Overtired

Jammin’ on the One

[00:00:00] Introduction and Birthday Celebrations

[00:00:00]

[00:00:03] Brett: Hey, happy birthday. It’s my birthday. It’s Overtired. Um, we’re all here this week. It’s Jeff Severance Gunsel, Christina Warren, and myself, Brett Terpstra. Uh, how are you guys?

[00:00:16] Christina: Not too bad. Go on, go on, Jeff. Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say pretty birth I was gonna say happy birthday. I was like, not as good as you, birthday boy, but you know,

[00:00:24] Brett: I’m 46 today

[00:00:26] Jeff: Forty six.

[00:00:28] Brett: I’m not lying about my age like some people do. Um,

[00:00:33] Christina: It might be, it might be your birthday, but I’ll still tell you to fuck off. I can lie about my age as long as I want.

[00:00:37] Brett: I wasn’t singling you out. I just said some people.

[00:00:41] Jeff: Some people.

[00:00:43] Christina: Some

[00:00:43] Gifts and Subscriptions

[00:00:43] Brett: Um, yeah, I, uh, I’ve had a really good birthday. Elle, Elle knows how much I love getting gifts and I’m too old for most people to give me so they take it upon themselves to shower me. With gifts every year. [00:01:00] Um, and this year they got me a bunch of cool stuff, including a subscription to Cooks Illustrated and, uh, the book Vegetables Illustrated from Cooks Illustrated, which I’m very excited.

[00:01:11] Jeff: Print subscription? What a beautiful is this still beautiful? It’s been a long time. I don’t know if it got eaten by okay,

[00:01:17] Brett: I was picking them up at the co-op and just like, well actually, uh, one of the, one of the families that EL was house sitting for had them laying out. And I had forgotten how much I loved that magazine. Even like, even as a pescatarian who can’t eat half the recipes in there, they’re still so beautifully illustrated and beautifully written.

[00:01:39] Brett: And it’s just, it’s a fun read. It’s food, it’s food porn.

[00:01:43] Jeff: in an era yeah, but with line art. But in a in an era of like, um, the horrible, awful, terrible, evil, fascist food blog, where it’s like, let me just push all this shit away to get to a very simple recipe.

[00:01:59] Brett: [00:02:00] huh.

[00:02:00] Jeff: How amazing that all of the extra verbiage in Cook’s Illustrated is just towards you learning.

[00:02:07] Jeff: Uh, I think it’s amazing. It was like in the day, maybe it sounds like it’s the same, it was like McSweeney’s level design attention, but like even beyond that somehow. Yeah. That’s awesome.

[00:02:18] Brett: That’s exciting. Um, yeah, she also got me the book, um, Hip Hop is History by Questlove,

[00:02:26] Jeff: Oh, nice.

[00:02:27] Brett: cause they heard a, an interview and they’re like, Oh, this is all Brett. This is great. So they got me the book. So anyway, it’s been a great birthday.

[00:02:37] Home Improvement and Plumbing Stories

[00:02:37] Brett: My parents got me a flood sensor, which at first blush is ridiculous because we live high on a hill.

[00:02:45] Brett: Uh, on a bluff or like on next to a bluff, but like, there’s no chance of our house flooding, but I have done things like missing, poorly install a bidet and not [00:03:00] realize that I’m flooding the basement

[00:03:02] Jeff: Yeah, those are great for the basements.

[00:03:04] Brett: Yeah. So, so having some, some, uh, moisture sensors around the house could be. Could be truly valuable.

[00:03:13] Brett: My dad got it for me because he had recently discovered that a 30 year old toilet had begun slowly leaking into the foundation.

[00:03:23] Jeff: Oh man.

[00:03:24] Brett: so he’s like, everybody gets flood detectors now.

[00:03:28] Jeff: That’s amazing. I bet it wasn’t the toilets fault though.

[00:03:32] Brett: Well,

[00:03:32] Jeff: just like a seal or something? Cause the amazing thing about toilets is they can go forever. There’s such simple machines.

[00:03:37] Brett: just solid pieces of porcelain. Yeah. It would have been like a seal or something. Um,

[00:03:44] Jeff: Fascinating content. Hey

[00:03:46] Brett: Yeah, yeah, subscribe, subscribe for more home improvement. Um,

[00:03:50] Christina: Okay. Speaking of

[00:03:51] Jeff: about it all day.

[00:03:53] The Best Toilet Seat Ever

[00:03:53] Christina: of toilets, someone showed me, no, no, genuinely, somebody showed me the best toilet seat I’ve ever seen the other day. [00:04:00] Um, it’s, it’s, it’s from like this, this, um, LA based artist who’s pretty awesome. And she, she basically took a bunch of old smartphones and made like a toilet seat out of them.

[00:04:10] Christina: Um, let me, let me find the link that I, that I can give you guys. Um, it’s really good. It’s the only problem is, and the only reason I’m not going to have it is that it’s. Is 1, 250. So, um, you know, that, that, that, that unfortunately, um, prices me out just a little bit. Yeah. The woman’s name is, uh, is Bailey, um, Hikawa and her stuff is incredible here.

[00:04:31] Christina: I’m putting this link in our chat here

[00:04:35] Jeff: Do you ever have to tighten your toilet seat?

[00:04:37] Brett: oh yeah,

[00:04:37] Jeff: Man.

[00:04:38] Brett: when you sit down and it wiggles off

[00:04:40] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I find that to be probably the most disgusting of toilet related maintenance because you have to get your hands around there and get your hand under there on the nut. Uh, just very terrible and preventable. I’m sure,

[00:04:55] Brett: we have one of those like bolt on bidets and in order to [00:05:00] properly clean our toilet, you have to fully remove the toilet seat and the bidet. So about once a week I do that and I’ve gotten really good at it, but I’ve also stripped out the screws by using a drill on the plastic screw.

[00:05:13] Jeff: oh no, you should have called

[00:05:15] Brett: the chances of ever tightening it enough that that little slip doesn’t happen when you sit down, that’s going to require

[00:05:22] Jeff: Wait, let’s make this the whole podcast. I have a couple of questions. Are those screws embedded or can you replace them? Cause they,

[00:05:27] Brett: Oh, they’re totally replaceable.

[00:05:28] Jeff: Okay, okay. Good to know.

[00:05:30] Brett: I have replaced them multiple times. I even tried replacing them with metal screws once, but that was, uh,

[00:05:35] Jeff: But you only really think about it when you’re on the shitter. Yeah, that’s a problem because you can’t do anything from there. Maybe Amazon.

[00:05:41] Brett: How much, how long do you think we could talk about toilets? Because

[00:05:44] Jeff: I’ll tell you what.

[00:05:46] Brett: haven’t even gotten into the talking toilets with the built in bidets. I,

[00:05:52] Plumbing Mishaps and Family History

[00:05:52] Jeff: One, my entire line of, of Gunsels, uh, in America, up until my dad [00:06:00] became a teacher, was plumbers. Gunsel Plumbing and Heating ruled the North Side. Uh, and, and so that’s one thing. Two, the reason my name is Jeff and not John, is because is because my dad was worried that coming from a plumbing fact, uh, family, I would be ridiculed for having a name that is also what you call a bathroom. So I can talk about this all day, uh, but we should probably stop for the sake of our, our,

[00:06:25] Brett: No, I’m, I’m digging this. It’s my birthday and I want to talk about toilets. I actually worked as a,

[00:06:31] Jeff: what you wish for.

[00:06:32] Brett: I worked as an apprentice plumber in, uh, in college and have installed my fair share of toilets. I enjoy everything from the wax ring up. Um, that’s, that’s actually

[00:06:45] Jeff: The wax ring is fascinating. For people that don’t know, the seal that keeps your toilet from doing what Brett’s dad’s toilet did, for the most part, is a fucking wax ring to this day.

[00:06:57] Brett: And it’s soft. It’s, it’s a soft wax ring. [00:07:00] Um, but yeah, and clearing out, um, toilets that people flush tampons down out in on campus. That was fun.

[00:07:11] Jeff: I am the family’s plunger.

[00:07:13] Brett: Hairballs were, I never, I never got used to hairballs. Yeah, I own my own snake. I can do all that stuff.

[00:07:21] Jeff: I remember a friend of the show, Danny Glamour, telling me about his time working in a nursing home and how he at least once had to go into a bathroom and break up a poop with a screwdriver to make something work. Christina, how are you with all this? I don’t know. I have a feeling you’re either like, yeah, I’ll just listen.

[00:07:40] Jeff: Or you’re like fucking stop.

[00:07:42] Christina: No, I mean, I’ll

[00:07:42] Brett: For all we know, she also worked as a plumber.

[00:07:45] Jeff: know.

[00:07:46] Christina: no. Uh, no. I’m the one who calls the plumber. Please, like, I’m the one who, like, does something dumb that requires the plumber to be called because, you know, yeah, you’re flushing the tampons down the toilet or whatever. Uh, no, I have [00:08:00] no opinions on any of this, but it’s interesting.

[00:08:03] Brett: Can I tell you? Oh, go ahead.

