Episode 3: Home Automations, with Fredrik Alm

00:00:02.59
Mark McCracken
There we go. where're We're off.
00:00:03.48
Michael
you
00:00:04.54
Mark McCracken
Cheers.
00:00:04.86
Michael
Cheers everyone. Happy Thursday.
00:00:06.85
Fredrik
cheers Cheers.
00:00:08.68
Mark McCracken
Happy Thursday. What have we got to drink, Michael?
00:00:11.53
Michael
Well, I woke up this morning and I was immediately sick.
00:00:15.88
Mark McCracken
So you hit the booze early.
00:00:18.08
Michael
So so instead of having one of my 10% stouts, I've come for a 4% blood orange jubel beer, which is lovely. I might regret it though.
00:00:26.93
Mark McCracken
Very nice.
00:00:28.27
Michael
So if I suddenly run off mid
00:00:29.19
Mark McCracken
Possibly, yeah.
00:00:30.16
Michael
mid recording you know it's a what is it so it's like a fruity one say yeah it's nice yeah we'll see what happens say what's everyone else got oh yeah at the same at the same time or okay
00:00:30.17
Fredrik
Is that an ale or an IPA or what kind of beer is it?
00:00:36.06
Fredrik
Ah, nice. Lovely.
00:00:38.48
Mark McCracken
Lovely. a I've got a Budvar, which I didn't buy. My friend bought it yesterday. We have a little jam in here, and it went great. But we ah didn't have any more than...
00:00:49.32
Mark McCracken
We only had one instrument, so we just had to share. So it we just took it in turns. No, no, we just took it in turns. you know like Whenever you're a kid and you're playing Call of Duty and you're like, well, it's a one-player game, so we're just going to pass the controller around with bass.
00:01:01.11
Michael
here
00:01:03.02
Mark McCracken
So yeah, that was good. and but he he he bought some beers and I lost my nice tasty beer. So I've got a ah Budvar, which is kind of Budweiser, but it's ah really tasty.
00:01:12.46
Fredrik
It looks like ah like these traditional ah knockoff brands that you've seen in these mean and real videos.
00:01:13.88
Mark McCracken
Yeah, Czech beer.
00:01:20.12
Mark McCracken
It was a cheap corner shop, so um yeah.
00:01:22.69
Fredrik
Could explain it.
00:01:23.22
Michael
What have you got Fred?
00:01:24.78
Fredrik
So I am enjoying myself probably one of the most famous Swedish lagers, which is called Maristad.
00:01:30.36
Mark McCracken
Hmm.
00:01:30.67
Michael
Okay.
00:01:31.65
Fredrik
Not even sure. I think it's still produced in Sweden, but it's surely not produced in Maristad anymore. It's probably made by the Coca-Cola company about this point. but it's a
00:01:41.17
Michael
didn he Didn't you fancy an omni pollo?
00:01:43.60
Fredrik
I actually yeah enjoyed myself an Onipolo two weeks ago, um since it's a Swedish brand. You usually have them in the stores.
00:01:50.69
Michael
They're about 15 quid though, so it's definitely a treat.
00:01:53.63
Fredrik
They're really, really expensive. But on the other hand, if you don't drink that often, which I rarely do these days, unfortunately, because I really do enjoy it.
00:01:55.02
Michael
yeah
00:02:00.66
Mark McCracken
Yeah, don think but don't think that would work for for me anyway.
00:02:03.94
Fredrik
no
00:02:05.35
Michael
It's quite be a big so big session on those and you spend 100 quid.
00:02:06.87
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:02:10.26
Mark McCracken
We're having a six-pack and we're breaking the bank.
00:02:12.27
Michael
Yeah.
00:02:13.64
Fredrik
But at least you got to make sure to enjoy them. I think that's ah the the most important thing.
00:02:15.72
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:02:17.77
Michael
Yeah.
00:02:18.34
Mark McCracken
um Yeah, I've i been having a terrible afternoon. I um ah got home, is the downside of of garden offices, got home and I thought, right, let's go, podcast time, get it all ready. And I walked out and and a fox had shit on my garden path.
00:02:30.86
Michael
Oh no.
00:02:32.35
Mark McCracken
And I walked it straight in here and I was like, shit, that's a lot of shit.
00:02:36.85
Michael
They're really, they're really, I don't think any shit is nice, but a fuck shit.
00:02:40.03
Mark McCracken
No.
00:02:40.50
Michael
the fox shit is really violent so it's really horrible today today we we we we're having this chat at work they they uh i remember phil who we both know was saying that they there's there's something about them it's like there's something deliberate and and like where they do it it's like it's like a fuck you like like when you do a step rule
00:02:41.94
Mark McCracken
And I walked in and it was dark and I didn't turn the light on straight away. And then before you know it, I've got like 10 steps of like the smallest amount of shit everywhere. And I'm like, that was not happy.
00:03:02.33
Mark McCracken
Yeah I remember but but when when I bought my first ever house on day one getting the keys I'm like yes get the keys let's go open the door and catch it day one straight straight into the house like first steps I took into the house so like great catch it and obviously having just got into a complete shell of an empty room I didn't have anything to clean it with I was like
00:03:15.29
Michael
Nice. Lovely.
00:03:24.71
Michael
but So what did you do?
00:03:24.73
Mark McCracken
Fuck, we have to go get some toilet roll. I think we think we had to go to the corner shop and buy some toilet rolls and some stuff like first purchase.
00:03:28.64
Michael
Uh, yeah.
00:03:30.70
Mark McCracken
But yeah. Anyway. um Yeah.
00:03:33.59
Michael
Introductions. Hey, how are you with a J?
00:03:34.96
Mark McCracken
Well.
00:03:35.78
Michael
It's Fred from Sweden.
00:03:37.18
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:03:37.39
Fredrik
Yes, this is my friend from Sweden.
00:03:37.94
Michael
Yeah.
00:03:39.46
Fredrik
Shall I do a quick introduction maybe of myself and why I'm actually on the on the call since Michael was keen to inviting me?
00:03:41.65
Mark McCracken
Go on then. Yeah.
00:03:46.70
Michael
Yeah.
00:03:46.79
Fredrik
Yes, so a quick introduction about myself. My name is Fredrik, born and raised and currently living in the middle of Sweden. Now, the thing about Sweden is it's a very long country and we if you think of it from a stereotypical perspective, you usually think of maybe snow and darkness and if you watch Game of Thrones, it's g literally beyond the wall. It's ah it's a very interesting nature.
00:04:11.13
Fredrik
beautiful in the summer but very dark and cold during the winter time but it's a very long counter it's almost 1600 kilometers long ah compared to its width which is almost 500 kilometers So when we refer to living in middle of Sweden, I think majority of the population refers to actually the quarter down the path of Sweden, because majority of the people actually lives in the bottom half of the entirety of the country.
00:04:39.14
Fredrik
So middle of Sweden, for me, is more referring to the middle of the lower part or the lowest half.
00:04:45.32
Mark McCracken
So is there like a lot going on in the middle of Sweden or is it like there's nothing here?
00:04:49.64
Fredrik
It's mostly forests, elks, and ah more forests. That's pretty much it.
00:04:54.37
Mark McCracken
And you...
00:04:54.70
Michael
So how dark is it like so about now, if you're in the top of Sweden, you've got darkness all day, right?
00:05:01.70
Fredrik
Yes, um in its peak, In the northern Sweden, ah you actually don't see the sun for a couple of weeks at all.
00:05:11.61
Mark McCracken
Really?
00:05:11.74
Fredrik
You see it? Yeah, no. You have some lights in the horizon, so it gets semi-bright during a couple of hours throughout throughout the day.
00:05:16.28
Mark McCracken
Lighter. Yeah. But the sun's not up.
00:05:18.61
Fredrik
But no, the sun's not up. Whereas in the summer, it's the complete opposite. If you travel really far up north in the middle of summers, you can actually see the sun ah going down to the horizon, but not below the horizon.
00:05:28.94
Mark McCracken
It comes back up.
00:05:31.08
Fredrik
And then it just yeah comes back up.
00:05:32.94
Michael
and and And it drives people like crazy isn't it? Or it can. Like people, it really fucks with you. Like, what do you say?
00:05:38.08
Fredrik
Yeah I mean imagine living in this in summers it's constantly bright and in the winters constantly dark.
00:05:41.01
Michael
Yeah.
00:05:43.24
Fredrik
We usually have a saying that northern people gets very depressed and I can see why because then you really need to adapt themselves constantly to this. So I'm very happy to live in southern part where it's not that extreme.
00:05:53.51
Mark McCracken
And you've you've always lived in Sweden?
00:05:55.65
Fredrik
Yes I've always lived in Sweden. um I'm 32 years of age so I was actually trying to convince myself to move abroad a couple of years back but then
00:05:57.90
Mark McCracken
So it's just too lovely.
00:06:06.08
Fredrik
It's just too lovely. And life came in the way with every with opportunities and everything. So I stayed.
00:06:11.78
Mark McCracken
So have you ever met Michael in person?
00:06:14.21
Fredrik
Yes. Fortunately, I have.
00:06:18.31
Mark McCracken
It's just an internet romance.
00:06:18.32
Michael
ah you've made You've made me think of things now.
00:06:21.17
Fredrik
No, me and Michael, we, what is it? No, Michael, we go back two years, something like that.
