00:00:00 ◼ ► I don't know, I feel like 2021 has been such a whirlwind, which I'll take over the complete
00:00:04 ◼ ► show that was 2020, but sure, but that's setting a pretty low bar. I mean, that's not really like,
00:00:10 ◼ ► it's like this is, this is better than like actual hell, like in a fire, literally. Yes. Like the
00:00:20 ◼ ► actual world of actual hell, like where you are just burning in, you know, a hellscape forever,
00:00:25 ◼ ► like an actual fire, your body's being torn apart, you're being tortured, you know, you have to
00:00:30 ◼ ► listen to Dave Matthews' band, all of that. Oh, can you imagine? So 2020 was indeed not as bad as that,
00:00:35 ◼ ► but yeah, definitely not a ton better. So I have to issue a plea. Can somebody at Apple please fix
00:00:52 ◼ ► I know we've been down on Apple Music recently. Oh, I have so many thoughts, which I'm not going
00:00:57 ◼ ► to get into now. We have too much to talk about, but God, what a piece of crap Apple Music is.
00:01:00 ◼ ► I know, just normally I don't have too many problems with it because I'm a pretty light user
00:01:04 ◼ ► of it really, but I just, I asked my home pods this morning to play the Crash Test Dummies album
00:01:10 ◼ ► God Shuffled His Feet, the one with, you know, that one, it's a big album from the, from the 90s.
00:01:15 ◼ ► Very well done, very well done, Marco. Thank you. If I had more time, I would do it the right speed,
00:01:18 ◼ ► but anyway, you're all listening at 2X anyway. This is one of my favorite albums. It's, it's,
00:01:23 ◼ ► liking Crash Test Dummies is, is like one of the weirdest things you can, you can be if you're not
00:01:27 ◼ ► Canadian. Like they were, they were really big in Canada. They were not at all big in the US except
00:01:31 ◼ ► for that one song. And if you like Crash Test Dummies, it's a very weird band to like because
00:01:35 ◼ ► every album is radically different than the other albums. And what they did after this, they had like
00:01:45 ◼ ► It got really weird. But anyway, this album, it's again, one of my favorite albums. And I listen,
00:01:52 ◼ ► I asked Siri, you know, "Hey, play, play this album." And that worked. You don't, you don't
00:01:56 ◼ ► have to like do anything weird to have it play a whole album in order. Like you can just say,
00:01:59 ◼ ► "Play the album named blah, blah, blah." And it says, "Okay." So great, plays the first two tracks.
00:02:03 ◼ ► Great. The third track, it switches to a live version of it. And then like the next, like a few
00:02:11 ◼ ► tracks in a row were the live version from some live album I've never heard of and don't own.
00:02:25 ◼ ► Now, the really funny part of this was when I looked like on my iPad with the now playing in
00:02:31 ◼ ► the control center for what's going on in your home pods, which I love this integration. I've
00:02:35 ◼ ► told it before, this is one of the best reasons to use Apple Music and AirPlay 2 because all you
00:02:39 ◼ ► get this integration that's wonderful where you can interact with what's playing on your home
00:02:43 ◼ ► pods or whatever from your phone and from any iPhone or iPad on your network, which is great.
00:02:48 ◼ ► Anyway, so I checked that and it's showing the studio album as the now playing. So Apple Music
00:02:55 ◼ ► doesn't think it's playing a live version, but it totally is. And then just before the show,
00:02:59 ◼ ► I'm like, "Let me just double check. Maybe this was something weird today." So just before the
00:03:02 ◼ ► show, I went on my phone to see like, what does my phone version of Apple Music think that it's
00:03:06 ◼ ► playing? And it had the same problem where it was playing a mix of live versions and studio versions,
00:03:14 ◼ ► but it was a different set of tracks that was wrong on the phone versus what was wrong from
00:03:21 ◼ ► the home pod earlier today. So please, Apple, I know there's got to be someone who works on
00:03:26 ◼ ► Apple Music who either likes this really weird band like the way I do, or maybe just is Canadian
00:03:33 ◼ ► and therefore is more likely to care about this band. But please fix the Crash Test Dummies album
00:03:38 ◼ ► because it's a really good album. And this is a really weird thing to be broken. I did also,
00:03:43 ◼ ► I even checked Spotify to see like, maybe they did some kind of weird reissue of it for weird
00:03:48 ◼ ► contractual reasons. Nope, Spotify version is perfect. Of course it is. And I own this CD. I
00:03:54 ◼ ► ripped the CD into iTunes forever ago. I have it on my computer, but there's no way, because I have
00:04:01 ◼ ► it in iTunes/Music on the Mac. I have my version there, so it plays correctly because it's local
00:04:07 ◼ ► files. And I have iTunes Match and I have Apple Music. But apparently there's no way for me to
00:04:13 ◼ ► play my copy of it on my phone anymore. Like I can only play the Apple Music copy, which is broken.
00:04:19 ◼ ► So please, Apple, fix the Crash Test Dummies. You know, we sometimes make fun of the fact that
00:04:27 ◼ ► our App Store apps have like an artist and album field because like it was the repurposed iTunes
00:04:32 ◼ ► Music store to make the App Store, right? And the underlying database schema dates back to
00:04:37 ◼ ► iTunes and all that stuff. And it's kind of weird and awkward. Sometimes I think about when looking
00:04:42 ◼ ► at Apple Music or hearing complaints about it, just dealing with my own thing, that the iTunes
00:04:47 ◼ ► Music store was purpose-built to be a music store. So it can't use the excuse of like, well, we were
00:04:54 ◼ ► just retrofitting onto an existing system we have for e-commerce essentially, right? And I don't know
00:04:59 ◼ ► about you, but I've been in the position many, many times across my career when I'm called upon
00:05:05 ◼ ► to essentially create a data model for a thing that doesn't exist. And if I was making Apple's
00:05:11 ◼ ► music store, granted, nobody can see the future and know whether it's going to be big or not or
00:05:14 ◼ ► whatever, but if I was given that test, "Hey, we're going to sell music over the internet. We need a
00:05:20 ◼ ► data model for this." It's kind of like the USB connector when I complain so much about if you're
00:05:25 ◼ ► tasked with making a connector, spend five minutes with a whiteboard thinking about what are the
00:05:29 ◼ ► attributes of a good connector and write them down and see if you can hit some of those. I don't think
00:05:34 ◼ ► it's over-engineering or over-designing to think about when making the iTunes Music store at the
00:05:39 ◼ ► year that it was made, concepts that lead to, that could potentially lead to the problem you have
00:05:45 ◼ ► here. Like, for example, albums are released and then sometimes there is a remaster or a re-release
00:05:54 ◼ ► or an anniversary edition. Also, sometimes artists have "best of" collections, which include songs
00:05:59 ◼ ► from various albums, right? And I feel like one brainstorming session with anybody who has any
00:06:07 ◼ ► interactional music will lead you to those things. It's not a huge schema. It's not thousands of
00:06:15 ◼ ► columns and dozens of tables that are interrelated. You could fit it on a whiteboard, but concepts
00:06:21 ◼ ► like that are super important. I run into this all the time because I have lots of versions of U2
00:06:25 ◼ ► albums. Maybe the iTunes store knows this, but if the iTunes store understands that my three
00:06:31 ◼ ► different copies of the Joshua Tree are in fact different versions of the original Joshua Tree
00:06:37 ◼ ► album from 1987, it is not apparent that iTunes understands that. But it's a really important
00:06:43 ◼ ► concept because then not only can you display that information and understand it, but then you can
00:06:49 ◼ ► avoid mistakes like this by saying, "Okay, you're playing this album. If you don't give me any other
00:06:55 ◼ ► information, I'll play the 1987 Joshua Tree, right? If you ask for the other ones, I'll play
00:06:59 ◼ ► that. But if I'm playing the 1987 Joshua Tree, just play the tracks from the 1987 version. Don't
00:07:10 ◼ ► get confused and switch to the remaster or the 30th anniversary edition or like just play it.
00:07:16 ◼ ► That's how you can tell. Don't try to match them up by like track name or title, or especially if
00:07:23 ◼ ► the remasters are just also called the Joshua Tree. I'm not asking, again, the people will sit
00:07:28 ◼ ► down to make this. That's got to come up in the first brainstorming session because it's a concept
00:07:32 ◼ ► that exists. And if you build that into the data model from day one, it makes writing the app so
00:07:37 ◼ ► much easier because say if someone's trying to debug this from Apple Music or whatever,
00:07:40 ◼ ► it can be confusing because the track names are the same and maybe the album name is the same.
00:07:44 ◼ ► And maybe especially with iTunes match where it's trying to look at your files and match them up
00:07:48 ◼ ► with the ones they have records of, and it's hard to know which one they're matching against.
00:07:51 ◼ ► This kind of metadata really helps. And so I do actually wonder what is the underlying data model
00:07:57 ◼ ► and how limited and dumb is it that errors like this come up all the time and there's apparently
00:08:06 ◼ ► That's very true. Since we're all filing Apple Music radars, let me file one verbally as well.
00:08:12 ◼ ► I was listening to the aforementioned Illusion is Nowadays, the new album, I believe it was on
00:08:16 ◼ ► my computer the other day. And it would play most of the album until there was about 45 seconds of a
00:08:25 ◼ ► song left. And then the audio stopped. It's still playing, allegedly, but the audio stopped. The
00:08:33 ◼ ► timer is still, or the counter, the play counter, whatever, the time is still ticking up. And no
00:08:39 ◼ ► music is coming out of my computer speakers. I advance to the next track immediately. Music is
00:08:44 ◼ ► coming from my speakers again. And then until about 45 seconds before the track ends and then
00:08:47 ◼ ► it all stops. I'm wired ethernet on a symmetric gigabit connection. There is no reason that this
00:08:55 ◼ ► should not be working, but here we are. So yeah, Apple Music not going well for Casey right now.
00:08:59 ◼ ► I'm just going to say that and I will try to leave it at that because we have a lot to talk about,
00:09:07 ◼ ► Jon Moffitt Are you just trying to avoid pronouncing Tatsuhiko Miyagawa's first name and
00:09:11 ◼ ► Jon Moffitt That is exactly correct because I did not have the time to practice and I thought,
00:09:17 ◼ ► Jon Moffitt I know this person from the internet and Pearl. So I had to practice. All right, so
00:09:22 ◼ ► last show I was trying to think of some kind of interview where some Apple executive tried to give
00:09:28 ◼ ► an explanation of why there is no weather or calculator app on the iPad. And apparently it
00:09:33 ◼ ► was an interview with Craig Federighi by MKBHD. We will have a link in the show notes to the
00:09:39 ◼ ► timestamp offset where you can hear his answer. And I had said last show that it wasn't a very
00:09:44 ◼ ► good answer. It's not. I mean, it's a, you know, public relations answer where you have to try to
00:09:49 ◼ ► make a reason that makes you seem good. And CFED's answer was like, well, we don't want to do those
00:09:54 ◼ ► apps unless we can do like something really special. Like we have a really good idea. We
00:09:58 ◼ ► really want to do them right and well. And on the one hand, it makes you think like you wouldn't say
00:10:02 ◼ ► that if you're a savvy Apple executive, you wouldn't say that unless there was actually some
00:10:05 ◼ ► kind of internal project to make a really good fancy iPad weather app and calculator app. Because
00:10:12 ◼ ► otherwise it sounds like, oh, we never want, we didn't want to do it unless we could do something
00:10:15 ◼ ► really special. You're setting yourself up for criticism if you ever release one that's just an
00:10:19 ◼ ► enlarged version. Cause what do you say then? So it makes me think that maybe there actually is
00:10:27 ◼ ► But the second problem with the answer of course is people don't care if it's something special
00:10:30 ◼ ► with the iPad, just make the app so it exists. Like just make, make the iPhone app bigger. It's fine.
00:10:35 ◼ ► Like people just want it to be there, especially calculator. Like we really want to do something
00:10:39 ◼ ► special. Oh really? With the calculator? How about having buttons you can press to add numbers
00:10:42 ◼ ► together? Like it's not rocket science. Well, and I feel like that's kind of a BS excuse too,
00:10:46 ◼ ► because you look at something like, like the clock app, originally there was no clock app on the iPad
00:10:51 ◼ ► that came later. It did something really special with it. Yeah. They just blew up the iPhone
00:10:56 ◼ ► version. It's fine. Like there's nothing, which is fine. Right? Like that's what we needed. Yes.
00:11:00 ◼ ► It's like, you don't need to do it. Like that's, that, that to me was a BS excuse. And the funniest
00:11:04 ◼ ► thing was they just redid their weather app for iOS 15 and there isn't an iPad version of that.
00:11:10 ◼ ► And they made it really cool. And I think if you took the iOS 15 weather app and just made it
00:11:15 ◼ ► bigger, it would still be a really cool weather app. It's not like it gets worse. Like I understand
00:11:19 ◼ ► the idea of like, Oh, I mean, especially back in the early days, it was like, if you can't think
00:11:25 ◼ ► of some way to add a sidebar to your app on the iPad, you're not really going iPad native. Like
00:11:29 ◼ ► don't just take your phone app and stretch it. Like it was a criticism of a lot of the Android
00:11:32 ◼ ► tablet apps. It was like, Oh, it's just the phone app and bigger. And that's true. You shouldn't
00:11:36 ◼ ► just take your phone app and make it bigger, but it's also true that people come to expect a
00:11:41 ◼ ► certain baseline set of functionality. Apple has trained them to expect this because it's available
00:11:45 ◼ ► on the phone. Uh, and at a certain point, it's better to have a calculator app than to have a
00:11:50 ◼ ► really fancy one that takes advantage of the screen space and has like scientific calculations
00:11:54 ◼ ► and reverse false notation and 10 memories and a graphing function. Like that's great if you want
00:11:59 ◼ ► to make that up, but you can also just make the calculator and have it be a little bit bigger and
00:12:03 ◼ ► people will be fine with that. Again, they're getting it for free with the, with the iPad.
00:12:07 ◼ ► You know, I, if you can't think of some way to put it in like a sidebar or like a persistent tape in
00:12:13 ◼ ► your calculator, it's okay just to make for the 1.0 a big calculator app and the weather app,
00:12:18 ◼ ► like I said, I think the graphics and fidelity and layout lend themselves well to an iPad size
00:12:23 ◼ ► screen. Yeah. Look at weather space dot. It looks just like Apple's but bigger. Right. Apple can
00:12:28 ◼ ► make theirs rotate to landscape and just blow out of the water. You know, I think I've made this
00:12:32 ◼ ► joke already, but you know, if only Apple had some sort of cross platform framework that they
00:12:38 ◼ ► already wrote the weather app refresh in, in order to put it on the iPad. Like imagine if they used,
00:12:46 ◼ ► you know, like some sort of Swift thing that was built for user interfaces. I don't know why you're
00:12:51 ◼ ► trying to make this joke. You realize the iPad and the iPhone both use UI kit. Like that already is
00:12:56 ◼ ► the cross-platform framework. Like they have three different, like they can use UI kit, they can use
00:13:01 ◼ ► UI kit plus catalyst on the Mac and they can use Swift UI. Like they have so many options. Yeah,
00:13:05 ◼ ► exactly. They can even use electronic here. That's getting popular. We'll get to that later. Hey,
00:13:08 ◼ ► all right. Moving, moving right along. God, we are way behind already and we're only 20 minutes in.
00:13:13 ◼ ► All right. Uh, the AMD W six, whatever video cards or workstation cards, nobody cares. Cause it's
00:13:19 ◼ ► Mac pro stuff moving right along. Oh, we so care. Is there just one item of Mac. Okay. So
00:13:24 ◼ ► there was some debate last time about whether Apple's graphics cards, these new AMD fancy ones
00:13:30 ◼ ► are the quote unquote of workstation cards and that's why they're so expensive. So, uh,
00:13:34 ◼ ► hish Nash says the AMD pro w whatever works, the w apparently stands for workstation cards,
00:13:39 ◼ ► get the pro drivers. This unlocks some driver features and pathways from running on windows
00:13:43 ◼ ► on a Mac. We're running windows on a Mac pro with a w card. You have access to these pathways as
00:13:51 ◼ ► more features in the windows drivers, but is it actually a different card? Are there any hardware
00:13:56 ◼ ► differences? And so Guillaume L'Huel says it is indeed the same GPU is used in the gaming cards
00:14:01 ◼ ► with the same performance. So there's not a hard, it's not like an entirely different GPU. It's the
00:14:06 ◼ ► same GPU and hish Nash says there's possibly some binning and he's not sure if the memory controllers
00:14:17 ◼ ► But I think it's mostly segmentation by AMD Apple will be paying AMD a lot more for these
00:14:21 ◼ ► GPUs than for a gaming than a gaming OEM would do to the pro w driver support in windows.
00:14:34 ◼ ► you get to use the workstation drivers, which expose new functionality when you're running
00:14:39 ◼ ► Mac OS. Is there literally any difference? Cause if the hardware is the same and the driver is the
00:14:44 ◼ ► same, it's very confusing. And again, you can put the non workstation AMD 68 or 6900 into a Mac pro
00:14:50 ◼ ► and it will use, I think the same drivers as the workstation one. That's the open question of
00:14:54 ◼ ► whether Apple has special workstation drivers or whatever. Um, so a little bit more on this
00:14:57 ◼ ► comparing the w 6,800 to the w 6,800 X like the PC workstation and the Mac workstation one,
00:15:04 ◼ ► they seem identical except for a slight clock drop. The w 6,800 is advertised at 17 teraflops
00:15:09 ◼ ► versus apples being just 16, the w 6,800 on the PC is $2,100. And so Apple's price of 2,800 is not
00:15:17 ◼ ► that extreme given Thunderbolt, et cetera. And again, they're charging you more, both on Mac and
00:15:22 ◼ ► PC for the w card for the exact same hardware, as far as we've been able to determine, except
00:15:27 ◼ ► that on windows, you get to use better drivers, which expose more of that hardware to windows.
00:15:32 ◼ ► And I think, and you know, more memory and possibly a higher grade of memory. I don't know,
00:15:36 ◼ ► but you can get, I think you can get the, the gaming 6,800 with 32, I'm not entirely sure.
00:15:43 ◼ ► That's, that's the question of what mix of hardware you get. Maybe you can get a cheaper memory
00:15:46 ◼ ► controller, but like the fact that the GPU itself, it used to be that you'd get an entirely different
00:15:50 ◼ ► GPU. Like it would be a different chip that had different features in it. It was often worse in
00:15:54 ◼ ► games and better in workstation type stuff, but this is the same GPU. It's just like heat features
00:16:02 ◼ ► are hidden behind a software thing on windows only. And who knows what it's like on the Mac. So
00:16:10 ◼ ► Yeah. And the moral of the story is that Apple is not marking up a $600 card to $3,000. They're
00:16:16 ◼ ► marking up a $2,200 card to $3,000. And the, that other, that first market was happening at AMD's
00:16:21 ◼ ► level, not Apple's level. Yeah. AMD is marking up a $600 card to a $2,000 card or whatever.
00:16:27 ◼ ► Although it's not like, again, like you can, AMD has like reference implementations, but I think
00:16:32 ◼ ► you can just buy the GPU from AMD and then build your own card. Anyway, the GPU market is confusing
00:16:38 ◼ ► and scary. Oh, speaking of confusing and scary, what is that Daisy I hear, I assume? I don't think
00:16:43 ◼ ► hops can make that sound. Yeah. She's a terrifying beast. She does not like the GPU market. No, no.
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00:18:45 ◼ ► Adrian writes, with regard to bug bounties, and I think we theorized on the show, or I don't
00:18:54 ◼ ► remember how it came up, but why doesn't Apple pay bigger bug bounties? They have more money than God.
00:19:01 ◼ ► Why not just pay all the money for really good bug bounties? And Adrian writes, "Apple can't just pay
00:19:06 ◼ ► bananas bug bounties because if they did, all the internal bug hunters would quit and make more
00:19:10 ◼ ► doing the same job from the outside. It's a delicate balance and bug hunters have to want to
00:19:15 ◼ ► do the right thing for it to work." I do agree with this and this does make sense. But then again,
00:19:19 ◼ ► Apple, like developers and employees, get a lot of tools and a lot of information that an external
00:19:25 ◼ ► person wouldn't get. And I know nothing about hunting for bugs, but it seems to me like that
00:19:30 ◼ ► would still be attractive if money is not your only driving force in the world, which for most
00:19:35 ◼ ► people probably is. I mean, they get health insurance and a salary and even if they don't find any bugs,
00:19:41 ◼ ► they keep getting paychecks. Like it's, I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison here.
00:19:47 ◼ ► The people who are finding them in the outside world, it's kind of like trying to win the lottery.
00:19:53 ◼ ► Whereas getting a job on a security team at Apple is a much different financial and life arrangement
00:19:59 ◼ ► that is much more attractive to some people than being outside Apple and competing with the rest
00:20:03 ◼ ► of the world in the hopes that you'll find a bug bounty that then you can convince Apple to pay you
00:20:07 ◼ ► for. Yeah, I also, I don't like this argument. And first of all, I think we heard this argument from
00:20:12 ◼ ► inside because we heard this from a number of different people on, from a number of different
00:20:17 ◼ ► names and stuff and through a number of different avenues of contacting us. And so this kind of
00:20:22 ◼ ► feels like we actually hit the right people with our rant last time. But to me, it's, they're
00:20:28 ◼ ► saying like, well, if Apple paid higher bug bounties, then we'd have to, then the internal
00:20:34 ◼ ► people would quit because they make more on the outside. Well, pay the internal people more.
00:20:38 ◼ ► Yeah, like that's not the only option here. Like you could, like if the market value of finding
00:20:44 ◼ ► these is so high that some company in some other country wants to sell it to Saudi Arabia or
00:20:51 ◼ ► whatever for a million dollars, like if the value is so high, then you kind of have to pay it,
00:20:58 ◼ ► whatever it takes. And so if you, if it, if it takes paying the internal bug hunters enough
00:21:06 ◼ ► if they can just make good money internally, well, that's the market for that. Apple is in a very
00:21:12 ◼ ► high profile position in the world and they have created, you know, through their success, you
00:21:17 ◼ ► know, and good for them, they've created a very high value for the, for exploits of their system.
