659: Use Your Meaty Stuff

It's time for episode six hundred and fifty-nine of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, June third, twenty twenty six. Clockwise four people, four tech topics, thirty minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast where WWC stands for We Will Divine Clocks. My name is Dan More and I'm joined across the internet. Ah my good friend, my pal, the one, the only Micah Sargent. How you doing today, Micah? I am doing well. Okay. I can see the clock in front of me.

Oh okay, I see where we're going. Okay. Hold on, let me get into the oh what does the clock say? Oh powerful and wise one. The clock says, well it doesn't say anything because it's a clock. I heard I oh man, I'll save this for a future we're a for a future intro, but my the other day my son told me a joke and the joke was what is a clock's favorite time? What is a clock's favorite time? Six thirty, two hands down.

Think about it. All right. All right. That's enough of that. Let's get on to the show. The clock is really saying it's time to start the show. This is of course the one where we have two fantastic guests to discuss four tech topics this week. To my left it's senior reporter at NGT Carissa Bell. Welcome back, Carissa. Hello hello, happy to be here. And to my left, still thinking honestly about two hands down, but to my left, nebulous media guy. It's great. Spirit, welcome back.

That's the only way I can think of describing my career just now. It's impossible to describe hello folks. I hear that. All right. We got four topics, just thirty minutes. Let's get going.

WWE C, as I mentioned in my intro, is next week Apple's annual developer conference. I'm curious to know if there are any rumored announcements that you're actually excited for slash interested in, and whether or not you think there will be any surprises. Give us your give us your two cents on this one, Carissa? Yeah, so I'm actually gonna be at WWDC this year. So I am pr particularly excited to to be back after a few years. Um I think

So the one thing that I would really want to have seen that uh I am excited for but it looks like it's not going to be happening for a while is the rumored Apple smart glasses. I write a lot I write a lot about smart glasses, so obviously that's something that's very

uh top of mind for me. Um but since we're not gonna get that, I think I'm really gonna be looking out for all the serious stuff. That's been kind of a big stumble for them. Obviously we're gonna hear a lot about AI. So just, you know, hearing kind of the Updated plans for Siri after sort of the uh debacle that happened uh previously, that's gonna be the thing that I'm most looking out for and uh hopefully we'll be surprised in a good way.

A lot of the AI announcements at this point do feel rather repetitive. And so in that way, I think that I am excited to see if Apple can say or do anything that actually feels exciting that has not already been sort of uh covered and figured out. Of course, you know, we're excited.

in the additional beh or additional features that we'll have. But more importantly, I'm going, okay, are you just going to show me the thing that everybody else has already done? And now you're just sort of this is yeah, we're checking the boxes here. So Uh I I hope I hope to be excited, and I am excited about the potential for being excited, is my answer. Chris, what is yours?

Uh yeah, I I kind of have a similar take to you, Micah. I think uh the challenge with the AI stuff is twofold. One, oh my god, AI, I can't hear any more of the AI. The other one is It feels like I'm stuck on Grindhog Day where Apple is for the seventy fourth time running go right guys, guys, guys, guys. Seri this time is gonna be great. We've fixed it. It's gonna be intelligent, responsive, context aware.

This is the time we're fixing Siri, folks. Um and I'm really, really bored of it. I so it might happen some good stuff might come out of it, but um I just I'm not excited about AI in general. And I use Siri rarely and you could argue maybe that's because it's not good, but yeah, I will fix it and you'll use it and it'll be okay. And maybe that's true, but I just I'm just a bit bored. The thing that I'm kind of hopeful for is a kinda kind of surprise.

In the same way as a lot of us think that the iPhone Air was a sort of technical exercise in advance of a foldable iPhone, like working out how to do things things as slim as possible so that when you've got two of them or more of them together, then it's not a ridiculous brick of a Nokia phone. But so in the same ways we saw those kind of advancements happening in hardware and we received an iPhone Air out of that.