00:06:24.87
Michael
No, it's probably like double that.
00:06:30.01
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:06:30.19
Michael
I think when you actually look at it, you're like, oh my God, it's like been four or five years.
00:06:32.58
Fredrik
No, you're right.
00:06:33.08
Michael
and
00:06:33.99
Fredrik
So we started to work together post the pandemic ah in Dallas, in a team called Deliver Engineering.
00:06:41.17
Mark McCracken
So when you joined, was it already called Bali's?
00:06:44.35
Fredrik
So I was part of a merger that former, before we came to Dallas, we were a company called, Mike always came from Gamesys, and I came from a company called Jackbook Joy. And there was an acquisition that took place that merged these companies together, which eventually became Dallas as a company.
00:07:01.16
Fredrik
So we kind of joined forces on a company level when we merged the Jackbook Joy and Gamesys together. And this was back in...
00:07:07.88
Mark McCracken
And the Swedish version of Jackpot Joy, because I used to, Michael and I used to work together and I also worked in Jackpot Joy at some point, but the UK version.
00:07:14.66
Michael
Yeah, it's like, no, that's hard.
00:07:14.77
Fredrik
the No, yeah, it's and's it's it's a weird thing.
00:07:15.94
Michael
It's like, you stole it.
00:07:16.41
Mark McCracken
yeah Yeah.
00:07:18.61
Michael
Yeah.
00:07:19.10
Fredrik
All the brand, the brand was bought out and then was bought back and the company group was named, it was a it's weird thing.
00:07:23.69
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Yeah. So what did you and Michael do together?
00:07:27.06
Fredrik
We did, I would say, probably DevOps in a more software-oriented way. so So it was very trying to make infrastructure as much as possible automated and work as much as possible the infrastructure as code.
00:07:32.61
Mark McCracken
Very nice.
00:07:40.99
Fredrik
So we became the delivery engineering team. Were you the one to actually form that team, Michael? Were you just tossed into it like, here's a team, here you go.
00:07:48.81
Michael
Uh, no, I think, I think, I think the, the, the, they always had that team in mind because it's basically like a platform engineering team. But I think at the time there's already at least three other platform engineering teams.
00:08:00.71
Michael
So they, they had to come up with a new name and it's just at one point it looked like that name was going to take off. Like there was, there was a, like Apple had a delivery engineering team.
00:08:11.75
Michael
But if you, if you go and look for deliver engineering, now you get one or two hits and then you get a lot of stuff about like delivering actual stuff.
00:08:12.25
Fredrik
you know
00:08:18.27
Michael
Like someone someone made a job application to join our team and it was like, they'd literally been a delivery driver. It was just so good.
00:08:28.89
Michael
They must've read the job spec and gone, yep, I'm ready, I'm ready.
00:08:30.45
Mark McCracken
Anyone with a pulse?
00:08:33.84
Michael
But no, it was give us, I fond memories of it, I really enjoy it. I love i love all that stuff, so it's good, isn't it?
00:08:40.06
Fredrik
Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:40.66
Mark McCracken
What kind of tools did you use?
00:08:44.10
Michael
And so,
00:08:45.33
Fredrik
Ansible, um Terraform, Python.
00:08:46.26
Mark McCracken
Lots of Ansible.
00:08:49.07
Michael
JFrog, I know Mark's not a fan.
00:08:50.89
Mark McCracken
fucking JFrog. My hatred of JFrog stems from one particular thing. I was using JFrog at some point because I'm sure Bartek told me to use JFrog. ah put Put your artifacts in here. And for whatever reason, I couldn't work out what it was doing wrong because it kept saying,
00:09:07.07
Mark McCracken
ah 503 error. It was giving me this error occurred 503 and it got really pissed off that eventually saying this should definitely be working and went to Ian Reeves to do like next level investigation, look at the logs for what's going on when I make this request.
00:09:20.89
Mark McCracken
And he eventually found out that it was a 404 request that was being redirected and and turning turning into a 503. And I was like, that's the worst the worst thing I've ever seen. Like that is so obfuscated.
00:09:30.07
Michael
and
00:09:31.43
Mark McCracken
Like how was I supposed to know that this wasn't working?
00:09:33.83
Michael
and and And then a few companies on you were storing your artifacts in confidence.
00:09:33.95
Mark McCracken
ah
00:09:37.60
Mark McCracken
yeah that
00:09:38.94
Michael
Did you feel better or worse?
00:09:39.71
Mark McCracken
i did I never, I didn't store the artifacts myself in Confluence.
00:09:44.44
Michael
Okay.
00:09:45.68
Mark McCracken
I just got there and that's what they were doing.
00:09:47.50
Michael
Okay, I probably shouldn't laugh.
00:09:47.65
Mark McCracken
And I said, this is, yeah, don't laugh. But that was pretty messed up too.
00:09:52.28
Michael
Okay.
00:09:52.79
Mark McCracken
But yeah, even Confluence was better than JFrog's. So JFrog's lowered my list of things that I like.
00:09:58.77
Michael
ah fer
00:09:59.14
Mark McCracken
Just because of that one small incident that took me about two days and I was like, I don't know.
00:10:00.88
Michael
Yeah. I think that' so that's all it takes sometimes, right? and it's
00:10:05.05
Fredrik
yeah JFrog was a really interesting product to work with. Good and bad, I'd say. I don't know the experience you had, Michael, but looking back to it, I haven't worked with JFrog since I left the Malice.
00:10:09.80
Michael
You haven't.
00:10:15.18
Fredrik
But it was with mixed feelings, having knowing and working with that product.
00:10:15.48
Michael
We have. OK.
00:10:18.78
Fredrik
And I wonder, would I ever want to work with that product product again? Maybe.
00:10:24.08
Michael
I actually reached out to them when when I and left Bally's. I was like, Do you want me? like i mean they but in ah Not particularly, but I put my name forward today.
00:10:33.05
Fredrik
Really?
00:10:33.62
Mark McCracken
like like you I was in like you had a close relationship with somebody at JFrog. Not semi, but yeah.
00:10:41.54
Michael
If you're on the lookout for someone, then I don't know. I kind of look back now and I think, do you would you want to work for a product?
00:10:52.13
Michael
Because if someone doesn't want that product,
00:10:55.81
Mark McCracken
Do you want to work for it?
00:10:57.41
Michael
No, no, but but do you like, have you, have you tied yourself to one particular thing and then it goes out of fashion and because things that, I mean, I guess you, I guess you don't just do JFrog stuff, right? You have to work with, I think it was a, what kind of role was it?
00:11:08.29
Michael
Like a solutions architect. So you had to go in and go, oh, you're a, may even use, you're a gradle user, you use pugging face and stuff. So, um, yeah, imagine doing loads of JFrog work and then everyone's like, nah, we don't want JFrog.
00:11:20.40
Mark McCracken
That'd be pretty, pretty dire, right? You gotta, you gotta read out a bunch of stuff.
00:11:22.15
Michael
Yeah.
00:11:24.68
Mark McCracken
Let me learn the exact same concepts, but slightly different.
00:11:24.81
Michael
Yeah.
00:11:27.67
Michael
Exactly, yeah. What is the big thing now? What's everyone using?
00:11:31.39
Fredrik
Wow, that's a really good question. um
00:11:33.04
Mark McCracken
That's a good question. I don't know. I just use whatever, I just use whatever Google offers.
00:11:34.26
Michael
Harbor?
00:11:36.75
Mark McCracken
I'm like, I just, I want the simplest, most cloud integrated thing that's already there.
00:11:36.82
Michael
Yeah.
00:11:40.40
Mark McCracken
I want the least amount of hassle and I don't care if it's amazing or what has it.
00:11:40.59
Michael
Yeah.
00:11:43.60
Mark McCracken
Just store my thing there and give it back to me later.
00:11:43.86
Michael
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
00:11:46.90
Fredrik
Funny you should ask, I was actually looking just a couple of weeks back for our company Storage Solutions for ah artifact images, especially OCI images, and I came to realize that if you look, depending of course the sizing of your company, the sizing of your needs, you still have the bigger players in the market that has been around for years, like you have Docker Hub, you have GitHub,
00:12:08.06
Fredrik
what's called GitHub packages and and all of this.
00:12:09.65
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:12:09.95
Michael
Yeah.
00:12:10.92
Fredrik
So it hasn't really changed much in the past few years as it seems by scouting the markets. So I think it's really down to the size of your business and size to your needs really.
00:12:21.89
Fredrik
I mean, JFrog was a beast and you could tell it was really enterprise oriented because they came with all these other packages, not just JFrog.
00:12:29.23
Mark McCracken
Because it's really developer unfriendly from day one, is that it?
00:12:31.97
Fredrik
but Maybe, maybe. So I think you have to look at it from the perspective of what's the needs of the business and the customer and that actually buys the product at the end of the day. And of course, if you were looking to work for that tank kind of company, then of course those would be your typical customers. So if that's not really your gig to try to work with big enterprises, then well, maybe not the case, but if you really want to work with big enterprises buying the product and trying to convince them to buy the product, then yeah, sure.
00:13:01.86
Michael
so um so So you, I'm guessing from that, you felt like obviously the place you left, it was when you left, it was a big enterprise. And now you've got a new job, right? Or newish.
00:13:10.87
Fredrik
Yes.
00:13:11.46
Michael
Yeah.
