Imperfect Signaling Mechanism
John:
so this is the show right i guess our first sponsor uh if you want to feel free it's been 18 minutes i guess we might as well i thought you were gonna cut all this out a mere uh two or three days ago we were talking about bit code and i how it may or may not allow apple to change cpu architectures i was coming down on the side of
John:
Mostly not because bitcode is an LLVM thing and LLVM IR actually is architecture specific in certain ways.
John:
But I didn't have details on what those ways were.
John:
Bruce Holt on Twitter sent some information about that.
John:
He said it's architecture specific in the same way that C code might be.
John:
So, you know, when you specify int or float or pointers or whatever in C, the C standard doesn't dictate what size those are.
John:
The size is dependent on the target architecture that you're compiling for.
John:
I mean, these days, you know, they're all similar sizes for, you know, 64-bit architectures and stuff.
John:
But the C standard doesn't dictate what size those should be, which is why you should do size of int and all that good stuff and not just assume that it's 16 or 32 or 64.
John:
Same thing with, like, float and double or whatever.
John:
uh and so when uh the client compiler outputs lvm intermediary code it burns in the sizes it has it has to nail down the sizes of every single thing so at that point it makes the decision and those decisions about the sizes and potentially also the alignment of structs and stuff like that is made at the time the ir is generated and after that if you go to a different cpu architecture we said this about the ending this is a similar thing but if you go to a different cpu architecture after that
John:
it's too late the sizes are already have already been determined so the bit code is not portable across cpu architectures in that way uh and i i asked well what if you could you create lvmir that is more neutral i said well if you didn't use like the the types that have indeterminate sizes everywhere you could and i was wondering like if swift nailed down the sizes of everything to a specific architecture that it wouldn't make much of a difference but i guess you still have alignment issues and stuff like that anyway um
John:
So thanks for the details on that.
John:
I would still love to see nitty-gritty source code, show me some sample programs, compile them to different architectures, and show me how the bit code is.
John:
I'll do that on my own.
John:
If I was writing an article about, say, the new version of OS X, I would somehow find a way to incorporate a big, long section about bit code.
John:
Because, hey, I did it with Swift, and it's not really OS X related.
John:
But I'm not, so now I'm just kind of winging it and collecting feedback from people on Twitter and stuff.
John:
uh but yeah like i said last week it's uh seems like at this point it's much more about taking advantage of new instructions or new uh register sets or new vector units or uh being able to ditch old instructions when they're not useful anymore i'm sure there's lots of stuff in arm 7 and arm 7s that apple
Marco:
does not want to support forever uh and so or whatever the heck the watch is based on i don't even know if that is the watch you might know this mark it was the watch arm 7s when you do target for the watch i think i saw something that it was arm 7k whatever that is oh yeah yeah i remember that it was probably from steve troughton smith uh from his various poking around and tweets and hacking and everything i'm pretty sure he had like a like a dump screen showing up like what what is what this is running on this thing and it was i think it was v7k but i don't really know what that is
John:
I don't think anybody knows yet exactly what the watch, what the S1 is.
John:
Is it like a little mini A5 or an A6 or is it some weird hybrid?
John:
I haven't seen anything about that.
John:
Have you guys?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
I heard rumors that it was somewhere around A4, A5, but no one really has codified that.
Marco:
I don't know who all is hacking it besides Steve Trout and Smith.
Marco:
I'd be curious to see something like Geekbench or some known benchmark run on it so that we can kind of try to guess where it fits on that spectrum.
John:
I was thinking of someone slicing the top off and aiming a microscope or whatever they do to actually see what it looks like inside there.
John:
Someone eventually does that.
Marco:
Yeah, but didn't Shipworks try that and they were basically like, well, it's some cores and we can't really tell.
Marco:
I don't think we even know if it's dual core or not.
John:
I mean, I guess you could kind of tell the family lineage of it.
John:
Maybe if it has the exact same layout and it's just a shrink, you could tell.
John:
But anyway, what I'm getting is that the S1 potentially uses some...
John:
architecture decisions from a long time ago and that Apple has grand plans for the future and would love to, say, replace one, you know, multiply add instruction with a much better multiply add instruction or a vector instruction or some other thing.
John:
And if the watch is bit code from day one, they can do that and no one has to recompile the wraps.
John:
They will just abandon, you know, the S3 will not even include that old crappy instruction.
John:
It will only include new ones and there'll be no problem because they will just retarget the bit code that everyone uploads.
Marco:
One theory I heard that I think is really interesting and possibly might explain, because if you look at this, as we keep learning more about big code, mostly from you, and as we keep seeing things like this is really not going to enable things like an automatic ARM Mac transition, stuff like that, is it worth all this complexity and potential risk for whatever they want to do with it if it's not going to be something big like an architecture change?
Marco:
And one interesting theory I heard was that rather than just being able to run apps on new little instruction tweets like that, that they actually might be able to use the app library that's out there to test while developing new instructions because they can change the architecture because they have that ARM license to do that.
Marco:
And so if they add their own instructions or if they are actually changing the chip design, they will now have a body of apps that they can then tweak to use their new things and see during the development stage to use that and say, is this optimization worth it?
Marco:
And they can actually design the chip to fit the apps that are out there in the world and to benefit them most, which I think is really interesting and interesting.
Marco:
That, I think, is a much more sizable advantage than just being able to have a little bit faster vector things once things are actually already out there when the instructions were developed in a black box somewhere.
John:
They already have, I think, a very good body of code.
John:
It's nice that they can test against real-world third-party apps in case third-party apps are doing weird stuff.
John:
And maybe Apple doesn't have as many games or whatever.
John:
But I think they have an adequate code.
John:
Because that's what they've been doing with all the things.
John:
All the A, whatever chips they've made.
John:
They use their own applications.
John:
They use the OS itself.
John:
They use their own frameworks.
John:
Like, I don't think they're hurting for some code to test against.
John:
I think it's nice that they have the third-party code there.
John:
But I wonder, like, with millions of apps, like, how do they even decide what counts as representative?
John:
Do they even know?
John:
I guess maybe they know the most downloaded apps.
John:
But do they know?
John:
They don't know how many apps are still launched.
John:
I don't know if they even...
John:
well they do if people opted in because that's all in the app analytics stuff on itunes connect but it only applies to people who opted into that checkbox on startup that says share data with apple and developers they know how long they run them and stuff like i'm wondering how they even pick a representative sample but anyway yeah i have more more testability and more like real world testability is good but that's what they've always been doing with with their chips is
John:
They're designed in concert with everything else that they do to improve things for their OS, for their frameworks, for the applications that they run and their users run.
Casey:
I mean, wouldn't it make sense if they just grabbed, say, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and I can't even think of what else.
Casey:
But, you know, there's got to be the same 5 to 10 apps that are on probably like 90% of all iPhones.
Casey:
And obviously those statistics are made up.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
You know, if you grab just five or 10 apps, you would probably get an overwhelming amount of the usage of an average person's iPhone.
Casey:
I mean, most average people spend an inordinate amount of time, probably in messages, which obviously they have the code for, and Facebook.
Casey:
You know, and so whatever the kids these days are using, I'm sure if they had that and a couple other things, that would make a big difference.
Casey:
And it would prevent, you know, the, oh, here's a new version of iOS.
Casey:
Oh, and by the way, Facebook doesn't work because for whatever reason, they're too slow to update.
John:
I think those apps, though, probably end up in Apple's framework code most of the time.
John:
That's why I mentioned games, because games are the ones that are going to use the least of Apple's framework code.
John:
And they're also the thing that Apple doesn't really have any of to test.
John:
And I think they're a very popular genre of application on all of Apple's iOS devices.
John:
So things like Facebook and Twitter...
John:
i would imagine spend most of their time in like ui kit core animation all sorts of things that apple controls that they it's nice to be able to say oh let's test the actual facebook app but then again like facebook could change its apps totally and have you know like the paper app was all crazily architected and stuff so there's only so much you can hang your hat on with third-party stuff but yeah like i said more uh apps is better and one more thing we haven't gotten this feedback yet but we just want to uh say it so it's uh
John:
preemptively clear whether or not bitcode helps apple what could potentially help apple with a transition of say max to arm it doesn't matter bitcode or not if apple wants max to go to arm it can do it it has done it before you don't need bitcode to change architectures
John:
none of this rules out max going arm at some point in the future so i don't want someone to listen to this and say remember when bitcode came out and you said the max would never go arm we totally are not saying that i might say that i well whatever i think it's i'm saying feasibility i'm saying it's still totally positive because we didn't have bitcode for the 68k to power pc transition and you know for the uh power pc to x86 like
John:
It is not something that Apple needs to have.
John:
Bitcode does not need to be part of their transition.
John:
If they decide they're going to transition, they can still do it the quote unquote old fashioned way.
John:
And we've talked about this a million times in the fast and it's going to be harder than it was in the previous transitions.
John:
And what are the upsides and what are the downsides and blah, blah, blah.
John:
So I would say Bitcode is neutral as far as max changing architecture or anything in the future.
Marco:
Well, but again, I would say, you know, don't forget that whenever we've had the architecture changes in the past, they've come with large performance increases.
Marco:
And in this case, it probably wouldn't.
Marco:
So that has afforded us luxuries like translation layers and virtualization and emulation that were possible in the previous ones that would be unrealistic in the current environment if going to ARM.
Casey:
But you're defining performance as speed.
Casey:
What if performance is defined in the future as battery life?
