Breaking Change

I'm going away on a trip for an unexpectedly long time, and you'll never guess why! (You might guess why.) Anyway, here's something to remember me by. If you've ever been worried about whether something you cared about would work out okay, email podcast@searls.co and tell me about it so that I can share your story with a bunch of strangers on the Internet. References available upon request: Nobody knows how to turn on Vision Pro I released a new gem called searls-auth Aaron's puns, ranked CodeWeavers' founder's gracious post, Whisky's Legacy, and the Spirit it Leaves Behind DeX for iPhones? Finally! A menu bar for iPads? Finally! Backblaze: the only subsidized startup pricing schemes left are the fraudulent ones! Russia moves to seize World of Tanks developer over Ukraine support Amazon To Display Tariff Costs For Consumers, Report Says (Update: They Won't) Meta's Digital Companions want to have sex with you (News+) OpenAI's chat bot will tell you that you're really good at sex But they're fixing it But Reddit fixed it better Someone made an AI better by having it argue with itself, just like humans do Coding competitions are dead and gone forever The Coravin Pivot wine preservation system is great So is this pool skimmer robot that I talked about last week but forgot about and am talking about again A book! Landed: Japan. Everything you may not need to know about buying real estate

Your favorite podcast about nothing continues to find things to talk about. Whatever you do, DO NOT e-mail me at podcast@searls.co or else I will read it on air and tell everyone how smart you sound and how good you look. Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube. Links to follow: Loving my Tariffmas gifts: external SSD array and pool skimmer, especially My first taste of GitHub Copilot's Agent mode Me putting Agent mode to the test in a fun little screencast Aaron's puns, ranked Videogame consoles like the Switch 2 are NOT exempt from tariffs Digital Foundry's technical analysis of Mario Kart World The stunning Marathon cinematic trailer Star Wars Zero Company is the X-Com game I want Almost 19% of Japanese people in their 20s have spent so much money on gacha they struggled with covering living expenses, survey reveals A bunch of Vision hardware leaks and rumors: 1, 2, 3, 4 People at Apple were calling the AI/ML group AIMLess, lol React Native might not be as popular as you think Boarding passes and check-in could be scrapped in air travel shake-up Incredible plot to print every single possible ticket to win the Texas lotto A Lack of Intelligence, Not Training, May Be Why People Struggle With Computers AI models still struggle to debug software, Microsoft study shows LLM bots + Next.js bankrupting people who design their sites badly Apps are being paid to install frameworks that sell users' bandwidth to proxy providers for AI scrapers OpenAI o3 and o4-mini announced (they also hallucinate more) GPT 4.1 is better at coding Codex CLI is OpenAI's answer to Claude Code Extremely long read: OpenAI is a Systemic Risk to the Tech Industry GPS magnetic quantum is 50x more accurate and unjammable The Gorge is good but takes a sharp left turn into horror town I went to Epic Universe and have opinions

Nothing like a peaceful Sunday morning at the end of an exhausting, historically-volatile week to pour a hot cup of coffee and spew absolutely scalding takes in all directions. If you get burned, don't say I didn't warn you. Read the message on the lid. We've done 34 of these now and my mailbag is getting full of old e-mails that don't make sense anymore. Please email new stuff to me at podcast@searls.co and we, like civilization, will start fresh next time! Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube. You can read more about things on other websites below: My "new" podcast, Merge Commits Announcing TLDR 1.0 Late to the party on this: it's good that Siri is bubbling up to Craig, finally Aaron's puns, ranked Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine OpenAI releases 4o Image Generation ChatGPT Users Are Creating Studio Ghibli-Style AI Images How OpenAI's Ghibli Frenzy Took a Dark Turn Real Fast (Archive) An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip Go to Truant Studio for all your branding and advertising needs Anthropic released their research into how LLMs "think" The 500 million worker problem India's domestic stock bubble Remember 15 years ago when we cared who would buy TikTok? Amazon might, still Eddie Burback's "No Phone" video College students are worse now, says professor, as always Ubisoft reportedly has lawyers ready to fight Assassin's Creed Shadows harassment Nintendo just carried out a major test of its reach in a post-Twitter world The Nintendo Switch 2 Direct Virtual Game Cards By "anti-scalping", they meant "for Japan" Third-party developers say Switch 2's horsepower makes them ‘extremely happy' Switch backwards compatibility is emulation Nintendo delays US preorders because tariffs Saturday Night film Titanic Still playing Avowed Not playing Inzoi How to change the oil on a Tesla Roguelike/Starfoxlike, Whisker Squadron: Survivor How SNL manages cue cards

I hope you ordered your podcast spicy, because this version is a slow heat, but it builds. I was pretty fired up by the end of this one. If I crossed a line here, please report it to HR at podcast@searls.co and they will conduct an investigation. Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube. I tossed this bouquet of URLs in the air but no one caught them: Tailwind 4 Upgrades Aaron's puns, ranked There's a new cringey Star Fox-like coming Shenmue 1 & 2 mixed up the axial tilt Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate The history of 3DFX The first portable Xbox could hit shelves this year Steam Decard VR thing could also be coming Tim Sweeney's been Elon-pilled Is Tesla Cooked? Cybertruck panels are flying every which way SpaceX's Starship is fucked, apparently Why LLMs aren't like Einstein LLM refuses to code No one knows what the hell an agent is crmne/ruby_llm is a new Ruby gem for interacting with LLMs Vision Pro let this guy see in 3D iOS 19 will overhaul the system UI Live translation is coming to iOS 19 (sort of) RCS is getting End-to-End Encryption Between Android and iOS Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation really is iPhone 17 Ultra may be coming Google bricked Chromecast Mozilla bricked Firefoxes Microsoft bricked a bazillion PCs Meta is run by a human brick China bricked the field of public health Stay tuned to Changelog next week - I'll be on it! Shogun - where the Japanese speak period-appropriate Japanese and the Portugese speak modern British English Avowed - the best damn game I've played in a long-ass time There's a new Vision Pro strap-on in town Star Trek Enterprise was good, actually Allstate's human engineers screwed up so the LLMs wouldn't have to AI Snipd is a podcast player

Turns out I'd accidentally been letting some of your e-mail get filtered as junk mail. I want to be clear that I don't think you're junk, Apple does. Write in with your feelings to podcast@searls.co and I'll read it, assuming I get it. Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube. Without further ado, links! POSSE Party Aaron's puns, ranked Don't invite anyone you like to a measles party Sorry vegans, plants can feel pain Reddit will add a paywall Junior developers know how to code even less than usual GPT 4.5 is a lemon

Update: This is the first version of Breaking Change available in 4K video. Check it out on YouTube. The one where Justin picks the perfect time to buy his first Tesla vehicle. Sometimes the things I say and do make people feel things. Share those feelings with me at this e-mail address: podcast@searls.co. Whatever you're feeling, I'll read it and do my best to acknowledge it. I also may read it on air. Unless you ask me not to, in which case I won't. Okay, so anyway, there are links to be lunked: The RuboCop pull request I referenced having talked about in this month's newsletter The Space Black Firanto paint I tried to use to heal my M4 MacBook Pro The little travel router that I'm using strictly for my Vision Pro Sponsored content: you too can have bad timing when you buy a new Tesla with my link and get $2500 off, apparently. Aaron's puns, ranked The ESA announces new "iicon" event after running E3 into the ground Apple finally lets you migrate purchases to a different Apple ID Prediction: iOS 19 features a new UI toolkit that looks a lot like visionOS and this new Invites app Google eliminates the woker half of its holidays calendar TikTok is so back, baby Netflix is connected to the Apple TV app! (lol, psyche!) What the WikTok story can teach us about programmers' future job prospects. (Not much) Gaudy Jeep ads are ruining Stellantis's terrible reputation Godzilla Minus One: Two is coming Even Disney is worried about the high cost of Disney A major visionOS 2.4 update is around the corner (Archive link) A youtube essay about "work games" Tape to Tape is hockey videogaming at its finest Yakuza: Like a Dragon's business management minigame is all I need. I also needed Alien: Romulus, though

If you're here for the spicy, good news: you're gettin' it spicy. I am usually joking, but I mean it this time: I'm going to stop doing this podcast if you don't write in to podcast@searls.co. Give me proof of life, that's all I need. I won't even read it on air if you don't want! If you're not bored yet, click the links: Becky did a reel of our twin birthday cruise Aaron's puns, ranked Fewer than 200 people bought Resident Evil on iPhone Apple Invites and GroupKit are gonna save us from Doodle Apple cancels the AR glasses you hadn't heard about Android XR is even more of a rip-off than Android was Vision Pro is getting Unreal Engine support WTF is Deepseek My own declaration of competence I've started work on my first fuckthis.app, and it's already doing stuff Nintendo's Alarmo clock The Wild Robot is not as bad as it looks Star Trek Unification Persona 3 Reloaded Ninja Gaiden 2 Black Via Prem: Exit 8 and Platform 8

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]

