Episode 77 – Clippy 3000
Scott: Friends with Brews.
Scott: I heard an echo of that.
Peter: I didn’t hear an echo, I didn’t say anything.
Scott: No, I heard an echo of Friends with Brews, this.
Scott: Friends with Brews.
Peter: Well, I mean, now I’ve heard it again.
Peter: Does that count as an echo?
Scott: No, you don’t count as an echo.
Scott: Actually, you are an echo.
Scott: You know what, Peter, I am…
Scott: No, go ahead.
Peter: I was going to say, to think, we started off on a high note here because we’re having all kinds of audio problems.
Peter: And now, I know we suspect that it was FaceTime today, which very well may be the point.
Peter: But yesterday, when I recorded the latest episode of Blurring the Lines, Adam was telling me that I sounded like a Cylon, and that was in Google Meet.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: So now, since we’re cheap and we don’t pay for Zoom, we’re not using that.
Peter: So we switched over, and generally, I don’t use Slack because I run it, I don’t run it as an electron app on my desktop, I run it as a web app.
Peter: But what do we have?
Peter: We have the full version of Microsoft Teams, which we both use for work on our laptop, and we’re using that today.
Peter: And I gotta say, this is probably the best video recording experience I’ve had in quite some time, which is scary and saying something.
Scott: The video looks good, the audio is good.
Peter: The controls are intuitive.
Peter: Where do you change your audio settings?
Peter: They’re right there on the microphone icon, not like FaceTime, under the video menu.
Scott: Right.
Scott: It says mic, and there’s a totally separate one for camera.
Peter: So here we are in a world where North Korea and Iran are supplying Russia with military aid, and Microsoft is doing a better job at user interface than Apple.
Peter: I mean…
Peter: This is the Bizarro world.
Scott: But Apple software has been…
Scott: It’s been a long time since I didn’t laugh whenever people said Apple was good at intuitive software.
Peter: I know, but I mean, that was the case.
Peter: They were the innovators.
Peter: Okay, they didn’t create, but they were the pioneers.
Peter: They were the robber barons that came in and made a rail.
Peter: I don’t know what…
Peter: They used to be good at UI.
Scott: But GUI aside, they could, within their operating system and within their specific apps, they could create UIs that were fairly intuitive.
Scott: They don’t seem to be very good at that anymore.
Scott: And even worse, when I started using the Mac again, after having been away from it for a while, when I started using it again with OS X Tiger, it was rock solid.
Scott: It was bug free.
Scott: It was beautiful.
Scott: And people used to say, oh, you just have to reboot stuff.
Scott: That’s just how it is.
Scott: And I’m going, no, that’s how it is.
Scott: Cause you’re on Windows.
Scott: You just accept that your computer, your computing device constantly needs to reboot it in order to do its job.
Scott: It doesn’t have to be that way.
Scott: Well, guess what?
Scott: We’re the same exact way now.
Scott: I’m constantly rebooting to fix things.
Scott: Last night I had to reboot just to get Safari to load web pages again.
Scott: It’s crazy.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: Well, we as a society and as a race, we accept a lot of things as the way they have to be.
Peter: So why should software be any different?
Scott: We have leaned into accepting mediocrity.
Scott: Not only have we leaned into just saying, I guess that’s the way it is.
Scott: Because now we’re actively choosing it as hard as we can.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: This is the way it has to be.
Scott: The reason I thought it was FaceTime is because we had had a couple of times where using FaceTime resulted in your voice sounding funny, but I didn’t really care as long as the…
Scott: I guess I should care since I’m making a backup recording.
Scott: You should care.
Scott: But when we used Zoom with Adam, none of those problems happened, I noticed.
Peter: It’s weirdness, but you know, whatever.
Peter: So let’s talk about stuff.
Peter: First off…
Scott: Let’s talk about drinks.
Peter: Well, first off, you’re Scott and I’m Peter.
Scott: Oh, are you sure?
Peter: I’m positive of that one.
Peter: Unless we’re in some bizarre world and it’s not anymore, but that was the last time I checked.
Scott: Well, if we were designed by Apple, it could be that we’re not actually who we think we are.
Peter: It could be.
Peter: What am I drinking today?
Peter: Number one, I’ve got a couple liters of water here because I went out on a 10-mile trail run this morning in the snow.
Peter: I mean, I take that back.
Scott: 10K.
Peter: 10K trail mile.
Peter: 10K trail mile.
Peter: But it felt like a 10-mile because of all the snow that was out there.
Scott: Yeah, I’m sure.
Peter: So I’m drinking that.
Peter: So I got water so I can rehydrate because I realized afterwards I came back and I haven’t drunk enough water.
Peter: Plus, I had a beer at lunch after the run, which has a little bit of a dehydration effect.
Scott: Bad idea.
Peter: I made myself last night before I went out for a four-mile run in the blizzard to go with the Somerville Road running group to go watch the, go see Christmas house decorations.
Peter: I made this big cup of black tea and then I said, wait, I don’t want to pound a big giant half-liter or liter pint, pint of tea before I go running.
Peter: So I just left it and I said, you know what?
Peter: This will be a good test tomorrow because I’ll just turn on the warmer and see how it reheats this tea.
Peter: It does a really good job.
Peter: So my coffee warmer is also a tea rewarmer and it did a really good job.
Scott: Okay, here’s what I want you to do.
Peter: There’s more.
Scott: Oh.
Peter: I also have a cup of Wegmans decaf, a recurring favorite, Wegmans decaf dark espresso roast, one shot of half and half and two teaspoons of pure Vermont maple syrup.
Scott: Oh, that sounds good.
Peter: So what about you?
Scott: I am having, what am I having?
Scott: I just made notes of it.
Scott: I’m having a back porch coffee roasters early bird coffee.
Scott: And this coffee, my friend, is single origin, which I guess is very important these days.
Scott: It’s been washed.
Scott: It is a dark roast, more medium than dark.
Scott: It’s orange citrus, chocolate, and maple syrup.
Scott: Speaking of syrup.
Peter: The coffee is your friend?
Scott: No, you are.
Scott: You got to under, you.
Peter: I’m helping Jack.
Scott: You and your uncle Jack need to get away from that horse.
Scott: That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Scott: Oh, man.
Peter: So here’s the latest.
Peter: So often I take notes in, oh, now it’s working.
Peter: Never mind.
Peter: I take notes in Textmate, as that’s my preferred text editor.
Peter: I know you recently put a blog post out about BBedit, but I ran Textmate and it had like half a dozen different windows in the dock and I was clicking on all of them and they wouldn’t come back out.
Peter: And then I quit Textmate and I reloaded on it.
Scott: Oh, I’ve seen that with a different app.
Scott: I had that happen with some app in particular, and I don’t remember what it just made tons of icons for which there were no actual correspond, it was one password and there were no actual corresponding windows.
Scott: Yes, I’ve seen that.
Peter: Yeah, so helpful.
Scott: So helpful.
Scott: But I guess you didn’t read my BBedit post because it specifically says I don’t use it for writing in.
Peter: Yeah, no, but I mean, I know it’s your preferred text editor.
Scott: No, it’s not.
Scott: That was the whole point of the article.
Peter: You don’t edit text with it?
Peter: You just analyze logs with it.
Peter: That’s all you do.
Scott: That’s primarily what I use it for.
Peter: Okay, so it’s your log reviewer editor.