00:13:11.81
Fredrik
So the company that I and Michael worked together in, I joined that company soon to be 10 years ago and I departure this spring.
00:13:24.27
Fredrik
When I joined the first company 10 years ago, we were approximately 20 people in the local office, 200 in the entire organization. Then it grew to ballasts. And when I actually departure, where are we?
00:13:37.99
Fredrik
100 something in the local office. So we multiplied fifty fivefold. And globally in ballasts, we're a couple of thousands.
00:13:46.79
Michael
millions.
00:13:46.88
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:13:47.47
Michael
It's just massive, right?
00:13:49.01
Fredrik
So it was quite different coming to a team consisting of a total of six people.
00:13:49.09
Michael
Yeah.
00:13:54.00
Fredrik
ah going to a classical, I would say classic traditional startup. It was a really refreshing feeling, a bit weird at first, but it didn't take long before getting into it again, I realized. I really miss this.
00:14:06.28
Fredrik
for a lot of reasons. I mean, there are pros and cons working in big companies and working in smaller companies, as always, especially if you've been doing both.
00:14:07.50
Mark McCracken
yeah
00:14:14.39
Fredrik
You know where the benefits are, you know also where the struggles are.
00:14:17.85
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:14:17.99
Fredrik
Smaller companies, you can't really rely on someone else doing the job for you. As Michael said, when we were in development engineering, we had dedicated DevOps teams, we had infrastructure teams. You knew that there were always someone to cover for you in case you were to get sick or anything.
00:14:30.29
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:14:32.40
Fredrik
In a smaller companies, you don't really have that. ah
00:14:35.59
Mark McCracken
Yeah, there's ah nowhere to hide.
00:14:37.22
Fredrik
No, exactly. So you need to be kind of creative and be quite aware about the company and the the role you're playing in the company.
00:14:44.26
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:14:44.73
Fredrik
But for me, that suits me perfectly. So I'm really happy with my transition.
00:14:48.26
Michael
do do you Do you feel like you've, do you feel like you've scaled up massively? Cause you've had to, you know, like who's the network person?
00:14:52.64
Fredrik
Yes.
00:14:54.41
Michael
Oh, that's you.
00:14:54.80
Mark McCracken
wear a lot of hats.
00:14:55.05
Michael
Oh, right okay.
00:14:56.27
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:14:56.45
Michael
Better learn some stuff.
00:14:58.32
Mark McCracken
So that that was that was my experience as well whenever I moved to LiveScore.
00:14:58.49
Michael
That's really cool. Yeah.
00:15:01.28
Mark McCracken
So it was part of that whole song and dance of Game Sis becomes Ballys, becomes no longer LiveScore. They divested LiveScore. So that's probably why we never crossed paths because I left as Ballys merged.
00:15:13.67
Fredrik
Right.
00:15:13.85
Mark McCracken
But I moved to LiveScore and they didn't, they had to have like transitional service agreements. during that time.
00:15:20.91
Michael
and Yeah.
00:15:21.16
Mark McCracken
So it's like, right, you're not separate, but you have to continue to provide HR services and IT services for 18 months until you can build your own team, so to speak. And I kind of got thrown into this data team.
00:15:32.27
Mark McCracken
and We're like, we need some infrastructure stuff, CI CD stuff. And and then like, well, we don't have an IT department at all. Like we've got, we got nothing. So, but the people over at games are still responsible for providing this stuff, like for like.
00:15:46.00
Mark McCracken
And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't necessarily want like for like, because then we're going to have to, we're going to have to start a data center.
00:15:48.94
Michael
see
00:15:51.38
Mark McCracken
And I'm like, that's like, don't do that. That's, you know, do some cloud stuff. But I got to wear a lot of hats while there was no enterprise IT function.
00:15:59.65
Fredrik
you know
00:15:59.74
Mark McCracken
And that was great. Like, like for learning new stuff and getting, you know, a lot of autonomy, amazing. And really fun. But also, you know, there was a really nice situation where if I'm like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I can just go and ask the Gibbs guys and be like, Michael, please help me out. I've messed it up.
00:16:16.34
Michael
it feels yeah it feels maybe maybe start for startup feels like saying everyone should do once in their career just to like experience a massive beast and experience like a tiny place where sick are you still six Fred or six six people okay
00:16:21.31
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:16:26.54
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:16:30.17
Fredrik
If I'm still what?
00:16:31.29
Mark McCracken
Are there still six people?
00:16:33.49
Fredrik
No, we actually increased up to nine people now. So we have three...
00:16:38.01
Mark McCracken
Whoa.
00:16:38.48
Fredrik
Yeah, I know. No, we actually have grown a little bit further. We are nine people in the local office and we have actually expanded in the in the Asia region ah with a couple of more people.
00:16:41.83
Michael
ah yeah
00:16:47.83
Mark McCracken
When you say local office, are you going into the office or are you like permanently remote in the midst of Sweden?
00:16:47.84
Fredrik
but
00:16:47.96
Michael
Okay.
00:16:52.18
Fredrik
But... No, we actually have an office in the neighbor town called Huerde. I won't expect you to pronounce it properly.
00:16:59.46
Mark McCracken
w That's going in the show notes.
00:17:00.94
Fredrik
but the yeah
00:17:01.37
Michael
yeah
00:17:01.91
Mark McCracken
Miss spelt.
00:17:03.42
Fredrik
It's actually the same town where Ballast still has its local office, so it's not really that far off.
00:17:06.37
Mark McCracken
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:10.44
Fredrik
It's because the founder of both the previous office from Ballis and who's now my new employer, Thomas, he was the one who founded the local office for Ballis before it was Ballis.
00:17:17.69
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:17:22.59
Fredrik
And he departed a couple of years back. Now he started this new venture still in the iGaming business. And I re-jump.
00:17:29.65
Mark McCracken
And it's going well.
00:17:29.87
Michael
See, you must see your old colleagues all the time, right?
00:17:30.56
Fredrik
Yeah, it's going well.
00:17:30.75
Mark McCracken
Great. wicked
00:17:33.87
Michael
If you, like I have been to, where have I done? And it's not a massive place, I think.
00:17:39.05
Fredrik
It's not a massive place.
00:17:39.23
Michael
You must, yeah.
00:17:39.89
Fredrik
I think the population is around 50,000 people in the city.
00:17:44.00
Mark McCracken
50,000 people used to live here and they still do.
00:17:48.24
Fredrik
Exactly. No, so it's but it's quite a small community, which is quite nice. I kind of like it.
00:17:53.54
Mark McCracken
Yeah, wicked.
00:17:55.93
Michael
so So I had to maybe, on to the next topic. So this is my trip to... I went out to Paddies, sorry, managed to meet myself as well.
00:18:17.20
Michael
I went out to...
00:18:17.42
Mark McCracken
i'm leaving that in that's your fault
00:18:18.20
Michael
Yeah, it is... Yeah, I went to Hoofda and Fred was very hospitable and we went out, we took about three buses and got out to Fred's place, where he where he cooked a slap up meal, there's wine, and Fred's probably got the geekiest house that I've ever been to, maybe, like as in, it's it's a bit of a Tony Stark thing going on, right?
00:18:43.84
Mark McCracken
I'm leaving that in, that's your fault.
00:18:46.95
Mark McCracken
Nice.
00:18:47.71
Michael
Yeah, so um yeah, I was ah very impressed with your smart mirror. And then after seeing all the smart stuff in the house, we got taken out into the garage where there are
00:18:57.15
Mark McCracken
The experimental, is the garage like the beta house?
00:19:00.33
Michael
the garage has got, I mean Fred over to you to tell us about your garage.
00:19:01.38
Mark McCracken
It's the testing staging area.
00:19:04.50
Fredrik
Now with the garage, I think as most guys, you have this dream as a youngster to have like this man cave um in the garage.
00:19:14.24
Mark McCracken
and ah And is the shit all over the floor in the man cave?
00:19:16.60
Michael
yes
00:19:17.02
Fredrik
No, I before, but I ended up with some equipment, um with with some racing equipment, and I think that was a quite nice addition. I was fortunate enough to have my fiancé supporting me ah to have this as well, otherwise we would never have this present in the garage taking the place.
00:19:26.15
Mark McCracken
Nice.
00:19:35.02
Fredrik
But, yes.
00:19:36.03
Michael
I can't imagine lots of people getting their partners to agree to like three racing simulators in the carriage. like No, three, right?
00:19:41.33
Mark McCracken
three Three, I thought it was one. You got you got three racing sims.
00:19:44.70
Michael
Four, four.
00:19:44.73
Mark McCracken
Four, okay, wow.
00:19:44.83
Fredrik
Four. i the The most common question I get when i when asked about if I ever go and try one of them myself, it's rarely. No, I only have them for when I have friends that were playing, ah to have a more more of a like a, whenever we have a local party or just having some beers and having some fun, that's the only thats the one time to actually use them.
00:20:03.69
Mark McCracken
That sounds awesome. That sounds awesome, yeah.
00:20:07.85
Fredrik
But it was it was actually one of my COVID projects, um acquiring these and renovating them and making them work again.
00:20:14.65
Mark McCracken
Yeah. How much does your average racing sim cost?
00:20:20.11
Fredrik
I'm disclosing that figure.
00:20:23.62
Mark McCracken
So do you like play online competitively?
