ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I know I'm going to end up disappointed

00:00:01 ◼   ► by the end of the night, but sitting here now,

00:00:03 ◼   ► where ignorance is lists,

00:00:05 ◼   ► I am so excited for the after show.

00:00:07 ◼   ► - You've been on fire with the list puns recently.

00:00:09 ◼   ► They've been, well I don't know if fire is really--

00:00:11 ◼   ► - Don't encourage him.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - You've been on this mud waterfall.

00:00:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:18 ◼   ► - All right, so Rob Sayer writes,

00:00:21 ◼   ► "Casey mentioned the Oracle Android Java case

00:00:24 ◼   ► "in the S3 API conversation."

00:00:26 ◼   ► So to back up a half step, we were talking about

00:00:27 ◼   ► is it okay to copy a developer--another party's API? Is that cool? Is that not cool?" And

00:00:32 ◼   ► I said, "Oh, well, you know, there's a big lawsuit between Oracle and, you know, Android

00:00:36 ◼   ► who had basically copied but re-implemented the Java APIs or at least that's my vague

00:00:40 ◼   ► understanding of it." So anyway, Rob continues, "The Supreme Court said that this was fair

00:00:44 ◼   ► use. I've always found this case funny because Oracle in fact copies the S3 API." So here

00:00:49 ◼   ► it was. Oracle took Google and Android and so on to court saying, "Oh, you copied our

00:00:53 ◼   ► stuff." And then Oracle turned right around and said, "Oh, you know, we're going to copy

00:00:57 ◼   ► the S3 API. That sounds great, thank you.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - I'm sure what Oracle would say is that,

00:01:01 ◼   ► well, APIs are not all the same.

00:01:02 ◼   ► We're talking about a programming interface

00:01:05 ◼   ► or local code in a machine,

00:01:06 ◼   ► and this is a network protocol, HTTP requests

00:01:09 ◼   ► for certain paths and parameters and so on,

00:01:12 ◼   ► and that's totally different.

00:01:14 ◼   ► These days we think of them all as APIs,

00:01:16 ◼   ► but there is a case to be made that

00:01:18 ◼   ► if there was to be some kind of law

00:01:20 ◼   ► coming out of that Java Oracle thing,

00:01:23 ◼   ► it might not apply to network APIs.

00:01:26 ◼   ► - That's a fair point.

00:01:28 ◼   ► And with regard to Marco's tear,

00:01:32 ◼   ► which I thought was justified at the time,

00:01:34 ◼   ► about Apple in the hypothetical Apple car,

00:01:37 ◼   ► they wouldn't wanna put any branding on the tires.

00:01:40 ◼   ► They would want a completely flat tire.

00:01:42 ◼   ► You didn't go so far as to say white walls,

00:01:44 ◼   ► but you never know.

00:01:45 ◼   ► If Johnny is still contracting, it could be.

00:01:48 ◼   ► He loves his white rooms.

00:01:49 ◼   ► - You know what Johnny would do?

00:01:50 ◼   ► All white tires, and just pretend like they don't get dirty.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - Right?

00:01:54 ◼   ► - You know, the same with, there's never a power cord

00:01:56 ◼   ► in their product photography.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Like, just, you know what, we're actually gonna have

00:01:59 ◼   ► this white car driving on this white store front,

00:02:01 ◼   ► you know, this white Apple Store floor as the demo

00:02:04 ◼   ► with white tires and forget what it looks like

00:02:06 ◼   ► in the real world, it'll always look like this.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - Well, I did have a space gray option too.

00:02:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:12 ◼   ► - If it's all white with white tires,

00:02:13 ◼   ► am I like contractually obligated to buy one?

00:02:17 ◼   ► Is that how this works?

00:02:17 ◼   ► - It would just happen to you.

00:02:18 ◼   ► It just, that's what happens with white cars.

00:02:20 ◼   ► - It would just happen.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Anyway, so with regard to Apple wanting brand free tires,

00:02:25 ◼   ► TK wrote to us to point out an article

00:02:28 ◼   ► about how Ford apparently demanded

00:02:31 ◼   ► that Goodyear remove the Wrangler branding

00:02:33 ◼   ► for tires installed on Broncos,

00:02:35 ◼   ► which I thought was very funny.

00:02:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, although they didn't, as far as I can tell,

00:02:38 ◼   ► they're not removing the word Goodyear,

00:02:40 ◼   ► and when they removed Wrangler,

00:02:43 ◼   ► they only removed it from one side.

00:02:45 ◼   ► It's like, if you're gonna remove Wrangler,

00:02:48 ◼   ► like they only removed it from the outside side,

00:02:49 ◼   ► so it's still on the inside, just seems

00:02:53 ◼   ► kind of half-hearted all around.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - Well, and I'm sure there's probably practical reasons,

00:02:57 ◼   ► like maybe when they stock these tires in the warehouse,

00:03:00 ◼   ► they could more easily see what they are or whatever,

00:03:01 ◼   ► who knows, but yeah, it's kind of funny

00:03:03 ◼   ► that there's this weird fluke that a popular line

00:03:05 ◼   ► of off-road capable Goodyear tires is called the Wrangler,

00:03:09 ◼   ► while also elsewhere in the car business

00:03:12 ◼   ► is a popular vehicle called the Wrangler

00:03:14 ◼   ► by a different company, which is kind of this amazing

00:03:16 ◼   ► failure of trademark law, like these two

00:03:19 ◼   ► should never have been allowed to coexist in the same industry but oh well

00:03:22 ◼   ► tire in a car do I mean you can drive your Bronco while wearing Wrangler jeans

00:03:26 ◼   ► probably yeah that's a whole different industry yeah that's a different

00:03:29 ◼   ► industry I know it's a different tires and an entire car it's fine

00:03:32 ◼   ► well regardless friend of the show Sam a well some aid who you might remember

00:03:37 ◼   ► from a recent episode of upgrade which is very good anyway Sam writes to say

00:03:41 ◼   ► Apple doesn't have to be stubborn about unbranded tires they just have to

00:03:44 ◼   ► specify it and probably pay a premium but any tire maker would build them

00:03:48 ◼   ► whatever they want. Even when they leave the branding on, the tires that are supplied from

00:03:51 ◼   ► the factory are almost always unique to that specific model. OEMs frequently spec unique

00:03:55 ◼   ► compounds or other characteristics to meet their performance requirements for handling,

00:03:58 ◼   ► braking, etc. If you look up tires on, say, Tire Rack, you will often see tires labeled

00:04:03 ◼   ► as OEM or aftermarket. They look identical, but they may have different rubber compounds

00:04:06 ◼   ► or even different internal construction. The aftermarket ones are the generic version.

00:04:10 ◼   ► I had no idea this was the case, so I thought that was fascinating.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Moving on, John, tell me about your TV. Do you have any updates for us, please?

00:04:17 ◼   ► I do have a handful of updates.

00:04:18 ◼   ► So first, on the whole Wi-Fi front,

00:04:21 ◼   ► my television wouldn't connect to Wi-Fi.

00:04:23 ◼   ► We had some ideas from folks out there.

00:04:26 ◼   ► First is from Jeff C. You said--

00:04:28 ◼   ► asked if your date and time is set correctly on the TV.

00:04:31 ◼   ► He says, my Sony TV wouldn't connect to Wi-Fi when

00:04:33 ◼   ► the date and time was incorrect.

00:04:35 ◼   ► That is a common thing, also a common thing

00:04:36 ◼   ► for SSL certificates.

00:04:38 ◼   ► If you're connecting to websites and telling you

00:04:39 ◼   ► the certificates are invalid, make sure your date and time

00:04:42 ◼   ► are set correctly.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Now, most modern devices, especially

00:04:44 ◼   ► ones that connect to the internet,

00:04:46 ◼   ► Connect to some kind of network time service.

00:04:48 ◼   ► You don't have to really do this manually,

00:04:49 ◼   ► like in the old days, and on some very behind the times

00:04:53 ◼   ► electronic devices.

00:04:54 ◼   ► The very first thing you do when you turn it on,

00:04:55 ◼   ► it would ask you to set the date and time,

00:04:56 ◼   ► but these days, if there's an expectation

00:04:58 ◼   ► that it'll have a network connection,

00:04:59 ◼   ► they don't ask you to do that.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So they should be set correctly,

00:05:01 ◼   ► but it's worth looking into the maybe NTP server,

00:05:05 ◼   ► you can't get to it on your network for some reason,

00:05:06 ◼   ► or there's some kind of problem,

00:05:07 ◼   ► or it thinks it's in the wrong time zone or something.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So that's worth checking.

00:05:11 ◼   ► That was not the problem with my television, however.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Justin Winchester says,

00:05:14 ◼   ► "Make sure you have limit IP address tracking turned off for your home wifi or your phone.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Also make sure local access is turned on for the app."

00:05:23 ◼   ► This is so when you do something on the TV and it says "Hey, just launch the YouTube

00:05:26 ◼   ► app and press the button and we'll sign you in."

00:05:30 ◼   ► He says the limit IP address tracking should be turned off on your phone and on your wifi.

00:05:35 ◼   ► I don't think that's the problem.

00:05:37 ◼   ► I double checked it to make sure.

00:05:38 ◼   ► I don't have that turned on, I don't think, on any of my devices.

00:05:43 ◼   ► and also the local access thing for the app.

00:05:46 ◼   ► That's when you launch an app and it prompts you

00:05:48 ◼   ► and it says whatever app wants to be able

00:05:50 ◼   ► to access the local network and you're not sure

00:05:52 ◼   ► what it means, so you just say okay.

00:05:54 ◼   ► I always just say okay too.

00:05:56 ◼   ► So I don't think either one of those were the problem.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I haven't had an opportunity

00:06:00 ◼   ► to set up another app since I already did all my setup.

00:06:03 ◼   ► So I haven't tested these theories,

00:06:04 ◼   ► but it's two more things for people to check

00:06:06 ◼   ► if you're having problems with this.

00:06:09 ◼   ► None of these helped my, obviously,

00:06:11 ◼   ► get my television on Wi-Fi.

00:06:13 ◼   ► The thing I was thinking of when I was messing with it,

00:06:16 ◼   ► the very obvious first thing to try is,

00:06:18 ◼   ► how about you just unplug the ethernet?

00:06:19 ◼   ► 'Cause maybe it just gets cranky that you have ethernet

00:06:21 ◼   ► and Wi-Fi at the same time and it can't handle it,

00:06:23 ◼   ► it just wants there to be one network connection,

00:06:25 ◼   ► it's not sophisticated enough to handle both of them.

00:06:27 ◼   ► So just unplug the ethernet.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And the reason I didn't do that immediately is,

00:06:30 ◼   ► oh, I gotta crawl behind the TV again,

00:06:31 ◼   ► I gotta pull off that panel, I gotta unplug the cable.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Like just, I thought I could get it to work

00:06:35 ◼   ► and I didn't wanna go crawl behind there.

00:06:37 ◼   ► But eventually I did crawl behind there

00:06:39 ◼   ► 'cause I was behind there for other reasons,

00:06:40 ◼   ► which we'll get to in a minute.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And yeah, if you unplug the ethernet,

00:06:43 ◼   ► it connects to Wi-Fi just fine.

00:06:45 ◼   ► So that's a pretty cruddy limitation

00:06:47 ◼   ► of whatever version of Android, Google TV thing

00:06:51 ◼   ► this is running that it just can't handle,

00:06:53 ◼   ► ethernet and Wi-Fi.

00:06:54 ◼   ► If you have ethernet plugged in,

00:06:55 ◼   ► Wi-Fi will never ever connect.

00:06:57 ◼   ► But as soon as you unplug the internet,

00:06:58 ◼   ► it connects just fine.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And the reason I was interested in that

00:07:01 ◼   ► is something I discovered about my television

00:07:05 ◼   ► that I should have known,

00:07:06 ◼   ► but maybe it didn't concern me.

00:07:09 ◼   ► All right, so there's an app that comes with the TV.

00:07:12 ◼   ► It's called BraviaCore.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Lots of listeners, state DP, wrote in to tell me,

00:07:15 ◼   ► "Hey, I've got a Sony TV too.

00:07:16 ◼   ► "Make sure you don't look,

00:07:17 ◼   ► "don't ignore the BraviaCore app."

00:07:20 ◼   ► It's a terrible name.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Bravia is Sony's like brand name for their televisions.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Technically my television is the Bravia XR,

00:07:26 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah, right?

00:07:28 ◼   ► The BraviaCore app, it's a movie app.

00:07:31 ◼   ► You know, Sony is also a movie studio

00:07:32 ◼   ► and they have a bunch of movies, right?

00:07:34 ◼   ► So you can pay for, download, or stream movies

00:07:37 ◼   ► from the Sony movie collection.

00:07:38 ◼   ► maybe others, I don't know.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But the advantage of the Broadview Core app is one,

00:07:42 ◼   ► when you buy the super expensive TV,

00:07:44 ◼   ► it comes with like 10 credits to get movies.

00:07:47 ◼   ► So hey, free movies.

00:07:48 ◼   ► I think each movie is like one credit or something,

00:07:50 ◼   ► so I can get 10 movies if I want,

00:07:51 ◼   ► as long as there's so many movies.

00:07:53 ◼   ► And two, apparently, Broadview Core movies

00:07:57 ◼   ► let you either stream or download or both movies

00:08:00 ◼   ► in much higher quality than even the iTunes store.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Like that they're 4K, full res, high bit rate,

00:08:07 ◼   ► Maybe not as high as Blu-ray, because Blu-rays are like 60 gigs a movie or whatever it is,

00:08:12 ◼   ► but much higher than you would get on a typical streaming service.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Okay, that's cool.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I should check that out."

00:08:19 ◼   ► But then I heard from other people and they said, "Oh yeah, I tried to use the Bravia

00:08:22 ◼   ► Core app, but I couldn't play the movies back at the high bit rate because it would stutter.

00:08:28 ◼   ► My network connection wasn't fast enough to keep up."

00:08:30 ◼   ► And I was like, "Well, I won't have that problem.

00:08:31 ◼   ► I'm plugged into Ethernet."

00:08:33 ◼   ► Then some people were saying, "Oh yeah, I'm on Ethernet too, and I also couldn't get my

00:08:36 ◼   ► my Wi-Fi to connect, but by the way,

00:08:38 ◼   ► I was trying to play movies from Broadview Core

00:08:40 ◼   ► and they were stuttering even when I was on Ethernet.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And the reason for that is that the Ethernet

00:08:43 ◼   ► is 100 megabits.

00:08:45 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:08:46 ◼   ► - I don't know what century this is,

00:08:48 ◼   ► but I mean you would think 100 megabits

00:08:49 ◼   ► is plenty for a movie, 'cause most things

00:08:51 ◼   ► that are on streaming services are like

00:08:53 ◼   ► single digit megabits, like it's heavily compressed video.

00:08:56 ◼   ► You know, through the magic of modern compression

00:08:58 ◼   ► algorithms, you can watch the movie and it doesn't take up,

00:09:01 ◼   ► you know, you don't need huge amounts of bandwidth.

00:09:03 ◼   ► That's why people can get away with it on Wi-Fi,

00:09:04 ◼   ► because even though the theoretical bandwidth

00:09:06 ◼   ► and wifi is very high,

00:09:07 ◼   ► from wherever people's televisions are

00:09:10 ◼   ► to wherever their routers are with interference

00:09:11 ◼   ► from walls and stuff like that,

00:09:13 ◼   ► maybe you're only getting 10, 20 megabits

00:09:15 ◼   ► at your television.

00:09:16 ◼   ► Heck, maybe you're getting nine megabits.

00:09:18 ◼   ► That's still enough to stream most things,

00:09:21 ◼   ► especially if it's not 4K content, right?

00:09:23 ◼   ► So it was 100 megabits.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And apparently 100 megabit ethernet is not enough

00:09:28 ◼   ► to stream some of the bigger, chunkier movies

00:09:31 ◼   ► that are there.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And so the first thing I did was I wanted to check what kind of speeds I'm getting on

00:09:37 ◼   ► Wi-Fi because people are saying, "Oh, don't use Ethernet.

