The Price of an ATP Sticker
Casey:
Right, so we were discussing this on Slack, and then it occurred to me that maybe we should discuss this publicly for the bootleg people.
Casey:
It's nothing bad, nothing, you know, illicit or anything.
Casey:
When you say that, it makes it sound worse.
John:
Why give that?
John:
No, because it's like, as a manager, John... It's not like we're talking about robbing a bank.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, now I think that we're robbing a bank.
Marco:
Yeah, it's like if you go to a restaurant and there's a sign taped to the door that says, don't worry, we're not going to spit in your food.
John:
Exactly right.
John:
No rats in this kitchen.
John:
Rat-free kitchen.
Casey:
You two are already on my shit list for the treatment I got yesterday morning, and now you're going to do this to me?
Casey:
That's how it's going to be?
Marco:
Oh, this was amazing.
John:
What treatment did you get yesterday?
Casey:
We'll get there.
Casey:
We'll get there.
Marco:
Casey Starless?
Casey:
Yes, yes.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
We'll get there.
John:
You brought that on yourself.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I hate you.
Casey:
You're fired.
Casey:
You're both fucking fired, and I quit.
Casey:
Anyway...
Casey:
September is a very special month to a lot of people, but particularly the greater RelayFM community.
Casey:
And that includes this very program, the Accidental Tech Podcast.
Casey:
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
Casey:
And this all started for me and for us with our dear friend Stephen Hackett.
Casey:
whose eldest child was afflicted with childhood cancer when the kid was like six months old.
Casey:
And so because of that, the Childhood Cancer Awareness Month is near and dear to our hearts.
Casey:
And in particular, St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital is near and dear to our hearts.
Casey:
And every September for at least the last two or three years, if not more,
Casey:
We've been trying to raise money in concert with Relay, since we're all Relay hosts.
Casey:
We're trying to raise money for St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Casey:
And we would very much love it if you, the listener, could donate any amount of money.
Casey:
A dollar, five dollars, ten dollars.
Casey:
a whole pile of money, that's cool too, any amount of money to St.
Casey:
Jude, particularly during this month.
Casey:
And so if you wanted to, and if you have a little extra cash you can send their way, you can go to stjude.org slash ATP.
Casey:
Pretty easy to remember, stjude.org slash ATP.
Casey:
And you can send them a little bit of your money.
Casey:
I should note that it now supports Apple Pay, which it never did before, which is super excellent.
Casey:
And you can, in just a matter of moments, send money to help fight childhood cancer.
Casey:
So let me give you kind of the formal spiel, and then I'd like to tell you a little bit about what ATP is doing for this.
Casey:
In September, like we said, you can join supporters around the world during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month to raise money for the kids of St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital, where families never receive a bill for anything.
Casey:
Let me say that one more time.
Casey:
Families never receive a bill for anything.
Casey:
Each year, between 180,000 and 240,000 children are diagnosed with cancer worldwide.
Casey:
Treatments invented at St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% since it opened more than 50 years ago.
Casey:
St.
Casey:
Jude won't stop until no child dies from cancer.
Casey:
So again, if you could, if you please donate, and you can do that at stjude.org.
Casey:
And you can join the fight to end childhood cancer.
Casey:
And again, you can do that now with Apple Pay, which is super convenient.
Casey:
So the three of us were thinking about, well, what can we do here in order to try to show how important this is to us and how much we value St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital?
Casey:
And what we have done is, as a threesome, we have donated a sum total of $20,001, which is a very odd choice.
Casey:
But yesterday...
Casey:
Under a little bit of duress in my case, which I'll explain in a moment, each of us donated $6,667 exactly such that we could get to basically $20,000, although it ended up, if you do the math, to be $20,001.
Casey:
That happened as we record this yesterday morning.
Casey:
And it's important to us that we note that this is because we find St.
Casey:
Jude to be such an important thing and we value it so much.
Casey:
And we're donating even more this year than we did in prior years, thanks in large part to our members.
Casey:
And we really appreciate that.
Casey:
And so, you know, whether or not you're a member, we really, really, really urge all of you.
Casey:
And we will say this a couple of more times this month.
Casey:
Please go to stjude.org slash ATP and throw any amount of money in St.
Casey:
Jude's way.
Casey:
Anything helps.
Casey:
Don't be embarrassed about a dollar or five dollars.
Casey:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
Be proud.
Casey:
Be proud of that five dollars.
Casey:
That counts.
Casey:
It does.
Casey:
Be proud of it.
Casey:
Donate what you can, and we'd really appreciate it.
Marco:
Yeah, it's really hard to find great charitable causes where there's no asterisks on, well, how effectively do they use the money or whatever.
Marco:
Sometimes you've got to do some research.
Marco:
Fortunately, we've done the research for you, and this is a fantastic place to donate money.
Marco:
If you want to make a difference in real people's lives in a really effective and concrete way, St.
Marco:
Jude is a really good place to give money.
Marco:
In addition to the incredible work they do providing care for kids and their families, like kids with cancer.
Marco:
And again, what case is it?
Marco:
Notice this is a very important detail.
Marco:
The kids who receive treatment don't have to pay for it.
Marco:
In the US.
Marco:
That's incredible.
Marco:
And if you think like this horrible thing that this family and this kid are going through if they have this diagnosis, the last thing you want to think about is money.
Marco:
Like how are we going to pay for this to save our kid?
Marco:
And they take that question away, which is incredible.
Marco:
And they're also a research institution.
Marco:
So in addition to all of that incredible financial help they give people –
Marco:
They also use the money to conduct research to treat and prevent childhood cancer.
Marco:
And so it's a huge deal to – the things they do are incredible and really help the world in a pretty amazing way.
Marco:
And they're just a fantastic organization.
Marco:
You can look up as much as you want to look up about them.
Marco:
They're a fantastic organization.
Marco:
They really use the money well and they do very good work.
Marco:
So –
Marco:
I'm going to go, as usual, a little bit more aggressive than Casey's pitch.
Marco:
I'm going to say, if you're listening to this show, odds are good you can afford to give them more than $5.
Marco:
If you can only afford $5, great.
Marco:
They will appreciate it.
Marco:
We will appreciate it.
Marco:
I bet you can do more.
Marco:
So I'm going to say, as we typically do, this is, you know, Apple hardware buying season is about to be upon us.
Marco:
Usually Apple hardware launches during September or is at least, you know, about to launch during September.
Marco:
And so usually we get to make this pitch to you every year.
Marco:
Whatever you're about to spend on a new iPhone or a new iPad or a new Apple watch or whatever, you're probably going to spend, you know, $75, $100, $150 in tax.
Marco:
Or like buying a case or something.
Marco:
So if you're lucky enough to be able to do that, take some of that and give it to St.
Marco:
Jude as well.
Marco:
Justify your ridiculous Apple hardware purchase by giving whatever you would spend on...
Marco:
tax or a case or apple care for some new apple device give that to st jude if you can do more even better but that's what i i'd say to set that as your target what you would spend on an accessory or on some kind of additional surcharge on your frivolous hardware purchase this fall give at least that much to that
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
I probably have made the same comparison before, but last I heard, CGP Grey has something like ad block absolution.
Casey:
So if you subscribe to his Patreon, then you don't have to feel bad about using an ad blocker.
Casey:
Well, like Marco said, this is frivolous spending absolution.
Casey:
If you donate a small to medium to large-sized pile of money to St.
Casey:
Jude, you get frivolous spending absolution from all of us.
Casey:
So it's a win-win.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, if you send them, like, $100, $200, something like that, you could buy whatever iPhone you want, guilt-free.
John:
And plus, the relay thing, like, they had... I forget what their goal was last year, but they totally smashed through their goal.
John:
This year, their goal is bigger than last year.
John:
I think it's, like, over $300,000.
John:
So, we're all collectively, everybody in this sort of...
John:
tech nerd podcasting sphere that's in any way related to relay we're trying to get them over the line uh i think their goal is 315 000 i feel like we can go higher than that right so it's just beginning now we're not quite there yet every little bit that you can add gets us closer to that goal and they're doing a bunch of fun things and they have like a podcast-a-thon and
John:
They've already had a bunch of videos they put up when they reach certain goals or whatever.
John:
So check out that content if you want to be motivated to give even more.
John:
If you give $5 now and then give $5 tomorrow and then give $20 a day after that, as you see the content that they're producing for this remote COVID telethon that we're all doing here, hopefully you'll be motivated to give even more and more.
John:
And like you both said, it's such a great charity because –
John:
You are essentially directly letting someone else not have to worry about paying for something.
John:
You're not just helping them pay their bills.
John:
You're not just giving them money towards their insurance.
John:
Nothing like that.
John:
It's like every dollar that you give is something that prevents a family from having to think about money when they're dealing with their kid having cancer if they're treated at St.
John:
Jude.
John:
So it's an extremely good cause and it should make everyone feel good to donate.
Casey:
I mean, you could literally be paying to cure cancer.
Casey:
I mean, how many times have you said, f*** cancer?
Casey:
Well, you know what?
Casey:
If you want to say that, then now's the way to do it.
Casey:
If you want cancer to go away, this is how you do it.
Casey:
So please, we'll let it go, but stjude.org slash ATP.
Casey:
We're going to say this a few more times during the month of September, but seriously, stjude.org slash ATP, if you please.
Marco:
Now let's talk about some text formatting.
Casey:
I'd like to file a formal complaint.
Casey:
I occasionally will get fired up at Marco and or John.
Casey:
I have never been more f***ing angry at the two of you than I was yesterday.
John:
Casey's idea was originally and I don't know if this was his idea just because he was busy or it was a legit idea it was like we should give our money during the show and the last thing I wanted to be doing during recording is like filling out forms on a website and carefully entering numbers and stuff like that it's like no we should we should have our donations done and we split it up into three with our weird odd number so we were trying to reach 20k so we did 20,001 because that's how it divided evenly by three whatever
John:
Right.
John:
And we were all going to give it, you know, around about the same time.
John:
So our names would appear near each other on the little donation list.
John:
Right.
John:
And but we were having this debate over like, well, what do we put for the names?
John:
Do we just put our first and last name?
John:
Do we do we write ATP colon John ATP colon Marco?
John:
um do we include our spouse's names do we include all our family names do we include just our last names not that it matters because it's just a text field that shows up on a website but these are the type of things we discuss right um and and marco wanted to get it done because he had something to do and was about to get in the car i wanted to get it done because i wanted to get done before the show but casey was recording a podcast he's like oh i don't have time to deal with this like whatever but but marco and i like tough you're out photo we want to do it now
John:
Two out of three.
John:
It's great having an odd number of people in the show.
John:
So like, let's just do it.
John:
Let's just get out of the way.
John:
Let's just do it.
John:
The amount, type 6667.00, do the thing, submit and go.
John:
So Marco went first and he did Marco and Tiff.
Marco:
And we even discussed in the chat, like, are we including spouse names?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
And then I'm like, okay, can I, are we going to format it like this?
Marco:
Marco and Tiff Arma.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
And I'm like, this is what we're going to do, right?
Marco:
Confirm, confirm.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Yep.
John:
Yep.
John:
And I did.
John:
And then he Marco did that.
John:
And then I did John and Tina Syracuse and submitted the thing following the format.
Marco:
Exactly.
John:
The thing we noticed, by the way, is when Marco did his like there's a leaderboard of like who gave the biggest donation.
John:
So Marco's at the top of the leaderboard.
John:
But then I do mine with the exact same amount.
John:
Now I'm at the top of the leaderboard.
John:
So we realize I was just like recency because we gave the exact same amount.
John:
And so we've realized Casey's going to be the top of the leaderboard because he's going to go last.
John:
And then I think I just didn't think about it and closed the window.
John:
But then when I looked back at it, Casey was indeed the number one in the number one spot.
John:
And still is, as we record, days later.
John:
But the name written there was not Casey and Aaron Liss.
John:
It was Casey space asterisk space Aaron space Liss.
John:
And they're like, we talked about this.
John:
What the hell is an asterisk doing there?
John:
And he angrily says, it's an ampersand.
John:
I'm like, it's not an ampersand.
John:
which would have also been wrong with all which would have also been wrong because we agreed it was going to be space a and space and so now if you look at the number one uh donation it looks like that thing you get on your credit card bill where you can't figure out what the vendor is where it's like all caps casey star erin slash something like who is this what is this what is this charge oh it's just casey he can't type
Casey:
So, OK, let me make it plain.
Casey:
I'm in the midst of recording analog while I'm trying to not ignore Mike and trying to have a conversation with him and dealing with these two numbnuts trying to tell me, go, go, go.
Casey:
And normally I wouldn't have really thought that much about it.
Casey:
I would have waited and I would have just done it like an hour or two later.
Casey:
But I had this vision of somebody watching.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Saying that just me and Marco gave money, but you didn't give any.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
And then, like, hours later, okay, fine, I guess I'll do it too, you jerks, you know, or something like that.
Casey:
And so I wanted to do it really quickly behind the two of them.
Casey:
Now...
Casey:
So ampersand and asterisk are next to each other on the American keyboard.
Casey:
So it is certainly plausible that I had typed an asterisk.
Casey:
But I am 99% sure I used an ampersand.
Casey:
Now, to be fair, we did all agree it was going to be space A and D space.
Casey:
But I was in a hurry.
Casey:
I was distracted.
Casey:
I was trying to get through it as quickly as possible.
Casey:
So I just did a frigging ampersand.
Casey:
And next thing I know, I see KC star Aaron Liz...
John:
Why didn't you just tell Mike, hang on a second?
