0:00:00Hey, have we ever recorded this show before noon?
0:00:04I would be surprised if Jon has ever recorded a podcast before noon.
0:00:08No, I've done a bunch of morning ones for usually like people in the UK and stuff.
0:00:12Have you even shaved yet?
0:00:13What are you talking about? I don't think you understand my shaving schedule.
0:00:18Yeah, maybe. You've completed the morning shave, but not the evening shave.
0:00:22Right, right.
0:00:23No, that's not... I shave like once a week-ish.
0:00:27I thought I figured you know your thick Italian heritage is just like just constant.
0:00:32It is, oh it is.
0:00:34It's just I don't feel the need to shave it off now that I'm not going into an office
0:00:38all the time.
0:00:39Even when I was going to an office honestly it was pretty hit or miss in the later years.
0:00:44You slowly become like the elder programmer look.
0:00:48Right?
0:00:49Yeah, because one or two days it's like stubble and then people start asking you whether you're
0:00:54throwing a beard, and then you shave,
0:00:55and then just repeats.
0:00:56(laughing)
0:00:57- By the way, if anybody asks,
0:01:00today is not December 26th, it's December 24th.
0:01:03And I figure if Roman emperors were able to dictate
0:01:08whatever they felt like the calendar doing,
0:01:10I feel like I can do it too.
0:01:12So today is really actually December 24th in our family,
0:01:15and we have our own custom calendar, only for this year.
0:01:18Because this has been,
0:01:22oh, this has been an experience.
0:01:25So we drove halfway upstate on the day before Christmas Eve,
0:01:32on Friday, this past Friday.
0:01:34The idea was to drive the rest of the way upstate
0:01:36to our family's place on Saturday, Christmas Eve day.
0:01:41And we woke up on Saturday morning,
0:01:43and our kid had a massive fever.
0:01:46And we were like, oh, no.
0:01:48So here we are scheduling to go up to visit
0:01:53the whole family, including his grandparents,
0:01:56who were, you know, we wanna be careful
0:01:58with what we bring to them.
0:01:59And so we were like, oh no, we gotta,
0:02:02we can't go up like this.
0:02:03We can't bring this very fevery kid.
0:02:07First of all, we can't make him sit in a car
0:02:09for three hours.
0:02:11That's not super great when you're feeling sick.
0:02:13Second of all, we don't wanna get them sick.
0:02:15So we're like, oh God, what do we do?
0:02:16It's Christmas Eve.
0:02:18And so we worked out this plan where we were basically
0:02:21gonna wait until the fever broke and talk to a doctor
0:02:24and see when it's safe and everything.
0:02:26And then so as we're working this out,
0:02:27we get reports from all of his,
0:02:30from some of his school classmates' parents.
0:02:33His whole class basically has flu A.
0:02:36It's the whole class.
0:02:37- Cool. - It's the real flu.
0:02:39Many of them got tested.
0:02:40It's influenza A, real flu,
0:02:43and now he's showing flu symptoms and we're like,
0:02:44oh crap.
0:02:46And it's Christmas Eve, may I remind you.
0:02:48It's not like anything's easily accessible or open.
0:02:51So we do like a telehealth thing,
0:02:53which thank God that even exists.
0:02:55I mean, that's an amazing thing.
0:02:57I'm so happy that that's,
0:02:59like I think one of the,
0:03:01if there is such a thing as a silver lining
0:03:03for the COVID era,
0:03:04it's that I think we have way more access
0:03:07to virtual services than we used to.
0:03:08And even though telehealth existed before COVID,
0:03:11it was a much smaller and less commonly available thing
0:03:13for most insurance plans and stuff.
0:03:15So now it's super easy.
0:03:17So we did telehealth,
0:03:18and then we had to get a prescription.
0:03:21And by this time,
0:03:22the time that we had done the telehealth and done all this,
0:03:25it was 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
0:03:28- Ugh.
0:03:28- So try getting a prescription filled
0:03:30at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
0:03:31(laughing)
0:03:33So we eventually found like a 24-hour pharmacy
0:03:36that was open Christmas Eve, had it sent there.
0:03:39It was a whole thing, but we got it.
0:03:42Anyway, so we've had it,
0:03:44And we're like, all right, the good thing about Christmas
0:03:47is that unlike, for example, Halloween,
0:03:50if you are sick on Halloween, you just miss everything
0:03:53because Halloween is a holiday that depends
0:03:55on the rest of the surrounding community
0:03:57celebrating it at the same time you are celebrating it.
0:04:00Otherwise, you can't really go trick or treating.
0:04:02If you just show up on strangers' doors
0:04:03and knock on them on November 3rd,
0:04:05you're gonna have a bad time, I think.
0:04:08But Christmas, it really just depends
0:04:11on when your family wants to celebrate it.
0:04:14It's basically within your own household for the most part.
0:04:16And so you can kind of celebrate it whenever you want.
0:04:19So we just delayed it.
0:04:20So yesterday we sat inside and played video games all day.
0:04:23Big fan of Project High Rise right now.
0:04:25It's like a modern Sim Tower.
0:04:27It's fantastic.
0:04:28- Oh, I loved Sim Tower.
0:04:29- Yeah, yeah.
0:04:30But yeah, and so we just played video games all day.
0:04:33They tried to teach me how to play Don't Starve together
0:04:35and I starved.
0:04:36Well, no, I died almost instantly.
0:04:40I think I lasted maybe 90 seconds in the game
0:04:43before dying, so that might not be a strength of mine, but certainly SimTower-like games
0:04:49are, I'm enjoying. So we just did all that yesterday, and this afternoon we are driving
0:04:53upstate and today is fake Christmas Eve and tomorrow is fake Christmas and we're gonna
0:04:58celebrate it, dammit. Anyway, so I'm very thankful for Modern Medicine and for our flexible
0:05:04family in their scheduling. And yeah, it's been a time. Oh, and 24 Hour Pharmacy is also
0:05:11Thankful for that.
0:05:12- Did you give Adam COVID tests?
0:05:15- Yes, and no.
0:05:17- And had he gotten his flu shot yet?
0:05:21- No, this is the thing.
0:05:22So he had COVID on Halloween.
0:05:25So that's why I'm such an expert
0:05:27in what it's like to miss Halloween.
0:05:29That was awful.
0:05:30And because we thought we might be exposed to it,
0:05:33we didn't get any boosters or anything yet,
0:05:35'cause we're like, all right,
0:05:36now let's wait two months, like they say,
0:05:37and then we'll get all of our boosters.
0:05:39and that puts us about now.
0:05:42- Whoops.
0:05:43- Yeah, I always remember when they would start advertising
0:05:46the flu shots and they'd be advertising them
0:05:48and before Halloween I'd be like,
0:05:50"That seems a little early for flu shots,"
0:05:52but I eventually gave in and said,
0:05:53"All right, well I'll just get it as soon as it's available
0:05:55so I'll let this be a lesson to the listener."
0:05:58Even though sometimes it seems like they're giving out
0:05:59the flu shots way too early
0:06:00and it's not even close to flu season yet,
0:06:02it's a good idea to get them when you can
0:06:03'cause it's easy to forget.
0:06:05- Yeah, yeah, last year we got them all regularly on schedule
0:06:08and we had a totally fine, smooth winter.
0:06:10I mean, you know, and I know it's on 100% or whatever,
0:06:13but at this point, I'll take any improvement in chances,
0:06:17even if it's on 100%, I'll take it.
0:06:20- All right, let's do some follow-up,
0:06:23and it starts with Brad Crittenden, who writes,
0:06:24"I got a butterfly keyboard class action lawsuit
0:06:26"settlement notice.
0:06:28"It claims that they will pay 300 to $395.
0:06:31"I have no recollection of this flying by.
0:06:33"I probably filled it out and just don't remember,
0:06:35"but I have zero recollection of this."
0:06:37So here's the thing, I'd never filled it out
0:06:39and I got one, or rather I got the notice
0:06:41saying I'm entitled to one or whatever,
0:06:42but I'm not gonna submit it because,
0:06:45see I never, as far as I can recall,
0:06:48I think I only got it repaired once,
0:06:51or even, did I ever get it repaired or did I just not?
0:06:54See I can't even remember
0:06:55if I actually ever got one repaired.
0:06:57So that's why I'm like, you know,
0:06:58it's 'cause the class action is basically like
0:07:01if you got a butterfly keyboard laptop repaired by Apple,
0:07:05depending on how many times you got it repaired,
0:07:07you have a certain payout of 100 bucks
0:07:11or 200 or 300 bucks apparently,
0:07:12but it's not a huge amount of money.
0:07:15'Cause I mean, look, the real problem
0:07:17with the butterfly keyboards,
0:07:18well, there were two real problems.
0:07:19Number one, people getting them repaired out of warranty
0:07:21had to pay quite a lot of money, and more than that.
0:07:24Remember, the price was, I believe,
0:07:25like over $500 to get one repair out of warranty.
0:07:29So there's that issue, which this, I guess,
0:07:32partially addresses but doesn't fully address.
0:07:35The other issue is any replacement you got
0:07:38would have the same problem eventually.
0:07:40And so really the whole laptop
0:07:43was incredibly devalued over time.
0:07:46That was the big problem.
0:07:48And so, you know, this is, I'm glad Apple, you know,
0:07:52got sued over the butterfly keyboards
0:07:53'cause frankly they should have.
0:07:55One issuance of that keyboard was bad enough
0:08:00and then to keep issuing it year after year
0:08:02after year after year claiming they'd fixed it
0:08:04was beyond negligent and borderline fraudulent.
0:08:08So they should have been held liable for that
0:08:11and it seems like they've been held
0:08:12a little bit liable for that.
0:08:14But ultimately, if you were an owner
0:08:16of a butterfly keyboard laptop,
0:08:18this kind of helps a little bit,
0:08:20but it doesn't really address the actual value
0:08:23that you lost by having that laptop
0:08:25and having to eventually sell or trade it in
0:08:27or get it repaired out of warranty.
0:08:29I was excited to get my money for this
0:08:31and then I realized, oh wait,
0:08:32my butterfly keyboard that broke wasn't mine,
0:08:34it was on my work's laptop.
0:08:35It was annoying though.
0:08:36- Oh no.
0:08:37- You gotta get your work laptop taken away
0:08:38and you gotta have a replacement
0:08:40and all your stuff is on it.
0:08:40It's even more annoying with all the work
0:08:42'cause they own the machine
0:08:43so it's not like you can just copy stuff off of it
0:08:45'cause they don't let you attach external drives
0:08:47and blah, blah, blah.
0:08:47So anyway, I hope my old workplace gets the money
0:08:51they have coming to them
0:08:52for all the butterfly keyboards that broke.
0:08:55- Yeah, I didn't end up getting any of these repaired.
0:08:57In fact, I'm trying to remember.
0:08:59So we still have, you know, Aaron, what was my adorable now, Aaron's adorable in the house,
0:09:03and every great moment, like once every few months, she'll be like, "Oh, my such and such
0:09:07key is sticking."
0:09:08Yep, sure is.
0:09:09I bet you're right.
0:09:11But anyways, but that never got a repair.
0:09:14And then I think the one or two other MacBook Pros that I had during the butterfly era were
0:09:19either works or have already been sold off.
0:09:22So yeah, I'd never had a repair, and that probably explains why I never got this notice.
0:09:26But I'm glad to hear that this is a thing,
0:09:28and I agree with you Marco that,
0:09:30you know, it's one thing to release a keyboard
0:09:32that's flawed and maybe you didn't know it,
0:09:34maybe you thought, oh it'll work itself out,
0:09:36and okay fine.
0:09:38The thing that bothered me about this whole fiasco,
0:09:40well one of the things that bothered me
0:09:41about this whole fiasco was the fact that,
0:09:43like you said, they just kept saying,
0:09:44no, no, no, it's fine, no, it's fine,
0:09:47no it's fine, no, it's fine.
0:09:49- This time we fixed it.
0:09:50- Oh yeah, oh we added a gasket or whatever it was,
0:09:52I don't remember the details,
0:09:53we added a gasket, that'll fix it.
0:09:55Because you're right, they were also saying,
0:09:57"Nothing's wrong, keep changing it.
0:09:58"Nothing's wrong, oh wait, we changed it again.
0:10:00"Nothing's wrong, what are you talking about?
0:10:02"There's no flaw, we fixed the flaw.
0:10:03"What are you talking about?
0:10:04"There's no flaw, oh, we fixed it again."
0:10:05Like, yeah, it was a rough time.
0:10:08- Huge Apple energy.
0:10:09- Not to mention the fact that it sucked
0:10:10even when it was working, but we'll move beyond that for now.
0:10:14- I mean, what are you gonna do?
0:10:14But no, I'm glad to see that this is finding,
0:10:19as late as it is, I'm glad to see it's finding
0:10:20some sort of resolution for regular people.
0:10:23- Two related things to this.
0:10:24I don't know we don't couldn't find this feedback for the show
0:10:26But we did get some feedback from somebody through some channel live streams that said
0:10:30That they had a Mac with a butterfly keyboard
0:10:33And it went bad and they brought it to the Apple store
0:10:36And they were informed that oh the Apple repair program for the butterfly keyboards that said hey if you have a problem
0:10:42You know whatever it's called the extended repair program if you have a problem or replace it that program has ended
0:10:46So this person had a butterfly keyboard
0:10:48Brought it in and and they're no longer
0:10:51eligible to get it repaired for free or for cheap because the Apple, we talked about this
0:10:54when Apple rolled out the program, it's like, okay, at a certain point, Apple says, yeah,
0:10:58we have this repair program because we realized we put out a defective keyboard, but at a
0:11:01certain point, we just want to stop paying for that, so we're going to.
0:11:03And I think we're past that point now, which is pretty crappy, so if you do want it repaired,
0:11:07you're on the hook for whatever the, you know, $500 repair bill, really just probably want
0:11:11to throw that laptop into the sea at that point.
0:11:13And the second thing is that, just from some brief Googling, I believe I still have a butterfly
0:11:19keyboard Mac that's in semi-active use. The original Retina MacBook Air had it, right?
0:11:25The Intel one? Yeah, the first one, the 2018 model. But the
0:11:292019 did not. Yeah, maybe I got the 2019 one, I'll have
0:11:33to look it up. There was an Intel MacBook Air Retina that
0:11:37didn't have the butterfly keyboard. Yeah, I'll double check, but I was thinking,
0:11:42"Oh, maybe if that one ever goes bad, I'll get paid," but apparently I won't, again,
0:11:45according to that feedback that I can't find. So that's pretty crappy. I understand the
0:11:49the repair programs can't last forever, but it's kind of like, what's the point of the
0:11:53repair program if you're saying, "We're sorry for putting out a defective laptop, but we
0:11:56have a timer on the lifetime of your computer."
0:11:59So, I mean, it seems like the keyboard is even more likely to fail after the three or
0:12:04four or five or however many years after that time period is up, but they're just saying,
0:12:07"Yeah, we can't pay for that forever," because we basically know that there's probably some
0:12:11graph of over time, what are the odds that a keyboard will fail, and at a certain point,
0:12:15it becomes like ruinous, not ruinous,
0:12:16but very expensive for Apple to repair
0:12:19because the percentage of them that are gonna go bad
0:12:21after 10 years is approaching like 25% or something.
0:12:25- Well, but it does make sense to have a time limit on it.
0:12:28I just think this time limit was probably too short.
0:12:31'Cause at some point they have to stop manufacturing
0:12:33and keeping the parts and the service equipment
0:12:36and stuff like that.
0:12:36So it does make sense to have an expiration date,
0:12:39but that expiration date should be however many years
0:12:43their products are expected to be in use
0:12:45that number of years after they stop being for sale.
0:12:49And so maybe it's like seven years, you know,
0:12:51whatever it is, like as long as they can expect
0:12:53a laptop to reasonably still be in use by most people,
0:12:57it should have covered that duration, and it didn't.
0:13:00- They don't have to keep making
0:13:01the butterfly keyboard parts,
0:13:02like that's not the only solution available to them.
0:13:05They can do what they have done in the past,
0:13:06which is that you bring something in to get repaired,
0:13:08and they're like, oh, we don't make parts for that anymore,
0:13:11and we don't make that product anymore,
0:13:13but we recognize that you've got a broken thing
0:13:15and it's our fault, so here is the new version.
0:13:17We've heard lots and lots of stories of Apple doing that.
0:13:19Like they basically give you a new laptop
0:13:20or a new iPod back in the day.
0:13:22That's not the one that you had
0:13:23that is better than the one you had,
0:13:24but it's the only option available to them
0:13:26because they don't make the old one anymore.
0:13:27They could always do that,
0:13:28but of course that would cost money.
0:13:30- And that would cost way more money.
0:13:32'Cause like-- - Yeah.
0:13:33Well, you stopped shipping a defective keyboard for years.
0:13:35- I know, but like, but you know,
0:13:36this was not a small number of affected products,
0:13:39even though they kept saying,
0:13:40"It's only a tiny percentage,
0:13:42but we all know it's a much bigger percentage.
0:13:44- A tiny percentage after six months,
0:13:46is it a tiny percentage after six years?
0:13:47- Right, yeah, that's the thing.
0:13:49This would have been a massive number
0:13:52if they actually did that.
0:13:52And I've heard of that happening,
0:13:55and one time it even happened for me
0:13:57back in the white plastic MacBook days.
0:14:00But it's not super common.
0:14:03I feel like you have to have a fairly exceptional case,
0:14:05and I think it has to go through some levels of approval
0:14:08before they just give you a new thing
0:14:11replace your old broken thing. So it's not that common of a thing.
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0:16:14- Let's move on and talk about stable diffusion, baby.
0:16:20And apparently artists can now opt out
0:16:23of the next version of stable diffusion.
0:16:26This is an article on the Technology Review.
0:16:28Artists will have the chance to opt out
0:16:29of the next version of stable diffusion.
0:16:30The company behind it has announced stability.ai
0:16:32will work with Spawning, an organization founded
0:16:35by artists couple Matt Dreiherst and Holly Herndon,
0:16:37who have built a website called Have I Been Trained.
0:16:40That's in the spirit of Have I Been Pwned, isn't it?
0:16:42That's so good.
0:16:42- Oh, all right. - That allows artists
0:16:43to search for their works in the dataset
0:16:47that was used to train stable diffusion.
0:16:49Artists will be able to select which works
0:16:51they want to exclude from the training data.
0:16:53- I mean, you don't even need to read the summary
0:16:54or the article, just the headline,
0:16:56which I've copied and pasted directly into the notes,
0:16:57just the headline is enough for you to,
0:16:59it's kind of like the Ian Beteridge law,
0:17:00if you're a user, just say no.
0:17:02Artists can now opt, no, you're not getting it.
0:17:05The idea is not, oh, we'll steal all your stuff
0:17:07and build a commercial product off of it and make money,
0:17:10but you can always track us down,
0:17:12find out we're doing that and tell us to stop.
0:17:14Everything's fine now, right?
0:17:16No, it's not.
0:17:17We'll siphon money from your bank account slowly over time,
0:17:20but if you catch us doing that and tell us to stop,
0:17:22we'll stop.
0:17:24Everything's fine now, right?
0:17:25No problem anymore?
0:17:26No, this is not the solution.
0:17:28You can't take people's stuff, use it,
0:17:30and say, "But we'll stop if you ask us to."
0:17:33It should not be an opt-out.
0:17:34Would you like to opt out
0:17:35of having your intellectual property stolen?
0:17:37Please offer that plan to Disney.
0:17:39Hey, Disney, we'll be using your intellectual property,
0:17:41but if you ask us to stop, we will.
