Auto, Dynamic, Fresh, Dank
The last little bit there is worth adding.
No, well, it wasn't bolded.
I got scolded earlier that I should.
Sorry.
All right.
We'll just have to edit all this out.
Let me take a note.
John gets angry at Casey.
You got to be serious with these bolds, John.
I already did trim this down, you realize.
It's not like I just copied and pasted the thing.
This is the trimmed version.
The bold is just to let you know which parts are important.
All right.
So let's get started as we have to with follow up.
We have another instance of a fairly long email that I'd like to read most actually a couple instances of this that I'd like to read pretty much in their entirety because I think they're really, really fascinating.
I would never generally do this, but now I'm making the exception the rule because these are really good emails.
You do it like every two weeks.
And I have to edit it in some way because it's like nothing is more boring and harder to follow than listening to somebody read like a six-paragraph email in a podcast.
All right, all right.
I'll try to make this as quick as I can since John has done us the service of bolding certain sections in the show notes.
Yeah.
We got some feedback from an anonymous Microsoft employee on the facial recognition in Windows.
And they said all the Surface devices since the Surface Pro 4, which is the last two generations apparently, have supported Windows Hello.
This is different than Hi Sierra.
This is Windows Hello, which uses an infrared LED, infrared depth camera, and RGB webcam to authenticate via your face.
This technology is derived from the Kinect and has in general been super well received.
It's fast, very reliable, and works in the dark.
And this includes a link to a video which we will put in the show notes.
It is also tricky to fool, arguably more secure than a fingerprint, and it can even tell twins apart.
And we'll put a different link in the show notes for that.
When Microsoft tried to scale this down to mobile devices in the Lumia 650 and 650XL, the same technology didn't work for a number of reasons, including power, cost, and constraints.
Size constraints, that is.
The Lumia device is shipped in 2015, and while the Surface solution didn't scale down effectively, then I have no difficulty believing Apple could scale down to a full-face solution like Windows Hello in 2017.
That said, most good solutions I've seen require at least two cameras, IR and RGB, to get depth, verify it's a fleshy 3D object, and capture enough identifiers as well as an IR LED to function in mixed lighting conditions.
Heavy backlighting and bright sunlight are especially challenging.
It's hard to see how these would fit into the quote-unquote forehead of a bezel-free iPhone without significant cutouts in addition to what's already required for the front-facing camera and proximity sensor.
Blah, blah, blah.
All that to say, it is fast, dependable, delightful face recognition that is absolutely possible and is in fact par for the course on some high-end Windows devices like the Surface.
Yes, it does introduce some UI requirements for explicit confirmation of intent, for example, with purchases.
It's just a matter of time before someone makes it work on a phone.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear Apple had done that.
This isn't a thread of feedback with all the people, all the Windows users telling us about Windows Hello, which we discussed on the show many, many, many months ago.
And as a person, the reason I picked this email out is it is a Microsoft employee.
And they talk specifically about the challenges of getting it down into a phone because obviously you have...
luxuries on even just a laptop form factor that you don't have on phones you got a lot of space to put sensors in there you got a lot more power you got a lot bigger battery usually you have more computing power a little these days the phone is probably faster than half of the things they listed um so so we'll see so yes face recognition on windows hello is there we got varying reports some people say it's amazing it already exists and it's wonderful other people said i can't get it to recognize my face it takes like three to five seconds then it doesn't work half the time and i hate it
So mixed results.
But in general, I think mostly people like Windows Hello and think that it works well.
It's just a question of can you get this in a phone?
I love that the new Windows did it is a lot like the old Opera did it.
That Windows is now so marginalized that the cutting-edge features of the Surface hardware and the stuff that's the whole pure Microsoft stack, hardware to software, so few people, relatively speaking, are using that and enjoying that to the point, especially around these parts, around Apple-y tech podcast circles, that...
we have no idea what they're doing and they're so like and they're doing important stuff and innovative stuff and they just want everyone to know that so much and meanwhile we're all like no one's ever done this before like it's it's exactly what exactly why the opera people have were always so mad because opera was doing all these great features that other browsers would add five years later and act like no one had ever done that before
And everyone else believed it.
But the reason people didn't know about it because in the case of opera is that opera was would fall down on like the basics like that.
People didn't use it not just because it was obscure and weird, but because it just wasn't as good a web browser in most cases.
There's other ones for like boring practical reasons.
Windows is not as good of an operating system.
That's why we don't use these things.
Anyway, Windows certainly doesn't have the mindshare, but like Windows Hello, like I said, we talked about it on this very podcast.
It's not like we didn't know that it existed.
And a lot of these features, I think we talked about the Samsung face recognition.
A lot of these features we do know have even been tried in phone form factors before.
Uh, but you know, the reason we don't like have them in front of mine is because I mean, I mentioned the Amazon fire phone last time, but like the five cameras and all the sensors and everything is like, if they don't work really well, it's like, oh, well, yeah, they tried to do a thing, but they essentially failed.
And so it will rise to the level of public consciousness if it becomes, uh,
popular and everyone agrees that it works really well and because if it worked really well it would be everywhere and every phone would be using it and so like no one has really cracked it kind of like fingerprint sensors that essentially work really well everywhere now and so they're very very common and so that's why everybody knows unlocking the phone with your finger is a thing uh whoever was first with that and getting it to work obviously we know about it from the apple world but for all we know android was doing it you know years before but anyway that technology is kind of settled and it works just fine face recognition is still in the realm of
Maybe on some desktop computers and some operating systems, some people think it works great, but no one has really nailed it on the phone to the point where it's better than fingerprint unlock or, you know, typing in a code or whatever.
I also still do think that there are significant challenges with face recognition as an unlock method around the issues of how do you confirm the authentication and what do you do if you don't want to authenticate something.
And one person, I think it was on Twitter, pointed out the example of like, what if someone takes your phone out of your hand and holds it up to your face?
And then if the only confirmation thing is recognize your face and then tap a thing on screen to say, okay, then somebody can take your phone and just authorize it right there in front of you and then walk away.
I was going to make another Indiana Jones reference, but Raiders of the Lost Ark reference.
I know you don't know that one.
Kind of like the...
The watch authentication, where once you unlock your watch, as long as it's on your wrist, it stays unlocked.
But if someone wants to steal your watch, it automatically locks when it leaves your wrist.
So I can imagine a similar feature where the gesture of picking it up and putting your finger on part of the screen, your finger has to be there.
Then the camera recognizes you.
Then you...
press the screen or slide in a direction or whatever and if any point in that chain like that your finger leaves the phone surface or wherever you're supposed to be holding down then then it's all over so someone pulls the thing out of your out of your hand uh and you know it well it doesn't work either does it
I don't know.
It's a difficult problem.
You'd have to incorporate the fingerprint sensor, I guess.
Right.
In which case, you have a fingerprint sensor.
Yeah, we're trying to avoid that.
And the thing is, the more complex that the gesture is, or the more requirements it has to succeed and to unlock the phone and to keep the phone unlocked,
the more often that it won't work in legitimate use.
The more legitimate use cases you have where like, okay, well, what if I want to authenticate my phone while it's sitting on a table and I just put my thumb on it now, but if you have to have your hand on a certain part, like Touch ID is so good and I feel like it solves or avoids so many of these other weird little problems that it would really take a lot to make it worth not using Touch ID anymore.
i don't know i'm glad this is still a rumored feature so we don't even know if it's shipping at all we won't have to consider this but well i guess we'll all find out i i still think it would be neat to like just have it sort of work by magic and just pick up your phone and use it and it's just automatically unlocked because you're you
I would probably sacrifice that for the security of like, oh, what if someone rips the phone out of your hand?
Because, you know, that's not that common enough occurrence in the circles that I travel in.
But for other people, I mean, obviously, if you have an option to turn this on or off, that would really help let people decide what their security profile is.
And like we said in the last show...
if you're in a situation like in an airport or you're going through immigration in some country and you want to avoid both touch id and face recognition because you can be you know compelled to unlock your phone in that way there are other ways where you can lock down your phone so that you have to enter a big long password which they would have to you know use what was it uh rubber hose cryptography pipe wrench cryptography this depending on what version whether it's from the skcd comic or from the idea that the skcd comic is derived from uh they just beat you with a pipe wrench until you tell them the password
This reminds me also of the watch unlock on the desktop.
So if you have an Apple Watch that is actively unlocked, I forget the exact requirements, I think you're all in the same iCloud account or something like that, and you've enabled everything on every device, then what you can do is if your watch is physically close to, say, your iMac or something like that,
And you tap a keyboard button or mouse button to wake it up, then it will see if your watch is nearby.
And if it's nearby and it's authenticated, etc., then it will go ahead and unlock the Mac for you.
That seems perfectly reasonable until you think about, say, an office where, you know, most of us work in cubicles.
And so what if I'm a couple cubes down or maybe the next cube over and somebody goes up to my work machine and...
you know, smacks the keyboard and it feels like my watch is close enough, then guess what?
That thing's getting unlocked.
And on the surface, that's terrible.
But in reality, you should, in theory, be close enough that you can hopefully see what is going on with your device.
And if you're not close enough to see what's going on, it hopefully wouldn't allow itself to be unlocked.
But it's a similar kind of problem, right, where there's a pretty reasonable explanation or expectation, I should say, that you are close and that is the intended results for your device to unlock.
But you don't know for sure.
Now, the difference is, which I didn't get a chance to talk to you before the chat room started yelling at me, that you get a notification on your watch.
Hey, such and such has been unlocked.
But it, to me, rings a similar set of potential problems.
And for me, it's been working out really well, and it's super convenient.
So I kind of agree with you, John, that in the circles I travel in, eh, I'm not too worried about it.
By the way, Casey, as the person who knows that they've seen Raiders, do you know what reference I was going to make before I bailed?
No, I definitely don't.
I've seen Raiders many times, but I do not know the reference.
The beginning bit with the idle.
