0:00

I gotta tell you, there's a thunderstorm that just

0:02

ripped through the area and I think we're

0:04

in the clear, but if we interrupt the

0:06

show, uh, because I need to

0:08

go, you know, start a generator or something,

0:10

uh, then my apologies, but it should be

0:12

fine. I think we're through the thick of

0:14

it. That sounds really hardcore. I'm gotta go

0:16

start my generator, everybody. Well, the thing of

0:18

it is, is that I think I've told

0:20

this story somewhere, but, uh, my parents live

0:22

only 45 minutes west of me, but their

0:24

area loses power regularly, and they got this

0:26

like obscenely expensive,

0:29

ridiculous Honda inverter generator

0:31

that weighs 85,000 pounds

0:34

and well, then they ended up getting

0:36

a generac or whatever whole home generator. And they were like,

0:38

here, you can borrow this forever. So

0:41

I've had, or we have had this

0:43

ridiculously nice, uh, Honda generator in our

0:45

garage for probably five ish years now.

0:47

And I believe I've used it once

0:49

for about 30, 35

0:51

minutes. And that's it because it's around the

0:54

time that they not bequeathed, but bequeathed us

0:56

to the generator. That's when the power company

0:58

cut down a bunch of trees

1:00

that were near the lines leading into

1:02

the neighborhood because the lines outside the

1:04

neighborhood are lines are above ground lines

1:06

and the stuff inside the neighborhood is

1:08

underground. Well, the, the law

1:11

of, you know, large equipment that you buy

1:13

for yourself for some kind of, you know,

1:16

special conditions is that the

1:18

moment you, first of all, the moment you buy it,

1:20

that condition will probably never happen again. But

1:22

certainly if that condition happens, you will need it

1:25

for the briefest of times. So the moment you

1:27

start your generator, the power will come back on.

1:29

Correct. Assuming you can get it started after it's been

1:31

sitting in your house for seven years without ever being started.

1:33

Well, right. In that case, if you can't get it started,

1:35

the power will stay up for three days. Yeah,

1:38

I don't know. It hopefully will not be an

1:40

issue, but if suddenly I disappear or get very,

1:42

very quiet, it's not because I'm sleepy, even though

1:44

I am. It's because we

1:46

lost power. So hopefully not. We know you're dying to

1:48

use it. You have this big thing. You're like, I

1:50

just hope we lose power so I get to run

1:52

out and use the big generator. Oh, yeah. I would

1:54

very much like to use a generator. I would rather

1:56

not do it under duress during a podcast that I'm

1:58

not as keen on. I'm trying to

2:01

use recreational generator use. Exactly. We

2:05

have to remind you that the ATP store is

2:07

back. It is back and better than ever, maybe.

2:10

I don't know, it's back though. We

2:12

have a whole bunch of stuff for sale. We

2:14

have a bunch of returning stuff from past years,

2:16

which I'm not going to talk about. We talked

2:18

about that last episode. But we have

2:20

some new stuff. John, if you don't mind, would you

2:22

quickly just talk through the new stuff very, very quickly

2:25

please? Have you enjoyed slash

2:27

endured the member special where I showed how

2:29

I manage my windows on my Mac?

2:31

We have a shirt celebrating that. Don't

2:33

worry, the shirt doesn't look too ridiculous. It's just

2:36

our logo with some windows behind it that most

2:38

people won't even be able to recognize as windows.

2:40

And then you get to explain the shirt and

2:42

explain how you feel about my window management technique,

2:44

good or bad. Anyway, we've got that. And

2:46

don't forget, it's not just a shirt. It's a tank top. It's

2:49

a long sleeve. It's a sweatshirt. Everything

2:51

is everything, as Marilyn says. Then we

2:53

have the ATP

2:55

graffiti shirt, which is our

2:57

logo written in Pomo S

3:00

graffiti style handwriting recognition that

3:03

also comes in a bunch of different styles

3:05

and colors. And

3:07

then finally, I guess some of our women aren't

3:09

talking about returning stuff, but I want to talk

3:11

about the performance shirt because that has basically not

3:14

been for sale for like five, seven years or

3:16

something. If you work out and you

3:18

get sweaty and you want a shirt that

3:20

will, I guess, wick away that moisture better than normal,

3:23

try the ATP performance shirt. And then we have a bunch

3:25

of returning stuff. Yeah, the polo too. So

3:27

yeah, check it out. So you can go to ATP.FM.

3:30

Flash store to go

3:32

and make your purchases. Remember you

3:34

have until Sunday, the 28th of April ATP

3:36

time, but you're not going to, you don't

3:38

need to worry about when the store closes

3:40

because you know what you're doing right now?

3:43

You're signaling, you're pulling over, or if you're

3:45

walking, you're looking for a gap in the

3:47

crowd. You know, walk to the side of

3:49

the sidewalk or what have you, and you're

3:51

going to go to ATP.FM slash store and

3:53

you're going to place your purchase right now

3:55

with plenty of time to spare. We

3:57

had someone write in, I don't remember if it was an

4:00

email or a tweet. or pute or whatever. And

4:03

they said, we all know that

4:05

what Casey's saying about people saying,

4:07

oh, I missed it. We all know

4:10

that people are just ribbing Casey. Let

4:12

me assure you, while I cannot say

4:14

with absolute, you know, unimmunable certainty, I don't

4:16

think that's what I'm looking for, but nevertheless,

4:19

I can't say with certainty that these things really

4:22

do happen, but every fiber of my being

4:25

know or feels like, yeah, there's a bunch

4:27

of people who say, oh, it's like two

4:29

minutes later and I forgot. Which fine, whatever.

4:31

I deserve it. I own that. But every

4:34

single time there's at least one, usually

4:36

between two and five people that say,

4:38

oh my gosh, I'm the one. I

4:41

never thought it would be me and

4:43

I'm the one. So ATP dot FM slash

4:45

store. It's happened to me. I

4:48

think one of the sales sales, I forgot to buy stuff. Luckily,

4:50

because it's my sale, I can just go to the company or

4:52

people say, yeah, I know the sales over, but I want X,

4:54

Y, and P. But that doesn't apply

4:56

to you, the listener. So get your order

4:58

in before the store closes. Yep. And as

5:00

a final note, remember, you go to your

5:02

member page at ATP dot FM slash member

5:04

and get your bespoke coupon code or

5:06

whatever you want to call it, discount code, which will

5:09

get you 15% off. And if you aren't a

5:11

member and want to get 15% off, ATP dot FM slash

5:13

join. Why else might you want to right this

5:15

very moment, go to ATP dot FM slash join,

5:18

John? We've got a new

5:20

member special. Our member special this month is

5:22

another ATP insider and it's about our computing

5:24

origin stories. If you want to hear a

5:26

bunch of old guys wax nostalgic

5:28

about how they got their starts

5:31

in computers, we have a podcast

5:33

episode for you. Indeed.

5:35

It was a lot of fun. You know, it's

5:37

funny because I'll only speak for myself. My memory is

5:40

garbage and I can barely remember

5:42

what I had for dinner three hours ago,

5:44

two hours ago, whatever time it is. But

5:46

I feel like there are these moments, I'm

5:48

sure this is true for everyone, not just

5:50

me, but there are moments that are just

5:52

crystal clear from decades ago, where I just

5:54

vividly remember a feeling or a thing or

5:56

an event. And it was fun going through

5:58

some of these like seminal moments in our

6:00

lives and talking about a speed run of

6:03

all of reconcilable differences. How did we get

6:05

to be the way we are? Well, we

6:07

sort of, at least in the technologist

6:10

slash nerd way, we tried to do

6:12

a speed run of that on this

6:14

month's member special. We had a lot

6:16

of fun recording it. I thought it

6:18

was really, really fun and happy.

6:20

It was good to be happy and

6:22

fun and nostalgic for a little while.

6:25

Check that out if you'd like hp.fm

6:27

slash join. And we found some very

6:29

surprising coincidences that

6:32

related all of our three stories. There's an obvious

6:34

coincidence, a long time lessor of the show, no,

6:36

but there were more that were uncovered. So if

6:39

you want to hear how we

6:41

were connected and how our lives might have been

6:43

different, if not for a few connected events, check

6:45

it out. So

6:47

please have a look. hp.fm

6:49

slash store, atp.fm slash join.

6:52

All right. One of you, and I

6:54

got to assume it's John, but you never know. What have

6:56

you put the following in our internal show notes document? How

6:59

little kids write fours? What's

7:02

this about? Sounds like it's about graffiti.

7:04

Mm hmm. You know, I listen to

7:06

the episode every every week. It's

7:08

just a thing that I do and and it's for stuff

7:11

like this because I missed it during the live recording. Marco

7:13

was describing graffiti. And he was weird

7:16

as like which characters we like from

7:18

graffiti. And Marco

7:20

said he liked the fours because it's written

7:22

like how little kids write fours. And

7:25

I didn't catch that when we were recording. And I

7:27

have I feel like I need to bring it to

7:29

follow up here. Marco, how do

7:31

little kids write fours? So

7:34

what I meant by that, which is actually funny,

7:36

because it's not how my kid writes them, which

7:38

I realized afterwards. But what I meant by that

7:41

is you start in the upper left, you

7:43

draw a right angle that goes down to the

7:45

right. And then you lift the

7:48

pencil up and you go to the top and you

7:50

draw a straight down line from the top to the

7:52

bottom. So it has an open top and there are

7:54

no angles or you know, just right angles. Yeah, that's

7:56

how I have always written a four. Yeah.

7:59

Now it's funny. My kid actually draws

8:01

fours with pointed tops, but starting from

8:03

the bottom. So he draws

8:05

the ascender up from the bottom,

8:07

straight up, diagonals down to

8:09

the left, and then across to finish it

8:12

out. But why did you describe that way,

8:14

the first way you described it, the way

8:16

that little kids write for us? How do

8:18

you write for us? Well, so I write

8:20

fours with those same two strokes, but I

8:23

write them as angled fours. So the top

8:25

forms a triangle, not an open, like, two

8:27

parallel line. I'm

8:29

going to say, I don't think there's anything

8:31

little kid-ish about the first way you described

8:33

it. It is one of the ways to write

8:35

fours, for sure. I would think

8:38

it's the most common way, but I don't know. But definitely

8:40

it's not a little kid way to do it. I mean,

8:42

as evidence from your own kid who was once little. You

8:44

don't think the angled top is more common?

8:47

No. I think the open, like, graffiti, as you

8:49

described, you know, you come down, hang a right,

8:51

and then lift up and go straight up and

8:53

down, or straight down, I guess I should say.

8:57

That is the most common way I see writing fours. I

8:59

asked Declan when I saw this in the show, and I

9:01

was like, how do you write a number four? And he

9:03

basically described what I just said. I am almost certain that

9:05

Erin does the triangle four, and I don't remember what

9:07

her, it is all one stroke.

9:09

I don't recall where she starts and ends. But

9:12

wait, so Margot wasn't saying that the triangle four

9:14

that he was drawing is one stroke. He just

9:16

said he angles the starting line. You know, he

9:18

goes down and to the left, then straight across

9:20

to the right, and then picks his pen up

9:22

and makes a vertical stroke, which in practice, if

9:24

you do that, you are basically doing the

9:27

graffiti style four, but you

9:29

are just angling that. And like practically speaking, it is

9:31

not always going to touch the vertical. Like, the angled

9:33

line is not always going to exactly meet

9:35

the vertical line. How sloppy are you

9:37

writing your fours? Well, you know, it is

9:40

meant to be faster writing, our handwriting is not great. Anyway, I

9:42

just wanted to put this in here, but I don't think the

9:44

graffiti way of drawing fours is the little kid way. And by

9:46

the way, speaking of kids drawing upwards, my

9:48

son also writes all of his letters from the bottom,

9:50

despite me And all of his teachers trying

9:52

to tell him not to do that. This drives me nuts,

9:54

and it is one of those things that it is kind

9:56

of in the spirit of secret things. What is it? Weird

9:58

Things, people, secret things, secret things. The things people, you

10:00

know it. it's like secret weird things a piss

10:02

you off my Cfl with it. I don't know

10:05

why but it bothers me what you more than

10:07

it should when people go vertical and certainly go

10:09

dope bottom to top rather than top to bottom

10:11

of what has a mutt. My son is the

10:13

first person I've ever seen to do it and

10:15

I think maybe it's because pan reading is less

10:17

emphasized than it was when we were is when

10:19

I went to school and so kids are left

10:21

to their own devices and maybe left it on

10:23

devices as like a fifty fifty was a kid's

10:25

gonna decide do from top to bottom up and

10:27

I decided that I could not convince my son

10:29

to. Write a letter from Pop Down. Neither could

10:32

any of his teachers and school. I

10:34

think I thrive and Potter and the school so

10:36

that it was. Yeah, I don't I don't recall

10:38

Adam ever getting a grade in hand writing, but

10:40

I did like how to Catholic school for elementary

10:43

school so we very much got you know, a

10:45

very prescribed way to right. Of course we had

10:47

to learn cursive and and it was it when

10:49

we got. great If we had a separate great

10:51

honor report card called handwriting a threat or button,

10:54

none of that existed anymore. This and out of

10:56

public school it is A Now I don't have

10:58

the Catholics. they probably still do it at some

11:00

other your has to either. I'm just saying that

11:02

there's a difference and I. Yeah, I i

11:04

bridegroom with Casey. it just makes me unreasonably.

11:07

hundred people draw lessons about a month but

11:09

somehow he survives a diva was use the

11:11

cross bar on letters, these or zeds in

11:13

the and seven I do it on sevens

11:16

on ice. I will. I will simply admit

11:18

I started doing it on seven when I

11:20

started taking French and likes of great I

11:23

do Not/sevens or these or zeroes oh yeah

11:25

I do zeroes to actually forgot about those

11:27

yeah know it on under their as I'd

11:29

I'd I do sevens I don't disease. I

11:32

just do so and then it's pointless because my

11:34

ones don't look like seven. That's the point of

11:36

this last and in the seventies to distinguish it

11:38

from ones because one of the ways that are

11:40

ones as had mega like and seven where the.