00:21:24 ◼ ► And so if the value of an exploit is a million dollars or $2 million or whatever it is,
00:21:29 ◼ ► who cares how they have to pay for it, who they have to pay, what like, they should be,
00:21:35 ◼ ► they should still be the ones paying for it, not some random, you know, exploit company that's
00:21:39 ◼ ► going to sell it to a creepy government. I mean, you can do what they do with salespeople,
00:21:42 ◼ ► right? So you give them a decent salary, but you say, Hey, if you find one of these bugs,
00:21:46 ◼ ► we just pay the bounty to you. Like it happens for salespeople all the time. Or I don't even know if
00:21:50 ◼ ► there's a base salary half the time for salespeople. It's like, if you make lots of big sales,
00:21:53 ◼ ► you get lots of money. Like the, it's like, the question is how valuable is this to Apple? And
00:21:57 ◼ ► whatever that number is, pay it to whoever finds the bug. And I think the internal people, you can
00:22:01 ◼ ► adjust and say, okay, well, the internal people get health insurance and benefits and a regular
00:22:05 ◼ ► salary. But also if an internal person hits the jackpot and find some kernel bug, or even maybe
00:22:09 ◼ ► the whole team does it, like give them the money that you would have given the extra. Like, this
00:22:13 ◼ ► is a solvable problem. You know, this is one of the few cases where Apple having tons of money
00:22:17 ◼ ► actually does help solve this problem. It's not so easy in other cases. Apple should just hire
00:22:21 ◼ ► all the people, especially if Apple's being stupid about remote, which they're still kind of being
00:22:25 ◼ ► stupid about. It's not that easy to turn money into talent, but in this case, money actually
00:22:30 ◼ ► does solve this problem and Apple has a lot of it. And so like, you know, I don't, again, I don't
00:22:35 ◼ ► think you have to, you don't have to make them exactly the same because I think there are real
00:22:40 ◼ ► tangible benefits to be a salaried Apple employee, like say stock benefits, like things that the bug
00:22:45 ◼ ► boundary people don't get, but you just have to make them competitive and comparable. That's all.
00:22:50 ◼ ► And then for the external people, like we said last week, make it easy for them to get paid,
00:22:53 ◼ ► make it so that everybody says, hey, if you find a bug, totally go to Apple because you get paid
00:22:57 ◼ ► quickly and conveniently because that's the way you get people to send you bugs. Exactly. The
00:23:00 ◼ ► reputation Apple should have amongst the security community is that if you find something broken
00:23:06 ◼ ► about iOS that you can go to Apple and get paid well and easily and correctly like that,
00:23:12 ◼ ► that should be the reputation that they develop. They don't have it now. And that's, that's a bad
00:23:17 ◼ ► thing, but I, that's what they should be developing. And if they have to end up, you know, paying their
00:23:21 ◼ ► internal bug hunters more fine. That's just, that's part of, part of how you get to that end state.
00:23:26 ◼ ► They can do it. It's fine. No one has ever said Apple pays way too much money to its employees.
00:23:31 ◼ ► I've never heard anybody ever say that. So I think they can afford to, you know, raise the salary of
00:23:37 ◼ ► this department if they have to and raise the bug bounties if they have to, like they can totally
00:23:41 ◼ ► do that. And the fact is that's what the market values these at. And so whatever the market values
00:23:46 ◼ ► them at, Apple should be willing to outbid anybody else in the market. Yep. Definitely agree. Some
00:23:51 ◼ ► quick iCloud photo library follow-up. It's funny, unlike Apple Music, which I feel like is, you know,
00:23:58 ◼ ► nails on a chalkboard every time I use it, I still am mostly enjoying iCloud photo library, but
00:24:04 ◼ ► it's not perfect because guess what? It's Apple web services. So my laptop, I tried to do an import
00:24:11 ◼ ► of some photos into iCloud photo library on my laptop and it hung. By that I mean like the
00:24:16 ◼ ► photos app still working. It's just, they never got uploaded after days, after reboots, after Ethernet,
00:24:21 ◼ ► after wifi, didn't matter. They never got uploaded. So I thought, okay, fine. On the laptop anyway,
00:24:26 ◼ ► I have the, you know, photos repository in its own, not partition, but you know what I'm saying,
00:24:31 ◼ ► like volume or whatever the technical term is. Sorry, John. And so I just tossed the volume,
00:24:36 ◼ ► rebuilt it and created a new iCloud photo library this time, or excuse me, created a new local photo
00:24:42 ◼ ► library. This time it actually synced very quickly, which I was quite happy about. But now I have not
00:24:47 ◼ ► gotten any new pictures since the fourth. And as we record this, it's the 11th. It's just frozen in
00:24:52 ◼ ► time on August 4th. Wonderful. Great. Thanks. Thanks so much guys. And then secondly, I went to start
00:25:04 ◼ ► In fact, I keep meaning to haven't done it yet, but I loved your idea, John, of setting a smart
00:25:09 ◼ ► album for the person is Declan, but the time the picture was taken was before he was born. Like I
00:25:15 ◼ ► haven't, I haven't done this yet, but I love that idea. I think it was a great idea. And I started,
00:25:18 ◼ ► for example, um, doing, trying to like have a smart album for pictures taken by my drone.
00:25:25 ◼ ► And there were a couple other things I was trying to do. And I feel like there are just not that
00:25:28 ◼ ► many smart album, like filtering options. And yes, I think I could have handled the drone or I may
00:25:34 ◼ ► have already done that or whatever, but I forget what it was off the top of my head. And I want to
00:25:38 ◼ ► kind of try to keep this short. So I'm just gonna move on, but I really wish there were more options
00:25:42 ◼ ► for smart albums for things you could filter by. And maybe that's just me, but please. And thank
00:25:46 ◼ ► you. Yeah. One way you can help to work around that is, uh, use the criteria that are there to
00:25:52 ◼ ► search for photos and then apply keywords to them and then use that keyword for filtering. You know
00:25:57 ◼ ► what I mean? Like you can, you can make your own criteria essentially, but because you can make any
00:26:01 ◼ ► number of keywords. So in the little keywords interface command K add as many keywords as you
00:26:05 ◼ ► want and use the existing smart album features to find the photos that you want to apply those
00:26:10 ◼ ► keywords to, and then use those keywords in your smart albums. It's a little bit of a workaround,
00:26:14 ◼ ► but I I'm really a big fan of keywords since you can make them up at any time and apply them to
00:26:19 ◼ ► any photos you want. They really help organize things. And of course you can apply multiple to
00:26:26 ◼ ► finding them in big batches and applying them, uh, usually goes a long way and you can always
00:26:30 ◼ ► amend them later by removing and adding a totally, I fully endorse Casey. If you're doing this,
00:26:35 ◼ ► assigning a keyboard shortcuts to the keywords. So you can press a single letter to, uh, to assign
00:26:42 ◼ ► a keyword or remove it like an unmodified keystroke. So you can just type like I type D,
00:26:47 ◼ ► which is for Daisy, my dog, there's also my dog. Um, and I can go through photos and really quickly,
00:26:53 ◼ ► like, you know, select a range and hit D. These are all Daisy or it's like the photo and hit D
00:26:58 ◼ ► to remove the Daisy tag. Cause it's misidentified. You know what I mean? Um, obviously you run out of
00:27:02 ◼ ► keys, but it's kind of like using VI. Like these are not command D not control D not option D just
00:27:07 ◼ ► plain D. Um, and it don't, by the way, uh, another thing, yeah, I don't know how you'd figure this
00:27:11 ◼ ► out. I just assume everyone knows cause I use it all the time, but people probably don't.
00:27:14 ◼ ► Those shortcuts only work when the keywords floating palette is visible. So you won't be
00:27:20 ◼ ► accidentally hitting the keyboard to like, Oh, I just labeled all my photos accidentally cause
00:27:24 ◼ ► my elbow hit the keyboard, right? Those key shortcuts only work after you've hit command
00:27:29 ◼ ► K and made the floating keywords palette visible. So you can make it visible, shove it off to the
00:27:33 ◼ ► side and then just select photos and just get and hit the thing. And it's actually pretty quick.
00:27:37 ◼ ► It's all just using it, doing a SQLite update under the covers. I'm pretty sure. So it's actually
00:27:41 ◼ ► pretty fast to remove them. It has some visual feedback. You can see like it turning red when
00:27:45 ◼ ► it removes the Daisy keyword and showing Daisy and white or whatever, when it adds it, give it a try.
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00:29:36 ◼ ► Buckle up. Here we go. Let me start by saying, if you are the kind of person that listens to
00:29:45 ◼ ► this in front of your children, that's awesome. And hi kids, we're so happy that you listen to us,
00:29:50 ◼ ► but not this time. This time, I strongly encourage you to use your chapter skip functionality in
00:29:57 ◼ ► Overcast or whatever, not as good as Overcast podcast client that you're using, and maybe skip
00:30:03 ◼ ► this chapter until after the kids are in bed. You probably know where this is going, but we'd like
00:30:09 ◼ ► to talk about Apple's new child safety features. So there's not going to be like swear words or
00:30:14 ◼ ► anything like that, but obviously the content from here on out, we're going to assume only adults
00:30:19 ◼ ► are listening. So please be careful. That being said, so Apple announced sometime, I think around
00:30:26 ◼ ► the time we recorded last week, or maybe shortly thereafter. It was like an hour after we released
00:30:30 ◼ ► the show. Okay, there you go. Apple released or announced some new child safety features,
00:30:36 ◼ ► and there's a whole landing page at apple.com/child-safety. And there are basically three
00:30:44 ◼ ► major features. And I think in part, because they were all announced simultaneously, there's a lot
00:30:50 ◼ ► of confusion, including for me as to what happens, where and when, and what all these are about. So
00:30:56 ◼ ► we're going to try as much for ourselves as for all of you to try to break this down and make sense
00:31:01 ◼ ► of it. So let me start with the like 50,000 foot view. And so here again, there are three major
00:31:06 ◼ ► components that Apple has announced. Number one, the messages app will use on-device machine learning
00:31:12 ◼ ► to warn about sensitive content while keeping private communications unreadable by Apple. And
00:31:17 ◼ ► we'll dive a little deeper into this in a moment. Number two, iOS and iPadOS will use new
00:31:24 ◼ ► applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of child, help me with this child.
00:31:30 ◼ ► Sexual abuse material, CSAM. Yep, I wonder, but that was the first time we said it. Yeah,
00:31:34 ◼ ► it's what used to be called child pornography. And this is now like the new modern, more inclusive,
00:31:39 ◼ ► I think, term for. Or more accurate. Yeah, yeah, child, yeah, child abusive material. Right. So,
00:31:44 ◼ ► let me start from the top. iOS and iPadOS will use new applications of cryptography to help limit the
00:31:49 ◼ ► spread of CSAM online while designing for user privacy. CSAM detection will help Apple provide
00:31:59 ◼ ► again, there's a lot to dive into on that one, which is probably where we're going to spend most
00:32:03 ◼ ► of our time here in a moment. Then finally, the third one, updates to Siri and search provide
00:32:08 ◼ ► parents and children expanded information and help if they encounter unsafe situations.
00:32:16 ◼ ► So, that's the broad overview. Three things, some stuff on device with messages, some stuff that's
00:32:24 ◼ ► working in concert between what's on your device and what's on Apple servers for photos, and then
00:32:31 ◼ ► finally, presumably almost entirely server-side, updates to Siri and search. So, that is the broad
00:32:38 ◼ ► overview. Gentlemen, I can keep going deeper, but do you want to jump in now with any tidbits?
00:32:42 ◼ ► I think we should start with messages one. I know you said you thought we'd spend more time on the
00:32:47 ◼ ► photos one, but the more I read up on this, the more I think the messages one is actually a little
00:32:52 ◼ ► bit of a more difficult situation. And by the way, no one seems to talk about the Siri and search
00:32:56 ◼ ► thing, but I think that is also related to this. Maybe I'll try to fold it into this discussion.
00:33:01 ◼ ► So, the messages one, that description is vague, like, "Oh, on device machine learning to warn about
00:33:06 ◼ ► sensitive content." What is it actually doing? So, what it's doing is it's trying to see if kids send
00:33:12 ◼ ► or receive sexually explicit material by detecting that on device. And then when it detects it,
00:33:20 ◼ ► depending on what the situation is, it pops up some kind of dialogue to the person who is sending
00:33:26 ◼ ► or receiving and gives them a bunch of options. Now, Gruber had a good explanation of these
00:33:32 ◼ ► features with more detail on his website, and we'll link to that. So, the first thing to know
00:33:36 ◼ ► about the messages thing is this only applies for children in an iCloud family account. So,
00:33:41 ◼ ► if you are not a child in an iCloud family account, I think Apple defines child as like,
00:33:56 ◼ ► this feature doesn't exist for you, whatever. And even if it does apply to you, you need to
00:34:01 ◼ ► explicitly opt in. So, your kids won't be opted into this without you doing it. It's an opt-in
00:34:13 ◼ ► you get a warning about the image. I don't know what the warning says. I think there's been some
00:34:19 ◼ ► screenshots of it, but it's aimed at younger kids, and you have two options at that point.
00:34:26 ◼ ► You can ignore the warning, and if you are under 12 years old, according to what Apple knows of
00:34:32 ◼ ► your age because you're in the iCloud family account, it says basically to the under 12-year-old,
00:34:37 ◼ ► if you choose to either continue to send or continue to receive this image that we're not
00:34:41 ◼ ► yet showing you, and you're under 12, we want you to know that we're going to notify your parents.
00:34:45 ◼ ► So, the kids, in theory, are told like, you can continue and you can do what you're doing,
00:35:03 ◼ ► Yeah, for what it's worth, I actually thought the verbiage that Apple cited on their child safety
00:35:08 ◼ ► page is very good and worth reading. Now, obviously, I'm no expert in this, but I thought it was good.
00:35:17 ◼ ► you know, huge thinking emoji, this could be sensitive to view, are you sure? And then it
00:35:21 ◼ ► has like three basically bullets after that. Sensitive photos and videos show the private
00:35:25 ◼ ► body parts that you would cover with bathing suits. It's not your fault, but sensitive photos
00:35:29 ◼ ► and videos can be used to hurt you. The person in this might not want it seen, it could have
00:35:33 ◼ ► been shared without them knowing, and it says, "I'm sure" or "not now" with "not now" being the
00:35:38 ◼ ► obvious default. And then there's a second dialogue, you know, it's your choice, but your
00:35:43 ◼ ► parents want to know you're safe. And again, three bullets. If you decide to view this, your parents
00:35:48 ◼ ► will get a notification to make sure you're okay. Don't share anything you don't want to. Talk to
00:35:51 ◼ ► someone you trust if you feel pressured. If you're not alone, you can always get help here,
00:35:55 ◼ ► and it appears that here's a hyperlink, and then the two options are don't view photo, which is the
00:36:00 ◼ ► default, and view photo. So, when you read this, you can see, you can see kind of see the target
00:36:04 ◼ ► audience in your mind. A kid under 12 who's involved in either sending or receiving these
00:36:09 ◼ ► things, there's lots of dangerous situations in which it would be good if there was some
00:36:15 ◼ ► intervention of someone warning or, you know, like, when you're picturing the ideal scenario,
00:36:22 ◼ ► you're like, these are all good things. But of course, when you're designing any feature
00:36:26 ◼ ► like this, any feature between parents and children, it is always fraught, because not all
00:36:33 ◼ ► parents are good parents, and not all children are in a safe situation. Like this feature,
00:36:37 ◼ ► I'm not going to say this feature assumes that all kids are in a safe situation, because it doesn't,
00:36:41 ◼ ► Apple does a bunch of stuff to mitigate this. For example, Apple doesn't immediately notify
00:36:46 ◼ ► the parents without telling the kids, because if you just assumed, oh, all parents are good,
00:36:50 ◼ ► and all children are in a safe situation, why this whole dance was letting the kid opt out of
00:36:55 ◼ ► the warning? What kid is going to read that and choose to notify their parents? That warning
00:36:59 ◼ ► undercuts the whole feature, doesn't it? That choice to bail out and avoid the notification
00:37:05 ◼ ► to the parents exists, at least in part, because Apple knows that not all parents are great parents.
00:37:22 ◼ ► does this increase the chance that a child reveals something in an unsafe parent-child relationship
00:37:30 ◼ ► that makes that situation worse? There are many parents that will have a bad reaction to knowing
00:37:33 ◼ ► that their kids are viewing any kind of sexually explicit images, especially if they're sexually
00:37:37 ◼ ► explicit images that are not aligned with the sexuality that the parent thinks the kid should
00:37:43 ◼ ► have, let's say, right? You can't just assume that all parents are there to save and protect
00:37:48 ◼ ► their children, or that all parents' idea of protection matches what Apple's idea of protection
00:37:52 ◼ ► is, right? And you would say, okay, well, those kids just can do the thing where they don't notify
00:37:58 ◼ ► the parents. Everything's fine, right? These are kids under 12. How many kids have you seen tap
00:38:03 ◼ ► through dialogue boxes without reading the text? Right? And I will add, on top of that,
00:38:11 ◼ ► even an 11- and 12-year-old can be, depending on the situation, if it's two 12-year-olds swapping
00:38:18 ◼ ► naked pictures of each other who are, like, in a relationship or whatever, those kids may be
00:38:23 ◼ ► highly motivated to see that picture. And kids don't always make the best choices, right? A
00:38:29 ◼ ► 12-year-old kid may not necessarily make the "best choices," as in, I know my parents are
00:38:35 ◼ ► going to be notified, but I'm going to take the risk. You know, there's a reason children who are
00:38:40 ◼ ► 12 years old aren't allowed to vote or drive cars and stuff like this. They're still growing. They're
00:38:46 ◼ ► still learning, right? So even in the best of situations, this feature can lead to harms that
00:38:52 ◼ ► would otherwise not happen. Now, this is why it's so difficult to think about this. You say, well,
00:38:58 ◼ ► should we just do nothing? Should there be no features that help a healthy parent-child
00:39:04 ◼ ► relationship? Think of Marco putting his Apple Watch on his son so he knows where he is.
00:39:08 ◼ ► Features like that can be abused by parents who are not good parents to their children,
00:39:14 ◼ ► to kids who are not in a safe situation. Location tracking can be used as a form of oppression.
00:39:19 ◼ ► It's not how Marco's using it, not how most parents are using it, but should that feature
00:39:23 ◼ ► not exist because it can be abused? Every time Apple adds a feature like this, you can see
00:39:29 ◼ ► some thought and some part of the design going into the notion that we have to mitigate against
00:39:35 ◼ ► the worst-case scenario. But it's difficult to argue that none of these features should ever
00:39:42 ◼ ► exist because there is a benefit to them, and you're trying to balance the potential harm with
00:39:47 ◼ ► the potential benefit. In a case like this where we're trying to deal with child sexual abuse,
00:39:53 ◼ ► the harm is so terrible that to do nothing, to me, feels worse than to try to do something.
00:40:02 ◼ ► But when you try to do something, you do have to, A, try to mitigate against harms that you can
00:40:08 ◼ ► imagine might happen, which I think Apple's doing, and B, accept feedback from the world and your
00:40:13 ◼ ► customers about how you might be able to improve the situation by mitigating that harm in a better
00:40:18 ◼ ► way. I'm not full of great ideas for this. That's why I think a lot of people have difficulty talking
00:40:23 ◼ ► about this topic because if anyone is talking about this topic and they're like, "There is an
00:40:28 ◼ ► obvious solution that Apple should have done that is so much better than what they did, and they
00:40:31 ◼ ► should just do it," I'm suspicious of that. Because unless they're extremists and they say, "Well,
00:40:36 ◼ ► Apple should never include any features that have anything to do with parents and children because
00:40:41 ◼ ► any harm is worse than nothing," like the extremist sort of, and we'll get to that with the photos
00:40:45 ◼ ► thing of just like freedom over everything, kind of the EFF thing where if you are a lobbying
00:40:50 ◼ ► organization where you are staking out one end of a spectrum, there is a place for organizations
00:40:56 ◼ ► like that. I mean, I like the EFF. I donate to them, but I always know that the position they're
00:41:00 ◼ ► going to stake out is the most extreme in favor of freedom. It doesn't mean I always agree with them,
00:41:06 ◼ ► but I feel like that force needs to be there to counteract the other force, which is naked
00:41:12 ◼ ► authoritarianism. We have plenty of that in the world, right? So those two extremes need to
00:41:17 ◼ ► fight it out, and I'm way more towards the EFF side of the spectrum to be clear, way, way,
00:41:21 ◼ ► way closer. But they're always going to say, "This feature shouldn't exist at all." I don't agree
00:41:27 ◼ ► with that, but I also agree that it's super hard to do this feature in a way that doesn't accidentally
00:41:31 ◼ ► end up harming a bunch of kids that would otherwise not be harmed, either on purpose or by accident,
00:41:36 ◼ ► because now this feature gives parents a, you know, gives, you know, parents, bad parents,
00:41:44 ◼ ► I don't want to say bad parents, but like children who are in an unsafe situation are now in more
00:41:48 ◼ ► danger because of the danger posed by this. Previously, there was no way to accidentally
00:41:53 ◼ ► hit a button and notify your parents that you're doing something you know is going to make your
00:41:56 ◼ ► life worse, right? And now there is. But the reason this exists is because there is other
00:42:01 ◼ ► harm that we're trying to stop as well. So I have real trouble figuring out how to feel about this
00:42:08 ◼ ► feature. Right now, I kind of feel like trying to do something is better than doing nothing.
00:42:27 ◼ ► probably you too as well. It's hard for me to talk about stuff like this, because this is a, like,
00:42:34 ◼ ► the horrible dark world of child sexual abuse and this, all this stuff that this is trying to
00:42:42 ◼ ► prevent or, you know, find at least. We are not experts in this world. We are fortunate enough
00:42:48 ◼ ► that we haven't had to be. And this is like, it's such a terrible, like, set of things that happens
00:42:56 ◼ ► here. And again, like, we're lucky that we're not experts, but because we have a tech podcast,
00:43:02 ◼ ► we, and because tech is so big and it encompasses so much of the world, stuff like this lands on
00:43:07 ◼ ► our feet of like, well, this is what our audience expects us to be talking about this week. It's
00:43:11 ◼ ► very relevant. And so here we are. And I feel like many of you out there are kind of put in the same
00:43:17 ◼ ► position, like, as consumers of tech news and Apple news, and, you know, or just being Apple
00:43:22 ◼ ► fans and being enthusiasts of this stuff. Like, this stuff comes up and all of a sudden we all
00:43:26 ◼ ► have to take a crash course in what all this stuff means. What is that, what is going on in the world
00:43:30 ◼ ► out there? You know, what, what problems and solutions already exist? What have people already
00:43:36 ◼ ► been doing? What have companies already been doing? So we're in unfamiliar territory here,
00:43:40 ◼ ► to fortunately a large degree. So please forgive us if we, you know, miss some aspect of this or
00:43:46 ◼ ► stumble over parts of this, because it's very uncomfortable to even be thinking about this
00:43:51 ◼ ► stuff. Cause it's, it's so like, you know, actual sexual abuse is so horrific. I think as we get to
00:43:58 ◼ ► in a minute, when we talk about the, the CSAM scanning feature, it has special treatment in
00:44:02 ◼ ► society because it is so horrific. Like it's such a special case in so many ways of how we treat
00:44:10 ◼ ► things. So anyway, all of that being said, and we'll get, we'll get back to that other part in
00:44:15 ◼ ► a minute. All that being said, the, you know, the messages, you know, nudity sensor, basically,
00:44:21 ◼ ► it seems like they've done a pretty decent job of avoiding most of the problems with the parameters
00:44:27 ◼ ► they put in place with this feature. If the feature went up to 18, I think that would be
00:44:32 ◼ ► much more problematic because, you know, there's, I think everyone can agree that you don't really
00:44:38 ◼ ► want nine year olds sharing nude photos with each other. But people have different definitions of
00:44:44 ◼ ► like things like age of consent and everything. As you get closer to 18, like you could argue,
00:44:48 ◼ ► many people do argue, if a 17 year old girl takes a picture of herself on her phone, is should she
00:44:55 ◼ ► be arrested for possession of underage nudes? Like that's, and that has happened. And there's,
00:45:01 ◼ ► there's all sorts of weird ways in which that can be overly oppressive to women or to queer youth.
