67: Everything That’s Good About Garlic

78 degrees in your house today. 78 degrees. You said that, and you know what the first thing that came to my mind was? What? Yeah, but what was the humidity? Oh, I should check. It's pretty low right now. You should check. Why do you not know that immediately? Well, I can check on the canary, but I have the little manual units that I use. I deploy around the house just so I know what the canary is.

You have one around your neck with a red piece of yarn. I have a latchkey child. Uh-huh. Or a latch humidity child. Just so you could know what the humidity was when your parents weren't there. They just tied it around your neck so you would know. I had to speak to a sorcerer named Tim.

answer some questions. I, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a strange time of year. It's a very strange time of year, but yeah, like all of a sudden, you know how it is like the different rooms that hit the, get the sun. You can see here. You got microclimates. You got microclimates in your microclimates. Inside the flat. That's right. In the lounge, it was 78 degrees. I still can't figure that flat.

business out because you did have that one ardent supporter who's saying that it's totally a thing in san francisco once again your flying monkey swept in to say that flat is not a thing even though they don't live in san francisco you know i was where we left it was like that i'm willing to believe it's regional but i expected

more regional people and so you did have one person saying totally it's regional like it's a thing we say here so on and so forth but just the one I don't know if there's oh yeah there's plenty like I've lived in Kansas my whole life and I've never heard flat and it's like thanks buddy no you've got your legion

out there i uh no i here's the thing i want to introduce a concept for this program whatever is in the show is in the show i don't want to do too much uh supra extra critical material outside the show i like to keep it in the show You know what I'm saying? You hear that? Can you hear that? Are you rubbing something? Yeah, I got this. A zipper. Yeah, I got this sweet new. Oh, Jesus. I got this sweet new jacket for my birthday.

But it's very noisy, so I'm going to take it off. See, I could do that kind of thing people do. to engage with social media where I go out and I say, Hey, quick poll, beep, boop. Have you ever heard flat use? I'm not going to do that.

Then you've got to talk to people. You've got to put one button, which is, I just want to see the results. And everybody clicks that one. It screws up the whole process. Why do you have to put that button? Why do people put that button? That's a good question. Because I think they feel like it scotches the results. that you can't see what people, it's got just people's reactions when they just want to see the results and they'll just hit anything, usually the clever one, the clever response.

You don't see that, though. You're on the Twitter effect. I just see a colon and then an empty space. Yeah. Oh, you know what? I just thought of something. I got a lot of bees in my bonnet tonight. Do you remember an option? I must be high. I feel like I remember an option. There was an incantation at one point, I feel like on iOS 10, where you could phrase things.

a certain way in iMessages, and it would get presented as an easily respondable, where you could say, like, for dinner, do you want... Yeah, do you want to, you know, Italian or Indian, and you had a thing that had Italian and Indian. Did I imagine that? I recall that as well, but I'm trying to remember the context. Was it iMessage? Was it the Messages application? Let me try it right now. I'm going to say, for dinner, I'm doing this from macOS, so it probably won't work. For dinner, do you...

Want Thai or Chinese? Oh, I know what it was. It was on the watch. On the watch is where it is. Oh, is that it? So if you get a text message that is phrased the way like that so that you don't have to type a reply, it tries to extract the two things and you get a button. for each of the options, and you send that back. I wouldn't mind that in all of the places, because that is a lot of what I, not a lot, it's a fair amount of what I do, is like, do you want this, this, or this? Yeah, yeah.

Here's my worry about that. Kind of like the poll thing where people just click to see the poll thing to see the results. I'm not sure there's enough intentionality involved in clicking the button for me to trust. that it represents. We need the double-key system for sending off the nukes, right? Yeah, turn the key, sir. Exactly. It shows that, no, you really want to do this. Whereas...

If they type a thing, if they type Italian and they typo it or whatever, an autocorrect or anything, I feel like they actually want Italian. But if I get the response back that they tapped on one of the bubbles, was that an accidental tap? Did they not understand? like what what would happen when they tapped it and they tapped it and now it's too late and i feel like i need a follow-up answer to say just to confirm you understood that by

putting your finger on the screen and touching that word that said Italian, you were telling me that, you know what I mean? It's like, it's too much. Do you agree to the terms and conditions? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, you know, the reason I like that, though, is if I say, do you want Thai or Chinese? or Foo, you know what's not an option on there? Whatever I want. Because that's not the answer that I want. I'm asking you because I want to know what you want. Yeah, they probably have a macro for that.

Yeah, I should probably get quick keys on my watch, something like that. I'm also mad, and I'm going to just get this out of my system because I'm actually in a pretty good mood considering. I got a delivery attempted today. Okay, so here's the thing. And they, quote unquote, attempted a delivery yesterday. And it was during the very narrow window when I was picking my kid up from school. That's fine. That happens. I had to sign for this particular thing, FedEx.

So I made a point of making sure somebody was stationed at home all the time. So the girls just got home about 6.12 my time. And I said, hey, I love you. I'm going. I'm going to go talk to the yucky John Syracuse and I'll give you a kiss when I come home. Bye. Hand it off. I get to the office. Guess what's waiting for me in deliveries? Delivery attempted. At 6.14, business was closed. Now, that doesn't seem crooked to me. Do you get this? Do you ever get this?

Why did it say business was closed? Does it think you're a business address? No, it's the generic nobody was home. It was delivery exception, customer not available, or business closed. Now it's back in South San Francisco, which is not really San Francisco. I've been hearing a lot of complaining about this on podcast.

lately, and I think it's all from people who live in cities. I think that's what it boils down to. There's just too many packages to deliver and not enough time and not enough people. I think you're right. I think the fact that it's good and dark here, it's late. It could be that guy with the green hair. That guy's bad news. You don't listen to Back to Work anymore. There's this one guy who's a total rogue agent, one of our FedEx drivers. He's a total rogue agent.

And his famous move with me is I come down to greet him because I know what his M.O. is. He comes halfway up the steps. He throws a box up the steps and says, enjoy and walks away. At least he says enjoy. Oh, I think he's been a little sarcastic.

Oh, all right. I thought it was blue apron. It's a better way to cook. He throws the blue apron box? That's an achievement. He throws the blue apron. Yes. That's very heavy. It is. Anyway, that frustrates me. And you know, it used to be it was just the postal service you would get that with. UPS, but I always felt like FedEx was a Federal Express, as we called it. I always felt like they were pretty good at stuff like that. They always seemed pretty on the level.

Yeah, I think I'd be angry about this too, but so far I'm pretty sure it hasn't extended to the suburbs, more or less. If we miss a package, we legit miss a package. I don't think I've ever had one say that a delivery was attempted when I was home. So I'm still isolated from the big city problems. Yeah, well, I'm normally sort of like...

I'm pretty burned out on the whole Apple frenzy thing. I do know how frustrating that is. Like if you're waiting for... an iphone or something like that and you get your fomo and you're sitting there and like my curly's case he's like sitting there with his shotgun on the porch like watching scanning i don't know nando's i don't know who delivers there but you uh but you but you look out for that orange is that the service i don't know

It's frustrating, though. We should cut all this out. Speaking of Apple stuff, you sent me a screenshot and I noticed it's a very tall screenshot. No! No, what? I mean, you've got a new phone. You don't want to say anything about it? I already have dealt with this. I'm returning null on this entire issue. Well, so what did you have before? What phone did you have before? Oh, my God. Just tell me what phone you had before.

Oh, my God. It'll be painless, I promise. I can't stay out of this. I think I'm out. And then what do you do? What? What phone did you have before? You pull me back in. I'm not pulling you anywhere. I just want to know what phone you have before. I will talk about this with you if you like at the link that you would like. This is your show. I had a iPhone 7 Plus that I was very, very happy with and I still think is terrific. So why did you get rid of it?

I haven't gotten rid of it yet because I want to make sure – well, you know me. I want to make sure I got all my – two-factor stuff squared away my biggest paranoia and one reason that honestly that keeps me from changing a primary device is just this feeling in my gut of like how central your, I don't know, what do you call it? For most people, your iPhone. That is your place where you receive the SMSs, or in my case, it's where I get Authy, it's where I get Google Authenticator.

All those different things. And I just sweat that so hard. You know me, right? I go into this real prayerful state. I got everything right here. I've bookmarked all of the exact instructions for each one. It's actually not that hard. Maybe it's a little too easy, but I, uh, that one's still around. I might get rid of it. It's, it's like, why did you decide to get a new phone? Oh, I'm sorry. Um, Why did I? I was, I mean, candidly.

I'm breaking my rule to not talk about this. I will talk about this. I candidly was very curious about how Face ID worked. And the fact that it was one of the primary things that made me... Skeptical. And then a lot of people, I think including you, maybe not so much you, but a lot of people seem to say you almost stop noticing that you even need to do anything with it, which is totally not true. But I was really interested to see how that worked and what else was I curious about.

Everybody talked about how fast it was and how good it looked, and that was appealing to me. Do you get a phone every year? I haven't kept track of your phone. I generally do. But it's not on a schedule. It's more like it was the day before my birthday, and I thought I deserved a treat. You give up your spot in line to somebody.

I may ban you. If this many topics is any indication, I may ban you from listening to that show. I'm usually so flattered that you listen to anything that I do. You may be banned from Dubai Friday after this. We're going to have to see how it goes. I dabble in podcast networks. I have too many podcasts. can't religiously uh listen to that many of them so i hop from podcast to podcast random episodes here and there um

Yeah, no, that's that's all I wanted to know, because because I knew you were you were taking this strong stance of not having a strong stance on new phones. And I'm just and I guess I had forgotten that you did you generally get a phone new phone every year or so? Well, now it's now it's died down. So it doesn't feel as bad. It was suffocating for a while.

The extent to which... Did you consider perhaps just like sitting it out to be like, I like my phone just fine. I'll just, you know, I don't have an opinion on this new one. I don't want to hear about it or deal with it. Why don't I just, why don't I just spend another year with my phone? Here's the part about that position that's... going to sound very odd to people which is my not having an opinion about this encompasses many many worlds like there's the part of me that's like

you guys, I don't need a third episode on how you tried to get a phone. Like, stop. Like, I love you so much, but please stop talking about this. It's so not interesting. And I didn't want to contribute. to the noise about that, whether I liked it or not. But with that said, of course, I love Apple stuff. I've been using Apple stuff for 30 years. This year it's 30 years. I love Apple stuff. And I do like having, it's not so much a FOMO.

latest and greatest. It's more like, but I mean, but it is nice to have something that is better than what you had before. There's... Something unimpeachably great about a super strong product. And all signs pointed to, with a few little niggles, this being an extremely strong product in most regards. So, I mean, I'm not made of stone. But to be honest, it was that I woke up.

And I did the Syracuse method. I did what I had been doing twice or three times a week, which is just for fun. I would go and look at my cart and see what it said. And it just so happened that this one day it... 7.20? I feel like it was last Saturday, maybe. I think it was last Saturday. Something like that. Anyhow, I looked and it was like, yeah, in-store available for pickup today. I was like, why not? And I did it. And I really do...