You've got to take the idle off, but put a sandbag of equal weight, like someone takes something out of your hand while maintaining contact with the part that you're... It's kind of like stealing your watch while keeping something touching the sensor on the bottom so it stays unlocked.
I bet Apollo Robbins could do that.
I was just about to ask, who's that guy that can do that unbelievable stealing stuff while you're talking to him?
That's his next level.
He gets an Apple sponsorship.
He can remove people's watches without them knowing, but can you do it while at the same time keeping something touching the proximity sensors underneath the watch so it remains unlocked?
That's the trick.
All right, moving on before I get stuck in some Apollo Robins videos because they are mesmerizing.
All right.
An anonymous Apple source familiar with MDNS Responder has also written in.
They said, now I'm quoting, you said MDNS Responder was a mess and had tons of bugs.
John said that.
We didn't say that.
Fair enough.
I couldn't let that pass without a response.
The reasons for the Bonjour rewrite were entirely political, nothing to do with MDNS Responder.
If you're a manager looking for something for your team to do, rewriting some extra software seems much safer and much more predictable than thinking of something new for yourself.
Rewriting something from scratch, as we all know, is a terrible idea.
And there's a link to the seminal Joel and Software blog post about this very thing.
Coming back to the email, if you measure it in admittedly crude, simple numerical terms of number of devices deployed, MDNS Responder is arguably the most successful piece of software ever to come out of Apple.
As well as being on almost every Apple product, it's also many other devices, almost all network printers, TiVo, network cameras, etc.
And in every Android device, which is not just Android phones and tablets, but also Android-based accessories.
If you consider the quality and robustness of the MDNS responder code, it's illustrated by the fact that even after being neglected for five years, finding an old copy of MDNS responder from a previous OS version and installing it on Yosemite still worked better than Discovery D software Apple briefly shipped before reverting back to MDNS responder.
I'm amused that you heard that the return to MDNS responder was instigated by a celebrity emailing Tim Cook.
You're right about that part, except it wasn't Bono.
It wasn't Bono.
It was Vint Cerf.
Fair enough.
And who is Vint Cerf?
Can you explain to the audience?
That's why we have a link to the Wikipedia page.
One of the fathers of the internet.
An old guy who did lots of important work on the early internet.
Is that you?
No, I'm not that old.
So, well, first, getting back to the part of this of MDS Responder being a buggy...
There's a basis for that.
First of all, being neglected for five years is never good for any piece of software.
Second, as a regular user, it was not uncommon to have weird problems with your Mac and to have the solution be killing MDNS responder.
I don't know if you guys remember that, but I certainly do.
You want to consider it a buggy mess or whatever.
It is something that would be a candidate for, hey, this this essential piece of the system seems like it might be getting a little creaky.
And if someone has a good idea about how to vastly improve it, by all means, do it.
um the joan software thing about you should things you should never do you should never rewrite software blah blah that's been hashed out to death i mean it's it's a good presentation of a particular of one side of a particular issue but of course sometimes you do have to rewrite things so many good things that we love came from the decision to rewrite things you just have to know when to do it and when not to do it which was basically joel's point but it was expressed in a very hyperbolic way of like oh you should just totally never do this let me tell you all the great things that are about like software that already has all the corner cases and uh you know
all the education, all the things that you've learned over the years, right?
Baked into it.
But on the Mac, we have examples of rewrites that are great.
And a lot of important things that we have on the Mac today are because someone decided to abandon some old code and rewrite it.
And then we have some cautionary tales.
So I think there's a reasonable mix.
And I think it's not...
out of bounds to say that MDNS responder was a candidate because it did cause real-world problems for regular people.
It wasn't zapping the PRAM point, but it was at a certain point in the history of the Mac that killing MDNS responder to fix a whole host of problems became one of those things you might just want to try because it could be what's going on.
Politically speaking, who knows?
Maybe that's because they said, oh, just don't ever fix MDNS responder for five years.
Whoever this person wrote in seemed to think the project was neglected.
But obviously, Discovery D
was not a successful rewrite and whatever reason, uh, that the rewrite was undertaken and the people who did it and whether they had the expertise or really understood what MDNS responder was doing and how it did it and all the decisions that led to its design and all the things they learned.
It just seems like it was not, it was not, uh, a project undertaken with the right attitude and by the right people.
Uh, but anyway, this, uh, uh, as to the, the idea of MDNS responder being on lots of different systems, this is news to me as well.
Um,
I suppose it's got to be an open source component or maybe it's part of some wider, like whether it's part of Darwin or some even bigger open source component.
I don't know.
I mean, I only know it because it's that process that I had to kill on my Mac sometimes.
It was super important.
And then most people know it because it's the thing that came back to replace Discovery to make your Macs work again.
Well, I did some very, very quick research.
Sorry for everyone who knows a lot more about it than this.
So Bonjour is the zero-conf networking protocol that Apple popularized under that name.
And basically, if you wanted to use a network printer or use network shares that were just listed by their names that would automatically find each other, there's a very good chance of using this Bonjour protocol.
Part of the Bonjour software is MDNS Responder, which is like the demon on the systems that manages that.
That apparently – MDNS Responder itself is open source under the Apache license.
And so it apparently went into all sorts of things that had to support ZeroConf networking and or the Bonjour protocol.
I think you mean Rendezvous.
Right.
What a better name Rendezvous was.
So ZeroConf is the techie nerd name for the technology.
um and then rendezvous was how apple branded it but then in one of the rare cases where apple lost or decided not to fight someone challenging their i forget what the situation was whether they just said oh never mind we'll pick a new name or they actually lost the court case they have to change it and so they changed it to bonjour which is not bad but boy rendezvous was better yeah exactly
So anyway, so it appears that like lots of different operating systems and devices like printers and stuff all embedded MDNS responder because it was open source.
So apparently that's why it kind of went in all these different things and went everywhere and is apparently in Android as well, which is pretty, pretty impressive.
That's, you know, that is, I got to give this guy credit for pointing out the stuff like that is really quite widespread.
And I always just assumed it was just an Apple thing, but nope.
Oh, I would add to the idea of it being successful and it being deployed everywhere are two very different things.
There's lots of software that's deployed everywhere.
If success is just measured by how far and wide you spread, all sorts of terrible things can be considered quote-unquote successful.
Windows.
not not even even if you just take some terrible code in the core of unix that's just been passed around because it's sort of unimportant but it's just that's where a lot of bugs and buffer overflows come from some really old library and some bsd uh unix variant that just gets passed around and no one ever looks at it and it's just this gross crusty little corner and
yeah um anyway um i don't know uh exactly why mdns responder was uh chosen as a as a victim for a rewrite but i think it was a reasonable decision uh but it was followed up by terrible execution so you gotta you gotta have both parts of it if you if you identify the parts of your system that could benefit from rewrites then you do a bad job you have not succeeded for what it's worth opensource.apple.com slash source slash mdns responder
oh and by the way now that we know more about the open source nature of this maybe it wasn't such a good candidate because when there is a project like an open source project that lots of other people use that is sort of being worked on like other people have a stake in this like if mdns responder really is broken or whatever presumably there's lots of people from lots of different companies that are motivated to make it not suck right and you say you know what we're gonna write our own thing it's like saying we've been using webkit which everybody helps update
But we would like our own engine, so we're just going to start our own from scratch again.
It's probably not a great idea.
Now, MDNS Responder is not the same thing as WebKit, obviously, in terms of complexity and importance.
But if everyone else in the industry is using MDNS Responder and presumably updating it and fixing it, and you decide to go it on your own, boy, you better have the best team available with lots of people on it to equal the effort and smarts and experience of everyone else who's maintaining MDNS Responder.
So perhaps it wasn't actually such a great candidate.
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All right, Sid Polk writes,
i trust him uh specifically also this is what public betas are for we did not have those in 2003 which is kind of funny yeah i think people are surprised at exactly how few people are are responsible for such important parts so this isn't like they always assume there's like hundreds of engineers when you learn there's like i forget what twitter's employee account was some was something obscene like 3 000 employers or something like what are all those people doing and then you learn like
How many people work on, you know, the dynamic linker for the Mac operating system and iOS and tvOS and watchOS?
And you're like, boy, that's probably like a team of a couple hundred people.
And it's like five people.
It's like five, you know, and really like two or three of them are doing the bulk of the work.
And the guy who did the DYLD, you know, is largely responsible for the DYLD3 also was responsible for DYLD2.
And he did it on a weekend and an earlier, more innocent time, pushed it out in a software update in the middle of the 10.3.x cycle.
And didn't, you know...
it was a different time but but even today like the teams are teams at apple are smaller than you think and that gets back to the whole like how money can't solve your your talent and retention problems like if you could mold money into the shape of people golem style or golem style i don't know how to pronounce it in this context uh apple would do it but they can't they actually have to hire people and keep them happy and give them interesting things to do and you need the right people and very often some of the best software is written by very small teams of people
who really know what they're doing and are very enthusiastic, rather than hundreds and hundreds of people being directed by 17 levels of management.
Fair enough.
Also, it's Gangnam Style.
Actually, I probably even pronounced that wrong.
There you go.
All right.
Anyway, please cut that from the show so I don't get a million pieces of feedback.
Nope.
Anyhow, Aaron Kirkland writes in, on my Mac 2FX, I had... That is not a very good name, if I'm honest.
But anyway, on my Mac...
what's what's not good about 2 fx that's one of the best mac names ever one of the best macs ever fx who doesn't like fx it's pronounced if x it's got an x in it so it's cool it's a it's a pun for effects it was the name of a movie in the 80s about special effects they don't make those anymore you get now you get now you see them which is about magic or something terrible do you remember movie magic that was a great tv show
Neither one of you has probably seen FX, and it's probably a terrible 80s movie, but Casey might like it.
Why do you say that?
Because I have terrible taste?
You like Hunt for Red October.
Don't you make fun of Hunt for Red October, man.
