648: My Couch Doesn't Get Updated

It's time for episode six hundred and forty-eight of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, march eighteenth, two thousand twenty six. Clockwise four people, four tech topics, thirty minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the Tech Podcast, where, with the luck of the Irish, we'll finish this episode on time.

I am one of your hosts, Mike a Sargent, who sometimes forgets to change the date in the spreadsheet, but don't worry,'cause my pal, my good friend, the one and only Dan Morin will make sure to correct it in his head while he's speaking. Good job, Dan. Thank you. After almost six hundred and fifty episodes, I always check first. That's what I've learned. There you go. That's the that's the guarante clockwise guarantee for you.

And while you're checking that first, I'm checking who's joining us today. To my left, it's generally nice person, Casey Liss. Hello, Casey. Hello. Now see I feel like if I am introduced with the title of Generally Nice Person, that really sets a positive tone for the remainder of our time together because I really need to live up to that hype. So

I'm gonna have to put away all the mean parts of my life and and just be gently kind. Deep down in a box. And to my left this week it is super gay nerd Brian Guffy. Welcome back, Brian. Hello, happy to be here. I figured If Casey's a generally nice person, I'm a super gay nerd. Or is it a super nerd gay? I'm not sure, honestly. I think you can be that even without Casey being a generally nice person. I'm just saying your your identity is not dependent on his, okay?

That's certainly true. You be you. You be the most you. I love it. You don't know how to be anything else. Very supportive episode of Clockwise. You all know how this works. We've got thirty minutes and four topics. Mine for you is this.

I'm just curious, how far off do you think we are from full self driving cars? Uh there was uh a story in the Atlantic about one of the people involved with FSD, I think for Uber, uh nearly died in a Tesla car crash. But yeah, I don't know. Are you eager for the future of full self driving? True full self driving? Casey, we'll start with you.

Will we ever get to full self driving? Uh maybe. I I mean I would assume so,'cause anytime as a youth, uh I when I say, Oh, this'll never happen, it inevitably happens. But I do feel like it's further away than we think it is. I would say to the order of ten or twenty years, not to the order of two to five years.

Um but this is the same I was the same person that when I was a kid argued that one could never use a gigabyte. Ever. It's impossible. Now granted this was like I think the early nineties or something like that, but still, it would be impossible to use an entire gigabyte, fill a gigabyte worth of data. Couldn't do it. But am I eager for this future in terms of improved safety if such a thing really is possible? Yes, absolutely.

Uh, you know, w I live in suburban America where I pretty much need a car to to accomplish anything.

And if I could make that experience safer for everyone involved, both inside my car and in the cars around me, then yeah, I am eager for this future. Even despite the fact that, like Dan, you know, I still drive a Volkswagen with three pedals and I still enjoy doing that every day and I will l I'm already lamenting the time when I eventually stop doing that and get, you know, it's an automatic car that's more of an appliance than it is an experience.

Uh but I don't know. I I just I think it's further away than everyone claims it is. But maybe I'm just a negative Ned. I'm kinda I'm kinda with you, Casey, on a lot of your your feelings here.

In some ways, I've had a long running argument with uh my best friend from college who is an emergency room doctor who thinks there's nothing that cannot be fixed by self driving cars. And, you know, he is coming at this from the perspective of someone who sees You know, oftentimes people arriving who have been in horrific accidents, oftentimes people who have been driving under the influence and get in horrific accidents, and I totally understand where he's coming from from that perspective.

But as somebody who knows stuff about like software, I I'm equally worried, right? Like I if from the outside it might seem like oh it's great the computer there's no way the computer could be worse than the people and friends, the computer c can definitely be worse than the people at time. Now, I mean, in neither case do we have something that's going to be a perfect system, right? I I don't think that the uh certainly it will eliminate

uh, you know, accidents to have computer driving cars. We've s already seen plenty of these. I think the the things like Waymo have proved that self driving is plausible. Um, I think it probably works better in a system where either everything is self driving or nothing is self driving, rather than this weird mix of some things are self-driving, some things are human driven. Um

I'm not super looking forward to it from the perspective of somebody who like Casey enjoys driving and also is a bit of a control freak and that probably those two things go together. Um But, you know, certainly I agree there are cases where I think it could provide a lot of functionality that might be needed for things like uh, you know, accessibility and accommodations for that. You know, I've got two aging parents.

My father is in his mid eighties and still is insists on driving and and I feel that at some point that will not be plausible anymore and it will be harder for them to get around. And having a car that could take them places they want to go much as he would hate that, uh, would still leave them the option to have some degree of autonomous movement in a way that they might be able to handle in a way that they're not gonna want to call lifts for everything or something like that.

