Breaking Change

By Justin Searls

A show in which Justin Searls talks with you from time to time. Apple stuff. Gaming news. What it's like to live in Disney World. Each episode also entitles the listener to one (1) exclusive pun, care... more

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The podcast currently has 29 episodes available.

Breaking Change episodes:

January 19, 2025v29 - Super Switch
In this episode: Justin goes to a birthday party, drives a Tesla, and configures your BIOS.
The compliments department is, as always, available at [email protected].
Have some URLs:
This is the combination air fryer / grill I bought
Microsoft dropped support for non-SecureBoot PC updates last month
Aaron's puns, ranked
Nobody Cares
Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
Judge ends man’s 11-year quest to dig up landfill and recover $765M in bitcoin
The Consensus on Havana Syndrome Is Cracking (News+)
Meta kills diversity programs, claiming DEI has become “too charged”
Google kills JavaScript-free searches
Sonos still seems kinda fucked
5090s seem kind of like a scam
The official Elder Scrolls: Oblivion remake leaked
Switch 2 was unveiled
Guy with 200bpm heart rate complains his watch isn't working (before admitting his heart isn't working)
The Diplomat
Conclave
Severance Season 2 is out
Marvel Rivals is a hit (with the Thirstlords)
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
P.T.
A Short Hike
Transcript:
[00:00:29] Well, good morning, everyone. If it's evening, where you are, well, it's not here. So that's just what you get. You get a good morning. You can save it for later, put it in your pocket, and then the next time the sun comes up, you can just remember, ah, yes, someone did wish me a good morning today.
[00:00:48] You are currently, your ears are residing inside of Breaking Change, which is an audio production. Not to be confused with Breaking Bad, certainly not Breaking Good, just broken.
[00:01:03] You know, now that officially, officially or unofficially, TikTok is down. It's unreachable in the U.S. Aaron has reported, our Seattle correspondent, for the broadcast, that even over his VPN, he can't get to TikTok.
[00:01:24] His arms are itchy. He's scratching. He, ah, I hope, wherever you are, I hope that you and your loved ones and your teenagers are okay.
[00:01:33] But yeah, anyway, now the TikTok is down. Maybe some of you are here, because you've got nothing else to do, and you need something to fill that void. So thank you for joining.
[00:01:45] Something that I've been meaning to do at the beginning of this, of the show, for the last, well, seven versions, has been to kindly ask that you go into your podcast player of choice, and you rate and review the show.
[00:02:02] I would prefer five stars on a five-star scale, but if it was a ten-star scale, you know, ten stars would be better.
[00:02:10] Thumbs up, or whatever. Write a little review explaining why the fuck somebody would want to listen to an explicit language, you know, tech-adjacent programmer-ish gaming movie, whatever the fuck this is.
[00:02:23] Dialogue, uh, because, uh, I have found that breaking change is a really hard pitch, you know, when, when, when, when explaining to people, it's like, oh, this is me talking, just like drive-time AM radio used to be, except instead of talking about a bunch of politically charged propaganda, uh, we're just hanging out, uh, and instead of having a commute, you know, you're walking a dog, or you're doing the dishes.
[00:02:50] Although, I guess, you know, maybe you listen on a commute.
[00:02:53] I, I, I've heard, I've heard from, from listeners on road trips, listening to entire episodes all in one stretch, and that's something else.
[00:03:03] Uh, I have not heard from a lot of commuters, so if you listen to this while you're commuting, shout out at podcast at searles.co, uh, you know, if you're driving, don't, don't try to rate and review, you know, in a distracted fashion.
[00:03:16] But, but next time you think of it, you know, you, you, you slam that five-star button.
[00:03:20] You know what, it's, it's, I got a lot of subversive elements, you know, in my cadre of people, because I am a total piece of shit, and I attract, I attract the good and the bad, everyone in between.
[00:03:32] But some of us, you know, we, we, we appreciate a good troll.
[00:03:35] There is no better way to stick it to the man and, and confuse the hell out of people than for all of you to go and give this five stars in, in, in iTunes and, in your podcast player.
[00:03:46] And then have a whole bunch of people, you know, have it surface in the algorithm for others.
[00:03:51] And then they listen to this, and then they're like, what, what, what the fuck is going on to my ears right now?
[00:03:55] Uh, I am very confused.
[00:03:57] And if that's you, hell, you know what?
[00:03:59] Oh, shoot.
[00:03:59] But I'm, I'm speaking from the past.
[00:04:01] Maybe this is the, the future where this is a lot of five-star reviews and some, some, some rando outside of Argentina is, is, is getting this put into their feed for them.
[00:04:11] And now they're like, four minutes have passed.
[00:04:14] What am I doing with my life?
[00:04:15] Well, hello.
[00:04:16] You are also welcome.
[00:04:17] Good morning to you as well.
[00:04:18] Uh, by the time you're listening to this, you know, I'm recording Sunday morning.
[00:04:24] First thing, uh, I know from experience that it can be hard to pretend to work during a Trump inauguration.
[00:04:33] So, uh, I figured that instead of pretending to work, you could be here with me instead if you're listening on Monday.
[00:04:41] And if you're, if you're fortunate enough to have Monday off, um, you know, I guess one difference between the, uh, uh, the previous Trump inauguration.
[00:04:51] And this one is that the, you know, inclusivity backlash against the Trump admin, you know, that has now recently receded.
[00:05:02] If you're to believe the Bezos and billionaire class, uh, uh, has resulted in way, way more people who don't work at post offices getting MLK junior day off.
[00:05:13] So I suppose many of us are not working on Monday, but regardless, this is a version 29 of the program titled super switch.
[00:05:24] Which, you know, depending on the audience, I think a lot of, you know, probably what I mean by that.
[00:05:29] We'll, we'll talk about it later.
[00:05:30] Uh, in life news, it feels like it's been a way more than two weeks since I talked to y'all.
[00:05:37] Uh, uh, uh, when you live in a theme park, there's just a lot going on.
[00:05:42] People coming and going stuff to do, uh, uh, stimulation overload.
[00:05:49] That's why I sound so just, you know, demure downbeat chill here is because I am exhausted permanently all the time.
[00:06:02] Cause every time I leave the house, I am, I am just overstimulated.
[00:06:05] Uh, last night we went to a birthday party of a friend, uh, in the, uh, Orlando proper part of Orlando,
[00:06:12] whereas we live in theme park, Orlando.
[00:06:14] So we had to, uh, drive over the, uh, the treacherous terrain known as I four, the deadliest stretch of highway in the United States in terms of, uh, only in terms of the number of people who die on it.
[00:06:26] And the party was, uh, it was funny cause our, our friends, uh, they're building a house on this beautiful lake, huge property.
[00:06:34] It's, it's absolutely gorgeous.
[00:06:36] It's going to, the house is a custom build.
[00:06:39] And a couple of years ago, uh, the one who's, whose birthday ended up being said, you know, we're going to have my 45th birthday party here at the house.
[00:06:47] After it opens the water slide, you're going to DJs.
[00:06:50] We're going to have, it's going to be a big blowout fest.
[00:06:52] It's going to be awesome.
[00:06:53] And then his husband was like, you know, it's, it's not going to be ready yet.
[00:06:57] Don't get your hopes up.
[00:06:58] And, uh, uh, sure enough, uh, both things came to pass.
[00:07:04] The house is nowhere near ready.
[00:07:05] It is an active construction site.
[00:07:07] And they trolled us hard.
[00:07:08] They said, Hey, come to this hotel.
[00:07:09] We're going to have, you know, uh, uh, free valet or whatever.
[00:07:12] And then like, like we go into like a normal kind of like typical ballroom thing and you get a cocktail.
[00:07:19] And then these construction workers show up and they, they, they, they heard us into buses.
[00:07:24] Uh, and so people are in their cocktail attire, you know, Becky wore, uh, I don't know if you'd call them heels,
[00:07:32] but elevated shoes for, for first time in a while, more of a flats person, which I respect.
[00:07:39] Cause I'm also a flats person and, uh, we all get into the bus and everyone's dressed up.
[00:07:44] And then, uh, they, they, they drive us to, uh, the active construction site.
[00:07:47] That is our friend's house.
[00:07:49] And, uh, they had, uh, the events planners and everyone like, like actually just decorate the shit out of, you know, what, what is a lot of concrete block first floor of most homes around here is concrete.
[00:08:01] And so the bones of the house are up and they just decorated it with kind of construction paraphernalia, orange cones.
[00:08:07] All of the staff had, uh, you know, orange vests on, uh, we were all given hard hats.
[00:08:11] Uh, the theming was truly on point.
[00:08:15] Weather was perfect.
[00:08:16] Uh, and, uh, you know, it was a big raucous affair, raucous raucous, you know what I mean?
[00:08:23] So that was great.
[00:08:24] Uh, we didn't even stay out that late, but I feel like I got hit by a truck, uh, this morning.
[00:08:29] Uh, I, I kept it to a two drink maximum, which is my new go-to rule of thumb.
[00:08:34] Uh, uh, cause I always end up barely regretting the third from a, from a, an ability to sleep perspective.
[00:08:43] Afterwards, uh, other life stuff, you know, like the logistics following the death of my father.
[00:08:48] First of all, thank you very much for many of you wrote in to express sympathies, uh, probably don't, don't need to put them all in the mailbag.
[00:08:55] Cause that after a certain point, it started reads like, you know, reading birthday cards on air, uh, in terms of they all, you know, not to diminish anyone's, uh, extension of grief, uh, or, or, or sharing their own stories.
[00:09:08] But there's a certain, you know, beginning, middle and end format to, to, to, to, to, no one knows what the fuck to say.
[00:09:15] I don't know what to thank you.
[00:09:18] Um, but yeah, like I know just sort of like finances and, and forensics front of trying to figure out how to tease out all the complexities of his life that he never really told anyone about and didn't certainly didn't document, uh, that the work continues still trying to help my mom consolidate her situation.
[00:09:36] It's been, you know, just a lot of very procedural.
[00:09:42] All right, find all the stuff, organize the stuff, come up with a to-do list, figure out how to like approach this, make all the phone calls that you need to make to all these institutions to, to, to, to, to iron it out and to, to continue fact finding or to, to, to give, you know, furnish whatever documentation they need.
[00:09:57] And, and, and because it's been so, uh, I guess transactional wrote, like not to say it's colored my perception of dad or anything, you know, one way or another.
[00:10:11] Uh, but it's definitely, when I look back on this era of my life, of course, his passing is going to stand out in sharp relief, but like, that was like a week of stuff.
[00:10:21] And then the rest of it is going to be like three months of stuff.
[00:10:25] Uh, and so I wonder how that's going to affect how I, how I, how I look back on it.
[00:10:28] But one of the things I noticed is a lot of different service providers, uh, like banks, for example, that have, uh, uh, you know, bills coming up, you know, you got a credit card bill and let's say it's due.
[00:10:45] Uh, I, I don't know why I'm blanking, but January 25th and then January 18th comes around and it says, Hey, you have a statement due January 25th.
[00:10:54] Or you got an upcoming bill or you, your bill is ready to be paid.
[00:10:58] And when I get an email like that, so I just got one from dad or, you know, for dad's account from us bank.
[00:11:05] And I was like, shit.
[00:11:07] Cause I know he didn't have auto pay set up in a lot of places.
[00:11:09] Uh, and like, do I have that login?
[00:11:12] Like, you know, do I have to coordinate with mom to get the SMS thing?
[00:11:15] Like I get into it.
[00:11:16] And then sure enough, like, cause I thought I'd set up auto pay.
[00:11:19] I even had a to-do list that said, set up auto pay for this.
[00:11:21] And, uh, auto pay was set up.
[00:11:23] It was just emailing me unnecessarily anyway.
[00:11:25] You know, if you're going to have a recurring payment or an auto payment set up, it, you know, it's, it's okay to notify the customer that there's another bill coming, but it would be really sweet.
[00:11:36] If like auto pay is enabled, just so you know, you're going to, you're set to auto pay this on X and X date, uh, because if you got, you know, as many cards as some people have, uh, it can get kind of exhausting to, to just worry about, uh, well, I hope that's, that's all set up.
[00:11:53] So it's, uh, things like that are just like random nonsense stressors and the amount of context switching, because you're constantly getting emails and calls from different, from all corners.
[00:12:03] I normally screen my calls really aggressively, but you know, this month I've got a pretty much
[00:12:08] answer it no matter who's calling, which is not my favorite.
[00:12:10] And I've, I've found myself falling into something that I never thought I would do.
[00:12:17] Uh, maybe it's cause I turned 40 this week, but I'm, uh, I've always associated this with like
[00:12:24] an old, a generational thing.
[00:12:26] When somebody asks me a yes, no question, I've started saying yes or no.
[00:12:31] Like the literal word, yes.
[00:12:33] And that might sound mundane to you, but in my family growing up, the word, yes, always felt
[00:12:41] violent because everyone always had more to say, or they had a compulsion to soften it, you know,
[00:12:49] like, yeah, sounds a lot, um, neutral, accepting, open, soft.
[00:12:58] Then yes, there's a certain like hardness to yes.
[00:13:01] You ask a yes, no question.
[00:13:02] The person says, yes, it feels like there's a period at the end of that.
[00:13:05] And when you say, yeah, or okay, or all right, or, you know, you give some sort of like, you know,
[00:13:11] like an invitation to either continue with a follow-up question or, you know, be, be open to maybe a retort or something.
[00:13:20] And so I had a colleague once who is, you know, the previous generation who is my superior.
[00:13:25] And, uh, his name was Daryl.
[00:13:28] Daryl's a lovely person.
[00:13:29] But every time I asked Daryl a question and I was asking him a lot of questions because I didn't know shit about fuck.
[00:13:34] And he knew a lot of things about everything he would, he would answer every yes, no question with just the word yes or the word no.
[00:13:43] And it felt so stifling and cruel and like, you know, like, why is he shutting me down like this?
[00:13:51] Even though he's literally answering in the affirmative, there's something about the word yes.
[00:13:55] When unadorned with any sort of softeners or explanation or exposition or, or, or, or, or justification or, or invitation to, to, to follow up that feel there's the finality of it feels just rude, even though it is very literally fine.
[00:14:12] So I caught myself doing that and I guess I've become a yes man.
[00:14:16] Other life stuff.
[00:14:22] Our ninja, we have a, uh, we seem to have like every ninja kitchen appliance, um, just in some sort of rotation around, uh, you know, our, our kitchen and it feels to me like every modern home that every year, the, there's like a, a counter surface inflation where the counters keep getting bigger.
[00:14:44] The kitchen islands keep getting bigger.
[00:14:46] And then the, almost a, um, sort of like how a, a gas will expand to fill its container.
[00:14:54] Like ninja appliances will continue getting invented to fill all available counter space in every home.
[00:14:59] Uh, and the reason that ninjas been so successful is that unlike Hamilton beach and Cuisinart and stuff like their, their products are actually pretty good and do what they say on the tin.
[00:15:09] But we had a, uh, one of the air fryer units that can also, you know, pretend to be a grill, even though like all that's really happening is a hairdryer is blowing downward onto your food and any sort of heating element underneath is indirect.
[00:15:20] Uh, we had one of those and, you know, it just kind of got grody and gross from lots of oil and, and repeat washings and, you know, food stuck to the basket.
[00:15:31] And it was, it was, it was no longer, you know, how sometimes you use one of these appliances, you don't clean it as intentionally or as frequently as maybe the instruction manual tells you to.
[00:15:42] And eventually your food starts tasting like, you know, the bottom of the, uh, the, the, the, the, the deep fryer at, at McDonald's, like, just like that oil tarry kind of like, you know, afterglow.
[00:15:55] Which makes, it takes, it really takes the shine off of, uh, whatever the omega threes that you're trying to get out of your fishes.
[00:16:00] Uh, so, so we, we bought a new one and what I really wanted out of a new one was one with like multiple heating elements.
[00:16:08] Like where, where there was an actual grill that could sear stuff and cook from the bottom up, but also a convection oven that could crisp it up and, and, and, and sort of dehumidify.
[00:16:18] And amazingly, Ninja does sell this product.
[00:16:22] Uh, it was called, uh, see if I can link to it.
[00:16:25] The Ninja convection plus grill.
[00:16:27] Oh no, that wasn't it.
[00:16:28] It's, it's got a name.
[00:16:29] Uh, something, something, grid IG 651.
[00:16:35] Okay.
[00:16:35] There you go.
[00:16:35] I'll put a link in the show notes.
[00:16:37] Uh, so the IG 651, whatever, it's got like a barbecue griddle on it.
[00:16:41] It seems, it seems nice.
[00:16:43] Uh, and it does exactly that.
[00:16:46] It's got like a big wide surface element.
[00:16:48] You can, you, you plug it in.
[00:16:49] It's a very complicated, unnecessarily.
[00:16:51] So a complicated thing where it's, it looks like you kind of take a George Foreman style griddle.
[00:16:55] It's angled forward, meaning like it's got, you know, uh, I said griddle at just like the slabby kind of, of, of metal slats, slats, you know, where you, you put the burger on it.
[00:17:07] And then it's like, you know, remember the George Foreman marketing?
[00:17:10] I'm sure you do like, you know, like it's like at the, like, like the, the squeezing iconography to, to indicate like the fat is coming out and then that will make this healthier, even though the fat is often the best part.
[00:17:20] Uh, so it's, it's got that it plugs into some like electrical, you know, electrode input thing with two little donguses.
[00:17:28] I don't know why I'm even trying to explain this.
[00:17:30] It's fine.
[00:17:30] And you plug that in, you can wash it separately, but you can put a griddle on top that kind of maps to it.
[00:17:36] So it'll pick up that heat.
[00:17:37] And that is a flat surface, which can be nice.
[00:17:40] If you're, if you're maybe, you know, toasting a sandwich or something.
[00:17:46] And yeah, the thing about it, the thing about that search was that trying to answer the question of what heating elements are in this smart cooking appliance proved to be extremely difficult.
[00:18:00] You go to the Amazon listing, you go to the product page.
[00:18:03] I read up on every single Ninja product that does this.
[00:18:06] I started looking at other products that do this.
[00:18:09] I started looking at things that ran themselves as smart ovens that, you know, advertise having, uh, multiple heating elements, you know, like the June oven did this.
[00:18:16] I think that's out of business now.
[00:18:18] Tovala did this.
[00:18:18] I think that's going out of business now where they would have, you know, like, um, maybe a microwave element plus a steam cooking element, or maybe they'd have a convection fan inside and also, um, an induction plate underneath.
[00:18:31] And none of them have really taken off in the U S unfortunately, uh, such that.
[00:18:39] It is a product category that the consumers are educated about, like what they're getting into in Japan.
[00:18:45] There's a product called health.
[00:18:46] You know, like literally like health EO, but THs are hard and it's got like the basic models have four or five different ways to heat your food.
[00:18:56] And then like, it's really smart in that you, you punch in a code, like a recipe code, and it'll just do everything cradle to grave for you with the advanced sensors that it has.
[00:19:04] And kind of move between whatever combination at whatever point in the cooking process, all of those heating elements need to be arranged.
[00:19:11] And so things come out almost better than a human could do them because they never have to be removed from this hermetically sealed environment, you know, for people's hands to come in and, and, and adjust how the thing is being heated.
[00:19:26] Because in Japan, that product has been so successful that the two or three different tiers of that product, not only are they all good, but like, no one needs to be explained what's there.
[00:19:36] Like the, the, the, the, it could just be like the higher level of literacy and, and, and education generally in Japan.
[00:19:42] But in general, like, it's just, it's really straightforward.
[00:19:46] And here, it seems to be that like people just want a device that they can throw food in.
[00:19:52] And then as long as they're picking off a menu and it has words like grill, they will feel good about it.
[00:19:58] And no one's going to ask, where's the heat coming from?
[00:20:01] How is this getting cooked?
[00:20:02] Which now that I say it, of course, like Americans don't give a fuck how the thing gets accomplished or without it gets accomplished well, typically, uh, just that, uh, you know, they know what box to put the food in and then the button to hit, which is, you know, a little bit condescending, but, you know, y'all have earned it in my opinion.
[00:20:20] Uh, so yeah, we got it.
[00:20:22] It works.
[00:20:22] Uh, uh, as far as I know, I turned it on the preheating started.
[00:20:26] We have not yet, you know, broken the seal and actually cooked with it yet, but I'm glad, I'm glad to have that because I think, I think, I think.
[00:20:32] Shit will turn out better, especially salmon, which is increasingly the number one thing that we were using our air fryer for, which was an inefficient, uh, use case.
[00:20:40] Speaking of the parks being really busy, uh, and, and life here being overstimulating on Friday, I found myself really testing the fences on this new being 40 year old thing.
[00:20:55] I, uh, got up at 5am with Becky.
[00:20:59] We had a special event at Disney's Hollywood studios that started at six.
[00:21:03] We got there.
[00:21:04] There were other people there.
[00:21:05] We went to bed early, you know, to, to, to, to be able to, to do this and not be super groggy and miserable, had a great time.
[00:21:13] And then we had some friends coming into the park just about an hour after that, that, that event wrapped.
[00:21:18] And so we went and visited with them for a little bit.
[00:21:20] Then we came home and tried to recover some sort of a productive day by then it was noon.
[00:21:25] Uh, and then that evening, cause the same friends that they had their big day, I wanted to debrief with, uh, uh, my buddy before he, uh, John, his name is John.
[00:21:35] He is a listener of the program.
[00:21:38] So hi, John.
[00:21:38] Hello.
[00:21:40] Uh, when to do debrief with him.
[00:21:43] So we went over to a bar called trader Sam's, which is a grog grotto.
[00:21:47] It's in the Polynesian resort hotel.
[00:21:49] And it's one of my favorite bars because it's got like a lot of like little imagineering knickknacks and stage elements that, that have since become very common at Tiki bars.
[00:21:58] But we got in there, we spent a couple hours and then pretty soon I realized, Oh fuck, it's midnight.
[00:22:03] And I've literally been Disney it up to some extent, uh, since 6am.
[00:22:10] And so, you know, I actually, I got a second wind in there, but I ultimately didn't get, get to bed until like two.
[00:22:16] Uh, so that was a, it was a big day.
[00:22:19] I feel like I did all right.
[00:22:20] Uh, from an energy level perspective, I think I, I was the person that I needed to be in all of the interactions I had that day.
[00:22:28] And that's probably the most I can say.
[00:22:29] Uh, I'm simultaneously finding that my body is falling apart.
[00:22:33] My, my, uh, left hip is pretty grumpy.
[00:22:38] Uh, it's just some sort of like a constant dull discomfort, uh, feels like a dislocated shoulder, but no matter how much PT I do,
[00:22:46] I, I, I seem to never fully, fully beat it.
[00:22:49] Um, I need a smart, the smart oven equivalent for, for, uh, you know, muscle therapies that people do.
[00:23:00] It's like, Oh, you can get some of the, it'll, it'll apply the icy hot and also, you know, drill you with a Theragun and also massage you and also use the, you know, resistant bands exercises to strengthen it.
[00:23:09] Uh, just all simultaneously.
[00:23:10] Cause it's like this round robin of, of attempts I've had to, to restore this fucking hip.
[00:23:17] Uh, it has been great.
[00:23:19] So that's been a constant thing.
[00:23:21] New things are like my right knee now hurts like hell.
[00:23:23] My left, my left heel, just the skin started cracking from how dry it's been here.
[00:23:28] And of course it's still way more humid here than the rest of the nation, but apparently my skin is so used to the humidity, uh, that I just woke up one morning and it hurt to walk because all my skin was exposed because all my skin and my foot had cracked.
[00:23:40] You know, like what the hell's going on?
[00:23:42] So, uh, if you're, uh, approaching 40 and you're worried about it, good.
[00:23:48] I don't know that I recommend it so far, uh, but I'm still here, still kicking.
[00:23:53] Uh, uh, well, I, so far I almost didn't make it to be honest.
[00:23:59] Uh, you know, well, I, if I'm going to talk about this next topic, uh, it's something that's come up in the show before.
[00:24:09] And so I think that technically makes it follow up.
[00:24:11] So let me hit this button right here.
[00:24:13] Yeah.
[00:24:20] So speaking of dying right before you turn 40, I, I'd mentioned that I four interstate four that runs east, west in, uh, through bisecting Orlando.
[00:24:37] It's, uh, known to be, and I fact checked this against GPT cause I knew I'd probably end up talking about it.
[00:24:45] Deadliest stretch of highway in the U S and you know, I'm a, I'm an experienced driver insofar as I've been driving for 24 years.
[00:24:54] I don't like love it.
[00:24:56] I'm not a car guy.
[00:24:57] Uh, I, I feel like I drive fine, relatively safely, probably more on the conservative side.
[00:25:05] Overall.
[00:25:06] I do speed from time to time, but you know, as long as if you're in America and you're speeding, as long as you use the phrase flow of traffic, uh, you can do whatever you want.
[00:25:17] And the problem is that when you live in theme park Orlando and you need literally anything that is not entertainment and hospitality related, uh, like for example, you know, I, I, and this is what puts this into the followup bucket of content.
[00:25:35] Uh, I've been talking on and off about having, uh, struggling with snoring.
[00:25:38] You know, I've been, uh, uh, doing that thing that a lot of middle-aged husbands start doing and deciding to interrupt their spouse's sleep by, by, by suddenly picking up this cool new habit.
[00:25:49] That is just making wheezing sounds all night long.
[00:25:53] And mine's really inconsistent.
[00:25:56] It's clearly triggered by something.
[00:25:57] Couldn't really tell what, you know, is it diet or whatever.
[00:26:00] It's like clearly like none of the symptoms of apnea.
[00:26:03] So that's probably not it.
[00:26:04] Given that I feel fully rested after like four hours and I've never feeling short of breath.
[00:26:08] Uh, you know, the new Apple watch has an apnea detection and it seems to not be detecting any apnea.
[00:26:16] So I finally got a sleep study ordered and the doctor who is a very nice lady, she, you know, she's just like the reality of insurance right now is, uh, I will put in a request for an in, in a let in lab sleep study.
[00:26:33] So we can watch you because the alternative is an at home sleep study.
[00:26:36] And based on everything you're saying, there is a 0.0% chance that that at home sleep study is going to find anything.
[00:26:44] Uh, and then I was like, well, then let's just do the in lab.
[00:26:46] Like you're saying, well, she's like, oh, the insurance will surely deny based on what you're saying, uh, an in lab sleep study.
[00:26:53] Uh, you have to do, you have to go through the motions of this at home sleep study first, and then it has to show nothing.
[00:27:00] And then I can put in a script again for the in lab.
[00:27:04] Uh, and, and then the prior authorization will go through and then you'll be able to do that.
[00:27:09] And so I have to kind of do this performative nothing operation, just nothing like procedure, operation procedure.
[00:27:18] It's over, you know, like diagnostic, you know, just to check some boxes and money is changing hands invisibly to me at every step.
[00:27:27] Of course, for the most part, thanks, thanks to having health insurance.
[00:27:30] So I, I, I schedule this and it's an at home sleep study.
[00:27:36] Like there are services that mail these units, you know, they could ship it.
[00:27:40] I could, I don't know, find a courier or something, but nope, this one, I have to drive to the other fucking side of Orlando, which is, you know, it's 20 miles, but it's like a 45 minute hour long adventure.
[00:27:49] And I have to calling them the rules of the game were that I had to, uh, drive there Sunday night to pick it up, come back Tuesday night to drop it off.
[00:28:00] And they, because of sleep study locations, this is like an actual, you know, testing center.
[00:28:07] Uh, they literally open at 6 30 PM in the evening.
[00:28:10] Uh, you know, so that's when their shift starts.
[00:28:13] So I had to get there at 6 30.
[00:28:15] So that means like, I'm basically fighting through rush hour into town and then pick it up and now I'm coming back home and now it's like eight.
[00:28:22] So I guess I'll just eat dinner by myself or whatever.
[00:28:25] Uh, and it's not like in a part of town where it's like, Hey, we can go downtown and like make a date, make a night date night out of it and go to like a fun restaurant.
[00:28:33] It's like, this is a, I don't know what I, I have many times in this program suggested you should move to Orlando.
[00:28:41] Orlando's great.
[00:28:41] I love life in Orlando, but like whenever I leave the bubble of like theme park party time, Orlando, where everything's just really, really nice and customer service is incredible.
[00:28:50] And the food's really great.
[00:28:52] And, and it's just a party.
[00:28:53] Uh, and I go to like real Florida.
[00:28:56] I'm like, Oh yeah, I need to stop recommending people move to Orlando.
[00:28:59] Cause this is like the median experience.
[00:29:01] And I wouldn't, I would not, I can't do this for an hour.
[00:29:05] I don't know how I would possibly live here.
[00:29:07] No offense to Orlando, but I, uh, I went and I picked it up.
[00:29:12] I drove my car there on Sunday night and traffic was pretty bad, but it's always pretty bad.
[00:29:18] I had numerous cases of people jumping in front of the car on the way onto the highway.
[00:29:23] Once I was on the highway, I get into the new express lanes, which do make things easier.
[00:29:27] You pay a toll and you get, uh, you know, expedited traffic.
[00:29:30] Um, and somebody had pulled over into the shoulder.
[00:29:34] And as soon as he pulls over, he just whips open his, his driver's side door off of the shoulder.
[00:29:41] And now the door is in my lane.
[00:29:43] And there's of course, somebody on my left causing me to, uh, flip out and have to slam the brakes to, to the point of like, you know, bad enough that smoke is happening.
[00:29:53] Right.
[00:29:53] Like you can smell the burnt tire because this dude is just like, I'm on the highway.
[00:29:57] I can open my door.
[00:29:58] I'm a, I'm a big man.
[00:29:59] I'm driving a truck.
[00:30:00] So I chose not to blow his door off.
[00:30:05] Uh, then on the way home, it was one of those ordeals where, uh, it's a, a sign said congestion, like eight, four miles ahead.
[00:30:16] I was like, oh, four miles.
[00:30:17] Okay.
[00:30:17] Maybe I'll find an opportunity to take, get off the highway or I'll get onto the express lane and try to avoid it.
[00:30:21] And, uh, Apple maps was saying I should turn right at the Kia center, which is like where the Orlando magic play.
[00:30:27] And then take three more rights and then get back on the highway.
[00:30:30] And I was like extremely convinced that this was just some sort of, you know, Apple maps fuckery.
[00:30:36] Uh, and, and the nav and the computer being wrong because it often is, I was like, I'm going to stay on the highway.
[00:30:42] I'm a smart guy and the instant that I passed that exit that it wanted me to take, everything became a parking lot and, and such a parking lot that it became road ragey pretty quickly with people driving and shoulders and honking and trying to edge each other out and motorcycles going between lanes.
[00:30:58] And, and, and there's just a, you know, there's probably a metric that you could use for any civilization called like, uh, TTMM time to Mad Max.
[00:31:10] And Florida has a very low TTMM, you know, it doesn't take long at all for every man for himself, uh, instincts to seemingly kick in.
[00:31:22] So I, I did the rerouting and now, now the phone is telling me, all right, well, you know, literally it's so demoralizing.
[00:31:32] You see the ETA to your home arrival move literally 40 minutes immediately because I chose not to take it's very wonky prescription of three right turns.
[00:31:42] And now I realized in hindsight, the reason it wanted me to do that is there's a direct entrance onto the express lane.
[00:31:47] And so not only did the ETA go up, not only do I have the regret that I didn't listen to the computer for, for telling me to do a stupid thing, but I also now am shamed by the insult on wounds here.
[00:31:58] The left of me, the express lanes are wide open and there's just like five cars just having a great time going 80 miles an hour to get to where they want.
[00:32:05] And everybody else is left in just this, this, this, this absolutely falling down style, uh, traffic jam, uh, or just after dark.
[00:32:17] I did get home, I, I took a side street and it was one of those ordeals where you, you know, you take the side street, go up a couple of blocks, you go, you know, uh, turn left, kind of go, I don't know, maybe a half mile just past wherever, whatever accident was causing the congestion.
[00:32:34] Then you get back on the highway.
[00:32:34] And the problem was, of course, we all have automated navigation systems.
[00:32:41] They all reroute us.
[00:32:42] And so that was immediately backed up there that it was three traffic lights of people in the left lane, trying to, to turn onto that third traffic light.
[00:32:52] And I, it would have been another 20 minutes just waiting for those light changes.
[00:32:56] And so I just, you know, fortunately I had a brain and I was like, all right, I'm going to just blow past this and go in the right lane and drive forward three, three intersections and then do a U-turn turn right.
[00:33:08] And then I, I successfully beat the rush and I got home and I, it merely only wasted 20 minutes of my time, but here, this story has already wasted five minutes of your time.
[00:33:16] So it was death defying because even once off the highway, virtually none of those drivers had ever been on those side streets or in that neighborhood before.
[00:33:27] And they were all driving like it and they were all driving like it and it was dark and there were not adequate streetlights.
[00:33:31] So, uh, you know, it's not just that like Florida drivers are bad, but like you are surrounded by a certain number of frazzled dads who just picked up rental cards, cars from MCO, who are trying to get to their Disney hotel, who just had a flight delay, whose kids are screaming.
[00:33:48] And nobody's happy like that is the default and that is the best case energy because like, you know, that's before you consider the, the, the capital F capital M Florida men and the tweakers and everyone else that just kind of contributes to this diverse fabric of society that we live in.
[00:34:08] So, uh, that was a bad experience.
[00:34:12] I, I did get home, you know, I am still with us, but by the time I got home, I was, I was so fried.
[00:34:18] Like I, I, I, I, I didn't want to hang out.
[00:34:22] I didn't want to talk to Becky.
[00:34:22] Just wanted to like pour a whiskey and collapse.
[00:34:25] Uh, the stress level is so high.
[00:34:28] Like, and you can, I looked at my watch, right.
[00:34:30] And I was looking at like the heart rate history and I was like, you know, I was white knuckling it.
[00:34:34] Um, and that's, and that's partly on me, right?
[00:34:36] Like I just, I don't, I don't like that kind of driving.
[00:34:39] I don't like that stress.
[00:34:39] Two days later, when I had to drop this device off, uh, the device itself was terrible, by the way, it was probably less sophisticated than my Apple watch and probably reading like less accurate, uh, heart rate.
[00:34:57] And, and even the, the modern Apple watch like does track breathing.
[00:35:00] That's how it does a sleep apnea thing, uh, uh, through the magic of gyroscopes.
[00:35:05] And, uh, this device is a piece of shit and I'm sure somehow the rental fee for, for a one-time use was $1,500 to my insure.
[00:35:12] Uh, and I'm sure it found nothing.
[00:35:15] I can totally, like, I don't know how it would find anything.
[00:35:17] Uh, it looked like it was built out of, you know, Teddy Ruxpin era, you know, technology in the mid eighties with, with the, the quality of the, the, the straps and the plastic.
[00:35:29] I could just, but when I had to, when it, when time came to drop it off, I really did not want to repeat that experience on a weeknight when you, you know, traffic would be even worse.
[00:35:41] And so I, I humbly asked my brother who has a Tesla, I said, Hey, uh, there's another follow-up item.
[00:35:48] We, we, we, we picked it up together just in October.
[00:35:51] I think, uh, I said, Hey man, like, can I swing by or you swing by drop off your Tesla?
[00:35:59] He did some stuff to do at our house anyway.
[00:36:01] And he's got the full self-driving like, like, uh, they keep renewing a 30 day trial for him.
[00:36:09] And, uh, you know, full self-driving isn't, it is, uh, the car will drive itself.
[00:36:14] You don't have to touch the wheel.
[00:36:16] It, it, it, it, it's very conservative.
[00:36:18] It has three modes, chill, uh, normal and hurried or hurry.
[00:36:23] I've never tried hurry.
[00:36:24] I don't need to try hurry.
[00:36:26] I just stick on chill because at the end of the day, as long as I get to where I'm going,
[00:36:29] I sort of don't care.
[00:36:30] I'm not in a big rush.
[00:36:32] Uh, I have the luxury of not needing to be anywhere in any particular pace.
[00:36:37] As long as I leave on time, you know, I'm, and I'm going to get there by the time I promise
[00:36:41] the chill is good with me and the, you have to supervise it.
[00:36:48] And it was the case when the full self-driving crap and Tesla's first hit that people were,
[00:36:55] you know, at first it was just like pressure testing the steering column.
[00:36:58] And so people would like use like, uh, uh, weights, like, like weighted wristbands and
[00:37:04] stuff to like make it trick the steering column into thinking that somebody was holding onto
[00:37:08] the wheel.
[00:37:08] Uh, and now they have cameras that look at you like inside the cabin and that, that camera
[00:37:15] is using some amount of intelligence to determine that you're distracted or not.
[00:37:19] So if you are looking a lot at the central, uh, tablet, it'll bark at you and say, Hey, pay
[00:37:23] attention to the road.
[00:37:25] If you're looking at your phone, it'll do the same.
[00:37:26] If you're looking at a watch, you know, like I've had it even like when I'm talking to the
[00:37:30] watch and looking forward, have it bark at me.
[00:37:31] And as soon, as soon as it does it, it makes a beep and then it gets increasingly aggressive
[00:37:36] and beeps louder.
[00:37:37] You impressively.
[00:37:39] I say this because like, you know, I'm sure that the reason it's like this is because Tesla
[00:37:43] is trying to minimize it's like legal liability for accidents caused by its system.
[00:37:47] If, if, if, if you ignore its beeps three times in a day, uh, you, you get a strike, the system
[00:37:56] will disengage and you will be forced to manually drive your car like a plebeian for the rest
[00:38:01] of the day.
[00:38:01] At least that's how Jeremy explained it to me.
[00:38:03] If you get five strikes, I want to say it is, um, you're just exited from your, you're ejected
[00:38:12] from the full self-driving program.
[00:38:14] And I am impressed not only that it's as aggressive as it is, like, you know, if you got to look
[00:38:22] at the screen for something, you've got to adjust it.
[00:38:23] You basically have seven or eight seconds to, you know, fix the mirrors or whatever it is
[00:38:28] before you got to be looking at the road again.
[00:38:29] I'm also like finding myself that when I'm driving his vehicle, I actually am significantly less
[00:38:36] distracted than in my own Ford escape, which has car play.
[00:38:39] And I typically don't touch the phone itself, but I, um, you know, I tune out a little bit
[00:38:44] or, uh, you know, might look at something or might be tapping away at the, uh, you know,
[00:38:49] the eye messages and, and, and, and whatnot seemingly longer in those cases than like what the Tesla
[00:38:55] would let me get away with.
[00:38:56] So I'm paying more attention to the road because the computer is telling me to, or forcing me
[00:39:01] to, and I am also doing less of the driving.
[00:39:05] So, you know, my foot's off the pedal, my foot, my hands are off the steering.
[00:39:08] And when they say supervised, it's actually like the right word, like it is doing the
[00:39:14] driving, but like the, it feels almost like a pilot co-pilot thing where I, your head's
[00:39:22] on a swivel.
[00:39:23] Like I can look to the left and I can look to the right and I have far greater situational
[00:39:27] awareness as the car is driving.
[00:39:28] Now, granted a lot of these like semi-autonomous and, and adaptive, you know, uh, uh, uh, assistance
[00:39:35] in cars will for most people lull them into a false sense of security and result in further
[00:39:44] driver inattentiveness and unsafety, right?
[00:39:46] Like people will, you'll train them out of the vigilance that you need at all times when
[00:39:52] you're the one driving a vehicle or being driven in a vehicle.
[00:39:55] However, like the particular, and maybe it's just cause I'm kind of coming in and chapter
[00:40:00] four of this particular saga of full self-driving and robo taxis will be here in six months as
[00:40:05] Elon Musk.
[00:40:06] And of course they're not there, but it seems like at least the way that I've experienced
[00:40:13] full self-driving when I've used it, it seems to me like I feel a thousand times safer because
[00:40:21] the combination of the car, mostly doing the right thing, mostly making the conservative
[00:40:25] choice, absolute worst case.
[00:40:27] It haunt, it blares at you and you need to take over, uh, combined with my own hypervigilance
[00:40:35] of not, you know, I constitutionally do not trust computers and you know, Jeremy doesn't
[00:40:41] either.
[00:40:42] And so when we're driving these things, we're looking around all the time where we're, we're,
[00:40:45] we're sort of, because we have a curiosity and how the technology works, like trying to think
[00:40:49] about how is it thinking through this?
[00:40:51] Like, like we have a lot of, for example, um, automated gated communities where like the,
[00:40:56] the gates will open and closed when you're, when you're entering and exiting.
[00:41:00] It's like, we, we look at the little like computer screens, like how does it, how does it, what
[00:41:04] does it think is in front of it right now?
[00:41:05] It sees that there's an obstruction.
[00:41:07] Uh, and if it opens too slowly, is it thinking it's a permanent obstruction or is it going to
[00:41:11] wait and then proceed after the thing opens automatically?
[00:41:14] Like there's a lot of little moments like that, where it's actually kind of interesting
[00:41:17] to see how, you know, how the car reacts and then it gets a software update and then how
[00:41:22] the car reacts after that.
[00:41:23] And then additionally, there's the typical ebb and flow of software updates generally where
[00:41:28] there's regressions, right?
[00:41:29] Like there was a version of this, uh, system that, that the ability, like it used to blow
[00:41:35] past this one particular speed bump, uh, uh, near our neighborhood, uh, because it didn't
[00:41:41] have sufficient paint on the road to indicate that it was a speed bump.
[00:41:45] And then there was a software update and then it perfectly negotiated all four speed bumps
[00:41:49] just right in a row every single time.
[00:41:52] And then there was another update and now it blows past the third speed bump again.
[00:41:56] And so, uh, I think that people who are technology enthusiasts who maybe follow this stuff and
[00:42:05] understand how, what software is, how it works, that updates are not a pure linear, you know,
[00:42:11] march of progress, I think the idea that there would be regressions in software releases or
[00:42:18] even, uh, non-determinism in how the, how the computer car operates, that's totally natural
[00:42:24] to me.
[00:42:24] And I expect it now.
[00:42:25] I, I grown at it and I think like, this is, this is probably a bad idea in aggregate and
[00:42:31] at a population level.
[00:42:33] I suspect that the average driver would be confused by that the same way that like the
[00:42:38] average person is terrified of updating their phone or their computer because they associate
[00:42:43] software updates with, uh, uh, you know, newness and unawareness and, and, and, and, and, and all
[00:42:51] the things that they finally had working, no longer working.
[00:42:54] And when they, but when you talk about the, the march of progress and technology, they sort
[00:43:00] of have a, what it is, is whenever anything goes wrong with technology, if you're not, if
[00:43:08] you're not primed to know that it's burning you is, it seems like people mostly blame themselves
[00:43:13] instead of blaming the technology.
[00:43:15] And if that's your, if that's the way you use your phone or your computer, uh, you
[00:43:21] know, when, when the car makes a mistake, you might not realize it as a car making mistake
[00:43:26] and you might not have the hypervigilance.
[00:43:27] That's like, you know, a more adversarial, like, like, I feel like I'm constantly spot checking
[00:43:31] it.
[00:43:31] And I, and while I am surprisingly impressed with how well it's been negotiating everything
[00:43:37] that we've thrown at it so far, it's made one or two mistakes and I've, I've, I've,
[00:43:41] I've, I've dealt with it, but on net, like it's driving waste.
[00:43:45] Way more safely than I am way.
[00:43:47] And it's, it's taught me a few things.
[00:43:49] It's like, Oh yeah.
[00:43:49] Like whenever I do this at an intersection, like that's really dumb.
[00:43:52] Like it's doing this way better.
[00:43:53] Uh, I can't think of a specific example, but like, I'm pretty impressed.
[00:43:58] And so I thought, well, I'll ask Jeremy to borrow the car because I've got this natural
[00:44:03] experiment now, same time of day, uh, same location.
[00:44:07] So I already know how to get there.
[00:44:08] It's a, it's a little bit goofy, but like, because I was just there, I'm not going to feel
[00:44:12] like I'm learning how to get, get there and also learning how to use this.
[00:44:15] Auto driving system simultaneously.
[00:44:17] And, uh, holy shit.
[00:44:20] Like, yes, I had people jump out in front of the car.
[00:44:23] It was even worse this time at the particular intersection before you get to the, to, to
[00:44:27] I four and the car like saw them out of its blind spot while it was turning, right.
[00:44:32] It saw them on the left camera and breaks perfectly.
[00:44:37] Uh, and I, uh, my first reaction was like, I would not have caught that.
[00:44:40] I probably would have cut it real close.
[00:44:44] Uh, almost hitting these people.
[00:44:45] Uh, you get onto the highway and then this is why I emphasize like I four is like the deadliest
[00:44:51] highway in America because it's, it is, it is not like driving on the highway, wherever
[00:44:59] the fuck you live like anywhere I was ever in Michigan or Ohio or anywhere else in the
[00:45:04] U S or certainly anywhere I've driven in Japan.
[00:45:06] Those are the only places I suppose I've driven or Canada.
[00:45:09] Like, yes, sometimes it's a little stressful driving on the highway.
[00:45:12] Like that's not what this is.
[00:45:14] This is, you have to practice extreme defensive driving.
[00:45:18] And if you actually want to get where you're going, you also have to practice offensive
[00:45:21] driving.
[00:45:21] Uh, so having, uh, you know, nine cameras and nine directions is just necessary for basic
[00:45:28] like assurance of survival.
[00:45:31] Like when I'm on I four, I, I feel constantly under threat.
[00:45:35] Uh, and something happens every time.
[00:45:39] So we get on the highway and that stuff does happen.
[00:45:42] Uh, you know, the car on its own decided to take the express lanes by itself, which was
[00:45:46] incredible, but like people were like, I was trying to merge into a lane.
[00:45:50] And then as, as the things, well, it was trying to merge into a lane.
[00:45:53] And as it was changing lanes, somebody who didn't even have a blinker on starts edging in
[00:45:58] and the car knows I'm going to back off.
[00:45:59] Uh, there was another case of somebody swerving into our lane, like very close to the car and
[00:46:05] the car, you know, defensively, you know, switch to the right lane, which was wide open
[00:46:11] to prevent the risk that like, you know, it might have to break.
[00:46:14] Suddenly there wasn't enough distance between the cars.
[00:46:16] And that was stuff that like, I only was actually even able to piece together.
[00:46:19] What the fuck was it doing after the fact?
[00:46:20] Like looking at the map and looking around me, it's just, it went great.
[00:46:28] Got there, dropped the shit off, turned around, you know, the parking is wonderful too, because
[00:46:34] it'll back into every parking spot.
[00:46:36] You just tap the screen.
[00:46:37] Like it'll see the parking spots.
[00:46:38] You just tap which one you want and just, it handles it for you.
[00:46:40] It parks way better than I park.
[00:46:42] I don't know, man.
[00:46:43] And on the ride home, not only, you know, everything around me felt like it was on fire and chaos,
[00:46:50] but because I had a buddy who was doing the driving and I could just kind of be, you know,
[00:46:54] patrolling and looking around, I actually got a, a low heart rate notification on my watch,
[00:47:00] which I get, I get them frequently.
[00:47:01] Cause I have a low resting heart rate, but like it would say, Hey, your, your heart rate's
[00:47:05] been under 40 beats per minute for the last 10 minutes.
[00:47:08] And, uh, which I, if that's not you, that's like, if that's not typical for you, that might
[00:47:14] sound scary, but like, no, my, my resting heart rate when I'm actually like de-stressed and,
[00:47:17] and just chill is like typically like 38.
[00:47:20] So the fact that I could be on I4 with a heart rate under 40 feeling completely safe more than
[00:47:27] anything, it's not about going fast or whatever.
[00:47:29] It's like feeling like I've got a team of two that are dedicated to getting me home safely,
[00:47:32] me and this computer.
[00:47:34] Uh, it was a revelatory experience now that look, I realized it's a complicated situation
[00:47:44] because Elon is a big old bucket of assholes and the politics of it are all fucked.
[00:47:50] Uh, you know, the right time to buy a Tesla was, was when, uh, everyone agreed that, that
[00:47:54] they were cool and EVs were good and the planet deserves saving.
[00:47:57] Uh, but yeah, I got, I totally saw where, where my brother was coming from and all of his friends
[00:48:03] who, who, who, who are similar technologists who, who have these things and who are, you
[00:48:07] know, who got on board in the very recent hardware three or hardware four era of Tesla.
[00:48:12] Um, particularly with like the, the, the entry level models that are higher volume and therefore
[00:48:17] kind of more, uh, consistently produced, you know, the cyber truck, for example, more, most
[00:48:26] expensive, but lowest volume and has the most problems.
[00:48:29] The model Y at this point is pretty boring and dull, but like, you know, if, if you, if
[00:48:34] you are like me and just kind of think of cars, the modern day car is just a tablet with wheels.
[00:48:40] This is a, you know, and I, yes, I had, I had low expectations.
[00:48:46] I had a high level of suspicion, but it went great.
[00:48:48] And, uh, uh, I, I, I successfully dropped off my snoring thing.
[00:48:55] I can't wait to get the results.
[00:48:57] That'll tell me that, uh, you know, nothing happened.
[00:48:59] Another bit of follow-up.
[00:49:01] I think I'd mentioned that I, uh, I had used rocket money.
[00:49:05] So, you know, it used to be called true bill and then quick and loans bought it.
[00:49:08] And, uh, the, as quick and loan started branding itself as rocket and having this rocket suite
[00:49:13] of products, rocket money became, it's, you know, a consumer entree into upselling it to
[00:49:18] other products and rocket monies, you know, promises.
[00:49:21] It's going to help you, uh, visualize all your subscriptions and even negotiate a tiny, tiny
[00:49:27] sliver of those subscriptions.
[00:49:28] And the one that I yielded to it was my spectrum account.
[00:49:32] So my ISP had, had gradually been charging me more and more to the point where it was
[00:49:36] like $145 after tax every month for the same internet program.
[00:49:39] That was like a hundred dollars when I moved here.
[00:49:41] And I was very skeptical when rocket money said, Hey, we just saved you $893 a year, uh, by,
[00:49:48] by lowering your monthly bill to 70 bucks.
[00:49:50] And they sent me a new modem as well.
[00:49:53] And I was like, I don't need a new modem.
[00:49:55] It's the, it's, it's the model number.
[00:49:56] It looks almost identical.
[00:49:57] And I, I was actually at UPS returning that modem.
[00:50:01] And I just thought to myself, what if this modem is somehow better?
[00:50:04] Cause I had not been super blown away by the performance of my current one.
[00:50:09] And so I, I went to the trouble of unplugging the old one, plugging in the new one, setting
[00:50:13] it up, calling to activate and it, my, my connection now is rock solid.
[00:50:19] So, so just by doing this price hack thing, I now have a modem that works way better.
[00:50:23] I was able to activate it myself without having some tech come over here.
[00:50:25] So that's a, that's a win, but the statements were still showing up $140.
[00:50:29] And I was really skeptical that like this would materialize, but sure enough, this week I got
[00:50:35] a statement for $70.
[00:50:36] Uh, and I guess that means I owe rocket money 35% of whatever it saved me.
[00:50:42] And I don't know how that's, I don't know how that's paid or when that works.
[00:50:45] I'll figure it out.
[00:50:47] But if you're, if you're willing to, basically I would recommend rocket money to anyone who
[00:50:52] is currently paying sticker price for whatever utilities, it's probably mostly ISPs and cell
[00:51:00] phone bills.
[00:51:01] If you're paying for like a normal plan that is still available and you're paying top dollar,
[00:51:06] uh, call them, give it a try.
[00:51:08] But if you're like, you know, like I am with T-Mobile grandfathered in on some 12 year old
[00:51:13] plan that has been replaced five times.
[00:51:15] And there's no like, like the most likely case then is it's going to put me on the latest plan
[00:51:19] and sign me up for all of the new throttling and four ADP video and the shit that you don't
[00:51:24] want, uh, in terms of limitations.
[00:51:26] So check out rocket money.
[00:51:30] I, I, I was extremely skeptical and now this is, this is a rocket money ad.
[00:51:34] Uh, although it is unpaid.
[00:51:36] If you want to be a sponsor of the program podcast at seerls.co, uh, another followup item.
[00:51:47] I, let me tell you what it took to connect.
[00:51:53] My Xbox controller to my, to my gaming PC.
[00:51:58] So, uh, I have an Xbox series elite to whatever you call it.
[00:52:04] A nice, the fancy Xbox controller that costs like $170.
[00:52:07] And I like this controller.
[00:52:09] It's got the little paddles in the back.
[00:52:11] It's got, you know, a nicer grip, uh, interchangeable thumb sticks and D pad and stuff.
[00:52:16] It's a very nice product, but it's, it's, you know, talk about low volume things that
[00:52:21] aren't as reliable.
[00:52:21] It has a lot of reliability issues and my right bumper button, like next to the right
[00:52:27] shoulder, it had been like very, very, um, it would miss like 70% of the clicks.
[00:52:36] And because the right bumper isn't the most important button in the world.
[00:52:39] Like it just meant like, uh, I guess I'm just not the kind of guy to throw grenades or whatever
[00:52:43] the right bumper is typically assigned to, I got a replacement relative, like a, a, a cheap
[00:52:50] replacement through Microsoft support channel.
[00:52:52] I think they charged me $70.
[00:52:53] They didn't require me to ship back the old one.
[00:52:55] Uh, the replacement came and I plugged it into the computer to start set up and pairing.
[00:53:00] And the Xbox accessories app was like, this is too out of date to be able to configure your
[00:53:06] controller, which was weird because windows update, which I checked frequently had said
[00:53:10] that I was up to date, but there was a little message at the bottom saying, uh, windows is
[00:53:16] up to date.
[00:53:16] Important security updates have not been applied.
[00:53:19] Make sure that your computer is turned on, which is weird because if I'm manually updating
[00:53:22] and nothing's saying that it's like, where are these secret security updates that aren't
[00:53:26] happening?
[00:53:26] And when I dug into my actual windows version, it said I was on 21 H two.
[00:53:32] So the naming scheme for these major windows releases seems to be the, the two digit year
[00:53:39] followed by H one for first half of the year and H two for second half of the year, which
[00:53:44] is, um, real dumb.
[00:53:47] I'm going to say just a dumb way to name things, you know, numbers are good.
[00:53:52] You know, I, I, I get it now why it's named that.
[00:53:56] But 21 was, uh, if you, if you decode the version several, several numbers ago, it was
[00:54:02] three, at least it was at least two H one ago.
[00:54:05] And why was I on such an old version?
[00:54:10] It turns out I'll share like a, an article from, from just December, the, the windows 11
[00:54:16] required computers to have secure boot enabled using the trusted platform module or TPM equivalent
[00:54:22] encryption.
[00:54:23] And that's to certify or to be able to attest that like the, the operating system has not
[00:54:28] been tampered with and so forth.
[00:54:29] And then this has all sorts of like DMCA, DR, DRM, um, uh, and, uh, HDCP, all this sort
[00:54:36] of a content encryption, copyright protection, uh, ostensibly it's quote unquote security.
[00:54:41] And it, and it's the, like making sure from a malware perspective that the veracity of
[00:54:45] the system files are all in place and so forth.
[00:54:47] But like a lot of nerds were not on board because they want to rip blue waves or whatever it is.
[00:54:51] And this might make it marginally more difficult, but gaming motherboards were like the last ones
[00:54:57] to the party to support secure boot.
[00:54:59] And even though I built my gaming PC, well, after windows 11 launched the BIOS that it
[00:55:04] shipped with did not support secure boot.
[00:55:06] Um, it didn't support, uh, I don't think like booting from UEFI drives correctly either.
[00:55:13] So I'd set it up just like a normal basic fucking computer and it worked for however long it
[00:55:18] worked.
[00:55:18] But apparently in December, Microsoft was just like, and you get no more updates at all.
[00:55:22] No more security updates, no more, nothing, which is why I started getting that message.
[00:55:25] Uh, if you want to be on the latest and greatest version of windows 11, you must have secure boot.
[00:55:30] Problem now is like, it's been several years.
[00:55:34] And so figuring out what kind of motherboard I even have, I'm too lazy to like open the case
[00:55:38] up and look at it.
[00:55:39] And so I, I found the particular model number in my Amazon orders.
[00:55:42] So step one, you know, I figured out what was happening.
[00:55:45] I guess step, step zero is I get this new controller and I immediately regret it.
[00:55:49] Uh, step two, figure out what's happening.
[00:55:52] Step three, check my Amazon orders, identify the motherboard.
[00:55:55] Uh, step four, I went to the motherboard website.
[00:55:58] I find that there, a BIOS update is available and it's, it adds the secure boot functionality
[00:56:03] because apparently the encryption software hardware is on the device, which is great.
[00:56:07] So I download the BIOS and then I start flashing it.
[00:56:12] Uh, not, you know, not that kind of, get your head out of the gutter.
[00:56:15] I, it, it requires, uh, you know, identifying there's a, there's a particular USB port on
[00:56:23] the back of the, of the motherboard.
[00:56:25] That is the only one that can flash the BIOS and you have to look for it.
[00:56:30] This is like M dash flash on it.
[00:56:31] So you put it in there, you know, you restart, you, uh, boot into the BIOS and I, uh, got
[00:56:39] it to update that, that part was actually pretty easy.
[00:56:41] Then you go into the, the BIOS and it, you know, I don't know what BIOS stands for.
[00:56:45] So if you're not like a PC person, this might not make sense, but you, you, the, the, it's,
[00:56:49] it's the little bit of software that runs before the computer really starts.
[00:56:52] And you can typically get there by hitting a key like F12 or delete.
[00:56:55] And it's, you know, if you weren't raised on windows, uh, it's, it's, it's a weird
[00:56:59] under, underbelly that sometimes you have to go into.
[00:57:02] It's got a lot of arcane settings.
[00:57:04] None of them make any sense.
[00:57:05] It's a lot of acronyms that aren't explained, even though modern BIOS systems typically have
[00:57:09] tooltips, it'll be like, what is, you know, what is MDR?
[00:57:12] And it's like this, this option determines whether you have MDR turned on and off.
[00:57:16] And there's like room for two more paragraphs to just maybe spell out what the fuck MDR is.
[00:57:20] Uh, I turned on the secure boot, figure that out.
[00:57:25] Uh, chat GPT is wonderful for stuff like this.
[00:57:27] Like it gave me step-by-step directions because like, there's probably 800 forum, forum posts,
[00:57:31] like detailing the same thing.
[00:57:33] Uh, after reboot, nothing worked and like the computer would not boot.
[00:57:39] I turned on secure boot, which required turning on UEFI, which is like a related technology of
[00:57:44] like a more modern boot system for computers.
[00:57:46] And it turns out it's because that my drive partition map is master boot record MBR, which
[00:57:51] is like from the DOS era.
[00:57:53] And that was the default when I set it up in 21 or 2020.
[00:57:56] So now I've got to like turn off secure boot, go back into BIOS, turn it off, boot up into
[00:58:03] windows under the old model, and then like figure out these like weird arcane, like, uh, uh, command
[00:58:09] line interfaces.
[00:58:10] I think I, I think I, there's something that there's a way to do this, like MBR to GPT slash
[00:58:15] validate slash disc colon, some number slash allow full OS.
[00:58:20] And, and that would like a test like, yes, you can convert this type of hard drive partition
[00:58:26] map into this other one.
[00:58:27] And so then I do it and, uh, I, I reboot again, I turn on secure boot again, and then it gives
[00:58:32] this fucking message.
[00:58:33] It's like, Hey, you know, secure boot function can only be enabled when the platform key is
[00:58:37] enrolled, which is, I know a decent amount of crypt cryptography.
[00:58:42] I can kind of guess at like, you know, thematically what it's getting at there, but like I'm in,
[00:58:48] I'm in a bio, there's no internet connection.
[00:58:50] There's no, there's no about page.
[00:58:51] Like, I'm just like, what do I do?
[00:58:53] Uh, so I, I, I went off the rails and I said, I don't want to do a standard secure boot.
[00:59:00] I'm going to do a custom secure boot.
[00:59:02] And then I clicked another thing that just said, enroll all factory keys.
[00:59:06] Uh, and then that said, Hey, we're going to reset this without saving options.
[00:59:10] And there's no cancel.
[00:59:11] There's just like save or, or, or don't save.
[00:59:14] I clicked save and I rebooted and, and then it all worked.
[00:59:18] And I just thought, man, like, how does anyone do this?
[00:59:23] I, the answer is when you build a gaming PC, you are absolutely signing up for this kind
[00:59:29] of bullshit on, on a cadence.
[00:59:32] It used to be like, you know, to keep a windows machine running for the purpose of playing games.
[00:59:37] That was a custom build.
[00:59:39] You would expect every month or every two months to have some kind of rigmarole that
[00:59:43] looked like this.
[00:59:43] And I just been blessed that it had been almost like three, four years of this thing just mostly
[00:59:47] working before I had to, you know, really do something drastic.
[00:59:52] I, uh, uh, the system worked, you know, for suddenly it finds a three years worth of updates.
[00:59:57] I install all those.
[00:59:58] And actually, like, I will say windows 11 is quite nice.
[01:00:00] Now I see what people are talking about.
[01:00:01] Like a lot of things are the tabbed interface for the windows Explorer works really well.
[01:00:05] Like everything feels much, much nicer.
[01:00:07] The downside is literally everything is now an advertisement.
[01:00:10] It's just like so many, which it's like recommending when you hit the start button, it was like
[01:00:15] recommended apps, Slack.
[01:00:16] I'm like, I don't have Slack installed.
[01:00:19] Like I don't, I'm not in any Slacks.
[01:00:20] I don't even have a fucking job.
[01:00:21] Like why are you recommending?
[01:00:22] Oh, right.
[01:00:23] Cause Slack is paying for like prominent placement just in the passively in the, in
[01:00:27] the operating system.
[01:00:28] That is a paid product.
[01:00:29] And I get that like Apple stuff is full of, uh, full of ads in its own way for Apple services,
[01:00:34] but unless you're searching for an app in the app store, like you don't see just, you know,
[01:00:39] it would be like having Slack just land on your home screen and, and, and be like, Hey,
[01:00:43] click me and then learn more about how you can pay us money.
[01:00:47] So, uh, you know, the takeaway here is if, if you are dedicated to the art of playing computer
[01:00:55] games, uh, keep it simple.