Casey:
So, yes, you're right that you would lose speed, especially when running x86 stuff.
Casey:
But what if batteries double or triple in capacity, not necessarily because of the batteries themselves, but because ARM is so much better on batteries than Intel is?
Casey:
I actually think you're right, but for the sake of playing devil's advocate, it very well could be that Apple in the future measures performance more by battery life than it does raw speed.
Marco:
I mean, it's possible, but again, I think the issue there would be if you have an ARM CPU running x86 code in some kind of emulation layer, even if the CPU is inherently more efficient, which, as we've discussed in the past, Intel has a process advantage over lots of people, but...
Marco:
Even if it's more efficient, you still have the ARM CPU basically working its butt off to emulate the x86 functionality.
Marco:
So you'd have the CPU in a very high power state most of the time.
Marco:
So I think it would be a rough transition.
Marco:
Now, Apple could just say, hey, we're making this new line of Macs that a lot of people are going to buy.
Marco:
and you better just recompile your apps to work on it because we just won't emulate x86.
Marco:
x86 apps just won't work on them.
Marco:
And if you want your app to be run on these, you better just change it.
Marco:
And they might be willing to do that and take the risk that people might not buy the thing.
Marco:
But ultimately, I think another big problem for ARM Macs, as we're seeing the direction of the ports ding and the buses...
Marco:
A big problem for our Macs is the lack of Thunderbolt.
Marco:
Because if USB 3.0 is now being tied into Thunderbolt, which it functionally might be, and if Thunderbolt peripherals become very commonplace and very much in demand, granted, as we see from the MacBook 1, a lot of people don't need a lot of peripherals.
Marco:
And you can have computers that are not compatible with most or any peripherals in the market, and they can sell okay.
Marco:
But that's another huge mark against our Macs.
Marco:
Again, they could make them, but if they are not compatible with all of the cool stuff that we're going to have over USB-C, Thunderbolt 3.1, whatever, in the next couple of years, and they probably can't be because I think Intel really owns that whole thing and is not going to let it go, then that's a problem.
Marco:
And that might prevent ARM Macs from ever being anything more than the MacBook One role in the lineup.
Marco:
And the MacBook One, as we see now, is already fine with Intel chips.
Marco:
It wouldn't be that much faster with an ARM chip if it had to keep the same battery life.
Marco:
It might even be slower.
Marco:
And we haven't even seen Skylake yet.
Marco:
Skylake might be coming out in six months or a year and...
Marco:
allegedly Skylake is going to be a big deal for power consumption.
Marco:
So, like, Intel might really step up the game again in six months or a year and leap even further ahead or at least maintain its lead in practicality and performance and everything.
Marco:
So, I just... I don't see a future of our Macs.
Marco:
I really don't.
Marco:
I think it's something that everyone talks about as this rumor unicorn of, oh, wouldn't this be great?
Marco:
We'd have infinite battery life.
Marco:
And the truth is,
Marco:
not only would it not be that great, not only would it not have as good a battery life as you think to get the kind of performance we would need to make it usable, but also, even if it gave us tons of extra battery life, Apple would just delete more of the battery and make the thing thinner and lighter.
Marco:
They wouldn't give us a computer that lasted a week.
Marco:
They would just give it a much smaller battery and say, look, we made it thinner.
Marco:
Because that's what they do.
Marco:
So it's this pipe dream, I think, that it probably won't ever happen.
Marco:
And if it ever happens, I don't think it would really be that compelling.
Casey:
You know, I actually think you make a really great point about Thunderbolt not really being a thing on ARM.
Casey:
But if the MacBook One, if that is positing the theorem or presenting the theorem that that ports aren't really that big a deal anymore.
Casey:
And if a lot of people are buying the MacBook One, then does not having Thunderbolt really matter?
Yeah.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
It depends.
Marco:
If you look at things they do in the laptop lineup, everything they do, even at the low end, you can tell that they're doing this to move forward into the future.
Marco:
Looking at the MacBook 1, it is a very, very high chance that
Marco:
the things about the MacBook One will propagate up the lineup into whatever the MacBook Air is, or if it goes away, it'll just skip that and then go to the MacBook Pro, right?
Marco:
And so if the MacBook One doesn't... Well, I mean, next year, I'm sure the MacBook One will support Thunderbolt over USB-C and whatever.
Marco:
But if they made an ARM Mac at the bottom that didn't, I think that would signal the imminent end of Thunderbolt support.
Marco:
That would be like, all right, well, this is the beginning of the end for Thunderbolt, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And I don't think they're going to do that yet.
Marco:
And maybe in the future they can do that.
Marco:
Once Thunderbolt is old and crusty and something else comes along that maybe can be powered by an ARM chipset, maybe that time will come on an infinite timescale.
Marco:
But for the next, I don't know, five years or whatever, I don't see it happening.
John:
You could always just buy Intel, give the money back to the shareholders, shut down the PC industry.
John:
Just use their fabs and their technology.
Yeah.
John:
We've talked about this in many past shows.
John:
If you think this was an incomplete discussion of Intel versus ARM on the Mac, you're right.
John:
I don't know what the old show numbers were, but suffice it to say that we've talked about this a lot.
John:
The only point I wanted to make was that bitcode is neutral.
John:
Does not help.
John:
Does not hurt.
John:
So whatever analysis we had before and whatever view we have on it now, bitcode is not.
John:
I assume you would agree, Marco, bitcode is not a factor in your analysis of whether or not ARM on the Mac makes sense.
Marco:
Not at all.
Marco:
No, I don't think it's relevant really in the slightest because it doesn't enable that to happen easily.
Marco:
And, you know, all the other problems don't really have anything to do with the software.
John:
I would say that Apple having sort of the quote unquote their own compiler being like the driving force between behind LLVM and Clang and all that stuff and having their own language is
John:
Those are positive factors in any CPU architecture change in the future.
John:
And arguably, as they make their new ARM chips or iOS devices, they are sort of quote unquote changing architectures because like, you know, the architecture is ARM 7, ARM 7S, ARM 7K.
John:
Those aren't the same as going from ARM to x86.
John:
but apple is changing architecture and it is important it does make it easier for them to make those changes the fact that they own and control all of this or not really own i don't know how to phrase this but the fact that they are the driving the force behind their own compiler and now their own language and it has all these neat features that does help them do these little things which is kind of the point of bitcode but not so much a factor in huge leaps from you know arm to intel
Marco:
Well, I think it also helps that as time goes on, more people are writing more code in higher-level ways where the byte order and the alignment of a struct and the exact byte size of an integer doesn't matter as much anymore.
Marco:
People are writing higher-level code like Swift and other languages that are not C-based, and they still have access to some of those things in certain places, but...
Marco:
usage of them I think is going down a lot overall and so when Apple eventually needs to make that transition to some other architecture where they have to make a change in something like by order or you know is word size still a thing or you know struct alignment stuff like that like if they have to make a change that would that would be beyond the abilities of bit code to iron over I think it would not be as painful as it was in the past for for software developers
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So speaking of Swift, tell us about Swift 2, John.
John:
This is just a minor point that I forgot to get to on the last show where we talked about Swift 2.
John:
And that is that the people making Swift 2 and Swift 1 and the whole deal, the people who are making that language and the people who are making Clang and LLVM for that matter,
John:
What those people do all day is, yes, they talk about language features and, you know, decide what the Swift language is going to look like.
John:
But the compiler people, they're writing C++ code all day.
John:
Like, that's what their job is because Clang and LVM are not written in Swift.
John:
Clang and LVM are written in C++.
John:
I don't know if there's any C component at all.
John:
But anyway...
John:
They're programming a C++ all day.
John:
And that's got to be kind of annoying.
John:
And I was thinking, wouldn't it be neat if Swift is supposedly this language that can scale from writing an operating system all the way up to writing a GUI application and all the way over to like writing just one off scripts and stuff, which is the stated goal of the language.
John:
Wouldn't it be nice if you could write LLVM and Clang and Swift as well?
John:
Which is would be nice, but it's not currently the case.
John:
And then people, the people, it's it's the awkward situation of if the people who are designing your language are not using your language primarily to do their work.
John:
It's not the end of the world, because obviously the people who are designing Swift are using Swift to do many things, if only to write the test suite and all sorts of other stuff.
John:
But and the term I had in the notes for this is self-hosting, which I think is the wrong term.
John:
But whatever the term is for.
John:
No, I thought that's right.
John:
maybe i don't know i look at the wikipedia page for it and i read the definition they had there and didn't seem exactly right but anyway i believe it's called freebooting are you making up these terms now nope that's a real word all right well anyway i rather than use the term for it which i'm not sure i'm just going to explain the thing i think it would be great if uh the people who are working on the swift language could also write the swift compiler and swift and clang and lvm and so because that would really prove the sort of lower end of swift's usefulness
John:
if uh if you know that would be a proof of concept for the language see we can use this language to write the compiler that compiles this language and compiles other language in fact this is a great language to write compilers in uh that is not that has not yet been demonstrated as far as i'm aware we don't know where apple is using swift because they're super secretive and stuff and it's not open source yet so other people aren't using it but
John:
I think that would be cool.
John:
And I think the people designing Swift would like it too, because if they liked C++ so much, they wouldn't have made Swift.
John:
They would have just said, hey, the new language for Apple's developers is C++, and then everyone would have had an aneurysm.
Casey:
It's so true.