Maybe we'll see some because dub dub is of course a developer conference. Maybe we'll see some stuff about how you manage multiple screens and windowing and splitting stuff. But again, that feels like um Apple once again trying to fix Uh, solve the problem that they created for themselves with the iPad by switching around between center stage and winded environments and mirroring and externals and

I don't know quite what they'll do, but maybe if the rumored iPhone fold is on its way, maybe we'll see some software features trickling down to the rest of us.

These are all good answers. I I think there's a wide variety of stuff. I mean obviously I think for me on the AI front, which is clearly the thing that everybody's talking about, I'm I'm really looking forward to seeing if Apple can show us some practical explanations and applications as opposed to I think uh what tend to be a little bit more

either technical or pie in the sky solutions from, you know, other companies purveying AI. I mean, there are so many companies that want AI to be a thing and sometimes the examples they give of what people use it for will be truly inane. Uh Apple's Also, can I just interrupt there for a sec'cause um MKBHD did a piece about AI recently and sort of talking about the fact that hey, there's this thing that'll book your holidays for you. And he's sort of like

really want like I'd like to go to the Seychelles please, booked. And just nothing in between. Like what flights am I on? Like did we check prices? What's the workout to wait to hear? So even the sort of practical examples people give are often like I don't I'm not comfortable seating that level of control at all, right? I think that is a big ch uh question. And so the y is there a way that there is a

You know, Apple has showed off in the past with these features that it was not able to ship things that are a little bit more practical, like, hey, what time does my mom's flight arrive? And just understanding of things, non-structured data. There is a lot of power in that.

Even more so than like do these things for me, because I agree with you that I don't think a lot of people necessarily want to give up all of that control. Even people like, look how great it is if you can do this. And it's like, but does anybody actually do that?

Um and so Apple, you know, obviously has a history of building consumer products and to that end it has to sort of be responsive to what people actually want to do and You know, it's not always successful in that way, but I think it tends to have a pretty good hit rate, so can it break this streak of having th people tell us why we should be excited about AI and it instead actually make people excited about it? Yeah.

I think that's both what I'm looking forward to and will be kind of a surprise if they manage to pull it off. But I too will be there. So I'll Chris I'll have find you, give you a high five. All right. Uh that's uh uh my topic. Krista, what's yours?

So it seems like this never ending ram crisis we're in is making just about every gadget more expensive. We're seeing price increases every week. Uh we recently saw Steam decks go up quite a quite a lot. Um so it got me thinking like what's your best tip for squeezing more life from an older device so you don't have to spend more to get something new?

I love this question. And when I first read this, I kind of saw it as more of a almost a maintenance thing, a w a way to make sure that if things like this happen, you've got older devices that you can rely on. And so uh I think the that my advice though does apply also to advice or to devices that you might be using now that you're trying to keep uh going longer. And that is first and foremost.

clean them. And I especially mean for things that have moving parts, which tends to be kind of where we are in the when we're talking about sort of uh the crisis at the moment. It's it's you know bigger hardware and there are Uh you know, a number of times uh where I've had a friend.

A friend or a family member and they've got a problem with their console or a problem with their laptop and I pop off the back and it's just got all this dust and gunk and things. And so then the fa it's everything. And heat is obviously Such an issue for battery life. And so that's another reason to keep them clean. The second thing is

F if you've got stuff that you're wanting to hold on to for later, perhaps, or keep around knowing that you might want to use it, um, remember that battery life is not just important in the short term, but also in the long term. When you're storing them. store them at fifty percent charge and then pull them out every three to six months to charge them back to that fifty percent whenever you store them.

I more went into doomsday prepping with your question, but there's some tips for for for future options. Chris, what are yours? I mean the traditional advice here is install Linux and I think that's a genuinely good bit of advice and I know it can be a bit intimidating and scary if you've got a really old bit of hardware, but there's a whole mess of like really user friendly distros out there that are designed to work well with

um stable platforms. Um and I think you'll have a really good uh so in various I haven't done that myself for ages'cause I don't have time and I don't have the inclination to do it. But my main my main tip really is a mindset shift one rather than a practical one, which is Maybe just downgrade what you think you can use that old kit for.

