0:00:00Last little bit there is worth adding.
0:00:02No, well, it wasn't bolded.
0:00:04I got scolded earlier than I should.
0:00:06Sorry.
0:00:07All right.
0:00:08We'll just have to edit all this out.
0:00:10Let me take a note.
0:00:11Jon gets angry at Casey.
0:00:15You got to be serious with these bolds, Jon.
0:00:17I already did trim this down, you realize.
0:00:19It's not like I just copy and paste the thing.
0:00:21This is the trimmed version.
0:00:22The bolds just to let you know which parts are important.
0:00:25All right.
0:00:26So let's get started.
0:00:28we have to with follow-up. We have another instance of a fairly long email that I'd
0:00:36like to read most, actually a couple instances of this that I'd like to read pretty much
0:00:40in their entirety because I think they're really, really fascinating. I would never
0:00:43generally do this but now I'm making the exception the rule because these are really
0:00:47good emails.
0:00:48- You do it like every two weeks and I always, and I have to edit it in some way because
0:00:52it's like nothing is more boring and harder to follow than listening to somebody read
0:00:57like a six paragraph email in a podcast.
0:01:01- All right, all right, I'll try to make this
0:01:04as quick as I can since John has done us the service
0:01:07of bolding certain sections in the show notes.
0:01:09So we got some feedback from an anonymous Microsoft employee
0:01:13on the facial recognition in Windows.
0:01:15And they said all the Surface devices
0:01:17since the Surface Pro 4,
0:01:18which is the last two generations apparently,
0:01:20have supported Windows Hello.
0:01:22This is different than Hi Sierra.
0:01:24This is Windows Hello, which uses an infrared LED,
0:01:27infrared depth camera and RGB webcam to authenticate via your face. This technology is derived
0:01:31from the Kinect and has in general been super well received. It's fast, very reliable, and
0:01:36works in the dark. And this includes a link to a video which we will put in the show notes.
0:01:40It is also tricky to fool, arguably more secure than a fingerprint, and it can even tell twins
0:01:44apart. We'll put a different link in the show notes for that. When Microsoft tried to scale
0:01:48this down to mobile devices in the Lumia 650 and 650 XL, the same technology didn't work
0:01:52for a number of reasons, including power, cost, and constraints.
0:01:56Size constraints, that is.
0:01:57The Lumia device is shipped in 2015, and while the Surface Solution didn't scale down effectively
0:02:01then, I have no difficulty believing Apple could scale down to a full-face solution like
0:02:04Windows Hello in 2017.
0:02:07That said, most good solutions I've seen require at least two cameras, IR and RGB, to get depth,
0:02:13verify it's a fleshy 3D object, that's such a funny word, fleshy, but anyway, and capture
0:02:18enough identifiers as well as an IR LED to function in mixed lighting conditions. Heavy
0:02:22backlighting and bright sunlight are especially challenging. It's hard to see how these would fit
0:02:27into the quote-unquote forehead of a bezel-free iPhone without significant cutouts in addition
0:02:33to what's already required for the front-facing camera and proximity sensor. Blah blah blah.
0:02:37All that to say it is fast, dependable, delightful face recognition that is absolutely possible and
0:02:44and is in fact par for the course
0:02:45on some high-end Windows devices like the Surface.
0:02:47Yes, it does introduce some UI requirements
0:02:49for explicit confirmation of intent,
0:02:51for example, with purchases.
0:02:53It's just a matter of time
0:02:53before someone makes it work on a phone.
0:02:55I wouldn't be at all surprised
0:02:56to hear Apple had done that.
0:02:59- This is a thread of feedback with all the people,
0:03:02all the Windows users telling us about Windows Hello,
0:03:04which we discussed on the show many, many months ago.
0:03:06And as this person pointed,
0:03:08the reason I picked this email out is
0:03:09it is a Microsoft employee,
0:03:10and they talk specifically about the challenges
0:03:13getting it down into a phone because obviously you have luxuries on even just a laptop form
0:03:18factor that you don't have on phones.
0:03:19You've got a lot of space to put sensors in there, you've got a lot more power, you've
0:03:22got a lot bigger battery, usually you have more computing power, although these days
0:03:26the phone is probably faster than half of the things they listed.
0:03:30So we'll see.
0:03:31So yes, face recognition on Windows Hello is there.
0:03:33We've got varying reports, some people say it's amazing, it already exists and it's wonderful,
0:03:36other people said I can't get it directed out into my face, it takes like 3 to 5 seconds
0:03:39and it doesn't work half the time and I hate it.
0:03:42So mixed results, but in general,
0:03:44I think mostly people like Windows Hello
0:03:46and think that it works well.
0:03:47It's just a question of can you get this in a phone?
0:03:51- I love that the new Windows did it
0:03:54is a lot like the old Opera did it.
0:03:56Like that Windows is now so marginalized
0:03:59that the cutting edge features of the Surface hardware
0:04:03and the stuff that's the whole pure
0:04:04Microsoft Stack hardware to software,
0:04:06so few people, relatively speaking,
0:04:09are using that and enjoying that to the point,
0:04:12especially around these parts,
0:04:14around Apple-y tech podcast circles,
0:04:17that we have no idea what they're doing.
0:04:20And they're doing important stuff and innovative stuff,
0:04:25and they just want everyone to know that so much,
0:04:27and meanwhile we're all like,
0:04:28hmm, no one's ever done this before.
0:04:30It's exactly why the Opera people were always so mad,
0:04:35'cause Opera was doing all these great features
0:04:37that other browsers would add five years later
0:04:40and act like no one had ever done that before.
0:04:41And everyone else believed it.
0:04:43- But the reason people didn't know about it
0:04:44because in the case of Opera is that Opera was,
0:04:47would fall down on like the basics.
0:04:49Like that people didn't use it not just because
0:04:51it was obscure and weird, but because it just wasn't
0:04:53as good a web browser in most cases as other ones
0:04:55for like boring practical reasons, you know?
0:04:58- Windows is not as good of an operating system.
0:04:59That's why we don't use these things.
0:05:01- Anyway, so, Windows certainly doesn't have the mind share,
0:05:05but like Windows Hello, like I said,
0:05:06We talked about it on this very podcast.
0:05:07It was not like we didn't know that it existed.
0:05:10And a lot of these features,
0:05:11I think we talked about the Samsung face recognition.
0:05:13A lot of these features we do know
0:05:14have even been tried in phone form factors before,
0:05:18but the reason we don't have them in front of mind
0:05:22is because, I mentioned the Amazon Fire phone last time
0:05:26with the five cameras and all the sensors and everything.
0:05:27It's like, if they don't work really well,
0:05:29it's like, oh, well, yeah, they tried to do a thing,
0:05:32but they essentially failed.
0:05:33And so it will rise to the level of public consciousness
0:05:36if it becomes popular and everyone agrees
0:05:40that it works really well.
0:05:41And if it worked really well, it would be everywhere
0:05:43and every phone would be using it.
0:05:44And so like, no one has really cracked it.
0:05:46Kind of like a fingerprint sensors
0:05:47that essentially work really well everywhere now.
0:05:49And so they're very, very common.
0:05:50And so that's why everybody knows unlocking the phone
0:05:53with your finger is a thing.
0:05:55Whoever was first with that and getting it to work,
0:05:57obviously we know about it from the Apple world,
0:05:59but for all we know, Android was doing it, you know,
0:06:01years before.
0:06:02But anyway, that technology is kind of settled
0:06:04and it works just fine.
0:06:05Face recognition is still in the realm of,
0:06:07maybe on some desktop computers and some operating systems,
0:06:09some people think it works great,
0:06:11but no one has really nailed it on the phone
0:06:13to the point where it's better than fingerprint unlock
0:06:16or typing in a code or whatever.
0:06:18- I also still do think that there are significant challenges
0:06:21with face recognition as an unlock method
0:06:23around the issues of how do you confirm the authentication
0:06:28and what do you do if you don't want
0:06:29to authenticate something?
0:06:31And one person, I think it was on Twitter,
0:06:33pointed out the example of like,
0:06:35what if someone takes your phone out of your hand
0:06:37and holds it up to your face?
0:06:39And then, if the only confirmation thing is,
0:06:42recognize your face and then tap a thing on screen
0:06:45to say, okay, then somebody can take your phone
0:06:49and just authorize it right there in front of you
0:06:51and then walk away.
0:06:52- I was gonna make another Indiana Jones reference,
0:06:54but Raiders of the Lost Ark reference,
0:06:55but I know you don't know that one.
0:06:56Kinda like the watch authentication,
0:07:00where once you unlock your watch,
0:07:01as long as it's on your wrist, it stays unlocked.
0:07:05But if someone wants to steal your watch,
0:07:06it automatically locks when it leaves your wrist.
0:07:08So I can imagine a similar feature
0:07:11where the gesture of picking it up
0:07:14and putting your finger on part of the screen,
0:07:16your finger has to be there,
0:07:18then the camera recognizes you,
0:07:19then you press the screen or slide in a direction
0:07:23or whatever.
0:07:24And if any point in that chain,
0:07:26like that your finger leaves the phone surface
0:07:29or wherever you're supposed to be holding down,
0:07:31then it's all over.
0:07:32So someone pulls a thing out of your hand,
0:07:34well, it doesn't work either, does it?
0:07:38I don't know, it's a difficult problem.
0:07:39You'd have to incorporate the fingerprint sensor, I guess.
0:07:42- Right.
0:07:42- But the whole point is that--
0:07:43- In which case you have a fingerprint sensor.
0:07:45- Yeah, we're trying to avoid that.
0:07:47- And the thing is, the more complex that the gesture is,
0:07:50or the more requirements it has to succeed
0:07:53and to unlock the phone and to keep the phone unlocked,
0:07:55the more often that it won't work in legitimate use.
0:07:58the more legitimate use cases you have,
0:08:00where like, okay, well, what if I want to authenticate
0:08:02my phone while it's sitting on a table,
0:08:03and I just put my thumb on it now,
0:08:04but if you have to have your hand on a certain part,
0:08:06like, Touch ID is so good, and I feel like
0:08:11it solves or avoids so many of these other
0:08:14weird little problems that it would really take a lot
0:08:19to make it worth not using Touch ID anymore.
0:08:23- I don't know, I'm glad this is still a rumored feature,
0:08:26so we don't even know if it's shipping at all,
0:08:27won't have to consider this but well i guess we'll all find out i i still think it would be neat to
0:08:32like just have it sort of work by magic and just pick up your phone and use it and it's just
0:08:36automatically unlocked because you're you i would probably sacrifice that for for the security of
0:08:42like oh what if someone rips the phone out of your hand because you know that's not that common
0:08:47enough occurrence in my in the circles that i travel in but uh for other people i mean obviously
0:08:53if you have an option to turn this on or off that would really help let people decide what they're
0:08:56security profile is and we said in the last show if you're in a situation like
0:09:01in an airport or going through immigration in some country you'd want
0:09:04to avoid both touch ID and the face recognition because you can be you know
0:09:08compelled to unlock your phone in that way there are other ways where you can
0:09:10lock down your phone so that you have to enter a big long password which they
0:09:14would have to you know use what was it a rubber hose cryptography pipe wrench
0:09:19cartography this depending on what version but there's an xkcd comic or
0:09:23from the idea that the SKCD comic is derived from.
0:09:26They just beat you with a pipe wrench
0:09:27until you tell them the password.
0:09:30- This reminds me also of the watch unlock on the desktop.
0:09:35So if you have an Apple Watch that is actively unlocked,
0:09:40I forget the exact requirements,
0:09:41I think you're all on the same iCloud account
0:09:42or something like that,
0:09:44and you've enabled everything on every device,
0:09:46then what you can do is,
0:09:47if your watch is physically close to say your iMac
0:09:51or something like that,
0:09:52and you tap a keyboard button or a mouse button to wake it up,
0:09:56then it will see if your watch is nearby, and if it's nearby and it's
0:10:00authenticated, etc., then it will go ahead and unlock the Mac
0:10:04for you. And that seems perfectly reasonable until you think about, say, an
0:10:10office where, you know, most of us work in cubicles, and so
0:10:14what if I'm a couple cubes down or maybe the next cube over,
0:10:18and somebody goes up to my work machine and smacks the keyboard and it feels like my watch
0:10:26is close enough, then guess what?
0:10:28That thing's getting unlocked.
0:10:29And on the surface, that's terrible.
0:10:32But in reality, you should, in theory, be close enough that you can hopefully see what
0:10:38is going on with your device.
0:10:40And if you're not close enough to see what's going on, it hopefully wouldn't allow itself
0:10:43to be unlocked.
0:10:44It's a similar kind of problem, right, where there's a pretty reasonable explanation, or expectation,
0:10:51I should say, that you are close and that is the intended results for your device to unlock,
0:10:56but you don't know for sure. Now, the difference is, which I didn't get a chance to talk to you
0:11:00before the chat room started yelling at me, that you get a notification on your watch, "Hey,
0:11:04such-and-such has been unlocked." But it, to me, rings a similar set of potential problems,
0:11:11and for me it's been working out really well and it's super convenient. So I kind of
0:11:14of agree with you, John, that in the circles I travel in, eh, I'm not too worried about it.
0:11:18By the way, Casey, as the person who knows that they've seen Raiders, can you, do you,
0:11:22uh, do you know what reference I was going to make before I bailed?
0:11:25No, I definitely do. I've seen Raiders many times, but I do not know the reference.