I don't normally do this, but content warning, this episode talks at length about death and funerals and, while I continue to approach everything with an inappropriate degree of levity, if that's something you're not game to listen to right now, go ahead and skip the first hour of this one. Recommend me your favorite show or video game at podcast@searls.co and I will either play/watch it or lie and say I did. Thanks! Now: links and transcript: Kirkland Signature, Organic Non-Dairy Oat Beverage Die with Zero book The "Prefer tabs when opening documents" setting Aaron's puns, ranked Amazon hoped more people would quit BoldVoice Accent Oracle Cab drivers get Alzheimer's less Video Games Can't Afford to Look This Good LG announces Bachelor's Only TV Can the rich world escape its baby crisis? Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? The Diplomat The Penguin It's in the Game Madden documentary Like a Dragon / Yakuza 7 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Transcript: [00:00:29] It is our first new year together in this relationship. [00:00:36] Breaking Change survived season one. [00:00:39] We are now in season two. [00:00:43] I don't know what, you know, how seasons should translate to a show about nothing. [00:00:51] I like to talk about how, you know, in different stages of life, we go through different seasons, right? [00:00:58] You know, like maybe, you know, after, you know, the seasonal life when maybe you get married or you have a kid, your first kid and all the changes that kind of go with that. [00:01:08] And if you play multiplayer competitive games, you might go through different seasons. [00:01:15] You know, like if you play Diablo four or Call of Duty, you might be in a particular eight week or 12 week season. [00:01:24] Now, as you grind your battle pass, that's similar in in scale and scope to having a child or having some big life event, because it turns out none of this fucking matters. [00:01:35] Hello, welcome. [00:01:36] This is a this is your kind and friendly host, Justin Searles, son of Fred Searles, son of Fred Searles himself, son of a Fred Searles. [00:01:48] That's yeah, there were there were, I think, three Fred's before me and then my dad was like combo breaker and he named me Justin. [00:02:02] Uh, thank you for subscribing to the advertisement free version of the podcast. [00:02:08] Uh, if you, if you think that there should be an advertisement version of the podcast, feel free to write in a podcast at Searles.co and then pay me money to read about your shit. [00:02:20] And I will do that. [00:02:21] Uh, and, and, you know, I'm happy to have all the conflicts of interest in the world because, uh, if your product sucks and I use it, I can't help myself. [00:02:32] I'm just, I'm just going to say it's bad. [00:02:34] So, uh, that's a real, you know, I, I, if you can't tell, I also run the ad sales department of this journalistic outfit and, uh, that might have something to do with the total lack of, uh, corporate funding. [00:02:48] Well, anyway, this is version 28 of the program. [00:02:54] This, this, this episode's breaking change titled, do you regret it yet? [00:02:59] And that'll make sense, uh, momentarily. [00:03:03] Uh, so, um, it's a big one in a sense, you know, it's something that, uh, there's very little in life that I'm not comfortable talking about. [00:03:14] And that's because, you know, well, I'll just dive right in. [00:03:20] So, so I read it, uh, I read an article, uh, uh, some number of years ago that explained that part of the reason why foot fetishes are so common in men is like part of the brain that identifies feet. [00:03:38] And part of the brain that is like erogenous in its, you know, there's different parts of the brain. [00:03:46] They do different things, but if you got to pick which neuron cluster you lived in as a part of the brain, erogenous zone, that would be sweet. [00:03:53] That'd be a lot more fun than the, um, whatever the, the part of the brain is that gets scared easily, which, uh, because I get stressed and anxious, [00:04:04] even just talking into a microphone with zero stakes on a recording that I could stop. [00:04:08] That makes me no money. [00:04:10] I'm too nervous to remember the fear part of the amygdala. [00:04:13] There it is. [00:04:14] You see, and if it just, and, and that gets back to my point in my particular fucked up brain soup, [00:04:22] the, uh, the, uh, the part of my brain that talks out my mouth hole is right next to the part of my brain that critically reasons through things. [00:04:37] So for me, it is very difficult to process something without talking it, talking it through. [00:04:47] And the idea that something is taboo has always been really uncomfortable for me. [00:04:52] And you can just sort of see the pained look on my face as I try to hold it in like a, like a burp or something. [00:04:57] Like I, I, I got to let it out somehow. [00:05:00] And so I'm, I, you know, I'm glad, I'm glad I get to be here with you. [00:05:05] I hope you find it kind of entertaining. [00:05:06] Unfortunately, the thing to talk about first thing, as I get into the section of this to-do list, that is this podcast titled life is that the big thing that happened since the last major breaking change, uh, uh, back in version 26, which is, I, I, I understand two numbers away from 28. [00:05:30] Uh, the big thing that changed, uh, is, uh, my father, Fred, he of a, a long and proud line of Fred's, uh, he passed away, uh, uh, uh, December 15th. [00:05:45] So just, just shortly after, uh, the previous, the previous version aired and, uh, pretty much every it's January 4th today and we're still working through it. [00:05:59] Um, he had a heart attack. [00:06:02] I think that's fair to say at this point, there's no, you know, no way to be a thousand percent sure, but all the signs suggest that's what it was. [00:06:11] And, uh, you know, without getting into, uh, the, the details, my side of the story is like, I was at Epcot with my brother, Jeremy. [00:06:26] So at least we were together. [00:06:28] Um, Jeremy gets the call and, uh, you know, we were, we were in that little tequila bar, uh, hanging out with a friend of ours who works there. [00:06:40] And, uh, the tequila bar inside of the Mexican pavilion pyramid. [00:06:44] And, uh, he had just brought us out the three kind of specialty cocktails that they got going on right now. [00:06:53] Uh, which is, uh, you know, wasn't, we are in a great time. [00:06:57] It was a lot of fun. [00:06:58] And, uh, Jeremy gets the call. [00:07:00] We process a little bit. [00:07:02] We realized like, we got to get home. [00:07:04] We got to figure this shit out. [00:07:06] You know, he's, he's a, he was a former emergency responder. [00:07:09] So he's really good at, uh, at thinking through the logistical things that you have to do with a relatively cool head. [00:07:16] It, you know, he comes across as like, you know, not drill sergeanty, but somebody who's like, you know, part of being calm and collected in an urgent situation is you have to be very direct. [00:07:28] And boom, boom, boom, boom. [00:07:30] So that was as soon as he knew what was happening. [00:07:35] That's the mode he flipped on. [00:07:37] And the mode that I flipped on was intense, uh, metabolization is the best word I can think of it. [00:07:44] Cause like you have like, like, like, like the saves take four shots of liquor, right? [00:07:48] You will metabolize that at whatever speed you do, and it'll hit you really hard and maybe you'll black out and maybe you'll, uh, you're a slower burn. [00:07:56] But for me, I feel, I feel things, whether they're chemical toxicology report showing up things or emotions, I tend to feel them extremely intensely and, and, and, and, and in a relatively brief burst, you know, uh, if you ever lit in a strip of magnesium on fire, which for some reason I did several times. [00:08:19] I was in, in, in different science lab classes as a kid, it brights, it burns real bright and real hot, but not for very long. [00:08:27] So while, while Jeremy was in his, you know, we got to figure out what to do mode. [00:08:33] Uh, we got to get out of here. [00:08:35] Uh, we gotta, you gotta, you know, we gotta book the next flight to Michigan to take care of this shit. [00:08:43] I was in, I'm going to, I'm going to just take a little, I'm going to pop a little deep squat here in Epcot, uh, right outside this bar. [00:08:56] And I'm going to just allow my vision to get blurry, which it did. [00:09:04] Um, my heart to race, my stomach to turn. [00:09:08] And I just needed that, you know, you lose track of time when something big and, and, and, and, and earth shaken happens. [00:09:20] I [00:09:22] snapped out of it is, you know, it's, it's crude way. [00:09:31] Words don't, words that you use for everyday things end up getting used for big life-changing things. [00:09:40] And it makes it feel smaller. [00:09:43] So even though I'm verbally processing every time I tell the story or think through it and, and talk it out. [00:09:53] I, I, I, I kind of came to my normal Justin senses pretty quickly, uh, where normal Justin senses means, you know, back in the bar, you know, everyone's, you know, who'd heard was upset and immediately like they're in their own kind of sense of shock, even not knowing my dad. [00:10:14] And I, I was, you know, uh, comforting them immediately and, you know, just asking our host, Hey, you know, because as a, as a staff member, he, he's able to get us out of the park a little bit more expeditiously, uh, than having to go all the way out and do this big, you know, what would have felt like a 15 minute walk of shame out of a theme park. [00:10:39] And, uh, yeah, anyway, so he got us out of there, we got home, booked flight, got, went up to Michigan the next day, uh, pretty much immediately. [00:10:50] And, and, and, and, and, and kudos to my brother for, for having that serious first response. [00:10:56] Cause like my first response after asking for, Hey, get us out of here was to see those three specialty cocktails on the table and be like, well, that, that would be a waste and B I could probably use a drink. [00:11:08] And so I, you know, one of them was a sake and, uh, mezcal infusion. [00:11:13] And I was like, well, they'd already poured it. [00:11:16] So I just threw that back on, on my way out the door. [00:11:18] That was probably a good move. [00:11:21] Uh, so we got up to Michigan, right? [00:11:25] And I don't want to tell anyone else's story about how, how they work through stuff and families. [00:11:31] Everyone processes things differently. [00:11:34] Uh, uh, so I'll skip all that shit. [00:11:36] I'll just say that like pretty quickly, the service planning, like that takes over, you know, the, uh, this is the first time I've had an immediate family member pass, but pretty quickly you're like, all right, well, there is this kind of, you know, process. [00:11:53] It's like not dissimilar from wedding planning, but instead of having six months, a year, or if you're an elder millennial, like eight years to plan, you have, uh, a few days. [00:12:07] And fortunately, uh, uh, dad had just by coincidence of, of, of another, uh, person we know passing had found a funeral home that he really liked. [00:12:18] And he, he said he wanted to do that one. [00:12:20] So that, that was off the table. [00:12:21] That was, that worked out. [00:12:23] But, uh, then, you know, even, and that was helpful. [00:12:28] That was really helpful to sit down and, and, and, you know, of course you go to the funeral home, you talk to the funeral home director and super sympathetic there. [00:12:35] It takes a certain kind, right? [00:12:38] A person, you know, you gotta have the strategically placed tissue boxes all over the place and then know when to stop talking and when to hand it and when to back away. [00:12:46] And, you know, dude is an absolute champ, but he's also done this before and he knows the questions to ask. [00:12:55] And it's not to like boil it down into a questionnaire, but it, it's a questionnaire. [00:13:00] It's like, Hey, what do you want? [00:13:01] How do you got to do this? [00:13:02] You know, you're being bang, boom. [00:13:04] What? [00:13:04] And fortunately, uh, collectively we came to the table with a lot of answers to a lot of those stock questions at the ready. [00:13:15] Um, but the thing that stood out to me was, you know, there's going to be a service we're going to have to write an obituary. [00:13:22] They gave us a start and, um, a start is actually the perfect thing to give me when it, when it comes to writing, you know, if you give me a blank page, it could take me all week. [00:13:32] But if you give me something I don't like and like me not writing in a hurry would result in the thing I don't like going out, then all of a sudden I get the motivation to go and write some shit. [00:13:46] So we, we, we, we, we worked together and we cleaned up the eulogy or the, excuse me, the obituary, all these terms you only use sparingly. [00:13:55] Occasionally, uh, got the obituary out, had a tremendous response, maybe from some of you because it was up on the website. [00:14:05] Had a tremendous response from people. [00:14:07] Everyone was shocked. [00:14:08] You know, no one expected that, uh, dad had a tremendously large social network being a dentist for 45 plus years in a community of people who loved him. [00:14:20] And he was genuinely, you know, an incredibly kind and friendly guy everywhere he went. [00:14:26] Uh, so, so that was good. [00:14:29] And you re and, and it was the obituary that made me realize like, well, I, you know, I knew this intellectually, but be like, oh yeah, like next few days here are for them. [00:14:37] It's for everybody else to understand process grief. [00:14:42] And so as soon as the obituary out, I was like, all right, next eulogy time. [00:14:48] So I, uh, I approached it as soon as I knew it's a, when I know something's for me, I let it be for me. [00:14:58] I'm not, I've, I accept myself. [00:15:00] I love myself and take care of myself as best I can. [00:15:03] I don't, I'm not a martyr, right? [00:15:06] Like I don't push down my needs and interests for the sake of other people. [00:15:12] To the point of other people's viewing it as selfish sometimes. [00:15:15] And increasingly over the years, I'm viewing it as like, maybe you, maybe it's the children who are wrong. [00:15:21] Maybe this is just the way to be, because it turns out that when you take good care of yourself, you can show up for other people. [00:15:26] Well, right. [00:15:26] So anyway, I, I, as soon as I knew that like the point of the service wasn't for me, the point of the service was, uh, the other people in the room who, who, some of whom drove hours and stayed overnight in hotels to come be there. [00:15:42] It was, it was to give them something. [00:15:46] So as soon as that bit flipped in my brain, it became very easy to write a eulogy because I, I approached it like work. [00:15:56] I approached it like a conference talk or yeah, like it, I didn't actually open keynote, but I thought about it because that's how, that's how I tend to storyboard and work out conference talks. [00:16:09] And I, I thought about like, well, maybe I just do that and I just don't show the slides, you know, because I think it would be possibly inappropriate to, to have a PowerPoint presentation at your, I, at a funeral. [00:16:23] I don't know. [00:16:24] I guess I had to make one anyway. [00:16:26] We'll talk about that. [00:16:29] So anyway, writing, the eulogy took over. [00:16:31] It went smoothly. [00:16:33] It, I liked how it turned out. [00:16:35] If you subscribe to the newsletter, you'll get a copy of it. [00:16:38] So, so justin.searles.co slash newsletter. [00:16:41] It's called Searles of Wisdom, which of course, you know, me making that sound kitschy right now in this rather grave moment might sound inappropriate to, to, to shill, but you will get a copy of the eulogy. [00:16:53] I'm happy with it, how it turned out. [00:16:56] I, uh, as soon as I wrote it then, of course, and this is what I'm trying to illustrate is like everything just became task A. [00:17:03] Like, okay, task A is complete, task B, no real time in there for processing and thinking through things through. [00:17:11] Uh, so the eulogy took over, wrote it, and as soon as I'd written it, I was now task C, I gotta deliver it, you know. [00:17:21] I don't typically read a script when I speak, uh, but I had to write it all out as if it was being spoken. [00:17:32] And I had to even practice and rehearse it as if I was reading it because I knew that in an emotionally, you know, the best way that people seem to talk about this is like, it's, your emotions are close to the surface as if like any little tiny thing could just break the surface tension and, and, and spill over. [00:17:51] Right. [00:17:52] I knew that out of my control, I might, I might tear up. [00:17:56] I might cry. [00:17:57] I might need a minute. [00:18:01] While delivering this. [00:18:02] And so I, uh, I, I practiced it to be read, but I knew like, man, there's just a, there's a, I call it a 5%, 10% chance that I just have a fucking breakdown and I can't get through this thing. [00:18:18] And the anxiety in the day and a half leading up to the service worrying that I would fail as a public speaker outside the context of, you know, sure. [00:18:32] Everyone would give you a break if your dad just died. [00:18:35] Right. [00:18:35] But this is like the last thing I'm doing for him, you know, in a, in a publicly meaningful way. [00:18:40] And it's also a skill that I've spent a lot of time working on. [00:18:45] And so I wouldn't for me to fail at that by, by breaking or by even, even just failing to deliver it successfully and in a, in an impactful way would have been hard for me. [00:19:05] And it would have been something I probably would be ruminating on here. [00:19:08] We are a couple of weeks later. [00:19:10] And as a result, what happened is the same thing that happens before I give a conference talk in front of a bunch of people at a conference or whatever. [00:19:18] It's the, the, the, the, uh, stress hormone gets released, the adrenaline and the cortisol starts coming out. [00:19:26] And so the morning of the funeral, everyone else is kind of approaching it their own way. [00:19:31] And I'm like, it's game time, you know, like I, I'm dialed in my, you know, all of my instincts are about just getting through that five to seven minute speech. [00:19:47] And no emotional response before then. [00:19:50] And afterwards, to be honest, the biggest emotional response afterwards was the relief of successfully. [00:19:57] And I did successfully deliver it. [00:19:59] And, uh, and then as soon as task C of delivering it is done, then task D starts of now it's the end of a funeral service. [00:20:08] And you've got a receiving line of all these guests coming up and they, you know, they're, they're approaching the open casket and they're, they're coming to, you know, hug you, talk to you. [00:20:17] See how you are. [00:20:18] And there's a performative aspect to that, right? [00:20:22] Like you gotta be like, all right, who's ready for lunch? [00:20:24] That would be inappropriate. [00:20:25] Right. [00:20:26] But the, you know, also talking about how, like, oh, I'm actually mostly focused on how I did a good job. [00:20:32] Giving this speech would separately be maybe, you know, off color, but these are the things that go through our brains in the, in these high impact moments. [00:20:43] When you just have to, when, when, whenever a situation dictates that your behavior be misaligned or the statements about oneself be at all discordant with what's really going on inside you in that literal moment. [00:21:08] And so, so I did my best, uh, of course, to make it about other people and see how they're doing and answer their questions in as, uh, productive a way as possible. [00:21:20] Right. [00:21:20] Give them answers about myself that gave them the things that they needed was my primary response all through. [00:21:29] And then, and then through that, and then task E, the wake. [00:21:32] Right. [00:21:33] And, and, uh, you do, you, you do that. [00:21:35] And then suddenly, uh, well, now you have task F after, after all that stuff of like, okay, well, we've got all this leftover food we got to take home. [00:21:42] So it's like load up the car and, and, and, and help everyone out and see everyone on their way safely. [00:21:48] And then, you know, you're exhausted and you want to just go back and, and, you know, get out of this fucking suit that barely fits. [00:21:58] Nope. [00:21:59] Task G is you got to go turn around, drive 20 minutes in the opposite direction to go back to the funeral home, to pick up all of these flowers. [00:22:05] Cause you, you tell people not to send flowers. [00:22:07] Uh, you, you say, you know, in dad's case, donate to the humane society, but people send flowers. [00:22:14] And then, you know, what do you fucking do with them? [00:22:16] Right. [00:22:17] It's like, well, here's look, if you or someone you're affiliated with sent flowers to this particular funeral, I'm deeply grateful. [00:22:25] And I had a moving moment, actually looking at all the flowers of friends of mine, people who never met dad. [00:22:31] Most of the time, a couple of our neighbors, right. [00:22:35] Who we don't really know well, but they're just really lovely people. [00:22:38] They, they did a bouquet and it was really nice. [00:22:40] You know, flowers are beautiful, but. [00:22:49] Like a cigarette can be really, really nice, but a carton can be a lot. [00:22:53] Uh, you know, a cocktail can be really nice, but drinking a whole fifth is problematic. [00:23:00] When you have so many bouquets that you can't fit them into your vehicle and also the people in the vehicle. [00:23:06] It's all it's, it, it just, it, it becomes a work. [00:23:10] Right. [00:23:11] And so that's what, you know, that's one of the ways in which having this service like this become sort of, you know, like less about the immediate family and more about the surrounding, you know, network of people that somebody knows. [00:23:24] And maybe this is all common sense and, and I should have been more conscientious of this going into the experience, but looking back on it, uh, I was just sort of like, all right, well, here's next task is figure out how to cram all these flowers. [00:23:39] And then you get home and it's like, where'd all these flowers go? [00:23:43] And so you just kind of scatter them throughout the house. [00:23:48] Uh, but they're all, you know, like they're not invasives or they're not like going to survive the long winter. [00:23:53] Like they're, they're now all on their own separate week to two week timer of themselves dying and needing to be dealt with, which is like, you know, a, let's just say an echo or a reverberation of like kind of what you're thinking about. [00:24:07] So maybe, okay, look, I don't want to spend this whole fucking podcast talking about a funeral. [00:24:15] I realize it's like maybe a bit of a downer, but you know, there's other stuff going on to like, I skipped a whole fucking half day activity. [00:24:25] Actually is wedge a task in there between B and C if you're for anyone playing the home game and keeping track of this, not that it's that complicated, uh, you got to come up with a slideshow, right? [00:24:39] So you've got the visitation before the service and we also had it the night before for anyone who couldn't make it or, you know, maybe acquaintances and whatnot, who didn't feel like going to the whole service, whatever it is. [00:24:57] You got to come up with a slideshow, which is theoretically easy these days because there's so many goddamn pictures of all of us. [00:25:04] It's theoretically easy because you have tools like, uh, shared iCloud photo libraries, uh, and shared albums, which, you know, as soon as somebody suggested a shared album, I went into my like pre canned speech. [00:25:20] And I think of, well, actually shared albums predate, you know, modern ways of sharing photos in the photos app. [00:25:25] And so whenever you put anything in a shared album, Apple compresses it pretty badly. [00:25:30] It, it downscales the resolution. [00:25:32] It also, you know, adjusts downward, the quality of the image. [00:25:39] And I got halfway through that spiel and being like, you know, this is going to go up on a 10 ADP TV in the back of a room. [00:25:45] Like it's fine. [00:25:46] That's not the issue. [00:25:47] But then the next issue is, you know, everyone goes in the people and pets and photo library, sees all the pictures of dad that aren't bad. [00:25:56] And we all dump them into the same shared library, shared photo album, which is like, like, that's no one's fault, but mine. [00:26:02] I told people just do that and I'll clear them out. [00:26:04] But then you wind up with, and it turns out, this is how that stupid fucking system works. [00:26:09] The shared photo album will treat all of those duplicates as distinct. [00:26:14] And there's, even though there's duplicate deduping now in the photos app, it does not apply to shared library, shared photo albums. [00:26:21] And on top of that, if somebody adds something to a shared photo album, they can remove it. [00:26:27] But for somebody else, like, like, let's say I added a photo of dad that Becky didn't want in there. [00:26:33] Well, Becky can't go in and remove it. [00:26:35] Only the organizer can remove it or the person who posted it. [00:26:39] So then I had to be the person going through and, like, servicing any requests people had for photos to, like, ban from the slideshow. [00:26:46] Because for whatever reason, you know, it's a sensitive time. [00:26:49] And then after it was all done, you realize the slideshow tools don't work correctly. [00:26:56] Like, just the play button and all the different options in the Mac, like, just don't work correctly in a shared album. [00:27:01] Because, of course, they don't. [00:27:02] So then you've got to copy them all. [00:27:07] You thought I was talking about feelings, but it all comes back. [00:27:11] All comes back to Apple shit. [00:27:13] So you've got to copy them all into your photo library, whoever is going to be running the slideshow. [00:27:17] Create a new slideshow project from there. [00:27:20] Dump them all in there. [00:27:22] And then realize there's no, once you've dumped shit into a slideshow project, there is no way to reorder them. [00:27:27] Short of manually drag dropping extremely slowly in a left-right horizontal scroll dingus. [00:27:34] And you've got 500 pictures or something, just fucking forget about it. [00:27:37] And on top of that, I had all these dupes. [00:27:40] Like, I had manually de-duped as best as I could before. [00:27:43] But first question I get half an hour into the visitation is like, yeah, it just seems weird. [00:27:48] Because, like, there's this one picture of me that's going to come up, like, four times. [00:27:52] I was like, I'm sorry, bud. [00:27:54] I said, oh, it's randomized or whatever, you know. [00:28:01] So after you get all of those into a photo slideshow project, and successfully, I installed amphetamine, which will keep your screen awake. [00:28:11] And you plug that into HDMI, and you know how to put a fucking Mac on a TV. [00:28:15] I don't need to tell you that. [00:28:16] After all of it was done and I got home, the two days later I realized, oh, yeah, shit. [00:28:24] Because now my photo library is full, all of the most recent photos are just shit that was copied, that was already initially in my photo library anyway. [00:28:32] And none of them are showing up in the little dupes thing, of course, because it needs days to analyze on Wi-Fi. [00:28:39] So I went to the recent imports or recently saved tab, and then I had to manually go through and delete, like, 1,400 pictures of my dad. [00:28:50] And then hope that, like, I wasn't deleting one that wasn't a dupe. [00:28:55] So I had to go through and, like, manually tease these out. [00:28:59] It took me a fucking hour and a half. [00:29:02] And, yeah, so then I deleted all those to kind of dedupe it, because I was confident I had copies of all those pictures already somewhere else in the library. [00:29:11] That could have been smoother, is the short version of this story. [00:29:16] And, of course, there's no goddamn good software that does this. [00:29:20] There are two people who have made apps that simply shuffle photos in a slideshow. [00:29:26] And they're bad apps. [00:29:27] So they look old. [00:29:28] It's like they basically had to reinvent slideshow stuff, including the software and the shuffling and the crossfades and the Ken Burns effect and the music and all the stuff that the Apple product does. [00:29:38] They had to reinvent all that just to have a shuffle button, which is what you probably want, especially if you've got a mix of scanned photos and, you know, contemporaneous photos. [00:29:50] Because there's no way you're going to make the timeline actually contiguous. [00:29:54] So instead, like, well, here's, like, a bunch of photos between, like, 2003 and 2017, because that's the digital photography era. [00:30:05] And then in 2018, when we scanned all of our photo albums, suddenly it's just all of the photo albums in random order. [00:30:12] And then you have 2019 to 2024. [00:30:15] Like, it's not a cohesive experience. [00:30:20] Now, I would say, well, you know, it's a visitation. [00:30:23] People are coming and going. [00:30:24] They go in, they visit the casket, and they spend time chatting. [00:30:28] But, like, they don't, though. [00:30:30] All the chairs are pointing at this TV, and people just sat there for more than an hour. [00:30:36] They'd watch multiple. [00:30:37] Like, I thought that having a 45-minute long slideshow, that pacing would be okay. [00:30:43] People watched it two or three times while they chatted, you know, just the state of, the lack of kinetic energy throughout the entire experience of somebody passing. [00:30:54] You know, the phrase sit Shiva from Judaism. [00:30:58] Like, I am somebody who is relatively uncomfortable just sitting around, around other people. [00:31:06] I'm happy to sit around by myself. [00:31:08] I'm doing it right now. [00:31:09] I'm actually pretty good at it. [00:31:10] Ask anybody. [00:31:11] But to not have an activity with other people, and also not to have, like, interesting conversation to have with other people, [00:31:20] to just have to be around and with other people, is really goddamn hard. [00:31:25] And I suspect I'm not the only one who feels that way. [00:31:28] Hence, everyone just staring at the slideshow and making a comment here and there. [00:31:32] So, a couple things did jump out at me about that service and about the visitation, though, that were interesting. [00:31:40] One was, Dad had mentored a couple of younger dentists in his last couple years practicing. [00:31:48] People who had intended to take over the practice. [00:31:51] That's his own long story. [00:31:52] But they were, my age or younger, probably younger, definitely younger, come to think of it. [00:31:59] Splendid people. [00:32:00] Like, super upbeat, super duper energetic, just, like, fun. [00:32:05] They forced my dad to do stuff like go fishing and get out and do things that he normally wouldn't do. [00:32:13] And they blew me away by just saying, like, you know, dad was 72. [00:32:18] He was like, this guy, most dentists, when they get older, the hands get shaky. [00:32:25] Their craft gets sloppy. [00:32:28] But your dad was, he, he, I think he said, he set the standard. [00:32:33] He was just a beast. [00:32:34] He was, and I was like, what do you mean? [00:32:36] Like, actually, I've never really talked to anyone about his craft, right? [00:32:41] Because he didn't want to talk about it. [00:32:44] He was like, his prep work and, and, and how he prepped for each procedure was meticulous and perfect every single time. [00:32:53] And his technique while doing things was, was like, like phenomenal. [00:33:00] And they went into a handful of specifics for me. [00:33:02] And that was really special to me because I, like, I, I know that about myself that I'm chasing this asymptotic goal of perfection, but I didn't have evidence that my dad was as well outside of just stuff around the