0:00:00- In general, I'm very happy right now.
0:00:02- Okay, this sounds like me.
0:00:04What was it, last week or the week before?
0:00:06Oh, God, all right, lay it on me.
0:00:08- Okay, so first of all, I don't know
0:00:10if I've been mentioned on the show much, if at all,
0:00:13but for about 15 years, maybe,
0:00:18I've had a weird stomach allergy to bananas and avocados.
0:00:23- Oh yeah, you've mentioned that, for sure.
0:00:24- Yeah, it's the weirdest thing.
0:00:25If I eat them, I just get this massive stomach ache,
0:00:29like as if I ate a saw blade or one of those
0:00:31like spiky crusty O's from the Simpsons,
0:00:33you know like it's like that kind of thing,
0:00:34like just huge, like just pain.
0:00:37And you know, nothing, not too much detail,
0:00:40but like nothing can come out of your direction
0:00:42to fix this problem, it's just pain.
0:00:44All right, so anyway, in my life I've known
0:00:46a couple of celiacs.
0:00:48One of them told the others,
0:00:51you should try taking colostrum,
0:00:53because I was once a celiac and it fixed me.
0:00:58And so far, all three of them have been fixed
0:01:02by taking colostrum.
0:01:04So, hey, anyone out there who's celiac,
0:01:06you might wanna look into that.
0:01:07- What's your doctor?
0:01:08Don't just blindly listen to us idiots.
0:01:10Talk to your doctor.
0:01:11- Is this a medical thing or is this a non-medical thing?
0:01:15- I don't know the details.
0:01:16So colostrum is like the first milk from a cow,
0:01:19like right when the calf is first born.
0:01:20I don't know the details, I'm probably butchering it.
0:01:21But the idea, so you can get these pills on Amazon.
0:01:24It's like this weird New Zealand company
0:01:25that makes them everywhere.
0:01:26- You can get these pills on Amazon
0:01:27is leading me in the direction of non-med.
0:01:29- Yeah, well anyway, so the theory is that it like,
0:01:33stimulates the, I think it stimulates the celia
0:01:35in your small intestine to like regrow
0:01:37or fix itself somehow, I don't know, anyway.
0:01:39I apologize to anybody medical out there
0:01:42who, I'm butchering this, but--
0:01:43- Yeah, don't forget the magnetic bracelet.
0:01:46- I'm just saying, so I'm just saying,
0:01:47I've known multiple celiacs who have tried this
0:01:50and it has actually like, solved their issues.
0:01:54Like people who were celiacs for years,
0:01:56Like you take it and then it just like fixes it
0:01:58and then you can stop taking it and you stay fixed.
0:02:00Anyway, so I thought maybe this might help this issue
0:02:03'cause this seems like some kind of weird
0:02:05small intestine issue.
0:02:06So I've been taking colostrum pills
0:02:09for like a month and a half or so
0:02:12and I decided let me start testing this allergy again.
0:02:15- Wait, did you do this today
0:02:16on a day that you're recording?
0:02:18- I've been doing it gradually.
0:02:19- Okay, okay, I'll allow it.
0:02:21- So, you know, bananas, you know,
0:02:23they're not that hard to get or not that expensive.
0:02:26what could one cost, $10?
0:02:28So I took a couple of bananas and sliced them up
0:02:30into little disks and I froze them.
0:02:32And so I had intervals, fixed intervals
0:02:35that I had constant access to.
0:02:37- I'm not sure what, I guess the freezing is preservation?
0:02:40Like what function is the freezing serving here?
0:02:42- Yeah, 'cause when you only go shopping every two weeks,
0:02:44it's kinda hard to keep fresh bananas in stock.
0:02:46So I would just, every day I would try one,
0:02:50like one slice, and just see what happens.
0:02:53And the first time I tried it,
0:02:54I kinda had like a nervous stomach afterwards,
0:02:56but I'm like, I think that might just be psychological,
0:02:58'cause I'm, you know. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:03:00- So I just kept doing it,
0:03:01like every day I would just take one.
0:03:02And it got to the point where I would forget.
0:03:04Like I would just throw it in my mouth
0:03:06and then I'd move on, and I wouldn't think about it,
0:03:08and I'd feel fine.
0:03:09And I would increase it to,
0:03:11look, let's try two today.
0:03:12Let's try three today.
0:03:13And slowly increased it,
0:03:14and now I'm up to being able to eat a full banana
0:03:16by itself, fresh, and I don't feel anything.
0:03:18It's fantastic.
0:03:19- Oh, that's exciting.
0:03:20- For the first time in 15 years, I can eat bananas.
0:03:22Now I haven't tested it on avocados yet.
0:03:23I'm gonna start that test next.
0:03:26Again, same thing, controlling.
0:03:27I didn't wanna try them both at once.
0:03:28Controlling for the factors, like,
0:03:30let me try one first, get that fixed,
0:03:33which seems to be the case.
0:03:35And now I can, oh my god, I can get a smoothie
0:03:37that doesn't suck now.
0:03:39- That's true.
0:03:39- Yeah, I was gonna say, what is the banana item
0:03:42that you're most excited to eat?
0:03:44- Smoothies, yeah.
0:03:44- Oh, smoothies are excellent.
0:03:46- Not peanut butter and banana sandwich?
0:03:47- Or banana bread, man.
0:03:49- Yeah, banana bread too, like that should be fine.
0:03:50I haven't had that in 10 years either,
0:03:5115 years, but anyway. - That's no way to live.
0:03:54- That's reason number one that I'm happy,
0:03:55that I had a banana earlier today,
0:03:56and I had one yesterday, and I had one the day before that,
0:03:58and it's been fine, and now I have 15 years
0:03:59of bananas to make up for.
0:04:01- Be careful, too many bananas give you hard poops.
0:04:03- I know, I've heard, but I eat a lot of vegetables,
0:04:05so believe me, my fiber situation is fine.
0:04:09(laughing)
0:04:10Thanks, John.
0:04:11So anyway, the second reason I'm very happy
0:04:16is that I have been incredibly busy
0:04:21with doing some stuff in real life,
0:04:23that is, it's good stuff, it's fine,
0:04:25but that has resulted in me not paying
0:04:27any attention whatsoever to the news
0:04:30or any flare-ups between people on Twitter
0:04:33or anything like that.
0:04:34I haven't even checked Instagram almost at all
0:04:36in about a week.
0:04:37I've just been so busy.
0:04:39Everyone always thinks like, oh my God,
0:04:41the world is so bad now.
0:04:42Like now this is extra bad.
0:04:43Now I really gotta pay attention.
0:04:45And the reality is I salute everyone out there
0:04:48who pays attention for me.
0:04:50I'm in a much better mental state by keeping a lot of
0:04:53distance from a lot of that stuff.
0:04:54And so anyway, reason number three I'm happy is that
0:04:58the same reason why every muscle in my body hurts right now.
0:05:02It's more of a mixed happiness in the sense that
0:05:06I got, I got here, I got my, here I'm knocking the mic here,
0:05:11my Theracane right here, massaging my neck and shoulders
0:05:15here and there tonight because everything is sore
0:05:20because my task this week that has been keeping me so busy
0:05:22is we've had this house for a while
0:05:26and we never really did major clean outs.
0:05:31Like you know, we would clean here and there
0:05:32but we just have 12 years worth of stuff accumulation.
0:05:37And we decided this week there was no school,
0:05:41Adam was visiting his grandparents upstate for a week
0:05:43and we thought we are gonna spend this week,
0:05:47we're gonna rent a dumpster
0:05:48and actually really clean out as much as we can.
0:05:52Massive early spring cleaning.
0:05:55- This is what sucks us for married people, by the way.
0:05:57(laughing)
0:05:59Let's rent a dumpster.
0:06:01Yes, the kid's away, finally.
0:06:03- Oh my god, so-- - That's amazing.
0:06:06- I've never rented a dumpster before.
0:06:07It turns out you just call, literally,
0:06:09the company that is recommended here
0:06:11is called AAAA, you know, Carding or whatever.
0:06:15It's one of those yellow pages' names.
0:06:17(laughing)
0:06:18And you just call them up and some fairly curt person
0:06:22on the other end is like, "How big you want it?
0:06:24"When do you want it?
0:06:25"Okay, I'll drop it off today."
0:06:26It's that kind of thing.
0:06:28- I mean, it helps if you're in New York
0:06:29if you want to get that full experience.
0:06:31- That's true.
0:06:32- They sound different if you call in Alabama.
0:06:34- I bet they don't sound that different.
0:06:36Anyway, so it wouldn't be funny if every carting company
0:06:40was all run by people from Brooklyn,
0:06:41just they were all over the country
0:06:43just running carting companies.
0:06:44- They were in construction, too.
0:06:45- Yeah.
0:06:47So anyway, yeah, so some guy in a truck shows up
0:06:50and dumps off his dumpster in the street,
0:06:51front of our house, and--
0:06:53- Wait, they put the dumpster in the street?
0:06:55- We didn't want them tearing up our papers in our driveway.
0:06:57- I know, but anyway, I believe you're allowed to do that.
0:07:00- You can, it just takes a quick permit from the village,
0:07:03but it's a wide street, there's room to go around it
0:07:05and everything. - Jeez, I have never seen
0:07:07that in the Boston area.
0:07:09It's always gotta go on your driveway or on your lawn.
0:07:12And yes, it does destroy it.
0:07:13- You don't have streets made for the modern era.
0:07:16Your streets are preposterously tiny.
0:07:18- And Marco's street isn't that wide.
0:07:20- My street's like 100 years old.
0:07:22- It's pretty wide.
0:07:23And that's actually, that's a good point.
0:07:24Your street is, I don't know what your excuse is.
0:07:26- It's not as wide as yours, Casey.
0:07:27Yours is like a football field.
0:07:28- It is not.
0:07:30- My street is wide enough that like,
0:07:32a car can be parked on both sides of the street,
0:07:34parallel parking, you can still drive through the middle.
0:07:36- Yeah, with one car.
0:07:37- One car could drive, so yeah,
0:07:38so it's like three cars wide, basically.
0:07:39- See, my street I would say is four cars wide.
0:07:43- Yeah, Casey, you could have a bus on either side.
0:07:45and you can drive two buses past each other between them.
0:07:47- No, parallel parked on either side in two cars.
0:07:50- Go get a tape measure and measure your street.
0:07:51It's huge. - Oh my gosh.
0:07:52All right, fine, fine.
0:07:53Anyway, we digress.
0:07:54- Yeah, so we knew we were hiring the dumpster.
0:07:57Like over the weekend before it arrived on Monday,
0:08:00over the weekend before it arrived,
0:08:01we basically spent that time like just staging
0:08:04a whole bunch of trash bags in the garage.
0:08:06By the way, this was a good time to have listened to rectus.
0:08:11It was all about like space.
0:08:12And I've heard Merlin over the years talk about
0:08:15It's All Too Much, this wonderful book.
0:08:17And literally, so we were driving up to drop Adam
0:08:20off upstate, on the way up they were listening to Rectifs,
0:08:23did the drop off, had some lunch.
0:08:25Right before we got in the car,
0:08:26I downloaded the audiobook for It's All Too Much,
0:08:28and we listened to that on the way home.
0:08:30And then we listened to it as we were cleaning
0:08:32everything out for the first couple days.
0:08:34We're almost done with it.
0:08:35- Just make sure you don't throw out
0:08:36your rock concert T-shirts.
0:08:37- Yes, yes, I heard that.
0:08:38- So one thing that you've learned is you got these books,
0:08:40you clean everything out, but this,
0:08:41don't make Maron's mistake and get so enthusiastic
0:08:44that you throw out the one irreplaceable thing
0:08:46that you're gonna regret losing for the rest of your life.
0:08:49- Yeah, but I mean, honestly,
0:08:50I don't think I have anything like that.
0:08:53- I don't know what the equivalent is.
0:08:54Maybe like save your, well, if you had a Sega Saturn,
0:08:56you should save that, but you don't.
0:08:58- No, and I have all the video game systems
0:09:00I'm saving, of course, but I'm just, you know, I have,
0:09:02like, and so fortunately, you know,
0:09:04it was a really nice day, so first we put everything
0:09:08like out on the curb for people to take,
0:09:09and then anything that was still there,
0:09:11like 24 hours later, we'd toss in the dumpster.
0:09:13And I had put out like tech stuff,
0:09:15you know, like old networking gear and stuff like that.
0:09:18I even, this might come up later,
0:09:20I even got rid of my coffee roaster.
0:09:22I gave it away, somebody took it.
0:09:24- What?
0:09:25- Yeah, I'm not roasting anymore.
0:09:26- Are you okay?
0:09:27- Yeah, so anyway, we'll get to that later,
0:09:29but anyway, I'm still drinking coffee,
0:09:31I'm just not roasting anymore.
0:09:32But yeah, so like a lot of stuff was taken,
0:09:35stuff that was, you know, basically trash, we threw away,
0:09:38Which I mean this included like literally every bit
0:09:40of food in the house.
0:09:42Like we, 'cause like, it's been, we have a lot of,
0:09:46a lot of expired food.
0:09:47I found a jar of couscous from 2011.
0:09:50- Oh, neat. - Excuse me,
0:09:51that expired in 2011.
0:09:52So it's actually probably from 2009.
0:09:54- I think I could beat that stuff in my house.
0:09:57I think we have a salad dressing in the refrigerator
0:09:59that beats that.
0:10:00- Oh my gosh. - Yeah, so we just,
0:10:01and we threw, you know, big black garbage bags,
0:10:05a lot of which was full of expired food
0:10:06or trash from the basement.
0:10:08We threw away so much stuff.
0:10:11And when the dumpster was first delivered
0:10:12and I started throwing all these bags in,
0:10:14I thought, it's a 10 cubic yard dumpster,
0:10:16it's the smallest one they have.
0:10:18And I thought, oh this is too big,
0:10:20we're never gonna fill this up.
0:10:22Well, guess what, it's full.
0:10:24It took us 48 hours, it's full.
0:10:28- You could squish that down a lot,
0:10:30there's a lot of air in there.
0:10:31- There's some, but not as much as you would think.
0:10:34So a lot of the space was like,
0:10:37there were a couple of old broken pieces of furniture
0:10:40that we tried having people take and nobody wanted them,
0:10:43so we had to throw those out.
0:10:44A lot of stuff from the basement,
0:10:46like screens for windows that we don't even have
0:10:50those windows anymore.
0:10:51Like we changed the windows years ago,
0:10:54like 10 years ago we got new windows
0:10:55and we have the screens for the old ones for some reason
0:10:58that we can't even use.
0:10:59Stuff like that, tons and tons of stuff
0:11:02that was just trash, just taking up space.
0:11:04And so, my God, it feels good.
0:11:07And so the crazy thing is,
0:11:09so we have this dumpster full of trash
0:11:11in front of our house.
0:11:13The house, when you're inside of it,
0:11:15does not look that different.
0:11:16It doesn't look like we're moving out,
0:11:18it looks like we just tidied up a little bit.
0:11:20- All that trash was hidden.
0:11:22- Yes, my office closet, the basement, the attic.
0:11:26It just, where do we get 10 cubic yards of trash
0:11:28in our house and have it disappear
0:11:30and have nothing look different?
0:11:31Anyway, it feels very good.
0:11:33This is something that I strongly recommend
0:11:37if you have a house with too much stuff in it.
0:11:39Listen to rectus, then listen to it's all too much,
0:11:42then rent a dumpster.
0:11:43And it's a good time, except that I am now
0:11:48extraordinarily sore from just huge amounts of hauling
0:11:52that's gone into this.
0:11:54Things like in the basement we had,
0:11:56again from a renovation we did 12 years ago or 10 years ago,
0:11:59we had an old door that, it was a custom-sized door,
0:12:04and the door frame that it goes in doesn't exist anymore.
0:12:08And so, why do we have this door in the basement?
0:12:11It's a custom-sized-- - Because it's bespoke.
0:12:13That's why.
0:12:14- Yeah, so that's sitting outside now.
0:12:15I hope somebody takes it who wants a reclaimed door,
0:12:18and they can reclaim it from next to our dumpster.
0:12:20Hopefully I don't have to put it in the dumpster,
0:12:22'cause my God, doors are heavy.
0:12:24But yeah, oh man, everything on my body hurts.
0:12:27- I'm sure people are listening to this and saying,
0:12:29oh, Marco, you're being so wasteful
0:12:30throwing all these things in the garbage.
0:12:32You should've given them away.
0:12:33You should've recycled them.
0:12:34You should've put them up for sale.
0:12:35You should've found someone who needed them
0:12:37or so on and so forth.
0:12:38- There actually was a free cycle type of group.
0:12:41Our neighbor was a member of this Facebook Buy Nothing.