11:43

Where. The top part angle found a lot. Of

11:45

learning and do that. I'd a totally made. It's

11:48

an affectation that I started in french wasn't that

11:50

great at some point as he was much later.

11:52

My things like high school something I've at this

11:54

was something that I became aware of and I

11:56

was at new that's fancy out to be. Say

11:58

it's he is. Nothing

12:00

to do like during Hearts in Your Eyes

12:02

Yeah right Aids I started doing away so

12:04

with sevens even though my one is just

12:06

a vertical bar and I start doing these.

12:08

Now that does make sense because in my

12:10

fantasy will my to in a Z is

12:12

effectively identical. I used to originally dude like

12:14

the very sushi like Loopy to in the

12:16

early on us and now I'm just a

12:18

Z for for a to So the Z

12:20

cross far as I am like zealots who

12:22

are the same atop a to was rounded

12:24

Jesse know there are no Mine is not.

12:26

It's three straight line for this but there's

12:28

that's not A to them As usual. Her

12:31

that's why have to cross bar for the seats.

12:33

In any case either those heroes I forgot I

12:35

do put the yeah the you're diagnosed last of

12:37

last known as he what I'm learning today that

12:39

the you have terrible handwriting and I to toss

12:41

it in a long time I guess could exceptions

12:43

like mine is nothing special at all but med

12:45

U S or tariffs remember your handwriting. Be nice

12:47

Marco we need to see a sample. They casey

12:49

I both admit we're terribly ironically out you detail.

12:51

Let's see some I do. House is a lot

12:54

on yeah Once a once upon a time I

12:56

made a font out of my own handwriting. You're

12:58

not, you're not in all caps person are. You

13:00

know, although I do find I find

13:02

that charming now I find the I

13:04

find that a deranged. So

13:07

I just you and swaggers as witnesses

13:09

Your example of good handwriting. An obvious

13:11

I said my nothing special but yours

13:13

is this is all your handwriting. Most

13:16

of it. And. Keep My does not

13:18

a whiteboard. Know this is not good handwriting.

13:20

by his name's estimates months arse. I mean

13:23

maybe not as bad as mine, but it's

13:25

close. it's almost as bad. Look, my handwriting

13:27

is not good for yours. The worst Sounds

13:29

like. No, no he looks very

13:31

similar is this is what amazes me

13:33

Like computer nerd guys who are similar.

13:35

It's to me all has been running

13:37

a look like minded makes no sense.

13:40

Like a biscuit. If I showed this to my

13:42

wife, she would think this was close to my

13:44

enron. I was his. I just looks very similar

13:46

to my handwriting. I think this is clear or

13:49

much clearer and easier to understand, but it's not

13:51

that dissimilar from. I don't know if here's where

13:53

I was. Like my civilized says, ice maker doesn't.

13:56

Second, to last blue line the other words

13:58

doesn't that is hundred percent medium I messed up

14:00

that D. D, there's

14:02

no baseline. The letters are all over the

14:04

place. The apostrophes go in the wrong direction.

14:06

It's the wrong smart apostrophe. The

14:09

T is upside down. The

14:12

N looks like an upside down rounded V. How

14:14

is a T upside down? This

14:17

is my handwriting writing right here. That word doesn't. That's

14:20

me. That's not a good look, Marco. Everything

14:22

else I actually think is pretty good. This

14:24

is what happens when you start out Catholic

14:26

and then you leave it. You have that computer

14:28

coming. You never have to write anything by

14:30

hand again. You have graffiti. And

14:32

then one year you have to read your grandmother's

14:34

birthday card and you're like, what is this? You

14:37

have recursive ones. I

14:40

was told one time around

14:42

my teenage years by

14:45

a psychologist I was seeing who was terrible, let's

14:48

be honest. But he was telling

14:50

me that... The feeling of the bumps on your head to find out what was wrong.

14:54

I think he at the time totally

14:57

failed to recognize ADD

14:59

and instead just told

15:02

me I was just lazy and we should keep

15:04

trying harder. It was easier to

15:06

be a psychologist back then. You could just tell the

15:08

kid they were lazy. Yes, exactly. I

15:10

go in once a week and I still

15:13

wasn't doing my homework. My mom

15:15

was frustrated and trying to figure out what was wrong with

15:18

me. I go in there and the guy would meet with

15:20

me for a while. Then meet with her and he would

15:22

tell her I was just being lazy and I was just

15:24

trying harder and you could use a try harder because that

15:26

works great. It's like talking to a depressed person. Just smile.

15:30

Does the guy ever think that maybe homework sucks? I

15:32

mean it does. That's very funny. I put

15:34

them in my hands. Why aren't you doing

15:36

your homework? Anyway, but he told

15:38

me with that wonderful skill set that

15:40

he actually analyzed my handwriting and he

15:42

said that my handwriting was lazy handwriting.

15:44

Jeez. This guy was a real gem.

15:47

Wow. He did enough for

15:49

me. But he

15:51

told me Basically like he

15:53

looked at it and he was like, well, you

15:55

can see I'm kind of doing the bare minimum

15:57

in each letter. Space

16:00

not putting a lot of effort into

16:02

like it communicates the words enough generally

16:04

but you know that but it does.

16:07

Only the bear minutes at us as

16:09

and recess downward of need Some sort

16:11

of handwriting sampled from the Sooners so

16:13

differ get on Iplayer mom of I

16:15

don't have an axe a lottery hurry

16:17

pins on my desk at all the

16:19

on my cell of interest viewer that

16:22

you have an Apple pencil no radio

16:24

no it actually have the yeah the

16:26

Studio Neat Now number on a on

16:28

this Reddit Journalists. It's it's

16:30

sister and her own the right on

16:32

putting August. I think I've bought more.

16:35

Studio neat pens, Then I

16:37

have. Depleted. Pens in the

16:39

last ten years, move on, dry up on

16:41

their own catheter the putting of them when

16:43

lots of either if you went through a

16:45

notebook like actually use ah the paper number

16:48

of bigger never you know the paper at

16:50

defending. I have I I used to be

16:52

there, was one of the timer, I was

16:54

a devout field notes person and then I

16:56

eventually to me hundred Ways Map but I

16:58

still under Steven Hock of that sells them

17:00

weekly sec whatever it is but I filled

17:03

a fair number, sold a field notes way

17:05

back to the day and I still love

17:07

love love those. Know books are like a

17:09

they get my highest recommendation. I honestly don't

17:11

know if ever sponsored. Truly, they're incredible Know

17:13

posts but I but now I haven't carried

17:15

one in years and I haven't sold one

17:18

Years and years and I never even purchased

17:20

one of the most. Never feel as far

17:22

as Tyrone a notebook with a thing college

17:24

and those Know books I'd never filled. Yeah.

17:26

We go through so mildly high school stuff and like

17:29

my mom a semi a bunch of my childhood stuff

17:31

recently as the Hunt differently all my school notebooks the

17:33

is a huge as like those black and white Dalmatians

17:35

print composition notebooks that we had both another so make

17:37

up so they do they do you know I have

17:40

but there were like one for every class and it

17:42

was every last of the same thing with the first.

17:44

Three. Or four pages would have

17:46

something on him and a means higher

17:49

referees a blank that I just given

17:51

up like it loses everything was emphasis

17:53

on. Was a big proponent of of

17:56

January I gym membership in attendance. right?

17:59

oh really we've gone right off the rails is

18:01

the real on show right so i wanted to

18:03

quickly call attention to uh... paul

18:06

turnoff wrote and said hey the

18:08

car buying process the case he described this

18:11

was a reply to an asky tp last

18:13

week other carbon process is basically exactly what

18:15

some guy or group of people are not

18:17

entirely clear and where the genesis for this

18:19

was but there was somebody who wrote the

18:22

three-step car buying process and this is no

18:24

longer on the internet but i'd dug up

18:26

a archive.org link which open the show notes

18:29

where they say pretty

18:31

much the same thing i said we thought exactly

18:33

but spiritually that the same based idea and the

18:35

three steps are determined make a model of car

18:37

you want right a bid letter which

18:40

basically means i don't send a letter to these dealers

18:42

that says i want this with this this this

18:44

this in this options and i would

18:46

like your out the door price of tax title

18:48

you know fees taxes etcetera etcetera and then you

18:50

contact all your dealers and have them effectively negotiate

18:53

with with each other through you and that is

18:55

a lot of work and it takes a long

18:57

time but uh... that's how i've

18:59

done it was over years and you can see a more uh...

19:02

a longer write-up of this uh... if

19:04

you go through this arkandt.org links i wanted to call

19:06

it to your attention for the gentleman whose name i

19:08

don't know who wanted to buy a car like six

19:10

months ago were finally now get here at this so

19:13

you're going to run over and also that there

19:15

are people who do this for you uh... how

19:17

interesting and in the end of

19:19

of course because anything involving paying

19:21

someone to do a thing for me watch out for the

19:24

ones who are actually paid by the dealership because obviously they're

19:26

going to see you tried buying stuff from the dealership of

19:28

the power of the art of the different people who you

19:30

pay a fairly large amount of money sometimes even a percentage

19:32

of the cost of the car and

19:34

they will essentially perform the exact process you just

19:36

described on although really a little bit more efficiently

19:39

because they noble the dealers are constantly talking to

19:41

them or whatever and i just a stranger so

19:43

if you really don't want to deal with it

19:45

you can find one of these people who will

19:48

uh... negotiate your car sale for you for either

19:50

a six-year-old percent of the self-price just make sure

19:52

you find one that is not paid based

19:55

on sending sales to particular best

19:58

price that is very true Also, if you

20:00

happen to be a Costco member, and this may

20:03

be true of like DJs or Sams or other

20:05

things, but I know Costco, they have some sort

20:07

of auto program where allegedly they have effectively pre-negotiated

20:09

on behalf of all their members. And if you

20:11

say to a company, hey, I'm buying under the

20:14

Costco program, I think your options are limited, but

20:16

allegedly they have pre-negotiated. So it's like, this is

20:18

the price, that's the deal, and it's usually a

20:20

decent deal, maybe not the best possible deal, but

20:22

a decent deal with very little work involved. However,

20:25

that being said, when we bought Erin's Volvo, which

20:27

was the last car that we bought that was

20:29

applicable for this, that made

20:31

zero difference whatsoever. Now, our dealer, our

20:34

local Volvo dealer, the sales department in

20:36

particular, were trash, and it

20:38

was one of those scenarios where I

20:40

was very clear up front, Erin was sitting next to

20:42

me, this is her car, we're buying it for her,

20:44

and she would ask a question, and the gentleman, the

20:46

salesman, would then look at me to answer her question,

20:48

which was super gross, and I hated it. It

20:51

was real bad, and I can tell you

20:53

all sorts of stories about this, but in

20:56

theory, there are places where

20:58

you can do this Costco thing, and it

21:00

will help. Marco,

21:02

I have great news about your car. Rivian's new

21:04

software update will help you avoid all the broken

21:06

EV chargers, of which we know there are many.

21:09

This is from the Verge. Rivian is pushing a new software update

21:11

that will give its customers better insight into which EV chargers to

21:13

visit and which to avoid. Rivian's

21:15

solution is to use their vehicle fleet to gather data

21:18

about broken chargers, which then get downranked in the company's

21:20

software algorithm. Charges are rated A to F. This is

21:22

like an anti-Reddit, huh? Or what was the DIG? It

21:24

was the other one that predated Reddit. Anyways, Rivian says,

21:26

every time one of our vehicles interacts with the charger,

21:29

we have a number of data points which are uploaded

21:31

to the cloud, and that give us a very accurate

21:33

understanding of the health of the session that vehicle's having.

21:36

So we get data related not only to the number of

21:38

successful sessions, but also how many trials did you make? How

21:40

was the payment? What's the speed of the interaction? What's the

21:42

overall peak performance that you have within a session? What's

21:45

the thermal derating behavior? And so on

21:47

and so on. So that's cool. That's good

21:49

news. Yeah, this is great. I don't

21:53

know if they're going to necessarily surface

21:56

user comments and all. Probably not.

22:00

simple things to know like you know hey

22:02

this one is like timing out which I

22:04

guess this algorithm will include that if I

22:06

guess what they mean by like trials number

22:08

of trials that I made

22:10

because sometimes like you'll pull up to electrify America charger

22:12

and the first bay you pull up to you plug

22:15

in and it just won't connect for whatever reason

22:17

it will time out or it will throw some weird error

22:20

and then you have to like all right get out unplug

22:22

back the car out pull into the next

22:24

spot reap start the whole thing over plug

22:26

like this is the experience of modern I'm

22:28

a chargers and that has never

22:31

happened yet at Tesla charger the only

22:33

thing that ever had happened negatively a

22:35

Tesla charger occasionally get a slow one

22:37

oh no it would still you know

22:39

it would still be like you know

22:41

60 you know kilowatts it would just be slower

22:44

than like a hundred hundred and twenty hundred and fifty

22:46

you know some of the higher speed we can see

22:48

these days but that that was the

22:50

only problem I ever had at a Tesla charger so

22:53

once again I continue to first

22:55

of all I love my Rivian second of

22:57

all I love when I get

22:59

to use Tesla chargers with it because

23:01

they work better and and third of

23:03

all I still maintain that

23:05

I think Tesla owners are

23:08

going to be very upset about this maybe

23:11

Tesla maybe shouldn't have opened up their

23:13

chargers but you know there's a

23:15

lot of arguments on both sides of that but I definitely

23:17

think that they're making everyone else's lives

23:19

better with EVs except Tesla

23:21

owners whose lives are being made worse by this actually

23:24

one other bit of a follow-up I don't

23:26

have the person attributed to this too but

23:28

someone told us that Tesla essentially had to

23:30

do this if they wanted in

23:33

on the what they called

23:35

inflation reduction act whatever infrastructure federal

23:38

funding yeah to get if you want in on

23:40

that gravy train you essentially had to open up

23:42

your chargers to everyone else they didn't necessarily have

23:44

to propose their thing as a standard or whatever

23:46

but many things aligned

23:48

to make this essentially the only move

23:50

that Tesla could make because Tesla wants

23:53

that government money indeed

23:55

the Joe Lyon writes with regard to medical limits

23:57

and I'm gonna nope right out of this cuz

23:59

I'm don't even know what the heck is

24:01

going on here. So John, take it away.