0:11:29The beginning bit with the idol? Like, you gotta take the idol off, but put a sandbag of equal
0:11:34weight, like someone takes something out of your hand, but while maintaining contact with the part
0:11:37that you're, it's kind of like stealing your watch while keeping something touching the sensor on the
0:11:42the bottom so it stays unlocked. You know, I bet Apollo Robbins could do that.
0:11:45Yeah, I was just about to ask, who's that guy that can do that unbelievable, like, stealing
0:11:51stuff while you're talking to him? That's his next level. He gets an Apple sponsorship.
0:11:54Like, he can remove people's watches without them knowing, but can you do it while at the
0:11:58same time, like, keeping something touching the proximity sensors underneath the watch
0:12:02so it remains unlocked? That's the trick. All right, moving on before I get stuck in
0:12:07some Apollo Robbins videos, because they are mesmerizing.
0:12:11All right, an anonymous Apple source familiar
0:12:13with MDNS Responder has also written in.
0:12:15They said, now I'm quoting, you said,
0:12:18"MDNS Responder was a mess and had tons of bugs."
0:12:20- John said that, we didn't say that.
0:12:22- Fair enough.
0:12:24I couldn't let that pass without a response.
0:12:25The reasons for the Bonjour rewrite were entirely political,
0:12:29nothing to do with MDNS Responder.
0:12:32If you're a manager looking for something for your team
0:12:34to do, rewriting some extra software seems much safer
0:12:36much existing software, excuse me, seems much safer and much more predictable than thinking
0:12:40of something new for yourself.
0:12:41Rewriting something from scratch, as we all know, is a terrible idea.
0:12:45And there's a link to the seminal Joel and Software blog post about this very thing.
0:12:51Coming back to the email, if you measure it in admittedly crude, simple numerical terms
0:12:54of number of devices deployed, MDNS responder is arguably the most successful piece of software
0:12:59ever to come out of Apple.
0:13:00As well as being on almost every Apple product, it's also many other devices, almost all network
0:13:04printers, TiVo, network cameras, etc., and in every Android device, which is not just
0:13:08Android phones and tablets, but also Android-based accessories.
0:13:13If you consider the quality and robustness of the MDNS Responder code is illustrated
0:13:17by the fact that even after being neglected for five years, finding an old copy of MDNS
0:13:22Responder from a previous OS version and installing it on Yosemite still worked better than Discovery
0:13:26D software Apple briefly shipped before reverting back to MDNS Responder.
0:13:31I'm amused that you heard that the return to MDNS Responder was instigated by a celebrity
0:13:35emailing Tim Cook.
0:13:36You're right about that part, except it wasn't Bono.
0:13:40Wasn't Bono.
0:13:41It was Vint Cerf.
0:13:42Fair enough.
0:13:43And who is Vint Cerf?
0:13:44Can you explain to the audience?
0:13:45That's why we have a link to the Wikipedia page.
0:13:46One of the fathers of the internet.
0:13:48An old guy who did lots of important work on the early internet.
0:13:51Is that you?
0:13:52No, I'm not that old.
0:13:55So first, getting back to the part of the MDNS Responder being a buggy.
0:14:01the basis for that. Like, first of all, being neglected for five years is never good for
0:14:05any piece of software. Second, as a regular user, it was not uncommon to have weird problems
0:14:11with your Mac and to have the solution be killing mDNSResponder. Right? I think, I don't
0:14:16know if you guys remember that, but I certainly do. Right? So whether you want to consider
0:14:20it a buggy mess or whatever, it is something that would be a candidate for, "Hey, this
0:14:27Essential piece of the system seems like it might be getting a little creaky and if someone has a good idea about how to vastly
0:14:32Improve it by all means do it
0:14:34The John software thing about you should things you should never do you should never write software blah blah
0:14:39That's been hashed out to death
0:14:40I mean, it's it's a good presentation of a particular of one side of a particular issue
0:14:45But of course sometimes you do have to rewrite things so many good things that we love came from the decision to rewrite things
0:14:51You just have to know when to do it and when not to do it was basically Joel's point
0:14:53But it was expressed in a very hyperbolic way of like oh you should just totally never do this
0:14:57Let me tell you all the great things that are about like software that already has all the corner cases and
0:15:02You know all the education all the things that you've learned over the years, right?
0:15:07baked into it but
0:15:10On the Mac we have examples of rewrites that are great and a lot of you know
0:15:14Important things that we have on the Mac today are because someone decided to abandon some old code and rewrite it and we have some
0:15:19Cautionary tale so I think there's a reasonable mix and I think it's not
0:15:23You know out of bounds to say that MDNS responder as it was a candidate because it did cause real-world problems for regular people
0:15:29To the it wasn't zapping the PRAM point
0:15:31But it was the point at a certain point in the history of the Mac that
0:15:34Killing in the NS responder to fix a whole host of problems
0:15:37It became like one of those things you might just want to try because it could be what's going now
0:15:41Politically speaking who knows maybe that's because they said oh just don't ever fix MDNS responder for five years
0:15:47Whoever this person who is wrote in seemed to think the project was neglected
0:15:51But obviously discovery D was not a successful rewrite and whatever reason
0:15:55That the rewrite was undertaken and the people who did it and whether they had the expertise or really understood
0:16:01What mdns responder was doing and how it did it and all the decisions that led to its design and all things they learned
0:16:07It just seems like it was not
0:16:08It was not a a project undertaken with the right attitude and by the right people. But anyway this
0:16:16As to the idea of MDNS responder being on lots of different systems, this is news to me as well. I
0:16:22Suppose it's got to be an open source component or maybe it's part of
0:16:27Some wider like I don't whether it's part of Darwin or some even bigger open source component
0:16:32I don't know
0:16:33I mean
0:16:33I only know it because it's that process that I had to kill my Mac sometimes it was super important and then most people know
0:16:38Because it's the thing that came back to replace discovery need to make your max work again
0:16:41Well, I did some very very quick research
0:16:43sorry for everyone who knows a lot more about it than this,
0:16:44but, so Bonjour is the zero-conf networking protocol
0:16:49that Apple popularized under that name,
0:16:52and basically if you wanted to use a network printer
0:16:55or use network shares that were just listed by their names
0:16:58that would automatically find each other,
0:16:59there's a very good chance it's using this Bonjour protocol.
0:17:02Part of the Bonjour software is MDNS Responder,
0:17:06which is the demon on the systems that manages that.
0:17:09That apparently, MDNS Responder itself is open source
0:17:12under the Apache license.
0:17:14And so it apparently went into all sorts of things
0:17:18that had to support ZeroConf networking
0:17:20and/or the Bonjour protocol.
0:17:23- I think you mean rendezvous.
0:17:25- Right.
0:17:25- What a better name rendezvous was.
0:17:27Like, so ZeroConf is the techie nerd name for the technology.
0:17:31And then rendezvous was how Apple branded it.
0:17:33But then in one of the rare cases where Apple
0:17:35lost or decided not to fight someone challenging their,
0:17:38I forget what the situation was,
0:17:39whether they just said, "Oh, nevermind, we'll pick
0:17:41in your name or they actually lost the court case,
0:17:43they have to change it, so they change it to Bonjour,
0:17:44which is not bad, but boy, rendezvous was better.
0:17:47- Yeah, exactly.
0:17:48So anyway, so it appears that like lots of different
0:17:50operating systems and devices like printers and stuff
0:17:53all embedded MDNS Responder because it was open source.
0:17:57So apparently that's why it kind of went
0:18:00in all these different things and went everywhere,
0:18:02and is apparently in Android as well,
0:18:04which is pretty impressive.
0:18:05That is, I gotta give this guy credit
0:18:08for pointing out the stuff.
0:18:10That is really quite widespread.
0:18:13And I always just assumed it was just an Apple thing,
0:18:15but nope.
0:18:17- Oh, I would add that the idea of it being successful
0:18:19and it being deployed everywhere are two
0:18:20very different things.
0:18:22There's lots of software that's deployed everywhere.
0:18:24The success, if success is just measured by how far
0:18:29and wide you spread, all sorts of terrible things can be
0:18:31considered quote unquote successful.
0:18:33- Windows.
0:18:34- Not even, even if you just take some terrible code
0:18:39in the core of Unix that's just been passed around
0:18:41'cause it's sort of unimportant, but it's just,
0:18:43that's where a lot of bugs and buffer overflows come from.
0:18:46Some really old library and some BSD Unix variant
0:18:51that just gets passed around and no one ever looks at it
0:18:54and it's just this gross crusty little corner and yeah.
0:18:57Anyway, I don't know exactly why MDNS responder
0:19:02was chosen as a victim for a rewrite,
0:19:06but I think it was a reasonable decision,
0:19:09but it was followed up by terrible execution.
0:19:12So you gotta have both parts of it.
0:19:14If you identify the parts of your system
0:19:16that could benefit from your rights
0:19:17and then you do a bad job, you have not succeeded.
0:19:20- For what it's worth, opensource.apple.com/source/mdnsresponder
0:19:26- Oh, and by the way, now that we know more
0:19:28about the open source nature of this,
0:19:29maybe it wasn't such a good candidate
0:19:30because when there is a project,
0:19:32like an open source project that lots of other people use
0:19:35that is sort of being worked on.
0:19:37Like other people have a stake in this.
0:19:38Like if MDNS Responder really is broken or whatever,
0:19:40presumably there's lots of people
0:19:41from lots of different companies
0:19:42that are motivated to make it not suck, right?
0:19:44And you say, you know what?
0:19:46We're gonna write our own thing.
0:19:48It's like saying we've been using WebKit,
0:19:49which everybody helps update,
0:19:51but we would like our own engine.
0:19:52So we're just gonna start our own from scratch again.
0:19:54It's probably not a great idea.
0:19:55Now, MDNS Responder is not the same thing as WebKit,
0:19:57obviously in terms of complexity and importance,
0:19:58but if everyone else in the industry
0:20:00is using MDNS Responder
0:20:01and presumably updating it and fixing it,
0:20:03and you decided to go down your own,
0:20:04boy, you better have the best team available with lots of people on it to equal the effort
0:20:09and smarts and experience of everyone else who's maintaining MBAs responder. So perhaps
0:20:14it wasn't actually such a great candidate.
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0:22:00All right, Sid Polk writes, "I was at Apple when DYLD 2 was developed and released. There
0:22:08was a guy who worked on Linkers. He was bothered one day by how slow DYLD was, so he spent
0:22:13the weekend writing a new one from scratch, because why not? It was eventually released
0:22:17in a software update during the 10.3 cycle, but the release notes for it were included
0:22:22in the 10.4 release. The engineer who wrote DYLD 2 also wrote DYLD 3. I trust him specifically
0:22:30Also, this is what public betas are for.
0:22:32We did not have those in 2003, which is kind of funny.
0:22:35Yeah, I think people are surprised at exactly how few people are responsible for such important
0:22:41parts.
0:22:42So this isn't like they always assume there's like hundreds of engineers.
0:22:44When you learn this, like, I forget what Twitter's employee count was.
0:22:46Some, this is something I've seen like 3000 employees or something.
0:22:50You're like, what are all those people doing?
0:22:52And then you learn like, how many people work on, you know, the dynamic linker for the Mac
0:22:57operating system and iOS and tvOS and watchOS. And you're like, "Boy, that's probably a team
0:23:02of a couple hundred people." And it's like five people. It's like five people. And really,
0:23:05like two or three of them are doing the bulk of the work. And the guy who did the DYLD,
0:23:10you know, is largely responsible for the DYLD3, also was responsible for DYLD2. And he did it in
0:23:14a weekend in an earlier, more innocent time, pushed it out in a software update in the middle
0:23:18of the 10.3.x cycle. It was a different time. But even today, teams at Apple are smaller than
0:23:26than you think.
0:23:27And that gets back to the whole like how money can't solve your talent and retention problems.
0:23:32Like if you could mold money into the shape of people, golem style or golem style, I don't
0:23:36know how to pronounce it in this context, Apple would do it but they can't.
0:23:40They actually have to hire people and keep them happy and give them interesting things
0:23:43to do.
0:23:44And you need the right people and very often some of the best software is written by very
0:23:47small teams of people who really know what they're doing and are very enthusiastic rather
0:23:51than hundreds and hundreds of people being directed by 17 levels of management.
0:23:55Fair enough. Also, it's Gangnam Style. Actually, I probably even pronounced that wrong.
0:24:01There you go.
0:24:02All right. Anyway, please cut that from the show so I don't get a million pieces of feedback.
0:24:06Anyhow, Aaron Kirkland writes in, "On my Mac 2FX, I had…" That is not a very good
0:24:13name, if I'm honest. But anyway, "On my Mac 2FX, I had…"
0:24:16What's not good about 2FX? That's one of the best Mac names ever. One of the best Macs ever.
0:24:22F-X! Who doesn't like F-X?
0:24:24It's pronounced "IF-X".
0:24:25It's got an X in it, so it's cool. It's a pun for "FX".
0:24:29It was the name of a movie in the 80s about special effects. They don't make those anymore.
0:24:33Now you see them, which is about magic or something. Terrible.
0:24:37Do you remember "Movie Magic"? That was a great TV show.
0:24:40F-X is the whole--neither one of you has probably seen F-X, and it's probably a terrible 80s movie.
0:24:44But, Casey might like it.
0:24:46Why do you say that? Because I have terrible taste?
0:24:49You're playing Hunt for Red October.
0:24:51Don't you make fun of Hunt for Red October, man. I will fight you.
0:24:54I know, I'm just saying, you're not going to turn up your nose in a movie with slightly dated tropes or whatever.
0:25:00Anyway, FX was a great movie to catch.
0:25:02This movie's terrible. Casey would like it.