Casey:
I could swear, and I don't have a link handy, but I could swear that several years ago, Mono, which is an open source cut on the C Sharp compiler...
Casey:
it declared itself as self-hosting.
Casey:
So that's why I think you were right, which means that in order to compile code in Mono, you use a compiler written in Mono, which is just, that's weird.
Casey:
But so I'm pretty sure that self-hosting is exactly what you're looking for.
John:
Yeah, that's the term I've heard when people talk about Perl 6, because, you know, the Perl 6 parser and language syntax is written in Perl 6 and all sorts of stuff like that.
John:
But yeah, it's a fun Hall of Mirrors thing.
John:
But it's not that crazy.
John:
Like, what do you think C compilers are written in?
John:
Usually written in C, right?
Casey:
Yeah, that's just, it melts my head thinking about that.
Casey:
So weird.
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Casey:
All right, so real-time follow-up.
Casey:
I'm looking at the mono C-sharp compiler page, which we'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
MCS was able to parse itself on April 2001.
Casey:
MCS compiled itself for the first time on December 28, 2001.
Casey:
MCS became self-hosting on January 3, 2002.
Casey:
So obviously there's some differences here, and I don't know what they are, but self-hosting was at least in the right direction, John.
Marco:
I think you're up so fast.
Marco:
I know, it's so sad.
Casey:
Anyway, John, speaking of growing up, tell me about your nose.
John:
I meant to tweet this back at WWDC with the actual day count, but I had my new Apple Watch for, I believe, less than a week before I touched it with my nose for the first time.
John:
And I didn't do it like, you know, I was not... I only realized after I had done it that, hey, you just touched your watch with your nose.
John:
So it was like three or four days, so...
John:
Nose touching is a thing.
John:
Just wanted to put that out there.
John:
Haven't done it since, but it was a situation.
John:
I was holding a bunch of stuff and like a notification came in or something.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
So if I recall correctly, we decided that Mike was wrong about the six plus, but we are deciding unequivocally that Mike was right about nose tapping.
John:
I'm not willing to assign nose tapping to one person as the creator or discoverer of that concept.
John:
Had I never known that nose touching was a thing, I assure you I would have still touched it with my nose.
John:
And speaking of not assigning one person to a concept that is broader than that, someone just tweeted at me that the Oculus CEO, I think, or founder or whatever, described the Oculus as the Palm Pilot of VR and mentioned that...
John:
It's not the iPhone of VR.
John:
There is no iPhone of VR, blah, blah, blah.
John:
When I was away from ATP, a guest hosting on Rocket, we talked about VR, and I believe at that point I compared the current status state of VR to the Palm Pilot, saying that it's kind of feasible, it's better than the Newton, but nothing is the iPhone of VR yet.
John:
Did I coin that phrase or did I read an interview with the Oculus CEO from six months ago where he said the exact same thing?
John:
I think it's much more likely that I read an interview from six months ago and that the CEO has been using the same analogy on all of his press and funding tours for years.
John:
So I also do not take credit for this, unless I really was the first person to say it, in which case, yay me.
John:
But I'm pretty sure he probably said it and I probably read it years ago.
John:
It's still apt, though.
John:
It's a good analogy.
John:
So in conclusion, Mike was right.
Marco:
In conclusion, Mike does not own the nose.
Marco:
I don't think I'm willing to say he was wrong about the 6+, though.
Marco:
Even though I am personally back to using my 6, I don't know what I'm going to do when the new ones come out, presumably this fall.
Marco:
But I'm tempted to try going the bigger phone again, because there really are a lot of advantages to it.
Marco:
And there are times where I kind of miss it.
John:
That concept is entirely ridiculous, that somehow he would be right or wrong about what?
John:
About that that size of phone is the appropriate phone for everybody?
Marco:
Well, he single-handedly invented the iPhone 6 Plus.
John:
Yeah, or that he's the first one who said this size of phone might be something that people like, or that he found one person who previously said they hate the big size, but then found that they liked it.
John:
It's ridiculous.
John:
There is no right or wrong here.
John:
I know it's just a joke, but I just want to clarify for the people who are actually trying to follow this, that this is pointless, and there's no such thing as Mike being right or wrong, because...
John:
What he's right or wrong around is nonsensical.
John:
Like it can't even be described.
John:
Or if you do describe it, you would read it and realize how ridiculous it is.
Marco:
There are no jokes in Syracuse accounting.
John:
Yeah, apparently.
John:
You know, I like jokes to have a foundation or have some sort of point, but this is like serious consideration.
John:
Oh, Mike is right.
John:
Mike is wrong.
John:
No, it's terrible.
Casey:
You're really critiquing this right now.
John:
I'm just saying, like, let's have something to hang our hat on.
John:
You know, let's have something that if we described it, it would make some sense.
Marco:
Your joke does not qualify as a joke.
Casey:
I think the issue here is that Mike was the first one to get the six plus out of our little group of friends and kept waxing poetic about how wonderful it is.
Casey:
And then all of you weak souls, ahem, Marco, ahem, Stephen Hackett, decided to listen to him and caved largely because of his browbeating.
John:
Is that why?
John:
Is it because of his brow beating?
Casey:
I thought that it was tried.
Casey:
Well, Marco, you probably bought one as a test unit, but I'm pretty sure Steven tried it just so he could look Mike in the eye and say, oh my God, you're so wrong about this.
Casey:
And then as it turns out, Mike was right in that there are plenty of advantages to the six plus.
John:
but mike was right that like and no one else said there were advantages like plus the millions of people who bought them who have been begging apple for a larger phone who've been using larger phones for years and android they're just but mike was the one who said you know what big phones guys they're actually kind of good well and and he wasn't the only one to like like you know renee got one on day one and renee like when i asked him about it he was saying oh yeah it's amazing but mike was the one who was like actively like campaigning for it in public right he's on the payroll of big phone yeah
John:
literally anyway this is mike hurley by the way in case you're wondering who that is we have got complaints that we have a lot of we've been yelling about mike for the past five minutes and if you don't listen to the show you don't know who mike hurley is we will link to mike in the show notes but what do you even link to i guess there's relay
Casey:
i don't even know i guess his twitter account i don't know this is this is i mike that we're talking about and uh and yeah he's going to hear this and he's going to fall over either very excited or very sad that syracusa does not believe in mike was right i'm not really sure which i just think it's it's not a good meme nothing is so perfect that it can't be complained about and getting tangled up in that meme like it's just there's there's no way to win the only winning move is not the mike
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
What is happening?
Marco:
This is what happens when we record on a different day.
Marco:
Everything's all off.
John:
Yeah, we're a little bit punchy.
John:
We just recorded the last episode a couple days ago.
John:
Please bear with us.
Casey:
By the way, that was a War Games reference, John.
Casey:
I just want you to know that I know that was a War Games reference.
John:
Good job.
John:
You've been doing good in the super obvious references that you should always get lately, Casey.
Casey:
I'm very proud of my... Wait, do you hear this?
Casey:
Do you hear this?
Marco:
that's me patting myself in the back good job just happened wow this show's taking a turn all right we're done with we're done with follow-up now right our second sponsor is hover hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names especially if you pronounce it the right way go to hover.com and use promo code lost backpack for 10 off your first purchase nice i know it's not lost you know you knew where it was the whole time it's
Marco:
just not with you forgotten backpack maybe but code is lost backpack that gives you 10 off your first purchase now hover is a domain registrar and i have tried so many of these things and i have bought many domain names in my life as a nerd uh i first bought domain names back when they cost 75 a year uh from god knows who in the year 2000 they don't cost 70 anymore thank god but uh
Marco:
There are so many registrars now, way more than we used to have, and most of them are just terrible.
Marco:
I have tried many of them, and the only one I like a lot really is Hover.
Marco:
And I can say that honestly.
Marco:
I'm not just BSing.
Marco:
I'm not just saying this because it's an ad.
Marco:
I have tried many.
Marco:
I have tolerated many, but the only one I like really is Hover.
Marco:
Man, I've bought them so many other places in the past.
Marco:
And usually when you're checking out, you have to uncheck a bunch of optional services.
Marco:
Or they kind of try to trick you into buying things you don't need.
Marco:
Or you have to uncheck the box that says spam me forever or don't give me privacy to actually get privacy or not spam or whatever.
Marco:
There's so many little gotchas in most of these registrars that it's not very good.
Marco:
Or even the ones that try to be nice, because they aren't all evil.
Marco:
Even the ones that try to be nice are often just really hard to use or really cluttered or just really confusing.
Marco:
Just overall just not great.
Marco:
And Hover, using Hover's tools, using their control panel...
Marco:
it's so much better night and day compared to every other panel i've ever seen even the ones that aren't that bad hover is still way better than those uh it is really just again night and day compared to anyone else uh you even get a cool thing called value transfer service this is again free so what they do if you want you don't have to but if you want you can give them the login to your old registrar and they will do the move for you if you want to move names into it
Marco:
And so they will transfer everything over properly to make sure things like DNS, which can be tricky to move over.
Marco:
If you make a little mistake, that could really mess you up for a few days or for a few hours.
Marco:
And all the transfer codes and the locks and everything, they can do all that for you if you don't want to deal with it.
Marco:
They also have great email hosting solutions.
Marco:
If you want to get your own custom email address for your domain, $20 a year gets you a fully functional email account with 10 gigs of storage.
Marco:
$29 a year gets you the big mailbox.
Marco:
This is in capital letters, the big mailbox.
