ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Moments ago, my wrist started vibrating kind of a lot over and over and over again.

00:00:06 ◼   ► And I was very confused, and then I realized, wait a second, this just happened a day or two back.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I know what this is. And I have on my Synology, there's a downloader app that you can point an RSS feed at,

00:00:20 ◼   ► or you can point it to an RSS feed, and it'll download all the things linked in the RSS feed.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And I do that for both ATP and analog. And we're going to talk a little later.

00:00:29 ◼   ► But we have changed the ATP website, and now my Synology is downloading all of our shows again, which is fine.

00:00:37 ◼   ► But what's interesting about that is I have a push notification sent to me when something downloads,

00:00:42 ◼   ► because typically I want to know these sorts of things, especially when they're automated,

00:00:45 ◼   ► because otherwise I may not think to check. And so I'm looking at 36 notifications on my iPhone lock screen, 37.

00:00:52 ◼   ► And it's still going, the entirety of the ATP back catalog being downloaded on my —

00:00:57 ◼   ► 38 being downloaded on my Synology as we speak.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Your relationship with notifications is different than mine.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:03 ◼   ► You want to be notified when your background automation downloads a thing? That's the whole point.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I don't want to know. Just — I have the same automation, by the way, for my podcast.

00:01:12 ◼   ► But the idea of getting a notification, let alone a notification that makes it all the way to my wrist,

00:01:16 ◼   ► boy, that's the opposite of what I want.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Well, but see, the thing is, I do want to know what — I totally hear your perspective.

00:01:23 ◼   ► You are not at all wrong.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I want to hear — I want to know when it happens.

00:01:28 ◼   ► I just don't want to be clicking buttons to make it happen.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Everything's OK, alarm.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly. Everything's OK. Everything's OK.

00:01:35 ◼   ► When this alarm is sounding, everything is fine. If that alarm ever stops, boy, look out.

00:01:39 ◼   ► How about getting a notification if it fails?

00:01:42 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, that'd be too easy.

00:01:43 ◼   ► How about a dead man switch where something just checks to see whether the new episode appears once per week,

00:01:49 ◼   ► and if it doesn't, then you get a notification.

00:01:50 ◼   ► All sorts of things you could do that would not result in the current risk shaking that you've got going on.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Hey, man, this is how I like my life, all right? Don't shame me. Don't shame my preferences.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Do you have the little LED on your nightstand?

00:02:01 ◼   ► Should it be on when the garage door is closed and off when it's not,

00:02:04 ◼   ► so you can wake up in the middle of the night and look to make sure the light is still shining?

00:02:07 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:02:09 ◼   ► All right, so we have to start the show with amazing, amazing news.

00:02:13 ◼   ► I could not be happier to tell you that you can buy stuff from us now.

00:02:18 ◼   ► You can do that thing that Dubai Friday does so well.

00:02:21 ◼   ► You can give us your money if you would like.

00:02:24 ◼   ► We have the ATP store back up, and we have new shirts, we have mugs,

00:02:29 ◼   ► and we have a bunch of the old crap we already had, or, you know, had in the past.

00:02:32 ◼   ► So we have, for the very first time, the ATP mug.

00:02:35 ◼   ► It is a very good-looking, a black mug with the M-style ATP logo,

00:02:42 ◼   ► and it has a red interior, which looks very cool.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And then, Jon, would you like to take us through the Pro Max Triumph shirts,

00:02:50 ◼   ► and then we'll explain the kind of advanced version after that, please?

00:02:55 ◼   ► Sure.

00:02:56 ◼   ► This would have been our WWDC sale, of course.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Sad, you know, we're not all going to be at WWDC.

00:03:01 ◼   ► None of us will be there, in fact, because it's, you know, happening online for obvious reasons.

00:03:05 ◼   ► But every WWDC, we try to have some kind of idea for a new shirt,

00:03:11 ◼   ► and, you know, in keeping with whatever the theme of the year is,

00:03:14 ◼   ► or whatever we're talking about on the show, this year, what we decided to do is

00:03:19 ◼   ► bring back the, well, I don't know if I ever really left, the Pro Max shirt,

00:03:24 ◼   ► the one that's got the silhouettes of a bunch of different sort of Pro level Max

00:03:28 ◼   ► throughout Apple's history.

00:03:29 ◼   ► It used to have five silhouettes on it, ending with the trash can, right?

00:03:34 ◼   ► And so this year is the Pro Max Triumph shirt, because with the return of the Mac Pro,

00:03:40 ◼   ► the real Mac Pro, the one we were all waiting for, the one sitting next to me at my desk right now,

00:03:45 ◼   ► that is the sixth Mac, and that happily gives us all six colors of the typical Apple logo.

00:03:52 ◼   ► So the shirt is now complete.

00:03:54 ◼   ► It looks just like it did before, except now there is a sixth Mac at the end, the current Mac Pro.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And Casey had the brilliant idea, in keeping with past shirts that we've done in this spirit,

00:04:04 ◼   ► to say, "Okay, well, you've got the shirts here with the Pro Max on it ending with the new Mac Pro."

00:04:09 ◼   ► But we should make a version of it with wheels.

00:04:12 ◼   ► So we did.

00:04:13 ◼   ► So you can get the shirt with wheels or without.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Without wheels is just the standard feat, and with wheels,

00:04:19 ◼   ► and you'll see it's got the little wheels on the bottom.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Of course, the wheels cost a little bit more, right?

00:04:24 ◼   ► But how much would you pay for...

00:04:26 ◼   ► What is the quote I got to pull up from the website?

00:04:28 ◼   ► How much is a perfect wheel worth?

00:04:30 ◼   ► It turns out when it comes to t-shirts, the wheels are $4 more, so it's $1 per wheel.

00:04:36 ◼   ► So it's proportionally scaled to the horrendously expensive computer that's sitting next to me.

00:04:41 ◼   ► You don't have to pay an extra $400 for your wheels.

00:04:43 ◼   ► On your shirt, you just got to pay an extra $4.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So with wheels or without, in black and in white, in 100% cotton and in tri-blend,

00:04:50 ◼   ► many, many options, please go and rep the fully armed and operational line of Pro Max from Apple.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Yes, we are aware there are only two wheels visible on the shirt.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Just go with the joke, please.

00:05:02 ◼   ► No, all four are there.

00:05:03 ◼   ► They're just behind them.

00:05:04 ◼   ► It's a silhouette.

00:05:05 ◼   ► I'm just waiting for everyone to well, actually, you, John.

00:05:08 ◼   ► You think maybe we're just giving you two wheels and there's just cinder blocks on the backside?

00:05:11 ◼   ► All four wheels are on this shirt.

00:05:14 ◼   ► You should read the book Flatline.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Actually, don't.

00:05:17 ◼   ► It's terrible, but learn about 2D versus 3D.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Yep.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So we have mugs, we have the Pro Max shirt, both with and without wheels, in black and in white,

00:05:25 ◼   ► and men and women's, in tri-blend and in cotton.

00:05:28 ◼   ► We also have the original OG ATP logo shirt.

00:05:31 ◼   ► We have brought back the ATP hoodie.

00:05:33 ◼   ► We have had like three requests for the ATP polo. You're my people.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Of course, nobody needs a polo to go to work anymore, but that's neither here nor there.

00:05:39 ◼   ► But if you want a polo, if you want a collared shirt, that's there as well.

00:05:42 ◼   ► We also have the ATP hat and the enamel pins, which let me remind you, have a locking pin back.

00:05:47 ◼   ► So all of this stuff, you pre-order it sort of, kind of Kickstarter style.

00:05:52 ◼   ► It's the same thing we've always done.

00:05:53 ◼   ► You can order it up until June 7th.

00:05:55 ◼   ► And then once they have reached a certain threshold, which is very low, then our friends

00:06:00 ◼   ► at Cotton Bureau will start printing and fulfilling all these orders.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Now, one small note, also news for today, briefly.

00:06:08 ◼   ► We are going to be launching a membership program for ATP,

00:06:12 ◼   ► and we're going to be doing that sometime soon-ish.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So if you have to allocate your money in only one place, that's totally understandable.

00:06:20 ◼   ► But please keep in mind that there will be a membership option coming up soon.

00:06:24 ◼   ► But for shirts, for mugs, for polos, for hoodies, for hats, for pins,

00:06:29 ◼   ► all of those things are available now at ATP.fm/store.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Once again, ATP.fm/store.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And I would say on the balance here, if you want this merchandise, and it's nice, and it's cool,

00:06:42 ◼   ► buy it, right?

00:06:43 ◼   ► But if you only just want to give us money, you may have an opportunity to do that in the future.

00:06:47 ◼   ► That's it.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Also of note, which is probably only interesting to the super nerds amongst us,

00:06:53 ◼   ► we have a new website now.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And I would like to take credit for absolutely none of it,

00:06:58 ◼   ► because this was pretty much entirely Marco's work.

00:07:00 ◼   ► We are very excited that we have a brand new website.

00:07:03 ◼   ► That won't mean too much to most of you, I don't think,

00:07:07 ◼   ► except that now all, what, 380-ish episodes of this show are all back in the RSS feed.

00:07:14 ◼   ► There were very uninteresting reasons why that wasn't the case before,

00:07:17 ◼   ► but there was a technical limitation prior to Marco making us our bespoke CMS.

00:07:20 ◼   ► But now you can get all of the back catalog in the RSS feed.

00:07:25 ◼   ► We have links to all of the best podcast apps on iOS,

00:07:30 ◼   ► and actually, PocketCasts on Android as well.

00:07:32 ◼   ► And we have a new CMS.

00:07:34 ◼   ► Marco, would you mind taking us on a little nickel tour as to what's going on here?

00:07:38 ◼   ► Well, actually, you forgot to also mention the other big news.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Neutral also has the new CMS.

00:07:45 ◼   ► So Neutral has also gotten a redesign.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Our long-retired podcast, last episode of which was about, what, six years ago?

00:07:53 ◼   ► Something like that, yeah.

00:07:55 ◼   ► So for various reasons, we've had this site on Squarespace since we started.

00:08:00 ◼   ► By the way, Squarespace is sponsoring this episode.

00:08:02 ◼   ► We've now moved it to Linode, another sponsor of this episode.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Each sponsor gets seven years to host the site.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And I think some people might view this as like, oh no, they love Squarespace.

00:08:14 ◼   ► But Squarespace covers a lot of needs,

00:08:17 ◼   ► and I think it really says something that covered all of our needs for seven years.

00:08:20 ◼   ► That's pretty good.

00:08:22 ◼   ► All of the needs of three extremely particular, extremely annoying nerds.

00:08:28 ◼   ► That website did just fine for us for seven years.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:08:31 ◼   ► It is not an indictment at all of Squarespace.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Yeah, and to replace it, it took me like three weeks of constant work

00:08:37 ◼   ► to replace like a one percent of the functionality that Squarespace offered.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Oh, and theirs is still better.

00:08:44 ◼   ► But yeah, we basically, you know, I've wanted to do this for a while for lots of reasons.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Mainly it will be supporting the new membership program that we will be launching.

00:08:52 ◼   ► As Casey said, you know, we're not going to really talk about that yet.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Frankly, don't get too excited.

00:08:57 ◼   ► The details aren't very interesting.

00:08:58 ◼   ► It's exactly what you'd expect from the three of us.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Yeah, but yeah, it's not, it's nothing interesting.

00:09:05 ◼   ► And the things that you get for free,

00:09:09 ◼   ► our current plan is to leave you getting those things for free.

00:09:11 ◼   ► So anyway, so don't worry about anything like that.

00:09:13 ◼   ► It's nothing bad.

00:09:13 ◼   ► So yeah, so basically wanted to write a new CMS.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Did a couple of super cool custom things.

00:09:19 ◼   ► People listening on the live stream now notice the live stream now automatically

00:09:22 ◼   ► turns itself on and off when we go live and when we don't go live.

00:09:25 ◼   ► I don't have to like do this weird like shell script copy into an iframe kind of thing

00:09:29 ◼   ► that I was doing before.

00:09:30 ◼   ► It now shows the number of live listeners right there on the page.

00:09:34 ◼   ► For the rest of the site, it's, you know, just a pretty minimal bare bones CMS.

00:09:39 ◼   ► As Casey mentioned, one of the reasons we wanted to do this for a while was the RSS feed limit.

00:09:45 ◼   ► So now all of our episodes will show in every podcast player.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Going all the way back to episode one.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Although man, those episodes sound awful.

00:09:53 ◼   ► I was going back testing a few of them and testing the neutral episodes as well

00:09:57 ◼   ► because they were recorded, you know, around that same time span.

00:09:59 ◼   ► And oh boy, our microphones are way better now.

00:10:03 ◼   ► But yeah, anyway, it's a podcast website.

00:10:07 ◼   ► It isn't that interesting otherwise.

00:10:09 ◼   ► I built it all on PHP.

00:10:10 ◼   ► It's very minimal, like CSS and JavaScript usage.

00:10:15 ◼   ► There's no frameworks on the front end at all.

00:10:18 ◼   ► John tried to convince me to use the JavaScript fetch API instead of XML HTTP request.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And I looked at an example of the fetch API and had all these like asyncs and .then, .then, .then.

00:10:30 ◼   ► - No libraries required though.

00:10:31 ◼   ► It's built into the browser.

00:10:33 ◼   ► - So that I like.

00:10:34 ◼   ► I like that a lot because like this site,

00:10:37 ◼   ► there's no use anywhere as far as I know of jQuery.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Now eventually when we do the membership,

00:10:42 ◼   ► we'll have to add stripes API to it and that might add some of that stuff.

00:10:46 ◼   ► So we'll see how long I can keep that going.

00:10:48 ◼   ► But you know, right now it's all just, you know, really vanilla stuff.

00:10:52 ◼   ► In the version of the site that you all are seeing,

00:10:54 ◼   ► there's almost no JavaScript at all.

00:10:55 ◼   ► On the back end version that has like the editing interface for the post,

00:10:58 ◼   ► there's a little bit, but it's like, you know, maybe a few hundred lines, it's not much.

00:11:01 ◼   ► It's all very, very simple stuff.

00:11:03 ◼   ► And it's funny, like I looked at the fetch API as I was saying,

00:11:06 ◼   ► and like that whole style of like the chaining of the do this, .then, do this, .then, .it's all that stuff.

00:11:15 ◼   ► - All right, hold on, let me just stop you there.

00:11:17 ◼   ► Let me just stop you there and let me simplify for all of us who are not old and boring.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Marco discovered promises and did not like what he saw.

00:11:23 ◼   ► - It was a common reaction to be fair,

00:11:25 ◼   ► but we just all had that same reaction what, six years ago or whatever,

00:11:28 ◼   ► but Marco is getting to it now.

00:11:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:11:31 ◼   ► - And he's having the reaction that I think everybody has

00:11:33 ◼   ► upon first encountering promises and futures and all that good stuff.

00:11:37 ◼   ► - To me, it looks like AppleScript.

00:11:40 ◼   ► - Oh, come on, that's a little harsh.

00:11:43 ◼   ► - You look at it and you're like, okay, this is trying to be minimal and readable,

00:11:49 ◼   ► but is it writable and is it understandable?

00:11:52 ◼   ► - That's the thing, it's not a style, it's not a syntax thing,

00:11:57 ◼   ► it is actually a functional thing and they're trying to find a way to make the functionality

00:12:02 ◼   ► palatable and usable, but in the end, what it's trying to accomplish is a functional thing,

00:12:07 ◼   ► which is a functional thing that is maybe not important to you

00:12:11 ◼   ► when you're writing client-side JavaScript to do a thing that you would normally do sync recently

00:12:14 ◼   ► or whatever, but anyway, we don't have time to go into futures now.

00:12:18 ◼   ► I'm not here to sell you on it, but all I can say is that--

00:12:21 ◼   ► - Because you won't?

00:12:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will eventually if you gave me many months and weeks,

00:12:25 ◼   ► but the point is everyone goes through this, they're weirded out by them,

00:12:27 ◼   ► it doesn't seem to make any sense, you eventually learn how they work,

00:12:29 ◼   ► you eventually get used to them, your brain does eventually fit around them,

00:12:32 ◼   ► and then you realize there are use cases where they do make sense.

00:12:36 ◼   ► You don't need to travel that path, there's nothing dragging you down it,

00:12:38 ◼   ► but I'm confident that you would travel that path if you had occasion to use them

00:12:43 ◼   ► in one of the contexts where they are very nice.

00:12:45 ◼   ► - Fair enough, but regardless, my use case for this was very, very simple.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I wouldn't have been saving a lot of code at all if I actually went to this,

00:12:57 ◼   ► and so it wasn't worth learning a whole new thing just to possibly save 10 lines of code.

00:13:04 ◼   ► So I went with the old way and my ready state change handler with state four,

00:13:09 ◼   ► and it was fine, it was totally fine, no big deal.

00:13:12 ◼   ► - It's funny to me because I had forgotten that conversation that we had,

00:13:15 ◼   ► and just today I wrote my own super streamlined promise class for Swift

00:13:22 ◼   ► because I didn't want to use any of the very good, but ultimately kind of bloated,

00:13:27 ◼   ► promises libraries that are available right now.

00:13:29 ◼   ► And so I wrote one that's super small, like very Marco style.

00:13:32 ◼   ► So on the one side, I should get a thumbs up from you for doing something like,

00:13:35 ◼   ► oh, screw it, I'll just roll my own, it'll be fine, I don't need that much from it,

00:13:37 ◼   ► but a thumbs down because I was writing my own promise library.

00:13:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's not gonna, you're gonna give a thumbs down on that one.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Casey has gone a little bit, that path that I've described to you, Marco,

00:13:47 ◼   ► Casey has continued onward, perhaps even advisedly further into the woods,

00:13:51 ◼   ► where now everywhere he is, he needs to have,

00:13:54 ◼   ► he needs to not only have those features available,

00:13:57 ◼   ► but he's not satisfied with the libraries that offer them,

00:13:59 ◼   ► or the built-ins that offer them, the parts of standard library,

00:14:01 ◼   ► I'm not gonna write my own promise library.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And that's, you've gone too far for me now, Casey.