24:03

Sure. A reticle size is the physical glass

24:05

slash quartz mask, our industry standards. So chip

24:07

designs can be shared between foundries and fabs

24:10

and reticle designs can be put into different

24:12

photolithography tools. In reality, ASML is the only

24:14

supplier of EUV photo tools, so they more

24:16

or less determine the reticle size. Any fab

24:18

using ASML EUV tools will use the same

24:20

reticle size and therefore have the same dye

24:22

size limit. So this is, we're talking about

24:24

reticle limit and TSMC's reticle limit. TSMC's reticle

24:26

limit is the same as everybody's reticle limit

24:28

if they're using these extreme ultraviolet stuff, which

24:31

they're using if they're using, doing stuff at

24:33

like three nanometers. So anyway, EUV

24:35

reticles are 104 millimeters by 132 millimeters, but which can

24:39

protect a field size or dye size on the wafer of 33

24:41

milliliters by 26 millimeters. That's

24:43

where the 858 square millimeter

24:45

max dye size comes from. So that number we

24:47

had in last week's episode

24:50

was correct. That is the reticle limit

24:52

for how big can a single exposure,

24:54

single dye thing on a wafer be.

24:56

The answer is 858 square millimeters. Joe

24:59

continues, any CHEP using modern EUV

25:01

processes over that size has to be made from

25:04

multiple physical dyes with dotted eye interfaces or mounted

25:06

on silicon interposers, etc. I think you can also

25:08

do multiple exposures, but that gets even more expensive.

25:12

Continuing, all of TSMC's N3

25:14

whatever lines are on standard EUV as

25:16

our Intel's processes from 3D, 20A and

25:19

18A. Intel has weird names for their processes.

25:21

The up because they're using angstroms, that's what

25:24

the A is for. The upcoming N2 line

25:26

will also be standard EUV. So N3 and

25:28

N2 both EUV and EUV

25:30

max reticle size is 858 square

25:33

millimeters. After TSMC's N2

25:35

and Intel's 18A process, the plan is

25:37

to move to high NA EUV. And

25:40

the NA stands for numerical aperture. It's

25:42

the measure of the ability of an

25:44

optical system to collect and focus light.

25:47

We talked about this in the past, but it's good to

25:49

remind everybody this is coming. The

25:52

N2 stuff, this high NA EUV, will

25:55

allow continued transistor shrinks, that's the N2,

25:57

2 nanometers instead of 3, but

26:00

at a huge cost. High NA UV will use the same

26:02

120 by 132 millimeter reticle as a UV, but the

26:06

max die size will be cut in half to 429

26:09

square millimeters. So that's going to

26:11

be big. Like I said, we've talked about this

26:13

in past episodes, so just remind people this is

26:15

coming. Not an N2 generation, N3 and N2, they'll

26:17

still be 858, but after that, the

26:20

max reticle size will be half. 429 is,

26:22

I think, smaller than the M3 max. So you can't even fab

26:28

an M3 max as it is currently designed on the

26:30

process that's going to come after N2. I don't know

26:32

what they're going to call it or whatever. So

26:35

this is out there in the future, and this is why we talked

26:37

about on the show in the past an

26:39

interview with Johnny Siruji, where he said, talking

26:42

about future Apple stuff in very vague ways,

26:44

he said, quote, one of the things that

26:46

is going to be important is packaging. We'll

26:49

put a link in the show notes to

26:51

both that ATP episode and that clip from

26:53

the interview. Why is packaging going to be

26:55

important? Because Apple will literally not be able

26:57

to make max size chips or larger once

26:59

this process comes, unless they cut them up

27:01

into individual pieces and do chiplets or something

27:03

like that. Or I suppose they could do

27:05

multiple exposures as well. But I think when

27:07

Johnny Siruji says packaging is important, I think

27:09

that's what he's talking about. He's talking about

27:11

not the N3 generation, not the N2 generation,

27:13

but the one after that, those chips are

27:15

already being designed or have already been designed

27:17

or in, you know, like there's many, many

27:19

year lead time in this. So the reason

27:21

Johnny Siruji is saying one of the things

27:23

I think is going to be important is

27:25

packaging. He already knows about the chips that

27:27

Apple is planning for this generation where the

27:29

reticle size is cut in half. And

27:32

I don't think Apple is going to just say, well, I guess we can't

27:34

make any chips bigger than a pro. No,

27:37

they're going to still make big chips, but they're going to make them out

27:39

of a bunch of smaller chips. And that'll

27:41

be fun to watch. Still doesn't quite answer the question about

27:43

what the M3 ultra

27:46

is going to be. Is it just two M3 maxes? What about

27:48

the M4? There's a bunch of rumors this week. I

27:51

didn't really put them in the notes, but just people have

27:53

been talking about M4 stuff saying, oh,

27:55

here are the rumors or all the M4 ones. Yeah, there

27:57

will be an M4 and the M4 will have low end

27:59

chips medium. and chips and high-end chips. The

28:01

rumors aren't juicy. They don't say, okay, but what are

28:03

those chips? Are they going to be a max size

28:06

chip? Are they going to stick two of them together

28:08

to make an ultra? I think once we see the

28:10

M3 results, we'll know more about that. Still

28:12

doubt in the rumors whether there will be an

28:15

M3 ultra. Some people say, oh,

28:17

I'm going to skip the M3 generation for

28:19

the Studio and the Mac Pro. Maybe

28:21

the M4 will be out sooner than you think. I think

28:23

there are rumors of the first M4 chip coming out before

28:25

the end of the year. So

28:28

lots of rumors swirling about this. But

28:30

those are the M3 and the M4. They're

28:32

all still three nanometers. I

28:35

think when we see what the hardware announces our

28:37

WWC, it will tell us a lot more. But

28:40

for now, know that the M4 is coming.

28:42

And it's supposed to be really good

28:44

at AI. There's a quote from Johnny Cerugi in

28:46

that interview as well saying, many years ago, we

28:48

determined that AI would be important. And so obviously,

28:51

all of Apple's chips going forward will have even more AI

28:53

stuff in them, not that they didn't already have stuff in

28:55

them. So yeah, the M4 rumors

28:57

are not exciting or concrete at this point. But

29:00

it's exciting to see the number go up. And it

29:02

will be interesting to see if Apple

29:05

skips the M3 generation, the M3

29:08

marketing generation for the chips and its high

29:10

end computers and jumps them right to M4

29:12

or something. I hope they don't because

29:14

that would be in a much longer wait. But we'll see a WWC.

29:17

Indeed. What was the context for

29:19

this next item? First

29:21

thing, we talked about robots and ATP overtime.

29:23

And I said I would love something that

29:25

could hold my phone. And I mentioned the

29:27

first product that we're going to talk about

29:29

here. Yes. So there are

29:32

a couple of Belkin iPhone mounts or

29:34

phone holders, if you will, that

29:36

exist that are specifically designed for use with a

29:39

TV. And there's the $50 Belkin iPhone mount

29:41

with MagSafe for Apple TV 4K, which you

29:43

can sit either on top of your television

29:45

or in front of it on like mantle

29:47

if you're a crazy person with TV too

29:49

high up like me or perhaps TV stand

29:52

or something like that. And

29:54

then there's another one Belkin auto tracking stand pro with Doc

29:56

kit and this is $180 which is quite a lot of

29:58

money. money, but

30:00

hypothetically it will follow you around as you're walking

30:03

around the room and it even has a little

30:05

battery. So if you're like a TikToker or whatever

30:07

you know you're doing Instagram reels and you can

30:09

bring this out in the field and

30:11

have it track you as you walk around. So

30:13

that's again 180 bucks. I think that we

30:15

had this in the notes ages ago. I'm not sure

30:17

I made it into a show. The tracking

30:21

stand works with DocKit which is

30:23

a framework that Apple introduced to

30:26

for this purpose. Let's like third-party

30:29

camera moving thingies. I have

30:31

an API that works with them. I assume it works

30:34

with FaceTime but I don't know that for a fact.

30:36

But anyway I

30:38

really want the Belkin one because I'm always

30:40

just like precariously like leaning my

30:43

phone against my television. I do have a TV stand

30:45

but it's like you have especially the phones are not

30:47

even with the

30:49

camera bump on them and everything and they're kind of slippery even

30:51

with leather case. So I would like something to hold it like

30:53

the Belkin stand is but $50 for an inert

30:57

piece of plastic with a magnet. It seems kind of pricey

30:59

so I haven't bought one. And then the other tracking thing

31:02

I totally forgot about but this is kind of what I

31:04

was talking about. I would love it if something could just

31:06

point my camera at me but I think that doesn't change

31:08

continuity camera. Continuity camera would still be using the wide-angle lens

31:10

and it would still be cropping out of it and I'm

31:12

not sure that the Belkin thing would change that. But

31:15

on the topic of Apple making robots which we've

31:17

now talked about on the show

31:19

in at least two separate episodes. This

31:22

thing all it is is a

31:25

thing that you it's got a magazine thing that

31:27

you stick your phone on and it like moves

31:29

to I guess rotate and

31:31

possibly tilt your camera. $180. So I

31:33

would use that as a context for how as expensive

31:38

is it to make things that have electronics in

31:40

them and move? This doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't

31:42

vacuum your house. It doesn't clean your dishes. It

31:44

doesn't do anything. It has no camera that has

31:46

no sensors. It is literally a powered

31:49

thing with a motor that moves your phone and it

31:51

sits in one place and it's $180. Well I mean you can

31:54

bring it out like I said. I take your point.

31:56

Your point is still fair but I mean it is

31:58

designed for use. elsewhere and so it doesn't

32:01

need to be plugged in always, although

32:03

presumably it's gonna need to be plugged in most of

32:05

the time. Yeah, the battery adds a little cost, but

32:07

remember this isn't even Apple, it's Belkin. Yeah,

32:09

and we never really did get any

32:11

good read on

32:14

whether or not Apple feeds Belkin designs, right?

32:16

Because a lot of people theorized, and I

32:18

mean it's tracks if you ask me, that

32:21

a lot of times Apple will be like, hey,

32:23

hey, hey, Belkin, take this envelope

32:26

and see if there's anything interesting in here,

32:28

and then they end up making these like, stands

32:30

or holders or what have you, and there

32:33

was one in particular, I can't remember what it

32:35

was now, that was like very clearly an Apple

32:37

design, but was made by Belkin

32:39

for the life of me, I can't remember what it was.

32:41

One of the dongles, doesn't this dongle thing look like a

32:43

Google device to you? It looks kind of like the bottom

32:45

of a Google Home. Yeah, it does, but nevertheless,

32:47

this is cool, and I'd love to try one, but

32:49

I am way too frugal, and

32:52

I also don't do that many FaceTime calls on a TV.

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35:04

right, moving on. We can talk about a

35:06

first look at Europe's alternative app stores. This

35:08

actually posted, I think, before we recorded last

35:10

week. We didn't have the time to get

35:12

to it. This is on the

35:14

verge. Another potential roadblock to widespread third-party marketplace

35:16

adoption is just how fiddly it is, with

35:18

each store taking around a dozen screen interactions

35:20

to install. It goes like this. You

35:23

begin by clicking a browser-based link to load the alternative

35:27

store. From there, you receive a pop-up informing

35:30

you that your installation settings don't allow marketplaces

35:32

from that developer. Then you head to settings to

35:34

enable the marketplace. Then you return to your browser

35:36

and click the download link again. Then you receive

35:39

another prompt asking you to confirm the installation. Finally,

35:41

you can open the store and browse the available

35:43

apps. That is not

35:46

exactly delightful, not surprised at

35:48

all. This happens

35:50

on the Mac, too. It's an annoying

35:52

pattern, but the annoyance serves

35:55

a function, so you can't really get rid of

35:57

it. The Mac experience

35:59

is... you try to run some Mac app

36:01

and it's like, you need

36:03

to give me full disk access

36:06

or screen recording permission or some other thing

36:08

that it needs to do its job, right?

36:11

But you can't give it that permission

36:13

from within the app because if you could, people

36:15

would just throw up a dialogue that would people

36:17

would go, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, okay, yeah, yeah.

36:20

If you could approve it from within the

36:22

app by clicking a button, apps would trick you

36:24

into doing it. So there's always has to be a process

36:26

that's like, that they'll tell you, go

36:29

to system preferences slash system settings and go to

36:31

the screen and do this and do that. And

36:34

some apps on the Mac went so far as to

36:36

sort of automate that process. They would like lead you

36:38

through a wizard style and they would bring up system

36:40

settings and they would make their own windows lined up

36:42

alongside the window with like arrows pointing to the things

36:44

you had to get. Like that was short lived, I

36:46

think, because system settings, system

36:49

preferences changed into system settings and Apple moved everything around

36:51

and I feel bad for the people who made these,

36:54

you know, wizards to do that. But it's because

36:57

the user has to, it's like when someone calls

36:59

you and you don't trust them or whatever, hang

37:01

up and like go to the website that belongs

37:03

to that company and find the number and call them

37:06

back yourself, right? So you know you're actually talking to

37:08

the person you think you're talking to, don't trust that

37:10

the number they called you from is not spoofed or

37:12

whatever. So you as the user have

37:14

to go and do a thing and

37:16

all the app or alternative app store or

37:19

whatever can do is say, you

37:22

know, or in this case, you always saying, oh,

37:24

you haven't allowed that developer to install third party

37:26

markplaces, you need to do that. And users are

37:28

like, how do I do that? I don't

37:30

know how to do that. Go to system settings, where

37:32

in system settings, can't you just do it for me?