So I recently put a M4 uh Pro Mac Mini as my main machine now, insanely capable capable machine. I still have that old Intel MacBook Pro that I use as my on the go computer, but it's mostly a sort of writing and emails machine. And that can be true of a whole m bunch of stuff as well. Um You don't always have to A buy new stuff, as uh Carissa is suggesting is the challenge here, but also you can sort of mindset shift the stuff you've got. I actually do a decent amount of typing on an ancient

Bluetooth folding keyboard designed for like a pocket Windows CE or whatever the hell it was called that folds really nicely, connects to my iPhone, and I can type stuff really well on that. And I think shifting your expectations of tech. Like use your meaty stuff for stuff that needs that power.

But for stuff that doesn't need that power, you're actually going to get tons and tons of just because something's you know rubbish at rendering 4K video doesn't mean to say it's rubbish at everything. So shift your mind a little bit and you'll get some good life out of your devices. Yeah, I mean I think mine is pretty similar to your Chris. Like I think a lot of it is about how you approach these things. I know people who I'm always surprised when I I find people uh using

you know, devices that are way older than devices I would use. And I I know that's in part because I succumbed to the new shiny uh temptation, right? You know, the oh this thing's out and it's newer and it's different and boy, my old computer's getting all gunked up and like you know, I I think that's the way that these

the system wants you to feel. And instead, you know, I think the people who are tend to be a little more unplugged tend to uh make their devices last longer and see them as things with a longer lifespan. I was just talking to a friend of mine who's like, Yeah

Guess it's finally time to update this nine year old laptop I've got. And I was like, My God, you're gonna be blown away with how good a laptop is after nine years. Um whereas, you know, for maybe you upgrade every three or four years, like I've gotten some nice bumps out of those, but like it is very different when you go on those long spans between updates. So I think that's one thing. I think Micro Micah's battery tips are good, obviously, you know.

you can get batteries and a lot of devices replaced if you're willing to pay a little bit more. I've been debating this guy. I have an older Apple Watch a series seven, which I like quite a bit, and it's mostly fine, but it does suffer from low battery life. It's like, well

Would it just be easier to get this battery replaced than to buy a whole new watch? Do I really need a whole new watch? What is that actually gonna get me? So I think there is kind of a combination there of both trying to like make sure that your old devices are in as good condition as they can be. And also to remember that you don't have to buy something new if you are happy with what you have right now. And in many cases,

Uh what we have is is a frankly overkill for many of the things that a lot of us do all day. So I guess that's my my sort of tip. Why don't you wrap us up here? Yeah, I love these answers. Um so this was inspired uh by my own old laptop, which is uh one of those rose gold twenty seventeen, I think, uh MacBooks. The one with the butterfly keyboard. I'm very attached to it.

I pulled it out the other day. It was just, you know, it's extremely slow. The Wi Fi was kind of dropping in and out and I'm like, Oh, is it time for a new laptop? Like I really You know, I don't use it this much. It's mostly uh, you know, like Chris said, I kinda it's kind of an email machine. I was like, let's see if we can rehab this. I you know, I did all the normal stuff, you know, software updates and

and kind of like basic maintenance stuff and it it kind of helped. And then I actually got the idea to uh maybe use AI for this. So I installed Codex. Can't actually really run that well natively on a MacBook that old. But once you install it, you can uh run it in terminal. So I opened up terminal and I started asking Codex to, you know, help me find ways that I could optimize the performance.

of the Mac, s if it could help me troubleshoot the Wi Fi issue and it actually was able to give me a bunch of suggestions, figured out the Wi Fi issue, which took like a few steps, had to do some stuff with my home router, but now it's running better than it has in years. And

it just kind of made me realize that, you know, if you're willing to put in a little bit of work and um, you know, to the point that Dan was just making, uh, you know, you really can make these older devices last uh so much longer, you know, if you really kind of change your mindset around uh how long they're supposed to be for and you know whether you actually really need something new or if you can make the thing you already have work for what you need.

