Sketch as F@ck

[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Lately Sporadic Overtired podcast. Um, Jeff is out this week. I’m Brett Terpstra. I am here with Christina Warren. Christina, how

[00:00:14] Brett: are you?

[00:00:14] Christina: I’m pretty good. I’m tired because, and I’m, and I’m just getting started this weekend. It’s going to be so, so busy, but no, I’m tired because I’ve, I’ve had kind of like a crazy last week or so. And it’s, it’s, it’s just going to get busier. I’m, I’m, I’m good. How about you? Uh,

[00:00:31] Brett: Um, I also am tired. Um, I had, I ran out of My sleep meds one night and then I got them and slept really well the next night. And then last night, even with the sleep meds, uh, after 2 a. m. I was up like every half an hour. So I’m dragging and I also had a crazy work week. Um, crazy for me, probably not as crazy as yours, but

[00:00:57] Mental Health Corner

[00:00:57] Brett: I, uh, I did this [00:01:00] project before I left on vacation.

[00:01:01] Brett: I went, I went to Asheville. I don’t, we haven’t talked since then, but have we? Um, I, uh, I, I worked really hard to get two projects in the can before I left on vacation and then made the mistake of checking Slack while on vacation and. and found out that both of the projects I had completed required revisions for asinine reasons um that I started to argue in slack halfway through my vacation and then I was like dude you’re totally harshing my buzz here so I’m just gonna I’ll talk to you when I get home.

[00:01:42] Brett: Um, and then I saw Victor and Victor kind of talked me down and, and I got back and like, it was no big deal, but then yesterday I get this frantic Slack message from someone I had never heard of who wanted to know who [00:02:00] greenlit the. Demo video that I published because that entire project apparently was confidential and like I worked directly with the team and the team didn’t know their project was confidential.

[00:02:15] Brett: They were as shocked as I was so there is some kind of failure of communication

[00:02:19] Brett: here.

[00:02:19] Christina: And a failure I should add that is in no way yours.

[00:02:22] Brett: Huh, I just followed

[00:02:23] Brett: orders. They

[00:02:24] Christina: what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. You had, you, you had zero.

[00:02:29] Brett: So I got, I got together all the stakeholders. I said, you guys sort this out. It’s Friday afternoon. I’m out. Have fun.

[00:02:37] Christina: Yeah, no, sounds fair, sounds fair. Um, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk more in depth, um, uh, off mic, but, um, I’m actually going to be talking to a couple of Oracle people at, uh, Microsoft Build, but I don’t know if you know any of them or not, but

[00:02:53] Brett: We’ll, we’ll think, we’ll find

[00:02:55] Christina: we’ll

[00:02:55] Christina: find out. You probably don’t cause it’s a big company, but yeah.

[00:02:59] Brett: yeah, [00:03:00] no, I, I meet new people every day. Um, so, uh,

[00:03:05] Mental Health Corner

[00:03:05] Brett: I think we’ve kind of started the mental health

[00:03:07] Christina: yeah, I was gonna say that. That sounds, that sounds good. So, so how, but, but let’s, uh, let’s, let’s go more into that. You can take it away. Like how, how is Asheville? How’s life?

[00:03:16] Brett: yeah, Asheville was awesome. Um, it was my second time going there and I loved it so much the first time I had to go back again. Um, have you ever

[00:03:26] Brett: been?

[00:03:27] Christina: I never have. I, um, I, I’ve, uh, but I’ve heard good things and I’ve heard it’s like a, a good place.

[00:03:34] Brett: It’s a, it’s, there’s Raleigh and there’s Asheville, the only blue spots in what is otherwise a

[00:03:41] Brett: deep red

[00:03:42] Christina: Yeah. I’ve been to

[00:03:43] Brett: Um, and yeah, Asheville is like, it’s kind of hippie meets yuppie meets, Like, just your average, like, West Coast liberal kind of sensibility, and, [00:04:00] um, and like, you’ll get into an Uber, and they’ll ask you where you’re from, and if, if they, if you’re from, like, a blue state, they’ll be like, oh, you’ll feel right at home here, and half the people there have relocated, so, like, my accent didn’t stick out.

[00:04:14] Brett: Um, no one really questioned whether I was from Asheville or not. I had to tell them I was just visiting. Um, but yeah, we did shopping. We, we hiked, we swam in waterfalls. We, uh, we ate a lot of really good food. They have a ton of like vegan gluten free food for us. And there’s this restaurant called Plant that it’s a vegan restaurant.

[00:04:40] Brett: And honestly. It’s the best vegan food I’ve ever had. I would take any meat eater there and just be like, enjoy. And it was half price wine, bottle of wine night. So we got a bottle of red wine, drank half of it with dinner. And then they sent us home. [00:05:00] They corked the bottle and gave us. I mean, we paid for it, but we got a pint of vegan ice cream, went back to our tiny home, which was awesome.

[00:05:09] Brett: We Airbnb’d a tiny home, and we sat and had a pint of ice cream and half a bottle of wine before going to bed in probably the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in. So overall, the vacation was pretty

[00:05:23] Brett: magical. Um, And then I came home and went right back into work. Um, which I don’t know. I was pretty refreshed.

[00:05:32] Brett: It’s like the first vacation in a long time that actually felt refreshing instead of stressful. Um, even though we drove from Minnesota to North Carolina, um, it, and I did most of the driving, but I, I’m a trooper. I can drive for hours. I don’t want to, but I can. Anyhow, that’s kind of, that’s, that’s my update.

[00:05:56] Christina: That’s good. That’s good. Well, I’m glad you had a good time. I wanna hear more about this [00:06:00] tiny home shit.

[00:06:01] Brett: Oh yeah, it was in this guy’s backyard. They built a tiny home that it had running water, it had electricity, it had wi fi, um, it had like a great shower with great water pressure, super comfortable bed, but the whole thing was maybe like 80 square feet. It had a decent sized refrigerator and a microwave and a toaster oven and a big sink and like just soup, all brand new, like all like recently built, everything was in top notch shape and.

[00:06:41] Brett: I sent a link out. I posted pictures of it and people who visit Asheville were like, I need to know where this is so I can link it in the show notes too. If you’re headed to Asheville, I highly recommend. And it was 80 a night.

[00:06:55] Christina: Damn.

[00:06:56] Brett: know, you can’t, it’ll only hold two

[00:06:58] Brett: people, but 80 bucks a [00:07:00] night. Yeah, that’s like a, that’s like motel

[00:07:02] Brett: prices.

[00:07:03] Christina: going to say, I don’t, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life ever

[00:07:08] Brett: it was, it was way under priced for what it was. I would have, I would have expected it to be more like 250

[00:07:15] Brett: and,

[00:07:16] Christina: I would expect that too. Yeah.

[00:07:18] Brett: completely, completely private. We met the owner one time in passing in his backyard, but otherwise it’s like keypad entry, never see anybody, completely secluded in like the backyard is a forest and it’s, it’s like surrounded by trees and it was so cool.

[00:07:38] Brett: It was awesome.

[00:07:39] Christina: That’s

[00:07:40] Brett: It’s worth going to Asheville just to stay in this tiny home.

[00:07:43] Christina: Yeah. No, the tiny home movement is so interesting to me. Um, uh, you know what I mean? Like it, it, it doesn’t, um, negate like a lot, many of the, the real problems, which are like, okay, well, where do you get space for a tiny home? But, uh, you know, like, like where, where do you get land for those things? But,

[00:07:58] Brett: Yeah, [00:08:00] no, but yeah, I love the, uh, I love the idea of a maximal, maximally livable space in a minimal area. Um, and that is like, I, I love it as an engineering problem. I don’t want to live in one like

[00:08:16] Brett: permanently, but like for a couple of nights, it’s awesome.

[00:08:21] Christina: That’s, that’s

[00:08:22] Brett: So how are you?

[00:08:23] Christina: pretty good. I, like I said, I’ve been busy. So last week, so Microsoft Build, uh, is, is happening, um, it’ll be Tuesday, the 21st, uh, the 22nd, the 23rd, so Wednesday, the 22nd, uh, or, um, and Thursday, the 23rd. And so, um, I’m, I’m involved in that this year. I’m not like as heavily involved as some years, but I am one of the hosts and so I’m still doing.