37:34

Can't you just send me a button that says, okay,

37:36

approve, yes, and the answer is no. They can't do

37:38

that because if they did that, if it was possible

37:41

to do that at all, every app

37:43

would throw a thing in your face that says, do you

37:45

like puppies? Click yes and then you just approve. Yeah, you

37:47

know. Like, and oh,

37:49

don't worry, Apple View will catch that. Yeah, right.

37:53

We know how many things get past app review.

37:55

So it is annoying

37:58

and fiddly and I'm sure Apple. didn't

38:00

really care about streamlining as this much because

38:02

this is still more than one or two

38:04

back and forths, but some

38:06

part of that fiddliness is essentially

38:09

unavoidable to actually implement

38:11

the security that isn't trivially exploitable. I think it's too much

38:13

on the Mac. I think, you know, Jason Snell has talked

38:15

about this a lot when he had to set up his

38:17

new Mac and he just went into a rage about how

38:19

many times he had to approve things. I think there should

38:21

be a way to sort of do mass

38:24

approvals or a better

38:26

interface to approvals instead of the current way

38:28

of digging in to find stuff and scrolling

38:30

like this. This process can be approved, but

38:32

you can never get rid of the part

38:34

that is essentially the equivalent of the user

38:36

hanging up and saying, whatever

38:39

you say, I'm going to call now the number that

38:41

I think is for a Visa credit card, like the

38:43

number on the back of my credit card, right? I'm

38:45

going to call that myself. If you've

38:47

hacked me so bad that that goes to the wrong place, then you win.

38:51

Right. Oh, goodness. Yeah.

38:54

So we'll see what happens with this.

38:56

We talked about it, Mike and I,

38:58

on not the upgrade that just dropped

39:00

this week, but last week when I guess it on

39:03

upgrade. And I just, I really feel like this is

39:05

a nonstarter unless something really,

39:07

really weird happens. And I think

39:10

some dorks will, like us, will enjoy doing

39:13

emulators, which we'll get to actually in a

39:15

second or something along those lines. But for

39:17

most people, I just

39:19

don't expect that most people

39:21

will bother unless Facebook like pulls their app

39:23

from the traditional app store in the EU

39:26

and says, oh, you have to go to

39:28

Facebook's app store now, in which

39:30

case that's different. But assuming it's just alternative

39:32

app stores, like what it says on the

39:35

tin, I just don't see people going through

39:37

it. This is surmountable. Like if you think

39:40

the number of steps here isn't too hard,

39:43

there's nothing in it that doesn't involve just, you're

39:45

just tapping things on your screen. People

39:47

just need to be adequately motivated. And things that

39:50

can actually motivate them are, like you mentioned, some

39:52

must-have app like Facebook or whatever doing this, that

39:54

would do it, right? But even stuff

39:56

like, you know, someone does

39:58

a TikTok about some app that's they saw

40:00

and then someone else does a TikTok that's like, oh,

40:02

if you want this cool app, you do these six

40:04

steps. Like never

40:06

underestimate how influential a

40:09

fast tutorial video plus the FOMO of

40:11

some cool app that someone found on

40:13

alternative app store doesn't take much for

40:16

that to happen, right? You

40:20

need something like that. You need something to make people

40:22

do it. They're not going to casually do it on

40:24

their own, but the things that could lead someone to

40:27

install a third party app store can be much smaller

40:29

and more trivial than, oh, you have to go there

40:31

to get Facebook now, which I don't think is going

40:33

to happen. Oh, yeah. I mean, like

40:35

so many people installed things like configuration profiles

40:37

just to get like different app icons on

40:39

their phone. And that's way scarier and takes

40:42

more steps and more fiddly than this is

40:44

basically just going back and forth to between

40:46

a web browser and settings. By

40:48

the way, guess what the app store cares about? None of

40:50

that. Those are app store apps.

40:53

That doesn't matter. Yeah, install configuration profiles,

40:55

change the icons for your Instagram and

40:57

stuff. Yeah, go ahead. What could possibly

40:59

go wrong? To Apple's credit, they did provide APIs

41:01

for that eventually. Not on Vision OS.

41:03

Yeah, well, you know, maybe you'll be able

41:05

to rearrange the icon someday. Yeah. Well,

41:08

as an app developer, I can't allow users. Yeah,

41:10

you can't change your icon. Hey, on the Mac,

41:12

there's API to change your icon, but no APIs

41:14

for other Mac apps to get. What the hell,

41:17

you changed the icon too. Doc can show your

41:19

icon, but nobody else. Not that that would be

41:21

bothersome to somebody writing a window management app. There's

41:23

a feedback filed against it. No, but for the

41:25

app store stuff, I

41:27

think people will go through this when

41:30

there's an app they want to use. That's it. It's

41:32

not going to stop them. Going

41:34

back to what John was saying earlier about the Mac

41:37

with its security dialogues of the app can tell you,

41:39

or the system can tell you, go to system settings

41:41

and do this, but it won't give you an easy

41:43

way, I'm

41:46

not sure I accept without

41:49

comment, but that's good for security.

41:51

It seems like a modern Apple

41:54

security practice is

41:56

to make something a real pain

41:59

in the head. the button and

42:01

make it really suck and hope

42:03

that people will just not want to do it

42:05

or will do it carefully because it sucks. I

42:07

have to say though, the sucking part of

42:10

the Apple side of it is not necessary for

42:12

the security. The necessary part is that you have

42:14

to go do something. The app doesn't have an

42:17

opportunity to dark pattern you into doing it. The

42:19

app can't put up a dog. That's the necessary

42:21

part for security. The fact that when you go

42:23

to do it, it sucks because system settings is

42:26

Byzantine and it's a pain to do. That's

42:28

on Apple and that's not a necessary part of the

42:31

security. That's just the way Apple did it. System

42:33

settings is not easy to navigate. The big

42:35

scrolling list doesn't sort by most recently request

42:37

it. There are ways that Apple could do

42:40

this better and they don't, but that's not part of the security.

42:42

The security part is the app does not have an

42:44

opportunity to trick you and that's the essential part that

42:47

you essentially have to ... what

42:49

is this? The Vrytek, remember I can't call

42:51

you. You have to make the first call. You have to

42:53

go make the move. I would

42:56

say Apple could fix a lot of the

42:58

suckiness by not being so bad at making

43:00

system settings. Yes, I actually agree

43:02

with that. You're right because I

43:04

don't mind, okay, there's one place you have to

43:06

go do this. That's okay, but

43:08

it just really sucks. Apple

43:11

doesn't always follow this themselves. How

43:13

often do you get a pop up on

43:16

your phone saying, you got to go into

43:18

your password and system settings and you tap

43:20

that and it brings you to a screen

43:22

where you need to enter your password. That's

43:24

terrible for security. That's doing the same thing

43:26

with your Apple ID password. There's

43:29

all sorts of paper cuts around this area. What

43:33

I hope is that Apple is

43:35

motivated to improve that user experience on

43:38

the Mac because you're right. The

43:40

Mac definitely gets the worst of it, but

43:42

we don't see any evidence that they care.

43:45

It seems like, as Jason

43:47

Snell wrote in that article, it seems

43:49

like the Mac security team always

43:52

wins over any kind

43:54

of remote usability concern

43:57

and that the Mac team in general seems

43:59

to not really have the resources

44:02

behind it to make bigger changes to make

44:04

all this stuff suck less. Yeah,

44:06

especially like the in the mass case on the Mac of

44:08

like you just up a new Mac to

44:10

do the things that would make that easier

44:13

actually required the security people to do a

44:15

bunch of stuff. So for example, having

44:17

a thing where like, look, I already gave this app

44:20

permission and I've set up a new Mac and I

44:22

want that permission to essentially transfer over doing that in

44:24

a secure way is difficult and complicated. The UI team

44:26

can't do that on their own. That's the security team

44:28

would have to say, you have to

44:30

say like hey security team, you have to

44:32

come up with a trusted, secure way to

44:36

transfer permissions from

44:38

one Mac to another. Based on

44:41

all you you allowed it on this Mac and on this Mac I say,

44:43

Hey, do you want this Mac? You want all the apps on this new

44:45

Mac to have the same permissions that they did on the old Mac and

44:47

the user just says yes. And then security

44:50

happens. And that happens in it in some

44:52

way, right? And so that's that's part of

44:54

the problem is to get the

44:56

better user experience. You also need buy-in from the security

44:58

people and they have to do a bunch of work.

45:00

And then on top of that is even if with

45:02

no help from the security team, the UI team could

45:04

surely make this a hell of a lot better. Like

45:06

I said, how about just a different way to sort

45:08

the app? So not to scroll through that giant list.

45:10

How about default sorting them by the

45:12

app that most recently asked for something like

45:14

imagine that. So I'm just constantly scrolling through

45:16

a list, which I convinced myself with

45:19

alphabetical until I scroll and it's like the alphabet

45:21

is started over again. And it's like this asciiabatica

45:23

on the capital letters come first with the how.

45:25

Yep, it's amazing. Alright,

45:27

so definitely not because

45:29

of any legal issues or

45:32

regulations or anything like that absolutely had nothing to

45:34

do with the fact that Apple is now allowing

45:36

the app store the app store to

45:39

offer retro game emulators definitely had nothing

45:41

to do with any pressure from anywhere.

45:43

I love this. I love this so

45:45

much. This is it's

45:47

so okay. Here's here's how this

45:50

goes. Apple is now

45:52

all of a sudden forced in the

45:54

EU to offer sideloading. What's

45:56

a popular reason that people

45:59

often sideload? load in a way that

46:01

wouldn't really matter at all if they allowed it

46:03

in the app store? Game

46:05

emulators. So isn't

46:07

it interesting that right as they need

46:09

to force open their, you know, sideloading thing

46:12

in a pretty big market in the world,

46:15

they suddenly have a change of heart

46:18

on allowing game emulators on

46:21

the app store everywhere, which,

46:23

hmm, somebody might think

46:25

that might deflate a

46:28

lot of the demand for sideloading

46:31

and therefore retain control for the app store?

46:33

What a surprise. You know, maybe

46:36

there's a larger lesson here. Maybe allowing

46:39

things in the app store that

46:41

are otherwise harmless is

46:44

better for Apple's continued long-term control

46:46

of the platform. Whoa,

46:48

whoa, let's not get, you know, completely out

46:50

of bounds here. Apple

46:52

doesn't think it's harmless. Like one of the reasons they stopped

46:55

this was like, hey, there's

46:57

no in-app purchase in those games. We don't get paid

46:59

for those games. We don't get to approve those games.

47:01

Like, as far as they're concerned, it's like, look, you

47:03

want to put space invaders on the iPhone, we better

47:05

get our cut, right? And

47:08

that's, if you ask them, I think that

47:10

it would tell you that's why. We don't want to have essentially app

47:12

stores within app stores. We don't want apps that run other apps. Like,

47:15

that was their main objection to this. Now, I

47:17

agree with you. That's not actually a problem. Apple is being

47:19

stupid about it, but that's what they think. And so, yeah,

47:21

they're being forced into this. And this is even more hilarious

47:23

because, what's the name,

47:26

Riley Testit? Yep. So,

47:28

he is the Alt Store guy. Alt Store is

47:30

a thing that existed for a while to let

47:32

you install non-Apple approved apps on

47:34

your iPhone, but it was complicated and used, what did they

47:36

use, to use a test flight system or something like that?

47:38

I forget. I think, I forget the

47:40

details too. But anyway, it was, it was, it was technically

47:42

complicated and weird. But anyway, Alt Store is a name that

47:45

you might have heard. It is, you know, for all the

47:47

time before this whole EU thing, you're like, is there another

47:49

way you can get apps onto the app instead of the

47:51

App Store? You might've heard of Cydia and you might've heard

47:53

of Alt Store. And these are all kind of like, you

47:55

know, skirting Apple's rules and technically

47:58

complicated or whatever. But

48:01

Riley's got his start by

48:03

making an emulator, a retro

48:05

game emulator for iOS that then

48:08

was not allowed on the App Store and then

48:11

got on the Alt Store, which is his thing, and

48:14

is funded through Patreon. And so now he's

48:17

making Alt Store a third-party

48:19

App Store using the Apple,

48:21

DMA third-party App Store thing

48:23

or whatever. And the reason he's doing

48:25

this, so he can put his retro

48:27

game emulator on

48:29

his Alt Store using Apple's official

48:31

thing. So this Apple

48:33

opening of the store to retro game

48:35

emulators is lightning-focused on the one dude

48:38

who ran Alt Store

48:40

and is now going to put

48:42

Alt Store in the EU alternative

48:44

marketplace thing, right, for his one

48:46

emulator. It's not like they said, well, here is all

48:48

the world of things that could possibly be in a

48:50

third-party store and we better compete with them. It's like,

48:52

I know this one guy, and Alt Store, by the

48:54

way, has been waiting for approval I think for like

48:57

a month or something. I forgot what his complaint was,

48:59

but it's been a slow roll

49:01

for them to get a thing. They know he's

49:03

doing this. So this rule is targeted on one

49:05

person's Alt Store to say, we're going to preempt

49:07

you, which is ridiculous. And I

49:10

feel like he should be honored that they feel like

49:12

he's such a threat to putting an emulator. They're just

49:14

like, come on back, come on back to the App

49:16

Store. You don't have to have that third-party store, even

49:18

though we made you jump through all these hoops and

49:20

do all this stuff. Never mind. You

49:23

can have it on the App Store. It'll

49:25

be fine, which is not because his thing is funded

49:27

through Patreon and you still can't do it on the

49:29

App Store, so he's still doing Alt Store, but whatever.