0:17:43- I can't.
0:17:45- It's hilarious that someone thought this was a good idea.
0:17:48- Well, I can, I mean, look,
0:17:51I know this is probably unpopular,
0:17:52so maybe I shouldn't even bother,
0:17:54but I think the issue of copyright and rights
0:17:59in terms of whether AI can be trained
0:18:02on your copyrighted material is a weird blurry situation.
0:18:06I don't think it's clear cut.
0:18:08'Cause if you think about what training is
0:18:11and how it might relate to real world analogs
0:18:13to which we have precedent,
0:18:14I am able to view a copyrighted work
0:18:19if it's being shown to me in a legal way.
0:18:21I'm able to view it and remember it and learn from it.
0:18:25Artists everywhere are able to look at other artists' work
0:18:29be inspired by them and generate new things in their spirit.
0:18:33And so it is kind of a weird blurry line
0:18:36in the sense that the AI models
0:18:38that are being trained in this data,
0:18:39they're not making illegal copies
0:18:41and distributing illegal copies of the original works.
0:18:45They are, in a way, viewing them.
0:18:47- But they're not people, so they're not.
0:18:49- Right, and so that's,
0:18:50and I know there was recently a court thing somewhere
0:18:52that said that they basically failed,
0:18:54that AI stuff, the output of AI models
0:18:57does not qualify for copyright
0:18:58'cause it was not created by a human.
0:19:00And I think that's also gonna be worked out over time
0:19:02in the core systems, I think that's also probably--
0:19:05- I think that's actually, that ruling's actually
0:19:07more questionable than, in my opinion,
0:19:09than the whether they're allowed to take your stuff.
0:19:11Because the not created by a human thing is fuzzy in the,
0:19:14okay, so the program is in human,
0:19:17but a human runs the program and tweaks the output
0:19:19and so on and so forth, so you have to say,
0:19:22this isn't copyrightable because it wasn't created
0:19:23by a human, it's like, well, the program didn't create it
0:19:25on its own, it's just sitting there waiting for a human
0:19:27It's like saying, "This is not copyrightable because it was created by Photoshop and Photoshop's
0:19:31not a human."
0:19:32Well, someone ran Photoshop and used it and clicked around and did stuff, right?
0:19:36How many tweaks to the output do you have to do for it to suddenly become a copyrightable,
0:19:39right?
0:19:40I think that is actually more fuzzy.
0:19:41What is not fuzzy, in my opinion, and again, who knows what the law will be, but in my
0:19:45personal opinion, is not fuzzy at all that you cannot take—that you can't take works
0:19:51that you don't have the rights to and use it to train an AI model.
0:19:54and I talked about this on upgrade a while back,
0:19:56like it just, in my opinion, there's no,
0:20:00like I see where people think it might be fuzzy,
0:20:02but the difference is that it's not a person doing,
0:20:04you're feeding it into a program,
0:20:05and the value of that program is nothing
0:20:08without being fed input.
0:20:10You have to feed input into the program.
0:20:12If I just give you that program and say,
0:20:14well, it's a program that I wrote,
0:20:15so anything that comes out of it is mine,
0:20:16sure, okay, go ahead, but it's like,
0:20:18okay, well, my program doesn't work unless I feed it data.
0:20:20Okay, well, now what data,
0:20:21where are you getting that data from?
0:20:23I'll just feed it any data I feel like.
0:20:25The point of the acquisition of data,
0:20:27you are taking that data and using it.
0:20:29It's like taking a font and using it to make a sign.
0:20:32Like fonts, this is more complicated
0:20:34'cause you can't copyright a font.
0:20:35But anyway, if you wanna use the official version
0:20:37of a font or whatever, you have to pay for it.
0:20:39You can use a clone of the font or whatever,
0:20:41which gets things complicated.
0:20:42But anyway, I don't think you can take people's
0:20:45copyrighted material and use it to train an AI model.
0:20:47I just don't, without some kind of compensation for them,
0:20:50because you are directly deriving value from their work.
0:20:55And I don't think the analogy to people makes any sense
0:20:57because the program's not a person.
0:20:58Yes, a person can look at art and make derivative art,
0:21:00right, but it's not a person.
0:21:02It's a person using a program, right?
0:21:04It's like, well, if I use a program to copy this,
0:21:07I didn't copy your art and resell it.
0:21:09I used the CP program, and the CP program copied your art,
0:21:12but then once I had it from the CP program,
0:21:14then I sold it, but it's fine
0:21:16because the CP program did just what a person does,
0:21:18looks at the art, right?
0:21:19No, it's just a more complicated version of the CP.
0:21:22Now, will lawyers agree?
0:21:25I think it really depends on, especially in our country,
0:21:27how rich the corporation is on each side of the case
0:21:30when it comes to, like if Disney arrives and says,
0:21:32"Hey, we see you've trained your AI model
0:21:34"on all of our intellectual property,"
0:21:35probably Disney's gonna win, based on the precedent.
0:21:39And in this case, I think Disney would be right
0:21:41that you can't train your model on stuff made by Disney.
0:21:45But as I said, an upgrade, Disney can train an AI model
0:21:48on stuff made by Disney.
0:21:49Like I'm not saying AI models are useless.
0:21:51Disney can train all the models they want
0:21:53on all their own intellectual property
0:21:55and use it to generate stuff.
0:21:57And I think the stuff that Disney generates
0:21:59from Disney's own intellectual property
0:22:01should be copyrightable because humans are running that
0:22:04and doing the prompts and tweaking the output and whatever.
0:22:06And I think that should be copyrightable.
0:22:08So, so far, the one legal case that we've heard of
0:22:12has gone the opposite way as I expected.
0:22:14But this is a, you know, I think you're right, Marco,
0:22:16that lots of people have different opinions on this.
0:22:18I just feel like mine is very strongly against using other people's intellectual property.
0:22:23And I think the problem with this stable diffusion thing is it's kind of admitting that, hey,
0:22:29we probably shouldn't be using your stuff because they will immediately stop using it
0:22:32if you ask them.
0:22:33So based on that silly policy, they're saying, oh, we understand that you have the right
0:22:38to make us stop.
0:22:39Or maybe they're just trying to say we're being nice and we'll stop if you want.
0:22:42But given my opinion that it is totally wrong for them to be taking that stuff in the first
0:22:46I think this is a dumb policy.
0:22:48- I think this is one of those areas where
0:22:51we're gonna look back at whatever our opinions are now,
0:22:54we're gonna look back in five or 10 years
0:22:55and be like, man, we were way off.
0:22:57And I don't know which direction we're gonna go in,
0:22:59but I think this is gonna be a rapidly evolving policy
0:23:04and what's acceptable and what's legal
0:23:08are both also going to rapidly evolve.
0:23:10I agree with you on the output being copyrightable.
0:23:15again, it's like, if you use Photoshop to flood fill an area with a pattern, does that
0:23:19not qualify for copyright because the program made the pattern and you didn't? So that
0:23:24obviously, I think using it, I think the output is copyrightable, but I think the input is
0:23:29really questionable and it's not clear cut. I think one area where it could kind of fall
0:23:37legally into some kind of settlement is that when you watch a movie and you get the little
0:23:43FBI warrant at the beginning, there are certain rights that you have and certain rights that
0:23:47you don't. You are not, for instance, allowed to buy a copy of the movie on Blu-ray or whatever
0:23:53and then show it to an audience who has paid to be there. You aren't allowed to use it
0:23:57commercially. You aren't allowed to do public performances. And the same thing applies to
0:24:03most music and things like that. And so you could argue, if you are a copyright holder,
0:24:08You could maybe argue, well, the use of your model viewing or listening to my content is
0:24:15not licensed because it's not personal, private home use or whatever.
0:24:20So they could maybe get something in there, but I think overall the concept, I still currently
0:24:25at least, I still fall on the side of the AI is just watching and learning from things
0:24:31in a similar, well, maybe not too similar, but it's in an analogous way to how humans
0:24:37might see something and be inspired by it over time.
0:24:40But what do you have to say about the idea that the program doesn't have any rights?
0:24:43Because in our law system, computer programs don't have rights right now, right? And I
0:24:48think this specific computer program definitely shouldn't have rights, because it's not a
0:24:51sentient being. So yes, it is doing something similar to what humans do, broad strokes,
0:24:56but it doesn't have any rights, because it is not a sentient being, and all of our laws
0:25:00apply to sentient beings, right? No, for that, I mean, I guess I agree with
0:25:04but I don't see this as whether the AI has rights itself.
0:25:09I see this as like--
0:25:11- You're trying to give it creative control.
0:25:12It's saying it created this thing,
0:25:14therefore now the program has rights to it.
0:25:15I mean, if you wanted to say that, I would say great.
0:25:17Now the program can do whatever it wants with it.
0:25:19You're like, well, the program doesn't wanna do anything
0:25:22with it, the human that ran the program, though,
0:25:24wants to sell it for an in and out purchase.
0:25:26So it's like, okay, if you actually want to assign rights,
0:25:29assign them to the program, and then you'd be like,
0:25:30well, that's dumb, the program can't do anything.
0:25:32- Exactly, that's why I don't have any rights.
0:25:35- Well, but I think it's more complicated than that.
0:25:38Like when you dive into the technical part of it,
0:25:40like okay, well what about when Google indexes
0:25:43fact data off of pages, and then you do a fact query
0:25:46and it shows one of those Google knowledge things.
0:25:48That's a questionable area of copyright as well, right?
0:25:51But I think that's very, very similar to this.
0:25:53- It is, but see, here's the thing.
0:25:55You're saying how this turns out,
0:25:56it can go a couple different ways.
0:25:58It really depends on, in the case of the Google thing,
0:26:02When that case comes--
0:26:03I don't remember what the resolution of the case--
0:26:05I think Google won that one.
0:26:06But when the cases come out, there are two strong forces
0:26:08here.
0:26:09One is rich corporations want something.
0:26:12In this case, Google is the rich corporation.
0:26:14It wanted to be able to take summaries of web pages
0:26:17and show them as its own output, which is arguably,
0:26:20you're right, very similar to what these models do.
0:26:22But I'm pretty sure--
0:26:23and we'll have all of this for a moment--
0:26:25I'm pretty sure Google won that case.
0:26:27And did they win it because they were right,
0:26:28or did they win it because they're Google,
0:26:30and they're rich, and they have a lot of lawyers?
0:26:31Right.
0:26:32see also Disney and copyright.
0:26:34- Right, exactly, right.
0:26:35So I think, but in using the analogy to what Google does,
0:26:38I kind of agree that Google, it's a little bit fuzzier,
0:26:42but because Google's whole thing is there,
0:26:44every one of their search results
0:26:45is arguably a summary or whatever,
0:26:47but Google is trying to be a venue for you to go somewhere,
0:26:51and by putting the summary things,
0:26:52they're making you not go there.
0:26:53When a program is summarizing
0:26:58and providing like an index or whatever,
0:27:00If you follow that road too far down, you're like,
0:27:02oh, you can't have search engines anymore
0:27:03because you're not allowed to reproduce
0:27:05any portion of my work, even a summary of it
0:27:07if it's programmatically generated anywhere.
0:27:08And that gets absurd.
0:27:09Obviously, we think we should have search engines,
0:27:11so let's not make a dumb law like that.
0:27:12- You can't even have browser caches
0:27:14if you follow that law too closely.
0:27:16- Right, but then there, but you know,
0:27:17this is the kind of technical nuance
0:27:19that laws aren't great with, okay?
0:27:20But what about when they take my webpage
0:27:21and they don't even provide a link to it
0:27:23and they just summarize the content
0:27:24and re-smash it through and say, oh, here's the answer
0:27:27and it's provided by Google
0:27:28and they don't give credit to my answer
0:27:29I'm the one who wrote that like, you know, "Grapes are poison to dogs" on my webpage,
0:27:33and they just took my paragraph and summarized it or massaged it and put it on there, right?
0:27:38And I, you know, again, I think Google won that case because they're rich, not because
0:27:41they're right.
0:27:42I would have decided that differently, but it's a nuanced ruling in that case, very nuanced,
0:27:45because I don't want to outlaw search engines or browser caches.
0:27:47In the case of the, you know, Disney finds someone's been training their AI models on,
0:27:52you know, Marvel superheroes, which absolutely has already happened, I'm sure, right?
0:27:57And Disney gets angry and sues.
0:27:59Disney's probably going to win that because they have all the politicians in their pocket
0:28:02or whatever the paraphrase of the line from The Godfather is.
0:28:07But on the other side of that, unlike the Google case, there is another side to that
0:28:11that is potentially just as powerful, which is people like free stuff.
0:28:16And combined with the fact that it's very difficult to – it's not immediately obvious
0:28:21what has been used to train an AI model.
0:28:23And then mixed into that, these sort of academic things, which is like, well, they're not
0:28:26selling anything that's just part of academic research and they should have broader purview
0:28:32to do things for non-commercial purposes or whatever, right?
0:28:34But the fact that it's just going to be like, "Well, Disney can sue, but they can try to
0:28:39make laws in the US, but the world is bigger than the US and anything that gets on the
0:28:43internet is everywhere, so good luck trying to stop people from making pictures of pregnant
0:28:47Sonic."
0:28:48Right?
0:28:49Yeah, pictures of pregnant Sonic probably Sega would not like to exist, but people are
0:28:52going to make them and it's a derivative work.
0:28:54That's probably a bad example.
0:28:55But anyway, these AI models are going to create images, and they're going to go everywhere
0:29:01if people want them.
0:29:02If it is a useful thing to have, it's going to be so hard to stop them.
0:29:05So the countervailing force here is at a certain point the case is coming, they're going to
0:29:10say, "Well, we think this should probably be illegal, but it's just so common and people
0:29:13really like it."
0:29:14And I know courts don't put an opinion that says, "Well, everybody does it, so it's fine."
0:29:18But practically speaking, you can end up with decisions that kind of lean in that direction.
0:29:23I'm sure there's some legal precedent of like, you know, like people who squat on a piece
0:29:27of land and at a certain point they own it.
0:29:29That doesn't make any sense.
0:29:30You're like, "That doesn't seem fair."
0:29:31But it's like, "But we have laws like that because it's even more absurd to do the opposite
0:29:34in some cases."
0:29:35Well, we've been living on this land for 100 years, but you know, you're going to kick
0:29:38us off because, well, again, in this country there's terrible analogies for that as well.
0:29:42Anyway, I'm not doing well with analogies.
0:29:44It's early in the morning.
0:29:45What can I tell you?
0:29:46So it depends on when these cases come out.
0:29:48I feel like there actually is something that may be equivalent to Disney trying to say,
0:29:54"Hey," again legally, "Hey, we've decided that this is okay."
0:29:58Regardless of what the law ends up being, I think it is not right to take people's copyrighted
0:30:02work, train a model on it, and sell the results of that model's output.
0:30:06If that model ever becomes a sentient being, which is plausible in the future, then we'll
0:30:10have a different discussion.
0:30:11That discussion will be what kind of rights do sentient computer programs have.
0:30:14And that is a very different discussion,
0:30:16but I want to be clear,
0:30:17none of these programs are sentient,
0:30:19no one is arguing that they are.
0:30:21So we can set that aside for a sci-fi future,
0:30:24but that's not what we're dealing with now.
0:30:26- Yeah, see, I see where you're coming from,
0:30:28I don't agree.
0:30:29I still think that--
0:30:30- Would you agree if you were an artist
0:30:32and your work was being taken
0:30:33and then the results of it being sold?
0:30:35- We are artists.
0:30:36So what would you think about somebody downloading all,
0:30:39all episodes of ATP we've ever made,
0:30:40all the podcasts we've ever made,
0:30:42and training a model on that?
0:30:44- Yeah, I don't think that's something,
0:30:45and selling the results,
0:30:46I don't think that's something you should do.
0:30:47What if they took the source code for Overcast
0:30:50and fed it into a program that tweaked it
0:30:52and then started selling new copies of Overcast?
0:30:55- Well, I don't release the source code,
0:30:56so that's a little bit different, but you know--
0:30:57- Yeah, it can reverse compile it,
0:30:59'cause you released the binary
0:31:00and they can just generate the source code from that.
0:31:01You've all seen that, and the program doesn't care
0:31:03what the variable names are all, A, B, C, D, and stuff,
0:31:05because the program doesn't care about that,
0:31:06but the program refacto, decompiles it,
0:31:09refactores it, changes it a little bit,
0:31:11and sells a new thing.
0:31:12I said, "Derivative work."
0:31:12just looked at it just the same way a person would.
0:31:14- Well see, and that I think, that's why
0:31:17I'm fairly hesitant to restrict the training side of things
0:31:20because in my opinion, I would rather use the systems
0:31:24we already have with copyright and fair use
0:31:27and trademark also, which is a little bit relevant
0:31:30in some of these things, but anyway,
0:31:31I'd rather use the systems we already have
0:31:34around copyright and fair use to manage
0:31:37when things go wrong and when things are misused,
0:31:40rather than say this new kind of technology
0:31:43that's really exciting and has a lot of good valid uses,
0:31:45we're gonna make it way harder
0:31:47and way less practical to create.
0:31:49Because if somebody uses an AI model
0:31:51that's been trained on whatever they could find,
0:31:53if they use that to generate something
0:31:55that is too close to an existing copyrighted work
0:31:58or that is clearly a derivative work
0:32:00of a protected character or franchise or whatever,
0:32:02then we already have infrastructure in place
0:32:05to issue takedown notices, to sue for something being
0:32:09or not being fair use, we already have all those systems.
0:32:12And I think we are better off relying
0:32:14on that human judgment side rather than
0:32:17kneecapping this technology in its early days
0:32:20in ways that are extremely impractical.
0:32:22I mean, if you think about, look at a similar problem
0:32:25that we faced when making web 2.0 and everything else.
0:32:29We had the rise of user-generated content sites,
0:32:33places like YouTube and Flickr and Tumblr
0:32:36and all these places.
0:32:37And you could say, legally speaking,
0:32:40you could say it should be impossible
0:32:44for anyone to ever upload a copy of my work
0:32:47to these services.
0:32:48In practice, that's really impractical and limiting.
0:32:51And so, kind of what you said a minute ago, John,
0:32:54so really the practice became,
0:32:56all right, well we're gonna have the structure in place
0:32:57to manage when there are violations,
0:32:59but it's not gonna be perfect,
0:33:01and it's not gonna be the intellectual property ideal
0:33:05of having it be impossible to break the law,
0:33:07but we're gonna just make a process in place
0:33:10so that we can deal with when people do things
0:33:12that are over the line.
0:33:13- But their process is they have a program
0:33:15called Content ID that will immediately detect
0:33:17if you have music playing in the background
0:33:19that's copyrighted, even if it's like
0:33:21this next house over, right?
0:33:22It is so incredibly fast and automated
0:33:25and defaults to rejecting.
0:33:26I mean, the YouTube video I wanted to see about Fusion
0:33:31that I think I might have mentioned on a past show
0:33:33was from Real Engineering, I think.
0:33:36It was rejected by copyright ID from YouTube or whatever,
0:33:40because the music used in the background was copyrighted.
0:33:44And the music used in the background
0:33:45was from a set of licensable music
0:33:47that the channel had licensed.
0:33:49So the copyright ID thing is so automated and so strict
0:33:53and so defaulting to rejection that it says,
0:33:55oh, this is copyright.
0:33:55It's like, yeah, and I paid for it.
0:33:57I paid for it to use on my channel.
0:33:59But it's like, no, program says no.