I like it quite a lot. What color did you get? The space gray. I thought I would like the way the other one looked more, but I don't. Yeah, me too. I really thought, because I got the Series 3 in the silvery color, and I think it looks kind of sharp. It looks different, right? But I do keep it in a case, because it sounds crazy not to keep it in a case.

with how easily it breaks. I have a leather case. But I love the way the edges feel. So are you going caseless right now? I forget. I don't even have this phone, remember? Oh, sorry, your lady got it?

Oh, of course. I'm sorry. I do listen to your program. I forgot. Yes. Anyway, I've just got my 7. You couldn't even really play with the face ID. Exactly. But I've got my 7 and I've got a leather case. And if I got this phone, I would also probably get that leather case because I like the leather case. This is a nice compromise between grippiness and like...

ability to slide into a pocket it's uh i'm not usually the person who's all into the materials fetish but uh i i think it's it feels really good in your hand

Let me just get through all the stuff that I – I'm not drawing this out. If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to. I just – No, it's fine. I just – I – yeah. So it does feel really – good the screen i guess you know i'm kind of blind i'm kind of deaf like i do notice the speakers are louder i do notice the screen looks good it's one of those apple products though where i don't notice how much better it is until i look at the other one i get

Get used to how it looks pretty quickly with a new product. Same way that something feels really fast for the first day, and then a week later, you're not noticing it as much, usually. But it does look really beautiful. I like that you can do things that are totally black. That looks really sharp, like when you're in Overcast. I do like how fast it is. Two of them, maybe the marquee features. Well, let's do Face ID second. I have gotten used to the gestures.

staggeringly quickly. It took me about two hours to feel really comfortable using the gestures, which really, really surprised me. It still bewilders my daughter when she grabs it and there's no button. But I didn't have any problem. You guys were talking about the best way to get the switcher up. I haven't had any problems with that. It's been a champ. And I love the way it feels. Face ID.

is good uh the people who are saying you don't even notice it anymore that has not been my experience maybe i need to redo my face title but uh it's you do need to look at it a certain way It feels to me like the way that I would unlock it in a lot of situations is it's going to be off angle down below. And it seems to want to be raised three to eight inches from where I'm usually holding it.

to get a good shot in my experience. So it is convenient. And I love that you can do it to unlock all the apps and for your autofill passwords and all that stuff. That's all really, really good. I don't love hitting that button to buy something. That feels weird. For buying stuff, I like the Touch ID better. It was more satisfying to do as a thing. Face ID seems good.

I heard an idea about the touching the button to buy things. The idea that I heard, I forget, it was just some person sent an email to ADP or something. It was like that they always want to have... Kind of like the thing I just talked about where someone taps the choice between Italian and whatever for your eating. You want to have something that they're sure indicates user intention.

The user hitting a hardware thing, whether it be a Touch ID button or the power button on the side, is something that can't be faked by software, whereas all sorts of shenanigans could happen on the screen. Oh, right. To try to get someone to tap on something that didn't mean to tap or whatever. That's the idea I heard. It would be harder to emulate a hardware click. Yeah, it's kind of like unmaskable interrupt, you know, control, delete on a PC or whatever.

That is the ultimate form of intentionality and the hardest to be simulated. That's just an idea. I have no idea if that's true. It's interesting that we're... where they choose to do that like as as it gets easier and easier to buy things like you know how dangerously easy it is to buy things with touch id and now this is like that

They don't actually want to make it. They're not Amazon. They don't actually want to make it. So if you just glance at your phone the wrong way, like buys you 20 more paper towels, right? That's not Apple's MO. So they do want it to be efficient, but also... I don't want to have any silly stories about how...

Yeah, their kid bought all these coins. Yeah, they stared at their phone while eating dinner and all the while the phone was ordering things over and over again and it was caught in a loop and it was just reading their face or something. Who knows? I think it's smart. And the truth is...

I don't want to say security theater, but if it makes you feel more secure using it, that's probably not a terrible thing, you know, that you feel like you're breaking the glass, like you're doing it, like you say, with intentionality. Did you try turning off the attention thing? Not yet.

to you now makes you want to try that just for an evening to see uh the difference but you know i mean there's this part of me this old man part of me that still wishes i mean i know we don't have the button anymore but like i kind of wish we had to do two things like I can envision a world where I would really want both Face ID and Touch ID. You know what I'm saying? I know that sounds crazy. Yeah, yeah. But you know what I mean? But I mean, I'm not that freaked out about it.

I mentioned ATP. I thought it would be a bad phone if it had both of them. And mostly because, not because like, oh, there's too much security, but like user confusion. What thing should I be doing now? And the impulse to try one when the other one doesn't work. My finger's wet, so I'll stare harder. I'm staring, it's not working, so let me try putting my finger on this. There's a clarity to...

Just having to, you know, contort yourself to satisfy one system. If two systems are available, I feel like mentally, at least I would be like ping pong. Well, no, I meant further than that. I meant it would require both. Right, for super important things, but for the non-important things. Yes. You think it should require them for all things, like even just unlocking your phone or just for, like, purchases? No, I mean, I think of it, what's an analogy? Like, you know, the mall is closed.

You can still get into the parking lot when the mall is closed because there's nothing of extreme value out there. But the big doors at the front open up at 10 a.m. when you come in. And then they have to roll up the gates. At exactly 10 a.m., they roll up the gates on the...

aunt annie's pretzels and now you can get in there but you still don't get access to the cash register right like you no matter how good a customer you are you don't get to go in the cash register that's kind of my mental model for this is I know this would add, just given the way that settings is already such a bear to get through, there's this part of me, though, that wishes...

You know, not so different from 2FA. I wish there were some things that had super privileges and other things that were just like whatever. And they do that a little bit already. You can have stuff on your lock screen, all that sort of stuff. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Does your lady like it? Judging by the number of complaints that she's been conveying to me about it, I think she's more or less used to it. I'm not sure if she considers it much of an upgrade. I mean, I guess it's...

faster than her old phone i think she likes the fact that it's a little bit smaller like it's nice compromise she liked the big screen but the other one was just so big but right mostly judged by the fact that she doesn't comment on her phone anymore i think it's fulfilling its role as

phone and not annoying her too much you know so well i'm you know i'm such a weirdo i have this ritual not every day but many days i grab all the devices i put them next to each other and I do app updates on all of them. I check for new software and I clean the screens. It's just a weird ritual I go through. And so the, um, 7 Plus is still in service. It's still getting charged up, still getting updated because I'm not ready to sell or mothball that because I want to make sure I didn't forget.

you know, something with authorization. I don't want to lock myself out. I'm a raving paranoiac about that. I want to wait at least a month, a cycle of bills, a cycle of logins, make sure I'm totally set. But it is, in the same way that it is very striking, to hold and use my daughter's iPod Touch after having a 7 Plus. It does actually feel kind of weird. The 7 Plus is not ungainly large to use, but it definitely feels...

big, and the new one does feel quite comfortable to use. In screen grabs, you're right, it's so clear how tall the screen is. It's very, very odd. But in practice, it works just fine. And the notch doesn't bother me, which surprises me too. This episode of Reconcilable Differences is brought to you in part by Squarespace. You can learn more about Squarespace right now.

by going to squarespace.com. And when you're ready to buy, please use the offer code DIFFS, that's D-I-F-F-S, at checkout, and then I'll get you 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace, because Squarespace... lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and so much more. Maybe you want to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog.

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Squarespace for the folks in your life that need a website. They want to maybe get off a social media site or augment their presence on the web with their own personal bespoke website. And you do not want to be in the webmaster business. I have been in the webmaster business. It's not a great racket. Point your friends to Squarespace. Now here's the crazy part. Squarespace plans start at just $12 per month. You can start with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com.

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You had opinions about it. Yep, yep, yep. Your Apple TV update is officially out, it looks like. It's out of beta. So I've been told, but yeah, you've been using it in the beta and it's been fine. So the actual release is not eventful for me, unless it breaks stuff. I'm assuming it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But...

What else was I going to say about the phone? It's good. I need to clean house. I need to get rid of a lot of apps. But I think I went through and I think I've consolidated most of my... two-factor things into a couple services that I'm confident in and sort of, you know, brought them together. But I don't know. Do you sweat that stuff? I've been very happy with the transfers. I mean, I only did one phone transfer, but I've done, I didn't.

several iPod touch transfers and one phone transfer. And I have really haven't had a problem with any of the, the two factor stuff. Like it's all. especially with like the iCloud restores and everything, everything's all still there. Everything's in all the authenticators. I've never had to redo anything. So now I just take it for granted that when I get a new phone and port everything over that I won't be missing anything.

Like, I wipe my old phone pretty quickly after. It's probably good to test it all, though, just to be sure. Yeah, you just launch the app I want to see. Like, I launch, you know, whatever authenticator app, and I scroll through the list and say, oh, yeah, that looks like most of the stuff. Like, you know, in the end, I feel like there's...

Most of these things have all sorts of emergency outs of, like, if you lose all your stuff, here's the super secret codes you should keep in your safety deposit box. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, one thing I like about the 1Password way of doing things, I don't use it for all of them, but for example, one service I use generates, you do an email address and password and immediately prompts you for the verification code.

And in the later, more recent versions of 1Password, I don't know, this might be bad. It feels good. When you enter it in, it automatically puts the code, a current code in your clipboard.

So basically you can just log right in without having to go to one. You know what I'm saying? Have you, have you experienced this? I know what you're talking about. If it generates like a six, yeah, you generate like a six digit code and get a little pop up on Mac OS that says, okay, your temporary code is in, just paste it in and that works. And then it just replaces.

the clipboard in like 20 seconds. And that's really good. I always forget on iOS that you can copy and paste the authenticator codes. I always just end up memorizing them frantically and retyping them. Usually all you have to do is tap them and put them in the clipboard. That is so stressful. That is so stressful. Let me ask you a question. This occurred to me the other day. Maybe this will be our dumb security episode. So you've had occasion, let's just be general, to use things like Authy.

or Google Authenticator. You're familiar with using an app like this to generate a time-sensitive time? Yeah, okay. Am I dumb or doesn't it kind of seem like those apps should... have password protection on them. I don't think the one that I use for most things, I don't think has that. Yeah, I think what they're the reason they don't have it is they are relying like the whole whole thing behind this is they're relying on your phone.

as the the thing you have the secure device and once you once you're into your phone there's not a second level of locks all right so that's that's the whole premise that this phone belongs to you only you can get into it only you have it um

And I guess they feel like they don't need a second thing, especially with time-sensitive stuff if you're typing in a bunch. It's like you could have locks within locks within locks where to get into your... authenticator app you need a password so you have to pull that password out of one password and to get into one password like it's just I don't know it's never really bothered me because

I feel like once I'm on my phone, I'm into sort of the inner sanctum of security at that point anyway. Did you see that article going around? I didn't listen to all of the latest ATP, but did you see that article going around about... The guy who wrote about his concerns with the way things like iTunes backups are handled with iOS 11. Did you see that article?