All right, that is two topics down, two topics left to go, which of course means it is halftime here at Clockwise. And this week's episode is brought to you by friends at Vitally, the AI-powered workspace for customer success management. Vitali's purpose built AI is for scaled customer success. It's there to help you better understand customers, to reduce churn, unlock growth, and always stay a step ahead. Basically all the things that make you great at your job.

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Yes, I would just like to know, uh what search engine do you use? Uh have you perhaps made a switch recently? And then I would like to hear your thoughts on typing in a search and getting an AI overview to kick things off. Uh Chris, we'll start with you. So my main uh search engine these days is Duck DuckGo, which I made that switch two, three years ago, I think. Um and that was in part uh, you know, refocus on my privacy and on uh tech that is

not as I think compromised as Google's stack is just now. So I had been using Google, as most of the world does. Uh switch to DuckDuckGo. It's broadly fine. The worst thing I think I've found is that it's rubbish for memes. If I'm trying to find a meme, DuckDuckGo's really bad at finding them, but so I will type in google.co.uk like a caveman and then put in my

uh search string there. Um but it's broadly it makes no difference. Um so switching your default engine, which you can do on like, you know, anything, is easy. I will sometimes use Google for not just memes, but sometimes it is a little better for some stuff. But I think defaulting myself to something that's not Google I think is a a good shot. Um AI summaries, AI overviews.

can be super useful. They can be a really good glanceable way of getting some information, especially for something that's quite low stakes. But I have two concerns. One is accuracy. obviously, and then the other one is uh I mean that information was scraped from somewhere. So all of a sudden somebody who wrote a thing that this question is being answered with is not getting a page impression and therefore add revenue based on that. And I

Don't like that centralization of uh power. Dan, are you less doomer than I am or more? I'm probably a little more uh set in my ways. I'm I'm still using Google as frustrated as I get with it from time to time, not only for the AI overuse, but generally just I think less relevance in the results. Uh, things like it's really impossible to find anything old on the internet. Um, which is frustrating when you're trying to do some research or dig up an old story or something.

I've been tempted by some others. I've used DuckDuckGo in the past. Um, I've sort of flirted with making it my default. I think I got frustrated at the time, and this was many years ago, because I felt the results were not as good as Google's, but I'm kind of willing to give it another shot.

I know a lot of people have been talked about Khagi, which I used a trial of and thought it was fine, but wasn't ready to pony up the you know, ten bucks a month or whatever to to get all the searching. I just I it's It's wasn't so much better for me in terms of what I was doing to make me feel like it was worth paying for. But perhaps that will change if Google continues to go on the downhill slide that it's been on. Carissa, what about you? Um I use Yahoo search. No, I'm just kidding.

Um Who's the mask jeeves? I'm I'm definitely still uh, you know, using Google ninety nine point nine percent of the time. Um say more just force of habit and ecosystem lock in and and all those things, although I definitely more and more see the appeal of something like duck duck go. AI overviews, you know, it's one of those things where I would be lying if I said, I don't ever do a search, see the AI overview, and then go, cool, and then, you know, move on with whatever it is I was doing.