[00:08:47] Christina: by not heavily involved. I think that only means I’m doing like, like 15 interviews instead of like 30. So, um, so stuff that’s been coming in hot and then, you know, there’ve been like parts of my day job and stuff too. And then I went out of [00:09:00] town beforehand to Atlanta for Mother’s Day and, um, I, uh, went to a concert in Portland this week, which in retrospect, not the best decision.

[00:09:12] Christina: Like, if I could do it all over again, as much as great of a time as I had at the concert and as great as it was to be in Portland for like a day and a half, I, I would not. have, I’ve gotten out of town, um, before all of this, just because I had a ton of meetings. I was like, I like, I like took a, I took a meeting like on an airplane, like as we were boarding, right?

[00:09:32] Christina: Like it was one of those things I was, they were like, Oh, you have to go. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. I’m going to be completely that asshole who, you know, sits in the front of the plane and is on the phone, um, while everyone is, is boarding. But, um, it was a small commuter jet cause it was for like an hour long flight.

[00:09:47] Christina: So, but it was, it was a really busy week and then the weekend is going to be really busy. Like, we’re recording this on a Saturday. I have an appointment this afternoon to get my eyebrows waxed and then. My call time tomorrow is like 8 a. m. for [00:10:00] rehearsals and prerecords. And then similar on Monday.

[00:10:03] Christina: So it’s like eight to six Sunday and Monday. And then my call time Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is 6 a. m. And it will go until like 6 p. m. So, yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s going to be like a long week. So, um,

[00:10:15] Brett: usually, I usually say it sarcastically, but that is why you get paid the big bucks.

[00:10:22] Christina: I don’t know

[00:10:22] Brett: usually if I say that to someone, it’s with this knowing smile, like, I know they don’t get paid the big bucks, but yeah, you deserve what you

[00:10:31] Christina: I mean, I, I get the moderately by tech standards bucks, right? Yeah. Um, no, this is definitely one of those weeks where I’m like, yeah, I’m, I’m doing a lot. Like yesterday I was trying to manage five million different things and I was like, I’m very sorry. I was like, things are coming in hot on this. And then I was, people were like, oh yeah, well, what are you doing with build?

[00:10:49] Christina: And then I was like telling them a little bit of my schedule, just like I did with you. I’m like, yeah. So I’ve got like two, you know, all day, like pre record and rehearsal days. And then like my call time’s at 6am for three days and it’s, you know, going to be there [00:11:00] All day and all night. Oh, and I’ll have community events at night too.

[00:11:02] Christina: Like, let’s not forget about that. Um, and they were like, and I haven’t even told that to people. I’ve just figured that the 6am call time was enough to kind of get it. But, um, no, I’ll have, I’ll have evening events as well. So yes, this is one of those weeks where I’m like,

[00:11:19] Brett: are, how are you gonna take care of yourself? Like, what do you do to make it possible to get through that many long

[00:11:26] Brett: days?

[00:11:27] Christina: I mean, you just do it. And then you collapse after.

[00:11:31] Brett: in the

[00:11:31] Brett: evenings?

[00:11:32] Christina: No, usually not. Usually not.

[00:11:34] Brett: I wouldn’t either. I wouldn’t either.

[00:11:37] Christina: If I were 10 years younger, if I were actually 29, sure. Um, but, but no, um, at my actual age, um, no, I don’t drink. Just because you can’t. Like, at least I can’t. Like, yeah.

[00:11:54] Brett: when you have to get up at 6 in the morning

[00:11:56] Brett: and be

[00:11:56] Christina: And beyond.

[00:11:57] Brett: like you just have to show up. Like, you gotta

[00:11:59] Brett: [00:12:00] be

[00:12:00] Christina: no, you gotta be on, you have to look good, right? Like, yeah, you’ve got to be, you know, energetic and doing all those things and yeah.

[00:12:07] Managing work and personal devices

[00:12:07] Christina: The only thing I’m, I’m, I’m weirdly anxious about at this point, this matters to no one, um, but I’ll just say it anyway cause fuck it. Um, I refuse to do what is required on my personal cell phone to be able to have access to Microsoft. Like chat stuff,

[00:12:28] Brett: Same, but with

[00:12:28] Brett: Oracle for

[00:12:29] Christina: right? Because GitHub doesn’t make us put any sort of MDM on our, on our phones.

[00:12:34] Christina: And so I have no problem getting Slack or email or Zoom or basically anything. Um, and, um, like I could, I can use a YubiKey if I need to for certain things, but now actually we can use with Okta, um, as, Basically a YubiKey. So, like, I, there’s nothing, I mean, there are like a handful of resources that require that I actually be on like a GitHub owned and operated machine, and in that case I wouldn’t be able to [00:13:00] access it on a phone anyway because we don’t have phone management stuff.

[00:13:03] Christina: Um, but Microsoft is different. And, When I worked at Microsoft, it was one thing for me to like put the Intune stuff on my phone because that way I could access email and teams and whatnot and and it was a trade off and for the most part for it was it was fine because What they have access to and what they can see at least on the iPhone is less than what they can on Android and like I Didn’t care, but then they started putting this antivirus Windows Defender stuff on

[00:13:28] Brett: yep.

[00:13:30] Christina: And that impacts your battery life in a not insignificant way.

[00:13:35] Christina: And the thing is, is that if it’s part of my job and part of my day thing, fine, I can, I can consider the trade off. Right. Um, but this isn’t part of my job and my day to day, like I don’t have to use their tools except for like one or two weeks out of the year for things like this, because this is like. [00:14:00] I know that they are going to be sending updates to Teams that I’m not going to be able to see.

[00:14:04] Christina: And Like, as much as I would like for them to just be like, just text me, I, I also am recognizing that that’s probably not going to be a thing. And so I’m gonna, I’m, I’m, there’s, I’m like half considering in tuning my phone for the week only because I broke my phone last Saturday when I was getting my haircut and, or maybe it was last Friday.

[00:14:30] Christina: And, um, I had to order like an express replacement and it arrived and I, it arrived on Wednesday, so I got it Thursday. So I have like 10 days to send it back to them. So, um, What I’m thinking is, is that I can take my broken phone, and what broke by the way was just like the back glass and the front glass a little bit, and it wasn’t that bad, but I didn’t have time to go to an Apple store and pay them 50 to deal with it, so I was just like, did the, pay them 100 and they’ll mail me a, [00:15:00] a, a refurb but new phone thing. This is the second time now that I’ve broken my iPhone 15 Pro Max, um, since, um, I got it in September. So great for me. Um, you would think, Christina, just buy a case. Well, I did buy a case, but I hated the case. And so here we are. Anyway, I’m thinking, I don’t know what your thoughts are on this. I’m like, maybe I just in tune my phone that I know I’m going to wipe anyway. And then just set up the new phone as a new phone and don’t bother with any of the, you know, like transfer over.

[00:15:31] Brett: I haven’t, so Oracle has MDM stuff and they will pay for my phone. If I, you know, run it as if it’s Oracle property, like they would, they would pay my cell bill and everything. Um, And if, if I saw a need for it, I would take them up on that and just have a separate number for work. Um, but like I can run Outlook on my phone, no problem getting my [00:16:00] emails.

[00:16:00] Brett: I can use Zoom with SSO on my phone, no problem getting meetings. And my, uh, like Apple calendar works with their. Office 365, uh, implementation of scheduling software, so I have no reason to let Oracle own my phone. Um, does Microsoft, will they pay, will they, can you just get a second phone for this two

[00:16:28] Brett: weeks out of the

[00:16:29] Christina: No, unfortunately that’s the thing, right? Like, so GitHub will pay as part of our, some of our benefits. Like I can have my, my. My phone bill, um, um, expensed, um, and, and even my cell phone is part of that, right? So like, if you do like the pay, like the monthly, you know, fee, like $50 a month or whatever, like the, you know, every two years or whatever, um, or if you are part of the Apple upgrade program, you know, like, every year you can get a new phone, right?

[00:16:52] Christina: Like I can expense that, Which is great, but that’s like a benefit, but I could also use that for money for other things too. So I guess [00:17:00] technically I could get a second phone and just have that paid for as my get up phone and then have my personal phone that I’m not, you know, expensing anything on and then use that for the two months out of the year or two weeks out of the year.

