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445: Best Blender Is a Wasteland

 

00:00:00   Is that is I don't feel like that is should be capitalized pretty sure it should be a good thing. I have a website to find out

00:00:06   I was so I was so happy that you saved my topic that I was so excited to talk about by doing a good summary of

00:00:15   It and I was so proud of you and so it's so in love with you in a fraternal way

00:00:19   But it was fine to need saving well

00:00:20   You know what? I mean and and I was so in love with you in a fraternal way now. I hate you again

00:00:23   Just like that. Mm-hmm

00:00:26   It's supposed to be capitalized damage on you ever wrong if you'd believe the internet you are never wrong

00:00:31   It's a burden I'm sure yeah, it must be a hard life

00:00:35   September is childhood cancer Awareness Month and our friends at relay, which is also us

00:00:45   We try to raise money as best we can for st. Jude Children's Research Hospital

00:00:51   They do incredible work

00:00:55   Predominantly in the United States

00:00:56   but

00:00:57   their work also has been shared or the results of their research have been shared the world over and have done a phenomenal job of

00:01:05   Decreasing the mortality rate from childhood cancer. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but a lot

00:01:09   they've done really really incredible work and

00:01:12   Every September relay, even though we this particular show is not officially part of relay

00:01:18   I think we are kind of unofficially part of relay, especially in September

00:01:22   And so we join relay and since we all have relay shows we join relay in in trying to raise money for

00:01:27   Childhood cancer awareness for curing childhood cancer and doing everything we can so

00:01:32   This is the time of year that I will be belligerent and accost you even more than I do for t-shirts

00:01:39   Which I know is a lot and tell you

00:01:40   Hey, if you have even a dollar to scrape together that you could send to st

00:01:46   Jude Children's Research Hospital to help cure childhood cancer. What else would you do with that dollar?

00:01:51   We can buy diet coke. It's delicious, but it doesn't help cure cancer and some of our you probably takes cancer

00:01:56   So I would even argue whether it's delicious. I mean, let's be honest here. Well that alone is also arguable

00:02:01   Well, we'll leave that aside for now, but nevertheless st. Jude org slash relay

00:02:07   St. J ude org slash relay ATP will probably be making some sort of joint donation at some point

00:02:14   We actually haven't had a chance to talk about it yet. That's on the to-do list for after this very show. So

00:02:18   If you have even a dollar to your name, please

00:02:22   St. Jude org slash relay, please send a little bit of money. I've been taught I don't want to really I don't want to guarantee anything

00:02:30   But I've been talking with Stephen Hackett who has a child who was a patient at st

00:02:36   Jude and st. Jude I think by any reasonable measure literally saved his child's life

00:02:40   Anyway, Stephen and I have been talking and I might be getting involved with a little special treat reward. Maybe maybe don't guarantee anything

00:02:48   But you know, maybe get a little excited if we if we raise a lot of money

00:02:51   So, please if you have anything that you can donate no amount is too little

00:02:56   I mean that now, of course, no amount is too much either. But hey, no amount is too little st

00:03:01   Jude org slash relay if you please

00:03:03   And I've looked up the stats that you couldn't get before

00:03:06   treatments invented to say judith helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% since opening and

00:03:13   With one in five children not surviving st. Jude won't stop until no child dies from cancer

00:03:18   There you go. Thank you John. Although I tried to put the URL in there for you as well

00:03:22   I had to do the same pitch on

00:03:24   My show recently and I was trying like what's the URL wise?

00:03:28   It's probably st. Jude org slash relay FM and so I tried it and it worked but apparently slash relay also works

00:03:34   So SDU de dot org slash relay with or without the FM. It's just a redirect that goes to the place where you can donate

00:03:40   Please donate

00:03:42   The more the better and and I've honestly like the podcasting on is to coming, you know

00:03:47   They do like what is a 24-hour thing or whatever where they raise money and it's a big deal

00:03:51   I do all sorts of cool activities which remain right not involve Casey which may or may not involve me because honestly

00:03:56   I wasn't supposed to be involved last year

00:03:57   I think I somehow I got sucked into it, but I always feel like when we do the pitch on here like, you know

00:04:03   They're already raising money, right? So we're late to the game here ATP listeners

00:04:07   We really need to represent for ATP to show we want to see the ATP bump, you know what I mean last year

00:04:12   We did it with making fun of Casey with a little asterisk in the name or whatever

00:04:15   That was amazing and that helped us kind of like in

00:04:18   Indirectly helped us see how amazing ATP listeners are and how generous they are and I really want to see like the ATP bump

00:04:25   Right, so, you know, it's not gonna be the size of the podcast a fun bump

00:04:28   Although I think we could achieve that if everyone gave tons and tons of money

00:04:31   But please give as much as you can represent for ATP. It's a great cause. Yep. Yes, please

00:04:36   And right now as we record thirty seven thousand one hundred twenty four dollars and thirty three cents

00:04:40   We can do a lot better than that. It is early in the month. I will concede

00:04:43   It's early the month, but we all of us can do a lot better than that and I agree with John

00:04:47   Let's be jerks about it. Let's just claim as much money as possible for ATP. Let's do it

00:04:51   Oh, yeah, like because you know as Casey mentioned like we we are

00:04:54   We are near relay

00:04:56   We are relay adjacent

00:04:57   But we are not part of relay and so I kind of feel like this little wonderful little rivalry that could happen here

00:05:03   You know only this way of like I don't care about any other kind of rivalry

00:05:06   But like if it's a rivalry where like we're just raising more and more money for a really good cause

00:05:10   Like there's kind of no downside to that right? I think there's nothing negative about that

00:05:14   So it would be kind of amazing for us to continue to like, you know

00:05:19   Throw a massive amount of ATP inspired fuel on this fire because this is a really good cause and we will keep talking about it

00:05:25   Every week during September as the rest of the other relay world does

00:05:30   Because this is a great time to do this and as Apple releases all of their good stuff probably over the next month

00:05:36   And we all dump a massive quantity of money on new, you know, little shiny gadgets that we don't probably necessarily need

00:05:43   Maybe you know most of its want and a little bit of need, you know

00:05:47   We can also think about how we can allocate some some of our money in better ways. Yep, so you'll hear about it some more

00:05:52   and I will repeat my

00:05:55   My offer from last year

00:05:58   Which I believe was whoever has the highest donation will get a not-for-sale

00:06:02   Batch of ATP stickers which really are not that impressive. But I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean they're incredibly cool

00:06:08   The best stickers I've ever seen what you mean is they're exclusive sold out limited edition not available anywhere except this way

00:06:15   Exactly. So if you want to buy a

00:06:18   Multithousand-dollar set of ATP stickers. I strongly encourage it. Please do you will be deeply disappointed and yet also very proud

00:06:25   But I mean when you compare it to like NFTs

00:06:28   I mean you talk about you know, spending a lot of money for not a significant object, right?

00:06:33   Like I feel like we're at least giving you an object like there is at least something

00:06:37   Yeah, and we know the sort of the provenance of like this is legit sticker from actual Casey not just like oh someone printed something

00:06:44   That looks like an ATP sticker and gave it to you. This will be the real thing. So it actually has collector's value, right?

00:06:50   Yeah, there's no yes, please st. Jude org slash relay if you please moving along to follow up

00:06:56   Philip Spedding has some follow-up also from 2011

00:07:00   Apparently John you said and I am quoting from the show notes and apparently this is from hyper critical episode 31

00:07:06   And this was released on August 24th of 2011 put it on your calendar from 10 years from now is Microsoft making PC hardware

00:07:14   Or tablets or anything like that. So what's your ruling John?

00:07:18   I mean this so this episode I had to go back and listen to to remind myself what this was about

00:07:22   First of all, this is an episode where Dan couldn't make it to Ryan Ireland was the guest host

00:07:25   So it was weird for me to hear not Dan's voice in there

00:07:27   And then I remembered that we had a guest spot and we were talking about HP leaving the PC business

00:07:33   Maybe kids don't remember that but Hewlett Packard was a company

00:07:36   they used to make personal computers that ran Windows and they were leaving the PC business and

00:07:41   the the topic of the show was like or not of this part of the show anyway was

00:07:46   Where does that leave Microsoft?

00:07:48   Because if the only PC makers that can survive are the ones that essentially cater to business by selling the cheapest possible PCs

00:07:55   It's gonna be really hard for Microsoft to ever compete with Apple

00:07:59   In terms of quality or cache or innovation or anything like that because their entire business would be around, you know

00:08:05   Being the lowest bidder to sell millions and millions of PCs to the business world

00:08:10   which is a great business to be in but you're never going to

00:08:12   Be Apple have those sort of the shiny things that Apple has in that scenario. So

00:08:18   the

00:08:21   Possibility came up but like what if Microsoft starts making its own personal computers because it seems like like, you know

00:08:26   In the free market of the Windows world seemed like no one was willing to make nice computers

00:08:31   I think it was also Lenovo. I don't know if they were leaving or they just been sold or something like that

00:08:36   Or the thinkpads have been sold one of anyway

00:08:38   Microsoft can just do it itself and then at least one company able to make making nice PCs, but of course Microsoft making PCs

00:08:47   Doesn't make other PC makers feel really good because now Microsoft is competing with the companies

00:08:51   That's supposed to be supporting as the platform vendor. So that was the topic

00:08:55   You can I put what a timestamp like in the show

00:08:58   it's it's back a little bit farther as you can hear a little bit more of the conversation or you can just rewind a few

00:09:01   minutes here it and

00:09:02   Yeah, that was the prediction. Let's look at this 10 years from now and to see if Microsoft's making PC hardware

00:09:07   They absolutely are they make the surface line. They make the that weird

00:09:12   What the I'm actually be drafting table surface studio Pro

00:09:16   They don't make phones anymore. They did for a while

00:09:18   But yeah, Microsoft makes PCs and it's kind of exactly like we discussed ten years ago and that they don't make PCs that

00:09:28   Compete with the Dells of the world to be the cheapest possible PC

00:09:33   You can put on the desk of all your employees or laptop or whatever and give them

00:09:36   They try to make computers that are nice and I think they actually are pretty nice

00:09:40   A lot of them are like they have a design aesthetic that yes looks a lot like Apple

00:09:44   But it's also very elegant and nice and I'm using their mouse right here on my Mac and I think it fits in well

00:09:50   and

00:09:52   yeah, this seems to me that the main reason they're doing it is because they want to make really nice PCs and show off what

00:09:57   Windows can do and

00:09:59   The rest of the PC world just wasn't doing it, right? It's like you can motivate them

00:10:03   You can say we really want our PC vendors to make great hardware

00:10:06   But what really happens they just ate each other and each other and each other in trouble

00:10:09   There's just one or two big companies left that sell to businesses and no one was really

00:10:13   Except for in the gaming world, perhaps we have those really ugly gaming PCs. Nobody was making a an apple like computer

00:10:20   So now Microsoft does yeah turns out yeah, and this email came in on the exact day of the deck ten year anniversary

00:10:26   That's just why I tried to shove it into the show

00:10:27   It doesn't have anything to do with what we're gonna discuss but August 24th was yesterday

00:10:30   All right moving right along. I owe a formal apology to Colin Donnell. I had attributed and credited

00:10:38   Gruber for the quote Mac asked Mac app

00:10:43   Which was how Gruber I thought described Mac apps that are really are good platform citizens

00:10:49   I really care about being you know, something that feels at home at them at on the Mac and Colin Donnell pointed out to me

00:10:55   Oh, no, no, no, that was me

00:10:57   It's as though nobody remembered where follow-up came from like how frickin frustrating would that be if nobody knew

00:11:04   The genesis of follow-up that was from Dubai Friday, right? Yeah, I think so

00:11:08   I think you were to you were two people off though because it was a Brent Simmons blog post and Brent Simmons says I stole this

00:11:15   phrase from my friend Colin Donnell and then

00:11:18   Gruber then took it from singing on Brent's post and probably talked about in the various lacks that were in

00:11:23   Yeah, so we were two degrees off there. Sorry. Sorry Colin. This is your phrase duly credited

00:11:28   Alright moving right along a very funny name on Twitter King Oleg one made and actually

00:11:35   What appears to me to be a reasonable observation? I'm curious to hear what you guys have to say about this

00:11:40   King Oleg one says one important thing to add though

00:11:43   I'm sorry

00:11:43   This is with regard to one password and it going to electron which again is based on web technology

00:11:48   One important thing to add is the risk of dependency injection via the JavaScript package ecosystem, which is a total mess

00:11:55   I for one would never trust an electron app with sensitive information no matter the company behind it

00:12:00   You know, for example crypto wallets that did the same and whose users were hacked this way

00:12:04   so

00:12:06   How can we effectively describe this?

00:12:08   So a lot of times that particularly in JavaScript in a lot of code

00:12:11   but particularly in JavaScript

00:12:12   You will pull in code from other places because it will do things that you don't want to have to write yourself and oftentimes

00:12:17   It will do them more efficiently and it will be better tested and battle proven etc, etc, etc

00:12:21   So you might pull in you know a library that that lets you store data in a certain way just for the sake of discussion

00:12:27   Well, if you're not inspecting that code that you're pulling in it could do nefarious things

00:12:33   like you have no way of knowing unless you actually go through the code and look and

00:12:36   so it is certainly possible that if one password is written using electron and if some of the

00:12:43   Code that they pull in which I'm assuming they pull in at least some

00:12:46   If some of that code wants to do a nefarious thing unless they are extremely diligent about their third-party dependencies that could happen

00:12:54   Right, so that would be very very bad

00:12:57   And yeah, we've talked about this before where people who don't know node and they're just like oh you're just saying it uses libraries

00:13:02   Every language uses libraries. What's the big deal with node? Well the way the JavaScript slash node.js ecosystem has evolved

00:13:09   there it's a very

00:13:11   Widespread use of packages and the packages are often

00:13:15   Not trivial but very small and there are a lot of them

00:13:19   So whereas you might make I don't know

00:13:21   you know an iPhone app and you include like one third-party library to do a thing for you a typical node app includes

00:13:29   Literally hundreds or thousands of third-party libraries, right and that's not an exaggeration. That's not like oh, this is an extreme case

00:13:36   It's very easy

00:13:37   If you just do create react react app and make a react application in node and count the dependencies. You're already underwater

00:13:43   There's a huge number of them and the way it's usually done was sort of continuous integration and cloud deployment for server-side stuff

00:13:49   Anyway, is that they a lot of them get pulled from the third-party repositories that are on the web

00:13:54   And so you're pulling library a which uses library B, which is library C through library D and so on

00:13:59   it's like all the way down the chains like hundreds or thousands of dependencies and

00:14:02   As if any one of those dependencies gets updated they often require new versions of other dependencies in many ways

00:14:09   It's a a lively ecosystem rich with new and updated apps and bug fixes and yes, it's it's very active, right?

