front.

00:00:46 ◼   ► - I already know where this is going.

00:00:48 ◼   ► - They finally moved from paid up front

00:00:49 ◼   ► to like paid once to subscription, which makes total sense.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Like it's, I love Tweetbot, it's a great Twitter app

00:00:55 ◼   ► and it makes total sense that they now do have ongoing costs

00:00:58 ◼   ► even more than they did with just development,

00:01:00 ◼   ► which is its own big thing before.

00:01:02 ◼   ► So it makes total sense to have subscription pricing,

00:01:05 ◼   ► I mean for almost any app these days

00:01:06 ◼   ► that doesn't have any other kind of constant income.

00:01:08 ◼   ► But anyway, so when I installed the new version

00:01:11 ◼   ► and it became read only mode until you subscribe.

00:01:16 ◼   ► And not that I think you shouldn't subscribe,

00:01:18 ◼   ► I think you should, however,

00:01:20 ◼   ► this became an accidental feature for me.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:01:24 ◼   ► - And now I have by inaction a read only Twitter client

00:01:28 ◼   ► on my phone and I still use it in read write mode,

00:01:31 ◼   ► paid all the way on my desktop.

00:01:34 ◼   ► But on my phone I have a read only Twitter client

00:01:38 ◼   ► and it's kind of amazing.

00:01:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:41 ◼   ► - I'll think like, oh I should reply to that

00:01:42 ◼   ► and oh well, they don't have to subscribe.

00:01:44 ◼   ► And I'm like, wait a minute,

00:01:45 ◼   ► I've been loving read only Twitter.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And so I just haven't subscribed only because

00:01:51 ◼   ► I actually love being forced not to engage.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And I'm like, oh this is actually better for me

00:01:55 ◼   ► that I post less and react less to things.

00:01:59 ◼   ► - It's so funny you say that

00:02:00 ◼   ► because I love the Tweetbot guys, I love Tweetbot.

00:02:03 ◼   ► It is one of my favorite and most used apps.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And when they went subscription and when they,

00:02:11 ◼   ► I don't know if they like turned off subscribing

00:02:13 ◼   ► on the beta or something like that.

00:02:14 ◼   ► But basically when I needed to have the real live app.

00:02:16 ◼   ► - Oh, that's how I discovered it.

00:02:18 ◼   ► That's right, 'cause they had the beta

00:02:21 ◼   ► and it was like with TestFlight betas,

00:02:23 ◼   ► you can make like test purchases

00:02:26 ◼   ► but they're not actually real

00:02:27 ◼   ► and they expire in a really short time and everything.

00:02:29 ◼   ► But I've had such bad luck in the past

00:02:31 ◼   ► with TestFlight sandbox purchases

00:02:34 ◼   ► resulting in some kind of bug where like

00:02:36 ◼   ► I get random pop-up dialogues all the time on my phone

00:02:39 ◼   ► saying hey, resubscribe sandbox environment

00:02:41 ◼   ► and having to reenter your store password and everything.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Store kit's a buggy mess.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And so I'm like, all right,

00:02:45 ◼   ► I'm not gonna subscribe to this during the TestFlight

00:02:47 ◼   ► because I don't want to mess up

00:02:49 ◼   ► my sandbox purchase environment with test purchases.

00:02:52 ◼   ► And so I just never subscribed.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And that's how I discovered like,

00:02:56 ◼   ► oh, this is actually really nice.

00:02:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so what had happened for me was

00:03:02 ◼   ► I had subscribed for free during the TestFlight

00:03:05 ◼   ► and then the TestFlight ended and I,

00:03:08 ◼   ► I don't remember if I went to the release version

00:03:10 ◼   ► or if the TestFlight, like maybe their own servers

00:03:13 ◼   ► like wouldn't bless a subscription or something.

00:03:15 ◼   ► One way or another, I wasn't subscribed then.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And at this point I had not paid them any money.

00:03:20 ◼   ► And so that's fair that I hadn't been subscribed.

00:03:23 ◼   ► But I noticed, wait a second,

00:03:25 ◼   ► I kind of miss being able to fave things

00:03:27 ◼   ► 'cause I like to use a hard to fave whatever

00:03:30 ◼   ► as like a very simple like, yep, thanks.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Or I see you or ha ha, I get it,

00:03:35 ◼   ► rather than having to reply to a tweet.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And I really missed that.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And that was it.

00:03:40 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:03:42 ◼   ► But I did end up subscribing just like a week or two ago.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And I don't know how long the new Tweetbot has been out.

00:03:47 ◼   ► I feel like it's been at least a month,

00:03:49 ◼   ► probably closer to two months.

00:03:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, something like that.

00:03:51 ◼   ► - And I only subscribed like a week ago.

00:03:53 ◼   ► And I echo everything you said, Marco.

00:03:54 ◼   ► I'm not trying to say you shouldn't subscribe.

00:03:56 ◼   ► It's a wonderful, wonderful app.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And what got me to subscribe was that

00:04:01 ◼   ► I kept the official Twitter app on my phone,

00:04:03 ◼   ► which is hot garbage.

00:04:05 ◼   ► It is not meant for me.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Like I shouldn't say it's hot garbage.

00:04:08 ◼   ► It is not meant for me is a better way of phrasing it.

00:04:10 ◼   ► - Oh no, it's also garbage, don't worry.

00:04:13 ◼   ► You don't need to candy coat this one.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, porque no los dos, right?

00:04:17 ◼   ► But I would use the official Twitter app

00:04:21 ◼   ► when I really, really, really wanted to reply to something.

00:04:23 ◼   ► But it was more the like hearts and things like that

00:04:28 ◼   ► that I miss, or like DMs for example,

00:04:30 ◼   ► that I really wanted Tweetbot for than it was replying.

00:04:34 ◼   ► And now that you say that, I almost wonder

00:04:37 ◼   ► if the Tweetbot folks could engage some sort of like

00:04:41 ◼   ► almost read only mode where maybe you could like

00:04:44 ◼   ► throw somebody a fav, but that was it.

00:04:46 ◼   ► You couldn't do anything else, you know?

00:04:48 ◼   ► - I kind of like that it prevents me from,

00:04:50 ◼   ► 'cause I've also had the same habit.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Like I'll throw a fav on things as kind of like

00:04:55 ◼   ► a acknowledgement or thank you.

00:04:56 ◼   ► But most people who I interact with or who follow me,

00:05:00 ◼   ► I think there's a higher than average chance

00:05:02 ◼   ► of using a third party Twitter client.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And if you use a third party Twitter client,

00:05:06 ◼   ► depending on how you have it set up,

00:05:07 ◼   ► but generally speaking, you don't usually get notified

00:05:10 ◼   ► on favs, because the third party APIs until very recently

00:05:14 ◼   ► didn't have a good way to like stream those in

00:05:16 ◼   ► and be notified all the time.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And so I have a feeling like my favs don't really mean

00:05:21 ◼   ► what I think they mean, and almost no one sees them

00:05:24 ◼   ► in practice, and so it's almost like well,

00:05:27 ◼   ► if you're gonna actually want to give somebody feedback,

00:05:30 ◼   ► you should give them real feedback,

00:05:32 ◼   ► like with a reply or something.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And so I think in practice favs are fairly useless,

00:05:38 ◼   ► and so you might as well not have the ability to leave them

00:05:41 ◼   ► because then you feel like you're leaving feedback

00:05:43 ◼   ► when in many cases the people will never see it.

00:05:45 ◼   ► - And that's completely fair, but it's so funny hearing

00:05:48 ◼   ► you describe this because I went through the exact same

00:05:50 ◼   ► adventure myself, and it was my utter disgust

00:05:54 ◼   ► with the official Twitter app that got me to pay for it.

00:05:57 ◼   ► That sounds bad.

00:05:58 ◼   ► I really, really love Tweetbot, this is not an ad,

00:06:00 ◼   ► I don't think they've ever, ever, ever paid us

00:06:02 ◼   ► to do anything on this show.

00:06:03 ◼   ► I really, really do love it, I'm not trying to imply

00:06:07 ◼   ► anything else, but I do agree that this was a feature,

00:06:10 ◼   ► not a bug in a lot of ways.

00:06:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:13 ◼   ► So yeah, I totally hear you, but to come back

00:06:16 ◼   ► to the actual point you were trying to make, yes.

00:06:18 ◼   ► I am working on something very slowly,

00:06:20 ◼   ► and I feel like I have like an analog and a half

00:06:23 ◼   ► worth of content about how slowly I've been working

00:06:26 ◼   ► on this app, and I'm actually, we don't need to poll

00:06:29 ◼   ► on this thread right now, but I'm really, really frustrated

00:06:31 ◼   ► and kind of disgusted with myself at how long

00:06:33 ◼   ► it's been taking me because it's really not

00:06:35 ◼   ► a very complicated app, and it really has been taking me

00:06:39 ◼   ► entirely too long to get it out the door.

00:06:41 ◼   ► But nevertheless, one of the things I am realizing

00:06:44 ◼   ► is that even a very, very, very simple app,

00:06:48 ◼   ► if you want to include a widget, if you want to include

00:06:52 ◼   ► a watch app, if you want to include a watch complication,

00:06:55 ◼   ► and I know this is not something novel or new,

00:06:58 ◼   ► but it is stunning the amount of stuff you have to manage

00:07:03 ◼   ► and the amount of code you have to write

00:07:05 ◼   ► in order to make all of those things happen.

00:07:08 ◼   ► And Marco, you more than probably anyone

00:07:10 ◼   ► know exactly what all this is about,

00:07:13 ◼   ► but even for an app like this, which I don't particularly

00:07:18 ◼   ► want to talk about what it is right now,

00:07:19 ◼   ► but suffice to say it's very, very, very, very simple,

00:07:22 ◼   ► the simplest app I've worked on yet.

00:07:24 ◼   ► But nonetheless, I'd like to have a widget,

00:07:27 ◼   ► I would like to have a very basic watch app,

00:07:30 ◼   ► I would like to have a watch complication,

00:07:32 ◼   ► and even using all the modern stuff, it's all Swift UI,

00:07:35 ◼   ► it's all combined where appropriate,

00:07:38 ◼   ► even using all the modern stuff, it is still

00:07:40 ◼   ► an just astronomical amount of work

00:07:43 ◼   ► to get all of these moving parts put together.

00:07:45 ◼   ► And I'm really gonna try hard not to go on a rant

00:07:48 ◼   ► because I've done this too often lately,

00:07:49 ◼   ► but it is very frustrating to go digging through

00:07:53 ◼   ► Apple's documentation, which for watch connectivity

00:07:57 ◼   ► is at least passable, which for Apple is a big compliment.

00:08:01 ◼   ► It's passable documentation, but in the case

00:08:04 ◼   ► of watch connectivity, which is what they call

00:08:06 ◼   ► sending data back and forth between the watch

00:08:08 ◼   ► and the iOS app, there are several different mechanisms

00:08:11 ◼   ► by which you can do it, which in and of itself, it's fine,

00:08:13 ◼   ► I don't have a problem with that.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And there's different trade-offs between each of these

00:08:18 ◼   ► different mechanisms, which here again, okay, that's fine,

00:08:20 ◼   ► but what they don't do a particularly great job of

00:08:23 ◼   ► is telling you, well, if you're doing this sort of thing,

00:08:27 ◼   ► this is what you wanna use.

00:08:28 ◼   ► If you're doing that sort of thing, use the other thing.

00:08:31 ◼   ► If you're doing this third thing,

00:08:33 ◼   ► you should look over there.

00:08:34 ◼   ► And they kinda like get a little vaguely in that direction,

00:08:37 ◼   ► but in the documentation that I saw,

00:08:39 ◼   ► I never really found a good clear document,

00:08:44 ◼   ► a more high level document as to when you're doing this,

00:08:48 ◼   ► choose that, and this feels like the sort of thing

00:08:51 ◼   ► that has probably been covered in a WWDC session

00:08:53 ◼   ► at some point, but--

00:08:54 ◼   ► - It hasn't.

00:08:55 ◼   ► - Okay, nevermind.

00:08:56 ◼   ► - I can tell you the answer there right now.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - Do you wanna know the answer right now?

00:08:58 ◼   ► - I would love to.

00:08:59 ◼   ► - Okay, never use application context, it's unreliable.

00:09:03 ◼   ► - Oh, that's what I was gonna use!

00:09:04 ◼   ► Sorry, well, this is good news, okay.

00:09:06 ◼   ► - You can use the message passing interface

00:09:11 ◼   ► where it's like send message with a dictionary

00:09:12 ◼   ► and you can put arbitrary info in the dictionary.

00:09:14 ◼   ► That works great.

00:09:16 ◼   ► - Now, but slow down though,

00:09:17 ◼   ► because there's two different mechanisms for this.

00:09:19 ◼   ► There's user info, which is not real time,

00:09:23 ◼   ► and then there's what they actually call messages,

00:09:26 ◼   ► which is the watch app is actively running as we speak

00:09:29 ◼   ► and you are actively sending a message back and forth

00:09:32 ◼   ► while both the watch and iPhone apps are running.

00:09:34 ◼   ► So are you talking about that?

00:09:35 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:09:36 ◼   ► - Or are you talking about this user info thing

00:09:37 ◼   ► where it's, ah, it'll get there eventually?

00:09:39 ◼   ► - No, that.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And the other method is file transfers, which never work.

00:09:42 ◼   ► So basically you can't use file transfers

00:09:44 ◼   ► because they don't work reliably.

00:09:46 ◼   ► You can't use application context, it doesn't work reliably.

00:09:49 ◼   ► The only one that works reliably

00:09:50 ◼   ► is when both apps are running,

00:09:52 ◼   ► the one where they communicate with dictionaries

00:09:54 ◼   ► back and forth, the user info dictionaries.

00:09:56 ◼   ► That being said, there's size limits

00:09:59 ◼   ► to what you can put in there.

00:10:00 ◼   ► I underscore found that I think it's something like 65,

00:10:03 ◼   ► 64K, something like that.

00:10:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, that I'm not worried about.

00:10:05 ◼   ► - In that ballpark.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And then the watch app,

00:10:09 ◼   ► when it sends a message to the phone app,

00:10:11 ◼   ► the watch app is able to wake up the phone app

00:10:13 ◼   ► with one of those messages, but not vice versa.

00:10:16 ◼   ► The phone app can't wake up the watch app.

00:10:18 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, yep.

00:10:19 ◼   ► - So this is why the entire watch connectivity framework

00:10:23 ◼   ► and its real world performance and pitfalls

00:10:27 ◼   ► and unreliability is one of the biggest reasons

00:10:30 ◼   ► why I've had so many problems developing watch apps

00:10:33 ◼   ► for Overcast over the years.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And it's one of the biggest reasons

00:10:37 ◼   ► why the current watch app,

00:10:39 ◼   ► which was recently rewritten as we discussed,

00:10:41 ◼   ► is mostly avoiding watch connectivity

00:10:45 ◼   ► and trying to communicate mostly over the internet,

00:10:48 ◼   ► over my sync servers instead.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Because anything you can do to avoid watch connectivity

00:10:53 ◼   ► will be better for your mental health.

00:10:56 ◼   ► - Sorry, so you're saying,

00:10:57 ◼   ► have you played with transfer user info?

00:10:59 ◼   ► Because there's application context,

00:11:01 ◼   ► which you've already spoken about,

00:11:02 ◼   ► then there's user info, which seems to be

00:11:04 ◼   ► to be maybe intended to be slightly closer

00:11:07 ◼   ► to real time question, oh no, I'm sorry,

00:11:09 ◼   ► no, I have that wrong.

00:11:10 ◼   ► I think application context is supposed to be closer to real

00:11:12 ◼   ► to see this is what I'm talking about,

00:11:13 ◼   ► it's so hard to tell.

00:11:14 ◼   ► - And if you read the documentation,

00:11:15 ◼   ► it says like, oh, use application context

00:11:17 ◼   ► as basically like a persistent version

00:11:20 ◼   ► of those back and forth really reliable dictionaries

00:11:23 ◼   ► so that if one of the apps isn't running,

00:11:25 ◼   ► it'll pick up the latest application context,

00:11:28 ◼   ► which by the way is only one way,

00:11:29 ◼   ► it only goes from phone to watch, not vice versa.

00:11:32 ◼   ► There's so many little exceptions and gotchas.

00:11:36 ◼   ► So yeah, try to minimize how much you rely on this framework

00:11:42 ◼   ► and the functionality of the phone app

00:11:43 ◼   ► talking to the watch app.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Because any amount of this that you do,

00:11:47 ◼   ► you're gonna regret.

00:11:48 ◼   ► - Super.

00:11:50 ◼   ► - You know, I knew this was my future,

00:11:52 ◼   ► but it's so frustrating.

00:11:53 ◼   ► So actually, if you the listener have had experience

00:11:57 ◼   ► with this and have anic data that you would like

00:12:00 ◼   ► to share with me, I would be happy to accept it via Twitter.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Please don't clog my email.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Via Twitter @CaseyLiss, don't bother Marco,

00:12:07 ◼   ► don't bother John, they didn't ask for this,

00:12:09 ◼   ► I'm asking for this.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I would love to hear your experience because yeah,

00:12:12 ◼   ► I was going to, as after having spoken to James Thompson,

00:12:16 ◼   ► friend of the show, I was going to go down

00:12:18 ◼   ► the application context route,

00:12:19 ◼   ► but if you're telling me that's unreliable and buggy,

00:12:21 ◼   ► then ugh.

00:12:22 ◼   ► And to be fair, the only thing I'm really trying

00:12:24 ◼   ► to transfer is something itty-itty-bitty,

00:12:28 ◼   ► which is basically like, how can I describe this

00:12:31 ◼   ► while still being general?

00:12:33 ◼   ► You can make one of like 15 or 20 choices within the app,

00:12:37 ◼   ► and I basically need to know which choice did you make

00:12:40 ◼   ► and what numeral is associated with that choice.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And gentlemen, I can tell you about it after the show.

00:12:44 ◼   ► But suffice it to say, it's like basically a class name

00:12:48 ◼   ► and an integer, and that's all I need to send.

00:12:50 ◼   ► So in that sense, I'm not worried about like data,

00:12:52 ◼   ► their size limits or anything like that,

00:12:53 ◼   ► but that doesn't necessarily negate your point

00:12:55 ◼   ► that it's just straight up unreliable to go back and forth.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And that's unsurprising but frustrating.

00:13:01 ◼   ► So yeah, documentation.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Some sort of higher level documentation

00:13:06 ◼   ► would be really, really nice.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Like some sort of flow chart or like table.

00:13:10 ◼   ► If you're trying to do this at such and such a speed,

00:13:13 ◼   ► use this.

00:13:14 ◼   ► If you're trying to transfer a file, get screwed,

00:13:16 ◼   ► because you're not gonna end up anywhere happy.

00:13:20 ◼   ► I don't know, it's frustrating.

00:13:22 ◼   ► I just want, all I want at WWDC,

00:13:24 ◼   ► which we'll talk about later,

00:13:25 ◼   ► all I want, please, please,

00:13:26 ◼   ► can we have better documentation?

00:13:28 ◼   ► Please, please.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And yes, in the chat room, from everything I've gathered,

00:13:33 ◼   ► Mark was exactly right, that going through the internet,

00:13:36 ◼   ► through the internet is faster than using watch connectivity

00:13:41 ◼   ► and certainly more reliable if not faster.

00:13:42 ◼   ► - Yes, maybe not.

00:13:43 ◼   ► So well, it can be faster sometimes.

00:13:45 ◼   ► The Apple Watch by default tries to transfer

00:13:48 ◼   ► as much as possible over Bluetooth instead of WiFi,

00:13:51 ◼   ► because Bluetooth is much lower power consuming.

00:13:54 ◼   ► Bluetooth though, it is lower power,

00:13:55 ◼   ► but it's also way slower.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And that's why for file transfers,

00:13:59 ◼   ► downloading a file directly from the internet,

00:14:01 ◼   ► which will usually prefer a WiFi connection,

00:14:04 ◼   ► is faster than transferring the file from the phone

00:14:08 ◼   ► to the watch over the same network.

00:14:10 ◼   ► It's a whole thing.

00:14:13 ◼   ► But the main reason thing, the big reason is the reliability.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Because if the watch tries to talk to the phone,

00:14:20 ◼   ► it's hard to really know whether that communication channel

00:14:23 ◼   ► is open and reliable and fast and not clogged with junk,

00:14:27 ◼   ► as opposed to the internet,

00:14:28 ◼   ► you can just make the connection directly

00:14:29 ◼   ► with the same APIs that you make any other connection with

00:14:31 ◼   ► from iOS and it just works.

00:14:33 ◼   ► - Neat.

00:14:34 ◼   ► - Although background transfers don't,

00:14:35 ◼   ► background downloads rather,

00:14:37 ◼   ► have significantly more restrictions on the watch

00:14:39 ◼   ► and are even less reliable.

00:14:40 ◼   ► That's a lot of fun too.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Well, to see that I'm not too worried about,

00:14:43 ◼   ► for me anyway, but for you, oh, that does not sound fine.

00:14:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's basically no way

00:14:49 ◼   ► to make an Apple Watch podcast app

00:14:52 ◼   ► that downloads episodes locally

00:14:55 ◼   ► that works well for everyone.

00:14:57 ◼   ► - Cool.

00:14:58 ◼   ► - I've tried every way to do it,

00:14:59 ◼   ► I've seen other apps that do it various different ways.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Every single app has a large number of five star reviews

00:15:06 ◼   ► saying this new method works great

00:15:07 ◼   ► and a large number of one star reviews saying

00:15:09 ◼   ► they changed it and now it doesn't work for me.

00:15:11 ◼   ► And there's all sorts of conditions and problems

00:15:15 ◼   ► and it's just a nightmare.

00:15:17 ◼   ► So try to avoid making an iOS podcast app

00:15:19 ◼   ► for many reasons like competing with me

00:15:21 ◼   ► but also try to avoid needing a watch app

00:15:25 ◼   ► with local downloads 'cause it's no fun.

00:15:27 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:15:29 ◼   ► - All right, let's cheer each other up a little bit

00:15:31 ◼   ► and let's talk about the Tesla Wheel of Shame

00:15:33 ◼   ► Stencil Edition and in fact other editions as well.