John:
I think Mike would have paused for two and a half minutes if you told him, hang on a second, I'm about to give a bunch of money to St.
John:
Jude.
Casey:
He would have said, fine, go for it.
Casey:
That's true, but I was just trying.
Casey:
I mean, in theory, it shouldn't have been that hard.
Casey:
Well, also, like, if you include the shift, you're only saving one keystroke.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Like, is that really worth it?
Marco:
Instead of A-N-D, shift eight or shift seven?
Marco:
We should just be glad you didn't put emoji in.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
You should.
Casey:
I should have done like an emoji.
Marco:
One of those big pluses.
Casey:
Anyway, the point is now I have the pleasure of not like I don't want to be at the top of the leaderboard.
Casey:
for more than like 10 minutes, like being there for 10 minutes.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
That's kind of fun.
Casey:
But like, I don't want to be there anymore.
Casey:
So like, Hey, if you're listening to this and you want to donate even a dollar more than 6,000, 6,667 dollars, send me your mailing address and, and a, and a redacted version of your receipt.
Casey:
And I will put not for sale ATP stickers in the mail.
Casey:
I'm not even kidding.
Casey:
I don't care where you live in the planet.
Casey:
I will do it.
John:
Okay.
John:
I always wonder what it would take to get a sticker.
John:
You know what it'll take?
John:
$6,668 or more to St.
John:
Jude.
Casey:
That's it.
Casey:
That's how much it costs right now.
Casey:
That is the price of an ATP sticker.
Casey:
That is it.
Casey:
But anyways, the point is I didn't want to necessarily be at the top.
Casey:
And now every time I look at this, because, you know, at the top of this page, they show like the different milestones that Mike and Stephen are trying to hit.
Casey:
And now every time I look down, it's, oh, God, Casey Starr.
John:
That's so fantastic.
Casey:
I was so angry at you two.
Casey:
It couldn't wait.
Casey:
Like, Marco, I sort of understand that you were trying to get in the car and, like, go somewhere.
Casey:
So I give you, like, a half pass on this.
Casey:
But, John, cut me a little slack, man.
Casey:
Like, you couldn't wait.
John:
No, but I wanted to get it done before the show, and I had things to do as well.
John:
I didn't want to be doing it during the show.
Casey:
Fine.
John:
All right.
John:
Anyway, we did it.
John:
We donated.
John:
Good job, everybody.
John:
Everyone who's listening, go donate.
John:
Yes, please.
Casey:
Oh, my gosh.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let me actually have a little bit of schadenfreude.
Casey:
And, John, tell me about your Mac Pro.
John:
Oh, where did we leave off my Mac Pro?
John:
Oh, I know.
John:
It was like I had revived the T2, which had fixed the sleep problem.
John:
I had all my data on my link data volume, but I couldn't actually boot into it, so it was just sitting there.
John:
And I had a plan for how I thought I was going to fix it, but I didn't want to go forward with that plan until I had some more backup.
John:
So, yeah.
John:
I got another hard drive.
John:
I did a complete backup of linked data.
John:
Also, I forgot to mention this last show.
John:
I also did another backup of my entire photo library to another hard drive.
John:
So I made two additional copies of my photo library and one additional copy of my entire data volume.
John:
Then I was ready to try my approach.
John:
I remember my approach was I was going to delete all the volumes from my boot thing, all the visible volumes.
John:
This is the thing.
John:
And Disk Utility doesn't show you some of the hidden volumes in different APFS roles, but it shows you the system volume and the user volume.
John:
So I had a system volume, and then I had an associated almost entirely empty user volume.
John:
And then I had my real user data volume, right?
John:
So I was ready to do this.
John:
I had my backups.
John:
They were all disconnected, put to the side, right?
John:
And then I booted into recovery mode, and I deleted my system volume, and I deleted my empty user volume, being very careful to make sure that I was deleting the empty user volume and not my real user volume, which was easy because I had renamed the volume so they didn't have the same name.
John:
Anyway, now I'm left with just one volume.
John:
I'm left with essentially an unbootable disk, just one volume called link hyphen data, right?
John:
And then I ran the Catalina installer.
John:
And when it asked me where I wanted to install, I said, please install on link hyphen data.
John:
Actually, I renamed it to just plain a link before I did it, just for cleanliness, because I knew what I hoped it was going to do that was the right thing to do.
John:
So I renamed my data volume to be just link.
John:
I ran the installer and I said, you should install on this volume right here.
John:
And the installer did exactly what I thought it was going to do, which is
John:
made a new system volume, renamed my data volume to be link-data, and wove them together during the installation process.
John:
So after the installer finished running, my computer rebooted, and I was back exactly where I left off with everything perfectly fine.
John:
So I could have done that like a week ago, but I didn't know that was going to work.
John:
So...
John:
If you're wondering how you, if you just have a data volume, how you can sort of revive your computer, the one thing that I tested that apparently works is delete all the other volumes and then run the installer on your data volume.
John:
And it will make a separate read-only system volume, connect it to that data volume.
John:
Even if that data volume was like a data volume from an old install of Catalina, it will all do the right thing.
John:
so it was great worked out great oh and by the way the photo book that i wasn't sure whether it had actually gone through because that was like the first time i can remember my computer not waking from sleep was it was like uploading my photo book uh and taking a long time and then i came back to my computer later and it wouldn't wake up and i was like well i wonder if that photo book turned out okay turns out it did the photo book arrived at my house it had all the photos in it none of the pictures were truncated it looked perfect so all's well that ends well uh
John:
And now I have a bunch of spare hard drives hanging around in case I have some other disasters I can hopefully recover from it.
John:
So bullet dodged.
Casey:
I am excited that it worked out for you, even though there is some amount of shot in front of, like I said, that this was all happening.
Casey:
I am glad that it all worked out.
Casey:
What a mess, though.
Casey:
How would any normal human reasonably diagnose and debug this?
Casey:
I don't think I would have been able to figure out all the steps.
John:
I mean, a normal person would probably just live with the fact that their computer doesn't wake from sleep and just make it not go to sleep, right?
John:
And then I think most people debugging it, like, and the thing that would do the thing that I was tempted to do, which is like, let me just wipe this clean and restore from a backup.
John:
But I did not want to do that just because I knew how long it would take.
John:
And my backups are recent within hours, right?
John:
But they're not...
John:
like completely update the only thing that was completely update as of the moment right it was my data volume and the data was all still there so i just stubbornly refused to lose even the tiniest amount of data if i didn't have to and it turns out i didn't have to but to be clear with all the time you spent diagnosing all this you could have easily backed up that thing from time machine or whatever in considerably less time and lost like an hour or two worth of data right well the thing is by the time that i had like
John:
remember it didn't even it didn't even occur to me that i was gonna ever get into a situation where there could be data loss but this is just a sleep problem right but it was reviving the t2 that made my machine unbootable and once it's unbootable i can't boot into it to run one more time machine backup right and i can't even run a super duper clone or whatever against it because all those cloning programs expect to be pointed out essentially like your volume as viewed by the os as one contiguous thing and not just at the data volume right
John:
What I ended up doing was cloning just the data volume, but that's not a bootable system, right?
John:
So once I crossed the line of like, oh, I might have to restore from a backup or something here, it was too late.
John:
I couldn't boot into my computer anymore except for into that other system, right?
John:
So now that I know that that's a possibility, it probably would have been better for me to just ignore the fact that my computer can't wake from sleep and just do a bunch more time machines and clones and all that other stuff.
John:
which I think I might have done at the beginning, but this was a multi-day restore process.
John:
I mean, I guess there was no data generated during those multiple days because all I was ever doing was rebooting and sleeping, but it's the principle of the matter.
John:
But anyway, it felt way better not to have to do any kind of restore and to just continue to use my data exactly as it was.
Casey:
Tell me about Big Sur and Bridge OS.
John:
So the question is, okay, great.
John:
You did all this thing.
John:
You fixed your computer.
John:
Great.
John:
Good for you.
John:
What the hell was the problem?
John:
We know that reviving the T2 fixed whatever the problem was, but what was the actual problem?
John:
So we have a lot of feedback from people with theories in their own stories.
John:
An anonymous Apple genius says both 1015.6 and Big Sur Beta 5 contains bridge OS updates.
John:
Mentioned before that one of the things that can modify the software that's on, you know, modify bridge OS for your T2 is an OS update.
John:
Both of the most recent updates had a bridge OS updates.
John:
In fact, each and every 1015.x update has also upgraded the T2, including the Catalina 1015.6 sum of bundle update that was released on the 12th.
John:
So this genius goes on to say,
John:
When John revived the Mac Pro via Apple Configurator 2, the latest shipping version of BridgeOS would have been installed on the T2.
John:
So the one from 10.15.6.
John:
Since I was using Apple Configurator 2 to revive it, it's not going to revive it with the big SERP beta.
John:
It's going to revive it with whatever the latest is for the supported released OS, and that would be 10.15.6, right?
John:
Here is an anonymous Apple employee saying...
John:
One point on why did the revive operation hose myOS volume, I'm pretty confident this is because when you did the revive, it essentially did a reinstall of the GM BridgeOS.
John:
This meant that you downgraded BridgeOS from what was installed previously from the Big Sur beta.
John:
Whenever BridgeOS is downgraded, login window failing to recognize login passwords is a known side effect.
John:
So that is a possible explanation for why wouldn't it let me log in, apparently unrelated to any unmountable volumes.
John:
It's just because I downgraded BridgeOS, right?
John:
I wondered if anyone else who had a Mac Pro out there and listened to the show had similar problems.
John:
John Sandiland says, I heard your tale of O. I also updated my Mac Pro to Big Sur Beta 5 and wake from sleep stopped working immediately after.
John:
So there's someone with a Mac Pro who did Big Sur Beta 5 update and had the exact same symptom.
John:
Paul Colton says, I'm having the same issues with my Mac Pro and Big Sur Beta 5.
John:
I'm hoping Beta 6 fixes the sleep issue.
John:
So if you're wondering what people would do, maybe sitting around and hoping Beta 6 fixes it is one of the options.
Sure.
Yeah.
John:
Uh, and Job says, uh, another, another listener, Job says Mac pro has the same issue with wake from sleep and I've never run a beta on it.
John:
So, and the stories start to tail off from there.
John:
I put the two ones that are like, I did, I had the exact problem that you did, but then people are like, I have a macro and it also can't wake to sleep.
John:
But I never ran Big Sur Beta.
John:
And, you know, many people have many sort of sleep problems.
John:
Even if you don't have a Mac Pro, there are some people.
John:
So Hagen Tershuren says, Big Sur Beta 5 broke BridgeOS so hard that it turned my 16-inch MacBook Pro into a brick that had to get a new logic board.
John:
There was no fix.
John:
I heard a bunch of stories from people who said something broke with bridge OS and even like the Apple store could not bring my computer back to like life.
John:
Like they couldn't restore it.
John:
They couldn't revive it.
John:
It was just dead.
John:
And you need like a logic board swap, which is no good.
John:
And Leeward says, my 2014 Mac Mini wouldn't wake from sleep at all while 1015.6 was running.
John:
Many, many hard reboots.
John:
1015.6 supplemental on August 12th has completely fixed the problem as far as I can tell.
John:
So, and again, many, many more bits of feedback explaining problems with waking from sleep coinciding with various software updates on all sorts of different kinds of hardware.
John:
And a smattering of stories where like literally your hardware was bricked because the T2 is it's hardware and it's software and it's firmware.
John:
And if it really, really, really gets hosed, there's just no coming back because like sort of the DFU mode, I'm imagining that requires some minimal functionality of your T2 to even get into that mode.
John:
So if you really hose it bad.
John:
you're in trouble so i never want to touch my t2 ever again and now i'm very wary of beta releases or any release for that matter as you know like every single catalina update has included a new version of bridge os that's a little scary but i guess that's how software updates work so now i'm a little scared of every update yay super and now i'm scared of it too i think we should all be like it is mac minis macbook pros a bunch of people with imax said a bunch of problems related to bridge os
Marco:
You don't usually think of a point update to your OS as being a potentially entire disk losing process.
Marco:
But if things go wrong with the Bridge OS and with the T2, that is a possible outcome.
John:
Especially if you have an encrypted disk.
John:
It's scary.
John:
Make sure you have good backups.
Marco:
It's a good thing Apple's software quality is always so stellar.
John:
Really though, I mentioned that the Big Sur beta cycle has been terrible for me in one aspect, which is updating from one beta to the next because they've totally changed how the OS update process works.
John:
But up until this point, we've had Macs with T2s for a long time, and it's kind of amazing that this type of problem hasn't been more prevalent.
John:
So I think in general, Apple is pretty careful with these updates and has a process that must be pretty, you know, have a lot of safeguards in place to make sure you don't get into a completely unbootable state.
John:
But, you know, I did install a beta and betas aren't perfect.
John:
So what can you do?
John:
So tell me about hardware tests then.
John:
Roland Manson wrote in to tell me that apparently the hardware test that you can run by holding down keys on your Mac has a longer version that you can run.
John:
So if you hold down the D key, it will run built-in hardware diagnostics.
John:
If you hold down a boot, if you hold down option D, it will do a thing where it pulls the latest hardware test from the internet.
John:
But then after that test is run, apparently you can press command E to run the extended version of the test.
John:
And apparently this is entirely undocumented in the Apple support article that we will link in the show notes.
John:
So...