00:14:05 ◼   ► - I'm sorry.

00:14:06 ◼   ► - I can't follow you into I'm going to write my own promise library for Swift.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Just async await will come eventually, just hang in there.

00:14:12 ◼   ► - Stop.

00:14:13 ◼   ► It was seriously like 150 or 200 lines, it was not that much.

00:14:16 ◼   ► - I know, but I'm just, okay, all right.

00:14:18 ◼   ► - In any case, so we have this fancy shiny new CMS,

00:14:21 ◼   ► and I'm very excited about it, and Marco, I'm very happy that you spent the time

00:14:25 ◼   ► putting this together, so I didn't have to, and John didn't have to.

00:14:27 ◼   ► And really, ultimately, for the listeners' perspective,

00:14:31 ◼   ► there's not, I mean, it's visually different, but functionally,

00:14:34 ◼   ► it's not really that different outside of the live page.

00:14:36 ◼   ► But we are excited about it, and I wanted to publicly thank you, Marco,

00:14:40 ◼   ► for putting in all that work, because whether or not you enjoyed it,

00:14:43 ◼   ► it was still a lot of work, and I'm very thankful for that.

00:14:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, one thing I think, I mean, again, no one ever goes to the website,

00:14:48 ◼   ► but anyway, one thing people can appreciate if they happen to go to it,

00:14:52 ◼   ► you might notice that the site loads very fast.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And part of that is, you know, the lack of JavaScript and so forth,

00:14:57 ◼   ► but part of that is Marco's fairly obsessive need to do the fastest thing possible,

00:15:05 ◼   ► which is not often the quote-unquote best practice for web design,

00:15:08 ◼   ► unless your goal is to make the page fast and responsive.

00:15:11 ◼   ► So if you view source, you're like, all the CSS is inlined?

00:15:15 ◼   ► Why is he doing that? Why?

00:15:17 ◼   ► 'Cause it's faster.

00:15:18 ◼   ► And guess what? It is faster.

00:15:19 ◼   ► The site loads really fast.

00:15:21 ◼   ► If you go to one of those, like, test this site to see how fast it is,

00:15:24 ◼   ► how could you make this site faster, they have, like, no advice.

00:15:27 ◼   ► 'Cause they're like, yep, you pretty much did it all.

00:15:30 ◼   ► Again, this is a simple website. It's not a big deal.

00:15:32 ◼   ► I just, you know, it's, when doing projects like this,

00:15:34 ◼   ► I find it amusing to set a goal for yourself that really doesn't have any particular,

00:15:39 ◼   ► you know, you don't need to do this, but it's a fun thing to do.

00:15:42 ◼   ► I don't know if this is what Marco did, but I appreciated that about the site,

00:15:45 ◼   ► that there is, you know, that it is way higher performance than it needs to be for any reason.

00:15:49 ◼   ► - It's, yeah, for me, I mean, whenever I do something new like this,

00:15:53 ◼   ► I try to make some kind of political statement.

00:15:55 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:15:57 ◼   ► - With you?

00:15:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, with, like, the way that I, you know, make certain decisions,

00:16:01 ◼   ► the way I build things.

00:16:02 ◼   ► And with this, you know, one of my statements, as John said, was, like, everything's inlined.

00:16:06 ◼   ► It isn't that way in the source tree.

00:16:07 ◼   ► In the source tree, it's all neatly separated into files, different roles.

00:16:10 ◼   ► But upon render, I just read those files in and inline them all because it's faster.

00:16:14 ◼   ► And it keeps things simpler.

00:16:16 ◼   ► The images are all SVG files, and they're really tiny.

00:16:20 ◼   ► I was tempted to even inline those.

00:16:22 ◼   ► You can do that.

00:16:23 ◼   ► I haven't yet.

00:16:24 ◼   ► You know, don't tempt me.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I might do that next.

00:16:28 ◼   ► And there's very few images.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Mostly just, like, you know, podcast icons for subscriptions.

00:16:33 ◼   ► There's a couple little CSS tricks, but not, like, super, you know, crazy stuff.

00:16:38 ◼   ► It's fairly minimal.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And there's also no custom font.

00:16:41 ◼   ► There's no web font.

00:16:42 ◼   ► This is just using, wherever possible, it's using the system font.

00:16:45 ◼   ► So it's using San Francisco on Mac.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's, like, very just fast, simple, bare bones.

00:16:50 ◼   ► The built-in audio player is not a custom audio player.

00:16:53 ◼   ► It's just whatever the browser provides for the audio tag by default with controls on.

00:16:58 ◼   ► That's it.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And it's a little bit less nice than a custom player.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And maybe in the future, I'll make a custom player for it.

00:17:03 ◼   ► But it doesn't seem that necessary, so I'm probably not going to do it.

00:17:06 ◼   ► And yeah, simple.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Just keeping everything as, like, simple, fast, bare bones as possible.

00:17:12 ◼   ► And it is running on my PHP framework, my, like, custom framework that runs Overcast as well.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It is running on that on the back end.

00:17:20 ◼   ► It not for a ton of reasons, except that it just makes it faster for me to build.

00:17:24 ◼   ► And I know how it works.

00:17:26 ◼   ► I know how it performs.

00:17:26 ◼   ► And it's all running on a $40 a month Linode box with a couple other sites that are going

00:17:33 ◼   ► to be on it as well, including, like, my own markers.org is going to be moved there at some

00:17:37 ◼   ► point.

00:17:37 ◼   ► And the very high traffic neutral.fm is also there, as I mentioned earlier.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Leave it to us to get off into the weeds of implementation of the site.

00:17:43 ◼   ► The point is, buy mugs and t-shirts.

00:17:45 ◼   ► It's a tech show.

00:17:47 ◼   ► Unless you're saving your money for your membership, and which you don't.

00:17:49 ◼   ► But anyway, I'll just say, the final note is my contribution to this website was to

00:17:55 ◼   ► add a little bit of modern web dev pee to Marco's pool by using Flexbox on the store

00:18:01 ◼   ► page.

00:18:01 ◼   ► You're welcome.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Oh, that's how you did that.

00:18:03 ◼   ► I haven't actually looked at your code for that yet.

00:18:05 ◼   ► It's modern stuff.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Don't look, Marco.

00:18:06 ◼   ► We'll burn you.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I know.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Seriously.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Stay back.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Stay back.

00:18:09 ◼   ► It looks very nice.

00:18:10 ◼   ► I don't have any tables except for, like, the actual list of episodes in the editing

00:18:14 ◼   ► side, but it's fine.

00:18:15 ◼   ► I do have a couple of floats here and there.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Oh, my word.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Sorry.

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00:20:22 ◼   ► Promo code ATP2020 for a $20 credit.

00:20:26 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my stuff and sponsoring our show.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Moving on, let's actually get the show properly started with some follow-up.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Jon, a lot of people were very interested in your MiniDV import and more technical details

00:20:43 ◼   ► as to how you did that and what you did.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Can you take us on a little bit of a journey through how you completed all that?

00:20:49 ◼   ► Jon Streeter Yeah, many more people than I thought, apparently,

00:20:51 ◼   ► also have shoeboxes full of MiniDV tapes and wanted to know more detail about how I did

00:20:56 ◼   ► it.

00:20:56 ◼   ► I didn't include most of the details because I thought it was boring, but I guess people

00:20:59 ◼   ► want to know enough information that they feel like they can do it themselves.

00:21:02 ◼   ► So first question is how did you import the movies?

00:21:06 ◼   ► So I still have my original camcorder that I took all the movies on, and that's how you

00:21:12 ◼   ► traditionally import it.

00:21:13 ◼   ► You connect the camera to your computer, and applications on the computer can actually

00:21:17 ◼   ► control the camera and make it rewind and fast-forward and play.

00:21:20 ◼   ► And you play it, and then the computer records it.

00:21:22 ◼   ► That's exactly what I did.

00:21:23 ◼   ► The application I used to do that was iMovie.

00:21:25 ◼   ► I was as surprised as anyone.

00:21:27 ◼   ► The modern, most recent version of iMovie, when you plug in a camcorder and go to import,

00:21:33 ◼   ► a UI that I didn't even know existed still exists with the fast-forward, rewind, play,

00:21:37 ◼   ► record.

00:21:37 ◼   ► All those controls are still there, and you can import.

00:21:39 ◼   ► People want to know what settings I imported at.

00:21:41 ◼   ► I didn't change anything.

00:21:44 ◼   ► I plugged in my camcorder.

00:21:45 ◼   ► I selected import.

00:21:46 ◼   ► I rewound, and then I clicked whatever the import button is, and that's it.

00:21:50 ◼   ► Whatever it's doing by default, that's what I did, and it seemed fine.

00:21:54 ◼   ► After that, things as you might expect go a little off the rails.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Oh, people also wanted to know how did you connect your camcorder to your crazy Mac Pro.

00:22:01 ◼   ► I managed to do it in three dongles.

00:22:03 ◼   ► It's like I can name that tune in three notes.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Four dongles would be more traditional, but I managed to find...

00:22:09 ◼   ► My one dongle that I managed to find is the one I connected directly to the camcorder.

00:22:11 ◼   ► The camcorder's got one of those little Firewire 400 ports on it, like the ones that look like

00:22:16 ◼   ► a rectangle with a notch taken out of the long side.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Firewire 400-800 is the first dongle that's connected to the camcorder.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Then I go with the second dongle that's Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt 2, and the Thunderbolt

00:22:31 ◼   ► 2 is the one that looks like Mini DisplayPort, but it's Thunderbolt 2.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And then the third dongle is Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And believe it or not, this actually works.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Somehow, someway, you go from Firewire 400 to Thunderbolt 3, and you plug it into your

00:22:45 ◼   ► computer, and your computer's like, "Sure, yeah, whatever, fine.

00:22:47 ◼   ► That works."

00:22:48 ◼   ► After I do the iMovie import, what I end up with is...

00:22:52 ◼   ► I made a new iMovie library.

00:22:53 ◼   ► I end up with a bunch of files in an iMovie library.

00:22:55 ◼   ► But I do all the imports, takes forever.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Then just quit iMovie, just done.

00:23:00 ◼   ► I'm no longer gonna touch iMovie.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Now I have this iMovie library, and on disk it's like a package file that's actually a

00:23:05 ◼   ► directory.

00:23:05 ◼   ► You go into the directory, you'll find a bunch of folders.

00:23:08 ◼   ► In there, you'll eventually find the actual digital video files.

00:23:12 ◼   ► I think they're .dv files, but honestly, I don't remember anymore.

00:23:14 ◼   ► But anyway, you'll see them.

00:23:15 ◼   ► They're the ones that are a couple hundred megabytes or gigabytes or whatever.

00:23:18 ◼   ► One for each clip, because when you import an iMovie, it will make separate files for

00:23:23 ◼   ► each clip.

00:23:23 ◼   ► A clip is like you hit record, and then you hit stop, then you hit record, and you hit

00:23:26 ◼   ► stop.

00:23:26 ◼   ► iMovie finds those cuts, so you end up with many, many files per tape, depending on how

00:23:31 ◼   ► many times you stopped recording and started recording again.

00:23:34 ◼   ► What I did with those is I encoded those as H.265, and I wanted to use Handbrake to do

00:23:41 ◼   ► it, like the GUI Mac thing or whatever.

00:23:43 ◼   ► But I couldn't figure out a way in Handbrake to like...

00:23:46 ◼   ► You know, I made a set of settings in Handbrake.

00:23:48 ◼   ► You can make a save preset, and I picked what I wanted, and all the different settings will

00:23:51 ◼   ► go over in a moment.

00:23:52 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Great, I have all these settings.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Now I ought to be able to select all on all those files and just drag them in here and

00:23:57 ◼   ► say, 'Just encode all these like this.'"

00:23:59 ◼   ► If there's a way to do that in Handbrake, I couldn't figure it out.

00:24:02 ◼   ► But Handbrake has a command line tool, and I'm like, "All right, well, that suits me

00:24:05 ◼   ► just fine."

00:24:06 ◼   ► And handily, the command line tool, creatively named Handbrake CLI, one of the arguments

00:24:13 ◼   ► you can give it is, "Tell me the name of the preset that you made in the GUI."

00:24:19 ◼   ► The GUI preset thing saved out to a JSON file, and you can just point to that JSON file and

00:24:23 ◼   ► say, "Look at this JSON file and use the settings that I called minidvimport or whatever."

00:24:28 ◼   ► And so the command line arguments are not horrendous, as they surely would be if I had

00:24:33 ◼   ► used Casey's favorite FFmpeg.

00:24:34 ◼   ► It's just like, "Handbrake CLI, settings file this, use the setting iMovie import, giant

00:24:42 ◼   ► list of files."

00:24:42 ◼   ► Of course, I didn't do it from the command line.

00:24:45 ◼   ► What I did instead was wrote a script to do it, because, again, I'm just like, "Margot

00:24:48 ◼   ► is writing the new site in PHP.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I'm writing the script in Perl, just because it's the tool I know best and I don't have

00:24:53 ◼   ► to bother thinking about it."

00:24:54 ◼   ► So I wrote a Perl script, and I tried to do what I thought would be useful.

00:24:59 ◼   ► It turned out to be totally not useful, which is, "All right, write a Perl script, find

00:25:02 ◼   ► all the files, run Handbrake CLI on them with the proper arguments, all that other stuff,

00:25:07 ◼   ► do proper error checking," which is a little pet peeve of mine, "and then also set the

00:25:16 ◼   ► file dates, because when iMovie imports them, it imports them with clip file names that

00:25:22 ◼   ► are based on the date range of the clip or whatever.

00:25:24 ◼   ► So I can pull from the file names and then set the files on disk to be those dates as

00:25:27 ◼   ► well."

00:25:28 ◼   ► So what I end up with is a bunch of video files that are compressed that all have the

00:25:33 ◼   ► right dates.

00:25:34 ◼   ► They're from 2002 or whatever, whenever all these videos were taken.

00:25:39 ◼   ► >> Well, wait, so how does the computer know when they were taken?

00:25:42 ◼   ► That metadata was readable by the computer on that MiniDV tape?

00:25:46 ◼   ► >> Yeah, it's got to be in the tape, because I think you can display the date or whatever.

00:25:50 ◼   ► The MiniDV tape has that information, and when iMovie made the clips, it put in the

00:25:54 ◼   ► file names.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I didn't ask it to do this.

00:25:56 ◼   ► It's just what it did.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It put in the file names.

00:25:58 ◼   ► You'll see in a second this is all pointless, but it did this, and so I just parsed the

00:26:03 ◼   ► dates out of the file names and set the dates in the file.

00:26:05 ◼   ► The settings I used, I used H.265.

00:26:08 ◼   ► I used the video toolbox setting in Handbrake, which is the one that uses the fast H.265

00:26:13 ◼   ► thing that's in Intel CPUs.

00:26:15 ◼   ► I don't think it uses GPU.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I think it just uses the CPU thing.

00:26:18 ◼   ► I think it's also lower quality than the fancy software one, but I didn't care.

00:26:21 ◼   ► I just wanted to do the one that was fast because I had a lot of video to go through.

00:26:24 ◼   ► I think I did like 6,000 kilobits per second average.

00:26:28 ◼   ► I did AAC encoding of the audio, probably at too high a bit rate because I think it's

00:26:33 ◼   ► like 96 kilobits off the MiniDV, and I think I actually encoded it higher than that, but

00:26:37 ◼   ► whatever.

00:26:37 ◼   ► It's not a big deal.

00:26:38 ◼   ► And yeah, I just had it run all those imports.

00:26:43 ◼   ► I wrote a second script to confirm that I got them all just because they're spread

00:26:48 ◼   ► all over the place, and there's a lot of files, and I made my own bespoke diffing

00:26:52 ◼   ► script to make sure everything's been converted.

00:26:54 ◼   ► I chose the MP4 container format just because I hope that would sort of stand the test of

00:26:59 ◼   ► time as an international standard yada yada, right?

00:27:02 ◼   ► So H.265 is the algorithm, because you can play MP2's MPEG2 video today, right?

00:27:08 ◼   ► So I'm hoping an MP4 container, anyway, I can just always change the container at some

00:27:11 ◼   ► point in the future.

00:27:12 ◼   ► The final bit was, okay, I've got all these files now.

00:27:16 ◼   ► The total file size was only like 50 gigs, which is way smaller than the file size I

00:27:21 ◼   ► imported them.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And then my final step was I'm going to drag them into my Apple Photos library, which is

00:27:27 ◼   ► what I always wanted to do with them.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And being the wise person that I am, I didn't just drag them all in there.

00:27:33 ◼   ► I dragged one first, and I dragged it in.

00:27:35 ◼   ► It's like, this movie is from 2020.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I'm like, no, it's not.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Why do you think it's from 2020?

00:27:41 ◼   ► The dates and the file name, the creation and modification date of the file on disk

00:27:46 ◼   ► are, you know, a decade ago.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Like, this is not a thing from 2020, Apple Photos.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Why can't I convince you that this is an old file?

00:27:54 ◼   ► Is it in the EXIF data?

00:27:55 ◼   ► Yes, it's in the EXIF data.

00:27:57 ◼   ► I got it.

00:27:59 ◼   ► Well, you look at the show notes.

00:28:00 ◼   ► No, I didn't.

00:28:00 ◼   ► You never looked at the show notes.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Of course you didn't look at the show notes.

00:28:04 ◼   ► There's metadata inside the file.

00:28:07 ◼   ► There's track-specific metadata on each track that determines the dates.

00:28:11 ◼   ► And for whatever reason, because Handbrake made these when Handbrake wrote out the file,

00:28:15 ◼   ► it's like, I'm making this movie, and it's brand new as of 2020.