49:33

I don't know that it's aimed at this one person,

49:36

but it is strangely coincident. I

49:38

don't know if it's aimed at that one person, although

49:40

honestly that is exactly the kind

49:42

of pettiness that App Store leadership would

49:44

actually do. But

49:47

no, I think it's more strategic. I think it's

49:49

literally just like, this is a reason why a

49:51

lot of people might side load. Let's deflate the

49:53

air in that balloon. Because it

49:56

turns out, this is some low-hanging fruit.

49:58

There really is not any... a good

50:00

reason why Apple couldn't have emulators in the app

50:02

store. It really doesn't harm them at all. It

50:04

doesn't really – as long as they keep it

50:07

within the parameters they're keeping it, which is retro

50:09

systems and kind of bring your own ROMs

50:12

and you assert they're okay, as long as

50:14

they do all that, then

50:16

they're not really in legal trouble

50:18

with it. But

50:21

yet there is all this demand for it. So this

50:23

is a clear instance where they can

50:25

just allow these because there really wasn't

50:28

that good a reason to disallow them in

50:30

the first place. So they're just allowing them

50:32

now because it is high

50:35

benefit to the app store and to

50:37

Apple strategically and very, very low risk

50:39

and cost compared to other ways they

50:42

could open up to kind

50:46

of deflate demand for sideloading. I

50:48

think other ways would have larger downsides and costs.

50:50

It wouldn't be as clear cut. So for instance,

50:52

if they – if for some reason

50:55

big crypto apps that don't fit what they currently allow

50:57

in the app store become big in some

51:00

kind of sideloading thing, which I mean is

51:02

anybody still doing crypto? But if they are, maybe

51:05

that would be a thing. But there's bigger downsides there. If

51:07

they start – if they would start allowing like

51:10

porn apps, they've never allowed porn apps in the

51:12

app store, that's probably obviously going to be like

51:14

a big thing in sideloading contexts I'm sure. There's

51:18

obviously bigger downsides to that if they want to keep

51:20

things a certain way in the app store, keep certain

51:22

standards, stay out of certain legal problems

51:24

there. But with emulators,

51:26

there really was not much reason not to

51:28

allow them. So I think it's

51:30

pure – I think there might be some element of

51:32

spite, of personal spite there, but I

51:34

think that's probably a small component if any. The

51:37

much bigger thing is this is just pure

51:39

strategy. Right as they're

51:42

forced to offer sideloading, remove a big reason

51:44

why anybody would need to do that. So

51:46

that would be, hey, come back to the

51:48

app store, back inside the wall garden, look,

51:50

it's nice here. Here's an emulator. Go nuts,

51:52

kid. And you described that as

51:54

a couple times as like deflating the need to go

51:56

to a third-party app store. The other word for that

51:58

is competition. competitors are

52:00

doing things that customers want. If

52:02

we want to get those customers

52:04

back, let's do the thing that

52:06

customers want too. Imagine that competition.

52:09

When there was no competition, they could just say, nope, not

52:11

allowed and you can't get apps from any place else, no problem.

52:13

And now you can get apps from somewhere else. And it's

52:15

like, what do those

52:17

other people have that we don't have that we can add to

52:19

your point? Like they're probably not going to add porn and stuff,

52:21

but like, I guess we'll add retro

52:23

games. Someone says, no, don't allow that. We

52:26

can't get in-app purchases from space invaders. And

52:28

like, but we have to do it because

52:30

competition. And so I like this development. We

52:32

should, but let's, let's read the details of

52:35

this because the devil is in the details.

52:37

As always, Apple is listening. It's

52:39

app store restrictions and opening the marketplace up to

52:41

retro game emulators and an update on Friday. Apple

52:43

announced that game emulators can come to the app

52:46

store globally and offer downloadable games. Apple

52:48

says those games must comply with quote all

52:50

applicable laws, quote, though, an indication it will

52:52

ban apps that provide pirated titles. The app

52:55

review guidelines read as follows. Apple,

52:57

excuse me, apps may offer certain

53:00

software that is not embedded in

53:02

the binary, specifically HTML five mini

53:04

apps and mini games, streaming games,

53:07

chat bots, and plugins. Additionally,

53:10

retro game console emulator apps can

53:12

offer to download games. And

53:15

now of course, James Thompson, front of

53:17

the show, immediately equipped. Well, I'm looking forward

53:19

to an official Apple definition of the word

53:21

retro. This is where the devil starts

53:24

in the details because remember, this is the

53:26

app store and your apps go

53:28

through app review and app review is capricious.

53:30

All right. Uh, what

53:33

is a retro game console emulator app? What

53:35

does it mean to quote comply with all

53:37

applicable laws? App review will tell you,

53:39

you'll find out I guess. Right. And

53:41

that was the question when this story, sorry, first came out.

53:43

People like, but like, what

53:46

does this mean? Can I put up

53:48

a Nintendo emulator or will Apple like

53:50

what I thought of as Casey's trying

53:52

to send a screenshot for college and

53:54

Apple's like, Hey, before we prove this

53:56

app, can you tell us that you

53:59

have the rights? to use this movie

54:01

poster. And it's like,

54:03

all right, well, so if you

54:05

send a Nintendo emulator, is Apple going to go,

54:07

hey, before we post your Nintendo emulator, can you

54:09

tell me that you have the rights to

54:13

ship a Nintendo emulator? Because we've heard of Nintendo. It's the

54:15

same way that they're asking Casey if he has the rights

54:17

to these known Hollywood movies. Like, this is the thing about

54:19

the App Review. You can

54:21

send up an app sometimes called

54:23

like a, you know, I

54:25

think someone did like a Mario app or something like

54:27

that. They'll sail through App Review and they're like, hey,

54:30

App Review doesn't deal with copyright. We just wait for

54:32

someone to complain. But if it's not our job to

54:34

vet all your copyrighted material. But apparently with Casey's app,

54:36

that reviewer's like, you know, it's my job to vet

54:38

copyrighted material. So how

54:41

is it going to work when they send

54:43

a game emulator? They're going to say, the

54:45

disclaimer is Apple are basically saying, hey,

54:48

you just have to follow up the laws. Someone complains to

54:50

us. We're going to say, hey, we told them they have

54:52

to follow the laws. Don't look at us. Just directly sue

54:54

the developer. Don't sue us. We said they have to comply

54:56

with all laws and they didn't do it. So they violated

54:59

the agreement or whatever. But when your app

55:01

goes to App Review, is the App Review going to say,

55:03

hey, everything in your app, are you allowed to do all

55:05

that stuff? Are you allowed to have a Nintendo emulator? Are

55:07

you allowed to like, I see you have like an icon

55:09

that looks like an N64. Are you allowed

55:11

to have that icon? Do you have the rights to this?

55:14

Or are they just going to be like, fine, gone through? I don't

55:16

care. And we didn't know the answer to that

55:18

question. I think we continue to not know the answer to that question because

55:20

we just have one or two data points. But

55:23

even just in the guidelines, retro game

55:25

console emulator apps, that's

55:27

multiple words in there. It's not just retro games, retro

55:29

PC games. That's not a console. So I think if

55:31

you're doing PC games, you can't do this. And what

55:34

does retro mean? Last generation? The

55:36

generation before that? Is it a number of

55:38

years? Is the Switch retro because it's so

55:40

damn old? Who

55:43

knows? You'll find out. Submit your app and find

55:45

out. I mean, I

55:47

think it's probably fairly clear.

55:51

I think so first of all, yes,

55:53

they will absolutely make

55:56

you assert that you own things or prove that you

55:58

own things that are shown. in your screenshots and

56:01

that come with the app? Well,

56:03

look at the IGBA emulator that we're going

56:05

to get to in a second. I don't think they did that in

56:07

that app at all. I'm sure scrutiny will

56:10

change and be incantantly applied like all other

56:12

apps are. But who knows? Because

56:14

we just had the one data point, IGBA,

56:16

which is a Game Boy Advance emulator. If

56:18

you look at it, it's filled with Nintendo

56:20

proprietary looking stuff, right down to the UI

56:24

looks like the Game Boy Advance or whatever.

56:28

Did someone have to assert that they own all that stuff?

56:30

Or did they just be like, yeah, it's fine. Yeah, they

56:32

wasn't my reviewers, so it's cool. No,

56:35

I think if I was making an

56:37

emulator for the app store, I

56:39

would assume that I can't

56:42

use trademarks. So stay away from, especially stay

56:44

away from the word Nintendo, just stay away

56:46

from it. Or the word Game Boy, or

56:48

about GBA. Yeah, I

56:50

think acronyms might be easier to get

56:52

away with. But certainly, I would stay

56:54

away from as many trademark names as

56:57

possible. I would obviously not

56:59

include any ROMs with it. Or

57:01

I would include only open source enthusiast

57:03

ROMs, which probably exist for most of

57:05

these systems. For

57:07

almost all these old systems, there

57:10

are enthusiast communities who make new

57:12

ROMs that were never actually made on

57:14

cartridges. So you

57:17

could ship this with only freely

57:19

available ROMs. They exist. So

57:22

you could do that or ship it empty and have

57:24

people bring their own. Well, if you ship it empty

57:26

and you get that one reviewer who's like, your app

57:28

does nothing rejected, then you've got a problem. Because those

57:30

reviewers exist, right? Like if your app doesn't do anything

57:33

when you launch it, you're like, oh, well, people have to supply their

57:35

own ROMs. Like, sorry, rejected your app does nothing. Yeah.

57:40

Anyway, so I think the path is

57:42

fairly clear. Like, when they

57:44

first made this rule, we all thought they're

57:47

not going to allow arbitrary ROMs to be

57:49

loaded into apps. They would allow

57:52

somebody like Nintendo themselves to

57:54

make an app that

57:56

includes their own emulated old games. They've

58:00

given a couple of press comments here and there, including

58:02

there was one in MacRumors today, I believe, that

58:05

basically where Apple has given statements basically saying, it

58:07

will be OK for you to bring ROMs

58:10

to it from the web. So that's allowed.

58:12

Yeah, we've got that quote done on the

58:14

show in the notes. Here's what MacRumors said.

58:16

Apple confirmed to us that emulators on the

58:18

App Store are permitted to load ROMs downloaded

58:20

from the web so

58:23

long as the app is emulating retro

58:25

console games only. Again, what is a

58:27

retro console game? Let

58:29

your heart guide you. So I

58:32

think ultimately this is that we're going to

58:34

hear about occasional pain in

58:36

the butt stories about App Review where somebody's going to

58:38

have to say, no, I don't own Mario, so

58:40

I can't show it in the screenshots. Fine. And

58:43

the whole thing's going to be very wink, wink, nudge. Yes, of

58:45

course you're going to load it up with Mario games. That's

58:48

what we're going to do in practice, and it will be fine.

58:51

But it will be just like any other

58:53

app, like CallSheet, like Overcast, like

58:55

Instapaper. It's like any other app

58:57

that has the ability to show

58:59

third party content, some of which

59:01

somebody might have rights over and some of which somebody might

59:04

not care. It's going to have that same

59:06

kind of trade off of

59:08

risk versus reward and possible

59:10

occasional App Store snags mostly

59:13

involving metadata and screenshots. And

59:15

I think it'll be fine. So speaking

59:17

of App Review problems, our

59:21

friend Ben McCarthy, they're about

59:23

to release a Pokedex app, like a Pokemon database

59:25

sort of thing. And I don't

59:28

think there's any marketing site for this, but

59:30

I'll put something in the show notes that

59:32

you can look at, at least briefly. Nevertheless,

59:34

I bet you anything that when we look

59:36

at the App Store screenshots for Ketchup, which

59:38

is the name of this app, I

59:41

think it'll end up being little to

59:43

no Pokemon in the app, or it'll

59:45

be like outlines

59:49

or something like that. Because if you

59:51

get too close to the actual Pokemon,

59:54

then you'll end up running a foul of App Review.

59:56

And I bet you any amount of money that Ben

59:58

has had to do some. really

1:00:00

heavy lifting to try to show this

1:00:02

app in the App

1:00:04

Store without using any of Nintendo's copyrightable

1:00:08

assets. And I'm sure it's going to be real

1:00:10

painful. Well, so we've had one example of emulators

1:00:12

first, and it's been an unfortunate one. So this

1:00:15

is the Verge story. The first approved Apple

1:00:17

emulators for the iPhone have arrived, and one

1:00:19

of them was the aforementioned IGBA, which was

1:00:21

a Game Boy Advance emulator. Unfortunately, it was

1:00:23

essentially a clone

1:00:25

of Rally Tested's first

1:00:27

retro game emulator, which was

1:00:30

open source, and it was essentially

1:00:32

forked. And someone forked it and made

1:00:34

an iOS game out of it and uploaded it

1:00:36

to the App Store and apparently didn't

1:00:38

follow the open source license. And

1:00:41

shortly after that story was posted, the

1:00:43

thing arrived, there was another

1:00:45

story that says, here's why Apple removed the first Game Boy

1:00:48

emulator from the App Store. And

1:00:50

according to the design to 5 Mac, Apple said

1:00:52

that it removed IGBA from the

1:00:54

App Store for violating two App

1:00:56

Store guidelines, copyright section 5.2 and

1:00:58

spam section 4.3. IGBA's

1:01:00

functionality was originally approved in compliance with the

1:01:02

App Store's guidelines. The app was then removed,

1:01:05

however, when Apple learned that it was a

1:01:07

clone of GBA for iOS, a violation of

1:01:09

copyright and spam App Store guidelines. So the

1:01:12

explanation is, we approved it first and then we

1:01:14

always made a mistake. And the mistake was not

1:01:16

that this retro game thing is not allowed, but

1:01:18

two things. One, there's the copyright thing and I

1:01:20

think that's just like failure to comply with an

1:01:22

open source license. And two,

1:01:25

is that it was a clone of

1:01:27

a previously existing but rejected app,

1:01:29

a GBA for iOS. And I guess the spam guidelines

1:01:32

are like, hey, you can't just, like if we reject

1:01:34

an app, you can't just upload another version of it

1:01:36

or something. So I don't actually understand this rejection at

1:01:38

all. But the bottom line is, retro

1:01:41

game emulator appeared and then it was quickly pulled down.