[00:17:10] Christina: I guess I could do that. I do have an iPhone 12, um, Pro Max, um, that’s still around. My thought has actually been over for a while has been to use that as like my, you know, Microsoft Teams phone if I need it, um, and, and also use it as a, uh, webcam replacement, um, instead of using the, the studio display’s, uh, garbage fucking camera, which I still have people on Mastodon and Threads, but mostly Threads, who will, like, argue with me about that, and I’m like, if you’re happy with a really shitty camera that’s, like, worse than, like, an iPad camera, in a 600 display, that’s great.

[00:17:48] Christina: I’m happy for you. However, most of us who spend 1, 600 on a display are also the sorts of assholes who will then spend more money on a better webcam because the [00:18:00] webcam that comes with it is hot garbage. And if, and if you want to be, live in delusional town and think that it’s not happy for you. Love that for you.

[00:18:08] Christina: However, most of us who are, like, dumb enough to spend this much money on this type of display because it’s the only display we can use because it is a waste of, it is overpriced and it is not worth the money, except it is. Like, there’s no alternative. So, I just spend more. Anyway, um, I’ve been thinking about using that, that, um, phone also as like a webcam.

[00:18:30] Hanging on to old tech… because it works

[00:18:30] Christina: you know, cause it’s now, you know, three years out of date and it’ll be almost four years out of date, but it’s still, it’s still perfectly, you know, serviceable, so I don’t

[00:18:38] Brett: Can I admit, I, I have never upgraded from my 12 Pro Max. Um, it is, I’ve, I’ve never broken it. It has never been slow. The battery life three years, four years later is still solid. Like I, like most of the iPhones I’ve had after a few years, like the battery life, you have to start charging it twice a day.[00:19:00]

[00:19:00] Brett: You have to like charge midday and that sucks. I, that’s why I usually upgrade. Um, This one, I, it, it runs for a day and a half about before it needs a charge, um, unless I’m playing a lot of Super Monsters Date My Condo, which I think I mentioned last time, but has just come out for Apple Arcade and I’m way back into it.

[00:19:22] Brett: But anyway, yeah, I still run a 12 Pro Max and I, I think every once in a while about going for a 15. I just, I love this phone. It’s I’ve never cracked it. There’s no chips on it. There’s, I just don’t have a reason to. My, my case is smashed to hell. Um, I’m going to hold this up so you can see, but like, the case is falling apart from all the times it’s protected my phone.

[00:19:50] Brett: It’s not in great shape. I should get a new case if I’m not going to get a new phone. And that’s what happens is I’m like, I should order a new case. Then I’m like, I should just go down to the Verizon store and [00:20:00] just finally get a new phone and then get a case for that. But. I have not.

[00:20:04] 1Password and Passkeys

[00:20:04] Brett: Um, couple questions, first of all, how much do you love passkeys?

[00:20:10] Christina: love Pasceys. They’re the greatest thing in the whole world.

[00:20:13] Brett: Like, when I, I used to be, cause I do a lot of, I do the GitHub, um, organization management for my, my organization. Um, for the entire DevRel, uh, part of Oracle. And. I used to have to, every time you, you can be logged in, but if you want to change the collaborators on a repo, it’ll ask you to do a 2FA login again.

[00:20:43] Brett: And it used to always be. Either I had to pull up the GitHub mobile app and punch in the two digit code, or I’d have to get a text message and punch in a 2FA code. And on my Mac, that’s a pain in the ass. Um, and now I have [00:21:00] passkeys and I can always just click the use passkey and then unlock one password, click a button, done.

[00:21:05] Brett: It’s so much faster. I use it for Google, GitHub, um, My, uh, health, my health insurance com lets me use passkeys. Yeah, I, I think it’s the

[00:21:16] Brett: future. It’s

[00:21:17] Christina: No, it’s so great. And the way that 1Password does it is especially really nice because, you know, like, um, nothing against like, like the other implementations, but like, it is sort of annoying on a desktop to have to hold up your phone and scan a QR code and then authenticate your face.

[00:21:35] Brett: 1Password can actually do a screen capture.

[00:21:38] Brett: Yeah,

[00:21:39] Christina: so, so what,

[00:21:39] Brett: no that’s

[00:21:40] Christina: so with what one Password is doing is that when you have a pass key that’s saved in one password, if you’re authenticated through one password, then the, then the pass key authenticates in your browser.

[00:21:49] Christina: So I’m not having to touch a UB key. I’m not having to authenticate with my, you know, face ID with a QR code and whatnot. So, for where it becomes really useful for me, and I think this would be useful [00:22:00] for you as well, like you can use a keyboard that has a fingerprint sensor with your, um, um, Mac Studio, but I don’t know if you.

[00:22:07] Christina: Do, because we’re going to talk about keyboards in a little bit, right? But you probably don’t, right? But like I have an Intel iMac and I, it has a T2 display or T2 chip. So it, it is like secure in that respect, but Apple refuses to let you use, um, biometric login with it. Like I can’t use one of their biometric keyboards on it, even though it’s secure enough, because.

[00:22:31] Brett: On

[00:22:31] Brett: 1Password.

[00:22:33] Christina: no, with, with, with, with macOS. So um, this is why 1Password is great. So like, one of the, like, which means like, cause, cause for instance, you could use pass keys on like Safari or, or some other things like using um, fingerprint sensor, um, without having to, to authenticate, like without having to do the, hold up your phone and, and scan the QR code and, and then [00:23:00] face authent, uh, face authenticate.

[00:23:00] Christina: Authenticate thing. Um, but what I like about 1Password is that, um, and, and so this is one of the reasons why I have like a YubiKey like hanging off the back of my iMac, uh, which, no, it’s not secure. No one’s in my house. Fuck off. You know what I mean? Like, it’s one of those things. Like, like, I, I, I’m anticipating all the well actually people, um, who are, Never going to listen to this, but, but I’m, I’m, I hear you anyway, and I’m, I’m anticipating your, your objections and I’m telling you, I understand and I don’t care.

[00:23:28] Christina: Um, but, um, what, uh, what’s great about 1Password is that because like, I, I can, you know, once, once I authenticate, you know, to get into that, like all my passkeys work without me having to touch a YubiKey or log in with another biometric means, which on this current machine I don’t have, like, um, Okta desktop won’t work on my iMac because it doesn’t have.

[00:23:52] Christina: Um, a biometric sensor. So, um, but yet pass keys for Okta work through one password. So [00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Brett: Have you, have you ever used, um, so you, you know how you can have authenticator apps like Google has one, Oracle has one, Microsoft has one, um, and they give you your six digit, your 2FA code. Um, and I hate. Like, I’ll be logging into, like, Oracle, and it’ll ask me to pull up my phone, open the Authenticator app, copy the, er, like, memorize the code, and then type it in, and that’s, that’s a pain in the butt.

[00:24:32] Brett: Um, if you can Set up one password as your

[00:24:36] Brett: authenticator app, which works most places. Yeah. It just auto fills your, your 2FA code every time. So I’ve been trying to port everything over to that. It has not worked. Oracle for some reason demands that you use

[00:24:50] Brett: their,

[00:24:50] Christina: Yeah. Microsoft does too for logging into Microsoft things. And they do it in a weird way where like, they send me a thing where they’re like, type in this code in [00:25:00] this app. so, it’s not the same TOT, like you can use the Microsoft Authenticator app as a TOTP provider.

[00:25:06] Christina: And for non corporate accounts, Microsoft Authenticator. You could actually, I’m pretty sure you could probably set up, um, um, Google Authenticator or Authy or 1Password or another, you know, T O T P provider to be the person who would provide you, like, that code, like, for, like, your consumer Xbox account or consumer Outlook account or whatever.

[00:25:23] Christina: However, with, I think it’s now called Intra, Which is such a fucking bad name, but it used to be Azure Active Directory, but now it’s, or Azure AD, now it’s Intra, but for that, you have to, with an E, yeah, it’s a fucking weird name, I’m like, I’m like, Intra is really close to Encarta, if you think about it, and, and, That’s weird because I bet the people who came up with the name don’t even remember Rincarda But I do because I was a child and I loved it.

[00:25:52] Christina: Anyway, Intra, you know that app like makes you log in with your face or some other way [00:26:00] and then type in Like the characters that it will show you on your screen

[00:26:05] Brett: the way, like, that’s the way GitHub, uh, the GitHub mobile app authentication, if you choose to use, yeah, you have to load up GitHub mobile and then type in the code, which is honestly easier to me than looking at my phone and copying by hand a

[00:26:22] Brett: six digit

[00:26:22] Christina: No, totally. I mean, and I agree with that. I actually prefer, like, tell me what to type into my phone rather than the other way around. I’m with you. But, like, the best thing is just, like, autofill it for me. Um, or, or in the case, or in the case of GitHub, use a passkey, right? Because you can use passkeys with GitHub.