[00:08:04] Jeff: we’re both just ready to keep going.

[00:08:06] Brett: We got stories, man.

[00:08:07] Jeff: Uh, you go, I’ll go, and then maybe we can,

[00:08:10] Brett: So my, the most recent time I had to call a plumber was our, our kitchen sink and the dishwasher weren’t draining. Um, and I had snaked down, my snake goes 50 feet and I had not been able to clear the issue. Uh, but I found, you know, the access valve in the downspout of the sink.

[00:08:31] Brett: I’m, I’m, I’m fucking up technical terms here,

[00:08:33] Jeff: Yeah, but your hand gestures are getting us there.

[00:08:35] Brett: If I unscrewed it, it would drain. So there was something, I could not figure out why that worked, but like it was, it was baffling, so we brought in a plumber and he snakes like a hundred feet in, he can’t find anything wrong. Like he gets all the way to the wall in the basement, nothing clogging it, no problem.

[00:08:56] Brett: The problem ends up being this little valve. It’s like a, [00:09:00] uh, I can’t remember what they call it. It’s just this tiny little part. It costs 15 to replace, but it costs us 200 in time for him to realize that the problem was right at the, at the faucet. Um, I couldn’t figure it out. I’ll, I’ll give him, I’m, yeah, they shouldn’t have charged me.

[00:09:21] Brett: That’s the thing. If he, if he did all that and then realized that he missed an obvious thing he should have checked first, I shouldn’t have been charged 200.

[00:09:29] Jeff: Ah, this is the this is the forever problem. Yeah. I don’t feel like we’ve ever had a contractor where it doesn’t end with, like, Uh, wait a minute, hold on. Ha ha ha ha ha!

[00:09:39] Christina: you for what now?

[00:09:40] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:41] Christina: that you messed up first? Yeah. Which, uh Which I think, which uh, we’re recording this on, on, on CrowdStrike day, so I think that’s something that even people not dealing with plumbing can relate to.

[00:09:54] Jeff: Yes. Yes.

[00:09:55] Brett: we move on to

[00:09:56] Jeff: Uh, after this one piece, um, so my grandfather, [00:10:00] my grandfather was the final plumber in the line, and I used to be at their home when he would get home from work. Man, they had an amazing little like Dodge white van that said Gunsel Plumbing and Heating. I’d kill for that van. Um, but I do have a giant framed Gunsel Plumbing and Heating poster from the 30s that is really awesome.

[00:10:16] Jeff: But anyway, he would come home and he would go down to the basement and he would wash his hands for so long. long and I would sit there and talk to him and it was just like he’d go to the laundry, uh, to the laundry sink and just soap and fucking go and soap and go that like lava soap that like

[00:10:32] Brett: Oh, I was going to ask if it was the orange stuff.

[00:10:34] Jeff: I don’t think that was around yet because that’s sort of in the 80s like uh early or mid 80s and um but then today to this day I am always happy when I my hands have become dirty enough like I was out working on this like, ancient tool and my hands were just filled with grease.

[00:10:51] Jeff: I don’t wear gloves. And I, and I am so thrilled when I have to come in and I just have to scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub because it just like, it feels like, feels like [00:11:00] Gramps. Uh,

[00:11:01] Brett: your kids sit and talk to you while you do

[00:11:02] Jeff: no, nobody talks to me while I do it. Nobody. Zero people. All right. That’s all I had to get out.

[00:11:10] Birthday Party Plans

[00:11:10] Brett: Oh, I was going to tell you guys about my birthday party before we move

[00:11:14] Christina: Yeah, please

[00:11:14] Jeff: Well, please, we asked before and that was what triggered us ending the pre show and starting the

[00:11:20] Brett: I always hope that someone will throw me a cool birthday party. And I had, um, put together rough plans back in 2020 something, um, for, for my birthday. 42nd birthday party, which would have been four years ago. Yeah. So like 2020 and I was going to have a big hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy theme party.

[00:11:44] Brett: And I was, I had plans for like a plaster. Head, like second head. So it could be, what’s it, Zaphod. Um, that all fell through thanks COVID and thanks Obama. And, um, and so I haven’t had a birthday party since [00:12:00] then. So this year I took it upon myself and I got, I sent out a Facebook invite to like 50 people, including Jeff, who doesn’t check Facebook.

[00:12:10] Christina: Right. Because who, who, who, because who checks Facebook genuinely?

[00:12:14] Brett: I do. Um,

[00:12:15] Jeff: But you gotta, but text me, then I feel like I’m really invited.

[00:12:18] Brett: Sure, sure. It’s just, I had a lot, I had a lot of moving parts. Um, but I put together a party at, uh, it’s called Suncrest Garden Pizza Farm. And it’s like big outdoor, they have a big barn with a wood fire, uh, wood Yeah, wood fire oven and they make pizzas to order and they do a vegan gluten free pizza and with your choice of toppings and then you eat outdoor.

[00:12:44] Brett: There’s some picnic tables but most people bring a blanket and just like sit around and there’s live music. Huge craft beer selection and yeah so I organized my own birthday party and I’m pretty excited. I got like 20 people coming that’s not bad.[00:13:00]

[00:13:01] Christina: pretty great,

[00:13:01] Jeff: That’s awesome, man. That sounds amazing. I’ve always wanted to go to one of those. And I wish I was going to yours. I really do. And I’m looking up on Facebook now, the invite, just so I can at least enjoy it and acknowledge it. I really truly did not see it. And I’m sorry about that.

[00:13:18] Brett: Yeah, I, I did, I did manually invite a few people. I assumed you wouldn’t be able to make it. So you’re lower on my list of people to like force invites upon,

[00:13:29] Jeff: Yeah, but I agreed to a hour plus call with you today.

[00:13:35] Christina: It’s true.

[00:13:36] Brett: without, without travel time.

[00:13:38] Jeff: But without travel time, that’s right.

[00:13:39] Brett: yeah. All right.

[00:13:40] CrowdStrike Incident

[00:13:40] Brett: We should talk about CrowdStrike, um, that I don’t know how pressing it will be on Monday when this comes out, but for today,

[00:13:48] Christina: for today,

[00:13:50] Brett: It’s a hell of a thing to have happen on your birthday,

[00:13:53] Christina: I mean, I’m, I’m glad that you’re not a Windows admin and, um,

[00:13:57] Brett: right? Oh

[00:13:57] Christina: genuinely that’d be the worst. No. So for [00:14:00] anybody who is not aware, um, three days ago, as you were listening to this, like the world woke up and everything was broken because CrowdStrike issued a driver update to tens of thousands of machines that Blue screen of death, everything.

[00:14:16] Brett: planes, planes weren’t taking off. Online banking wasn’t working. Health providers were failing. Yeah,

[00:14:23] Jeff: Oh, I couldn’t deposit checks at my bank today.

[00:14:26] Christina: Oh yeah, no, ATMs are down. Like a friend of mine, um, is an ER doc at like one of the biggest hospitals in, in Washington. And, and like, uh, he sent me, you know, info. He was like, yeah, they just told us to bring our own laptops in today. And then he sent me like, like a, like the part of an email that like showed all the systems that are down.

[00:14:44] Christina: I was like, holy shit. Now most of the main systems, I think like the really, really like important ones are back up already, but

[00:14:51] Brett: they said. They said most, most users that could just reboot

[00:14:57] Christina: Yes,

[00:14:57] Brett: would come up fine. The [00:15:00] problem was automated systems that can’t be cycled in that way.

[00:15:05] Christina: Right, yeah, so this is the funny thing, like the best solution to this is literally to restart it between 3 and 15 times.

[00:15:15] Brett: you tried turning it off and turning it back on 15

[00:15:18] Christina: And yet that is actually one of the solutions, yeah, so I mean, people are working on some automated ways for this to work, but honestly, like, bad day for CrowdStrike, although, you know what, these are fucking McAfee people, so I don’t know why we expected more from them.

[00:15:31] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:15:32] Christina: Genuinely.

[00:15:33] Brett: I like how ground news in their summary of this story. Uh, the third point was Crouch, CrowdStrike shares are down. And their competitor’s shares are up. Well, no shit.

[00:15:47] Christina: Yeah. I mean, as they freaking should be. Um, cause they, this is a company that, uh, like has lobbied the hell out of various governments to basically mandate that anybody who does any sort of, you know, [00:16:00] government or, or, uh, public issued thing, they’re like, Oh no, you have to, um, use, um, us. There’s, there’s no way you’ll be protected and secure without us.

[00:16:09] Christina: Please let us have control over all of your systems. And, um, And people, I guess, believe them. And, uh, yeah. This is a

[00:16:19] Brett: many people do you think are getting fired?

[00:16:21] Christina: I mean, a lot, I hope. Because if a lot aren’t, then what is this for, right? Like, honestly, like, I’m not usually, like, a big proponent of fire, you know, people who make fuckups. But in a case like this, like, literally your job is to You know what I mean?