[01:00:59] Uh, you know, I, if you're willing to sign up for this bullshit, like, like by all means,
[01:01:04] like, I think like the best performance, the best experience that you can have is only really
[01:01:08] attainable if you build your own PC and it's not that hard to, you know, there's services
[01:01:12] like PC part picker that make it pretty easy, but there is just no escaping the windows
[01:01:16] of it all.
[01:01:17] Uh, speaking of, I, I, I've been talking about my steam deck and I love that device.
[01:01:24] It's really nice.
[01:01:25] I, I, I was playing Yakuza seven on it.
[01:01:27] And, uh, unfortunately I was doing it with headphones in so as not to be loud at night.
[01:01:32] Uh, cause if I'm playing in bed next to Becky and the, the headphone jack just broke, it just
[01:01:37] stopped working.
[01:01:37] I thought it was my headphones.
[01:01:38] I tried three different pairs of headphones.
[01:01:39] It's just all static nonsense.
[01:01:41] So I RMA'd it.
[01:01:42] I, I contacted steam and got an RMA label.
[01:01:45] I'm actually going to process that as just a return.
[01:01:47] So I'm going to send that out tomorrow.
[01:01:48] And, uh, cause Becky and I are going on a cruise in a few days ago, I would like to have a device.
[01:01:53] So I ordered another steam deck, you know, which is inefficient for sure.
[01:01:57] But I'd rather have a brand new one than, you know, some kind of repair, I guess.
[01:02:01] So whatever.
[01:02:02] And at the same time, I was like, you know what?
[01:02:07] Like, it's kind of wasteful.
[01:02:08] And this is, I, if you're not a gamer, this stuff doesn't make sense.
[01:02:11] Cause it's all nonsense.
[01:02:12] But like, like it would be like having, um, if you have a gaming PC, it's like, you can
[01:02:18] have multiple app stores installed.
[01:02:20] You have steam and maybe you buy some games on steam.
[01:02:22] And then you also have like the Xbox app where your, your, your, your game pass subscription
[01:02:27] just gives you free access to lots of games.
[01:02:29] The steam deck is really great for playing steam games, but unless you install windows onto
[01:02:34] it, you can't play the game pass games.
[01:02:37] And I'm not like, I could, if I wanted to, I like, say I'm playing Indiana Jones right
[01:02:41] now on game pass, I could buy it again for $70 on steam, but like the, the save game wouldn't
[01:02:47] transport, I don't think, uh, or wouldn't cloud sink probably.
[01:02:51] Uh, so I did a thing and I, on the, the new steam deck showed up.
[01:02:59] And the first thing I did was I put windows on it because coming off this other experience
[01:03:05] with windows, apparently I just, I, I got overconfident.
[01:03:08] It took, it was about a three hour ordeal and that was following a really, really nice guide
[01:03:13] and using a lot of supporting software to make it easy to dual boot into windows.
[01:03:16] And I got there and I got it all updated and I got all the drivers installed and then I
[01:03:19] launched Indiana Jones and then it just like was compiling shaders in the beginning and then
[01:03:23] it just crashed.
[01:03:24] And it seems to have just crashed because it ran out of VRAM.
[01:03:27] And it seems like the solution to that is find a different game to play.
[01:03:33] And so I go in and I try to search for help and stuff and realize that like the software
[01:03:37] keyboard in windows, at least with how it's out of the box set up after installing this
[01:03:42] drivers on steam deck, like the software keyboard just refuses and will not open, uh, much of
[01:03:48] the time.
[01:03:49] And so like, I can't type in most of the time.
[01:03:51] And so like I find myself now I've got a USB hub plugged into the steam deck so that I can
[01:03:57] have a normal fucking keyboard next to it so that I can type and try to debug stuff.
[01:04:01] And now I'm, I'm pretty, you know, I'm nowhere near the point of being able to get just a,
[01:04:08] a, a game pass game running on a mobile handheld and certainly not anywhere near the point of
[01:04:14] like throwing just the handheld in my bag and having any hope in hell that like it, like
[01:04:18] I'll be able just to hit a button and launch it like it, like a game console.
[01:04:22] So, uh, the windows on steam deck experience is very bad.
[01:04:26] And at the same time, uh, Best Buy had a, uh, ROG ally extreme Z one extreme windows first
[01:04:33] gaming devices on sale.
[01:04:36] And I was like, you know what?
[01:04:37] I'm in the return period of everything.
[01:04:38] I've clearly, you know, like I have opened Pandora's box.
[01:04:41] I may as well just give myself over to taste testing all of these different options.
[01:04:46] Uh, so I, I, I, I bought one of those and now it's, it's, it's, it's actually lighter and
[01:04:52] smaller to a certain extent, which is impressive.
[01:04:54] I expected the steam deck to be more svelte, I guess.
[01:04:57] Uh, it feels pretty good in the hand.
[01:05:00] Uh, I haven't booted it yet because I'm still recovering from the experience of trying to get
[01:05:05] windows onto the steam deck.
[01:05:06] And, uh, I'm, I'm interested in trying and seeing how the performance is.
[01:05:10] Cause if game pass works well and I'm happy with it, um, the ROG ally was like several hundred
[01:05:15] dollars cheaper than the steam deck.
[01:05:17] It's got a faster processor.
[01:05:19] Uh, it might be a little bit less convenient, but to be honest, uh, the idea that I'd be rebuying
[01:05:24] all of my, uh, my games on, uh, on steam when they're also available, you know, quote unquote
[01:05:31] for free on game pass seems pretty silly.
[01:05:33] Uh, cause I, I'm as a, as a one game at a time guy, uh, being able to play the same game
[01:05:39] that I'm playing in the evening as when I'm remote sounds pretty nice.
[01:05:43] So stay tuned.
[01:05:44] Uh, I'm looking forward to trying that out, but as for now, I don't think windows on steam
[01:05:50] deck is gonna, gonna happen for me.
[01:05:51] I think I'm going to reformat the whole thing and just fucking start over.
[01:05:54] Uh, so, so that was a lot about, there's a lot.
[01:05:59] Hello.
[01:05:59] Hi.
[01:06:00] How are you?
[01:06:00] Good morning.
[01:06:01] I'm glad you're here.
[01:06:03] Uh, now let's, uh, I think we need a palate cleanser.
[01:06:06] So let's, let's hear a joke from our friend, Aaron.
[01:06:09] Now, uh, if you, if you will recall, Aaron Patterson, who provides us with the content portion
[01:06:22] of this segment where, uh, he writes a pun, he, I messages it to me, uh, via invisible ink
[01:06:30] so that I am seeing it in reacting in real time.
[01:06:33] He and I re-ranked all of the 2024 season one puns, uh, and those are now set in stone.
[01:06:42] That is the canonical ordering of the puns, uh, from, from, from, from worst to bad.
[01:06:50] Uh, and, uh, uh, uh, uh, this year, uh, being just the second version, second release, uh, uh, uh, we just have to determine whether or not the pun that we're about to read is better or worse than the version 28's pun.
[01:07:03] And so I'll just read that one now.
[01:07:05] Aaron says, I was really hoping to play Bellatro today, but I don't have time.
[01:07:11] So I guess it's not in the cards.
[01:07:12] And a useful bit of information is that Bellatro is a card game.
[01:07:19] And then the pun might make more sense.
[01:07:21] Uh, all right.
[01:07:22] So we're going to sneak up here and just see what are we in for?
[01:07:26] What's he got in store?
[01:07:27] Oh man.
[01:07:34] Brace yourself.
[01:07:37] I bought a Nintendo Switch because I heard, I, uh, I heard it was going to be really fun to play.
[01:07:43] Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it one bit and now I feel like I've been Joy-Conned.
[01:07:49] I bought a Nintendo Switch because I heard it was going to be really fun to play.
[01:07:56] Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it one bit and now I feel like I've been Joy-Conned.
[01:08:00] Uh, useful context for any non-gamer.
[01:08:07] in the room, the little, uh, controllers on the left and right side of the Nintendo Switch
[01:08:12] are referred, uh, their names, their Joy-Cons, Joy-Controllers.
[01:08:16] Uh, and, uh, so he feels like he's been Joy-Conned out of his fun.
[01:08:21] Uh, that, that's a great example of a pun where you start with Joy-Conned.
[01:08:27] He must have thought of that and then had to work backwards from there to like
[01:08:31] make that make sense or, or come up with a reason to have been Joy-Conned.
[01:08:36] And the promise of fun followed by it not being fun.
[01:08:39] He got Joy-Conned.
[01:08:40] All right.
[01:08:43] When we talk about good pun or bad pun, like the big takeaway from, from the ranking was,
[01:08:53] all right, so we want to know about like, how much time do we waste in the brains of listeners
[01:08:59] over the long haul?
[01:09:01] And the fact that the Switch is in the news right now, uh, for its reveal is going to have
[01:09:08] more stuff come out in April, probably release in May, June, and then be continued to be a
[01:09:13] going concern for years.
[01:09:14] That tells me that a, uh, a pun like this one, Joy-Conned, you're going to hear the word
[01:09:20] Joy-Con a lot.
[01:09:20] You're going to see Switches are going to be in the media, probably more staying power
[01:09:26] than Bellatro.
[01:09:27] And to say it's not in the cards is, uh, very straightforward wordplay.
[01:09:34] There's not like a, there's no custom construction necessary to make that happen.
[01:09:39] So I would, I would say that in terms of, uh, psychological torment, this pun is clearly
[01:09:50] superior to version 28.
[01:09:51] So that we're going to say that's, this is the new number one pun of 2025.
[01:09:56] How cool would it be if he was able to keep up a streak and have every pun be the number
[01:10:01] one pun and get, and you know, I think every, everybody deserves to be in the spotlight for
[01:10:08] a day.
[01:10:08] everyone deserves to be the hero of the story everyone deserves to like you know be the star
[01:10:11] of the show at least once in their life and uh as we as we have this just real optimistic feeling
[01:10:20] about the future and the world around us right now is that we're just like the you know people
[01:10:24] are coming together and we're all feeling great about how things are going on the planet uh i'm
[01:10:31] going to extend that that that that that that grace and that that that optimism that starry-eyed
[01:10:38] naive you know just hope for the future to all aaron's puns i hope that all of them this year
[01:10:44] are the number one pun for exactly one version of the program uh and and then we'll re-rank them and
[01:10:52] and you know when we tell them that they suck later at least they'll at least they'll have had that one
[01:10:58] day to shine all right so new number one pun there that was easy uh if you've got a pun uh you should
[01:11:07] say it to yourself or to someone near you uh people don't tell enough puns uh but unfortunately we don't
[01:11:15] have time for puns now because uh we got a lot of news to cover and uh i think i'm going to try to keep
[01:11:23] keep it keep it pretty upbeat so let's see let's see how we how let's see how we do all right
[01:11:28] the first item is a blog post
[01:11:36] so it's not really news i still don't know exactly what blog posts are it's titled
[01:11:42] by a fellow named grant slatin or at least that's his uh domain name it might be grantslatin.com
[01:11:49] wrote an essay called nobody cares and uh nobody cares declaratively nobody nobody cares
[01:11:58] and uh it starts off you know why why does nobody care about anything the world is full of stuff that
[01:12:03] could be excellent with just one percent more effort but people don't care you know it's got a sort of
[01:12:08] like a rhythm to it so i'll keep reading a bit have you been to the dmv it sucked there is a human who
[01:12:15] uh there's a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the dmv they do not care that it sucks
[01:12:19] ever use a piece of software that's buggy as hell looks bad but still costs money presumably because
[01:12:24] the company behind it has found some regulatory capture to justify their experience their their
[01:12:28] existence the programmer who wrote it probably doesn't care their manager definitely doesn't care
[01:12:33] the regulators don't care and he goes on and and you know oh and even better you know you might think
[01:12:39] something something incentive systems but no at my job at my big tech job i had the pleasure of
[01:12:43] interviewing a few programmers who worked for a large health care company that engages in regulatory
[01:12:47] capture and let me assure you they do not care and goes on to talk about municipal governments he
[01:12:52] lives in seattle and complains about that and it's not a super long post but it's written in kind of
[01:12:58] tight short uh uh little couplets or paragraphs and this experience of being surrounded by people who seem to
[01:13:10] not care we talk sometimes about like taste do people have taste do like
[01:13:16] like for example like the ninja heating thing right like is it ignorance laziness that like no one's
[01:13:24] thinking like is it you know how the thing is working like how is it heating my food you know and what
[01:13:30] what impact does the way that it heats my food have on you know how the food turns out and and how good
[01:13:37] it tastes it is it is it is it i think that the the occam's razor explanation for what seems to be the death of giving a shit
[01:13:48] is not structural systemic incentive problems it's not that like you know nobody's uh
[01:13:57] sufficiently rewarded or punished for not going the extra mile i think it's the
[01:14:05] at a system-wide level at a population level it seems much more explicable that if capitalism as
[01:14:14] the driving force for society and maximizing shareholder value and eking out more and more
[01:14:18] profits or more and more productivity out of workers if that's the thing that we're all optimizing for
[01:14:23] it stands to reason that things are becoming less and less sustainable over time if you define state
[01:14:31] sustainable as like there's cartilage in between your joints and it kind of cushions the blow and
[01:14:36] there's a little bit more buffer and a little bit more breathing room and a chance to lean back and
[01:14:39] think hard about the right way to do things you know that's exactly what gets ironed out through
[01:14:45] optimization you know we saw this with like um lean manufacturing and the super duper tight
[01:14:51] uh uh supply chains that would indeed be able to push through you know uh turn over the inventory of a
[01:15:00] company as large as apple on like a a several day long basis such that they didn't have any aged
[01:15:05] inventory anywhere which means they didn't have to pay to store it and they didn't have any waste and
[01:15:08] that meant they could put out new products and not have a whole bunch of you know uh excess crap to
[01:15:13] clear right but it also meant that as soon as anything fucking went wrong there's no slack in the system and
[01:15:18] now it's like oh one little tiny fuck up in the supply chain and now there's just zero iphones
[01:15:23] sorry right uh covid taught us that like a very specific lesson about that but i don't think
[01:15:31] we have fully grappled with the fact that for the world to get really good at playing the game of
[01:15:38] min-maxing the stock market almost necessarily means that the space and the time to to take care
[01:15:45] gets ironed out and you might think well if you're a bureaucrat or if you're in a cushy job and you're
[01:15:51] paid salary and you and you you barely fill your day with work because no one's telling you what to do
[01:15:56] and uh there's not enough to do like well why don't they care why don't they do more the answer to that
[01:16:02] is probably like the flip side at the consumer side of capitalism being really good at capitalizing
[01:16:10] is the middle class is is under a lot of financial stress college is more expensive you want to send
[01:16:19] your kid to college it's more expensive than ever and the the certainty that that is going to lead to
[01:16:24] the a child who is not still living with you at 29 years old has never been lower uh the
[01:16:31] you know inflation hurt a lot of families you know just a real you know on an emotional and
[01:16:38] visceral level because it hits stuff like you know gas and groceries and and and prices that people see
[01:16:42] all the time the political environment the sort of like just general vibe that like you know that
[01:16:49] we are we are exiting a a an era of unprecedented stability in exchange for something of higher
[01:16:56] volatility the the two income trap that you know elizabeth warren very presciently wrote
[01:17:01] about you know 30 years ago and launched kind of her kind of public facing career of well if all
[01:17:06] the women start working and now all we've done really is increase the competition for
[01:17:11] all families because now you've got some that are making more money which means that prices are going
[01:17:15] to go up because houses are going to be under more you know the competition is going to expect it and
[01:17:19] so now it's like there's really no way to exist except for both you know parents if there are two
[01:17:23] parents to be working to support child care and it's unless you're very wealthy right so if you're well
[01:17:32] off like if you're affluent i think that you can write this blog post and be like nobody fucking cares i
[01:17:39] care a lot and it's true like me personally i am affluent and i do care a lot and yet at the same time
[01:17:45] i feel surrounded by people who are incredibly stretched thin who are who are under great
[01:17:52] duress to make rent payments uh you know you you become friends with a few disney cast members or
[01:17:58] people who work at universal or people who work at hotels which are literally a majority of the people
[01:18:04] that i have met since moving here the rents go up you know uh wages don't keep up with that you know
[01:18:14] the the hotels now have figured out dynamic pricing so like for example some bean counter at hotels i
[01:18:22] figured this is a great just a crystallized example of this have figured out that like you could take a
[01:18:27] hotel dynamically price it such that uh it's a non-linear scale so it's like well
[01:18:34] when the hotel is fully occupied our costs are very high because we have to fully staff all of
[01:18:40] the contingent workers that we have that are kind of just on call and they might do some math and say
[01:18:46] like actually our our if we're pricing naively like our best case scenario from a customer satisfaction
[01:18:54] and an operating cost perspective is if we're at 60 occupied and what we'll do is we'll just ratchet up the
[01:19:03] prices you know uh uh such that we end up at 60 occupied but but and dynamically price as if that
[01:19:10] was the ceiling and we'll end up making the same amount of revenue but our costs are basically flat
[01:19:15] and all the hotels kind of like you know it's really hard to get a hundred dollar hotel room anymore right
[01:19:21] even a 200 hotel room suddenly feels like a deal but they go further and really you end up with like
[01:19:30] like like like to become fully occupied means and some of the hotels in my area that means that like
[01:19:36] 1400 1500 2000 a night for basic fucking rooms to to to actually fill out that last bit of inventory
[01:19:46] what effect does that have for the workers especially tipped staff how like you know the
[01:19:53] the valet guys who work for a subcontracting firm like like they get zero of the upside in fact they
[01:19:59] get cut more often right but they're going to get fewer tips because there's fewer cars because the
[01:20:03] hotel's less full even though it's making more money than ever all of the the the wait staff you know
[01:20:08] they're getting fewer shifts and the shifts that they do get the bar is less full because there's fewer
[01:20:13] fewer guests the guests might like it because experientially like the hotels are empty here
[01:20:17] and and things are less crowded but the um the price that they're paying to to to stay here is higher
[01:20:23] than ever uh you know i i think that if you are in a like a a monoculture like if you're in a bubble
[01:20:33] and you don't see up close people who are like struggling right now it would be very easy to say people
[01:20:41] sure seem to be caring less than they used to uh but because i've been spending so much time in japan
[01:20:45] over the course of 20 20 years now i guess 19 and a half years uh you know you can still spend 100 yen
[01:20:54] and get a green tea out of a vending machine the 100 yen coin is still king in a lot of ways but more
[01:21:01] often you gotta spend 150 yen more often you gotta spend 180 yen you know to get the same kind of product
[01:21:07] uh and uh if it is still 100 yen you're getting a very very thin very watery a green tea and it's in a
[01:21:15] smaller bottle than ever before
[01:21:17] the inflation has happened mostly through shrink flation and the reason is that like japanese wages have
[01:21:23] not increased one iota but inflation you know it's been not as bad as here but it's still pretty bad
[01:21:30] it's still it's still impacting people and my friends who were you know they were middle class
[01:21:36] in japan like like like like when i was in college and through my early you know just general adult life
[01:21:42] uh i've got a friend there who who who has had a broken water heater for for like a year and it would cost
[01:21:51] just enough to fix that he wouldn't be able to pay for you know kids school supplies or food
[01:21:56] and and and having to make that choice even though he's got a perfectly reasonable salary job
[01:22:02] when i visit our our friends who are like programmers in in japan we talk about you know
[01:22:07] not of course it always comes up that they can't easily come to the u.s or travel internationally
[01:22:12] because the yen is so depressed but that also means imports are really expensive and and so like
[01:22:16] when we talk about computers like some of them are switching to linux because the price of apple
[01:22:19] products have become so much more expensive it's and and you know programmers like it's not a ticket to
[01:22:27] like upper middle class affluence like it like it can be in the united states like a lot of programmers
[01:22:32] still make between 30 and 45 000 full-time in japan uh and that used to be enough uh in a lot of cases but
[01:22:41] you know through various austerity measures that the ltp has put in place and you know gentle inflation like
[01:22:46] this i think of this kind of optimization that like just the the endless march of capitalism uh uh
[01:22:54] seems to have and i'm not anti-capitalist i'm just saying like like you if you take a rubber band and you
[01:23:01] just keep stretching it a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further it gets
[01:23:04] tighter and tighter and thinner and thinner and eventually it reaches like you know a breaking point
[01:23:08] and that's why nobody cares so anyway this is a is a good essay it's a good food for thought uh but
[01:23:16] i'll be honest one of the reasons that i moved to orlando was people fucking care here it's still
[01:23:21] unsustainable you know i i have friends who who drive beaters who are you know they work in the parks and
[01:23:26] they they are their performers and they're they're doing it for the love of the game and they're they're
[01:23:31] happy to be here but like they they have to put up with all kinds of injustices but they still
[01:23:37] they still have the care and they still care but like if i was in you know bfe ohio or just like any
[01:23:45] old town like i you wouldn't have the motivation of like you know being convinced that you're in the
[01:23:50] most magical place on earth or being surrounded by this energy or this like this this big nostalgia
[01:23:55] factory to keep you motivated like i i i don't blame people for not caring i just am very grateful
[01:24:02] that i both get to care myself i've got the i've got the privilege of care mad but also like i happen
[01:24:07] to be in a place and i position myself in a place where in spite of all of those obstacles for for in
[01:24:14] the case of traveling japan people still give a shit because like their whole culture is caring their
[01:24:20] whole temperament and disposition is is caring too much sometimes often too much
[01:24:26] and by being over here in the parks and and and in theme parkville uh it the mystique is so strong
[01:24:34] that the caring just kind of happens and and it's true that service is like not what it used to be
[01:24:40] right that those stresses and those fractures they become apparent from time to time but it's still
[01:24:45] night and day head and shoulders better than pretty much everywhere else that i go such that every time
[01:24:50] i leave orlando i feel like uh i i inevitably end up texting either becky or my brother or a friend
[01:24:57] back home it's like why do i leave like we live in paradise so if you do move to orlando though you
[01:25:03] be mindful of which which side of i4 you're on uh there's a post i don't have a lot to talk about
[01:25:13] with this one it's it's just a good kind of summary of like by by another blog post simon willison
[01:25:20] uh called uh things we learned about llm's large language models in 2024
[01:25:28] uh he did a similar uh post in 2023 and it's a good kind of synopsis and summary of sort of like
[01:25:35] the state of the art with ai like what was this year all about uh none of the none if you've been
[01:25:41] following along none of these are incredible uh none of these are are are really like blow away like
[01:25:50] new things this is just a summary of like year in review 2024 and this post and last year's post
[01:25:55] are both really helpful for just at a glance because like all the whole ai era already feels
[01:26:00] kind of like a blur because these products are just like the models move underneath you kind of
[01:26:04] invisibly and so their capabilities actually this is similar to the full self-driving thing a lot of
[01:26:09] tesla drivers don't subscribe or don't use the full self-driving because the first version was
[01:26:13] a complete joke it was totally unsafe uh it was mostly a lot of heuristic based c plus plus if
[01:26:18] else code and now it has so much data getting uploaded from these devices and these cameras
[01:26:24] and so much machine learning technology in there and like you know the much better hardware that's
[01:26:28] able to like like it's a different product now but like from a user interface perspective it looks the
[01:26:32] same a lot of the ai stuff is the same so so i'm going to share that link uh in the show notes
[01:26:37] it is something to read maybe while you grapple with the fact that tick tock is down
[01:26:44] you know i could list that as a new story but i think probably you probably know and uh you know it is
[01:26:51] it being january 19th a little bit before noon we who the fuck knows where it's going to go you can
[01:26:58] we can all imagine many different paths that this could take uh it's it's kind of it's not necessarily
[01:27:06] worth speculating uh the the the number one thing i'm curious about is if the if the ban holds for a few
[01:27:13] days i wonder what it's going to be like to be a middle school teacher when the kids can't just be
[01:27:21] one hand on their phone during class all day what the withdrawal symptoms are going to be like for
[01:27:27] especially children who are addicted to it um pretty much every other country it seems like
[01:27:32] that's banned tick tock it seems it seems like mostly it's just been youtube shorts and instagram
[01:27:37] immediately pick up the same traction uh it's it's interesting right because like i mean like
[01:27:44] the tension between free expression and being able to post stuff and also like the national security
[01:27:49] concerns of like well you know like a lot of people threw away their votes in this last election over
[01:27:54] aggravation about palestine like
[01:27:59] there's a lot of evidence and like you know there's a national you know director i think
[01:28:04] was a dni report about the amount of pro-palestine messaging that was being promoted through tick tock
[01:28:09] to sow discord uh one one could presume uh yeah you know when the founders were thinking about free
[01:28:19] speech they were not necessarily thinking about like free coercive speech for foreign actors to be
[01:28:25] passively you know promoting in our feeds so i don't know what the right answer is other than
[01:28:32] quit facebook hit the gym and lawyer up so just do that and you'll be fine
[01:28:38] uh an actual news item from actual publication ours technica this was posted in a bunch of places but
[01:28:46] ours usually has the best uh rundowns so this fella in the uk has been trying to
[01:28:55] he mined a bunch of bitcoin in 2009 and he was trying to get his laptop back from a uh a landfill
[01:29:04] which one presumes you know a decade hence it would be deep down into that landfill and so he made a
[01:29:12] lawsuit he said look i mined a bunch of bitcoin it was on a laptop hard drive uh it's got the private key
[01:29:17] how how the fuck like okay i get it like crypto is confusing and people want to have hardware key
[01:29:25] uh uh our hard hardware wallets and and security and place to put these keys but like i still
[01:29:30] personally struggle with like and why isn't one password good enough actually write in if you know
[01:29:35] the answer like it if i had any crypto and i needed to store a key i would put it in one password and then
[01:29:42] i would be like not a fucking dipshit and just hand that over to to anyone or click on sketchy links or
[01:29:49] paste that hardware keyboard into a website that could be getting you know an xss attack or something
[01:29:55] like that like what the benefit of these hardware key like i suspect that it's just that crypto attracts
[01:30:01] tinfoil hat people who are susceptible to first of all the siren song of
[01:30:08] bullshit crypto claims about it you know being a legitimate currency or some some way to escape
[01:30:14] state control and i suspect that that same mindset is also very amenable to the idea that like
[01:30:20] yeah you can't trust you know cloud-based password manager you got to use a hardware wallet or you got
[01:30:25] to you know write all this out in paper and and make sure that you don't use too legible of a handwriting
[01:30:30] or like you know the ai is going to ocr it and never never bring that piece of paper outside or the spy
[01:30:35] satellites will watch it and then china will take all the money like you got to bury that paper you
[01:30:40] keep it covered get only walk outside with an umbrella while you're at it and make sure that
[01:30:44] it's lined with the rfid blocking tape that we sell uh yeah the the anyway i seem to know a lot of people
[01:30:55] who were early in on bitcoin but like who claimed to have like forgotten the password that would unlock
[01:31:03] at this point hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars worth of the bitcoin you know as a deflationary
[01:31:09] currency it's like you know it's designed to run out of new coins to mine it within not too long from
[01:31:16] now six seven years you're so technologically advanced you're so at the bleeding edge of technology
[01:31:24] that you were mining crypto in 2009 but like you never thought that a password manager would be a
[01:31:30] good idea like i got i think i was on one password in 2008 i don't know man like i saw i saw bitcoin i was
[01:31:36] like ah that looks kind of i don't i don't know anyway this guy wants claims that he has rights
[01:31:42] to this laptop and that that that that that means that he should be able to go into a landfill and just
[01:31:47] dig up the laptop and find what is now considered to be worth uh 765 million dollars he started this
[01:31:55] lawsuit when it was only worth 70 7.5 million so it's you know 8 000 bitcoins lying around there and
[01:32:01] and unfortunately the judge has ruled that he that that he doesn't that the landfill authority owns the
[01:32:09] trash so uh and there's a six-year statute of limitations so so it's just
[01:32:19] if you're gonna crypto try to be smarter than the grifters try to be you know more intelligent than
[01:32:27] the people who will you know tie up so much of their finances and something and then not bother
[01:32:34] to you know make sure that they've got a way to access that shit uh i don't know why i i
[01:32:42] crypto is going to experience a renaissance because we're about to see uh what little regulation we
[01:32:47] have around it completely you know evaporate uh anderson horowitz uh as in and the two fellas
[01:32:57] they did a video about you know why they supported trump in the last election and why they think that
[01:33:02] like you know a regulatory regulation of crypto is really bad when you really what it is is like it's a
[01:33:07] get out of sec free card for for for for funders and startups and investors especially when you're like
[01:33:14] when you're a vc you're like you are positioning yourself at the top of every ponzi scheme and so
[01:33:20] like having a financial vehicle that allows you to escape any responsibility for starting ponzi schemes
[01:33:27] uh you know when you can just tell people on their phones to to sign up for this new coin that you're
[01:33:35] minting to support i don't know like uh a new retinal eye scanning ai technology like what it was a world
[01:33:43] con or whatever like uh uh yeah people can just pump pump and dump to their heart's content
[01:33:50] so i feel like we're not going to escape crypto anytime soon and i'm sure that the valuations will
[01:33:56] keep going up because preppers love spending money on shit but man i uh like i i've never been less
[01:34:04] interested in other uh in news of of where consensus seems to be changing on something genuinely uh you
[01:34:13] you might know uh have heard of havana syndrome this is like the the diplomats in cuba following the the
[01:34:20] obama normalization with cuba uh where where people were reporting like really bad headaches migraines um
[01:34:28] seemingly like inner ear damage from supersonic waves that reportedly russian agents or somebody was like
[01:34:36] blasting at the u.s embassy and and the homes of diplomats and and foreign service workers
[01:34:41] and enough people had come forward with these symptoms that it was really weird to me that like
[01:34:49] the national intelligence apparatus and every report that had been put out was just like yo they crazy
[01:34:53] you know that no that's just hysteria and you'd see like a lot of the literati in the political press
[01:35:00] over the last few years be like oh yeah well that was clearly debunked because this report said so
[01:35:04] you know like matt glace is being like oh there's no evidence so it's like you know every now and then
[01:35:08] there is i think a uh
[01:35:10] there are like like for example in my high school they built a brand new high school in like 2005 was the first year
[01:35:17] it was open my brother was there i was in college and kids started passing out in class uh it was
[01:35:23] brand new it had that new school smell and it happened like once and then twice and then three
[01:35:28] times i think i don't know how many kids ultimately passed out but eventually they like they temporarily
[01:35:32] closed the school to have like an audit done to be like is there some weird noxious gas in here
[01:35:37] and ultimately they didn't find anything now that doesn't mean that there wasn't proof that it does it
[01:35:41] just means there wasn't proof that there was something wrong like it it could have been a meme right
[01:35:46] kids could have heard about it but like also like high school starts too early and maybe they got
[01:35:50] sleepy and you know i don't maybe it was conscious or maybe it was just like a you know a kid falls
[01:35:55] asleep and then suddenly it's like they've got a they've got a great cover story built in which is
[01:35:58] like oh it's the it's the gases you know the vapors but this havana syndrome thing is just too
[01:36:04] fucking weird and like a lot of these people are like still on uh um like disability and haven't been
[01:36:11] able to come back to work for years so if it was just some sort of hysteria or all in their heads like
[01:36:17] that's an impressive amount of psychosomatic trauma to to just have you know quote-unquote made
[01:36:22] up uh so anyway i was always like look i'm a lab leak hypothesis guy like do i think that that the
[01:36:30] coronavirus was like you know accelerated in uh in in a wuhong lab and and and broke out or do i think
[01:36:38] it was like a pangolin or something in a wet market like i'm i'm actually you know i'm a i'm a lab leak
[01:36:44] truther and i have been from the first minute because it just seems like too too many coincidences
[01:36:48] so you tell me like hey we've got foreign service people working in cuba and then they happen to a
[01:36:54] couple other countries that are both known as places that russia has a lot of operations and a lot of
[01:36:59] interests uh i don't know it seemed it seems like they're you know it always seemed real to me so
[01:37:11] anyway it looks like finally after some resistance by biden administration officials being like i don't
[01:37:16] know this seems real that they're finally admitting that it seems real so if you're in havana and you
[01:37:22] start to get the syndrome blame russia i guess uh meta is continuing the lightning round meta
[01:37:33] let's see if i can pull over yes a couple different links i suppose aris technica has one where it's
[01:37:41] just sort of just the facts ma'am of medics killing its diversity programs citing that dei uh diversity equity inclusion has become too charged
[01:37:50] uh you know so by you know it's interesting that we live in an era where if you successfully
[01:37:57] politicize something you also neutralize it you know as soon as like half the country decides they
[01:38:02] don't want to do something you no longer have a plurality of support for something
[01:38:05] and the backlash effect of the you know just like a bud light right like if you'd gone back five years
[01:38:10] 10 years and told me modello was going to be the number one beer in america because a transgender woman
[01:38:15] was in a bud light ad like i i would totally have believed you and then that's what happened
[01:38:22] uh he uh also in a separate new york post article and now it's the new york post so who knows but
[01:38:29] uh apparently when zuckerberg was yucking it up with uh trump down in mar-a-lago he uh uh threw
[01:38:36] cheryl sandberg under the bus as being the reason for all the the dei crap and that he's finally
[01:38:42] unshackled and and can say what he wants and and in so doing is also really loosened up the uh
[01:38:48] political speech suppression that you see on instagram and especially threads where
[01:38:54] i think threads had an uh a huge opportunity when it launched if only they had not downranked
[01:39:01] anything news anything contemporaneous anything political i think that they really could have
[01:39:06] given elon and x a run for their money because uh unlike x it had the virtue of uh the pages loading
[01:39:12] but because it was a a heated election season you know the whole political press all of the journalists
[01:39:20] were like well you're downranking news like why would i spend time in threads in fact now
[01:39:24] now blue sky is taking off so i think like all these things happen in a piece but the the fact
[01:39:28] that meta killed its diversity programs and that we're seeing similar kind of
[01:39:32] the alignment right of like well you know you got to play ball with the trump administration anyway
[01:39:38] you know that somebody asked me last night at the birthday party like why is it that like tech
[01:39:43] is cozying up to trump and i think that they the at some point the the alliance between
[01:39:54] left of center politicians and the the tech world it flipped the polarity flipped and
[01:40:02] when i went to visit google in 2007 2007 2007 like they had so many pictures on the wall of here's al
[01:40:09] gore here and here's all these democratic bundlers and like like like luminaries and stuff and all the
[01:40:14] people who visited the campus and spoken uh to our staff done a done a special google talk or whatever
[01:40:21] the i think the bloom came off the rose a bit first from the center left people because they realized
[01:40:28] like oh wow like these platforms are you know like like uh open the door to misinformation right and
[01:40:36] then it was uh first around the election the russia stuff and then it was like during covet it's like oh
[01:40:40] shoot like you know like it's the anti-vax crap and and all of all of the conspiracy theories you know all
[01:40:46] these different sort of like the the pressures around the type of speech that their algorithms
[01:40:50] happen to promote which is like very outrage very you know like anger bait and and a lot of that stuff
[01:40:56] tends to agitate more like right-wing people who have like the authoritarian top-down mindset so like i think
[01:41:03] that like like partly the democrats like left like like like like started pressuring or distancing
[01:41:08] themselves or or finding themselves in opposition to just like what technology was but much more
[01:41:13] literally the the the the the biden administration's like decision to like let's regulate trusts uh the
[01:41:22] doj lawsuit against apple the the the judgment against google that like right now as it stands google has
[01:41:28] to come up with a plan for how to like divest itself of android and or chrome and or search
[01:41:33] uh uh to break it up now that probably won't happen and certainly because the election is less likely to
[01:41:39] happen but you ask like hey why why is tech turned on it's like the dei stuff is also just like a huge
[01:41:44] huge huge i hate to say it because like i actually really really like the idea of us all getting better
[01:41:50] but from the perspective of an executive trying to run a business a huge distraction like now in addition
[01:41:58] to running a business in a competitive environment i also have to meet all of these other goals that are
[01:42:02] orthogonal to it's just like you know like how many stories have we heard about microsoft doing the
[01:42:10] like stupid thing with respect to security like security doesn't make them more money obviously pr disasters
[01:42:16] cost them some amount of money but sometimes the cost that that is incurred by a security fiasco
[01:42:22] is still less than the cost of fixing it at at the root and so they make that trade all the time uh so
[01:42:31] i suspect that the like the impatience that leadership has with the increasingly you know demanding uh
[01:42:39] activists left during 2020 2021 2022 uh i was at the time saying like man like you gotta find a way to
[01:42:48] attenuate these signals or else like you're just going to create a huge fucking backlash and i got a
[01:42:53] lot of heat for that uh internally and without and uh i hate to say i told you so but this is exactly what
[01:43:00] fucking happens so we're just seeing a thermostatic effect and now we're just in the case of i guess
[01:43:06] we'll see where it goes but uh zuckerberg looks like a fucking loser by the way with his big t-shirts
[01:43:13] and his hair uh speaking of killing programs google is killing uh the ability to use google.com unless you
[01:43:21] have javascript enabled uh so so it used to be the case that you could uh go to google.com like it
[01:43:27] was a website type in a search query hit enter and then have it like if you if you have javascript it
[01:43:32] does all the fancy stuff right like it like fills in the next set of results the auto fills them in and
[01:43:38] then you click a thing and then it's not a hard page load or anything like the the results is magically
[01:43:42] populate right that's how that's the google experience as we've known it for over a decade
[01:43:46] probably over 15 years but because google is like a technologist first linux neckbeard joint from the
[01:43:55] start it would all it would it would play by pre-javascript rules of you go to the website you
[01:44:02] type in the google query you hit search search was an actual button that you could press you know like
[01:44:07] and and it would load another page and then you have 10 results or 30 results per page and you have
[01:44:11] the little like remember the little o's were like the the paginators i don't even know if it's still
[01:44:16] last time i've lasted more than five google results before giving up on google was uh quite a long time
[01:44:22] ago i guess you could do all that throughout google's history without having javascript on
[01:44:29] why that was significant was it meant that you could use more accessible browsers it meant that you could
[01:44:36] use uh browsers that had like you know uh uh worse hardware on them but importantly it meant that you
[01:44:42] could scrape fucking google it meant that you could write a program that could easily and conceivably
[01:44:47] download the google page navigate it you know parse the links and then but that's a way to bypass ads
[01:44:55] right and and by programmatically using google at all it allows uh third parties to scrape it uh and and to
[01:45:03] build their own indexes at scale which google does not want to do because that's their special sauce
[01:45:08] uh and so of course like that tension has always been there and they've always had sort of all
[01:45:12] all kinds of anti-scraping you know technologies and middlewares to try to prevent this but they
[01:45:17] finally given up the ghost and said you know now you just need to have javascript running and
[01:45:23] i don't love that it's that you know whatever you know like most websites require you have javascript
[01:45:29] running the things that i write require you to have javascript running so it's not like
[01:45:32] this is just a a changing of the it is a sign of the times so it's like okay well we are now in the
[01:45:38] era that the the the web is just an application platform and the the primary benefit of these fancy
[01:45:45] applications is to to build a bigger wall around the garden it's not necessarily to improve the user
[01:45:51] experience because nothing is lost by by you know they claimed like you get worse search results when
[01:45:58] javascript isn't enabled it's like that the server is the one doing and i don't know they're acting
[01:46:03] like this is a user experience win but they really are taking something away and calling it better
[01:46:08] so i just want to note that that's too bad i i i will miss the old-fashioned i could use the links
[01:46:15] browser in my terminal and navigate google and search for results over ssh which is a thing that i did in
[01:46:21] in school often uh from my linux workstation when i was in the lab
[01:46:25] as we continue these potpourri of shitty tech news the ceo of sonos was forced to step down
[01:46:33] as well as the head of product uh
[01:46:36] if you i've had various sonos devices i i did and when i was in columbus i had a home theater set up
[01:46:43] where where where you had like the two back then they were like sonos ones uh that were the side
[01:46:50] channels the the the bar in the middle and then the uh the subwoofer which is a very very expensive
[01:46:58] subwoofer even by sonos standards and their speakers are all expensive because it had the
[01:47:02] force cancelling like design where you know it would push up and down at the same level at the
[01:47:07] same time at the same frequency or amplitude i guess and so those waves would cancel out and so you'd
[01:47:11] still get the thump but it wouldn't literally shake the floor really good system good good audio you
[01:47:18] know for years sonos's biggest problem is that their audio products are so good and so long lasting
[01:47:23] that they've got a certain they've got a fixed number of fans basically like of of of sonos heads
[01:47:28] but they don't need to replace their hardware very often and so you know
[01:47:32] the diminishing returns of how good a speaker can get or how good the syncing of the audio between
[01:47:38] different rooms the household can get is such that once you've got all the speakers that you need and
[01:47:43] you're not going to move house anymore like there's probably move house is that a britishism
[01:47:48] why'd i say that write in if that's a britishism uh
[01:47:51] you know it's it's a hard business to run and they wanted to enter the headphone market because that's
[01:47:58] where there's a lot it's a much more disposable product category right headphones take wear and tear
[01:48:02] they've got lithium ion batteries in them they eventually wear out and in order for the headphone
[01:48:09] to work the they had to update their app and their app is one of the it's a whole category of apps like
[01:48:14] there's certain things just like existed before airplay 2 right existed before apple streaming music
[01:48:20] uh and so the app is sort of this dinosaur of a controller for music and it can integrate to various
[01:48:27] music services and you can select which rooms things are playing in and don't get me wrong like
[01:48:32] they've got their own protocols and they are very good and people who love sonos swear by it but
[01:48:38] every time i've had sonos devices like i have never wanted to use that app it has always been a garbage
[01:48:44] piece of shit it's a junky ux it always was it always is and maybe it's more reliable but it was
[01:48:49] never my experience the app is the place you go to set up a new sonos device and then when you have
[01:48:54] when you move it and you want it to like recalibrate it's uh what do they call it true
[01:48:58] tone where like you walk around with the phone and wave it around so that it can use the microphone from
[01:49:03] the phone to kind of like synchronize a distance between the speakers and so forth so but but
[01:49:08] apparently sonos people will use the app and actually use it in earnest uh which i've never
[01:49:14] understood i'm just grateful that i never had that workflow it's like airplay 2 is more than good
[01:49:18] enough for me because i'm just blasting audio all these home pods anyway and home pods are not sonos
[01:49:23] machines so i've got a um a move 2 which is a nice speaker it's a nice big boy it's a big
[01:49:28] it's like an ottoman it's a it's a small ottoman sized portable speaker uh and it rests on a little
[01:49:36] ring that charges over usb so you don't have to plug it and unplug it we just pick it up out of the cafe
[01:49:41] we can go down to the the ticket to the the pool outside it's a great time so they wanted to release
[01:49:47] these headphones and so they put out a huge rewrite of the app they brushed it because their headphones
[01:49:52] were launching and uh the old app wouldn't support the headphone pairing or whatever that was about
[01:49:57] the stupid fucking headphone the bespoke headphone experience which of course can't just be a bluetooth
[01:50:01] headphone anymore not if you're sonos so they rush out this new app and the the the ceo did some tap
[01:50:09] dancing about you know kind of basically like the apple style hashtag courage about it and and and the
[01:50:15] app had a lot of problems and fortunately i didn't experience any of them i downloaded the app uh or i had it
[01:50:20] anyway i think i got the i got i i was on the new app because i i just gotten this the the move to
[01:50:26] speaker and it was like you know it was enough the setup worked and whatever i didn't think about it
[01:50:30] people were really mad though and sonos people you know like like the one thing that they love about
[01:50:34] sonos and would always brag is the reliability so i get it and none of them wanted fucking headphones
[01:50:38] from sonos anyway i don't think so yeah ceo's gone apparently it's like like people are talking about
[01:50:45] this now like it's the fucking like mcdonald douglas takeover of boeing or something that the
[01:50:49] current crop of executives there just didn't understand what sonos was all about but like
[01:50:54] to be fair sonos is a feature not a product in the current era where everything's abstracted to like
[01:51:03] you know the big five tech companies all offer all of the same things and the kinds of like level of
[01:51:07] platform integrations that they can offer is so compelling that like what is so like if sonos isn't
[01:51:13] going to sell to apple what are they doing you know what what it would be really difficult to be
[01:51:18] the ceo of sonos regardless uh so he's gone new guys in he's saying all the right things but like i
[01:51:25] it it's a it's it's a their lane is so fucking narrow like what what is that what is a a sonos
[01:51:35] comeback story after this debacle look like right where the fans have turned on you and really the only
[01:51:41] reason your business was doing well was people had an irrational level of love and respect for
[01:51:45] you and your reliability and your brand power now that that's gone what what do you got what do you
[01:51:52] got because it because because the products themselves were actually not worth the price that you were
[01:51:58] charging and the structural and like you know just sort of systemic problems that you're facing are
[01:52:06] worse now than they were a year ago before you burned all this clock on nonsense like
[01:52:11] uh i think sonos is publicly traded sell your sonos please this is financial advice go go
[01:52:16] fucking sell it i i'm not an investor and this is not does not constitute financial advice um speaking
[01:52:22] of financial advice uh the nvidia came out with its 5000 series of graphics cards well it announced
[01:52:30] them at their keynote at ces and nvidia they're on top of the world they talk about stock prices uh they're
[01:52:35] they're they're they're they're enjoying the the peak of their bubble i uh i keep telling people
[01:52:41] like you know like especially people who have invested in nvidia um you know just like individual
[01:52:45] stock picking like the reason that nvidia is doing well right now is they were so fortunate to ride the
[01:52:55] crypto wave where yes it just turns out that like uh general purpose gpus are useful like multiplying
[01:53:02] matrices is a really handy operation to be able to do at scale for lots of different you know uh ponzi scheme
[01:53:11] adjacent technology ventures so like the crypto scheme they take off nvidia's are all the graphics
[01:53:19] cards are are sold out everywhere because everyone wants to mine their cryptos uh now between proof of
[01:53:25] stake and like the subsiding you know nft craze and everything like that that just as that starts to
[01:53:30] ebb the ai boom starts taking off and now everyone is the h100 uh uh server rack graphics you know ai chip
[01:53:39] is the the coin of the realm and and all of these you know companies vcs are are are basically bartering
[01:53:46] in h100 access and all the cloud computer uh the cloud platforms are are hoovering up all of them and so
[01:53:52] nvidia was able to very like gracefully navigate from the crypto bubble to the ai
[01:53:58] we'll see if it's a bubble bubble uh and so they're on top of the world and well you know like
[01:54:06] they're in in such a dominant position and ai will continue to exist that there's going to be a lot of
[01:54:10] winners and losers in terms of applications for ai but if you look at the eps if you look at the
[01:54:17] trajectory of the nvidia stock like there's a a sickness in the brains of finance pros that think
[01:54:24] numbers can only go up um they're they're just drawing and cram the extrapolation of the rest of
[01:54:29] the line and i i suspect that this is a there's just not enough money at the lower levels in the value
[01:54:35] chain like like the cloud providers are eventually going to have to turn a profit because they're all
[01:54:39] publicly traded too um it's hard to imagine everyone's going to be replacing all of these
[01:54:44] server racks like every single year and if they're doing that you're gonna have people like amazon
[01:54:49] like make their own ai chip so anyway nvidia like not that they're on shaky ground but like they're
[01:54:54] really riding high you know you got jensen the the co-founder and his shiny leather jackets and stuff
[01:54:59] and he's always been a little bit of a character i the thing that you know them making discrete graphics
[01:55:08] chips for computers so that gamers could play games was their thing and crypto was seen as a big
[01:55:15] distraction and that they took their eye off the ball and they uh you know the 2000 series of cards
[01:55:21] was kind of mediocre in a lot of ways the 3000 series of cards adds you know enhances the ray tracing
[01:55:27] capabilities of the cards and then and and and in general performance is fine like they don't have
[01:55:32] a lot of competition right now intel just put out one that's like a decent budget option that's
[01:55:37] surprisingly performant and competent given that it's intel and a company that shouldn't exist uh
[01:55:43] the 5000 series of cards they they they they they did a very well produced keynote they showed a lot of
[01:55:51] unlabeled bar charts comparing it to the 4000 series of cards that they're replacing they're coming in
[01:55:56] at prices that are lower than people expected they're making bold claims like that the um
[01:56:01] the the what is it the 50 70 provides 40 90 levels of performance where the the last two digits indicate
[01:56:10] the sort of the the tier of the card so like the card that in the new generation that's two rungs down
[01:56:15] from the top of the previous generation that those are going to be somehow equivalent
[01:56:19] and when you listen to them talk of course they're talking about because of the ai because the ai compute
[01:56:26] in these new chips is way higher and we have these cool tricks the two primary tricks are upscaling
[01:56:34] using ai so you take a you actually rasterize you render the game at a low resolution like call it 1080p
[01:56:41] and then you use machine learning and a model that's kind of embedded and ships with the drivers
[01:56:46] to upscale it to 4k or whatever it is and if you just do that naively you end up with a picture that
[01:56:53] looks really sharp and like a lot of jacket edges and stuff but if you do it based on like you know
[01:56:57] a lot of training data that says this is what the game should look like or what a game should look like
[01:57:00] at 4k in this particular genre in this particular circumstance you know like it can actually do really
[01:57:04] clever things like make sure that the foliage ends up in front of the light or whatever it is
[01:57:08] so that's called dlss and uh dlss 4 is even more advanced and it's a whole cadre of features one of
[01:57:16] the other the other big kind of leg of the stool here is uh frame gen or frame generation and that is
[01:57:23] you know the name of the game for graphics cards really two things you have a frame buffer putting out
[01:57:28] a certain amount of resolution uh to a display and then you do that a certain number of times
[01:57:35] a second you know in hertz so for a long time getting a game to run stable at 60 hertz or 60
[01:57:41] frames per second that was the gold standard and if you could do that you're great but now modern day
[01:57:45] displays not only have very very high refresh rates but they have connections to the the graphics card
[01:57:52] that can sync that that refresh rate so that the graphics card can communicate to the the monitor
[01:57:56] and say like let's say i've got a monitor that has some of these are nuts like there's a there's one
[01:58:00] i think that was ces that can do 4k at 240 hertz or 1080p at 480 hertz so like we're talking about
[01:58:10] screens that can refresh all of the pixels on the screen like absurdly fast but the the card can now
[01:58:16] communicate over the you know display port connection it can say like hey i'm going to be outputting at 275
[01:58:22] or some arbitrary uh frequency or or yeah uh frame rate and the display can can anticipate that and
[01:58:30] then the two can basically be in lock stink so there's lots lock sync so there's no tearing or
[01:58:35] anything like that it's all very very neat so so frame generation where you the graphics card will
[01:58:43] interpolate so if you if you're drawing like let's say like like it's only rasterizing like 60 frames a
[01:58:48] second and you want to display 120 frames you want it to feel that much smoother that much faster now
[01:58:56] whether or not people can actually perceive stuff faster than 60 or 90 or 120 frames per second
[01:59:02] i don't know it would be really interesting to see somebody do a side-by-side study and see
[01:59:07] what portion of the population can even fucking tell but if you want to be able to say that you're
[01:59:12] putting out 120 frames per second or 240 frames per second just like dlss takes lower resolution images
[01:59:19] and upscales them so you can say or feel like you're playing a 4k game and have it look mostly
[01:59:24] right even though it's it's not the game anymore it's an imagined it's an ai fever dream of what the
[01:59:30] game should look like at 4k uh that's heavily informed by you know tweaks between the developers
[01:59:35] and drivers and yada yada the frame generation side is sort of like the same thing but for motion so it's
[01:59:39] like all right so the 65 60 frames per second game that's what we're rendering at so that's the work
[01:59:44] that the computer has to do is just to get those 60 frames out the door and then dlss the the sort of
[01:59:51] ai piece the pipeline will interpolate like what imagine what the frame would look like in between
[01:59:57] you know each of the other frames so interleaved between each frame is a frame that i just made up
[02:00:03] and then i've doubled the frame right and that's 2x frame generation well these new 5000 cards are
[02:00:08] going to support 4x frame generation so in between each frame you've got now what would that be three
[02:00:14] more fucking frames that are also made up until the next real frame and it interpolates between the two
[02:00:20] and it adds a certain amount of latency right because you want to know what's what's the next
[02:00:24] frame before you put it out but that latency now is like it used to be that the latency was slow
[02:00:29] enough it would because the pipeline would have to run and so forth then it would take longer and so
[02:00:33] like you'd end up with uh the sort of phenomenon like you move the controller a little bit and then
[02:00:37] like it's just a little laggy or motion blurry like you're you're it's not a snappy music and rhythm
[02:00:42] games like it would be a game over because when you tap the button it wouldn't time up with what you're
[02:00:46] seeing on the screen the latency is apparently back down and so like they're bragging now like oh yeah you
[02:00:51] you have incredible performance at 240 480 frames per second but they're not like gamers look at that
[02:00:59] who are hardcore gamers who want to like you know like there there is a dick measuring contest aspect
[02:01:06] to pc games where it's like if i make a custom pc i'm trying to maximize the raster we say rasterization
[02:01:14] performance of the graphics uh because all of the device components that i'm picking whether it's
[02:01:21] you know the motherboard so like that like the memory band with those maxed out the the particular chip
[02:01:26] that i get so that the you know the um any games that i play are not uh uh bottlenecked from the cpu
[02:01:34] right like the the amount of like sort of like game world processing and the ai movement of all the the npcs
[02:01:41] and all that and then you get this graphics card and you want just a big beefy thing that can
[02:01:45] multiply a shit ton of matrices matrices simultaneously this feels like cheating this feels like well
[02:01:51] uh i'm not really rendering 4k i'm rendering 1080p and then it's making up some stuff it feels like oh
[02:01:57] okay well i'm not really running at 60 frames per second or 100 i'm not really running 120 frames i'm
[02:02:01] running 60 and sort of doubling them in this kind of goofy way and because these uh upscalers and and
[02:02:08] and frame gen you know techniques are not perfect that they do make mistakes a certain amount of
[02:02:13] veracity is lost for sure and like these things are getting better and that's nice but the yeah like i
[02:02:19] said the dick measuring aspect of like why are people really in this racket to begin with that is uh
[02:02:25] completely undercut and so like nvidia finds itself like in this like marketing problem where all they
[02:02:31] really want to work on is the ai stuff and the diminishing returns of like making something that can
[02:02:35] multiply matrices faster and like introduce new shaders and technologies that actually make games
[02:02:39] look better not just you know uh uh easier to artificially accelerate they're clearly like that's not where
[02:02:50] their attention is their attention is on building like you know neural language processors and and
[02:02:56] rather than actually improve these cards performance versus the previous generation it is increasingly looking
[02:03:01] like and and and once you ignore the bar charts and dig into like what's actually in these cards
[02:03:06] uh you know the the number of actual cores that like go to the graphics processing stuff it's like
[02:03:12] pretty mild some of them are flat over the previous generation now granted like the prices aren't super high but
[02:03:20] you know i was i'm a guy who fucking loves to upgrade shit i have a 30 90 it's a great card i i i in fact
[02:03:30] my indiana jones i'm running at 4k 60 frames a second my projector only supports 60 frames a second only
[02:03:35] supports 4k nevertheless when the 50 90 is getting announced i'm like i want that because it's new and
[02:03:41] it's faster and like i i have a homeopathic sort of benefit like i something in the air that just makes me
[02:03:47] sleep better at night knowing that my performance is the best that i can possibly get
[02:03:50] uh i would have better path tracing i'd have better lighting maybe right and while that is true i can
[02:03:58] still drag up almost every single game slider all the way to the right but then you you layer on this
[02:04:05] kind of stuff and and the fact that the performance actually isn't the rasterization performance isn't
[02:04:11] better it just does it feels it cheapens it somehow so i don't know like when we talk about triple a
[02:04:19] gaming and how how it is uh structurally one wonders really whether or not um this market's even big
[02:04:27] enough to to worry about uh you know nvidia clearly doesn't care it's like sort of like intel just has
[02:04:32] this desktop pc gaming market anymore and it's like this tiny tiny little rounding error in terms of their
[02:04:37] overall businesses so go check out the 5000 series cards but i suspect that aftermarket 4000 and 3000
[02:04:45] cards are still going to be very valuable um because it's not like you know the average the average card
[02:04:50] is like a 2000 series or 3000 series like a an older card and and developers need to hit as many
[02:04:57] gamers as possible so no one's actually taking advantage of these advanced features unless you got some sort of
[02:05:03] marketing deal with nvidia to turn them on so that they could you know run their ads sorry that was a
[02:05:09] lot if you're not into i should i really should figure out how to add chapters of this thing if
[02:05:13] you don't care about gpu shit and i wish i didn't but anyway all that to say i am personally really proud
[02:05:21] of myself that i reached the conclusion that i have no business upgrading my 3090 to one of these new cards
[02:05:26] that i actually actively chose like i'm gonna i'm happy with what i have
[02:05:31] and that's such an unusual sensation for me to feel that i'm i i'm i am noting it to say look at me
[02:05:37] look at me um also in gaming news uh it has been rumored for a while uh it's actually kind of sad
[02:05:47] because there's been um for for elder scrolls skyrim uh which is very very popular game it's been launched
[02:05:54] on every single platform there's been a long running 10 year plus mod project by the community
[02:06:01] to port sky uh port the oblivion game the game prior to skyrim into the skyrim engine and they're
[02:06:09] still working on it it's still kind of in this flux state uh well there's a new leak that like
[02:06:14] uh bethesda gameworks is literally actually contracting a real studio to kind of do the same
[02:06:22] thing and remake oblivion in a modern game engine uh with you know kind of creature comforts and
[02:06:28] other sort of updates to make the game more playable today which personally i think is brilliant one
[02:06:32] because i actually enjoyed oblivion more than skyrim i know it's unpopular opinion but two like their
[02:06:39] output has been really bad they've got starfield which was underwhelming uh you know fallout sort of
[02:06:45] in in in in in a situation of flux like bethesda takes a really long time to get games out the door
[02:06:50] and oblivion is sitting right there as being like a really good game that just needs a little bit of
[02:06:54] spit polish to get over the finish line so apparently you know this has been rumored for a little bit
[02:06:58] a whole bunch of leaks came out uh indicating like yeah this is actually happening and so
[02:07:02] currently slated to release in june 2025 so if you've never played oblivion before stay tuned
[02:07:08] keep an eye out for that this is not the sky oblivion remake this is like a an actual product that will
[02:07:14] hopefully be as good as the thing that the random fans throw together uh also in the news you may have
[02:07:22] seen so that reason i titled this episode super switch is as a kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s
[02:07:30] and i had a nintendo and then i was very excited to get the super nintendo uh i was really hoping that
[02:07:38] nintendo would have the amount of capital c cool in them to to to make the switch to just the super
[02:07:46] switch now that creates several problems uh and i get why they didn't do it right but like they put
[02:07:54] out their unveil trailer it's two and a half minutes long it's easy to find it you'll never guess but it
[02:07:59] looks like a switch it's a little bit bigger the the thumbsticks are less bad you know like instead
[02:08:05] of having rails that the joy cons don't get joy conned now the rails that the joy cons slip into are
[02:08:11] now uh they click in through magnets and there's a little button to kind of detach them it's the kickstand
[02:08:21] is less bad right the the hardware of course is going to be incrementally better but it's not going
[02:08:25] to be anything that you want to write home about but the reason that they didn't call it the super
[02:08:30] switch is that they finally have a hit on their hands they want to just make it crystal clear that
[02:08:35] this is not the same thing this is the next okay grandma this is the one you buy right because nintendo
[02:08:41] is has named things uh so foolishly from a market perspective over the years uh you know in ancient
[02:08:48] history when when the super nintendo was released there was genuine market confusion why doesn't this play my
[02:08:54] nintendo games and vice versa you know uh they they had to market it as like because people people had
[02:09:01] not experienced a new console generation most of them and so like they had to like you know go and
[02:09:07] educate like oh this is actually a different product it enables new experiences and and the number of
[02:09:11] early 90s like infuriated moms that were being interviewed in newspapers and local news of like i just
[02:09:19] paid hundreds of dollars for granted and it's inflation adjusted terms like they were right
[02:09:24] to complain like and now and now nintendo's throwing all that away and i need to buy a whole new system
[02:09:30] just to play the latest games and my kids are you know bagging for it and whatnot like the fact it was
[02:09:35] named super nintendo was just one more barrier then of course they name the next thing nintendo 64 which uh
[02:09:41] has the virtue of having a number at the end i guess uh then the gamecube which is its own thing and
[02:09:47] maybe that was the smartest name of them all uh just because it was a totally different brand uh
[02:09:51] and it did fine and then you have the wii but then you know things the the wheels really fell off the
[02:09:57] wagon because in 2012 when they released the wii u and it looks just like a wii but just on its side
[02:10:04] and it has this tablet thing like people are all in the boxes mostly showing off the tablet because that's
[02:10:10] the interesting looking thing even people who like are relatively plugged in could look at that in a
[02:10:15] target and be like so this is just a tablet for my wii like i don't use my wii anymore because of
[02:10:20] you know it's collecting dust or whatever uh it was unclear that it was a new console and and it still
[02:10:27] had the wii modes it was a it was a absolute nightmare and and easily you know the the worst performing
[02:10:33] console that nintendo ever produced at the same time they had the the ds and the 3ds systems
[02:10:39] and those ones like they had similarly nonsensical names let's see if i can name them all so then
[02:10:43] there was the nintendo ds and then the ds lite which was smaller and and and square more square edges uh
[02:10:51] kind of like the the clamshell ibook to the squared off ibook g4 similar aesthetic then they had was it the
[02:11:00] dsi the internet connected ds uh and then they had oh i think that might have might have been
[02:11:11] might have been it was the new ds the ds or the 3ds the new nintendo ds might have been the last one