I think it goes hand in hand with a lot of other things too, improvements in public transportation infrastructure and, you know, sort of the advent of e bikes and all those things too. But yeah, it's coming not as soon as people want, but also probably sooner than I'd like. Brian? Yeah, I don't expect it to come that soon, mainly because

I really believe that for it to be really effective, you've gotta do like everybody all at once. And because the real benefit you get is when all of the cars are self driving. And not when like some of the cars are self driving and we still have crazy people on the road. um driving. So I just like I don't see us getting over that hump. I think that more likely what we'll start seeing more quickly than that is just like, ooh, here's my own little like tiny hover crack.

Or my tiny little helicopter and I can go where I want. Um and we just sort of skip that whole like let's make cars better. Um to like what if not cars? Um, but still personal conveyances. And then we can still drive cars for fun, but for fun only. I love to hear that everybody here is still on board with the idea that it is uh potentially a safer thing. Uh I you know, uh when I've talked to people sort of outside of the tech space about this.

There are lots of mentions of the accidents that have taken place. And there's not as much of an awareness of how many more accidents are taking place at the exact same time because humans are involved. And also how many times the accidents with the self-driving cars are the result of another human being involved in the situation. And so I'm glad that there's at least that awareness. And I think that that will help um make this a possibility in the future.

I really like driving as well and it's also some of like my best thinking time. Yeah. Um, and so I don't want to miss out on that opportunity, but there are other times where By golly, it'd be nice to just sit in a vehicle and be able to do whatever I want to do and know that I'm gonna get to my destination. That's pretty cool as well. So thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Casey.

So sticking with the car theme, just stick with me on that. Are there any software systems in your life that you wish wouldn't update? Or perhaps you could say, Never update and never ask me to do so again. I know the clockwise expectation is for me to answer my own question last, but to Explain my segue that I probably shouldn't have committed to. Erin's car. She has a uh Volvo XE 90 that is due to get a software upgrade imminently.

that vastly revamps the infotainment setup in her car. Oh no. For all w well, exactly. Right. So it could be that it'll be a vast improvement. It might. I'm not sure. But She certainly knows where everything is now and everything is about to get rearranged, and like any regular human, she's not go extremely enthusiastic about ev her you know, the deck chairs being rearranged, if you will. And so

It's one of those situations where maybe it would be better even if the new version is improved in some small way, you know, in th this section or that section. It might be better to just tell the car, no, never, never, thank you very much. But maybe that's a maybe that's dumb. I don't know. Are there any systems like that in your lives that where you you want to say, you know what? I'm good where I am, thank you. I think that you're right in that there are classes of devices that certainly

are things where you're expecting, you know, more consistency and disruption can be, even if it improves things, disruption can still be unwarranted and cause problems. And I feel like cars is a good example of that because it is something that is kind of

critical to the use of stuff. You don't want people having to figure a new way of doing things while they are also operating an automobile. Um, I might add uh like some types of appliances. Like I've never seen a substantial appliance to say like my induction stove have like a major update that changes like, oh, now the things that control the heat go in the opposite direction. Right. Like they're not gonna do that, right? That would be bad. Um

But certainly over time there are things that have updated and I don't like them as much. I'm thinking about um, you know, I've got some e-readers here like a Kindle. I think Kindle software has improved, but there are times when I was I was used to the way that things worked and then they would

rearrange things or they would take features away. Um and I don't really want to be the person who's stuck in the past and insisting things never change. Um but there is You know, I think there is a tendency among many of these companies to keep tweaking and tweaking things and at a certain point there are diminishing returns and things that are changed just for the sake of change that don't necessarily improve things and disrupt people's lives.

Uh I think rather than me saying don't ever update that, I should tell someone should tell them stop doing that. Uh I'm sure they will I'm sure they will listen to that. Brian, what about you? I mean, I have ADHD. And that is probably the the best description of all this. It's just a hit of dopamine.

Every time things change. So I'm like so excited by it. Like all of a sudden I get to rediscover my phone again. And part of this is I really do believe that like the fact that I have ADHD and my working memory is so shoddy that I'm very quick to learn things because often I don't remember them. So it's not a big deal for me to relearn something like over and over and over again because it's my it's what my whole life has been.

Yeah. Um I really identify with the ADHD of it all. I absolutely and and Dan with your answer as well. I like getting new things to explore and check out and be excited about and be interested in. And when it comes to Technology, which happens to be the stuff that gets the update. Like my couch doesn't get updated unless you buy a new one. Um

The stuff that I know the most about is the stuff that gets regular updates and I am excited about it. So I think I would love to have like if there was a software system in my life I wish wouldn't update, it would be everyone Who for whom I do tech supports stuff, that their stuff doesn't get updated unless they're very, very, very ready for it. So Casey, round us out.