00:09:40 ◼   ► You should use Wi-Fi because you can get higher than 100 megabits on Wi-Fi."

00:09:44 ◼   ► So that's why I unplugged the Ethernet cable, connected to Wi-Fi, and then I had to figure

00:09:47 ◼   ► out how fast the Wi-Fi is.

00:09:49 ◼   ► So I needed to get a speed test application and I had to get it from the Sony app store,

00:09:55 ◼   ► right?

00:09:56 ◼   ► Because I can't do it on my Apple TV or something because that wouldn't be testing the TV's

00:09:58 ◼   ► Ethernet connection.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It would just be testing the Apple TV's Ethernet connection, which by the way, the Apple TV

00:10:02 ◼   ► was 100 megabits for years and years, right?

00:10:04 ◼   ► I hope it's still not, and I'm not entirely sure.

00:10:06 ◼   ► - No, I think the modern ones are,

00:10:08 ◼   ► I think once it went to 4K, I believe,

00:10:10 ◼   ► that's when they upped it.

00:10:11 ◼   ► - Yep, I believe that's when.

00:10:12 ◼   ► - Although I'm not sure there's any content

00:10:14 ◼   ► that I watch on my Apple TV

00:10:16 ◼   ► that exceeds 100 megabits anyway.

00:10:17 ◼   ► But yeah, so I can't, I have to download it

00:10:19 ◼   ► from the Sony App Store.

00:10:20 ◼   ► So I go to the Sony App Store, I search for speed tests,

00:10:22 ◼   ► and there's like, just a, you know,

00:10:25 ◼   ► like the usual suspects lineup

00:10:26 ◼   ► of sketchy-looking applications

00:10:28 ◼   ► that all claim to be speed tests, you know?

00:10:30 ◼   ► None of them are recognizable brands of any kind of thing.

00:10:33 ◼   ► They all just look like generic speed tests,

00:10:35 ◼   ► like, hmm, which one of these is least likely

00:10:37 ◼   ► to destroy my television?

00:10:38 ◼   ► So I downloaded a couple of them.

00:10:40 ◼   ► One of them didn't work at all.

00:10:42 ◼   ► One of them looks a little bit janky,

00:10:44 ◼   ► but one of them did actually run a speed test.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And on my Wi-Fi, from the position of all my routers

00:10:49 ◼   ► and everything, I was getting like, you know,

00:10:52 ◼   ► 70, 80 gigabits, not gigabits, megabits,

00:10:55 ◼   ► 70, 80 megabits per second, which is less than the ethernet.

00:10:58 ◼   ► So I plugged the ethernet bit in and tried that,

00:10:59 ◼   ► And sure enough, it gets like 9900 megabits,

00:11:01 ◼   ► like just like you would expect.

00:11:03 ◼   ► So my wifi in my position, in my television,

00:11:07 ◼   ► where all my routers are in my house

00:11:09 ◼   ► is not faster than 100 megabits.

00:11:11 ◼   ► So what am I supposed to do?

00:11:12 ◼   ► I want faster than 100 megabits into this television

00:11:17 ◼   ► because I don't know, I wanna watch a Broadview Core,

00:11:19 ◼   ► I wanna see the fancy stuff.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Granted, I have a Blu-ray player for all that too,

00:11:22 ◼   ► but I have these 10 free movie credits

00:11:23 ◼   ► and I'd like to see the full quality.

00:11:25 ◼   ► I asked this to Merlin last night on Erectif's recording,

00:11:29 ◼   ► which will come out sometime in the future,

00:11:30 ◼   ► but I'll ask you two, what should I do?

00:11:33 ◼   ► - Can you DFU restore your TV?

00:11:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:36 ◼   ► - Well, what would that,

00:11:37 ◼   ► like it's 100 megabit ethernet port.

00:11:38 ◼   ► That's never getting any faster, right?

00:11:40 ◼   ► And my wifi is not fast enough given my router location.

00:11:43 ◼   ► So I want to get more than 100 megabits of data

00:11:46 ◼   ► into my television.

00:11:47 ◼   ► - I get you could you put another Eero

00:11:51 ◼   ► connected via ethernet like directly next to the TV?

00:11:53 ◼   ► - I'm trying to think,

00:11:55 ◼   ► is there any way to otherwise pipe in ethernet?

00:11:57 ◼   ► Like I assume, like would a USB 3 Ethernet adapter work?

00:12:02 ◼   ► Probably not, but.

00:12:04 ◼   ► - That's the way, the thing I pursued, all right.

00:12:06 ◼   ► So there are, if you search, you will find plenty

00:12:09 ◼   ► of USB A to Ethernet adapters

00:12:11 ◼   ► that claim gigabit Ethernet speeds.

00:12:14 ◼   ► This television does have the USB A ports on it,

00:12:16 ◼   ► most modern televisions do.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And from other Sony people out there

00:12:20 ◼   ► who have Sony televisions, older Sony televisions,

00:12:23 ◼   ► they said, yeah, I got a USB to Ethernet adapter

00:12:25 ◼   ► and it let me get faster speeds, right?

00:12:27 ◼   ► Unfortunately, since this television is so new,

00:12:29 ◼   ► I had trouble finding people who had this television

00:12:32 ◼   ► and had done it successfully.

00:12:33 ◼   ► So people were like, oh, I've got an A80J or an A90J,

00:12:36 ◼   ► and I did this, and that worked.

00:12:37 ◼   ► And I was like, well, I don't know.

00:12:39 ◼   ► You know, things change.

00:12:40 ◼   ► The OS version is different.

00:12:42 ◼   ► This is a brand new TV.

00:12:43 ◼   ► I'm not sure what will work.

00:12:45 ◼   ► If you look at the USB to ether adapters

00:12:47 ◼   ► that you will see for sale, you know, at Amazon or whatever,

00:12:51 ◼   ► there's tons of them, but there's nothing

00:12:53 ◼   ► to really distinguish them other than the price

00:12:55 ◼   ► and some branding, they all kind of look the same.

00:12:57 ◼   ► But this is not a computer, right?

00:12:59 ◼   ► I don't know, I can't install drivers as far as I know

00:13:02 ◼   ► to make this adapter work, so it's either gonna work

00:13:04 ◼   ► or it's not gonna work.

00:13:06 ◼   ► So I ordered one and I picked the name brand,

00:13:10 ◼   ► I ordered the Anker one, I'm like, I've heard of them,

00:13:12 ◼   ► I have their power adapters or whatever,

00:13:14 ◼   ► this seems like a reasonable quality product.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Let me try it.

00:13:19 ◼   ► TV didn't see it at all.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Plug it in, nothing happens.

00:13:22 ◼   ► It's just totally invisible to television,

00:13:23 ◼   ► There's no way to make it detected as far as I can tell.

00:13:26 ◼   ► It just didn't work at all.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Then the time that it took to ship that,

00:13:30 ◼   ► I had been doing more Google searching.

00:13:32 ◼   ► I found somebody with an actual A95K,

00:13:34 ◼   ► and they said, "I use this specific adapter, and it works."

00:13:37 ◼   ► So I just bought the exact one that they had.

00:13:38 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:13:39 ◼   ► It is one of those Amazon products with a giant name

00:13:42 ◼   ► that I'm not going to read right now,

00:13:43 ◼   ► but it's from Cable Matters.

00:13:45 ◼   ► It looks exactly the same as the Anker one,

00:13:47 ◼   ► but like a different color, and this one works.

00:13:49 ◼   ► Apparently, the theory is that you have to have

00:13:51 ◼   ► the RTL8153 chipset inside the adapter,

00:13:55 ◼   ► and that, you know, the Google TV OS will recognize,

00:13:59 ◼   ► and yes, you plug it in, it recognizes that it works.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I did a speed test, I wasn't getting any gigabit,

00:14:03 ◼   ► but I was peaking around seven or 800 megabits.

00:14:06 ◼   ► So, pretty good.

00:14:08 ◼   ► And that's much more convenient

00:14:09 ◼   ► than getting a whole other Eero thing

00:14:11 ◼   ► and putting the WiFi two inches away,

00:14:13 ◼   ► and I, you know, especially since all my, like,

00:14:16 ◼   ► top-end Eero 6 Pro or whatever things

00:14:19 ◼   ► are in use in the house.

00:14:21 ◼   ► I would have to either buy another fancy one

00:14:22 ◼   ► to get the maximum WiFi speed,

00:14:24 ◼   ► or use one of my older, lesser ones

00:14:26 ◼   ► that can't even do the most modern WiFi standards.

00:14:29 ◼   ► And I also don't even know what WiFi standards

00:14:31 ◼   ► the television supports.

00:14:33 ◼   ► I don't even know what the most modern one is.

00:14:34 ◼   ► What is the top end one now?

00:14:36 ◼   ► It's not AC anymore. - Oh, I don't even know.

00:14:37 ◼   ► - Six, yeah, they just went to numbers.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Or 6E, I don't know.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Anyway, the USB to Ethernet adapter,

00:14:46 ◼   ► it's a little bit weird and janky,

00:14:47 ◼   ► and you might not think of it, but it worked,

00:14:49 ◼   ► And so now that's how my television is connected.

00:14:51 ◼   ► - Even though that's a stupid thing,

00:14:53 ◼   ► you shouldn't even have to do that,

00:14:54 ◼   ► I'm glad that was the answer.

00:14:55 ◼   ► 'Cause the wifi right next to it thing

00:14:57 ◼   ► just kinda seemed dirty.

00:14:58 ◼   ► It's like when you wanted to record stuff on a cassette

00:15:01 ◼   ► when you were younger before you knew anything

00:15:03 ◼   ► and had anything and it's like,

00:15:04 ◼   ► all right, I can hold my boombox up to the speaker

00:15:07 ◼   ► of another radio and hit record and maybe it'll work.

00:15:10 ◼   ► And it does kind of work, but not well and it seems wrong

00:15:14 ◼   ► and it's not the right way to do it.

00:15:16 ◼   ► So I'm glad you found the correct way

00:15:19 ◼   ► among the limited options that were available to you.

00:15:21 ◼   ► - Well honestly, it's pretty shameful.

00:15:23 ◼   ► If Sony's gonna have the service,

00:15:24 ◼   ► and the selling point is we have super high quality movies,

00:15:26 ◼   ► like what do you think about ethernet porting a TV?

00:15:28 ◼   ► It mostly has to do with, I think,

00:15:30 ◼   ► the fact that even though the panel on the 895K

00:15:33 ◼   ► is this fancy new Samsung Quantum.OLED thing,

00:15:35 ◼   ► the guts of the TV are not substantially different

00:15:39 ◼   ► in terms of the decoding hardware and everything

00:15:41 ◼   ► than they were on last year's model of Sony television.

00:15:43 ◼   ► So that's part of why the limit has the limitations in gaming and stuff that the LG one doesn't sell you just ahead of them

00:15:49 ◼   ► on there so in the computer that is inside the television, so

00:15:53 ◼   ► You know, that's a shame. But seriously, you know for a television this price is no reason

00:15:58 ◼   ► It should have a hundred megabit Ethernet port or at least it should warn you about it. They don't use this

00:16:01 ◼   ► It's bad the fact that the USB port to the rescue. Jeez. What a world

00:16:05 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by the stack overflow podcast for more than a dozen years

00:16:13 ◼   ► The Stack Overflow podcast has been exploring

00:16:16 ◼   ► what it means to be a developer

00:16:17 ◼   ► and how the art and practice of software programming

00:16:19 ◼   ► is changing our world.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I have personally listened to the Stack Overflow podcast

00:16:24 ◼   ► for most of that time, I think.

00:16:27 ◼   ► This was one of the first podcasts

00:16:28 ◼   ► I ever listened to on a regular basis.

00:16:30 ◼   ► You know, back of, really, they've been doing it

00:16:32 ◼   ► for more than 12 years.

00:16:33 ◼   ► I remember listening to it on my way

00:16:35 ◼   ► back when I was working in the city,

00:16:37 ◼   ► working on Tumblr every day in like 2007, 2008

00:16:40 ◼   ► kind of timeframe.

00:16:41 ◼   ► I was listening to the Stack Overflow podcast.

00:16:43 ◼   ► They were talking about building Stack Overflow itself.

00:16:45 ◼   ► And you can imagine what Stack Overflow is

00:16:47 ◼   ► to the developer community.

00:16:48 ◼   ► It's this massive, important resource now.

00:16:51 ◼   ► The people who built that and the culture and the company

00:16:54 ◼   ► that they created over time, they're

00:16:56 ◼   ► now doing all sorts of great stuff, including the Stack

00:16:59 ◼   ► Overflow podcast.

00:17:00 ◼   ► From Rails to React, from Java to Node,

00:17:02 ◼   ► they host important conversations

00:17:04 ◼   ► and fascinating guests that will help

00:17:06 ◼   ► you understand how technology is made and where it's headed.

00:17:09 ◼   ► It's now hosted by Ben Popper, Matt Kieranander, Cassidy

00:17:13 ◼   ► Williams, and Ciora Ford.

00:17:15 ◼   ► So the Stack Overflow podcast is your home for all things code.

00:17:19 ◼   ► They offer new episodes twice a week.

00:17:21 ◼   ► And of course, it's available in every podcast app.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Wherever you get your podcasts, you

00:17:26 ◼   ► can find the Stack Overflow podcast.

00:17:28 ◼   ► So check it out.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I love Stack Overflow.

00:17:31 ◼   ► And I love the company they built.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And I love the product they built.

00:17:34 ◼   ► And the Stack Overflow podcast is exactly as good

00:17:36 ◼   ► as you'd think it would be from Stack Overflow itself.

00:17:38 ◼   ► See for yourself, once again,

00:17:40 ◼   ► the Stack Overflow podcast available

00:17:42 ◼   ► wherever you get your podcasts.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Thank you so much to the Stack Overflow podcast

00:17:46 ◼   ► for being in my ears for so many years

00:17:48 ◼   ► and for sponsoring our show.

00:17:50 ◼   ► - So in terms of the TiVo remote codes,

00:17:56 ◼   ► trying to get my TiVo remote to control the power

00:17:58 ◼   ► and the volume and everything on my television

00:17:59 ◼   ► and first the codes weren't working

00:18:01 ◼   ► and then I swapped the batteries

00:18:02 ◼   ► and then the codes were kind of working

00:18:03 ◼   ► but it was janky, especially for like volume up and down,

00:18:06 ◼   ► you'd hit the all volume up button

00:18:07 ◼   ► and nothing would happen, you'd hit it again

00:18:08 ◼   ► and it would go up three notches.

00:18:09 ◼   ► It was not quite working right.

00:18:12 ◼   ► So I actually did contact TiVo support,

00:18:14 ◼   ► which apparently still exists, and said,

00:18:16 ◼   ► hey, I've got this new TV.

00:18:18 ◼   ► I tried entering remote code.

00:18:19 ◼   ► None of them quite work the way I want them to.

00:18:22 ◼   ► What should I do?

00:18:22 ◼   ► And they replied and pointed me to the article

00:18:24 ◼   ► that I had already seen that many other people pointed me to

00:18:26 ◼   ► was like, oh, here's how you can make the remote scan

00:18:28 ◼   ► through all the codes with this, enter in 0999,

00:18:32 ◼   ► and it will just go through all the codes and press

00:18:34 ◼   ► the channel up button every two seconds

00:18:35 ◼   ► to keep going through the codes.

00:18:37 ◼   ► First of all, that article that tells you to do that,

00:18:39 ◼   ► like I understand what it's saying,

00:18:39 ◼   ► like oh, there's 10,000 codes,

00:18:40 ◼   ► you're not gonna type them all on yourself,

00:18:41 ◼   ► so just let the remote do it for you.

00:18:43 ◼   ► It never said what happens, what should happen.

00:18:46 ◼   ► All it said is every two seconds,

00:18:48 ◼   ► allow at least two seconds between presses

00:18:50 ◼   ► and then press channel up.

00:18:51 ◼   ► First of all, why am I doing that?

00:18:52 ◼   ► Why doesn't it just go through all the codes?

