394: The Price of an ATP Sticker
03 Sep 2020Supporting a good cause, replacing a Synology, an unexpected hardware review, and Cooking with Casey: The Virginia Treat.
Episode Description:
- Please join us in donating to St. Jude
- Follow-up:
- John’s Mac Pro
- Reviving a data-only volume
- bridgeOS updates
- Other Mac Pro Woes
- Non-Mac-Pro Woes
- Hagen Terschüren
- Leeward
- Roland Månsson on Mac hardware tests
⌥Dand then⌘E- Apple support article
- SilentKnight
/usr/libexec/remotectl dumpstate(via Paul Galow)- Recycling cables
- Fortnite “Accidentally” Enables Cross-Play (via DJ Ghostmare)
- US Bill for Unsubscribing to services (via Clarus the Dogcow)
- Epic Games’s developer is terminated
- John’s Mac Pro
- Marco’s Synology
#askatp- How much disk space is left on my APFS-based storage‽ (via Ron Olson)
tmutil listlocalsnapshots
- Is the Mac menu bar going to become window chrome? (via Michael Grossmann)
- Does Marco have a target loudness? (via Jake Bennett-Young)
- How much disk space is left on my APFS-based storage‽ (via Ron Olson)
- Post-show:
- Marco’s Running
- Cooking with Casey (oh no)
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
- Eero: We’re asking a lot of our Wi-Fi. eero can help yours do more. Enter code ATP at checkout to get free next-day shipping.
- Cotton Bureau: Use the code ATP for 10% off anything on the site until September 10. One random buyer using that code will receive the same gift that John did.
Become a member for an ad-free feed and our unedited “bootleg” feed, released about a day before the edited version of the show!
Chapters
- Nothing illicit here
- Donate to St. Jude
- Casey * Erin Liss 🖼️
- John’s Mac Pro update
- BridgeOS updates
- Longer hardware test
- Recycle your old cables
- Past Epic shenanigans
- Unsubscribe Act of 2019
- Epic developer account revoked
- Sponsor: Cotton Bureau (code ATP)
- Marco’s “Synology”
- Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
- Why not a Mac Pro?
- Casey’s Synologies
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- #askatp: APFS free space
- #askatp: Menu as window chrome
- #askatp: Marco’s target LUFS
- Ending theme
- Marco’s running “recently”
- Cooking with Casey
Nothing illicit here
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, so we were discussing this on Slack and then it occurred to me that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe we should discuss this publicly for the bootleg people. It’s nothing bad, nothing, you know, illicit
⏹️ ▶️ John When you say that, it makes it sound worse. Why give that? No, because it’s like as a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey manager. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like we’re talking about robbing a bank. Yeah. 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
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly right. kitchen. Rant-free kitchen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You two are already on my s*** list for the treatment I got yesterday morning and now you’re gonna do this to me?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s how it’s gonna be?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, this was amazing. What treatment did you get yesterday?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get there. We’ll get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh yeah. We’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ John You brought that on yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my god, I hate you. You’re you’re fired. You’re both fired and I quit
Donate to St. Jude
⏹️ ▶️ Casey September is a very special month to a lot of people, but particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the greater RelayFM community, and that includes this very program, the Accidental Tech Podcast. September
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And this all started for me and for us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with our dear friend, Stephen Hackett, whose eldest child was afflicted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with childhood cancer when the kid kid was like six months old. And so because of that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Childhood Cancer Awareness Month is near and dear to our hearts. And in particular, St. Jude Children’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Research Hospital is near and dear to our hearts. And every September for at least the last two or three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years, if not more, we’ve been trying to raise money in concert with Relay since we’re all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Relay hosts. We were trying to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we would very much love it if you, the listener, could donate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any amount of money, a dollar, $5, $10, a whole pile of money, that’s cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too, any amount of money to St. Jude, particularly during this month. And so if you wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, and if you have a little extra cash you can send their way, you can go to stjude.org.atp.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pretty easy to remember, stjude.org.atp. And you can send them a little bit of your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money. I should note that it now supports Apple Pay, which it never did before, which is super excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can, in just a matter of moments, send money to help fight childhood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cancer. 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. Let me say that one more time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is never receive a bill for anything. Each year,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between 180,000 and 240,000 children are diagnosed with cancer worldwide.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Treatments invented at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to more than 80% since it opened more than 50 years ago. St.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jude won’t stop until no child dies from cancer. So again, if you could,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you please, donate, and you can do that at stjude.org.atp, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can join the fight to end childhood cancer. And again, you can do that now with Apple Pay, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super convenient. So the three of us were thinking about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, what can we do here in order to try to show how important this is to us and how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much we value St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital? And what we have done is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a threesome, we have donated a sum total of $20,001, which is a very odd choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yesterday, under a little bit of duress in my case, which I’ll explain in a moment, each
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of us donated $6,667 exactly, such that we could get to basically $20,000, although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it ended up, if you do the math, to be $20,001.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That happened as we record this yesterday morning. And it’s important to us that we note that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is because we find St. Jude to be such an important thing and we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey value it so much. And we’re donating even more this year than we did in prior years, thanks in large part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to our members, and we really appreciate that. And so whether or not you’re a member, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really, really urge all of you, and we will say this a couple of more times this month, please
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go to stjude.org.atp and throw any amount of money in St. Jude’s Way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything helps. Don’t be embarrassed about a dollar or five dollars. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Be proud, be proud of that five dollars. That counts, it does. Be proud of it. Donate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you can, and we’d really appreciate it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s really hard to find great charitable causes where there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asterisks on, well, how effectively do they use the money or whatever. Sometimes you gotta 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way, St. Jude is a really good place to give money. In addition to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the incredible work they do providing care for kids and their families,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like kids with cancer. And again, what case is it? Notice, this is a very important detail.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The kids who receive treatment don’t have to pay for it. in the US.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s incredible. And if you think like this horrible thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this family and this kid are going through if they have this diagnosis, the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing you want to think about is money. Like, how are we going to pay for this to save our kid? And they take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that question away, which is incredible. And they’re also a research
⏹️ ▶️ Marco institution. So in addition to all of that incredible financial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco help they give people, they also use the money. money to conduct research to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco treat and prevent childhood cancer. And so it’s a huge deal to, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things they do are incredible and really help the world in a pretty amazing way. And they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a fantastic organization. You know, you can look up as much as you want to look up about them. They’re a fantastic organization.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They really use the money well and they do very good, very good work. So I’m going to go,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as usual, a little bit more aggressive than Casey’s pitch, I’m going to say, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco donate, if you can, if you’re listening to the show, odds are good, you can afford to give them more than $5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you can only afford $5, great. They will appreciate it. We will appreciate it. I bet you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do more. So I’m going to say, as we typically do, this is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, Apple hardware buying season is about to be upon us. Usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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. Whatever you’re about to spend on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new iPhone or a new iPad or a new Apple Watch or whatever, you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna spend, you know, 75, 100, $150 in tax. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like buying a case or something, all right? So if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re lucky enough to be able to do that, take some of that and give it to St. Jude as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco justify your ridiculous Apple hardware purchase by giving whatever you would spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on tax or a case or AppleCare for some new Apple device,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give that to St. Jude. If you can do more, even better, but that’s what I’d say, that is your target.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you would spend on an accessory or on some kind of additional surcharge on your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frivolous hardware purchase this fall. Give at least that much to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. And you know, I probably have made this same comparison before, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last I heard CGP Grey has something like adblock absolution, you know, so if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey subscribe to his Patreon, then you don’t have to feel bad about using an adblocker. Well, like Marco said, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frivolous spending absolution. If you donate a small to medium to large-sized pile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of money to St. Jude, you get frivolous spending absolution from all of us. So it’s a win-win.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah. I mean, if you send them like $100, $200, something like that, you could buy whatever for 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. This year, their goal
⏹️ ▶️ John is bigger than last year. I think it’s like over 300 grand. So we’re all collectively, everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John in this sort of tech nerd podcasting sphere that’s in any way related to Relay.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re trying to get them over the line. I think their goal is 315,000. I feel like we can go higher
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey than that, right? So it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John beginning now. We’re not quite there yet. Every little bit that
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. So check out that content
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to be motivated to give even more. If you give five bucks now and then give five bucks tomorrow and then give 20
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks the day after that, like as you see the content that they’re producing for this
⏹️ ▶️ John remote COVID-telethon that we’re all doing here, hopefully you’ll be motivated to give even more
⏹️ ▶️ John and more. And it’s like you both said, it’s such a great charity because you are
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially directly letting someone else not have to worry about paying for something. You’re not just
⏹️ ▶️ John helping them pay their bills. You’re not just giving them money towards their insurance. Nothing like that. It’s like every
⏹️ ▶️ John dollar that you give is something that prevents a family from having to think about money when they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John dealing with their kid having cancer if they’re treated at St. Jude. So it’s an extremely good cause
⏹️ ▶️ John and it should make everyone feel good to donate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, you could literally be paying to cure cancer. I mean, how many, how many times have you said, f*** cancer?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know what? If you want to say that, then now’s the way to do it. You know, if you want cancer to go away,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is how you do it. So please, we’ll, we’ll let it go. But stju.org slash ATP. We’re going to say this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few more times during the month of September, but Seriously, stu.org slash ATP,
Casey * Erin Liss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now let’s talk about some text formatting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d like to file a formal complaint. I occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will get fired up at Marco and or John. I have never been more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John we should give our money during the show. And the last thing I wanted to be doing during recording is like
⏹️ ▶️ John filling out forms on a website and carefully entering numbers and stuff like that. It’s like, no, we should have
⏹️ ▶️ John our donations done. And we split it up into three with our weird, odd number. So we were trying to reach
⏹️ ▶️ John 20K. So we did 20,001, because that’s how it divided evenly, by three, whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And we were all gonna give it, you know, around about the same time, so our names would appear near each other on the little
⏹️ ▶️ John donation list, right? And, but we were having this debate over like, well, what do we put for the names? Do we just put our first
⏹️ ▶️ John and last name? Do we write ATP colon John, ATP colon Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ John Do we include our spouse’s names? Do we include all our family names? Do we include just our last name? Not that it matters,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s just a text field that shows up on a website, but these are the type of things we discuss, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 it done before the
⏹️ ▶️ John show, but Casey was recording a podcast. He’s like, oh, I don’t have time to deal with this, like whatever, but Marco and I like tough,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re outvoted, we want to do it now. So, it’s two
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey out of three. It’s great having an odd number of people in the
⏹️ ▶️ John show. So like, let’s just do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Let’s just get out
⏹️ ▶️ John of the way. Let’s just do it. 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? Yes, okay. And then I’m like, okay, are we gonna format
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like this? Marco and Tiff are, okay. And I’m like, this is what we’re gonna do, right? Confirm, confirm, yes, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, yep. And then I did it. And then Marco did that. And then I did John and Tina, Syracusa, and
⏹️ ▶️ John submitted the thing. following the format. Exactly. The thing we noticed, by the way, is when Marco did his like there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John leaderboard of like who gave the biggest donation. So markers at the top of the leaderboard. But then I do mine with the exact same amount.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now I’m at the top of the leaderboard. So we realized I was just like recency because we gave the exact same amount. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve realized Casey’s going to be the top of the leaderboard because he’s going to go last. And then I think I just didn’t think about it and
⏹️ ▶️ John close the window. But then when I looked back at it, Casey was indeed the number one in the number one spot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and still is as we record days later.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the name written there was not Casey and Aaron Liss. It was Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John space asterisk space Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ John Liss. And we’re like, we talked about this. What the hell is
⏹️ ▶️ John an asterisk doing there? And he angrily says, it’s an ampersand. I’m like, it’s not an ampersand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which would have also been wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which would have also been wrong because we agreed it was going to be space A-N-D space. So now
⏹️ ▶️ John if you look at the number one donation, it looks like that thing you get on your credit card bill where you can’t figure out what
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the vendor is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where it’s like, all caps, Casey star, Aaron slash
⏹️ ▶️ John something. Like, who is this? What is this? What is this charge? Oh, it’s just Casey, he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, okay, let me make it plain. I’m in the midst of recording analog while I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to not ignore Mike and trying to have a conversation with him and dealing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with these two numb nuts trying to tell me, go, go, go. And normally I wouldn’t have really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought that much about it. I would have waited and I would have just done it like an hour or two later. But I had this vision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of somebody watching and I was
⏹️ ▶️ John saying that just me and Marco gave money, but you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give any exactly. And then like hours later, okay, fine. I guess I’ll do it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too. You jerks, you know, or something like that. And so I wanted to do it really quickly behind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the two of them. Now, ampersand and asterisk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are next to each other on the American keyboard. So it is certainly plausible that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had typed an asterisk, 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, but I was in a hurry,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was distracted, I was trying to get through it as quickly as possible, so I just did a frigging ampersand. And next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing I know, I see Casey star Aaron Liss.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why didn’t you just tell Mike, hang on a second? I think Mike would have paused for two and a half minutes if you told him, hang
⏹️ ▶️ John on a second, I’m about to give a bunch of money to St. Jude. He
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey would have said, fine, go for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true, but I was just trying, I mean, in theory, it shouldn’t have been that hard. Well, also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if you include the shift, you’re only saving one keystroke. Oh my God. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that really worth it? Instead of A-N-D, shift eight or shift seven?