[02:11:19] yeah and it just said new in front like new super mario brothers and that was nonsense then of course they
[02:11:24] they had the 3ds and then they had the 2ds and it's you know like all right so like look nintendo's
[02:11:32] bad at names they uh satoru iwata he was a programmer who worked his way up to ceo very fun guy very like
[02:11:41] you know brilliant in so many ways but uh not like a finance head and not like a marketing guru like the
[02:11:49] current furukawa-san at nintendo's sure seems to be like he he's a plant like the the shareholders
[02:11:56] love him because he just prints money the switch is making tons and tons of money he just you know
[02:12:03] playing it safe it's the switch 2 uh nintendo switch 2 it's got a big 2 on it it's a
[02:12:08] big old gaudy ugly ass number two it's like you're gonna look at that doc and you're gonna be like man
[02:12:13] which switch is this and then you're not going to wonder anymore so uh it's it's disappointing
[02:12:20] to me as a lifelong nintendo fan that it's so boring but from a
[02:12:27] the walls closing in on the gaming industry and nintendo kind of having the last good thing going
[02:12:34] in terms of being able to sell products and make a profit i it's probably for the best it's probably
[02:12:41] the best for everyone that like this is a very predictable you know perfunctory release and and
[02:12:46] the fact that they've also spawned this entire cottage industry of other people making handhelds
[02:12:51] that sort of imitate the switch uh they clearly hit on something in that initial design and it'll be
[02:12:56] interesting it's it's interesting now but it'll be interesting to go back in like 10 15 20 years
[02:13:01] and see what was the history of and the the influence of that particular design of that initial
[02:13:08] switch when released in 2016 what it had on on the broader handheld gaming market
[02:13:13] to whatever extent that still exists from then uh let's see
[02:13:20] let's skip over the next couple little things
[02:13:23] we'll end on a note that this isn't real news this is reddit news
[02:13:33] i just loved this post the the shot chaser aspect of this reddit post it was posted to the the apple
[02:13:39] watch sub a few days ago title is i got 202 beats per minute at one point and regularly rest at 100
[02:13:46] beats per minute is my apple watch defective let's keep reading i really don't understand but ever since
[02:13:53] i got my apple watch i've been seeing some really weird heart rate heart rate heart weird heart trends
[02:13:58] when i stand up or go for a walk my heart rate raises well over 100 beats per minute
[02:14:02] i also get 120 110 to 120 while resting occasionally you can see my range while doing different activities
[02:14:08] in the picture attached at one point i was not exercising i reached 202 beats per minute i know
[02:14:14] that's absolutely not normal but i felt normal at the time it recorded it and i was genuinely so confused
[02:14:19] after at the time i'm writing this i've been laying down for 30 minutes and i've done no activities
[02:14:24] that would warrant a high heart rate however i somehow got 103 beats per minute i'm in good shape
[02:14:28] and i exercise often i don't understand where this is coming from took an ecg a few times and almost all
[02:14:33] of them came out as high heart rate i have a series 5 which is an older model but it's in perfectly good
[02:14:39] condition i've checked to make sure i'm wearing it correctly and i've cleaned the heart rate sensor
[02:14:43] several times but that's not the problem any tips
[02:14:45] i i have been known to experience something just like i said earlier like most people when they have
[02:14:57] a computer issue they blame themselves i tend to err on the opposite side which is what i think makes
[02:15:03] me interesting to some people is that i'm so quick to blame the computer that i will go digging and try
[02:15:08] to figure it out but it can sometimes lead to me complaining and blaming the computer a little bit
[02:15:13] too proactively right and now that like our devices are so integrated and aware of like with these health
[02:15:22] sensors the fact that rht123x this user could go to the trouble of the screenshots the documentation the
[02:15:31] multi-day wondering about this the posting to reddit they're responding to some comments in reddit
[02:15:37] and never at any point think what if i just took my middle finger and my index finger and i put them
[02:15:45] you know on my neck near that artery and i just counted like i would hope most people who are adults
[02:15:55] will have been taught at some point in their life how to measure one's pulse you don't get a rough idea
[02:15:59] did he ever do that i assume he did right because of course like if if my heart rate was 202 beats per
[02:16:07] minute i've already outed myself as a having a low heart rate privilege but if my heart rate was 202
[02:16:13] and my the app was saying it's like you've got arrhythmia you've got to go to the doctor be like
[02:16:17] well look at this fucking thing this is obviously broken so i just assumed like he must have checked
[02:16:24] his heart rate but i said you know what i bet he didn't i bet he just rushed to the conclusion that
[02:16:30] his apple watch is defective and you read a bunch of the comments and they're like i i think you're
[02:16:36] just i think your shit's fucked are you sure you do have you checked your uh uh checked your heart rate
[02:16:42] he replied uh later on in the thread i to find it it was so buried in the uh you know reddit does
[02:16:48] a bad job generally with the folding comments but like it wasn't his replies only got his his personal
[02:16:53] update explaining what the fuck happened in this post that has 412 upvotes only has two upvotes
[02:17:00] at present where he comes back and actually says what the fuck was happening he says update hello
[02:17:05] everyone still alive i genuinely feel stupid for not checking my pulse manually first thing to make
[02:17:10] sure it was correct i did so a few months back and it was around 80 beats per minute i believe so i
[02:17:15] didn't think there was any cause for concern nor a problem and assumed my watch was just wrong i did
[02:17:20] one just now and it was almost exactly the same as the reading on my apple watch so i know now that
[02:17:25] it's not my watch that's defective but rather my heart i did multiple ecgs as mentioned in the post
[02:17:29] and they gave similar results i don't have health insurance unfortunately but i will arrange an
[02:17:33] appointment with the doctor as soon as i can to sort this out parentheses might be costly sibling of
[02:17:38] mine does have pots pots i'm unsure if that has any correlation but i'm just putting out there in case i
[02:17:45] end up being diagnosed with the same condition thank you for your insights and i apologize for not taking
[02:17:50] some basic measures prior to making the post i want to clarify that i do know how to take a manual pulse
[02:17:54] and that i'm not usually this dumb i really am sorry yeah so
[02:18:00] i don't know who needs to hear this but if you don't know how to measure your heart rate google how
[02:18:10] to measure your heart rate and if your watch is telling you that you are uh gonna die at any moment maybe
[02:18:18] maybe get a second opinion before you post it to reddit uh i don't know what to say i'm not an
[02:18:25] expert but that but that one jumped off the page uh every now and then i like reading something like
[02:18:31] that to be like ah you know what i am pretty in the head but i'm at least i'm not that guy all right
[02:18:38] that's it's the last time around i may have oversold the netflix series the diplomat i should have been
[02:18:50] clearer that it's not good it's like fine it's tv i do have a big boy crush on carrie russell that's
[02:19:02] that's true but i was you know kind of selling it as such and it you know watch it if you like political
[02:19:10] you know if you liked west wing or madam secretary that kind of thing it's it's good it's fine uh
[02:19:18] season two wrap that up with becky and it was uh uh it ended with one of the best cliffhangers
[02:19:25] first of all allison janney shows up she who played cj craig in west wing uh and uh she's
[02:19:32] wonderful and uh yeah the the the the finale really sets the stage for some cool shit i think it's a
[02:19:40] it's a short season like six episodes maybe uh six or eight uh but they've already renewed for season
[02:19:46] three so i'm excited uh yeah i don't want to spoil anything one thing i did spoil myself i read a book
[02:19:54] oh i read a book uh but i listened to a book don't don't get ahead of yourselves i listened to a book
[02:20:04] called conclave by robert harris uh two three years ago you know i was it was one of the games i would
[02:20:11] play like while playing no man's sky in vr um so i should get back into that i really wish i had a
[02:20:17] good vr setup for for gaming right now uh so i listened to this book because robert harris wrote
[02:20:24] a trilogy of books about uh ancient rome uh uh starring uh cicero and they they were three of my favorite
[02:20:35] books like like like absolutely fantastic uh trilogy i should go back and check that out
[02:20:40] imperium i think might have been the first one and he wrote a book called conclave about you know like a
[02:20:47] modern era um changing of the guard with the pope dying and then the the the conclave the you know and
[02:20:53] the curia or whatever the cardinals all vote and have to come up to a two-thirds you know vote on and
[02:20:59] who the next pope hat is gonna be uh and i thought you know it's a pretty good book it's like a little
[02:21:06] bit of palace intrigue it's like a little bit of politics it's uh you know um i would say a little
[02:21:13] bit like i don't know um there there's a there's a handful of twists and turns that are i think are
[02:21:22] genuinely thought-provoking but it's a slow burn as a book it's like okay you know and and and as a book
[02:21:29] it's very there's not a lot of texture in it it's just sort of like and then this happened and then
[02:21:35] this conversation happened i don't remember it being like particularly like you know like artful
[02:21:38] but the uh the film version which is currently streaming on peacock i want to say uh i think
[02:21:48] very good so the film came out um it was by the guy who did all quiet on the western front which is
[02:21:55] also surprisingly good and punched way above its weight uh and this this this movie has like three
[02:22:02] sets you know it's like it's visually not the most exciting thing in the world and then you know there's
[02:22:07] a couple shots that are really beautiful but like i don't know like like all movies look the same now
[02:22:12] because digital filmography cinematography has gotten to be like the baseline level of quality is higher so
[02:22:19] that even art house films even if they're shot on the iphone still like look pretty good most of the
[02:22:24] time i i noticed like this one doesn't like this one looks weirdly bad like like they were just
[02:22:29] shooting in genuinely dim environments so like not to say things are blurry or out of focus but like
[02:22:35] yeah i've got a pretty good rig and like it did not look great uh but the writing was fantastic and
[02:22:41] there's a couple of really great speeches throughout um so if you if you if you got peacock would you do if
[02:22:48] you have uh instacart plus uh if you got peacock check it out uh it i was very impressed and it was
[02:22:57] the reason that i'm sharing it is it was a rare movie for to to end a non-blockbuster big movie
[02:23:07] where at the end becky and i are like i'm just really glad i watched that like not to say like
[02:23:13] the message is incredible uh but it was yeah it was just a uh a window to a story that was like
[02:23:23] thought-provoking like what if the world what would the impact of the world be if if this particular
[02:23:29] series events unfolded and there were a handful of you know a you call it moralizing or whatever but
[02:23:36] ralph is it ralph fiennes or ralph fines i've heard it pronounced both ways recently uh he plays the
[02:23:43] main cardinal dude who's administering this whole
[02:23:46] you know the black smoke white smoke charade and he gives a speech in the beginning
[02:23:54] and like as a little homily and he says that you know to his fellow cardinals that the gravest
[02:24:04] sin is certainty uh that being so sure of yourself or sure that things had to be one way that's a good
[02:24:11] thing to talk about before voting on multiple rounds of potentially having to change your vote several
[02:24:15] times depending on how things pan out uh and that little speech is like one of the best it's right up
[02:24:23] there with the uh the bill pullman and independence day for me as a 10 year old or 11 year old or whatever
[02:24:30] the hell it was uh in terms of just like rousing like yeah like hell like when you think about it
[02:24:38] like that certainty is really at the heart of like a lot of problems like the the lack of flexibility in
[02:24:43] people's minds the inability even to when things are out of your control just to take a let's see approach
[02:24:48] uh yeah a good good movie good influence uh so check out conclave if you if you if you're if you're so
[02:24:56] inclined uh severance season two started that just came out friday um becky and i uh hoovered that
[02:25:04] episode up in the first like 15 minutes of it landing on the apple tv uh they're just doing one episode
[02:25:12] at a time which makes sense uh now that it's it's it's made a splash the the the cast did a weird pop-up
[02:25:20] store thing at the new york store where they they set up a fake severance in the uh severance office
[02:25:26] cubicle orientation inside of the the cube you know above ground at the the manhattan store
[02:25:34] is it fifth avenue i don't know new york shit but anyway like they had the actual cast there and they
[02:25:39] were like pretending play acting out you know like a day in the office as a uh uh
[02:25:45] macro data refiner or whatever and so that was a cool stunt uh you know this is a
[02:25:51] adam scott is i've always loved him as an actor you know i i thought parks and rec might be the biggest
[02:25:57] thing that he ever did and so to see him as the star in a in a in a show that's taken so seriously
[02:26:02] ben stiller every episode that he's directed has just been lights out phenomenal and and the season
[02:26:08] two opener of severance is is no different um it's just they're they're they're doing stuff that
[02:26:16] is really novel and really special like the comedic the the the air they find levity in things that
[02:26:25] are objectively unacceptable like in this case the funniest parts of this opener are surrounding child
[02:26:31] labor the forest child the constriction of conscription of a child into like you know office work uh
[02:26:37] you know presume in in a sense against her will right like you know becky becky took some offense
[02:26:43] when i was like that is really fucking funny and like the thing is like it is funny they make it funny
[02:26:48] uh in a sense it i had this epiphany while we were watching that like severance is kind of like the
[02:26:55] opposite of the good place because the conceit of the good place which michael sure show is a really
[02:27:00] fantastic show the conceit is like you know all these people died they go into like what they think is
[02:27:04] heaven turns out to be hell and back and forth and so forth and like you know like they the over the
[02:27:09] course of the series everyone's awareness continues to expand of like the scope of what is life what is
[02:27:17] existence and everything keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and and and more and more infinite
[02:27:23] whereas in severance the idea that you would have a part of yourself that would be blocked off and
[02:27:28] isolated and as as time runs out like you getting permanently retired you go into an elevator once
[02:27:34] one day and then you just never come out again right and that's death the the the feeling like
[02:27:42] the opposite of the good place where they find humor in the absurdity of the situation that they're in and
[02:27:46] that keeps things light enough but you're literally going down into this like you know contraction of
[02:27:52] awareness and that's where they find the tension uh yeah so i'm just mad maybe i'm thinking of that
[02:28:00] old 90s game that was like sort of like uh called afterlife where you had like a heaven mode and a and a hell
[02:28:06] mode and you're trying to do like a sim city on of heaven and hell simultaneously uh
[02:28:14] huh anyway severance is good uh transitioning over to uh the video game side of the fence uh marvel
[02:28:22] arrivals has really taken the world by a storm uh what it has successfully done is take overwatch as a
[02:28:28] game mechanic a squad-based shooter where everyone plays different roles uh put a blockbuster
[02:28:36] intellectual property in the form of of marvel so you got all the marvel superheroes uh uh and then you
[02:28:44] you you have a chinese game developer that's got you know a huge absolute massive staff that they're
[02:28:50] that are gonna be pumping out new heroes every few weeks um and of course because it's chinese like
[02:28:56] they're the the the not to say there's something inherently thirsty about chinese uh uh people or
[02:29:04] something but like the the let's just say that like free-to-play online games developed by chinese developers
[02:29:13] will uh they they they much more often tend to have jiggle physics as a high priority in the backlog
[02:29:22] and some of the characters that are already there are very clearly catering to a a thirstier
[02:29:30] look man like there's just like i'm not i'm not saying that marvel rivals is gonna be just like super sexed up
[02:29:42] gotcha game sort of like you know from an artistic perspective uh someday but like they're already
[02:29:49] inching that way to a point where i'm like how is disney green lighting this but of course it's in china
[02:29:55] and it's like you can only say so much because this is a cc being trying to sell your sell your movies
[02:29:59] uh but like you know the way that these free-to-play games typically go is they only you know well
[02:30:05] gotta sell more battle passes or more characters or more more skins and more outfits like the the
[02:30:12] the the thirst vector can only go up unlike nvidia's stock price you're only going to get
[02:30:18] slightly bigger boobs and slightly jigglier butts as time goes on based on the long arc of free-to-play
[02:30:28] east asian games uh over time and so i wonder where we're going to be in a couple years i suspect that
[02:30:35] i would be surprised if there isn't some sort of come to jesus moment in terms of the the the brand
[02:30:43] safety side of of of this particular game and especially if it continues to take off and uh how
[02:30:49] disney feels about how its characters are represented because they so far it seems like they're getting away
[02:30:54] with murder but also marvel's kind of at a nadir right now in terms of influence and they're probably
[02:30:58] willing to take what they can get i'm uh also very near the end of indiana jones and the great circle
[02:31:07] uh which of course i cannot play on my steam deck just it it was literally like everything short of
[02:31:14] smoking like the the start the game up and and it's just blowing hot air at the other end so whatever you
[02:31:19] know when it's running in windows mode there's just nothing to throttle it so i was back on my
[02:31:24] real gaming pc with my 30 90 and playing indiana jones last night and you can kind of just tell
[02:31:30] when when when when the main campaign of a game even though it feels like arbitrary it feels like oh
[02:31:38] yeah i'm just in this world now i'm doing this stuff and like maybe there's another world it's like
[02:31:41] it's it's got certain like wrap it up plot beats like oh wait these characters have never seen each
[02:31:47] other these two antagonists are like they're here simultaneously now and this one you know enemy
[02:31:52] of my enemy is my friend shows up and so now we're on the same side so like little signals like that
[02:31:58] are like you know more big over the top set pieces or more you know like uh tighter tighter tighter
[02:32:04] interplay between cinematic and then marginally interactive segments and then more cinematic like
[02:32:09] so like that is accelerating that loop and so that tells me it's like i'm probably nearing the end of
[02:32:14] the game so i'm almost done about a couple hours prior in the game there is a uh if you know what pt is
[02:32:25] uh pt uh stood for playable trailer uh it was a uh production of konami uh hideo kid kojima the fella who
[02:32:35] made uh uh metal gear solid and has and death stranding and has made it his entire career's
[02:32:41] work to try to ingratiate himself to hollywood and hobnob with famous people because he's a big
[02:32:48] film buff and uh egomaniac uh considers himself an artur uh and so like a lot of his work is really
[02:32:56] overwrought generally it's you know whatever it's fine he's got a whole cadre of very talented people
[02:33:00] around him they make games in school i play most of the games it's fine well he made a game a trailer
[02:33:06] a free demo of a game called pt playable trailer and it was a horror game and i think it came out in
[02:33:12] 2014 with the original ps4 and the long and short of like what happened i guess i'll do that part first
[02:33:21] and then segue into the game kojima leaves so leaves konami it's very fractious and and acrimonious
[02:33:30] the the the the middle gear solid five game the last thing he worked on there comes out in a sort
[02:33:35] of half half unfinished state still a breakthrough game in a lot of ways but just like you know not
[02:33:41] not a full complete package that makes any kind of fucking sense in my opinion i still enjoyed it um
[02:33:47] because of that that the game that pt would have become never happened and not only that konami sort of
[02:33:55] like uh started delisting stuff and almost threatened to get out of normal gaming entirely kind of as a
[02:34:02] hissy fit around this and so they delisted that pt game and so you can't download it anymore and because
[02:34:07] it was free no one actually had a paid license to it and so sony wouldn't you know just let you
[02:34:11] re-download it which means that like on ebay there are ps4s for sale that have pt loaded onto them and
[02:34:17] like presumably you'd also be buying the account of whoever it was that had it so like if you
[02:34:21] you were real smart you would bought 10 ps4s and then made 10 burner accounts and downloaded
[02:34:25] nothing but pt onto each of them uh and then waited a decade so if you want to play this particular game
[02:34:32] you got to go and buy one of these dozen or so ps4s floating around although i'm sure somebody's
[02:34:37] figured out a way to crack this one would hope so the the game pt and i was so cool because just for
[02:34:43] me personally uh jeremy happened to be in town in columbus and so we we downloaded it and it was dark
[02:34:49] at night and we played pt and we kind of took turns with the controller and it is a simple conceit you are
[02:34:55] in a hallway and the hallway is a square a big rectangle and you walk around the hallway and stuff happens you
[02:35:01] hear voices and you see things and they're horrific or they're mundane or it's a phone ringing you answer
[02:35:07] the phone the phone says something creepy but there's nowhere to go except backwards or forwards
[02:35:13] and forwards you're just doing another loop around the hallway but then every time you do a loop around
[02:35:17] the hallway something changes now there's like a weird like a refrigerator hanging from the ceiling
[02:35:23] instead of a chandelier and there's blood dripping down it you know but there's nothing you can do with
[02:35:28] it so i guess i just keep walking and then you keep walking and now it's like oh this door that
[02:35:31] was closed before is now open and i go inside and i see some spooky thing right and as you keep going
[02:35:39] you know maybe you keep going and then now nothing's happening and it's just the same thing over and over
[02:35:43] again which means you must have missed something so now you gotta like scour and it's like oh wait this
[02:35:47] picture frame the picture changed and and now it's this and now it's oh now this is you know it's a
[02:35:52] smiling family to like you know like oh the the mom's missing and then when you look at that it'll
[02:35:57] trigger some audio cut scene the next time you go around in the loop and you got to notice the
[02:36:01] right thing and then go and it is terrifying like i don't know what it is about it but the creepypasta
[02:36:07] aspect of just going in this loop and every time you know you're going to get shocked in a little
[02:36:12] slightly different way and sometimes it's going to be you know banal and sometimes it's going to be
[02:36:16] truly like a jump scare indiana jones has a sequence as a dream sequence is a spoiler that is like
[02:36:25] literally pt it is the same goddamn thing it is a uh geometrically impossible uh uh uh a hallway that
[02:36:37] just goes in circles and you have to circumnavigate it like 20 30 times to complete this segment and
[02:36:44] every time you you go through that circle it starts off and i'm not going to spoil it further but like
[02:36:48] it starts off in one environment that slowly morphs into another environment and uh you know
[02:36:54] it's it's a dream segment so like it's it's not like a supernatural thing but holy cow like it wasn't
[02:37:01] a horror game it didn't just suddenly tone shift to i'm a horror game now like the recent call of duty
[02:37:06] campaigns just like oh hey what if we just throw zombies in the middle of the fucking campaign for no
[02:37:11] reason uh it's not that but it was like it was kind of intense it was like it was it was very well
[02:37:17] designed and the the degree to which it was clearly an homage to pt is like something that would jump off
[02:37:23] the page to anyone who'd ever played pt and so i really appreciated that like i you know uh i don't
[02:37:29] know i i thought i'd mention so if you know what the fuck i'm talking about go play indiana jones or
[02:37:34] don't uh but it was really cool it was kind of creepy and i i you know even if you're just passively
[02:37:39] interested in what i'm talking about i have not searched the internet but i assume that other people
[02:37:43] are talking about this too and it's not just me who made this connection i highly doubt it was a
[02:37:46] fucking coincidence uh google it and watch the video for a significantly less creepy video gaming
[02:37:54] option um it's easy in the current era to look at pixel art or like lo-fi indie games that kind of look
[02:38:02] like generic animal crossing or like you know cozy games there there's just so many of them that that that
[02:38:09] they don't really stand out many of them are crap like like they're just not very good no offense
[02:38:15] but like like most games suck generally and indie games suck more often specifically uh especially
[02:38:22] when they don't you know have particularly attractive looking artwork or a thing to do other than to walk
[02:38:29] around like it's like game engines actually can carry a lot of water for you in those regards uh but
[02:38:35] there's one that like i just randomly heard recommended a couple times as well you know like
[02:38:40] it's called a short hike and if you've played it then you know this but like i've heard somebody say oh
[02:38:44] well yeah everyone's been emulating a short hike for years and trying to get back like claim that magic
[02:38:50] that it happened to capture in a bottle or uh you know youtube was recommending me videos like why a
[02:38:56] a short hike is like the best game ever whatever some hyperbole and i downloaded it and i i started
[02:39:02] playing it and a short hike is like a really really it's a it's a clinic in game design a dude made this
[02:39:11] and it's just the things that it sets out to do it does so perfectly uh you are a little bird and you
[02:39:18] are you literally like the the whole setup is that you are camping and your your elder bird is like
[02:39:26] you know commenting oh yeah by the way you're not going to have any phone signal here you know you're
[02:39:30] out of range and your bird freaks out and it's like well you can go up to this hawk point or whatever like
[02:39:35] go go hike up this mountain and then you'll have signal and so like that's the whole thing is the mission is
[02:39:41] go to this high point so that you have signals so that you can use your phone because you don't want to
[02:39:45] actually in in you know commune with nature or community or whatever when you're at this uh
[02:39:50] you're out camping with your family and you you go for this hike and you meet all these fascinating
[02:39:55] people and you do all these things and then you're like wait a second i'm getting snickered into actually
[02:40:00] engaging with nature and and and this community aren't i uh and the little adventures that you do in
[02:40:05] turns out it is quite you know i think it's a long hike to be to be honest it's false advertising but
[02:40:11] uh really delightful game and they they it's it's it's not like it's a walking simulator it's it's
[02:40:17] interactive there's things to find there's things to do and there's like kind of little sub quests
[02:40:20] but it's it's what's nice about it for me anyway is like it's not it's not beating you over the head
[02:40:24] with objectives like you're collecting things and those things allow you to do things and then the
[02:40:27] vocabulary things are allowed to do get you access to other places and things and accomplish other
[02:40:31] goals uh and if you if you if you probably don't have to do all of them to complete the hike but uh
[02:40:39] uh yeah it's just a very natural and and manages to be it's a really good palate cleanser if you're like
[02:40:46] me and like playing a really intense or violent game or a game that's like you know i got a lot of stress
[02:40:51] built in like lately i've been playing all these stealth action games and like i stealth really stresses
[02:40:56] me out because i hate getting caught and then having to hurry you know try to escape from the
[02:41:00] bad guys that i'm not strong enough to kill myself uh having this as a thing to play after that or when
[02:41:06] i'm not in the mood for even more violence because sometimes i'm in the mood for violence uh i've had my
[02:41:12] fill of violence because i uh maybe yeah actually the day i downloaded i had just been on i4 for three
[02:41:19] hours so that's you know that was enough violence for me just the florida exposure therapy uh so that's
[02:41:25] all that's i'm gonna throw it as a recommendation just in case i didn't mention it already i think i
[02:41:33] i probably did but if you're not subscribed to becky graham i recommend it it's graham g-r-a-m dot
[02:41:43] better with becky dot com and uh you can sign up now you click follow and you give it your email
[02:41:49] address uh you'll actually get emailed each time that becky makes a post uh most of those posts are
[02:41:55] are photos and videos uh photos and or videos carousels it's very instagram like but it's not
[02:42:02] instagram because she owns it uh and so uh hope you'll check it out she she writes a lot of thoughtful
[02:42:07] content and and we're we're currently our goal this month is to kind of come up with a
[02:42:12] a content marketing strategy make it sound serious no but but but really though like uh it's been fun
[02:42:21] uh discussing with her ways that we can use this new platform to tell interesting stories and share
[02:42:27] very valuable and helpful advice uh i say we here because like i'm her it guy but it's really she is
[02:42:35] doing the heavy lifting here uh so it's it's been it's been fun to help her out a little bit and so
[02:42:39] if you subscribe now uh uh i hope you'll stay tuned to to what she's working on sharing whether or not
[02:42:44] you're interested in strength training or fitness or health or nutrition or mindset stuff uh she kind
[02:42:49] of has the market cornered it seems like on uh most aspects of living and breathing uh but but in truth
[02:42:56] i think her perspective is really fresh and it's it's interesting to see somebody who's so um
[02:43:02] inclined to buck a lot of the broader trends that we find ourselves in uh especially around fit fluencers
[02:43:10] which is a word that i i believe i independently invented although i'm sure if you google it uh i that
[02:43:16] that is a it's probably emerged independently okay so that's the last of the recommendations that means
[02:43:22] we're just gonna uh on my way out i'm just gonna go quickly check the mail all right let's see what we
[02:43:34] got um remember if you want to write into the show it's podcast at searls.co uh had a
[02:43:42] weird confluence of a few different people sending in like essentially the same email uh so so if i if i
[02:43:49] don't get to yours but i talk about the basic topic let us you you and i right now let's just consider
[02:43:55] that one red uh no offense typically whenever somebody writes in the first first in wins because
[02:44:03] these emails are you know just give them send a sentence send a fucking sentence just give me a
[02:44:07] prompt just say i want to hear justin talk about his favorite fluffy pancakes and that's all you got to
[02:44:12] say and then i'll i'll start talking about carbs uh so marius writes in with the subject treadmill
[02:44:18] gaming he says that you often mix up gaming with other activities and you seem to be a consistent
[02:44:25] runner for the past couple years i've been doing majority of my runs on the treadmill while playing
[02:44:30] games this doesn't seem to be like a popular activity and i'm not sure why even the somewhat
[02:44:35] dead subreddit about treadmill gaming is mostly about walking pads and doing slow walks while using a
[02:44:39] computer like linus torvalds or actually i do this too i've got a walking pad that i you know use
[02:44:44] probably about a 20 percent of the time while i'm coding i successfully do runs anywhere between four
[02:44:50] to five minute uh kilometers so it's like six and a half to eight minute miles which is pretty
[02:44:57] fucking fast i run an eight minute mile um and i used to run them faster but i slowed down because i didn't
[02:45:03] want to hurt my knees uh or or uh yeah the impact was just getting to be too much anyway playing games
[02:45:10] with nintendo joy cons now remember marius don't get joy conned is the easiest you see that pun's good
[02:45:15] because it's already wasting time in my brain it's the the it's paying dividends already anyway playing
[02:45:22] games with the nintendo joy cons is the easiest way to start since the hands are separated these days you
[02:45:26] can officially pair them with the steam deck or ipad but the switch library is probably more than
[02:45:31] enough switch aside the ipad is the least complex to set up and you can play ios games or use some
[02:45:37] form of remote gaming like nvidia geforce now or steam link ps remote doesn't work well
[02:45:42] like all this practical advice and like like this one does suck even if you get joy cons to work using a
[02:45:50] non-official client you will miss some of the controls which is a deal breaker uh this is
[02:45:56] if you're hearing this and you've never had this epiphany before and you run on a treadmill like
[02:46:02] this is a hundred percent great advice and i can't believe i didn't think of it uh or think think of
[02:46:06] sharing it before i actually did this um when we were in ohio uh i bought a nice perforce uh
[02:46:13] high-end like four thousand dollar treadmill uh and i i situated it right in front of a
[02:46:20] 50 inch television screen and then i like plugged in the switch and so you know you don't want to play
[02:46:27] like i don't know like a super intense twitch game where you have to have like immediate reaction times
[02:46:32] necessarily but uh i played stardew valley every as part of my run every day because it's like each day
[02:46:37] is pretty short uh you know you can save relatively frequently uh and with the joy cons having a
[02:46:44] separate controller in your left and right hand meant that you could have like a normal
[02:46:48] gate and a normal kind of swaying of your arms but still have a full grip on the controllers
[02:46:53] and as long as like you know the screen's in front of you like with a tablet on a um
[02:47:00] like resting on a treadmill at high speeds like those tend to bounce around a decent amount unless you've got
[02:47:07] a super stable platform so if you were to use an ipad i'd hope hopefully put it up on a gooseneck
[02:47:13] or some other kind of stand but having a tv in front of you is great of course if you if you if you do
[02:47:17] this at home you're able to um unfortunately like my house doesn't really have room for a treadmill we
[02:47:22] have we've had conversations about treadmills but there's no way we'd be able to have one without like
[02:47:26] becoming a weirdo and having some common space just happen to have a weird treadmill set up in the
[02:47:31] middle of it uh so it's probably no longer in the cards for me but yeah i played probably 150
[02:47:36] 150 hours of stardew value over the course of the better part of a year running my 5k every day
[02:47:42] uh uh and that was yeah that was a lot of fun and it was motivating too because like then instead of
[02:47:49] just you know listening to the uh uh like a podcast and half tuning out and thinking about other stressors
[02:47:57] or whatever or or letting my brain think real thoughts which is separately dangerous i could instead you know
[02:48:03] uh uh uh uh harvest crops and and turn that into real real you know gold coins in my imaginary world
[02:48:11] uh or or give gifts to villagers and and level up the heart levels that i have with them or or you know
[02:48:18] participate in festivals so i was getting a lot done while i was getting stuff stuff done um yeah
[02:48:23] strongly recommend i do miss it i do miss that and and uh this email brought a smile to my cold dead face
[02:48:30] because i i that was a fun era for me and maybe i'll get back to it someday maybe i'll have another
[02:48:36] running treadmill at some point uh rachel writes in i uh was recently in tokyo and i walked into apache slot
[02:48:45] i uh that is to say like a pachinko parlor on my first trip uh uh to japan and got overwhelmed and
[02:48:53] immediately turned around you've been to japan a lot have you ever played pachinko
[02:48:57] incidentally i have played pachinko i think twice one time it was when i was in um college there was a
[02:49:06] pachinko parlor in the small town i was in because they preyed on small towns then especially it's you know
[02:49:13] uh they would target like you know
[02:49:15] uh economically depressed areas uh and so i uh yeah they had a pachinko parlor near where i worked
[02:49:25] and i was like you know i gotta try it so i i i went to the the pachinko place i was like you know
[02:49:30] what like i just treated like kind of like vegas terms you know it's really loud if you ever go in
[02:49:34] if you don't know the basic gist it's sort of like playing plinko from um uh price is right except
[02:49:41] instead of just one plinko thing going down all the pegs and bouncing around it's like what if it was
[02:49:46] hundreds of balls simultaneously and you had extremely little agency but some amount of agency
[02:49:52] over like where the balls went uh but it's really like you know it's a test of it's mostly a game of
[02:49:58] luck and i i when i'm in a casino in america i'm like very comfortable saying i'll put 10 bucks in
[02:50:06] 20 bucks in the machine see what happens maybe get a drink and then be on my way
[02:50:10] and i was at this pachinko place i put whatever the equivalent probably a thousand yen into the machine
[02:50:15] is and uh immediately just watch all of the little marbles drain from the top of the thing to the
[02:50:23] bottom of the thing and then it's like see ya now like people sit at these machines for hours and hours
[02:50:29] and they're they're they're sort of like slots or penny slots they're kind of a slow burn like over
[02:50:35] the larger numbers as you are going to lose all of your money but it happens at like a ratio typically
[02:50:40] that is like you know 98 cents on the dollar will get returned to you after each play and so you will
[02:50:46] very slowly lose the money but you'll get many hours of entertainment right that they say um
[02:50:51] as as as as your life force is slowly drained from you and as your hearing slowly goes because the
[02:50:58] sound of all those marbles and then the video game speakers to drown out the sound of the marbles just
[02:51:03] the cacophony of humanity and at the time smoke heavy smoking uh it's a sensory experience for the whole
[02:51:10] family but only men uh typically and you uh while you're playing well first i should get back to my
[02:51:23] experience anyway i lost all my money really fast it was so fast and there was like you know i was the
[02:51:27] middle of the day i was the only guy there he was a small town uh you know pachinko is a place you go
[02:51:33] after work but before you want to go home kind of place at least in you know outside the big cities
[02:51:37] where it's probably just busy 24 7 uh the manager or somebody working there they came over to me and my
[02:51:46] japanese wasn't very good yet and they didn't really communicate what they were doing but they kind of
[02:51:50] like opened the machine up and then they hit a button and they closed the machine and then they put ten
[02:51:53] ten dollars in for me and they said try again basically and that time wouldn't you believe it
[02:51:59] but i won a lot i won big i won like immediately it was like they just like hit a button to say like auto
[02:52:06] win for this dummy and uh i don't know if like everybody gets one or something but like they probably
[02:52:11] realized this this guy's never going to be back again and so maybe they had some sort of policy or some
[02:52:15] some spiff that they were able to give out to like you know entice people it's not like this is regulated
[02:52:20] and so uh i won the equivalent of like a hundred dollars which to me as somebody who like i spent
[02:52:26] like six months of my life there and i lived on barely two thousand dollars like a hundred bucks was
[02:52:32] like several weeks of groceries for sure um at least god god yeah so i was over the moon and and then i did
[02:52:40] the you know the rational thing it was like i am i am clocking the fuck out of here right away and so i took my
[02:52:46] uh now 10 times larger little basket of marbles and uh here's how it works like so gambling is illegal
[02:52:54] but you can trade uh uh like metals or some sort of intermediary currency like these pachinko marbles
[02:53:02] and you can take the little tray of bb's to a counter and you can exchange those for a prize and what's the
[02:53:11] price you say well it's not money because that would be gambling it's instead like it's a plastic
[02:53:16] card or a token or some sort of trivial you know tchotchke and typically it's it's it's as if you're
[02:53:23] trading um like if you've played a metal game i guess or it's as if you're trading uh
[02:53:33] these coins that don't matter or playing cards for casino chips like it's it's a color-coded slotted
[02:53:40] plastic thing it's like okay so i got this yellow two yellow uh uh chips back or something they're
[02:53:47] pieces of plastic and i'm like okay so what do i do with these they're not functional it's not like
[02:53:52] a keychain and because my um japanese ability was so non-existent the staff kind of had to like
[02:54:00] spell out for me what is um by design in order to skirt gambling regulations a a gray and implicit
[02:54:08] procedure so what they sort of steered me gently without explicitly saying no dummy you trade this
[02:54:16] plastic for money they're like go outside to the back and then in a separate freestanding structure
[02:54:21] that is definitely not the pachinko building anymore it is a different building that just so happens
[02:54:27] to trade pieces of plastic for hard cash it's a simple business you know so i i gave them my little
[02:54:35] yellow piece of plastics and uh handed that to them and and the it was it was like a love hotel and that
[02:54:44] you don't get to see the person it was just like a a trance um an opaque piece of glass and uh a little
[02:54:50] hand underneath it right so you you you'd in the little tray you'd put your plastic and then money would go
[02:54:56] there and then you'd take the money and then you'd go and so that's that's how they that's why pachinko
[02:55:01] isn't gambling so yeah that was my first experience and then every time after that i've been like you
[02:55:07] know i think i i think i already had the perfect experience i think i should probably leave it at
[02:55:11] that i might have played it once in kyoto uh later on that year and then immediately lost all my money
[02:55:17] and it was like ah yes dummy no unless somebody's gonna hit a button for you yeah and that's what i was
[02:55:21] doing i was like maybe if i sit over here as a dumb guy gene like maybe if i lose my money fast
[02:55:27] enough they'll take pity on me and i'll hit the button again i'll get ten dollars you know another
[02:55:31] hundred dollars and that's like not how any of this works uh so that that's not what happened uh uh
[02:55:37] spencer writes in uh talking about xreal glasses i'd been curious as you talked about xreal glasses
[02:55:42] connected to your macbook those are those ar glasses that project 1080p postage stamp size screens into
[02:55:47] each eye uh you as you've talked about xreal glasses connected to your macbook but then when you
[02:55:54] suggested getting them for the steam deck i had to pick up a pair i'm enjoying using them a few days
[02:55:59] in do you have a pair of xreal one or do you use a different model i am pretty sure that what i have
[02:56:05] is called the xreal air 2 they also have like the xreal air ultra and one and some other ones but as far
[02:56:14] as i can tell literally all of these things are the exact same part like the exact same lcd part it like
[02:56:24] like same size same 1080p resolution all that seems to change is brightness which is like not the screen per
[02:56:31] se and uh uh some color gamut stuff which might be like a little bit different so like i i don't think
[02:56:39] it really matters which which model you get i would just get the cheapest one uh because at the end of
[02:56:43] the day you're just paying for a uh you know a really cheap screen that goes right over your eyeballs
[02:56:50] uh and is uh yeah uh uh connected via usbc to something that can output that but man uh i got
[02:57:01] four emails from people who either just decided to try xreal glasses for this exact purpose to play
[02:57:06] games or to use their phone or something with a you know a neutral neck posture uh and uh all but one
[02:57:12] had a really good experience and though the one who didn't i think they the thing to look out for with
[02:57:18] these kinds of uh products is that they they don't want to market as hey we're just like a shitty tv
[02:57:25] in your eye holes for fake glasses because like that doesn't sound like the future but if they call
[02:57:30] them ar glasses and if they offer a mode or a an accessory that enables the vision pro style of uh
[02:57:38] taking a taking a screen and stationarily putting it in a place like anchoring a particular screen in
[02:57:44] space or at a particular place in your field of vision so so you can move your head left right and the
[02:57:50] screen will stay put they they offer these modes too where they will take the feed in and then
[02:57:54] they'll kind of render it that way if they offer that trust me it will be bad because you're looking
[02:58:00] at a 300 400 500 piece of hardware and to do that well takes a 3 500 piece of hardware it turns out
[02:58:08] and even that is like you know not that interesting like if if using my vision pro if the mac uh screen
[02:58:15] was always perfectly in front of me i'd also be fine with that like i don't need it to you know to lay
[02:58:21] out my office with with different screens every which place as if i'm going to swivel around it's like
[02:58:25] no i'm a sedentary motherfucker like i'm just just show me the goddamn right and where do i want
[02:58:30] the i if i'm playing a video game or watching a movie i want to be three fucking inches from the
[02:58:35] screen and i want to fill up as much my field of view as possible and the answer to the question of
[02:58:39] how close should i be is as close as i can be without the vision getting blurry right i want the eyes to
[02:58:46] burn out uh thank you mother so the the idea that you would turn on an ar mode that's just going to
[02:58:54] like do some sort of shitty real-time resizing and and uh keystoning of the image that's just going to
[02:59:03] pixelate it further and take up less of the overall display space to show it like it makes no sense just
[02:59:11] like just have it be in default mode and and the image always glued to directly in front of you do not
[02:59:17] use these in ar mode uh they will they will advertise it as if that's what you got to do and
[02:59:22] they will advertise like all of the add-ons like the beam as being necessary and just don't do that
[02:59:26] uh thank you spencer have fun playing games uh neil writes in about prism uh this is from christmas time
[02:59:35] because new versions of ruby release on christmas day he says most ruby users might not notice this
[02:59:42] uh but i'm excited that prism is the default parser as of ruby 3.4 what's your favorite change with the
[02:59:48] new release if you um if you don't know what prism is or or or how ruby parsers work and you're
[02:59:59] interested in this the episode that i did back in uh late may where i was recapping ruby kaii i talk a
[03:00:05] bit about the the parser wars and not to say prism one outright but the fact that like both of them
[03:00:12] shipped with ruby 3.3 the old parser that had been rewritten by konekos on uh and ruby and prism which
[03:00:18] is a funded by uh shopify and god god i always forget the guy's name kevin mitchell kevin there's
[03:00:27] multiple kevin's richards oh is that like wait is that kramer ah fuck me my best michael kramer no no
[03:00:35] michael no michael richards anyway uh you know when when no offense to anyone here but like when
[03:00:45] a white guy has a name whose first and last name are both white guy first names it's really hard for
[03:00:51] me to keep it straight uh and it's even harder with with with three white guy first name names like neil
[03:00:57] patrick harris uh all right so anyway prism is great the reason prism is great uh not only because
[03:01:07] it's fast and comprehensible but because the api that it because it's a handwritten parser you can
[03:01:12] actually do meta programming uh that is much more interesting by by navigating the structure of code
[03:01:20] via code much more sanely than when you try to use ripper or the kind of less less sophisticated uh
[03:01:28] abstract syntax trees that that the ruby api previously uh exposed and you know even if that's
[03:01:35] something that you don't need in your daily life and times as a programmer and spoiler alert very few
[03:01:39] people do the amount of tooling that we can build once we have that is really phenomenal and so uh rubocop
[03:01:47] stands to gain greatly from this like a next generation of of linters and formatters uh might
[03:01:52] emerge uh as well as the ruby lsp that shopify is also making uh to improve the development experience
[03:01:58] of of using ruby uh really will depend on prism to to be able to build a common shared index that
[03:02:04] multiple extensions can then use in creative and interesting ways so i think prism really is the deal
[03:02:09] um the big deal here i don't know if this one landed in three four or not but they have a new um
[03:02:15] block shorthand called it so if you're mapping over um a bunch of stuff or doing a filter operation or
[03:02:23] whatever anytime you're calling one of these like uh built-in methods although this i think this also
[03:02:29] works for non-built-in methods like that would be a you pass a block and then you typically only care
[03:02:34] about the first parameter because you're you're you're you're having that block operate on everything
[03:02:39] in say an array or in a hash if you only care about the first parameter there had been this like
[03:02:45] numbered shorthand syntax where you could do underscore one or underscore two to refer to what
[03:02:51] would be the first and second block parameter without explicitly naming them i eyes are glazing over i i
[03:02:56] get it if you if this this might be hard to follow i always thought that was like really ugly like i don't
[03:03:03] want to do underscore number one to to indicate like the first thing that this block got passed
[03:03:07] i get that you you're limited in what identifiers are illegal and so that's what maybe what they did but
[03:03:13] this just got merged into ruby and i'm not sure if it made it or not but like it you can just say it
[03:03:19] so you say it like it dot whatever which i think is really clever so like it just becomes the like the
[03:03:24] default first block arc as an alias to to underscore one so now you can like when you're mapping over say
[03:03:31] say say like you know or say you're doing find so like i've got a list of people and i want to find
[03:03:37] the first one whose email address is at hotmail.com so i've got like users dot find and then in the block
[03:03:44] instead of having a you know a redundant looking you know user param i can just say it dot email dot starts
[03:03:50] with uh or ends with hotmail.com you so so that it as a shorthand so you're not declaring a kind of
[03:03:59] duplicative uh parameter uh inside the block i think that's really neat little tiny little i love
[03:04:06] that ruby is still getting little touches like that uh so that's that's all i gotta say about that
[03:04:12] uh and we're look at us we're coming right at three hours uh that means it's quitting time here at
[03:04:19] searles llc productions uh you know it's big big big day uh here sunday the uh january 19th the the
[03:04:27] dawn of the third day before whatever the fuck is going to happen for the next four to eight years
[03:04:34] we say four to eight uh four to n or or n to m who knows or i don't know what we're in for all i know
[03:04:45] is that we deserve it
...more
3h 6min
January 04, 2025v28 - Do you regret it yet?
I don't normally do this, but content warning, this episode talks at length about death and funerals and, while I continue to approach everything with an inappropriate degree of levity, if that's something you're not game to listen to right now, go ahead and skip the first hour of this one.
Recommend me your favorite show or video game at [email protected] and I will either play/watch it or lie and say I did. Thanks!
Now: links and transcript:
Kirkland Signature, Organic Non-Dairy Oat Beverage
Die with Zero book
The "Prefer tabs when opening documents" setting
Aaron's puns, ranked
Amazon hoped more people would quit
BoldVoice Accent Oracle
Cab drivers get Alzheimer's less
Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good
LG announces Bachelor's Only TV
Can the rich world escape its baby crisis?
Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?
The Diplomat
The Penguin
It’s in the Game Madden documentary
Like a Dragon / Yakuza 7
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Transcript:
[00:00:29] It is our first new year together in this relationship.
[00:00:36] Breaking Change survived season one.
[00:00:39] We are now in season two.
[00:00:43] I don't know what, you know, how seasons should translate to a show about nothing.
[00:00:51] I like to talk about how, you know, in different stages of life, we go through different seasons, right?
[00:00:58] You know, like maybe, you know, after, you know, the seasonal life when maybe you get married or you have a kid, your first kid and all the changes that kind of go with that.
[00:01:08] And if you play multiplayer competitive games, you might go through different seasons.
[00:01:15] You know, like if you play Diablo four or Call of Duty, you might be in a particular eight week or 12 week season.
[00:01:24] Now, as you grind your battle pass, that's similar in in scale and scope to having a child or having some big life event, because it turns out none of this fucking matters.
[00:01:35] Hello, welcome.
[00:01:36] This is a this is your kind and friendly host, Justin Searles, son of Fred Searles, son of Fred Searles himself, son of a Fred Searles.
[00:01:48] That's yeah, there were there were, I think, three Fred's before me and then my dad was like combo breaker and he named me Justin.
[00:02:02] Uh, thank you for subscribing to the advertisement free version of the podcast.
[00:02:08] Uh, if you, if you think that there should be an advertisement version of the podcast, feel free to write in a podcast at Searles.co and then pay me money to read about your shit.
[00:02:20] And I will do that.
[00:02:21] Uh, and, and, you know, I'm happy to have all the conflicts of interest in the world because, uh, if your product sucks and I use it, I can't help myself.
[00:02:32] I'm just, I'm just going to say it's bad.
[00:02:34] So, uh, that's a real, you know, I, I, if you can't tell, I also run the ad sales department of this journalistic outfit and, uh, that might have something to do with the total lack of, uh, corporate funding.
[00:02:48] Well, anyway, this is version 28 of the program.
[00:02:54] This, this, this episode's breaking change titled, do you regret it yet?
[00:02:59] And that'll make sense, uh, momentarily.
[00:03:03] Uh, so, um, it's a big one in a sense, you know, it's something that, uh, there's very little in life that I'm not comfortable talking about.
[00:03:14] And that's because, you know, well, I'll just dive right in.
[00:03:20] So, so I read it, uh, I read an article, uh, uh, some number of years ago that explained that part of the reason why foot fetishes are so common in men is like part of the brain that identifies feet.
[00:03:38] And part of the brain that is like erogenous in its, you know, there's different parts of the brain.
[00:03:46] They do different things, but if you got to pick which neuron cluster you lived in as a part of the brain, erogenous zone, that would be sweet.
[00:03:53] That'd be a lot more fun than the, um, whatever the, the part of the brain is that gets scared easily, which, uh, because I get stressed and anxious,
[00:04:04] even just talking into a microphone with zero stakes on a recording that I could stop.
[00:04:08] That makes me no money.
[00:04:10] I'm too nervous to remember the fear part of the amygdala.
[00:04:13] There it is.
[00:04:14] You see, and if it just, and, and that gets back to my point in my particular fucked up brain soup,
[00:04:22] the, uh, the, uh, the part of my brain that talks out my mouth hole is right next to the part of my brain that critically reasons through things.
[00:04:37] So for me, it is very difficult to process something without talking it, talking it through.
[00:04:47] And the idea that something is taboo has always been really uncomfortable for me.
[00:04:52] And you can just sort of see the pained look on my face as I try to hold it in like a, like a burp or something.
[00:04:57] Like I, I, I got to let it out somehow.
[00:05:00] And so I'm, I, you know, I'm glad, I'm glad I get to be here with you.
[00:05:05] I hope you find it kind of entertaining.
[00:05:06] Unfortunately, the thing to talk about first thing, as I get into the section of this to-do list, that is this podcast titled life is that the big thing that happened since the last major breaking change, uh, uh, back in version 26, which is, I, I, I understand two numbers away from 28.
[00:05:30] Uh, the big thing that changed, uh, is, uh, my father, Fred, he of a, a long and proud line of Fred's, uh, he passed away, uh, uh, uh, December 15th.
[00:05:45] So just, just shortly after, uh, the previous, the previous version aired and, uh, pretty much every it's January 4th today and we're still working through it.
[00:05:59] Um, he had a heart attack.
[00:06:02] I think that's fair to say at this point, there's no, you know, no way to be a thousand percent sure, but all the signs suggest that's what it was.
[00:06:11] And, uh, you know, without getting into, uh, the, the details, my side of the story is like, I was at Epcot with my brother, Jeremy.
[00:06:26] So at least we were together.
[00:06:28] Um, Jeremy gets the call and, uh, you know, we were, we were in that little tequila bar, uh, hanging out with a friend of ours who works there.
[00:06:40] And, uh, the tequila bar inside of the Mexican pavilion pyramid.
[00:06:44] And, uh, he had just brought us out the three kind of specialty cocktails that they got going on right now.
[00:06:53] Uh, which is, uh, you know, wasn't, we are in a great time.
[00:06:57] It was a lot of fun.
[00:06:58] And, uh, Jeremy gets the call.
[00:07:00] We process a little bit.
[00:07:02] We realized like, we got to get home.
[00:07:04] We got to figure this shit out.
[00:07:06] You know, he's, he's a, he was a former emergency responder.
[00:07:09] So he's really good at, uh, at thinking through the logistical things that you have to do with a relatively cool head.
[00:07:16] It, you know, he comes across as like, you know, not drill sergeanty, but somebody who's like, you know, part of being calm and collected in an urgent situation is you have to be very direct.
[00:07:28] And boom, boom, boom, boom.
[00:07:30] So that was as soon as he knew what was happening.
[00:07:35] That's the mode he flipped on.
[00:07:37] And the mode that I flipped on was intense, uh, metabolization is the best word I can think of it.
[00:07:44] Cause like you have like, like, like, like the saves take four shots of liquor, right?
[00:07:48] You will metabolize that at whatever speed you do, and it'll hit you really hard and maybe you'll black out and maybe you'll, uh, you're a slower burn.
[00:07:56] But for me, I feel, I feel things, whether they're chemical toxicology report showing up things or emotions, I tend to feel them extremely intensely and, and, and, and, and in a relatively brief burst, you know, uh, if you ever lit in a strip of magnesium on fire, which for some reason I did several times.
[00:08:19] I was in, in, in different science lab classes as a kid, it brights, it burns real bright and real hot, but not for very long.
[00:08:27] So while, while Jeremy was in his, you know, we got to figure out what to do mode.
[00:08:33] Uh, we got to get out of here.
[00:08:35] Uh, we gotta, you gotta, you know, we gotta book the next flight to Michigan to take care of this shit.
[00:08:43] I was in, I'm going to, I'm going to just take a little, I'm going to pop a little deep squat here in Epcot, uh, right outside this bar.
[00:08:56] And I'm going to just allow my vision to get blurry, which it did.
[00:09:04] Um, my heart to race, my stomach to turn.
[00:09:08] And I just needed that, you know, you lose track of time when something big and, and, and, and, and earth shaken happens.
[00:09:20] I
[00:09:22] snapped out of it is, you know, it's, it's crude way.
[00:09:31] Words don't, words that you use for everyday things end up getting used for big life-changing things.
[00:09:40] And it makes it feel smaller.
[00:09:43] So even though I'm verbally processing every time I tell the story or think through it and, and talk it out.
[00:09:53] I, I, I, I kind of came to my normal Justin senses pretty quickly, uh, where normal Justin senses means, you know, back in the bar, you know, everyone's, you know, who'd heard was upset and immediately like they're in their own kind of sense of shock, even not knowing my dad.
[00:10:14] And I, I was, you know, uh, comforting them immediately and, you know, just asking our host, Hey, you know, because as a, as a staff member, he, he's able to get us out of the park a little bit more expeditiously, uh, than having to go all the way out and do this big, you know, what would have felt like a 15 minute walk of shame out of a theme park.
[00:10:39] And, uh, yeah, anyway, so he got us out of there, we got home, booked flight, got, went up to Michigan the next day, uh, pretty much immediately.
[00:10:50] And, and, and, and, and, and kudos to my brother for, for having that serious first response.
[00:10:56] Cause like my first response after asking for, Hey, get us out of here was to see those three specialty cocktails on the table and be like, well, that, that would be a waste and B I could probably use a drink.
[00:11:08] And so I, you know, one of them was a sake and, uh, mezcal infusion.
[00:11:13] And I was like, well, they'd already poured it.
[00:11:16] So I just threw that back on, on my way out the door.
[00:11:18] That was probably a good move.
[00:11:21] Uh, so we got up to Michigan, right?
[00:11:25] And I don't want to tell anyone else's story about how, how they work through stuff and families.
[00:11:31] Everyone processes things differently.
[00:11:34] Uh, uh, so I'll skip all that shit.
[00:11:36] I'll just say that like pretty quickly, the service planning, like that takes over, you know, the, uh, this is the first time I've had an immediate family member pass, but pretty quickly you're like, all right, well, there is this kind of, you know, process.
[00:11:53] It's like not dissimilar from wedding planning, but instead of having six months, a year, or if you're an elder millennial, like eight years to plan, you have, uh, a few days.
[00:12:07] And fortunately, uh, uh, dad had just by coincidence of, of, of another, uh, person we know passing had found a funeral home that he really liked.
[00:12:18] And he, he said he wanted to do that one.
[00:12:20] So that, that was off the table.
[00:12:21] That was, that worked out.
[00:12:23] But, uh, then, you know, even, and that was helpful.
[00:12:28] That was really helpful to sit down and, and, and, you know, of course you go to the funeral home, you talk to the funeral home director and super sympathetic there.
[00:12:35] It takes a certain kind, right?
[00:12:38] A person, you know, you gotta have the strategically placed tissue boxes all over the place and then know when to stop talking and when to hand it and when to back away.
[00:12:46] And, you know, dude is an absolute champ, but he's also done this before and he knows the questions to ask.
[00:12:55] And it's not to like boil it down into a questionnaire, but it, it's a questionnaire.
[00:13:00] It's like, Hey, what do you want?
[00:13:01] How do you got to do this?
[00:13:02] You know, you're being bang, boom.
[00:13:04] What?
[00:13:04] And fortunately, uh, collectively we came to the table with a lot of answers to a lot of those stock questions at the ready.
[00:13:15] Um, but the thing that stood out to me was, you know, there's going to be a service we're going to have to write an obituary.
[00:13:22] They gave us a start and, um, a start is actually the perfect thing to give me when it, when it comes to writing, you know, if you give me a blank page, it could take me all week.
[00:13:32] But if you give me something I don't like and like me not writing in a hurry would result in the thing I don't like going out, then all of a sudden I get the motivation to go and write some shit.
[00:13:46] So we, we, we, we, we worked together and we cleaned up the eulogy or the, excuse me, the obituary, all these terms you only use sparingly.
[00:13:55] Occasionally, uh, got the obituary out, had a tremendous response, maybe from some of you because it was up on the website.
[00:14:05] Had a tremendous response from people.
[00:14:07] Everyone was shocked.
[00:14:08] You know, no one expected that, uh, dad had a tremendously large social network being a dentist for 45 plus years in a community of people who loved him.
[00:14:20] And he was genuinely, you know, an incredibly kind and friendly guy everywhere he went.
[00:14:26] Uh, so, so that was good.
[00:14:29] And you re and, and it was the obituary that made me realize like, well, I, you know, I knew this intellectually, but be like, oh yeah, like next few days here are for them.
[00:14:37] It's for everybody else to understand process grief.
[00:14:42] And so as soon as the obituary out, I was like, all right, next eulogy time.
[00:14:48] So I, uh, I approached it as soon as I knew it's a, when I know something's for me, I let it be for me.
[00:14:58] I'm not, I've, I accept myself.
[00:15:00] I love myself and take care of myself as best I can.
[00:15:03] I don't, I'm not a martyr, right?
[00:15:06] Like I don't push down my needs and interests for the sake of other people.
[00:15:12] To the point of other people's viewing it as selfish sometimes.
[00:15:15] And increasingly over the years, I'm viewing it as like, maybe you, maybe it's the children who are wrong.
[00:15:21] Maybe this is just the way to be, because it turns out that when you take good care of yourself, you can show up for other people.
[00:15:26] Well, right.
[00:15:26] So anyway, I, I, as soon as I knew that like the point of the service wasn't for me, the point of the service was, uh, the other people in the room who, who, some of whom drove hours and stayed overnight in hotels to come be there.
[00:15:42] It was, it was to give them something.
[00:15:46] So as soon as that bit flipped in my brain, it became very easy to write a eulogy because I, I approached it like work.
[00:15:56] I approached it like a conference talk or yeah, like it, I didn't actually open keynote, but I thought about it because that's how, that's how I tend to storyboard and work out conference talks.
[00:16:09] And I, I thought about like, well, maybe I just do that and I just don't show the slides, you know, because I think it would be possibly inappropriate to, to have a PowerPoint presentation at your, I, at a funeral.
[00:16:23] I don't know.
[00:16:24] I guess I had to make one anyway.
[00:16:26] We'll talk about that.
[00:16:29] So anyway, writing, the eulogy took over.
[00:16:31] It went smoothly.
[00:16:33] It, I liked how it turned out.
[00:16:35] If you subscribe to the newsletter, you'll get a copy of it.
[00:16:38] So, so justin.searles.co slash newsletter.
[00:16:41] It's called Searles of Wisdom, which of course, you know, me making that sound kitschy right now in this rather grave moment might sound inappropriate to, to, to shill, but you will get a copy of the eulogy.
[00:16:53] I'm happy with it, how it turned out.
[00:16:56] I, uh, as soon as I wrote it then, of course, and this is what I'm trying to illustrate is like everything just became task A.
[00:17:03] Like, okay, task A is complete, task B, no real time in there for processing and thinking through things through.
[00:17:11] Uh, so the eulogy took over, wrote it, and as soon as I'd written it, I was now task C, I gotta deliver it, you know.
[00:17:21] I don't typically read a script when I speak, uh, but I had to write it all out as if it was being spoken.
[00:17:32] And I had to even practice and rehearse it as if I was reading it because I knew that in an emotionally, you know, the best way that people seem to talk about this is like, it's, your emotions are close to the surface as if like any little tiny thing could just break the surface tension and, and, and spill over.
[00:17:51] Right.
[00:17:52] I knew that out of my control, I might, I might tear up.
[00:17:56] I might cry.
[00:17:57] I might need a minute.
[00:18:01] While delivering this.
[00:18:02] And so I, uh, I, I practiced it to be read, but I knew like, man, there's just a, there's a, I call it a 5%, 10% chance that I just have a fucking breakdown and I can't get through this thing.
[00:18:18] And the anxiety in the day and a half leading up to the service worrying that I would fail as a public speaker outside the context of, you know, sure.
[00:18:32] Everyone would give you a break if your dad just died.
[00:18:35] Right.
[00:18:35] But this is like the last thing I'm doing for him, you know, in a, in a publicly meaningful way.
[00:18:40] And it's also a skill that I've spent a lot of time working on.
[00:18:45] And so I wouldn't for me to fail at that by, by breaking or by even, even just failing to deliver it successfully and in a, in an impactful way would have been hard for me.
[00:19:05] And it would have been something I probably would be ruminating on here.
[00:19:08] We are a couple of weeks later.
[00:19:10] And as a result, what happened is the same thing that happens before I give a conference talk in front of a bunch of people at a conference or whatever.
[00:19:18] It's the, the, the, the, uh, stress hormone gets released, the adrenaline and the cortisol starts coming out.
[00:19:26] And so the morning of the funeral, everyone else is kind of approaching it their own way.
[00:19:31] And I'm like, it's game time, you know, like I, I'm dialed in my, you know, all of my instincts are about just getting through that five to seven minute speech.
[00:19:47] And no emotional response before then.
[00:19:50] And afterwards, to be honest, the biggest emotional response afterwards was the relief of successfully.
[00:19:57] And I did successfully deliver it.
[00:19:59] And, uh, and then as soon as task C of delivering it is done, then task D starts of now it's the end of a funeral service.
[00:20:08] And you've got a receiving line of all these guests coming up and they, you know, they're, they're approaching the open casket and they're, they're coming to, you know, hug you, talk to you.
[00:20:17] See how you are.
[00:20:18] And there's a performative aspect to that, right?
[00:20:22] Like you gotta be like, all right, who's ready for lunch?
[00:20:24] That would be inappropriate.
[00:20:25] Right.
[00:20:26] But the, you know, also talking about how, like, oh, I'm actually mostly focused on how I did a good job.
[00:20:32] Giving this speech would separately be maybe, you know, off color, but these are the things that go through our brains in the, in these high impact moments.