house. [00:33:16] And you can say that, well, that's perfectionism and that's OCD. [00:33:19] And we both have like, you know, traits of that too. [00:33:20] But the, that was really interesting because everyone had only ever experienced my dad as a patient or somebody who's like really, really gregarious and friendly and good at comforting patients. [00:33:33] But yeah, their stories were really, really encouraging. [00:33:39] And that was, that was one where it's like, I was glad to be able to walk away from that series of experiences and learn new stuff about my dad, uh, new stuff that rounded out the story of him in my mind. [00:33:54] Uh, so I'm really thankful to those guys, uh, because they were able to dive in and baby bird for me, explain like I'm five, like the ways in which he was a great dentist, which is just a thing that like, you know, everyone. [00:34:08] How do you rate your dentist, right? [00:34:10] Well, he's good at comforting me. [00:34:12] He's good at explaining things. [00:34:13] He doesn't upsell me a lot. [00:34:15] You know, I'm not afraid when I'm in the chair with him. [00:34:17] And then afterwards things seem to go pretty well, but like, really like the, the work is a black box. [00:34:22] You can't see what's going on in your fucking mouth. [00:34:24] You're, you're conscious. [00:34:25] You know how you feel before and how you feel after, but it's, uh, that was really cool. [00:34:31] Uh, the other, uh, another dentist that worked for him earlier in, in, in, uh, his career, uh, she, she had previously lost her dad and she said, you know, she said something that felt at the time, extremely true. [00:34:47] That a funeral is like having to host the worst party ever. [00:34:51] Uh, so that just to put a cap on it, that's, uh, accurate. [00:35:00] It felt like a party because I got to see a whole lot of people, friends from college, you know, Mark Van Holstein, the president or former president, but co-founder, founder of, uh, mutually human software in Grand Rapids. [00:35:10] You had my former housemate. [00:35:11] He came out, uh, uh, other kid, uh, other friends from, from middle school, high school made the trick, trick, trick, trick, Jeff and Dan. [00:35:21] It was really great to see so many people under, you know, suboptimal circumstances. [00:35:28] And then of course the whole set of extended family where it's like weddings and funerals, huh? [00:35:33] And then like the obligatory, like, yeah, we should really figure out a way to see each other more. [00:35:37] And it's like true. [00:35:38] And no one doesn't feel that way. [00:35:40] It's just like structurally unlikely the way people's lives work. [00:35:44] Uh, and so there's a sort of, uh, uh, nihilism is definitely the wrong word. [00:35:52] There's a sort of resignation that one has about what even are weddings and funerals and why is it that there's this whole cast of characters in your life that are important or close to you and via affiliation or history in some way. [00:36:12] But that you only see at these really like, like, like, like loud life events where it's a big, the background sound is a huge gong going off that distracts from actually getting to know the people. [00:36:26] If you just, you know, picked them on a random Tuesday and went to lunch, you'd probably learn a lot about the person. [00:36:31] But if it's just in the context of like, you know, like looking at, you know, a tray of sandwiches and having to find something to say, it's all going to be sucked in by the event. [00:36:41] And that's too bad, but that's, that's life, I guess, uh, tasks, you know, H through Z day after I, I had intentionally put off any sort of like looking at stuff, like, like thinking about the logistics, uh, the finances, the legal side, the, all that stuff, life insurance, yada, yada. [00:37:06] Uh, but then, you know, it was a lot of that, right. [00:37:09] For, for the rest of our trip, we were there for, for, for 11 days. [00:37:12] I would say skipping a lot of the minutiae because I, of course, you know, when the, when the, when, when a, when a household had a household or breadwinner passes and they didn't leave instructions, like you got to go and do the forensic analysis to figure out like, what are all the, where is everything? [00:37:32] Right. [00:37:32] That's, that's what it was. [00:37:34] It's all fine. [00:37:36] But the, uh, the tech support son, which is like my, you know, uh, it's not an official designation, but, uh, you know, it's a, it's a role I've stepped into and I feel like I've grown into pretty well. [00:37:48] One of the things that jumped is, all right, so we got a couple of things going on. [00:37:54] One, my mom is in an Apple family organized to buy my dad's Apple ID. [00:37:59] Now what? [00:38:00] All the purchases have been made in general on dad's Apple ID, including their Apple one premiere subscription. [00:38:06] Okay. [00:38:07] Well, you know, next eight, you can imagine my next eight Google searches or coggy searches. [00:38:13] All right. [00:38:14] Well, how do you change head of house or organizer of a family answer? [00:38:19] You cannot. [00:38:19] Okay. [00:38:20] Well, how can I transfer the purchases from an organizer to somebody else in the family? [00:38:28] You cannot. [00:38:28] Okay. [00:38:29] Is there a process by which I can make somebody sort of like a legacy page on Facebook, a legacy [00:38:35] human Apple ID? [00:38:37] No. [00:38:39] Okay. [00:38:40] So what do I do? [00:38:41] And they're like, well, you can call Apple support and they may need a death certificate, [00:38:45] but then you can call them and then they can do some amount of stuff, but some, but you don't [00:38:52] get to know what. [00:38:52] And once you kind of go through that process, the Apple ID gets like locked out or that's a, [00:38:57] that's a risk. [00:38:58] And all the sort of, you know, contingent, other things related to that. [00:39:02] I was like, all right, well, I don't necessarily want to do that as a first resort, but I do got [00:39:09] to figure this out because having just like this extra Apple, having this whole like digital [00:39:14] twin to borrow a, an industry term, continue to be a part of a, you know, an Apple family, [00:39:22] a one password family or all this for years into years, just because the software companies [00:39:27] don't make it logistically possible to die. [00:39:30] Uh, that seems great, you know, like, like, so working through that, you know, like I, I still [00:39:38] don't quite have a solution to that. [00:39:39] I'm just going to get through a couple of billing cycles on all the other stuff first, [00:39:43] before I think too hard about it. [00:39:44] Just kidding. [00:39:45] I've thought really hard about it and I've got a 15 step, you know, uh, set of to do's, [00:39:50] but they're just gonna, I gracefully, mercifully, I mercifully punted them two weeks into the [00:39:56] future. [00:39:56] Uh, I, one of the biggest things other than the Apple family stuff was my, my dad had just [00:40:09] bought a new iPhone 16. [00:40:12] I, and he set it up and all that stuff, but my mom was on an older one, like a 12 pro or a 12 mini or a 13 mini. [00:40:19] And it didn't make sense to leave her with the old phone and the new 16, just like in a drawer, [00:40:30] it made sense to give her the new phone. [00:40:33] Right. [00:40:34] Otherwise that the other phone's old enough. [00:40:36] It's like, I'll just be back in six months or, or, or, you know, like we'll, you'll be wasting [00:40:39] money. [00:40:40] So, and that, you know, just like deleting photos of your dad because of a stupid duplication bug, [00:40:45] having to go through a whole bunch of hoops to, to migrate one phone to the other was like the [00:40:50] next challenge. [00:40:52] Cause here was why it was thorny, right? [00:40:54] If, if all of the bank accounts and multi-factor authentication against banks is almost exclusively [00:41:03] SMS, right? [00:41:04] Cause they didn't get on the bandwagon for a, a T O T P or, you know, like you scan the QR code and you [00:41:11] get an authenticator app to, to show it. [00:41:13] And because they, they certainly don't support pass keys. [00:41:16] Uh, we can't just turn off dad's cellular line until we work through all the financial stuff. [00:41:22] But at the same time, okay. [00:41:25] So like if I'm resetting dad's phone and moving mom's stuff onto dad's phone, then how do I [00:41:30] transfer, how do I get these, how do I make it so that dad's SIM doesn't just disappear? [00:41:35] Cause like last thing I want to do is have to call T-Mobile and explain, and then set up the [00:41:41] old phone from scratch and then have them like, I guess, restart the e-SIM process over the phone [00:41:46] on Christmas, you know, Christmas Eve or whatever. [00:41:51] So I, um, I came up with like a towers of Hanoi solution that I actually kind of liked. [00:41:56] What I did was I transferred dad's SIM from the 16 to mom's 13, call it. [00:42:03] So now she had two SIMs on her phone. [00:42:05] She had her primary SIM and dad's SIM, uh, e-SIM. [00:42:09] Uh, uh, and then I, oh, and the 13 or the 12, whatever has one physical and one e-SIM. [00:42:17] And she fortunately had a physical SIM in there. [00:42:19] So she was able to, to, to receive dad's old e-SIM. [00:42:22] So now the 13 of that stage has a physical, a physical nano SIM and an e-SIM. [00:42:27] And then that allowed me to go to dad's phone, back it up, of course, and all that, and then [00:42:32] wipe it. [00:42:33] Cause it had no cellular plan on it. [00:42:35] And then you set it up new, you set it up for mom. [00:42:40] And during that wizard, you know, you do the direct transfer, they're connected via, you [00:42:45] know, USB cables or whatever. [00:42:46] You set it up for mom. [00:42:49] And she has to, she, it says, Hey, you're ready to transfer your cellular plans. [00:42:56] I'm like, yes. [00:42:56] And then I, it's, I realized it's not, you click, you tap one in it and a check box goes [00:43:02] up next to that number. [00:43:03] And then you check the other one and the check box, the check mark moves. [00:43:07] It's clearly like it doesn't support actually initializing a phone with two SIMs, which means [00:43:14] now it's like, okay, so I'll move for a primary SIM first as part of this direct transfer. [00:43:20] And then the direct transfer, because her router was simultaneously and coincidentally failing, [00:43:25] the direct transfer failed because the wifi timed out. [00:43:30] And when you're in the direct transfer mode between two phones in that setting, you can't [00:43:36] like get to control center and turn off the wifi nick. [00:43:39] So then I've got these two phones that I can clearly tell are timing out in the activation [00:43:43] process while the SIM is moving. [00:43:45] And I'm like, fuck sake. [00:43:47] But it's also like a mesh router and there's three mesh access points throughout the house [00:43:52] and I don't know where they are. [00:43:53] So I, I can't just unplug them and make the SSID go away. [00:43:57] So then I would like throw on my winter coat, it's fucking freezing outside and I start marching [00:44:03] down the street until I can get to like far enough away that they both lose the wifi signal [00:44:09] so that the transfer doesn't fail. [00:44:11] So I, it took 15 houses. [00:44:14] I'm, you know, in, in, in, in, uh, uh, my winter coat, 15 houses, they finally get onto [00:44:21] five G and then the, the, the transfer starts succeeding. [00:44:23] And then I start walking back and then it's just instantly says failed. [00:44:26] So then I get back to the house, start the whole thing over again. [00:44:30] And now of course, mom's primary SIM is like trapped on the first phone or the second, the [00:44:36] new 16, but in setting it up again, it doesn't see it anymore because like it was just at that [00:44:41] perfect moment when all the e-sim juice lands in the 16 or whatever. [00:44:48] So I started the whole process over again. [00:44:50] I, I, I set it up fair and square and then I, I, uh, uh, it all went fine after a few hours. [00:44:59] And then the last thing it does is the 13 or whatever says, Hey, okay, time to delete [00:45:04] me. [00:45:04] And then it's like a, basically two taps and you've deleted the phone that just was the [00:45:08] sender or the old phone in the transfer process. [00:45:11] And I almost habitually clicked it. [00:45:13] And I was like, wait, no, that will delete the SIM, the e-sim. [00:45:16] So click, no, cancel out of that, restart the phone. [00:45:20] And then, and then you can transfer that second SIM back to the first one. [00:45:23] So like when that was just two phones, just moving to e-sims, like again, you know, note [00:45:28] to Apple, like this could probably be made easier. [00:45:31] Uh, it's just, it's edge cases like this, that all software companies are really, really bad [00:45:37] at, uh, especially ones that don't have a great track record of automated testing and stuff [00:45:43] like, so I get it. [00:45:45] I know why it happened. [00:45:47] The other thing that sucked was a dad had an Apple card and if we're not going to have [00:45:52] a phone with dad on it, you don't want, there's no other fucking way to cancel an Apple card. [00:45:57] You have to be on the phone that has the Apple card to cancel it. [00:46:01] But if there's no phone with Fred on it, like that meant I, that forced the issue. [00:46:05] Like I'm not, I'm putting off all the financial stuff, right? [00:46:07] But I had to cancel the Apple card, but I had a balance. [00:46:10] So now I've got to like pay a balance on this Apple card. [00:46:13] And of course the banking connection, he didn't like, like it expired or something. [00:46:18] So I have to go and find the banking information. [00:46:21] I log in, whatever I hit cancel. [00:46:23] And it's, you can cancel the card. [00:46:25] It wants you to pay the balance first. [00:46:27] I tried to pay the exact balance. [00:46:30] It was $218 and 17 cents. [00:46:32] I, and I tried 15 goddamn times. [00:46:35] Uh, I changed to a different bank and it said insufficient balance. [00:46:41] And I was like, does that mean like the checking accounts overdrawn? [00:46:45] So then I'm panicking. [00:46:45] It's like, so I go into the bank account. [00:46:47] I'm like, is it easy overdrawn or what? [00:46:50] Hour of, you know, me retrying and doing this only to realize that there's a fucking bug, [00:46:58] a rounding bug of sub decimal sense. [00:47:02] Because when it said $218 and 17 cents as being the balance owed, it was probably a floating [00:47:09] point under there of $218 and call it 16.51 cents. [00:47:16] Because when I tried to do $218 and 17 cents, it failed. [00:47:21] It's an insufficient balance, which made me think insufficient funds. [00:47:25] But then I had the bright idea to try just one penny less than that. [00:47:28] And it cleared. [00:47:30] It meant that you can't make a payment on the card that is in excess of what is owed on the [00:47:35] card. [00:47:35] And it saw that fraction of a penny as being, oh, hey now, a little too generous. [00:47:40] So an Apple, you know, be good guy, Apple, making sure people can't overpay. [00:47:44] Also, the bad guy, Apple doesn't write tests or use, you know, appropriate data structures [00:47:50] for storing goddamn dollars. [00:47:52] Results in, I can't close this card out. [00:47:56] So eventually, so I got it down to one penny. [00:47:58] And then when it was down to one penny, it let me pay one penny, which is separately hilarious. [00:48:02] So I close the Apple card and then the Apple card says, all right, you're closed now. [00:48:09] The card is removed from all your devices. [00:48:14] Now monitor for the next few months and make payments against anything that shows up in [00:48:18] the statement, right? [00:48:19] Because like, that's how credit cards work. [00:48:20] Things don't post immediately. [00:48:22] I was like, well, I have no idea what was getting charged onto this thing. [00:48:26] What might hit it? [00:48:28] I'd scrolled through a statement. [00:48:31] I had a feeling it wouldn't be bad. [00:48:32] But then of course, like as soon as I wipe that phone, I even restored it. [00:48:36] I restored dad's Apple ID onto another phone because I had a burner phone back when I got [00:48:42] home just to see like, would it, would it, would it, would the, would it, the iCloud sync [00:48:47] work, you know, where your wallet shit just shows up in the new phone just magically after [00:48:52] setup. [00:48:52] And the answer is no, because the Apple card is closed. [00:48:55] So there's no reason to put the Apple card on the new phone. [00:48:58] People would be confused, even though it's just in this removed state of like, watch the [00:49:01] balance, which means now that once the phone gets wiped, there's actually no way to pay [00:49:06] a balance. [00:49:06] If one were to materialize, I guess it would just go to collections. [00:49:10] So now, you know, like, please don't post any transactions to my dad's defunct Apple card. [00:49:16] Cause like, I don't have any fucking way to pay it. [00:49:18] There's card.apple.com. [00:49:19] But like, that's just for downloading statements. [00:49:22] So great job, Apple, like you should really make it easier to die. [00:49:26] Like, fuck, fuck it's sake. [00:49:27] This is a, I realized this has been a lot. [00:49:33] I'm going to move right along. [00:49:37] While we were up, we wanted to just, we needed a break. [00:49:42] It'd been like day after day of the same, you know, emotional and logistical tumult. [00:49:48] Just a real grind. [00:49:49] So we want to go see a movie and like, like, uh, uh, Jeremy had expressed interest in seeing [00:49:53] wicked, which is an autobiography about Ariana Grande as a person, as best I can tell. [00:50:00] Real just, she seems like a piece of shit in real life, but also she got to play one in [00:50:08] a movie. [00:50:08] And so like, uh, it's like one of those things where it's like, well, that Bill Murray just [00:50:12] like plays himself. [00:50:13] And it just so happens that he is such a delightful and interesting person that everything he's [00:50:18] in is always amazing. [00:50:19] So I'm glad she got to play herself. [00:50:21] It seemed well acted, but I knew it was probably just who she is. [00:50:27] Uh, huge fan. [00:50:31] Uh, so anyway, we went to see wicked and all of a sudden, you know, we joked about it beforehand, [00:50:37] but like, I can't, I don't understand lyrics. [00:50:39] I have a thing I've got a, uh, a worm lives inside my brain. [00:50:43] And whenever there's a song playing, uh, that worm starts humming and I can't hear the lyrics [00:50:49] to the song. [00:50:50] I can't understand or discriminate where the words are starting and stopping. [00:50:53] I can't tell what is being said. [00:50:56] And if I can barely make it out, then I'm so overwrought and focusing on what's being said. [00:51:01] Then, then I kind of lose the thread. [00:51:02] Like I'll hear the individual words if I really focus, but then not understand what is being [00:51:08] communicated through lyrics. [00:51:10] At the same time, you go to a musical, you go to like, when I went to Hamilton, this was [00:51:15] like extremely clear. [00:51:16] It's like, Oh, I, I put, we went to Hamilton, uh, when, when Hamilton was still cool and not [00:51:21] seen as some sort of, you know, uh, uh, white supremacist whitewashing by putting BIPOC [00:51:27] people in, in these roles and whatnot, 2020 was a hell of a year, uh, when we went to [00:51:33] Hamilton, I got, they got through the first number and I was like, that was very impressive. [00:51:38] I, I appreciate the, this tonal, you know, interesting take. [00:51:43] This is like very like, like skillfully and artfully, uh, done. [00:51:47] Uh, and then, uh, you know, then they go straight into another song and I turned to Becky. [00:51:54] He was like, is there, is there no talking in this one? [00:51:56] Is there zero spoken dialogue in this? [00:52:00] And it turned out that the answer was yes. [00:52:02] And I was like, I don't understand anything. [00:52:04] And so, uh, when we went to Hamilton, which I'd paid a lot of money to go to, uh, I walked [00:52:09] to the lobby in the middle of the show. [00:52:12] And then I ordered like two thingies of wine, uh, which I paid a lot of money for the wine. [00:52:20] And then I got back to the seat, threw back both wines and fell asleep. [00:52:23] So that was Hamilton for me. [00:52:26] So here I am at wicked and we're in the first little ditty. [00:52:28] And I'm like, I don't understand any of these fucking words. [00:52:33] I don't, I don't know what's happening. [00:52:35] And I've got to worry that this is going to be a song heavy movie, which it was. [00:52:40] So I was like, you know what, like normally I'd be embarrassed to do this, [00:52:44] but I'm going to go to the front and say, like, I'm hard of hearing. [00:52:49] Can I have a subtitle machine dingus? [00:52:52] I knew that theaters had them. [00:52:55] I didn't really know how they worked or what they were, if they were any good. [00:52:58] But I was like, you know, for the sake of science and technology, I'm going to try the [00:53:02] subtitle dingus. [00:53:04] So I went to the front, I went to the little, like, you know, whatever ticket booth, and [00:53:08] they handed me a gooseneck snake thing where the bottom is like, it's like a, a drill that [00:53:17] would bore a tunnel, but it goes in the cup holder. [00:53:20] So it's like a cup holder drill and it screws in. [00:53:23] So it goes in the cup holder. [00:53:25] You screw it in to secure it. [00:53:27] And then there's a long gooseneck, a too long, in my opinion, gooseneck. [00:53:31] It's like probably two feet. [00:53:34] If you don't know the term gooseneck, like, like, like, like bendy, like, like, you know, [00:53:42] relatively thick, not a cable, but like a, like a pole that is pliable. [00:53:48] So you can bend it in all sorts of different directions to kind of adjust it. [00:53:53] And then on the top, it was a, a device that had a blinder on the top so that other people [00:53:59] weren't getting a whole bunch of illumination and seeing subtitles and a radio system in [00:54:05] the center, as well as like a kind of internal projector unit. [00:54:08] And so it was very interesting to see how these worked. [00:54:11] You would, and, and, and honestly, because I was uninterested in the Ariana Grande story, [00:54:16] I was mostly just futzing with, and it gave me something to do for the three and a half [00:54:23] hours. [00:54:23] By the way, I had been told that there was an intermission and I was told that because somebody [00:54:29] had in the game of telephone and said they broke it up into two parts. [00:54:32] So like I went in expecting an intermission and then we're like three hours in, it's almost [00:54:37] like 11 fucking o'clock. [00:54:38] And I'm like, I got to pee, but like, I hear there's an intermission. [00:54:41] How late are we going to be here? [00:54:44] So that was, that kept me busy too. [00:54:46] I had something else to do, but anyway, the, the, the subtitle machine was really interesting [00:54:50] because as you look at it and once you get it configured, right, you realize like while [00:55:00] I was walking down the, the, the corridor, it just said, Hey, you know, go inside the theater [00:55:06] or whatever. [00:55:07] When you go in the side of theater, it'll just start showing up. [00:55:09] And when I looked inside the theater, just at the, at the edge of the theater, it was like, [00:55:14] malfunctioning. [00:55:15] It said like something about an, a reader. [00:55:16] And then I realized, Oh, what's happening here is, and this is really one of those kind [00:55:20] of old school, cool technology, you know, innovations where they couldn't just use a digital system [00:55:27] for this per se. [00:55:28] Like a protocol, right? [00:55:30] Like if you were to build this today, these would be like lithium ion battery devices that [00:55:34] would have some charging dock and some kind of software that ran on, like on top of some [00:55:38] minimal Linux stack. [00:55:40] And then it would use the, the, the theater's wifi to send subtitles, which would require [00:55:46] all of this configuration, right? [00:55:47] Like, okay, now punch in on the touch screen on your subtitle device, like which theater, [00:55:52] which theater you're in and which movie time. [00:55:54] And we'll play it. [00:55:55] Right. [00:55:55] But instead, this was just like a short wave radio system. [00:55:58] So you'd be inside the theater and every theater you, you've never even noticed this. [00:56:03] Probably you're in the theater and you're watching a movie. [00:56:06] And the subtitle machine is just receiving these waves that you can't see because the projector [00:56:13] area, I presume is just always blasting out radio waves of the current line of dialogue. [00:56:20] You just didn't have the device to see it. [00:56:22] And so I got the thing screwed in with Jeremy's help because I'm not very handy and I got to [00:56:29] actually follow along the rest of the movie, which makes me an authority on, on, on being [00:56:34] able to say not that great. [00:56:35] Not very interesting. [00:56:37] I I'm on the Kinsey scale. [00:56:40] I'm all the way to hetero male, which means musical theater is not, doesn't come naturally [00:56:48] to me in terms of being like something that gets me real excited deep down there. [00:56:53] Uh, sorry if that's you, I'm just saying it's not it anyway. [00:57:02] Uh, yeah. [00:57:03] So that was, that was pretty cool. [00:57:05] Uh, other life stuff. [00:57:13] Well, the, the version, I guess tying a bow around the, uh, the trip up there and all [00:57:21] that realizing I've gone an hour on it now. [00:57:25] People, when you move from the Midwest United States to Florida and you do it because you [00:57:35] feel like the Midwest kind of sucks, you know, it's cold. [00:57:38] A lot of the time, uh, a lot of the rest belt States are, well, they're called rust belt. [00:57:45] They're dying economically. [00:57:46] There's less economic activity. [00:57:48] There's less new stuff. [00:57:50] There's less vibrancy. [00:57:51] Uh, when you move from the Midwest to Florida and you have a great setup there and lots of sunshine [00:58:00] and, and, and, and stuff to do people react in very different ways. [00:58:08] No one just says, Oh my God, that's so great for you. [00:58:10] I'm really, really happy for you. [00:58:11] Wow. [00:58:12] That sounds awesome. [00:58:12] I mean, some people kind of do, uh, a lot of people are either jealous or in some state [00:58:20] of denial or, or frustration by it, you know, like you feel abandoned or whatnot. [00:58:27] I think, I think the people who genuinely think the Midwest is better and the people who are [00:58:34] jealous, both end up asking the same question of us Midwestern expats. [00:58:41] And that, that question is, do you regret it yet? [00:58:44] God, I've been down here for four years. [00:58:48] Right. [00:58:49] And here I am. [00:58:50] My dad just died. [00:58:52] Just put on a funeral, you know, staying at a Hampton Inn. [00:58:57] Huh? [00:58:59] A Hampton Inn where like, it was a great experience. [00:59:02] The staff were really great, but like they had a desk in the laundry room that was never screwed [00:59:07] in or, or, or secured properly. [00:59:08] So I set down my brand new MacBook pro and a Coke, a can of Coke. [00:59:13] And then it just collapsed all of it all at once to the floor. [00:59:17] So my MacBook got soaking wet and Coke. [00:59:19] And also the, the unibody enclosure got super scraped up. [00:59:23] And, uh, the, the day before the funeral, I was all, you know, in a lot of neck pain from, [00:59:29] from the fall and the general manager still hasn't gotten back to me. [00:59:33] It was gray outside. [00:59:35] It was cold. [00:59:37] You know, and I, and I was struggling like for activities and things we could do as a [00:59:42] family and, and settled. [00:59:43] Uh, and the best, most entertaining thing to do was the Ariana Grande story. [00:59:50] And they ask, do you regret it yet? [00:59:52] Like totally just straight. [00:59:56] Every time we go back, I thought like, this is going to be the trip. [01:00:00] I go back and I don't have a single person ask me that, but then it came up relative at the [01:00:06] wake. [01:00:09] And I was like, man, thank you for asking. [01:00:11] You know, I think about it a lot. [01:00:14] I love Michigan. [01:00:14] Michigan's beautiful in the summers, but inside I'm like, come on. [01:00:17] No, I don't regret it. [01:00:19] Yes. [01:00:20] I'm already homesick. [01:00:21] Uh, it's fucking awesome here. [01:00:23] I'm not going to lie. [01:00:24] Like I live in goddamn paradise. [01:00:26] I don't know why more people don't do it. [01:00:28] I don't, you know, politics are part of the equation for a lot of folks, uh, politics and [01:00:35] policies. [01:00:36] Uh, and I, and I get it, but man, like I am so much fucking happier here just on a [01:00:42] day-to-day basis. [01:00:43] Like you, you blind out all of the sort of like metal layer stuff and just like my meat [01:00:48] bag gets a lot more sun and a lot more movement and a lot more just stuff going on down here. [01:00:53] And so, no, I don't regret it yet. [01:00:54] Uh, but if I ever do, I'll let you know, I've got a podcast, so I definitely will. [01:01:02] Uh, one thing I do regret is eating so, or is, uh, uh, drinking so little dairy in my [01:01:07] twenties because I have become extremely lactose intolerant. [01:01:12] Uh, so I don't have any lactase to the point where even if I drink lactaid, like, like what [01:01:19] they call like lactose free milk, but, but actually is lactose full milk with also lactase enzyme [01:01:25] added to it so that your tummy will process it. [01:01:28] Even when I drink that, I drank 20 grams two nights ago and the whole next day I was [01:01:33] wrecked. [01:01:33] That's not a lot of fucking milk. [01:01:35] Uh, now you call that an allergy or an intolerance. [01:01:39] Um, but like if I want cereal, like it's going to happen. [01:01:42] So sure you can pathologize it, but I was like, I, I am making a trade with my future self. [01:01:48] Like I'm going to put up with some indigestion so that I can have this deal. [01:01:52] Okay. [01:01:53] We're in, uh, if I had a peanut allergy to the point of like anaphylactic shock, I'd be [01:02:01] having the same negotiation. [01:02:03] I would just probably not take the deal most of the time. [01:02:07] Uh, anyway, I finally caved. [01:02:11] Cause like I talking about politics, I am politically, um, unaccepting intolerant of, [01:02:19] uh, milk alternatives. [01:02:22] Cause it's not milk. [01:02:24] People call almond milk, milk. [01:02:26] That's not milk. [01:02:27] That's just squeezed almond. [01:02:29] And like the amount of water that goes into making an almond is insane. [01:02:32] And so the, whatever almond milk is must be not, not really great from a sustainability [01:02:37] perspective. [01:02:38] And it's just, it's not, it's not what it says on the 10. [01:02:41] It shouldn't be allowed to be called milk. [01:02:43] It's like that fake egg product called just egg. [01:02:45] I was like, that's no, it's unjust egg. [01:02:48] This is not an egg. [01:02:49] Uh, so I, I, I caved and I bought Kirkland dairy-free oat beverage is what it says in the [01:03:00] box and oat milk. [01:03:02] And I had that last night and I'm still mad at myself about it, but here we are. [01:03:08] I'm going to say that's, I'm going to cap it at an hour of life updates. [01:03:16] I knew it would be life heavy. [01:03:18] Um, but, and because it's a heavy period of life right now, but if you're curious after all [01:03:24] of this shit and all the storytelling and all me getting stuff off my chest, I'm actually [01:03:28] doing great. [01:03:29] I'm processing things. [01:03:30] Love my dad dearly. [01:03:31] Um, I, I've taken the moments, you know, to be quiet and still and to spend effort and [01:03:44] time genuinely reflecting and going through old things and, you know, letting feelings happen [01:03:51] and letting those memories come by and doing other

