v29 - Super Switch

In this episode: Justin goes to a birthday party, drives a Tesla, and configures your BIOS.

The compliments department is, as always, available at podcast@searls.co.

Have some URLs:

• This is the combination air fryer / grill I bought
• Microsoft dropped support for non-SecureBoot PC updates last month
• Aaron's puns, ranked
• Nobody Cares
• Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
• Judge ends man’s 11-year quest to dig up landfill and recover $765M in bitcoin
• The Consensus on Havana Syndrome Is Cracking (News+)
• Meta kills diversity programs, claiming DEI has become “too charged”
• Google kills JavaScript-free searches
• Sonos still seems kinda fucked
• 5090s seem kind of like a scam
• The official Elder Scrolls: Oblivion remake leaked
• Switch 2 was unveiled
• Guy with 200bpm heart rate complains his watch isn't working (before admitting his heart isn't working)
• The Diplomat
• Conclave
• Severance Season 2 is out
• Marvel Rivals is a hit (with the Thirstlords)
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• P.T.
• A Short Hike

Transcript:

[00:00:29] Well, good morning, everyone. If it's evening, where you are, well, it's not here. So that's just what you get. You get a good morning. You can save it for later, put it in your pocket, and then the next time the sun comes up, you can just remember, ah, yes, someone did wish me a good morning today.
[00:00:48] You are currently, your ears are residing inside of Breaking Change, which is an audio production. Not to be confused with Breaking Bad, certainly not Breaking Good, just broken.
[00:01:03] You know, now that officially, officially or unofficially, TikTok is down. It's unreachable in the U.S. Aaron has reported, our Seattle correspondent, for the broadcast, that even over his VPN, he can't get to TikTok.
[00:01:24] His arms are itchy. He's scratching. He, ah, I hope, wherever you are, I hope that you and your loved ones and your teenagers are okay.
[00:01:33] But yeah, anyway, now the TikTok is down. Maybe some of you are here, because you've got nothing else to do, and you need something to fill that void. So thank you for joining.
[00:01:45] Something that I've been meaning to do at the beginning of this, of the show, for the last, well, seven versions, has been to kindly ask that you go into your podcast player of choice, and you rate and review the show.
[00:02:02] I would prefer five stars on a five-star scale, but if it was a ten-star scale, you know, ten stars would be better.
[00:02:10] Thumbs up, or whatever. Write a little review explaining why the fuck somebody would want to listen to an explicit language, you know, tech-adjacent programmer-ish gaming movie, whatever the fuck this is.
[00:02:23] Dialogue, uh, because, uh, I have found that breaking change is a really hard pitch, you know, when, when, when, when explaining to people, it's like, oh, this is me talking, just like drive-time AM radio used to be, except instead of talking about a bunch of politically charged propaganda, uh, we're just hanging out, uh, and instead of having a commute, you know, you're walking a dog, or you're doing the dishes.
[00:02:50] Although, I guess, you know, maybe you listen on a commute.
[00:02:53] I, I, I've heard, I've heard from, from listeners on road trips, listening to entire episodes all in one stretch, and that's something else.
[00:03:03] Uh, I have not heard from a lot of commuters, so if you listen to this while you're commuting, shout out at podcast at searles.co, uh, you know, if you're driving, don't, don't try to rate and review, you know, in a distracted fashion.
[00:03:16] But, but next time you think of it, you know, you, you, you slam that five-star button.
[00:03:20] You know what, it's, it's, I got a lot of subversive elements, you know, in my cadre of people, because I am a total piece of shit, and I attract, I attract the good and the bad, everyone in between.
[00:03:32] But some of us, you know, we, we, we appreciate a good troll.
[00:03:35] There is no better way to stick it to the man and, and confuse the hell out of people than for all of you to go and give this five stars in, in, in iTunes and, in your podcast player.
[00:03:46] And then have a whole bunch of people, you know, have it surface in the algorithm for others.
[00:03:51] And then they listen to this, and then they're like, what, what, what the fuck is going on to my ears right now?
[00:03:55] Uh, I am very confused.
[00:03:57] And if that's you, hell, you know what?
[00:03:59] Oh, shoot.
[00:03:59] But I'm, I'm speaking from the past.
[00:04:01] Maybe this is the, the future where this is a lot of five-star reviews and some, some, some rando outside of Argentina is, is, is getting this put into their feed for them.
[00:04:11] And now they're like, four minutes have passed.
[00:04:14] What am I doing with my life?
[00:04:15] Well, hello.
[00:04:16] You are also welcome.
[00:04:17] Good morning to you as well.
[00:04:18] Uh, by the time you're listening to this, you know, I'm recording Sunday morning.
[00:04:24] First thing, uh, I know from experience that it can be hard to pretend to work during a Trump inauguration.
[00:04:33] So, uh, I figured that instead of pretending to work, you could be here with me instead if you're listening on Monday.
[00:04:41] And if you're, if you're fortunate enough to have Monday off, um, you know, I guess one difference between the, uh, uh, the previous Trump inauguration.
[00:04:51] And this one is that the, you know, inclusivity backlash against the Trump admin, you know, that has now recently receded.
[00:05:02] If you're to believe the Bezos and billionaire class, uh, uh, has resulted in way, way more people who don't work at post offices getting MLK junior day off.
[00:05:13] So I suppose many of us are not working on Monday, but regardless, this is a version 29 of the program titled super switch.
[00:05:24] Which, you know, depending on the audience, I think a lot of, you know, probably what I mean by that.
[00:05:29] We'll, we'll talk about it later.
[00:05:30] Uh, in life news, it feels like it's been a way more than two weeks since I talked to y'all.
[00:05:37] Uh, uh, uh, when you live in a theme park, there's just a lot going on.
[00:05:42] People coming and going stuff to do, uh, uh, stimulation overload.
[00:05:49] That's why I sound so just, you know, demure downbeat chill here is because I am exhausted permanently all the time.
[00:06:02] Cause every time I leave the house, I am, I am just overstimulated.
[00:06:05] Uh, last night we went to a birthday party of a friend, uh, in the, uh, Orlando proper part of Orlando,
[00:06:12] whereas we live in theme park, Orlando.
[00:06:14] So we had to, uh, drive over the, uh, the treacherous terrain known as I four, the deadliest stretch of highway in the United States in terms of, uh, only in terms of the number of people who die on it.
[00:06:26] And the party was, uh, it was funny cause our, our friends, uh, they're building a house on this beautiful lake, huge property.
[00:06:34] It's, it's absolutely gorgeous.
[00:06:36] It's going to, the house is a custom build.
[00:06:39] And a couple of years ago, uh, the one who's, whose birthday ended up being said, you know, we're going to have my 45th birthday party here at the house.
[00:06:47] After it opens the water slide, you're going to DJs.
[00:06:50] We're going to have, it's going to be a big blowout fest.
[00:06:52] It's going to be awesome.
[00:06:53] And then his husband was like, you know, it's, it's not going to be ready yet.
[00:06:57] Don't get your hopes up.
[00:06:58] And, uh, uh, sure enough, uh, both things came to pass.
[00:07:04] The house is nowhere near ready.
[00:07:05] It is an active construction site.
[00:07:07] And they trolled us hard.
[00:07:08] They said, Hey, come to this hotel.
[00:07:09] We're going to have, you know, uh, uh, free valet or whatever.
[00:07:12] And then like, like we go into like a normal kind of like typical ballroom thing and you get a cocktail.
[00:07:19] And then these construction workers show up and they, they, they, they heard us into buses.
[00:07:24] Uh, and so people are in their cocktail attire, you know, Becky wore, uh, I don't know if you'd call them heels,
[00:07:32] but elevated shoes for, for first time in a while, more of a flats person, which I respect.
[00:07:39] Cause I'm also a flats person and, uh, we all get into the bus and everyone's dressed up.
[00:07:44] And then, uh, they, they, they drive us to, uh, the active construction site.
[00:07:47] That is our friend's house.
[00:07:49] And, uh, they had, uh, the events planners and everyone like, like actually just decorate the shit out of, you know, what, what is a lot of concrete block first floor of most homes around here is concrete.
[00:08:01] And so the bones of the house are up and they just decorated it with kind of construction paraphernalia, orange cones.
[00:08:07] All of the staff had, uh, you know, orange vests on, uh, we were all given hard hats.
[00:08:11] Uh, the theming was truly on point.
[00:08:15] Weather was perfect.
[00:08:16] Uh, and, uh, you know, it was a big raucous affair, raucous raucous, you know what I mean?
[00:08:23] So that was great.
[00:08:24] Uh, we didn't even stay out that late, but I feel like I got hit by a truck, uh, this morning.
[00:08:29] Uh, I, I kept it to a two drink maximum, which is my new go-to rule of thumb.
[00:08:34] Uh, uh, cause I always end up barely regretting the third from a, from a, an ability to sleep perspective.
[00:08:43] Afterwards, uh, other life stuff, you know, like the logistics following the death of my father.
[00:08:48] First of all, thank you very much for many of you wrote in to express sympathies, uh, probably don't, don't need to put them all in the mailbag.
[00:08:55] Cause that after a certain point, it started reads like, you know, reading birthday cards on air, uh, in terms of they all, you know, not to diminish anyone's, uh, extension of grief, uh, or, or, or sharing their own stories.
[00:09:08] But there's a certain, you know, beginning, middle and end format to, to, to, to, to, no one knows what the fuck to say.
[00:09:15] I don't know what to thank you.
[00:09:18] Um, but yeah, like I know just sort of like finances and, and forensics front of trying to figure out how to tease out all the complexities of his life that he never really told anyone about and didn't certainly didn't document, uh, that the work continues still trying to help my mom consolidate her situation.
[00:09:36] It's been, you know, just a lot of very procedural.
[00:09:42] All right, find all the stuff, organize the stuff, come up with a to-do list, figure out how to like approach this, make all the phone calls that you need to make to all these institutions to, to, to, to, to iron it out and to, to continue fact finding or to, to, to give, you know, furnish whatever documentation they need.
[00:09:57] And, and, and because it's been so, uh, I guess transactional wrote, like not to say it's colored my perception of dad or anything, you know, one way or another.
[00:10:11] Uh, but it's definitely, when I look back on this era of my life, of course, his passing is going to stand out in sharp relief, but like, that was like a week of stuff.
[00:10:21] And then the rest of it is going to be like three months of stuff.
[00:10:25] Uh, and so I wonder how that's going to affect how I, how I, how I look back on it.
[00:10:28] But one of the things I noticed is a lot of different service providers, uh, like banks, for example, that have, uh, uh, you know, bills coming up, you know, you got a credit card bill and let's say it's due.
[00:10:45] Uh, I, I don't know why I'm blanking, but January 25th and then January 18th comes around and it says, Hey, you have a statement due January 25th.
[00:10:54] Or you got an upcoming bill or you, your bill is ready to be paid.
[00:10:58] And when I get an email like that, so I just got one from dad or, you know, for dad's account from us bank.
[00:11:05] And I was like, shit.
[00:11:07] Cause I know he didn't have auto pay set up in a lot of places.
[00:11:09] Uh, and like, do I have that login?
[00:11:12] Like, you know, do I have to coordinate with mom to get the SMS thing?
[00:11:15] Like I get into it.
[00:11:16] And then sure enough, like, cause I thought I'd set up auto pay.
[00:11:19] I even had a to-do list that said, set up auto pay for this.
[00:11:21] And, uh, auto pay was set up.
[00:11:23] It was just emailing me unnecessarily anyway.
[00:11:25] You know, if you're going to have a recurring payment or an auto payment set up, it, you know, it's, it's okay to notify the customer that there's another bill coming, but it would be really sweet.
[00:11:36] If like auto pay is enabled, just so you know, you're going to, you're set to auto pay this on X and X date, uh, because if you got, you know, as many cards as some people have, uh, it can get kind of exhausting to, to just worry about, uh, well, I hope that's, that's all set up.
[00:11:53] So it's, uh, things like that are just like random nonsense stressors and the amount of context switching, because you're constantly getting emails and calls from different, from all corners.
[00:12:03] I normally screen my calls really aggressively, but you know, this month I've got a pretty much
[00:12:08] answer it no matter who's calling, which is not my favorite.
[00:12:10] And I've, I've found myself falling into something that I never thought I would do.
[00:12:17] Uh, maybe it's cause I turned 40 this week, but I'm, uh, I've always associated this with like
[00:12:24] an old, a generational thing.
[00:12:26] When somebody asks me a yes, no question, I've started saying yes or no.
[00:12:31] Like the literal word, yes.
[00:12:33] And that might sound mundane to you, but in my family growing up, the word, yes, always felt
[00:12:41] violent because everyone always had more to say, or they had a compulsion to soften it, you know,
[00:12:49] like, yeah, sounds a lot, um, neutral, accepting, open, soft.
[00:12:58] Then yes, there's a certain like hardness to yes.
[00:13:01] You ask a yes, no question.
[00:13:02] The person says, yes, it feels like there's a period at the end of that.
[00:13:05] And when you say, yeah, or okay, or all right, or, you know, you give some sort of like, you know,
[00:13:11] like an invitation to either continue with a follow-up question or, you know, be, be open to maybe a retort or something.
[00:13:20] And so I had a colleague once who is, you know, the previous generation who is my superior.
[00:13:25] And, uh, his name was Daryl.
[00:13:28] Daryl's a lovely person.
[00:13:29] But every time I asked Daryl a question and I was asking him a lot of questions because I didn't know shit about fuck.
[00:13:34] And he knew a lot of things about everything he would, he would answer every yes, no question with just the word yes or the word no.
[00:13:43] And it felt so stifling and cruel and like, you know, like, why is he shutting me down like this?
[00:13:51] Even though he's literally answering in the affirmative, there's something about the word yes.
[00:13:55] When unadorned with any sort of softeners or explanation or exposition or, or, or, or, or justification or, or invitation to, to, to follow up that feel there's the finality of it feels just rude, even though it is very literally fine.
[00:14:12] So I caught myself doing that and I guess I've become a yes man.
[00:14:16] Other life stuff.
[00:14:22] Our ninja, we have a, uh, we seem to have like every ninja kitchen appliance, um, just in some sort of rotation around, uh, you know, our, our kitchen and it feels to me like every modern home that every year, the, there's like a, a counter surface inflation where the counters keep getting bigger.
[00:14:44] The kitchen islands keep getting bigger.
[00:14:46] And then the, almost a, um, sort of like how a, a gas will expand to fill its container.
[00:14:54] Like ninja appliances will continue getting invented to fill all available counter space in every home.
[00:14:59] Uh, and the reason that ninjas been so successful is that unlike Hamilton beach and Cuisinart and stuff like their, their products are actually pretty good and do what they say on the tin.
[00:15:09] But we had a, uh, one of the air fryer units that can also, you know, pretend to be a grill, even though like all that's really happening is a hairdryer is blowing downward onto your food and any sort of heating element underneath is indirect.
[00:15:20] Uh, we had one of those and, you know, it just kind of got grody and gross from lots of oil and, and repeat washings and, you know, food stuck to the basket.
[00:15:31] And it was, it was, it was no longer, you know, how sometimes you use one of these appliances, you don't clean it as intentionally or as frequently as maybe the instruction manual tells you to.
[00:15:42] And eventually your food starts tasting like, you know, the bottom of the, uh, the, the, the, the, the deep fryer at, at McDonald's, like, just like that oil tarry kind of like, you know, afterglow.
[00:15:55] Which makes, it takes, it really takes the shine off of, uh, whatever the omega threes that you're trying to get out of your fishes.
[00:16:00] Uh, so, so we, we bought a new one and what I really wanted out of a new one was one with like multiple heating elements.
[00:16:08] Like where, where there was an actual grill that could sear stuff and cook from the bottom up, but also a convection oven that could crisp it up and, and, and, and sort of dehumidify.
[00:16:18] And amazingly, Ninja does sell this product.
[00:16:22] Uh, it was called, uh, see if I can link to it.
[00:16:25] The Ninja convection plus grill.
[00:16:27] Oh no, that wasn't it.
[00:16:28] It's, it's got a name.
[00:16:29] Uh, something, something, grid IG 651.
[00:16:35] Okay.
[00:16:35] There you go.
[00:16:35] I'll put a link in the show notes.
[00:16:37] Uh, so the IG 651, whatever, it's got like a barbecue griddle on it.
[00:16:41] It seems, it seems nice.
[00:16:43] Uh, and it does exactly that.
[00:16:46] It's got like a big wide surface element.
[00:16:48] You can, you, you plug it in.
[00:16:49] It's a very complicated, unnecessarily.
[00:16:51] So a complicated thing where it's, it looks like you kind of take a George Foreman style griddle.
[00:16:55] It's angled forward, meaning like it's got, you know, uh, I said griddle at just like the slabby kind of, of, of metal slats, slats, you know, where you, you put the burger on it.
[00:17:07] And then it's like, you know, remember the George Foreman marketing?
[00:17:10] I'm sure you do like, you know, like it's like at the, like, like the, the squeezing iconography to, to indicate like the fat is coming out and then that will make this healthier, even though the fat is often the best part.
[00:17:20] Uh, so it's, it's got that it plugs into some like electrical, you know, electrode input thing with two little donguses.
[00:17:28] I don't know why I'm even trying to explain this.
[00:17:30] It's fine.
[00:17:30] And you plug that in, you can wash it separately, but you can put a griddle on top that kind of maps to it.
[00:17:36] So it'll pick up that heat.
[00:17:37] And that is a flat surface, which can be nice.
[00:17:40] If you're, if you're maybe, you know, toasting a sandwich or something.
[00:17:46] And yeah, the thing about it, the thing about that search was that trying to answer the question of what heating elements are in this smart cooking appliance proved to be extremely difficult.
[00:18:00] You go to the Amazon listing, you go to the product page.
[00:18:03] I read up on every single Ninja product that does this.
[00:18:06] I started looking at other products that do this.
[00:18:09] I started looking at things that ran themselves as smart ovens that, you know, advertise having, uh, multiple heating elements, you know, like the June oven did this.
[00:18:16] I think that's out of business now.
[00:18:18] Tovala did this.
[00:18:18] I think that's going out of business now where they would have, you know, like, um, maybe a microwave element plus a steam cooking element, or maybe they'd have a convection fan inside and also, um, an induction plate underneath.
[00:18:31] And none of them have really taken off in the U S unfortunately, uh, such that.
[00:18:39] It is a product category that the consumers are educated about, like what they're getting into in Japan.
[00:18:45] There's a product called health.
[00:18:46] You know, like literally like health EO, but THs are hard and it's got like the basic models have four or five different ways to heat your food.
[00:18:56] And then like, it's really smart in that you, you punch in a code, like a recipe code, and it'll just do everything cradle to grave for you with the advanced sensors that it has.
[00:19:04] And kind of move between whatever combination at whatever point in the cooking process, all of those heating elements need to be arranged.
[00:19:11] And so things come out almost better than a human could do them because they never have to be removed from this hermetically sealed environment, you know, for people's hands to come in and, and, and adjust how the thing is being heated.
[00:19:26] Because in Japan, that product has been so successful that the two or three different tiers of that product, not only are they all good, but like, no one needs to be explained what's there.
[00:19:36] Like the, the, the, the, it could just be like the higher level of literacy and, and, and education generally in Japan.
[00:19:42] But in general, like, it's just, it's really straightforward.
[00:19:46] And here, it seems to be that like people just want a device that they can throw food in.
[00:19:52] And then as long as they're picking off a menu and it has words like grill, they will feel good about it.
[00:19:58] And no one's going to ask, where's the heat coming from?
[00:20:01] How is this getting cooked?
[00:20:02] Which now that I say it, of course, like Americans don't give a fuck how the thing gets accomplished or without it gets accomplished well, typically, uh, just that, uh, you know, they know what box to put the food in and then the button to hit, which is, you know, a little bit condescending, but, you know, y'all have earned it in my opinion.
[00:20:20] Uh, so yeah, we got it.
[00:20:22] It works.
[00:20:22] Uh, uh, as far as I know, I turned it on the preheating started.
[00:20:26] We have not yet, you know, broken the seal and actually cooked with it yet, but I'm glad, I'm glad to have that because I think, I think, I think.
[00:20:32] Shit will turn out better, especially salmon, which is increasingly the number one thing that we were using our air fryer for, which was an inefficient, uh, use case.
[00:20:40] Speaking of the parks being really busy, uh, and, and life here being overstimulating on Friday, I found myself really testing the fences on this new being 40 year old thing.
[00:20:55] I, uh, got up at 5am with Becky.
[00:20:59] We had a special event at Disney's Hollywood studios that started at six.
[00:21:03] We got there.
[00:21:04] There were other people there.
[00:21:05] We went to bed early, you know, to, to, to, to be able to, to do this and not be super groggy and miserable, had a great time.
[00:21:13] And then we had some friends coming into the park just about an hour after that, that, that event wrapped.
[00:21:18] And so we went and visited with them for a little bit.
[00:21:20] Then we came home and tried to recover some sort of a productive day by then it was noon.
[00:21:25] Uh, and then that evening, cause the same friends that they had their big day, I wanted to debrief with, uh, uh, my buddy before he, uh, John, his name is John.
[00:21:35] He is a listener of the program.
[00:21:38] So hi, John.
[00:21:38] Hello.
[00:21:40] Uh, when to do debrief with him.