Um but I do, you know, similar to what what Chris was saying as somebody who is in an industry that, you know, completely relies on uh people clicking on links and and web traffic. Uh there's a lot about AI overviews that really um is is troubling to say the least. Um and then I've also found that, you know, for anything that's not sort of a simple, straightforward uh search, I've I find that there's often either if not glaringly wrong, there's like often like nuances that are like actually just

not right. If you you know, for example, you often do an AI overview and then if you look at where it's sourcing, it's sourcing like, you know, Reddit threads, for example. And I'm somebody I'll go in and I'll tap into those Reddit threads and sort of look at the underlying conversation that this AI overview is citing. And I often find that it's not

quite characterizing it correctly so that like maybe it's giving you an answer, but then when you actually like kind of dig into its sourcing, like it's not really actually always giving you like a completely accurate or like fully contextualized result. So I do worry too that like it's sort of

degrading kind of the information ecosystem, I guess, for lack of a better word, because it's so easy to just kind of see that that thing right up top, read those two sentences and kind of move on and like not realize. um always like when it is making a mistake or like not giving you the full picture. So I think like there is kind of like a lot that is sort of worrying about uh AI reviews, AI search is kind of like move away from um just sort of like traditional search as we think about it.

Very well uh put there at the end. Um I I absolutely when it comes to these AI overviews, I obviously have concerns about I'm not sure. I've been very happy to hear just how many people are annoyed by them and are you know, DuckDuckGo is basically every chance they get letting everybody know about how many people are switching over to it. And I'm happy about that because my biggest concern when AI overviews started to really pop up was the idea that you'd type in something that is

is, you know, verifiable. And unfortunately the result that is returned is And I... accurate. And then that just gets carried through and carried through and carried through. So the fact that people are kind of not enjoying these AI overviews and looking for other opportunities is great. Um I will say that when I do a Google when I well, there you go. When I do a search, I do typically do a Google search. I will scroll past or use the non-AI mode, but I find myself rarely doing

searches like that online these days. I d typically am going to specific websites for specific things. And so um I don't do a lot of of of searching. But when I do, yeah, just a little scroll pack. All right. Thank you all for your answers on that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Chris.

We love tech, usually, most of us uh listening to this podcast or on this podcast right now, but uh tech should be in service of human creativity and I wonder and I suspect I'll get a good answer from Micah on this, but I'm not sure about the rest of you. Let's see. What is the last or next cool like craft project you've got coming up that your uh computer's gonna help you with? Dan? Bold of you to assume that I have any crafting expertise at all.

Um, I am not a particularly crafty person. I will say I have definitely used some like I've done some like ho home improvement stuff. uh using um some technological tools. I mean some of just like installing smart like light switches and stuff like that. Um I would say the sort of craftiest like art

stuff I do I mean that's writing. I mean I just use computer I just type on things, guys. I'm not I'm not excited here. I don't do exciting craft projects. I wish I had a better answer for this, but I've really never been a terribly like uh like good person for for coming up or building things.

I've definitely helped my kid with some stuff, but like I think it's largely at this point still like building stuff with duplos rather than building anything that's super creative. But I I'm hoping that maybe the next generation will change that and maybe that will I will get some of that craftiness. uh in like a reverse osmosis fashion. That's the best I can hope for, unfortunately. Carissa, what about you?

Yeah, so what came to mind was my dad recently had a milestone birthday and we decided to use one of those uh online services where you can make like a custom vinyl record for somebody. And so we did that and then part of the the fun thing about it is you get to design the, you know, actual like album cover that goes with it.

So we kind of collaborated on it. I I used Photoshop to make a photo collage, you know, for the backside and then for the front of the album we used a a photo of him that we had and then um One of my relatives used uh ChatGPT to kind of make it into sort of a you know, photo illustration kind of type image.

of him and then you know use that to like add some text and and kind of make this this custom cover and it ended up you know looking really cool and like I think we were all kind of surprised by how how good it came out and it was a I don't know if that's really crafting because ultimately it was you know the

third party company that was actually kind of putting the thing together, but it was a really fun project and definitely something that we all kind of used a little bit of tech for along the way. What did the pirate say on his eightieth birthday? Aye, matey.

So what I am doing, um I'm gonna be going to the Renfair soon and Something that I didn't we never did when I was in high school and went to the Renfair, but uh I learned at the Portland or at the Oregon Renfair is that people will bring little trinkets. and they will give you little trinkets. And then if you have trinkets, you can give trinkets to them. So I am going to be going uh as a pirate.