[00:26:38] Christina: And then that’s great. And what’s great about 1Password, um, What I like, like, so passkeys right now aren’t fully, like, exportable, um, although apparently that’s going to be coming to the spec. But, you know, I will save the same passkey or, you know, maybe two different passkeys, but it will both be authenticated the same way, both, like, in my, you know, phone’s, um, password.

[00:26:59] Christina: [00:27:00] You know, manager folder as well as on one password. And then I can select like on my phone, like, where do you want what passkey? Where do you want to use it from? And I’m like, great. And, um, the only annoying thing about like Google’s passkey implementation is that it doesn’t sync. So you have to have like a different passkey.

[00:27:15] Christina: Like you have, like, if you have a passkey set up for Chrome, for instance, you need to do that, like on every device that you’ve got Chrome installed on. And it’s, it’s great. Um, and for most people who don’t have four, how many computers do I have? Four or five. Yeah, I’m literally counting. I’m literally counting in my head because I’m like, hmm, I mean, it’s four that I use heavily and then like, um, and that doesn’t count the iPhone and iPad. And then like, I have a fifth. So yeah, um, technically a sixth, but yeah, but I don’t do other stuff on that one.

[00:27:48] Christina: So yeah, most people don’t have that situation, but like for someone like me, I’m like, I appreciate how 1Password does it because I just need to install 1Password everywhere and then my passkeys are working like [00:28:00] on every platform.

[00:28:03] Sponsor: AeroPress

[00:28:03] Brett: I’m gonna stick a sponsor read in here. I’m actually pretty excited to have these guys as a sponsor. So, um, we’re gonna talk about Aeropress. Aeropress combines the best qualities of a few coffee brewing methods into one cup. A little French press, a little pour over, and a little espresso all in one cup.

[00:28:23] Brett: It’s the best cup of classic coffee you’ll ever drink. AeroPress is incredibly versatile, giving you full control over all brewing variables like temperature, time, grind size. So unlike other brewers, you can make countless recipes. I have my own favorites, but I love to experiment and get different cups of coffee from the same beans.

[00:28:45] Brett: And it’s the fastest single cup coffee maker out there. Two minutes to brew and clean. I have a Zojirushi water heater so I can We have boiling water in about a minute, um, and have my cup of coffee two minutes later. [00:29:00] AeroPress just released a new set of clear colors, blue, green, purple, red, and more, so you can add a touch of color and personality to your brew wherever you are.

[00:29:09] Brett: I’m rocking a red one right now and I love it, but I am tempted by blue too. I only need one AeroPress, but we have three in the house, uh, you know, just in case three people want a cup of coffee at the same time, I guess. Um, AeroPress is shockingly affordable, less than 50, and we’ve got an incredible offer for our listeners.

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[00:29:56] Brett: AeroPress ships to the USA and over 60 countries [00:30:00] around the world. And we thank AeroPress for sponsoring our show.

[00:30:05] Sponsor: ExpressVPN

[00:30:05] So, how do you feel about

[00:30:07] Brett: ExpressVPN?

[00:30:07] Christina: I mean, okay, genuinely, um, they are also a sponsor, this week and we appreciate them very much. I pay for ExpressVPN and, uh, I, like, I don’t get this for free from them for them providing, uh, a sponsorship for us. Although that would be nice. Uh, I actually pay for it. So, When you think about like how you choose like your internet service provider and who to use, what’s, what’s funny is in the United States anyway, don’t have a choice in most cases.

[00:30:33] Christina: It’s just like, This is your ISP. And if you want to get it from someone else, then you have to, you know, pay for like a, a cellular, carrier and, and in on that, which may or may not be better, than, than what your options are, but your, your options are limited.

[00:30:48] Christina: And so, this allows, you know, basically these companies going to have the monopoly and then they can determine not just, what types of, service they offer you, but because net neutrality law is being recalled, [00:31:00] they can determine like how fast or how slow certain types of, of content you have access to is.

[00:31:04] Christina: And then in addition to that, this is also a thing, again, net neutrality laws, uh, uh, being repealed, um, allowed this to happen. Like they can sell your data, like they can log and sell all the, Different sites that you visit and access and, um, and that’s allowed. Thanks Ajit Pai for all of that.

[00:31:21] Christina: So, um It is, in some ways, a good idea to use a VPN, like ExpressVPN, to maybe hide your traffic from your ISP, if you want. Like, if you don’t want, like, what you’re doing being sold to other people. It’s a VPN, so it’s going to be encrypting network traffic and tunneling it through their secure server so that your ISP can’t see any of your activity.

[00:31:42] Christina: ( ) And that’s not a bad idea. It’s also a good idea to use something like that if you’re on a network that you don’t have a lot of information about. Um, because even though most web traffic these days is encrypted, um, you know, HTTPS, um, you don’t necessarily want the people, you know, at the Marriott to, again, be able to kind [00:32:00] of, like, control what sorts of content you can and can’t access.

[00:32:02] Christina: I’ve actually run into this before, where I’ve been using, like, a perfectly valid, Um, thing like a, like a, like a torrent client. And I’ve been at a hotel and they’ve been like, no, because this daemon is running on your machine, you’re not even actively like running a torrent right now. But because you have this like background daemon, like we’re not letting you access our network.

[00:32:21] Christina: Like that’s the real thing that’s happened to me. So you can use ExpressVPN. And then the main network can’t, can’t see that. That was what’s your, what you’re doing and you know, Bob’s your uncle. So big fan of express VPN. Um, you know, also use it if you want to watch Canadian Netflix, it’s good stuff.

[00:32:36] Christina: Uh, so I, I recommend it as a way to, you know, hide your online activity from the Marriott or your own ISP or to. Access Netflix in another country so stop handing your personal data to ISPs and other tech giants who mine your activity and sell off your information. Protect yourself with the VPN that I trust to keep me private online.

[00:32:54] Christina: You can visit expressvpn. com slash overtired. That’s e x p r [00:33:00] e s s v p n dot com slash overtired to get three extra months for free. Expressvpn. com slash overtired right now to learn more.

[00:33:11] None.com

[00:33:11] Brett: Yup. Alright. Uh, side note, like, all of these, uh, VPN ads used to be about, um, well, for a while they were all about, like, co location or whatever you want to, geolocation, um, which, which is valid, but it used, before that it was all about security, but you’re right, like, everything is SSL encrypted now. So it’s kind of, that’s a moot point.

[00:33:39] Brett: So these, these new talking points

[00:33:41] Brett: are far

[00:33:42] Christina: yeah, exactly. Yeah, they’ve had to shift around that because it’s like, yeah, everything is SSL encrypted, so it’s just, it’s not like the same thing like, oh, the Wi Fi at the airport is going to snoop your data. No, it’s not. It’s just they might sell your data, right? Like, especially if you log in with an actual email address. which don’t ever do. Just do none at none. [00:34:00] com for the airport wifi. I promise you, because they don’t make, because there’s, because if you think about it, there’s no way for you to check, to click on an email link at the airport when they ask you for it. So they’re just asking you for an email. So just none at none.

[00:34:13] Christina: com. I have no idea what, who owns that domain or, or, or anything. And I hope to God there’s not a mailbox attached to it because, you know, I bet that there are millions and millions of people who every day are just like, This, this is my random email.

[00:34:27] Brett: I use example. com

[00:34:29] Brett: just

[00:34:30] Christina: Yeah, it makes sense.

[00:34:31] Brett: like, it’s a force of habit because when you’re writing for the web, if you want to use a dummy URL, you can’t just make shit up because then people can buy that domain and hijack any traffic that does anyone who doesn’t realize it’s a dummy URL and they click it and yeah.

[00:34:47] Brett: Yeah. So I always use example. com cause that’s a protected, I, I

[00:34:52] Brett: can

[00:34:53] Christina: Correct. Which is good. Yeah, the reason I do none is just because it’s fewer characters to type. [00:35:00] But you’re right. When you’re like writing things, it’s better. But like when I’m like on my phone, I’m like, I don’t have time to do the ex. Like I’m just now, I’m just, you know.