[00:16:34] Christina: Like, like, literally your job is, is you, you are saying to people, trust us for all of your security updates and for your antivirus and ransomware and whatnot, and trust us to protect your systems. And then you push out an update that is either not tested well, or something went wrong, and it breaks, like, half the free world.

[00:16:51] Christina: Yeah, a lot of people

[00:16:52] Brett: I was gonna say, so you got, you got like, you got a coder, and then you have hopefully like a peer review, and then you have [00:17:00] quality control, and there should have been at least two levels of testing on a, an update with this ram, with these ramifications, if not more. But, so that’s, that’s three, that’s three people slash teams that shouldn’t have a job.

[00:17:17] Christina: right. Yeah. I mean, and their bosses, whatever their, whatever their process is, because this had to be a breakdown in process, right? Like, obviously they have processes to, to test, um, but clearly they’re not good enough. It was interesting. Um, I, I was able to find some proof that like, obviously people are, are understandably like taking digs at Windows right now.

[00:17:37] Christina: The truth is this could have happened with any platform that CrowdStrike supports. It didn’t, but it could have. And in fact, I found evidence that in April and May, there were massive, like, kernel panics that happened on both Debian and Red Hat because of CrowdStrike. But I guess, you know, they just don’t have the same, um, like,

[00:17:56] Brett: really, maybe it’s not a matter of people getting fired. Maybe it’s a [00:18:00] matter of CrowdStrike going bankrupt.

[00:18:02] Christina: I mean, yeah, maybe. The CEO, his initial response, he didn’t even apologize. He was just like, Oh, we had an issue. Blah, blah, blah. And he didn’t even bother to say sorry. MoFo, read the room. Like, airports and hospitals and 911 systems are down.

[00:18:19] Jeff: 911 systems, you know, when you fucking apologize is when hospitals and 911

[00:18:23] Christina: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:18:25] Jeff: definitely a time to apologize no matter what your lawyer says.

[00:18:28] Christina: Right, exactly. And then, exactly. Fuck your lawyer. Oh, we can’t show, you know, responsibility. You are responsible, motherfucker. You are responsible, like, literally. And also, again, you’re the people who have lobbied, you know, like, governments and institutions and been like, oh, you have to use us if you want to be safe and secure, right?

[00:18:44] Christina: So if you’re telling people you’re good enough to be in those spaces, well then, fuck you. Buck stops with you, asshole. Um, he finally like released a slightly better statement, slightly, where he did put in an apology, but like, it’s still so minor and it’s still so like, [00:19:00] trying to just be like, Oh, this wasn’t a security incident.

[00:19:03] Christina: Fuck off. Like, I don’t think people care about the nuances

[00:19:07] Jeff: it is now.

[00:19:08] Christina: Yeah.

[00:19:09] Sponsor: 1Password

[00:19:09] Brett: You, you would not believe how well I can segue this from here to our sponsor for today and then into our next topic. Man, I, my brain’s working on like, it’s like 40 chests

[00:19:22] Jeff: what that is right now? That’s birthday

[00:19:24] Christina: I was going to say, this is birthday brain. Hell yeah.

[00:19:26] Brett: yes. So, speaking of safety and security, our sponsor today is 1Password, which we are huge fans of, and we will admit at the top that none of us have used it for IAM and MDM, so we can’t personally vouch for this aspect of 1Password.

[00:19:46] Brett: But given my absolute faith in 1Password, I guarantee you it’s a great solution. So, listen up. Imagine your company’s security like the quad of a college campus. There are nice brick paths in between the [00:20:00] buildings. Those are the company owned devices, IT approved apps, and managed employee identities. And then there are the paths that people actually use, the shortcuts worn through the grass that are the actual straightest line from point A to point B.

[00:20:13] Brett: Those are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps, and non employee identities like contractors. Most security tools only work on those happy brick paths, but a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts. 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all of these unmanaged devices, apps, and identities under your control.

[00:20:37] Brett: It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every app is visible. 1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDM can’t touch. It’s security for the way we work today, and it’s available now to companies with Okta, and coming later this year to Google [00:21:00] Workspace and Microsoft Office.

[00:21:01] Brett: Entra? Entra? Christina?

[00:21:04] Christina: Intra. It used to be Azure AD. It used to be Active Directory, but yeah,

[00:21:08] Brett: There you go. Check it out at 1password. com slash product slash xam. That’s 1password. com slash product slash xam.

[00:21:20] Sponsor bonus content

[00:21:20] Brett: And then just to tag onto this, uh, there was a big hullabaloo around 1Password becoming an Electron app. But honestly, I haven’t even noticed. Uh, it’s been, it’s, the system integration is still so tight.

[00:21:36] Brett: I just, I don’t care. It’s an Electron app done right.

[00:21:40] Christina: Yeah, I fully agree.

[00:21:42] Jeff: and if that read didn’t touch you, I just hear, I mean, I, one password is such, maybe as much an important part of my life as one or two of Brett’s creations, um, in terms of just how much I access it and use it every single day. And I have [00:22:00] never, ever had a problem. They only get. Better, they added the SSH business not long ago.

[00:22:05] Jeff: I mean, maybe a year ago now, but like, they just. It’s incredible. And I don’t even know, like, I don’t even know what life is without it, even though there are other options. And also I’m in the process of doing some like business operations stuff for our company and, and realize that a number of our employees may or may not, don’t listen hackers, be using 1Password as directed.

[00:22:27] Jeff: And so I’m also in the midst of like, writing sort of like a memo that’s like, here’s why you have to do it. Here’s how you use it. And here’s, um, and here’s, You know, here’s what will happen to you if you don’t. And just like having to kind of look into the features and, and the way this thing works today in order to write that.

[00:22:44] Jeff: So I can help people get set up. That’s like, this fucking thing is amazing. It’s amazing. Thank you. 1Password. Also, I finally stopped about three years ago, uh, uh, using the same password for everything. It was one thing that 1Password was telling me not to do forever, but I was like, I can’t listen, [00:23:00] but now I do.

[00:23:00] Jeff: So fuck you hackers.

[00:23:01] Brett: every time you open it up into like an edit window, it’ll tell you, a watch tower will tell you if the site. Uh, had experienced a breach and B, it will tell you if 2FA is available and you haven’t set it up and it will tell you if, uh, passkeys are available and you haven’t set it up, um, which is super handy when you have, as most people on the internet these days do, you know, a hundred, some different logins for a hundred different sites, uh, and you want to use a different password on everyone.

[00:23:34] Brett: You want everything to be as secure as possible. Yeah. And. And, uh, to the best of my knowledge, 1Password is one of the few password apps that have never experienced, uh, a major breach. Um, uh, uh, unlike LastPass, for example.

[00:23:53] Christina: Yeah, yeah. I, I’ve been, like, I don’t know what my passwords are and I haven’t for, I guess, going on, going on 18 years [00:24:00] because I,

[00:24:00] Brett: couldn’t possibly, yeah.

[00:24:01] Christina: because I’ve been using one password, I guess, since probably 2007, so I guess 17 years. And I, I don’t know my passwords. I don’t know them. And, uh, and

[00:24:08] Brett: all my passwords are random 20 character strings. There’s no way I could know my password.

[00:24:14] Christina: Uh, and, and, and I will just give a little bit of love to the, like, the passkey, um, support. Like, I, I know that there are, are some things that are, you know, just because passkeys, there’s some stuff that isn’t figured out, like, exporting and whatnot. But, like, if you use passkeys on multiple devices, that, especially if they’re not all Apple devices, 1Password, in my opinion, is the best solution because it does, it’ll sync everywhere.

[00:24:35] Christina: So a passkey that I have, you know, on like, uh, uh, you know, will work on Linux or on Windows or on my Mac or my iPhone or on whatever, which is really, really great. So,

[00:24:46] Jeff: Yeah. Christina loves it on Arch Linux. Big. Big fan. She built, she built that from the ground. I mean, I have to,

[00:24:52] Christina: I, I, yeah, yeah, I, I, I did. And because I’m going to tell everybody, you know, that I use Arch. But no, they, I, they do actually have a Linux client.

[00:24:58] Christina: So, good [00:25:00] stuff.

[00:25:00] Jeff: because this is almost as fun as toilets. Um, I just, a couple of things I want to add. One is that one thing I’ve started using more and more is in one password. You can send somebody a password, login information, and you can choose that it only goes that person. You can say it can only be used once. You can say it can be used for seven days.

[00:25:15] Jeff: I use that all the time. And that became like, The importance of that became really incredible when I found an onboarding document in our, in our files that had, it was like a Google doc with all of our key passwords in it, despite the fact that we have one password. The other thing I want to say is that there is nothing more fun.

[00:25:29] Jeff: Literally you could pass time doing this. If you were ever just kind of like bored, you were waiting at the doctor’s office. Just start generate, generating three word passwords. I’m going to do a few right now in one password. Okay. Here’s one, Kate. Pasty, Punt. That’s fun. Okay, here’s another one. Here’s another one.

[00:25:44] Jeff: Imply, Soften, Eclat, Perplex, Kohlrabi, Posit. I mean, come on, this is a great time.