I know.
I'm just saying you're not going to turn up your nose at a movie with slightly dated sort of tropes or whatever.
Anyway, FX was a great movie to catch.
This movie's terrible.
Casey would like it.
I know, right?
I'm glad somebody else heard that.
It's a great movie to catch on a Saturday when you're 12 years old.
Oh, God.
I don't know if I love you, John, or if I hate you.
Probably a little of both.
On my Mac 2 FX, horrible name or not, writes Aaron Kirkland, I had a floppy disk autoloader.
Why are we still talking about this?
I had a floppy disk autoloader that would hold 25 disks for unattended retrospect backup, and it relied on auto-inject.
This is the discussion actually I was having with Merlin at some point, although I think it was off the air.
But I had this recollection that there were devices that would do the floppy swapping for you.
But I'm like, that's probably just something I was thinking of when I was a kid.
I don't think those things ever existed.
Because when you're swapping floppies manually, you're like, surely I can make a machine, some sort of Rube Goldberg machine to do this for me, right?
But this person says...
that apparently such thing actually existed so my i had convinced myself that it was just like a false memory um but then i asked do you remember the make and model and he didn't uh i would love to if anyone anyway if anybody has knows more about these can provide like a picture or a name or something to google so we can find one of these things and see what it looked like i would love to see such a thing
You can always rely on the world of large-scale backup hardware, like tape drives and everything else, for the weirdest stuff out there.
You can do large-scale backups onto 3.5-inch floppy disks.
That sounds great.
Right.
Well, you know, because there was a need for that.
Not everybody needed that at that time, but someone needed it, and someone was willing to pay thousands of dollars for that, probably.
Yeah.
Retrospect, by the way, was a Mac backup program, which someone in the chat room was saying was terrible, but I think it had some kind of neat features.
I used it for many years.
all right any other follow-up kids we're still in follow-up i know this was a long one those emails were good though so that's true they were pretty good i'll give i'll give john a buy on this one because we all know good follow-up is our fault but bad follow-up is john's fault that sounds right works for me we have a consensus all right so chief waffler in chief what'd you buy these days
This was not a waffle.
This was just straight up upgrade.
You'll have to narrow down that question, Casey, if you want an answer.
What did you buy in the last 48 hours?
What's the biggest thing, physically speaking, that you purchased recently?
What impulse buy, what multi-thousand dollar impulse buy did you just do?
So we've had our wonderful Plasma 42-inch Panasonic 85U TV for about 10 years.
And it's fine.
It's great.
But in the room that we have it in, we have a pretty large first-floor great room in our house.
When I first got this TV, I was still in apartments, and it was great for apartments.
In the room we had it in,
It was a little small for the setup we had in that room.
But it was still fine, so I was just waiting for it to die before I replaced it.
And I didn't want it to die for a long time because a nice 1080p plasma was still kind of the best thing you could get for a while.
And I also didn't want it to die for a while because...
Over time, like when I bought it, you could get a 42-inch screen that was like the highest quality type of screen.
Today, if you want a great image quality TV, the smallest you can get them in is usually 55 inches.
And for a long time, I was kind of hoping that my TV would hold out longer and longer and longer because A, 55-inch plasmas were huge.
Because plasmas still retained quite a bit of thickness and bezel width, even until the end of plasmas compared to the other technologies.
And so a 55-inch plasma is a pretty big thing.
And I thought that would be too big for the room and for the TV stand and everything else.
So I really didn't want to upgrade to that.
1080p was great.
I already had 1080p with great color, great black levels, great brightness, everything else, because plasmas are awesome.
I didn't want to have to replace my TV until I could get a really great
4K HDR OLED TV.
Because I hate LCD.
Like, LCD is a terrible TV technology.
The only thing good about it is that it costs almost nothing.
That's it.
Everything else about LCD TVs is terrible.
So, I wanted to just go from plasma to OLED.
And don't even give me anything about LED TVs because we all know that's fake.
That's a wonderful marketing sleight of hand.
I can't believe they pulled it off, but they did.
Anyway, when we were at the beach last week, the house had a really big, cheap LCD TV that was about 50 inches.
And Tiff messaged me one night saying, okay, we can get a bigger TV.
I said nothing.
And within 45 seconds, it was already ordered and on its way.
Why was she saying that?
Because she was watching the cruddy LCD TV in there?
Why does that mean we can get a big... Was the one in the house too small for her?
I think seeing the cruddy one finally convinced her that a bigger TV can look really nice.
Oh, but was this one bigger?
Oh, it was 50, you said.
Yeah, it was 50.
So it was 50 compared to a 42.
And so she was like, wow, this 50 inch feels so much bigger.
She's probably sitting closer to it than...
Yeah, she also was sitting closer to it, yes.
But anyway, I've been dying to get a 4K OLED TV ever since I saw one in Best Buy last year.
And I've already had all the research done that if I had the reason to get a 4K TV this year...
that I would get an LG, you know, whatever the LG 4K OLED series of the year was.
Because all the reviews seem to be in pretty wide agreement that that's basically the best one out there.
So, finally, Tiff said, okay, we can get a bigger TV.
And I said absolutely nothing about it until it arrived.
LAUGHTER
Because I did not want to bring the conversation back up to have it maybe be back down or have her mind changed.
I'm not sure if this is indicative of you having mastered marriage or you having a real and true problem with buying shit.
Or maybe both, to be honest with you.
Tiff did not appreciate this strategy.
Oh, man.
Where are you sleeping tonight?
Are you sleeping on the couch?
This resulted in a... To get me back for it, she periscoped me undoing all the wires and stuff of the old one, which is basically just a periscope of my butt leaning over the TV stand for like an hour.
And now we are even.
But...
by the way the small tv problem remains we have a small tv in our bedroom and it was so hard to find a small television forget about like the best picture quality just like not the worst picture quality because small televisions are like oh someone's going to use in their kitchen so put the crappiest thing you can and it hasn't gotten better over time as everything's crept up it used to be that the good tvs were 42 then the good tvs were 50 this is the minimum size now like you said the good tvs are 55 minimum size
uh everything's creeping up so to try to find like now it's a choice is kitchen tv or 55 inch and in between just a no man's land of crap yeah basically so i'm sorry what model did you order marco so i i did exactly what i what i had been researching to do and i did a quick double check before just make sure nothing had changed and
um but everyone seems to agree so i got the lg 2017 4k oled series um that has sevens in the names and they have they put a number in front or a letter in front of them to indicate as far as i can tell nothing except like the sound bar that's included so you can pay like a small or you will none of these are small amounts you can pay a smaller amount to get one with just like regular tv speakers in it like on the back but
And then you can pay like $1,000 more to get a little sound bar on the bottom.
And I hate sound bars anyway, so that was not going to be a thing.
And then you can pay $1,000 more than that to get like even better of a sound bar on the bottom or something.
And so the one I got is the base model of the 2017 one, which is the LG C7 TV.
So it's amazing.
At 55 inches?
Yeah, 55.
Yeah.
So why didn't you go to 65?
Yeah.
Well, first, I knew I had to sell this when it arrived.
And now that we see it in the room, I think I actually probably could have pulled off 65.
But the reason why I'm glad, I'm pretty sure I'm happy enough with the 55 now, is that, first of all, it is a substantial upgrade from 42%.
But the good thing is the TV itself does not look that much bigger on the shelf because there's such a difference in bezel width.
Like the new one has almost no bezel at all.
And the old one, the bezels were like three inches on all sides.
It's a huge difference in bezel width and thickness.
Like the new one looks really sleek and has a screen that is more than 10 inches bigger, but it doesn't look like that much bigger of a TV.
Which is nice because we don't want the TV to dominate the look of the room.
When you get a TV that's too big for the room, or that's even just kind of big for the room, your eye is drawn to that.
Even when it's off, you just have this big black wall in your room.
It's something that is very dominant.
And because...
Our TV is not in some back room of the house.
It's like the main room.
You walk into our house and you're in this main room that has the TV and the living room and the dining room all in one big room.
To make the TV substantially bigger I think would look too big for the room.
But now we have the actual screen size of the bigger TV without it looking that much bigger.
So it's almost like we got the extra screen size for free visually.
But they had to put the touch ID in the back though, right?
And it's got a brow.
The only thing is TVs have gotten a lot more full of crappy software since I last bought a TV 10 years ago.
Worst products through software.
Yeah, exactly.
Evergreen.
Like this TV takes a good 20 seconds to boot.
I don't know why a TV has to boot, but fortunately, if you just put it in, like, standby mode instead of turning it off...
the web os things that that lg uses are the least disgusting let's say that because nobody does what panasonic used to which is completely utilitarian minimal uh like i remember my first uh panasonic plasma i had like the volume the little volume bar that appears on screen when you change the volume
was really small and was jammed against the bottom edge of the screen so it obscured as little of like nobody does that now now you change the volume and it's like a giant fairy comes out and waves a magic wand sparkles fly from it and this bar full of bubbling liquid moves forward and this pulsing pattern is like oh my god just change the volume
The good thing is it's actually, you know, even though that the software is really kind of overbearing, it doesn't seem like it's horrible software.
It's just, it's software where I don't really need there to be software.
But the good thing is it also has built-in apps for Netflix and Amazon Video.
Every TV has that now.
I know, I know.
This is, again, like the opera people.
It's like, yes, we know.
We invented this years ago.
Yeah, I know.
So it's new to me.
And it's actually kind of nice.
And it's got the little accelerometer remote with a little mouse cursor thing, which I thought would be terrible.
But having used it, it's actually pretty good.
We have different opinions about that.
No, you don't like it?
I mean, the alternative is using like a five-way pad to move a little thingy around.
I like the little accelerometer cursor thingy.
I have not found it to be to have the precision I want.
Maybe that's just me.
Maybe I don't have the precision I want.
But would you prefer to go tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap?
Because I find it I find it this way.