Uh yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, it's basically car infotainment for me is one that I wish I could opt into and Volvo's done a good job. I I don't know if I'll be able to dig up a link, but Volvo has done a good job of Um there's a website where you can kind of trial what the new info infotainment looks like and get get kind of a gist of what it's going to be. And I do dig that they've done that. I think that's really smart, but still I feel like

This is the sort of thing that it's a safety issue, right? I mean, bringing it back to our earlier uh topic, it's a safety issue. If you're f hunting around to change the station and you knew exactly where the button on screen used to be because of course it's an on screen button. Uh you knew where it used to be and now it's somewhere totally different.

That's a safety problem. And so something like that, I wish I could opt into it or if there was a way to like roll it back so this way you could try it, you know, and it's not the end of the earth. Um but of course I understand you know, from a software developer's point of view, I understand why that's not the case. But from a user point of view, I wish it was.

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All right, I'm curious if you use an app launcher on your Mac, a tool where you can, you know, press a keyboard shortcut, type in the name of an app, launch that app. Maybe it does other stuff too. And if you do, uh have you changed recently? Like have you switched this over or even in the past have you changed? Um or are you sort of a die hard user? This is the thing I use and I'm gonna use it until they drag it from my coal dead hands. Brian? I use a nap launcher. It's Ray Kath.

I use it. I wouldn't want to not use it. But I guess if like I had to not use it, I would survive. But it has been it has been really fun. It's the first launcher I ever really stuck with. So, um I have definitely sort of fallen in love with it, even a as its updates have slowed a little bit. Uh so yeah, I think I'm I'm pretty diehard about it and if anybody ever told me that I couldn't have it I would whine a lot.

I yeah, I um I've been, ha I've always been, probably will always be, a a diehard spotlight person. I like I mean I I consider it to be the way that I use uh iOS and iPad OS as well. Um I I search for an app. I don't tap on an app to to launch it. So yeah, uh I I mean Spotlight. i is the way to go. I've tried a bunch of different ones, including Raycast.

Um and in those cases it's just I didn't get engaged with it early enough that like it didn't, it didn't pull me in quick enough that I wanted to devote more time to learning how to use it versus my deep knowledge of how to use spot. Uh Casey, what are your thoughts? I I I've used Alfred for as long as I can remember. I I don't know if I've always used Alfred, but it's been so darn long now that it's effectively the entire time I've been using the Mac. Um I like Alfred a lot. It think

The way I think, or at least the way it operates, is compatible with the way I think. Similarly similarly to Micah, I tried Raycast when everyone was losing their minds about it and I didn't get it I didn't get sucked in the way everyone else did and so I gave it a quick shot and was like, Yeah, it's fine and then went back to Alfred. Um I know that Spotlight is the right answer to this question because it's gotten so much better in the in the new build.

And to echo what I believe was Dan saying w was saying earlier, you know, I didn't resist any of the new builds, even, you know, Mac OS. I think the resistance was a bit unnecessary and I think uh the commenters like myself

uh got a little worked up about it, although I updated pretty quick. Thank you very much. Um but anyways, I've not really given Spotlight another shake. I think if I wasn't going to use Alfred, it would probably be Spotlight because my needs are very minor. But the thing of it is is that I've got Just incredible muscle memory for simple things in Alfred. So for example, you know, I have it down to command space.

if you hit command space and then hit space bar again, that lets you search for a file, you know, as a silly example. And and there's others like it, but that muscle memory is deeply ingrained and I don't have any issues with spot with uh I almost said spotlight. I don't have any issues with Alfred and s and there's nothing that I'm yearning for it to do. So

Uh perhaps ignorance is lis, but one way or another. You are welcome. Uh but one way or another I'm I'm happy with Alfred where I am right now.

Uh yeah, I thank you all for your thoughts on this. Uh I've m used several different launchers in the past. I used to use Alfred, I think I used Quicksilver way back in the day. Um I've used Spotlight for a long time, in in large part because it's what's built in and I I I think it's worthwhile to be using the built in tools not only Um, to get that experience but also to be able to figure out like when things work, when things don't work, when things improve, etcetera.

Um now a part of the reason that spurred this for me is that Spotlight in the most recent macOS Tahoe update, like 2631, I think, is Broken. Um it I as an example, I was a little late for this uh podcast recording session'cause I hit spotlight, I typed zoom, I hit return, and you know what it did? Yep. It it opened Zoom in iPhone mirroring on my phone. Cool. Not useful.