00:15:36 ◼   ► So we have had listeners from around the world

00:15:40 ◼   ► tell us and send us photographic evidence

00:15:43 ◼   ► of all the different kinds of Tesla demarcations

00:15:46 ◼   ► and graffiti that they found.

00:15:47 ◼   ► John, since you've been so quiet recently,

00:15:49 ◼   ► would you like to take us on a tour?

00:15:51 ◼   ► Would you prefer me to do that?

00:15:52 ◼   ► - Actually I had some things to say

00:15:53 ◼   ► about your Twitter client stuff but you went on so long

00:15:56 ◼   ► we probably shouldn't belabor it but I'll just add this.

00:15:58 ◼   ► It's a good thing we have this podcast

00:16:00 ◼   ► because Marco would have loved to have told you

00:16:01 ◼   ► these things on Twitter but he couldn't reply.

00:16:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:06 ◼   ► You had to get advice from James Thompson instead.

00:16:08 ◼   ► - Yeah and someone in the chat room,

00:16:11 ◼   ► I missed this when it went by before,

00:16:13 ◼   ► had a good suggestion for your app

00:16:15 ◼   ► or a guess at what your app might be.

00:16:17 ◼   ► Tweet of you or read only Twitter clients

00:16:18 ◼   ► so people like Marco can't mess things up.

00:16:20 ◼   ► - There you go, fear gold.

00:16:22 ◼   ► - All right, those are my two Twitter things

00:16:24 ◼   ► but yeah, back to the Wheels of Shame, the important stuff.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I promise this will be the last time.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I know we've had Wheels of Shame

00:16:28 ◼   ► on like three shows in a row or whatever.

00:16:29 ◼   ► They're just funny and they come with pictures

00:16:31 ◼   ► so I find them appealing and I understand this is a podcast

00:16:34 ◼   ► and you don't get to see the pictures

00:16:36 ◼   ► except the ones that Marco makes his show art

00:16:38 ◼   ► but we will describe them for you.

00:16:40 ◼   ► So the first one is the aforementioned stencil one.

00:16:43 ◼   ► We mentioned on the last show,

00:16:45 ◼   ► it looked like a neat stencil.

00:16:46 ◼   ► This particular one we're seeing the stencils on,

00:16:48 ◼   ► it looks like someone cut a hole in a piece of cardboard

00:16:51 ◼   ► and used a can of spray paint through it

00:16:52 ◼   ► and they're very, very tiny stencils.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Just a little Tesla T on the spokes.

00:16:57 ◼   ► I guess that's a deterrent.

00:16:59 ◼   ► It doesn't look as bad as the other sloppy.

00:17:01 ◼   ► It looks like someone, like a kid,

00:17:03 ◼   ► like if you're trying to like decorate your BMX bike

00:17:05 ◼   ► or something and you like spray painted some stencils on it.

00:17:08 ◼   ► It's clear that you were trying to do something neat

00:17:10 ◼   ► but your skills aren't really up to it.

00:17:13 ◼   ► The next one is from San Francisco.

00:17:14 ◼   ► I like the style of this one.

00:17:16 ◼   ► It is haphazard red spray paint but only on half the wheel

00:17:19 ◼   ► and no one would do that on purpose.

00:17:21 ◼   ► So that's definitely a look people wouldn't want on their car.

00:17:26 ◼   ► - Something about San Francisco is haphazard?

00:17:28 ◼   ► - No. - Yeah.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Then there's one from Belvedere, California

00:17:31 ◼   ► where the people who run-- - This one is great.

00:17:32 ◼   ► - People who run this service obviously could not deal

00:17:35 ◼   ► with the idea of making the wheel ugly.

00:17:37 ◼   ► So they tried to do as neat a job as possible

00:17:39 ◼   ► and they took like, what is it,

00:17:40 ◼   ► like a 30 degree slight pie wedge out of it?

00:17:42 ◼   ► Basically one spoke.

00:17:44 ◼   ► - Well it's making the Tesla logo basically.

00:17:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's really, I actually like this one a lot.

00:17:47 ◼   ► It's very clever.

00:17:48 ◼   ► - Me too.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah, but most people, the style in cars these days

00:17:52 ◼   ► is not to have asymmetrical coloring on your wheels.

00:17:55 ◼   ► But this has one spoke and the surrounding area

00:17:58 ◼   ► is making a little T in red.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And it looks pretty neatly done.

00:18:01 ◼   ► I don't know of any car maker that makes wheels like this

00:18:04 ◼   ► on purpose so I think it would still encourage you

00:18:06 ◼   ► to swap it for the real one.

00:18:09 ◼   ► But kudos to the person who just

00:18:11 ◼   ► couldn't stand to look sloppy.

00:18:12 ◼   ► - No, I love this one so much.

00:18:14 ◼   ► And this was sent in by Alistair Logee.

00:18:16 ◼   ► And it was, the caption was pizza slice

00:18:20 ◼   ► in Belvedere, California.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Which this is kind of what that looks like.

00:18:23 ◼   ► Not only does it look like a pizza slice,

00:18:25 ◼   ► but it looks like the Tesla logo.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I love this one.

00:18:27 ◼   ► I really think this one's great.

00:18:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's very clever.

00:18:29 ◼   ► - And then finally we have one from the Bay Area from 2016.

00:18:32 ◼   ► This may, does this predate the spray paint?

00:18:35 ◼   ► When was your first spray paint job, Marco?

00:18:37 ◼   ► - 2019.

00:18:38 ◼   ► - All right, so maybe they hadn't come on

00:18:40 ◼   ► this spray paint technique.

00:18:42 ◼   ► This one does have a tiny little Tesla logo.

00:18:45 ◼   ► It looks like it could even be a sticker

00:18:47 ◼   ► on like the inside rim of the wheel.

00:18:49 ◼   ► And I think that one probably wouldn't encourage people

00:18:51 ◼   ► to return it 'cause it's just too small and too subtle.

00:18:54 ◼   ► But those were the before times,

00:18:56 ◼   ► before they had the technology

00:18:58 ◼   ► of haphazardly spray painting something.

00:18:59 ◼   ► So thank you everybody from across the world

00:19:02 ◼   ► for sending us your ugly Tesla wheels.

00:19:04 ◼   ► We will treasure these photos forever.

00:19:06 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:19:07 ◼   ► - Well, we'll laugh at them for a few minutes.

00:19:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's more accurate.

00:19:10 ◼   ► But Marco won't be sending you any hearts,

00:19:12 ◼   ► I can tell you that right now.

00:19:13 ◼   ► - Oh, that was my other comment on the Twitter client thing.

00:19:16 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, go ahead.

00:19:17 ◼   ► - Not to belabor or something that I'm sure you all know,

00:19:20 ◼   ► but if you want to not reply to tweets,

00:19:24 ◼   ► you can do that for free in any Twitter client.

00:19:27 ◼   ► You don't have to have a client

00:19:29 ◼   ► that literally stops you from doing it.

00:19:31 ◼   ► I understand that having the software help you is good,

00:19:35 ◼   ► but at the point where you're wishing for a mode

00:19:37 ◼   ► in an application that will let you fave and not reply,

00:19:39 ◼   ► that's the point when I say it's time for you

00:19:40 ◼   ► to invoke some tiny degree of self control.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Never. - What is that?

00:19:45 ◼   ► I don't understand what those words mean.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Oh goodness, all right, so Harrison Krebs wrote us

00:19:50 ◼   ► this missive with regard to a genuinely frustrating story

00:19:54 ◼   ► about AirPods, Macs, warranty repairs.

00:19:57 ◼   ► Generally speaking, I don't like to give too much attention

00:20:00 ◼   ► to these sorts of things 'cause we are not here

00:20:01 ◼   ► to be everyone's crusaders, I'm sorry.

00:20:03 ◼   ► However, this is a good public service announcement.

00:20:06 ◼   ► So in summary, Harrison went and did a warranty repair

00:20:10 ◼   ► on bricked AirPods Macs, but when he got them back,

00:20:13 ◼   ► they didn't include his ear cushions,

00:20:15 ◼   ► which is not desirable at all.

00:20:18 ◼   ► So apparently it's Apple's policy to remove the ear cushions

00:20:21 ◼   ► and not send them back after a repair,

00:20:24 ◼   ► which Harrison didn't know,

00:20:25 ◼   ► and apparently the Apple Store employee

00:20:27 ◼   ► was supposed to tell Harrison that

00:20:29 ◼   ► and just kind of didn't.

00:20:31 ◼   ► So this is a public service announcement for everyone.

00:20:33 ◼   ► If you're sending in your AirPods Macs

00:20:35 ◼   ► for warranty repairs, hey, guess what?

00:20:37 ◼   ► You're gonna wanna take those ear cups off.

00:20:39 ◼   ► - Or at least ask the person at the store about it

00:20:41 ◼   ► because who knows if this is a universal policy or whatever,

00:20:44 ◼   ► but just FYI, it's a good thing to know

00:20:46 ◼   ► because Apple Store employees are people too.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Maybe they forgot to tell you,

00:20:50 ◼   ► maybe that person didn't even know

00:20:51 ◼   ► they weren't gonna come back.

00:20:52 ◼   ► I actually kind of understand the policy

00:20:55 ◼   ► of not sending you back your ear things.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I think they should come back with brand new ones

00:21:00 ◼   ► rather than just taking your old ones and giving them back.

00:21:03 ◼   ► But either way, since they come off so easily,

00:21:05 ◼   ► if the Apple Store employee had just said,

00:21:07 ◼   ► oh, by the way, you'll wanna take these home

00:21:09 ◼   ► because our policy is not to send them back,

00:21:12 ◼   ► that would have solved the problem.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And I assume that Harrison contacted the Apple Store again

00:21:16 ◼   ► and said, hey, WTF, and got new ear pads to replace it

00:21:21 ◼   ► because it was the store's fault.

00:21:21 ◼   ► They didn't tell them they would be gone.

00:21:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, and this is actually fairly consistent

00:21:26 ◼   ► with Apple's other repair methods.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Whenever you send anything to Apple for repair,

00:21:31 ◼   ► they don't want any accessories that go with it.

00:21:34 ◼   ► And we don't think of ear pads as accessories to headphones.

00:21:37 ◼   ► You kind of can't use it without them.

00:21:38 ◼   ► But for Apple repair parlance,

00:21:41 ◼   ► if you send a watch in for repair,

00:21:42 ◼   ► you remove the strap first or they do it for you

00:21:45 ◼   ► and they hand it back to you.

00:21:46 ◼   ► If you send in a laptop, you don't send the power cord.

00:21:48 ◼   ► It is consistent with that.

00:21:49 ◼   ► So I don't consider this outrageous thing,

00:21:52 ◼   ► how dare they not send your ear cups back.

00:21:54 ◼   ► It's simply like, oh, the store person messed up.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And that happens, human error.

00:21:58 ◼   ► And yeah, as John said, I'm sure they,

00:21:59 ◼   ► I'm sure talking to the store people,

00:22:01 ◼   ► I'm sure they resolved it.

00:22:02 ◼   ► But the policy is something that you might not expect

00:22:05 ◼   ► because you don't think of headphone ear pads

00:22:08 ◼   ► as an accessory that you just pop off whenever you want to.

00:22:12 ◼   ► But here we are.

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00:23:56 ◼   ► - All right, so I have good news and bad news for everyone,

00:24:02 ◼   ► especially the two of you.

00:24:04 ◼   ► There's going to be WWDC this year, which is great,

00:24:07 ◼   ► but not in person, which at least for Marco and me,

00:24:11 ◼   ► I think is bad news.

00:24:12 ◼   ► John, I know you're just devastated

00:24:14 ◼   ► that you don't have to travel to California this year

00:24:16 ◼   ► for the second consecutive year.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Gosh, when was the last time we all saw each other?

00:24:20 ◼   ► Was it WWDC in 2019?

00:24:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - Anyway, there was no question about it.

00:24:25 ◼   ► The WWDC wasn't gonna be in person.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I think we all knew it was gonna be remote,

00:24:28 ◼   ► but it's been announced.

00:24:29 ◼   ► They announced the dates.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Interestingly, I guess it doesn't really matter

00:24:32 ◼   ► 'cause whatever, it's remote.

00:24:34 ◼   ► And by the way, it's also free like it was last year, right?

00:24:36 ◼   ► So it's all online.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Anybody can do it, right?

00:24:39 ◼   ► And they announced the dates,

00:24:40 ◼   ► but they didn't do anything else really.

00:24:42 ◼   ► I mean, maybe there's nothing else to do.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Did they have us register last year?

00:24:45 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:24:46 ◼   ► - No. - I don't remember.

00:24:47 ◼   ► - No, there was no user input basically.

00:24:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's just free to everybody.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Here it is.

00:24:52 ◼   ► It's here again.

00:24:53 ◼   ► The only thing we collectively had to look at

00:24:55 ◼   ► was the little invitation graphics,

00:24:57 ◼   ► which people got a little bit obsessed with as we do.

00:25:00 ◼   ► I mean, it's not an invitation.

00:25:01 ◼   ► It's just a, I don't know, a PR image.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And this year, it's a bunch of, how does Apple say it?

00:25:07 ◼   ► Did they say Memoji or Memoji?

00:25:09 ◼   ► They say Memoji, right?

00:25:10 ◼   ► - I believe it varies by presenter, right?

00:25:12 ◼   ► - Yes, and I think it was officially Memoji,

00:25:15 ◼   ► and I used to jokingly call it Memoji.

00:25:17 ◼   ► And then I think Tim at some point said Memoji,

00:25:20 ◼   ► and I felt like I could claim victory at that point.

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyway, it's got a bunch of those faces

00:25:26 ◼   ► looking into a laptop that's slowly opening

00:25:28 ◼   ► in the same way that Craig Federighi did in the M1 video,

00:25:31 ◼   ► like with all those memes of cracking open the M1 laptop

00:25:34 ◼   ► and having the light shine in his face.

00:25:37 ◼   ► And what people got obsessed with in this thing

00:25:39 ◼   ► is the fact that all of the people

00:25:42 ◼   ► who are opening the laptop,

00:25:43 ◼   ► but it's kind of from the same angle as the Craig thing,

00:25:45 ◼   ► they're all wearing glasses,

00:25:46 ◼   ► and everyone's like, oh, glasses,

00:25:48 ◼   ► how can they all be wearing glasses?

00:25:50 ◼   ► What are the odds of that?

00:25:50 ◼   ► Apple glasses, AR glasses, so on and so forth.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And then reflected in the glasses

00:25:54 ◼   ► are the images of various iOS-style application icons,

00:25:59 ◼   ► which doesn't make a lot of sense,

00:26:00 ◼   ► but I guess the Xcode's in there too.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Anyway, a bunch of application icons

00:26:04 ◼   ► reflected in the glasses, right?

00:26:06 ◼   ► Which handily explains why everybody has glasses,

00:26:09 ◼   ► because you can't have things reflected

00:26:10 ◼   ► in people's glasses without glasses.

00:26:11 ◼   ► You could reflect them in their gigantic eyeballs,

00:26:14 ◼   ► 'cause Memoji have giant eyes,

00:26:16 ◼   ► because they're very cartoony.

00:26:18 ◼   ► I feel like what no one was talking about,

00:26:21 ◼   ► except for maybe one person I saw on Twitter

00:26:23 ◼   ► had some part of this,

00:26:24 ◼   ► the glasses don't have any,

00:26:27 ◼   ► oh, what are they called?

00:26:27 ◼   ► Temples, right?

00:26:29 ◼   ► Temples. - The sticks?

00:26:30 ◼   ► - The sticks. - Oh, no sticks.

00:26:31 ◼   ► That's true. - At least some of the glasses

00:26:33 ◼   ► do not have temples.

00:26:34 ◼   ► They virtually float,

00:26:35 ◼   ► not touching any part of the person's face,

00:26:37 ◼   ► because it's a stylized representation,

00:26:40 ◼   ► and it's not literal.

00:26:41 ◼   ► So anyway, that's all we've got to go on.

00:26:43 ◼   ► I don't think this says anything one way or the other

00:26:46 ◼   ► about Apple Glasses.

00:26:46 ◼   ► We all know they're working on AR stuff.

00:26:48 ◼   ► Is this the year they announce it?

00:26:50 ◼   ► If it is, I don't think this image has anything to do with it

00:26:52 ◼   ► because all of the rumors,

00:26:53 ◼   ► especially since all of the rumors about AR stuff

00:26:55 ◼   ► have not been about the imminent release

00:26:58 ◼   ► of things that look like glasses people would wear.

00:27:00 ◼   ► They've been more like the semi-imminent

00:27:03 ◼   ► in the next year or two release of a giant VR headset

00:27:05 ◼   ► that looks like an Oculus,

00:27:07 ◼   ► but weighs a lot less, or whatever.

00:27:08 ◼   ► Anyway, so I read nothing into this

00:27:10 ◼   ► other than the fact that you need glasses

00:27:11 ◼   ► to have reflections, and that's about it.

00:27:15 ◼   ► - Every time there's an Apple event,

00:27:17 ◼   ► people always try to read into the art,

00:27:19 ◼   ► and usually if there's some kind of obvious pun

00:27:24 ◼   ► with the name of a special event,

00:27:27 ◼   ► that usually is relevant to the products,

00:27:29 ◼   ► but the artwork chosen is almost never relevant.

00:27:33 ◼   ► And for something like WVDC, where--

00:27:34 ◼   ► - No, it's relevant in an obvious way.

00:27:38 ◼   ► It's not relevant in a sneaky way.

00:27:40 ◼   ► When the art is relevant, it's relevant in,

00:27:42 ◼   ► one of them was the little rotating silver Apple

00:27:45 ◼   ► that had a Mac OS behind it or something,

00:27:48 ◼   ► and it was because they were gonna talk about Mac OS.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Like whatever the most obvious,

00:27:52 ◼   ► and this one, the most obvious interpretation is,

00:27:55 ◼   ► hey, they're playing on the Craig peeking into the laptop

00:27:58 ◼   ► from the M1 meme, right?

00:27:59 ◼   ► - I would assume so, yeah.

00:28:00 ◼   ► - And that's true, that's absolutely true.

00:28:02 ◼   ► That's what they're doing, right?

00:28:04 ◼   ► But you don't need to go hunting then,

00:28:06 ◼   ► okay, well that seems too obvious,

00:28:07 ◼   ► what else could it be, right?

00:28:09 ◼   ► So, I don't know.

00:28:12 ◼   ► And that's not to say they're not gonna do the AR thing,

00:28:14 ◼   ► because that AR like goggle thing,

00:28:16 ◼   ► seems like it's actually getting close to being a product.

00:28:19 ◼   ► If they decide to release it at all,

00:28:20 ◼   ► it seems like the tech might be ready

00:28:22 ◼   ► not to release the product,

00:28:23 ◼   ► but to, at your developer conference,

00:28:25 ◼   ► tell everybody, hey, in eight months,

00:28:27 ◼   ► we're gonna potentially release this thing,

00:28:29 ◼   ► so start developing now, here are all the new APIs.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Like that could happen, but if that happens,

00:28:34 ◼   ► this advertising campaign has probably nothing to do with it

00:28:38 ◼   ► and if it has anything to do with it,

00:28:39 ◼   ► it is the most tangential sly nod.

00:28:43 ◼   ► There's even the possibility that if the AR thing

00:28:45 ◼   ► is not coming out until three years from now,

00:28:46 ◼   ► they would still put glasses on everybody,

00:28:48 ◼   ► because they've been working on this glasses stuff

00:28:50 ◼   ► internally for ages, so it's kind of cheeky to say,

00:28:53 ◼   ► I know that you know that we've been working on glasses,

00:28:55 ◼   ► so here, everyone has glasses.

00:28:56 ◼   ► But anyway, here are our announcements for this year.

00:28:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the only thing that they've kind of announced,

00:29:03 ◼   ► at least obliquely, is they said,

00:29:05 ◼   ► this year's conference will include announcements

00:29:07 ◼   ► from the keynote and State of the Union stages,

00:29:08 ◼   ► online sessions, one-to-one labs

00:29:10 ◼   ► offering technical guidance, and new ways for developers

00:29:12 ◼   ► to interact with Apple engineers and designers

00:29:14 ◼   ► to learn about the latest frameworks and technologies.

00:29:17 ◼   ► That is all we know, it could be something

00:29:19 ◼   ► totally silly and lame, but maybe it isn't,

00:29:22 ◼   ► and I'm curious to see what that means.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I forgot about that, that was the,

00:29:26 ◼   ► I think it was what I was getting at with the announcement

00:29:28 ◼   ► is no one was forcing them to announce this now,

00:29:31 ◼   ► since no one's gonna be traveling,

00:29:32 ◼   ► it's not like you need to make plans

00:29:33 ◼   ► and you don't need to register

00:29:34 ◼   ► and you don't need to do anything else.

00:29:36 ◼   ► But then why have an announcement

00:29:38 ◼   ► without concrete information about certain things?

00:29:40 ◼   ► Like they still wanna have a tease aspect of it,

00:29:43 ◼   ► so it's like we've come up with a new way

00:29:44 ◼   ► for you to do stuff with us somehow,

00:29:48 ◼   ► but we're not gonna tell you yet.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Maybe they haven't figured it out yet,

00:29:50 ◼   ► but plenty of time to figure it out.

00:29:52 ◼   ► But I think it is important,

00:29:55 ◼   ► if Apple continues to do these this way,

00:29:57 ◼   ► to try to recapture some of the things

00:29:59 ◼   ► that are good about being there in person.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Maybe they'll have a clubhouse.

00:30:04 ◼   ► - Oh my. - Or everyone will just join.

00:30:06 ◼   ► As if we'll still care about clubhouse by June.

00:30:08 ◼   ► - Didn't they do last, wasn't last WSC, didn't they do WebEx?

00:30:12 ◼   ► - I thought so for labs, yeah.

00:30:14 ◼   ► - And that is so reflective of Apple's non-hipness

00:30:19 ◼   ► when it comes to internet stuff that they would use.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Is it the bottom of the barrel

00:30:25 ◼   ► corporate teleconferencing software?

00:30:28 ◼   ► Probably close, I think I've used them all.

00:30:30 ◼   ► Maybe Link, L-Y-N-C is the bottom of the barrel.

00:30:33 ◼   ► I don't know if that's still made, that Microsoft product.

00:30:35 ◼   ► - Isn't that just sucked into Skype now or no?