[00:20:43] When you just have to, when, when, whenever a situation dictates that your behavior be misaligned or the statements about oneself be at all discordant with what's really going on inside you in that literal moment.
[00:21:08] And so, so I did my best, uh, of course, to make it about other people and see how they're doing and answer their questions in as, uh, productive a way as possible.
[00:21:20] Right.
[00:21:20] Give them answers about myself that gave them the things that they needed was my primary response all through.
[00:21:29] And then, and then through that, and then task E, the wake.
[00:21:32] Right.
[00:21:33] And, and, uh, you do, you, you do that.
[00:21:35] And then suddenly, uh, well, now you have task F after, after all that stuff of like, okay, well, we've got all this leftover food we got to take home.
[00:21:42] So it's like load up the car and, and, and, and help everyone out and see everyone on their way safely.
[00:21:48] And then, you know, you're exhausted and you want to just go back and, and, you know, get out of this fucking suit that barely fits.
[00:21:58] Nope.
[00:21:59] Task G is you got to go turn around, drive 20 minutes in the opposite direction to go back to the funeral home, to pick up all of these flowers.
[00:22:05] Cause you, you tell people not to send flowers.
[00:22:07] Uh, you, you say, you know, in dad's case, donate to the humane society, but people send flowers.
[00:22:14] And then, you know, what do you fucking do with them?
[00:22:16] Right.
[00:22:17] It's like, well, here's look, if you or someone you're affiliated with sent flowers to this particular funeral, I'm deeply grateful.
[00:22:25] And I had a moving moment, actually looking at all the flowers of friends of mine, people who never met dad.
[00:22:31] Most of the time, a couple of our neighbors, right.
[00:22:35] Who we don't really know well, but they're just really lovely people.
[00:22:38] They, they did a bouquet and it was really nice.
[00:22:40] You know, flowers are beautiful, but.
[00:22:49] Like a cigarette can be really, really nice, but a carton can be a lot.
[00:22:53] Uh, you know, a cocktail can be really nice, but drinking a whole fifth is problematic.
[00:23:00] When you have so many bouquets that you can't fit them into your vehicle and also the people in the vehicle.
[00:23:06] It's all it's, it, it just, it, it becomes a work.
[00:23:10] Right.
[00:23:11] And so that's what, you know, that's one of the ways in which having this service like this become sort of, you know, like less about the immediate family and more about the surrounding, you know, network of people that somebody knows.
[00:23:24] And maybe this is all common sense and, and I should have been more conscientious of this going into the experience, but looking back on it, uh, I was just sort of like, all right, well, here's next task is figure out how to cram all these flowers.
[00:23:39] And then you get home and it's like, where'd all these flowers go?
[00:23:43] And so you just kind of scatter them throughout the house.
[00:23:48] Uh, but they're all, you know, like they're not invasives or they're not like going to survive the long winter.
[00:23:53] Like they're, they're now all on their own separate week to two week timer of themselves dying and needing to be dealt with, which is like, you know, a, let's just say an echo or a reverberation of like kind of what you're thinking about.
[00:24:07] So maybe, okay, look, I don't want to spend this whole fucking podcast talking about a funeral.
[00:24:15] I realize it's like maybe a bit of a downer, but you know, there's other stuff going on to like, I skipped a whole fucking half day activity.
[00:24:25] Actually is wedge a task in there between B and C if you're for anyone playing the home game and keeping track of this, not that it's that complicated, uh, you got to come up with a slideshow, right?
[00:24:39] So you've got the visitation before the service and we also had it the night before for anyone who couldn't make it or, you know, maybe acquaintances and whatnot, who didn't feel like going to the whole service, whatever it is.
[00:24:57] You got to come up with a slideshow, which is theoretically easy these days because there's so many goddamn pictures of all of us.
[00:25:04] It's theoretically easy because you have tools like, uh, shared iCloud photo libraries, uh, and shared albums, which, you know, as soon as somebody suggested a shared album, I went into my like pre canned speech.
[00:25:20] And I think of, well, actually shared albums predate, you know, modern ways of sharing photos in the photos app.
[00:25:25] And so whenever you put anything in a shared album, Apple compresses it pretty badly.
[00:25:30] It, it downscales the resolution.
[00:25:32] It also, you know, adjusts downward, the quality of the image.
[00:25:39] And I got halfway through that spiel and being like, you know, this is going to go up on a 10 ADP TV in the back of a room.
[00:25:45] Like it's fine.
[00:25:46] That's not the issue.
[00:25:47] But then the next issue is, you know, everyone goes in the people and pets and photo library, sees all the pictures of dad that aren't bad.
[00:25:56] And we all dump them into the same shared library, shared photo album, which is like, like, that's no one's fault, but mine.
[00:26:02] I told people just do that and I'll clear them out.
[00:26:04] But then you wind up with, and it turns out, this is how that stupid fucking system works.
[00:26:09] The shared photo album will treat all of those duplicates as distinct.
[00:26:14] And there's, even though there's duplicate deduping now in the photos app, it does not apply to shared library, shared photo albums.
[00:26:21] And on top of that, if somebody adds something to a shared photo album, they can remove it.
[00:26:27] But for somebody else, like, like, let's say I added a photo of dad that Becky didn't want in there.
[00:26:33] Well, Becky can't go in and remove it.
[00:26:35] Only the organizer can remove it or the person who posted it.
[00:26:39] So then I had to be the person going through and, like, servicing any requests people had for photos to, like, ban from the slideshow.
[00:26:46] Because for whatever reason, you know, it's a sensitive time.
[00:26:49] And then after it was all done, you realize the slideshow tools don't work correctly.
[00:26:56] Like, just the play button and all the different options in the Mac, like, just don't work correctly in a shared album.
[00:27:01] Because, of course, they don't.
[00:27:02] So then you've got to copy them all.
[00:27:07] You thought I was talking about feelings, but it all comes back.
[00:27:11] All comes back to Apple shit.
[00:27:13] So you've got to copy them all into your photo library, whoever is going to be running the slideshow.
[00:27:17] Create a new slideshow project from there.
[00:27:20] Dump them all in there.
[00:27:22] And then realize there's no, once you've dumped shit into a slideshow project, there is no way to reorder them.
[00:27:27] Short of manually drag dropping extremely slowly in a left-right horizontal scroll dingus.
[00:27:34] And you've got 500 pictures or something, just fucking forget about it.
[00:27:37] And on top of that, I had all these dupes.
[00:27:40] Like, I had manually de-duped as best as I could before.
[00:27:43] But first question I get half an hour into the visitation is like, yeah, it just seems weird.
[00:27:48] Because, like, there's this one picture of me that's going to come up, like, four times.
[00:27:52] I was like, I'm sorry, bud.
[00:27:54] I said, oh, it's randomized or whatever, you know.
[00:28:01] So after you get all of those into a photo slideshow project, and successfully, I installed amphetamine, which will keep your screen awake.
[00:28:11] And you plug that into HDMI, and you know how to put a fucking Mac on a TV.
[00:28:15] I don't need to tell you that.
[00:28:16] After all of it was done and I got home, the two days later I realized, oh, yeah, shit.
[00:28:24] Because now my photo library is full, all of the most recent photos are just shit that was copied, that was already initially in my photo library anyway.
[00:28:32] And none of them are showing up in the little dupes thing, of course, because it needs days to analyze on Wi-Fi.
[00:28:39] So I went to the recent imports or recently saved tab, and then I had to manually go through and delete, like, 1,400 pictures of my dad.
[00:28:50] And then hope that, like, I wasn't deleting one that wasn't a dupe.
[00:28:55] So I had to go through and, like, manually tease these out.
[00:28:59] It took me a fucking hour and a half.
[00:29:02] And, yeah, so then I deleted all those to kind of dedupe it, because I was confident I had copies of all those pictures already somewhere else in the library.
[00:29:11] That could have been smoother, is the short version of this story.
[00:29:16] And, of course, there's no goddamn good software that does this.
[00:29:20] There are two people who have made apps that simply shuffle photos in a slideshow.
[00:29:26] And they're bad apps.
[00:29:27] So they look old.
[00:29:28] It's like they basically had to reinvent slideshow stuff, including the software and the shuffling and the crossfades and the Ken Burns effect and the music and all the stuff that the Apple product does.
[00:29:38] They had to reinvent all that just to have a shuffle button, which is what you probably want, especially if you've got a mix of scanned photos and, you know, contemporaneous photos.
[00:29:50] Because there's no way you're going to make the timeline actually contiguous.
[00:29:54] So instead, like, well, here's, like, a bunch of photos between, like, 2003 and 2017, because that's the digital photography era.
[00:30:05] And then in 2018, when we scanned all of our photo albums, suddenly it's just all of the photo albums in random order.
[00:30:12] And then you have 2019 to 2024.
[00:30:15] Like, it's not a cohesive experience.
[00:30:20] Now, I would say, well, you know, it's a visitation.
[00:30:23] People are coming and going.
[00:30:24] They go in, they visit the casket, and they spend time chatting.
[00:30:28] But, like, they don't, though.
[00:30:30] All the chairs are pointing at this TV, and people just sat there for more than an hour.
[00:30:36] They'd watch multiple.
[00:30:37] Like, I thought that having a 45-minute long slideshow, that pacing would be okay.
[00:30:43] People watched it two or three times while they chatted, you know, just the state of, the lack of kinetic energy throughout the entire experience of somebody passing.
[00:30:54] You know, the phrase sit Shiva from Judaism.
[00:30:58] Like, I am somebody who is relatively uncomfortable just sitting around, around other people.
[00:31:06] I'm happy to sit around by myself.
[00:31:08] I'm doing it right now.
[00:31:09] I'm actually pretty good at it.
[00:31:10] Ask anybody.
[00:31:11] But to not have an activity with other people, and also not to have, like, interesting conversation to have with other people,
[00:31:20] to just have to be around and with other people, is really goddamn hard.
[00:31:25] And I suspect I'm not the only one who feels that way.
[00:31:28] Hence, everyone just staring at the slideshow and making a comment here and there.
[00:31:32] So, a couple things did jump out at me about that service and about the visitation, though, that were interesting.
[00:31:40] One was, Dad had mentored a couple of younger dentists in his last couple years practicing.
[00:31:48] People who had intended to take over the practice.
[00:31:51] That's his own long story.
[00:31:52] But they were, my age or younger, probably younger, definitely younger, come to think of it.
[00:31:59] Splendid people.
[00:32:00] Like, super upbeat, super duper energetic, just, like, fun.
[00:32:05] They forced my dad to do stuff like go fishing and get out and do things that he normally wouldn't do.
[00:32:13] And they blew me away by just saying, like, you know, dad was 72.
[00:32:18] He was like, this guy, most dentists, when they get older, the hands get shaky.
[00:32:25] Their craft gets sloppy.
[00:32:28] But your dad was, he, he, I think he said, he set the standard.
[00:32:33] He was just a beast.
[00:32:34] He was, and I was like, what do you mean?
[00:32:36] Like, actually, I've never really talked to anyone about his craft, right?
[00:32:41] Because he didn't want to talk about it.
[00:32:44] He was like, his prep work and, and, and how he prepped for each procedure was meticulous and perfect every single time.
[00:32:53] And his technique while doing things was, was like, like phenomenal.
[00:33:00] And they went into a handful of specifics for me.
[00:33:02] And that was really special to me because I, like, I, I know that about myself that I'm chasing this asymptotic goal of perfection, but I didn't have evidence that my dad was as well outside of just stuff around the house.
[00:33:16] And you can say that, well, that's perfectionism and that's OCD.
[00:33:19] And we both have like, you know, traits of that too.
[00:33:20] But the, that was really interesting because everyone had only ever experienced my dad as a patient or somebody who's like really, really gregarious and friendly and good at comforting patients.
[00:33:33] But yeah, their stories were really, really encouraging.
[00:33:39] And that was, that was one where it's like, I was glad to be able to walk away from that series of experiences and learn new stuff about my dad, uh, new stuff that rounded out the story of him in my mind.
[00:33:54] Uh, so I'm really thankful to those guys, uh, because they were able to dive in and baby bird for me, explain like I'm five, like the ways in which he was a great dentist, which is just a thing that like, you know, everyone.
[00:34:08] How do you rate your dentist, right?
[00:34:10] Well, he's good at comforting me.
[00:34:12] He's good at explaining things.
[00:34:13] He doesn't upsell me a lot.
[00:34:15] You know, I'm not afraid when I'm in the chair with him.
[00:34:17] And then afterwards things seem to go pretty well, but like, really like the, the work is a black box.
[00:34:22] You can't see what's going on in your fucking mouth.
[00:34:24] You're, you're conscious.
[00:34:25] You know how you feel before and how you feel after, but it's, uh, that was really cool.
[00:34:31] Uh, the other, uh, another dentist that worked for him earlier in, in, in, uh, his career, uh, she, she had previously lost her dad and she said, you know, she said something that felt at the time, extremely true.
[00:34:47] That a funeral is like having to host the worst party ever.
[00:34:51] Uh, so that just to put a cap on it, that's, uh, accurate.
[00:35:00] It felt like a party because I got to see a whole lot of people, friends from college, you know, Mark Van Holstein, the president or former president, but co-founder, founder of, uh, mutually human software in Grand Rapids.
[00:35:10] You had my former housemate.
[00:35:11] He came out, uh, uh, other kid, uh, other friends from, from middle school, high school made the trick, trick, trick, trick, Jeff and Dan.
[00:35:21] It was really great to see so many people under, you know, suboptimal circumstances.
[00:35:28] And then of course the whole set of extended family where it's like weddings and funerals, huh?
[00:35:33] And then like the obligatory, like, yeah, we should really figure out a way to see each other more.
[00:35:37] And it's like true.
[00:35:38] And no one doesn't feel that way.
[00:35:40] It's just like structurally unlikely the way people's lives work.
[00:35:44] Uh, and so there's a sort of, uh, uh, nihilism is definitely the wrong word.
[00:35:52] There's a sort of resignation that one has about what even are weddings and funerals and why is it that there's this whole cast of characters in your life that are important or close to you and via affiliation or history in some way.
[00:36:12] But that you only see at these really like, like, like, like loud life events where it's a big, the background sound is a huge gong going off that distracts from actually getting to know the people.
[00:36:26] If you just, you know, picked them on a random Tuesday and went to lunch, you'd probably learn a lot about the person.
[00:36:31] But if it's just in the context of like, you know, like looking at, you know, a tray of sandwiches and having to find something to say, it's all going to be sucked in by the event.
[00:36:41] And that's too bad, but that's, that's life, I guess, uh, tasks, you know, H through Z day after I, I had intentionally put off any sort of like looking at stuff, like, like thinking about the logistics, uh, the finances, the legal side, the, all that stuff, life insurance, yada, yada.
[00:37:06] Uh, but then, you know, it was a lot of that, right.
[00:37:09] For, for the rest of our trip, we were there for, for, for 11 days.
[00:37:12] I would say skipping a lot of the minutiae because I, of course, you know, when the, when the, when, when a, when a household had a household or breadwinner passes and they didn't leave instructions, like you got to go and do the forensic analysis to figure out like, what are all the, where is everything?
[00:37:32] Right.
[00:37:32] That's, that's what it was.
[00:37:34] It's all fine.
[00:37:36] But the, uh, the tech support son, which is like my, you know, uh, it's not an official designation, but, uh, you know, it's a, it's a role I've stepped into and I feel like I've grown into pretty well.
[00:37:48] One of the things that jumped is, all right, so we got a couple of things going on.
[00:37:54] One, my mom is in an Apple family organized to buy my dad's Apple ID.
[00:37:59] Now what?
[00:38:00] All the purchases have been made in general on dad's Apple ID, including their Apple one premiere subscription.
[00:38:06] Okay.
[00:38:07] Well, you know, next eight, you can imagine my next eight Google searches or coggy searches.
[00:38:13] All right.
[00:38:14] Well, how do you change head of house or organizer of a family answer?
[00:38:19] You cannot.
[00:38:19] Okay.
[00:38:20] Well, how can I transfer the purchases from an organizer to somebody else in the family?
[00:38:28] You cannot.
[00:38:28] Okay.
[00:38:29] Is there a process by which I can make somebody sort of like a legacy page on Facebook, a legacy
[00:38:35] human Apple ID?
[00:38:37] No.
[00:38:39] Okay.
[00:38:40] So what do I do?
[00:38:41] And they're like, well, you can call Apple support and they may need a death certificate,
[00:38:45] but then you can call them and then they can do some amount of stuff, but some, but you don't
[00:38:52] get to know what.
[00:38:52] And once you kind of go through that process, the Apple ID gets like locked out or that's a,
[00:38:57] that's a risk.
[00:38:58] And all the sort of, you know, contingent, other things related to that.
[00:39:02] I was like, all right, well, I don't necessarily want to do that as a first resort, but I do got
[00:39:09] to figure this out because having just like this extra Apple, having this whole like digital
[00:39:14] twin to borrow a, an industry term, continue to be a part of a, you know, an Apple family,
[00:39:22] a one password family or all this for years into years, just because the software companies
[00:39:27] don't make it logistically possible to die.
[00:39:30] Uh, that seems great, you know, like, like, so working through that, you know, like I, I still
[00:39:38] don't quite have a solution to that.
[00:39:39] I'm just going to get through a couple of billing cycles on all the other stuff first,
[00:39:43] before I think too hard about it.
[00:39:44] Just kidding.
[00:39:45] I've thought really hard about it and I've got a 15 step, you know, uh, set of to do's,
[00:39:50] but they're just gonna, I gracefully, mercifully, I mercifully punted them two weeks into the
[00:39:56] future.
[00:39:56] Uh, I, one of the biggest things other than the Apple family stuff was my, my dad had just
[00:40:09] bought a new iPhone 16.
[00:40:12] I, and he set it up and all that stuff, but my mom was on an older one, like a 12 pro or a 12 mini or a 13 mini.
[00:40:19] And it didn't make sense to leave her with the old phone and the new 16, just like in a drawer,
[00:40:30] it made sense to give her the new phone.
[00:40:33] Right.
[00:40:34] Otherwise that the other phone's old enough.
[00:40:36] It's like, I'll just be back in six months or, or, or, you know, like we'll, you'll be wasting
[00:40:39] money.
[00:40:40] So, and that, you know, just like deleting photos of your dad because of a stupid duplication bug,
[00:40:45] having to go through a whole bunch of hoops to, to migrate one phone to the other was like the
[00:40:50] next challenge.
[00:40:52] Cause here was why it was thorny, right?
[00:40:54] If, if all of the bank accounts and multi-factor authentication against banks is almost exclusively
[00:41:03] SMS, right?
[00:41:04] Cause they didn't get on the bandwagon for a, a T O T P or, you know, like you scan the QR code and you
[00:41:11] get an authenticator app to, to show it.
[00:41:13] And because they, they certainly don't support pass keys.
[00:41:16] Uh, we can't just turn off dad's cellular line until we work through all the financial stuff.
[00:41:22] But at the same time, okay.
[00:41:25] So like if I'm resetting dad's phone and moving mom's stuff onto dad's phone, then how do I
[00:41:30] transfer, how do I get these, how do I make it so that dad's SIM doesn't just disappear?
[00:41:35] Cause like last thing I want to do is have to call T-Mobile and explain, and then set up the
[00:41:41] old phone from scratch and then have them like, I guess, restart the e-SIM process over the phone
[00:41:46] on Christmas, you know, Christmas Eve or whatever.
[00:41:51] So I, um, I came up with like a towers of Hanoi solution that I actually kind of liked.
[00:41:56] What I did was I transferred dad's SIM from the 16 to mom's 13, call it.
[00:42:03] So now she had two SIMs on her phone.
[00:42:05] She had her primary SIM and dad's SIM, uh, e-SIM.
[00:42:09] Uh, uh, and then I, oh, and the 13 or the 12, whatever has one physical and one e-SIM.
[00:42:17] And she fortunately had a physical SIM in there.
[00:42:19] So she was able to, to, to receive dad's old e-SIM.
[00:42:22] So now the 13 of that stage has a physical, a physical nano SIM and an e-SIM.
[00:42:27] And then that allowed me to go to dad's phone, back it up, of course, and all that, and then
[00:42:32] wipe it.
[00:42:33] Cause it had no cellular plan on it.
[00:42:35] And then you set it up new, you set it up for mom.
[00:42:40] And during that wizard, you know, you do the direct transfer, they're connected via, you
[00:42:45] know, USB cables or whatever.
[00:42:46] You set it up for mom.
[00:42:49] And she has to, she, it says, Hey, you're ready to transfer your cellular plans.
[00:42:56] I'm like, yes.
[00:42:56] And then I, it's, I realized it's not, you click, you tap one in it and a check box goes
[00:43:02] up next to that number.
[00:43:03] And then you check the other one and the check box, the check mark moves.
[00:43:07] It's clearly like it doesn't support actually initializing a phone with two SIMs, which means
[00:43:14] now it's like, okay, so I'll move for a primary SIM first as part of this direct transfer.
[00:43:20] And then the direct transfer, because her router was simultaneously and coincidentally failing,
[00:43:25] the direct transfer failed because the wifi timed out.
[00:43:30] And when you're in the direct transfer mode between two phones in that setting, you can't
[00:43:36] like get to control center and turn off the wifi nick.
[00:43:39] So then I've got these two phones that I can clearly tell are timing out in the activation
[00:43:43] process while the SIM is moving.
[00:43:45] And I'm like, fuck sake.
[00:43:47] But it's also like a mesh router and there's three mesh access points throughout the house
[00:43:52] and I don't know where they are.
[00:43:53] So I, I can't just unplug them and make the SSID go away.
[00:43:57] So then I would like throw on my winter coat, it's fucking freezing outside and I start marching
[00:44:03] down the street until I can get to like far enough away that they both lose the wifi signal
[00:44:09] so that the transfer doesn't fail.
[00:44:11] So I, it took 15 houses.
[00:44:14] I'm, you know, in, in, in, in, uh, uh, my winter coat, 15 houses, they finally get onto
[00:44:21] five G and then the, the, the transfer starts succeeding.
[00:44:23] And then I start walking back and then it's just instantly says failed.
[00:44:26] So then I get back to the house, start the whole thing over again.
[00:44:30] And now of course, mom's primary SIM is like trapped on the first phone or the second, the
[00:44:36] new 16, but in setting it up again, it doesn't see it anymore because like it was just at that
[00:44:41] perfect moment when all the e-sim juice lands in the 16 or whatever.
[00:44:48] So I started the whole process over again.
[00:44:50] I, I, I set it up fair and square and then I, I, uh, uh, it all went fine after a few hours.
[00:44:59] And then the last thing it does is the 13 or whatever says, Hey, okay, time to delete
[00:45:04] me.
[00:45:04] And then it's like a, basically two taps and you've deleted the phone that just was the
[00:45:08] sender or the old phone in the transfer process.
[00:45:11] And I almost habitually clicked it.
[00:45:13] And I was like, wait, no, that will delete the SIM, the e-sim.
[00:45:16] So click, no, cancel out of that, restart the phone.
[00:45:20] And then, and then you can transfer that second SIM back to the first one.
[00:45:23] So like when that was just two phones, just moving to e-sims, like again, you know, note
[00:45:28] to Apple, like this could probably be made easier.
[00:45:31] Uh, it's just, it's edge cases like this, that all software companies are really, really bad
[00:45:37] at, uh, especially ones that don't have a great track record of automated testing and stuff
[00:45:43] like, so I get it.
[00:45:45] I know why it happened.
[00:45:47] The other thing that sucked was a dad had an Apple card and if we're not going to have
[00:45:52] a phone with dad on it, you don't want, there's no other fucking way to cancel an Apple card.
[00:45:57] You have to be on the phone that has the Apple card to cancel it.
[00:46:01] But if there's no phone with Fred on it, like that meant I, that forced the issue.
[00:46:05] Like I'm not, I'm putting off all the financial stuff, right?
[00:46:07] But I had to cancel the Apple card, but I had a balance.
[00:46:10] So now I've got to like pay a balance on this Apple card.
[00:46:13] And of course the banking connection, he didn't like, like it expired or something.
[00:46:18] So I have to go and find the banking information.
[00:46:21] I log in, whatever I hit cancel.
[00:46:23] And it's, you can cancel the card.
[00:46:25] It wants you to pay the balance first.
[00:46:27] I tried to pay the exact balance.
[00:46:30] It was $218 and 17 cents.
[00:46:32] I, and I tried 15 goddamn times.
[00:46:35] Uh, I changed to a different bank and it said insufficient balance.
[00:46:41] And I was like, does that mean like the checking accounts overdrawn?
[00:46:45] So then I'm panicking.
[00:46:45] It's like, so I go into the bank account.
[00:46:47] I'm like, is it easy overdrawn or what?
[00:46:50] Hour of, you know, me retrying and doing this only to realize that there's a fucking bug,
[00:46:58] a rounding bug of sub decimal sense.
[00:47:02] Because when it said $218 and 17 cents as being the balance owed, it was probably a floating
[00:47:09] point under there of $218 and call it 16.51 cents.
[00:47:16] Because when I tried to do $218 and 17 cents, it failed.
[00:47:21] It's an insufficient balance, which made me think insufficient funds.
[00:47:25] But then I had the bright idea to try just one penny less than that.
[00:47:28] And it cleared.
[00:47:30] It meant that you can't make a payment on the card that is in excess of what is owed on the
[00:47:35] card.
[00:47:35] And it saw that fraction of a penny as being, oh, hey now, a little too generous.
[00:47:40] So an Apple, you know, be good guy, Apple, making sure people can't overpay.
[00:47:44] Also, the bad guy, Apple doesn't write tests or use, you know, appropriate data structures
[00:47:50] for storing goddamn dollars.
[00:47:52] Results in, I can't close this card out.
[00:47:56] So eventually, so I got it down to one penny.
[00:47:58] And then when it was down to one penny, it let me pay one penny, which is separately hilarious.
[00:48:02] So I close the Apple card and then the Apple card says, all right, you're closed now.
[00:48:09] The card is removed from all your devices.
[00:48:14] Now monitor for the next few months and make payments against anything that shows up in
[00:48:18] the statement, right?
[00:48:19] Because like, that's how credit cards work.
[00:48:20] Things don't post immediately.
[00:48:22] I was like, well, I have no idea what was getting charged onto this thing.
[00:48:26] What might hit it?
[00:48:28] I'd scrolled through a statement.
[00:48:31] I had a feeling it wouldn't be bad.
[00:48:32] But then of course, like as soon as I wipe that phone, I even restored it.
[00:48:36] I restored dad's Apple ID onto another phone because I had a burner phone back when I got
[00:48:42] home just to see like, would it, would it, would it, would the, would it, the iCloud sync
[00:48:47] work, you know, where your wallet shit just shows up in the new phone just magically after
[00:48:52] setup.
[00:48:52] And the answer is no, because the Apple card is closed.
[00:48:55] So there's no reason to put the Apple card on the new phone.
[00:48:58] People would be confused, even though it's just in this removed state of like, watch the
[00:49:01] balance, which means now that once the phone gets wiped, there's actually no way to pay
[00:49:06] a balance.
[00:49:06] If one were to materialize, I guess it would just go to collections.
[00:49:10] So now, you know, like, please don't post any transactions to my dad's defunct Apple card.
[00:49:16] Cause like, I don't have any fucking way to pay it.
[00:49:18] There's card.apple.com.
[00:49:19] But like, that's just for downloading statements.
[00:49:22] So great job, Apple, like you should really make it easier to die.
[00:49:26] Like, fuck, fuck it's sake.
[00:49:27] This is a, I realized this has been a lot.
[00:49:33] I'm going to move right along.
[00:49:37] While we were up, we wanted to just, we needed a break.
[00:49:42] It'd been like day after day of the same, you know, emotional and logistical tumult.
[00:49:48] Just a real grind.
[00:49:49] So we want to go see a movie and like, like, uh, uh, Jeremy had expressed interest in seeing
[00:49:53] wicked, which is an autobiography about Ariana Grande as a person, as best I can tell.
[00:50:00] Real just, she seems like a piece of shit in real life, but also she got to play one in
[00:50:08] a movie.
[00:50:08] And so like, uh, it's like one of those things where it's like, well, that Bill Murray just
[00:50:12] like plays himself.
[00:50:13] And it just so happens that he is such a delightful and interesting person that everything he's
[00:50:18] in is always amazing.
[00:50:19] So I'm glad she got to play herself.
[00:50:21] It seemed well acted, but I knew it was probably just who she is.
[00:50:27] Uh, huge fan.
[00:50:31] Uh, so anyway, we went to see wicked and all of a sudden, you know, we joked about it beforehand,
[00:50:37] but like, I can't, I don't understand lyrics.
[00:50:39] I have a thing I've got a, uh, a worm lives inside my brain.
[00:50:43] And whenever there's a song playing, uh, that worm starts humming and I can't hear the lyrics
[00:50:49] to the song.
[00:50:50] I can't understand or discriminate where the words are starting and stopping.
[00:50:53] I can't tell what is being said.
[00:50:56] And if I can barely make it out, then I'm so overwrought and focusing on what's being said.
[00:51:01] Then, then I kind of lose the thread.
[00:51:02] Like I'll hear the individual words if I really focus, but then not understand what is being
[00:51:08] communicated through lyrics.
[00:51:10] At the same time, you go to a musical, you go to like, when I went to Hamilton, this was
[00:51:15] like extremely clear.
[00:51:16] It's like, Oh, I, I put, we went to Hamilton, uh, when, when Hamilton was still cool and not
[00:51:21] seen as some sort of, you know, uh, uh, white supremacist whitewashing by putting BIPOC
[00:51:27] people in, in these roles and whatnot, 2020 was a hell of a year, uh, when we went to
[00:51:33] Hamilton, I got, they got through the first number and I was like, that was very impressive.
[00:51:38] I, I appreciate the, this tonal, you know, interesting take.
[00:51:43] This is like very like, like skillfully and artfully, uh, done.
[00:51:47] Uh, and then, uh, you know, then they go straight into another song and I turned to Becky.
[00:51:54] He was like, is there, is there no talking in this one?
[00:51:56] Is there zero spoken dialogue in this?
[00:52:00] And it turned out that the answer was yes.
[00:52:02] And I was like, I don't understand anything.
[00:52:04] And so, uh, when we went to Hamilton, which I'd paid a lot of money to go to, uh, I walked
[00:52:09] to the lobby in the middle of the show.
[00:52:12] And then I ordered like two thingies of wine, uh, which I paid a lot of money for the wine.
[00:52:20] And then I got back to the seat, threw back both wines and fell asleep.
[00:52:23] So that was Hamilton for me.
[00:52:26] So here I am at wicked and we're in the first little ditty.
[00:52:28] And I'm like, I don't understand any of these fucking words.
[00:52:33] I don't, I don't know what's happening.
[00:52:35] And I've got to worry that this is going to be a song heavy movie, which it was.
[00:52:40] So I was like, you know what, like normally I'd be embarrassed to do this,
[00:52:44] but I'm going to go to the front and say, like, I'm hard of hearing.
[00:52:49] Can I have a subtitle machine dingus?
[00:52:52] I knew that theaters had them.
[00:52:55] I didn't really know how they worked or what they were, if they were any good.
[00:52:58] But I was like, you know, for the sake of science and technology, I'm going to try the
[00:53:02] subtitle dingus.
[00:53:04] So I went to the front, I went to the little, like, you know, whatever ticket booth, and
[00:53:08] they handed me a gooseneck snake thing where the bottom is like, it's like a, a drill that
[00:53:17] would bore a tunnel, but it goes in the cup holder.
[00:53:20] So it's like a cup holder drill and it screws in.
[00:53:23] So it goes in the cup holder.
[00:53:25] You screw it in to secure it.
[00:53:27] And then there's a long gooseneck, a too long, in my opinion, gooseneck.
[00:53:31] It's like probably two feet.
[00:53:34] If you don't know the term gooseneck, like, like, like, like bendy, like, like, you know,
[00:53:42] relatively thick, not a cable, but like a, like a pole that is pliable.
[00:53:48] So you can bend it in all sorts of different directions to kind of adjust it.
[00:53:53] And then on the top, it was a, a device that had a blinder on the top so that other people
[00:53:59] weren't getting a whole bunch of illumination and seeing subtitles and a radio system in
[00:54:05] the center, as well as like a kind of internal projector unit.
[00:54:08] And so it was very interesting to see how these worked.
[00:54:11] You would, and, and, and honestly, because I was uninterested in the Ariana Grande story,
[00:54:16] I was mostly just futzing with, and it gave me something to do for the three and a half
[00:54:23] hours.
[00:54:23] By the way, I had been told that there was an intermission and I was told that because somebody
[00:54:29] had in the game of telephone and said they broke it up into two parts.
[00:54:32] So like I went in expecting an intermission and then we're like three hours in, it's almost
[00:54:37] like 11 fucking o'clock.
[00:54:38] And I'm like, I got to pee, but like, I hear there's an intermission.
[00:54:41] How late are we going to be here?
[00:54:44] So that was, that kept me busy too.
[00:54:46] I had something else to do, but anyway, the, the, the subtitle machine was really interesting
[00:54:50] because as you look at it and once you get it configured, right, you realize like while
[00:55:00] I was walking down the, the, the corridor, it just said, Hey, you know, go inside the theater
[00:55:06] or whatever.
[00:55:07] When you go in the side of theater, it'll just start showing up.
[00:55:09] And when I looked inside the theater, just at the, at the edge of the theater, it was like,
[00:55:14] malfunctioning.
[00:55:15] It said like something about an, a reader.
[00:55:16] And then I realized, Oh, what's happening here is, and this is really one of those kind
[00:55:20] of old school, cool technology, you know, innovations where they couldn't just use a digital system
[00:55:27] for this per se.
[00:55:28] Like a protocol, right?
[00:55:30] Like if you were to build this today, these would be like lithium ion battery devices that
[00:55:34] would have some charging dock and some kind of software that ran on, like on top of some
[00:55:38] minimal Linux stack.
[00:55:40] And then it would use the, the, the theater's wifi to send subtitles, which would require
[00:55:46] all of this configuration, right?
[00:55:47] Like, okay, now punch in on the touch screen on your subtitle device, like which theater,
[00:55:52] which theater you're in and which movie time.
[00:55:54] And we'll play it.
[00:55:55] Right.
[00:55:55] But instead, this was just like a short wave radio system.
[00:55:58] So you'd be inside the theater and every theater you, you've never even noticed this.
[00:56:03] Probably you're in the theater and you're watching a movie.
[00:56:06] And the subtitle machine is just receiving these waves that you can't see because the projector
[00:56:13] area, I presume is just always blasting out radio waves of the current line of dialogue.
[00:56:20] You just didn't have the device to see it.
[00:56:22] And so I got the thing screwed in with Jeremy's help because I'm not very handy and I got to
[00:56:29] actually follow along the rest of the movie, which makes me an authority on, on, on being
[00:56:34] able to say not that great.
[00:56:35] Not very interesting.
[00:56:37] I I'm on the Kinsey scale.
[00:56:40] I'm all the way to hetero male, which means musical theater is not, doesn't come naturally
[00:56:48] to me in terms of being like something that gets me real excited deep down there.
[00:56:53] Uh, sorry if that's you, I'm just saying it's not it anyway.
[00:57:02] Uh, yeah.
[00:57:03] So that was, that was pretty cool.
[00:57:05] Uh, other life stuff.
[00:57:13] Well, the, the version, I guess tying a bow around the, uh, the trip up there and all
[00:57:21] that realizing I've gone an hour on it now.
[00:57:25] People, when you move from the Midwest United States to Florida and you do it because you
[00:57:35] feel like the Midwest kind of sucks, you know, it's cold.
[00:57:38] A lot of the time, uh, a lot of the rest belt States are, well, they're called rust belt.
[00:57:45] They're dying economically.
[00:57:46] There's less economic activity.
[00:57:48] There's less new stuff.
[00:57:50] There's less vibrancy.
[00:57:51] Uh, when you move from the Midwest to Florida and you have a great setup there and lots of sunshine
[00:58:00] and, and, and, and stuff to do people react in very different ways.
[00:58:08] No one just says, Oh my God, that's so great for you.
[00:58:10] I'm really, really happy for you.
[00:58:11] Wow.
[00:58:12] That sounds awesome.
[00:58:12] I mean, some people kind of do, uh, a lot of people are either jealous or in some state
[00:58:20] of denial or, or frustration by it, you know, like you feel abandoned or whatnot.
[00:58:27] I think, I think the people who genuinely think the Midwest is better and the people who are
[00:58:34] jealous, both end up asking the same question of us Midwestern expats.
[00:58:41] And that, that question is, do you regret it yet?
[00:58:44] God, I've been down here for four years.
[00:58:48] Right.
[00:58:49] And here I am.
[00:58:50] My dad just died.
[00:58:52] Just put on a funeral, you know, staying at a Hampton Inn.
[00:58:57] Huh?
[00:58:59] A Hampton Inn where like, it was a great experience.
[00:59:02] The staff were really great, but like they had a desk in the laundry room that was never screwed
[00:59:07] in or, or, or secured properly.
[00:59:08] So I set down my brand new MacBook pro and a Coke, a can of Coke.
[00:59:13] And then it just collapsed all of it all at once to the floor.
[00:59:17] So my MacBook got soaking wet and Coke.
[00:59:19] And also the, the unibody enclosure got super scraped up.
[00:59:23] And, uh, the, the day before the funeral, I was all, you know, in a lot of neck pain from,
[00:59:29] from the fall and the general manager still hasn't gotten back to me.
[00:59:33] It was gray outside.
[00:59:35] It was cold.
[00:59:37] You know, and I, and I was struggling like for activities and things we could do as a
[00:59:42] family and, and settled.
[00:59:43] Uh, and the best, most entertaining thing to do was the Ariana Grande story.
[00:59:50] And they ask, do you regret it yet?
[00:59:52] Like totally just straight.
[00:59:56] Every time we go back, I thought like, this is going to be the trip.
[01:00:00] I go back and I don't have a single person ask me that, but then it came up relative at the
[01:00:06] wake.
[01:00:09] And I was like, man, thank you for asking.
[01:00:11] You know, I think about it a lot.
[01:00:14] I love Michigan.
[01:00:14] Michigan's beautiful in the summers, but inside I'm like, come on.
[01:00:17] No, I don't regret it.
[01:00:19] Yes.
[01:00:20] I'm already homesick.
[01:00:21] Uh, it's fucking awesome here.
[01:00:23] I'm not going to lie.
[01:00:24] Like I live in goddamn paradise.
[01:00:26] I don't know why more people don't do it.
[01:00:28] I don't, you know, politics are part of the equation for a lot of folks, uh, politics and
[01:00:35] policies.
[01:00:36] Uh, and I, and I get it, but man, like I am so much fucking happier here just on a
[01:00:42] day-to-day basis.
[01:00:43] Like you, you blind out all of the sort of like metal layer stuff and just like my meat
[01:00:48] bag gets a lot more sun and a lot more movement and a lot more just stuff going on down here.
[01:00:53] And so, no, I don't regret it yet.
[01:00:54] Uh, but if I ever do, I'll let you know, I've got a podcast, so I definitely will.
[01:01:02] Uh, one thing I do regret is eating so, or is, uh, uh, drinking so little dairy in my
[01:01:07] twenties because I have become extremely lactose intolerant.
[01:01:12] Uh, so I don't have any lactase to the point where even if I drink lactaid, like, like what
[01:01:19] they call like lactose free milk, but, but actually is lactose full milk with also lactase enzyme
[01:01:25] added to it so that your tummy will process it.
[01:01:28] Even when I drink that, I drank 20 grams two nights ago and the whole next day I was
[01:01:33] wrecked.
[01:01:33] That's not a lot of fucking milk.
[01:01:35] Uh, now you call that an allergy or an intolerance.
[01:01:39] Um, but like if I want cereal, like it's going to happen.
[01:01:42] So sure you can pathologize it, but I was like, I, I am making a trade with my future self.
[01:01:48] Like I'm going to put up with some indigestion so that I can have this deal.
[01:01:52] Okay.
[01:01:53] We're in, uh, if I had a peanut allergy to the point of like anaphylactic shock, I'd be
[01:02:01] having the same negotiation.
[01:02:03] I would just probably not take the deal most of the time.
[01:02:07] Uh, anyway, I finally caved.
[01:02:11] Cause like I talking about politics, I am politically, um, unaccepting intolerant of,
[01:02:19] uh, milk alternatives.
[01:02:22] Cause it's not milk.
[01:02:24] People call almond milk, milk.
[01:02:26] That's not milk.
[01:02:27] That's just squeezed almond.
[01:02:29] And like the amount of water that goes into making an almond is insane.
[01:02:32] And so the, whatever almond milk is must be not, not really great from a sustainability
[01:02:37] perspective.
[01:02:38] And it's just, it's not, it's not what it says on the 10.
[01:02:41] It shouldn't be allowed to be called milk.
[01:02:43] It's like that fake egg product called just egg.
[01:02:45] I was like, that's no, it's unjust egg.
[01:02:48] This is not an egg.
[01:02:49] Uh, so I, I, I caved and I bought Kirkland dairy-free oat beverage is what it says in the
[01:03:00] box and oat milk.
[01:03:02] And I had that last night and I'm still mad at myself about it, but here we are.
[01:03:08] I'm going to say that's, I'm going to cap it at an hour of life updates.
[01:03:16] I knew it would be life heavy.
[01:03:18] Um, but, and because it's a heavy period of life right now, but if you're curious after all
[01:03:24] of this shit and all the storytelling and all me getting stuff off my chest, I'm actually
[01:03:28] doing great.
[01:03:29] I'm processing things.
[01:03:30] Love my dad dearly.
[01:03:31] Um, I, I've taken the moments, you know, to be quiet and still and to spend effort and
[01:03:44] time genuinely reflecting and going through old things and, you know, letting feelings happen
[01:03:51] and letting those memories come by and doing other things to protect that memory, especially
[01:03:56] as I go through all these logistics.
[01:03:58] Right.
[01:03:58] And as I dig through the finances and the legal stuff, it's like, you know, just any decisions
[01:04:04] that he made and stuff like he's not there to explain them now.
[01:04:06] So if I'm frustrated about that, like that's on me, not, not something to taint his memory.
[01:04:12] Uh, I think I'm doing a lot of the things, right.
[01:04:16] And I think I'm, I'm, I'm grieving at the grief appropriate pace.
[01:04:22] Uh, so thank you for everyone for sending sympathies and stuff.
[01:04:24] But, uh, no, yeah, I think there's not that I don't want your sympathy, but I feel like
[01:04:32] I'm doing really well.
[01:04:33] So thank you.
[01:04:34] Thanks in part to you.
[01:04:35] Uh, I guess one last thing I'll share simply because it's the new year in Japan, the new
[01:04:45] year, Oshogatsu is the most important holiday, uh, for many, many years.
[01:04:51] One reason that the Japanese don't make a big deal a lot about birthdays is like everyone
[01:04:56] sort of, my understanding is, or I've heard everyone sort of nationally like treated their
[01:05:00] birthday is the first of the year.
[01:05:02] Um, you know, whatever year you were born in was what mattered.
[01:05:06] They have different words for, uh, the phrase you say to celebrate the new year before the
[01:05:14] new year, new year, you say, as in have a good year ahead.
[01:05:21] And if you see somebody after the new year, you say, so it's like, it's a new year.
[01:05:27] Congratulations.
[01:05:29] Now, the thing about that last phrase, is that it's a, it's a positive, happy, congratulatory
[01:05:36] phrase.
[01:05:36] Hey, we made it.
[01:05:37] Problem is if somebody in your family died the previous year, somebody didn't make it.
[01:05:42] And so it's customary in Japanese.
[01:05:45] If you have a friend and you know that they have a family member who died, you're not supposed
[01:05:51] to say to them at the new year, you're supposed to express sympathy, you know, thanks for,
[01:05:58] for being there for me.
[01:05:59] Thanks for trying harder or whatever, you know, something more, uh, non-congratulatory, but
[01:06:06] still affection.
[01:06:07] And there's, you know, two or three set phases that people use in that case.
[01:06:10] This is a fun culture note.
[01:06:15] Uh, cause I, you know, with the time change and everything, I, a couple of days ago, I spent
[01:06:19] a lot of time texting with my Japanese friends to, to wish them a happy new year.
[01:06:22] Cause of course it's important.
[01:06:24] Um, culturally for them, I did get a lot of Akimash Deo Meditos back from people who do
[01:06:31] know that my dad just died, but I, I was willing to cut them some slack because it's actually
[01:06:36] their culture and I don't care.
[01:06:37] All right.
[01:06:40] That's enough life shit.
[01:06:40] Let's fall shut.
[01:06:41] Is it fall, fall, fall, fall, deep breath.
[01:06:45] All right.
[01:06:46] I said deep breath, but I'm not going to take a deep breath.
[01:06:49] I'll do that later because I got to play the stinger and it's titled follow up because
[01:06:54] the next segment of the show is also titled follow up, I guess.
[01:06:59] So a couple of newsletters ago, I had explained a bit about my current phase of life and my
[01:07:12] decision to step back from being employed.
[01:07:15] And, uh, in response, a lot of people, a lot of people, I had probably three or four people
[01:07:24] the book die with zero, uh, to me.
[01:07:27] I, I don't have the author's name in front of me.
[01:07:30] I should probably do that.
[01:07:31] It's a book.
[01:07:32] I, I, people seem to really like it.
[01:07:35] Uh, the idea is as you might guess, Bill Perkins, he seems, it seems to be very, um, people online
[01:07:45] seem to like it.
[01:07:45] People who, you know, like the, the online hustle culture, people, you know,
[01:07:50] who tend to have the insatiable desire for more and growth.
[01:07:56] They seem to be like pausing for a second to be like, Oh, what if we hit an inflection
[01:08:02] point?
[01:08:02] And then it just makes more sense to enjoy our lives rather than always go for more, which
[01:08:08] was kind of what I was writing about.
[01:08:10] Uh, I just put that here as a note that, uh, it's, it's funny how sometimes it takes things
[01:08:23] being in a book for people to listen.
[01:08:26] Uh, especially it's even funnier when they don't read the book, they just either hear
[01:08:33] a synopsis or an interview or, or, or a blinkist of the book, uh, a cliff notes.
[01:08:40] And it takes, it takes that to believe it because like the, the power of authority is so strong
[01:08:49] that like, I, I just don't, I don't really believe in books that have straightforward messages.
[01:08:56] Like this book could have been a blog post.
[01:08:58] It was cause I wrote one, right?
[01:09:00] Like it's, and granted, this is a four-year-old book, but like, like I, I feel like for some
[01:09:08] folks, the appeal to authority is just so important in, in their decision-making criteria that if
[01:09:15] there's not a, an employer or a system or an accepted cultural norm that gives them a lane
[01:09:24] through which to believe or think a thing, then they will resist it.
[01:09:31] Or it'll just like, let it like pass by.
[01:09:34] It just, it, it, it passes through some membrane and falls to the floor.
[01:09:38] Uh, because there's so many successful books out there that are effectively like could have
[01:09:44] been three sentences long and the book is just padding and, and different ways of saying
[01:09:50] the same thing and, and whole genres of books that get sold and gifted and whatnot that no
[01:09:56] one ever really reads.
[01:09:57] Cause they're not really books.
[01:09:58] They're like a, a signal.
[01:10:00] They're a signal that like, Hey, this lesson seems good.
[01:10:03] It could help you.
[01:10:04] Uh, here's a book.
[01:10:07] And because it's in writing, cause it's on paper, it's, uh, um, it, it, it lends credibility
[01:10:15] to the idea that like, it's okay to think this or to make this change.
[01:10:19] Uh, so to me, a book is a hallmark card with extra steps, right?
[01:10:25] It's just heavier and there's shit in the middle.
[01:10:27] Now there's different kinds of books, but I'm talking about these sort of like that's self
[01:10:31] help maybe to a certain extent, but also, um, messaging books, like a book with an agenda,
[01:10:38] like get people thinking or doing this.
[01:10:40] Like, uh, one that I pushed around a lot was, uh, uh, Cal Newport's first book, the deep,
[01:10:47] deep thought, deep, deep work.
[01:10:49] Right.
[01:10:49] Uh, and, and I thought it was an interesting book, but even I got like, you know, I was
[01:10:56] like, okay, I get it.
[01:10:57] Yeah.
[01:10:58] It, you know, that book could have been a blog post.
[01:11:01] Now he's got a whole, you know, cottage industry around his, his sort of productivity guru stuff.
[01:11:05] Uh, it's a shame to be honest.
[01:11:10] I just say, I think it's a shame of an industry.
[01:11:12] So anyway, I wrote this book here simply because as follow-up people sent it to me and I had no
[01:11:17] other thoughts until I started speaking, but it's a, it would be a shame to write something
[01:11:23] like that.
[01:11:24] Tim Ferriss with four hour work week, which was a ludicrous book.
[01:11:28] That's not true and not replicatable for maybe at all, but definitely not for most of the people
[01:11:35] buying that book who bought the book and then immediately like lost all motivation to actually,
[01:11:39] you know, work and make the money.
[01:11:44] Um, I, uh, I'm glad to have not written books like that or not have ever.
[01:11:55] I had people as early as 2011, somebody was like, Hey, what you're doing is really interesting.
[01:12:00] What are you talking about?
[01:12:01] It was really cool.
[01:12:02] You should write a book.
[01:12:04] This, like I had people approach me about doing books relatively early in my career.
[01:12:08] Uh, that would have been more pointed and, and, and, and sort of messaging books.
[01:12:13] It was very strange.
[01:12:14] I know, but I, to each one, I was like, I don't, I don't have the patience for that.
[01:12:20] Cause I don't.
[01:12:20] And for the longest time I would play it down and I would, even to myself, I would say, well,
[01:12:25] it's because I don't have like, I need the rapid feedback of do a thing, put the thing
[01:12:29] out and get, get the accolades or get the, get the feedback at people saying, Hey, good
[01:12:35] job at a boy.
[01:12:36] And I need that on too tight of a time loop to go squirrel away and spend a year or two
[01:12:42] years writing a book and then coming out and having the book come out and then getting the,
[01:12:47] the release, getting, getting the people excited about you.
[01:12:52] Like that would be too long.
[01:12:53] That's what I would always say.
[01:12:54] And that's kind of what I told myself.
[01:12:55] But now that I think about it, it's just like, I think it was just like most books in a lot
[01:13:00] of nonfiction categories, probably also some fiction, like they just don't have that much
[01:13:05] to say.
[01:13:06] And the idea that like a book has to be a certain number of words ends up with a lot of fluff
[01:13:13] and not a lot of stuff.
[01:13:16] So I don't know, man, like I, I, if I had written the book written, you know, any book
[01:13:27] that was that style of book and gone, the sort of guru route of this is just the way to live.
[01:13:34] This is the way to code, right?
[01:13:36] This is the, you know, the methodology with a name on it and, and whatever.
[01:13:41] And then like, we put a whole conference around it and we, you know, go around the country
[01:13:44] and, you know, it's, I do workshops and this is the way the problem with that is like, there
[01:13:52] wasn't even enough for a fucking book.
[01:13:54] And now your whole identity is Bill Perkins.
[01:13:59] Your whole identity is this one interesting sentence or idea.
[01:14:05] Now you got to stretch that out because it's your moneymaker into a whole series of books
[01:14:11] and a mini series and, uh, you know, interview circuit and a workshop thing.
[01:14:16] And it's all speaking thing, right?
[01:14:18] Maybe you get a radio show like, uh, uh, blows and fucks.
[01:14:23] What's his name?
[01:14:23] David, uh, the, the Christian finance dad, you know, I'm talking about the one who tells you
[01:14:30] to freeze your credit cards.
[01:14:31] Like, great.
[01:14:32] He's got like five great pieces of advice, but like, you got to turn it into the rest of
[01:14:37] your fucking life is just to be a bloviator.
[01:14:39] And look, I'm a bloviator.
[01:14:42] I'm bloviating right now.
[01:14:43] Kind of like it.
[01:14:44] I might stick it, stick it out here.
[01:14:46] I might keep on doing this, but I blow you about whatever the fuck, right?
[01:14:50] I don't have some like main thesis that I thought of in my twenties.
[01:14:55] I'm still just, uh, I all got, got to pay rent.
[01:15:00] So here, let's drag this dead horse out of the barn.
[01:15:03] Just sorry, buddy.
[01:15:05] Got to keep on beating the fucking shit out of you.
[01:15:07] Cause this is just apparently my career now.
[01:15:10] That's how I feel about basically everybody, whether it's Gary V or whoever in the sort of
[01:15:17] like hustle culture influencer world, yes, they do stuff and yes, they've got other stuff
[01:15:21] going on, but it's effectively, it's like the, their whole game becomes around a personal
[01:15:29] brand that is so one dimensional, you know, if you're a multidimensional person and you've
[01:15:37] got a personal brand and you've gotten to go and do lots of different things.
[01:15:40] Like that's, that's really fascinating.
[01:15:42] Uh, uh, and, and, and good on you.
[01:15:45] That's really fun.
[01:15:46] But there is a whole cottage industry of just very one note people.
[01:15:51] And it almost always starts with a book, a book that gets traction because at birthday,
[01:15:58] when you don't know how to give somebody something, but you do want to send them a passive aggressive
[01:16:02] message that they need to change what they're doing, you can give them the book.
[01:16:06] And if that message resonates with them, great.
[01:16:09] Now you've, now you've got two people who believe in the book and that's how it spreads
[01:16:14] like a meme.
[01:16:15] So, uh, die with zero is a book.
[01:16:18] I'll link to it in the show notes.
[01:16:20] If you, if you need to buy it for yourself, I don't know why you would next follow-up item
[01:16:25] is, uh, I think I'd complained about this probably the early iOS 18 betas.
[01:16:31] But when you're using, um, announcements with Siri, that is to say, Siri will, uh, you know,
[01:16:40] interrupt your jog or whatever, when you have the headphones in and say, Hey, so-and-so
[01:16:45] it just says yada, yada, yada.
[01:16:47] And then it listens because you can say reply and you give your reply.
[01:16:55] Well, one thing that started happening in iOS 18 that was driving me up a wall is if, as
[01:17:01] I was running, I was only on my jogs, I'd hear all these beep boop sounds like they sounded
[01:17:06] like ping pong balls bouncing off of an invisible wall.
[01:17:09] Uh, whether I was speaking or not, or while I was speaking a reply and it was only just totally
[01:17:18] random that I happened to be turning my head while stationary when one of these things happened.
[01:17:25] And I heard the beep boop and I realized it's the new feature where you can nod or shake your
[01:17:32] head to dismiss or agree to any of those Siri announcements.
[01:17:36] So like, you know, if a phone call comes in, you can nod and it'll accept the call.
[01:17:40] And I assume you'll also hear ping pong ball up and down sound until it confirms.
[01:17:45] And then you hear like a, an audible, an audio equivalent of a check mark.
[01:17:49] Right?
[01:17:49] So that's what that is.
[01:17:52] Uh, it's good to know that now it's sort of like having a neighbor who's making noise above
[01:17:58] you and it drives you goddamn crazy, but you, you, you go upstairs or whatever.
[01:18:04] And you, you, you're like, you can pound the ceiling all you want with the broomstick.
[01:18:08] But as long as you keep hearing it, like in, at least in my brain, I'll be like, what
[01:18:12] is that?
[01:18:12] What are they doing?
[01:18:13] That's what I want to know.
[01:18:14] It's like, yes, I want the noise to go away, but I most urgently just need to know what it
[01:18:20] is.
[01:18:20] Cause if I knew what it was, then, then, uh, my head would stop trying to spin stories
[01:18:27] about what it was.
[01:18:28] And so like, I, I, you know, it's like that now that I know that the ping pong ball sound
[01:18:34] is it thinking I'm shaking my head furiously because I'm just, you know, there's a head
[01:18:38] bob as you, as you jog around the neighborhood, like that's where that is.
[01:18:41] So if you've been having weird ping pong head like me, that's, uh, that's maybe what happened
[01:18:49] just as a public service announcement, that one, uh, speaking of public service announcements,
[01:18:56] when I was setting up that new Mac book pro, which is now scraped to all shit.
[01:19:01] Uh, good luck repainting that space black finish, by the way, when I was setting it up,
[01:19:06] I checked a box that I had never checked before, which is in the settings app, desktop and doc.
[01:19:11] They've rearranged all this shit.
[01:19:13] There's an option called prefer tabs when opening documents.
[01:19:17] And I thought, you know, I've never set this to always, but I could give it a try.
[01:19:22] Cause I typically do like to use tabs and it drives me a little baddie that like finder
[01:19:27] just is so aggressive about opening new windows when it's got a perfectly good tabbed interface.
[01:19:31] So I clicked always.
[01:19:33] And then the next two weeks of my life, I saw just a lot of weird bugs.
[01:19:37] So I was like a lot of beach balls and a lot of really weird UI stuff.
[01:19:41] And a lot of like me getting trapped in part of an app and not being able to get out of that
[01:19:45] part of the app.
[01:19:46] And it took two weeks to realize it's because nobody tested that feature recently and Swift UI apps
[01:19:53] basically don't work.
[01:19:54] Uh, so, uh, if you have that setting set, change it.
[01:19:59] All right.
[01:20:00] I guess follow-up was mostly public service announcement time and me getting something
[01:20:04] off my chest about books.
[01:20:05] I hadn't thought about it in a while.
[01:20:07] Uh, you know, speaking of stuff on chests, Aaron likes to get stuff off his chest every now
[01:20:14] and then in our next little, our next little number, which is when we read one of Aaron's
[01:20:24] puns and he, he sent us a pun just last night.
[01:20:27] The pun turnaround time is just impeccable.
[01:20:30] Uh, this time around, I said, I might need a pun.
[01:20:33] He was there.
[01:20:34] Let's read it.
[01:20:37] So remember season two, uh, I totally forgot to shill to promote this.
[01:20:43] So the reason that version 26 jumps to version 28 is because in between Aaron and I recorded
[01:20:47] version 27, I guess it's not that hard to understand.
[01:20:51] In fact, you, as a subscriber to this podcast feed, you probably saw that the numbers did
[01:20:55] not have an interruption.
[01:20:56] Uh, version 27, he and I ranked collaboratively in a consensus format, all 26 of the puns from
[01:21:03] 2024 and we were able to do it.
[01:21:06] And the last thing I want to do is make that list even longer by re-ranking these puns once
[01:21:11] they're more than a year old.
[01:21:12] So we're hitting reset on the puns.
[01:21:15] This is now season two puns.
[01:21:17] So season two, 2025 puns is what we're listening to, which means I don't really have to rank this
[01:21:23] one.
[01:21:23] It just kind of goes in the list as the number one ranked pun, at least for this week.
[01:21:29] Let's read it.
[01:21:30] I'm revealing it now.
[01:21:33] I was really hoping to play Bellatro today, but I don't have time.
[01:21:38] So I guess it's not in the cards.
[01:21:39] I was really hoping to play Bellatro today, but I don't have time.
[01:21:47] So I guess it's not in the cards.
[01:21:49] Bellatro is a video game.
[01:21:52] If you haven't heard of it, it's a card game.
[01:21:55] It was really popular on Steam on PC because that's where it launched.
[01:21:59] It's now available on just about everything, including if you have the Apple Arcade subscription
[01:22:06] in iOS.
[01:22:07] It's an arcade game.
[01:22:08] So the Bellatro Plus version is unpaid.
[01:22:11] Don't don't pay for this game.
[01:22:12] If you already have it, you just download it.
[01:22:14] And it's a it's sort of like a really bad poker.
[01:22:19] It's like a poker game with slightly different rules and jokers that do weird things and you
[01:22:24] are competing for like high scores against it's a single player, but it's sort of like
[01:22:29] a card puzzle poker game with custom rules.
[01:22:35] It's apparently very addictive, but in Aaron's case here, it was not in the cards.
[01:22:39] So, of course, the pun there is it is a card game and it's not in the cards.
[01:22:47] So that's a little it's not his most complicated, I will say, but, you know, it is a pun.
[01:22:54] And I, you know, in terms of so one of the things I guess if I'm going to mention it,
[01:22:59] I'll mention it now.
[01:23:00] One of the things we landed on and it's kind of fun if you do listen to version 27.
[01:23:03] Also, it's up on YouTube, by the way.
[01:23:06] So there's a video of us moving up and down everything in the spreadsheet, which might be
[01:23:11] a little bit more, you know, simple to follow.
[01:23:13] If you listen to the end, you realize like it took us the two and a half hours to actually
[01:23:20] come to a grand unifying way to rank puns.
[01:23:25] And the answer is of the people listening, how much cumulative time does the pun waste
[01:23:34] in those people's lives?
[01:23:36] So there's and what's the depth, I suppose, of like the time wasted in terms of like how
[01:23:45] deep does it cut?
[01:23:47] So that's, you know, a way to look at it is like Bellatro.
[01:23:51] Now, because it's tied to this particular game, which is having a moment.
[01:23:55] If Bellatro becomes like Tetris and people are playing Bellatro like games, like they still
[01:24:00] play Candy Crush forever, years and years from now, then that means that every time that you
[01:24:06] play up, boot up Bellatro or tap on that, that app icon, you might think I was really hoping
[01:24:12] to play Bellatro today, but I don't have time.
[01:24:13] So I guess it's not in the cards.
[01:24:15] You might remember the pun and then have that much of your life wasted again.
[01:24:22] It's like a it's a it's like an annuity to him.
[01:24:25] Right.
[01:24:25] So Aaron will feed on that, the dark energy that that fuels him.
[01:24:30] But if Bellatro is already kind of had its moment and, you know, you never think about it or play
[01:24:36] it again, then this was a one time only time waster.
[01:24:39] So whether that influences your decision to ever play Bellatro again, that's that's up to
[01:24:46] you.
[01:24:46] But that's that's a little behind the scenes on what's going on here.
[01:24:50] So, yeah, that's that's today's pun.
[01:24:53] Good job, Aaron.
[01:24:54] That's a very good pun.
[01:24:55] And it's currently the number one pun.
[01:24:57] Look at that.
[01:24:58] We'll see.
[01:25:00] We'll see where it lands.
[01:25:01] But, you know, first, let's let's get to the news.