HEADS UP: This one has a video version in case you'd prefer to watch that! HEADS UP SEVEN UP: Here's a spoiler-free link to this year's puns as they existed prior to this recording. Welcome to a very special Holiday Edition of Breaking Change: our first annual Breaking Change Punsort! Today, we're joined by a surprise guest! Want to know who it is? You'll just have to listen and find out. Yes, it's Aaron. As always, you can e-mail the show at podcast@searls.co. If you enjoyed this episode and want to see a second annual edition next year, let me know! If you don't write in, I'll stop—because editing multiple speakers plus video is a massive pain in the ass. No links today, because we didn't actually talk about anything worth citing.

I'd write more here, but I've got places to be. Becky, Jeremy, and I are going to engage in some holiday festivities. We have a couple gingerbread houses to make and a tree to trim. And no nog to speak of. Really, that's all you get by way of show notes this time as a result, deal with it. Send your complaints to podcast@searls.co and they will be read on air. Some bullet points below the fold: My 90-minute, outdated guide to setting up a Mac Aaron's puns, ranked Jim Carrey is 62 and can't even retire I bought my 8 year old a switch and didn't realize how much games cost Teen creates memecoin, dumps it, earns $50,000 Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds Install the Mozi app (manifesto here | app here) Vision Pro getting PSVR2 controllers The 2024 Game Awards news roundup Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet looks badass, but is it too inclusive for The Gamers? We don't talk about Luigi An invisible desktop app for cheating on technical interviews (HN comments) Sora is out, but it's not good yet Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is out, and it is good yet Emudeck is so great it shouldn't be legal, and some people probably think it isn't Pikmin Stay tuned to my YouTube channel for upcoming LIVE streams Transcript: [00:00:00] Thank you. [00:00:29] Good morning, internet. [00:00:32] I started speaking before I realized, as an asynchronous audio production, it's actually pretty unlikely that it's the morning where you are. [00:00:43] Although, if it is the morning, coincidentally, please feel free to be creeped out, check over your shoulder. [00:00:51] Today was, I woke up with Vim and Vigor this morning, super excited to take on the day, thinking maybe I've got what it takes to record an audio production today. [00:01:07] And then we have an elderly coffee pot. [00:01:11] I don't want to completely put the blame on it because we were using it wrong for several years. [00:01:24] And it's a long story that I will shorten to say, any piece of consumer electronics or appliances in America, the half-life keeps decreasing. [00:01:37] And so when I say elderly coffee pot, I mean that we bought this coffee pot post-COVID. [00:01:42] And it's already feeling like, oh, we should probably get a new coffee pot, huh? [00:01:45] What happens is, from time to time, heat will build up in the grounds dingus. [00:01:55] I'm just realizing now that I'm like, you know, I'm not a coffee engineer. [00:01:58] Some of you are. [00:02:00] But, you know, of course, we all know that the dingus is connected to the water spigot, which is above the craft. [00:02:09] And what happens, as far as I can tell, is once in a while, you get all that hot water and grounds swirling around. [00:02:20] And if it clogs at all, like if it doesn't release just so, the whole little undercarriage, again, this is a technical term, just stay with me. [00:02:30] And we'll pop forward like three millimeters, which is just enough for the water to kind of miss its target on the craft and then spray all who's he what's it's, as well as for the spigot to start just kind of like splurring, you know, this water coffee slurry everywhere. [00:02:49] And so I went after, you know, but then you still get the triumphant ding dong sound that the coffee is ready. [00:02:56] So I walked over to the coffee expecting like, yes, it's the best, best way to start my day or whatever. [00:03:06] Pull out the coffee. [00:03:07] And the pot is too light. [00:03:10] And I had a familiarity of like what that means. [00:03:13] It means like there is water somewhere. [00:03:17] And it's not in this pot. [00:03:19] And so it's just like, you know, this big, big machine we actually have we've put because of our Mr. [00:03:26] Coffee's, you know, elderly onset incontinence. [00:03:33] We have we have put the entire coffee pot on a tray, like a rimmed silicone tray that you would use for like, I guess, a dog feeding bowl, right? [00:03:45] A dog, you know, messily eats food and slaps water around and stuff. [00:03:49] And you don't want it all over your hardwood. [00:03:50] Like you'd put this underneath that and it would catch some of the water. [00:03:53] So we I spent the first 30 minutes of my waking life today getting my hopes up that I was going to have coffee, followed by, you know, painstakingly carrying this entire cradle of of of coffee pot full of hot brown liquid. [00:04:10] That would stay in all of my clothes and, you know, get on the cabinets and stuff with a silicone underbelly thing. [00:04:18] And just kind of like, you know, we've got one of those big we're very fortunate to have one of those big farmers, farmer house, farmhouse. [00:04:25] I never know what to call it. [00:04:27] Steel, basically a double wide sink. [00:04:30] So what's nice about a double wide sink is that if you've got a problem in your kitchen and you're only a few steps away, whether it's the coffee pot part of the kitchen or the fridge or the freezer or the God forbid, the range or the oven, you can just sort of strategically hurl whatever it is you're holding just about into the into the sink. [00:04:51] And then once it hits the sink, it's, you know, the the the potential damage is limited. [00:04:57] So I gently hurled my coffee apparatus. [00:05:02] Is that the plural of apparatus? [00:05:04] One wonders into the into the into the sink and then spent the next 20 minutes, you know, scrubbing them and all to make another pot. [00:05:13] And Becky, of course, walks down the minute that the second pot is about to be finished. [00:05:18] And I'm like, I've already seen some shit and I'm going to go record a podcast now. [00:05:22] And that swallow you just heard was me having a sip of coffee that was not disgusting, but not great. [00:05:31] But I'll take it over where I was an hour ago. [00:05:39] Thank you for for subscribing as a as a true believer in breaking change. [00:05:47] We're coming up on one year now. [00:05:49] It's hard to believe that it's already been a year, not because this has been a lot of work or a big accomplishment, but just because the the the agony of existence seems to accelerate as you get older. [00:06:03] It's one of the few kindnesses in life and so as we whipsaw around the sun yet again, we're about to do that. [00:06:11] This is the 26th edition version 26 of the podcast. [00:06:17] I've got two names here to release titles and I haven't picked one yet. [00:06:22] So as a special. [00:06:24] Nearing the end of the year treat. [00:06:29] I'm going to pitch them both to you now, right? [00:06:31] So so we're in this together. [00:06:33] I like to think this is a highly collaborative one person show. [00:06:37] Version 26 rich nanotexture. [00:06:42] And that's a nod to the MacBook Pro has a nanotexture anti-glare screen coding option. [00:06:52] It's a reference to the rich Corinthian leather that was actually it's a Chrysler reference. [00:06:58] It's a made up thing. [00:06:59] There is no such thing as Corinthian leather, but like that's what they called their their seating. [00:07:03] And Steve Jobs referenced that as being the inspiration for I think it was the iPad calendar app. [00:07:13] With the rich Corinthian leather up at the top during the era of skeuomorphic designs back in 2010, 2009, maybe I can't remember exactly when they I think it's 2010 when he had his famous actually leather chair demonstration of the iPad. [00:07:28] Maybe the reason that that stood out to me was the car reference because it is it is an upsell. [00:07:34] The nanotexture $150 if you want to have a don't call it matte finish. [00:07:41] The other one, so that's option one, rich nanotexture. [00:07:46] And I didn't love it because I couldn't get texture. [00:07:49] I couldn't get the same Corinthian, right? [00:07:53] Like you want that bite, the multisyllabic bite that adds the extra, you know, the gravitas of a luxury good. [00:08:04] Yeah, texture just didn't have it for me. [00:08:06] But then if you change that word, it doesn't make sense. [00:08:08] So I mean, the other option two that came to mind version 26 don't don't by the way, don't think I'm going to edit this in post and fix it. [00:08:19] I will not. [00:08:20] I will ultimately land on one of these and that will be the title that you saw on your podcast player. [00:08:25] Or maybe some third thing will come to mind and then this conversation will be moot. [00:08:29] I do not think of this collaborative exercise. [00:08:32] Just imagine it's a it's a it's a quantum collaboration. [00:08:37] So by observing it, that's you actually took part. [00:08:41] You opened your podcast player and then the yeah, the entangled, you know, bits just they coalesced around one of these two names or some third name. [00:08:58] It's all just statistics version 26 Luigi's Mansion, which is a nod to two things at once. [00:09:05] I'm going to talk a little bit about GameCube, but also I'll probably not escape mentioning Luigi Manjoni Manjoni man. [00:09:15] You know, I haven't been watching the news. [00:09:17] I don't know how to pronounce his name, but it looks enough like mansion that I was like, oh, man. [00:09:21] I bet you there's a Nintendo PR guy whose day just got fucking ruined by the fella who is a overnight folk hero. [00:09:30] More attractive than most assassins, I would say. [00:09:35] Great hair. [00:09:36] Good skin. [00:09:37] Apparently, skincare Reddit is all about this fella who murdered in cold blood the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. [00:09:45] If you haven't caught the news, if you're even less online than I am. [00:09:51] And yeah, so I'm trying to decide. [00:09:53] I think Luigi's Mansion is probably going to win. [00:09:56] It's more timely. [00:09:57] It's the first time the name Luigi has come up in the last year. [00:10:00] And I may have mentioned nanotexture before when discussing Apple's very compromised studio display. [00:10:11] So I'm leaning Luigi's Mansion, but, you know, don't tempt me. [00:10:15] I might switch. [00:10:18] I'm going to just keep drinking coffee because I got to power through this. [00:10:21] Let's talk about some life stuff. [00:10:24] I so when we last talked that way back in the heady days of version 25, I had just gotten off a plane from Japan. [00:10:34] I was still a little bit jet lagged. [00:10:36] I recorded later in the evening. [00:10:38] I was tired. [00:10:39] You know, I was still overcoming. [00:10:41] I listened to the episode, realized I was overcoming a cold. [00:10:44] You know, then Becky shortly thereafter, after recording, she developed a pretty bad cough. [00:10:51] And so we've both been sleeping relatively poorly. [00:10:53] And I can't complain about this cough because her having a cough for four nights is nothing like me snoring on and off for over a year. [00:11:02] And I think the fact that her cough is consistent is actually a kindness compared to the sporadic nature of my snoring, where it's like I might go a week without it. [00:11:11] And then all of a sudden there's like, bam. [00:11:14] So she doesn't, you know, it's like sneaks up on her and that's not fair. [00:11:17] So so she's got a cough and I haven't been sleeping particularly well. [00:11:20] Maybe that's it. [00:11:22] I also, you know, I wanted to dry out because I was living on shoe highs, you know, canned cocktails in Japan for way too long. [00:11:30] Just drinking, you know, five whole dollars of alcohol every day, which is an irresponsible amount of alcohol. [00:11:36] It turns out. [00:11:40] Yeah, that's one nice thing about living in Orlando and theme park Orlando is that the average price of a cocktail here is seriously $20. [00:11:49] I think it is. [00:11:51] I am delighted and surprised when I find a cocktail under $20. [00:11:55] That's any good. [00:11:55] In fact, the four seasons right around the corner, their lobby bar has a some of the best bartenders in the state of Florida. [00:12:05] Like they went all kinds of awards. [00:12:06] And so when you say a lobby bar, you think it sucks. [00:12:09] But it's actually it's like it's a it's a restaurant with a room if you're ever around and they still do a happy hour with like $4. [00:12:18] It was $4 beers. [00:12:19] I think they finally increased to $5 beers draft beer. [00:12:23] And it's all craft. [00:12:25] You know, it's all fancy people stuff. [00:12:27] And they do it's I think it's $10 margaritas, French 75s, and they got some other happy hour cocktail. [00:12:37] It was highballs for a while. [00:12:39] Whiskey highballs was like probably centauri toki or something. [00:12:43] I gotta say like that $10 margarita. [00:12:47] They'll throw some jalapeno in there if you want some tahini rim, you know, they do it up. [00:12:52] They do it well. [00:12:54] But that might be the cheapest cocktail I've had in all of Orlando is at the Four Seasons. [00:13:01] Famous for that TikTok meme of the Four Seasons baby, if you're a TikTok person. [00:13:06] Anyway, all that all all this drinking talk back to the point. [00:13:11] I've been not drinking for a week. [00:13:12] And I, you know, I'm back to tracking my nutrients every day. [00:13:17] The things that I consume and adding up all of the protein and carbohydrate and realizing [00:13:21] if you don't drink, it's actually really easy to blow past one's protein goals. [00:13:25] And so I had one day where I had like 240 grams of protein, which is [00:13:28] enough protein that you'll feel it the next morning if you're not used to it. [00:13:34] And I still was losing weight. [00:13:38] I lost like five or six pounds in the last week. [00:13:43] And to the point where it was like, you know, I was feeling a little lightheaded, [00:13:47] a little bit woozy because I wasn't drinking enough is the takeaway. [00:13:52] So so thank God we got to go to a Christmas party last night. [00:13:57] It was it was great Gatsby themed. [00:13:58] And I dressed up like a man who wanted to do the bare minimum to not get made fun of at the party. [00:14:05] So I had some some suspenders on instead of a belt, which was the first time I ever put on suspenders. [00:14:13] They were not period appropriate suspenders simply because they had the, you know, the [00:14:18] little class B dues instead of how they had some other system for I don't I don't fucking know. [00:14:25] Like I, I had chat GPT basically helped me through this. [00:14:28] And it's like, hey, you want these kinds of suspenders? [00:14:30] I'm like, that sounds like an ordeal. [00:14:31] How about I just get some universal one size fits all fit and clip them in? [00:14:36] I also had a clip on bow tie. [00:14:37] So that worked. [00:14:39] When you think clip on bow tie, I guess I'd never used one before, but like it, I always [00:14:45] assumed it would just be like, you know, like a barrette clip that would go in front of the [00:14:49] front button and look silly for that reason. [00:14:51] And maybe that's how they used to be. [00:14:53] But it seems these days, if you want to spend $3 on a fancy clip on bow tie with a nice texturing, [00:14:58] I'll say, uh, it's just pre it's a pre tied bow with a still wraps around your neck. [00:15:04] It's just, it has a class mechanism, which seems smart to me, right? [00:15:08] I don't know what. [00:15:09] Look, if you're really into men's fashion, uh, there's this weird intersection or this tension [00:15:19] between I'm a manly man who, who ties my own shoes and, you know, kills my own dinner and [00:15:25] stuff. [00:15:25] And I, I, for fuck's sake, tie my own bow tie from scratch every day. [00:15:29] Right? [00:15:29] Like there's a toxically masculine approach to bow ties, but at the same time, it is such [00:15:35] a foofy accoutrement. [00:15:37] It's like an ascot, um, that the idea of like a manly man, like a man trying to demonstrate [00:15:43] his manliness by the fact that he doesn't use a clip on bow tie, uh, came to mind yesterday [00:15:50] when I was, uh, struggling even with the clasping kind. [00:15:54] I was like, man, I wish I could just get this to anyway. [00:15:58] Um, I had a vest at a gray vest. [00:16:03] This is all brand new territory for me. [00:16:05] Uh, yeah, I, I've, I've leaned pretty hard into the t-shirt and shorts and or jeans life [00:16:10] for so long. [00:16:12] Uh, the, the fella in front of us when we, when we were checking in, cause they took little [00:16:16] photos of you, uh, all of the women had the same exact flapper dress from Amazon, you know, [00:16:22] with the, the, the, the hairband thing with the, you know, fake, the polyester peacock tail. [00:16:28] Becky's looked the best. [00:16:29] I'm not gonna, I'm not even lying. [00:16:32] Uh, uh, her dress actually fit. [00:16:35] He had some, uh, very ill fitting flapper costumes that these women couldn't even move in. [00:16:40] Um, it was interesting. [00:16:42] Uh, but the, the fella in front of us at check-in was wearing a, a, a full blown, you know, tuxedo [00:16:48] get up that he brought from home. [00:16:50] And he was talking about, Oh yeah, well he's got two of them and his wife, you know, ribbed [00:16:54] him a little bit that he could only fit in one. [00:16:55] I was like, man, owning a tuxedo, that's nuts. [00:16:58] Like, and then it like turns out he's like got all these suits and these fancy clothes and [00:17:02] he's an older gentleman. [00:17:05] Uh, but my entire career only the first few years did I have to think about what I was [00:17:10] wearing and, and it never really got beyond pleated, you know, khakis and a starched shirt. [00:17:18] And, and I had, I had to wear a suit maybe on two sales calls. [00:17:22] Um, and they were always the sales calls that were just, uh, there were certain sales demos [00:17:30] when I was a, a, a baby consultant, these really complex bids. [00:17:39] I remember we were at cook County once, uh, uh, the, the county that wraps Chicago and it [00:17:44] has a lot of functions and facilities that operate at the county level. [00:17:48] So, but of course we're in Chicago in some, you know, uh, dystopian office building. [00:17:54] That's very Gothic, I should say. [00:17:57] And the, the solution that we were selling was a response to a bid around some kind of [00:18:05] document, electronic document ingestion and, and, and routing solution. [00:18:09] And so what, what that meant was it was like a 12 person team. [00:18:14] It was a big project working on this pitch. [00:18:18] And most of the work and most of the money came from the software side at the end of the [00:18:23] process. [00:18:23] It's like, you're going to get IBM file net and you're going to get all these different, [00:18:26] uh, enterprise tools. [00:18:28] And we're going to integrate, uh, with all your systems and, and build these custom integrations [00:18:32] that you've asked for here and here and here. [00:18:33] But the, the, the hard part is the human logistics of how do you get all of their paper documents [00:18:41] into the system. [00:18:42] Uh, and that was my job was I had to get paper and then scan it, uh, with a production, big [00:18:50] Kodak funkin fucking scanner. [00:18:52] Uh, and then use, what was it? [00:18:54] Kofax capture or something like a, like an OCR tool of the era. [00:18:59] And the thing about it is that scanning is not, was not ever a science and neither is [00:19:07] OCR, the OCR stuff and OCR stands for optical character recognition. [00:19:10] So you'd have a form and you'd write on the form, like, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, some, [00:19:15] some demo address and name and all this. [00:19:19] I spent. [00:19:22] So like the people doing the software, like they, they could just like click a button and [00:19:26] like, they could even just use fakery, right? [00:19:29] Like, Oh, the API is not really there, but I'll always return this particular, like, let's [00:19:33] call it an XML soap message. [00:19:34] And so the, the software guys clocked in, clocked out, got back to their billable work. [00:19:39] I, because the stakes were so high in this particular, uh, and I'm here right now explaining [00:19:46] all of this nonsense because I had to wear a suit and that was also really bad, but I [00:19:51] was in Chicago late at night with a group of like, at that point it was like 9 PM and it [00:19:54] was just me and two partners. [00:19:56] Cause the partners had a sickness called avoid family, stay at work. [00:20:02] And, uh, I, I was just running over and over and over again where I'd like, you know, [00:20:09] I'd take the paper, I'd put it through the scanner and it would get 90% of the OCR stuff [00:20:13] done, or I'd get it perfect. [00:20:15] And it would scan everything just right, which would result in the downstream, you know, after [00:20:21] the capture, like all of my integrations, like would route it to the right thing. [00:20:24] So that like, it was basically a game of mousetrap or dominoes where like my task was both [00:20:29] the most important to being able to demonstrate, but also the most error prone, but also the [00:20:37] least, uh, financially like, um, valuable to, to our services company. [00:20:42] And so I had no support, uh, on top of that, they, the, our fucking it people