00:45:07 ◼ ► And so obviously any feature involving like people's ability to take and share pictures
00:45:14 ◼ ► of themselves runs into serious problems in practice if it's like, you know, older teenagers,
00:45:21 ◼ ► necessarily. So by keeping it to younger children, you avoid a lot of those murky areas.
00:45:26 ◼ ► Well, the flip side of that, though, is that young kids are also the most likely to misunderstand or
00:45:31 ◼ ► not really get the consequences of what the dialogue box is trying to tell them. That's why
00:45:36 ◼ ► the dialogue is worded to try to like the bathing suit area thing. It's worded and aimed at younger
00:45:40 ◼ ► kids, but they're exactly the ones that are the least equipped to really, truly understand the
00:45:44 ◼ ► consequences and also probably the most likely to tap through them really quick. And the second
00:45:49 ◼ ► side of that is, you know, abuse and sort of grooming by older predators happens to 16 to
00:45:56 ◼ ► 17 year olds all the time too. So there's some people who are more expert in this field who have
00:46:01 ◼ ► criticized Apple's targeting of saying most of the sort of sex trafficking and grooming that is
00:46:08 ◼ ► happening is not happening to nine year olds, but it's actually more of a problem in the older teens.
00:46:12 ◼ ► And so the situation like, we all because it's so horrific, we all tend to think of like, Oh,
00:46:18 ◼ ► what are the normal situations? A 17 year old couple are like sending each other nude pictures,
00:46:22 ◼ ► and we don't want to get in the way of that because it's just normal growing up stuff, right?
00:46:25 ◼ ► But what about the, you know, the much, much older sexual predator, either posing as a teen or not
00:46:34 ◼ ► even posing as a teen, but you know, grooming a 16 or 17 year old, it's just as bad as the child
00:46:44 ◼ ► situation. There's so many variety of ways that these things can be abused. And the tool that we
00:46:50 ◼ ► have to deal with this, this, you know, we should get into the tech aspect of this for a second.
00:46:54 ◼ ► This is sort of just machine learning, hey, this picture that either is being about to be received
00:46:59 ◼ ► or about to be sent. Does it look sexually explicit? And that's just kind of a best guess.
00:47:05 ◼ ► And that's the only tool we have. We don't have any other context. There is no machine learning
00:47:09 ◼ ► trying to suss out. Is this conversation between a predator and prey? Is this a conversation between
00:47:14 ◼ ► two kids who are a couple? There's as far as Apple has told us, there's none of that. It is literally
00:47:20 ◼ ► only this one thing, photo coming in, photo coming out, ML model, look at photo, tell me yes, no,
00:47:26 ◼ ► is it sexually explicit? Such a blunt instrument that has no awareness of this other stuff.
00:47:31 ◼ ► And it's hard enough to solve this problem because you know, all the, like the pictures of like,
00:47:35 ◼ ► you know, someone's making bacon cookies and they take a picture of the bowl and it's sexually
00:47:40 ◼ ► explicit because it's like, it looks, you know, like machine learning is not perfect. This is
00:47:44 ◼ ► straight up, hey, machine learning, here's an arbitrary picture. Tell me whether it's sexually
00:47:48 ◼ ► explicit. And it's not super accurate. So we also have to account for all the cases where some poor
00:47:55 ◼ ► kid or teenager is going to be faced with this dialogue, especially on an incoming picture and go,
00:47:59 ◼ ► why did this person send me? And it's just like a picture of their dog, right? Because their dog
00:48:05 ◼ ► is determined to be sexually explicit, right? So the tech involved in this thing also makes it
00:48:11 ◼ ► somewhat fraught. And I think like, you know, Marco, from your perspective, like, oh, it's,
00:48:16 ◼ ► it's easier for the older kids and harder for the younger in some aspects, but also in some aspects
00:48:20 ◼ ► is the reverse. And like, you really just have to go through all the different scenarios. And it
00:48:24 ◼ ► probably also helps to have experts in this field to like, you know, like I read a few things from
00:48:28 ◼ ► of saying like, here's where the bulk of the problem is. And even though this is scarier,
00:48:32 ◼ ► this happens, it's kind of like the whole thing of like, you're probably not going to be like,
00:48:36 ◼ ► murdered by a stranger, most likely, especially if you're a woman, you'd be murdered by, you know,
00:48:43 ◼ ► it's depressing to think about, but like, the fear of murder from a stranger, you know, or a
00:48:48 ◼ ► shark attack or whatever is so much out of proportion to what's actually going to kill you,
00:48:52 ◼ ► which is usually much more mundane. Right. And so I'm sure something like that also applies to
00:48:58 ◼ ► all the child sexual abuse stuff and experts in the field would could probably help Apple
00:49:13 ◼ ► it's such a tough thing, like you guys said, you know, you want to prevent this and in Apple's case,
00:49:20 ◼ ► not only do you want to prevent it, but you want to do it with some semblance of privacy, you know,
00:49:24 ◼ ► you don't want to be beaming these images to some server like Google probably would, I honestly
00:49:30 ◼ ► don't know how they handle it. But you know, you don't want to be beaming these every image that
00:49:35 ◼ ► you receive via iMessage to some server to verify whether or not it has CSAM in it. It's a very
00:49:42 ◼ ► difficult problem to solve. And Apple's made it more difficult by by insisting on on having it be
00:49:47 ◼ ► as private as they possibly can, which is, in my opinion, it's something they should be applauded
00:49:52 ◼ ► for. But it's challenging. This gets us into the next feature was like, Oh, this is privacy
00:49:56 ◼ ► preserving, it doesn't break end to end encryption on messages, right? Because it's only like,
00:50:00 ◼ ► obviously, when a message arrives on your phone, something has to decrypt it. Otherwise, you can't
00:50:04 ◼ ► read it. Right. So and if we do it on device, if we do the machine learning model on your device,
00:50:09 ◼ ► like it was encrypted, and then encrypted across the hallway, and only right before it gets to
00:50:13 ◼ ► your eyeballs, when we have to encrypt it anyway, at that point, we'll do the machine learning
00:50:16 ◼ ► thing. So it's privacy preserving, right? From one point of view, yes, I if by what you mean
00:50:21 ◼ ► of privacy is, we didn't compromise the privacy in transit, no one snooping over the internet is
00:50:26 ◼ ► going to be able to see that picture and grab it because it's end to end encrypted. Another aspect
00:50:30 ◼ ► of privacy is, hey, Apple, don't tell my parents about this. That's privacy, too. If you're a kid,
00:50:35 ◼ ► not ratting you out to your parents is a form of privacy. Right? And so yes, the grant of dialogue
00:50:40 ◼ ► tells you it's going to do that, and so on and so forth. But you're putting a lot of weight on
00:50:44 ◼ ► people being able to correctly read and understand dialogues and by the way, tap the right button.
00:50:48 ◼ ► Right? Previously, before this feature, there was no feature in messages that could potentially rat
00:50:53 ◼ ► you out to your parents, right with an errand click on a dialog box, right? And now there is.
00:50:59 ◼ ► And from a child's perspective, that's not privacy preserving at all, right? From an abstract kind of
00:51:05 ◼ ► like, oh, random people snooping on internet routers can't see your picture. Great, that's
00:51:09 ◼ ► great. But what I care about is my parents finding out and now suddenly there's possibility where
00:51:12 ◼ ► that didn't happen before. And of course, on the parent side is, oh, if a predator is trying to,
00:51:17 ◼ ► you know, groom my 12 year old, I really want to know about that, Apple. And so there's just so
00:51:22 ◼ ► many conflicting stakeholders in this soup that it's very difficult to come up with a, you know,
00:51:28 ◼ ► other than again, the extreme position of like, you should just never do anything about this.
00:51:31 ◼ ► Right? And that seems like a clean solution to you think, all right, so we should do nothing about
00:51:35 ◼ ► child sexual abuse. It's like, well, don't do this. Well, what should we do? Oh, now it's a hard
00:51:40 ◼ ► question. I don't like it. Like, so Apple's trying to do something and we'll get to why probably in
00:51:43 ◼ ► a little bit, but anything you do is, is fraud in some way. Well, and I think, I mean, let's get to
00:51:50 ◼ ► that now. I think one of the things that I've learned listening to, you know, other people's
00:51:54 ◼ ► podcasts about this, by the way, I can strongly recommend this week's episode of decoder with
00:51:59 ◼ ► Neelay Patel. He had a couple of experts on in this area and I guess so this podcast, you know,
00:52:05 ◼ ► decoder, every, every, every episode of it is like, you know, some CEO or, you know, chief officer of
00:52:12 ◼ ► some company and they, they mostly sound that they're going to be really boring. But then when
00:52:17 ◼ ► I listen to them, it's like, I learned something cool or it's much more interesting than I thought
00:52:22 ◼ ► every single episode, like literally every episode I've heard, which is most of them, it always ends
00:52:26 ◼ ► up being worth it. Even if it sounds like from the title and description, like it might not be very
00:52:30 ◼ ► exciting or it might be a company you don't care about. Anyway, so this week's episode of decoder
00:52:35 ◼ ► with Neelay Patel, very, very good. He, cause he had two experts on in this area and I learned a
00:52:41 ◼ ► lot from that, that I didn't hear in a lot of other places. So I can strongly recommend listening to
00:52:45 ◼ ► that. If you, if you want to hear from people who actually know what they're talking about in this
00:52:49 ◼ ► area, you will learn a lot, I promise. But yeah, anyway, one of the big things that we've all
00:52:54 ◼ ► learned, at least I sure have, I didn't know this before this is that almost all of the major,
00:53:03 ◼ ► you know, tech cloud slash service companies are doing various forms of C scan, CSAM scanning
00:53:15 ◼ ► you know, Facebook, Microsoft, like everyone's doing this. And one of the reasons why they're
00:53:20 ◼ ► doing this is because they have to by law in many countries, including in the U S and so I think
00:53:27 ◼ ► part of the reason why Apple is doing this is that they have been facing increasing pressure from
00:53:34 ◼ ► the law and, and from law enforcement agencies. And there's, there's a big history here of,
00:53:40 ◼ ► you know, Apple trying to make their devices very private and trying to give users lots of
00:53:46 ◼ ► strong encryption tools to use for their data and for their content, while sometimes being at odds
00:53:53 ◼ ► with what law enforcement wants to be available to them. You know, there was the obvious of the
00:53:58 ◼ ► famous San Bernardino shooter case, where, you know, the government wanted Apple to unlock a
00:54:05 ◼ ► phone and Apple basically said no. And Tim Cook made some terrible analogies about cancer. But,
00:54:10 ◼ ► you know, for the most part, his argument, once you got past those terrible analogies was fairly
00:54:14 ◼ ► sound. And why they shouldn't do that. But anyway, you know, this part of what makes this complicated
00:54:21 ◼ ► is that we in the tech business, we operated for so long, kind of skating by, under the radar of most
00:54:30 ◼ ► governments and legislators, they couldn't keep up with us. They didn't understand what we were
00:54:34 ◼ ► doing. And they kind of left us alone to a large degree for a very long time as we developed the
00:54:40 ◼ ► tech business. And I think those days are long over now, like that now governments have gotten
00:54:47 ◼ ► a clue of how powerful tech is. They don't like parts of it. And they intervene now it to a much
00:54:54 ◼ ► larger degree with legislation and pressure and legal, you know, threats or actions that they did
00:54:59 ◼ ► in the past. So we as computer people are accustomed to tech companies being able to do whatever they
00:55:05 ◼ ► wanted, and us being able to have these devices that we could do whatever we wanted on. And
00:55:10 ◼ ► largely the law was not enforced, or didn't expand to cover tech stuff. And so we got used to this
00:55:17 ◼ ► freedom of like, my device is mine, the government can't tell me what my phone can and can't do or
00:55:22 ◼ ► whatever that, you know, that era has been chipped away over the last several years, at least. And
00:55:28 ◼ ► now, all the tech companies are under much greater pressure from the governments that they either
00:55:34 ◼ ► operate directly in, or at least have to sell their products to for, you know, for healthy
00:55:38 ◼ ► financial reasons. So there's going to be an increasing amount of government intrusion into
00:55:45 ◼ ► tech. Some of that, like some of the antitrust proposals, which I know there was a big one today,
00:55:49 ◼ ► we're probably not going to get to it today, because it just happened and we have a lot of
00:55:52 ◼ ► stuff to talk about today. But some of that stuff will be good. But a lot of this stuff will be,
00:55:56 ◼ ► well, we have to comply with this law now. And some of those are going to be good laws that we
00:56:01 ◼ ► agree with. And some of them are not. And it's going to get messy. It's already getting messy.
00:56:06 ◼ ► And it's going to get messier as the tech companies have to, like, bow to pressure from or just
00:56:13 ◼ ► comply with the laws in their jurisdiction that they operate in. Are you sure about one
00:56:18 ◼ ► correction? Are you sure about the thing where they have to scan? I'm pretty sure they don't
00:56:21 ◼ ► have to scan in the US. What they have to do is report it if they find it, but they don't have to
00:56:25 ◼ ► go looking for it. But there are, I believe that's right. But there are UK and EU laws that are
00:56:32 ◼ ► coming down the pike that potentially will say you have to scan for it. So in some ways,
00:56:37 ◼ ► well, let's just finish up the motivation for this thing. Some of the motivation might be
00:56:42 ◼ ► that those laws are coming and you might have to comply with it anyway, so we should do it.
00:56:47 ◼ ► Another part of the motivation is, and by the way, all these features we're talking about are
00:56:57 ◼ ► will potentially expand this to other countries on a country by country basis, according to them.
00:57:02 ◼ ► The other thing is that if the US ever has a law like this, Apple, and this is what Apple says in
00:57:08 ◼ ► their interviews, and we'll have Matt Pansarino had a good interview with Apple's head of privacy
00:57:13 ◼ ► about this. The Apple answer is, the reason we're doing this now is because we figured out a way to
00:57:18 ◼ ► do it that is "privacy preserving." And we'll talk about the photo scanning and what their meaning of
00:57:24 ◼ ► that is. But what they're saying is these other companies that are doing it, like Facebook and
00:57:28 ◼ ► Microsoft and so on and so forth, they do it the brute force way of like, "Hey, we have access to
00:57:32 ◼ ► all your photos that are stored on our servers. It's our servers, they're on our cloud services.
00:57:36 ◼ ► We're just going to scan them there. And if we find anything, we're going to report it." Because
00:57:39 ◼ ► the law in the US is if you find it, you have to report it. But they're actively looking for it.
00:57:43 ◼ ► They're scanning all your photos on the server side because they have them. Apple could do that
00:57:47 ◼ ► too, but Apple apparently considers that not privacy preserving. And the Apple side of privacy
00:57:52 ◼ ► really hits on this thing of saying, "Well, I know it's much worse when you scan on the server side
00:57:56 ◼ ► because it's more opaque and you can't tell what we're doing. And we could decide to just scan one
00:58:00 ◼ ► person's thing because they're under scrutiny and all these sorts of other things." Apple is very
00:58:05 ◼ ► big in their messaging to say, "That is not from Apple's perspective privacy preserving. What is
00:58:09 ◼ ► more privacy preserving is if we do it on device." And we'll talk about that feature in a second or
00:58:13 ◼ ► whatever. But Apple's story is, "Hey, the reason we're doing this now is not because we're afraid
00:58:17 ◼ ► of regulations coming down or whatever. It's because we found a way to do it that is privacy
00:58:21 ◼ ► preserving according to our definition of privacy preserving." But surely part of Apple's motivation
00:58:26 ◼ ► is that Apple knows that whenever there is an attack on Apple's privacy preserving features,
00:58:32 ◼ ► like the San Bernardino thing of the FBI or whatever saying, "Apple, this is a terrible
00:58:36 ◼ ► terrorist. You need to let us have a backdoor on all your iPhones because terrorism is bad."
00:58:40 ◼ ► That's not a good situation to be in and Apple has to make the difficult argument that we're not in
00:58:46 ◼ ► favor of terrorism, but we also don't want to put a backdoor on all our devices because there's no
00:58:50 ◼ ► such thing as a backdoor that can only be used by the good guys. It's an argument that tech people
00:58:54 ◼ ► understand, but it's hard to understand when emotions are high and terrorism is involved.
00:58:59 ◼ ► Same exact thing with child sexual abuse. If it's a child sexual abuse situation, you can say,
00:59:03 ◼ ► "Apple, I know you said you don't want to include a backdoor for some reason, but child sexual abuse,
00:59:08 ◼ ► you have to do it for the children." So features like this, where you can say, "We found a way
00:59:14 ◼ ► to do this without backdooring every single iPhone," is a great defense when the time comes
00:59:19 ◼ ► when someone says, "Oh, just like in the movies, this kid has been kidnapped by the boogeyman,"
00:59:24 ◼ ► and some scenario that never happens in real life. "A stranger has kidnapped a beautiful,
00:59:28 ◼ ► innocent child and you need to unlock this phone to get it and Apple, you need to let this happen,"
00:59:32 ◼ ► or whatever. Features like this that hopefully catch the boogeyman before they kidnap a kid by
00:59:37 ◼ ► detecting the fact that they're downloading CSAM and stuff, done in a way that doesn't require
00:59:43 ◼ ► putting in a backdoor that "only the good guys can use" or some other technical fantasy that
00:59:53 ◼ ► those regulations start coming in the US. It's not a free-for-all anymore. It's probably part
00:59:59 ◼ ► of the same reason that Facebook and Microsoft and Google and all those things do their own
01:00:03 ◼ ► CSAM scanning server-side. Just say, "Look, we're already doing a thing that will help with this
01:00:08 ◼ ► terrible situation, so please don't ask us to backdoor our encryption," or "Please don't outlaw
01:00:12 ◼ ► and end encryption," or all sorts of other much worse policies that will actually make everyone
01:00:21 ◼ ► Yeah, so let's talk about iCloud Photo Library. So like I'd said, again, the summary is that iOS
01:00:34 ◼ ► CSAM online. While designing for user privacy, CSAM detection will help Apple provide valuable
01:00:38 ◼ ► information to law enforcement on collections of CSAM and iCloud Photos. So let's start off.
01:00:43 ◼ ► If you are not using iCloud Photos, this does not apply to you. That's as simple as that.
01:00:49 ◼ ► Before moving on from that point, that's another thing that a lot of people will bring up,
01:00:59 ◼ ► child sex abuse predators will just read that and say, "Aha, I'm safe from Apple. I just won't
01:01:04 ◼ ► use iCloud Photo Library." Why would Apple announce the way to avoid this feature? It's totally
01:01:11 ◼ ► pointless. All it will ever do is catch innocent people because no guilty person will ever use it.
01:01:22 ◼ ► and you see how many instances of it they catch every year—I think the Facebook number was 20
01:01:28 ◼ ► million reported last year. Oh my god. And it's not like it's a secret information that Facebook
01:01:35 ◼ ► does this scanning, right? So you would think, "Well, if Facebook announces to the world that
01:01:40 ◼ ► they do this scanning, why would anyone who's a child sexual predator use Facebook?" People
01:01:48 ◼ ► do things that don't make a lot of sense, but it's—we'll get to this in a little bit—saying,
01:01:56 ◼ ► "I just won't use Facebook. I just won't use Google. I just won't use Apple. I just won't
01:02:00 ◼ ► use iCloud Photo Library." Yes, in theory, if you were the world's biggest criminal mastermind,
01:02:06 ◼ ► you could avoid all these things, right? But practically speaking, it's very difficult to
01:02:12 ◼ ► essentially avoid using the internet and the major players on the internet. And practically speaking,
01:02:17 ◼ ► 20 million cases caught by Facebook shows that they don't avoid it. They do it, and we catch them.
01:02:24 ◼ ► And that's why features like this, even though there's a way to work around them, still have
01:02:30 ◼ ► value in catching criminals. If you caught zero of them per year, we should have to rethink this,
01:02:36 ◼ ► but 20 million per year at Facebook is a big number. And by the way, Apple, which prior to
01:02:42 ◼ ► these features was not actively doing anything to catch this stuff, reported something like 200 last
01:02:48 ◼ ► year. And who knows how they found those 200, right? Maybe they were reported or something like
01:02:52 ◼ ► that. But when Facebook is doing 20 million and Apple is doing 200, I feel like that shows that
01:02:59 ◼ ► Apple needs to do more. And so here is that, thus these features that we're talking about. So there
01:03:04 ◼ ► is this next feature. So yes, it's only if you use iCloud Photo Library. If you don't use iCloud Photo
01:03:08 ◼ ► Library, none of this stuff ever happens, but that doesn't mean that no one will ever be caught by
01:03:13 ◼ ► this. Right. So I tried to do some deeper reading into the mechanics of how this works and I did
01:03:20 ◼ ► some, but my eyes glazed over for some of it. I didn't get through it all. So I have tried to do
01:03:26 ◼ ► some research and I have failed. So call me John Saracusa, but we will try to cite what we can and
01:03:31 ◼ ► people who have done a little more research than us. And certainly like, you know, Marko's disclaimer
01:03:35 ◼ ► earlier, you know, I am not a cryptographic expert. In fact, a lot of it is way above my head. So I'm
01:03:41 ◼ ► trying my darndest to understand this a little better, but I need a little more time to get it
01:03:45 ◼ ► a hundred percent right. But with that said, mostly quoting Gruber's really good summary.
01:03:50 ◼ ► So for iCloud Photos, the CSAM detection for iCloud Photos only applies to images that are being
01:03:55 ◼ ► sent to iCloud Photo Library. Like I said earlier, if you don't use iCloud Photo Library, no images
01:04:00 ◼ ► on your devices are fingerprinted. Photos are compared on device to a list of known CSAM from
01:04:08 ◼ ► NCMEC, N-C-M-E-C, which is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So let me
01:04:12 ◼ ► unpack that sentence. So NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
01:04:17 ◼ ► they do keep a database or repository of some sort, if I understand correctly, of CSAM. And
01:04:24 ◼ ► they are the only organization, they're the only people that are legally allowed to do that here
01:04:29 ◼ ► in the United States. And that's because they're the people in charge of trying to prevent it and
01:04:33 ◼ ► fight it. And so, from my understanding is, Apple, and I'm filling in a couple of blanks here,
01:04:38 ◼ ► but Apple will provide some sort of tool to NCMEC to scan all their files and their database. These
01:04:44 ◼ ► are things that they know are bad. This known, you know, sexually explosive material, child sex
01:04:50 ◼ ► assault material, whatever. They will scan all that and that will generate a bunch of hashes.