[01:25:10] So news, Amazon, where, you know, so many people in America are employed now to having
[01:25:24] to do very hard labor in distribution centers, moving boxes around or contract companies, you
[01:25:31] know, with the blue vests in the in the dark blue trucks, like schlepping stuff all over the
[01:25:39] place many times a day, really hard jobs, obviously can't do that remotely, but you can do the
[01:25:46] cool programmer stuff remotely.
[01:25:48] And people who work at Amazon have been, you know, able to work remote or hybrid for, you
[01:25:57] know, since the pandemic, like a lot of programmers or any sort of like job that could mechanically
[01:26:02] be done over distance.
[01:26:05] We've talked about before psychologically that, like, first of all, there's an inequity,
[01:26:12] right?
[01:26:12] Like certain roles have to happen in person, even inside the same company or the same team.
[01:26:16] Other roles don't like.
[01:26:18] So there's a fairness argument of who has to go into the office and who doesn't.
[01:26:26] But more than that, there's the middle manager and the executive who their whole job is results
[01:26:33] and how they get results is part of it is, you know, they, it may be that they, that, that
[01:26:40] the supervisory aspect of being a manager is the only thing that they see as being their
[01:26:45] work.
[01:26:45] And so you see some number of managers who just come in and like empty office, twiddle their
[01:26:50] thumbs.
[01:26:50] There's nothing for them to do.
[01:26:51] And they, they get self-conscious that pretty soon people are going to realize they're not
[01:26:55] doing anything.
[01:26:56] And then they're going to be the ones getting bopped on the head.
[01:26:59] But it's also just the case that like, once you escalate beyond an individual contributor,
[01:27:04] you are, you spend a lot of your time talking and, and I don't know about you, but the more
[01:27:11] time you spend talking on zoom, like it is draining and it's less effective than being in person
[01:27:16] with somebody, you get all of the stress of meetings and none of the affectionate, genuine
[01:27:25] connection with people.
[01:27:26] That's my experience.
[01:27:28] I don't know.
[01:27:29] Now, is it a trade-off I'd still take?
[01:27:32] And would I still work remotely most of the time?
[01:27:34] If not all the time?
[01:27:36] Yes.
[01:27:36] And that's, that's exactly the problem, right?
[01:27:38] So I'm not, I don't support just blanket statement, return to office policies, right?
[01:27:46] But the people who tend to be running things and making the decisions on policies at companies
[01:27:52] like they, the, the reasons why they want people back are understandable.
[01:27:57] Some of them are defensible.
[01:27:59] Some are less defensible, but Amazon wants people back.
[01:28:05] Now, this article, the, uh, the Amazon is struggling with, you know, their, their RTO policy, their
[01:28:20] mandates, they keep delaying them and pushing them out and people feel jerked around.
[01:28:25] Some people moved cross country.
[01:28:27] Now they've moved back, say to like the Austin area.
[01:28:30] So they could go to the Austin office or threat threatened with losing their job.
[01:28:34] But the mandate is still not in effect because it turns out Amazon doesn't have enough office
[01:28:40] space to put all the people that they hired in the heady halcyon days of post pandemic,
[01:28:44] you know, stock indexes.
[01:28:48] And, you know, this article doesn't talk about quitting or resigning.
[01:28:57] But if let's say you're Amazon and you put out a mandatory or will fire, you return to
[01:29:03] office policy and you know, people are really mad about it.
[01:29:07] And you also know that the stock market is rewarding layoffs.
[01:29:10] And after Elon bought Twitter, everyone's like in, in the chattering, you know, wealthy tech
[01:29:17] people classes talking about how, yeah, maybe we don't need that many people just to keep
[01:29:20] the lights on the RTO policy is a proxy way to get people to resign and find jobs elsewhere.
[01:29:31] But like the job market is so tight right now from the other perspective that there's not
[01:29:36] a lot of opportunities out there that this article and I, you know, ours is a really, really good
[01:29:44] publication has been for so long and I'm glad that they're still there on the beat.
[01:29:48] You're talking, this article handles the superficial, what is happening?
[01:29:55] You know, Amazon mandate.
[01:29:57] Oh, delay because there's not enough office space.
[01:30:00] Handles it beautifully.
[01:30:02] What is, goes on said though, is one of two things has to be true here, right?
[01:30:09] Like either Jeff Amazon, uh, and his cohort can't do basic math and they don't realize that
[01:30:21] they don't have enough chairs for all of the butts that they've hired, which is like, you
[01:30:27] know, it's not a super easy problem when you've got multiple offices, but it's not rocket science
[01:30:32] or now stick with me.
[01:30:37] They expected more people to quit than did.
[01:30:42] So they, they, they had a graph right internally and I'm sure it's not shared, uh, uh, you know,
[01:30:51] on their intranet with the whole population of the staff, but they probably have some graph
[01:30:57] and it shows the, the amount of attrition that they'll get with each RTO tightening of
[01:31:04] the screws, each of these shakedowns to come back to the office and people are holding on
[01:31:10] for dear life because they want the, in many cases, overly generous compensation packages
[01:31:18] that Amazon was shelling out, shelling out in the early 2020s.
[01:31:23] It's 2025 now.
[01:31:24] So that's the early 2020s.
[01:31:26] We're in it by the way.
[01:31:28] And that's not what the article is about.
[01:31:32] That big company gives away the game that they were hoping more people would quit.
[01:31:37] And then they didn't quit.
[01:31:40] Now, okay.
[01:31:41] It's really hope or expect, but if, if it's expect, then, then you would, you would assume
[01:31:51] that they would be working on solving the problem of getting more chairs, but they aren't really
[01:31:56] because they don't want to have even more people, right?
[01:32:00] Uh, it's, it's sort of like, look, it's kind of like, assume you wear a, um, slacks and a
[01:32:09] belt to work every day.
[01:32:11] And then you, you, you, you, you take a nice long vacation.
[01:32:13] You take two weeks in a cruise ship and you, you just gorge yourself.
[01:32:19] All you can eat food, drinks, package, the whole thing.
[01:32:21] You gain 10, 15 pounds, which in a two week cruise pound a day, that's actually like normal.
[01:32:31] A lot of people experience that you come back to work after that two week bender, same pants,
[01:32:38] same belt might not fit.
[01:32:41] Right.
[01:32:42] And then, then you're dealing with a whole series of feelings about what to do about that.
[01:32:49] Uh, but you've got the urgent need of like, I got to go to work, right?
[01:32:53] You weren't wearing this, the, the slot you were wearing sweatpants and, and, and pool shorts,
[01:32:59] right?
[01:32:59] Swimming, swimming trunks.
[01:33:02] Uh, you didn't notice that is what happened to the entire tech sector during the COVID remote
[01:33:09] work days of we've got to hire as fast as we can.
[01:33:11] Oh, don't care.
[01:33:12] They're in, they're in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
[01:33:13] That's fine.
[01:33:14] Well, you know, we're, we're remote now remotes the future.
[01:33:16] Uh, so, so, huh.
[01:33:20] I'm sorry for the people who work at companies that are getting jerked around like this.
[01:33:26] It really sucks, but that's, that is what is happening here.
[01:33:30] Uh, interesting piece of technology.
[01:33:35] This, this company called bold voice, which sells software to teach people how to adopt
[01:33:43] a more natural English accent.
[01:33:46] So these are foreign, uh, uh, people for whom English is a, not their first language.
[01:33:52] They sell training or software coaching to make your net, uh, your accent sound more natural.
[01:34:00] Which is, you know, as somebody who studies a foreign language, that's a hard fucking problem.
[01:34:06] Uh, I've investigated, uh, tools to help me with pitch accent so that I don't have to just
[01:34:14] watch a bunch of videos and practice a lot and like, listen to myself talk.
[01:34:19] There is a tool called bold voice that has a, uh, went viral in Japan recently.
[01:34:26] So I had a friend of us, ours, uh, I text us to test our own voice against it.
[01:34:32] It's called accent Oracle.
[01:34:33] I'm going to share the link cause you might have fun with it.
[01:34:36] It will, uh, you talk at it, you read scripts and then it will ascertain whether it believes
[01:34:44] that your accent is a native English speaking accent.
[01:34:47] And if not, it'll guess what country you're from, right?
[01:34:51] What accent, what is your first language that you're coming from?
[01:34:54] And so our friend was like, Oh man, like it says, I've got a very strong Japanese accent.
[01:34:59] Like, but, but he'd only seen it on Japanese TV.
[01:35:01] Of course, everyone's result is very strong Japanese accent.
[01:35:04] And he's like, does this thing even work?
[01:35:05] He needed me as a data point to prove that like, yes, I, so sorry, bud.
[01:35:10] It sounds, it says I'm a native English speaker, but still like, like the technology, I would
[01:35:14] love to know how this works.
[01:35:15] Uh, I'd also love to steal whatever AI model it's, it's doing this for, because I would love
[01:35:22] to port this to other languages and whatever language software I ended up building.
[01:35:25] Uh, another article, uh, it's a wall street journal.
[01:35:30] I'll, I'll share the archive short link.
[01:35:33] Taxi cab drivers, uh, apparently get Alzheimer's less because the thinking goes, uh, if you're
[01:35:48] not using a GPS to navigate you all day long, the amount of spatial reasoning skills it takes
[01:35:54] to kind of mentally plot a course in your mind and get around is, uh, uh, significant.
[01:36:01] And, and the, and just the kind of mental exercise that results in less, you know, uh, cognitive
[01:36:08] issues later in life.
[01:36:10] Uh, so if you're like me and, uh, you used to have a good sense of direction, but then you,
[01:36:16] you, even when you're going to the same place that you've been a thousand times, you, you still
[01:36:20] punch it into the navigation system anyway, just for convenience, it might be a good, you
[01:36:25] know, Hey, maybe just drive to the grocery store without it next time.
[01:36:30] Uh, I was thinking about that.
[01:36:34] Cause my dad never used the GPS system in his car, uh, which, which turned out to be frustrating
[01:36:39] because then, you know, I didn't know how to get anywhere.
[01:36:45] And so I started using the navigation that I get, I'd get yelled at when, uh, uh, it turned
[01:36:49] out that like half of the roads are dirt roads and he was always focused on keeping his car
[01:36:54] immaculate.
[01:36:54] And so like, I just made mass of myself and got mud on his car pretty much every day that
[01:36:58] I was up in Michigan.
[01:37:00] Cause I didn't know how to get around and I didn't know how to avoid all the dirt roads,
[01:37:02] but that was in my dad's brain.
[01:37:04] So taxicab drivers don't get Alzheimer's as much.
[01:37:08] That's good.
[01:37:09] Cause unfortunately they, these days they're, they're Uber drivers and they're not going to
[01:37:13] have health insurance, sad trombone sound, followed by, um, another link, uh, New York
[01:37:21] times, give you an archive.is Nintendo, uh, all about Nintendo.
[01:37:28] It's, you know, video games can't afford to look this good.
[01:37:31] So this is actually like interesting because it's finally mainstream media coming to grips
[01:37:36] with now.
[01:37:37] It's not a particularly well-sourced, well-researched article.
[01:37:40] Like there's factual issues with it.
[01:37:43] Uh, and there's editorial decisions in this article that are not perfect, but just the
[01:37:48] breakthrough moment of, wow, Nintendo made an extremely smart financial decision where
[01:37:53] the Nintendo switch is now the most profitable.
[01:37:55] That lifespan is the most profitable.
[01:37:57] The profits from that period dwarf in combination, all other, the rest of Nintendo's entire history
[01:38:05] combined, why?
[01:38:09] Because Nintendo continually from the GameCube onward made the, the bet over and over and
[01:38:15] over again, not to chase fancier graphics on the theory that the artwork cost would, would
[01:38:23] increase super linearly.
[01:38:25] And that expectations would go up and dev times would go up and the cost of input would go up.
[01:38:32] But the outcome was still selling $60 games at retail to a group of people who are getting
[01:38:40] smaller because the next generation are being raised on mobile games and, uh, you know, games
[01:38:46] that where they don't even care how good they look because gaming for, you know, Gen Z and alpha
[01:38:51] in many ways, it's just an excuse to hang out, right?
[01:38:54] It's like, well, we were, we're separated by distance.
[01:38:57] And so when we play Roblox, it's like a social chat and games are sort of secondary or even for
[01:39:01] Minecraft or whatever, like, yes, mining happens, but it's mostly just a place to exist with one
[01:39:06] another.
[01:39:06] So good article.
[01:39:10] Um, if you need to lend credibility to the argument that like Nintendo made a brilliant decision by
[01:39:16] intentionally staying five years behind the eight ball, probably a good thing to think about.
[01:39:20] Cause in the next few days here, maybe January 8th, maybe sometime this month, uh, Nintendo
[01:39:25] switch two will be announced and it's going to be, you know, way more powerful than the
[01:39:31] first switch, probably just a little bit less good than a PlayStation four pro, which is a,
[01:39:38] you know, granted a eight year old console, but this one's going to be portable and it's
[01:39:43] going to be able to receive ports from lots and lots of stuff.
[01:39:45] So it's going to be able to grow a pretty quick library pretty fast.
[01:39:48] And it, you know, it's not going to be rocket science to ship games on it.
[01:39:51] Um, yeah, there turns out, uh, the thing that gamers say they want, and I'm one of these
[01:40:00] gamers is picture perfect, super realistic visual fidelity.
[01:40:05] I want you to recreate real worlds that trick my brain into thinking I'm there.
[01:40:11] The number one word I use in games is immersion.
[01:40:14] I want to feel totally immersed.
[01:40:15] Uh, but the cost of that is you may need to run your business out of business to the brink
[01:40:25] of bankruptcy every time you release a game, because increasingly it's just a bunch of 35
[01:40:31] year old and up men who want that.
[01:40:35] And they are shrinking.
[01:40:37] Uh, and they also are cheap and all these subscription services now are, are, are, are making it.
[01:40:43] So like, I won't pay some, I have not paid $70 for a game yet and I don't plan to.
[01:40:47] Right.
[01:40:48] And so like, where does the money come from?
[01:40:49] The answer is like your profits.
[01:40:51] And so that's why, you know, you got publishers like Ubisoft that are in death's door.
[01:40:55] Um, yeah, so it's all a big death, death spiral, but Nintendo sitting pretty, uh, by not chasing
[01:41:02] this sort of fan driven or technologist driven compulsion to always have beautiful, perfect
[01:41:12] graphics, uh, which is a real damn shame because it's like literally one of the top three things
[01:41:17] I care about when it comes to a game, but you know, the, the, the rational part of my brain
[01:41:22] can't help, but like, you know, acknowledge like that was very adroit, you know, they're
[01:41:27] in a much better situation now.
[01:41:28] Uh, next up, uh, LG, which I think sometimes their logo will say life's good as if that's
[01:41:39] what it stands for.
[01:41:40] I actually don't know what it stands for.
[01:41:44] I assume it's some Korean combo word.
[01:41:48] Um, but I don't know, uh, life's good.
[01:41:51] They just announced, uh, the world's first bachelor's only television set.
[01:41:55] Uh, it's a bendable 5k, 2k monitor.
[01:42:02] That's like 40 some inches.
[01:42:04] So 5k, 2k is like an ultra widescreen format, 5k pixels wide and 2000 pixels up.
[01:42:13] Uh, it's not quite retina if you're coming from the Apple world, but it's high, it's a high
[01:42:20] DPI.
[01:42:22] It's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a enough pixels to do like pixel doubling, uh, uh, or
[01:42:28] close to it.
[01:42:28] So the things don't look super blurry unless you're, you're really, really up close.
[01:42:33] I think it was like 127 dot pitch.
[01:42:35] It's also bendable.
[01:42:37] If you're into that sort of thing, you can bend it and change how curved it is.
[01:42:42] And it's big enough that if you're like, that's why reading this is like, this looks
[01:42:46] like something for bachelors who have smaller apartments and they just want to use the same
[01:42:51] device for their TV as for their gaming.
[01:42:53] Right.
[01:42:54] Cause like at that point, 40 plus inches, it's like the size of a TV in a small apartment.
[01:42:59] Uh, or at least used to be, I guess now you can, you can go way bigger for pretty cheap.
[01:43:04] I am personally really glad to see, oh, and it's an OLED display.
[01:43:10] The only thing we don't know is they didn't announce the, uh, the refresh rate.
[01:43:14] So is this because they didn't, I assume it's a 60 frames per second affair, which is fine
[01:43:19] for me, but seeing OLED gaming monitors finally coming out at a higher resolution than 1440p.
[01:43:26] That's pretty fucking cool.
[01:43:27] Cause like I could, I could squint and imagine using that for work, uh, and having a monitor
[01:43:33] that actually performs well, uh, from a gaming perspective where it's like once you've gone
[01:43:37] OLED, it's really hard to go back.
[01:43:39] The local dimming zones and the sort of shit that Apple does, uh, is not the same, you
[01:43:45] know, especially in, in environments where you might only have small little blotches of
[01:43:49] black here and there, the contrast ratio on OLED is just so much better.
[01:43:52] And we got the dual tandem OLED displays in the M4 iPad pro.
[01:43:58] And that's wonderful, but like, we're still probably a couple of years out from MacBook pro
[01:44:03] getting the same OLED treatment.
[01:44:04] Uh, I can only imagine that a 32 inch or bigger, you know, studio display or pro display XDR,
[01:44:11] unless it literally costs 15 grand.
[01:44:14] Uh, I don't think Apple's in any sort of hurry to, to get OLEDs out the door at those sizes.
[01:44:19] So I would love to see it, but in the meantime, the likelihood that if I, uh, assuming that I
[01:44:25] continue to do work at a computer and not via the vision pro, uh, seeing that there are more
[01:44:33] player, you know, more players in this field than simply one monitor that is, you know, sufficiently
[01:44:40] ultra wide and also like at all high resolution is encouraging.
[01:44:43] Uh, there was an article, a sub stack.
[01:44:47] Let's see.
[01:44:50] Clicking through, I want to make sure I opened the right one first,
[01:44:55] or maybe I have the same article open twice.
[01:45:01] Oh man, I think I, I think I have an article and then another article front that cites the
[01:45:11] other one.
[01:45:12] Oh no.
[01:45:14] Oh no.
[01:45:15] Okay.
[01:45:16] I want to get, I want to make sure that I don't waste your time other than the sort of verbal
[01:45:21] tap dance that you're hearing.
[01:45:23] What's the right order to talk about these?
[01:45:28] Uh, there's a, there, well, you know what?
[01:45:34] They're not tightly related now that I think about it.
[01:45:36] They're both about boys and girls, male versus female statistics in America.
[01:45:43] Uh, one, let's start with the baby crisis.
[01:45:49] So a lot of right wingers, a lot of people in the sort of like the, the, the family matters
[01:45:54] wing of America and in a lot of countries around the world have adopted pro natalist
[01:45:59] views that like, you know, with dwindling birth rates, uh, the only solution to keep economies
[01:46:08] going and social, social like safety nets working is to either accept more immigrants, which is
[01:46:15] not acceptable in reactionary, right.
[01:46:17] You know, mindsets or make more babies, which is increasingly difficult to convince women
[01:46:25] to do, uh, article like dives into a lot of the data on this.
[01:46:30] Uh, and that's the economist that did it.
[01:46:33] Great economist article.
[01:46:35] Uh, well-researched what buried the lead.
[01:46:40] Because a lot of the data points that we hear about this issue are coming from people
[01:46:47] who have like a pretty, the reason I started with politics here, have a pretty strong, like
[01:46:51] set of incentives to exaggerate the nature of the issue.
[01:46:57] Uh, because you know, like maybe they're pro family and they don't want women working in
[01:47:04] the workplace, right?
[01:47:05] And maybe they, uh, or, or, or they know that if they can, you know, encourage women
[01:47:09] to have children sooner, there'll be, they'll be less tempted to go back to a workplace because
[01:47:14] of the gap in time.
[01:47:15] Maybe they're just anti-abortion or whatever it is, right?
[01:47:18] There's a lot of reasons you might want families to have more kids from, uh, and, and, and try
[01:47:25] to massage the data into, into agreeing with you.
[01:47:27] One thing that I never would have thought about, and that's buried in this article.
[01:47:34] More than half the drop in America's total fertility rate is explained by women under the age of
[01:47:41] 19, not have now having next to do children.
[01:47:45] So like if, you know, if we've gone from, I don't know, 2.4 to 2.1 or 1.9, half of that
[01:47:55] drop is literally just us solving teenage pregnancy through contraception and education.
[01:48:01] And yes, abortion.
[01:48:02] And so like, to a certain extent, the hyperbolic reaction to it.
[01:48:09] And then as the data goes on, you read a little further past that paragraph.
[01:48:13] You're like, Oh, like people are just planning more and delaying more until it's like right
[01:48:17] for them.
[01:48:17] And so like to solve it by just pushing people to have kids younger, you're basically signing
[01:48:24] up more children to have miserable childhoods where their parents weren't ready for it.
[01:48:28] Uh, and reducing the total amount of economic activity that like, you know, a mother or a
[01:48:36] family unit would be able to produce otherwise if they had delayed having children.
[01:48:41] So yeah, think about that next time this comes up is like, actually, you know, let's, when
[01:48:48] we talk about statistics and the fertility rate, let's remove, let's just start with like people
[01:48:54] under 18.
[01:48:55] Let's say like, can we all agree that's maybe not ideal in a developed country?
[01:48:59] Cause if we do, then it's like, turns out that's like a lot, quite a lot, uh, of what
[01:49:05] we're, what we're talking about here.
[01:49:06] The other one isn't, is, I don't know what we call a sub stack feel.
[01:49:12] It feels article-y, uh, and it's titled, why aren't we talking about the real reason male
[01:49:17] college enrollment is dropping?
[01:49:20] Uh, and it introduces a term that's new to me titled male flight.
[01:49:24] And it talks about other cases and experiences where the, as soon as men enter a field, like
[01:49:32] veterinarians, uh, uh, programs, as just a men enter a field, as soon as like women enter
[01:49:39] the, the, um, the classroom, like men tend to back away as if it is a threat to their
[01:49:44] masculinity and it's happened enough in enough cases that, and I've seen this happen anecdotally
[01:49:54] that it's sort of interesting to think about like the, once you hit the 60% women tipping
[01:50:02] point in a particular program in a school, suddenly it becomes less valued by society seen as, you
[01:50:08] know, more feminine by men.
[01:50:10] So it threatens their masculinity.
[01:50:12] So they back away and do something else.
[01:50:14] And then like, you know, the entire pay scale and cultural perception of the, the, the job
[01:50:22] itself goes down accordingly.
[01:50:24] And so this is like, in a sense, this is like pretty straightforward, you know, smash the patriarchy
[01:50:31] kind of shit.
[01:50:32] But like in another sense, it's like, oh yeah, I mean, being married to a teacher.
[01:50:38] And having a lot of friends who went into nursing, like you, you can totally see this, right.
[01:50:46] Or having like, you know, as a computer scientist, as a programmer, like they were the first programmers
[01:50:51] were basically all women and they were treated like secretaries and paid like secretaries.
[01:50:54] But then a whole bunch of men entered the field and now it's science, right?
[01:50:58] Separately incorrect perspective.
[01:51:03] And like all of a sudden, like the, the compensation goes way up.
[01:51:06] And so does the prestige and everything that comes with it.
[01:51:09] So like, there's like, regardless how you feel politically about this, like there is a certain
[01:51:14] amount of elasticity going on here.
[01:51:15] And the thing about it is, as you kind of scroll through and you read, you realize, okay, well,
[01:51:19] we're hitting the 60% tipping point on college enrollment generally.
[01:51:24] And so when you look at how people are talking about school, if you look at how, like, you
[01:51:28] know, on Reddit, everyone's saying skip college.
[01:51:30] It's a, it's a, it's a waste of time.
[01:51:31] It's not worth it.
[01:51:32] It's sort of like we've, you know, it's going to further accelerate the devaluation of higher
[01:51:41] education, if not education more broadly, if we're not careful and as a society, we're,
[01:51:47] we're not careful.
[01:51:48] So that's pretty cool.
[01:51:49] Yeah.
[01:51:50] This is, this is a, this is an upbeat day for us.
[01:51:53] As we started off 2025, we're figuring in, we're figuring shit out.
[01:51:57] Let's at least watch some good TV and that'll be over in the recommendations.
[01:52:04] For any newcomers to the program, this is usually the part.
[01:52:11] where I talk about video games, TV books, stuff that I'm consuming that I enjoy or that I
[01:52:18] don't enjoy.
[01:52:18] I suppose I'm not too discriminating.
[01:52:20] One of the things I talked about early on in season one, the earlier season of my life,
[01:52:28] that is 2024.
[01:52:29] I had an issue for, oh, you know, roughly 20 years where I really struggled to play a video
[01:52:40] game without having a second screen up playing a TV show simultaneously, which made me select
[01:52:46] games that were pretty mindless, like destiny two or world of Warcraft, where you're kind
[01:52:50] of like going through rote behaviors.
[01:52:53] And as a result, you need something else to keep your, um, keep your mind going.
[01:52:57] And I like that overstimulation.
[01:52:59] Don't get me wrong.
[01:53:00] I do, but it means like a whole nother category of games.
[01:53:03] I just don't play them like, uh, uh, uh, Japanese language games, for example, you know, like those
[01:53:10] are less stimulating than playing a semi stimulating game plus a semi stimulating TV show, which is
[01:53:18] no way to live.
[01:53:19] Right.
[01:53:19] So I've, I've, I've forced myself over the last few months to kick that habit.
[01:53:23] And I've been mostly successful.
[01:53:24] There are certain days where it's like time to play games.
[01:53:27] And it's like already 10 PM or whatever.
[01:53:29] And I'm just like, I don't have enough gas in the tank to do this.
[01:53:32] Uh, and so I wind up distracting myself until I go to bed, but in general, it's gone really
[01:53:37] well.
[01:53:38] Uh, I'm in playing, uh, Indiana Jones, which Indiana Jones and the great circle is available
[01:53:45] for free on game pass.
[01:53:46] If you have that available to you, otherwise it's just a normal last game that you pay with
[01:53:50] money dollars.
[01:53:50] It is beautiful.
[01:53:52] The, like I mentioned last time around the tutorials, like the opening Raiders, the lost
[01:53:57] arc, it's really great.
[01:53:58] And as you get into it more, you realize this is, this is an old school point and click adventure
[01:54:05] game in three dimensions and I'm finding that it has like experientially, the immersive qualities
[01:54:17] are making me realize that it's a lack of combat or relative de-emphasis on combat.
[01:54:24] I mean, you, you got a gun the whole fucking time and you're punching dudes and punching Nazis
[01:54:28] left and right, which feels good these days and hopefully all days.
[01:54:33] Uh, it's, it makes the immersion experience land for me.
[01:54:39] Like for example, a game, um, like Skyrim, the, the elder scroll series, very immersive
[01:54:44] games.
[01:54:44] People like them a lot, but the constant threat of just like violence around any corner or
[01:54:49] always having to be on guard against a potential zombie who gets up in the catacombs and whatnot.
[01:54:53] It, it diminishes the sense of like, I'm in these fucking catacombs.
[01:54:59] And it's genuinely spooky because like, instead I'm just like, all right, always have the bow
[01:55:03] drawn.
[01:55:04] You never know when one of these zombies is going to wake up and it turns everything into a set
[01:55:11] piece for combat.
[01:55:13] But in Indiana Jones, you know, you'll have segments where you're around other people, you're in
[01:55:18] a city, you got to be stealthy.
[01:55:19] You got to kind of be smart.
[01:55:20] And then you have segments where you're like go underground and you're just there and you
[01:55:25] had, you had to open a door that hadn't been open for a thousand years.
[01:55:28] And so from a plot perspective, it makes no sense for you to immediately find other people
[01:55:32] there.
[01:55:32] It's just you doing trials like the ones from the movies.
[01:55:37] And that you sure there might be traps that you need to avoid, but it really allows your
[01:55:44] brain to be like, ah, yes, I am here.
[01:55:46] I am exploring this and you can take in the environment.
[01:55:49] You can think about it in a sort of relaxed pace is the wrong word, but in like a mindful
[01:55:53] way.
[01:55:54] And so I think that's wonderful.
[01:55:56] In fact, it's delivering on the wish fulfillment that I think a lot of people get from a game
[01:56:00] like Skyrim where you, you want to explore these caves and these dungeons and see these
[01:56:04] fantastical places and things, uh, in a sense of solitude, but the constant barrage of NPCs
[01:56:13] and, uh, enemies sort of gamifies away any sense of awe or wonder.
[01:56:22] Whereas this game by having wonderful graphics and also the de-emphasis on combat, which I'm
[01:56:27] sure plenty of people who want that from a game, I mean, you've got plenty to choose
[01:56:30] from, won't be super into.
[01:56:33] It means there's more puzzles.
[01:56:37] It means there's more thinking.
[01:56:38] Um, yeah, me getting rid of that habit or at least pausing the habit of also watching a
[01:56:45] show while I play a game all the time has made me really enjoy this game and it's forced
[01:56:50] me to move at a slower pace, which is something generally that's been on my, on my goal list.
[01:56:54] Uh, so it, you know, the other game that you compare it to a lot is uncharted, which was
[01:57:00] always like an Indiana Jones game, but they had to justify its existence by making it very
[01:57:04] gamey, uh, and blockbuster-y.
[01:57:06] And so they'd have the big set pieces just like this new Indiana Jones piece does where you're
[01:57:10] climbing up to get into a, a Nazi Zeppelin, right?
[01:57:13] And it feels very much like uncharted, but the stakes are, so then you're on the Zeppelin
[01:57:19] having a conversation, not, and then you're on the Zeppelin having like a corridor shooter
[01:57:23] where you just mow down hundreds and hundreds of Nazis so you can get to the next cut scene.
[01:57:28] This is this by making a triple a game that delivers on a narrative experience that isn't
[01:57:36] just a complicated movie in terms of interactivity, but is instead a real video game with lots of
[01:57:45] interesting systems in it makes Indiana Jones really stand out to me as a monument in modern
[01:57:52] gaming.
[01:57:53] It has not been done like this before, not on the big stage that it has.
[01:57:57] Uh, so yeah, it, it's a, it makes me glad that the, the one thing about the game that does
[01:58:06] have a modern trope that, that maybe we should all take a break from is you have a journal
[01:58:12] and instead of the journal being paper journal, I mean, it's also a paper journal, but you have
[01:58:16] a basically like a huge task list.
[01:58:19] You have this to-do list that gets generated for you as you overhear conversations.
[01:58:23] And as you, uh, you know, move around, you've got the main story quest and you got the side
[01:58:27] quest and you got the field work and you got these mysteries to solve, which puzzles, and
[01:58:31] you got all of these sort of like to-dos.
[01:58:33] And part of me after, as I was leaving the first segment of the game is in the Vatican,
[01:58:38] as I was about to like knowingly cross the threshold and kind of do the last little quest
[01:58:44] before I was expecting to clear the Vatican and move to the next place, my video gamer
[01:58:51] brain was already thinking, okay, well, I've got 25 fucking other to-dos here back in the
[01:58:56] Vatican.
[01:58:56] And I know like, apparently the game is pretty like, there's a point where it's permissive
[01:59:00] about you going back to past places and kind of cleaning up your side quests.
[01:59:04] So it doesn't like give the big like dialogue box saying point of no return, which is another
[01:59:08] thing that's common in games.
[01:59:10] But even without that, just having the sense that the Vatican stuff was wrapping up gave
[01:59:16] me like, I didn't, I didn't even play it one night because I was like, I don't want to do
[01:59:20] all these side quests, but I don't want to not have done them because there's a lot of good
[01:59:24] content in there.
[01:59:25] There's a lot of good stories and maybe I'll show up to the next area and I'll be underpowered
[01:59:30] because I won't have, you know, acquired certain skills and so forth.
[01:59:37] And I just had a thought to myself, it's like, you know what, maybe instead of trying to just
[01:59:41] mainline a main story of a game or just be absolutely completionist, maybe I'll just ignore
[01:59:47] that whole tab and just do whatever I see, right?
[01:59:53] Like just like how games used to be, like speaking of Skyrim, two games before that was a game called
[01:59:59] Morrowind in the series.
[02:00:01] And Morrowind had relatively little in the way of a heads up display and interface and
[02:00:06] a constant to do list in the sidebar.
[02:00:08] I mean, there are ways to get to your quest log and stuff, but Morrowind was a game where
[02:00:12] you just like walked the fuck around and then shit happened and you'd be like, cool.
[02:00:19] Something just happened and it would, it would feel extemporaneous and random or like it only
[02:00:26] happened to you.
[02:00:26] But as soon as like something goes into to do tracker and it's like, now it's a waypoint
[02:00:31] in a map and I'm walking to that waypoint.
[02:00:34] Whatever happens there is a set, is a, is a, is a movie shoot.
[02:00:38] It's a, you know, it's clearly on rails.
[02:00:41] It's clearly, it's not, the thing doesn't have to actually be organic.
[02:00:44] It just has to be convincingly emergent.
[02:00:48] The phrase emergent gameplay is like kind of what this often is referred to, but emergent
[02:00:54] gameplay actually depends on like a lot of math and, and a lot of physics systems and other
[02:01:00] things that is kind of like, at least without AI inventing stories dynamically, which I don't
[02:01:06] know would be any good anyway.
[02:01:08] I'm dubious.
[02:01:09] Emergent gameplay is also sort of at odds with narrative experiences.
[02:01:14] But we can all trick ourselves into having emergent narrative experiences by just not
[02:01:20] looking at the quest log and just kind of roaming about and, you know, we're directionally.
[02:01:26] We know the next area is over this way.
[02:01:28] Let's just go.
[02:01:29] So I've been practicing playing the game that way the last couple of nights and boy, howdy,
[02:01:33] is it a lot more fun?
[02:01:35] Cause I feel like I am having experiences and not like I am just long day of doing to do's
[02:01:42] on my to do track or let's go fire up this game.
[02:01:44] So I can do to do's on this one that means less, even less.
[02:01:49] So yeah, if you haven't checked it out, do it.
[02:01:52] On my steam deck, I've been playing like a dragon, Yakuza seven.
[02:01:59] No longer a beat them up.
[02:02:00] It's a, you know, it's a kind of dragon quest style RPG turn-based battle system, which some
[02:02:08] people were upset about, but then you remind them like actually the Yakuza combat system
[02:02:12] and like where it was more of a brawler, like was never actually that good or engaging.
[02:02:17] Uh, what it was always about was the set pieces that you you're in Japan, you're in, you know,
[02:02:24] you're working in a crime syndicate.
[02:02:26] You there's this big epic sweeping story and the story itself is pretty basic, but the side
[02:02:33] stories are hilarious and very interesting and fascinating.
[02:02:37] And the, and the things that you interact with are really cool.
[02:02:40] And the relationships between the characters are really interesting, uh, which is just seems
[02:02:45] like a better fit for a traditional role-playing game.
[02:02:47] That's turn-based.
[02:02:47] Uh, so I'm having a great time.
[02:02:49] It's a great steam deck game.
[02:02:51] Cause you know, the graphics are fine and, and, uh, yeah, just, I'm, I'm inching through
[02:02:54] it.
[02:02:54] It was really nice to have a steam deck while we were over in Michigan, um, so that I could
[02:02:59] have something to unwind with, uh, back at the hotel, uh, at the end of a long day.
[02:03:04] Cause, uh, and it was super effective for that.
[02:03:06] Uh, also it pairs really well.
[02:03:08] Jeremy had the idea, get my X real glasses out.
[02:03:11] The AR glasses, like 400, $500.
[02:03:14] Not to say that they're cheap, but like compared to the vision pro they are that those glasses
[02:03:21] have a 10 ADP screen in each eyeball and a USB-C cable.
[02:03:26] You, you start your steam deck, you're in a game, you plug in the cable.
[02:03:32] The only reason that you have to, you have to wake this, the steam deck up first or else
[02:03:36] it won't initiate, right?
[02:03:38] Wake up the steam deck, plug in the cable and boom.
[02:03:41] Now you can, in any posture you're like, while you're lying down in bed, you're playing a triple
[02:03:46] a ass game with a really nice controller on a slightly too heavy steam deck, but hell, you
[02:03:51] can have it on your lap.
[02:03:52] It doesn't matter, right?
[02:03:53] You're not holding it up to look at it.
[02:03:55] And a very good, rich, you know, gamut of colors, 1080p screen in your face.
[02:04:02] And, you know, the two, three hour battery life.
[02:04:04] It was awesome on the plane.
[02:04:06] It's great playing at night because, you know, it's filling up most of your field of view.
[02:04:11] Whereas you're squinting at, you can make a tablet's eight fucking inches.
[02:04:15] It's huge.
[02:04:16] I would love a steam deck that was smaller for this exact reason, right?
[02:04:20] Um, so anyway, uh, cool, cool beans on the TV front, uh, Becky and I started watching the
[02:04:29] diplomat season two, uh, the, the best reason to watch the diplomat, which is on Netflix.
[02:04:34] And it's, uh, uh, about an unlikely ambassador to the UK who's used to being in more war-torn
[02:04:41] regions in the world, uh, who, who mostly spend season one complaining about how she has to
[02:04:46] dress up all the time, uh, and doesn't like doing that, which is pretty much how I would
[02:04:51] probably be.
[02:04:51] Uh, the number one reason to watch it is because Carrie Russell.
[02:04:55] So that's what we're doing.
[02:04:58] And it's great because Carrie Russell, uh, say no more.
[02:05:03] The Americans is one of my all time favorite shows, uh, and that whole vibe.
[02:05:09] Um, so, so diplomat is more like madam secretary, but really good because Carrie Russell.
[02:05:15] So if you, if you need further convincing, we're just, you and I are wired differently.
[02:05:20] Uh, I talked a few months ago, maybe now, maybe not that long couple, some number of versions
[02:05:28] ago, I was talking about the series, the penguin on, uh, max.
[02:05:33] And it's, you know, it's takes place on Colin Farrell plays the same person he played in
[02:05:39] the Batman with, uh, you know, the, the, the twilight kid one.
[02:05:44] It was a good movie.
[02:05:45] Don't get me wrong, but like, he wasn't penguin ass penguin.
[02:05:47] He was like a club owner or a club manager.
[02:05:51] Uh, he's still on the, the villain team, but we'll hadn't gone full blown blown, you know,
[02:05:56] Danny DeVito yet.
[02:05:57] Uh, uh, penguin and the penguin series, which is eight episodes, limited series.
[02:06:04] Uh, I talked about it being really good.
[02:06:07] It being like a really good Scorsese style, you know, gangster series.
[02:06:15] Uh, the finale, like I, I actually canceled max.
[02:06:19] I was saying, I was cleaning up some of our subscriptions.
[02:06:21] We don't really use it very much.
[02:06:22] I canceled it.
[02:06:23] And then I let it lapse and penguins finale came out.
[02:06:26] And last night I had time to myself and I was like, you know what?
[02:06:28] I, I want to watch that.
[02:06:30] I'm going to, I'm going to watch that.
[02:06:32] And so I literally paid $20 to watch one episode of television by resubscribing to HBO max.
[02:06:40] Uh, and it was worth it.
[02:06:41] It was so fucking good.
[02:06:43] Good Lord.
[02:06:45] That show is great.
[02:06:46] Uh, that is one of the best, especially for something tight.
[02:06:51] That's, you know, one does not presume is going to have a season two.
[02:06:53] I think the season two equivalent will be the next Batman movie, which unfortunately has been
[02:06:57] delayed until 2027.
[02:06:58] So if you haven't watched this yet, you got plenty of time to get there.
[02:07:00] Uh, is my guess.
[02:07:01] One, one assumes he's going to be the big bad in that one.
[02:07:06] It is of extremely well executed series, uh, similar to see on the Disney side of the fence
[02:07:17] there, the and or series taking a property that was pretty tired and doing something fresh
[02:07:24] with it that even if you stripped away, the intellectual property would still be fucking
[02:07:29] rad and, or did that for star Wars penguins doing that for Batman to the point now where
[02:07:36] now my expectations for Batman are really probably inappropriately high, just like after watching
[02:07:42] whatever came after, uh, Ahsoka or whatever came after and, or I was like, you know what?
[02:07:48] Maybe I don't like star Wars that much.
[02:07:51] Maybe I just like and or star Wars.
[02:07:53] Uh, so yeah, if you haven't watched it, check it out.
[02:07:57] Uh, documentary, uh, uh, I started yesterday.
[02:08:01] I, uh, uh, I Paul, I didn't, I love video game documentaries cause I love video game history
[02:08:08] and I love being able to see archival footage of things that I kind of, you know, heard through
[02:08:11] the grapevine or had read about.
[02:08:13] Um, and there's one called it's in the game, uh, which was a electronic arts motto for a long time.
[02:08:19] Uh, and it's about Madden, the story of how John Madden football was created in the eighties.
[02:08:27] It's rise to prominence, uh, it's struggles through its struggles recently to stay relevant.
[02:08:34] Um, and tons and tons of great interviews, including with Trip Hawkins, the founder of,
[02:08:39] um, the founder of EA, uh, at one point, this gamer fans will appreciate this part.
[02:08:47] At one point in the second or third episode, they asked him, do you want to talk about 3DO?
[02:08:52] Cause he left EA to go start his own game console, which was a colossal failure.
[02:08:56] And he just sort of like, Oh yeah, let's, let's maybe not talk about that, but not from
[02:09:03] like a place of like humility, but a place of like still fucking sore about it.
[02:09:07] Like, like big man, child energy.
[02:09:10] That made me laugh.
[02:09:12] Anyway, it's a really touching, it's a really good documentary.
[02:09:16] Cause like, I don't play Madden.
[02:09:17] I've never been into Madden, but like seeing the number of lives that touch as well as it
[02:09:22] was one of the first franchise.
[02:09:24] First of all, it's the first franchise to just have like 35 installments.
[02:09:27] Like, and if somebody had to have the idea, let's do another Madden this year, even though
[02:09:32] it's just basically the same game as last year.
[02:09:34] Like that wasn't written in a stone tablet and handed down by the video game gods.
[02:09:38] Like that just a dude thought of that.
[02:09:41] Uh, and then John man was like, cool, do it.
[02:09:44] And then they had to figure it out.
[02:09:46] Uh, it's also like the first game series that had tremendous cultural crossover appeal outside
[02:09:56] of the radio shack, you know, purchasing computer game boys in a suburb in the Midwest in the eighties
[02:10:09] and early nineties, like it broke out of that sphere.
[02:10:13] And you get to see that a lot with the number of, um, black people, people from different socioeconomic status,
[02:10:21] the number of players who were like, you know, like how it influenced the game and wanting to go into playing football,
[02:10:27] the relationships between fathers and sons, where maybe one isn't really into gaming and another is,
[02:10:32] or they're both into football.
[02:10:33] Like it's a, it's a really interesting, I'm glad that they made this and I'm glad that they made specifically this
[02:10:41] because like, I think if you're going to do a sports documentary or no, if you're going to do a documentary
[02:10:47] on sports games, you should do it like a sports documentary.
[02:10:49] And it's kind of that, like it's yeah.
[02:10:53] Anyway, uh, it's on Amazon prime.
[02:10:56] So you have it because I, if you're listening to this, you, and you live in an Amazon country,
[02:11:01] like the, the greater federation of Amazon States, like Japan and, and, uh, the UK and America,
[02:11:07] if you live in one of the Amazon countries, uh, you already probably have it.
[02:11:13] So, uh, yeah, it's in the game.
[02:11:15] Great, great documentary.
[02:11:16] I think, uh, I'll leave it there and we'll just see what I, you know, get up to next time.
[02:11:24] If you've got any recommendation, I mean, I share a lot of my opinions about like things that I like
[02:11:28] to watch and do and play.
[02:11:29] I would love to hear your recommendations too.
[02:11:32] And I'll talk about them, uh, on the podcast.
[02:11:35] It is, if you're not familiar, it's podcast at searles.co.
[02:11:39] And then I will see it and I will definitely read it and I'll probably reply.
[02:11:43] And I might even mention it on air.
[02:11:45] No promises.
[02:11:46] I know like, you know, some number of you, you listen to this and you think, oh, maybe I'll
[02:11:50] write an email, but then like, you know, you're doing whatever.
[02:11:52] That's why you're listening to a fucking podcast.
[02:11:53] And then you go, then you go and you go about your day and you're onto the next thing.
[02:11:58] And that's fine.
[02:11:59] I'm that way too.
[02:12:01] Like I don't write into podcasts very often, but once I, there's a couple of podcast hosts
[02:12:06] who are like, you know, pretty notable out there.
[02:12:07] And I'll, I've gotten into email correspondence with them like relatively regularly and they
[02:12:12] treat me like a human.
[02:12:13] It's kind of nice.
[02:12:14] So if you want to be treated like a human, just email me, uh, your favorite video game
[02:12:18] or TV show from this year.
[02:12:19] And I will, uh, appreciate you.
[02:12:22] All right.
[02:12:23] Uh, well, speaking of the mailbag, that's also the next thing that we tend to do.
[02:12:29] Sorry.
[02:12:29] I hate when I'm explaining the show format, but like, I'm just pretty tired.
[02:12:33] I'm realizing now it's been a long goddamn couple of weeks.
[02:12:37] I'm glad to have a new year, but I'm not.
[02:12:40] And I feel like we're out of the woods.
[02:12:44] We're out of the holiday woods here, but I don't, I don't know what kind of year it's
[02:12:48] going to be.
[02:12:49] Hopefully good.
[02:12:50] And you're right about that too.
[02:12:52] I don't know.
[02:12:52] Here we go.
[02:12:53] Marius or Marius writes in subject line, doing my civic duty.
[02:13:07] Uh, uh, I've been an avid listener of the podcast since episode one and greatly enjoying it.
[02:13:14] I am going through a bit of podcast fatigue right now, losing interest in all that sciencey,
[02:13:20] motivational health and wellbeing related advice all over the place.
[02:13:24] End of sentence.
[02:13:26] Listening to some more realistic talks about day-to-day quote unquote struggles is more,
[02:13:33] is somewhat more entertaining these days.
[02:13:35] PS.
[02:13:37] I've been an engineer since the late nineties, starting with infrastructure and networks,
[02:13:41] transitioning to programming and Ruby around 2010.
[02:13:43] Uh, I I've been doing that since then.
[02:13:46] Uh, first, sorry if I misplode your name.
[02:13:50] Second, sorry, I'm bad at reading things.
[02:13:52] Three.
[02:13:52] Uh, I mostly picked this one because it was highly complimentary to me and I liked that a
[02:13:58] lot.
[02:13:58] So if you want to get right on air, just all you got to do is tell me you, you enjoy this
[02:14:04] program, whether it's true or not.
[02:14:06] I will feel the happy feelings afterwards.
[02:14:08] No, but seriously, I think there really does seem to be as podcasting has become more popular.
[02:14:20] It's just an audio format.
[02:14:22] These are just MP3s in an RSS file.
[02:14:25] Like the number, the shape of different kinds of shows, right?
[02:14:30] Like you can just literally, like there's so many different ways to be.
[02:14:33] And this format, right.
[02:14:39] Was like really common in AM radio.
[02:14:41] Like a person talking to you relatively informally about the goings on of the day was, uh, a big
[02:14:49] fucking deal and really common.
[02:14:51] You know, it's how people commuted, you know, uh, grew up, dad would commute and he'd listen
[02:14:57] to Mitch album in, in, uh, before Tuesdays with more, he made him relatively famous.
[02:15:02] And, uh, of course Mitch even had co-hosts, but like there were some number of years where
[02:15:08] the co-hosts were not really, uh, invited to speak very much.
[02:15:13] It seemed like, but that's sort of style, right.
[02:15:18] Of radio program kind of just died and, and the, the, the current crop of podcasts that
[02:15:23] we have seemed to all be multiple co-hosts on a regular format or NPR like program or serial
[02:15:32] or something where it's like, this is a show and this is science and this is whatever.
[02:15:35] And it's, it's serving a purpose.
[02:15:37] So I appreciate that.
[02:15:38] Like, you know, some number of people out there just like having shooting the shit, so to speak.
[02:15:44] And that's what, that's what we're here for is we're rhetorically shit shooting together.
[02:15:50] And, uh, so yeah, thanks for being here.
[02:15:52] I appreciate it.
[02:15:53] Thanks for writing in, uh, really, truly Matt writes in and asks,
[02:15:59] Matt, you just, you stared into the maw of this one.
[02:16:25] There's maybe one of the reasons why kitchens keep getting bigger and kitchen islands keep
[02:16:30] getting bigger is because of the, like the tension in American marriages to have enough
[02:16:40] counter space to, for example, prepare a meal.
[02:16:44] Uh, but also an increasing number of bespoke appliances that all require electricity, all want to sit on a counter permanently and be like the big thing.
[02:16:57] Right.
[02:16:57] So like on ours, I'm, I'm not looking at it, but thinking left to right, we have a ton of counter space.
[02:17:04] Our house is huge and I had to bring in a cart to like store fruits and veggies and stuff and also an instant pot.
[02:17:12] So there's a relatively large instant pot over there.
[02:17:15] I didn't want the steam going up against the cabinet, you know, cause if the cabinet gets a ton of steam over and over again, the, the pain will warp.
[02:17:23] So we've got an instant pot, we have an air, a ninja air fryer, both are ninja brand.
[02:17:29] Uh, in general, we like the ninja brand a lot.
[02:17:32] Like it seems like they're actually making real products and it's not just like Hamilton beach or Cuisinart, just like looking for like lowest bidder, bitter subcontractors to like be able to say that they made a slow cooker.
[02:17:43] Um, and then sell that on Amazon.
[02:17:45] Uh, so ninja seems to be making actual products and I would like those.
[02:17:49] So yeah, that's a one, two punch instant, instant pot, which we don't get a lot of use out of, uh, because Becky doesn't need enough beans.
[02:17:56] So everyone write in and tell, tell Becky, we should be eating more beans.
[02:18:01] We say we like protein, not big bean people.
[02:18:04] I would love to be eating more beans.
[02:18:06] Uh, that would make me feel like we are getting more out of that instant pot investment.
[02:18:12] Uh, the air fryer, super convenient, use it a lot.
[02:18:15] I like crispy food and I don't like to have to douse it in like, you know, a, a vat of hot oil first, uh, that will then, you know, trace amounts of that oil will go inside of me and make me fatter faster.
[02:18:27] Uh, so, so being able to make something hot and crispy on the outside is great.
[02:18:30] Uh, it would be nice if a combination air fryer, like very, very powerful convection oven microwave was a thing in America.
[02:18:40] But as far as I know, and, and Jeremy was just talking to me about this, like Subway has them in certain fast food restaurants, have them in the U S I don't know if that's like a product that people typically sell.
[02:18:52] I should look into it.
[02:18:53] Uh, but in Japan they're called helshio.
[02:18:56] Um, and it's a, it's a whole product category.
[02:18:59] I think Panasonic are the big ones where you have IR cooking infrared.
[02:19:04] You have a heat plate in the middle.
[02:19:07] You have a, a steam cooker.
[02:19:10] So you have to like load water into it and it's a microwave, uh, and it's a convection oven.
[02:19:15] Like this is a five, it's a not quintuple.
[02:19:19] What's, what's the one after quintuple?
[02:19:21] It's beyond quintuple threat in terms of food prep.
[02:19:25] And so, so as a result, you can just put in like a casserole dish or whatever you're cooking, type in the pin code or you use the touchscreen, depending on what kind of model you have.
[02:19:35] And like bingo, bingo, it's a expertly made souffle with everything perfectly timed right inside of one device without all the shifting around.
[02:19:42] Like I would love for that product category to have taken off.
[02:19:46] And we had like, I think the June oven was a startup trying to do that kind of thing, but it was only like two or three heating elements.
[02:19:52] And of course they had to tie it to some bullshit subscription.
[02:19:54] Uh, the Tovala was one that we used for a little while.
[02:19:58] And that was the same sort of thing.
[02:19:59] It's like, well, to really use it, you have to be buying their food and their food was not always great.
[02:20:04] Okay.
[02:20:06] Moving right along.
[02:20:07] Um, I'm a real stickler.
[02:20:10] I try to move stuff out of, we got way more cabinets than we need.
[02:20:14] So we, uh, keep a lot of these things in the cabinets.
[02:20:17] Okay.
[02:20:20] Then there's the range, like, you know, we have a gas range.
[02:20:22] And then after the range, I guess, technically my brother bought us a salt and pepper grinders that are electronic.
[02:20:30] So they have to be plugged in.
[02:20:32] There's a little docking station.
[02:20:33] So that's kind of an appliance.
[02:20:34] Then I am home free.
[02:20:38] I think I'm doing pretty good.
[02:20:39] Actually.
[02:20:40] I think I'm now I'm visually at the, uh, the knife block, which is not an appliance because it is a block full of knives.
[02:20:47] Uh, and then to the right of that, there's two, you know, wall mounted microwave and oven double unit, which takes us to our next little counter nook.
[02:20:58] And that is just, I got a ninja coffee machine.
[02:21:00] So I think, I think we're, I think it's just the three, but we're there.
[02:21:06] It was a, it was a real fucking struggle.
[02:21:08] I'll tell you that.
[02:21:09] That means like you open up three or four different cabinets and we've got all kinds of stuff.
[02:21:13] It's interesting that you said kitchen aid mixers are universally permitted.
[02:21:16] I think kitchen aid mixers are real dumb.
[02:21:19] There's a real stupid, like no one ever uses them.
[02:21:23] I think maybe people have like an idea that like, oh, I'm going to bake a cake or something.
[02:21:28] But I, I think the reason that there are always permitted on counters is that they're absolutely fucking nowhere for them to go other than the garbage you burnt.
[02:21:38] Uh, um, let's see.
[02:21:43] I've got a couple of real good ones, but I'm going to save them because my throat's gone.
[02:21:50] It's been a long, it's been a long day.
[02:21:52] Uh, Jason, he offers a, uh, a bug.
[02:21:59] He says Apple sports.
[02:22:01] Okay.
[02:22:01] Here's a bug that I just hit.
[02:22:03] Apple sports updates the ranking of the team.
[02:22:07] Even when you're looking at results from the past, from yesterday.
[02:22:12] So like he's talking, I'm sure about, uh, NCAA college football.
[02:22:16] So like, let's say that the game happens on Saturday and the rank and the teams win and lose.
[02:22:22] And then the new rankings come out on Sunday.
[02:22:24] You want to know one assumes.
[02:22:27] All right.
[02:22:29] So I'll read.
[02:22:30] So the rankings no longer represent the ranking of the time of the game.
[02:22:32] There it is.
[02:22:33] I just discovered this and the overlap of extremely into Apple and also into sports is probably low.
[02:22:41] And now I'm mad.
[02:22:42] Yeah.
[02:22:42] So that's the thing is like the people who wrote this game, there's, you can already imagine it.
[02:22:46] There's like a data model somewhere of sports team and they have a, you know, the data associated
[02:22:51] with them is like, well, they got a name, they got a logo, they got colors.
[02:22:54] Uh, they've got, uh, you know, what league they're in.
[02:22:57] Of course they belong to a certain league and they might as a piece of metadata have like
[02:23:01] their current ranking.
[02:23:02] And since the game is there, since the app is just for looking at sports scores, you don't
[02:23:07] necessarily need a lot more than that.
[02:23:08] You might have a current roster or whatever, but like, there's not a, you don't want to
[02:23:12] have a time series database for no reason.
[02:23:15] You're going to just say like, okay, well the number was 23 and now it's 22, but it means
[02:23:19] it's like you go back in time and you look at previous scores and now it's going to be
[02:23:25] say that they were 22 ranked yesterday, but that's also what they are.
[02:23:28] Yeah.
[02:23:29] That's, um, it's a real obvious oversight that would be seen as unacceptable if this was like
[02:23:35] a product you were charging money for, but you're not because it's just a random Apple
[02:23:39] stock app.
[02:23:39] That's not very good and get in line.
[02:23:41] It'll just quietly eliminate the entire market for similar apps made by independent publishers.
[02:23:48] Uh, and that bug will live on for 10 years.
[02:23:51] So there you go.
[02:23:51] The Apple way.
[02:23:54] And there we are.
[02:23:55] Okay.
[02:23:55] Well, I hope you all have a wonderful, um, start of the year.
[02:23:58] Uh, I'm grateful for every minute of my existence, but even more so now.
[02:24:03] And, and I am have a renewed sense that, you know, whatever you're feeling, whatever you
[02:24:09] want to do, there's, there's no better day than today to do it.
[02:24:11] So carpe that diem for me.
...more
2h 25min
December 31, 2024 v27 - The Punsort Algorithm
HEADS UP: This one has a video version in case you'd prefer to watch that!
HEADS UP SEVEN UP: Here's a spoiler-free link to this year's puns as they existed prior to this recording.
Welcome to a very special Holiday Edition of Breaking Change: our first annual
Breaking Change Punsort! Today, we're joined by a surprise guest! Want to know who it is? You'll
just have to listen and find out. Yes, it's Aaron.
As always, you can e-mail the show at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this episode and want to see a second annual edition next year, let me know! If you don't write in, I'll stop—because editing multiple speakers plus video is a massive pain in the ass.
No links today, because we didn't actually talk about anything worth citing.
...more
2h 40min
December 14, 2024v26 - Luigi's Mansion
I'd write more here, but I've got places to be. Becky, Jeremy, and I are going to engage in some holiday festivities. We have a couple gingerbread houses to make and a tree to trim. And no nog to speak of. Really, that's all you get by way of show notes this time as a result, deal with it.
Send your complaints to [email protected] and they will be read on air.
Some bullet points below the fold:
My 90-minute, outdated guide to setting up a Mac
Aaron's puns, ranked
Jim Carrey is 62 and can't even retire
I bought my 8 year old a switch and didn’t realize how much games cost
Teen creates memecoin, dumps it, earns $50,000
Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds
Install the Mozi app (manifesto here | app here)
Vision Pro getting PSVR2 controllers
The 2024 Game Awards news roundup
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet looks badass, but is it too inclusive for The Gamers?
We don't talk about Luigi
An invisible desktop app for cheating on technical interviews (HN comments)
Sora is out, but it's not good yet
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is out, and it is good yet
Emudeck is so great it shouldn't be legal, and some people probably think it isn't
Pikmin
Stay tuned to my YouTube channel for upcoming LIVE streams
Transcript:
[00:00:29] Good morning, internet.
[00:00:32] I started speaking before I realized, as an asynchronous audio production, it's actually pretty unlikely that it's the morning where you are.
[00:00:43] Although, if it is the morning, coincidentally, please feel free to be creeped out, check over your shoulder.
[00:00:51] Today was, I woke up with Vim and Vigor this morning, super excited to take on the day, thinking maybe I've got what it takes to record an audio production today.
[00:01:07] And then we have an elderly coffee pot.
[00:01:11] I don't want to completely put the blame on it because we were using it wrong for several years.
[00:01:24] And it's a long story that I will shorten to say, any piece of consumer electronics or appliances in America, the half-life keeps decreasing.
[00:01:37] And so when I say elderly coffee pot, I mean that we bought this coffee pot post-COVID.
[00:01:42] And it's already feeling like, oh, we should probably get a new coffee pot, huh?
[00:01:45] What happens is, from time to time, heat will build up in the grounds dingus.
[00:01:55] I'm just realizing now that I'm like, you know, I'm not a coffee engineer.
[00:01:58] Some of you are.
[00:02:00] But, you know, of course, we all know that the dingus is connected to the water spigot, which is above the craft.
[00:02:09] And what happens, as far as I can tell, is once in a while, you get all that hot water and grounds swirling around.
[00:02:20] And if it clogs at all, like if it doesn't release just so, the whole little undercarriage, again, this is a technical term, just stay with me.
[00:02:30] And we'll pop forward like three millimeters, which is just enough for the water to kind of miss its target on the craft and then spray all who's he what's it's, as well as for the spigot to start just kind of like splurring, you know, this water coffee slurry everywhere.
[00:02:49] And so I went after, you know, but then you still get the triumphant ding dong sound that the coffee is ready.
[00:02:56] So I walked over to the coffee expecting like, yes, it's the best, best way to start my day or whatever.
[00:03:06] Pull out the coffee.
[00:03:07] And the pot is too light.
[00:03:10] And I had a familiarity of like what that means.
[00:03:13] It means like there is water somewhere.
[00:03:17] And it's not in this pot.
[00:03:19] And so it's just like, you know, this big, big machine we actually have we've put because of our Mr.
[00:03:26] Coffee's, you know, elderly onset incontinence.
[00:03:33] We have we have put the entire coffee pot on a tray, like a rimmed silicone tray that you would use for like, I guess, a dog feeding bowl, right?
[00:03:45] A dog, you know, messily eats food and slaps water around and stuff.
[00:03:49] And you don't want it all over your hardwood.
[00:03:50] Like you'd put this underneath that and it would catch some of the water.
[00:03:53] So we I spent the first 30 minutes of my waking life today getting my hopes up that I was going to have coffee, followed by, you know, painstakingly carrying this entire cradle of of of coffee pot full of hot brown liquid.
[00:04:10] That would stay in all of my clothes and, you know, get on the cabinets and stuff with a silicone underbelly thing.
[00:04:18] And just kind of like, you know, we've got one of those big we're very fortunate to have one of those big farmers, farmer house, farmhouse.
[00:04:25] I never know what to call it.
[00:04:27] Steel, basically a double wide sink.
[00:04:30] So what's nice about a double wide sink is that if you've got a problem in your kitchen and you're only a few steps away, whether it's the coffee pot part of the kitchen or the fridge or the freezer or the God forbid, the range or the oven, you can just sort of strategically hurl whatever it is you're holding just about into the into the sink.
[00:04:51] And then once it hits the sink, it's, you know, the the the potential damage is limited.
[00:04:57] So I gently hurled my coffee apparatus.
[00:05:02] Is that the plural of apparatus?
[00:05:04] One wonders into the into the into the sink and then spent the next 20 minutes, you know, scrubbing them and all to make another pot.
[00:05:13] And Becky, of course, walks down the minute that the second pot is about to be finished.
[00:05:18] And I'm like, I've already seen some shit and I'm going to go record a podcast now.
[00:05:22] And that swallow you just heard was me having a sip of coffee that was not disgusting, but not great.
[00:05:31] But I'll take it over where I was an hour ago.
[00:05:39] Thank you for for subscribing as a as a true believer in breaking change.
[00:05:47] We're coming up on one year now.