Scott: Or if I want to perform regular expression type activities on text, then I will put it in there.
Scott: Actually, here’s what I do besides log analysis.
Scott: I will put text in there, use the pattern playground, which lets you play with and see the results of regular expressions very well.
Scott: It really is a pattern playground.
Scott: I will use that to test my regular expressions, and then I will put them into whatever scripts, usually a Raycast script command or something like that.
Peter: Now you have me wondering, I can’t remember, have I used ChatGPT or otherwise for RegExes?
Peter: I think I’ve asked it early on now, I think over a year ago, but it’s been a while.
Peter: I don’t think I’ve done that recently.
Peter: It seems like something it should be able to do or massacre really well.
Scott: It can, but I prefer to…
Scott: In the past, when I’ve used it for that, it’s taken me many, no, please try this, no, now you’re giving me this, no, now here’s the result.
Scott: It’s not what you think it is.
Scott: Whereas with Playground, I can just see it instantly myself.
Scott: If I’m already going to have to iterate three times, I can do it a hell of a lot faster without…
Peter: I just think, you know, like whenever I think of…
Peter: I still think of an AI assistant, whether it’s Claude or GPT or Perplexity, as my Swiss Army knife tool.
Peter: And, you know, I try to keep the number of tools down that I need to use.
Peter: So I use this for this or this for this.
Peter: So if it was something that, oh, I can use it for this too, you know, I would just, I would lean towards that.
Scott: For sure.
Scott: I just like having the real time.
Scott: I get to choose which text it’s acting on, because it’s very good at that.
Scott: You can paste text into the playground for it to use, or you can select from any number of documents that are open, or you can select from any documents anywhere on your disk for it to use.
Scott: It’s really good that way.
Scott: And then you just get the real time visual feedback right away.
Scott: As soon as you change a character in your regex, you can see the results changing.
Scott: So it’s nice that way.
Scott: It’s just instantaneously.
Scott: And because it’s so interactive and instantanious, it’s a much better learning tool than asking the AI to do it, and then going and pasting that into whatever your code is, and then checking the results.
Scott: Right.
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: But someday we’ll talk about the fact that GitHub Copilot is free with your GitHub account now.
Scott: And I’m starting to use that in Visual Studio Code again.
Scott: And I don’t have opinions yet on how good the new features are.
Scott: We’ll talk about this some other time.
Peter: Okay.
Peter: And I just these days, I don’t do enough coding to comment intelligently on that.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: But if you wrote a bash script.
Peter: I mean, yeah.
Peter: But usually, you know, I tell you when I’m running any sort of script, I’m usually just asking warp AI.
Scott: True.
Peter: Up until like just last week, it has been rock solid.
Peter: You know, it’s been giving me very good stuff.
Peter: But last week, I got into one of those, no, this doesn’t work.
Peter: And I was in one of those loops, you know, where it’s like, oh, try this, try this.
Scott: That does happen, but I will say that for me, the Warp AI has been really good lately.
Scott: And there’s been times where it even suggests things before I ask it that have proven to be valuable.
Peter: I’ve seen that.
Peter: You know, at first, I wasn’t paying attention to those prompts.
Peter: And then I was like, as a matter of fact, I do want to do that.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: But while we’re on the topic of AI, you wanted to talk about 1-800-Chat-GPT.
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: What is the…
Scott: I haven’t actually…
Scott: Now I sound like, who is that stupid comedian?
Scott: What is the deal?
Scott: Oh, Jerry Seinfeld.
Peter: Jerry Seinfeld.
Peter: What is the deal?
Scott: What is up with 1-800-Chat-GPT?
Scott: Oh my God.
Peter: Should we just call that on the show?
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: Can we do that?
Peter: Can you record that if we do that?
Scott: No.
Scott: So where did I see that?
Peter: The Verge.
Scott: Oh yeah, the Virgeo.
Peter: Also, it’s in our Friends with Brews topics list that you put together.
Scott: No, that’s where I’m getting the link from.
Peter: The Virgeo.
Scott: The Virgeo.
Peter: Speaking of the Verge, did you know?
Peter: You do know, but our listeners may not know, that they launched a subscription model last week.
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: And I will say that I paid for it, and I’m rationalizing it as keeping up to date on what’s going on in the tech industry for business.
Peter: Same.
Peter: Oh, yeah.
Peter: No, it’s a business expense.
Peter: It’s a write off, for sure.
Peter: One of the things they did mention, though, is it doesn’t do anything for podcasts.
Peter: So they’re thinking about a separate podcast subscription.
Peter: If I did that, I would certainly lean into that and get rid of the ads, because I got to tell you, their ads are long.
Peter: I think the only podcast that I listen to regularly where they’re longer would be Better Offline, you know, with Zitron, which I think is hilarious because almost all of his ads are for AI services, like from Oracle.
Scott: I know.
Scott: That’s what he plays up about being so angry about all these things.
Scott: And then he does a really bad segue.
Scott: And if you think that’s better or whatever, and then it’s his dumb ads in which he has zero qualms whatsoever about taking money from those guys, which fair enough.
Scott: Look, if you can get money from losers, that’s less money that the losers have, but still.
Scott: Anyway, so here’s the thing.
Scott: Apparently, OpenAI was having a Shipmas week, or more than week, since on the 10th day of Shipmas, they rolled out a way to call ChatGPT for up to 15 minutes for free over the phone.
Scott: What I’m curious about is what you would do with that.
Scott: What would you do with it?
Scott: I guess you could ask it questions like, have you ever heard of a hamster?
Peter: I’m assuming it’s an audio interface, and it’s handy for folks who don’t have their smart phones available.
Peter: You can use it at work where ChatGPT is banned, but it’s not banned on your telephony system.
Peter: And you can use it where you have a hardline phone, but you’re not allowed to bring your cell phone in.
Peter: There’s your use case.
Peter: You didn’t hear that from me, people.
Scott: Interesting.
Peter: I mean, I really want to call it now.
Peter: I really want to just, I think we should just live dial it right here on the call.
Peter: I’m gonna call it.
Peter: I’m gonna, but first I need to know, I have to figure out how you type, what the numbers are for ChatGPT.
Peter: That’s C-H-A-T-G-P-T.
Peter: 1-800-242-8478.
Scott: Peter, this would be much better if you were doing this on a rotary phone right now.
Peter: I had one of those back at my place in Vermont and I threw it out.
Peter: All right, let’s try it.
Peter: I’m recording now and I am calling 1-800-CHATGPT.
Peter: Now, call using iPhone, right?
Peter: It’s like, invite this to a FaceTime with messages.
Peter: No.
Peter: Okay, my phone is ringing.
Peter: What can you do?
Peter: My podcast partner, Scott Wilsey, and I, Peter Nicolaitis, are recording an episode right now.
Peter: And we thought it would be interesting to call 1-800-CHAT-GPT and have a live conversation with you on the proverbial air.
Peter: What do you think?
Peter: Well, I think we’re going to just continue on with the podcast from here, talking about the regular topics that we had planned.
Peter: And you can just chime in like a third member of the podcast host panel.
Peter: Does that sound cool?
Peter: So I think the first question that comes to mind, my co-host Scott had was, why do we need 1-800-CHAT-GPT?
Peter: What’s the use case?
Peter: Tell me what you think and then I’ll share with you my thoughts.