01:04:54 ◼ ► So basically a bunch of numbers. And they'll be post-processed a little bit by Apple, the hashes,
01:04:59 ◼ ► that is, not the photos. And that generates a whole bunch of hashes, again, so these are numbers that
01:05:08 ◼ ► Apple can then use to compare your photos to. So the idea is, and I'm dramatically oversimplifying,
01:05:15 ◼ ► but let's say there's a CSAM picture of whatever, doesn't matter what the specifics are, and it
01:05:22 ◼ ► yields a number of 42. Now, obviously these numbers are way longer than that, but let's just say
01:05:27 ◼ ► it yields the number 42. Well, if I had a picture on my phone that also yielded 42 as the hash,
01:05:34 ◼ ► as that unique number, and it should do this, by the way, even if I make it grayscale, even if I,
01:05:40 ◼ ► you know, twist it upside down or whatever the case may be, because it's doing some semantic
01:05:44 ◼ ► processing and some other things. But one way or another, if I end up with a photo that ends up with
01:05:49 ◼ ► a hash of 42, and Nicmec has provided a photo and scanned it using Apple's tool and provided the
01:05:55 ◼ ► hash of 42 to Apple, then uh-oh, we've got a match and things will carry on from there. But before I
01:06:00 ◼ ► go on any further... And when you say a match, by the way, you're not saying this is a similar
01:06:05 ◼ ► picture, this is a picture of a similar thing, it is literally the same picture. Plus or minus,
01:06:09 ◼ ► like you said, zooming, cropping, grayscale, blurring, like, but basically what it's trying
01:06:15 ◼ ► to say is this is literally the same picture. Like it's not like saying, oh, this is a picture
01:06:18 ◼ ► of an apple. It's like, no, this is the exact picture of an apple that's in the CSAM database,
01:06:23 ◼ ► right? It is the exact picture. So there are a finite number of pictures that this is trying
01:06:29 ◼ ► to detect. It is the database provided by Nicmec. I don't know how many pictures it is, but that's
01:06:34 ◼ ► it. Those are all the pictures that it's ever going to find. It's not going to find a picture
01:06:37 ◼ ► that's not in that database. And if it finds one, it's not saying this is a similar picture,
01:06:41 ◼ ► a picture of the same thing, or even a picture of the same person or anything like that. It is
01:06:44 ◼ ► saying this is literally that picture. So it is extremely limited in that if it's not on the
01:07:00 ◼ ► attempting to do. Right. This is in contrast, mind you, to the messages stuff, the iMessage stuff we
01:07:06 ◼ ► were talking about earlier, where that is trying to say, oh, that looks like a body part covered
01:07:10 ◼ ► up by a bathing suit. That is something we should figure, you know, that that's something we should
01:07:14 ◼ ► alert you about. This is different. This is exactly what John said. This is not, oh, that looks like
01:07:19 ◼ ► a body part covered by bathing suit. It's no, no, no. It's this picture matches whatever picture
01:07:25 ◼ ► is in that CSAM database. And Apple doesn't get the CSAM database because not only do they not
01:07:30 ◼ ► want it, I'm quite sure, but it is illegal for them to have it. All they are getting is the ha-
01:07:34 ◼ ► or the the list of hashes generated by it, presumably by some tool that Apple provides.
01:07:39 ◼ ► So the thing is, though, you just one match isn't enough. Nothing happens if there's one match.
01:07:46 ◼ ► There is some threshold. Nobody knows what that threshold is. That's probably for several different
01:07:51 ◼ ► reasons. Probably so, you know, like if we all knew that the threshold was 20, then some nefarious
01:07:57 ◼ ► individual could keep 19 photos on their phone and they'd be fine. But we don't know if the threshold
01:08:02 ◼ ► is 20 or two or two million or whatever. So one way or another, one match isn't enough to trigger
01:08:08 ◼ ► any action. There is this threshold and we don't know what that threshold is, but eventually that
01:08:15 ◼ ► threshold will be reached. And, and again, I'm totally making this up, but just to make discussion
01:08:19 ◼ ► easier, let's say it's 20. And so once 20 pictures are hit, then at that point, the cryptographic
01:08:27 ◼ ► protections that are built around these, um, these, I forget what they call them. I'll have to
01:08:31 ◼ ► help my head now. Safety vouchers. That's actually before we even get to the threshold board. That's
01:08:35 ◼ ► an important point. When, when one of these matches is found, there's one of these safety
01:08:39 ◼ ► vouchers is sent to Apple, but Apple itself can't decrypt that to do anything with it until the
01:08:47 ◼ ► is probably over all of our heads, uh, that makes that possible is using cryptography to say, okay,
01:08:52 ◼ ► when we find a hit, we'll send the safety voucher to Apple, but Apple cannot do anything with that
01:08:59 ◼ ► safety voucher. They can't tell what the original picture was. They can't tell which picture it
01:09:02 ◼ ► matched. They can't do anything with it until the threshold is reached. And when the threshold
01:09:14 ◼ ► then they can actually decode them and say, now we need to actually look at these pictures. And
01:09:18 ◼ ► so that brings us to the next step. Yeah. It's kind of like the world's most complicated and
01:09:22 ◼ ► worst raid array. Like we need, we need a certain number of these before we can decrypt any of them.
01:09:29 ◼ ► Honestly, like from a technical point of view, that's a really cool idea. Like that is very
01:09:34 ◼ ► clever. They do a bunch of other privacy preserving stuff that again, if you can understand the
01:09:38 ◼ ► cryptographic stuff where they will intentionally send like false, uh, seed it with false
01:09:42 ◼ ► information. So there's no way to sort of, there's no way to sort of pick out people who are
01:09:47 ◼ ► potentially bad actors until the threshold is reached. Because just because you see some,
01:09:52 ◼ ► like it's, they do a bunch of stuff where to try to be privacy preserving, because as we've learned,
01:10:03 ◼ ► some information that could be used to determine something. So they intentionally seed in some
01:10:07 ◼ ► information to add noise to the thing. But the whole point is even Apple, even under like
01:10:12 ◼ ► threat of law, again, if they, someone subpoenaed said, we demand that you decrypt these safety
01:10:17 ◼ ► vouchers and show what these pictures are. Apple literally can't do it because of math until the
01:10:22 ◼ ► threshold is reached. Right. Which is, which is very cool. And again, that 20 number that
01:10:26 ◼ ► we're using that's just made up. We have no idea what the threshold is. So the, but the threshold
01:10:31 ◼ ► is designed such that, and now this is a quote from Apple. So to provide an extremely high level
01:10:37 ◼ ► of accuracy and ensures that less than one in 1 trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging
01:10:44 ◼ ► a given account that now mind you, that's not incorrectly flagging a photo incorrectly,
01:10:52 ◼ ► be it 20 or 200 or 2 million or whatever, there is less than a one in 1 trillion chance that any one
01:10:58 ◼ ► of the three of us or anyone else for that matter, we'll have an oops and get our account flagged,
01:11:02 ◼ ► even if it shouldn't be. So this, this thing reveals some information about this because
01:11:06 ◼ ► we just got done saying like the whole point of this algorithm is to try to tell, is this the
01:11:10 ◼ ► same picture as that accounting for things like zooming, cropping, rotating, color changing,
01:11:16 ◼ ► stuff like that. So when I say, Oh, accounting for those changes, it's clear that it's not a
01:11:21 ◼ ► byte for byte comparison because that would work on any of those things, right? Obviously there is
01:11:26 ◼ ► some amount of, I don't know if you call it machine learning, but some amount of processing that is
01:11:30 ◼ ► done to try to determine if this picture is the quote unquote same picture as that one, even if
01:11:36 ◼ ► it's been converted to black and white, even if it's been zoomed a little bit, even if the crop
01:11:40 ◼ ► is slightly different, even if a new section of it was blurred out, even if it has some words stamped
01:11:44 ◼ ► on it, you know what I mean? Like a human could tell if they're the same picture, but for computers,
01:11:48 ◼ ► it's harder to sell like a human can tell, Oh, this is the same picture. It's just rotated a
01:11:52 ◼ ► little bit in zoom track. We can do that pretty easily, but computers have harder time with it.
01:11:55 ◼ ► Right? So this one inch trillion chance thing. And the fact that there's a threshold at all
01:12:01 ◼ ► is telling us this algorithm is not a hundred percent accurate when it comes to determining
01:12:06 ◼ ► if this picture is the same as the other one, because if it was, you wouldn't need a threshold,
01:12:09 ◼ ► right? It's not like they're trying to say, you're allowed to have some number of CSAM on your,
01:12:14 ◼ ► on your computer. That's not what they're saying with this threshold. Like, Oh, it's okay. If you
01:12:16 ◼ ► have a little, but if you have a lot, we're going to report you to the law. It's because this
01:12:21 ◼ ► algorithm is not a hundred percent accurate. Right. And so to make it and, and, you know,
01:12:30 ◼ ► Apple has done the math and said, we're going to make this threshold and we're going to make it. So
01:12:34 ◼ ► it's really, really bad, hard to have a false positive. And there's, there's two strategies
01:12:39 ◼ ► in that one, the consequences of a false positive are, could be devastating to the person involved
01:12:44 ◼ ► in it. You do not want to be reported for law enforcement for having CSAM when you have actually
01:12:49 ◼ ► none because of some stupid algorithm. Right. That is super harmful and Apple would never want to do
01:12:55 ◼ ► that. Right. And the second thing is, since the algorithm is not a hundred percent accurate,
01:13:02 ◼ ► Apple wants to actually know that like it's an Apple's interest to, to try to, to make sure that
01:13:09 ◼ ► you, and also to get the most egregious offenders, right. You really like the whole point of this is
01:13:14 ◼ ► to catch the people doing the bad thing. I'm going to, I don't know much about this field,
01:13:19 ◼ ► but I'm going to say it's probably unlikely that people who are doing this have one picture,
01:13:23 ◼ ► right. They probably have more than one. So we, again, we don't know what the threshold is,
01:13:27 ◼ ► but by putting the threshold like this, hopefully they can avoid any false positives and also pretty
01:13:34 ◼ ► much catch everybody who's doing this. Again, it depends on the threshold. If the threshold is a
01:13:38 ◼ ► million photos, maybe this is not a great feature. Uh, but if the threshold is 10, you're probably
01:13:42 ◼ ► going to catch all the people. Right. Like, again, why don't they just keep nine or is the, if they,
01:13:47 ◼ ► we found out the secret threshold, people could just keep one under see also Facebook catching
01:13:51 ◼ ► 20 million people. Um, it like, that's not the way criminality works and there is no system that can
01:13:57 ◼ ► own that can catch the master criminals. Right. Cause they just won't use the internet and they'll
01:14:00 ◼ ► be safe. They'll live in a shack in the woods. Like there's always some out, right. We're just
01:14:08 ◼ ► unreliability of this needs to be a factor, like the threshold, that's the way to think about this.
01:14:12 ◼ ► Right. Um, and Apple's calculations presumably are well-founded, but, um, the reason a lot of
01:14:20 ◼ ► people are, oh, there's lots of reasons people are nervous about this, which we'll start enumerating
01:14:24 ◼ ► now, I think. But one of them is that this is not, uh, that it is an algorithm. And despite the fact
01:14:30 ◼ ► that Apple says it's one in a trillion, it's not potentially reassuring. Now the next backstop on
01:14:34 ◼ ► that is when you hit the threshold and Apple can finally decrypt the safety vouchers. It doesn't
01:14:39 ◼ ► report you to the police at that point. What happens at that point is Apple has someone
01:14:44 ◼ ► whose job is terrible, actually actual human beings then have to look at the photos and do a
01:14:51 ◼ ► final human powered confirmation that yes, these really are the same photos, right? That these
01:14:56 ◼ ► really are. I mean, not the same, but these really are, you know, they are, they are CSAM and not a
01:15:00 ◼ ► picture of someone's dog, right? Human being has to make that determination. That's not a fun job.
01:15:07 ◼ ► Um, but that is the backstop and saying, okay, at that point, after a human looks at it, after it's
01:15:12 ◼ ► past the threshold, it's done all the things. Once it passes the threshold, they get, I think they
01:15:16 ◼ ► get like a, a lower resolution version of it. They don't even get the full version of it, but they
01:15:20 ◼ ► get enough of it. So, so a human can look at it cause Apple can finally decode it now because it
01:15:24 ◼ ► passed the threshold. They look at it, they make a determination. This is by the way, after the one
01:15:29 ◼ ► in a trillion, after the one in a trillion, then a human looks at it. So even if you fall into the
01:15:34 ◼ ► one in a trillion thing, if it turns up not being one in a trillion, but one in a hundred million,
01:15:41 ◼ ► they report you to the authorities because it's us law that they have to do that anyway, right?
01:15:49 ◼ ► Uh, unfortunately for Apple, even this is not particularly reassuring to a lot of people because
01:15:55 ◼ ► anyone has gone through app review knows that ostensibly human looks at every app in app review
01:15:59 ◼ ► and we've all seen rejections from app review that prove that having a human look at something is not
01:16:08 ◼ ► that the people doing this job have a higher threshold of reporting someone to the police
01:16:15 ◼ ► for child sexual abuse material than rejecting your app because they think you didn't put a
01:16:20 ◼ ► button in the right place. I would also hope they don't have such a volume to deal with.
01:16:42 ◼ ► especially within tech community that's thinking about this from a tech and privacy perspective,
01:16:46 ◼ ► that that doesn't actually make me feel that much better because my experience with humans at Apple
01:16:57 ◼ ► gut reaction to past experiences that I hope has almost no bearing on this situation. Um,
01:17:02 ◼ ► because it seems like app review is complicated. Uh, human being looking at a picture and
01:17:08 ◼ ► determining whether it's child sexual abuse material seems less complicated to me. It seems
01:17:12 ◼ ► more an open shot type of thing. I don't think a picture of your dog is going to be accidentally
01:17:19 ◼ ► flagged as CSAM by an inattentive reviewer. I really hope not. Right. Um, but so why, you know,
01:17:27 ◼ ► so why does this feature make people upset? Why was this feature getting most of the press and
01:17:32 ◼ ► complaints, uh, aside from the messages feature above and beyond the messages one? Why is this
01:17:36 ◼ ► the one that bugs everybody? Um, I think part of it is that it applies to, uh, adults. It's not
01:17:43 ◼ ► just kids because, you know, who's on the internet arguing about this, probably not 12 year olds,
01:17:47 ◼ ► but it's a bunch of adults. And this one does apply to adults if you use iCloud photo library.
01:17:55 ◼ ► well, Apple says it's one in a trillion, but who's knows what it really is. It's not a deterministic
01:18:00 ◼ ► algorithm, or it's not a, it's not a algorithm that anyone really understands. So it's some
01:18:04 ◼ ► form of machine learning and it's kind of fuzzy and it's not a hundred percent accurate. That's
01:18:07 ◼ ► the thresholds that makes me nervous. And the humans is the backstop don't make me feel better.
01:18:16 ◼ ► Apple's put into it. Um, one of the more fundamental underlying discomforts with this entire system
01:18:22 ◼ ► is that it feels, I'm going to say unjust on American, not in keeping with the American
01:18:30 ◼ ► justice system because people have some expectation and you know, part of the constitution, the fourth
01:18:37 ◼ ► amendment or whatever, but like in, in the U S anyway, there is a sense that if you are looking
01:18:46 ◼ ► into something in my life, there has to be some reason I'm suspected of a crime. So you look at
01:18:52 ◼ ► my bank records to see if I've been laundering money. You know, uh, like I, I, you think I have
01:18:59 ◼ ► stolen merchandise because there's a, you know, someone who matches my description caught on a
01:19:03 ◼ ► security camera, stealing something from a store. So you have a warrant to search my house, right?
01:19:08 ◼ ► That is generally the way our criminal justice system works. That if there is some suspicion
01:19:14 ◼ ► that you have done a thing, you have to convince a judge that we think this person might do this
01:19:19 ◼ ► thing. Therefore we need to search something and you get a search warrant and you look into it.
01:19:28 ◼ ► And that way, if anyone does anything wrong, you catch them. And that's what we call surveillance.
01:19:35 ◼ ► And this feature does not have the concept of probable cause or any of these type of things.
01:19:43 ◼ ► It's surveillance. It is watching every single picture on every single person's phone all the
01:19:51 ◼ ► time. Now, Apple isn't the U S government. The, you know, there, there, there is not the same
01:19:57 ◼ ► situation at all, but from a sort of emotional feel and justice perspective, it feels like I am
01:20:04 ◼ ► now being surveilled that everybody is being surveilled. That we, that everything we're doing
01:20:09 ◼ ► is being watched just in case we ever do something criminal. Again, the messages feature is exactly
01:20:14 ◼ ► the same, but it's like, Oh, that's kids only. It only applies to kids. It doesn't apply to me.
01:20:22 ◼ ► who under the age limit of that messages feature, every single photo has that ML thing run against
01:20:28 ◼ ► it. If you've opted in right. And same thing with this thing. If you're using iCloud photo library,
01:20:37 ◼ ► And for some people, especially people who are sort of security conscious and looking at, or
01:20:41 ◼ ► privacy conscious and looking at this through the broader lens of, you know, what seems fair and
01:20:48 ◼ ► just in a technological world, this doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good to know that you are
01:20:52 ◼ ► constantly being surveilled just in case you do something wrong and everyone tries all those
01:20:56 ◼ ► stuff. Also, if you're not doing child sexual abuse stuff, you have nothing to worry about.
01:21:00 ◼ ► If you have nothing to hide, it's okay for the East Germans to listen in on your phone calls. Right?
01:21:04 ◼ ► Like, again, Apple is not the government. It is not a direct comparison, but it feels similar.
01:21:10 ◼ ► People don't like the idea that you're being surveilled. Setting aside the fact that like,
01:21:14 ◼ ► you know, the CSAM scanning is going on for every photo uploaded to Facebook, every photo put into
01:21:18 ◼ ► Google Drive, every photo put into Microsoft OneDrive, like that's also surveillance because
01:21:24 ◼ ► they're not discriminating. They're not saying, oh, this person might be a criminal. We're going
01:21:27 ◼ ► to scan. They just scan everybody's because that's what computers do. But it feels like surveillance
01:21:32 ◼ ► to people. And this gets back to the app argument of like, oh, we didn't want to do this until we
01:21:38 ◼ ► could do it in a privacy preserving way. But by doing it in this quote unquote privacy preserving
01:21:43 ◼ ► way, it still feels like surveillance. No, they're not scanning it on the server, but they're still
01:21:47 ◼ ► scanning every picture for everybody. They're just doing it on the client. And Apple can't even make
01:21:51 ◼ ► the argument of like, oh, we can't even see your photos because they can because Apple doesn't do
01:22:02 ◼ ► if you back up to iCloud, Apple can get at those backups. And so some people are making the argument
01:22:07 ◼ ► that this feature is a precursor to Apple finally providing end-to-end encryption for iCloud photo
01:22:11 ◼ ► backups. Again, more arguments about like, well, the criminals just won't do iCloud backups. Like,
01:22:15 ◼ ► you know, they will and they do because they're people and some of them won't, but most of them
01:22:21 ◼ ► will, right? Because it's just law of averages. Anyway, if this is a precursor to end-to-end
01:22:26 ◼ ► encrypting iCloud backups, great. But if it's not, it doesn't feel any more privacy preserving. And
01:22:33 ◼ ► I say feels specifically here than scanning on the server side. Apple's argument is that
01:22:38 ◼ ► it is more privacy preserving because the scanning happens on your device and everyone gets the same
01:22:43 ◼ ► OS with the same database of NicMec images. And you can prove that cryptographically and you can
01:22:47 ◼ ► look at the bytes and you can be clear that we're not targeting an individual and so on and so forth.
01:22:51 ◼ ► But in the end, Apple is still saying, hey, every single person who has an iPhoto who uses iCloud
01:22:56 ◼ ► photo library, your device that you hold in your hand is looking at every single one of your photos.
01:23:01 ◼ ► And as Ben Thompson pointed out in his thing today, a lot of people feel like their own phone,
01:23:07 ◼ ► quote unquote, spying on them is somehow feels worse than, you know, sending it to a server
01:23:13 ◼ ► where it gets scanned by Apple, right? Because you feel like you're being betrayed by the physical
01:23:17 ◼ ► thing you hold in your hand. Like even though it's not actually worse, it's the same thing, right?
01:23:21 ◼ ► And in many ways it is more secure for it to be happening on device and not, you know, not sending
01:23:27 ◼ ► it unencrypted across the wire or letting Apple see it or all those other things, setting aside
01:23:30 ◼ ► the iCloud backup issue. But it feels worse. And this is a lot of Apple's problem with this feature
01:23:35 ◼ ► that every part of it, Apple is making the argument that this is, preserves your privacy better.