And I'm going to have tiny little um messages in a bottle, but inside, because I love dad jokes, aka puns, I have a bunch of different pirate jokes. And in order to do this, I have uh I I got this parchment paper and I'm going to be using my Cricut uh crafting machine, which is basically just computerized arm that moves or yeah, arm, I guess, that moves around and can cut, but also can write.

And so I'm going to have it write out these things on uh this parchment that I have. And then I'll be able to roll those up and put them into the little glass bottles and hand those out. and watch people uh roll their eyes and groan whenever they read the Various pirate jokes and I'm very excited about it, and I'm so glad you asked this question. I you did not disappoint Mike.

Um for me uh you might have heard of sun paper, which is uh sort of photosensitive paper you can put out in the sun and usually people would like lay flowers on them and that will expose the flowers through the sun. Um there's a process called cyanotype. But I'm gonna be using uh my computer and my laser printer to print those negatives on transparencies. Um and a friend and I have been talking about it for ages. We really wanna really want to do it.

Uh we've we've got everything now. We just need to like pick the images and do some tests which we'll be doing tomorrow. And ultimately what we're gonna do is make hoodies for each other that have got images printed on them. You can just slosh the photosensitive chemicals on fabric as well. So expose those uh through the transparency so we can transfer that negative image. And the positive. So we'll be walking art. Should we really fun.

All right. Well that is four topics down. Just enough time for a bonus topic. Before then I'll remind you to go over to Clockwise dot social for all of your clockwise swag needs, hats, t shirts, mugs, um beanies, everything. We've got it all. It helps support the show. We really appreciate it. Bonus topic time what is the farthest distance wise that you've ever been from home, Carissa?

Uh so that would be Argentina and specifically the south of Argentina, um uh an air uh town called Pariloche, which is sort of in the southern area, like in the I guess more northern part of like the Patagonia region, not, you know, all the way down south in the like where the glaciers are and stuff, but Definitely pretty far. My uh my husband's originally from Argentina, so so we go visit there um fairly often and and see family and uh to the rest of the country. Nice.

I'm convinced that this is the reverse of me asking if people have upgraded their TVs or if they have a newer car with car play, although I know that's changed a little bit. But uh that's because I've never been out of the country, so I would say Uh living growing up in Missouri when we would go to California, I believe that

The problem is Missouri's right in the middle or it's very close to the middle. So uh that makes it difficult. I don't know if that is technically farther, going to California or uh going to some of the northeastern locations in the US. Uh but yeah, somewhere somewhere around there, but still within the States. Chris, what about you?

Well, I also live in the middle, you know, literally on the prime meridian. Um so for me I had to check the distances. But uh Kyoto just wins about six thousand miles. But San Francisco's a little over five thousand miles the other direction. So it's between those two, but Uh Kyoto uh gets the prize. Nice. Yeah, I um I think it was my wife lived in India for a little while and so I spent a lot of time over there, but we also took a vacation at the end of her time there.

To the Maldives, which I am told is eight thousand seven hundred and about forty five miles from where I live right now. It's just above the equator. Uh There's no competition other than I win. Ha ha. Ha ha. Beyond that, everything's fine. Anyways, yeah. I'm not sure I I'm not sure yeah I'm not sure how much farther I could go without looping back on the other side there. So that's not bad.

Uh thank you all for your answer to that. And let me remind you that if you would like to get ad-free episodes with an extra unwound episode every week, you can become a member of Clockwise. Just go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up. For just seven dollars per month or seventy dollars a year, and you'll help support the show. And with that we have reached the end of this week's episode. All that remains is for us to thank our fantastic guest, Carissa Bell, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. And of course, Chris Finn, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, go make something. Uh and Michael, we'll be back next week. Um, but until then, we remind everyone out there listening: watch what you say. Bye everybody.