00:28:17 ◼   ► And so I had to use one final tool, the EXIF tool, to modify all of the relevant dates

00:28:25 ◼   ► on each individual media track.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Which was tricky, because now I'm making, like, the way EXIF tool, at least the way

00:28:31 ◼   ► I was running it, it doesn't modify them in place, it makes a second copy.

00:28:33 ◼   ► So now I got to make sure I do this for all the things, and it works, and I have all the

00:28:36 ◼   ► second copies, and distinguish them from the first, and rename everything, and yada, yada,

00:28:40 ◼   ► yada, purl, purl, purl.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Eventually, I ended up with, you know, several dozen files.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Actually, it was like 20 tapes worth of files.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Each tape was like 20, I don't know, they varied in how many.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Anyway, a lot of files, eventually I got it to work, threw them into Apple Photos, and

00:28:59 ◼   ► you know, after doing one test one and seeing that it correctly filed it, you know, 10,

00:29:03 ◼   ► 12 years ago, I threw them all in.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So that's how it works.

00:29:06 ◼   ► We'll put the links in the show notes to Handbrake CLI and EXIF tool, iMovie you can

00:29:12 ◼   ► get for free from the App Store, I think, and the dongles.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I had most of these.

00:29:18 ◼   ► The Thunderbolt 2 to 3 was an Apple one, the Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 was also an

00:29:23 ◼   ► Apple one, the 400 to 800, I don't even remember where I got it.

00:29:27 ◼   ► It didn't have it in the house, I had to actually buy it, I think I just searched Amazon

00:29:29 ◼   ► for it.

00:29:30 ◼   ► Well, I'm impressed.

00:29:32 ◼   ► That is a lot of work, but I'm sure that you have quite a bit of peace of mind knowing

00:29:37 ◼   ► that all that stuff is now safely in 34 different locations and three different cloud services.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Slowly bit-rodding, yeah.

00:29:43 ◼   ► It's great.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Slowly bit-rodding everywhere.

00:29:45 ◼   ► All right, would one of you like to tell me about other reasons why people might ask for

00:29:49 ◼   ► app promo codes?

00:29:50 ◼   ► I'll tell you because I brought it up in the last show, where it's like, "Oh, you get

00:29:53 ◼   ► these automated emails, if you have an app in the App Store and people ask for promo

00:29:57 ◼   ► codes, why are they asking, blah, blah, blah."

00:29:59 ◼   ► We didn't touch on what seems like the most obvious but also sort of the most cynical

00:30:03 ◼   ► and sad reason.

00:30:05 ◼   ► It's because they want to resell them.

00:30:07 ◼   ► They want to get a thing for you for free and they want to charge somebody money for

00:30:11 ◼   ► the thing they got for free.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And if you do that at scale and you send out thousands and thousands and thousands of automated

00:30:16 ◼   ► emails and some small percentage gives you a thing for free and then you sell all those

00:30:19 ◼   ► free things for a dollar, you just made a dollar profit on all of that.

00:30:23 ◼   ► So that could be a good business.

00:30:24 ◼   ► And then the final one, which is a similar thing, is to populate pirate app stores.

00:30:29 ◼   ► So if you can get a legitimate app and somehow crack it or strip it or whatever, then you

00:30:34 ◼   ► can put it up on a store and resell that same copy over and over again for people who have

00:30:38 ◼   ► jailbroken phones.

00:30:39 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure how that works, but I'm just speculating that it's basically just

00:30:43 ◼   ► a way to get a thing for free and either sell it once or sell it multiple times to make

00:30:47 ◼   ► money.

00:30:48 ◼   ► So that's a bummer.

00:30:49 ◼   ► I was very surprised that, first of all, that we didn't think about this.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Of course, it's some kind of stupid arbitrage scam.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Again, we don't think this way because we're not scammers.

00:31:03 ◼   ► Well, I thought the people who had the fake app store apps, I mean, this is being silly,

00:31:10 ◼   ► I was like, "Well, surely they have...

00:31:11 ◼   ► Why would they be begging for copies of the software they're going to sell on their

00:31:16 ◼   ► illegal site?

00:31:17 ◼   ► Surely they have other ways to get them."

00:31:18 ◼   ► I guess someone's got to get it first, but the apps they're going to sell, it's like

00:31:23 ◼   ► trying to find an illegal copy of Photoshop in the '90s.

00:31:26 ◼   ► You don't go asking Adobe for it.

00:31:27 ◼   ► You just go find it online and download it.

00:31:28 ◼   ► But I guess with the app store scale, that becomes more difficult and maybe this mass

00:31:33 ◼   ► emailing works.

00:31:34 ◼   ► I didn't think that this was the source.

00:31:36 ◼   ► The source was mass emails to developers.

00:31:39 ◼   ► I always just thought it was like, "Oh, they find a copy online."

00:31:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And I was more surprised about the reselling promo codes for less than their list price

00:31:47 ◼   ► as a thing.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Like that is kind of an ingenious, horrible scam.

00:31:51 ◼   ► I would never have thought to do that.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And it is totally unethical.

00:31:57 ◼   ► But it is kind of like, that makes a lot more sense why you get a bulk email, why you never

00:32:03 ◼   ► hear from the people again.

00:32:04 ◼   ► It's just like, "Just give me codes, give me codes, give me codes."

00:32:07 ◼   ► And then if one person says yes, great, then go sell that code for half of what that app

00:32:11 ◼   ► sells for in the store, and eventually somebody might buy it.

00:32:14 ◼   ► And it costs you nothing.

00:32:16 ◼   ► So even if no one ever buys your code, you're still fine.

00:32:19 ◼   ► You need to store eight characters in a database somewhere.

00:32:22 ◼   ► That's your only cost.

00:32:23 ◼   ► And you can automate it.

00:32:25 ◼   ► This can just run in the background while you're sitting on the beach.

00:32:27 ◼   ► There's nothing.

00:32:28 ◼   ► It's zero touch.

00:32:29 ◼   ► It just runs.

00:32:30 ◼   ► It sends the emails.

00:32:31 ◼   ► When it gets the response, it looks for a promo code.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It puts it into a database.

00:32:34 ◼   ► It shows up on a store.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Like it all just runs by itself.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Again, like I said last week, whenever you have some kind of large ecosystem like this

00:32:43 ◼   ► where any kind of scam or grift is even possible, even if it doesn't seem like it would make

00:32:48 ◼   ► that much money, or even if it seemed like it would be a lot of work to get into, there

00:32:53 ◼   ► are people out there for whom it's worth it.

00:32:56 ◼   ► And someone out there will do it.

00:32:58 ◼   ► If there is a scam to be had, people will do it.

00:33:02 ◼   ► And that's why whenever you think about app store policy or Apple's physical policies

00:33:09 ◼   ► about their devices, things like repair policy, warranty repairs, how they deal with serial

00:33:14 ◼   ► numbers and locked devices, stuff like that, so much of this.

00:33:18 ◼   ► You've got to think from the angle of what would scammers do with this given a lot of

00:33:23 ◼   ► time and no ethics?

00:33:26 ◼   ► And possibly, and a lot of scammers live in places where the cost of living and the expenses

00:33:33 ◼   ► of daily life are much lower than ours.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And so it might be worth it for them to run a scam that might not be worth it for us.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Because if it isn't making huge amounts of money, but it's making small amounts of

00:33:44 ◼   ► money, that's worth it to somebody.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And so anything Apple does, they're at such a large scale.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Their customer base is at such a large scale.

00:33:52 ◼   ► And there's so much potential money to be made in unethical or illegal ways, people

00:33:58 ◼   ► will do it.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And you kind of have to give them the benefit of the doubt when they make some kind of weird

00:34:04 ◼   ► or inconvenient change to one of their policies around something like this.

00:34:08 ◼   ► A lot of times it's like, oh, actually, yeah, people were scamming them, or us as developers.

00:34:13 ◼   ► People were scamming for millions of dollars over time.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And this change was necessary to reduce that or something like that.

00:34:18 ◼   ► As a software person, there is a kind of a beauty to this type of scam.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Because we always hear about, oh, someone goes and buys a dozen iPhones and sells them

00:34:26 ◼   ► when they're in high demand.

00:34:27 ◼   ► And in some respects, people are out there waiting in lines, and there's physical goods.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And it's real hard work, and it's hard to make money.

00:34:37 ◼   ► But this is one of those beauty--

00:34:38 ◼   ► They pay other people to wait in lines for the change.

00:34:40 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:34:41 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:34:41 ◼   ► But eventually there's labor involved.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Whereas this one is like an individual person without much programming knowledge.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Can write this little machine and just run it indefinitely.

00:34:52 ◼   ► And because the scale of the App Store is so huge, the success rate, the response rate

00:34:58 ◼   ► of people giving free codes can be very tiny.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I can imagine making a large amount of money.

00:35:02 ◼   ► Despite the fact that it's, A, probably illegal and against Apple's terms of service or whatever,

00:35:06 ◼   ► and B, certainly unethical, there is a certain beauty to it.

00:35:10 ◼   ► And I can imagine that person sitting on the beach and thinking, people are in line trying

00:35:14 ◼   ► to get iPhones.

00:35:14 ◼   ► They have to carry around these physical goods.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And they're just slowly, ambiently getting this trickle of income that keeps the pina

00:35:24 ◼   ► coladas coming.

00:35:24 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's not-- the person who's doing this is not probably sipping

00:35:30 ◼   ► pina coladas on the beach.

00:35:31 ◼   ► But there is a certain beauty to these kind of pure software scams.

00:35:36 ◼   ► You think it's maybe like those Bud Light, Lime-arita things?

00:35:40 ◼   ► What are those?

00:35:41 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:35:43 ◼   ► I mean, this is the Superman rounding error banking scam for the modern age.

00:35:50 ◼   ► You don't know that.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Superman 3.

00:35:52 ◼   ► Is that the thing that's referenced in Office Space?

00:35:54 ◼   ► Yep, yep, yep.

00:35:55 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:35:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I can get you one reference away.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Yeah, Office Space referenced the thing.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I can't tell you what the Superman was, because I didn't see that.

00:36:04 ◼   ► But I saw Office Space a lot.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I had Richard Pryor, and I had a scene where a bunch of wires wrap around people, and it

00:36:08 ◼   ► scared me when I was little.

00:36:09 ◼   ► All right.

00:36:11 ◼   ► I'm assuming that it was Marco that put in this Destiny entry in the show notes.

00:36:15 ◼   ► So Marco, why don't you tell me about Destiny and cursors?

00:36:17 ◼   ► It turns out they have cursors in Destiny, but they don't call them that.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Go ahead.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Try to fake it.

00:36:24 ◼   ► What's your next line in the joke?

00:36:25 ◼   ► I can't even make one up.

00:36:27 ◼   ► You can't.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Just cat-dev you random.

00:36:30 ◼   ► They call it that.

00:36:31 ◼   ► All right.

00:36:34 ◼   ► So last episode, I think, we were talking about Craig Federighi's interview with Federigo

00:36:41 ◼   ► Viticci, where they talked about the cursor design on iPad OS.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And some of the things they talked about was comparing to certain aspects of the aim assist

00:36:51 ◼   ► feature, not amethyst, but aim assist feature in Destiny.

00:36:55 ◼   ► It turns out that what I should have been talking about, silly me, was also the fact

00:37:02 ◼   ► that Destiny itself has a cursor in it.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And many reasons the strangeness didn't occur to me.

00:37:09 ◼   ► I was talking about inside the game, there's an aiming reticle that you use to aim at and

00:37:13 ◼   ► shoot people, and that's the main gameplay.

00:37:14 ◼   ► But it has a menu system, too, and it has a cursor, and it's controlled by thumb sticks.

00:37:18 ◼   ► And guess what?

00:37:19 ◼   ► That cursor looks like a ghost finger.

00:37:21 ◼   ► It is and has been since 2014 a circular blob that's on the screen.

00:37:25 ◼   ► You use it to select menus and buttons and do all sorts of stuff like that.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Now, the problem space is very different.

00:37:30 ◼   ► The reason I was comparing the iPad OS one with the shooting mechanics is because it's

00:37:35 ◼   ► slightly more analogous than this, because on iPad OS, you're not controlling the cursor

00:37:40 ◼   ► with a tiny joystick.

00:37:41 ◼   ► You have a touchpad, which is a very different interface, or a mouse.

00:37:45 ◼   ► But a joystick is a very different problem set.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So I fell into a pretty deep rabbit hole of game developer conference videos, GDC videos

00:37:55 ◼   ► on YouTube.

00:37:56 ◼   ► There was a couple ones that I've already seen about Destiny, and there was a couple

00:38:00 ◼   ► ones that I reviewed for the thing we talked about last week.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And then there's this one, it's called Destiny's Tenacious Design and Interface.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Even if you've never used Destiny, it's a really interesting video to watch someone

00:38:12 ◼   ► explain how they tackled the design problem of letting people use a cursor with a game

00:38:18 ◼   ► controller.

00:38:19 ◼   ► If you've ever had a game that tried to do this, you know how badly it can go, because

00:38:23 ◼   ► a tiny thumb stick with like, you know, three quarters of an inch of travel is not the ideal

00:38:29 ◼   ► way to control a cursor on a screen.

00:38:31 ◼   ► So how do you do that?

00:38:32 ◼   ► How do you even make that interface so people don't want to tear their hair out?

00:38:36 ◼   ► Because people are going to be using it a lot in Destiny.

00:38:38 ◼   ► I think most Destiny players take it for granted as essentially the first decent interface

00:38:44 ◼   ► where you have a cursor on the screen.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Like most games don't even have a cursor.

00:38:47 ◼   ► They just say, "Oh, you use a D-pad.

00:38:48 ◼   ► Up, down, down, right, right, left, left."

00:38:50 ◼   ► But that gets tedious as well.

00:38:51 ◼   ► But at least it works.

00:38:52 ◼   ► People know how that works, like in an RPG, Final Fantasy, or whatever.

00:38:55 ◼   ► You got a menu system, you just get used to it.

00:38:57 ◼   ► You just, you know, it's fast, it's responsive, it's a game console.

00:39:00 ◼   ► But at a certain point when your interface becomes very expansive, that itself becomes

00:39:04 ◼   ► way too tedious.

00:39:05 ◼   ► You want to have essentially a mouse cursor.

00:39:07 ◼   ► How do you do that on a game console?

00:39:10 ◼   ► And in the case of the original Destiny, they were also, this boggled my mind because I

00:39:14 ◼   ► totally forgotten about it, but the original Destiny also had to run on consoles that supported

00:39:19 ◼   ► 4x3 televisions, like non-HDTVs.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Like you could hook up a PlayStation 3 to a non-HDCRT and games had to work on it.

00:39:27 ◼   ► So if you've looked at a Destiny screenshot and you ever wondered why there's nothing

00:39:30 ◼   ► in the sort of the sides of the 16x9 box, it's because they had to keep everything so

00:39:34 ◼   ► that it would work on a 4x3 TV and they didn't want to lay out every screen twice.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Anyway, I put the link in the show notes.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Like I said, even if you don't even like games, don't even know what Destiny is, and in the

00:39:45 ◼   ► beginning of the video maybe it's a little bit boring, stay with it and watch to the

00:39:47 ◼   ► point where they start showing you how they approach this design.

00:39:51 ◼   ► You will see some things that are similar to iPadOS, but other things that are just

00:39:55 ◼   ► totally alien in terms of counter-scrolling the screen and finding ways to fit in localized

00:40:01 ◼   ► text in these boxes.

00:40:03 ◼   ► All the things that if you do UI design, some of them you recognize, but the unique aspects

00:40:07 ◼   ► of it that only apply to games are really interesting.

00:40:09 ◼   ► You will also see in some of the screenshots icons for our friends at the Icon Factory

00:40:14 ◼   ► and prototypes of the game.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Before there's any artwork, they just need a bunch of icons to put on screen to test

00:40:20 ◼   ► the interface.

00:40:21 ◼   ► There's a whole bunch of Icon Factory icons in there, which I thought was pretty neat.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I have a related slight tangent update.

00:40:29 ◼   ► So first of all, you conflate 4x3 TVs with standard def TVs, and as I mentioned before,

00:40:36 ◼   ► I owned a 4x3 1080i HDTV.

00:40:40 ◼   ► They did exist.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Are you sure about that?

00:40:42 ◼   ► Yes.

00:40:43 ◼   ► I know HD, I know high definition CRTs existed, but I thought they were 16x9.

00:40:47 ◼   ► No?

00:40:48 ◼   ► No, I mean maybe those also existed, but I had a 4x3, I think it was a Magnavox or something,

00:40:53 ◼   ► 4x3 HDTV that was a CRT that had component input and supported 1080i.

00:40:59 ◼   ► You need to look up this device, because I need to see this.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Trust me, lots of these existed, well maybe not lots.

00:41:06 ◼   ► They existed for a short time, like when HDTVs were coming out, but people still wanted inexpensive

00:41:11 ◼   ► ones.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Chat Room says yes, and Chat Room is never wrong.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Wow, 4x3 HDTV.

00:41:15 ◼   ► So it just had, it was just letterboxed I guess?

00:41:17 ◼   ► Yeah, well you could choose, but yeah, that's usually how you would set it, because nothing

00:41:22 ◼   ► supported actual 4x3 HD content.

00:41:26 ◼   ► It was similar, you could letterbox it or you could crop off the ends, and I usually

00:41:30 ◼   ► just letterbox it.

00:41:31 ◼   ► It was very strange.

00:41:32 ◼   ► That's terrible.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I would never want that TV.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Like I would hold out for the 16x9 CRTs.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Well it wouldn't have had the problem having now with my TV.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Your big fancy TV?