pushed out some [00:20:49] kind of, um, you know, involuntary security update security and bunny quotes that, that [00:20:57] slowed my system down dramatically in the course of just like a day. [00:21:01] And I had, I had no way to test for this. [00:21:04] So I remember I was up at like 11 PM at that point, trying to make this work consistently [00:21:10] and realizing that the only way to get it to run it all required me to, um, install a virtual [00:21:16] machine, put windows in the virtual machine, install all this software inside that virtual [00:21:22] machine, and then run it there because only in the black box of an encrypted virtual machine [00:21:27] image or, uh, you know, a virtual machine, like disc image, could I evade all of the accountant [00:21:33] bullshit that was trying to track and encrypt and, and, and muck with files and flight and [00:21:38] so forth. [00:21:39] And so it was only around like probably one 30 or two that I got to bed and our, our demo [00:21:46] was like at seven in the morning and I had to wear a suit. [00:21:47] So if you ever wonder, Hey, why is Justin always just in a, a t-shirt and shorts? [00:21:54] Uh, I would say childhood trauma, fuck suits. [00:21:59] The only, the only time I associate like nice clothes, you know, having a lot of [00:22:03] having to dress up is church shit. [00:22:05] I didn't want to go to. [00:22:06] And usually it's like the worst church shit. [00:22:09] Like there's some cool church shit out there, you know, youth group where everyone's a horny, [00:22:14] right. [00:22:15] And singing pop songs to try to get people in. [00:22:17] That's as church shit goes, that's above average. [00:22:21] But when you're talking about like, Hey, you know, this aunt you've never heard of died and [00:22:27] we got to go all the way to goddamn Dearborn to sit in a Catholic mass, that's going to [00:22:32] be in Latin. [00:22:33] And they're going to, you know, one of those, you know, you should feel bad for him because [00:22:39] he's abused. [00:22:39] But one of the altar boys, he's going to be waving that little like incense thingy, [00:22:43] the jigger back and forth and back and forth like a metronome. [00:22:46] And, uh, you're going to get all this soot in your face, all of that, you know, frankincense [00:22:51] and myrrh and whatever the fuck they burn. [00:22:52] And, uh, yeah, then they're going to play some songs, but they're not going to be songs you [00:22:57] want to hear. [00:22:57] And you're going to be uncomfortable because I bought you this suit at JC Penny when you [00:23:01] were like nine and you're 12, you're 12 now, and you've gained a lot of weight, but [00:23:06] here we are. [00:23:07] And then you got to go and, you know, like, don't worry because after the service, there's [00:23:12] a big meal, but it's mostly just going to be, you know, styrofoam plates and plastic forks [00:23:16] and, uh, cold rubbery chicken. [00:23:19] And then a whole lot of family members who want to pinch your cheeks, uh, had an aunt that [00:23:24] always wanted to, um, put on a bunch of red lipstick and kiss me and leave kiss marks. [00:23:30] And she thought that was adorable and everyone else thought it was funny. [00:23:33] And for whatever reason, I wasn't a fan, uh, that's the kind of, uh, yeah, so anyway, moving [00:23:45] right along the, uh, the, the other than having to dress up, the, the Christmas party was really [00:23:50] nice because it had an all you can drink martini bar. [00:23:52] So that, that helped that took the edge off a little bit since I hadn't been drinking for [00:23:57] the previous week. [00:23:57] Uh, and it was, you know, uh, they, they had a great bartender, the, the, I assume that [00:24:07] that people drank gin martinis back in the day of Gatsby, but it seemed to be a vodka forward [00:24:12] martini bar, which I appreciated. [00:24:15] Uh, as I get older and my taste buds start dying, uh, I found myself going from dry martinis [00:24:23] to martinis with an olive to martinis with two olives to me asking for like a little bit of [00:24:30] olive juice and then drinking the martini and realizing that wasn't quite enough olive juice. [00:24:34] So that's just disgusting, but, um, it's where, uh, it's one of the signs of age, I guess. [00:24:43] Uh, so the martini bar was good. [00:24:46] Uh, they also had an aged old fashion that they'd made, you know, homemade, um, with like nutmeg [00:24:51] and cinnamon in there. [00:24:52] That was impressive. [00:24:53] Uh, so yeah, had a, had a big old Christmas party last night, had a couple of drinks, uh, [00:25:00] and, and, uh, because of the contrast, whenever I go, you know, go a week without any alcohol [00:25:06] and then I have some alcohol and then I wake up the next morning and I'm like, oh yes, I [00:25:11] know what people mean now that alcohol is poison. [00:25:13] And it's a mildly poisonous thing because I feel mildly poisoned. [00:25:19] Um, and, and I just usually feel that most days until I forget about it. [00:25:23] So it's a data point, uh, to think about, uh, uh, I, I, I had a good, good run for, [00:25:30] for a while there, just cause like when you live in a fucking theme park and there's nowadays [00:25:34] alcohol everywhere that I go and every outing, I had a good run for a few months. [00:25:40] Um, not last year, the year before where I just didn't drink at home as a rule to myself. [00:25:46] I was like, you know, I'm not going to pour any liquor for myself at home unless I'm entertaining [00:25:49] guests. [00:25:50] And, uh, even then go easy on it because I I'm, I'm, I'm going to just the background radiation [00:25:56] of existence in when you live in a bunch of resorts. [00:25:59] Uh, I'll, I'll get, I'll get, I'll get plenty of alcohol subcutaneously. [00:26:05] Um, a contact tie. [00:26:07] So maybe I'll, maybe I'll try that again. [00:26:10] I don't know. [00:26:11] It's the stuff you think about in mid December when you're just inundated with specialty food [00:26:17] and drink options, uh, do other life stuff that isn't alcohol or religion or clothing [00:26:27] related. [00:26:28] Oh, uh, uh, I've been on a quest to not necessarily save a bunch of money, not necessarily. [00:26:35] Uh, I was going to say, uh, tighten my belt, but, uh, I don't know what the suspender equivalent [00:26:43] is because I did not wear a belt last night. [00:26:45] I just wore suspenders. [00:26:46] Uh, I've been interested in, in not budgeting either. [00:26:52] Just, I think awareness. [00:26:54] Like I want, I know that a lot of money flies through my pockets every month in the form of, [00:27:01] um, SAS software subscriptions and streaming services. [00:27:05] I mentioned this last, uh, last go round that I was recommending, Hey, let's say, go take a [00:27:11] look at like our unused streaming subscriptions of those. [00:27:14] Uh, yesterday I did cancel max. [00:27:16] Cause I realized that, uh, if I'm not watching a lot of news, I'm not going to watch John Oliver [00:27:20] and, and they frankly, a lot of HBO's prestige shows haven't been besides they cut a Sesame [00:27:28] street and it just so happened that I canceled that day. [00:27:31] So maybe there's a, some data engineer at HBO who's like, Oh man, people are canceling because [00:27:37] we got rid of Sesame street. [00:27:38] Uh, that would be good. [00:27:40] That would be good for America to get that feedback. [00:27:43] Uh, yeah. [00:27:44] I just want awareness of like, where's the money going and in what proportion and does that sound [00:27:50] right to me? [00:27:50] Uh, and I've, there are software tools for this. [00:27:53] Uh, they are all compromised in some way. [00:27:57] For example, we just, uh, we'd used lunch money in the past, which is a cool app. [00:28:02] And it has the kind of, you know, basic integrations you would expect. [00:28:06] I don't know if it uses plaid or whatever behind the covers, but like you, you connect your, your, [00:28:11] your checking accounts, your credit card accounts. [00:28:14] It lists all your transactions is very, um, customizable in terms of rules that you can [00:28:21] set. [00:28:21] It has an API. [00:28:22] Jen is a solo co-founder and she seems really, really competent and lovely and responsive, [00:28:27] which are all great things. [00:28:29] But the UI is a little clunky for me. [00:28:32] I don't like how it handled URLs. [00:28:33] It was like, once you got all the transactions in there and, and set up, it didn't feel informative [00:28:41] because there wasn't like a good reporting or graphs that just kind of at a glance would [00:28:45] tell you, this is where your money's going. [00:28:46] At least for me. [00:28:47] Uh, additionally, like it, it can't do the Apple card. [00:28:51] That's the, that's become the crux for a lot of these services is that, um, Apple card [00:28:55] only added support for reading. [00:28:59] Uh, well now you can read, uh, uh, so I, Apple added away on iOS and specifically iPhone [00:29:07] OS to read, uh, transactions from Apple card, Apple savings and Apple cash. [00:29:14] And this was like nine months ago, if that, but copilot, uh, money is one of two apps maybe [00:29:22] that supports this. [00:29:23] And so if you, if you have, we have, we each have an Apple card and we use it for kind of [00:29:29] our silly stuff whenever we're, you know, using a tap to pay. [00:29:33] So, so if, if you want to track transactions and you don't want to manually export CSVs [00:29:40] from your wife's phone every 30 days, which is the process that I'd fallen into with, with [00:29:44] lunch money, then you, you basically have copilot money. [00:29:50] And then there's another one, maybe Monarch, uh, the copilot money. [00:29:53] People are always talking about this other app called Monarch. [00:29:55] I haven't checked it out. [00:29:55] I don't know if that's why they like it or if it's just the other one that's being developed [00:29:59] right now in this post mint apocalypse, as we all grapple with the fact that mint was [00:30:04] always bad, uh, but people got into it and I don't copilot money is like nice, but like [00:30:11] it, like, for example, like if I'm, uh, if I buy a, uh, if I put $10, the equivalent of [00:30:19] $10, so 1000 yen on my Starbucks card in Japan, which is totally separate because of course it [00:30:25] is there's two Starbucks cards. [00:30:27] There's the one in Japan and then the one in the rest of the world. [00:30:30] So you open the Japanese only app, you put a thousand yen on it. [00:30:33] Uh, you pay for that with Apple pay. [00:30:36] So which goes to my Apple card and copilot money will read that transaction. [00:30:40] But if you read like the text in the merchant description, it's literally like [00:30:44] staba day and it's like all no spaces. [00:30:47] It's just like 40 characters in a row to, and if you really squint, you can kind of see [00:30:52] Starbucks, Japan, um, you know, app store payment, which is, you know, like I want to [00:31:00] change that to Starbucks, Japan, and then set up a rule to just like always change that. [00:31:05] So I don't have to like memorize these random ass merchant names. [00:31:08] Uh, apparently like after, after two hours of setting up copilot money yesterday, I realized [00:31:13] that there's like both no way to set up that kind of rule. [00:31:16] The only rule that it supports is categorization of, of spending fine, but then if you set [00:31:22] up a rule and you don't like it, there's no way to edit the rules cause there's no UI for [00:31:25] rule editing. [00:31:26] And so then, you know, where do you go, but read it and you're like, okay, well there's [00:31:30] a subreddit. [00:31:30] And then like, what's half the post in the subreddit? [00:31:32] It's about, Oh, of course it's a bunch of dads who are like, I can't see my rules and I have [00:31:36] to contact support. [00:31:37] And it's been nine months. [00:31:38] And I was like, Oh God. [00:31:39] So that's, uh, if anyone's got any great budgeting software that supports Apple card, you let me [00:31:46] know. [00:31:47] Uh, and also isn't a part-time job. [00:31:50] I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna spend all day on this. [00:31:52] I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna check in on this, uh, the four times a year that I, that [00:31:58] I wake up in a cold sweat wondering, Oh my God, how many subscriptions do I have? [00:32:02] Which is, uh, I, I really missed my calling by not being a dad, I guess. [00:32:07] But it did land me on looking at rocket money. [00:32:11] Uh, so, so, so there was an app called true bill that marketed heavily with like a lot of [00:32:19] other DTC apps where the pitch was, we will negotiate your bills for you. [00:32:26] And by bills, I think that one of the reasons why this, this, this business probably struggled [00:32:31] is that there's really only two that they could reasonably negotiate on your behalf. [00:32:37] You know, you, you imagine they've got a call center or they've got people who've, who [00:32:40] are trained, who have scripts that they follow, who, who will doggedly keep calling back until [00:32:44] they get what, you know, the discount, the, just the steps that you would have to go through [00:32:48] if you wanted to call Comcast or Verizon, they, they, they, they can basically could basically [00:32:57] only really negotiate your ISP and your cell phone carrier. [00:33:01] Cause those are the two sort of, you know, that are, that are transactional enough that [00:33:08] are regionalized or nationalized enough that they, that they could train on. [00:33:11] And then of course, like they, they're the ones that like get you in with a teaser rate and [00:33:15] then gradually turn up the heat over the course of a couple of years. [00:33:19] Well, Quicken Loans bought, they rebranded as rocket and then rocket fill in the blank [00:33:26] with other products. [00:33:26] And they bought true bill around the same time. [00:33:29] And I, my understanding from a distance is that true bill, uh, uh, that became rocket money [00:33:36] in order to be an entree into other rocket star services. [00:33:41] So like you, you now, when you install rocket money, it's still got the negotiation thing. [00:33:46] Cause that's what they market it on, but you have to slog through so much like, no, I'm actually [00:33:52] all set with credit and, and, and, and debt repayment services. [00:33:57] And I'm, I'm already all set with financial advisors and retirement goals. [00:34:00] I just get me to the, to the thing where I can pay you 35% of whatever you save me on [00:34:06] my ISP bill. [00:34:07] And so of course, you know, like I, I, I signed up for the first time, went through the app [00:34:12] onboarding. [00:34:13] I was not impressed with the bugginess of the app, but I was able to soldier on through [00:34:19] it. [00:34:19] And where I landed was I was, uh, following its little setup wizard for first. [00:34:27] Spectrum, which is my internet provider. [00:34:28] And I was, I'd initially paid a hundred dollars when I moved here in 2021, uh, a month for, [00:34:36] for one gig down, call it 30 megabits per second up. [00:34:40] And I can't get a, another ISP here. [00:34:43] They had an exclusive agreement. [00:34:44] They're building neighborhoods bullshit. [00:34:47] Uh, and I, I, so I can't get higher upstream and that really gets in my crawl. [00:34:53] Nevertheless, they have increased prices about $15 a year. [00:34:59] Each time I'm here to the point now where I think my monthly, you know, debit is like $150, [00:35:05] $145 and you fill it out and you give them your pin number. [00:35:11] You got this customer pin that like, you know, is secures your account. [00:35:14] I'm like, eh, all right, well, that's four digits, you know? [00:35:17] And besides I'm already on like this one dead simple plan. [00:35:20] It's just their normal plan. [00:35:22] And it's, you know, like I'm paying top dollar for it. [00:35:26] So what's the worst that they could do if they, if somebody else were to call and change [00:35:30] my plan up, you know, like it, it wouldn't cause that much lasting damage. [00:35:34] Cause it's not like I'm on some teaser rate. [00:35:36] It's not like I've got a great deal as it is. [00:35:38] So I let them do it. [00:35:39] And three days later, I had low expectations, right? [00:35:42] Cause you go on Reddit, speaking of Reddit, you go on and you, you search other people's [00:35:46] experiences and people will say, oh yeah, well like the, you know, I, some of them are [00:35:52] pretty hyperbolic. [00:35:53] It's like, you know, like they, they changed my plan to this and now I'm stuck with this, [00:35:57] you know, TV subscription for the next four years. [00:35:59] And then they charged me a thousand dollars in imagined savings that never materialized. [00:36:03] I'm like, shit. [00:36:04] All right. [00:36:04] Well, that's, that's not good. [00:36:06] But I, I gave them a shot. [00:36:08] They came back three days later and they said, congratulations. [00:36:12] We saved you $859. [00:36:14] I was like, what the, excuse me over the next 12 months. [00:36:18] And it turned out that they got me from $142, $145 down to 70 flat. [00:36:25] You multiply that by 12 and then indeed comes out to eight something. [00:36:28] And I was like, damn. [00:36:29] All right. [00:36:30] And so I've been, I've been looking for the other shoe to drop like ever since, like something [00:36:36] is fishy here. [00:36:37] Like I, they didn't sign me up for other services. [00:36:39] I did receive, I'm looking over at it now. [00:36:43] I did receive a relatively large box that has a, you know, one of those wifi modem router [00:36:50] combo units in it. [00:36:51] That was partly like apparently part of the deal. [00:36:54] I don't know if they canceled my service and then in one fell swoop also signed me up for [00:36:58] service. [00:36:58] But now I've got this gigantic fucking wifi thing that wouldn't even fit in my patch box [00:37:02] if I wanted it, which I don't. [00:37:04] So I'm, I'm, I'm currently in this ether of like, well, if my modem that I rent is still [00:37:11] going to work, I rent for $0. [00:37:14] It's one nice thing about spectrum. [00:37:15] If my modem that I rent is still going to work, uh, maybe I can just keep this wifi thing in [00:37:20] the box and not call anyone. [00:37:22] And maybe everything will keep working and I'll pay the $70 a month, or maybe I should send [00:37:27] the other one back, but then that might trigger some other thing. [00:37:30] Right. [00:37:30] I, so look like, do I recommend the service? [00:37:36] I don't really, I don't, we'll see. [00:37:38] Right. [00:37:39] Like call me in a year. [00:37:40] I should set a reminder. [00:37:41] Oh, I'm sure if something bad happens, I'll, I'll be right on the airwaves screaming about [00:37:47] it. [00:37:47] Like I, like I do, but even after this experience, saving me a lot of money, like what I trust [00:37:53] them with my T-Mobile account, right. [00:37:54] Where I have been grandfathered in on what was called the one choice plus plan in 2014 [00:38:01] or whatever. [00:38:02] And it's genuine, honest to God, unlimited data without any real throttling. [00:38:08] As far as I can tell, until you get to some absurdly high number where you can watch your [00:38:12] videos in HD on your, you know, like, like it's, it's, it's a good one. [00:38:16] It's better than their magenta crap. [00:38:18] Um, and a lower price than their magenta max thing. [00:38:21] Well, we got three lines. [00:38:22] You got, you know, the watches and I would love to pay less for that, but I just don't [00:38:27] try like you, you, you fill out the rocket money form, uh, with the, uh, the, the, it wants [00:38:34] your T-Mobile, like login information. [00:38:36] And that's, that was a bridge too far for me. [00:38:40] I got there and I was like, you know, I could just imagine this going poorly. [00:38:44] You know, these plans are so complicated and feels like even when I call T-Mobile and I [00:38:48] ask, Hey, how's the weather? [00:38:49] Like they click a button and it fucks up my shit for two weeks. [00:38:52] So I'm, I'm, I'm good. [00:38:55] I can probably afford a cell phone bill. [00:38:57] Uh, I just, I just would prefer not to have to pay it. [00:39:01] Only one other life item in the last week, I was given a special opportunity. [00:39:11] Um, I've talked about massages a couple of times on this program and the, uh, I mentioned, [00:39:15] uh, the one I went, uh, the one I had most recently in a previous episode, I, I, I was, I was wrapping [00:39:29] up my massage with a human like you do. [00:39:31] And the human said, have you, have you tried our robot massage? [00:39:36] And, uh, I didn't know how to take that. [00:39:38] And I said, I, I've heard of it. [00:39:41] I know Becky tried it. [00:39:43] If you check Becky's, um, Becky Graham, you'll see, uh, there's a video of her, uh, getting [00:39:48] felt up by a robot. [00:39:50] Uh, I forget the name of the company, but it's, it's, uh, it's like a robot that tries to simulate [00:39:59] the experience of a human massaging you. [00:40:02] So it's, uh, you're on a bed, you're face down. [00:40:06] It's, uh, got arms that kind of go back and forth, uh, on a track and they, they push and [00:40:13] whatnot. [00:40:13] And it kind of reminds me of the white birthing robot from star Wars episode three at the end [00:40:21] when, when Luke and Leah are being born, it does everything short of make the cooing [00:40:26] sounds to get the babies to calm down. [00:40:28] You know, like I, you do have a tablet and you can, you can pick out these pre-baked Spotify [00:40:34] playlists while it's pushing on you. [00:40:36] Anyway, all that to say, I signed up, um, mostly cause it was free. [00:40:41] So I had a 30 minute trial and, uh, the fact is trying to