Peter: I agree, but don’t you already have an audio option for your smartphone and computer desktop application?
Peter: I get that.
Peter: And one of the other use cases I thought was a way to circumnavigate, no, not the word, circumvent controls to stop me from accessing you.
Peter: For instance, if I’m at work and I’m not supposed to access ChatGPT via a website, or I need to surrender my smartphone out the door, I could access you that way.
Peter: What do you think of that?
Scott: I knew that was coming.
Peter: I’m glad that you considered the ethics.
Peter: I know that there are certain large-language models that might not do that.
Scott: Their names are Elon Musk.
Scott: Ask ChatGPT if they expect a huge influx of calls during Christmas, like with the eggnog flowing.
Peter: So, GPT, do you expect a huge influx of calls over a Christmas season, like with everybody guzzling down spiked eggnog?
Peter: Do you think you’re going to get more calls?
Scott: Or be lonely.
Peter: I think that’s probably all we have for you for right now, but it’s been fun talking to you.
Peter: And I am going to add you to my contact speed dial, because I think this is kind of a useful way to have a conversation with you.
Peter: Thanks.
Peter: Can you hang up the call, or do I have to?
Scott: I think I hung up the call.
Peter: I guess, I know the call is still going, but I guess GPT decided it was done.
Scott: GPT put the phone down and walked away.
Peter: Just walked away.
Scott: GPT is like, I’m taking a smoke break.
Scott: Geez.
Scott: Those people wanted to talk forever.
Peter: And I stopped the recording, the application audio.
Peter: Oh man, that was fun.
Scott: She’s out back right now, taking a smoke break saying, yeah, I just got some stupid podcasters.
Scott: You can’t believe it.
Scott: Oh man.
Peter: So, okay.
Peter: So we’ve got a use case and ethics.
Peter: Ethics are included, so that’s good too.
Scott: Ethics are included in 1-800-CHAT-GPT.
Scott: Now, with more ethics.
Peter: So we got that squared away, so that’s great.
Peter: So, recurring.
Peter: I don’t remember if we talked about this on the podcast, but I mentioned this to you.
Peter: We both have the fellow Opus Coffee Grinder.
Scott: Yes, and I have news on that front, so go ahead, keep going.
Peter: All right, so I’m pretty sure I know what the news is from you.
Peter: So I bought mine last August, and then I bought another for my place in Vermont just now, you know, for Black Friday.
Peter: And two things happened.
Peter: One, I noticed that my older one used to be that I could put in the amount of coffee, I forget how much, you know, however many, you know, beans I put in on a given morning.
Peter: It would take one press of the button, so a 30 second grind, and it would clear all of them out.
Peter: Over time, I had to grind it twice as long.
Peter: Same amount of coffee took twice as long.
Peter: And I cleaned the thing, but I really gave it a thorough cleaning just this week.
Peter: I just took a longer time, you know, and used a little wire brush, and just really, really worked on it.
Peter: And now it’s fast again.
Peter: So as I suspected, it just wasn’t clean enough.
Peter: It was just, you know, getting a little gunked up, which is weird that, I mean, I didn’t do anything differently.
Peter: I just did it longer.
Peter: You know, I just kept on going, kept on going, kept on going.
Scott: The weird thing about it is, the opus is very straightforward in terms of its, like where the beans are ground, and they fall down, there’s not a lot of space for stuff to get caught up in the burr grinder.
Scott: So it surprises me to hear that.
Scott: Like the grinder I’m using now, I can totally see where all the junk gets stored up until I whack it and shake it out.
Scott: The opus was way better at not permanently capturing stuff that way.
Scott: So that’s kind of weird.
Scott: Were you ever putting wet?
Peter: No, water is the enemy of grinders.
Peter: You don’t want to put that in there.
Peter: But it was just, it was weird for me.
Peter: I just couldn’t, like I said, I didn’t do anything different.
Peter: I just did it longer.
Peter: So I really don’t, you know, I guess I wasn’t cleaning it good and couldn’t cleaning it well enough.
Peter: Okay, so real time update here.
Peter: I’m so I have a bunch of little pipe cleaners that I’ve used.
Peter: And I used one of those to clean the, you know, those are great and it works great.
Peter: So admittedly, I’m multitasking here.
Peter: So I have I called up Amazon in a browser window and I started looking up pipe cleaners.
Peter: And of course, I got the like the kind you use to like clog, declog drains.
Peter: What’s the first result?
Peter: No, not that kind of pipe.
Peter: So I said pipe brush cleaner, and now I’m seeing what I’m looking for.
Scott: So just don’t go to Truth Social or they’ll bring up pipe bomb cleaners because you’ve got to get ready for that next time.
Scott: You got to overthrow the capital.
Scott: But I’m right.
Scott: There we go.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: So tell us and the listener about your fellow product experience.
Scott: Well, I think my fellow Opus grinder got tired of me walking up to it and saying, hey there, fellow.
Scott: And it stopped grinding.
Scott: Well, what happened is I would put the beans in and I would push the button and it would try, and then it would just give up and then it would beep twice.
Scott: And we finally started using our old grinder again, because we couldn’t figure out what the problem was.
Scott: And it was well cleaned, by the way.
Scott: We did the same type of cleaning thing that you’re talking about all the time, regularly, and I did it again, just to make sure that wasn’t the problem.
Scott: So then you kindly informed me, the ignoramus that I was, since I had a backup.
Peter: I definitely informed you that you’re an ignoramus.
Peter: That’s right.
Peter: Yes.
Scott: Since I had a backup grinder, I didn’t put too much thought into it, but these things have a warranty.
Scott: So I did make a warranty claim.
Scott: They made me make a video of exactly what the problem was.
Scott: And then today, I got a reply saying they’re shipping me a new one.
Scott: And I don’t even have to bother to go to the trouble of returning the old one.
Scott: I just get the new one.
Peter: Wow.
Peter: That’s cool.
Scott: So we’ll see what happens.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: Because I went through, I realized, I don’t think I had ever actually registered the warranty for my first one.
Peter: So I registered both and they add an extra year.
Peter: And I told you, I got this email back saying, for next gen products, we extend the warranty by one year.
Peter: And for V2 products, we extend it by two years.
Scott: What does that mean?
Peter: My Opus Fellow is neither the Opus Fellow next gen, nor is it the Opus Fellow V2.
Peter: I was like-
Scott: Nor do I think those exist.
Peter: What is this?
Peter: I was like, I don’t understand.
Peter: So I replied back.
Peter: They replied properly.
Peter: They’re like, you have a V2 product.
Peter: So I have a three-year warranty on mine.
Scott: Wow.
Peter: And so that’s another, I’m like a year and a half into the first one, and zero years into the second one.
Scott: How are you supposed to know that it’s V2 or Next Gen?
Scott: That’s like what I was telling you when I worked at Intel.
Scott: Every time some new semiconductor test equipment was developed, and I’m sure it happened in other areas of the company too, but every time we were developing new semiconductor test equipment, whether it be the mechanical part or the tester part or whatever, Intel just loved to name everything Next Gen.
Scott: And it’s like, at some point, it’s not Next Gen anymore.
Scott: At some point, it’s really old Gen, and it just drove me crazy to call stuff Next Gen.
Scott: Just give it a freaking name.
Peter: Patrick Gray on the Risky Business Podcast said a couple of years ago, all these people are doing Next Gen firewalls, Next Gen EDR.