00:14:16   but it also means that

00:14:18   Sort of nailing down your dependencies and saying look this is it

00:14:21   We're just gonna use these libraries and we're never gonna change them again is difficult to do because people find security

00:14:26   Problems and there are bug fixes and you want those and so you say well

00:14:30   I'm not just gonna be stay frozen at these thousand versions of my dependencies

00:14:33   Every single day one of those dependencies gets a bug fix or security fix. Sometimes those are important

00:14:39   You don't want to ship with a security problem

00:14:40   And in fact the main package manager for node has built into it an audit feature that lets you know all the security

00:14:46   Problems that your current dependency stack has and how to fix them all that other stuff

00:14:50   so the common practice is if

00:14:52   A module is updated if a library is updated pull the new version because it probably has important fixes and that's how the sneaky

00:14:58   You know security stuff gets in someone will use a library that returns a boolean value indicating whether or not a number is odd

00:15:05   It's a real thing. Look it up

00:15:07   and and someone will sneak a

00:15:10   bit of code into there that likes

00:15:13   you know does Bitcoin mining in your

00:15:15   Application or tries to steal keystrokes and send them to a website or something like that and no one will notice because who no human

00:15:20   Is going to manually audit, you know hundreds or thousands of dependencies every time one changes. It's just human nature. It's too much stuff

00:15:27   so that's that explains why it's people aren't as concerned about

00:15:33   Security flaws of including a library to in your Mac or iOS app

00:15:37   Although there is concern like this third party, even if you're using one library. It's a third party like

00:15:41   Analytics tracker those are kind of creepy too. But anyway, that's why people are concerned about node specifically indeed

00:15:47   And then Rustam Karimov who is one of the co-founders one password and also developer had a tweet in which you know

00:15:54   He had some commentary on that

00:15:55   He writes what the one password code repository has more Swift than typescript typescript being you know

00:16:00   Not a front end but a different way of writing JavaScript. It is not your off-the-shelf electron node.js or web app

00:16:06   It is more integration with Mac OS than any catalyst app

00:16:09   You can show me when I'm actually curious if that's true

00:16:12   We should actually talk about that in a second launch services touch ID keyboard shortcuts system sleep/wake, etc

00:16:17   I think the numbers show how we built one password 8 do as much as possible in the common core

00:16:21   Which they're very excited to tell you is built on Rust and then you Swift for Mac OS specifics and typescript for the front end

00:16:27   Yeah, so I mean it does show that like, you know, if the majority of their code is in JavaScript

00:16:32   It's not as bad as it could be but of course the front end is

00:16:35   JavaScript and they didn't didn't really answer the question of how they handle dependencies because it's a difficult problem

00:16:40   Like there's no easy solution to like oh everyone just knows you should just pin all your dependencies and just never change them

00:16:45   well

00:16:45   that's not good either because

00:16:46   like wait a week and you'll find out one of your dependencies has an incredible security flaw that you need to fix and now you

00:16:52   Have to update it and then it's just so easy to just

00:16:54   Do what NPM tells you to do and update all your things and then you can do her get diff to see what's changed

00:17:00   And just your eyes will glaze over and eventually you'll get sick of looking at it and you won't find a Bitcoin miner

00:17:04   You know people make fun of me for never wanting to use third-party libraries in my apps

00:17:09   Like I almost never bring in third-party code almost never like unless it's something that I really can't do myself

00:17:16   And it's very complicated and that I can easily look at and audit like, you know two files like, you know

00:17:21   Something really simple and yes, I know it's possible to sneak weird stuff in but like, you know

00:17:26   Nobody's doing that to like my audio buffer

00:17:28   things like that, but

00:17:30   You know for the most part I do everything myself and this is a blessing and a curse, you know

00:17:36   the the curse is that I do everything myself and so I have to do it myself and I

00:17:40   basically reinvent the wheel all the time and that has pluses and minuses, you know, the pluses are that I

00:17:46   Know everything about my code. I know everything it's doing and everything. It's not doing I know how it works

00:17:52   If I have to get in there and change or add to it to add

00:17:55   Functionality or change or something behaves or figure out why something isn't behaving. I know it all because it's all code

00:18:00   I wrote and I have right there

00:18:02   Whereas that's not true when you bring in other people's libraries that being said I definitely therefore move more slowly

00:18:07   Like I think once I get to where I was going

00:18:10   It's a better place to be that it's all my code

00:18:13   But it's a much slower road to get there and I certainly avoid a whole host of these problems that you guys been talking about

00:18:20   But you know, obviously I bring on my own problems of things like having to you know

00:18:24   Fix bugs that other people have already fixed, you know handle edge cases that other people have already handled and stuff like that

00:18:30   So, you know, it's a mixed bag, but I still like the way I do it better

00:18:33   I mean you're here still especially on the Apple platforms. You're building on top of the OS which is not third-party

00:18:39   It's first party, but that's the majority of the code in your application is Apple's code, right?

00:18:43   That's true of everybody who builds on a platform. That's you know, you're not

00:18:45   Setting even aside the operating system just whatever UI framework and everything. That's where all the code is

00:18:50   That's where all the lines of code in our own all of our applications the whole point of

00:18:53   Cocoa and all the other things is like oh you get to write at this level where we've already written all the libraries for you

00:18:58   Do yourself and you just tell us button goes here window goes there when they click this happens

00:19:01   then the whole machinery of the UI runs under there and then underneath there is the foundation services and then the core OS services and

00:19:07   The kernel and all the way down. So we're all standing on the shoulders of Giants

00:19:10   it's just that you don't want to be standing on the shoulders of

00:19:12   Random internet script kiddies who wrote the is odd and library which by the way has a dependency. Of course it does

00:19:20   It depends on the is number library

00:19:24   It only has one dependency it's very slim. Oh my god

00:19:28   All right, so very quickly with regard to catalyst apps

00:19:31   I had asked or put out a call for for submissions if you will of

00:19:36   What people thought of and held up as really good catalyst apps

00:19:40   Most of them I've not heard of and most of them were not really popular as far as I knew

00:19:44   The one I should have kept better notes on the things that I was told but the one that I do remember hearing a lot

00:19:50   Is craft which is I guess one of those

00:19:53   New cool kid note-taking apps if I'm not mistaken or like personal knowledge management, whatever things

00:19:59   This is so not in my wheelhouse, but I think it's called craft

00:20:04   I hope I have that right, but I will find a link and put it in the show notes

00:20:08   But yeah, apparently that's electron is excuse me

00:20:10   Not electron is catalyst and is very very good from what I've been told

00:20:13   I think I use craft when there was they were first advertising it

00:20:16   Maybe they're advertising that was under development or whatever

00:20:19   Anyway, and I could swear I thought it was a web app when I first used it, but that was a while ago

00:20:22   Like it's probably changed

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00:22:19   Moving right along we have some CSAM news information that we need to talk about

00:22:28   I actually have not been following this very closely

00:22:30   But my very limited understanding and perhaps John you can fill in a little bit here. Is that somehow?

00:22:37   Somebody or a team of somebodies have like extracted the neural hash algorithm from a I guess a pre-release build of iOS

00:22:45   And have been throwing things against it to try to

00:22:48   See if they can create a collision that is wrong

00:22:52   So just to back up a half-step remember that the way this works is

00:22:56   Every one of your pictures will be analyzed and a hash will be generated and if that hash

00:23:03   Matches something that is known as child sexual assault material something like that abuse abuse. Thank you

00:23:09   child sexual abuse material

00:23:11   Anyways, if it matches one of these images they were one of these hashes I should say then that'll cause problems, right?

00:23:17   well

00:23:18   The people have extracted the algorithm allegedly and have been looking to see if they could make

00:23:24   collisions that are not actually collisions which is to say take two unlike pictures and have the

00:23:30   Algorithm say oh these are the same thing and I guess that's happening and people are figuring out a way to do it and that's

00:23:36   Lightly alarming to say the least well

00:23:40   I don't think it's as bad as people say because the the idea of you know

00:23:44   Any hash any hashing algorithm is taking a lot of information and reducing it down to a little bit of information

00:23:49   There's always going to be the possibility of collisions where two different inputs produce the same output

00:23:54   So collisions are inevitable if you are specifically looking to craft collisions with a certain algorithm

00:23:59   You know, it usually can be done, you know without too much trouble

00:24:03   So, you know, I have no doubt that people will be able to create images that you know

00:24:08   Look kind of like random noise as though I so far I think I think all the collisions that they've you know published so far

00:24:14   I think they all kind of like random noise

00:24:15   So it's not you know, it's not like it's a picture of a puppy and somebody looks at and the algorithm says oh, you know

00:24:20   We have better report this to Apple. That's not entirely true, but you continue. I'll clarify in a bit. Okay

00:24:26   Anyway, the idea of being able to create or find collisions is

00:24:31   You know not great you try to when you're designing a hash algorithm

00:24:34   You try to minimize the chances of that but you know, it's inevitable

00:24:37   So the question is what happens when a collision is found like what happens to an image that matches the hash

00:24:43   And we know that already, you know, what happens is it gets that that you know security voucher thing

00:24:48   That's that's sent to Apple and if they collect enough security vouchers from the same account

00:24:52   They're able to decrypt the images and look at them

00:24:54   Well that would instantly then be obvious to the human who's reviewing this but you know

00:25:01   Deciding whether to forge law enforcement or not. They would see. Oh, this is not see Sam

00:25:05   Therefore we don't need to file this report. So it's an interesting

00:25:10   You know academic exercise. It's an it's interesting to prove, you know the limits of this hash algorithm

00:25:15   But I don't think this is a big deal that that it's possible to create collisions here

00:25:20   I just don't think it's a big deal now there is

00:25:23   you know, there is certainly the the angle of like

00:25:26   could you

00:25:28   somehow like attack someone else by inserting these images into their library and

00:25:34   Therefore getting them in trouble or getting them possibly in trouble or getting law enforcement possibly to go, you know

00:25:40   Give them a visit that's certainly, you know an avenue worth considering

00:25:43   but

00:25:45   There aren't even a lot of ways to get images into other people's photo libraries without their interaction

00:25:50   So that and and again like if it's actually

00:25:53   Not see Sam that you're ingesting into the library as well. That's not really going to do anything in the long run

00:25:58   And now it is certainly worth questioning whether there are ways to get see Sam

00:26:04   Actual see Sam into other people's photo libraries and get them in trouble

00:26:07   that's certainly worth, you know, making sure there's not a good way to do that, but

00:26:11   The existence of hash collisions and the ability to generate them. I don't think

00:26:18   Does much in this context because there is a level of human review

00:26:21   so to start with like the reason this out this item has a question mark after it in a little follow-up notes here is

00:26:27   They extracted an algorithm with from a function

00:26:31   It looked like it was probably the see Sam hashing function from like a released version of iOS

00:26:36   It's not even like a beta one because apparently Apple has been testing this for a while

00:26:39   You just run presumably running it against people's libraries and you know limited fashion or whatever who knows maybe we just wasn't using it

00:26:45   It was dead code. We actually don't know why what it's doing there, but we don't actually know for a fact that

00:26:50   This is the exact algorithm, right? So

00:26:52   There's that and so people were using this algorithm. Remember the the job of this algorithm is to try to tell

00:26:58   If an image matches one of a fixed set of images that's in this database, you know, the nic Mac database, right?

00:27:06   And instead of the reason we need an algorithm

00:27:08   Why don't you just compare it byte for byte is because it wants to find the image even if it's been modified in some minor

00:27:13   way like oh it's

00:27:15   Tinted a different color or there's like some words over it or you know

00:27:19   It's been rotated a little bit or it's black and white instead of color

00:27:22   Like that's why the algorithm exists to try to say, you know, here's the fixed set of images

00:27:27   We're looking for looking for this exact image not an image of a dog, but this exact image of this exact dog, right?

00:27:33   That's what they're looking for

00:27:34   But we want to allow for minor variations because we don't want to miss an image just because you know

00:27:39   Someone recompressed it as JPEG again, right?

00:27:42   That's why these algorithms exist and as we said it a couple shows ago the threshold exists because this algorithm is not exact

00:27:49   It uses like whatever, you know

00:27:51   What is it a neural hash or whatever? It's it's guessing

00:27:55   It's trying to make a best guess because although humans find it easy to say

00:27:59   Yeah, these are the same picture even though that one's been recompressed as a JPEG at lower quality

00:28:02   It's really easy for humans to figure that out not so easy for computers to do so

00:28:06   It's making a best guess and that's why the threshold exists because you don't if the algorithm was 100% accurate

00:28:11   You'd flag on the first one right? You're not letting people have 28 pictures you like it's because it's not exact

00:28:17   so

00:28:19   Let's say for example that this neural hash had a 50% success rate at identifying

00:28:25   Images matching a database you give it an image and it's like a coin flip. It's like well this image of my dog

00:28:32   50/50 it could this algorithm could think it matches an image in the in the nic mech see Sam database or it could not

00:28:41   if you did that and you know remember apples apples like a

00:28:44   document said there's a one in a trillion chance of

00:28:48   An account being flagged so they're basically saying there's a one in a trillion chance

00:28:52   That you that a an account account will be falsely flagged that that you will reach the 30

00:28:58   Photo limit and by the way, I think since last show I think Craig Federighi's basically said it was like 30 photos

00:29:06   But that's the number everyone is using right?

00:29:08   So, you know, it's one in a trillion that you're gonna reach the 30

00:29:11   image limit, right

00:29:14   If the algorithm had a 50/50 chance

00:29:16   Is that one in a trillion and I tried I did a little math to figure out like let's say you have the worst algorithm

00:29:22   In the world and it is a 50/50 chance of identifying an image incorrectly

00:29:25   How many what would the threshold have to be to get one in a trillion and the answer is 40

00:29:29   Right. So if you had if this algorithm was awful like 50/50 to people would say that's awful like

00:29:37   Why are you even using this hashing algorithm that half the time it gets the answer wrong?

00:29:41   If you have a threshold of 40 the odds of it getting the answer wrong 40 times in a row

00:29:47   Exactly 40 times in a row in sequence, right? Just one after the other is one in a trillion now

00:29:55   Yeah, obviously Apple algorithm is better than that and people have more than 40 images in their collections and they're not sequential

00:30:01   So those that probability calculation is not particularly relevant

00:30:04   The only reason I bring it up is to show that no matter how bad the neural hash algorithm is

00:30:10   Apple can adjust the threshold

00:30:12   To make sure that even though it might get one or two pictures wrong the odds of it getting 30 pictures wrong

00:30:19   No, not in a row, but 30 pictures wrong out of an entire collection are what they say

00:30:24   It's supposed to be, you know one in a trillion

00:30:25   And obviously they did that based on like test data or whatever and they mentioned that they will adjust it as long as the threshold

00:30:31   Isn't like a thousand or a million pictures if the threat, you know

00:30:34   Probabilities go, you know go up pretty quickly as you start requiring more and more coincidences, right?