⏹️ ▶️ John We should just be glad he didn’t put emoji in. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. You should. one of those big pluses. Anyway, the point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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, okay, that’s kind of fun, but like I don’t want to be there anymore. So like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re listening to this and you want to donate even a dollar more than $6,667,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey send me your mailing address and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey redacted version of your receipt and I will put not-for-sale ATP stickers in the mail. I’m not even kidding. I don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you live in the planet. I will do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John always wonder what it would take to get a sticker. You know, it’ll take $6,668 or more to St. Jude. That’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how much it costs right now. That is the price of an ATP sticker. That is it. But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point is, I didn’t want to necessarily be at the top. And now, every time I look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at this, because at the top of this page, they show the different milestones that Mike and Steven are trying to hit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now, every time I look down, it’s, oh, God, KC Starr, Aaron Norris. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was so angry at you two. I couldn’t wait. Marco, I sort of understand that you were trying to get in the car and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go somewhere, so I give you a half pass on this. But John, cut me a little slack,
⏹️ ▶️ John couldn’t have waited? No, but I wanted to get it done before the show, and I had things to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t want to be doing it during the show. Fine. All right. Anyway, we did it. We donated. Good
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey job, everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone who’s listening, go donate.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, please.
John’s Mac Pro update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my gosh. All right. Before I, let me actually have a little bit of schadenfreude and John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell me about your Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, where did we leave off my Mac Pro? Oh, I know. It was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I had revived the T2, which had fixed the sleep problem. I had all my
⏹️ ▶️ John data on my link data volume, but I couldn’t actually boot into it. So it was just sitting there and I had a plan
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 I got another hard drive, I did a complete backup of linked data, also I forgot to mention this
⏹️ ▶️ John last show, I also did another backup of my entire photo library
⏹️ ▶️ John to another hard drive. So I made two additional copies of my photo library and one additional
⏹️ ▶️ John copy of my entire data volume. Then I was ready to try my approach. Remember my approach
⏹️ ▶️ John was I was going to delete all the volumes from my boot thing, all the visible
⏹️ ▶️ John volumes. This is the thing, and Disk Utility doesn’t show you some of the hidden volumes and different APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John roles, but it shows you the system volume and the user volume. So I had a system volume,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I had an associated, almost entirely empty user volume, and then I had
⏹️ ▶️ John my real user data volume. So I was ready to do this. I had my backups. They
⏹️ ▶️ John were all disconnected, put to the side, and then I booted into recovery mode, and I deleted
⏹️ ▶️ John my system volume, and I And I deleted my empty user volume, being very careful to make sure that I was deleting the empty
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John now I’m left with just one volume. I’m left with essentially an unbootable disk, just one volume called link-data.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I ran the Catalina installer. And when it asked me where I wanted to install, I said, please install
⏹️ ▶️ John on link-data. Actually, I renamed it to just plain old link before I did it, just for cleanliness, because I knew
⏹️ ▶️ John hope it was going to do that was the right thing to do. So I renamed my data volume to be just link. I ran the installer and
⏹️ ▶️ John I said you should install on this volume right here. And installer did exactly what I thought it was going to do which
⏹️ ▶️ John is made a new system volume renamed my data volume to be link hyphen data
⏹️ ▶️ John and wove them together during the installation process. So after the installer finished running my computer rebooted
⏹️ ▶️ John and I was back exactly where I left off with everything perfectly fine. So I could have done that like a week ago
⏹️ ▶️ John but I didn’t know that was going to work. So if you’re wondering how you if you just have
⏹️ ▶️ John a data volume how you can sort of revive your computer the one thing that I tested that apparently works is delete all
⏹️ ▶️ John the other volumes and then run the installer on your data volume and it will
⏹️ ▶️ John make a separate read only system volume connected to that data volume even if that data volume was like a
⏹️ ▶️ John data volume from an old installed Catalina it will all do the right thing. So it’s great worked out great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh and by the way the photo book that wasn’t sure whether it had actually gone through Because that was like the first
⏹️ ▶️ John time I can remember my computer not waking from sleep was it was like uploading my photo book And taking a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John turns out it did photo book arrived at my house. It had all the photos in it None of the pictures were truncated it looked perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John so All’s well that ends well And now I have a bunch of spare hard drives
⏹️ ▶️ John hanging around in case I have some other disasters I can hopefully recover from it so So, blood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am excited that it worked out for you, even though there is some amount of shudder, like I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, that this was all happening. I am glad that it all worked out. What a mess, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How would any normal human, you know, reasonably diagnose and debug this? I don’t think I would have been able
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to figure out all the steps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that you did. I mean, an
⏹️ ▶️ John ordinary 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John let me just wipe this clean and restore it from a backup. 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? But they’re not,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, completely up to date. The only thing that was completely up to date as of the moment, right, it was my data volume.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the data was all still there. So I just stubbornly refused to lose even the tiniest amount of data
⏹️ ▶️ John if I didn’t have to. And it turns out I didn’t have to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But to be clear, with all the time you spent diagnosing all this, you could have easily backed up that thing from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Time Machine or whatever in considerably less time and lost like an hour or two worth of data,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing is, by the time that I had, like, remember, it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even occur to me that I was going to ever get into a situation where there could be data loss because this is just
⏹️ ▶️ John a sleep problem, right? But it was reviving the T2 that made my machine unbootable. And once it’s unbootable,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t boot into it to run one more Time Machine backup, right? And I can’t even run a SuperDuper clone or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John against it because all those cloning programs expect to be pointed at essentially like your volume
⏹️ ▶️ John 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? So
⏹️ ▶️ John at the, you know, once I crossed the line of like, Ooh, I might have to restore from a backup or something here. It was too
⏹️ ▶️ John late. I couldn’t boot into my computer anymore except for into that other system. Right? So now that I know that that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a possibility, it probably would have been better for me to just ignore the fact that my computer
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t wake from sleep and just do a bunch more time machines and clones and all that other stuff. Which I think I might have done at the beginning, but this
⏹️ ▶️ John was a multi-day restore process. I mean, I guess there was no data generated during those multiple days because
⏹️ ▶️ John all I was ever doing was rebooting and sleeping, but it’s the principle of the matter. But anyway, it felt way better
⏹️ ▶️ John not to have to do any kind of restore and to just continue to use my data exactly as it was.
BridgeOS updates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me about Big Sur and bridge OS so
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the question is okay great you did all this thing you fix your computer great Good for you. What the hell was the problem?
⏹️ ▶️ John We know that reviving the t2 fixed whatever the problem was, but what was the actual problem? So we have a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of feedback from people with theories in their own stories and anonymous Apple genius says
⏹️ ▶️ John Both 10 15 6 and big sir beta 5 5 contains bridge OS updates mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John before that one of the things that can modify the software that’s on modified Bridge OS for your T2 is an OS
⏹️ ▶️ John update. Both of the most recent updates had a Bridge OS update. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John each and every 10.15.x update has also upgraded the T2, including the Catalina 10.15.6
⏹️ ▶️ John bundle update that was released on the 12th. So this genius goes on to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John when John revived the Mac Pro via Apple Configurator 2, the latest shipping version of Bridge OS would have been installed
⏹️ ▶️ John on the T2. So the one from 10.15.6. Like, since I was using Apple Configurator 2 to revive
⏹️ ▶️ John it, It’s not going to revive it with like the Big Sur beta. It’s going to revive it with whatever the latest is for the supported
⏹️ ▶️ John released OS. And that would be 10.15.6, right? Here is an anonymous
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple employee saying, one point on why did the revive operation
⏹️ ▶️ John hose my OS volume? I’m pretty confident this is because when you did the revive, it essentially did a reinstall of the
⏹️ ▶️ John GM Bridge OS. This meant that you downgraded Bridge OS from what was installed previously from the
⏹️ ▶️ John Big Sur beta. Whenever Bridge OS is downgraded, The login window failing to recognize login passwords
⏹️ ▶️ John is a known side effect. So that is a possible explanation for why wouldn’t it let me log in. Apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John unrelated to any unmountable volumes, it’s just because I downgraded BridgeOS, right? I wondered
⏹️ ▶️ John if anyone else who had a Mac Pro out there and listened to the show had similar problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John A John Sandeland says, I heard your tale of oh, I also updated my Mac Pro to Big Sur
⏹️ ▶️ John Beta 5 and wake from sleep stopped working immediately after. So there’s someone with a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro who did Big Sur Beta 5 update and had the exact same symptom. Paul Colton says,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m having the same issues with my Mac Pro and Big Sur Beta 5. I’m hoping Beta 6 fixes the sleep issue. So
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 And Job says, another listener, Job says, Mac Pro has the same issue with wake from
⏹️ ▶️ John sleep and I’ve never run a beta on it. So, and the story starts to tail off from there. I put the two ones that
⏹️ ▶️ John are like, I had the exact problem that you did, but then people are like, I have a Mac Pro and it also can’t wake to sleep. But it never ran
⏹️ ▶️ John Big Sur Beta. And you know, and there are many people have many sort of sleep problems. Even if you don’t have a Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are some people. So Hagen Tershuren says, Big Sur Beta 5 broke Bridge
⏹️ ▶️ John OS so hard that it turned my 16 inch MacBook Pro into a brick that had to get a new logic board. There was
⏹️ ▶️ John no fix. I heard a bunch of stories from people who said, something broke with Bridge OS
⏹️ ▶️ John and even like the Apple store could not bring my computer back to life. Like they couldn’t restore it,
⏹️ ▶️ John that couldn’t revive it, it was just dead and you need like a logic board swap, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John no good. And Leeward says, my 2014 Mac mini wouldn’t wake from sleep at all while 1015.6 was
⏹️ ▶️ John running. Many, many hard reboots. 1015.6 supplemental on August 12th
⏹️ ▶️ John has completely fixed the problem as far as I can tell. So, and again, many, many more bits of feedback
⏹️ ▶️ John explaining problems with waking from sleep, coinciding with
⏹️ ▶️ John various software updates and all sorts of different kinds of hardware and a smattering of stories where
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m imagining that requires some minimal functionality of your T2 to even get into that mode. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John really hose it bad, you’re in trouble. So I never wanna touch my T2 ever again
⏹️ ▶️ John and now I’m very wary of beta releases or any release for that matter. I mean, no, like every single
⏹️ ▶️ John Catalina update has included a new version of Bridge OS, that’s a little scary. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess that’s how software updates work, so now I’m a little scared of every update. Yay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now I’m scared of it too.