imitate humans was really interesting [00:40:49] to me because I had just spent a month in Japan, uh, getting, uh, what'd you call it? [00:40:54] Uh, massage chairs, our hotel chain that we stay at has always has massage chairs and even [00:41:01] bad massage chairs in Japan are pretty intense. [00:41:03] Uh, uh, but, but good ones are just like, you know, you go in there and it's just like, [00:41:09] I'm sure there's been, you've probably seen a horror movie image, right? [00:41:13] Where it's like, you sit in a chair and then like 25 hands grab all the parts of your body [00:41:18] simultaneously and that is meant to be horrific. [00:41:20] But if those hands, if there was some nice music playing and it was illuminated and those [00:41:25] hands were massaging you simultaneously all over your body, maybe it would be pretty, pretty [00:41:29] great. [00:41:29] And so that's what a Japanese massage chair is like. [00:41:33] Cause they, they don't have this arbitrary conceit that a massage must happen in a format [00:41:39] that resembles how it would happen if a single human on a bed surface was rubbing your tiddly [00:41:45] bits, which is what this robot is. [00:41:49] Right. [00:41:49] And so it's trying to think of another analog, right? [00:41:55] Like where we, we kind of retain the artifice of the way that it used to be before we automated [00:42:00] it. [00:42:00] And, and in some, sometimes we do that to keep people being comfortable like that rich [00:42:05] Corinthian leather. [00:42:06] It's like, we wanted to look like a traditional calendar. [00:42:08] So people know what they're looking at instead of just a bunch of boxes. [00:42:11] It's like, Oh yeah, this looks like a placemat style calendar that I would have had on my desk. [00:42:15] And then eventually that ages out. [00:42:16] And the younger people are like, I've never seen a calendar on a desk, even though my dad [00:42:20] grew up with one, you know? [00:42:24] So maybe that's it, right? [00:42:25] Like, like sometimes that's why we would have a robo massage that like, you know, pressures [00:42:31] and needs you, you know, kind of with just the two arms up and down in particular points, [00:42:35] sometimes at the same time, sometimes just one arm, you know, it's, it's, it's less efficient [00:42:41] is my immediate frustration. [00:42:43] Cause it's like, you could have 45 fucking arms going to town all over my body and I'd [00:42:49] get way more work done in 30 minutes. [00:42:52] Right. [00:42:52] Cause I'm just trying to min max my existence, but instead by, by, by, by imitating a human [00:42:59] massage, like nothing is really gained because I can't see it. [00:43:03] I'm facedown. [00:43:04] I'm looking at a silly tablet and watching imagery, imagery of forests and, and, and ocean waves [00:43:10] and whatnot, and I'm kind of getting a, you can look at a weird overhead view of what [00:43:14] your body is looking at, looking like right then, you know, like it scans your body and [00:43:19] then has like a little illustration of like, here's where I'm pushing you. [00:43:21] Here I go. [00:43:22] It's, it seems more to me like they designed this, you look at this unit and it's just like, [00:43:31] this has got to cost at least 15 grand. [00:43:34] This is an expensive, complicated piece of equipment. [00:43:38] It feels like a lack of imagination, uh, to, to somebody had the idea, let's take human [00:43:47] masseuses out of the equation and just make a robo masseuse thing that we could put in spas [00:43:53] when, uh, you'd actually have a better experience. [00:43:56] It would be cheaper. [00:43:57] And there's like more prior art at Panasonic or these other companies in Japan. [00:44:01] If you just made a, you know, massage chair, but that would be boring, I guess. [00:44:08] Uh, and massage chairs, like you, you hear the word massage chair right now as you're listening. [00:44:13] And if you haven't had like a real one, you know, at a Japanese Denki-yasan on the third [00:44:17] floor, where all the salary men on their way home tell their wives, oh, I got a, I got a big meeting [00:44:24] with the boss and then they go to, they go to Yamada Denki or they go to Yodabashi camera. [00:44:28] And then they just, you know, they take their briefcase and they set it down next to one of the [00:44:33] trial units of the massage chair. [00:44:34] And then they, they, they, they, they go into this little like sensory deprivation pod and [00:44:39] they get all their bits smushed simultaneously and they got a remote control and they can [00:44:45] say, just do it hard. [00:44:46] And then they can forget their worries for, for 15 minutes until, uh, one of the staff has [00:44:52] to remind them that, uh, they don't live there and that they have to go home now. [00:44:56] If you haven't had that experience, uh, you probably, when you hear a massage chair, think [00:45:02] of like those $2, you know, leather chairs that are, you know, just like our just normal [00:45:08] fucking chairs that may be vibrate, like the vibrating bed equivalent that you see at an [00:45:12] airport. [00:45:12] Um, this is not what I'm talking about. [00:45:15] So get your head out of there and, and go Google, you know, for high end Japanese massage [00:45:22] chair, and you might get some idea. [00:45:24] Uh, also I, uh, in the course of a 30 minute massage, I encountered so many fucking Android [00:45:32] tablet bugs. [00:45:33] I, I didn't, I gave them a lot of feedback cause they, this is sort of a trial that they're [00:45:37] doing. [00:45:37] They wanted to want to know how, what I thought. [00:45:40] And I gave them a lot of this perspective and feedback about like, well, you know, this [00:45:44] skeuomorphic design, yada, yada. [00:45:45] But I didn't even touch any of the software stuff. [00:45:49] Cause like there's an absolutely nothing that they're going to be able to do with that much [00:45:52] less like they won't even be able to communicate this back to the company in a way that's helpful, [00:45:55] but it was, you know, it would freeze or the display would become non-responsive. [00:46:01] One time I had the music just turn itself all the way up. [00:46:05] The, um, the, so many things about this design are meant to make you feel comfortable are [00:46:13] meant to make you feel safe. [00:46:14] Like if, if you, it moves at all, or if it detects anything is off at all, it basically [00:46:20] like will, will disengage entirely and reposition itself. [00:46:23] And then you have to actively resume the massage. [00:46:26] And then it's got to put the little flappy doos back over you. [00:46:30] Like it's really worried about people flipping out about this robot pressing up against them. [00:46:36] And it extends to, to like, you know, you pick your firmness, like light, medium firm. [00:46:41] And I clicked firm. [00:46:42] And then there, you could see there was like a little like pressure bar on the right. [00:46:47] And that even though I'd clicked the firm preset, I wasn't at a hundred percent pressure. [00:46:52] And I was like, well, that, that won't do. [00:46:54] And so I jacked it up to a hundred percent right out of the gate. [00:46:56] And the whole time, 30 minutes, like you could, uh, [00:46:59] Hmm. [00:47:01] It, I knew that a massage was happening. [00:47:05] Like I knew when contact was being made, but like, it was not a massage. [00:47:08] It was, it was somebody kind of like, like, like back rub would be generous. [00:47:14] It was like somebody like took an open palm hand and just pressed it. [00:47:18] Just, just, just an obnoxiously against different parts of my body and no firmness beyond that. [00:47:26] So you got a robo massage. [00:47:29] It's limited in what it can do. [00:47:33] Cause it's trying to imitate a human. [00:47:34] It's very worried about liability, which is why I imagine the max firmness is light pressure. [00:47:39] Uh, and it's fussy and it's buggy. [00:47:42] And of course it can only do very limited regions of the body. [00:47:45] Like if I was a massage therapist, I'd be like, Hey, sweet. [00:47:49] You know, I'm going to keep having a job longer than all these programmer juckle fucks. [00:47:52] You're going to get replaced by a Claude and open AI. [00:47:56] So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm confident that a massage therapist is going to be a, a lucrative, you [00:48:03] know, going concern as a career for a little while programming. [00:48:08] I'm not so sure of, but most of us listening have already made our choice, whether we're [00:48:14] going to be massage therapists or programmers. [00:48:16] So we're just going to have to see how this, how this plays out. [00:48:19] All right. [00:48:20] Well, that's all, that's everything going on in my life. [00:48:23] So let's, uh, well, let's follow up on stuff that had been going on in my life and is now [00:48:30] continuing or is once again, I started to realize that there's a, there's a certain theme to this [00:48:37] show. [00:48:37] Hmm. [00:48:38] All right. [00:48:46] There's basically two major areas of follow-up today. [00:48:51] Um, but somehow the two of them take up 11 bullet points in my notes. [00:48:59] So I'll try to be expeditious. [00:49:02] The first is I bought a, uh, M4 pro MacBook pro, I guess an Apple nomenclature, a MacBook pro [00:49:13] left parentheses, 2024, right parentheses with M4 pro. [00:49:19] I think is probably maybe the 2024 is at the end. [00:49:22] Maybe they don't put the date now that they have the chip name. [00:49:25] In any case, I needed a computer that was built for Apple intelligence, which is how they also, [00:49:32] they crammed that in the fucking name. [00:49:34] Um, and like the, every subheader says Apple intelligence on it, which, you know, I mean, [00:49:40] if you're, if you're a marketing dude, it's the thing that, you know, like you gotta, every [00:49:48] year is a struggle to goose people into, to buying computers. [00:49:51] And, uh, it's been a while since they've had anything new to say that your computer can do. [00:49:56] So it makes sense, but come on. [00:49:59] It can't even make Genmoji yet. [00:50:02] Uh, just if you've, if you've downloaded it, used 18.2 iOS or iPadOS, uh, go turn on the, [00:50:13] um, you know, the AI feature, if it's available in your region and language, and then you open [00:50:19] the image playground app and you click through there and let it download all of the image [00:50:24] playground shit, uh, in particular, the image playground itself, where you can take a person [00:50:30] and a place and kind of like, you know, create sort of a, uh, a witch's brew of bad imagery [00:50:35] and then, and then have a keep swiping to the right as, as they just all look bad that I have [00:50:43] no, no need for, but Genmoji, or at least the promise of Genmoji, I like quite a lot. [00:50:49] I enjoy, you know, um, typing in little like name, like, so we were at the parks, uh, with [00:50:57] our friends last week and it was a Jollywood Knights event, which is also Gatsby themed. [00:51:06] There's a reason why ordering 1920s era costumes on Amazon in Orlando was like not an overnight. [00:51:13] It was like a two, three day leg because this, this Jollywood Knights 1920s era themed, uh, [00:51:21] ticketed event at Hollywood studios has been going on. And it was one of those nights. And so some [00:51:26] flapper lady in line, she had a purse that had a phone handle on it. And her husband, who now that [00:51:34] I think back on this was dressed very similarly to how I dressed myself last night. So something tells [00:51:39] me he was sort of a long for the ride in this, she picked up the phone handle off of her purse and [00:51:46] handed it to Becky. And then he, you could sort of see him on the phone being a bad ventriloquist [00:51:53] and talking to her on the phone. So like his cell phone was somehow communicating to the purse phone. [00:51:59] It was very, it reminded me of get smart, you know, like that spy TV show from the sixties that was on [00:52:05] Nick at night in the eighties or nineties when I would have watched it. Uh, of course it didn't [00:52:10] work. And then we were just in line and it was like, sorry, we're in line. It didn't work. And then, [00:52:14] and then of course the way that lines work, right. As you turn left, turn right. And now it's up, [00:52:18] here's the same people again. And so they're like, all right, try again. So she picks up the purse [00:52:23] phone and here's the guy talk. And she's like, yes, this is indeed a telephone. That is a purse. [00:52:28] My reaction, my contribution to this experience was to try to generate a Genmoji for the group [00:52:35] that I was with. That was like purse phone. And, uh, wouldn't you know it, uh, it struggled to like, [00:52:43] I was like purse with a phone handle on top. And it was, it gave me like one with like a, [00:52:49] like a locker combination lock instead of a rotary dial in the middle. It was all, it was not, [00:52:54] not good. And, and I think like a lot of these Genmoji, in addition to being bad and not good, [00:53:01] they are when they, there's, they have to be so detailed because usually it's people mashing up [00:53:07] different concepts. They have to be so detailed that when in line with texts, you have to squint [00:53:12] and you can barely see what they are. And then if they're as a tap back, you have no hope of knowing [00:53:16] what they are. Like if it's of a person, for example, like it's, you're going to get like 80% shirt [00:53:21] and then like 10% head. So you're not going to be able to tell who's what. Uh, so those need work [00:53:27] and no one wants my Genmoji. My, my brother has formally requested. I stopped sending them and, [00:53:32] uh, I will, I will take that request under advisement. Anyway, uh, bought a MacBook pro. Um, [00:53:42] Oh, I've got a, I've got a parenthetical as a C notes. All right, well, here's eight more bullet [00:53:50] points. I'm going to rattle through these. So Becky, actually, it was her idea. She wanted to [00:53:54] get me this. We were in Japan. She's like, Hey, you know, I heard you talking about the nanotexture [00:53:57] display. And like, of course, you know, the, the, the brighter screen and us being in Orlando, [00:54:01] you never use a computer outside or out of the house. So she wanted to buy it. And she said, [00:54:06] it was just really complicated. I didn't want to fuck up. I didn't want to get you the wrong set of [00:54:09] options. I asked Aaron and Aaron didn't know either. He said he hadn't really been on top of it. [00:54:16] Uh, and I was like, honey, that's so I didn't say like, bless your heart. I, it was a such a sweet [00:54:23] gesture. And it is true that I've been curious about it. Um, but I didn't feel like, uh, I had [00:54:30] to get one right this minute. Uh, and, and honestly, the, the, the 14 inch MacBook pro is still too heavy. [00:54:36] I, I, I, I lifted tonal my, my weightlifting robot, uh, reported in my tonal wrapped because [00:54:46] everything has to do a goddamn wrapped dingus to try to share in social media as if like, you know, [00:54:52] one assumes that all these wrapped posts just go to the goddamn bottom of every algorithm because [00:54:57] they're all the same. But in any case, it showed me a little wrapped video and it said, I wait, [00:55:02] I, I lifted one and a half million pounds last year or over the course of 2024. And I was like, [00:55:07] that's a lot of weight that I lifted. I, yesterday I did the equivalent of like, you know, 250, [00:55:12] 275 pound deadlift barbell deadlift. And that was hard, but not too hard. It's the max weight that, [00:55:20] that tonal can do. Um, I, I, I, I like to think I'm pretty strong now. Uh, that four pound fucking [00:55:31] MacBook pro is backbreakingly heavy, no matter where I am, I'll pick it up and like, that is denser than [00:55:40] it looks. It's a, it's like when you pick up a baby, that's like a little bit too dense, you know, [00:55:46] and you're just like, Oh wow. I was expecting this to be more fun. This is just going to give [00:55:51] me pelvic floor problems. If I do this for more than exactly 30 seconds and then hand it back to [00:55:57] its mother who surely has pelvic floor issues. Um, I don't want to be carrying around this MacBook pro. [00:56:05] I don't want to carry it with my arms. I don't want to carry it in a bag. I don't want to carry it [00:56:09] into the car. I don't want to carry it, you know, uh, in a Starbucks. I want to hire a Porter to [00:56:16] bring it around to me, you know, from place to place. Maybe, maybe they could also saddle up and [00:56:23] have a, uh, vision pro. So that's what I really want. Uh, at least until, and unless Apple releases [00:56:30] the 12 inch MacBook pro, uh, that we were promised in our early years. [00:56:34] Anyway, when Becky said that it was hard to configure and figure out what she'd want to order [00:56:43] or what I would want her to order. And as a result would have made a pretty lousy gift because [00:56:49] the likelihood of her getting it right. Where if you look at the number of configurations for these [00:56:53] seeing this thing, like astronomically small, I actually spent, I sat down, I look, I, I said, [00:57:01] I didn't need the thing. And then I come home and then within a day and a half, uh, my MacBook air is [00:57:07] crying because it's out of storage to the point where like I composed an email and I hit send on the email [00:57:12] and then Apple mail reported, yo, we just barfed on all this and just deleted all your shit. Cause we [00:57:17] ran out of disk space, no warning. And in modern day Mac OS, you don't get to know how much disk space [00:57:23] you have because all of it is like optimized storage. So like whether it's your iCloud drive [00:57:29] or it's your Apple photos, once the system is under any sort of, um, storage stress, it'll, [00:57:35] it's supposed to detect that and start deleting shit. Your phone does this too. So sometimes like [00:57:41] you're like, like I was importing a bunch of raw images on the phone and it said, Oh, you're out of [00:57:45] storage. And then I knew, because I know how it works under the hood, even though it exposes zero [00:57:49] controls or visibility as to what is going the fuck on. I knew that when it ran out of storage, [00:57:54] the right solution was sit and wait for 30 seconds while it deletes shit in the background and then [00:57:59] just hit import again. Right. Well, I, that didn't work in this case. Like I actually went and deleted [00:58:05] like a hundred gigabytes of garbage. It's a small SSD. It's a 512 gigabyte MacBook air. I deleted all this [00:58:11] stuff, but, um, from my iCloud drive on another computer, because this one was finder was completely [00:58:17] unresponsive. Uh, and it never got better because it had suspended all iCloud drive syncing as a, [00:58:24] probably like some sort of like memory safeguard or storage safeguard to like make sure I didn't, [00:58:27] it didn't fuck up anything in the cloud. And so like even going, I'm not going to, [00:58:33] most of that storage was in my iCloud drive, which is how it got full while I was overseas. [00:58:38] And when I came back, I, I didn't have like, I could, I could have gone through and like run [00:58:47] RM dash RF from the terminal and deleted stuff from the iCloud drive to like as a, as an emergency break, [00:58:52] like get, get this SSD empty enough that the operating system can run and then figure it out. [00:59:00] But then of course it would have synced all of those deletions up to the cloud and deleted the [00:59:03] same things off of my other computers. So this is a tractable problem. And I, I, I ultimately did solve [00:59:10] it, but I, I realize now why Apple markets so much of its pro devices to photos and video people, [00:59:20] because photos and videos take up a shit ton of space. Uh, they have different performance [00:59:26] characteristics than programming and, and the, their needs in many ways are higher than what you need. [00:59:33] If you're just writing Ruby code, right? Uh, it just so happens that Swift, the programming language [00:59:38] that they wrote is also like, we'll, we'll take advantage of all of these cores during compilation [00:59:42] in a way that like a lot of local development in other languages won't. [00:59:45] But in my last year of doing a lot more video work, doing a lot more audio work, I can definitely [00:59:52] understand now like, Oh yeah, like the, the MacBook air actually is inappropriate for a lot of the [00:59:57] workflows of the things that I do. So that experience, I came to Becky and I was like, look, I know I said [01:00:05] I didn't need this, but I think I might need this. Um, where need is in very, you know, very gentle [01:00:12] text. It's, it's a thin font variant to say, I need this. What I mean to say is like, I, it would save [01:00:19] me a lot of time and stress and headache and, uh, uh, rework to have a better computer, a more [01:00:26] capacious computer. And of course you can't upgrade the storage and your existing max. So here we are. [01:00:32] Um, but anyway, I was in the configurator for the new MacBook pro. And the first decision you got to [01:00:36] make is do I want a regular M4 chip, which I did not, or one of the pro ones, which is a, you know, [01:00:43] 12 or 14 core. I want to say a chip, uh, which is a huge upgrade over the M3 pro the M3 pro had a way [01:00:53] more efficiency cores and the M4 pro has more performance score. So it's like a, it's doing [01:00:57] much better in synthetic benchmarking that that's impressive. It's a big year over year change or the [01:01:02] M4 max, which is, you know, uh, an incremental improvement over the M3 max, but to the extent [01:01:10] that it's better than the pro it's like, you know, got another meat and quote unquote media [01:01:14] e