00:30:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:30:38 ◼   ► But anyway, WebEx is not--

00:30:39 ◼   ► - It certainly is sucked.

00:30:41 ◼   ► - WebEx is not cool. (laughing)

00:30:42 ◼   ► WebEx isn't cool, WebEx isn't hip.

00:30:44 ◼   ► WebEx is a bad app.

00:30:46 ◼   ► WebEx destroys your laptop's battery.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Presumably the only reason Apple's using it

00:30:51 ◼   ► is because Apple has no replacement themselves

00:30:54 ◼   ► 'cause they have, remember when it was like iChat

00:30:57 ◼   ► where you do iChat with multiple people

00:30:58 ◼   ► and share a document, they don't have that anymore.

00:31:00 ◼   ► And because presumably it's what they use internally

00:31:04 ◼   ► for Apple corporate stuff, but boy, what a shame.

00:31:07 ◼   ► That is a terrible application and it's in general

00:31:09 ◼   ► a terrible experience to do labs through WebEx.

00:31:13 ◼   ► If Apple had its own cool application

00:31:17 ◼   ► that does the type of thing that WebEx does

00:31:20 ◼   ► and Skype does and Slack does and Teams does

00:31:24 ◼   ► and I don't know, name every other app

00:31:26 ◼   ► that lets you do multi-person teleconferences.

00:31:28 ◼   ► I'm sure they would use it instead, but they don't.

00:31:31 ◼   ► So it's WebEx.

00:31:32 ◼   ► So that makes me wonder what like,

00:31:34 ◼   ► oh, we have a cool new way for you

00:31:35 ◼   ► to interact with engineers.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Is it still WebEx?

00:31:38 ◼   ► Now we're using Microsoft Teams.

00:31:41 ◼   ► That's a cool new way.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Anyway, I look forward to see what it is.

00:31:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and before everyone writes us,

00:31:45 ◼   ► yes, we are aware that FaceTime video exists,

00:31:48 ◼   ► but to the best of my knowledge,

00:31:49 ◼   ► you can't do like screen sharing

00:31:50 ◼   ► or anything like that on FaceTime.

00:31:52 ◼   ► So that doesn't really work for this particular context.

00:31:55 ◼   ► - Count yourself lucky if you don't know

00:31:57 ◼   ► what problem these apps are solving

00:31:59 ◼   ► because they solve a problem

00:32:00 ◼   ► that most individual people don't have,

00:32:02 ◼   ► but if you work for a business

00:32:03 ◼   ► and have been working from home,

00:32:05 ◼   ► especially in a company that normally doesn't work from home,

00:32:06 ◼   ► you know the problem they solve,

00:32:08 ◼   ► which is essentially how do I have meetings

00:32:10 ◼   ► when not in person?

00:32:12 ◼   ► And meetings don't just involve people talking to each other

00:32:16 ◼   ► and seeing each other.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Meetings always involve presenting things

00:32:19 ◼   ► and sharing documents and all that good stuff.

00:32:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm excited to see what's announced.

00:32:26 ◼   ► I'm excited to see what a second cut

00:32:29 ◼   ► at an online conference is.

00:32:31 ◼   ► I'm really sad, okay, so COVID notwithstanding,

00:32:34 ◼   ► there's no fricking chance if it was in person

00:32:36 ◼   ► that I would be going this year,

00:32:37 ◼   ► but leaving that aside, I'm sad not to be seeing you guys.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I'm sad not to be seeing other friends that typically went.

00:32:44 ◼   ► I'm sad not to be doing a live show.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I know that John, really, COVID-19 is John's fault

00:32:49 ◼   ► because this is the length that John is willing to go to

00:32:51 ◼   ► to avoid doing a live WWDC.

00:32:53 ◼   ► It was all down to him.

00:32:54 ◼   ► It wasn't anything from overseas.

00:32:57 ◼   ► It wasn't a bat.

00:32:58 ◼   ► It wasn't a lab.

00:32:58 ◼   ► It was John, Syracuse.

00:33:00 ◼   ► It was his fault.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I can't blame him.

00:33:02 ◼   ► All because he doesn't like ATP live shows.

00:33:05 ◼   ► But nevertheless, I am sad to be missing out on that.

00:33:07 ◼   ► I really hope that next year, if it's safe,

00:33:12 ◼   ► that they bring everyone back in.

00:33:15 ◼   ► I am super skeptical.

00:33:17 ◼   ► I think, honestly, if they were to do

00:33:20 ◼   ► an in-person anything for WWDC,

00:33:22 ◼   ► I think they would bring press in for the keynote,

00:33:26 ◼   ► and then maybe that would be it.

00:33:28 ◼   ► I would love for them to do an old-school style WWDC,

00:33:31 ◼   ► and certainly, I just noticed as we were talking

00:33:33 ◼   ► that at the tail end of their announcement,

00:33:35 ◼   ► they said, "To support the local economy,

00:33:37 ◼   ► "even while WWDC '21 is hosted online,

00:33:40 ◼   ► "and as part of its $100 million racial equity

00:33:42 ◼   ► "and justice initiative, Apple's also committing

00:33:44 ◼   ► "one million dollars to SJ Aspires,

00:33:46 ◼   ► "an education equity initiative

00:33:47 ◼   ► "launched by the city of San Jose."

00:33:49 ◼   ► So they're still pouring some amount of money

00:33:52 ◼   ► into San Jose, which implies to me

00:33:55 ◼   ► that they hope one day it'll come back,

00:33:57 ◼   ► but I don't know, we'll see.

00:33:59 ◼   ► - Marco, 2022, what do you think is gonna happen?

00:34:02 ◼   ► You think it'll be in person, somewhat in person,

00:34:04 ◼   ► not all in person, what's your guess?

00:34:06 ◼   ► - That's a good question.

00:34:07 ◼   ► This year, yeah, I had no doubt

00:34:10 ◼   ► this year would be remote as well,

00:34:11 ◼   ► because even though the US is doing a pretty impressive job

00:34:15 ◼   ► at the speed of our vaccinations being deployed out,

00:34:19 ◼   ► it is, after all, a worldwide conference,

00:34:21 ◼   ► not a US-only conference.

00:34:22 ◼   ► Many people come from other countries,

00:34:24 ◼   ► and the rate of vaccinations worldwide

00:34:28 ◼   ► is not as fast as it's happening in the US, unfortunately,

00:34:31 ◼   ► for lots of reasons.

00:34:32 ◼   ► - Or there are other countries that don't have

00:34:34 ◼   ► the problem that we have at all,

00:34:35 ◼   ► and wouldn't wanna come to the US,

00:34:36 ◼   ► because they have zero cases.

00:34:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, very true.

00:34:39 ◼   ► So anyway, it makes total sense this year.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I have a feeling that next year,

00:34:44 ◼   ► live events like this will be happening on a regular basis,

00:34:47 ◼   ► and it won't, there's some question,

00:34:50 ◼   ► when we will get "back to normal" in most ways,

00:34:55 ◼   ► and I think we're gonna see a lot of that

00:34:56 ◼   ► this summer and fall,

00:34:58 ◼   ► but I think by next summer,

00:35:00 ◼   ► it's gonna be, we're gonna be pretty back to normal.

00:35:02 ◼   ► I don't think that's an unreasonable bet

00:35:04 ◼   ► to make at this point.

00:35:06 ◼   ► - An interesting thing about what they've done

00:35:07 ◼   ► with the live thing last year is that they,

00:35:10 ◼   ► in the lead up to that, and all of the,

00:35:11 ◼   ► you know, the quote-unquote normal years before COVID,

00:35:14 ◼   ► they slowly essentially made the free, real-time,

00:35:18 ◼   ► online-for-everybody version of WWDC

00:35:21 ◼   ► by simply broadcasting the sessions as they air,

00:35:24 ◼   ► live to everybody for free, without needing to register.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Right? That, you know, obviously, when they,

00:35:29 ◼   ► you know, last year, they recorded them ahead of time,

00:35:32 ◼   ► and there's a very different vibe

00:35:33 ◼   ► from a recorded ahead-of-time produced video

00:35:35 ◼   ► than a live one, but practically speaking,

00:35:37 ◼   ► if you just want the information,

00:35:39 ◼   ► and you don't wanna pay anything,

00:35:40 ◼   ► and you don't wanna travel, Apple was already there.

00:35:43 ◼   ► So if they go back to in-person, which again,

00:35:45 ◼   ► you know, I buy the deal that giving money to San Jose,

00:35:48 ◼   ► like, what, is Apple just gonna perpetually give money

00:35:51 ◼   ► to San Jose every year just out of, you know, good memories?

00:35:53 ◼   ► It seems like they still want to have a relationship

00:35:55 ◼   ► with the city, which probably means

00:35:57 ◼   ► they're gonna go back to in-person,

00:35:58 ◼   ► and they'll go back to, you know, it's like,

00:36:01 ◼   ► well, why not keep the online thing for everybody?

00:36:03 ◼   ► Well, they were already doing that, essentially.

00:36:04 ◼   ► The only difference is there's no way for online people

00:36:07 ◼   ► to get on a Webex with an Apple engineer,

00:36:11 ◼   ► and in that respect, like, whatever the capacity is

00:36:15 ◼   ► for Apple to, for Apple engineers to interact with people,

00:36:19 ◼   ► if that capacity is saturated by the in-person people

00:36:23 ◼   ► who pay money and go to San Jose,

00:36:26 ◼   ► maybe there's none left for Webex meetings.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Like, I wouldn't say that you should take time away

00:36:32 ◼   ► from the people who paid to be there,

00:36:33 ◼   ► because they pay all that money and traveled,

00:36:35 ◼   ► and so they should get something for that,

00:36:37 ◼   ► but it does seem more equitable to essentially

00:36:41 ◼   ► a raffle-off lottery worldwide for anybody

00:36:44 ◼   ► who attends for free, like they were doing,

00:36:47 ◼   ► like they did last year,

00:36:48 ◼   ► 'cause it wasn't some kind of, like, slots are open,

00:36:50 ◼   ► and it's just a lottery, and you just,

00:36:51 ◼   ► if you want help, you file in.

00:36:52 ◼   ► There was no preferential system, right?

00:36:55 ◼   ► - For admission? - For labs?

00:36:57 ◼   ► - For labs, yeah. - Oh, for labs.

00:36:58 ◼   ► - I don't know, I didn't do any.

00:37:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I, no, did I do, I don't think I did any last year.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure, to be honest with you.

00:37:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, but anyway, like, that's the tension

00:37:07 ◼   ► that Apple has here.

00:37:08 ◼   ► There's a limited capacity,

00:37:09 ◼   ► there's only so many Apple engineers, right,

00:37:11 ◼   ► and so there's a limited capacity of help they can give.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Who should they give that help to?

00:37:14 ◼   ► Should it be a random distribution of all developers

00:37:17 ◼   ► with no barriers to entry

00:37:18 ◼   ► other than having an internet connection

00:37:19 ◼   ► like it was last year, or should it be for the people

00:37:22 ◼   ► who could afford to pay the high entrance fee

00:37:24 ◼   ► and travel to WWDC to get that help, right?

00:37:29 ◼   ► I don't know, it's not a clear-cut answer there.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Like, maybe you could say the people who are there in person,

00:37:33 ◼   ► you know, some portion of the help

00:37:35 ◼   ► will go to the people who are there in person,

00:37:37 ◼   ► and when you do get one in person,

00:37:38 ◼   ► you get the benefit of, you know,

00:37:40 ◼   ► person-to-person interaction

00:37:41 ◼   ► instead of doing it through Webex,

00:37:43 ◼   ► but some portion should be given

00:37:44 ◼   ► to people who couldn't attend,

00:37:45 ◼   ► because otherwise it's not a particularly

00:37:47 ◼   ► equitable distribution of Apple's limited amount of help.

00:37:51 ◼   ► - You know, I thought I'd heard rumblings last year,

00:37:53 ◼   ► the first virtual year,

00:37:54 ◼   ► that they actually had way more labs,

00:37:57 ◼   ► bandwidth, poor choice of words,

00:37:59 ◼   ► way more labs availability than they did takers

00:38:02 ◼   ► on people who wanted to go to the labs.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - I saw that, I remember, at the end of last year,

00:38:05 ◼   ► they're like, "Hey, we've got labs open

00:38:07 ◼   ► "if anybody wants them."

00:38:08 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it's like that in person, too,

00:38:09 ◼   ► towards the tail end of the week.

00:38:10 ◼   ► I don't partake of the labs,

00:38:12 ◼   ► so I don't know what the experience is like,

00:38:14 ◼   ► but if there is excess capacity,

00:38:16 ◼   ► that argues even more strongly for, like,

00:38:18 ◼   ► give all the excess capacity to people online, right?

00:38:21 ◼   ► So have people there in person,

00:38:23 ◼   ► and if there's no person takers, certainly, you know,

00:38:25 ◼   ► it's like, everything is like COVID vaccines.

00:38:27 ◼   ► If you've got leftover vaccines,

00:38:28 ◼   ► just give them to whoever wants them, right?

00:38:31 ◼   ► Hal, just call Casey up so we can yell at you

00:38:33 ◼   ► about documentation for an hour.

00:38:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, that sounds perfect.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Sign me up.

00:38:36 ◼   ► I will yell at anyone at Apple about documentation.

00:38:39 ◼   ► - You're yelling at the wrong people.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Don't yell at the developers.

00:38:41 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:38:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, sometimes you yell at the developers,

00:38:44 ◼   ► not for documentation,

00:38:45 ◼   ► but there is a lot of value in going to the labs

00:38:49 ◼   ► and finding the one engineer who's there

00:38:51 ◼   ► for your kind of obscure API,

00:38:53 ◼   ► and if you have some kind of question or request,

00:38:56 ◼   ► you can actually just tell them,

00:38:57 ◼   ► and it actually can get you somewhere.

00:38:59 ◼   ► - I would actually love to do that.

00:39:01 ◼   ► I would love to find the,

00:39:02 ◼   ► this is the problem.

00:39:04 ◼   ► This is the problem in my real company, in my real job,

00:39:07 ◼   ► and I imagine in many jobs,

00:39:09 ◼   ► and also in the case of the one thing

00:39:11 ◼   ► that I would wanna talk to Apple engineers about,

00:39:14 ◼   ► ownership, who owns this part of the thingy?

00:39:17 ◼   ► Who owns this API?

00:39:18 ◼   ► Who owns this framework?

00:39:19 ◼   ► Who owns this application?

00:39:20 ◼   ► And very often, the depressing answer

00:39:22 ◼   ► in large corporations is, I don't know.

00:39:24 ◼   ► - Oh, no, that's not true at Apple, though.

00:39:25 ◼   ► - That's a bad situation.

00:39:27 ◼   ► - That's not true at Apple.

00:39:29 ◼   ► - Apple has different failure modes, like nobody right now.

00:39:32 ◼   ► - That's what I'm saying.

00:39:34 ◼   ► That's what I mean by I don't know,

00:39:36 ◼   ► not like, oh, just this person doesn't have the knowledge,

00:39:38 ◼   ► that the company collectively does not know,

00:39:41 ◼   ► because if the application or framework is not broken,

00:39:46 ◼   ► and it's an older thing,

00:39:47 ◼   ► and it's in between the purview of two possible groups,

00:39:50 ◼   ► you would think, of course they have to know.

00:39:52 ◼   ► What about when someone files a bug?

00:39:54 ◼   ► Whose queue does that go into?

00:39:55 ◼   ► Obviously, every company knows who owns everything.

00:39:57 ◼   ► I can tell you from experience, that is not true.

00:40:00 ◼   ► What happens is, there may be a queue for those things,

00:40:03 ◼   ► but then different parts of the organization fight over

00:40:05 ◼   ► who really owns it,

00:40:06 ◼   ► because nobody wants that crap in their queue for real,

00:40:08 ◼   ► so it just ends up being a shoving contest of like,

00:40:11 ◼   ► I'm not taking this book.

00:40:12 ◼   ► I'm not taking this, it's not my thing.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Well, it's not your thing, but let's not look at this.

00:40:15 ◼   ► This is my charter of my scrum team.

00:40:17 ◼   ► I don't know, it's just, it is never ending, right?

00:40:19 ◼   ► So for parts of the OS,

00:40:21 ◼   ► like the one or two APIs that I need to work

00:40:24 ◼   ► for Switch Glass in front and center,

00:40:25 ◼   ► that apparently nobody owns and nobody cares about,

00:40:27 ◼   ► because they don't work reliably, who owns that?

00:40:30 ◼   ► That probably hasn't changed in literally a decade.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Try to find the group,

00:40:34 ◼   ► oh, it's probably Core OS, the catch-all group,

00:40:36 ◼   ► and then Core OS is like, uh-uh,

00:40:38 ◼   ► don't try to hoist that on us.

00:40:39 ◼   ► We don't do anything with that.

00:40:39 ◼   ► We haven't touched that in years, it's fine.

00:40:41 ◼   ► There's no showstopper bugs, there's no sub ones,

00:40:42 ◼   ► get that out of my face.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Anyway, I just want like two APIs to work reliably,

00:40:49 ◼   ► 'cause they're like the only two APIs

00:40:50 ◼   ► my simple little apps use, and they don't, and I'm sad.

00:40:53 ◼   ► - I'm so sorry, Jon.

00:40:55 ◼   ► So my understanding of how Apple works internally,

00:40:59 ◼   ► which granted is hearsay upon hearsay,

00:41:02 ◼   ► but for things that matter,

00:41:04 ◼   ► and I think this is maybe where the difference is

00:41:05 ◼   ► between you and me, for things that matter,

00:41:08 ◼   ► there is, and it's so funny talking to people at Apple,

00:41:11 ◼   ► because just like in governmental contracting,

00:41:13 ◼   ► everything is just acronym soup.

00:41:15 ◼   ► There's the ABC and the QRS and the TUV and the WIZ,

00:41:19 ◼   ► and half the time, if I'm talking to somebody-

00:41:20 ◼   ► - The DRI, you're looking for the DRI.

00:41:22 ◼   ► - Exactly right.

00:41:23 ◼   ► So that's exactly what I was driving toward,

00:41:24 ◼   ► is there's the DRI, the directly responsible individual.

00:41:27 ◼   ► And my understanding, again, hearsay,

00:41:30 ◼   ► is that there is one person that may be an engineer,

00:41:34 ◼   ► maybe a product or a project manager or project owner,

00:41:37 ◼   ► I forget what the term is they use internally,

00:41:39 ◼   ► but basically one person that the buck stops there.

00:41:42 ◼   ► And for anything that matters,

00:41:44 ◼   ► my understanding is there really is

00:41:45 ◼   ► a directly responsible individual

00:41:46 ◼   ► for anything that they care about.

00:41:49 ◼   ► But Jon, to your point a moment ago,

00:41:51 ◼   ► perhaps the things that you care about

00:41:53 ◼   ► are not the things that they care about,

00:41:55 ◼   ► and maybe there isn't a DRI for that sort of thing.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Or alternatively, there's a DRI,

00:41:58 ◼   ► but they really just could not care less

00:42:00 ◼   ► about your particular problem.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - That's probably what it is.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And speaking of that, I should just clear this out

00:42:05 ◼   ► 'cause it's been in our potential after show topics in ages,

00:42:08 ◼   ► so I'll just finish clearing this out.

00:42:09 ◼   ► So one of the APIs that I'm talking about,

00:42:12 ◼   ► maybe I'll leave some more on field,

00:42:13 ◼   ► but one of them is the API for NS running applications,

00:42:18 ◼   ► which is a very old API that probably is from the next days

00:42:20 ◼   ► that in theory tells you information

00:42:22 ◼   ► about all the applications that are running.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And you can imagine I would need that information

00:42:25 ◼   ► for Switch Glass and potentially also for front and center.

00:42:28 ◼   ► And this application was described by a very well-known

00:42:32 ◼   ► and experienced Apple Mac platform developer

00:42:35 ◼   ► as the worst API on the Mac.

00:42:37 ◼   ► And I was told this before I began my work,

00:42:39 ◼   ► and after I started working on his apps,

00:42:41 ◼   ► I think that person may be right.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And this is the person who has been working on the Mac

00:42:44 ◼   ► for literal decades.

00:42:45 ◼   ► So when they say the worst API on the Mac,

00:42:47 ◼   ► they're not just like a new developer who tried something.

00:42:49 ◼   ► I don't wanna name names because this person didn't tell me.

00:42:51 ◼   ► But anyway, this is a very experienced Mac developer

00:42:54 ◼   ► calling this the worst API on the Mac.

00:42:56 ◼   ► And I will put in the show notes the radar numbers,

00:42:59 ◼   ► the one, two, three, four, five, six radar numbers

00:43:02 ◼   ► I got thrown at me from this person

00:43:03 ◼   ► when this person was telling me about the API.

00:43:05 ◼   ► They said, this is the worst API I've been filing.

00:43:07 ◼   ► These are radars, not feedbacks,

00:43:09 ◼   ► 'cause it was before the feedback error.

00:43:11 ◼   ► These bugs have been there for who knows how many years.

00:43:13 ◼   ► They're never getting fixed.

00:43:15 ◼   ► And all the bugs that I was finding with it,

00:43:17 ◼   ► I doubt they were gonna fix too.

00:43:18 ◼   ► So if you are inside Apple and you think you know

00:43:21 ◼   ► who owns NS running application,

00:43:23 ◼   ► an API that no one cares about,

00:43:24 ◼   ► and that it works well enough

00:43:25 ◼   ► that no one needs to care about,

00:43:27 ◼   ► here's six radar numbers, none of which are for me.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Six radar numbers that you can look at

00:43:31 ◼   ► and then you can decide once again

00:43:33 ◼   ► that they're not important enough to fix.

00:43:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:43:36 ◼   ► - I'm so sorry, Jon, I really honestly am.

00:43:39 ◼   ► I really, really honestly am.

00:43:40 ◼   ► I don't know what's worse actually,

00:43:42 ◼   ► and I go back and forth.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Is it worse to have something that a lot of people rely on,

00:43:50 ◼   ► like, hmm, watch connectivity,

00:43:52 ◼   ► that they just really don't care to fix?

00:43:54 ◼   ► Or is it worse to have something

00:43:57 ◼   ► that nobody else cares about,

00:43:59 ◼   ► so you care that much more,

00:44:02 ◼   ► but they still don't care to fix?