[00:21:43] So we went over to a bar called trader Sam's, which is a grog grotto.
[00:21:47] It's in the Polynesian resort hotel.
[00:21:49] And it's one of my favorite bars because it's got like a lot of like little imagineering knickknacks and stage elements that, that have since become very common at Tiki bars.
[00:21:58] But we got in there, we spent a couple hours and then pretty soon I realized, Oh fuck, it's midnight.
[00:22:03] And I've literally been Disney it up to some extent, uh, since 6am.
[00:22:10] And so, you know, I actually, I got a second wind in there, but I ultimately didn't get, get to bed until like two.
[00:22:16] Uh, so that was a, it was a big day.
[00:22:19] I feel like I did all right.
[00:22:20] Uh, from an energy level perspective, I think I, I was the person that I needed to be in all of the interactions I had that day.
[00:22:28] And that's probably the most I can say.
[00:22:29] Uh, I'm simultaneously finding that my body is falling apart.
[00:22:33] My, my, uh, left hip is pretty grumpy.
[00:22:38] Uh, it's just some sort of like a constant dull discomfort, uh, feels like a dislocated shoulder, but no matter how much PT I do,
[00:22:46] I, I, I seem to never fully, fully beat it.
[00:22:49] Um, I need a smart, the smart oven equivalent for, for, uh, you know, muscle therapies that people do.
[00:23:00] It's like, Oh, you can get some of the, it'll, it'll apply the icy hot and also, you know, drill you with a Theragun and also massage you and also use the, you know, resistant bands exercises to strengthen it.
[00:23:09] Uh, just all simultaneously.
[00:23:10] Cause it's like this round robin of, of attempts I've had to, to restore this fucking hip.
[00:23:17] Uh, it has been great.
[00:23:19] So that's been a constant thing.
[00:23:21] New things are like my right knee now hurts like hell.
[00:23:23] My left, my left heel, just the skin started cracking from how dry it's been here.
[00:23:28] And of course it's still way more humid here than the rest of the nation, but apparently my skin is so used to the humidity, uh, that I just woke up one morning and it hurt to walk because all my skin was exposed because all my skin and my foot had cracked.
[00:23:40] You know, like what the hell's going on?
[00:23:42] So, uh, if you're, uh, approaching 40 and you're worried about it, good.
[00:23:48] I don't know that I recommend it so far, uh, but I'm still here, still kicking.
[00:23:53] Uh, uh, well, I, so far I almost didn't make it to be honest.
[00:23:59] Uh, you know, well, I, if I'm going to talk about this next topic, uh, it's something that's come up in the show before.
[00:24:09] And so I think that technically makes it follow up.
[00:24:11] So let me hit this button right here.
[00:24:13] Yeah.
[00:24:20] So speaking of dying right before you turn 40, I, I'd mentioned that I four interstate four that runs east, west in, uh, through bisecting Orlando.
[00:24:37] It's, uh, known to be, and I fact checked this against GPT cause I knew I'd probably end up talking about it.
[00:24:45] Deadliest stretch of highway in the U S and you know, I'm a, I'm an experienced driver insofar as I've been driving for 24 years.
[00:24:54] I don't like love it.
[00:24:56] I'm not a car guy.
[00:24:57] Uh, I, I feel like I drive fine, relatively safely, probably more on the conservative side.
[00:25:05] Overall.
[00:25:06] I do speed from time to time, but you know, as long as if you're in America and you're speeding, as long as you use the phrase flow of traffic, uh, you can do whatever you want.
[00:25:17] And the problem is that when you live in theme park Orlando and you need literally anything that is not entertainment and hospitality related, uh, like for example, you know, I, I, and this is what puts this into the followup bucket of content.
[00:25:35] Uh, I've been talking on and off about having, uh, struggling with snoring.
[00:25:38] You know, I've been, uh, uh, doing that thing that a lot of middle-aged husbands start doing and deciding to interrupt their spouse's sleep by, by, by suddenly picking up this cool new habit.
[00:25:49] That is just making wheezing sounds all night long.
[00:25:53] And mine's really inconsistent.
[00:25:56] It's clearly triggered by something.
[00:25:57] Couldn't really tell what, you know, is it diet or whatever.
[00:26:00] It's like clearly like none of the symptoms of apnea.
[00:26:03] So that's probably not it.
[00:26:04] Given that I feel fully rested after like four hours and I've never feeling short of breath.
[00:26:08] Uh, you know, the new Apple watch has an apnea detection and it seems to not be detecting any apnea.
[00:26:16] So I finally got a sleep study ordered and the doctor who is a very nice lady, she, you know, she's just like the reality of insurance right now is, uh, I will put in a request for an in, in a let in lab sleep study.
[00:26:33] So we can watch you because the alternative is an at home sleep study.
[00:26:36] And based on everything you're saying, there is a 0.0% chance that that at home sleep study is going to find anything.
[00:26:44] Uh, and then I was like, well, then let's just do the in lab.
[00:26:46] Like you're saying, well, she's like, oh, the insurance will surely deny based on what you're saying, uh, an in lab sleep study.
[00:26:53] Uh, you have to do, you have to go through the motions of this at home sleep study first, and then it has to show nothing.
[00:27:00] And then I can put in a script again for the in lab.
[00:27:04] Uh, and, and then the prior authorization will go through and then you'll be able to do that.
[00:27:09] And so I have to kind of do this performative nothing operation, just nothing like procedure, operation procedure.
[00:27:18] It's over, you know, like diagnostic, you know, just to check some boxes and money is changing hands invisibly to me at every step.
[00:27:27] Of course, for the most part, thanks, thanks to having health insurance.
[00:27:30] So I, I, I schedule this and it's an at home sleep study.
[00:27:36] Like there are services that mail these units, you know, they could ship it.
[00:27:40] I could, I don't know, find a courier or something, but nope, this one, I have to drive to the other fucking side of Orlando, which is, you know, it's 20 miles, but it's like a 45 minute hour long adventure.
[00:27:49] And I have to calling them the rules of the game were that I had to, uh, drive there Sunday night to pick it up, come back Tuesday night to drop it off.
[00:28:00] And they, because of sleep study locations, this is like an actual, you know, testing center.
[00:28:07] Uh, they literally open at 6 30 PM in the evening.
[00:28:10] Uh, you know, so that's when their shift starts.
[00:28:13] So I had to get there at 6 30.
[00:28:15] So that means like, I'm basically fighting through rush hour into town and then pick it up and now I'm coming back home and now it's like eight.
[00:28:22] So I guess I'll just eat dinner by myself or whatever.
[00:28:25] Uh, and it's not like in a part of town where it's like, Hey, we can go downtown and like make a date, make a night date night out of it and go to like a fun restaurant.
[00:28:33] It's like, this is a, I don't know what I, I have many times in this program suggested you should move to Orlando.
[00:28:41] Orlando's great.
[00:28:41] I love life in Orlando, but like whenever I leave the bubble of like theme park party time, Orlando, where everything's just really, really nice and customer service is incredible.
[00:28:50] And the food's really great.
[00:28:52] And, and it's just a party.
[00:28:53] Uh, and I go to like real Florida.
[00:28:56] I'm like, Oh yeah, I need to stop recommending people move to Orlando.
[00:28:59] Cause this is like the median experience.
[00:29:01] And I wouldn't, I would not, I can't do this for an hour.
[00:29:05] I don't know how I would possibly live here.
[00:29:07] No offense to Orlando, but I, uh, I went and I picked it up.
[00:29:12] I drove my car there on Sunday night and traffic was pretty bad, but it's always pretty bad.
[00:29:18] I had numerous cases of people jumping in front of the car on the way onto the highway.
[00:29:23] Once I was on the highway, I get into the new express lanes, which do make things easier.
[00:29:27] You pay a toll and you get, uh, you know, expedited traffic.
[00:29:30] Um, and somebody had pulled over into the shoulder.
[00:29:34] And as soon as he pulls over, he just whips open his, his driver's side door off of the shoulder.
[00:29:41] And now the door is in my lane.
[00:29:43] And there's of course, somebody on my left causing me to, uh, flip out and have to slam the brakes to, to the point of like, you know, bad enough that smoke is happening.
[00:29:53] Right.
[00:29:53] Like you can smell the burnt tire because this dude is just like, I'm on the highway.
[00:29:57] I can open my door.
[00:29:58] I'm a, I'm a big man.
[00:29:59] I'm driving a truck.
[00:30:00] So I chose not to blow his door off.
[00:30:05] Uh, then on the way home, it was one of those ordeals where, uh, it's a, a sign said congestion, like eight, four miles ahead.
[00:30:16] I was like, oh, four miles.
[00:30:17] Okay.
[00:30:17] Maybe I'll find an opportunity to take, get off the highway or I'll get onto the express lane and try to avoid it.
[00:30:21] And, uh, Apple maps was saying I should turn right at the Kia center, which is like where the Orlando magic play.
[00:30:27] And then take three more rights and then get back on the highway.
[00:30:30] And I was like extremely convinced that this was just some sort of, you know, Apple maps fuckery.
[00:30:36] Uh, and, and the nav and the computer being wrong because it often is, I was like, I'm going to stay on the highway.
[00:30:42] I'm a smart guy and the instant that I passed that exit that it wanted me to take, everything became a parking lot and, and such a parking lot that it became road ragey pretty quickly with people driving and shoulders and honking and trying to edge each other out and motorcycles going between lanes.
[00:30:58] And, and, and there's just a, you know, there's probably a metric that you could use for any civilization called like, uh, TTMM time to Mad Max.
[00:31:10] And Florida has a very low TTMM, you know, it doesn't take long at all for every man for himself, uh, instincts to seemingly kick in.
[00:31:22] So I, I did the rerouting and now, now the phone is telling me, all right, well, you know, literally it's so demoralizing.
[00:31:32] You see the ETA to your home arrival move literally 40 minutes immediately because I chose not to take it's very wonky prescription of three right turns.
[00:31:42] And now I realized in hindsight, the reason it wanted me to do that is there's a direct entrance onto the express lane.
[00:31:47] And so not only did the ETA go up, not only do I have the regret that I didn't listen to the computer for, for telling me to do a stupid thing, but I also now am shamed by the insult on wounds here.
[00:31:58] The left of me, the express lanes are wide open and there's just like five cars just having a great time going 80 miles an hour to get to where they want.
[00:32:05] And everybody else is left in just this, this, this, this absolutely falling down style, uh, traffic jam, uh, or just after dark.
[00:32:17] I did get home, I, I took a side street and it was one of those ordeals where you, you know, you take the side street, go up a couple of blocks, you go, you know, uh, turn left, kind of go, I don't know, maybe a half mile just past wherever, whatever accident was causing the congestion.
[00:32:34] Then you get back on the highway.
[00:32:34] And the problem was, of course, we all have automated navigation systems.
[00:32:41] They all reroute us.
[00:32:42] And so that was immediately backed up there that it was three traffic lights of people in the left lane, trying to, to turn onto that third traffic light.
[00:32:52] And I, it would have been another 20 minutes just waiting for those light changes.
[00:32:56] And so I just, you know, fortunately I had a brain and I was like, all right, I'm going to just blow past this and go in the right lane and drive forward three, three intersections and then do a U-turn turn right.
[00:33:08] And then I, I successfully beat the rush and I got home and I, it merely only wasted 20 minutes of my time, but here, this story has already wasted five minutes of your time.
[00:33:16] So it was death defying because even once off the highway, virtually none of those drivers had ever been on those side streets or in that neighborhood before.
[00:33:27] And they were all driving like it and they were all driving like it and it was dark and there were not adequate streetlights.
[00:33:31] So, uh, you know, it's not just that like Florida drivers are bad, but like you are surrounded by a certain number of frazzled dads who just picked up rental cards, cars from MCO, who are trying to get to their Disney hotel, who just had a flight delay, whose kids are screaming.
[00:33:48] And nobody's happy like that is the default and that is the best case energy because like, you know, that's before you consider the, the, the capital F capital M Florida men and the tweakers and everyone else that just kind of contributes to this diverse fabric of society that we live in.
[00:34:08] So, uh, that was a bad experience.
[00:34:12] I, I did get home, you know, I am still with us, but by the time I got home, I was, I was so fried.
[00:34:18] Like I, I, I, I, I didn't want to hang out.
[00:34:22] I didn't want to talk to Becky.
[00:34:22] Just wanted to like pour a whiskey and collapse.
[00:34:25] Uh, the stress level is so high.
[00:34:28] Like, and you can, I looked at my watch, right.
[00:34:30] And I was looking at like the heart rate history and I was like, you know, I was white knuckling it.
[00:34:34] Um, and that's, and that's partly on me, right?
[00:34:36] Like I just, I don't, I don't like that kind of driving.
[00:34:39] I don't like that stress.
[00:34:39] Two days later, when I had to drop this device off, uh, the device itself was terrible, by the way, it was probably less sophisticated than my Apple watch and probably reading like less accurate, uh, heart rate.
[00:34:57] And, and even the, the modern Apple watch like does track breathing.
[00:35:00] That's how it does a sleep apnea thing, uh, uh, through the magic of gyroscopes.
[00:35:05] And, uh, this device is a piece of shit and I'm sure somehow the rental fee for, for a one-time use was $1,500 to my insure.
[00:35:12] Uh, and I'm sure it found nothing.
[00:35:15] I can totally, like, I don't know how it would find anything.
[00:35:17] Uh, it looked like it was built out of, you know, Teddy Ruxpin era, you know, technology in the mid eighties with, with the, the quality of the, the, the straps and the plastic.
[00:35:29] I could just, but when I had to, when it, when time came to drop it off, I really did not want to repeat that experience on a weeknight when you, you know, traffic would be even worse.
[00:35:41] And so I, I humbly asked my brother who has a Tesla, I said, Hey, uh, there's another follow-up item.
[00:35:48] We, we, we, we picked it up together just in October.
[00:35:51] I think, uh, I said, Hey man, like, can I swing by or you swing by drop off your Tesla?
[00:35:59] He did some stuff to do at our house anyway.
[00:36:01] And he's got the full self-driving like, like, uh, they keep renewing a 30 day trial for him.
[00:36:09] And, uh, you know, full self-driving isn't, it is, uh, the car will drive itself.
[00:36:14] You don't have to touch the wheel.
[00:36:16] It, it, it, it, it's very conservative.
[00:36:18] It has three modes, chill, uh, normal and hurried or hurry.
[00:36:23] I've never tried hurry.
[00:36:24] I don't need to try hurry.
[00:36:26] I just stick on chill because at the end of the day, as long as I get to where I'm going,
[00:36:29] I sort of don't care.
[00:36:30] I'm not in a big rush.
[00:36:32] Uh, I have the luxury of not needing to be anywhere in any particular pace.
[00:36:37] As long as I leave on time, you know, I'm, and I'm going to get there by the time I promise
[00:36:41] the chill is good with me and the, you have to supervise it.
[00:36:48] And it was the case when the full self-driving crap and Tesla's first hit that people were,
[00:36:55] you know, at first it was just like pressure testing the steering column.
[00:36:58] And so people would like use like, uh, uh, weights, like, like weighted wristbands and
[00:37:04] stuff to like make it trick the steering column into thinking that somebody was holding onto
[00:37:08] the wheel.
[00:37:08] Uh, and now they have cameras that look at you like inside the cabin and that, that camera
[00:37:15] is using some amount of intelligence to determine that you're distracted or not.
[00:37:19] So if you are looking a lot at the central, uh, tablet, it'll bark at you and say, Hey, pay
[00:37:23] attention to the road.
[00:37:25] If you're looking at your phone, it'll do the same.
[00:37:26] If you're looking at a watch, you know, like I've had it even like when I'm talking to the
[00:37:30] watch and looking forward, have it bark at me.
[00:37:31] And as soon, as soon as it does it, it makes a beep and then it gets increasingly aggressive
[00:37:36] and beeps louder.
[00:37:37] You impressively.
[00:37:39] I say this because like, you know, I'm sure that the reason it's like this is because Tesla
[00:37:43] is trying to minimize it's like legal liability for accidents caused by its system.
[00:37:47] If, if, if, if you ignore its beeps three times in a day, uh, you, you get a strike, the system
[00:37:56] will disengage and you will be forced to manually drive your car like a plebeian for the rest
[00:38:01] of the day.
[00:38:01] At least that's how Jeremy explained it to me.
[00:38:03] If you get five strikes, I want to say it is, um, you're just exited from your, you're ejected
[00:38:12] from the full self-driving program.
[00:38:14] And I am impressed not only that it's as aggressive as it is, like, you know, if you got to look
[00:38:22] at the screen for something, you've got to adjust it.
[00:38:23] You basically have seven or eight seconds to, you know, fix the mirrors or whatever it is
[00:38:28] before you got to be looking at the road again.
[00:38:29] I'm also like finding myself that when I'm driving his vehicle, I actually am significantly less
[00:38:36] distracted than in my own Ford escape, which has car play.
[00:38:39] And I typically don't touch the phone itself, but I, um, you know, I tune out a little bit
[00:38:44] or, uh, you know, might look at something or might be tapping away at the, uh, you know,
[00:38:49] the eye messages and, and, and, and whatnot seemingly longer in those cases than like what the Tesla
[00:38:55] would let me get away with.
[00:38:56] So I'm paying more attention to the road because the computer is telling me to, or forcing me
[00:39:01] to, and I am also doing less of the driving.
[00:39:05] So, you know, my foot's off the pedal, my foot, my hands are off the steering.
[00:39:08] And when they say supervised, it's actually like the right word, like it is doing the
[00:39:14] driving, but like the, it feels almost like a pilot co-pilot thing where I, your head's
[00:39:22] on a swivel.
[00:39:23] Like I can look to the left and I can look to the right and I have far greater situational
[00:39:27] awareness as the car is driving.
[00:39:28] Now, granted a lot of these like semi-autonomous and, and adaptive, you know, uh, uh, uh, assistance
[00:39:35] in cars will for most people lull them into a false sense of security and result in further
[00:39:44] driver inattentiveness and unsafety, right?
[00:39:46] Like people will, you'll train them out of the vigilance that you need at all times when
[00:39:52] you're the one driving a vehicle or being driven in a vehicle.
[00:39:55] However, like the particular, and maybe it's just cause I'm kind of coming in and chapter
[00:40:00] four of this particular saga of full self-driving and robo taxis will be here in six months as
[00:40:05] Elon Musk.
[00:40:06] And of course they're not there, but it seems like at least the way that I've experienced
[00:40:13] full self-driving when I've used it, it seems to me like I feel a thousand times safer because
[00:40:21] the combination of the car, mostly doing the right thing, mostly making the conservative
[00:40:25] choice, absolute worst case.
[00:40:27] It haunt, it blares at you and you need to take over, uh, combined with my own hypervigilance
[00:40:35] of not, you know, I constitutionally do not trust computers and you know, Jeremy doesn't
[00:40:41] either.
[00:40:42] And so when we're driving these things, we're looking around all the time where we're, we're,
[00:40:45] we're sort of, because we have a curiosity and how the technology works, like trying to think
[00:40:49] about how is it thinking through this?
[00:40:51] Like, like we have a lot of, for example, um, automated gated communities where like the,
[00:40:56] the gates will open and closed when you're, when you're entering and exiting.
[00:41:00] It's like, we, we look at the little like computer screens, like how does it, how does it, what
[00:41:04] does it think is in front of it right now?
[00:41:05] It sees that there's an obstruction.
[00:41:07] Uh, and if it opens too slowly, is it thinking it's a permanent obstruction or is it going to
[00:41:11] wait and then proceed after the thing opens automatically?
[00:41:14] Like there's a lot of little moments like that, where it's actually kind of interesting
[00:41:17] to see how, you know, how the car reacts and then it gets a software update and then how
[00:41:22] the car reacts after that.
[00:41:23] And then additionally, there's the typical ebb and flow of software updates generally where
[00:41:28] there's regressions, right?
[00:41:29] Like there was a version of this, uh, system that, that the ability, like it used to blow
[00:41:35] past this one particular speed bump, uh, uh, near our neighborhood, uh, because it didn't
[00:41:41] have sufficient paint on the road to indicate that it was a speed bump.
[00:41:45] And then there was a software update and then it perfectly negotiated all four speed bumps
[00:41:49] just right in a row every single time.
[00:41:52] And then there was another update and now it blows past the third speed bump again.
[00:41:56] And so, uh, I think that people who are technology enthusiasts who maybe follow this stuff and
[00:42:05] understand how, what software is, how it works, that updates are not a pure linear, you know,
[00:42:11] march of progress, I think the idea that there would be regressions in software releases or
[00:42:18] even, uh, non-determinism in how the, how the computer car operates, that's totally natural
[00:42:24] to me.
[00:42:24] And I expect it now.
[00:42:25] I, I grown at it and I think like, this is, this is probably a bad idea in aggregate and
[00:42:31] at a population level.
[00:42:33] I suspect that the average driver would be confused by that the same way that like the
[00:42:38] average person is terrified of updating their phone or their computer because they associate
[00:42:43] software updates with, uh, uh, you know, newness and unawareness and, and, and, and, and, and all
[00:42:51] the things that they finally had working, no longer working.
[00:42:54] And when they, but when you talk about the, the march of progress and technology, they sort
[00:43:00] of have a, what it is, is whenever anything goes wrong with technology, if you're not, if
[00:43:08] you're not primed to know that it's burning you is, it seems like people mostly blame themselves
[00:43:13] instead of blaming the technology.