I find it more precise than the other main thing I use to navigate stuff on TV, which is a stupid Apple TV remote where I'm forever trying to swipe vertically and horizontally.
And that's true.
It's misinterpreting me.
Yeah, so for the listeners who might have missed what we were talking about here, the remote to this behaves a lot like a Wiimote where the TV somehow sends, I don't know if it's only accelerometer or if it's also like the vision-based thing like the Wiimote had with a little IR bar, but somehow the remote, you just wave it around and it moves a little mouse pointer thing on screen.
And I'd say it does not work as well as a Wiimote does in that way.
It isn't as precise or stable.
So it's fine.
Ultimately, I'm assuming that there's going to be a 4K Apple TV update this fall.
Once we have that 4K Apple TV, I don't expect to ever use the built-in software on this TV again.
It's the kind of thing I'm just like setting it up once, going through all the picture settings, trying to find out how to make it look normal, and then you just leave it after that.
So I don't expect the software of this TV to matter at all to me after this week.
Except for potentially the boot time and whatever the volume control looks like when you move it up and down.
That's, well, I don't use the volume control on the TV.
Who uses TV speakers?
Animals.
That's who.
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Watching you briefly on the Periscope try to adjust the picture, I have some advice.
Oh, here we go.
Here we go.
I knew you would.
I'm so happy you do.
This is how Tiff gets you back.
It's not the butt cam 2017 edition.
It's giving John insight into how you set up the TV.
Just come to our house and do it for me.
Well, I mean, it's a Periscope, and he's under the public eye, and he's just fiddling around with things.
But in general, what you were doing is exactly what people shouldn't do when they adjust their TV, which is,
play with the settings and try to see try to think does this look right turn this on turn this off what does this mode mean blah blah blah blah um so you're never gonna you're never gonna arrive at anything that way so to first of all the thing that marco knows and that everyone else should know is when you buy tv no matter where you get it from almost all the time it is configured badly um
um it it might still be in showroom demo mode where everything is like super saturated and super bright with all the effects on but even if it's not the sort of standard default modes on most tvs is not quote-unquote accurate it's not what uh what the people who created the content were expecting you to see because they're sort of creating it and you know mastering it in a
in a particular color space with the expectation of things look a certain way.
The only way to get a television configured correctly is to use some sort of calibration thing, whether it's an app or a Blu-ray or whatever.
And the tricky part is, um, the, the place where your configuration thing comes from, like the source is,
affects how you're configuring it like if you can get a configuration thing to run on your apple tv that will and your and your adjustments are per input that will correctly adjust the apple tv input but then how do you correctly adjust the input that is you know if you use that same setting and apply it to your other inputs or some tvs don't even let you do like
How do you apply that to the one that the Blu-ray is in and how do you apply it to the one that the cable is in or whatever?
That's something you just have to sort it out in every TV.
But either way, you have to get a calibration thing.
And there's tons of calibration things that are out there.
They give you grayscale things and they tell you what it should look like and all sorts of color patterns.
And then you have to basically...
mess with the menus of your television to get the test patterns to look correct to do that to figure out i don't know what all these words mean i don't understand but what these you know the settings are like auto you know dynamic fresh dank like you know what the hell like what what do these words mean right goodness
um sometimes if you look in the manual they'll translate them to like the actual meaning but most of the time what you want to do is seek out on the internet one of those forums where people spend a million years adjusting their tvs and people have like basically settings lists for the televisions say in order to get this particular exact make and model of television to pass a reasonable calibration test here's all the things i had to change it to and sometimes they'll helpfully say here's what these settings actually mean
And this sounds like a long way to go.
Like, oh, I got to go to internet forums and scroll through, like, web bulletin boards.
Like, it's like 2003 and just find setting packs for people and download them sometimes.
And it's just like, here's the thing.
You only have to do this essentially once and then just to, you know, adjust over every few years, right?
Once you get it set up and calibrated according to the calibration app, and you kind of know what the settings do, and you know how to turn everything off, and what the different things mean, mostly all you need to do is adjust contrast, brightness, and a few other things as the screen ages and it drifts a little bit.
um and that's really the only way to do it you can't do it by looking at people's faces and saying does that skin look right to you you will never do it that way you can't do it by looking at video and saying does that motion look right to you need to use a calibration app um and there's tons of them out there or you know calibration dvd or calibration blu-ray or whatever the hardest thing to do is cadence which you probably don't care about to see if you're you don't even have a blu-ray player do you like to see if you can have the ps4
Yeah, well, do you ever watch anything that you care is showing 24 frames per second cadence?
If you don't care about that, you don't need to do it.
But that's the hardest one to do.
The only way I've found to do that one is to use a camera and configure it to use a shutter that's open for a second and run a pattern that, you know, does something over the course of a second and you can see if you see.
even lighting in the one second exposure if you don't see even lighting then you're seeing three to pull down because one frame was shown three times the other frame was shown two times and the three times one is brighter than two times one so you get this sort of checkerboard bright dim bright dim thing that's how you know you're getting the wrong cadence true 24 frames per second cadence everything will be exactly equal brightness because it was 24 frames and each one of them was shown you know for the same amount of time
that's the hardest to calibrate.
I don't know how to do that with an app.
I just know how to do it with a camera and an app, but the other ones just, you know, get an app and easiest for you.
You have an Apple TV.
There are apps on the app store, like THX apps or whatever, like go find one download.
It doesn't really matter which one it is.
They all kind of have the similar test patterns.
Some of them might be better than others.
and just spend a day with it.
And it's important to calibrate it both during the daytime and at nighttime and figure out the balance of brightness, especially for televisions.
I don't know of OLED.
OLED's not as bright as LED-backlit LCDs, but I think it's brighter than most plasmas, but...
sometimes you have to make a trade-off between does this look right at night time versus does it look right in day and your television and i believe most televisions have an ambient light sensor they can be like don't worry about it you just calibrate it and i'll use the ambient light sensor to adjust the brightness for you sometimes you want that because it's helpful but other times it'll just screw with your settings so you calibrate it and then night comes and the ambient light sensor screws with all your settings and you can't see anything in the dark scene so if it's up to me i would pick a good
Medium setting and turn off all the dynamic stuff that this TV is gonna look like exactly like this all the time Please do not dynamically adjust anything But anyway, it's it's a lot harder than just let me go through the menus and try a few things And I think it's worthwhile.
I think it's worth adjusting because if you do if you spend the day adjusting it and you know, maybe like Three months later or six months later run through the adjustments again Just to make sure the thing hasn't drifted and then like save the original setting and
and like in the middle of the movie switch back to the other setting and be like oh god it's just it's terrible it's like it's like suddenly everything was you know you know that uh it's like a festival in india or something we use colored powders to throw all of everything suddenly everything is like super oversaturated it's like it doesn't it doesn't look right it doesn't look natural um it looks like someone has thrown uh festive colored powders over everything on your television you don't want that just ask marilyn you don't want the powders
So did you just fiddle with controls and you're like, yeah, good enough, and now you're never going to revisit it?
I at least did just fiddle with controls and say good enough.
I don't know if I will ever revisit it or not.
I probably will because we only had like one night with it so far to really play with it.
So we will probably still be messing with some stuff.
I will say, though, that this is probably going to be an area of my life that I choose the Casey Path.
Atta boy.
The path of not being very picky.
It's just one day, in your case, one day over the next 10 years that you're going to own this television.
Just spend the time.
Yeah, you said it would also be one day doing boot camp on Windows to set up the gaming for TIFF.
It would have if I had done it.
You're right.
So come over.
Take a day off of work.
That's the other option.
You can pay someone to calibrate it for you, but I think it's a ripoff.
You just do it yourself with an app.
The next time I'm at your house, if you give me some time, I will do this to your television because it's a service I provide.
How busy could you be?
Just come tomorrow.
At the very least, make sure you have the size set correctly.
Can I at least convince you to do that?
You mean, like, instead of, like, fake over scanning and then... Yeah, exactly.
Like, make sure that it's actually showing... I think I have it correct.
I haven't, like, tested anything, like, that can verify on the edges, but... You know how you can tell whether you have it correct?
Calibration app.
This is, like, the first thing they're going to do is, like, hey, can you see all the pixels of a 1080 in a 4K picture?
Or is it cutting off the stuff around the border because you have fake over scan on it?
All right.
Send me the name or a link to an Apple TV app that you think I should try.
And I will give it a shot.
Yep.
But I really can't.
I don't think I'm going to spend a day on it.
That seems like a lot.
I say a day because, you know, whatever.
But it could turn into a day depending on how obsessed you get about it.
let me guess not terribly obsessed also marco there's an easy way to fix this problem stop caring well that's the most easy way to fix it the second most easy way and by the way i highly recommend that it's it's wonderful ignorance is less or a terrible vision like casey where you can't tell what's going on anyway that's also that's also an easier fix but it also affects other parts of your life take your glasses off everything looks great
But no, the second easiest way to fix this is to tell John that you have three dozen bagels of various varieties that are all on the approved bagel list.
And all he has to do is come pick them up from your house.
Oh, and by the way, fix a TV.
John has free time.
He can do it.
Yeah, that seems reasonable.
I would do it for three dozen bagels.
Problem solved.
All right.
So you happy with it?
Again, I've only had like one night to watch it so far.
But so far, yes.
It is not as dramatic of a change as I would have guessed.
You know, maybe if we went all the way to 65, it might have been.
If you went from a crappy LCD to this, it would be.
You're just used to black levels that are reasonable anyway.
But I mean, I feel... Although...
obviously i'm way more sensitive to this than most people but when i went from my previous panasonic plasma to my current panasonic plasma i was startled by how much better the black levels improved just from like when you turn it on it's got like a logo like or whatever on a black background and i could tell wow this is you know in my opinion quote unquote dramatically better than my previous plasma but if you had gone from lcd to oled and you turn on the lcd and it's just you know like whatever samsung and then a black background and this thing it turns on it says lg in a black background
you would be startled by exactly how black it is but going from plasma maybe not as startling to you maybe you don't notice as much although i have to say your plasma is old enough that it is you know still several generations behind the best plasmas got before like plasmas went away so right because because they got so big i could i couldn't upgrade
Yeah.