0:34:00So if it becomes possible to programmatically detect if your AI training model was trained
0:34:06with any copyrighted data, no one will ever be able to upload any AI trained stuff to
0:34:11YouTube, because YouTube will immediately detect it and reject it, even if you've paid
0:34:14for the rights, because that's the side they err on because big corporations don't like
0:34:19it.
0:34:20It's more like, you know, okay, so that's YouTube, but then what about the wider internet,
0:34:23like that it'll be everywhere.
0:34:24And again, I think AI models are still useful and can be useful, particularly for companies
0:34:30that want to train it on their own intellectual property.
0:34:32Like it is useful to train things on stuff that you own.
0:34:34And even an individual might not own enough to train a model,
0:34:37but there are licensable image sets that you can train on.
0:34:40That's also legally valid, right?
0:34:42I don't think, to your point about kneecapping disorder,
0:34:44I don't think we need any new laws.
0:34:46My interpretation of the existing laws is,
0:34:48this is already illegal, but the existing laws
0:34:50also provide lots of ways that it's legal.
0:34:53You know, Getty Images can sell image training sets.
0:34:56There are free public domain image training sets.
0:34:59if you would like to license an image training set from Disney, maybe they'll sell you one
0:35:03and then you can train your model on that.
0:35:05And then we have to have all the automated systems saying, "Okay, I can tell this was
0:35:08trained on X, Y, and Z images, and X, Y, and Z images are from these licensable sets,"
0:35:13and then you have to show that you licensed it just the same way the real engineer had
0:35:16to say, "No, no, I licensed this music thing from this company.
0:35:20I'm allowed to use it in my video.
0:35:21This is how the system is supposed to work, YouTube.
0:35:24Stop rejecting my videos."
0:35:25Right?
0:35:26and annoying, but if anything, if there is a programmatic way to enforce existing laws on fair use and intellectual property,
0:35:34it will be worse for creativity and innovation than humans enforcing it, because computers are really, really good at doing stuff like detecting if there's copyrighted music.
0:35:43And I presume eventually computers will be pretty good at figuring out if any copyrighted works from some set are part of a training set.
0:35:51training set, because that's, you know, have I been trained or whatever, and maybe they
0:35:54just have a database, I don't know how it works or whatever, but once it's programmatically
0:35:57possible to answer this question, it swings farther in the direction of Disney stopping
0:36:02you from ever training any image set on Star Wars.
0:36:05Well, I mean, and again, I think using Content ID on YouTube as an example is, that's kind
0:36:10of an extreme case, even though it is a highly relevant one, just because Content ID is so
0:36:13overly aggressive, but you know, that's not, and if you think about also, like, some other
0:36:17angle of this, you know, if Disney starts using this technology to like, you know, scan
0:36:22everything that they can find on YouTube and be like, "Oh wait, that's Elsa. Oh, stop,
0:36:26wait." And like, they can use the AI to detect derivative works even. Disney could start
0:36:31scanning like DeviantArt and Flickr and stuff for like fan-drawn versions of their characters.
0:36:38Well, but under existing laws, they have to show it was taken from like one of their actual
0:36:43Well, drawing's not a picture of Elsa, right?
0:36:45Although if you do want to put Elsa on a t-shirt and sell it,
0:36:48you can't say, well, I drew the Elsa myself, so it's fine.
0:36:50Actually, I don't know where the law is on that,
0:36:52depending on how derivative the work is.
0:36:54But anyway, what you would expect for the training thing
0:36:56and how it would be trained is not just, hey,
0:36:58you drew a picture of an apple, and there's
0:36:59a picture of an apple in the training set.
0:37:00It's like, is it literally your picture of the apple?
0:37:03And that's where it gets tricky.
0:37:05Again, I don't know how this have I been trained thing works.
0:37:08Maybe it is a byte provider-- they
0:37:09know the checksums of every image that
0:37:12was part of the data set and you can upload one of your images
0:37:15and if the checksum matches, then it's the same.
0:37:17Is it literally byte for byte and if you resize your picture
0:37:20or change one pixel, it doesn't match?
0:37:22Or is it fuzzier than that?
0:37:23This is kind of similar to the CSAM system
0:37:26of perceptual hashing or whatever.
0:37:28Because that gets into what you're saying.
0:37:30It's like, OK, well, it's not from a Disney picture of Elsa.
0:37:33It's a picture that I drew of Elsa.
0:37:35And that's different.
0:37:37And again, with Disney being overly aggressive, saying,
0:37:39oh, great, we have a way to tell if anyone never
0:37:41training set on any picture of Elsa.
0:37:44I'm not sure where that falls under existing laws.
0:37:46But is that even possible?
0:37:48Is it possible for them to say,
0:37:50we can tell that you trained your model on these images?
0:37:53- I don't know if you can reverse it,
0:37:54but I assume the people who train the models
0:37:57know literally every single image that's in the image set.
0:37:59It's a long list, but they probably,
0:38:01they have the data somewhere,
0:38:02and they could build a database based on that data
0:38:05with either real content hashes, perceptual hashes.
0:38:08That's how I assume have I been trained is working.
0:38:10Like they know, if you train it on a data set
0:38:13and then you delete the data set
0:38:14and then you can be like, oh well Shrug,
0:38:16I don't even know what it was trained on.
0:38:17I think it's difficult to like,
0:38:19difficult or impossible to reverse it to say,
0:38:21oh, I can tell by looking at the output
0:38:22what it was trained on.
0:38:23I don't think that's possible.
0:38:24But hopefully you keep around.
0:38:27This is where you might need new laws.
0:38:28Like, hey, if you wanna use an AI model,
0:38:30you have to be able to prove something
0:38:32about your training set.
0:38:33And if you have an AI model and you say,
0:38:34oh, we deleted our training set.
0:38:35Oh, well, the law would say,
0:38:37yeah, you can't use any of that.
0:38:38because part of whatever our laws,
0:38:40new laws that come out will say,
0:38:42"Okay, here are the situations
0:38:44"under which the output of an AI model is copyrightable,
0:38:48"can be used successfully."
0:38:50You probably have to be able to prove something
0:38:53about the training set,
0:38:53and ignorance would not be a defense of the law of the law.
0:38:56They're like, "We don't even know
0:38:57"what the training set was, so everything's fine, right?"
0:38:59Yeah, probably not.
0:39:00- I don't know, I'm still on the side of
0:39:02this is addressing it at the wrong stage of the pipeline.
0:39:04I mean, 'cause it's gonna be more complicated.
0:39:07many new models that come out are not based on nothing
0:39:10and trained from scratch, they're based on initial models
0:39:13that were pre-trained by somebody else.
0:39:15(laughing)
0:39:16- That's part of what's in favor of the chaos
0:39:18of the internet, it's like now we can't even tell,
0:39:19what are you gonna do now?
0:39:20- Right, you know, I think there's gonna be,
0:39:23I think it's gonna be quickly very difficult
0:39:25to ever tell how something was trained in completion.
0:39:29And I think, again, I think this is as unenforceable
0:39:33as it should be impossible to ever upload
0:39:35copyrighted material to your platform.
0:39:36Like that should, it's just impossible.
0:39:39- But I mean, but that's more of like a practicality.
0:39:42The legal thing is like, oh, you can't actually,
0:39:44you don't actually own this copyrighted material.
0:39:46The law is clear, it's just the practicalities
0:39:48of the enforcement of the law are not clear.
0:39:49And here I think the law is not clear yet.
0:39:52- Right, yeah, because I still think it's definitely
0:39:55a very open question about like whether training
0:39:58an AI model on a copyrighted work is itself
0:40:02a violation of that copyright or not.
0:40:04Again, 'cause I still don't think it is.
0:40:06Well, we'll see what the courts say,
0:40:08but I'm pretty strongly on one side of this.
0:40:10But, and again, this doesn't mean I'm against AI models.
0:40:12I think they're super useful,
0:40:13and I think there's lots of places where they can be used.
0:40:16It's just that I think there should be some discipline
0:40:19about the training, that's all.
0:40:20We'll see.
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0:41:50- Ted Shop writes that we would probably get a kick
0:41:57out of a new Twitter to Mastodon web app,
0:42:00and this is @mastedon-flock.vercel.app.
0:42:04I didn't try it past the first screen or two,
0:42:07but as a former Windows user, oh, the nostalgia.
0:42:11Oh my word.
0:42:13This made me laugh quite a bit.
0:42:14And it looks like a Windows 95 installation wizard.
0:42:17Big, Nsys, like Nolsoft install system energy.
0:42:21I remember I used to play with that,
0:42:23probably around the time that Marco and I--
0:42:24- No, Nsys was what replaced this.
0:42:26That was much better.
0:42:27Wasn't Nsys not full screen?
0:42:29- That's true, I think you're right.
0:42:30This is that full screen blue gradient that was used a lot around that time.
0:42:35And now this is, you could tell that they installed the driver for their GPU before they ran this wizard
0:42:40because the background gradient is not super dithered in 16 color mode.
0:42:45I thought this was really interesting because, well, two levels.
0:42:48One, it is just like Move to Dawn in that it gives you follow on follow links.
0:42:52So ignore the whole Windows 95 look or whatever.
0:42:54It is another tool that is like Move to Dawn.
0:42:56So Move to Dawn never goes away and you want to try something similar,
0:42:59this does the same thing, it authenticates with all your things, then it gives you follow
0:43:03buttons for all the people who have the info.
0:43:06I don't know if it does a better job of scraping or whatever.
0:43:08But the second thing is, part of the gag of it looking like Windows 95, it's not as far
0:43:15as I can tell, maybe you can tell me if you're familiar with Windows 95, it's not a pixel
0:43:20for pixel reproduction, it's almost like it's vector.
0:43:23They have the Windows 95 look, but they've done it with vector pixels, because it looks
0:43:28way bigger, it's scaled up, but it is pixel accurate if you imagine the pixels being these
0:43:34smooth vector-y things.
0:43:36Well, if you zoom in on the next and cancel buttons, on the corners, you see that they
0:43:41have like a beveled edge.
0:43:44Now in actual Windows 95, that would have been probably a one pixel thick line.
0:43:48And so here they have like a beveled edge in the corners, so obviously it's like a CSS
0:43:51border trick or something.
0:43:52Yeah, and I'm on the final page, and I'm looking at the headers of the table, and the headers
0:43:58have like a 3D gradient on them and you can see that there is like a you know a
0:44:02dark line on the bottom and lighter line on the left and top and that line is
0:44:06made of a chunky like would have been like a Windows 95 size pixel but then
0:44:11the bevel is made with pixels that are 1/8 of that size that would not exist in
0:44:15Windows 95 right because they're on an angle so I think it's very clever cut
0:44:19it's a little bit of an uncanny valley thing I'm like this looks like Windows
0:44:2295 but Windows 95 didn't never look like this down to the pixel anyway I thought
0:44:26it was a little extra fun sauce on top of a useful tool.
0:44:31And you can just in case the Move
0:44:33to Don goes away.
0:44:34But it's one of the show notes if you want to try another one
0:44:35or get a little bit of weird uncanny value
0:44:37Windows 95 nostalgia.
0:44:39- And while we're on the subject,
0:44:39Massodon continues to be great, by the way.
0:44:42It just continues to be awesome.
0:44:44And it's way better than Twitter right now,
0:44:47in my view and for my needs and for the people I follow,
0:44:50it's way better than Twitter.
0:44:52So I'm happy there.
0:44:54- Briefly going back to this web app,
0:44:55Did you notice that if you click the X on the installer,
0:44:58it actually drops you down to Windows desktop
0:44:59and it has a privacy policy link.
0:45:02- Oh my God. - An about link
0:45:03that opens Windows Explorer,
0:45:06that opens Internet Explorer.
0:45:07And then if you click on the home page,
0:45:08or no, not the home page, what was it?
0:45:10It was one of these icons.
0:45:11Oh, I guess it was the bookmarks icon at the top.
0:45:14Then you go to what appears to be
0:45:16the author's like old 1999 website,
0:45:20which is pretty delightful.
0:45:22Big like GeoCity's energy on this one.
0:45:24There's a lot more here than I thought.
0:45:25This is really great.
0:45:26Oh, that's so cool.
0:45:28Yeah, isn't that neat?
0:45:30The other way I would have imagined
0:45:31doing this that would have been fun
0:45:33is all the ones that run older operating systems in Web
0:45:37Assembly in your browser.
0:45:39There's one for all the versions of Mac OS.
0:45:41It's like macos-9.app, system7.app, macos-8.app.
0:45:44Try those URLs.
0:45:46And those are basically running a virtual machine in JavaScript
0:45:48that's running the real version of those operating systems.
0:45:52If you had done that and then wrote
0:45:54moved it on in Windows 95 and ran it inside the Windows 95
0:45:58that's running in your browser,
0:45:59then you wouldn't have to fake any of this stuff.
0:46:01You could literally just make everything exactly
0:46:05in Windows 95, although that might be more difficult
0:46:07trying to authenticate with modern SSL stuff
0:46:10from Windows 95.
0:46:12- Yeah, I was gonna say, can you imagine trying to make
0:46:14just any network request that would work
0:46:16in the modern era from that?
0:46:18- I think some, I saw someone who did a 68K Motorola 68K
0:46:22classic Mac OS Mastodon client, and I think somehow they compiled a version of OpenSSL
0:46:28or something. They basically found a way to make a TLS connection from classic Mac OS
0:46:33just to support their idea of doing this funny classic Mac OS client from Mastodon. That's
0:46:38amazing.
0:46:39That's pretty good stuff. Alright, and then let's see what else we have. Oh, that's right.
0:46:45I wanted to make note, this news is actually a little bit old. We spoke about rewind.ai
0:46:50I don't know, a couple months ago, this is the livestreams thing that John apparently
0:46:54has always wanted.
0:46:56It is available to anyone at this point, I believe.
0:46:59It is 30 days free trial, but then it's $20 a month, which I don't mean to begrudge.
0:47:05They've written software, they deserve to be compensated for it, but I don't know.
0:47:09I don't love the idea of this 30 days free, and then you have to come back and remember
0:47:14to cancel.
0:47:15So I have not personally tried it, especially since this is not an itch I feel like I need
0:47:18But for those that are interested,
0:47:21it's available if you wanted to give it a shot.
0:47:23- It ain't begrudging anything.
0:47:24It's just the question of, you know,
0:47:25do you think the price is worth the value for you?
0:47:28And I was into this thing.
0:47:30I'm like, oh, I'm gonna try it out of technical curiosity.
0:47:32And I actually got in early and they sent the email
0:47:34and said, hey, it's available for you to try.
0:47:35I'm like, great, I'll try it.
0:47:36And then I saw it was one of those free trial
0:47:37and then we'll start charging you.
0:47:39And I knew myself well enough to know,
0:47:41I'm probably gonna forget and then I'm gonna get charged
0:47:43and then I'm gonna feel bad.
0:47:44In fact, I did that with the Lenza app, speaking of AI.
0:47:47make money off other people's stuff.
0:47:49The Lenza thing, like you signed up for a free trial
0:47:52of the $50 a month subscription.
0:47:54- Oh my goodness.
0:47:55(laughing)
0:47:56- And then, or it was $50 a month or $50 a year, I forget.
0:48:00But anyway, you sign up for the free trial,
0:48:01and then once you sign up for the free trial,
0:48:03it gives you a discount on the in-app purchases.
0:48:05And so I made like several $6 in-app purchases
0:48:09to play with it, right?
0:48:10But then I'm like, oh hey, I just gotta remember
0:48:11to cancel this before the $50 thing.
0:48:13And sure enough, I forgot,
0:48:15'cause I didn't make a reminder for myself.
0:48:16And I got a refund for it because I asked for a refund the second it kicked in and Apple
0:48:20was nice enough to give me a refund.
0:48:22But anyway, that's why I haven't tried to rewind.
0:48:24I am curious about it.
0:48:25I'm like, "I don't want to have to sign up for it and set myself a reminder, remember
0:48:30to cancel it."
0:48:31It's just like, for me, that price and that situation was enough of a barrier to not want
0:48:38to deal with it.
0:48:39And honestly, since we've talked about it, I'm like, "Oh, I'll try for technical curiosity."
0:48:42I'm still kind of skeeved out by it.
0:48:44I'm like, "Well, I'll try it on my laptop.
0:48:45It's more isolated."
0:48:46But not that I think they're doing anything nasty.
0:48:48It's just, I don't know.
0:48:51I probably will try it eventually as well.
0:48:53In terms of $20 a month, if I got tons of value from it, I would pay $20 a month if
0:48:57I felt like I was getting $20 a month worth of value out of it.
0:48:59That's the question of software.
0:49:01How do you price it such that enough people will think that price is acceptable?
0:49:05Casey was also scared away by that price.
0:49:08But I think none of us are in the situation where we think we would possibly...
0:49:12The only reason we'd be looking at it is a little bit of curiosity, right?
0:49:14And so, maybe we'll try it.
0:49:17I can see this, like I said, this company eventually being spun off into like an enterprise
0:49:21software because I think lots of companies might like something like this so they can
0:49:25spy on their employees.
0:49:26This is a rich and burgeoning market that already has existing players that are probably
0:49:30worse than Rewind.ai because the technology is newer and better.
0:49:33But so far, their sales pitch does not seem to be to corporations, it seems to be to individual
0:49:40users.
0:49:41If you're an individual user that's already tried it,
0:49:43write in and tell us what you think.
0:49:45John, real-time follow-up, you cannot run this on your Mac Pro
0:49:48because it is not sufficiently powerful.
0:49:50I have ARM Macs in the house.
0:49:52OK, well, you said you would run it on your laptop.
0:49:54I thought you were trying to imply that you would have
0:49:56otherwise run it on the Mac Pro.
0:49:57And that is--
0:49:58The Mac Studio is another choice.
0:50:00You know, I have a couple of ARM-- yeah, some.
0:50:02Well, because your Mac Pro is just too old and busted,
0:50:04doesn't have Apple Silicon, which
0:50:05is required for rewind.ai.
0:50:07It's got an immunity to the spyware.
0:50:10(laughing)
0:50:12- All right, John, tell me about your iPad mystery.
0:50:17- My son got a new iPad for Christmas.
0:50:18He was long overdue for one.
0:50:19- Which one?
0:50:20- He was using, well, that's part of the thing.
0:50:21He was using a really old one.
0:50:23He'd been using it for years.
0:50:24I actually, he wanted to draw with the Apple Pencil,
0:50:27so I had an old, like the original 9.7-inch iPad Pro,
0:50:31like the very first one that,
0:50:32I think it was the first one that had pencil support.
0:50:33- Well, the 12.9, that was the first small one.
0:50:36Yeah, that's right.
0:50:38So anyway, I said, here, you can use this,
0:50:40and use my old, roly Apple pencil,
0:50:41and laugh at how it gets charged and everything.
0:50:44And I'm like, well, you should just use that as your new iPad,
0:50:46because it's better than--
0:50:48his iPad was so old, it was older than the 9.7-inch iPad
0:50:51Pro.
0:50:52But eventually, he said, no, there's
0:50:54something haunted on your iPad, which I kind of agreed with him
0:50:57that 9.7 started getting weird in its later years.
0:50:59I don't know if it's a hardware thing,
0:51:00or it just doesn't agree with the modern OSes.
0:51:02But he kept using super-ancient iPads.
0:51:04So he was due for a new one and I got him a new one.
0:51:07And I bought it a while ago.
0:51:08And it was just sitting somewhere and then wrapped it and gave it to him.
0:51:11And then I was setting it up for him, because that's what dads do.
0:51:14I was trying to give it a name.
0:51:17And I wrote general about it and wrote the name of the thing.