0:12:46This is apparently a thing.
0:12:47I didn't know about it, but I'm not very good at that.
0:12:50But they posted it there,
0:12:52and a lot of people came and took stuff.
0:12:53It was great.
0:12:54Yeah, so I was like, part of the--
0:12:57I don't know if they talk about this,
0:12:58and it's all too much, but we talk about it--
0:13:00Merlin talks about it, and we talk about it in rec diffs
0:13:02when I talk to him on the topic.
0:13:04Sometimes you can use that as an excuse to never do this.
0:13:09You can say, oh, well, I don't want to throw all this stuff
0:13:11out.
0:13:11I really should give it away.
0:13:12And you should.
0:13:13But if you never actually do find someone to give it to,
0:13:17then it just stays in your house.
0:13:19And so getting the notion that we should get a dumpster
0:13:23and just chuck it all away, and then stopping yourself
0:13:25and saying, no, I should find something to give it away,
0:13:26but then not doing that either doesn't help anybody.
0:13:29It keeps the junk in your house, and it also
0:13:32doesn't help the people that you were supposedly
0:13:33going to give it to.
0:13:34So though putting it all in a dumpster
0:13:36and having it go to a landfill seems wasteful
0:13:38and it should be reused and so on and so forth,
0:13:40yes, that's true, but when you have to choose
0:13:43the lesser of multiple evils, the one that gets the stuff
0:13:46out of your house will probably make your life better
0:13:48more than the one where you just keep it in your house
0:13:49and feel guilty about it.
0:13:51- Right, and there are, certain things are easier
0:13:54to find better uses for than others.
0:13:57Things like clothing that's in decent shape.
0:13:59Usually you can find some place
0:14:00that will accept clothing donations,
0:14:02or things that might have some value.
0:14:04You can often donate to thrift shops or something like that.
0:14:07- And sometimes they have big just,
0:14:08places where you can shove them.
0:14:09You don't even have to talk to a person.
0:14:10They'll just have like, hey, take your old clothes
0:14:12and put 'em in this thing that looks like a dumpster,
0:14:14but it isn't.
0:14:14- Yeah, the problem though is that,
0:14:16like a lot of things in our modern world,
0:14:19A lot more of this stuff ends up getting thrown away
0:14:21behind the scenes than we realize,
0:14:24or that many people assume.
0:14:25So if you're worried like, oh no,
0:14:28what if I just throw this away?
0:14:30I can donate it to somebody.
0:14:31Well, depending on what it is and where you are,
0:14:34there's actually a good chance
0:14:35it's gonna get thrown away by them.
0:14:36So it's not, this is not a good thing,
0:14:41but it is worth knowing in the sense
0:14:42that it's a good counterargument against yourself
0:14:44that you don't have to necessarily not clean out your house
0:14:48because it might go to waste because like,
0:14:50A, it's gonna go to waste anyway,
0:14:52it's going to waste now if it's in your house
0:14:54not being used and not being useful.
0:14:56But B, like, almost any way you could get rid of it,
0:15:00there's a high chance of a lot of it being wasted.
0:15:03And so in a way that kind of, it's crappy,
0:15:06it's kind of a negative way to look at it,
0:15:09but in a way it's like, well then I might as well at least,
0:15:11I might as well get rid of it and improve my life
0:15:15and just try to not be so wasteful in the future
0:15:17when accumulating things in the first place,
0:15:20as opposed to like, I have to keep this,
0:15:23you know, these 10 bags of junk forever
0:15:25because otherwise they'll go in a landfill.
0:15:27Like, well that's, then your house
0:15:28would just become in a landfill at that point.
0:15:30Like, that's not really helping anybody either.
0:15:32- Well, so you've had a fun vacation then, huh?
0:15:36- Oh my God, this is not a vacation.
0:15:39It's a break from school.
0:15:40This is not a vacation.
0:15:42- How's the dog poop situation like?
0:15:44- Well, he poops outside.
0:15:45- I mean in the dumpster.
0:15:46- Oh, there's one bag for me.
0:15:49I think that's all so far.
0:15:50- Really, hmm, interesting.
0:15:52If there's ever a dumpster in our neighborhood,
0:15:53it slowly fills with bags of dog poop.
0:15:56- Yeah, and I've been that guy.
0:15:57'Cause look, I understand, I'm sure people have reasons,
0:16:02but it's stupid that if I'm walking my dog
0:16:07around these suburbs, there's no trash cans anywhere.
0:16:11- You have to escort the poop back to your house.
0:16:13Yeah, there is not a town trash can anywhere.
0:16:17You can walk a mile and a half and see zero trash cans.
0:16:22And that to me, I don't think that's necessarily
0:16:25a good thing, we do see a lot of litter that happens
0:16:28as a result, I think overall it's probably more responsible
0:16:31city planning to put trash cans periodically somewhere,
0:16:34but also who wants to have a trash can
0:16:37in front of their house?
0:16:38I understand why they're not there,
0:16:40like it's definitely a bit of a NIMBY problem,
0:16:42but it is kind of annoying.
0:16:45So yeah, I've totally been that guy.
0:16:47I've like, if there's nobody around
0:16:49and I'm walking past a dumpster,
0:16:50I'll just whoop, flick it in there.
0:16:51But I figure now, all the years I've been doing that,
0:16:55if somebody walked by my dumpster
0:16:55and throws their poop in there, that's fine.
0:16:57I know, they owe it to me.
0:16:58- It's a circle of poop.
0:17:00We'll get everyone writing and telling us
0:17:03how harmful it is to have animal waste in with garbage.
0:17:07- Wait, where else are we supposed to put it?
0:17:09- I don't know, but I'm sure it's wrong.
0:17:11- Probably, I mean look, believe me,
0:17:14there's gonna be a lot of people who think
0:17:15half of what I just said was wrong.
0:17:17You know, that's--
0:17:18- Well, that's why I wanted to call it out,
0:17:19to say like, it's not ideal.
0:17:20Ideally, you would carefully find good new homes
0:17:23for all this extra stuff, but in reality,
0:17:25it would mean that you would just never do it,
0:17:27and it would just fill your house until you died,
0:17:28and then someone would have an estate sale.
0:17:30- Or that person would hire a dumpster,
0:17:32and just dump, like, that's what happens.
0:17:34That's how a lot of these stories end, unfortunately.
0:17:37You keep it until you die,
0:17:39and then someone else throws it away for you.
0:17:41And that's no way to live.
0:17:42So, I mean, keep in mind, like, you know,
0:17:45like a lot of this, this is the thing,
0:17:47like so much stuff that you don't realize
0:17:49gets thrown away, like store returns.
0:17:51So, I know there was a couple of articles recently
0:17:53about like online shopping returns and everything.
0:17:55Yeah, most returns to stores get thrown away.
0:17:59There are very few items that stores will actually resell
0:18:02if they've been returned.
0:18:04Like, there's so much, you know, recycling obviously
0:18:06is a big one, like so much plastic recycling
0:18:08gets thrown away.
0:18:09We should be conscious about our waste for sure
0:18:12and our consumption for sure.
0:18:14There's lots of reasons to be conscious about that
0:18:15and to do that, but there's a reason why
0:18:18the whole reduce recycle thing, reduce is first.
0:18:21Because once you have this stuff,
0:18:26at that point, most of it, at some point,
0:18:30its useful life is going to end
0:18:31and it's going to have to be sent somewhere.
0:18:34And sometimes you can find a good use for it
0:18:36with somebody else or somebody wants to take it.
0:18:38a lot of times you can't.
0:18:40And so if you want to be environmentally conscious
0:18:43about this or more ecologically responsible,
0:18:46the better place to do that is the front part
0:18:48of this equation of like, yeah, you know what,
0:18:50buy less stuff, use less stuff.
0:18:51That's the better part of it.
0:18:54But don't get too high and mighty about what's gonna happen
0:18:57after you're done with it because chances are
0:18:59it's gonna end up in a landfill regardless.
0:19:01- Fun. - Yeah.
0:19:02- All right, well I'm glad you're making progress
0:19:05even though nobody can see it,
0:19:07except outside in the dumpster.
0:19:08- I am recycling an absurd amount of cardboard.
0:19:11Like I-- - Oh, that's good.
0:19:12- So one of the things we did was we upgraded
0:19:16to a larger bed and so we had this tremendous Casper box.
0:19:21(laughing)
0:19:23That, and I also pulled out of the basement
0:19:26two boxes for floor-standing speakers
0:19:29that we use next to our TV.
0:19:31So pretty tall, probably three and a half feet tall.
0:19:34So you know, two, a pair of speakers,
0:19:36each one had its own individual box
0:19:38that was almost the size of a coffin,
0:19:40like a coffin for a short person.
0:19:42And so I had two of those,
0:19:44plus the Casper King size box,
0:19:46which itself is probably about coffin sized as well
0:19:50for a short person.
0:19:51And so I filled all three of those with other cardboard
0:19:55that had been flattened and packed and everything.
0:19:57- Goodness.
0:19:58- Oh my, it's so heavy.
0:19:59(laughs)
0:20:00Again, the hauling.
0:20:02But I would say I could probably fill half a dumpster
0:20:05just with paper and cardboard.
0:20:07- My word.
0:20:09- So yeah, that's sitting next to my dumpster.
0:20:12It's a fun night.
0:20:13- Oh, wow.
0:20:14- So whatever's going on in the world of tech,
0:20:15I have no idea.
0:20:16I have missed all of it.
0:20:18Is anything going on?
0:20:19- Did you hear?
0:20:20Apple bought Nintendo.
0:20:21- Oh yeah, that finally happened.
0:20:22(laughs)
0:20:23(electronic beeping)
0:20:25- All right, let's do some follow up.
0:20:26With regard to greedy Bluetooth from Ask ATP,
0:20:30we got some feedback from Paul Violante,
0:20:33who wrote, regarding Marco's Apple Maps,
0:20:35Bluetooth predicament, there's a setting to have maps speak
0:20:38driving directions through the car as phone call audio.
0:20:42So if you go to settings, maps, spoken directions,
0:20:44and then toggle directions on radio on,
0:20:47then that will act as though a brief phone call
0:20:50has just came in and that will make sure
0:20:52that your car radio treats that as an,
0:20:55oh my goodness, you need to listen to this sort of scenario.
0:20:58So Paul writes, this works on my 2017 Toyota 4Runner.
0:21:00Even if I am playing, even if I'm playing no audio,
0:21:04the phone will connect as if it was on a phone call
0:21:06to speak the directions.
0:21:07- Yeah, this is interesting, yeah,
0:21:08'cause this is about my FJ,
0:21:11you have to be playing music or a podcast
0:21:13in order to hear any spoken map directions,
0:21:16'cause it has to be logically thinking
0:21:17it's playing something.
0:21:19And so, I never thought about this, this is a good idea.
0:21:22I'm gonna try it, but it is kind of annoying
0:21:24that I would have to, this would have to be how it works
0:21:28over any Bluetooth, not just that car radio.
0:21:33But it is interesting, a lot of people forget or never knew
0:21:36these old Bluetooth modes where phone calls
0:21:39were treated differently than audio.
0:21:42And this was for lots of legacy technology reasons,
0:21:44it's a whole different Bluetooth profile,
0:21:47all these different codecs that were lower bandwidth,
0:21:49they could have bi-directional communication
0:21:52over the very, very, very crappy latency,
0:21:54or very crappy bandwidth of early Bluetooth versions.
0:21:57So there's all this stuff.
0:21:57But yeah, it's interesting, Bluetooth,
0:22:00has a lot of crappy legacy stuff,
0:22:02but in this case, that actually will be helpful.
0:22:05- I feel for the person who had to come up with a copy
0:22:08for this option, 'cause it's called directions on radio.
0:22:12It's gotta communicate this very,
0:22:15the thing that Casey just said.
0:22:16So say you're in your car and you wanna hear directions
0:22:18from the map, but you don't wanna have audio playing,
0:22:20well turn this thing on and it'll do that
0:22:21for reasons that are even more complicated than this.
0:22:23But instead, it's just a toggle that says
0:22:25directions on radio.
0:22:27I wonder if people, I do wonder,
0:22:29- How young do you have to be to not recognize radio
0:22:32as the thing in your car that makes noise?
0:22:35'Cause does anyone listen to,
0:22:36I suppose tons of people do listen to radio,
0:22:38but at least in my household,
0:22:41I can't remember the last time we had AM or FM radio
0:22:43turned on in any of our cars.
0:22:45- Yeah, I mean, and this is actually like,
0:22:48I was first making Overcast back in 2013 or so,
0:22:53and I actually briefly considered doing this kind of feature
0:22:57that would route the podcast audio
0:22:59through the phone call profile instead of the audio profile
0:23:03for this reason that like some people actually had
0:23:07Bluetooth situations in their cars usually
0:23:10that supported the phone call mode but not the audio mode.
0:23:13- Oh my. - And so this was a,
0:23:16thank God, a very short-lived period in Bluetooth evolution
0:23:18where you would have that, you know,
0:23:20only have the phone and not have the music.
0:23:22But there are cars out there that have that situation.
0:23:25So I briefly thought about like a feature
0:23:27that would just do this.
0:23:28I even once looked into like,
0:23:29what if I run one of those like, you know,
0:23:31phone IP APIs, like Twilio or whatever back then?
0:23:35Like what if I actually have a premium feature
0:23:37where you can call a phone number
0:23:40and have it just play your podcasts
0:23:42like over an actual phone call
0:23:45for other types of integrations?
0:23:47But fortunately, like, you know,
0:23:49by the time I would have actually gotten to that
0:23:51in my to-do list, the need for all of this stuff
0:23:52had vanished.
0:23:53- Speaking of cars, we have,
0:23:55it's a little bit of longer feedback,
0:23:57but I found it absolutely fascinating.
0:23:58So an anonymous person wrote in
0:24:00with regard to break-by-wire systems.
0:24:01So this means there's no physical connection
0:24:05between the brake pedal and the brakes.
0:24:07It's all electronically controlled.
0:24:08That's break-by-wire.
0:24:09So anonymous writes, "I've spent most of the last decade
0:24:12"working on brakes and break-by-wire brakes
0:24:14"are actually stranger than how you portrayed them.
0:24:17"When a car company calls 'break-by-wire,'
0:24:19"they're primarily referring to a certain kind
0:24:21"of electrically boosted brake system.
0:24:23"Marcus Tesla has a Bosch, Bosch, Bosch.
0:24:26iBooster, which is electrically boosted similarly to how electric power steering is boosted.
0:24:31It senses torque at a motor attached to the input rod and provides additional torque to
0:24:34aid the driver.
0:24:35These "by-wire" systems have the input rod connected to a master cylinder just as it
0:24:39would be in a car without power brakes.
0:24:41The master cylinder is sealed off from the rest of the system by a valve that is held
0:24:44closed during normal operation.
0:24:45The brake controller reads the master cylinder pressure and pedal stroke to determine the
0:24:49driver intent, and then uses a separate electrically actuated boost cylinder to generate the brake
0:24:54system pressure.
0:24:55So it is technically by wire as during normal operation there is no fluid connection to
0:24:59the wheels, but there is fluid involved on the input side and all of this actuation takes
0:25:03place in one piece of hardware.
0:25:05Some manufacturers, particularly Japanese automakers, use high pressure accumulators
0:25:08in place of the boost cylinder, but the principle of operation is similar.
0:25:12This is done because only generating the pressure needed for a situation is more efficient,
0:25:18and subjective metrics are improved by isolating the driver from wheel behavior.
0:25:21Additionally, this provides a built-in failsafe,
0:25:23where if the brake unit fails,
0:25:25the isolation valve will open itself
0:25:26or be opened by the ECU and provide the driver
0:25:28with a direct connection to the wheels.
0:25:30And then, Jon, I guess you were having
0:25:32an email conversation with this person, is that right?
0:25:34- Mm-hmm, yeah, this was my response to that.
0:25:35So this is actually stuff that I had seen
0:25:38when the first Brake-by-Wire system came out,
0:25:41and we didn't go into it in the past show,
0:25:43but how do they deal with the situation
0:25:45where what if the electronics fail?
0:25:47Like, when the very first Brake-by-Wire things came out,
0:25:50Lots of people were nervous about that.
0:25:51So they had all these fail safes where it's like,
0:25:52it's like a regular braking system,
0:25:55but that part of it is shut off normally.
0:25:57But if anything goes wrong, this valve opens up,
0:25:59and it just like, it sort of default fails
0:26:02into being normal-ish brakes, right?
0:26:05That was to make people feel more comfortable.
0:26:07So my response to this was to ask this person,
0:26:10you know, it was just basically amusing.
0:26:12I said, I wonder if the other go to the jet fighter route.