[00:25:51] Brett: So, yeah, the space is a valid character in passwords. And once I realized that, uh, it increased my [00:26:00] usage of random three or four word, just random combinations of words, which on their own, uh, it becomes, uh, Not as unguessable as a 20 character random string with symbols, but, uh, but kind of on par. So like, um, Weasel, Monkey, Buttstuff can be a great password.

[00:26:25] Jeff: Totally. Yeah. And by the way, everybody, when you make your O’s, zeros, it’s not helping you.

[00:26:30] Brett: Yeah, right.

[00:26:31] Jeff: but that’s, that’s another story

[00:26:33] Brett: When you do, when you use leet speak, that’s, uh, that’s in most dictionaries.

[00:26:37] Jeff: when you

[00:26:37] Christina: Yeah, it is at this

[00:26:38] Jeff: not helping you.

[00:26:40] Christina: Unfortunately, we’ve all used, you know, whatever, like, the password, like, with one on the end. Like, we’ve all done that enough times that everybody knows. And the elite speak is unfortunately now in the dictionaries because, yeah, we’ve, enough breaches have happened and, uh, everyone knows our, uh, our [00:27:00] tells.

[00:27:00] Jeff: But yeah, we reviewed one of those annual reports of most commonly used passwords once on this podcast. That is a really good time as well. It’s, it’s also humbling.

[00:27:09] Christina: it really is humbling. You’re like, yeah, and this is why I don’t want to know what any of them are. Like, genuinely, like, I don’t

[00:27:13] Jeff: Yeah, you do not want to know what any of them are. Cause you know what doesn’t come up? Zero, A, two, asterisk, four, three, A, B, capital C. Never comes up in the top used passwords.

[00:27:24] Christina: No. No. And it’s great, too. Sorry, go on.

[00:27:28] Brett: no, I was about to change topics, but you got more to say? Go for

[00:27:31] Christina: No, I’m done. I’m done.

[00:27:33] Reviving TUAW: A Controversial Story

[00:27:33] Brett: So one of the people affected by the CrowdStrike problem, uh, was Tim Stevens, who could not board a flight and got stuck. And you may remember Tim Stevens as the editor of Engadget. Which, for years now, has hosted the archives of a little blog called the Unofficial Apple Web Blog.

[00:27:58] Brett: Um, which was, [00:28:00] which was dead. You go to tua. com and it would redirect you to mGadget. But, Um, Yahoo, which now owns the 2R domain, or owned, past tense, sold it to a holding company which pulled some shenanigans. You want to tell us about

[00:28:19] Jeff: This story, I’m just going to spoil it. The story is insane. And also I want to come back to your pronunciation of Yahoo later.

[00:28:25] Christina: Yahoo!

[00:28:28] Jeff: Yahoo!

[00:28:30] Brett: I’m sorry, I just can’t do the inflection right.

[00:28:32] Christina: Well, no, I think, I think we all just watched the, the ads so many times. Yahoo!

[00:28:38] Jeff: Yahoo!

[00:28:38] Christina: yeah. Um, anyway, yeah. Okay, so, this goes back about, um, two weeks now, as, as you’ll hear this. I was sick, actually. And I think this is important to know, because I, I, I, I’m very proud of myself for accomplishing what I accomplished while I had the stomach flu.

[00:28:54] Christina: And John Gruber sent me a link to tuaw. com and it [00:29:00] had my byline on it. And I was like, laughing. I was like, okay, what is this? And then it turned out, I looked at it and I was like, why is this site still alive? Because as Brett mentioned, the site had been dead for close to 10 years. Well, it had been dead for, for close to close to 10, because it shut down in 2015.

[00:29:17] Christina: And, um, It was just redirecting to engadget. com, not even redirecting to the article links, just a full on redirect. And I was like, okay, why is this here? And then I look at this face and I see this face that is not mine, but I see, you know, byline Christina Warren, and I’m seeing articles written. And I was, at first I’d assumed that maybe somebody had bought the domain and they were like trying to backfill some of the past articles.

[00:29:39] Christina: I was like, okay, what is this? And then I looked a little closer and I realized, no, the site is back and they’re publishing new articles. Um, which, you know, look, that’s a thing. If Yahoo, the current owners of the AOL brands, Apollo Global, whatever, if they want to sell, uh, you know, an old domain because they think they can make a few dollars off of it, fine.

[00:29:59] Christina: If someone wants to try to [00:30:00] revive the brand, fine. But what was odd to me is that My name looked like I was still publishing new articles in July 2024. I’m like, okay, what is this? Right. And so I look further into it and I look at the about page and all of the author names are historical old school authors of TUAW.

[00:30:19] Christina: And so Brett’s name is there. Uh, uh, Victor’s name is there. Mike Rose’s name is there. Like everybody that we used to work with back in the day is there, but the photos are. AI generated. No, no. I mean, and this honestly pissed me off. I was like, could you at least have made me hotter? Like, genuinely, like that, that was like the biggest insult and injury.

[00:30:39] Christina: So what they did, um, according to their own about page, they said that they acquired the domain only and not the content, but that they quote, meticulously rewrote the content using archive.

[00:30:54] Jeff: Meticulously rewrote.

[00:30:55] Christina: yeah, yeah, they said that they meticulously rewrote the content, um, [00:31:00] using stuff that was on archive.

[00:31:01] Christina: org and, um, uh, to, to, to match, uh, current standards, which, okay. Um, and, and then they were publishing these things that way. So I, of course, immediately am mad and I’m sick, right? So I,

[00:31:15] Jeff: Oh my god, I would have been sick if I weren’t sick

[00:31:18] Christina: totally, totally.

[00:31:19] Jeff: mean, that is awful.

[00:31:20] Christina: I mean, cause, cause here’s the thing, like, we’ve seen this happen before. The hairpin is, is one recent example where like domains expire and somebody buys it and then they go through the archives to try to recreate the backlinks and, and sometimes the, you know, they’re somewhat adjusted, but whatnot, and, and we see that sort of thing before.

[00:31:36] Christina: Um, it’s happened for years. It’s gross, but it’s a thing. What I, what I did not expect genuinely was for someone to try to revive a site and then start publishing new content. under the names of the people who used to work there. And then what got even worse is I realized that the articles that were like the past backlinks were not the same.

[00:31:56] Christina: The slugs were the same. The articles had slightly, [00:32:00] sometimes the same headlines, sometimes slightly different, um, different authors attached. And then the content had been rewritten because what they did is they just, used AI to rewrite the content they found on archive. org, thinking I guess that somehow that would get them around the plagiarism issues, the copyright infringement issues, which it doesn’t.

[00:32:17] Christina: Um, so I was big mad. And so I posted about it on Twitter and on threads and at Mastodon, and then I sent a strongly worded email to the email address that was on this site saying, take my name down. I’m immediately, or else I will contact, you know, I will get lawyers involved. You know, I’m, I’m a public figure.

[00:32:36] Christina: This is going to harm, you know, my professional prospects. I don’t want any association with you. This is not my work. Fuck off. I didn’t use the fuck off part, but I was just like, take it, take it down immediately. And I didn’t expect anything. I didn’t expect them to respond, um, because I was like, I don’t know where they’re based, you know, I don’t know what my legal options are.

[00:32:53] Christina: I was like, I will, in my mind, I was like, okay, I will contact a lawyer and send a cease and desist, but whatever. Um, [00:33:00] and then much to my surprise and delight, the tech press saw my posts and Engadget, 404 Media, uh, Jason Snell at Six Colors, uh, The Verge, and then later on, uh, people like Ars Technica and other places wrote about it too, all wrote about this.

[00:33:18] Christina: And um, Ernie Smith from TDM was able to find out who is behind this shady company. And it’s this guy who um, he also did something similar to iLounge, although it seems like he might have officially bought that from the old iLounge owner. But like, they’ve done this before where like, you know, just buys like old kind of dead brands and, and then starts pumping out what looks like plagiarized content.

[00:33:42] Christina: Um, You know, full of probably, you know, who even knows if they have affiliate links, but you know, just, I don’t know what their business model is, but he’s just been doing this stuff.

[00:33:53] Brett: is what’s the fucking point?

[00:33:55] Christina: Yeah, exactly. have no idea. I don’t, I don’t get it.

[00:33:59] AI Articles and Identity Theft

[00:33:59] Brett: [00:34:00] the end game of

[00:34:01] Christina: I don’t either, because this is such a weird, like many years old strategy, you know, of trying to do something like Google doesn’t rank these things well anymore.

[00:34:08] Christina: So I don’t even understand why this is here. Um,

[00:34:11] Brett: if most of it was done with AI, like it’s still a lot of effort to put into what end, like, and like you said, this, like, I didn’t want these AI regurgitated articles coming up in Google searches for my name,

[00:34:26] Christina: right. I mean, that, that was my primary concern, right? Was, I was like, I don’t want people, because for better or worse, like you’re the same way, Brett, like people associate us with TUAW and I don’t want people seeing things coming up and thinking, Oh, Christina’s writing for this site again, or Christina wrote this, right?