Marco:
A full terabyte of storage.
Marco:
So a terabyte of email for just $29 a year, plus some other nice bonuses that come with that.
Marco:
And if you need just email forwarding, like if you already have an email host like I do, I have a bunch of these little things.
Marco:
If you want email forwarding,
Marco:
Just $5 a year gets you email forwarding on a domain.
Marco:
So you can keep the mail hosting you already have and still receive mail at the new domain that you just bought.
Marco:
So anyway, go to Hover.com.
Marco:
Check out all the cool stuff.
Marco:
Buy some domains.
Marco:
You can get all the jokey new ones, .plumbing and .diamonds and all those...
Marco:
crazy ones or you can get you know the nice respectable old ones like dot com if you can still find any uh anyway go to hover.com use promo code lost backpack that's lost backpack for 10 off your first purchase thank you very much to hover for sponsoring our show once again i love that promo code it's delightful
Casey:
So let's talk about some news from WWDC, specifically around WebKit.
Casey:
And now there's some new extension points into WebKit and you can make content blockers.
Casey:
I don't know, Marco, do you want to tell us a little more about this or is this more, would you like to punt this to John?
John:
um i can do i can go over the the brief version of it and and john and i are actually in the session video which many people have pointed out to us on twitter i'm glad that we're not like uh looking at our watches or phones and we're actually paying attention i guess that's why you they would put us in they pick the audience shots they pick the one of the people who are paying attention so yeah we really at least i really do pay attention marco i think he was doing something else in that video but
Marco:
No, I was watching that one.
Marco:
I'm looking at the slides.
Marco:
I'm not sure where you're looking.
Marco:
Anyway, so the idea here is they know everyone's using ad blockers, and the way most ad blocker extensions for browsers work is they have to evaluate their own code on every load request.
Marco:
So every time something is requested to be loaded, whether it's a page or a resource on that page, the extension has to run JavaScript code to run through its list of things that are prohibited, and that is just very expensive to do en masse.
Marco:
And it also exposes other problems.
Marco:
It is very expensive.
Marco:
Also, it's kind of a privacy issue.
Marco:
If you don't really trust the people who make the ad blocker and they're seeing every resource that you're loading and it's passing through their code.
Marco:
So there's a number of things about this that are non-ideal.
Marco:
And because ad blockers are just so popular, much to the chagrin of people writing terrible websites that run terrible ads, because most of them these days, unfortunately...
Marco:
Boy, that's a tough business.
Marco:
But basically, Apple wanted to improve the efficiency and the privacy of ad blockers in Safari.
Marco:
And then they also brought it to iOS.
Marco:
And so it runs in iOS as well.
Marco:
So now it is trivially easy to make an ad blocker for iOS.
Marco:
And it's funny.
Marco:
Apple is not offering one.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I suspect on day one of iOS 9 this fall, I suspect there's going to be hundreds, if not thousands, of ad blockers in the store on day one.
Marco:
It's going to be a massive rush because they're just so easy to make.
Marco:
So the new system, which allows all this, it basically does not run executable code of yours in the browser.
Marco:
you just give it a giant JSON array of regexes and prefixes to block loads for.
Marco:
And you can't alter the page by inserting things.
Marco:
You can't change what's on the page.
Marco:
But you can delete certain elements.
Marco:
So you can apply a CSS display none to certain selectors, certain CSS selectors.
Marco:
Or you can block certain host names or URL prefixes from loading JavaScript or images or third-party cookies.
Marco:
So like...
Marco:
They also added something called the Safari View Controller in WVDC this year, which is going to be in iOS 9.
Marco:
And so this basically is the mini-browser killer.
Marco:
So many of us... I forget whether we talked about this or not.
Marco:
Many of us have, in our lives as iOS developers, written embedded web browsers for it so that when people tap links in our apps, they can view them in a little web browser right in the app instead of being kicked out of Safari.
Marco:
Writing these things is awful, and they also can't access many nice things, like if you have a login in Safari.
Marco:
If you have cookies, and you've already logged into some site in Safari, if you open something up in a mini-browser in somebody's app, you've got to log in again.
Marco:
You also don't have things like any kind of extension that you run.
Marco:
If the app supports it, the app can integrate one password into its own little mini-browser, but most don't.
Marco:
And most extensions are not going to have that luxury of being integrated.
Marco:
So if you have any extensions that are useful to you in Safari, they won't run in these mini-browsers and everything.
Marco:
And there's also...
Marco:
There's some security concerns about mini-browsers and using them for OAuth and stuff.
Marco:
There's a lot of arguments against mini-browsers, basically, both from users and from security and from Apple's point of view.
Marco:
There's lots of arguments against mini-browsers.
Marco:
So Apple released the Safari View Controller for iOS 9, which allows you to basically pop up an isolated Safari window from your app, like a little slide-up sheet from your app, that looks and works just like Safari,
Marco:
is still in your app conceptually, but is running in a different process.
Marco:
It's totally isolated from your app.
Marco:
Your app is only notified when the user closes it, basically.
Marco:
So it's a way for you to provide the same convenience of having a built-in browser in your app that just instantly slides up and can be dismissed easily without being Safari and kicking people through to it.
Marco:
But it gives you all the features of Safari.
Marco:
So anyway, these ad blockers that are now possible to write will also work in those.
Marco:
which gives people yet another reason to delete their mini-browsers out of their apps and switch to the Safari view controller.
Marco:
So it's this whole improvement to this whole system here where they're going to make most mini-browsers obsolete and also enable ad blockers on iOS and on Safari on the Mac in 10.11.
Marco:
El Capitan.
Marco:
I don't know how... How do you say that?
Casey:
That might be the first time I've tried to say it.
Casey:
That sounded pretty good.
Casey:
I like it.
Casey:
That sounded pretty good.
Casey:
It was enthusiastic.
Casey:
We'll just call it the Captain.
Casey:
Oh, Captain, my Captain.
Marco:
Well, and people who are much cooler than me who live on the West Coast keep saying that people call it LCAP.
Marco:
Like, rock climbers have been calling it LCAP, apparently, for a long time.
Marco:
But I don't know if I'm cool enough to do that.
Marco:
I don't think I can.
Marco:
Anyway, so they're doing all this cool stuff.
Marco:
They're enabling all this cool stuff.
Marco:
The upside is that I would suspect many apps will lose their many browsers in the future.
Marco:
And I'm looking forward.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
I wrote the best mini-browser I've ever written for Overcast.
Marco:
I've written like four of them in my life so far.
Marco:
They've all been awful.
Marco:
Overcast, I think, has the least awful mini-browser that I've ever written.
Marco:
I still can't wait to delete it.
Marco:
It's still not great.
Marco:
It's still not Safari.
Marco:
And I am very much looking forward to deleting that once I can require iOS 9, or at least once I can support iOS 9.
Marco:
Anyway, so basically, in one fell swoop, they have both...
Marco:
obsoleted mini-browsers, thank God, and also enabled ad blocking for the first time on iOS in a way that probably won't suck and is also ridiculously easy to make.
Marco:
I think it's very interesting, first of all, that they enabled the ad blocking.
Marco:
There is definitely a pragmatic aspect to it, as I said earlier, about how they knew people were doing this anyway, and so they want to give a better way to do it that uses less battery life and has fewer privacy concerns and is faster.
Marco:
But also, this is obviously a jab at web advertising.
Marco:
And the skeptical view or the cynical view of this can also point out like, well, they're also doing this at the same time that they're launching the Apple News app, which is based on web stuff and has iAds embedded, which can't be blocked by this system.
Marco:
And so they're kind of stabbing the web in the back here while also launching a web alternative and asking publishers to opt into it and using their ads or publishers' ads, but really kind of encouraging the use of their ads.
Marco:
It's really interesting.
Marco:
It might be a jab at Google.
Marco:
It might be totally driven by practicality concerns, as I said.
Marco:
People are going to do it anyway, so I might as well do it right.
Marco:
Also, as a user...
Marco:
I want to hear what you guys think about ad blockers, too, because as a user, I have never run an ad blocker before.
Marco:
And I've started in the last few months, I've started to be tempted to finally start running one because, you know, I know people who make their living on the web.
Marco:
I am a person who makes my living on the web.
Marco:
I don't like the idea of ad blockers, but web ads have gotten so bad.
Marco:
It was a different story five years ago.
Marco:
These days, the ads are so bad, and they're even worse on mobile because so often they're so badly written and so intrusive that you can't properly dismiss them on mobile without clicking on some tiny little X in the corner.
Marco:
There are so many problems with this.
Marco:
And when they take up screen space on mobile, it's kind of more expensive because you have less screen space to begin with.
Marco:
And they're slow.
Marco:
And it's just like... I want to not need to block web ads.
Marco:
But unfortunately...
Marco:
I need to block web ads now because they have just gotten so bad.
Marco:
And there's more than ever, there are things that obscure the text, things that kind of show it, not even just interstitials, but almost like pop-ups, but embedded in the page, whatever those are called, pop-overs, slide-overs, whatever those are called.
Marco:
And so they'll overlay a video that's like a video ad that starts playing over an article, and you have to wait five seconds YouTube-style to dismiss the ad before the article shows up behind it.
Marco:
There's so much garbage out there, and it's only getting worse, and it seems to be getting worse at an accelerating rate.
Marco:
I am shocked every time I go to an article on what used to be a reputable site, or what seems like a reputable site, and I get a full-screen ad that I can't skip, that I can't properly close on mobile, and I can't even see the text.