0:26:15So jet fighter planes for many, many years, decades,
0:26:18have also had fly-by-wire,
0:26:20and the same deal, the first plane that was fly by wire,
0:26:23all of the pilots and the engineers were all scared.
0:26:25It's like, what if the electronics fail?
0:26:28Electronics fail all the time.
0:26:29I want the pedals and the stick in my plane
0:26:32to be connected to the control surfaces.
0:26:34I don't wanna rely on the electronics.
0:26:36If the electronics go out,
0:26:37I'm just gonna fall out of the sky like a rock
0:26:39'cause I can't control anything anymore.
0:26:41And the way they eventually dealt with that in jet fighters
0:26:45and other sort of fly by wire airplanes
0:26:47is not by doing the thing that you just read,
0:26:50where it's like, well, it's like a regular hydraulic system,
0:26:52but we shut that off normally and do this by wire thing,
0:26:55but then it fails, it opens back up.
0:26:57Instead, the way they deal with it in,
0:26:59not all planes, but a lot of them,
0:27:02I mean, it's the same way they deal
0:27:03with a lot of things in aviation,
0:27:04massive redundancy.
0:27:06So there's not one electronic system,
0:27:08there's not two electronic systems,
0:27:09like three completely independent, redundant,
0:27:12fully functioning systems
0:27:14routed through different parts of the plane
0:27:15using different technologies,
0:27:17And it's like, if one of them fails,
0:27:18you switch to the backup one.
0:27:19If the backbone fails,
0:27:20you switch to the backup, backup one.
0:27:22And that, in theory, it makes people comfortable enough
0:27:26that they're okay flying the plane.
0:27:27Nevermind the fact that a lot of fighter planes
0:27:29are so unstable, under normal operation,
0:27:32that without the computers constantly adjusting
0:27:33the control surfaces, it will tumble out of the sky
0:27:35like a rock thrown by a toddler.
0:27:38But we'll set that aside for now.
0:27:40So that was my question.
0:27:42All right, so you just described the way this works.
0:27:44do you think cars will ever go to full by wire with no physical backup and deal with it by saying,
0:27:50"Okay, we're really going to separate your pedals entirely from the hydraulic system,
0:27:55but to make it so you all don't die, we're going to double or triple or quadruple redundant,
0:28:00make the system redundant." And so the person wrote, "Publicly available information would say,
0:28:06yes, all the suppliers are preparing for that, especially as cars gain more and more advanced
0:28:10ADAS, which is Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, some redundancy becomes necessary.
0:28:15And there are lots of benefits that can come from separating the driver controls from the
0:28:18actuator that you just might be able to imagine.
0:28:20This is kind of one of those, like the person here is working on brake biowire systems and
0:28:25you know, I asked a question, I wonder if they're going to do X and the person said,
0:28:29"publicly available information" would say yes.
0:28:31That's their way of saying, "I'm not going to tell you we're doing that, but were you
0:28:34to look at publicly available information, you would see it leaning in that direction."
0:28:37So that's a confirmation without confirmation.
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0:30:38Aidan Traeger writes, "I know you acknowledge the existence of third-party Apple Music apps on the show,
0:30:47but I wanted to pass along Mark Barrowcliff's fourth annual iOS music player showcase from just last month."
0:30:52So, you know, we were talking about in God bless if yeah, does anyone at Apple actually use the Apple Music app?
0:30:59I feel like we say this about a lot of things.
0:31:02This is becoming like the new "If Steve Were Alive."
0:31:04Does anyone at Apple actually--
0:31:07- Well, I can tell you one thing.
0:31:08They definitely don't use the Mac version,
0:31:11and if they do, they definitely don't use the songs view.
0:31:14- It's what, I feel like every corner of the music app
0:31:17on every platform is straight trash.
0:31:19And this is why I haven't divorced myself of Spotify,
0:31:23despite being cheap enough to want to,
0:31:25is because it's all garbage.
0:31:27I can't play something until I can,
0:31:29And then I'm in the midst of playing something,
0:31:31it's playing great.
0:31:32Actually, just earlier today,
0:31:33I had an instance where I was not authorized
0:31:35to play something.
0:31:37Earlier in the day,
0:31:38I had an instance where I was playing an album,
0:31:39I think I was playing Thriller by Michael Jackson.
0:31:41I was playing the album,
0:31:42went through the first three or four songs, no problem.
0:31:44Just stopped.
0:31:46It knows it's ready to play the next song.
0:31:48I didn't stop it, I swear to you, I didn't stop it,
0:31:50'cause this happens a lot.
0:31:51It's ready to play the next song, but it just froze.
0:31:54Like, the app is functional, but it just froze.
0:31:56It got sleepy, I guess, I don't know.
0:31:58I was asking too much.
0:31:59I guess I just don't have enough empathy for the machine.
0:32:01Am I right?
0:32:02Anyway, so with regard to,
0:32:03hey, what could you do to fix this problem?
0:32:06Well, you could potentially
0:32:07just get a different music app entirely.
0:32:09And so Eden reminded us of this list by Mark Barrowcliff.
0:32:13It's actually more than the list.
0:32:14It's a comprehensive review.
0:32:16And I started paging through this this morning
0:32:18and there is a lot here.
0:32:20So if you are interested,
0:32:23Mark does an amazing job of like laying out the landscape
0:32:26and showing what each of these things looks like
0:32:29and how they behave and what they're good at,
0:32:30what they're bad at, et cetera.
0:32:31But it's a really, really interesting roundup
0:32:33and I strongly encourage you, if you're like me
0:32:36and hate everything about your music situation,
0:32:39check it out, you might like it.
0:32:40- These are just iOS apps, right?
0:32:42- iOS and iPadOS, yes.
0:32:44I do not believe there was anything on macOS, that's correct.
0:32:48- Yeah, there was 16 apps, three of them are new this year.
0:32:51I know there are similar clients available for the Mac,
0:32:54but I doubt there are 16 of them in total.
0:32:56(laughing)
0:32:58- Yeah, this is so often the problem.
0:33:00Like, I've looked at a lot of these
0:33:02possible alternative apps over the years,
0:33:04and usually there is not an app that is Mac and iOS.
0:33:09There are some that are Mac only,
0:33:11there's a lot that are iOS only,
0:33:13but usually you have to give up one of those platforms
0:33:17to use one of these apps.
0:33:18Or you can just have it use your Apple Music Library,
0:33:21which a lot of these apps do anyway,
0:33:23and then you can kind of just keep using
0:33:25the Apple version of music on the Mac,
0:33:28but that's the worst one.
0:33:30Like, that's the one I don't wanna keep using,
0:33:32that's the one I wanna replace.
0:33:33- Mm-hmm.
0:33:34It's so bad.
0:33:36I mean, I hate to rag on these apps
0:33:40because you don't know what constraints they're dealing with
0:33:44you don't know what they're up against.
0:33:45- Oh, I know what, they're dealing with not caring.
0:33:47That's it, if they can't, look, Apple has shown
0:33:50when they care about something,
0:33:52they put a lot of resources behind it,
0:33:54they put good talent on it,
0:33:56they incentivize the people in the company to work on it.
0:33:59And it's very, very clear that they do not value this,
0:34:04because if they valued it,
0:34:06they would put the resources behind it to make it happen,
0:34:08and they just don't.
0:34:09- And when you say they, to be clear,
0:34:11you're not talking about the developers
0:34:12who make the application,
0:34:13because they don't set those top priorities,
0:34:15you're talking about-- - Do any developers
0:34:16make the applications?
0:34:17(laughing)
0:34:18Honestly, look, in a lot of times,
0:34:21What happens in Apple a lot of times is certain apps
0:34:25or features actually go for a long span
0:34:28having a full-time staff of zero people.
0:34:30The impression I've gotten over many, many people
0:34:33over many years is that people get moved around
0:34:35to different projects or they move themselves around
0:34:37to different projects and for your career to progress,
0:34:42you typically have to be moved around
0:34:44to whatever the hot new thing is.
0:34:46I've heard time and time again that it's hard
0:34:50for your career to advance and progress
0:34:53if you're doing the more boring stuff.
0:34:55Like, what engineer or product manager
0:34:58wants to spend their time on the music app for the Mac?
0:35:01Like, I understand why it is this way,
0:35:03but that is ultimately a failure of management and structure.
0:35:05Like, that is something that, like,
0:35:07the company has always had problems,
0:35:10like multitasking and keeping their interest
0:35:13in working on the things they've already started
0:35:15rather than going and starting something new constantly.
0:35:18And ideally, as they grow, they should be able
0:35:22to balance more things over time.
0:35:25In practice, that hasn't really happened nearly as much
0:35:27as you would think based on their size.
0:35:31- I mean, this is not a unique to Apple problem.
0:35:33Every company I've ever worked for experiences this.
0:35:35It is one of the most annoying to people like us
0:35:38who really appreciate good software
0:35:40to see resources not be put into something
0:35:44that is quote unquote done or isn't the new hotness
0:35:47or doesn't drive revenue or isn't driving growth
0:35:50or whatever and that's just the natural inclination
0:35:52of any company, the people who are managing it.
0:35:54Why am I gonna dump all my money into a thing
0:35:56that I know is not going to produce any growth,
0:35:58does not have any big potential upside,
0:36:01exists the way it is now, has a dwindling number of users.
0:36:05If I made it 1000% better, I wouldn't make .01% more money
0:36:08and it wouldn't make anybody choose the Mac or the iPhone.
0:36:13You can list off all these reasons why.
0:36:15Here's why we're not investing in that.
0:36:17And for the most part, that's right,
0:36:21except for where things just slowly start to decay, right?
0:36:24That people think, well, once it's done, it's done.
0:36:27And even though everyone knows intellectually,
0:36:28even at the highest levels of management,
0:36:30well, software is never done.
0:36:31You have to, at the very least, maintain it.
0:36:33And it's important to keep up with the times
0:36:35that every few years you really need to overhaul it.
0:36:37And Apple would say that they do that.
0:36:38It's just that they do that, like every company,
0:36:40way too slowly.
0:36:41They wait too long.
0:36:43They wait for something to become a festering sore
0:36:45to say, okay, well, we're never gonna make any money
0:36:47off of this, but really it should be better
0:36:50because it's an embarrassment now,
0:36:51or it's actually hurting us reputation-wise,
0:36:53or like, you know, and then someone seizes
0:36:55on that opportunity within the company to say,
0:36:57ah, I've wanted to fix this app forever,
0:36:58and finally I get to bring a team up,
0:37:00and we'll get a bunch of people who are enthusiastic,
0:37:02and they'll fix it all.
0:37:03And that's not a cycle that we enjoy as users.
0:37:05We don't enjoy the app that we use every day
0:37:07slowly crumbling to dust,
0:37:09'til it becomes such a big crisis
0:37:11that Apple turns its gaze briefly to it,
0:37:13and throws some people and money at it,
0:37:14and resurrects it and then we begin the cycle again.
0:37:17It would be better if everything was maintained evenly.
0:37:20But that's not just, it's very difficult in my experience
0:37:23working for several different companies over my career,
0:37:26it's very difficult for companies to have that,
0:37:29to have that discipline to say we are going to
0:37:32keep a team of people on let's say terminal for the mag.
0:37:36And we are never gonna have zero people on it.
0:37:39We're never gonna have, I mean I think terminal for example
0:37:41has had fractional people.
0:37:42Like it would have one person who's responsible for terminal
0:37:44and five other apps, right?
0:37:45So it's got 20% of a person on it for five years.
0:37:48But we're gonna have, what I always call it
0:37:52in my pitches inside companies,
0:37:53'cause I'm always complaining about this,
0:37:54is you need to have a standing army,
0:37:56which is probably a bad analogy
0:37:57for militaristic reasons or whatever,
0:37:58but a standing army for everything that you care about,
0:38:01that you can never disband them.
0:38:02You can never say, "Terminal's done.
0:38:04"Don't need any people on it."
0:38:05There always needs to be a terminal team.
0:38:07Doesn't need to be a big team,
0:38:08but it literally needs to be there forever.
0:38:09Like forever?
0:38:10What do you mean forever?
0:38:11Yeah, if you ship terminal on the Mac
0:38:13and you still sell Macs and terminal still comes with them,
0:38:16you always have to have some, at least some small team
0:38:19whose only job is to continue to maintain
0:38:22and improve terminal.
0:38:24And there are anti-patterns there as well
0:38:26because if you have that team,
0:38:27eventually that team gets bored
0:38:28and decide the terminal is gonna become like a,
0:38:30you know, an text-based MMO or something, right?
0:38:33'Cause they just-- - Or they get
0:38:34like rewrite-itis, you know?
0:38:35Like, oh, we're gonna rewrite this all in Swift UI.
0:38:38- Right, right, so that's part of the discipline as well,
0:38:41but we're so far at the other end of the spectrum
0:38:43where it just gets abandoned, right,
0:38:44that I feel like we could swing back in the other direction.
0:38:46And what you mentioned about career is also true.
0:38:49If you're going to do that and have a standing army
0:38:50who are on these applications,
0:38:52you need to not punish them for being on the boring project.
0:38:57If they're doing an awesome job,
0:38:58and every year, you know, terminal,
0:39:01terminal is the most beloved application on the Mac,
0:39:03and it's so good that, you know,
0:39:05third-party terminal apps have trouble competing,
0:39:07and you know, and again, there's,
0:39:09with this particular thing where we're talking about Apple,
0:39:11it's a little bit weird
0:39:12because they're also the platform owner.
0:39:15That's another thing that this discipline will get you,
0:39:17is you'll have the conversation.
0:39:18Should we be shipping Insert Application here with the Mac,
0:39:22or should we allow third parties to handle this entirely?
0:39:24In fact, there's a topic about that
0:39:25that we'll get to in some future episode of ATP.
0:39:28And by being forced to have a standing army,
0:39:31a team assigned to every single thing, it makes you think,
0:39:35do we really need to be shipping Graphing Calculator?
0:39:38Do we care about Graphing Calculator anymore?
0:39:40Or should we let that be a third party opportunity
0:39:43because we don't want to fund a team
0:39:45that for the next 20 years with even just one or two people,
0:39:49all they do is make sure Graph and Calculator
0:39:50is improving every year.
0:39:52Right, you know, be honest with yourself.
0:39:54Do we care about Graph and Calculator
0:39:55or is it just there because someone wrote it once
0:39:56and it still works?
0:39:57So those are all things that should happen inside Apple
0:40:01and should happen inside every company,
0:40:03but it is not easy, it's not easy.
0:40:05From the outside, it just seems like
0:40:06just make all the apps better, right?
0:40:08have unlimited money, but that's never really true,
0:40:10and money doesn't translate directly into developer effort.
0:40:13So it's tricky, but I agree that Apple,
0:40:16particularly in the case of the music app,
0:40:17and particularly in the case of the music app on the Mac,
0:40:21is not doing well.
0:40:23- I think in some ways, like, you know how
0:40:25over the last couple of decades,
0:40:28some of the more enlightened and some of the big tech
0:40:30companies have intentionally created career paths
0:40:35because the original problem was like programmers
0:40:38would get elevated to management
0:40:40as they advance in their careers,
0:40:41but not all programmers can or want to be managers.
0:40:45And so a lot of places have developed career tracks
0:40:49for programmers to advance their careers
0:40:51while still just being programmers,
0:40:53not like directing a whole team of people.
0:40:55- They're called ICs, Marco.
0:40:57- Yeah, sorry, yes.
0:40:58You can tell how much experience I have.
0:41:00- Individual contributors.
0:41:02But you can see how in a way,
0:41:06it was like the industry had to develop
0:41:09and stabilize and mature to some degree
0:41:12before it had the introspection.
0:41:13Be like, you know, actually we need to kind of create
0:41:16a structure here that creates better results
0:41:17in this area, right?
0:41:18And I think this is one of those areas of like,
0:41:21the industry now is so big and so developed and mature,
0:41:26there's a lot of boring technologies
0:41:29that we just kinda need to keep working.
0:41:32and they're never gonna be exciting to work on anymore,
0:41:35or probably, or at least rarely gonna be exciting
0:41:37to work on, but you can't have,
0:41:41these big tech companies that have these big,
0:41:43old developed platforms, all these different apps
0:41:45and parts to them, they have to incentivize and reward
0:41:50the maintenance of boring things over time.
0:41:54We have so much now that we've built as an industry
0:41:56over the last 20, 30 years that we still need.
0:42:00We need all of this to keep working.
0:42:02Ideally, it would slowly even get better
0:42:04and have a staff of more than zero
0:42:06working on it at some point.
0:42:08But this isn't, as you mentioned,
0:42:11this isn't exclusive to Apple,
0:42:11but Apple still does a pretty bad job of this.
0:42:14We need those things to have somebody looking out for them.