1:01:44

And for what it was Riley

1:01:46

said, that I just

1:01:48

want to reiterate that I'm not mad at the developer, everyone

1:01:50

makes mistakes, and they even reached out to me via email

1:01:52

to personally apologize for the mess, so no hard feelings. So

1:01:55

it's not a big deal that the person uploaded a thing that was

1:01:57

a clone and not compliant or whatever. it

1:02:00

appeared and disappeared and it was rejected by

1:02:02

Apple but not for using Nintendo's

1:02:05

copyrighted material or loading ROMs from

1:02:07

the web or anything like that

1:02:09

for other App Store guideline

1:02:12

related reasons and as I said before Nintendo

1:02:14

says you are allowed to download ROMs from

1:02:16

the web. On this topic

1:02:18

though there are other parties that are able to

1:02:21

stop the retro dream

1:02:24

from happening on all our phones and iPads and

1:02:26

so on and so forth. No, iPads still

1:02:29

because it's global for the App Store. Nintendo

1:02:31

recently nuked from

1:02:33

orbit the Yuzu switch emulator and

1:02:36

that's something

1:02:39

that hadn't been happening too often

1:02:41

like it was like a game

1:02:44

console developers were like you

1:02:46

know turn the blind eye to emulators of

1:02:48

their old platforms which always seemed weird

1:02:51

to me because in the olden days like

1:02:53

well fine they don't care they just care about their latest

1:02:55

console they don't care that you're emulating an NES and some

1:02:57

open source thing that nobody cares about but over

1:02:59

the past decade or so all

1:03:02

the big console makers have

1:03:04

been making money off their own old

1:03:06

games often using emulators and hiring emulator

1:03:08

developers into their own companies so that

1:03:10

you can play pay for and play

1:03:12

NES games on your switch or whatever

1:03:15

right so it's not like

1:03:17

these companies no longer care about retro

1:03:19

consoles they do care every person who

1:03:21

downloads for free an NES emulator and

1:03:24

downloads in the legal NES ROM of Mario and plays

1:03:26

it is a customer that is less likely to pay

1:03:29

whatever it costs to get that

1:03:31

in Nintendo's own official store

1:03:33

where you can buy old NES games but

1:03:37

the Nintendo thing with Yuzu I

1:03:40

was asking for if the switch was retro the switch

1:03:42

is a really old console hasn't been updated in a

1:03:44

while the old one came out people thought that might

1:03:46

have been a revised switch but it was just a

1:03:49

better screen anyway it's been out for a long time and it was slow

1:03:51

when it came out from

1:03:53

hardware perspective it is retro but

1:03:56

from Nintendo's perspective it is their current console

1:03:59

and Nintendo's Nintendo didn't like many things

1:04:01

about the Yuzu emulator, one of which obviously

1:04:03

runs Switch games that

1:04:05

people illegally download. But the second one,

1:04:08

I think supposedly the people involved with

1:04:10

the Yuzu emulator might have somehow been

1:04:12

involved in leaking the Tears

1:04:15

of the Kingdom game before it was actually officially

1:04:17

released. So people were playing it on

1:04:19

their Steam decks before it was even out on the Switch, and

1:04:21

Nintendo was just like, enough. And

1:04:24

so, lawyers descended. And as you can

1:04:26

imagine, Nintendo has a pretty slam dunk

1:04:28

case against an emulator

1:04:30

whose entire purpose and community and

1:04:32

website and tutorials and everything is

1:04:35

so clearly aimed at letting you figure

1:04:37

out how to essentially play your illegally

1:04:39

acquired ROMs. And

1:04:42

they had a court case, and I believe

1:04:44

the court case was settled. And the settlement

1:04:46

was Yuzu loses everything, Nintendo gets everything by

1:04:48

Yuzu. And Yuzu had to pay $2.4 million

1:04:52

and, you know, shuttered its entire company.

1:04:54

And Nintendo continues to wander the web

1:04:56

finding people and things who are doing

1:04:58

things it doesn't like. Like

1:05:00

it's getting a bunch of Discord servers shut down, because Yuzu is

1:05:02

open source, there's like forks of Yuzu. And Nintendo's

1:05:04

getting their Discord shutdowns so they no longer have a place

1:05:07

to hang out with each other and work on

1:05:09

their emulators. So Nintendo is awake and

1:05:12

angry, and I'm not, I'm kind of not

1:05:14

surprised, like I said, because Nintendo, like many other console

1:05:16

makers, is making money off

1:05:18

quote unquote retro game consoles.

1:05:20

So yes, Apple may allow your retro thing

1:05:23

up on the App Store. But

1:05:26

if Apple sees that, not

1:05:28

Apple, Nintendo sees that that thing is essentially

1:05:30

being used for piracy, I can

1:05:33

imagine Nintendo will ask Apple, hey,

1:05:35

we think this app violates our

1:05:37

intellectual property, yada, yada, yada. And

1:05:40

then Apple will take it down, or Apple will direct them

1:05:42

to you and you'll take it down yourself because you don't

1:05:44

have a billion dollars to pay for lawyers to fight Nintendo.

1:05:49

And the same is true, by the way, of alternative app

1:05:51

stores. If you have an emulator, you put it up on

1:05:53

alternative app store, and Nintendo comes a knockin' either at the

1:05:55

alternative app store or comes knockin' on your door, guess what,

1:05:57

you're gonna fold like a house of cards just like you.

1:06:00

Yuzu did and you're not gonna have 2.4 million

1:06:02

dollars to pay them to settle a lawsuit. So it's

1:06:04

a dangerous world out there. Console emulation,

1:06:06

especially since like in the case of

1:06:09

the Switch, it's so retro that the

1:06:11

Switch emulations like in Yuzu play Switch

1:06:13

games better than the Switch because

1:06:16

any reasonably powerful PC or probably

1:06:18

even iPad or whatever can

1:06:20

play Switch games at a

1:06:23

higher frame rate and higher resolution than the

1:06:25

Switch itself can because the Switch hardware

1:06:27

is so anemic and old. And

1:06:30

so not only is it not retro

1:06:32

or the Switch is their current console but

1:06:34

it's so retro that you can play it

1:06:36

faster in emulation than you can on the

1:06:38

actual Switch. So it actually gives you a

1:06:40

superior game experience, superior fidelity than an actual

1:06:43

Switch. And partially Nintendo

1:06:45

is to blame for that but really Nintendo

1:06:47

is not, Nintendo is angry and

1:06:49

they are awake and I think it's gonna really

1:06:51

put a damper on everyone's fun with this whole

1:06:53

retro game thing. Indeed. Yeah

1:06:56

we'll see what happens. I mean I'm sure something

1:06:58

will show up and I'm glad that Apple's finally

1:07:00

doing, I was gonna say

1:07:02

what's right, I think it's a bit dramatic. I think it's

1:07:05

good that they're finally embracing things

1:07:07

that aren't cut and dry perfect

1:07:09

fits for Apple. And

1:07:12

again I think it's this competition that's caused

1:07:14

it and I'm here for it. Like I

1:07:16

want more of this. So I

1:07:18

don't want specifically but I just want more of this.

1:07:20

So please and thank you. Yeah and this is

1:07:22

an example just to reiterate where there was the EU

1:07:24

DMA thing that's forcing Apple to do a thing

1:07:26

and Apple's response was to change the rules for the

1:07:29

whole world in the App Store. So we actually benefit

1:07:31

from it in this case. We don't get the

1:07:33

alternative App Stores like the EU folks do but

1:07:35

we do, like the retro game rule is not

1:07:37

just for the EU. So I think that is

1:07:40

what Apple should be doing. You

1:07:42

know you would think that it

1:07:44

annoys Apple to have a fragmented ecosystem where

1:07:46

the rules are different in the EU in

1:07:49

significant ways that like impact the OS and

1:07:51

the user experience. And I'm sure Apple doesn't

1:07:53

like that. But

1:07:55

in every case where Apple can bring

1:07:58

itself to make a decision for the whole world. world

1:08:00

they should because you

1:08:02

don't want to fragment it even further. And

1:08:04

I'm glad they managed to convince

1:08:07

themselves that this would not be the end

1:08:09

of the world to allow retro game console

1:08:11

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do some Ask ATP and Jan Wettacand writes,

1:10:18

how does John manage where new tabs spawn

1:10:20

in Safari with so many open browser windows?

1:10:22

It drives me bananas in that it always

1:10:24

opens in the last active window and it's

1:10:26

cumbersome having to manually move them around. Any

1:10:28

tips? Well, it is

1:10:31

cumbersome. Two

1:10:33

ways I manage this. One is

1:10:35

the not great way, but practically speaking, this happens

1:10:37

sometimes. You click on a link, it

1:10:40

opens, you know, where it's going to open. Safari has

1:10:42

a bunch of rules about where it's going to open

1:10:44

new windows and new tabs based on your settings, based

1:10:46

on what the front-most window was, yada yada. Whatever

1:10:49

Safari picks, it's not that big

1:10:51

a deal that if it picked the wrong place, just yank out

1:10:53

that tab, put it where you want it. Put it in the

1:10:55

window you want it, put it in its own separate window, that's

1:10:57

the thing you can do. The second thing, which I do a

1:10:59

surprising amount, is don't click links, right

1:11:01

click them, copy link locations, switch to Safari,

1:11:03

make a new window, paste in the URL. You

1:11:05

can do most of this from the keyboard. And

1:11:09

then you can decide where it goes. You can put the tab where

1:11:11

you want it to appear and paste the

1:11:13

URL into the location bar and hit

1:11:15

return. And I know this probably sounds

1:11:17

cumbersome, but like as a career web developer,

1:11:20

I've spent a lot of time in the address bar, let's

1:11:23

say. And other people never even touch it. In

1:11:25

fact, Apple, I think correctly, de-emphasized it many, many

1:11:27

years ago to the point where they don't even

1:11:29

show the full URL anymore. I think people just

1:11:31

think of that as the Google search box and

1:11:33

ignore it when it has any other text in

1:11:35

it. But as a web developer, I spend a

1:11:37

lot of time in there. And so copying and

1:11:39

pasting things into the address bar or browsers is

1:11:41

like how I spent half of my day. And

1:11:43

that's a weird way to work for most people.