Um and I don't know why. Uh and it's had this issue too where I try to launch audio hijack and it's like, oh, surely you want this file called audio with a long string of numbers.mp4. Oh. No, surprisingly enough, I don't want that. Uh and you know I will say I have used again, I've used Spotlight for a long time. Um I've used Spotlight up until recently and been pretty happy with it.

Uh it surprises me that Apple can't make this work a bit better because especially like as it crams other features into this, it feels like the core, at least for me, is I still want to just launch apps. The number of times I want to open a file from Spotlight. vanishingly small. Um but apps literally all the time. Yeah. So uh rather than opening a random preference pane when I type something, uh or, you know, again an app on my iPhone, I'd sure love it if it just opened that app. So

I'm unlikely to change. Like many of you, I get stuck in my ways, and I'm not gonna go to a third party launcher just because of this. Um, but I thought it was interesting because it was something that uh it's a category of apps that has a lot of passionate users.

Uh and is still has a lot of third party uh applications that are very popular and very competitive, even though Apple has its own option for it as well. So intrigued to see where you all were. But thank you for that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Brian. All righty

AetherOS is an incredible cyberpunk OS in a browser. Tangled just raised three point eight million euros from ByFounders and the ex CEO of GitHub for basically its take on GitHub. Is this the AT protocol moment? Are you using any AT protocol apps besides Blue Sky? If so, which? If not, why not? Are you even on Blue Sky? Yes, I'm on blue sky. Do I know even more than just oh I recognize AT protocol? Uh I do I know any more than that about AT protocol? No.

Am I using any other AT protocol apps besides Blue Sky? I don't think so. Uh unless Threads is, but I don't think it is. I think it's the one that works with uh Mastodon. So I don't know much about about AT protocol and I'm looking forward to hearing what Brian has to say when we get back around to them. Uh Casey, what about you? Uh again, I I echo your thoughts. Uh I mean I'm familiar with AT protocol as a thing, uh, but uh in terms of

uh services or whatever they use it. I I knew that it was a bit of a playground, but I was not aware of this Aether OS thing. I was fiddling with it shortly before we started recording. It is a Very impressive, even though I'm not entirely clear what the hell is going on. Um, but it's very cool. Uh just to click around in there. Uh I am on Blue Sky. I found that after the death of Twitter, as we once knew and loved slash hated it.

Um, I moved away from Twitter when Elon bought it as many of our peers did. And for me, Mastodon is where I do nerdy things and Blue Sky is where I do basically everything else.

And so I I I in a perfect world I would love that for that to be just one service, but I'm not grumpy about it the way it is. And so I am more into blue sky now than I had been months ago, in part because I'm betaing a uh an app that will let you merge, if you will, like a univ universal app for both Mastodon and Blue Sky, which is really nice.

Uh it's an app called Indigo, which I think you can get on a mailing list for that somewhere, somehow some way, somehow. Um, but anyways, so I'm big in on blue sky, but in terms of anything else, AT protocol shrug? Is there stuff? I guess so. Yeah, uh I'm kinda I'm kinda with Casey on this one. I've I've used Blue Sky for a while. I'm baiting the same app. Um I have I I'm intrigued by it. I think it's a it's a like

Mastodon, it has a good idea behind it, which is the idea that it's like the protocol should be kind of divorced from the services and certainly from the companies behind it. Um so I appreciate that aspect of it. Trying for me to like shoehorn like why I want a browser operating on it is something that I struggle with.

Um, you know, a browser that runs an operating system that runs on AT protocol is cool as a proof of concept. I don't think I'm ever gonna have any reason to use it. It is very I love the aesthetic. Um, I love all the little cyberpunk there. I mean, you know, there's the little uh browsing thing called Deckard. You know, I just I just recorded two podcasts about Bleed Runner in the last month, so I'm fully on board with all of that.

Um, but I'm not sure that this is a thing that's ever really going to be for me more than a in you know, sort of technological underpinning of a service like a social media network that I use. And I'm not sure how much life AT protocol has in it behind beyond that.

And either really how much life it has in it. I think certainly You know, Mastodon, while it's more um certainly nerdier and certainly a lot smaller community, uh has a degree of self sufficiency just because of the way that it's structured. um uh which may incor encourage it to live longer even if it is a smaller, more self selected group of people. But

Um it is intriguing. I love to see people playing around with technology of this and seeing what they can do and the idea of implementing an entire OS on this is wild and very cool. Brian, why don't you uh wrap us up here? I think there's actually a lot of misconception from some people out there in the world about the way that the app protocol is architected, actually. Like it's pretty fully decentralized at this point. You can run any piece of the stack.