[00:05:49] It's hard to believe that it's already been a year, not because this has been a lot of work or a big accomplishment, but just because the the the agony of existence seems to accelerate as you get older.
[00:06:03] It's one of the few kindnesses in life and so as we whipsaw around the sun yet again, we're about to do that.
[00:06:11] This is the 26th edition version 26 of the podcast.
[00:06:17] I've got two names here to release titles and I haven't picked one yet.
[00:06:22] So as a special.
[00:06:24] Nearing the end of the year treat.
[00:06:29] I'm going to pitch them both to you now, right?
[00:06:31] So so we're in this together.
[00:06:33] I like to think this is a highly collaborative one person show.
[00:06:37] Version 26 rich nanotexture.
[00:06:42] And that's a nod to the MacBook Pro has a nanotexture anti-glare screen coding option.
[00:06:52] It's a reference to the rich Corinthian leather that was actually it's a Chrysler reference.
[00:06:58] It's a made up thing.
[00:06:59] There is no such thing as Corinthian leather, but like that's what they called their their seating.
[00:07:03] And Steve Jobs referenced that as being the inspiration for I think it was the iPad calendar app.
[00:07:13] With the rich Corinthian leather up at the top during the era of skeuomorphic designs back in 2010, 2009, maybe I can't remember exactly when they I think it's 2010 when he had his famous actually leather chair demonstration of the iPad.
[00:07:28] Maybe the reason that that stood out to me was the car reference because it is it is an upsell.
[00:07:34] The nanotexture $150 if you want to have a don't call it matte finish.
[00:07:41] The other one, so that's option one, rich nanotexture.
[00:07:46] And I didn't love it because I couldn't get texture.
[00:07:49] I couldn't get the same Corinthian, right?
[00:07:53] Like you want that bite, the multisyllabic bite that adds the extra, you know, the gravitas of a luxury good.
[00:08:04] Yeah, texture just didn't have it for me.
[00:08:06] But then if you change that word, it doesn't make sense.
[00:08:08] So I mean, the other option two that came to mind version 26 don't don't by the way, don't think I'm going to edit this in post and fix it.
[00:08:19] I will not.
[00:08:20] I will ultimately land on one of these and that will be the title that you saw on your podcast player.
[00:08:25] Or maybe some third thing will come to mind and then this conversation will be moot.
[00:08:29] I do not think of this collaborative exercise.
[00:08:32] Just imagine it's a it's a it's a quantum collaboration.
[00:08:37] So by observing it, that's you actually took part.
[00:08:41] You opened your podcast player and then the yeah, the entangled, you know, bits just they coalesced around one of these two names or some third name.
[00:08:58] It's all just statistics version 26 Luigi's Mansion, which is a nod to two things at once.
[00:09:05] I'm going to talk a little bit about GameCube, but also I'll probably not escape mentioning Luigi Manjoni Manjoni man.
[00:09:15] You know, I haven't been watching the news.
[00:09:17] I don't know how to pronounce his name, but it looks enough like mansion that I was like, oh, man.
[00:09:21] I bet you there's a Nintendo PR guy whose day just got fucking ruined by the fella who is a overnight folk hero.
[00:09:30] More attractive than most assassins, I would say.
[00:09:35] Great hair.
[00:09:36] Good skin.
[00:09:37] Apparently, skincare Reddit is all about this fella who murdered in cold blood the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
[00:09:45] If you haven't caught the news, if you're even less online than I am.
[00:09:51] And yeah, so I'm trying to decide.
[00:09:53] I think Luigi's Mansion is probably going to win.
[00:09:56] It's more timely.
[00:09:57] It's the first time the name Luigi has come up in the last year.
[00:10:00] And I may have mentioned nanotexture before when discussing Apple's very compromised studio display.
[00:10:11] So I'm leaning Luigi's Mansion, but, you know, don't tempt me.
[00:10:15] I might switch.
[00:10:18] I'm going to just keep drinking coffee because I got to power through this.
[00:10:21] Let's talk about some life stuff.
[00:10:24] I so when we last talked that way back in the heady days of version 25, I had just gotten off a plane from Japan.
[00:10:34] I was still a little bit jet lagged.
[00:10:36] I recorded later in the evening.
[00:10:38] I was tired.
[00:10:39] You know, I was still overcoming.
[00:10:41] I listened to the episode, realized I was overcoming a cold.
[00:10:44] You know, then Becky shortly thereafter, after recording, she developed a pretty bad cough.
[00:10:51] And so we've both been sleeping relatively poorly.
[00:10:53] And I can't complain about this cough because her having a cough for four nights is nothing like me snoring on and off for over a year.
[00:11:02] And I think the fact that her cough is consistent is actually a kindness compared to the sporadic nature of my snoring, where it's like I might go a week without it.
[00:11:11] And then all of a sudden there's like, bam.
[00:11:14] So she doesn't, you know, it's like sneaks up on her and that's not fair.
[00:11:17] So so she's got a cough and I haven't been sleeping particularly well.
[00:11:20] Maybe that's it.
[00:11:22] I also, you know, I wanted to dry out because I was living on shoe highs, you know, canned cocktails in Japan for way too long.
[00:11:30] Just drinking, you know, five whole dollars of alcohol every day, which is an irresponsible amount of alcohol.
[00:11:36] It turns out.
[00:11:40] Yeah, that's one nice thing about living in Orlando and theme park Orlando is that the average price of a cocktail here is seriously $20.
[00:11:49] I think it is.
[00:11:51] I am delighted and surprised when I find a cocktail under $20.
[00:11:55] That's any good.
[00:11:55] In fact, the four seasons right around the corner, their lobby bar has a some of the best bartenders in the state of Florida.
[00:12:05] Like they went all kinds of awards.
[00:12:06] And so when you say a lobby bar, you think it sucks.
[00:12:09] But it's actually it's like it's a it's a restaurant with a room if you're ever around and they still do a happy hour with like $4.
[00:12:18] It was $4 beers.
[00:12:19] I think they finally increased to $5 beers draft beer.
[00:12:23] And it's all craft.
[00:12:25] You know, it's all fancy people stuff.
[00:12:27] And they do it's I think it's $10 margaritas, French 75s, and they got some other happy hour cocktail.
[00:12:37] It was highballs for a while.
[00:12:39] Whiskey highballs was like probably centauri toki or something.
[00:12:43] I gotta say like that $10 margarita.
[00:12:47] They'll throw some jalapeno in there if you want some tahini rim, you know, they do it up.
[00:12:52] They do it well.
[00:12:54] But that might be the cheapest cocktail I've had in all of Orlando is at the Four Seasons.
[00:13:01] Famous for that TikTok meme of the Four Seasons baby, if you're a TikTok person.
[00:13:06] Anyway, all that all all this drinking talk back to the point.
[00:13:11] I've been not drinking for a week.
[00:13:12] And I, you know, I'm back to tracking my nutrients every day.
[00:13:17] The things that I consume and adding up all of the protein and carbohydrate and realizing
[00:13:21] if you don't drink, it's actually really easy to blow past one's protein goals.
[00:13:25] And so I had one day where I had like 240 grams of protein, which is
[00:13:28] enough protein that you'll feel it the next morning if you're not used to it.
[00:13:34] And I still was losing weight.
[00:13:38] I lost like five or six pounds in the last week.
[00:13:43] And to the point where it was like, you know, I was feeling a little lightheaded,
[00:13:47] a little bit woozy because I wasn't drinking enough is the takeaway.
[00:13:52] So so thank God we got to go to a Christmas party last night.
[00:13:57] It was it was great Gatsby themed.
[00:13:58] And I dressed up like a man who wanted to do the bare minimum to not get made fun of at the party.
[00:14:05] So I had some some suspenders on instead of a belt, which was the first time I ever put on suspenders.
[00:14:13] They were not period appropriate suspenders simply because they had the, you know, the
[00:14:18] little class B dues instead of how they had some other system for I don't I don't fucking know.
[00:14:25] Like I, I had chat GPT basically helped me through this.
[00:14:28] And it's like, hey, you want these kinds of suspenders?
[00:14:30] I'm like, that sounds like an ordeal.
[00:14:31] How about I just get some universal one size fits all fit and clip them in?
[00:14:36] I also had a clip on bow tie.
[00:14:37] So that worked.
[00:14:39] When you think clip on bow tie, I guess I'd never used one before, but like it, I always
[00:14:45] assumed it would just be like, you know, like a barrette clip that would go in front of the
[00:14:49] front button and look silly for that reason.
[00:14:51] And maybe that's how they used to be.
[00:14:53] But it seems these days, if you want to spend $3 on a fancy clip on bow tie with a nice texturing,
[00:14:58] I'll say, uh, it's just pre it's a pre tied bow with a still wraps around your neck.
[00:15:04] It's just, it has a class mechanism, which seems smart to me, right?
[00:15:08] I don't know what.
[00:15:09] Look, if you're really into men's fashion, uh, there's this weird intersection or this tension
[00:15:19] between I'm a manly man who, who ties my own shoes and, you know, kills my own dinner and
[00:15:25] stuff.
[00:15:25] And I, I, for fuck's sake, tie my own bow tie from scratch every day.
[00:15:29] Right?
[00:15:29] Like there's a toxically masculine approach to bow ties, but at the same time, it is such
[00:15:35] a foofy accoutrement.
[00:15:37] It's like an ascot, um, that the idea of like a manly man, like a man trying to demonstrate
[00:15:43] his manliness by the fact that he doesn't use a clip on bow tie, uh, came to mind yesterday
[00:15:50] when I was, uh, struggling even with the clasping kind.
[00:15:54] I was like, man, I wish I could just get this to anyway.
[00:15:58] Um, I had a vest at a gray vest.
[00:16:03] This is all brand new territory for me.
[00:16:05] Uh, yeah, I, I've, I've leaned pretty hard into the t-shirt and shorts and or jeans life
[00:16:10] for so long.
[00:16:12] Uh, the, the fella in front of us when we, when we were checking in, cause they took little
[00:16:16] photos of you, uh, all of the women had the same exact flapper dress from Amazon, you know,
[00:16:22] with the, the, the, the hairband thing with the, you know, fake, the polyester peacock tail.
[00:16:28] Becky's looked the best.
[00:16:29] I'm not gonna, I'm not even lying.
[00:16:32] Uh, uh, her dress actually fit.
[00:16:35] He had some, uh, very ill fitting flapper costumes that these women couldn't even move in.
[00:16:40] Um, it was interesting.
[00:16:42] Uh, but the, the fella in front of us at check-in was wearing a, a, a full blown, you know, tuxedo
[00:16:48] get up that he brought from home.
[00:16:50] And he was talking about, Oh yeah, well he's got two of them and his wife, you know, ribbed
[00:16:54] him a little bit that he could only fit in one.
[00:16:55] I was like, man, owning a tuxedo, that's nuts.
[00:16:58] Like, and then it like turns out he's like got all these suits and these fancy clothes and
[00:17:02] he's an older gentleman.
[00:17:05] Uh, but my entire career only the first few years did I have to think about what I was
[00:17:10] wearing and, and it never really got beyond pleated, you know, khakis and a starched shirt.
[00:17:18] And, and I had, I had to wear a suit maybe on two sales calls.
[00:17:22] Um, and they were always the sales calls that were just, uh, there were certain sales demos
[00:17:30] when I was a, a, a baby consultant, these really complex bids.
[00:17:39] I remember we were at cook County once, uh, uh, the, the county that wraps Chicago and it
[00:17:44] has a lot of functions and facilities that operate at the county level.
[00:17:48] So, but of course we're in Chicago in some, you know, uh, dystopian office building.
[00:17:54] That's very Gothic, I should say.
[00:17:57] And the, the solution that we were selling was a response to a bid around some kind of
[00:18:05] document, electronic document ingestion and, and, and routing solution.
[00:18:09] And so what, what that meant was it was like a 12 person team.
[00:18:14] It was a big project working on this pitch.
[00:18:18] And most of the work and most of the money came from the software side at the end of the
[00:18:23] process.
[00:18:23] It's like, you're going to get IBM file net and you're going to get all these different,
[00:18:26] uh, enterprise tools.
[00:18:28] And we're going to integrate, uh, with all your systems and, and build these custom integrations
[00:18:32] that you've asked for here and here and here.
[00:18:33] But the, the, the hard part is the human logistics of how do you get all of their paper documents
[00:18:41] into the system.
[00:18:42] Uh, and that was my job was I had to get paper and then scan it, uh, with a production, big
[00:18:50] Kodak funkin fucking scanner.
[00:18:52] Uh, and then use, what was it?
[00:18:54] Kofax capture or something like a, like an OCR tool of the era.
[00:18:59] And the thing about it is that scanning is not, was not ever a science and neither is
[00:19:07] OCR, the OCR stuff and OCR stands for optical character recognition.
[00:19:10] So you'd have a form and you'd write on the form, like, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, some,
[00:19:15] some demo address and name and all this.
[00:19:19] I spent.
[00:19:22] So like the people doing the software, like they, they could just like click a button and
[00:19:26] like, they could even just use fakery, right?
[00:19:29] Like, Oh, the API is not really there, but I'll always return this particular, like, let's
[00:19:33] call it an XML soap message.
[00:19:34] And so the, the software guys clocked in, clocked out, got back to their billable work.
[00:19:39] I, because the stakes were so high in this particular, uh, and I'm here right now explaining
[00:19:46] all of this nonsense because I had to wear a suit and that was also really bad, but I
[00:19:51] was in Chicago late at night with a group of like, at that point it was like 9 PM and it
[00:19:54] was just me and two partners.
[00:19:56] Cause the partners had a sickness called avoid family, stay at work.
[00:20:02] And, uh, I, I was just running over and over and over again where I'd like, you know,
[00:20:09] I'd take the paper, I'd put it through the scanner and it would get 90% of the OCR stuff
[00:20:13] done, or I'd get it perfect.
[00:20:15] And it would scan everything just right, which would result in the downstream, you know, after
[00:20:21] the capture, like all of my integrations, like would route it to the right thing.
[00:20:24] So that like, it was basically a game of mousetrap or dominoes where like my task was both
[00:20:29] the most important to being able to demonstrate, but also the most error prone, but also the
[00:20:37] least, uh, financially like, um, valuable to, to our services company.
[00:20:42] And so I had no support, uh, on top of that, they, the, our fucking it people pushed out some
[00:20:49] kind of, um, you know, involuntary security update security and bunny quotes that, that
[00:20:57] slowed my system down dramatically in the course of just like a day.
[00:21:01] And I had, I had no way to test for this.
[00:21:04] So I remember I was up at like 11 PM at that point, trying to make this work consistently
[00:21:10] and realizing that the only way to get it to run it all required me to, um, install a virtual
[00:21:16] machine, put windows in the virtual machine, install all this software inside that virtual
[00:21:22] machine, and then run it there because only in the black box of an encrypted virtual machine
[00:21:27] image or, uh, you know, a virtual machine, like disc image, could I evade all of the accountant
[00:21:33] bullshit that was trying to track and encrypt and, and, and muck with files and flight and
[00:21:38] so forth.
[00:21:39] And so it was only around like probably one 30 or two that I got to bed and our, our demo
[00:21:46] was like at seven in the morning and I had to wear a suit.
[00:21:47] So if you ever wonder, Hey, why is Justin always just in a, a t-shirt and shorts?
[00:21:54] Uh, I would say childhood trauma, fuck suits.
[00:21:59] The only, the only time I associate like nice clothes, you know, having a lot of
[00:22:03] having to dress up is church shit.
[00:22:05] I didn't want to go to.
[00:22:06] And usually it's like the worst church shit.
[00:22:09] Like there's some cool church shit out there, you know, youth group where everyone's a horny,
[00:22:14] right.
[00:22:15] And singing pop songs to try to get people in.
[00:22:17] That's as church shit goes, that's above average.
[00:22:21] But when you're talking about like, Hey, you know, this aunt you've never heard of died and
[00:22:27] we got to go all the way to goddamn Dearborn to sit in a Catholic mass, that's going to
[00:22:32] be in Latin.
[00:22:33] And they're going to, you know, one of those, you know, you should feel bad for him because
[00:22:39] he's abused.
[00:22:39] But one of the altar boys, he's going to be waving that little like incense thingy,
[00:22:43] the jigger back and forth and back and forth like a metronome.
[00:22:46] And, uh, you're going to get all this soot in your face, all of that, you know, frankincense
[00:22:51] and myrrh and whatever the fuck they burn.
[00:22:52] And, uh, yeah, then they're going to play some songs, but they're not going to be songs you
[00:22:57] want to hear.
[00:22:57] And you're going to be uncomfortable because I bought you this suit at JC Penny when you
[00:23:01] were like nine and you're 12, you're 12 now, and you've gained a lot of weight, but
[00:23:06] here we are.
[00:23:07] And then you got to go and, you know, like, don't worry because after the service, there's
[00:23:12] a big meal, but it's mostly just going to be, you know, styrofoam plates and plastic forks
[00:23:16] and, uh, cold rubbery chicken.
[00:23:19] And then a whole lot of family members who want to pinch your cheeks, uh, had an aunt that
[00:23:24] always wanted to, um, put on a bunch of red lipstick and kiss me and leave kiss marks.
[00:23:30] And she thought that was adorable and everyone else thought it was funny.
[00:23:33] And for whatever reason, I wasn't a fan, uh, that's the kind of, uh, yeah, so anyway, moving
[00:23:45] right along the, uh, the, the other than having to dress up, the, the Christmas party was really
[00:23:50] nice because it had an all you can drink martini bar.
[00:23:52] So that, that helped that took the edge off a little bit since I hadn't been drinking for
[00:23:57] the previous week.
[00:23:57] Uh, and it was, you know, uh, they, they had a great bartender, the, the, I assume that
[00:24:07] that people drank gin martinis back in the day of Gatsby, but it seemed to be a vodka forward
[00:24:12] martini bar, which I appreciated.
[00:24:15] Uh, as I get older and my taste buds start dying, uh, I found myself going from dry martinis
[00:24:23] to martinis with an olive to martinis with two olives to me asking for like a little bit of
[00:24:30] olive juice and then drinking the martini and realizing that wasn't quite enough olive juice.
[00:24:34] So that's just disgusting, but, um, it's where, uh, it's one of the signs of age, I guess.
[00:24:43] Uh, so the martini bar was good.
[00:24:46] Uh, they also had an aged old fashion that they'd made, you know, homemade, um, with like nutmeg
[00:24:51] and cinnamon in there.
[00:24:52] That was impressive.
[00:24:53] Uh, so yeah, had a, had a big old Christmas party last night, had a couple of drinks, uh,
[00:25:00] and, and, uh, because of the contrast, whenever I go, you know, go a week without any alcohol
[00:25:06] and then I have some alcohol and then I wake up the next morning and I'm like, oh yes, I
[00:25:11] know what people mean now that alcohol is poison.
[00:25:13] And it's a mildly poisonous thing because I feel mildly poisoned.
[00:25:19] Um, and, and I just usually feel that most days until I forget about it.
[00:25:23] So it's a data point, uh, to think about, uh, uh, I, I, I had a good, good run for,
[00:25:30] for a while there, just cause like when you live in a fucking theme park and there's nowadays
[00:25:34] alcohol everywhere that I go and every outing, I had a good run for a few months.
[00:25:40] Um, not last year, the year before where I just didn't drink at home as a rule to myself.
[00:25:46] I was like, you know, I'm not going to pour any liquor for myself at home unless I'm entertaining
[00:25:49] guests.
[00:25:50] And, uh, even then go easy on it because I I'm, I'm, I'm going to just the background radiation
[00:25:56] of existence in when you live in a bunch of resorts.
[00:25:59] Uh, I'll, I'll get, I'll get, I'll get plenty of alcohol subcutaneously.
[00:26:05] Um, a contact tie.
[00:26:07] So maybe I'll, maybe I'll try that again.
[00:26:10] I don't know.
[00:26:11] It's the stuff you think about in mid December when you're just inundated with specialty food
[00:26:17] and drink options, uh, do other life stuff that isn't alcohol or religion or clothing
[00:26:27] related.
[00:26:28] Oh, uh, uh, I've been on a quest to not necessarily save a bunch of money, not necessarily.
[00:26:35] Uh, I was going to say, uh, tighten my belt, but, uh, I don't know what the suspender equivalent
[00:26:43] is because I did not wear a belt last night.
[00:26:45] I just wore suspenders.
[00:26:46] Uh, I've been interested in, in not budgeting either.
[00:26:52] Just, I think awareness.
[00:26:54] Like I want, I know that a lot of money flies through my pockets every month in the form of,
[00:27:01] um, SAS software subscriptions and streaming services.
[00:27:05] I mentioned this last, uh, last go round that I was recommending, Hey, let's say, go take a
[00:27:11] look at like our unused streaming subscriptions of those.
[00:27:14] Uh, yesterday I did cancel max.
[00:27:16] Cause I realized that, uh, if I'm not watching a lot of news, I'm not going to watch John Oliver
[00:27:20] and, and they frankly, a lot of HBO's prestige shows haven't been besides they cut a Sesame
[00:27:28] street and it just so happened that I canceled that day.
[00:27:31] So maybe there's a, some data engineer at HBO who's like, Oh man, people are canceling because
[00:27:37] we got rid of Sesame street.
[00:27:38] Uh, that would be good.
[00:27:40] That would be good for America to get that feedback.
[00:27:43] Uh, yeah.
[00:27:44] I just want awareness of like, where's the money going and in what proportion and does that sound
[00:27:50] right to me?
[00:27:50] Uh, and I've, there are software tools for this.
[00:27:53] Uh, they are all compromised in some way.
[00:27:57] For example, we just, uh, we'd used lunch money in the past, which is a cool app.
[00:28:02] And it has the kind of, you know, basic integrations you would expect.
[00:28:06] I don't know if it uses plaid or whatever behind the covers, but like you, you connect your, your,
[00:28:11] your checking accounts, your credit card accounts.
[00:28:14] It lists all your transactions is very, um, customizable in terms of rules that you can
[00:28:21] set.
[00:28:21] It has an API.
[00:28:22] Jen is a solo co-founder and she seems really, really competent and lovely and responsive,
[00:28:27] which are all great things.
[00:28:29] But the UI is a little clunky for me.
[00:28:32] I don't like how it handled URLs.
[00:28:33] It was like, once you got all the transactions in there and, and set up, it didn't feel informative
[00:28:41] because there wasn't like a good reporting or graphs that just kind of at a glance would
[00:28:45] tell you, this is where your money's going.
[00:28:46] At least for me.
[00:28:47] Uh, additionally, like it, it can't do the Apple card.
[00:28:51] That's the, that's become the crux for a lot of these services is that, um, Apple card
[00:28:55] only added support for reading.
[00:28:59] Uh, well now you can read, uh, uh, so I, Apple added away on iOS and specifically iPhone
[00:29:07] OS to read, uh, transactions from Apple card, Apple savings and Apple cash.
[00:29:14] And this was like nine months ago, if that, but copilot, uh, money is one of two apps maybe
[00:29:22] that supports this.
[00:29:23] And so if you, if you have, we have, we each have an Apple card and we use it for kind of
[00:29:29] our silly stuff whenever we're, you know, using a tap to pay.
[00:29:33] So, so if, if you want to track transactions and you don't want to manually export CSVs
[00:29:40] from your wife's phone every 30 days, which is the process that I'd fallen into with, with
[00:29:44] lunch money, then you, you basically have copilot money.
[00:29:50] And then there's another one, maybe Monarch, uh, the copilot money.
[00:29:53] People are always talking about this other app called Monarch.
[00:29:55] I haven't checked it out.
[00:29:55] I don't know if that's why they like it or if it's just the other one that's being developed
[00:29:59] right now in this post mint apocalypse, as we all grapple with the fact that mint was
[00:30:04] always bad, uh, but people got into it and I don't copilot money is like nice, but like
[00:30:11] it, like, for example, like if I'm, uh, if I buy a, uh, if I put $10, the equivalent of
[00:30:19] $10, so 1000 yen on my Starbucks card in Japan, which is totally separate because of course it
[00:30:25] is there's two Starbucks cards.
[00:30:27] There's the one in Japan and then the one in the rest of the world.
[00:30:30] So you open the Japanese only app, you put a thousand yen on it.
[00:30:33] Uh, you pay for that with Apple pay.
[00:30:36] So which goes to my Apple card and copilot money will read that transaction.
[00:30:40] But if you read like the text in the merchant description, it's literally like
[00:30:44] staba day and it's like all no spaces.
[00:30:47] It's just like 40 characters in a row to, and if you really squint, you can kind of see
[00:30:52] Starbucks, Japan, um, you know, app store payment, which is, you know, like I want to
[00:31:00] change that to Starbucks, Japan, and then set up a rule to just like always change that.
[00:31:05] So I don't have to like memorize these random ass merchant names.
[00:31:08] Uh, apparently like after, after two hours of setting up copilot money yesterday, I realized
[00:31:13] that there's like both no way to set up that kind of rule.
[00:31:16] The only rule that it supports is categorization of, of spending fine, but then if you set
[00:31:22] up a rule and you don't like it, there's no way to edit the rules cause there's no UI for
[00:31:25] rule editing.
[00:31:26] And so then, you know, where do you go, but read it and you're like, okay, well there's
[00:31:30] a subreddit.
[00:31:30] And then like, what's half the post in the subreddit?
[00:31:32] It's about, Oh, of course it's a bunch of dads who are like, I can't see my rules and I have
[00:31:36] to contact support.
[00:31:37] And it's been nine months.
[00:31:38] And I was like, Oh God.
[00:31:39] So that's, uh, if anyone's got any great budgeting software that supports Apple card, you let me
[00:31:46] know.
[00:31:47] Uh, and also isn't a part-time job.
[00:31:50] I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna spend all day on this.
[00:31:52] I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna check in on this, uh, the four times a year that I, that
[00:31:58] I wake up in a cold sweat wondering, Oh my God, how many subscriptions do I have?
[00:32:02] Which is, uh, I, I really missed my calling by not being a dad, I guess.
[00:32:07] But it did land me on looking at rocket money.
[00:32:11] Uh, so, so, so there was an app called true bill that marketed heavily with like a lot of
[00:32:19] other DTC apps where the pitch was, we will negotiate your bills for you.
[00:32:26] And by bills, I think that one of the reasons why this, this, this business probably struggled
[00:32:31] is that there's really only two that they could reasonably negotiate on your behalf.
[00:32:37] You know, you, you imagine they've got a call center or they've got people who've, who
[00:32:40] are trained, who have scripts that they follow, who, who will doggedly keep calling back until
[00:32:44] they get what, you know, the discount, the, just the steps that you would have to go through
[00:32:48] if you wanted to call Comcast or Verizon, they, they, they, they can basically could basically
[00:32:57] only really negotiate your ISP and your cell phone carrier.
[00:33:01] Cause those are the two sort of, you know, that are, that are transactional enough that
[00:33:08] are regionalized or nationalized enough that they, that they could train on.
[00:33:11] And then of course, like they, they're the ones that like get you in with a teaser rate and
[00:33:15] then gradually turn up the heat over the course of a couple of years.
[00:33:19] Well, Quicken Loans bought, they rebranded as rocket and then rocket fill in the blank
[00:33:26] with other products.
[00:33:26] And they bought true bill around the same time.
[00:33:29] And I, my understanding from a distance is that true bill, uh, uh, that became rocket money
[00:33:36] in order to be an entree into other rocket star services.
[00:33:41] So like you, you now, when you install rocket money, it's still got the negotiation thing.
[00:33:46] Cause that's what they market it on, but you have to slog through so much like, no, I'm actually
[00:33:52] all set with credit and, and, and, and debt repayment services.
[00:33:57] And I'm, I'm already all set with financial advisors and retirement goals.
[00:34:00] I just get me to the, to the thing where I can pay you 35% of whatever you save me on
[00:34:06] my ISP bill.
[00:34:07] And so of course, you know, like I, I, I signed up for the first time, went through the app
[00:34:12] onboarding.
[00:34:13] I was not impressed with the bugginess of the app, but I was able to soldier on through
[00:34:19] it.
[00:34:19] And where I landed was I was, uh, following its little setup wizard for first.
[00:34:27] Spectrum, which is my internet provider.
[00:34:28] And I was, I'd initially paid a hundred dollars when I moved here in 2021, uh, a month for,
[00:34:36] for one gig down, call it 30 megabits per second up.
[00:34:40] And I can't get a, another ISP here.
[00:34:43] They had an exclusive agreement.
[00:34:44] They're building neighborhoods bullshit.
[00:34:47] Uh, and I, I, so I can't get higher upstream and that really gets in my crawl.
[00:34:53] Nevertheless, they have increased prices about $15 a year.
[00:34:59] Each time I'm here to the point now where I think my monthly, you know, debit is like $150,
[00:35:05] $145 and you fill it out and you give them your pin number.
[00:35:11] You got this customer pin that like, you know, is secures your account.
[00:35:14] I'm like, eh, all right, well, that's four digits, you know?
[00:35:17] And besides I'm already on like this one dead simple plan.
[00:35:20] It's just their normal plan.
[00:35:22] And it's, you know, like I'm paying top dollar for it.
[00:35:26] So what's the worst that they could do if they, if somebody else were to call and change
[00:35:30] my plan up, you know, like it, it wouldn't cause that much lasting damage.
[00:35:34] Cause it's not like I'm on some teaser rate.
[00:35:36] It's not like I've got a great deal as it is.
[00:35:38] So I let them do it.
[00:35:39] And three days later, I had low expectations, right?
[00:35:42] Cause you go on Reddit, speaking of Reddit, you go on and you, you search other people's
[00:35:46] experiences and people will say, oh yeah, well like the, you know, I, some of them are
[00:35:52] pretty hyperbolic.
[00:35:53] It's like, you know, like they, they changed my plan to this and now I'm stuck with this,
[00:35:57] you know, TV subscription for the next four years.
[00:35:59] And then they charged me a thousand dollars in imagined savings that never materialized.
[00:36:03] I'm like, shit.
[00:36:04] All right.
[00:36:04] Well, that's, that's not good.
[00:36:06] But I, I gave them a shot.
[00:36:08] They came back three days later and they said, congratulations.
[00:36:12] We saved you $859.
[00:36:14] I was like, what the, excuse me over the next 12 months.
[00:36:18] And it turned out that they got me from $142, $145 down to 70 flat.
[00:36:25] You multiply that by 12 and then indeed comes out to eight something.
[00:36:28] And I was like, damn.
[00:36:29] All right.
[00:36:30] And so I've been, I've been looking for the other shoe to drop like ever since, like something
[00:36:36] is fishy here.
[00:36:37] Like I, they didn't sign me up for other services.
[00:36:39] I did receive, I'm looking over at it now.
[00:36:43] I did receive a relatively large box that has a, you know, one of those wifi modem router
[00:36:50] combo units in it.
[00:36:51] That was partly like apparently part of the deal.
[00:36:54] I don't know if they canceled my service and then in one fell swoop also signed me up for
[00:36:58] service.
[00:36:58] But now I've got this gigantic fucking wifi thing that wouldn't even fit in my patch box
[00:37:02] if I wanted it, which I don't.
[00:37:04] So I'm, I'm, I'm currently in this ether of like, well, if my modem that I rent is still
[00:37:11] going to work, I rent for $0.
[00:37:14] It's one nice thing about spectrum.
[00:37:15] If my modem that I rent is still going to work, uh, maybe I can just keep this wifi thing in
[00:37:20] the box and not call anyone.
[00:37:22] And maybe everything will keep working and I'll pay the $70 a month, or maybe I should send
[00:37:27] the other one back, but then that might trigger some other thing.
[00:37:30] Right.
[00:37:30] I, so look like, do I recommend the service?
[00:37:36] I don't really, I don't, we'll see.
[00:37:38] Right.
[00:37:39] Like call me in a year.
[00:37:40] I should set a reminder.
[00:37:41] Oh, I'm sure if something bad happens, I'll, I'll be right on the airwaves screaming about
[00:37:47] it.
[00:37:47] Like I, like I do, but even after this experience, saving me a lot of money, like what I trust
[00:37:53] them with my T-Mobile account, right.
[00:37:54] Where I have been grandfathered in on what was called the one choice plus plan in 2014
[00:38:01] or whatever.
[00:38:02] And it's genuine, honest to God, unlimited data without any real throttling.
[00:38:08] As far as I can tell, until you get to some absurdly high number where you can watch your
[00:38:12] videos in HD on your, you know, like, like it's, it's, it's a good one.
[00:38:16] It's better than their magenta crap.
[00:38:18] Um, and a lower price than their magenta max thing.
[00:38:21] Well, we got three lines.
[00:38:22] You got, you know, the watches and I would love to pay less for that, but I just don't
[00:38:27] try like you, you, you fill out the rocket money form, uh, with the, uh, the, the, it wants
[00:38:34] your T-Mobile, like login information.
[00:38:36] And that's, that was a bridge too far for me.
[00:38:40] I got there and I was like, you know, I could just imagine this going poorly.
[00:38:44] You know, these plans are so complicated and feels like even when I call T-Mobile and I
[00:38:48] ask, Hey, how's the weather?
[00:38:49] Like they click a button and it fucks up my shit for two weeks.
[00:38:52] So I'm, I'm, I'm good.
[00:38:55] I can probably afford a cell phone bill.
[00:38:57] Uh, I just, I just would prefer not to have to pay it.
[00:39:01] Only one other life item in the last week, I was given a special opportunity.
[00:39:11] Um, I've talked about massages a couple of times on this program and the, uh, I mentioned,
[00:39:15] uh, the one I went, uh, the one I had most recently in a previous episode, I, I, I was, I was wrapping
[00:39:29] up my massage with a human like you do.
[00:39:31] And the human said, have you, have you tried our robot massage?
[00:39:36] And, uh, I didn't know how to take that.
[00:39:38] And I said, I, I've heard of it.
[00:39:41] I know Becky tried it.
[00:39:43] If you check Becky's, um, Becky Graham, you'll see, uh, there's a video of her, uh, getting
[00:39:48] felt up by a robot.
[00:39:50] Uh, I forget the name of the company, but it's, it's, uh, it's like a robot that tries to simulate
[00:39:59] the experience of a human massaging you.
[00:40:02] So it's, uh, you're on a bed, you're face down.
[00:40:06] It's, uh, got arms that kind of go back and forth, uh, on a track and they, they push and
[00:40:13] whatnot.
[00:40:13] And it kind of reminds me of the white birthing robot from star Wars episode three at the end
[00:40:21] when, when Luke and Leah are being born, it does everything short of make the cooing
[00:40:26] sounds to get the babies to calm down.
[00:40:28] You know, like I, you do have a tablet and you can, you can pick out these pre-baked Spotify
[00:40:34] playlists while it's pushing on you.
[00:40:36] Anyway, all that to say, I signed up, um, mostly cause it was free.
[00:40:41] So I had a 30 minute trial and, uh, the fact is trying to imitate humans was really interesting
[00:40:49] to me because I had just spent a month in Japan, uh, getting, uh, what'd you call it?
[00:40:54] Uh, massage chairs, our hotel chain that we stay at has always has massage chairs and even
[00:41:01] bad massage chairs in Japan are pretty intense.
[00:41:03] Uh, uh, but, but good ones are just like, you know, you go in there and it's just like,
[00:41:09] I'm sure there's been, you've probably seen a horror movie image, right?
[00:41:13] Where it's like, you sit in a chair and then like 25 hands grab all the parts of your body
[00:41:18] simultaneously and that is meant to be horrific.
[00:41:20] But if those hands, if there was some nice music playing and it was illuminated and those
[00:41:25] hands were massaging you simultaneously all over your body, maybe it would be pretty, pretty
[00:41:29] great.
[00:41:29] And so that's what a Japanese massage chair is like.
[00:41:33] Cause they, they don't have this arbitrary conceit that a massage must happen in a format
[00:41:39] that resembles how it would happen if a single human on a bed surface was rubbing your tiddly
[00:41:45] bits, which is what this robot is.
[00:41:49] Right.
[00:41:49] And so it's trying to think of another analog, right?
[00:41:55] Like where we, we kind of retain the artifice of the way that it used to be before we automated
[00:42:00] it.
[00:42:00] And, and in some, sometimes we do that to keep people being comfortable like that rich
[00:42:05] Corinthian leather.
[00:42:06] It's like, we wanted to look like a traditional calendar.
[00:42:08] So people know what they're looking at instead of just a bunch of boxes.
[00:42:11] It's like, Oh yeah, this looks like a placemat style calendar that I would have had on my desk.
[00:42:15] And then eventually that ages out.
[00:42:16] And the younger people are like, I've never seen a calendar on a desk, even though my dad
[00:42:20] grew up with one, you know?
[00:42:24] So maybe that's it, right?
[00:42:25] Like, like sometimes that's why we would have a robo massage that like, you know, pressures
[00:42:31] and needs you, you know, kind of with just the two arms up and down in particular points,
[00:42:35] sometimes at the same time, sometimes just one arm, you know, it's, it's, it's less efficient
[00:42:41] is my immediate frustration.
[00:42:43] Cause it's like, you could have 45 fucking arms going to town all over my body and I'd
[00:42:49] get way more work done in 30 minutes.
[00:42:52] Right.
[00:42:52] Cause I'm just trying to min max my existence, but instead by, by, by, by imitating a human
[00:42:59] massage, like nothing is really gained because I can't see it.
[00:43:03] I'm facedown.
[00:43:04] I'm looking at a silly tablet and watching imagery, imagery of forests and, and, and ocean waves
[00:43:10] and whatnot, and I'm kind of getting a, you can look at a weird overhead view of what
[00:43:14] your body is looking at, looking like right then, you know, like it scans your body and
[00:43:19] then has like a little illustration of like, here's where I'm pushing you.
[00:43:21] Here I go.
[00:43:22] It's, it seems more to me like they designed this, you look at this unit and it's just like,
[00:43:31] this has got to cost at least 15 grand.
[00:43:34] This is an expensive, complicated piece of equipment.
[00:43:38] It feels like a lack of imagination, uh, to, to somebody had the idea, let's take human
[00:43:47] masseuses out of the equation and just make a robo masseuse thing that we could put in spas
[00:43:53] when, uh, you'd actually have a better experience.
[00:43:56] It would be cheaper.
[00:43:57] And there's like more prior art at Panasonic or these other companies in Japan.
[00:44:01] If you just made a, you know, massage chair, but that would be boring, I guess.
[00:44:08] Uh, and massage chairs, like you, you hear the word massage chair right now as you're listening.
[00:44:13] And if you haven't had like a real one, you know, at a Japanese Denki-yasan on the third
[00:44:17] floor, where all the salary men on their way home tell their wives, oh, I got a, I got a big meeting
[00:44:24] with the boss and then they go to, they go to Yamada Denki or they go to Yodabashi camera.
[00:44:28] And then they just, you know, they take their briefcase and they set it down next to one of the
[00:44:33] trial units of the massage chair.
[00:44:34] And then they, they, they, they, they go into this little like sensory deprivation pod and
[00:44:39] they get all their bits smushed simultaneously and they got a remote control and they can
[00:44:45] say, just do it hard.
[00:44:46] And then they can forget their worries for, for 15 minutes until, uh, one of the staff has
[00:44:52] to remind them that, uh, they don't live there and that they have to go home now.
[00:44:56] If you haven't had that experience, uh, you probably, when you hear a massage chair, think
[00:45:02] of like those $2, you know, leather chairs that are, you know, just like our just normal
[00:45:08] fucking chairs that may be vibrate, like the vibrating bed equivalent that you see at an
[00:45:12] airport.
[00:45:12] Um, this is not what I'm talking about.
[00:45:15] So get your head out of there and, and go Google, you know, for high end Japanese massage
[00:45:22] chair, and you might get some idea.
[00:45:24] Uh, also I, uh, in the course of a 30 minute massage, I encountered so many fucking Android
[00:45:32] tablet bugs.
[00:45:33] I, I didn't, I gave them a lot of feedback cause they, this is sort of a trial that they're
[00:45:37] doing.
[00:45:37] They wanted to want to know how, what I thought.
[00:45:40] And I gave them a lot of this perspective and feedback about like, well, you know, this
[00:45:44] skeuomorphic design, yada, yada.
[00:45:45] But I didn't even touch any of the software stuff.
[00:45:49] Cause like there's an absolutely nothing that they're going to be able to do with that much
[00:45:52] less like they won't even be able to communicate this back to the company in a way that's helpful,
[00:45:55] but it was, you know, it would freeze or the display would become non-responsive.
[00:46:01] One time I had the music just turn itself all the way up.
[00:46:05] The, um, the, so many things about this design are meant to make you feel comfortable are
[00:46:13] meant to make you feel safe.
[00:46:14] Like if, if you, it moves at all, or if it detects anything is off at all, it basically
[00:46:20] like will, will disengage entirely and reposition itself.
[00:46:23] And then you have to actively resume the massage.
[00:46:26] And then it's got to put the little flappy doos back over you.
[00:46:30] Like it's really worried about people flipping out about this robot pressing up against them.
[00:46:36] And it extends to, to like, you know, you pick your firmness, like light, medium firm.
[00:46:41] And I clicked firm.
[00:46:42] And then there, you could see there was like a little like pressure bar on the right.
[00:46:47] And that even though I'd clicked the firm preset, I wasn't at a hundred percent pressure.
[00:46:52] And I was like, well, that, that won't do.
[00:46:54] And so I jacked it up to a hundred percent right out of the gate.
[00:46:56] And the whole time, 30 minutes, like you could, uh,
[00:46:59] Hmm.
[00:47:01] It, I knew that a massage was happening.
[00:47:05] Like I knew when contact was being made, but like, it was not a massage.
[00:47:08] It was, it was somebody kind of like, like, like back rub would be generous.
[00:47:14] It was like somebody like took an open palm hand and just pressed it.
[00:47:18] Just, just, just an obnoxiously against different parts of my body and no firmness beyond that.
[00:47:26] So you got a robo massage.
[00:47:29] It's limited in what it can do.
[00:47:33] Cause it's trying to imitate a human.
[00:47:34] It's very worried about liability, which is why I imagine the max firmness is light pressure.
[00:47:39] Uh, and it's fussy and it's buggy.
[00:47:42] And of course it can only do very limited regions of the body.
[00:47:45] Like if I was a massage therapist, I'd be like, Hey, sweet.
[00:47:49] You know, I'm going to keep having a job longer than all these programmer juckle fucks.
[00:47:52] You're going to get replaced by a Claude and open AI.
[00:47:56] So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm confident that a massage therapist is going to be a, a lucrative, you
[00:48:03] know, going concern as a career for a little while programming.
[00:48:08] I'm not so sure of, but most of us listening have already made our choice, whether we're
[00:48:14] going to be massage therapists or programmers.
[00:48:16] So we're just going to have to see how this, how this plays out.
[00:48:19] All right.
[00:48:20] Well, that's all, that's everything going on in my life.
[00:48:23] So let's, uh, well, let's follow up on stuff that had been going on in my life and is now
[00:48:30] continuing or is once again, I started to realize that there's a, there's a certain theme to this
[00:48:37] show.
[00:48:37] Hmm.
[00:48:38] All right.
[00:48:46] There's basically two major areas of follow-up today.
[00:48:51] Um, but somehow the two of them take up 11 bullet points in my notes.
[00:48:59] So I'll try to be expeditious.
[00:49:02] The first is I bought a, uh, M4 pro MacBook pro, I guess an Apple nomenclature, a MacBook pro
[00:49:13] left parentheses, 2024, right parentheses with M4 pro.
[00:49:19] I think is probably maybe the 2024 is at the end.
[00:49:22] Maybe they don't put the date now that they have the chip name.
[00:49:25] In any case, I needed a computer that was built for Apple intelligence, which is how they also,
[00:49:32] they crammed that in the fucking name.
[00:49:34] Um, and like the, every subheader says Apple intelligence on it, which, you know, I mean,
[00:49:40] if you're, if you're a marketing dude, it's the thing that, you know, like you gotta, every
[00:49:48] year is a struggle to goose people into, to buying computers.
[00:49:51] And, uh, it's been a while since they've had anything new to say that your computer can do.
[00:49:56] So it makes sense, but come on.
[00:49:59] It can't even make Genmoji yet.
[00:50:02] Uh, just if you've, if you've downloaded it, used 18.2 iOS or iPadOS, uh, go turn on the,
[00:50:13] um, you know, the AI feature, if it's available in your region and language, and then you open
[00:50:19] the image playground app and you click through there and let it download all of the image
[00:50:24] playground shit, uh, in particular, the image playground itself, where you can take a person
[00:50:30] and a place and kind of like, you know, create sort of a, uh, a witch's brew of bad imagery
[00:50:35] and then, and then have a keep swiping to the right as, as they just all look bad that I have
[00:50:43] no, no need for, but Genmoji, or at least the promise of Genmoji, I like quite a lot.
[00:50:49] I enjoy, you know, um, typing in little like name, like, so we were at the parks, uh, with
[00:50:57] our friends last week and it was a Jollywood Knights event, which is also Gatsby themed.
[00:51:06] There's a reason why ordering 1920s era costumes on Amazon in Orlando was like not an overnight.
[00:51:13] It was like a two, three day leg because this, this Jollywood Knights 1920s era themed, uh,
[00:51:21] ticketed event at Hollywood studios has been going on. And it was one of those nights. And so some
[00:51:26] flapper lady in line, she had a purse that had a phone handle on it. And her husband, who now that
[00:51:34] I think back on this was dressed very similarly to how I dressed myself last night. So something tells
[00:51:39] me he was sort of a long for the ride in this, she picked up the phone handle off of her purse and
[00:51:46] handed it to Becky. And then he, you could sort of see him on the phone being a bad ventriloquist
[00:51:53] and talking to her on the phone. So like his cell phone was somehow communicating to the purse phone.
[00:51:59] It was very, it reminded me of get smart, you know, like that spy TV show from the sixties that was on
[00:52:05] Nick at night in the eighties or nineties when I would have watched it. Uh, of course it didn't
[00:52:10] work. And then we were just in line and it was like, sorry, we're in line. It didn't work. And then,
[00:52:14] and then of course the way that lines work, right. As you turn left, turn right. And now it's up,
[00:52:18] here's the same people again. And so they're like, all right, try again. So she picks up the purse
[00:52:23] phone and here's the guy talk. And she's like, yes, this is indeed a telephone. That is a purse.
[00:52:28] My reaction, my contribution to this experience was to try to generate a Genmoji for the group
[00:52:35] that I was with. That was like purse phone. And, uh, wouldn't you know it, uh, it struggled to like,
[00:52:43] I was like purse with a phone handle on top. And it was, it gave me like one with like a,
[00:52:49] like a locker combination lock instead of a rotary dial in the middle. It was all, it was not,
[00:52:54] not good. And, and I think like a lot of these Genmoji, in addition to being bad and not good,
[00:53:01] they are when they, there's, they have to be so detailed because usually it's people mashing up
[00:53:07] different concepts. They have to be so detailed that when in line with texts, you have to squint
[00:53:12] and you can barely see what they are. And then if they're as a tap back, you have no hope of knowing
[00:53:16] what they are. Like if it's of a person, for example, like it's, you're going to get like 80% shirt
[00:53:21] and then like 10% head. So you're not going to be able to tell who's what. Uh, so those need work
[00:53:27] and no one wants my Genmoji. My, my brother has formally requested. I stopped sending them and,
[00:53:32] uh, I will, I will take that request under advisement. Anyway, uh, bought a MacBook pro. Um,
[00:53:42] Oh, I've got a, I've got a parenthetical as a C notes. All right, well, here's eight more bullet
[00:53:50] points. I'm going to rattle through these. So Becky, actually, it was her idea. She wanted to
[00:53:54] get me this. We were in Japan. She's like, Hey, you know, I heard you talking about the nanotexture
[00:53:57] display. And like, of course, you know, the, the, the brighter screen and us being in Orlando,
[00:54:01] you never use a computer outside or out of the house. So she wanted to buy it. And she said,
[00:54:06] it was just really complicated. I didn't want to fuck up. I didn't want to get you the wrong set of
[00:54:09] options. I asked Aaron and Aaron didn't know either. He said he hadn't really been on top of it.
[00:54:16] Uh, and I was like, honey, that's so I didn't say like, bless your heart. I, it was a such a sweet
[00:54:23] gesture. And it is true that I've been curious about it. Um, but I didn't feel like, uh, I had
[00:54:30] to get one right this minute. Uh, and, and honestly, the, the, the 14 inch MacBook pro is still too heavy.
[00:54:36] I, I, I, I lifted tonal my, my weightlifting robot, uh, reported in my tonal wrapped because
[00:54:46] everything has to do a goddamn wrapped dingus to try to share in social media as if like, you know,
[00:54:52] one assumes that all these wrapped posts just go to the goddamn bottom of every algorithm because
[00:54:57] they're all the same. But in any case, it showed me a little wrapped video and it said, I wait,
[00:55:02] I, I lifted one and a half million pounds last year or over the course of 2024. And I was like,
[00:55:07] that's a lot of weight that I lifted. I, yesterday I did the equivalent of like, you know, 250,
[00:55:12] 275 pound deadlift barbell deadlift. And that was hard, but not too hard. It's the max weight that,
[00:55:20] that tonal can do. Um, I, I, I, I like to think I'm pretty strong now. Uh, that four pound fucking
[00:55:31] MacBook pro is backbreakingly heavy, no matter where I am, I'll pick it up and like, that is denser than
[00:55:40] it looks. It's a, it's like when you pick up a baby, that's like a little bit too dense, you know,
[00:55:46] and you're just like, Oh wow. I was expecting this to be more fun. This is just going to give
[00:55:51] me pelvic floor problems. If I do this for more than exactly 30 seconds and then hand it back to
[00:55:57] its mother who surely has pelvic floor issues. Um, I don't want to be carrying around this MacBook pro.
[00:56:05] I don't want to carry it with my arms. I don't want to carry it in a bag. I don't want to carry it
[00:56:09] into the car. I don't want to carry it, you know, uh, in a Starbucks. I want to hire a Porter to
[00:56:16] bring it around to me, you know, from place to place. Maybe, maybe they could also saddle up and
[00:56:23] have a, uh, vision pro. So that's what I really want. Uh, at least until, and unless Apple releases
[00:56:30] the 12 inch MacBook pro, uh, that we were promised in our early years.
[00:56:34] Anyway, when Becky said that it was hard to configure and figure out what she'd want to order
[00:56:43] or what I would want her to order. And as a result would have made a pretty lousy gift because
[00:56:49] the likelihood of her getting it right. Where if you look at the number of configurations for these
[00:56:53] seeing this thing, like astronomically small, I actually spent, I sat down, I look, I, I said,
[00:57:01] I didn't need the thing. And then I come home and then within a day and a half, uh, my MacBook air is
[00:57:07] crying because it's out of storage to the point where like I composed an email and I hit send on the email
[00:57:12] and then Apple mail reported, yo, we just barfed on all this and just deleted all your shit. Cause we
[00:57:17] ran out of disk space, no warning. And in modern day Mac OS, you don't get to know how much disk space
[00:57:23] you have because all of it is like optimized storage. So like whether it's your iCloud drive
[00:57:29] or it's your Apple photos, once the system is under any sort of, um, storage stress, it'll,
[00:57:35] it's supposed to detect that and start deleting shit. Your phone does this too. So sometimes like
[00:57:41] you're like, like I was importing a bunch of raw images on the phone and it said, Oh, you're out of
[00:57:45] storage. And then I knew, because I know how it works under the hood, even though it exposes zero
[00:57:49] controls or visibility as to what is going the fuck on. I knew that when it ran out of storage,
[00:57:54] the right solution was sit and wait for 30 seconds while it deletes shit in the background and then
[00:57:59] just hit import again. Right. Well, I, that didn't work in this case. Like I actually went and deleted
[00:58:05] like a hundred gigabytes of garbage. It's a small SSD. It's a 512 gigabyte MacBook air. I deleted all this
[00:58:11] stuff, but, um, from my iCloud drive on another computer, because this one was finder was completely
[00:58:17] unresponsive. Uh, and it never got better because it had suspended all iCloud drive syncing as a,
[00:58:24] probably like some sort of like memory safeguard or storage safeguard to like make sure I didn't,
[00:58:27] it didn't fuck up anything in the cloud. And so like even going, I'm not going to,
[00:58:33] most of that storage was in my iCloud drive, which is how it got full while I was overseas.
[00:58:38] And when I came back, I, I didn't have like, I could, I could have gone through and like run
[00:58:47] RM dash RF from the terminal and deleted stuff from the iCloud drive to like as a, as an emergency break,
[00:58:52] like get, get this SSD empty enough that the operating system can run and then figure it out.
[00:59:00] But then of course it would have synced all of those deletions up to the cloud and deleted the
[00:59:03] same things off of my other computers. So this is a tractable problem. And I, I, I ultimately did solve
[00:59:10] it, but I, I realize now why Apple markets so much of its pro devices to photos and video people,
[00:59:20] because photos and videos take up a shit ton of space. Uh, they have different performance
[00:59:26] characteristics than programming and, and the, their needs in many ways are higher than what you need.
[00:59:33] If you're just writing Ruby code, right? Uh, it just so happens that Swift, the programming language
[00:59:38] that they wrote is also like, we'll, we'll take advantage of all of these cores during compilation
[00:59:42] in a way that like a lot of local development in other languages won't.
[00:59:45] But in my last year of doing a lot more video work, doing a lot more audio work, I can definitely
[00:59:52] understand now like, Oh yeah, like the, the MacBook air actually is inappropriate for a lot of the
[00:59:57] workflows of the things that I do. So that experience, I came to Becky and I was like, look, I know I said
[01:00:05] I didn't need this, but I think I might need this. Um, where need is in very, you know, very gentle
[01:00:12] text. It's, it's a thin font variant to say, I need this. What I mean to say is like, I, it would save
[01:00:19] me a lot of time and stress and headache and, uh, uh, rework to have a better computer, a more
[01:00:26] capacious computer. And of course you can't upgrade the storage and your existing max. So here we are.
[01:00:32] Um, but anyway, I was in the configurator for the new MacBook pro. And the first decision you got to
[01:00:36] make is do I want a regular M4 chip, which I did not, or one of the pro ones, which is a, you know,
[01:00:43] 12 or 14 core. I want to say a chip, uh, which is a huge upgrade over the M3 pro the M3 pro had a way
[01:00:53] more efficiency cores and the M4 pro has more performance score. So it's like a, it's doing
[01:00:57] much better in synthetic benchmarking that that's impressive. It's a big year over year change or the
[01:01:02] M4 max, which is, you know, uh, an incremental improvement over the M3 max, but to the extent
[01:01:10] that it's better than the pro it's like, you know, got another meat and quote unquote media
[01:01:14] engine of like encoders and decoders, uh, for, for, for video and audio, it's got a lot more GPU heft
[01:01:21] and day in day out. I, I, I knew I wasn't going to really use that often. It wasn't going to be the
[01:01:29] thing like holding me back. Most of the time, the thing that holds me back most of the time is like
[01:01:33] the spinning beach balls that one always gets when using Mac OS for more than a few hours. Uh,
[01:01:38] and those are just software bugs, like a faster processor doesn't help. Additionally, like the,
[01:01:42] the, the pro chips have better battery life. Um, they're, they're, they're less likely to get
[01:01:48] thermally throttled when they are under load. So I decided I was going to get a M4 pro. Uh, of course,
[01:01:56] like one of the things that's weird about this configurator is that not only are there a lot of
[01:02:03] decisions to make when you're, when you're configuring your Mac book pro, but changing one,
[01:02:09] and you may have heard this elsewhere. You've made, maybe you've played with this thing yourself.
[01:02:13] I think the M4 year is even worse than previous years, because when you change any one option,
[01:02:17] whether it's storage tier or Ram, it will upsell or downsell you into different computer,
[01:02:23] different, um, different chips. Uh, for example, if you're on the binned version of the M4 pro with,
[01:02:31] I think only either 10 or 12 CPU cores, then, uh, it will downgrade your power supply from 95 Watts to
[01:02:41] like 79 Watts, because you probably won't or can't benefit from the high power mode that the 96 watt one
[01:02:49] is designed to draw. Okay. Sure. Uh, if you have a pro and you want, it comes with 24 gigabytes or
[01:02:56] if you want 48 gigabytes of Ram, you can click that. But then if you want a max chip, if I'm looking at
[01:03:02] the max chip now, it's like, Oh, I want, I want at least 48 gigs of Ram. I want to future-proof this.
[01:03:07] I know like a lot of the, uh, the, the LLM and AI stuff really is Ram hungry. I'm looking at my Mac
[01:03:13] studio. I checked to that. I'm like, okay, yes, it has 128 gigs of Ram or whatever. And, and almost
[01:03:17] all of it's in use in, you know, whatever that means, because activity monitor also kind of lies
[01:03:22] about that. And I, you know, I, I wanted to try the max with exactly 48 gigs of Ram.
[01:03:31] problem is the max comes with 36 gigs of Ram. If you're on the binned version, uh, which is the,
[01:03:39] the, the, the chip with two broken cores on it. So it's like two fewer CPU cores at that point. I'm
[01:03:45] like, well, is the, is the unbinned pro better or worse at computing tasks, CPU bound tasks than the
[01:03:55] binned max. And we don't have an answer for that because we don't know if these performance cars
[01:04:00] cores are identical or very similar between the pro and the max. And nobody, I mean, nobody has done
[01:04:05] benchmarks comparing the unbinned pro versus the bin to max because Apple didn't send those
[01:04:09] configurations out. So we just don't really have a good idea. I could have gone scouring geek bench
[01:04:15] uploads, but like those are synthetic. It's not real world anyway. So I was like, well,
[01:04:20] I don't want the bin to max. Oh, well, oh. And then I click and we realize that the,
[01:04:24] the binned version comes with a 36 gigs of Ram. If you want to upgrade to 48 on the max, uh,
[01:04:32] you have to upgrade to the non-binned max chip. And then once you do the non-binned one has four, um,
[01:04:40] RAM memory banks and the binned one has three, which is how they arrived at 36. It's three
[01:04:45] memory banks of 12, but the non-binned one will use all four memory banks. And so the non-binned
[01:04:50] chip starts at 48 and then goes up from there, which means that just going from the pro to the
[01:04:57] max, if you want 48 gigs of Ram is a $900 upsell, right? And that now, now we're talking like now
[01:05:04] $3,000 computer thereabouts becomes a $4,000 computer. So that's, uh, it, no, a good purchasing experience
[01:05:15] results in you feeling like not exhausted at the end, not, you know, maybe you feel accomplished.
[01:05:22] Maybe you feel like, Oh, I picked out the perfect car. Look at this list of features and I can get
[01:05:27] so many little things to get excited about in, in, in whatever the purchase was.
[01:05:31] It should not leave you second guessing that you clicked the right buttons in the right order. And
[01:05:36] that when you clicked a button at the end of this list of, of buttons, that it didn't uncheck the first
[01:05:41] thing. You shouldn't feel like in the cart that you have to scrutinize every single little line item
[01:05:46] that is right. And then, and then the next morning I wake up and I'm like, did I get this right? Did I,
[01:05:51] did I, did I mess up? Should I gotten the max? You know, I felt very unsure about the order.
[01:05:58] The only thing that I was really sure about was I wanted the $150 nano texture, uh, which really does
[01:06:04] an impressive job of cutting on, cutting down glare from other light sources. And when you, when you live
[01:06:12] in Florida, uh, AKA the light source state, um, there's a lot of light everywhere bouncing every which way.
[01:06:18] So having that display, uh, really increases the usable range of, of the computer.
[01:06:25] So I, I, I knew that $150 was down. And then at the next morning I saw all these deals. Of course,
[01:06:31] I got like, you know, RSS feed of just, Hey, look, this, the, the $600 off the new M4 MacBook Pro.
[01:06:36] I was like, ah, motherfucker. And of course, like I had a shipping delay until December 24th anyway.
[01:06:42] So I was like, well, yeah, I'll, I'll go and play the field and look at discounts.
[01:06:45] I found a discounted MacBook Pro that would have saved me $300 or so. Yeah. Well, you know,
[01:06:50] it's economical and Apple care is the same thing. Maybe I'll just buy from them. But then as soon
[01:06:55] as I got to checking out there, I realized that that nano texture display is only available if you
[01:06:59] buy it, build to order from Apple, uh, which is in a sense really brilliant because it, it, it, it
[01:07:09] gooses first party sales because that's like one of the big selling points of this, of this particular
[01:07:13] laptop. And so I have a, whenever Apple sells you the computer directly at full retail price,
[01:07:19] like they're taking way more profit than when best buy or Adorama or B and H photo or whatever
[01:07:25] sells it. Uh, so, so that was clever on their part to not have any sort of a pre-boxed skews include
[01:07:33] that, that nano texture display. So that brought me right back to Apple again. Uh, and then at the last
[01:07:38] minute I remembered, Oh yeah, I know I have friends who work at Apple and there is an employee purchase
[01:07:42] program. Like I'll ask for our friends and family discount. And so I did that and I saved, uh,
[01:07:47] a decent chunk of change, but more importantly, like that, that, that shipped to me overnight UPS,
[01:07:53] like it was there 20 hours later. Uh, so, so I, I've received the new laptop. Uh, and ultimately I'm,
[01:08:02] I'm happy with the decision I made. I think that the, the, I S I spend more time worrying about battery
[01:08:07] life in these things than I spend feeling like I'm waiting on a build to finish. So I, I, I'm pretty
[01:08:16] happy that I picked the M four pro over the M four max this time around. Uh, if you've got one of these,
[01:08:23] things, I'd love to hear your thoughts, uh, on the process. You can, you can email me those thoughts
[01:08:28] at podcast at searls.com. No, no, not searls.com. That's that's owned by doc Searls, the Harvard
[01:08:34] business fellow. I lazily said, then this is why you use.com addresses podcast at searls.co.
[01:08:42] Please. When you buy not, when you buy a computer from Apple, of course, like it prompts you to trade
[01:08:50] in your current one. And so I went through the trading configurator and I got real mad real fast
[01:08:54] because I pasted the serial number from my, my M three MacBook air, which is all of nine months old.
[01:08:59] And it didn't say what it should have done is it should have said, Oh, we don't take these yet.