⏹️ ▶️ John think we should all be. Like, it is Mac minis, MacBook Pros, a bunch of people with iMacs had a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of problems related to Bridge OS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like you don’t usually think of a point update to your OS as being a potentially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire disk losing process. But if things go wrong with the Bridge OS and with the T2,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a possible outcome.
⏹️ ▶️ John Especially if you have an encrypted disk. 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 Yeah. I mean, really, though, I mentioned that the Big Sur beta cycle
⏹️ ▶️ John has been terrible for me in one aspect, which is updating from one beta to the next,
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’ve totally changed how the OS update process works. But up until this point,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, have a lot of safeguards in place to make sure you don’t get into a completely unbootable state. But,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I did install a beta and betas aren’t perfect. So what can you do?
Longer hardware test
⏹️ ▶️ John me about hardware tests then. Roland Manson wrote in to tell me that apparently the
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware test that you can run by holding down keys on your Mac has a longer version that you can run. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John hold down the D key, or run built-in hardware diagnostics, if you hold down a boot, if you hold down option
⏹️ ▶️ John D, it will do a thing where it pulls the latest hardware tests from the internet. But then after that
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. So there
⏹️ ▶️ John is apparently a longer, more thorough hardware test. I’m not really inclined to run that
⏹️ ▶️ John right now, but next time I have some sort of terrible problem, I will definitely remember to let the hardware test run
⏹️ ▶️ John after booting by holding down Option D and then hit Command D. Although of course, with the Arm Max, we know this is all
⏹️ ▶️ John changing. Like they’re not, they don’t have any more of these Command Option P, R, Command R,
⏹️ ▶️ John Option D, D. All that’s gone. The Arm Maxes are just gonna be like, you hold down the power button or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, we talked about it on a previous show, But this whole boot process is changing.
⏹️ ▶️ John So instead of memorizing a bunch of keys that you have to hold down, you essentially get into this mode with a single
⏹️ ▶️ John key and then choose what you have to do. So I suppose, hopefully, the next time I have this problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll be on an ARM Mac and everything will have changed. Speaking of more diagnostic tools, there’s this tool called
⏹️ ▶️ John Silent Knight, Knight spelled like the medieval knight with a K, that will dump a
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of info about your Bridge OS and your EFI version and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll put a link in the show notes to that program. And if you don’t want to install another program, if you run user
⏹️ ▶️ John lib exec remote control, remote control, space dump state, we’ll put that command
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John OS plus a bunch of other stuff. So that’s useful to know. Like I know everyone’s like, oh, I’m looking at the OS version and I’m a
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John relevant to what state your computer is in. And in my case, the thing that mattered was, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John either something having to do with the Bridge OS or possibly EFI. And if you’re wondering what those version numbers look like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re scary. For example, my current EFI version is 1037.147.4.0.0.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s my EFI version.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And my Bridge
⏹️ ▶️ John OS version, no, my I says iBridge. I don’t know if that means the OS version, But anyway, it says iBridge is 17.16.16610.0.0.0.0.
⏹️ ▶️ John At least you can look at them and see, did Big Sur change something or did reviving it
⏹️ ▶️ John decrease the number? Like you can compare the two numbers to each other. but yeah, there’s a lot going on inside
Recycle your old cables
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, would you like to recant anything you said with regard to cable management last time?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Surprisingly, no. Now, that being said, so people, a lot of people wrote in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say, how could I have possibly had the conscience or lack thereof
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to recommend that people throw away their cables because there are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of actual material from actual things you dump it to bins and places like Best Buy, how much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does it actually happen? I’m willing to guess based on other specialty recycling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, I’m guessing it’s not very common to get useful material out of your discarded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB cables. Maybe I’m super wrong about this, but I don’t think it’s pragmatic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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 a reason to hesitate or you’re adding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco friction to the process of getting rid of stuff that you should get rid of. When it’s something like this where like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there’s a lot of like trace metals in cables. The last thing anybody needs to hear is, wait,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t throw away your cables because you might be throwing them away wrong. Sorry, if I’m super wrong, I’m sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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, but
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll put these links in the show notes. Apple itself has a recycling program. If there’s one company that I would
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 So, and yes, Best Buy also has a free recycling program. So people should be aware of that
⏹️ ▶️ John and they should do it if they can, I think. Even if this is a small percent chance that they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John actually recycle it, it’s better than the 0% chance of when you throw it in the garbage and it just goes into a landfill somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I suggest doing it. I understand what Mark was saying about like, OK, well, now you’ve just added friction, and
⏹️ ▶️ John now they’re never going to get rid of their cables. But honestly, if you’re using your house as the landfill, that’s probably still better
⏹️ ▶️ John for the planet than putting them in the actual landfill. And bless Margo, you can drive there in your electric car
⏹️ ▶️ John and have a much smaller environmental impact than the rest of us. So keep that in mind
⏹️ ▶️ John for your own personal choice over whether you should recycle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If that’s the only reason you’re driving there, you’re probably having a worse impact. Just the energy you’re using to
⏹️ ▶️ John drive there. You can continue to use your house as a landfill for all those cables.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway, Apple has a free
⏹️ ▶️ John recycling program, and so does Best Buy and so do tons of other places. So please consider recycling.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, for my local Best Buy, don’t be creepy, the last I had recycled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smaller stuff like cables, it was just in that initial, like, what is it, a vestibule where it’s like in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the airlock between the outside and the actual store itself. There was just a bunch of bins where you could just throw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things like cables and stuff like that. So yeah, it’s really, if you’re paranoid like me about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically anything that’s inside, you have to step into the airlock if you will, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, or at least at my Best Buy, and maybe like yours as well, and just drop it off and run.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so it’s about as low contact as you can get, and I am in full support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of trying that, because yeah, it may not actually do anything, but I don’t know, I feel like I have a lot better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing it that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, throw all your cables into Best Buy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There you go, problem solved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you could just kind of treat Best Buy as a giant landfill.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Perfect, I mean, it already kind of is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t it? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s kind of, It’s pretty sad in there.
Past Epic shenanigans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, DJ Ghostmare writes on Epic versus Sony slash Microsoft and cross play.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Epic quote unquote accidentally enabled cross play for a weekend before shutting it off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This weaponized the fan base against Sony until they caved. And there’s a post from IGN that I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey details all this. I guess that is interesting and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re going to talk about this at some point, but Fortnite is not available for download on iOS right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. And that’s surprising to me. I’m surprised neither one of them flinched in this game
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this was the story I was trying to think of where I talked about last time about enabling crossplay. And this
⏹️ ▶️ John is just the the icing on the cake. And it was also something that I had remembered, but couldn’t find a link for that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Epic was kind of a jerk about it. So, yes, Epic eventually convinced both Sony and Microsoft to allow crossplay for Fortnite
⏹️ ▶️ John and eventually other games as well. But the way they did it was, you know, reminiscent
⏹️ ▶️ John of what they were doing and are still doing with Apple, which is they just
⏹️ ▶️ John broke the rules and said, but you know what, we can enable cross play because it’s totally technically possible. And oops, we just enabled
⏹️ ▶️ John it for a weekend. And people got to play against their friends on different consoles. And of course
⏹️ ▶️ John players loved it because it’s a feature that players would love. And, you know, what effect that
⏹️ ▶️ John had, I mean, you know, this person is saying that it weaponized the fan base because the fans got a taste of what
⏹️ ▶️ John it was like to have cross play and they wanted it back. Also, there are some people saying like, they were just showing that there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John technical barriers because of course the console makers would be like, well, if we allow you to play course platform, maybe there’s some differences
⏹️ ▶️ John in the platforms that would make it unfair. And they all have these hemming and hawing reasons why cross play is
⏹️ ▶️ John much more complicated than you think. But Epic just said, you know what? We’re just gonna turn it on. And we know it’s against the rules and maybe we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John get like a ban from the Sony and Microsoft store, but in the end their active civil disobedience
⏹️ ▶️ John resulted in no punishment and potentially helped get what they wanted. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Epic’s MO is consistent. Be, you know, swing your
⏹️ ▶️ John weight around, show that you are, you know, a big company that’s important to these platforms. Disobey
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. In
⏹️ ▶️ John of Epic and Apple, so far they haven’t worked anything out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But before then.
Unsubscribe Act of 2019
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Claire Sadocco writes, on last week’s ATP, Syracuse said Congress should pass a law
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you must be able to unsubscribe from a service the same way you subscribe to it. Mark Takano, who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a Democrat from California, has authored, or sponsored, if nothing else, Unsubscribed Act of 2019,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which would do just that. We’ll put a link in the show notes to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is HR 2683. 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
⏹️ ▶️ John bill could be enacted as a law, this has a 3% chance because our government is nonfunctional. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it just goes to show that if there’s a good idea out there, chances are some well-meaning politician has thought of
⏹️ ▶️ John it, and their dreams will be crushed by the rest of the machinery that is our nonfunctional government. This
⏹️ ▶️ John bill was introduced in May of 2019, by the way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you remember when we had something that vaguely resembled a government?
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. It’s common sense. And it’s not even particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John burdensome to industry. Obviously, industry thinks everything is burdensome if you make them do anything. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if they allow you to subscribe over a computer, chances are good they have the infrastructure to let you unsubscribe
⏹️ ▶️ John over a computer. And the only reason they’re not doing it is so they can make you write a letter
⏹️ ▶️ John in cursive on a piece of parchment paper, or whatever the hell it takes to get unsubscribed.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t know how seriously to take these GovTrack numbers,
⏹️ ▶️ John but a 3% chance of being enacted doesn’t. It’s depressing. Is there no bill about the puppies
⏹️ ▶️ John are cute bill? Oh, sorry, there’s only a 1% chance of passing. We can’t get everyone to agree that puppies are cute. What’s wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John with us? A lot. Yeah.
Epic developer account revoked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So you want to, let’s talk about something awesome. Like Apple terminating Epic’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey game, Epic games, developer account for the hell Apple didn’t flinch. They really did it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. 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
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t upload a version that’s compliant and just doesn’t have purchase, we will terminate the developer account
⏹️ ▶️ John that you use to develop Fortnite. They did not because the judge wouldn’t let them terminate the developer
⏹️ ▶️ John account that Epic uses to develop Unreal Engine, but they did the one for Fortnite. So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. And then Apple released a little statement that says, we’re disappointed that we’ve had to terminate the Epic Games account
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John work it out, but it didn’t work out right now. So.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have had to terminate the Epic Games account. Did you,
⏹️ ▶️ John did you have to? Well, you know, they said they would. Look what you made me do.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, I mean, they have
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. Epic did violate the rules. And here’s, this is a consequence of violating the rules. So I think this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John proportional and entirely predictable result, and it happened. And so if you’ve previously
⏹️ ▶️ John downloaded Fortnite, you can still play it. But of course, the stuff we mentioned about the seasons means that
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John reason you can’t get it is because Apple’s mean, and they’re blocking Fortnite, blah blah blah. Some
⏹️ ▶️ John people noted that Apple did a editorial feature on the App Store promoting PUBG,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is, I was gonna say, a Fortnite competitor, also potentially the game that Epic
⏹️ ▶️ John copied exactly to make Fortnite, because PUBG was the first sort of battle royale popular,
⏹️ ▶️ John that popularized that sort of format, and Fortnite copied it. Anyway, saying, ah, look at Apple really
⏹️ ▶️ John screwing Epic by promoting their competing app when Fortnite
⏹️ ▶️ John is off the store and can’t compete with them anymore. The only problem with that theory is 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. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I really don’t think Apple did that feature to say, screw you to Fortnite. Maybe they did, but if they did, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not really as effective maybe as they thought it would be.