0:42:18And if the incentives in the company
0:42:21for things like career promotion and excitement and reward
0:42:26are not gonna reward that,
0:42:29we need to start creating paths for that to be rewarded,
0:42:31like inside these companies.
0:42:33- Well, and they exist.
0:42:34Like in Apple, there is a title,
0:42:37like there's Distinguished Engineer,
0:42:39Scientist and Technologist is a title at Apple.
0:42:41And my understanding, which is very limited,
0:42:44and I might have this wrong,
0:42:45but my limited understanding is
0:42:47that's basically a nerd's nerd
0:42:48that has just been a super nerd for their entire lives
0:42:52and is still writing code even though they are
0:42:56in the perhaps twilight of their career.
0:42:59And it's not because they're no good,
0:43:00it's the opposite because they're extremely good.
0:43:02And I've seen in many companies these sorts of things
0:43:05'cause what you said is right,
0:43:07that oftentimes, especially up until 10, 20 years ago,
0:43:10there would be a fork in the road,
0:43:12or really there wasn't even a fork, I should say,
0:43:15there was just a really right-angled turn
0:43:19where even if you really love coding,
0:43:21well, you're old enough and wise enough
0:43:23that well, you're gonna be a manager now and that's that.
0:43:24So, you know, KISS, Xcode, Visual Studio, whatever, goodbye.
0:43:28You're just gonna live in Excel and PowerPoint
0:43:31for the rest of your career, have fun.
0:43:33And it's gotten better, but it's still not great.
0:43:36And I don't know, Apple Music is just so frustrating
0:43:39because when I got exposed to Apple,
0:43:43which by John's metric was yesterday,
0:43:45but in reality was the mid-aughts,
0:43:47they were the music company.
0:43:50Like more than almost anything else,
0:43:51they were the music company, they were the iPod company,
0:43:54They were the iTunes company.
0:43:56And it makes me sad, perhaps more than most,
0:44:00because that's kind of my intrinsic and default view
0:44:05of Apple is that they're so good at music,
0:44:08among other things.
0:44:09In the same way that like, I guess in the '80s,
0:44:11and John, correct me when you're ready,
0:44:13but in the '80s, they were the publishing company,
0:44:15among other things.
0:44:16And they were so good at publishing,
0:44:18and in the aughts, they were so good at music.
0:44:21and to see Apple trying in some regard,
0:44:26with Apple Music trying to be modern
0:44:29and trying to be forward thinking
0:44:32and getting big into streaming,
0:44:34and yet the client applications,
0:44:36which is the thing that you would think
0:44:37would be their bread and butter,
0:44:39it's just such garbage, it really is.
0:44:42I hate making, poking fun at other people's work,
0:44:47but it's just so bad, you guys, it's so frustrating.
0:44:49It's nobody's work.
0:44:50That's the problem.
0:44:51Yeah, maybe that's it.
0:44:52I think Apple Music, especially on iOS, has a lot of people working on it.
0:44:56I think it is, we've talked about this before, probably hampered by the backend, which seems
0:44:59like it's old and creaky and not particularly responsive.
0:45:01And I bet the frontend team has very limited control over what the backend does.
0:45:04And part of the reason it's so creaky and crumbling is because it is from when KC started
0:45:09getting into Apple.
0:45:10It's old, like in the grand scheme of things.
0:45:12Really does need to be torn down and rebuilt.
0:45:15In particular on the Mac, splitting out the music app was not really the rebuild we were
0:45:18looking for.
0:45:19I think it's definitely doing better than the Mac version, but it's still weird and
0:45:23buggy.
0:45:24I tend to blame a lot of the server-side stuff for that.
0:45:26But getting back to having to have a team on every project, a standing army on all your
0:45:32things forces you to do, I think if you had that conversation about music, they would
0:45:36agree with Casey.
0:45:37They would say, "Well, no.
0:45:38Music is a thing that Apple needs to do, not just because we used to be the music company
0:45:42when we made the iPod, but just because it is a core activity that our customers do with
0:45:46our products.
0:45:48It is not graphing calculator, right?
0:45:50It is one of the big pillars of things people do with their phones and their Macs and their
0:45:57iPads and the things that we sell.
0:45:59So this is a quick conversation.
0:46:02Should music be better?
0:46:03Yes.
0:46:04Should we stop doing music?
0:46:05No.
0:46:06And you know, it's a service behind it too.
0:46:07So you've got servers around, like everything says, please fix music.
0:46:11I'm not sure what's taking them so long.
0:46:12I think they have made some improvements in recent years, but it is definitely in need
0:46:17of a freshening and an overhaul.
0:46:19And maybe it's just so complicated now
0:46:21because they have the legacy of people like Marco
0:46:23who are still using it like iTunes,
0:46:24so they've gotta support all those features,
0:46:25otherwise Marco will be sad,
0:46:27but then they're trying to also be Spotify,
0:46:28but Spotify doesn't have that legacy
0:46:30that they have to deal with.
0:46:31And you know, it's a difficult situation,
0:46:33but this is definitely an area that needs improvement,
0:46:35but if they ask me, I'm gonna say,
0:46:38do photos for families first.
0:46:40- Yeah, I mean-- - I would agree with that.
0:46:41I would agree with that. - That's probably
0:46:42in worse shape, but yeah, no, I mean, it's just,
0:46:44that's the thing, like, I don't think,
0:46:46It's one of the situations where it's not like
0:46:48any one person trying to do a bad job.
0:46:52It's that the structure of the incentives
0:46:55and the way things work, the way people move around,
0:46:58it's that kind of stuff that has to be addressed
0:47:00through structural changes and management.
0:47:05It's that kind of thing.
0:47:05It's not like there's some villain keeping music down.
0:47:10But it's like, when you look at Spotify's crappy app,
0:47:16Spotify's app should not be a breath of fresh air
0:47:20in any way to any Apple customer.
0:47:23Because Spotify's app is terrible.
0:47:25And we are a custom as Apple users,
0:47:28at least we used to be, to a higher standard
0:47:31of how good our first party apps,
0:47:34or the apps that we're accustomed to seeing
0:47:36from our community, to how good those are.
0:47:38Like that's kind of where we came from.
0:47:40Now yes, I know the iPhone is much bigger
0:47:42than everything else, but we are accustomed
0:47:45to culturally a high bar.
0:47:47Like our apps should be really good,
0:47:49and apps on the Mac and first party apps from Apple
0:47:52should be really good because historically
0:47:54they usually were.
0:47:56And we're at a point now where in a lot of areas,
0:48:00including this, they're not.
0:48:01And that's on them to create the conditions
0:48:06to turn that around.
0:48:09Because again, we should never, none of us,
0:48:12should ever look at Spotify and say,
0:48:14"Ooh, this part's nice,"
0:48:16because no part of Spotify is nice.
0:48:17It's garbage.
0:48:18- No, that's not true. - In certain areas,
0:48:20it's just less garbage-y than Apple's current music app.
0:48:23- See, but that's the thing.
0:48:24One of the areas where it's less garbage than Apple Music
0:48:27is it actually plays music reliably.
0:48:30- I know. - That's an area
0:48:32where it's less garbage.
0:48:33- Agreed, and that's why,
0:48:35'cause it is a terrible app.
0:48:37- Otherwise, yes, you're right.
0:48:39- It's a web view, and it's a bad web view at that.
0:48:42It's an even worse web view
0:48:43than the old Apple Music Store things were.
0:48:45And we shouldn't be looking at that and saying,
0:48:48ooh, this is better than ours in any way.
0:48:50'Cause Spotify's app is garbage
0:48:51and Apple can very much do better.
0:48:54And so I wish they would in this area
0:48:56because I don't wanna use Spotify for lots of reasons.
0:49:01You know, many of which are political.
0:49:03But certainly, you know, I don't wanna be tempted
0:49:06by any part of their app being better.
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0:51:13(upbeat music)
0:51:16- I would like to do the thing that I do
0:51:18every once in a while, which is I attempt
0:51:20to take a victory lap on something and then I'm shot down.
0:51:22So here we go, everyone.
0:51:24I would like to tell you that I was listening
0:51:26to the aforementioned "Reconsider differences"
0:51:28episode 176, "The Curse of Convenience."
0:51:31And first of all, I do love that show so darn much. It is so good.
0:51:34But beyond that, um,
0:51:35I was listening and John was describing how you are going through old
0:51:40photographs, like, you know,
0:51:41printed photographs and scanning them and so on and so forth,
0:51:43which as with everything John talks about is somehow riveting,
0:51:46even though it shouldn't be. But here's where the victory lap comes in.
0:51:49You were geotagging these photos.
0:51:51And I was lamenting to you just a couple of months ago that I think it's
0:51:54preposterous that Mr. Metadata himself didn't want to put geotags in any of his
0:51:58pictures. And I said, you should do that.
0:51:59You never know when you might want it and listen to that
0:52:02Apparently John you're met your geotagging your photos and I am doing my victory lap as we speak
0:52:07Well, I think you are aided there by the incredibly slow scanner I have
0:52:11The episode unfortunately this part is in the members only after shows you'd have to go to really not FM slash rd slash
0:52:20join
0:52:22I think I'm just going off top of my head there
0:52:24To hear the member thing. But yeah, the problem is
0:52:28It doing something like this scanning photos. There's a lot of downtime or you're waiting for the scanner
0:52:34and so you're looking for other things to do and
0:52:37Part of what I'm doing with that time is taking the previous batch and retouching them and rotating them and fixing them
0:52:43And then while I'm in there, I like okay
0:52:44Well, I've done I've got them all looking nice and the scanners only halfway through. So what do I do now?
0:52:49Well my as well geotag them
0:52:54Like part of what I'm doing the geotagging is because how can you geotag photos from a long time ago?
0:52:59Well if they're like in my childhood home
0:53:01I know the address like yeah, so I just do that and I said on the show some of them are there are beach photos
0:53:06I know the spot on the beach
0:53:07So I just dropped the pin
0:53:09Right on any Google Maps like with the satellite view and just get the latitude and longitude because I literally know like down to you
0:53:15Know 10 feet where it was taken from and that's a fun thing to do while I for the scanner to finish
0:53:20Yeah, so I don't do with all of them
0:53:21I can't do it with all of them, but it's something for me to do while I wait for the scanner
0:53:26to slowly grind.
0:53:27And here's the thing I don't understand about the scanner.
0:53:28I'm sure there's a good explanation for this, but I'm putting multiple photographs on a
0:53:33flatbed scanner at the same time, right?
0:53:36Just because, you know, I figured that's more efficient, but I put a bunch down there.
0:53:39And the flatbed scanner has got like a little bar, I think, that like kind of like shines
0:53:43light and moves across and scans, right?
0:53:45And the bar goes across the width of the thing, goes, you know, and I imagine it just lighting
0:53:48up a row at a time of the image and recording the pixel values and that little thing.
0:53:54I'm assuming that's how it works.
0:53:55I don't know the details, right?
0:53:57But what I expect to happen is I line up all the photos on the flatbed scanner and the
0:54:01little bar goes and just goes from one end of the flatbed to the other and scans all
0:54:06the pictures.
0:54:07Because if I had put a flat piece of paper there, like the scanning bed is, I don't know,
0:54:10it's like 11 inches by 14 inches, whatever it is.
0:54:12If I put a piece of paper filling like the whole area, it would scan that.
0:54:15It would just go and scan the whole page.
0:54:18But when I put five photos there in the image capture app and I like show and I say I want
0:54:23this to come out as multiple files, it does one pass for each photo.
0:54:28So it goes, oh, scans the first photo and then it goes back to the beginning, scans
0:54:34the second one, it goes back to the beginning, scans it.
0:54:36That's why it takes for freaking ever.
0:54:38And I think that's incredibly inefficient and I don't understand why it's doing that.
0:54:42So anyway, that's why I'm geotagging photos now.
0:54:44Hey, I don't care how you got there.
0:54:46I just care that you got there.
0:54:47I'm excited.
0:54:48And then since we're in apparently the John Power Hour,
0:54:51would you like to tell us about the feedback
0:54:53to your absolutely delightful streaming app spec?
0:54:58- Yeah, so I'm making up for the fact
0:54:59that I didn't post any blog posts last year,
0:55:03so now I've done two this year,
0:55:04so I'm maintaining my one per year average.
0:55:06(laughing)
0:55:07- No wait, if one blog post is a follow-up
0:55:09to one that came shortly before,
0:55:11does that count as a whole separate one?
0:55:14Or is it more like a 1.5 situation?
0:55:16- No, it's a whole separate one.
0:55:18OK, it's got a different URL.
0:55:19It's got a title.
0:55:20It's the whole thing.
0:55:22So the last one where we talked about streaming apps
0:55:25and my spec for the bare bones features
0:55:28that they should all have.
0:55:29And then I said I wanted to do a post about the feedback
0:55:31I was getting, and I did.
0:55:34We'll put a link in the show notes.
0:55:35The title is very similar to the other one,
0:55:37so some people might think, oh, I already read this one,
0:55:39but this is just about the feedback.
0:55:41I'm not going to go through it all here.
0:55:42Again, I talked about it more in rectives.
0:55:44But I'm just going to tell you that the upshot is
0:55:48The overwhelming feedback, like 80% of all the feedback
0:55:52I got from people was people saying,
0:55:53"I hate it when I launch a video streaming app
0:55:55"and I can't continue watching the thing
0:55:57"I was previously watching."
0:55:58Everybody complains about it.
0:56:00It's just like the number one complaint, not even close.
0:56:04So much so that like, it just,
0:56:08I was in the car with my daughter and I was saying
0:56:09where I was gonna talk about it on a podcast.
0:56:11She doesn't care about technology or, you know,
0:56:13she watches streaming stuff all the time
0:56:15and we have all these streaming services,
0:56:16but she doesn't care about apps or whatever.
0:56:18So I said, "What do you think about streaming apps?
0:56:19I'm gonna be talking about it on a podcast."
0:56:21She's like, "I had to sort of explain
0:56:22what the heck a streaming app is.
0:56:23You know, like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, whatever.
0:56:27Like, not the shows that are on them,
0:56:28but like the actual thing you're using to watch the shows,
0:56:31what do you think about those?"
0:56:32And you could tell she really hadn't given them much thought
0:56:35'cause, you know, kids just take things for granted.
0:56:37This is just how the world works.
0:56:38You can watch TV shows on your magic little device.
0:56:40I was like, "Yeah, but if you think about the apps,
0:56:42like, do you have anything to say about them?
0:56:44Any kind of opinion?"
0:56:45And she said, "I find it kind of annoying
0:56:47"when I go to the app and I can't find the show
0:56:49"I was watching."
0:56:50It was literally the only thing she said.
0:56:52Totally unprompted, I didn't mention anything about it.
0:56:54I'm like, this is just like the original sin
0:56:58of streaming apps.
0:56:59And I go into this post, a further explanation
0:57:03of why that is.
0:57:04Someone from Hulu saying that we actually did A/B testing
0:57:06and determined that it drove engagement.
0:57:08And so the theory that it drives more engagement
0:57:10is not just a theory, it's a real thing that happened
0:57:12and it caused them to change their apps to make them worse.
0:57:14For people who won't read it, I will just throw in the money sentence that I almost
0:57:19bolded but didn't.
0:57:22The idea that you have some kind of engagement-based metric where if we make it harder for you
0:57:26to find the show you're watching, you'll try more new stuff and that's actually good for
0:57:30you because you'll discover new shows and all these other things you can convince yourself
0:57:34that this is better because it will make the company more money or even if you can convince
0:57:38yourself that it's better for the customer because it will help them discover new shows
0:57:42and they'll be happier in the end because they discovered that amazing show that they
0:57:45wouldn't have otherwise discovered.
0:57:47Even if you agree with all that, which I don't, but even if you stipulate that for the sake
0:57:52of argument, sure, that's all true.
0:57:55People hate it.
0:57:57They hate not being able to find the thing they were watching.
0:58:00And the adaptation of this old saying, which I could not find the source of so I just linked
0:58:05the quote investigator, was "People won't remember what you said, but they will remember
0:58:10how you made them feel. And that applies to applications as well. People will not remember
0:58:17that your app helped them find their new favorite television show. They'll remember that your
0:58:22app was frustrating. And they will eventually associate that frustration with your brand.
0:58:27And so even if it is better, which I don't think it is, to intentionally make it harder
0:58:31to find what people were watching, everyone hates it. Please don't do it. Yeah, we'll
0:58:37We'll see if anything changes.
0:58:39But seeing the incentives so clearly outlined like this,
0:58:42it seems like nothing will change
0:58:43because as far as these companies concern,
0:58:45the applications are working as designed.
0:58:47And in the end, as has been a skill to have,
0:58:51really like the TV shows matter
0:58:52and we will suffer through almost any application
0:58:54to get to the play button to make it happen.