00:20:25.75
Fredrik
ah Rarely actually, I've never been so much of a gamer. I used to do, as amongst youngsters and most teenagers, I used to play a lot of games when I was in my teenage playing Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft and all of this.
00:20:28.56
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:20:35.45
Fredrik
But when I grew up into my 20s and I went to uni, that more or less was replaced with heavy drinking and side by side with my studying and since then I more or less left gaming altogether so I've never been competitive with online gaming since. so
00:20:51.41
Michael
So so take take history take us through your small house then.
00:20:52.21
Mark McCracken
hard to find it time
00:20:55.40
Fredrik
Right, so yes, to the topic of the smart home.
00:20:55.65
Michael
ah
00:20:57.76
Fredrik
so I would actually take like to take some moments to talk about Smart Home and before talking about my house, I would actually like to ask you, what's your definition of a smart home?
00:21:07.90
Michael
Oh, that is just a terrible, I can't just put it on the spot like that.
00:21:14.07
Mark McCracken
very on the spot. i Your house can do, you can turn on and off pretty much whatever you want and see what's going on at any given point in time, whether you're there or not.
00:21:21.83
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:21:23.80
Mark McCracken
And you can automate stuff to your pleasing, whatever, whatever it is you want to automate.
00:21:26.88
Michael
and maybe even use your voice as well.
00:21:27.97
Mark McCracken
Except for the toaster. Yeah. Use your voice. Yeah.
00:21:30.33
Michael
Yeah.
00:21:30.72
Fredrik
Yeah, I think that's quite a good explanation. And I think it mostly comes from what's available to consumers from the public vendors. Like if you look for vendors like Google, Apple, Amazon, and all the big companies, they have provided us in the past 10 years or so with a lot of smart home technologies, voice assistants, smart bulbs, um ah sensors of any kinds like yeah motion sensors.
00:21:57.62
Fredrik
humid answers all of this So, of course, it has kind of added on to this concept of having a smart home and everything connected. And especially since we received the popularity in the world, the digital world of the smartphone and everything being connected to your smartphone, you should control everything with your phone. It kind of has boosted the ah the way of thinking of smart homes as well.
00:22:17.93
Fredrik
But I have, throughout the years, tried to get it with a really different type of definition. And my definition of a smart, maybe not so smart home, but a smart devices, any device that is controlled based on an input from a real time variable from one or multiple external entities.
00:22:37.17
Fredrik
So to break that down, if you take a radiator for example, a radiator is usually controlled by a thermostat and some type of electronics inside the radiator uses this thermostat to distinguish should I burn more heat or should I stay cold for a while to regulate the temperature. So it's kind of smart in a way that it uses a third-party sensor to make what it's supposed to be doing.
00:23:02.78
Fredrik
That, in my view, is actually something that's smart. It takes an external variable and it makes it make an action based out of it. Now, you could argue that because we're now living in this digital world, that a smart product should be something that's connected.
00:23:17.28
Fredrik
It should be connected or hooked up to any something, especially something in your network. Something, as you said, that you can control, usually with your phone or with your computer, or it should be automated.
00:23:26.29
Mark McCracken
Mm hmm. Yeah.
00:23:28.55
Fredrik
and I would say the future and the most primary future is trying to connect all these technologies together. So you have a variety of different um controllable entities and devices that you can control in various ways or automates.
00:23:45.16
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:23:47.28
Fredrik
I think that's where the pleasure comes in from smart home automation.
00:23:50.59
Michael
Do you remember what the first thing you got is for both of you? And do you remember how you felt? Were you embarrassed? Because I was. One of my friends got a lot of smart bulbs. And I was like, oh, that's really tacky.
00:24:02.83
Michael
And then I ended up getting one.
00:24:03.20
Mark McCracken
ah so i did I did the same thing.
00:24:04.31
Michael
It was like Black Friday or something. I was like, I'll get one. And then I was like, look at this. It's red. It's green. It's yellow. It's like.
00:24:10.28
Mark McCracken
I bought four of these Philips Hue Smart Downlighters and they were all the different colours and they were extortionately expensive.
00:24:14.47
Michael
Yeah.
00:24:17.62
Mark McCracken
I remember people taking a piss out of me because I bought these bulbs at £50. It just meant £200 on bulbs and they were like, what the fuck?
00:24:22.78
Michael
Yeah.
00:24:23.84
Mark McCracken
You spent £200 on bulbs? um Now I've got like, I've got too many of these bulbs to admit, um but they don't all cost 50 quid. They're a lot cheaper now.
00:24:33.04
Michael
Yeah.
00:24:33.32
Mark McCracken
But the great thing about this was I had these four bulbs and I had them like in, in like a square shape on my ceiling. as you do it with your bulbs.
00:24:41.43
Michael
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:44.39
Mark McCracken
It can program them with an API. so i was learning to mi This is before I got into tech and I was learning some iOS stuff and thought maybe I could put this together with Swift. and I managed to make an API that would do two things. It would it would check um the local bus time. So I lived i lived like just between two bus stops. So you could either run forwards and catch the bus or run towards the bus. So you had two choices. And there was a 25 and an 86 route. And I thought, that's four things. There's the left bus and the right bus, which which one you want to go for. There's a 25 and the 86. So I managed to connect to the TFL API and get the time through the buses and then connect to these light bulbs and make them change to the right color. So it would be like purple and work its way down through the rainbow to red.
00:25:23.53
Mark McCracken
to be like, you've got if you leave right now, you'll be able to walk to the end of the road and get on that bus on that route.
00:25:28.12
Michael
that's very cool.
00:25:28.83
Mark McCracken
And I was like, just for that. That that was like that was one of my first phrase into programming before I got a database job. Probably should have stuck me an iOS developer. That'll put me back years.
00:25:38.20
Fredrik
I was actually really creative of you to come up with that flow.
00:25:40.77
Mark McCracken
Yeah, I was, I was chuffing.
00:25:41.43
Michael
but
00:25:42.28
Mark McCracken
It was really, it was like the worst UI you've ever seen, but it worked. I was like, this is the shit I ah love programming. This is amazing. Look at these bulbs. I never be like, what's up with the fucking rainbow bulbs? I'm like, the bus is coming, you know.
00:25:55.01
Michael
keep Keep the answers to this one, PG, but any favorite lighting scenes in the house?
00:26:00.86
Fredrik
Any favorite lighting scenes the most? Probably the most boring, standard, white one.
00:26:03.92
Michael
Okay.
00:26:06.56
Mark McCracken
So I've got.
00:26:06.62
Fredrik
Because it's the one that sees the most. I mean, you can have all this gimmick stuff with multicolor and your entire house being like a a freaking rainbow.
00:26:11.14
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:26:14.23
Fredrik
But at the end of the day, you just want lights.
00:26:15.35
Mark McCracken
You just want lights, right? and You want them to turn on and off.
00:26:17.31
Michael
slides
00:26:18.75
Mark McCracken
I've got one that's quite interesting, actually. i've got the So on TV, I really wanted one of those you know you know those TVs that have got like back panel on them. So you've got whatever's on the screen.
00:26:26.37
Michael
Yeah, like the Phillips ones, the Ambilight.
00:26:27.71
Mark McCracken
And it displays onto the back.
00:26:28.74
Michael
Yeah.
00:26:29.62
Mark McCracken
I'm like, well, it's too late.
00:26:30.01
Michael
Yeah.
00:26:30.56
Mark McCracken
I bought the TV now years ago, and I'm not going to change it.
00:26:31.54
Michael
Yeah.
00:26:33.37
Mark McCracken
So I got one of those things that's stripped that goes around the TV. And the way it works is there's a little tiny camera, like a little arm on top of your TV. And it just looks at the screen with a video and works out what's around the edges.
00:26:42.82
Michael
Okay.
00:26:44.61
Mark McCracken
And it makes the round the edges like the same color.
00:26:47.21
Michael
That's not the Phillips, it's not the Phillips HDMI sync.
00:26:47.30
Mark McCracken
But because now it's a govi thing, it's just pretty it's pretty good.
00:26:49.65
Michael
thing like Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
00:26:52.43
Mark McCracken
But because the TV is like massive, it can't really see the bottom of the screen. So the the color that you get on the bottom of the screen is just what's halfway up the screen. And most of the time it's fine, but you're like, that looks stupid.
00:27:03.20
Michael
Yeah.
00:27:03.58
Mark McCracken
um But that's quite good. and but one thing is not it's so so But most of the time, we just put it on a light orangey color, and it's it's lovely.
00:27:08.74
Michael
yeah
00:27:10.12
Mark McCracken
But ive the thing that's really annoyed me with it, this it doesn't first of all, it doesn't integrate with Apple HomeKit, so immediately lose a point. Second of all, my girlfriend has put this automation on it, but for whatever reason,
00:27:21.40
Mark McCracken
It's not like shared automation, so I can't see what she's automated. And I can't turn it off. So she's automated to come on and turn off at certain times. And she's away this week. And I'm just like, why is this thing coming on?
00:27:30.43
Michael
so
00:27:32.07
Mark McCracken
with Did does this be done all night? I didn't turn this on.
00:27:34.22
Michael
just Do you think she's just winding you was your first device, Fred?
00:27:36.13
Mark McCracken
Yeah, maybe, maybe. I've had a situation before where I've invited somebody to my like hope my smart my Apple Smart Home and said, oh, you're staying for a week. I'll add you to the home. And then they forgot about it. And then two weeks later, they're like turning lights off while I'm asleep. And I'm like, what the fuck are you doing, man? Get out of my fucking Apple Home.