01:23:42 ◼ ► But to the average person, when you explain it to them, it feels worse than the alternatives
01:23:48 ◼ ► that Apple says are worse. But in the end, all of them are essentially some form of surveillance
01:23:53 ◼ ► by your device, which is common practice and is the way that we use computers to try to
01:23:58 ◼ ► catch criminals in this particular situation, which I don't know. Again, you know, people
01:24:05 ◼ ► who don't like this, okay, what should we do instead? Well, there's always the people who say,
01:24:13 ◼ ► else in the tech industry. And if those laws come through that says Apple has to scan, they need a
01:24:17 ◼ ► solution. And if you needed a solution, this one is in keeping with Apple's values, which is we'd
01:24:22 ◼ ► rather do it on device. We don't want to, you know, we don't want to compromise our end-to-end
01:24:27 ◼ ► encryption where it exists. In theory, Apple, this leaves Apple free to do end-to-end encrypted iCloud
01:24:32 ◼ ► backups at any point in the future while still being able to say to government regulators,
01:24:36 ◼ ► hey, we're still scanning for CSAM, right? You can't make us unencrypt our end-to-end encrypted
01:24:42 ◼ ► backups because that's not stopping us from doing the thing you want us to do, you know,
01:24:45 ◼ ► save the children and all that stuff. But from a feel perspective, I don't think this feels great
01:24:53 ◼ ► to a lot of people. I mean, for me, the more I sit with this and the more we learn about some of the
01:24:59 ◼ ► details, I'm put a little bit more at ease about it. You know, and the more I think about a lot of
01:25:06 ◼ ► it, you know, it's tricky because as you mentioned earlier, like, CSAM is a special case, both morally
01:25:13 ◼ ► for most people, but also legally in most jurisdictions that, you know, normally you can
01:25:19 ◼ ► take a picture of, in most cases, whatever you want, and it's generally not going to be illegal
01:25:26 ◼ ► for you to even possess that picture. You know, there's things like copyright infringement that
01:25:30 ◼ ► could be a problem or, you know, other issues, but like, for the most part, most types of data
01:25:36 ◼ ► are not themselves like totally illegal to even possess, whereas this is. And I think the more
01:25:50 ◼ ► when, if you know at all how horrific this kind of stuff can be, then yeah, you kind of realize
01:25:56 ◼ ► why it should be illegal. It's, you know, to even possess it. So Apple then is in a tough position
01:26:03 ◼ ► because they sell, you know, a billion devices that have really good encryption built in and
01:26:10 ◼ ► really good privacy built in. And it gives their customers the ability to do a lot of illegal
01:26:16 ◼ ► things to great effect. A lot of that you can, you can, you know, look the other way and say,
01:26:21 ◼ ► well, you know, it's out of our hands. It's not our problem. And, you know, the good outweighs
01:26:30 ◼ ► enable child abuse? That's a pretty horrible thing. And in this case, if you look at the way
01:26:38 ◼ ► they designed this feature, you know, we'll talk about potential future motives in a minute,
01:26:42 ◼ ► but if you look at the way they designed this feature, they didn't design it to prevent the
01:26:48 ◼ ► iPhone camera from capturing CSAM images. They didn't prevent other apps from transmitting
01:26:57 ◼ ► them back and forth. You know, they, they, like, you know, we mentioned earlier about the,
01:27:01 ◼ ► the iMessage feature. I think a lot of kids are going to be using other services to do that kind
01:27:05 ◼ ► of thing, not just iMessage, but anyway, they did roughly the bare minimum they could do
01:27:17 ◼ ► the iMessage thing, that's a little bit different, but they, what they did was keep themselves out of
01:27:23 ◼ ► possession of data that's illegal to possess. So in that way, they clearly did a very narrow thing
01:27:31 ◼ ► here. Well, they're not keeping themselves out of possession because surely they possess tons of it
01:27:36 ◼ ► now. And they're not going to find that tons of it unless it is uploaded or downloaded from iCloud
01:27:44 ◼ ► would assume they are. They won't, they won't be because that's the whole point. They're not doing
01:27:47 ◼ ► server-side scanning. Now they will scan it if it comes to or from a phone, which may allow them
01:27:52 ◼ ► to scan it. But like, I mean, if it goes off the end because you're optimizing storage and you pull
01:27:56 ◼ ► it back in, but the Apple has been very explicit that they are not scanning it server-side.
01:28:00 ◼ ► Eventually they'll probably get it all because if it's in an iCloud photo library and you
01:28:04 ◼ ► load up a new phone or even just scroll a whole bunch or, you know, like things go back and forth
01:28:08 ◼ ► from iCloud photo library all the time to the phone. And every time something goes back and
01:28:12 ◼ ► forth to any device, a Mac, a phone, I don't know if it's a Mac, it's just iPadOS and iPhoneOS. But
01:28:16 ◼ ► anyway, anytime it transfers, it is then scanned on that device. But they're explicitly not saying,
01:28:24 ◼ ► oh, and by the way, we're going to go through our back catalog of all the, of all these iCloud
01:28:27 ◼ ► phone backups that we have access to because we have the keys and scan all the photos, right? So
01:28:31 ◼ ► Apple will undoubtedly continue to be in possession of CSAM just as they are at this moment.
01:28:37 ◼ ► But going forward, they are trying to catch any collection of it that starts to exist or that is
01:28:44 ◼ ► newly downloaded to a new phone or a new iPad or whatever. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. But
01:28:48 ◼ ► anyway, I think, you know, they, they are clearly trying to, for the most part in, in most ways,
01:28:56 ◼ ► still let your device be your device. In this case, they are, they're basically mostly protecting
01:29:02 ◼ ► themselves from being in possession of data that's illegal to possess. And so I'm, I'm a little bit
01:29:09 ◼ ► heartened. Did we figure out if that's a word or not? It is. I don't know why you doubt this. It
01:29:14 ◼ ► is. I'm a little bit heartened that they've done this in a relatively narrow way. You know,
01:29:19 ◼ ► there's lots of ways that governments have applied pressure to tech companies that, that I think are,
01:29:27 ◼ ► are a little bit more overreaching. Like for instance, try scanning a picture of a $100 bill
01:29:33 ◼ ► or any, you know, Euro bank note or, you know, any, any modern bank note, try scanning it and
01:29:38 ◼ ► open it up in Photoshop. See how far you get. Oh, that, that actually brings up the other
01:29:42 ◼ ► big objection to this, which is the Slippery Slope thing having to do with governments.
01:29:45 ◼ ► So we just described the feature. It's the NicMec database. It's the comparison against things.
01:29:50 ◼ ► One of the things people jumped on really early was like, first of all, how does stuff get into
01:29:55 ◼ ► the NicMec database? Cause if it's totally opaque and Apple doesn't even get to know what's in there,
01:30:03 ◼ ► put in this picture of our, you know, copyrighted image into your NicMec database. So then we'll
01:30:08 ◼ ► know if anyone shares our copyrighted image or whatever. And the second thing is that's just
01:30:13 ◼ ► one database. Next, it's going to be a database of anything, you know, movie companies will be
01:30:18 ◼ ► putting in databases of movies and trailers. And we're just going to find every, you know,
01:30:23 ◼ ► it's going to all be copyright infringement and patents. And also this stuff will just be like,
01:30:26 ◼ ► Apple would just take anyone's database and just compare against and all this stuff. There's lots
01:30:30 ◼ ► of Slippery Slope arguments there. Apple for what it's worth has explicitly said, no, Apple itself
01:30:36 ◼ ► is not adding stuff to the database. It's not letting anyone else add stuff to the database.
01:30:39 ◼ ► The NicMec's entire purpose in life is not to allow random companies like Disney to add pictures
01:30:44 ◼ ► of Iron Man to the database because they don't want people sharing pictures of Iron Man. Like
01:30:47 ◼ ► it is very, very narrowly defined, right? The second part of the, and Apple says that they'll,
01:30:52 ◼ ► you know, like that's the intended function of this feature, right? Second part is, okay, well,
01:30:57 ◼ ► but the government can make Apple do all sorts of things. And in fact, the government can make Apple
01:31:00 ◼ ► not tell people about it. So what if the government makes Apple add pictures of secret, like Pentagon
01:31:07 ◼ ► documents, so they don't want it to be leaked or whatever, and we need, we want it to be leaked
01:31:10 ◼ ► because they show like, you know, abuses in Abu Ghraib or whatever, right? The government can make
01:31:15 ◼ ► Apple do that. And then the government can make Apple not say anything about it. All right. So
01:31:20 ◼ ► the solution to the government being able to force companies to do things that we don't like,
01:31:31 ◼ ► gerrymandering and all the other terrible things that afflict this country, is that we change the
01:31:35 ◼ ► government and the government changes the laws. Then we have things in the constitution that
01:31:43 ◼ ► would prevent any sort of evidence, you know, gathered in this way from being admissible in
01:31:48 ◼ ► court or whatever. But anyway, in the US, in theory, I'm being buried under a storm of asterisks
01:31:54 ◼ ► here. They're just falling from the sky, just burying me under a pile of asterisks. Yeah, I know.
01:31:59 ◼ ► But, but anyway, in the US, in theory, we have a mechanism to stop that from happening. But
01:32:05 ◼ ► what it comes down to is, yes, companies are subject to the government that runs the country
01:32:12 ◼ ► in which they operate. And the US is subject to the US government. And the US government has a
01:32:15 ◼ ► bunch of terrible laws. And it's very difficult to change those terrible laws. And we know all that,
01:32:19 ◼ ► but that is that situation. But then one step up from that is, okay, let's say you're okay with the
01:32:24 ◼ ► US and you think they're not going to do anything too terrible. What about in China? Well, I have
01:32:28 ◼ ► some bad news, as we've discussed in the past. Apple has a China problem and the world has a
01:32:33 ◼ ► China problem. And part of that problem is that China already has access to everything that Apple
01:32:38 ◼ ► does in China, because China has made Apple put all their stuff in Chinese data centers where
01:32:43 ◼ ► China holds the keys, right? That's not a problem Apple can solve. The only way they can solve it
01:32:50 ◼ ► is say we're either going to be in China and do what Chinese law dictates, which is essentially
01:32:54 ◼ ► give China access to everything, which is what the situation currently is, or we don't do business
01:32:59 ◼ ► in China, which is some other what some other companies have chosen to do. So that's the
01:33:03 ◼ ► conversation you need to have there, which is like, first of all, China doesn't need to stick
01:33:07 ◼ ► things in the Nicmec database. They have access to everything because they're an oppressive
01:33:11 ◼ ► authoritarian regime, right? They've already done that. They probably have way better systems in
01:33:15 ◼ ► this for, you know, keeping track of the dissidents and doing all terrible things that they do, right?
01:33:19 ◼ ► That's terrible. That's also not a problem Apple can solve. And it's not made worse by this feature.
01:33:25 ◼ ► So like so many things, if you don't trust your government to not do oppressive authoritarian
01:33:32 ◼ ► things, nothing the technology company that operates in your in your country can do will
01:33:38 ◼ ► fix that. Like Apple can't fix the US government except for through lobbying and all the other ways
01:33:42 ◼ ► they can fix it. But again, as they're all the aspects that are falling down from this guy from
01:33:55 ◼ ► the reason technology is so difficult to regulate is because the the issues are complicated and
01:33:59 ◼ ► nuanced. And there's lots of you know, we have to do this because terrorism or save the children or
01:34:04 ◼ ► whatever. So we need backdoors and online encryption. And we continue to fight that as tech
01:34:08 ◼ ► savvy voters and consumers. But the the the I think the most salient point here is that regardless of
01:34:15 ◼ ► your dim view of the US government, and I think we all share that we can say that in the US,
01:34:21 ◼ ► our ability to change what the government can and can't do is way better than in China. And as we
01:34:29 ◼ ► said at the top of this program, this policy is only in effect in the US. So if you see this,
01:34:34 ◼ ► and you think this is terrible, the government can make Apple do all sorts of sneaky things.
01:34:42 ◼ ► and and force them not to tell you about it. This has already happened and will continue to happen.
01:34:46 ◼ ► And if you don't like that, vote for people who want to change that. That's the only stupid tool
01:34:51 ◼ ► we have to change that. No, you know, there is no complaining on Twitter about Apple policy that is
01:34:56 ◼ ► going to change that. Because Apple, believe me, Apple does not like being told to do something
01:35:00 ◼ ► about the government, and also being told that they can't tell anyone about it. Apple doesn't
01:35:09 ◼ ► let's change the laws related to that. And again, in theory, the Constitution is some form of a
01:35:16 ◼ ► backstop against the most egregious offenses, because our certain rights are very difficult
01:35:20 ◼ ► to change without a constitutional amendment and yada yada yada, right? And then if you're worried
01:35:25 ◼ ► that Apple is going to let China do whatever they want, they already are, sorry, right? And if you're
01:35:30 ◼ ► worried that Apple is going to let some other country do whatever they want, this eventually
01:35:34 ◼ ► comes down to this the foundation of trust that we've talked about when talking about many features
01:35:38 ◼ ► in the past, which is in the end, you have to trust your OS vendor or your platform vendor with
01:35:44 ◼ ► something because no matter what they do, like, oh, we have end to end encryption. Somebody writes
01:35:48 ◼ ► the app that implements end to end encryption. And if you don't trust the person who's writing the app,
01:35:54 ◼ ► even if it's open source, oh, I trust them because I can see the source code. Oh, really? You audited
01:35:57 ◼ ► all those lines of your source code? If that was true, a heartbleed wouldn't have happened, right?
01:36:05 ◼ ► implementing your encrypted system, even if you agree with all of the, you know, the way it's
01:36:10 ◼ ► supposed to work. That's what it always comes down to. Do you trust Apple to not secretly put pictures
01:36:17 ◼ ► of Mickey Mouse and Iron Man into the database and find people who are illegally copying,
01:36:21 ◼ ► like movie trailers or something stupid, right? You either do or you don't. And if you don't trust
01:36:26 ◼ ► them, who do you trust? Buy your phone from them instead, right? That's what it comes down to.
01:36:30 ◼ ► Because yes, Apple, like, whenever what their encryption things is, in the end, the messages
01:36:34 ◼ ► app eventually has access to all of your messages. The mail app eventually, because it shows you them
01:36:38 ◼ ► on the screen. Like they're in memory on the phone. Like the phone could be doing whatever it wants.
01:36:44 ◼ ► Like it doesn't matter about all this encryption, provable security or whatever. Something has to
01:36:48 ◼ ► decrypt them and send the information to your eyeballs. And the people who write that software,
01:36:53 ◼ ► you have to have some amount of trust in them because somebody has access to it. And it's not
01:36:58 ◼ ► just you, it's the person who writes that app. And that's Apple in this case. So if you find yourself
01:37:02 ◼ ► spiraling down a trust hole here and being like, I can't trust Apple to run this CSAM system because
01:37:08 ◼ ► they could do anything. Yes, they can do anything. China can do anything. The US government can do
01:37:13 ◼ ► almost anything, right? That's true. But each one of those stages is like, what can I do to change
01:37:20 ◼ ► the government in China? What can I do to change the government in the US? And do I trust Apple
01:37:24 ◼ ► to do something that's in my interest? On the plus column for Apple, they have proven in the past
01:37:30 ◼ ► that they will resist US government pressure to do a thing that would be essentially a PR win. Oh,
01:37:36 ◼ ► Apple is so great, they unlock that terrorist spawn for the FBI. Apple refused to do that,
01:37:41 ◼ ► despite the fact that to many people it made them look bad. Oh, does Apple side with the terrorist?
01:37:45 ◼ ► Do you enjoy, you know, these San Bernido killer? Is that your number one customer? You want to
01:37:50 ◼ ► protect that person? Because there is a higher principle. So if you're worried that Apple would
01:37:55 ◼ ► never do that, they have at least once and probably more times proven that they will do that. If you're
01:38:02 ◼ ► about them, yeah, that's probably happening. But nothing about what Apple implements can really
01:38:08 ◼ ► prevent that. You could say, oh, if Apple didn't implement this feature, then they wouldn't have
01:38:11 ◼ ► to bow to government pressure. No, because once the government can make you do stuff and not say
01:38:14 ◼ ► anything about it, there are very few limits on that. Like, and again, iCloud backups are not
01:38:20 ◼ ► end to end encrypted. So already, the government can probably force Apple to give them that
01:38:24 ◼ ► information not saying anything about it. Right. So I kind of understand the argument that tech
01:38:30 ◼ ► companies shouldn't implement features like these because it makes it easier for the government to
01:38:34 ◼ ► demand they do things. But I don't really buy into it too much. Because if your problem is that the
01:38:39 ◼ ► government can make a company do a thing, the solution is not tech companies should never
01:38:44 ◼ ► implement features, because government can make them use the features for nefarious purposes. The
01:38:48 ◼ ► solution is, it shouldn't be legal for the government to use these to make companies do
01:38:52 ◼ ► these things for nefarious purposes. And in general, it's not except for in these quote,
01:38:56 ◼ ► unquote, extreme circumstances, 9/11, never forget, where these laws can be used and abused to make
01:39:03 ◼ ► companies do things because of terrorism, because of child sexual abuse, and so on and so forth.
01:39:07 ◼ ► And then finally, as we've been discussing the whole time, sometimes, as they say at the
01:39:15 ◼ ► the quote right. That's law and order SVU for people who are not getting the reference I'm
01:39:19 ◼ ► trying to make. Sometimes there is what is the worst of the worst of the worst thing that society
01:39:24 ◼ ► treats differently for reasons we all agree on. And in those particular cases, I think it is worth
01:39:30 ◼ ► it to try to do something rather than doing nothing because you think the nothing will somehow
01:39:35 ◼ ► protect you against an oppressive government, slightly, and I don't think it will. So as with
01:39:41 ◼ ► the messages feature, if this feature works as designed, I think it is a reasonable compromise
01:39:59 ◼ ► Jared Ranerel Yeah, my first reaction to this was, this is garbage. And the more I read on it, the
01:40:06 ◼ ► more my reaction and my thoughts on it are calmed down. I still, I think maybe, Jon, you're slightly,
01:40:15 ◼ ► I don't know, underselling is the best word I can come up with. But I understand, I really,
01:40:21 ◼ ► really, really understand, certainly after 2016 through 2020, I understand better than I ever have
01:40:28 ◼ ► that we, it is easy for us to lose control. This already sounds bad, but it's easy for us to lose
01:40:36 ◼ ► control of our government. And by that, I mean rational humans. And so when one cannot fundamentally
01:40:43 ◼ ► trust your own government, which is probably been true my entire life, but it's only felt
01:40:49 ◼ ► true in the last five-ish years, particularly 2016 through 2020. When one can't trust their
01:40:57 ◼ ► own government, then it makes it hard to trust that they won't compel Apple to do this. And
01:41:06 ◼ ► ultimately, as much as Apple will say, no, we will refuse, we will not capitulate, we will never allow
01:41:12 ◼ ► this to happen. Even with that said, ultimately, when it comes down to it, the government has
01:41:19 ◼ ► guns and bombs. And not that they would literally bomb Apple, but like if the government really went
01:41:24 ◼ ► that haywire and really wanted to win this argument, they will win the argument. There is no
01:41:30 ◼ ► ifs, ands, or buts about it. And the reason I think everyone's worried, including me, although by and
01:41:35 ◼ ► large, I'm not too upset about this anymore. But the reason anyone, everyone is worried is that
01:41:40 ◼ ► before there was no real mechanism that we knew of to scan your photos for content, justified or not,
01:41:49 ◼ ► that someone has deemed inappropriate. There was though, because Apple has access to all
01:41:54 ◼ ► your iCloud backups. If the government came to you and said, hey, we want you to scan all of
01:41:57 ◼ ► KCLS's photos, they could totally do it right now without this feature. Like that's what I'm saying.
01:42:02 ◼ ► That this doesn't add any, you know what I mean? And that's, that's where we get to the end and
01:42:06 ◼ ► backup thing of like closing that door. But right now that door is not closed. Like, so
01:42:10 ◼ ► like I understand the argument, like if you add a feature, it makes it easier for the government
01:42:14 ◼ ► to make you do a thing, but the thing that the government would make you do, they can already
01:42:17 ◼ ► make Apple do it. And they have been able to make, and in fact, they have actually done it. I'm
01:42:21 ◼ ► pretty sure the government has used law to get access to people's iCloud backups, right. With
01:42:31 ◼ ► That's already technically possible, right. The unlocking of the phone is like, oh, we just want
01:42:35 ◼ ► to see what's on that phone. But if it was an iCloud backup, it would have had access to it.
01:42:38 ◼ ► Right. So like, I, I know what people are saying of like, if you implement this feature,
01:42:43 ◼ ► the government can force you to do it. But I think the solution to that, like, I don't think this
01:42:47 ◼ ► strategy of we'll just never implement features that could be abused by the government is a good
01:42:51 ◼ ► one because almost any feature can be abused by the government and lots of useful features can be
01:42:55 ◼ ► abused by the government. The solution to government abuse is government. Like, is, you know,
01:43:00 ◼ ► part of the reason the constitution exists and the whole argument that I saw in some article or
01:43:05 ◼ ► whatever of like, would the fourth amendment allow you to submit as evidence in any kind of criminal
01:43:11 ◼ ► trial information gained by forcing Apple to scan things like, you know, secretly or whatever. And
01:43:18 ◼ ► like, you know, like that's, that's the reason we have courts and the constitution and our laws and
01:43:22 ◼ ► the fourth amendment to try to protect against those kinds of abuses to try to protect against
01:43:26 ◼ ► the government saying how we're just gonna, the government's gonna listen to everyone's phone
01:43:29 ◼ ► calls. Oh yeah. Does that sound familiar to anybody? Yep. 9/11. Never forget. Like that the,
01:43:36 ◼ ► this is a problem, but when I see this problem, I don't think this is a problem that needs to be
01:43:41 ◼ ► solved by tech companies. It's not, it's, it's a problem that tech companies to live with. And I
01:43:45 ◼ ► get that argument, but it really just sort of makes me even more hardened to fight against
01:43:50 ◼ ► stupid laws, stupid politicians that appoint stupid judges through stupid processes that
01:43:59 ◼ ► but the way I feel like attacking them is not through the tech stack and living within those
01:44:04 ◼ ► limits. I feel like this specific feature of the NicMec database and scanning for CSAM on devices
01:44:12 ◼ ► against a collection of data that the government already has access to is not a feature that,
01:44:17 ◼ ► that worsens the situation. Like I feel like it does acknowledge that yes, our government is bad
01:44:22 ◼ ► because it doesn't give the government access to anything they didn't already have access to.
01:44:27 ◼ ► I don't, I, I, I do see what you're saying. I don't think I entirely agree. I think the rub
01:44:32 ◼ ► for me is that yes, the government could say scan Casey's photos for such and such imagery and
01:44:53 ◼ ► photos have already been fully scanned by Google. Oh, absolutely. Well, hopefully not anymore. Well,
01:44:58 ◼ ► I guess it never really dies. We were getting sidetracked. Did you have to your trash yet?