00:18:53 ◼   ► And second of all, what is supposed to happen

00:18:56 ◼   ► during this process, like when it finds the code?

00:18:59 ◼   ► Will it stop when it finds the code?

00:19:00 ◼   ► How does it know when it finds the code?

00:19:02 ◼   ► Should I be watching for something that happens?

00:19:04 ◼   ► Should I be watching for the tower to turn off

00:19:05 ◼   ► and then I should hit a button to say,

00:19:06 ◼   ► hey, you found it.

00:19:07 ◼   ► There's no, in the article,

00:19:09 ◼   ► doesn't tell you what you should do.

00:19:11 ◼   ► So either this doesn't work at all

00:19:13 ◼   ► or I don't understand what I'm supposed to do

00:19:14 ◼   ► 'cause I tried it like three times and nothing happens.

00:19:18 ◼   ► The television just sits there,

00:19:19 ◼   ► showing whatever it's showing.

00:19:21 ◼   ► The remote sits there and nothing ever happens.

00:19:24 ◼   ► So I don't understand it at all.

00:19:26 ◼   ► But anyway, they said that and that wasn't helpful.

00:19:29 ◼   ► And they said, if you have any other problems, contact Sony.

00:19:32 ◼   ► So they passed the buck.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So I don't know what I'm gonna do,

00:19:35 ◼   ► 'cause contacting Sony seems like it will not be fruitful.

00:19:37 ◼   ► At least TiVo replied and had a suggestion,

00:19:41 ◼   ► but not a great support experience,

00:19:45 ◼   ► 'cause I would feel like in the good old days of TiVo,

00:19:47 ◼   ► it would be like, it's their job to know all,

00:19:50 ◼   ► like they put these codes in the UI.

00:19:52 ◼   ► It's part of the TiVo experience.

00:19:53 ◼   ► It's like, don't worry, we'll figure this out for you.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Here, if you have a Sony television, here are the codes.

00:19:56 ◼   ► We figured them all out.

00:19:57 ◼   ► And when there's a new code, we put the new code in the UI.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And this is a brand new TV, and you would think,

00:20:02 ◼   ► oh, we're gonna be on top of this new TV.

00:20:03 ◼   ► we'll have the new codes for our router,

00:20:04 ◼   ► but nope, they just said if it still doesn't work,

00:20:07 ◼   ► this is all we know, if it still doesn't work, contact Sony.

00:20:09 ◼   ► - So, I'm sorry, you said that,

00:20:12 ◼   ► you mashed on the channel up button repeatedly,

00:20:14 ◼   ► which, okay, so far, so good,

00:20:16 ◼   ► channel up is an interesting choice,

00:20:18 ◼   ► but you said there's no way to indicate that it has worked?

00:20:23 ◼   ► Because my expectation is,

00:20:24 ◼   ► like I've done this with remotes before,

00:20:26 ◼   ► in fact, we'll talk about that later,

00:20:28 ◼   ► and what you would typically do is do like power or volume

00:20:30 ◼   ► or something like that,

00:20:31 ◼   ► something that's generic across any sort of input,

00:20:33 ◼   ► And then when you've hit the right one,

00:20:35 ◼   ► when the volume changes or the TV turns off or what have you,

00:20:38 ◼   ► then you hit a different button on the remote

00:20:40 ◼   ► to say to the remote, yeah, yeah, that was that last one.

00:20:43 ◼   ► That was the one.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Save it.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And you're saying that there's no option for that in the TiVo?

00:20:47 ◼   ► I mean, all I'm saying is the support document

00:20:49 ◼   ► didn't say that.

00:20:51 ◼   ► It just said, enter this code.

00:20:52 ◼   ► And then allowing at least two seconds between presses,

00:20:55 ◼   ► keep pressing the channel up button,

00:20:57 ◼   ► and it will try all sorts of codes.

00:20:58 ◼   ► The way you do it normally is you hold down

00:21:01 ◼   ► some buttons for five seconds.

00:21:02 ◼   ► you enter a four digit code,

00:21:03 ◼   ► and then you try the power button.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Like entering the four digit code says,

00:21:06 ◼   ► I'm going to be this kind of universal remote,

00:21:08 ◼   ► this universal remote code, right?

00:21:10 ◼   ► So as soon as, if you try the power button, it works,

00:21:12 ◼   ► you're done, 'cause you don't have to enter any more codes.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Like that configuration process,

00:21:15 ◼   ► it'll hold down the button so light turns on

00:21:16 ◼   ► and type in the four digit code, that's it, you're done.

00:21:18 ◼   ► There's no other step.

00:21:20 ◼   ► But the whole point of this other thing

00:21:21 ◼   ► is it's going to cycle through the codes.

00:21:23 ◼   ► And I don't, it didn't say like,

00:21:25 ◼   ► oh, when the television turns off,

00:21:26 ◼   ► the remote will just magically know,

00:21:28 ◼   ► and it will stop cycling.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Or when the television turns off,

00:21:30 ◼   ► quick hit this button to tell the remote,

00:21:31 ◼   ► "Hey, you found it."

00:21:32 ◼   ► It didn't say that in the support article,

00:21:33 ◼   ► so I don't understand if the support article says,

00:21:35 ◼   ► "Yeah, oh yeah, hold down the buttons that enter 0999,

00:21:38 ◼   ► "and then every two seconds hit channel up,

00:21:39 ◼   ► "and then just live there for the rest of your life

00:21:41 ◼   ► "hitting channel up every two seconds?"

00:21:42 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:21:43 ◼   ► - Real-time follow-up, RIP Mac, I guess Rip Mac,

00:21:48 ◼   ► says in the chat, at the very bottom it says, quote,

00:21:51 ◼   ► "If you press channel up and your TV turns off,

00:21:53 ◼   ► "press enter to select the code.

00:21:55 ◼   ► "Press the TV power button to test the code.

00:21:56 ◼   ► "If your TV turns on,

00:21:57 ◼   ► "you have successfully programmed the remote."

00:21:59 ◼   ► - This is interesting,

00:22:00 ◼   ► a different document than the one I had.

00:22:02 ◼   ► 'Cause the one I was pointed to was at a different URL

00:22:06 ◼   ► and it had the 0999 code, not the 199,

00:22:08 ◼   ► I guess the 199 one's for AV-ster receivers.

00:22:10 ◼   ► All right, so I mean, I can try that next time,

00:22:13 ◼   ► see if it'll go through all the codes,

00:22:14 ◼   ► but I do wonder if it's actually using all 1,000 of them.

00:22:18 ◼   ► The other thing is, how many codes is it going through

00:22:20 ◼   ► and how long it'll be sitting there hitting channel up?

00:22:22 ◼   ► Because I know a couple of them will at least work

00:22:24 ◼   ► for the power button and kind of work for the volume.

00:22:26 ◼   ► - It seems to me like it's just time

00:22:27 ◼   ► abandon that piece of crap TiVo am I right? No, still pretty good. Except for not 4k obviously.

00:22:34 ◼   ► There's got to be something that would serve these purposes without actually being a TiVo.

00:22:41 ◼   ► And somebody wrote in to scold me justifiably, and I don't have your name in front of me

00:22:45 ◼   ► I'm sorry, but to say you know Channels, which sponsored us once in the past and one of the

00:22:49 ◼   ► co-founders is a personal friend of mine, but Channels does darn near everything that

00:22:54 ◼   ► TiVo does, and arguably does it better.

00:22:57 ◼   ► And so, now I'm not a TiVo person,

00:22:59 ◼   ► I've never been a TiVo person,

00:23:00 ◼   ► so maybe I'm over selling here,

00:23:01 ◼   ► but it is worth thinking about.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Maybe it is time to get rid of the TiVo, Jon.

00:23:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, lots of people promoted the channel's UI,

00:23:08 ◼   ► especially as a way to not have to use the YouTube TV UI,

00:23:11 ◼   ► which other YouTube TV users also complain about,

00:23:14 ◼   ► like the guide thing only going one item at a time.

00:23:16 ◼   ► They say, well, you don't have to worry about that,

00:23:17 ◼   ► 'cause if you use channels, you don't have to use their UI,

00:23:19 ◼   ► you can just use the channel's UI, which is really nice,

00:23:21 ◼   ► lots of raves for that.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Problem with me for channels, at least right now,

00:23:25 ◼   ► is the product that they have,

00:23:27 ◼   ► like the hardware product that they have

00:23:28 ◼   ► that accepts cable cards, they don't manufacture anymore

00:23:30 ◼   ► and haven't manufactured a long time.

00:23:32 ◼   ► On their website they say, "Oh, just go on eBay and get it."

00:23:34 ◼   ► And that's not-- - No, no, no, no,

00:23:35 ◼   ► that's not true. - What I'm looking for.

00:23:36 ◼   ► - I'm almost sure, I'm not gonna search for it

00:23:39 ◼   ► while we're live, but I went down this road

00:23:42 ◼   ► just a couple of months ago to see if I could get

00:23:44 ◼   ► the HD home run that takes a cable card,

00:23:46 ◼   ► and I am pretty sure Amazon had some in stock at the time.

00:23:50 ◼   ► - Well, the getchannels.com website

00:23:53 ◼   ► it links to eBay now, so.

00:23:55 ◼   ► But the whole point is it's not a product they make anymore.

00:23:57 ◼   ► Their website, they say, we don't make that anymore.

00:23:59 ◼   ► So I'm--

00:24:00 ◼   ► - No, actually, I'm looking at it right now.

00:24:00 ◼   ► It's Silicon Dust HD Home Run Prime Cable TV 3 Tuner.

00:24:04 ◼   ► It takes a cable card, 150 bucks on Amazon,

00:24:07 ◼   ► available right now.

00:24:08 ◼   ► - Right, but they don't make it anymore.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Like, it's a dead product.

00:24:12 ◼   ► - It doesn't, and TiVo isn't?

00:24:14 ◼   ► Like, first of all, TiVo is too.

00:24:14 ◼   ► - No, they still make TiVos.

00:24:15 ◼   ► You can buy one right now.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - Well, first of all, I don't understand why you think

00:24:19 ◼   ► it's a dead product if I'm looking at it in--

00:24:21 ◼   ► - I know, but you can't make it.

00:24:22 ◼   ► don't make it anymore. I don't think that's true John I really honestly I

00:24:25 ◼   ► understand what channel says I'm not arguing that. One, this model is no longer

00:24:29 ◼   ► manufactured you can still find them on eBay though that's what it says on the

00:24:33 ◼   ► getchannels.com website. Yes but why wouldn't you trust Silicon Dust like I'm

00:24:38 ◼   ► pretty sure. But why don't they make it anymore why is there no replacement for it?

00:24:42 ◼   ► I think they do I'm pretty sure they do. It says on their website they don't. No but

00:24:46 ◼   ► you're getting confused channels doesn't make the hardware channels is just

00:24:50 ◼   ► talking about silicon dust hardware.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Channels is software only.

00:24:54 ◼   ► So they're not the arbiter of what silicon dust is

00:24:57 ◼   ► or is not doing.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And so if you go to silicon dust website,

00:25:02 ◼   ► it's so busted and ancient,

00:25:03 ◼   ► it says that it's actually in development,

00:25:05 ◼   ► but it's available on Amazon right now.

00:25:10 ◼   ► You can buy it right now.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I'm tempted to send it to you right now, but I'm too cheap.

00:25:14 ◼   ► So it is available.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I don't think it's a dead product, I really don't.

00:25:18 ◼   ► - Is it the same product they're talking about?

00:25:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I'm wondering, well, I don't--

00:25:20 ◼   ► - Yes, I'm pretty sure. - It's the HD Home Run Prime?

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Yes, that's what's on it.

00:25:24 ◼   ► Let me put the link in the show notes here.

00:25:26 ◼   ► - Why does Git Channel say,

00:25:27 ◼   ► "This model is no longer manufactured"?

00:25:29 ◼   ► - I understand what you're saying.

00:25:31 ◼   ► I get it, I really do.

00:25:33 ◼   ► I can't put an affiliate link in, that's annoying.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Anyway, I just sent you the link.

00:25:38 ◼   ► - Oh, Amazon has plenty of things

00:25:39 ◼   ► that aren't manufactured anymore, but anyway.

00:25:41 ◼   ► I mean, the real problem with the Git Channel thing,

00:25:43 ◼   ► from my perspective, aside from the sketchiness

00:25:46 ◼   ► of getting something that works with CableCard,

00:25:47 ◼   ► and by the way, it only has three tuners instead of six,

00:25:49 ◼   ► which is not great.

00:25:50 ◼   ► - How often do you need to record

00:25:51 ◼   ► more than three things at once?

00:25:53 ◼   ► - A surprising amount of time,

00:25:55 ◼   ► 'cause I've had six tuners for many, many years

00:25:57 ◼   ► and you just get used to not having to worry about it.

00:25:59 ◼   ► - How do you have time to watch all of this TV?

00:26:01 ◼   ► - Yes, seriously.

00:26:02 ◼   ► - It's just sometimes there's,

00:26:03 ◼   ► it's not that there's so much TV,

00:26:04 ◼   ► it's just like television,

00:26:06 ◼   ► there's a popular times for shows to be on.

00:26:08 ◼   ► - And you watch every,

00:26:09 ◼   ► so you're recording like ABC, CBS, Fox,

00:26:12 ◼   ► and all, and I can't even, NBC.

00:26:14 ◼   ► - Well, not network TV, come on,

00:26:15 ◼   ► I'm like this and that, that's madness.

00:26:16 ◼   ► - I'm just saying.

00:26:18 ◼   ► - On cable shows, there are popular times

00:26:19 ◼   ► multiple things on and then you might want to be watching something else. I don't think I need six,

00:26:23 ◼   ► but three is pushing because I think I had a three tuner TiVo and sometimes you would bump into

00:26:27 ◼   ► limits. Then get two of them! Yeah, I mean it starts to add up. Anyway, the other thing about

00:26:31 ◼   ► the, you know, so that thing with the cable cards is the cable card box thing doesn't actually

00:26:38 ◼   ► record anything, it is just to ferry the signal. So then you need to run the channel software on

00:26:44 ◼   ► some device and to its credit the channel thing runs on tons of things. It runs with Synology,

00:26:47 ◼   ► you can run it on a PC,

00:26:48 ◼   ► I think you can run it on a bunch of Apple devices,

00:26:51 ◼   ► but that means that you need to have a hard drive

00:26:53 ◼   ► that you're gonna dedicate to this,

00:26:54 ◼   ► or at least have enough hard drive space to store stuff,

00:26:56 ◼   ► which is great, you can have as much space as you want,

00:26:58 ◼   ► but bad in that now you have to buy and build this thing.

00:27:00 ◼   ► So I did look, I'm some kind of--

00:27:01 ◼   ► - No, Sean, I have it running on a Mac mini,

00:27:04 ◼   ► the reefer Mac mini that I just bought like a month ago,

00:27:07 ◼   ► and you know where it saves all of its stuff?

00:27:10 ◼   ► To the Synology.

00:27:11 ◼   ► (bell ringing)

00:27:12 ◼   ► Because why wouldn't you?

00:27:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, you can run,

00:27:13 ◼   ► I think you can run it on the Synology,

00:27:15 ◼   ► you don't even need a Mac mini, I think.

00:27:16 ◼   ► potentially, but I don't trust that.

00:27:19 ◼   ► - Maybe when my TiVo finally dies,

00:27:20 ◼   ► I will probably look into this.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I mean, what I really want to do

00:27:22 ◼   ► is not have the cable card either,

00:27:24 ◼   ► which is kind of the direction they're going.

00:27:25 ◼   ► You can do the whatever TV Anywhere thing

00:27:27 ◼   ► where it uses the API to get the stuff,

00:27:28 ◼   ► but it still kind of seems like on the fringes

00:27:31 ◼   ► even more so than TiVo,

00:27:33 ◼   ► because TiVo, for all its wonkiness,

00:27:36 ◼   ► has a very established tech stack.

00:27:38 ◼   ► There's nothing in the tech stack

00:27:40 ◼   ► that is imminently going to be destroyed,

00:27:42 ◼   ► other than cable card being essentially discontinued,

00:27:44 ◼   ► which is a bummer.