The difference between it and blue uh and Mastodon is ultimately are you running a whole server for a bunch of people or are you basically hosting what is called a PDS or a personal data server? Which is basically just like a git repo at the end of the day, and you get to hold on to your stuff and take it wherever you want.

And what I what I particularly like about the app protocol ecosystem is how open and welcoming it is from uh both the developer standpoint and the community. One of the things that I sort of found uh for me on Mastodon. was just that like you had to find the right server to get the right people and also then sometimes things didn't sync and then you weren't getting things from other things and it was sort of

heavy and um the way that it was built made it sort of difficult. And I think the coolest thing to me that has popped up off on top of all of this is NPMX. But MPMX is a new browser for NPM. has had like over a thousand PRs in the past month with people just building on it and working together, sort of all came from the at proto community. Uh they actually integrated at Proto into it and sort of the whole idea about this is just I can take my social identity with me wherever I want.

Uh there's an app on at Proto called um I mean there's like seven different ones that are all about like writing your own blog and having your own blog. But I don't have to- find all of my friends on there anymore. If I sign in with my handle, then all of the people I already follow, they will already show up there. So it's that ability to sort of make my social connections portable. that I think is particularly interesting. So am I using other ones? Absolutely.

Um I'm about to release my own that's really focused just on like moderate like helping it's basically a new take on um block party but using a little bit of machine learning to like identify where you have topic overlaps with people and then how often are they posting in a toxic manner? The idea being like, can I catch people before they drive by and show up and say mean things to you for no reason? I think something that Dan said that I really do love is this idea of just like how much

fun energy there is on there. There's a replacement for last FM. There's a replacement for GitHub. And now right now the protocol is it's it's a default open protocol. So all your stuff is out there, everywhere. That is they actually are working on permissioned data now. Um, but it's a tricky it's a they intentionally built it to this sort of open way, but it's just you can tell that it spun out of Twitter at one point.

Um and the other interesting thing is they just got a new CEO. Yeah. Um that CEO used to be the CEO of WordPress. Um, but yeah, so I like I really love the app protocol. I'm actually going to a conference about it next week. in Vancouver. And I think there is actually the moment here, but I do think it is a little bit of a different lift for people to understand that effectively what you're doing is you're like wandering around wandering around with all of your data, all of your posts.

All of your connections to people, like not literally in your pocket, but that's what this allows you to do. It's like they can't take my friends away from me. Uh all righty folks, we are nearly at the end of the show. My bonus topic for you all.

Can you whistle? And do you remember when you learned how to do so? Casey, we'll start with you. Can I whistle? Yes, I can, but only the regular kind of more melodic y whistle, not the, hey kids, you're halfway down the block, it's time to come home whistle that I yearn to be able to do, and I'll be darned if I remember when I learned. What I will say about whistling is I actually I remember very vividly that as a kid I first learned to whistle only via

bringing air into my mouth. Oh, interesting. And it was it's hard because you run out of air much faster. And so I remember having to learn how to do it the other way. Um, which obviously is it counter counterintuitively feels like it should be more difficult because the air is coming out.

But um yeah, anyways, yes, I can whistle and I do remember learning as a kid, probably on like eight or nine, to like, okay, let me see if I can figure out how to do this the other way. Uh my kid also tries to whistle, but he's only three and a half and so he just does a Brian, what about you? Yes, kind of. Like I can half whistle. I'm okay at whistling. I'm not great at whistling. So I do I remember learning to do so? Uh n

No, I don't remember learning to do so. I don't remember a lot about my early years. I also don't recall When I learned to whistle. Um I can and I I can I can do that whistle, I can do the the hand flute, which I think sounds a lot like a Um... Anyway.

Thank you all for your answers on that. Very fascinating to me. Uh, and I appreciate it. If you out there would like to get ad-free episodes with an extra unwound episode every week where Dan and I talk about a given topic, you can become a member of Clockwise. Go to relay.fm slash clockwise to sign up. Seven dollars a month, seventy dollars a year to help support the show.

And with that, we have reached the end of this episode of Clockwise. All that's left is to thank our awesome guests, Casey Liss. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. As always, it is a blast and I did not expect that whistles were gonna be the topic of conversation when I woke up this morning, but I am always glad to to find these little gifts from from you to me.

And Brian Guffy, thank you so much for joining us as well. Happy to be here as always. What love when I get that text from Micah. Uh and Micah, we'll be back next week, but until then we remind everyone listening out there, watch what you say and keep Watching the clock. Bye everybody.