00:44:04 ◼   ► - And actually, let me throw in my thing here too,

00:44:07 ◼   ► because I think that is an interesting example

00:44:09 ◼   ► of what you just described.

00:44:10 ◼   ► The one API that I want to work,

00:44:12 ◼   ► well, there's a bunch of APIs that do this,

00:44:14 ◼   ► but the thing I want to accomplish on the Mac

00:44:16 ◼   ► that is currently impossible to accomplish

00:44:18 ◼   ► in a reliable way is to tell an application

00:44:21 ◼   ► to bring all of its windows forward.

00:44:23 ◼   ► It seems like an important feature

00:44:25 ◼   ► of the two applications that I make,

00:44:26 ◼   ► and there are multiple APIs to do that.

00:44:29 ◼   ► I haven't tried the accessibility APIs,

00:44:31 ◼   ► because you have to ask for accessibility permission

00:44:33 ◼   ► to do that, and maybe I could do it manually that way,

00:44:36 ◼   ► but this is another thing about sandboxing

00:44:38 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store.

00:44:39 ◼   ► I haven't been willing to go over the hurdle

00:44:41 ◼   ► to say I'm going to request accessibility access,

00:44:44 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, you want to let this app

00:44:46 ◼   ► read all your keystrokes and record your screen,

00:44:48 ◼   ► and people flip out, and rightly so, right?

00:44:50 ◼   ► I don't want that access.

00:44:51 ◼   ► I just want to say one thing.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Hey, app, bring all your windows to the front.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And again, there are multiple APIs to do that,

00:44:58 ◼   ► and zero of them work reliably.

00:45:00 ◼   ► They work about 98, 99% of the time,

00:45:03 ◼   ► but then they just stop working,

00:45:04 ◼   ► and there's no error condition,

00:45:05 ◼   ► and there's no log messages,

00:45:07 ◼   ► and the only recourse is to quit the app

00:45:09 ◼   ► or sometimes restart your computer.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And what do my dinky little apps do?

00:45:13 ◼   ► One really important thing they do

00:45:15 ◼   ► is ask applications to bring all their windows to the front,

00:45:17 ◼   ► and when that stops working, it's sad.

00:45:20 ◼   ► I even hacked in a little thing

00:45:21 ◼   ► where you can switch which API my app is using to do that.

00:45:26 ◼   ► Like, you can, like, cycle through them,

00:45:28 ◼   ► say, "Did that API work? Try this one.

00:45:29 ◼   ► Try that one. Try that one." None of them work.

00:45:31 ◼   ► When it stops working, it stops working for good.

00:45:33 ◼   ► And I feel like, even though that's a bug

00:45:34 ◼   ► that no one cares about,

00:45:36 ◼   ► if you're going to have any APIs on the Mac that say,

00:45:39 ◼   ► "Hey, app, bring all your windows to the front,"

00:45:41 ◼   ► I don't understand how that can ever stop working

00:45:44 ◼   ► or be unreliable, because I feel like the Windows server

00:45:48 ◼   ► should own the window layering policy to some degree.

00:45:50 ◼   ► It should be able to say,

00:45:52 ◼   ► "Look, app, I don't care what you're doing.

00:45:54 ◼   ► I don't need any interaction with you whatsoever.

00:45:57 ◼   ► I, the Windows server, own your windows,

00:45:58 ◼   ► and I put them on the screen,

00:45:59 ◼   ► and I composite them and everything,

00:46:01 ◼   ► so I'm simply going to bring, as the Windows server,

00:46:03 ◼   ► all your windows to the front.

00:46:05 ◼   ► You don't even need to be running.

00:46:06 ◼   ► You could be hung in an infinite loop,

00:46:08 ◼   ► 'cause this is Mac OS X and not classic Mac OS.

00:46:11 ◼   ► I don't care if you're hung, app.

00:46:12 ◼   ► I'm bringing all your windows to the front."

00:46:14 ◼   ► But no, no API does that reliably, and it makes me very sad.

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00:48:02 ◼   ► So we heard some breaking news earlier today, I believe,

00:48:10 ◼   ► that Apple has added two brand new Siri voices

00:48:13 ◼   ► that will no longer default to a female voice

00:48:15 ◼   ► in the latest version of iOS, which is now in beta.

00:48:19 ◼   ► This is, I think, from TechCrunch.

00:48:20 ◼   ► I'm not really sure what the source is here,

00:48:22 ◼   ► but Apple is adding two new voices

00:48:23 ◼   ► to Siri's English offerings and eliminating

00:48:25 ◼   ► the default "female voice" selection

00:48:27 ◼   ► in the latest beta version of iOS.

00:48:29 ◼   ► This means that every person setting up Siri

00:48:30 ◼   ► will choose a voice for themselves

00:48:31 ◼   ► and it will no longer default

00:48:32 ◼   ► to the voice assistant being female.

00:48:35 ◼   ► Seems good.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I haven't heard it yet.

00:48:37 ◼   ► I think there's a sample out there,

00:48:38 ◼   ► but I just haven't had a chance to hear it.

00:48:40 ◼   ► But sounds good to me.

00:48:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, what's nice about this is,

00:48:45 ◼   ► throughout our history as a society

00:48:49 ◼   ► of trying to give people more rights, equal treatment,

00:48:52 ◼   ► trying to clamp down on stereotypes

00:48:56 ◼   ► and misogyny and stuff like that,

00:48:59 ◼   ► the more weird old assumptions that we can break,

00:49:04 ◼   ► generally the better things are.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Culturally in America, most robot voice assistant things,

00:49:11 ◼   ► whether you're hearing it on a phone menu

00:49:13 ◼   ► or something like that, have been female.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And that assumption isn't true everywhere.

00:49:16 ◼   ► Like in the UK, they're usually male.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Like it's just different in different places.

00:49:21 ◼   ► But it's this assumption that we've had

00:49:24 ◼   ► for forever in our society.

00:49:26 ◼   ► Like oh, the assistant voice should be female.

00:49:30 ◼   ► And that's based on some pretty terrible assumptions

00:49:32 ◼   ► of general reversals and everything over time.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And so what Apple's doing here is

00:49:37 ◼   ► effectively breaking that assumption

00:49:38 ◼   ► and making you choose which style of voice

00:49:41 ◼   ► you want to hear as your Siri assistant,

00:49:44 ◼   ► not just assuming and making a default

00:49:46 ◼   ► to saying okay, in America it's always gonna be

00:49:48 ◼   ► a female voice, in the UK it's always gonna be a male voice.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Like breaking that assumption now.

00:49:52 ◼   ► And that's generally a good thing, I think.

00:49:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there's a, I don't know if this was Siri related

00:49:56 ◼   ► but there was a couple of links going around

00:49:58 ◼   ► a few weeks ago about like why do computer voice assistants

00:50:01 ◼   ► have to be gendered at all?

00:50:03 ◼   ► Or binary gendered at all?

00:50:05 ◼   ► Like a computer doesn't have,

00:50:06 ◼   ► like all this is just to make people feel more comfortable.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Oh, it's a little person, it's not a computer.

00:50:10 ◼   ► Well of course we know it's not actually a person

00:50:11 ◼   ► but it makes us feel comfortable and interact

00:50:13 ◼   ► with something that sounds like a person.

00:50:16 ◼   ► But there's no reason that you need to just pick

00:50:18 ◼   ► oh it's male-ish sounding, meaning a deeper voice

00:50:20 ◼   ► or a female-ish sounding.

00:50:21 ◼   ► And so there was a bunch of voice assistant's demos,

00:50:24 ◼   ► maybe it was from Microsoft, I don't know,

00:50:25 ◼   ► someone will probably find the link.

00:50:27 ◼   ► If not this week then by next week.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Showing essentially non-binary gendered voices.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And I thought they were pretty amazing.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Like why shouldn't your computer sound like that?

00:50:38 ◼   ► And the idea of giving you a choice

00:50:42 ◼   ► and making you select now,

00:50:44 ◼   ► people may just end up selecting according to the stew,

00:50:47 ◼   ► the cultural stew that they've brought up in.

00:50:49 ◼   ► And maybe most Americans will pick female

00:50:51 ◼   ► for exactly the same reason,

00:50:52 ◼   ► the default was unthinkingly female.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Or you know what I mean?

00:50:55 ◼   ► It's just like again, the culture of traditional gender roles

00:50:58 ◼   ► in your particular country.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And what Apple's trying to do is not perpetuate that

00:51:02 ◼   ► by just saying oh yeah, no, we're just gonna,

00:51:04 ◼   ► we're gonna pick the thing

00:51:05 ◼   ► that we think you're comfortable with already, right?

00:51:07 ◼   ► They're not stopping you

00:51:08 ◼   ► from picking whatever you're comfortable with.

00:51:09 ◼   ► And maybe the ratio of people picking

00:51:11 ◼   ► one or the other will be exactly the same.

00:51:13 ◼   ► And you could even get down to the point of like okay,

00:51:15 ◼   ► well what order are the options going to be in?

00:51:17 ◼   ► Because the sort of cultural hegemony

00:51:21 ◼   ► of the assistant is female

00:51:23 ◼   ► and the assistant is subservient to,

00:51:26 ◼   ► is the service worker or whatever,

00:51:28 ◼   ► is so big in this country and probably in the world

00:51:32 ◼   ► that if they put the female option first,

00:51:35 ◼   ► that will cause it to be selected even more

00:51:37 ◼   ► because that's what people expect.

00:51:38 ◼   ► So it seems to me that they should actually

00:51:40 ◼   ► have to randomize the options

00:51:42 ◼   ► to give all of us a fighting chance

00:51:44 ◼   ► to not succumb to our default programming.

00:51:47 ◼   ► This is like the version of the tyranny

00:51:48 ◼   ► of the defaults we talk about,

00:51:50 ◼   ► where like in your application,

00:51:51 ◼   ► whatever you set as the default for some preference,

00:51:54 ◼   ► almost everyone's going to go with that

00:51:56 ◼   ► because most people don't care enough about that option

00:51:58 ◼   ► or aren't even aware that it could be in an option

00:52:01 ◼   ► to dig into your preferences and find the setting for it.

00:52:04 ◼   ► In fact, they might complain

00:52:05 ◼   ► that your program doesn't do this thing that it does.

00:52:07 ◼   ► That's the tyranny of the defaults.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And tyranny of the defaults has an analog in real life,

00:52:11 ◼   ► which is just like society and culture.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And when you grow up in it,

00:52:15 ◼   ► you don't think that there,

00:52:15 ◼   ► you might not even think that there is a child.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Well, that's just the way things are.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Secretaries are women.

00:52:20 ◼   ► How do I know that?

00:52:20 ◼   ► Everybody knows that.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Haven't you seen TV and movies and the entire culture

00:52:24 ◼   ► of the entire world that I've spent my entire life in?

00:52:26 ◼   ► Of course secretaries are women and nurses are women

00:52:29 ◼   ► and doctors are men and like,

00:52:30 ◼   ► unthinkingly adhering to these stereotypes.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And so when some people see this,

00:52:36 ◼   ► changing the voice on Siri, congratulations,

00:52:39 ◼   ► I'm sure that will help women everywhere.

00:52:41 ◼   ► Every little bit, every little one of these things

00:52:43 ◼   ► is one tiny, you know, one tiny pebble taken off a pile.

00:52:48 ◼   ► It doesn't fix the world, but if you don't do this,

00:52:51 ◼   ► then everyone will just continue to assume,

00:52:53 ◼   ► oh, well, my assistant has to be female

00:52:55 ◼   ► because assistants are females

00:52:56 ◼   ► just like secretaries and nurses, right?

00:52:58 ◼   ► So I applaud this move.

00:53:00 ◼   ► I don't quite know why it took so long.

00:53:02 ◼   ► I also don't understand why the default was male

00:53:06 ◼   ► in the UK and female in the US for so long,

00:53:07 ◼   ► 'cause it seems like there was some understanding

00:53:10 ◼   ► within Apple that these cultural differences mean things,

00:53:14 ◼   ► but like why not take the next step and say,

00:53:16 ◼   ► but yeah, should it be our position at Apple

00:53:19 ◼   ► to unthinkingly perpetuate them or to serve them

00:53:22 ◼   ► or should we instead do what we can

00:53:25 ◼   ► to try to make things again more equitable

00:53:28 ◼   ► by just letting the user pick

00:53:31 ◼   ► from a randomly ordered selection of choices.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And I'll be excited if they throw in a few non-binary choices

00:53:37 ◼   ► there too, because I think they sound cool.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - Yep, agreed.

00:53:39 ◼   ► And I found a couple of examples,

00:53:41 ◼   ► mostly thanks to the chat room,

00:53:42 ◼   ► of recordings of these that you can listen to

00:53:46 ◼   ► after the fact.

00:53:47 ◼   ► All right, last week we had an Ask ATP

00:53:49 ◼   ► with regard to how we would set up networking

00:53:52 ◼   ► in a fantasy, you know, new house or something like that.

00:53:55 ◼   ► And Marco, as you want to do,

00:53:58 ◼   ► recommended something that you really like.

00:54:00 ◼   ► And you had some caveats and some gotchas about it,

00:54:02 ◼   ► but you had said in the past, up until about a year ago,

00:54:06 ◼   ► Ubiquiti, which is a manufacturer of UniFi stuff,

00:54:10 ◼   ► you have had really good experiences with them

00:54:13 ◼   ► up until semi-recently.

00:54:15 ◼   ► And then you had kind of self-backpedaled, if you will,

00:54:19 ◼   ► a little bit last week to say,

00:54:20 ◼   ► well, it used to be much better than it is now,

00:54:22 ◼   ► I'm not so sure.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Is that fair so far?

00:54:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically.

00:54:25 ◼   ► You know, I've been using Ubiquiti stuff

00:54:27 ◼   ► for many, many years for my home networking

00:54:30 ◼   ► and it's been rock solid for the most part for,

00:54:33 ◼   ► I mean, geez, maybe six, seven years.

00:54:35 ◼   ► I've been using it for a long time.

00:54:37 ◼   ► But the latest hardware from them,

00:54:41 ◼   ► the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Router series,

00:54:45 ◼   ► it seems like the Wi-Fi access points are all still fine,

00:54:48 ◼   ► but the Dream Machine Router and the software

00:54:50 ◼   ► that goes with it, it seems unreliable

00:54:52 ◼   ► and they keep moving the software forward

00:54:54 ◼   ► in very aggressive ways in ways that they seem

00:54:58 ◼   ► to have adopted a move fast and break things attitude,

00:55:02 ◼   ► which is not generally what you want from your router.

00:55:04 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:55:05 ◼   ► You kind of want your router to be old and boring

00:55:07 ◼   ► and just work well and not break anything for reasons.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So that culture might have come back to bite them slightly.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, so there was a breach that happened,

00:55:20 ◼   ► I guess, late last year.

00:55:21 ◼   ► And Ubiquiti seems to have admitted to it to a degree.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I think they said some third party cloud provider

00:55:29 ◼   ► had had a breach that's associated with them.

00:55:31 ◼   ► And I believe that's pretty much all they said.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Well, there was an article that we'll put in the show notes

00:55:36 ◼   ► from Krebs on Security, wherein a whistleblower

00:55:38 ◼   ► reached out to them and they called the whistleblower Adam.

00:55:42 ◼   ► And the whistleblower said it was considerably bigger

00:55:45 ◼   ► than Ubiquiti's leading on.

00:55:46 ◼   ► So I'm gonna try to grab just a few quotes from here.

00:55:49 ◼   ► In reality, this is from the article.

00:55:51 ◼   ► In reality, Adam said the attackers had gained

00:55:52 ◼   ► administrative access to Ubiquiti servers

00:55:54 ◼   ► at Amazon's cloud service,

00:55:56 ◼   ► which secures the underlying server hardware and software

00:55:58 ◼   ► that requires the cloud tenant or client

00:56:00 ◼   ► to secure access to any data stored there.

00:56:02 ◼   ► Adam says that the attackers had gained access

00:56:04 ◼   ► to privileged credentials that were previously stored

00:56:06 ◼   ► in the LastPass account of a Ubiquiti IT employee

00:56:09 ◼   ► and gained root administrator access

00:56:11 ◼   ► to all Ubiquiti AWS accounts,

00:56:13 ◼   ► including all S3 data buckets, all application logs,

00:56:15 ◼   ► all databases, all user database credentials

00:56:18 ◼   ► and secrets required to forge single sign-on cookies.

00:56:21 ◼   ► I could go on and on actually about this.

00:56:24 ◼   ► Supposedly they were threatened.

00:56:26 ◼   ► The attackers wanted $2.8 million in order to keep quiet.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And so they actually wanted it, of course, in Bitcoin.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And I had assumed, oh, that must be like 1,000 Bitcoin.

00:56:38 ◼   ► Oh no, $2.8 million apparently at the time of writing

00:56:42 ◼   ► was 50 Bitcoin, which is just pretty fosters to me.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Oh, please don't email me, I don't care about Bitcoin.

00:56:47 ◼   ► But anyway, I just thought that was funny.

00:56:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, can we pause on that for one moment?

00:56:51 ◼   ► - Yeah. - People occasionally request

00:56:53 ◼   ► that we talk about the world of cryptocurrency.

00:56:55 ◼   ► I could not possibly care less

00:56:58 ◼   ► about the world of cryptocurrency.

00:56:59 ◼   ► I have very little knowledge of it,

00:57:01 ◼   ► but it's mainly I just have no interest.

00:57:03 ◼   ► And there seems to be, like there's a lot of people

00:57:05 ◼   ► out there who absolutely are super into it,

00:57:08 ◼   ► super involved, super interested.

00:57:11 ◼   ► I almost feel like it's a different world of tech

00:57:14 ◼   ► than the world that we live in.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And while there might be a very small amount of overlap,

00:57:19 ◼   ► I don't think it's much more than that.

00:57:21 ◼   ► And it's like people who are super into stock trading

00:57:25 ◼   ► and stuff, it's a different form of financial gambling

00:57:28 ◼   ► and instruments and everything.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And I just couldn't care less about that stuff.

00:57:32 ◼   ► I have no interest in it.

00:57:35 ◼   ► And it seems like there's so much there to know

00:57:39 ◼   ► that if you're gonna be into it,

00:57:40 ◼   ► you gotta be really into it.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Or you have to not be into all the stuff I'm into

00:57:44 ◼   ► in order to even have time to keep up with it

00:57:47 ◼   ► and to do it correctly and well and everything.

00:57:50 ◼   ► And so all of you out there,

00:57:51 ◼   ► if whatever portion of our audience is interested in that,

00:57:55 ◼   ► I'm sorry, I'm really not.

00:57:57 ◼   ► And so I'm never gonna wanna talk about it.

00:57:59 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:58:00 ◼   ► And that's just, there's a lot that we don't cover

00:58:02 ◼   ► on the show because tech is a very big world.

00:58:05 ◼   ► And for me, it's gotta be,

00:58:07 ◼   ► the whole world of cryptocurrency is part of that.

00:58:09 ◼   ► I just have no knowledge and no interest about it.

00:58:13 ◼   ► - Well, kind of like the financial instruments

00:58:15 ◼   ► that you mentioned before,

00:58:17 ◼   ► despite the fact that you have no interest in it,

00:58:19 ◼   ► unfortunately, like the stock market

00:58:21 ◼   ► and various financial instruments,

00:58:22 ◼   ► it does potentially have effect on your life,

00:58:25 ◼   ► if you remember 2008, for example.

00:58:27 ◼   ► So lots of times, things that we don't have any interest in

00:58:29 ◼   ► that just seem like there are a bunch of people

00:58:31 ◼   ► playing in a world that doesn't affect us,

00:58:33 ◼   ► when it starts to get into the financial system,

00:58:36 ◼   ► when they mess up real bad, it can affect us.

00:58:39 ◼   ► So it's one of those things where even if you don't

00:58:42 ◼   ► actually know anything about it,

00:58:43 ◼   ► it would behoove you to know enough about it

00:58:46 ◼   ► to know what side you're on and what you wanna lobby for

00:58:49 ◼   ► and who you might want to vote for in elections

00:58:51 ◼   ► and so on and so forth, respect to cryptocurrency,

00:58:54 ◼   ► just like the financial system,

00:58:55 ◼   ► which I have no interest in whatsoever,

00:58:57 ◼   ► but has in my very short lifetime

00:58:59 ◼   ► affected me in very profound ways already

00:59:01 ◼   ► and all of us, right?

00:59:02 ◼   ► So we can't just let the people over there

00:59:04 ◼   ► play with their stocks and collateralize debt obligations

00:59:08 ◼   ► and everything like, the whole reason I even know

00:59:10 ◼   ► what a collateralized debt obligation is

00:59:12 ◼   ► is because of the 2008 financial crash, right?

00:59:15 ◼   ► I didn't know about what any of those things are,

00:59:16 ◼   ► but boy, eventually we all had to know,

00:59:18 ◼   ► kind of like we all had to know about like viruses and stuff

00:59:21 ◼   ► and with the COVID thing.

00:59:23 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, not that having some foundational

00:59:27 ◼   ► baseline knowledge of cryptocurrency

00:59:28 ◼   ► is probably going to save us,

00:59:29 ◼   ► but it's probably better to know something a little sooner

00:59:32 ◼   ► rather than to just read about it after the world

00:59:36 ◼   ► is totally destroyed by people mining for Bitcoin

00:59:40 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:59:41 ◼   ► - Well, and like the small amount of opinion I do have

00:59:44 ◼   ► about it is not positive because I am familiar

00:59:49 ◼   ► with the general idea of how it works.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I am also familiar with the immense amount of energy

00:59:54 ◼   ► consumption it's causing around the world.

00:59:56 ◼   ► - That's all free energy that no one was using, Marco.

00:59:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so there's--

01:00:00 ◼   ► - It was going to waste.

01:00:01 ◼   ► If it wasn't for Bitcoin, that energy would just be

01:00:03 ◼   ► falling on the floor and rotting.

01:00:04 ◼   ► Do you not want people to use that energy?

01:00:06 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, oh God.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Anyway, before we get, I mean, believe me,

01:00:10 ◼   ► you think Tesla people are bad with the email?

01:00:13 ◼   ► - No, Cryptocurrency people don't listen to the show.

01:00:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:16 ◼   ► - Anyway, no, it's--

01:00:16 ◼   ► - I'm not so sure.