Sponsor: Cotton Bureau (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Cotton Bureau. Cotton Bureau
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is our merch partner. They make all of our awesome, you know, like the t-shirts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hoodies, the hats, even Casey’s polo that Casey buys.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They are our merch partner and they are because they make really good stuff and they are also the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco merch partners for MKBHD, FiveThirtyEight, Chatechery, Adam Savage,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Rainforest Alliance, and many more podcasts and YouTubers and other things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you’ve probably heard of. They even make a wide variety of graphic tees, also available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from thousands of independent designers. A lot of times I actually will go to Cotton Bureau and just browse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their stuff, just whatever designs they have, because they have some really cool t-shirts. And I would say about a third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my t-shirts are Cotton Bureau shirts, because they’re just a lot of fun stuff, whether it’s like our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco merchandise or some other podcasts that we listen to, our friends stuff, and a lot of it is just like that independent designer stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just, you know, like cool symbols, like I like my Unix shirt. It’s just, it’s a fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side of Cotton Bureau and their stuff’s really good. So you can go to Cotton Bureau right now and you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use code ATP at checkout to get 10% off anything on the site through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco September 10th. They’re also going to pick one random person who uses code ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at checkout to get 10% off before September 10th to receive a free Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Elite Wireless Controller Series 2. So once again, go to Cotton Bureau,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use code ATP for 10% off through September 10th, and then one person who uses that code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will receive a free Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2. Now, they happened to send
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of these to John to review. So John, first of all, I don’t even know what this is. I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what the Xbox is, but what is the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2? typical Microsoft name. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very long name. And how is it? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a product that I love the fact that it exists. And for a long time, I was sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of upset that I couldn’t use it because I don’t have an Xbox. I’ve got a PlayStation, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But in recent years, everyone has been expanding their support for controllers. So
⏹️ ▶️ John practically speaking, this is a Microsoft controller for the Xbox console. But you can use
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John try it. You can buy an adapter and use it with your PlayStation. You know, it’s a Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John controller. Like, it has a surprising amount of compatibility, right? What is it? It is a controller. 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is like $180, I think. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a controller? Gosh. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John just for just one controller. It’s essentially four times the price of a regular controller.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can almost get a Switch for that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That might sound ridiculous to you, but I don’t understand Marco scoffing considering the price of the headphones he wears. Right? Touche.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why would somebody want a controller that costs almost $200 when the one that comes with the game console
⏹️ ▶️ John seems perfectly fine? Like, what’s wrong with that one? The reason I wanted this product to exist is I love, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, handheld devices that are high quality, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know, the stock one is fine, but if you can get one that feels a little better,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a little smoother, that doesn’t get creaky, that’s more sturdy and that has more features. I would
⏹️ ▶️ John love that. I would love a PlayStation controller that is like the Xbox Elite. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s different about this controller? This is the second version of this, that’s why it’s a Series 2, right? But it has mostly the same features as the original. The
⏹️ ▶️ John first major feature is that everything you see, almost everything you see on the top of the controller,
⏹️ ▶️ John the sticks, the D-pad, those can be pulled off. They’re magnetic,
⏹️ ▶️ John so you can just pull those off and put on different ones. And that may sound like, oh, isn’t that flimsy? Is like a magnetic connection
⏹️ ▶️ John flimsy? Or like, why would I wanna change those? It doesn’t make any sense. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John first of all, they’re not flimsy. Like you would never know that if I didn’t tell you these were magnetically connected, you’d have
⏹️ ▶️ John no idea. They don’t come off. You can’t accidentally push them off with your fingers. They’re very solid. And the second is,
⏹️ ▶️ John they give you an option of what you want. For example, like Microsoft has this weird radar dish
⏹️ ▶️ John looking thing that they use instead of a D-pad. If you don’t like that, take it off and put on the little D-pad thingy. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John you have a regular D-pad that looks like a cross. I don’t know. I think maybe they did that on the original Xbox because
⏹️ ▶️ John Nintendo’s D-pad patent hadn’t expired. I forget, for some stupid reason. But anyway, the sticks. You
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John sniping where you can move your thumb a longer distance and the stick will move a smaller amount because
⏹️ ▶️ John the stick is longer. You can choose what kind of caps you want. You want them to be concave or convex. You want them to be
⏹️ ▶️ John smooth or grippy. 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. Oh my God. On the
⏹️ ▶️ John backside of the thing, there are triggers. Well, on the regular Xbox controller and on the regular PlayStation controller,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no buttons down there. Like, I mean, like on the total underside, like there’s just a smooth bottom, right? On this thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can have two sets of triggers, both of which are magnetic and removable. So if you just want one
⏹️ ▶️ John trigger on either side, you can put that. If you want two, you want two on one side, one on the other, whatever. You essentially have
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. The L2 triggers
⏹️ ▶️ John have adjustable stops and then default position that you can pull the triggers all the way in, just like
⏹️ ▶️ John a regular Xbox controller. But you also have two other positions, including one where they barely move
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. 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 snipes
⏹️ ▶️ John because it actually takes time for you to pull the trigger. You start pulling the trigger, but it doesn’t actually fire
⏹️ ▶️ John until the trigger gets to the end of its like one centimeter travel. Well with these things cranked all the way up you have like
⏹️ ▶️ John two millimeters of travel and so you have a little bit more reaction time, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, edge on your opponent. Or maybe you just like the way that feels better. The thing
⏹️ ▶️ John looks expensive. 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. The triggers are all made of metal. The bottom triggers I mean.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a high quality grippy material. It is rechargeable, it is super heavy, it comes in a case
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John It comes with all the different, you know, knobs and things that you can put on it. It, when you hold
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you’re like, okay this looks and feels like a $180 controller
⏹️ ▶️ John because it really, really does. And that I think is its first and one of its biggest
⏹️ ▶️ John problems. When you make something feel like a $180 controller,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, just like a car interior. Everything is made of metal and it’s heavy and it’s smooth
⏹️ ▶️ John and silky. Those are qualities that make something feel expensive, but
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. By making the analog
⏹️ ▶️ John sticks all out of metal, they are heavier and they have more momentum when you move
⏹️ ▶️ John them 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
⏹️ ▶️ John that controller and it’s more tiring to hold a heavy controller. The controller
⏹️ ▶️ John itself has more sort of inertia if you’re the type of person who moves around a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John when you play. I feel the extra weight of all the controls and the controls that
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t metal like the buttons aren’t metal and that and the two front triggers aren’t metal I like them better because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re plastic, because they feel light and they feel easier to press. 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. It means that if you’ve never used a control like this, you’re not used to it. I tried to play Destiny,
⏹️ ▶️ John and this is Apple, you can map every single one of these controls to whatever you want, right? So I tried mapping them
⏹️ ▶️ John to something reasonable so I could keep both my thumbs on the thumbstick and do all the things I would normally do. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I played for hours. 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 but when you take the triggers off
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 on the
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 thing you do constantly in the game.
⏹️ ▶️ John With the analog stick in the quote-unquote better position I have less leverage like in the Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ John version where it’s up higher I have less leverage to push down the thumb stick to run so very often I would
⏹️ ▶️ John try to run and fail to press it partly because of the position also partly because everything on this controller
⏹️ ▶️ John is heavier and stiffer right. 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 isn’t that awkward just use one of the triggers, but I just feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like a piano player is running out of fingers It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I have all these triggers and
⏹️ ▶️ John everything but like Some some part of my hands needs to hold the controller like I can’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John my pointer fingers Handling the trigger handling the front triggers and then two other fingers
⏹️ ▶️ John handling the bottom triggers and then the thumb on the stick, what’s left? I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got like my pinky and that’s it, my pinky and like on the side of my hand
⏹️ ▶️ John holding the controller, I just feel like, I don’t know, I feel like, or maybe like someone trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John stop leaks in a dam by sticking their fingers in all the different holes and you just run out of fingers and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like. The controller as a piece of hardware is beautiful. You would love
⏹️ ▶️ John the interior of your car to look and feel like this. The controller as a just plain controller pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ John except that it’s heavy but for me personally as a someone who’s played Destiny
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John playing a basic arcade game that just requires to stick in 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 That felt great. The only other complaint I have is that I do like the triggers to be in
⏹️ ▶️ John the 2mm travel position, but when you put them in any position except for
⏹️ ▶️ John the default maximum travel position, they feel different when you pull them. In the default
⏹️ ▶️ John position, you pull the triggers and it feels great. They come to an end and it’s like a soft landing.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the other positions, it must put a stop there, and the stop is hard. So suddenly they make a harsh click,
⏹️ ▶️ John stop. It doesn’t feel like it’s broken, but it feels less pleasant than the default
⏹️ ▶️ John position. So basically the default position is privileged to have
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re already used to this shape. Because by the way, it’s pretty much the same shape as a regular Xbox controller. So if
⏹️ ▶️ John you are used to Xbox controller shape and think you might like triggers, go to find this in a
⏹️ ▶️ John store and try it out. I think you’ll be impressed with it. I would have no problem
⏹️ ▶️ John paying this amount of money or more for a PlayStation equivalent of the same controller. But right
⏹️ ▶️ John now, after playing with this for many hours, when I went back to my PlayStation
⏹️ ▶️ John controller and played Destiny, it just felt like coming home and it was just so much lighter and nicer. And yes, even though
⏹️ ▶️ John after several years in Destiny, maybe one of my triggers squeaks, you know what happens when that happens? I just spend 50
⏹️ ▶️ John more bucks and buy a brand new PS4 controller and I’m a lot happier.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to Cotton Bureau for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John sponsoring our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show. If you want a chance to get one of these things, go to Cotton Bureau, use code ATP at checkout
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get 10% off through September 10th and you’ll have a chance to win this ridiculous thing. Thanks Cotton
Marco’s “Synology”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s been something in the show notes for, I don’t know, like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco month-ish. My Synology?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. Uh-oh. And I really, really, really want to hear about this. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also am going to piggyback on this at some point, and I have a request for the listeners, God help me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’ll talk about that at the end. But all I know is, in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show notes, is Marco’s Synology. What’s going on, friend?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I teased Casey at the very, very, very end of the after show a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks back thing that I might want another Synology and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then stop the show, which was amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure that’s the word I would use to describe it, but sure, let’s go with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Yeah. So the problem I’m trying to solve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I recognize with a massive disclaimer up front,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the firstest of all first world problems. Even for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, so with that disclaimer out of the way, we have been spending more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time this summer at the beach than usual. The Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is back at my house, not at the beach. I am not going to get a second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheeled suitcase to bring that whenever I come here. That’s not gonna 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. What that also means is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by not being with, in the same household as my Synology, what that also means is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have Time Machine backup for my iMac, and that I don’t have access to my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco archive drive, where I put like, you know, archive podcast files of episodes we’ve already recorded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that. And it also provides extra storage for other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive files that won’t fit for my computer and TIFF’s laptop. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, without that, we have no time machine and no archive storage. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to figure out, OK, is there some solution I can do to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fix this problem in a useful way for me for the future? In