Marco:
It's getting really bad.
Marco:
What do you think?
Marco:
There's obviously an ethical question here, but it's ethical versus pragmatic.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
How do you guys fall on this?
Casey:
Well, I think that we would be remiss not to mention my favorite of all egregious ad practices, which is going to Macworld and getting an autoplay video that's often playing way too loudly and scares the ever-living crap out of me.
Casey:
Um, and so that is, that is my personal favorite of all the God awful egregious advertisements.
Casey:
But, um, to answer your question, I honestly don't even know if I'm running an ad blocker on my main machine right now.
Casey:
I'm on Aaron's MacBook air.
Casey:
It's still alive.
Casey:
Um, and, and hers and hers does not have one.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
I used to, for sure, run an ad blocker called Glimmer Blocker.
Casey:
And we'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
If memory serves, the way this works is it kind of puts a quiet proxy in between you and the internet.
Casey:
And so this way, any browser you're using and any version of any browser you're using, it will use that proxy that's running locally.
Casey:
And Glimmer Blocker will block ads within that proxy.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It worked pretty well, but it was not flawless by any means.
Casey:
And I used to run that for a long time.
Casey:
And honestly, I don't think I'm running it on my work machine anymore because accepting this new wave of even more egregious ads that you just spoke of, Marco, which I completely agree with you.
Casey:
um accepting the ones that like occlude what you're trying to look at the the sidebar ads and things like that i've gotten so good at tuning those out that they're not even there anymore like my my ad blocker is my brain at this point um but i don't know i feel i have mixed feelings about it um in the past i didn't care i would absolutely run an ad blocker any anytime anywhere
Casey:
But now I have really mixed feelings about it.
Casey:
I mean, this show is run on advertising.
Casey:
Now, granted, it's a different kind of advertising, but it's still advertising.
Casey:
So there are some ethical, moral questions that are rolling around in my head about it.
Casey:
But for now, I probably will continue not, I think, running an ad blocker unless more websites that I frequent...
John:
get these god-awful egregious autoplay videos and in light boxes or wherever they are that take up the whole screen um it is certainly getting worse what do you think john i'm much more annoyed by video pre-roll ads not so much because i'm opposed to video pre-roll ads but for in two cases one the same video pre-roll ad that you see a hundred times hulu is the biggest offender there obviously
John:
But it happens on YouTube as well.
John:
And two, when I want to watch a 30-second video and I have to watch a 30-second ad.
John:
This is mostly talking about YouTube here because that's where I watch a lot of videos.
John:
It doesn't seem to be a balance between amount of advertising per content.
John:
It would be nice if I'm watching a 30-second video
John:
to choose not to put a long ad in front of that.
John:
And they try to do some things.
John:
Like, you don't see ads in front of every video.
John:
If you've seen an ad today, the next one you'll see is longer.
Marco:
Well, that, by the way, most people don't know that YouTube ads, the settings for those are set by the uploader.
Marco:
They choose whether to show ads on their videos and whether the ads are unskippable or not.
John:
right but i did choose how long the ads are because there are three second you know they're very the ads of varying length it's not like television where they have to be fixed length as far as i can tell i think there was a really quick geico one that's like you can't skip this geico ad because it's already over that which was clever and then they had one on for twice as long to do their jingle or whatever but anyway uh
John:
those bother me more than like the ads you're talking about on websites and stuff even the ones that you have to dismiss i have to admit especially when i'm mobile what annoys me way more than any ad like like you said marco i'm annoyed by trying to hit the little x in the box and doing all that stuff but what annoys me way more is after i successfully dismiss the ad that i can't scroll the freaking web page because of scroll jacking or some other thing i just want to read the content
John:
And very often I find that like, all right, I've dismissed the ad.
John:
The page is loaded.
John:
I do scroll, scroll, scroll.
John:
It snaps me back to the top.
John:
I do scroll, scroll.
John:
Oh, I accidentally hit something and it goes through like because it registered my scroll as a tap because it's trying to do some weird janky scrolling thing.
John:
That annoys me more than ads.
John:
I have a fairly high tolerance because, you know, like Casey, I have ad banner blindness, major case of ad banner blindness.
John:
So they don't bother me that much.
John:
And even the ones that like I try to go to an article and a big ad pops up like those are gross.
John:
But if I'm really interested in the article, a lot of people in the chat room are like, oh, just don't go to the site.
John:
Like, no, I'll click through the ad if I think the article is going to be really good underneath it.
John:
I prefer not to have to do that, but it's not the end of the world to me.
John:
And I don't run an ad blocker in Safari, although the main reason I run ad blocker in Safari gets back to what I think is the most interesting part of this web content blocking thing that Apple's coming out with.
John:
I don't run it because of my machine empathy, mentioned in previous shows, because I know how Safari extensions work.
John:
Safari extensions came out for Safari on the Mac.
John:
and they're like made with web technologies you can just make a bunch of little data files and images and a bunch of javascript code and you can with your javascript code you can do crap to web pages and from a machine empathy perspective it means wait a second every time i load a web page an arbitrary collection of javascript gets to run and decide if it needs to do something because that's the only way you can tell like you know there's some filters you can do on all apply to this url or whatever but like but yeah like
John:
it's going to somewhere in the process of loading the page say now by the way in addition to everything that is actually run on this page at some point we're going to allow this extension to run its blob of javascript it's just arbitrary and then this next extension can run its javascript and this next extension can run its javascript and that is horribly inefficient even if it like tries to pre-compile the javascript or whatever like javascript is not that fast and i just don't want arbitrary code munging every web page uh i would imagine that
John:
Like anyone who does any browser benchmarking, any kind of extensions running would totally destroy your benchmarks because it's like mandatory minimum overhead keeps going up every time you add an extension.
John:
So people are like, oh, I love extensions.
John:
I have 17 installed.
John:
That's not good.
John:
So anyway, those came out for OS 10, but they were not available on iOS for a variety of reasons.
John:
You know, keyboards weren't even available on iOS back then.
John:
Like it was it was the pre iOS eight days, but certainly not available on iOS.
John:
And no one thought that was a big deal because iOS just doesn't allow that kind of extensibility.
John:
But now content blockers come out.
John:
And they are written in an entirely different way.
John:
They are data driven.
John:
They're compiled to an optimized form.
John:
The matching expressions that you can do are very limited.
John:
It's not just like, you know, full fledged pro regular expressions, but you can do whatever the hell you want, because it's trivially easy to write a regular expression that like.
John:
uh takes till the heat death of the universe to uh try to match something right um and even in this session which we'll put the link in the show notes which you can watch for free uh you don't have to be a developer or anything apple even emphasizes like the ordering of the rules like they are so gung-ho in the efficiency like not only are you going to take your crap and compile them to some super optimized form and and confine you to a limited set of wild cards and stuff and then like okay and also try to put them in the order that's the most efficient so we know as soon as possible whether we need to apply this blocking or not
John:
That is so far from the OS X Safari extension philosophy.
John:
And that's basically what it takes to get onto iOS, right?
John:
Is a totally different mindset.
John:
And so I'm excited by that mindset.
John:
And does that mindset help me get over my machine empathy problem to install Safari AdBlocker?
John:
It gets over the technical part, but I'm still faced with two things.
John:
One, the sort of ethical concerns of like the sites that I visit, I want to support.
John:
I don't have a problem with ads that they run.
John:
Even on mobile, even the fairly intrusive ones.
John:
Like I read Macworld.
John:
The autoplaying videos is a bridge too far, obviously.
John:
But Macworld had a thing that would slide out of the corner and stuff.
John:
And it annoyed me.
John:
But it was a reason for me to stop reading Macworld.
John:
No, like...
John:
if you're publishing website, I would the advice I would give is do not annoy people with your ads.
John:
But I have a pretty high tolerance for that.
John:
And the second thing is, I'm always afraid ad blockers are going to break websites or stop me from seeing something that I'm supposed to be seeing in an article because it is just kind of a heuristic of like, well, it looks like this, or it's from this host or whatever.
John:
And you can have good ad blockers or bad ad blockers.
John:
And by the way, some of the most popular ad blockers allow advertisers to pay for their ads to be whitelisted.
John:
So there's a whole other angle of
John:
ethical concerns and annoyance there that's messed up yeah i mean like it's it sounds worse than it is but it's still pretty bad um you can read lots of articles about these controversies but hey you know you can install any ad blocker you want or uninstall any ad blocker you want or whatever but yeah i i'm not really enthusiastic about allowing anything to screw up the web pages that i'm watching because i'm always afraid i'm like we've all had the experience where we go to a web page and something doesn't work
John:
on mobile or on desktop you're clicking around like maybe i should try a different browser maybe the site is just broken uh you don't know what the deal is and i don't want to think maybe the site is fine and the problem is one of these stupid extensions that i'm running that's screwing things up so i like my extensions to be very targeted like
John:
one of the extensions i run is that thing that stops that site that stops you from copying and pasting text off a page whatever that thing is like that is very targeted you could you know it's stopping one particular company from doing one particular thing that's annoying and even that i worry about the efficiency of i have that installed in safari and occasionally i go through like an extension cleaning spree in safari and say do i really need this extension turn it off off off
John:
basically the only extension i really stick with is my essential extension for sorry which is the reload button the most complicated extension i believe it is one line of code that says reload the page um it is essential and even that one i worry there's lots of different ways you can do a reload button a lot of people wanted like a stop reload button like when the page is loading it's a stop
John:
right and then when it's done page is done it becomes a reload button like the old reload button in safari used to and the one that's in the address bar currently does now right but to do that you would have to run more javascript in every page load so i refuse my my reload button has no intelligence it does not munch your page with javascript because i i just like i wanted to be as efficient as possible if i could have a super duper compiled version of the reload button say if apple could add it to the stupid customized toolbar sheet then i would just get rid of my extension but not that you're bitter they seem not to want to do that and i have to hit that little tiny
John:
X, uh, circle arrow thing in the far side of the address bar.