01:00:17 ◼   ► - So yeah, so to me, that whole world,

01:00:20 ◼   ► it's like, I love computers for what we used to use

01:00:25 ◼   ► computers for, what used to be the only thing

01:00:27 ◼   ► we used computers for is messing around,

01:00:29 ◼   ► making documents and images and audio and video

01:00:32 ◼   ► and sending things back and forth,

01:00:34 ◼   ► communicating back and forth with each other.

01:00:36 ◼   ► And this seems like, hey, what if we used computers

01:00:39 ◼   ► to generate this entire financial world

01:00:41 ◼   ► of complex financial instruments?

01:00:42 ◼   ► And I was like, okay, you've lost me.

01:00:44 ◼   ► Now, what you're really talking about is finance.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And it doesn't have that much to do

01:00:50 ◼   ► with the computers anymore.

01:00:52 ◼   ► And that goes well beyond my interest or knowledge.

01:00:56 ◼   ► And again, the little bit I do know about it

01:01:00 ◼   ► really rubs me the wrong way, for lots of reasons.

01:01:03 ◼   ► From the attitude of a lot of the people in that world,

01:01:06 ◼   ► which it does seem like a lot of them

01:01:07 ◼   ► come from the world of finance and stuff like that,

01:01:10 ◼   ► which is not my scene at all,

01:01:12 ◼   ► as well as the environmental issues it causes.

01:01:17 ◼   ► And it seems, and just the attitude of the presumption

01:01:22 ◼   ► that this is going to take over everything

01:01:24 ◼   ► and that all of us simpletons using fiat currency

01:01:28 ◼   ► are somehow wrong or old dinosaurs.

01:01:30 ◼   ► - You know enough of the vocabulary to know the terms

01:01:35 ◼   ► that you wouldn't otherwise have any reason to know,

01:01:36 ◼   ► so it's getting to you.

01:01:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean literally everything about it

01:01:39 ◼   ► that I know rubs me the wrong way,

01:01:40 ◼   ► with the sole exception that I think

01:01:43 ◼   ► the technological concept of how it works

01:01:46 ◼   ► is interesting technologically,

01:01:48 ◼   ► but that's where the positive feelings I have about it end.

01:01:53 ◼   ► - I predict we will talk about it, yes,

01:01:56 ◼   ► even more than we are now, in a future episode

01:01:59 ◼   ► at some point related to the NFT stuff, but not this week.

01:02:03 ◼   ► - Are we still talking about those?

01:02:04 ◼   ► - And I wish, not this week, and I wish I could find,

01:02:07 ◼   ► we should end by saying, me trying to find the originator

01:02:11 ◼   ► of this amazing tweet that I still,

01:02:13 ◼   ► that's the problem with the internet,

01:02:14 ◼   ► I can't tell who originated this tweet

01:02:16 ◼   ► 'cause people could just be copying and pasting it

01:02:17 ◼   ► or whatever, but anyway, it was the explanation of Bitcoin

01:02:20 ◼   ► from 2018, potentially by the person who we'll link

01:02:23 ◼   ► in the show as it says.

01:02:24 ◼   ► You all know what Bitcoin is?

01:02:26 ◼   ► Imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced

01:02:28 ◼   ► solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin.

01:02:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:02:31 ◼   ► I know, I've seen that before, it's pretty good.

01:02:33 ◼   ► - You have to know a lot of Bitcoin to understand

01:02:35 ◼   ► how every part of that sentence makes sense,

01:02:38 ◼   ► but it's also depressingly accurate.

01:02:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you know, so I haven't had a chance to weigh in,

01:02:44 ◼   ► I'll be very brief.

01:02:45 ◼   ► I agree with almost everything Marco said.

01:02:48 ◼   ► If it wasn't for the fact that this is accelerating

01:02:50 ◼   ► the heat death of the universe,

01:02:51 ◼   ► I would probably be far more interested in it.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Just a month or so ago, I went, I didn't do a deep dive,

01:02:58 ◼   ► but I started looking into, 'cause I did not understand

01:03:01 ◼   ► how it worked at all, and there was a really good video

01:03:03 ◼   ► on YouTube that's almost half an hour,

01:03:05 ◼   ► but it's excellent, and it's by 3blue1brown,

01:03:08 ◼   ► and I'd never heard of this channel before.

01:03:11 ◼   ► But link it in the show notes.

01:03:12 ◼   ► If you wanna know from a nerd's perspective,

01:03:14 ◼   ► but yet approachable from a non-nerd's perspective,

01:03:17 ◼   ► how does this actually work, I really, really recommend it,

01:03:19 ◼   ► 'cause it helped me understand,

01:03:21 ◼   ► even after having read many, many things about it,

01:03:23 ◼   ► it wasn't until I watched this video that I was like,

01:03:24 ◼   ► oh, okay, I got it.

01:03:26 ◼   ► And yeah, I agree with you, Marco.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Like, not only is the scene not for me,

01:03:29 ◼   ► and not only does everyone seem to think,

01:03:32 ◼   ► much in the same way of Tesla people,

01:03:34 ◼   ► that they are the one true people that really understand,

01:03:38 ◼   ► and all you sheeple just don't get it, blah, blah, blah.

01:03:41 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - It's just like Tesla people.

01:03:44 ◼   ► Oh, you idiots with your internal combustion engines

01:03:47 ◼   ► blowing up dinosaurs.

01:03:49 ◼   ► - Let's say, more charitably,

01:03:51 ◼   ► when people are tech enthusiasts, as we are,

01:03:53 ◼   ► it's easy to get excited about a new technology.

01:03:56 ◼   ► We are often excited about new technologies.

01:03:58 ◼   ► I certainly am, right?

01:03:59 ◼   ► It just so happens that sometimes

01:04:01 ◼   ► some of those new technologies that people get excited about

01:04:03 ◼   ► and form communities around have, let's say,

01:04:05 ◼   ► externalities that turn other people off.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Even Tesla, which is doing a good thing.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Electric cars, yay, right?

01:04:12 ◼   ► That's good, right?

01:04:13 ◼   ► And yeah, it is.

01:04:14 ◼   ► But maybe when the fans get a little bit too enthusiastic

01:04:17 ◼   ► and too excited about defending their,

01:04:20 ◼   ► the thing that they are a fan of,

01:04:21 ◼   ► that gets a little bit toxic.

01:04:23 ◼   ► But in the case of things like Bitcoin or other,

01:04:25 ◼   ► you know, where there's,

01:04:27 ◼   ► anything where there is exciting technology,

01:04:30 ◼   ► and like you said, Casey,

01:04:31 ◼   ► some of the ideas behind Bitcoin are very clever

01:04:33 ◼   ► and interesting and worth pursuing,

01:04:34 ◼   ► kind of get overshadowed by the reality of,

01:04:39 ◼   ► okay, but then what changes is this actually causing

01:04:42 ◼   ► to happen in the world,

01:04:43 ◼   ► and how do I feel about those changes

01:04:45 ◼   ► as someone who isn't enthusiastic about this technology?

01:04:47 ◼   ► And that's where people end up getting conflict.

01:04:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, it is worth checking out.

01:04:52 ◼   ► If you listen to the show, if you enjoy the show,

01:04:56 ◼   ► it is likely that you have enough of a nerd's brain,

01:04:59 ◼   ► and I mean that in a complimentary way,

01:05:00 ◼   ► that you would enjoy reading up on this

01:05:02 ◼   ► and learning about it.

01:05:03 ◼   ► And like I said, this 26 minute and 20 second video

01:05:05 ◼   ► really helped me anyway understand how it works.

01:05:08 ◼   ► All right, leaving all that behind us, at least for now.

01:05:10 ◼   ► So yeah, apparently Ubiquiti really kind of screwed up.

01:05:13 ◼   ► - Back to Ubiquiti.

01:05:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, back to Ubiquiti.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Speaking of screw ups, hey-o.

01:05:17 ◼   ► - Are they using all of our routers to mine for Bitcoin?

01:05:20 ◼   ► What's going on?

01:05:20 ◼   ► - Maybe that's it.

01:05:21 ◼   ► It all comes full circle, guys.

01:05:23 ◼   ► It all comes full circle.

01:05:24 ◼   ► - You don't need to start that rumor on the show.

01:05:26 ◼   ► That is not true.

01:05:27 ◼   ► - God, please no.

01:05:28 ◼   ► But no, all kidding and snark aside, this is some stuff.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Like this seems to me, and gosh, it's been a long time

01:05:36 ◼   ► since I've really run anything server side.

01:05:38 ◼   ► So Marco, jump in on,

01:05:40 ◼   ► or actually both of you jump in and correct me,

01:05:41 ◼   ► but it seems to me like a lot of this stuff

01:05:43 ◼   ► was kind of amateur hour

01:05:45 ◼   ► and that they really should have known better

01:05:47 ◼   ► than to make a lot of these mistakes.

01:05:49 ◼   ► And golly, if you're already in a position

01:05:52 ◼   ► where some of your most diehard supporters like Marco,

01:05:55 ◼   ► and again, and I mean that in a complimentary way,

01:05:58 ◼   ► you had said for years Marco, oh, this stuff is the best.

01:06:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's expensive, but it's the best.

01:06:01 ◼   ► It's so good, blah, blah, blah.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And you had already been backpedaling some

01:06:05 ◼   ► as of literally a week ago.

01:06:06 ◼   ► And now, oh, yikes,

01:06:09 ◼   ► I don't know if I wanna go anywhere near this.

01:06:10 ◼   ► - I mean, here's the thing.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Like, I mean, we don't know that much about this yet.

01:06:14 ◼   ► And honestly, I don't follow this world

01:06:16 ◼   ► very closely normally.

01:06:18 ◼   ► So it's hard to expect any company

01:06:22 ◼   ► to be perfect all the time.

01:06:23 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:06:24 ◼   ► - Something like, you know, Ubiquiti,

01:06:25 ◼   ► they mostly sell like networking gear to companies.

01:06:30 ◼   ► So they have to be expected to have pretty good security

01:06:33 ◼   ► because their devices are kind of assumed

01:06:37 ◼   ► to have good security themselves

01:06:38 ◼   ► 'cause they're being brought into serious businesses

01:06:40 ◼   ► and places where there's high stakes

01:06:42 ◼   ► if their devices are compromised.

01:06:44 ◼   ► So it is important, you know, it's like a server vendor.

01:06:47 ◼   ► It is important that they are trustworthy

01:06:50 ◼   ► and that they are viewed as following

01:06:52 ◼   ► pretty good security practices.

01:06:54 ◼   ► It is also important that they communicate clearly

01:06:58 ◼   ► when there is a problem or when there is a breach.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And in this case, you know,

01:07:03 ◼   ► you can argue whether they should've had this breach at all.

01:07:07 ◼   ► And I don't know enough about it to know

01:07:08 ◼   ► like what was involved, how,

01:07:11 ◼   ► if they were practicing reasonably secure

01:07:14 ◼   ► and responsible practices beforehand, I don't know.

01:07:16 ◼   ► What I do know is that if this accusation is true,

01:07:22 ◼   ► again, that's a big if

01:07:24 ◼   ► because there's, you know, you have to wonder like

01:07:28 ◼   ► could this be some kind of stock manipulation scheme?

01:07:30 ◼   ► They're a public company, I think, right?

01:07:31 ◼   ► Oh yeah, they are, right?

01:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, so like it could be some kind of weird thing like that.

01:07:34 ◼   ► We don't actually know if this accusation is true or not.

01:07:38 ◼   ► But if it is true, what it points to is

01:07:42 ◼   ► I don't think anything like super damning

01:07:44 ◼   ► about their security practices,

01:07:46 ◼   ► but it does point to a pretty big problem

01:07:48 ◼   ► that they might've like underrepresented

01:07:51 ◼   ► or lied about a pretty substantial breach.

01:07:53 ◼   ► That is worrisome if that is true.

01:07:56 ◼   ► But that being said, what this means for me

01:08:00 ◼   ► and for people out there who have Ubiquiti gear,

01:08:03 ◼   ► it's one of those moments that gives you pause

01:08:05 ◼   ► about some of the features that we have enabled

01:08:08 ◼   ► on these routers and stuff

01:08:08 ◼   ► and some of the abilities they have

01:08:11 ◼   ► and whether we should enable them or not.

01:08:12 ◼   ► So for instance, on my Ubiquiti stuff,

01:08:16 ◼   ► I have auto updates turned on.

01:08:17 ◼   ► I have it, whenever there's a software update,

01:08:19 ◼   ► I have it installed at a certain time

01:08:20 ◼   ► and automatically reboot if it has to

01:08:22 ◼   ► at a certain time that won't disrupt things.

01:08:24 ◼   ► When something like this happens,

01:08:25 ◼   ► you realize, oh, maybe I shouldn't have auto update on

01:08:28 ◼   ► because if somebody compromises their update channel

01:08:31 ◼   ► and has the ability to arbitrarily sign any updates

01:08:36 ◼   ► they want as valid and push them out to all customers,

01:08:39 ◼   ► well, that could be pretty bad for me.

01:08:42 ◼   ► On the other hand, maybe I do want automatic updates

01:08:45 ◼   ► because that lets them patch security holes faster

01:08:47 ◼   ► as they're found, right?

01:08:48 ◼   ► So there's stuff to consider there.

01:08:50 ◼   ► There's also the entire model of Ubiquiti's routers

01:08:54 ◼   ► and stuff, I don't know if people who don't have them,

01:08:57 ◼   ► they probably don't know about this kind of stuff,

01:08:58 ◼   ► there's a whole bunch of remote management

01:09:02 ◼   ► and cloud-based features of Ubiquiti stuff.

01:09:04 ◼   ► So you don't just have a router running in your house

01:09:08 ◼   ► that you log into at like 192.168.1.1 anymore.

01:09:12 ◼   ► That is there still, but you can sign into it from anywhere

01:09:16 ◼   ► if you have that enabled and you can manage things centrally

01:09:19 ◼   ► with your central Ubiquiti account where you're actually

01:09:22 ◼   ► not just signing into your router, you're signing into

01:09:23 ◼   ► Ubiquiti as their single sign-on thing for their service

01:09:27 ◼   ► and then you can access your stuff through their service

01:09:29 ◼   ► from anywhere, you can have all this cloud-based everything

01:09:31 ◼   ► about your local network and its management.

01:09:33 ◼   ► So maybe we don't need to enable those features

01:09:36 ◼   ► as home users.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I've been using that because it's convenient sometimes,

01:09:41 ◼   ► but something like this makes me question,

01:09:43 ◼   ► do I really need that?

01:09:44 ◼   ► Maybe I should be just setting it up once

01:09:47 ◼   ► and then just turning off auto updates

01:09:49 ◼   ► and turning off remote stuff and only updating it manually

01:09:52 ◼   ► like once a year when I think about it

01:09:54 ◼   ► and when I feel like it and then going to check.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Maybe I should go back to a system like that,

01:09:58 ◼   ► which used to be the way I would always do things on routers

01:10:00 ◼   ► because it didn't really matter most of the time.

01:10:03 ◼   ► I don't usually enable remote management of anything

01:10:05 ◼   ► on my home network because I don't usually need it.

01:10:08 ◼   ► So maybe I should go back to something like that

01:10:09 ◼   ► and I think this kind of breach should make

01:10:11 ◼   ► all Ubiquiti customers ask these questions to themselves.

01:10:14 ◼   ► And then finally, if you're able to,

01:10:17 ◼   ► this probably also should remind you to maybe not assume

01:10:22 ◼   ► that your internal network is secure by default.

01:10:26 ◼   ► And that might change what kind of services you offer

01:10:29 ◼   ► locally inside your network, whether you have passwords

01:10:33 ◼   ► on things like file shares or not.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I've always just had passwords on stuff

01:10:37 ◼   ► because I've always kind of assumed,

01:10:39 ◼   ► well, if some kid comes over with their weird

01:10:43 ◼   ► switch or iPad or whatever and I give them our wifi password,

01:10:48 ◼   ► I don't have a VLAN setup or anything like that.

01:10:50 ◼   ► I don't get that complicated.

01:10:51 ◼   ► What if their device gets hacked or they share the password

01:10:54 ◼   ► and then other people can get on my wifi network?

01:10:57 ◼   ► I don't need to know that every single device on my network

01:11:00 ◼   ► is always gonna be trusted and secured

01:11:02 ◼   ► because all the things I run inside my network

01:11:05 ◼   ► I assume to be requiring some base level of security,

01:11:08 ◼   ► requiring passwords and user accounts and stuff like that.

01:11:11 ◼   ► So it would be a good idea to also revisit

01:11:14 ◼   ► those kind of assumptions for people who are looking

01:11:16 ◼   ► at this and getting worried.

01:11:18 ◼   ► If somebody has access to something running on your network,

01:11:21 ◼   ► what do they have access to?

01:11:23 ◼   ► And if you can minimize that, that's probably a good idea

01:11:26 ◼   ► because even if you run some other router

01:11:29 ◼   ► and this problem doesn't apply to you,

01:11:31 ◼   ► we live in a world full of internet of things,

01:11:34 ◼   ► crap devices and everything and it's only a matter of time

01:11:38 ◼   ► before something on your network gets hacked by somebody

01:11:42 ◼   ► and has some kind of vulnerability

01:11:44 ◼   ► that doesn't get patched or whatever.

01:11:45 ◼   ► So something hostile will be on your wifi network eventually

01:11:49 ◼   ► so this is a good way to think about what the risks there

01:11:53 ◼   ► are and think about how you wanna manage those.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And then again going back to Ubiquiti,

01:11:57 ◼   ► thinking about with Ubiquiti stuff,

01:11:59 ◼   ► do you want to enable auto updating

01:12:01 ◼   ► and do you want remote access?

01:12:03 ◼   ► And I think the answer here is gonna,

01:12:05 ◼   ► for a lot of people it's now gonna be maybe not.

01:12:07 ◼   ► - Well I think this gets to the heart

01:12:08 ◼   ► of what you were saying before about communication

01:12:11 ◼   ► from the company because like I said,

01:12:13 ◼   ► people get hacked all the time, it's a thing that happens.

01:12:18 ◼   ► It's essentially unavoidable.

01:12:21 ◼   ► If someone wants to target you and wants to get in,

01:12:24 ◼   ► they probably will get in.

01:12:25 ◼   ► I think history has shown that there is no such thing

01:12:27 ◼   ► as an invulnerable, completely secure anything

01:12:30 ◼   ► that is on any kind of network,

01:12:33 ◼   ► which is why real security requests, as they say, air gap,

01:12:37 ◼   ► although there's all sorts of crazy academic papers

01:12:39 ◼   ► that will show you that even an air gap

01:12:41 ◼   ► isn't sufficient to protect you, but anyway.

01:12:43 ◼   ► The whole point is stuff happens, as they say.

01:12:47 ◼   ► But in that kind of environment,

01:12:50 ◼   ► of course you wanna have auto updates on

01:12:51 ◼   ► because that is your best defense against exploits

01:12:55 ◼   ► because exploits are discovered and then they are patched

01:12:57 ◼   ► and then new ones are discovered and then those are patched

01:12:58 ◼   ► and then other new ones are discovered and they're patched.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And if you opt out of that patching cycle

01:13:03 ◼   ► or do it at a much less frequent time interval,

01:13:06 ◼   ► like a month or a year instead of as soon as the patch

01:13:09 ◼   ► is available, you are vulnerable for longer.

01:13:12 ◼   ► But then we run into the ubiquity problem,

01:13:14 ◼   ► which is not so much that, oh,

01:13:15 ◼   ► maybe the signing certificates got stolen

01:13:18 ◼   ► and someone can put an update as them,

01:13:20 ◼   ► it's that we don't know because ubiquity,

01:13:22 ◼   ► according to the story, has not been upfront about it.

01:13:25 ◼   ► What you want is truthful communication

01:13:28 ◼   ► from the company to tell you,

01:13:30 ◼   ► if they had told you, hey, our stuff was stolen

01:13:33 ◼   ► and people can sign things as us,

01:13:35 ◼   ► everybody turn off your auto updates now

01:13:37 ◼   ► and then the company would later tell you,

01:13:39 ◼   ► okay, we've issued new certificates and redone everything,

01:13:42 ◼   ► now apply this patch manually and re-enable.

01:13:45 ◼   ► That's what you're looking for.

01:13:47 ◼   ► Like the trust in the company is the thing

01:13:50 ◼   ► that is damaged here.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Not so much, again, assuming it's true,

01:13:53 ◼   ► not so much the breach itself

01:13:55 ◼   ► because if you have trust in the company,

01:13:57 ◼   ► you would know which actions to take

01:13:58 ◼   ► because you would just ask the company,

01:13:59 ◼   ► hey, what should I do?

01:14:00 ◼   ► Should I have auto updates on or not?

01:14:02 ◼   ► But now Marco's in a situation of like,

01:14:03 ◼   ► well, I don't know whether I should have them on or not

01:14:06 ◼   ► because I don't even know if this is a thing

01:14:07 ◼   ► that happened or not because if the story is true,

01:14:10 ◼   ► then ubiquity is withholding information

01:14:11 ◼   ► that's making me not trust them,

01:14:13 ◼   ► but if I don't trust them, should I turn on auto updates

01:14:15 ◼   ► or should I not turn them on and I don't know what to do?

01:14:17 ◼   ► And that like, you know,

01:14:19 ◼   ► it's probably some business 101 lesson or whatever.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Like again, stuff is going to happen in your business

01:14:24 ◼   ► that's bad, it's how you handle it that, you know,

01:14:27 ◼   ► within reason, obviously if you're running a store

01:14:30 ◼   ► and it burns to the ground, you have no insurance,

01:14:31 ◼   ► how you handle it isn't that important.

01:14:33 ◼   ► But in situations like this,

01:14:35 ◼   ► how you handle it is a big factor

01:14:37 ◼   ► in how your company comes out of this.

01:14:39 ◼   ► So I really hope either parts of this story are true

01:14:43 ◼   ► or ubiquity at least comes clean at this point.

01:14:45 ◼   ► So its customers know what they should do going forward,

01:14:48 ◼   ► including knowing whether they should just

01:14:50 ◼   ► buy new networking equipment.

01:14:52 ◼   ► - Oh, and to answer everyone's questions about like,

01:14:54 ◼   ► what do I recommend now that ubiquity has a problem?