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the future, we are going to be spending probably as much or more time at the beach as we do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And so I wanted to have something, something that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could have at the beach so that I could have the same functionality that I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as my Synology at home. So basically archive storage and time machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One option I could do is set up a VPN between my house here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my house, my other house, I know, I’m sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I could access the Synology from here, from remotely, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do Time Machine over a network, like over the biggest network.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I know it would be slow, but I don’t frequently need Time Machine, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s already slow when you do it over the network anyway. To have it be even slower by doing it over the internet, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be inconvenient, but not fatally so. Like I’m not using it every day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am backing up to it a lot, but you know, but I’m not like restoring from it, so I don’t really see how slow it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that was one option. Another option is, I guess, have a second Time Machine disk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, and that could be on a Synology, it could be a local disk, who knows? You know, it could be anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But have a second thing here, because Time Machine, I think, fairly easily replicates to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiple disks, like depending on what network it’s on. Like you can have more than one disk registered with Time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Machine and it’ll just do what I think whichever one it can reach at any given time. So that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The archive storage, I didn’t have as many good options for that, unless I’m gonna do like remote access to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my home Synology from here. Now my home Synology is the Synology that they sent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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? Do you remember what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year that was? 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey piece of hardware. I still use mine daily and it’s still really nice. Although it’s starting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seven years on to feel a little bit old. But yeah, it’s a very nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey model. And it’s basically, I think it was on the upper end if not the top of the line for like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either crazy home users or like small businesses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and so at the time we got them, the biggest hard drive that I put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it, I think was either two or four terabytes. I think I started with all twos and slowly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgraded them to fours over time. I think that’s how it happened. Regardless, you know, capacities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were much lower back then. So it’s this big eight bay unit. I have all eight bays filled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this crazy arrangement of like striping and combinations and iSCSI, stuff I don’t recommend anybody actually do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s crazy, but these days, I would do things differently. So that’s where I started thinking, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years, I’ve been thinking, well, if I was gonna start over, I would do things a bit differently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would do something simpler, I would use fewer disks, I would love to use all SSDs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the pricing on that is kind of crazy a lot of the times, so maybe I could get away with less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco storage. So all this factored in, and I was thinking, Okay, well, maybe the right idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the beach is to just get a small, like, 2-4 disk Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have a second copy of Time Machine and basically have it be, like, for the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part, Time Machine only, or like Time Machine in a small archive drive, but I would still have my primary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco archive drive back at home. Second option? Hybrid. Have local Time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Machine and then have the archive be accessed remotely from home.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option would be to move the archive to some kind of cloud storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. So, you know, however that would work, whether it’s something like Backblaze, because I’m already using Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for cloud backup, but I could also, you know, like cloud archive storage could be something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like where I store my files just on S3 or something, you know, or someone, one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco various cloud providers. So that’s, that’s one option, but that gets pretty expensive when you’re storing like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many terabytes of back of archive data. And I don’t love the idea of having archive data be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like only in the cloud for just speed and access reasons. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t love that. And a lot of it’s stuff like Blu-rays that I’ve ripped that I wanted to play on my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plex or something. It’s like that’s, it seems kind of ridiculous to rip a Blu-ray only to upload
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to S3 and have to pay for it every month. 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 that’s another whole thing. So I decided, let me look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what Synology offers. And they still offer tons of great stuff. This is not an ad for them. You’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see why in a few minutes. But this is not an ad for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they still offer great stuff. 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that while I have a Synology, while I have a Synology, I don’t really want one anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is getting a second one really gonna get me closer to my goal of simplicity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and having, you know, less to deal with and not having as many systems to have to update and everything?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, now, again, another disclaimer. I recognize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the correct solution most people should do in this situation is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a giant external hard drive and plug it directly into my computer and have that be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time machine and archive storage. I could even get a little, you know, two disc
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAID box that does hardware RAID 1 and have it mirror and have redundancy and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would be amazing, right? Hardware RAID 1 with a couple of, you know, now because hard drives are so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big now, you don’t need eight of them anymore to save my data. You need like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one or at most two because you can get inexpensive-ish, like 8 terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drives these days. 10 terabyte, I think they only go up to 16 now. They’re so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a spinning disk enclosure where I’m not going to hear it. At home, I have the Synology in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the garage. I have no care in the world for how much noise it makes, because you can’t hear that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise anywhere in the house. It’s isolated enough from the rest of the house, it’s fine. But here, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have anywhere to put it where I can’t hear it. And I am
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not at all interested in hearing a hard drive or fan noise or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anywhere in this house. This is 2020, dammit, I’m not going to hear discs and fans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I can help it. If I’m setting something up that’s new, I’m not going to buy new discs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and fans if I can help it. So I started looking into what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are like SSD based options here. There’s not a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good options out there for like SSD enclosures that are managed in some way. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could also just use little like you know disk bracket things and stick a bunch of SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into a Synology. There’s nothing stopping you from doing that. They even sell a small one that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made specifically to hold a bunch of SSDs. Like, this is a thing that you can do. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started realizing, you know, this is overkill. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m willing to just set a bit more money on fire.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it’s the Marko approach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can just plug an SSD enclosure directly into my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac. If I can get one that is like small enough, ideally, I would like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Velcro tape it to the back of the iMac and just stick a short USB-C cable into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the back. And then I have a silent solution that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moves with the iMac wherever I bring the iMac throughout the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year. And I don’t have to deal with having two different setups. I can have one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup, are you getting it? One setup. Mm-hmm. All in one. The iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is an all-in-one computer. I can have all-in-one storage.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, all-in-one plus the wart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all-in-one, yeah, plus a wart velcro to the back but you can’t see that from the front so as far as far as I’m concerned it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John invisible. You just got to make sure you get a wart that doesn’t have a fan because you mentioned the SSD Synology
⏹️ ▶️ John I bet that SSD Synology has a fan and the fan and the Synology the fan of Synology is gonna be the loudest
⏹️ ▶️ John thing by far so if you get if you tape it to the back your computer just make sure whatever enclosure you get has no fans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I believe me I was looking at that because a lot of hard drive enclosures even have fans especially almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything designed to hold multiple discs that it almost always has fans. However, I was able to find,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are these, I believe it’s from Micron, there are SSDs that are 7.68
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terabytes, so, you know, seven and a half terabytes. It is not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were not as expensive as you would expect a nearly eight terabyte SSD to be, because they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very fast, they’re not very good. 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of crappy SSDs put them in a whatever no-name enclosure I found on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon that holds two SSDs and is fan less and is very lightweight and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not velcroed yet I don’t have any velcro tape at the moment but it is sitting behind my iMac behind the little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco foot and I can’t see it and it is glorious it just
⏹️ ▶️ John what is the interface?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB. It’s USB 3 point something. Who knows? But it has C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and A cables, and it’s C on its end.
⏹️ ▶️ John As crappy as those SSDs may be, they’re starving to death behind your
⏹️ ▶️ John USB connection. Are they also SATA? Are they SATA SSDs? They sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. Because again, because speed doesn’t matter for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John application. I know, but it’s just like, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ 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
⏹️ ▶️ John still. You’re right, they are silent, but it’s almost a shame that you couldn’t buy cheaper, worse SSDs,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally fine. It is, these things have worked perfectly. And the total
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost of my 15-ish terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fake Synology was not, it was about 50% more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I would have spent on a comparable Synology setup. Now, 50% more is a lot more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not a small number, but it is so simple. It is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the computer. When I move the computer, it will move with it, like with no separate carrying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of anything. I’ll just toss it in the iMac carrying case with everything else, and it’s directly connected.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s backed up to Backblaze with no problem because it’s just an external drive. Time Machine works very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well locally. And I was able to use the Mac OS sharing panel thing to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set up like a Time Machine server setup, which was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all intuitive. I was able to set up Time Machine servers for my laptop and Tiff’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Machine until now. And so now I have Time Machine, archive storage, and Time Machine for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three computers, and archive storage for all three computers, all accessible over the network and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to do, and it does it better than a Synology could because what I want is simplicity and smallness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and silence and everything else. And it only took a bit of money fire setting on to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the verb for that is, it only took a bit of that to pay the premium for SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be the storage medium instead of hard drives, but overall, totally worth
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So if you had a Mac Pro like me, you could get a new bent piece of metal that’ll support 10
⏹️ ▶️ John internal SATA SSDs. Did you see that recently? Some company has come out with a
⏹️ ▶️ John whole series of bent pieces of metal for every combination. Three 3.5 inch hard
⏹️ ▶️ John drives, two 2.5 inches, and one 3.5 inch, and yes, their biggest one is 10 2.5 inch SSDs. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fantastic. All internal. So if you can find, Like if
⏹️ ▶️ John you could have a bunch of junk SSDs hanging around, right? Just, you know, I’ve got a 200 gigabyte one,
⏹️ ▶️ John a 64 gigabyte one, and just like, put them all in there and put them all in RAID zero, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can have your own very, very cheap internal SSD. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would totally have internal SSDs in this thing for my local backups, but I do not want to set that much
⏹️ ▶️ John more money on fire yet. Eventually, what I want to do is
⏹️ ▶️ John stop using the four terabyte boot drive and start using a
⏹️ ▶️ John faster NVMe card and a PCIe card because you can get faster four terabyte SSDs that go
⏹️ ▶️ John in a PCI slot and I would use that as my boot drive but I don’t I don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that and it’s also very expensive so as usual Marco is living in all of our futures once the prices come
⏹️ ▶️ John down I also will get rid of my spinning disks but they’re all internal and I’ll replace them with internal
⏹️ ▶️ John SSDs. And right now on my external disk my boot Bootcamp drive and my Big Sur drive
⏹️ ▶️ John are both SSDs. So it’s nice to be able, and they’re so tiny. Like, you know, my Bootcamp drive is,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s in an enclosure that looks like that has a 2.5 inch drive in it, but of course it doesn’t. But my
⏹️ ▶️ John Big Sur one has a thing that’s like the size of a book of matches. It’s a one terabyte padded
⏹️ ▶️ John rubber book of matches that contains Big Sur plus a redone copy of my photo library.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause that’s where I put my second copy. Of course it does. But they’re all disconnected now. And yeah, the Big Sur
⏹️ ▶️ John one is disconnected anyway. The bootcamp one is
⏹️ ▶️ John And I also, and that enclosure that I got, the one for Big Sur is Thunderbolt. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not as fast as an internal SSD, but it’s as fast as it can be externally. It’s Thunderbolt 3.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s nice. The downside of Thunderbolt 3 is, or of Thunderbolt in general, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only do you have fewer options and they tend to be significantly more expensive, but also a lot of times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Thunderbolt controller chips inside the enclosures run so hot that they need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fans. And so that if you’re trying to go for like a fanless setup, USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is almost always gonna give you that sooner than Thunderbolt will.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this doesn’t have any fans. Like it’s too small to have fans. It’s just a sealed rubber thing. Let me see what brand it is. Hang on a second.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So while John’s doing that, what is the plan for the eight base Synology and also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You want another seven year old Synology?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, maybe, I’m not sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John I found the brand, but it’s a brand whose name no one knows how to pronounce. L-A-C-I-E, it’s been around for
⏹️ ▶️ John ages. Oh, Lacie. I remember getting hard drives from them for my classic Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John I always said Lacie.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I always say Lacie in my head, but I don’t know, I’ve never heard it. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a Lacie, completely rubberized, completely solid, zero moving parts, one terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John SSD. And yes, it was expensive, but it’s Thunderbolt and it’s cool. It’s a shame that it’s got Big Sur on
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but this’ll be one of my scratch drives for other random stuff. This is the problem with
⏹️ ▶️ John data inflation. Like, Mark’s got a little bit, but like, I was,
⏹️ ▶️ John one terabyte was my boot drive for the longest time, and then I graduated to four with this one, which
⏹️ ▶️ John feels so good, but that means everything needs to graduate to four. My Time Machine backer needs to be able to hold
⏹️ ▶️ John SuperDuper backer needs to be able to hold four. And it just, it cascades from there. So unfortunately now I have
⏹️ ▶️ John all these one terabyte drives hanging around that are not useful to me. I can’t use it for Time Machine.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t use it for SuperDuper. I can barely fit my photo library on it and that’s gonna change, so.