0:25:04I know, right? I'm glad somebody else heard that.
0:25:06It's a great movie to catch on a Saturday when you're 12 years old.
0:25:09I don't know if I love you John or if I hate you, probably a little of both.
0:25:14On my Mac 2FX, horrible name or not, writes Aaron Kirkland, I had a floppy disk autoloader.
0:25:19Why are we still talking about this?
0:25:20I had a floppy disk autoloader that would hold 25 disks for unattended, retrospect backup,
0:25:26and it relied on auto-inject.
0:25:29This is the discussion actually I was having with Merlin at some point, although I think
0:25:32it was off the air, but I had this recollection that there were devices that would do the
0:25:37floppy swapping for you?" But I'm like, "That's probably just something I was thinking of
0:25:42when I was a kid. I don't think those things ever existed." Because when you're swapping
0:25:45floppies manually, you're like, "Surely I can make a machine, some sort of Rube Goldberg
0:25:50machine to do this for me, right?" But this person says that apparently such a thing actually
0:25:56existed. So I had convinced myself that it was just like a false memory, but then I asked,
0:26:01"Do you remember the make and model?" And he didn't. I would love to, if anyone, anyway,
0:26:06If anybody knows more about these, can provide a picture or a name or something to Google
0:26:11so we can find one of these things and see what it looks like, I would love to see such
0:26:13a thing.
0:26:14You can always rely on the world of large-scale backup hardware, like tape drives and everything
0:26:21else, for the weirdest stuff out there.
0:26:23You can do large-scale backups onto 3.5-inch floppy disks.
0:26:27That sounds great.
0:26:28Right.
0:26:29Well, you know, because there was a need for that.
0:26:31Not everybody needed that at that time, but someone needed it and someone was willing
0:26:35to pay thousands of dollars for that probably.
0:26:37- Yeah, Retrospect by the way was a Mac backup program,
0:26:40which someone in the chat room was saying was terrible,
0:26:41but I think it had some kind of neat features.
0:26:44I used it for many years.
0:26:46- All right, any other follow-up kids?
0:26:48- We're still in follow-up.
0:26:49- I know, this was a long one.
0:26:52Those emails were good though, so.
0:26:53- That's true, they were pretty good.
0:26:54- I'll give John a buy on this one.
0:26:57'Cause we all know good follow-up is our fault,
0:26:59but bad follow-up is John's fault.
0:27:01- That sounds right.
0:27:03works for me. We have a consensus. All right, so Chief Waffler and Chief, what'd you buy
0:27:10these days? This was not a waffle. This was just straight-up
0:27:13upgrades. You have to narrow it down, that question,
0:27:16Casey, if you want an answer. What did you buy in the last 48 hours?
0:27:21It was the biggest thing, physically speaking, that you purchased recently.
0:27:26What impulse buy, what multi-thousand dollar impulse buy did you just do?
0:27:31So we've had our wonderful Plasma 42 inch Panasonic 85U TV for about 10 years.
0:27:41And it's fine, it's great, but in the room that we have it in, we have a pretty large
0:27:50first floor great room in our house.
0:27:52when I first got this TV, I was still in apartments,
0:27:55and it was great for apartments.
0:27:57In the room we had it in, it was a little small
0:28:00for the setup we had in that room, but it was still fine,
0:28:02so I was just waiting for it to die before I replaced it.
0:28:05And I didn't want it to die for a long time
0:28:08because a nice 1080p plasma
0:28:13was still kind of the best thing you could get for a while.
0:28:16And I also didn't want it to die for a while
0:28:18because over time, like when I bought it,
0:28:21you could get a 42 inch screen that was like the highest quality type of screen.
0:28:27Today, if you want a great image quality TV, the smallest you can get them in is usually
0:28:3355 inches.
0:28:36And for a long time, I was kind of hoping that my TV would hold out longer and longer
0:28:40and longer because A, 55 inch plasmas were huge.
0:28:45'cause plasma's still retained quite a bit of thickness
0:28:49and bezel width, even until the end of plasmas,
0:28:53compared to the other technologies.
0:28:55And so a 55 inch plasma's a pretty big thing,
0:28:58and I thought that would be too big for the room
0:29:00and for the TV stand and everything else.
0:29:01So I really didn't want to upgrade to that.
0:29:04I also, like 1080p was great,
0:29:06and I already had 1080p with great color,
0:29:08great black levels, great brightness, everything else,
0:29:11'cause plasmas are awesome.
0:29:13So I was basically, I didn't want to have to replace my TV
0:29:17until I could get a really great 4K HDR OLED TV,
0:29:22'cause I hate LCD.
0:29:25Like LCD is a terrible TV technology.
0:29:27The only thing good about it is that it costs almost nothing
0:29:30that's it.
0:29:31Everything else about LCD TVs is terrible.
0:29:34So I wanted to just go from plasma to OLED.
0:29:38And don't even give me anything about LED TVs
0:29:40'cause we all know that's fake.
0:29:41That's a wonderful marketing sleight of hand.
0:29:44I can't believe they pulled it off, but they did.
0:29:46Anyway, when we were at the beach last week,
0:29:49the house had a really big, cheap LCD TV
0:29:54that was about 50 inches.
0:29:55And Tiff messaged me one night saying,
0:29:57"Okay, we can get a bigger TV."
0:30:00I said nothing.
0:30:03- And within 45 seconds,
0:30:05it was already ordered and on its way.
0:30:08- Why was she saying that?
0:30:09because she was watching the cruddy, the LCD TV in there.
0:30:13Was it like, why does that mean we can get a big,
0:30:15was the one in the house too small for her?
0:30:18- I think she was, I think seeing the cruddy one
0:30:20finally convinced her that a bigger TV can look really nice.
0:30:24- Oh, was this one bigger?
0:30:27Oh, it was 50, you said 50.
0:30:28- Yeah, it was 50.
0:30:29And ours was 42. - So it was 50 compared
0:30:30to a 42, and so she was like, wow, this 50 inch
0:30:33feels so much bigger.
0:30:34She's probably sitting closer to it than your other two.
0:30:37- Yeah, she also was sitting closer to it, yes.
0:30:38But anyway, I've been dying to get a 4K OLED TV
0:30:42ever since I saw one in Best Buy last year.
0:30:46And I already had all the research done
0:30:49that if I had the reason to get a 4K TV this year,
0:30:54that I would get an LG, whatever the LG 4K OLED
0:30:58series of the year was.
0:31:01'Cause all the reviews seem to be in pretty wide agreement
0:31:04that that's basically the best one out there.
0:31:07So finally Tiff said, "Okay, we can get a bigger TV."
0:31:12And I said absolutely nothing about it until it arrived.
0:31:18(laughing)
0:31:20Because I did not want to bring the conversation back up
0:31:23to have it maybe be back down or have her mind changed.
0:31:27- This, I'm not sure if this is indicative
0:31:30of you having mastered marriage
0:31:32or you having a real and true problem with buying shit.
0:31:36(laughing)
0:31:37or maybe both to be honest with you.
0:31:39- Tiff did not appreciate this strategy.
0:31:42(laughing)
0:31:44- Oh man, so where are you sleeping tonight?
0:31:51Are you sleeping on the couch?
0:31:53- This resulted in a, to get me back for it,
0:31:57she periscoped me undoing all the wires
0:32:00and stuff with the old one,
0:32:01which is basically just a periscope of my butt
0:32:03leaning over the TV stand for like an hour.
0:32:06And now we are even but
0:32:08By the way, the small TV problem remains
0:32:11We have a small TV in our bedroom and it was so hard to find a small television
0:32:16forget about like the best picture quality just like not the worst picture quality because
0:32:22Small televisions are like oh someone's gonna use in their kitchen
0:32:25So put the crappiest thing you can in it and it hasn't gotten better over time as everything's crept up
0:32:31It used to be that the good TVs were 42 then the good TVs were 50
0:32:34this is the minimum size.
0:32:35Now, like you said, the good TV is a 55 minimum size.
0:32:39Everything's creeping up.
0:32:40So to try to find, like now it's a choice of this
0:32:43kitchen TV or 55 inch?
0:32:45And in between, it's just a no-land's land of crap.
0:32:48- Yeah, basically.
0:32:49- So I'm sorry, what model did you order, Marco?
0:32:52- So I did exactly what I had been researching to do.
0:32:55I did a quick double check before
0:32:57just to make sure nothing had changed,
0:32:58but everyone seemed to agree.
0:32:59So I got the LG 2017 4K OLED series
0:33:02that has sevens in the names,
0:33:06and they put a number in front,
0:33:07or a letter in front of them to indicate,
0:33:09as far as I can tell,
0:33:11nothing except like the sound bar that's included.
0:33:14So you can pay like a small,
0:33:15or well, none of these are small amounts.
0:33:17You can pay a smaller amount
0:33:19to get one with just like regular TV speakers in it,
0:33:21like on the back.
0:33:22And then you can pay like $1,000 more
0:33:24to get a little sound bar on the bottom.
0:33:26And I hate sound bars anyway,
0:33:27so that was not gonna be a thing.
0:33:29And then you can pay $1,000 more than that
0:33:31to get even better of a soundbar on the bottom or something.
0:33:35And so the one I got is the base model of the 2017 one,
0:33:38which is the LG C7 TV.
0:33:42So it's amazing.
0:33:44- At 55 inches?
0:33:45- Yeah, 55, yeah.
0:33:47- So why didn't you go to 65?
0:33:48- Well, first, I knew I had to sell this when it arrived.
0:33:53And now that we see it in the room,
0:33:57I think I actually probably could have pulled off 65.
0:34:01But the reason why I'm glad,
0:34:03I'm pretty sure I'm happy enough with the 55 now,
0:34:06is that first of all, it is a substantial upgrade from 42.
0:34:09But the good thing is that the TV itself
0:34:11does not look that much bigger on the shelf
0:34:14because there's such a difference in bezel width.
0:34:16Like the new one has almost no bezel at all,
0:34:19and the old one, the bezels were like
0:34:21three inches on all sides or something like that.
0:34:24It's a huge difference in bezel width and thickness.
0:34:28Like the new one looks really sleek
0:34:30and has a screen that is more than 10 inches bigger,
0:34:33but it doesn't look like that much bigger of a TV.
0:34:36Which is nice because we don't want the TV
0:34:39to like dominate the look of the room.
0:34:41Like when you get a TV that's too big for the room
0:34:43or that's even just like kind of big for the room,
0:34:46that is like, your eye is drawn to that.
0:34:48Even when it's off, like you just have
0:34:49like this big black wall in your room.
0:34:52Like, it's something that is very dominant,
0:34:54and because, like, our TV is not like in some, like,
0:34:58back room of the house, it's like the main room,
0:35:01like, you walk into our house and you're in this, like,
0:35:02main room that has the TV and the living room
0:35:05and the dining room all, like, in one big room.
0:35:08To make the TV substantially bigger,
0:35:10I think would look too big for the room.
0:35:13But now we have the actual screen size of the bigger TV
0:35:17without it looking that much bigger.
0:35:18So it's almost like we got the extra screen size,
0:35:20like for free visually.
0:35:22- But they had to put the touch ID in the back though, right?
0:35:24And it's got a brow.
0:35:25(laughing)
0:35:27- The only thing is,
0:35:28TVs have gotten a lot more full of crappy software
0:35:31since I last bought a TV 10 years ago.
0:35:33- Worst products through software.
0:35:35- Yeah, exactly. - Evergreen.
0:35:36- Like this TV takes a good 20 seconds to boot.
0:35:40I don't know why a TV has to boot,
0:35:42but fortunately if you just put it in like standby mode,
0:35:45instead of turning it off.
0:35:46- 'Cause it's got a web-os.
0:35:48I have to say it like,
0:35:49Yeah, all software on TVs is terrible, but everyone agrees this is the best software
0:35:54on TVs, or close to the best.
0:35:55I mean, there's some disagreement, but if you want any kind of quote-unquote "smart
0:35:59TV" features, the web OS things that LG uses are the least disgusting, let's say that.
0:36:06Because nobody does what Panasonic used to, which is completely utilitarian, minimal,
0:36:12like my first Panasonic Plasma had like the volume, the little volume bar that appears
0:36:16on the screen when you change the volume, was really small and was jammed against the
0:36:21bottom edge of the screen so it obscured as little of it.
0:36:23Like nobody does that now.
0:36:25Now you change the volume and it's like a giant fairy comes out and waves a magic wand
0:36:29and sparkles fly from it and this bar full of bubbling liquid moves forward and this
0:36:33pulsing pattern is like, "Oh my God, just change the volume."
0:36:38The good thing is it's actually, you know, even though that the software is really kind
0:36:43of overbearing. It doesn't seem like it's horrible software. It's just software where
0:36:50I don't really need there to be software. But the good thing is it also has built-in
0:36:53apps for Netflix and Amazon Video.
0:36:57Every TV has that now.
0:36:58I know, I know. This is, again, like the opera people. It's like, "Yes, we know. We invented
0:37:02this years ago." Yeah, I know. So it's new to me, and it's actually kind of nice.
0:37:07And it's got the little accelerometer remote with a little mouse cursor thing, which I
0:37:12which I thought would be terrible, but having used it, it's actually pretty good.
0:37:16We have different opinions about that.
0:37:17No, you don't like it?
0:37:18I mean, the alternative is using like a five-way pad to move a little thingy around.
0:37:22I like the little accelerometer cursor thingy.
0:37:26I have not found it to be to have the precision I want.
0:37:29Maybe that's just me.
0:37:30Maybe I don't have the precision I want, but...
0:37:32Would you prefer to go tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?