00:30:40   No matter how bad your algorithm is, right?

00:30:42   So that's the first thing to understand about this is that you know

00:30:46   It's anyone who knows anything about hashing or any of these algorithms should know that this is gonna have false positives

00:30:50   That's the reason there's a threshold and that's also the reason as Marco mentioned that there's human review

00:30:54   Second thing to know is in terms of trying to make collisions people have made collisions

00:31:00   With like Marco said like noise images like oh this, you know, this is a picture of a dog

00:31:04   And here's just a gray bunch of noise and the algorithm thinks they're the same ha ha our computer's dumb

00:31:09   But it's so easy for a human to see the gray field of noise is not the picture of a dog, right?

00:31:13   But people have made other collisions where like here's a picture of a pen and here's a picture of a nail

00:31:17   And it thinks those are the same picture and you can go

00:31:20   Okay, I can kind of see that because they're both kind of long skinny things right on a white background, right?

00:31:24   lots of collisions between

00:31:26   Similar looking pictures, which is kind of this algorithms job. It's supposed to find the exact picture

00:31:32   But if you get them close enough, it can be confused

00:31:34   So that makes sense too, you know collisions happen, right?

00:31:37   But to sort of weaponize this what you need to do is not just get two images that collide

00:31:42   They have the same neural hash

00:31:44   What you need to do is get a you know

00:31:47   a harmless image that neural hash thinks matches one of the C Sam pictures in the nic mech database and

00:31:53   To do that you have to know all of the hashes of the nic mech images

00:31:59   In that database and as far as I'm aware

00:32:02   There is no way for you to get those specific hashes the things that ship on your phone are derived

00:32:09   From those hashes but are not in fact those hashes and here's what Apple had to say in this article from the verge

00:32:14   But they responded to this whole controversy

00:32:16   This is the verge writing here

00:32:18   Apple said at C Sam scanning system is built with collisions in mind given the known limitations of perceptual hash hashing algorithms in particular the company

00:32:24   emphasized the secondary server-side hashing algorithm separate from neural hash the specifics of which are not public if an image that produces a neural hash collision was

00:32:33   Flagged by the system. It would be checked against the secondary system and identified as an error before reaching the human moderator

00:32:37   So what I interpret this is to say is that alright

00:32:41   So neural hash algorithm is going to ship with your phone and we can run it and we can do all these

00:32:45   Experimentations with it, but Apple also has its own

00:32:48   Different hashing algorithm that they run on the server side and so not only would you have to get the hash?

00:32:54   from the nic mech database, which I don't think you have access to and

00:32:58   Find an image that matches it because if you have the hash you could find an image that matches it and then get it on

00:33:03   Someone's phone and then that image also

00:33:06   Needs to fool the other hashing algorithm that they're running which you don't have access to so you have no way to sort of reverse

00:33:12   Engineer that algorithm or figure out how to fool it or grab us. You need to fool two different

00:33:16   Hashing algorithms and then finally go through human review

00:33:20   So I think if you wanted to get someone in trouble

00:33:24   For having see Sam on their phone as Marco points out

00:33:28   You could send them see Sam and that would do it right like there's no

00:33:31   Trying to trying to fool the system with like a noise image or a picture of a dog or something is way more work

00:33:38   Than just finding actual see Sam on the internet, which is probably the neck make database and shoving on their phone in all cases

00:33:44   You're performing a criminal activity is actually trying to frame someone for a crime

00:33:47   They didn't commit, you know, whatever you're gonna try to blackmail them, you know what I mean?

00:33:50   Well, I think that in the latter case, it's like you have two felonies instead of one, right?

00:33:54   Well, there's there's all these schemes are coming up. Like you could have someone in a lawless state

00:33:58   Find an image on the internet

00:34:00   It's probably in the neck mech database and give you the neural hash of it because you otherwise you can't get that one and then

00:34:05   Now you have the hash to target and all they send to you is the hash now

00:34:08   You're not in the possession of see Sam so you can find an image that matches that hash and put it on the phone

00:34:12   But then when it gets to Apple system

00:34:14   They're gonna run a different algorithm on it that you don't have access to and it's not gonna match in that case

00:34:17   So this is a fun interesting thing and it can freak people out who don't understand as Marco explained

00:34:23   that the job of a hashing algorithm is to take a large number of inputs and produce a much smaller number of outputs which

00:34:29   Necessarily means there have to be collisions. Otherwise, it's not a hashing algorithm

00:34:34   and that's why the threshold exists because

00:34:36   there's gonna be false positives and we just have to tune it so that

00:34:40   We need we when we have enough or preponderance of evidence the odds of that many false positives happening is very very low

00:34:47   And then finally you have human review

00:34:49   so I think this story mostly faded because it's too again technical and weird and you know

00:34:54   Involves security stuff that most people don't care about

00:34:56   But it is an opportunity to learn about hashing algorithms

00:35:00   I suppose and I feel like this part where Apple told us about the second server side hashing algorithm is

00:35:04   kind of an example of as far as I'm aware maybe security through obscurity because did they not tell us about that before and

00:35:11   Only revealed it now like that in other words that they have backstops against abuses. Yeah the second level

00:35:16   I don't think we knew about the second level of the hash, right? Which is I mean, it's fine

00:35:20   But like I don't know in one respect you think why wouldn't you brag about that Apple?

00:35:25   But another respect maybe it makes them more vulnerable to attacks to try to find the second algorithm all sorts of stuff like that

00:35:31   I mean they did tell us about the threshold and they could have not told us about that

00:35:33   but I feel like transparency with security related things is probably better than

00:35:38   You know keeping the secret secondary server side hashing algorithm from the public

00:35:43   There have been some Safari 15 updates and actually there is a new developer beta that I believe was released the day

00:35:50   We are recording which I don't think any of us have really looked at yet

00:35:53   But I have it installed I installed it ten minutes ago. I

00:35:56   actually during the show

00:35:59   Well done. I

00:36:01   Put the public beta not the developer beta but the public beta on my phone about a week ago

00:36:06   Maybe a little less and it seems mostly okay

00:36:08   And there's a couple of minor quirks here and there but for the most part it seems fine

00:36:12   And and I like the Safari now, I think I would have hated Safari a couple of builds ago

00:36:17   But I like it just fine now

00:36:19   But yeah, so there have been some changes as of beta 6 which is presumably roughly the same public beta that I'm on

00:36:25   Things basically look a bit more normal

00:36:28   The the tab bar at the bottom. It's not a tab bar I suppose but the bar at the bottom tool

00:36:34   But isn't quite so the toolbar. Thank you the bottom of the toolbar at the bottom isn't quite so floaty for the most part

00:36:39   I know it behaves more logically perhaps Marco you have more to say about this than I but these are definitely strong improvements that

00:36:48   Have gotten so when I you know installed the public beta I didn't rage quit my phone, which is a good thing

00:36:54   Yeah

00:36:55   This so this is actually this shipped last week as part of developer beta 6

00:36:59   But this new and this new interface the one that came out today which I think today's beta 7 or 8 anyway

00:37:06   I think it's 7 I think yeah, so the one that came out today

00:37:08   It looks like it's pretty similar in most ways. I don't see any major changes yet

00:37:13   But yeah, but certainly I've used the one that came out

00:37:15   You know last week beta 6 that that finally gave it like the big double height toolbar on the bottom the option to move the address

00:37:22   Bar back to the top so you can actually configure it to just be like old Safari was so finally I think on the iPhone

00:37:28   They have come up with like a decent good design not all parts of it are good not all configurations of it

00:37:35   I think are good, but you can but you can finally choose which one you want

00:37:40   You know what they did here in some ways is a design failure in the sense that they tried something radically new

00:37:48   It didn't work and instead of rolling it back completely

00:37:51   They're now just offering a bunch of check boxes that you can configure it. It's like fine

00:37:54   You don't like it making whoever you want

00:37:55   You know it's kind of that which is not I mean ideally there would just be one design

00:37:59   And it would be good enough that everyone would use it and everyone would understand it

00:38:03   But in the absence of that option, but for some reason they don't appear to be doing

00:38:09   You can actually now configure it in a number of good ways depending on what your preferences are so

00:38:14   Now I'm happy with it. I know that's yeah, it sounds very entitled, but yeah now I'm happy with it

00:38:19   Like they they can ship this and I think I think what happened is you know they they tried something radical

00:38:26   It didn't work, and they're running out of time. You know the way they are

00:38:30   They're rushing to like you know nail things down in these last two betas

00:38:34   You know the news came out earlier today that iCloud private relay is gonna actually launch as a beta feature that I believe is gonna

00:38:40   Be off by default at first, and then it'll I guess become out of beta sometime later

00:38:45   You know they're they're clearly like nailing stuff down getting ready for imminent release. You know I think

00:38:52   You know this beta that came out today might end up being the last beta before the GM probably not

00:38:58   I bet there's gonna be one more, but we are getting very very close to release

00:39:02   And so I think they looked at the safari design really look. This is still on fire

00:39:06   We need to make people we need to make something that we can ship to the whole world and not have a massive problem on

00:39:13   Our hands so now they they fixed it and it's good

00:39:16   I have not yet used the terrible like Mac and iPad tab redesign

00:39:21   So I don't have anything to say about those, but on the iPhone the iPhone Safari is now

00:39:26   Able to be set up in such a way that it's pretty good I

00:39:30   Will say with regard to the iPad that I do for the most part have

00:39:35   You know I enjoy Safari. I don't have any major problems with it except

00:39:39   The tabs oh my gosh like I don't mind the colors

00:39:43   Well, yeah, you're right. I don't mind the colors bleeding up like it

00:39:47   I don't see it as necessary, but I don't mind it

00:39:50   But the thing I mind is I can never friggin tell which is the active tab never ever ever ever

00:39:55   Can I tell what the active tab is and that is absolutely infuriating?

00:39:58   Yeah, Stephen Hackett had a good post on 512 pixels dotnet the Safari 15 fight isn't over yet is the title

00:40:05   And it's talking about Mac Safari and so rather than us

00:40:08   Talking again about all of our complaints about Mac Safari just read this blog post it reiterates all exactly the same things

00:40:14   Mostly having to do with the tabs which no longer make any sense now that they have

00:40:18   Allowed you to revert the design to be more like the old Safari while still keeping the tabs

00:40:22   yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to trying the Safari and the phone one because

00:40:28   It's it's kind of surprising to me that they didn't just stick with the bottom toolbar one because really like as we said

00:40:34   Many past shows it was the floating part that was a problem, and it just doesn't float anymore now

00:40:38   It's just a big big bar at the bottom right and so that's their design stuff at the bottom

00:40:43   And they they found a straightforward way to do it without the weird floating thing that had all sorts of problems

00:40:49   I don't think it's particularly attractive, but you can swipe from side to side to go through tabs

00:40:53   It's closer to the bottom of the phone which is easy to reach people with big phones

00:40:56   You know like we said it has all the benefits of their old design

00:40:58   It just gets rid of the terrible parts of it and the giant drop shadow and all those stuff

00:41:03   But then they gave you the option to basically make it like Safari 14

00:41:06   Which I have no complaints about because I like Safari 14

00:41:09   I don't find it hard to reach the top of my phone

00:41:11   But it's it's just so weird that they this is the new Apple of like

00:41:15   Not only do we iterate on the design and make changes in response to you know internal testing feedback

00:41:20   whatever they're making changes in response to but also

00:41:23   We hedge our bets by letting you also change it back to the old way

00:41:27   Which is so weird like it's a hand Safari on the Mac

00:41:30   Does a worse job of that because if our in the Mac lets you change it back to the old way

00:41:35   But not really not really the old way you get the tabs that the tabs that don't make any sense because they look like the new

00:41:41   Style tabs, but they're not there don't change into the address bar

00:41:43   So why they look at the address bar, and that's why it case you can't tell what the heck they are so

00:41:46   Yeah, the Mac this still work to be done

00:41:49   But the Mac is on it kind of on a different beta cycle than the phone and it's gonna be released the Mac OS is

00:41:53   Gonna be released later anyway, so

00:41:55   The Mac still has time, but just FYI if you thought this was the end of Safari 15

00:42:00   The Safari 15 watch it probably isn't at least on the Mac

00:42:04   I'd say that's fair possibly the iPad - do you think like the reason they keep doing these you know radical design and then?

00:42:12   either step it back or

00:42:14   Make an option to undo it basically

00:42:16   is that a sign of of

00:42:20   Like problems in the flow or do you think that's just like the maturity of a large company doing large things like it in some ways

00:42:27   Like is is this a sign of something being wrong or is just a sign of like how big?

00:42:31   These things now are and that they're trying really ambitious things I

00:42:35   Mean I think it's a sign that like what what what what would stop this from happening

00:42:40   It's another way of looking this like if you think this is if let's surmise that this is a bad thing

00:42:44   What does it take to stop this sequence of events from happening?

00:42:48   What what you need to stop it from happening is?

00:42:50   somebody with

00:42:53   you know better instincts to

00:42:56   Say no to it and as mentioned we talked about this in the past

00:43:01   You really don't want the whole rest of the company to have veto power or what your group is doing like some group is responsible for

00:43:07   The UI and Safari and that's their job and other people can have opinions

00:43:11   but in the end you hire these people to make Safari for iOS and

00:43:15   They should be able to do what you hired them to do rather than like oh well

00:43:20   We did it but someone who's on like the you know

00:43:24   The the mail team thinks it's bad

00:43:26   So we can't ship it like a big big wig manager on the mail team says this is a bad interface

00:43:30   And now we can't like no they're in charge of mail

00:43:32   They're not in charge of mobile Safari like you have to allow the people you hire to do their jobs

00:43:36   So the only way to stop something like this from happening is not to have some sort of weird

00:43:40   Organization where everyone has veto power over everyone else like that's quite incredibly dysfunctional

00:43:45   But as you go up the org chart not laterally

00:43:48   But upwards in the org chart and it's very difficult to do that in Apple's very flat organization

00:43:52   Probably the biggest big wig who's in charge of like iOS software like they probably report right up to the CEO

00:43:59   They did it back in the Steve Jobs days anyway, or like one step away from that

00:44:02   So there's a very small number of people who properly should have veto power

00:44:07   And in Apple, there is nobody in those one or two positions above this this

00:44:14   Whoever has final say in this type of thing

00:44:16   Who had good enough instincts or taste to stop this from shipping and having WDC sessions about it?

00:44:21   I guess right and in the old days that was Steve Jobs and his taste wasn't always good

00:44:25   He had terrible ideas sometimes he shipped things with leather stitching on them

00:44:28   Like it's not let's not deify Steve Jobs's taste

00:44:31   But the fact is a lot of stuff that didn't make it out the door because the one big wig guy the CEO

00:44:37   Didn't like it

00:44:39   Would Steve Jobs have stopped this?