John:
there is apparently a longer more thorough hardware test i'm not really inclined to run that right now but next time i have some sort of terrible problem i will definitely remember to let the hardware test run after booting by holding down option d and then hit command d although of course with the r max we know this is all changing like they're not they don't have any more of these command option pr command r option dd all that's gone the r max is just going to be like you hold down the power button or something i don't know we talked about in a lot on a previous show but
John:
this whole you know boot process is changing so instead of memorizing a bunch of keys that you have to hold down you essentially get into this mode with a single key and then choose what you have to do so i suppose hopefully the next time i have this problem i'll be on an arm mac and everything will have changed
John:
Uh, speaking of more diagnostic tools, there's this tool called silent night, night spelled like the medieval night with a K, um, that will dump a bunch of info about your bridge OS and your EFI version and stuff like that.
John:
Uh, we'll put a link in the show notes to that program.
John:
And if you don't want to install another program, if you run user lib exec remote control, uh,
John:
remote control space dump state we'll put that command in the show notes too so you don't have to wonder how to spell it that will also dump a little bit of info about bridge os plus a bunch of other stuff so that's useful to know like i know everyone's like i'm looking at the os version and i'm a mac power user so i know that you can click on the version and it will show the build number there are many other numbers that are relevant to what state your computer is in and in my case the thing that mattered was
John:
You know, either something having to do with the bridge OS or possibly EFI.
John:
And if you're wondering what those version numbers look like, they're scary.
John:
For example, my current EFI version is 1037.147.4.0.0.
John:
That's my EFI version.
John:
And my bridge OS version, it says iBridge.
John:
I don't know if that means the OS version.
John:
But anyway, it says iBridge is 17.16.16610.0.0.0.
John:
at least you can look at them and see did big sir change something or did reviving it decrease the number like you can compare the two numbers to each other but uh yeah there's a lot going on inside your t2 grip to mac
Casey:
Marco, would you like to recant anything you said with regard to cable management last time?
Marco:
Surprisingly, no.
Marco:
Now, that being said, a lot of people wrote in to say, how could I have possibly had the conscience, or lack thereof, to recommend that people throw away their cables?
Marco:
Because there are things that can attempt to recycle cables and get stuff out of them.
Marco:
I didn't know about this, and a lot of people say, oh, there are these bins that you can just dump your electronic waste into in places like Best Buy or whatever, and they will do it for you.
Marco:
I hesitate to recommend anything like that because the reality about recycling is that it doesn't always happen the way you think it does or the way you think it should.
Marco:
And I simply don't know how widespread actual recovery of actual material from actual things you dump into bins and places like Best Buy.
Marco:
How much does that actually happen?
Marco:
I'm willing to guess based on other specialty recycling things.
Marco:
I'm guessing it's not very common to get useful material out of your discarded USB cables.
Marco:
Maybe I'm super wrong about this, but I don't think it's pragmatic to tell people you shouldn't recommend that you throw things away because you could recycle them.
Marco:
Because what you're doing is giving people a reason to hesitate or you're adding friction to the process of getting rid of stuff that you should get rid of.
Marco:
When it's something like this where, like, I don't think there's a lot of, like, trace metals and cables, the last thing anybody needs to hear is, wait, don't throw away your cables because you might be throwing them away wrong.
Marco:
Sorry, if I'm super wrong, I'm sorry to the earth, but I bet I'm not.
John:
Well, I understand what you're getting at and that you don't want people to have a barrier to getting crap out of their house.
John:
But we'll put these links in the show notes.
John:
Apple itself has a recycling program.
John:
If there's one company that I would trust to actually try to recycle them, it's Apple because they have a ton of money and they're good about that type of stuff.
John:
And yes, Best Buy also has a free recycling program.
John:
People should be aware of that, and they should do it if they can, I think.
John:
Even if there's a small percent chance that they're going to actually recycle it, it's better than the zero percent chance of when you throw it in the garbage and it just goes into a landfill somewhere.
John:
So I suggest doing it.
John:
I understand what Marco's saying about, like, okay, well, now you've just added friction, and now they're never going to get rid of their cables.
John:
But honestly, if you're using your house as the landfill, that's probably still better for...
John:
the planet than putting them in the actual landfill and plus margo you can drive there in your electric car and have a much smaller environmental impact than the rest of us so keep that in mind for your own personal choice over whether you should recycle if that's the only reason you're driving there you're probably having a worse impact just the energy you're using to drive there continue to use your house as a landfill for all those cables anyway apple has a free recycling program and so does best buy and so to tons of other places so please consider recycling
Casey:
For my local Best Buy, don't be creepy, the last I had recycled smaller stuff like cables, it was just in that initial, like, what is it, a vestibule where it's like in the airlock between the outside and the actual store itself.
Casey:
There was just a bunch of bins where you could just throw things like cables and stuff like that.
Casey:
So, yeah, it's really, if you're paranoid like me about basically anything that's inside, you have to step into the airlock, if you will, and that's it, or at least at my Best Buy and maybe like yours as well.
Casey:
and and just drop it off and run and so it's about as low contact as you can get uh and and i am in full support of trying that because yeah it may not actually do anything but i don't know i feel i have a lot better doing it that way all right throw all your cables into best buy there you go problem solved i mean you can just kind of treat best buy as a giant landfill perfect i mean it already kind of is yeah i mean yeah it's kind of it's pretty sad in there
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
DJ Ghostmare writes on Epic versus Sony slash Microsoft and crossplay.
Casey:
Epic, quote unquote, accidentally enabled crossplay for a weekend before shutting it off.
Casey:
This weaponized the fan base against Sony until they caved.
Casey:
And there's a post from IGN that I guess details all this.
Casey:
uh i guess that that that is interesting and we're going to talk about this at some point but fortnite is not available to download on ios right now and that's surprising to me i'm surprised neither one of them flinched in this game of chicken yeah this was the the story i was trying to think of where i talked about last time about enabling crossplay and this is just the the icing on the cake and it was also something that i had remembered but couldn't find a link for
John:
that Epic was kind of a jerk about it.
John:
So yes, Epic eventually convinced both Sony and Microsoft to allow cross-play for Fortnite and eventually other games as well.
John:
But the way they did it was reminiscent of what they were doing and are still doing with Apple, which is they just broke the rules and said, but you know what?
John:
We can enable cross-play because it's totally technically possible.
John:
And oops, we just enabled it for a weekend.
John:
And people got to play against their friends on different consoles.
John:
And of course, players loved it because it's a feature that players would love.
John:
And
John:
What effect that had, I mean, this person is saying that it weaponized the fan base because the fans got a taste of what it was like to have cross-play and they wanted it back.
John:
Also, there are some people saying they were just showing that there's no technical barriers because, of course, the console makers would be like, well, if we allow you to play cross-platform, maybe there's some differences in the platforms that would make it unfair.
John:
And they all have these...
John:
hemming and hawing reasons why crossplay is much more complicated than you think.
John:
But Epic just said, you know what, we're just going to turn it on.
John:
And we know it's against the rules, and maybe we'll get, like, banned from the Sony and Microsoft store, but in the end, their act of civil disobedience resulted in no punishment and potentially helped get what they wanted.
John:
So...
John:
epics mo is consistent uh be you know swing your weight around show that you are you know a big company that's important to these platforms disobey them intentionally if you think it will get you closer to your goal and in the case of the consoles
John:
Console makers and Epic were able to work something out.
John:
In the case of Epic and Apple, so far they haven't worked anything out.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And we'll get to that in a minute.
Casey:
But before then, Claris the Dog Cow writes, on last week's ATP, Syracuse has said Congress should pass a law where you must be able to unsubscribe from a service the same way you subscribe to it.
Casey:
Mark Tacano, who is a Democrat from California, has authored or sponsored, if nothing else, Unsubscribed Act of 2019, which would do just that.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes to it.
John:
This is H.R.
John:
2683.
John:
If you want to look up the bill, we'll put a link and you can read it.
John:
This website, this is govtrack.us, has a little thing that shows a percentage chance that this bill could be enacted as a law.
John:
This has a 3% chance because our
John:
Government is non-functional.
John:
But anyway, it just goes to show that if there's a good idea out there, chances are some well-meaning politician has thought of it and their dreams will be crushed by the rest of the machinery that is our non-functional government.
John:
This bill was introduced in May of 2019, by the way.
Casey:
Do you remember when we had something that vaguely resembled a government?
John:
I remember on the last show I was like, this is the type of bill that people can get behind because it's not partisan.
John:
It's the type of thing that everyone's constituents would like.
John:
It's common sense.
John:
And it's not even particularly burdensome to industry.
John:
Obviously, industry thinks everything is burdensome if you make them do anything.
John:
But if they allow you to subscribe over a computer, chances are good they have the infrastructure to let you unsubscribe over a computer.
John:
And the only reason they're not doing it is so they can make you –
John:
you know write a letter in you know cursive on a piece of parchment paper whatever the hell it takes to get unsubscribed right you know it's just but three i mean i don't know how to how seriously to take these gov track uh numbers but a three percent chance of being enacted doesn't it's depressing like is there no bill like about the puppies are cute bill oh sorry there's only a one percent chance of passing we can't get everyone to agree the puppies are cute it's like what's wrong with us a lot yeah
Casey:
Yeah, so you want to – let's talk about something awesome like Apple terminating Epic Games' developer account.
Casey:
Well, Apple didn't flinch.
Casey:
They really did it.
John:
Epic didn't upload a version that was compliant, and Apple did exactly what they said they were going to do, is if by the 28th you don't upload a version that's compliant and just does an app purchase, we will terminate the developer account that you use to develop Fortnite.
John:
They did not, because the judge wouldn't let them, terminate the developer account that Epic uses to develop Unreal Engine.
John:
but they did the one for fortnight so yeah and the apple released a little statement that says we're disappointed that we've had to terminate the epic games account on the app store right we hope that we can work together again in the future like it's like the door is open we can still work it out but it didn't work out right now so we have had to terminate the epic games account did you did you have to well you know they said they would look what you made me do
John:
epic did violate the rules and here's this is a consequence of violating the rules so i think this is a proportional and entirely predictable result and it happened right and so if you've if you've previously downloaded fortnight you can still play it but of course the stuff we mentioned about the seasons means that the viability of that is going to be limited very quickly when everyone else is on the new season and you're still stuck on the old season just playing against a much smaller user base on ios and mac os so that's a shame
John:
And then, of course, Epic sent out their email to Fortnite players saying, the reason you can't get it is because Apple's mean and they're blocking Fortnite and blah, blah, blah.
John:
Some people noted that Apple did a editorial feature on the App Store promoting PUBG, which is, I was going to say, a Fortnite competitor.
John:
Also, potentially the game that Epic copied exactly to make Fortnite because PUBG was the first sort of battle royale that popularized that sort of format.
John:
And Fortnite copied it.
John:
And anyway...
John:
It's like, ah, look at Apple really screwing Epic by promoting their competing app when Fortnite is off the store and can't compete with them anymore.
John:
The only problem with that theory is, well, twofold.
John:
One, PUBG uses the Unreal Engine, so Epic gets something from them too.
John:
And two, PUBG is published by Tencent, which owns 40% of Epic.
John:
So I really don't think Apple did that feature to say, screw you to Fortnite.
John:
Maybe they did.
John:
But if they did, it's not really as effective maybe as they thought it would be.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Cotton Bureau.
Marco:
Cotton Bureau is our merch partner.
Marco:
They make all of our awesome, you know, like the T-shirts, the hoodies, the hats, even Casey's polo that Casey buys.
Marco:
They are our merch partner.
Marco:
And they are because they make really good stuff.
Marco:
And they are also the merch partners for MKBHD, FiveThirtyEight, Chatechery, Adam Savage, Rainforest Alliance, and many more podcasts and YouTubers and other things that you've probably heard of.
Marco:
They make a wide variety of graphic tees, also available from thousands of independent designers.
Marco:
a lot of times i actually will go to cotton bureau and just browse their stuff just whatever designs they have because they have some really cool t-shirts and i would say about a third of my t-shirts are cotton bureau shirts and because they're just a lot of fun stuff whether it's like you know our merchandise or some other podcasts that we listen to our friends stuff and a lot of it is just like that independent designer stuff just you know like cool symbols i like my unix shirt uh it's just it's a fun fun side of cotton bureau and their stuff's really good
Marco:
So you can go to Cotton Bureau right now and you can use code ATP at checkout to get 10% off anything on the site through September 10th.
Marco:
They're also going to pick one random person who uses code ATP at checkout to get 10% off before September 10th.
Marco:
to receive a free Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2.
Marco:
So, once again, go to Cotton Bureau, use code ATP for 10% off through September 10th, and then one person who uses that code will receive a free Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2.
Marco:
Now...
Marco:
they happened to send one of these to John to review.
Marco:
So John, first of all, I don't even know what this is.
Marco:
I mean, I know what the Xbox is, but what is the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2?
Marco:
Boy, typical Microsoft name.
Marco:
That's a very long name.
Marco:
And how is it?
John:
Yeah, this is a product that I love the fact that it exists, and for a long time I was sort of upset that I couldn't use it because I don't have an Xbox.
John:
I've got a PlayStation, right?
John:
But in recent years, everyone has been expanding their support
John:
For controllers, so practically speaking, this is a Microsoft controller for Xbox console, but you can use it with iOS devices, with Macs that I think that are using Big Sur, although I'm afraid of that OS now, so I didn't try it.
John:
You can buy an adapter and use it with your PlayStation.
John:
It's a Bluetooth controller.
John:
It has a surprising amount of compatibility, right?
John:
What is it?
John:
It is a controller.
John:
You've seen a console controller.