0:37:35Because I find it...
0:37:36I find it...
0:37:37Put it this way.
0:37:38I find it more precise than the other main thing I use to navigate stuff on TV, which
0:37:41which is a stupid Apple TV remote
0:37:42where I'm forever trying to swipe vertically
0:37:44and horizontally and it's misinterpreting me.
0:37:46- Yeah, yeah, 'cause yeah, so for the listeners
0:37:48who might have missed what we were talking about here,
0:37:50the remote to this behaves a lot like a Wiimote,
0:37:53where the TV somehow sends,
0:37:56I don't know if it's only accelerometer
0:37:57or if it's also a division-based thing
0:37:58like the Wiimote had with the little IR bar,
0:38:00but somehow the remote, you just wave it around
0:38:04and it moves a little mouse pointer thing on screen.
0:38:07And it doesn't, I don't,
0:38:08I'd say it does not work as well as a Wiimote does
0:38:11in that way.
0:38:12It isn't as precise or stable.
0:38:14So it's fine.
0:38:17Ultimately, I'm assuming that there's gonna be
0:38:20a 4K Apple TV update this fall.
0:38:23Once we have that 4K Apple TV,
0:38:25I don't expect to ever use the built-in software
0:38:27on this TV again.
0:38:28It's the kind of thing I'm just like setting it up once,
0:38:30going through all the picture settings,
0:38:31trying to find out how to make it look normal,
0:38:33and then you just leave it after that.
0:38:36So I don't expect the software of this TV to matter at all to me after this week.
0:38:41Except for potentially the boot time and whatever the volume control looks like when you move
0:38:44it up and down.
0:38:45That's, well, I don't use the volume control on the TV.
0:38:48Who uses TV speakers?
0:38:49Animals.
0:38:50That's who.
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0:40:04That's betterment.com/ATP.
0:40:07Betterment, investing made better.
0:40:09- Watching you briefly on the Periscope
0:40:15tried to adjust the picture, I have some advice.
0:40:17- Oh, here we go.
0:40:19Here we go.
0:40:20- I knew you would, I'm so happy you did.
0:40:22- This is how TIFF gets you back.
0:40:23It's not the butt cam 2017 edition.
0:40:26It's giving Jon insight into how you set up the TV.
0:40:29Just come to our house and do it for me.
0:40:31- Well, I mean, it's a periscope,
0:40:32and he's under the public eye,
0:40:34and he's just fiddling around with things.
0:40:35But in general, what you were doing
0:40:37is exactly what people shouldn't do
0:40:38when they adjust their TV,
0:40:39which is play with the settings and try to see,
0:40:43try to think, does this look right?
0:40:44Turn this on, turn this off.
0:40:45What does this mode mean?
0:40:46Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
0:40:47(laughing)
0:40:48So you're never gonna arrive in anything that way.
0:40:50So first of all, the thing that Marco knows
0:40:53and that everyone else should know is when you buy a TV,
0:40:56no matter where you get it from,
0:40:57almost all the time it is configured badly.
0:41:01It might still be in showroom demo mode
0:41:04where everything is like super saturated
0:41:06and super bright with all the effects on.
0:41:08But even if it's not,
0:41:09the sort of standard default modes on most TVs
0:41:11is not quote unquote accurate.
0:41:14It's not what the people who created the content
0:41:18were expecting you to see
0:41:19because they're sort of creating it
0:41:20and mastering it in a particular color space
0:41:23with the expectation of things to look a certain way.
0:41:26The only way to get a television configured correctly is to use some sort of calibration
0:41:30thing, whether it's an app or a Blu-ray or whatever.
0:41:33And the tricky part is the place where your configuration thing comes from, like the source,
0:41:43affects how you're configuring it.
0:41:46If you can get a configuration thing to run on your Apple TV and your adjustments are
0:41:51per input, that will correctly adjust the Apple TV input.
0:41:54But then how do you correctly adjust the input that is, you know, if you use that same setting
0:41:59and apply it to your other inputs, or some TVs don't even let you do, like how do you
0:42:03apply that to the Blu-rays in it?
0:42:04How do you apply it to one of the cables in it, or whatever?
0:42:06That's something you just have to sort it out on every TV.
0:42:07But either way, you have to get a calibration thing.
0:42:10There's tons of calibration things that are out there.
0:42:11They give you grayscale things, and they tell you what it should look like, and all sorts
0:42:15of color patterns.
0:42:16And then you have to basically mess with the menus of your television to get the test patterns
0:42:23to look correct.
0:42:24To do that, to figure out, I don't know what all these words mean, I don't understand what
0:42:29these, you know, the settings are like, auto, you know, dynamic, fresh, dank, like, you
0:42:36know, what the hell?
0:42:37Like, what do these words mean, right?
0:42:40Oh my goodness.
0:42:42Sometimes if you look in the manual, they'll translate them to, like, the actual meaning,
0:42:45But most of the time what you want to do is seek out on the internet one of those forums
0:42:49where people spend a million years adjusting their TVs and people have like basically settings
0:42:55lists for the television.
0:42:57In order to get this particular exact make and model of television to pass a reasonable
0:43:02calibration test, here's all the things I had to change it to.
0:43:05And sometimes they'll hopefully say, "Here's what these settings actually mean."
0:43:08And this sounds like a long way to go.
0:43:09Like, "Oh, I got to go to internet forums and scroll through like web bulletin boards."
0:43:13like 2003 and just find setting packs for people and download them sometimes and it's
0:43:21like here's the thing you only have to do this essentially once and then just to you
0:43:25know adjust over every few years right once you get it set up and calibrated according
0:43:30to that the calibration app and you and you kind of know what the settings do and you
0:43:33know which ones to how to turn everything off and what the different things mean mostly
0:43:37all you need to do is adjust like contrast brightness and a few other things as the screen
0:43:42ages and it drifts a little bit.
0:43:46And that's really the only way to do it.
0:43:47You can't do it by looking at people's faces and saying, "Does that skin look right to
0:43:50you?"
0:43:51You will never do it that way.
0:43:52You can't do it by looking at video and saying, "Does that motion look right to you?"
0:43:53You need to use a calibration app.
0:43:56And there's tons of them out there, or calibration DVD or calibration Blu-ray or whatever.
0:44:01The hardest thing to do is cadence, which you probably don't care about, to see if you're...
0:44:06You don't even have a Blu-ray player, do you?
0:44:07Like to see if you can...
0:44:08I have the PS4.
0:44:09Yeah, well, do you ever watch anything?
0:44:11Do you ever watch anything that you care is showing 24 frames per second cadence?
0:44:14If you don't care about that, you don't need to do it.
0:44:15But that's the hardest one to do.
0:44:16The only way I've found to do that one is to use a camera and configure it to use a
0:44:20shutter that's open for a second and run a pattern that, you know, does something over
0:44:25the course of a second.
0:44:26And you can see if you see even lighting in the one second exposure.
0:44:29If you don't see even lighting, then you're seeing three, two pull down because one frame
0:44:33was shown three times.
0:44:34The other frame was shown two times.
0:44:35And the three times one is brighter than the two times one.
0:44:37So you get this sort of checkerboard,
0:44:39bright dim, bright dim thing.
0:44:41That's how you know you're getting the wrong cadence.
0:44:43True 24 frames per second cadence,
0:44:44everything will be exactly equal brightness
0:44:46because it was 24 frames and each one of them was shown,
0:44:48you know, for the same amount of time.
0:44:50That's the hardest to calibrate.
0:44:51I don't know how to do that with an app.
0:44:52I just know how to do it with a camera and an app,
0:44:55but the other ones just, you know, get an app.
0:44:57And easiest for you, you have an Apple TV.
0:45:00There are apps on the App Store,
0:45:02like THX apps or whatever, like go find one, download.
0:45:05Doesn't really matter which one it is.
0:45:06all kind of have a similar test pattern, some of them might be better than others, and just
0:45:10spend a day with it. And it's important to calibrate it both during the daytime and at
0:45:14nighttime and figure out the balance of brightness, especially for televisions. I don't know if all
0:45:19that, oh it's not as bright as LED backlit LCDs, but I think it's brighter than most plasmas, but
0:45:24sometimes you have to make a trade-off between does this look right at nighttime versus does it
0:45:28look right in day. And your television, and I believe most televisions, have an ambient light
0:45:31sensor. They can be like, "Don't worry about it, you just calibrate it and I'll use the ambient
0:45:35light sensor to adjust the brightness for you. Sometimes you want that because it's helpful,
0:45:39but other times it'll just screw with your settings so you calibrate it and then night comes
0:45:43and the ambient light sensor screws with all your settings and you can't see anything in the dark
0:45:46scene. So if it was up to me I would pick a good medium setting and turn off all the dynamic stuff
0:45:53and say this TV is going to look like exactly like this all the time please do not dynamically
0:45:56adjust anything. But anyway it's it's a lot harder than just let me go through the menus and try a
0:46:02few things. And I think it's worthwhile. I think it's worth adjusting. Because if you do, if you
0:46:07spend the day adjusting it, and maybe three months later or six months later, run through the
0:46:13adjustments again just to make sure the thing hasn't drifted. And then save the original setting,
0:46:17and in the middle of the movie, switch back to the other setting and be like, "Oh, God,
0:46:21it's just terrible." It's like suddenly everything was... You know that... It's like a festival in
0:46:27India or something, we use colored powders to throw all over everything. Suddenly everything
0:46:30is like super oversaturated it's like it doesn't it doesn't look right it doesn't
0:46:34look natural it looks like someone has thrown festive colored powders over
0:46:38everything new television you don't want that just ask Marilyn you don't want the
0:46:40powders well so did you did you just fiddle with controls and you're like
0:46:47good enough and that you're never gonna revisit it I at least did just finish
0:46:51fiddle with controls and say good enough I don't know if I will ever revisit it
0:46:55or not I probably will because we only been we only had like one night with it
0:46:58so far to really play with it.
0:47:00So we will probably still be messing with some stuff.
0:47:04I will say though, that this is probably going to be
0:47:08an area of my life that I choose the Casey path.
0:47:12- Attaboy.
0:47:13- The path of not being very picky.
0:47:17- It's just one day, in your case,
0:47:21one day over the next 10 years
0:47:22that you're gonna own this television.
0:47:23Just spend the time.
0:47:24- Yeah, you said it would also be one day
0:47:26doing boot camp on Windows to set up the gaming for TIFF.
0:47:29- It would have if I had done it.
0:47:31- Right, so come over, take a day off of work.
0:47:35- That's the other option, you can pay someone
0:47:36to calibrate it for you, but I think it's a rip off,
0:47:38you just do it yourself with an app.
0:47:40If the next time I'm at your house,
0:47:43if you give me some time, I will do this to your television
0:47:46'cause it's a service I provide.
0:47:48- How busy could you be, just come tomorrow?
0:47:50- Oh, at the very least, make sure you have
0:47:51the size set correctly, can I at least
0:47:52convince you to do that?
0:47:54- You mean like instead of like fake overscanning
0:47:56and then I'll review it. - Yeah, exactly.
0:47:58Make sure that it's actually showing.
0:47:58- I think I have it correct.
0:48:00I haven't tested anything that can verify on the edges, but.
0:48:03- Well, you know how you can tell
0:48:04whether you have it correct?
0:48:05Calibration app.
0:48:07It's like the first thing they're gonna do is like,
0:48:08hey, can you see all the pixels of a 1080 in a 4K picture,
0:48:12or is it cutting off the stuff around the border
0:48:14because you have fake overscan on it?
0:48:16- All right, send me the name or a link to an Apple TV app
0:48:21that you think I should try, and I will give it a shot.
0:48:24but I really can't, I don't think I'm gonna spend a day
0:48:28on it, that seems like a lot.
0:48:29- Well, I say a day 'cause, you know, whatever.
0:48:32But it could turn into a day depending on how obsessed
0:48:35you get about it.
0:48:36- Let me guess, not terribly obsessed.
0:48:38Also, Marco, there's an easy way to fix this problem.
0:48:41- Stop caring?
0:48:42- Well, that's the most easy way to fix it,
0:48:44the second most easy way, and by the way,
0:48:46I highly recommend that, it's wonderful, ignorance is less.
0:48:50(laughing)
0:48:50- Or have terrible vision like Casey,
0:48:52where you can't tell what's going on anyway.
0:48:53That's also an easier fix, but it also affects other parts of your life.
0:48:57Take your glasses off. Everything looks great.
0:48:59But no, the second easiest way to fix this is to tell Jon that you have three dozen bagels
0:49:06of various varieties that are all on the approved bagel list, and all he has to do is come pick them up from your house.
0:49:12Oh, and by the way, fix a TV. Jon has free time. He can do it.
0:49:15Yeah, that seems reasonable. I would do it for three dozen bagels.
0:49:18Problem solved.
0:49:19All right, so you happy with it?
0:49:22Again, I've only had like one night to watch it so far.
0:49:25But so far, yes.
0:49:27It is not as dramatic of a change as I would have guessed.
0:49:31Maybe if we went all the way to 65, it might have been.
0:49:35If you went from a crappy LCD to this, it would be.
0:49:37You're just used to black levels that are reasonable anyway.
0:49:40But I mean, I feel, although, obviously I'm way more sensitive to this than most people,
0:49:44but when I went from my previous Panasonic Plasma to my current Panasonic Plasma, I was
0:49:49startled by how much better the black levels improved.
