631: Let Me Take the Shovel Away From You

It's time for episode 631 of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, November 12th, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to ClockPies, the tech podcast that has pivoted to discuss another round item. My name is Dan Morin, and I am joined across the internet by my good friend, my pal.

I can only assume a pie aficionado. It's Micah Sargent. How are you doing today, Micah? Oh, yeah. Very much a pie lover. So this is... All right. Well, welcome. Welcome to Clock Pies. We can start talking about our favorite pies. Well, we'll put a pin in that. But meanwhile, we will do the show where we talk about four topics with two fantastic guests. To my left this week, it's a writer and editor who has worked for...

fabulous places like Wire, ProPublica, and The Wall Street Journal. It's Meg Marco. Welcome back, Meg. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Still looking for the daylight we supposedly saved. And to my left, host of Android Faithful. And Jason Howell on YouTube. It's Jason Howell, believe it or not. You don't put a pen in a pie. You put a spoon in a pie. I've been doing it wrong.

Team Fork. Team Fork. Oh no, a spoon. You can slop up so much more stuff with a spoon. Interesting. Well, this is a rich vein for us to discuss, but not on this podcast, I guess. We're going to talk about...

four tech topics. I'm going to kick things off. Apple introduces digital ID this morning, which announced back in June, essentially lets you turn your passport into a digital ID that you have in your phone. I'm curious, do you use a mobile ID of any kind? Would you? If not, why? And if so, where have you used it? Meg, we'll start with you. So I don't use one yet, but this is like an area that I'm super, super interested in.

The sort of animating reason is that everybody has like a picture of their ID or their health insurance card or something on their phone. And they're like using that. And I think that's a really, really. poor idea for a number of reasons and so I'm sort of excited for new ways of doing digital identity and maybe some privacy preserving ways and some you know something that feels a little bit less

more risky than, hey, I took a picture of my driver's license or I took a picture of this this ID card. So I don't use it yet, but I think that's the direction we're going. And I'm sort of excited to see. more opportunities for that sort of thing to happen. Yeah, I don't, I haven't had an opportunity to use this. I remember when Apple Pay first came out and it took me a while to feel comfortable.

using it because I did not want to be that person at the front of the line holding everybody else up. And I waited and waited and waited. I finally tried it. I ended up being the person at the front of the line holding people up because the people did not know what to do. And I did not know what to do. So we both didn't know what to do. And that wasn't fun.

I'm always, when it comes to stuff like this where it involves other people, I'm not an early adopter. But at the same time, as a person who would prefer to have fewer things to remember to bring with them. I think this is fun and good and right. And as Meg mentioned there, the idea that I could let someone know that I am of a specific...

age or at or above a specific age without having to hand over my ID that has my address, my exact date of birth and all that kind of stuff, I think is great. So moving towards something like that, I am fond of that idea. Jason, what about you? I am not kidding you in saying this. I am literally, as we do this show, scanning my driver's license into my Google wallet, primarily because I forgot that you could do it. You're welcome. If that's the answer. So thank you for that.

And it was actually very easy, so I can attest to that. I'm in this weird zone, and I did this with mobile payments. It's like this long purgatory where I don't quite trust it yet. And because I haven't done it. And so, you know, I like you, Micah, I hate being in the position where I'm like, yeah, I'm doing the new thing. And then everybody else has no idea what I'm doing. And then I hold up the line or I left my ID at home and I rely.

on it and then I don't have it and then it creates more problems than it would have solved if I just had my physical ID. So I'm in this like zone of do I trust it yet? No, not really. But I should at least kind of buy into it a little bit and start testing the waters. And so I'm going to finish setting this up while we throw it back over to Dan. Yeah, thanks. I'm interested in the fact that I think even all of us as people who are probably a little more tech savvy and maybe...

even early adopters and these kinds of things have generally not used it. And I imagine for some of you, like for me, one of the problems is my state does not have one. So Massachusetts does not offer a digital ID system, which I find. bananas given this is a state with a long history in technology adoption um

And so I hadn't been able to try this out until Apple introduced this new feature because it's based on the passport. Therefore, it's a federal document. Obviously, you can kind of make an end run around all the states that have been slow to adopt this. There's only, I believe there are...