01:14:58 ◼   ► The answer is I don't know.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I haven't, you know, we have things like, you know,

01:15:03 ◼   ► the previous sponsor Eero, I've used those before,

01:15:05 ◼   ► like in vacation situations and stuff like that

01:15:07 ◼   ► and they've been fine.

01:15:09 ◼   ► But this kind of world, like,

01:15:11 ◼   ► almost everything has downsides somewhere in the chain

01:15:16 ◼   ► or like parties that you have to trust

01:15:19 ◼   ► if you're gonna use it.

01:15:20 ◼   ► You can go the kind of home brewed route

01:15:22 ◼   ► and set up like, you know, like one of those like,

01:15:25 ◼   ► like PF sense things, but those sometimes have problems too.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Like I think they just had a problem recently.

01:15:29 ◼   ► So like there's all sorts of gotchas

01:15:32 ◼   ► with a lot of this stuff.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And I think, again, like a reasonable way to approach it

01:15:38 ◼   ► is probably to keep things pretty simple.

01:15:41 ◼   ► And if you wanna be conservative about, you know,

01:15:45 ◼   ► the security and stuff on your network,

01:15:47 ◼   ► don't do things that have remote access, you know,

01:15:50 ◼   ► don't do things that are based on web services.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Have things that are more local and local only,

01:15:58 ◼   ► where like you are taking a more active role

01:16:00 ◼   ► in their management or there isn't much to manage

01:16:04 ◼   ► because they're so simple and local.

01:16:06 ◼   ► I think that's the general way to go.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And that's probably where I'm gonna be heading

01:16:08 ◼   ► with my stuff as well.

01:16:10 ◼   ► - So interestingly and totally unrelated

01:16:12 ◼   ► to this ubiquity thing,

01:16:13 ◼   ► I have been doing some thinking and purchasing

01:16:18 ◼   ► related to my home network because in this year,

01:16:22 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say this year of working from home

01:16:23 ◼   ► 'cause honestly I was working from home a lot

01:16:25 ◼   ► even before the COVID stuff.

01:16:28 ◼   ► But in this last year, I've had much more occasion

01:16:31 ◼   ► to be on, you know, Teams, basically Microsoft Teams,

01:16:35 ◼   ► teleconference meetings all day long, right?

01:16:37 ◼   ► And every once in a while, it always seemed to be

01:16:43 ◼   ► during like an important Teams meeting, right,

01:16:45 ◼   ► with like where I'm either I'm giving

01:16:48 ◼   ► an important presentation or I'm talking with my bosses

01:16:50 ◼   ► or whatever, I would lose internet briefly

01:16:53 ◼   ► and then it would come back.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And it happened like, it happened one particularly

01:16:59 ◼   ► memorable time and I was like, if this happens again,

01:17:02 ◼   ► I'm fixing everything.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And then of course, it didn't happen again for months.

01:17:04 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, well, whatever that was,

01:17:06 ◼   ► you don't have to worry about it.

01:17:07 ◼   ► But then it happened again and I'm like, okay,

01:17:09 ◼   ► this might, maybe this happens all the time

01:17:11 ◼   ► and I just only notice when I'm in the middle

01:17:13 ◼   ► of an important meeting, like 'cause it, you know,

01:17:15 ◼   ► it just goes out briefly but then comes back, right?

01:17:18 ◼   ► And what it looks like from my networking perspective

01:17:21 ◼   ► is it looked the same as back in the bad old days

01:17:23 ◼   ► when my ISP would like, you know, go down for a second

01:17:26 ◼   ► or lose an IP address but it also might look similar

01:17:29 ◼   ► to a router rebooting itself because it crashed.

01:17:32 ◼   ► I have no way to tell because one of the routers I'm using,

01:17:34 ◼   ► I can't figure out how to get the logs from it

01:17:36 ◼   ► unless I do like SNMP or whatever

01:17:37 ◼   ► and I don't wanna deal with that.

01:17:38 ◼   ► But the whole point is, it's one of these problems

01:17:40 ◼   ► that's, it's like testing my resolve by saying,

01:17:44 ◼   ► I'm only gonna happen, I'm gonna happen in an infuriating

01:17:47 ◼   ► time but then it won't happen again for months.

01:17:48 ◼   ► But then it'll happen again but then it won't happen

01:17:50 ◼   ► again for months.

01:17:51 ◼   ► But now it happened again today and I'm like,

01:17:53 ◼   ► you know what, this is not just whatever it's called,

01:17:56 ◼   ► like a selection effect, not selection effect,

01:17:58 ◼   ► was it when someone mentioned something

01:18:00 ◼   ► and now you start seeing it everywhere?

01:18:01 ◼   ► - Oh yes, yes, yes, I can't think of it there.

01:18:03 ◼   ► - Merlin is yelling it right now.

01:18:05 ◼   ► - Yep, yep. - Yeah, exactly.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Whatever that phenomenon is, I'm like, it's not just that

01:18:08 ◼   ► 'cause yes, there was a one particularly very--

01:18:09 ◼   ► - It's a Dunning-Fruchner. - Bader mine off.

01:18:12 ◼   ► - Oh, there it is, there it is, yep.

01:18:13 ◼   ► - Anyway, it was one particular really bad time it happened

01:18:16 ◼   ► but then like nothing for a while but now,

01:18:17 ◼   ► now like I didn't, normally what I should do

01:18:19 ◼   ► is like start logging it, like let me just write down

01:18:21 ◼   ► what it happens to prove to myself

01:18:22 ◼   ► that it's not just my, but I'm past that.

01:18:24 ◼   ► It happened today, I'm like all right,

01:18:25 ◼   ► you're over your limit for the year

01:18:26 ◼   ► which is like three or four, right?

01:18:29 ◼   ► And so I want to redo some things in particular,

01:18:32 ◼   ► I think I'm going to finally retire

01:18:33 ◼   ► the Apple Airport Express that Marco gave me

01:18:36 ◼   ► that I've been using for ages and just,

01:18:39 ◼   ► or start, basically what I'm gonna start doing

01:18:41 ◼   ► is eliminating components to narrow it down, right?

01:18:43 ◼   ► 'Cause if it's that Apple thing

01:18:44 ◼   ► which is the oldest component in my thing

01:18:46 ◼   ► and honestly the thing I have the least faith in,

01:18:48 ◼   ► let me just remove that from the network

01:18:50 ◼   ► 'cause I don't need it technically,

01:18:51 ◼   ► it's redundant with the rest of my network.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And then I'll just start going component by component

01:18:56 ◼   ► and taking things out of the loop and you know,

01:18:59 ◼   ► now the problem is I have to take one of these variables out

01:19:01 ◼   ► and I have to wait a few months.

01:19:03 ◼   ► And then you know, if it happens again,

01:19:05 ◼   ► they got to take another one out and wait a few months.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Like the iteration cycle is gonna be low

01:19:08 ◼   ► but anyway, all this to say is I'm taking that thing out

01:19:11 ◼   ► and when I take that out, it turns out

01:19:13 ◼   ► that I will actually need a few more ethernet ports

01:19:16 ◼   ► because the Apple Airport Express

01:19:17 ◼   ► doesn't just have like a WAN port and a LAN port,

01:19:20 ◼   ► it has like four ports on the back of it

01:19:23 ◼   ► and I'm using every single one of them

01:19:24 ◼   ► for a device that I care about.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So I can't just remove that from the network

01:19:28 ◼   ► 'cause then I get a bunch of those.

01:19:29 ◼   ► - Oh, slow down, slow down.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Before we get a bunch of email,

01:19:30 ◼   ► you're talking about an airport extreme,

01:19:31 ◼   ► not an airport express, right?

01:19:33 ◼   ► - Yes, sorry, not an airport express.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I forgot the airport extreme, it's the one that's vertical

01:19:37 ◼   ► that some of them have a hard drive in

01:19:38 ◼   ► but this one doesn't, yes, airport extreme, sorry.

01:19:40 ◼   ► I forgot how extreme it was.

01:19:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:44 ◼   ► Yeah, airport express was the thing

01:19:46 ◼   ► that did like a AirPlay music transmission.

01:19:49 ◼   ► All right, if I take that out of the network,

01:19:51 ◼   ► I just have a bunch of loose ethernet cables

01:19:53 ◼   ► that have no place to plug.

01:19:55 ◼   ► So everyone knows what you need here.

01:19:57 ◼   ► You just need an unmanaged,

01:19:59 ◼   ► as in not exploitable through Ubiquiti X,

01:20:02 ◼   ► an unmanaged switch.

01:20:05 ◼   ► That's the simplest device you could possibly imagine.

01:20:07 ◼   ► There's nothing to configure, there's no software,

01:20:09 ◼   ► it is an unmanaged switch, ethernet switch,

01:20:12 ◼   ► a gigabit ethernet switch,

01:20:13 ◼   ► it has a bunch of ports in the back

01:20:14 ◼   ► and a place where you give it power

01:20:16 ◼   ► and you just plug in your ethernet cable

01:20:18 ◼   ► and it doesn't matter where you plug them in

01:20:19 ◼   ► for the most part

01:20:20 ◼   ► because they're all auto switching and auto magical

01:20:22 ◼   ► and it just essentially is like a USB hub

01:20:24 ◼   ► that used to be back in the day when we had those.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Where you have one ethernet port

01:20:29 ◼   ► and you need more than one ethernet port

01:20:31 ◼   ► and it is the simplest and most straightforward

01:20:36 ◼   ► and least complicated way you can get more ethernet ports

01:20:38 ◼   ► and yes, there are caveats compared to a managed port

01:20:40 ◼   ► and you can get fancier and fastener

01:20:42 ◼   ► but I literally just need one or two

01:20:43 ◼   ► or three extra new ports here, right?

01:20:45 ◼   ► So I simply needed to get an unmanaged gigabit ethernet switch

01:20:50 ◼   ► I've purchased many, many unmanaged gigabit ethernet switches

01:20:53 ◼   ► in my life, I've purchased many 10, 100

01:20:56 ◼   ► unmanaged ethernet switches in my life, right?

01:20:58 ◼   ► Hell, I've purchased ethernet hubs, I've done it all, right?

01:21:02 ◼   ► That seems like such an easy thing to buy

01:21:04 ◼   ► but kind of like toasters,

01:21:05 ◼   ► not that I wanna go on that rant again,

01:21:07 ◼   ► like toaster ovens, it's becoming re,

01:21:10 ◼   ► and I guess USB hubs for that matter,

01:21:11 ◼   ► it's becoming really, really hard to find

01:21:16 ◼   ► an unmanaged ethernet switch

01:21:19 ◼   ► that doesn't have thousands of angry people

01:21:22 ◼   ► on the internet telling you how it's a complete piece

01:21:24 ◼   ► of garbage and doesn't work.

01:21:25 ◼   ► - I'm looking at one right now and it's fine.

01:21:28 ◼   ► - Every, I know, I have a bunch of my house,

01:21:30 ◼   ► I have like, there's like four in my house, right?

01:21:32 ◼   ► They're all different, right?

01:21:33 ◼   ► What I wish is that I could take one of the four

01:21:35 ◼   ► that I have in my house and buy another one just like it

01:21:39 ◼   ► but of course all the ones in my house

01:21:40 ◼   ► were purchased years and years ago

01:21:41 ◼   ► 'cause ethernet doesn't change that much

01:21:42 ◼   ► and they're all totally discontinued, right?

01:21:44 ◼   ► And so name the brand, D-Link, Linksys, TP-Link, Netgear,

01:21:49 ◼   ► like Cisco, like just whatever brand you think,

01:21:54 ◼   ► go find a consumer priced unmanaged ethernet switch

01:21:59 ◼   ► from them and then find how many hateful reviews

01:22:03 ◼   ► of people saying this doesn't work,

01:22:05 ◼   ► nothing worked on my network until I took it off,

01:22:07 ◼   ► it worked for six months and then died,

01:22:10 ◼   ► I hate company X, you should try company Y

01:22:12 ◼   ► and then you go to company Y and it's just a giant circle

01:22:15 ◼   ► and you just go around and around and around in circles

01:22:17 ◼   ► 'cause and in the end, probably the actual contents

01:22:21 ◼   ► of all of these devices are made like by one or two companies

01:22:24 ◼   ► and they're all just packaging

01:22:25 ◼   ► in a different plastic container.

01:22:27 ◼   ► And then you say, okay, well,

01:22:28 ◼   ► why don't you just go for the business ones?

01:22:31 ◼   ► The problem with the business, you know,

01:22:33 ◼   ► unmanaged ethernet switches is they are made

01:22:36 ◼   ► for a business context and in one particular way

01:22:38 ◼   ► that's just gonna sound stupid but you know,

01:22:40 ◼   ► this is, I just want it the way I want it as they say.

01:22:44 ◼   ► The thing in a business context seemed to be

01:22:48 ◼   ► to have the power on the opposite side

01:22:50 ◼   ► of all the ethernet cables.

01:22:52 ◼   ► And the way I have everything arranged

01:22:54 ◼   ► in the way this thing is gonna be, that's no good for me.

01:22:57 ◼   ► I want all the ethernet ports and the power

01:23:00 ◼   ► all on the same side so all those cables can run off

01:23:03 ◼   ► the side or the back of my desk.

01:23:04 ◼   ► That used to be how almost every consumer ethernet switch

01:23:08 ◼   ► was made, somehow in the past 10 years someone decided,

01:23:12 ◼   ► you know what, I understand the business one.

01:23:14 ◼   ► The business one there in like a rack

01:23:15 ◼   ► and you can see the ports in the back as a power.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Like I understand that for the business ones

01:23:18 ◼   ► but that's not my context and honestly business ones

01:23:21 ◼   ► usually have more ports than eight or four

01:23:23 ◼   ► or whatever I need for my thing.

01:23:25 ◼   ► But then for the consumer ones, someone decided

01:23:27 ◼   ► that the power should come in the side for a lot of brands.

01:23:30 ◼   ► - The side?

01:23:31 ◼   ► - The side, I don't understand.

01:23:33 ◼   ► I mean, they're just cheap plastic consumer things

01:23:35 ◼   ► but someone decided and not only does it come in the side

01:23:38 ◼   ► but it doesn't come in with like a right angle,

01:23:40 ◼   ► you know, like a little DC right angle connector.

01:23:42 ◼   ► No, it comes straight out of the side.

01:23:44 ◼   ► You got your ethernet cables coming out one side.

01:23:47 ◼   ► I'm just surprised there aren't brands

01:23:48 ◼   ► that don't have ethernet ports in like a circle around them

01:23:50 ◼   ► like a big spider.

01:23:51 ◼   ► 'Cause that's about how much--

01:23:55 ◼   ► - An ethernet squid.

01:23:56 ◼   ► - Exactly, that's like how much--

01:23:57 ◼   ► - No, a squid would be better.

01:23:58 ◼   ► - How much acknowledgement these companies have

01:24:00 ◼   ► of how people actually use it.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Like you're making a consumer thing,

01:24:03 ◼   ► you're making it pretty.

01:24:04 ◼   ► Don't you think people have desks?

01:24:05 ◼   ► Don't you think they want the cables running off their desk

01:24:07 ◼   ► and not like one cable running towards them

01:24:09 ◼   ► and the rest running away?

01:24:11 ◼   ► So, you know, of the ones that have all the ports

01:24:14 ◼   ► and the power in the back

01:24:15 ◼   ► and there are a bunch of models you can find,

01:24:16 ◼   ► every one of the reviews says they're all pieces of garbage.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Like every brand just, no, obviously, again,

01:24:22 ◼   ► reviews like 99.9% they're great, right?

01:24:26 ◼   ► But these things have like thousands of reviews

01:24:27 ◼   ► on many different sites.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And so there's hundreds of people saying,

01:24:30 ◼   ► you should never buy Netgear, you should only buy Linksys.

01:24:33 ◼   ► And then you go to Linksys and you should never buy Linksys.

01:24:36 ◼   ► You could always, you should always buy TP-Link.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Oh, don't buy TP-Link, they're the cheapest ones

01:24:39 ◼   ► and they're garbage, you should buy Netgear.

01:24:41 ◼   ► And oh my God, it goes around and around.

01:24:43 ◼   ► All I'm looking for is just a straightforward,

01:24:48 ◼   ► like I'm willing to pay more

01:24:50 ◼   ► because these things cost like 20 bucks, right?

01:24:52 ◼   ► I'll pay 40 bucks, I'll pay $50.

01:24:54 ◼   ► - Big spender, big spender.

01:24:55 ◼   ► - Find me the one that's like everyone agrees

01:24:58 ◼   ► is 100% reliable and has ethernet ports and the power.

01:25:01 ◼   ► And that just doesn't exist.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Even in the chat room, people are saying,

01:25:03 ◼   ► everyone knows TP-Link is good.

01:25:05 ◼   ► They're well regarded by almost everyone.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Almost, but not quite, not quite everybody.

01:25:10 ◼   ► In fact, they have the exact same number of people

01:25:12 ◼   ► telling you their pieces of garbage as every other brand.

01:25:14 ◼   ► So I made a random choice.

01:25:16 ◼   ► I picked one, I ordered it, it's on its way.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And then I went to Monoprice

01:25:21 ◼   ► and bought some ethernet cables for two bucks

01:25:22 ◼   ► and felt better about myself.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Using my new found knowledge of ethernet cables

01:25:26 ◼   ► from our vast research on this topic across the place.

01:25:29 ◼   ► Weeks and weeks of shows, learned more about,

01:25:31 ◼   ► I didn't have to say like,

01:25:32 ◼   ► what's the difference between Cat6 and Cat6a again?

01:25:35 ◼   ► I already knew that was nice and they were cheap.

01:25:37 ◼   ► So I'm going to excise the airport extreme for my network.

01:25:43 ◼   ► But the reason I put this in here,

01:25:45 ◼   ► I'm thinking about Marco with his setup was,

01:25:47 ◼   ► there's never a good time, especially in these COVID times

01:25:53 ◼   ► for me to knock everyone in the house off the internet.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Which is what I would have to do

01:25:58 ◼   ► to remove this essential component

01:26:00 ◼   ► because the Apple airport extreme is in fact,

01:26:02 ◼   ► the thing that pulls an IP address from my FiOS.

01:26:05 ◼   ► My FiOS thing has an ethernet cable coming out of it.

01:26:08 ◼   ► It goes into the Apple thing.

01:26:09 ◼   ► The Apple thing gets my like public IP address

01:26:11 ◼   ► that I get through FiOS

01:26:12 ◼   ► and distributes IP addresses to everything else.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Then I have a Euro for all my wifi, but that is the Lynchman.

01:26:17 ◼   ► So when I unplugged that,

01:26:18 ◼   ► everything in this house goes offline.

01:26:20 ◼   ► And I was thinking about telling my family,

01:26:22 ◼   ► hey, I need to do an upgrade or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

01:26:24 ◼   ► But you know how these things go.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Sometimes it doesn't go as quick as you want.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I can't do that in the middle of the day.

01:26:29 ◼   ► The kids have remote school

01:26:30 ◼   ► and people are watching streaming video at night.

01:26:33 ◼   ► So I feel like I'm back at work again.

01:26:35 ◼   ► I have to wait till like off hours,

01:26:37 ◼   ► like 2 a.m. when everyone's asleep,

01:26:38 ◼   ► I got to sneak down and redo the network in the house

01:26:40 ◼   ► so that when everyone wakes up,

01:26:41 ◼   ► allowing for the hour and a half

01:26:43 ◼   ► of when something's gonna be screwed up

01:26:44 ◼   ► or the FiOS thing is gonna refuse to give a new IP

01:26:47 ◼   ► to my router or whatever.

01:26:49 ◼   ► I have to allow for that and have it built in.

01:26:51 ◼   ► Plus the possibility that I'm gonna be up all night.

01:26:53 ◼   ► And by the time they wake up, I need to go to school.

01:26:55 ◼   ► I haven't fixed the network

01:26:56 ◼   ► and now it's just permanently broken.

01:26:57 ◼   ► So there's always that possibility.

01:26:58 ◼   ► So it's fairly more and more fraught

01:27:01 ◼   ► of how to essentially change or update your home network

01:27:06 ◼   ► in a way that doesn't cause the disruptions.

01:27:08 ◼   ► And I thought this would be a good opportunity to ask Marco

01:27:10 ◼   ► how he has handled this in his household,

01:27:12 ◼   ► which granted in pre-COVID times

01:27:14 ◼   ► when you did your various network redesigns

01:27:16 ◼   ► probably wasn't as fraught.

01:27:18 ◼   ► But what are your plans now?

01:27:19 ◼   ► Like say, oh, I'm gonna get rid of my ubiquity

01:27:21 ◼   ► and replace it with something else.

01:27:22 ◼   ► How do you plan to do that?

01:27:24 ◼   ► Or is it just like you just wait for Adam to go to school

01:27:27 ◼   ► and then just tell Tiff tough luck

01:27:29 ◼   ► and then take everything offline?

01:27:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I basically wait until no one's using it.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And I actually do have a few chances a week

01:27:37 ◼   ► where that happens in the middle of the day.

01:27:39 ◼   ► And so I can do that.

01:27:40 ◼   ► But getting back a minute to your Switch issue.

01:27:43 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:27:44 ◼   ► I found it amusing.

01:27:46 ◼   ► I looked up the Switch that runs most of my house here

01:27:50 ◼   ► is, well, was until very recently

01:27:52 ◼   ► when I upgraded, quote, upgraded to ubiquity stuff,

01:27:56 ◼   ► an HP 18 or 24 port HP rack mount Switch.

01:28:01 ◼   ► And this is something I bought in 2012 for $274

01:28:06 ◼   ► and has been bulletproof.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Totally rock solid until I took it offline

01:28:12 ◼   ► and upgraded to the ubiquity stuff last year sometime.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So it worked for probably nine years or eight years at least

01:28:20 ◼   ► and was totally rock solid, never had a problem.

01:28:24 ◼   ► And at some point I needed an eight port Switch

01:28:27 ◼   ► in one of my TV stations.

01:28:30 ◼   ► And I just got the HP Pro Curve,

01:28:33 ◼   ► it's the HP Pro Curve 1810G line.

01:28:36 ◼   ► And I just got the eight port version of that,

01:28:38 ◼   ► which is smaller and got that.

01:28:40 ◼   ► And that was also totally reliable,

01:28:43 ◼   ► bulletproof the entire time.

01:28:45 ◼   ► So I can suggest if you're willing to go with things

01:28:48 ◼   ► that are a little bit larger and might have the power port

01:28:50 ◼   ► on the opposite side as the network ports.