00:27:55.20
Mark McCracken
um
00:27:58.04
Fredrik
My first device.
00:27:58.18
Michael
remember
00:27:59.40
Fredrik
Wow. Proprietary device or homemade device. I think that's a quite clear definition.
00:28:03.87
Mark McCracken
at the
00:28:04.78
Fredrik
Now, the first device probably was a Raspberry Pi. Starting off with doing Stinning Suit or Raspberry Pi.
00:28:08.51
Michael
Okay.
00:28:11.09
Mark McCracken
I've actually never had this one.
00:28:11.28
Fredrik
But it's a smart device.
00:28:12.88
Michael
and
00:28:13.03
Mark McCracken
What did you do with it?
00:28:15.48
Fredrik
You never had Raspberry Pi. i have an ah
00:28:17.24
Mark McCracken
I know, I'm quite quite surprised myself there that I've never had one. The closest I had was one of those little build kits and it's like just a really simple nano board and you plug in like LEDs just to kind of learn the basics of use JavaScript to do this Arduino thing.
00:28:30.00
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:28:30.11
Mark McCracken
But I never had a Raspberry Pi because I was always like, what am I going to do with that? The the the mirror thing sounds awesome though. What did you do with your Raspberry Pi?
00:28:37.28
Fredrik
Yes, so the first thing I did with my Raspberry Pi, this was back in 2013, about the same time when, it was actually quite the same time when I acquired my first smart device. so speak It was a life fix bulb. Now you have to think remember and remember that back in 2013, there weren't really much of a smart home. That wasn't really a thing yet.
00:28:58.23
Fredrik
ah Apple had released Siri 2011 and that was probably the closest we had so far from some something being smart. At least if you think about from a voice
00:29:08.00
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:29:09.48
Fredrik
assistant point of view. ah HomeKit ah wasn't available back then.
00:29:13.90
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:29:13.90
Fredrik
It was released in 2014. Amazon Echo 2015 and Google Home 2016.
00:29:17.22
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:29:19.39
Fredrik
So the traditional voice assistants were quilt far off and so ah so were the devices. Philips Hue were released, I think it was 2012, something like that. so they And they were like the earliest adopters of getting some kind of smart bulbs on the market.
00:29:33.07
Mark McCracken
yeah
00:29:33.42
Fredrik
Livix was a Kickstarter and
00:29:35.28
Mark McCracken
That's why they were charging 50 quid a bulb motherfuckers.
00:29:37.51
Fredrik
Yeah, exactly.
00:29:38.96
Michael
like i've got life i've been life
00:29:39.26
Fredrik
and actually I actually kickstarted that campaign. I think it took me half a year to get those bulbs. But man, did I have fun.
00:29:47.86
Mark McCracken
So what did you do with your Raspberry Pi?
00:29:49.77
Fredrik
So the first thing I did with my Raspberry Pi was something that I had been thinking of for around three years. So dating back to 2008, that I would say is the first in my head at least, my first lightbulb when I wanted to do a smart home.
00:30:05.59
Fredrik
Because I watched the Marvel movie...
00:30:06.15
Michael
I've got life, I've got life.
00:30:06.83
Mark McCracken
Are you saying you had a light bulb moment?
00:30:08.74
Michael
yeah
00:30:08.83
Fredrik
Yeah, I had a lightbulb moment.
00:30:10.24
Michael
ah so many times
00:30:10.75
Fredrik
And I realized, if this is going to be the future, I want to be a part of it.
00:30:13.23
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:30:14.84
Fredrik
The movie Iron Man by Marvel. was released in 2008 with thousand or night with a Robert Donovan Jr. And he has this virtual assistant, AI assistant called Jarvis, which he takes care of his house as an AI virtual assistant controlled by voice.
00:30:24.80
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:30:31.42
Fredrik
And it's also the the the the system that controls his suit at the end of the day.
00:30:35.08
Michael
Yeah. Well, it's so many times.
00:30:36.35
Fredrik
And it was voiced by the British actor Paul Bettany. And he has a really nice, I don't know if you follow him, but he has a really nice semi posh bottler accent when he provides the this character.
00:30:45.43
Mark McCracken
Very posh, yeah.
00:30:47.18
Fredrik
And it really suits that the ah the character really, really well. And I thought to myself all the back then, if this is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen, he really, really geeky, extremely geeky.
00:30:58.07
Fredrik
It doesn't bring maybe it's so much of value because now we know and in hindsight, we have the Google Home, we have the Amazon Echo and Siri, so we usually know how voice control and where assistance works.
00:31:02.71
Mark McCracken
yeah
00:31:11.41
Michael
Um, okay.
00:31:11.86
Fredrik
But that thing always stuck to my head like, if he can have that home and if that's where the future heading, that's how I want to have my home in the future.
00:31:19.83
Mark McCracken
Robot hovers and shit. Nice.
00:31:22.43
Fredrik
yes the whole chebang
00:31:25.36
Michael
And was that was that when you started on the mirror? or
00:31:28.62
Fredrik
No, that one was that was going back now to the Raspberry Pi. The first project was actually a GitHub project called Jasper, which was a very simple text-to-speech and speak-to-text ah translator and synthesizer.
00:31:42.60
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:31:43.04
Fredrik
So you can actually do, together with Google's API, who recently, by then, opened up to use voice-to-text, take a command in just by doing voice by you saying, hey, Jasper.
00:31:55.22
Fredrik
the commo day The application was called Jasper. And it simply was a predecessor to what Google Home does today. Hey Google, literally that, but completely open source.
00:32:01.57
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:32:05.73
Fredrik
So as you know, with early open source works, it was kind of buggy, kind of didn't work sometimes, but it was still, the cool factor was over the roof.
00:32:13.88
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:32:14.37
Fredrik
It was amazing. And together then with the Livex bulbs, I started to do some automations with that.
00:32:17.96
Mark McCracken
Work it.
00:32:21.20
Fredrik
It was so it's quite fun. I was living in my student dorm back then in uni.
00:32:22.91
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:32:26.55
Fredrik
So it was a great place to experiment with all this stuff.
00:32:27.76
Mark McCracken
Work it. Uh, so how much, you know, have have you expanded your home ecosystem now to have like tons of stuff?
00:32:37.83
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:32:38.00
Mark McCracken
You got a favorite thing?
00:32:38.11
Fredrik
so Oh, a favorite thing. It's probably the mirror. So going back to Michael's thing, there is an open source project called Magic Mirror. I really encourage you to Google it.
00:32:48.82
Fredrik
It's a node-based project.
00:32:50.09
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:32:50.48
Fredrik
And the idea is that you build a ah mirror based on it. So you have a and regular screen in front of it, a see-through mirror, basically the same types of mirrors that you use in a interrogation rooms.
00:33:01.31
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:33:05.37
Fredrik
so
00:33:05.56
Mark McCracken
Oh yeah, I got loads of those lying around.
00:33:06.53
Michael
yeah yeah yeah
00:33:06.56
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:33:08.44
Michael
ah sure
00:33:09.50
Fredrik
And ah frame it nicely and put it on the wall. And it gives this really, really nice, it's a really, really nice touch to the smartphone feeling because you can have these modules added. So people
00:33:20.60
Mark McCracken
So is it like touchy or you've got to do it otherwise?
00:33:23.22
Fredrik
You can make it touchy. So ah an old colleague of mine, we actually made one of our each when we did them.
00:33:28.75
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:33:30.20
Fredrik
And he actually put a digitizer in front of it. So he actually made his touchable.
00:33:32.64
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:33:34.08
Michael
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:33:35.29
Fredrik
I didn't, because I didn't want to have fingerprints on the glass.
00:33:38.92
Mark McCracken
fair Fair.
00:33:39.63
Fredrik
And now when I think about it, maybe I should have done it. But on the other hand, I've automated in a way that I don't need to.
00:33:44.02
Michael
I think the but fingerprints would annoy me, fingerprints would bug me.
00:33:46.99
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Yeah, I'd be wiping it all the time.
00:33:48.42
Fredrik
Yeah, fingerprints.
00:33:49.60
Michael
Yeah.
00:33:50.26
Mark McCracken
So what what what does it say? I mean, why why is this mirror any good? Why is it better than ne my shitty mirror?
00:33:55.71
Fredrik
So it's because it displays all the information that you need. Since it's no-based and since it's a very, very popular open source project, you have a lot of third-party integrations that other people have created.
00:34:04.50
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:34:05.37
Fredrik
So you can have like your local bus timetable on this mirror present. You have the weather from your favorite news and weather station.
00:34:13.16
Mark McCracken
Can you integrate like your girlfriend's Ujira ring on it and be like, she is pissed this morning.
00:34:16.37
Fredrik
Probably. ah Me and my fiance, we have both our Apple calendars from our iPhones present on this.
00:34:23.38
Mark McCracken
Ah, so you can see all the events and stuff while you're brushing your teeth.
00:34:26.19
Fredrik
Yes, all the events, and they opted in real time.
00:34:28.54
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:34:28.84
Fredrik
ah Quite recently, Intuator as well, the times for the dishwasher, so we can see how much time is so remaining on the dishwasher before it's completed.
00:34:36.80
Michael
Wait, wait, wait.
00:34:37.42
Fredrik
and the energy Yes, the dishwasher, it's actually a swagger API.