1:11:45

Actually speaking, that is one way that I essentially

1:11:47

determine where things are going to open. It's because

1:11:50

I'm inverting the process. I am not clicking

1:11:53

a URL now in the OS to dispatch and the

1:11:55

app to choose or whatever. I'm grabbing a URL as

1:11:57

a text string and I'm that I'm going to the

1:11:59

browser I wanted to go in because remember I'm running two

1:12:01

of them all the time and finding the window or tab where

1:12:04

I wanted to be Or making a new window or whatever and

1:12:06

pasting the URL and hitting return so that is a very unsatisfying

1:12:08

answer, but that's how I do it Pedro

1:12:10

Fernandez writes, what's your take on using case sensitive file

1:12:13

system formatting for Mac OS? I had a bug that

1:12:15

was driving me crazy because it was working perfectly in

1:12:17

Mac OS But failing in Linux a

1:12:19

folder was named data set with capital D capital

1:12:21

S. What is that Pascal case? I always get

1:12:23

it wrong. That's Pascal right sure sure and I

1:12:25

was accessing it with the string data set with

1:12:28

capital D and lowercase s It

1:12:30

worked on Mac OS but not Mac OS, but

1:12:32

not on Linux I once I

1:12:34

recall once formatting Mac OS using case

1:12:36

sensitive and having many problems I

1:12:38

honestly don't even remember what I do. I feel

1:12:40

like I do case sensitive. Where do you want to see? Okay? I

1:12:43

guess I don't yeah, cuz the case sensitive is not

1:12:45

the default And and

1:12:47

yeah, and before we let John tell us the right answer I

1:12:50

will button and say case sensitive is

1:12:52

wrong in most cases like it That

1:12:54

is that is a poor choice in

1:12:56

most cases I mean obviously

1:12:59

there's there's a lot of complexity once you

1:13:01

get into like various other types of Unicode

1:13:04

Normalization and things like that. There's a lot of complexity

1:13:06

there and I I

1:13:09

think it creates better outcomes for

1:13:11

users and it avoids more it

1:13:14

avoids more problems and potential bugs

1:13:17

and even sometimes security problems if

1:13:21

The file system normalizes names as much

1:13:23

as possible when doing duplicate detection so

1:13:25

let you enter whatever case you want

1:13:28

and Let and then display

1:13:30

whatever you entered back to the user but

1:13:33

prevent the creation of another file in

1:13:35

the same folder with a name

1:13:37

that Matches it in any

1:13:39

kind of normalized form so for instance Capital

1:13:41

A versus lowercase a in the name don't allow

1:13:43

that it to just in the same directory But

1:13:46

even other things like you know there's this whole

1:13:48

this whole mechanism in place for character

1:13:50

normalization of You

1:13:53

know letters that are beyond just the you know the

1:13:55

English Roman alphabet So for instance for instance like you

1:13:57

know an e with an accent over it should

1:13:59

should would a word with an accent at E be

1:14:03

unique from a file system perspective from

1:14:06

that same word with the English E

1:14:08

with no accent? They're both Es,

1:14:11

but they have different forms sort

1:14:13

of like certain letters

1:14:15

who normalize in different ways. There's that

1:14:17

big capital B looking symbol in German

1:14:19

that kind of translates to like SS

1:14:21

I think. So

1:14:23

there's all sorts of like different in

1:14:26

different alphabets and different languages. There's different

1:14:28

characters that kind of can normalize down

1:14:30

to other characters. And there's

1:14:33

a question of like how should a file

1:14:35

system handle this? Should they treat those as

1:14:37

two separate spellings and therefore allow two files

1:14:40

to exist with one each of those variants

1:14:42

or not? And I think in general it

1:14:45

is better to coalesce those

1:14:47

down for duplicate detection so that no

1:14:50

similarly translating characters

1:14:53

are allowed to coexist as two different

1:14:55

file names. Alright, John, what's the

1:14:57

right answer? So if you are listening to

1:15:00

this and you don't recall what you picked,

1:15:02

you took the default and the default is

1:15:04

not case sensitive. So that's the answer to

1:15:06

what most people are doing. There's a long

1:15:10

history behind this, a long, mostly sad

1:15:12

history. In

1:15:14

the HFS plus slash HFS

1:15:16

days, maybe this is

1:15:18

just HFS plus. But anyway, in the classic Mac OS days,

1:15:22

what the file system would do was it would

1:15:25

perform Unicode normalization. So you'd give it a file name

1:15:27

and it would be like, that's great and all, but

1:15:29

I'm going to normalize that. And Unicode normalization is essentially

1:15:31

picking, there's a bunch of different normalized forms you can

1:15:33

look up in the Wikipedia page, in case you can

1:15:35

find a link for it. But

1:15:38

to give an example, like I was just

1:15:40

the word cafe with the E with a little accent

1:15:42

over it, right? That little E with the accent can

1:15:44

be written at least two different ways. One of them

1:15:46

is there's a Unicode code point for the E with

1:15:48

a little accent over it. But another way is you

1:15:51

can write the Unicode code point for E and

1:15:53

then the one for little

1:15:55

accent combining character. And they

1:15:57

both make an E with an accent over it. One of

1:15:59

them There's a single thing, one of them is

1:16:01

E plus accent, they combine, right? There's these combining

1:16:03

character in Unicode. So they look

1:16:06

exactly the same. They are the same comparison

1:16:08

size, but the bytes on disk are different

1:16:10

for both of those things. So if you

1:16:13

did a blind byte comparison, even though they're

1:16:15

both UTF-8, like they're not different

1:16:17

encodings, they're both UTF-8. But if

1:16:19

you went byte by byte and you compared cafe

1:16:21

to cafe, they look the same, they are the

1:16:23

same character, they're the same, but

1:16:26

byte by byte, like, nope, these are different, right? And

1:16:29

what HFS plus did, I believe it did one

1:16:32

of the normalized forms, it normalized everything.

1:16:34

So whatever you fed it, it would do, maybe it's like

1:16:36

normal form D or something, I forget what the names are.

1:16:41

And that, you know, and

1:16:43

setting aside the case sensitivity, that Unicode

1:16:45

normalization made some

1:16:48

computer nerds angry, like Linus Tovolt, a

1:16:50

creator of Linux. He was very angry

1:16:52

about the fact that HFS plus did

1:16:54

that because he's like, how dare the

1:16:56

file system change the bytes that I

1:16:58

gave it for the file name, because

1:17:01

it violated what he thought was the contract, which is,

1:17:03

hey, file system, here's a bunch of bytes that is

1:17:05

the file name. And then later the code would go,

1:17:08

look for that file in the file system based

1:17:10

on those bytes and it wouldn't find it, because

1:17:13

the file system had changed the byte sequence to

1:17:15

do whatever normalized form, like one normalized form is

1:17:17

combine everything, the other normalized form is like, how

1:17:19

everything decomposed? And you wouldn't get back the same

1:17:21

bytes that you put in. He's like, this is

1:17:23

a violation of the contract. When I read the

1:17:25

file name back from that directory, I better see

1:17:27

the bytes that I put in there, otherwise it's

1:17:29

insanity. And he was super angry about that. You

1:17:31

can find his email, the internet where he was

1:17:33

angry about that. So when APFS came along, APFS

1:17:36

made a different choice, maybe not because Linus was

1:17:38

angry about it, but whatever. APFS,

1:17:40

the original version of APFS said, you

1:17:42

give me some bytes, I'll store some bytes, whatever. I'll just,

1:17:45

whatever bytes you give me, I'm gonna store. That's that. And

1:17:47

when you read the directory and you look at the list of file names, I'm giving

1:17:49

you back the bytes that you gave me. And as

1:17:51

soon as APFS came out, in fact, before it was released,

1:17:53

at least on a Mac anyway, I filed a bug against

1:17:56

Apple that said, hey, I can make two files named CAFE

1:17:58

in the same directory in the Finder. One

1:18:00

of them is the E with the accent as

1:18:02

one little thing, and one of them is the

1:18:04

E with the combining accent character. But in the

1:18:06

file system, they literally look the same. And

1:18:09

here they are, side by side with each other,

1:18:11

in the same directory, to Markra's point. There's not

1:18:13

a capitalization difference or whatever. They literally look the

1:18:15

same. And it's because the file system was totally

1:18:17

hands-off, and it was like, I am not.

1:18:20

You give me bytes? I store bytes. I'm not involved

1:18:22

in this at all. I just put the bytes in,

1:18:24

and when you read the directory, I give you the

1:18:26

bytes back out, kind of like what Linus wanted. But

1:18:28

of course, from user interface per second, that's not great.

1:18:30

Eventually, future versions of APFS changed to do,

1:18:33

I think this is current. Someone will correct

1:18:35

me if I'm wrong, but I think the

1:18:37

current strategy is this. APFS still

1:18:39

takes the bytes that you gave it and gives them back to you just

1:18:41

the way you gave it to it. But the

1:18:44

thing that looks in the directory

1:18:46

to see if a file by that name

1:18:48

already exists, that mechanism normalizes

1:18:50

everything. So the comparison is normalized.

1:18:52

They normalize before they do the

1:18:54

comparison of both sides, but

1:18:56

it will always give you the bytes out that you

1:18:58

put in. So if you try to make a second

1:19:00

file called cafe with a different normalization, it won't let

1:19:02

you because it'll say size file exists. It

1:19:05

will clash. That seems like the best approach. Yeah, well,

1:19:07

it is certainly better than the previous two that we

1:19:09

said, but I believe this is what everything currently does.

1:19:11

And that, in case sensitivity, I assume, I don't know

1:19:13

how case sensitivity is implemented, but I assume it's in

1:19:15

the same type of thing where

1:19:18

the case sensitivity comes in

1:19:20

the checking whether that file already exists or

1:19:22

not. But when you put the file

1:19:25

in the file system, the case is there. So

1:19:27

it is case preserving. It is encoding preserving, but

1:19:29

it is not encoding sensitive. And if you choose

1:19:31

case insensitive, it is not case sensitive. Here's

1:19:34

my take on this. I think

1:19:37

that the file system should be

1:19:39

case sensitive on comparison.

1:19:42

And I think that higher levels

1:19:44

of the OS should implement case insensitivity

1:19:46

for places where it matters. But

1:19:49

it doesn't matter what I think, because we have

1:19:51

decades of Mac OS history where the file system

1:19:53

by default has not been case sensitive. And the

1:19:55

plain fact is that Mac

1:19:58

apps sometimes will misbehead. on

1:20:00

a case-sensitive file system. Shouldn't be that way. People

1:20:02

shouldn't be careless when they write their programs, but

1:20:06

reality is what it is. I would say the answer, as long

1:20:08

as the answer to this is, do not

1:20:10

format your file system as case-sensitive, especially

1:20:13

your boot disk, on Mac OS, and

1:20:16

expect to have a problem for your experience. Don't do

1:20:18

it. It's the legacy of software for the

1:20:20

Mac that is going to thwart you. And as much

1:20:22

as you may want to have a case-sensitive file system

1:20:25

for your own purposes, don't do

1:20:27

it. Now, if you want one, make an external

1:20:29

disk, with an external file system. Make a disk

1:20:31

image. I have this on all, I've had this

1:20:33

on every Mac for my entire existence. I've had

1:20:36

a case-sensitive file system disk image that I would

1:20:38

launch and mount and CD

1:20:40

into to do stuff. And why? Well,

1:20:42

you may be angered slash

1:20:44

surprised to learn that one of the file

1:20:47

name extensions for C++ source files in Unix,

1:20:49

the file name extension is capital C. How

1:20:52

do you feel about that? Oh, no. What? Lowercase

1:20:55

C is a C file. Capital

1:20:57

C is a C++ file. Oh, God. And

1:20:59

you may think that's not true. It's CPP.

1:21:02

It's C with two plus characters. I

1:21:05

will tell you, as an old school

1:21:07

Unix person, one of the five extensions for C++ files

1:21:09

was in the past. Capital C. And why might that

1:21:11

come up? Well, you download some of one source thing

1:21:13

and you untard and you try to build it and

1:21:16

it doesn't work. And you're like, why the hell doesn't

1:21:18

it work? And it's because when it untard, either

1:21:20

a foo.capital C, overrode

1:21:22

a foo.lowercase C, or vice versa, and now you're

1:21:25

missing one of the files. That's

1:21:27

why you need a case sensitive. So the

1:21:29

culture of Unix and all Unix software is

1:21:31

to have case sensitive file systems by default.

1:21:33

But the culture of Mac OS is not.

1:21:35

So there's tons of Mac software out there

1:21:37

where in the source code, someone copy and

1:21:39

pasted like a folder name or a file

1:21:42

name that's part of their application that

1:21:44

has the wrong case. And it's been working for 30

1:21:46

years because Mac file systems are

1:21:48

case insensitive by default. So the sad fact

1:21:51

is we are essentially all stuck with case

1:21:53

insensitive file systems, which I agree

1:21:55

that that should be the policy. I just

1:21:57

kind of wish the file system at the lowest level was case

1:21:59

sensitive. and then just the higher levels implemented that,

1:22:01

but that's not the world we live in. So

1:22:04

Pedro, case insensitive, keep

1:22:07

around a second disc or a disc image that is case

1:22:09

sensitive for when you need it. Matt

1:22:11

McCurdy writes, in the style of throw money at the problem

1:22:13

for the best product, I'm curious to know what brand of

1:22:15

ceiling fan Marco landed on. Where does one

1:22:17

shop for fans? I'm trying to avoid

1:22:19

the big box store generic brands for fear of a

1:22:22

low quality and noisy product, and then I can only

1:22:24

seem to find styles that are stuck in the 70s

1:22:26

or hyper modern like they belong in space. Switch to

1:22:28

Marco. I get space fans. So

1:22:31

the short version of this is it

1:22:34

doesn't matter in my experience

1:22:36

that much in terms of

1:22:38

like quality. I've

1:22:40

had good fans, I've had crap fans, I've had

1:22:42

fans that I picked up myself and put in

1:22:45

new, I've had fans that came with the place

1:22:47

that I was renting or an old house that

1:22:49

I bought or whatever. It's

1:22:51

not that different, because

1:22:53

fans aren't that hard to make, it turns out.

1:22:56

So buy fans that you like the

1:22:58

look and other specs of, fans that

1:23:01

fit your rooms, that fit your style.

1:23:03

For the most part, it's probably better

1:23:05

off fashion wise for you not to

1:23:07

notice your fan very much, because they're

1:23:10

not that attractive, even the nice ones.

1:23:12

So all that being said, I

1:23:15

suggest get whatever fits. The

1:23:18

ones I get are, I think the

1:23:20

nice ones, I get the Fanimation brand.

1:23:23

It is fine. I've

1:23:25

occasionally had some that got loose and rattled

1:23:27

and had to be tightened, just like any

1:23:29

other brand. Most of them have

1:23:31

been fine for years, just like any other

1:23:34

brand. The only weird thing

1:23:36

that I don't like about their fans is

1:23:38

that they seem to mostly or all now

1:23:40

come with those dumb like custom

1:23:42

remotes to control them, instead

1:23:45

of just having like three wires. Now

1:23:47

they can be adapted and converted to

1:23:50

the three wire system, but

1:23:52

that requires you to have three wire wiring

1:23:54

that goes from the switch to the fan.

1:23:58

And so in some ways, It's

1:24:00

better that they have an option to not do

1:24:02

that. If you use their little

1:24:04

smart remotes, you can just have regular

1:24:06

two-wire wiring that was never planning for a fan on

1:24:08

a certain circuit or switch, and you can make it

1:24:10

work and it will be fine. So

1:24:13

I currently, in the new house, we

1:24:16

got a bunch of Fanimation fans, and

1:24:19

they all have these dumb little remotes. So

1:24:22

I got to deal with that now. Can you

1:24:24

explain the Fanimation, the name of an anime animation?

1:24:26

Oh, that's Fanimation, sorry. I don't know. I

1:24:28

feel like there's a possible trademark conflict. Can you

1:24:30

explain the three-wire thing? I don't quite understand what

1:24:33

you're getting at there. Many fans

1:24:35

have built-in lights, and so

1:24:38

the idea is if

1:24:40

you have a switch on the wall for the fan, if

1:24:43

you only have one set of wires that runs from

1:24:45

the switch to the fan... A fan and a light

1:24:47

on the same time. Yeah, if it has the fan

1:24:49

and the light. So you have multiple options there. The

1:24:52

light switch is kind of like the main switch,

1:24:54

but then the fan will have two pull chains.

1:24:57

One for the light, one for the fan speed. That's

1:24:59

one option. Or, the nicer fans, you

1:25:01

can control them without pulling chains, but

1:25:04

then you need basically a third wire,

1:25:07

one that goes from the switch to the fan, and one that

1:25:09

goes from the switch to the fan's light. And

1:25:11

that way you can control them separately. Do

1:25:14

you have lights on your fans? I do,

1:25:16

only because most good fans come with lights.