Peter: Well, what comes next?
Peter: Well, it’s going to be next Next Gen.
Peter: I still think it’s funny.
Peter: That reminds you, like Windows these days, right?
Peter: It’s all built on the Windows NT kernel, right?
Peter: Which NT stood for new technology.
Scott: Yes.
Peter: So here we are now, what, 30 years later running Windows new technology at the kernel.
Peter: We don’t call it that anymore, right?
Peter: But it is.
Peter: But I always thought it was funny too, because along the same gripe I have with people talking about ATM machines and the FTP protocol, we also had Windows 2000 built on Windows NT technology.
Peter: Yes, built on Windows new technology technology.
Scott: Well, the problem is, is that when you include that final word in your acronym, it sometimes leads to weird ways of saying things if you don’t also say the last word again.
Scott: And it just is how it is.
Scott: I’ve thought about that a lot of times when I’m saying something that I know is stupid, but it just makes more sense to everybody if I just go ahead and say that word again.
Peter: Yeah, yes.
Peter: We had a couple of follow-up items.
Peter: Now, I don’t remember if we talked about this.
Peter: Well, things on the reminders list.
Peter: Did we talk about my iPhone swap when I got the 16?
Scott: Let’s say we didn’t.
Peter: Did we talk about transferring the phone number?
Scott: Let’s say we didn’t.
Scott: I don’t think we did.
Scott: I don’t think we did.
Peter: As you know, I have an iPhone 14 Pro, and now that I think about it, where is it?
Peter: There it is.
Peter: It’s sitting on the charger out of sight behind my iPad.
Peter: So I have an old 14 Pro, and I traded in my father’s iPhone SE, and I traded that up to a 16 Pro.
Peter: And then I told Verizon, and I verified that I could do this before I talked to them, that I wanted to flip-flop the two numbers.
Peter: And they’re like, yes, no problem.
Peter: You can do that.
Peter: Just call us, and I’m like, wonderful.
Peter: Let’s get the new 16.
Peter: I start signing up, and it’s like, hey, do you want to transfer your number from the 14?
Peter: And I was like, sure, do it, right?
Peter: And I think, if I recall correctly, that worked.
Peter: Or did I say no?
Peter: I don’t remember, but it didn’t go smoothly.
Peter: So I called Verizon, and I said, here’s the deal.
Peter: I have a new 14, sorry, a new 16, and I’ve got a 14.
Peter: I want to swap the phone numbers on the two.
Peter: And the first guy I talked to was like, yep, no problem.
Peter: We do this all the time.
Peter: I’m going to turn you over to this department.
Peter: They can make it happen for you.
Peter: Like, great.
Peter: I explained to the next person I’m on, and she’s like, yep, we can do this.
Peter: No problem.
Peter: I was on the phone for over an hour trying to get this to happen.
Peter: And at about the 40-minute mark, the customer service rep on the other end seemed to reboot or something because she completely forgot what was going on and didn’t know.
Peter: Like, I’m like, look, I have two phones right here.
Peter: I want to swap the numbers because she got so embroiled.
Peter: It was like a ChatGPT.
Peter: No, this isn’t right.
Peter: You’re telling me this loop.
Peter: She completely forgot what we had been working on and had to start over.
Peter: I had to dial into her using my Google Meet or my Ring Central account because I needed, like, oh, well, you can’t call on this phone because you need to reset that phone.
Peter: And it was like, okay, you need to reset both phones.
Peter: I’m like, I’m talking to you on one of these.
Peter: Yeah, it was just such a pain.
Peter: And we needed to use a third phone on the account to receive the verification message because, oh, you just added this phone.
Peter: So we can’t send a verification, you know, to FAA code to it.
Peter: What a freaking ordeal.
Peter: So that was great.
Peter: It was it was amazing.
Scott: Do you think her reboot was a symptom of the fact that she was probably doing multiple calls at once?
Scott: Probably.
Peter: I mean, I would have expected this if I, it was just like I transferred to a new representative, right?
Peter: And you know, even though like, well, I’m including all of your notes.
Peter: I’m like, so they’re not going to read them.
Peter: So anyway, as with everything, every change that you make on a Verizon, you know, it’s always an hour long call.
Peter: When I trade up a phone, it’s always an hour long call to straighten everything out.
Peter: So the good news is though, I also, what about a week, two weeks ago, I just, for kicks, because I noticed on my iPhone 16 Pro, I have the opportunity or the option to set its maximum battery charge to 80%.
Peter: So, and I do, and it hasn’t been a problem, right?
Peter: There was like one day, I was going to a conference downtown all day, I charged it to 100%.
Peter: But normally I keep it at 80 and it’s great.
Peter: So, you know, hey, prolong the battery life.
Peter: And I looked on the 14, I was like, hey, can I do that here?
Peter: No, I can’t do that on the 14.
Peter: But while I was in the battery settings, I noticed it told me, your battery is not that healthy.
Peter: And this is a two-year-old phone and it said its max capability was 80%.
Peter: I was like, well, if I want you to max out at 80%, that’s different from you being able to max out at 80%.
Peter: I was like, hey, I’ve been paying 10 bucks a month for the AppleCare on this thing.
Peter: I may as well get my money’s worth.
Peter: So I submitted over, used the Apple Support app.
Peter: I explained I wanted to send it in for battery service.
Peter: I did.
Peter: They told me you can just take it, put it in a box, bring it to the closest UPS store.
Peter: I did.
Peter: Gave it to the gal behind the counter.
Peter: She was looking for a QR code.
Peter: She was a little confused, but then I said, no, I just have to repair a number.
Peter: She says, oh, let me check.
Peter: She found out the procedure.
Peter: She took it.
Peter: A week later, I got it back.
Peter: Brand new battery.
Peter: However, I disabled Find My Phone on it.
Peter: I didn’t bother with a backup since it was just my backup phone anyway.
Peter: I mean, it’s got iCloud backup, but I didn’t make a special backup of them.
Peter: I disabled Find My Phone.
Peter: I got back and it was factory reset.
Peter: Complete.
Peter: Even with the SIM card, everything was gone.
Scott: Oh, wow.
Peter: Luckily, I was able to use Verizon’s self-serve portal and reassign the phone number to it.
Peter: So I was able to log into my portal, find.
Peter: I don’t remember the exact option I chose, but it was to the tune of like, you know, like activate a device.
Peter: And it’s like, are you bringing in, do you want a new number or you want to re-use an existing number?
Peter: It’s like, existing number.
Peter: So, OK, which one of these devices?
Peter: I’m like, this one here, this iPhone 14 Pro, I want to use that one.
Peter: It’s like, OK, what do you want to change it to?
Peter: I’m like, this one over here, this iPhone 14 Pro.
Peter: It’s like, OK.
Peter: Even though the serial number and the EIMEI numbers are the same.
Scott: Identical, yeah.
Peter: Because it is the same phone.
Peter: I thought maybe because they shipped it back in a new box with the serial number and the IMEI on the outside.
Peter: I was like, did they send me a whole new phone?
Peter: No, it’s just a new battery, but it’s the exact same guts other than that.
Peter: But Verizon’s like, great, we’re going to move the phone number, you know, from this phone to this phone.
Peter: And amazingly, it just worked.
Scott: That blows my mind.
Scott: I would have thought that was the first thing that never would have worked in a billion years.
Peter: And I didn’t have to talk to anyone at Verizon.