Yeah, and I saw a second article that was talking about all the same stuff but had the exact opposite conclusion, that Apple had actually made things more secure when they were previously. And they both had their reasons, and it really depends on how you look at it and what you consider. Too far. The first article seemed to say that, I guess this person has some bona fides in the security world. Maybe you can help me find that article. Had said that up until through iOS 10.

this person felt that this was a really, really sound system and that you really, it was, it would be difficult. I think it was along the lines that like, if you do an iTunes encrypted backup on your Mac, there's a unique. I guess, key or whatever that's generated by your phone. So like if that it's phone based and that that isn't the case with iOS 11. I think the idea was that if you had your phone, your phone's pin.

you could decrypt all sorts of things that you weren't able to decrypt before so that like your phone's pin was sufficient to get at not just into your phone but also to decrypt like itunes backups or something like that the gist of it was that um even if you had two-factor enabled your phone's pin acted as this one mega factor that you could work around stuff and the second article i read was uh it used to be that if someone stole your phone while it was unlocked

they could like change all your passwords and take over your life. Like the idea of you're talking on your phone on the street and someone swipes it out of your hand, you know, like it's already unlocked and they get it. Um, uh, and. It used to be that if they did that, you were in big trouble because now they basically had your unlocked thing and they could...

go to your email and do forgot password and do resets and so on and so forth. And that in iOS 11, they changed it so that if you want to do any of that stuff, like, so hi, you've got your unlocked phone, but you want to start resetting some passwords and changing the person's Apple ID password and stuff. Oh, you still need the code.

Then it asks you for the pin and it didn't use to. So two different, I mean, they can both be true that the person who was complaining about the pin is now more powerful than it was for like decrypting backups. That could also be true. But on the other side.

they're at asking for the pin in in this situation where someone grabs your unlock phone so i don't know like i was i worry about that i worry about the the power of the phone i worry about the power of the phone more than i worry about the power of my email because i feel like my email

I mean, it's connected. Your email is such an important thing for you to get at lots of other stuff, so you try to lock that down as securely as possible, but the phone is partially a way to get into your email because if you have any sort of two-factor stuff. No, just keep an eye on your phone. Yeah. Put all your eggs in that one password basket and then watch that basket.

I noticed before, by the way, how do you pronounce your mother's sister? Ugh, don't ask. Do you have like a set way or you just fluctuate? No, I've capitulated. My entire life, everyone in my family, everyone I know, if you're referring to the sister of a sibling, or sorry, the sister of your partner. I always said aunt. Always. Never said auntie.

You always say aunt. You say aunt and uncle. And that is strictly verboten in my household. That is seen as really, really savage. And unfortunately, I have a sister-in-law whose name is Anne. And so now my brain... I did get a snap to grid on Ann, where now I call her Auntie Annie. Because before, you talked about the pretzel place in the mall, and you said...

Aunt Annie. Something like that. Which is something I don't think I've ever heard anyone say before because the name so clearly is begging you to say Aunt Annie. I know. This is what they've done to me, John. These people are monsters. You should tell them that you found yourself saying Aunt Annie and say, huh?

Huh? I mean, because no one could be in favor of that. I don't even know if I said it right. I might have snapped a grid, double snapped a grid and mentioned my sister-in-law. Tell her I said hi.

No, I don't like it. Now, what about you? What do you say? What do your people say? I don't think I've ever found myself saying aunt. I suppose I could be pulled into it if I was having a conversation with someone who kept saying aunt, but I'm pretty much... much ant all the way i recently heard somebody on a podcast an american person who very i think it was on chapo very unselfconsciously said rather especially on a show like that it's kind of weird for this guy to say rather

Isn't that odd? Do you get that? Is that a Boston thing? I have not heard that. I have not heard that. I think that gets into the realm of some weird Madonna fake accent thing going on. It's an affectation. All right, so we have a mini topic here that I just wanted to touch upon. Oh, yes, you certainly do. Yes, you there. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to talk about too much. Delicate interplay. That's all right.

Go ahead. On another one of your programs, you had some segment where all the hosts found themselves talking about garlic. I was talking about how I prepare what is called a standing rib roast or a prime rib. And I mentioned... I like those little cubes of garlic that are frozen that you get from the Whole Foods. And it's a nice, simple way to deal with garlic. And you've made that a mini topic. That's not the topic I'm talking about. I don't even know what those things are.

You know, I'll leave that to I feel like it was addressed on the program. But there was a question that came up in the discussion of garlic and it was about garlic presses. And this is the first time I'd ever heard sort of any. You're telling me I'm getting off the hook that easy? Any.

I can put you back on the hook if you want, but honestly, I have never, I don't know what those things are. Yes, I understand your description, but I've never seen them for sale. I've never purchased them. I have no idea. how bad or good they are. But garlic presses, I do know something about. And there was some discussion over whether it's appropriate to press your garlic. Like, is this a thing that you should do? As opposed to like smashing it with a knife.

As opposed to anything else. There's all sorts of different ways. It had never occurred to me that there was controversy here. That some people were anti-garlic press for some reason. And I don't feel like that was fleshed out. I know it went to Twitter and they were all like, you know, asking all their friends, please tell me what you think about pressing garlic, you know, asking all their culinary friends.

The answer's well over the minute. Okay, now this, I'll allow this. I'm curious to hear about this. So where do you come down on the garlic press? I have one, and I use it, and I can't understand why it would be controversial. You can't or can't understand? Cannot. Rather. Yeah, I don't know either. I'm thinking maybe... So this is the Grand Unified.

Theory of garlic, and it's not very complicated. Garlic, if you ever notice what garlic is, it has a strong taste, and basically the more you mess with it, the more of that taste comes out faster. So if you take an entire head of garlic and throw it into something, it is not going to give up its garlicky flavor immediately or in a strong way. If you take a clove of garlic, you know, if you...

Crush it a little bit. Some of that garlic flavor is coming out a little bit, right? How much do you break up the cell walls? If you slice it, well, every slice you made is cutting a bunch of cell walls. It's more bioavailable garlicness. What if you mince it? Now you're cutting through even more cell walls and releasing its garlic flavor. Again, it's got the same amount of flavor. It's just a question of how fast is it released and where. And garlic press is the ultimate...

Give me all of the volatile chemicals that are in this garlic immediately now in maximum dose fastest as possible, which means that it will dissipate the fastest as well, which means you shouldn't like, you know, if you're going to. cook it to death, then you will basically guarantee that all of the garlic flavor has been, you know, dispersed and cooked away.

so if you want the garlic flavor to be slowly released on over time or you want to be able to eat some garlic as part of the dish and taste the garlic flavor instead of just this pulpy mess that has had all its flavor dispersed already like that's the continuum and i always consider garlic press on it's as far as you can go because a lot of recipes call for you to mince things but

Who's got time to mince girls? I mean, like the other thing is, and this is not exactly what you're saying, but like if you are going to do something like a sauce or a stew. and let's say you don't want it to be overpowered with garlic, or maybe let's say there's somebody in your family who's not opposed to the taste of garlic, but doesn't want to bite into garlic. That's another nice thing where like a bit of a clove, what do you call the individual pieces? The individual...

Clove. Head is the big thing. Clove is the little one. Okay, so a clove that you've cut the skin off of and tossed in there. That way you say to yourself, okay, I know there's five garlic cloves in here. I need to retrieve those before I serve this. That can be good. Whereas on the other hand, the garlic press, I think is...

really good if you want to if you want to do some sauteing because it kind of melts easier yeah you won't see you won't see any garlic and it will get rid of all the flavor now you got to be careful because if you do that like all your garlic flavor could be gone by the time you're eating because you just

you know a lot of it went off into the air and you just crushed it and it went away so um i would say garlic press is just a tool you got to know when to use it and when not to use it and the only additional thing i have about uh cutting up garlic is My favorite shape that you can cut garlic into, like the sort of...

My go-to happy medium for dishes where I want garlic flavor and also I want to be able to eat garlic, like actually eat pieces of it, because I like doing that in things, is the, I guess you would call it the disc or the slice. So you're cutting it sort of across the core, right? Like a Goodfellas cut.

no because that was like over the razor blade making super little thin things that you know melt and whatever that's that's mostly bs and that's that's that's basically like your hand your hand pressing it or hand mincing it because you're trying to cut through every single cell wall on these single cell with sheets with the razor blade it's like right it's like it's like you're a pathologist doing slides exactly yeah that's that's a little bit silly

Discs that are maybe a couple of millimeters wide. Okay. Right. That is a, it's easy to do because it's not, it's not fussy. You just take the garlic cloves and you just slice, slice, slice. Each one goes into maybe, you know, five or six slices. They're big enough that you can see them and manipulate them. They, you know, it's not...

And they retain their flavor for longer because they're thick enough that they're not immediately giving up everything they have to give up. So I would recommend people look into the slice as a nice medium between. a crushed entire clove or a whole entire clove or mincing or crushing the the slice is the shape that i think most people overlook especially good for pastas where i think that it's with the pasta cooking time and

The amount of time you want to put into prep. Yeah, you can brown them a little bit. Look into that. That's a good one. Now for your... for your thing. So you sent me a picture of these. Hang on. Hang on. We'll get to that. I'll take my beating in a second. How do you, how much garlic do you get when you get garlic and how do you store it?

I store it up in the little thing outside of the fridge with the onions. You keep it in a bespoke garlic box. It's like a wire mesh basket. So it's kind of out in the open. You don't feel the need to seal that or refrigerate that. No, not refrigerated, not sealed in any way. I usually keep it up high. I don't know why. It's just where we have a little pasket. Don't put garlic or onions near potatoes that don't like each other. Don't feed them after midnight.

Exactly. Okay. Yeah. And how do I buy it? You buy it ahead of time. And you leave the heads up there. And depending on the season, they keep pretty well. Okay. All right. Yeah, I mean, my go-to back in the day used to be when I, I don't know where I first heard the trick of using the knife to kind of crush. You take it off, it's still got its little nipple on it, its little skin.

And you do the crushing, which Max, of course, felt like he was educating me about because he's such a wise millennial. But you do the smash, and then that makes it easy to take off the skin and the nipples. And then you can do whatever you want to do next from there, whether it's going to be putting it into the...

squeezy thing or doing a little slicey thing do you do that if i'm in a hurry to get the papery bits off yeah that's the fastest way to do it there are all sorts other weird techniques to do it as well but When I do the slice, if I'm making a recipe with sliced garlic, I don't do that. I want to slice the cloves with all their integrity. So I will...

snip off the ends to help get the papery bits off, but I do not want to crush it because what I want is fully constituted slices, not a sort of half-crushed clove that has lost its integrity and then slice that. I want complete, perfect slices.