00:44:42   Maybe I think he would have stopped the floating blob because it's too fidgety

00:44:44   But lots of other things that we don't like he wouldn't have stopped because his taste was super weird

00:44:48   But that's it. That's the only way you can really stop this from happening. So I feel like

00:44:52   It's not a strategy to say, you know, step one hire Steve Jobs like there's not a viable strategy

00:44:58   And again, it's not even foolproof. So I would say that this is not the sign of an organization that has any sort of

00:45:05   Organizational problems like I think it's structured the right way

00:45:09   I think what happened had to happen in this way to be a healthy organization

00:45:13   but it is a sign that perhaps some of the people who actually

00:45:16   do

00:45:18   Define and decide what the UI should be for mobile Safari

00:45:21   Have some not great ideas

00:45:25   Have some not great it's not the ideas because everyone's like all ideas are great. Let's hear it. Let's try it or whatever but like

00:45:32   their their value system the the the

00:45:36   Values that they use to judge whether a thing that they've tried is successful or not

00:45:40   Their values don't match

00:45:43   Well with the values of apples

00:45:45   Apple as a company I feel like because that in the end that's what it comes down to

00:45:49   It's not like Apple's customers made them change this right Apple as a company

00:45:52   Decided to listen the the way they decide what feedback they will listen to and what feedback they will ignore

00:45:59   It's Apple's values that determines that because everybody somewhere hates something that Apple does like no matter what Apple does

00:46:04   You can find a bunch of people who don't like it, right?

00:46:06   But only Apple only takes that the heart and acts on it if Apple says, you know what?

00:46:11   This subset of people who don't like this thing. We agree with them. They're right. This could be better

00:46:17   It is worse than that way. It weighs X Y & Z, right? So I feel like

00:46:20   the the reason this got out is

00:46:23   Somewhere there is a mismatch between the values the value system used to judge the success of the work

00:46:30   Within you know, the mobile Safari group and the values of Apple as a whole I don't begrudge

00:46:36   Apple trying something it's it's so tough because on the one side will tell you like oh Apple should try things more and get

00:46:44   Feedback more and let the outsiders be involved more

00:46:48   And then in the next breath will tell you what the hell were they thinking?

00:46:51   Why did they release this ever and I think it's possible for both those things to be true, but it's it's it's tough

00:46:58   Especially with Apple, you know you they they proclaim that their their stuff is so well designed

00:47:05   It's so well thought out remember when they used to say it just works too. That was fun. But nevertheless it

00:47:11   It's it's a tough thing to figure out internally much less externally

00:47:17   Like what do we allow to leak out and when do we allow it to happen?

00:47:21   Do we present this perfectly wrapped package and only when it's perfectly wrapped that in that we will let it out of Apple parts

00:47:28   Or do we show kind of the build process and let people get involved and see see what happens and in this case. I

00:47:35   admire them for letting

00:47:38   Kind of the world get involved with with you know, kind of voting on on what they think but I don't know

00:47:45   It seems to me like anyone with any amount of taste would have seen that this was a flawed design from the get-go

00:47:51   That being said where it's landed now

00:47:53   I'm pretty happy with like the left particularly on the phone the left right swipey on the bottom

00:47:57   This super convenient. I think Marco you brought that up a minute ago

00:48:00   In in having the address bar at the bottom is great for those of us who don't have miniature phones like Marco

00:48:06   So no matter how you slice it is it is good. My miniature phone has a heart - it has feelings

00:48:12   It doesn't have battery life, but it has feelings

00:48:15   You know, what else doesn't have battery life my watch by 40 millimeters series 6 whatever it is

00:48:20   It's I typically charge it a little bit in the middle of the day

00:48:23   But if I don't I know it cuz holy cow, yeah, I have by the way I have for the record

00:48:28   I have I'm down to

00:48:29   89% battery health after about a year on the mini which I think is the biggest loss ever gotten in a year

00:48:35   I wonder what mine is now. We're now we're on a tangent of attention. Let's let's all look

00:48:39   Battery battery health 90% on my 12 Pro. Okay. So, you know you're doing not too not too much better 1% better

00:48:48   Not too stellar, although I will say for better or worse potentially worse

00:48:51   I do charge using Chi almost exclusively

00:48:54   It's very rare that I charge with anything but Chi and I my gut tells me although it may be

00:48:59   Completely wrong. My gut tells me that that is not helping my battery health at all

00:49:03   Well, I think it's I mean so keep in mind also like the the new phones with with modern OSes

00:49:08   Do that weird thing where they don't even charge all the way until you're gonna wake up soon, right?

00:49:11   Yeah, there's stuff like that that actually is helping but overall

00:49:14   Yeah, I mean Chi charging is not great because for the for you know

00:49:18   Preserving the lifespan of lithium-ion batteries charging them in a hot environment is not great and she adds heat

00:49:24   That that wouldn't otherwise be there from it from the inefficiency

00:49:28   So it's not great from that point of view

00:49:30   But I don't know how much like I don't I don't know if we have good information on like

00:49:34   How much does Chi versus lightning charging matter in terms of battery lifespan?

00:49:39   Like yes charging a battery in you know in constant heat is not great

00:49:43   But is that enough to make a difference with that amount of heat over the typical lifespan of a phone?

00:49:49   you know versus just its natural degradation or the the degradation introduced by things like

00:49:55   Constantly site like cycling it down a lot every day or fast charging it which is also probably worse for it

00:50:01   Because that's charging a faster introducing more heat is it's probably not good either

00:50:05   So there's all sorts of other factors with the way we use our phones these days that I don't know how much she actually matters

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00:51:49   Something I've been needling on for about a month now is

00:51:56   I feel like Apple is fighting a PR war

00:52:02   with themselves

00:52:04   like I'm gonna blow through a handful of selections over the last month month and a half of

00:52:09   Apple just doing things that most of the public thinks are gross or wrong or

00:52:16   Certainly not desirable or what's the Merlinism? They're not wholesome

00:52:20   and it's been going on kind of a lot recently and

00:52:24   It's really kind of weirding me out that this is

00:52:29   Consistently happening. I feel like every week there's some new brouhaha about Apple and yes, of course

00:52:35   Most of you will say well that's been happening forever

00:52:37   Yeah, I get that but I feel like a lot of times it'll be somebody saying oh, you know Apple's Apple's doing this thing

00:52:44   That's wrong somebody from the outside. Whereas I would argue a lot of this stuff and I'm gonna go through it in a minute

00:52:49   It's happening internally and just leaking out into real world or it's it's Apple making

00:52:55   Proclamations about how great they are only to have them backfire

00:52:57   And so I'm not terribly interested unless the two of you are in in going through the particulars about any one of these things

00:53:05   but I'd like to take you through a timeline and and start with Thursday, July 15th when

00:53:11   This is shortly after Apple had announced that they were gonna start bringing people back which they've since backpedaled on

00:53:17   But they said oh, we're gonna bring people back

00:53:19   We're gonna do a hybrid model and I thought my head I think was like Tuesday Wednesday Thursday in the office Monday and Friday

00:53:24   you can work from home and

00:53:26   Apparently they've been real jerks about it, which is of no great surprise

00:53:29   I've talked to many birdies who are saying that a lot of people are leaving because of it

00:53:34   Maybe that's hearsay. Maybe that is hearsay. Maybe that's not true. But that's what I'm hearing but you know

00:53:39   There's a verge article Apple employees say the company's cracking down on remote work

00:53:43   One employee said in slack that Apple even denied their ADA American Disability Act Association something like that work from home accommodation

00:53:50   So even though this person according to the government deserve to work from home

00:53:54   Apparently Apple said tough nuggies if you were to believe them, that's Thursday, July 15

00:53:58   Moving right along Wednesday the 4th of August Apple places a program manager on administrative leave for her request

00:54:04   after accusations of a toxic workplace again, I'm not really looking to litigate these particular points, but

00:54:10   Apparently a woman at Apple had and I don't have her name in front of me. I'm sorry. I had

00:54:15   some seemingly legitimate complaints about a really toxic workforce and

00:54:20   Apple basically said yeah, no, you're fine. And she said well that's kind of bogus

00:54:24   Can we you know work this out and apparently they're working it out. That was Wednesday the 4th of August

00:54:28   Thursday the 5th of August see Sam stuff

00:54:30   So literally the next day the completely bungled rollout of all the see Sam protections and so on and so forth

00:54:38   So that's Thursday the 5th Monday the 9th Apple shuts down employee run surveys on pay

00:54:44   So share Scarlett is an Apple employee and has been trying very very diligently

00:54:49   To get an understanding of whether or not pay is equitable amongst gender amongst roles

00:54:56   amongst locations

00:54:58   And several other facets and so share was trying to get Apple employees to voluntarily fill out information about you know

00:55:05   What they're making what their role is etc. And apparently Apple's been shutting this down more and more and more violently

00:55:11   That was Monday the 9th of August Monday the next Monday the 16th of August

00:55:15   Apple Forces flick type watch out of the App Store. So this was a an app that I guess would let you do kind of like

00:55:22   a swipey keyboard thing on your watch which unbeknownst to me as so many things are I'm really I

00:55:27   Need to get better about this but unbeknownst to me apparently this was really important for people that had accessibility needs

00:55:34   and so a lot of people would use this keyboard in order to respond to text messages and things like that and

00:55:40   Miguel de casa who is a friend of the show had pointed out that this is one of the things that

00:55:46   Apple had previously touted as being one of their favorite apps in the App Store for accessibility. Well done guys

00:55:52   and

00:55:54   Just a couple of days ago Monday the 23rd of August Apple employees are now organizing under the banner

00:55:59   Hashtag Apple - which is in the spirit of me - so this is what like six or seven items over the course of a month

00:56:06   where something Apple is done is doing or didn't do or whatever is

00:56:10   Causing like quite the blow-up and I feel like they are just fighting a PR war on themselves and this is

00:56:18   Very very unlike Apple and typically they're so quiet. They're so reserved

00:56:24   They only speak when they are sure they have everything right?

00:56:28   It's just very very very surprising to me

00:56:31   And and if you guys don't have thoughts about it, we can just let that one

00:56:33   We can let that marinate and move on but if either of you guys have anything to add

00:56:38   I'd be very curious to hear what your take is. I

00:56:40   Was gonna like dive into the title that you gave this for the topic Apple's fighting a PR war against itself and say like what?

00:56:46   Does that actually mean what are you trying to say with that title?

00:56:48   I can more precisely and you didn't dig into it in the description, but I think

00:56:53   Like the spirit of it like the way I first I read it and made perfect sense, but then I read it again

00:56:58   I'm like that doesn't make any sense. I feel like I feel like the spirit of it

00:57:02   I might try to expand on what I think the spirit of it is, right?

00:57:05   So lots of people as you as you noted, but people probably didn't hear so I'm gonna say it again

00:57:08   They're gonna say people always are criticizing Apple

00:57:11   It's like they're the biggest company in the world super popular to like of course is gonna be negative stories about Apple

00:57:15   Like that's not new

00:57:16   It's been happening the whole life of the company and just as they've gotten more powerful and more popular just happens even more and more

00:57:21   So this is not a trend you're not noticing anything new

00:57:24   Why are you even talking about this? There's always negative stories about Apple how half the things we do on the show

00:57:29   Some people will say oh you're saying negative things about Apple. Is that what you're talking about the show?

00:57:33   We're like we're you're part of the whole same problem, right?

00:57:35   but I think what is different about this set of items or most of the set of items that you've gathered up here and

00:57:43   it

00:57:44   connects to the fighting appear war on itself is

00:57:47   These are stories

00:57:50   that

00:57:52   Conflicts with Apple's

00:57:56   Image of itself and the image they project to the world very often the negative stories about Apple are

00:58:01   Something that is negative perceived to be negative by the world and certainly by whoever is writing the story

00:58:08   but that Apple would consider an asset like I

00:58:11   Don't know like I mean, this is this is kind of fraught because of the antitrust stuff like oh the App Store

00:58:17   Why can't I put there? You know, why why can't we have third-party app stores?

00:58:20   Why does everything have to go through the App Store Apple would say I know you don't like that decision

00:58:24   But we think it's perfectly in keeping with Apple's philosophy of having things be proprietary and having us control them and stuff like you

00:58:30   Go back even farther like why can't I build a PC clone or on Mac OS on it, right?

00:58:35   People hate that's a negative story for the you know for literally decades

00:58:38   They're like why doesn't Apple license the operating system that Microsoft is eating their lunch because they've insist on making the hardware on the software

00:58:44   And they crack down on clone makers

00:58:46   Negative story after negative story about that, but Apple would say yeah, that's that we see that's a negative story. But our

00:58:54   Our conception of ourself is not threatened by that

00:58:57   We know that we're not letting you make Mac clones except for that one time we did which was a mistake

00:59:01   But you know, we know we're not letting you run Mac OS on cheap generic PC hardware. Like that's a strategy

00:59:08   We're doing that on purpose that fits with our image of our self that's fits with how we present ourselves to the world

00:59:14   We build the whole widget. It's an integrated experience. It all works together

00:59:18   We control everything about it, which is why it's nicer than your PC, right?

00:59:22   but these stories all this stuff are

00:59:24   negative stories

00:59:26   That fly pretty much exactly counter to how Apple thinks of itself into Apple how Apple presents itself to the world

00:59:34   Apple

00:59:35   Wants to think of itself and wants to present itself to the world as a company that is fair and equitable to its employees that it's

00:59:41   A good place for anyone to work that is a place where they are fighting against workplace harassment discrimination

00:59:47   So and so or Apple doesn't say that it's perfect like but they Apple tries to hold itself accountable and here the values we believe

00:59:53   In and if we find out something is wrong

00:59:54   We will try to remedy it and this is what we're shooting for but these are stories about Apple doing the opposite and saying

01:00:00   No, we don't want you to do a survey of employees to find out how everybody makes

01:00:05   Despite the fact that it's against the law for Apple to literally stop that Apple finds technicality and say well

01:00:11   We can't stop you from doing it

01:00:14   But if you do it and involve Apple systems in any way like if you post on an internal Apple bulletin board if you use

01:00:19   Your company, you know supplied computer to do it. Like there's all sorts of these technicalities where Apple can

01:00:24   Strongly discourage slash squash this especially if it happens inside the company where I said Apple can say we're not breaking the law

01:00:31   But the spirit is you don't want employees to know what all their co-workers are making

01:00:39   Because what you're hiding something like it doesn't like that is not in keeping with hey

01:00:44   We want to have an equitable workplace where everyone feels welcome and where the pay is fair and so on and so forth, right?