⏹️ ▶️ John Still waiting for those prices to go down, but someday I’ll be able to achieve Marco’s nirvana.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Even better,
⏹️ ▶️ John because my computer won’t have something taped to the side of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, right. No, and just a quick little thing about your external disk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem here. This is one of the reasons why whenever I am shopping for disks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco storage, SSDs or spinning or whatever, always buy the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones you can, because the size of disk that you buy is directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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 gonna stop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using that, or you’re gonna stop having good reasons to use that, or good ways to use that, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in less time than if it was bigger. And so if you can get one that’s bigger, it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a longer useful life, and therefore while it is more expensive up front, you will get more time out of it probably.
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Why not a Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, why haven’t you already bought yourself a Mac Pro? Since you’re in the setting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money on fire frame of mind, then just buy a Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John problem. 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. It is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wagon. I actually thought about that. Because I thought, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when my iMac was having the problems of the seemingly possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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, 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. I want to, you know, if I’m going to replace this, what is it, a three-year-old computer now? I’d want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get at least something better, you know, faster. And so I thought about that. I looked into that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I also, I rethought about it again a few weeks ago, as it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco became clear after that non-update, the iMac Pro was 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I was before, and I’m hitting lots of wait time in my development workflow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even on this 10-core iMac Pro, because Swift is so incredibly slow. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, it might actually pay if I can get something that’s significantly faster than this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the amount of work I’m doing right now with, with all this Swift crap, uh, you know, 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. I even thought like maybe I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get another iMac pro just with a faster CPU, uh, like, like up to the 24 or 28 core or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I looked at everything. And the reality is that the, when, when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac pro came out, whatever it was three years ago, And we were all like, this is incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s because it was three years ahead of the curve. What you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get now in an iMac Pro or a Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to spend so much money to make it meaningfully faster than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the three-year-old 10-core iMac Pro that existed back then that I’m still using today. You have to spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 12, $15,000 on a setup to make it meaningfully faster than that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you do that, the fastest you can get is like twice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as fast. It’s not, you’re not making it like five times faster by doing that. You’re not making it like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massively faster. You’re making twice as fast, which is very fast. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that amount of money and disruption and everything, it’s just, it’s 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. It’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the ARM transition is happening. If you can hold out, wait for, in two years, wait for the ARM Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, and if you still got the itch then, that one should be considerably faster and
⏹️ ▶️ John much cooler, and that’s the one to get. Spending tons of money on an Intel Mac Pro now when you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely sure that you have a use case for it is not a good idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I came to the same conclusion as well, like that, yeah, this is not a great time to invest extremely heavily into a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive Intel setup. And what made it even easier to accept
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that my iMac Pro has stopped having that overheating problem. When I moved it to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the beach this summer, I guess I must have dislodged a dust clod somewhere in it or something, and it doesn’t have that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it’s just more relaxed at the beach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it is. It doesn’t heat up as much. Maybe it’s going in the water. The salt
⏹️ ▶️ John air getting in there, it’s really just corroding some pieces of metal it’s allowing the air to flow more freely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it is. So interesting question from Wuft in the chat room who asks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but Marco, what would you buy today if your iMac Pro was stolen slash burnt?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this, I always love this question when thinking about like how happy you are with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your current purchase. Like if it just disappeared and you had to replace it today, what would you replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it with? I’ve waffled on that as well. I think I would probably still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get an iMac Pro, but I would give it like a 50-50 maybe shot that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d lean towards the Mac Pro just because, again, like I would want it to be better than what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had. If I’m forced to replace it today, I would want it to be some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade. I wouldn’t, you know, even though it makes no sense logically. Logically, I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still get the iMac Pro because here’s the thing, I’d be like John. I wouldn’t tolerate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some crappy monitor. I’d have to get the XDR. And so, again, you’re looking at like a $15,000 combo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. It would be ridiculous. But I would feel bad spending iMac Pro money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a computer that I had already had for three years and it wouldn’t be that much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. Like, you know, maybe I’d get a higher CPU or something this time, but like overall, it wouldn’t be that much different than what I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already had. So I would probably rationalize a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro and XDR setup even though it would be a terrible use of money. So I’m hoping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my iMac Pro lasts until there is an arm, something or other that I want to replace
Casey’s Synologies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so let me hang off this subject with a request for help. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a friend, Chris Gray, who is one of the hosts of the Starport 75 Disney-themed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcast, which I made an appearance on a while back, actually a couple times, he had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 4-base Synology, I forget what vintage, but a little newer than ours, that he wasn’t using and sent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me. And my thought at the time was, this is perfect. I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make a redundant copy of my sonology, like I’ll put big fat drives in this thing, and I’ll make a redundant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey copy of my sonology onto it. And then, God forbid I have an issue like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had a few months ago, there will be effectively a second sonology ready to go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a moment’s notice. And, oh, bonus, my parents are about to get gigabit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey internet at their house, like I have, although a different provider. And so, perfect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will just put it at mom and dad’s house, 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? Because I did, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s called shared folder sync. I forget exactly what it is, but it’s basically like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John a Synology wrapper.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so hold on. So it’s basically a Synology wrapper around our sync. And I can tell you, it took literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a week or two to get everything synced across. This is locally on a gigabit network in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey house. It took forever. then it’s been extremely unreliable. And I think a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that is because my parents have this extraordinarily weird, like local ISP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And maybe we can talk about that in the after show if we don’t have something better. But nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not working across the internet really at all. And I think some of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is user error on my part, and some of that is their ISP and some weirdness
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with like the way they’re doing port forwarding and things like that. So anyway, Leaving the ISP side
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aside, what is the best and most appropriate way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using onboard Synology software? Like, I don’t want to have to install some other weird thing. I don’t want to run
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something in Docker. Like, using what Synology provides, what is the correct way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make a complete and entire duplicate of my Synology to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between my two Synologies, and then keep them in sync? What is the right answer?
⏹️ ▶️ John So first, let me tell you why shared folder sync isn’t the right solution. I use shared folder sync locally as well,
⏹️ ▶️ John because I do like a backup of a subset of my Synology to a second Synology that I have and I use shared
⏹️ ▶️ John folder sync for it. And because it’s like, basically, you know, I don’t know if it’s running R-Sync
⏹️ ▶️ John behind the covers, but it’s like periodically it runs and says, Oh, stuff has changed. 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, Marco it’s like, Oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to copy, but the copy failed because the file moved out of the way. And it’s like, yeah, that’s gonna happen. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John activity is happening on the source. And what you want from a comprehensive backup is,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I know things are gonna be happening on the source. Your job as a backup program is to make copies
⏹️ ▶️ John to the destination and not bother me about it. Because of course I’m gonna continue to add files and delete files and modify
⏹️ ▶️ John files in the source and you’ve just gotta handle that. And shared folder sync does not handle it gracefully. Now, Synology
⏹️ ▶️ John has a feature, I don’t know, I wish I knew the name, maybe it’s a part of hyper backup that does exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John that you say you want to do. So I have to imagine it, A, works better than shared folder
⏹️ ▶️ John sync, and B, will just copy everything like you want, right? So go to the
⏹️ ▶️ John hyper backup thing and see if you can find the like, whatever, replicate my entire Synology to another Synology, because that feature
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, if you, listener, have done this before with two Synologies and have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tips or write-up that I can follow, please, please let me know, because I really want to make this work and right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now it’s not working.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just use, just launch Hyper Backup, it’ll be obvious. Synology is just like, it’s the interface with a bunch of check boxes and
⏹️ ▶️ John screens, you can just figure it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but the thing is, there’s Hyper Backup and then there’s Hyper Backup Vault. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey already I’m confused and don’t know what the right answer
⏹️ ▶️ John is. And the thing is, under the covers, ideally it would be great if you used a file system that supports snapshots
⏹️ ▶️ John on both the source and the destination. I don’t know if that’s possible on your source because it’s so old,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it would probably make the job of the backup software easier. I don’t know if you have that level
⏹️ ▶️ John of control, but it’s something worth considering, especially if you haven’t, well, I mean, now you just said you did a big backup, but like, if you’re willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to reformat your new one and if it supports BTRFS, I would use that everywhere, just
⏹️ ▶️ John on the off chance that it does snapshots.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the new one is on BTRFS. The old one is very much not. It’s on X2 or X3 or whatever it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, four, I think, uh, one way or another, I, I feel like this has got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be a solved problem. And I have looked around on several different occasions and looked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot in, tried to figure out what the right way is, and I’m either a dummy or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Synology software is not the best. I don’t know what it is, but I could not and cannot figure it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. So if you have done this and it doesn’t, I don’t necessarily care if it’s a perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey live backup, like a daily backup would be sufficient for me, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t necessarily need like high availability. You know, I just said earlier on like, Oh, I could swoop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in at a moment. So it’s like, I don’t expect like fail over or anything crazy like that. I just want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my data there. And I don’t think that’s too much to ask. And I’ve got to imagine this is a solved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem with synologies, but like I said, for the life me I can’t figure it out.
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#askatp: APFS free space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, 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. 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey magically back. I’ve researched this and APFS has, quote, free space, quote, quote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey purgeable space, quote, to which I say, big frickin’ deal. I just want to know whether
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or anywhere else, how much space I have free. Is there anything that will actually tell this info that anyone knows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about? For all of HFS Plus’s shortcomings, at least I always knew how much space I had used on the disk,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if only to mourn its loss when HFS Plus corrupted it. What do you do, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, it sounds like Ron understands the issue here. Like APFS supports things like snapshots,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the way snapshots work is like, it just takes a, as it says, a
⏹️ ▶️ John point in time image of your disk, and then later, if you make changes, like say deleting a gigantic
⏹️ ▶️ John file, the snapshot retains the space that that file was using. Because yeah, you deleted
⏹️ ▶️ John it and you don’t see it anymore, but you have a snapshot from an hour ago when that thing still existed, and the snapshot
⏹️ ▶️ John will keep that file around. Obviously snapshots don’t, you know, it’s not like it doubles the storage. You can take snapshots
⏹️ ▶️ John all day long and just the differences between the snapshots are preserved, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John How that manifests is, you know, macOS is periodically taking snapshots
⏹️ ▶️ John behind the scenes, whether you know it or not. And when you delete that big file, you don’t get the space back
⏹️ ▶️ John because that big file exists in one or more snapshots. It doesn’t matter how many snapshots it’s in, it only exists once,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But like, you don’t get the space back because to get the space back would mean destroying
⏹️ ▶️ John that snapshot, because that snapshot is like what your computer was like before you deleted that file. And in order for
⏹️ ▶️ John that snapshot to exist, your big file still gotta be there, which means it’s still gotta be on your disk. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the distinction of free space versus purgeable space, yada yada, that’s more
⏹️ ▶️ John of a user interface thing. As far as the file system’s concerned, it’s all just space that’s being used. We decide
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 versus and yada yada. So we’ll call
⏹️ ▶️ John that purgeable space. So if the operating system ever needs more disk space, I’ve got a whole
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of snapshots. I’ve been taking one every hour and I keep 10 around. If you want some more space,
⏹️ ▶️ John just delete some snapshots. Which snapshots? Which one, which deleting which snapshot will
⏹️ ▶️ John free up the most space? 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. But as far as the file system’s concerned,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s all just data. The problem with macOS is that it does a really,
⏹️ ▶️ John really bad job of freeing up space when you need it. So it’s not the display,
⏹️ ▶️ John because the display could, you know, what is the truth? The display can tell the truth in various ways. It can show all the space
⏹️ ▶️ John used, it can show the space minus the purgeable space, but whatever it shows, the promise that it should be keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John is if you suddenly need more disk space, It either needs to tell you,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t give you more disk space unless you delete such and such snapshots and here’s how much space you would save. 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 so
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna have to abandon those snapshots. Because those snapshots are happening not because the user asked for them, but just
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s a thing that Time Machine does. And it’s a useful thing and you can save your butt if you have a file that you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna delete, you can recover it. But those features are not well exposed in the OS. So I think what macOS should be
⏹️ ▶️ John doing is aggressively purging snapshots to give you free space.