0:49:51Just like when you turn it on it's got like a logo like whatever on a black background
0:49:56and I could tell wow this is you know in my opinion quote unquote dramatically better
0:50:00than my previous plasma but if you had gone from LCD to OLED and you turn on the LCD and
0:50:05it's just you know like whatever Samsung and then a black background and this thing it
0:50:08turns it on it says LG in a black background you would be startled by exactly how black
0:50:12it is but going from plasma maybe not as startling to you maybe you don't notice much although
0:50:16I have to say, your plasma is old enough that it is still several generations behind the
0:50:22best plasmas got before plasmas went away.
0:50:24So right, because they got so big, I couldn't upgrade.
0:50:27Yeah.
0:50:28Yeah.
0:50:29But like, yeah.
0:50:30And also, like, I've seen very little 4K content on it so far, because there isn't that like,
0:50:35right now, the only way I have to get 4K in there is the built in Netflix and Amazon apps.
0:50:39The Amazon app, I had a very hard time getting it to show me anything in 4K.
0:50:44The Grand Tour.
0:50:45No, it showed me Grand Tour in HDR,
0:50:49but 1080p for some reason.
0:50:50Like I couldn't get it to set me up to 4K.
0:50:52I don't know why, maybe it's the settings.
0:50:54I looked in the settings, couldn't find anywhere.
0:50:58I was able to see real 4K with Netflix.
0:51:01I watched a little bit of House of Cards.
0:51:04And so that was nice.
0:51:05But House of Cards is a pretty dreary gray show.
0:51:09(laughs)
0:51:10So like the--
0:51:11- In so many ways.
0:51:12- Yes, exactly.
0:51:13(laughs)
0:51:14So I wasn't able to really see like, you know,
0:51:17what is like a beautiful nature scene?
0:51:19Like I want like the stuff they show on the demo reels
0:51:22in Best Buy, like all like the beautiful nature scene.
0:51:24- You need planet earth, just go get, oh well.
0:51:27- I have planet earth, but I don't know how to get it in 4K.
0:51:30- Yeah, the other thing is that you should look,
0:51:33go to one of those viewing distance calculators.
0:51:35It could be that your viewing distance
0:51:38and your television size is such that
0:51:40you're gonna have difficulty discerning 4K versus 1080
0:51:44at that combination. So you're saying I should have gotten the 75. Yeah, well, you have to
0:51:49use one of those calculators to see, but I was surprised when I did the tape measure
0:51:52thing to see like here's where I sit on my couch and here's how far away my television
0:51:55is. Yeah, yeah. I would have to step up to bigger than 55 to really get the benefit of
0:52:014K. I mean, not that it matters, like you don't have a choice anymore essentially. You're
0:52:04going to get a 4K TV whether you want it or not, which is fine, but all I'm saying is
0:52:08that don't get hung up on the 4K too much until you've done that measurement to see,
0:52:13my eye even resolve the difference in dot pitch essentially between 1080 and 4K at this
0:52:19size television at this distance?
0:52:21Well, and it isn't just about being able to resolve individual pixels. You can look at
0:52:28the screen of an iPhone 7 and then next to it an iPhone 7 Plus. The 7 Plus screen has
0:52:33a much higher DPI and the 7 Plus screen looks better. And you might not be able to identify
0:52:40"Oh, I can see pixels on this one and this one I can't."
0:52:43I can't really see them on either of them, but--
0:52:45- 7+ is non-native res, though.
0:52:47Maybe you're just responding to the blurring.
0:52:49And the aliasing.
0:52:50(laughing)
0:52:52- Yeah, maybe, who knows, probably not.
0:52:53But anyways, and there's also HDR,
0:52:56the different contrast ratios,
0:52:58so there's a huge amount of improvement
0:53:00to picture quality here that was not just the resolution.
0:53:04- Yeah, the frame rate and color range,
0:53:06potential frame rate and color range differences
0:53:08or what you want, although a lot of 4K content,
0:53:10especially like on Netflix,
0:53:11is also very heavily compressed, so, you know,
0:53:14not that you're gonna run out and buy a Blu-ray player,
0:53:16but if you really wanted to see
0:53:17what this television could do,
0:53:18Blu-ray is your highest quality,
0:53:20the highest quality video that you can bring to your home
0:53:23still comes on a plastic disc, which is sad, but true.
0:53:26- But is there 4K Blu-ray, is that a thing?
0:53:28- Mm-hmm.
0:53:29- Really, I didn't know that.
0:53:31Can the PS4 non-pro do that?
0:53:34- I have no idea.
0:53:36- Ah.
0:53:37I don't have a 4K TV and I have no idea.
0:53:39That's one of the things keeping me away from 4K
0:53:41is I realize I have to just rip out my old setup
0:53:43'cause I'm pretty sure my receiver,
0:53:44maybe it has 4K pass through on one of its inputs
0:53:47or whatever, but I just have to start over.
0:53:49- Like 40 people in the chat just said no, no, no, no.
0:53:53None of the PS4s can do this.
0:53:54No, please don't.
0:53:55Oh my God, no, no, no.
0:53:57So apparently I have to get an Xbox One SX1X,
0:54:00but I don't know what that is.
0:54:02- No, don't.
0:54:03Or you could just get a Blu-ray player.
0:54:04They're pretty cheap and you can get a good one.
0:54:06- The Blu-ray players are pieces of crap.
0:54:07I hate them so much.
0:54:09I hate like, just the Blu-ray spec is the worst thing
0:54:12that has ever happened to movies.
0:54:13- True, everyone hates it, but it's still,
0:54:16if you want to get like 100 and something gigabytes
0:54:18of the highest quality video of your favorite movie,
0:54:22I mean, at the very least you gotta get the Blu-ray
0:54:23and then rip it on your Mac and then find a way
0:54:26to play it losslessly off of whatever device you put it on,
0:54:28which I also still haven't mastered
0:54:29because of the 24 frames per second cadence problem,
0:54:32as previously discussed.
0:54:33Although, someone did mention this Plex VEL
0:54:35for the PS3 and when I revisited it
0:54:37and I saw Plex was already installed on my PS3,
0:54:39I think I already tried it, but Plex changes fast,
0:54:41so maybe it got fixed, I don't know.
0:54:42- I mean, the good thing is, again,
0:54:43this fall, when the Apple TV 4K presumably exists,
0:54:47I have a feeling that's gonna be my answer to this.
0:54:49I think I'm just gonna buy 4K stuff on iTunes
0:54:52and call it a day.
0:54:53- Yeah, you hope they have it for sale.
0:54:54- I know, I really hope they have it.
0:54:56I also, I kinda hope that I can maybe upgrade
0:54:59some things I've already bought.
0:55:00I bought Planet Earth 2 on iTunes,
0:55:03And I know that is available in 4K somewhere.
0:55:06And I would hate to have to rebuy the whole thing
0:55:11at an undiscounted new price to just get that,
0:55:14but I probably would anyway, 'cause it's so good.
0:55:16(laughs)
0:55:18That's something, if you really wanna show off 4K,
0:55:20you need bright nature scenes.
0:55:22Or even just, I wanna see the Apple TV screensavers in 4K.
0:55:26- Yeah, I was thinking that earlier.
0:55:27- They're gonna look amazing.
0:55:29- I don't think the source video is 4K, though.
0:55:31I've watched it on my Mac.
0:55:32- Oh, I've had issues. - Are you sure?
0:55:32- It looks so great.
0:55:33I think it's just 1080.
0:55:34Like when you run aerial,
0:55:36the aerial screen saver on your Mac,
0:55:37I'm always struck by how,
0:55:38on the 5K iMac anyway,
0:55:39I'm like, "Ooh, that's blurry."
0:55:40Like this looks much better on my TV.
0:55:41- Really? - 'Cause my TV is 1080
0:55:43and my 5K iMac is, you know,
0:55:45whatever giant resolution it is.
0:55:46- Well, that doesn't mean that the source is not 4K.
0:55:49That just means that Apple is not publishing
0:55:52more than 1080 worth of, you know, streams.
0:55:54- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:55:55I'm just saying like, are they gonna quote on,
0:55:56are they gonna remaster it?
0:55:57Is it gonna go back to the red 8k footage or whatever the stuff was taken from and remake all those videos?
0:56:02also, if you
0:56:05happen to see the back of a truck roll by Marco from what I can tell grand tours between 20 and 30 gigs for
0:56:124k and and there are trucks that have it
0:56:15But how do I get them onto my TV in a way that actually can play 4k?
0:56:19If you're gonna see 4k content, please don't make it the grand tour. I know that's
0:56:234k old man wrinkles
0:56:26No, no, no, I agree, I agree. I'm just trying to think of something that you would potentially,
0:56:32at least slightly enjoy, and typically is well shot and pretty. Yes, I understand your
0:56:36point about the old man wrinkles and you're right, but I mean, generally speaking, it's
0:56:41visually a nice looking show. Well, anyways, to get it on your TV, well, why not do, can
0:56:47you do 4, you can do 4K over HDMI, although usually it's 30 frames per second, except
0:56:52in this case, that'd be fine.
0:56:54I mean, I'm pretty sure that there is a new HDMI spec that this TV supports that does
0:56:584K 60, I think.
0:56:59Oh, there you go.
0:57:00I don't know.
0:57:01So do it with your – play it with your computer.
0:57:02Yeah, it's going to be fine.
0:57:03You have a – what version of HDMI?
0:57:05I'm assuming as well.
0:57:06I don't know.
0:57:07But I would look it up before I spent the money on it instead of after.
0:57:10You don't understand.
0:57:12I got approval that I – I believed I had a narrow window of opportunity.
0:57:17Well, here's the thing.
0:57:19But what Marco did is like, look, if any TV is going to support all the things, make it
0:57:24the most expensive one.
0:57:25And it's essentially what you did.
0:57:26You didn't get the most expensive one because you avoided that weird soundbar crap and everything,
0:57:29which I agree is not a good idea.
0:57:31But that's really all you can do.
0:57:34The problem is though, sometimes you look at the most expensive one and it still doesn't
0:57:38have support for the latest whatever that's just about to come out.
0:57:40And so you're like, "Okay, I can't buy a TV this year.
0:57:43I gotta wait till next year."
0:57:44But I think you're probably safe.
0:57:45Yeah, because it seems like that the 4K world has pretty much reached the point that it's
0:57:52safe to buy it.
0:57:53Close.
0:57:54Like, would you?
0:57:55Well, it's close.
0:57:56I mean, it's the same reason a lot of people give bad reviews to this TV.
0:58:00It's like, "Well, it's the best picture quality we've ever seen, but it costs a
0:58:02whole jillion dollars."
0:58:03And obviously, that's not a barrier for you, but for other people, it's like, "Maybe
0:58:08wait one more year, two more years for the same quality television to come down from
0:58:14the middle of the pack or whatever, right?
0:58:16And the other thing with the smart TV stuff is over the years, a lot of that LG smart
0:58:20TV stuff, like I don't know if they weren't using enough RAM or slower processors or whatever,
0:58:24but that has gotten faster too.
0:58:26And it's like when it first came out, well, it kind of works, but in two years presumably
0:58:30they'll put better chips in their TVs and it will get faster, and it has.
0:58:34So I think you bought the earliest you could possibly buy and still get all the things,
0:58:40all you had to sacrifice for was a little bit of money and some yelling from your spouse.
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1:00:13Before we leave the TV topic, I'll take one other brief...
1:00:21I don't know why I bother, but brief run at trying to convince you/the audience to invest
1:00:29in a multi-channel audio solution.
1:00:32I know you think stereo is just fine.
1:00:34I know you think you don't need a subwoofer and left and right channel is fine.
1:00:40I mean, the way I was going to try to convince you was to think about how concerning it is
1:00:46when viewing an LCD screen in non-native res, but that is now an outdated analogy, because
1:00:52as you were just saying with the 7+, if you make the pixels small enough it doesn't matter,
1:00:55but there's no equivalent to making the pixels small enough in the world of audio.
1:00:59So lots of these shows that you like, including probably House of Cards, have a 5.1 mix.
1:01:08They have six channels of audio, maybe they have seven, I don't know, but they have multi-channel
1:01:12audio.
1:01:13That's what they're putting out, and some of them don't have a stereo mix, so you have
1:01:17to take that 5.1 and downmix it through some voodoo into, you know, Dolby ProLogic or something,
1:01:24into a stereo mix, and that adds stuff.
1:01:27It adds artifacts and weirdnesses that are not there.
1:01:29Like you're taking—someone did—
1:01:30I mean, hang on.
1:01:32What doesn't have a stereo mix?
1:01:33Like, whenever I've, like, ripped DVDs and stuff, there's always a stereo track.
1:01:37things that fall off the back of trucks sometimes don't have stereo mixes to give just one example
1:01:42Like most of the stuff I watch is legal like almost everything I watch is on the Apple TV
1:01:47And do I when I rip my own blu-rays?
1:01:50I don't put a stereo mix on them sometimes they animate things sometimes don't have stereo sometimes
1:01:54They'll be like stereo Japanese and 5.1 English, but no stereo English
1:01:58I don't know about iTunes, but all I'm saying is like the 5.1 mix is available right and a
1:02:04reasonable 5.1 setup
1:02:06with a 5.1 mix going straight to it sounds better than stereo. If you
1:02:12don't have places for speakers I can kind of understand that. We don't. But I
1:02:16think you do. You've got a big room. It's great that room. Let me tell you about
1:02:20your house, Marco. I think you can find, I mean I found places in my totally awful
1:02:27should never have any kind of television in a carriage house weird thing. It makes,
1:02:32I didn't think it would be a big deal either. I held off doing it forever. I have some fairly cheap
1:02:38cruddy 5.1 speakers. It sounds so much better to have dedicated left, right, back,
1:02:45you know, center channel. It's a big difference. I would encourage you to, if you, I mean, I know
1:02:53you don't care that much about movies, but these days TV shows have 5.1 mixes. It makes a difference.