0:51:21I remembered to change the name so it's easy to find.
0:51:24And the device list.
0:51:25And I started saying, "Oh, wait a second.
0:51:28Which iPad?"
0:51:29Because I like to give it the name of the thing.
0:51:33My wife says like, you know,
0:51:34Tina's Apple Watch Series 8.
0:51:36So I know it's the Series 8 one.
0:51:37Like, people ask that as an AskATD question.
0:51:39How do you name your devices?
0:51:40I name it John's iPad 14 Pro.
0:51:43Like, 'cause otherwise, or iPhone 14 Pro.
0:51:45'Cause otherwise I'll never friggin' remember
0:51:47what the names are and I can't just reuse the same name.
0:51:49I give them the name that is named with the device.
0:51:51- Yeah, it's nice too, like when you down the road
0:51:53when you upgrade that device,
0:51:55it's nice to be able to like keep the backups straight
0:51:57and like do the migration correctly and everything.
0:51:59It makes it very nice.
0:52:00- Yeah, and I do rename them to be like,
0:52:02okay now it's Alex's iPhone 14 Pro, right?
0:52:05But it's still iPhone 14 Pro,
0:52:06so I know which device we're talking about.
0:52:07And luckily in the house we tend not to buy
0:52:11multiple devices of the same type,
0:52:13just because people end up getting things
0:52:14at different years, but if we had like two iPhone 12 Pros,
0:52:16that might be a little bit confusing.
0:52:18Maybe I would put the color in then.
0:52:20Anyway, I wanted to give this thing a name of what it was.
0:52:24So I named it Alex's M2 iPad Pro.
0:52:27'Cause it was like, I got him the fancy one,
0:52:30He deserves it.
0:52:31He's been using an ancient iPad.
0:52:33I think he was using an original iPad Air maybe.
0:52:35It was super old.
0:52:37No face ID, very slow, very old.
0:52:39And he uses it all the time.
0:52:41It's a very important machine for him.
0:52:43So I'm a big fancy one.
0:52:45But then I went to General About and it said, "iPad Pro 4th Generation."
0:52:51I'm like, "Is that the M2?
0:52:54Or did I change my mind and say the M2 is too expensive and get him a cheaper one?"
0:52:58So I do what I normally do and type in a Google query for whatever, and I usually go to the
0:53:03Wikipedia page because it's usually straightforward and I know the sidebar is going to have the
0:53:07name of the SOC in it, and there's some basic information.
0:53:11It's kind of like why I don't go to IMDB anymore, I just go to Wikipedia, because I want to
0:53:14just know what's the cast of this thing.
0:53:16I can find it on the Wikipedia page and IMDB is just a cluster and I can't find anything
0:53:20on that friggin' site anymore and I hate it.
0:53:22So bad.
0:53:23So I go to Wikipedia and I go to iPad Pro 4th generation Wikipedia page and I scroll
0:53:28down the thing it says system on a chip a12z bionic did I get him something with
0:53:34an a12z because I would originally looking for a you a refurb m1 iPad Pro
0:53:38could not find one Apple didn't have them you could find them used at other
0:53:41places but I wanted to get an app official Apple refurb and Apple was not
0:53:44selling refurb m1 iPad pros for whatever reason they just didn't have them all
0:53:49right and so I thought I had decided to get an mm - it's I'm holding the device
0:53:53in my hand I'm like how annoying is it that I can't tell if this thing has an
0:53:56M2 in it. Just like, because Apple's thing just says fourth generation and when I
0:54:00google fourth generation it says A12Z. So I downloaded Geekbench. I'm like look,
0:54:04I know what the Geekbench numbers should be for an M2 and it's gonna be very
0:54:09different from the A12Z. First of all Geekbench immediately says in the
0:54:11sidebar this has an M2. So I'm like, I got the right one. But there was like 20
0:54:16minutes where I was like did I buy the wrong thing from, I was looking at the
0:54:19orders like maybe I bought the right thing because the amount looked like an
0:54:22an M2 amount, it looked like an M2 iPad Pro amount,
0:54:25but like maybe they charged me for the M2
0:54:27and shipped me a different one.
0:54:28So this is just a PSA to let everybody know.
0:54:31On the Wikipedia pages for iPad Pro,
0:54:33they have a list of generations
0:54:34that go up to sixth generation.
0:54:36The iPad Pro sixth generation on the Wikipedia page
0:54:41is what Apple calls the iPad Pro 11 inch fourth generation.
0:54:45So do not be confused,
0:54:46and I think Wikipedia should really change this.
0:54:48- 'Cause it's the fourth generation of the 11 inch.
0:54:51- Exactly right.
0:54:52And they're called like the main articles,
0:54:55iPad Pro parentheses fourth generation,
0:54:57which is exactly what you will see in general
0:54:59about on your iPad, but it is not right.
0:55:02So anyway, when in doubt, get Geekbench.
0:55:04And by the way, I actually ran Geekbench
0:55:05to make sure the number that came out was the M2 number.
0:55:07So he has an M2 iPad Pro.
0:55:09Oh, and the other thing is when I was doubting him,
0:55:11I'm like, oh, this is an easy way to tell
0:55:12'cause I got him an Apple Pencil with it
0:55:13'cause he does a lot of drawing on his iPad.
0:55:15I tried to do the hover thing.
0:55:17I'm like, well, I have Procreate, let me launch Procreate.
0:55:19I know Procreate has the hover
0:55:20and nothing would work on the hover.
0:55:22And so I looked at a YouTube video
0:55:23and I saw people hovering over the icons on the home screen
0:55:27and they would make, you know, with the pencil
0:55:28and they would make the icons bigger
0:55:29and that didn't work either.
0:55:30And I'm like, is there something I have to enable for hover
0:55:33and is there some preference of hover in Procreate
0:55:35but why doesn't it work on the home screen?
0:55:37This is why I was like, I think I got the wrong iPad.
0:55:39It doesn't hover, it can't possibly be an M2.
0:55:41Did I get the wrong pencil?
0:55:42I googled for like, is there a second,
0:55:45second generation Apple pencil that does the hover?
0:55:47I'm like, no, it's all the ones with the flat side.
0:55:50he's got the one with the flat side,
0:55:51it magnetically connects, this should be doing hover.
0:55:53The answer to that was, you gotta update to 16.2.
0:55:56- Oh, gosh.
0:55:57- It should, oh, it shipped with the wrong OS.
0:55:59So it was a confusing morning where I was like,
0:56:01what the hell did I buy, and don't put it past me,
0:56:04I've bought the wrong thing before.
0:56:06When I ordered his MacBook Air, I ordered the wrong color
0:56:08and I had to cancel it and did a big thing,
0:56:09or at least I caught that before it shipped,
0:56:11but lots of confusion on Christmas morning,
0:56:13but he does indeed have an M2 iPad Air,
0:56:16which he very richly deserves, with an Apple pencil on.
0:56:18Once updated to 16.2, Hover started working.
0:56:21- All right, so that brings up something
0:56:22I've been wondering about for a long time,
0:56:24and I keep forgetting to bring it up.
0:56:26So I got my first and only set of AirPods Pro
0:56:28a year ago for Christmas.
0:56:29I love them, I do want the new ones,
0:56:31but I'm too cheap because the ones I've got
0:56:32work really well, the battery's fine,
0:56:34no rattling, et cetera, et cetera.
0:56:35The thing that's driving me batty
0:56:37is if you go into Find My, and you go into the Devices tab,
0:56:40it shows my AirPods Pro, and it shows them
0:56:44as outside of the case, which I'm looking at them.
0:56:46I'm holding them in my hand right now.
0:56:48I can assure you they are not outside the case.
0:56:49And it shows them last having been seen
0:56:52on September 27th, 2022.
0:56:55And I vaguely remember, because again,
0:56:58my memory is garbage, that when I think it was 16,
0:57:01I was 16 first came out, or I don't,
0:57:03or maybe it was a late beta, I forget exactly what it was.
0:57:05But my AirPods Pro could do the homing beacon,
0:57:10W1 or whatever it is where you wave your phone around
0:57:14and it shows you where the AirPods are, et cetera, et cetera.
0:57:16And I think that that only worked for a minute,
0:57:19and then they pulled that for the original AirPods Pro,
0:57:22and now it only works on the AirPods Pro 2.
0:57:24But the stupid Find My app is stuck on September 27th,
0:57:28and it's like it never got a clue that this feature,
0:57:31the homing beacon feature, whatever it's called,
0:57:33doesn't work.
0:57:34And so according to this, my left AirPod,
0:57:37or my left AirPod, that's a great movie,
0:57:39my left AirPod Pro was last seen September 27th, 2022,
0:57:43at 2.38 p.m.
0:57:45And it is now, well, according to Marco, it's December 24th,
0:57:47but in most of the world, it's December 26th now.
0:57:50What do I do to fix this?
0:57:51Like, I don't wanna unpair the things,
0:57:52which I guess I could.
0:57:54I really do not wanna sign out of iCloud,
0:57:56'cause that's a nightmare.
0:57:57- No.
0:57:58- Is there a thing I can do to fix this?
0:57:59I'm asking you two, and I'm asking the audience.
0:58:01Like, what do I do about that?
0:58:04- Hmm, I don't know any answer to that.
0:58:06- Right? (laughs)
0:58:07- I would unpair, like, 'cause unpairing
0:58:08is not that big a deal,
0:58:09and it's definitely the first thing you try.
0:58:11Like, restart it, do it over, unpair.
0:58:13Yeah, that's the right move.
0:58:15I'll take that as a homework assignment for myself.
0:58:18People in the chat are saying, oh, I'm
0:58:19seeing some of this as well.
0:58:20So I'm sorry if I've just made you aware of this.
0:58:22But I don't know.
0:58:23It was really cool for the 10 minutes
0:58:25that it worked with the little homing beacon thing.
0:58:27And I really liked that.
0:58:28But then Apple took it away because they're meanies.
0:58:30And then people are saying, when you unpair it,
0:58:32then remove it from Find My when it's unpaired.
0:58:35And then start fresh.
0:58:37Fair enough.
0:58:38I'll take that as homework assignment.
0:58:39And do what Margo said.
0:58:40Then you have to reset all your preferences on all
0:58:42your devices to--
0:58:43Well, if you want auto pairing,
0:58:44you have to do the defaults are in your favor there.
0:58:46- Yeah, yeah.
0:58:47All right, iOS 16.2 came out a little while ago,
0:58:49but it has a feature that we wanted to call
0:58:51to everyone's attention.
0:58:52And it was called to our attention by Brandon Butch,
0:58:54who writes, "You can now stop your wallpaper
0:58:56and/or notifications from appearing on the iPhones
0:58:58always on display."
0:59:00This was as of Beta 3, which obviously now it's true
0:59:03for the shipping version.
0:59:05But yeah, there's a switch in all,
0:59:06or there's several switches and always on display.
0:59:07There's just on/off.
0:59:09Then there's show wallpaper and show notifications.
0:59:12So you can turn the wallpaper on or off
0:59:15and the notifications on or off individually.
0:59:17- Yeah, so remember when the 14,
0:59:20first of all, right before the 14 Pro came out
0:59:23and we were speculating about the rumors
0:59:24about the always-on display,
0:59:26I had said, wouldn't it be cool if they basically
0:59:29had this whole new aesthetic on the display
0:59:32where most of the screen is black
0:59:34and you have maybe just monochrome icons or widgets
0:59:39and the clock and have those things glow
0:59:41and have the rest of the screen be black,
0:59:42which people quickly pointed out that that's basically
0:59:44how Android phones with always on displays have always been.
0:59:47And that this was not a new idea in the Android world.
0:59:50So thank you for that.
0:59:52They all probably used Opera as well.
0:59:53So when the 14 came out though,
0:59:57the only option you really had through iOS was
1:00:01just take whatever your home screen is,
1:00:03just make a dim version.
1:00:04That's it, like that's what it did.
1:00:05And there was no customization.
1:00:07And this led to I think a couple of shortcomings.
1:00:11one of the biggest ones being obviously
1:00:12it wasn't very power conservative.
1:00:14It wasn't as power conservative as it could be
1:00:17if most of the screen was black
1:00:18and only some pixels were being lit
1:00:20if you had any kind of colored wallpaper.
1:00:22But also it became harder to tell
1:00:25whether your phone was awake or asleep.
1:00:28And that was a huge, I think stumbling point
1:00:31for people when they first got the 14 Pro
1:00:34'cause iPhone users were never accustomed to having
1:00:37always on anything.
1:00:38And so you'd see your phone kind of like out of the corner
1:00:41of your eye and you kind of freak out, oh, it's awake.
1:00:43Like you'd think there was notification on it or something
1:00:44or you think it was ringing or whatever
1:00:46because you were conditioned to believe that a phone
1:00:49with the screen on is awake and trying to tell you something.
1:00:52And so what they added with 16.2 is an option
1:00:56to turn off the wallpaper when it's in, you know,
1:01:00sleeping always on mode.
1:01:02And you could also optionally turn off notifications
1:01:05which I believe Do Not Disturb always did
1:01:08on its lock screen, but it was kind of custom on other ones.
1:01:11Anyway, the big thing for me was the wallpaper toggle.
1:01:14So if you turn off Show Wallpaper
1:01:17under the Always On Display settings,
1:01:18you now have in sleep mode a black background
1:01:22that then only shows the clock and your widgets
1:01:26and whatever notifications you might have there.
1:01:29And you can turn off the notifications
1:01:30if you want there as well.
1:01:31So I've been using this since the 16.2 betas,
1:01:34which were, it's been a couple of months now, I think,
1:01:38and it has radically improved my interaction
1:01:41with the 14 Pro's always on screen.
1:01:43I can strongly recommend if you are a little bit put off
1:01:47by like, you know, it not looking too different
1:01:49or if you keep still thinking that your phone's awake
1:01:51when it's not, try this option.
1:01:54Turn off show wallpaper.
1:01:55And it is, I think it's massively better.
1:01:59I think it looks cooler and it functions better
1:02:01in the sense that it allows me to know
1:02:04my phone is not awake right now.
1:02:06- I definitely believe you,
1:02:07but I did turn off the always-on display ages ago,
1:02:10mostly because, for what you said,
1:02:12it seems like my phone was always on.
1:02:14But now that I've gone back to the old way,
1:02:17I'm not anxious to sacrifice battery life.
1:02:21Because what I did learn after using it for a while
1:02:24with the always-on display on
1:02:25is that I didn't derive a lot of utility from it.
1:02:28There was the downside, which is like,
1:02:29"Oh, I think my phone is on."
1:02:30But setting that aside, setting aside the downside,
1:02:32Did I find occasions where it was useful for me to have the screen always on?
1:02:36And I think the answer to that is no.
1:02:38So even though this is, I agree, a much better way of doing it, at least for my purposes,
1:02:42so I'd be able to tell that that's the always on display because the background is black,
1:02:47I don't think I get any value from it the way I use my phone, so I'm not going to sacrifice
1:02:53the battery life for this.
1:02:55But I agree this is a great feature and it might even be useful to be the default, but
1:02:59that could just be old habits, right?
1:03:02Maybe new users who their first iPhone has
1:03:04the always on screen will just be used to it
1:03:05and not develop the habits that we all have
1:03:07to expect a phone with our wallpaper being displayed
1:03:10is on or trying to tell us something.
1:03:12And I think related to wallpapers,
1:03:13didn't 16.2 also add the thing where they separated
1:03:17the screen that appears under your icons on springboard
1:03:21from the lock screen?
1:03:23Like it used to be whenever you made a custom one,
1:03:24it made you make both of them as a match set, as a pair.
1:03:29and I think they split that out, is that correct?
1:03:31- I thought that was the case.
1:03:33I haven't tried it either, but I thought that was the case,
1:03:35and it drove me nuts.
1:03:36It drove me nuts in the original version 16.
1:03:39- And they should be split out,
1:03:40because I, especially when I was first messing with it,
1:03:43I wanted to make lots of different fun lock screens.
1:03:46I did not want to make lots of different thing
1:03:48that goes behind my icons,
1:03:50'cause the thing behind my icons is 100% black
1:03:52and always has been, and that doesn't change for me,
1:03:55and so every time I had to,
1:03:57wanted to make a new lock screen, it's like,
1:03:58"Oh, and don't forget, you also need to make a..."
1:04:00And I go, "Ugh, just separate these,
1:04:01"it's two different things."
1:04:03So if you wanna make a million different,
1:04:05I guess they would call, what would you call it?
1:04:06You would call it the, well, they call wallpaper
1:04:09the image that's behind stuff,
1:04:10but I think there should be a different name
1:04:12for the image that appears behind your icons on springboard,
1:04:15and then the image that appears on the lock screen.
1:04:17And they call that image wallpaper in this setting,
1:04:22because the option is, on the always on display,
1:04:25do you want to show your wallpaper?
1:04:27they mean do you want to show the image that shows behind the icons on your, on Springboard.
1:04:32Anyway, confusing nomenclature but I'm glad they're working this feature out to be more
1:04:36flexible.
1:04:37Yeah, because one issue I still have with the Always On Display is that when it's in
1:04:42sleep mode, whatever is on screen is not tappable.
1:04:46It looks like it's tappable, but it's not.
1:04:48The first tap that you do will put it into awake screen mode and then you have to tap
1:04:52again or swipe or whatever you're doing to interact with something on that screen.
1:04:57And so having, like part of the reason why I like this option of turning off show wallpaper
1:05:02is that it makes it more clear to me, not only is the phone not awake, but it is not
1:05:05interactive right now.
1:05:07Like if I want this thing to be interactive, I have to tap it so that it is no longer mostly
1:05:11black.
1:05:12And then I know, oh it's lighting up with my, I still like the weather background, it's
1:05:16lighting up with the rain that's outside, great, now I can interact with the notification
1:05:20or whatever.
1:05:21And that's, I hope, I really, really hope,
1:05:25in future hardware iterations,
1:05:26I hope they are at some point able
1:05:28to make the sleep state more interactive.
1:05:31I know there's a lot of challenges with that
1:05:33and a lot of kind of practical concerns of like,
1:05:36well, what if it's in your pocket
1:05:37or what if you're handling it, you know, whatever it is.
1:05:39And I think there are certain risks
1:05:41and maybe it's not possible to do that well,
1:05:44but I would love for them to at least try to do that well
1:05:46because, or at least make it more obvious
1:05:49that something's not interactive in the design.
1:05:52And then ideally also, hopefully, make it wake up faster.
1:05:56That would also help a lot.
1:05:58Like if it can go from sleep state to awake state
1:06:01in half the time it does now,
1:06:04I'm sure some of that is a choice
1:06:06in terms of animation speed,
1:06:07but also I think some of that is giving the OS time
1:06:10to wake up and using the animation
1:06:12as kind of cover for that time.
1:06:14So whatever they can do to make it more interactive
1:06:17when you want to interact with it,
1:06:18that would feel very good.
1:06:20And right now, it still feels a little bit clunky
1:06:22in that way.
1:06:23- They could do kind of,
1:06:24the only safe way I think they should try doing this
1:06:26is kind of like they do for continuity camera,
1:06:28which is the thing where you can take your phone
1:06:30and use it as like the quote unquote webcam for your laptop.
1:06:34And continuity camera works by detecting
1:06:36that you have taken your camera
1:06:38and put it in a particular orientation
1:06:40that is more or less stationary
1:06:41when you put it on those little clips or stands
1:06:43to be behind your display, right?
1:06:45So the feature you want,
1:06:47It would be extremely, it would have lots of accidental input if it was just like that
1:06:51all the time.