00:27:45 ◼   ► But aside from that, no sort of streaming service

00:27:49 ◼   ► is angry that TiVo is recording channels and stuff like that.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Whereas I can imagine the various streaming services,

00:27:54 ◼   ► even the ones that do currently support whatever API

00:27:56 ◼   ► they're using to scrape video from the web,

00:27:58 ◼   ► might decide that it's not in their best interest

00:28:00 ◼   ► to support that anymore.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Already, some of them don't support it.

00:28:03 ◼   ► So it just seems like more moving parts and more stuff

00:28:07 ◼   ► to deal with.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Now, that said, I'm kind of interested in just using it

00:28:10 ◼   ► just to see the interface and just connecting it

00:28:12 ◼   ► to streaming services.

00:28:13 ◼   ► Because you don't have to use cable card or do any cable.

00:28:14 ◼   ► You can just sign in with your streaming service credentials

00:28:18 ◼   ► or also sign in with your cable credentials,

00:28:20 ◼   ► and it will try to pull them from the web too,

00:28:22 ◼   ► because you don't need to use a cable card to use this.

00:28:24 ◼   ► So I'm going to look into that to see how that goes,

00:28:27 ◼   ► because if I can get YouTube TV-ish 4K content

00:28:30 ◼   ► for regular shows without cable card, which is what I want,

00:28:34 ◼   ► because that's kind of also a dead end,

00:28:36 ◼   ► I may be interested in that.

00:28:37 ◼   ► But really, I just want to see what the UI looks like.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - So real-time follow-up from John Maddox,

00:28:43 ◼   ► who is the aforementioned co-founder of channels,

00:28:47 ◼   ► I said, "Is this still being manufactured?"

00:28:50 ◼   ► Linking him what I did on Amazon.

00:28:52 ◼   ► And he said, "They found more of the chips last year.

00:28:55 ◼   ► They've been selling it again for a year."

00:28:58 ◼   ► - There was a box in the back

00:28:59 ◼   ► that had some more chips in it.

00:29:02 ◼   ► - So he said, "Having Fios, which you do, Jon,

00:29:06 ◼   ► you're silly for not getting one for channels.

00:29:08 ◼   ► It's hands down the best setup."

00:29:10 ◼   ► And he said, "Yeah, they weren't for sale for a while."

00:29:12 ◼   ► and I told him you were very, very worked up about the website and he said he would

00:29:16 ◼   ► change it for you tonight. So by the time you look at this listener, if you look in

00:29:20 ◼   ► the show notes, you may not see what Jon saw, but it will be updated soon. Anyway, Jon Maddox,

00:29:27 ◼   ► the co-founder, said it's not a dead product or it's not any more dead than Cablecart

00:29:32 ◼   ► is as a whole. So there you go.

00:29:34 ◼   ► So the co-founder of the company says that you should get this product. Got it.

00:29:38 ◼   ► - No, no, no, John, again, he doesn't care whether,

00:29:42 ◼   ► he doesn't get a cut from HD Home Run.

00:29:44 ◼   ► It's a different entire company.

00:29:45 ◼   ► - No, I get it, that's also kind of part of the problem.

00:29:47 ◼   ► - It doesn't sound like you get it though,

00:29:49 ◼   ► 'cause channels is just software.

00:29:50 ◼   ► - I was reading their website that said

00:29:52 ◼   ► it was no longer manufactured and that made,

00:29:53 ◼   ► and they also didn't have any information

00:29:56 ◼   ► about another cable card model, and that was like,

00:29:58 ◼   ► okay, well fine, this one isn't manufactured,

00:29:59 ◼   ► but I'll just buy the new one, right?

00:30:00 ◼   ► And they didn't have a link to that either,

00:30:02 ◼   ► so that makes me think, I mean, I know what you're saying,

00:30:04 ◼   ► like I said, cable card itself is, you know,

00:30:07 ◼   ► not really going to be a going concern for much longer and it kind of isn't anymore either but

00:30:12 ◼   ► it's what i'm currently using and tivo support it um and so i would and you can buy a brand new

00:30:18 ◼   ► tivo today that supports it a model that is still manufactured so tivo still got that one up there

00:30:24 ◼   ► i mean i hear you and as much as i love poking fun at you for using this ancient ass piece of

00:30:29 ◼   ► technology i really genuinely think that you would probably be better served by using channels and

00:30:36 ◼   ► in one of these boxes.

00:30:37 ◼   ► - What I would suggest to channels is,

00:30:41 ◼   ► for someone like me, who's a Mac person,

00:30:43 ◼   ► suggest a build.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I would build myself a little PC,

00:30:46 ◼   ► or suggest what is the best experience.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Should I use my Synology, or is mine too old in a week?

00:30:51 ◼   ► Should I use a Mac Mini like you?

00:30:53 ◼   ► That seems a pretty expensive way to do this, right?

00:30:54 ◼   ► And yeah, if there was a little,

00:30:56 ◼   ► oh, here's, if you wanna build yourself a PC

00:30:59 ◼   ► that works great with this setup,

00:31:02 ◼   ► here's a cheap way to do it.

00:31:03 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't wanna go through the research

00:31:05 ◼   ► building my own PC that does all this stuff,

00:31:07 ◼   ► and I'm not quite ready to buy a new Synology yet.

00:31:10 ◼   ► I don't wanna spend thousand plus dollars

00:31:12 ◼   ► on a Mac Mini to do it.

00:31:13 ◼   ► So, faced with that kind of situation where,

00:31:16 ◼   ► oh, they don't even make it, it's a different company,

00:31:19 ◼   ► it's all different people doing the things they want,

00:31:20 ◼   ► but if I just wanna go in and say,

00:31:21 ◼   ► I don't wanna deal with any of this,

00:31:22 ◼   ► I just want something that's as easy as TiVo

00:31:24 ◼   ► or as close as I can get,

00:31:25 ◼   ► they're still a little far from that in terms of the setup.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Obviously, if that's not what you want,

00:31:29 ◼   ► if you want the ability to customize it,

00:31:31 ◼   ► you can build it the way you want,

00:31:32 ◼   ► you can put the storage that you want,

00:31:34 ◼   ► then channels is great.

00:31:34 ◼   ► And apparently everybody loves the UI,

00:31:36 ◼   ► which is the main reason I'm looking into it.

00:31:38 ◼   ► But if you're just looking for that TiVo type experience,

00:31:41 ◼   ► now that TiVo is slowly fading away,

00:31:44 ◼   ► no one is there to take its place.

00:31:46 ◼   ► - I hear what you're saying,

00:31:48 ◼   ► but consider that I use a Mac Mini

00:31:50 ◼   ► because I don't wanna deal with supporting anything else.

00:31:53 ◼   ► - And you have a Mac Mini.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Like if I had one, I would use it.

00:31:55 ◼   ► - Right.

00:31:56 ◼   ► But if I wasn't doing it on this,

00:31:58 ◼   ► I believe they have a build for Raspberry Pis.

00:32:00 ◼   ► And of course, if I'm not gonna solve a problem

00:32:02 ◼   ► a with the Synology then I'll solve with Raspberry Pi. But I genuinely think you're making this

00:32:08 ◼   ► out to be much harder than it really is. I understand what you're saying, I really honestly

00:32:12 ◼   ► do. But if you got one of these tuner things, these HD home runs, which again, completely

00:32:18 ◼   ► and utterly different company than channels. If you got one of these and put your cable

00:32:21 ◼   ► card that's currently in the TiVo into this and hooked it up to any computer in the house,

00:32:27 ◼   ► you have so many computers in that house. I mean, any computer that's running 24/7 or

00:32:32 ◼   ► really running any time that you--

00:32:33 ◼   ► - I would have to be in the basement.

00:32:35 ◼   ► This stuff, that type of thing can't be

00:32:36 ◼   ► in the upstairs with the people.

00:32:38 ◼   ► - What thing?

00:32:39 ◼   ► What do you think--

00:32:41 ◼   ► - Anything that is not in the,

00:32:42 ◼   ► like any computer that's, unless it's completely silent,

00:32:46 ◼   ► any other computer doesn't stay up.

00:32:47 ◼   ► - Well, is Tina's iMac on 24/7?

00:32:50 ◼   ► - It's not an iMac.

00:32:51 ◼   ► She has a Mac Studio and it's under the desk

00:32:53 ◼   ► and it's on 24/7 and it's silent.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - So then, run the channel software on the Mac Studio.

00:32:58 ◼   ► You've already got your problem solved.

00:32:59 ◼   ► - Oh, no, I'm not gonna do that.

00:33:00 ◼   ► - Why?

00:33:01 ◼   ► 'Cause you restarting the computer

00:33:03 ◼   ► while someone's watching TV, right?

00:33:06 ◼   ► - How often do you restart the computer?

00:33:07 ◼   ► - I don't know what she does on her computer.

00:33:09 ◼   ► It's her computer, but she does not want,

00:33:11 ◼   ► and I don't want the state of her computer

00:33:13 ◼   ► to affect people watching television.

00:33:15 ◼   ► It's unacceptable entanglement.

00:33:17 ◼   ► - You are being incredibly difficult.

00:33:19 ◼   ► - I mean, I run the Plex server on her thing,

00:33:21 ◼   ► but a Plex, I don't have-- - Oh my God, John!

00:33:23 ◼   ► Why is that okay?

00:33:25 ◼   ► Why is it different?

00:33:26 ◼   ► - I don't have an SLA on my Plex server,

00:33:28 ◼   ► and I'm the only person who knows how to use Plex,

00:33:30 ◼   ► So it's not like it has anyone else's stuff on it.

00:33:32 ◼   ► - Holy smokes, my dude.

00:33:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:34 ◼   ► (sighing)

00:33:34 ◼   ► Am I just getting--

00:33:35 ◼   ► - I also, I mean, I also run the Plex server

00:33:36 ◼   ► in the Synology too.

00:33:37 ◼   ► So if the Plex server is,

00:33:39 ◼   ► I have so many Plex servers in my house.

00:33:41 ◼   ► If that Plex server is down, you can go to the one on,

00:33:43 ◼   ► I have it on two Synologies.

00:33:44 ◼   ► So you can go to either one.

00:33:45 ◼   ► - Oh my God. - And yes,

00:33:46 ◼   ► they all point to the same data.

00:33:47 ◼   ► So you can go to any of those.

00:33:50 ◼   ► - Why? - Any three Plex servers.

00:33:51 ◼   ► - I don't even have two Plex servers running in this house

00:33:53 ◼   ► and I'm obsessed with Plex.

00:33:54 ◼   ► - You should, it's handy.

00:33:56 ◼   ► I mean, I have everything being mirrored, right?

00:33:58 ◼   ► - So I have, her Plex server points to the Synology

00:34:02 ◼   ► with just an SMB mount of the Synology, right?

00:34:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the way mine works.

00:34:05 ◼   ► - And then Synology obviously runs Plex

00:34:08 ◼   ► with its local storage.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And then I have a second Synology

00:34:11 ◼   ► that I clone the first Synology to,

00:34:12 ◼   ► and that runs its own copy of Plex on the clone of the data,

00:34:15 ◼   ► which is kept in sync with the synchronization service

00:34:18 ◼   ► that we couldn't remember the name of that at the time.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - Well, all I'm saying is this doesn't have to be

00:34:24 ◼   ► as difficult as you're making it out to be.

00:34:25 ◼   ► I understand how you got to where you are,

00:34:28 ◼   ► but you were making this way harder than it needs to be.

00:34:30 ◼   ► - I'll say, what I really just want is a 4K TiVo.

00:34:32 ◼   ► Do you have the co-founder of TiVo on the phone with you?

00:34:34 ◼   ► Oh no, they're long gone.

00:34:36 ◼   ► - No, but I can tell you this,

00:34:39 ◼   ► I don't know if actually channels does do 4K,

00:34:41 ◼   ► but I bet you if anything could feed at 4K,

00:34:43 ◼   ► I would be surprised if it didn't accept it and eat it.

00:34:46 ◼   ► - I think to get 4K, it would, I mean, I don't know,

00:34:48 ◼   ► but I don't think cable car can even handle that.

00:34:50 ◼   ► I think it would have to be the streaming service thing,

00:34:51 ◼   ► 'cause get channels can just pull stuff

00:34:53 ◼   ► from your streaming service

00:34:55 ◼   ► and any of the various streaming service.

00:34:56 ◼   ► That's how it works with YouTube TV and stuff like that.

00:34:58 ◼   ► - Yes, although I think that 720,

00:35:01 ◼   ► which is not channels is fault,

00:35:02 ◼   ► I think that's what the streaming service

00:35:03 ◼   ► gives you via TV everywhere,

00:35:05 ◼   ► but I could be wrong about that.

00:35:07 ◼   ► I don't know, all I'm saying is the software

00:35:08 ◼   ► is super easy to install,

00:35:10 ◼   ► migrating it is hilarious.

00:35:12 ◼   ► Like when I migrated from the old Mac Mini

00:35:13 ◼   ► to the new Mac Mini,

00:35:14 ◼   ► doing the Plex migration was not a nightmare,

00:35:17 ◼   ► but was not fun.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Doing the channels migration was basically

00:35:20 ◼   ► install the channel software

00:35:21 ◼   ► and then point it at the right folder

00:35:22 ◼   ► and then magic happens.

00:35:23 ◼   ► It's as though it was on that machine forever.

00:35:26 ◼   ► So it really is really, and again, John, the other John, is a friend of mine.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I'm a little bit biased, but I went kicking and screaming into using channels.

00:35:35 ◼   ► He kept beating me up about it, like, "Why are you using Plex? Why are you using Plex? Use this, use this."

00:35:39 ◼   ► And I don't think channels is a reasonable replacement for Plex, although you could do that.

00:35:44 ◼   ► But I will say, as a DVR, channels really is fantastic. Plus you can set it up to do fun things

00:35:50 ◼   ► like make a virtual channel that just plays Letterkenny 24/7, which I have done,

00:35:55 ◼   ► or whatever your particular vice may be.

00:35:57 ◼   ► So genuinely, I mean, they are a former sponsor,

00:36:00 ◼   ► the guy is a friend of mine, so take all this

00:36:01 ◼   ► with as much salt as you desire,

00:36:03 ◼   ► but hand to God, it really is great software,

00:36:06 ◼   ► and it's worth trying out.

00:36:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will try as much of it as I can

00:36:10 ◼   ► without changing any hardware setups,

00:36:12 ◼   ► and just to see if I like the UI or whatever,

00:36:13 ◼   ► and then I'll see where I go with it,

00:36:14 ◼   ► kind of like I did with YouTube TV.

00:36:16 ◼   ► I knew when I got the new setup, I was gonna try it.

00:36:18 ◼   ► You know, I stumbled on the UI.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - I would definitely give it a roll.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Final TV thing, the mystery of the box.

00:36:27 ◼   ► How does that box work?

00:36:29 ◼   ► The top and the bottom halves don't seem to stay together

00:36:32 ◼   ► and yet somehow it got into my house.

00:36:35 ◼   ► The answer was that apparently I blacked out

00:36:36 ◼   ► when the TV was delivered

00:36:38 ◼   ► because when it was delivered to my house,

00:36:40 ◼   ► it had two of those thin plastic mesh straps

00:36:45 ◼   ► that come on packages wrapped around the thing.

00:36:49 ◼   ► So I'll put a tweet in the show notes

00:36:52 ◼   ► you can see exactly what it looks like.

00:36:54 ◼   ► Yeah, and I cut those off,

00:36:57 ◼   ► and that's what was holding the top to the bottom,

00:36:58 ◼   ► but I totally forgot that I had cut those off.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - Oh, sweet.

00:37:02 ◼   ► - I mean, no, I mean, you can't, they're not,

00:37:04 ◼   ► like, you have to cut them off to open the box.

00:37:06 ◼   ► - Are you able to properly disconnect those

00:37:10 ◼   ► and throw them away without cutting your hand?

00:37:12 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm not.

00:37:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, you just gotta be careful.