12 states now plus puerto rico and then also japan has added this for their um their i believe their national id card um I mean, I think for many of the reasons both Meg and Micah mentioned, this is a big plus because of things that are privacy-preserving about it.

The idea that you are handing over your license with all this information feels a little bit antiquated now in the same way that handing your credit card to a server to walk away from the table with feels a little antiquated, even though we still do it. So the idea that we can kind of be a little more selective about the information that we share seems like a big benefit.

Even if I'm not in the state where I'm going to be like, all right, I'm going to specifically travel without a document to use this, the idea that I have it there in case I need it, I feel like that's kind of the adoption curve is like there'll be a few years here where it's like... oh, just in case I forget my wallet or I forgot my passport, maybe this lets me do that without being super panicked about it.

And then eventually, it probably will start to shift and become more of the norm where it's like, well, I don't need to bring my passport because I've got it on my phone. I should note, by the way, the digital ID only valid for domestic flights within the US currently because there is no international standard for basically digital.

passwords at this point. But again, as with so many of these things, I imagine that is the kind of thing that is changing over the next several years. So thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let us go to our second topic, which comes from Meg.

So this is a little bit of a follow up from you all roasting me a little bit for like wired headphones. has caused me great emotional damage and I've not recovered. And then I was also thinking about, as I saw like a save icon on an app, I thought, dude. do young people know what a floppy disk is they know what this icon actually is because this is out of use right no one's really using a floppy disk anymore i hope i hope i hope someone's gonna write you and say that they do um

So my question is, what is the oldest technology that you all regularly use and why? I love this. When I sort of look around and try to determine what technology I have that is the oldest, I would have to say it is my... printer, first and foremost, it feels... to me, like printers in general are not as popular as they want. And by this, I don't mean popular in terms of their ability to make you feel good about yourself and about the world.

because they've never been that, but just in the concept of owning a printer. And I've got a clunky, you know... clunky old thing that just does what it needs to do. And I don't use it that often. So I don't necessarily even need one myself. Except that my significant other likes to make lots of returns. And so we need to print out return labels a lot. And that's where it comes in handy most of the time. So, yeah, I think that's my oldest technology.

Sadly, I don't have any floppy disks rattling around. I do. Yeah, yeah, that's got to be my oldest. Although now I'm just realizing I also do have a. Apple SuperDrive sitting on my counter that I occasionally put DVDs into for reasons that are none of anyone's business. And definitely not making digital copies of them. Jason. Stop talking. As your lawyer, stop talking. What about you, Jason? The hole's getting deeper. It's getting deeper. Let me take the shovel away from you.

Hard to say. I've got kind of two answers. I just picked up this in the music production world, a keyboard, a synthesizer, the Kawaii K4. It's a digital synthesizer from 1989, which is... Pretty awesome. But in the music production world, people collect old synths and stuff like that. Do I use that every day or every week? No, but when I do, I enjoy it. But I would say thinking about this on a regular use perspective.

I have upstairs in my other podcast studio a Vixia HFG10, which is Canon's 2011 high-end consumer camcorder. So it was released with much praise at the Consumer Electronics Show that year. Twit, where you work. Micah and I used to work had ordered these in abundance way back when and filled the studio with them for years as our main kind of podcast cameras. And then when the studio shut down, I was given a few of those. And so I integrated that into my upstairs.

setup and i love it it's not 4k it's just hd has quality glass and the images continues to be excellent the only downside is that the battery on the device um is pretty much all depleted so i have to keep them plugged in all the time otherwise everything on it resets and i have to set up all the settings and stuff but very useful um

All right. What are we defining as technology? Because my first thought was I can climb planes like all the time. Wheels. Wheels. Fire. With simple machines. Yeah. Okay. Machines. Well, one of the things is that I drive a stick shift car. I mean, that's pretty old as technology goes. And that car itself is like 13 years old. I really like my stick shift car. Because I love driving stick shift. And I'm sad about...

I am sad about it going away. I will, I mean, when I eventually replace that car, it will be with an electric car. And though they've tried as yet, no good stick shift electric cars. And then because I guess it's mandatory for mentioning in these questions when they seem to pop up every once in a while, I have a television. We'll talk about, well, hold on. There's another topic about television. I don't want to spoil too much now. We'll just say it's an older television, but it checks out.