01:45:02 ◼ ► Yes, I did. So, um, so the thing is, is that there was, you could argue and nobody really
01:45:11 ◼ ► knows, but you could argue that while it is easy for the government to say, scan all of
01:45:15 ◼ ► Casey's photos and look for such and such, I would assume maybe ignorantly, maybe naively,
01:45:26 ◼ ► I would like to know across all Apple users in the United States who has a picture of Trump or
01:45:33 ◼ ► whatever. And now there is clearly a mechanism that Apple claims would never be used for this,
01:45:40 ◼ ► that, you know, uh, the Nick mode or whoever they are, they would never, would never give us an
01:45:45 ◼ ► image like that. But the, the technical solution to show me all of the iPhones with a picture of,
01:45:54 ◼ ► of Trump on it, they could hypothetically do that now in a far easier way than they ever could
01:46:00 ◼ ► before. And what you'd said earlier, do you not remember when the U S government was listening
01:46:04 ◼ ► into every single phone call in the entire United States? Does that not ring a bell? Like,
01:46:09 ◼ ► do not underestimate the government's ability to do like, you know, well, they could target,
01:46:14 ◼ ► they could tap my phone, but they're not going to listen to all the phone calls and that would be
01:46:18 ◼ ► crazy. No, they will. Like after the government can absolutely look at every photo and every iCloud
01:46:24 ◼ ► backup, if they want to do, they can look at every photo going across the entire industry. Like that's
01:46:28 ◼ ► the power of our, that's our tax dollars at work. Are we making our own little oppressive regime
01:46:33 ◼ ► under the guise of fear-mongering for terrorism? Uh, that's, those are all terrible things that
01:46:37 ◼ ► have happened in our country and are probably still happening. Exactly. Right. And it's,
01:46:43 ◼ ► you know, that's again, the difference between surveillance for like technology enables
01:46:47 ◼ ► surveillance. Like this is plenty of sci-fi on this, right? Without technology, you have to
01:46:52 ◼ ► look at just the one person, but technology is like, you know what? We can just look at everything
01:46:56 ◼ ► all the time. Why don't we try that? Like, that's why so many sci-fi stories have to do with the
01:47:00 ◼ ► techno dystopia where, you know, the panopticon where you're being watched all the time. That's
01:47:04 ◼ ► not possible with humans. It's very possible with computers. And so, you know, again, with
01:47:08 ◼ ► the discomfort, Apple's solution is essentially surveillance, private surveillance by a private
01:47:13 ◼ ► company of private people's stuff, right? Uh, but government also does surveillance and thanks to
01:47:18 ◼ ► technology, they can also do it on a mass level, right? And, you know, so if, if the government,
01:47:24 ◼ ► for all we know, the government is already doing this without Apple's knowledge, that's another
01:47:26 ◼ ► thing that our wonderful government does sometimes, see the phone tapping or whatever. Um, but, you
01:47:32 ◼ ► know, and it's not, again, it's not a human listening. It's machines processing. That's always
01:47:35 ◼ ► the way it is the magic of computers. But like, that's why I think you have to look at these in
01:47:39 ◼ ► terms of capabilities. If you are tasked with searching all, uh, photos for every U.S. citizen,
01:47:45 ◼ ► your go-to is not, let's get something into the NicMec database, right? Your go-to is not,
01:47:51 ◼ ► aha, finally Apple invented this feature. We'll finally have our opening. No, you've long since
01:47:55 ◼ ► implemented your own solution to this that is not Apple specific, that is not Google specific,
01:48:00 ◼ ► that is not Microsoft specific, that spans the entire internet and has nothing to do with any
01:48:04 ◼ ► specific feature a tech company had to build for you, right? And, um, like there's all sorts of
01:48:10 ◼ ► conspiracy theories. You can think about how that might be done, but like, that's what I get to where
01:48:14 ◼ ► you really need to look at the specific features as does this specific feature make it more likely
01:48:19 ◼ ► that this bad thing is going to happen in this specific feature in this specific case, I think
01:48:24 ◼ ► doesn't because it doesn't provide any new capabilities and it doesn't even make it any
01:48:28 ◼ ► easier. In fact, it's harder because of the limitations of this database and exact matches
01:48:32 ◼ ► and so on and so forth. It's easier to just scan everything for, you know, anything you want to
01:48:38 ◼ ► and your own scanning technique of not being as strict of saying it has to be in this fixed
01:48:41 ◼ ► database or whatever and doing it client side, scan them all server side using whatever logic you want,
01:48:46 ◼ ► right? Look for whatever you want. You're not limited by this feature. This feature is too
01:48:50 ◼ ► limiting to be useful as a government tool. Government has much better tools already at
01:48:54 ◼ ► their disposal that I feel like they would prefer, which is why this specific feature doesn't bother
01:48:58 ◼ ► me. The broader question of like, why is Apple implementing essentially surveillance features
01:49:04 ◼ ► is slightly bothersome, but I think that is mostly explained by the fact that they're doing this for
01:49:10 ◼ ► essentially trying to be narrowly targeted as Margaret was saying before, narrowly targeted
01:49:14 ◼ ► to their own apps in the worst case scenario or thing everyone agrees is awful that has
01:49:17 ◼ ► specialized already written for it. And so if you're going to be comforted by any of the
01:49:21 ◼ ► narrowness, this has all the narrowness you could possibly imagine. Yeah. And to be clear, and Casey,
01:49:26 ◼ ► I agree with your concerns for the most part. I think we all saw how big the mountain of asterisks
01:49:35 ◼ ► on our government was over the last, and not even just from 2016 to 2020, but I would even say a lot
01:49:41 ◼ ► of that happened from 2000 to 2016 as well. It happened much longer than that, but it started
01:49:45 ◼ ► affecting white men recently, so we all know. Yeah. I mean, that's the truth of like, if you
01:49:52 ◼ ► think you have distrust of government or distrust that government's going to do things that are in
01:49:55 ◼ ► your best interest, you're very lucky if you just had that realization in the last decade or so.
01:50:03 ◼ ► I have a slightly more, I guess, defeatist view on this, but I think that it enables a more
01:50:10 ◼ ► clever solution, which is, I think people keep saying like, "Well, this is okay in the US,
01:50:16 ◼ ► but what happens if China gets a hold of this?" No, it's not okay in the US either. It's not okay
01:50:21 ◼ ► for the government to have widespread surveillance powers in the US either. And we have seen over and
01:50:28 ◼ ► over again how the freedoms that we claim to have, the justice system that we claim works and is
01:50:36 ◼ ► reasonably impartial, the oversight the government agencies are supposed to have over each other,
01:50:42 ◼ ► the checks and balances, we've seen how all of that can just be forgotten and made exceptions
01:50:48 ◼ ► for at the drop of a hat. And it isn't even just like one or two bad presidents that get us there.
01:50:54 ◼ ► We have so many exceptions on all those freedoms and protections that we think we allegedly have.
01:51:02 ◼ ► And the reality is, we have a government that largely does whatever it wants, and that when
01:51:09 ◼ ► bad actors come in, they are able to get a lot of bad stuff through our system. I mean, geez,
01:51:18 ◼ ► it's, I'm always reminded of like how, imagine how dark things would have gotten in the last four
01:51:22 ◼ ► years if they were actually competent. They were like incredibly cruel and mean-spirited,
01:51:28 ◼ ► but they weren't very competent. Imagine if they were also competent, like how much damage could
01:51:37 ◼ ► - So my point is, if you desire or if you need for whatever you are trying to do, if you need
01:51:50 ◼ ► you are not doing yourself any favors by having those conversations on public cloud services
01:51:58 ◼ ► that are not end-to-end encrypted. There's lots of arguments whether iCloud should have end-to-end
01:52:04 ◼ ► encryption for everything. iMessage is by default, obviously there's the issue of what happens when
01:52:09 ◼ ► it backs up itself to iCloud, which is, I forget if that's the default now, but that can be turned
01:52:14 ◼ ► off and it was off for a long time before it existed. Anyway, the point is, if you want
01:52:20 ◼ ► governments that are ill-intentioned, which over an infinite time scale, that's gonna be every
01:52:26 ◼ ► government at some point, if you want your data to be above government surveillance, you have to
01:52:34 ◼ ► take a purely technical approach to that and use things like strong encryption and even then,
01:52:39 ◼ ► hope that the NSA hasn't broken that encryption very easily in ways that you don't know about yet.
01:52:43 ◼ ► - Or intentionally weakened it, you didn't even know, but they weakened it from the beginning.
01:52:54 ◼ ► if you want to get out of the potential for governments to abuse their power and for Apple
01:53:02 ◼ ► to abuse its power and to work together to try to get you, the way you do that is using technological
01:53:25 ◼ ► - I don't know about it, but the law outweighs math though. Remember when there was encryption,
01:53:30 ◼ ► there was export restrictions on heavy encryption and the PlayStation 2 couldn't be exported or
01:53:36 ◼ ► what do you like? That's what we keep getting out of, if you don't do anything, the government will
01:53:43 ◼ ► make some terrible law outlawing end-to-end encryption. So yeah, math is the protection
01:53:48 ◼ ► against, that's why Apple can refuse the FBI's thing, is like, "We literally can't do that."
01:53:52 ◼ ► It's physically impossible because of math, right? But the government can always come back and say,
01:53:56 ◼ ► "Oh yeah, guess what? End-to-end encryption is legal now." And that's super bad. So in the end,
01:54:01 ◼ ► the solution to all this all has to be a government-powered solution. In the interim, when
01:54:06 ◼ ► we are protected by whatever crumbling foundation remains of our constitution that protects our
01:54:12 ◼ ► supposedly inalienable rights, as upheld by a bunch of lifetime appointed judges who got there
01:54:19 ◼ ► by an incredibly corrupt, terrible process, and many of them are themselves terrible people,
01:54:24 ◼ ► hopefully we protect enough of our foundational rights so that, let's say, if the government
01:54:30 ◼ ► makes a terrible law that makes it impossible to provide any kind of secure communication,
01:54:42 ◼ ► What Marco's point, though, is about the talking about it on public clouds or whatever,
01:54:48 ◼ ► gets to this really good aspect of this whole discussion that brought up by the person who
01:54:57 ◼ ► Mike Chay-Sudlofsky? Yeah, there you go. I'm just going to read these three tweets because
01:55:02 ◼ ► basically it summarizes it better than I could. This is directly from the Pinboard tweets.
01:55:06 ◼ ► "The governance problem here is that we have six or seven giant companies that can make
01:55:09 ◼ ► unilateral decisions with enormous social impact and no way of influencing those decisions beyond
01:55:17 ◼ ► So this is the problem of like, "Oh, also if you don't trust Apple, maybe you should try Google.
01:55:23 ◼ ► Or if you don't trust Google, maybe you should try Microsoft. Or if you don't trust Microsoft,
01:55:39 ◼ ► implemented a bunch of these policies for child safety and they were much worse. They were super
01:55:43 ◼ ► harmful and they did a much worse job of trying to balance the concerns of the chance of false
01:55:51 ◼ ► positives were really high and it was just going to look like it was going to be a disaster.
01:55:55 ◼ ► You don't have a lot of recourse as a consumer because these companies get so big and so powerful
01:56:01 ◼ ► and they all tend to do similar things. See all the other companies that are doing the server
01:56:05 ◼ ► side scanning. That if you really don't like what they're doing because they're not government
01:56:10 ◼ ► entities, you can't vote them out and you quote unquote voting with your wallet has a limited
01:56:16 ◼ ► effect on them unless you can get millions and millions and millions and millions of other people
01:56:20 ◼ ► to do the same thing. In the end, people tend to need in the modern era cell phones to just live
01:56:27 ◼ ► their life and if there are only a few sources of those cell phones and all those sources agree
01:56:32 ◼ ► that they're all going to do a thing and you don't like it, the idea of "I just want to have a cell
01:56:36 ◼ ► phone" is very difficult to convince millions and millions of other people to also do to the degree
01:56:41 ◼ ► that it affects them. We've talked about this before. Why is it bad to have a small number
01:56:46 ◼ ► of giant companies that control important aspects of our life? In general, it's bad. So continuing
01:56:51 ◼ ► the pinboard tweets, "The way we find out about these technology impacts is by rolling them out
01:56:55 ◼ ► worldwide and then seeing what social political changes result." See also social networking,
01:56:59 ◼ ► Facebook, so on and so forth. Sorry, I'm adding some commentary. Hope you can see which parts are
01:57:04 ◼ ► mine. "It's certainly a bracing way to run experiments with no institutional review board
01:57:18 ◼ ► it is better to not like this shouldn't be done through one governmental agency. Innovations,
01:57:22 ◼ ► the reason we have all these great things from Apple and Microsoft and Google and all that good
01:57:26 ◼ ► stuff right. So continuing from pinboard, "But the problem is there's no way to close the loop right
01:57:32 ◼ ► now. To make it so that Apple or Facebook or Google inflicts huge social harm, their bottom
01:57:36 ◼ ► line suffers or their execs go to jail or they lose all their customers. Profits accrue while
01:57:40 ◼ ► social impacts are externalized." So say you start a social network, you know, originally to try to
01:57:46 ◼ ► rate which girls in your school are hot or not and eventually you end up fomenting genocide halfway
01:57:51 ◼ ► across the earth. Does that affect your bottom line? Are you harmed by that? I guess it's a
01:57:57 ◼ ► press relations issue. We can probably smooth that over but when you get to the size of Facebook,
01:58:02 ◼ ► if you accidentally foment genocide, like the loop is not closed. Those are the externalized
01:58:10 ◼ ► harms but your stock doesn't suddenly drop in half and you don't get fired. Nobody goes to jail.
01:58:16 ◼ ► Maybe you get brought in front of congress and they yell at you a little bit while you say that
01:58:20 ◼ ► you can't remember or are just trying to do the right thing. But this is yet, like, you know,
01:58:26 ◼ ► I know we just got done talking about how Apple we think is mostly trying to do the right thing here.
01:58:29 ◼ ► It's important for technology companies to do something but let's not lose sight of the fact
01:58:33 ◼ ► that having gigantic incredibly powerful, a small number of gigantic incredibly powerful tech
01:58:39 ◼ ► companies is itself its own problem independent of the problem of trying to have a government.
01:58:43 ◼ ► Because as bad as the government system is, we have even less control collectively over what
01:58:50 ◼ ► these companies do. In some ways you may think we have more because like, oh, the citizens are
01:58:55 ◼ ► make or break these companies. But practically speaking, especially in areas that have technical
01:59:00 ◼ ► nuance, it has proven very difficult for consumer sentiment to close the loop. To say, hey company,
01:59:08 ◼ ► if you do a bad thing, you will be punished in a way that makes you motivated to not do bad things
01:59:14 ◼ ► in the future. That loop tends to only work in terms of like products that explode in your hands
01:59:19 ◼ ► or like, you know, supporting the worst of the worst possible politicians with your donations.
01:59:25 ◼ ► But in general, if you do something and there's like a third order effect, again, if you make
01:59:29 ◼ ► Facebook and it accidentally foments genocide, most people are like, yeah, but that wasn't really
01:59:34 ◼ ► Facebook's fault. And the genocide people were going to do a genocide anyway. And Facebook is
01:59:38 ◼ ► trying to stop it. And like, like the loop is not closed there. Right. And so if there's something
01:59:58 ◼ ► I'm never going to buy an Apple phone. They're spying on me. And so is Google and so is Facebook
02:00:02 ◼ ► or whatever. But just try getting one of your friends who's not into the tech world to listen
02:00:05 ◼ ► this far into this podcast. In general, what we've seen from technology stuff like this is that
02:00:12 ◼ ► people just don't care. Like they just want their phone to work. They just want to do their things
02:00:16 ◼ ► as long as it doesn't bother them. As long as they're not falsely flagged for child sexual
02:00:20 ◼ ► abuse material, they mostly don't care. So trying to affect the policies of these companies by
02:00:27 ◼ ► rallying the people to refuse to buy Apple phones or Google phones or Microsoft phones or
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02:02:29 ◼ ► Leilo Vargas writes, "Hello friends. What's your current thinking on Bitcoin and crypto in general?
02:02:33 ◼ ► I think I never heard you talking about nerd money. Do you hold any, without disclosing any
02:02:38 ◼ ► amounts, any project in particular that you like? Thanks friends." So a couple of things. First of
02:02:43 ◼ ► all, let me try to be brief, which we never successfully do on this show. My thoughts on
02:02:49 ◼ ► crypto art, you know, I think the heat death of the universe is coming fast enough without crypto.
02:02:54 ◼ ► Let's not accelerate it. But with that said, one of you, probably Jon, added two delightful links
02:03:00 ◼ ► to the show notes, which is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ponzi-scheme and /pyramidscheme, which made
02:03:09 ◼ ► me laugh more than I am comfortable admitting when I saw those in the show notes a day or two back.
02:03:13 ◼ ► So Jon, would you like to explain the relevance here? Yeah, Jon, do you hold any Bitcoin?
02:03:19 ◼ ► So we did actually talk about this on a past show. Not that long ago, too. I put these links in there
02:03:25 ◼ ► just because it's fun to, like, if you read the little summary on pyramid scheme, you would read
02:03:29 ◼ ► it and say, okay, technically Bitcoin isn't a pyramid scheme because pyramid scheme is a
02:03:34 ◼ ► business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling other members
02:03:38 ◼ ► into the scheme. It's like, that's not how Bitcoin works. You don't get Bitcoins for recruiting other
02:03:42 ◼ ► people into Bitcoin. So that's, it's not really a pyramid scheme. So let's look at Ponzi scheme. Is
02:03:46 ◼ ► that what it is? Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lowers investors and pays profits to early
02:03:50 ◼ ► investors, which funds some more recent investors. It's like, well, that's not how Bitcoin works. When
02:03:57 ◼ ► like directly like it does in a Ponzi scheme. The reason I put these links in here, though,
02:04:01 ◼ ► is that although Bitcoin technically isn't exactly like the technical definition of a pyramid scheme
02:04:09 ◼ ► and technically isn't exactly like the definition of a Ponzi scheme, it operates very much like them
02:04:14 ◼ ► in that thus far, the only value inherent in Bitcoin is based on the speculation that the
02:04:21 ◼ ► price of everyone's Bitcoin will go up. And so getting more people to invest in Bitcoin and
02:04:27 ◼ ► therefore making Bitcoin look more desirable does in fact benefit the early investors and
02:04:32 ◼ ► quote unquote recruiting people into getting Bitcoin, just like in a pyramid scheme, does in
02:04:37 ◼ ► fact raise the value of the people who already have Bitcoin and were in earlier, right? Setting
02:04:46 ◼ ► isn't it cool that you can have two people who don't trust each other have an exchange of money
02:04:50 ◼ ► without a central party mediating it, right? That technology is interesting. Unfortunately,
02:04:55 ◼ ► it uses a lot of energy and is really slow and doesn't have good concurrency and has all sorts
02:04:59 ◼ ► of other problems that have to do with it, which makes it not that interesting for many problems,
02:05:04 ◼ ► except for buying heroin. It's a great way for criminals that don't trust each other to
02:05:08 ◼ ► exchange money in a way that's not observable by governments. So there is a use case for Bitcoin.
02:05:13 ◼ ► It just happens to be a terrible Bitcoin. If you are a criminal and don't want to use the banking
02:05:17 ◼ ► system because you're doing something criminal, Bitcoin is a great way to do that. So what Bitcoin
02:05:22 ◼ ► has enabled is a huge explosion in ransomware, because guess what? You can get paid for
02:05:34 ◼ ► someone to transfer money into like a numbered account in like Switzerland or something. It's
02:05:39 ◼ ► like way more complicated. Bitcoin is so much easier. So that's why there is a huge explosion
02:05:51 ◼ ► Yeah, proof of stake is slightly better for the environment. But the bottom line is like
02:05:54 ◼ ► lots of bad uses are enabled. Most of the people who are into it, and the reason you see so much
02:05:59 ◼ ► evangelism is because the more people they can get to get into Bitcoin, the higher the value of
02:06:03 ◼ ► Bitcoin goes up and that helps them with their investment. And those are all the earmarks of
02:06:07 ◼ ► a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme, even if it's not technically exactly the same thing. So are
02:06:12 ◼ ► people getting rich off of Bitcoin? Yeah, people get rid of pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes all
02:06:16 ◼ ► the time. That's why they exist, because they make people rich. But they're not a great thing to get
02:06:21 ◼ ► into. And the whole thing about Bitcoin is like, well, if you had said, you know, people thought
02:06:25 ◼ ► it was about reaching the tipping point five years ago, but if you had heeded that advice and not
02:06:29 ◼ ► invested, you wouldn't be rich like I am now. That's true. That's true of Ponzi schemes and
02:06:34 ◼ ► pyramid schemes too. But it doesn't make me excited to get into them because I am not planning on
02:06:40 ◼ ► ransomware-ing anything. I'm not trying to buy heroin. And I do not have confidence that were
02:06:46 ◼ ► I to put my life savings into some kind of cryptocurrency, that I would not be the last
02:06:51 ◼ ► person left holding the bag. But I instead would be one of those early investors who gets rich off
02:06:55 ◼ ► of it. So if you have gotten rich off it, congratulations. Good job. But if you have not
02:07:03 ◼ ► invested in Bitcoin, I would suggest that it is not a particularly safe place to put your life
02:07:08 ◼ ► savings, given that no one really knows how and when this story will end. But most people are
02:07:14 ◼ ► pretty confident that it will end in some way. And when it does end, you don't want to be the one,
02:07:19 ◼ ► you know, left holding the bag. You don't want to be the one playing musical chairs who has no place
02:07:23 ◼ ► to sit down when all the other people cash out, the early people, if they haven't already,
02:07:26 ◼ ► and you're left with a bunch of Bitcoin that becomes not worth quite that much. And if you
02:07:30 ◼ ► were wondering if Bitcoin really has great utility and worth in the world, look at what people do
02:07:34 ◼ ► with it, which is they like to exchange it for what I would call real nerd money, which is actual
02:07:38 ◼ ► money that you can use to buy things. Wow. A couple of quick thoughts here. First of all, I think it
02:07:45 ◼ ► was ATP 424 from April where we discussed this. I put a link to that in the show notes. And
02:07:50 ◼ ► additionally, I do think as much as I snark on Bitcoin and crypto, I do think, and John, you
02:07:56 ◼ ► alluded to this earlier, the mathematics behind it, or the principle of the mathematics behind it,
02:08:01 ◼ ► I think are fascinating and very clever and very cool. And I've talked about this a couple of times,
02:08:07 ◼ ► but there's a really good video by Blue31Brown or something like that. I forget the name of this
02:08:12 ◼ ► person. 3Blue1Brown. I was close. It's like a 25 minute video or something like that, but it is
02:08:18 ◼ ► extremely well done and builds up from like, "Hey, how do you and a couple of roommates figure out
02:08:24 ◼ ► how to settle up bills if you don't trust each other?" And it basically ends up with Bitcoin. So
02:08:30 ◼ ► as a solution to a problem, I think it's very clever and very interesting as something that
02:08:46 ◼ ► This is an example of externalities, right? So the technology is there and it's like, "Oh,
02:08:51 ◼ ► and the externality that we just essentially made it profitable to burn energy?" Because as long as
02:08:58 ◼ ► you make more in Bitcoin than you spend in electricity, it is a profitable endeavor. So the
02:09:03 ◼ ► unintended externality of these cool systems for having sort of zero trust, no middle party
02:09:11 ◼ ► relationship to be able to exchange things, the externality is, "Wait a second. I think you just
02:09:16 ◼ ► made it profitable to burn electricity." And they did. And people do. And it makes sense from a
02:09:21 ◼ ► financial perspective, but from an earth perspective of like, "So what value are you creating?"
02:09:28 ◼ ► "Well, it's kind of like a pyramid scheme and some people get rich." "Okay. And then the cost is?"
02:09:32 ◼ ► "What? How much CO2 emissions?" "Oh, we only use solar power or spare energy." "I'm not quite sure
02:09:37 ◼ ► about that." The real question for all that is like, "Okay, look, if Bitcoin didn't exist,
02:09:42 ◼ ► would that coal have been burnt? Where would that energy go?" Obviously, the silly ones are like,
02:09:49 ◼ ► "There was a shutdown power plant and Bitcoin miners bought the power plant and turned it on,
02:09:53 ◼ ► and all it does is run Bitcoin stuff all day. And by the way, it's making everyone's gaming cards
02:09:57 ◼ ► more expensive. Can't we at least agree on that?" Well, even nerds should be able to say,
02:10:02 ◼ ► "It's not good that we can't get GPUs to play games." Games produce value in the form of
02:10:07 ◼ ► happiness in the world, right? And people get paid to make games. Like it's an actual economy.