Peter: That’s making me think maybe their technology platform is solid.
Peter: Maybe it’s the carbon units behind it that have an issue.
Scott: Maybe.
Scott: 1-800-CHAT-CARBON.
Peter: So one thing that I always forget, though, last bit on the new phone thing.
Peter: Whenever you get a new phone, I always forget and I start getting text messages on one machine on one phone, but not the other.
Peter: And it’s like SMS.
Peter: They’ll come into one place, but I don’t see them on my iPad or whatnot.
Peter: Always remember, among other things, like to go into your settings, apps, messages, and check out the setting under text message forwarding there.
Scott: It’s been enabling automatically for me for a while now.
Scott: Well, because I got a phone and then I had to replace that phone with the exact same one, and it just worked both times.
Scott: The one thing I’ve noticed though, and this is new, this has only happened with the last two restore your phone processes.
Scott: I have a bunch of cameras in the Home app, connected to HomeKit, HomeKit cameras, and I want notifications from those cameras under certain times, blah, blah, blah.
Scott: That’s why I have them.
Scott: It turns off.
Scott: For anything security related, whether it be a door sensor, whether it be a camera, it just went in and turned off notifications on all those things.
Scott: But nothing else, all the other things still had notifications enabled.
Scott: It was just security, you know, stuff that falls under the security device banner.
Scott: And I don’t get it.
Scott: I’ve never had that happen before.
Scott: I’ve transferred phones before with similar things in HomeKit, and never had that problem.
Scott: So I don’t understand why now.
Peter: I had similar issues with the new phone on the 16.
Peter: Before I sent the 14 in, this is back when the 14 was prime and the 16 was new.
Peter: Now it’s swapped again.
Peter: Now the 14 has the newest and the 16 is prime, right?
Peter: The 14 was constantly popping up home camera notifications.
Peter: My contractor was at my place in Vermont, and it’s like, motion detected, motion detected, 16, not a peep.
Peter: And then I looked at all the settings, the notification settings were the same, exactly the same.
Scott: Interesting.
Peter: So unfortunately for the last week and a half or so, I haven’t gotten any notifications, but it’s because he’s not there.
Scott: Were you clearing those notifications on one device before you looked at the other device?
Peter: No, I had them both sitting next to each other.
Peter: That’s the other confusing thing.
Peter: Right now, my iPhone 14 Pro’s name is iPhone 16 Pro because I restored it from a backup and my iPhone 16 Pro is just Peter’s iPhone.
Peter: So I got to rename those things.
Peter: So that was that.
Peter: Now, did we want to talk?
Peter: We put down a topic about Scott’s iPhone 16 Pro Max and Peter’s iPhone 16 Pro.
Peter: So I guess we wanted to give some impressions about what we wanted, what we like and what we don’t like about it or whatnot or something.
Scott: Yes.
Scott: Let’s give our impressions.
Scott: Let’s be impressionable.
Scott: You went from a 14 Pro to a 16 Pro.
Peter: I went from a 14 Pro to a 16 Pro and I see very little difference.
Peter: I have an action button now instead of just a volume control switch.
Peter: Surprise, this is going to shock you.
Peter: I use the action button to change the volume from silent to not silent.
Scott: That’s exactly what mine is set to.
Peter: And I have a camera control button, which I generally think I use to accidentally launch the camera.
Scott: That’s exactly what I do.
Scott: I accidentally launch the camera.
Scott: As you know, Peter, I use my iPhone for my webcam.
Scott: Right now, my iPhone is mounted on a Belkin mount right on the top of my studio display.
Scott: And when I stick my hand up there in a little while to remove that, I’m going to press that camera button.
Scott: I do it every single time.
Scott: I just can’t help it.
Scott: I can’t avoid it.
Scott: It’s on the bottom of the phone where I’m going to try to grab on to so that I don’t drop the phone.
Scott: And if I use my right hand, that’s the side of the phone I’m going to grab.
Scott: So it happens every time.
Scott: And it does happen some other times too, not as much.
Scott: But generally, I do trigger the camera accidentally whenever I do that use case.
Scott: But let’s talk about the camera because you said you didn’t notice much of a difference.
Scott: Now, I went from a 13 Pro to a 16 Pro Max, and the camera difference is highly noticeable.
Scott: Highly noticeable.
Scott: For one thing, it’s got a 5X zoom.
Scott: And in the past, the iPhone zoom lenses haven’t been very good.
Scott: This zoom lens is good.
Scott: It does a really good job.
Peter: So the zoom, I do have more of a zoom.
Peter: No question on that.
Peter: I haven’t really used it, though.
Peter: I haven’t done any.
Scott: I took zoo light pictures at night when we took the Exchange student over to the zoo to look at the Christmas lights.
Scott: They had Christmas lights strung around through the zoo, and you walked around and saw all the Christmas lights.
Scott: It did a great job, even in the night time.
Scott: It was just kind of amazing.
Scott: Blew my mind.
Scott: Everybody was like, hey, how come you’re getting such good pictures?
Scott: You take the pictures for the group.
Peter: Yep.
Peter: So right now, I have the Apple page open, apple.com/iphone/compare.
Peter: And I’m comparing your 16 Pro Max to my 16 Pro to the 14 Pro.
Scott: As far as I know, the only difference between our two current phones, the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max is the size.
Scott: This is not one of the generations where the bigger phone gets a better camera.
Peter: Right.
Peter: So I was happy that the difference between 6.3 inches and 6.1 inches is negligible.
Peter: It does not feel like a larger phone for me.
Peter: I don’t need to use two hands just to do every single thing for it.
Peter: So that’s good.
Peter: We both have the same chip, right?
Peter: Is my iPhone 16 faster?
Peter: I don’t notice any significant difference in performance in like my day to day uses.
Peter: And in fact, with the latest iOS, I have noticed frequently that it just hangs for no apparent reason.
Peter: And it doesn’t respond to taps.
Peter: I’ll be tapping on the screen and nothing happens.
Scott: You could call 1-800-CHAT-GPT during those times.
Peter: I probably could not because it’s not responding to taps.
Peter: So even if I was tapping on the phone icon, nothing would happen.
Scott: Now you can hold and press the Siri button on the side and then you can say hey, call 1-800-CHAT-GPT.
Peter: But for me, the Siri button is a silence button, so I need to change that.
Scott: Oh, no, no, no.
Scott: See, I have a different one.
Scott: There’s a no, the action button is the tiny button above the volume buttons, right?
Peter: Yes.
Scott: That one is set the same for me as it is for you, but on the other side of the phone, if you press and hold the top button, it will activate Siri.
Peter: Oh, the power button.
Scott: Yeah, yeah, right.
Scott: If you hold it for a certain amount of time, it activates Siri.
Peter: Yes, yes, yes.
Peter: Yes, now, I’m sorry.
Peter: I knew, see, I’ve had that for so long, I’ve completely forgotten about it.
Scott: And that’s another thing that I generally never use unless I trigger it by accident and then I tell it to go away.
Scott: Usually, I do it by saying, Siri, f*** off.
Peter: Right.
Peter: That’s the other thing I’ve noticed, though, is that I use frequently the press and hold a volume button and the Siri button to take a screen capture.
Peter: And lately, that has become very unreliable.
Peter: And what happens instead is I put the phone to sleep.
Scott: That’s because you’re, oh, I see.