I left the country for a few weeks to get that taste out of my mouth but now I'm back and as salty as ever. Brace yourself. I made a pretty strong appeal that you should e-mail the show at podcast@searls.co, so I won't repeat myself here. DO IT. DO IT NOW. Hopefully I'll be back at least once more before we call it for 2024. Stay tuned.

TIL that 4 AM is way too goddamn early to record a podcast. Apologies if I'm more chipper than usual, that's probably the coffee talking. Had some great e-mails this show. You should keep the streak alive and mouth off with your fingers at podcast@searls.co. Savor this version, folks. Gonna be at least a few weeks until you'll have another one. International Driver's Permit Don't be that guy. Don't drive a go-kart in downtown Tokyo Watch my final talk, The Empowered Programmer (Justin's Version) I have to pay for a search engine now, wtf macOS Sequoia iPhone Mirroring is cool Aaron's puns, ranked The Nintendo Music app is rad Fresca is extremely-flavored seltzer water Don't disable "Prioritize Faster Shooting" Google has a thumb on the scale Apple is buying Pixelmator Mass Effect is coming to Amazon Prime Video Pour one out for the You've Got Mail guy Notepad.exe is AI now LLMs may be reaching a point of diminishing returns Newest member of the badass scientist of the month club How to undervolt your GPU Like a Dragon: Yakuza Galileo G8 controller