And also, I've seen very little 4K content on it so far.
Right now, the only way I have to get 4K in there is the built-in Netflix and Amazon apps.
The Amazon app, I had a very hard time getting it to show me anything in 4K.
The Grand Tour.
no it showed me grand tour in hdr but 1080p for some reason like i couldn't get it to step me up to 4k i don't know i don't know why maybe it's a settings i couldn't i looked in the settings couldn't find anywhere i did um i was able to see real 4k with netflix and i watched a little bit of house of cards and so that was nice but house of cards is a pretty dreary gray show
So, like... In so many ways.
Yes, exactly.
So, I wasn't able to really see, like, you know, what is, like, a beautiful nature scene?
Like, I want, like, the stuff they show on the demo reels in Best Buy, like, all, like, the beautiful nature scenes.
In Planet Earth.
Just go get... Oh, wow.
I have planet Earth, but I don't know how to get it in 4K.
Yeah.
The other thing is you should go to one of those viewing distance calculators.
It could be that your viewing distance and your television size is such that you're going to have difficulty discerning 4K versus 1080 at that combination.
So you're saying I should have gotten the 75?
Yeah, well, you have to use one of those calculators to see.
But I was surprised when I did the tape measure thing to see, like, here's where I sit on my couch and here's how far away my television is.
Yeah, yeah.
I would have to step up to bigger than 55 to really get the benefit of 4K.
I mean, not that it matters.
Like, you don't have a choice anymore, essentially.
You're getting out of 4K TV whether you want it or not, which is fine.
But all I'm saying is that don't get hung up on the 4K too much.
until you've done that measurement to see can my eye even resolve uh the difference in dot pitch essentially between 1080 and 4k at this size television at this distance
Well, and it isn't just about, like, being able to resolve individual pixels.
You know, like, you can look at the screen of an iPhone 7 and then next to it an iPhone 7 Plus.
The 7 Plus screen has a much higher DPI.
And the 7 Plus screen looks better.
And you might not be able to identify, like, oh, I can see pixels on this one and this one I can't.
Like, I can't really see them on either of them.
7 Plus is non-native res, though.
Maybe you're just responding to the blurring and the aliasing.
yeah maybe who knows probably not but anyway so like and there's also hdr the different contrast ratios so like there's a huge amount of improvement to picture quality here that was not just the resolution yeah the the frame range and color range potential frame rate and color range differences are what you want although a lot of 4k content especially like on netflix is also very heavily compressed so
you know not that you're not that you're gonna run out and buy a blu-ray player but if you really wanted to see what this television can do blu-ray is your highest quality the highest quality video that you can bring to your home still comes on a plastic disc which is sad but true but is there 4k blu-ray is that a thing really i didn't know that can the ps4 non-pro do that i have no idea
i don't have a 4k tv and i have no idea that's that's that's one of the things keeping me away from 4k is i realize i have to just rip out my whole setup because i'm pretty sure my receiver maybe it has 4k pass through on like one of its inputs or whatever but i just have to like i have to start over like 40 people in the chat just said no no no no none of the ps4s can do this no please don't oh my god no no no so apparently i have to get an xbox one sx one x but i don't know what that is no don't
Or you could just get a Blu-ray player.
They're pretty cheap, and you can get a good one.
But Blu-ray players are pieces of crap.
I hate them so much.
I hate, like, just the Blu-ray spec is the worst thing that has ever happened to movies.
True.
Everyone hates it, but still, if you want to get, like, a hundred and something gigabytes of the highest quality video of your favorite movie...
I mean, at the very least, you've got to get the Blu-ray and then rip it on your Mac and then find a way to play it losslessly off of whatever device you put it on, which I also still haven't mastered because of the 24 frames per second cadence problem, as previously discussed.
Although someone did mention this Plex valve for the PS3, and when I revisited it and I saw Plex was already installed on my PS3, I think I already tried it.
But Plex changes fast, so maybe it got fixed.
I don't know.
i mean the other thing is like again like this fall when the apple tv 4k presumably exists i have a feeling that's going to be my answer to this i think i'm just going to like buy 4k stuff on itunes and call it a day yeah you hope they have it for sale i know i really hope they have and i also i i kind of hope that i can like maybe upgrade some things i've already bought like i bought planet earth 2 on itunes and i know that is available on 4k somewhere uh and
I would hate to have to rebuy the whole thing at an undiscounted new price to just get that, but I probably would anyway because it's so good.
If you really want to show off 4K, you need bright nature scenes.
I want to see the Apple TV screensavers in 4K.
Yeah, I was thinking that earlier.
They're going to look amazing.
I don't think the source video is 4K, though.
I've watched it on my iPad and it looks so great.
I think it's just 1080.
When you run Arial screensaver on your Mac, I'm always struck by how, on the 5K iMac anyway, I'm like, ooh, that's blurry.
This looks much better on my TV.
My TV is 1080 and my 5K iMac is whatever giant resolution it is.
Well, that doesn't mean that the source is not 4K.
That just means that Apple is not publishing more than 10D worth of streams.
Yeah, I'm just saying, are they going to remaster those?
Are they going to go back to the red 8K footage or whatever the stuff was taken from and remake all those videos?
also uh if you happen to see the back of a truck roll by marco from what i can tell grand tours between 20 and 30 gigs for 4k and and there are trucks that have it but how do i get that onto my tv in a way that actually can play 4k if you're gonna if you're gonna see 4k content please don't make it the grand tour i know that's you're gonna see 4k old man wrinkles
No, no, no, I agree.
I agree.
I'm just trying to think of something that you would potentially at least slightly enjoy and typically as well shot and pretty.
Yes, I understand your point about the old man wrinkles and you're right.
But, I mean, generally speaking, it's visually a nice looking show.
Well, anyways, to get it on your TV, well, why not do, can you do, you can do 4K over HDMI, although usually it's 30 frames per second, except in this case, that'd be fine.
No, I mean, I'm pretty sure that there is a new HDMI spec that this TV supports that does 4K 6D, I think.
Oh, there you go.
I don't know.
So do it with your – play it with your computer.
Yeah, you should be fine.
You have a – what version of HDMI is that?
I'm assuming as well.
But I would look it up before I spent the money on it instead of after.
You don't understand.
I got approval that I believed I had a narrow window of opportunity.
Here's the thing.
What Marco did is like, if any TV is going to support all the things, make it the most expensive one.
And it's essentially what you did.
You didn't get the most expensive one because you avoided that weird soundbar crap and everything, which I agree is not a good idea.
That's really all you can do.
The problem is, though, sometimes you look at the most expensive one and it still doesn't have support for the latest whatever that's just about to come out.
And so you're like, okay, I can't buy a TV this year.
I've got to wait until next year.
But I think you're probably safe.
Yeah, because it seems like that the 4K world has pretty much reached the point that it's safe to buy it.
like would you well it's close i mean it's not i mean it's the same reason a lot of people give bad reviews of this tv it's like well it's the best picture quality we've ever seen but it costs a whole jillion dollars and obviously it's not a barrier for you but for other people it's like maybe maybe wait like maybe wait one more year two more years for the same quality television to come down from the middle of the of the pack or whatever right and the other thing with the smart tv stuff is over the over the years
a lot of that lg smart tv stuff like i don't know if they weren't using enough ram or slower processors or whatever but that has gotten faster too and it's like when it first came out well it kind of works but in two years presumably they'll put better chips in their tvs and it will get faster and it has so i think you bought the you know the earliest you could possibly buy and still get all the things and all you had to sacrifice for was you know a little bit of money and some yelling from your spouse
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before we leave the tv topic one i'll take one other brief i mean i don't know why i bother but a brief run at trying to convince you slash you slash the audience uh to invest in a multi-channel audio solution i know you think stereo is just fine i know you think you don't need a subwoofer and left and right channel is fine um
I mean, the way I was going to try to convince you was to think about how concerning it is when viewing an LCD screen in non-native res, but that is now an outdated analogy, because as you were just saying with the 7+, if you make the pixels small enough, it doesn't matter, but there's no equivalent to making the pixels small enough in the world of audio, so...
Lots of these shows that you like, including probably House of Cards, have a 5.1 mix.
Like, they have six channels of audio.
Maybe they have seven.
I don't know.
But they have multi-channel audio.
That's what they're putting out.
And some of them don't have a stereo mix.
So you have to take that 5.1 and down-mix it through some voodoo into...
you know dolby pro logic or something into a stereo mix and that that adds stuff it adds artifacts and weirdnesses that are not there like you're taking someone did what doesn't have a stereo mix i like whenever i've like ripped dvds and stuff there's always a stereo track
Things that fall off the back of trucks sometimes don't have stereo mixes, to give just one example.
Most of the stuff I watch is legal.
Almost everything I watch is on the Apple TV.
When I rip my own Blu-rays, I don't put a stereo mix on them.
Anime things sometimes don't have stereo.
Sometimes they'll be stereo Japanese in 5.1 English, but no stereo English.
I don't know about iTunes, but all I'm saying is the 5.1 mix is available.
Right?
And a reasonable 5.1 setup with a 5.1 mix going straight to it sounds better than stereo.
And if you don't have places for speakers, I can kind of understand that.
We don't.
But I think you do.
You've got a big room.
It's great, that room.
Let me tell you about your house, Marco.
Yeah.