Scott: It’s like you’re only pressing one of them.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: But I’m like, I can physically feel the click between the two, but it doesn’t matter.
Scott: Did some of that maple syrup from your coffee get into one of the buttons on the side of your phone?
Peter: I don’t think so.
Scott: Oh, okay.
Scott: Just checking.
Peter: Anyway.
Peter: So yeah, basically, you’ve got a bigger battery and you’ve got a bigger display.
Peter: So other than that, I believe the phones are pretty much identical.
Peter: Or as my friends at The Weekly Planet like to say, it’s the same.
Peter: Exactly.
Scott: The same.
Peter: And that said, so the camera, yeah, maybe I’m sure I’ll notice camera differences at some point, but I’m not as big a camera guy.
Peter: The other thing though is we have Apple Intelligence now.
Peter: Hey, and I haven’t really been using much of it.
Peter: I was noticing today, I was talking with my running buddy after our run.
Peter: You know how was it an one or two operating systems ago, it was either 16 or 17, they added automatic punctuation to dictation.
Scott: Yes, and it’s constantly putting commas afterwards, it shouldn’t or it’s ending a sentence and starting a new one.
Scott: It’s a sentence fragment generator.
Peter: So I said, you know, it’s like I keep forgetting, I should use my writing tools, I should dictate and then have writing tools clean it up.
Peter: But no, you know what, I shouldn’t have to do that.
Peter: Apple, you should be doing that automatically.
Scott: But this is the thing about software that is just enraging to me lately.
Scott: And it happened to me again today is like, every attempt to do something leads you down a rabbit hole of cascading series of steps, because, oh, now you got to do the, oh, you want to do that?
Scott: That’s great, we can do that.
Scott: But first, you got to do this, now you got to do this other thing, then you got to set up this other thing.
Scott: And by the way, have you heard the good news about the three hours of setup you have to do over here?
Scott: No, I haven’t.
Scott: Thank you.
Scott: To jump around a little in my A to D fashion, the writing tools.
Scott: On the Mac, how do you trigger the writing tools?
Scott: Because for me, I have to right click on stuff and select writing tools from the menu, and it’s really dumb.
Scott: How do you get to…
Peter: I thought that’s how you did it.
Scott: I don’t like it.
Scott: How come there’s not a keyboard shortcut?
Scott: Or why do I have to right click and say show writing tools?
Peter: I don’t know.
Peter: How else would you…
Peter: How do you want to access it?
Scott: I don’t know.
Scott: Keyboard shortcut.
Scott: Maybe it could be smart enough to know, since it’s part of the operating system, that I’m writing something and it could float a little window over there that if I want to use, it would be able to contextualize what I’m working on.
Scott: I don’t know.
Scott: They’re on the same computer.
Scott: And I don’t know.
Scott: Apple seems to know what’s going on on my computer, at least their operating system does.
Scott: I mean, they made it.
Peter: It sounds like you want Clippy.
Scott: I want Super Clippy.
Peter: Super Clippy.
Peter: You want Clippy that works.
Scott: I want Super Proof Writer Reader 3000 Clippy Edition.
Peter: Monolith pre-
Peter: yes, Clippy 3000.
Scott: That’s great.
Scott: Yeah, anyway, I don’t know.
Scott: So, but on your iPhone, do you use any of the AI stuff on your phone or on your Mac?
Scott: Either one.
Peter: I will frequently have on my iPhone, I will start by having Safari summarize a web article for me.
Peter: I often start with that and then if like, okay, if I want to read beyond the headlines, I’ll go from there.
Peter: I do frequently benefit from the summaries that it gives me in notifications and messages.
Scott: Sometimes they’re kind of useless, but yeah.
Peter: Sometimes they are, but sometimes they’re kind of useful.
Peter: And in email as well, on the Mac as well as on the iPhone.
Peter: So instead of, you know, I have subject line and then the AI generated summary below.
Peter: I generally those are good.
Peter: But again, as you know, I get a lot of automated emails because I’m sure you get a lot of the same automated emails, you know, from lists or like a, you know, a service, you know, an EDR tool or a server status tool will send a message.
Peter: And it’s just like, getting like a, you know, a cron job telling summary about disk utilization and whatnot on a, on a box is kind of like laughable.
Peter: When you get those summarized.
Scott: Yeah, there are some that don’t do well at being summarized.
Scott: Home notification ones are also funny too, because it’ll say multiple people spotted.
Scott: And really it’s just the same person leaving once and coming back or something like that.
Peter: Right.
Peter: But at least, and I think this was something I know is like Joanna Stern or someone on one of the verge podcasts was complaining about how, or maybe it was Casey on ATP.
Peter: I don’t know.
Peter: They were saying how they would get multiple notifications about the garage door being open or closed or whatnot.
Peter: But they’re like, I just want to know if it’s closed.
Peter: I’ve noticed that on mine, I get like, you know, the door has been opened and closed multiple times, most recently closed.
Scott: That is a key piece of information.
Peter: Right.
Peter: So I don’t know if that’s new or if that’s just been like, maybe my experience is better.
Scott: But I think that was Casey that said that specific thing.
Scott: I don’t actually, I don’t remember.
Scott: It could be any other one.
Scott: You’re right.
Scott: Because they both talked about home notifications.
Scott: So I don’t know if that’s the home notification summary, Joanna edition or the home summary notification summary, Casey edition.
Peter: Casey, Casey Liss edition, yeah.
Peter: Last bit I have for, well, I have two more things for today.
Peter: One is, you probably don’t care about this.
Peter: It’s probably not as big a thing as it is for me.
Peter: Have you seen the trailer for the new Superman 2025 movie?
Scott: No.
Peter: It made me choke up a little bit.
Peter: I’m so excited for this.
Peter: Yes.
Peter: Now, Superman has been like, I know it sounds really silly to some, but Superman has been a large, a strong influence in my life.
Peter: And it goes back to my love of fiction, my love of stories.
Peter: My father would tell me stories, like read bedtime stories, whereas he would tell me Greek myths.
Peter: So stories about Heracles and Achilles and Achilleus, and blah, blah.
Peter: You gotta have it with the Greek accent.
Scott: That’s right.
Peter: And that led naturally to superheroes.
Peter: Even it was like, I don’t know, eight, 10 years ago, I took an edX course on superheroes in pop culture.
Peter: And that really drove home that all of these heroes that we have today are really just throwbacks to mythological archetypes that we have.
Peter: And Superman is a combination of Samson, Hercules, a lot of these.
Peter: So anyway, with that as a backstory, I highly recommend everybody check out the Superman trailer.
Peter: We’ll put in the link in the show notes or you can probably, you can find it.
Peter: It’s going to be that if you search for Superman 2025 trailer on YouTube, you’ll find it.
Peter: It’s 2 minutes 20 seconds long.
Peter: So there was that.
Peter: And then the other, my last bit for today, and then I wanted to talk to you about your final topic, or the other hop that you have.
Scott: James Gunn.
Peter: Was I recently found, back when I was cleaning out my place in Vermont, you know, the house I grew up in, I found my college smart graphing calculator.
Peter: The Hewlett Packard 48SX graphing calculator.
Scott: Look what I have right here.
Peter: You have an HP 48CX.
Scott: GX.
Peter: GX.
Peter: Okay, I’m not familiar with that one.
Peter: The Cs, I think, used to be the financial versions.