⏹️ ▶️ John What it actually does is nothing. Like you try to copy it and it’s like, oh sorry, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John enough space. It’s like, yeah, but make space. And so what I end up having to do is go to tmutil, list
⏹️ ▶️ John local snapshots or whatever. Like you can do it manually from the command line, very, very painfully, and manually
⏹️ ▶️ John deleting snapshots. Everywhere you go in the macOS docs, they’re like, oh, macOS will automatically purge space
⏹️ ▶️ John for you as needed, but it won’t. I mean, it will maybe eventually, but not when you need
⏹️ ▶️ John it to. And there’s no good user interface with like buttons and stuff to make it do what
⏹️ ▶️ John you want. Rebooting apparently triggers some process that trims back the snapshots or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, which is why people think, oh, I rebooted and now I have my free space. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a terrible system. And it’s not the fault of the file system, it’s the fault of the OS that’s managing the file system because
⏹️ ▶️ John tons of these really cool features are not exposed anywhere to the user. People have no
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that they’re even happening. And no matter what they show in the free space, whether it’s in DF or
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Finder or whatever, it’s not useful or actionable information. So
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John the truth. And it’s frustrating because I just threw out a 20 gig file and I don’t have 20 gigs more of this space.
⏹️ ▶️ John What do I do now? How do I get that space back? And people learn experimentally. Well, it turns out if I reboot now, it suddenly tells me I have 20
⏹️ ▶️ John more gigs of free space. That’s terrible. So I really hope macOS gets its act together when
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes to disk space. But if you’re gonna assign blame, it’s not the file system,
⏹️ ▶️ John which has lots of cool features. It’s the operating system on top of it that doesn’t use those features
⏹️ ▶️ John very well and doesn’t have any sort of GUI interface to those features. I’m hesitant to recommend people
⏹️ ▶️ John look at the tmutil man page because Time Machine is usually the thing that’s creating the snapshots.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because you can kind of hose yourself if you’re not careful with
⏹️ ▶️ John tmutil. like you don’t want to destroy your backups or accidentally delete them. And sometimes deleting a snapshot can take a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time. And you have to distinguish between the snapshots that are in a time machine backup versus the local snapshots.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John freeing up space and that works for you, that is definitely a safer move than trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to mess with the TMU-TL command line tool. And in the meantime, we’ll just all wait for the operating system to
⏹️ ▶️ John catch up with the features of the file system.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How long has APFS been around? It’s been like two or three years,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Yeah, and Big Sur brings the version of Time Machine that in theory understands APFS better.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m looking forward to that. But as far as I’m aware, Big Sur does not provide any GUI to snapshot
⏹️ ▶️ John disk usage. Maybe it’s better about freeing up space. I haven’t tried it enough to know, but what I would want to happen
⏹️ ▶️ John is I drag the big file over. And when it says about to copy 20 gigs, At that moment it says,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, there’s not enough space. But before I throw up a dialog box that says not enough space, let me check if there’s any of that so-called
⏹️ ▶️ John purgeable space. And if there is, throw up a second dialog that says, purging free space to make room
⏹️ ▶️ John for the thing that you copied, and show me that progress bar. And then when that’s done, do the copy. That would be a better interface.
#askatp: Menu as window chrome
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Michael Grossman writes, have you considered the idea that the Mac menu bar is going to move to become window chrome this year? This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is what’s going to fix the active window discoverability problem in Big Sur and some others But they couldn’t show it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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 is? Michael talking about like having the menu bar within the window chrome like window
⏹️ ▶️ Casey style. Is that what this means?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how I interpret it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no way. That’s what that’s what I thought but no way I don’t see it happening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t even see, so yeah, so not only do I agree with you that I don’t think they’re going to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you just think about it from like a pragmatic point of view, the developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advance notice for that would be significant because if you’re moving the menu bar into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco each application’s active window, you’re changing the dimensions and behavior and theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and appearance of every active window potentially, and that’s something that developers they need to adopt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to over time. So they wouldn’t, that would be something that they would most likely do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the WWDC preview beta thing, not in the fall, like one week before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware, here’s the GM version kind of thing. That’s a very big change, so that they wouldn’t, I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’d do that. But this question was also predicated on the assumption that, oh yeah, also they’re gonna have basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a server studio style iMac, where you’re gonna be able to touch everything on desktop in one unified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical interface, you can touch or mouse everything. And I don’t think that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen either. I do think it’s potentially likely, although not a guarantee,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all Apple Silicon Macs might have touch screens. That’s possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that’s the most likely outcome, honestly. I think the most likely outcome is we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still have Macs that are non-touchable. That are untouchable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think they’re ever gonna make desktops have touch screens. I don’t ever see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple making the Surface Studio style iMac as a giant like drafting table
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or easel kind of thing where you can bring it down and start touching it. I don’t see that happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they’re going to have touch Macs, I think they’re gonna be laptops. And even that I think is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not necessarily a guarantee that that’s gonna happen. Again, I think it’s possible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe even likely on an infinite timescale, 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
⏹️ ▶️ John common keystrokes, you know, for cut, copy, paste, and the primary modifier, because that left control
⏹️ ▶️ John available for Unix so I could have this one operating system where control is Unix land and Command is
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac land. 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John because they were too busy copying Next, which had a whole different notion of what to do with menu bars, right? But the menu
⏹️ ▶️ John bar at the top of the screen, as opposed to being in every window, is such a genius idea, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if you use a computer like I do, actually having multiple windows and not making everything full screen. If you make everything full
⏹️ ▶️ John 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. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not how I use computers. Having the menu bar in every single one of my million windows is a huge
⏹️ ▶️ John waste of space. And of course there’s the whole Fitts’ law thing of it’s harder to target with the mouse cursor and blah, blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? 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
⏹️ ▶️ John top of the screen. It’s always visible taking up space. Since the years when we used to argue about that, macOS
⏹️ ▶️ John has a feature that lets you hide the menu bar. So it doesn’t even need to take up a space when you’re not using it. So if you don’t wanna ever use the menu bar,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not even visible. Menu bar and window was a terrible, terrible Windows mistake along with
⏹️ ▶️ John using control as the main modifier key and I’m so glad the Mac never did that, and it never
#askatp: Marco’s target LUFS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, Jake Bennett Young writes, Marco, do you have a target loudness, which apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is LU? I hear a large range of loudness between individual podcasts and few similar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a known standard, which is music. Some podcasts even differ from episode to episode. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always riding that volume rocker.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, if you want your podcast to all be the same volume,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I suggest, although I’m slightly biased, that you use Overcast and that you use the voice boost feature because that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally what it does. It is literally volume normalization to a particular target
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loudness. Now, that target loudness for what I make versus what Voice Boost is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the units I use LUFS, which I think LU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, I think LUFS is LU relative to, it’s loudness units relative to full scale.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s the same thing, or at least in practice it’s the same thing. Anyway, my mastering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bring them into Logic and Logic is applying a very slight amount of compression, dynamics compression,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to each track and then you know outputting that way. So it probably boosted up a couple maybe you know one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or two more so it might hit negative 14 then. So I do think negative 16 is a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mastering level for tracks. It’s it’s loud but not too loud. Voice boost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is negative 14 LUFS. Cool. All right. Thanks to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Eero, and Cotton Bureau. And thank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to our members this month, as usual. Go to atp.fm slash join if you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco join them. and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him, Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ John to ♪ Too accidental, accidental ♪ Tech Podcasts,
Marco’s running “recently”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you’ve been running recently. 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, so that’s understandable. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell me about your running.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started running at the beginning of the summer. Tiff went through a big, you know, learning to run thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about a year ago, and I didn’t want to do it because I hated it and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t think I could do it I could do it because I have some mild asthma and didn’t have incredible lung capacity for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high aerobic activity. I can do moderate aerobic stuff for a long time, but high aerobic stuff I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couldn’t do. And I thought that was it. I thought, well, I just can’t do running because of that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually I decided, you know what, let me try. Let me see. Because running as an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exercise form has a lot of potential upsides. There’s a lot of convenience factors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with running. There is no equipment that you need. you don’t have to be in certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco locations. I mean, you know, certain conditions might help, but like you can do, you can run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much anywhere you are much of the year, although certainly not all of the year, if you’re somewhere with winter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you have lungs, um, but you can, you know, you, you can run as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a casual runner in lots of conditions and you don’t need, and you can, you know, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can use a treadmill if you’re in like a hotel gym or something. Like there’s all sorts of places in context
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you can run and you don’t need a whole bunch of specialty gear in most cases. So, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very appealing thing. That, this is something I should do. It’s also high aerobic activity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve been doing a lot of exercising and various fitness improvements over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few years, but I didn’t have that component of it really solved. I didn’t do a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high aerobic activity. I do have a rowing machine, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love rowing. Like, I have no trouble doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, that has been, ever since I got it last fall, that has been my exercise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of choice. I love rowing and it’s great, but I’m not getting to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those super high heart rates that you can get while I’m running, and it’s something that you need a rowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco machine to do, which I don’t always have. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know? You aren’t getting to equivalent heart rates on a rowing machine? Because I haven’t rowed in 20 years,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but my parents used to have one, and that thing would destroy me. It was extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey difficult to do, in the sense that it is a tremendous amount
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of work to row with any sort of quickness or speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My high heart rate when rowing is usually somewhere around 130,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whereas when running it’s like 150. That’s kind of where I top out.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you should row faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I’ve tried that, but if I row fast enough to really get it up there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my arms get tired too quickly. So I do a kind of moderate to quick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pace. I think, I don’t even know what the unit of measurement is, but whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unit is measured in like how many minutes it takes you to row a certain distance, I’m usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at about two and a half minutes for that unit. Another way to tell you is what I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care about usually is total strokes. I usually do 1200 strokes, and it usually takes about 35 minutes. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever that is. I don’t know how to convert that into useful things, that’s that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my usual pace but I just thought you know running is especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running here at the beach is wonderful because not only is the weather really nice for much of the summer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means that sometimes too hot but not only is it nice for much of the summer it’s also very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flat land here and back at home it’s very hilly and running uphill sucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running on flat ground is much nicer so anyway I decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to join TIFF this year and learn to run and that can be my challenge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the summer. And that was great when we were here in June.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we actually built up to being able to do 5K, which I never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought I would be able to do, but it turns out that my lung capacity limitations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were not entirely due to my mild asthma. They had more to do with I just hadn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever done it before. And so I was able to push past it, and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far past it, mind you. I still don’t have a great capacity, but I’m able to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little more. And again, running, I wasn’t able to go that fast for that reason, and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could have been able to do it if I kept at it. But I eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we eventually didn’t run that much because this has been a much more humid summer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than usual. And that, and in addition, you know, this is mask