[01:09:04] Instead, it just kind of, uh, asked me what kind of computer it was. And so I clicked MacBook air and
[01:09:11] I clicked 2023 and I clicked the, you know, uh, uh, uh, processor and the Ram and the storage and the
[01:09:17] quality. And it gave, it spat out like $615. And I added that to my cart. And then I was about to
[01:09:24] check out and I realized, wait, I should double check that I type, I hit all those things correctly.
[01:09:30] And I went back and it said M two, not M three. And I realized now what happened was the M three
[01:09:36] MacBook air is not yet eligible for trade in at Apple, which is a weird, right? Uh,
[01:09:43] I get it. Most people wouldn't want to trade in their thing nine months after buying it.
[01:09:47] But not only is it like not trade in a bowl, but like if you give a serial number, it's as if the
[01:09:53] system doesn't know that serial number. And then in order to increase their, you know, conversion rate,
[01:09:58] they don't tell you that the serial number is either unknown to them or for a model that they
[01:10:03] don't accept. And so they just let you click through anyway. And I'm very confident that if
[01:10:07] I had sent in this computer configured, as if it was a prior year M two model that they would have
[01:10:15] gladly taken it and sent me back the marginally less amount of money than I would have had.
[01:10:21] Um, so that's shame on Apple, right? Like there come on, like their trade in system is actually
[01:10:29] kind of nice. It is convenient, but if you'll take a serial number and just like, I'll let people send
[01:10:34] in a newer, better computer than the one that like, you know, the configurator will, the wizard will let
[01:10:39] them choose, uh, you know, best case scenario, you mail it back to them at great expense and time,
[01:10:45] uh, worst case scenario, you take their money and bilk them. So not cool.
[01:10:50] Uh, once the computer came, but the setup took me all fucking day, like setup took me four or five,
[01:10:59] six hours. And that was weird. Uh, cause usually I actually have an old video I'll share in the
[01:11:05] show notes of, um, from 2019 or 2020 of setting up a new Mac. And it, it's a 90 minute video.
[01:11:12] And I was going at a relatively leisurely pace. These are all the settings that I use. This is how I go
[01:11:16] through it. Uh, it has become so much slower now, partly because there's more going on in Mac OS as
[01:11:23] it has become more and more iPhone-ified partly because the system settings app really hides a
[01:11:30] lot of important features and confusing nooks and crannies. Uh, partly it was, uh, the amount of
[01:11:37] video and audio tools and paid plugins that I have now that required me to intentionally deauthorize the
[01:11:44] first machine authorized on the second machine. Uh, I guess I recorded that video on probably my last
[01:11:51] Intel MacBook Pro. I hit a huge snag where I kept running into issues with, um, the, the iZotope RX
[01:11:58] plugin suite, which I install so that I could have, um, it, if you, if you want to know it mouth de-clicks
[01:12:06] me, so you hear fewer mouth clicks in, in, in this production. And it also reduces some of the
[01:12:14] background noise in my room. Installing that I just got this really Byzantine bizarre error over and over
[01:12:21] and over again. And, uh, Googling for just a snippet of the error, it was other people talking about
[01:12:26] Postgres and other people talking about Microsoft office. And, and I realize now, uh, that the common
[01:12:32] thread was Rosetta, the translation layer for, for, to be able to run x86 stuff on, on Apple
[01:12:38] Silicon, Silicon, Silicon, Silicon. There it is. Apple Silicon. Uh, I got to say it like that.
[01:12:45] And, uh, Rosetta wasn't installed because it wasn't installed by default. So I had to go and find
[01:12:50] something else or find a program to run that require Rosetta to prompt the Rosetta install,
[01:12:55] install Rosetta and then run the installer. And then the installer worked. And I was just like,
[01:12:59] fuck sake. Like this is the Rosetta experience in the M one generation. When Apple Silicon Silicon was
[01:13:06] new, was really, really delightful because a lot of things required it. And it was pretty straightforward.
[01:13:11] And I'm sure a lot of Apple engineers were using a lot of things, but now that we're scraping the
[01:13:14] bottom of the barrel and almost everything supports Apple Silicon by default, we, uh,
[01:13:21] I don't know how that's going to sound in post. Uh, now that everything basically supports Apple
[01:13:27] Silicon, we, we don't see the Rosetta pop up as much. In fact, like some of you may not even have
[01:13:33] Rosetta installed cause you don't have any of this kind of weird shit anymore. That tells me that we're
[01:13:40] probably looking at, we might be drawing near to the announcement that like, you know, this is the,
[01:13:46] like, like, like a WWDC, I wouldn't be surprised if they tell us like, you know, this subsequent
[01:13:51] Mac OS 16 version is going to be the last one that supports x86 instruction, uh, programs.
[01:13:57] I think it's time, uh, you know, yes, some things won't be able to run anymore, but the, uh,
[01:14:02] anyone who vendors Venn's who anyone who Venn's software on the Mac has had plenty of time at this
[01:14:10] point. Um, and the Mac has been so successful now that if you probably were to look at a,
[01:14:14] a pie chart of how many of the Macs out there are already running Apple Silicon, like, uh,
[01:14:21] I wish they'd just called it arm. I, I'm annoyed that the industry and the reviewers and everyone
[01:14:28] who reports on this shit has, has, uh, uh, gone along with Apple's marketing lingo for this, uh,
[01:14:39] calling it Apple Silicon. Uh, so anyway, yeah, uh, I was envious of that 90 minute video of past Justin
[01:14:46] because this took so long that my day was pretty much poisoned, wrecked. Um, one observation,
[01:14:54] my MacBook air from my office, it's Bluetooth radio is too weak to talk all the way to my phone,
[01:15:03] which is downstairs in a cradle near the entrance to the home. So I can't use the iPhone mirroring
[01:15:08] or the iPhone notifications. Not that I want to, I think it's probably a net bad feature,
[01:15:15] but there are so many times where it's like, oh, I need to get a code from the phone or something like
[01:15:18] that. And I, I, uh, I don't want it to get up and walk downstairs, even though it's probably good for
[01:15:24] me to get up and walk downstairs from time to time. The new MacBook pro can actually reach the phone,
[01:15:29] which was incredible. The, uh, uh, that's a much longer distance Bluetooth wise. The problem was I
[01:15:37] was using my vision pro headset and, uh, vision pro when you're using Mac virtual display that actually
[01:15:44] counts as sidecar. So you might've heard of sidecar as being the, the technology that Apple released a few
[01:15:49] years ago, 2019, 2020 let you run an iPad as if it was an external Mac monitor. Well, sidecar,
[01:15:57] the technology of like wirelessly, um, uh, uh, pushing the, the computer treating a remote wireless
[01:16:05] device as a additional screen for the computer, uh, is actually the same protocol that they're using to
[01:16:12] do the Mac virtual display. So when you have Mac virtual display on envision pro that counts as a
[01:16:18] sidecar session, uh, cause it's doing additional stuff above and beyond the VNC to traditional screen
[01:16:24] sharing. Well, when you're doing iPhone mirroring in Mac OS 15, that also counts as a sidecar session.
[01:16:30] And apparently a computer can only a Mac can only do one sidecar session at a time. So if you are in
[01:16:36] Mac virtual display and you try to do, uh, uh, uh, one of these iPhone mirroring sessions, you'll say,
[01:16:43] you'll get an error pop-up say, Hey, sidecar is already in use. So as long as I'm in the headset,
[01:16:50] I'm probably not going to be using it much, but the reason I was excited to use the headset was that day,
[01:16:58] coincidentally, uh, 15.2 and vision OS 2.2 both released. And that was the pair of releases that,
[01:17:07] uh, enabled what was, I mean, the vision, vision pros only real kind of marquee announcement from,
[01:17:14] from WWDC, uh, the ultra wide screen. And this is the swivel chair mode where, where I took a little
[01:17:22] video, uh, screencast. Cause it was just so wide. It was like almost 90 degrees to the left,
[01:17:27] all the way to 90 degrees to the right in this huge screen that wraps around your, your whole
[01:17:33] front half of, of the globe of your existence. Uh, the, the resolution wise, they say it is like having
[01:17:41] two 5k studio displays side by side, but because it wraps around you, it even feels more than that.
[01:17:49] And the way that it can pull off such a high resolution is because it introduces foveated
[01:17:55] rendering, which is to say, uh, it uses the eye tracking, which is built into the vision pro
[01:18:00] hardware to know where you're looking. And then it communicates to the Mac. They're looking here.
[01:18:05] And then the Mac will send a higher resolution, uh, uh, view of that part of the screen to the vision
[01:18:13] pro and lower resolution elsewise that are in the periphery of your vision. This is a trick
[01:18:19] that is used throughout other VR headsets as well. Um, any of them that support eye tracking will take
[01:18:25] advantage of this because in a 3d game, it allows you to run the game at a higher level of fidelity
[01:18:32] with, with better shaders and more detail at where the user is looking and, and not waste so much time
[01:18:39] post-processing and sharply rendering things that are, you know, at the periphery or even out of you.
[01:18:45] That's
[01:18:47] that's pretty neat. Um,
[01:18:50] I don't know how I, when you're, when you boot up this, you know, I'm sharing this because like,
[01:18:57] I had so many people texting me. It's like, you still use the vision pro you use it as a monitor.
[01:19:01] Like how's this ultra wide? So I had a lot of people ask, even that day they were like,
[01:19:04] they, they saw the maybe on Mac rumors or whatever, and they're like, Oh yeah, Justin does this.
[01:19:07] Several thoughts first, like this ultra wide mode. If you have it turned on,
[01:19:14] it's so goddamn big that there's not room unless you literally are in a swivel chair and you're
[01:19:19] kind of just doing this minority report or, or, you know, thing where you spin around or Ron from
[01:19:25] parks and rec. It's so big that it means using vision OS even less. So like they built this whole
[01:19:33] operating system, all of these, you know, here's how you drag and drop windows and here's how you
[01:19:37] resize them. And here's the vision OS version of Apple music. And like all these app, like all of
[01:19:42] this development went into making it a first class computing platform that is second class and that no
[01:19:47] one wants to use. And I'm sure that their analytics data tells them that like of the people who use
[01:19:52] their vision pro more than five minutes a week, they're using them to control their max is a strong
[01:19:58] suspicion that I hold. And I'm sure that designers and developers who work on the vision OS stuff are
[01:20:07] disappointed by this because they did all of this work. And then ultimately all people want is to,
[01:20:11] to, to create sidecar sessions from, from their Mac. And by giving into us sickos like me, uh, who,
[01:20:19] who basically only use the vision OS as a, as a dumb terminal to, to use a Mac without neck strain,
[01:20:24] right? Cause like leaning over a laptop, I can only do a couple hours before my neck pinches.
[01:20:30] Uh, and I just kind of have a tension headache or cranial headache for the next few hours.
[01:20:35] I, by introducing ultra wide and it, which is a very cool feature and does make the Mac virtual
[01:20:45] display very impressive. It's a, an admission or at all, at the very least it is, uh, if the person
[01:20:55] who's using the vision pro primarily as a Mac virtual display, if the screen is just a 4k thing in front of
[01:21:02] view, you can still have other vision OS windows to the left and to the right. And that's typically
[01:21:06] what I would do. I'd put like YouTube to the left or, or Apple music and maybe a notes to the right
[01:21:12] or to do list. Now with the ultra wide, I don't have room for either of those things
[01:21:18] because it's wrapping around my face. Uh, and, and instead of thinking about organizing spatial
[01:21:24] computing all around me, instead I'm thinking, okay, like how do I configure, configure Moom or one
[01:21:29] of these like window management tools to basically segment my screen into like four regions where two
[01:21:37] of those regions are, are effectively out of view most of the time. Uh, additionally, this new ultra
[01:21:44] wide, it comes with, um, like this, this software update for the first time, we'll stream the audio
[01:21:49] from your Mac to the, to the headset, which is what you want. And it's kind of a, it was a bizarre
[01:21:55] omission in the first go round because all these things are airplay targets and stuff like it should
[01:21:59] have just worked. But now I don't even have the need for running YouTube or Apple music on the vision
[01:22:04] OS. I can just run it on the Mac and then play the same goddamn audio through the wonderful audio pods
[01:22:10] that sound really nice and vision vision pro. And so I'm finding like, this is that this is the hallmark
[01:22:17] feature that they launched with vision OS two. You really wonder, is it coincidence? Uh, is it based
[01:22:25] on usage? And they're, they're trying to kind of like test out and see, you know, what are, what are
[01:22:30] the things people use similar to the Apple watch, right? Like they could, they, they had a shotgun approach
[01:22:34] here. It's like 15 different ideas. And it turned out that what people wanted for the Apple watch was
[01:22:38] fitness tracking and notifications by and large and like audio playback, you know, playing podcast
[01:22:44] while you go for a walk or a run or something. Maybe they're still feeling out like, what do people
[01:22:51] want with this particular product? But they clearly like, they know this isn't, this is a dev kit. Like
[01:22:55] they know that where they want to get is AR computing, spatial computing. So to see them
[01:23:00] release a thing that gets them even further from their users using the spatial computing
[01:23:07] has got to feel like a, a bit of a letdown for anyone who, who inside of Apple is really bought
[01:23:14] into this shit. Um, I personally am glad I want to see them move in more directions. I feel like the
[01:23:20] vision, the vision provide the opposite problem of the Apple watch. If you think about it, it couldn't
[01:23:24] do enough. Uh, we'll, we'll talk about gaming on the vision pro later, but it's really, I, I wish
[01:23:35] I want them to go in every direction at full speed, you know, create more content, faster,
[01:23:40] continue to nurse this Mac connection. If anything, maybe like launch first realized max inside of the
[01:23:45] vision pro headset. Right. So you could just travel with just a vision pro like it, wouldn't that be
[01:23:49] fucking great? Uh, I think that's possible. Right. And now we're like, you know, what if the,
[01:23:57] so, so some of the reviews of the iMac with M4 have said, you know, the, the era of the all-in-one
[01:24:05] computer that has like, you know, just a display built into the CPU and whatnot, it's like kind of
[01:24:10] outmoded. No one really uses it that way anymore. Those people just use laptops now. Well, what if
[01:24:16] the next all-in-one is the headset, you know, like if, if, if, if Apple's going to go with this fat
[01:24:22] device form factor, even if it's just transitory or even if like maybe vision pro eight years from now
[01:24:29] means has the computer in the headset and vision is, has the computer in some thing in your pocket.
[01:24:36] Right. And, and it was more like glasses. Maybe the next all-in-one should just be the goddamn thick
[01:24:42] headset. Right. Like that's the thing. If you want to run Mac OS, it's the car versus truck analogy.
[01:24:46] I think that there's something there. Uh,
[01:24:50] using the ultra wide, however, as much as I'm grateful that they did it and that they went that
[01:24:57] far using the ultra wide is a suboptimal experience to say the least, like the, the plumbing works,
[01:25:05] the protocol works, the, the, the display looks right, but zero people thought about like, how
[01:25:14] does Mac OS need to change? If Mac OS wraps around your entire field of view, like no one thought,
[01:25:20] because if you, let's say you hit a, looking at my keyboard command shift and slash or the question mark
[01:25:27] key, that brings up a text entry where you can search the menu bar menu items for like, you know,
[01:25:34] I don't know, duplicate or whatever command you're looking for. I kept doing this yesterday
[01:25:39] and it didn't work. It didn't seem to be doing anything. And then I realized, oh yeah,
[01:25:44] the menu bar is literally 90. The, the menu items are a little apple in the top left. That's 90 degrees
[01:25:52] to the left. I have to crane my neck all the way over there to see that. And then I can pick my menu
[01:25:58] item. And while that was happening, and I'm thinking about that, my wife texted me and I felt a buzz in
[01:26:03] my watch and I was like, oh, there's no text notification. There's no notification set up.
[01:26:06] I thought I had that turned on. And then I remember, oh, now that I'm looking all the way
[01:26:10] 90 degrees to the left, I actually have to look all do 180 degrees, look all the way 90 degrees to the
[01:26:15] right. Cause notification center is just this little strip of, you know, 10, 10 degrees of my field of
[01:26:22] view at the far right side. If you had a website, right. That had an ultra wide display would put
[01:26:30] the UI elements like the sidebar all the way to the left and the, um, maybe like menu items all the way
[01:26:36] to the right. You would have, it would be a suboptimal experience, which is why if you're designing a website,
[01:26:45] you would typically have some kind of max width set up and you would center those elements so that
[01:26:49] if you are on a super wide display, you kind of just get background, uh, you know, colors or something
[01:26:55] at the far extremes. And like the, the important things to click don't require you to travel the mouse,
[01:27:00] you know, three kilometers to get from left to right. Even that just, you know, met having a max
[01:27:09] width set on the menu bar and the notification center would be a massive improvement, uh, in usability,
[01:27:15] at least the doc, if you have that in sent in the dead center, which I guess like a lot of the
[01:27:20] hardcore users keep that pin to the left or to the right. Like if they're using this feature,
[01:27:26] they'd probably be similarly frustrated by the doc. The doc, at least for me is front center.
[01:27:30] And that's usable and spotlighting or raycast or whatever you use as your launcher, like that
[01:27:35] pops up in the middle. That works well. But, but again, like when you're doing setup,
[01:27:40] first time setup for a Mac means like downloading a lot of DMG files, disk image files, installers,
[01:27:46] a lot of opening windows, moving stuff around. And when your window, when your display starts to fill up,
[01:27:52] macOS will just kind of start, um, opening every single new window, like every new disk image that got
[01:27:58] opened all the way to the far left. I had, I had one open, not only to the far left, but it was
[01:28:04] actually partially occluded. Like, so like I had to look all the way to the left, like finding windows
[01:28:09] was so goddamn hard. Okay. And, and the way that you find your windows when they're all lost is you,
[01:28:14] you swipe up on the trackpad to go to mission control and you see like, you know, all of the
[01:28:18] windows kind of fanned out, but mission control similarly would just fan those windows out further
[01:28:24] to the left and right. It was a very bad experience. Um, and of course, you know, no one uses stage
[01:28:31] manager on the Mac, but if you do use stage manager, you will be frustrated to see that the piles of, of,
[01:28:36] of windows are at your far left. Like they're all the way over there. So it might even be that like
[01:28:43] the best experience because so many of these things are anchored to the left would be to just
[01:28:47] drag the, the semi-circle to the far, to your right. And then, and then kind of have the left
[01:28:54] side be your primary space that you work in. But at that point, like just downgrade from ultra wide to
[01:29:03] wide. There's a wide option. That is, if you push it out pretty much viewable all the time,
[01:29:10] by out of the corner of your eye, you'll be able to see stuff, but even that, like then you've pushed
[01:29:14] it out and maybe like, you know, UI elements are too small. So I found myself going back to the original,
[01:29:18] just the, the, the, the basic 4k display in a kind of standard 16 by nine, uh, aspect ratio.
[01:29:26] But now here's, here's where this went from exciting to disappointing to really concerning.
[01:29:36] I spent some time in the wide mode, not even ultra wide. And I, you know, I was an hour for setting
[01:29:44] this fucking Mac up and I was tired and I was hungry. I, uh, I was like, I need to take a break.
[01:29:51] I took the headset off. Uh, I stepped down and I, I set down the headset to plug it in. And as I leaned
[01:29:59] over to plug in the headset, I was like, I feel a little bit woozy. I know I'm not drunk. Cause at
[01:30:03] the time I hadn't had a drink for five or six days. I hadn't had any other fun drugs. So I was like,
[01:30:10] all right. So I'm pretty woo. Ooh. And then I was like a little bit, what's the opposite of sure
[01:30:16] footed, unsure footed. I was unsure footed as I walked, uh, back to the bedroom, I was going to
[01:30:23] change to, to go work out. And I, I, I spent like maybe four minutes just with my head between my legs
[01:30:31] in, in the closet. Cause I couldn't imagine putting on my gym shorts. I was like, man, I,
[01:30:39] I've been using VR since the Oculus DK one, whenever that was probably a decade ago.
[01:30:45] And I'll sometimes get like a little twinge of like, this game isn't fun for me because it is a
[01:30:52] little bit herky jerky motion sick, right? A little bit of that. But when I take the headset off,
[01:30:58] I'm fine. This is the first time I can remember using a headset, having it be fine. Like I wasn't
[01:31:04] feeling great, but I wasn't about to fall over the first time I can imagine. Like I was like legit
[01:31:10] motion sick as if I just got on the teacups ride and spun in circles worse. It didn't get better right
[01:31:18] away. I would, I, when I was in the closet there, I just like, I'd take a breather, deep breaths,
[01:31:23] head between the legs, you know, all this stuff. I changed into the workout gear and then
[01:31:28] at that moment, like I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to fucking throw up. Like I almost vomited.
[01:31:33] You know, I was like, did I catch Becky's sickness? No, she caught it for me. That's not it. It was like
[01:31:39] my, my gag reflex is like iron clad. And so like, it takes a lot for me to throw up.
[01:31:44] I can probably, I've probably done it a dozen times or fewer in my life.
[01:31:51] Uh, and so I didn't do it this day, but like, uh, a weaker throated individual would have absolutely
[01:31:58] blown chunks all over my closet. And please don't, that would be less fun even than picking up after my,
[01:32:05] uh, elderly coffee machine.
[01:32:07] I, I don't know what to make of this. Right. I talked to Becky about it. I don't know if it was like
[01:32:15] the ultra wide view was just too much. I don't know if it's the fact that the, uh, the, the vision
[01:32:21] field of view, like is now even on the non-wide versions, like it wraps around me. Like, I don't
[01:32:26] know if that taking a, uh, I was chatting with Adam Lizagor about this and he suggested that it might be
[01:32:31] the, the projection mapping of a flat thing into a spatial mode. Right. So like that it's a flat
[01:32:36] display, but it's curved. Maybe that was not helping. My worry is it could be the foveated rendering.
[01:32:43] It could be that the way Apple is doing foveated rendering is like, it's like, maybe it's got a
[01:32:48] really, really sharp core of pixels. That's like dead center where you're looking. But what if the
[01:32:54] halo of slightly more blurry pixels is too tight, is too much in your field of view or is causing
[01:33:02] flickering? If that's the case, then you could totally imagine like if you were looking at a
[01:33:06] computer screen and there were sort of like light flickering and color. Um, uh, uh, what do you call
[01:33:15] it? Uh, you know, I talk, I talk so much into this thing every now and then I run out of words and I
[01:33:21] got to go and put another quarter in the meter and then more words come to me. Uh, yeah. So if any
[01:33:27] colors are distorted, that might've been the word. Thank you. Got to feed the meter. Uh, if any colors
[01:33:32] are distorted, right? Like, like, like over the course of hours, maybe that has some sort of
[01:33:36] cumulative effect. And, and my hunch is that's what it is. And that unfortunately, I think that
[01:33:42] the foveated rendering is now just built into the protocol layer. I don't think that's a thing that
[01:33:46] turns on when you switch to the wide and ultra right. I'd love to be wrong and I'll, I'll report
[01:33:50] back, but I texted, uh, the same, the same friend from Apple who, who hooked me up with the, uh, the
[01:33:58] discount. I was like, do you, is there a radar for this? Is there a radar for this new ultra wide thing
[01:34:04] is neat, but it makes me want to vomit rocket my way out of here. Uh, you know, you think of like,
[01:34:10] you know, issue trackers and software, you don't normally have to deal with physical ramifications of
[01:34:15] using it, but boy. So yeah, if you're, if you're prone to motion sickness, uh, I would,
[01:34:22] uh, uh, brace yourself, come, you know, try it for sure, but bring a doggy bag, bring a little
[01:34:28] bucket, you know, uh, be ready to take a shower after just in case. Uh, so those are, uh,
[01:34:39] those are my only follow-up items, only follow-up items. I'm glad, glad, glad to be where I am,
[01:34:47] right? So this MacBook pro is look at the split. It's super fast. The screen is really lovely.
[01:34:52] The speakers are nice. The, uh, the, the, the, it's got a new, um, 12 megapixel center stage camera,
[01:34:59] which I mean, the Apple studio display. One looks like shit. This one looks less like shit,
[01:35:05] but I'm not convinced it's an upgrade over the 10 ADP camera that it replaces. Uh, you know,
[01:35:11] overall build quality looks solid. The space black is really nice. Uh, it's a, you know,
[01:35:17] you know what it is. It's, it's cool. Uh, the ultra wide thing is a bummer. Cause I spent most of
[01:35:25] the summer looking forward to that and I, I'm going to try it again cause I'm stubborn, but
[01:35:29] hopefully, uh, uh, Apple keeps iterating. Uh, speaking of keeping on iterating, uh,
[01:35:36] it's time for the next entry in a recurring segment, which is Aaron tells us a pun.
[01:35:49] All right. I'm sitting down for this one. Uh, I, you know, I mentioned that us picking what the
[01:35:59] version title, the release name for this, uh, episode would be is a little bit of a interactive
[01:36:07] collaboration between, um, you and me. I suppose this segment is similar because we're both hearing
[01:36:14] this pun for the first time simultaneously, asynchronously. Uh, so sort of like a, one of
[01:36:20] those YouTube reaction videos or a talk over a live stream or something where it's like, you know,
[01:36:25] childless men react to, uh, bad puns. Uh, so that's my role. I'm the childless man. And, uh, Aaron's role
[01:36:33] is to provide me a pun. Uh, I'm currently looking at an I message window, which I have dutifully
[01:36:38] scrolled up a few days of, uh, history. And before I read this pun and reveal it to the world,
[01:36:47] I will say that my, uh, lowly rating of his most recent pun, which I don't have in front of me.
[01:36:54] And I've mostly forgotten. It had like a word choice issue that I quibbled a little too hard on,
[01:37:00] I guess. Cause I got a lot of email saying that, uh, you know, I was, uh, it was a better pun than I
[01:37:07] gave it credit for. Aaron actually told me that he got a text saying he got jobbed. I was like,
[01:37:13] yeah, sorry. That's, uh, you know, I'm, I'm not perfect. I'm just doing my best. Uh, the reaction,
[01:37:22] right. Is one part, the thing being reacted to and one part, the reactor, right? So I had headspace
[01:37:30] where my brain's at. That's all part of it. I gave him a bunch of different prompts. So let's see what
[01:37:36] he did. I once read a really great think piece on the business of recovering lost laptops.
[01:37:43] I found the article to be Mac book profound.
[01:37:47] Hmm.
[01:37:54] I'm going to steal myself.
[01:37:59] I'm going to take a minute and I'm going to read that again.
[01:38:07] Oh, like wincing. I once, God damn it. Aaron. I once read, I once read a really great think piece
[01:38:20] on the business of recovering lost laptops. I found the article, the article. All right. I got a,
[01:38:28] I'm breaking, right? Shit. It's not that I think it's funny. It's, I think it's just so bad.
[01:38:35] I once read a really great think piece on the business of recovering lost laptops. I found the
[01:38:40] article to be Mac book profound. God damn it. Uh, it's like, it's, it's the kind of laughter that
[01:38:52] brings him joy and not, not the laugher. It's, uh, by laughing at that in that way, I'm letting him win.
[01:39:04] God damn it. All right. That's, uh, let's struggle to figure out how to copy paste this text.
[01:39:12] Oh, Jesus Christ. And see where this ranks. I don't know. How do you, I don't know how you feel
[01:39:20] about this one. I don't love it. I'm going to be honest. It's, it's so simple in that the look,
[01:39:31] the best thing about this pun is that the setup is, even though it's concise, it's extravagant,
[01:39:38] it portends like, Oh, where is he going to go with this? It's going to be something interesting.
[01:39:42] And so the, the, this is a class of pun where it's, uh, sort of like if you have a song and it
[01:39:52] starts at a really high pitch and the singer successfully descends dramatically and quickly
[01:39:57] down to a much lower pitch, that is a sign of proficiency, right? His ability to set my
[01:40:07] expectations as I'm reading this pun pretty high. I once read, I once read a really great think piece
[01:40:12] on the business of recovering lost laptops. Okay. Yeah. There's a, there's a few different little
[01:40:16] threads you can pull there. I could see something. Maybe he'll tie it as something,
[01:40:20] you know, uh, uh, contemporaneous from the news, but then the sudden descent down the mountain of,
[01:40:32] I found the article to be MacBook profound, where the whole joke is simply that the word profound
[01:40:41] starts with pro and that pro is in the MacBook pro name. Like that's the whole word play. It's just
[01:40:49] that little nugget. It's not nothing, right? But it's the setup sets your expectations higher than the
[01:40:59] payoff. And the payoff is like, is that it? Um, so on a level, like as a, like, is this humorous?
[01:41:07] It is, it is very poor, but how humorous something is, isn't, doesn't determine how good a pun is,
[01:41:13] right? So like if, if Aaron's goal, when he says, he says that his, his goal, when he, he tells puns
[01:41:22] is to either make people angry or make people eye roll, right? This,
[01:41:28] this kind of makes me angry and eye roll. That's an angry role. And for that reason,
[01:41:37] cause I know he is accomplishing his aim. I think this is a highly rated one. I hate it. I'm mad.
[01:41:45] I'm mad and bemused.
[01:41:52] I'm inclined. I'm looking up the list here.
[01:41:56] This reminds me of our seventh ranked pun back from episode 17 says I'm in Singapore this week
[01:42:05] for red dot Ruby conf. I have learned that many people here either love the king of fruit or they're
[01:42:10] just enduring it. This is, this is of a piece with that one. Uh, six ranked going camping with my family
[01:42:23] this week. It's intense. That one is that one. It nails it. Like it's a set. Both of those follow
[01:42:31] the same kind of pattern of statement followed by disappointing pun, uh, or overly simplistic
[01:42:37] wordplay. Uh, I think, Oh, the durian one is too deep a cut. Cause a lot of people don't know what
[01:42:48] a durian is. I knew what a durian was and I knew that they're stinky. Uh, but I didn't know it was
[01:42:53] called the king of fruit. Uh, additionally, it's less of an eye roll and more of a, like, uh, huh? Yes.
[01:43:01] Hmm. So I think this is our new number seven pun. I'm going to slam it between those two.
[01:43:06] Uh, boy. Yeah. I'll clean that up later. That's well, here we are. Let's, uh,
[01:43:15] cleanse the palate with some news.
[01:43:19] I wrote about retirement in my newsletter. You can check it out at justin.searles.co
[01:43:30] slash newsletter, uh, discussed, you know, my career to date transitions. I'm going through.
[01:43:38] I used the R word, uh, to describe, uh, what I did, uh, at the end of last year, read it. It's
[01:43:47] good. It's one of my better ones. So people say I've gotten a lot of responses to it. All positive,
[01:43:54] which is always concerning might mean I didn't go hard enough.
[01:43:58] one person wrote in to say that it pushed him over the edge, them over the edge. I guess I don't know
[01:44:03] them. It pushed them over the edge to call it quits and quit while they're ahead and stop working.
[01:44:11] Uh, so, so if you see, um, a downtick in the, uh, labor force participation numbers this quarter,
[01:44:19] uh, I am now partly to blame, which I love to see. Hopefully that person has, uh, uh,
[01:44:26] the means to, to, to, to, to follow through. And I'm not just, you know, that's whenever I do
[01:44:33] anything and it has like a real world impact on somebody else, I'm like, Oh no, I just wanted
[01:44:39] attention. I just wanted your validation. I didn't, I didn't mean to break all this shit. I didn't mean
[01:44:43] to, uh, uh, but honestly, the, the, at the same time, being able to have an impact on somebody is,
[01:44:53] uh, it's, it's something that I've never really allowed myself to think for more than five minutes,
[01:45:02] because if I did, then that would become a new hypervisory process that rolled through my brain
[01:45:07] all the time. And I'd be worried. I'd be thinking right now, I was like, well, if I say that, and then
[01:45:13] somebody, you know, ends up cheating on his wife because of it, then I'm that's, I'm the reason those
[01:45:18] kids to grow up without a dad, you know, like I don't, I shouldn't be thinking that way. Cause then
[01:45:24] I would never say anything. And I, it's really hard to be a podcaster if you don't say anything.
[01:45:28] So I gotta, I gotta keep talking. If you're not talking, you're dying. That's what sharks do.
[01:45:34] Reason I mentioned the retirement newsletter is Jim Carrey is 62 and he's coming out of retirement
[01:45:43] after Sonic, the second Sonic, the hedgehog movie, where he plays Dr. Eggman,
[01:45:48] which is what Sega of America was forced to rename Dr. Robotnik to, because that's what he was named
[01:45:55] in Japan. Sort of similar how princess toadstool became princess peach all of a sudden with the
[01:46:01] launch of Nintendo 64. Dr. Robotnik is a cool ass motherfucking name. And Dr. Eggman is a stupid,
[01:46:07] goddamn stupid, stupid piece of shit name, garbage name. If you're an egg person, I apologize,
[01:46:14] but like, you know, get a better surname at least like, so yeah, Jim Carrey plays Dr. Robotnik in the
[01:46:21] Sonic, the hedgehog films. And after the second one, he declared his retirement. He said, I'm all done.
[01:46:25] You'd have to have this amazing script to, to, to lure me back. And so then he got lured back for
[01:46:34] Sonic, the hedgehog three. And, uh, this, this raised questions like, aren't you retired? And he,
[01:46:41] he said, yeah. And quote, you know, I bought a lot of stuff and I need the money, frankly.
[01:46:50] So Jim Carrey, Ace Ventura, the cable guy, the mask, the anti-vaxxer who is married to Jenny
[01:46:58] McCarthy, who now I don't know where he stands on vaccine because he's no longer married to Jen,
[01:47:04] Jen, Jen, Jen. I just said the name McCarthy.
[01:47:11] Uh, I have not seen the Sonic the hedgehog films. I hear that they are fine. If you're into that sort
[01:47:18] of thing, I don't know. Like I've, I've, I've bought a lot of Sonic the hedgehog games and I get bored
[01:47:24] after five minutes. I have a feeling this movie would work out the same way. So he's a, he, that Jim
[01:47:32] Carey, yes, man. Like he made so much goddamn money in the nineties that if he had just put it all in a
[01:47:43] target retirement account at, at Vanguard would probably be a billion fucking dollars by now.
[01:47:49] He is 62 and he can't retire. Insufficient savings relative to his burn rate. Now, I don't know what
[01:48:00] are you spending money on? Like if he bought himself a bunker to survive the next four years
[01:48:04] that was fully furnished and had all the stabilized water and, and a staff to pamper his ass, then Hey,
[01:48:11] sure. That's a trade-off. That makes sense. But I suspect it's like, he's actually not very happy
[01:48:18] because most people aren't very happy. And when you spend your, like a shit ton of money and it forces
[01:48:24] you to come out of retirement, it means something went wrong, right? It's not according to plan. And if
[01:48:30] you're 62 and you still don't have a goddamn plan for your life yet that you're executing on
[01:48:34] successfully, and you've all the privilege in the world of being Jim goddamn carry, like I lost some
[01:48:41] respect for this man who I had never thought about whether I respected him or not, but it's like,
[01:48:46] get together, dude. Like you're an old fucking man at this point. You're playing a two bit shitty
[01:48:54] video game villain. Who's got no personality and no character. And yeah, you're really good at
[01:48:59] being the Grinch and having the big, you know, exaggerated faces and stuff. And like,
[01:49:03] if you were smart at all, you would have just cashed the fuck out and done something with your life that
[01:49:10] mattered. Like you had a couple of Truman show, great movie, touching point, you know, go out on top
[01:49:16] instead, like a general, the, the last generation who will remember Jim Carrey, right? Will be the
[01:49:26] poor children who grew up watching the Sonic, the hedgehog movies over and over again on Paramount
[01:49:32] plus or whatever. Those are going to be the, that's your legacy. Now is like, that's who you are,
[01:49:38] who you will be remembered as. Uh, the only people who are going to remember the Truman show are the
[01:49:43] ones who are like, you know, doing these avant-garde YouTubes of YouTube channels of like old movie
[01:49:48] critique. So you're fucking loser. Like that's before you get to the anti-vax and like all that,
[01:49:56] that, that, uh, that other shit, however you feel about that. And I feel like vaccinations are good,
[01:49:59] actually. Uh, what a, what a, what a chuckle fuck loser. Sorry, Jim Carrey, get it together,
[01:50:07] read my newsletter, justin.searles.co slash newsletter. Have a plan for your fucking life,
[01:50:14] you piece of shit. I don't know. Sorry for piling on Jim Carrey there, but I'll honestly,
[01:50:19] if you go back and watch his movies, none of them were actually that good.
[01:50:23] he's a, turned out he was a one trick pony and we all just saw the one trick the like
[01:50:27] first couple of times. It was like, Hey, you know, like Chris Farley was too, right? Another
[01:50:32] great nineties comedian, but he could, Chris Farley died. And so we didn't get to see him,
[01:50:36] you know, fall apart like this in his sixties. I'm sure, you know, so we got to see him fall
[01:50:42] apart in his thirties. Sorry, too soon. Uh, next coming in hot, uh, this, uh, Reddit post titled,
[01:50:54] I bought my eight year old a switch and didn't realize how much games cost. Am I screwed?
[01:51:00] And this is really sad. This is a parent who, you know, doesn't have a lot of money. Uh, and
[01:51:10] their kid wanted a Nintendo switch, but, but they, you know, uh, okay. So, uh, she says,
[01:51:19] I am a 30 year old single mother and she could afford a switch. She saw it on discount. Um,
[01:51:26] and so she bought it and then she gave it to the kid and then she realized that the games cost a lot
[01:51:33] of money, right? Like Nintendo games, uh, Nintendo is very good at protecting its value. It doesn't,
[01:51:38] um, what do you say? It doesn't run discounts very frequently. Uh, it keeps the prices of their games,
[01:51:47] uh, you know, relatively like, you know, whatever MSRP is, that's where you're probably going to find
[01:51:52] the price of that game three, four or five years later. Only recently, some of the retro games
[01:51:57] around that Nintendo switch online service. Uh, but that took 20, 25 years. And the reason that they
[01:52:03] do that is that, that the rest of the industry, whether you're looking at the steam sales or,
[01:52:10] or the other digital marketplaces, like they're all in a race to the bottom or subscription services,
[01:52:14] right? Like it has never been, you can play so many fucking games for so cheap triple A games.
[01:52:21] Like, like, like if you just like watch for deals and it trains everyone, um, in non Nintendo ecosystems
[01:52:27] to never pay full price for a game. Like you are a absolute fucking sucker. If you pay 60,
[01:52:33] $70 for a new game, because if you just wait like 10 days, you could find a CD key for way cheaper or,
[01:52:40] or some other discount or it'll, it'll show up on one of the premium subscription offerings.
[01:52:44] Like I didn't, I paid like a grand total of $35 or whatever to pay, to play, um, star Wars outlaws,
[01:52:50] which I loved, but like it would have been $70 to buy it. Instead. I just subscribed to Ubisoft's
[01:52:57] subscription service and then unsubscribed as soon as I was done with the game.
[01:53:03] Additionally, and that's like, that's like games that cost a lot to make, right? Additionally,
[01:53:08] like if you are just a normal 30 year old operating in this world where, you know, you've had smartphones
[01:53:16] since you were maybe middle school, early high school have been ubiquitous. You know, games are free.
[01:53:25] Games are things you download on your phone. You watch ads, right? Where you pay for in-app purchases
[01:53:30] sometimes. So I'm sharing the link to this post to read, um, to see how people react, to see, you know,
[01:53:40] it's to me, it, it made it, it added nuance to this new sort of, um, the, the world we live in,
[01:53:52] right. Where, what does it mean to come of age thinking that games should be really, really
[01:53:57] cheaper free and finding yourself in exactly this situation being like, Oh man, like the, like I
[01:54:03] wanted to, I wanted to treat my kid to a Nintendo switch. So you'd have a dedicated gaming platform,
[01:54:08] good, high quality games, good for children, but then realize like you can't afford any of them.
[01:54:14] Right. And because you didn't budget for games to be, to, to be either not free or, or more than a few
[01:54:23] dollars. Never occurred to me because I was being older, right? 10, just 10 years older than this
[01:54:30] person. Like I remember paying $50 of all of my allowance money for a long time to get Dr. Mario on
[01:54:38] the NES at, at, uh, uh, uh, Toys R Us. And if you inflation adjust that, whatever it was, it might
[01:54:46] have been more, it might've been $60. If you inflation adjust that upward, you know, now I'm
[01:54:50] like Jim Carrey. I probably should have just bought a fucking mutual fund because it's, uh,
[01:54:55] I will leave it there. I think it's just interesting to think about like, Oh man, like this is the next
[01:55:04] generation of parents that Nintendo has to sell to don't know the game should cost money.
[01:55:08] Right. When we talk about problems facing the gaming industry of like costs a lot to build
[01:55:14] good ones. Uh, if you have a good one and it had a high production cost, the best way to
[01:55:21] monetize it is through shitty, you know, predatory, you know, in-app purchases and, and kind of
[01:55:31] like, you know, unlimited up upside, you know, transactions that prey on people's psychology
[01:55:39] is the best way to make money on a game is like make a cheap game. That's like a low quality,
[01:55:44] but is highly addictive is the best way to get a good profit. Nintendo is doing the thing where
[01:55:50] they're actually investing in the games and they're charging a high price and they're, they're eking out
[01:55:54] a profit that way. And while it is very laudable that they're protecting their sort of sense of value
[01:55:59] here, we are looking at like, how many of these parents are just like only willing to put up with
[01:56:04] this to buy their kids, these games, because they came up of the age where, where games in where I
[01:56:09] paid Dr. Mario, like $170 in inflation adjusted dollars to buy Dr. Mario when I was five or six,
[01:56:18] uh, which is wild to think about. So this is this new world that we're in where media doesn't cost
[01:56:25] anything or information is truly free. Uh, which means like all of it sucks. Uh, it's real neat,
[01:56:33] real neat. Uh, another, another sign of the times, uh, Ars Technica had an article up, uh, about a teen
[01:56:41] who created his own meme coin. So he did a, his own personal pump and dump scheme, just like,
[01:56:48] like on some service where you can make coins. And he did a live stream and he's like, buy this coin.
[01:56:53] And then suckers did. And then he did look, if I was like 15 and I made a meme coin and I did a stream
[01:56:59] and I saw people buying it, I'd be like, sweet. And then I would, I would, I would sell. And then I
[01:57:05] would log off. And he did that. And he earned $50,000. Uh, and then he got doxxed by people who
[01:57:12] bought his meme coin. And so his parents were confused and concerned and impressed. And then like their phone
[01:57:17] starts ringing and now like the death, death threats start coming. And the way crypto works
[01:57:23] is you can't just like refund the angry people, right? Like something tells me that the recent
[01:57:30] election result is only going to increase the amount of crypto shenanigans that we see and,
[01:57:35] and schemes over the next few years. And that's, you know, the Hawk to a girl just did a meme coin
[01:57:45] pump and dump. Everyone's pumping. Everyone's dumping. No, one's, no, one's asking me what I
[01:57:52] want. You know, Searle's coin would suck. You know, the funny thing about it is Dogecoin was
[01:57:59] meant to be an inflationary satirical response to Bitcoin. And then Elon's embrace of it makes it,
[01:58:06] you know, yet another one of these hyper volatile securities and that it had its own peaks and
[01:58:14] values before he got into this shit. But maybe we are due for a truly satirical
[01:58:21] cryptocurrency. If you want to build one with me, you let me know, but we got to come up with a funny
[01:58:27] name. Uh, ours also had a, another story startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids
[01:58:38] without refunds. Um, this it's a support robot for kids, not kids without refunds. That would be a
[01:58:43] funny charity kids without refunds. It's like kids who have toys that like don't quite work or, or, you
[01:58:50] know, clothes in the wrong size. And, and, you know, we're, we donate money because the store
[01:58:56] wouldn't refund them or they lost their receipt. No, this is, um, a startup was charging $800 for
[01:59:03] these emotional support robots that would, you know, uh, have various interactive experiences with
[01:59:09] children, uh, you know, maybe to coax them into socialization or, or, or comfort them after trauma
[01:59:14] or whatever the cause and the startup, you know, like a lot of startups, they had a funding round
[01:59:19] collapse at the last minute where a key investor pulled out. You don't want to pull out of your
[01:59:27] pump and dump scheme. You got to stay in there. How do we use these words with a straight face?
[01:59:33] So the investor pulls out and then they're like, you know, they send one of those sappy emails being
[01:59:39] like, just so you know, your, your, your robot will still be a, like a plush animal, but it's going to do
[01:59:45] no other things anymore. So you, you imagine you buy like a little, like, I don't know, a stuffed
[01:59:51] dinosaur for your kid. He develops, uh, a emotionally healthy relationship with this thing. It helped,
[01:59:59] it helps him process grief, you know, and it's, uh, he loves it and it's got a name and it's, it's like a,
[02:00:06] you know, my brother got a Furby for Christmas one year when he was a Furby appropriate age. I hope
[02:00:12] that's safe to say. And I remember the Furby after about three days was annoying enough that he just
[02:00:18] like lived in a drawer and woke up sometimes and freaked us all out in the middle of the night,
[02:00:22] which is funny. Cause they looked like the, um, the little animals from, from gremlins,
[02:00:30] you know, before they get wet. But then when they wake up in the middle of the night, you're like,
[02:00:33] Oh no, who fed it? Uh, how sad, right now that, so we've come to this point in technology where like
[02:00:44] effectively a, a smarter Furby is able to actually trick kids into loving it as if it's a pet.
[02:00:51] And then some faceless startup just runs out of money and they turn it off and all these kids are
[02:00:56] heartbroken. I mean, in a way the kid gets two life lessons, but, but that's a, that's a pretty
[02:01:03] painful rug pull. So yeah, think about that. If I was a ever at a startup or at a company that
[02:01:12] who, whose profitability depended on a live service, like piece of hardware for, for, for the,
[02:01:20] the mental wellbeing of children. I, even if I, if I had to do this defiantly and subversively,
[02:01:28] I would code into it some sort of kill switch that like, if the servers went off, it would keep
[02:01:33] working. Right. And yes, maybe that would make it easier to hack or to pirate these like, you know,
[02:01:38] emotional support robots, but like that is pretty fucked. I'm just, that's people.
[02:01:50] Speaking of people, uh, Ev Williams, uh, co-founder at Twitter, then later the founder of medium,
[02:01:58] he's exited medium, uh, at this point, he's, uh, a cool announcement post posted on medium about a
[02:02:08] social media app or so nice to say a social network that, that he has launched. Uh, he's like an advisory
[02:02:16] role and he, he, he, I surely helped fund it. It's called Mosey M O Z I dot app. And this social
[02:02:25] network, when you first look at it, it, it, it reminds you of all of like peach and these other
[02:02:33] ones in like 2010, 2011, 2012, before Apple locked down the contacts API behind a, behind a user prompt,
[02:02:39] a privacy prompt, it, it is very simple.
[02:02:47] It is reasonable to look at this cynically or think that they're just harvesting our data,
[02:02:53] but the message behind it in this essay that I'll share is so on point. It is,
[02:03:01] it is basically for the first time making a clear delineation between what is a social network and what
[02:03:08] is social media. And if you think of a social network as something that actually helps you
[02:03:13] keep track of the people you actually know in real life, you know, where they're located,
[02:03:18] you know, their address, you know, how to get ahold of them. You know, it's when their birthday,
[02:03:21] basically Facebook 1.5, right? Pre newsfeed Facebook. And when the newsfeed hit and then
[02:03:32] everything like in 2014, Twitter goes to an algorithmic timeline, Instagram goes from being a
[02:03:37] chronological feed of just your friend's photos. And again, to an algorithmic timeline that's,
[02:03:41] and now is increasingly pushing in other people's stuff or even artificial stuff into the feed.
[02:03:46] That's when they became social media replacing and really, you know, supplanting traditional media.
[02:03:54] And we can, we, we spend a lot of time talking about the media landscape and whether that's good
[02:03:59] or bad and how corrosive it's been for society and so forth. We talk less about what was lost from
[02:04:06] just having a glorified address book that was on a network and, uh, that was all synced, right?
[02:04:12] So we could know, cause even now, you know, you go to Facebook and you don't know if like friends
[02:04:16] deleted their account or if it's up to date because no one updates their Facebook shit anymore.
[02:04:20] We don't really have a place to go and look for even just how to contact people that mean something
[02:04:27] to us in our lives. And of course, starting a new social network now that looks at your contacts
[02:04:31] is not going to overnight restore this problem. But the, the, the main function of the app,
[02:04:38] other than just have a place to log all your friends and one, you know, kind of centralized place,
[02:04:43] which is maybe not of zero value, but there's a million ways to do that at this point.
[02:04:49] It is to state where you are located and then to, when you're going to be located anywhere else,
[02:04:55] the only other activity really that you can do is you plan a trip. You say, oh, I'm in Japan from
[02:04:59] here and here. I'm in LA from here to here. I'm in Chicago on these days, or maybe I'm connecting this
[02:05:05] day and I've got a full day here. Uh, you enter those plans in and then any friends of yours that either
[02:05:12] live in that city or happen to also have a plan that has them in that city will be notified.
[02:05:19] You'll be, oh, so, and so is also connecting in LA this week, like, oh, and, or this day. And you,
[02:05:24] maybe you could see them in the terminal, like these, uh, the opportunity for serendipitous run-ins with
[02:05:31] people that, you know, now, Hey, you might be from a small town and everyone, you know, is from that small
[02:05:36] town. Right. And if that's the case, this app is going to make no fucking sense. But if you're like me,
[02:05:41] and like a lot of my friends are people that I met while traveling, uh, who, who do move around a bit,
[02:05:48] or if you're like me and you live in goddamn Orlando where 75 million people come every year on vacation,
[02:05:53] uh, they come because they don't pull out of their pump and dump scheme
[02:05:59] or maybe they do. And that's what, how they get the money. Oh, God damn it. The
[02:06:10] Aaron's pun just sent me on a path and I'm not in a good place right now. Uh,
[02:06:15] because people come to Orlando, uh, and me having a login to this account, right? Where people can,
[02:06:25] once I share my contacts, anyone else who joins and they ingest their contacts will see me and they'll,
[02:06:31] will be connected. If they've got notifications turned on and they land at MCO, they'll get a push
[02:06:36] notification right after they get there, you know, you know, the phone comes back online or
[02:06:41] whatever. They'll be like, Oh, Justin's here. Cause I've had so many friends come and go from this
[02:06:46] city since I moved here and forget that I was here or forget to contact me or claim to forget.
[02:06:51] Well, now they get an additional little tickle to say, Hey, go, go hang out with Justin. He'll buy
[02:06:56] you a coffee. Uh, so yeah, anyway, I installed it. I'll link to it. I think it's a good essay. I think
[02:07:02] it's important for us to think about what in this sort of, whether you call it federated
[02:07:07] fediverse or whether you just think about it as sort of like the, the sudden revolutionary
[02:07:14] aspect of creating boring ass web apps that don't try to be network scale media, uh,
[02:07:23] it, it, it, it opens the mind to what could a social network that refuses to be social media,
[02:07:32] what could it be? Right. Cause we look back on a lot of these things like four square and swarm
[02:07:37] as failures because they did get swamped by a naive populace that, uh, kind of gladly gobbled up the,
[02:07:45] the skinner boxes of social media apps and didn't leave any room for, for a social network app that
[02:07:53] was truly social. So Mosey and this, this essay, they exist in a point in time. And that point in time
[02:08:01] that it's like a month after this particular electoral result in the U S probably was very
[02:08:06] good timing for them to launch. So hopefully some people try it out. Hopefully you, you download it,
[02:08:11] prepare to be underwhelmed. I mean, it doesn't do very much, but that's also kind of the point.
[02:08:14] I told you I'd, I'd be talking about vision pro and video gaming. Uh, so video games chronicle,
[02:08:23] uh, I think they might've been the first with the news that the vision pro is getting
[02:08:30] PlayStation VR to controller support. No, it was Mark Gurman. I think, uh, you know what,
[02:08:36] maybe I should click the links and cite things properly. Yep. It was Bloomberg. So yeah,
[02:08:42] Gurman came up with this report. If you haven't heard of the PlayStation VR too, it's a followup to
[02:08:48] the place in VR, uh, except you need to have a PS five, which costs $600 and, uh, it doesn't play
[02:08:53] any of the PS VR games from the PS four. It can't play them. Uh, Sony really did put their back behind
[02:08:59] this, this product. It, it, it is a high performance, really cool headset, lots of
[02:09:04] advanced features like the eye tracking, like foveated rendering, like we talked about earlier,
[02:09:07] uh, HDR screens, like really beautiful, like OLED, uh, uh, displays. Uh, and, uh, then they,
[02:09:15] they built two games and then no one else built games because the VR gaming market is sort of, uh,
[02:09:22] metas right now. Like meta has bought a lot of VR gaming studios and they're paying big dollars still to
[02:09:28] get exclusives like the new Batman Arkham game. Uh, and so there's just like it, even before this,
[02:09:35] the PlayStation VR to launched, you could tell Sony knew it was going to fail.
[02:09:38] And so they didn't really put a lot behind the marketing for it. It had like a big day on the
[02:09:44] internet when the reviews went out and then it was mostly forgotten. And so there are a lot of
[02:09:50] PlayStation VR two units just sitting around in warehouses and Apple, I think has gotten the memo
[02:09:57] that when they initially announced the, the division pro and notably did not use the name VR,
[02:10:04] the word virtual reality anywhere in their presentation. And I don't think that they have yet.
[02:10:10] Uh, they wanted it to not look like a VR headset. They wanted it to look like not a gaming device.
[02:10:15] The only reference to gaming was playing flat Apple arcade games with a, you know, like a,
[02:10:22] like a PlayStation controller, like a traditional controller while strapped on to the headset, you know?
[02:10:33] It is limiting because even now that there are games that are made for the vision pro like fruit ninja
[02:10:39] or whatever, or some knockoff version of, uh, uh, blade dual blade, what is the beat saber?
[02:10:49] Uh, you know, hand tracking is not sufficient. It's, it's insufficiently accurate and consistent.
[02:10:57] And some games, you know, like you play like a table tennis kind of game.
[02:11:01] Uh, if you're not holding something in your hand or something that like a thing that vibrates or
[02:11:07] provide some kind of tactile feedback, like you're not getting as good of an experience at a certain
[02:11:11] point, you're just waving your arms around. And, uh, that was, you know, it's not, that's not a
[02:11:19] premium gaming experience, but Apple didn't want to pre position the platform that way. And they probably
[02:11:25] still don't want too much of such an association to develop. Like as much as I would love for them to
[02:11:31] add support for the steam OS, you know, like, like a steam link, right. Uh, or some way to like cast the
[02:11:40] VR from the computer. They're probably not going to do that. Cause they, they have nothing to gain by that.
[02:11:46] So it's interesting, but not surprising that this, uh, these two situations would coalesce where PlayStation
[02:11:56] has a whole bunch of these VR two units just sitting around in boxes and literally in the box are two
[02:12:01] really nice controllers that are full blown. You know, you take these two controllers and aggregate,
[02:12:08] like they can do everything that a normal gaming controller can do, but they are high resolution.
[02:12:14] like, uh, I say resolution in the sense of like very accurate, uh, uh, uh, easy to track devices.
[02:12:21] And Apple and Sony are apparently going to put their two unfortunate situations together to try to
[02:12:28] make some kind of headway, uh, by, by the vision pro supporting the VR two controllers and then selling
[02:12:35] those VR VR two controllers, which I imagine will be literally shucked out of these boxes and these
[02:12:40] warehouses and then repackaged for sale as a standalone skews in the Apple retail channel.
[02:12:46] Uh, people have had reactions to this. I mean, one of them is like, you know, the operating system
[02:12:55] level support was rumored from the get go that like they, they'd been playing with some sort of wand
[02:13:00] device. So like, you know, a thing that you would hold in your hand or a thimble that would, that would
[02:13:04] provide for, for, for pinpoint accuracy, cursor, like tracking in the vision pro. Uh, I think frankly,
[02:13:11] like I would still really like that just while I'm using a computer rather than forcing me to have
[02:13:17] a mouse or a trackpad next to me, if I could just point and use like a finger gun sort of thing, but
[02:13:21] like a highly accurate one, that'd be interesting, especially if I could still like the thimble thing
[02:13:24] in particular, like if I could still type with that thimble on, that'd be interesting, but I'm not
[02:13:30] concerned. Like I think the OS probably could support this with minimal effort.
[02:13:33] You get into the sick, so much of what makes the vision pro disappointing is the exact same stuff
[02:13:42] that made the Apple TV disappointing because the Apple TV waited for a long time before it had any
[02:13:47] sort of controller support. It finally got controller support. Uh, you could theoretically install games
[02:13:53] to it, but now you have such a tiny user base. Um, there might be a lot of Apple TVs out there,
[02:13:59] but there's a tiny user base of people who know how to install or will ever install an app other
[02:14:03] than whatever their primary streaming services are. Uh, you're already starting with a small group of
[02:14:10] people and now an even smaller group of even more hardcore people who would also have figured out how
[02:14:14] to pair a proprietary, you know, controller to your Apple TV is even smaller still. And Apple of course
[02:14:21] was requiring everyone to not require the use of a controller. So you had to, the games had to work with a
[02:14:28] remote. This strikes me as something that's probably going to be very reminiscent of that where, yeah,
[02:14:33] it technically is supported. Uh, you will, you know, be able to buy these controllers, but probably
[02:14:40] no games, approximately none of them will like actually support it properly. Now,
[02:14:45] if Apple wanted to make this headset more attractive to hardcore gamers or to any audience,
[02:14:53] they would throw money at independent developers to make compelling software for it.
[02:14:57] And games are very compelling software because you can't have a VR like gaming experience elsewhere.
[02:15:02] Now the M two is a, is a good processor. If they updated it to an M four or an M five,
[02:15:10] you know, down the road and otherwise kept mostly the same hardware people were,
[02:15:14] there was a report about that recently. Like, well, what would you, what would that really
[02:15:17] afford you as a user, you know, with the current software stack? The answer is not much, but
[02:15:22] you know, uh, let's say they do, um, a deal with CD project red and they bring cyberpunk in VR,
[02:15:31] right? Exclusive to Apple vision pro. Now we're talking, right? Cause the Apple vision pro as a
[02:15:36] standalone unit has just enough horsepower. If it had an M five in it or an M four to maybe possibly run that,
[02:15:44] or, uh, you know, uh, they're always willing to do a deal. Uh, uh,
[02:15:49] hello games could do no man's sky port for vision pro. Now, no man's sky is already available in VR on
[02:15:56] PC and on Sony PlayStation, but you know, it's, the game is sort of like a 3d outer space operating system,
[02:16:04] having 4k displays and, and having it all happen locally, it would be pretty sweet.
[02:16:10] Like if I could play no man's sky somehow from the airport or from a hotel, yeah, that would be like
[02:16:15] the only game I need to get, to get through a three day trip. But here I am dreaming and that's
[02:16:23] all it is is a dream. And I refuse to get my hopes up because, uh, when it comes to gaming,
[02:16:29] Apple is not to be trusted. Speaking of video games and, uh, the current media landscape, uh,
[02:16:36] there are fewer and fewer actual capital J journalists reporting on the video game industry.
[02:16:43] So even though the gaming industry is now worth more money than, than has ever been, there are
[02:16:48] probably fewer journalists doing actual muck raking than there have ever been. Uh, and you know, like
[02:16:55] games journalism has always been sort of a joke because the, your source is also the people who are
[02:17:01] using you to try to promote their wares. Uh, so, you know, you'd be a natural conflict of interest.
[02:17:08] Even if you try to keep the reviews, people separate from the news, people separate from the previews,
[02:17:13] people are the people who kind of go to the pressers and, and, and, uh, more or less just parrot,
[02:17:18] whatever the PR people say. So, I mean, it's always been complicated. Uh, but the current, you know,
[02:17:25] situation of how hard it is to turn attention into dollars means that, you know, influencers have
[02:17:34] sort of taken over the, the games journalism landscape. And if you have somebody whose opinion
[02:17:40] you really like, and they, they talk about the games you care about, then that's going to capture
[02:17:45] your attention. Uh, and the platforms will reward that person with pennies on the dollar
[02:17:50] as they capture most of the, uh, you know, the revenue from that. It just doesn't leave a lot
[02:17:56] of room for somebody who makes a salary and has benefits, uh, at a proper corporation, uh,
[02:18:02] or, or the various support that you would need to like, you know, be a real journalistic out outlet.
[02:18:09] And the same exact thing we're seeing and the tech press and the, and, you know, political press and
[02:18:14] newspapers video games chronicle that I'd mentioned earlier seems to be one of the last, um,
[02:18:24] yeah, their, their, their news seems good and they actually report things. Uh, so, uh,
[02:18:31] I'll link to them for their, their summary post of the, uh, 2024 game awards. Uh, the video game awards
[02:18:41] started on like maybe spike TV, like early two thousands. And then this fellow, Jeff Keighley
[02:18:49] was always kind of around and part of it. And it was like a big production with, you know, scantily
[02:18:54] clad women and, and Snoop dog. And it was, it was trying to figure out who was this for, uh, because
[02:19:02] video games are nerdy and, and you know, you had shitty television executives trying to sex it up.
[02:19:10] At some point, Jeff Keighley, like rested control of the, the name, uh, and just started doing his
[02:19:20] own things. He's got the summer games for us and then the game awards. And when E3, if you know about
[02:19:25] about the E3 show trade show, fell apart, uh, he stepped up in the kind of post COVID era,
[02:19:33] especially. And now, now Keighley and his, his events team basically, uh, provide the two biggest,
[02:19:40] at least in America, the two biggest, uh, events per year for, uh, video game publishers to show off
[02:19:49] their, their games. Uh, most game publishers, like the big ones, like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo,
[02:19:57] they prefer to directly just do their own events, do their own videos, uh, online without some
[02:20:05] intermediary, but for the third party publishers and for smaller publishers, they just want to get
[02:20:11] the word out any which way. And so they'll do exclusive game reveals and trailers at these two
[02:20:17] events, summer game fest and the game awards. So weirdly the game awards have become about
[02:20:23] everything other than the games we all just played and which one was the best.
[02:20:27] Like there are similar to how it spike TV. It was like about, you know, getting a random
[02:20:33] B tier celebrities on stage and tits and ass and that sort of thing. Like wasn't really about, you know,
[02:20:39] uh, the, the, the, uh, critical success of different video games and so forth.