[00:35:11] Google AI and the death of web traffic

[00:35:11] Brett: So can we talk a little bit about Google’s vision of the

[00:35:15] Christina: Yes, please. Let’s talk about it. How many times are we going to say AI in this conversation? And can we use Google?

[00:35:21] Christina: And can we use Gemini or whatever to tell us? Anyway. Sorry. Yes.

[00:35:27] Brett: um, so Google IO happened recently and. Uh, one of their major focuses was AI search, um, AI in general, they, they demoed, uh, an improved version of AI from the last Google I O round. Um, but like they’re talking about basically revamping their search results page to provide answers directly on the page, re reducing the need to click into [00:36:00] websites, which.

[00:36:02] Brett: Okay, A, that’s like for us old school web people, like getting Google traffic was a major source of traffic to our website, um, which leads to the ability to have advertisers, the ability to build a name, to build a reputation. Um, if they were to. Scrape my data and just give it directly to people without sending them to my site?

[00:36:28] Brett: That seems like, that seems like a betrayal of the web. But also, they run

[00:36:34] Brett: most of the

[00:36:35] Christina: Well, I was going to say, this is, this is a, this is like a, a big, I have to feel like this is like a big existential crisis internally for them because

[00:36:46] Brett: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a

[00:36:47] Brett: caveat for

[00:36:48] Christina: because, yeah, because, you know, okay. So I think when I think of like greatest acquisitions in history, like in business and like in computing history, right?

[00:36:58] Christina: Like, obviously you have, you [00:37:00] know, Apple acquiring Next, right? Which, which brought back Steve Jobs, which was most important and also gave them the underpinnings for, you know, Mac OS X, which. Thinned is the underpinnings for everything they have. I also think of Apple’s acquisition of, um, um, um, uh, PaSemi and, and getting, um, into being able to, to manufacture their own chips, right?

[00:37:20] Christina: And, um, and then the PaSemi acquisition, which was, a fairly small acquisition, let them do that. But then I also think like for the web, like, and then you also think like, you know, like, like Facebook buying Instagram, things like that. One of the ones that has to be like in the top three, if not the top two is, is Google buying DoubleClick.

[00:37:41] Christina: So when Google bought DoubleClick, which was, you know, the big ad serving thing, they were able to do exactly what you said. Like, Page rank already existed and people were wanting to rank highly on Google, you know, because people were using Google as a search engine to drive traffic to their sites. And then they were able to sell ads on it.

[00:37:56] Christina: But then Google was like, well, we’re going to buy DoubleClick and we’re going to sell you [00:38:00] the ads that are on your site. And we’re going to app, we’re going to do it in a programmatic way. And we’re going to let you just insert a snippet of code. And then we will show you contextual ads, you know, on your site and make it very easy for people to do that.

[00:38:11] Christina: And, and Google and Facebook are. I think they’re like 80 something percent of the ad market, right? All of, all of that comes through them. And Google is by far the largest. So it is interesting. A, like you said, it feels like a betrayal for people who are like, Hey, we gave you access to our sites. We let you, you know, search them and whatnot.

[00:38:29] Christina: And we played by your rules, even sometimes to our detriment about changing how our sites were coded and how information was presented so that you would rank us well, so that people would click through to us. Now you’re going to. Upend that and not show us, you know, like not take people to our site, you know, scrape our, you’re already kind of taking some of our data and putting it into data boxes and, and other things on the site.

[00:38:53] Christina: And there were, there’ve been lawsuits about that, but now you’re not even pretending that the goal is to send people to our sites. [00:39:00] You’re just flat out going to take it. But, you know, the, the, the weird caveat is, is that by not sending people to our sites, that also means that people are not going to see the ads that you provide.

[00:39:11] Christina: So how is Google going to make money from search?

[00:39:15] Brett: Yeah, no, I think something’s got to give there either. They need to walk back their obvious plan for, uh, basically a bot

[00:39:27] Christina: Mm hmm.

[00:39:27] Brett: that answers any and all questions instead of directing traffic around the web. They’re, they’re either going to have to walk that back or they’re going to have to find a new revenue stream because I have to imagine ad revenue is not an insignificant part of

[00:39:41] Brett: Google’s annual.

[00:39:43] Christina: it is. I mean, it’s, it’s how they make money. Like it is, it is how they make money. So you can’t just get rid of that. And, and it is, and the hard thing is, is that, you know, people do use, increasingly use, you know, chat GPT and, and other, um, services like that to do web searching and [00:40:00] to get answers to questions and.

[00:40:01] Christina: Yes, that does have an impact on what websites people will visit. But the thing is, is that that’s not real time. Like, as much as Bing is trying to make it more real time, and as much as, you know, OpenAI is trying to, you know, um, add in stuff to make it more real time, like, it’s not quite there yet. So, for, like, Depending on what you’re searching for, you might not get those results.

[00:40:26] Christina: You might still need to like, have a traditional Google or, or, you know. Uh, I’ve been using Kegi, actually. I’ve been paying for Kegi. I guess that’s how it’s pronounced. It’s K A G I, and so,

[00:40:38] Brett: Oh, like the old,

[00:40:39] Christina: yes.

[00:40:40] Brett: to be a software licensing company called

[00:40:43] Christina: and, and, and, and, it, yeah, Kaji or Kegi, I have no idea how it’s pronounced, um, uh, I say Kegi, but, uh, please correct me if I’m wrong on this, um, yeah, they, they, uh, they bought the domain from them, but it’s not affiliated with that in any way, um, the, the people who are behind this [00:41:00] I don’t know how the guy got rich, um, but he got rich and then decided to start building the Orion web browser that I think we’ve talked about, which is, which is, um, WebKit based, but it supports, um, web extensions.

[00:41:14] Christina: And so, um, it’s pretty cool. And, um, but it turns out that, that Orion was, was always kind of created in some ways. It’s, it’s kind of like a way to kind of show off the search engine. And so Keiki is, it costs money. It’s like, um, I’m on a family plan or duo plan with, with my friend Justin. So we pay like, 14 a month, um, with, with, with tax, um, or I guess annually, I guess we pay 151 a year.

[00:41:42] Christina: So 1260 a month in tax. So I paid Justin 75 cause he already had the plan. Um, and, um, we, um, basically, um, you get unlimited search, um, from unlimited devices and they bring stuff in from a number of different sources, [00:42:00] some their own, some that they’ve, you know, worked with other people. So like, I think BraveSearch is one of their sources and, um, you know, Bing and, and, you know, DECA Go and things like that, as well as some other things.

[00:42:11] Christina: And then they have some AI summarization tools that you can use with some of their things. And they have like a, I guess like a partnership with, with, with Wolfram Alpha, but the main thing I use it for is just honestly, just straight up search. And I found the search to be really, really good. Um, I was like, not sure if I needed to pay for a search engine and I’ve got so frustrated with Google search that I started paying for.

[00:42:35] Christina: For, um, uh, Kegi or Kaji or however the hell you pronounce it. Yeah.

[00:42:41] Brett: yeah, no, it’s, I guess my, it’s a lesser concern, but the other thing about like actually linking people to a webpage is you have, you can get a pretty good sense as to

[00:42:53] Brett: how

[00:42:54] Christina: Oh, 1000%.

[00:42:55] Brett: a source of information is by visiting the webpage. You do not get that [00:43:00] opportunity when a bot is just telling you, this is the answer you, you, then you have to do a search to verify

[00:43:07] Brett: your

[00:43:07] Christina: Well, no, that’s the thing, right? And, and, and what’s frustrating is, is like, even when you have an, and I, you know, what they were kind of showing off, it’s like, um, I was watching IO from a plane, so correct me if I’m wrong on this, but it didn’t seem like they were showing a list of sources of where they were getting that information, right?

[00:43:24] Christina: So, which means that I then have to, like, I would like to ask myself the question, like, how credible am I finding this? And, where is this coming from? And, like, can I find a way to get this information? You know, like, can I figure out, like, where they got this information so I can then vet it? You’re right, right?

[00:43:40] Christina: Like, it would, it would at least be better if they, um, Like would show you a source list. don’t know. Maybe they do. Again, I was, I was on a plane when I was watching IO, so I have no idea.

[00:43:53] Brett: I didn’t notice, I mean, to me, that seems like minimum viable product [00:44:00] would require a source list and, and links to the sources we scrape this information from, not just to be polite, but for exactly, uh, to avoid hallucinations, to allow people to, and that’s the problem is most people won’t. Most like if AI starts hallucinating or starts cannibalizing itself in any way, then most people are just going to accept what Google tells them.