I'm glad somebody laughed at that. So yeah, I feel like there is an assortment of things that I use that I kind of like for nostalgia versions. I mean, I guess for as far as stick shift goes, my feeling on driving a stick shift car is a little bit like people who really like it. vinyl um which is just i don't know there's just something about the experience of driving it that i prefer um but other than that

I have a printer, as Micah intimated, but it's actually a relatively new printer itself, even if the technology is fairly old. And then I have some defunct pieces of old technology around, so I don't think those quite qualify because they don't really...

use them anymore. But I'm sure there's something else that I'm totally forgetting. But off the top of my head, those are the ones that seem to fit the bill the best. Meg, why don't you wrap us up here? Yeah. So that's a good... transition for me because I am one of those people who likes vinyl but not for like any sort of like a specific quality reason it's just kind of fun and you know lately I've been

kind of finding myself getting kind of back into physical media. That used to be something that I really cared about and collected. And then I didn't for a really long time when streaming was happening. And then I find myself wanting to cancel streaming services and just have... you know, just have 4K versions of the movies that I like. And it's been this very, like, strange retro experience for me. And I think when you think back at how truly old vinyl is, that's got to be the...

the oldest thing that I'm sort of regularly using. I'm wondering, maybe this is just a life stage for me, like moving away from streaming. I don't know. Comfort movies. I don't know. But like physical media seems to be kind of a wise. decision now when you do the math of all these streaming services. So that's kind of where I'm at.

All right, that's two topics down, two topics to go, which of course means it is halftime here at Clockwise. And as a reminder, you can get all of the great Clockwise merchandise that you would like over at clockwise.social hats, shirts, tote bags. mugs, stickers, whatever you want.

We got it. And by purchasing it, not only do you get super cool clockwise swag to show off, but you also help support the show. And Mike and I really appreciate it. So thanks for that. Go to clockwise.social for all your clockwise merchandising needs. And with that, we'll kick it back to Micah for his topic. Yeah, I'm just curious. Do you have a smart TV? And do you care?

if it is spying on you and i'll explain something real quick which is that uh the other day i was messing with the guest tv turned it on there was a new update and the television was asking me if it could do content recognition um and no it's totally cool it's fine you should do this because of these reasons And of course, I said, no, but it has been anecdotal situations where I have said, hey, you know, this is happening in your TV. And I think maybe four different people have said.

Oh, that doesn't really bother me. I don't really care. So I just would love to know, do you have a smart TV? And do you care if that content recognition stuff is happening? I feel like mostly if you have a TV these days, it's probably a smart TV, unless you've really gone out of your way to buy a non-smart TV. I just kind of assume they're all smart at this point. We've got...

Two TVs in our house, one kind of in like a den area and then one in our living room, both Samsung, both smart TVs, but we rely on set-top boxes. So we're not using the smarts inside the TV themselves, though we are using set top boxes that have their own smart TV things. And like, do I care that like, you know, I'm using a Google TV?

interface that is kind of monitoring what i watch and proposing that i watch these other things i don't know that i care a whole lot i mean i don't really rely or even use The smart element of like, hey, we've noticed you like these kinds of movies, so here's a whole bunch of other ones that you might like. It's like my eyes don't see them. And you know what I mean? Like, I don't really rely on them to pick content.

Do I have a problem with it? I mean, I would prefer it not happen. I would prefer for all the smarts to be gone and go away and everything. So if I'm given the option and I have the motivation, I will disable the stuff. You know, often I'm just like, eh, whatever. As I said in the previous answer, the TV in my house is one of the older things in my house. I think it's more than a decade old now. It's a 1080p TV. It is...

technically has some smart features. I think it had a Netflix and an iHeartRadio client built in or something. I only ever remember that when I have to pick up the remote for some reason and I accidentally hit the button to launch.

the Netflix app, which takes about an hour because it's so old. I've long since disabled its network access and all of that. And there was a whole thing. It's a Vizio. And there was a whole thing where they got... I believe he had a class action suit against them for, you know, scarfing up everybody's private data back before that was a thing we all just agreed to do.