So it takes a long time if you want to do that, if you care about that. If you don't care about that, by all means, take the paper off however you want to do it and then slice, slice, slice. Because that's the whole point of the slices. It's not too fuzzy. And you're not sitting there mincing for an hour or like... rubbing salt into the back of your knife to like make a paste all sorts of things to like do what the garlic press does but in a slightly nicer way

um but i i'll do that in a recipe where i don't want the slices and or like for example if it's going into the garlic press if it's going into the garlic press I don't care what the things look like, so I'll definitely do the side of the knife to smash just to get them into the garlic press as fast as possible, because who cares? You're about to be squishing them anyway. I never think about the cell walls. You give me a whole new dimension to this.

It's all about the cell walls. It's all garlic is. I know that's true with the corn. I know corn's all about the cell walls. I didn't know that about the garlic. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you got the cubes here. You got these. is this crushed garlic is it actually like what do the cubes look like are they just like imagine garlic that had gone through garlic press but then like that pulp is made into cubes and frozen almost exactly the size of a sugar cube

crushed garlic the size of a sugar cube and you pop it out and it thaws super quickly and you can just toss it into your thing. No oil, salt, lemon concentrate. All right, here we go. Here's the problem with these things, like garlic. Oh, you're right. It's got a lot more than garlic in it. Look at that. Once you have...

Once you've broken those cell walls, the timer starts. Everything in there that's good about garlic is volatile and is going to react with everything else around it, including the air. And I know they're trying to freeze it to try to say, you know, okay, it's starting to do that thing, but quick, freeze it! I don't know. I've never tasted these things, but I have to imagine they, at the very least, taste different than...

what garlic should taste like. And I'm not sure the convenience they're providing is... It depends on your environment, I guess, but... Garlic keeps really well, especially in the wintertime or in dry weather. You just leave it up there. They'll sprout eventually. But even after they sprouted, you can salvage. It's not a big deal to just essentially always have garlic around when you need it. And it's not that big a deal to pull it out.

Life is about trade-offs, John. It's very convenient. If I had nothing to worry about except the... wallpaper-esque evening that I'm having with my partner as we sip red wine from an oversized glass in the kitchen and leisurely make our dinner together. If that was all I had to do, my goodness, I would have artisanal garlic and I would slice it like a gentleman.

It's just that this kind of also keys into my tofu recipe, which for the third episode in a row, I am taking this thing to a whole new level. My tofu recipe is on point at this point. It's last night I made it. And I made it with this garlic junk. I also have some sliced ginger. I don't know if you have a feeling on ginger, if you like to grade it or how you do it. Ginger, sesame seeds, sesame oil, soy sauce, black pepper. I didn't have any white pepper.

And then you fry that in the pan. And I got accolades from my lady friend about that. Like I've gotten about very few things I've ever made. She certainly does not compliment my meat anywhere near the way that she compliments my tofu. You got all that stuff going on in there. Maybe you can get away with this stuff. Here's the thing with the convenience foods like this. If you have them enough, it sort of becomes part of the recipe.

like that you can't use the fresh version like we all know recipes like the what do you call the casserole thing with the canned mushroom soup you can't make that with if you try to make with like I made my own fresh mushroom soup like no you've now messed up the recipe yes like

So you just get used to it tasting a certain way, regardless of whether this stuff tastes anything like garlic. If that's the recipe and that's the thing that they like, if you were to substitute regular garlic after feeding them this thing for a year, they'd be like, oh, it tastes different this time. Do you like it better? No, make it the old way. I like it the old way.

that's that's the danger this danger of convenience foods the danger and the glory of convenience foods that eventually that just like me with the yellow mustard like me with the bright yellow french's you know mustard that i never had my whole life but then the dining hall served and that eventually

That's what I have to have on my hot dog, even though it's crap compared to the quote unquote real mustard. It's just is what you get used to. Yeah, it's just totally true. But it's also funny, like with little kids, like if I were to say to my daughter, hey, how would you like a meal with lots of garlic in it?

Like, no way, not interested, thank you very much. That's too close to an onion, no thank you. But she loves garlic bread. Yeah, do you make garlic bread? I don't. We sometimes get it as a side thing when we get delivery Italian food. I usually throw that in my kids' face when they complain about too much garlic and things. I'm like, when I make garlic bread, you guys can't get enough of it.

Like, that is the garliciest thing that we make in this house, basically. It makes the whole house smell like garlic. But it's got the butter and salt. It's the butter and salt, man. Like, that's my daughter would just live on butter and salt. But it's not like the garlic flavor is subtle. I'm using real garlic. And I use the garlic press for, you know, press the garlic into the butter and like cook that. That sounds good.

That butter is entirely infused with all the goodness that that garlic has to offer. And then butter on the bread. Sprinkle some Kraft Parmesan cheese on top? Nope. Nope. Yeah.

That's where I draw the line on convenience food. Is that where you draw the line? I'm willing to entertain the idea that you're making a stir-fry with these little cubes of whatever the hell they are, right? Yeah. If you're going to make Parmesan cheese, either get Parmesan cheese or don't. There's plenty of other cheeses you can get. that are fine but like if you're going to get parmesan just get the real thing

Or just don't get it. I follow your advice from your post, which we'll find for our annual discussion about pasta. Yeah, no, I get the Parmigiano Ricciano. Is that what it's called? Yeah. Next time, not for this, not for stir fry type things, but if you make some recipe, probably some Italian recipe, some pasta recipe that has garlic in it, you should try the regular garlic and see what the time sink is. First of all, yes, I will do that.

I will absolutely do that. I just also want to stipulate that's how I cook things with garlic for 30 years. For 40 years. This is something my wife picked up at Whole Foods a few years ago, and now we use. I'm aware of garlic as something that can be sliced or minced, or I'm aware of those things. I just...

I don't know why I feel the need to defend this, but that's how I made garlic things for as long as I've been making food with garlic. Well, maybe you like the taste of this. Does this taste you like garlic or does it taste like another taste that you like? No, I mean, it imparts a garlicky taste.

So it does taste like garlic, do you? It's just a more convenient way to get it? Well, yeah. You can taste the lemon. You can taste the canola oil. It really brings out the essence of the cell walls. Is it lemon concentrate? The cell walls.

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I noticed a pattern. Okay, Stuart Wellington. I'm going to see them on Saturday. Oh, the San Francisco show, right? Yeah, I'm excited. Stu got me on the list. You going to introduce yourself as Merlin Mann from the internet? I'm going to take something for them to sign because my daughter is so freaking envious that I'm going to see them. They're going to feel bad that you're letting your 10-year-old daughter listen to their show. Not appropriate.

We watch some of the little videos. I'm an unborn letter with so much potential. Some of those videos have bits in them that are probably not. What, the purposeoid story? That's totally normal. I like those guys a lot. I really I don't I don't I know how it is to go. and perform and travel and do all that stuff. It's very stressful. And he's got a bad back. He's got a terrible back right now. He's having an awful time. I really hope I get to meet them. I really would like to say hi.

And I'm going to make Dan listen to my compliments. I'm going to tell him how much I enjoy what he does, and it's going to be really awkward. There you go. Also, give him some tips. That's what they're looking for, the tips and tricks. Dan, never get sick of that. You got any hacks?

You have any trouble with your email inbox? Before this episode starts, I just want to say about 15 minutes in, something happened with Elliot's audio and we don't know what it was or how to fix it, but... so it must this must feel like such a sisyphean thing to him like how like 10 years they've been doing the show something like that yeah no it's the demon haunted world

It's like man versus nature. There's no overcoming it. It's not a thing that can be mastered. Well, it's like he's Wile E. Coyote and Sound Quality is the Roadrunner. Yep. That's how it seems, like insurmountable. Because at this point, you're just like, this is the nature of reality and nothing...

There is nothing that can be done. And so we just sit back and we enjoy it. We just let it happen. I do. I do. I bought this Acme podcast sound better pill. I'm excited about that. Anyways, love those guys. I noticed something. When did this start? So, you know, kids use computers and do stuff at school using computers. I think mostly probably starting around maybe first, second grade, but like definitely in third and fourth grade.

My kid's doing more stuff with the computer. There's testing. They all get accounts on a popular service with limited functionality to do things and get to docs. They get things like the services where you can do reading at home and then your teacher gets to see how well you're doing with your reading at home. I feel really weird even talking about this. But something that I noticed from fairly early on...

that at first just kind of tickled the hairs on the back of my neck but now drives me absolutely crazy um is that the what i would just generally call like the security let's be specific the password hygiene, the kids are learning, in my experience, is very bad and very damaging, very silly.

and maybe to the point I want to ask you about, I feel like it's a tremendous missed opportunity in the curriculum, not to make your kid a weirdo, but like at the same time that you're doing all these, um, modules and sections on how to be safe and stranger danger and lockdown drills like why don't we also teach them I mean they don't have to be perfect but why don't we teach them to be better than stupid about things like passwords and I just feel like it's

Starting with the teacher who has everybody on the two line and no BCC, like all the way down the line, it just feels like there's a certain amount of tone deafness. to beyond just the material, right? So the material, they are, you know, furtively, like honestly trying to make a real attempt to get people to get kids to be better at reading and doing their math and stuff like that. But I just feel like there is, on the one hand...

It's foolish to give kids crappy passwords that are actually literally guessable because of reasons we can talk about. But I also just really feel like it's a missed opportunity to make that part of their little education, is to realize that this is an important thing. It could be the first module in the same reason we explained why we have a lock on the door. Why aren't we helping them be better? And maybe my prologue aside now.

How do you feel about that? Do you see what I'm talking about? Am I being a weirdo? Are your kids getting better exposure to password hygiene than mine is? I have two minds about this because I do think that in every basic... school education up through high school we should be teaching kids basics about how to be safe on the internet because it's part of life and they should be taught it and the same reason

We teach them all the other things from how to write a check to sex ed to stranger danger. We teach kids these sorts of things. It's not vocational, but it's sort of... things you need to know to get by and practical information and it used to not be like you know i don't know when what decade sort of health class became a thing and sex ed became a thing but there was a time when that was not a thing that we taught people in school

And at some point, we all decided collectively that reading, writing, and arithmetic are fine, but there's a set of other things that are important enough. that we should tell kids about it. I think it was drugs. I really think it was drugs. When I first started getting health classes, the sex stuff and the don't get VD stuff was definitely part of it. But the hugest amount of what we covered in every health class I can remember was about the dangers of drugs.

and just books filled with images. I'll never forget an image of a shirtless, a black and white photo of a shirtless, probably 14-year-old boy with a bag over his head. dead from sniffing glue. And like that was very, and all the posters of people like with diseased lungs and all that stuff, like from smoking, that was, I think health class existed primarily as a way to keep kids off of alcohol drugs.

And similar. And the more high-minded ideal, you know, especially... in the times before aids but even after like the sex education yes it was all about how to avoid disease so on and so forth but there is a very important component of it i would say the core component that demystifies sex that if your parents didn't have any talk with you about it

Guess what? You're going to learn it in school and you're going to learn the actual real truth from an authority figure who you can trust. This is how it actually works. You know, sex, pregnancy, birth, demystifying an important thing. that everyone in the class is probably going to encounter in their life, and you should have some clue about it. And yes, there's safety stuff, but also just the basics. So I think internet...

security falls into that same category. Can I make one note on what you said? Because I think you accidentally just said, well, you said something that I'm realizing is really smart, which is that one element of education that's sometimes a little bit difficult to get your hands around is like, how do you... Whether this is algebra or condoms, like how do you introduce a kid to an idea to let them know how important this thing is likely to become in their life?

without the kind of full disclosure about exactly every little thing that's involved with that. Right. So like even before you learn about the Holocaust, there's still other historical things you learn. And even before you learn what happens if you, you know, use a glory hole, like there are still like baby steps to getting you there. And that's.