1:25:19

I find the actual light on the

1:25:21

fan usually to be really harsh and

1:25:23

terrible. They also usually now these days

1:25:25

are custom LED fixtures, as in you

1:25:27

cannot replace the bulb, and

1:25:29

they say, oh, they last forever, and they don't. And

1:25:33

so eventually the LED in it

1:25:35

will start going bad, and we'll start flickering, or

1:25:37

we'll just outright die, and then you

1:25:39

don't have a light in your fan anymore unless you

1:25:42

go through the hassle of replacing the custom LED thing

1:25:44

in there. So for the most

1:25:46

part, no is the answer. As

1:25:48

a non-fan person, I would think what I would want

1:25:50

is a fan without a light, because it will be

1:25:52

lower profile and sleek, but that's just me thinking about

1:25:54

Headroom, I guess. In practice, the

1:25:57

LED lights only add one inch. of

1:26:00

height. Because they're not bulbs and they're

1:26:02

the stupid custom things, right? That's why

1:26:04

they're so... Yeah, you're right. Like if

1:26:06

you want to minimize, you know, the

1:26:09

protrusion from the ceiling, yeah, don't get

1:26:11

one with a light. But yeah, with

1:26:13

these modern terrible custom LED things, the

1:26:15

difference is pretty small. As a

1:26:17

final note, and I think I've

1:26:19

told the story before, I don't recall the specifics. Please,

1:26:21

please, please, please, please, talk to an electrician or do

1:26:23

your own research. But we bought space-looking

1:26:26

fans, I couldn't tell you what brand they were

1:26:28

for the screened-in porch, and they came with like

1:26:30

the RF boxes, just like

1:26:32

you described. But certain kinds

1:26:34

of fans, I want to say it's AC

1:26:36

fans, and then there's others that like have

1:26:38

a conversion into DC. Again, double check my

1:26:41

math on this, I'm probably getting this all

1:26:43

wrong. But certain kinds of fans,

1:26:45

you can... will work with, say, the former

1:26:47

sponsor, but one of my favorite things in the

1:26:49

world, the Lutron Caseta fan switches. And so what

1:26:51

we did was, or what the electricians did was

1:26:53

they wired it up to the, you know, RF

1:26:55

receiver, whatever, and then I took one

1:26:57

of them and was like, well, let me see what happens.

1:26:59

And sure enough, it's been this way for two, three years

1:27:01

now, we can use

1:27:03

them with the Caseta things, and it's working just

1:27:06

fine. And I vastly prefer that, even though the

1:27:08

Caseta, especially the early Caseta stuff, wasn't the most

1:27:10

beautiful stuff in the world, but it's extraordinarily reliable,

1:27:12

as Marco and I have talked about many times,

1:27:15

and it's so

1:27:17

much better looking than the RF boxes that were mammoth

1:27:19

and stuck out of the wall, and so on and

1:27:21

so forth. So do your own research, but

1:27:24

it is possible in certain circumstances, but

1:27:27

especially if you have a fan

1:27:29

that does not have a light in it like those

1:27:32

are, you might be able to use Casetas, which is

1:27:34

pretty... in a pretty straightforward way. Thank

1:27:37

you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace

1:27:39

and Fastmail. And thank you to our

1:27:41

members who support us directly. You can

1:27:43

join us at atv.fm slash join. Members,

1:27:45

you got a bunch of perks, including

1:27:47

ATP Overtime, a bonus segment every week.

1:27:49

This week on Overtime, we're catching

1:27:51

up with some old phones. We are

1:27:54

talking about the reviews of the Humane

1:27:56

AI pin and also

1:27:58

that automatic... has acquired Bieber.

1:28:01

So this will be interesting. Thank you so much

1:28:04

to everyone for listening and we will talk

1:28:06

to you next week. today

1:28:31

you can finish your notes

1:28:33

at a b b i s m

1:28:36

and if you're in too much to know

1:28:39

you can follow them at

1:28:41

k a s e y

1:28:43

l i s s so that's

1:28:45

k c list m a r c o

1:28:48

a r m and

1:28:50

t marco arman s i

1:28:52

r a c k

1:29:10

a c you can spot up lutron, kasada, and the switches. In

1:29:14

the new house i've had the electricians

1:29:16

put in lutron's new diva smart switches.

1:29:18

Oh those are the ones that are

1:29:21

way prettier right? Oh my god they're

1:29:23

great. So okay huge caveat

1:29:25

first of all yes they were a former sponsor. I

1:29:27

don't know if they're gonna sponsor again. Second of all

1:29:29

i've had them in my house for like two weeks.

1:29:31

But oh my god they

1:29:33

look so nice. So one of the

1:29:36

challenges of lutron's dimmers before is that

1:29:39

it was kind of like BMW's controls.

1:29:42

They were fine once you learned them but

1:29:44

when you had a guest over like how do i

1:29:46

turn on the lights. The

1:29:49

lutron switch controls in the past

1:29:51

were a little bit unintuitive. The

1:29:54

diva switch looks just like a

1:29:56

big decora style like the big

1:29:58

square paddle. switch, the up

1:30:00

and down, and then it happens to have more of

1:30:02

the little slidey dimming things on the side. But

1:30:05

the up and down is not

1:30:08

stateful. So it's always

1:30:10

rocked in the middle, and you tap it

1:30:12

up, and it rocks for a second. You

1:30:14

tap, but then you release your hand, and

1:30:16

it just goes back to the center. So

1:30:18

they can be smart-controlled, but still

1:30:20

have the look and feel of

1:30:22

regular light switches. And then other

1:30:24

huge benefit of that, I

1:30:27

know nerds out there, I

1:30:30

bet many of you, like me, when

1:30:33

you have a three-way switch in

1:30:35

your house, there is a certain

1:30:38

alignment that you consider correct. Correct.

1:30:40

Preach, brother. My life. My life in my house.

1:30:42

Yep. Oh, my gosh. Preach. And it's – oh,

1:30:45

this is going to cause a marital issue between

1:30:47

Aaron and me. Oh, gosh. Fuck of the New

1:30:49

England, where every switch is three-way. Well,

1:30:52

this is the problem, because our main kitchen

1:30:54

light has a switch at the entryway from

1:30:56

the garage and a switch where the telephone

1:30:58

would have been when the house was built,

1:31:01

like the main area of the kitchen, like halfway through the kitchen – well,

1:31:03

like the other end of the kitchen, really. But

1:31:05

right next to the main hallway downstairs. And Aaron loves

1:31:08

to use the switch by the garage

1:31:10

door, and I prefer to use the

1:31:12

switch that's on the other side. And

1:31:14

we basically just fight each other constantly.

1:31:17

We cannot stand. Oh, it drives me bananas. You

1:31:20

need to have like a summit, a switch summit,

1:31:22

where you can come to some kind of a joint

1:31:24

resolution. Yep, yep, yep. No, and I would – actually,

1:31:26

listeners – I'm so sorry railroad, did you mark over

1:31:28

this? No, no, this is great. You triggered me.

1:31:31

But listeners, it does

1:31:33

not have to be a smart switch. I does not have to be a smart

1:31:35

switch. If you have a paddle style –

1:31:37

or whatever this is called, I think Decora is what you said

1:31:40

earlier, Marco. I think that's the right name for it. Decora

1:31:42

is the large shape, like where it's like

1:31:44

a big rectangular cutout instead of like a

1:31:46

little tiny stick in the middle. It's a

1:31:48

seesaw. It's a big seesaw. It's an 80s

1:31:51

seesaw. Yeah, a big, big, big seesaw. Yeah.

1:31:53

If you have a state-free Decora switch –

1:31:55

and I don't need this to be a smart switch, but

1:31:57

based on what you just told me about this – The

1:32:00

decor is excuse me the what is the thank

1:32:02

you the diva I might be spending a lot

1:32:05

of money because these are not cheap I might

1:32:07

be spending money on these just so I never

1:32:09

have to see these stupid rockers upside down ever

1:32:11

again So it but if you know of a

1:32:13

dumb equivalent, you know a non home kit just

1:32:15

a freakin switch Please please find a way write

1:32:18

me tweet me send me a letter Shoot a

1:32:20

carrier pigeon my way do something and let me

1:32:22

know because I would I would love to have

1:32:24

one of these well I think it has to

1:32:26

be somewhat smart to make this work. Yeah, if

1:32:28

it's not smart You're just you're just making yourself

1:32:31

angry like the switches won't appear to be wrong

1:32:33

But you'll never know whether you need to hit

1:32:35

up or down to make the light go on

1:32:37

or off there Yeah, whereas like the way so

1:32:40

the way that the the smart divas work is

1:32:42

they have they sell a right like a smart

1:32:44

regular switch and then they sell Accessory

1:32:46

switches that if you put them on a three-way

1:32:48

circuit with it You can just tap

1:32:51

either one of them up or down and it

1:32:53

will turn the light on or off Exactly

1:32:55

the way it should be so both switches

1:32:57

are visually always centered and whichever one you're

1:32:59

near You can tap it up to

1:33:01

turn it on and tap it down and

1:33:04

turn it off So there is no wrong

1:33:06

configuration of a three-way circuit. It is a

1:33:08

lot is life changing like that So much

1:33:10

because I've always hated that with any with

1:33:12

all three it could not agree more I'm

1:33:14

pretty good about forcing things to be the

1:33:16

correct way our house like you know Let

1:33:20

me say we've been living in this house for over 20

1:33:22

years now 23 24 We've been

1:33:24

living in this house a long time Okay And

1:33:26

still like when my parents come to visit or

1:33:28

something they find like a switch that I didn't

1:33:30

even I forgot Existed and they will flip that

1:33:33

one it will reverse all the switches in the

1:33:35

kitchen, right? We

1:33:37

never touch What the

1:33:39

hell happened in here and I have to go and fix

1:33:41

them all like you'll know you're I think we should let

1:33:44

me just explain This briefly so people know what we're talking

1:33:46

about a three-way switch is let's just give a simple example

1:33:48

There's one light in the middle of the room and the

1:33:50

room has two switches on the wall, right? I know this

1:33:52

is something like they're in the same room But maybe there's

1:33:55

two entrances to the room Yeah two entrances of the room

1:33:57

and each entrance has a switch on the wall, right and three-way switch

1:33:59

means that if you want that light, one

1:34:01

of the switches is going to be when you push the

1:34:03

switch up, the light goes on, push the switch down, the

1:34:05

light goes on. The other switch is going to be reversed.

1:34:07

When the switch is down, the light is on, when the

1:34:09

switch is up, the light is off. And

1:34:12

what we're saying is, if you live in a

1:34:14

house for a while, you come to decide, look, the

1:34:16

switch by this door is the one that's going

1:34:18

to work as you expect. The

1:34:21

switch by this door means when you push it up, the light

1:34:23

goes on, push it down, the light goes off. And

1:34:25

that means you never touch, ever, the switch

1:34:27

by the other door. And often

1:34:29

people employ something like a piece of tape over

1:34:32

that switch. They indicate, this switch

1:34:34

is not a switch. Never touch it.

1:34:37

Because by preserving the state of this switch, like

1:34:39

tape it into the up or down position, whatever

1:34:42

it needs to be, that makes the

1:34:44

one true switch work in a sane manner. And

1:34:46

that's what we're all trying to preserve in our

1:34:48

house, is that... That's actually slightly

1:34:50

different than my situation. The kitchen switch, it

1:34:53

is... I forget the terminology.

1:34:55

I did all the switches in the house during COVID,

1:34:57

it was one of my COVID projects, and I've lost

1:34:59

all the terminology. But with the kitchen switch, I'm pretty

1:35:01

sure there's only two physical switches. I think it is

1:35:03

still considered a three-way switch, you know, in terms of

1:35:05

the wiring and all that. If

1:35:08

there is more than one physical switch, it is a... It's

1:35:10

like a plus one situation. That's what I was saying. Two

1:35:12

wall switches, one light. Yeah, if there's three switches, it's

1:35:14

a four-way. But the thing of it is, is if...

1:35:17

Maybe I somehow screwed up the wiring, but it's

1:35:19

worked in our favor, because you can have it

1:35:22

such that both of them are off and

1:35:24

the light is off. Then you turn either one

1:35:26

of them on and the light goes on. But

1:35:29

the problem is, if one of them is on

1:35:31

and you want to turn the light off from

1:35:33

the other switch, that's when it gets all backwards.

1:35:35

But my point is, there is a

1:35:38

good state when only one is up and the

1:35:40

light is on. Like, that is the standard state.

1:35:42

The problem comes where Erin will turn on the

1:35:44

one that I don't want her to turn on,

1:35:46

and I want to turn on the one that she doesn't

1:35:48

want to turn on. Yeah, but you don't want them to

1:35:50

be in essentially what you consider to be invalid states. It

1:35:52

basically comes down to the point of like, if I could

1:35:54

just erase one of these switches, and simplify it, I would.

1:35:57

But instead, I just prefer you not to use. It's

1:36:00

not used. And our weird New England house, it's convenient

1:36:02

because a lot of those switches that I don't know

1:36:04

exist, like they're behind appliances or like they're just never

1:36:06

used by anyone who lives here until someone visits and

1:36:09

somehow is looking for a light switch and they find

1:36:11

it behind the toaster and they flip it and then

1:36:13

like every light is reversed and it's madness.

1:36:17

Yeah, and modern electrical codes, you

1:36:20

know, not even that recently, I find

1:36:23

three-way switches are much, much, much more

1:36:25

common than they used to be because

1:36:27

the intent of modern

1:36:30

electrical codes is basically like you

1:36:32

should be able to find a light switch when you're entering a

1:36:34

dark room. Yeah. So,

1:36:36

okay, what if you have a big hallway? There's

1:36:39

certain conventions or some of them might even be

1:36:41

coded rules of like within a certain amount of

1:36:43

distance of a bedroom door, you want to be

1:36:45

able to come out your bedroom door and hit

1:36:47

a switch to turn on the hall light. Well,

1:36:50

if it's a long hallway, you might

1:36:52

have multiple bedroom doors that need their

1:36:55

own switches near them somewhere. So you

1:36:57

might have two, maybe even three switches

1:36:59

down this long hallway. Or four, two

1:37:02

different floors because our upstairs is like a

1:37:04