1:06:52Oh, the lock screen, but it's interactive because people, like I said, people would
1:06:54put it in their pocket, it would activate.
1:06:56My parents are constantly accidentally calling me because, just because the delay between
1:07:00when they lock their phone and when they put it into their pocket is too long and they
1:07:06end up like touching something on their phone when they put it into their pocket and they
1:07:08butt dial me, right?
1:07:10But it could detect, for example, when it is laying on its back on a table for a certain
1:07:15period of time and say, now I've detected that I'm on a table,
1:07:19and I am going to actually register your taps, whatever
1:07:23you tap on.
1:07:23But as soon as you pick it up and start moving,
1:07:25it's like, nope, nope, I'm locked.
1:07:26No input means anything to me, right?
1:07:28So that you-- it's tricky to do, right?
1:07:30But I think if you just make it active all the time,
1:07:32people are going to dial things like crazy.
1:07:34Like it's just-- it's impossible to have.
1:07:37Because again, when you lock your phone
1:07:39and you put it into any of your pockets,
1:07:42the expectation is there's nothing
1:07:43can happen in that pocket that's going to do stuff on my phone, right? Even if I accidentally
1:07:48hit the power button, which is a physical button for now anyway, it's still not going to unlock
1:07:53my phone because Face ID will fail, Touch ID will fail, it's inside my pocket, right? Whereas if that
1:07:57tap would actually activate the notification, as we know from stupid iOS, once you look at
1:08:01a notification it's gone forever and you can never see it again and I hate that so much. I wish there
1:08:06was like, here are the last 100 notifications that you dismissed, just show me them, keep them around.
1:08:11So anyway, tricky to add feature, but I get where you're coming from, and I do think the
1:08:1616.2 things are all improvements.
1:08:19I actually left my Always On Display in all the default settings.
1:08:23I like it.
1:08:25I wouldn't say it's been an earth-shattering change for me.
1:08:28I will say, kind of tangentially related, that battery life, when I first got the new
1:08:32phone and it was chugging on photos and all that and all the machine learning stuff, like
1:08:36the battery life was garbage as expected.
1:08:38Then it got really really good for a while and then I don't know if it was 16.2 or something
1:08:43But sometime in last month or two both errands and my phones
1:08:46Our battery life has gone through the crapper recently and I haven't dug much to figure out what's going on there
1:08:52There was nothing obvious when I went, you know spelunking in the battery like history and all that in settings
1:08:58But it's it struck me as a little odd that both of us were having similar problems
1:09:02So, I don't know if that's just a list family thing or if that's broader or whatever
1:09:06But it's been a little bit of a bit of a bummer and so I might be turning off the always-on display if it continues
1:09:12To be a problem, but all told I do like it
1:09:14I have it rotating between pictures of the kids and pictures of Erin
1:09:17And I like that every time I pick up my phone or well every time it gets locked
1:09:22There's a new picture there and then the next time I lock the phone
1:09:25There's a different picture and I can see it dimly on the display while it while it's just sitting and I dig that I think
1:09:30That's fun cute
1:09:31But I totally understand if it's not for everyone and by the way even without the always-on display like part of my problem of being
1:09:37Distracted by it is that I would think like someone is calling because there I see their face on my phone
1:09:43But I also have a rotation of my family right so every time I pick up my phone
1:09:46It's the picture of someone in my family, but if my phone starts ringing
1:09:50And it's like a spam call from just you know random spam number telling you my car warranty repair or whatever
1:09:56But my phone screen will light up and I'll see a picture of my son's face on it
1:10:01I'm like, oh I'm getting a call from my son. But yeah, I mean like that was the problem with the always on display
1:10:06I always thought that was being contacted by somebody even without the always on display
1:10:09that's still that's just a side effect of putting people's face as the you know, as your
1:10:14Wallpaper or lock screen or whatever because you have to actually then say ignore the face
1:10:18Look up at that
1:10:20You know at the little caller ID thing that shows when you're getting a call to see what number it's coming from
1:10:24from.
1:10:25And if my son does call, I think it still shows his face, but it's a different picture,
1:10:29but it's still him.
1:10:30So anyway, possible confusion.
1:10:32I mean, I guess I could just do landscapes or, you know, this is the first, whatever
1:10:35it is, the iPhone 14 Pro is the first phone and iOS 16 that I did not have a picture of
1:10:42one of my past dogs as my lock screen.
1:10:44That has been my lock screen since the iPod touch in 2007, right?
1:10:48I remember this.
1:10:49It was Huckleberry or whatever, right?
1:10:51Yep.
1:10:52I decided, because I wanted to try the feature, I decided to try the rotating thing.
1:10:55I had a bunch of nice pictures of my family that I made very tall and put room above their
1:11:00heads for the clock so the clock wasn't over their face.
1:11:02And I do like that.
1:11:03I do like seeing those pictures rotate, but it continues to be a little bit confusing
1:11:06when I get a call.
1:11:08So a week or two ago, I think something like that, it was sometime in December, we got
1:11:13word through Bloomberg, and I presume it was Germin, that the Apple Car project has "scaled
1:11:18back" and is delayed. And it won't feature full self-driving capabilities. Imagine that.
1:11:23But yeah, this was a news report and some highlights that were reported, re-reported on
1:11:29MacRumors. Apple Inc. has scaled back ambitious self-driving plans for its future electric vehicle
1:11:33and postponed the car's target launch date about a year to 2026. The car project has been in limbo
1:11:39for the past several months as Apple executives grappled with the reality that its vision for a
1:11:42fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals isn't feasible with current technology.
1:11:47You don't say.
1:11:48Imagine that.
1:11:49The car will have an Apple-designed custom processor
1:11:51to power AI functionality.
1:11:52The chip is equivalent to four of the highest-end Mac chips
1:11:55and is nearly production-ready.
1:11:57That actually kind of brings us back to our discussion
1:11:59about the Mac Pro last week,
1:12:00but that's neither here nor there.
1:12:01- That's a nip, though.
1:12:02- Well, I mean, I would think.
1:12:04Apple will use the cloud for some AI processing,
1:12:06and the company is considering a remote command center
1:12:09that could assist drivers and control the cars
1:12:10from afar during emergencies.
1:12:12That sounds safe.
1:12:14I don't know if we really need to go
1:12:16go into the ins and outs of the particulars of this,
1:12:18but it is interesting that this poop show
1:12:21is still a poop show from what it sounds.
1:12:25- Why are they still doing any of this?
1:12:27That's my, you know, this project has gone through
1:12:30so many phases and ideas and certainly people
1:12:35and certainly money, oh my God.
1:12:38Like how long do they have to keep fumbling around
1:12:42with this massive money waster before they're like,
1:12:45you know what, this isn't for us.
1:12:46Let's just crap can it and move on.
1:12:49I still don't see why they even want to be in this business,
1:12:54let alone why they keep plowing forward
1:12:58without seemingly able to go near any kind of outcome.
1:13:01- The story's interesting because it's kind of like,
1:13:06the best line of the story is where it says that,
1:13:10grappling with their vision, that blah, blah, blah,
1:13:12isn't feasible with current technologies.
1:13:14What it's saying is they don't have it.
1:13:16They would like to have a product that does X,
1:13:18but they don't.
1:13:19It's like, I would like something,
1:13:20I would like something that lets me levitate.
1:13:23That would be a cool product, but we don't have that.
1:13:27So how much money are you gonna spend on a project?
1:13:29So is this R&D?
1:13:31Like that's kind of the problem with self-driving.
1:13:33It's difficult to do the R&D to figure out
1:13:36if you can make a product without spending a lot of money.
1:13:39And I get that.
1:13:40It's not as simple as like,
1:13:40oh, we'll have these people tooling around
1:13:43with a multi-touch, right?
1:13:44And that'll be a small team of a handful of people
1:13:49and they'll tool away at it for years.
1:13:50And eventually, if we get to the point where,
1:13:52no, we could probably make a product out of this.
1:13:53Maybe we'll make a tablet, maybe we'll make a phone.
1:13:55Then you form the iPhone team and then the iPad team, right?
1:13:59And that's when you staff up
1:14:00and that's when you spend the money.
1:14:01Although the amount of money that was used
1:14:03to develop the original iPhone is comically low
1:14:05and every company should feel bad
1:14:07when they read those histories of like,
1:14:08so how much money did Apple spend?
1:14:10Even if we count like everything we can think of,
1:14:11How much do they spend to make the iPhone?
1:14:14The small number I think is they spend $150 million,
1:14:16which is like, we spent $150 million
1:14:18to change the color of the logo, right?
1:14:20That's what big companies normally do.
1:14:22So they spent $150 million to make the iPhone,
1:14:24how much money is it made?
1:14:26Anyway, there's more to it if you add to that, right?
1:14:28But for self-driving cars, it's like, okay,
1:14:31I can understand why they're saying,
1:14:32it would be cool if we had a self-driving car.
1:14:34I agree, that would be cool, right?
1:14:37Can we make one?
1:14:38Let's do some R&D to find out.
1:14:40But it has always seemed to me
1:14:41that this project at Apple was created
1:14:43as if they had already done that.
1:14:44It's like, oh, we know how to make a self-driving car,
1:14:46let's just make a project to make one.
1:14:47Like that it's already in the phase of like,
1:14:49we're designing a product and we're staffing a team
1:14:51to build that product and we're gonna contract manufacturers
1:14:54to manufacture that product.
1:14:55It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
1:14:56what product are you making?
1:14:57Our self-driving car.
1:14:59Do you have a self-driving car?
1:15:00He's like, no, but we'll probably be able
1:15:02to figure it out, right?
1:15:03Nope. (laughs)
1:15:05Like you gotta be able to make the thing first
1:15:08before you make a product team.
1:15:10So again, no one knows the details of this,
1:15:12but to the extent that anything with product Titan
1:15:15has been in like let's make a product mode,
1:15:18that has been a bad idea if the premise of the product
1:15:21is a car without a steering wheel or pedals.
1:15:23You cannot make a car, let's go with that saying,
1:15:25you cannot make a car with a steering wheel or pedals
1:15:27until it can drive itself.
1:15:29And if it can't drive itself,
1:15:30maybe get out of the product phase
1:15:32and back into the R&D phase.
1:15:34Don't go to the product phase until you think
1:15:36you have something that works like the multi-touch.
1:15:38We've got a multi-touch screen that we think works.
1:15:41Maybe it's too big, maybe it's too clunky,
1:15:43maybe it takes a lot of power,
1:15:44maybe it's connected to like a power Mac or something,
1:15:46but it works.
1:15:48And the question is, can we make it smaller, cheaper,
1:15:51blah, blah, blah.
1:15:52They don't have anything that works.
1:15:54Nobody does.
1:15:55Nobody has this, right?
1:15:57It would be cool if you could make it, but make it first.
1:16:00I think this is just a hilarious story that the premise is,
1:16:03Apple has decided they can't make a product they can't make.
1:16:05Like, yeah, you gotta be able to.
1:16:07And the other thing they can decide is,
1:16:08we're not gonna make a car without pedals or steering wheel.
1:16:10Make one with pedals and a steering wheel
1:16:12that humans can drive.
1:16:13Lots of people do that.
1:16:14You can have lots of self-driving assistive functions
1:16:16that I think are probably a bad idea in many cases,
1:16:18but that's a thing that you can make.
1:16:20But the idea that they keep trying to make a car
1:16:22without a steering wheel, you can't do that.
1:16:25And so I'm sad for them and I'm sad for the story.
1:16:28I do like the idea that their AI powered chip
1:16:30or whatever is, that sounds so much like the Mac chip
1:16:33that they canceled, equivalent to four
1:16:34of their high-end processors.
1:16:36You know, I mean, you can't afford to put it in a $10,000,
1:16:40you know, Mac Pro, because $10,000 is too much for a Mac Pro.
1:16:42How much would this car cost?
1:16:44Again, if it actually existed and worked.
1:16:46My advice to Apple is if you wanna make a car,
1:16:48add a steering wheel and pedals.
1:16:50- Yeah, I just, I still go back and like,
1:16:53you know, to me, like the question you asked,
1:16:54like all right, can we make this thing work,
1:16:56and then, you know, then move on from there.
1:16:58I would step back again and say,
1:17:00is this even a business that we need to be in
1:17:02or want to be in?
1:17:04And what would it mean if we entered this business
1:17:08and actually stayed in it and maybe even succeeded in it?
1:17:11What would that actually mean for the rest of our business?
1:17:15Can you imagine Apple selling cars?
1:17:18How would that even physically work?
1:17:20Can you imagine Apple servicing cars?
1:17:22Can you imagine Apple going through all the regulations?
1:17:25Like, I can see that it's possible for them to do all that,
1:17:30But why would they want to?
1:17:32And what they would achieve in that
1:17:35would be they'd be a car manufacturer.
1:17:39Look at all the car manufacturers.
1:17:40How happy are they?
1:17:41How good of a business does that seem to be?
1:17:44It doesn't seem like it's worth them entering this business
1:17:48even if it was fairly easy to get into, and it's super not.
1:17:53And so I just don't see why they would even want
1:17:58to be in this business.
1:17:59That even sets aside the question of,
1:18:02could Apple be good at designing cars,
1:18:06which I think is a huge question mark, honestly.
1:18:10Apple's very good at designing a lot of things.
1:18:13I don't know that I would want an Apple-designed car,
1:18:17but again, I think that's even,
1:18:20that's too far down the line of thinking of like,
1:18:22why are they even doing this?
1:18:23Why do they wanna be in this business?
1:18:25That, to me, makes no sense.
1:18:27I mean, it is different in many ways that we've discussed, but I think it is actually
1:18:31a better fit with their traditional strengths than some other things.
1:18:37Because it is manufacturing a product that they sell for a profit.
1:18:42It is, you know, regulation stuff.
1:18:44Again, Apple's not used to automotive regulation, but they are used to dealing with the FCC
1:18:48and the various radio regulations and heat and thermal.
1:18:51Like there are different laws in different countries and being in compliance with them
1:18:54with electronic devices is a thing, right?
1:18:56It is a scaled up version of what they do.
1:18:59They're good at manufacturing, they don't have their own manufacturing plans, they outsource
1:19:02that, and they're good at helping those manufacturers do a better job of manufacturing.
1:19:06Apple is good at actually "making things" even if they're doing through third parties.
1:19:09Like, I can squint and say, this looks like, again, a question of whether they'd be able
1:19:14to make a good car, but they make hardware products that are software powered and they
1:19:18manufacture them and comply with a bunch of laws.
1:19:20So it is conceivable that they could get good at this after many years because it is like
1:19:25what they do.
1:19:26to me of this great quote that Gruber had back on December 21st, I put this in contrast
1:19:31to something that Apple already does that I think is not a good fit for their traditional
1:19:36strengths and model.
1:19:37This is a quote from talking about, what was it, Gruber's not guested on a podcast and
1:19:43they talked about various Apple related things.
1:19:46And he put this little summary at the end of his link to the podcast he was a guest
1:19:51on.
1:19:52This is quoting Gruber.
1:19:53The App Store's financial success is the worst thing that's happened to Apple this century.
1:19:57It's a distraction at best and a profound corruption at worst.
1:20:01Services revenue and the App Store do not fit with Apple's traditional strengths of
1:20:06making a really good product and selling it to people for a profit because it's really
1:20:09good and they like it.
1:20:10It is a much more complicated model where you're selling access to them, you're rent-seeking,
1:20:16you're controlling a platform and then charging other people money to get access to the people,
1:20:19potentially collecting information about them and advertising to them.
1:20:23That model does not fit with the Apple that we love in a way that the car does.
1:20:27Because if Apple made a good car product, I believe that they could figure out how to
1:20:32sell it, how to service it.
1:20:33In the same way they figure out how to sell their hardware products, their phones and
1:20:37everything, they figure out how to service them, they figure out how to comply with laws,
1:20:40they figure out how to get them manufactured, they figure out how to sell them all over
1:20:43the world with different regulations.
1:20:45Obviously a car is way different than a phone.
1:20:47is a much bigger scale thing. There are so many other complications they're working with,
1:20:51a bunch of other players, but that fits better. The incentives are aligned better for the
1:20:56Apple that I like, the Apple that makes its money by making a good product. Not the Apple
1:21:01that is a distraction at best or a corruption at worst, paraphrasing Gruber, that is distracted
1:21:07by the idea of like, "Yeah, but have we considered rent-seeking? Because that's where the real
1:21:11money is." That does not align with the incentive. I want them to be incentivized to make good
1:21:17The incentives that I like is, hey, if we make a bad keyboard,
1:21:19we have to pay people a class action lawsuit.
1:21:21And if we make good keyboard, people buy our stuff.
1:21:23If we put ports back on our laptops,
1:21:24people buy more of them.
1:21:25If we make a really fast, low-power computer,
1:21:27people buy it, right?
1:21:28If we make an amazing touchscreen phone,
1:21:29people buy it because it's a cool phone.
1:21:31That model aligns better with my interest as a customer.
1:21:34Make cool technology.
1:21:36Make a profit when I buy it, because it costs you
1:21:39less to manufacture it than it does for me to buy it from you.
1:21:42That's your profit.
1:21:43That's a really good business.
1:21:44It's a model I understand that I'm more comfortable with.
1:21:47than the App Store model, which is sell tons of devices that
1:21:51are awesome and then charge people 30% of all the money
1:21:54they make on them because you deserve it
1:21:56because you made the platform.
1:21:58The thing that-- just to go back a little bit to what Marco's
1:22:00saying, I think the thing that makes me very worried--
1:22:04maybe a little dramatic-- but worried about an Apple
1:22:06car is that I feel like the same problems that everyone
1:22:10snarks on Tesla about, like, oh, the windshield wipers don't
1:22:13work because it never rains in the Bay Area, which I know
1:22:15is not really true.
1:22:16but just go with it here.
1:22:18- They don't work that well.
1:22:19- Well, fair.
1:22:20And then the door handles would freeze constantly
1:22:23because it legitimately really rarely does freeze
1:22:25in the Bay Area.
1:22:26This very myopic view of the world,
1:22:28which I feel like is a very common problem
1:22:32for engineers in the Bay Area,
1:22:34I wonder if that's going to be an affliction
1:22:37for an Apple car as well.
1:22:38And where that would manifest itself is,
1:22:40oh, surely $150,000 car is something anyone would want,
1:22:43right?
1:22:44We charge like 200% of what an average, you know, run-of-the-mill Android phone is for a new iPhone.
1:22:51People pay 2x for a new iPhone. Surely they'll pay 2 to 3x for an entire car, right?
1:22:57And no, people will not. Like maybe it's just me,
1:23:01but I don't have $150,000 just laying around to buy an Apple car, to lease an Apple car at $4,000 or whatever.
1:23:07I don't know. I don't lease cars, but whatever that lease payment would be.
1:23:09I don't have that just laying around.
1:23:11Like, it's wonderful if they think that them
1:23:13and their cushy worlds with their $3 million,
1:23:152,000 or 200 square foot houses and their, you know,
1:23:19R8s and their Lamborghini Uruses and all that,
1:23:23like yeah, $150,000 car may be great in the Bay Area,
1:23:27but that ain't gonna work in the real world, my friends.
1:23:28- Doesn't it fit with Apple's model?
1:23:30Their hardware is always more expensive
1:23:32than everybody else's.
1:23:32And I know it's a different matter of scale.
1:23:34It's like, oh, 20% higher is an extra 200 bucks
1:23:36versus 20% higher is an extra 20,000 bucks.
1:23:40But still, I think that it is not impossible
1:23:43to be the car manufacturer that sells mostly cars
1:23:45that are too expensive.