[00:44:31] Brett: And, and Google itself could become a source of misinformation.

[00:44:37] Christina: I’m sure that it will be. I’m sure that it will be. No. And then it, and it’s just, I don’t know, like I, I understand what they’re trying to do because they are seeing themselves getting disrupted out of this market and they need to disrupt themselves. And I fully understand that, but like, I don’t know if the vision that they’ve shown off is like a good vision of,

[00:44:58] Brett: Yeah, I, I [00:45:00] kind of don’t think it is. And for like obvious reasons that we’ve talked about now,

[00:45:04] Grapptitude

[00:45:04] Brett: but anyhow, how would you feel about a, uh, What’s it called? A Graptitude.

[00:45:13] Christina: yeah. I love

[00:45:14] Brett: I can go first because I don’t know if you’re

[00:45:16] Brett: prepared

[00:45:16] Christina: I’m not prepared, um, but I need to look

[00:45:19] Brett: you’ll figure it out. I recently Okay, so let me start by saying TextExpander has been a long time supporter of my work and um, I have devoted a lot of time to building cool TextExpander snippets.

[00:45:37] Brett: But TextExpander is not really innovating anymore. There is a new text expansion tool that is doing some very cool things called TextBlaze. And I talked to, I got a, I got a demo from, um, a guy that actually used to work at TextExpander who now does sales [00:46:00] for, Um, Text Blaze, and he gave me like a full tour, and if you go, I’ll link the,

[00:46:08] Brett: it’s,

[00:46:08] Christina: Blaze. today?

[00:46:10] Brett: yeah, Blaze.

[00:46:11] Brett: today, and if you go there, it looks like it’s just the Chrome extension, and you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see the macOS app, um, and it syncs between platforms, so you can run the Chrome extension, and the macOS app, and the Windows app, And all of your snippets sync and it has, it does not have script snippets, which was one of the big things that I used TextExpander for.

[00:46:37] Brett: But what it does have is like this command palette and some that has commands like URL load and it will pull in a JSON response from an API, and then , you can write a JavaScript function to, um, parse and output, you know, any part [00:47:00] of that JSON response, um, which actually solves, I mean, half of the shell script snippets that I have in TextExpander are really just Curling and API and, and, and those don’t work on iOS.

[00:47:15] Brett: So they were kind of like, they’re outdated at this point. And having this built in ability to, to pull in, an external data source is brilliant and you can do if then scripting and they have all the fill ins for like text fields and dropdowns. And. I’m having a lot of fun, like, kind of porting all my stuff over to it.

[00:47:37] Brett: The one thing that’s killing me is, In TextExpander, I always set it to expand after whitespace. So I would have to type the snippet and then the spacebar. And TextBlaze cannot do that. And you cannot include a space in a shortcut. So, I mean, I can get used to that. That’s fine. But I, [00:48:00] I naturally hit a space after I type a shortcut.

[00:48:04] Brett: Like it’s ingrained muscle memory. So I keep ending up with like, I have one that just writes, thanks Brett, at the end of an email. Dash equals, writes, thanks. No, comma TX writes, thanks Brett, um, to sign off on emails. And I always hit the space, comma TX space. So then I get a space right before the T in.

[00:48:27] Brett: And then I have to backspace and that does not save me any time. I could have typed it faster at that point. Um, so I, that’s going to take some getting used to. I’m getting there. I’m basically using, instead of comma comma, which is my kind of standard prefix for, TextExpander. I’m using forward slash, um, so that my brain can start new muscle memory on these.

[00:48:53] Brett: Um, but yeah, no, it’s super cool, super fun to play with. They do have clients for [00:49:00] various operating systems, all in beta right now, so, for anyone who is a long time TextExpander user who wants to try something new, it’s, uh, it’s worth

[00:49:11] Brett: checking out.

[00:49:12] Christina: Yeah, I’m looking at the site now and so, and it looks like, yeah, like it’s in free, it’s free forever. They’ve got like a free forever plan. And then they, it looks like they have like a pro plan, which is 3 a month, which that’s about the same price as text expander, I think. Um.

[00:49:28] Christina: They have a free account, but then if you want to do certain things, like, for instance, if you want to add in, so, and, and the free plan might be good enough, but I can’t tell from the free plan, is it that, like, they have these, um, looks like they have, like, these, these snippet packs or command packs or what?

[00:49:45] Brett: command packs that are very much geared, like most of those only work in Chrome and they’re designed for automating like Gmail tasks and, and there’s AI, uh, writing built in, like it’ll [00:50:00] write, you know, You can basically use AI to generate a pleasant intro to an email to X customer and then save that as a snippet.

[00:50:10] Brett: Um, and I, I don’t, I haven’t differentiated between what’s available in my business

[00:50:15] Brett: plan.

[00:50:16] Christina: what I can’t

[00:50:16] Brett: what’s available in

[00:50:17] Brett: the free

[00:50:18] Christina: what I was thinking is, because I didn’t know this, like, is if any of the, like, some of the API stuff, like, obviously, yeah, those command packs have been pre created for things, but they also have, like, these connected snippets and then these dynamic commands where, like, you can basically have, like, a, you know, a function that’ll, you know, for things like a clipboard or click or whatnot, which might be useful and might be a way potentially to get around the lack of AppleScript support.

[00:50:42] Christina: So, that, that I don’t

[00:50:44] Brett: Check this out. Check this out though. They have a discourse, forum and they’ve built a, like, shortcode for embedding snippets. And it will actually display the snippet. Like it’s, [00:51:00] it’s cool. You can type out like in curly brackets, you can type in your own commands. And then when you double click them, they turn into tokenized bubbles.

[00:51:08] Brett: And then you can click on that bubble and you get like a whole info palette where you can edit all of its parameters and everything on the side. They built that into their discourse forum. So you get a JavaScript version of your snippet. That you can preview. You can, you can click a button to import it to your

[00:51:26] Brett: own text

[00:51:26] Christina: Oh, that’s

[00:51:27] Brett: And, and it, yeah, it looks exactly like it does in the app. I, it’s super cool. I love

[00:51:33] Brett: it.

[00:51:33] Christina: That’s very cool. No, I’ll check this out. Um, I’ve been using, what’s the, um,

[00:51:37] Christina: I’m trying to think who it’s from, I think it might be from, but I, because I, I have, I pay for TechMate or not, not Te TechMate, um, um, uh, text Expander. Um, I would pay for TechMate if TechMate we’re still in, development. Um, but on, on some machines, like it just doesn’t make sense for me to always like, have. TextExpander running. Um, [00:52:00] and, and I think I also was just like wanting to look at like what like alternatives might have been. So I, I’ve, um, I’ve played with some alternatives, um, that, that have been good and that, that it can, you know, uh, take TextExpander inputs. Um, the, the big thing that I run into, like, like you said, is the, the lack of white space thing.

[00:52:22] Christina: Like, that’s a, that’s a thing that for me can, can really kind of ruin things. But no, but this looks great. This looks really, really cool. Um, a typinator, that’s, that’s the app. That’s the

[00:52:31] Brett: Type in

[00:52:32] Christina: Typinator. Um, I, I’ve paid for that, um, and um, because, I, I don’t know, like a one time thing versus a, you know, ongoing subscription.

[00:52:42] Christina: There’s appeal in that, depending on how much you use, you know, your, your tools. Um, I, I haven’t had a problem paying for TextExpander, but at the same time, I don’t know, I like to, I like to try things out. So, uh, TextBlaze, I’ll give that a shot. Um, that’s cool,

[00:52:55] Brett: I want, I want the code for that discourse plugin so that I [00:53:00] can embed text play snippets on my blog and make them look as cool as they do in discourse. Um, I don’t know if they’re gonna

[00:53:09] Brett: open that up

[00:53:10] Christina: I mean, they should. I mean, honestly, here’s the thing, like, the community of people who care about sharing Expander snippets for any tax expander service is it’s like 10 people, right? Like the community people who care about that is like really small and you’re part of that.

[00:53:27] Christina: So if you are wanting people to adopt your tool, like, I think that it would make sense for them to, to make that sort of thing open.