0:58:56So probably not a lot of incentive for this to change,
0:58:58but boy, it's kind of a shame.
0:59:00- I've been loving your posts about this
0:59:04and I'm sad that I'm not gonna get another post
0:59:07about anything until 2023.
0:59:09So it's been a fun ride.
0:59:10- Well, who knows?
0:59:11Stranger things have happened.
0:59:13- Indeed.
0:59:14So we have a few things to clear out in the main show.
0:59:18I don't know how much time we'll have for it,
0:59:20but we wanted to start tonight with the,
0:59:23actually fairly old news at this point,
0:59:24about Nvidia, Intel, and ARM,
0:59:26or most especially Nvidia and ARM.
0:59:28So we talked, actually,
0:59:30I guess it was like a year or two back, when was that?
0:59:32It was September of 2020,
0:59:34which I feel like it was yesterday,
0:59:36but time is a flat circle.
0:59:37We talked about how NVIDIA was trying to acquire ARM,
0:59:40ARM being, how would you describe ARM?
0:59:42I don't know, I feel like I'm gonna butcher this
0:59:44if I make an attempt at it.
0:59:45- The company that came up with the instruction set
0:59:47and CPU, many of the CPU designs that are used in cellphones
0:59:52and many other things, there are small, low-power chips,
0:59:54and when people started making smartphones,
0:59:56ARM chips were ideally suited to it
0:59:59because they were small and low-power.
1:00:01And eventually Apple decided to put ARM chips in the iPhone,
1:00:05and then it started making its own chips
1:00:07based on the ARM instruction set, and the rest is history.
1:00:11- Indeed, thank you.
1:00:12So, early, I think it was late January or early February,
1:00:16there were some rumblings that, oh, this acquisition
1:00:19may not go through because a lot of regulators
1:00:21were really unhappy about it across the entire world.
1:00:24And then sure enough, it was, looks like February 8th,
1:00:28the deal collapsed, quoting from Daring Fireball,
1:00:31"Softbank Media Group Corp has shelved its blockbuster sale
1:00:34of ARM, limited to US chip maker Nvidia Corp,
1:00:38valued at up to $80 billion, citing regulatory hurdles
1:00:41that will instead seek to list the company.
1:00:43Britain's ARM, which named a new CEO
1:00:45on whatever Tuesday that was, said it would go public
1:00:48before March 2023, and SoftBank's CEO,
1:00:50which owns most if not all of it,
1:00:52indicated that it would be in the United States
1:00:54and most likely on the NASDAQ.
1:00:56So it is going to be its own thing sooner rather than later.
1:01:01And for people who don't know, ARM is not unique, but part of what makes ARM different
1:01:08than other CPU makers is that they don't actually have to manufacture the chips themselves.
1:01:15They will license the instruction set and they will license CPU designs to people.
1:01:20And they will license to Apple the ability to make their own chips that are compatible.
1:01:23So if you want to make a chip, ARM will license you, "Here's a design for a chip.
1:01:28Tell me how big you want it," or whatever.
1:01:29You can also get what is it called architecture license where some arm arm just says, okay
1:01:34Well, you just make your own chips
1:01:35We'll tell you how the instructions are supposed to work, but you go ahead and you can make it any way you want
1:01:38And so when anybody wanted to buy them
1:01:41I'm not entirely clear what people are scared about from antitrust other than just like, you know
1:01:46Two big giant companies that are really important to the world combining together doesn't seem like it would be good for competition
1:01:52All right
1:01:53So but anyway the deal
1:01:54Looks like it's not going to go through and the reason I think this is relevant is a topic that has come up a lot
1:01:59In the show especially before the arm based max came out
1:02:04We were talking about the possibilities like what will that be like?
1:02:07They'll lose, you know Apple lose compatibility with Windows
1:02:10All the people who are you who enjoy doing development on x86 because they're going to deploy
1:02:16On an x86 server somewhere will lose that uniformity between having the same instruction set in both places
1:02:21And really we're talking about x86-64 here, not plain old x86.
1:02:25But anyway, the Nvidia deal, if Nvidia had purchased them,
1:02:30a lot of people thought that it would be the kick
1:02:36in the pants that ARM needs to finally sort of
1:02:39fulfill its destiny and strike down Intel
1:02:44and do what I was painting as the optimistic scenario,
1:02:50sort of sweep through the whole industry,
1:02:52and Apple's move to ARM wouldn't end up being something
1:02:55that hurts it in the long run,
1:02:56because eventually everything would be ARM.
1:02:59PCs would be ARM, servers would be ARM,
1:03:01phones, iPads, and Macs would be ARM,
1:03:03and then we'd be back to where we were
1:03:05when everything was x86, where you get a Mac that's x86,
1:03:08and you deploy on your servers x86,
1:03:10you can run Windows natively at x86, right?
1:03:12Then we would get back to that state.
1:03:14So we would just be kind of like a bump in the road,
1:03:16where for a while Apple moved to ARM
1:03:18before the rest of the world did,
1:03:19but eventually Windows and the server also moved to ARM.
1:03:23And in fact, the phones and iPads were already on ARM,
1:03:26and we have this beautiful future
1:03:27where everybody uses ARM processors,
1:03:30and they license the ARM instruction set
1:03:32from this one company, and it's not great
1:03:35that one company controls it all,
1:03:37but really, since everyone can license it
1:03:38and Apple makes its own chips,
1:03:39and everyone can make their own chips if they want to,
1:03:41it is actually a more competitive landscape
1:03:43than when x86 dominated.
1:03:45And the argument is the reason that hasn't been happening
1:03:48is because Arm, this relatively little company
1:03:51that doesn't even make its own chips
1:03:54and just licenses the instruction set
1:03:56and chip designs that it makes to other people,
1:03:59it's not in a position, it doesn't have the people,
1:04:02the skills, or maybe even the desire
1:04:04to do what it would take to displace x86.
1:04:07And what it would take is all of the sort of
1:04:10tool chain stuff, compilers, software support,
1:04:14like there's a big software component to sort of,
1:04:18that Intel has with x86 now that ARM doesn't yet have
1:04:22that has been slowing ARM's rod.
1:04:25Even things like the server
1:04:26where it seems like such a clear win.
1:04:28Like Amazon's been rolling out ARM servers
1:04:30and they're like, they're faster, they're cheaper,
1:04:31they're lower power.
1:04:32It's like, what's the holdup?
1:04:33Like, why isn't everybody deploying on ARM and AWS?
1:04:36It's so much better than x86.
1:04:38What's the downside?
1:04:39And the downside is, well,
1:04:40there's a whole ecosystem around x86
1:04:42that's been there for decades that is very mature
1:04:44and it's been built up
1:04:45and it's taking a long time to go through that.
1:04:47So if Nvidia bought them, it'd be like,
1:04:50well, Nvidia's got tons of money,
1:04:51and Nvidia has the software expertise.
1:04:54They know how to make an ecosystem.
1:04:55It's the whole reason everyone's using Nvidia stuff
1:04:58for like Bitcoin mining and crap, and before that,
1:05:00CUDA and all the Nvidia performance with game drivers.
1:05:03Nvidia understands that there's a market they care about.
1:05:05They have to give you the full stack,
1:05:08including all the software support
1:05:09and the tooling and everything,
1:05:11and they can get that going.
1:05:13Now that this deal has been shelved,
1:05:16I think it's good that the deal didn't go through because I don't like these big companies
1:05:20combining but I kind of was looking forward to a silver lining of this deal being that
1:05:27maybe it would accelerate ARM because I do want ARM to replace x86 everywhere because
1:05:31I don't like Apple being the odd one out with the Mac on ARM and PC still on x86.
1:05:36I see no reason why the whole world couldn't be one big happy family all on ARM at the
1:05:41same time.
1:05:42Windows for ARM, but is it more popular than x86 Windows? No. There already is ARM in the
1:05:47server, but is it more popular on the server side than x86? Not yet, right? So maybe we'll
1:05:52just get there more slowly now, but I thought this was worth noting that potentially a thing
1:05:58that could have accelerated this has been cancelled. Again, I think this is the right
1:06:02decision. I don't like it when very big, very powerful companies combine into one company.
1:06:06I feel like that's bad for everybody involved, but I was kind of looking forward to that
1:06:10that's overlining.
1:06:10- I hear you.
1:06:13You know what's funny?
1:06:14This is tangentially related.
1:06:15I don't recall having heard a lot of moaning or complaining
1:06:20about people who were previously virtualizing Windows
1:06:25and are now in the Apple Silicon world
1:06:28and can't do that anymore.
1:06:30And that would have been me several years ago
1:06:33'cause I was living in VMware Fusion every day
1:06:36to do my work in Visual Studio.
1:06:38And I think a lot of that is because the environment
1:06:42and landscape keeps changing.
1:06:44And my limited understanding of what's going on in C#
1:06:48these days is that a lot of work is done on,
1:06:51was it Visual Studio Core, excuse me, .NET Core
1:06:55or something like that, which is a cross-platform thing
1:06:57that apparently, I saw it tweet recently,
1:06:58I won't be able to find it, but apparently
1:07:00it came from Silverlight of all places,
1:07:02which is really weird and funky.
1:07:04But anyways, it's fascinating to me
1:07:07that when I went to using a Mac in the late aughts,
1:07:12it was a relatively crazy thing to do at the time
1:07:17because, especially living in a Windows world--
1:07:19- It was not.
1:07:20- No, no, for me, because I was living
1:07:24in this Windows world for work and stuff.
1:07:25- If you were a Windows developer,
1:07:26you wouldn't be a Windows developer in a Mac.
1:07:28- Right, right. - Right, exactly, exactly.
1:07:29And so, sorry, that was ambiguous, so I apologize.
1:07:32So anyways, so yeah, so it was a little bit bananas
1:07:35at the time, but now it seems like there are very few people,
1:07:40I mean, I personally haven't heard of anyone
1:07:42who has really burned or is like lingering on Intel
1:07:46on account of these sorts of problems.
1:07:47Now, maybe you spent 15 to $20,000 on your computer setup
1:07:51and that's why you're lingering on Intel, hi John,
1:07:53but for people with normal computers,
1:07:55I haven't heard any real problems with it,
1:07:57which is really fascinating and really cool.
1:07:59- Well, I mean, speaking of companies that have the skills
1:08:01and the experience building ecosystems,
1:08:04Microsoft in theory has all the tools.
1:08:06It's got plenty of money.
1:08:08They know how to build an ecosystem with software tooling,
1:08:10you know, from all the way from the compilers and the IDEs
1:08:14to the libraries that go with it.
1:08:15Like there should in theory be no reason that Intel
1:08:19can't shift the entire Windows PC market over to ARM.
1:08:24But it's been, you know,
1:08:26Apple has gone through multiple processor transitions
1:08:29and has done all the, each one better than the last.
1:08:32and Microsoft has never done it.
1:08:34I don't know if Microsoft is institutionally unwilling
1:08:37to do a processor transition or incapable.
1:08:40Windows on Arm shows they're not unwilling,
1:08:43'cause why would they have even tried to do Windows on Arm,
1:08:45but they have not done a good job.
1:08:47It's been this weird product that was kind of separate
1:08:49from the regular Windows,
1:08:50'cause you don't wanna screw with the regular Windows.
1:08:52Their market is different than Apple's market.
1:08:54It is much bigger,
1:08:55it involves more people who are resistant to change.
1:08:58I understand their task is different than Apple's.
1:09:00Apple is, you know, especially the Mac in particular is small, still small enough that
1:09:04Apple can kind of do what they want and have all these users who are very dedicated to
1:09:07it or whatever.
1:09:08But I feel like, on a long enough timeline, Microsoft should be able to pull this off.
1:09:14So they've had a couple of false starts with Windows on Arms.
1:09:16I'm hoping, you know, there's no reason that Microsoft can't do it eventually.
1:09:20And even if the server battle goes differently for whatever reason, you know, Intel starts
1:09:24manufacturing on TSMC 3nm and come roaring back and fight back against the ARM chips
1:09:31that are outperforming on the server.
1:09:33At the very least, Microsoft should be somewhat motivated to not be tied to x86.
1:09:41I mean, Microsoft has had it good because they've got Intel and AMD, so they have two
1:09:45possible choices and they're always fighting each other, but Microsoft's ambitions with
1:09:50surface really lend themselves in the same way that Apple's do to not only using ARM
1:09:55chips but making their own ARM chips for their own hardware and you know it seems like for
1:09:59a decade or more now Microsoft has really wished that it could be Apple like the hardware
1:10:05that it makes is Apple-ish in the not in the sense of like what the hardware looks like
1:10:10although sometimes it is that but in the sense that Microsoft likes the idea that they can
1:10:14control the whole stack and give an experience that PC vendors were not giving and they can
1:10:19do that even better with ARM.
1:10:20So I really hope they pull it off,
1:10:22'cause I don't like, you know,
1:10:24the honeymoon period when I had my cheese grater,
1:10:27or cheese grater is I guess, well, my one cheese,
1:10:29yeah, just one, right?
1:10:31- Wait, now we're talking about the Macs again though, right?
1:10:33Not the Parmesan creators?
1:10:35- Yeah, the PowerPC 5 was in the same case,
1:10:37but that was PowerPC, anyway.
1:10:38That honeymoon decade, where everyone was on x86
1:10:42and was all one big happy family,
1:10:43except we had the good OS and the nicer hardware,
1:10:46I hope we can get back to that again.
1:10:49Is anybody making PC ARM processors
1:10:54outside of the server space?
1:10:55Are there any consumer-facing PC ARM CPUs
1:10:59that Microsoft could even sell ARM Windows for?
1:11:02- Yeah, they do.
1:11:02They sell ARM-based hardware with,
1:11:05I think it's like the, I don't know what the names
1:11:08or numbers are of them, but actual ARM CPU designs
1:11:11that are PC or laptop-caliber chips,
1:11:14and they put them in their Surface,
1:11:16are they in the Surface products?
1:11:17Whatever they sell with the ARM chips in them.
1:11:18There are ones that are there.
1:11:19I don't think there's anything around
1:11:21that would rival like a Mac Pro.
1:11:23I mean, Apple doesn't even have one of those yet,
1:11:24but there are options.
1:11:26- Is there anything even rivaling a MacBook Air?
1:11:28- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
1:11:29- The M1 is so good.
1:11:31Is there anything that--
1:11:32- Rivaling in terms of it's in the same power envelope
1:11:34and it runs Windows okay,
1:11:35but no, they're not as good as the M1
1:11:37because Apple is on top of the game
1:11:40in terms of desktop caliber ARM chips, for sure.
1:11:44But there was some other stories down in the topics thing
1:11:46about other companies getting in on this.
1:11:50Was it Google, at the very least?
1:11:51A bunch of other companies are like,
1:11:53we should do what Apple did.
1:11:54We shouldn't buy these CPU designs from ARM.
1:11:57Or who else makes them?
1:12:00Qualcomm?
1:12:00Qualcomm makes a lot of them, I think.
1:12:01Yeah, yeah.
1:12:02Like, we shouldn't get those because then you just
1:12:04have a choice of what they offer to sell.
1:12:06If we make our own chips, we can make them
1:12:07exactly the way we want, the same way
1:12:08that Apple made their chips so they perform well
1:12:11with Apple's applications.
1:12:12They do what Apple needs it to do.
1:12:14We should all do that, shouldn't we?
1:12:15But if you look at how long it took Apple to execute that plan,
1:12:18it is not something you turn around in a year.
1:12:20That is a multiple, many year, five year, six year,
1:12:2310 year project that some people only embarked on maybe a few years ago.
1:12:28So it's going to take a while for the fruits of that labor to appear.
1:12:31But I hope Apple has shown them the way to say,
1:12:33if you want really good chips that are well-suited to your products,
1:12:37you got to do it yourself.
1:12:38All right. So this also happened a little while ago. We are, we are,
1:12:42what is the line from Godfather?
1:12:44or we're handling all the family business or whatever.
1:12:46- That's it. - We are,
1:12:47we're trying to clean everything out.
1:12:48So a while ago, a developer corrupted, sort of,
1:12:53an NPM library, or two NPM libraries,
1:12:55Colors and Faker, which broke thousands of apps.
1:12:58So what the crap did I just say?
1:12:59So NPM is Node Package Manager.
1:13:02It's a way to get other people's code into your apps
1:13:04in certain contexts.
1:13:06And there were two super popular ones,
1:13:08one called Colors, one called Faker,
1:13:10that the developer of these broke those deliberately.
1:13:14And that caused quite a kerfuffle.
1:13:18So let me read from bleepingcomputer.com,
1:13:20we'll put a link in the show notes.