01:00:49   They do all these readouts about how well they're doing and hiring and diversity and all that other stuff

01:00:54   But their direct actions counter that right the App Store one is, you know

01:01:00   They're always doing bad app store rejections that is probably in keeping with

01:01:02   itself and that yes, and that's

01:01:05   stupid but

01:01:07   Yeah, Apple to the the harassment stuff the the see Sam stuff Apple's in we talked about this in many past shows

01:01:14   Apple's whole thing is we're the privacy company. We want to do things for maximum privacy

01:01:17   And in this case, it's a little bit more nuanced because Apple thinks it is doing something that's in keeping with privacy

01:01:22   But the world disagrees so that's maybe a slightly different category

01:01:24   But still the PR rollout is against Apple's normal practice of having a very controlled careful PR message in this case

01:01:31   Setting aside the actual features the rollout of them the sort of you know

01:01:36   How do how were they presented to the world backfired in a big way?

01:01:40   Like, you know, even if you think the features themselves are fine

01:01:42   The way Apple presented it was not in keeping with Apple's usual image of itself as we know how to communicate

01:01:49   like what we like apples one of Apple's biggest strengths is

01:01:54   They choose very carefully what they want to communicate and they make sure that that is the message that gets out

01:01:59   that it that you know that someone doesn't take what they say and run with it and

01:02:03   Have a different kind of story like the story that Apple wants to see written is the story

01:02:07   That fits with the message that putting out and Apple is so good at that except for in the case of this stuff

01:02:12   Which totally messed it up?

01:02:14   yeah, so I feel like this is I

01:02:16   Don't know about or in the same thing with the remote the work from home thing

01:02:21   Like again our could be argued that's in keeping with Apple's tradition of having everybody work there

01:02:25   But it's it is against the tradition of trying to be accommodating and welcoming and so on and so forth

01:02:31   You know, especially like oh all the stories about how Apple is very accommodating during the kovat Christ and everything

01:02:36   That's in keeping with Apple's corporate philosophy is extenuating circumstances it you know, we will

01:02:41   Accommodate for that and you could even say hey, well we have a new policy even post kovat

01:02:46   We're gonna have a new policy, but it's just it didn't go far enough

01:02:48   But yeah Apple being at war with its employees is not in keeping with the image of presents to the world

01:02:53   So that you know, that is just you know a bad PR situation like you don't want

01:02:59   The story to be that

01:03:01   You know all that stuff you say is BS because look at how you act

01:03:06   You don't want to look like you don't want to look hypocritical, right?

01:03:08   You want the image that you present to the world to be supported by everything you do and in this case, you know

01:03:15   Apple might feel

01:03:17   Like that it's losing control of what is coming out of the company like there's their you know

01:03:22   Culture of secrecy and everything has in the past probably helped with this

01:03:27   But people feel emboldened to say look

01:03:30   this is going on in the workplace and we don't think it's right and

01:03:33   Apple I dare you to punish fire me for telling the world that this is going on and Apple's like, okay

01:03:40   We'll take that bet we will punish you and it just makes them look worse. Right? Yep, so

01:03:44   You know, obviously the solution here is Apple

01:03:47   Either this, you know

01:03:50   Stop doing things that are in conflict with the image you present to the world

01:03:53   Or change the image you present to the world and I would suggest doing the first one because most of the things Apple is doing

01:03:58   Again smell like they've come up when we've talked about App Store or other things like it smells like there's someone somewhere in the organization

01:04:05   Who has as their goal to like, you know, like someone thinks it's really bad

01:04:10   For example for employees to know how much they all their their co-workers make right and so they're just doing anything

01:04:16   they possibly can to stop that from happening without thinking about is this is

01:04:22   You know is my goal in keeping with Apple's values they just say like no like this. This is what I want

01:04:28   Maybe I work in the HR department and it will hurt my ability to hire and it will I have to rebalance everyone's salary or

01:04:33   I don't want the world to know how unfairly the women are being paid in the cut like there's reasons why they're doing it

01:04:38   But something else in the organization should be overriding that they're you know, sort of localized self-interest interest in the HR department to say

01:04:46   That's not how we do things at Apple, right?

01:04:49   If they want to organize a survey a it's illegal for us to actually stop them

01:04:54   So why are you even bothering to like finally technicalities right? Because they're just gonna eventually do it

01:04:58   Anyway, they'll put up a Google Sheet and they'll talk about it after work off of Apple's get like, you know

01:05:03   And and be if someone knows that you've been spending all this time trying to squash this

01:05:09   It just makes us look worse

01:05:10   Like the bottom line is do we care about equitable pay or do we not and if we do care about it?

01:05:15   We should have the guts to say here's what it's like at Apple right now

01:05:18   And if it's bad say we know it's bad and we're working to improve it in a ways X Y & Z which they mostly deal with

01:05:23   A lot of other stuff but then this is you know counter to that entire narrative

01:05:26   So what you don't want is a month like this where the accumulation of stories slowly convinced people that Apple is not the company

01:05:33   That it thinks it is and Apple is not the company that maybe you thought it was

01:05:37   Are we the baddies now?

01:05:39   Yeah, and it is I will go back to like yeah

01:05:42   If you're the biggest company in the world people always gonna be trying to tear you down

01:05:45   Like I still think in the grand scheme of things Apple is way better than average on all these things, right?

01:05:51   And a part of the reason these stories gets traction is because we expect so much of Apple and because they're such a pinnacle

01:05:57   You know, they're up on a pedestal people want to tear them down and any little thing they do you're gonna yell them out

01:06:02   But anyone who has worked literally any job ever

01:06:05   You can think of much worse things that have happened to them at their job or they've seen happen in their job or their

01:06:12   systemic across their other giant company that they've worked for that

01:06:15   You know make these things look like nothing but you know

01:06:19   That's that's the you know

01:06:21   It's like Marco and his dependencies the beauty and the curse of Apple that we we hold them to a higher standard

01:06:26   Because in general they are better and we're big fans of them and they wanted to do

01:06:30   Well and Apple itself holds itself to a high standard

01:06:33   That's part of the reason it's presentation to the world is to talk about

01:06:36   their values and how they're working to improve and you know

01:06:39   like again this room for criticism and all of them whether it's labor in China or how they deal with China at all or

01:06:45   Cozing up the Trump at the Mac Pro factory like there's always things to criticize but through it all I feel like

01:06:51   what Apple has tried very hard to hold on to is

01:06:54   Their values like this is what Apple stands for and though we may fall short

01:06:59   we will acknowledge when we fell short and we will try to do better and make changes and

01:07:03   Seeing Apple actively work against forces within its own company that are trying to improve it

01:07:09   Right like say I'm reporting harassment take care of the rest. Don't yell at me. I'm trying to help make the pay more equitable

01:07:14   Don't you stop the survey? You should be asking for they don't need the results, or they know what everyone's being paid

01:07:19   but anyway, they should you should be taking this feedback and acting on it and not trying to you know, stop me or whatever and

01:07:24   Again, I'm gonna set aside the app store rejections. We've spoken enough about that from our perspective

01:07:30   It's a terrible thing to do to have these arbitrary and better

01:07:34   rejections, but there's so many of those and it's so difficult to tell which are the good or which are the bad and you know

01:07:38   That's a that's a long-running thing that maybe Congress will sort out eventually, but yeah

01:07:44   Yeah, it's I just hope Apple

01:07:47   Takes all that kind of like this is our 15 stuff like sometimes things go badly and you have a bad result

01:07:53   But you can you can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by saying we're going to learn from this

01:07:59   We'll correct our mistakes. We'll take

01:08:02   Remedial action and the next time we'll do better and that's what Apple should do in all these circumstances, but the first step is

01:08:09   Acknowledging that you're making a mistake like, you know, stop doing the things that are bad and then you know

01:08:16   Go through the rest of the process

01:08:17   Yeah, John

01:08:18   I

01:08:18   Thank you

01:08:19   because I

01:08:20   Think my thesis was too brief in and you did an excellent job of capturing what I was trying to say

01:08:25   Which is exactly that that this is incongruent with my perception of Apple and certainly the perception of Apple

01:08:31   I think Apple wants me to have and and that is in short what I'm seeing over the last month

01:08:35   Which is really too bad and I agree with everything you just said

01:08:38   So thank you for for being the chief summarizer in chief for me

01:08:41   I am one actually one more thing on this like the we keep talking about Apple like as if it's this disembodied entity

01:08:48   but Apple is made up of all of these people and

01:08:51   The nature of companies is the people are it's not made up all those people evenly right, you know, so there's thousands of employees and

01:09:00   The you don't average them all together and get Apple the CEO

01:09:04   Counts has a much higher weighting factor and then as you go down the org chart, you know

01:09:09   The weighting factors get smaller and smaller and they rank and file people have a much lower weighting factor in the average

01:09:14   That is Apple but when we talk about apples values and living up to its own values

01:09:18   whatever these employees who are internally agitating to make things better are

01:09:23   Apple in the same sense that the CEO is Apple there's way more of them

01:09:28   But their weighting factor is way way way way lower and in the end

01:09:33   They have a boss who has a boss who has a boss who tells them what to do and has the power to fire them

01:09:37   Right. So that's the nature of companies. And so I think when we talk about Apple like

01:09:42   These employees pushing back are in fact embodying the values of Apple because they make up the values of Apple like the actual on

01:09:50   You know boots on the ground

01:09:53   Values of Apple is embodied by its employees and in that way all these stories do reflect

01:09:58   The mass of Apple living up to its ideals, but these people don't run Apple and that's the disappointing

01:10:06   So what? Yeah, so when we're talking about Apple we're talking about the people who are in charge of Apple

01:10:10   Not the majority of the employees at Apple who mostly are like ever, you know Apple employees though

01:10:15   I've met are always just

01:10:16   Great enthusiastic people with great values who want all the best for everybody else who works at Apple and there's just it doesn't you know

01:10:23   You put a few people with bad ideas in the wrong place with the wrong motivations

01:10:26   And it can really make the whole company take a wrong turn. I

01:10:29   think there also might be

01:10:32   Like deep-rooted structural or cultural issues that are much much harder to you know

01:10:38   Try to fix from anywhere little you know from the top or from the you know

01:10:42   From the bottom or from anywhere because you know, I think somebody I think it was on Dubai Friday

01:10:47   Famously said that success hides problems

01:10:50   That was also them right that follow up in that what are you trying to do?

01:10:54   What's that? Yeah. Yeah

01:10:57   so

01:10:58   You know Apple's been so successful that

01:11:00   It's easy for everyone at the company, you know at all levels to get into the mindset of

01:11:08   We know what's best obviously because look at how well we're doing look at this great stuff for making we're really changing the world

01:11:15   We're doing great work. We're making great things. So therefore we are great and the way we do things is great

01:11:20   and we've heard over the years many common themes that go something like

01:11:26   the reason why this thing is the way it is is because a middle manager somewhere along the chain of command is

01:11:34   either you know, not very good or being a jerk in some way or is responding to

01:11:41   Dysfunctional incentives that the company culture has set up like, you know

01:11:45   It's because they're in their project even though it shouldn't go in a certain direction

01:11:50   They push it that direction because of their own like career political

01:11:53   Motives and incentives we we've heard this over and over again over many years. This is not new

01:11:59   It does seem like Apple is like any other big company. You have people problems. You have incentive problems

01:12:05   You have cultural problems and as the company has gotten bigger that hasn't, you know, obviously gotten better

01:12:10   it's if anything it's gotten worse and and

01:12:14   And I do hear more about like the the depth of that chain of command

01:12:19   Under Tim Cook as opposed to what it was under Steve Jobs

01:12:22   But that also could be attributed to the company's growth during that time

01:12:25   So it's hard to know if it's like, you know

01:12:27   Is this the Tim Cook way or is this just as the company got bigger this happened, but we know that they have

01:12:33   problems we know that there are problematic bosses there are problematic managers and

01:12:40   We also know that Apple's not super great all the time at at

01:12:44   Recognizing when it isn't the best recognizing when they had when they've done something that that isn't good

01:12:50   It that isn't changing the world for the better that isn't the best it could be

01:12:53   Sometimes it takes them a long time to recognize that sometimes their own internal culture seems to

01:12:58   Prevent them from considering that as even an option see also America

01:13:02   so it's very hard for them to seemingly to recognize when they have an internal problem or

01:13:10   Hell an external problem like when they have a product problem. It's very hard for them to recognize that sometimes I hope

01:13:15   Some of these massive PR blunders they've created for themselves over the last, you know year or so

01:13:20   But you know, especially recently as Casey has outlined here. I

01:13:23   Hope maybe this is shining a light on their own cultural problems to the people who matter who can you know?

01:13:31   the people up top who can who can maybe start to change some of these incentives or

01:13:34   implement better processes for dealing with problems when they arise or

01:13:38   Change policies in certain ways change attitudes in certain ways

01:13:41   Because they are a big company like any other they have problems like any other they're gonna have jerky bosses here

01:13:48   And they're like any other and they have to

01:13:50   recognize that's gonna be a thing that they have to deal with and put systems in place to deal with it better than the way

01:13:55   They're dealing with it right now because it does seem like that's not as good as it could be

01:13:58   So I hope this has been kind of a wake-up call because you know one other thing, you know

01:14:03   Regarding the PR tone from Apple recently

01:14:07   It does, you know, we've we've commented a lot in recent years about how it seems like they're they misread the room

01:14:13   they put something out there that goes over like a lead balloon and

01:14:17   They seem shocked at this like they seem totally caught off guard

01:14:21   that the world didn't love something they put out there or something they said as much as they did and

01:14:27   I think this all is related that you know

01:14:31   it's all like this company has been so successful for so long and they think everything they do is gold and

01:14:37   they can't tell when their you know stuff stinks and and that I

01:14:43   Hope we see movement in that area. I think we might be slowly seeing them get better at that

01:14:49   but but I do think they I hope they keep going on that I hope they keep pushing on that because

01:14:55   this has been a problematic area for some time now and

01:15:00   If Apple keeps telling themselves and if all the all the managers and and you know

01:15:04   Chaning Command inside of Apple if they keep telling themselves that they're great

01:15:08   they're gonna keep missing problems and they're gonna keep putting their foot in their mouths and

01:15:13   losing their best people and and other problems that are avoidable if they

01:15:17   Go in with a little more humble attitude and say, you know, we're we're not great in all ways here

01:15:22   Let's put better processes in place

01:15:24   Let's start changing some of our attitudes some of our culture some of our workplace environment rules and things like that

01:15:29   To actually better address this stuff and speaking of like things changing and recent months and years

01:15:35   one change that I have definitely noticed is that

01:15:40   employees who are current employees of Apple have felt

01:15:44   If they felt more free more of them are speaking publicly while employed at Apple

01:15:49   Which is a thing that almost never happens even about the most trivial things let alone like let me air my internal HR related

01:15:55   Grievances about Apple while I'm still employed at Apple who's unheard of and part of that was you just mentioned Steve Jobs as

01:16:02   Someone at the top with slightly better taste vetoing things

01:16:04   he was also a massive authoritarian and he would probably fire these people on the spot if he was still alive because you know,

01:16:09   Oh, yeah, the the environment of fear that caused everyone to be silent was not a good thing

01:16:14   It was you know, the external effect of that was Apple had very controlled messaging and no one ever said anything but internally

01:16:20   Like success hides problems. So does silence silence hides problems, too

01:16:24   So who knows what terrible things could have been going on back in the era where if you said anything on Twitter if you acknowledge

01:16:29   That you were an employee of Apple and said something that got picked up by some news org

01:16:33   It was like, you know

01:16:35   If Steve catches if that l8 to the point where it comes up to Steve's desk

01:16:38   He would say can we just fire that person and maybe your boss will argue for another really important that the only person who knows

01:16:43   How this thing in the kernel works and he maybe he would grumble but obviously, you know

01:16:47   If you're a low-level or new employee

01:16:48   like the idea of being fired for doing something like that is a thing that happens in small startups with tyrants who run them and

01:16:54   also

01:16:55   at various times at one of the biggest tech companies the world when Steve Jobs was there because you know one of his less

01:17:02   Less desirable attributes. Let's say it was his authoritarian bent about command and control of the company. That was his that he was running

01:17:08   All right

01:17:10   So the change that has taken place recently is employees are like poking their little heads out of their holes and being like

01:17:16   I'm gonna make a tweet

01:17:19   about

01:17:20   Work, I'm not gonna tell you like Apple secret product not even gonna tell you what team I'm on because they still are too afraid

01:17:25   To do that. They won't even like I work at Apple on software, right? But a few of them are coming up and saying

01:17:31   here's

01:17:33   Something about the workplace at Apple even just saying a good thing like oh

01:17:37   I really like at Apple because we have this group and we talk and my manager says this or whatever was like

01:17:41   I can't believe I'm hearing about things that are going on inside Apple from someone who still works there even hearing people

01:17:46   I've been outside Apple for five years and I'm finally ready to tweet about it right even hearing that used to be a big thing

01:17:51   But now people and then setting aside the people who are like look I'm pissed at Apple

01:17:55   I brought this to HR I brought them all this evidence about all this terrible things happened to me

01:17:58   Here's a screenshot of a message conversation. I have with my boss that I sent them and Apple said it was fine

01:18:03   What do you think like we're all just holding your breath and going is that person gonna be fired tomorrow?