John:
Uh, so anyway, yeah, Bob, uh, I don't, I'm not as strongly against ad blocking as an ethical and moral thing as some people are, because I feel like the, the social contract of the web is,
John:
is not that when you make an HTTP request, your browser must honor all of the content that comes back.
John:
I don't think that's how the internet works.
John:
But practically speaking, if you visit a website a lot and you want that website to stay in business, forget about morals or ethics.
John:
If you want the website to still be around, you should show their ads so that will help them still be around next week when you're on a look at their website.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
But there is one other side of the ethical thing, though, that I think is worth pointing out.
Marco:
When you visit a page that is unknown to you, you click on a link on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, you go to a page that you've never been to before, you don't know what to expect.
Marco:
You don't know what that page is like.
Marco:
You don't know what they will have on there.
Marco:
And without your knowledge or your permission...
Marco:
that page can sell your data.
Marco:
So if they have a Google ad embedded, say, then just by visiting that page, without you having a choice in the matter,
Marco:
you will be giving google information about you and that information will follow you all over the web after that you know just like just like john and your what was it was it lights outside lights what was it lamps yep yep yeah so like it there is like it isn't cut and dry ethically to say like you know you should you should let a pig load its ads because it's like well you're also letting the pigs load a bunch of stuff that you might object to or that is actually they're actually taking something from you also and
Marco:
without necessarily asking you first.
Marco:
They're taking your data.
Marco:
They're offering your data to other people.
Marco:
It's tricky.
Marco:
It's a blurry line.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I hate what the web has become so much.
Marco:
It hurts me because I love the web.
Marco:
I've grown up with the web for the most part.
Marco:
And I want the web to still be healthy, but there's so much about it that's just gross and deteriorating rapidly and offensive.
Marco:
And I don't see a good way out of this.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
You know, ad blockers could be a better social signal, like a better feedback mechanism, because right now ad blockers are still the domain of the nerds.
John:
And if you're not into tweaking things on your computer...
John:
they're kind of a one-way thing where you just oh i have an ad blocker installed and i don't see ads and most of them have a way for you to whitelist the sites that you like and so on and so forth but that's not like a regular person probably doesn't know ad blockers exist at all if they do they just install it and never think about it again they're not going to be in there tweaking the setting and writing their little regular expressions to whitelist and blacklist stuff right
John:
Someone in the chat room says tons of people use them.
John:
I don't want to reveal numbers from websites that I've been affiliated with in the past, but it is not as many as you might think, even among the super nerds.
John:
But anyway, regardless, even the people who use them, no one's sitting there carefully tweaking their white and black list to sort of manage their list of sites that they want to give money to, essentially, by viewing their ads.
John:
It's kind of like fire and forget.
John:
It's like, oh, the web is better now, and now I never think about it again.
John:
And there is a possibility that Apple, by sort of opening this door to mobile ad blockers on their platform, which is a fairly popular platform, I don't want it to be the same thing where it's like, okay, like Marco said, a million ad blockers are available on day one.
John:
Everyone downloads a bunch of them.
John:
Maybe one or two of them become really popular.
John:
Everyone who has an iPhone says, oh, you got to install this thing.
John:
Why?
John:
Because you won't see ads on the web and they install it and that's it.
John:
It would be nicer if there were some sort of
John:
interface in Safari or something a friendly interface that would prompt you say the first time you visit a site I don't know that would be annoying every time you visit a site like some sort of interface to let regular people decide
John:
whether they want to do this ad blocking thing so it isn't just like an arms race between ads are blocked everywhere and then websites trying to defeat the ad blockers and everyone just has ad blockers installed because it's really easy to do everyone who gets an iphone knows the first thing you do is you download your favorite ad blocker and that's just a stupid arms race and we're all victims it would be nicer if
John:
there was a better you know you could say well the feedback mechanism is you just don't go to the site but it's not that simple like marco said there's lots of sites that you read for years and years and become part of your life and their ads just start to get worse and like we all think it's dumb like on both sides of the thing it's like look this is not the way you're going to save your site like just look at what happened to mac world like their ads got more and more aggressive
John:
Did that make the site more and more popular, more and more profitable?
John:
No, everybody got laid off.
John:
It's a skeleton crew.
John:
The print edition is gone.
John:
Like, it's a desperation move towards the end.
John:
I've never seen it work.
John:
I've never seen a site that's having trouble monetizing get more and more aggressive ads.
John:
It's a negative feedback loop.
John:
That just drives more people away and makes your problem worse.
John:
So maybe it helps someone's executive's bottom line for one quarter or something, but...
John:
in the end, is just hastening the end of your profitability in your publication.
John:
So I don't know if a friendlier interface to ad blockers is the right kind of signal, but people just silently complaining and cursing when they go to sites is not great.
John:
And the alternative of just, well, just don't visit those sites, I don't know if that's really feasible.
John:
What if, like...
John:
you know, if your favorite site for whatever news starts doing really terrible ads, it's not like you stopping to patronize that, stopping going into that site is going to suddenly make an equivalent site pop up overnight, right?
John:
What you're signing up for is perhaps multiple years of never having a site where you can read about whatever your favorite hobby is, right?
John:
You know, if you're really into like woodworking and your favorite woodworking site that you've been going to for like literally a decade starts running really aggressive ads,
John:
and the people saying like oh just don't go to the site anymore well but what if all my friends are there and i want to read about woodworking or whatever well that site will go out of business and five years later maybe someone else found a new site and build a new community but you'll have the same like it would be nicer just to tell the people who are running this site uh i this is not a great way for you to get more money maybe think of subscriptions or like i don't know but you can't that's a silly thing where you're like talking to the
John:
people who run the site and giving them advice but like it's an imperfect signaling mechanism basically is what i'm saying between the people who are dissatisfied and the people who are running the sites and this doesn't seem like we can get those things connected and it's just like the people running the sites do one terrible thing people using the sites are sad and then the site goes away anyway and it seems like not a great system
Marco:
our final sponsor this week is i recognize the irony is automatic automatic is a connected car adapter that plugs into your car's diagnostic port the obd right oh yeah on board diagnostic the obd2 port uh the one that your mechanic uses to diagnose your car's performance and problems and
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
It can also give you a log of your trips and your parking location.
Marco:
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Marco:
It can score you when you're driving efficiency, so you can set goals and save money on gas.
Marco:
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Marco:
This could really add up.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Now, you may have seen that Automatic just launched a new app store for the car.
Marco:
So over 20 apps are now available at automatic.com slash apps, allowing you to use your car's data in all kinds of new ways.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
First of all, they have If This Then That IFTTT integration.
Marco:
And they've had this for a little while now, but now there's an app for that and everything.
Marco:
And IFTTT gives you the power to build all kinds of recipes based on your driving or various events that happen during your driving.
Marco:
There's an app called Concur that lets you pull your trips easily into expense reports.
Marco:
FreshBooks can create invoices from your mileage.
Marco:
Pebble Watches, if you have a Pebble Watch, this can show your parking location right on your wrist.
Marco:
License Plus can coach your teenager into safer driving.
Marco:
If you have a teenager, I feel bad for you, but I guess I'll be there eventually.
Marco:
You can have it automatically send a Yo in the Yo app.
Marco:
So that is a real thing.
Marco:
So along with these apps, they've also launched a developer platform for building your own apps using car data.
Marco:
So they have a modern REST API with a real-time streaming API as well.
Marco:
They do OAuth 2, and they provide access to a driver's trip history, including distance, route, time, location, miles per gallon, etc.
Marco:
The REST API is built for ease of use.
Marco:
There's plenty of client libraries and examples to quickly launch your app on Heroku if you want to, on a dinosaur over there.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to Automatic for sponsoring our show once again.
John:
One more quick thing on Apple's content blocking that I forgot to mention.
John:
I mentioned that they had this limited matching vocabulary and that in the session they were telling you about the order to put things.
John:
And I'm going by memory here.
John:
Maybe Marco can confirm or deny.
John:
But wasn't there a thing where they will actually refuse to load your blocker if they can determine that it is particularly inefficient?
John:
Does that ring a bell, Marco?
Marco:
I haven't looked too far into it.
Marco:
I think they said something like that.
Marco:
But in the call to register your blocker code with it, there's a callback that you get.
Marco:
So maybe there's an error that will pass you.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
But anyway, I was actually surprised by the degree to which Apple is...
John:
so adamant about optimization here and i think it just highlights like the different worlds like i'm the mac well i do whatever you want run javascript every page whatever like you know even that was probably foolish and probably why you know they're revisiting that uh now but if you're going to go on ios it's like no we can't we can't have that we need to just get everything super efficient and compiled uh
John:
Because I think a part of it is also because people are going to be downloading them from the app store.
John:
Safari extensions are not hard to install, but they're a hell of a lot harder than downloading an app from the app store.