[00:34:40] Christina: I’m like, absolutely not. So fortunately, um, after the first, um, Press came out, they started to change the names. Like first my byline was changed from Christina to Christina Warren to Christina, which I thought was funny. And then it was changed to Mary Brown and then they started to change everyone else’s bylines.

[00:34:57] Christina: Now the past links that they’ve recreated, [00:35:00] like I don’t think there’s a whole lot we can do about that, but at least they don’t have our names associated with it. So that at least started within like The first six hours.

[00:35:08] The Resurrection of Old Content

[00:35:08] Christina: But then, and then more people wrote about it and it became kind of a second day story, which, which I didn’t expect.

[00:35:14] Christina: Um, but um, like I said, what’s funny though is that because people figure out who this guy was, he then started to try to delete himself off the internet, which was really funny. Like, he started to try to, like, he started to try to hide, like, like, taking away articles that he’d clearly, like, self written about himself to make him seem like he was, like, this big shot.

[00:35:34] Christina: Um, and, and, you know, removing his name from some other pages. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, you, you think you can hide, now you’re just making this more interesting. Now we just really want to track down. Who you are, motherfucker. But yeah, what a,

[00:35:46] Jeff: yeah. Now it’s a game.

[00:35:48] Reflecting on Past Work

[00:35:48] Christina: yeah, but, but what a, what a weird thing to like find a site you wrote for in college, you know, like resuscitated from the dead with a photo that’s not yours, but your byline.[00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Jeff: Yeah, for Ichi, when was your last actual byline for I

[00:36:04] Christina: Uh, for me, it was 2009. Brett, you worked there a lot longer. Cause I know you, you went on to work at AOL proper.

[00:36:09] Brett: Right, that’s the thing is I kind of, I slowed down my blogging onto uh, when I started working for, as you call it, AOL Proper.

[00:36:18] Jeff: like that, it’s like L. A. proper.

[00:36:20] Brett: so I don’t remember what the last article I wrote was, but it would be prior to 2009 probably.

[00:36:29] Christina: No, I think you were probably after that. I think you were after that. Yeah, but

[00:36:32] Brett: wrote a couple here and there. Um, sometimes just to test new integrations I was building into Blogsmith.

[00:36:40] Christina: yeah, because I don’t, I, I, I think, I think you started working for them like after I left, but I could be wrong. But regardless, it’s been a very long time for both of us. And so it was a weird thing to see it. And then like, again, this is a site that’s been dead for 10 years. So, you know, um, uh, Steve Sandy, I saw a comment that he made on Apple Insider that [00:37:00] showed that like, I guess Yahoo had approached him two weeks before all this was discovered, offering like him to buy the domain because he’d started like a, a similar site to Chua after the fact.

[00:37:12] Christina: Um, but, but he’s retired and, and, and super into Jesus now. So he was not interested, but, um,

[00:37:19] Brett: I feel like he always was, he just knew enough to keep his mouth shut. In polite company.

[00:37:24] Christina: right, right. Well now that seems like

[00:37:26] Jeff: What’s that, what’s that skill like? I don’t have that muscle.

[00:37:29] Christina: But, uh, but, but he, he was not interested. And so, you know, it seems like, I guess they were looking at their assets. We’re like, Oh, well, maybe we can sell this cause it’s a four letter domain name and we can get value out of it. I don’t know.

[00:37:40] The Sale of Content Rights

[00:37:40] Christina: I just, what, what, what annoys me?

[00:37:42] Christina: Like, I’m annoyed with a few things. Like, obviously my, my main annoyance is with like the, you know, grifter assholes who did this and tried to steal our identities. Um, but I’m also pissed off at like Yahoo, Apollo Global, whatever for selling this stuff. Just so haphazardly because it’s like it’s like[00:38:00]

[00:38:00] Brett: could not, it couldn’t have been that profitable.

[00:38:02] Christina: what I’m saying like the 15 grand you got No, that’s what I’m saying because they couldn’t right it turned out Mike Schramm looked back through his or instead of Brad Linder, Brad Linder looked back through his contract and found like and I went back and Found mine too like we owned The rights to our content, um, uh, AOL, Weblogs, Inc.,

[00:38:20] Christina: whatever, had a perpetual license to, a non exclusive perpetual license to, you know, uh, republish it, but we owned our content, so they couldn’t sell the content. But like, yeah, it had to be like between five and 15 grand. I’m sure it was a cheap sale. You’re Apollo Global. What are you getting out of this?

[00:38:38] Christina: Like, somebody felt, somebody felt like, Oh, we’re, we’re doing super well here, guys. Yeah. Well, I hope that the bad publicity You know, shamed you of that, like, notion, but yeah, very frustrating, but very funny. I, I, I changed my avatar at Work Slack to the AI avatar, and then someone said, you should do that on all of your [00:39:00] socials, and I did that for a few days.

[00:39:01] Christina: Um, and, uh, I have a blue check because, um, Elon gave me one, and because of that, like, I had to wait a few more days before I could change it back to my normal face again, which was pretty funny. So

[00:39:13] Brett: changed, they changed my, they gave most people full name changes. That’s it.

[00:39:17] Christina: they only made yours, like, the, the first

[00:39:19] Brett: I’m, I’m Paul Terpstra now,

[00:39:22] Christina: Yeah,

[00:39:23] Brett: is how I, which is how I almost introduced myself at MacStack when I

[00:39:27] Christina: you should have. You should have. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like, I think if you wanted to, you could probably send an email and be like, you need to make this even more distinctive. I don’t want any Terpstra association, you know, with this, with this site. But

[00:39:40] Brett: Yeah, no, I probably should. And they probably, I mean, given how fast they changed all those

[00:39:45] Christina: yeah, no, I think they would. I think they would because I think,

[00:39:48] Jeff: There’s a potential,

[00:39:49] Christina: know.

[00:39:50] Jeff: there’s a potential upside that hadn’t occurred to me until just now, because I only saw downside, which is that all of us have posts online. Probably that we’re just like, maybe it’s just like, I have some blog [00:40:00] posts, like from my journalism days where I’m like, Oh, stupid. I was just on, I had a quota and I wrote this thing and I really embarrassed that’s even there.

[00:40:07] Jeff: If it gets flooded with fake stuff, then it can be like, I don’t know, is that real or fake? And then nobody can judge you. If I, when I meet people and describe my work or something, and then I imagine them going and Googling me and finding some city pages, which was like a village voice media, all. Alt, you know, weekly thing, post from like 2007.

[00:40:26] Jeff: I’m like, Oh God, anything I said is a lie. Anyway, I’m sorry that happened. What a mess.

[00:40:33] Christina: Yeah.

[00:40:33] Jeff: future.

[00:40:34] Christina: I mean, look, thank you, John Gruber for like finding this. He, he was trying to find out why something wasn’t working on his system and he did a search result and it came up in Google. So apparently, you know, because I guess if the, the, the, the domain, because of the number of backlinks I’m, I’m assuming, um, and I guess this is why they did buy the site and why they recreated the backlinks.

[00:40:53] Christina: They were able to still rank in Google News. Now that to me is a fundamental Google problem. Like you should look at a site like this. This should [00:41:00] never be allowed to be indexed and be part of. You know, your stuff and to be serving stuff, um, but it was already getting served there. And so he was surprised.

[00:41:07] Christina: And at first, like I said, like, I didn’t even know what I was looking at at first. And then I looked closer and I was like, wait a minute, they’re publishing new content. Okay. Absolutely not. Like,

[00:41:16] Brett: well, so my first thought was they, they bought it all and like recreated it and then just didn’t bother to, because like you said, the slugs didn’t change and the slugs contained the date, uh, which, which always disagreed with the published date. In the article itself, and I thought that was just laziness, but then I started reading my so called posts and did not, A, half the time, I didn’t remember writing about half the topics I was, had a byline on, and the ones that I did, the ones that I did remember, I’m like, that doesn’t sound like me.

[00:41:51] Brett: I, I would have, I would have written that more tongue in cheek. I, I know myself better than that.

[00:41:56] Christina: know, and you did, it was funny because, uh, The Verge did a, did a [00:42:00] comparison between like the same post with the, with different, with the same link, like from an art, one from archive and one, the rewritten one to show like what the differences were. And, um, uh, Jason from 404 Media, um, who, who was great, who I talked to at length about, um, uh, for the story and who was very kind and quoted me a lot.

[00:42:17] Christina: Um, he, um, did the same thing. Like, I was on the phone with him talking to him about it. And we were both going through things together and like finding like the differences in how the rewrites had happened. And then there were certain things that we would just like cut off. Like it’s like the archive didn’t grab the full thing of the page.

[00:42:33] Christina: And so it would just like sentences would like just cut off mid sentence in certain posts, just the laziest implementation.

[00:42:39] Brett: Yeah, if you, if you read that 404 article, you would think Christina was the only writer at 2A.