1:13:21The developer behind popular open source
1:13:23NPM libraries colors, aka colors.js on GitHub,
1:13:26and Faker, aka faker.js on GitHub,
1:13:28intentionally introduced mischievous commits in them
1:13:31that are impacting, or when this was written,
1:13:34impacting thousands of applications
1:13:35relying on these libraries.
1:13:36Yesterday, users of popular open source projects,
1:13:39such as Amazon's cloud development kit, AWS CDK,
1:13:42were left stunned, stunned I tell you,
1:13:45on seeing their application print gibberish messages
1:13:48in their console.
1:13:49GitHub has reportedly suspended the developer's account
1:13:51and that too has caused mixed reactions.
1:13:53Quote, "Removing your own code from GitHub
1:13:55"is a violation of their terms of service, WTF.
1:13:58"This is a kidnapping," quote,
1:14:00responded software engineer Sergio Gomez.
1:14:02Quote, "The responses to the colors/faker author
1:14:05"sabotaging their own packages are really telling
1:14:08about how many corporate developers think they are morally entitled to other source
1:14:12developers' unpaid labor without contributing anything back," wrote one Twitter user.
1:14:17So this is a really interesting case study in how open source affects the world, or the
1:14:25corporate world if not the world, insofar as here's a library that was written by some
1:14:30person, presumably with little to no compensation by darn near anyone.
1:14:35It gets used darn near everywhere,
1:14:37and this person, kinda justifiably,
1:14:40is a little perturbed that they haven't gotten compensated
1:14:43for any of this.
1:14:44So they take matters into their own hands
1:14:46and kinda ruin it,
1:14:47which is perhaps not the most mature approach,
1:14:48but is, I suppose, within their rights, I think?
1:14:52- Well, I mean, you can't say,
1:14:54"Okay, I'm gonna do this work for free
1:14:56"and anybody can use it."
1:14:58And then when a bunch of people use it
1:14:59and say, "Wait, now I want money?"
1:15:00Like, you know, that's kind of on you at that point.
1:15:03So obviously I think that's a huge jerk move
1:15:07to do something like this.
1:15:08And that's also a quick way to probably harm your chances
1:15:12of working in the industry again in the future
1:15:14for anybody else ever again.
1:15:16So that's also not, it's both a jerk move
1:15:20and also a stupid move, you shouldn't do it.
1:15:22But that being said, there are a lot
1:15:26of underlying issues here.
1:15:28I mean, first of all, this is admittedly,
1:15:32Like if you want, next to the entry of
1:15:34not invented here syndrome in the dictionary
1:15:36is a picture of me.
1:15:37So from that point of view--
1:15:41- That is excellent self-awareness, Marco.
1:15:42- Yeah, with that adequately disclaimed,
1:15:45I try to use as little third party code
1:15:48in my apps as possible, which is often like damn near zero.
1:15:53But the idea that I would have any kind of deployment
1:15:59of an app where not only am I using third party code,
1:16:03but that it is auto updating that third party's code
1:16:07without my first downloading it manually and testing it.
1:16:12What?
1:16:13I mean, I know that you can use a package manager
1:16:16to pin to a certain version, I know that.
1:16:19But I bet a large part of this problem
1:16:22is that a lot of people aren't doing that.
1:16:24Possibly even the majority of people aren't doing that.
1:16:27And that to me, that is just incredibly irresponsible
1:16:32programming practices.
1:16:33And whatever you want to say about third party code,
1:16:35I'm sure everybody likes it more than I do.
1:16:37But if you're gonna use third party code,
1:16:42you download early, you use one version of that code.
1:16:45And if you want to have some process where you came
1:16:48to check for updates and test them, great.
1:16:50But to have it auto update in any of your deployments,
1:16:53that is, that's nuts to me.
1:16:54That isn't just living on the edge, that's negligence.
1:16:59And you should not do that.
1:17:01- Like a Margot advocating testing.
1:17:03(laughing)
1:17:05You did it twice, oh you're gonna get the new thing,
1:17:06how can you tell whether the new version works?
1:17:09Well you'll test.
1:17:10I know you meant manually testing it I guess.
1:17:12- Yes.
1:17:13- Anyway, yeah, so you can definitely pin versions.
1:17:16I mean part of the reason that version pinning,
1:17:19that it is a more complicated topic for NPM in particular,
1:17:23We've talked about this in the past, that the way Node has grown up, the culture and
1:17:27the environment is that there are tons and tons of tiny little libraries.
1:17:31Thousands and thousands and thousands of dependencies for even a trivial, like, hello world website
1:17:36using a common web framework.
1:17:37They're just very, very small.
1:17:40Did we give people too many hardware resources?
1:17:42Is that the problem?
1:17:43Like, they don't know what to do with it, so they want to burn it all up?
1:17:45No, it's more of a cultural issue, because it's not like they're, you know, it's still
1:17:49just two lines of code, and two lines of code performs the same, whether it's in one file
1:17:53or another one, like it's not, especially for a server to resident application, it's not that big of a deal, performance wise, but you could argue the granularity is stupid, but it is what it is.
1:18:00But what that means is if you pin things, then you fall subject to another one of the things that ails the Node.js culture community, which is security problems, right?
1:18:13if you have so many dependencies,
1:18:15people are constantly finding security problems in them.
1:18:18And if you pin your versions, like wait two weeks,
1:18:23and now suddenly your application is vulnerable
1:18:24to 50 different things, right?
1:18:26And so you can say, well, then you should do
1:18:28that manual process where you test everything or whatever.
1:18:30It is a force pulling you back in the direction of saying,
1:18:34I'm going to honor the semantic versioning,
1:18:37and I'm going to pin to, you know,
1:18:40I'll take any patch version,
1:18:41or I'll take any minor version, right?
1:18:42as long as it's not a major version upgrade,
1:18:44I'll auto-take that one, because I will assume
1:18:47those are security patches or performance fixes or whatever.
1:18:51I won't pin it all the way down,
1:18:53I'll pin it part of the way down.
1:18:54And the reason this comes up in this particular story
1:18:57is like, that's fine, that probably works,
1:18:59that's probably a reasonable compromise
1:19:01between pinning it completely down
1:19:03and being vulnerable to a thousand security exploits
1:19:05within a month, or letting it be a free-for-all,
1:19:09find something in the middle,
1:19:11but this story is about a developer
1:19:13maliciously doing something.
1:19:14If you're doing something maliciously,
1:19:15you just make it a patch version, right?
1:19:17See, oh yeah, no, this is just a minor change.
1:19:19I didn't totally replace all my code
1:19:21with the funny message, right?
1:19:22Because they're just individual developers, right?
1:19:26And Arco called this a jerk move, right?
1:19:29This gets at, like, this particular story and the person,
1:19:32I'm not too interested in why they were angry
1:19:35or, you know, whatever, right?
1:19:36I don't think there's any justification for them.
1:19:38I think they were just a jerk.
1:19:39They did a mean thing, right?
1:19:40But the thing that I'm much more interested in is
1:19:43how many big important companies with lots of money
1:19:47are at the mercy of jerks.
1:19:49Right, I mean not inside the company.
1:19:51Obviously they're all at the mercy of jerks
1:19:53inside the company.
1:19:54We've talked about this issue in the past, right?
1:19:56But externally, right?
1:19:58That is setting aside the jerks who are being jerks
1:20:01and they're doing mean things, they're doing whatever.
1:20:03Why is it that you with all your money and all your people
1:20:05and all your smart big brains or whatever
1:20:07are essentially building your business
1:20:09on top of work that other people are contributing to you
1:20:13out of the goodness of their heart,
1:20:15and you have no defense against any of them turning bad,
1:20:18especially again in a node where it's not just
1:20:20one or two or three people that you could name,
1:20:22but literally tens, hundreds, thousands of people
1:20:25are contributing to the software.
1:20:27And like Marco said, if you make something for free
1:20:29and put it out in the world and put it in a license
1:20:31that anybody can use this for free,
1:20:33that's a choice that you've made.
1:20:36If you later come to regret that choice
1:20:38because suddenly it's used by everybody,
1:20:39like man if I had a nickel for everybody to use my library I'd be rich now. well
1:20:43you know you didn't make that choice right but also if you want to take your
1:20:47ball and go home you can also do that right because it's your ball right you
1:20:51can just stop developing it or you can maliciously develop it or you could you
1:20:54know intentionally introduce bugs that makes you a jerk but it's a thing that
1:20:58you can do and there's always going to be weird stuff like that and the
1:21:02solution is not we should yell at those people because well you know by yelling
1:21:06will somehow stop jerks from being jerks.
1:21:08Someone is always gonna get mad and do a thing
1:21:10and take their ball and go home or screw things up
1:21:12or whatever.
1:21:13I feel like it's on the multi-billion dollar corporations
1:21:16or even the individual small companies
1:21:18to be thoughtful about the third-party code that they use
1:21:22and game this out and say,
1:21:25"If something goes wrong with the third-party code,
1:21:28how do we handle that?
1:21:29Do we do it by pinning our versions all the way down?
1:21:31Then how do we handle security problems?
1:21:33Do we have an automated test suite?"
1:21:35There are ways to deal with this and you should talk about them at your company.
1:21:39I don't think the solution is don't use third-party software.
1:21:41I don't think the solution is just don't worry about it.
1:21:44I forget if this story was before or after the Log4j thing came out.
1:21:47It was after.
1:21:48It was after?
1:21:49I'm pretty sure.
1:21:51But the Log4j thing is another example.
1:21:53This is a widely used piece of software that just had a bug.
1:21:57No one does anything malicious if software has bugs.
1:22:00so many people use this software, it was, and probably still is, a fire drill across
1:22:05the entire world of software, saying, "If you have anything that uses Java, chances
1:22:10are it uses Log4j, and now you are vulnerable to this exploit. Patch all your software."
1:22:15And who develops Log4j? "Oh, a bunch of volunteers." "Oh, and the whole world runs on it?" "Yeah,
1:22:20pretty much." So, what is your, you know, this is a situation where you're not defending
1:22:26against someone malicious, you know,
1:22:28they just happen to be a bug, human error, it happens, right?
1:22:31But suddenly, this is like the security problem
1:22:34that I mentioned with Node,
1:22:35suddenly without you knowing it,
1:22:37you and all your software are vulnerable to this exploit
1:22:39because it's already in there.
1:22:41So you need to do a thing to get it fixed.
1:22:43And a lot of people were like,
1:22:45when are you gonna fix this bug?
1:22:46We need to fix ASAP.
1:22:48It's like, they're not your employee.
1:22:50The log4j team doesn't work for you.
1:22:51Do you pay them?
1:22:53Are they your employee?
1:22:54You can't make them fix things faster.
1:22:56they could just decide we're never gonna fix this.
1:22:58They didn't do that, they're not a bunch of jerks,
1:23:00they're nice people, right?
1:23:01But I feel for them because the whole world
1:23:03is looking at them and say, hey,
1:23:05we've been using your software for free for a decade now,
1:23:07but it's really important that you not sleep
1:23:09the next 48 to 96 hours and fix this bug for us
1:23:12because our big important company,
1:23:14from which you profit zero amount,
1:23:17is really in a bind here, so you really need to fix that.
1:23:20And then the other part of this problem,
1:23:21which is like, if you're going to use open source software,
1:23:25You don't, and you're not going to do anything
1:23:28to help support it, you're not gonna have a standing army
1:23:31on staff who understands the source code for Log4j
1:23:35and can fix their own bugs in it
1:23:36and contribute them back to the source or not, whatever.
1:23:38Like it's open source depending on the license,
1:23:40you can do whatever you have.
1:23:41But if you're not gonna do that,
1:23:42if you're just gonna assume all that third party
1:23:44open source software we have, it's someone else's problem
1:23:47to make sure it's good and fit for purpose.
1:23:49And if it ever isn't good, you know,
1:23:51even just something as simple as a bug,
1:23:53it's someone else's problem to fix it
1:23:55and we're gonna get really mad and pound the table
1:23:56and say, someone needs to fix this software
1:23:58that our company is built on.
1:23:59Well, why don't you fix it?
1:24:00But it's not our software, it's third party software,
1:24:03they should fix it.
1:24:04Well, I mean, they probably eventually will
1:24:06'cause they're not jerks, but in the meantime,
1:24:09do you have anyone who works for your company
1:24:10that can help fix it faster or fix it yourself?
1:24:13Well, no, that's how we save money
1:24:15by not paying anyone to do that
1:24:17and we just use third party code.
1:24:18And it gets to, this is the XKCD comic,
1:24:21it's two, three, four, seven,
1:24:23we'll put a link in the show notes.
1:24:25It shows like a block structure being built,
1:24:27this big elaborate block structure that looks all fancy
1:24:30and there's one side of it that's held up
1:24:31by this tiny little skinny block and it said,
1:24:34the big structure is all modern digital infrastructure
1:24:37and the tiny little block, the caption says,
1:24:40a project some random person in Nebraska
1:24:41has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003.
1:24:44So much that we build on is like at the mercy
1:24:49of a small number of nice people continuing to be
1:24:53not only nice, but essentially infallible.
1:24:55And the second they are not both nice and infallible,
1:24:58these big corporations turn their sore unlike eye
1:25:01and say, "Fix this bug, it's going to destroy
1:25:04"our multi-billion dollar business."
1:25:05And you're like, "I'm just in my basement in Nebraska
1:25:07"and I've been maintaining this open source thing
1:25:09"that you've been using."
1:25:10And yeah, we let you use it for free,
1:25:11but it's not my problem that your company
1:25:13is gonna burn down.
1:25:14If you care that much about this,
1:25:15maybe you should have, let's say,
1:25:18bought a support contract for this,
1:25:20for some company that can do that,
1:25:21hired people who know enough about the source code to fix it or essentially not take the
1:25:27software but then not be, it's not like giving back, it's like oh you took it, you have to
1:25:30give back, you don't have to give back, the license says you don't have to give back,
1:25:33you don't have to give back, but the second you get into a bind, that's on you to say
1:25:36we never prepared for this scenario, we are not prepared to support ourselves, right?
1:25:42So it's not a case of like I took and didn't give back, which they did but you're allowed
1:25:47to and according to these licenses.
1:25:49It's a case of we did not plan properly.
1:25:51We thought that this nice person would always be nice and also that they would never make
1:25:56a mistake.
1:25:57And that is a poor assumption.
1:25:58And it's kind of hilarious to see in the response to the Log4j thing, the US government made
1:26:03this panel and this committee or whatever to say, "This is because it's a national security
1:26:08concern because the government and military uses software that uses Log4j and suddenly
1:26:12we're vulnerable to these exploits.
1:26:14How could it be?
1:26:15we're vulnerable to cyber espionage and the government can't fix it because we're relying
1:26:21on what is open source software, what do you mean someone else wrote it and they don't
1:26:24work for it.
1:26:25Having a committee where they have to sort of come to terms with the reality that we've
1:26:28all been living in because suddenly there is a flashpoint event that makes everybody
1:26:31realize just how precarious everything is, I think is actually useful.
1:26:38I think the government committee, especially in the US, is going to be pointless and terrible
1:26:41because government stuff that has to do with computers is never good.
1:26:44But I think it's good for everyone to have a moment of reckoning and saying, "This
1:26:49is not new.
1:26:50This is the way it always has been and will continue to be, and I hope this helps people
1:26:55inside companies everywhere, perhaps seize this."
1:26:59Every crisis is an opportunity inside a company.
1:27:01Seize this crisis/opportunity to say, "Hey, do you like how this feels?
1:27:07If you don't, maybe we should put some small amount of money towards staffing somebody
1:27:13either in this company or a contractor or giving directly to the open source maintainers
1:27:18or having more commercial companies spring up that will offer commercial support contracts,
1:27:24do something that involves money to make it so that we are not vulnerable to this type
1:27:29of thing.
1:27:30And it doesn't mean necessarily giving money to people that wrote software.
1:27:33There are tons and tons of other things you can do.
1:27:34That's why there's so many companies built on open source products.
1:27:37Why would I pay this company for this product?
1:27:39I can just get the source code for free.
1:27:40Well, you're paying them for a support contract, which they charge you through the nodes for.
1:27:45So you do have someone who you can yell out when it breaks because you're paying them,
1:27:49right?
1:27:50And if you're not going to pay anybody—and again, with Node it gets complicated because
1:27:54like, well, we have 100,000 dependencies, you're telling me there's some company
1:27:57that's going to support all 100,000 of these?
1:27:59Do we have to give $10 checks to 100,000 people?
1:28:02No.
1:28:03But maybe if you hired like a team of 10 Node.js experts and gave them a salary and kept them
1:28:08as full-time employees of your company, and the next time something went wrong with some
1:28:10library they could parachute in and fix it themselves in your own local copy.