01:28:52 ◼   ► - And a fan potentially?

01:28:53 ◼   ► - I don't think these have fans, I'll double check.

01:28:55 ◼   ► - Well, I can stop you.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Don't suggest any rack mounts.

01:28:58 ◼   ► Obviously I know if I wanted to just buy

01:29:00 ◼   ► like business equipment, yeah, it would be fine.

01:29:03 ◼   ► But these are for better or for worse,

01:29:05 ◼   ► this networking stuff is happening like on a desk

01:29:08 ◼   ► up where people are.

01:29:10 ◼   ► So rack mount stuff is--

01:29:11 ◼   ► - Well, the eight port version,

01:29:13 ◼   ► yeah, the eight port version is not a rack mount

01:29:14 ◼   ► or at least it's one of those like half wide things.

01:29:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, but that's why I start to get into fashion.

01:29:19 ◼   ► Like for example--

01:29:21 ◼   ► - The fashion of network Switches?

01:29:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the one I have on my Synology--

01:29:25 ◼   ► - John, you're gonna have like five network cables

01:29:28 ◼   ► coming out of it, where's the fashion?

01:29:29 ◼   ► There isn't like--

01:29:30 ◼   ► - I don't want an ugly box,

01:29:31 ◼   ► I don't want an ugly box sitting on my desk,

01:29:33 ◼   ► that's what it comes down to.

01:29:34 ◼   ► - It shouldn't be on your desk.

01:29:36 ◼   ► It's covered in wires.

01:29:38 ◼   ► If you're concerned about the appearance of something

01:29:39 ◼   ► that's inherently going to be covered in wires--

01:29:42 ◼   ► - You can't even see the wires,

01:29:43 ◼   ► they all disappear behind the desk.

01:29:45 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:29:46 ◼   ► - So anyway, the one I have attached to my Synology

01:29:48 ◼   ► is sort of the spiritual successor of the good one

01:29:52 ◼   ► that I like.

01:29:53 ◼   ► The good one that I like is the one

01:29:54 ◼   ► that my Mac Pro is connected to.

01:29:56 ◼   ► It's an eight port Switch, I think I bought it,

01:29:58 ◼   ► I think I bought it in like 2002 or something,

01:30:00 ◼   ► I don't even know how old it is, right?

01:30:02 ◼   ► But it looks nice, it looks like a rectangle, it's black.

01:30:05 ◼   ► It has lights on the front with colors

01:30:07 ◼   ► that mean something, right?

01:30:10 ◼   ► And it has power that comes out the back, right?

01:30:12 ◼   ► Can't buy that anymore, right?

01:30:14 ◼   ► The company that makes it makes a new model that's ugly.

01:30:17 ◼   ► I bought one of those ugly ones

01:30:18 ◼   ► and that's what my Synologies are on.

01:30:20 ◼   ► There's, I don't care, it's in the basement,

01:30:21 ◼   ► I don't see it, but I need something up here

01:30:23 ◼   ► that is tasteful and discreet and not ugly

01:30:27 ◼   ► and reasonable quality and has the ports on the back

01:30:31 ◼   ► and the plug on the back.

01:30:32 ◼   ► If you think about the AirPort Extreme, that qualifies.

01:30:36 ◼   ► It is tasteful, yes, it has cables all plugged

01:30:38 ◼   ► into the back of it, but they're all in the back,

01:30:40 ◼   ► you can't see them because you can't walk around

01:30:41 ◼   ► the back of his desk, it's against the wall.

01:30:43 ◼   ► It fulfills the goal.

01:30:45 ◼   ► It is a reasonable looking nice thing

01:30:48 ◼   ► that has been reliable as far as we know,

01:30:51 ◼   ► but that I'm deciding to take out of the networking equation

01:30:54 ◼   ► just because it's the oldest thing.

01:30:55 ◼   ► And again, I'm not necessarily blaming

01:30:58 ◼   ► this particular device, but it's the first variable

01:31:01 ◼   ► that I'm going to eliminate and I'm going to replace it

01:31:03 ◼   ► with something else.

01:31:04 ◼   ► So the one I got is a black rectangular box

01:31:06 ◼   ► with all the ports in the back of it.

01:31:07 ◼   ► It's from a brand I have not tried before,

01:31:10 ◼   ► so wish me luck, but it's a $20 purchase,

01:31:12 ◼   ► so if it's garbage, I'll just try another brand.

01:31:15 ◼   ► It's not the end of the world.

01:31:16 ◼   ► And in fact, I think I have a spare one

01:31:17 ◼   ► of the ugly ones up in the attic

01:31:19 ◼   ► 'cause I got a lot of, I always have,

01:31:20 ◼   ► this is a good thing to go.

01:31:22 ◼   ► When you're buying something like this,

01:31:23 ◼   ► like networking switches or whatever,

01:31:25 ◼   ► especially if your house is set up like mine

01:31:28 ◼   ► where you essentially use all the ports,

01:31:30 ◼   ► like there's no networking switch in my house

01:31:32 ◼   ► that has an abundance of free ports.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I'm tempted to say that there are zero free ports,

01:31:37 ◼   ► but I think I have one in this room

01:31:39 ◼   ► as my sort of go-to spare port, right?

01:31:42 ◼   ► But anyway, if something goes wrong

01:31:44 ◼   ► and you're wired networking and you'd like a box dies

01:31:47 ◼   ► because you've been using it for 15 years

01:31:50 ◼   ► and you don't have a replacement,

01:31:51 ◼   ► it can be frustrating when things go offline

01:31:54 ◼   ► and kids can't get wifi anymore

01:31:55 ◼   ► because you had some, you know,

01:31:57 ◼   ► the wire that goes to the satellite thing doesn't work

01:31:59 ◼   ► and you're like, well, sorry, I'm all out of ports, right?

01:32:01 ◼   ► It's a good idea to have spares.

01:32:02 ◼   ► And so I do have a couple of spare switches,

01:32:04 ◼   ► but they're ugly, so I'm hoping the one I bought

01:32:07 ◼   ► that is less ugly works well, but if it doesn't

01:32:10 ◼   ► and it's an emergency, I can swap in one of the other boxes.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Do you wanna be really frustrated?

01:32:16 ◼   ► I actually have this problem very well solved in my house

01:32:19 ◼   ► because, you know, who makes a really nice little switch?

01:32:22 ◼   ► - Ubiquiti? - Ubiquiti!

01:32:24 ◼   ► - But they're managed! - Exactly.

01:32:26 ◼   ► And you need to be running their management software

01:32:30 ◼   ► to activate the switch.

01:32:32 ◼   ► But they make this one called the USW Flex Mini.

01:32:35 ◼   ► It's a managed five-port switch that's very, very small.

01:32:39 ◼   ► They sell it in, I think I bought a four-pack for 100 bucks.

01:32:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, they do sell them in multi-packs.

01:32:44 ◼   ► I noticed that too, I'm like, why is this so expensive?

01:32:46 ◼   ► It comes with four of them.

01:32:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it can be powered either via USB-C,

01:32:52 ◼   ► which is on the wrong side of it,

01:32:54 ◼   ► or it can be powered by a power over ethernet feed-in.

01:32:58 ◼   ► That's also the uplink.

01:33:00 ◼   ► And one of the coolest things I ever did for my network

01:33:03 ◼   ► was I upgraded my main switch to be a power

01:33:06 ◼   ► over ethernet switch on all of its ports.

01:33:08 ◼   ► And that way I can plug any PoE thing

01:33:10 ◼   ► into any ethernet port around my house, and it gets powered.

01:33:14 ◼   ► And what's great about this is that

01:33:16 ◼   ► if I need a switch somewhere,

01:33:18 ◼   ► I can plug this in to the wall jack, it gets powered,

01:33:22 ◼   ► and then I don't have to separately run a power cable to it,

01:33:25 ◼   ► and I can plug whatever I want into its other ports.

01:33:27 ◼   ► And so it is a very, very nice system.

01:33:30 ◼   ► Unfortunately, it requires you to have

01:33:32 ◼   ► a PoE infrastructure, or USB-C power, but on the wrong side.

01:33:35 ◼   ► Or either way, it still requires you

01:33:37 ◼   ► to have a Ubiquiti management system set up.

01:33:41 ◼   ► But it is a really nice looking, very small switch.

01:33:43 ◼   ► - No, it is.

01:33:44 ◼   ► I looked at it, in my tour of every networking vendor

01:33:47 ◼   ► on the planet, I looked at it.

01:33:48 ◼   ► Hell, I was looking at vendors that sell, essentially,

01:33:51 ◼   ► this product, an ethernet lowering switch,

01:33:53 ◼   ► for use in factories, like to build things.

01:33:56 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh. - Right?

01:33:58 ◼   ► 'Cause there are vendors that specialize in,

01:34:00 ◼   ► so on the factory floor of your metal machining shop

01:34:04 ◼   ► or whatever, you might need ethernet

01:34:05 ◼   ► for your CNC machines or whatever.

01:34:07 ◼   ► And the things they sell, they're hilarious.

01:34:09 ◼   ► They have their own fashion.

01:34:10 ◼   ► They look like Milwaukee Power Tools or whatever.

01:34:13 ◼   ► They have that kind of macho, I belong in a factory vibe,

01:34:16 ◼   ► which is not the look I'm looking for.

01:34:18 ◼   ► And they're also seven times more expensive

01:34:20 ◼   ► than even this Ubiquiti thing.

01:34:21 ◼   ► So you want a four-port factory router?

01:34:23 ◼   ► That's $300, please.

01:34:25 ◼   ► I don't know what's factory about them,

01:34:26 ◼   ► other than the fact that they seem to have metal cases

01:34:28 ◼   ► and ridiculous flanges and stuff.

01:34:30 ◼   ► But yeah, no, I did look at Ubiquiti.

01:34:32 ◼   ► I looked at a lot of the other managed stuff.

01:34:34 ◼   ► I don't want and can't support any managed stuff.

01:34:36 ◼   ► Some of the more expensive consumer ones are all about like,

01:34:38 ◼   ► "Hey, this one has all power ethernet ports."

01:34:41 ◼   ► But that doesn't help me because I'm pretty sure,

01:34:44 ◼   ► I don't know if the CAT6 cable that's going

01:34:48 ◼   ► from my Fios thing supports power ethernet.

01:34:50 ◼   ► Do all cables support it?

01:34:52 ◼   ► This is another thing in my research.

01:34:53 ◼   ► Like I don't have any power ethernet infrastructure

01:34:55 ◼   ► as you were saying.

01:34:56 ◼   ► Like there's zero power ethernet things in my house

01:34:59 ◼   ► and applying it after the fact.

01:35:02 ◼   ► And this is what people are gonna tell me

01:35:03 ◼   ► and they're probably kind of right.

01:35:05 ◼   ► You should just get a server rack and put it in your basement

01:35:07 ◼   ► next to all your Synology stuff.

01:35:08 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:35:09 ◼   ► - That probably will happen someday eventually.

01:35:11 ◼   ► Unfortunately, the other part of my home networking,

01:35:14 ◼   ► as we talked about before,

01:35:15 ◼   ► like the part where you have to get wires

01:35:17 ◼   ► to go from point A to point B in your house,

01:35:20 ◼   ► that is the most sneaky, janky, ridiculous,

01:35:24 ◼   ► so you didn't really wanna do this

01:35:25 ◼   ► the right way situation, right?

01:35:27 ◼   ► I ran all these wires myself.

01:35:29 ◼   ► I am not an electrician and I did it

01:35:32 ◼   ► by essentially being sneaky.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Like I didn't do anything the right way.

01:35:36 ◼   ► Nothing hits, it's all about like,

01:35:38 ◼   ► where can I hide a wire where no one will notice it?

01:35:41 ◼   ► And I go from the far corner of my house

01:35:43 ◼   ► to the other far corner and it's just ridiculous.

01:35:46 ◼   ► If you saw the network topology, it's like,

01:35:48 ◼   ► oh God, I wish I could find this.

01:35:50 ◼   ► It's probably on YouTube somewhere.

01:35:51 ◼   ► You ever seen the thing explaining why a particular nerve

01:35:55 ◼   ► in the human body, like, I forget where it starts.

01:35:58 ◼   ► Like starts in one place then goes down half your body

01:36:01 ◼   ► then makes a U-turn and comes back up half your body

01:36:04 ◼   ► and connects to something that's like an inch

01:36:05 ◼   ► from where it started.

01:36:07 ◼   ► And it's like the most, it's like why would,

01:36:09 ◼   ► if you need, if this part of your, if this brain,

01:36:11 ◼   ► you know, you go from brain to this nerve to the thing,

01:36:14 ◼   ► it's like two inches away.

01:36:15 ◼   ► Why are you going down to my stomach and back up again?

01:36:17 ◼   ► And there's a really good explanation of like,

01:36:19 ◼   ► well, this is you with your stupid nerve, right?

01:36:23 ◼   ► Rewind evolutionarily speaking and look,

01:36:25 ◼   ► here is a fish and here's how the fish biology is set up

01:36:29 ◼   ► and here how the transitional, you know,

01:36:31 ◼   ► the various species that are between fish and us

01:36:34 ◼   ► and you watch as that nerve gets longer and longer

01:36:36 ◼   ► and slowly bends into a crazy U-shape

01:36:38 ◼   ► until we get to like primates and now you say,

01:36:40 ◼   ► oh, I see, it just kind of ended up that way.

01:36:43 ◼   ► That's my home network.

01:36:45 ◼   ► My home network has cable runs that go from the source,

01:36:48 ◼   ► they go all the other side of the house

01:36:50 ◼   ► then all the way back, then back again in this direction.

01:36:52 ◼   ► Like you would never make a network this way.

01:36:56 ◼   ► - But it's entirely designed,

01:36:57 ◼   ► like where and how I can hide the wires

01:37:01 ◼   ► without actually running them through any of my walls,

01:37:03 ◼   ► which are all made of like horsehair plaster

01:37:05 ◼   ► and lath and everything.

01:37:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:37:07 ◼   ► Right, so I'm slightly constrained on the networking.

01:37:11 ◼   ► In general though, I have everything that I need.

01:37:13 ◼   ► It's just that, you know,

01:37:15 ◼   ► if I want to replace a thing

01:37:17 ◼   ► that has four ethernet ports on it,

01:37:18 ◼   ► I need something else that has at least

01:37:19 ◼   ► four ethernet ports on it.

01:37:21 ◼   ► If I want to replace everything,

01:37:22 ◼   ► I have to rerun all new wires and sort of home run them down

01:37:25 ◼   ► to my big non-existent networking rack in the basement.

01:37:28 ◼   ► That maybe is a project for another decade,

01:37:31 ◼   ► but for now I just want to find the culprit.

01:37:33 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way,

01:37:34 ◼   ► I'm the culprit of what the networking thing is.

01:37:36 ◼   ► I really do think anecdotally speaking,

01:37:39 ◼   ► as far as my work can tell,

01:37:41 ◼   ► it mostly happens when I'm in meetings with the Teams app.

01:37:44 ◼   ► I'm like, how could that be?

01:37:46 ◼   ► What is it about using Teams?

01:37:47 ◼   ► It's not particularly network constrained.

01:37:50 ◼   ► It's not like we're sharing video.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Half the time everyone has their video turned off

01:37:53 ◼   ► and we're all staring at one document.

01:37:55 ◼   ► And I do huge downloads and uploads all the time,

01:37:58 ◼   ► putting gigs of photos and everything else,

01:38:01 ◼   ► all my back play stuff going up from multiple computers.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Like what is it about and being in the Teams meeting

01:38:06 ◼   ► that causes this problem to happen?

01:38:08 ◼   ► I don't have an answer.

01:38:10 ◼   ► I don't know why I'm blaming the Apple thing

01:38:11 ◼   ► just because it's old,

01:38:12 ◼   ► but it's the first thing I'm trying.

01:38:14 ◼   ► So we'll check back in in three months.

01:38:16 ◼   ► Or maybe I'll check back in the next episode

01:38:18 ◼   ► and I'll tell you how nice my black box looks on the desk.

01:38:21 ◼   ► And then after that three months,

01:38:22 ◼   ► I'll tell you if I've actually solved my problem.

01:38:25 ◼   ► - I just love that you've been stressing

01:38:27 ◼   ► about how many nines you've implicitly provided your family.

01:38:31 ◼   ► I don't think you knew it,

01:38:33 ◼   ► but you're apparently in four to five, nine territory.

01:38:36 ◼   ► - No, actually the thing is they're not around

01:38:39 ◼   ► or at least they don't,

01:38:40 ◼   ► no one has ever come to me and say,

01:38:42 ◼   ► hey, is the network out?

01:38:43 ◼   ► 'Cause it goes down for a second.

01:38:44 ◼   ► But if you're in the middle of giving a presentation,

01:38:46 ◼   ► it's a problem, right?

01:38:48 ◼   ► So as far as they're concerned, it's 100% uptime.

01:38:51 ◼   ► And I figure I wanna maintain it,

01:38:53 ◼   ► mostly because if I was to just right now

01:38:55 ◼   ► kill the network connection,

01:38:56 ◼   ► every person in my house would come be knocking at this door

01:38:58 ◼   ► and saying what's going on.

01:38:59 ◼   ► 'Cause I guarantee you they're all on the internet right now

01:39:02 ◼   ► in some form, right?

01:39:04 ◼   ► Oh, John, I'm sorry.

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01:40:59 ◼   ► - All right, Michael writes,

01:41:04 ◼   ► "A long time ago I read that it was best

01:41:05 ◼   ► "to have an admin account and your user account.

01:41:07 ◼   ► "And your user account shouldn't be an admin

01:41:08 ◼   ► "for security purposes.

01:41:09 ◼   ► "Is that still best practice?

01:41:11 ◼   ► "Some commands/installs require sudo,

01:41:13 ◼   ► "which my user doesn't have.

01:41:15 ◼   ► "This is a great question.

01:41:16 ◼   ► "I think I might have done this once in the Windows era,

01:41:18 ◼   ► "like 49 years ago.

01:41:21 ◼   ► "I'd never have really done this regularly.

01:41:24 ◼   ► "So, John, what's the right practice here?"

01:41:26 ◼   ► - This is another question we get occasionally,

01:41:28 ◼   ► and I think we're up to like the two or three year rotation

01:41:31 ◼   ► where we need to answer it again.

01:41:33 ◼   ► It's, the trade-off is exactly how people think.

01:41:36 ◼   ► There is no secret thing

01:41:38 ◼   ► you're probably not thinking of, right?

01:41:40 ◼   ► It is safer not to have an admin account

01:41:42 ◼   ► because then you can't actually do something

01:41:44 ◼   ► to hose yourself, but it's also annoying

01:41:46 ◼   ► because sometimes you want to do something as admin,

01:41:48 ◼   ► and if your account doesn't have it,

01:41:49 ◼   ► then you have to switch one that does,

01:41:50 ◼   ► which you can do, but it's a hassle.

01:41:52 ◼   ► So it's that old security versus convenience trade-off.

01:41:55 ◼   ► What I would say is if you're listening to this podcast

01:41:58 ◼   ► and more or less trust yourself

01:42:00 ◼   ► to not do something phenomenally stupid with your computer,

01:42:03 ◼   ► having an admin account is so much more convenient

01:42:06 ◼   ► that I think it is worth the slightly higher chance

01:42:09 ◼   ► that you will hose yourself and/or be exploited

01:42:11 ◼   ► by some program that takes advantage of the fact

01:42:13 ◼   ► that you can elevate privileges.

01:42:15 ◼   ► That said, if you want to make the opposite choice,

01:42:17 ◼   ► that's fine too.

01:42:17 ◼   ► It's not that fraud.

01:42:18 ◼   ► Like just decide what your risk, you know,

01:42:21 ◼   ► your risk tolerance is.

01:42:22 ◼   ► I personally make my accounts admin accounts.

01:42:25 ◼   ► I made all my children's accounts non-admin accounts,

01:42:27 ◼   ► and I even went back on that

01:42:28 ◼   ► 'cause it was too annoying when I was on their account

01:42:30 ◼   ► trying to fix something that I couldn't

01:42:32 ◼   ► essentially do admin stuff, right?

01:42:34 ◼   ► Sometimes when you're prompted for admin stuff,

01:42:35 ◼   ► you can enter an admin username and password.

01:42:38 ◼   ► So if I was on their account

01:42:39 ◼   ► and I needed to give some app access

01:42:41 ◼   ► to the microphone or whatever,

01:42:42 ◼   ► I could enter my username and password,

01:42:45 ◼   ► but then I couldn't use touch ID

01:42:46 ◼   ► because their thing, you know,

01:42:47 ◼   ► their laptops had touch ID with their finger in it.

01:42:49 ◼   ► Anyway, I have now gone to,

01:42:52 ◼   ► the entire family has admin accounts

01:42:53 ◼   ► just because I am annoyed by the hassle

01:42:56 ◼   ► of not being able to elevate to admin privileges

01:42:58 ◼   ► with the current user's password in every situation.

01:43:01 ◼   ► Your mileage may vary.

01:43:02 ◼   ► It is in fact safer not to do that,

01:43:04 ◼   ► but not to a degree that I would have a problem

01:43:07 ◼   ► with recommending that people just make admin accounts.

01:43:09 ◼   ► Just be careful out there.

01:43:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I disagree a little bit.

01:43:13 ◼   ► I err on the side of just make everybody admin

01:43:15 ◼   ► because first of all, it depends on like

01:43:19 ◼   ► where the risk is coming from

01:43:20 ◼   ► as to whether this makes any difference at all.

01:43:22 ◼   ► Sandboxed apps, for instance, on the Mac,

01:43:25 ◼   ► you don't need to separate these privileges out

01:43:27 ◼   ► because they are already restricted

01:43:28 ◼   ► in what they can access and things like that.

01:43:30 ◼   ► And so sandbox apps are already kind of implicitly

01:43:33 ◼   ► locked down for the most part.

01:43:36 ◼   ► Un-sandboxed apps, if you're not an admin,

01:43:39 ◼   ► still have access to all of your files.

01:43:42 ◼   ► And that's pretty important.

01:43:44 ◼   ► They have so much access to things that matter to you

01:43:48 ◼   ► that whether or not they can modify like system files

01:43:51 ◼   ► or the files of other users on the system

01:43:53 ◼   ► might not matter if they still have access

01:43:56 ◼   ► to all of your documents, all of your files.