John:
It's the little buttons and the sticks and whatever, but it costs a huge amount of money.
Yeah.
John:
It is like $180, I think.
John:
For a controller?
Casey:
Gosh.
John:
Yes, for just one controller.
John:
It's essentially four times the price of a regular controller.
John:
You can almost get a Switch for that much.
John:
That might sound ridiculous to you, but I don't understand Marco scoffing considering the price of the headphones he wears.
John:
Touche.
John:
Why would somebody want a controller that costs almost $200 when the one that comes with the game console seems perfectly fine?
John:
What's wrong with that one?
John:
The reason I wanted this product to exist is I love...
John:
handheld devices that are high quality right so i you know the stock one is fine but if you can get one that feels a little better that is a little smoother that doesn't get creaky that's more sturdy and that has more features i would love that i would love a playstation controller that is like the xbox elite now what's what's different about this control this is the second version of this that's why it's the series two right but it has mostly the same features as the original the first major feature is that
John:
Everything you see, almost everything you see on the top of the controller, the sticks, the D-pad, those can be pulled off.
John:
They're magnetic.
John:
So you can just pull those off and put on different ones.
John:
And that may sound like, oh, isn't that flimsy?
John:
Is it like a magnetic connection?
John:
Flimsy?
John:
Or like, why would I want to change those?
John:
It doesn't make any sense.
John:
Well, first of all, they're not flimsy.
John:
Like you would never know that if I didn't tell you these were magnetically connected, you'd have no idea.
John:
They don't come off.
John:
You can't accidentally push them off with your fingers.
John:
They're very solid.
John:
And the second is they give you an option of what you want.
John:
For example, like Microsoft has this weird radar dish looking thing that they use instead of a D-pad.
John:
If you don't like that, take it off and put on the little D-pad thingy.
John:
And now you have a regular D-pad that looks like a cross.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I think maybe they did that on the original Xbox because Nintendo's D-pad patent hadn't expired.
John:
I forget.
John:
There's some stupid reason.
John:
But anyway, the sticks.
John:
You can have sticks of different heights because if you have a longer stick, it lets you do more precise sort of like aiming when you're sniping where you can move your thumb a longer distance and the stick will move a smaller amount because the stick is longer.
John:
You can choose what kind of caps you want.
John:
You want them to be concave or convex.
John:
You want them to be smooth or grippy.
John:
And then this comes with like a little tool where you can change the tension
John:
On the analog sticks to make them stiffer or looser.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
On the backside of the thing, there are triggers.
John:
On the regular Xbox controller and on the regular PlayStation controller, there's no buttons down there.
John:
I mean, like, on the total underside.
John:
Like, there's just a smooth bottom, right?
John:
On this thing, you have two sets of triggers, both of which are magnetic and removable.
John:
So if you just want one trigger on either side, you can put that.
John:
If you want two, you want two on one side, one on the other, whatever.
John:
You essentially have four new buttons that you can press without moving your thumbs from the thumbstick, if you want.
John:
On the front side of the thing, it's got the normal L1 and L2 triggers.
John:
The L2 triggers have adjustable stops.
John:
In the default position, you can pull the triggers all the way in, just like a regular Xbox controller.
John:
But you also have two other positions, including one where they barely move at all.
John:
And that's good for, again, a game where, like say, you're trying to use a sniper in a game and you keep getting out sniped because it actually takes time for you to pull the trigger.
John:
You start pulling the trigger, but it doesn't actually fire until the trigger gets to the end of its like one centimeter travel.
John:
Well, with these things cranked all the way up, you have like two millimeters of travel.
John:
And so you have a little bit more reaction time, you know, edge on your opponent.
John:
Or maybe you just like the way that feels better.
John:
The thing looks expensive.
John:
Everything in it is like the controls, like the sticks and everything are all made of metal.
John:
The D-pad is made of metal.
John:
The triggers are all made of metal.
John:
the bottom triggers i mean it's a high quality grippy material it is rechargeable it is super heavy it comes in a case with a little recharging pad inside the case so you can charge it when it's in the case but you can also take that out of the case it comes with all the different you know knobs and things that you can put on it it when you hold it you're like okay this looks and feels like a 180 controller because it really really does
John:
And that, I think, is its first and one of its biggest problems.
John:
When you make something feel like a $180 controller, just like a car interior, everything is made of metal and it's heavy and it's smooth and silky.
John:
Those are qualities that make something feel expensive.
John:
but I'm not entirely sure they're the qualities you want in controller parts.
John:
It's kind of like the controller equivalent of unsprung weight on a car.
John:
By making the analog sticks all out of metal, they are heavier and they have more momentum when you move them.
John:
And even on the loosest setting, I feel like these are a little bit stiffer than I would like them.
John:
Having a controller that weighs maybe twice as much as a regular controller means you have to hold that controller.
John:
And it's more tiring to hold a heavy controller.
John:
The controller itself has more sort of inertia if you're the type of person who moves around a lot when you play.
John:
I feel the extra weight of all the controls.
John:
And the controls that aren't metal, like the buttons aren't metal and the two front triggers aren't metal, I like them better because they're plastic, because they feel light and they feel easier to press.
John:
Second thing is the triggers.
John:
No console that's shipping, as far as I know, has these triggers on the bottom.
John:
And it's weird to have triggers on the bottom.
John:
It means that if you've never used a control like this, you're not used to it.
John:
I tried to play Destiny, and this is an app where you can map every single one of these controls to whatever you want, right?
John:
So I tried mapping them to something reasonable so I could keep both my thumbs on the thumbstick and do all the things I would normally do.
John:
And I played for hours.
John:
It was very, very difficult to sort of remap my brain to use the triggers.
John:
In the end, I decided I would rather just not have the triggers on, so I took the triggers off.
John:
But when you take the triggers off, there's the little holes where the triggers go, and you can feel them underneath with your fingers.
John:
And finally, this is not a fault of this controller, but I'm used to the PlayStation and...
John:
On the PlayStation, the two analog sticks are lower down, which is not a great position for them ergonomically, except in one case.
John:
L3, which means pressing in on the left stick, is what the default mapping in Destiny is for run.
John:
And I'm very used to pressing in on the left analog stick to initiate run, which is the thing you do constantly in the game.
John:
With the analog stick in the quote-unquote better position, I have less leverage.
John:
Like in the Xbox position where it's up higher, I have less leverage to push down the thumbstick to run.
John:
So very often I would try to run and fail to press it.
John:
Partly because of the position, also partly because everything on this controller is heavier and stiffer, right?
John:
That's one of the reasons I was trying to use the trigger to run.
John:
Because like, why do you have to use press in on L3?
John:
Isn't that awkward?
John:
Just use one of the triggers.
John:
But...
John:
I just feel like a piano player is running out of fingers.
John:
It's like, yeah, I have all these triggers and everything, but some part of my hands needs to hold the controller.
John:
I can't have my pointer fingers handling the trigger, handling the front triggers, and then two other fingers handling the bottom triggers.
John:
And then the thumb on the stick, what's left?
John:
I've got my pinky...
John:
and that's it my pinky and like on the side of my hand holding the controller i just feel like i don't know i feel like or maybe like someone trying to uh stop uh leaks in a dam by sticking their fingers in all the different holes and you just run out of fingers and you're like the controller as a piece of uh hardware is beautiful you would love the interior of your car to look and feel like this the controller as a just plain controller is pretty good except that it's heavy
John:
But for me personally, as someone who's played Destiny on the PlayStation for a long, long, long time, I could not remap my brain to this controller, which is disappointing.
John:
Now, I tried using it in other things besides Destiny that are sort of less hardcore, and there was much more successful.
John:
Like playing a basic arcade game that just requires a stick and some buttons feels great because the stakes are lower.
John:
Like I played Sayonara Wild Hearts, which is not quite as high stress or whatever as a competitive game like Destiny.
John:
And that felt great.
John:
Um, the only other complaint I have is that I do like the triggers to be in the, you know, sort of two millimeter travel position.
John:
But when you put them in any position, except for the default maximum travel position, they feel different when you pull them in the, in the default position, you pull the triggers and it feels great.
John:
It's like, they're like, they come to an end and it's like a soft landing in the other positions.
John:
It must put like a stop there.
John:
And the stop is hard.
John:
So suddenly they make a harsh click stop.
John:
It doesn't feel like it's broken, but it feels like,
John:
It feels less pleasant than the default position.
John:
So basically the default position is privileged to have a gentler, nicer feel, and all the other ones feel kind of like you're hitting against a stop because you are, right?
John:
I never used the Series 1 of this thing, so I don't know what they improved from the Series 1 to the Series 2, but...
John:
This is a really cool product if you are super into controllers, especially if you're an Xbox player and you're already used to this shape.
John:
Because by the way, it's pretty much the same shape as a regular Xbox controller.
John:
So if you are used to Xbox controller shape and think you might like triggers, go to find this in a store and try it out.
John:
I think you'll be impressed with it.
John:
I would have no problem paying this amount of money or more for a PlayStation equivalent of the same controller.
John:
But right now, after playing with this for many hours, when I went back to my PlayStation controller and played Destiny, it just felt like coming home and it was just so much lighter and nicer.
John:
And yes, even though, you know, after several years in Destiny, maybe one of my trigger squeaks, you know what happens when that happens?
John:
I just spend 50 more bucks and buy a brand new PS4 controller and I'm a lot happier.
Marco:
Thanks to Cotton Bureau for sponsoring our show.
Marco:
If you want a chance to get one of these things, go to Cotton Bureau, use code ATP at checkout to get 10% off through September 10th, and you'll have a chance to win this ridiculous thing.
Marco:
Thanks, Cotton Bureau.
Casey:
There's been something in the show notes for, I don't know, like a month-ish.
Marco:
My Synology?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Uh-oh.
Casey:
And I really, really, really want to hear about this.
Casey:
And I also am going to piggyback on this at some point, and I have a request for the listeners, God help me.
Casey:
So I'll talk about that at the end.
Casey:
But all I know is, in the show notes, is Marco's Synology.
Casey:
What's going on, friend?
Marco:
So I teased Casey at the very, very, very end of the after show a few weeks back saying that I might want another Synology and then stop the show, which was amazing.
Casey:
I'm not sure that's the word I would use to describe it, but sure.
Casey:
Let's go with that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So the problem I'm trying to solve –
Marco:
is i recognize with a massive disclaimer up front the firstest of all first world problems even for me okay so with that disclaimer out of the way we have been spending more time this summer at the beach than usual
Marco:
The Synology is back at my house, not at the beach.
Marco:
I am not going to get a second wheeled suitcase to bring that whenever I come here.
Marco:
That's not going to happen.
Marco:
So basically, the longer I spend at the beach, the more I am without my Synology.
Marco:
Because my iMac is here with me.
Marco:
What that also means is by not being in the same household as my Synology, what that also means is that I don't have time machine backup for my iMac and that I don't have access to my archive drive where I put archive podcast files of episodes we've already recorded and stuff like that.
Marco:
And it also provides extra storage for other massive files that won't fit for my computer and TIFF's laptop.
Marco:
So basically without that, we have no time machine and no archive storage.
Marco:
Now, I wanted to figure out, okay, is there some solution I can do to fix this problem in a useful way for me for the future?
Okay.
Marco:
In the future, we are going to be spending probably as much or more time at the beach as we do now.
Marco:
And so I wanted to have something that I could have at the beach so that I could have the same functionality that I have as my Synology at home.
Marco:
So basically archive storage and time machine.
Marco:
One option I could do is...
Marco:
is set up a VPN between my house here and my house, my other house.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
And so I could access the Synology from here, from remotely, and do Time Machine over a network, like over the biggest network.
Marco:
And I know it would be slow.
Marco:
But I don't frequently need Time Machine, so it's already slow when you do it over the network anyway.
Marco:
To have it be even slower by doing it over the internet, basically, would be inconvenient, but not fatally so.
Marco:
I'm not using it every day.
Marco:
I'm backing up to it a lot, but I'm not restoring from it, so I don't really see how slow it is.
Marco:
So that was one option.
Marco:
Another option is, I guess, have a second Time Machine disk here.
Marco:
And that could be on a Synology.
Marco:
It could be a local disk.
Marco:
It could be anything.
Marco:
But have a second thing here because Time Machine, I think, fairly easily replicates to multiple disks depending on what network it's on.
Marco:
You can have more than one disk registered with Time Machine and it'll just do, I think, whichever one it can reach at any given time.
Marco:
So that's fine.
Marco:
The archive storage, I didn't have as many good options for that unless I'm going to do remote access to my home Synology from here.
Marco:
Now, my home sonology is the sonology that they sent us back when we first started talking about NASA's, I mean, what was that, six years ago?
Marco:
It was a long time ago, right?
Marco:
Do you remember what year that was?
Casey:
Well, I think it was 2013 because the model we have is the DS1813 Plus.
Casey:
So that's an eight bay model and it was a 2013 vintage.
Casey:
And so at the time, it was a phenomenally nice model.
Casey:
piece of hardware i still use mine daily and it's still really nice although it's starting seven years on to feel a little bit old um but yeah it's a very nice model and it's basically i think it was on the upper end if not the top of the line for like either crazy home users or like small businesses
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so at the time we got them, the biggest hard drive that I put in it, I think, was either two or four terabytes.
Marco:
I think I started with all twos and slowly upgraded them to fours over time.
Marco:
I think that's how it happened.
Marco:
Regardless, capacities were much lower back then.
Marco:
So it's this big eight bay unit.