And here, we're not necessarily getting straight to the whole clown in a white van looking for his puppy, but we are able to give you some general heuristics for knowing when something doesn't feel right. So you're kind of teaching them how to get a certain feel for doing things.

for knowing what's important and doing the right thing even before they fully understand why they're doing that. Yeah, and there's that important ramp for a lot of these quote-unquote sensitive topics. But security is interesting.

Because it's not so much that it's a sensitive topic that we want to, like, ease people into it. Because there's no reason you can't just go... whole hog into like here's you know here's how to be safe on the internet here's how to use good passwords and security and so on and so forth like you could do that pretty much at any point because i don't think parents you don't have to send a note home to the parents tell them you're going to teach them about strong passwords right um but

It comes up earlier because it's so pervasive, right? Because they're going to encounter this not in the form of education, but in the form of... Oh, and we use technology in schools too. So what you're actually trying to teach you is reading or math or whatever. And incidentally, the tools we're using to do that use all this computer security mumbo jumbo that we haven't. explained to you yet right right and i kind of understand uh the desire to

Like the technology and security aspects of that are basically a barrier to getting to the learning part that they care about. And not even yet getting to the fact that the teacher may not be. super duper savvy and is certainly very time constrained. It doesn't, it would be, they don't have time to do support for a kid who's forgotten their military grade password. Right. And like it's the, for, you know, the tradeoff in security and convenience.

In that context, the earlier you go, the more they're going to say convenience 100 percent. Like if they were allowed, I think teachers would say no passwords for any children, no security whatsoever. Like because.

Anything that gets in the way of getting towards the learning that I care about. Because in my curriculum, my units, here's what I'm supposed to teach. And nowhere in my curriculum does it say anything about computer security. So everything that has anything to do with computer security.

is like damage. It's like... Right, it's taking time away from the thing that I'm being evaluated for. Right, exactly. And they're not going to be tested on it. I'm not going to be measured based on it. We're not doing that right now, so get it out of the way. Cynical, but totally understandable. And obviously... you know the downsides that are obvious like you're teaching kids terrible habits right but there i can imagine them considering an upside to it as well which is

This is another example of the other very important thing you're teaching, especially in early education of like how how to follow rules. Right. So there is an honor system. like pretend they all had no passwords. The whole idea is like, you're not supposed to go into your neighbor's desk and take their erasers, right? If you do that, that's against the rules of the class. You're not supposed to log in as the person next to you.

What's stopping you from doing that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing is stopping you. We have no security whatsoever. Pretend nobody has any passwords. No more than it stops a kid from breaking every pencil.

I mean, it's, there's this, there's this resource for the class and like, why, why would, why would somebody just go and destroy it? And so like the, the lack of security is kind of a feature in the, we're learning how to follow rules and be nice people. And like the, the honor system, very, lots of environments.

where young children are going to have to do something based on the honor system, which doesn't really get that name until later in life. But that is another important lesson that probably actually is on the list of curriculum for those kind of years.

teaching kids to get along with each other and to follow instructions like that, that actually is like spelled out explicitly as a thing you're learning in first grade or second grade, you know? So I have some sympathy for the idea that these, in these instances, people. They're not teaching about computer security. They don't want to teach about computer security. And they feel like they don't need it because the things they are teaching about following rules and using the honor system.

This dovetails nicely with it. And any problems they might have are problems that they... can deal with in the same way they deal with someone breaking all the pencils. Like that's the thing that they, that first grade class teachers deal with all the time. First grade class teachers don't deal with, I forgot my password and I have to constantly reset my password. That's not.

that's not something they're they're expected to deal with and they're also not modeling good behavior as you noted with everything on the two line just because they don't know um every every single teacher she's ever had yeah i mean like here's the thing so it's not just teachers um the the this the final aspect of this for me that I think it kind of makes me a little bit hopeless is the education system best case like gets everyone up to some sort of

A nice-looking bell curve, like an average. Most people are kind of in the stat part, and then we have extremes on either end. Mostly we want everybody to be... to meet some minimum criteria. Everyone comes out of school, they can read, they can write, they can do basic math, they can, you know, there's a minimum bar, right? When I look across the mass of humanity, especially now many decades, many generations into the internet age, it seems to me that...

The minimum, like what you can hope to expect from an adult who quote unquote knows how to use technology on the internet is that it's basically impossible on average for people to know how to use email quote unquote correctly. Basically impossible for people to use anything approaching.

a good password hygiene now it could be people say oh it's just a matter of education if you taught people from the beginning about how internet security how passwords work that they would they would take these good habits on into adulthood I not that I'm saying this is why you shouldn't do it, but I have some doubts about that. I because that that convenience versus security trail is always there. And I think even if you taught an entire generation from day one, super duper.

password hygiene that they would revert to the mean and they would they would say yeah i know all that but it's real convenient and I'm just going to make my password my birthday followed by my favorite baseball team and there's like literally nothing you can do to stop them in the same way you can't stop them when you're using computers two or three times a week there's so many opportunities for that to just kind of you know sneak in as something

I'm not saying like today, but I mean like in two years, three years, five years, isn't that something where we could sneak this in like through the side door? I'm saying if you taught them from the birth.

Like taught them an excellent curriculum, like exactly what they should be doing and drilled it into their head and required it as everything to do as part of their education that they would abandon that. Like they abandoned like the things they had to memorize for chemistry class once they no longer needed. know them for the test like that it's just like that it's human nature now the flip side of that is you could say something like uh sex education and unprotected sex

That has shown, that could be say, well, you know, humans and their sex drive, there's no way, no amount of education is going to change their habits. I think it has, right? So that's the hopeful angle. It's like, well, you teach them about birth control enough and you don't demonize it and you make it available.

that you do have new generations of kids that are much much much more likely to use birth control than previous generations and that could be just tearing down the walls that you know the sort of religious walls or whatever that we're stopping from doing it despite sort of knowing rationally that it's the thing to do right um

But that's the positive story. So I don't know which one computer security is. Is it like sex ed where we can really change the habits of a generation of kids if we educate early and often? Or...

Is it like the current situation on the internet where, you know, even the best of us do silly things just because they're convenient and in general, nobody cares about the security stuff as much as... they probably should and nothing will change that because it all just feels esoteric right until until there's a password dump and you see how many pencil 69s are in there yeah

that's the thing that discourages me that like it's not like you know this is the first generation and of course all the old people don't know about it we've had multiple generations go through this now there's and they use computers every single day and they're just not getting any better at they're just you know it's the the story

they always say of like how passwords are a bad system and that we need to come up with something different because it's a terrible system because because they're essentially not yeah they're not They're not human friendly, like the humans will thwart them by making terrible decisions, despite how much they know better. Yeah, I got a lot of thoughts on this. I mean...

Okay, so, but there are examples, and I think you're kind of nailing the really important part of this. And I say this in no way to disparage the very, very, very hardworking teachers who may not have expertise. in this, but definitely probably just don't even have interest in this, let alone time, let alone expertise. But I mean, think about how many things in school, especially in an elementary school, the staff, faculty.

go out of their way to over, not a virtue signal, but it's very important to them that they model certain kinds of behavior. I think a common thing that I'm very happy happens is that I think to a person, pretty much, no. Every person I have met at my kids' school goes out of their way to be kind, honestly. They are very, very kind. Now, I don't know if they're kind when they go home and have two glasses of wine, but they model kindness.

in everything that they do. The better ones also model patients. A lot of them model the ability to focus very heavily on a kid. Those are all things where you would expect or hope. out of a teacher of those things and thank god that that is the case i'm trying to get at something that is much more i don't know speculative which is that you know i think when we're ready to tell them

why you don't get into the white van with the clown who wants to find his puppy. When we finally have that discussion about, no, like kids who get in a van with a clown end up in a bad way. And here's very specifically why. Right. At some point, you're going to have that conversation with your kid. I am not looking forward to that. But there is a way.

to slowly build a path toward that conversation in a way that I think a kid can very much understand. And we do it in some ways by modeling, right? So I kind of have two minds here. I had to go look up the quote for this. I'm looking, you think about when a gunnery sergeant... Hartman is maybe almost his angriest with Private Pyle. It's when he goes in and doesn't have a lock on his footlocker, right?

And Jim will have to blip this. Hartman is screaming. This is in Full Metal Jacket. He says, if it wasn't for d***s like you, there wouldn't be any thievery in this world, would there? which I think is such an interesting thing to say. Like Sergeant Hartman has been there. He knows that, and obviously part of this just is you didn't follow my order and therefore you must be singled out. But part of that is a way to say that, look, again, to paraphrase my friend Chris's,

that locks keep the honest people honest. There's no way that we are going to stop bad things from happening. But like we all hold each other to a certain standard by all knowing that the lock on our locker works up to this point. There's something in that that I'm not qualified enough to turn into a curriculum, but there's something in that idea. It's not mean.

You're not being mean to strangers, but you're saying, I'm taking care of my own little half acre over here. I think when you say that to a kid, when you say in the same way the gunnery Sergeant Hartman is saying this to Pyle, you're saying, you know what? Even if you don't care about the contents of your footlocker, it's disruptive to the maintenance of this group to have somebody here who's not meeting the bare minimum.

of security and now you're actually kind of an attractive nuisance you've now become somebody where like you're inviting crime on a certain level so i i guess i feel like when we get to the point of talking about the white van with a kid it's going to be less complicated and difficult if all along the way we've said, hey, you know, belt and suspenders. These are the kinds of things that we do to take care of ourselves. When we leave the house,

There's a little checklist. We make sure we've done these things. We make sure the cat's got food and water. We make sure that the, you know, the pilot light is working okay. And we lock the door when we leave because that's the thing that we do. So flashback to, I want to say two years ago.

was when this first really hit me. So long story short, there was one of the various services that they were using. One of the things that required a logon was... I think I tried to describe this a little bit in the doc, but my memory of this was that it was a part of your name, basically that it would be like, it might be Jay Syracusa, for example, right?

But it was a pattern that was replicated through all the kids. It was all the kids, first initial and last name. Let's say for the sake of argument, right? The password that every child had was their... their student number. Like every kid in the class has a number from one to 26 or whatever. Just, you know, uh, it's your student number plus the same noun along the lines of password. Do you follow me?

Where does the noun come from? So your password is jsyracusa. Sorry, your login name is jsyracusa. It's your student number plus pencil. So your J Syracuse and your password is 22 pencil. And it's the same pencil. My login, my login name is M man. And my password is 17 pencil.