00:37:14 ◼   ► - Like, literally every time I operate

00:37:16 ◼   ► those plastic strap things, I'm like, all right, careful,

00:37:18 ◼   ► don't get a cut, like, it's like a paper cut.

00:37:21 ◼   ► - Easy, easy.

00:37:22 ◼   ► - Hiding it through your hands or something?

00:37:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, somehow I do that and I always cut my finger.

00:37:26 ◼   ► It's like a big paper cut, it's terrible.

00:37:28 ◼   ► It's like the worst, and I have never operated those things

00:37:31 ◼   ► and successfully gotten them from the box

00:37:33 ◼   ► to the trash can all the way without getting a cut.

00:37:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, those things are a nightmare.

00:37:38 ◼   ► All right, anything else about your TV or are you solid?

00:37:41 ◼   ► - I think that's it for now.

00:37:43 ◼   ► - Are you enjoying it?

00:37:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, we watch some stuff on it.

00:37:45 ◼   ► I mean, you know, having a TV.

00:37:47 ◼   ► - Some?

00:37:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I've been podcasting a lot,

00:37:49 ◼   ► but other people have been watching it,

00:37:51 ◼   ► But having a fancy TV really, you know, now it was easier before when I could be like,

00:37:55 ◼   ► "Oh, this show is in 1080.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Oh, this is in HDR."

00:37:58 ◼   ► Like, all the things that I never noticed or cared about before.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Now there's this hierarchy of like, you're more excited to watch shows that take advantage

00:38:07 ◼   ► of the features of your new TV and less excited to do ones that...

00:38:10 ◼   ► Because honestly, like a 1080 SDR show, it looks better than it did on my old TV, but

00:38:16 ◼   ► not wow you better, because it's 1080 and it's SDR and it's being upscaled and, you

00:38:20 ◼   ► know.

00:38:21 ◼   ► - I hear you.

00:38:22 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Trade Coffee.

00:38:27 ◼   ► You know, people know I'm a coffee nerd

00:38:28 ◼   ► and they often ask me, "Hey, what's the best coffee?

00:38:30 ◼   ► "What kind of coffee should I get?"

00:38:31 ◼   ► And I always tell them, "Get freshly roasted beans.

00:38:34 ◼   ► "That matters more than anything else.

00:38:36 ◼   ► "Get them freshly roasted."

00:38:37 ◼   ► Trade is a great way to get fresh roasted beans

00:38:41 ◼   ► delivered to you however often you need it

00:38:44 ◼   ► and from 60 of the country's best craft roasters.

00:38:47 ◼   ► They keep over 450 different kinds of coffee,

00:38:51 ◼   ► live and ready to ship in their system every single day.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Because they know that there's no one perfect coffee

00:38:57 ◼   ► for everyone, but there might be a perfect coffee for you,

00:39:00 ◼   ► and Trades human-powered algorithm will find it.

00:39:03 ◼   ► They are so confident they will match you

00:39:05 ◼   ► with the coffee that you love the very first time,

00:39:08 ◼   ► that if they don't, they'll take your feedback

00:39:10 ◼   ► and an actual coffee expert will work with you

00:39:11 ◼   ► to send you a brand new bag for free.

00:39:14 ◼   ► This is a great service to try a bunch of coffee.

00:39:16 ◼   ► You tell them what you like.

00:39:18 ◼   ► You tell them things like, I like maybe a medium

00:39:20 ◼   ► or a light roast or whatever it is,

00:39:22 ◼   ► you tell them how you're brewing it,

00:39:23 ◼   ► what kind of brewer you're using,

00:39:24 ◼   ► whether you need it to be ground by them

00:39:26 ◼   ► or whether you're gonna grind it yourself,

00:39:28 ◼   ► certain other flavors you might like or dislike,

00:39:30 ◼   ► and they have this system that matches you

00:39:32 ◼   ► to exactly what is gonna be best for you.

00:39:35 ◼   ► And it gives you a nice variety too.

00:39:36 ◼   ► You don't get the same thing every week,

00:39:38 ◼   ► you get something that fits your profile every week.

00:39:41 ◼   ► And they even ask you,

00:39:42 ◼   ► how much do you wanna be surprised?

00:39:44 ◼   ► Basically, how much variability do you want?

00:39:46 ◼   ► It's a great service at Trade.

00:39:48 ◼   ► They have an amazing selection and the variety you get from them is incredible.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Right now Trade is offering new subscribers a total of $30 off your first order plus free

00:39:57 ◼   ► shipping when you go to www.drinktrade.com/atp.

00:40:02 ◼   ► That's more than 40 cups of coffee for free.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Get started by taking their quiz at www.drinktrade.com/atp and let Trade find you a coffee you'll love.

00:40:12 ◼   ► That's www.drinktrade.com/atp for $30 off.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Trade for sponsoring our show.

00:40:19 ◼   ► The two of you went on vacation recently

00:40:25 ◼   ► and I was curious to hear your respective tech experiences.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Every year when Jon does this trip,

00:40:32 ◼   ► we get a camera report of how the camera situation

00:40:35 ◼   ► has changed and evolved and how it performed.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And Casey, when you take your vacation,

00:40:39 ◼   ► usually I know you take good drone photos

00:40:43 ◼   ► and you probably connected at least four

00:40:45 ◼   ► or five Apple TVs to a hotel or rental TV at some point

00:40:49 ◼   ► through your various HDMI cables

00:40:50 ◼   ► that you keep in your travel pack.

00:40:52 ◼   ► So I'm wondering what kind of tech experiences

00:40:56 ◼   ► do you have in your vacations?

00:40:57 ◼   ► - I mean, let me start 'cause I don't think I have that much

00:41:00 ◼   ► to be honest with you.

00:41:01 ◼   ► The big to do with regard to my travel a couple of weeks

00:41:05 ◼   ► back was the aforementioned issues with HomeKit

00:41:08 ◼   ► and the Apple TV.

00:41:09 ◼   ► And the Apple TV being convinced that my home

00:41:12 ◼   ► was actually now in Cape Charles rather than in Richmond,

00:41:15 ◼   ► which was super fun.

00:41:17 ◼   ► But other than that, not that much was that different.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Having my desktop computer come with me was kind of neat

00:41:23 ◼   ► because I only have a laptop now,

00:41:25 ◼   ► and that is my only computer. - Desktop laptop.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, yep.

00:41:28 ◼   ► So that was kind of neat, I kind of liked that.

00:41:29 ◼   ► It was nice to be able to process photos as much as I do

00:41:34 ◼   ► with my Kakamimi setup, and then because I was connected

00:41:37 ◼   ► to my VPN at home, I could copy and upload

00:41:40 ◼   ► all of those photos to the Synology as though I was at home from the beach. So I

00:41:45 ◼   ► didn't have to do like, you know, several hours of going through all of them when

00:41:49 ◼   ► I got home. I just did a little bit each day with the pictures I had taken and

00:41:52 ◼   ► then just uploaded them just like I always do. Granted it was a little bit

00:41:57 ◼   ► slower from the beach because they were on a, you know, a cable connection with

00:42:00 ◼   ► not a particularly strong upload side connection but nevertheless... You couldn't

00:42:04 ◼   ► find a really fast bench there. Yeah, right exactly. No, unfortunately not. But

00:42:09 ◼   ► nevertheless, you know, it's nice having your desktop with you, which I enjoy. And

00:42:12 ◼   ► then I wrote a blog post about this like a week ago, and I'll put this in the show

00:42:16 ◼   ► notes, but I have, as Marco mentioned, a Go pack. And what I mean by that is I have

00:42:21 ◼   ► a, it's actually a Harry's, former sponsor Harry's shaving, I have a Harry's

00:42:27 ◼   ► toiletry kit that just so happens to be like a perfect size to carry all of my

00:42:31 ◼   ► travel cables and things and whatnots. And so it used to be that I had just an

00:42:38 ◼   ► obscene amount of cables in there. And in short, what I did was I would get, I had one of those,

00:42:45 ◼   ► like, plug it into the wall in boxes and then it had five USB-A connections on it. And so I would

00:42:52 ◼   ► typically use four of them. At the very least, I would use one for Aaron's phone, one for Aaron's

00:42:57 ◼   ► watch, one for my phone, one for my watch. And then I would have some USB-A extension cables so

00:43:02 ◼   ► that the box would be on my side of the bed, but I could, you know, put a couple extensions and then

00:43:07 ◼   ► and then a lightning cable on the end of those extensions

00:43:09 ◼   ► so I could get the connection all the way

00:43:11 ◼   ► to Erin's side of the bed

00:43:12 ◼   ► so she can put her phone down when she's ready

00:43:14 ◼   ► rather than having to hand it to me for me to plug in.

00:43:16 ◼   ► And it was just cables upon cables upon cables upon cables,

00:43:20 ◼   ► and it was annoying.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And what I ended up doing, as we spoke about

00:43:25 ◼   ► a few episodes ago,

00:43:25 ◼   ► is getting these absurdly overpriced Mophie things.

00:43:28 ◼   ► And that was super nice

00:43:30 ◼   ► because all I had to do was plug in two of those.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And then they have MagSafe,

00:43:34 ◼   ► they have the Apple Watch chargers on them,

00:43:36 ◼   ► and that worked out real well and I liked that.

00:43:39 ◼   ► I did bring the Apple TV and connected that via HDMI.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I connected the Switch with the Switch dock via HDMI.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Oh, and the other thing I did was,

00:43:50 ◼   ► Merlin turned me onto this idea.

00:43:52 ◼   ► I brought with me, I don't remember the exact model name,

00:43:57 ◼   ► but it's on the blog post that I'll link in the show notes,

00:43:59 ◼   ► I brought my own universal remote,

00:44:01 ◼   ► which I use now when I go to hotels or Airbnbs and whatnot,

00:44:05 ◼   ► because people say, and maybe this is BS,

00:44:07 ◼   ► but people say that remote controls

00:44:10 ◼   ► are some of the most disgusting things

00:44:11 ◼   ► in like a hotel room or what have you.

00:44:13 ◼   ► And because of that, I've decided, yep, no thanks,

00:44:16 ◼   ► I'll just bring my own, which is a little bit tinfoil hat,

00:44:18 ◼   ► I'll be the first to tell you.

00:44:19 ◼   ► But I did that and that lets you program in

00:44:23 ◼   ► what TV or whatever you're using

00:44:25 ◼   ► based on a four or five digit code.

00:44:26 ◼   ► And it also does the whole scanning dance

00:44:29 ◼   ► like we were talking about earlier.

00:44:30 ◼   ► But I brought that and used that on the TV there

00:44:33 ◼   ► and that worked great.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And unlike last year, I didn't lose one of the Apple TV remotes in the house, so I didn't have to spend $70 when I got home.

00:44:41 ◼   ► That's an expensive loss.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I was really pissed. And this was right after it came out, too. I was really, really pissed about it.

00:44:47 ◼   ► But nonetheless, it worked out real well.

00:44:51 ◼   ► The drone, I didn't use it quite as much. It was really windy when we were there,

00:44:54 ◼   ► and windier than my little Mavic Mini or DJI Mini 2 could handle.

00:45:00 ◼   ► But I did take a few shots and I gotta tell you, even though I don't use the drone that often,

00:45:05 ◼   ► about a year and change on, maybe a year and a half on, I am still glad I bought it and I still do

00:45:10 ◼   ► enjoy using it. And I still think aerial photography is super fun, partially because it's just not

00:45:16 ◼   ► something that a lot of people are capable of doing in the sense that they haven't spent obscene

00:45:19 ◼   ► amount of money on a drone. But I do enjoy it quite a bit and I wish I had had the opportunity

00:45:26 ◼   ► to get out more, but like I said, it was just the weather was super crummy in terms of wind. Like,

00:45:30 ◼   ► Like it was fine in, you know, human terms, but in for the drone it was really bad and that was that was unfortunate

00:45:37 ◼   ► But I think that was mostly it. The only problem I had was

00:45:41 ◼   ► We we when we were up when we're driving up. I like to use my GoPro as kind of a poor man's

00:45:49 ◼   ► Dashcam and what I'll do is I'll put the GoPro pointed out the front of Aaron's car and I'll put it on time-lapse mode

00:45:55 ◼   ► So it takes a picture of photo still every like second and my theory is

00:45:59 ◼   ► is it's better than nothing if, god forbid, we get in some sort of accident. I'll have some sort of

00:46:03 ◼   ► documentation of what happened, right? And the problem with that, though, is that on a two and a

00:46:07 ◼   ► half hour trip, which in this case ended up being three and a half hours because of traffic,

00:46:11 ◼   ► the GoPro will deplete its battery during the span of that time. And so I typically use a battery

00:46:18 ◼   ► pack that I keep in my laptop bag, which is also mentioned in this blog post. I'll connect that to

00:46:21 ◼   ► the GoPro and it'll keep the GoPro charged fine. But in this case, I thought to myself, "I wonder

00:46:27 ◼   ► if I could use my travel computer charger, which is a very unremarkable, what is it,

00:46:35 ◼   ► GAN, I don't remember, something nitride or something?

00:46:38 ◼   ► Gallium nitride?

00:46:39 ◼   ► Something like that, yeah, yeah.

00:46:41 ◼   ► So basically it's a physically small charger, and I thought, man, I wonder if I could use

00:46:46 ◼   ► that to plug in, so it's an AC adapter, and I wonder if I could plug in the GoPro in my

00:46:51 ◼   ► iPad, which I was using for most of the trip, or maybe even my computer if I felt it, plug

00:46:56 ◼   ► both of those into the AC adapter, and then we have a very, very old inverter. So this

00:47:02 ◼   ► is a thing you plug it into the cigarette lighter, and it has an AC outlet on the other

00:47:05 ◼   ► end. And I thought, "Well, I wonder if I could plug this in and power the GoPro off of the

00:47:10 ◼   ► car rather than this battery pack, and then plug in my iPad as well, which would be kind

00:47:14 ◼   ► of nice." Because my iPad now, since my switch to Verizon, it has cellular service. And I

00:47:20 ◼   ► got to tell you, Marco, have you known how wonderful it is to have cellular service on

00:47:24 ◼   ► device other than your phone. Imagine, Marco, how freaking great it would be to

00:47:28 ◼   ► have that on your desktop laptop. Are we are you talking about Verizon's ultra

00:47:31 ◼   ► fast worldwide 5G network? That's exactly right. But seriously, I really wish I had the option for that on a

00:47:38 ◼   ► computer because I know it would be obscenely expensive and I would grumble

00:47:42 ◼   ► about it for months but I would be so happy to have it. No, it wouldn't have to be. It's

00:47:46 ◼   ► only like $129 premium on the iPad. Yeah, but you know they would charge $250

00:47:50 ◼   ► on a Mac. Well, of course they would but like it doesn't it doesn't have to be.

00:47:53 ◼   ► You know, I feel like we do a slight disservice

00:47:57 ◼   ► whenever we make it seem like this is some huge reach

00:48:01 ◼   ► to add cellular to a Mac.

00:48:02 ◼   ► It's not.

00:48:03 ◼   ► It's been done on PCs forever,

00:48:05 ◼   ► and you can do it on Macs with those USB dongle modem things

00:48:09 ◼   ► that they've had forever.

00:48:11 ◼   ► I don't know, do those still exist?

00:48:13 ◼   ► I used to use those back in the day.

00:48:14 ◼   ► I don't know if they-- - I don't even know.

00:48:16 ◼   ► - They probably do, but anyway.

00:48:17 ◼   ► It's not like this is a hard thing

00:48:19 ◼   ► to add cellular to laptops.

00:48:20 ◼   ► It can be done.

00:48:21 ◼   ► And yeah, there's a couple of minor things

00:48:23 ◼   ► have to do with Mac OS to make it aware of like,

00:48:25 ◼   ► hey maybe don't download the latest episode of Mad Men

00:48:28 ◼   ► from iTunes over cellular and burn up your whole data usage.

00:48:30 ◼   ► - Not that you've ever done that.

00:48:31 ◼   ► - No, definitely not.