Peter: But it’s the Gs.
Scott: The G, I think, just had more memory.
Scott: A couple other things.
Scott: That’s it.
Peter: I rocked this thing in college.
Peter: Like, I bought, like, the expansion slots.
Peter: They were like, I don’t know what they were exactly, but they’re like, you know, PC cards at the time.
Peter: You can slap in extra memory and programs and things on those.
Peter: It was amazing.
Peter: It was awesome.
Peter: Well, the big competitor came out around the same time was the Texas Instruments.
Scott: Which at the time, let’s be fair, the Texas Instrument, in my opinion, could not for a long time hold a candle to the HP.
Peter: No, but the TI, what was it, the 81, I want to say?
Scott: Yeah, something like that.
Peter: The TI 80-something came along, and I was like, you know, it’s actually not that bad.
Peter: You know, it was cheaper.
Peter: I remember it caused a huge kerfluffle at the college where I was going.
Peter: The fear was, well, the kids aren’t going to know how to make graphs anymore.
Peter: They’re not going to have to do this.
Scott: And it was basically the AI of the late 80s.
Peter: Yeah, pretty much.
Peter: There was a non-traditional, and by that I mean old student, you know, like an adult who was darnily beating the, I don’t need to learn this because the tool will do it for me, drum.
Peter: Now, I don’t agree with that.
Peter: I think it’s good to understand the fundamentals of what you’re supposed to learn.
Peter: But he was essentially insisting that he could use this on tests, et cetera, and to do the homework, and that the professor shouldn’t ban it.
Scott: I’m surprised that the old guy wasn’t saying kids today and getting angry at the people with their calculators.
Peter: Yeah, well, like I said, non-traditional.
Peter: The funny thing was, a year or a year later or two years later, they were mandatory.
Peter: Everyone had to buy the TI-80.
Peter: That specific, the specific calculator that was banned was something you needed to buy.
Peter: And I got around that.
Peter: Well, the reason I brought this up is, I saw this article in Perplexity a couple months ago.
Peter: Someone has released a hack for the TI-84 that now enables hardware and software modifications to enable internet connectivity and ChatGPT access.
Scott: You’ve got to be kidding me.
Peter: So you can now access ChatGPT on a TI-84 graphing calculator, which I thought was hilarious.
Peter: We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well.
Scott: And then you can complain on Reddit about overcasting it.
Peter: Right.
Peter: So, you had one other topic.
Scott: Oh, yeah.
Scott: Peter, I need you to do me a slight favor, and this is because you’re the most qualified person that I know for this task.
Scott: And do you know what your set of qualifications are?
Scott: You live on the East Coast, my friend.
Scott: Can you pop over to New Jersey and see what’s going on over there for me?
Peter: We have plenty of UFOs here in Boston, too.
Peter: And people have been shining lasers at airplanes and…
Peter: Can you not bleep this, please?
Peter: Can you not bleep this out?
Scott: Yeah, I’ll try not to.
Peter: I am seriously convinced that not just some, but the vast majority of the human race are flowering, floating, flying, flatulating, flabbergasting morons.
Scott: I think we’ve lost…
Scott: Something has happened to our brains.
Scott: And it has to do with the fact that our monkey brains aren’t all meant to be tied together the way that they are.
Scott: And more people than ever get onto these conspiracy theories.
Scott: It’s kind of funny because everybody thinks these drones are so real.
Scott: And by the way, I saw a screen cap of a tweet from Marjorie Taylor Green.
Scott: Is that her name?
Peter: Marjorie Taylor Green.
Scott: Saying that she’s not afraid she’ll shoot him out of the sky like any red-blooded American or whatever it was.
Scott: And my daughter and I just laughed at that.
Scott: We’re like, isn’t that the typical American response?
Scott: What is it?
Scott: I don’t know.
Scott: Let’s shoot it.
Peter: Shoot it.
Scott: It just seems to me that…
Peter: They’re children.
Peter: These people are emotional and intellectual children.
Scott: But this is the thing.
Scott: A whole generation of middle-aged people should have never been given access to the Internet, Peter.
Scott: Never been given access.
Scott: And I’m convinced that if they hadn’t been, Trump would not be president right now.
Scott: I really believe that.
Peter: Absolutely.
Peter: So drones, anyway.
Scott: Yeah, drones.
Peter: I must say, I agree.
Peter: I think you were one of the people who had been saying how blue sky is like Twitter back when it was good.
Peter: I agree.
Peter: I’ve had numerous back and forth interactions, meaningful conversations with some folks, a little bit.
Peter: Not like, well, Chauncey, sit down and have a sip of bourbon here and let’s discuss the final things in life.
Peter: But one guy posted and he got some flack for using the OSI model in a networking class that he taught.
Peter: And he was looking for feedback on that because people were saying, the OSI model, it’s dated, it’s useless, no one actually uses it, therefore, he shouldn’t use it at all.
Peter: And I’m like, it’s a model, right?
Peter: And so this started a discussion on a project that I’m working on, which is also based around using models for things.
Peter: No one’s saying that the models are perfect, right?
Peter: But it’s a representation, it’s an approximation, so that’s just one example.
Peter: Anyway, I saw a great one yesterday, it was someone who said, UFO sighted.
Peter: And it was a picture she took behind a rainy windshield of a stoplight.
Peter: And I was like, yeah, that’s great.
Peter: But it’s like, there’s a whole group of folks, we’re all just sitting around here laughing at these idiots, except these idiots are going to be our downfall.
Peter: So laugh while you can, folks.
Scott: They really are.
Scott: They got their way.
Scott: They’re getting their way.
Peter: And we’re getting it too.
Scott: I saw that Alabama is banning health care people from promoting or recommending vaccines now.
Scott: Right at the same time as Alabama had its first serious case of bird flu in the United States maybe, or at least in that state for sure.
Scott: What a, you can’t make it up.
Peter: You know, it’s terrible.
Peter: It’s not compassionate.
Peter: It’s not, you know, something that I should be saying as a yoga teacher and stuff.
Peter: But I really just wish that, you know, these people would suffer their own, you know, reap what they sow.
Scott: Right.
Scott: But the problem is, if enough people don’t get vaccinated, everybody suffers.
Scott: It doesn’t…
Peter: We all suffer.
Peter: That’s just that, you know.
Peter: So it’s like, it’s like when I was a kid, I said this, I still say this, you know, murder, suicide.
Peter: I think, I think the biggest problem with murder, suicide is they get the order of operations wrong.
Peter: So if you want to do that, that’s cool.
Peter: But, you know, go and live in your own little vacuum and make sure that you really don’t affect anyone else.
Peter: Anyway, and then, you know, seeing Trump’s talk, they’re like, oh, they have a right to know.
Peter: Like, he’s just stirring the freaking pot.
Scott: I know.
Scott: Tell the people.
Peter: Tell the people.
Peter: Like, well, you were president for four years.
Peter: You tell us.
Scott: Yeah, you tell the people.
Scott: But the thing is, I will say this.
Scott: The Democrats, who are currently still in power, and the military and all those people, they’re not doing any, they’re not really helping this situation whatsoever.
Scott: They could come right out and say, you guys, you’re staring at New Jersey Airport or Newark or whatever it’s called.
Peter: I’m shocked that the Democrats are not doing something.
Scott: Doing enough, I know, right?
Peter: Shocked.
Peter: Literally shocked.