1:28:14So I mean this story probably hits closer to home I guess if you're an open source author
1:28:21maybe you're rooting for the guy to you know be mad that he didn't get paid or whatever
1:28:24but I'm not in that camp I'm definitely in the camp of rooting for the people who run
1:28:29these big companies to get a clue that they actually need to do something to protect themselves,
1:28:35their company and their customers from things like this and it's not the fault of the open
1:28:40source people and it's not the fault of you know like you know mean people doing
1:28:45mean things like this guy with colors like that's that's the you know not the
1:28:48common case but like you have to think about that because that's kind of the
1:28:51worst case scenario if the log4j people turned evil they could have done much
1:28:54worse well the funny thing is you know you talked about ways that corporate
1:28:59America can help and discourse did a victory lap about this after it happened
1:29:04and and when I first read this I was like yeah go ahead you guys great work
1:29:08And now reading it again with a little distance between when it was posted now.
1:29:13So the post is "Discourse Gives Back 2021 Edition.
1:29:17Discourse had a great year. We raised 20 million, a $20 million Series A investment, yada yada."
1:29:22So they talk about how they should give back, blah blah blah.
1:29:26And they enumerate, I don't know, maybe 10 different donations they made to different open source or community projects.
1:29:31And at first I was like, "Yeah, great work, folks. This is the way it should be."
1:29:35But it occurred to me the sum total of all,
1:29:39what, 10 of these donations was like less than 100 grand.
1:29:42In the same post they just said,
1:29:44Discourse had a great year,
1:29:45we raised a $20 million investment.
1:29:49So of that $20 million,
1:29:51they were able to shave off less than 100 grand.
1:29:53Well done.
1:29:55- I mean, you're not gonna get,
1:29:56like that kind of feel good stuff
1:29:57where you chuck a couple bucks over the thing.
1:29:59It's better than nothing.
1:30:00- It is, it is.
1:30:01- But what you have to think about is like,
1:30:02What is the value, the future value of our company?
1:30:06Discourse is going to be this big product.
1:30:09The future value of discourse in some degree
1:30:11depends on discourse not breaking and being terrible
1:30:13and having security problems.
1:30:15How much is it worth to you to make sure discourse continues
1:30:18to function correctly?
1:30:19And it should be worth a lot more than a one time,
1:30:21feel good, random investment to develop.
1:30:23Because honestly, those developers,
1:30:25they don't want to work for discourse.
1:30:27They can't get $10 from every company
1:30:29and be like a $10 employee of every company in the world,
1:30:33and maybe they don't want to start a company
1:30:34that sells commercial support for their open source library.
1:30:37And again, with the Node.js case,
1:30:38there's thousands of those people,
1:30:40so how are you gonna work that?
1:30:41What it calls into question is,
1:30:44how much are we building our business on software
1:30:47that we didn't write that we have no way to support?
1:30:50That's a risk factor in your company.
1:30:52Sometimes it's a risk worth taking,
1:30:53and you get lucky, and everything works out,
1:30:55and eventually you get so big that you're too big to fail,
1:30:58or whatever that you can deal with these bumps in the road.
1:31:01But when you're just starting out,
1:31:03you get a huge boost from building on open source software.
1:31:07If you get unlucky, you don't have the skills to fix it.
1:31:09You can't pay people to help you fix it,
1:31:13and it breaks and it takes down your company.
1:31:14But Discourse is probably big enough now
1:31:16where they should be thinking about
1:31:17how do we do this in-house?
1:31:18Again, it's good to give money
1:31:20to the people who make the software.
1:31:21Hell, if Discourse was smart and they really care
1:31:24about some particular library
1:31:25that's really important to their product,
1:31:27See if you can hire that person.
1:31:29Again, maybe they don't want to be hired,
1:31:30but then maybe you can hire someone
1:31:31and say your only job is to be the in-house guru
1:31:35for these two libraries.
1:31:36So learn the source, start contributing to it,
1:31:39make a local fork of it if needed or whatever,
1:31:41but we need that library to always work
1:31:43and if it ever breaks, we need it to be fixed ASAP,
1:31:45so now that's your job.
1:31:46And that's gonna take a lot more
1:31:48than a one-time $100,000 donation.
1:31:50You can't get a single programmer to do anything
1:31:52for that amount of money once you factor in healthcare
1:31:54and all the other stuff.
1:31:55You know, I think it is definitely better than just ignoring the problem and doing nothing.
1:32:01So I think Discourse is, you know, it's good for them to be proud that they are essentially,
1:32:05"We're giving away money" for free!
1:32:07We're just throwing at these people because they made some software we use.
1:32:10But they're not actually solving the problem.
1:32:12Because that money doesn't entitle them three years from now when something breaks in some
1:32:15obscure library to say, "Hey, remember we gave you $5,000 three years ago?
1:32:19Well, it's time for you to get up out of bed at 3am and fix this problem for us."
1:32:23and they would say, "Who is this?"
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1:33:10(upbeat music)
1:33:14- All right, so we have a twofer from Amri Arbeev.
1:33:18First of all, what's Marco's current coffee setup?
1:33:20has Marco tried James Hoffman's
1:33:21excellent AeroPress technique.
1:33:23And also, why aren't you roasting your own coffee, man?
1:33:25What's going on there?
1:33:26- This is amazingly topical.
1:33:27I didn't know about the roasting stuff.
1:33:30- So the current coffee setup is AeroPress still for,
1:33:35if I'm making only one cup, and if I'm making more than one,
1:33:39which is the case most mornings, I'm using my Ratio 8.
1:33:44It's a fancy hipster coffee maker that's very nice.
1:33:47It is an automatic drip machine.
1:33:48It's just a good automatic drip machine.
1:33:50And it's not as good as AeroPress Coffee,
1:33:52but it is less work in my morning routine
1:33:56when making two cups.
1:33:58Because now that I'm doing my big fake eggs
1:34:00with vegetables, stirred into them, and cooked up,
1:34:04my breakfast is a lot of work these days.
1:34:07Through my own choice, and I appreciate that,
1:34:09but the time spent on the coffee needed to go down,
1:34:12and with the Ratio 8 being a drip machine,
1:34:15I could kind of batch it and set it all up
1:34:17and then just hit go and then walk away
1:34:19and do my other stuff and then come back
1:34:21right before I'm serving breakfast,
1:34:23everything's hot, ready to go,
1:34:25pour the coffee and it's done.
1:34:26- And for people who don't know,
1:34:27the ratio eight machine has wood on it.
1:34:30- Of course it does.
1:34:31- Yeah, when he says the hipster coffee maker,
1:34:33it's got wood on it.
1:34:35- Yeah, I was turned on to it years ago by Chase Reeves
1:34:39when I met him in Portland and he showed it to me
1:34:42and it looked really cool and we picked it out
1:34:46for mostly aesthetic reasons, if I'm honest.
1:34:49- It's got wood on it.
1:34:50- Right, it's really nice.
1:34:52But it's a really great coffee maker also.
1:34:55Anyway, so yeah, that's the coffee setup.
1:34:57And I stopped roasting because two things changed.
1:35:01First of all, my tastes shifted a little bit
1:35:06lighter than they were at first.
1:35:08That made it harder for me to do my own roast
1:35:10because making a light roast in a home roaster
1:35:12is actually pretty difficult to really nail it.
1:35:15and certainly I didn't have the skill
1:35:18to really do that well.
1:35:20And secondly, the mail order things all got better
1:35:24over the last X years.
1:35:25I mean, I started roasting maybe what, 10 years ago?
1:35:28It's been a long time.
1:35:29Well, in the meantime, we've had a lot more
1:35:31really good mail order options.
1:35:34And I've been really happy with those.
1:35:36And so my tastes shifted towards a type of coffee
1:35:39that I'm not very good at roasting.
1:35:41And also, the available options for me
1:35:44to just buy someone else's expertly roasted version
1:35:47of that increased and got better.
1:35:49So that's what happened.
1:35:51- Good deal.
1:35:52So have you tried this AeroPress technique?
1:35:54I have not watched this video.
1:35:55- I watched that entire series of videos
1:35:58and I still haven't done it.
1:36:00Because honestly, my technique,
1:36:02which I do the inverted method,
1:36:04and I just kinda, you know,
1:36:06I grind 15 grams into a full AeroPress inverted.
1:36:11So I pull it out to the four line,
1:36:13but upside down and I just pour in water and stir it
1:36:18and wait a few seconds and I slowly press it out
1:36:19and it's fine.
1:36:21I'm sure I could perfect that more
1:36:23if I actually tried this better method
1:36:26but this better method is also more time consuming
1:36:28and my method is fine, it works fine for me.
1:36:32This is an area where I used to care a lot
1:36:35about all these details and now I care less
1:36:38about these details.
1:36:40I've been focusing my energies more intensely
1:36:43in areas that I wanna care a lot more about,
1:36:46and certain things had to fall by the wayside.
1:36:47This is why, for instance, I care less about cars
1:36:50than I used to, that I had to kind of make room
1:36:53for other stuff.
1:36:54- Well, no, you stopped caring about cars
1:36:56when you bought a Tesla.
1:36:57Hey-o!
1:36:58- And similarly, I care a lot less about the fine details
1:37:03of the coffee process now, because I get results
1:37:06that I consider very good with very little effort.
1:37:11And to answer some other questions,
1:37:12I am still using my Baratza Virtuoso grinder.
1:37:15I'm using the technique that I think I might have first
1:37:18saw in a James Hoppin video
1:37:21where you spritz the beans with a little bit of water
1:37:24before you put them in the grinder
1:37:25and that eliminates all static cleaning.
1:37:27This is amazing.
1:37:28Look, if anybody out there,
1:37:29if you grind your own coffee and you're not doing this,
1:37:31I'm telling you, this is like a life changer.
1:37:33If you grind your own coffee,
1:37:34but it makes a mess when you take out the little hopper
1:37:37because of static electricity,
1:37:38like making the grounds cling to everything.
1:37:41So you take a little spritzer, any little water spritzer,
1:37:44I got a little one on Amazon,
1:37:45it looks like it's made for perfume or something.
1:37:47I got a four pack for 10 bucks.
1:37:49And you just put plain water in it, nothing special,
1:37:52and you just spritz the beans
1:37:54right before you put 'em in the coffee grinder.
1:37:56That gives it just enough moisture
1:37:58that static electricity doesn't really factor in.
1:38:01It doesn't have a chance to do anything.
1:38:03- People with hair will be familiar with this phenomenon
1:38:05from hair and combing.
1:38:07- There you go, yeah.
1:38:08And so the beans come out and it's like,
1:38:10they come out perfectly and there's no dust flying
1:38:14everywhere, it's a game changer for like how messy
1:38:17your coffee counter gets when you're making coffee.
1:38:19Anyway, so yeah, I'm still using my Braco Virtuoso
1:38:22from that's probably 10 or 12 years old now.
1:38:25It's still working great 'cause they build those things
1:38:27with pretty good quality.
1:38:28And yeah, and then Aeropress or the Ratio 8.
1:38:33Do you have any particular beans
1:38:35that you can throw your weight behind?
1:38:37- I go between a few.
1:38:40So former sponsor and possibly future sponsor, Yes Please,
1:38:44that is my standard, I always fall back to that one.
1:38:48So that's always in the rotation.
1:38:50Usually I get that one every two bags that I get.
1:38:54And then the one that I'm mixing in with it,
1:38:56I will either do something from trade
1:38:58when I'll go between different roasters there,
1:38:59or I'll go to Intelligentsia.
1:39:02All three of those options are great.
1:39:04They all have different things going for them and everything.
1:39:07All three of them are great.
1:39:08I strongly recommend all three of them, honestly.
1:39:10So yeah, Intelligentsia, yes please,
1:39:12and Trade, all of them.
1:39:14- Trade, Trade former and future sponsor,
1:39:17yes please, former sponsor,
1:39:18and Intelligentsia have been none of the above.
1:39:21- Yeah, but yeah, they all do things great.
1:39:24Intelligentsia's roasts are a little bit darker,
1:39:27but they tend to have really nice single origins.
1:39:30So if I'm going for something like a really nice Costa Rica
1:39:33or when they do have Kenya, which is not that often,
1:39:35but Kenya's still my favorite, but I can get it,
1:39:38but it's not super easy to get all year round.
1:39:41Trade has, I mean, there's a million options of trade,
1:39:43so I don't really recommend any particular blend or roaster.
1:39:47Just go there if you want a million options
1:39:50'cause the whole thing would tailor it to you
1:39:51and everything, that's a good thing.
1:39:53And then what's great about Yes, Please!
1:39:55is that Yes, Please! is extremely consistent.
1:39:58Everything I've gotten from,
1:39:59And when I've ordered coffee from other places,
1:40:01I get, you know, mostly stuff I like,
1:40:03occasionally I get something I don't like.
1:40:04Yes, please is like, it's my rock of consistency.
1:40:08They produce something I've liked every single time.
1:40:11Like that's what's great about it.
1:40:12It doesn't always blow me away,
1:40:14but sometimes it's really nice,
1:40:15but usually it's not like, oh my god, this is incredible.
1:40:17Usually it's like, this is something I can depend on
1:40:19being great every single time.
1:40:21Like it's always, it's always good.
1:40:23It's definitely a crowd pleaser too.
1:40:25Like if you have anybody who like,
1:40:27is very sensitive to any more bitter roasts,
1:40:30you'll never offend them with anything from Yes Please.
1:40:32So that's why, that's my default.
1:40:34If I have to recommend something
1:40:35to somebody who doesn't know what they like
1:40:37and wants something that's the same consistency
1:40:41every single time, that's Yes Please.
1:40:44- And then also from Amri,
1:40:45is Jon still subscribed to cable?
1:40:47At what point is paying for cable
1:40:48no longer worth it for him?
1:40:50- I mean, now I pay for cable
1:40:51and also tons of streaming services.
1:40:53It's the future we were promised.
1:40:55I can pay even more money for even more things.
1:40:58I think cable for me is tied to my TiVo.
1:41:04So if my TiVos break and I don't buy new ones,
1:41:09that will probably be the end of cable because cable without--
1:41:12well, I would say cable without TiVo
1:41:15is probably not going to work for me.
1:41:16But of course, every cable company
1:41:18has their own server-side DVR solution
1:41:20that they'll try to sell you as well.
1:41:22So maybe I would try that.
1:41:23But the main reason I still subscribe to it is it's part of some big package thing and
1:41:27I get all the fancy channels and there are still some things that are on television either
1:41:34before or only on television, you know, before on the streaming service or they're not on
1:41:40the streaming service at all or they're on the streaming service much later.
1:41:43And I'm not even talking about things like sports with Blackout or whatever.
1:41:47Not every streaming service is a complete reflection.
1:41:50no matter how much you pay them, is a complete accurate reflection of everything that's on
1:41:53all the channels that are on the large cable subscription.
1:41:56So it is good to have it in.
1:41:58It depends on what we're doing.
1:42:00The Olympics is one example.
1:42:04Recording the Olympics on a TiVo, but then we also subscribe to the Peacock streaming
1:42:07service to get even more stuff.
1:42:10I do have to say, related to streaming video apps, given that I'm using an older TiVo,
1:42:17It's the interface of using a TiVo to jump around video on your TV is still so much better
1:42:22than every one of the fancy streaming apps that's available on all these high powered
1:42:25platforms like the phone and iPad and Mac and websites or whatever.
1:42:30TiVo is still superior for that just because it's responsive and works and is very reliable.
1:42:37So yeah, I think I'm pretty close to being able to get away without cable, but I see
1:42:43no reason to give up what I have now other than saving the money I suppose.
1:42:52So I'm just going to stay with it until all my TiVos die.
1:42:55And replacing them, TiVos still exist and will sell you a device but I always look because
1:42:59they always have these come ons like "save X number of hundred dollars on this TiVo blah
1:43:03blah blah" I always look but as far as I can tell they do not sell a TiVo with as much
1:43:07storage as the one I currently have.
1:43:09The closest one they have I think they sell you is like half the storage.
1:43:12Why would I ever buy a TiVo that's worse than the one I have now?
1:43:15Why would I buy, I don't know, you can replace the hard drive and blah blah blah, but I'm
1:43:17not going to go down that road.
1:43:19Why would I buy one that has either fewer tuners or less hard drive space or both?
1:43:24That just seems pointless to me.
1:43:26So when my thing breaks, maybe I'll buy the smaller one or maybe I just won't buy one
1:43:30at all or maybe I'll try the cable companies, the cable companies, the FiOS DVR, or maybe
1:43:36I'll just cut the cord then.
1:43:37But it hasn't happened yet.
1:43:39Alright, Paul Walker writes, "Do you have a good system for managing family contacts,
1:43:43especially kids' friends and their parents across your multiple devices?"
1:43:46Yeah, you tell each other, "Oh, so-and-so's numbers 1234567890.
1:43:52That's what we do."