01:18:08   The answer is no they weren't fired, right?

01:18:09   So how does the culture change at a company obviously leadership can change it?

01:18:13   But in the absence of that when leadership is sort of not doing the right thing

01:18:16   Culture can start to change when people in the rank-and-file

01:18:20   Start to air their grievances in public and let these stories get picked up by the press and put pressure on the company

01:18:27   And yeah

01:18:27   a lot of them are probably gonna get fired or

01:18:29   Sidelined or put on an administrative leave or like the company will find excuses to fire them do all those terrible things that companies do

01:18:34   And that will also be a story and that's not how Apple should be reacting to this

01:18:38   But I feel like that, you know

01:18:41   essentially brave Apple employees are attempting to change the culture and I think

01:18:46   They are having some tiny bit of success

01:18:50   you know

01:18:51   even if it's just in the form of the

01:18:53   Pressure applied by the press and podcasts talk about Apple or whatever because when this stuff was going on and we didn't know about it

01:18:59   We could just say oh Apple. They're so disciplined. They have great messaging and look at their products. It's all wonderful. Steve jobs is great

01:19:05   I'm sure all these same things were going on, you know years and years ago

01:19:08   We just didn't hear about them and so I would rather hear about them and if hearing if this is the only way like, you know

01:19:13   Like the app store run to the press never helps except it totally helps

01:19:17   so now that I'm telling all employees like risk your job and your livelihood and your future career by

01:19:22   You know publicly airing all of your grievances about the Apple workplace like no you can never ask that of people

01:19:28   They shouldn't have to do this. This is what leadership should do and to be fair

01:19:30   I think there's lots of great leadership in Apple that is also working in this direction

01:19:34   But there's enough bad spots in that org chart that Apple is doing some things that are very counter to the values that the vast vast

01:19:41   vast majority of people out at Apple Holt

01:19:43   And that's not a tenable

01:19:46   Situation so kudos to all the Apple employees being brave. I hope it works out for you and you know

01:19:52   again, I want to acknowledge that like 99% of Apple is

01:19:56   Amazing and great and it only takes just like, you know

01:20:00   1% or less doing the wrong thing in the right positions in the company to really mess things up for everybody else

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01:22:06   Colin writes are there any tips for organizing an Apple Photos library of about 30,000 photos the conditions you can put on smart albums

01:22:16   Don't seem robust enough. Mostly. I'm just going through them by hand deleting and sorting the last 20 years

01:22:21   How can I better zero in on significance? I?

01:22:24   Feel like my completely esoteric bananas approach to this is probably not helpful

01:22:30   So John you seem to be the most invested in Apple Photos of the three of us. Tell me what's the right answer?

01:22:35   my main tip is

01:22:38   Use the favoriting feature the little heart thing

01:22:42   Right, and this is the sounds it's trickier than that because if you just use that feature and you save every photo you haven't organized

01:22:49   Anything right? So there's a ratio and other right? Yeah, or if you if you save one out of every

01:22:54   10,000 photos then you have three faves and that doesn't help you either right? So you have to sort of

01:22:59   find

01:23:02   calibrate your fate your sense of faveness and

01:23:04   What you want to do is basically I should look at the the math to see what ratio, you know

01:23:11   What is my favorite issue? Is it one out of every ten one of every hundred every fifty but

01:23:15   like you want to you want to be honest and say is

01:23:18   This a picture that I would consider printing putting in a frame that I'd want to see in a screensaver

01:23:23   Like is it a good photo right? And if you're honest with yourself, you don't have that many of those

01:23:29   You got a thousand pictures of your kids, but what are your favorite ones, right?

01:23:33   And so I would say go I mean if you really want to do this, this is the question from Colin

01:23:37   I want to organize my 30,000 photos. You're gonna have to go through all 30,000 and save the good ones

01:23:41   And when you're done with that incredible laborious process because you're starting behind 30,000, right?

01:23:46   Then you click on the little favorites thing in the sidebar. Suddenly your 30,000 photo collection becomes a

01:23:52   Thousand photos, let's say right and a thousand photos all of which are really good

01:23:58   Now you're getting somewhere you can put those in random playing your screensaver, right?

01:24:04   You can when you want to find a good picture of your kid when they were five

01:24:09   Click on favorites first scroll backwards to the year. They were five you're looking at 30 pictures, right?

01:24:15   You're looking at a screen full of pictures

01:24:17   That's the way to do it

01:24:19   And you know the number one tool like that's not the only tool but that is the easiest and the most important one

01:24:24   And it also means every time you import pictures from now on you save the good ones

01:24:29   It's just an ongoing process and I'm going through 30,000 is gonna seem like a lot. It's not that bad

01:24:34   Consider it like picking right? You obviously you can delete the ones that are blurry or terrible or out of focus

01:24:38   You know or like badly framed or whatever

01:24:41   Fave the really good ones. I'm not saying you have to edit the really good ones

01:24:45   You have to do anything them just save them. That is the most important one then beyond that

01:24:49   You can organize them into albums put tags on them use the face recognition

01:24:53   There's lots and lots of stuff you can do before that, but that's my number one tip

01:24:56   Marco any thoughts? Nope. I don't organize my photo library at all. Yeah for me. It's just by date and I am

01:25:03   trying to be somewhat diligent about the people feature in Apple photos and like, you know, making sure that I'm

01:25:08   that that the photos that are claimed to be Declan for example are actually actually Declan, but yeah, I

01:25:15   view everything almost everything I view on the file system by date and in

01:25:21   Apple photos by either date or by location. So yeah, I'm pretty useless in this capacity. Sorry Colin Sam writes

01:25:28   How does one Google for specific tech problems without receiving incredibly vague and unrelated answers?

01:25:33   I'm sure you've all faced this at some point search engines will always push the most generic catch-all articles because that's what gets the most clicks. I

01:25:40   I don't have any good recipes for this either to be honest with you. I'm assuming that John does oftentimes

01:25:46   I'll just blast I'll blast through the first few

01:25:49   Results knowing full well that they're gonna be shovelware and then after you know page two or three

01:25:55   I'll finally find the thing that's useful. But John you probably have some science that you can perform here

01:25:59   Yeah, the the sort of failure modes are familiar for anyone who's ever tried to Google for like best refrigerator

01:26:07   like, you know, it's just

01:26:09   Spam links where people just make make web pages by copying pasting data from other things

01:26:14   So they come up as the number one through 100 results on best insert name of product, right?

01:26:18   That's the one noise problem. The other one is I'm having a technical problem

01:26:22   No one's doing SEO to get this but I don't like I don't know what to type to describe it

01:26:27   Like, you know computer won't work screen frozen

01:26:30   like those are not gonna get you anywhere because it's too generic and people have been having those problems forever and it's

01:26:36   It's a sign that you don't know enough about what's going on to formulate a good question

01:26:41   So there's two strategies that I want to recommend

01:26:44   the first is

01:26:46   the

01:26:48   Sort of if you're a tech nerd you probably this probably won't occur to you

01:26:52   Because it seems like it shouldn't work and it's like the wrong way to do things

01:26:55   but I'm here to tell you that you need to go against your instincts and try this which is

01:26:59   Type out like, you know, it's kind of like rubber ducking pretend someone came into the room and said hey

01:27:06   What's the problem and you had to explain it to them? Whatever you would say to them type that into the little search box

01:27:11   You're like, but I'm gonna say seven sentences them. You want me to type that whole big thing into the search box?

01:27:15   Yeah type, you know, I was running Adobe Photoshop and every time I click on the bucket tool

01:27:21   You know, it makes a beeping noise and then the screen turns blue and I can't get it to stop

01:27:26   Every single word I just said put that into the Google search box and you're like, there's no way that's gonna work

01:27:32   It's it's ridiculous. It's all that like that's just the way I phrased it in a sentence and it's not you know

01:27:37   I'm not looking for those words. And what if someone described the problem that they use different words?

01:27:42   Just try

01:27:44   The way this works best obviously is for non computer stuff where you say that person with the brown hair who's been in the movie with

01:27:51   You know with Tom Cruise

01:27:53   But wasn't his co-star but it was different romantic interest type all that into the Google search box

01:27:58   Google does amazing things for that like you can again when you're at like

01:28:03   Someone someone's at a table like who's in that movie and people are trying to do these these three word Google queries

01:28:09   Just record what they said and put into the Google

01:28:12   It works great for celebrities, but for computer stuff, it can sometimes work that's strategy number one strategy number two

01:28:17   Try to fix it yourself until you get an error message paste copy paste the error message into

01:28:21   because that's the secret of tech support and tech nerds the secret of all programming really in the modern era is

01:28:27   Try it just try something eventually something won't work

01:28:31   And hopefully you'll get an error message and you hope against hope that that error message has enough uniqueness in it

01:28:37   Not too much uniqueness because you don't want like process IDs or dates or other stuff, right?

01:28:41   But just enough uniqueness and put that yes put the error message in double quotes

01:28:45   Maybe you'll get zero results then sort of narrow the double quotes down to just sort of the meat of the thing until you start

01:28:51   getting results

01:28:53   Those are the main strategies

01:28:54   I would employ is the this is never going to work rubber ducking technique and

01:28:58   Try it yourself find an error message put it in double quotes and narrow the double quotes

01:29:02   Yeah, it's useful to know that like for most at least on the Mac most error messages have selectable text these days

01:29:09   So you can you can actually select the text and paste it right to Google if you want

01:29:14   But yeah, this this is a problem

01:29:16   You know trying to find any information the web can be pretty difficult these days because there's just so much just

01:29:23   Spam and algorithmically generated garbage and affiliate marketing sites and stuff. It's really hard

01:29:31   But I think this is you know, this is like the scale we've been training our entire lives building up

01:29:36   As the web has gotten more and more filled with crap. I

01:29:42   Think the the answer is you just you know that you're gonna wait through a bunch of crap you

01:29:47   You know mentally prepare yourself like alright fine. I'm gonna type in this terrible query into Google

01:29:52   I know I'm gonna go through many pages of garbage trying to refine what I'm looking for, you know

01:29:57   you will eventually find it like and

01:30:00   It can feel like a long time when you have to do like three or four searches to like

01:30:05   Finally kind of like narrow in and what you're looking for, but in there in the reality, you know

01:30:09   You're probably gonna have your answer in 45 seconds, you know or something like that

01:30:12   Certainly certain areas are worse than others. I agree with you know, what John said about like if you're looking for like product recommendations

01:30:21   That's just garbage

01:30:23   Like the reason why wire cutter is so popular is not because they necessarily always have great picks

01:30:30   I you know, I disagree with many of their picks. It's because

01:30:34   There's pretty much nowhere else trustworthy to go. It's really hard to look anywhere else

01:30:39   That's why when I when I google for things now, I type a wire cutter best blender

01:30:43   I don't type best blender best blender is a wasteland wire cutter

01:30:46   Best blender is just a convenient way for me to get to wire cutters latest blender ratings

01:30:49   Which I could just go to wire cutter comm and click around but Google makes it faster to type wire cutter best blender

01:30:54   It's the same reason I type, you know, Tom Cruise movies Wikipedia because I don't want results for anywhere else

01:30:59   So I just put the word Wikipedia in the title. Yes

01:31:01   I know I could just do W space with my little shortcut that goes right to the Wikipedia search or whatever, but like

01:31:07   That's that's I guess a third strategy if you know

01:31:10   More or less somebody has probably has the answer to this

01:31:13   You can just put the word in the query like Wikipedia or wire cutter

01:31:18   If you really want to get techie out, you know site colon and the URL

01:31:21   But like I don't even think you need to go that far, right? Sometimes

01:31:24   You you kind of know where you'd like to find this answer and you could look there for us

01:31:28   Like you don't have to go as far as the right like stack overflow can't use undefined value as hash reference, right?

01:31:34   You don't have to type stack overflow

01:31:35   Cuz they're usually number one in the search results without the word in there, but wire cutter isn't you type best blender forget it

01:31:41   Yeah, well and like and with you know with text off like stack overflow, it's useful

01:31:45   I'm sure many of you out there have have noticed that whenever you search for anything that is vaguely

01:31:51   You know coding related or anything that would be represented on a stack exchange site

01:31:56   like, you know, some of their like some of them aren't coding related some of them like, you know system in stuff or just to help with

01:32:01   you know your Mac or whatever and

01:32:03   You probably noticed that when you search for anything that has those results

01:32:06   You might find the stack exchange site in the top few results

01:32:10   But you will also find seven or eight sites that might even rank above it that are all just ripping off stack overflow

01:32:18   content and republishing it

01:32:19   Yeah, and or you know, you find like some you know, you search like hey

01:32:23   What how do I do this thing on my Linux server or what is this weird error message from my SQL mean and you'll find?