00:41:43 ◼   ► Yep, my big fancy LG OLED, so I still have my hot blue pixel near the top edge.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Hot pixel, hot pixel.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I have sometimes stopped noticing it, but not regularly stopped noticing it.

00:41:58 ◼   ► And the other day, Tiff was playing Animal Crossing and going across a light beach area.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And along the bottom quarter of the screen, we saw a very familiar outline of about 10

00:42:16 ◼   ► hearts, about 10 meat-shaped logs, and then about 8 or 10 squares that form some kind

00:42:25 ◼   ► of quick action bar.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I told you never to look.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I didn't look for it, but this was clear as day.

00:42:31 ◼   ► Before I thought Zelda would burn in, but apparently you just didn't play enough hours

00:42:34 ◼   ► of Zelda, but Minecraft?

00:42:36 ◼   ► You've played enough hours of Minecraft.

00:42:37 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't play on the TV, but Tiff does.

00:42:40 ◼   ► It's her fault now.

00:42:42 ◼   ► So we play either on the Dubai Friday server, which is Java, in which case we're all on

00:42:46 ◼   ► PCs, Macs or whatever, or we play in our family game, which is just like a private thing that

00:42:51 ◼   ► we have just for our family, and that's the Bedrock edition.

00:42:55 ◼   ► And for that, Tiff plays on the Switch.

00:42:57 ◼   ► We played so much of that recently that now there is the Minecraft HUD burned in to the

00:43:02 ◼   ► bottom of our TV.

00:43:03 ◼   ► Now fortunately, it is not burned in enough that we notice it most of the time.

00:43:07 ◼   ► It was only when Tiff was walking across the certain light to medium shade flat colored

00:43:14 ◼   ► beach area that we saw it very clearly there, but during watching regular TV content where

00:43:20 ◼   ► stuff is actually moving all the time, we don't really notice it yet, but I'm hoping

00:43:23 ◼   ► it doesn't get any worse than that.

00:43:26 ◼   ► Well you know the solution.

00:43:27 ◼   ► The solution is do not play Minecraft on that TV anymore and then wait a year.

00:43:31 ◼   ► Is that, yeah, I was curious, is it permanent?

00:43:34 ◼   ► I mean, I know my hot pixel is permanent and therefore this TV is dead to me, even though

00:43:39 ◼   ► it's, you know.

00:43:40 ◼   ► I don't know if the hot pixel is permanent.

00:43:41 ◼   ► Sometimes those things come back to life too, weirdly.

00:43:43 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't have experience with OLEDs.

00:43:47 ◼   ► My only experience is with the plasma and with the plasma, no, it wasn't permanent,

00:43:50 ◼   ► but it did take a full calendar year for me to stop being able to see my Destiny HUD.

00:43:55 ◼   ► As soon as I saw that combined with my dead pixel, I said, "You know what?

00:43:59 ◼   ► I wish I had just kept my plasma."

00:44:01 ◼   ► Well, the plasmas have burned into it, you'd have the plasma of Minecraft burn in too.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Does it burn at the same rate?

00:44:09 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:44:10 ◼   ► I mean, plasma, I still, I know OLED is a lot more elegant in a lot of ways.

00:44:16 ◼   ► It's certainly a lot more efficient and it's thinner and the bezels are thinner and it

00:44:20 ◼   ► has 4K, which plasma, as far as I know, never went 4K.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Has better color reproduction, has more pixels.

00:44:27 ◼   ► Plasma's are way better at motion and they are significantly better in a lot of these

00:44:31 ◼   ► areas of retention and dead pixels and everything, in my experience.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Maybe I just got lucky, I don't know.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I don't know if they're better.

00:44:38 ◼   ► I don't think they're worse than OLEDs.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Some OLEDs may be worse than others, but plasma was the previous champion of image retention

00:44:45 ◼   ► and OLED is just kind of like, I feel like OLED is tying it.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Well, anyway, I am, I so far, I did what everyone else does a couple of years ago and I wanted

00:44:55 ◼   ► to buy a 4K OLED TV and I went to the review sites and I bought the one that everyone buys,

00:44:59 ◼   ► the LG C whatever.

00:45:01 ◼   ► You got the right one.

00:45:02 ◼   ► I have the C7, I think, yeah.

00:45:04 ◼   ► I got the right TV.

00:45:05 ◼   ► I did all the research.

00:45:06 ◼   ► A lot of people have these TVs.

00:45:08 ◼   ► I have friends who have these TVs.

00:45:10 ◼   ► I am not very happy with it.

00:45:11 ◼   ► I got to say, after three years or almost three years of having it, to have two significant

00:45:17 ◼   ► image related problems, not thrilled with that purchase right now, especially because

00:45:21 ◼   ► it costs like $2,200 or something.

00:45:23 ◼   ► Like it wasn't a cheap TV.

00:45:25 ◼   ► So you got the extended warranty.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Honestly, I think for whatever I buy next, if this thing ever dies and actually forces

00:45:32 ◼   ► me to buy something new, I would probably do one of those stupid like best buy warranties.

00:45:37 ◼   ► That's what I did with my plasma.

00:45:38 ◼   ► I bought the extended warranty despite how ridiculous it was because I knew plasmas have

00:45:42 ◼   ► problems and I always wanted the option to be like, oh, this thing goes terribly wrong.

00:45:46 ◼   ► The thing that goes wrong with plasmas a lot is, aside from the image retention, is because

00:45:49 ◼   ► they use so much power.

00:45:50 ◼   ► They have some sort of analog circuit that actually vibrates in use and that eventually

00:45:56 ◼   ► it can crack its housing and make a terrible noise just from the vibration of the high

00:46:02 ◼   ► power.

00:46:03 ◼   ► You can always hear a plasma.

00:46:04 ◼   ► If you put a full white screen on a plasma and you have young enough ears, you can hear

00:46:06 ◼   ► it going like that kind of electrical buzzing noise.

00:46:09 ◼   ► But if that thing cracks, it becomes incredibly loud.

00:46:12 ◼   ► And you don't want that to happen like one year after your warranty is out and the warranties

00:46:15 ◼   ► are very short.

00:46:16 ◼   ► So extended warranty for sure.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Kids don't use nearly as much power as these plasmas and don't have that buzzing problem,

00:46:23 ◼   ► but things can go wrong with any kind of screen, especially a 4K screen.

00:46:27 ◼   ► Normally those extended warranties on most things are total ripoffs and I would never

00:46:31 ◼   ► recommend buying them on pretty much anything.

00:46:33 ◼   ► But I do admit I'm jealous when, if I mention something about this TV, you always hear from

00:46:39 ◼   ► people who are like, "Yeah, well, you know, it happened to me once and I had the genius

00:46:43 ◼   ► squad come over and they just took it right out and swapped it with a new one.

00:46:46 ◼   ► No questions asked because I had one dead Pixel blue."

00:46:48 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Oh, God."

00:46:50 ◼   ► But you know your previous reasoning about why you don't do that still holds.

00:46:53 ◼   ► The idea is, okay, every three years you buy a new $2,000 TV and you don't have this problem

00:46:56 ◼   ► or you buy an extended warranty, which one costs more money in the long run?

00:46:59 ◼   ► I guess that's true, but yeah, because a warranty on something that's going to be, what, like

00:47:03 ◼   ► three or four hundred bucks?

00:47:04 ◼   ► Yeah, that was multi hundred dollars for my plasma, although I used my plasma for like

00:47:08 ◼   ► ten years.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I mean, I've only ever owned three TVs in my adult life.

00:47:12 ◼   ► The first one was the HD CRT.

00:47:15 ◼   ► The second one was my 42-inch plasma, and this is the third.

00:47:18 ◼   ► Yeah, if you had played Minecraft on this plasma, though, you would have burned in the

00:47:21 ◼   ► Minecraft bar at the bottom of the plasma.

00:47:23 ◼   ► It's just a matter of like, when did your Minecraft time of life begin?

00:47:26 ◼   ► So basically, it's on Adam.

00:47:28 ◼   ► Adam came of age.

00:47:29 ◼   ► He came of Minecraft age, and that sentenced your television to death, essentially.

00:47:34 ◼   ► Wow.

00:47:35 ◼   ► Because the blue Pixel, I feel like, yeah, it's annoying, but you probably could have

00:47:37 ◼   ► lived with it, but the burn-in is more of an issue.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Like it will show up any time there's kind of gray in that area.

00:47:44 ◼   ► You'll see it.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Oh, jeez.

00:47:46 ◼   ► Oh, goodness.

00:47:47 ◼   ► All right, we'll move on, and Sir Kathy wrote in to point out something that I missed, but

00:47:53 ◼   ► we were talking about multi-user iPads in the last couple of episodes, and in iOS 13.4,

00:47:59 ◼   ► apparently shared iPad for business was a thing, or became a thing.

00:48:03 ◼   ► This is apparently a business version of the Apple Classroom shared iPad thing.

00:48:08 ◼   ► So shared iPad for business is from 9to5Mac.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Shared iPad for business enables businesses to share devices between multiple employees

00:48:15 ◼   ► while still providing a personalized experience.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Employees sign in with a managed Apple ID to begin loading their data.

00:48:20 ◼   ► The user then has their own mail accounts, their own files, iCloud photo library, app

00:48:23 ◼   ► data, and more.

00:48:24 ◼   ► The data for the employees stored in iCloud so employees can sign in from any shared iPad

00:48:27 ◼   ► that belongs to the organization.

00:48:29 ◼   ► I had no idea this was a thing.

00:48:31 ◼   ► I totally missed this, so I just thought I would call it out.

00:48:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that makes sense from, you know, just like schools have a use case for this,

00:48:38 ◼   ► so do businesses.

00:48:39 ◼   ► They want to have like a fleet of iPads and a bunch of employees, and you just sort of

00:48:42 ◼   ► check out an iPad and your stuff is there and then you put it away, you know, rather

00:48:46 ◼   ► than buying one iPad for every single employee.

00:48:49 ◼   ► You would think that this would mean, oh, this other use case means that Apple is even

00:48:52 ◼   ► more motivated to make the system better, but because this is essentially enterprise

00:48:56 ◼   ► software, there is a high tolerance for, let's say, inconvenient software experiences in

00:49:01 ◼   ► that market, so I'm not sure this actually changes the motivation one way or the other,

00:49:04 ◼   ► but it is interesting to know they're using it someplace other than education.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Do we have to do this last follow-up item?

00:49:09 ◼   ► I really don't want to do this last follow-up item.

00:49:11 ◼   ► We have to.

00:49:12 ◼   ► No, we don't have to, but I don't want to.

00:49:17 ◼   ► I'll help you, Casey.

00:49:18 ◼   ► You have nothing to be ashamed of, probably.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Probably.

00:49:22 ◼   ► All right, so John Enger, thank you, John, writes, "Hey, Casey, I'm 25 minutes into episode

00:49:28 ◼   ► 377 and I'm enjoying your Raspberry Pi garage door opening adventures.

00:49:31 ◼   ► As a security professional, oh, God, as a security professional, though, I'm having

00:49:35 ◼   ► nervous twitches.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Are your Pi zeros hardened to use an encrypted connection between them?

00:49:39 ◼   ► When you connect these to the actual garage doors, will it be trivially easy for a man

00:49:41 ◼   ► with a laptop to break into your garage?

00:49:43 ◼   ► Irritating details like this are why I prefer HomeKit over the Alexa ecosystem.

00:49:46 ◼   ► For anything HomeCatch tree-related, extra costs be darned."

00:49:50 ◼   ► I am sure that the answers I'm about to give will be unsatisfactory to somebody, and that's

00:49:55 ◼   ► okay.

00:49:56 ◼   ► That's okay.

00:49:57 ◼   ► It's fine for me.

00:49:58 ◼   ► The Raspberry Pi has no incoming connection to the internet.

00:50:03 ◼   ► It is outgoing only.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Additionally, the only control for the garage door, well, I had intended to add control

00:50:11 ◼   ► to the garage door via HomeKit and HomeKit only.

00:50:14 ◼   ► I tried putting a relay on it, and for uninteresting reasons, that didn't work, which might be

00:50:18 ◼   ► user error, so I got to look at that again.

00:50:20 ◼   ► But I tried that earlier today and it didn't work.

00:50:22 ◼   ► But yeah, there's no mechanism other than HomeKit to control the garage door, and even

00:50:27 ◼   ► then, there's actually right now no control at all.

00:50:30 ◼   ► And yeah, there's no incoming connection to these Raspberry Pis, and they only talk locally

00:50:37 ◼   ► within the network, so I think it's fine, and it's fine enough for my use, but I'm sure

00:50:42 ◼   ► all of you are going to write in and tell me how I am inviting people to open my garage

00:50:46 ◼   ► door.

00:50:47 ◼   ► Are you using HTTPS?

00:50:51 ◼   ► Are all the network connections using some encrypted protocol?

00:50:54 ◼   ► No, but they're all internal to my own network.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Can we reconsider that?

00:51:01 ◼   ► First of all, I'm really not interested in having a debate about whether or not this

00:51:05 ◼   ► is hard enough.

00:51:06 ◼   ► I don't mean to be a jerk.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I just don't care.

00:51:09 ◼   ► But this is the type of thing where it's like, it probably helps a little bit, and it's usually

00:51:12 ◼   ► easy to do because it's not like you're writing these protocols if you just change the URL

00:51:15 ◼   ► from HTTP HTTPS and install a certificate of something, or use SSH.

00:51:20 ◼   ► It's usually not like something you have to program or do or worry about.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Very often you have an option.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Like our Synologies, for example, there are apps that Synology gives you for iOS, right?

00:51:29 ◼   ► And when you use one of them, it asks you to sign in to Synology and it has a checkbox

00:51:33 ◼   ► that says use HTTPS or not.

00:51:35 ◼   ► You just check the checkbox.

00:51:36 ◼   ► And that's what I do on the Synology because that is exposed to the internet from an incoming.

00:51:40 ◼   ► The internet can get to the Synology if you know where to go.

00:51:45 ◼   ► These pies, they're outbound connections to the internet but not inbound.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And the thing of it is that if something was able to hack into these Raspberry Pis, that

00:51:55 ◼   ► means that my entire network at that point has been compromised.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Because again, there is no port forwarding or anything like that available to these Raspberry

00:52:06 ◼   ► Pis to allow somebody from outside my network into them.

00:52:11 ◼   ► So if something has gotten in from outside, that means my entire network is compromised

00:52:14 ◼   ► and I have much bigger worries than these little $10 computers.

00:52:18 ◼   ► So I'm not upset at Jon for asking the question.

00:52:22 ◼   ► I know it was in good spirit.

00:52:23 ◼   ► I know he's not trying to be difficult.

00:52:25 ◼   ► But I don't feel like I'm putting out myself...

00:52:29 ◼   ► Well, first of all, there is no control via the Raspberry Pi, like I said.

00:52:32 ◼   ► I do want there to be, but there isn't any.

00:52:34 ◼   ► It's just a sensor and nothing else.

00:52:35 ◼   ► But even if there is control, there is no way to get into that Raspberry Pi from outside

00:52:41 ◼   ► my home.

00:52:42 ◼   ► There's not.

00:52:43 ◼   ► And so, short of something just catastrophically bad affecting Linux installations everywhere,

00:52:49 ◼   ► and I'm sure that you, the listener, can write in and tell me about, "Oh, this one crazy

00:52:53 ◼   ► hack that happened."

00:52:54 ◼   ► Like, okay, if you really want to get into my garage that bad, fine.

00:52:58 ◼   ► Fine.

00:52:59 ◼   ► - Since there's no inbound port acceptance on it, I think you're right that the attack

00:53:03 ◼   ► surface on this from the outside should be pretty much zero.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And yeah, if it's not, you have many other problems.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And your computers and other devices will have many other problems.

00:53:14 ◼   ► So that's good.

00:53:16 ◼   ► So a friend of mine asked me the other day, now that we're working from home a lot more,

00:53:21 ◼   ► what can we do, what should we be doing security-wise to just best practices for home network security?

00:53:28 ◼   ► And what I told him was basically like, A, make sure your Wi-Fi password is reasonable,

00:53:35 ◼   ► using whatever modern standards exist for Wi-Fi passwords and it's reasonably long and

00:53:38 ◼   ► not easily guessable.

00:53:40 ◼   ► That's like the best thing.

00:53:41 ◼   ► Just keep people off your network.

00:53:43 ◼   ► And beyond that, the one thing I said to him was, make sure you're not using any kind of

00:53:47 ◼   ► weird like cheap or no-name or unnecessary smart home products.

00:53:53 ◼   ► 'Cause smart home products so often are attack vectors in people's networks when they're

00:53:58 ◼   ► running bad software or when they're made by no-name vendors who have no interest in

00:54:03 ◼   ► supporting them and have possibly no ability to write secure software in the first place

00:54:06 ◼   ► even.

00:54:08 ◼   ► If you're staying with big brand stuff and sticking within the well-known Amazon or home

00:54:12 ◼   ► kit ecosystems, you're pretty much good as long as you're not getting too crappy of devices

00:54:19 ◼   ► that have too crappy of software on them.

00:54:21 ◼   ► But smart home stuff is a significant vector, but that's because so many smart home devices

00:54:26 ◼   ► open up ports to the internet and run local services to the outside world.

00:54:30 ◼   ► So if you're not doing that from the pie, which you're not, then you're pretty good

00:54:34 ◼   ► there.

00:54:35 ◼   ► The other angle to consider here is the attack surface or the attack target of the inside

00:54:41 ◼   ► of your garage.

00:54:43 ◼   ► If somebody really wants to get into your garage, the ability to remotely open it isn't

00:54:47 ◼   ► particularly useful.

00:54:48 ◼   ► They probably want to be somewhere nearby so they can walk into your garage after they

00:54:52 ◼   ► open it and, I don't know, pick up your car and walk away with it somehow.

00:54:59 ◼   ► So that's problem number one.