[00:43:15] And if that's your, if that's the way you use your phone or your computer, uh, you
[00:43:21] know, when, when the car makes a mistake, you might not realize it as a car making mistake
[00:43:26] and you might not have the hypervigilance.
[00:43:27] That's like, you know, a more adversarial, like, like, I feel like I'm constantly spot checking
[00:43:31] it.
[00:43:31] And I, and while I am surprisingly impressed with how well it's been negotiating everything
[00:43:37] that we've thrown at it so far, it's made one or two mistakes and I've, I've, I've,
[00:43:41] I've, I've dealt with it, but on net, like it's driving waste.
[00:43:45] Way more safely than I am way.
[00:43:47] And it's, it's taught me a few things.
[00:43:49] It's like, Oh yeah.
[00:43:49] Like whenever I do this at an intersection, like that's really dumb.
[00:43:52] Like it's doing this way better.
[00:43:53] Uh, I can't think of a specific example, but like, I'm pretty impressed.
[00:43:58] And so I thought, well, I'll ask Jeremy to borrow the car because I've got this natural
[00:44:03] experiment now, same time of day, uh, same location.
[00:44:07] So I already know how to get there.
[00:44:08] It's a, it's a little bit goofy, but like, because I was just there, I'm not going to feel
[00:44:12] like I'm learning how to get, get there and also learning how to use this.
[00:44:15] Auto driving system simultaneously.
[00:44:17] And, uh, holy shit.
[00:44:20] Like, yes, I had people jump out in front of the car.
[00:44:23] It was even worse this time at the particular intersection before you get to the, to, to
[00:44:27] I four and the car like saw them out of its blind spot while it was turning, right.
[00:44:32] It saw them on the left camera and breaks perfectly.
[00:44:37] Uh, and I, uh, my first reaction was like, I would not have caught that.
[00:44:40] I probably would have cut it real close.
[00:44:44] Uh, almost hitting these people.
[00:44:45] Uh, you get onto the highway and then this is why I emphasize like I four is like the deadliest
[00:44:51] highway in America because it's, it is, it is not like driving on the highway, wherever
[00:44:59] the fuck you live like anywhere I was ever in Michigan or Ohio or anywhere else in the
[00:45:04] U S or certainly anywhere I've driven in Japan.
[00:45:06] Those are the only places I suppose I've driven or Canada.
[00:45:09] Like, yes, sometimes it's a little stressful driving on the highway.
[00:45:12] Like that's not what this is.
[00:45:14] This is, you have to practice extreme defensive driving.
[00:45:18] And if you actually want to get where you're going, you also have to practice offensive
[00:45:21] driving.
[00:45:21] Uh, so having, uh, you know, nine cameras and nine directions is just necessary for basic
[00:45:28] like assurance of survival.
[00:45:31] Like when I'm on I four, I, I feel constantly under threat.
[00:45:35] Uh, and something happens every time.
[00:45:39] So we get on the highway and that stuff does happen.
[00:45:42] Uh, you know, the car on its own decided to take the express lanes by itself, which was
[00:45:46] incredible, but like people were like, I was trying to merge into a lane.
[00:45:50] And then as, as the things, well, it was trying to merge into a lane.
[00:45:53] And as it was changing lanes, somebody who didn't even have a blinker on starts edging in
[00:45:58] and the car knows I'm going to back off.
[00:45:59] Uh, there was another case of somebody swerving into our lane, like very close to the car and
[00:46:05] the car, you know, defensively, you know, switch to the right lane, which was wide open
[00:46:11] to prevent the risk that like, you know, it might have to break.
[00:46:14] Suddenly there wasn't enough distance between the cars.
[00:46:16] And that was stuff that like, I only was actually even able to piece together.
[00:46:19] What the fuck was it doing after the fact?
[00:46:20] Like looking at the map and looking around me, it's just, it went great.
[00:46:28] Got there, dropped the shit off, turned around, you know, the parking is wonderful too, because
[00:46:34] it'll back into every parking spot.
[00:46:36] You just tap the screen.
[00:46:37] Like it'll see the parking spots.
[00:46:38] You just tap which one you want and just, it handles it for you.
[00:46:40] It parks way better than I park.
[00:46:42] I don't know, man.
[00:46:43] And on the ride home, not only, you know, everything around me felt like it was on fire and chaos,
[00:46:50] but because I had a buddy who was doing the driving and I could just kind of be, you know,
[00:46:54] patrolling and looking around, I actually got a, a low heart rate notification on my watch,
[00:47:00] which I get, I get them frequently.
[00:47:01] Cause I have a low resting heart rate, but like it would say, Hey, your, your heart rate's
[00:47:05] been under 40 beats per minute for the last 10 minutes.
[00:47:08] And, uh, which I, if that's not you, that's like, if that's not typical for you, that might
[00:47:14] sound scary, but like, no, my, my resting heart rate when I'm actually like de-stressed and,
[00:47:17] and just chill is like typically like 38.
[00:47:20] So the fact that I could be on I4 with a heart rate under 40 feeling completely safe more than
[00:47:27] anything, it's not about going fast or whatever.
[00:47:29] It's like feeling like I've got a team of two that are dedicated to getting me home safely,
[00:47:32] me and this computer.
[00:47:34] Uh, it was a revelatory experience now that look, I realized it's a complicated situation
[00:47:44] because Elon is a big old bucket of assholes and the politics of it are all fucked.
[00:47:50] Uh, you know, the right time to buy a Tesla was, was when, uh, everyone agreed that, that
[00:47:54] they were cool and EVs were good and the planet deserves saving.
[00:47:57] Uh, but yeah, I got, I totally saw where, where my brother was coming from and all of his friends
[00:48:03] who, who, who, who are similar technologists who, who have these things and who are, you
[00:48:07] know, who got on board in the very recent hardware three or hardware four era of Tesla.
[00:48:12] Um, particularly with like the, the, the entry level models that are higher volume and therefore
[00:48:17] kind of more, uh, consistently produced, you know, the cyber truck, for example, more, most
[00:48:26] expensive, but lowest volume and has the most problems.
[00:48:29] The model Y at this point is pretty boring and dull, but like, you know, if, if you, if
[00:48:34] you are like me and just kind of think of cars, the modern day car is just a tablet with wheels.
[00:48:40] This is a, you know, and I, yes, I had, I had low expectations.
[00:48:46] I had a high level of suspicion, but it went great.
[00:48:48] And, uh, uh, I, I, I successfully dropped off my snoring thing.
[00:48:55] I can't wait to get the results.
[00:48:57] That'll tell me that, uh, you know, nothing happened.
[00:48:59] Another bit of follow-up.
[00:49:01] I think I'd mentioned that I, uh, I had used rocket money.
[00:49:05] So, you know, it used to be called true bill and then quick and loans bought it.
[00:49:08] And, uh, the, as quick and loan started branding itself as rocket and having this rocket suite
[00:49:13] of products, rocket money became, it's, you know, a consumer entree into upselling it to
[00:49:18] other products and rocket monies, you know, promises.
[00:49:21] It's going to help you, uh, visualize all your subscriptions and even negotiate a tiny, tiny
[00:49:27] sliver of those subscriptions.
[00:49:28] And the one that I yielded to it was my spectrum account.
[00:49:32] So my ISP had, had gradually been charging me more and more to the point where it was
[00:49:36] like $145 after tax every month for the same internet program.
[00:49:39] That was like a hundred dollars when I moved here.
[00:49:41] And I was very skeptical when rocket money said, Hey, we just saved you $893 a year, uh, by,
[00:49:48] by lowering your monthly bill to 70 bucks.
[00:49:50] And they sent me a new modem as well.
[00:49:53] And I was like, I don't need a new modem.
[00:49:55] It's the, it's, it's the model number.
[00:49:56] It looks almost identical.
[00:49:57] And I, I was actually at UPS returning that modem.
[00:50:01] And I just thought to myself, what if this modem is somehow better?
[00:50:04] Cause I had not been super blown away by the performance of my current one.
[00:50:09] And so I, I went to the trouble of unplugging the old one, plugging in the new one, setting
[00:50:13] it up, calling to activate and it, my, my connection now is rock solid.
[00:50:19] So, so just by doing this price hack thing, I now have a modem that works way better.
[00:50:23] I was able to activate it myself without having some tech come over here.
[00:50:25] So that's a, that's a win, but the statements were still showing up $140.
[00:50:29] And I was really skeptical that like this would materialize, but sure enough, this week I got
[00:50:35] a statement for $70.
[00:50:36] Uh, and I guess that means I owe rocket money 35% of whatever it saved me.
[00:50:42] And I don't know how that's, I don't know how that's paid or when that works.
[00:50:45] I'll figure it out.
[00:50:47] But if you're, if you're willing to, basically I would recommend rocket money to anyone who
[00:50:52] is currently paying sticker price for whatever utilities, it's probably mostly ISPs and cell
[00:51:00] phone bills.
[00:51:01] If you're paying for like a normal plan that is still available and you're paying top dollar,
[00:51:06] uh, call them, give it a try.
[00:51:08] But if you're like, you know, like I am with T-Mobile grandfathered in on some 12 year old
[00:51:13] plan that has been replaced five times.
[00:51:15] And there's no like, like the most likely case then is it's going to put me on the latest plan
[00:51:19] and sign me up for all of the new throttling and four ADP video and the shit that you don't
[00:51:24] want, uh, in terms of limitations.
[00:51:26] So check out rocket money.
[00:51:30] I, I, I was extremely skeptical and now this is, this is a rocket money ad.
[00:51:34] Uh, although it is unpaid.
[00:51:36] If you want to be a sponsor of the program podcast at seerls.co, uh, another followup item.
[00:51:47] I, let me tell you what it took to connect.
[00:51:53] My Xbox controller to my, to my gaming PC.
[00:51:58] So, uh, I have an Xbox series elite to whatever you call it.
[00:52:04] A nice, the fancy Xbox controller that costs like $170.
[00:52:07] And I like this controller.
[00:52:09] It's got the little paddles in the back.
[00:52:11] It's got, you know, a nicer grip, uh, interchangeable thumb sticks and D pad and stuff.
[00:52:16] It's a very nice product, but it's, it's, you know, talk about low volume things that
[00:52:21] aren't as reliable.
[00:52:21] It has a lot of reliability issues and my right bumper button, like next to the right
[00:52:27] shoulder, it had been like very, very, um, it would miss like 70% of the clicks.
[00:52:36] And because the right bumper isn't the most important button in the world.
[00:52:39] Like it just meant like, uh, I guess I'm just not the kind of guy to throw grenades or whatever
[00:52:43] the right bumper is typically assigned to, I got a replacement relative, like a, a, a cheap
[00:52:50] replacement through Microsoft support channel.
[00:52:52] I think they charged me $70.
[00:52:53] They didn't require me to ship back the old one.
[00:52:55] Uh, the replacement came and I plugged it into the computer to start set up and pairing.
[00:53:00] And the Xbox accessories app was like, this is too out of date to be able to configure your
[00:53:06] controller, which was weird because windows update, which I checked frequently had said
[00:53:10] that I was up to date, but there was a little message at the bottom saying, uh, windows is
[00:53:16] up to date.
[00:53:16] Important security updates have not been applied.
[00:53:19] Make sure that your computer is turned on, which is weird because if I'm manually updating
[00:53:22] and nothing's saying that it's like, where are these secret security updates that aren't
[00:53:26] happening?
[00:53:26] And when I dug into my actual windows version, it said I was on 21 H two.
[00:53:32] So the naming scheme for these major windows releases seems to be the, the two digit year
[00:53:39] followed by H one for first half of the year and H two for second half of the year, which
[00:53:44] is, um, real dumb.
[00:53:47] I'm going to say just a dumb way to name things, you know, numbers are good.
[00:53:52] You know, I, I, I get it now why it's named that.
[00:53:56] But 21 was, uh, if you, if you decode the version several, several numbers ago, it was
[00:54:02] three, at least it was at least two H one ago.
[00:54:05] And why was I on such an old version?
[00:54:10] It turns out I'll share like a, an article from, from just December, the, the windows 11
[00:54:16] required computers to have secure boot enabled using the trusted platform module or TPM equivalent
[00:54:22] encryption.
[00:54:23] And that's to certify or to be able to attest that like the, the operating system has not
[00:54:28] been tampered with and so forth.
[00:54:29] And then this has all sorts of like DMCA, DR, DRM, um, uh, and, uh, HDCP, all this sort
[00:54:36] of a content encryption, copyright protection, uh, ostensibly it's quote unquote security.
[00:54:41] And it, and it's the, like making sure from a malware perspective that the veracity of
[00:54:45] the system files are all in place and so forth.
[00:54:47] But like a lot of nerds were not on board because they want to rip blue waves or whatever it is.
[00:54:51] And this might make it marginally more difficult, but gaming motherboards were like the last ones
[00:54:57] to the party to support secure boot.
[00:54:59] And even though I built my gaming PC, well, after windows 11 launched the BIOS that it
[00:55:04] shipped with did not support secure boot.
[00:55:06] Um, it didn't support, uh, I don't think like booting from UEFI drives correctly either.
[00:55:13] So I'd set it up just like a normal basic fucking computer and it worked for however long it
[00:55:18] worked.
[00:55:18] But apparently in December, Microsoft was just like, and you get no more updates at all.
[00:55:22] No more security updates, no more, nothing, which is why I started getting that message.
[00:55:25] Uh, if you want to be on the latest and greatest version of windows 11, you must have secure boot.
[00:55:30] Problem now is like, it's been several years.
[00:55:34] And so figuring out what kind of motherboard I even have, I'm too lazy to like open the case
[00:55:38] up and look at it.
[00:55:39] And so I, I found the particular model number in my Amazon orders.
[00:55:42] So step one, you know, I figured out what was happening.
[00:55:45] I guess step, step zero is I get this new controller and I immediately regret it.
[00:55:49] Uh, step two, figure out what's happening.
[00:55:52] Step three, check my Amazon orders, identify the motherboard.
[00:55:55] Uh, step four, I went to the motherboard website.
[00:55:58] I find that there, a BIOS update is available and it's, it adds the secure boot functionality
[00:56:03] because apparently the encryption software hardware is on the device, which is great.
[00:56:07] So I download the BIOS and then I start flashing it.
[00:56:12] Uh, not, you know, not that kind of, get your head out of the gutter.
[00:56:15] I, it, it requires, uh, you know, identifying there's a, there's a particular USB port on
[00:56:23] the back of the, of the motherboard.
[00:56:25] That is the only one that can flash the BIOS and you have to look for it.
[00:56:30] This is like M dash flash on it.
[00:56:31] So you put it in there, you know, you restart, you, uh, boot into the BIOS and I, uh, got
[00:56:39] it to update that, that part was actually pretty easy.
[00:56:41] Then you go into the, the BIOS and it, you know, I don't know what BIOS stands for.
[00:56:45] So if you're not like a PC person, this might not make sense, but you, you, the, the, it's,
[00:56:49] it's the little bit of software that runs before the computer really starts.
[00:56:52] And you can typically get there by hitting a key like F12 or delete.
[00:56:55] And it's, you know, if you weren't raised on windows, uh, it's, it's, it's a weird
[00:56:59] under, underbelly that sometimes you have to go into.
[00:57:02] It's got a lot of arcane settings.
[00:57:04] None of them make any sense.
[00:57:05] It's a lot of acronyms that aren't explained, even though modern BIOS systems typically have
[00:57:09] tooltips, it'll be like, what is, you know, what is MDR?
[00:57:12] And it's like this, this option determines whether you have MDR turned on and off.
[00:57:16] And there's like room for two more paragraphs to just maybe spell out what the fuck MDR is.
[00:57:20] Uh, I turned on the secure boot, figure that out.
[00:57:25] Uh, chat GPT is wonderful for stuff like this.
[00:57:27] Like it gave me step-by-step directions because like, there's probably 800 forum, forum posts,
[00:57:31] like detailing the same thing.
[00:57:33] Uh, after reboot, nothing worked and like the computer would not boot.
[00:57:39] I turned on secure boot, which required turning on UEFI, which is like a related technology of
[00:57:44] like a more modern boot system for computers.
[00:57:46] And it turns out it's because that my drive partition map is master boot record MBR, which
[00:57:51] is like from the DOS era.
[00:57:53] And that was the default when I set it up in 21 or 2020.
[00:57:56] So now I've got to like turn off secure boot, go back into BIOS, turn it off, boot up into
[00:58:03] windows under the old model, and then like figure out these like weird arcane, like, uh, uh, command
[00:58:09] line interfaces.
[00:58:10] I think I, I think I, there's something that there's a way to do this, like MBR to GPT slash
[00:58:15] validate slash disc colon, some number slash allow full OS.
[00:58:20] And, and that would like a test like, yes, you can convert this type of hard drive partition
[00:58:26] map into this other one.
[00:58:27] And so then I do it and, uh, I, I reboot again, I turn on secure boot again, and then it gives
[00:58:32] this fucking message.
[00:58:33] It's like, Hey, you know, secure boot function can only be enabled when the platform key is
[00:58:37] enrolled, which is, I know a decent amount of crypt cryptography.
[00:58:42] I can kind of guess at like, you know, thematically what it's getting at there, but like I'm in,
[00:58:48] I'm in a bio, there's no internet connection.
[00:58:50] There's no, there's no about page.
[00:58:51] Like, I'm just like, what do I do?
[00:58:53] Uh, so I, I, I went off the rails and I said, I don't want to do a standard secure boot.
[00:59:00] I'm going to do a custom secure boot.
[00:59:02] And then I clicked another thing that just said, enroll all factory keys.
[00:59:06] Uh, and then that said, Hey, we're going to reset this without saving options.
[00:59:10] And there's no cancel.
[00:59:11] There's just like save or, or, or don't save.
[00:59:14] I clicked save and I rebooted and, and then it all worked.
[00:59:18] And I just thought, man, like, how does anyone do this?
[00:59:23] I, the answer is when you build a gaming PC, you are absolutely signing up for this kind
[00:59:29] of bullshit on, on a cadence.
[00:59:32] It used to be like, you know, to keep a windows machine running for the purpose of playing games.
[00:59:37] That was a custom build.
[00:59:39] You would expect every month or every two months to have some kind of rigmarole that
[00:59:43] looked like this.
[00:59:43] And I just been blessed that it had been almost like three, four years of this thing just mostly
[00:59:47] working before I had to, you know, really do something drastic.
[00:59:52] I, uh, uh, the system worked, you know, for suddenly it finds a three years worth of updates.
[00:59:57] I install all those.
[00:59:58] And actually, like, I will say windows 11 is quite nice.
[01:00:00] Now I see what people are talking about.
[01:00:01] Like a lot of things are the tabbed interface for the windows Explorer works really well.
[01:00:05] Like everything feels much, much nicer.
[01:00:07] The downside is literally everything is now an advertisement.
[01:00:10] It's just like so many, which it's like recommending when you hit the start button, it was like
[01:00:15] recommended apps, Slack.
[01:00:16] I'm like, I don't have Slack installed.
[01:00:19] Like I don't, I'm not in any Slacks.
[01:00:20] I don't even have a fucking job.
[01:00:21] Like why are you recommending?
[01:00:22] Oh, right.
[01:00:23] Cause Slack is paying for like prominent placement just in the passively in the, in
[01:00:27] the operating system.
[01:00:28] That is a paid product.
[01:00:29] And I get that like Apple stuff is full of, uh, full of ads in its own way for Apple services,
[01:00:34] but unless you're searching for an app in the app store, like you don't see just, you know,
[01:00:39] it would be like having Slack just land on your home screen and, and, and be like, Hey,
[01:00:43] click me and then learn more about how you can pay us money.
[01:00:47] So, uh, you know, the takeaway here is if, if you are dedicated to the art of playing computer
[01:00:55] games, uh, keep it simple.
[01:00:59] Uh, you know, I, if you're willing to sign up for this bullshit, like, like by all means,
[01:01:04] like, I think like the best performance, the best experience that you can have is only really
[01:01:08] attainable if you build your own PC and it's not that hard to, you know, there's services
[01:01:12] like PC part picker that make it pretty easy, but there is just no escaping the windows
[01:01:16] of it all.
[01:01:17] Uh, speaking of, I, I, I've been talking about my steam deck and I love that device.
[01:01:24] It's really nice.
[01:01:25] I, I, I was playing Yakuza seven on it.
[01:01:27] And, uh, unfortunately I was doing it with headphones in so as not to be loud at night.
[01:01:32] Uh, cause if I'm playing in bed next to Becky and the, the headphone jack just broke, it just
[01:01:37] stopped working.
[01:01:37] I thought it was my headphones.
[01:01:38] I tried three different pairs of headphones.
[01:01:39] It's just all static nonsense.
[01:01:41] So I RMA'd it.
[01:01:42] I, I contacted steam and got an RMA label.
[01:01:45] I'm actually going to process that as just a return.
[01:01:47] So I'm going to send that out tomorrow.
[01:01:48] And, uh, cause Becky and I are going on a cruise in a few days ago, I would like to have a device.
[01:01:53] So I ordered another steam deck, you know, which is inefficient for sure.
[01:01:57] But I'd rather have a brand new one than, you know, some kind of repair, I guess.
[01:02:01] So whatever.