1:23:46Look at Porsche.
1:23:47- Oh, I agree, I agree.
1:23:48But I just, I don't know.
1:23:49I think the thing, and maybe it was Gruber,
1:23:51maybe it was you, John.
1:23:52Somebody had once said, like,
1:23:54the great thing about Apple and about Coke is that if,
1:23:57okay, so if you want the best Coke in the world,
1:23:59the best Coca-Cola in the world.
1:24:01- And he was paraphrasing somebody else.
1:24:03- Yeah, wasn't this like Andy Warhol or somebody?
1:24:04- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:24:05- Who knows? - I think it was Andy Warhol.
1:24:06want if you want the best coca-cola in the world I don't care if you make a
1:24:09thousand dollars a year or a hundred million dollars a year you're still
1:24:12getting the same coca-cola if you want the best iPhone in the world you know
1:24:15you're still if you're a rich and famous or if you're just somebody of a regular
1:24:19schmo you're getting the same iPhone and I don't know I feel like Apple wants to
1:24:23be in that space where they are a premium product full stop but they're
1:24:27not a 10x premium product I mean look at how well that worked out for the Apple
1:24:31Watch Edition like yeah some were sold some to some of the hosts on this
1:24:35episode but nevertheless... Not the gold one! Fair, fair. But you get what I'm
1:24:41driving at. That they want to be a premium product but I don't think that a
1:24:4610x premium product has ever really fit that well for them. See also Mac Pro and
1:24:51beyond that we're talking, this is what you just said Jon, we're talking about
1:24:5410x, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10x of what's an average car these days?
1:24:59Anywhere between $20,000 and $40,000 for like an okay car? Like how much does a
1:25:03a Civic cost, John. Like that's a decent, very run-of-the-mill car. And a Civic is like
1:25:08fifteen, twenty thousand dollars, isn't it? Easily.
1:25:11What planet are you on? You cannot buy a Civic for fifteen thousand dollars. You haven't
1:25:15been able to do that for decades. Okay, fine. So it's been a while since I've
1:25:18bought a car. Maybe the average selling price of car is
1:25:20like forty grand or something. Oh, there you go. So you think that they're
1:25:23just going to slide in here and charge 3x, 4x, 5x? Like, yeah, again, maybe that works
1:25:29in the Bay Area, where you folks are all getting paid absurd amounts of money and spending
1:25:33it all on housing. But that doesn't work in the real world. And I'm very concerned that
1:25:38they're going to strut in thinking, "Oh, we can totally charge 3X for our car because
1:25:43it's awesome and it's Apple."
1:25:44Well, that was one of the rumors of what one of the revisions of Project Titan, Apple's
1:25:49car project was scrapped because they did a product design and they said, "Here's
1:25:53the car we want to make," and then they priced it out and said, "No, it's too much."
1:25:57So they've already stopped one of their iterations due to cost because they realize—I mean,
1:26:02Again, I think it is perfectly valid to be a car manufacturer that makes expensive cars.
1:26:05You're just going to sell fewer of them.
1:26:06The question is, where do you want to be?
1:26:08Do you want to sell as many cars as Ferrari?
1:26:10They actually sell a lot of cars for a car company that sells cars that start at like
1:26:14200 grand or whatever, but they don't sell as many as Porsche, and then Porsche does
1:26:18not sell as many as Volkswagen and on down the line.
1:26:21So you have to kind of decide how many you want to sell.
1:26:23iPhones, they sell a heck of a lot of those.
1:26:25They sell them to not half the world, but a pretty stable portion of the potential smartphone
1:26:30selling market is iPhones.
1:26:31I don't know what it is worldwide, is it like 30% or something?
1:26:35If you wanted to sell 30% of the cars in the world, you can't price it at 100 grand.
1:26:39But there is a question of, is our first one really expensive and then the price comes
1:26:44down, especially with electric cars, which is what everyone assumes they're building.
1:26:48A lot of the price has to do with battery, that is the cost driver for your car is the
1:26:53battery.
1:26:54Those electric motors don't actually cost that much and building a car costs as much
1:26:57as it's ever cost in terms of making a frame and suspension and tires and brakes or whatever,
1:27:01but the battery is the big cost thing. If the batteries cost nothing, electric cars
1:27:05would be incredibly cheap, but if the batteries were expensive as they were two decades ago,
1:27:09they're less feasible. And again, battery technology is something Apple is familiar
1:27:14with and has relationships with and stuff like that, so I think it is plausible that
1:27:18Apple could sell a car at a reasonable price range, but I also think if they ever come
1:27:24out with a car, it's definitely going to be the Apple of cars, which is going to be too
1:27:27expensive most people, especially the first one. Think of the shock of the iPhone. Remember
1:27:31when the iPhone came out and everyone was like, "I've never been making fun of it because
1:27:33it cost so much money?" Because it wasn't like carrier-subsidized or whatever. And today,
1:27:38the iPhones we all have are very expensive devices. If you had told us back when we were
1:27:42using flip phones that someday you're going to every year, or in my case every other year,
1:27:47buy a phone for $1200, you'd be like, "$1200 from a phone? I'm not going to carry that
1:27:51around and drop it on the pavement?" That's ridiculous. But people derive enough value
1:27:55from their smartphones that they're willing to pay hundreds, sometimes up into a thousand
1:27:58dollars for their phone sometimes every year.
1:28:01So that, of all things, I get where you're coming from, that it just doesn't seem like
1:28:07something that they're going to be able to sell a lot of, and it also doesn't seem like
1:28:10they want to be the Ferrari or the Porsche of phones, but they don't have a product to
1:28:15sell at all right now, so it's not really an issue.
1:28:16And then as for the Andy Warhol thing of like, no matter who you are, a Coke is a Coke, when
1:28:21Gruber uses that analogy and said no matter who you are, a phone is a phone, I think it's
1:28:24a little bit too different things. The idea of Coke is like Coke is not an expensive product
1:28:30to make. Anyone can buy it because it's very inexpensive and it's also not expensive to
1:28:34manufacture. The things that are in it are not rare, right? Whatever the secret formula
1:28:38is, it's not made with platinum flakes or something, right? So everyone can get it because
1:28:45it is accessible to everyone and it is the same. And the whole point is, because it's
1:28:48basically the cultural hegemony of Coca-Cola, because you're all raised drinking Coke and
1:28:53you want something that tastes like what you were raised on, you have brand loyalty to
1:28:56Coke because if you try RC Cola it doesn't taste like what you think a Coke could taste
1:28:59like.
1:29:00Not because Coke is fancier and more expensive than RC, but just because it's what you're
1:29:03used to due to the dominance of the Coca Cola brand.
1:29:06Whereas the iPhone, no one can get a better iPhone, no matter how rich you are, because
1:29:11making a phone is really, really hard.
1:29:14Unlike Coca Cola, which is protected by whatever the circular form of it is, the iPhone is
1:29:18protected by the fact that making a smartphone with a complete ecosystem around it has a
1:29:22There's a huge barrier to entry.
1:29:24And so yeah, no matter how rich you are,
1:29:26you can't get another iPhone.
1:29:27Because even if given, you know, $3 trillion,
1:29:31try making a better iPhone than an iPhone
1:29:34with $3 trillion.
1:29:36It's a harder thing to make.
1:29:37Whereas if I gave you $3 trillion
1:29:39and said try making your own Coke,
1:29:40you'd just buy Coca-Cola.
1:29:42And you got your own Coke now, right?
1:29:44Like it's different in that like,
1:29:45one is like everyone gets the same Coke,
1:29:48which seems weird because it's so easy to make.
1:29:49And the other one, everyone gets the same,
1:29:51no one can make a better iPhone,
1:29:52how rich they are, because it's so tremendously hard to make a smartphone.
1:29:56So I'm not sure that analogy works out.
1:29:58What it is trying to say is that it's nice that, to your point, Casey, that the very
1:30:04best X in the world is accessible to a large number of people.
1:30:08And although the iPhone is very expensive, it is accessible to a lot of people, especially
1:30:13if you're buying a used iPhone.
1:30:14I think that's what Gruber was celebrating, the idea that iPhones are so important to
1:30:18our life and if you want the very best one you don't have to be a millionaire to get
1:30:22it. You just have to shop for refurbs on Amazon or whatever. Whereas the very best car in
1:30:28the world is not accessible to most people because even if you're shopping for a refurb
1:30:33whatever you consider the best car it's going to cost a lot more than a Civic.
1:30:37It certainly will. Do you think that they would do something, I forget the term for
1:30:41it but like Volvo and I'm sure other manufacturers are doing this, have like a subscription service
1:30:45And the way this worked when it first came out, you had to go there.
1:30:49I'm asking because they love their services revenue.
1:30:52I agree with you.
1:30:53I think the Apple car would have a service or a new component.
1:30:56That's what the thing with like the data center where they can assist drivers.
1:30:58I bet you pay for that service.
1:30:59Oh my gosh, I hope that's not true.
1:31:02But I hear you and you're probably right.
1:31:03Grubber's saying that it's a distraction at best and a profound corruption.
1:31:07Whereas it is a profound corruption to every time they make a cool tech product to figure
1:31:10out and now how can we make a service out of this?
1:31:14How can we make it a recurring payment?
1:31:15How can we make it so that you don't just buy the Apple car, you buy a subscription
1:31:19to the Apple car and if you want your heated seats to get, like again, the auto industry
1:31:22is way out ahead of Apple here, but I have to imagine that in Project Titan, this is
1:31:27disgust because the old Apple that would create a technology product without service revenue
1:31:33attached to it seems dead.
1:31:34Like the headset.
1:31:35Headset's going to be cool tech if and when they ship it.
1:31:38And you're like, well, that's not going to have a service associated with it.
1:31:40Of course, it will have an app store.
1:31:41That is the easy go-to of like if we sell anything that is a platform, it has an associated
1:31:45app store where we try to make service revenue, which may or may not work, but that's the
1:31:48play.
1:31:49So if Apple comes out with a car, there will be service revenue associated with it because
1:31:54that's what modern Apple does.
1:31:55Yeah, I just don't know if they're going to do like a Care by Volvo, as I was just looking
1:31:59it up, is what I believe I'm thinking of where you get to get a car and I believe insurance
1:32:04as well and maintenance and all that.
1:32:06You just pay a monthly fee and I think you might even be able to switch which Volvo you
1:32:10have from time to time and so on and so forth. I don't know, I feel like it wouldn't surprise
1:32:15me if that's how they get in the door is that you're not buying a $300,000 Apple car. You're
1:32:20instead paying a hilariously expensive lease or subscription or what have you to have access
1:32:25to Apple's Apple car that they own.
1:32:27Well, that's the Apple car upgrade program.
1:32:29Right, exactly.
1:32:30You get a new Apple car every year. And again, I don't, I don't, that is more of a, that's
1:32:34less than the server I've been complaining about. I'm just like, Hey, it's kind of like
1:32:37a rolling lease where you get a new car at a certain interval, but you can also buy it
1:32:41outright.
1:32:42It's the service revenue I'm talking about.
1:32:43Your car is useless to you unless you pay X dollars a month for the service that, I
1:32:46don't know, whatever they would charge for.
1:32:48We're not going to go to the heated seats or whatever, a BMW, but this is obviously
1:32:53not just like, "Oh, Apple's being mean.
1:32:54They shouldn't do this."
1:32:55This is the way the whole industry and the whole world is going.
1:32:57And to some extent it makes sense, but it feels worse when the people who are charging
1:33:04are not charging because the service is useful, but charging because they've got you on a
1:33:10vice that's like they can't.
1:33:12You have no other choice, right?
1:33:14It doesn't seem like you would pay for this otherwise, but because Apple has complete
1:33:18control over the platform, they get to extract 30% of all the transactions.
1:33:21That feels worse than "let me pay."
1:33:24Even just something as simple as "let me pay for Sirius XM Radio" or whatever.
1:33:26I want to pay for ongoing access to this thing.
1:33:28If you think it's worthwhile, pay for it.
1:33:30If you don't, don't.
1:33:31but it's not like all of its competitors
1:33:34are forced to also pay serious
1:33:35to be able to put audio into your car.
1:33:37Like that's what starts feeling bad.
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1:34:40No.
1:34:41This is for people who you have an audience and you want to retain control of it and you
1:34:45have your own opinions on the branding and everything else.
1:34:47This is a tool for you.
1:34:48They have great support to help you get started if you need it and they're always willing
1:34:52to help you jump in and maybe optimize for conversions or whatever else you might need.
1:34:56And you can check it out today for free with no credit card required at memberful.com/ATPs.
1:35:03You can see for yourself how it works for you.
1:35:05This is used by some of the biggest creators on the web.
1:35:08And you know, the great thing about Memberful is that you can launch this whole new revenue
1:35:11stream without rebuilding your entire tech stack.
1:35:14So again, see for yourself at memberful.com/ATP to start your free trial today.
1:35:21Thank you so much to Memberful for sponsoring our show.
1:35:25(upbeat music)
1:35:28- All right, let's do a little bit of Ask ATP,
1:35:30and let's start with Peter Petrovic, who writes,
1:35:32"In this day and age of social media all around us,
1:35:35"and with the Fediverse gaining traction,
1:35:37"is it still worth one's time to have a personal website
1:35:39"or a blog residing on one's personal domain?"
1:35:42Yeah, I think so, because I'm a nerd,
1:35:43and I want that control.
1:35:45I mean, nobody can ever take away
1:35:49casylist.com from me.
1:35:51It's mine.
1:35:52Well, that's not a challenge.
1:35:52Please don't take that as a challenge.
1:35:53But you know what I'm saying.
1:35:54it's mine, that's where I live, that's my space.
1:35:58My space, space, you know what I'm saying.
1:36:00And so anyway, I control that,
1:36:03and my email address is at caselist.com.
1:36:06So when I moved from Gmail to Fastmail,
1:36:09then nobody knew it.
1:36:12Well, I mean, people knew it
1:36:12because I talked about it on the show,
1:36:13but like any of the people I knew--
1:36:14- I was gonna say, everyone knew it.
1:36:16(laughing)
1:36:17- Hush you, nobody asks.
1:36:19It's caselist.com/fastmail.
1:36:20Anyway, but again, you take the point,
1:36:24you get the point I'm trying to make here is that because it was under my control, everyone
1:36:28else that I was emailing with was completely ignorant to the fact that these emails were
1:36:32actually getting routed to passmail instead of Gmail. And similarly, you know, my website
1:36:36will live there and maybe it will continue to run on my broken blog engine, maybe it'll
1:36:40run on something else, but it will always be there. And even though my hot takes and
1:36:45quips and whatnot I used to put on Twitter and now I'm putting on Mastodon, it's still
1:36:50to me important to have a like canonical place to live, if you will, a place that is mine
1:36:57and that is kind of my home base on the internet. And I think it is absolutely worth it. Even
1:37:02if all you have is like a single serving site, you know, an about page that says, "Hey, I'm
1:37:07Casey. I do these, you know, I have these projects. You can find me at these places."
1:37:10I still think that's important. And let's not lose sight of the fact that, you know,
1:37:15we were all on Mastodon servers years ago, most of which have crumbled, except John who
1:37:19apparently was on every Mastodon server, but for like Marco and me, you know, or at least
1:37:23certainly me, and I thought Marco, you were in the same boat. We signed up on servers
1:37:26that have since disappeared and that could happen. Now granted, you know, the three of
1:37:30us seem to be using Mastodon.social now, which seems to be the most stable, but you never
1:37:35know, you never know what'll happen. And so I absolutely stand by and think it is important
1:37:40and it's not that expensive. You know, you can use pass sponsor hover to get a domain.
1:37:45You can use past sponsor Squarespace
1:37:48in order to put a website there.
1:37:49In fact, I think you can even get your domain
1:37:51through Squarespace if you so choose.
1:37:52- Linode.
1:37:53- Linode, yep, that's another past sponsor as well.
1:37:56- Pretty sure those two are also current sponsors,
1:37:58by the way, just not this episode.
1:38:00- I'm sorry, that's what I meant.
1:38:01Sorry, just not this episode is what I meant,
1:38:03but thank you for the correction.
1:38:04But yeah, I mean, we bring these services up
1:38:06in part because genuinely we either use
1:38:09or genuinely recommend them because they really are great.
1:38:12And so this is something that I absolutely think
1:38:14you should have a little corner of the internet
1:38:17that is under your control.
1:38:19And I stand by that 100%.
1:38:21Let's start with Marco, where do you land on this?
1:38:23And I think I have a pretty strong feeling about it.
1:38:26- So I think we have to separate out like,
1:38:28is it worth having your own domain from,
1:38:31what Peter was asking here was,
1:38:33is it worth having a personal website or blog
1:38:35on a personal domain?
1:38:36- That's fair, that's fair.
1:38:37- So whether you want to have a website or a blog,
1:38:40that's up to you.
1:38:41I do think it's worth having a domain
1:38:44because as Casey was saying, on the long term,
1:38:49on an infinite time scale, services come and go.
1:38:52And servers come and go, and companies come and go,
1:38:55and what you want to do on the website,
1:38:57what your identity is, what services and functions
1:39:01it needs to offer or provide, all of that changes over time.
1:39:06And so it is nice to have something
1:39:08that is your own domain, so that way,
1:39:10when you have your email address at your own domain,
1:39:13instead of at a certain email provider.
1:39:15That pretty much guarantees that as long as no one
1:39:20big email provider that does not support custom domains
1:39:23ever takes over and makes it impossible
1:39:26to use a custom domain, which seems unlikely with email,
1:39:28that pretty much guarantees that you can be
1:39:30service provider portable or agnostic.
1:39:33And so, for instance, if you use Gmail with your own domain,
1:39:37and then Gmail starts to suck,
1:39:38or they start charging money for that
1:39:40and you don't wanna pay or whatever happens there,
1:39:42If you don't wanna be on Gmail anymore,
1:39:44you can just move what is hosting your email,
1:39:47but it's, to the world, it's still your domain.
1:39:51You change over the MX records and that's it.
1:39:53So you can change your hosting provider
1:39:55and not affect your ability to be reached or found
1:39:58or whatever popularity you've built up or whatever.
1:40:01If Mastodon continues to be a thing, and I hope it does,
1:40:06then certainly there might become some value
1:40:08in having your own domain for that,
1:40:09in the sense that, again, that's a username
1:40:11that you can easily port between different backend options.
1:40:16That being said, it's a little bit less important there
1:40:17'cause they have this whole redirect mechanism in place.
1:40:20But basically for many services,
1:40:23the redirect procedure isn't so simple or effective
1:40:26or permanent, and so it is nice to be able
1:40:30to have your own domain that things are pointed to
1:40:32and that you can host whatever you want there over time.
1:40:35Now whether you should have a blog,
1:40:38that's a different question, and that's up to you.
1:40:41You know, personally, I have had a blog for a long time.
1:40:45I don't really use it much anymore,
1:40:47but I like the idea that I can always go back to it.
1:40:49Many people, in the collapse of Twitter,
1:40:53many people are going back to their own personal blogs
1:40:55and reviving them and writing again,
1:40:57and I think that's great.
1:40:58And so, you know, whether you're gonna like, you know,
1:41:03become the next Engadget, posting, you know,
1:41:0530 posts a day or whatever, that's, you know,
1:41:08you don't have to do that to make it worth
1:41:09having a personal blog.
1:41:11It could be like John's where you post once a year,
1:41:13or it could be like mine,
1:41:14and when you post whenever you wanna promote something
1:41:16or call out a particularly bad bug to Apple
1:41:18and hope they fix it.