I think you can find... I mean, I found places in my totally awful, should never have any kind of television in it, carriage house weird thing...
it it makes i didn't think it would be a big deal here i held off doing it forever i have some fairly cheap cruddy 5.1 speakers it sounds so much better to have dedicated left right back uh you know center channel it's a big difference um i would encourage you to if you if i mean i know you don't care that much about movies and
but but these days tv shows have 5.1 mixes it makes a difference five point i mean it's like games of thrones or something a 5.1 mix with a subwoofer of a good tv show is just plain better than stereo considerate it's not like you you've done nothing to preclude it you didn't buy a tv with a weird sound bar which is like the worst of like let's just forget about multi-channel and just do some weird stuff up front and try to fake it out i think you have the room especially with these very tiny speakers like mine are very small like
I don't know how big they are.
They're like the size of a big iPhone kind of speakers.
You're like, oh, those can't possibly sound good.
They're wired.
They're passive wired.
You know, they don't need to be plugged in anymore.
They're not Bluetooth or any sort of other weird thing.
You can get those speakers for a reasonable price and hide the software for somewhere in the corner and it sounds awesome.
Consider it.
You know, I don't think that either Marco or I is denying that it's better.
It's not that we're saying it's not better.
It's just, and now I'll speak for myself, I would love to have that set up, but it's not worth the energy to me to make it happen.
Because to do it right, I would have to put like wires under the floor and everything.
You don't always have to.
You just have to be a little bit creative.
I don't have wires under my floor or through my ceiling.
But you can find ways to... The wires are smaller than you think they are.
And you can be creative with where you route them.
And I don't think Marco would even have to be that creative.
And worst case, Marco can throw money at this problem and actually get wireless ones because then you don't have to worry about it.
If you want to spend more money than I was willing to spend on it... Because I was like, I'm not going to spend a lot of money on a 5.1 system.
I don't even know if I like this, but...
Since I'm getting all this stuff, I might as well try it.
And I bought the cheapest one I possibly could.
It was well-rated.
If you want to spend a couple hundred bucks and get six speakers and a subwoofer, do this.
And I did that, and I was amazed.
And they're very small, and so I'm not planning on replacing them with fancier, more expensive ones.
marco's excuse was he was tired of hooking up all that stuff moving from apartment to apartment but he's been in this house for a long time now so that excuse doesn't work the other excuse is it doesn't work in his doesn't work in his room uh but you know again this would take more than a day i feel like i could map out some some wire routes where to put them in places where you wouldn't notice them and hops wouldn't eat them and it would be just fine
hops doesn't eat speakers i don't know my dog eats everything so now i'm now i'm mapping my dog onto uh all dogs you can't put wires in a house dog will eat them hops will lick them yeah hops will look at them and back away slowly because he's scared of them uh so yeah i mean and and casey's right i never said that surround is not
good or better like surround i had surround for a long time granted this was a long time ago um you know i stopped hooking up the surround speakers at least 10 years ago and the the speaker set that they were part of i don't even own anymore uh so i it died long ago uh so
I know it's good.
But again, I'm going to have to pull a Casey here and say I just don't care.
Because most of the benefit is for movies.
But TV shows are in 5.1 now.
That's what I'm saying.
I know.
I know.
But what I care about is the sound should sound good and clear.
And it should be usable to fill the room with music when I want music in the room.
Yeah.
And a standard stereo set works great for that.
I should also point out, I don't have a receiver.
I drive the speakers currently with a little tiny stereo speaker amp that is about the size of four decks of cards stacked.
It's a really small speaker amp.
One of these little Class D things.
And it's great.
And it has a remote support, so the Apple TV controls the volume on it, like the Ritz remote, could learn the IR thing.
It's a great, simple setup.
The TV stand that we have is a non-negotiable piece of furniture with the Historical Society.
I know.
Discussions are ongoing with the Historical Commission regarding the receiver.
There is no receiver that exists that I have been able to find that will fit in this stand.
What if I make a receiver the same size and shape as, say, an old Bell telephone?
They don't make them that small.
How would that work for you?
Even the low-end receivers have these giant cases now because they use the same case design, whether you have, like, two or seven channels.
They just put, like, different numbers of cards in them.
So I think the solution here that we've learned is I just need to install a surround system and a receiver in the beach house and then have Tiff watch a movie on it late at night, and then she'll send you a text that says, okay, we can get a receiver.
Maybe.
Yeah.
We'll have to play with that.
Start your research now.
But yeah.
So I am totally fine with our basic stereo setup.
It's a really good stereo setup because the speakers are my favorites, the Paradigm Adams.
I love the Paradigm Adams speakers because they're like $200 each.
So it's like about $400 a pair.
And they are the best bookshelf speakers I've ever heard.
And I've heard many that it costs way more than that, and they don't sound better.
The Atoms embarrass everything else I've ever tried.
They are just so damn good.
You can use them as your left and right channel, and then only buy the backs and the center and the subwoofer.
Here's the problem now.
The new TV is just bigger enough that the atoms no longer fit on the stand next to it.
Oh, no.
So I have to either get those little pole speaker stands for them, which I don't love that option because that seemed like it would be to get something top heavy in a house that often has children running around and it does not seem like a good idea.
So I don't love that option.
Also, those stands are really expensive.
And you can get new speakers for not that much more money than those stands.
So I'm looking into floor standing options now, but it's very early in the search.
just screw some tiny little wings onto the edges of the tv stand now they'll fit yeah but i love that but yeah right well if i can somehow like drag them behind a truck for a while first and like spray paint them in weird ways it might it might be distressed yeah yeah distress it in like the most hipster way possible and then it'll look right um talked about that on the upcoming rec diffs just for you awesome
but but yeah so i now i'm looking into like floor speakers but i'm probably just going to get more paradigm for you know paradigm makes floor speakers too and they're similarly from what all the reviews say they are amazing values and amazing sound quality for what you're paying so so i take it you didn't like measure the top surface of your table and the the width of the television you didn't do this math beforehand so you just you got it you took it out of the box you put it on there okay let me put the speakers back on you're like oh they don't fit yeah
Pretty much.
I did the math a year ago.
With the TVs that were out a year, when I first started doing all this research, I did it then, and I knew then that I could get a 55-inch TV and that it would intrude roughly halfway into my speakers on either side.
So I knew this was probably going to head.
So you already knew you had a...
you ever see i've seen this in a lot of people's houses two possible solutions that i've seen in real life one put the speakers slightly behind the television two put the speakers in front of the television i've seen both those solutions both of them boggle my mind those are both terrible solutions they think like this is fine like and i can't decide which is worse blocking the television or having the speakers firing directly into the back of your television set
Yeah, I would have a hard time figuring that out too.
I think, I mean, either way, you're making something suck terribly.
So, yeah, I don't know.
Are these bookshelf speakers that you love?
Are they super expensive?
Let me look at them.
No, they're $200 each.
So a pair is $400.
I think we have different definitions.
For bookshelf speakers made by a company that is like respected in the world of speakers, $400 for a pair is not incredibly expensive.
My whole set of speakers was like $400.
it's six speakers for that right speakers are speakers are kind of like watches unfortunately where like you think if you're not like a watch person you don't really know how expensive watches are and speakers are like oh i'm gonna buy some speakers how much could they cost and you're like what is this filled with diamonds i don't know and those you're right those are cheap in the grand scheme of things but i was thinking oh bookshelf speakers and marco likes them maybe they're you know 50 bucks each nope
nope sorry that's but come on for for good speakers that is not ridiculous it's not you're right it's not it's not like they're 900 each but like when i hear bookshelf speakers i start thinking like oh this is for people who don't want to spend big money on fancy speakers so
No, and I've had two pairs over the years.
The second pair of them is on my desk.
These are like my computer speakers because computer speakers are the biggest ripoff in the world.
Oh, they are the worst.
Like my entire time using a computer, ever since I have had a sound card, I have used regular speakers instead of computer speakers.
Every time I've tried computer speakers, I have been dramatically disappointed by how crappy they sound compared to how much they cost.
regular even cheap regular speakers like the first when i first started doing this i just had like it was like a little pioneer integrated stereo thing that i just had like in my room like like you know with like the two speakers and the big unit in the middle that has like the cassette deck and the cd player all in one and the whole thing was probably like 200 bucks i just used those speakers as my computer speakers and that sounded a million times better than anything else i'd ever heard how are they are you amplifying them you're going through the big receiver thing yeah it's a big yeah
Yeah, and the ones on my desk now, I have a second one of those tiny little, like, Class D desktop amplifiers, and that amplifies them just fine.
Like, there are better ways to amplify speakers, but they're all much larger.
And so, you know, you can do it.
I've tried powered monitors, and powered monitors sound okay, but these paradigm atoms, again, they just kick their butts.
Like, it's not even close.
They just sound a million times better.
And...
A pair of powered desktop speakers is not that much cheaper than these paradigms.
You're getting into the $400 territory pretty fast with those, and they really don't sound good.
Even good ones from brands like Klipsch and KEF and Bose and B&O, brands that have a lot of fans,
and i know i know i shouldn't put bows in that list i'm sorry but it has a lot of fans like i've i've tried a lot of these some in some cases i've bought and returned them because they were so bad like for whatever reason there there seems to be very little correlation between how much you pay for a set of speakers and how good they sound and you know everyone has like their one thing that oh i bought this one pair of these like 60 years ago they sound great and and that's like
Once you find that, it's really hard to try anything else because you try something else and you get it and it's on the worst end of the spectrum.
I get the feeling anybody can slap together some drivers into a box of particle board and say they're a speaker manufacturer and it shows.
I've been surprised by the speaker system.
I got some Logitech speaker, you know, typical desktop speaker, computer speakers for my PlayStation 4, and I've gone through a series of quote-unquote computer speakers on my Mac, and they all sound terrible, including the ones that I'm currently using, but I don't...
i don't use them for anything they're fine like i you know they're they were cheap and they're okay um but for the ps4 again i'm playing games there which is mostly like gunfire and explosions um i was surprised at how good the 2.1 set up like you know two stereo speakers and a comically large subwoofer to get that uh
all those explosions to sound good makes a big difference when you know for a ps4 that you're not playing on a tv that you have a gaming monitor you know 4k gaming monitor 2.1 logitech speaker system and a ps4 uh so much more impressive than just a ps4 hooked up to someone's cruddy lcd tv playing through the tv speakers um
I don't know if I can wholeheartedly recommend the product because it's kind of expensive and the power button flakes out, but I did buy a second one.