I don't love the idea of a smart TV spying on me. It's one of the reasons. I mean, I don't love the idea, as Jason said, of a smart TV at all, which is one reason. that I haven't upgraded it in the intervening years. So yeah, I know this one will die eventually. But until then, I'm just kind of holding on to it because it's relatively good.

I always argue with one TV in the house and that's the TV that we have. We don't even know what we're missing. Ignorance is bliss. Meg, what about you? That's so upsetting. I'm so upset. Everyone gets upset about this all the time. I'm so upset. I'm fine. it's all good I'm glad you're fine no I'm happy for you I really do care about this. I have a 4K TV and I'm a kind of movie nerd. I really like watching movies. It's something I really, really enjoy. really do.

mind the smart TV features for sort of two reasons. One, I don't want the recommendations and they annoy me and they're never right. And I don't think it's worth the surveillance and the data exchange. don't want those features and so the trouble that it takes to go through the settings and find them all and shut them off is really annoying and I really don't like it.

And, you know, just kind of generally it results in a lot of sort of useless motion and menus and stuff like that, that I think takes away generally from the experience of the TV. So, so yeah, I really don't. I don't like that.

And I would just say I used to work at Consumer Reports and shout out Consumer Reports. If you do want to shut these things off, they have a great article that helps you sort by your manufacturer and find these settings and sort of reliably shut them off to the extent that they allow you. to opt out. So yeah, shout out them. Shut this stuff off. It's really not helpful. That is good to know. I, yeah, again, I... was surprised to see that prompt because

I have shut it off in the past. And so the fact that they were like, you know what? Now's a great time to ask you again if you would like content recognition turned on. No, I still don't. Thank you. Bye. It is ridiculous. how difficult they make it to find usually. This, I will say, was very easy because it was a prompt to say, no, turn this off. But it was also a little bit confusing because it looked like just a normal privacy policy. And so it was kind of giving the impression that...

Well, if you disagree, then you're not going to be able to move along whenever you're used to privacy policies being sort of a required agreement. And I felt like that was a little bit hashtag dark pattern of them. But I, yeah, I just was kind of curious if there's as much apathy among this group as I seem to find among a more general public. And I'm glad to see.

that for the most part, we're not fond of this technology. Thank you all for your answers on that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Jason.

Just a little quick update. My ID is now in my Google wallet. Congratulations. Yeah, I've been approved. Proud parent of a new digital ID. Oh, it's so cute, too. All right. So my question, did you I'm assuming you did. I'm assuming we're all of age to have lived. Yes, through the smartphone era, which we are currently embroiled, but also have experienced the phone era that came before it.

And I'm curious to know, what's one of your favorite phones prior to, let's say, the iPhone or Android or whatever smartphone you have now, from your own personal history, what's one of your favorite pre-smartphone era phones that you had? Love it. I think my favorite was my original, the first smartphone I ever had, which was a Motorola V60, which is a little silver flip phone. That thing was... Awesome. In fact, I liked it so much that even when I switched from AT&T to Verizon briefly...

I tried to get the Verizon version of it because it required a different version. At the time, they had different networks and everything. And I bought one. I actually told the story just recently on our Clockwise Unwound section. So you should definitely subscribe and listen to that. I bought it from like eBay or something and it was super shady and I think it ended up, it was like locked and I had to take it to Verizon to get it like physically.

like the passcode reset and everything because it was probably stolen. So yeah, that part I'm not sad about, but I really loved it. It was so tiny. I mean, that's the thing I do miss. These days. I mean, you could do basically nothing. You had to learn how to do all the little like tap, tap, tap, tap, like to text it all, you know, T9. It was terrible. But I love that phone because it was so small and so cute. Meg.

I have no idea what you gentlemen are talking about. I am a young person and I don't understand these words that you're saying. No, I mean, I think I liked. My black Motorola Razr. I just thought that was such a cool phone, like a cool keyboard. And it was so thin, like very satisfying.

flip open. I felt like a cool person. So I don't know. I kind of would use that now. I'm going to be honest with you. I probably should put the phone down and get something like that. So yeah, that was definitely my favorite. And yeah, I also don't know what you're talking about when you're talking about texting by tapping the keypad. Wow, I can't believe that, you guys. News to me.