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wearing summer. And I’m not going to be one of those people who thinks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that when I’m running, somehow I’m immune to airborne viruses. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not going to be one of those people who, who like, you know, leaves the mask off and then just pulls it up when I pass somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m afraid I’ll forget to do that. And then run past somebody without the mask up and I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a jerk. I don’t want to be a jerk. So I did all those runs here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a mask on. And as it got more and more humid, the combination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those factors made it increasingly difficult to run. And we would try waking up earlier and earlier,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but even at six in the morning, it’s still pretty humid a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of these days this summer, and you’re still wearing a mask. And so it became
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hindrance to run. So I actually, since about, I think about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco early August, I really haven’t run much. So that’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the story, is that I started this summer becoming a runner, and then I ended the summer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing a lot more rowing and the air conditioning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s understandable. You know, it’s worth noting, I enjoy running. I didn’t for a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long time. There was a window of time where I was running a 5K at least two to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three times a week. And that for a long time when I was working also included waking up at like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five, I think it was, sometimes in the dead of winter. So I’d be running in like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey underwear, shorts, sometimes like long underpants and sweatpants,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, on the bottoms and then like three or four shirts and a sweatshirt on top, which is not particularly enjoyable, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey assure you. But it is worth noting that running from everything I have understood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a non-doctor, running is absolutely terrible for your entire body. Like it is exercise,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is great, but like in terms of your joints and, and, and the repetitive injury of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smacking the pavement, like it’s everything I’ve understood is that it’s not great for you. I still run
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least a mile, if not, you know, a full 5k, which is about three miles in our messed up units.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still do that usually about once a week, but I have moved to more weight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lifting and or aerobic stuff again in the air conditioning, like you said, for the most part.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, I really enjoy running. It’s great podcast time. And when you do it in the morning,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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. I’m on the other side of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the street always. And I usually only see one or two other people when I run, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. And I get the feeling that at Fire Island, it’s not, oh, that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit of OPSEC. I get the feeling that where you are, it’s probably a lot more crowded than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where I am. So, I don’t know. It’s funny because I’m in both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in support of you running and I like the idea of it for all the reasons that you enumerated, like you can do it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost any time of year if you’re willing to. It doesn’t require equipment. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relatively easy thing to do. It’s not conceptually difficult, but yeah, there’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasons why it’s also not particularly fun and not particularly, mostly humidity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And all the Californians who don’t have weather are very smug right now, but those of us who actually have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this thing called weather, it makes things very challenging.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And first of all, I do wanna disclaim that for anybody who’s gonna armchair train me, I appreciate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. This is not, like rowing and or running are not the only form of exercise I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve been seeing a trainer a few days a week, usually most of the most weeks has been two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because he moved out of the area and we stayed with him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because we like him. And so we like geared up for remote exercise sessions about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three months before the quarantine. And we felt like the luckiest timed people in the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like buying a bunch of exercise exercise gear for home right then, because you can’t get it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. You still can’t buy like free weights and stuff. They’re sold out everywhere still.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we do like strength training stuff for the most part and core stuff with the trainer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So then we’re left on our own to do like the aerobics kind of as homework. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to complete my exercise regimen, I just have to get in some aerobic work somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it can really be either thing, but Rowing I would dread every single time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hate the entire time I’m doing it. Whereas rowing, I have a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop stand on the rower. And so I open the laptop and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I got all my YouTube watching in. So I’m sitting there watching YouTube explainer videos.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m watching CGP Grey and the Wendover stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Technology Connections, all my favorite YouTube channels, watching all that stuff, about, oh, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how airline economics and retroreflectors work as I’m like pumping the rower.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s totally fine. And I actually enjoy it. And I can control the environment.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You mentioned the California jerks. They have all this perfect weather all the time. Well, yeah, in New York,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we do have some amazing weather, but not every day. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco varies a lot between all these extremes. And running, you know, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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, there’s a narrow range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in which it’s reasonably comfortable to do so. And New York does not stay in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range very long. So having something like this where I can do it indoors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any conditions, it’s quite nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, you’ve personally got a solution to your problem for the aerobic exercise.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s something you can do no matter how humid it is and without a mask and it doesn’t have the impact of running
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s called swimming. That’s true. It’s aerobic, you will definitely get your heart rate up
⏹️ ▶️ John and even if it’s super hot and humid, you’ll wanna go in the water because it will cool you down. You just gotta make sure you don’t drown
⏹️ ▶️ John or get eaten by sharks. But other than that, it’s right there for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true. I will say though, there is a slight challenge with that is that the ocean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the summertime on a public beach is not exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not crowded. It’s been extremely crowded. We haven’t done a lot of ocean swimming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this year because the beach is still open. It’s a public beach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyone’s welcome. And therefore, everyone is coming. And it’s a very, very crowded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco public beach during the hot days and in the middle of the day. So we haven’t been going that much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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 or you’re just walking past them anyway because you’re gonna go out past where the breakers
⏹️ ▶️ John are anyway to swim back and forth along the shore. It’s definitely more dangerous than running, but you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also at the crack of dawn, there’s no lifeguards. So that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lifeguards aren’t gonna save you. Oh, that’s even less great. Oh my goodness. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna save yourself. Yeah, I think I’ll just row with my YouTube, thanks.
Cooking with Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Titles. Do I actually, do I even have to ask?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s got to be Casey Starr Aaron List, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the Casey Starr Aaron List one, but I don’t like the idea of having their names up there, especially Aaron’s
⏹️ ▶️ John name. She didn’t sign up for this. It’s fair. It’s not her fault that Casey doesn’t know how to type.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, she did pick him. I know, but she didn’t say, use my name in the title of an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode. It’s the price of an ATP sticker, you jerk. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ John my god. I’m still waiting for pictures of that birthday meal that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made her. Oh yeah. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John true. Just make some Velveeta mac and cheese. Sprinkle some parsley on top. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ John my god. Your kids will like it. They’re half you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. That’s true. They would like it. Yeah, it’s funny. They’re, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what? No, I’m not going to do it. No, I’m not going to do it. 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not going to do it because I don’t want to listen to the two of you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at me. Oh, we have to
⏹️ ▶️ John Nope. Nope. Is it a sandwich made of chocolate chip cookies surrounding marshmallow?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What is it? Do it for the members, Casey. The members want this. Nope. Nope. Not going to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No. You two are jerks. Come on. Rice Krispie Treat Salad? No, it’s not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad. For Christ’s sakes. Good grief. Does it contain a vegetable?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no. I mean, well, I put, I often times I’ll put one on the side, but like the, the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the entree does not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John The entree absolutely does not. You
⏹️ ▶️ John have to tell us what it is now. Just tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us. It’s a, let me see if I can find the link.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It is. It is not going to surprise you at all. I’m trying. Is it dinosaur
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shaped chicken tenders? No, but those are delicious. All right, here we go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In the chat room, there you
⏹️ ▶️ John Mm-hmm. Cheesy rice. Creamy four cheese flavor. Mm-hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, it’s delicious. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does this mean, they’re very careful to say creamy four cheese flavor. Is this like there’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually four cheeses in it? Is it cheese with a Z?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s C-H-E-S-E, but I mean, basically it’s rice, vermicelli, vermicelli, however
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pronounce it, and cheese paste that, or not, I’m sorry, not paste,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s probably, yeah, cheese dust. Paul Matzko, J.D.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Cheese dust, yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Paul Matzko, J.D. Oh, good, cheese dust. So, my favorite thing about this is that it says in the description here, the only thing better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than tender rice blended with cheese is tender rice blended with four creamy cheeses. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can think of a few things besides that that are better. Paul
⏹️ ▶️ John Matzko, J.D. Like tender rice blended with two cheeses or three cheeses? 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. Scroll to the bottom of the page. I hope it’s the same for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone. Rice-a-roni product and preparation hack. Are you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prepared, gentlemen? I was trying to say this with a straight face, and I can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Prepare yourselves for this
⏹️ ▶️ John hack. This is the best hack ever. Life hack.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extra guests over for dinner? Make two boxes at once! Exclamation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Matt Stauffer Not only is this an amazing hack
⏹️ ▶️ John of why have one when you can have two or twice the price, but it makes people buy more of this product. Genius.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where’s the ingredient list? I’m trying to find the ingredient list. Ingredients. Starch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Dust. Rice, wheat flour, pricely hydrogenated palm oil, salt, cheddar, Parmesan,
⏹️ ▶️ John limano, and blue cheeses. Well, This is apparently real cheese in here that contains
⏹️ ▶️ John milk, cheese culture, salt enzymes, reduced lactose whey, corn syrup. Yeah, of course you need corn
⏹️ ▶️ John syrup in your rice because why not? Why wouldn’t you? Onions, palm oil. I mean, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is a side dish. This isn’t a meal though, right? No, it’s the meal. That’s the meal. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John not a complete meal for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey children. Stop making them rice. Well, I mean, I’ll usually put a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frozen vegetable, like a bagged frozen vegetable on the side, but this is the star of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show. I will also point out that while this does, admirably,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually contain four cheeses, it contains more salt than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheese. That’s not a surprise. It also contains more palm oil.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John More wheat flour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than cheese. Right, because I guess I assume it’s like thickening up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you’re really just eating rice in a flour and oil
⏹️ ▶️ John sauce. the seven years of this program, I think we’re getting a glimpse of exactly how much of Casey’s diet is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or at least processed starch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chris Collins You say that, but generally it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is going to be a reference that lands for neither of you, but in The Hunt for October, particularly the book, they went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on and on about how the sonar system that they used, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the software, was originally written to detect volcanoes, undersea volcanoes. 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and just assume, oh, it’s got to be a magma
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John displacement. Paul Matzko, Jr.:
⏹️ ▶️ John That was in the movie. I saw the movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reference. Paul Abrams, Jr.: Yeah, but they go on, and it makes a lot more sense if you read the book because they describe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it a lot more explicitly. But nevertheless, I bring all that up to say, I feel like when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I bring up the Velveeta and the rice-aroni, creamy four cheeses of the world, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she is not the best cook. She has a very limited repertoire of things that are not from a box or a freezer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or a can or whatever. She made a meatloaf and threw it out in the woods in Connecticut and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she found it like a few days later and not a single deer had eaten it. we had like a zillion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deer around our house in Connecticut and not one of them would touch this meatloaf that was just sitting there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Our deer carnivores?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, deer are herbivores.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There were other animals too, but no, you’re- The raccoons should have eaten it. Exactly. But no, your point is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair. But 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the sort of thing that, that not, I, I grew up with in the sense that it was part of the repertoire. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the the only thing I ate. Now, Erin does 98% of the cooking in the house, and she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes legitimate, healthy meals all the time. Like, tonight we had salmon, roasted cauliflower,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sweet potato, and a little bit of roasted regular potato, for example.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was super tasty. Erin has become a very good cook. And you can tell I love her because I married her before I knew
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she was a really good cook, because she wasn’t a really good cook when we got married. So that’s how you know
⏹️ ▶️ John I love her. And neither were you, but only one of you learned.