00:34:38.07
Mark McCracken
You got a smart dishwasher.
00:34:39.10
Michael
Your got an API.
00:34:42.32
Michael
Wow.
00:34:44.73
Mark McCracken
ah I said, well, but can't be rocket science. instead they They make it.
00:34:47.73
Michael
if
00:34:48.41
Mark McCracken
Oh, wow.
00:34:49.35
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:34:49.40
Mark McCracken
That's pretty, how much, how much extra you fork out for like, no, we're looking at the dishwashers.
00:34:50.35
Michael
but which Which brand is that?
00:34:54.19
Mark McCracken
We're looking at budget brands, 200 premium brands, 400.
00:34:54.39
Michael
Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:58.01
Fredrik
I didn't meant.
00:34:58.08
Mark McCracken
The one with the API 800.
00:35:00.76
Michael
I just imagine walking into curry and being like, so what's the What's the API? Is it open? Is it open API v3 or?
00:35:08.76
Mark McCracken
Hasn't got graph QL.
00:35:09.92
Michael
Yeah.
00:35:10.64
Fredrik
Yeah, exactly.
00:35:12.07
Michael
Is it really rest or is it kind of?
00:35:13.01
Fredrik
Well, I probably, I'm hating to say this, but actually that is actually one of the first things that I'm looking at.
00:35:14.44
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:35:14.91
Michael
they
00:35:18.85
Fredrik
What's the API availabilities when I'm buying a smart products?
00:35:21.44
Mark McCracken
So I bought a tumble dryer a while ago and I was looking at it and some of the tumble dryers are like Wi-Fi connected and I thought, what the fuck do I want that for? What is that going to do for me? Like tell me on my phone that it stopped spinning right next to me.
00:35:36.19
Michael
to be every every every reached peak small home or is.
00:35:36.25
Fredrik
But now you know.
00:35:40.76
Mark McCracken
i yeah i think so i don't think there's any I don't think there's much more places to go. I think the thing that's missing is just a bit more choice in some of the smart stuff, like fans and electric blinds is a big one.
00:35:48.85
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:35:51.24
Mark McCracken
I would love to have electric blinds, but because only one company has ever bothered their ass to make electric blinds, they've got a monopoly on it and they cost a fortune. So you're like, I'd love electric blinds, but I can't afford them. So maybe I'll make it myself.
00:36:03.00
Mark McCracken
I don't got the time. So it's not worth my, it's going to cost me more money in my time to make it than it is to buy it. And it's not worth buying it.
00:36:09.67
Michael
Are you see ah you're not buying from this brand out of principle?
00:36:10.30
Mark McCracken
So.
00:36:13.35
Mark McCracken
ah just because it's so expensive Not even good on a principle. I mean, fair enough. there If they're the only ones and it works and it's great and people like it, maybe it'd be worth it, but it's it was just too expensive. I'm like, I'm not fucking paying for that for Yeah, China.
00:36:23.95
Fredrik
I'm happy to tell you them that there are kits that you can buy from China that's around, I think, 50 quid each that you actually can buy.
00:36:29.88
Mark McCracken
Go China.
00:36:30.42
Fredrik
Yeah. No, but you can buy them from 50 quid each and make a regular dummy blind from any of your favorite, like Ikea or whatever, any kind of blind, regular blind, and make it smart.
00:36:37.98
Mark McCracken
Yeah. So. Speaking of China, one of the brands I've got, so so I replaced by Ring Doorbell recently because Amazon, Ring, seems a bit, what are they up to?
00:36:49.22
Mark McCracken
Who knows? But that that that didn't bother me so much as the price. Money money is, cash is king, right? So they took their price subscription for, from 3.99 a month to like 5.99 a month and I was like, what the hell?
00:36:59.82
Fredrik
Wait, so that's a monthly subscription to have that service.
00:37:02.12
Mark McCracken
Yeah, so the ring the ring the ring yeah the video recording.
00:37:02.92
Michael
The video record, right? Yeah.
00:37:04.70
Mark McCracken
So if you've got a Ring doorbell, you can have it for free, but you can only look at it live. But if you want to record stuff and obviously want to record stuff, you've got to pay a monthly subscription. I went from, they had like, increase price for like 50%.
00:37:17.48
Mark McCracken
And I was looking at my Apple Home stuff. And with Apple Home, you can have video recordings. And it's like, it's it's not unlimited. It's like 10 days worth of storage, but unlimited recording in that 10 day space, pretty much.
00:37:28.80
Mark McCracken
and it's already bundled into like your iCloud subscription. So if you're only paying 8.99 a month, you get like two cameras worth. If you pay like the cheapest one, you get one camera. You pay the more expensive one, you get two cameras, and you pay the higher one, you get four.
00:37:38.30
Michael
and
00:37:39.46
Mark McCracken
So I was like, fuck these Ring guys. I'm not having this anymore. So I got rid of it. So so I canceled the Ring, and I bought an Akara. which I've never heard of, which is full-on Chinese stuff.
00:37:47.55
Michael
Okay, yeah
00:37:49.57
Mark McCracken
But it's been great but because it's integrated with HomeKit. like i've got I've got a HomeKit camera on the front door, but I've also got a HomeKit camera on the back door, which is now a bit pointless because I can just i i can look look at it right now.
00:38:01.04
Mark McCracken
I can just see myself in the garden office as a little speck. um But i've got the two camera I've got the camera in the front, camera in the back, and I really like having it on the HomeKit, because everything's nicely integrated, and it's great. If you're watching, like so so I use like Apple TV religiously, and on my main TV, like which, and the TV is like a foot away from the door.
00:38:21.00
Mark McCracken
So it's so it's a tad unnecessary. But on the main TV, we're watching Apple TV. Somebody rings the doorbell, it comes up in the top right, no matter what you're doing, it comes up in the top right of the TV. Here, she's at your door, and you instantly see that camera.
00:38:30.83
Michael
That's pretty cool.
00:38:31.87
Mark McCracken
So that's pretty,
00:38:32.04
Michael
And that's, that's a HomeKit thing, is it? Or, uh, yeah.
00:38:33.95
Mark McCracken
Yeah, it's a HomeKit thing. If you've got a doorbell and somebody rings it, it'll show up in the top right of your TV and be like, oh yeah, that is the delivery guy. Because who the fuck else is gonna, if I'm sitting watching TV at nine o'clock at night, there's only one person ringing the doorbell.
00:38:44.66
Michael
That's, that's
00:38:49.49
Mark McCracken
It's the delivery guy.
00:38:51.13
Michael
very
00:38:52.70
Mark McCracken
So yeah, I got the Acara, but it is very much Chinese, China, China, China, everything China.
00:38:55.89
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:38:57.01
Mark McCracken
And I was like, better or worse and than Ring.
00:38:58.50
Fredrik
I think it's kind of inevitable. Yeah, I think it's kind of inevitable that you will get most of the equipment from China. There are vendors that are operating outside is in Europe and the US to create smart home appliances and products.
00:39:08.00
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:39:11.05
Fredrik
But if you're looking for cheap electronics, and I think that's a very important factor for the consumer that wants to buy smart home electronics, it is expensive.
00:39:13.40
Michael
Very cool.
00:39:18.96
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:39:19.73
Fredrik
Still, you were talking, Michael, about having reached a peak.
00:39:20.54
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:39:23.41
Fredrik
I would say not yet, for and for multiple factors, one of them are the costs.
00:39:25.38
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:39:27.88
Mark McCracken
Yeah, but what but that that even like the Chinese thing and like I've got a you know preconceived notion that shit from China It'll be crap, but it's been so good the the integration with home kits absolutely fantastic I've basically got 24 7 footage of my front doorbell for 10 days 20 24 10 and that's it um But it's been fantastic and it no No complaints. So i would would I buy from the beginning? Probably. One of the other things I've got that's really interesting from the same brand, or one of the ones from the same brand, is a little tiny infrared blaster. So for stuff that doesn't connect to the internet super well, I've got what's called a switchbot. So it's a little tiny
00:40:04.53
Mark McCracken
puck is like two inches by two inches and you just plug it in and then you connect it to your internet connected stuff and you teach it the infrared commands of any given remote controller and then you can just blast out those signals and you can automate that as well so using the switchbot app you can automate that as a shortcut in your There's a shortcut command in your Apple shortcuts app and you can get it to do stuff.
00:40:24.67
Michael
Hmm.
00:40:26.57
Mark McCracken
And all of this is like the basis of my granddad's TV.
00:40:26.63
Michael
Okay.
00:40:30.01
Mark McCracken
So he's, he's, he's getting on and I got him a new TV at the start of the year and he's got an Apple TV because just what old people like complicated shit.
00:40:39.89
Mark McCracken
But the point behind it was we can change the channel on his TV just by texting him. So if he wants to watch, if he phones me says and says anything good on the TV, I'll say, yeah, there's snooker on BBC Four. I can put it on for you now. And I just text him the message channel four, channel BBC Four.
00:40:55.90
Mark McCracken
And by a combination of shortcuts on his phone, it notices when you've got a text message from this person, starting with the word channel, what's in the end, parts what's on the end, choose a shortcut to run, run the shortcut.
00:41:06.27
Mark McCracken
And the shortcut works by sending commands from his iPhone to his Apple TV to say launch the certain app. And then using that infrared blaster, sending commands to that to say go down four times and then write two times and hit enter and hit enter again.