01:32:29   17 different

01:32:32   Reproductions of the same like forum thread with different ads injected into each

01:32:37   Just like for all these different sites that that all you know are claiming to be

01:32:41   independent original but of course you can tell they're all just scraping whatever the heck the same

01:32:45   Original source was whether it was stack overflow or something else and you just kind of you know as modern internet searchers

01:32:51   You just kind of learn to spot this kind of stuff and you start realizing things like which I was saying like if this is

01:32:57   The kind of answer that I already know a pretty trustworthy source will probably have I will just search for their answer

01:33:04   Which again, this is not a great place for the world to be but it's the place we have

01:33:09   So this is you know, you start you start realizing. Okay. Well for these kind of things

01:33:13   I'll add stack overflow to the query. So I just go right there for these kind of things

01:33:16   I'll add wire cutter or whatever, you know, that's that's that's the rule we're in

01:33:21   This incidentally is a good way to judge the health of your website. Someone mentioned IMDB in the chat

01:33:26   IMDB is ostensibly the internet movie database, but every time I want to know something about a movie I type, you know

01:33:33   List of Steven Spielberg movies Wikipedia

01:33:37   Or I type the title of the movie Wikipedia

01:33:40   You know why because IMDB is impossible for me to find I want to find out what year was this release and who is the director?

01:33:44   Wikipedia has that info boom one second. It's right there in my face. I am DB can't find it for the life of me and

01:33:50   Then wants me to log in and get prone. It's like forget it

01:33:53   So IMDB is failing you can tell it's failing as even if it was number one

01:33:57   search results of like type in the title of the movie like I

01:33:59   Just you know, that's not that I keep promoting Wikipedia because I own problems with it or whatever

01:34:04   But like, you know

01:34:06   The information architecture of your website is bad if people are actively avoiding it

01:34:10   Even though it should be quote-unquote should be the number one Google hit

01:34:13   Finally Mark Slutsky writes do I ever need to update Java every time this window comes up?

01:34:18   I dismiss it been doing so for years now. Nothing bad ever seems to happen, but am I wrong to do so?

01:34:23   Man, I forgot Java was a thing to be honest with you

01:34:28   I cannot remember the last time I've had like a full board Java installation on any of my computers

01:34:33   It's been I think longer since I've had a full bore, you know, Windows VM on one of my computers

01:34:38   So this is a screenshot of I think the Apple

01:34:42   Software update dialog Apple used to ship Java with his computer isn't eventually it was available as a separate download

01:34:48   But once you installed it from Apple like you'd get updates to it and eventually just you know, Apple stopped supplying it

01:34:54   I don't think they support it all anymore

01:34:56   You know what's data but this looks like the Apple update dialogue and one of the reasons I put this question in here is

01:35:01   In recent years because I have the I have a non Apple version of Java at work because I actually needed it for work many many

01:35:08   Years ago right in recent years the current owners of Java. I think it's Oracle, right?

01:35:14   Have changed their like always running updater thing in a way that I

01:35:20   An unprecedented way that I've never seen this before

01:35:24   So on my work computer when the dialogue comes up like the Oracle Java updater thing

01:35:29   It doesn't say to me, you know, you're you're running this version and this is a visualization version

01:35:35   Do you want to update or whatever like the Apple one has like skip this version remimulator install update

01:35:39   So this is that's you know, the regular Apple dialogue the the Oracle whatever dialogue comes up and it's some weird

01:35:46   janky non-native UI of course, right and

01:35:49   what it says to me is

01:35:52   Your computer is running something like this not exact word

01:35:54   But your computer is running Java, but you haven't used Java in over two years. Do you want to uninstall Java?

01:36:00   We don't recommend you keep it installed if you're not using it

01:36:03   That's what the dialog box says. That's the first party one. Yes it the first thing it does

01:36:09   It says hey, it looks like you haven't used Java in a while. We recommend that you uninstall it. That's amazing unprecedented

01:36:16   Like even Adobe Flash didn't offer to uninstall itself. It was literally no longer supported at all, right?

01:36:21   Like Java still supported it's still a thing. It's not like Java is dead, right?

01:36:25   It's a very popular language used all the time now

01:36:28   I haven't used Java on my Mac for many years and the the updater knows that and it's not just like the default action

01:36:35   It's the first thing it wants me to do. It says you should and it like it recommends it

01:36:39   It says you should uninstall it if you're not using it. It's fascinating

01:36:42   So anyway, my answer from Mark is if you're not using Java, even though this thing doesn't say that like

01:36:49   Uninstall it right like, you know go go to skip this version or whatever its problem is, right?

01:36:55   If you are using Java update it

01:36:56   Those are your two choices because if it's not say you're not you it was like what if I need Java later?

01:37:00   You can always get Java again. It's not going anywhere, right?

01:37:03   But if you're not using it this dialog box doesn't say whether or not you're using it, right?

01:37:07   But if you're not using Java get rid of it like find the Java uninstaller

01:37:11   I know this is difficult with Apple stuff because they don't provide uninstallers and there's no option to uninstall on this thing

01:37:15   But you can again using your new Google skills that you learned how to uninstall Java from Mac OS

01:37:20   Right and you will find and again look at the dates and the results are you will eventually find a way to do it or?

01:37:26   A link to an install or Mac OS Java uninstall or Mac Java uninstall or like you'll you'll narrow down pretty quickly

01:37:32   Get rid of it. Don't worry if you ever need it again, like you can always reinstall it. So that's my advice

01:37:38   Yeah, I would say don't even decide whether you actually use it or not

01:37:41   Just uninstall it and see if anything breaks and if anything does break reinstall it

01:37:46   Yeah, it's not dangerous or anything like official as long as it's not actual malware. It's real Java

01:37:49   Java is fine. Like, you know, it's a thing. Sometimes you might need to run a Java application. It's perfectly fine

01:37:54   It's not you know, like I said the Oracle which is generally considered to be an evil company

01:37:58   their their installer is the ones offering to uninstall it

01:38:03   So I think they're trying to do the right thing

01:38:05   like they don't want

01:38:06   You to have an old version of Java that you never use on your computer because if it suddenly becomes an avenue for an exploit

01:38:11   That reflects badly on Oracle I suppose so they're they're saying we the default choice should be a recommendation that you uninstall this offer

01:38:18   Because it's clearly you're not using it. All right

01:38:20   Thanks to our sponsors this week

01:38:22   Member full Linode and maiden and thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join at ATP FM slash join

01:38:29   We will talk to you next week

01:38:31   Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:38:41   It was accidental

01:38:44   John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental

01:38:52   It was accidental

01:38:54   And you can find the show notes at ATP FM

01:38:59   And if you're into Twitter

01:39:02   You can follow them at

01:39:05   CAS

01:39:07   EYL

01:39:09   ISS so that's Casey lists ma RC o ar m

01:39:13   anti Marco Arman

01:39:16   SIR AC

01:39:19   SAC recuse

01:39:21   So I went to a fish concert

01:39:36   this is

01:39:38   Extremely exciting to me. So and only you well, I tell you what, I am excited about this

01:39:44   I remember talking to you. I thought on I thought on the show

01:39:49   Yeah

01:39:49   how that

01:39:51   This I'm talking years ago how that you hate you went to one like years and years and years ago and you hated it

01:39:56   And we were talking about it years ago. You hated it. You thought it was bad

01:39:59   You didn't enjoy it blah blah blah and then you told us I think I don't even think it was in the the bootleg

01:40:06   I think it was privately you had said hey, I'm going to this fish concert. Did you see it publicly?

01:40:10   I said I said it on that. I think it was the bootleg. I don't think it was in the final show

01:40:15   Anyway, it doesn't really matter but one way or another you said hey, I'm going to this fish concert

01:40:19   And I was stupefied because the last I we had spoken about it. It sounded like it was a never again sort of scenario and I

01:40:26   Really miss live music whether or not anyone listening agrees with my taste of music and I would assume most of you do not I

01:40:33   Really really love live music and and I haven't even in the before times that had been a while since I'd been to a concert

01:40:39   But I am I am very excited even though I'm not a particularly large fish fan. In fact, I don't particularly like fish very much

01:40:47   I am super excited to hear your report on how it was going to a concert at all and

01:40:52   Especially in these oh so unprecedented times. So where did you go? What'd you see?

01:40:58   Well, you obviously saw fish but like what what happened man

01:41:00   so so I mentioned a few months back that I

01:41:05   Like we were talking about kovat

01:41:08   You know a few months back and I mentioned how like I thought it would be really cool

01:41:12   to go to one of the first fish concerts if even possibly the first one after kovat to just kind of feel that energy to kind

01:41:19   of celebrate like the end of kovat and and to feel I

01:41:22   Figured it would be like a very culturally significant moment at least for you know for my culture as a fish fan

01:41:27   But just like to kind of feel that after kovat now in practice

01:41:31   Kovat isn't over and it kind of will probably never be over

01:41:35   I think you know most of the evidence suggests an endemic future not a not, you know the end of a pandemic

01:41:41   but you know just

01:41:42   now it's gonna be one of these viruses that

01:41:44   Just is like the flu and cold that it just kind of goes around and you know

01:41:48   We try to get shots for here and there and whatever but anyway, that's for another night

01:41:51   But you know kovat isn't over it didn't didn't end but live music is starting back up

01:41:56   we know in responsible ways and when I first said that I

01:41:59   Was kind of like on the fence or whether I should go because the first scheduled concerts were just gonna be like

01:42:06   whatever was supposed to happen in 2020 they just changed the year 2021 and

01:42:10   so it was gonna it was gonna start like in in June or July and

01:42:13   a lot of the venues they had booked were on the other side of the country and

01:42:17   They a lot of them were like indoor like, you know basketball stadiums and stuff

01:42:21   And so the last time I went to a concert was at Madison Square Garden in New York

01:42:25   Which is an indoor basketball stadium and and I just I really I didn't like a lot of the environment of it

01:42:31   you know, it's I didn't like the massive amount of

01:42:34   Smoke that collects at the top of stadiums. We have concerts there

01:42:40   You know the I didn't have a very good, you know view of the stage or any of the screens

01:42:45   You know, it's like I kind of got like a last-minute ticket from a friend. I

01:42:48   I don't know. I don't know what to do, you know, so and that was that was 2009

01:42:53   So it was a long time ago, but I had decided after that like, you know

01:42:57   I don't know if this is actually for me and so I didn't go to any more shows after that but

01:43:01   Because I wanted to have this kind of like, you know quote end of kovat celebration

01:43:07   Or to feel that that cultural moment. I

01:43:11   started looking alright, what what about doing that doing one of these shows this summer and

01:43:15   They actually changed the tour

01:43:17   like before it started they

01:43:20   Revamped the dates and the venues to be all outside venues and a much more of it was happening on the East Coast

01:43:27   So this changed it this went from a oh

01:43:30   I don't I don't know if I want to fly across the country to go to a basketball stadium into oh

01:43:35   They're playing in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which is only a couple hours drive from here on a beach

01:43:41   So like okay now you have my attention. All right

01:43:46   and so sure enough I

01:43:50   Found a friend who would tolerate the band and we would

01:43:54   It was not me. No, it was not you. Although actually all kidding aside. I I would have like in in very different circumstances

01:44:03   I absolutely would have gone just to experience it as much as I joke and as much as I give you a hard time I

01:44:08   Would in in a different set of circumstances I would have gone

01:44:11   I bet you I would have liked it, but that's neither here nor there maybe I mean you might have had to

01:44:15   Inhale a lot of the smoke that was there in order to like it

01:44:18   And it wouldn't have been because of the music

01:44:22   So on that note it keep in mind. This is on a beach with a breeze

01:44:29   So you would expect

01:44:33   You wouldn't really notice much smoke happening on a beach with a breeze. Oh

01:44:38   My god, it was so smoky like the whole audience

01:44:43   Was just it was it was like a smoke emitter in a game

01:44:47   like he's just a constant upward draft of smoke and I

01:44:51   Never saw or smelled a single cigarette

01:44:55   None of it was cigarette smoke as far as I can tell literally none of it

01:45:02   So

01:45:04   That that was kind of a funny detail like it was so it there was so much smoke that like I was so I

01:45:10   took a friend's advice and

01:45:13   And bought like a nice ticket. They had like this VIP area

01:45:18   You could spend a little bit more on the ticket and you had like a little tent that you could watch it from I kind of

01:45:22   Off to the side, but still pretty close had like, you know much easier access to the bathrooms

01:45:27   Had little snacks and drinks available and stuff like that

01:45:29   So other good thing about this was that it was less densely packed like in the general admission, you know giant beach area

01:45:36   Everyone's standing pretty close together and you know in part to minimize COVID risk and in part just I'm a boring old adult

01:45:42   I wanted that I wanted the more like, you know spread out, you know boring adult version

01:45:47   So I did get the VIP ticket and that was totally worth it

01:45:51   Because the VIP area was much more like, you know

01:45:56   My scene as the boring old person and I was not the oldest person in the VIP section by a mile

01:46:01   I kind of felt like oh these these are my people. Okay good

01:46:04   but

01:46:06   It was really an incredible experience, you know on a number of fronts, you know

01:46:11   obviously, you know the all the massive clouds of smoke were funny and it was it was interesting noting how like

01:46:17   The you know that the fish crowd being very much. This is very much a weed band

01:46:23   This is like this is different bands have different crowd

01:46:26   energies and attitudes and you know problems or

01:46:31   benefits

01:46:32   Certain bands they're known for having like really rowdy crowds that you know might have a lot of violence problems

01:46:37   You need like more security to you know, to keep everything safe fish is not one of those bands

01:46:41   Everyone is so high and so chill

01:46:45   I noticed like like when when people would like walk by you and like bump into you they'd be like, oh, I'm so sorry

01:46:51   Like they're hey, man. I'm so sorry. Like they were so chill like nobody was like getting all agro or upset

01:46:57   anybody else like it's just really nice and

01:47:00   So it was great. You know, the music was was it was a pretty good show

01:47:05   I got a couple of really love my favorite songs in there

01:47:07   but

01:47:09   ultimately what I what was really the big the biggest value to me in this show and

01:47:14   If you'll permit me, you know, you guys each have feelings podcasts. I don't so I'm gonna

01:47:20   This is gonna have to go here top four. That's not a feelings podcast your feelings about pop-tarts

01:47:26   Anyway

01:47:29   so

01:47:31   You know when all kidding aside

01:47:33   I know we make fun of my liking of fish on the show because it's funny and I and I get that but it is

01:47:39   You know certainly

01:47:41   not good for someone psyche overall if

01:47:44   nowhere in your life

01:47:48   Do does anybody think that the thing you like is normal, you know, like and I'm sure you know

01:47:52   Many of many of us out there being computer nerds especially growing up, you know in earlier decades as computer nerds

01:47:58   I'm sure you understand like

01:48:00   When the thing that you're into or that you identify with or that resonates with you when everyone else thinks that's weird