1:41:18Like, whatever it is, you can post once every five years
1:41:21and through the magic of RSS readers,
1:41:23it doesn't really matter.
1:41:24You're not gonna lose your audience.
1:41:25They'll just see a post once every five years
1:41:27and that'll be it.
1:41:28So whether you have a blog, that's up to you,
1:41:30but I think that can be very flexible.
1:41:31But I do think whether you should have your own domain
1:41:35and some way to put stuff on that domain,
1:41:37whether that's your, you know,
1:41:38whether you're just pointing it to even like
1:41:40static page on GitHub that will host it for free,
1:41:42or whether you're putting it to like an S3 bucket,
1:41:44or having a full-blown host like Squarespace,
1:41:46or running a full-blown server like Linode,
1:41:48whatever it is, having a domain,
1:41:51if you are nerdy enough to even know
1:41:52what any of the stuff I'm talking about means,
1:41:54is probably valuable to you, and you should probably do it.
1:41:57- Yeah, this is kind of, this topic comes up a lot,
1:42:00and I think it's kind of a, not a happy accident,
1:42:03but we were lucky enough that the standards of the internet
1:42:07that were made by people who wanted to do something good for the world, or do it in
1:42:16a kind of open way.
1:42:18The attitudes of the people who made the internet were such that the things we got out of it
1:42:24— DNS, TCP/IP, the fact that it was part of a government program that became open,
1:42:29all those different systems — that they sort of snowballed and gained critical mass
1:42:35before private or public corporations could come in and extract all the value means that
1:42:41we actually have a competitive market for the things we're talking about.
1:42:46The reason we say it's so important is not because, to Marco's point, not because we
1:42:50think you should have a blog or be a blogger, but because DNS and owning your own domain
1:42:55name is a way for you to control your identity and your data on the internet.
1:43:01The internet is really important and having control of your identity is important.
1:43:04The reason you can control it is because DNS is not owned and controlled by Google or Microsoft
1:43:09or Apple, right?
1:43:10TCP/IP is not owned and controlled by any corporation.
1:43:13It wasn't embraced and extended by Microsoft, so they own all the networking.
1:43:16We're not doing all this on MSN or whatever.
1:43:18Those open standards that sort of got their foot in the door before corporations would
1:43:22come and ruin everything exist and you should take advantage of them.
1:43:26And all the technical ins and outs of why it's portable and everything are important,
1:43:30but the underlying technology is what makes that possible.
1:43:33That's why there is a competitive market for where you register your domain name.
1:43:37You can use it at one of our sponsors, you can use it at different companies.
1:43:39There's companies that compete to try to be the place where you register your domain.
1:43:43No one controls all domain names.
1:43:45You can register at different places.
1:43:47What about hosting?
1:43:48Where do I host my website?
1:43:49There is a competitive market for hosting your website.
1:43:52Once you control the domain, the hosting companies know you can put that domain anywhere.
1:43:56You can run a server out of your closet, you can put it on Squarespace, you can put it
1:43:59on Linode, you can put it on like there's a million companies that do that because nobody
1:44:02owns and controls, oh this is the one company that controls, like, AWS does not control
1:44:06web hosting, although sometimes it seems that way. They don't. You can host anything anywhere.
1:44:11Same thing with email. It happens to be an open protocol that, yes, there are dominant
1:44:14players in the market, but you can host your email at different places. It's not as easy
1:44:18to be receiving email, which is what we talked about in past shows, because of all the spam
1:44:21rules and all the crap like that. Some of that early sort of open stuff didn't go quite
1:44:25so well. Maybe email didn't work out that well for the world. But that's why we're always
1:44:30pressing on that you should have your thing, not because we think you should be a blogger
1:44:34or not because we think you should use one of our sponsors and have a website, but because
1:44:37we want individuals to own and control their identity on the web.
1:44:41That's why we push for the idea of some username at twitter.com.
1:44:45You don't own and control that.
1:44:46Twitter does, right?
1:44:48Same thing with Mastodon, although Mastodon does let you use the web finger protocol and
1:44:51various other things to basically be your username at domain that you control on Mastodon,
1:44:57but I haven't gone into the web finger thing to try it.
1:44:59It seems like it might not be as well supported in various clients and places as I expect,
1:45:05but that is the ideal.
1:45:06That's what we're shooting for.
1:45:08Open protocols, open standards, a competitive market to provide the services, and that's
1:45:13where this falls down.
1:45:14It's like we're a nerd show and we know that if you're listening to this, maybe you know
1:45:17how to make your own website.
1:45:18We all wish it was easier, and that's why in a competitive market, you have companies
1:45:22like Squarespace that are saying, "We're going to try to make it as easy as possible for
1:45:25you to do this."
1:45:26more complicated than you would like and the competition is,
1:45:29"Oh, look how easy it is to sign up for Twitter.
1:45:31You don't have to pick a server, you just go to twitter.com
1:45:33and you create an account and it's so easy."
1:45:35Private companies can make it easier
1:45:37because there is less competition.
1:45:38There's one place to go.
1:45:40Mastodon, you have to pick a server
1:45:41and even then you're sort of under the thumb of that server
1:45:43even with the redirect rules and everything, right?
1:45:45Domain names and web hosting are the most open
1:45:49and that means there is the most choice
1:45:51and that means there is kind of a barrier to entry
1:45:53because like, "Where do I go?
1:45:54What if I don't want to use to where I sit?
1:45:55what I want to use, you know, like it's a little bit trickier to use, but that is the beauty of it. Like,
1:45:59claim a portion of the internet for yourself because as websites come and go, as MySpace, you know, rises and falls,
1:46:07as Facebook comes in and out of favor, as Twitter comes and goes, and Mastodon comes and goes, if you own your own domain name,
1:46:13your place on the internet will always exist at static URLs that you control.
1:46:19That's why we always send you to ATP.fm/store because that is the URL that we control. And yes,
1:46:24Yes, it leads you to Cotton Bureau with various URLs,
1:46:28but at various times it has led you to other places.
1:46:30We want to send you to the place that we control,
1:46:32so that if you hear something that says ATP.fm store,
1:46:37five years in the past or five years in the future,
1:46:40that page will still exist.
1:46:41And we know that because we control it.
1:46:43And whether we're hosted on Squarespace or Linode
1:46:45or Marco's water closet, wherever we're hosted,
1:46:50we control that URL.
1:46:51That's-- this is the ideal.
1:46:53The web happened to get out the door before corporations could totally destroy it.
1:46:57And yes, it is tricky or whatever, but this is why we wish everything was.
1:47:01We wish that our names on social were our names at a domain that we control, but that
1:47:05is unfortunately, it is not reasonable to expect as much as nerds would like every person
1:47:11in the world to have their own domain name.
1:47:13The namespace contention alone would be horrendous, right?
1:47:16So we recognize this is not, you know, it's a little bit of a fantasy to say that every
1:47:21Every person in the world is going to have their own domain name, although with IPv6
1:47:24they can have their own IP address, but that's a different story.
1:47:27But for the people listening to this show, you're not every person in the world, unfortunately
1:47:30for us.
1:47:31You are a very, very, very tiny subset.
1:47:33And for the people listening to this show, I definitely recommend getting your own domain
1:47:37and using it and making a bunch of static URLs that never change and putting stuff on
1:47:42them.
1:47:43And if you post it once every five years, that's fine.
1:47:44If the only thing on it is a link to your resume, that's fine.
1:47:46Whatever you want to do.
1:47:47The point is that you control it.
1:47:48Once you have that, no one can take it away from you except probably the government, and
1:47:52hopefully we'll stop that from happening.
1:47:54Alright, Jeremy Nash writes, "I've recently learned about Bitrot and I am going down a
1:47:58rabbit hole convinced all my data will be corrupted one day.
1:48:01Do you guys worry about this on your Synologies?
1:48:03Is ZFS or TrueNAS the only answer?
1:48:05And related, if your Synologies died today, would you immediately replace them or would
1:48:08you look at a do-it-yourself solution like Unrate or TrueNAS?"
1:48:11I'll start here.
1:48:13I am actually looking at, I feel like we just talked about this, maybe we didn't, but I
1:48:16I am looking to replace my sonology probably in the first half of this coming year, not
1:48:20because there's anything wrong with it, but because it's 10 years old and I think it's
1:48:23starting to feel its age and it's time to maybe get something new.
1:48:28But I freaking love this thing.
1:48:29I adore my sonology.
1:48:31I totally understand that if you're patient enough and enjoy fiddling enough, that unraided
1:48:37true NAS may be interesting to you, but it is not to me.
1:48:40With regard to bit rot, it's something I try not to think about because I don't want to
1:48:45think about it. But one of the things that I want to do on a new Synology, which I don't
1:48:48think my current one supports, is I want to move to some file system, I believe, Butter,
1:48:54BTR, whatever it is. I'll talk to Jon about it when the time comes. But I would like to
1:48:57move to some file system that prevents this. Maybe it's, maybe Butter isn't the one I'm
1:49:01thinking of, but one of the ones that at least does a passable amount of effort to try to
1:49:06prevent bit rot. But yeah, it's a fact of life unless you're actively avoiding it. And
1:49:12I'm not actively avoiding it yet, but I hope to be soon.
1:49:15Let's start with Jon this time.
1:49:16- Yeah, so congratulations for learning about bit rot.
1:49:20Yes, all your rots, all your bits will be corrupted someday
1:49:23on an infinite timeline.
1:49:25And the defense against that are these systems that,
1:49:28well, there's two defense of this.
1:49:29One is you want to detect when this happens.
1:49:32Because if you don't detect when this happens,
1:49:33all you do is you'll propagate your corrupted data
1:49:35to all your backups, right?
1:49:36So there's lots of different file systems
1:49:37and storage systems that do this.
1:49:40There's two parts to that.
1:49:41One is detecting whether it happened, in which case you have to have some kind of like checksum
1:49:45to say, "Hey, we wrote bits like this.
1:49:47Are they still like that?"
1:49:49You need to be able to answer that question.
1:49:51Second is, when you get the answer, it says, "No, actually, when we wrote these, they look
1:49:54like this, but now they look like that."
1:49:58They might just know, "This is not what we wrote.
1:50:00Ten years ago, we wrote some data here, and now the checksum doesn't match.
1:50:02This is bad."
1:50:04What do you do about that?
1:50:05Well, what you want is to be notified, at the very least, for your device to say, "Hey,
1:50:11file is corrupt. That doesn't help you if you don't have a way to fix that corruption.
1:50:16One way you can fix it, if you're lucky, is "okay, well I have a backup of that file,
1:50:21and I got notified promptly that the file was corrupt, so that means that my backup
1:50:25isn't corrupt, because it just turned corrupt, and I backed up, you know, I have like 30
1:50:29days worth of backups, so I can pull that file from 30 days ago and restore it, and
1:50:34now it's not corrupt anymore." That relies on timely notification and timely action and
1:50:38frequent backups. The other way you can do that is the file system itself can store enough
1:50:43redundant information such that when it finds something is corrupt, it can just fix it itself
1:50:48if it has a good copy of that data somewhere. But of course that eats your storage space,
1:50:52because now you're not just storing all your data once, you're storing it 1.2 times, 1.5
1:50:56times depending on how many errors you want to be able to recover from. If you want to
1:51:00store your data twice, three times, five times like AWS does and S3 or whatever, the more
1:51:04copies of your data you store, the more likely you will be able to repair it when the computer
1:51:10detects that it's bad.
1:51:12So again, two parts.
1:51:13Detect when it's bad, be able to fix it.
1:51:15And those are two different things.
1:51:17Just because you use a file system that has checksums, you're like, "I'm protected!"
1:51:20All it's going to do is tell you when you're screwed immediately.
1:51:22"Oh, I found your files corrupt and you don't have any other copies of it.
1:51:25Haha, that doesn't help you."
1:51:27You have to have a good copy of the data somewhere.
1:51:31So ZFS and BTRFS and a bunch of other things can let you sort of choose how much storage
1:51:36space do you want me to burn saving redundant data such that you can repair small errors,
1:51:42bigger errors or whatever.
1:51:43Really if you want to be the best protected you should use a file system that does that,
1:51:47store some amount of redundant data and also have backups with not just one backup, not
1:51:52like you overwrite the backup of the new one every time, you want to have multiple versions
1:51:56of backups.
1:51:57Like even Backblaze has this now where you can save different versions for 30 days or
1:52:00or whatever, so you have seven different versions
1:52:02of this file, not just one.
1:52:03And then pay attention when it tells you
1:52:05that something is corrupt, right?
1:52:07This is a high bar, kind of like hosting,
1:52:09oh, I don't wanna have to think about all this stuff,
1:52:11whatever, but if you're looking into TrueNAS and stuff,
1:52:14it seems like you're on board to dive into this,
1:52:16so that's what you need.
1:52:17Detect the errors and be able to fix them.
1:52:19As for me, if my Synology died today,
1:52:21I would immediately replace it with a Synology.
1:52:23I love it, it's been one of the best technology products
1:52:25I've had in my entire life.
1:52:28I actually, I don't wanna replace it
1:52:30'cause it just works and it's fine,
1:52:33but I also frequently go to the Synology site,
1:52:35but I had to replace it.
1:52:36- Yep, yep, yep. - What kind of cool
1:52:37Synology would I get?
1:52:38'Cause I love it, it's like, it's my favorite thing.
1:52:40It's in the basement, it's out of sight, it's out of mind,
1:52:42it does everything that I want it to do.
1:52:44It is almost 10 years old, it is old and creaky,
1:52:47it will soon be very, exactly 10 years old
1:52:50'cause we got them in 2013, right?
1:52:52- Yeah, in April, I believe.
1:52:53- Yeah, so in April, this will be the thing
1:52:54that'll be 10 years old, I hope it doesn't take that.
1:52:56I don't wanna replace it 'cause it would be expensive
1:52:58to replace, but I kind of look forward to replacing it
1:53:00'cause I wanna shop for a new Synology.
1:53:02So that's an endorsement of that brand.
1:53:04- All right, Edwin Guggenbichler writes,
1:53:07"Do you use native mouse acceleration?"
1:53:10And then somebody, I don't know if that was Edwin
1:53:12or somebody else, put in a link to SteerMouse.
1:53:15I don't even know what this is about, so John, fill in.
1:53:17- All right, so Casey, you probably remember
1:53:19when you switched from Windows to Mac,
1:53:22the way the mouse accelerates is different
1:53:24between those two systems.
1:53:25- Oh God, it was so long ago.
1:53:26I'm sure you're right, but I have zero recollection of it.
1:53:29- Well, you've certainly noticed if you go back.
1:53:31(laughs)
1:53:32- That's fair, that's fair.
1:53:33- And if you happen to use PCs and Macs to get,
1:53:37on a regular basis, if you happen to use both,
1:53:40you will probably notice, especially if you use mice
1:53:42on both, it's a little bit harder to notice
1:53:43with trackpad on the Mac or whatever,
1:53:45but if you use mice on both, you will definitely notice,
1:53:48oh, it doesn't move right on one or the other.
1:53:52So basically, yeah, the mouse acceleration
1:53:54works totally differently on Macs than it does on Windows.
1:53:58So to answer Edwin's question,
1:53:59do I use native Mac acceleration?
1:54:01Yes, because I'm mostly on Mac
1:54:06and with the exception of playing my weird Sim Tower game,
1:54:09I'm mostly on Mac most of the time
1:54:12and games are the only thing I use Windows for
1:54:15and games I feel like you kind of get used to whatever,
1:54:18however the mouse behaves in the game anyway
1:54:21and it's always different from how it behaves on a desktop,
1:54:23so it kind of doesn't matter.
1:54:24So is there a setting for this?
1:54:26I still feel ignorant.
1:54:28- So the reason why the Steer Mouse link is here,
1:54:29I assume John put it there,
1:54:31is that Steer Mouse is a utility
1:54:33that I believe allows you to change
1:54:35the mouse acceleration curve on Macs
1:54:38to possibly better match what Windows PCs do.
1:54:41- That's not what it's,
1:54:43it's not supposed to match Windows PCs.
1:54:44So yeah, when we talk about acceleration curve,
1:54:46it's basically saying, when you move the mouse,
1:54:48there's multiple pieces of information coming in.
1:54:51There's how far you moved it,
1:54:52which direction and over what period of time, right?
1:54:55And those are all factors in how the cursor moves.
1:54:58The new position of the cursor is a factor of all of that.
1:55:00It's not just how far you move the mouse, and it's not just how fast you move it, and
1:55:03it's not just the direction, it's all those things combined.
1:55:06And the equation that takes those inputs and translates them to the new position of the
1:55:12cursor is called like, they call it the mouse acceleration curve, right?
1:55:15And there's lots of different kind of, you know, if you could graph like, here's the
1:55:18three inputs, here's the output, you can graph that, and it's probably more than three inputs.
1:55:22But anyway, there's lots of different ways you can do that.
1:55:26I'm very sensitive to mouse acceleration, especially since I was basically born on the
1:55:30Mac and used to the Mac's mouse acceleration, which was just phenomenally better than mouse
1:55:36acceleration on other platforms from day one.
1:55:38If you use a mouse on the Apple IIGS and use it on the Mac, it did not feel the same.
1:55:42Like even from the same company, it was not the same at all.
1:55:45I was so sensitive to it, I remember when I got my SE30, there was some kind of bug.
1:55:51I don't know if it was a bug in the OS, a bug in Mac Paint.
1:55:54I think it was probably a bug in the OS that would cause the mouse cursor to jump in a
1:56:00little L-shaped right angle thing, where instead of going from one point to another point that's
1:56:04on an angle from it, it would go up and then over to the right.
1:56:08Like up three pixels and to the right three pixels, instead of going like the hypotenuse,
1:56:13right?
1:56:14And that would manifest if you tried to draw with the mouse in Mac Paint.
1:56:17You would see these little stair steps, and not just stair steps from pixels, but stair
1:56:20intercepts like three pixels high, three pixels right.
1:56:23And it's like, no, I wanted you to do five pixels
1:56:25on an angle on the hypotenuse.
1:56:27I actually brought it to the,
1:56:28that was such a complaining kid,
1:56:30brought it to the authorized Apple dealer.
1:56:32- You? - Some things never change.
1:56:34- Because I got a new computer,
1:56:35this is my new fancy computer,
1:56:37and the mouse doesn't work right.
1:56:38Like I can't draw on Mac Paint.
1:56:39I brought it to, we brought it to the authorized Apple dealer
1:56:42'cause there was no Apple stores in those days,
1:56:43and said, hey, we just got this new computer
1:56:45and the mouse don't work right.
1:56:46And then I showed them and they're like,
1:56:48how much you talking about, kid, go away.
1:56:49Like they just, I mean, there's nothing they could do about it.
1:56:51I don't know if it ever got fixed or if it was just like,
1:56:53I got a new computer after that.
1:56:54But anyway, I'm very sensitive to the mouse curve.
1:56:57The reason I use SteerMouse, which is what I put link in here, is--
1:57:00and this is sometimes the case for people--
1:57:03when you go to the system settings or whatever
1:57:07and see the little slider for mouse acceleration--
1:57:09what is it called now?
1:57:10It's like--
1:57:11Pointer speed or something?
1:57:13Yeah, mouse.
1:57:14Tracking speed.
1:57:16Yeah, it's a slider.
1:57:17And it goes from slow in the left end to fast at the right.
1:57:19Those are literally the labels.
1:57:20There are no labels in synthetic marks.
1:57:21The left edge is labeled slow, and the right edge
1:57:23is labeled fast.