Marco:
I have all eight bays filled with this crazy arrangement of striping and combinations and iSCSI, stuff I don't recommend anybody actually do because it's crazy.
Marco:
But these days, I would do things differently.
Marco:
so that's what i started thinking okay for years i've been thinking well if i was going to start over i would do things a bit differently i would do something simpler i would use fewer discs i would love to use all ssds but you know the pricing on that is kind of crazy a lot of the times so uh and so maybe i could get away with less storage and
Marco:
So all this factored in, and I was thinking, okay, well, maybe the right idea for the beach is to just get a small, like, two to four disk synology, and have a second copy of Time Machine, and basically have it be, like, for the most part, Time Machine only, or, like, Time Machine on a small archive drive, but I would still have my primary archive drive back at home.
Marco:
Second option, hybrid.
Marco:
Have local time machine and then have the archive be accessed remotely from home.
Marco:
Another option would be to move the archive to some kind of cloud storage thing.
Marco:
So, you know, however that would work, whether it's something like Backblaze, because I'm already using Backblaze for cloud backup, but I could also, you know,
Marco:
Cloud archive storage could be something like where I store my files just on S3 or something, or one of the various cloud providers.
Marco:
So that's one option.
Marco:
But that gets pretty expensive when you're storing many terabytes of archive data.
Marco:
And I don't love the idea of having archive data be only in the cloud for just speed and access reasons.
Marco:
I don't love that.
Marco:
And a lot of it's stuff like Blu-rays that I've ripped that I wanted to play on Plex or something.
Marco:
It seems kind of ridiculous to rip a Blu-ray only to upload it to S3 and have to pay for it every month.
Marco:
I don't love that either.
Marco:
I might as well just rebuy everything in digital formats and not have to worry about any of that stuff.
Marco:
So anyways, that's another whole thing.
Marco:
So I decided, let me look at what Synology offers.
Marco:
And they still offer tons of great stuff.
Marco:
This is not an ad for them.
Marco:
You'll see why in a few minutes.
Marco:
But this is not an ad for them.
Marco:
But they still offer great stuff.
Marco:
And I was looking at their current models and they have some nice really small ones.
Marco:
But then I started thinking, you know, I've been saying for years that while I have a Synology, I don't really want one anymore.
Marco:
Is getting a second one really going to get me closer to my goal of simplicity and having less to deal with and not having as many systems to have to update and everything?
Marco:
Okay, now, again, another disclaimer.
Marco:
I recognize that
Marco:
That the correct solution most people should do in this situation is just get a giant external hard drive and plug it directly into my computer and have that be time machine and archive storage.
Marco:
I could even get a little two-disc RAID box that does hardware RAID 1.0.
Marco:
and have it mirror and have redundancy and everything.
Marco:
That would be amazing, right?
Marco:
Hardware RAID 1 with a couple of, you know, now, because hard drives are so big now, you don't need eight of them anymore to save my data.
Marco:
You need, like, one, or at most two, because you can get inexpensive-ish, like, eight terabyte drives these days.
Marco:
10 tera, I think they go up to 16 now.
Marco:
They're so, hard drives are so big now that you can just get a couple hard drives and be done with it.
Marco:
But at the beach, I don't have a great place to put a spinning disc enclosure where I'm not going to hear it.
Marco:
At home, I have this analogy in the garage.
Marco:
I have no care in the world for how much noise it makes because you can't hear that noise anywhere in the house.
Marco:
It's isolated enough from the rest of the house.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
But here, I don't have anywhere to put it where I can't hear it.
Marco:
And I am not at all interested in hearing a hard drive or fan noise or anything anywhere in this house.
Marco:
This is 2020, damn it.
Marco:
I'm not going to hear discs and fans if I can help it.
Marco:
If I'm setting something up that's new...
Marco:
I'm not going to buy new discs and fans if I can help it.
Marco:
So I started looking into what are SSD-based options here.
Marco:
There's not a lot of good options out there for SSD enclosures that are managed in some way.
Marco:
Now, you could also just...
Marco:
use little like you know disk bracket things and stick a bunch of ssds into a synology there's nothing stopping you from doing that they even sell a small one that is made specifically to hold a bunch of ssds like this is a thing that you can do but i started realizing you know this is overkill
Marco:
If I'm willing to just set a bit more money on fire.
Casey:
Oh, it's the Marco approach.
Marco:
I can just plug an SSD enclosure directly into my iMac.
Marco:
If I can get one that is like small enough, ideally, I would like Velcro tape it to the back of the iMac and just stick a short USB-C cable into the back.
Marco:
And then I have a silent solution that moves with the iMac wherever I bring the iMac throughout the year.
Marco:
And I don't have to deal with having two different setups.
Marco:
I can have one setup.
Marco:
Are you getting it?
Marco:
One setup.
Marco:
Hmm.
John:
mm-hmm all-in-one the iMac is an all-in-one computer i can have all-in-one storage well all-in-one plus the wart yeah all-in-one yeah plus a wart velcro to the back but you can't see that from the front so as far as as far as i'm concerned it's not there it's invisible you just got to make sure you get a wart that doesn't have a fan because you mentioned the ssd synology i bet that ssd synology has a fan and the fan and the synology the fan of the synology is going to be the loudest thing by far so if you get if you tape it to the back of your computer just make sure whatever enclosure you get has no fans
Marco:
Yeah, believe me, I was looking at that.
Marco:
Because a lot of hard drive enclosures even have fans.
Marco:
Especially, almost anything designed to hold multiple disks, it almost always has fans.
Marco:
However, I was able to find, there are these, I believe it's from Micron, there are SSDs that are 7.68 terabytes.
Marco:
So, you know, 7.5 terabytes.
Marco:
They were not as expensive as you would expect a nearly 8 terabyte SSD to be because they're not very fast.
Marco:
They're not very good.
Marco:
But I don't need them to be very fast or very good.
Marco:
I just need them to store a bunch of data in dead silence that I don't frequently access.
Marco:
And so I got two of these 7.6 terabyte kind of crappy SSDs, put them in a whatever no name enclosure I found on Amazon that holds two SSDs and is fanless and is very lightweight.
Marco:
And it is not Velcro yet.
Marco:
I don't have any Velcro tape at the moment, but it is sitting behind my iMac behind the little foot and I can't see it.
Marco:
And it is glorious.
Marco:
It just works.
John:
What is the interface?
John:
uh usb it's usb three point something who knows um but it has c and a cables and it's c on its end as crappy as those ssds may be they are starving to death behind your usb connection are they also sata are they sata ssds they sure are because again because speed doesn't matter for this application i know but it's just like yeah like they
John:
The chips are capable of one speed, and then SATA is capable of a slower speed, and then USB is capable of a slower speed still.
John:
You're right, they are silent, but it's almost a shame that you couldn't buy cheaper, worse SSDs, you know what I mean, to be even slower?
Marco:
I mean, maybe their souls aren't being silent right now, but they're being held back.
Marco:
But it's totally fine.
Marco:
These things have worked perfectly.
Marco:
And the total cost of my 15-ish terabyte fake Synology...
Marco:
was not it was about 50 percent more than i would have spent on a comparable synology setup now 50 percent more is a lot more that's not a small number but it is so simple it is just with the computer when i move the computer it will move with it like with no separate carrying of anything i'll just you know toss it in the imac carrying case with everything else and
Marco:
And it's directly connected.
Marco:
It's backed up to Backblaze with no problem because it's just an external drive.
Marco:
Time Machine works very well locally.
Marco:
And I was able to use the macOS sharing panel thing to set up a Time Machine server setup, which was great.
Marco:
Not at all intuitive.
Marco:
I was able to set up time machine servers for my laptop and TIFF's laptop to be able to back up to this when they're on the network, which is wonderful because neither of those laptops had any time machine until now.
Marco:
And so now I have time machine, archive storage, and time machine for three computers and archive storage for all three computers online.
Marco:
all accessible over the network and everything, all directly connected to my iMac Pro in a portable, silent, tiny solution.
Marco:
So while it is less capable than a Synology, it does everything I want it to do, and it does it better than a Synology could, because what I want is simplicity and smallness and silence and everything else.
Marco:
And it only took a bit of money fire setting on to...
Marco:
whatever the verb for that is uh it only took a bit of that to pay the premium for ssds to be the storage medium instead of hard drives but overall totally worth it see if you had a mac pro like me you could get a new bent piece of metal that'll support 10 internal sata ssds
John:
did you see that recently some some company has come out with uh a whole series of bent metal bent pieces of metal for every combination three 3.5 inch hard drives two 2.5 inches and one 3.5 inch and yes their biggest one is 10 2.5 inch ssds that's fantastic all internal so if you can find like if you could have a bunch of junk ssds hanging around right just you know i've got a 200 gigabyte one a 64 gigabyte one and just like pick them all in there and put them on raid zero you can have your own
John:
Very, very cheap internal SSD.
John:
Yeah, I would totally have internal SSDs in this thing for my local backups, but I do not want to set that much more money on fire yet.
John:
Eventually, what I want to do is stop using the 4TB boot drive and start using a faster NVMe card and a PCIe card because you can get faster 4TB SSDs that go in a PCI slot.
John:
And I would use that as my boot drive, but I don't need to do that, and it's also very expensive.
John:
So as usual, Marco is living in all of our futures.
John:
Once the prices come down, I also will get rid of my spinning disks, but they're all internal, and I'll replace them with internal SSDs.
John:
And right now on my external disk, my Bootcamp drive and my Big Sur drive are both SSDs.
John:
So it's nice to be able... And they're so tiny.
John:
My Bootcamp drive is... It's in an enclosure that looks like it has a 2.5-inch drive in it, but of course it doesn't.
John:
But my Big Sur one has a thing that's like the size of a book of matches.
John:
It's a one-terabyte padded rubber book of matches that contains Big Sur plus a redundant copy of my photo library because that's where I put my second copy.
John:
Of course it does.
John:
But they're all disconnected now, and yeah.
John:
Oh, the Big Sur one is disconnected anyway.
John:
The Boot Camp one is connected.
John:
And that enclosure that I got, the one for Big Sur, is Thunderbolt.
John:
So it's not as fast as an internal SSD, but it's as fast as it can be externally.
John:
It's Thunderbolt 3.
Marco:
Yeah, that's nice.
Marco:
The downside of Thunderbolt 3 is, or of Thunderbolt in general, not only do you have fewer options and they tend to be significantly more expensive, but also a lot of times the Thunderbolt controller chips inside the enclosures run so hot that they need fans.
Marco:
And so if you're trying to go for like a fanless setup, USB is almost always going to give you that sooner than Thunderbolt will.
John:
Yeah, this doesn't have any fans.
John:
Like it's too small to have fans.
John:
It's just a sealed rubber thing.
John:
Let me see what brand it is.
John:
Hang on a second.
Casey:
So while John's doing that, what is the plan for the 8-base Synology and also dibs?
Marco:
You want another 7-year-old Synology?
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
I'm not sure.
John:
I found the brand, but it's a brand whose name no one knows how to pronounce.
John:
L-A-C-I-E has been around for ages.
John:
Oh, Lacey.
John:
I remember getting hard drives from them for my classic Mac.
John:
I always said Lacey.
John:
I always say Lacey in my head, but I don't know.
John:
I've never heard it.
John:
Anyway, this is a Lacey, completely rubberized, completely solid, zero moving parts.
John:
One terabyte SSD.
John:
And yes, it was expensive, but it's Thunderbolt and it's cool.
John:
It's a shame that it's got Big Sur on it, but this will be one of my scratch drives for other random stuff.
John:
This is the problem with my data inflation.
John:
Like, Mark's got a little bit, but like...
John:
You know, I was one terabyte was my boot drive for the longest time.
John:
And then I graduated to four with this one, which feels so good.
John:
But that means everything needs to graduate to four.
John:
My time machine backup needs to be able to own four.
John:
My super duper backup needs to be able to hold four.
John:
It cascades from there.
John:
So unfortunately, now I have all these one terabyte drives hanging around that are not useful to me.
John:
I can't use it for time machine.
John:
I can't use it for super duper.
John:
I can barely fit my photo library on it.
John:
And that's going to change.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I'm still waiting for those prices to go down, but someday I'll be able to achieve Marco's nirvana.
John:
Even better because my computer won't have something taped to the side of it.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
And just a quick little thing about your external disk problem here.
Marco:
This is one of the reasons why whenever I am shopping for disks, storage, SSDs or spinning or whatever –
Marco:
Always buy the biggest ones you can because the size of disk that you buy is directly related to its lifespan, like its useful lifespan in your setup.
Marco:
If you get one that's like half of what the current ones can go up to, you're going to stop using that or you're going to stop having good reasons to use that or good ways to use that.
Marco:
you know in less time than if it was bigger and so if you can get one that's bigger it will have a longer useful life and therefore while it is more expensive up front you will get more time out of it probably
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Eero.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
All of these and more put a strain on your home Wi-Fi.
Marco:
It's not good enough if it's only good in like one or two rooms.
Marco:
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Marco:
To do this, you need Eero.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Just plug it into your modem and you are good to go.
Marco:
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Marco:
You can do all sorts of fun features with that.
Marco:
So see for yourself at Eero.com slash ATP.
Marco:
We're asking a lot of our Wi-Fi these days.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
That's Eero.com, E-E-R-O.com slash ATP.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to Eero for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So why haven't you already bought yourself a Mac Pro?
Casey:
Since you're in the setting money on fire frame of mind, then just buy a Mac Pro and fix the problem.
John:
You can get it with wheels and use it to cart things to and from the freight thing.