And just, if you couldn't figure it out yourself, everybody in the room knows everybody else's student number. It's an identifying characteristic of every kid in the room. When you do line, when you do a line, there's a name they use for this, but when you do the line time and you do the lineup.

You always go in a certain order with these certain numbers. Do you see where I'm going with this? Those are not... Yeah, that's certainly a login name. That's not a password. And so guess what happened? One of the kids in the class... Thought it'd be funny. This is like a second grader.

This is a kid I want to hire. The second grader went in and caused some havoc by going into other kids' accounts. It's not even guessable. You're not even guessing what it is. You know what it is. You know your classmate's first name and last name. You know what their student number is.

And you know what the noun is. And this kid went in and messed around and did some, as Brady would say, he was naughty. And they really brought the boom down on him. He got in a lot of trouble because he'd been hacking. When I heard that, I was very frustrated to learn that because on the one hand, I thought, well, good for him.

it's like back in the day when you would like turn it in and what was the thing you used to do where you could go in before passwords were everywhere and it wasn't finger but there was things you could do where you could like

you know, walkie talkie to everybody in the, on the domain and stuff like that, just as a kind of a prank. I don't know that for me, like that was the first time I felt the fear a little bit. And I was like, ah, there's so much wrong with this. There's so much wrong with the kids not having anything. Their first experience with having a name and password is that stupid and that pointless. They're imprinting on that. Unless somebody else comes in and intervenes, they're imprinting on the idea.

that a couple numerals plus a noun that anybody could guess is going to be any kind of protection for them. But then I thought it was actually kind of galling that that kid got in trouble. And he got yelled at for doing that. So there's two parts to that. one part is the demonization of hacking which I think is separate from how good the security is like the idea like sort of

The idea put forward by both movies and the content industry. Not separating hackers versus crackers. Or just that breaking into a computer system is... you know like the most heinous thing you can do it's like sure you know child slavery that's bad but breaking into a computer system boy howdy that's the worst part of it is like you know the

The bad thing that people can do that adults of a certain generation didn't understand. And that stigma stuck where it's like, I understand the world and physical security, but I have no idea about these.

darn computers and the kids these days getting into the darn computers and wreaking havoc and we got to bring the boom down kind of like the demonization of drugs with the ridiculous sentences of drugs ridiculous sentences for hacking the ridiculous sentences for copyright infringement all sort of

power structure systems feeling threatened by asymmetrical warfare using, you know, techniques and uh or substances or whatever that are just so outside the the realm of exploitation so that that demonization that's pretty terrible that's part of why like

If the kid had broken all the pencils, would they come down as hard on him as he, quote-unquote, hacked into their... No, because the pencil breaking is just something... Because he's a witch, right? He's a witch. Right, exactly, yeah. And they spin this out into like...

you know that no one spins out the pencil breaking to like when he's an adult he'll be breaking telephone poles all down the road and the electrical grid will go down because they'll be snapping those those like they don't extrapolate but with the hacking it's like he'll be breaking into the pentagon and launching the nukes right they just

immediately and so it's ridiculous right so there's that aspect of it the other part is like in this system where they're giving the kids like essentially all the same password or all the same password system like that that that screams a system where they just wish

passwords didn't exist like they don't want there to be any passwords which and honestly i think it would be fine if there were no passwords if anything the sort of school it that's insisting that they have passwords of any kind is uh propagating a fiction that

uh that those passwords will be worth anything like why even have it's like well you have to have a password and i'm in charge of school it and it's important for everyone to have passwords like they can't let go of that when they should because if you're not going to teach the kids Anything about computer security? As you said, is it better to have no passwords? Plenty of things in school have no passwords. There's no password for the pencil sharpener. You don't need one for the restroom.

Even though somebody pees on the floor in the restroom sometime, that doesn't mean we put a password on it. This episode of Reconcilable Differences is brought to you in part by AppOptics. You can learn more about app optics right now by going to appoptics.com slash differences. Application monitoring shouldn't break the bank.

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you're not teaching bad habits if it's clear to everyone this is just you just type in your name and you do your thing right once you add a password there because someone insisted that you have to have one but you don't want to deal you wish there wasn't one so you do that kind of system

i'm not entirely sure that that's going to make people have bad passwords in their adulthood because i think they'll do that naturally on their own but at the very least like but don't you see the missed opportunity kind of but make it well before i get to that i said to like make it be honest about what it is if you wish there was no password

there then that's the that's the environment you should have and you shouldn't be like well we're not allowed to use google docs because google insists that everybody has passwords and it won't let me set it or the school it like that's bad um So I wish those things were just essentially passwordless, and I'm a big proponent of the honor system and just...

Having people, you know, and that avoids all the hacking stuff, too, because there's nothing to hack when it's like. And it's also a different kind of modeling. Now you're modeling about the tragedy of the commons and how we avoid that by agreeing that we're going to treat this well.

And why you don't go into your neighbor's desk and take their cool eraser that they like. It's like, yeah, the desk is open. There's no locks in them. It's just this is the environment. This is the lessons that we're teaching. All that said, with the white van business and stuff, like, I think it is appropriate.

as early as possible to start introducing this topic, uh, generally, not as in connection to the place where we do our math quiz drill things, but as a separate thing entirely of like, put it on the curriculum as.

Today we're going to talk about, and you can use it as a model to say, now you may be wondering, we're telling you all this stuff about security or these basics, but we use computers and we don't use any of that. Why is that? And you could say, here's the difference like in school this is your account just for school it is you know you could you make analogies to the bathrooms and the pencil chopper to say you have you will have to distinguish in your life between things that

that we don't use security on and things that you absolutely should use security on. And then have the whole conversation about how you shouldn't, you know. put any personal identifying information in places where there's no security like have that whole conversation but use it as an example to show like not just that every single thing in your life should be super duper secure but that you should be able to distinguish between

The thing you do at summer camp to log on to the system that everyone logs on to, to like power their robots. Right. That is not, you know, that we have no security on whatsoever because we're all just sharing the system and it's just a fun thing that we're doing versus. Your email address, your personal email address and why that's the linchpin of so much and why you can't use the same set of rules for the math quiz thing on the shared computer in your school.

later in life like these important things that you'll have so i think you can start introducing that very early a little bit at a time just like these other topics till eventually i probably the same time you tell them about the white van you can tell them about child predators on the internet you can tell them about people

Once you have information or things that people can steal, your selfies, it's the same conversation. Essentially, in the end, it's the same conversation as the white van thing, unfortunately, for kids that age.

Because that is the main danger to them. They don't have credit cards. They don't have bank accounts. They don't have years and years worth of email filled with, you know, they're not going to get their identity stolen, probably. They're going to get the white van is the most immediate fear.

In the same way we teach about that, we need to teach about this because they will be on the internet and they will be taking pictures of themselves and they will be communicating with each other. And so it definitely should be part of the curriculum. But I would mostly make it separate from the...

often painful use of technology in classes to teach other subjects. Yeah. I mean, from a practical standpoint, that makes a lot of sense just because, so you're going to take all of the things that we require out of a teacher.

require from a teacher these days plus ad like you've got to be smarter than your average bear about internet security that's a lot to ask i mean they don't have to be that much smarter like especially in the first or second grade maybe the only thing you talk about is I don't know, broad strokes, the world of what is the internet and how we're all connected and, you know, how information that you put there is accessible to everybody else unless you protect it.

And here are different ways, you know, like really basic stuff about the acknowledgement that taking a picture on your phone, like that it doesn't end on your phone. You see it on your phone, but that.

that it now connects you know to this thing called the internet and what does that mean that means every single you know draw lines in the board and say see how these lines connect even though you just took this picture here someone over there can go from this line to this line to this line to this line and they can get your picture they're like oh they shouldn't get my picture oh well what's

stopping them then you get into computer security and what you would be protecting with that security like really broad strokes like just very high level concepts and every year crank that up a little bit this is like a two-day unit it's not that much Yeah, and I'm imagining, and I'm not the one who would teach this because I don't know this stuff, but I'm imagining somebody comes in, and it's been very sobering to me over the years, especially as computers have gotten faster.

I remember there was something in, I want to say Lifehacker a while back, that would show you how quickly a given kind of password with certain... I don't want to depress the kids about the advance of math. Okay, but I'm sitting here doing this right now in 1Password, and I know this is not necessarily for every 10-year-old kid, but go in and generate...

Some four words separated by dashes. Hell, let's do three words. Three words separated by dashes. Amigo, begat, room. Right? Widget, hull, utter. You could certainly, that could be kind of a fun class if somebody comes in and explains, well, you know, guess what? You know, Pencil Octothorpe 69 is actually probably not as good as... For example, Karam snuggle psychic caution. That's actually like a pretty good password. And how crazy is that?

Yeah, those classes are the most difficult to teach because it's nuances that it's fairly advanced. You have to teach it to advanced children and finding teachers who are actually up to date. I think it would be somebody from outside. I don't think it would be a teacher. Even people from outside. It's really.

really difficult to that's the problem with a lot of these topics that change quickly i mean hell even in businesses and you know the the accepted best practice now among as far as i'm aware as of a year or two ago is i think even like the government you know was it the government agency that recommends like security practices for all the government agencies and stuff like that um is that you shouldn't make people

reset their passwords every once a month. You've got to come up with a unique password with no characteristics that resemble your previous one. That is an anti-pattern. That is an anti-pattern that is a guarantee of appearing on a Post-it note over your computer. Right. And it took a long time for the top end of the security world to come around to the idea that that's not the best practice, right?

At my work, we are all required to change our passwords on a fairly annoyingly short schedule. Right. You can't even make best practices penetrate to for-profit corporations. The idea of those best practices successfully penetrating to people who visit schools is... it's very it's not likely to happen like with schools like so far they're probably the last to be teaching about you know the current practices of things that change like that so

That is a difficult situation. And if I had to teach a class about... What's a good password? What's a bad password? The main thing I would be trying to teach or what's a good practice? What's a bad practice? The main thing I'd be trying to teach is the idea that the answers to these questions change and that there's nothing that you can learn now that will serve you for the rest of your life.

right this is this is an area an evolving area that you must pay attention to and it's important for you to pay attention to it some baseline level of attention paid to it because it's not static it's going to change a lot in your life and There's literally nothing I can tell you now that you can write down and memorize and just take with you for your entire adult life and be safe because it just won't happen. And to illustrate that, I would show like.

you know how fast short passwords can be cracked and you know how impenetrable they were just 20 years ago and how they take a fraction of a second now and to say what that means is that you have to keep up with this because if you don't keep up with it and keep doing what what is the very best thing we can tell you right now, even if I even knew what the very best thing was, in 20 years, if you keep doing that same very best thing, you are totally open. So that's a bummer.

But it's, you know, it's like, that's the lesson to teach kids. And this is like a high school level lesson of like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole like, what's the guy's name? Bruce. Schneier? I don't know how you pronounce it, but security is a process, not a product. I mean, there's so many things where I would love to introduce a module about how so many things that seem like a product are actually a process. I mean, I would kill for that.