[01:02:02] And at the same time, I was like, you know what?
[01:02:07] Like, it's kind of wasteful.
[01:02:08] And this is, I, if you're not a gamer, this stuff doesn't make sense.
[01:02:11] Cause it's all nonsense.
[01:02:12] But like, like it would be like having, um, if you have a gaming PC, it's like, you can
[01:02:18] have multiple app stores installed.
[01:02:20] You have steam and maybe you buy some games on steam.
[01:02:22] And then you also have like the Xbox app where your, your, your, your game pass subscription
[01:02:27] just gives you free access to lots of games.
[01:02:29] The steam deck is really great for playing steam games, but unless you install windows onto
[01:02:34] it, you can't play the game pass games.
[01:02:37] And I'm not like, I could, if I wanted to, I like, say I'm playing Indiana Jones right
[01:02:41] now on game pass, I could buy it again for $70 on steam, but like the, the save game wouldn't
[01:02:47] transport, I don't think, uh, or wouldn't cloud sink probably.
[01:02:51] Uh, so I did a thing and I, on the, the new steam deck showed up.
[01:02:59] And the first thing I did was I put windows on it because coming off this other experience
[01:03:05] with windows, apparently I just, I, I got overconfident.
[01:03:08] It took, it was about a three hour ordeal and that was following a really, really nice guide
[01:03:13] and using a lot of supporting software to make it easy to dual boot into windows.
[01:03:16] And I got there and I got it all updated and I got all the drivers installed and then I
[01:03:19] launched Indiana Jones and then it just like was compiling shaders in the beginning and then
[01:03:23] it just crashed.
[01:03:24] And it seems to have just crashed because it ran out of VRAM.
[01:03:27] And it seems like the solution to that is find a different game to play.
[01:03:33] And so I go in and I try to search for help and stuff and realize that like the software
[01:03:37] keyboard in windows, at least with how it's out of the box set up after installing this
[01:03:42] drivers on steam deck, like the software keyboard just refuses and will not open, uh, much of
[01:03:48] the time.
[01:03:49] And so like, I can't type in most of the time.
[01:03:51] And so like I find myself now I've got a USB hub plugged into the steam deck so that I can
[01:03:57] have a normal fucking keyboard next to it so that I can type and try to debug stuff.
[01:04:01] And now I'm, I'm pretty, you know, I'm nowhere near the point of being able to get just a,
[01:04:08] a, a game pass game running on a mobile handheld and certainly not anywhere near the point of
[01:04:14] like throwing just the handheld in my bag and having any hope in hell that like it, like
[01:04:18] I'll be able just to hit a button and launch it like it, like a game console.
[01:04:22] So, uh, the windows on steam deck experience is very bad.
[01:04:26] And at the same time, uh, Best Buy had a, uh, ROG ally extreme Z one extreme windows first
[01:04:33] gaming devices on sale.
[01:04:36] And I was like, you know what?
[01:04:37] I'm in the return period of everything.
[01:04:38] I've clearly, you know, like I have opened Pandora's box.
[01:04:41] I may as well just give myself over to taste testing all of these different options.
[01:04:46] Uh, so I, I, I, I bought one of those and now it's, it's, it's, it's actually lighter and
[01:04:52] smaller to a certain extent, which is impressive.
[01:04:54] I expected the steam deck to be more svelte, I guess.
[01:04:57] Uh, it feels pretty good in the hand.
[01:05:00] Uh, I haven't booted it yet because I'm still recovering from the experience of trying to get
[01:05:05] windows onto the steam deck.
[01:05:06] And, uh, I'm, I'm interested in trying and seeing how the performance is.
[01:05:10] Cause if game pass works well and I'm happy with it, um, the ROG ally was like several hundred
[01:05:15] dollars cheaper than the steam deck.
[01:05:17] It's got a faster processor.
[01:05:19] Uh, it might be a little bit less convenient, but to be honest, uh, the idea that I'd be rebuying
[01:05:24] all of my, uh, my games on, uh, on steam when they're also available, you know, quote unquote
[01:05:31] for free on game pass seems pretty silly.
[01:05:33] Uh, cause I, I'm as a, as a one game at a time guy, uh, being able to play the same game
[01:05:39] that I'm playing in the evening as when I'm remote sounds pretty nice.
[01:05:43] So stay tuned.
[01:05:44] Uh, I'm looking forward to trying that out, but as for now, I don't think windows on steam
[01:05:50] deck is gonna, gonna happen for me.
[01:05:51] I think I'm going to reformat the whole thing and just fucking start over.
[01:05:54] Uh, so, so that was a lot about, there's a lot.
[01:05:59] Hello.
[01:05:59] Hi.
[01:06:00] How are you?
[01:06:00] Good morning.
[01:06:01] I'm glad you're here.
[01:06:03] Uh, now let's, uh, I think we need a palate cleanser.
[01:06:06] So let's, let's hear a joke from our friend, Aaron.
[01:06:09] Now, uh, if you, if you will recall, Aaron Patterson, who provides us with the content portion
[01:06:22] of this segment where, uh, he writes a pun, he, I messages it to me, uh, via invisible ink
[01:06:30] so that I am seeing it in reacting in real time.
[01:06:33] He and I re-ranked all of the 2024 season one puns, uh, and those are now set in stone.
[01:06:42] That is the canonical ordering of the puns, uh, from, from, from, from worst to bad.
[01:06:50] Uh, and, uh, uh, uh, uh, this year, uh, being just the second version, second release, uh, uh, uh, we just have to determine whether or not the pun that we're about to read is better or worse than the version 28's pun.
[01:07:03] And so I'll just read that one now.
[01:07:05] Aaron says, I was really hoping to play Bellatro today, but I don't have time.
[01:07:11] So I guess it's not in the cards.
[01:07:12] And a useful bit of information is that Bellatro is a card game.
[01:07:19] And then the pun might make more sense.
[01:07:21] Uh, all right.
[01:07:22] So we're going to sneak up here and just see what are we in for?
[01:07:26] What's he got in store?
[01:07:27] Oh man.
[01:07:34] Brace yourself.
[01:07:37] I bought a Nintendo Switch because I heard, I, uh, I heard it was going to be really fun to play.
[01:07:43] Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it one bit and now I feel like I've been Joy-Conned.
[01:07:49] I bought a Nintendo Switch because I heard it was going to be really fun to play.
[01:07:56] Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it one bit and now I feel like I've been Joy-Conned.
[01:08:00] Uh, useful context for any non-gamer.
[01:08:07] in the room, the little, uh, controllers on the left and right side of the Nintendo Switch
[01:08:12] are referred, uh, their names, their Joy-Cons, Joy-Controllers.
[01:08:16] Uh, and, uh, so he feels like he's been Joy-Conned out of his fun.
[01:08:21] Uh, that, that's a great example of a pun where you start with Joy-Conned.
[01:08:27] He must have thought of that and then had to work backwards from there to like
[01:08:31] make that make sense or, or come up with a reason to have been Joy-Conned.
[01:08:36] And the promise of fun followed by it not being fun.
[01:08:39] He got Joy-Conned.
[01:08:40] All right.
[01:08:43] When we talk about good pun or bad pun, like the big takeaway from, from the ranking was,
[01:08:53] all right, so we want to know about like, how much time do we waste in the brains of listeners
[01:08:59] over the long haul?
[01:09:01] And the fact that the Switch is in the news right now, uh, for its reveal is going to have
[01:09:08] more stuff come out in April, probably release in May, June, and then be continued to be a
[01:09:13] going concern for years.
[01:09:14] That tells me that a, uh, a pun like this one, Joy-Conned, you're going to hear the word
[01:09:20] Joy-Con a lot.
[01:09:20] You're going to see Switches are going to be in the media, probably more staying power
[01:09:26] than Bellatro.
[01:09:27] And to say it's not in the cards is, uh, very straightforward wordplay.
[01:09:34] There's not like a, there's no custom construction necessary to make that happen.
[01:09:39] So I would, I would say that in terms of, uh, psychological torment, this pun is clearly
[01:09:50] superior to version 28.
[01:09:51] So that we're going to say that's, this is the new number one pun of 2025.
[01:09:56] How cool would it be if he was able to keep up a streak and have every pun be the number
[01:10:01] one pun and get, and you know, I think every, everybody deserves to be in the spotlight for
[01:10:08] a day.
[01:10:08] everyone deserves to be the hero of the story everyone deserves to like you know be the star
[01:10:11] of the show at least once in their life and uh as we as we have this just real optimistic feeling
[01:10:20] about the future and the world around us right now is that we're just like the you know people
[01:10:24] are coming together and we're all feeling great about how things are going on the planet uh i'm
[01:10:31] going to extend that that that that that that grace and that that that optimism that starry-eyed
[01:10:38] naive you know just hope for the future to all aaron's puns i hope that all of them this year
[01:10:44] are the number one pun for exactly one version of the program uh and and then we'll re-rank them and
[01:10:52] and you know when we tell them that they suck later at least they'll at least they'll have had that one
[01:10:58] day to shine all right so new number one pun there that was easy uh if you've got a pun uh you should
[01:11:07] say it to yourself or to someone near you uh people don't tell enough puns uh but unfortunately we don't
[01:11:15] have time for puns now because uh we got a lot of news to cover and uh i think i'm going to try to keep
[01:11:23] keep it keep it pretty upbeat so let's see let's see how we how let's see how we do all right
[01:11:28] the first item is a blog post
[01:11:36] so it's not really news i still don't know exactly what blog posts are it's titled
[01:11:42] by a fellow named grant slatin or at least that's his uh domain name it might be grantslatin.com
[01:11:49] wrote an essay called nobody cares and uh nobody cares declaratively nobody nobody cares
[01:11:58] and uh it starts off you know why why does nobody care about anything the world is full of stuff that
[01:12:03] could be excellent with just one percent more effort but people don't care you know it's got a sort of
[01:12:08] like a rhythm to it so i'll keep reading a bit have you been to the dmv it sucked there is a human who
[01:12:15] uh there's a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the dmv they do not care that it sucks
[01:12:19] ever use a piece of software that's buggy as hell looks bad but still costs money presumably because
[01:12:24] the company behind it has found some regulatory capture to justify their experience their their
[01:12:28] existence the programmer who wrote it probably doesn't care their manager definitely doesn't care
[01:12:33] the regulators don't care and he goes on and and you know oh and even better you know you might think
[01:12:39] something something incentive systems but no at my job at my big tech job i had the pleasure of
[01:12:43] interviewing a few programmers who worked for a large health care company that engages in regulatory
[01:12:47] capture and let me assure you they do not care and goes on to talk about municipal governments he
[01:12:52] lives in seattle and complains about that and it's not a super long post but it's written in kind of
[01:12:58] tight short uh uh little couplets or paragraphs and this experience of being surrounded by people who seem to
[01:13:10] not care we talk sometimes about like taste do people have taste do like
[01:13:16] like for example like the ninja heating thing right like is it ignorance laziness that like no one's
[01:13:24] thinking like is it you know how the thing is working like how is it heating my food you know and what
[01:13:30] what impact does the way that it heats my food have on you know how the food turns out and and how good
[01:13:37] it tastes it is it is it is it i think that the the occam's razor explanation for what seems to be the death of giving a shit
[01:13:48] is not structural systemic incentive problems it's not that like you know nobody's uh
[01:13:57] sufficiently rewarded or punished for not going the extra mile i think it's the
[01:14:05] at a system-wide level at a population level it seems much more explicable that if capitalism as
[01:14:14] the driving force for society and maximizing shareholder value and eking out more and more
[01:14:18] profits or more and more productivity out of workers if that's the thing that we're all optimizing for
[01:14:23] it stands to reason that things are becoming less and less sustainable over time if you define state
[01:14:31] sustainable as like there's cartilage in between your joints and it kind of cushions the blow and
[01:14:36] there's a little bit more buffer and a little bit more breathing room and a chance to lean back and
[01:14:39] think hard about the right way to do things you know that's exactly what gets ironed out through
[01:14:45] optimization you know we saw this with like um lean manufacturing and the super duper tight
[01:14:51] uh uh supply chains that would indeed be able to push through you know uh turn over the inventory of a
[01:15:00] company as large as apple on like a a several day long basis such that they didn't have any aged
[01:15:05] inventory anywhere which means they didn't have to pay to store it and they didn't have any waste and
[01:15:08] that meant they could put out new products and not have a whole bunch of you know uh excess crap to
[01:15:13] clear right but it also meant that as soon as anything fucking went wrong there's no slack in the system and
[01:15:18] now it's like oh one little tiny fuck up in the supply chain and now there's just zero iphones
[01:15:23] sorry right uh covid taught us that like a very specific lesson about that but i don't think
[01:15:31] we have fully grappled with the fact that for the world to get really good at playing the game of
[01:15:38] min-maxing the stock market almost necessarily means that the space and the time to to take care
[01:15:45] gets ironed out and you might think well if you're a bureaucrat or if you're in a cushy job and you're
[01:15:51] paid salary and you and you you barely fill your day with work because no one's telling you what to do
[01:15:56] and uh there's not enough to do like well why don't they care why don't they do more the answer to that
[01:16:02] is probably like the flip side at the consumer side of capitalism being really good at capitalizing
[01:16:10] is the middle class is is under a lot of financial stress college is more expensive you want to send
[01:16:19] your kid to college it's more expensive than ever and the the certainty that that is going to lead to
[01:16:24] the a child who is not still living with you at 29 years old has never been lower uh the
[01:16:31] you know inflation hurt a lot of families you know just a real you know on an emotional and
[01:16:38] visceral level because it hits stuff like you know gas and groceries and and and prices that people see
[01:16:42] all the time the political environment the sort of like just general vibe that like you know that
[01:16:49] we are we are exiting a a an era of unprecedented stability in exchange for something of higher
[01:16:56] volatility the the two income trap that you know elizabeth warren very presciently wrote
[01:17:01] about you know 30 years ago and launched kind of her kind of public facing career of well if all
[01:17:06] the women start working and now all we've done really is increase the competition for
[01:17:11] all families because now you've got some that are making more money which means that prices are going
[01:17:15] to go up because houses are going to be under more you know the competition is going to expect it and
[01:17:19] so now it's like there's really no way to exist except for both you know parents if there are two
[01:17:23] parents to be working to support child care and it's unless you're very wealthy right so if you're well
[01:17:32] off like if you're affluent i think that you can write this blog post and be like nobody fucking cares i
[01:17:39] care a lot and it's true like me personally i am affluent and i do care a lot and yet at the same time
[01:17:45] i feel surrounded by people who are incredibly stretched thin who are who are under great
[01:17:52] duress to make rent payments uh you know you you become friends with a few disney cast members or
[01:17:58] people who work at universal or people who work at hotels which are literally a majority of the people
[01:18:04] that i have met since moving here the rents go up you know uh wages don't keep up with that you know
[01:18:14] the the hotels now have figured out dynamic pricing so like for example some bean counter at hotels i
[01:18:22] figured this is a great just a crystallized example of this have figured out that like you could take a
[01:18:27] hotel dynamically price it such that uh it's a non-linear scale so it's like well
[01:18:34] when the hotel is fully occupied our costs are very high because we have to fully staff all of
[01:18:40] the contingent workers that we have that are kind of just on call and they might do some math and say
[01:18:46] like actually our our if we're pricing naively like our best case scenario from a customer satisfaction
[01:18:54] and an operating cost perspective is if we're at 60 occupied and what we'll do is we'll just ratchet up the
[01:19:03] prices you know uh uh such that we end up at 60 occupied but but and dynamically price as if that
[01:19:10] was the ceiling and we'll end up making the same amount of revenue but our costs are basically flat
[01:19:15] and all the hotels kind of like you know it's really hard to get a hundred dollar hotel room anymore right
[01:19:21] even a 200 hotel room suddenly feels like a deal but they go further and really you end up with like
[01:19:30] like like like to become fully occupied means and some of the hotels in my area that means that like
[01:19:36] 1400 1500 2000 a night for basic fucking rooms to to to actually fill out that last bit of inventory
[01:19:46] what effect does that have for the workers especially tipped staff how like you know the
[01:19:53] the valet guys who work for a subcontracting firm like like they get zero of the upside in fact they
[01:19:59] get cut more often right but they're going to get fewer tips because there's fewer cars because the
[01:20:03] hotel's less full even though it's making more money than ever all of the the the wait staff you know
[01:20:08] they're getting fewer shifts and the shifts that they do get the bar is less full because there's fewer
[01:20:13] fewer guests the guests might like it because experientially like the hotels are empty here
[01:20:17] and and things are less crowded but the um the price that they're paying to to to stay here is higher
[01:20:23] than ever uh you know i i think that if you are in a like a a monoculture like if you're in a bubble
[01:20:33] and you don't see up close people who are like struggling right now it would be very easy to say people
[01:20:41] sure seem to be caring less than they used to uh but because i've been spending so much time in japan
[01:20:45] over the course of 20 20 years now i guess 19 and a half years uh you know you can still spend 100 yen
[01:20:54] and get a green tea out of a vending machine the 100 yen coin is still king in a lot of ways but more
[01:21:01] often you gotta spend 150 yen more often you gotta spend 180 yen you know to get the same kind of product
[01:21:07] uh and uh if it is still 100 yen you're getting a very very thin very watery a green tea and it's in a
[01:21:15] smaller bottle than ever before
[01:21:17] the inflation has happened mostly through shrink flation and the reason is that like japanese wages have
[01:21:23] not increased one iota but inflation you know it's been not as bad as here but it's still pretty bad
[01:21:30] it's still it's still impacting people and my friends who were you know they were middle class
[01:21:36] in japan like like like like when i was in college and through my early you know just general adult life
[01:21:42] uh i've got a friend there who who who has had a broken water heater for for like a year and it would cost
[01:21:51] just enough to fix that he wouldn't be able to pay for you know kids school supplies or food
[01:21:56] and and and having to make that choice even though he's got a perfectly reasonable salary job
[01:22:02] when i visit our our friends who are like programmers in in japan we talk about you know
[01:22:07] not of course it always comes up that they can't easily come to the u.s or travel internationally
[01:22:12] because the yen is so depressed but that also means imports are really expensive and and so like
[01:22:16] when we talk about computers like some of them are switching to linux because the price of apple
[01:22:19] products have become so much more expensive it's and and you know programmers like it's not a ticket to
[01:22:27] like upper middle class affluence like it like it can be in the united states like a lot of programmers
[01:22:32] still make between 30 and 45 000 full-time in japan uh and that used to be enough uh in a lot of cases but
[01:22:41] you know through various austerity measures that the ltp has put in place and you know gentle inflation like
[01:22:46] this i think of this kind of optimization that like just the the endless march of capitalism uh uh
[01:22:54] seems to have and i'm not anti-capitalist i'm just saying like like you if you take a rubber band and you
[01:23:01] just keep stretching it a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further it gets
[01:23:04] tighter and tighter and thinner and thinner and eventually it reaches like you know a breaking point
[01:23:08] and that's why nobody cares so anyway this is a is a good essay it's a good food for thought uh but
[01:23:16] i'll be honest one of the reasons that i moved to orlando was people fucking care here it's still
[01:23:21] unsustainable you know i i have friends who who drive beaters who are you know they work in the parks and
[01:23:26] they they are their performers and they're they're doing it for the love of the game and they're they're
[01:23:31] happy to be here but like they they have to put up with all kinds of injustices but they still
[01:23:37] they still have the care and they still care but like if i was in you know bfe ohio or just like any
[01:23:45] old town like i you wouldn't have the motivation of like you know being convinced that you're in the
[01:23:50] most magical place on earth or being surrounded by this energy or this like this this big nostalgia
[01:23:55] factory to keep you motivated like i i i don't blame people for not caring i just am very grateful
[01:24:02] that i both get to care myself i've got the i've got the privilege of care mad but also like i happen
[01:24:07] to be in a place and i position myself in a place where in spite of all of those obstacles for for in
[01:24:14] the case of traveling japan people still give a shit because like their whole culture is caring their
[01:24:20] whole temperament and disposition is is caring too much sometimes often too much
[01:24:26] and by being over here in the parks and and and in theme parkville uh it the mystique is so strong
[01:24:34] that the caring just kind of happens and and it's true that service is like not what it used to be
[01:24:40] right that those stresses and those fractures they become apparent from time to time but it's still
[01:24:45] night and day head and shoulders better than pretty much everywhere else that i go such that every time
[01:24:50] i leave orlando i feel like uh i i inevitably end up texting either becky or my brother or a friend
[01:24:57] back home it's like why do i leave like we live in paradise so if you do move to orlando though you
[01:25:03] be mindful of which which side of i4 you're on uh there's a post i don't have a lot to talk about
[01:25:13] with this one it's it's just a good kind of summary of like by by another blog post simon willison
[01:25:20] uh called uh things we learned about llm's large language models in 2024
[01:25:28] uh he did a similar uh post in 2023 and it's a good kind of synopsis and summary of sort of like
[01:25:35] the state of the art with ai like what was this year all about uh none of the none if you've been
[01:25:41] following along none of these are incredible uh none of these are are are really like blow away like
[01:25:50] new things this is just a summary of like year in review 2024 and this post and last year's post
[01:25:55] are both really helpful for just at a glance because like all the whole ai era already feels
[01:26:00] kind of like a blur because these products are just like the models move underneath you kind of
[01:26:04] invisibly and so their capabilities actually this is similar to the full self-driving thing a lot of
[01:26:09] tesla drivers don't subscribe or don't use the full self-driving because the first version was
[01:26:13] a complete joke it was totally unsafe uh it was mostly a lot of heuristic based c plus plus if
[01:26:18] else code and now it has so much data getting uploaded from these devices and these cameras
[01:26:24] and so much machine learning technology in there and like you know the much better hardware that's
[01:26:28] able to like like it's a different product now but like from a user interface perspective it looks the
[01:26:32] same a lot of the ai stuff is the same so so i'm going to share that link uh in the show notes
[01:26:37] it is something to read maybe while you grapple with the fact that tick tock is down