00:55:00 ◼   ► Problem number two is if they are willing to like sit near your garage to break into

00:55:05 ◼   ► it and possibly like get on your Wi-Fi somehow or something, well they can also just like

00:55:10 ◼   ► sniff the over-the-air signals that your garage door opener sends it when you drive up to it.

00:55:15 ◼   ► And if it's not a pretty modern, secure garage door, they can probably just repeat

00:55:20 ◼   ► the code that's transmitted and reopen it whenever they want to.

00:55:24 ◼   ► There are like different standards of garage door opener over-the-air protocols and some

00:55:27 ◼   ► of them, especially the old ones, are really insecure.

00:55:30 ◼   ► They just like transmit a certain pattern once and that's it.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And you can just repeat that pattern over and over again and it'll just keep working

00:55:36 ◼   ► forever.

00:55:37 ◼   ► And then the more modern ones have some kind of like rotating code system or like a single

00:55:40 ◼   ► use kind of thing.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I don't have too much into it so forgive me if I'm getting some of this wrong.

00:55:44 ◼   ► But like if somebody wants to actually get into your garage that badly and they're

00:55:47 ◼   ► local, because why else would they want to get into your garage, there are so many other

00:55:51 ◼   ► ways to do it than hacking your smart garage door opener, which by the way doesn't open

00:55:57 ◼   ► your garage door.

00:55:58 ◼   ► It just tells you whether it is open or not.

00:56:01 ◼   ► So...

00:56:02 ◼   ► - Today, today.

00:56:03 ◼   ► I do want it to be able to but today that is correct.

00:56:05 ◼   ► - Right.

00:56:06 ◼   ► So the point is like this is a pretty small attack surface to begin with and then once

00:56:10 ◼   ► you look at well what's the actual target here, your Raspberry Pi is not the security

00:56:15 ◼   ► hole in this setup.

00:56:17 ◼   ► Your garage door opener is the security hole in this setup.

00:56:20 ◼   ► By the way, most garage doors, those garage door openers are not pulling thousands of

00:56:26 ◼   ► pounds of wood up.

00:56:28 ◼   ► They're counter weighted or they have counter springs on them.

00:56:31 ◼   ► You can lift them by hand if you have to.

00:56:34 ◼   ► So unless you're actually going there every night and turning the big metal locking thing

00:56:38 ◼   ► that sticks the bars out to lock it against the doors, which no one ever does, somebody

00:56:43 ◼   ► who wants to go into your garage door can probably just walk up to it and lift it up

00:56:46 ◼   ► with their hands.

00:56:48 ◼   ► So again, not a significant surface to worry about for attacks here.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - That's how my garage door locks with those metal things.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I do that every day.

00:56:55 ◼   ► - Because I don't have an opener.

00:56:56 ◼   ► - I was about to say, you don't have a garage door opener, do you?

00:56:59 ◼   ► - I think, I mean, the takeaway is I was saying if you're setting up something like this,

00:57:03 ◼   ► it is a good thing to think about, especially if you go whole hog into home automation,

00:57:07 ◼   ► because if you don't think about it at all, you could find yourself, especially if you're

00:57:09 ◼   ► tinkering in a situation where anyone sitting in a car outside your house has complete control

00:57:14 ◼   ► over all your appliances.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And although that's not particularly dangerous, it could be annoying.

00:57:18 ◼   ► And the second thing that occurred to me is kind of what Marco was getting at.

00:57:21 ◼   ► You could be in a smoke alarm like situation where I had installed many years ago, as described

00:57:26 ◼   ► on a Hypercritical episode, whose number I can't remember, installed a smoke detector

00:57:32 ◼   ► that had an IR interface.

00:57:34 ◼   ► Like if you have a really high ceiling in your house and the smoke detector goes off,

00:57:37 ◼   ► you have a little remote that you could point at the smoke detector and tell it to stop

00:57:41 ◼   ► beeping because you took the burning stake off your stove and now you just want it to

00:57:44 ◼   ► be quiet, right?

00:57:46 ◼   ► So they have IR sensors in them, and my smoke detector kept going off and I couldn't figure

00:57:50 ◼   ► it out.

00:57:51 ◼   ► And it turns out that it was somehow getting IR signals while we were all sleeping from

00:57:56 ◼   ► the neighbor watching their TV in their house.

00:57:59 ◼   ► They would point their remote at the television.

00:58:01 ◼   ► This is my theory because everyone in our house is asleep.

00:58:04 ◼   ► It's like the middle of the night.

00:58:05 ◼   ► But it was on the second floor and it did have sort of line of sight to a neighbor's

00:58:09 ◼   ► window of their bedroom.

00:58:10 ◼   ► And I can imagine them sitting on their bed changing channels on their TV with their remote

00:58:14 ◼   ► and turning off our smoke detector.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And experiments back this up when I used the super secret as searched on the internet sequence

00:58:22 ◼   ► of button presses that you could tell it to disable its IR sensor.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Never happened again.

00:58:27 ◼   ► So I'm thinking like, "Oh, it's not a security problem, but it could be annoying if you had

00:58:32 ◼   ► something set up."

00:58:33 ◼   ► Or I guess in Marco's case, it's probably more likely it's just the actual remote and

00:58:37 ◼   ► not your Raspberry Pi.

00:58:38 ◼   ► But like a situation where someone's not trying to mess with you, but through some confluence

00:58:42 ◼   ► of wireless signaling and events and strange hacks that you'd set up, something happens

00:58:47 ◼   ► that causes the garage door to open in the middle of the night and you keep waking up

00:58:50 ◼   ► and you're like, "I checked before I went to sleep and it was closed.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Why is it open now?"

00:58:54 ◼   ► And it's not a person messing with you, it's just like your neighbor opening their garage

00:58:58 ◼   ► door or something and it turns out it's opening yours too.

00:59:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And now we're in.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Let's be done with follow-up.

00:59:04 ◼   ► And there is an interesting story that broke yesterday, I believe, as we record this.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And I don't think I dig it.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Joe Rogan has announced that he is going to be taking his show to Spotify.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Now, Joe Rogan, he was the Fear Factor guy, right?

00:59:22 ◼   ► He was.

00:59:23 ◼   ► He was the Fear Factor guy.

00:59:24 ◼   ► He was less puffy then, but yeah, that's him.

00:59:27 ◼   ► So I guess he's ostensibly a comedian.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Like I've not listened to any of his podcasts, but it seems that by almost anyone's measure,

00:59:36 ◼   ► he is literally the most popular podcast in the world.

00:59:41 ◼   ► Something to the order of like 192 million listeners and also like three to five million

00:59:46 ◼   ► YouTube viewers for each episode.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And supposedly Spotify brought a $100 million pile of cash to Joe and said, "Please come

00:59:57 ◼   ► to Spotify at the end of the year."

00:59:58 ◼   ► I don't know if that's the real amount.

01:00:00 ◼   ► That's just the last number I saw being thrown around.

01:00:02 ◼   ► So don't take these numbers as written.

01:00:04 ◼   ► I was trying to find a link for the story and it's very difficult to find a good definitive

01:00:08 ◼   ► report that's not filled with a bunch of garbage.

01:00:09 ◼   ► But anyway, as of recording, this is the number we heard.

01:00:13 ◼   ► So Joe Rogan has gone to Spotify and he is taking presumably a large chunk of these almost

01:00:21 ◼   ► 200 million listeners to Spotify with him.

01:00:23 ◼   ► And that really bums me out.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And I'd like to get out of the way first so we can just move on.

01:00:32 ◼   ► If Spotify would like to offer the three of us $100 million to go to Spotify, I don't

01:00:36 ◼   ► know if I speak for my co-host, but I would absolutely go to Spotify for $100 million.

01:00:40 ◼   ► You should explain what "go to Spotify" means in this context though because that's

01:00:45 ◼   ► one of the nuances.

01:00:46 ◼   ► I had to read several stories before I mostly gathered this.

01:00:49 ◼   ► When we say "go to Spotify" in this case, what we mean is Joe Rogan's got a podcast

01:00:54 ◼   ► and you can just go to his feed right now and download it and just listen for free and

01:00:57 ◼   ► it's got ads on it.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Surprise, it's a podcast.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Going to Spotify means his podcast will still be free to download and listen to and it will

01:01:07 ◼   ► still have ads in it.

01:01:09 ◼   ► The only difference is you can't listen to it unless you sign up for Spotify, which is

01:01:13 ◼   ► a thing that you can do for pay but also for free.

01:01:16 ◼   ► You can sign up as a user for Spotify and not give them any money and download the Spotify

01:01:21 ◼   ► app to whatever device you have and then search for the Joe Rogan podcast and hit play and

01:01:26 ◼   ► listen to it and that podcast will have ads on it.

01:01:28 ◼   ► So from your perspective as a listener, the only thing that's changed is now you previously

01:01:34 ◼   ► listened to it in whatever your podcast app was and now you can't, you have to listen

01:01:37 ◼   ► to it through Spotify because that's the only place you can get it.

01:01:39 ◼   ► It basically stops being a podcast and starts being a thing you can get in Spotify because

01:01:43 ◼   ► a podcast, kind of by definition, is a thing that's available on an RSS feed that can be

01:01:47 ◼   ► played by a podcast client.

01:01:49 ◼   ► So yeah, he's not going to really have a podcast anymore.

01:01:52 ◼   ► He's going to have a Spotify thing and people will have to sign up for Spotify if they haven't

01:01:56 ◼   ► already and listen to it in the app but it's not like you have to now pay money to listen

01:02:03 ◼   ► to Joe Rogan and it's also not like his show won't have ads anymore.

01:02:06 ◼   ► - Yeah and there's a lot of complicating factors here that are worth knowing.

01:02:11 ◼   ► You know, Spotify bought Gimlet this past year of which I was investor disclosure so

01:02:16 ◼   ► I made money from that deal.

01:02:18 ◼   ► So Spotify has been making large podcast acquisitions recently and when you think about it from

01:02:24 ◼   ► Spotify's point of view, it makes total sense because they are, as I said back then and

01:02:27 ◼   ► I won't go into it too much but like they're a music streaming service.

01:02:31 ◼   ► For every minute that you spend listening to music on Spotify, they have to pay a royalty

01:02:36 ◼   ► to whatever you play.

01:02:37 ◼   ► It's like if they can suck away some of that time that you would have otherwise listened

01:02:42 ◼   ► to music and make you listen to podcasts instead, they don't pay per listen.

01:02:46 ◼   ► They don't pay per stream for podcasts.

01:02:49 ◼   ► They run their own podcast directory.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Many podcasts are in it.

01:02:53 ◼   ► I think including ours, though no one listens to it there which for a reason I'll give them

01:02:56 ◼   ► to in a few minutes and honestly, we might not keep it there forever but we'll see.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Anyway, people can listen to podcasts there for free and the podcast creators don't get

01:03:06 ◼   ► paid by Spotify.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Spotify is almost certainly working on, I think they've even said they're working on

01:03:12 ◼   ► some kind of like big ad platform for podcasters but for the most part, they have their own

01:03:16 ◼   ► kind of copy of the podcasting world.

01:03:18 ◼   ► You have to opt into it because they do a whole bunch of weird crap with your show that

01:03:23 ◼   ► if you opt in, you have your show on Spotify but Spotify is not, again, they're not paying

01:03:27 ◼   ► per listen.

01:03:28 ◼   ► It makes a ton of sense for Spotify who has always had pretty shaky financials because

01:03:33 ◼   ► they have to pay a lot of money to the record companies to get as many people as possible

01:03:37 ◼   ► listening to podcasts instead of music because they will make more money from those people

01:03:42 ◼   ► than they will with music people because they're not paying royalties for every listen for

01:03:46 ◼   ► podcasts.

01:03:47 ◼   ► They have a huge financial incentive to do this.

01:03:50 ◼   ► Additionally, they are building in a huge distribution front end for this medium and

01:03:58 ◼   ► they're building their own ad network for it and so they will be able to have podcasters

01:04:03 ◼   ► go put their show on Spotify, opt into Spotify's automatic monetization similar to like Google

01:04:09 ◼   ► AdSense on web pages where you're just like, "All right, well look, I have a show.

01:04:12 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of listeners.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I can't get big sponsors but if I have Spotify auto insert ads for me, maybe I can make 12

01:04:19 ◼   ► bucks a month."

01:04:20 ◼   ► It will be that kind of thing and do enough of that, you can get pretty big as the platform

01:04:25 ◼   ► there and you can make additional revenue that way.

01:04:28 ◼   ► There's tons of business reasons why Spotify wants to do this and the people who run Spotify

01:04:32 ◼   ► seem pretty smart and they really know their stuff about music but the people who run Spotify

01:04:39 ◼   ► and who are doing all these deals don't seem like they really get podcasts.

01:04:44 ◼   ► They're certainly not podcast enthusiasts.

01:04:46 ◼   ► They're certainly not listening to shows like this or anything even in our world.

01:04:51 ◼   ► They're not listening to independently produced small shows like this.

01:04:57 ◼   ► They're listening to Joe Rogan.

01:04:59 ◼   ► They're listening to if you go to like the top 10 podcasts and Apple podcasts, they're

01:05:05 ◼   ► listening to those and they think that's the podcasting market and they're making a player

01:05:11 ◼   ► successfully and getting a lot of market share successfully for other people like that.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Spotify launched their podcast thing I think about a year and a half ago, something like

01:05:21 ◼   ► that and they got a lot of market share really fast but it's been mostly additive market

01:05:26 ◼   ► share.

01:05:27 ◼   ► There's almost no people who are leaving their current podcast app and going to Spotify instead.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Most of the market share they've gotten has been additive.

01:05:36 ◼   ► They have quickly amassed a substantial market share I think about something like a fifth

01:05:41 ◼   ► the size of Apple, maybe a quarter the size of Apple in the podcast space but those were

01:05:46 ◼   ► people who just came out of nowhere.

01:05:48 ◼   ► They didn't move from Apple and Overcast and everything else.

01:05:54 ◼   ► If you look at their demographics also, the kinds of shows that do well on Spotify are

01:06:00 ◼   ► those really big, big name mass audience shows.

01:06:04 ◼   ► It's not the specialized shows that are like made more casually like ours, made for more

01:06:12 ◼   ► specialized interests like tech or whatever.

01:06:15 ◼   ► It's not that.

01:06:17 ◼   ► It's those big general interest public radio style shows of hey, this thing's interesting.

01:06:22 ◼   ► There's a bunch of production and a lot of overhead for our format so we can fit seven

01:06:25 ◼   ► minutes of content into a 30 minute show.

01:06:29 ◼   ► It's that kind of stuff.

01:06:31 ◼   ► That entire market is huge.

01:06:33 ◼   ► It's a massive part of podcast listenership but it's not us.

01:06:40 ◼   ► It's not you listening to this show.

01:06:43 ◼   ► It's not me and John and Casey producing this show.

01:06:46 ◼   ► It's not me as the maker of Overcast.

01:06:48 ◼   ► We operate in a whole different world over here.

01:06:51 ◼   ► It happens to use the same technology and most of the same apps but it might as well

01:06:57 ◼   ► be a different medium functionally.

01:06:58 ◼   ► When you look at the business, we are so completely separate.

01:07:03 ◼   ► I looked at some stats and Joe Rogan is Overcast's number one podcast.

01:07:10 ◼   ► I looked at the top 100 podcasts in Overcast.

01:07:15 ◼   ► The top 20 or so match pretty well for if you look at Apple's top and Pocket Cast and

01:07:20 ◼   ► all the other big players, the top 20 is pretty much the same across all of us which is good.

01:07:24 ◼   ► It means we have significant market share enough that the average people work their

01:07:29 ◼   ► way in and we see the same rough stats basically.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I looked at the top 100 list and the only shows in the top 100 that I listen to are

01:07:42 ◼   ► this, the talk show, relay shows, and Hello Internet.

01:07:48 ◼   ► All of which are shows by people I know.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Those shows are big on Overcast disproportionately to how big they are in real life.

01:07:59 ◼   ► ATP on Overcast is I think it's number 22 or 21, something like that.

01:08:03 ◼   ► It is by far not the number 21 most popular podcast in the world.

01:08:08 ◼   ► It just happens to be Overcast users are overrepresented on Overcast because I make it.

01:08:13 ◼   ► The world of podcasting, it started out with us, nerds, hobbyists, and then it grew way

01:08:22 ◼   ► past us.

01:08:23 ◼   ► In the first wave it grew past us with This American Life and the first wave of public

01:08:26 ◼   ► radio style shows.

01:08:28 ◼   ► More recently it's grown way past even that to the massive productions, first with big

01:08:35 ◼   ► comedians, celebrities, and now it is that.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Joe Rogan is big, was big.

01:08:41 ◼   ► It's way beyond the initial hobbyist level stuff.

01:08:45 ◼   ► But that hobbyist level stuff is itself a great place to be and a great business to

01:08:50 ◼   ► be in.

01:08:52 ◼   ► And that's what we're in.

01:08:53 ◼   ► And so to some extent we should be concerned that Spotify is not only trying but succeeding

01:09:01 ◼   ► in locking down large parts of this open ecosystem into their own proprietary walled garden and

01:09:07 ◼   ► they're going to mess with it.

01:09:09 ◼   ► You better believe they're going to mess with it.

01:09:11 ◼   ► One of the ways you can tell how little they understand podcasting or care about it and

01:09:16 ◼   ► how little their audience understands and cares about podcasting really is how crappy

01:09:20 ◼   ► of an experience it is listening to podcasts and Spotify.

01:09:23 ◼   ► It's a terrible podcast player but they don't care and it doesn't matter.

01:09:28 ◼   ► It won't affect them at all because the people listening to podcasts and Spotify are mostly

01:09:32 ◼   ► casual users listening to those big name shows who are not like podcast power users.

01:09:36 ◼   ► They're not like podcast nerds who want all the different controls and options and features

01:09:41 ◼   ► that a modern podcast app would have.