[00:42:46] Christina: Well, I’m sorry, but I, I, but also, never,

[00:42:50] Brett: he, uh, he asked me for a comment and I just wrote back, this is terrible. I hope we can find some recourse. That was like, at which I think he did quote,

[00:42:59] Christina: did quote, he [00:43:00] quoted you in SRAM and I was just, I was willing to get on the phone because here’s the thing about me, I will never, um, like, take, you know, like, lose the opportunity to, you know, take a bad situation and turn it into good publicity. Like, you know what I mean? Like,

[00:43:15] Jeff: Can we just say 404 Media, it is, it feels like a death wish to name your, your organization this, and I’m referring to all the times I go to my old stories and get a 404 error. Uh, it’s a little bit of a, you know, you don’t want that to be a self fulfilling prophecy.

[00:43:32] Brett: Right.

[00:43:32] Christina: Uh, they’re a great site, though. Uh, they’re, they’re, um, a, um, a, um, like, um, author owned site, kind of like Defector. It’s a bunch of people who used

[00:43:39] Brett: They’re, they’re new, right?

[00:43:40] Christina: yeah, used to be the motherboard team, and they’ve started it. They’re really, really good. Um, I, I pay for them. They do really great work. Um, they’re gonna be at XOXO, and so I’m looking forward to seeing them, um, there.

[00:43:51] Christina: But yeah, they’re, they’re really good people. So,

[00:43:54] Jeff: I feel like used to be advised has to be asterisks like the good ones.

[00:43:57] Christina: Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, no, but this is, this is, [00:44:00] this is, this is, this is, uh, uh, Jason Peebler and, and, and Joseph Cox and, um,

[00:44:04] Jeff: Yeah, the good ones. So

[00:44:06] Christina: uh, um, Sam Cole, um, and, um, Emmanuel Myberg. So yeah, really good people, uh, basically like the tech version of Defector. So, uh, happy, happy for them. Um, but yeah, it was, uh, it was very weird, very weird thing that happened to us last week, Brett.

[00:44:23] Christina: Like, it was nice though. It Well, it was weird, too, because, like, we got, I got an email, I, I saw, like, Mike Schramm’s email about the 404 request before I even saw Jason’s email in my inbox. And I was like, you know, it was funny because we got, like, this, this kind of group email from people, you know, some people you have, I haven’t talked to in, like, 15

[00:44:40] Brett: Right. It

[00:44:41] Christina: was kind of nice. It was. It was, it was, it was really, in a really terrible way, but it was also, like, glad everybody’s doing well, you know?

[00:44:48] Jeff: Yeah, nice way to check in.

[00:44:50] Macstock Reunion

[00:44:50] Brett: of reunions, uh, last weekend was Macstock, um,

[00:44:55] Christina: Tell us about that.

[00:44:56] Brett: was not heavily attended, [00:45:00] um, but the people that were there were so great to connect with. Um, I actually had a really good connection with Dave Hamilton from our network, Backbeat Media. Um, I have a little Queerclick. Um, of like two gay guys and, uh, various other just like trans and queer people.

[00:45:23] Brett: And I don’t, it wasn’t ever intentionally a queer click. Um, it just kind of, you know, you attract a certain type of person and you become. Um, but that’s super fun. And then like all the podcasters, uh, that I like were there and I gave a talk and right before my talk, like I had peppered some dad jokes into my talk as I am want to do, um, and right before my talk, Elle text me a real bad one.

[00:45:55] Brett: So I decided to open with it before I said anything I said, [00:46:00] and I got full crowd participation on this. I said, knock, knock.

[00:46:04] Christina: Who’s there?

[00:46:06] Brett: Yoda Lady.

[00:46:07] Christina: Yoda lady who? That’s funny.

[00:46:10] Brett: and it, like, everyone did it. And then I just paused. And then there was great laughter. I was, I was amazed how well it went over. Um, my other ones were, uh, Where Do Bad Rainbows Go?

[00:46:25] Brett: To Prism. It’s a, it’s a light, no, it’s a light sentence, but it gives them time to reflect. Um, and This Morning I Tried To Catch Fog, But I Missed.

[00:46:37] Jeff: Oh man,

[00:46:39] Brett: And then, you know, just a slight pause and then you just move on with your talk. It works well. It’s my, it’s my formula.

[00:46:46] Christina: It’s your, it’s your dad, it’s your dad joke formula.

[00:46:48] Brett: yeah, I have a dad joke formula. My first year, I actually had a slide that just said, um, pause for laughter after one of those jokes.

[00:46:58] Brett: And then I just like moved on to the [00:47:00] next slide. Um, I, I, I do, I do funny presentations. I’m pretty good at funny. I also think like I covered a lot of stuff. My, my focus was smart mailboxes. Which, as usual, like the first year I did something kind of out there was I just did a deep dive on Spotlight. And I couldn’t believe the number of people who A, hadn’t used Spotlight, or B, didn’t realize like how powerful it was.

[00:47:26] Brett: And this is five operating systems ago. And then I did one on tagging and nobody Nobody had, this is right after Finder tags, like after they Sherlocked OpenMeta. Um, I guess, is it Sherlocking if it was free software? Um,

[00:47:46] Christina: absolutely.

[00:47:47] Brett: yeah, so, so I did tagging and nobody, nobody had been using tagging. Um, and I still get people at MaxSoc coming up to me asking me questions about tags because they started using them after [00:48:00] my talk.

[00:48:01] Brett: Um, yeah, it’s, it’s a blast. I, I love MaxSac. Like I said, I think there were a total of 150 people dead this

[00:48:08] Christina: I mean, I still

[00:48:08] Brett: but every Every one of them was super cool. We had so much fun. Um, the power went out in the hotel when we were all hanging out at the bar. Um, so it’s pitch black and I’m just walking around gently touching people’s butts so they think they’re being pickpocketed. Good times. It was just good times.

[00:48:29] Christina: That’s cool. That’s awesome. I love that.

[00:48:36] Brett: Yeah,

[00:48:36] Jeff: the mall,

[00:48:37] Brett: one of these years I’ll get, I’ll get one or both of you to come. Um, it’s not, it’s not a prestigious event like Christina is used to going

[00:48:47] Christina: Oh, come on. It’s not a matter of that. It’s really more of a time of, like, finding, like, making sure I can, like, make the, like,

[00:48:52] Brett: Yeah, it’s a longer trip for you than it is for us. Um, which I understand. Uh, and I brought Erin there [00:49:00] last year, two years ago. Um, my coworker Erin and she gave a talk and I felt bad for bringing her. Um,

[00:49:10] Jeff: she should have been on the stage, like the show you and I saw two weeks ago.

[00:49:15] Brett: right, oh my God. But the audience at MaxDocSkews, um, Like 70 year old white guy, um, which is not the demographic for a young trans woman to give a talk on, uh, logic.

[00:49:31] Jeff: the demographic for your

[00:49:33] Christina: What is her band? Isn’t her band called Genital Shame?

[00:49:36] Jeff: Genital Shame. Yeah, did you talk Brett and I went to see Genital Shame.

[00:49:40] Brett: I think we talked about it a bit last time, but yeah, it was outstanding. I, yeah, I’m a huge genital shame fan now, which is a weird sentence to say without context. Which I feel is the point of the band name, just to make it, uh, not [00:50:00] blatantly offensive, but awkward. It’s an awkward, it’s an awkward thing to

[00:50:04] Jeff: Yeah, totally. It’s great.

[00:50:06] Brett: Yeah. All right.

[00:50:09] GrAPPtitude: App Recommendations

[00:50:09] Brett: Um, should we get to GrAPPtitude?

[00:50:11] Jeff: wa.

[00:50:12] Christina: let’s do it.

[00:50:13] Brett: Um, I’ll kick it off cause I have a, I have a new one. I learned about this app from Mike Schmitz at MacStack.

[00:50:20] Christina: Nice.

[00:50:22] Brett: I have not used it extensively yet, but I’ve used it enough that dropping the 80 for an individual license was kind of a no brainer. So it’s called ScreenStudio.

[00:50:34] Brett: I’m sorry. I don’t have notifications turned off. Um, I had, it’s called, it’s from Dave Hamilton. Um, and I can only read the preview of it and I don’t know where it goes, but, um, so ScreenStudio is kind of like ScreenFlow automated. So all this stuff, so ScreenFlow is a screen recording app that can do, uh, full screen recordings and then you can [00:51:00] add callouts and focus windows and all that fun stuff to make it a fun, watchable video.

[00:51:07] Brett: But, ScreenStudio can automate the whole idea of like focusing where you’re clicking, panning to it, making your mouse cursor bigger, and you can just kind of record your screen and it will automate the process of creating a truly informative screen recording out of it. And 100 percent worth 80 bucks. I mean, I think ScreenFlow costs 99

[00:51:37] Jeff: about every year, practically.

[00:51:39] Christina: Yeah. I mean, I mean, that’s basically how it works. Yeah. I’ve, um, I haven’t bought ScreenStudio yet, but I have a lot of friends who have, and it’s, um, uh, people have talked about how great it is. So yeah, it, it,

[00:51:48] Brett: much, it’s much bandied about.