[01:26:44] you know i could list that as a new story but i think probably you probably know and uh you know it is
[01:26:51] it being january 19th a little bit before noon we who the fuck knows where it's going to go you can
[01:26:58] we can all imagine many different paths that this could take uh it's it's kind of it's not necessarily
[01:27:06] worth speculating uh the the the number one thing i'm curious about is if the if the ban holds for a few
[01:27:13] days i wonder what it's going to be like to be a middle school teacher when the kids can't just be
[01:27:21] one hand on their phone during class all day what the withdrawal symptoms are going to be like for
[01:27:27] especially children who are addicted to it um pretty much every other country it seems like
[01:27:32] that's banned tick tock it seems it seems like mostly it's just been youtube shorts and instagram
[01:27:37] immediately pick up the same traction uh it's it's interesting right because like i mean like
[01:27:44] the tension between free expression and being able to post stuff and also like the national security
[01:27:49] concerns of like well you know like a lot of people threw away their votes in this last election over
[01:27:54] aggravation about palestine like
[01:27:59] there's a lot of evidence and like you know there's a national you know director i think
[01:28:04] was a dni report about the amount of pro-palestine messaging that was being promoted through tick tock
[01:28:09] to sow discord uh one one could presume uh yeah you know when the founders were thinking about free
[01:28:19] speech they were not necessarily thinking about like free coercive speech for foreign actors to be
[01:28:25] passively you know promoting in our feeds so i don't know what the right answer is other than
[01:28:32] quit facebook hit the gym and lawyer up so just do that and you'll be fine
[01:28:38] uh an actual news item from actual publication ours technica this was posted in a bunch of places but
[01:28:46] ours usually has the best uh rundowns so this fella in the uk has been trying to
[01:28:55] he mined a bunch of bitcoin in 2009 and he was trying to get his laptop back from a uh a landfill
[01:29:04] which one presumes you know a decade hence it would be deep down into that landfill and so he made a
[01:29:12] lawsuit he said look i mined a bunch of bitcoin it was on a laptop hard drive uh it's got the private key
[01:29:17] how how the fuck like okay i get it like crypto is confusing and people want to have hardware key
[01:29:25] uh uh our hard hardware wallets and and security and place to put these keys but like i still
[01:29:30] personally struggle with like and why isn't one password good enough actually write in if you know
[01:29:35] the answer like it if i had any crypto and i needed to store a key i would put it in one password and then
[01:29:42] i would be like not a fucking dipshit and just hand that over to to anyone or click on sketchy links or
[01:29:49] paste that hardware keyboard into a website that could be getting you know an xss attack or something
[01:29:55] like that like what the benefit of these hardware key like i suspect that it's just that crypto attracts
[01:30:01] tinfoil hat people who are susceptible to first of all the siren song of
[01:30:08] bullshit crypto claims about it you know being a legitimate currency or some some way to escape
[01:30:14] state control and i suspect that that same mindset is also very amenable to the idea that like
[01:30:20] yeah you can't trust you know cloud-based password manager you got to use a hardware wallet or you got
[01:30:25] to you know write all this out in paper and and make sure that you don't use too legible of a handwriting
[01:30:30] or like you know the ai is going to ocr it and never never bring that piece of paper outside or the spy
[01:30:35] satellites will watch it and then china will take all the money like you got to bury that paper you
[01:30:40] keep it covered get only walk outside with an umbrella while you're at it and make sure that
[01:30:44] it's lined with the rfid blocking tape that we sell uh yeah the the anyway i seem to know a lot of people
[01:30:55] who were early in on bitcoin but like who claimed to have like forgotten the password that would unlock
[01:31:03] at this point hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars worth of the bitcoin you know as a deflationary
[01:31:09] currency it's like you know it's designed to run out of new coins to mine it within not too long from
[01:31:16] now six seven years you're so technologically advanced you're so at the bleeding edge of technology
[01:31:24] that you were mining crypto in 2009 but like you never thought that a password manager would be a
[01:31:30] good idea like i got i think i was on one password in 2008 i don't know man like i saw i saw bitcoin i was
[01:31:36] like ah that looks kind of i don't i don't know anyway this guy wants claims that he has rights
[01:31:42] to this laptop and that that that that that means that he should be able to go into a landfill and just
[01:31:47] dig up the laptop and find what is now considered to be worth uh 765 million dollars he started this
[01:31:55] lawsuit when it was only worth 70 7.5 million so it's you know 8 000 bitcoins lying around there and
[01:32:01] and unfortunately the judge has ruled that he that that he doesn't that the landfill authority owns the
[01:32:09] trash so uh and there's a six-year statute of limitations so so it's just
[01:32:19] if you're gonna crypto try to be smarter than the grifters try to be you know more intelligent than
[01:32:27] the people who will you know tie up so much of their finances and something and then not bother
[01:32:34] to you know make sure that they've got a way to access that shit uh i don't know why i i
[01:32:42] crypto is going to experience a renaissance because we're about to see uh what little regulation we
[01:32:47] have around it completely you know evaporate uh anderson horowitz uh as in and the two fellas
[01:32:57] they did a video about you know why they supported trump in the last election and why they think that
[01:33:02] like you know a regulatory regulation of crypto is really bad when you really what it is is like it's a
[01:33:07] get out of sec free card for for for for funders and startups and investors especially when you're like
[01:33:14] when you're a vc you're like you are positioning yourself at the top of every ponzi scheme and so
[01:33:20] like having a financial vehicle that allows you to escape any responsibility for starting ponzi schemes
[01:33:27] uh you know when you can just tell people on their phones to to sign up for this new coin that you're
[01:33:35] minting to support i don't know like uh a new retinal eye scanning ai technology like what it was a world
[01:33:43] con or whatever like uh uh yeah people can just pump pump and dump to their heart's content
[01:33:50] so i feel like we're not going to escape crypto anytime soon and i'm sure that the valuations will
[01:33:56] keep going up because preppers love spending money on shit but man i uh like i i've never been less
[01:34:04] interested in other uh in news of of where consensus seems to be changing on something genuinely uh you
[01:34:13] you might know uh have heard of havana syndrome this is like the the diplomats in cuba following the the
[01:34:20] obama normalization with cuba uh where where people were reporting like really bad headaches migraines um
[01:34:28] seemingly like inner ear damage from supersonic waves that reportedly russian agents or somebody was like
[01:34:36] blasting at the u.s embassy and and the homes of diplomats and and foreign service workers
[01:34:41] and enough people had come forward with these symptoms that it was really weird to me that like
[01:34:49] the national intelligence apparatus and every report that had been put out was just like yo they crazy
[01:34:53] you know that no that's just hysteria and you'd see like a lot of the literati in the political press
[01:35:00] over the last few years be like oh yeah well that was clearly debunked because this report said so
[01:35:04] you know like matt glace is being like oh there's no evidence so it's like you know every now and then
[01:35:08] there is i think a uh
[01:35:10] there are like like for example in my high school they built a brand new high school in like 2005 was the first year
[01:35:17] it was open my brother was there i was in college and kids started passing out in class uh it was
[01:35:23] brand new it had that new school smell and it happened like once and then twice and then three
[01:35:28] times i think i don't know how many kids ultimately passed out but eventually they like they temporarily
[01:35:32] closed the school to have like an audit done to be like is there some weird noxious gas in here
[01:35:37] and ultimately they didn't find anything now that doesn't mean that there wasn't proof that it does it
[01:35:41] just means there wasn't proof that there was something wrong like it it could have been a meme right
[01:35:46] kids could have heard about it but like also like high school starts too early and maybe they got
[01:35:50] sleepy and you know i don't maybe it was conscious or maybe it was just like a you know a kid falls
[01:35:55] asleep and then suddenly it's like they've got a they've got a great cover story built in which is
[01:35:58] like oh it's the it's the gases you know the vapors but this havana syndrome thing is just too
[01:36:04] fucking weird and like a lot of these people are like still on uh um like disability and haven't been
[01:36:11] able to come back to work for years so if it was just some sort of hysteria or all in their heads like
[01:36:17] that's an impressive amount of psychosomatic trauma to to just have you know quote-unquote made
[01:36:22] up uh so anyway i was always like look i'm a lab leak hypothesis guy like do i think that that the
[01:36:30] coronavirus was like you know accelerated in uh in in a wuhong lab and and and broke out or do i think
[01:36:38] it was like a pangolin or something in a wet market like i'm i'm actually you know i'm a i'm a lab leak
[01:36:44] truther and i have been from the first minute because it just seems like too too many coincidences
[01:36:48] so you tell me like hey we've got foreign service people working in cuba and then they happen to a
[01:36:54] couple other countries that are both known as places that russia has a lot of operations and a lot of
[01:36:59] interests uh i don't know it seemed it seems like they're you know it always seemed real to me so
[01:37:11] anyway it looks like finally after some resistance by biden administration officials being like i don't
[01:37:16] know this seems real that they're finally admitting that it seems real so if you're in havana and you
[01:37:22] start to get the syndrome blame russia i guess uh meta is continuing the lightning round meta
[01:37:33] let's see if i can pull over yes a couple different links i suppose aris technica has one where it's
[01:37:41] just sort of just the facts ma'am of medics killing its diversity programs citing that dei uh diversity equity inclusion has become too charged
[01:37:50] uh you know so by you know it's interesting that we live in an era where if you successfully
[01:37:57] politicize something you also neutralize it you know as soon as like half the country decides they
[01:38:02] don't want to do something you no longer have a plurality of support for something
[01:38:05] and the backlash effect of the you know just like a bud light right like if you'd gone back five years
[01:38:10] 10 years and told me modello was going to be the number one beer in america because a transgender woman
[01:38:15] was in a bud light ad like i i would totally have believed you and then that's what happened
[01:38:22] uh he uh also in a separate new york post article and now it's the new york post so who knows but
[01:38:29] uh apparently when zuckerberg was yucking it up with uh trump down in mar-a-lago he uh uh threw
[01:38:36] cheryl sandberg under the bus as being the reason for all the the dei crap and that he's finally
[01:38:42] unshackled and and can say what he wants and and in so doing is also really loosened up the uh
[01:38:48] political speech suppression that you see on instagram and especially threads where
[01:38:54] i think threads had an uh a huge opportunity when it launched if only they had not downranked
[01:39:01] anything news anything contemporaneous anything political i think that they really could have
[01:39:06] given elon and x a run for their money because uh unlike x it had the virtue of uh the pages loading
[01:39:12] but because it was a a heated election season you know the whole political press all of the journalists
[01:39:20] were like well you're downranking news like why would i spend time in threads in fact now
[01:39:24] now blue sky is taking off so i think like all these things happen in a piece but the the fact
[01:39:28] that meta killed its diversity programs and that we're seeing similar kind of
[01:39:32] the alignment right of like well you know you got to play ball with the trump administration anyway
[01:39:38] you know that somebody asked me last night at the birthday party like why is it that like tech
[01:39:43] is cozying up to trump and i think that they the at some point the the alliance between
[01:39:54] left of center politicians and the the tech world it flipped the polarity flipped and
[01:40:02] when i went to visit google in 2007 2007 2007 like they had so many pictures on the wall of here's al
[01:40:09] gore here and here's all these democratic bundlers and like like like luminaries and stuff and all the
[01:40:14] people who visited the campus and spoken uh to our staff done a done a special google talk or whatever
[01:40:21] the i think the bloom came off the rose a bit first from the center left people because they realized
[01:40:28] like oh wow like these platforms are you know like like uh open the door to misinformation right and
[01:40:36] then it was uh first around the election the russia stuff and then it was like during covet it's like oh
[01:40:40] shoot like you know like it's the anti-vax crap and and all of all of the conspiracy theories you know all
[01:40:46] these different sort of like the the pressures around the type of speech that their algorithms
[01:40:50] happen to promote which is like very outrage very you know like anger bait and and a lot of that stuff
[01:40:56] tends to agitate more like right-wing people who have like the authoritarian top-down mindset so like i think
[01:41:03] that like like partly the democrats like left like like like like started pressuring or distancing
[01:41:08] themselves or or finding themselves in opposition to just like what technology was but much more
[01:41:13] literally the the the the the biden administration's like decision to like let's regulate trusts uh the
[01:41:22] doj lawsuit against apple the the the judgment against google that like right now as it stands google has
[01:41:28] to come up with a plan for how to like divest itself of android and or chrome and or search
[01:41:33] uh uh to break it up now that probably won't happen and certainly because the election is less likely to
[01:41:39] happen but you ask like hey why why is tech turned on it's like the dei stuff is also just like a huge
[01:41:44] huge huge i hate to say it because like i actually really really like the idea of us all getting better
[01:41:50] but from the perspective of an executive trying to run a business a huge distraction like now in addition
[01:41:58] to running a business in a competitive environment i also have to meet all of these other goals that are
[01:42:02] orthogonal to it's just like you know like how many stories have we heard about microsoft doing the
[01:42:10] like stupid thing with respect to security like security doesn't make them more money obviously pr disasters
[01:42:16] cost them some amount of money but sometimes the cost that that is incurred by a security fiasco
[01:42:22] is still less than the cost of fixing it at at the root and so they make that trade all the time uh so
[01:42:31] i suspect that the like the impatience that leadership has with the increasingly you know demanding uh
[01:42:39] activists left during 2020 2021 2022 uh i was at the time saying like man like you gotta find a way to
[01:42:48] attenuate these signals or else like you're just going to create a huge fucking backlash and i got a
[01:42:53] lot of heat for that uh internally and without and uh i hate to say i told you so but this is exactly what
[01:43:00] fucking happens so we're just seeing a thermostatic effect and now we're just in the case of i guess
[01:43:06] we'll see where it goes but uh zuckerberg looks like a fucking loser by the way with his big t-shirts
[01:43:13] and his hair uh speaking of killing programs google is killing uh the ability to use google.com unless you
[01:43:21] have javascript enabled uh so so it used to be the case that you could uh go to google.com like it
[01:43:27] was a website type in a search query hit enter and then have it like if you if you have javascript it
[01:43:32] does all the fancy stuff right like it like fills in the next set of results the auto fills them in and
[01:43:38] then you click a thing and then it's not a hard page load or anything like the the results is magically
[01:43:42] populate right that's how that's the google experience as we've known it for over a decade
[01:43:46] probably over 15 years but because google is like a technologist first linux neckbeard joint from the
[01:43:55] start it would all it would it would play by pre-javascript rules of you go to the website you
[01:44:02] type in the google query you hit search search was an actual button that you could press you know like
[01:44:07] and and it would load another page and then you have 10 results or 30 results per page and you have
[01:44:11] the little like remember the little o's were like the the paginators i don't even know if it's still
[01:44:16] last time i've lasted more than five google results before giving up on google was uh quite a long time
[01:44:22] ago i guess you could do all that throughout google's history without having javascript on
[01:44:29] why that was significant was it meant that you could use more accessible browsers it meant that you could
[01:44:36] use uh browsers that had like you know uh uh worse hardware on them but importantly it meant that you
[01:44:42] could scrape fucking google it meant that you could write a program that could easily and conceivably
[01:44:47] download the google page navigate it you know parse the links and then but that's a way to bypass ads
[01:44:55] right and and by programmatically using google at all it allows uh third parties to scrape it uh and and to
[01:45:03] build their own indexes at scale which google does not want to do because that's their special sauce
[01:45:08] uh and so of course like that tension has always been there and they've always had sort of all
[01:45:12] all kinds of anti-scraping you know technologies and middlewares to try to prevent this but they
[01:45:17] finally given up the ghost and said you know now you just need to have javascript running and
[01:45:23] i don't love that it's that you know whatever you know like most websites require you have javascript
[01:45:29] running the things that i write require you to have javascript running so it's not like
[01:45:32] this is just a a changing of the it is a sign of the times so it's like okay well we are now in the
[01:45:38] era that the the the web is just an application platform and the the primary benefit of these fancy
[01:45:45] applications is to to build a bigger wall around the garden it's not necessarily to improve the user
[01:45:51] experience because nothing is lost by by you know they claimed like you get worse search results when
[01:45:58] javascript isn't enabled it's like that the server is the one doing and i don't know they're acting
[01:46:03] like this is a user experience win but they really are taking something away and calling it better
[01:46:08] so i just want to note that that's too bad i i i will miss the old-fashioned i could use the links
[01:46:15] browser in my terminal and navigate google and search for results over ssh which is a thing that i did in
[01:46:21] in school often uh from my linux workstation when i was in the lab
[01:46:25] as we continue these potpourri of shitty tech news the ceo of sonos was forced to step down
[01:46:33] as well as the head of product uh
[01:46:36] if you i've had various sonos devices i i did and when i was in columbus i had a home theater set up
[01:46:43] where where where you had like the two back then they were like sonos ones uh that were the side
[01:46:50] channels the the the bar in the middle and then the uh the subwoofer which is a very very expensive
[01:46:58] subwoofer even by sonos standards and their speakers are all expensive because it had the
[01:47:02] force cancelling like design where you know it would push up and down at the same level at the
[01:47:07] same time at the same frequency or amplitude i guess and so those waves would cancel out and so you'd
[01:47:11] still get the thump but it wouldn't literally shake the floor really good system good good audio you
[01:47:18] know for years sonos's biggest problem is that their audio products are so good and so long lasting
[01:47:23] that they've got a certain they've got a fixed number of fans basically like of of of sonos heads
[01:47:28] but they don't need to replace their hardware very often and so you know
[01:47:32] the diminishing returns of how good a speaker can get or how good the syncing of the audio between
[01:47:38] different rooms the household can get is such that once you've got all the speakers that you need and
[01:47:43] you're not going to move house anymore like there's probably move house is that a britishism
[01:47:48] why'd i say that write in if that's a britishism uh
[01:47:51] you know it's it's a hard business to run and they wanted to enter the headphone market because that's
[01:47:58] where there's a lot it's a much more disposable product category right headphones take wear and tear
[01:48:02] they've got lithium ion batteries in them they eventually wear out and in order for the headphone
[01:48:09] to work the they had to update their app and their app is one of the it's a whole category of apps like
[01:48:14] there's certain things just like existed before airplay 2 right existed before apple streaming music
[01:48:20] uh and so the app is sort of this dinosaur of a controller for music and it can integrate to various
[01:48:27] music services and you can select which rooms things are playing in and don't get me wrong like
[01:48:32] they've got their own protocols and they are very good and people who love sonos swear by it but
[01:48:38] every time i've had sonos devices like i have never wanted to use that app it has always been a garbage
[01:48:44] piece of shit it's a junky ux it always was it always is and maybe it's more reliable but it was
[01:48:49] never my experience the app is the place you go to set up a new sonos device and then when you have
[01:48:54] when you move it and you want it to like recalibrate it's uh what do they call it true
[01:48:58] tone where like you walk around with the phone and wave it around so that it can use the microphone from
[01:49:03] the phone to kind of like synchronize a distance between the speakers and so forth so but but
[01:49:08] apparently sonos people will use the app and actually use it in earnest uh which i've never
[01:49:14] understood i'm just grateful that i never had that workflow it's like airplay 2 is more than good
[01:49:18] enough for me because i'm just blasting audio all these home pods anyway and home pods are not sonos
[01:49:23] machines so i've got a um a move 2 which is a nice speaker it's a nice big boy it's a big
[01:49:28] it's like an ottoman it's a it's a small ottoman sized portable speaker uh and it rests on a little
[01:49:36] ring that charges over usb so you don't have to plug it and unplug it we just pick it up out of the cafe
[01:49:41] we can go down to the the ticket to the the pool outside it's a great time so they wanted to release
[01:49:47] these headphones and so they put out a huge rewrite of the app they brushed it because their headphones
[01:49:52] were launching and uh the old app wouldn't support the headphone pairing or whatever that was about
[01:49:57] the stupid fucking headphone the bespoke headphone experience which of course can't just be a bluetooth
[01:50:01] headphone anymore not if you're sonos so they rush out this new app and the the the ceo did some tap
[01:50:09] dancing about you know kind of basically like the apple style hashtag courage about it and and and the
[01:50:15] app had a lot of problems and fortunately i didn't experience any of them i downloaded the app uh or i had it
[01:50:20] anyway i think i got the i got i i was on the new app because i i just gotten this the the move to
[01:50:26] speaker and it was like you know it was enough the setup worked and whatever i didn't think about it
[01:50:30] people were really mad though and sonos people you know like like the one thing that they love about
[01:50:34] sonos and would always brag is the reliability so i get it and none of them wanted fucking headphones
[01:50:38] from sonos anyway i don't think so yeah ceo's gone apparently it's like like people are talking about
[01:50:45] this now like it's the fucking like mcdonald douglas takeover of boeing or something that the
[01:50:49] current crop of executives there just didn't understand what sonos was all about but like
[01:50:54] to be fair sonos is a feature not a product in the current era where everything's abstracted to like