01:48:08   When you're like the only person in the room who ever likes the band you like

01:48:13   That that weighs on someone, you know, it's it's a significant thing when your own wife can't tolerate the music. Yeah, right. She can't

01:48:20   She tries bless her. She tries but she can't and it's fine. So

01:48:26   it was especially like

01:48:28   soul mending

01:48:31   to be in this place where

01:48:33   My music that normally I have to confine to headphones because it's too embarrassing and everyone else thinks it's too weird

01:48:40   My music was being blasted in the greatest possible way in

01:48:44   This giant public area in this pretty big city full of tons of people many of which were at the concert

01:48:51   So that's a my music is being blasted aloud

01:48:54   B I am looking at

01:48:56   Thousands of people in front of me real people who by nature of being there

01:49:02   most of whom don't think my music is weird and that

01:49:08   That really meant something I really felt that and so that that was very helpful

01:49:13   And then finally I had this moment where you know again, I think many of our audience can probably relate to

01:49:20   Maybe not being super comfortable with dancing

01:49:23   I'm guessing there's a lot of overlap between

01:49:27   Programmers that's a Texas size 10-4

01:49:30   Yeah, I'm between you know programmers and computer nerds and people who don't feel comfortable dancing very much

01:49:37   So that's that's certainly me

01:49:39   and I one of the reasons why I'm I

01:49:43   Hesitate to go to concerts is that I don't really know what to do when I'm at a concert because I can't dance

01:49:49   I don't want to dance. I like I just can't I

01:49:52   Don't want to have that awkwardness

01:49:54   You know of like trying to like being pressured to do something and being the weird guy just standing there or like, you know

01:50:00   Weirdly moving my foot or something, you know

01:50:03   So that was I was concerned a little bit about that going into this so, you know about about halfway through the concert

01:50:10   I looked around and I realized two things number one. I

01:50:13   Had been moving slightly in my incredibly awkward nerdy way to this music. That is very hard to dance to

01:50:21   But I looked around the crowd and I saw every single other

01:50:26   Person was as bad at whatever the heck we were doing called dancing as I was

01:50:32   There were thousands thousands of people who were

01:50:35   Exactly as weird and awkward and bad at this as I was and it just is an incredible feeling to feel

01:50:43   Normal it like in this way that you always thought you were weird to have a place where you can feel normal

01:50:50   And feel fit in in a way that you never fit in

01:50:54   That was worth everything

01:50:58   so that I'm incredibly happy I went to this for many reasons, but I

01:51:03   Got a surprising amount of like soul repair out of it. And I'm and that that was worth

01:51:10   everything

01:51:12   And you didn't get COVID and I didn't get COVID. Yeah, I got tested before and after

01:51:17   Yes did not get COVID. So that helped a lot

01:51:20   But yeah, it was it was worth

01:51:23   driving through, New Jersey

01:51:26   *laughter*

01:51:28   Did you take any good pictures

01:51:30   Yeah, I have a couple like video clips

01:51:32   It was mostly like, you know, just kind of like me like, you know

01:51:34   panning across the crowd for my from my vantage point just like I just want to say like what the stage setup was now you've kind

01:51:40   Of described it and throw a couple on the slack so I can see yeah, let me see I will but yeah

01:51:44   It's like the VIP tent was kind of like it was like it was near the front but off to the side

01:51:48   Which and it was good because I was actually standing up on the top of a platform

01:51:54   Like I was basically sitting at the top of a staircase that that would brings you like from the VIP platform

01:51:59   Which is like a few feet up down and so I was looking over the crowd by a few feet instead of being down

01:52:05   You know, so I had a fantastic view

01:52:08   I was gonna use the analogy that like what you're describing is kind of like going to Macworld Expo back before back when Apple was

01:52:14   Doomed right because you'd finally find people who like the weird computer you did but someone in the chat an even better example

01:52:19   They even better example because even more narrow interest they described it as being kind of like going to an ATP live show

01:52:26   Weird podcast where they talk about technology and complain about Apple for two hours every week and

01:52:32   You're like the only person in your entire group of friends who even knows this podcast exists

01:52:37   Let alone listens to it

01:52:38   and then finally you go to

01:52:40   WWC and they'll suddenly you're a bunch of nerds who are into the same thing with you and then you go to the ATP live show

01:52:44   Add WWDC and now you're with the tiny subset of a subset of a subset of a people who actually like this weird podcast

01:52:50   No that that is extremely kind of who PhD to say and you know and Marco as much as I

01:52:56   Genuinely love just beating you up mercilessly about fish. I am

01:53:01   extremely extremely pleased and really happy that you had this experience because I

01:53:07   I I don't have

01:53:11   Exactly one-to-one feelings when I go to see a live show

01:53:15   But I get the same net joy like my joy comes from different places is a better way of phrasing it

01:53:21   my joy comes from different places, but I have that unbelievable joy when I go to a concert of

01:53:28   Almost anything even shows where I'm only mildly interested in the the artists that's performing

01:53:35   I get such immense joy out of seeing music performed live

01:53:38   I think partly because I am so incredibly inept at performing anything that even vaguely resembles music

01:53:45   and so I just find it to be fascinating and

01:53:49   Incredibly impressive that any human being can make sounds that actually sound decent

01:53:53   but just to experience that and to have that that that

01:53:58   That feeling of we're all in this together in the best possible way and we're all having fun together

01:54:04   And yeah, you know like the only time you'll find me dancing is at a concert or if I've had way too much to drink

01:54:10   Which hasn't happened in a long time?

01:54:11   So yeah

01:54:12   I agree with you there in in so many ways this

01:54:16   Your feeling and then the joy that's exuding from you is so much the way I feel and I'm so very

01:54:21   Genuinely glad that you had the opportunity to do that

01:54:24   So do you think you're gonna try to make this again like kovat issues notwithstanding?

01:54:29   Are you gonna try to make this something that you do more often? I

01:54:32   Think I'm gonna keep a much closer look on like where they are performing like what kind of venue are they performing at?

01:54:38   I I definitely you know with this I realize it quite how awesome a beach venue is

01:54:44   I've never seen a concert on a beach before this so like that's it really is quite something to see I

01:54:49   would like to go maybe once a year once every couple of years if they are playing at a really nice venue and

01:54:55   especially if they do this is one of those like VIP areas again because that that greatly added to the

01:55:01   Practicality and ease of me going at this concert like it's it's pretty good

01:55:04   like when you're like

01:55:05   You know a nearly 40 year old boring guy

01:55:07   To to buy the seat where like when you have to go to the bathroom

01:55:10   You can just walk like 30 feet over and you get the air-conditioned porta-potty

01:55:15   It's really it's a very different experience than than what concerts usually are for most people

01:55:22   So yeah, certainly if they offer this kind of thing again

01:55:25   This is actually one of the first time they've had one of those VIP areas

01:55:28   but if they offer this kind of thing again, I would jump on it and especially in a venue like this where it's

01:55:33   It's easy for me to get in and out of it and you know, like travel time isn't too bad and it's a beautiful place

01:55:39   You know with a nice outdoor, you know scenario, I would I would definitely jump on that in the future

01:55:45   Last big concert I went to I held my pee the whole time

01:55:48   person's game

01:55:51   There was some forum post

01:55:56   Back when I'd like when when the tickets first went for sale

01:55:58   I was trying to research like what what the different ticket types meant and of course

01:56:02   so it's all these like fish fan forums and stuff that you get all these results from speaking of googling for answers and

01:56:07   And one guy was complaining he was asking like, you know, hey, how do you how do you guys go to the bathroom at the shows?

01:56:14   Like what do you do for that?

01:56:16   and this one response was

01:56:18   Just smoke a blunt and eat a block of cheese

01:56:25   Okay, so nothing has to come out

01:56:27   I don't think that works for pee. Well as opposed to drinking though, like, you know, if you're drinking a lot then

01:56:34   Yeah, well like I said, I'm very glad that you got the out that you'd had the opportunity that you did it

01:56:42   That that it seems to have gone. Well

01:56:44   you know what if if

01:56:46   COVID ever gets the point that we're okay with it and if there's ever a time that there that fish is somewhere

01:56:51   You know in between us I would sir I would genuinely entertain making a trip meeting up with you and going just to experience it

01:56:57   because I know when I see a Dave Matthews concert, which I haven't done in a couple years the the

01:57:02   Smoke smell is strong, but I've got to imagine it is

01:57:06   Not even in iota compared to what it's like at a fish concert

01:57:11   I guy cannot fathom what that was one especially because like the

01:57:15   You know the the the the email that you get but like, you know

01:57:18   What's allowed in what kind of bag you can bring in and stuff like that. There's a whole section of it

01:57:22   That's like, you know, don't you know, no no outside alcohol being able to brought in no illicit substances

01:57:27   And it's like okay fish is a lot of drug culture among the audience, especially like they're obviously

01:57:34   There's gonna be a lot of stuff going on in there

01:57:35   And and I think that's kind of like a wink-a-mink another thing, but then I realized afterwards like wait a minute

01:57:39   Weeds legal in New Jersey. So that's not an illicit substance in this venue actually Marco everything is legal in New Jersey

01:57:46   Well, yeah, except like, you know good road design

01:57:49   But I realized afterwards like oh, that's why like normally at a fish concert

01:57:53   Nobody would really care but here they especially didn't care and I think that's why it was so incredibly like

01:57:59   Everyone just massive cloud of smoke above the whole time. Oh man. So for what it's worth

01:58:06   We I thought we were gonna talk about this last week. We didn't end up having the chance but I

01:58:10   took a look at the setlist from your concert and

01:58:15   the setlist from the most recent Dave Matthews concert for which I could find the time that each song took and I

01:58:23   Made a list and solver of here's how long each of the fish

01:58:26   songs was and then here's how long of each of the Dave Matthews songs were and

01:58:31   I computed the average length of a song at your fish concert versus a mostly arbitrary but also

01:58:38   Recent Dave Matthews concert would you like to wager a guess either of those numbers or perhaps the difference between them? I

01:58:45   Mean to be fair, I don't know how much the length of songs matters because it's like well, you know

01:58:53   It's a jam band. It's kind of like one continuous thing

01:58:55   You know in certain ways like there are breaks but sometimes songs bleed into each other or they kind of like call back to earlier

01:59:01   Songs so I think what matters most is like how long is the concert in total in this case?

01:59:05   It's three hours and there was a break in the middle

01:59:07   So that's I think that's it's less about song boundaries. However to actually play along with your game. I'm going to

01:59:14   I'm gonna guess that the average between the two bands actually is not that different

01:59:20   Even though there were some pretty long ones in this in this show

01:59:23   but I'm gonna guess the average for this show for fish was probably something along the lines of like

01:59:28   Seven or eight minutes and I'm guessing the average for Dave Matthews is probably about five minutes the longest

01:59:36   Again, I'm picking these two concerts. Mostly arbitrarily

01:59:39   I'm looking at the 7th of August for Dave Matthews

01:59:42   The longest performance or the longest song was 17 minutes 55 seconds total time for the entire Dave Matthews show 2 hours 49 minutes

01:59:50   46 seconds to come back to my actual question in your guesses. You said what 7 or 8 for fish was your guess?

01:59:55   Yeah for average song length. Yeah eight point nine seven minutes

01:59:59   So I will give you full credit for that even though you were a minute off. I still count it

02:00:02   However, your guess of five minutes for Dave Matthews is is pretty wrong eight minutes for Dave Matthews

02:00:09   So a difference of only about a minute it was eight point nine seven versus eight point nine

02:00:12   Oh nine, so only a minute difference between the two I would have figured

02:00:16   Especially given all the fun of made fish over the years

02:00:20   I would have figured it would have been like 15 20 minutes for fish and like 10 ish for less than 10 for Dave and

02:00:25   Turns out no, it was it was about the same and CMF in the chat is asking

02:00:30   What was the long song with Dave Matthews? It was seek up which is one of my favorites

02:00:33   So I think what we're learning here is that you don't have any right to make long song jokes anymore

02:00:37   Possibly I mean I'm looking at this Dave Matthews that list is 18 minutes 10 minutes

02:00:43   Skipping a lot but you have the long ones. There's 18 minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes

02:00:48   12 minutes and those were the all the double-digit songs looking at the fish set

02:00:53   14 minutes 20 minutes 15 minutes 10 minutes

02:00:59   11 minutes 15 minutes, so there were more that were double-digit minutes

02:01:03   But still it wasn't night and day like I would have expected

02:01:06   Yeah, fish should have they might be Giants open for them and just do like they're super short songs to pull down the average

02:01:12   There's never an opening band for fish anymore not there hasn't been for a very long time in part

02:01:18   so one of the reasons why like it's good to be a fan of this band is like

02:01:22   They just want to give you as much music as possible

02:01:25   And so they start their shows pretty much on time like, you know

02:01:30   A lot of growing up in the 90s you see a lot of these like, you know 90s like everything sucks

02:01:34   You know caring about things sucks you suck like a lot of that culture in the 90s

02:01:38   And so, you know, there was this this, you know

02:01:40   arrogant rock star culture of like you'd have the opening band they would start late and then you'd be this long way and like the

02:01:47   And then the you know, like the quote, you know real or whatever like, you know

02:01:49   the headlining band

02:01:50   would start even later and you're just waiting and they're just making you wait and you're just like you feel like they're being jerky

02:01:55   I'm making you wait all this time and they're trying to be cool and it's like no you're just being a jerk

02:01:58   This is not how his origins in the 90s, by the way, just well, yeah, I know

02:02:02   I'm just saying like we saw it a lot now, you know, cuz that's when we that's when Casey and I grew up

02:02:06   And so, you know fish has none of that attitude. There's none of that like, you know, we're cool

02:02:12   Like, you know F you like there's none of that attitude

02:02:15   It's it's a very much like a positive just you know

02:02:18   They're happy to be there and play and that's that's what they want to do

02:02:21   and so they don't have opening bands because they want to cram in as much music as possible and and they're limited by like how

02:02:27   Late the venue and city will let them perform

02:02:30   They just want to cram stuff in so they show up on time and they give you a three hours of music

02:02:34   Like there's there's like a 15-minute set break in the middle. Everyone takes a break goes to the bathroom, whatever, you know

02:02:39   but otherwise

02:02:40   like it's a ton of music and this is and and I just I love that they just show up on time every time like

02:02:46   It's good being a fish fan, even though you get no support from any room

02:02:51   You're in

02:02:52   But somehow they're selling out stadiums and beaches for three days in a row in the same city all the time

02:02:57   All those thousands of people have to go something. Where do they go?

02:03:00   Where are all these people in the rest of life? Like when I'm you know in all these rooms

02:03:06   I apparently find myself in where are all these people? Well, there's not one of them in the room like really?

02:03:11   There's thousands of them right here. There's not one in all these other rooms. I'm in

02:03:14   [BEEPING]