[00:51:50] Jeff: Much bandied about. I’m going to try this. That’s really awesome.

[00:51:54] Christina: cause it really helps you do.

[00:51:55] Brett: trial. You can give it a shot.

[00:51:57] Christina: Yeah. Cause I think the thing that’s really nice about it is like, it makes it really [00:52:00] easy to do like the kind of the, the zooming effects and, and things like that, like to make it look really slick and, and the editing from what I understand is a lot faster. So a lot of my, a lot of my colleagues are really like it.

[00:52:10] Brett: you don’t get all the multi track, uh, kind of power of Screen Studio or ScreenFlow. I love editing in ScreenFlow. Um, I will load in, if I just need to do cuts and fades on something rather than dealing with like DaVinci Resolve or. or Final Cut. I’ll just load it in ScreenFlow and do my quick edits and I have all the shortcuts set up on my, um, between my Stream Deck and my Shuttle Express.

[00:52:42] Brett: I can flip through editing in seconds. Um, but, You do have decent editing and faster editing in ScreenStudio. And like you said, like, to add, uh, to make your cursor bigger in ScreenFlow, it’s a matter of selecting the [00:53:00] clip, um, and it doesn’t, if you’ve split the clip at any point, now you have to join clips, and then you add a callout, and then you set the settings for the cursor, blow it up to the size you want, add builds, add inouts, and by the time you’re done, it looks great, but you just spent.

[00:53:17] Brett: Uh, three, four minutes blowing up your mouse

[00:53:20] Jeff: It sounds like, okay, so let’s, let’s imagine a sort of flow chart here. So in a way it’s like you start with CleanShot to meet your initial screen, you know, screencast needs, right? Then maybe it’s, it’s the ScreenStudio, which is somewhere between ScreenShot And ScreenFlow. So you can, I can imagine the use for all of them

[00:53:39] Brett: When you say screen, do you mean clean shot?

[00:53:41] Jeff: CleanShot. Did I say ScreenShot?

[00:53:42] Brett: You said screenshot,

[00:53:44] Christina: But I understood what you were saying as, I understood what you were

[00:53:46] Jeff: CleanShot, everybody. Yeah, that’s all I got.

[00:53:51] Brett: clean shot to screen studio. Yeah. We could make one of those, which OS is best for you

[00:53:56] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[00:53:57] Christina: No, I mean, I think that, I think that’s exactly right. And I think for a lot of [00:54:00] people, like, I think like, again, like if you’re making a course, if you’re doing something where what is, what’s being published, you know, you need to really have like the power, like you said, the multi tracks and stuff, like something like ScreenFlow or Camtasia or frankly, even DaVinci Resolve or, or, you know, Final Cut or whatever is going to be better for you.

[00:54:15] Christina: But, um, yeah. But, um, based on what my colleagues have said, like, ScreenStudio is really, really good. And I think it’s also nice, like, you can set, like, what the background of your stuff looks like. And I think just, like, it’s just, it’s, it’s been, you know, defined in a much more modern way. Which I

[00:54:31] Brett: Yeah. And you can, you can save, you can save presets for doing like backgrounds on, uh, isolated windows or even like iPhone recordings and yeah. Um, Yeah, it

[00:54:45] Jeff: I tell you a cautionary auto zoom story?

[00:54:48] Brett: yes.

[00:54:49] Jeff: So I was meeting with a client once and she was at her desk and they had, uh, they had one of those situations where you had like a camera that would auto zoom to you or whatever. And it was like a little [00:55:00] bit above her head, probably like eight or 10 inches.

[00:55:03] Jeff: And it kept zooming in tight on her cleavage. And then zooming back. And I was, I had to turn off the video. I had to turn off the video. Cause I was like, I’m not going to say anything, but your cleavage has given off face vibes to your camera. I don’t know what, I don’t know what that means even, but you should know, but I’m not going to tell you.

[00:55:21] Jeff: Uh, it was the most awkward, and it happened like five times in like 15 minutes. It just kept going. Anyway.

[00:55:29] Brett: believe the correct sound effect is Awooga.

[00:55:34] Jeff: Anyway.

[00:55:35] Brett: Alright, who’s next?

[00:55:37] Christina: Um, I’ll go. Um, so my pick is, uh, Kaleidoscope 5 and, uh, cause that just came out this week. And, uh, Kaleidoscope we’ve talked about before, um, is, uh, it’s a longtime Mac app, a diff app, a diff tool, uh, that has, uh, changed, um, ownership hands a number of times, but the current owners who bought it, I think probably two years ago have done a really, really good job, [00:56:00] I think, with like, uh, Like, like they not only did completely rewrite the app and, and kind of bring back like all the good things that with it, but they’ve improved it so much.

[00:56:10] Brett: many of these apps change hands and then wither. And Kaleidoscope is, in the two years, I think they’ve been through two major version

[00:56:19] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. They, they did move to a subscription model, but they’ve been adding things to it all the time, which I think is really great. And so Kaleidoscope 5 came out. Um, one of the main new features, which I really like is that they’ve integrated Git. They’d started doing that in, in the last month.

[00:56:32] Christina: Releases, uh, with, with, with a, in and the for, uh, branch, but now it’s actually like built into kaleidoscope. So you can basically just like add in what gi repos you want and basically like as, as your, you know, as you can compare files that are in your, like your working directory. So you can compare like, okay, what are, you know, um, I, how can I compare the different, um, things between my working copy and this one, which I think is a really nice visual way of, of looking at stuff, um, and, and really, really good.

[00:56:59] Christina: [00:57:00] Um, they’ve also had, um, you know, uh. Like they have like a change set feature, which is, which is like, um, connected, um, to, to the Git stuff. And so you can kind of like view your change set and your file history of things. Um, and they even have that like as, you know, integrated in with the other apps they integrate with, but yeah, they have integration with Xcode and with VS code and, and JetBrains and, and things like that.

[00:57:24] Christina: And

[00:57:24] Brett: they, they do all that integration with a service. I mean, like, so they’ve always had some kind of Xcode and even like Safari debugger and integration, but what they added was a service where you can just select a hash for a commit and load up, um, Kaleidoscope, you know, with a right click services or assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

[00:57:47] Brett: And so any app that can display a hash for Any commit, uh, you can load that commit automatically in, uh, Kaleidoscope. And like you said, there’s like a full [00:58:00] repo browser, basically. You can, like, compare between branches, compare bet compare between commits. Um, it is, so I use Tower for most of my, uh, graphical Git management.

[00:58:14] Brett: And And it does a decent job of branch comparisons, but it also integrates with Kaleidoscope. So I do most of that in Kaleidoscope. I do all of my Git merge conflicts in Kaleidoscope. It’s brilliant for that. But yeah, I love

[00:58:31] Jeff: I love Kaleidoscope.

[00:58:33] Christina: yeah, really good app. So yeah, version five just came out and I’m, I’m really happy, um, uh, for them. Like, like, again, like most, like Brett said, most apps, when they change hands, like it’s kind of a death spiral. And that certainly was the case with Kaleidoscope, which has changed hands a number of times.

[00:58:47] Christina: Like it, you know, it had been like kind of this brilliant diff app. And like, I still like had it, but I was like,

[00:58:52] Brett: Yeah, we were all still promoting it, but we’re like, eh, we don’t know its future.

[00:58:56] Christina: Exactly. It’s like, this hasn’t been touched in a long time. We don’t know what’s going on. And like, they came [00:59:00] in and they, they did the really, really hard work of reviving it and making it better. And, um, um, so yeah, just huge, uh, huge fan.

[00:59:11] Brett: Nice. What you got, Jeff?

[00:59:13] Jeff: So I had a, we had someone over for dinner the other night. I’d never met him, him and his wife, and he’s a, he’s a singer and kind of a sound artist. And, um, he was telling me about a project he was working on. It’s really amazing, which is like, he was explaining how like robins, the birds, robins have like a vocabulary and, and they have their own kind of vocabulary that is different from other robins.

[00:59:34] Jeff: And, and up to like, I think 30 or 40 individual sort of Let’s say words. And, and he was describing, he’s been recording them with a shotgun mic and, and sampling them. And he pulls up his phone to show me the, the, um, the samples. And it’s just this nice little, you know, soundboard, like nine buttons. And, and he’s, he’s pushing them, showing them, he set it to like half speed, whatever, and it was the most elegant.

[00:59:58] Jeff: thing. And I was like, what app is this? [01:00:00] And it was this app called Koala, which is like a sampling app, like just super elegant, super low, like super quick, like, uh, learning curve. And so incredibly fun. And you can just start sampling your voice if you want. And, and this, so this. It gets me to a quiz. I have an 80s quiz for you because this happened to him and I, uh, we, we connected on something really special.

[01:00:25] Jeff: I don’t, but here’s the thing. Did you ever watch, let’s call it the Huxtable show,

[01:00:29] Christina: Yeah,

[01:00:30] Jeff: Cosby show. Okay. So do you happen to remember the episode where the family visits Stevie Wonder in the studio?