When I got my PS4 Pro and I shifted my old PS4 up to my son's room, I got a second one of the exact same speaker set, even knowing that the power button is going to eventually flake out.
You just have to wiggle it the right way and then it's fine.
That is saying something.
If you're willing to rebuy the same thing a second time, that does say a lot.
yeah and and again this is after years and years of terrible computer speakers often by logitech often by the same exact company and i you know i realized how much i like them when i went to get speakers i'm like oh no what if they don't make these anymore because that's always the problem with computer speakers like if you find a set that you like and they break they don't make them anymore so but they do still make them and i bought a second one and so you know when mine eventually break i will scavenge the the new ones from my son's room and use them
You know what's awesome about buying regular speakers?
First of all, they're for sale for more than like a year.
And then second of all, they last forever.
You can get speakers that last 50 years.
Eventually the cones often dry out and have problems, but they last a long time.
Because they're just passive devices that they don't, at least usually if they're really good, there's no electronics in them.
There are circuits inside of them.
There's like the crossovers and stuff.
But there's not much there.
And they just last.
And...
It's like the Mac Pro thing.
My iMac is having all these weird problems now and I'm going to have to upgrade the entire computer if I want an upgrade.
But you get a decent pair of speakers and if the amp flakes out, you can just replace the amp.
If you want bigger speakers but you already have an awesome amp, you can replace the speakers.
Having components turns out really nice, which all of our parents discovered 40 years ago.
Speaking of, my dad, who is a huge stereophile, and you know this because he believes in vinyl.
Anyway, he has a set of Dahlquist speakers that he tells me were in his dorm room when, obviously, he was effectively a kid.
Now, I'm sure the cones have been replaced on these, and presumably whatever minimal electronics are in there have been replaced from time to time.
But...
To your point, Marco, I mean, these are 40-ish-year-old speakers that he is still using to this day.
Not as his primary speakers on his nice stereo, but as the surround sound system in his accessory setup, if you will, his second setup.
So yeah, this stuff lasts forever.
The other thing I find about speakers, though, is they're very often ugly.
Like, that I wouldn't want them sitting next to my computer.
For TV, usually you can hide them, but some of them, especially the fancier they get, like, even the boring ones, they're just plain ugly.
I don't know why speakers need to look like anything except for, like, the world's most understated rectangular solid.
Like, why do they need to be weird-shaped or have things poking out of them or be shiny or...
draw any attention to themselves at all so and even the ones that are supposed to look like boring little cubes always have some little flourish or chamfer or other thing to make the boxes look weird and I wish they didn't do that
This is another reason why I love my Paradigm Adams.
Because they come with the black cloth grills that you can just stick on there.
And then it just looks like a boring speaker.
It's a black cloth rectangle sticking on the front of a wooden rectangular solid.
That's it.
It's very simple.
It comes in four different colors.
Again, it's possible to do great speakers.
It's got the wood grain if I'm looking at the right one here.
Because I wouldn't
I would not put that next to my computer.
I have it next to my computer.
It looks great.
And you can also get it in different colors, different finishes.
Yeah, they look nice with and without the speaker covers in the front.
Very simple.
That would be fine.
And they are just normal rectangular solids, but the wood grain, I don't like.
That's part of the reason my current... What are these?
I don't even know what the hell they are.
They're probably like creative.
Yeah, they are creative.
These terrible creative speakers I have hooked up to my computer.
They look nice.
They don't sound great, but they look okay.
Ha ha ha
I will say, one of the most attractive speaker things I've ever seen was computer speakers.
It was, what was, John, you would know, like, those clear plastic Harman Kardon sticks with the big, like, lamp thing as the subwoofer?
Sound sticks with the big jellyfish subwoofer.
Yeah, yeah.
I like the subwoofer.
That looked cool.
Like, the subwoofer did look like a jellyfish, and it was really neat and clear or whatever.
But the sound sticks, I didn't like.
Too many holes.
LAUGHTER
Well, I still, I honestly, I'm not even sure I've ever even heard those.
I have no idea how they sound, but I honestly think like that should go down in history of computer industrial design.
Like that was so, that's such a great design.
I like the cube speakers better in terms of visuals.
Like you remember that the G4 cube came with like these two little round balls that were just a single, single little cone in them.
Same kind of the visual language of clear, but you can see the electronics.
Oh, I think I know what you mean.
Yeah.
They nicely match the thing.
The sound sticks always just seem, they still look like giant octopus tentacles.
I know people, I think, is it Dan Morin?
I think some people we both know got those back in the day and still use them and still have them.
To your point about component stuff, it's like, oh, you know, what other stuff do you have from the era of the G4 Cube that you're still using?
But if they're just plain old speakers, you can just keep using them because they're speakers and they work with every Mac that you buy and everything works out.
That's the thing.
And even getting back to receivers and stuff, so many of the receivers these days, the receiver is integrating certain HDMI standards that go out of date quickly.
Maybe it has network streaming standards.
Maybe it has Bluetooth or AirPlay or integrates with Pandora.
Even my new TV now,
has dedicated hardware buttons on their remote for Amazon Video and Netflix.
And that's probably not going to age that well in the grand scheme of things if TVs still last 10 years.
And it's nice to keep things... You give up on some of the cool integration of having things all in one, that this one box does all these different things and has integrated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, all this stuff.
You give up on some of that if you go the separate component route.
There's usually still a way to achieve it.
You just might need multiple parts.
But I feel like long term, you're setting yourself up for a better outcome.
And this is, again, why I really want to wait for the Mac Pro tower rather than buying the iMac Pro this winter.
Because I like having separate components.
Because most of the time in my life, I have done things that way.
And the few times I haven't, I've usually come to regret it.
But you won't.
You'll buy the iMac Pro.
So the sound sticks are still available, by the way.
They are still for sale.
The sound sticks are only up to three.
Sound sticks three by Harman Kardon.
Wait, really?
$170.
You can order them right now.
That's actually not that expensive for what that is.
Yeah, I mean, I think they look cool.
I've never heard them, so I can't vouch for how good they sound compared to anything.
I mean, you can look at it.
I mean, you can see the components.
Like, well, there's that size driver for the subwoofer, and there's these little tiny drivers for the left and right speakers, and it is what it is.
The other thing is, I have a feeling this is probably a design that looks better in pictures than it does in real life covered in dust and with the plastic faded and cracked and scratched.
I bet the plastic holds up pretty well, but I just don't like how it even looks in pictures.
I like the subwoofer.
I think that's a cute design, but the soundsticks, they look like octopus tentacles, and I don't like the little Cheerio life preserver base thingies.
Don't like them.
Yeah, I guess those little bases aren't that great either.
you know you're ruining this for me this is why do i do a podcast just get the subwoofer and keep it on your desks of curiosity but filled with m&ms pour it down the little you know and the other funny part too is like you put subwoofers usually out of sight you put them like on the floor like
You're not supposed to have this anywhere where it's visible.
The thing about sub-workers is you can put them anywhere.
Who's to say?
You put them out of sight because usually there are these big black cubes that you just want to get rid of.
But this one is so nice.
Put it on your desk.
Because humans cannot localize low-frequency sound as well as high-frequency sound.
uh you know it doesn't matter where you put it i will say on that though i greatly prefer just big speakers that have their own woofers that can produce the low frequencies well enough to the sound of little satellites and then one subwoofer somewhere in the room like
I have heard this from you before, and I think your opinion of this is based on some very terrible 5.1 setups early on.
No, no, no.
My opinion of this is based on liking music.
That's what it is really.
I totally agree with you that if what you're optimizing for is movies and TV sound, then having a subwoofer is cooler.
It sounds cooler that way.
You get more of the big booms from explosions and stuff like that.
But I don't like the way music sounds through that kind of setup.
I think it sounds weird and unnatural and not how that was intended.
I would rather have speakers that are pretty good at TV and movies and also really great at music than the opposite.
I mean, you can choose your left and rights to be standalone left and right channels that can reproduce all the frequencies.
I mean, your receiver usually controls like you can control like the crossover of like what, you know, you could shift the cutoff of which frequencies go to the subwoofer for mixes that don't separately address it.
But if you've got left and right channel speakers that can handle all the frequencies, you don't have to send anything to subwoofer.
in the case where you're just playing music.
Although, multi-channel music is a thing.
Over at Jason Snell's house, I heard, was it Crowded House 5.1 Mix?
It's not everybody's thing, but it is a thing.
Thanks a lot for our three sponsors this week, Betterment, Audible, and Squarespace.
And we will see you next week.
And now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Because it was accidental.
Accidental.
Accidental.
Accidental.
John didn't do any research.
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Because it was accidental.
Accidental.
And it was accidental.
Accidental.
You can find the show notes at atp.fm And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them At C-A-S-A-Y-M-I-S-S-K-C-U-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-O-A-M-A-N-T-S-I-R-A-C USA Syracuse
Do we have multi-channel vinyl?
5.1 vinyl?
They don't even have stereo.
You just buy five records and you play them all at the same time.
What was that?
The Flaming Lips did a thing.
The Flaming Lips did a thing where you buy two vinyl albums and you play them both at the same time.
I have no idea.
Or maybe it was CDs.
Anyway.
Aye, aye, aye.
Let me like what I like.
Let people enjoy things, John.
I'm letting you enjoy things.
I'm telling you, you might enjoy a thing where you get to play two records at the same time.
Double the fun, right?
It's like double mint gum.
And yeah, as the part of the challenge is, you know, you like the ceremony.
Now you have a physical challenge where you have to drop the needle.
You have to drop the needle on the beginning track in exactly the same spot at exactly the right time because you don't want the music to be out of sync.