00:48:33 ◼   ► But they already have almost all of that infrastructure

00:48:36 ◼   ► in place in the recent URL session and URL connection APIs.

00:48:41 ◼   ► All that stuff is already there for detecting

00:48:44 ◼   ► metered connections and limited connections

00:48:45 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:48:47 ◼   ► So anyway, it's not that much work to add cellular

00:48:50 ◼   ► to the laptops, just like what are we waiting for?

00:48:52 ◼   ► just do it it's fine yes yes please but anyway so I wanted to power all this we

00:48:56 ◼   ► have my inverter and the inverter we haven't used that in years like it still

00:49:01 ◼   ► works but I think the last thing that was plugged into it was a breast pump

00:49:04 ◼   ► when Aaron was breastfeeding so like it's it hasn't been used in a while but

00:49:08 ◼   ► nevertheless I tried plugging in this like I don't know 80 90 watt Gann charger

00:49:13 ◼   ► and the inverter was like you know nope that's way too much and so none of this

00:49:17 ◼   ► was a problem but I have since purchased and I'll put a link in the show notes a

00:49:21 ◼   ► a pure sine wave inverter, which is very cool, and that has two AC outlets on it and supposedly

00:49:27 ◼   ► is up to 300 watts and actually does it actually has a 60 watt USB-C PD port on it in and of itself

00:49:34 ◼   ► so I may not even need to plug in my GaN charger if I'm only plugging in one device. But anyway,

00:49:39 ◼   ► I'm going to try that out and next time we're on a longer trip and see if that works because

00:49:43 ◼   ► that would be kind of cool. But I don't know, for the most part it was basically same old stuff,

00:49:47 ◼   ► But I tell you, when you do have your travel setup locked in and squared away, which I feel like I do pretty well now,

00:49:54 ◼   ► it is super nice. And again, I preach the gospel of the Go Pack. Just have a package or a packet or a bag or what have you

00:50:02 ◼   ► that has cables that you never ever use for anything else. You never ever use for anything else.

00:50:11 ◼   ► One more time, you never use it for anything else. And then, you know at a moment's notice,

00:50:17 ◼   ► all you have to do is grab that bag. You don't have to worry about, "Oh, I gotta undo the thing

00:50:20 ◼   ► by the bed," or, "Oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do that." No, you just grab the bag. You grab the bag

00:50:24 ◼   ► and you're set. I cannot preach this gospel loudly enough. - I, too, do that. Like, I have--so,

00:50:29 ◼   ► first of all, like, I used to be a little bit more of a backpack nerd, and I had, you know,

00:50:33 ◼   ► three or four different bags. You know, I would watch Chase Reeves' reviews on YouTube and get

00:50:37 ◼   ► all the cool bags he recommended, and I loved how, you know, how cool the different ones were.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And I realized over time that it was kind of a pain in the butt to have a bunch of different

00:50:47 ◼   ► bags to have to keep stuff shuffled between or never quite have the stuff you think you

00:50:51 ◼   ► have or have to maintain duplicate copies of everything.

00:50:54 ◼   ► So I went down to just having one backpack.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And that's the backpack I bring to everything.

00:50:58 ◼   ► And in that backpack is what you're talking about.

00:51:01 ◼   ► A complete set of everything, cables, chargers, adapters.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And those things are only used outside of my home.

00:51:09 ◼   ► They are never used in the home.

00:51:11 ◼   ► They are never taken out of the backpack

00:51:13 ◼   ► because then they will never go back into the backpack.

00:51:15 ◼   ► And then when I'm out somewhere, I won't have them.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And so, I do the same thing and it is so, so worth it.

00:51:22 ◼   ► - And it's expensive.

00:51:23 ◼   ► A lot of these things, like Apple dongles,

00:51:25 ◼   ► are super expensive.

00:51:26 ◼   ► These freaking $150 Mophie things that I do love,

00:51:29 ◼   ► but obviously that's silly expensive.

00:51:32 ◼   ► But I do genuinely think, as frugal as I am,

00:51:36 ◼   ► spending the money on having a complete go pack

00:51:39 ◼   ► that is redundant for things that you would use

00:51:41 ◼   ► in the house, I can't speak it highly enough.

00:51:44 ◼   ► - I mean, and the good thing is too,

00:51:45 ◼   ► like over time, we need fewer of these things.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And this is, by the way, this is part of the reason

00:51:50 ◼   ► why I push so hard on getting rid of lightning.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Because if we get rid of lightning,

00:51:53 ◼   ► I need even fewer of these things.

00:51:55 ◼   ► But now that everything is USB-C everywhere,

00:51:59 ◼   ► we have USB-C multi-port chargers, as you mentioned,

00:52:02 ◼   ► like the new generation of GaN chargers is even smaller

00:52:06 ◼   ► and can fit even more ports and even more wattage.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Like, so we have this amazing abundance

00:52:11 ◼   ► of great charging equipment and technology now,

00:52:15 ◼   ► and it's really just kind of waiting

00:52:16 ◼   ► for Apple to make it simpler.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Like, you know, the thorns on my side

00:52:19 ◼   ► are the, are Lightning and the Apple Watch.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Like, those things needing their own

00:52:24 ◼   ► special charging things are annoying,

00:52:26 ◼   ► but otherwise, like, so many things

00:52:28 ◼   ► that we used to need in the past, we don't need.

00:52:30 ◼   ► And with this new generation of laptops,

00:52:32 ◼   ► you don't even need most of the dongles anymore.

00:52:33 ◼   ► Like, you need a way to get a USB-A sometimes,

00:52:37 ◼   ► but that's about it.

00:52:38 ◼   ► I have my SD card now built in,

00:52:41 ◼   ► HDMI's built in if I ever need it,

00:52:42 ◼   ► although I probably won't, but you do,

00:52:44 ◼   ► other people use it.

00:52:45 ◼   ► So a lot of that stuff went away now,

00:52:47 ◼   ► it's new generation, so hopefully it'll keep

00:52:49 ◼   ► moving this direction and get more and more standardized,

00:52:51 ◼   ► more USB-C stuff, fewer custom chargers from Apple,

00:52:55 ◼   ► and fewer reasons to carry around

00:52:56 ◼   ► the mini USB adapters for other crap.

00:52:59 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, yep, yep.

00:53:01 ◼   ► John, how was your trip?

00:53:02 ◼   ► - I'm gonna comment on the travel bag thing first,

00:53:03 ◼   ► 'cause you guys talk about this a lot,

00:53:04 ◼   ► and Merlin talks about it a lot,

00:53:05 ◼   ► And if it's a thing that makes you feel good to have,

00:53:10 ◼   ► which obviously it does for both of you, then fine.

00:53:13 ◼   ► But I would say, practically speaking,

00:53:15 ◼   ► I don't think either one of you travels enough.

00:53:18 ◼   ► This is a requirement in your life.

00:53:19 ◼   ► No, I agree.

00:53:20 ◼   ► You're not a spy that the CIA is going to call you

00:53:23 ◼   ► until your identity is burned and you have to leave

00:53:24 ◼   ► in a moment's notice.

00:53:25 ◼   ► You want to make sure you have all the adapters.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Like, it's just a fun thing that you're doing,

00:53:29 ◼   ► either to keep Dave and Dogs at bay

00:53:30 ◼   ► or just because it's a fun convenience

00:53:32 ◼   ► that you spend a little bit extra money for

00:53:33 ◼   ► and it gives Marco something to put in his backpacks.

00:53:35 ◼   ► but I certainly do travel. - Backpack singular.

00:53:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, sorry.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - Backpack monogamous now.

00:53:40 ◼   ► I've given up my old ways.

00:53:42 ◼   ► - I travel so little, and when I do travel,

00:53:45 ◼   ► I bring the stuff that I need to put in me,

00:53:47 ◼   ► and it's not a big deal, but you know,

00:53:49 ◼   ► if this is a thing that you're into

00:53:50 ◼   ► and you wanna have a go bag, you can have a go bag.

00:53:52 ◼   ► I do not have a go bag.

00:53:54 ◼   ► When I go, I put things in a bag.

00:53:55 ◼   ► It's a little bit different.

00:53:57 ◼   ► - Boo. - Sorry, and it's cool,

00:53:59 ◼   ► it's fun, I'm just saying, like,

00:54:00 ◼   ► if you're listening to this,

00:54:01 ◼   ► we preach the same gospel, like,

00:54:02 ◼   ► oh, you really need backups or whatever,

00:54:04 ◼   ► I'm gonna say this is a different category of things.

00:54:05 ◼   ► Like, back up your family photos,

00:54:07 ◼   ► but if you don't have a go bag, you'll probably be fine.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Unless you're like a frequent business traveler,

00:54:10 ◼   ► in which case you should definitely have this,

00:54:11 ◼   ► because you will forget stuff,

00:54:13 ◼   ► but none of us are frequent business travelers.

00:54:15 ◼   ► - By the way, I travel more than both of you.

00:54:17 ◼   ► - I know, you go back and forth.

00:54:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:20 ◼   ► But when you do that, you're not bringing your go bag,

00:54:23 ◼   ► 'cause you've got stuff at both places.

00:54:24 ◼   ► - No, I'm bringing my backpack every time.

00:54:26 ◼   ► You know what's also in my backpack?

00:54:27 ◼   ► The car key, the house key, like an inhaler.

00:54:30 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, do you have to have a special go bag

00:54:33 ◼   ► to keep your wallet and car keys in?

00:54:34 ◼   ► No, everyone just puts them in,

00:54:36 ◼   ► brings them with them when they go and--

00:54:37 ◼   ► - No, but if I'm gonna take a boat across the bay first,

00:54:42 ◼   ► I wanna make sure that--

00:54:42 ◼   ► - But you're not bringing,

00:54:44 ◼   ► make sure you have adapters to connect to your iPad

00:54:46 ◼   ► and your phone and your watch charger.

00:54:48 ◼   ► That's not essential for you to bring with you

00:54:51 ◼   ► because there's a watch charger and an iPad charger

00:54:54 ◼   ► and all that stuff at both places you're going.

00:54:56 ◼   ► - I know I can take the exact same bag with me,

00:54:59 ◼   ► whether I'm just going to Westchester

00:55:01 ◼   ► or whether I'm flying across the country.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I know I can take that same bag and have the things I need.

00:55:05 ◼   ► And the things you're talking about are not like

00:55:07 ◼   ► a massive amount of size or weight or cost.

00:55:10 ◼   ► You're talking about like three cables, basically.

00:55:13 ◼   ► - I just feel like you could also pack that bag

00:55:14 ◼   ► when you need to go.

00:55:15 ◼   ► - But why would you?

00:55:16 ◼   ► Why wouldn't you?

00:55:17 ◼   ► For someone who, I think, and I am a very nervous traveler,

00:55:20 ◼   ► but I think of the three of us, you are the worst.

00:55:22 ◼   ► For someone who is such a nervous traveler,

00:55:24 ◼   ► just cross this off the list.

00:55:25 ◼   ► - I never travel anywhere.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Not traveling is the most relaxing.

00:55:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:55:31 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:55:31 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Memberful.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Monetize your passion with membership.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Look, if you're a creator, diversified income away

00:55:39 ◼   ► from just ads is really great to get.

00:55:42 ◼   ► And selling memberships to your audience

00:55:45 ◼   ► is a great way to do this.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Memberful allows you to do this, and it's

00:55:49 ◼   ► used by some of the biggest creators on the web.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And Memberful includes everything you

00:55:53 ◼   ► need to run a membership program,

00:55:54 ◼   ► things like custom branding, gift subscriptions, Apple Pay,

00:55:57 ◼   ► free trials, support for hosting private podcasts,

00:56:01 ◼   ► and tons more.

00:56:03 ◼   ► And best of all, Memberful seamlessly integrates

00:56:05 ◼   ► with the tools you already use.

00:56:08 ◼   ► This is why so many people are into it,

00:56:09 ◼   ► so you know, because you don't wanna have to like

00:56:11 ◼   ► write your own whole custom integration or anything.

00:56:13 ◼   ► With Memberful, they already support

00:56:15 ◼   ► some of the biggest tools,

00:56:17 ◼   ► some of the most popular stuff out there,

00:56:18 ◼   ► so you probably don't have to write anything.

00:56:20 ◼   ► And they do all the hard stuff for you.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Trust me, I've written payment stuff like this before.

00:56:26 ◼   ► You don't wanna write it, it's a pain in the butt.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Memberful takes care of all the hard stuff for you,

00:56:30 ◼   ► and they have great features.

00:56:32 ◼   ► Optimize checkout to get you more customers.

00:56:34 ◼   ► Of course, Apple Pay support, member management,

00:56:37 ◼   ► dashboards, analytics, so much built into Memberful.

00:56:42 ◼   ► If you need any help, they have a world-class support team

00:56:44 ◼   ► ready to help you get started,

00:56:46 ◼   ► simplify your memberships and grow your revenue

00:56:49 ◼   ► 'cause they are passionate about your success at Memberful

00:56:51 ◼   ► and they always give you access to real humans.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And best of all, you always retain full control

00:56:57 ◼   ► and ownership of your audience, your branding,

00:57:00 ◼   ► and your membership.

00:57:01 ◼   ► Payments even go directly to your own Stripe account.

00:57:04 ◼   ► That is fantastic, I'm big on ownership,

00:57:06 ◼   ► and Memberful is great for that.

00:57:08 ◼   ► You brand everything yourself, you own your audience.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Can't beat that.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Get started for free with Memberful

00:57:13 ◼   ► with no credit card required at memberful.com/ATP.

00:57:18 ◼   ► Once again, visit memberful.com/ATP today.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Memberful for sponsoring our show.

00:57:26 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:57:30 ◼   ► So speaking of traveling, one, I mean,

00:57:31 ◼   ► you know, I've been going to Long Island every summer

00:57:34 ◼   ► for many, many years now.

00:57:35 ◼   ► We rent places down there.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Used to have-- we had like two steady places that we rented.

00:57:40 ◼   ► One of them we outgrew, and the other one

00:57:42 ◼   ► that people stopped renting it, basically,

00:57:44 ◼   ► which is kind of a bummer.

00:57:46 ◼   ► But so we've rented many other places in between.

00:57:50 ◼   ► And if you're listening to this and you have a rental house,

00:57:53 ◼   ► please make sure that in this day and age,

00:57:56 ◼   ► your internet stuff works.

00:57:57 ◼   ► It amazes me how many places,

00:58:01 ◼   ► I've never been in a place with good internet.

00:58:03 ◼   ► And I'm like, do people ever live in this house?

00:58:06 ◼   ► In one case I knew they did.

00:58:07 ◼   ► This was someone's actual house where they lived,

00:58:08 ◼   ► they just rented it out for the summer.

00:58:10 ◼   ► But how do they tolerate not having good internet

00:58:12 ◼   ► in their house?

00:58:14 ◼   ► And maybe it's like they make it bad

00:58:16 ◼   ► when the summer renters come,

00:58:19 ◼   ► and then they make it good again.

00:58:20 ◼   ► And how would they make it bad and good?

00:58:21 ◼   ► Well, there seems to be this thing with people--

00:58:23 ◼   ► - Why would they make it bad?

00:58:25 ◼   ► - Well, I'll explain it to you.

00:58:26 ◼   ► - There seems to be this thing that every place

00:58:29 ◼   ► that I've ever rented, they let you use their house.

00:58:34 ◼   ► You're in there, you're using their house.

00:58:35 ◼   ► If you've ever had a rental house,

00:58:36 ◼   ► there's usually some part of the house

00:58:37 ◼   ► or some part that's locked up that has the owner's stuff

00:58:40 ◼   ► that you're not supposed to go into, right?

00:58:42 ◼   ► That makes sense, don't touch the good china,

00:58:44 ◼   ► this is where the stuff from our bedroom is,

00:58:46 ◼   ► don't go in there, that's fine, that all makes sense.

00:58:49 ◼   ► But 100% of the time in all the rental houses

00:58:52 ◼   ► I've ever been in, the internet router,

00:58:55 ◼   ► internet connection stuff is one of those things

00:58:57 ◼   ► that they lock up.