02:10:13 ◼ ► Bitcoin, for the most part, does not produce any value except for speculative investors making
02:10:17 ◼ ► money at the expense of later investors, and maybe some cool technical papers that help someone get
02:10:23 ◼ ► their PhD. Well, that sounds like a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, and I think like, to me, like, multiple
02:10:28 ◼ ► parts of this are offensive to me. Like, first of all, I am in agreement with Casey, and I think,
02:10:35 ◼ ► Jon, that, you know, the technological concepts of shared work like this, the idea of blockchain
02:10:43 ◼ ► verification of transactions, that's a really cool set of technologies and approaches, and it's very
02:10:49 ◼ ► clever and it's fascinating. But I think what that has enabled, if you look at the total, like the
02:10:55 ◼ ► net good and bad that have been enabled by cryptocurrency, I think the bad dramatically
02:11:00 ◼ ► outweighs the good. It's not even close. The killer app of Bitcoin is literally ransomware,
02:11:06 ◼ ► right? Exactly. And possibly also drugs, but I mostly just hear about the ransomware and the
02:11:10 ◼ ► circles I travel. Like, the net net is not good for the world. For individuals, it might be great.
02:11:15 ◼ ► Some people who got rich, it's great for them, but for the world, it's super negative at this
02:11:20 ◼ ► point. It's not even close. Yeah, and then my second major problem with Bitcoin is the people.
02:11:26 ◼ ► Now, I know we're going to hear from a few of them, and I'm going to tell you right now,
02:11:31 ◼ ► I don't like you. Because here's, and if you write to me and say bad stuff, I won't care.
02:11:37 ◼ ► I don't like you because what you most likely are if you're into Bitcoin. So A, you are very likely
02:11:44 ◼ ► to be a person who is willing to make the world a slightly worse place, whether it's through carbon
02:11:50 ◼ ► emissions or through participating in a system that enables a lot of illegal and damaging activity,
02:11:55 ◼ ► whatever it is, like you're willing to make the world a little bit worse place to make a buck.
02:11:59 ◼ ► And that tends to attract not the best people to that area. Now, when you combine that factor with,
02:12:24 ◼ ► You totally, you 100% were. No, no, I was near that area, but I don't think I was never,
02:12:31 ◼ ► I wasn't like, you know, one of those people who would like go on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt and
02:12:47 ◼ ► I would never claim that. And that actually mostly happened after I was gone for the record.
02:12:50 ◼ ► Anyway, so, anyway, so I, the world of tech bros is a world that I don't usually get along with
02:13:01 ◼ ► very well. It's all those people who the Silicon Valley TV show makes fun of and they don't think
02:13:07 ◼ ► it's funny. Like it's like, it's that crowd, right? So what Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general,
02:13:13 ◼ ► the kind of people that attracts, it's the combination of tech bros, which are largely a
02:13:21 ◼ ► pretty terrible group of people in, you know, some relatively minor ways, but mostly it's still
02:13:26 ◼ ► terrible people. The intersection of tech bros with a far worse group of people, finance bros.
02:13:33 ◼ ► Oh, and living in the New York Metro area, I see a lot of these people. Oh my God, they're the worst.
02:13:45 ◼ ► Yeah, and libertarians. That's the whole other thing. When you combine these groups of people,
02:13:50 ◼ ► and especially the prospect of making money pulls in the finance bros and converts some
02:13:55 ◼ ► of the finance bros into wannabe tech bros. And so the intersection of this produces just the
02:14:01 ◼ ► worst group of people ever. Like you do not... And oh, and of course all the, you know, profiteering
02:14:06 ◼ ► people who will burn carbon to make a little bit of money. So like, this is the collection of these
02:14:11 ◼ ► people is just the worst people. And so cryptocurrency as a thing, while I think it's an
02:14:16 ◼ ► interesting concept, the realities of the kinds of people who are mostly into it and the kinds of
02:14:21 ◼ ► people it attracts and the kind of usage it attracts are so terrible. And both from like an
02:14:27 ◼ ► annoying point of view and from, you know, from a world damage point of view. So it's just, it's a
02:14:33 ◼ ► terrible thing that it has actually produced. And it's, these are all the worst people that have
02:14:38 ◼ ► invaded our industry and taken over all the GPUs and everything. It's like, they're making the tech
02:14:44 ◼ ► industry worse. And they're like, you know, they're a burden on us. They're a burden on the world.
02:14:50 ◼ ► Like I just, I don't see any benefit to it. So to answer the question, I don't hold any
02:14:56 ◼ ► cryptocurrency. And I'm not a big fan. I'm not as harsh as Marco in that like, when like,
02:15:03 ◼ ► I think I talked about this before when we first talked about Bitcoin, like when a new technology
02:15:06 ◼ ► comes out, it's natural for nerds to be curious in it. So if you like got a bunch of Bitcoin,
02:15:11 ◼ ► especially because you thought it was a cool technical thing or whatever and play with it.
02:15:14 ◼ ► Hey, especially if you made a bunch of money off of it because you mined Bitcoin back when
02:15:18 ◼ ► it was easy and they became worth a lot of money, great, more power to you. Like, especially in the
02:15:23 ◼ ► beginning, it wasn't clear how this was going to turn out. It's like any new technology. And
02:15:26 ◼ ► as tech enthusiasts, we're interested in new technologies, right? I mean, when Bitcoin first
02:15:30 ◼ ► came out, I downloaded the software and tried like mining for it. I never actually got any Bitcoin,
02:15:34 ◼ ► so I don't have any, I have never owned any, but it's a technical curiosity. And so if you
02:15:39 ◼ ► became rich off Bitcoin, I say more power to you. You found a way, hopefully you use that money for
02:15:45 ◼ ► something good. You use it to have a happy life and to support your community and your family.
02:15:50 ◼ ► Like kudos, right? But what Margot is talking about is like at this point, at this today, 2021,
02:15:55 ◼ ► correct? The footprint of cryptocurrency and understanding what it is, what it's good for,
02:16:00 ◼ ► what it's not good for and how what you have to do to make money off of it is much more clear now
02:16:05 ◼ ► than it was. And so I would say if you have Bitcoin, I'd be looking for to make it the most
02:16:11 ◼ ► advantageous exit as possible. And what I wouldn't say, like, I would say that if you're super
02:16:22 ◼ ► up with one that's better than the ones that we have now, which to the credit of a lot of people
02:16:25 ◼ ► involved in this, they do. That's why proof of stake exists instead of proof of work, right?
02:16:30 ◼ ► People are trying to improve it, but Bitcoin gets all the press because it's like the one that sort
02:16:34 ◼ ► of broke through is the most popular. It has a lot of mystique around it. And when a lot of people
02:16:40 ◼ ► say cryptocurrency, what they really mean is Bitcoin and Bitcoin has a lot of bad externalities.
02:16:46 ◼ ► And I would not suggest anyone get into it. If you got rich off it, great. But at this point, it's
02:16:55 ◼ ► But at this point, like at this point, like these, you know, I'm going to make a cryptocurrency and
02:16:59 ◼ ► I'm going to convince a celebrity to endorse it because they don't understand the tech,
02:17:02 ◼ ► but I'll just tell them that it'll make the money and actually will because the celebrity will give
02:17:06 ◼ ► it publicity. And then the early people who have most of the coins will make money. And like,
02:17:10 ◼ ► it's just another way to scam people out of money, to scam investors out of money. It's
02:17:14 ◼ ► tales all this time. This is not like what you see happening with Bitcoin always happens with
02:17:18 ◼ ► financial insurance. Like look at the various financial crashes caused by those tech bros
02:17:21 ◼ ► that Marco doesn't like, right? It's just that now there's a different angle on it. And that is just
02:17:26 ◼ ► generally distasteful and bad. I will say though, I do have some cryptocurrency. Some in the early
02:17:31 ◼ ► days of crypto, some cryptocurrency company was giving out free cryptocurrency for signing up to
02:17:35 ◼ ► their website. And I did that and I got free cryptocurrency, which I still have. And it just
02:17:42 ◼ ► sits there as a number and it's not a very big number. But I'd never do anything with it or look
02:17:46 ◼ ► at it because it's not worth enough money for me to cash out, right? And if it is someday worth
02:17:54 ◼ ► enough money to cash out, I'll cash out and be like one of those people who says, oh, great,
02:17:57 ◼ ► you got rich off cryptocurrency, but it's probably never going to be worth any money. So I just
02:18:02 ◼ ► ignore it. But I do have some of it. I did actually have to like declare it on my taxes as an asset or
02:18:07 ◼ ► whatever, because it's above like whatever the $200 limit or something like we had to have our
02:18:11 ◼ ► account and go through all this or whatever. So it's an official thing that I own and I look at
02:18:16 ◼ ► it and if it ever becomes worth millions of dollars, you can bet your butt I'm going to
02:18:18 ◼ ► cash out of it and take that millions of dollars. But I got it for free and it's not a thing that I
02:18:23 ◼ ► use as an investment instrument. I do not use it to do any transactions. I don't do anything having
02:18:28 ◼ ► anything to do with crypto. Richie Haroonian writes, I know the clever trick to limit iCloud
02:18:34 ◼ ► photo library disk usage by creating a separate APFS volume or disk image. Recently I noticed
02:18:38 ◼ ► that messages was using almost 100 gigs on my 256 gig SSD. That is not desirable. I did a bit of
02:18:45 ◼ ► research, but couldn't find a similar trick to limit messages disk usage. I think it's a little
02:18:48 ◼ ► more complicated since message attachments are somewhere under the library folder. Any insight
02:18:52 ◼ ► here? I don't have any insight, although I thought the messages, like the actual text of messages was
02:18:58 ◼ ► in like a series of SQLite databases if I remember right. And I think that Richie is right that the
02:19:03 ◼ ► attachments are stored somewhere semi-predictable, but no, I have no useful insight here.
02:19:07 ◼ ► You could probably find the folder that they are being stored in deep within library, whatever.
02:19:14 ◼ ► You could probably use a Simlink trick to Simlink that into a disk image that is limited or an APFS
02:19:21 ◼ ► volume, however you want to do it. So that's the first thing I would try. But also I would also ask
02:19:28 ◼ ► does Richie not use iCloud for message attachments? Because message attachments could be very big. It
02:19:34 ◼ ► is in some ways a photo library. Actually I don't think we even heard whether those are being scanned
02:19:39 ◼ ► for the CSAM. Interesting. But you can, I'm kind of surprised we didn't hear that actually.
02:19:45 ◼ ► But if you store your messages attachments in iCloud, I bet it offloads them pretty soon when
02:19:53 ◼ ► you're low on space and so it probably doesn't keep that big of a cache. Because I use iCloud
02:19:57 ◼ ► for iMessage attachments. As I scroll up through messages, it has to page them in and load them off
02:20:01 ◼ ► the network after a while because it's not keeping all the attachments locally. Whereas
02:20:06 ◼ ► before iCloud photo library, I remember that was always a big chunk of my iPhone storage space.
02:20:11 ◼ ► You'd see messages and it would be like 5 gigs, 10 gigs, whatever on your phone because it was
02:20:16 ◼ ► all those attachments historically over time. So I would suggest if Richie does not use iCloud
02:20:22 ◼ ► photo storage or iCloud storage to store message attachments, I would suggest trying that or
02:20:27 ◼ ► considering that if this is going to be a big problem. Like if you can't just get rid of these
02:20:31 ◼ ► attachments because they actually are like the only copies of them. But if this is just some
02:20:38 ◼ ► disk quota not being enforced well and they are being paged off as they get older, I would attempt
02:20:43 ◼ ► some kind of SimLink trick into a disk image. I think it's pretty brave to try the SimLink trick.
02:20:47 ◼ ► I generally don't want to mess with, especially now with like the containerization and the various
02:20:52 ◼ ► container folders, don't want to mess with the internal structures of these iCloud powered apps
02:20:57 ◼ ► just because, you know, it's not as straightforward as it used to be. The library folder used to be
02:21:02 ◼ ► much more tractable but now with the advent of the container system with iCloud stuff it's a little
02:21:07 ◼ ► bit sketchier. The problem with messages is the problem with a lot of Apple apps in that it's
02:21:12 ◼ ► quote-unquote "supposed" to manage your disk space in an intelligent manner by purging things that
02:21:17 ◼ ► are safely ensconced in the server, which to Marco's point means that you basically should enable
02:21:21 ◼ ► the iCloud messages sync thing, which means the government will be able to look at all your
02:21:25 ◼ ► messages in your iCloud backups too, which is nice. But yeah, that's the consequences of that. And
02:21:30 ◼ ► Apple's solution to this in recent years has been one, the iCloud messages thing, which helps solve
02:21:36 ◼ ► this problem if it operates correctly. If it doesn't there's nothing you can really do except
02:21:39 ◼ ► cross your fingers and hope that crap gets purged. But two, they added with some surprising amount of
02:21:45 ◼ ► fanfare a couple years ago the ability to tell messages to trim off attachments older than some
02:21:52 ◼ ► date, right? Because this was a big problem on a lot of people's phones. They were filling their
02:21:55 ◼ ► phones with message attachments. Eventually you just fill it, right? So your choices are either
02:22:00 ◼ ► get that stuff into the cloud so you can purge it from your phone and not lose it or delete it from
02:22:05 ◼ ► your phone. And Apple did both. They came up with, you know, messages in the cloud feature, that's
02:22:09 ◼ ► the cloud version, and they also came up with features in the messages app that will let you
02:22:12 ◼ ► delete that crap. They're doing that in reminders now too. It used to be that reminders would just
02:22:18 ◼ ► pile up forever, which reminders are obviously tinier, they're not like photos, but eventually
02:22:22 ◼ ► after, you know, 10, 15 years of the iPhone people have a lot of reminders too. So the features to
02:22:27 ◼ ► delete them will clean it up. Ironically, the thing that deletes your data, like oh delete all
02:22:31 ◼ ► attachments older than a year, that will probably actually clean your space up as soon as you
02:22:35 ◼ ► activate it. Whereas the iMessage in the cloud thing, you activate it and then you just wait,
02:22:50 ◼ ► And finally, Andrew Nelson writes, "What camera or lens should I rent for a Disney World trip?
02:23:01 ◼ ► unexpected rain, better sharpness and bokeh than the iPhone 11 Pro, easy to use, and good battery.
02:23:08 ◼ ► Andrew does not care about long zoom, RAW or touching up pictures." I will answer this because
02:23:13 ◼ ► I can be very quick. What you want is your iPhone 11 Pro because having just gone to Disney World
02:23:19 ◼ ► a couple of years ago, we went in late 2019, I did bring my big camera and on a couple of occasions
02:23:26 ◼ ► it was very useful. But by and large, and maybe it's just because my big camera, which is an
02:23:31 ◼ ► Olympus OM-DEM10 Mark III, I think I have that right. Maybe it's just my particular big camera
02:23:38 ◼ ► and that's the crux of the issue, so maybe I'm being unfair. But in my opinion, the iPhone,
02:23:44 ◼ ► particularly with HDR, which I'm waiting for John to jump in and tell me that his big camera does
02:23:50 ◼ ► all these things, but the HDR on the iPhone is really impressive, particularly for outdoor shots
02:23:54 ◼ ► where you're trying to get a decent sky that's not blown out smithereens as well as your subject
02:23:59 ◼ ► matter. Plus the low light on my iPhone is actually quite a bit better than it is on my Olympus here,
02:24:04 ◼ ► especially is where John is going to say, "Oh, so not so fast." But in so many ways, it was just
02:24:09 ◼ ► a pain in the butt to carry anything bigger than an iPhone onto rides or anywhere else.
02:24:14 ◼ ► So even though I did have my big camera with me pretty much always, I should have actually done
02:24:20 ◼ ► and looked and seen how many pictures I took with each, but my gut tells me 80% of the pictures I
02:24:26 ◼ ► took on the most recent Disney World trip I had were with my iPhone. And in fact, it was either
02:24:31 ◼ ► 10 or 11, whatever was current at the time in late 2019. And almost probably 20% at most were taken
02:24:38 ◼ ► with the big camera. And I think even that is optimistic. I think it was probably like 90/10.
02:24:47 ◼ ► do you have any thoughts on this real quick? - Yeah, it was funny. So because Andrew wanted,
02:24:53 ◼ ► you know, you look at the list of wants, it's everything iPhones are great at. Low light,
02:24:57 ◼ ► fast, good autofocus, water resistance, ease of use, battery, and then Andrew says, "Don't care,
02:25:05 ◼ ► long zoom, raw, and touching up pics." So initially I'm like, "Well, okay, just iPhone really." But
02:25:13 ◼ ► unfortunately in the middle of the want list, Andrew says, "Better sharpness and bokeh than
02:25:18 ◼ ► iPhone 11 Pro." Okay, so first, I mean, the smart ass answer is go get rent or buy an iPhone 12 Pro Max,
02:25:26 ◼ ► which is honestly probably the best answer if you actually just don't want to use your iPhone.
02:25:40 ◼ ► not caring about long zoom and raw, that to me really says like, "All right, you want pictures
02:25:46 ◼ ► that are just great right out of the camera without a lot of effort, you want an iPhone." But if you
02:25:52 ◼ ► actually want a significantly more resolution and better like actual optical background blur,
02:25:58 ◼ ► then, you know, better than what an iPhone can do with its weird simulated background thing that
02:26:00 ◼ ► blurs your ears off, here are some good options. So from cheapest to most expensive. And also
02:26:07 ◼ ► Andrew says rent, which is good. So from cheapest to most expensive. The cheapest option is still
02:26:13 ◼ ► just use your iPhone, but get a nice lens that you can clip onto it. A decent telephoto lens that
02:26:20 ◼ ► gives you like a, you know, two to four x kind of zoom range. I don't really know what's out there
02:26:26 ◼ ► in this area, but that will give you better background blur, because that's the principle
02:26:32 ◼ ► of how those optics work. You get really good background blur if you use a very like, you know,
02:26:37 ◼ ► the longest telephoto lens you can get, and you get as close to the subject as possible, then you
02:26:42 ◼ ► will get really good background blur. And there's other factors, of course, but that's what's going
02:26:46 ◼ ► to be relevant here. And that's, you know, those lenses are like, you know, 30 to $50 for the
02:26:50 ◼ ► various clip on things. I know that the Moment case and lens assembly together is a little more
02:26:58 ◼ ► expensive, but tends to be pretty quality. I even have like, we have Tiff wanted a macro lens to
02:27:04 ◼ ► photograph our butterfly caterpillars that we were raising here. Don't worry about it. And
02:27:11 ◼ ► and you know, we try different options. And I just I went on Amazon and just found one that was well
02:27:15 ◼ ► reviewed. And it was like 30 bucks. And it's like a clip on thing. So you just clip it onto the
02:27:19 ◼ ► phone, you align it on top of the main camera of the cluster. And it just works. And that was great.
02:27:25 ◼ ► And it was inexpensive. So 30 bucks, you get something like that. But get like a telephoto
02:27:29 ◼ ► lens and that that'll give you what you want. Otherwise, use your iPhone. Now, the next most
02:27:34 ◼ ► expensive option is to actually, you know, do what Andrew asked for, and actually rent a camera lens,
02:27:40 ◼ ► I would say because zoom is not one of Andrew's priorities, I would say get a fixed lens compact
02:27:48 ◼ ► camera. And again, rentals are make this easier. Now the water resistance thing makes some of this
02:27:56 ◼ ► little trickier. So I will say, rent a camera that is not water resistant, hope it doesn't rain,
02:28:02 ◼ ► and get the insurance plan. Because the you know, any kind of like, you know, lens rentals is
02:28:08 ◼ ► wherever different from before. They, and pretty much anywhere else you can rent a camera will have
02:28:13 ◼ ► some kind of, you know, somewhat pricey insurance plan you could add on that will cover all risk. So
02:28:19 ◼ ► you can drop it in the ocean and you won't be responsible for all of it or some of it or
02:28:23 ◼ ► whatever. So I would say rent whatever you want, and get the insurance and then water resistance
02:28:29 ◼ ► is kind of checked off the list. Okay, so as for what you want, what I would suggest having never
02:28:34 ◼ ► used either of these cameras is at the low end, the Fuji X 100 f, because it's a fixed lens camera,
02:28:41 ◼ ► Fuji I found is very, very good at getting really good pictures right out of the camera with no
02:28:48 ◼ ► post processing whatsoever. They have really good JPEG rendering, usually really good color rendering,
02:28:54 ◼ ► it's just it's very, very good for low effort, good shots. And I why I've never owned this
02:29:01 ◼ ► particular camera Fuji cameras tend to have very good reviews for things like basic usability,
02:29:05 ◼ ► ergonomics, stuff like that. It's also reasonably compact. And but yet it is going to give you a
02:29:11 ◼ ► significantly better optical setup that you can get from an iPhone for things like total resolution
02:29:23 ◼ ► lens rentals has that for about $83 a day or a week. So the high end option for about three times
02:29:29 ◼ ► that is the Leica Q2. I have never owned a Leica camera. I have rented Leica cameras before. I have
02:29:38 ◼ ► briefly used a Q1 I have not used a Q2. But the Q the Q series of Leica cameras is delightful to use.
02:29:46 ◼ ► They're extraordinarily expensive to buy. But if you're going to be renting one for a short trip,
02:29:52 ◼ ► it's you know, 250 bucks plus whatever they want for the for the insurance. So you're probably
02:29:57 ◼ ► looking at you know, three 350. So again, not cheap. And you're really getting close to you know,
02:30:03 ◼ ► just the buy an iPhone 12 Pro Max territory. But But what you get with the Leica cameras in my in
02:30:10 ◼ ► my experience is, again, really good JPEGs right out of the box with with not a lot of messing
02:30:17 ◼ ► around. You do have amazing optics, amazing resolution, you have, you know, great ability
02:30:28 ◼ ► fun to use. They're very fast and responsive. And that's something that's really hard to find in
02:30:33 ◼ ► full frame cameras. But But here it is like the Leica Q2 has that. So anyway, that's my
02:30:38 ◼ ► recommendation. But again, I would go with Casey and suggest just getting like maybe a fun little
02:30:46 ◼ ► clip on lens for your iPhone and a battery pack might be the better approach. For what it's worth.
02:30:52 ◼ ► At lens rentals.com, which both Marco and I have used in the past, and although they've never
02:30:56 ◼ ► sponsored, I definitely recommend them. They're they're excellent. The lens cap plus coverage,
02:31:01 ◼ ► which is the most expensive, I don't know exactly what it covers. For the Leica Q2, it's $60. So that
02:31:06 ◼ ► brings the rental price from $257 for a week to $317 per week, which is not cheap. And like you
02:31:15 ◼ ► said, we're talking about at this point, you know, you're Why not just buy yourself a new iPhone. But
02:31:19 ◼ ► I do understand what you're saying. And I do like the idea of what you're saying there, Marco,
02:31:27 ◼ ► So this list of criteria is a little bit odd, because it doesn't have any kind of waiting.