1:57:24And that's basically saying, do you
1:57:26want the mouse cursor to move a lot when
1:57:28you move the mouse a little?
1:57:29Or do you want it to move a little when
1:57:31you move the mouse a little, right?
1:57:33And there's a setting for this under the covers.
1:57:36I think it's just a floating point value or something.
1:57:38Just a single floating point value, which obviously,
1:57:40given what I said about the inputs,
1:57:42it's more complicated than that.
1:57:43But the OS gives you this one setting, slow and fast.
1:57:47If, like me, you have a very large monitor,
1:57:49even the fastest setting might feel too slow.
1:57:52Like it might feel like it takes,
1:57:54you have to like move the mouse, then pick it up
1:57:56and move it back to the middle and move it again
1:57:58just to get from one side of the other thing to the other.
1:57:59Or you have to move the mouse unreasonably fast
1:58:01and it doesn't feel accurate to do it or whatever.
1:58:04So if you're on the highest setting
1:58:06and it still doesn't feel fast enough,
1:58:08one thing you can do is just like default to right
1:58:10whatever that thing is,
1:58:11and set the value of that thing to a higher value
1:58:15than the slider lets you go.
1:58:16I don't know what the values are,
1:58:17but let's pretend the left side of the thing is like zero
1:58:19and the right side is 1.0.
1:58:21You can from the command line set it to 1.5, 2.0, 2.5,
1:58:25like basically set values that are not
1:58:27settable with the GUI.
1:58:28So that's one way to influence the mouse tracking.
1:58:33On my big monitors, I have found that no matter
1:58:35what value I put into the one value that Apple lets you pick,
1:58:38the mouse doesn't feel right to me.
1:58:40It feels slow, but also inaccurate.
1:58:43So for a while, I've used a third-party utility,
1:58:45a steer mouse, that lets you more concisely tweak
1:58:50the acceleration curves for individual input devices.
1:58:54This is another factor that's not, I didn't mention.
1:58:56The actual mouse influences this as well.
1:58:59If I'm using my Microsoft mouse connected through USB
1:59:02versus using an Apple mouse connected through USB,
1:59:05they behave wildly differently.
1:59:06This may seem strange to you, but they absolutely do.
1:59:09different mice will behave differently
1:59:11with the same tracking setting.
1:59:13So to make this Microsoft mouse not drive me insane,
1:59:17I needed to be able to tweak the acceleration curves
1:59:21in a more accurate way.
1:59:24And so SteerMouse gives you two numbers
1:59:26that lets you type in the values.
1:59:28I don't know what these numbers mean.
1:59:29They call them acceleration and sensitivity.
1:59:31Who knows what they're doing under the covers?
1:59:32But the point is I can fiddle with these sliders
1:59:35and type in exact values and save my settings
1:59:37and associate them with this specific input device.
1:59:39So if I plug in an Apple mouse,
1:59:41it will feel Apple mouse normal,
1:59:43and I can make this Microsoft mouse feel the way I want.
1:59:45So do I use native mouse acceleration?
1:59:47No, I don't, not with my Microsoft mouse.
1:59:50If I had an Apple mouse,
1:59:51I think I probably would use the native one
1:59:52because the Apple mice,
1:59:54when you crank up the built-in setting,
1:59:57still feel right to me.
1:59:59But when I went on the big mouse journey
2:00:01buying all these different mice,
2:00:02I was amazed at how different they feel.
2:00:04Logitech mouse, a Logitech gaming mouse
2:00:06feels different from a Logitech regular mouse,
2:00:07feels different from a Microsoft mouse,
2:00:09feels different from an Apple mouse.
2:00:10That's why it's great to have third-party utilities
2:00:12that let you tweak this.
2:00:13And again, associate that tweak specifically with the device.
2:00:16So once you get every device set up the way you want,
2:00:19you can even have different curves
2:00:20for Bluetooth versus USB connection of the same mouse.
2:00:22Then it just remembers them,
2:00:23and when you plug in the device, it feels normal.
2:00:26One of the fun things StairMouse has
2:00:28is like a social networking aspect
2:00:30where you can see other people's popular saved settings
2:00:34for your mouse.
2:00:35- Are there achievements that like,
2:00:37oh, you've moused 100 miles?
2:00:39- There should be, but no, I think it's just like,
2:00:42save settings for your mouse,
2:00:43'cause you feel like, I don't know
2:00:44what to set these numbers to.
2:00:45Every time of these sliders around, it still feels weird.
2:00:47Can I find a setting that lots of other people use
2:00:50for this mouse, and you can just use
2:00:52one of the save settings.
2:00:54- Thanks to our sponsors this week,
2:00:55Memberful, Nebula, and Blaze.
2:00:58And thanks to our members who support us directly.
2:01:00You can join at atp.fm/join,
2:01:03and we will talk to you next week.
2:01:05Happy New Year everyone.
2:01:06(upbeat music)
2:01:09♪ Now the show is over ♪
2:01:12♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
2:01:14♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
2:01:16♪ Accidental ♪
2:01:17♪ Oh it was accidental ♪
2:01:19♪ Accidental ♪
2:01:20♪ John didn't do any research ♪
2:01:22♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪
2:01:25♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
2:01:26♪ Accidental ♪
2:01:28♪ It was accidental ♪
2:01:29♪ Accidental ♪
2:01:30♪ And you can find the show notes ♪
2:01:32And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
2:01:40@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
2:01:44So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
2:01:49Auntie Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C
2:01:54U-S-A, Syracuse It's accidental
2:01:58They didn't mean to, accidental, accidental Tech podcast so long
2:02:10Did anybody watch any Christmas movies?
2:02:12Even Marco when he thought his Christmas was going to be a normal time?
2:02:15Did any of you watch a movie that you always watched during Christmas?
2:02:18Oh yes, absolutely.
2:02:19You have to watch several movies.
2:02:21There's a litany of movies that you are compelled to watch, Jon.
2:02:24You have to watch...
2:02:25Every year though?
2:02:26- Yeah. - Like as a tradition?
2:02:27How much room is there for multiple?
2:02:29I feel like maybe you can have one or two movies,
2:02:31but you can't have like 17 movies
2:02:32you have to watch on Christmas.
2:02:33- Oh, you absolutely can.
2:02:35Christmas for most of us is the 25th, man.
2:02:37You got plenty of time.
2:02:38I think you were intending to mean on the day of,
2:02:41and that's a different conversation, but--
2:02:42- No, no, not on the day of.
2:02:43Just sort of like I always have to watch these
2:02:45in the Christmas season.
2:02:47What is your list of terrible '90s movies
2:02:49that you like to watch? - Well, since we haven't
2:02:50actually gotten to like the rest of the family
2:02:52where we would normally watch like Christmas Vacation,
2:02:56We've only watched kind of second-tier movies. And in fact, we've actually watched no joke
2:03:02Only bad sequels to second-tier movies so far. So the Christmas movies we've seen so far this year are
2:03:07Diehard 2 and Home Alone 2.
2:03:10Diehard 2 is not that bad. It's not as good as the first but it's not that bad.
2:03:14It's not as bad as Home Alone 2. I'll give you that but but neither are good. I would say.
2:03:19No, I mean for us that you know the Christmas season in terms of movies starts really anytime after Thanksgiving
2:03:26at the very latest on December 1st.
2:03:28And for us, we have to watch Elf.
2:03:32I've always enjoyed Elf,
2:03:33and it is becoming possibly my favorite Christmas movie
2:03:36over time.
2:03:37Aaron is a big fan of Love Actually.
2:03:39I know that's very polarizing.
2:03:40I never had seen or even heard of Love Actually
2:03:43before we had met.
2:03:44And I actually have come to really, really like Love Actually
2:03:46as well.
2:03:47This is where John rolls his eyes and tells me
2:03:48the litany of ways in which it's wrong or bad or what have you.
2:03:51- I was rolling my eyes at Elf, but go on.
2:03:52- Yeah, me too. - Oh, fair enough.
2:03:54Oh, how can you not like Elf?
2:03:55- Oh God, you monsters.
2:03:56- I don't dislike it, but it is not,
2:03:58like, here's the thing with classic Christmas things,
2:04:01it's whatever you get used to at a certain point,
2:04:03it has really no connection to quality.
2:04:04We all just have to admit that.
2:04:05Like, it's like, the things, the Christmas movies
2:04:08that we like is unrelated to the quality of those things.
2:04:12- Well, with that in mind, for me,
2:04:14the thing that imprinted on me when I was a wee lad,
2:04:17you know, many, many moons ago, was Claymation Christmas.
2:04:19- Oh yeah.
2:04:20- Which almost nobody has heard of,
2:04:21but Marco is the prime age,
2:04:23it's because we're basically the same age,
2:04:25the Prime Age to have heard of Claymation Christmas. It is not the Christmas season
2:04:29if you have not watched Claymation Christmas at least once, preferably thrice to ten times.
2:04:34So that is definitely on the list. I'm trying to think of what else. I just watched for
2:04:38the very first time, I watched Christmas Vacation. I'd never seen it. Which is funny because
2:04:43my parents' license plate growing up was Griswold. But I'd never seen it and I went into it expecting
2:04:49it to be garbage, kind of like a Christmas story. And I actually thought it was pretty
2:04:54good. It, you know, there are some, some jokes that didn't age well, but for the most part,
2:04:58yeah, when you come to something that's 30 years old, 40 years old, whatever it is today,
2:05:02usually it's bad. It's real bad. And I actually enjoyed Kristen's Vacation. It was pretty good.
2:05:09Yeah. I'm actually kind of surprised that like, that like as a newcomer to it in 2022,
2:05:14I'm surprised that you would have liked it honestly, because yeah, you're right. Like most
2:05:18like 80s and 90s movies are really do not hold up well to modernize especially
2:05:25comedies especially Chevy Chase movie like oh god there's so much like the you
2:05:31know odds are poor that that anything you see from that time period is going
2:05:35to hold up today and and even that you even be able to get through it let alone
2:05:39think it's funny and not be horribly offended by it and but yeah it actually
2:05:43as that goes, you know, again, the bar is low, but as that goes, it's good.
2:05:51It's all relative. So, John, what are your John
2:05:55Syracuse approved movies? And is there, are there any? Is there at least one?
2:05:59I don't, I used to watch things like every year just because they were on,
2:06:04like the Rudolph thing, because that's how old I am, right? Right, but that was just on TV and
2:06:07I'd watch it every year, but as I got older, and surprise, surprise to everyone, like, the,
2:06:12When things were of bad quality, but they were still like,
2:06:15oh, you watch us every year,
2:06:17the bad quality eventually went out.
2:06:19Then I stopped watching things that I don't like.
2:06:21It's like, yes, it is traditional, I watch us all the time,
2:06:23but it's not like the Rudolph thing,
2:06:25it's for kids, I'm not interested in it.
2:06:27I don't feel compelled to watch the Rankin/Bass Rudolph thing
2:06:30every year because it's not something that I enjoy,
2:06:33so I haven't seen that in ages.
2:06:36It's true of most things.
2:06:37I remember watching "Christmas Vacation"
2:06:38when it first came out and enjoying it when I was,
2:06:40however old it was when that happened,
2:06:42teenager or something but I don't think it would hold up on repeat viewing and
2:06:46so I don't watch it even though it's like oh as traditional I've seen it all
2:06:49the time like it's part of my Christmas memories it is but it's not a movie that
2:06:52I enjoy so I don't watch it the one thing that I would probably be willing
2:06:56to watch again is a Christmas story which I think is actually good but I
2:07:03know people are bored by it may require I think it is a well-executed version of
2:07:08what it is but it is a nostalgia trip for people of a certain age it is a
2:07:11nostalgic for a time that is before my time, but it is my parents time so I can
2:07:16I can relate to it and kind of the same way I can relate to Goodfellas. I wasn't
2:07:20a mobster in the 70s, but some of my relatives probably were.
2:07:23So when I look at Goodfellas I see people who I remember from my childhood
2:07:30like my uncle was like that, my cousin was like that, like I can connect to it
2:07:34in that way. So in the same way Christmas Story connects with me because
2:07:37because it is a fantasy nostalgia version of a world I never experienced and probably never really existed
2:07:44but that I feel like I have a connection to.
2:07:46And I think it's actually kind of funny and a fun movie.
2:07:48But I understand it's kind of like the same way that I'm never going to like Elf the way that 90s kids like it.
2:07:52I thought Elf was fine, but it doesn't have that connection to me.
2:07:55So if I had, if it was forced at gunpoint, it says, "You must watch a movie every Christmas from now on as a Christmas tradition."
2:08:02A) I wouldn't like it because that's not how I roll.
2:08:04B) If I had to pick out a Christmas story.
2:08:06Oh, I mean, obviously whatever makes you happy makes you happy, but for me, I came to Christmas
2:08:10Story just like five-ish years ago, and I did not care for it at all.
2:08:14There's no Claymation Christmas, right, Casey?
2:08:16No, it is not a Claymation Christmas!
2:08:18It's so much better!
2:08:20Frankly, that'd be my one!
2:08:21If I had to pick one, it'd be Claymation Christmas.
2:08:23Oh, amen, brother.
2:08:24I am right there with you.
2:08:25Oh my goodness, no, you are doing it through rose-colored glasses.
2:08:29Oh, 100%!
2:08:30Also, honorable mention for the Garfield Christmas as well.
2:08:33I don't think I've ever seen that one.
2:08:35- Claymation Christmas, I absolutely will concede
2:08:39that it is probably garbage if you look at it
2:08:42with any sort of reasonable point of view,
2:08:45but as someone who is of the correct age, like Marco,
2:08:48who is of the correct age for Claymation Christmas,
2:08:50if I had to choose just one, it's that one,
2:08:52but if I got two, I think Elf would be my second.
2:08:55I really freaking love Elf.
2:08:56That being said, Aaron and I watched Die Hard last night,
2:08:58because that's what you do.
2:08:59- Yeah, I mean, Die Hard is more of a recent
2:09:01internet phenomenon, people like getting it,
2:09:02what was it, like a decade ago,
2:09:03like, oh, Die Hard's a Christmas movie, right?
2:09:05I love Die Hard and I'll watch it anytime.
2:09:07It's a fun movie, but it's not something
2:09:08I ever watched at Christmas.
2:09:09I never went in on that fad.
2:09:11I guess the one Christmas tradition thing that I do have
2:09:13that I actually do do every Christmas season
2:09:16is not a movie, but music.
2:09:18When I was a kid, we had a record, Casey,
2:09:21the Muppets and John Denver Christmas album.
2:09:24- What?
2:09:26- We were a big John Denver family.
2:09:27We had John Denver records, and I loved the Muppet Show
2:09:30when I was a kid, watched every single night
2:09:32or whatever time I was on, 7.30 or whatever.
2:09:34love the Muppet show, I love the Muppets,
2:09:35I love the Muppet movie, I'm of that age.
2:09:38And because we had that Christmas records
2:09:40of the Muppets singing Christmas carols with John Denver,
2:09:43we heard it all the time during my childhood.
2:09:45And for whatever reason, unlike, well, here,
2:09:48unlike the movies, which are crap movies
2:09:49and I stop watching, if this is crap music, I can't tell.
2:09:53Because I still enjoy listening to the Muppets
2:09:56and John Denver sing Christmas carols.
2:09:58So when we put on Christmas music,
2:09:59when we're decorating the tree,
2:10:00and it's my random playlist of holiday music,
2:10:03A huge swath of that is John Denver and the Muppets.
2:10:06I love that album.
2:10:07It reminds me of my childhood.
2:10:09And I think they do a good job.
2:10:10I mean, they're singing Christmas carols.
2:10:11It's like, you know, it's not,
2:10:13it's "Rear Out the Red News," "Reindeer," "Silent Night,"
2:10:15like it's Christmas songs,
2:10:17sung by the Muppets and John Denver.
2:10:19And I still give that a thumbs up.
2:10:21I think some of the songs are funny and good for kids.
2:10:23And, you know, especially if you're a kid
2:10:24and you like Muppets,
2:10:25but some of them are just good renditions of a song.
2:10:27I guess it helps if you like John Denver, which I do.
2:10:30So yeah, that's the one thing I actually still do every year
2:10:33not a single Christmas has gone by where I have not listened to John didn't run them
2:10:36up at St. Christmas Carols at some point.
2:10:38This is from a TV special apparently? I've never heard of this, I'm digging on Wikipedia
2:10:41now, but apparently it's a soundtrack album from a special?
2:10:44I think it was on TV, but I have the record and now I have it in MP3s.
2:10:50Also on the list, it will surprise nobody that I'm a bit of a pack rat about certain
2:10:53things, and I really enjoy the Pentatonix Christmas specials from the years and the
2:10:58Disney Christmas specials through the years, and I'll put those on as like background noise
2:11:01and whatnot. All of these of course are living in Plex as they are wont to do. But no, I
2:11:07freaking love Claymation Christmas and Elf, again I think I'm of the right age, that Elf
2:11:11just absolutely clicked for me. Even though it came out when Marco and I were like almost
2:11:15graduated from college if I remember right, I think it was like 2003 or thereabouts.
2:11:18Yeah, we were a bit old for it. I think if I liked Will Ferrell I would like it, but
2:11:22I don't so I don't.
2:11:24Oh, see, I love Will Ferrell so I'm all in. But no, I don't have any real problems with
2:11:31with any of these, not that it really matters, you do you,
2:11:33but I don't know, Christmas Story just never clicked for me.
2:11:35I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life,
2:11:37so I don't know if that's good or bad or whatever.
2:11:40Obviously, The Grinch, I'm okay with the Jim Carrey version,
2:11:43the original version I love.
2:11:45One of you, I think John had mentioned Rudolph,
2:11:48and all the Rankin/Bass stuff, and Frosty,
2:11:50that always happens, but no,
2:11:52Elf and Claymation are my two winners.
2:11:55- Now, speaking of owning your place on the web
2:11:57and having permanent links to live on,
2:11:58this is a difficult problem,
2:12:00I just put a link in the show notes.
2:12:02I said, I want a link in the show notes to the John Dutton
2:12:04and Ryn Muppet albums that I was thinking of.
2:12:06Someone in the chat room put an Apple Music link,
2:12:07but then you're like, oh, but what if people
2:12:09don't use Apple Music?
2:12:09Should I have a Spotify link?
2:12:11Maybe it's on YouTube, blah, blah, blah.
2:12:12So there's these services that have grown up
2:12:15over the past few years that try to provide
2:12:19a canonical link to a song and say,
2:12:21hey, if that song is available in Apple Music,
2:12:23here's how you get to it.
2:12:23If it's a song on Spotify, here's how you get to it there,
2:12:25and so on and so forth.
2:12:26But of course, those services themselves
2:12:28are just another thing that might disappear.
2:12:30So album.link is the song.link.
2:12:35- Oh, see, I use songwhip, but it's the same idea.
2:12:38- Right, but that's the problem.
2:12:39None of those things are any more permanent
2:12:41than the individual services.
2:12:42So I'm gonna put an album.link thing in the show notes,
2:12:44but five years from now, when album.link is a spam site
2:12:47that tries to give you a virus, I feel bad,
2:12:49but there just isn't a canonical place for this.
2:12:52You can't rely on the record label to have a canonical link
2:12:54'cause they change the URLs every day
2:12:55and they probably don't have it up anymore.
2:12:56So we're gonna put an album.link here,
2:12:58This just shows the problem of like if if the people who own this media really cared about it
2:13:03They would provide canonical links for all the media in their catalog that then sublinked out to its availability on services
2:13:10But that's a lot of work and they just seem like they're not going to ever do that. So we're stuck with these things
2:13:14[BEEPING]