01:09:44 ◼   ► So to some extent we should be concerned.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Shows are moving there and that is going to hurt our ecosystem to some degree.

01:09:53 ◼   ► I don't think we know to what degree though.

01:09:55 ◼   ► It could hurt us a lot.

01:09:57 ◼   ► It could especially hurt us badly in the money department.

01:10:00 ◼   ► It could be really, really bad if a huge portion of sponsorship and ways to monetize your show

01:10:08 ◼   ► like that become you have to put it on Spotify and use their ads because that's where all

01:10:13 ◼   ► the money is going.

01:10:15 ◼   ► That would be really damaging to a lot of people.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Although keep in mind that the vast majority of podcasts out there don't have ads on them

01:10:24 ◼   ► at all.

01:10:25 ◼   ► It's a huge long tail and while like the top handful of percentage of podcasts have ads,

01:10:32 ◼   ► there's a massive amount that don't that either are not monetized at all because people

01:10:38 ◼   ► just do them because they like to do them and there's nothing wrong with that or they're

01:10:43 ◼   ► monetized in different ways.

01:10:45 ◼   ► Maybe they sell merchandise instead.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Maybe they have a Patreon or membership program instead.

01:10:49 ◼   ► Maybe they sell a book and they're using the podcast to promote their book.

01:10:53 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

01:10:54 ◼   ► There's all sorts of other ways people use podcasts to make money that are not just having

01:10:57 ◼   ► ads in them.

01:10:58 ◼   ► But certainly having ads in them is the way that almost every big show makes money and

01:11:03 ◼   ► it is a way that most of the money is made, period.

01:11:06 ◼   ► So anything that affects that and could potentially lock that down into one ecosystem is very

01:11:11 ◼   ► damaging.

01:11:13 ◼   ► So that we do have to be worried about.

01:11:16 ◼   ► However because this is an open ecosystem, because like what Spotify does doesn't directly

01:11:23 ◼   ► affect my ability to make a general purpose app that reads public RSS feeds, it doesn't

01:11:29 ◼   ► affect your ability as a customer to read those feeds and to play the audio files in

01:11:33 ◼   ► those feeds.

01:11:34 ◼   ► So we have our own separated islands out here in geek land and it's fine.

01:11:39 ◼   ► That's the beauty of the open ecosystem.

01:11:40 ◼   ► It's all decentralized for the most part, mostly decentralized.

01:11:44 ◼   ► They can't really do anything that would really kill us.

01:11:48 ◼   ► So we will largely be fine as long as people stick around to listen.

01:11:54 ◼   ► And I think that's likely to happen.

01:11:57 ◼   ► At least for shows like this.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Now if I was an investor in big podcast content right now, like some major show or trying

01:12:06 ◼   ► to get some kind of big celebrities, I'd be nervous about Spotify as a competitor there.

01:12:12 ◼   ► But in the area that we are operating in, as both us being the host of the show and

01:12:17 ◼   ► me being the owner of Overcast, I think we'll be alright.

01:12:21 ◼   ► But it's going to be different if Spotify succeeds at what they intend to be doing.

01:12:26 ◼   ► And they probably will, honestly.

01:12:29 ◼   ► They are buying a lot of big content.

01:12:32 ◼   ► They are locking stuff down into their platform.

01:12:35 ◼   ► They are going to be working on, or already are working on, some pretty major monetization

01:12:39 ◼   ► things that will definitely threaten everything in our ecosystem and the money side especially.

01:12:45 ◼   ► But as long as people keep listening to shows like this and keep supporting independent

01:12:50 ◼   ► shows by listening, if they have sponsorships, do that.

01:12:54 ◼   ► If they have memberships, like we're about to do that.

01:12:57 ◼   ► How are you supposed to support them and listen to them?

01:12:59 ◼   ► We can be okay if the people are also willing to listen here.

01:13:04 ◼   ► So if someone goes to Spotify to listen to one show a week, or two shows or five shows

01:13:09 ◼   ► a week, I don't care, and they also still listen to shows like this in whatever app

01:13:13 ◼   ► they want, we're still fine.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Obviously I hope Spotify has less of an impact than that.

01:13:22 ◼   ► But they might not, and that's okay.

01:13:25 ◼   ► If Spotify captures all of the people somehow, all of the people who listen to big shows

01:13:30 ◼   ► like Joe Rogan, who don't listen to tech shows at all mostly, or don't listen to our

01:13:35 ◼   ► show at least, or any show that I've ever heard, that I listen to, that doesn't necessarily

01:13:40 ◼   ► need to impact us.

01:13:42 ◼   ► And as I mentioned earlier, it does kind of feel like the podcast market is like two different

01:13:46 ◼   ► things.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's the thing it used to be, which is what we are.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Smaller, independently produced shows for the most part, all on their own sites and

01:13:54 ◼   ► networks with their own RSS feeds, playing in all these different apps.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And then there's like the celebrity podcasts, the big mass market ones.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Those have co-adjusted in the same ecosystem for a while, but they don't have to.

01:14:08 ◼   ► There's no guarantee that because they were unified into one ecosystem for so long, that

01:14:11 ◼   ► they will continue being in the same ecosystem.

01:14:15 ◼   ► If they split off, and they go to their own Netflix kind of thing, or if they go off to

01:14:19 ◼   ► Spotify and all the regular quote regular people out there listen to their podcasts

01:14:23 ◼   ► on Spotify, and then all the nerds like us listen in podcast players that actually are

01:14:27 ◼   ► good, that's not that bad of a thing.

01:14:29 ◼   ► As long as the money part doesn't get too messed up by their moves into that, you know,

01:14:34 ◼   ► into the ad system, as long as they don't destroy the ability for other shows to sell

01:14:40 ◼   ► ads and make money, I think we'll be mostly okay.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Complicating factors, which we'll get to once we talk about membership in a future

01:14:49 ◼   ► episode.

01:14:51 ◼   ► There are other things that can destroy that sponsorship environment also, some of which

01:14:56 ◼   ► are starting to happen.

01:14:57 ◼   ► Our world of podcasts that, you know, we deal either directly or very close to directly

01:15:04 ◼   ► with sponsors most of the time, and you listen, and we give them your download numbers, and

01:15:09 ◼   ► they buy ads and stuff, that system might be going away over the next couple of years

01:15:14 ◼   ► for other reasons, not Spotify.

01:15:16 ◼   ► And if that happens, we're all gonna have to figure something else out anyway.

01:15:19 ◼   ► But Spotify's moves in particular are unlikely to affect shows like ours.

01:15:26 ◼   ► They definitely will affect bigger shows, but as long as people like you keep listening

01:15:32 ◼   ► to shows like this in apps like whatever you're listening to this on, we can keep having fun,

01:15:37 ◼   ► we can keep doing this, we can keep our business going regardless of what the like big podcasters

01:15:42 ◼   ► do with their business.

01:15:43 ◼   ► That's interesting in these sort of battles that we've had in the past between open ecosystems,

01:15:51 ◼   ► systems built on protocols and technologies that are not owned by any single commercial

01:15:56 ◼   ► entity versus, you know, proprietary systems.

01:16:01 ◼   ► In general, open has proved very resilient in the scenarios where it has grown enough

01:16:08 ◼   ► to live, where if it's reached viability, it's very difficult to kill it.

01:16:12 ◼   ► One example I bring up all the time is email.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Email is terrible and crappy from a technical perspective, but it got critical mass before

01:16:20 ◼   ► anyone could come in and try to get rid of it.

01:16:21 ◼   ► And despite many, many people trying, plain old regular email continues to cling to life

01:16:28 ◼   ► because no one is able to sort of get critical mass, not Hotmail, not Gmail, not AOL.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Nobody is able to get everybody into a thing and say, "Email, whatever, like you're all

01:16:40 ◼   ► on AOL email now or now Hotmail is email and regular old email, we don't support that anymore."

01:16:45 ◼   ► Like no one's been able to capture it all and say, "Proprietary, we own you all now.

01:16:49 ◼   ► We have everyone's email address."

01:16:51 ◼   ► Because email is protocol, there's a bunch of them, they're open, anyone can implement

01:16:56 ◼   ► them, you can make an email client and an email server.

01:16:57 ◼   ► It doesn't mean there hasn't been consolidation.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Most people's email address probably are Hotmail or Gmail or whatever, right?

01:17:04 ◼   ► But email itself, the protocol, is why you can still have things like, I was going to

01:17:10 ◼   ► say 37 signals, Basecamp's upcoming Hey.com email client.

01:17:15 ◼   ► The only reason they're able to do that is because guess what?

01:17:17 ◼   ► Email is still an open system.

01:17:19 ◼   ► They don't have to sign an agreement with Google to be able to send email to Gmail users

01:17:23 ◼   ► or vice versa.

01:17:25 ◼   ► It's an open protocol, everybody exchange email, it has proved resilient, right?

01:17:30 ◼   ► The web is another example.

01:17:32 ◼   ► It's the platform that nobody owns.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Many companies have tried to embrace and extend it, Microsoft with Internet Explorer, putting

01:17:39 ◼   ► proprietary stuff in there like the ActiveX controls back when they had platform dominance,

01:17:43 ◼   ► can we make that happen and turn the web browser into just a fancy container for running Win32

01:17:47 ◼   ► applications?

01:17:48 ◼   ► Like, people have tried.

01:17:49 ◼   ► There's been lots of junk in the browser, Flash in more recent memory, right?

01:17:53 ◼   ► But all that stuff comes and goes and the web and HTTP and the standards that underlie

01:17:58 ◼   ► continue to exist and evolve and nobody can stop you from putting up a website.

01:18:05 ◼   ► There's lots of companies you can do with, hey, Squarespace, sponsor of the show, right?

01:18:09 ◼   ► Most people's websites probably do use one of those types of services because who wants

01:18:13 ◼   ► to, besides Marco, do it all yourself.

01:18:18 ◼   ► But the web as an entity has been resistant to all those people.

01:18:21 ◼   ► We didn't all get owned by GeoCities.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Even Facebook, which owns like the entire planet, could not destroy the web.

01:18:28 ◼   ► They sort of circumvented it and live off of it and use it to feed their giant, evil

01:18:33 ◼   ► machine, but the web continues to exist.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Podcasts are very much like that in that it's an open protocol built on top of the web and

01:18:42 ◼   ► RSS and all that other stuff.

01:18:44 ◼   ► There's very little anything it can do to kill that technology once it reached critical

01:18:49 ◼   ► mass and I think it has.

01:18:51 ◼   ► But just like all the other things I mentioned, email, web, or whatever, you can kill individual

01:18:55 ◼   ► websites.

01:18:56 ◼   ► You can kill individual email providers.

01:18:58 ◼   ► You can kill those things pretty easily.

01:19:00 ◼   ► You can really mess with that entire ecosystem.

01:19:03 ◼   ► And the example that I hope you're all thinking of right now when I mention all these different

01:19:06 ◼   ► words is, hey, what about RSS?

01:19:08 ◼   ► Didn't Google Reader basically kill RSS by taking an open protocol and bringing most

01:19:12 ◼   ► of the users into Google Reader and then discontinuing it and then news readers, quote unquote, news

01:19:18 ◼   ► readers fizzled?

01:19:20 ◼   ► That is the type of scenario where they didn't kill it outright.

01:19:24 ◼   ► You can download Net News about it today and it works great.

01:19:25 ◼   ► It works better than ever and you can read feeds with it and sites still have RSS feeds.

01:19:29 ◼   ► But they did put a significant dent in it.

01:19:31 ◼   ► They didn't get everyone into it and change the protocol and suddenly no one has RSS and

01:19:35 ◼   ► RSS doesn't exist anymore.

01:19:37 ◼   ► And even when Google Reader existed, you continued to use a thing that was not Google Reader

01:19:42 ◼   ► to read news.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Like they didn't actually embrace and extend or make proprietary news.

01:19:47 ◼   ► But they did get enough users into it such that when it went away, a lot of people thought,

01:19:52 ◼   ► well, basically what they thought was Google Reader equals news.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Google Reader goes away, that means news reading goes away.

01:20:00 ◼   ► If Spotify ever got to the point where people think podcast equals Spotify and let's say

01:20:06 ◼   ► Spotify goes out of business or stops doing podcasts or whatever, although I don't see

01:20:09 ◼   ► why they would for all the reasons Marco mentioned, people say, oh, well, now that Spotify is

01:20:13 ◼   ► gone, I guess podcasts are over too because podcast equals Spotify.

01:20:18 ◼   ► That's not true and never will be true just the same way that Google Reader is an RSS.

01:20:23 ◼   ► But if people ever get into that mindset, if Spotify ever gets that kind of critical

01:20:26 ◼   ► mass, that could be people's thinking and it could really hurt the ecosystem.

01:20:31 ◼   ► It's taken a while for news reading to sort of regain its footing.

01:20:35 ◼   ► And by the way, podcasts are essentially news feeds.

01:20:38 ◼   ► They use the same standard as the quote-unquote news readers.

01:20:40 ◼   ► You can look at podcasts in an RSS reader.

01:20:45 ◼   ► In the end, it's an RSS feed with a bunch of audio attachments, right?

01:20:49 ◼   ► So it's all kind of wrapped up in the same thing.

01:20:52 ◼   ► But in these battles between open and proprietary, despite the fact that it's difficult for

01:20:58 ◼   ► proprietary to actually outright win, it can really screw things up and it can definitely

01:21:04 ◼   ► rock the boat.

01:21:05 ◼   ► And as Marco mentioned, ecosystems built on open platforms, they can have their own sort

01:21:08 ◼   ► of earthquakes and tremors totally unrelated to anybody trying to do something.

01:21:13 ◼   ► And the final factor I'll mention here is the industry does learn from the past in a

01:21:19 ◼   ► weird way.

01:21:20 ◼   ► There's sort of institutional memory of the people and companies involved.

01:21:24 ◼   ► The best example I can think of is when Apple came in with the iTunes store and convinced

01:21:29 ◼   ► all the record companies – I love that we still call them record companies, the music

01:21:33 ◼   ► companies, whatever – to sign up with iTunes and Apple became like the middleman for the

01:21:39 ◼   ► entire digital music industry back when people were downloading MP3s.

01:21:44 ◼   ► And in the beginning, they signed up for like, "Sure, Apple, whatever.

01:21:46 ◼   ► You can do this today.

01:21:47 ◼   ► We're making a bazillion dollar off CDs.

01:21:48 ◼   ► You want to sell a bunch of files?

01:21:50 ◼   ► I don't even understand what you're talking about.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Go ahead.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Here.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Here's our music.

01:21:55 ◼   ► Good luck.

01:21:56 ◼   ► Make sure you give us 70 cents out of every dollar, right?

01:21:57 ◼   ► Whatever."

01:21:58 ◼   ► And it turned out that digital music – selling MP3s on the internet turned out to be a really

01:22:02 ◼   ► good business and Apple very quickly dominated that business and the record companies didn't

01:22:07 ◼   ► like it.

01:22:08 ◼   ► They're like, "Why are we going through this middleman that's not even us?

01:22:11 ◼   ► Suddenly the majority of our revenue is coming through Apple?

01:22:14 ◼   ► Who the hell is Apple?

01:22:15 ◼   ► Why aren't we making that money?

01:22:16 ◼   ► I don't like this at all."

01:22:19 ◼   ► And when other parts of the industry went through similar transitions, "Oh, people

01:22:25 ◼   ► are going to watch movies digitally somehow now?"

01:22:28 ◼   ► The movie companies, sometimes the same companies as the "record companies," learned from

01:22:32 ◼   ► the past and said, "Let's not put all of our eggs in the same basket."

01:22:37 ◼   ► But even within the music industry going from downloads to streaming or playing Amazon against

01:22:42 ◼   ► Apple, they all looked around and said, "We don't want to happen to us what happened

01:22:47 ◼   ► to the record companies when Apple came in."

01:22:50 ◼   ► So if we have the content, let's spread it around a little bit.

01:22:54 ◼   ► I'm not sure if there is any set of large power entities in the world of podcasting

01:23:01 ◼   ► that contain that collective wisdom, but I'm hoping that either A, Spotify just literally

01:23:07 ◼   ► doesn't have enough money to buy its way to that much market share, or B, the content,

01:23:12 ◼   ► the things that these people need, they need the content.

01:23:15 ◼   ► The people who own the content start to think at some point, "Is it really a good idea

01:23:19 ◼   ► for all of us to put in with Spotify?"

01:23:24 ◼   ► Especially if they're out there in the world, there's some big, huge popular show like

01:23:26 ◼   ► Serial or whatever, and eventually Spotify comes to them and says, "Hey, Serial or whoever

01:23:31 ◼   ► owns you, wouldn't you like to become a Spotify exclusive and only be available on Spotify

01:23:37 ◼   ► and we'll give you umpteen bajillion dollars?"

01:23:39 ◼   ► I hope someone involved in that says, "Spotify has really been cranking up in market share

01:23:46 ◼   ► and lots of people are listening and people are starting to equate Spotify with podcasts.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Should we do this or should we, in the same way like the movie companies, whoever's saying

01:23:56 ◼   ► this, say, "Well, we'd like our movies not just to be on iTunes.

01:23:59 ◼   ► We want them on other services too because we don't want to give Apple all this power."

01:24:04 ◼   ► It's a bad idea for content creators to give a single platform a huge amount of power.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Witness YouTube, which also factors into the Joe Rogan thing.

01:24:13 ◼   ► That's not a great situation for creators.

01:24:15 ◼   ► Yes, everyone loves the fact that YouTube lets them distribute their stuff worldwide

01:24:18 ◼   ► and it made billionaires out of big stars and it's a great platform to get your start

01:24:22 ◼   ► on, but in the end, when you look around, you realize, kind of like the App Store or

01:24:26 ◼   ► anything else, YouTube owns us.

01:24:28 ◼   ► YouTube owns the entire online video space and I am at their whim.