John:
You don't need a wagon for it.
John:
It is the wagon.
Marco:
I actually thought about that because I thought basically when my iMac was having the problems of like the seemingly possible overheating and it was kicking the fans up really easily, I thought like, am I going to have to replace this?
Marco:
And if so, like...
Marco:
It's literally still this exact same as the iMac Pro that's for sale today.
Marco:
I wouldn't really feel good replacing it with that.
Marco:
If I'm going to replace this, what is it, a three-year-old computer now, I'd want to get at least something better, faster.
Marco:
And so I thought about that.
Marco:
I looked into that.
Marco:
And I rethought about it again a few weeks ago.
Marco:
As it became clear after that non-update that the iMac Pro is never getting updated, I thought, well...
Marco:
I have a very busy fall ahead of me of development work, and I'm doing a lot more Swift than I was before, and I'm hitting lots of wait time in my development workflow, even on this 10-core iMac Pro because Swift is so incredibly slow.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
I'm like, it might actually pay.
Marco:
If I can get something that's significantly faster than this, the amount of work I'm doing right now with all this Swift crap, I could save real time here.
Marco:
And so I looked into it, and I looked into benchmarks, and I looked into pricing all again.
Marco:
I even thought maybe I should get another iMac Pro just with a faster CPU, like up to the 24 or 28 core or whatever.
Marco:
And I looked at everything, and the reality is that the...
Marco:
When the iMac Pro came out, whatever it was, three years ago, and we were all like, this is incredible, it's because it was three years ahead of the curve.
Marco:
What you can get now in an iMac Pro or a Mac Pro
Marco:
You have to spend so much money to make it meaningfully faster than the three-year-old 10-core iMac Pro that existed back then that I'm still using today.
Marco:
You have to spend like $12,000, $15,000 on a setup to make it meaningfully faster than that.
Marco:
And if you do that, the fastest you can get...
Marco:
is like twice as fast.
Marco:
You're not making it like five times faster by doing that.
Marco:
You're not making it like massively faster.
Marco:
You're making it twice as fast, which is very fast.
Marco:
But for that amount of money and disruption and everything, it's just not worth it to me.
Marco:
So believe me, I did consider that, but it's just not worth it.
John:
You shouldn't be buying an Intel-based Mac Pro right now.
John:
The ARM transition is happening.
John:
If you can hold out, in two years, wait for the ARM Mac Pro, and if you've still got the itch then, that one should be considerably faster and much cooler, and that's the one to get.
John:
Spending tons of money on an Intel Mac Pro now when you're not entirely sure that you have a use case for it is not a good idea.
Marco:
yeah and i came in the same conclusion as well like that yeah this is not a great time to invest extremely heavily into a very expensive intel setup and you know especially and what made it even easier to accept is that my iMac pro has stopped having that overheating problem i like when i moved it to the beach this summer i guess i must have dislodged a dust clod somewhere in it or something and it doesn't have that problem anymore well it's just more relaxed at the beach yeah
Marco:
Yeah, it is.
John:
It doesn't heat up as much.
John:
Maybe it's going in the water.
John:
The salt air getting in there is really just corroding some pieces of metal that's allowing the air to flow more freely.
Marco:
Yeah, it is.
Marco:
So, interesting question from Wooft in the chat room who asks, but Marco, what would you buy today if your iMac Pro was stolen slash burnt?
Marco:
And I always love this question when thinking about how happy you are with your current purchase.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
If it just disappeared and you had to replace it today, what would you replace it with?
Marco:
I've waffled on that as well.
Marco:
I think I would probably still get an iMac Pro, but I would give it like a 50-50 maybe shot that maybe I'd lean towards the Mac Pro just because, again, I would want it to be better than what I had if I'm forced to replace it today.
Marco:
I would want it to be some kind of upgrade.
Marco:
Even though it makes no sense logically.
Marco:
Logically, I should still get the iMac Pro.
Marco:
Because here's the thing.
Marco:
I'd be like John.
Marco:
I wouldn't tolerate some crappy monitor.
Marco:
I'd have to get the XDR.
Marco:
And so, again, you're looking at like a $15,000 combo here.
Marco:
It would be ridiculous.
Marco:
But I would feel bad spending iMac Pro money on a computer that I had already had for three years, and it wouldn't be that much better.
Marco:
Maybe I'd get a higher CPU or something this time, but overall it wouldn't be that much different than what I've already had.
Marco:
So I would...
Marco:
probably rationalize a Mac Pro and XDR setup even though it would be a terrible use of money.
Marco:
So I'm hoping my iMac Pro lasts until there is an ARM something or other that I want to replace it with.
Casey:
Oh, my.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So let me hang off this subject with a request for help.
Casey:
So a friend, Chris Gray, who is one of the hosts of the Starport 75 Disney themed podcast, which I made an appearance on a while back, actually a couple of times.
Casey:
He had a four base analogy.
Casey:
I forget what vintage, but a little newer than ours that he wasn't using and sent to me.
Casey:
And my thought at the time was, this is perfect.
Casey:
I will make a redundant copy of my synology.
Casey:
I'll put big, fat drives in this thing, and I'll make a redundant copy of my synology onto it.
Casey:
And then, God forbid I have an issue like I had a few months ago, there will be effectively a second synology ready to go at a moment's notice.
Casey:
And, oh, bonus—
Casey:
My parents are about to get gigabit internet at their house like I have, although a different provider.
Casey:
And so perfect.
Casey:
I will just put it at mom and dad's house.
Casey:
I will sync to that Synology and everything will be great.
Casey:
What I want to know is what is the right way to set up that replication?
Casey:
Because I did – I think it's called shared folder sync.
Casey:
I forget exactly what it is.
Casey:
But it's basically like a Synology wrapper.
Casey:
That's the wrong way.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So hold on.
Casey:
So it's basically a Synology wrapper around our sync.
Casey:
And I can tell you it took literally a week or two to get everything synced across.
Casey:
This is locally on a gigabit network in my house.
Casey:
It took forever.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And then it's been extremely unreliable.
Casey:
And I think a lot of that is because my parents have this extraordinarily weird local ISP.
Casey:
And maybe we can talk about that in the after show if we don't have something better.
Casey:
But nevertheless, it's not working across the internet really at all.
Casey:
And I think some of that is user error on my part.
Casey:
And some of that is their ISP and some weirdness with the way they're doing port forwarding and things like that.
Casey:
So anyway, leaving the ISP side aside, what is the best and most appropriate way using onboard Synology software?
Casey:
Like, I don't want to have to install some other weird thing.
Casey:
I don't want to run something in Docker.
Casey:
Like, using what Synology provides, what is the correct way to make a complete and entire duplicate of my Synology between my two Synologies and then keep them in sync?
Casey:
What is the right answer?
Yeah.
John:
So first, let me tell you why shared folder sync isn't the right solution.
John:
I use shared folder sync locally as well because I do like a backup of a subset of my Synology to a second Synology that I have.
John:
And I use shared folder sync for it.
John:
And because it's like basically, you know, I don't know if it's running our sync behind the covers, but it's like periodically it runs and says, oh, stuff has changed.
John:
Let me copy it over there.
John:
If you're making changes to the source drive while it's trying to copy, it gets angry.
John:
And it's like, oh, I tried to copy, but the copy failed because the file moved it out of the way.
John:
And it's like, yeah, that's going to happen because, you know, activity is happening on the source.
John:
And what you want from a comprehensive backup is, yeah, I know things are going to be happening on the source.
John:
Your job as a backup program is...
John:
is to make copies to the destination and not bother me about it because, of course, I'm going to continue to add files and delete files and modify files in the source, and you've just got to handle that.
John:
And Shared Folder Sync does not handle it gracefully.
John:
Now, Synology has a feature, I don't know, I wish I knew the name, maybe it's part of Hyper Backup, that does exactly what you want, which is I've got two Synologies, make this one a backup of the other one.
John:
I've never used this feature, but it's not shared folder sync, and it does exactly the job that you say you want to do.
John:
So I have to imagine it, A, works better than shared folder sync, and B, will just copy everything like you want, right?
John:
So go to the hyper backup thing and see if you can find the, like, whatever, replicate my entire Synology to another Synology, because that feature definitely exists.
Casey:
All right, well, if you, listener, have done this before with two Synologies and have tips or write-up that I can follow, please, please let me know, because I really want to make this work, and right now it's not working.
John:
Just launch hyper-backup.
John:
It'll be obvious.
John:
Synology is just like it's the interface with a bunch of checkboxes and screens.
John:
You can just figure it out.
Casey:
Well, but the thing is there's hyper backup and then there's hyper backup vault.
Casey:
Like already I'm confused and don't know what the right answer is.
John:
And the thing is under the covers, ideally it would be great if you used a file system that supports snapshots on both the source and the destination.
John:
I don't know if that's possible on your source because it's so old, but it would probably make the job of the backup software easier.
John:
I don't know if you have that level of control, but it's something worth considering, especially if you haven't.
John:
I know you just said you did a big backup, but if you're willing to reformat your new one and if it supports BTRFS, I would use that everywhere, just on the off chance that it does snapshots.
Casey:
Yeah, the new one is on BTRFS.
Casey:
The old one is very much not.
Casey:
It's on X2 or X3 or whatever it is.
Casey:
4, I think.
Casey:
One way or another, I feel like this has got to be a solved problem.
Casey:
And I have looked around on several different occasions and looked a lot and tried to figure out what the right way is.
Casey:
And I'm either a dummy or Synology software is not the best.
Casey:
I don't know what it is, but I could not and cannot figure it out.
Casey:
So if you have done this and it doesn't, I don't necessarily care if it's a perfect live backup, like a daily backup would be sufficient for me.
Casey:
But, and I don't necessarily need like high availability.
Casey:
You know, I just said earlier on, like, oh, I could swoop it in in a moment.
Casey:
So it's like, I don't expect like failover or anything crazy like that.
Casey:
I just want to be able to say in a desperation scenario, oh God, the one in my house has died.
Casey:
I can drive an hour, don't be creepy, and pick up the other one and bring it to my house and have 98% of my data there.
Casey:
And I don't think that's too much to ask.
Casey:
And I got to imagine this is a solved problem with Synology's.
Casey:
But like I said, for the life of me, I can't figure it out.
Marco:
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Casey:
Ask ATP?
John:
Let's do it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We start with Ron Olson, who is also grumbling about disk-related things.
Casey:
Ron writes, I can never seem to get an accurate idea of how much disk space is left on my computer with APFS.
Casey:
I rarely reboot my Mac.
Casey:
I've noticed the available disk space on my Mac's hard drive is always decreasing.
Casey:
I remember that this is APFS and begrudgingly reboot to discover that most if not all of the disk space is magically back.
Casey:
I've researched this, and APFS has, quote, free space, quote, quote, purgeable space, quote, to which I say, big freaking deal.
Casey:
I just want to know whether I can copy those enormous files to my machine, and I can't seem to get an accurate idea, either from the Finder or DF or anywhere else, how much space I have free.
Casey:
Is there anything that will actually tell this info that anyone knows about?
Casey:
For all of HFS Plus's shortcomings, at least I always knew how much space I had used on the disk, if only to mourn its loss when HFS Plus corrupted it.
Casey:
What do you do, John?
John:
Yeah, well, it sounds like Ron understands the issue here.
John:
Like APFS supports things like snapshots.
John:
And the way snapshots work is like it just takes a, as it says, a point in time image of your disk.
John:
And then later, if you make changes, like, say, deleting a gigantic file,
John:
The snapshot retains the space that that file was using because, yeah, you deleted it and you don't see it anymore, but you have a snapshot from an hour ago and that thing still existed and the snapshot will keep that file around.
John:
Obviously, snapshots don't, you know, it's not like it doubles the storage.
John:
You can take snapshots all day long and just the differences between the snapshots are preserved.
John:
Right.
John:
How that manifests is, you know, macOS is periodically taking snapshots behind the scenes, whether you know it or not.
John:
And when you delete that big file, you don't get the space back because that big file exists in one or more snapshots.
John:
It doesn't matter how many snapshots it's in.
John:
It only exists once, right?
John:
But, like, you don't get the space back because to get the space back would mean destroying that snapshot because that snapshot is like what your computer was like before you deleted that file.
John:
And in order for that snapshot to exist, your big file still got to be there, which means it's still got to be on your disk.
John:
And the distinction of free space versus purgeable space, yada, yada, that's more of a user interface thing.
John:
As far as the file system is concerned, it's all just space that's being used.
John:
We decide that snapshots are purgeable because we decide, you know what, if I have to ditch that snapshot...
John:
I can because the user doesn't even know it's there and we're just using it for backup purchases and yada yada.
John:
So we'll call that purgeable space.
John:
So if the operating system ever needs more disk space, I've got a whole bunch of snapshots.
John:
I've been taking one every hour and I keep 10 around.
John:
If you want some more space, just delete some snapshots, which snapshots, which one, which deleting, which snapshot will free up the most space.
John:
Oh, you'd have to dip the snapshots and see which files are unique to them and stuff like that or whatever.
John:
But that's what the OS considers purgeable.
John:
But as far as the file system is concerned, it's all just data.
John:
The problem with macOS is that it does a really, really bad job of freeing up space when you need it.
John:
So it's not the display, because the display could, you know, what is the truth?
John:
The display can tell the truth in various ways.
John:
It can show all the space used.
John:
It can show the space minus the purgeable space.
John:
But whatever it shows, the promise that it should be keeping is...
John:
If you suddenly need more disk space, it either needs to tell you, I can't give you more disk space unless you delete such and such snapshots and here's how much space you would save.