[01:51:03] you know the big five tech companies all offer all of the same things and the kinds of like level of
[01:51:07] platform integrations that they can offer is so compelling that like what is so like if sonos isn't
[01:51:13] going to sell to apple what are they doing you know what what it would be really difficult to be
[01:51:18] the ceo of sonos regardless uh so he's gone new guys in he's saying all the right things but like i
[01:51:25] it it's a it's it's a their lane is so fucking narrow like what what is that what is a a sonos
[01:51:35] comeback story after this debacle look like right where the fans have turned on you and really the only
[01:51:41] reason your business was doing well was people had an irrational level of love and respect for
[01:51:45] you and your reliability and your brand power now that that's gone what what do you got what do you
[01:51:52] got because it because because the products themselves were actually not worth the price that you were
[01:51:58] charging and the structural and like you know just sort of systemic problems that you're facing are
[01:52:06] worse now than they were a year ago before you burned all this clock on nonsense like
[01:52:11] uh i think sonos is publicly traded sell your sonos please this is financial advice go go
[01:52:16] fucking sell it i i'm not an investor and this is not does not constitute financial advice um speaking
[01:52:22] of financial advice uh the nvidia came out with its 5000 series of graphics cards well it announced
[01:52:30] them at their keynote at ces and nvidia they're on top of the world they talk about stock prices uh they're
[01:52:35] they're they're they're they're enjoying the the peak of their bubble i uh i keep telling people
[01:52:41] like you know like especially people who have invested in nvidia um you know just like individual
[01:52:45] stock picking like the reason that nvidia is doing well right now is they were so fortunate to ride the
[01:52:55] crypto wave where yes it just turns out that like uh general purpose gpus are useful like multiplying
[01:53:02] matrices is a really handy operation to be able to do at scale for lots of different you know uh ponzi scheme
[01:53:11] adjacent technology ventures so like the crypto scheme they take off nvidia's are all the graphics
[01:53:19] cards are are sold out everywhere because everyone wants to mine their cryptos uh now between proof of
[01:53:25] stake and like the subsiding you know nft craze and everything like that that just as that starts to
[01:53:30] ebb the ai boom starts taking off and now everyone is the h100 uh uh server rack graphics you know ai chip
[01:53:39] is the the coin of the realm and and all of these you know companies vcs are are are basically bartering
[01:53:46] in h100 access and all the cloud computer uh the cloud platforms are are hoovering up all of them and so
[01:53:52] nvidia was able to very like gracefully navigate from the crypto bubble to the ai
[01:53:58] we'll see if it's a bubble bubble uh and so they're on top of the world and well you know like
[01:54:06] they're in in such a dominant position and ai will continue to exist that there's going to be a lot of
[01:54:10] winners and losers in terms of applications for ai but if you look at the eps if you look at the
[01:54:17] trajectory of the nvidia stock like there's a a sickness in the brains of finance pros that think
[01:54:24] numbers can only go up um they're they're just drawing and cram the extrapolation of the rest of
[01:54:29] the line and i i suspect that this is a there's just not enough money at the lower levels in the value
[01:54:35] chain like like the cloud providers are eventually going to have to turn a profit because they're all
[01:54:39] publicly traded too um it's hard to imagine everyone's going to be replacing all of these
[01:54:44] server racks like every single year and if they're doing that you're gonna have people like amazon
[01:54:49] like make their own ai chip so anyway nvidia like not that they're on shaky ground but like they're
[01:54:54] really riding high you know you got jensen the the co-founder and his shiny leather jackets and stuff
[01:54:59] and he's always been a little bit of a character i the thing that you know them making discrete graphics
[01:55:08] chips for computers so that gamers could play games was their thing and crypto was seen as a big
[01:55:15] distraction and that they took their eye off the ball and they uh you know the 2000 series of cards
[01:55:21] was kind of mediocre in a lot of ways the 3000 series of cards adds you know enhances the ray tracing
[01:55:27] capabilities of the cards and then and and and in general performance is fine like they don't have
[01:55:32] a lot of competition right now intel just put out one that's like a decent budget option that's
[01:55:37] surprisingly performant and competent given that it's intel and a company that shouldn't exist uh
[01:55:43] the 5000 series of cards they they they they they did a very well produced keynote they showed a lot of
[01:55:51] unlabeled bar charts comparing it to the 4000 series of cards that they're replacing they're coming in
[01:55:56] at prices that are lower than people expected they're making bold claims like that the um
[01:56:01] the the what is it the 50 70 provides 40 90 levels of performance where the the last two digits indicate
[01:56:10] the sort of the the tier of the card so like the card that in the new generation that's two rungs down
[01:56:15] from the top of the previous generation that those are going to be somehow equivalent
[01:56:19] and when you listen to them talk of course they're talking about because of the ai because the ai compute
[01:56:26] in these new chips is way higher and we have these cool tricks the two primary tricks are upscaling
[01:56:34] using ai so you take a you actually rasterize you render the game at a low resolution like call it 1080p
[01:56:41] and then you use machine learning and a model that's kind of embedded and ships with the drivers
[01:56:46] to upscale it to 4k or whatever it is and if you just do that naively you end up with a picture that
[01:56:53] looks really sharp and like a lot of jacket edges and stuff but if you do it based on like you know
[01:56:57] a lot of training data that says this is what the game should look like or what a game should look like
[01:57:00] at 4k in this particular genre in this particular circumstance you know like it can actually do really
[01:57:04] clever things like make sure that the foliage ends up in front of the light or whatever it is
[01:57:08] so that's called dlss and uh dlss 4 is even more advanced and it's a whole cadre of features one of
[01:57:16] the other the other big kind of leg of the stool here is uh frame gen or frame generation and that is
[01:57:23] you know the name of the game for graphics cards really two things you have a frame buffer putting out
[01:57:28] a certain amount of resolution uh to a display and then you do that a certain number of times
[01:57:35] a second you know in hertz so for a long time getting a game to run stable at 60 hertz or 60
[01:57:41] frames per second that was the gold standard and if you could do that you're great but now modern day
[01:57:45] displays not only have very very high refresh rates but they have connections to the the graphics card
[01:57:52] that can sync that that refresh rate so that the graphics card can communicate to the the monitor
[01:57:56] and say like let's say i've got a monitor that has some of these are nuts like there's a there's one
[01:58:00] i think that was ces that can do 4k at 240 hertz or 1080p at 480 hertz so like we're talking about
[01:58:10] screens that can refresh all of the pixels on the screen like absurdly fast but the the card can now
[01:58:16] communicate over the you know display port connection it can say like hey i'm going to be outputting at 275
[01:58:22] or some arbitrary uh frequency or or yeah uh frame rate and the display can can anticipate that and
[01:58:30] then the two can basically be in lock stink so there's lots lock sync so there's no tearing or
[01:58:35] anything like that it's all very very neat so so frame generation where you the graphics card will
[01:58:43] interpolate so if you if you're drawing like let's say like like it's only rasterizing like 60 frames a
[01:58:48] second and you want to display 120 frames you want it to feel that much smoother that much faster now
[01:58:56] whether or not people can actually perceive stuff faster than 60 or 90 or 120 frames per second
[01:59:02] i don't know it would be really interesting to see somebody do a side-by-side study and see
[01:59:07] what portion of the population can even fucking tell but if you want to be able to say that you're
[01:59:12] putting out 120 frames per second or 240 frames per second just like dlss takes lower resolution images
[01:59:19] and upscales them so you can say or feel like you're playing a 4k game and have it look mostly
[01:59:24] right even though it's it's not the game anymore it's an imagined it's an ai fever dream of what the
[01:59:30] game should look like at 4k uh that's heavily informed by you know tweaks between the developers
[01:59:35] and drivers and yada yada the frame generation side is sort of like the same thing but for motion so it's
[01:59:39] like all right so the 65 60 frames per second game that's what we're rendering at so that's the work
[01:59:44] that the computer has to do is just to get those 60 frames out the door and then dlss the the sort of
[01:59:51] ai piece the pipeline will interpolate like what imagine what the frame would look like in between
[01:59:57] you know each of the other frames so interleaved between each frame is a frame that i just made up
[02:00:03] and then i've doubled the frame right and that's 2x frame generation well these new 5000 cards are
[02:00:08] going to support 4x frame generation so in between each frame you've got now what would that be three
[02:00:14] more fucking frames that are also made up until the next real frame and it interpolates between the two
[02:00:20] and it adds a certain amount of latency right because you want to know what's what's the next
[02:00:24] frame before you put it out but that latency now is like it used to be that the latency was slow
[02:00:29] enough it would because the pipeline would have to run and so forth then it would take longer and so
[02:00:33] like you'd end up with uh the sort of phenomenon like you move the controller a little bit and then
[02:00:37] like it's just a little laggy or motion blurry like you're you're it's not a snappy music and rhythm
[02:00:42] games like it would be a game over because when you tap the button it wouldn't time up with what you're
[02:00:46] seeing on the screen the latency is apparently back down and so like they're bragging now like oh yeah you
[02:00:51] you have incredible performance at 240 480 frames per second but they're not like gamers look at that
[02:00:59] who are hardcore gamers who want to like you know like there there is a dick measuring contest aspect
[02:01:06] to pc games where it's like if i make a custom pc i'm trying to maximize the raster we say rasterization
[02:01:14] performance of the graphics uh because all of the device components that i'm picking whether it's
[02:01:21] you know the motherboard so like that like the memory band with those maxed out the the particular chip
[02:01:26] that i get so that the you know the um any games that i play are not uh uh bottlenecked from the cpu
[02:01:34] right like the the amount of like sort of like game world processing and the ai movement of all the the npcs
[02:01:41] and all that and then you get this graphics card and you want just a big beefy thing that can
[02:01:45] multiply a shit ton of matrices matrices simultaneously this feels like cheating this feels like well
[02:01:51] uh i'm not really rendering 4k i'm rendering 1080p and then it's making up some stuff it feels like oh
[02:01:57] okay well i'm not really running at 60 frames per second or 100 i'm not really running 120 frames i'm
[02:02:01] running 60 and sort of doubling them in this kind of goofy way and because these uh upscalers and and
[02:02:08] and frame gen you know techniques are not perfect that they do make mistakes a certain amount of
[02:02:13] veracity is lost for sure and like these things are getting better and that's nice but the yeah like i
[02:02:19] said the dick measuring aspect of like why are people really in this racket to begin with that is uh
[02:02:25] completely undercut and so like nvidia finds itself like in this like marketing problem where all they
[02:02:31] really want to work on is the ai stuff and the diminishing returns of like making something that can
[02:02:35] multiply matrices faster and like introduce new shaders and technologies that actually make games
[02:02:39] look better not just you know uh uh easier to artificially accelerate they're clearly like that's not where
[02:02:50] their attention is their attention is on building like you know neural language processors and and
[02:02:56] rather than actually improve these cards performance versus the previous generation it is increasingly looking
[02:03:01] like and and and once you ignore the bar charts and dig into like what's actually in these cards
[02:03:06] uh you know the the number of actual cores that like go to the graphics processing stuff it's like
[02:03:12] pretty mild some of them are flat over the previous generation now granted like the prices aren't super high but
[02:03:20] you know i was i'm a guy who fucking loves to upgrade shit i have a 30 90 it's a great card i i i in fact
[02:03:30] my indiana jones i'm running at 4k 60 frames a second my projector only supports 60 frames a second only
[02:03:35] supports 4k nevertheless when the 50 90 is getting announced i'm like i want that because it's new and
[02:03:41] it's faster and like i i have a homeopathic sort of benefit like i something in the air that just makes me
[02:03:47] sleep better at night knowing that my performance is the best that i can possibly get
[02:03:50] uh i would have better path tracing i'd have better lighting maybe right and while that is true i can
[02:03:58] still drag up almost every single game slider all the way to the right but then you you layer on this
[02:04:05] kind of stuff and and the fact that the performance actually isn't the rasterization performance isn't
[02:04:11] better it just does it feels it cheapens it somehow so i don't know like when we talk about triple a
[02:04:19] gaming and how how it is uh structurally one wonders really whether or not um this market's even big
[02:04:27] enough to to worry about uh you know nvidia clearly doesn't care it's like sort of like intel just has
[02:04:32] this desktop pc gaming market anymore and it's like this tiny tiny little rounding error in terms of their
[02:04:37] overall businesses so go check out the 5000 series cards but i suspect that aftermarket 4000 and 3000
[02:04:45] cards are still going to be very valuable um because it's not like you know the average the average card
[02:04:50] is like a 2000 series or 3000 series like a an older card and and developers need to hit as many
[02:04:57] gamers as possible so no one's actually taking advantage of these advanced features unless you got some sort of
[02:05:03] marketing deal with nvidia to turn them on so that they could you know run their ads sorry that was a
[02:05:09] lot if you're not into i should i really should figure out how to add chapters of this thing if
[02:05:13] you don't care about gpu shit and i wish i didn't but anyway all that to say i am personally really proud
[02:05:21] of myself that i reached the conclusion that i have no business upgrading my 3090 to one of these new cards
[02:05:26] that i actually actively chose like i'm gonna i'm happy with what i have
[02:05:31] and that's such an unusual sensation for me to feel that i'm i i'm i am noting it to say look at me
[02:05:37] look at me um also in gaming news uh it has been rumored for a while uh it's actually kind of sad
[02:05:47] because there's been um for for elder scrolls skyrim uh which is very very popular game it's been launched
[02:05:54] on every single platform there's been a long running 10 year plus mod project by the community
[02:06:01] to port sky uh port the oblivion game the game prior to skyrim into the skyrim engine and they're
[02:06:09] still working on it it's still kind of in this flux state uh well there's a new leak that like
[02:06:14] uh bethesda gameworks is literally actually contracting a real studio to kind of do the same
[02:06:22] thing and remake oblivion in a modern game engine uh with you know kind of creature comforts and
[02:06:28] other sort of updates to make the game more playable today which personally i think is brilliant one
[02:06:32] because i actually enjoyed oblivion more than skyrim i know it's unpopular opinion but two like their
[02:06:39] output has been really bad they've got starfield which was underwhelming uh you know fallout sort of
[02:06:45] in in in in in a situation of flux like bethesda takes a really long time to get games out the door
[02:06:50] and oblivion is sitting right there as being like a really good game that just needs a little bit of
[02:06:54] spit polish to get over the finish line so apparently you know this has been rumored for a little bit
[02:06:58] a whole bunch of leaks came out uh indicating like yeah this is actually happening and so
[02:07:02] currently slated to release in june 2025 so if you've never played oblivion before stay tuned
[02:07:08] keep an eye out for that this is not the sky oblivion remake this is like a an actual product that will
[02:07:14] hopefully be as good as the thing that the random fans throw together uh also in the news you may have
[02:07:22] seen so that reason i titled this episode super switch is as a kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s
[02:07:30] and i had a nintendo and then i was very excited to get the super nintendo uh i was really hoping that
[02:07:38] nintendo would have the amount of capital c cool in them to to to make the switch to just the super
[02:07:46] switch now that creates several problems uh and i get why they didn't do it right but like they put
[02:07:54] out their unveil trailer it's two and a half minutes long it's easy to find it you'll never guess but it
[02:07:59] looks like a switch it's a little bit bigger the the thumbsticks are less bad you know like instead
[02:08:05] of having rails that the joy cons don't get joy conned now the rails that the joy cons slip into are
[02:08:11] now uh they click in through magnets and there's a little button to kind of detach them it's the kickstand
[02:08:21] is less bad right the the hardware of course is going to be incrementally better but it's not going
[02:08:25] to be anything that you want to write home about but the reason that they didn't call it the super
[02:08:30] switch is that they finally have a hit on their hands they want to just make it crystal clear that
[02:08:35] this is not the same thing this is the next okay grandma this is the one you buy right because nintendo
[02:08:41] is has named things uh so foolishly from a market perspective over the years uh you know in ancient
[02:08:48] history when when the super nintendo was released there was genuine market confusion why doesn't this play my
[02:08:54] nintendo games and vice versa you know uh they they had to market it as like because people people had
[02:09:01] not experienced a new console generation most of them and so like they had to like you know go and
[02:09:07] educate like oh this is actually a different product it enables new experiences and and the number of
[02:09:11] early 90s like infuriated moms that were being interviewed in newspapers and local news of like i just
[02:09:19] paid hundreds of dollars for granted and it's inflation adjusted terms like they were right
[02:09:24] to complain like and now and now nintendo's throwing all that away and i need to buy a whole new system
[02:09:30] just to play the latest games and my kids are you know bagging for it and whatnot like the fact it was
[02:09:35] named super nintendo was just one more barrier then of course they name the next thing nintendo 64 which uh
[02:09:41] has the virtue of having a number at the end i guess uh then the gamecube which is its own thing and
[02:09:47] maybe that was the smartest name of them all uh just because it was a totally different brand uh
[02:09:51] and it did fine and then you have the wii but then you know things the the wheels really fell off the
[02:09:57] wagon because in 2012 when they released the wii u and it looks just like a wii but just on its side
[02:10:04] and it has this tablet thing like people are all in the boxes mostly showing off the tablet because that's
[02:10:10] the interesting looking thing even people who like are relatively plugged in could look at that in a
[02:10:15] target and be like so this is just a tablet for my wii like i don't use my wii anymore because of
[02:10:20] you know it's collecting dust or whatever uh it was unclear that it was a new console and and it still
[02:10:27] had the wii modes it was a it was a absolute nightmare and and easily you know the the worst performing
[02:10:33] console that nintendo ever produced at the same time they had the the ds and the 3ds systems
[02:10:39] and those ones like they had similarly nonsensical names let's see if i can name them all so then
[02:10:43] there was the nintendo ds and then the ds lite which was smaller and and and square more square edges uh
[02:10:51] kind of like the the clamshell ibook to the squared off ibook g4 similar aesthetic then they had was it the
[02:11:00] dsi the internet connected ds uh and then they had oh i think that might have might have been
[02:11:11] might have been it was the new ds the ds or the 3ds the new nintendo ds might have been the last one
[02:11:19] yeah and it just said new in front like new super mario brothers and that was nonsense then of course they
[02:11:24] they had the 3ds and then they had the 2ds and it's you know like all right so like look nintendo's
[02:11:32] bad at names they uh satoru iwata he was a programmer who worked his way up to ceo very fun guy very like
[02:11:41] you know brilliant in so many ways but uh not like a finance head and not like a marketing guru like the
[02:11:49] current furukawa-san at nintendo's sure seems to be like he he's a plant like the the shareholders
[02:11:56] love him because he just prints money the switch is making tons and tons of money he just you know
[02:12:03] playing it safe it's the switch 2 uh nintendo switch 2 it's got a big 2 on it it's a
[02:12:08] big old gaudy ugly ass number two it's like you're gonna look at that doc and you're gonna be like man
[02:12:13] which switch is this and then you're not going to wonder anymore so uh it's it's disappointing
[02:12:20] to me as a lifelong nintendo fan that it's so boring but from a
[02:12:27] the walls closing in on the gaming industry and nintendo kind of having the last good thing going
[02:12:34] in terms of being able to sell products and make a profit i it's probably for the best it's probably
[02:12:41] the best for everyone that like this is a very predictable you know perfunctory release and and
[02:12:46] the fact that they've also spawned this entire cottage industry of other people making handhelds
[02:12:51] that sort of imitate the switch uh they clearly hit on something in that initial design and it'll be
[02:12:56] interesting it's it's interesting now but it'll be interesting to go back in like 10 15 20 years
[02:13:01] and see what was the history of and the the influence of that particular design of that initial
[02:13:08] switch when released in 2016 what it had on on the broader handheld gaming market
[02:13:13] to whatever extent that still exists from then uh let's see
[02:13:20] let's skip over the next couple little things
[02:13:23] we'll end on a note that this isn't real news this is reddit news
[02:13:33] i just loved this post the the shot chaser aspect of this reddit post it was posted to the the apple
[02:13:39] watch sub a few days ago title is i got 202 beats per minute at one point and regularly rest at 100
[02:13:46] beats per minute is my apple watch defective let's keep reading i really don't understand but ever since
[02:13:53] i got my apple watch i've been seeing some really weird heart rate heart rate heart weird heart trends
[02:13:58] when i stand up or go for a walk my heart rate raises well over 100 beats per minute
[02:14:02] i also get 120 110 to 120 while resting occasionally you can see my range while doing different activities
[02:14:08] in the picture attached at one point i was not exercising i reached 202 beats per minute i know
[02:14:14] that's absolutely not normal but i felt normal at the time it recorded it and i was genuinely so confused
[02:14:19] after at the time i'm writing this i've been laying down for 30 minutes and i've done no activities
[02:14:24] that would warrant a high heart rate however i somehow got 103 beats per minute i'm in good shape
[02:14:28] and i exercise often i don't understand where this is coming from took an ecg a few times and almost all
[02:14:33] of them came out as high heart rate i have a series 5 which is an older model but it's in perfectly good
[02:14:39] condition i've checked to make sure i'm wearing it correctly and i've cleaned the heart rate sensor
[02:14:43] several times but that's not the problem any tips
[02:14:45] i i have been known to experience something just like i said earlier like most people when they have
[02:14:57] a computer issue they blame themselves i tend to err on the opposite side which is what i think makes