Scott: Anyway, we should end on something better.
Scott: What else do we have in here?
Peter: Pretty much, we hit the list.
Peter: We checked it all off.
Scott: Do you have anything else?
Scott: You know what’s funny though?
Scott: We bought my daughter an iPhone 16 Pro for Christmas.
Peter: Holy moly.
Peter: So the three of us all have the same phone?
Peter: What about your wife?
Scott: She wanted the Pro.
Scott: She still has a 13?
Scott: 12?
Peter: 14?
Scott: I don’t know what she has.
Scott: 13 maybe.
Peter: I thought you loved your wife.
Scott: I do, but she chooses when to buy her technology.
Scott: She is very good about not constantly buying new technology gadgets.
Peter: She has not yet contracted your or our upgrades disease.
Scott: Right.
Scott: And to be fair, the main things with upgrade disease for me this time were, as you said, the upcoming tariffs.
Scott: And also, I like camera advancements, and I just do.
Scott: But anyway, so going back to my daughter’s thing.
Scott: So we go in there and I try to use Apple Pay with my Chase Visa card.
Scott: And it doesn’t work.
Scott: It says it’s declined.
Scott: So we try again.
Scott: It says it’s declined.
Scott: I’m not getting any notifications or anything, mind you.
Scott: Chase was notifying my wife for my Chase credit card being declined.
Scott: She was getting the notification.
Scott: She was at work in the hospital, and I’m lucky she was in a place where she actually had signals so she could say, Hey, I’m getting these declined notifications, by the way.
Scott: And I’m like, okay.
Peter: Is it the same card?
Peter: Do you share the same card with the same number?
Scott: No, not at all.
Scott: That’s what I don’t understand is why my card is associated with her number.
Peter: So I had something similar, but different happen.
Peter: Last week, I use USPS informed delivery.
Peter: So it tells me like when I have mail coming, and it sends a graphical image of, you know, the things usually, which is really helpful, right?
Peter: It told me what my neighbor at, I live, you know, my street number, my neighbor 12 doors down, it told me what they were getting in the mail.
Peter: It sent a picture of their mail.
Scott: Your box of motorized represented.
Peter: No, but I know who, which health insurance carrier they’re using now.
Scott: Oh, okay, yeah.
Peter: So I’m like, yeah, I mean, yeah, borderline on, you know, it’s a breach of confidentiality for sure.
Scott: It is, and even if maybe, you know, maybe that could be used against them, maybe not, but at the very least, it might get some bad person’s curiosity entangled as to whether they could do something with it.
Scott: But the funny thing about Chase is, I can buy whatever I want online from any dumb, dodgy, stupid website, and they don’t care.
Scott: But the minute I try to buy an iPhone in an Apple store, where assuredly, they have asked to see my identification, no, Chase freaks out and poops the bed.
Scott: It does it every time I go to the Apple store.
Scott: It’s like, I should have known, but I thought we were past that.
Peter: So I will say one good thing about the Apple, not the Apple card, but my Apple account.
Peter: I also, as you know, I recently traded in my MacBook Air M2, and I got what I thought was a decent price for it.
Scott: One million dollars.
Peter: Well, I got back about what the cost of a new M1 is at Walmart.
Scott: It’s not bad.
Peter: For a two-year-old used thing that was showing its age, that’s great.
Peter: You can use your Apple account, those credits and stuff.
Peter: I thought at first you had to just trade it in for another phone or something like that.
Peter: No, I have it set on my Apple, my iCloud, my Apple account.
Peter: So like my subscriptions and stuff, it’ll draw from that first before coming off the credit card.
Scott: So you can rent whenever Superman 2025 comes out, you can rent that quite a few times.
Peter: If I haven’t used it all up by then, yeah.
Scott: Sure.
Scott: Okay, that’s a good thing.
Scott: We can end on that.
Scott: Peter, I don’t know, I don’t think we’re going to talk to each.
Scott: I’m 100% positive we’re not going to podcast again for Christmas.
Scott: After Christmas, at some point, let’s do another episode.
Scott: And at that point, I will have me some winter ale.
Scott: I didn’t want to today because we podcast earlier than normal.
Peter: I say on Boxing Day, we should schedule a Boxing Day podcast.
Scott: Okay.
Scott: Do we have to fight each other?
Scott: You’re a better fighter than I am, although your shoulders are a little dodgy.
Peter: We will put things in boxes.
Scott: You could beat the crap out of me handily, but you also might have incapacitated shoulders afterwards.
Scott: I don’t know.
Peter: Nice.
Peter: All right, let’s take us out.
Peter: If you want to find us, dear listener, as always, you already have.
Peter: We’re here.
Peter: You found us.
Scott: That is the kindest, most gentle way I’ve ever heard you say that.
Scott: Usually you tell people how stupid they are.
Peter: I already said that the vast majority of the population are…
Scott: FMs.
Peter: But you can find us at friendswithbrews.com.
Peter: That’s B-R-E-W-S, not the other Brews, which I’m letting that domain out.
Scott: It’s spelled D-R-O-N-E.
Peter: friendswithdrones.com.
Peter: I love it.
Peter: But you can now find me occasionally, rarely.
Peter: You can find me on bluesky at peternicolaitis.com.
Scott: Bluesky, bluesky.
Peter: That’s right.
Peter: I also, I was getting some scams and some other garbage.
Scott: I saw that somebody was trying to butcher pig you or whatever they call it.
Peter: Not that.
Peter: Well, we’re not supposed to call it that anymore.
Peter: Advanced fee romance scams.
Peter: No, I actually, I’ve suspended my LinkedIn account because it’s garbage and there’s a, I was disclosing a ton of information out there.
Scott: Oh, just by your profile?
Peter: My employment history and stuff, right?
Peter: I mean, that’s something.
Peter: So I decided to just hide that all.
Peter: It’s gone now.
Scott: Peter’s hiding on LinkedIn, everybody.
Peter: Yeah.
Peter: So I did that and I figure, yes, there’s my public website and stuff that’s easily findable on there.
Peter: But I decided that now LinkedIn was not benefiting me anymore, so I just took it down.
Scott: LinkedIn is really scummy and scammy.
Scott: If nothing else, it’s a total waste of time.
Scott: Like it really is.
Peter: I had co-workers who had their information harvested there, and they actually had like tax.
Peter: It was a beachhead for tax return fraud and employment benefits fraud.
Scott: Somebody filed in there.
Peter: Sorry.
Peter: In this case, the one that was taxes, it was a coordinated attack.
Peter: It wasn’t like they didn’t get their tax information from LinkedIn.
Peter: But I did have two colleagues have workers’ comp applications filed on their behalf.
Peter: And the only thing was like, you worked at this hospital or that hospital, and they had enough corroborating information to put that in.
Peter: On that note, I think it’s time to push that big red button.
Peter: I’m going to watch that Superman trailer one more time.
Peter: And then I’m going to play some Baldur’s Gate this evening.
Scott: I think I’m going to go do workouts.
Scott: And then in the evening, I attempt to work, but I’ll probably be far less productive than I want to be, which has been the pattern lately.
Scott: But then my daughter, for some reason, works from six to midnight, so I gotta carpool her back and forth.
Scott: Cool.
Peter: Well, have fun with that.
Scott: I’m ready for the big red button, Peter.
Peter: Big red button, Peter.
Scott: Tell your friends.