00:58:59 ◼   ► - Oh really?

00:58:59 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever seen that.

00:59:00 ◼   ► - Always.

00:59:01 ◼   ► - No, I've always seen it like, you know,

00:59:02 ◼   ► shoved behind the TV.

00:59:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:04 ◼   ► - And all the rental has it been, it is locked up center.

00:59:07 ◼   ► It's locked in a basement, it's locked in a cabinet,

00:59:09 ◼   ► it's just all locked up.

00:59:10 ◼   ► And you would think, okay, well,

00:59:12 ◼   ► that's so like the renters don't screw it up

00:59:14 ◼   ► because non-techie people are gonna come in

00:59:15 ◼   ► and they're gonna, something's not gonna work

00:59:17 ◼   ► and they're like, I can fix it and they'll screw it up

00:59:19 ◼   ► and then they're gonna call the owners and say,

00:59:20 ◼   ► hey, the internet doesn't work

00:59:21 ◼   ► and then it's just a big hassle.

00:59:22 ◼   ► so lock it up so they can't screw it up, right?

00:59:25 ◼   ► That would be fine, except it's pretty screwed up

00:59:27 ◼   ► almost all the time.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And the second problem is, where they lock it up

00:59:31 ◼   ► is often someplace that doesn't acknowledge the fact that,

00:59:34 ◼   ► hey, do you realize that's where your Wi-Fi is coming from?

00:59:36 ◼   ► You've put it in the basement

00:59:37 ◼   ► in a locked room in the corner,

00:59:39 ◼   ► you think I'm gonna get that Wi-Fi in the living room

00:59:41 ◼   ► on the other side of the house anymore?

00:59:42 ◼   ► No, you buried the router, that's the source of your Wi-Fi.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Oh, just put it like a repeater.

00:59:47 ◼   ► No, the repeater doesn't help

00:59:48 ◼   ► when it's on the other side of the house.

00:59:49 ◼   ► It's like 100 feet and three floors

00:59:51 ◼   ► from the actual source of the wifi.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And I know this because what I always do

00:59:54 ◼   ► when I go into these houses is I say,

00:59:55 ◼   ► where the hell is this people's internet stuff?

00:59:57 ◼   ► Like what are they using and let me find it?

00:59:59 ◼   ► Like let me set it free.

01:00:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:01 ◼   ► And it's always locked up.

01:00:02 ◼   ► So this year we went to a house,

01:00:04 ◼   ► the same house we went to last year,

01:00:06 ◼   ► and its internet is so bad,

01:00:09 ◼   ► just it might as well be useless.

01:00:10 ◼   ► A lot of the time it's just you can't load any webpage,

01:00:13 ◼   ► it's just down.

01:00:14 ◼   ► And is that because the actual internet is down

01:00:17 ◼   ► from their provider?

01:00:18 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Part of it might have to do with the fact

01:00:21 ◼   ► where they lock up their stuff, right?

01:00:24 ◼   ► The clue, if you search the house and you're like,

01:00:26 ◼   ► where the hell is it locked up?

01:00:27 ◼   ► 'Cause there are sections of it that are closed off,

01:00:29 ◼   ► like it must be in there, I guess,

01:00:30 ◼   ► but no, based on signal strength,

01:00:31 ◼   ► that doesn't seem like that's where it is.

01:00:33 ◼   ► They use Eero, so you can find an Eero,

01:00:35 ◼   ► so like I found an Eero, but it's just a,

01:00:37 ◼   ► you know, it's one of the satellite things,

01:00:38 ◼   ► it's not the thing, like there's no Ethernet cable

01:00:41 ◼   ► going into it, right?

01:00:42 ◼   ► So they're using Eero, and the WiFi signal strength

01:00:45 ◼   ► is good everywhere, 'cause Eero is good at blanking it

01:00:47 ◼   ► with WiFi, but where is the actual,

01:00:48 ◼   ► where does the internet come from?

01:00:50 ◼   ► And if you pick up that Eero and turn it over,

01:00:52 ◼   ► you see the ominous word in Sharpie

01:00:55 ◼   ► written on the bottom of this Eero, which is shed.

01:00:58 ◼   ► What?

01:01:00 ◼   ► So their internet stuff was in their backyard

01:01:03 ◼   ► in a locked shed, far from the house.

01:01:06 ◼   ► It's a wooden shed, it's locked up,

01:01:09 ◼   ► it's got a padlock on it, and that's where they're into it.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Is cable buried under the ground?

01:01:16 ◼   ► Is cable internet?

01:01:17 ◼   ► Like, how does the internet get to there?

01:01:19 ◼   ► But either way, when it goes down

01:01:21 ◼   ► and the light on the arrow turns red

01:01:22 ◼   ► and you can't get anywhere,

01:01:23 ◼   ► there's nothing you can do about it.

01:01:25 ◼   ► And when it's up, it's just, the speeds are awful.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Like I would do the thing, speaking of cases,

01:01:30 ◼   ► like reviewing photos on vacation, that's what I do.

01:01:32 ◼   ► You take pictures during the day,

01:01:33 ◼   ► I load them onto my laptop that I brought with me.

01:01:36 ◼   ► I sort through them or whatever,

01:01:37 ◼   ► usually have a slideshow at night

01:01:38 ◼   ► showing the day's photos to the family, right?

01:01:40 ◼   ► But also, the other function I'm doing is

01:01:42 ◼   ► I load them onto the computer

01:01:43 ◼   ► and then I usually leave the computer plugged in and on

01:01:46 ◼   ► so it can shove them up the iCloud photo library, right?

01:01:48 ◼   ► In this house, if you leave this thing open

01:01:51 ◼   ► while you're asleep, it will upload like three photos.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Like the upload speeds and the connection is so bad

01:01:56 ◼   ► that it's like, it's pointless, right?

01:01:59 ◼   ► So when we go there, this is the house that we're in,

01:02:00 ◼   ► but the rest of my family's in another house

01:02:02 ◼   ► that's like a couple blocks away.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Their internet connection at least works well enough

01:02:06 ◼   ► to upload, so what I would do is I would go over their house,

01:02:08 ◼   ► plug my laptop in, shove it in a corner, and let it upload,

01:02:10 ◼   ► because at least it would progress over time.

01:02:13 ◼   ► So that continues to be a frustration,

01:02:15 ◼   ► people locking their internet stuff in obscure locations

01:02:18 ◼   ► 'cause I mean, again, I get it,

01:02:20 ◼   ► I understand they don't want people screwing with it,

01:02:22 ◼   ► but it just plain doesn't work half the time.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And then you get kids there,

01:02:25 ◼   ► and they're all on their devices,

01:02:26 ◼   ► so they're complaining the internet doesn't work.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Luckily, they both have phones,

01:02:28 ◼   ► so worst case scenario, you just drop back to 5G,

01:02:30 ◼   ► which is mostly what they did,

01:02:32 ◼   ► and now you just hope you don't burn through all your data

01:02:34 ◼   ► because the kids just give up on WiFi

01:02:35 ◼   ► because it never works, and the cellular is faster anyway.

01:02:38 ◼   ► - Was it the Verizon nationwide ultra?

01:02:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, on, on, right?

01:02:42 ◼   ► It was an ultra wideband like the bench, though,

01:02:44 ◼   ► so it was, you know, it was just,

01:02:45 ◼   ► at least web pages will load,

01:02:47 ◼   ► and of course, my daughter's always on Spotify,

01:02:50 ◼   ► so that's all streaming all the time,

01:02:52 ◼   ► so we are using a lot of bandwidth,

01:02:53 ◼   ► but yeah, the WiFi is just grim.

01:02:55 ◼   ► And at the other house, the WiFi is better,

01:02:58 ◼   ► but still not good.

01:02:59 ◼   ► I'm not sure where their router is locked up,

01:03:01 ◼   ► I didn't go searching for it,

01:03:03 ◼   ► but yeah, every house has bad WiFi,

01:03:07 ◼   ► and I don't know how people live like that.

01:03:09 ◼   ► - See, I'm surprised, 'cause like,

01:03:11 ◼   ► so I live in a vacation town,

01:03:13 ◼   ► and so almost every house here

01:03:16 ◼   ► gets rented on a regular basis in the summertime.

01:03:18 ◼   ► And the clear standard here is that people usually

01:03:23 ◼   ► make the Wi-Fi router easily accessible

01:03:25 ◼   ► in the middle of the house,

01:03:26 ◼   ► buy whatever the primary TV is in the living room.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And the reason why, first of all,

01:03:29 ◼   ► it's there because that's where they install it,

01:03:31 ◼   ► 'cause that's where Verizon usually,

01:03:33 ◼   ► this is a Fios town,

01:03:34 ◼   ► that's where Verizon always defaults to installing it.

01:03:37 ◼   ► And it's accessible because what often,

01:03:40 ◼   ► much more often happens than people messing it up

01:03:43 ◼   ► is that they get there and it doesn't work,

01:03:45 ◼   ► like what happened to you,

01:03:46 ◼   ► and they call the owner or management company,

01:03:49 ◼   ► like hey, the wifi doesn't work,

01:03:49 ◼   ► and somebody has to go reboot it.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And it's much easier and more practical

01:03:52 ◼   ► for them to just tell the renter,

01:03:54 ◼   ► just unplug it and plug it back in,

01:03:56 ◼   ► and they can kind of fix it themselves,

01:03:58 ◼   ► rather than having to send somebody out there

01:04:00 ◼   ► who has access to the owner's shed or whatever.

01:04:03 ◼   ► So I'm surprised yours is done that way,

01:04:05 ◼   ► because if it's rented, every summer,

01:04:08 ◼   ► it's a different piece, or at least to a bunch of people,

01:04:10 ◼   ► I'm surprised that issue hasn't been bothersome enough

01:04:13 ◼   ► to them that they haven't just been like,

01:04:15 ◼   ► hey, fix it yourself.

01:04:16 ◼   ► - I mean, well, part of the thing is,

01:04:17 ◼   ► when the Eero Lite turns red and it's like,

01:04:19 ◼   ► I have no Android connection,

01:04:20 ◼   ► I didn't do anything to fix that.

01:04:22 ◼   ► It eventually fixed itself and it went back

01:04:24 ◼   ► to its normal, terrible speeds.

01:04:26 ◼   ► And I don't know what caused that.

01:04:27 ◼   ► It may be something is rebooting inside the shed

01:04:30 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:04:31 ◼   ► At the previous house, I had the habit

01:04:33 ◼   ► of bringing a Wi-Fi extender with me.

01:04:34 ◼   ► This is in the days before Eero.

01:04:36 ◼   ► I would bring a Wi-Fi extender so I could get

01:04:37 ◼   ► the Wi-Fi signal from where I knew it was locked up

01:04:40 ◼   ► and I would sort of daisy chain these cheap Wi-Fi extenders

01:04:42 ◼   ► It's not you know, not a mesh network not like a row

01:04:44 ◼   ► but just like a repeater to get the signal and that would make it so because it was so bad in that house that in

01:04:50 ◼   ► The main sort of living room the one with this big giant 80s sectional sofa like the biggest sofa ever seen in my life

01:04:55 ◼   ► I just show you a picture over hilarious very 80s. This house was super 80s

01:04:59 ◼   ► Like it was so 80s that it had I think I've talked to it for like the in the in wall intercoms that rich people houses

01:05:04 ◼   ► Had in the 80s

01:05:05 ◼   ► And like the new tone like radio so you could pump radio and a cassette player to play through all the speakers throughout the house

01:05:11 ◼   ► Super eighties welcome to Long Island. Yeah

01:05:13 ◼   ► It was such a time capsule was amazing

01:05:16 ◼   ► But in the main room of that giant sectional and what was originally a gigantic rear projection television again total eighties rich people house, right?

01:05:22 ◼   ► It was zero Wi-Fi. You just you couldn't do anything, right?

01:05:26 ◼   ► So I had because that's where we wanted to be hanging out and like as we got more and more devices

01:05:30 ◼   ► It'd be like well you could be on the comfortable couches talking with people or you could be in this room on like sitting on

01:05:34 ◼   ► This uncomfortable wicker thing, but you can get Wi-Fi and people would slowly migrate that direction because they just wanted to be able to use their phones

01:05:40 ◼   ► Anyway, so that's what I used to do there in this house what I considered because I've watched a lot of YouTube

01:05:46 ◼   ► I've watched enough like lock picking channels to know how to pick those combination padlocks

01:05:50 ◼   ► Combination padlocks like most of those things where you have like a wheel where you turn the zero through nine numbers right on each one

01:05:57 ◼   ► There's pretty simple ways if you watch YouTube videos how to open those locks with nothing more than your fingers and feel it's not as easy

01:06:05 ◼   ► As they make it look especially when the lock is like outdoors and rusted, but I considered doing that but I'm like

01:06:10 ◼   ► you know how you're like breaking and entering,

01:06:11 ◼   ► don't just go to the other house.

01:06:13 ◼   ► And so that's what I did.

01:06:15 ◼   ► I went to their house, do my uploading.

01:06:16 ◼   ► So I did always manage to get everything uploaded.

01:06:19 ◼   ► I think I talked about,

01:06:20 ◼   ► did I talk about photography stuff?

01:06:23 ◼   ► - No, you talked very briefly on rectifs about it,

01:06:25 ◼   ► but not here yet.

01:06:27 ◼   ► - Okay, so I brought the two cameras this year.

01:06:29 ◼   ► I brought the camera that Mark gave me, a7 III.

01:06:32 ◼   ► - The curse gift, yes, thank you.

01:06:33 ◼   ► - Yes, which I was cursed to buy very expensive lenses for.

01:06:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was literally laughing out loud

01:06:39 ◼   ► when I heard that, it was delightful.

01:06:41 ◼   ► - And I bought my previous year's camera, the A6600,

01:06:46 ◼   ► with, and my plan this year was to not change lenses

01:06:49 ◼   ► to the beach, which is something I had done in past years,

01:06:51 ◼   ► and I'm pretty good at doing, but it's always nerve-wracking.

01:06:54 ◼   ► There's wind, there's sand, there's water,

01:06:56 ◼   ► there's kids running around the area where you're sitting,

01:06:59 ◼   ► kicking up stuff, like, yeah.

01:07:02 ◼   ► So I don't wanna change lenses to the beach,

01:07:04 ◼   ► but I always have to because I got my super long lens

01:07:05 ◼   ► to get the kids out in the waves,

01:07:07 ◼   ► and I've got, when everyone's back on the blanket,

01:07:09 ◼   ► you can't be using a really long zoom

01:07:10 ◼   ► 'cause they're two inches away from you

01:07:12 ◼   ► and you know, playing on the beach, stuff like that.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So my plan was to use my really long zoom lens

01:07:17 ◼   ► on my a6600 and then use a more reasonable length

01:07:22 ◼   ► on the a7, 'cause I don't have a really long zoom

01:07:27 ◼   ► for the a7.

01:07:28 ◼   ► If you want to get a decent quality,

01:07:31 ◼   ► really long zoom lens for a full frame camera,

01:07:33 ◼   ► A, they're as big as a truck

01:07:34 ◼   ► and B, they're really expensive, right?

01:07:36 ◼   ► I don't have one of those.

01:07:38 ◼   ► I just have it on the small one.

01:07:39 ◼   ► I'll put the links in the show notes,

01:07:41 ◼   ► but the small one I have is the Sony 70-350.

01:07:43 ◼   ► So it's 70-350, but it's an APS-C sensor.

01:07:46 ◼   ► So that 350 is actually whatever the equivalent is,

01:07:48 ◼   ► probably like 400, 500.

01:07:50 ◼   ► And it's a good lens.

01:07:51 ◼   ► I think it's the most expensive lens I have

01:07:53 ◼   ► for my small camera.

01:07:55 ◼   ► And the APS-C is not a big deal,

01:07:57 ◼   ► 'cause it's super sunny at the beach.

01:07:59 ◼   ► You don't need extra light gathering or whatever.

01:08:00 ◼   ► So that setup served me pretty well.