[02:15:03] me interesting to some people is that i'm so quick to blame the computer that i will go digging and try
[02:15:08] to figure it out but it can sometimes lead to me complaining and blaming the computer a little bit
[02:15:13] too proactively right and now that like our devices are so integrated and aware of like with these health
[02:15:22] sensors the fact that rht123x this user could go to the trouble of the screenshots the documentation the
[02:15:31] multi-day wondering about this the posting to reddit they're responding to some comments in reddit
[02:15:37] and never at any point think what if i just took my middle finger and my index finger and i put them
[02:15:45] you know on my neck near that artery and i just counted like i would hope most people who are adults
[02:15:55] will have been taught at some point in their life how to measure one's pulse you don't get a rough idea
[02:15:59] did he ever do that i assume he did right because of course like if if my heart rate was 202 beats per
[02:16:07] minute i've already outed myself as a having a low heart rate privilege but if my heart rate was 202
[02:16:13] and my the app was saying it's like you've got arrhythmia you've got to go to the doctor be like
[02:16:17] well look at this fucking thing this is obviously broken so i just assumed like he must have checked
[02:16:24] his heart rate but i said you know what i bet he didn't i bet he just rushed to the conclusion that
[02:16:30] his apple watch is defective and you read a bunch of the comments and they're like i i think you're
[02:16:36] just i think your shit's fucked are you sure you do have you checked your uh uh checked your heart rate
[02:16:42] he replied uh later on in the thread i to find it it was so buried in the uh you know reddit does
[02:16:48] a bad job generally with the folding comments but like it wasn't his replies only got his his personal
[02:16:53] update explaining what the fuck happened in this post that has 412 upvotes only has two upvotes
[02:17:00] at present where he comes back and actually says what the fuck was happening he says update hello
[02:17:05] everyone still alive i genuinely feel stupid for not checking my pulse manually first thing to make
[02:17:10] sure it was correct i did so a few months back and it was around 80 beats per minute i believe so i
[02:17:15] didn't think there was any cause for concern nor a problem and assumed my watch was just wrong i did
[02:17:20] one just now and it was almost exactly the same as the reading on my apple watch so i know now that
[02:17:25] it's not my watch that's defective but rather my heart i did multiple ecgs as mentioned in the post
[02:17:29] and they gave similar results i don't have health insurance unfortunately but i will arrange an
[02:17:33] appointment with the doctor as soon as i can to sort this out parentheses might be costly sibling of
[02:17:38] mine does have pots pots i'm unsure if that has any correlation but i'm just putting out there in case i
[02:17:45] end up being diagnosed with the same condition thank you for your insights and i apologize for not taking
[02:17:50] some basic measures prior to making the post i want to clarify that i do know how to take a manual pulse
[02:17:54] and that i'm not usually this dumb i really am sorry yeah so
[02:18:00] i don't know who needs to hear this but if you don't know how to measure your heart rate google how
[02:18:10] to measure your heart rate and if your watch is telling you that you are uh gonna die at any moment maybe
[02:18:18] maybe get a second opinion before you post it to reddit uh i don't know what to say i'm not an
[02:18:25] expert but that but that one jumped off the page uh every now and then i like reading something like
[02:18:31] that to be like ah you know what i am pretty in the head but i'm at least i'm not that guy all right
[02:18:38] that's it's the last time around i may have oversold the netflix series the diplomat i should have been
[02:18:50] clearer that it's not good it's like fine it's tv i do have a big boy crush on carrie russell that's
[02:19:02] that's true but i was you know kind of selling it as such and it you know watch it if you like political
[02:19:10] you know if you liked west wing or madam secretary that kind of thing it's it's good it's fine uh
[02:19:18] season two wrap that up with becky and it was uh uh it ended with one of the best cliffhangers
[02:19:25] first of all allison janney shows up she who played cj craig in west wing uh and uh she's
[02:19:32] wonderful and uh yeah the the the the finale really sets the stage for some cool shit i think it's a
[02:19:40] it's a short season like six episodes maybe uh six or eight uh but they've already renewed for season
[02:19:46] three so i'm excited uh yeah i don't want to spoil anything one thing i did spoil myself i read a book
[02:19:54] oh i read a book uh but i listened to a book don't don't get ahead of yourselves i listened to a book
[02:20:04] called conclave by robert harris uh two three years ago you know i was it was one of the games i would
[02:20:11] play like while playing no man's sky in vr um so i should get back into that i really wish i had a
[02:20:17] good vr setup for for gaming right now uh so i listened to this book because robert harris wrote
[02:20:24] a trilogy of books about uh ancient rome uh uh starring uh cicero and they they were three of my favorite
[02:20:35] books like like like absolutely fantastic uh trilogy i should go back and check that out
[02:20:40] imperium i think might have been the first one and he wrote a book called conclave about you know like a
[02:20:47] modern era um changing of the guard with the pope dying and then the the the conclave the you know and
[02:20:53] the curia or whatever the cardinals all vote and have to come up to a two-thirds you know vote on and
[02:20:59] who the next pope hat is gonna be uh and i thought you know it's a pretty good book it's like a little
[02:21:06] bit of palace intrigue it's like a little bit of politics it's uh you know um i would say a little
[02:21:13] bit like i don't know um there there's a there's a handful of twists and turns that are i think are
[02:21:22] genuinely thought-provoking but it's a slow burn as a book it's like okay you know and and and as a book
[02:21:29] it's very there's not a lot of texture in it it's just sort of like and then this happened and then
[02:21:35] this conversation happened i don't remember it being like particularly like you know like artful
[02:21:38] but the uh the film version which is currently streaming on peacock i want to say uh i think
[02:21:48] very good so the film came out um it was by the guy who did all quiet on the western front which is
[02:21:55] also surprisingly good and punched way above its weight uh and this this this movie has like three
[02:22:02] sets you know it's like it's visually not the most exciting thing in the world and then you know there's
[02:22:07] a couple shots that are really beautiful but like i don't know like like all movies look the same now
[02:22:12] because digital filmography cinematography has gotten to be like the baseline level of quality is higher so
[02:22:19] that even art house films even if they're shot on the iphone still like look pretty good most of the
[02:22:24] time i i noticed like this one doesn't like this one looks weirdly bad like like they were just
[02:22:29] shooting in genuinely dim environments so like not to say things are blurry or out of focus but like
[02:22:35] yeah i've got a pretty good rig and like it did not look great uh but the writing was fantastic and
[02:22:41] there's a couple of really great speeches throughout um so if you if you if you got peacock would you do if
[02:22:48] you have uh instacart plus uh if you got peacock check it out uh it i was very impressed and it was
[02:22:57] the reason that i'm sharing it is it was a rare movie for to to end a non-blockbuster big movie
[02:23:07] where at the end becky and i are like i'm just really glad i watched that like not to say like
[02:23:13] the message is incredible uh but it was yeah it was just a uh a window to a story that was like
[02:23:23] thought-provoking like what if the world what would the impact of the world be if if this particular
[02:23:29] series events unfolded and there were a handful of you know a you call it moralizing or whatever but
[02:23:36] ralph is it ralph fiennes or ralph fines i've heard it pronounced both ways recently uh he plays the
[02:23:43] main cardinal dude who's administering this whole
[02:23:46] you know the black smoke white smoke charade and he gives a speech in the beginning
[02:23:54] and like as a little homily and he says that you know to his fellow cardinals that the gravest
[02:24:04] sin is certainty uh that being so sure of yourself or sure that things had to be one way that's a good
[02:24:11] thing to talk about before voting on multiple rounds of potentially having to change your vote several
[02:24:15] times depending on how things pan out uh and that little speech is like one of the best it's right up
[02:24:23] there with the uh the bill pullman and independence day for me as a 10 year old or 11 year old or whatever
[02:24:30] the hell it was uh in terms of just like rousing like yeah like hell like when you think about it
[02:24:38] like that certainty is really at the heart of like a lot of problems like the the lack of flexibility in
[02:24:43] people's minds the inability even to when things are out of your control just to take a let's see approach
[02:24:48] uh yeah a good good movie good influence uh so check out conclave if you if you if you're if you're so
[02:24:56] inclined uh severance season two started that just came out friday um becky and i uh hoovered that
[02:25:04] episode up in the first like 15 minutes of it landing on the apple tv uh they're just doing one episode
[02:25:12] at a time which makes sense uh now that it's it's it's made a splash the the the cast did a weird pop-up
[02:25:20] store thing at the new york store where they they set up a fake severance in the uh severance office
[02:25:26] cubicle orientation inside of the the cube you know above ground at the the manhattan store
[02:25:34] is it fifth avenue i don't know new york shit but anyway like they had the actual cast there and they
[02:25:39] were like pretending play acting out you know like a day in the office as a uh uh
[02:25:45] macro data refiner or whatever and so that was a cool stunt uh you know this is a
[02:25:51] adam scott is i've always loved him as an actor you know i i thought parks and rec might be the biggest
[02:25:57] thing that he ever did and so to see him as the star in a in a in a show that's taken so seriously
[02:26:02] ben stiller every episode that he's directed has just been lights out phenomenal and and the season
[02:26:08] two opener of severance is is no different um it's just they're they're they're doing stuff that
[02:26:16] is really novel and really special like the comedic the the the air they find levity in things that
[02:26:25] are objectively unacceptable like in this case the funniest parts of this opener are surrounding child
[02:26:31] labor the forest child the constriction of conscription of a child into like you know office work uh
[02:26:37] you know presume in in a sense against her will right like you know becky becky took some offense
[02:26:43] when i was like that is really fucking funny and like the thing is like it is funny they make it funny
[02:26:48] uh in a sense it i had this epiphany while we were watching that like severance is kind of like the
[02:26:55] opposite of the good place because the conceit of the good place which michael sure show is a really
[02:27:00] fantastic show the conceit is like you know all these people died they go into like what they think is
[02:27:04] heaven turns out to be hell and back and forth and so forth and like you know like they the over the
[02:27:09] course of the series everyone's awareness continues to expand of like the scope of what is life what is
[02:27:17] existence and everything keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and and and more and more infinite
[02:27:23] whereas in severance the idea that you would have a part of yourself that would be blocked off and
[02:27:28] isolated and as as time runs out like you getting permanently retired you go into an elevator once
[02:27:34] one day and then you just never come out again right and that's death the the the feeling like
[02:27:42] the opposite of the good place where they find humor in the absurdity of the situation that they're in and
[02:27:46] that keeps things light enough but you're literally going down into this like you know contraction of
[02:27:52] awareness and that's where they find the tension uh yeah so i'm just mad maybe i'm thinking of that
[02:28:00] old 90s game that was like sort of like uh called afterlife where you had like a heaven mode and a and a hell
[02:28:06] mode and you're trying to do like a sim city on of heaven and hell simultaneously uh
[02:28:14] huh anyway severance is good uh transitioning over to uh the video game side of the fence uh marvel
[02:28:22] arrivals has really taken the world by a storm uh what it has successfully done is take overwatch as a
[02:28:28] game mechanic a squad-based shooter where everyone plays different roles uh put a blockbuster
[02:28:36] intellectual property in the form of of marvel so you got all the marvel superheroes uh uh and then you
[02:28:44] you you have a chinese game developer that's got you know a huge absolute massive staff that they're
[02:28:50] that are gonna be pumping out new heroes every few weeks um and of course because it's chinese like
[02:28:56] they're the the the not to say there's something inherently thirsty about chinese uh uh people or
[02:29:04] something but like the the let's just say that like free-to-play online games developed by chinese developers
[02:29:13] will uh they they they much more often tend to have jiggle physics as a high priority in the backlog
[02:29:22] and some of the characters that are already there are very clearly catering to a a thirstier
[02:29:30] look man like there's just like i'm not i'm not saying that marvel rivals is gonna be just like super sexed up
[02:29:42] gotcha game sort of like you know from an artistic perspective uh someday but like they're already
[02:29:49] inching that way to a point where i'm like how is disney green lighting this but of course it's in china
[02:29:55] and it's like you can only say so much because this is a cc being trying to sell your sell your movies
[02:29:59] uh but like you know the way that these free-to-play games typically go is they only you know well
[02:30:05] gotta sell more battle passes or more characters or more more skins and more outfits like the the
[02:30:12] the the thirst vector can only go up unlike nvidia's stock price you're only going to get
[02:30:18] slightly bigger boobs and slightly jigglier butts as time goes on based on the long arc of free-to-play
[02:30:28] east asian games uh over time and so i wonder where we're going to be in a couple years i suspect that
[02:30:35] i would be surprised if there isn't some sort of come to jesus moment in terms of the the the brand
[02:30:43] safety side of of of this particular game and especially if it continues to take off and uh how
[02:30:49] disney feels about how its characters are represented because they so far it seems like they're getting away
[02:30:54] with murder but also marvel's kind of at a nadir right now in terms of influence and they're probably
[02:30:58] willing to take what they can get i'm uh also very near the end of indiana jones and the great circle
[02:31:07] uh which of course i cannot play on my steam deck just it it was literally like everything short of
[02:31:14] smoking like the the start the game up and and it's just blowing hot air at the other end so whatever you
[02:31:19] know when it's running in windows mode there's just nothing to throttle it so i was back on my
[02:31:24] real gaming pc with my 30 90 and playing indiana jones last night and you can kind of just tell
[02:31:30] when when when when the main campaign of a game even though it feels like arbitrary it feels like oh
[02:31:38] yeah i'm just in this world now i'm doing this stuff and like maybe there's another world it's like
[02:31:41] it's it's got certain like wrap it up plot beats like oh wait these characters have never seen each
[02:31:47] other these two antagonists are like they're here simultaneously now and this one you know enemy
[02:31:52] of my enemy is my friend shows up and so now we're on the same side so like little signals like that
[02:31:58] are like you know more big over the top set pieces or more you know like uh tighter tighter tighter
[02:32:04] interplay between cinematic and then marginally interactive segments and then more cinematic like
[02:32:09] so like that is accelerating that loop and so that tells me it's like i'm probably nearing the end of
[02:32:14] the game so i'm almost done about a couple hours prior in the game there is a uh if you know what pt is
[02:32:25] uh pt uh stood for playable trailer uh it was a uh production of konami uh hideo kid kojima the fella who
[02:32:35] made uh uh metal gear solid and has and death stranding and has made it his entire career's
[02:32:41] work to try to ingratiate himself to hollywood and hobnob with famous people because he's a big
[02:32:48] film buff and uh egomaniac uh considers himself an artur uh and so like a lot of his work is really
[02:32:56] overwrought generally it's you know whatever it's fine he's got a whole cadre of very talented people
[02:33:00] around him they make games in school i play most of the games it's fine well he made a game a trailer
[02:33:06] a free demo of a game called pt playable trailer and it was a horror game and i think it came out in
[02:33:12] 2014 with the original ps4 and the long and short of like what happened i guess i'll do that part first
[02:33:21] and then segue into the game kojima leaves so leaves konami it's very fractious and and acrimonious
[02:33:30] the the the the middle gear solid five game the last thing he worked on there comes out in a sort
[02:33:35] of half half unfinished state still a breakthrough game in a lot of ways but just like you know not
[02:33:41] not a full complete package that makes any kind of fucking sense in my opinion i still enjoyed it um
[02:33:47] because of that that the game that pt would have become never happened and not only that konami sort of
[02:33:55] like uh started delisting stuff and almost threatened to get out of normal gaming entirely kind of as a
[02:34:02] hissy fit around this and so they delisted that pt game and so you can't download it anymore and because
[02:34:07] it was free no one actually had a paid license to it and so sony wouldn't you know just let you
[02:34:11] re-download it which means that like on ebay there are ps4s for sale that have pt loaded onto them and
[02:34:17] like presumably you'd also be buying the account of whoever it was that had it so like if you
[02:34:21] you were real smart you would bought 10 ps4s and then made 10 burner accounts and downloaded
[02:34:25] nothing but pt onto each of them uh and then waited a decade so if you want to play this particular game
[02:34:32] you got to go and buy one of these dozen or so ps4s floating around although i'm sure somebody's
[02:34:37] figured out a way to crack this one would hope so the the game pt and i was so cool because just for
[02:34:43] me personally uh jeremy happened to be in town in columbus and so we we downloaded it and it was dark
[02:34:49] at night and we played pt and we kind of took turns with the controller and it is a simple conceit you are
[02:34:55] in a hallway and the hallway is a square a big rectangle and you walk around the hallway and stuff happens you
[02:35:01] hear voices and you see things and they're horrific or they're mundane or it's a phone ringing you answer
[02:35:07] the phone the phone says something creepy but there's nowhere to go except backwards or forwards
[02:35:13] and forwards you're just doing another loop around the hallway but then every time you do a loop around
[02:35:17] the hallway something changes now there's like a weird like a refrigerator hanging from the ceiling
[02:35:23] instead of a chandelier and there's blood dripping down it you know but there's nothing you can do with
[02:35:28] it so i guess i just keep walking and then you keep walking and now it's like oh this door that
[02:35:31] was closed before is now open and i go inside and i see some spooky thing right and as you keep going
[02:35:39] you know maybe you keep going and then now nothing's happening and it's just the same thing over and over
[02:35:43] again which means you must have missed something so now you gotta like scour and it's like oh wait this
[02:35:47] picture frame the picture changed and and now it's this and now it's oh now this is you know it's a
[02:35:52] smiling family to like you know like oh the the mom's missing and then when you look at that it'll
[02:35:57] trigger some audio cut scene the next time you go around in the loop and you got to notice the
[02:36:01] right thing and then go and it is terrifying like i don't know what it is about it but the creepypasta
[02:36:07] aspect of just going in this loop and every time you know you're going to get shocked in a little
[02:36:12] slightly different way and sometimes it's going to be you know banal and sometimes it's going to be
[02:36:16] truly like a jump scare indiana jones has a sequence as a dream sequence is a spoiler that is like
[02:36:25] literally pt it is the same goddamn thing it is a uh geometrically impossible uh uh uh a hallway that
[02:36:37] just goes in circles and you have to circumnavigate it like 20 30 times to complete this segment and
[02:36:44] every time you you go through that circle it starts off and i'm not going to spoil it further but like
[02:36:48] it starts off in one environment that slowly morphs into another environment and uh you know
[02:36:54] it's it's a dream segment so like it's it's not like a supernatural thing but holy cow like it wasn't
[02:37:01] a horror game it didn't just suddenly tone shift to i'm a horror game now like the recent call of duty
[02:37:06] campaigns just like oh hey what if we just throw zombies in the middle of the fucking campaign for no
[02:37:11] reason uh it's not that but it was like it was kind of intense it was like it was it was very well
[02:37:17] designed and the the degree to which it was clearly an homage to pt is like something that would jump off
[02:37:23] the page to anyone who'd ever played pt and so i really appreciated that like i you know uh i don't
[02:37:29] know i i thought i'd mention so if you know what the fuck i'm talking about go play indiana jones or
[02:37:34] don't uh but it was really cool it was kind of creepy and i i you know even if you're just passively
[02:37:39] interested in what i'm talking about i have not searched the internet but i assume that other people
[02:37:43] are talking about this too and it's not just me who made this connection i highly doubt it was a
[02:37:46] fucking coincidence uh google it and watch the video for a significantly less creepy video gaming
[02:37:54] option um it's easy in the current era to look at pixel art or like lo-fi indie games that kind of look
[02:38:02] like generic animal crossing or like you know cozy games there there's just so many of them that that that
[02:38:09] they don't really stand out many of them are crap like like they're just not very good no offense
[02:38:15] but like like most games suck generally and indie games suck more often specifically uh especially
[02:38:22] when they don't you know have particularly attractive looking artwork or a thing to do other than to walk
[02:38:29] around like it's like game engines actually can carry a lot of water for you in those regards uh but
[02:38:35] there's one that like i just randomly heard recommended a couple times as well you know like
[02:38:40] it's called a short hike and if you've played it then you know this but like i've heard somebody say oh
[02:38:44] well yeah everyone's been emulating a short hike for years and trying to get back like claim that magic
[02:38:50] that it happened to capture in a bottle or uh you know youtube was recommending me videos like why a
[02:38:56] a short hike is like the best game ever whatever some hyperbole and i downloaded it and i i started
[02:39:02] playing it and a short hike is like a really really it's a it's a clinic in game design a dude made this
[02:39:11] and it's just the things that it sets out to do it does so perfectly uh you are a little bird and you
[02:39:18] are you literally like the the whole setup is that you are camping and your your elder bird is like
[02:39:26] you know commenting oh yeah by the way you're not going to have any phone signal here you know you're
[02:39:30] out of range and your bird freaks out and it's like well you can go up to this hawk point or whatever like
[02:39:35] go go hike up this mountain and then you'll have signal and so like that's the whole thing is the mission is
[02:39:41] go to this high point so that you have signals so that you can use your phone because you don't want to
[02:39:45] actually in in you know commune with nature or community or whatever when you're at this uh
[02:39:50] you're out camping with your family and you you go for this hike and you meet all these fascinating
[02:39:55] people and you do all these things and then you're like wait a second i'm getting snickered into actually
[02:40:00] engaging with nature and and and this community aren't i uh and the little adventures that you do in
[02:40:05] turns out it is quite you know i think it's a long hike to be to be honest it's false advertising but