John:
So, you know, Apple knows once they roll this thing out, a lot of people are going to be tapping those icons and getting them in there.
John:
And if they did allow people to run arbitrary JavaScript in every page on the phone, everyone's phones would be paralyzed.
Yeah.
John:
all right then it's also kind of a privacy nightmare i mean that's the other problem with it yeah ios and and now the watch are apple's chances to do things like we have a chance to do things right so let's let's look at what went wrong on the mac and let's not reproduce or not on the mac but in the pc industry let's say and let's not reproduce those problems on ios
Casey:
So tell us about trim support in OS X. I don't know much about it.
John:
I've just been reading these.
John:
I just actually installed 10.11 very recently and haven't played with that extensively.
John:
But 9to5Mac and several other sites have pointed out
John:
that apple has when i first saw this i'm like oh someone figured out how to hack uh el capitan to support third-party ssds with trim and all that other stuff uh but no this is apparently an apple supplied thing command that ships with the os called trim force that sounds awesome yes and it would be a reference to well i'm not going to tell you it'd be a reference to anyway
John:
wow i didn't get your non-reference yeah and when you run it a little message that says you know okay well basically we're going to enable trim on your third party drives but apple let's read the text by using this in tool to enable trim you agree that apple is not liable for any consequences name being result including but not limited to data loss or corruption basically apple's washing your hands like fine
John:
You want to enable trim on a drive that we haven't tested and qualified to work with trim correctly?
John:
Feel free.
John:
Not our problem anymore, which is how the trim enabler always was.
John:
It's just that in Yosemite, I believe, when they did the kernel extension signing thing, the only way you could...
John:
uh enable trim on third-party ssds was to turn off like the thing that that verified all the kernel extensions were signed and blah blah blah and so now they're giving you a way uh to more safely uh use trim on your ssds at your own risk and i'm not entirely sure if i'm going to uh do this on my drives oh and by the way the story says this is actually on 10 10 4 i assume it'll be in 10 11 as well but
John:
I'm not sure if I'm going to do it on my SDS because I have the question that this warning talks about, like, have not validated drive, blah, blah, blah.
John:
I haven't validated my drive either.
John:
I have no idea if enabling trim support is going to cause data loss on my drive.
Marco:
Well, also, if data loss, like, if you didn't agree to this...
Marco:
isn't apple already identified from any kind of data loss or corruption you might suffer on your computer like like does that really actually achieve any new protection for apple they didn't already have doesn't hurt like some lawyer probably loves the text is there but yeah like you know the bottom line i mean they have the file system thing that's already there corrupting everything slowly over time anyway
John:
yeah yeah as as all the end user license agreements say this this program is not suitable for any purpose or whatever the text is like we do not promise that this does anything successfully it just sits anyway it's nice to have a warning so people know what they're getting to i'm sure my drive is fine i'm sure there's a million people who have my exact same drive mechanism installed on their pcs or their linux systems and they have trim support enabled and it's working fine for them or whatever but
John:
I don't want to be the guinea pig.
John:
And as I said when I got this big hunk in SSD, I'm going to use it in the quote-unquote Apple-supported way until I see some problems.
John:
If I fill my disk and things start slowing down, then I know where to turn it.
John:
I can go to the trim force thing.
John:
If I don't see any slowdowns and everything still seems lighting fast, why would I risk it?
John:
I'm just going to stick with what I have, which is...
John:
what apple thinks is the appropriate thing to do with this drive even though they're almost certainly wrong because every ssd needs trim because there's no way the drive can tell which blocks are free blah blah blah we all know about this cpass shows where we talked about ssd and trim but we never talk about the same thing twice until i run into that problem i i just don't want to deal with this at all but i am glad they're they're giving a nice way to enable it because trying to hack the system and disable the kernel extension signing verification was just the worst possible way to do that a supported way is great and so i applaud this effort in
John:
Yosemite 1010-4, supposedly, and I assume in El Capitan as well.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, MailRoute, Hover, and Automatic.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Casey:
Now the show is over.
Casey:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Casey:
Because it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Casey:
And if you're into Twitter...
Casey:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-G, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Tech podcast so long.
John:
It's hot here today.
Casey:
Do you have central air?
Casey:
I don't remember.
John:
Do not.
John:
The weather is fine, but, you know, the computer room is on, like, the sunny side when the sun goes down, so it gets hot late in the day, and they usually crank the A.C.
John:
in here to get it cooled down, and then we start.
Marco:
do you think you would ever uh do central air in that house or is it just too crazy to run all the ducts oh no that's like that's on the list maybe next year well as you say like if you're gonna have your house invaded and your attic invaded because you usually have to put the units and stuff in the attic uh you might as well roll it in this year if you can because it's like if they're gonna be there tearing everything up they're not they're just doing windows remember everything is outside except for the windows and the windows are basically still outside they just you know
Marco:
And they're doing straight replacements, so they're keeping the framing, or are they reframing them too?
John:
No, same framing, same size window.
Marco:
The same trim and everything.
John:
Yeah, like the idea is to be as minimally invasive.
John:
We'll see how this goes, but to be as minimally invasive to the interior as possible, because all they're doing is taking off just enough of the trim to get the new windows in.
John:
Nothing else is being done inside.
John:
No walls, no floors, no ceilings, no nothing.
Marco:
Yeah, because minimally invasive always is true when contractors and doctors and surgeons say it.
John:
We'll see.
John:
I mean, if they make a big mess of it, it's going to be a big mess until probably next year when we start doing interior stuff.
John:
But going from the outside in.
Marco:
Got to start somewhere.
John:
Yeah, we got to protect from the weather and then that preserves the inside and then we can fix the inside.
Marco:
Well, my construction just ended.
Marco:
Casey, is yours ended yet or is it still finishing?
Casey:
My house construction is done asterisk.
Casey:
So the kitchen is done, except there's some tweaks that need to be made to the cabinets and the installers, one of whom is Aaron's cousin, knows that that has to happen except last week or I think it was last week he was on his honeymoon.
Casey:
So he's a little preoccupied.
Casey:
And then we kind of neglected to put two and two together and realize that, oh, now that we have this beautiful new kitchen with beautiful new cabinets and beautiful new countertops, the area where a backsplash would be, these countertops and whatnot do not match where the old countertops were.
Casey:
So the wall is just freaking destroyed.
Casey:
in anywhere that used to have countertop but does not so it's not painted there's a hole in one part it's just a mess and so we need to it we need to figure out what to do about a backsplash and have somebody come in and do that um yes there's there's no way i would even say done asterisk if you still have tile and finishing work to do which you do then uh that's still another two weeks at least i sure hell hope not it shouldn't be that long
Marco:
Well, it's two days of work, but it's going to be two weeks until it's done.
John:
You have to learn the thing that everyone who ever has home repairs learns is that you can live in a house that is, quote-unquote, not done being constructed.
John:
How long do you think you can live with your crazy-looking walls in the kitchen?
John:
Actually, surprisingly a long time.
John:
As long as you have running water and plumbing and toilets and maybe washing machines and electricity...
John:
Everything else can be crap for years and years.
John:
And I've known many people whose houses have been missing inessential elements like that for a very long time.
Casey:
Well, that's the problem is Aaron and I, I don't think we're procrastinators.
Casey:
I don't think we're lazy, but we will find other higher priority things to worry about if we don't conquer this backsplash issue quickly.
Casey:
And so because of that, now we're recording a little early because of Aaron and I, you know, we're going to be busy for a few days, but...
Casey:
because we know ourselves well enough to know that we will never accomplish these things if we don't light a fire under our own butts right now, we really, as soon as we're done doing this stuff next week, we're going to try to get this squared away as quickly as possible because otherwise it will be in 15 years when we go to sell the house that we think to ourselves, oh, you know what, that backsplash that we should have done in 2015, now that it's 2030, maybe we should go do it.
John:
And I'm telling you that I think that's fine.
Marco:
No, I'm telling you that, Casey, your suspicion is right, that home construction is like inertia.
Marco:
It has this inertia to it where when you're in it, you can look at something that's unfinished or broken or just kind of bad and say, oh, let's do that too.
Marco:
But once you are not currently doing construction, once it is over, once everyone's out of your house...
Marco:
The last thing you want to do is start up another thing again.
Marco:
Even if it's something small, like, oh, we really got to get somebody in here for two days to do this backsplash and maybe a couple of trim pieces here or there if that's necessary as well.
Marco:
But getting started from zero requires so much motivation and effort and work that you're not going to want to do it.
Marco:
So right now, before you've settled back down again, get it done now.
Marco:
Especially because a tile backsplash to go between your counters and your cabinets, that's not a whole lot of tile.
Marco:
That's not a big job, really.
Marco:
It's not going to be a massive imposition or expense or time to get it done.
Marco:
So you might as well get it done now.
Marco:
Because, again, otherwise you'll turn it to John and just not do it.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It's so true.
Marco:
That's the way to live, though.
Marco:
And just complain about it every year for the next 15 years.
John:
You don't have to complain.
John:
I've learned to not care about many things in my house that are falling apart, as long as the functional things work.
Casey:
See, and I don't want to get myself back in that position because... I don't think your house was ever falling apart, was it?
Casey:
No, but that's how we had an air conditioner that didn't work for the eight years we've been in the house.
Casey:
I mean, well, it didn't work as relative, of course.
Casey:
You know, it cooled... Well, let me put it to you this way.