So we should start our own school, you and me. We'll do it. In the end, a lot of things are like that. The main lesson of history is not you learn a bunch of events that happened in the past, but that you get a view of how things go down.

when humans with humans and so what mistakes people can't help making again and again and possibly why yeah and you know that like that you will be able to pattern match you know you extrapolate forward and so that's the you know the lessons of history that yeah you learn about these things in detail or whatever but you should start to you know you can apply that and for computer security or you know

the millionth time you learn about some substance that is potentially you could potentially abuse like you get start start to get some tools to understand how does this fall is like how addictive is it

How common is it? What are the bad effects? What are the good effects? What, you know, what are the economics of it? Like, you know, that's part of the obsession with drugs. Part of the good thing about these session drugs is like, just went into such incredible depth and detail about every aspect of every drug.

you know, all the way down to the economics. Where does it come from? How is it manufactured? How does it get here? Like, it's like, are we all going to be DEA agents? Like, I know, I know. It's just need to be, but we get, and,

But it's kind of good because now we have this toolbox to evaluate drugs and to, you know, call BS on people telling us that marijuana is the same category of drug as heroin or whatever. Like, it's like, that doesn't make sense based on what we learned here. It's like, you know, like. That's a good tool set. That's an especially kind of poignant example of something where it helps if you can be honest about why you're teaching this.

You know what I mean? Like, it's on the one hand to say that, like, well, you know, it's one thing to say that, like, hey, you know, marijuana is legal and it's actually not deadly. And but it's still something you need to be. you need to be aware of what the effects are and what it can cause you is very different from in some ways from like, well, if you have unprotected sex in 1986, you might die. Yeah. Yeah. And to be able to like be sober and honest, I mean, cause.

Kids have an amazing BS detector and they're very skeptical about everything to begin with. But like you do yourself no particular advantage by going in with something. You know, to be all booga booga about something, you can't always sell that with kids.

yeah although that that particular sex thing that you know what i was taught as kids you know you have sex you will die because like the height of the age of the epidemic like that was much more true then than it is now there was no treatments and you know like right And I think that telling kids that age that something they will do could potentially kill them has no effect. That's so much less effective. That's so much. If they're 26, that might work.

Not going to work at their 50. It's like, all right, well, that's a thing that could happen to other people, but I'm immortal, so I don't even know why you're telling me this. Well, now you have my attention. It might kill me, huh? Wow. And to connect it to sex. Given that I'm indestructible, it sounds like something I should try. Right.

You're connected to sex, which is like the, you know, the irresistible force, right? Yes, yes. So I don't think that that had any effect, but it was so much more true than it is now.

yeah the computer security stuff will continue to be true unless there's some kind of breakthrough like there's two possibilities of how the security stuff could go down like i'm always we're always on the lookout for the security apocalypse like if someone yeah perfects quantum computing and just like shatters every every technique we have

Every mathematical technique we have to secure information is destroyed by our advances in computation, right? And there would be some gap before they come up with the next advance. to use that new computation to come up with a way to secure everything but there's this period of time before that happens when the whole world is cracked open that's bad like that can happen that's bad

And the other side is that we come up with way better ways to secure everything, that we stop this password nonsense, that we come up with ways that are a better fit for human nature, that make everything way more secure. And that, like... the way our information becomes obsolete is like, oh, we used to have to know all these details about security.

But now we don't have to know nearly as much because of the invention of whatever. Like, whatever the new magic security thing. Now I don't even know the difference between a 1959 Les Paul and a... It's heavy. And the final thing I want to add here, though, is... both of us i think don't actually know what

is actually being taught at the higher levels about computer security. For all we know, computer security has been an important part of high school curriculum for like 10 years, but we don't have kids in high school yet, so we don't know. So I think we will learn as our kids march to the grades at what point. I feel like they will, both of our children.

will be taught at some point about computer security somewhere. Yeah, but I mean, like, it's just I go back to the hand washing where I'm such a grind about hand washing because I really feel like I've seen the difference that it can make. You don't have to be a crazy person about it, but like.

We're not going to not wash our hands because it's inconvenient. Like, I know, we're at the mall. It sucks. But if we want to eat, we've been on Muni. We're going to wash our hands before we eat. This is how we don't get cold. It's just that, you know, to be able to kind of hand wave this stuff away. at a time when like exposure to it, I don't know, but no, I take your point though. I take your point. And that's why I'm saying like,

Now I feel like the ultimate kind of Apple fan where like, I don't know how to fix this problem. I don't even know how to fully identify this problem, but I know there is somebody who could, and I would love for their influence to be exercised over somebody in a way that could be.

that kids can imprint on. That's all. Bringing us back to face ID, actually, for the sort of passwordless classroom scenario, imagine if everything, every computing device that first graders interacted with did face ID. That would be... a way to avoid uh dealing with security stuff it would be a way to not have to teach kids about security just because you want them to do to learn to do the little math quiz reading quiz thing

and actually would provide more security than everyone having a completely predictable password. Totally true, yeah. So that's an example of an advanced technology that has... Sort of it's kicking the ball down the road because you still eventually need to teach the kids about this. But at the very least, it doesn't interfere with you trying to teach them how to read and write like that. You you're able to defer this conversation.

until you're ready to actually talk about it and not have to deal with it as a side effect because technology has solved that problem for you. It would tick all the boxes because it wouldn't be difficult. it would actually be effective. But, you know, kids are surrounded by all kinds of arbitrary things. There's reasons that, like, after this time, you're not allowed to go in this area, or we don't yell in the hall. There's like, there's...

huge amounts of arbitrariness in every kid's life. It's just that it feels like it could be a thin end of the wedge to getting them thinking about something that's going to become... It's going to suddenly become very, very important for them. You know, I guess what I'm not saying, here's what I'm not saying that I probably should say. I think it sucks that you've got to go have, at some point, you've got to go have a very difficult crash course.

conversation with your kid at a time when you probably have next to zero credibility with them in terms of saying like, oh, you know, I've been using a computer for a long time and I'm here to tell you this is why you shouldn't post pictures of yourself. If you're doing that five years into this current...

environment that they're growing up in, if what they're seeing at school is presented to them as what's normal for password security, and then you swoop in as the old man kicking his slippers at them, that's going to be a tough sell. Also, I'm looking in terms of self-preservation. It's going to be a very hard sell for me at that point to say that like your pencil 69 password, like we really need to work on that because of the white fans.

Yeah, I've been working on my kids with password security since very early on, since before they even had any kind of accounts in school computers, right? I mean, I guess it's better than nothing. but they know they intellectually know all of what you're supposed to do but at various times i have like had my kids you know set up an account like oh you need an account for this playstation thing for you can use your own playstation account right so

We've talked about this a million times. You've seen me do it. You have your passwords that I made for them that are, you know, fairly more secure than most adults passwords for anything. that I made you memorize. I've done all this hard work. I said, now you create an account for this whatever new thing that you're doing. And despite conversations, they'll look up at me and say, can I just use the same password?

like they feel like it's such an achievement that they had remembered like the password that i made for them that's this big complicated thing for like the one email address that they had and they so desperately they so desperately want to use that and they know they're not supposed to and so look at me and say

I just use the same password. And I'll be like, no, you can't use it. Like, what have we been talking about? It's like, it's impossible. It's like they, it's so, it's so important that you not do that. And then you saw the email that I sent you from today. I sent you a screen grab. The teacher's very excited to announce that the service that we used to use is back. And you know what the good news is? You can just reuse your Google password. It'll work fine. Yep. Yay.

We've conveniently set it to the same password that we should not actually even know. If you keep copying the same key, it's not really a key anymore. Yeah, because it's just human nature. They don't want to memorize another giant thing. And I've talked to them about passport managers, and they're just like, oh, this is ridiculous. Who made this? And I'm like, I know, but it's what we've got.

It's what we've got. This is it. I know. I know. I don't want, you want to protect them from it, but at the same time, like they want to have accounts. They want to have a, it's so, it would be so, I mean, like the thing is when you talk about the creating accounts on the PlayStation, it would be so easy to just go in. and say, you know, I'm chunkylover53 at AOL.com, and check this out. I'm also going to make that my password, chunkylover53, except I'm going to make it an A instead of an at.

Like, how cool is that? That is so fast to type. That is so baller. When I let my kids set their PIN codes on their iOS devices. 1-1-1-1. yeah no they like despite us having the conversations of how you shouldn't use all not just like one two three four five and not even just like birthdays or your age or the year or like they're just They go through, like in desperation, trying to make a code that I will find acceptable. They literally hit all the, you know, they go through all the hits.

Like, you know, can I use our dog's name? Can I use our address? And it's like, no, no, no, no. It's like, how do you even know? How do you even know that? Like, it's just human nature to know all the bad ones. And then.

Then they come up with something arbitrary. Well, that's what's interesting about doing, I don't know if Diceware is exactly the word for it, but there's a really, I mean, for those of you who have not done this in 1Password, if you only ever used it to capture your old passwords, go to 1Password. I'm in 1Password 6. File.

New password. Let's see here. New, yeah, new password. And then so you can go in and when you, you can click on that little dial that lets you regenerate a password and you can select how many characters, length, digits, and symbols, et cetera. Or you can say words.

And you could say, make me a password that consists of four English words. And the diceware part that's important is, it's not four words that I, quote unquote, randomly picked. It's four, like, more or less, I'm sure Jeff Goldberg could probably really school me on this. Like, these are actually, like, surprisingly good passwords, and all you have to type is English letters in a dash. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm not saying it's perfect. But you know what?

Dude, if you did just three English words separated by dashes, honey, sweetie pie, if you did two English words separated by dashes, you'd be so much better off than what you think that thing you're putting in. Yeah, even in those things, I'm always afraid to tell my kids systems like that because I'm trying to impart the idea that no system is good. And in the case of those type of systems...

I'm trying to impart the idea that no system is good. So in the case of those, anything that constrains your password in any way, like if it's constrained to English words by dashes, the cracking programs know that that is a system. In the same way they know all the common passwords and they all know all the replacing the letters with the symbols that look like those letters, they also know the system of a bunch of English words with separators. And so anything that constrains the password...

The cracking program is like, that's great. You've narrowed down the problem space to me tremendously. And so they have different strategies and different approaches. If they're using letter replacement, do this. a bunch of words do this if they're using you know uh numbers or symbols and the combinations of them like like those those programs the the cracking things they feed on the idea that

But human beings need something to hang their hat on to remember these stupid passwords, right? That's why the multiple words thing. Right. No, no, I'm not saying this is the best. The best situation is to, I think, to go in and just say, what did I do, like 20, 27 characters? Yeah, like line noise. Line noise is the best. So length of 20, digits three, symbols three, and just see what that comes up with. And you don't even need, you're better off if you don't know it.

Is what I would say about that. Yeah, no, that's, you know, the total line of no constraints whatsoever. You pick a random character from a set of printable characters, let's say, like the entire range of things that this could type.