1:02:595.1, I mean it's like Games of Thrones or something.
1:03:01A 5.1 mix with a subwoofer of a good TV show is just plain better than stereo.
1:03:07Consider it.
1:03:08It's not like you've done nothing to preclude it.
1:03:10You didn't buy a TV with a weird soundbar, which is like the worst of like let's just
1:03:13forget about multi-channel and just do some weird stuff up front and try to fake it out.
1:03:17I think you have the room, especially with these very tiny speakers.
1:03:20Like mine are very small, like I don't know how big they are.
1:03:23They're like the size of a big iPhone kind of speakers.
1:03:25You're like, "Oh, those can't possibly sound good."
1:03:28They're wired, they're passive wired, you know, they don't need to be plugged in anymore,
1:03:32they're not Bluetooth or any sort of other weird thing.
1:03:35You can get those speakers for a reasonable price and hide the subwoofer somewhere in
1:03:39the corner and it sounds awesome.
1:03:41Consider it.
1:03:42You know, I don't think that either Marco or I is denying that it's better.
1:03:46It's not that we're saying it's not better.
1:03:49It's just, and now I'll speak for myself, I would love to have that setup, but it's
1:03:55not worth the energy to me to make it happen because to do it right I would have to put
1:04:00like wires under the floor and and you don't always have to you just have to be a little
1:04:05bit creative like I don't have wires under my floor or through my ceiling right but you
1:04:10can you can find ways to like the wires are smaller than you think they are and you can
1:04:15be creative with where you route them and I don't think Marco would even have to be
1:04:18that creative and worst case Marco can throw money at this problem and actually get wireless
1:04:22ones because then you don't have to worry about it.
1:04:25If you want to spend more money than I was willing to spend on it, because I was like,
1:04:28"I'm not going to spend a lot of money on a 5.1 system.
1:04:30I don't even know if I like this, but since I'm getting all this stuff, I might as well
1:04:33try it."
1:04:34And I bought the cheapest one I possibly could.
1:04:35It was well rated.
1:04:36They said, "If you want to spend a couple hundred bucks and get six speakers and a subwoofer,
1:04:42do this."
1:04:43And I did that, and I was amazed.
1:04:45And they're very small, and so I'm not planning on replacing them with fancier, more expensive
1:04:48ones.
1:04:49Marco's excuse was he was tired of hooking up all that stuff moving from apartment to apartment
1:04:53But he's been in this house for a long time now so that excuse doesn't work
1:04:55The other excuse is it doesn't work in his doesn't work in his room
1:04:58But you know again this would take more than a day
1:05:01I feel like I need to map out some some wire routes
1:05:05Where to put them in places where you wouldn't notice them and hops wouldn't eat them, and it would be just fine
1:05:10Hops doesn't eat speakers
1:05:13My dog eats everything so now I'm mapping my dog onto all dogs
1:05:18"You can't put wires in a house, the dog will eat them!"
1:05:20(laughing)
1:05:21Hopps will lick them.
1:05:23- Yeah, Hopps will look at them and back away slowly
1:05:25'cause he's scared of them.
1:05:27So yeah, I mean, and Casey's right,
1:05:31I never said that surround is not good or better.
1:05:35Like surround, I had surround for a long time.
1:05:38Granted, this was a long time ago.
1:05:40You know, I stopped hooking up the surround speakers
1:05:43at least 10 years ago, and the speaker set
1:05:47that they were part of, I don't even own anymore.
1:05:50So, it died long ago.
1:05:51So, I know it's good.
1:05:55But again, I'm gonna have to pull a Casey here
1:05:58and say, I just don't care.
1:06:01Because most of the benefit is for movies.
1:06:05- But TV shows are in 5.1 now, is what I'm saying?
1:06:07- I know, I know.
1:06:09But what I care about is the sound should sound good
1:06:15and clear, and it should be usable to fill the room
1:06:20with music when I want music in the room.
1:06:22And a standard stereo set works great for that.
1:06:26I should also point out, I don't have a receiver.
1:06:30I drive the speakers currently with a stereo,
1:06:33with a little tiny stereo speaker amp
1:06:35that is about the size of like four decks of cards stacked.
1:06:39Like, it's a really small speaker amp,
1:06:42one of these little like class D things.
1:06:44And it's great.
1:06:46And it has a remote support,
1:06:47so the Apple TV controls the volume on it,
1:06:50like the Ritz remote, 'cause it learned the IR thing.
1:06:52It's a great, simple setup.
1:06:55The TV stand that we have is a non-negotiable
1:07:00piece of furniture with the Historical Society.
1:07:02- I know, discussions are ongoing
1:07:03with the Historical Commission regarding the receiver.
1:07:06- There is no receiver that exists
1:07:09that I have been able to find that will fit in this stand.
1:07:12- Why don't I make a receiver the same size and shape
1:07:14as say an old Bell telephone.
1:07:16- They don't make them that small.
1:07:19Even the low end receivers have these giant cases now
1:07:22because they use the same case design
1:07:24whether you have like two or seven channels,
1:07:27they just put like different numbers of cards in them.
1:07:29- So I think the solution here that we've learned
1:07:31is I just need to install a surround system
1:07:34and a receiver in the beach house
1:07:36and then have Tiff watch a movie on it late at night
1:07:38and then she'll send you a text that says,
1:07:39okay, we can get a receiver.
1:07:40- Maybe, yeah, we'll have to play with that.
1:07:42- Start your research now.
1:07:43But yeah, so, (laughs)
1:07:46yeah, like I am totally fine with our basic stereo setup.
1:07:51It's a really good stereo setup
1:07:52because the speakers are my favorites, the Paradigm Adams.
1:07:57I love the Paradigm Adam speakers
1:07:59because they're like 200 bucks each,
1:08:01so it's like about 400 bucks a pair,
1:08:03and they are the best bookshelf speakers I've ever heard.
1:08:06And I've heard many that it costs way more than that
1:08:09and they don't sound better.
1:08:10Like the Adams embarrass everything else
1:08:12I've ever tried.
1:08:13Like they are just so damn good.
1:08:15- You can use them as your left and right channel
1:08:17and then only by the backs and the center and the subwoofer.
1:08:20- Here's the problem now.
1:08:22The new TV is just bigger enough
1:08:25that the Adams no longer fit on the stand next to it.
1:08:28- Oh no.
1:08:28(laughing)
1:08:30- So I have to either get those little pole speaker stands
1:08:34for them, which I don't love that option
1:08:36because that seemed like it would be,
1:08:39to get something top heavy in a house
1:08:41that often has children running around
1:08:42and it does not seem like a good idea.
1:08:45So I don't love that option.
1:08:46Also, those stands are really expensive.
1:08:49And you can get new speakers for not that much more money
1:08:53than those stands.
1:08:54So I'm looking into floor-standing options now,
1:08:58but it's very early in the search.
1:09:00- Just screw some tiny little wings onto the edges
1:09:02of the TV stand.
1:09:04That'll fit.
1:09:05- But yeah, right.
1:09:07Well, if I can somehow drag them behind a truck
1:09:10for a while first and like spray paint them in weird ways.
1:09:13It might matter. - It's gonna be distressed.
1:09:14- Yeah, yeah, distress it in like the most hipster way
1:09:17possible and then it'll look right.
1:09:19- Talked about that on the upcoming rectifs just for you.
1:09:21- Awesome. (laughs)
1:09:23But yeah, so now I'm looking into like floor speakers,
1:09:26but I'm probably just gonna get more Paradigm.
1:09:29Paradigm makes floor speakers too and they're similarly,
1:09:32from what all the reviews say, they are amazing values
1:09:35and amazing sound quality for what you're paying, so.
1:09:38- So I take it you didn't like measure the top surface
1:09:40of your table and the width of the television.
1:09:42You didn't do this math beforehand,
1:09:44so you got it, you took it out of the box,
1:09:45you put it on there, okay, let me put the speakers back on,
1:09:47and you're like, oh, they don't fit.
1:09:49(laughing)
1:09:50- Pretty much, I did the math a year ago.
1:09:52Like with the TVs that were out a year,
1:09:54when I first started doing all this research,
1:09:56I did it then, and I knew then that I could get
1:09:59a 55 inch TV and that it would intrude
1:10:02roughly halfway into my speaker on either side.
1:10:04So I knew this was probably--
1:10:06- Oh, so you already knew that you had a,
1:10:08You ever see I've seen this in a lot of people's houses two possible solutions
1:10:12I've seen in real life one put the speaker slightly behind the television to put the speakers in front of the television
1:10:18I've seen both those solutions both of them boggle my mind. Those are both terrible solutions
1:10:22They think like this is fine like and I can't decide which is worse blocking the television or having speakers firing directly into the back
1:10:30Yeah, that's I don't have a hard time figuring that out too I think I
1:10:36I mean, either way, you're making something suck terribly.
1:10:38So yeah, I don't know.
1:10:40- Are these bookshelf speakers that you love,
1:10:42are they super expensive?
1:10:43Let me look at them.
1:10:44- No, they're 200 bucks each.
1:10:45So a pair is 400 bucks.
1:10:46- I think we have different definitions of a super.
1:10:48(laughing)
1:10:50- For bookshelf speakers made by a company
1:10:52that is respected in the world of speakers,
1:10:55400 bucks for a pair is not incredibly expensive.
1:10:59- My whole set of speakers was like $400.
1:11:02It's six speakers for that price.
1:11:04(laughing)
1:11:04Speakers are kind of like watches, unfortunately.
1:11:08Where you think, if you're not a watch person,
1:11:11you don't really know how expensive watches are.
1:11:12And speakers are like, "Oh, I'm gonna buy some speakers.
1:11:14"How much could they cost?"
1:11:15Like, "What, is this filled with diamonds?"
1:11:17I don't know.
1:11:18(laughs)
1:11:19And those, you're right,
1:11:19those are cheap in the grand scheme of things.
1:11:21But I was thinking, "Oh, bookshelf speakers,
1:11:23"and Marco likes them.
1:11:24"Maybe they're, you know, 50 bucks each."
1:11:26Nope.
1:11:27(laughs)
1:11:27- Nope, sorry.
1:11:29But come on, for good speakers, that is not ridiculous.
1:11:33- It's not, you're right.
1:11:34It's not like they're $900 each,
1:11:36but when I hear bookshelf speakers,
1:11:38I start thinking like, oh, this is for people
1:11:40who don't wanna spend big money on fancy speakers.
1:11:43- No, 'cause I've had two pairs over the years.
1:11:46The second pair of them is on my desk.
1:11:48These are my computer speakers,
1:11:50'cause computer speakers are the biggest rip-off
1:11:52in the world. - Oh, they are the worst.
1:11:54- My entire time using a computer,
1:11:56ever since I have had a sound card,
1:11:59I have used regular speakers instead of computer speakers,
1:12:02'cause every time I've tried computer speakers,
1:12:04I have been dramatically disappointed by how crappy
1:12:07they sound compared to how much they cost.
1:12:09Regular, even cheap regular speakers.
1:12:11Like when I first started doing this,
1:12:14I just had like, it was like a little pioneer
1:12:16integrated stereo thing that I just had like in my room,
1:12:19like you know, with like the two speakers
1:12:20and the big unit in the middle that has like the cassette
1:12:22deck and the CD player all in one.
1:12:24And the whole thing was probably like 200 bucks.
1:12:26I just used those speakers as my computer speakers.
1:12:29And that sounded a million times better
1:12:30than anything else I'd ever heard.
1:12:31- How are you amplifying them?
1:12:33- You were going through the big receiver-y thing?
1:12:34- Yeah. - The big, eh.
1:12:36- Yeah, and the ones on my desk now,
1:12:37I have a second one of those tiny little
1:12:40Class D desktop amplifiers,
1:12:42and that amplifies them just fine.
1:12:44Like, there are better ways to amplify speakers,
1:12:47but they're all much larger,
1:12:48and so, you know, you can do it.
1:12:51I've tried powered monitors,
1:12:53and powered monitors sound okay,
1:12:57but these paradigm atoms, again,
1:12:58they just kick their butts.
1:12:59Like, it's not even close.
1:13:01They just sound a million times better,
1:13:03And a pair of powered desktop speakers
1:13:07is not that much cheaper than these paradigms.
1:13:11You're getting into the $400 territory
1:13:13pretty fast with those, and they really don't sound good.
1:13:17Even good ones from brands like Klipsch and KEF
1:13:21and Bose and B&O, brands that have a lot of fans,
1:13:26and I know I shouldn't have put Bose in that list,
1:13:28I'm sorry, but it has a lot of fans.
1:13:31I've tried a lot of these.
1:13:32In some cases, I've bought and returned them
1:13:34'cause they were so bad.
1:13:36For whatever reason, there seems to be very little
1:13:39correlation between how much you pay for a set of speakers
1:13:43and how good they sound.
1:13:44Everyone has their one thing that,
1:13:47"Oh, I bought this one pair of these 60 years ago
1:13:50"and they sound great."
1:13:51And that's, once you find that,
1:13:53it's really hard to try anything else
1:13:56because you try something else and you get it
1:13:59and it's on the worse end of the spectrum.
1:14:02I get the feeling you can, you know,
1:14:03anybody can slap together some drivers
1:14:05into a box of particle board
1:14:07and say they're a speaker manufacturer, and it shows.
1:14:10- I've been surprised by the speaker system.