01:24:32 ◼   ► If they decide they don't want to let me monetize something or want to kick me off their platform

01:24:37 ◼   ► or whatever, that's career ending for me as how the career is called "YouTuber."

01:24:42 ◼   ► That's a bad situation to be in.

01:24:45 ◼   ► If your profession is named after a company, that company owns you practically.

01:24:50 ◼   ► I really hope that, I mean, this doesn't apply to us, but this applies to those big shows,

01:24:54 ◼   ► those top 20 shows, those shows with millions and millions of listeners.

01:24:58 ◼   ► Spotify can keep buying them, starting with the number one and the number two and the

01:25:00 ◼   ► number three, but when they start going down the top 20, I'm hoping at some point somebody

01:25:04 ◼   ► says, "This is not good for all of us to go to Spotify.

01:25:09 ◼   ► We need to play Spotify off against whoever that competitor might be."

01:25:12 ◼   ► Some people suggested Apple doing this.

01:25:14 ◼   ► I really hope they don't because I like their current hands-off attitude, but I think there

01:25:18 ◼   ► is sort of an immune response of the industry to this getting really out of hand for big

01:25:26 ◼   ► shows.

01:25:27 ◼   ► This again is probably not relevant to us because we may die in an earthquake unrelated

01:25:33 ◼   ► to Spotify in the industry related to ad sales or whatever, but as a listener of shows, I

01:25:42 ◼   ► listen to some big shows too.

01:25:44 ◼   ► I'll listen to, I was going to say Reply All, but Heavyweight, I don't know if that's such

01:25:50 ◼   ► a big show.

01:25:51 ◼   ► I guess most of my shows are kind of obscure.

01:25:53 ◼   ► What's the most mass market show I listen to?

01:25:56 ◼   ► I listen to 99 PI and I actually really, really like it.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Yeah, there you go.

01:26:00 ◼   ► 99% Invisible.

01:26:01 ◼   ► What's the one that I'm not managing to think of?

01:26:03 ◼   ► I'm so bad.

01:26:04 ◼   ► This American Life, duh.

01:26:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll listen to this American Life.

01:26:07 ◼   ► I'm not an animal, but I don't want Spotify to own all those shows.

01:26:13 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:26:14 ◼   ► I don't want Spotify to become the Google Reader of podcasts.

01:26:19 ◼   ► I don't want them to become the iTunes Music Store.

01:26:23 ◼   ► I certainly sure as hell don't want them to become the YouTube of podcasts.

01:26:27 ◼   ► That is like the nightmare scenario for everybody, for consumers and creators alike.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I know everyone thinks they love YouTube, like, "Oh, YouTube is the place I go and there's

01:26:34 ◼   ► great videos there," or whatever, but there are things that you are not seeing and are

01:26:39 ◼   ► never going to see because YouTube owns that platform.

01:26:42 ◼   ► They may be things from creators that you already like, "YouTubers," who want to do

01:26:47 ◼   ► a thing or make a thing, but they can't because of some YouTube policy or because it's not

01:26:53 ◼   ► monetizable in the same way or because YouTube's algorithm herds them toward – we hear this

01:26:58 ◼   ► from YouTube creators all the time – that there's what they would like to make and there's

01:27:01 ◼   ► what they have to make to continue to make a living on top of YouTube's algorithm because

01:27:07 ◼   ► YouTube's algorithm favors certain things and doesn't favor other things.

01:27:10 ◼   ► If you want your video to be seen, you have to sort of fit into that mold and that shapes

01:27:14 ◼   ► content.

01:27:15 ◼   ► It was bad enough when there was three TV networks when I was a kid.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Imagine if there was just one and it was a private company not beholden to anybody.

01:27:22 ◼   ► I didn't want to turn this into a YouTube slamming fest, but anyway, that's what comes

01:27:26 ◼   ► to mind.

01:27:27 ◼   ► So the Spotify situation, someone asked earlier in the chat, "Is there some article I can

01:27:31 ◼   ► point to to show people who don't care about the podcast ecosystem why they should be sad

01:27:35 ◼   ► about Spotify?"

01:27:36 ◼   ► I don't have an article like that and honestly, it's the type of thing that the average

01:27:40 ◼   ► person shouldn't ever need to know just like they never knew – just like nobody

01:27:45 ◼   ► who's not close enough to this industry knows that YouTube is seen as a potential

01:27:50 ◼   ► bad actor by people who make their living on the platform.

01:27:52 ◼   ► That's all inside baseball.

01:27:54 ◼   ► Nobody knows or cares about that just like nobody knows or cares about the various battles

01:27:57 ◼   ► between the big three networks when I was a kid.

01:28:01 ◼   ► The solution to this problem is not going to be get everyone you know to understand

01:28:04 ◼   ► that Spotify is bad for podcasting.

01:28:06 ◼   ► The solution is – Marco always alludes to and it sounds terrible, but it's the truth.

01:28:10 ◼   ► It's like if you want to continue seeing a thing in your life, support that thing to

01:28:16 ◼   ► the best of your ability.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Because podcasting is built on open protocols, that's it.

01:28:21 ◼   ► You don't have to do anything else.

01:28:22 ◼   ► There's no other company you have to give money to unless you actually own This American

01:28:27 ◼   ► Life.

01:28:28 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about decisions about selling to Spotify.

01:28:30 ◼   ► You as a consumer just use your ears and your wallets to support the things you want to

01:28:37 ◼   ► see and continue to exist and they will continue to exist.

01:28:41 ◼   ► It could – meanwhile, there could be a big calamity happening over there in the rest

01:28:45 ◼   ► of the network and you may be sad if suddenly you have to listen to This American Life with

01:28:49 ◼   ► annoying dynamically inserted ads that creep you out.

01:28:52 ◼   ► But there's not much you can do about that.

01:28:55 ◼   ► If I had a good article that did explain this, I would put it in the show notes, but I don't

01:28:58 ◼   ► have one.

01:28:59 ◼   ► I don't have any decisions.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Maybe we'll put it in the next episode.

01:29:01 ◼   ► But in the meantime, I guess just keep supporting and listening to the things that you like

01:29:08 ◼   ► and mostly hope for the best unless you have the ear of people who own one of the top 20

01:29:13 ◼   ► podcasts.

01:29:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and just a few other little addendums to that like – addenda?

01:29:18 ◼   ► Addenday?

01:29:19 ◼   ► Anyway, you're right about how YouTube really has dominated that medium.

01:29:25 ◼   ► And I don't know any big players on YouTube who are incredibly happy with YouTube.

01:29:32 ◼   ► I don't know any – because like that company, I mean they have a lot of their own problems,

01:29:35 ◼   ► but like it's not good to have someone get in the way between you and your audience and/or

01:29:41 ◼   ► you and your money.

01:29:43 ◼   ► And when you get big enough, those problems get pretty big and the risk goes up.

01:29:47 ◼   ► And big companies don't want to be beholden to some random platform that doesn't have

01:29:53 ◼   ► their best interest in mind necessarily or maybe doesn't care who they are.

01:29:57 ◼   ► And so nobody wants Spotify to get between them and their customers or them and their

01:30:02 ◼   ► money.

01:30:03 ◼   ► If Spotify does do some kind of big ad thing, which again they are working on, so if Spotify

01:30:08 ◼   ► succeeds in some kind of big ad thing like a way to monetize podcasts against a lot of

01:30:13 ◼   ► people to go sign up for Spotify, possibly exclusively, I don't know if it would work

01:30:16 ◼   ► that way but possibly, then I don't see big shows like This American Life, like I

01:30:23 ◼   ► don't see them going to that.

01:30:25 ◼   ► They have their own way to make money.

01:30:26 ◼   ► They have their own platforms.

01:30:27 ◼   ► They have their own dynamic ad insertion and automatic sales and large scale deals and

01:30:34 ◼   ► all their own data analysis.

01:30:36 ◼   ► They don't need Spotify to do that for them.

01:30:37 ◼   ► They do that themselves.

01:30:39 ◼   ► And they don't want Spotify doing that for them because they don't want some other

01:30:42 ◼   ► company getting between them and their money and them and their customers.

01:30:46 ◼   ► And so I don't think most of the large shows would make deals like that which should be

01:30:51 ◼   ► exclusive.

01:30:52 ◼   ► You know, there is, if you become exclusive to any one platform, whether it's paid or

01:30:57 ◼   ► not, as you mentioned, Spotify has a free plan which it seems like most of its users

01:31:02 ◼   ► use.

01:31:03 ◼   ► So we're not talking about having to pay a special service to go listen to Joe Rogan

01:31:07 ◼   ► now.

01:31:08 ◼   ► We're talking about having to use a certain app instead of using any podcast app.

01:31:12 ◼   ► Now you have to use this particular app to listen to this podcast.

01:31:15 ◼   ► Which you're likely to have already installed because they have hundreds of millions of

01:31:18 ◼   ► users of Spotify already.

01:31:20 ◼   ► What it means though is some percentage of your audience will get lost in that transition.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Granted with Spotify it's not going to be as much of a percentage as it was something

01:31:30 ◼   ► like Luminary where they were asking people to pay, first of all, to pay a period no matter

01:31:36 ◼   ► what.

01:31:37 ◼   ► And then also to listen in this app that nobody already had.

01:31:40 ◼   ► So it was like starting from zero, right?

01:31:41 ◼   ► And that went nowhere and they burned through $200 million and somehow got a little bit

01:31:44 ◼   ► more but they're going to burn through that too.

01:31:46 ◼   ► It's not going to work.

01:31:47 ◼   ► Spotify will work a lot better because it is free and because so many people already

01:31:51 ◼   ► have it.

01:31:52 ◼   ► But there are still a lot of people who they're going to lose.

01:31:55 ◼   ► Joe Rogan is going to have a smaller audience there at least to start and probably for a

01:32:00 ◼   ► few years.

01:32:01 ◼   ► I don't know how long his deal is for but probably for a few years he can have a smaller

01:32:04 ◼   ► audience there than he has currently because a lot of people will move to Spotify to listen

01:32:09 ◼   ► to him but not all of them.

01:32:11 ◼   ► He might go down by a third or half.

01:32:13 ◼   ► It could be a big loss.

01:32:15 ◼   ► I don't know any of the big shows who would take on that kind of listener loss unless

01:32:20 ◼   ► they were getting paid absurd amounts of money like what he reportedly is getting.

01:32:24 ◼   ► But Spotify can't afford to do that for all the big shows.

01:32:28 ◼   ► They can afford to do it for one or two.

01:32:30 ◼   ► They're not going to do it for all of them.

01:32:31 ◼   ► They can't even if the big shows were game which they aren't.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Because problem number two is the big shows are already making really good money doing

01:32:38 ◼   ► what they're doing on their own.

01:32:40 ◼   ► So like and so was Joe Rogan.

01:32:42 ◼   ► Like he had ads in his show.

01:32:45 ◼   ► He was probably people are saying he might have made a hundred million dollars off this

01:32:48 ◼   ► deal.

01:32:49 ◼   ► By a lot of estimates he was probably making somewhere near that already with ads every

01:32:54 ◼   ► year.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Like he was he has a really big show.

01:32:57 ◼   ► He sells a lot of ads to a lot of people like so you know regardless the big companies are

01:33:02 ◼   ► already doing their own thing.

01:33:04 ◼   ► They have all their own stuff set up.

01:33:06 ◼   ► They have their own servers.

01:33:07 ◼   ► They have their own analytics.

01:33:08 ◼   ► They have their own ad platforms.

01:33:09 ◼   ► They have their own ad sales and they make that money directly.

01:33:13 ◼   ► They don't have middlemen getting in the way and taking some percentage of it and they're

01:33:18 ◼   ► not losing their audience in large chunks because they're locking it down to certain

01:33:22 ◼   ► apps.

01:33:23 ◼   ► If they could do that they could do it with their own apps.

01:33:25 ◼   ► Like they could make their own apps.

01:33:26 ◼   ► Some of them have and you know they could lock people in that way and say well now we

01:33:30 ◼   ► get a hundred percent of your attention and data and everything.

01:33:32 ◼   ► They don't because it's better for their businesses overall.

01:33:34 ◼   ► They make more money overall and reach way more people overall by staying in the open

01:33:38 ◼   ► ecosystem.

01:33:39 ◼   ► So I don't actually see a lot of them moving over and becoming Spotify exclusive.

01:33:44 ◼   ► Instead if Spotify is going to do you know some kind of major move into ad monetization

01:33:49 ◼   ► for podcasts it's going to be trying to capture small podcasts.

01:33:51 ◼   ► This is why they bought Anchor.

01:33:52 ◼   ► Like when they bought Gimlet they bought Anchor at the same time and the reason why I think

01:33:57 ◼   ► I wasn't in any of these conversations or anything but the reason why I assume they

01:34:00 ◼   ► bought Anchor is to have that some kind of like basis with which to make an all-in-one

01:34:05 ◼   ► thing like all right you want to start a podcast?

01:34:08 ◼   ► Start here.

01:34:09 ◼   ► That way you know they immediately get rights to it because you know that's probably built

01:34:13 ◼   ► into Anchor and they can also immediately you know have you hook into their ad system

01:34:17 ◼   ► and have you start making 40 cents a month using their ad system and do that enough times

01:34:23 ◼   ► or have some of those podcasts get kind of medium-sized and they can make real money

01:34:26 ◼   ► there.

01:34:27 ◼   ► So I think that's their long-term plan here but to do all that they just need a lot of

01:34:31 ◼   ► people using Spotify for podcasts and they need you know if they keep calling it Anchor

01:34:35 ◼   ► or whether they eventually just call it you know Spotify podcast they need people making

01:34:39 ◼   ► podcasts on there and signing up for their monetization platform but you know again I

01:34:44 ◼   ► think if we continue to just run our own thing out here in the wilderness we'll be fine

01:34:52 ◼   ► as long as our listeners stay here and so far we've had our show on Spotify for a

01:34:58 ◼   ► few months at least and it has effectively zero listeners like no one listens to it there

01:35:04 ◼   ► because the type of people who listen to this type of show don't listen on Spotify and

01:35:08 ◼   ► seem to not want to and I'm sure many of our listeners have Spotify memberships and

01:35:13 ◼   ► use it for music but they don't want to listen to podcasts there because they're

01:35:16 ◼   ► nerds like us and they want their own they want better controls and they want all the

01:35:19 ◼   ► stuff in a podcast app and everything else so we will probably be fine but there is definitely

01:35:25 ◼   ► potential for the industry as a whole to have some pretty significant ripples from this.

01:35:30 ◼   ► So you nervous?

01:35:31 ◼   ► Are you scared?

01:35:32 ◼   ► Do you think you think it'll be all right?

01:35:33 ◼   ► I'm curious what it does to podcasting as a whole but again I think for the things that

01:35:39 ◼   ► both that I listen to and that I make I think I think they'll be fine.

01:35:46 ◼   ► And if Spotify backs a hundred million dollar pile of cash to your house are you going to

01:35:53 ◼   ► say yes?

01:35:54 ◼   ► Of course.

01:35:55 ◼   ► Look everyone has a price and everyone's price is generally under a hundred million

01:35:58 ◼   ► dollars.

01:35:59 ◼   ► People keep asking that but it's such an absurd question it's like what if someone offered

01:36:05 ◼   ► you a hundred million dollars for your car?

01:36:08 ◼   ► Everyone would do it like but no one's gonna offer you that because your car is not worth

01:36:12 ◼   ► a hundred million dollars so it's an absurd question what if I offered you a hundred million

01:36:15 ◼   ► dollars to raise your right hand would you raise your right hand?

01:36:18 ◼   ► Oh but you I thought you were a post-it what if they offered you a hundred million dollars

01:36:21 ◼   ► to eat fish but you don't like fish?

01:36:24 ◼   ► There are things you don't do but no one's ever gonna offer you that because it's not

01:36:27 ◼   ► worth that so you don't have to worry about it no one is gonna offer us that much money

01:36:31 ◼   ► for our show because our show is not worth that much but if they did in this absurd scenario

01:36:35 ◼   ► yes of course right so that's why I feel like it's you know it's it's not and and honestly

01:36:41 ◼   ► you said well but wouldn't that be a breach of your ethics or whatever no because our

01:36:44 ◼   ► show wouldn't help us Spotify gain any dominance in the industry we would be taking their free

01:36:49 ◼   ► money essentially and giving them nothing in return which is why they would never offer

01:36:52 ◼   ► us that much money so I think it's kind of a silly scenario but anyway anyway Spotify

01:36:56 ◼   ► call us we're ready for a hundred million dollars we're ready exactly that's our price

01:37:01 ◼   ► we could be argued down to 99 right yeah maybe.