Right. But you did not decide anything that made it even close to a word. Did you ever read Jeff Goldberg? Jeff Goldberg is a guy at Etch Out Pits. Did you ever read his thing about the Larry Curly Moe thing? Did you ever read that article? I don't think so. I'll find it. Yeah. Yeah. The kids, the kids like.

They recognize the problem very soon. It's like, so good passwords are the ones that is impossible for me to memorize? Like, yes, that's not convenient. Not good passwords, honey. The only password. Right. That's, you know. And the ones, the passwords I gave them.

They're not like line noise. They are constrained in a way that the kids have a fighting chance of typing them. And they've typed them enough now that they've both memorized them. I've also tried to prepare them for the day. Like, look.

This will not be your password for this account for life. Eventually, this password will be burned and you'll have to come up with another one. So when I went through the exercise, oh, so you're getting your second account. Let's come up with a good password for it. And they know you can't use the other one, blah, blah, blah. When we went through that exercise, I said, and.

And by the way, the other password that you like, that one's going to be gone soon, too. Like, you can't keep them for your whole life. Eventually, they get... It's a string of letters, not a pet. Yeah. And so it's these are hard lessons. And I'm, you know, I'm trying to teach them at home, which is difficult. I think school should address this so far. As far as I'm aware, I should actually ask.

My son, if he's in middle school, have they touched on any of this stuff? You know, actually, I would love, I don't want to give you homework, but I would love to hear about that. I'm guessing no. I'm guessing they haven't touched on it, but I'll ask. But yeah, this should definitely be taught somewhere. You should just respond to an email from the teacher. And so that's on the to line. It goes to everybody in the class. You could ask them what they think about that. Or you go on Nextdoor.

I saw a friend of ours on Nextdoor today. I felt really bad. She had her pot of plants stolen. My wife, I see she's getting emails from Nextdoor, so I think she's part of it. She tried to rope me into it. I resisted, but I think she's still getting it. It's fun to get the urgent emails because you can choose to be opted in for let me know when something urgent happens. This is one that I received yesterday.

So this is like my kid, my kid is missing in the woods type things, right? It's sort of like, you know, or like, you know, my sweet precious angel has disappeared. I got to find my cat. This is, thank you. Thank you very much to neighbor Erica. Urgent alert. This came to me late at night. I'm looking for a handyman to do some work. Anyone know of a good one who uses an invoice?

I'll read that again. I'm looking for a handyman to do some work. Anyone know of a good one who has uses an invoice? Who has uses? Has uses an invoice. Yeah. That's from neighbor Erica. It was holding together in the beginning there. And then it just fell apart. Urgent is usually just shy of 911. Yeah. Maybe one of her light bulbs is out. They said no one's supposed to be in the area. I keep getting that combined with...

Uh, Clerks. Not even supposed to be here today. Oh, I don't, you know, I've never seen Clerks. Oh my goodness. No, I would watch that. I would watch that. That is a window that you definitely miss because I feel like... Are you watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime?

No, I've heard a lot about it, and I believe I have added it to my list, but I am not watching it. I don't like to give you homework. I've already given you homework with your son. I would say I'm going to put a stake in the ground. I think you should at least watch the pilot. It's super duper New York and it's gorgeous. The costumes are amazing. I don't know if you're ever a Gilmore Girls fan, but it's, you know, potty mouth.

It's Amy Sherman Palladino who did Gilmore Girls does this. Yeah, I've seen the ads for it. I know what's involved. I think I'll probably like it. The woman, she's not from Mr. Robot. What is she from? Rachel Brosnahan? She's been in other things. Quite, quite good. And it's got a great cast. It's got, like, Tony Shalhoub and Kevin Pollack. Stuff like that. I think you'd really enjoy it.

I found it very addictive. I keep trying to get back into Godless. I'm still stuck on episode three of Godless. Every time it comes on, I'm like, oh, I'm not up to this. This show is so good, but it's heavy and dark, and I really like it, and I don't feel... I'm qualified to watch it unless I've really got the energy, and so I end up watching bass videos or Mrs. Maisel.

I think Godless, I found it rough going in the beginning. How far are you? I finished it. Oh, really? Okay. When I first started watching Godless, I'm like, the first episode or two, I felt like were mishandled.

You said that it calms, I think the phrase you used was it calms down a lot after the first episode. Yeah, like, I don't know what was mishandled about it, but it was like keeping me at a distance. And then, but there was a turn. And at that point, like, I was in. I was all in on the characters. Well, it's a little...

there's a lot going on and it's a little stiff in the first episode, but I felt like by the time you get to the end of the third act of the first episode, I was bought in. I was, by the time we see like what the dude, like what his deal is, I was really bought in. And I love that actress. She's from downtown Abbey. Did you know that? I do know that.

Yeah, I think that show, Mom, we were with characters, which I... Oh, so much. Instead of all, like, the shows with, like, the characters that, you know, they're all bad people and you hate all of them, like, or characters that you don't... think are nice people this is the opposite of that where everybody in the show like resists being a you know maximum interest so like everyone is obnoxious uh because that's the most interesting way they can be that everyone resists that that they

They try to be real people. Yeah, but also that it's, you keep waiting. I'm cribbing this a little bit from Jason. Jason's podcast with Tim Goodman, but you keep waiting for this to be, well, the obvious.

not an antecedent, but the obvious similarity. You keep waiting for the Westworld twist. You keep waiting for somebody to go, oh, you know, what's the turns out? Or waiting for it to be Deadwood. You're waiting for it to be Deadwood and it won't. It's very, I would say heavily influenced by Deadwood.

in lots of ways. But yeah, you keep waiting for it. But you know what? It's just a really good TV show. Like, just enjoy it as a TV show. Stop waiting for it to turn into The Sixth Sense or something. Yeah, and the other show that I watched recently that I find myself... thinking about actually more than godless which i enjoyed and i thought it was i recommend definitely that people should watch but i watched alias grace

Oh, I started, I started that and, uh, wait, give me a quick primer. We watched an episode of this. This is, remind me what happens on the show. Margaret Atwood, uh. thing which which i had no familiarity with which i think the pacing was was real strange it's canada yep and yeah there's a story of a woman and she's in she's uh in jail

And a lot of it's told in flashback. Yeah, it's all told in flashback. Do you recommend sticking with it? I don't know much about Margaret Atwood. I think I probably actually read The Handmaid's Tale when I was young. And then, of course, we've got the whole... you know the whatever series yeah they've got that whole mini series um and that's you know no one's watching that and wondering what the message is right but like

And Margaret Atwood, like, this is a second thing from her, the second thing that I'm aware of in existence. And it's clear that she's got a thing that she wants to talk about, which is essentially the treatment of women. And The Handmaid's Tale is a fantastical way to talk about it. And this is a much more prosaic way to talk about it. But also a little bit more zoomed in. I mean, there's a...

you know, whatever, what are they talking about? The fox and the hedgehog or whatever. Like the, the handmaid's tale has a very sweeping ambition and this show feels more, a little bit more focused. Yeah. And about, it's not about every aspect of how. the patriarchy becomes this hegemonic force. It's much more, not much more subtle, but it's more subtle. And there's a lot more to like all kinds of things about what we know and understand and believe about people.

Yeah, and it's very character-driven in that partway through you'd be like, okay, is there some sort of message in this or is this just a story about characters? And I feel like in the end it melds them. both together well and that it doesn't say these characters are just chess pieces on the board of me trying to trace out a thing that I'm trying to tell you but it also doesn't say that no actually this is a story about characters has nothing then it has no water message it has both in it

It pulls them both off really well. That's tricky. At the end of it, I'm satisfied that the characters weren't just there to play things for a message, but I'm also satisfied that the larger message... makes the story more than just a bunch of stuff that's happened to some made-up people. Last question. Did you see Coco? I did. Maybe after the...

First, let's give people time to see it, but maybe after the first of the year, I would love to talk about that movie. Yep, people should go see it. People should definitely. Without the Frozen short, if you can. Did you? I sent you that photo, right? Yeah, yeah. The sign, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they had announced, so apparently it came out that there was going to be this Frozen Short, and then it came out that I guess people didn't like it very much, and...

Who requested that it be pulled? Was it Disney that requested that they pull it? It was long. It's not particularly good. It's not nearly as bad as people say, but it's not good. It's the length that's the problem. That is the problem. It is roughly as long as a TV show. It's like 20 minutes, right? You've already got like a half an hour of trailers. Let's just say it's no Jack Jack attack. It's no bounden.

yeah it's not propulsive like and it makes you like it just makes the movie going experience like it prigs it over the line there's a line after which like the natives are getting restless right so it's time you know it's It just makes it too long. We've already sat through. We sat through. So I think we broke a record this time for the number of times my daughter and I turned.

as you know so so like you know you get this you get the trailer and at the end the rating comes up and they say when it's coming out and that's the point when my daughter and i always turn to each other and usually at least make a face and sometimes say, oh yeah, or hard pass, is what we usually say. We had three hard passes in the trailers for this one. There were so many terrible, terrible movies. Yeah, that's the one where I tweeted about it. They're all making these terrible...

pun-based jokes based on profanity in kids' movies. I said to my daughter, I said, there's two things that you need to learn about the Mann family. Two things you need to understand. First of all, farts are funny. Everybody knows that farts are funny. There is nothing wrong with laughing at farts. And I'll go so far as to say, I've laughed pretty hard at farts in movies. With that said, if there's even one fart or butt-related joke in the trailer for a movie...

be circumspect because there's a pretty good chance that's the best they had. And if it involves like an animal sliding backwards with like a butt landing on a face, and then there's two more fart jokes in the trailer, that's really not a good sign. and i didn't like that like i said i didn't like the the adult angle like oh hey parents here's why i know i know you're right right just i just feel like that's that's weak it's it's not appropriate uh and it's like

You should be able to make a trailer for a kids movie that makes adults want to see it without saying like, what's next? You're just going to have like flashes of nudity to bring the parents in. Like it's not an excellent example of a movie. My daughter ended up liking much to my chagrin is the boss baby movie. We're like ending the trailer with a Glengarry Glen Ross reference. Yeah, that's bouncing off the kids. She really liked that.

It's the DreamWorks school. So, you know, OK, so my expectations were, as I said to you in the private text channel, my expectations were so hopelessly low that I ended up thinking it was OK. But it was funny because there's a sign with typos on it that somebody had made that had a big frozen winter massacre.

or whatever it was called. It was on a print shop, right? I think so. Typos and all. And they were like, it was, I sent that same photo to my wife. She said, my God, it's like a warning. And what did it say? It said that... Olaf's Frozen Adventure. All showings of Coco include the featurette Olaf's Frozen Adventure. New paragraph. The featurette is approximately 22 minutes long and is included in the full feature runtime.

And it was definitely included in the full feature runtime, but they had to warn people that you're about just so you know, there's a 22 minute movie before the movie. And super loud, always on, talkative, very loud, laughing loud gay guy, two seats down from us, turned to my daughter, my 10-year-old daughter, and said, is this Coco? That's like a new record. 40-something minutes in, and he's got to take a break.