It is Wednesday, my dudes! This is normally a weekend listen, but there are new Macs to talk about. I wanted to give you the absolute freshest, least accurate information I can about all these neat new computers that I WILL NOT BE BUYING BECAUSE TIM COOK IS A COWARD. Write something you want to say in all caps over at podcast@searls.co and maybe I'll scream it on the show! Inside-voice links follow: The new Kindle Paperwhite Black plastic is worse, now. Egg yolks are back to being good Fancy Shun knives at a reasonable price Don't waste your money on this combination sleeping mask / Bluetooth speaker iOS 18 Hearing Test Ricky Mondello's Apple Passwords migration strategy My new fuckthis.app platform Eric Doggett is helping me learn how to take pictures Aaron's puns, ranked New M4 Macs BUT NO 12" MACBOOKS TO SPEAK OF Can't wait to see The Rock star in the Apple Oregon Trail movie GitHub's new Copilot and Spark announcements Redditors Are Trying to Poison Google's AI to Keep Tourists Out of the Good Restaurants One man's high-end electric vehicle is another man's obsolete garbage Star Trucker game Call of Duty: Blops 6

Welcome to this podcast which, by now, you have probably decided you either listen to or don't listen to! And if you don't listen to it, one wonders why you are reading this. Remember to write in at podcast@searls.co with suggestions for news stories and whatever you'd like me to talk about. Please keep it PG-rated or NC-17 rated. I want nothing in between. Family-friendly and/or sexually explicit links follow: I returned this razor How I fixed Photo Shuffle I made an unfortunate comment about birds and hands in my newsletter Koala Nap is not currently working for me, but I appreciate their responsiveness in trying to fix it Aaron's puns, ranked

Get ready for a three-hour-plus Breaking Change spectacular! Why is it special? I'm not going to tell you. You'll just have to listen. Remember, money doesn't change hands when you consume this Content™, but that doesn't make it free! In exchange for downloading this MP3, the license requires you to write in to podcast@searls.co at least once every three episodes. Some of y'all are past due, and I know where to find you. Want URLs? I got URLs: This useless skinny tree fell over Becky's first app is live at betterwithbecky.com I bought a camera I gave my final conference talk. Video is pending, but I'll link to it here when it's up Aaron's puns, ranked Apple: 1, Europe: 0 Google should figure out security architecture A nice longread about where AI is and where it (may) be going over the next decade I'm bearish on IBM's prospects 1Password 8 doesn't feel like an upgrade The iPhone 16 Pro is all about camera styles and tone map customization Can't wait for that 12" MacBook Pro The new Reduce Interruptions focus mode Folks are mad about Star Wars Outlaws Star Trucker, a game I mistakenly called "Space Trucker" Furiosa is good The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives isn't Penguin is remarkable 2 episodes in

There have now been 20 major versions since the initial release of Breaking Change, but this is one of the less bad ones. It was substantially improved by friend of the show, Eric Doggett, who helped out with mixing! If you have strong feelings about anything you hear, you know where to stuff those feelings (other than "deep, deep down"): podcast@searls.co. Spicier-than-usual show notes follow: Kin Euphorics are usually non-alcoholic overpriced cocktails Squarespace kinda sucks now and a lot of people are worried the new PE overlords are gonna kill it Build with Becky soft-launched, but it's stealth so you're on your own to figure out the sign-up URL. My newsletter that's reminded some people of my impossibly, unfairly high standards Nifty Cyberpunk VR mod Aaron's puns, ranked Apple Event stuff Rest in Playercount, Concord Remember to make sure your surgeon can tell a spleen and a liver apart before they put you under All aboard Florida's manslaughter express

It is me, I am back! And after working too hard and becoming too dull I'm finally done* with that big app I've been working on. I'm running behind on e-mails and need your best and worst takes for the next episode: podcast@searls.co. Find out what that asterisk refers to below: Filing an FCC complaint Supermaven The git logo iMessage via satellite Aaron's puns, ranked Meta cancels their 2027 Vision Pro competitor A bunch of random, disturbing Black Myth: Wukong links Ford might start making cars again (News+) The Acolyte and review-bombing SmartLess: On the Road Deathloop Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand Star Wars Outlaws Adam Mcrea's Alpine/Phlex screencast *I am, in fact, not at all done.

Boy, have I got a great show for you today! I guess. You be the judge. If you listen to the podcast, please rate it on a scale from Good Charlotte to My Chemical Romance at podcast@searls.co. The following links are included with your subscription: Macrofactor app Butterfly keyboard checks going out My tutorial on real-time model broadcasts in Rails Aaron's pun Physical game sales are finally in decline Intel's processors are borked Flighty's latest update is an example of "Good" "AI" The M4 Mac Mini Mini Google banning accounts for CSAM when there may not be CSAM Loki is fine Deadpool & Wolverine is fiiiine

I hope you like stories about moaning during a couples massage, bugs with Apple's Home Key system, and when it's OK to duplicate code in software. Because that's most of what I got this time. Not enough of you are writing in, and if you don't start soon I am going to CANCEL this PODCAST production PERMANENTLY: podcast@searls.co. (Write in or else.) Some proof of work: Aaron's pun SearchGPT The Crowdstrike thing Windows Kernel access to third parties Pete Buttigieg reads angry Delta tweets Legitimate LLC The Boys (I failed to explain what this show is or the basic premise, so here's a Wikipedia link. Whoops!) Gary Larsen's The Far Side comic

Big day: now with transition music!

I bought a new gadget! And it runs Android! And I don't hate it! Tell me about things you hate and don't hate and I might just read your feelings on air, for others to have opinions about! The e-mail, as always, is podcast@searls.co. Sources below: Ubiquiti UniFi Loopback with SSL2+ This annoying Safari bug My first video clip from Breaking Change A podcast I will appear on shortly: Vision Pros Aaron's punboard The EU won't get these new Apple features Gruber's take on this matches my own The BOOX Palma Digital Foundry tells us not to play games on our Windows + Copilot PCs Dark Matter Godzilla Minus One samus.link

WWDC came and went and now we're all just left to ponder what life will be like under the thumb of our new AI overlords (and underlords). But at least for now, humans are still allowed to produce podcasts on their own, which means we can safely opine about the fresh hell we're all hard at work creating. I finally got a chance to get to some mailbag questions in this episode! If you want to be a part of the ✨magic

WWDC is right around the corner, and I wanted to do a predictions podcast before Monday's keynote, but then Mark Gurman went and just read back literally everything that's going to happen. So I guess let's talk about that or something. As always, I love love love to receive your e-mail even though it's hard to get through very many of them on the program. Please know that your comments and questions really bring me a lot of joy and that you should e-mail whatever pops into your head to podcast@searls.co. Quick. Now. Don't think, hit send. Okay, and now for some

[Update: if you're reading this, then you're listening to an updated version of this episode with a more aggressive denoise filter, to try to combat the karaoke jingles playing incessantly in the background

Today we have a veritable smorgasboard of potpurri as we indulge in the figurative potluck dinner that is, "shit Justin wants to talk about." This may be the last major version for a while, so savor this. Thank you to listeners who took version 10's mandatory e-mail feedback demand seriously, as the mailbag once again is full of good questions. But you must do your part and e-mail podcast@searls.co to keep it that way. Each e-mail you send entitles you to a license to listen to three more episodes, so—in a sense—you can't afford not to write in. Have some links: The Synapse 25 bag I'm downgrading into Sandwich video makes cool commercials Searls After Dark was a 10 part YouTube series I did Star Trek Into Darkness "Open face" Vision setups TikTok ban passes Base RAM hasn't budged since Tim Cook took over Peter Cooper be trollin' Llama sucks at coding My new Spots media type and mapping feature The man who killed Google ⛷️

It's been over two weeks! Let's catch up. We can talk about anything you want, so long as it's App Store policies regarding "retro" game emulators or where to find the best Japanese love hotels. Also, I hate to spoil an announcement, but due to a lack of mailbag engagement, e-mailing podcast@searls.co after you listen to each episode of the program is now mandatory for all listeners. Figure it out. Citations follow: 60 Percent Of Playtime In 2023 Went To 6-Year-Old Or Older Games Devs don't want to make live service games The Courage to be Disliked The Top 10 Breaking Change puns Disney changes its accessibility program Spatial personas are quite cool John Gruber is wrong about vibration APIs Emulators! In the App Store! The Humane AI Pin is a bad product Sonos Move 2 is an expensive speaker Constellation is a weird show Fallout hits all the right mid-century notes This Love Hotel room has a water slide A video about how sports betting seems bad DHH announcing his cloud exit

If you're itching for a discussion that explains why I'm afraid to move into my new bathroom, what I really think about Andrew Huberman, and why it might make more sense to learn French than Java… prepare to be scratched, I guess? I am highly confident that at least one person will get angry and unfollow this show as a result of words that came out of my mouth. If you've got thoughts and/or feelings, let me have'm at podcast@searls.co! Some links to things: legitimate.us Added likes for my podcast Browsers ignore autocomplete=off My new dry_eraser gem My newsletter about chronic back issues Tron got snubbed because they "cheated" by using computers (a cool video about its production) The Huberman "hit-piece" (News+) Huberman as pseudo-science Universities have a Computer-Science Problem (News+) The End of Foreign-Language Education (News+) Stardew Valley 1.6 True Detective Season 4

This podcast is dedicated to the brave men and women at the Department of Justice for taking bold and decisive action against a clear and present danger to the continued existence of the United States of America: Apple's use of green bubbles and how they make some Android users feel bad. Since the DOJ's lawsuit is all about vibes, send me your vibes—good or bad—and I'll be there for you. Who knows, if you choose to direct your energy to podcast@searls.co, maybe I'll get lucky and finally feel something in this cold, dead heart of mine. Links and such follow: Rails World 2024 Toy Story Mania Bertrand Russel dishin' out takes A look at Unreal Engine 5's new features like Nanite and Lumen Ubisoft's creepy AI chatbot NPCs The DOJ's 88-page complaint against Apple Jason Snell's first take on it Another Life, finally answering the question, "what if Battlestar Galactica was a CW show but only the Katee Sackhoff parts"? The Halo-flavored Halo show and the mediocre Halo Infinite game Dave the Diver Odell Lake for the Apple II Cook Serve Delicious

This was a long episode, so here are some short notes. As always, your e-mails delight and inspire me. Send one to podcast@searls.co with anything you want in it. I don't care if it's just emoji and gifs. Citations follow: iOS progressive web apps are back to how they were in the EU The Television app unveil "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." - Bill Gates Webpacker is retired KameSame is my Japanese language app DHH and Windows Smart EX Starship Troopers led us to Helldivers 2 The story behind Game Dev Story That Weird Al biopic The upcoming Fallout series

The audio is better this week! I'm learning. Also, I finally had something to talk about that has nothing to do with Apple! The target of the ion cannon that is my mouth this time? drumroll… it's Stripe! Sorry, Stripe. If you like rants about software quality and the systemic reasons everything is terrible, hoo boy! This one brings the heat.

Welcome to Breaking Change, the 14th most popular technology podcast in Argentina! (And 30th in Norway!) It's been a couple weeks since my last breaking change and, guess what, I done broke things again. If you would prefer I not make so many breaking changes (or if you wish me to break even more of them!), e-mail me at podcast@searls.co and let me know and/or share your darkest secrets under a pseudonym using a throwaway account. Nobody needs to know. Links and so forth: Open AI's Sora The first good Apple Vision Pro strap Apple vindictively yanked PWAs from Europe How to behead an M2 MacBook Air runruby.dev My newsletter, which if you sign up for now you'll see my announcement of Beckygram Link by Stripe seems neat Welcome to Wrexham is a good show Sidecar is a very grown-up drink for grown-ups Dark AF movies: Drive my Car (starring the guy from きのう何食べた) Cloud Atlas Synecdoche, New York Vanilla Sky Requiem for a Dream

This podcast is a month old and four episodes in and the singular event looming over all of it has finally arrived! The era of facial computing has begun! Join me for a Vision Pro extravaganza in which I detail all of my first impressions using the device, including dozens of things that seemingly every media and YouTube reviewer missed or excluded. Listen to this podcast and you'll hear tell of bugs you wouldn't believe even if you did see them! The headline takeaway is: Apple Vision is clearly the future, because it's clearly not yet the present. (And why I'm probably keeping it anyway.) As always, e-mail me your reviews, reactions, and errata at podcast@searls.co and I'll absorb them into the bubbling stew of opinions I'm forming about this futuristic-and-not-necessarily-in-a-good-way computing platform. Scant show notes follow: Life updates: What life? There is only Vision Pro! Follow-up: No time. Skipped it! I managed to completely botch the reading of yet another of Aaron's puns News: Apple Vision Pro is here and I talk about it. At length! Recommendations: Flowriter is worth checking out for generating immersive 3D spaces with text prompts alone Mailbag: Things 3 for visionOS You know the deal: podcast@searls.co See you, spatial cowboy.

Welp, Apple forced my hand and generated even more news in the run up to the launch of Apple Vision Pro and it demands a response! (Right?) As is so obvious and well-established that I forgot to mention it, you can e-mail me the show at podcast@searls.co and maybe I'll find a way to work it in. Comments, questions, and complaints are all welcome! Without further ado, let's a-do it: What's new: It's finally shorts season!

Heads up gang, there's a new breaking change with this release: my wallet is like $8000 lighter thanks to the Vision Pro preorders. As always as of a week ago, you can e-mail me at podcast@searls.co and I'll read it silently in my head. If all goes well, I'll read it out loud, too. And everything works out, I may even read it out loud and into a microphone for the next show. Okay, let's dig into this latest version: What's new: I flew a little too close to the sun at Universal Studios Speaking of Universal, DJ Khaled is billed for their Mardi Gras concert series Finally answered the question, "how much of an 8", 12-pound carrot cake can I eat in one sitting?" Follow-up: My v1 nervousness Fixing an ActiveStorage bug Vision Pro pre-order This stupid travel case This hyper-dense 24,000 mAH Anker Power Bank battery to continuously charge the battery Dual Loop Band >>>> Solo Knit Band Will it have shake to undo? How heavy is 650 grams? News: Siri and multiple languages Victor Shepelev's Useless Ruby Syntax Landon Gray's react_ai gem / proof-of-concept (based on Cornell's ReAct paper) Entertainment Foundation Season 2 The Crown's final season Moonlighter You Suck at Cooking Mailbag: Dead Space remake Riley H on Fiverr is the fellow that made the show's jingle Rewind.ai Next time, it's up to you to e-mail podcast@searls.co Phew. Until next time, I guess.

I finally gave up and recorded a podcast. And now I'm writing show notes. I tried not to let this happen but here I am typing this and it's happening. Forgive me. This is a podcast for anybody who shares my interests and likes passing the time with a friendly, opinionated voice in their head. I have done thousands of hours of chores and errands over the years listening to mostly agreeable, sometimes interesting 1.5-3 hour podcasts to keep my mind busy. Now it's time for me to give back, I guess. Here's the deal: e-mail me at podcast@searls.co and I'll talk about whatever you want me to talk about. Write whatever you want into that e-mail body: ask a question about video games, ask for my take on a new technology, ask for relationship advice, tell me my podcast sucks. You write it, I'll read it. Okay, here's what I covered in version one of Breaking Change: What's new: I made a massive pot of Japanese curry rice for my buddy Len, who hosts his own actually real podcast I'm building a couple apps for my better half's business, which makes Becky my product owner and me her developer—what could go wrong?! Weather in Orlando has been freezing so please pity me and my inability to deal with temparatures below 65º F Follow-up: I made a video about speaking: Secrets of Great Conference Talks I wrote a post about careering: Only you can give meaning to your career I shipped a newsletter about the book The Courage to Be Disliked: Searls of Wisdom Newsletter I exhorted my fellow Rubyists: Why you should come to this RubyKaigi in 2024 Pun break: I asked and @tenderlove agreed to write me a pun for each episode of Breaking Change that I will read for the first time live as I record to the camera If you want to know the pun, you'll just have to listen to the podcast Actually, I'm going to rate the puns, so I've decided to (extremely inadvisably) share this Numbers spreadsheet publicly News: I am currently wearing the XREAL Air 2 glasses when working in public to prepare everyone around me to get ready for the Vision Pro landing onto my face next month I paid for GPT Plus and it's just uncanny sometimes how good it is compared to Google Search, thanks in part to how much worse Google Search has gotten. There's no other way I'd have found these tweezers The original Workflow Team is angling to be the first group to sell their company to Apple twice by forming a new AI desktop automation startup Standard Ruby might have made it into Rails 8, but it didn't, and I basically completely agree with DHH that it shouldn't: David's original issue The new bikeshed David built David's blog post about style guides I revisited the whole POSSE meme for web sites and how I'm building another app to integrate with my feed2gram gem to help people escape Instagram I started using ActiveStorage and this thread was absolutely vital to figuring it out (the Rails Guide could probably use a few updates, but the real issue is the API is probably due to be pruned a bit) Tailwind still feels like the Correct™ approach to styling web sites, but Rails needs a better answer for rendering forms with it. In lieu of an official solution, Daniel Huss described an approach I've been using since late 2022 with a custom FormBuilder subclass Speaking of correct approaches, I'm convinced Stimulus and HTMX are basically the right way to handle JavaScript in most apps, but I'll be damned if I don't have to totally relearn Stimulus's API every time I use it I think I forgot to mention it, but Stimulus Components is a neato project that I'd love to see more of—little modular, prepackaged actions that are (mostly) free of gnarly dependencies and import-map friendly Entertainment Playing Harvest Moon 64 and immediately falling for min-maxing the hell out of it instead of just playing the game Bullets and Blockbusters is a great YouTube channel on films, especially "what if" scenarios Searls After Dark is less great, but also on YouTube. Please subscribe to my channel so I can hit 1000 followers and disable ads on all my videos! Foundation is fine, but slow Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is… bad, I think? I'm muscling through it Letterkenny and Shoresy never disappoint, however Mailbag: Empty! Nobody knew I was going to start a podcast, least of all me, so nobody e-mailed me. Get featured on my next installment by emailing podcast@searls.co Phew. Until next time, I guess.