Was it, uh, was it double dare that had physical challenges?
They actually phrased it as physical challenge.
That was, that was double dare.
I was going to make that reference, but I didn't bother, but there you go.
You got it.
You proud of me, John?
I am.
All I want is for you to be proud of me, daddy.
Did you read that story, by the way, about Double Dare?
And there was the big, like, you know, inside story of Double Dare.
I think there was a separate story about, like, the video phone that you get as a prize on Double Dare.
I know exactly the video phone you're thinking of.
I don't recall having seen the story about that.
But I did read and freaking loved the oral history of Double Dare, which was actually written, which is a little weird.
I mean, I guess it was... Sounds like a written history.
Exactly.
But nevertheless...
It was I think there might have been an associated like brief podcast, which I never bothered listening to me.
That's what it was.
It doesn't matter if you are a child or if you were a child of the 80s and watch Double Dare on Nickelodeon.
This is absolutely worth your time.
It was a fantastic read.
And now you have to find that link for the show notes.
I already have it.
This is my other job other than being chief summarizer in chief.
I love Double Dare.
Double Dare was the best.
And that's the thing.
I've actually said to people, I don't think I've ever said it on the show, but I've said to people in real life, because apparently this isn't real.
But anyway, do you remember that when you were a kid, the grand prize from Double Dare was...
was as already mentioned a video telephone where you would get two of them i believe and you could put one in one person's house and one in the other person's house and you would get like a postage stamp and that's not much of an exaggeration a postage stamp sized image that had a frame rate of like one new image every five to ten seconds and that blew my mind when i was 10 or whatever and
And now, in my pocket, I can have an HD call with anyone on the planet, anywhere I am.
I mean, the future is amazing.
You know what else is amazing about the future, speaking of?
Net neutrality.
Net neutrality is pretty amazing.
Is it so amazing?
We should fight for it.
I think it would be amazing if we maintain it.
I'm not sure the future is going to be so amazing in that department.
So true.
So what's going on with this?
Why do we care about that today as we record on Wednesday the 12th?
I'm going to go through net neutrality all over again.
I think people who don't know what it is or what we're talking about, there is a video.
It's a video from Vi Hart explaining net neutrality in her unique way.
It's actually an updated version of an older video, which gets us more towards why we're talking about this again, where she just took her old video and then bookended it by
preface and then the things that have changed this is a battle that we thought we had if not won at least sort of got things moving in the right direction but for a variety of depressing reasons things are moving back in the wrong direction in these parts on seemingly all fronts and neutrality is no exception so you get someone who used to be uh mostly a lawyer for verizon or whatever you get some industry person in to come in and do something that most people in the united states don't want which is a rollback
net neutrality to make it so that big corporations can charge different amounts of money for different customers of the internet instead of just being a common carrier blah blah blah watch the video to have explained uh the the annoying thing about this is like you get fatigued like how much do i have to hear about and care about net neutrality like didn't we go through this all where we all got all up in a tizzy and everyone write your congressperson and it seems like we're doing that all the time and how many things can i possibly care about and
I don't, you know, I've heard about net neutrality too much.
I don't even care anymore.
Just don't bother me.
Or if you do want to do something about it, you're like, well, what do I do?
I did a bunch of stuff last time.
Do I do that same stuff again?
Ars Technica has a good article here entitled How to Write a Meaningful FCC Comment Supporting Net Neutrality.
Now,
The depressed person in me who sees everything falling apart in this country these days thinks it doesn't matter how meaningful your comment to the FCC is because the stupid Verizon lawyer who's running a thing is going to ignore it and do whatever the hell big corporations want because he doesn't care what people want.
He doesn't care what's good for long-term anything.
All he cares about is screwing everything up.
And that's exactly why he was pointed to his position.
Anyway, but if you are not in that type of dark mood for the moment that you read this article...
This will help you do the best that you can possibly do.
Instead of just clicking a bunch of buttons and filling out this thing, how can you write a meaningful comment that has a chance of influencing things?
And who knows?
It kind of sort of worked last time before everything started moving backwards again, and it might work this time.
So two links in the show notes.
One, watch Vi Hart's video for... It's not the best explanation of net neutrality because it's many-faceted, and a lot of times they pick an analogy like, it's kind of like if this happened, and you know...
in some ways it's better to just straight up explain it without analogy but the analogy she uses is reasonably representative even if it does gloss over a lot of things and there are other aspects to it but anyway watch that to have it explained and it's fun and interesting and if you already know what it is but you feel fatigued by the idea of trying to battle against this again um give the how to write a meaningful comment thing a read to see if you can do more than just check a box or put your name on a list or whatever but actually um
pour out a little bit of your heart and your angst and even your anger in the most constructive way possible.
Uh, and you know, do what you can do to fight the same fight that we continue to be fighting over and over and over and over and over again.
There's also a great video.
It's only about three and a half minutes from CGP gray.
That was from the last time we were all at this exact same rodeo.
Uh, this one's from 2014.
So maybe it wasn't the last time, but you get my point.
Um,
um that is also very good i've seen this by hard video or at least the the original iteration thereof probably also from 2014 which it is excellent as well um yeah this it's it's important i i think and well i was going to say i think that anyone who really has any inkling as to what's going on that isn't paid by one of these big corporations will say net neutrality is the only way to go but you know then we elected who we elected so obviously people think differently
So anyway, if you care about things like this podcast and you want to get it reasonably quickly and not have people get in the way of it, maybe talk to your representatives about net neutrality.
Not that, by the way, a lot of the examples they give you of like, here's what could happen if we didn't have net neutrality.
The difficulty is if you wanted to be like...
if you wanted to actually extrapolate, like if you had to put money on it, like what would actually happen if we roll back to neutrality?
It's such a sort of systemic boil the frog kind of thing that we're already halfway through to that is difficult to convince people exactly how bad it would be.
Like the things that we describe are like, oh, your podcast will download slowly, right?
Yeah, that could happen.
But in general, the powers that be, the powers that are lobbying behind this, that want this, you know, they want to, you know, they want the net not to be neutral.
um they're not that dumb they would do it in the same way they've done everything else like how do we all of a sudden wake up and find ourselves with only one isp choice in like half the country right they did that slowly and insidiously by merging and lobbying to allow larger and larger companies to merge together and it's kind of like a thing like
what do I care if Time Warner is purchased by whatever, or this cable company buys that?
I don't care, whatever.
I just want my TV.
Like people don't care at that level.
And slowly these giant, giant companies are doing things behind the scenes that is making people's lives, like that is closing the door on things that can make people's lives materially better.
You could have faster internet access for less money.
Uh, they're like, they're essentially taking away something that you never had, like progress essentially.
Like,
And you don't know how cheap broadband is in the rest of the world and how other people have choices and how if you have a common carrier that people can actually compete based on price and features.
Like, if you've never experienced that, it's like it's a lack of something.
Like, I've never known it could be this way.
Therefore, the lack of it doesn't make me feel like I'm losing anything.
But you are, right?
that's how they do it and so if they made the net non-neutral and cut all these deals and extorted money from as they've already done from netflix to get their bits to carry over the wires and and startups that you've never heard of and never will hear of are not allowed to enter against the big like you will not notice so most people will not notice the lack of things that you could have had but that is really the worst effect of this stuff stuff that
That people – that you will never get because competition has been eliminated and, you know, people in the middle are extracting value from everybody else.
And it's like – you may have like a mid-level malaise of like, oh, Comcast is all I can get and I hate Comcast.
But it's like, oh, you know, I hate airlines.
You know, airlines have a similar problem of monopoly and consolidation.
But anyway –
it's it's usually not as comically evil as like i was watching my show and they turned it off and they're not going to do that right they're going to do it in a much more insidious way and they're going to end up you know finding a way to continue to charge you more for worse service and make you feel powerless against it and you were like how did how did we even get here and like net neutrality is like the last fashion literally the last one because they've already got everything else that i just described that is like and if we could just get that one last little bit and be able to
be the gatekeeper for all internet content for the last mile for everybody and we've already chased out all competition and consolidated our power structure we just need this last little bit that's why like everyone is fighting for this tooth and nail because it's not as like we're fighting for some sort of utopia we're just trying to
hold on to the last shred of what we have in this country and i'm sure people listening in other countries it's better where you are but as with many things in the u.s for historical reasons and stupid governmental reasons many things are terrible and uh internet access is one of them and so send help yeah that's that's i can't say i can't add anything to that that wouldn't be just dark and depressing
I mean, if you want to be optimistic, as people pointed out, like the previous head of the FCC was also an industry person.
And I mean, you know, we did all the public comment and we do all this rallying or whatever.
Eventually we did, you know, we did get the result we wanted.
Of course, that was a very different administration.
And that's where Marco gets depressed again.
And we all get depressed.
Like that was...
a different administration but anyway the fact that we have made progress on this in the past means it is not 100 impossible that we can't make progress on in the future and as we've learned administrations change right every 48 years um so even if we lose this one we can still win the war unlike things like supreme i can't even talk about supreme court justices like this these are things that can change with the administration um so
anyway i'm this is this is a great would be great at rallying people to political action by telling them exactly how useless everything they could possibly do is but we have to do it it's like it's like all we can do we can vote uh and we can register to vote we can vote we can be active politically and we can do when they call for public comment on things and the fcc does publicly comment you're part of the public comment that's what it's for even if you think you're going to be ignored yeah
Do you think the FCC gives a crap about public comments?
No.
Congress doesn't either.
We're trying to get people to do something.
What part of the population is asking for any of these laws that they're trying to shove through?
No one's asking for this.
Big companies.
Big companies with a lot of money.
That's who they're asking for.
There's like four companies asking for it.
Zero part of the population asking for it.
Just like so much else that's going on, there's like no one is asking for this except the people passing the laws.
Mm-hmm.
Well, there you have it.
Another rousing episode of ATP.
Enjoy.