So I actually talked about this with you, Jason, on TechSploder. The phone that I had that I really enjoyed was made by Sanyo. And it was the Senyo Juno SCP-2700. And it was sort of a BlackBerry-esque device. But it was blue with these green accents. And so I was already on board because of the colors. But then I also felt a little bit like my BlackBerry owning friends.

The thing that I love the most about it was on the back of the phone was this really textured surface. And so it was just this nice thing that I could. run my fingernail across or sort of rub with my thumb. And it was kind of a fidget in a way back before we had all the different fidget toys we have. And yeah, it was thin, small. And the battery lasted a really long time, which was good in comparison to some of the other devices I had at the time where they seemed to die. So, yeah, I liked it.

Well, prior to smartphones... Like right before getting my Motorola Droid, which was my first touchscreen smartphone, CNET, where I was working at the time, issued me a BlackBerry Bold. That was not my favorite. pre-touchscreen smartphone phone. Mine was probably the LG Envy, the VX9900. I had it on Verizon. It's like this landscape. Well, it's a normal candy bar, I guess, phone. It was not like a flip.

phone in the the style like you mentioned dan it was like a candy bar shape but then you could flip it open landscape style to reveal a chiclet keyboard and a display like a little like normal ratio you know three to four ratio display on the inside and um it just it felt like next level to me prior to the next generation of smartphones right like it

had this whole hacking community that i found online so you could you know you had to literally hack it in order to bring mp3s that you wanted into it so that you could change the ringtone to whatever you wanted and i think i probably chose some like super mario sound effects or whatever for my ringtone but it just it felt really cool to do that had two megapixel camera with a flash but the you know the the pictures were garbage

And yeah, I just remember absolutely loving that thing and hacking it to death. Probably the hacking of that led to my curiosity around Android would be my guess. But yeah, it's a pretty good phone. All right. Well, that is four topics down.

We've got just enough time for a bonus topic. And my question for you is, when does the holiday music start? And does it ever end? Meg, when does the holiday music start? I think the holiday music should start... after thanksgiving or like maybe on thanksgiving like the the day it should definitely start after the decorations are acceptable it's the music yeah it gets old

I used to work in a mall. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. For sure. For me, usually, yeah, it's at or around Thanksgiving. I have been blessed. to have not worked retail jobs that require you listening to a bunch of holiday music leading up to the holiday. And so I still have a great fondness. for a nice holiday tune. And therefore, as soon as I can start to, it also, it's very helpful with my seasonal affective disorder. So it might be dark at 2 p.m.

But at least I can feel cozy and, I don't know, put on a turtleneck and listen to Nat King Cole. And so, yeah. For me, it's after Thanksgiving. And I would say that's probably the case for most of the people in my household. For my youngest daughter, it's pretty much the day after Halloween. She's been walking into the room lately. She could probably hear me because she's homesick today. But she's been walking in the room lately and doing the opening.

mariah carey all i want for christmas stuff like she just walks in the room and does that which apparently is a meme right now so yeah it's already begun in our house It has also already begun in my house, despite my protestations to the contrary. My wife is also a day after Halloween, basically. She is going to ramp up. She has a 12-hour playlist of holiday songs. Because her point was, I am a Christmas... the season for me starts.

when Santa Claus shows up at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The seal is broken at that point. For me, that's when we go. But she has decided that, you know, she's like, either way, I end up getting sick of it and I might as well listen to it longer and enjoy it longer. out at the same time like a week before christmas no matter when i start so i'm just gonna listen to it more and enjoy it more i was like all right i guess i can't argue with that um or i could but i shouldn't thank you all

for your answers to that topic hey have you heard the good news about clockwise unwound it is a short weekly segment after the main show wraps up where mike and i chat about tech topic as i mentioned we just talked about like old cell phones the other week so if you'd like to get all of that extra content plus

ad-free episodes. Just go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just $7 per month or $70 per year and you'll help support the show. With that, we have reached the end of this week's episode and all that remains is for us to thank our fantastic guest, Meg Margo. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. And Jason Howell, thank you so much for being here. Always an absolute pleasure. Thank you. And Michael, we'll be back next week. But until then, remind everyone listening out there, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.