01:43:58 ◼   ► So from that point of view,

01:44:01 ◼   ► I think you're thinking there's more security

01:44:03 ◼   ► in making that a restricted account

01:44:05 ◼   ► than what there actually might be.

01:44:07 ◼   ► - I mean, the context of my household

01:44:09 ◼   ► is that every person has an account

01:44:10 ◼   ► on every single computer.

01:44:11 ◼   ► So even though it seems silly,

01:44:13 ◼   ► like well, it's got all access to your stuff,

01:44:14 ◼   ► well, it doesn't have access, for example,

01:44:16 ◼   ► to my wife's stuff if it's not an admin account, right?

01:44:18 ◼   ► So I can hose mine, like it's more relevant for kids.

01:44:21 ◼   ► If a kid didn't have an admin account,

01:44:23 ◼   ► they could erase all their crap,

01:44:25 ◼   ► but they couldn't erase my crap

01:44:26 ◼   ► or my wife's crap or whatever, right?

01:44:28 ◼   ► But in the end, you know, like it's,

01:44:31 ◼   ► like how much are you trusting your kids

01:44:35 ◼   ► to operate the computer in a safe way?

01:44:38 ◼   ► Like it's a trade-off.

01:44:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, but also, if you run non-admin accounts,

01:44:43 ◼   ► lots of weird stuff breaks.

01:44:45 ◼   ► That being said, I mean, I've had many problems

01:44:49 ◼   ► with multi-user support in Big Sur and recent releases.

01:44:54 ◼   ► Every time we have to log out of my user account

01:44:58 ◼   ► and like TIFF logs in to record a podcast or something,

01:45:02 ◼   ► after that, the computer is basically broken

01:45:04 ◼   ► until I reboot it.

01:45:05 ◼   ► Like mail search doesn't work,

01:45:07 ◼   ► touch ID doesn't work, watch unlock doesn't work,

01:45:09 ◼   ► any kind of spotlight,

01:45:10 ◼   ► anything based on the spotlight index doesn't work.

01:45:13 ◼   ► It's frankly baffling to me that Big Sur

01:45:15 ◼   ► has gotten as far as it has in the release cycle

01:45:18 ◼   ► and multi-user support is still completely broken

01:45:21 ◼   ► in this way.

01:45:22 ◼   ► - I don't think it's broken for everyone though,

01:45:25 ◼   ► because I'm running Big Sur on all our computers

01:45:27 ◼   ► and we perpetually have multiple people logged into them,

01:45:29 ◼   ► switching accounts all day long

01:45:30 ◼   ► and don't experience any of this.

01:45:31 ◼   ► Now, to be fair, we don't use Apple Mail at all, period,

01:45:34 ◼   ► across the entire family.

01:45:35 ◼   ► - There you go.

01:45:36 ◼   ► - We do use things like spotlight

01:45:38 ◼   ► and like nothing else seems broken,

01:45:40 ◼   ► 'cause if it did, nothing in our house would function,

01:45:42 ◼   ► I would have downgraded everybody, right?

01:45:43 ◼   ► So mail may absolutely be broken,

01:45:45 ◼   ► but I mean, I'm not saying it's not happening to you,

01:45:47 ◼   ► but whatever it is causing it must be something

01:45:50 ◼   ► that either we don't have or that we aren't doing.

01:45:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, mail search breaks, watch unlock breaks,

01:45:55 ◼   ► and lots of things based on spotlight break.

01:45:57 ◼   ► It seems, and if you are on Big Sur and you switch users,

01:46:01 ◼   ► switch back, it will be broken until you reboot

01:46:05 ◼   ► and that's been persistent.

01:46:07 ◼   ► - Through every software update.

01:46:08 ◼   ► - But not spotlight, 'cause spotlight still does work for us.

01:46:10 ◼   ► We don't use watch unlock and we don't use Apple Mail,

01:46:13 ◼   ► so I do wonder what is the deal.

01:46:14 ◼   ► - Well, you can't.

01:46:16 ◼   ► You couldn't use them if you wanted to

01:46:17 ◼   ► because they would break in your setup.

01:46:18 ◼   ► - Although actually, wait a second,

01:46:19 ◼   ► I do use Apple Mail to download my Gmail,

01:46:22 ◼   ► it's just periodically, but I never do searches for it.

01:46:24 ◼   ► - Right, anyway, so multi-user mode is buggy

01:46:28 ◼   ► and there's lots of weird stuff that breaks.

01:46:30 ◼   ► So anyway, going back to the question,

01:46:32 ◼   ► like if you wanna have like separate accounts

01:46:34 ◼   ► for admin versus non-admin,

01:46:35 ◼   ► you have to give up a lot of convenience

01:46:38 ◼   ► and a lot of things working correctly all the time.

01:46:41 ◼   ► And what you get from that is this

01:46:43 ◼   ► theoretical security benefit that I think in practice,

01:46:47 ◼   ► you're not really benefiting from in most cases.

01:46:49 ◼   ► If it's a single user computer,

01:46:51 ◼   ► you're not really benefiting much at all.

01:46:52 ◼   ► And then secondly, you think about the practice

01:46:55 ◼   ► of what happens when you have one of these

01:46:58 ◼   ► non-admin accounts, you get asked a lot

01:47:01 ◼   ► to authorize with admin privileges

01:47:03 ◼   ► or you have to run a lot of things as pseudo

01:47:04 ◼   ► or enter the root password or whatever.

01:47:06 ◼   ► If you're doing this on a regular basis anyway,

01:47:09 ◼   ► you are regularly poking holes in that shield

01:47:11 ◼   ► out of necessity or convenience,

01:47:13 ◼   ► it kind of reduces the security

01:47:15 ◼   ► that you're actually getting in practice.

01:47:17 ◼   ► Because if you're constantly authorizing things

01:47:19 ◼   ► to run with root privileges here and there as needed,

01:47:22 ◼   ► are you really being that secure by having this account

01:47:25 ◼   ► be in this mode in the first place?

01:47:27 ◼   ► Like I feel like the real world security benefit of that

01:47:32 ◼   ► in most setups is not high,

01:47:34 ◼   ► whereas the inconvenience and potential bug exposure

01:47:39 ◼   ► and annoyance is high.

01:47:42 ◼   ► So I don't think it's worth it for most people to do that.

01:47:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I tend to agree.

01:47:46 ◼   ► Duncan Wilcock writes, "I have about 400 video clips

01:47:49 ◼   ► "with my son and I want to join them

01:47:51 ◼   ► "into one three hour movie.

01:47:52 ◼   ► "I want 4K and 60 frames per second, original codec.

01:47:55 ◼   ► "Recommend a good tool please."

01:47:57 ◼   ► Hi, have you never heard of FFmpeg?

01:48:00 ◼   ► How long have you been listening to the show

01:48:02 ◼   ► that you've never heard of FFmpeg?

01:48:03 ◼   ► I mean, come on, man.

01:48:04 ◼   ► That's probably not the best solution to this problem,

01:48:07 ◼   ► but it is a solution.

01:48:09 ◼   ► Also, it gets a little dodgy if,

01:48:12 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure what Duncan is saying.

01:48:14 ◼   ► I want 4K and 60 frames per second original codec.

01:48:17 ◼   ► I'm assuming that these are 400 video clips

01:48:21 ◼   ► coming from various different pieces of hardware

01:48:24 ◼   ► across presumably years where not everything started in 4K.

01:48:29 ◼   ► And this is all stuff that can be handled by FFmpeg,

01:48:31 ◼   ► but it does get dodgy kind of quickly.

01:48:34 ◼   ► Duncan writes that, "Apparently a Photos app slideshow

01:48:36 ◼   ► "is 1080p max and iMovie doesn't preserve date order

01:48:39 ◼   ► "if exported with edits."

01:48:42 ◼   ► I mean, this is not gonna be easy

01:48:45 ◼   ► with anything I know how to do.

01:48:46 ◼   ► You can do it with FFmpeg, but it would be semi-manual.

01:48:51 ◼   ► Do one of you have a better answer

01:48:52 ◼   ► or do we have to tell Duncan to ask me to help them out?

01:48:57 ◼   ► - This question was totally for you

01:48:59 ◼   ► just so you can say FFmpeg again.

01:49:00 ◼   ► Because yeah, this is one of those situations

01:49:03 ◼   ► where once you get into this type of question

01:49:05 ◼   ► where you're like, look, I've got a video.

01:49:06 ◼   ► I don't wanna do a thing to it,

01:49:08 ◼   ► but I wanna do exactly this thing and exactly this way.

01:49:10 ◼   ► You're basically singing a FFmpeg song.

01:49:12 ◼   ► And yeah, it's a painful song.

01:49:15 ◼   ► - It is.

01:49:16 ◼   ► - There may be other better tools.

01:49:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:49:17 ◼   ► - The lyrics make no sense.

01:49:19 ◼   ► - I'm just familiar with FFmpeg

01:49:21 ◼   ► because it's a very common tool

01:49:22 ◼   ► and Casey talks about it all the time.

01:49:24 ◼   ► But I'm sure professional video editors

01:49:28 ◼   ► or people who are familiar with different kinds of tools

01:49:29 ◼   ► have better ways to do this.

01:49:31 ◼   ► But if you don't wanna spend any money,

01:49:33 ◼   ► but just wanna get this job done

01:49:35 ◼   ► and you're willing to Google for a while,

01:49:37 ◼   ► FFmpeg will probably eventually do what you want

01:49:40 ◼   ► once you figure out how to make it work.

01:49:42 ◼   ► - And by Google for a while, he means a while.

01:49:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you'll try a bunch of things

01:49:47 ◼   ► that don't work first.

01:49:48 ◼   ► Here's what I would recommend.

01:49:49 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know if Casey does a similar thing,

01:49:51 ◼   ► but every time I tried to mess with FFmpeg,

01:49:53 ◼   ► I have like test files that are very small

01:49:56 ◼   ► and I do all my testing on them.

01:49:58 ◼   ► They're representative.

01:49:59 ◼   ► They're the same as the files that I wanna deal with,

01:50:01 ◼   ► but maybe the file I wanna deal with

01:50:03 ◼   ► is like some like eight gig movie or something.

01:50:05 ◼   ► Don't do all your testing on that.

01:50:06 ◼   ► It'll take a long time.

01:50:08 ◼   ► Test with small files first.

01:50:10 ◼   ► And then when you finally get a working file

01:50:11 ◼   ► that has the characteristics that you want

01:50:13 ◼   ► and it figured out the mile long command line incantation,

01:50:17 ◼   ► then do it on your real files.

01:50:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's smart.

01:50:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

01:50:22 ◼   ► Another thing I do is oftentimes

01:50:23 ◼   ► I just wanna test something.

01:50:24 ◼   ► I'll trim it to be, it's dash T, I believe,

01:50:28 ◼   ► or you can say only output like 10 seconds

01:50:31 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:50:32 ◼   ► So you can still use your eight gigabyte input,

01:50:34 ◼   ► but it's only gonna input,

01:50:35 ◼   ► it's only gonna output 10 seconds and it's gonna quit.

01:50:38 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, you can do this with FFmpeg for sure.

01:50:41 ◼   ► It's actually not that complicated incantation.

01:50:43 ◼   ► The complicated thing would be that

01:50:45 ◼   ► the way I know how to do this

01:50:47 ◼   ► is that you would need a plain text file

01:50:49 ◼   ► that lists the names of all 400 videos

01:50:54 ◼   ► that you're looking to input.

01:50:55 ◼   ► And if you can get that, even if you do it by hand,

01:50:57 ◼   ► it's actually a very straightforward incantation

01:50:59 ◼   ► that I'll put in the show notes.

01:51:01 ◼   ► But that would require, again,

01:51:03 ◼   ► a file that reads it's plain text and it reads file space

01:51:07 ◼   ► and then a file name, new line,

01:51:08 ◼   ► file space, next file name, new line.

01:51:10 ◼   ► And then you can have FFmpeg concatenate all of those videos.

01:51:15 ◼   ► You would probably need to specify by hand

01:51:18 ◼   ► like output resolution and stuff like that.

01:51:20 ◼   ► So it's not, I guess it's not quite as easy as I thought,

01:51:22 ◼   ► but the idea of mashing 400 video clips together

01:51:26 ◼   ► is actually very straightforward

01:51:29 ◼   ► if you're willing to generate a file that has 400,

01:51:32 ◼   ► a plain text file that has 400 lines in it

01:51:34 ◼   ► that is the names of all the files you're trying to input.

01:51:37 ◼   ► So this is doable for sure.

01:51:40 ◼   ► And FFmpeg will do it.

01:51:41 ◼   ► I don't know if Handbrake will do this sort of thing.

01:51:43 ◼   ► Of course, anytime I say FFmpeg,

01:51:45 ◼   ► everyone else starts saying Handbrake

01:51:47 ◼   ► because Handbrake is in many respects

01:51:49 ◼   ► just a user interface, a GUI front end to FFmpeg.

01:51:54 ◼   ► Again, it's been a long time since we've played with Handbrake

01:51:56 ◼   ► and it might do this sort of thing.

01:51:58 ◼   ► And there is a Handbrake CLI for doing it on the command line

01:52:01 ◼   ► which maybe would do this sort of thing.

01:52:03 ◼   ► But yeah, it's certainly FFmpeg will do it.

01:52:07 ◼   ► And it's not that inherently difficult.

01:52:10 ◼   ► It is workable.

01:52:11 ◼   ► And building on what Jon was saying about

01:52:13 ◼   ► how do you get to be decent at FFmpeg?

01:52:15 ◼   ► I think I mentioned this before, but in Apple Notes,

01:52:17 ◼   ► which is now my repository of random information,

01:52:21 ◼   ► just like Evernote once was,

01:52:22 ◼   ► have you heard about WorkChat?

01:52:24 ◼   ► Well, in Apple Notes, I have a folder that is FFmpeg.

01:52:28 ◼   ► And it's just examples of different incantations

01:52:30 ◼   ► that I have used and I thought I would come back to

01:52:34 ◼   ► at some point.

01:52:35 ◼   ► And this one of them is concatenating files.

01:52:37 ◼   ► And I can remember how to do it off the top of my head now,

01:52:40 ◼   ► but for the first 10, 15 times I did it,

01:52:42 ◼   ► I was like, wait, what do I need to do?

01:52:43 ◼   ► And what does that plain text thing look like?

01:52:46 ◼   ► And how does that work?

01:52:47 ◼   ► And so having that sort of thing handy is very, very useful.

01:52:52 ◼   ► And also, if you're not really familiar with FFmpeg,

01:52:55 ◼   ► I'll put my primer that I wrote, I don't know,

01:52:58 ◼   ► how was it, three, four years ago now it looks like,

01:53:00 ◼   ► I'll put that in the show notes for you to look at.

01:53:03 ◼   ► Moving right along, Brandon Weese writes,

01:53:07 ◼   ► how does Overcast scrape iTunes?

01:53:09 ◼   ► Does it use the iTunes search API

01:53:10 ◼   ► or does it scrape it from web pages?

01:53:12 ◼   ► - It uses the iTunes search API.

01:53:14 ◼   ► It's a very simple answer.

01:53:15 ◼   ► It's not that interesting, but yeah, that's it.

01:53:18 ◼   ► I use the iTunes search API.

01:53:19 ◼   ► It's been around forever.

01:53:21 ◼   ► Apple seems to be okay with people using it in this way,

01:53:25 ◼   ► and they have been for some time.

01:53:27 ◼   ► It has basically never changed.

01:53:29 ◼   ► I would not wanna build something

01:53:33 ◼   ► based around scraping web pages

01:53:34 ◼   ► that I was actually making into a product

01:53:36 ◼   ► for other people to use.

01:53:37 ◼   ► 'Cause just scraping web pages is both hard to maintain

01:53:41 ◼   ► and unreliable and can possibly get you into legal issues

01:53:45 ◼   ► with the people you are scraping them from,

01:53:47 ◼   ► and that's just, it's not worth doing anything

01:53:49 ◼   ► that requires that if you're intending to make it

01:53:52 ◼   ► a serious effort that you're giving people.

01:53:55 ◼   ► I use the API the way I'm allowed to, and that's it.

01:53:57 ◼   ► - The API is so old, is it like a SOAP API?

01:54:00 ◼   ► What is it that returns?

01:54:01 ◼   ► - It returns JSON, actually.

01:54:03 ◼   ► - Wow, it's pretty modern, fancy.

01:54:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's super easy to use.

01:54:07 ◼   ► It's one of those things, it's kinda like Usenet.

01:54:10 ◼   ► Just don't talk about it,

01:54:12 ◼   ► because it seems too good to be true,

01:54:13 ◼   ► and we don't want somebody to realize this exists

01:54:16 ◼   ► and shut it down.

01:54:17 ◼   ► So we don't talk about it.

01:54:20 ◼   ► Anyway, thank you to our sponsors this week,

01:54:22 ◼   ► Squarespace, HelloFresh, and Linode,

01:54:25 ◼   ► and thank you to our members who support us directly.

01:54:27 ◼   ► You can join atp.fm/join.

01:54:30 ◼   ► You can use our new annual or monthly options

01:54:33 ◼   ► in your currency of choice,

01:54:34 ◼   ► if your choice happens to be US dollars,

01:54:36 ◼   ► Euro, or Great British pounds.

01:54:38 ◼   ► Thank you, everybody, and we will talk to you next week.

01:54:42 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:54:44 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:54:46 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:54:49 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:54:51 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:54:52 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:54:54 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:54:55 ◼   ► ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:54:57 ◼   ► ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

01:55:00 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:55:01 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:55:02 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:55:04 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:55:05 ◼   ► ♪ And you can find the show notes at atp.fm ♪

01:55:10 ◼   ► ♪ And if you're into Twitter ♪

01:55:13 ◼   ► ♪ You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S ♪

01:55:18 ◼   ► ♪ So that's Casey Liss ♪

01:55:21 ◼   ► ♪ M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M ♪

01:55:24 ◼   ► ♪ N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N ♪

01:55:26 ◼   ► ♪ S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:55:29 ◼   ► ♪ U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A ♪

01:55:31 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:55:33 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:55:35 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to accidental ♪

01:55:38 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:55:39 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast so long ♪

01:55:43 ◼   ► - I have some bell follow-up.

01:55:47 ◼   ► - Some bell follow-up, I did not see that coming.

01:55:49 ◼   ► All right, tell me more.

01:55:50 ◼   ► - Did you break another bell?

01:55:51 ◼   ► - No, I fixed the original bell.

01:55:53 ◼   ► - Whoa. - Oh, excellent.

01:55:55 ◼   ► - So I pulled out of the closet the other day

01:55:57 ◼   ► 'cause I had a theory.

01:55:59 ◼   ► I had heard on one of the recent Merlin podcasts,

01:56:02 ◼   ► I forget which one, I probably do by Friday,

01:56:05 ◼   ► he was playing with a magnet with his bell.

01:56:09 ◼   ► Now these are metal bells and I thought,

01:56:12 ◼   ► oh, wait a minute, maybe the reason mine

01:56:14 ◼   ► was getting all rattly was that the metal

01:56:16 ◼   ► got magnetized in transit.

01:56:19 ◼   ► 'Cause if it gets magnetized, maybe the little hammer thing

01:56:22 ◼   ► in there that hits it doesn't pull back correctly

01:56:24 ◼   ► and sticks to it a little too long

01:56:26 ◼   ► or makes it rattle weirdly.

01:56:28 ◼   ► So I thought, I, from the war of watches,

01:56:31 ◼   ► I have a deep magnetizer.

01:56:33 ◼   ► So I thought maybe I can fix my original bell,

01:56:35 ◼   ► maybe it got magnetized by being transported

01:56:38 ◼   ► next to an iPad smart cover or something.

01:56:40 ◼   ► And great, I can just run my deep magnetizer around.

01:56:43 ◼   ► So I took it out and I waved over my compass

01:56:47 ◼   ► to test whether it was magnetized or not.

01:56:49 ◼   ► And it wasn't.

01:56:50 ◼   ► And I thought, okay, well, there goes that theory.

01:56:52 ◼   ► But then I took out the working bell

01:56:55 ◼   ► and I held them side by side and compared them.

01:56:58 ◼   ► And I realized that the old broken bell,

01:57:01 ◼   ► the dome of the main bell-shaped part of the bell,

01:57:06 ◼   ► it was not resting level on the broken one.

01:57:09 ◼   ► It was tilted and it was touching the bottom base part.

01:57:14 ◼   ► Whereas the functioning bell had a perfectly even air gap

01:57:18 ◼   ► between those two parts.

01:57:19 ◼   ► - Your broken one was muting itself,

01:57:21 ◼   ► like you mute strings in a guitar.

01:57:22 ◼   ► - A little bit, yeah, except rattling itself instead.

01:57:24 ◼   ► I thought, well, let me see if I can fix that.

01:57:28 ◼   ► This is just metal, maybe I can bend it back into place.

01:57:32 ◼   ► And sure enough, a $10 bell is not made

01:57:36 ◼   ► of very high quality or thick metal.

01:57:38 ◼   ► So I could just bend it back with my hands.

01:57:41 ◼   ► And now I have the original bell back to its former glory.

01:57:46 ◼   ► It works fine.

01:57:48 ◼   ► I could just, at some point in its various trips

01:57:51 ◼   ► to WBC or the beach or whatever,

01:57:53 ◼   ► it probably just got compressed in a bag

01:57:56 ◼   ► and it bent down slightly and bent the metal.

01:57:59 ◼   ► Now I have repaired my bell.

01:58:01 ◼   ► I believe in repairability and reuse

01:58:05 ◼   ► before I recycle things,

01:58:06 ◼   ► I have my original bell back in service.

01:58:09 ◼   ► - Before you order 50 other bells

01:58:10 ◼   ► in an attempt to get a new one of the original bell.

01:58:13 ◼   ► - Which I'll never be able to get again.

01:58:15 ◼   ► - Well, it's a good thing, like my broken cheese graters.

01:58:17 ◼   ► I keep them around too for parts.

01:58:19 ◼   ► It's a good thing you kept the original bell around.

01:58:21 ◼   ► - Yup, yup, so here we are.

01:58:23 ◼   ► I'm back on the original bell.

01:58:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can tell it has a warmer sound.

01:58:27 ◼   ► (beeping)