00:41:20.35
Mark McCracken
And you're watching BBC Four.
00:41:21.47
Michael
This is, you you got a lesson from Tim Cook, didn't you?
00:41:24.68
Mark McCracken
I did. Yeah, that that was pretty wicked.
00:41:25.40
Michael
Yeah.
00:41:26.26
Mark McCracken
So after I did all of the accessibility stuff for my granddad, it's like, we've got to like get him a new iPhone and get him shortcutted the shit out because he's like bad at managing his life. And, um,
00:41:37.21
Mark McCracken
I give him loads of shortcuts. Like when his battery gets to 20%, it'll say, your battery's on 20%, make sure you charge it, and then see him at 15 and see him at 10. When it gets to five, not only will it say, hey, your battery's at 5%, make sure you charge it.
00:41:48.10
Mark McCracken
It'll text me and my mum and my aunt at the same time to say, his battery's only on 5% now, and he's been warned three times and he still hasn't done it. So phone him and get him to put the iPhone in charge because if that doesn't work, you know the whole thing falls apart.
00:41:59.42
Michael
yeah
00:41:59.88
Mark McCracken
And it reads out as reminders and stuff like that. um And after I did all of that, I sent ah an email to Tim Cook and Craig Federighi at Apple, and both of them personally responded, which was quite nice.
00:42:09.98
Fredrik
Wow, that's really, really cool.
00:42:10.04
Mark McCracken
And ah yeah and i was I knew it was definitely from Tim because it was like eight words, and I was like, they're very nice, thanks, bye. I was like, well, you know, if it was a that if it was an assistant, they'd have taken more time, but it must be him, because he's like, oh, that's very nice, bye.
00:42:21.60
Michael
the
00:42:23.29
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:42:23.42
Mark McCracken
And Craig Federighi sounded good, like three or four paragraphs. I was like, that's nice. And I just go, I imagine in my head that Craig seen it and was like, yeah, really nice. And then he bumped into Tim and he was like, check this email you just got.
00:42:33.56
Mark McCracken
And he's like, oh shit, that's nice.
00:42:33.80
Michael
Yeah, just keep on the hiring list. if we Yeah.
00:42:36.79
Mark McCracken
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:42:37.36
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:42:37.55
Mark McCracken
Keep him on the hiring list, exactly. Yeah, it's all a big ploy. No, I just i thought it was some of the automation stuff you can do with the shortcuts was really interesting, like the Apple Shortcuts app. And I was like, I've mastered this.
00:42:47.91
Mark McCracken
I love it. It's great. And it's made his life, well, a bit better at times.
00:42:53.01
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:42:53.06
Mark McCracken
So it's, yeah, I was chuffed with that.
00:42:53.79
Michael
Yeah.
00:42:54.69
Mark McCracken
So I thought, write a blog about it.
00:42:55.09
Michael
I think.
00:42:56.28
Mark McCracken
So yeah.
00:42:57.43
Fredrik
You're touching on a really interesting subject, and that is to how could you smartify something that's really, really dumb, as in you take a traditional TV or a stereo system or whatever that's IR-based control with regular remotes.
00:43:07.65
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:11.74
Fredrik
And by using this, as you said, like this smart hub that actually can set the blaster, you can actually make these controllers and these devices and devices smart.
00:43:13.91
Mark McCracken
Little blaster. Yeah.
00:43:15.43
Michael
Yeah.
00:43:15.88
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:43:19.72
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:43:19.71
Fredrik
And I think that's a really fascinating way of thinking about turning your home into a smart home. And if I if i were ever to encourage someone popping the question, where should I start? I would probably say, work with what you have.
00:43:31.10
Fredrik
like Check what devices you have and how can you make them smart to begin with.
00:43:31.31
Mark McCracken
yeah
00:43:35.08
Fredrik
ah You mentioned like the dryer machine, Michael. We actually have the exact same scenario here. like You could just plug in an energy meter inside between the the socket of the dryer machine and the wall socket, and it will measure the like the energy, and it can actually turn it off and off and ah on and off and all that.
00:43:49.38
Mark McCracken
Ah.
00:43:50.30
Michael
Yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:51.08
Mark McCracken
So don't buy the $800 dryer, buy the $200 dryer, just put a smart plug on it for 50 bucks and just use that as a...
00:43:53.49
Fredrik
it's
00:43:58.26
Fredrik
Yeah. Exactly.
00:43:59.85
Mark McCracken
Genius. You've hacked it.
00:44:00.71
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:44:00.95
Michael
yeah
00:44:01.59
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:44:01.61
Fredrik
So it's actually quite a cheap way and also a smart way to make it some kind of smarter.
00:44:06.24
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:44:06.30
Fredrik
Of course, it depends at the end of the day what you're looking for, but that's a good start.
00:44:09.49
Mark McCracken
Mostly fun.
00:44:10.35
Fredrik
Mostly fun, yes.
00:44:10.60
Mark McCracken
Mostly a hobby. Yeah.
00:44:11.48
Michael
So someone is.
00:44:12.12
Fredrik
But at some points, it that could actually provide some good value. Taking our our dryers, it has some years on it on its own on its neck, and it doesn't ring anymore.
00:44:18.86
Mark McCracken
Yeah, I think...
00:44:21.80
Fredrik
It doesn't give any beeps when it's done. So we actually now have
00:44:25.27
Mark McCracken
Not for long.
00:44:26.32
Fredrik
Not for long, no.
00:44:26.39
Mark McCracken
Wait till you get this on the mirror.
00:44:27.60
Michael
play
00:44:28.61
Mark McCracken
Get some subwoofers on this mirror.
00:44:28.66
Fredrik
good Yes, exactly. So now actually what we've done, we don't have a smart assistant, but we actually do, coming back to Iron Man, we actually do have the voice of Olbethany in her house, ah which is been a which has been made using AI.
00:44:41.61
Michael
tell tell Tell me again how you got that. was I thought you ripped the individual sound too.
00:44:44.08
Mark McCracken
How did you... Yeah.
00:44:45.84
Fredrik
So there are... No, yes, so there actually comes from two or original origins. So in 2000, I think it was... One was Iron Man 3 released at some point.
00:44:58.59
Mark McCracken
At some point, yeah.
00:45:00.99
Fredrik
They released an iPhone app, which was Jarvis.
00:45:04.21
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:45:04.64
Fredrik
right so and that app Someone, of course, broke down the app and actually extracted all the audio from that app, which was which were recordings of Paul Bettany making all of these basic system commands for these applications, characterizing Jarvis.
00:45:14.09
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:45:20.54
Fredrik
now if you look at today you can just go to a lot of any website you can google it ai text generator and you can do take any mp3 file that you want ah put it in like two minutes remember they did actually they did actual list in mission impossible i think it was the second movie or third movie when they're recording the voice to be able to synthesize the exact voice.
00:45:42.72
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:45:42.82
Fredrik
You, we have that now using AI. You can upload every three, five, two minutes of speech, and then you can always type it, say this, and it will say with exactly that voice. It's extremely scary.
00:45:53.67
Michael
Scary.
00:45:55.20
Fredrik
At the same time, it's really, really cool. So using this, we've been able to synthesize Paul Bettens' voice to our Sono speakers.
00:45:56.91
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:46:03.63
Mark McCracken
But how does that get like triggered? how how do you How do you talk to something and something talks back and uses that voice? Because where's the integration point between Siri or Alexa or Google Home to say, replace this voice with this voice that I've got?
00:46:13.21
Fredrik
Yes.
00:46:15.77
Fredrik
Yeah. So um going back to the Jasper and the the with the voice assistant, we actually don't have a voice assistant anymore.
00:46:20.08
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:46:21.75
Fredrik
I tried out Amazon Echo when it was first released and I used it for quite some years before Google Home was available. Of course, again, going back to the Iron Man, having someone to speak to and speak back. It's kind of on the to-do shelf. I have been probably been a bit damaged by the industry working in IT security for some years to realize, do I really want some microphones for listening constantly in my home? And I came to realize that's like where I draw the line for now. It's also where the my but Linda, my fiancé, always kind of draw the line, like, we don't want this at home, which I fully accept.
00:46:53.81
Fredrik
So instead, we try to make automations that we don't actively trigger ourselves, but we have everything around us that actually triggers these automations. And as a confirmation and response, we have the pull that the voice of Paul Bettany with the voice of Jarvis making the confirmations.
00:47:10.78
Mark McCracken
So like, rather than you triggering automations, the automation is kind of triggering themselves.
00:47:11.22
Michael
and
00:47:15.34
Mark McCracken
So when somebody turns on the char tap, turn off all the other fucking taps in the house for fuck's sake, for five minutes.
00:47:15.53
Fredrik
Yes.
00:47:19.71
Fredrik
Yes.
00:47:20.72
Michael
Don't let anyone put one here.
00:47:20.83
Fredrik
Yes. Or in this case, when the drying machine is ready, it literally says in the speaks, excuse me, but the drying machine is ready.
00:47:27.36
Mark McCracken
Excuse me.
00:47:28.65
Fredrik
Yeah, of course, we had to make it for light.
00:47:29.16
Mark McCracken
yeah Nice.
00:47:32.16
Michael
That's really cool. Because we we like the we we only use a few, but we like sometimes if we sit down in front of the TV, We put the the light above the TV off.