Casey:
Once we got the AC redone,
Casey:
I noticed that our garage is stifling hot now, and it never used to be that way.
Casey:
Well, you know why?
Casey:
It's because the furnace, heat pump, whatever it's called, used to be in the garage.
Casey:
Now there's one under the house, one in the attic.
Casey:
And it must have been leaking so much air-conditioned air into the garage that I thought, because we do happen to have an insulated garage, I thought we were just super well insulated.
Casey:
Oh, no, my friends.
Casey:
As it turns out, we were cooling our garage as well as our house.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So we need to get the backsplash done.
Casey:
For those of you who are going to tweet or email me telling me how easy it is to do a backsplash, don't care.
Casey:
I'm incapable.
Casey:
I know I'm incapable.
Casey:
No matter what you think you know in order to make this job doable, I promise you I'm inept.
Casey:
It's not going to happen.
Casey:
I'm good with ones and zeros.
Casey:
I'm good with flapping my gums, and that's about where it ends.
Casey:
So I will have somebody come in and do that.
Casey:
And I also forgot to mention, it's actually that my house has done asterisk, what is it, cross symbol?
Casey:
Because I forgot that we also didn't ever have the gas line run, certainly to the upstairs furnace and perhaps the downstairs furnace.
Casey:
Because despite the fact that you guys believe there is no winter in Virginia, we have been spoiled by gas heat during the, I guess, 20th.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
um now that gas line needs to be plumbed but after our ac guy was in the house for two weeks and we were moved out of the house for two weeks all of us needed a break so he's gonna have to come back in a few weeks and and do that as well so our how our how our home construction is done asterisk cross symbol how about you marco oh my god no you get get him there as soon as possible i'm telling you like the longer he's gone the the worst the the idea of him coming back will be to you like you just you have to get it done now i know don't listen to john
Marco:
Get it done now.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
John is unequivocally wrong.
Casey:
And as soon as I say that, the internet rises up and comes to his defense.
Casey:
But I'm telling you, internet, John is wrong.
John:
Wrong for you, maybe.
John:
Not wrong for me.
John:
What I'm saying is that I think it's okay to live in an unfinished house for a long period of time.
John:
And I know people do that.
John:
But if you can't bear the idea of living in an unfinished house, then by all means, continue to repair things.
John:
And in fact, you may want to use your construction inertia to get an AC unit installed in your garage so your car doesn't get too hot.
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, so I have a question about that.
Marco:
So in your state of non-winter that apparently needs two furnaces for a state that doesn't have winter.
Marco:
Allegedly, right.
Marco:
You have an insulated garage?
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
Because it seems like most of the problem in Virginia would be trapping the heat in in the summertime.
Marco:
Most people who live in the Northeast, like me and John, don't have insulated garages because the houses are too old and nobody built them.
Marco:
I don't have an insulated house.
Marco:
we're lucky to have that so I'm wondering I don't have an insulated garage and it's not amazing but it's fine it actually is cooler in the garage in the summertime than it is outside and my car is nice and cool I don't have to blast the AC when I get into my car in the garage in the summertime because it isn't that hot because it wasn't sitting in the sun so I wonder what do you need the insulated garage for and is it causing more harm than good
Casey:
I don't think it's causing more harm than good, but I can tell you right now I am well out of my comfort zone.
Casey:
The reason I have an insulated garage is because we moved into the house with an insulated garage.
Casey:
It wasn't a – Right.
Marco:
I guess nobody goes and uninsulates their garage.
Casey:
Right, right.
Casey:
It wasn't a deliberate choice.
Casey:
And it's not like –
Casey:
dry walled or anything.
Casey:
Basically, in between the studs, at some point, somebody had thrown in the little pink insulation packets.
Casey:
I'm sure there's a technical term for it.
Casey:
I don't know what it is.
Casey:
Don't care.
Casey:
But anyway, so most of the garage... Actually, I don't know if it's only the back
Casey:
wall and i don't remember if the one side exterior wall is insulated or not now my my father who is um a little bit crazy has decided that even though he doesn't have an insulated garage for whatever reason and he lives 45 minutes west of me he has put that same kind of insulation on his garage doors
Casey:
which I know there's a reason for it.
Casey:
And I know the garage doors tend to leak a bit, but I'm still not entirely sure what he's after on that one.
Casey:
And it's funny because when he did put the insulation into the garage doors or had it put in or whatever, it ended up that he needed to have the garage door people come back because now the springs weren't strong enough to raise the damn garage door because it was all this new weight on it.
Casey:
But what about your construction?
Casey:
Because you were doing some as well, right, Marco?
Yeah.
Marco:
Mine is totally done.
Marco:
We move back into it.
Marco:
Well, no asterisk asterisk.
Marco:
So you have the asterisk and the little T. I have the little double bar T. Oh, OK.
Marco:
OK.
Marco:
But I don't think those characters exist outside of asterisks.
Marco:
Probably not.
Marco:
I've never seen them.
Marco:
Anyway, so we as part of so the main rooms that we had done are done.
Marco:
but we still have to wait for one light fixture to come in that just needs to be put on the ceiling because it was back-ordered.
Marco:
And then we also tacked onto the job a leaky skylight in our upstairs bathroom, totally far away from what we were working on.
Marco:
But we figured we have people here, and we had this leaky skylight that keeps leaking water and rotting the support beam that it's sitting on, so we might as well get that fixed, too, so we don't rot our house away.
Marco:
Like John.
Marco:
Like John, yeah.
Marco:
Because water is the enemy of houses.
Marco:
So, yeah, we still have to get that done.
John:
That's the thing that I am fixing, the water part.
Casey:
So did you have that because of the god-awful winter that you had?
Casey:
Oh, no.
John:
Actually, we didn't actually have any water inside our house, unlike many of our neighbors who could be seen during the winter up on their roofs, futilely trying to scrape snow off and hack at their ice dams.
John:
No, we didn't have any water in the house.
John:
But anyway, yeah, the outside of the house where the water does touch is slowly dying.
John:
And so we're getting all that done.
Marco:
I think my plan for our future retirement house is to either move to California where it does not rain or...
John:
build an entire house just out of like glass and plastic like just nothing that can rot from from water that's what modern houses are made are made out of these days they you know if you get anything replaced on your house like say they're going to replace i don't know like the soffits or something or like even just front door stuff they replace it with non-wood materials for the most part
John:
Like they use PVC or various other composites that just do not rot.
John:
There's no point in making something that you know is going to come in contact with water out of wood these days.
Marco:
Except for costs.
Marco:
Well, and also, even when you use wood or drywall, they have pressure-treated wood.
Marco:
They have mold-resistant drywall.
Marco:
These things cost a little bit more.
Marco:
But no one uses them by default except Homes on Homes.
Marco:
No one else does.
Marco:
Now we've had a lot of work done on our house total that involves lots of wood.
Marco:
And we asked for mold-resistant drywall the first time.
Marco:
And they would only put it in the bathroom.
Marco:
We're like, come on.
Marco:
They were shady and they were weird.
Marco:
So the second time, we have a much better contractor, and they found a bunch of rot around the big sky that we were replacing in this main roof area of our house.
Marco:
Tons of rotted support beams, rotted joists in the roof around this area that, of course, when we got a new roof three years ago, they didn't find.
Marco:
I love those guys.
Marco:
But we just asked, we're like, hey, since you're replacing all this anyway, and it has already rotted from water leaking in, can you use pressure-treated wood this time?
Marco:
And at first they were like, well... And then they were like, yeah, I guess we can.
Marco:
And it's like, why...
John:
why would you ever not use it yes it costs a little bit more but it costs way less than doing the job a second time like i cost you way less they'd love to do the job a second time yeah maybe you've hit the nail on the head there yeah no for for load bearing things it's more difficult but i was mostly talking about like trim pieces and stuff like you know trim stuff around your door or the the soffits of your house or whatever like just make that all out of pvc and you just don't have to worry about because it's not load bearing it doesn't matter that it's floppy it's all just
John:
decorative stuff especially stuff that's in contact with the ground like the little thing underneath your front door that's against whatever your porch is using wood there is just crazy these days oh goodness so john yours has or has not started yet has not okay and do you have a start date for that endeavor we have our third start date so far so that's going according to expectations right exactly that's amazing
Casey:
uh yeah yeah and i forgot to mention that uh i already have started the to-do list for next year which is roof for sure because the house is about 10 no i'm sorry 20 years old almost so it's about time for that and uh i'm thinking we might do windows as well so basically um each year i'm driving cars of various quality off a cliff in terms of how much i'm spending it's delightful you should you should everyone should buy a house it's the best
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Your house is 20 years old and you're thinking you're replacing the windows, right?
John:
So we're getting windows replaced.
John:
The windows we're keeping are the ones from like the 80s.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Our windows that we're keeping because they're the quote unquote new windows are the ones that you're thinking of getting replaced.
John:
The ones we're replacing are from 1932.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Your house isn't insulated.
Casey:
You're right.
John:
It will be soon.
John:
Sort of.
Marco:
Or it was at one time insulated by a few pieces of newspaper that have since fallen down into the wall cabinets.
Marco:
They're just sitting on the bottom.
John:
It's mostly insulated with mouse fur.
John:
When they go up and down the walls, their little fur rubs off.
John:
That's our insulation.
John:
Well, you know, fur, I mean, if you get a lot of it, that wouldn't be that bad.
John:
Our mice are small.
John:
It takes a lot of mice to fill our wall cavities.