01:37:06 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Squarespace start building your website today at squarespace.com/ATP

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01:39:07 ◼   ► all right let's do some Ask ATP Play My Jam wants to know and I also heard this on upgrade

01:39:16 ◼   ► as well I don't know if this was the same question or not but Play My Jam wants to know

01:39:19 ◼   ► what clipboard managers do we use for me I use Alfred as my launcher and it has a basic

01:39:24 ◼   ► clipboard manager within that and that's all I've ever really needed John are you using

01:39:29 ◼   ► clipboard manager I could swear we had this question before but yeah I am using one I'm

01:39:33 ◼   ► using pastebot I use some free open source one for a long time but I like the tap pots

01:39:38 ◼   ► folks and so I wanted to try commercial product and I installed pastebot and I've been using

01:39:43 ◼   ► ever since and I'm fine with it one thing I learned recently this is actually ties into

01:39:47 ◼   ► one of my old semi-war stories about my Mac apps I couldn't figure out for the longest

01:39:54 ◼   ► time why when I logged in pastebot would throw up its user interface like this is like a

01:40:01 ◼   ► little window like a preferences style window or whatever it would pop that up and I would

01:40:04 ◼   ► just close it I was like why does it do that every login it's so weird like I do want it

01:40:09 ◼   ► to launch on login like I'd want that because I just always wanted to be running it but

01:40:13 ◼   ► why does it put the UI and always makes me dismiss that window I thought it was like

01:40:15 ◼   ► a weird bug or I'm like maybe my preferences are screwed up or whatever I must have run

01:40:20 ◼   ► pastebot like this for over a year before my little monkey brain said hey dummy didn't

01:40:25 ◼   ► you just spend you know 20 minutes on a podcast explaining how there's two different ways

01:40:29 ◼   ► that you can launch applications on login due to weird historical sandboxing things

01:40:32 ◼   ► do you remember that show yeah that was you pastebot probably is doing the same thing

01:40:38 ◼   ► and there are two different ways to launch on login you being you know an old school

01:40:42 ◼   ► Mac OS 10 troglodyte drag it into login items and system preferences thinking this is all

01:40:47 ◼   ► we're gonna make pastebot launch at login I'll put it in login items but you also have

01:40:51 ◼   ► the checkbox checked in the pastebot preferences that says launch on login and that's using

01:40:55 ◼   ► the new system it doesn't use login items so essentially it was launching on login through

01:41:01 ◼   ► like the new quote unquote modern weird ass sandbox system and then login items would

01:41:06 ◼   ► run or vice versa doesn't really matter which goes first and it would say please open this

01:41:09 ◼   ► app and if you open an app that's already open you basically get a reopen event in your

01:41:14 ◼   ► application another thing I learned writing my application and that usually you can applications

01:41:20 ◼   ► can respond any way they want to reopen event but usually what they do is they if they don't

01:41:24 ◼   ► have any open windows and they're already launched and they reopen event they just show

01:41:27 ◼   ► like their main window that's exactly what pastebot was doing so over a year later I

01:41:32 ◼   ► go into login items select pastebot hit the minus button remove it and guess what now

01:41:36 ◼   ► I log in and pastebot does not open its window in my face and I'm a big dummy so here's your

01:41:42 ◼   ► free tip but anyway pastebot it's a forpay app I forget how much it is it's cheap I think

01:41:49 ◼   ► it's in the Mac App Store and also not I tend to buy things outside the Mac App Store if

01:41:53 ◼   ► I can because they usually have more capabilities and be more money goes to the developer but

01:41:57 ◼   ► do whatever you want that's the one I recommend check it out and I use launch bar there's

01:42:02 ◼   ► lots of apps to do this I like launch bar you know both as a launcher and as a clipboard

01:42:07 ◼   ► manager because it's the one I like launch bar is the launcher I happen to be using when

01:42:12 ◼   ► I started using a clipboard manager and so it was it's the one that I developed muscle

01:42:17 ◼   ► memory and visual preference for so I've tried other ones since then and they didn't work

01:42:22 ◼   ► the way I wanted to with muscle memory and they didn't look the way that I wanted them

01:42:25 ◼   ► to look because they didn't look like launch bar so this is a wonderful area where whatever

01:42:32 ◼   ► however you want this to look and feel you can probably find something that looks and

01:42:35 ◼   ► feels the way you want it to and yeah launch bar is that thing for me I absolutely love

01:42:38 ◼   ► it and it's the one thing that like if I'm setting up a new computer and I don't have

01:42:43 ◼   ► that installed yet I it it hurts it hurts so much because you know first you hit command

01:42:48 ◼   ► space and you get spotlight search which is like spotlight search is almost a good launcher

01:42:53 ◼   ► like it's it's like an 85% good launcher you can use it that way it works roughly most

01:42:59 ◼   ► of the time it's mostly fast it has many capabilities it's fine but not having clipboard history

01:43:08 ◼   ► kills me it makes it so hard for me to work because I'm so used to it now this is also

01:43:14 ◼   ► one of the reasons why I am skeptical of like any kind of heavy work on iOS from my preferences

01:43:23 ◼   ► because iOS doesn't have anything like this that actually works and continuously runs

01:43:26 ◼   ► and everything I can't so unless it's not assistant level which Apple probably would

01:43:30 ◼   ► never do so like I just I love clipboard history and you know both with programming and with

01:43:36 ◼   ► just other kinds of general text stuff images even it works like it's just it's so good

01:43:42 ◼   ► and once you get used to clipboard history not having it is like not having a clipboard

01:43:47 ◼   ► like it's like it feels your computer feels so broken and so hobbled by not having it

01:43:52 ◼   ► once you're accustomed to it you really start to appreciate what it does for you it's like

01:43:56 ◼   ► a data loss bug yeah like because I if I go on if I go on a computer that doesn't have

01:44:01 ◼   ► clipboard history I will literally lose data because I will just assume I can copy and

01:44:05 ◼   ► copy and copy and then I can just paste them out later and on that thing the thing I copied

01:44:09 ◼   ► three copies ago is gone now and I'm like oh well don't worry it's in the clipboard

01:44:13 ◼   ► hit oh no like it's a data loss bug like you get so used to it that it is destructive like

01:44:18 ◼   ► it's not like oh you just want that thing that you're kind of used to and it's a habit

01:44:22 ◼   ► you have to change no it like it will actually cause you to make mistakes that you can't

01:44:26 ◼   ► recover from because the data is gone yeah like imagine if like if if before you set

01:44:32 ◼   ► your computer up the right way or if you were using someone else's computer imagine if cut

01:44:36 ◼   ► was just a synonym for delete so like oh I'm gonna cut this thing I'm gonna go paste it

01:44:40 ◼   ► over here wait it's not there that's how it feels like when as you're saying like and

01:44:45 ◼   ► it was a paragraph of text you just wrote it in an email and you cut it and it just

01:44:49 ◼   ► deleted it and sent it into nowhere and then you went to paste it and it wasn't there and

01:44:52 ◼   ► like well can I get that back it's like no it's gone now sorry yeah clipboard history

01:44:59 ◼   ► I strongly recommend you use it I don't care what app you use everyone just use it use

01:45:04 ◼   ► this fun use this feature somehow speaking of being a data being gone now here's a story

01:45:09 ◼   ► an old man story from classic Mac OS right classic Mac OS did not have clipboard history

01:45:13 ◼   ► built into the OS if there were third-party tools for it I don't really recall any of

01:45:16 ◼   ► them but I know that I didn't run them for most of the history of the operating system

01:45:20 ◼   ► and I'd find myself in situations like that where I will have cut something from some

01:45:24 ◼   ► application and then you know not really been aware of it in my mental buffer and then cut

01:45:30 ◼   ► something else and realize huh the thing I had gotten before was like a page of text

01:45:37 ◼   ► that I wrote for like a school report it's like you know that's thinking of me like do

01:45:41 ◼   ► I have to write that whole like page of that report again can I write it again you just

01:45:46 ◼   ► feel like you just want to crawl in a hole and die right but if you are a nerd and you're

01:45:51 ◼   ► on classic Mac OS and you have found yourself in the situation before because you're a young

01:45:55 ◼   ► and foolish child right there's all this was true for me classic Mac OS did not have what

01:46:01 ◼   ► it did not have everyone say it with me protected memory oh no so that people sold shareware

01:46:08 ◼   ► utilities that when you did that you would launch them and cross your fingers and tell

01:46:15 ◼   ► it what string you're looking for if it was text and it would search all RAM try to find

01:46:21 ◼   ► the thing the thing that you had cut and it would find it let me tell you it would find

01:46:27 ◼   ► it and you'd be like yes there's my page of our report and maybe the encoding would be

01:46:32 ◼   ► screwed up and then maybe you'd have like rich text stuff but you're just so happy to

01:46:35 ◼   ► have it back and then you would copy that and paste it into a teach text document and

01:46:41 ◼   ► save it you'd be like yeah you'd feel like a king of the universe protected memory it

01:46:46 ◼   ► sucks you should have complete access to the memory space technically you can do that on

01:46:50 ◼   ► a Mac OS too with if you had system integrity protection turned off or whatever and did

01:46:53 ◼   ► something as root but with 96 gigs of RAM it would probably take a lot longer and anyway

01:46:58 ◼   ► I still remember the good feeling it's like undulating files on DOS which maybe to give

01:47:02 ◼   ► you UPC troglodytes to use troglodytes for a second time this episode another thing to

01:47:07 ◼   ► relate to do you remember undelete in DOS?

01:47:09 ◼   ► Well yeah well cause yeah well and there's also this is this is works a lot very similarly

01:47:12 ◼   ► to how like if you have like an SD card recovery utility which are still a thing it works similarly

01:47:18 ◼   ► to that cause you can just read the whole card and you know read the raw sectors and

01:47:20 ◼   ► just pull out whatever data you can but yeah like in in DOS like the the way files would

01:47:24 ◼   ► be deleted in DOS was they would overwrite the first character of the file name with

01:47:30 ◼   ► either a null or a question mark or something like that it would show up as a question mark

01:47:33 ◼   ► in the undelete utilities and so and until those blocks of the disk were written over

01:47:37 ◼   ► by something else the data was still there and so you could just like it like the undelete

01:47:43 ◼   ► utilities would just scan the disk for these like abandoned files that were no longer listed

01:47:47 ◼   ► in the file system listings but they were still on disk until something overwrote them

01:47:52 ◼   ► and they could recover them and this is exactly how all those SD card recovery things work

01:47:57 ◼   ► today where like they will scan the SD card for whatever data happens to be in the in

01:48:02 ◼   ► the sections that are like marked by the housekeeping as available but there is still data there

01:48:08 ◼   ► from whatever was written to them last.

01:48:10 ◼   ► The moral of the story is use clipboard history.

01:48:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:48:14 ◼   ► All right, Luke Arthur writes from its release iOS 13 has received negative commentary regarding

01:48:18 ◼   ► its instability and lack of readiness for prime time.

01:48:21 ◼   ► Given such bad reports I indefinitely postponed upgrading my devices.

01:48:24 ◼   ► Now with the added features like mouse support on iPad and the upcoming COVID tracking API

01:48:28 ◼   ► which actually just landed today if I'm not mistaken I am finally seeing compelling reasons

01:48:32 ◼   ► to upgrade but I haven't heard much lately about the issues that early adopters were

01:48:35 ◼   ► having so how are you three feeling about the about the OS today hasn't matured and

01:48:39 ◼   ► stabilized yet or there's still downsides to consider.

01:48:42 ◼   ► For me I ran 13 pretty early and I think relatively early on within the first couple of months

01:48:49 ◼   ► it was fine for me anyway.

01:48:51 ◼   ► I would still say that if you're not hurting for Catalina don't touch it.

01:48:55 ◼   ► I genuinely think that Catalina is still not ready which is really uncomfortable given

01:49:00 ◼   ► that we're getting the next release next month in theory or at least a preview of it.

01:49:05 ◼   ► But yeah iOS 13 I think you're fine Catalina stay away if you can help it.

01:49:09 ◼   ► Marco what are you doing?

01:49:11 ◼   ► I think I'm roughly in the same boat.

01:49:13 ◼   ► I've been running 13 for so long now that I kind of forgot how good 12 was in comparison

01:49:20 ◼   ► if it was even really good.

01:49:23 ◼   ► So at this point I don't know I will say that the bug I'm having where mail does not show

01:49:28 ◼   ► it doesn't correctly insert new messages so like the symptom is on a mail mailbox in Apple's

01:49:35 ◼   ► built-in mail app you might have new mail and it doesn't show up there and what's actually

01:49:39 ◼   ► happening is it's being inserted at the bottom of the list but you can't see that from your

01:49:43 ◼   ► position at the top of the list and you can only fix it by like hitting the back button

01:49:48 ◼   ► going to like the root folder list screen and then going back into your inbox and then

01:49:51 ◼   ► they're there because it gets resorted.

01:49:53 ◼   ► So it's basically like a temporary mail data loss in the sense that you're getting new

01:49:57 ◼   ► mail and you don't know it which is a horrible bug and it's still there in 13.5 it's been

01:50:03 ◼   ► there since last like July or whatever it's still there I cannot believe they haven't

01:50:07 ◼   ► fixed it yet but other than that I don't have any major problems with iOS 13.

01:50:13 ◼   ► However I agree with you Catalina is still really just it's just sloppy like the the

01:50:19 ◼   ► things I thought would be annoying about it like all those all at the permissions dialogues

01:50:24 ◼   ► those have proven to be only mildly annoying with things I do you have an annoying first

01:50:29 ◼   ► few days as you have to approve everything for the first time at launches and then it's

01:50:33 ◼   ► mostly fine after that like you don't see a lot of those boxes too often the things

01:50:37 ◼   ► don't get in your way too often what annoys me about it is really common tasks now sometimes

01:50:45 ◼   ► just lag for no particular reason especially around open save dialogues I don't know what

01:50:51 ◼   ► this is I don't know if it's like some weird new iCloud thing or what but open save dialogues

01:50:58 ◼   ► are just slow hiding and showing apps sometimes is just slow like there's like a little half

01:51:04 ◼   ► second lag when you try to hide or show something or little half second lag when you display

01:51:08 ◼   ► an open save dialogue that wasn't there before in under what was the was last Mojave whatever

01:51:13 ◼   ► it was and that's like it feels stupid to have these amazing powerful computers these

01:51:21 ◼   ► days and to have an open save dialogue get noticeably slower between one release and

01:51:27 ◼   ► the next why this is a basic thing it just seems like they're incapable of shipping new

01:51:34 ◼   ► versions of Mac OS without significant regressions that often just kind of never get fixed because

01:51:39 ◼   ► they don't care about Mac OS enough to really invest heavily into this kind of stuff and

01:51:43 ◼   ► into QA to really avoid these bugs and fix them when they come up please Apple stop touching

01:51:48 ◼   ► it like stop for the love of God like I'm hoping although this is probably not going

01:51:54 ◼   ► to happen I'm hoping this summer given all the quarantine stuff I was hoping maybe they

01:52:00 ◼   ► would take this opportunity to say you know what we're gonna do another like refinement

01:52:03 ◼   ► year and push off some you know some of the big changes till next year whatever they're

01:52:08 ◼   ► probably not going to do that but I kind of hope they do because they really need to fix

01:52:14 ◼   ► a lot of the like little paper cut quality issues in Mac OS I don't know any Mac power

01:52:20 ◼   ► user who's excited about getting each new US new OS anymore like if Apple whatever they

01:52:25 ◼   ► want to do with iOS we don't care if Apple goes up there on their virtual stage whatever

01:52:31 ◼   ► it is and they say we're not going to do any new features on Mac OS this year we're just

01:52:35 ◼   ► going to you know improve quality etc not even bump the version number keep it up keep

01:52:40 ◼   ► you know make it make it Catalina dot six or whatever they would get so many people

01:52:45 ◼   ► at home cheering at that because it just needs it Mac OS does not need rapid pace change

01:52:53 ◼   ► it needs quality first and performance first and it doesn't have that Catalina is it made

01:53:00 ◼   ► a lot of things worse and the releases before Catalina weren't that great themselves it

01:53:05 ◼   ► needs some love there's no reason for the regressions it has there's no reason there's

01:53:10 ◼   ► no good reason why like open save dialogues and hiding and showing apps should be slow

01:53:15 ◼   ► and noticeably slower than they were one version ago that's that's like amateur hour and they

01:53:21 ◼   ► need to fix that so John tell me about iOS 13 poor Luke asked a question about iOS 13

01:53:28 ◼   ► has to hear about Catalina for an hour sorry Luke iOS 13 I think it's perfectly safe now

01:53:33 ◼   ► I've upgraded all my devices long ago I don't have any particular problems Marco's point

01:53:36 ◼   ► about the mail app being screwed up I'm sure there's other little apps that have those

01:53:40 ◼   ► problems but in general for the OS I wouldn't hesitate to tell someone to upgrade to it

01:53:44 ◼   ► Catalina you know obviously I have to run it on my Mac Pro I really haven't had any

01:53:50 ◼   ► problems with it on my Mac Pro it is with with one exception but for a while my Mac

01:53:56 ◼   ► Pro was a little bit creaky about shutting down you'd shut it down or restart it and

01:54:00 ◼   ► it would shut down or restart but it would take a long time and then when you when you

01:54:04 ◼   ► come when I would reboot it would bring up like the your your thing crashed and it would

01:54:08 ◼   ► give you a crash report and basically was like some job that's waiting for like the

01:54:11 ◼   ► last thing to die on the system after everything else is exited and it just wasn't dying and

01:54:15 ◼   ► it was timing out and I just kept sending those reports to Apple because you know you

01:54:19 ◼   ► have the send Apple button and the explanation was this seems to happen every time I shut

01:54:23 ◼   ► down or restart but I eventually got annoyed enough by it to you know exert the force of

01:54:27 ◼   ► Google on it and just search for a while and figure out other people having problems and

01:54:30 ◼   ► I an SMC reset seemed to fix it so I haven't seen it in a while but all the performance

01:54:36 ◼   ► problems you just mentioned are all those weird bugs or whatever I don't see any of

01:54:39 ◼   ► that but this is not the only machine you're running Catalina on I run Catalina on my work

01:54:43 ◼   ► laptop too which is the 2017 MacBook Pro and there I see all the things that Marco mentioned

01:54:48 ◼   ► the stalls the slowdowns the inexplicable things even today like it's actually impacting

01:54:53 ◼   ► like the functionality of the computer today I was in surprise you know a video conference

01:54:57 ◼   ► because we all are right and I had the thing zoomed to full screen because it's a small

01:55:02 ◼   ► laptop screen and I needed to see a document someone was sharing in some blurry little

01:55:06 ◼   ► things so zooming the app to full screen was the way to quickly get the document right

01:55:09 ◼   ► and I knew I was going to be up next to talk about a thing and I went to minimize the full

01:55:16 ◼   ► screen window so I could see some other document that was behind it that I needed to reference

01:55:20 ◼   ► when I was talking about what I was going to talk about and so I went up to the top