01:08:03 ◼   ► And then on the, on Marco's camera,

01:08:06 ◼   ► I have the horrendously expensive Sony 24-70 GM2,

01:08:11 ◼   ► which is smaller and lighter than the original GM,

01:08:14 ◼   ► which is why I got it, which is why they got it

01:08:16 ◼   ► to liberate that money from my wallet,

01:08:18 ◼   ► because I wasn't gonna buy the other one,

01:08:19 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, ah, it's kind of an old lens,

01:08:21 ◼   ► and it's big and it's heavy, and they said,

01:08:22 ◼   ► but wait, here's exactly the lens you wanted,

01:08:24 ◼   ► but now it's smaller and it's lighter and it's brand new,

01:08:26 ◼   ► and so I got that, and it was very expensive,

01:08:28 ◼   ► but it's also very--

01:08:29 ◼   ► - It probably cost more than the camera.

01:08:30 ◼   ► - It was close.

01:08:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:32 ◼   ► - Oh my word.

01:08:33 ◼   ► I also have a, I got a used 85 millimeter 1.8,

01:08:37 ◼   ► I think I talked about it on the show,

01:08:38 ◼   ► but I didn't really use that on the vacation.

01:08:40 ◼   ► So these are the two lenses I used.

01:08:41 ◼   ► It was great not having to swap lenses,

01:08:45 ◼   ► but I did find myself in the slightly awkward situation

01:08:48 ◼   ► of now I have to swap cameras.

01:08:51 ◼   ► Usually not a big deal,

01:08:53 ◼   ► 'cause hey, if you're down by the waves,

01:08:54 ◼   ► you have the one camera, right?

01:08:57 ◼   ► But very often, if you're not familiar

01:08:59 ◼   ► with the ways of Long Island beaches,

01:09:02 ◼   ► There are lifeguards sitting in chairs

01:09:04 ◼   ► trying to keep you alive.

01:09:06 ◼   ► But in general on the Long Island beaches,

01:09:08 ◼   ► if you want to use surfboards or boogie boards,

01:09:10 ◼   ► you're not allowed to use them where the lifeguards are.

01:09:13 ◼   ► I always wondered about that.

01:09:14 ◼   ► It's been that way since I was a kid.

01:09:15 ◼   ► Like I guess you're more likely to drown

01:09:17 ◼   ► when you're using them.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Does it make harder for the lifeguard to see?

01:09:19 ◼   ► I don't actually know the reasoning behind that.

01:09:20 ◼   ► It's just something I never questioned

01:09:21 ◼   ► 'cause it's just been part of my life.

01:09:23 ◼   ► - My best guess is a combination of like,

01:09:27 ◼   ► if you're gonna do stuff like far out on floating devices,

01:09:30 ◼   ► they don't wanna be responsible for you.

01:09:31 ◼   ► and then secondarily maybe that if you're in their zone,

01:09:35 ◼   ► they have to keep watch over the water constantly

01:09:37 ◼   ► and it's probably hard for them to watch

01:09:39 ◼   ► a couple of people way out there

01:09:41 ◼   ► and also a whole bunch of people really close to them.

01:09:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean it's not really a distance thing

01:09:45 ◼   ► 'cause they don't let you use the boogie boards

01:09:46 ◼   ► even if you use it two feet from the shore, right?

01:09:48 ◼   ► They just, no boogie boards allowed, no surfboards allowed.

01:09:50 ◼   ► I'm sure there's very good reasons for it

01:09:52 ◼   ► but I've really never questioned it

01:09:53 ◼   ► 'cause it's just been an obvious law.

01:09:54 ◼   ► And as I explained this, it probably seems weird.

01:09:57 ◼   ► So it doesn't seem weird to me 'cause I grew up like this

01:10:00 ◼   ► But so they have flags in the sand saying,

01:10:02 ◼   ► here is the area where if you swim,

01:10:04 ◼   ► you know, if you extend those lines out into the water,

01:10:06 ◼   ► if you swim between these flags and they move the flags,

01:10:08 ◼   ► more lifeguards come or whatever.

01:10:09 ◼   ► So between these flags, lifeguards are in theory

01:10:11 ◼   ► watching you and may save you, right?

01:10:14 ◼   ► But if you're outside those flags, you're on your own.

01:10:16 ◼   ► And so you're like, well, if they're worried about people

01:10:19 ◼   ► dying or it's a safety thing,

01:10:21 ◼   ► forcing them to go far away from the lifeguards

01:10:24 ◼   ► where no one is watching them,

01:10:25 ◼   ► doing the ostensibly more dangerous thing

01:10:27 ◼   ► doesn't seem to make sense,

01:10:28 ◼   ► but that's exactly what happens, right?

01:10:30 ◼   ► So we go to the beach, we bring boogie boards and sometimes surfboards, and then we basically

01:10:35 ◼   ► take a trek to, or we're going to go down the beach, we're going to go boogie boarding,

01:10:39 ◼   ► we're going to go surfboarding or whatever.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And so you bring all your stuff and you go down the beach.

01:10:42 ◼   ► It's away from, you know, our blanket is where the lifeguards are and that's where everyone's

01:10:46 ◼   ► going in the water mostly, but if you want to do that you go down the beach.

01:10:48 ◼   ► I want to go down the beach, I have to take both cameras with me.

01:10:53 ◼   ► One for the long lens, for the people who are out surfing, but also for the people,

01:10:56 ◼   ► you know, if we're collecting shells or going into little tidal pools on the other side

01:10:59 ◼   ► and doing this stuff like I need both cameras.

01:11:01 ◼   ► So now I've got two cameras around my neck,

01:11:04 ◼   ► walking down the beach, and I'm like swapping between them.

01:11:07 ◼   ► - How do you not get arrested?

01:11:09 ◼   ► - Yes, seriously.

01:11:10 ◼   ► - I mean, I'm going with a family group,

01:11:11 ◼   ► you know, it's obvious what I'm, you know,

01:11:13 ◼   ► I have occasionally had people come up to me

01:11:15 ◼   ► and give me dirty looks or say stuff about like,

01:11:16 ◼   ► hey, who are you taking a picture of?

01:11:17 ◼   ► I'm like, that's my daughter.

01:11:18 ◼   ► They're like, oh, okay.

01:11:20 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:11:20 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh.

01:11:22 ◼   ► - But you know, it's not that big.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Anyway, so I got two cameras around my neck,

01:11:25 ◼   ► and I got pretty good at swapping between them,

01:11:28 ◼   ► but it was a little bit awkward and heavy

01:11:30 ◼   ► dealing with that.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Now, doing it the other way where I have one camera

01:11:33 ◼   ► and a backpack with lenses that I get down and swap

01:11:35 ◼   ► was probably worse.

01:11:37 ◼   ► But yeah, the two camera system,

01:11:39 ◼   ► overall, I give it mostly a thumbs up.

01:11:42 ◼   ► I did kind of miss using primes

01:11:45 ◼   ► 'cause both of these are zooms.

01:11:46 ◼   ► I did kind of miss using primes

01:11:47 ◼   ► because I wasn't gonna swap to them.

01:11:49 ◼   ► I had them with me, I had all my lenses with me

01:11:51 ◼   ► if I wanted them, but in practice, I just didn't.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I never thought I needed to prime enough

01:11:57 ◼   ► to deal with having to change it on the beach.

01:12:00 ◼   ► The other thing was, we had a bunch of days

01:12:02 ◼   ► that were overcast-ish, so a lot of my pictures,

01:12:05 ◼   ► you know, it's nicer when it's sunny,

01:12:06 ◼   ► but rain was predicted for a lot of the days.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Rain mostly held off, which is good,

01:12:12 ◼   ► but the light wasn't great on a lot of the days,

01:12:14 ◼   ► so that kind of made my pictures more dull than usual.

01:12:17 ◼   ► The final thing, and this is not really tech-related,

01:12:20 ◼   ► but it is, well, it kind of is,

01:12:22 ◼   ► I like to take pictures of birds at the beach.

01:12:24 ◼   ► The birds are always there.

01:12:25 ◼   ► They're fun to take pictures of.

01:12:26 ◼   ► It's fun to mess with the camera.

01:12:28 ◼   ► If you follow any of my things on Instagram,

01:12:30 ◼   ► you can see lots of pictures of birds.

01:12:31 ◼   ► That's me usually using the super really long lens

01:12:33 ◼   ► to get them far away and to pull them real close in.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Sometimes planes fly over the beach,

01:12:37 ◼   ► I get pictures of them, that's fun to do.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I did that this year too.

01:12:42 ◼   ► I don't know what the deal is

01:12:43 ◼   ► because we were on Long Island last year, right?

01:12:45 ◼   ► Like I did this trip last year, I think.

01:12:47 ◼   ► So I can't really blame it on like COVID,

01:12:50 ◼   ► like, oh, you know,

01:12:51 ◼   ► so many people hadn't been going to the vacation,

01:12:54 ◼   ► but now the people are back, right?

01:12:56 ◼   ► But this year, the birds were different.

01:12:59 ◼   ► This year, the birds were way more aggressive

01:13:04 ◼   ► than I had seen them on these beaches

01:13:06 ◼   ► in my entire history of going to these specific beaches

01:13:09 ◼   ► at this time of the year.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Gulls on the beach are always,

01:13:13 ◼   ► they want your potato chips, let's face it.

01:13:15 ◼   ► They want anything you're eating,

01:13:16 ◼   ► that's just what gulls are like on the beach,

01:13:18 ◼   ► it's just something you accept, right?

01:13:20 ◼   ► But normally, they do the bird thing,

01:13:23 ◼   ► They just kind of hang back or whatever and then like some kid throws a chip because he thinks it'll be fun and a thousand

01:13:28 ◼   ► Birds to send out of nowhere and it becomes a giant thing or whatever and then the parents say don't throw things to the birds

01:13:33 ◼   ► Right because it just gets them all, you know riled up

01:13:35 ◼   ► This year they weren't waiting for anybody to throw anything. They weren't waiting for a kid to drop a damn sandwich

01:13:42 ◼   ► They would walk by they would walk by and they give you this little side eye and they'd be like they'd be looking at what?

01:13:47 ◼   ► You're eating and they'd you know, and you'd be looking at them. You're like, I'll just I won't throw anything in the middle

01:13:53 ◼   ► it'll be fine, and they just kinda get a little closer.

01:13:55 ◼   ► They kinda look a little closer.

01:13:56 ◼   ► Maybe one or two of them would see somebody who like,

01:13:59 ◼   ► oh, someone went to the water,

01:14:00 ◼   ► and then someone else went to the water,

01:14:01 ◼   ► and now no one is at their blanket.

01:14:03 ◼   ► They go over to that blanket and say, hmm, a backpack.

01:14:05 ◼   ► - What?

01:14:06 ◼   ► - Let me stick my nose in that backpack.

01:14:07 ◼   ► What do you got in here?

01:14:08 ◼   ► Oh, I got a bag of chips, oh, I got a bag of chips!

01:14:09 ◼   ► Pulls the bag of chips out of the backpack,

01:14:11 ◼   ► and 100 birds come down and they tear the bag of chips open.

01:14:13 ◼   ► You know, and then the people come back from the water

01:14:16 ◼   ► and it's just their bag of chips is gone,

01:14:18 ◼   ► and there's a mess by their thing or whatever.

01:14:20 ◼   ► They were so aggressive this year.

01:14:23 ◼   ► They were pulling things out of people's bags,

01:14:25 ◼   ► pulling bags, I posted on Instagram,

01:14:28 ◼   ► you can see one pulling a bag of pistachios out.

01:14:30 ◼   ► It must be an expensive bag of pistachios,

01:14:31 ◼   ► it looks pretty big.

01:14:32 ◼   ► They would just go into your stuff and get your food.

01:14:35 ◼   ► They weren't waiting for you to throw it, right?

01:14:37 ◼   ► The other thing is, so we'd all be there,

01:14:39 ◼   ► like it's lunchtime, everyone comes back to the blanket,

01:14:41 ◼   ► they're all wet, they got their wet hair,

01:14:42 ◼   ► they got the towels around them,

01:14:43 ◼   ► we're sitting under our umbrellas,

01:14:45 ◼   ► all the kids are eating their sandwiches,

01:14:46 ◼   ► we're eating the stuff, whatever.

01:14:48 ◼   ► And the birds are looking at you

01:14:49 ◼   ► and they know you got stuff.

01:14:49 ◼   ► Whatever, we're experienced,

01:14:51 ◼   ► we're not gonna throw them food,

01:14:52 ◼   ► Even the little kids know you don't throw foods to the birds.

01:14:54 ◼   ► It gets them all riled up.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Keep your food to yourself, right?

01:14:56 ◼   ► But they keep walking by.

01:14:57 ◼   ► And then like, we had our chairs in like a U shape.

01:15:01 ◼   ► And you could see if you're on one side of the U,

01:15:02 ◼   ► you could see on the other side of the U,

01:15:04 ◼   ► they're walking behind the other people over there.

01:15:05 ◼   ► And you'd be like, "Psst, there's a bird behind you."

01:15:07 ◼   ► And you turn around and look at it.

01:15:08 ◼   ► And you think, "Oh, I turn around and look at it.

01:15:09 ◼   ► "It's gonna fly away."

01:15:09 ◼   ► And the other bird would just look at you and say,

01:15:10 ◼   ► "What, I'm just walking here.

01:15:12 ◼   ► "Don't mind me," right?

01:15:14 ◼   ► And aside from getting pooped on, which should happen once,

01:15:18 ◼   ► 'cause occasionally they'll fly over your head

01:15:19 ◼   ► and poop on you, I'm there with the camera going like,

01:15:21 ◼   ► wow, this is crazy. - Sounds awful.

01:15:23 ◼   ► - These birds are real close,

01:15:24 ◼   ► I can get lots of pictures of them.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And it was really windy and they were doing a lot

01:15:27 ◼   ► of low-level flying, like back and forth

01:15:30 ◼   ► over the blanket area, which was good

01:15:31 ◼   ► for taking pictures of them, whatever.

01:15:33 ◼   ► But they were also doing a lot of low-level flying.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I'm like, hmm, you got the walkers and you got the flyers.

01:15:38 ◼   ► And at one point, I wasn't paying attention,

01:15:41 ◼   ► I was just talking to the people on my side of the thing.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And then one of my little nephews started crying

01:15:46 ◼   ► on the other side, and they're like,

01:15:47 ◼   ► you know what, what happened, what happened?

01:15:48 ◼   ► It's like, oh, a bird, the bird tried to grab his sandwich

01:15:51 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:15:52 ◼   ► I don't think anyone saw it happen, but he was very upset

01:15:54 ◼   ► and he said that a bird had tried to grab something

01:15:56 ◼   ► that he was eating, right?

01:15:58 ◼   ► Not that he was throwing food

01:16:00 ◼   ► or the bird was pulling something from a bag,

01:16:02 ◼   ► but he was trying to get the thing that he was eating.

01:16:03 ◼   ► He was very upset by it.

01:16:04 ◼   ► And they're all going and comforting the little boy

01:16:07 ◼   ► and everything, right?

01:16:07 ◼   ► While this is happening, I'm eating my sandwich.

01:16:10 ◼   ► You know, we make our own little sandwiches

01:16:12 ◼   ► and bring them to the beach.

01:16:13 ◼   ► I'm eating my sandwich and a bird comes from behind me

01:16:17 ◼   ► in the air and takes a bite of my sandwich

01:16:20 ◼   ► that is in my hands.

01:16:21 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh. - And I'm in the process

01:16:23 ◼   ► of eating.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I didn't, he didn't get the sandwich

01:16:26 ◼   ► 'cause my grip, I grabbed it as they went away,

01:16:29 ◼   ► but he took a bite out of it.

01:16:30 ◼   ► And of course now I gotta throw out the whole sandwich,

01:16:32 ◼   ► it's got a bird bite on it, right?

01:16:33 ◼   ► I want the bird slobber that came on this thing,

01:16:35 ◼   ► but I'm like, it's in my hands, right?

01:16:38 ◼   ► And that happened, I think once again,

01:16:39 ◼   ► to one other person.

01:16:40 ◼   ► So the new move was like when we're eating lunch,