[00:53:34] Brett: they do, they do have some sharing, uh, features that I think they’re going to improve on, uh, much like TextExpander finally, after like 10 years, started offering like web based snippet sharing, um, long after I had built my own like snippet, snippet group generator. Um, but yeah,

[00:53:57] Christina: no, that’s great. Um, okay. So my [00:54:00] pick is, and this kind of goes into a topic that we didn’t talk about, but, um, I can talk about a little bit here. So I bought a new Windows laptop. So, um, I last bought a Windows laptop about three years ago and I got the, uh, one from Framework, um, a company that, that I, I like a lot who makes, sustainable, like modular, upgradable laptops.

[00:54:22] Christina: And I really liked my Framework laptop, um, except it was an 11th Gen Intel processor and this was better than some of the Intel generations, but like not the best in terms of like battery life performance, like certainly nothing close to like what Apple Silicon was giving you, right? Um, and um, They do have an AMD variant available now that I looked at buying.

[00:54:43] Christina: The only reason I didn’t was because it was a little expensive considering I already, like if I were buying a brand new laptop and I didn’t already have like a framework, like it would have been a no brainer. But since I didn’t, since I already had a framework laptop and I was like, it’s the same screen, it’s the same [00:55:00] keyboard, it’s just, you know, a different processor and new RAM and stuff.

[00:55:04] Christina: Like I didn’t know if I wanted to go through the process of upgrading everything over or if I wanted to. Like, I don’t know. It just, it felt, I felt like I kind of maybe just wanted something a little bit different. So I bought, um, HP had a sale and then American Express had 150 off offer. So it was like, if you bought something for a thousand dollars or more, you got 150 off and then HP had a sale.

[00:55:27] Christina: And so a laptop that Best Buy was selling for basically the equivalent of the Best Buy, like their price, their MSRP was like 1, 900. I wound up getting four. Um, I think like 12. 56 before tax and before the, you know, discount. Um, and so it was like 13 something, um, uh, after tax. And then, so, you know, minus 150, basically 1, 200.

[00:55:51] Christina: I got, um, a core, 7, I think that’s what they call it, 155H, I don’t know, Intel has a new [00:56:00] naming scheme. With 32 gigs of RAM and a 1 terabyte SSD, um, and it’s a touch screen, um, convertible, so like it’ll, it’s, the x360 part of it is that, you know, you can turn it all around, you can draw on it with like, like a tablet.

[00:56:13] Christina: Um, basically cheaper than an iPad Pro, uh, but actually you can use it as a computer. Um. Bye. Yes, that is a dig, and I have an iPad Pro, and I might be buying the new iPad Pro. I don’t know yet. If I do, it’s just so I can give my iPad Pro to my mom, because it would be cheaper to give her that iPad Pro than, like, the amount of money that Apple will give me for buyback, like, is less than what a 10th gen iPad would cost.

[00:56:38] Christina: It’s, it’s dumb. Anyway, um, I’m rambling here, but I got a new Windows laptop. And so I, I’ve been playing with, with Windows a little bit more because this laptop is, is faster and is more efficient than like my three year old one, which I’ve, I haven’t fucked with in a long time and I still have many complaints about Windows, especially with the setup process and and definitely I’m looking forward to seeing I [00:57:00] think there’s going to be like a Qualcomm announcement, um, in the next few weeks about, um, um, Apparently Windows on arm is finally gonna get good.

[00:57:09] Christina: And, and we’ll, and we’ll see if, if that, if that actually happens. But in the interim, um, I have been playing, you know, on, on this new laptop that I’ve had for about a week and a half now. And, and I, I like a lot of things about it. Uh, I like the ole screen, I like the, the refresh rate, but my gude pick. And this was my, I’m very sorry.

[00:57:28] Christina: This is my long way of getting into this. I’m, I’m long wind, I’m long-winded because I’m tired. Um. is Arc, the web browser we were talking about, like web browsers, Arc is now available for Windows.

[00:57:38] Brett: Nice. Yeah. I remember Brian Guffey was talking about that. They were totally sold on that browser a long time ago. Um, but at that point I think

[00:57:48] Brett: it was

[00:57:49] Christina: Yeah, and it’s, it’s been not going to land. So a couple of weeks ago, um, ARC became available for Windows. And what’s interesting about it, I believe, is that they built it using like Swift still for [00:58:00] Windows. Um, they, they released this a year ago. There was a video, um, it says how we’re building the ARC, um, browser Windows app with Swift. So they’re actually. Doing like Swift under the hood, which is pretty interesting. So instead, um, yeah, so this was from, um, I guess their CEO, this was back in November of 2022.

[00:58:19] Christina: So 18 months ago, he says, Arc is coming to Windows in 2023. Okay. You were off there, buddy. But although I think it was available in preview, but I didn’t, um, use the preview. With a twist, instead of using C sharp, Arc for Windows will be built using Swift. This is at browser company’s biggest R& D yet. Um, and, and then they have a whole video about, like, why we need to do those things.

[00:58:42] Christina: And I’m assuming it’s just because it was just easier for them for, for whatever they’re trying to do. I will actually want to go watch that, that full video because I have questions about why you would, why you would choose this when you’re rendering

[00:58:54] Christina: engine is Chromium.

[00:58:56] Brett: if, you can have, uh, two codebases that [00:59:00] more or less align, it would save you, in the long run, it would save you a lot of development

[00:59:06] Brett: time.

[00:59:07] Christina: Yeah,

[00:59:08] Brett: So I have to assume, I have to assume it’s so that they can port code back and forth. Although I’ve tried porting. Swift code to like Linux machines and run into like the frameworks are different and the APIs are different and it still takes a lot of, uh, manipulation, especially for something as complex as like the Arc browser.

[00:59:32] Brett: So it is an interesting

[00:59:33] Brett: choice.

[00:59:34] Christina: Well, yeah, no, totally. I mean, I understand, I think, kind of the decision there because, like you said, the, you know, less maintenance, but then at the same time, I’m like, but your underlying, like, rendering engine is chromium. Um, I don’t know, like, wouldn’t C just be your better option? Like, honestly?

[00:59:52] Brett: I hate

[00:59:52] Brett: writing in

[00:59:53] Christina: I know I understand that, but I’m saying if you’re a browser company, if your company name literally is The Browser [01:00:00] Company, which is their name, which is great. But if your company name is The Browser Company, it make more sense to use something like C as your language on all of your platforms from the beginning, rather than trying to scaffold Swift into working on Windows? That, that’s all I’m saying. So, I will drop the video in show notes cause, cause I, cause I wanna, um, I, I have, I have questions about this, but, at the same time, I don’t care, um, in terms of like, like, what decisions you made, hey, maybe you just wanted to nerd snipe, like, maybe you just really, you know what I mean?

[01:00:33] Christina: Like, I’m, I’m like, I’m a big fan, like, whatever you wanna do, guys, um, anyway, I like the browser a lot, um, I actually like, um, We were talking about AI stuff. I actually like how ARC has, gives you the option if you want to enable some AI tools for doing some summarization and some search stuff. They use Perplexity AI under the hood, which is a service that I now get for free, pro for free, because I bought that stupid Rabbit R1 device.

[01:00:59] Christina: [01:01:00] Um, and I got it and it’s dumb as hell and the company is sketchy as fuck and I, I’m not recommend,

[01:01:05] Brett: but then they basically released a non functional

[01:01:09] Brett: Android phone.

[01:01:10] Christina: Well, yeah, which, which of course they did. Of course it was going to be based on AOSP. For me, the thing that I was actually more pissed about was the fact that like, when you log into the services, they’re like, Oh, you need to use a computer. You can’t use your phone or your browser or, or, or an iPad.

[01:01:25] Christina: I’m like, okay, that’s weird. And then on my computer, I was like, this doesn’t look retina. And I realized that what you’re doing is you’re, you’re logging into a, um, a VM. Um, controlled by like, um, tiny VNC or something. And so, but they’re hiding it. And so they’re making it look like you’re logging into an official login thing.

[01:01:43] Christina: Then the way I realized, A, was that stuff wasn’t writing that. And B, I was like, why is my password manager not auto filling? And then I realized what was happening. And there was, and they have like this fucking copy button where you can like pay, pay something from your clipboard and then like, send it to.

[01:01:58] Christina: Um, the password [01:02:00] field. And I was like, okay, so this is sketch as fuck, right? Like, I, I, I, rather than using OAuth, which is what you should be doing, they’re like, oh, well, we don’t need to use any official APIs because we’re just using playwright scripts to, you know, do our functions. I’m like, I get it. I get, I get that, like, you know, you might be violating Spotify’s You know, uh, partner terms or whatever.