[02:20:44] Uh, now the game awards is actually mostly about trailers for games that are coming out next year
[02:20:49] and beyond and much less about reflecting on the year that was, uh, although so many game studios have
[02:20:57] been closing lately that I kind of wish that they would do a, uh, an in memoriam section like you have
[02:21:02] at the beginning of the Oscars where you play some sad Sarah McLachlan when music and you say,
[02:21:07] say, Hey, sorry, arcane Austin, you know, you know, of course, like, because, and this is goes back to
[02:21:13] the conflicts of interest. They would never do something like that because the way that their
[02:21:15] bread is buttered is paying paid promotional. Like if you want to get your trailer in the video game
[02:21:20] awards, you're paying Keely and his people money to put it there. They have some that are sponsored,
[02:21:27] some that are just sort of newsy. Like they like where we're both parties benefit because it's a big reveal.
[02:21:33] probably money doesn't change hands, but then you like watch the 15th, uh, you know, trailer for some
[02:21:40] free to play Chinese mobile game. Right. That's like clearly kind of like a pump and dump scheme, but, but, uh,
[02:21:50] instead of cryptocurrency, it's just fake currency. Uh, yeah. So, so they would never go so far as to bite
[02:21:59] the hand that feeds and make fun of the fact that the big publishers, even when they're having record
[02:22:04] setting years will, uh, nevertheless shut down studios, uh, no matter how successful. So, uh,
[02:22:13] I can tell you that the game that won 2024 game of the year is called Astro bot. It's a platformer for PS5.
[02:22:18] And, uh, that, that, that, that award and that, that, that honor and that accolade was maybe
[02:22:25] 0.1% of the coverage as it were. Um, because no one fucking cares about that. Everyone only cares
[02:22:32] about what's what's next, what's coming. And there were like, I'll, I'll link to the overall post and
[02:22:38] you can scroll through. There's good trailers for Witcher 4, which is going to star Ciri instead of
[02:22:42] Geralt, but lots of different games, like some stuff that was surprising, some stuff that was less
[02:22:46] surprising. For example, you know, like the, uh, the, the studio that makes the Yakuza like a dragon
[02:22:51] series is making one called project century. That is a 1950, 1915 Japan. So pre war kind of height of
[02:23:01] the emperor empire pre war. And, uh, you know, looks like a kind of classic beat them up in an old
[02:23:08] setting. Uh, you know, interesting stuff, but far and away the most interesting and the most delightful
[02:23:16] trailer of these new reveals and part kind of impressive that they were able to keep this under
[02:23:22] wraps for so long was called intergalactic as an intergalactic, planetary, planetary, intergalactic
[02:23:30] colon, the heretic profit, uh, profit with a pH.
[02:23:39] Uh, and this is the new naughty dog game. So naughty dog, you know, they made crash bandicoot
[02:23:44] and then Jack and Daxter. Actually, they, they roll these all off in, in, in the trailer, uh,
[02:23:50] uncharted and last of us. And like a lot of places, uh, their, their output, uh, slowed down over the
[02:23:59] year because the costs and the complexity of developing a triple a game is more and more complex every year.
[02:24:05] So they released what, um, uncharted one, two, and three and last of us. So four games in the PS4 era
[02:24:10] and then the PS5 era. No, wait, wait, wait. Uh, sorry. Got that all wrong. Uncharted one,
[02:24:17] two, and three were on the PS3 last of us also on the PS3. Everything's it's been such an unproductive
[02:24:25] decade in video games that like, I'm already, I'm off by one in these generations.
[02:24:29] The PS4 then saw uncharted four, uh, and an expansion pack and it saw the, um,
[02:24:36] well, the first of what became two last of us re-releases and then last of us part two.
[02:24:42] So really just kind of like two and a half games on the PS4 and the PS5 so far has seen bupkis. Uh,
[02:24:49] Naughty Dog has released remasters of last of us and last of us part two. And you know,
[02:24:57] with the HBO series, um, being so successful, uh, one, I remember when last of us was first announced,
[02:25:06] I'm not a big zombie guy, but I was really impressed that they broke out of that uncharted series.
[02:25:13] Uncharted is kind of a, uh, uh, you know, it's, uh, an off-brand cereal in the bottom rack at the,
[02:25:23] at the grocery store version of Indiana Jones. Uh, it's, it's snarky. It's silly. Uh, it's, uh,
[02:25:31] you know, got a lot of shooting. It's kind of a shooting gallery with Indiana Jones-esque
[02:25:36] set pieces and cut scenes in the middle. Uncharted was much more serious and stayed and had less
[02:25:44] dissonance between the cut scenes and the gameplay. Cause it was slower and more stealth action.
[02:25:48] Uh, you wouldn't like, you know, in the uncharted games, the, the phrase, uh, the term ludo narrative
[02:25:55] dissonance, that is to say the dissonance between what the story is doing and what you, the character
[02:26:02] are doing was extreme. Like, you know, people, you'd be like, oh man, I can't believe I, I killed
[02:26:08] this guy. That's really something else. And then like the scene before that doesn't make any sense.
[02:26:14] Cause like you, you just had to mow down like 400 guards with an automated turret or something, right?
[02:26:19] Like each of the games that they've made. So like the, the, from, from uncharted to last of us,
[02:26:27] it was more grounded. It was more real. It was slower paced. It was the, them telling a story
[02:26:33] in interactive and non-interactive ways. They got better each time. And my fear was now that they've
[02:26:43] got this sort of marquee franchise that they would just keep on milking it into the ground. And that's
[02:26:48] just generally been the vibe of what Sony's output over the last five years is, is what they call them,
[02:26:54] uh, sad dad games. Like whether you're, you're Joel from, uh, last of us or your, uh,
[02:27:01] Kratos from, from God of war now with your sad kid. Uh, you know, there is, uh, something to be said
[02:27:12] for the fact that they're now doing a new series. They're doing something called intergalactic,
[02:27:16] the heretic prophet. And it is, it looks, I'll be honest, it looks dope as fuck. You see a, um,
[02:27:25] now I'm sure that the internet's not going to like this, but the apparent protagonist is a woman of
[02:27:31] color. So I'm sure that they'll find a way to shit all over it. And just like star Wars outlaws,
[02:27:35] which started a woman, uh, uh, character got just, you know, review bombed into oblivion to the point
[02:27:42] where now Ubisoft is potentially going to have to take itself private. Uh, cause gamers are toxic
[02:27:48] assholes and online gaming culture is just absolutely terrible. So, you know, we'll see how this goes.
[02:27:55] Uh, but God, it looks awesome. Like you, you're a fucking futuristic bounty hunter in space down on
[02:28:04] your luck. You solo in a ship, uh, the ship, you know, whenever you see an outer space themed game,
[02:28:11] you one assumes that there's going to be a lot of world building. Oh, it's like universe like ours,
[02:28:17] but not ours. And, you know, you got to learn all these faction names. And this is what
[02:28:23] was interesting to me was that you had Bethesda game works just went from like the similar sort of
[02:28:27] trajectory of the elder scroll skyrim and then the fallout. And then like, you know,
[02:28:31] the, now they go to outer space with star field and like, they're making the same game each time,
[02:28:35] basically just in different settings. Naughty dog, I think elevates each time that they, that they've
[02:28:41] jumped between series. Certainly if you, if you go as far back as like Jack and Daxter to, to uncharted.
[02:28:48] So what that they, that the first cut in this trailer, it zooms out and you see the, the,
[02:28:56] the ship moving forward towards this kind of sundered moon and the back of the spaceship that your
[02:29:05] protagonist is, is, is flying says Porsche in, in real, you know, Porsche typography.
[02:29:13] And then you realize, oh yeah, that's what this is. This is a real, our universe,
[02:29:20] just fast forward a few hundred years with just enough corpo dystopia that Porsche is still making
[02:29:26] fucking personal vehicles.
[02:29:30] I know if hopefully they were able to get Porsche to pay some money for that.
[02:29:35] But it's, um, I, I think one of the reasons why so many space opera kind of properties fail is that
[02:29:43] they all want to be the next star Wars. So they all want to create their own universe.
[02:29:46] Like mass effect was this way. And it's like manager. Yes. Technically earth was there and stuff,
[02:29:52] but like it, it was so much creating complexity and lore that it was, it became, it felt like work
[02:29:58] and halo has gotten to be that way. Right. And star field was from the jump that way where they try to
[02:30:06] like, you know, uh, hand wave away our, you know, our first planet as quickly as possible. And we'll see
[02:30:12] how this one plays out. But the fact that it says Porsche like that, I think that was a wink that was
[02:30:16] like, this is going to be pretty grounded. Uh, so, so I'll, I'll link to the YouTube of that one in
[02:30:21] particular because it looks real fucking good. Now you look at this list and you think, man,
[02:30:30] there's a lot of real bangers. There's some good fucking games coming out. And then, and this was
[02:30:34] kind of a dry year. A lot of indie games got highlighted. I, of course I want lots of good
[02:30:44] games to come out, but the problem is when I see like 15 really fucking
[02:30:50] high budget, great games that are exactly the kind that I say that I want, that everyone else says
[02:30:54] that they want is like, I'm not going to pay $70 to play each of those 15 games.
[02:30:59] No one is. You'll get game pass. You'll get a, you'll wait for them to go on sale unless they're
[02:31:04] from Nintendo and Nintendo is completely absent at this thing, of course, because they're going to be
[02:31:08] announcing their new switch product probably after the holiday. Uh, plus they go to direct anyway.
[02:31:17] So, so you have all these great games and really fundamentally, I think we got a supply demand issue.
[02:31:24] Like the demand for games has never been bigger. People are paying more and more money
[02:31:29] for games, except that the, like, like that pie is mostly in that purchases and like Apple is getting
[02:31:34] 30% of it. And those aren't, when I say games, that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking
[02:31:39] about these triple a experiences, but so many of them now, even if you just look at the triple a games
[02:31:45] or like live service games that try to like suck in all of your attention all the time so that you're
[02:31:49] living their battle pass to battle pass and you're not tempted to go and try other games or they are
[02:31:56] the high production, big budget thing. And they have a one shot chance to get your $70. Or if you want
[02:32:02] to play it three days early, you're a hundred dollars. And that's a one big bang revenue, you know,
[02:32:08] windfall. Sure. But it's got to fund several years of cost of, of developers and artists and marketing
[02:32:20] and all of the complexity that goes into building something that's like effectively as, as, as
[02:32:24] complex, if not more than a blockbuster film.
[02:32:27] So I, I see all, all of these games and I kind of felt like, oh, this is bad. This just means
[02:32:36] some of these games are going to come out and they're going to go up against GTA six next year,
[02:32:41] Grand Theft Auto six, and they're going to get fucking murdered. And they're just gonna,
[02:32:45] we're going to see these studios disappear. And it may be from a supply demand perspective,
[02:32:51] right? Like if the market for people who are willing to pay full price for games is way less
[02:32:55] than it used to be. You think about that mom earlier who bought a $200 switch and was like,
[02:33:00] whoa, what the fuck? No. I mean like the, you don't even just for inflation,
[02:33:05] like the NES was $200. The super NES was $200. The Nintendo 64 was $250. And then you gladly,
[02:33:13] you know, you're the mom who bought the Nintendo 64. You glad you fought tooth and nail to get a copy of
[02:33:19] GoldenEye, you know, for your kid for Christmas. And that was $90, right? Because, because, because
[02:33:27] retailers would mark them up because it was rare. So things have changed enough now that I worry that,
[02:33:35] you know, even with all these great games coming out, that doesn't mean that the industry is healthier.
[02:33:39] It means that like more shoes are out there and they must drop because the structural problems facing
[02:33:46] the gaming industry remain unresolved. So that's a bit of a douche chill. Sorry.
[02:33:51] Talking about games, let's talk about that new Luigi game. Everyone's
[02:34:03] all excited about it. Of course, I'm referring to the fellow Luigi Mangione. Don't write in to tell me
[02:34:17] how to pronounce it. I'm not going to just start watching the news. I thought about loading a video
[02:34:21] just to see how it's pronounced, but I don't care. I'm going to link to the Verges article because I think
[02:34:26] it did the best. Liz Lopata wrote it. I think it did the best job summarizing
[02:34:30] the media angle on this, which, you know, 10, 12 years ago, there was a movement in media to not
[02:34:43] report on the identities and the manifestos and the tawdry life details of mass murderers or murderers
[02:34:52] generally, because all you're going to do is encourage copycats. And if the thing that,
[02:34:57] if the reason that they're killing something, someone is to get attention, giving them that
[02:35:02] attention by, by virtue of, of talking all about them and their, their feelings and their thoughts
[02:35:07] and putting their picture on the TV is to reward the behavior. And like anyone who's so similarly
[02:35:13] disposed, we'll just go in and commit copycat crimes. And I think that became part of the,
[02:35:19] not just journalistic best practice, but a sort of like understanding of, well, you know,
[02:35:23] we want less school shootings. And one way to do that is to not, uh, glorify the shooters by,
[02:35:29] by giving them all of this attention. Well, unless you kill somebody that everyone hates,
[02:35:36] there's not a political constituency. That's like a huge fan of the CEO of United healthcare.
[02:35:44] I mean, there, there is like, it's called the shareholders of United healthcare, um, because
[02:35:51] CEOs in the modern day, they exist primarily as useful idiots to run companies, to extract profits
[02:36:02] for shareholders. They get their hands dirty so that the shareholders don't have to, and they are
[02:36:08] remunerated in the form of, um, you know, up to a million dollars in salary can be a tax deducted.
[02:36:16] Uh, that was a law passed during the Clinton administration. The idea at the time was, okay,
[02:36:20] we're going to put a cap on CEO pay because of the income disparity. And then of course, what all the
[02:36:25] companies did was, okay, well, I guess the rest of your pay has to come from stock, which means now
[02:36:29] you're, you're actually better aligned with us. So we'll, we'll pay you in stock options or stock
[02:36:35] in some kind of equity relief. And that means that if you can make that number go up, you, you get paid
[02:36:41] more, we get paid more. Right. But don't be fooled. Right. Even though the CEO is a shareholder, the CEO
[02:36:48] works for the board works for the shareholders. If numbers start going in the wrong direction,
[02:36:55] it doesn't matter how popular a CEO you are. Like, unless you have lock stock and barrel control of
[02:37:00] the board, like Elon does at Tesla, that he just reaffirmed with his $45 billion pay package, or like
[02:37:06] Mark Zuckerberg does and having like preferential stock and Sergey Brin and whatnot, uh, Larry page
[02:37:12] at alphabet as well. Unless you've got some kind of stock that basically makes you the only one with
[02:37:17] real voting rights. You know, if you're Tim cook, even right, like that's a normal fucking company.
[02:37:23] Like, like he's got two down quarters in a row and he's, they're going to people be talking about
[02:37:27] getting rid of him. So the loyalty only extends as far to a CEO and the, the job definition is only
[02:37:35] really like how much, what have you done for me lately? How's the, the IRR look for the investors of
[02:37:42] this, you know, equity. So yeah, you know, United healthcare CEO get shot. Luigi does it, which again,
[02:37:54] you know, I'm sure Nintendo is thrilled about.
[02:37:56] I, I don't have a lot to say other than I think the media angle is interesting that like, as soon as
[02:38:05] it was somebody we all hated, we're like, all right. And of course we don't, none of us knew
[02:38:10] the fucking UHC CEO's name right before this happened, the CEO exists as a figurehead in all
[02:38:17] of our imaginations of like, you know, cause we know that like the first story that you see about
[02:38:23] like this happening, right? Like, and this is before they had any, like the, the news had just broken.
[02:38:28] The first thing we see, like this happened, I was in the, um, Atlanta airport when I saw the news.
[02:38:33] First thing you see is like UHC has the highest, um, denials claim denials of any of the major
[02:38:41] for-profit insurers. And the second thing that you see is that their profitability was best.
[02:38:47] You take those two things together and doesn't take a genius to be like, okay, well,
[02:38:50] whoever the CEO is must've been really good at making more profits by denying care.
[02:38:55] So whatever his name is, right, he is, uh, uh, he was, and that company is a sort of example of
[02:39:02] exemplar of all the things about for-profit healthcare for health insurance that like
[02:39:09] Americans don't like that no one likes because it's unjust and because it's stupid and silly.
[02:39:14] And it's part of the system that we have. And you might, you might politically defend its right to
[02:39:18] exist and, and it's, it's superiority to having the government be more involved in it. But it,
[02:39:24] unlike so many other things in our two sides of the politic, like it doesn't make you like, like
[02:39:30] rooting for this guy, right? This is, you know, if you're the hardcore right wing Gordon Gekko greed is
[02:39:39] good kind of person, the UHC CEO fucked up because he wasn't rich enough to have a private security detail
[02:39:46] that was robust enough to protect him from this event. You know, if you believe in survival of the
[02:39:52] fittest, this CEO should have had a huge bump, like, like, like secret service around him and he should
[02:40:00] have paid for that. Otherwise he was just being insufficiently ruthless. And so like at both
[02:40:08] ends of the spectrum, basically they look at this killer and they're like, yeah, all right, good game.
[02:40:13] Right. And so like, that's, uh, huh? I don't have strong feelings about it. To be honest,
[02:40:22] I, I, I'm just, you know, like I said, uh, around the election, I realized at some point that I don't
[02:40:28] actually have any stake and, and I feel like I'll probably be fine either way. I just want to know
[02:40:37] what the future is. And in this case too, I kind of wonder as like, is this like the, uh, the gilded
[02:40:43] age where all of a sudden we saw, you know, railroad barons and other people, you know, from the trusts
[02:40:49] kind of become targeted by an increasingly furious populace, you know, and populace movements that
[02:40:56] were kind of like violent at times. Like, is that where we're going?
[02:41:02] I'm just curious. I, yeah, I don't know, but it's definitely been interesting to see the contrast
[02:41:08] between how this person's being covered and how viciously the internet is attacking
[02:41:13] news sources that, you know, try to downplay, you know, are still playing by the playbook,
[02:41:19] like the Boston marathon bombings of like, you know, like trying not to like, you know,
[02:41:22] get the message out about the person. Uh, I, I, I was scrolling through Reddit and like one of the
[02:41:28] whole threads here was like people getting mad at McDonald's corporation because they hired a snitch
[02:41:33] because it was somebody who worked at a McDonald's that turned the guy in like this.
[02:41:37] This is a materially different. So I mean, my first reaction seeing this was like, well,
[02:41:46] every CEO on the planet now is going to insist on us like, like if they work for an immoral industry,
[02:41:52] like an extractive resource industry or something like for profit health insurance,
[02:41:57] they're all going to demand in their contract, just like they demand private jets and whatnot,
[02:42:01] effectively a PMC, a private military contractor, right. To guard them. And that's,
[02:42:08] you know, you can, one can imagine the sort of dystopian corporatized, uh, military protection of the
[02:42:15] executives of, of companies that do bad things. And we're only a hop, skip and a jump away from,
[02:42:21] you know, Mad Max
[02:42:23] dystopia. That's punctuated by these sort of biosphere bubbles over safe zones, uh, 20, 30 years
[02:42:30] out. So this is, you know, maybe this is how we get to outer space driving really cool spaceships.
[02:42:36] Let's say Porsche on the back is all I'm saying.
[02:42:40] Uh huh. Don't have a segue here. Next item. There is a,
[02:42:45] an invisible desktop application that you can run is available on, on github.com called interview
[02:42:53] coder. And, uh, if you are being interviewed for a tech job, uh, you can run this thing while you're
[02:43:02] your pair programming and you can have it perform various, uh, functionality to either give you the
[02:43:09] answers in a way that is invisible to the interviewer or, or auto complete code for you.
[02:43:14] If you're an employer and you want to hire a programmer, it is really, really hard to ascertain.
[02:43:25] Are they good at programming or are they good at talking about programming or both or neither?
[02:43:31] Additionally, even somebody who's good at programming might not be a good team member.
[02:43:39] They might not be a strong communicator. They might have other quirks and quirbles and,
[02:43:43] and, and, and, and, and, and pros and cons that are difficult to assess inside of an hour or two hours.
[02:43:51] And just like Jane could all observe that, like, you know, you cannot observe the apes
[02:43:54] without affecting them. So you may as well just dive in like, there is no way the best programmers
[02:44:01] that I've met are relatively emotionally sensitive and hyper aware. And so like, there's no way to
[02:44:10] interview somebody who is, who is extremely in tune with their mind and their feelings and their thoughts
[02:44:17] and present without assuming a relatively high level of stress and anxiety during something that's as high
[02:44:26] stakes as a job interview. You know, like I've had to interview a lot of programmers and I've actually
[02:44:31] had to interview a lot of sales reps. And I took from my experience interviewing programmers, like
[02:44:38] it is my job as the interviewer to make them feel safe, to lower the stakes. I've had new,
[02:44:45] once I had more notoriety as a developer, I had numerous candidates cry, breakout crying when they
[02:44:51] didn't know an answer. Cause they were like, I am not only unlikely to get this job, but this guy who
[02:44:57] I look up to is going to think I'm stupid. I, I remember I'll never forget the first time it happened.
[02:45:03] The person turned off their video and then they, they, they made an excuse, you know, when I could very
[02:45:08] obviously hear that they were crying and I was, you know, I was at a conference, I was in like one of
[02:45:13] those little like cubbies, uh, in a lobby and a Hilton trying to do this call on bad wifi.
[02:45:20] And I was like, what am I even doing? You know? So I took those experiences with me when I started
[02:45:26] interviewing sales candidates and the sales candidates were so polished and so, uh, unflappable
[02:45:35] and so seemingly comfortable and self-confident and so self-assured that at first glance, I was like,
[02:45:44] all right, like these, these people are generally pretty good. You, then you hire a few and you're like,
[02:45:49] well, you're really good at thinking that you're really good
[02:45:54] and being impervious to the judgment of others. And, and that's not a skill, right? That's not like a
[02:46:03] something to celebrate, but it's, it's a factor here. When we talk about how to best hire programmers,
[02:46:12] it's like, well, no amount of quizzes, no amount of pair programming exercises, no amount of take home,
[02:46:20] you know, questionnaires and, and, and, and, and puzzles is going to actually accurately tell us how
[02:46:28] the person shows up for work because none of that is the work. Increasingly, I feel like the only way to
[02:46:34] do it is to hire somebody on contract for a couple of weeks or maybe a little longer if you need to give
[02:46:40] them a little bit more runway. You know, you know, that's the last phase is we hire everyone provisionally
[02:46:47] and not on a full-time basis. And, you know, again, that's exclusionary in certain ways. Like
[02:46:53] some people, like maybe they're at a current job and like, you know, if they were to go and jump ship
[02:46:57] to work for you for a couple of weeks or whatever, on a, on a, on a contingent basis, like that's too
[02:47:02] much risk that, that you're then loading from the company to the employee. And I get it, but I, you know,
[02:47:10] short of doing the work with me, I don't know if you can do the work with me and no one has yet found
[02:47:15] a good substitute for that. Uh, probably the best thing that you can do as a potential programmer
[02:47:22] is because programming is something that is an individual can do with a normal fucking computer
[02:47:27] at home is like program a lot of stuff and then post it for free on the internet and show your work.
[02:47:32] Right. It's why I did a lot of open source. It was a way to, um,
[02:47:38] you know, GERD my sort of bona fides. If I ever needed to, I could say, well, if you don't, if you
[02:47:43] think I here, I'm blowing this whiteboard interview, I'm really sucking, I'm, I'm huffing and puffing,
[02:47:48] and I'm crying too. And this goddamn thing. Well, at least I can prove to you that I know how to program
[02:47:53] because look over here, here's this gigantic, like sprawl of repositories of code, whose test to pass.
[02:48:03] Not everyone feels this way, right? Some people feel like the pair programming interview is sufficient,
[02:48:09] is good enough. Uh, well now you got to ask, are they running a invisible AI interface to give them
[02:48:17] the answers in real time as you ask questions and as they work through the code?
[02:48:21] That's, uh, uh,
[02:48:26] the hacker news thread. I think I'll link to the hacker news comment thread as well.
[02:48:32] There was a, um, a back and forth that one would expect. It's like either this is an arms race and you
[02:48:40] have HR departments and hiring managers on one end, trying to figure out who's going to actually be good
[02:48:46] good at the job. And then you have, uh, candidates on the other who are trying their best to get the
[02:48:52] job. And it's not the, it's, it's, it's rare for us to have a story where the company isn't the evil
[02:49:00] guy by default. Cause like really well-intentioned companies are doing these things and asking for
[02:49:04] these things very, not, not, it's not for their health, right? They're not trying to, you know,
[02:49:10] hire only white guys. They're not trying to, you know, make this really hard and stressful.
[02:49:15] They're just trying to arrive at the right answer. Cause like they know how expensive a mishire is.
[02:49:19] Instead, the tension is really between candidates. It's like, if I'm candidate a, and I have a moral
[02:49:29] upright, you know, attitude that says, I'm not going to cheat on this test, but candidates B through Z all
[02:49:37] do, I will not win the interview. Does that mean that I'm putting myself at a huge disadvantage in
[02:49:46] what might be one of the most momentous things for determining in this capitalist society, whether I
[02:49:51] fucking have healthcare from United healthcare or not, or nothing at all. Right. At that point,
[02:49:58] you know, like do you, how much do you judge the use of these things? Does that just become kind of
[02:50:04] part of this? And that's why it was positioned by some as an arms race, even though effectively,
[02:50:09] what we're saying is, uh, there is a, there's a way to view this that provides moral cover to people
[02:50:15] cheating on tests and subverting what is meant to be an honest assessment of a person's abilities.
[02:50:21] Yeah. So I think that's really interesting. Uh,
[02:50:25] I, I wouldn't refer the record. If I was being interviewed, I would not use something like this
[02:50:33] because I, in real time, if my anxiety is high, I am really bad at lying. And if I was ever asked,
[02:50:40] I would probably break down and melt into a puddle of goo in real time.
[02:50:43] I worry about the people who wouldn't melt into the pile of goo.
[02:50:48] Last, last bit of news, Sora, which is the Japanese word for sky is out. Open AI has a video generation
[02:51:00] tool. You type in, um, a little bit of text and then a video you don't want to comes out. It's very
[02:51:06] similar to mid journey and Dali in that way. Uh, the videos are bad. Uh, they, I, I tried it out
[02:51:12] just to make sure that they're bad. Uh, and I can confirm that the videos that it makes are bad.
[02:51:17] They, they have moments of greatness or in still images, like it may be like a few frames at a time.
[02:51:23] You're like, Ooh, that really looks like a
[02:51:25] furry animal and it looks, or this is a photo realistic mountain range, but you try to do anything
[02:51:32] like real. It's just, uh, stuff just flips around and it's like, it's all over the place. It's like,
[02:51:39] it's like, there's no respect for physics. It's just comparing, you know, frame by frame,
[02:51:44] by frame, by frame, like get me from this frame to the next frame. And so it results in like a kitty
[02:51:49] turns around and then in order to turn around, it ends up having two heads for half a second and then
[02:51:54] the heads recombine, um, or, or, or the legs of animals will, will the hind leg will become the
[02:52:02] front leg foremost leg, uh, randomly and then back and forth. So there's a lot of visual quirks that,
[02:52:08] that, that, that tend to be dead give us giveaways of this thing. But what I want out of it, and the
[02:52:14] reason why I'm actually excited about Sora is that it, if I paid the $200 a month for a GPT pro,
[02:52:21] God forbid, I could use it to generate stock videos that are way more interesting, way more
[02:52:30] on point with whatever I'm talking about. When I use stock videos and YouTube videos, it's like as
[02:52:34] an explainer video to kind of set the table. But like when I use story graph or story blocks, uh, uh,
[02:52:41] the story graph friend of the show, uh, Nadia's, uh, startup, that's like a Goodreads competitor.
[02:52:47] That's not what I'm talking about. Story blocks, which is like a stock video site,
[02:52:50] this subscription site that I pay for, uh, via descript, which is a video editor.
[02:52:55] Story blocks only has like, and I, all of these stock video things that like, like, like they over
[02:53:02] index on videos that are easy to take of, you know, just actors that do this kind of thing,
[02:53:08] you know, like, like lots of stuff in the home, lots of stuff at the office,
[02:53:12] you know, some sports, there's not a lot there. You can't get a stock video of somebody in outer space,
[02:53:19] you know, um, drinking Tabasco sauce out of the bottle, you know, while, while, while they shoot
[02:53:27] somebody, that's not a thing you can just get a stock video of. But if I wanted that in my video,
[02:53:33] uh, I could use a tool like Sora to generate five seconds of video. And so people are looking at
[02:53:39] this, they're like, what good is five seconds of video? Well, for me in a stock in the way that I do
[02:53:45] YouTubes or that I like to five seconds is all I ever want of one of these. Additionally, like, oh,
[02:53:51] there's no audio, it's video. And there's actually, I don't want the audio because I want to talk over it.
[02:53:58] So that's what I see. The supplanting first is stock video. And I, I'm here to report. It is not
[02:54:04] there yet. Uh, unless you have all of the patients in the world to sit there all day continuing to
[02:54:08] refine and refine. And then once you download it, crop and stretch and pull and whatnot, uh, it's just
[02:54:14] not, it's not that there are mistakes, which there are, and there will be for a long, long time. It's
[02:54:19] that it is insufficiently expressive in that it fails to convert your prompts to what you're actually
[02:54:26] asking for. I've only done a few of these, but it's pretty clear. It's, it's many notches behind
[02:54:31] like mid journey is for generating images that you're asking for. So I'll, I'll pop in and out,
[02:54:37] but I'm not, I'm not about to quit my day job and start making YouTubes just yet. But as soon as,
[02:54:42] as soon as we get there, hold me back.
[02:54:51] All right. Uh, gonna keep this brief. He says almost at the three hour mark. Cause I've got,
[02:55:00] I got places to be, uh, recommendation. Number one with a bullet is a video game titled Indiana Jones
[02:55:09] and the great circle. Uh, or if you're, uh, on my windows PC, you'll see the, uh, Japanese version of the
[02:55:16] name because one time on one game, I set localization to Japanese and now the Xbox app is extremely
[02:55:23] confused. Uh, and so I had to, had to pin it to the desktop because I don't have actually like the
[02:55:31] Japanese input method editor and I can't type in Japanese. I couldn't search for it real fun. Um,
[02:55:37] so like always with PC gaming, the launching of the game is most of the fun. Uh, great graphics,
[02:55:44] looks really good. Uh, they, they got Indiana Jones, uh, Indiana Jones. He, he is the character.
[02:55:50] They got Harrison Ford's likeness. Uh, so the first trailer or whatever, it didn't really look
[02:55:55] very Harrison 40, but now it looks extremely Harrison 40, uh, which is, uh, one of my turn-ons.
[02:55:59] Uh, it, it, the tutorial is literally the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark,
[02:56:07] except you get to do it as Harrison Ford looking Indiana Jones.
[02:56:13] It is made by, um, machine games who are the people who made the Wolfenstein remakes.
[02:56:23] And those are run and gun, shooty, blasty, kill a bunch of Nazi games. So when this was announced
[02:56:29] and it was going to be a first person game, everyone kind of walked in assuming it's like,
[02:56:32] well, apparently it's going to be Indiana Jones, just mowing down motherfuckers.
[02:56:36] And I am, if you followed this game at all, you know, that is not what it is. Instead,
[02:56:41] what it is is it's an adventure game that actually reminds me more than anything of Indiana Jones
[02:56:49] and the fate of Atlantis, which was, uh, the, probably the best LucasArts, uh, point and click
[02:56:56] adventure game from the early to mid nineties, uh, voice acted, you know, by not Harrison Ford at the
[02:57:03] time. And it was a genuine, like slow paced, puzzley, you know, you go through these different
[02:57:11] locales, you have different conversations and so forth. This one feels a lot like that. People have,
[02:57:19] have called it sort of like the evolution of the walking simulator, which is a pejorative given to games
[02:57:25] where you don't fight. There's not really combat. It's mostly you go from A to B and you let the narrative
[02:57:31] wash over you, but this is like way more interactive. And of course there is combat. It's just,
[02:57:36] you know, you're a college professor. Combat is almost never going to be like
[02:57:41] the best course of action to solve a problem. You know, if you get in fisticuffs with a Nazi or whatever, like
[02:57:47] he's just as likely to win as you. Uh, one thing that I've heard other people comment and I,
[02:57:55] I'm now experiencing this as well as like, I'm, I'm several hours into this game and I've
[02:57:59] not shot a gun yet. I listened to one person say that they got through the whole first area. You
[02:58:05] start in the Vatican. It's the big first set piece. They got out of the Vatican to the next area and they
[02:58:11] found a gun and they're like, Ooh, there's guns, you know? And then they remembered, or they looked in
[02:58:15] their inventory, realized that they actually had a revolver all along through the whole Vatican sequence,
[02:58:20] like five, six hours of the game and they just never used it. And I think that is a radical,
[02:58:27] uh, success for machine games, not only to escape that, like first person means shooter, but they'll
[02:58:37] like triple a game means shooter. I, one of the reasons I like these games, like farming simulators
[02:58:43] and space trucking games is not just the, the game loop of resource acquisition. It's because
[02:58:48] it's so boring that every game mechanic ultimately redounds to combat. What if I could just solve
[02:58:57] interesting problems and not have to do combat? And as, as a result, the immersive sim genre, like, uh,
[02:59:03] Deus Ex, uh, through prey, you know, Bioshock and all these, well, less so Bioshock, but games where you can
[02:59:09] ostensibly solve levels without just resorting to going through the front door and, and killing a bunch of
[02:59:19] motherfuckers. I find that appealing partly because I'm not really good at combat. I get nervous about
[02:59:25] it. Like I get, you know, sweaty palms and stuff and, and I need to take breaks because I can, I can get
[02:59:30] overwhelmed easily. Uh, uh, I don't know just how I am. What else is boring, right? Like there's so
[02:59:37] many other interesting things in life and, and to see the video game world always just resort to,
[02:59:44] you know, this is a twin sticks, you know, shooter, basically we're just call of duty, but instead of
[02:59:49] military stuff, it's Indiana Jones stuff or call of duty, but instead of, you know, Indiana Jones stuff,
[02:59:55] it's outer space stuff or it's call of duty, you know, and it's just different themes on the exact
[02:59:59] same game over and over with the same UI with the same control layout. This is really,
[03:00:03] really repetitive. And they're just, it becomes a vehicle for narrative devices. So
[03:00:08] it's unforgettable to, to play a game that has these high production values, has interactive stuff to do.
[03:00:20] You are sneaking and crawling and solving puzzles and, uh, without necessarily resorting to violence and,
[03:00:28] and action and combat and gunplay as being the only mechanic. It is there and maybe,
[03:00:36] and I'm sure I'll get to a point where like, it's the tool that I have to use, but it's just one tool
[03:00:40] in the toolbox. That's really impressive. Um, it reminds me a little bit of hitman in that way,
[03:00:47] the new hitman games where the world is very large. There's a lot to explore. There's a, there's a, um,
[03:00:55] vibrance in the livelihood in the world where people are moving around, they're living their lives.
[03:00:59] And if you listen to the people, you will learn things and then you can take action based on those
[03:01:04] things. So you, I heard a, a nun speak in Italian saying that this book was out of reach in a library.
[03:01:11] And I, you know, I don't know Italian, but they have subtitles for foreign languages. And I was like,
[03:01:18] oh, okay. And I look up and I grabbed the book and I hand it to her and she thanks you. Right.
[03:01:23] Different nun says she wants a picture of this guy. And just like, I was running up the stairs
[03:01:28] and she mentioned she wanted a picture of, of this fella. I knew where he was. I knew his name
[03:01:33] and I had just acquired a camera. So I ran upstairs, took a picture of the guy, ran back downstairs and
[03:01:36] just dropped off the, the, the photo. And she said, thank you. Right. Little things like that. Like
[03:01:43] the game rewards you for paying attention and living in it. And there's of course more intricate.
[03:01:47] It's not just all simple fetch quest stuff. That's really nice because I want to live and
[03:01:55] feel immersed in a, in a world. And I want to be rewarded for exploring it in a way that's more than
[03:02:01] just like, you know, collect all of these resources, you know, go and scour every single room and every
[03:02:06] single box to max out the number of coins that you collect. There's that too. It also reminds me a lot
[03:02:14] of the Quantic Dream games, which are similarly like walking simulators with, you know, fail states like,
[03:02:20] uh, uh, heavy rain or, uh, Indigo prophecy, you know, or, or Detroit become human or that one with, uh,
[03:02:30] uh, Elliot page that I forgot that was less good. Um,
[03:02:38] Quantic Dream's actually been, been working on a star Wars game for a while. So that's, uh,
[03:02:43] a narrative experience that feels high stakes. It feels high production value that you get to,
[03:02:49] you know, feel like you're the protagonist through, except this time you get the protagonist is Indiana
[03:02:54] fucking Jones. And he looks like Harrison Ford and actually like Troy Baker, who is, uh, you know,
[03:02:59] the aforementioned, uh, last of us, uh, Joel and last of us was, was voiced and, and, and mo-capped by,
[03:03:06] by Joel Baker or Troy Baker, who's who, and who has become the basic, like default male protagonist in
[03:03:14] every single piece of voice acting in video games. Like they only know one person, but he is very good
[03:03:18] at it. But when I found out that he was the voice of Indiana Jones, I was like, ah, he's probably going
[03:03:22] to be, you know, how good could he be? He sounds, he doesn't sound exactly like Harrison Ford sounded.
[03:03:31] He sounds like Indiana Jones should sound. It's so, so on the money. It doesn't sound like he's
[03:03:37] doing an impression. It sounds like he is fucking Indiana Jones. Uh, so if you have any interest at
[03:03:42] all in that, and it doesn't scare you off to hear that it doesn't, you don't get to shoot Nazis all day
[03:03:47] long, check it out. It's real good. Sink your teeth into it. Uh, it's rare for a game to come out in
[03:03:53] December and be good. But, uh, uh, incidentally it's when Oscar bait movies come out, but it actually
[03:04:01] missed the, uh, the deadline for the video game awards. So instead that goes to Astro Bot. That's
[03:04:05] too bad. Only other recommendation this, uh, this time around is the steam deck last, last, uh, last week,
[03:04:15] it was steam deck with a question mark. And this time it is steam deck with a period. We'll see what,
[03:04:20] what happens if it earns an exclamation point. At some point, I finally got time to set, set up,
[03:04:27] set it up a little bit yesterday and play around a little bit. One of my goals was to see how emulation
[03:04:33] was like, could it emulate GameCube and Wii games sufficiently? And how did it do with Dreamcast and
[03:04:39] what, what other options are there? I gotta say that I normally am quirky and I want to like, you know,
[03:04:46] I got the Mac in part because no one used Macs in 2003, right? Like, like, like the Mac was the uncool
[03:04:53] platform. Uh, I try to avoid following the herd, you know, like my brother bought a Tesla and yeah,
[03:05:00] that was kind of like, eh, cause I don't like Elon, but it was also like, I want, I want to get one of
[03:05:05] the, like, I want to get the, uh, best challenger to the incumbent brand, which would have been Rivian,
[03:05:13] except Rivian is going to be out of business in 18 months. Uh, I don't want to get the brand that
[03:05:19] everyone else is getting. Cause I'm, I'm that kind of person, but the Steam Deck is a reminder to me that
[03:05:26] sometimes there's a virtue in following the herd because you can just on your Steam Deck launch into
[03:05:31] desktop mode, open a browser, and then type emudeck.com and then download a script that will basically run for an
[03:05:39] hour or 40 minutes or half an hour, whatever it was and, and install every single emulator, organize all of the
[03:05:46] folders just so it knows all the hardware that you're running it on. Cause it's always running on a Steam Deck.
[03:05:51] And so it, it, it, it configures all of these things and like, you know, what resolution to run things at,
[03:05:56] what, what, what, what are the performance characteristics that you can handle and so forth in terms of upscaling.
[03:06:01] And, uh, it was like literally a one button, wait a while and then drag an ISO file over and then you're
[03:06:06] playing the game that you want to play all of my legally ripped genuine GameCube collection because I
[03:06:12] literally own every fucking GameCube game. Uh, thanks to working at blockbuster video and, uh,
[03:06:19] EB games in high school. Uh, so I have a couple of review copies floating around. Nothing, nothing cool.
[03:06:25] Ubisoft sent me Tom Clancy's very first ghost recon game. I don't know why, but that's still in a box
[03:06:32] somewhere. Uh, yeah. So, you know, I fired up the original Pikmin game and I just had like a little
[03:06:39] moment of nostalgic joy. Cause I remember where I was when I played the first Pikmin game. And I
[03:06:45] remember how absurd that game felt, uh, and how it still feels absurd and the, the lighthearted,
[03:06:51] joyful approach of just like, you know, yeah, you, you, you crash land on the planet and you find
[03:06:56] these onions and then you pluck these little like, uh, random characters out of the ground once their
[03:07:02] leaves sprout and then, and then you command them to do your bidding. Like I came out of somebody's
[03:07:07] brain and they just made it. And then it was a massive hit. Uh, and it's still a series that's
[03:07:11] going on now. Like you don't see a lot of that anymore outside the indie scene. Um, but that's,
[03:07:18] you know, I guess I'm also recommending Pikmin. All right. That's a, that's all I got for
[03:07:24] recommendations. Maybe I'll play a bunch more games and I'll have more next time.
[03:07:28] I made a mistake when it came to the mailbag. Uh, so last time around, please write me
[03:07:38] [email protected] or [email protected] so I can put it in the right mail hole before I pull out of my
[03:07:47] pump and dump scheme. Uh, I jokingly said you should pull over and then write a subject lines like
[03:07:56] something like, you know, you are making me do this and I feel threatened. Please stop threatening me or
[03:08:00] something like that. And then I got a whole bunch of email the next day. And then over the course of
[03:08:04] the week, a whole bunch more email with, uh, terrifying subject lines, like stop threatening me.
[03:08:10] And I, uh, you are making me do this and things like that. And because no one, no one actually
[03:08:18] transcribed it perfectly correctly. And each time it was like, you know, I normally check my mail first
[03:08:25] thing and I was like, Oh God. Oh no. Oh no. What's that? And the, Oh, right. They listened
[03:08:29] to the podcast and they typed in the words that I told them to type. I played myself. So I, I had like
[03:08:36] several heart rate spikes over the course of this week, uh, uh, looking at emails that I jokingly told
[03:08:42] people to write, uh, that they then follow through Don followed through on, uh, Patrick was the first
[03:08:50] person to do it. So he gets, they get credit subject. You are making me do this. Uh, well,
[03:08:57] the, the unique part of this message is I don't know who a care bearer is care bear, but you know,
[03:09:04] I guess if you don't know who the care bears are, you probably don't know what the phrase is.
[03:09:07] These are, these are bear like animals with, uh, stars in their bellies and different colors and they
[03:09:15] talk. So I can't name a favorite one. Well, I will name a favorite one and I will name bedtime bear.
[03:09:21] It's the blue one. He's easy going. Solves problems. I don't know why he's called bedtime
[03:09:25] bear. Cause they all got the energy to like, you know, help the others out. Uh, you might've assumed
[03:09:31] I'd like grumpy bear, but like I, I bring enough grumpy for the whole crew. I don't need more grumpy.
[03:09:36] I, I got that cornered. Uh, next email from, I apologize for not asking how to pronounce this.
[03:09:44] Uh, Kabiru K A B I R U Kabiru writes new subscriber here. Great talk at rails world, which is how I
[03:09:54] learned about your pod. I have to say it's intriguing that you like, prefer email communication. I just
[03:10:03] listened to the ghost engineering episode. And my thought was that you sound like James Spader,
[03:10:07] AKA Ultron. Has anyone said this to you before? Right. I'll see myself out. Uh,
[03:10:13] uh, Kabiru, thank you for writing and thank you for listening. I appreciate having you here. Yeah.
[03:10:17] Welcome to the tribe, the J hive. Uh, uh, I didn't, you know, when you said AKA Ultron,
[03:10:30] Ultron, I remembered Ultron being a character in the one Avengers movie that I watched and
[03:10:35] promptly forgot. So I had to go and like Google who James Spader was. Cause he's one of those
[03:10:39] Hollywood people who Hollywood people reference sometimes, but like that, I don't think a lot
[03:10:43] of people themselves know or follow. And so I Googled him and he looks a little bit like a,
[03:10:48] like a silly guy. Um, and then I asked a friend, I said, Hey,
[03:10:55] is it a compliment to be said that I did to be told that I sound like James Spader? And he said,
[03:10:59] that is not a compliment, uh, with a laughing emoji. So thank you for the comment. Uh, if you,
[03:11:08] if you think that I sound like someone or something, uh, feel free to write in [email protected]. Uh,
[03:11:14] but next time, please include whether or not you consider it to be a compliment. That would be helpful.
[03:11:20] Then I would know how to reply. Uh, Ben writes, I know you use chat GPT a lot. What is the difference
[03:11:27] between GPT 4.0 and O1? When do you pick which? So 4.0 is, uh, the model that they've had for a
[03:11:36] while. O1 is a slightly different model that who, whose hallmark feature is it basically folds in on
[03:11:43] itself. It'll resp it'll respond in its head, quote unquote, and then run that through subsequent like
[03:11:48] levels of prompting. For example, if you say, Hey, you know, how much glue should I put in my pizza?
[03:11:54] Uh, typical chat GPT 4.0 might just start replying right away. Even if the answer is a little bit of
[03:12:03] glue is okay. Right. Uh, but for O1 will first, you know, think the, the, whatever response 4.0 would
[03:12:13] have had or similar, and then ask itself a follow-up like, is this true? Are there other angles here to
[03:12:21] consider? And basically kind of, it's not that it's better. It's that it has a lot of the conversational
[03:12:26] back and forth for you. So that when it starts writing and I've, I've asked it things where it's
[03:12:31] had to think for two seconds and I've asked it things where, where it has quote on thanked,
[03:12:35] uh, for, for, for 30, 40 seconds. Uh, O1 is also different from 4.0 and that 4.0 can search the web
[03:12:46] and O1 is locked to just its training data. So if I'm asking for like, Hey,
[03:12:52] give me a coupon code or whatever, like it's not going to be able to search the web. It's not what it's
[03:12:57] for. Oh, one usage is also limited. If you pay for GPT plus, I, I use O1 when I'm asking a really
[03:13:04] a question that requires a lot of deep thought, you know, if I want to write, have it, have it
[03:13:11] right pros for me, like, Hey, write me an email to this accountant in Japanese based on this context.
[03:13:16] I'll ask O1 because it'll go through a couple, you know, a couple of rounds of review for me
[03:13:22] that I don't have to do. When I ask it, um, like after I wrote my newsletter that came out Sunday,
[03:13:28] uh, I just ask for a diff of proofreads. Uh, just, just show me the typos and this and this
[03:13:35] GPT four. Oh, had a lot more editorialization and style stuff that I didn't like.
[03:13:42] Same prompt. Oh, one just spat out changes to this, this, to this otherwise looks good,
[03:13:48] right? Was actually way less work because I didn't have to do the labor of teasing out a
[03:13:54] overly confident for, Oh, that would just start talking immediately. Uh, and, and spit out 2000
[03:14:01] words that sound like very self-assured, but we're not necessarily correct or helpful.
[03:14:06] And that's maybe one of the most depressing things about the success of chat GPT is, is
[03:14:11] Bill Clinton and then, uh, said, I think it was, I don't know if he was still president or if it was
[03:14:18] after his presidency said, you know, strong and wrong beats right and weak every time. I think that, uh,
[03:14:24] you know, in our politics, we see that a lot, but to see it also in the revealed preferences of,
[03:14:31] of the popularity of chat GPT, people would much rather have a strong and wrong, confident answer
[03:14:38] that comes bold and in their face than a thoughtful mealy mouth one that embraced nuance and trade off.
[03:14:43] So that's depressing next. Uh, Kate asks if you had to give an impromptu Ted talk on something
[03:14:54] unrelated to software or Japan, what would it be?
[03:14:57] Uh, and now I'm at the point where I'm just going to say, uh, to like fill air so that you know that,
[03:15:09] like your podcast didn't just pause or your AirPods didn't just disconnect while I struggle to think
[03:15:15] of what, uh, I could talk about Ted talks. I could talk about the organization of Ted a little bit
[03:15:21] because Ted is a former client of test. Maybe like, maybe still a current client. I know that they're,
[03:15:26] they're, I can say it cause I remember getting, um, permission to put the, the logo on the website.
[03:15:35] I have not really thought seriously about this. Uh, if I, if I give a Ted talk and I wasn't allowed
[03:15:43] to talk about software or Japan, Oh man, am I that boring? Um, I would, I would probably talk.
[03:15:57] Oh, and then I just realized that this idea that I just had was actually Japan adjacent.
[03:16:03] Uh, so that's out. I, I might talk,
[03:16:10] you know, and that this is, it's hard to talk about startup culture and stuff without being also tech
[03:16:18] adjacent. Doesn't the T and Ted stand for technology. I think it's, I think I would talk about, um, a
[03:16:24] little bit of what I did in my last newsletter of the sickness of, um, founders, like dispelling notions
[03:16:32] around entrepreneurs as good. Um, of S of what the, I phrased it based on an illusion that,
[03:16:42] that, um, Chris Hayes made in his book, twilight of the elites, this image that, that, that accumulating
[03:16:49] wealth is like a Mayan step pyramid. And you, you, you can only ever see the stairs in front of you.
[03:16:54] You climb those stairs and you think I've made it. I, this is all I ever wanted. I've achieved my goal.
[03:17:00] I'm making this much money now. And you feel great for five seconds. And you look in front of you and
[03:17:04] you're like, Oh, there's another fucking set of stairs to climb. The example that he gave in the book was
[03:17:09] at Davos, um, the big, you know, Switzerland meeting of all the billionaire minds. Uh, you'd have
[03:17:16] everyone, uh, at the airport, which is a small little runway and there are all their private jets
[03:17:21] just taking turns landing. Everyone would get the limo ride, which took a while to get up the mountain.
[03:17:27] Like, so they'd get in their limo at the airport and then they'd all like, you know,
[03:17:31] they're in a limo in, um, a really ritzy, amazing luxury place, uh, in a meeting of billionaires,
[03:17:39] like the, the wealthiest of the wealthy in the world. And all any of them could think about was
[03:17:43] how jealous they were that they couldn't afford the helicopter because the helicopter service was
[03:17:48] limited to the people who had lots of money, right? That would take them straight up the mountain
[03:17:53] instead of spending two hours kind of curving around it. And, uh, yeah, I don't think enough
[03:18:00] common people think that if like, you know, look, America doesn't have poor people. America has
[03:18:07] temporarily down on their luck millionaires. And I think the reason that we as a culture venerate,
[03:18:17] uh, wealth and success is that we want to see that as a destination that will cure what ails us.
[03:18:27] So
[03:18:29] it, it strikes me as something worth talking about now that I've had some amount of success enough to
[03:18:38] not have to, you know, go and apply for a job right now to share stories of founders that I've met.
[03:18:47] And how, and, and, and, and ultra wealthy people, I've met billionaires as weird as that is, uh,
[03:18:54] to, to humanize them a little bit and put them in a context that dispels the notion that once you've
[03:19:06] reached financial success, you've really made it. In fact, to do the things you have to do to, uh,
[03:19:12] accumulate a massive amount of wealth while you're still young enough to spend it.
[03:19:17] The act of doing those things requires a loss of self. It requires a personal sacrifice that actually
[03:19:26] indicates you're more likely to be like living an unbalanced, unhappy life. You're more likely to burn
[03:19:34] bridges or, you know, uh, not invested in your health or your family or your, your ability to
[03:19:41] just have a day and, and navigate life in a sensible way without using as a crutch,
[03:19:49] this treadmill that you've built for, for, for, for always reaching for more. And so that's why you see
[03:19:55] these ultra successful people. They always move on to the next thing. And it's not because they're on,
[03:20:00] they're geniuses, which I think is the narrative that we typically see, but it's, it's just that
[03:20:04] they, they don't know what to do with their hands. So, uh, that's, I would, I would find a way to build
[03:20:11] that talk. And then I'd be very interested to see it, how it would play it. And when we say Ted,
[03:20:17] I'm talking about Ted, not Ted X. Ted X is just like, you know, franchise local events. As far as I know,
[03:20:23] like I would want to talk to Ted because I'd, I'd want to be talking to the billionaires and I would write
[03:20:27] it that way. And I'd probably make it probably wear a top hat and a monocle. I'd lean in a last one.
[03:20:37] Mark writes and he says, you talked about learning Swift and Swift UI at some point on one of these
[03:20:44] podcasts. Maybe it wasn't a newsletter. Who knows? How's that going? Do you have any app ideas?
[03:20:50] Uh, it is already over three hours. I'm not going to talk about app ideas. I will tease that I am
[03:20:55] setting up my streaming setup now and it's going pretty well. Uh, and so I'm going to probably in
[03:21:02] earnest tomorrow morning, uh, get back to setting up my streaming setup. I'm building in like a tape
[03:21:08] delay. That's the hard part. Uh, I was hoping, so I would be able to do like, like intro outro, uh,
[03:21:14] technical difficulties, play cards for me and stuff and loops, but it's just not there yet.
[03:21:18] So I'm going to go and cut a few of those. Uh, and then once I'm up and running, my plan is to learn
[03:21:24] Swift in a stream setting. So Searles goes Swift or something like that. And it would be a series
[03:21:31] that I run on my YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com slash at Justin Searles.
[03:21:36] Uh, and, uh, you know, if any of you listening look like not everyone, I don't expect more than
[03:21:43] a few people are going to actually like tune into a live stream of me because, because who knows when
[03:21:49] you're at the computer, who knows how long these things are going to be. I, I just want to share
[03:21:55] in the open what I'm learning. And then not like, of course, at the end, it becomes a really long video
[03:21:59] of Justin getting mad at his computer, which is separately entertaining.
[03:22:04] If any of you are interested in potentially watching these things and trimming them down,
[03:22:12] like if you want to edit me live streaming several hours of work, if you're interested in doing like
[03:22:20] a smash super cut of just the useful 20 minutes in there or 30 minutes, uh, into a shorter video that
[03:22:26] we could then post after the fact, uh, as an intern, uh, reach out to me, [email protected]. I'd like to
[03:22:33] hear about it because I think that's, that's really where I'm stuck right now is I want to
[03:22:37] create content that is genuinely useful, but I don't have the energy to plan in advance the useful
[03:22:44] parts to make a highly produced video upfront, but just by my sheer existence and wanting to learn Swift
[03:22:52] anyway, uh, I will be going through those motions. So why not do it on camera? Then the missing link is
[03:22:59] just how do I take all that uncut stuff and cut it down? And, and that would also end me, uh,
[03:23:04] especially staring at yourself on camera over and over again. So if anyone's interested in taking on
[03:23:09] that responsibility, you let me know. I don't expect any takers, but please, uh, I'd love to hear from you.
[03:23:16] And thus concludes today's episode, which I am. I'm deciding now I'm going to, to call version 26.
[03:23:33] I still don't like either of these names. Version 26, Luigi's Mansion. There we go. All right. Bye.
...more
3h 25min
December 06, 2024v25 - Ghost Engineering
I left the country for a few weeks to get that taste out of my mouth but now I'm back and as salty as ever. Brace yourself.
I made a pretty strong appeal that you should e-mail the show at [email protected], so I won't repeat myself here. DO IT. DO IT NOW.
Hopefully I'll be back at least once more before we call it for 2024. Stay tuned. 📻
Correction: In the opening segment, I said (twice) that the Gender Equality section chief took me to Tokyo to see 紅葉 in 2005, but it was actually Kyoto. I regret the error
iOS 18.2 adds two-step shutter to the Camera Control
Aaron's puns, ranked
The MacBook Upgrade Program
What will the Command Center look like?
Tim Cook hasn't forgotten how to long divide
The Camera Roll is less slow now
Intel is so boned
Google is approaching that level of bonedness (News+)
Ghost Engineers 👻
LLMs seem like a bad business to be in
AGI is right around the corner but don't worry, it sucks
Get your work done before the day gets poisoned
Wonder Project J
Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket
Gladiator II is good
I hope Steam Deck is, too
Neeto Products
...more
2h 51min
November 10, 2024v24 - Prophylactic Jet Lag
TIL that 4 AM is way too goddamn early to record a podcast. Apologies if I'm more chipper than usual, that's probably the coffee talking.
Had some great e-mails this show. You should keep the streak alive and mouth off with your fingers at [email protected].
Savor this version, folks. Gonna be at least a few weeks until you'll have another one.
International Driver's Permit
Don't be that guy. Don't drive a go-kart in downtown Tokyo
Watch my final talk, The Empowered Programmer (Justin's Version)
I have to pay for a search engine now, wtf
macOS Sequoia iPhone Mirroring is cool
Aaron's puns, ranked
The Nintendo Music app is rad
Fresca is extremely-flavored seltzer water
Don't disable "Prioritize Faster Shooting"
Google has a thumb on the scale
Apple is buying Pixelmator
Mass Effect is coming to Amazon Prime Video
Pour one out for the You've Got Mail guy
Notepad.exe is AI now
LLMs may be reaching a point of diminishing returns
Newest member of the badass scientist of the month club
How to undervolt your GPU
Like a Dragon: Yakuza
Galileo G8 controller
...more
3h 5min
October 30, 2024v23 - M4 Supermax
It is Wednesday, my dudes! This is normally a weekend listen, but there are
new Macs to talk about. I wanted to give you the absolute freshest, least
accurate information I can about all these neat new computers that I WILL
NOT BE BUYING BECAUSE TIM COOK IS A COWARD.
Write something you want to say in all caps over at [email protected]
and maybe I'll scream it on the show!
Inside-voice links follow:
The new Kindle Paperwhite
Black plastic is worse, now. Egg yolks are back to being good
Fancy Shun knives at a reasonable price
Don't waste your money on this combination sleeping mask / Bluetooth speaker
iOS 18 Hearing Test
Ricky Mondello's Apple Passwords migration strategy
My new fuckthis.app platform
Eric Doggett is helping me learn how to take pictures
Aaron's puns, ranked
New M4 Macs BUT NO 12" MACBOOKS TO SPEAK OF
Can't wait to see The Rock star in the Apple Oregon Trail movie
GitHub's new Copilot and Spark announcements
Redditors Are Trying to Poison Google’s AI to Keep Tourists Out of the Good Restaurants
One man's high-end electric vehicle is another man's obsolete garbage
Star Trucker game
Call of Duty: Blops 6
...more
2h 32min
October 20, 2024v22 - Coming to VHS
Welcome to this podcast which, by now, you have probably decided you either
listen to or don't listen to! And if you don't listen to it, one wonders
why you are reading this.
Remember to write in at [email protected] with
suggestions for news stories and whatever you'd like me to talk about. Please
keep it PG-rated or NC-17 rated. I want nothing in between.
Family-friendly and/or sexually explicit links follow:
I returned this razor
How I fixed Photo Shuffle
I made an unfortunate comment about birds and hands in my newsletter
Koala Nap is not currently working for me, but I appreciate their responsiveness in trying to fix it
Aaron's puns, ranked
🚨 RoboCab Code White 🚨
Matt Mullenwag sounds like a real piece of work at work
Alien: Romulus is coming to VHS. Really
Grindr will soon Grind without you
Apple's next 4 Vision Devices according to Mark Gurman
iPad Mini 7
Diablo IV - Vessel of Hatred
I hope Dragon Age: Veilguard redeems Bioware
Strange Planet was a cool show
The Family is creepy
Struggling to care about Slow Horses
Got schmutz? Get a Zodiac MX8 Elite
...more
2h 12min
October 07, 2024v21 - Not From Backup
Get ready for a three-hour-plus Breaking Change spectacular! Why is it special?
I'm not going to tell you. You'll just have to listen.
Remember, money doesn't change hands when you consume this Content™, but that doesn't
make it free! In exchange for downloading this MP3, the license requires you to
write in to [email protected] at least once every
three episodes. Some of y'all are past due, and I know where to find you.
Want URLs? I got URLs:
This useless skinny tree fell over
Becky's first app is live at betterwithbecky.com
I bought a camera
I gave my final conference talk. Video is pending, but I'll link to it here when it's up
Aaron's puns, ranked
Apple: 1, Europe: 0
Google should figure out security architecture
A nice longread about where AI is and where it (may) be going over the next decade
I'm bearish on IBM's prospects
1Password 8 doesn't feel like an upgrade
The iPhone 16 Pro is all about camera styles and tone map customization
Can't wait for that 12" MacBook Pro
The new Reduce Interruptions focus mode
Folks are mad about Star Wars Outlaws
Star Trucker, a game I mistakenly called "Space Trucker"
Furiosa is good
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives isn't
Penguin is remarkable 2 episodes in
🫡
...more
3h 24min
September 15, 2024v20 - Mandatory Stealth
There have now been 20 major versions since the initial release of Breaking
Change, but this is one of the less bad ones. It was substantially improved by
friend of the show, Eric Doggett, who helped out with
mixing!
If you have strong feelings about anything you hear, you know where to stuff
those feelings (other than "deep, deep down"):
[email protected].
Spicier-than-usual show notes follow:
Kin Euphorics are usually non-alcoholic overpriced cocktails
Squarespace kinda sucks now and a lot of people are worried the new PE overlords are gonna kill it
Build with Becky soft-launched, but it's stealth so you're on your own to figure out the sign-up URL.
My newsletter that's reminded some people of my impossibly, unfairly high standards
Nifty Cyberpunk VR mod
Aaron's puns, ranked
Apple Event stuff
Rest in Playercount, Concord
Remember to make sure your surgeon can tell a spleen and a liver apart before they put you under
All aboard Florida's manslaughter express 🚂🚂
The PS5 Pro is the solution to a problem, but nobody's sure which
Open AI o1-preview is significantly less stupid
Thanks to our sponsor for all your ERP needs, Oracle Netsuite
Star Wars Outlaws
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Don't start a Civil War
Welcome to Wrexham Season 3
For any chumps out there who think listening is the key to persuasion
@tompng's awesome Ruby Kaigi keynote now has a video you can watch
Walkshop is a super cool way to run a retreat
🌶️
...more
2h 57min

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The podcast currently has 29 episodes available.

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