1:14:14I got some Logitech speaker, you know,
1:14:15typical desktop speaker, computer speakers
1:14:18for my PlayStation 4, and I've gone through a series
1:14:21of quote-unquote computer speakers on my Mac,
1:14:23and they all sound terrible,
1:14:23including the ones that I'm currently using,
1:14:25but I don't use them for anything.
1:14:26They're fine.
1:14:27They were cheap and they were okay.
1:14:31But for the PS4, again I'm playing games there which is mostly like gunfire and explosions.
1:14:37I was surprised at how good the 2.1 set up, two stereo speakers and a comically large
1:14:45subwoofer to get all those explosions to sound good.
1:14:48It makes a big difference when for a PS4 that you're not playing on a TV, you have a gaming
1:14:53monitor, 4K gaming monitor, 2.1 Logitech speaker system, and a PS4.
1:15:00So much more impressive than just a PS4 hooked up to someone's cruddy LCD TV playing through
1:15:05the TV speakers.
1:15:06I don't know if I can wholeheartedly recommend the product because it's kind of expensive
1:15:11and the power button flakes out, but I did buy a second one.
1:15:14When I got my PS4 Pro and I shifted my old PS4 up to my son's room, I got a second one
1:15:20of the exact same speaker set.
1:15:22knowing that the power button is going to eventually flake out.
1:15:26You just have to wiggle it the right way, and then it's fine.
1:15:28That is saying something.
1:15:29If you're willing to rebuy the same thing a second time,
1:15:32that does say a lot.
1:15:34Yeah, and again, this is after years and years
1:15:37of terrible computer speakers, often by Logitech,
1:15:39often by the same exact company.
1:15:41And I realized how much I liked them when I went to get speakers.
1:15:43I'm like, oh no, what if they don't make this anymore?
1:15:45Because that's always the problem with computer speakers.
1:15:46Like, if you find a set that you like and they break,
1:15:49they don't make them anymore.
1:15:50But they do still make them.
1:15:52and I bought a second one and so, you know,
1:15:54when mine eventually break, I will scavenge the new ones
1:15:57from my son's room and use them.
1:15:59- You know what's awesome about buying regular speakers?
1:16:01First of all, they're for sale for more than like a year,
1:16:03and then second of all, they last forever.
1:16:06They really, you know, you can get speakers
1:16:08that last 50 years.
1:16:09Like, you know, eventually the cones often dry out
1:16:11and have problems, but like, they last a long time
1:16:15because they're just passive devices that they don't,
1:16:18at least if they're, usually if they're really good,
1:16:21There's no electronics in them.
1:16:23There are circuits inside of them,
1:16:26there's like the crossovers and stuff,
1:16:27but there's not much there and they just last.
1:16:31And it's like the Mac Pro thing.
1:16:34Like my iMac is having all these weird problems now
1:16:36and I'm gonna have to upgrade the entire computer
1:16:39if I want an upgrade,
1:16:40but you get a decent pair of speakers
1:16:42and if the amp flakes out, you can just replace the amp.
1:16:47If you want bigger speakers
1:16:48but you already have an awesome amp,
1:16:50you can replace the speakers.
1:16:51Like, having components is, turns out, really nice.
1:16:54Which, like, all of our parents discovered 40 years ago.
1:16:58- Yeah, speaking of my dad, who is a huge stereo file,
1:17:02and you know this because he believes in vinyl.
1:17:04Anyway, he has a set of Dalquist speakers that I,
1:17:08he tells me were in his dorm room
1:17:10when obviously he was effectively a kid.
1:17:13Now, I'm sure the cones have been replaced on these,
1:17:16you know, and presumably whatever minimal electronics
1:17:19in there have been replaced from time to time. But to your point, Marco, I mean, these are
1:17:2340-ish year old speakers that he is still using to this day. Not as his primary speakers
1:17:31on his nice stereo, but as the surround sound system and his accessory setup, if you will,
1:17:38his second setup. So yeah, this stuff lasts forever.
1:17:41>> The other thing I find about speakers, though, is they're very often ugly. Like,
1:17:47But I wouldn't want them sitting next to my computer.
1:17:49For TV, usually you can hide them, but some of them, especially the fancier they get,
1:17:54like even the boring ones, they're just plain ugly.
1:17:57I don't know why speakers need to look like anything except for like the world's most
1:18:01understated rectangular solid.
1:18:04Like why do they need to be weird shaped or have things poking out of them or be shiny
1:18:08or draw any attention to themselves at all?
1:18:14And even the ones that are supposed to look like boring little cubes always have some
1:18:16little flourish or chamfer or other thing to make the boxes look weird and I wish they
1:18:23didn't do that.
1:18:24Well, this is another reason why I love my Paradigm Atoms because they come with, you
1:18:29know, like the black cloth grills that you can just stick on there and then it just looks
1:18:35like a boring speaker.
1:18:37Like it's a black cloth rectangle sticking on the front of a wooden rectangular solid.
1:18:43Like that's it.
1:18:44It's very simple, it comes in like four different colors.
1:18:47Like it is, again, it's possible to do great speakers.
1:18:51- It's got the wood grain if I'm looking
1:18:52at the right one here.
1:18:53I can't, 'cause I would not put that next to my computer.
1:18:56- I have it next to my computer, it looks great.
1:18:58And you can also get it without,
1:18:59you can get it in different colors, different finishes.
1:19:02- Yeah, they look nice with them without the speaker covers
1:19:04in the front, very simple.
1:19:06That would be fine, but, and they are just normal
1:19:08rectangular solids, but the wood grain, I don't like.
1:19:11That's part of the reason my current, what are these,
1:19:13I don't even know what the hell they are.
1:19:15They're probably like creative, yeah,
1:19:16they are creative, these terrible creative speakers
1:19:18I have hooked up to my computer.
1:19:21They look nice.
1:19:22They don't sound like right, but they look okay.
1:19:24(laughing)
1:19:25- I will say, one of the most attractive speaker things
1:19:28I've ever seen was computer speakers.
1:19:30It was, what was, John, you would know,
1:19:32like those clear plastic carbon carton sticks
1:19:35with the big like lamp thing as the subwoofer.
1:19:38- Sound sticks with the big jellyfish subwoofer.
1:19:40- Yeah, yeah.
1:19:41I like the subwoofer. That looked cool. Like the subwoofer did look like a jellyfish and
1:19:46it was really neat and clear or whatever. But the sound sticks, uh, and like, I thought,
1:19:52too many holes.
1:19:53Well, I still, I honestly, I'm not even sure I've ever even heard those. I have no idea
1:19:59how they sound, but I honestly think like that should go down in history of computer
1:20:03industrial design. Like that was so, that's such a great design.
1:20:07I like the cube speakers better in terms of visuals.
1:20:10Like, you remember the G4 Cube came with, like, these two little round balls that were
1:20:15just a single, single little cone in them.
1:20:19Same kind of visual language of clear, but you could see the electronics.
1:20:23Oh, I think I know what you mean.
1:20:25Yeah.
1:20:26They nicely match the thing.
1:20:27The Soundsticks always just seem so—they still look like giant octopus tentacles.
1:20:30I know people—I think—is it Dan Morin?
1:20:33I think some people we both know got those back in the day and still use them and still
1:20:38have them. To your point about component stuff, it's like, "Oh, what other stuff do you have
1:20:42from the era of the G4 Cube that you're still using?" But if they're just plain old speakers,
1:20:46you can just keep using them because they're speakers and they work with every Mac that
1:20:49you buy and everything works out.
1:20:51That's the thing. So many of like, and even getting back to receivers and stuff, so many
1:20:56of the receivers these days, the receiver is integrating certain HDMI standards that
1:21:02that go out of date quickly, certain,
1:21:04maybe it has network streaming standards,
1:21:07maybe it has Bluetooth or AirPlay,
1:21:10or integrates with Pandora.
1:21:11I mean, even my new TV now has dedicated hardware buttons
1:21:16on the remote for Amazon Video and Netflix,
1:21:19and that's probably not gonna age that well
1:21:21in the grand scheme of things if TV still lasts 10 years.
1:21:24And it's nice to keep things,
1:21:27you give up on some of the cool integration
1:21:30of having things all in one,
1:21:31this one box does all these different things
1:21:34and has integrated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, all this stuff.
1:21:37You give up on some of that
1:21:38if you go the separate component route.
1:21:40There's usually still a way to achieve it.
1:21:41You just might need multiple parts.
1:21:43But I feel like long-term,
1:21:46you're setting yourself up for a better outcome.
1:21:48And again, this is again why I really want to wait
1:21:51for the Mac Pro tower
1:21:53rather than buying the iMac Pro this winter.
1:21:56Because I like having separate components
1:21:58because most of the time in my life,
1:22:00have done things that way and the few times I haven't I've usually come to regret it.
1:22:05But you won't, you'll buy the iMac, bro.
1:22:07So the sound sticks are still available, by the way.
1:22:09They're still for sale.
1:22:10The sound sticks are apparently up to three.
1:22:12Sound Sticks 3 by Harman Kardon.
1:22:14Wait, really?
1:22:15170 bucks, you can order them right now?
1:22:17That's actually not that expensive for what that is.
1:22:19Yeah, I mean, I think they look cool.
1:22:21I've never heard them so I can't vouch for how good they sound compared to anything.
1:22:25I mean, you can look at it.
1:22:26I mean, you can see the components, like, "Well, there's that size driver for the subwoofer
1:22:29and there's these little tiny drivers for the left and right speakers and it is what
1:22:34it is.
1:22:35The other thing is I have a feeling this is probably a design that looks better in pictures
1:22:38than it does like in real life covered in dust and with the thing with the plastic faded
1:22:42and cracked and scratched.
1:22:43I bet the plastic holds up pretty well but I just don't like how it even looks in pictures.
1:22:46Like I like the subwoofer.
1:22:47I think that's a cute design but the sound sticks they look like octopus tentacles and
1:22:51I don't like the little cheerio life preserver bass thingies.
1:22:55Don't like them.
1:22:56Yeah I guess those little basses aren't that great either.
1:22:59You know you're ruining this for me.
1:23:00This is, why do I do a podcast?
1:23:01- Just get the subwoofer and keep it on your desk
1:23:03'cause of curiosity, but fill it with M&M's.
1:23:05Pour it down the little, you know.
1:23:07- That's the other funny part too is like,
1:23:09you put subwoofers usually out of sight.
1:23:12- Put them like on the floor.
1:23:13Like you're not supposed to have this anywhere
1:23:15where it's visible.
1:23:16- The thing about subwoofers is you can put them anywhere.
1:23:18Who's to say?
1:23:19You know, you put them out of sight
1:23:19'cause usually they're these big black, you know,
1:23:21cubes that you just wanna get rid of,
1:23:23but this one is so nice.
1:23:24Put it on your desk and you know,
1:23:26because humans cannot localize low frequency sound
1:23:28as well as high frequency sound.
1:23:30It doesn't matter where you put it.
1:23:33- I will say on that though,
1:23:35I greatly prefer just big speakers
1:23:38that have their own woofers
1:23:39that can produce the low frequencies well enough
1:23:42to the sound of little satellites
1:23:44and then one subwoofer somewhere in the room.
1:23:47- I have heard this from you before
1:23:48and I think your opinion of this
1:23:50is based on some very terrible 5.1 setups early on.
1:23:53- No, no, no, my opinion of this is based on liking music.
1:23:55That's what it is really.
1:23:57I totally agree with you that if what you're optimizing for
1:24:00is movies and TV sound,
1:24:02then having a subwoofer is cooler.
1:24:05Like it sounds cooler that way.
1:24:06Like you get more of like the big booms from explosions
1:24:08and stuff like that.
1:24:09But I don't like the way music sounds
1:24:12through that kind of setup.
1:24:13I think it sounds weird and unnatural
1:24:15and not how that was intended.
1:24:17I would rather have speakers that are pretty good
1:24:21at TV and movies and also really great at music
1:24:25than the opposite.
1:24:26I mean, you can choose your left and rights to be standalone left and right channels that
1:24:31can reproduce all the frequencies.
1:24:32I mean, your receiver usually controls like, you can control like the crossover, like what,
1:24:37you know, you could shift the cutoff of which frequencies go to the subwoofer for mixes
1:24:41that don't separately address it.
1:24:43But if you've got left and right channel speakers that can handle all the frequencies, you don't
1:24:47have to send anything to subwoofer in the case where you're just playing music.
1:24:50Although multi-channel music is a thing.
1:24:53Jason Snell's house I heard was a crowded house 5.1 mix. It's not
1:24:57everybody's thing but it is a thing. Thanks to our three sponsors this week
1:25:01Betterment, Audible, and Squarespace and we will see you next week.
1:25:07And now the show is over, maybe leave with me to begin
1:25:12Cause it was accidental, accidental, accidental, accidental
1:25:18John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:25:23Cause it was accidental, accidental, accidental, accidental
1:25:29And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:25:35And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:25:40S-C-A-S-O-Y-M-I-S-S-H-E-C-U-S-M-A-R-C-O-E-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-M-E-T-S-I-R-A-C
1:25:55USA, Syracuse, uh, it's Axing Out!
1:25:59Axing Out!
1:26:01Hey, they're gonna be like a channel, Axing Out!
1:26:05Axing Out!
1:26:07But, Axing Out!
1:26:09Do we have a multi-channel vinyl? 5.1 vinyl?
1:26:14They don't even have stereo!
1:26:16You just buy five records and you play them all at the same time.
1:26:18Like, what was it? The Flame Lips did a thing.
1:26:21The Flame Lips did a thing where you buy, wasn't it?