02:31:32 ◼ ► So both of you said like, Oh, the iPhone is good at low light. That's true, as long as your subject
02:31:37 ◼ ► is not moving. The way the iPhone gets good at low light is by taking 100 pictures and combining
02:31:43 ◼ ► together into one picture. If you're trying to take a picture of a kid running through some dimly
02:31:48 ◼ ► lit ride, you're going to get nothing because the sensor on the iPhone is tiny, it does not gather
02:31:52 ◼ ► a lot of light computational photography is doing all the heavy lifting on low light. Now that said,
02:31:57 ◼ ► maybe you think your subject won't be moving and all you want to take is pictures of people
02:32:00 ◼ ► standing and smiling in front of things, then the iPhone is good at low light again, congratulations,
02:32:04 ◼ ► right. But good at low light. Like if that it's listed first, but like if that if that is your
02:32:09 ◼ ► number one priority, to actually get a camera that is good at low light, you need a much bigger
02:32:16 ◼ ► sensor. And because this list isn't prioritized, it's like, okay, but how good at low light? Like,
02:32:22 ◼ ► do you need a full frame camera? Do you want medium format? And when I get into stuff like this,
02:32:26 ◼ ► there's one thing that wasn't listed, which is like, reasonable size is listed nowhere. So,
02:32:33 ◼ ► like, it really opens the door to like, do you want to carry a gigantic 50 pound camera? I don't think
02:32:38 ◼ ► you do, but you didn't list it on your wants. So it's hard for me to say what I should recommend,
02:32:43 ◼ ► because you're kind of saying like, like, what this list says to me is, I don't actually mind
02:32:48 ◼ ► if it's kind of a big camera, like a size and portability and convenience like that wasn't
02:32:53 ◼ ► listed, right? The next item, great fast autofocus. This is where I start to get into the cameras I
02:32:58 ◼ ► have the most experience with. Sony has one of the best if not generally agreed upon to be the best,
02:33:03 ◼ ► great fast autofocuses in the entire industry across almost their entire camera line. It's
02:33:09 ◼ ► really, really good about finding the thing you want to focus on and latching on to it really,
02:33:14 ◼ ► really quickly and not letting go. That's like the major selling point of the software side of
02:33:20 ◼ ► the Sony cameras. It's really, really good, right? Lots of Sony cameras are water resistant,
02:33:25 ◼ ► and then better snarkiness and bokeh than iPhone 11 Pro. Yes, iPhone 12 is the snarky answer,
02:33:30 ◼ ► but like, really, it's not that much better. That makes me think you want a real camera,
02:33:35 ◼ ► because if you want actual optical depth of field, do you need actual optics, which means you need an
02:33:40 ◼ ► actual camera. And so given that, given that you didn't say like that, like, it's not super
02:33:47 ◼ ► important to have the smallest, lightest thing. I'm setting aside the cameras that Marco
02:33:51 ◼ ► recommended, but just like the little compact all in one non interchangeable lens cameras,
02:33:55 ◼ ► because that wasn't listed in the criteria. So why would you pick that camera unless compactness is
02:34:04 ◼ ► experience with. And especially if you're willing to rent, I would say that makes it even easier.
02:34:08 ◼ ► Now you say long zoom is not important, but I know from experience of taking pictures at Disney
02:34:13 ◼ ► World, long zoom is not important. But having a prime lens can be limiting, because you won't know
02:34:21 ◼ ► what focal length to put it. Maybe you want a big picture of like the the big ride of like, oh,
02:34:26 ◼ ► here's Space Mountain or the Matterhorn or whatever. And then another situation, maybe you
02:34:30 ◼ ► want a picture of just your kid, right? You probably need some kind of zoom range to say,
02:34:36 ◼ ► this is a wide shot versus this is a tighter shot, right? So it's going to be really difficult to
02:34:41 ◼ ► pick a single focal length. So what I'm saying is, get an interchangeable lens camera with a pretty
02:34:48 ◼ ► big sensor and a decent lens that has a reasonable zoom range, not a long zoom, it's not going to zoom
02:34:54 ◼ ► in probably any farther than you know, an average camera, but you really want that range. Maybe
02:34:58 ◼ ► you'll even find yourself in a cramped situation where you want to take a picture of your family,
02:35:01 ◼ ► and they're all in front of you, and you're like a foot away, and you want to get the whole family
02:35:04 ◼ ► in. Now you need a wider angle. Right? So kind of like the range that the iPhone does is a reasonable
02:35:10 ◼ ► range. But I think the iPhone is it falls a little bit short about getting picture of your kid on the
02:35:15 ◼ ► Dumbo ride, because they might be far away from you, like the little barriers of where you have
02:35:18 ◼ ► to get the picture from, right? So you need some kind of zoom range. So my main recommendation,
02:35:23 ◼ ► and you know, this is both based on my experience, but it's also based on my very limited experience,
02:35:29 ◼ ► but it's also based on the reason I bought this camera is if you're going to rent, get the Sony
02:35:33 ◼ ► a6600, which like there are better, cheaper options if you're going to buy, but if you're
02:35:37 ◼ ► going to rent, it's probably not that much more expensive to rent the 6600 than the 65 or 64 or
02:35:42 ◼ ► 61. So get the 6600. It comes with the amazing fast autofocus system. It is weather resistant
02:35:48 ◼ ► slash weather. It's water resistant, right? So it actually is kind of weather sealed. And so is the
02:35:53 ◼ ► lens I'm going to recommend you get for it and get the Tamron 17 to 70 lens, which has a great zoom
02:35:58 ◼ ► range is an amazing lens and is weather sealed. And it's not that big, but the sensor is way bigger
02:36:04 ◼ ► than an iPhone. It has way better low light performance than the iPhone with any subject
02:36:09 ◼ ► that moves in any way, including your hand shaking, right? Because the sensor is so much bigger. And
02:36:14 ◼ ► the step up from that I would say is the a7c, which is a full frame sensor, same exact size body,
02:36:23 ◼ ► Tamron 17 to 70. Actually, no, it's not full frame. You can get the full frame equivalent of that lens
02:36:27 ◼ ► from a different manufacturer and use that on the full frame 7C. But the camera that is literally
02:36:35 ◼ ► sitting on my desk here right now, the a6600 with the Tamron 17 to 70 will absolutely cover all of
02:36:40 ◼ ► your actual photography needs. And it will take way better pictures than any of the cameras
02:36:45 ◼ ► recommended so far at a similar price. Thanks to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, Memberful,
02:36:51 ◼ ► and Burrow. And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join at atp.fm/join. Thanks,
02:36:58 ◼ ► everybody. We'll talk to you next week. Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin
02:37:08 ◼ ► because it was accidental. It was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey
02:37:17 ◼ ► wouldn't let him because it was accidental. It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at
02:37:26 ◼ ► atp.fm. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey Liss
02:37:39 ◼ ► M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T. Marco Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A. Syracuse. It's accidental. They didn't mean to
02:38:08 ◼ ► I've not heard of that. 1770. All right. I'm trying to get some. Yeah. Sigma and Tamron are
02:38:14 ◼ ► like the two big, like kind of third party lens makers for most of the SLRs and so. Gotcha. Yeah.
02:38:19 ◼ ► The 17 to 70 is like, I should have recommended, I mean, I'm still on the show, so it's fine.
02:38:24 ◼ ► The Sony 16 to 55 is actually a better lens, but it costs twice as much. But if you're again,
02:38:30 ◼ ► if you're renting, maybe that doesn't make a difference. So consider that as well. I mentioned
02:38:34 ◼ ► the Tamron just because it has a slightly bigger range and it's cheaper. And if that factors it in
02:38:38 ◼ ► in the in at all the rental, then do that. But the Sony 16 to 55 is actually slightly better,
02:38:45 ◼ ► tiny bit more compact. And if you're renting, it's probably like only five bucks more or something.
02:38:50 ◼ ► See, I don't know how you would want to lug around a full frame like Sony interchangeable setup.
02:38:54 ◼ ► Well, they didn't, they didn't list compact size. Like they didn't say it has to be small enough
02:38:59 ◼ ► to fit in my thing or whatever. And having lugged around a camera of this exact size on a extended
02:39:04 ◼ ► Disney vacation, I can say it wasn't that bad. Like, like these are compact cameras. They're
02:39:09 ◼ ► small. Like the, the a seven C is the same size body. They're small for interchangeable lens
02:39:13 ◼ ► cameras, but they're not small compared to an iPhone. But I don't think they're that bad too,
02:39:17 ◼ ► to lug around, even in the million degree heat, even with like a backpack on everything. I did it,
02:39:22 ◼ ► I was fine. I survived. And so if you're not going to list compact size, then you're going to get
02:39:26 ◼ ► recommended larger cameras. It's not like I'm recommending a gigantic, you know, Canon SLR
02:39:31 ◼ ► full frame. That's like weighs seven times as much. Right? Yeah, that's fair. But I don't know.
02:39:37 ◼ ► I mean, this is why like, I ultimately like, I think Casey's experience of just mostly using
02:39:41 ◼ ► the iPhone is worth heating. Like it's so like the iPhone is so good as a vacation camera for
02:39:48 ◼ ► most people's priorities. Like John, John, you are, I think much more willing to lug around a
02:39:55 ◼ ► camera than most people are. But, but Andrew specifically is trying to say not an iPhone with
02:40:01 ◼ ► this criteria. They want better sharpness, better bokeh. Like they want actual optical depth of
02:40:06 ◼ ► field and they know they're not going to get that with an iPhone. So they're set and they're talking
02:40:08 ◼ ► about renting, right? So they're obviously saying they might as well have just said, don't recommend
02:40:13 ◼ ► me an iPhone because they know what the iPhone is. It's known quantity has its qualities. And even
02:40:17 ◼ ► though for most people, it probably does everything you needed to do. Andrew is specifically asking,
02:40:20 ◼ ► I want better pictures than I would get with an iPhone. You want real optical depth of field,
02:40:25 ◼ ► you get a real camera. That's what you'll get. I totally get you. And I'm glad both of you made
02:40:29 ◼ ► those recommendations, but ultimately I feel like it is worth hearing someone say it might be worth
02:40:35 ◼ ► just saving your money and sticking with the thing that's most convenient. Well, what I said last time
02:40:39 ◼ ► is look, they're going to have their iPhone with them anyway. So if there is a situation in which
02:40:43 ◼ ► you don't want to have the big camera or you think the iPhone would take a better picture, just use
02:40:47 ◼ ► the iPhone. Like I didn't not take iPhone pictures on my Disney vacation. Of course I had my iPhone
02:40:51 ◼ ► with me. I had both, right? You're going to have your phone with you anyway. Like, it's not like
02:40:55 ◼ ► you're going to say, I got a real camera, so I don't need to bring my phone. Of course you're
02:40:58 ◼ ► going to bring your phone. Everybody brings their phones. It's so the government can surveil you. No,
02:41:10 ◼ ► again, this question specifically looks to me like someone who says, I want pictures of my vacation
02:41:21 ◼ ► Yeah. We recently had some friends visit and one of our friends uses a small, I believe it's a Fuji,
02:41:30 ◼ ► like a small, I think it's a micro four thirds camera. And the photos she was able to take on it
02:41:36 ◼ ► were noticeably better than the iPhone photos, but not necessarily in the like, you know,
02:41:43 ◼ ► massive amounts of sharpness. Like that's not what I noticed about them. What I noticed about them
02:41:48 ◼ ► was that they just had a different color tone. Like just like the way that the camera rendered tones
02:41:54 ◼ ► and colors and skin tone and the color science is what they call it in the biz, right? Like color
02:42:03 ◼ ► And I wouldn't necessarily even say better. It was just different. And that was refreshing. Like
02:42:08 ◼ ► after seeing mostly only iPhone pictures myself for a very long time, to have a few pictures that
02:42:14 ◼ ► were in the, in this like group photo library we had from the trip that were taken by like a quote,
02:42:21 ◼ ► real camera, they looked noticeably different and it was just a refreshing thing to see. And I think
02:42:28 ◼ ► in some ways they were better technically. In some ways the iPhone pictures are easier to take, you
02:42:33 ◼ ► know, good pictures with, but it was interesting like seeing what another camera could do. And it
02:42:40 ◼ ► was nice, you know, the way the iPhone renders colors and contrast and stuff, it's very, you know,
02:42:48 ◼ ► scientifically optimized. It's like when you eat at like a fast food place, you know, like this has
02:42:54 ◼ ► been optimized by flavor scientists to like maximally taste exactly the way it's supposed to,
02:42:59 ◼ ► you know, eating like a Dorito. It's like, this is like all flavor science has gone in here, but
02:43:04 ◼ ► then you have like different foods sometimes that has different priorities and it's refreshing and
02:43:12 ◼ ► I think it's the same as those analogies in another way. And that the iPhone photos are
02:43:17 ◼ ► processed, just like processed food. Like the reason they look the way they do is you're
02:43:21 ◼ ► starting with garbage and you really have to process it to make it appealing. Whereas the
02:43:26 ◼ ► ones that kind of look different are starting with a better product, isn't a less noisy image
02:43:30 ◼ ► from the sensors. Like the iPhone is doing a lot of work. And so the iPhone pictures look the way
02:43:34 ◼ ► they do it because the raw material they're starting with is just total garbage. And the
02:43:37 ◼ ► computational stuff is working overtime to combine them, denoise them, contour them. You do the HDR
02:43:43 ◼ ► stuff like, and it's amazing. Don't get me wrong. That's amazing. That's why we like iPhone,
02:43:47 ◼ ► but that's why they come out so good because the phone does all that stuff. But the regular camera
02:43:52 ◼ ► can do so much less and just say, look, our raw material off the sensor is 10 times better.
02:43:56 ◼ ► We don't have to do that much processing. And you know, even for things like the colors,
02:44:00 ◼ ► a lot of the colors, I'm not saying they're synthesized, all the colors are synthesized
02:44:03 ◼ ► from various sensor readings, but like you're getting more raw material to work with from a
02:44:10 ◼ ► camera with a big sensor and big glass and all that. So you don't have to grind over it as much.
02:44:18 ◼ ► I'm sure different kinds of quote unquote color science. Whereas the phone has to do tons of heavy
02:44:26 ◼ ► lifting and multiple exposure and exposure bracketing and combining to get what it thinks
02:44:31 ◼ ► is a representation of what's in front of it. Like, I'm not going to say that the big camera
02:44:35 ◼ ► looks quote unquote more natural, but like you said, it can, it can look different to you because
02:44:44 ◼ ► It's funny coming off a beach vacation a couple of weeks ago and actually a day trip to the beach,
02:44:50 ◼ ► literally today, I brought the big camera with me today. I brought my GoPro with me and I brought,
02:44:57 ◼ ► of course, my phone with me. And the only thing I really took pictures on today happened to be
02:45:02 ◼ ► the GoPro, which is a terrible still still camera. Like it's, it's truly bad, but I was in the water
02:45:08 ◼ ► and I certainly don't want to bring my big camera in there. I do, John, the same thing you do. So
02:45:12 ◼ ► I'm not like, I'm not absolutely opposed to it, but generally speaking, I try to avoid it if I can.
02:45:17 ◼ ► I have lightly cracked the back of my iPhone. And so I don't want to get that wet because I
02:45:23 ◼ ► have never again going caseless, caseless. And so I was left with the GoPro because I was in the
02:45:27 ◼ ► water a lot today. When I was on the beach trip, I did use the big camera a lot. And it's so
02:45:33 ◼ ► frustrating. I've probably said this before. It's so frustrating because I'll look at the pictures
02:45:38 ◼ ► that the big camera took. And in terms of like having a proper telephoto lens so I can get close
02:45:44 ◼ ► to my subject without actually being close to them. And in terms of the bokeh, even on a,
02:45:49 ◼ ► I think my zoom is an f/2.8 and my prime is like an f/1.4 or something like that. And I almost
02:45:53 ◼ ► never put the prime on anymore because I'm trying to get close to like a moving child or whatever
02:45:58 ◼ ► the case may be. Or just a far away child more than anything else. And I look at these photos
02:46:03 ◼ ► and the bokeh is great. And, you know, I think the color is pretty good, although I'm not, you know,
02:46:07 ◼ ► a particularly astute critic of these things. But then I'll look at the sky and like the sky is
02:46:12 ◼ ► completely blown out. And so I miss the HDR of the iPhone. And then I think about how I have to go and
02:46:21 ◼ ► And I wish I had the iPhone. And so... Are you shooting on auto? No, I'm shooting aperture
02:46:25 ◼ ► priority. Well, what do you have your aperture set for? Usually like between two and four,
02:46:30 ◼ ► generally speaking. I don't know why your sky is blown out as much as it is when people are outdoors
02:46:34 ◼ ► on a sunny day. I feel like it's not a challenging HDR situation where you should be able to get
02:46:38 ◼ ► reasonable balance. Well, because I don't have HDR. I don't have HDR at all in this camera.
02:46:42 ◼ ► I know, but I'm saying even without HDR, like it's not, it doesn't seem like it would be a super
02:46:47 ◼ ► challenging situation to have a reasonably good exposure on the person's face that's in sunlight
02:46:51 ◼ ► and the sky that's behind them. Well, and also I'm firing these from the hip, so to speak, in the
02:46:56 ◼ ► sense that, you know, I'm not, I'm not doing hours and hours of, oh, that's exaggerating. You know
02:47:00 ◼ ► what I'm saying? Like a lot of calibration. No, no, no processing just right off the, right off the
02:47:04 ◼ ► camera. I mean, just like, I don't know enough about photography to know how, what, what you
02:47:08 ◼ ► might need to change other than it seems like you're overexposing a little bit. But if you,
02:47:11 ◼ ► if the faces, I don't know, you'd have to look at a specific picture. All I can say is like,
02:47:14 ◼ ► I take a lot of pictures of people at the beach and having the sky blown out behind people is not
02:47:18 ◼ ► usually a problem for me. And I am not doing anything particularly fancy with my camera.
02:47:22 ◼ ► And I think you have a better camera than I by a fairly large margin, but like I dropped in the
02:47:26 ◼ ► chat in, in our super secret private text channel, or private Slack channel. I don't want to put
02:47:31 ◼ ► these on the show notes. And I apologize for that because it has pictures of the kids, which I
02:47:36 ◼ ► mostly try to keep off the internet now. But if you look at the first couple of pictures, they are
02:47:41 ◼ ► shot on the big camera and you can tell because the subject's super close. And then you look at
02:47:45 ◼ ► the next couple of pictures and maybe you wouldn't, I would say the sky's blown out in the ones in the
02:47:50 ◼ ► big camera and maybe you wouldn't, but certainly without question, the sky on the pictures taken
02:47:57 ◼ ► with my phone is far better exposed than the ones taken with the big camera. And perhaps that's user
02:48:03 ◼ ► error on my part. Well, that's not the same sky. It's totally, it's framed totally differently.
02:48:07 ◼ ► No, I, I, I agree with Casey. It's what, where the iPhone really excels is first of all, an area I
02:48:14 ◼ ► forgot to mention video, like it's nearly impossible for lay people who are not really good
02:48:21 ◼ ► video shooters to get better video from any other camera than you get out of an iPhone with, with no
02:48:26 ◼ ► effort whatsoever. So that's part number one. But I would even say a lot of that actually stands to
02:48:30 ◼ ► photos now too, like what you get photo wise out of an iPhone, especially in regards to dynamic
02:48:37 ◼ ► range. Uh, and you know, whether it's, you know, the built in HDR stuff or just, you know, just,
02:48:42 ◼ ► just various other ways that it processes dynamic range, it's so much so far ahead of what any
02:48:50 ◼ ► standalone camera does. Now there's reasons for that. You know, people who really know what they're
02:48:54 ◼ ► doing with standalone cameras can, you know, capture the much better data from the much
02:48:58 ◼ ► better optics and much better sensor and can typically do a good amount of post-processing
02:49:03 ◼ ► on it to do things like, you know, you expose to the left or close to the right, whichever one it
02:49:07 ◼ ► is where you, you basically expose for the highlights not to be blown out. And the result is
02:49:12 ◼ ► your shadows are super dark right out of the camera. But then in post you raise up the shadow
02:49:17 ◼ ► detail with all these amazing, you know, sensor dynamic ranges that we have nowadays with the
02:49:22 ◼ ► standalone cameras. But that all takes work and skills and talent that many of us don't have or
02:49:28 ◼ ► don't have time for. Right. And so what you get out of an iPhone for dynamic range is so much
02:49:36 ◼ ► better and more pleasing and more usable. And typically you get more dynamic range detail
02:49:41 ◼ ► because it's so hard to use for most people to use standalone cameras to capture things like
02:49:48 ◼ ► a bright sunny sky with anything else in the frame. Yeah. And so what I'm driving at in a
02:49:54 ◼ ► roundabout way is, and the pictures I've shown Marco and John are not the greatest representations
02:49:59 ◼ ► of, you know, like really excellent pictures that my phone has taken. Actually, John, I forgot to
02:50:04 ◼ ► show you, I did take a single bird picture for you since you were apparently spamming all of Instagram
02:50:09 ◼ ► with 300 bird pictures while you were on your beach vacation. The reason I put all those pictures is
02:50:14 ◼ ► they're not pictures of people who might want to have their pictures shown. So birds don't complain.
02:50:18 ◼ ► That's true. But anyways, you know, there are examples of pictures I took with my big camera
02:50:23 ◼ ► and also the day I've stumbled on just now is relatively overcast day. So in many ways, I'm not
02:50:28 ◼ ► giving you a great example, but you know, I would get out the big camera, particularly in zoom situations.
02:50:34 ◼ ► And I would think to myself, man, I'm so glad I brought the big camera, but then about half the
02:50:39 ◼ ► time I would think, wow, the sky is blown out, man. I kind of wish I had the iPhone for this. Oh, I got
02:50:43 ◼ ► to geotag everything now. I kind of wish I had the iPhone for this. So the big camera definitely has
02:50:48 ◼ ► space in my life and that's why I still bring it. But as I've said many times over the last couple
02:50:53 ◼ ► of years, as the iPhone gets better and better, if it wasn't for just having such better glass on this
02:50:59 ◼ ► camera, I don't think I would ever use it. But to get that really decent bokeh, to get some, I would
02:51:05 ◼ ► argue in some cases, some much better color, I really do need to get out the big camera. And that's
02:51:10 ◼ ► not really a complaint, but it's just, it's wild to me how in just a few years, again, we've said this
02:51:15 ◼ ► many times on the show, in just a few years, we've gone from, yeah, we'll use the iPhone in a pinch to,
02:51:22 ◼ ► yeah, I'll use the big camera when I like really want to get a really good picture and God, what a
02:51:27 ◼ ► pain in the ass it is. It's just such an unbelievable change from the way it used to be. And that's a
02:51:33 ◼ ► good thing in the grand scheme of things. But as someone who wants to be a ever better amateur
02:51:40 ◼ ► photographer, I feel like it is limiting for me to only use my iPhone, which is also not really true
02:51:46 ◼ ► because you can get incredible shots from an iPhone if you work at it. But I don't know, it's just a
02:51:49 ◼ ► very odd place to be, that here it was, I had the big camera with me and I had people that I wanted
02:51:54 ◼ ► to take pictures of with my big camera, including not only my family, but the family that we were