John:
That would be one option.
John:
Or even better, what it would do is ditch snapshots behind the scenes to say, well, they need the disk space.
John:
So I'm going to have to abandon those snapshots because those snapshots are happening.
John:
not because the user asked for them, but just because it's a thing that Time Machine does.
John:
And it's a useful thing, and you can save your butt.
John:
If you have a file that you didn't want to delete, you can recover it.
John:
But those features are not well exposed in the OS.
John:
So I think what macOS should be doing is aggressively purging snapshots to give you free space.
John:
What it actually does is nothing.
John:
Like you try to copy it, and it's like, oh, sorry, it's not enough space.
John:
It's like, yeah, but make space.
John:
And so what I ended up having to do was go to tmutil, list local snapshots or whatever.
John:
You can do it manually from the command line very, very painfully and manually deleting snapshots.
John:
Everywhere you go in the macOS docs are like, oh, macOS will automatically purge space for you as needed, but it won't.
John:
I mean, it will maybe eventually, but not when you need it to.
John:
And there's no good user interface with like buttons and stuff to do to make it do what you want.
John:
Rebooting apparently triggers some process that trims back the snapshots or whatever, which is why people think, oh, I rebooted and now I have my free space.
John:
But it's a terrible system.
John:
And it's not the fault of the file system.
John:
It's the fault of the OS that's managing the file system.
John:
Because tons of these really cool features are not exposed anywhere to the user.
John:
People have no idea that they're even happening.
John:
And no matter what they show in the free space, whether it's in DF or in the Finder or whatever,
John:
It's not useful or actionable information.
John:
So it's like you're either lying to the user and telling them they have more free space than they actually have, or you're telling them the truth, and it's frustrating because I just threw out a 20-gig file, and I don't have 20 gigs more of disk space.
John:
What do I do now?
John:
How do I get that space back?
John:
And people learn experimentally.
John:
Well, it turns out if I reboot now, it suddenly tells me I have 20 more gigs of free space.
John:
That's terrible.
John:
So I really hope macOS gets its act together when it comes to disk space.
John:
uh but if you're if you're going to assign blame it's not the file system which has lots of cool features it's the operating system on top of it that doesn't use those features very well and doesn't have any sort of gooey interface to those features i'm hesitant to recommend people look at the tmutil man page because time machine is usually the thing that's creating the snapshots because you can kind of hose yourself if you're not careful and
John:
with tmutil like you don't want to destroy your backups or accidentally delete them and sometimes deleting a snapshot can take a long time and you have to distinguish between the snapshots that are in a time machine backup versus the local snapshots and you have to copy and paste these really long paths with quote characters around them because they have spaces in them and it's just
John:
it's kind of exhausting so i don't quite recommend people do that if rebooting is your workaround for freeing up space and that works for you that is definitely a safer move than trying to mess with the tmutil command line tool and in the meantime we'll just all wait for the operating system to catch up with the features of the file system
Casey:
How long has APFS been around?
Casey:
It's been like two or three years, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And Big Sur brings the version of Time Machine that, in theory, understands APFS better.
John:
So I'm looking forward to that.
John:
But as far as I'm aware, Big Sur does not provide any GUI to snapshot disk usage.
John:
Maybe it's better about freeing up space.
John:
I haven't tried it enough to know, but...
John:
What I would want to happen is I drag the big file over, and when it says about to copy 20 gigs, at that moment it says, well, there's not enough space.
John:
But before I throw up a dialog box that says not enough space, let me check if there's any of that so-called purgable space.
John:
And if there is, throw up a second dialog that says purging free space to make room for the thing that you copied.
John:
And show me that progress bar, and then when that's done, do the copy.
John:
That would be a better interface.
Casey:
Agreed.
Casey:
Michael Grossman writes, have you considered the idea that the Mac menu bar is going to move to become window Chrome this year?
Casey:
This is what's going to fix the active window discoverability problem in Big Sur and some others.
Casey:
But they couldn't show it before showing the new all-interaction models Touch iMac with the boom-style lowering stand in the back, a la Surface Studio.
Casey:
So what does this mean?
Casey:
Is Michael talking about like having the menu bar within the window Chrome like Windows style?
Casey:
Is that what this means?
John:
That's how I interpret it.
Casey:
Yeah, no way.
Casey:
That's what I thought.
Casey:
But no way.
Casey:
I don't see it happening.
Marco:
I don't even see... Not only do I agree with you that I don't think they're going to do that, if you just think about it from a pragmatic point of view, the developer advance notice for that would be significant because if you're moving the menu bar into each application's active window, you're changing the dimensions and behavior and theme and appearance of every active window, potentially.
Marco:
And that's something that developers need to adopt to over time.
Marco:
So they wouldn't, that would be something that they would most likely do, you know, in the WDC preview beta thing, not in the fall, like one week before hardware, here's the GM version kind of thing.
Marco:
That's a very big change.
Marco:
So that they wouldn't, I don't think they would do that.
Marco:
But this question was also predicated on the assumption that, oh yeah, also they're going to have like basically a server studio style iMac where you're going to be able to touch everything on desktop and one unified, you know, physical interface where you can touch or mouse everything.
Marco:
And I don't think that's going to happen either.
Marco:
I do think it's potentially likely, although not a guarantee, that all Apple Silicon Macs might have touchscreens.
Marco:
That's possible.
Marco:
I don't think that's the most likely outcome, honestly.
Marco:
I think the most likely outcome is we still have Macs that are non-touchable, that are untouchable.
Marco:
I don't think they're ever going to make desktops have touchscreens.
Marco:
I don't ever see Apple making the Surface Studio style iMac as a giant drafting table or easel kind of thing where you can bring it down and start touching it.
Marco:
I don't see that happening.
Marco:
If they're going to have touch Macs, I think they're going to be laptops.
Marco:
And even that, I think, is not necessarily a guarantee that that's going to happen.
Marco:
Again, I think it's possible.
Marco:
Maybe even likely on an infinite timescale.
Marco:
But I wouldn't say it's a given.
Marco:
And I don't think they're ever going to have touch desktops.
John:
I remember on a past show where I talked about how happy I was that the Mac used command for its common keystrokes, you know, for cut, copy, paste and like the primary modifier because that left control available for Unix.
John:
So I could have this one operating system where control is Unix land and command is Mac land.
John:
The menu bar in the window is in the same class of...
John:
issue in that what windows did was such a terrible mistake and now they have to live with it forever of not having a menu bar at the top of the screen probably because they just didn't want to copy apple probably because they were too busy copying next which had a whole different notion of what to do with menu bars right
John:
But the menu bar at the top of the screen, as opposed to being in every window, is such a genius idea, especially if you use a computer like I do, actually having multiple windows and not making everything full screen.
John:
If you make everything full screen, it's the same thing because the menu bar is at the top of the screen because it's at the top of the window, Chrome, and you only ever see one window.
John:
That's not how I use computers.
John:
Having the menu bar in every single one of my million windows is a huge waste of space.
John:
And, of course, there's the whole Fitts' Law thing of it's harder to target with the mouse cursor and blah, blah, blah, right?
John:
I think people who like it in the windows would say, well, it's a waste of space to have that menu bar on the top of the screen.
John:
It's always visible taking up space.
John:
Since the years when we used to argue about that, macOS has a feature that lets you hide the menu bar, so it doesn't even need to take up space when you're not using it.
John:
So if you don't want to ever use the menu bar, it's not even visible.
John:
Menu bar and window was a terrible, terrible Windows mistake, along with using control as the main modifier key, and I'm so glad the Mac never did that, and it never will.
Casey:
Finally, Jake Bennett Young writes, Marco, do you have a target loudness, which apparently is LU?
Casey:
I hear a large range of loudness between individual podcasts and few similar to a known standard, which is music.
Casey:
Some podcasts even differ from episode to episode.
Casey:
I'm always riding that volume rocker.
Marco:
First of all, if you want your podcast to all be the same volume, I suggest, although I'm slightly biased, that you use Overcast and that you use the Voice Boost feature because that is literally what it does.
Marco:
It is literally volume normalization to a particular target loudness.
Marco:
Now, that target loudness for what I make versus what Voice Boost is, in the units I use LUFS, which I think LU...
Marco:
is i think you know lufs is lu relative to its loudness units relative to full scale um i think it's the same thing or at least in practice it's the same thing anyway my mastering target is approximately 14 to 16 lufs as output
Marco:
What I do first is I master all the tracks to negative 16, and then I bring them into Logic, and Logic is applying a very slight amount of compression, dynamics compression, to each track, and then outputting it that way.
Marco:
So it probably boosted up a couple, maybe one or two more.
Marco:
So it might hit negative 14 then.
Marco:
So I do think negative 16 is a good mastering level for tracks.
Marco:
It's loud, but not too loud.
Marco:
Voice Boost normalizes everything to negative 14 in most circumstances.
Marco:
I actually do it a little bit louder if using the iPhone speaker, the built-in speaker on the iPhone, just so you can get a little more volume out of the speaker.
Marco:
But the standard configuration of Voice Boost for most cases that are not the iPhone speaker is negative 14 LUFS.
Marco:
Cool.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Eero, and Cotton Bureau.
Marco:
And thank you to our members this month, as usual.
Marco:
Go to atp.fm slash join if you want to join them.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even
Marco:
notes at atp.fm and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s so that's casey list m-a-r-c-o-a-r-m-n-t-marco-r-m-n-s-i-r-a-c-u-s-a-s Syracuse it's accidental they didn't mean to
Casey:
Marco, you've been running recently.
Casey:
What's that about?
Marco:
Well, I wouldn't say incredibly recently.
Casey:
This has been in the show notes for about 11 billion years.
Casey:
So that's understandable.
Casey:
But tell me about your running.
Marco:
I started running the beginning of the summer.
Marco:
Tiff went through a big learning to run thing about a year ago.
Marco:
And I didn't want to do it because I hated it and didn't think I could do it because I have some mild asthma and didn't have incredible lung capacity for like high aerobic activity.
Marco:
I can do like moderate aerobic stuff for a long time, but high aerobic stuff I really couldn't do.
Marco:
And I thought that was it.
Marco:
I thought, well, I just can't do running because of that.
Marco:
and eventually i decided you know what let me try let me see because running as an exercise form has a lot of potential upsides you know there's a lot of convenience factors with running there is no equipment that you need you don't have to be in certain locations i mean you know certain conditions might help but like you can do you can run pretty much anywhere you are much of the year although certainly not all of the year if you're somewhere worth winter and you have lungs um
Marco:
But you can run as a casual runner in lots of conditions, and you can use a treadmill if you're in a hotel gym or something.
Marco:
There's all sorts of places and contexts where you can run, and you don't need a whole bunch of specialty gear in most cases.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
It's a very appealing thing.
Marco:
This is something I should do.
Marco:
It's also high aerobic activity.
Marco:
And I've been doing a lot of exercising and various fitness improvements over the last few years, but I didn't have that component of it really solved.
Marco:
I didn't do a lot of high aerobic activity.
Marco:
I do have a rowing machine, and I love rowing.
Marco:
I have no trouble doing that.
Marco:
That has been, ever since I got it last fall, that has been my exercise of choice.
Marco:
I love rowing, and it's great, but...
Marco:
I'm not getting to those super high heart rates that you can get when I'm running.
Marco:
And it's something that you need a rowing machine to do, which I don't always have.
Casey:
Wait, wait.
Casey:
You aren't getting to equivalent heart rates on a rowing machine?
Casey:
Because I haven't rowed in 20 years, but my parents used to have one.
Casey:
And that thing would destroy me.
Casey:
It was extremely difficult to do.
Casey:
Well, in the sense that it is a tremendous amount of work to row with any sort of quickness or speed.
Yeah.
Marco:
my high heart rate when rowing is usually somewhere around like one 30.
Marco:
Whereas when running, it's like one 50.
Marco:
Like that's, that's kind of where I top out.
John:
Huh?
John:
You should row faster.
Marco:
I mean, I, I've tried that, but like, you know, if I row fast enough to really get it up there, my arms get tired too quickly.
Marco:
So I, I do a kind of, you know, moderate to quick pace.
Marco:
I think I've,
Marco:
I don't even know what the unit of measurement is, but whatever unit is measured in like how many minutes it takes you to row a certain distance, I'm usually at about two and a half minutes for that unit.
Marco:
Another way to tell you is what I actually care about usually is total strokes.
Marco:
I usually do 1,200 strokes, and it usually takes about 35 minutes.
Marco:
So whatever that is.
Marco:
I don't know how to convert that into useful things, but that's my usual pace.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I decided, you know, running is, especially, you know, running here at the beach is wonderful because not only is the weather really nice for much of the summer, I mean, sometimes it's too hot, but not only is it nice for much of the summer, it's also very flat land here and back at home, it's very hilly and running uphill sucks.
Marco:
Running on flat ground is much nicer.
Marco:
So anyway, I decided I'm going to join TIFF this year and learn to run and that can be my challenge for the summer.
Marco:
And that was great when we were here in June.
Marco:
And I actually built up to being able to do 5K, which I never thought I would be able to do, but it turns out that my lung capacity limitations were not entirely due to my mild asthma.
Marco:
They had more to do with I just hadn't ever done it before.
Marco:
And so I was able to push past it.
Marco:
Not far past it, mind you.
Marco:
I still don't have a great capacity, but I'm able to do a little more.
Marco:
And again, running, I wasn't able to go that fast for that reason.
Marco:
And maybe I could build up to it if I kept at it.