[02:40:11] uh really delightful game and they they it's it's it's not like it's a walking simulator it's it's
[02:40:17] interactive there's things to find there's things to do and there's like kind of little sub quests
[02:40:20] but it's it's what's nice about it for me anyway is like it's not it's not beating you over the head
[02:40:24] with objectives like you're collecting things and those things allow you to do things and then the
[02:40:27] vocabulary things are allowed to do get you access to other places and things and accomplish other
[02:40:31] goals uh and if you if you if you probably don't have to do all of them to complete the hike but uh
[02:40:39] uh yeah it's just a very natural and and manages to be it's a really good palate cleanser if you're like
[02:40:46] me and like playing a really intense or violent game or a game that's like you know i got a lot of stress
[02:40:51] built in like lately i've been playing all these stealth action games and like i stealth really stresses
[02:40:56] me out because i hate getting caught and then having to hurry you know try to escape from the
[02:41:00] bad guys that i'm not strong enough to kill myself uh having this as a thing to play after that or when
[02:41:06] i'm not in the mood for even more violence because sometimes i'm in the mood for violence uh i've had my
[02:41:12] fill of violence because i uh maybe yeah actually the day i downloaded i had just been on i4 for three
[02:41:19] hours so that's you know that was enough violence for me just the florida exposure therapy uh so that's
[02:41:25] all that's i'm gonna throw it as a recommendation just in case i didn't mention it already i think i
[02:41:33] i probably did but if you're not subscribed to becky graham i recommend it it's graham g-r-a-m dot
[02:41:43] better with becky dot com and uh you can sign up now you click follow and you give it your email
[02:41:49] address uh you'll actually get emailed each time that becky makes a post uh most of those posts are
[02:41:55] are photos and videos uh photos and or videos carousels it's very instagram like but it's not
[02:42:02] instagram because she owns it uh and so uh hope you'll check it out she she writes a lot of thoughtful
[02:42:07] content and and we're we're currently our goal this month is to kind of come up with a
[02:42:12] a content marketing strategy make it sound serious no but but but really though like uh it's been fun
[02:42:21] uh discussing with her ways that we can use this new platform to tell interesting stories and share
[02:42:27] very valuable and helpful advice uh i say we here because like i'm her it guy but it's really she is
[02:42:35] doing the heavy lifting here uh so it's it's been it's been fun to help her out a little bit and so
[02:42:39] if you subscribe now uh uh i hope you'll stay tuned to to what she's working on sharing whether or not
[02:42:44] you're interested in strength training or fitness or health or nutrition or mindset stuff uh she kind
[02:42:49] of has the market cornered it seems like on uh most aspects of living and breathing uh but but in truth
[02:42:56] i think her perspective is really fresh and it's it's interesting to see somebody who's so um
[02:43:02] inclined to buck a lot of the broader trends that we find ourselves in uh especially around fit fluencers
[02:43:10] which is a word that i i believe i independently invented although i'm sure if you google it uh i that
[02:43:16] that is a it's probably emerged independently okay so that's the last of the recommendations that means
[02:43:22] we're just gonna uh on my way out i'm just gonna go quickly check the mail all right let's see what we
[02:43:34] got um remember if you want to write into the show it's podcast at searls.co uh had a
[02:43:42] weird confluence of a few different people sending in like essentially the same email uh so so if i if i
[02:43:49] don't get to yours but i talk about the basic topic let us you you and i right now let's just consider
[02:43:55] that one red uh no offense typically whenever somebody writes in the first first in wins because
[02:44:03] these emails are you know just give them send a sentence send a fucking sentence just give me a
[02:44:07] prompt just say i want to hear justin talk about his favorite fluffy pancakes and that's all you got to
[02:44:12] say and then i'll i'll start talking about carbs uh so marius writes in with the subject treadmill
[02:44:18] gaming he says that you often mix up gaming with other activities and you seem to be a consistent
[02:44:25] runner for the past couple years i've been doing majority of my runs on the treadmill while playing
[02:44:30] games this doesn't seem to be like a popular activity and i'm not sure why even the somewhat
[02:44:35] dead subreddit about treadmill gaming is mostly about walking pads and doing slow walks while using a
[02:44:39] computer like linus torvalds or actually i do this too i've got a walking pad that i you know use
[02:44:44] probably about a 20 percent of the time while i'm coding i successfully do runs anywhere between four
[02:44:50] to five minute uh kilometers so it's like six and a half to eight minute miles which is pretty
[02:44:57] fucking fast i run an eight minute mile um and i used to run them faster but i slowed down because i didn't
[02:45:03] want to hurt my knees uh or or uh yeah the impact was just getting to be too much anyway playing games
[02:45:10] with nintendo joy cons now remember marius don't get joy conned is the easiest you see that pun's good
[02:45:15] because it's already wasting time in my brain it's the the it's paying dividends already anyway playing
[02:45:22] games with the nintendo joy cons is the easiest way to start since the hands are separated these days you
[02:45:26] can officially pair them with the steam deck or ipad but the switch library is probably more than
[02:45:31] enough switch aside the ipad is the least complex to set up and you can play ios games or use some
[02:45:37] form of remote gaming like nvidia geforce now or steam link ps remote doesn't work well
[02:45:42] like all this practical advice and like like this one does suck even if you get joy cons to work using a
[02:45:50] non-official client you will miss some of the controls which is a deal breaker uh this is
[02:45:56] if you're hearing this and you've never had this epiphany before and you run on a treadmill like
[02:46:02] this is a hundred percent great advice and i can't believe i didn't think of it uh or think think of
[02:46:06] sharing it before i actually did this um when we were in ohio uh i bought a nice perforce uh
[02:46:13] high-end like four thousand dollar treadmill uh and i i situated it right in front of a
[02:46:20] 50 inch television screen and then i like plugged in the switch and so you know you don't want to play
[02:46:27] like i don't know like a super intense twitch game where you have to have like immediate reaction times
[02:46:32] necessarily but uh i played stardew valley every as part of my run every day because it's like each day
[02:46:37] is pretty short uh you know you can save relatively frequently uh and with the joy cons having a
[02:46:44] separate controller in your left and right hand meant that you could have like a normal
[02:46:48] gate and a normal kind of swaying of your arms but still have a full grip on the controllers
[02:46:53] and as long as like you know the screen's in front of you like with a tablet on a um
[02:47:00] like resting on a treadmill at high speeds like those tend to bounce around a decent amount unless you've got
[02:47:07] a super stable platform so if you were to use an ipad i'd hope hopefully put it up on a gooseneck
[02:47:13] or some other kind of stand but having a tv in front of you is great of course if you if you if you do
[02:47:17] this at home you're able to um unfortunately like my house doesn't really have room for a treadmill we
[02:47:22] have we've had conversations about treadmills but there's no way we'd be able to have one without like
[02:47:26] becoming a weirdo and having some common space just happen to have a weird treadmill set up in the
[02:47:31] middle of it uh so it's probably no longer in the cards for me but yeah i played probably 150
[02:47:36] 150 hours of stardew value over the course of the better part of a year running my 5k every day
[02:47:42] uh uh and that was yeah that was a lot of fun and it was motivating too because like then instead of
[02:47:49] just you know listening to the uh uh like a podcast and half tuning out and thinking about other stressors
[02:47:57] or whatever or or letting my brain think real thoughts which is separately dangerous i could instead you know
[02:48:03] uh uh uh uh harvest crops and and turn that into real real you know gold coins in my imaginary world
[02:48:11] uh or or give gifts to villagers and and level up the heart levels that i have with them or or you know
[02:48:18] participate in festivals so i was getting a lot done while i was getting stuff stuff done um yeah
[02:48:23] strongly recommend i do miss it i do miss that and and uh this email brought a smile to my cold dead face
[02:48:30] because i i that was a fun era for me and maybe i'll get back to it someday maybe i'll have another
[02:48:36] running treadmill at some point uh rachel writes in i uh was recently in tokyo and i walked into apache slot
[02:48:45] i uh that is to say like a pachinko parlor on my first trip uh uh to japan and got overwhelmed and
[02:48:53] immediately turned around you've been to japan a lot have you ever played pachinko
[02:48:57] incidentally i have played pachinko i think twice one time it was when i was in um college there was a
[02:49:06] pachinko parlor in the small town i was in because they preyed on small towns then especially it's you know
[02:49:13] uh they would target like you know
[02:49:15] uh economically depressed areas uh and so i uh yeah they had a pachinko parlor near where i worked
[02:49:25] and i was like you know i gotta try it so i i i went to the the pachinko place i was like you know
[02:49:30] what like i just treated like kind of like vegas terms you know it's really loud if you ever go in
[02:49:34] if you don't know the basic gist it's sort of like playing plinko from um uh price is right except
[02:49:41] instead of just one plinko thing going down all the pegs and bouncing around it's like what if it was
[02:49:46] hundreds of balls simultaneously and you had extremely little agency but some amount of agency
[02:49:52] over like where the balls went uh but it's really like you know it's a test of it's mostly a game of
[02:49:58] luck and i i when i'm in a casino in america i'm like very comfortable saying i'll put 10 bucks in
[02:50:06] 20 bucks in the machine see what happens maybe get a drink and then be on my way
[02:50:10] and i was at this pachinko place i put whatever the equivalent probably a thousand yen into the machine
[02:50:15] is and uh immediately just watch all of the little marbles drain from the top of the thing to the
[02:50:23] bottom of the thing and then it's like see ya now like people sit at these machines for hours and hours
[02:50:29] and they're they're they're sort of like slots or penny slots they're kind of a slow burn like over
[02:50:35] the larger numbers as you are going to lose all of your money but it happens at like a ratio typically
[02:50:40] that is like you know 98 cents on the dollar will get returned to you after each play and so you will
[02:50:46] very slowly lose the money but you'll get many hours of entertainment right that they say um
[02:50:51] as as as as your life force is slowly drained from you and as your hearing slowly goes because the
[02:50:58] sound of all those marbles and then the video game speakers to drown out the sound of the marbles just
[02:51:03] the cacophony of humanity and at the time smoke heavy smoking uh it's a sensory experience for the whole
[02:51:10] family but only men uh typically and you uh while you're playing well first i should get back to my
[02:51:23] experience anyway i lost all my money really fast it was so fast and there was like you know i was the
[02:51:27] middle of the day i was the only guy there he was a small town uh you know pachinko is a place you go
[02:51:33] after work but before you want to go home kind of place at least in you know outside the big cities
[02:51:37] where it's probably just busy 24 7 uh the manager or somebody working there they came over to me and my
[02:51:46] japanese wasn't very good yet and they didn't really communicate what they were doing but they kind of
[02:51:50] like opened the machine up and then they hit a button and they closed the machine and then they put ten
[02:51:53] ten dollars in for me and they said try again basically and that time wouldn't you believe it
[02:51:59] but i won a lot i won big i won like immediately it was like they just like hit a button to say like auto
[02:52:06] win for this dummy and uh i don't know if like everybody gets one or something but like they probably
[02:52:11] realized this this guy's never going to be back again and so maybe they had some sort of policy or some
[02:52:15] some spiff that they were able to give out to like you know entice people it's not like this is regulated
[02:52:20] and so uh i won the equivalent of like a hundred dollars which to me as somebody who like i spent
[02:52:26] like six months of my life there and i lived on barely two thousand dollars like a hundred bucks was
[02:52:32] like several weeks of groceries for sure um at least god god yeah so i was over the moon and and then i did
[02:52:40] the you know the rational thing it was like i am i am clocking the fuck out of here right away and so i took my
[02:52:46] uh now 10 times larger little basket of marbles and uh here's how it works like so gambling is illegal
[02:52:54] but you can trade uh uh like metals or some sort of intermediary currency like these pachinko marbles
[02:53:02] and you can take the little tray of bb's to a counter and you can exchange those for a prize and what's the
[02:53:11] price you say well it's not money because that would be gambling it's instead like it's a plastic
[02:53:16] card or a token or some sort of trivial you know tchotchke and typically it's it's it's as if you're
[02:53:23] trading um like if you've played a metal game i guess or it's as if you're trading uh
[02:53:33] these coins that don't matter or playing cards for casino chips like it's it's a color-coded slotted
[02:53:40] plastic thing it's like okay so i got this yellow two yellow uh uh chips back or something they're
[02:53:47] pieces of plastic and i'm like okay so what do i do with these they're not functional it's not like
[02:53:52] a keychain and because my um japanese ability was so non-existent the staff kind of had to like
[02:54:00] spell out for me what is um by design in order to skirt gambling regulations a a gray and implicit
[02:54:08] procedure so what they sort of steered me gently without explicitly saying no dummy you trade this
[02:54:16] plastic for money they're like go outside to the back and then in a separate freestanding structure
[02:54:21] that is definitely not the pachinko building anymore it is a different building that just so happens
[02:54:27] to trade pieces of plastic for hard cash it's a simple business you know so i i gave them my little
[02:54:35] yellow piece of plastics and uh handed that to them and and the it was it was like a love hotel and that
[02:54:44] you don't get to see the person it was just like a a trance um an opaque piece of glass and uh a little
[02:54:50] hand underneath it right so you you you'd in the little tray you'd put your plastic and then money would go
[02:54:56] there and then you'd take the money and then you'd go and so that's that's how they that's why pachinko
[02:55:01] isn't gambling so yeah that was my first experience and then every time after that i've been like you
[02:55:07] know i think i i think i already had the perfect experience i think i should probably leave it at
[02:55:11] that i might have played it once in kyoto uh later on that year and then immediately lost all my money
[02:55:17] and it was like ah yes dummy no unless somebody's gonna hit a button for you yeah and that's what i was
[02:55:21] doing i was like maybe if i sit over here as a dumb guy gene like maybe if i lose my money fast
[02:55:27] enough they'll take pity on me and i'll hit the button again i'll get ten dollars you know another
[02:55:31] hundred dollars and that's like not how any of this works uh so that that's not what happened uh uh
[02:55:37] spencer writes in uh talking about xreal glasses i'd been curious as you talked about xreal glasses
[02:55:42] connected to your macbook those are those ar glasses that project 1080p postage stamp size screens into
[02:55:47] each eye uh you as you've talked about xreal glasses connected to your macbook but then when you
[02:55:54] suggested getting them for the steam deck i had to pick up a pair i'm enjoying using them a few days
[02:55:59] in do you have a pair of xreal one or do you use a different model i am pretty sure that what i have
[02:56:05] is called the xreal air 2 they also have like the xreal air ultra and one and some other ones but as far
[02:56:14] as i can tell literally all of these things are the exact same part like the exact same lcd part it like
[02:56:24] like same size same 1080p resolution all that seems to change is brightness which is like not the screen per
[02:56:31] se and uh uh some color gamut stuff which might be like a little bit different so like i i don't think
[02:56:39] it really matters which which model you get i would just get the cheapest one uh because at the end of
[02:56:43] the day you're just paying for a uh you know a really cheap screen that goes right over your eyeballs
[02:56:50] uh and is uh yeah uh uh connected via usbc to something that can output that but man uh i got
[02:57:01] four emails from people who either just decided to try xreal glasses for this exact purpose to play
[02:57:06] games or to use their phone or something with a you know a neutral neck posture uh and uh all but one
[02:57:12] had a really good experience and though the one who didn't i think they the thing to look out for with
[02:57:18] these kinds of uh products is that they they don't want to market as hey we're just like a shitty tv
[02:57:25] in your eye holes for fake glasses because like that doesn't sound like the future but if they call
[02:57:30] them ar glasses and if they offer a mode or a an accessory that enables the vision pro style of uh
[02:57:38] taking a taking a screen and stationarily putting it in a place like anchoring a particular screen in
[02:57:44] space or at a particular place in your field of vision so so you can move your head left right and the
[02:57:50] screen will stay put they they offer these modes too where they will take the feed in and then
[02:57:54] they'll kind of render it that way if they offer that trust me it will be bad because you're looking
[02:58:00] at a 300 400 500 piece of hardware and to do that well takes a 3 500 piece of hardware it turns out
[02:58:08] and even that is like you know not that interesting like if if using my vision pro if the mac uh screen
[02:58:15] was always perfectly in front of me i'd also be fine with that like i don't need it to you know to lay
[02:58:21] out my office with with different screens every which place as if i'm going to swivel around it's like
[02:58:25] no i'm a sedentary motherfucker like i'm just just show me the goddamn right and where do i want
[02:58:30] the i if i'm playing a video game or watching a movie i want to be three fucking inches from the
[02:58:35] screen and i want to fill up as much my field of view as possible and the answer to the question of
[02:58:39] how close should i be is as close as i can be without the vision getting blurry right i want the eyes to
[02:58:46] burn out uh thank you mother so the the idea that you would turn on an ar mode that's just going to
[02:58:54] like do some sort of shitty real-time resizing and and uh keystoning of the image that's just going to
[02:59:03] pixelate it further and take up less of the overall display space to show it like it makes no sense just
[02:59:11] like just have it be in default mode and and the image always glued to directly in front of you do not
[02:59:17] use these in ar mode uh they will they will advertise it as if that's what you got to do and
[02:59:22] they will advertise like all of the add-ons like the beam as being necessary and just don't do that
[02:59:26] uh thank you spencer have fun playing games uh neil writes in about prism uh this is from christmas time
[02:59:35] because new versions of ruby release on christmas day he says most ruby users might not notice this
[02:59:42] uh but i'm excited that prism is the default parser as of ruby 3.4 what's your favorite change with the
[02:59:48] new release if you um if you don't know what prism is or or or how ruby parsers work and you're
[02:59:59] interested in this the episode that i did back in uh late may where i was recapping ruby kaii i talk a
[03:00:05] bit about the the parser wars and not to say prism one outright but the fact that like both of them
[03:00:12] shipped with ruby 3.3 the old parser that had been rewritten by konekos on uh and ruby and prism which
[03:00:18] is a funded by uh shopify and god god i always forget the guy's name kevin mitchell kevin there's
[03:00:27] multiple kevin's richards oh is that like wait is that kramer ah fuck me my best michael kramer no no
[03:00:35] michael no michael richards anyway uh you know when when no offense to anyone here but like when
[03:00:45] a white guy has a name whose first and last name are both white guy first names it's really hard for
[03:00:51] me to keep it straight uh and it's even harder with with with three white guy first name names like neil
[03:00:57] patrick harris uh all right so anyway prism is great the reason prism is great uh not only because
[03:01:07] it's fast and comprehensible but because the api that it because it's a handwritten parser you can
[03:01:12] actually do meta programming uh that is much more interesting by by navigating the structure of code
[03:01:20] via code much more sanely than when you try to use ripper or the kind of less less sophisticated uh
[03:01:28] abstract syntax trees that that the ruby api previously uh exposed and you know even if that's
[03:01:35] something that you don't need in your daily life and times as a programmer and spoiler alert very few
[03:01:39] people do the amount of tooling that we can build once we have that is really phenomenal and so uh rubocop
[03:01:47] stands to gain greatly from this like a next generation of of linters and formatters uh might
[03:01:52] emerge uh as well as the ruby lsp that shopify is also making uh to improve the development experience
[03:01:58] of of using ruby uh really will depend on prism to to be able to build a common shared index that
[03:02:04] multiple extensions can then use in creative and interesting ways so i think prism really is the deal
[03:02:09] um the big deal here i don't know if this one landed in three four or not but they have a new um
[03:02:15] block shorthand called it so if you're mapping over um a bunch of stuff or doing a filter operation or
[03:02:23] whatever anytime you're calling one of these like uh built-in methods although this i think this also
[03:02:29] works for non-built-in methods like that would be a you pass a block and then you typically only care
[03:02:34] about the first parameter because you're you're you're you're having that block operate on everything
[03:02:39] in say an array or in a hash if you only care about the first parameter there had been this like
[03:02:45] numbered shorthand syntax where you could do underscore one or underscore two to refer to what
[03:02:51] would be the first and second block parameter without explicitly naming them i eyes are glazing over i i
[03:02:56] get it if you if this this might be hard to follow i always thought that was like really ugly like i don't
[03:03:03] want to do underscore number one to to indicate like the first thing that this block got passed
[03:03:07] i get that you you're limited in what identifiers are illegal and so that's what maybe what they did but
[03:03:13] this just got merged into ruby and i'm not sure if it made it or not but like it you can just say it
[03:03:19] so you say it like it dot whatever which i think is really clever so like it just becomes the like the
[03:03:24] default first block arc as an alias to to underscore one so now you can like when you're mapping over say
[03:03:31] say say like you know or say you're doing find so like i've got a list of people and i want to find
[03:03:37] the first one whose email address is at hotmail.com so i've got like users dot find and then in the block
[03:03:44] instead of having a you know a redundant looking you know user param i can just say it dot email dot starts
[03:03:50] with uh or ends with hotmail.com you so so that it as a shorthand so you're not declaring a kind of
[03:03:59] duplicative uh parameter uh inside the block i think that's really neat little tiny little i love
[03:04:06] that ruby is still getting little touches like that uh so that's that's all i gotta say about that
[03:04:12] uh and we're look at us we're coming right at three hours uh that means it's quitting time here at
[03:04:19] searles llc productions uh you know it's big big big day uh here sunday the uh january 19th the the
[03:04:27] dawn of the third day before whatever the fuck is going to happen for the next four to eight years
[03:04:34] we say four to eight uh four to n or or n to m who knows or i don't know what we're in for all i know
[03:04:45] is that we deserve it