1:26:23wasn't it you buy two vinyl albums and you play them both at the same time?
1:26:26I have no idea. Or maybe they're CDs. Anyway.
1:26:30Let me like what I like. Let people enjoy things, Jon.
1:26:37I'm letting you enjoy things. I'm telling you you might enjoy a thing where you get to play
1:26:40two records at the same time. Double the fun, right? It's like double mint gum.
1:26:44And yeah, as part of the challenge is, you know, you like the ceremony, now you have a physical
1:26:49challenge where you have to drop the needle. You have to drop the needle on the beginning
1:26:53track in exactly the same spot exactly at the right time because you don't want the
1:26:55music to be out of sync.
1:26:58Was it Double Dare that had physical challenges? They actually phrased it as physical challenges.
1:27:05Yes, that was Double Dare. I was going to make that reference, but I didn't bother,
1:27:08but there you go. You got it.
1:27:09Are you proud of me, Jon?
1:27:10I am.
1:27:11All I want is for you to be proud of me, Daddy.
1:27:13Did you read that story, by the way, about Double Dare?
1:27:17And there was the big like, you know, inside story of Double Dare.
1:27:21I think there was a separate story about like the videophone that you get as a prize in
1:27:24Double Dare.
1:27:25I know exactly the videophone you're thinking of.
1:27:28I don't recall having seen the story about that.
1:27:32But I did read and freaking loved the oral history of Double Dare, which was actually
1:27:39written, which is a little weird.
1:27:40I mean, I guess it was, it was, it was oral history.
1:27:44Sounds like a written history.
1:27:45But nevertheless, it was,
1:27:48oh, I think there might have been
1:27:49an associated brief podcast,
1:27:50which I never bothered listening to.
1:27:51Maybe that's what it was.
1:27:52It doesn't matter.
1:27:53If you are a child, or if you were a child of the '80s
1:27:56and watched "Double Dare" on Nickelodeon,
1:27:58this is absolutely worth your time.
1:28:01It was a fantastic read.
1:28:03- And now you have to find that link for the show notes.
1:28:05- I already have it.
1:28:06This is my other job,
1:28:08other than being chief summarizer in chief.
1:28:10- I love "Double Dare."
1:28:11- "Double Dare" was the best.
1:28:12And that's the thing, I've actually said to people,
1:28:14I don't think I've ever said it on the show, but I've said to people in real life,
1:28:18because apparently this isn't real, but anyway, do you remember that when you were a kid,
1:28:23the grand prize from Double Dare was, as already mentioned, a video telephone,
1:28:30where you would get two of them, I believe, and you could put one in one person's house
1:28:33and one in the other person's house, and you would get like a postage stamp,
1:28:37and that's not much of an exaggeration, a postage stamp-sized image that had a frame rate
1:28:42of like one new image every five to 10 seconds.
1:28:46And that blew my mind when I was 10 or whatever.
1:28:50And now, in my pocket, I can have an HD call
1:28:56with anyone on the planet anywhere I am.
1:29:00I mean, the future's amazing.
1:29:01You know what else is amazing about the future,
1:29:03speaking of net neutrality?
1:29:05Net neutrality's pretty amazing.
1:29:06- Is it so amazing? - You should play for it.
1:29:08- I think it would be amazing if we maintain it.
1:29:10I think, I'm not sure the future's gonna be so amazing
1:29:12in that department.
1:29:13So true.
1:29:14So what's going on with this?
1:29:16Why do we care about that today as we record on Wednesday the 12th?
1:29:19Why don't I go through Net Neutrality all over again?
1:29:22I think people who don't know what it is or what we're talking about, there is a video.
1:29:29It's a video from Vi Hart explaining Net Neutrality in her unique way.
1:29:36It's actually an updated version of an older video, which gets us more towards why we're
1:29:41talking about this again, where she just took her old video and then bookended it by a preface
1:29:46and then the things that have changed.
1:29:48This is a battle that we thought we had, if not won, at least sort of got things moving
1:29:53in the right direction, but for a variety of depressing reasons, things are moving back
1:29:57in the wrong direction in these parts on seemingly all fronts, and Net Neutrality is no exception,
1:30:03so you get someone who used to be, what was it, a lawyer for Verizon or whatever, you
1:30:10You get some industry person in to come in and do something that most people in the United
1:30:14States don't want, which is roll back net neutrality to make it so that big corporations
1:30:19can charge different amounts of money for different customers of the internet instead
1:30:24of just being a common carrier, blah, blah, blah.
1:30:26Watch the video to have explained.
1:30:29The annoying thing about this is you get fatigued.
1:30:34How much do I have to hear about and care about net neutrality?
1:30:37we go through this all where we all got all up in a tizzy and everyone write your congressperson
1:30:41and it seems like we're doing that all the time and how many things can I possibly care
1:30:44about and I don't, you know, I've heard about net neutrality too much. I don't even care
1:30:49anymore. Just don't bother me. Or if you do want to do something about it, you're like,
1:30:53"Well, what do I do? I did a bunch of stuff last time. Do I do that same stuff again?"
1:30:57Ars Technica has a good article here entitled "How to Write a Meaningful FCC Comment Supporting
1:31:02net neutrality. Now, the depressed person in me who sees everything falling apart in
1:31:07his country these days thinks it doesn't matter how meaningful your comment to the FCC is,
1:31:13because the stupid Verizon lawyer who's running the thing is going to ignore it and do whatever
1:31:16the hell big corporations want, because he doesn't care what people want, he doesn't
1:31:19care what's good for long-term anything, all he cares about is screwing everything up.
1:31:23And that's exactly why he was appointed to his position. Anyway, but if you are not in
1:31:27that type of dark mood for the moment that you read this article, this will help you
1:31:31do the best that you can possibly do instead of just clicking a bunch of buttons and filling
1:31:35out this thing or how can you write a meaningful comment that has a chance of influencing things
1:31:40and who knows it kind of sort of worked last time before everything started moving backwards
1:31:44again and it might work this time so two links in the show notes one watch Vi Hart's video
1:31:50for it's not the best explanation of net neutrality because it's many faceted and she particularly
1:31:54you know a lot of times they pick an analogy like it's kind of like if this happened and
1:31:57And you know, in some ways it's better to just straight up explain it without analogy,
1:32:02but the analogy she uses is reasonably representative, even if it does gloss over a lot of things
1:32:07and there are other aspects of it.
1:32:08But anyway, watch that to have it explained, and it's fun and interesting.
1:32:11And if you already know what it is, but you feel fatigued by the idea of trying to battle
1:32:16against this again, give the "How to Write a Meaningful Comment" thing a read to see
1:32:21if you can do more than just check a box or put your name on a list or whatever, but actually
1:32:26pour out a little bit of your heart and your angst and even your anger in the most constructive
1:32:31way possible and, you know, do what you can do to fight the same fight that we continue
1:32:37to be fighting over and over and over and over and over again. There's also a great
1:32:42video, it's only about three and a half minutes from CGP Grey, that was from the last time
1:32:47we were all at this exact same rodeo. This one's from 2014, so maybe it wasn't the last
1:32:53time but you get my point. That is also very good. I've seen this by heart video
1:32:57or at least the the original iteration thereof probably also from 2014 which it
1:33:02is excellent as well. Yeah this it's it's important I think and well I was gonna
1:33:09say I think that anyone who really has any inkling as to what's going on that
1:33:14isn't paid by one of these big corporations will say net neutrality is
1:33:17the only way to go but you know then we elected who elected so obviously people
1:33:22think differently. So anyway, if you care about things like this podcast and you want to get it
1:33:28reasonably quickly and not have people get in the way of it, maybe talk to your representatives
1:33:32about net neutrality. Not that, by the way, a lot of the examples they give you of like,
1:33:36here's what could happen if we didn't have net neutrality. The difficulty is if you wanted to be
1:33:42like, if you wanted to actually extrapolate, like you had to put money on it, like what would
1:33:47actually happen if we go back to neutrality. It's such a sort of systemic boil the frog kind of
1:33:53thing that we're already halfway through to that it's difficult to convince people exactly how bad
1:33:59it would be. Like the things that we describe are like, "Oh, your podcast will download slowly."
1:34:03Yeah, that could happen, but in general, the powers that are lobbying behind this,
1:34:12They want the net not to be neutral. They're not that dumb. They would do it in the same way they've
1:34:17done everything else. How do we all of a sudden wake up and find ourselves with only one ISP
1:34:21choice in half the country? They did that slowly and insidiously by merging and lobbying to allow
1:34:27larger and larger companies to merge together. It's kind of like a thing like, "What do I care
1:34:30if Time Warner is purchased by whatever or this cable company buys that? I don't care. Whatever.
1:34:35I just want my TV." People don't care at that level. Slowly, these giant companies are doing
1:34:41things behind the scenes that is making people's lives, like that is closing the door on things
1:34:46that can make people's lives materially better. You could have faster internet access for less
1:34:50money. They're essentially taking away something that you never had, like progress essentially.
1:34:56And you don't know how cheap broadband is in the rest of the world and how other people have
1:35:00choices and how if you have a common carrier that people can actually compete based on price and
1:35:03features. If you've never experienced that, it's a lack of something like, "I've never known it
1:35:09it could be this way.
1:35:10Therefore, the lack of it doesn't make me feel
1:35:12like I'm losing anything, but you are, right?
1:35:14That's how they do it.
1:35:15And so if they made the net non-neutral
1:35:18and cut all these deals and extorted money from,
1:35:20as they've already done from Netflix,
1:35:21to get their bits to carry over the wires
1:35:23and start ups that you've never heard of
1:35:25and never will hear of
1:35:26or not allowed to enter against the big,
1:35:27like you will not notice,
1:35:29so most people will not notice the lack of things
1:35:31that you could have had,
1:35:32but that is really the worst effect of this stuff.
1:35:35Stuff that people, that you will never get
1:35:38because competition has been eliminated
1:35:42and people in the middle are extracting value
1:35:46from everybody else.
1:35:47And it's like, you may have like a mid-level malaise
1:35:51of like, oh, Comcast is all I can get and I hate Comcast,
1:35:53but it's like, oh, you know, I hate airlines.
1:35:55You know, airlines have a similar problem
1:35:56of monopoly and consolidation.
1:35:58But anyway, it's usually not as comically evil
1:36:02as like, I was watching my show and they turned it off
1:36:04and they're not gonna do that, right?
1:36:06they're going to do it in a much more insidious way.
1:36:09And they're gonna end up finding a way
1:36:11to continue to charge you more for worse service
1:36:14and make you feel powerless against it.
1:36:16And you were like, how did we even get here?
1:36:17And like Net Neutrality is like the last batch,
1:36:19literally the last one,
1:36:20'cause they've already got everything else
1:36:22that I just described.
1:36:23They're just like,
1:36:24and if we could just get that one last little bit
1:36:25and be able to be the gatekeeper for all internet content
1:36:28for the last mile for everybody.
1:36:30And we've already chased out all competition
1:36:33and consolidated our power structure.
1:36:35We just need this last little bit.
1:36:36That's why everyone is fighting for this tooth and nail.
1:36:38Because it's not as if we're fighting for some sort of utopia.
1:36:40We're just trying to hold onto the last shred of what we have in this country.
1:36:45And I'm sure people listening in other countries, it's better where you are.
1:36:48But as with many things in the US, for historical reasons and stupid governmental reasons, many
1:36:54things are terrible.
1:36:55And Internet access is one of them.
1:36:57And so, send help.
1:37:00Yeah, that's, I can't say, I can't add anything to that.
1:37:08That wouldn't be just dark and depressing.
1:37:11If you want to be optimistic, as people pointed out, like the previous head of the FCC was
1:37:14also an industry person and, I mean, you know, we did all the public comment and we did all
1:37:21this rallying and whatever, eventually we did, you know, we did get the result we wanted.
1:37:26Of course, that was a very different administration and that's where Marco gets depressed again
1:37:28and we all get depressed.
1:37:29Like, that was a different administration, but anyway, the fact that we have made progress
1:37:35on this in the past means it is not 100% impossible that we can't make progress on it in the future.
1:37:40And as we've learned, administrations change, right?
1:37:44Every 48 years.
1:37:46So even if we lose this one, we can still win the war.
1:37:51Unlike things like Supreme—I can't even talk about Supreme Court justices.
1:37:55These are things that can change with the administration.
1:37:59So anyway, this is a great – we'll be great at rallying people to political action
1:38:05by telling them exactly how useless everything a capacity deal is.
1:38:08But we have to do it.
1:38:10It's like all we can do.
1:38:12We can vote.
1:38:14We can register to vote.
1:38:15We can vote.
1:38:16We can be active politically and we can do – when they call for public comment on things
1:38:20and the FCC does, publicly comment.
1:38:22You're part of the public comment.
1:38:24That's what it's for.
1:38:25if you think you're gonna be ignored.
1:38:26- You think the FCC gives a crap about public comments?
1:38:29Like, do you think, like,
1:38:30- No, but we're trying to get people to do something.
1:38:33- Like, who in, what part of the population
1:38:35is asking for any of these laws
1:38:37that they're trying to shove through?
1:38:38Like, no one's asking for this.
1:38:40- Big companies, big companies with a lot of money,
1:38:43that's who they're asking for.
1:38:44- Right, there's like four companies asking for it,
1:38:45zero part of the population asking for it.
1:38:47You know, just like so much else that's going on,
1:38:49there's like no one is asking for this
1:38:51except the people passing the laws.
1:38:53Well, there you have it. Another rousing episode of ATP. Enjoy.
1:39:03[beeping]