1:43:53I have no good—
1:43:54You airdrop them the contact card.
1:43:56Or they are, yeah, that's actually another good example, yeah.
1:43:58But I certainly do not have a good answer for this question.
1:44:01This is just like the photos thing.
1:44:02This is what I always bring up when we talk about photos.
1:44:04It's like, "Hey, Apple, if you think this is really hard, start with something small,
1:44:07contacts because it's a small amount of data.
1:44:09Like photos are large and extremely numerous, but contacts are small and not that numerous.
1:44:13It's a small dataset.
1:44:15This is a great place to try out your ideas about how it can work.
1:44:20The thing that it is replacing from my youth was an address book.
1:44:25And every member of the family in general did not have their own little address book
1:44:28with grandma's phone number in it.
1:44:30There was one address book by the phone, which was attached to the wall with a wire.
1:44:35And in the address book was grandma's phone number and address.
1:44:38And if grandma moved or changed their phone number, we changed it in that address book.
1:44:43Some people did have their own individual address books, maybe, "Oh, you got your phone
1:44:46numbers of all your friends in your little address book."
1:44:48But you wouldn't also probably put all of your relatives' addresses in there, because
1:44:52those can be in the family address book.
1:44:54This is a model that existed for a long time before computers existed.
1:44:59And when computers came along, it was more convenient implementation-wise for everyone
1:45:02to just have their own contacts, and oh, we made a great way for you to just share contacts.
1:45:06Wow.
1:45:07Well, you just give someone else a copy.
1:45:08It's like, that's not sharing.
1:45:10Then now when grandma's phone number changed, everybody has to change it in all of their
1:45:13books.
1:45:14That's, you know, we have the technology.
1:45:15We can do better than this.
1:45:17So Paul, I do not have a good system for managing family contacts.
1:45:23In fact, this just happened recently.
1:45:25My wife asked me, "What's your brother's address?"
1:45:29And I said, "Oh, I don't even think I have my brother's address in my thing, and if I
1:45:32do it might be his previous house."
1:45:35Because in our family we've basically just decided that my wife has the canonical address
1:45:39book, because she does the addressing of the Christmas cards.
1:45:41That's me.
1:45:42And that's where it has to count.
1:45:44And I do have lots of addresses and names of people in my personal contacts.
1:45:48But I'm not confident they're up to date, because if something changes, we change it
1:45:53in her address book, which is the "real address book."
1:45:56But I still want to have contacts in my thing.
1:45:58At the very least, I'd have the iMessage ID of my brother
1:46:01so I can text with him or whatever.
1:46:03But I'm not confident that I have his current house address.
1:46:07And this is a terrible situation.
1:46:08It's like the photo situation, but at a smaller scale.
1:46:11So I really hope Apple does fix this.
1:46:12And there are probably third-party applications
1:46:14that do way better.
1:46:15I just don't know of them.
1:46:16So I don't personally have a good system
1:46:18for managing family contacts.
1:46:20- Yeah, I don't either.
1:46:21I feel like maybe a decent way to do this
1:46:24would be kind of similar to how,
1:46:27I don't know, for anybody who's used
1:46:28one password for families, the idea is that,
1:46:31you know, you have your own private one password items,
1:46:34and anything you add by default is private.
1:46:37But you can then either, you have the option
1:46:39to move or copy any one password item
1:46:42into the shared family fault.
1:46:45And then that's accessible and editable
1:46:46by anybody in the family.
1:46:48And I think that might be a good way to do contacts
1:46:50of like, you know, maybe you still have,
1:46:53by default, maybe everything is still private to you
1:46:56because you don't necessarily need the contacts
1:46:59of everybody else in your family,
1:47:00but you probably have, as John said,
1:47:02like family members or close family friends, whatever,
1:47:05you probably have certain ones
1:47:06that you want everyone to have access to,
1:47:08but that, again, you want a centralized,
1:47:11only one source of truth to edit when that changes.
1:47:14And so maybe that could be a thing
1:47:15where there's like family contacts,
1:47:17and then you can move a contact into the family,
1:47:20and then everyone gets it, and everyone can edit it.
1:47:23Yeah, I mean, again, because the data is so small,
1:47:25there's lots of-- it's easier to think about it here
1:47:27and easier to implement.
1:47:28And in fact, Apple does something not similar,
1:47:30but I believe they have some kind of solution
1:47:34to sharing for reminders, for example,
1:47:36because we have reminders that we share amongst the family.
1:47:39And I think those work on an individual basis.
1:47:41Like when I share a reminder, it doesn't just give a copy
1:47:44of it to someone else.
1:47:44It is both of us editing.
1:47:45Same thing with notes.
1:47:46Notes, you can do a shared note, which for sure is both of us
1:47:48seeing the same note.
1:47:49And reminders, we're both seeing the same reminder.
1:47:52and if I added the reminder, it updates on my wife's own as well.
1:47:55That is not as convenient as what Marco was just saying, which is like, well, how about
1:47:59if there was like, you know, you could collect reminders into the family reminder library.
1:48:03I think you might be able to do other reminders too.
1:48:05But like the point is, this is not a completely foreign concept to Apple.
1:48:09They have just not extended it to contacts and I certainly haven't extended it to photos.
1:48:12And it is a common problem that's going to come up in any family situation where there's
1:48:16going to be some data that is private to the individuals and some data that wants to be
1:48:19shared and I hope Apple gets around to tackling it on all of their, all the things they collect
1:48:24data for eventually.
1:48:27Thanks to our sponsors this week, Collide, JumpCloud, and Lutron Quesada. And thanks
1:48:32to our members who support us directly. You can join at ATP.fm/join and we will talk to
1:48:37you next week.
1:48:39[Music]
1:48:40Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.
1:48:48Oh it was accidental.
1:48:52John didn't do any research.
1:48:54Margo and Casey wouldn't let him.
1:48:57Cause it was accidental.
1:49:00It was accidental.
1:49:03And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
1:49:08And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
1:49:16So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:49:21Anti-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C
1:49:26USA, Syracuse, it's accidental
1:49:32They didn't mean to, accidental
1:49:36Tech podcast, so long
1:49:41- You skipped our bonus Ask ATP, man.
1:49:44- Oh, it was a bonus Ask ATP, man?
1:49:45- Yeah, well, it's basically on the after show.
1:49:47Although before that, someone pointed out
1:49:48that you do obviously calendar sharing as well.
1:49:51I use Google Calendar for that,
1:49:52but I think Apple does it the same way.
1:49:54Where they don't give you a copy of the calendar,
1:49:55it is actually a shared calendar, and you can make it.
1:49:57- Yeah, there's a family calendar that you can make, yeah.
1:49:59- Yeah, and apparently Apple will make one by default
1:50:02that is shared with all the people in your family,
1:50:04so they're traveling down this road just extremely slowly.
1:50:07- All right, the bonus to Ask ATP very quickly
1:50:10was from Nick Van DuPas, who writes,
1:50:13"Do you say you're in front of the computer
1:50:14or behind the computer?
1:50:16You absolutely say you're in front of the computer.
1:50:18- Who here, did anyone ever say behind?
1:50:20- I don't know.
1:50:21- I mean, you could have a colorful turn of phrase
1:50:23where you could say all the people lined up
1:50:26behind their computers or something like that,
1:50:27but no, you know, I'm sitting in front of the computer.
1:50:29Yeah, I mean, maybe it varies
1:50:32in different English-speaking countries,
1:50:33or maybe it varies in non-English-speaking countries,
1:50:35but I have always said I am in front of the computer.
1:50:38What are you doing in front of the computer all day?
1:50:39Sitting in front of the TV all day,
1:50:40or always in front of it? - Yep, there it is.
1:50:42- Well, if you think about the computer
1:50:44as having a face.
1:50:46What is the front of a computer and the back of a computer?
1:50:49I think it's obvious that the front of the computer
1:50:50is the screen and possibly the keyboard.
1:50:54And the back of the computer is the back of the screen
1:50:57lit up, it's a laptop or whatever.
1:50:58- Where the wires come out.
1:50:59- Right, yeah.
1:51:00And so I think any way that you would try to define
1:51:03the front or back of a computer,
1:51:05I think people would pretty much agree on that.
1:51:07And where you sit is facing its front
1:51:12and your front is facing its front as well,
1:51:15unless you're doing something really weird.
1:51:17So I would imagine, that's why I have a hard time
1:51:21thinking of any way somebody would perceive this
1:51:23as you being behind the computer
1:51:26if your front is facing the computer's front
1:51:29any time you're using it.
1:51:30- I mean, but the thing is that phrases and language phrases
1:51:34don't logically follow from, you know,
1:51:36you can reverse reason it logically,
1:51:39but that's not how language works.
1:51:40as someone in the chat room pointed out, in English in particular we say you get behind
1:51:44the wheel of a car.
1:51:45And you're not behind the wheel, you're in front of it.
1:51:47But language does not follow the logic that you have just outlined.
1:51:52It just is what it is, and it is an idiom, a saying, it is the language that developed
1:51:57around computers, and televisions for that matter.
1:52:00So in fact the computer language probably just inherited from television because we're
1:52:04all sitting in front of the TV, and as soon as we got computers, I mean the first computers
1:52:07You were actually literally hooked up to your TV
1:52:09in your home, so that probably sort of explains
1:52:12the path that we traveled,
1:52:13but logic has nothing to do with it.
1:52:15It's just the way it is.
1:52:16- Well, I could see two different ways to get to,
1:52:18okay, so first of all, the behind the wheel of a car,
1:52:21if you think about behind in the form of motion,
1:52:24then when the car is in motion,
1:52:26unless you're going to reverse,
1:52:26but normally in forward motion of the car,
1:52:29you are behind the wheel.
1:52:32- Interesting point, yeah.
1:52:33- But where's the front of the wheel
1:52:34and where's the front of you?
1:52:35It's the same logic as before, you know what I mean?
1:52:37Where's the back of the steering wheel,
1:52:38the paddles are on the back of the steering wheel,
1:52:40the logo is on the front,
1:52:41the front of you is the part where your nose is,
1:52:43the fronts are tasting each other, it's the same situation.
1:52:45- Well, but so there's the question of like,
1:52:47for two stationary objects,
1:52:49I think if you're saying what's behind--
1:52:51- Special relativity, you're really working hard
1:52:53to back-solve for this one.
1:52:55- If you're talking about objects that are stationary,
1:52:57if you're saying, are you in front of it or behind it,
1:53:00then I think that, then I think the question is like,
1:53:03what direction are these objects facing?
1:53:05So again, so if you're on a train,
1:53:06but you're facing backwards.
1:53:08- Right, yes.
1:53:09- Oh my goodness.
1:53:10- So, yeah, so if you're stationary,
1:53:12it's a matter of which direction the objects are facing.
1:53:16And if you are in motion, then it's a matter of like,
1:53:19what's the direction of motion
1:53:20and which object is more in front of it.
1:53:22- So when you're on a train, are you behind the computer?
1:53:25(laughing)
1:53:27But if you're sitting backwards on the thing
1:53:28that you're in front of it again?
1:53:30If you're on a train going close to the speed of light
1:53:33and you open a laptop screen,
1:53:34The screen is facing forward.
1:53:35How fast does the light come out of the laptop screen?
1:53:39- This is going nowhere good.
1:53:40How do we end up in robot or not?
1:53:41- This is amazing.
1:53:42This is kind of, yeah.
1:53:43What I'm saying, like it's just language phrases,
1:53:46they seem normal to you because you're used to them,
1:53:48but a lot of them, if you try to, you know,
1:53:50explain them logically, they don't make any sense.
1:53:52It's just like, well, we all know what this means.
1:53:54It's the phrase we've all agreed upon.
1:53:56It is a cultural thing.
1:53:57And that's why it can vary from language.
1:53:58What are we talking about?
1:53:59You know, foreign language expressions.
1:54:02I can't, I wish I could remember one of them,
1:54:04but how widely they vary from country to country
1:54:08and language to language,
1:54:09all saying basically the same thing.
1:54:11- All right, one more theory.
1:54:12All right, so what if, so from the perspective of,
1:54:16from what we as broadcasters would describe
1:54:21the position of the audience,
1:54:23like if you're a TV broadcaster,
1:54:25you might think you're looking through the camera
1:54:28through someone's TV screen
1:54:30and they are behind the TV screen.
1:54:32from your perspective as a TV broadcaster, right?
1:54:35I can kind of understand that.
1:54:37When we talk about people's online communication,
1:54:41suppose we are talking about some jerk commenter
1:54:44on a website, we might think of that person
1:54:48as being behind their computer from our perspective
1:54:53of seeing them on the internet.
1:54:55So there is kind, like I can kind of see,
1:54:57I've heard that phrasing before, like oh,
1:54:59this is a stranger behind a screen
1:55:02are behind a computer.
1:55:03I have heard that.
1:55:04They're hiding behind their computer.
1:55:05Right, exactly.
1:55:06And so from certain perspectives--
1:55:09But they're sitting in front of their computer
1:55:11while they hide behind it.
1:55:12They are sitting in front of their computer,
1:55:13but from our perspective, maybe they are behind their computer.
1:55:17Yeah, from our inertial frame of reference.
1:55:20This is all totally a relativity thing.
1:55:22Yeah, I love that I started this podcast being a health doctor,
1:55:27and now we're ending up being physics professors.
1:55:32- Our talents are broad, but perhaps they're not deep.
1:55:35- They're not, that's the problem.
1:55:37- This is related to the thing,
1:55:39remember this question ages ago,
1:55:40like what are the relative positions of us in your mind
1:55:43when you're listening to the podcast?
1:55:44Are we sitting in a row? - Oh, golly, yeah, yeah.
1:55:46- Are we stacked vertically?
1:55:47(laughing)
1:55:49'Cause Marco doesn't, correct me if I'm wrong,
1:55:50but you don't do any panning in the mix or anything, right?
1:55:53- No, and by the way, anybody who produces a podcast,
1:55:56don't do that, people hate it.
1:55:58A very common feature request that podcast app makers get
1:56:01is a down-mixed to mono feature,
1:56:03which I'm going to add soon, don't worry.
1:56:05But it's all there on the code,
1:56:06I just have no interface for it yet.
1:56:08But because people who hear podcasts
1:56:11where people are not mixed in the absolute center,
1:56:14listeners hate it.
1:56:16In many ways, it makes it extremely difficult
1:56:17for certain people to listen to it at all.
1:56:20So yeah, don't do that.
1:56:21But yes, everyone's always dead center.
1:56:22- But still, even with us dead center,
1:56:24the question remains, and that was the question
1:56:26we talked about, how do you picture the people?
1:56:27And you were doing the reverse,
1:56:29it was like, how do we picture ourselves?
1:56:30Like we're not on television looking into our camera,
1:56:32seeing the audience behind the camera,
1:56:34we're just talking to a microphone.
1:56:35So where do we picture the audience?
1:56:36And to that I would say,
1:56:38I'm a tiny little person inside your ear canal.
1:56:41- Wow.
1:56:41- It's a valid color digit.
1:56:44- Yeah, we should do, remember,
1:56:45a couple months ago, Upgrade did the low bit rate release
1:56:49where they had released a couple of extra copies
1:56:52at ridiculously hilariously bad bit rates.
1:56:55You should do one where you're in the center
1:56:59and John is on the left and I'm on the right
1:57:01or something like that just to mess with people
1:57:02and just make it--
1:57:03- No, we should change positions every sentence.
1:57:06- Oh, God.
1:57:06(laughing)
1:57:09- Hard pan left, hard pan right.
1:57:11- Oh, I have to use like the crappy automation thing
1:57:13and logic, oh, it's such a pain.
1:57:15- It should be like a rotation
1:57:17where it's just a constantly spinning thing
1:57:19and whenever we speak, we just hop onto that train
1:57:22and then it, you know, yeah.
1:57:24- You know, Marco, if you were a really good editor,
1:57:25you would really embrace spatial audio.
1:57:28- Exactly.
1:57:29- I am such a good editor that I know not to do this
1:57:32because us joking about it is funny right here,
1:57:34but if I actually did this, people would hate it so much.
1:57:39You don't understand how much they would hate it.
1:57:42Trust me, it is very hated.
1:57:44- It should make it sound like I'm a tiny person
1:57:46in the ear canal, but I'm so small
1:57:48that the ear canal is like a cathedral
1:57:50and my voice echoes in spatial audio.
1:57:53- Reverb, yeah, reverb is fine
1:57:54'cause that doesn't mess people up too badly.
1:57:57- Yeah, that's totally fine.
1:57:58- Well, but you can do spatial audio with that
1:58:00because like Casey can be at the other end of the ear canal
1:58:02and they yell to each other and our voices can bounce.
1:58:06- Hello.
1:58:06(beeping)