[01:00:37] Christina: Yeah, one of the best episodes ever. Yeah.

[01:00:39] Jeff: Yeah, so basically there’s this moment, it’s iconic in my life and among my friend group and my bands.

[01:00:46] Jeff: We’re all the same age and we all watched this episode when it aired in 1984, um, where Theo Huxtable, Stevie Wonder calls him over, Stevie Wonder invites him into the studio so he can show him all the cool shit he does. And it’s an amazing episode, it’s like as good as like a Mr. [01:01:00] Rogers episode basically because you actually learn and I actually learned I’d never heard of a sampler.

[01:01:04] Jeff: And so he says to Theo Huxtable. Say something like, what would you say at a party? And Theo goes, jammin on the one. And then it’s instantly a sample, and Stevie Wonder’s on his keyboard going, jammin on the one, jammin on the one, right? Okay, so put that aside. I have never heard that in the wild in my life.

[01:01:20] Jeff: So this guy has his sampler app in front of me, and I ask what it is, and he’s like, oh, let me show you how it works. He hits the thing, and we basically both go jammin on the one. And it was the most amazing thing. And what was just really super cool about it was that like for him, um, that was also his first time seeing into a studio and his first time seeing a sampler.

[01:01:39] Jeff: And he’s someone who does sample stuff all the time now. So I just want to like shout out to the Huxtable show. Um, for just like creating that opportunity and, and actually I can only imagine that there are many, many people out there for whom this was also like a, uh, just like a sort of portal opening moment.

[01:01:57] Jeff: So anyway, Koala is the, is the app. It’s [01:02:00] super awesome. Um, I’m working on pulling samples that I want to put into it now. Uh, and, and I, I love it so much. I already sampled some Mike Watt, uh, bass thumps with his voice, um, especially his song, Big Train. And that was thrilling.

[01:02:16] Brett: Nice.

[01:02:17] Jeff: So yeah, that’s what I got.

[01:02:18] Brett: Cool. I should, I should play with this. I used to be, I used to own like hardware samplers. Um, I had so much fun, like walking around with a field recorder. I

[01:02:28] Christina: Oh yeah, I bet.

[01:02:30] Brett: music, Nits, Nitsareb kind of stuff. And like recording like grocery carts, smashing together and turning, turning it into a crash cymbal.

[01:02:39] Jeff: And you can thousand percent do that here, right? Like it’s just anywhere you are, you just hit the button. It samples from your, from your mic. It’s fricking awesome.

[01:02:46] Christina: That’s so

[01:02:46] Brett: Love it. I’ll be playing with that. It’s been a long time.

[01:02:50] Jeff: Jamming on the one.

[01:02:52] Christina: Jammin on

[01:02:52] Brett: Jamming on the one. Is that the episode title?

[01:02:55] Jeff: the episode title it’s season two episode. I’ll put the link in right now. [01:03:00] Um,

[01:03:00] Brett: I was talking about our episode,

[01:03:01] Christina: the one. Yeah, I think

[01:03:03] Brett: on right

[01:03:03] Jeff: episode jamming on the one. Yeah, please.

[01:03:05] Christina: on the one. Yeah, I

[01:03:06] Brett: Unless it’s about toilets.

[01:03:08] Christina: Is that her birthday brain? But I think Jammin on the One.

[01:03:12] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:03:12] Brett: I like it.

[01:03:13] Jeff: I like

[01:03:13] Brett: And people will listen all the way through

[01:03:16] Jeff: And I’m putting that’s right,

[01:03:18] Brett: one hour mark to

[01:03:19] Jeff: come from? I’m gonna put the episode clip, the Stevie Wonder

[01:03:23] Christina: Yes, please

[01:03:24] Jeff: show notes now.

[01:03:25] Christina: No, that, that episode is so funny. Uh, like, I think because, because they ran and rerun so much. So I was not really cognizant, like, when it first aired, but it was in, you know, syndication for so long. Like, that’s such a good episode of TV. And

[01:03:37] Jeff: Oh, it’s amazing.

[01:03:39] Christina: just, like, the, the, the kids, like, the, the, the kid actors, like, genuinely glee that you can see of them being with Stevie, you know,

[01:03:46] Jeff: Yeah, like the actors themselves,

[01:03:48] Christina: like Lisa Bonet and Malcolm Schmall Warner, like, you can tell they are just, like, besides themselves, because, I mean, which, who wouldn’t be, right?

[01:03:56] Christina: But, yeah.

[01:03:57] Jeff: Yep. Completely. Yeah. Totally amazing. I [01:04:00] loved that show so, so very much.

[01:04:03] Christina: Yeah, it was a great show. It’s very disappointing that we have to, like, view it in a different context. Um, and, and I’ve, I’ve long been, like, a Lisa Bonet, like, wha So, I’ve, like, since probably 2005 or something, like, had, like, complicated feelings about the Cosby show even before all of his other stuff was more known.

[01:04:21] Christina: Just because I was like, just because I was like, it was fucked up what you did to, like, the best character on the show, like, you, you guys did Denise Dirty, fuck off. But like, the show itself, like, I, I can separate those things, um, and, uh, yeah. Very, very good TV. And like, that’s just, that’s one of those great sitcom episodes.

[01:04:38] Remembering Bob Newhart

[01:04:38] Christina: Um, speaking of good sitcoms, and actually from people who are not problematic, um, Bob Newhart died, um,

[01:04:45] Jeff: I know. Hi, Bob. I pulled up some Bob Newhart on YouTube

[01:04:50] Brett: how, how many years did he make it without becoming problematic?

[01:04:53] Jeff: I mean, 94. Yeah.

[01:04:56] Brett: that’s a good

[01:04:57] Jeff: And my brother, Daryl is my other brother, Daryl.

[01:04:59] Brett: [01:05:00] And even had like a recurring and adorable part on the Big Bang

[01:05:05] Christina: Yeah,

[01:05:05] Jeff: Oh, I never saw him on that. I only see that show in the hotels.

[01:05:08] Christina: And, and he was in Elf. And like, like, it’s funny, like, that’s

[01:05:11] Jeff: Oh yeah. No. Incredible in

[01:05:13] Christina: so good at Elf. Well, I mean, it was funny. Go

[01:05:16] Jeff: Go ahead. No, no, you, you.

[01:05:17] Christina: No, I was saying, I was having, I was explaining him to some, um, somebody yesterday who I was like, no, you know, if you saw him, you would know who he was. I’m like, I’m not saying that he invented deadpan humor, but I’m not not saying it either.

[01:05:28] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. So, uh, can I just share, can we go out on an elf story? Um, so, uh, as my, as my wife said when she posted, uh, about this, like, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who think elf is hilarious and those who don’t. Um, and so she had just read an article and the article was like about the filming of the movie and of course James Caan’s in it.

[01:05:53] Jeff: God, what an amazing person and what a bizarre place for him to be, but also

[01:05:57] Christina: so good in it too.

[01:05:58] Jeff: And, and the [01:06:00] bit was that, I don’t know who was, I don’t know if he was telling the story or Will Ferrell or someone else, but apparently in the, in the shooting of that movie, at some point he said to Will Ferrell, I just don’t think you’re funny.

[01:06:09] Jeff: Like, I don’t get you. And, and like the end of it is great because apparently like while he was shooting it, he just could not figure out why this is funny, but saw the movie and realized this is incredible. And I think that the fact that that’s how he felt about Will Ferrell in that movie must contribute to how amazing he is as that father in

[01:06:28] Christina: Absolutely. No, without a doubt, without a doubt. Um, also, fun fact about Bob Newhart, he won the Grammy in 1961 for Best New Artist and Best Album of the Year.

[01:06:40] Jeff: Hell yeah. Go get him, Bobby.

[01:06:43] Brett: he had an album.

[01:06:44] Christina: we had a number of comedy albums, right? Like, so it was for a

[01:06:46] Brett: Oh, sure, sure. Okay.

[01:06:48] Christina: he also won, like, Best Comedy Performance Spoken, but like, that’s how crazy, like, that’s, that’s nuts to think about. Like, the Album of the Year in 1961 was not, like, Uh, a rock record or, you know, like jazz or anything else.

[01:06:59] Christina: [01:07:00] It was fucking Bob Newhart. The button down mind of Bob Newhart, one album of the year, which is amazing. Yeah, no, they were very

[01:07:08] Brett: that up. I’ve never heard his, his, I’ve never heard his recorded

[01:07:12] Christina: I

[01:07:12] Jeff: So, Deadpan

[01:07:14] Brett: him from TV and that’s about it.

[01:07:17] Jeff: and Elf.

[01:07:17] Christina: And Elf. Elf. Elf. We love Elf.

[01:07:20] Jeff: Well, I’m not going to get any sleep now because all I’m going to think about is Bob Newhart. I might have to watch a few, a few episodes tonight.

[01:07:25] Christina: Yeah.

[01:07:27] Brett: All right. I love you guys.

[01:07:28] Jeff: Hey, love you back. Happy birthday, brother. Get some birthday sleep.

[01:07:31] Christina: Get some sleep.