Marco:
But we eventually didn't run that much because this has been a much more humid summer than usual.
Marco:
And in addition, this is mask-wearing summer, and I'm not going to be one of those people who thinks that when I'm running, somehow I'm immune to airborne viruses.
Marco:
I'm not going to be one of those people who leaves the mask off and then just pulls it up when I pass somebody because I'm afraid I'll forget to do that and then run past somebody without the mask up, and then I'll be a jerk.
Marco:
I don't want to be a jerk.
Marco:
So I did all those runs here with a mask on.
Marco:
And as it got more and more humid, the combination of those factors made it increasingly difficult to run.
Marco:
And we would try waking up earlier and earlier.
Marco:
But even at 6 in the morning, it's still pretty humid a lot of these days this summer.
Marco:
And you're still wearing a mask.
Marco:
And so it became a hindrance to run.
Marco:
So I actually...
Marco:
Since about – I think about early August, I really haven't run much.
Marco:
So that's basically the story is that I started the summer becoming a runner, and then I ended the summer doing a lot more rowing and the air conditioning.
Casey:
That's understandable.
Casey:
You know, it's worth noting.
Casey:
I enjoy running.
Casey:
I didn't for a long time.
Casey:
There was a window of time where I was running a 5K at least two to three times a week.
Casey:
And that for a long time when I was working also included waking up at like five.
Casey:
I think it was sometimes in the dead of winter.
Casey:
So I'd be running in like, you know, underwear, shorts, sometimes like like long underpants and sweatpants, you know, on the bottoms and then like three or four shirts and a sweatshirt on top, which is not particularly enjoyable, I assure you.
Casey:
Um, but it is worth noting that running from everything I have understood as a non-doctor running is absolutely terrible for your entire body.
Casey:
Like it, it is exercise, which is great, but like in terms of your joints and, and, and the repetitive injury of smacking the pavement, like it's everything I've understood is that it's not great for you.
Casey:
I still run at least a mile, if not, you know, a full 5k, which is about three miles in our messed up units.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
I still do that usually about once a week, but I have moved to more weight lifting and or aerobic stuff again in the air conditioning, like you said, for the most part.
Casey:
But yeah, I really enjoy running.
Casey:
It's great podcast time.
Casey:
And when you do it in the morning, it's particularly delightful because we don't see that many people in our neighborhood out and about.
Casey:
I don't run with a mask because it's extremely easy for me to avoid people.
Casey:
I'm on the other side of the street always.
Casey:
And I usually only see one or two other people when I run, if that.
Casey:
And I get the feeling that at Fire Island, it's not... Oh, that was a little bit of obsequ.
Casey:
I get the feeling that where you are, it's probably a lot more crowded than where I am.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's funny because I'm both in support of you running and I like the idea of it for all the reasons that you enumerated.
Casey:
You can do it almost any time of year if you're willing to.
Casey:
It doesn't require equipment.
Casey:
It's a relatively easy thing to do.
Casey:
It's not conceptually difficult.
Casey:
But, yeah, there's a lot of reasons why it's also not particularly fun and mostly humidity.
Casey:
And all the Californians who don't have weather are very smug right now.
Casey:
But those of us who actually have this thing called weather, it makes things very challenging.
Marco:
And first of all, I do want to disclaim that for anybody who's going to armchair train me, I appreciate that.
Marco:
This is not – like rowing and or running are not the only forms of exercise I do.
Marco:
We've been seeing a trainer a few days a week.
Marco:
Usually most weeks it's been two days a week for I think about three years now, me and Tiff.
Marco:
And it's funny, like we actually been doing like FaceTime sessions since before the quarantine because he moved out of the area and we stayed with him because we like him.
Marco:
And so we like geared up for remote exercise sessions.
Marco:
about three months before the quarantine.
Marco:
And we felt like the luckiest time to people in the world for buying a bunch of exercise gear for home right then.
Marco:
Because you can't get it now.
Marco:
You still can't buy free weights and stuff.
Marco:
They're sold out everywhere still.
Marco:
So we do strength training stuff for the most part and core stuff with the trainer.
Marco:
So then we're left...
Marco:
on our own to do the aerobics as homework.
Marco:
To complete my exercise regimen, I just have to get in some aerobic work somehow.
Marco:
It can really be either thing, but running I would dread every single time and hate the entire time I'm doing it, whereas rowing...
Marco:
I have a little laptop stand on the rower.
Marco:
Of course you do.
Marco:
And that's where I get my YouTube watching in.
Marco:
So I'm sitting there watching YouTube explainer videos.
Marco:
I'm watching CGP Grey and the Wendover stuff and Technology Connections.
Marco:
All my favorite YouTube channels.
Marco:
Watching all that stuff.
Marco:
Learning how airline economics and retro reflectors work as I'm pumping the rower.
Yeah.
Marco:
And it's totally fine.
Marco:
And I actually enjoy it.
Marco:
And I can control the environment.
Marco:
You mentioned the California jerks.
Marco:
They have all this perfect weather all the time.
Marco:
Well, yeah, in New York, we do have some amazing weather, but not every day.
Marco:
And it varies a lot between all these extremes.
Marco:
And running, I think if you are a well-conditioned runner, you can run in a wide variety of climates and you can take it.
Marco:
If you're an amateur runner like me,
Marco:
But there's a narrow range in which it's reasonably comfortable to do so.
Marco:
And New York does not stay in that range very long.
Marco:
So having something like this where I can do it indoors in any conditions, it's quite nice.
John:
you know you've personally got a solution to your problem for the aerobic exercise there's something you can do no matter how humid it is and without a mask and doesn't have the impact of running and it's called swimming that's true it's aerobic you will definitely get your heart rate up and even if it's super hot and humid you'll want to go in the water because it will cool you down you just got to make sure you don't drown or get eaten by sharks but other than that it's right there for you
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
I will say though there is a slight challenge with that is that the ocean in the summertime on a public beach is not exactly not crowded.
Marco:
It's been extremely crowded.
Marco:
We haven't done a lot of ocean swimming this year because –
Marco:
The beach is still open.
Marco:
It's a public beach.
Marco:
Anyone's welcome.
Marco:
And therefore, everyone is coming.
Marco:
And it's a very, very crowded public beach during the hot days and in the middle of the day.
Marco:
So we haven't been going that much because it just doesn't seem incredibly safe to do so.
John:
You get up at the crack of dawn and there's no people there.
John:
Or you're just walking past them anyway because you're going to go out past where the breakers are anyway to swim back and forth along the shore.
John:
It's definitely more dangerous than running.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Also, at the crack of dawn, there's no lifeguards.
Marco:
So that's not great.
John:
Lifeguards aren't going to save you.
Marco:
That's even less great.
John:
You're going to save yourself.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I think I'll just row with my YouTube.
Marco:
Thanks.
Marco:
Titles.
Casey:
Actually, do I even have to ask?
Marco:
It's got to be Casey Starr Aaron-less, right?
John:
I like the Casey Starr Aaron-less one, but I don't like the idea of having their names up there, especially Aaron's name.
John:
She didn't sign up for this.
John:
It's fair.
John:
It's not her fault that Casey doesn't know how to type.
John:
I mean, she did pick him.
John:
I know, but she didn't say, use my name in the title of an episode.
Casey:
Enough!
Casey:
It's the price of an ATP sticker, you jerk.
John:
I'm still waiting for pictures of that birthday meal that you made her.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
John:
That's true.
John:
Just make some Velveeta mac and cheese.
John:
Sprinkle some parsley on top.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
Your kids will like it.
John:
They're half you.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
They would like it.
Casey:
Yeah, it's funny.
Casey:
You know what?
Casey:
No, I'm not going to do it.
Casey:
I was going to bring up another dumb meal that I'll cook for when it's just the kids and me, but I'm not going to do it because I want to listen to the two of you whine at me.
John:
Oh, we have to hear this.
John:
Nope.
John:
Is it a sandwich made of chocolate chip cookies surrounding marshmallow?
Marco:
Do it for the members, Casey.
Marco:
The members want this.
Marco:
Nope.
Marco:
Nope.
Casey:
Not going to do it.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
You two are jerks.
Marco:
Come on.
Marco:
Rice Krispie Treat Salad?
Casey:
No, it's not that bad, for Christ's sakes.
Casey:
Good grief.
Marco:
Does it contain a vegetable?
Casey:
no no i mean well i put i oftentimes i'll put one on the side but like it the the the entree does not the entree absolutely does not you have to tell us what it is now just tell us it's uh let me see if i can find a link is it a is it a product you're finding a link this makes me think it's a it's a processed food product oh yeah oh yeah it is it is not going to surprise you at all i'm trying is the dinosaur shaped chicken tenders no but those are delicious
Marco:
all right there we go in in the chat room there you go rice-a-roni cheesy rice creamy four cheese flavor now does this mean they they're very careful to say creamy four cheese flavor is this like there's not actually four cheeses in it is it is it cheese with a z
Casey:
No, it's C-H-E-S-E.
Casey:
Basically, it's rice vermicelli, however you pronounce it, and cheese paste.
Casey:
I'm sorry, not paste.
Casey:
Cheese dust.
Marco:
Oh, good.
Marco:
Cheese dust.
Marco:
My favorite thing about this is that it says in the description here, the only thing better than tender rice blended with cheese is tender rice blended with four creamy cheeses.
Marco:
Now,
Marco:
I can think of a few things besides that that are better.
John:
Like tender rice blended with two cheeses or three cheeses?
John:
Or does it not get better until the fourth cheese?
Marco:
Almost anything I eat is better than tender rice blended with cheese.
Casey:
Wait, I can get even better.
Casey:
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
Casey:
I hope it's the same for everyone.
Casey:
Rice-a-roni product and preparation hack.
Casey:
Are you prepared, gentlemen?
Casey:
I tried to say this with a straight face, but I can't.
Casey:
Prepare yourselves for this hack.
Marco:
This is the best hack ever.
Marco:
Life hack.
Casey:
Having extra guests over for dinner?
Casey:
Make two boxes at once!
John:
Not only is this an amazing hack in the vein of why I have one when you can have two or twice the price, but it makes people buy more of this product.
John:
Genius.
John:
Where's the ingredient list?
John:
I'm trying to find the ingredient list.
John:
Ingredients.
John:
Starch.
John:
Dust.
John:
Rice, wheat flour, pricely hydrogenated palm oil, salt, cheddar, parmesan, limano, and blue cheeses.
John:
Well, there's apparently real cheese in here that contains milk, cheese culture, salt enzymes.
John:
Reduce lactose whey, corn syrup.
John:
Yeah, of course you need corn syrup in your rice because why not?
John:
why wouldn't you onions palm oil i mean this is a side dish this isn't a meal though right no it's the meal that's the meal that's not a this is not a complete meal for your children stop making them rice well i mean i'll usually put i'll usually put a a frozen uh vegetable like a bagged frozen vegetable on the side but this is the star of the show
Marco:
I will also point out that while this does admirably actually contain four cheeses, it contains more salt than cheese.
Marco:
That's not a surprise.
Marco:
It also contains more palm oil.
John:
More wheat flour than cheese.
Marco:
Right, because I guess I assume it's like thickening up the sauce.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So you're really just eating like rice in a flour and oil sauce.
John:
Over the seven years of this program, I think we're getting a glimpse of exactly how much of Casey's diet is processed cheese.
John:
Or at least processed starch.
Casey:
You know, you say that, but generally it's not.
Casey:
So, you know, this is going to be a reference that lands for neither of you, but in the Hunt for October, particularly the book,
Casey:
They went on and on about how the like sonar system that they used, which was originally written, like the software was originally written to detect like volcanoes, like undersea volcanoes.
Casey:
And they kept referring to magma displacements.
Casey:
And the joke was that Jonesy, the sonar operator, said whenever the software got confused, it would kind of run home to mama and just assume, oh, it's got to be a magma displacement.
John:
That was in the movie.
John:
At least I saw the movie.
Casey:
I get this reference.
Casey:
Yeah, but they go on and it makes a lot more sense if you read the book because they describe it a lot more explicitly.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I bring all that up to say I feel like when I bring up like the Velveeta and the Rice-A-Roni creamy four cheeses of the world, that's me running home to Mama because my mother, whom I love dearly, she is an amazing, amazing woman.
Casey:
For all of her many, many, many perks and wonderful features, she is not the best cook.
Casey:
She has a very limited repertoire of things that are not from a box or a freezer or a can or whatever.
Casey:
She made a meatloaf and threw it out in the woods in Connecticut and she found it like a few days later and not a single deer had eaten it.
Casey:
And we had like a zillion deer around our house in Connecticut and not one of them would touch this meatloaf that was just sitting there.
John:
Are deer carnivores?
John:
No, deer are herbivores.
Casey:
There were other animals, too.
John:
The raccoons should have eaten it.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
But no, your point is fair.
Casey:
The point I'm driving at, though, is that I feel like this is me running home to the figurative and literal mama, because this is the sort of thing that I grew up with in the sense that it was part of the repertoire.
Casey:
It was not the only thing I ate.
Casey:
Now, Erin does 98% of the cooking in the house, and she makes legitimate healthy meals all the time.
Casey:
Like tonight we had salmon, roasted cauliflower, sweet potato, and a little bit of roasted regular potato, for example.
Casey:
It was super tasty.
Casey:
Erin has become a very good cook.
Casey:
And you can tell I love her because I married her before I knew she was a really good cook because she wasn't a really good cook when we got married.
Casey:
So that's how you know I love her.
John:
And neither were you, but only one of you learned.