[01:02:21] Christina: Although Spotify makes a very, like, they have a hardware program that this company could definitely has the money for and could definitely, like, you know, qualify for. Like, there’s no reason for, like, maybe for, like, Uber or DoorDash, you would need to, to do what they’re doing. But for Spotify, like, there, there’s a valid way you could have an integration set in.

[01:02:41] Christina: Regardless, anyway, Ravida’s sketch as fuck. The reason I don’t regret it is A, 200, who cares? B, um, I’m very privileged, blah, blah, blah. B, but, but, but let’s be real. If you’ve listened to this podcast or any of my, my other podcasts, you know that I’ve wasted 200 on so many dumber things than this. Like it’s not even, this doesn’t even [01:03:00] rank, like it’s not even in the top 100.

[01:03:02] Christina: But I got a year of Perplexity Pro for free, which is also 200. So, Um, I enjoy Proplexity Pro quite a bit. Um, it’s, um, it’s basically kind of like ChatGPT but you can also choose between, um, Claude and, um, the, the Mistral models and, and some of the other models too. So it’s, it’s pretty cool, but they also have stuff with Arc for summarizing.

[01:03:23] Christina: And asking some AI related stuff, so you don’t have to use that stuff. You can turn all those things off, but I like the ARC browser a lot. I like how its tabs work. I like, um, uh, it’s opinionated and what it’s doing. And so, um, and then now there’s a Windows version and, um, and I enjoy it on Windows too. So anyway,

[01:03:40] Brett: I get the, I get the ARC newsletter and I see all of their, every time they have a new feature, I read about it. Um, I have it installed. I’ve never kind of pretty sold on Firefox right now, so I haven’t been looking for a new browser, but they are doing some very cool things that I think ultimately [01:04:00] may convince me

[01:04:00] Brett: to switch.

[01:04:01] Christina: I mean, the thing that is for me, like that prevents me from Firefox is the same thing that kind of prevents me from Safari, but, uh, it’s, it’s Safari has, it’s more, it’s that there are certain apps, and I, I’ve run into less of this, to be clear, but there are certain apps that will, that are, that are designed for

[01:04:17] Christina: Chromium.

[01:04:17] Brett: like, Riverside here right now, anything that’s recording video, anything pretty much that uses video, is going to prefer Chrome, uh, or a Chromium browser. Um, so that makes perfect sense. And, and honestly, I, I have to load up Chrome to, to record our podcast, so I’m not purely a

[01:04:36] Brett: Firefox

[01:04:37] Christina: Right, right.

[01:04:37] Brett: But Firefox Developer Edition, um, I can’t remember what they call it, Web Developer Edition or whatever, uh, with the blue Firefox logo, the, the inspector palette in that is

[01:04:50] Brett: crazy cool.

[01:04:52] Christina: I like that a lot. I actually recently, it’s funny, um, I, um, yeah, I like the Firefox Developer Edition and then, um, they have a, they have a VS Code plugin [01:05:00] too, which is really great. Um, cause that’s actually one of my things that, like, I really liked about Edge when it first came out. Like, cause the Edge DevTools are really good and I, and I still stand by that.

[01:05:11] Christina: Like, I, I prefer the Edge DevTools to the, um, Chrome, um, DevTools. They are actually. Fairly significantly different, and um, I like that like you, I can use those in VS Code. But yeah, the Firefox ones are really good now too, and I, and they have a, they have a, um, a VS Code extension. So yeah, big fan of that.

[01:05:28] Brett: All right. So next time we’re going to talk about all of my recent keyboard purchases and how I’m building keyboards from scratch now, because I’ve gone down a rabbit hole and it’s costing me a lot of money. And someone told me, at least you didn’t go down an espresso rabbit hole, because that gets way more expensive, but I’m like, I’m buying keycaps for like 30 dollars a piece, so it’s gonna, it’s gonna,

[01:05:55] Christina: No, it is. No, that’s so funny. So like, like, like, like, like 30 per key?[01:06:00]

[01:06:00] Brett: You, uh,

[01:06:01] Brett: just for

[01:06:01] Christina: Oh, just for artisans. Okay.

[01:06:03] Brett: my, yeah, my resin

[01:06:04] Brett: coin

[01:06:05] Christina: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, just for your

[01:06:07] Brett: I have, I’ve tried, I’ve tried like a dozen different keys, different resin keys, and finally found one that works well with backlighting and that I really like, so now I have to replace all of the tab, caps lock, shift control, um, so that they’re uniform and my keyboard looks right and my whole bottom row.

[01:06:28] Brett: Uh, like function control option command is going to be these glowing yellow Manta keys. They’re like amber colored. It’s going to be a cool keyboard, this ultimate hacking keyboard. But then, then I bought more

[01:06:42] Brett: that we’ll

[01:06:42] Christina: Yeah, we’ll talk more. I want to hear about it. I want to hear about like, like, what type of boards are you doing and like, because, because I, I went down this rabbit hole and I didn’t like do the full soldering thing because I was like, I don’t want to solder that much. Um, But I did that like a couple years ago, and I’ve definitely spent [01:07:00] my fair amount of money like on keycaps and shit, but yeah, I’m very interested in hearing, um, and I still watch a lot of the key, like, video, like, well not keycap, but like keyboard YouTube content.

[01:07:11] Brett: I thought I, I won’t go into depth, but I thought I knew what switches I wanted for this one. I’m building this Sophie that I’m building, and then when I got into going to purchase them, I realized there were like a dozen that I had never even heard of, new ones from like Gator on, and so I ordered a 100 switch tester, um, that comes with like, uh, double shot key caps and everything. So you can really test how things are going to sound. Um, so I’m waiting until I get that before I decide how to finish this keyboard.

[01:07:48] Christina: Yeah, yeah, I definitely want to talk to you about that next time and I want to link to what keycap or what switch tester you got because I have, I have like, this is where I kind of run into things because I kind of know like what switches I know [01:08:00] I like and I kind of stick with them and then new ones come out and I’m like, How do I even test this?

[01:08:08] Christina: So, and how do I, like, yeah. It’d be nice if somebody would just, maybe this is what you got, if somebody was just like, hey, here, here are, is a tester that’s pre installed with what we think are like the best switches. Go nuts.

[01:08:22] Brett: should be able to order like, Going into it, you know you want clicky, or you know you want silent, or you know you want linear. Like, those are like some basic. So you should be able to order a switch tester that’s just clicky, or just silent, and, and just test out, you know, the clickiest of clicky, um, keys.

[01:08:44] Brett: That would, that would save me some time. I wouldn’t have needed a hundred switch

[01:08:47] Brett: tester if

[01:08:48] Christina: exactly. Yeah, no, that would be nice. And the thing is too, I’m surprised that like that hasn’t been a thing because like in the hobby as it’s known, because like it takes time to get these things and, and [01:09:00] it would be better if like you did just sell like a, a, you know, a cookie switch tester, uh, you know, a silent one and whatnot, because then like, You know, you’d be much more like, like, this could be like a DIY thing.

[01:09:11] Christina: That’s one of the, you know, companies, you know, like put together because then like, if you have them, then great, guess where you’re going to go. You’re going to go back to that same place that you bought your, your, you know, um, uh, switch tester from and buy switches from them. Like,

[01:09:23] Brett: Yeah, yeah, well, and also they should have different levels of lube on the switches that you can test before you go and lube 50 some switches, uh, because someone told you you should lube your switches.

[01:09:39] Christina: cause some are pre looped.

[01:09:40] Brett: like a

[01:09:40] Brett: lot of work

[01:09:41] Christina: It is a lot of work

[01:09:42] Brett: some are pre lubed and you can get them lightly lubed or heavily lubed and this feels dirty all of a sudden, I’m sorry. Anyhow, that’ll

[01:09:50] Brett: be, we’ll

[01:09:51] Christina: we’ll wait for Jeff. Yeah, I wouldn’t. Yeah. I’m sure he’ll have questions too, but no, I, I look forward to going down the keyboard rabbit hole with you.

[01:09:58] Brett: alright. [01:10:00] Well, Christina, you got a big week

[01:10:01] Brett: ahead, get some

[01:10:02] Christina: Thank you, Brett. You too. Get some sleep.