00:47:43.12
Michael
We put the, there's a little LED strip behind the couch, which comes on. So there's a, there's a scene for that, but you, you could probably just thinking now, like if it was, you know, if the TV goes on after like, hey, stick that scene on, suppose it doesn't need a, it's the where, where this all falls down, I think someone said it earlier is it's all great when it's like you and your partner and you know everything that's going on, but you have someone stay in your house.
00:47:54.24
Mark McCracken
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
00:48:06.83
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:48:07.20
Michael
And like, you know, if I had my mum come in and imagine that was on, imagine she was in the living room and suddenly all these lights start coming on, the TV goes off and then she starts turning things off for the plug.
00:48:13.36
Mark McCracken
Oh, yeah, that's the world.
00:48:15.14
Michael
And yeah, it kind of.
00:48:17.14
Mark McCracken
you Your mum comes in and turns off a switch and you're like, no, no, no, that which that's a switch.
00:48:17.17
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:48:17.35
Michael
Yeah.
00:48:20.66
Mark McCracken
That's a smart switch. We never turn that one off.
00:48:21.68
Michael
Yeah. There's, there's stuff for this.
00:48:23.72
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:48:24.71
Michael
as I was, I was looking at this when we did some building work. There's, there's things you can put, uh, who sells them? Life X or Phillips? The, the, it actually puts them in behind the dimmer or behind the switch.
00:48:34.82
Fredrik
Philips.
00:48:35.75
Michael
Yeah.
00:48:36.28
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:48:36.81
Fredrik
We have a few of those, or actually almost all the outlets in our house, or I actually do have the the Philips wall switch as they call them.
00:48:37.00
Michael
So, yeah.
00:48:43.59
Fredrik
So it's basically, you have this dilemma with smart bulbs. Either you make the wall socket smart, like the this the switch itself, or you make the bulb swarm smart.
00:48:50.10
Mark McCracken
Yeah, or the bulb.
00:48:51.95
Michael
Yeah.
00:48:52.00
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:48:54.07
Fredrik
It's really hard to have them both, because if you kill the power to the bulb, you can't really control it ah with your smart appliance.
00:48:59.31
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:48:59.47
Michael
Yeah.
00:49:02.71
Fredrik
So you can have it make a choice there.
00:49:02.79
Mark McCracken
So it.
00:49:03.99
Fredrik
And if you make the bulb smart, you need to have it powered consistently, like 100%. But you still want, as you might you said, Michael, the wall socket with the natural switch, the the one that everyone is familiar with, like the analog
00:49:10.43
Michael
Yeah.
00:49:14.98
Michael
Yeah.
00:49:16.51
Mark McCracken
So just a normal, so so yeah, I've looked at this.
00:49:18.41
Michael
It goes behind the, it goes behind the, this, yeah.
00:49:18.91
Mark McCracken
So yeah, so I've looked at some of the smart switches, but those smart switches and themselves, like the dedicated thing that's rather than being a press or flick, it's like a digital thing that you're like, what the hell is this?
00:49:31.67
Mark McCracken
But that's just like a little tiny box that you take off the switch, you put it in behind and you wired in and you put it back.
00:49:34.38
Michael
Yeah. Be behind there.
00:49:35.62
Fredrik
Yep.
00:49:35.99
Michael
and
00:49:37.27
Fredrik
yeah
00:49:37.40
Mark McCracken
That sounds great. I would love that. Are those like expensive?
00:49:40.29
Fredrik
ah Depends. ah I would say the the best product ah in the market is the Philips Hue Wall Switch module.
00:49:41.99
Michael
We're 30 quid.
00:49:47.00
Fredrik
And I think it's for for a pack of two, I think it's around 30 quid, something like that.
00:49:51.16
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:49:52.38
Fredrik
And it's battery powered, so you can disconnect your entire wall switch.
00:49:54.01
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:49:57.08
Fredrik
ah Make sure that the power level is always 100% connected.
00:49:58.57
Mark McCracken
Yeah. But you can still press the button.
00:50:00.90
Fredrik
Yes, and that because that button becomes a smart remote, just like your Philips Smart Remote.
00:50:03.47
Mark McCracken
I'm sold. I'm 100% sold.
00:50:06.14
Michael
Black Friday, jump on.
00:50:06.67
Mark McCracken
Does it integrate with HomeKit? Black Friday. Have we passed Black Friday yet?
00:50:09.82
Michael
and
00:50:10.13
Mark McCracken
Or is it?
00:50:10.54
Michael
no it's still amazon's going to distinct bridge and and yeah your your mom's over and like nothing's working on the
00:50:10.99
Mark McCracken
I thought it was last week.
00:50:11.13
Fredrik
It's tomorrow.
00:50:12.47
Mark McCracken
I thought it was last week. And I'm like, this Black Friday is going off for ages, man. All right. Okay. We'll look into that Phillips one.
00:50:17.47
Fredrik
no I can highly recommend.
00:50:18.61
Mark McCracken
Yeah. All right.
00:50:19.35
Fredrik
And that's actually something that, but it kind of still creates a dilemma because then you become reliant on the smart home device that controls all of this. In this case, it would be a Philips Hue bridge.
00:50:26.63
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:50:30.22
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:50:30.30
Fredrik
So what happens if the Philips Hue bridge goes down?
00:50:33.34
Mark McCracken
Yeah, mine's a bit dodge, because I got one of the older ones. Yeah. I haven't one of those before.
00:50:37.56
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:50:38.21
Mark McCracken
So i've got I've got this, one of one of my favorite lamps in the house is a Phillips Hue Go. And it's a little, not not tiny, but it's a lamp like you put on your bedside table. But if you unplug it, it also has a battery in it, which is kind of nice, because you can the Go being you can move it around.
00:50:53.57
Michael
Mm hmm.
00:50:54.50
Mark McCracken
ah I had some automations with that. of One day, my dad stayed over at my house when I wasn't there. And he was like, Mark, how did you turn that bloody lamp off? Because he said said, it just sort of, it was on.
00:51:04.55
Mark McCracken
And I didn't know how to turn it off. Because it's not like there's a button, but it's on the back of it upside down. And it's not obvious. And he goes, I pulled the plug out of it, and it still was on. And I had to put it i had to put it in the cupboard. But that's the that was really good.
00:51:16.19
Mark McCracken
But it has to connect to that bridge thing.
00:51:18.42
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:51:18.63
Mark McCracken
And now the bridge thing is just there taking up a spot on my ethernet connections, which I've only got three or four, and I'm like, hmm, do I prioritize plugging in the TV or the Xbox or the entire garden office or this Philips Hue Bridge?
00:51:30.75
Mark McCracken
Philips Hue Bridge, you're gonna have to go.
00:51:31.55
Michael
oh that surprises me because I think our first our first chat was about how you've got like 18 sockets in and you've only got four ethernet
00:51:32.51
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:51:36.56
Mark McCracken
Many, many sockets, but in the, so I figure, yeah, I've only got four on the inside of the house because of the silly router. So I kind of have to pick and choose what I'm gonna plug in on the TV. but So i've gotve i've I've chosen well, don't worry, nothing be concerned about.
00:51:49.73
Fredrik
Yeah. That's also actually a very interesting topic. So when you're trying to expand your smart home and you're getting into the smart home expansion, you realize quite quickly that there are so many hubs available and so many products these days have proprietary
00:52:00.83
Mark McCracken
Yeah, I don't really want another hub. One one thing that I found quite interesting recently is there's a thing called a nano leaf. Did we talk about this, Michael? A little nano leaf thing?
00:52:10.29
Michael
I know nanoleaf, but I don't think we talked about it.
00:52:12.14
Mark McCracken
Yeah, it's it's a little, they're like nine little panels that you put on your wall and you kind of connect them together and you can control them. via your home stuff. And that looks pretty wicked. I've put that on my Christmas list. I would like some of that. So if anybody wants to donate me some nano leaf for Christmas for this, we'll get like a GoFundMe or something or buy me a coffee thing.
00:52:32.17
Michael
so everyone yeah Everyone seems to put it behind the desk, right? Everyone puts it behind the monitor, and it seems to be a
00:52:36.88
Mark McCracken
Yeah, but there's there stuff, there's already stuff behind my desk. I don't know. I'll work it out. It's not like it's going to go unused in Myspace.
00:52:41.17
Michael
Yeah.
00:52:43.08
Mark McCracken
I got plenty of plugs. I got plenty of plugs.
00:52:44.92
Michael
how How much, how, how worried cause cause you buy this stuff and I'm not digging on any particular country, but there's a lot of stuff on Amazon and I'm just thinking I'm sticking out my own network.
00:52:45.02
Fredrik
They're really nice. They're really nice.
00:52:55.19
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:52:57.88
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:52:58.03
Michael
Then what the fuck this stuff is, take my wifi password. And then yeah, you, I mean, you thought you bothered or like, how much did you research this doorbell?
00:53:00.81
Fredrik
Yeah.
00:53:02.69
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:53:05.39
Mark McCracken
ah Yeah, but i was i was I was sketchy about the ah China. China's watching me ah through that sit through the front door. um my My one rule is I try to stick to things that are only Apple HomeKit compatible, because they're unlike the whole privacy train.
00:53:20.14
Michael
and
00:53:21.98
Mark McCracken
Everything's private. Even your Apple intelligence bullshit that we haven't released yet. um But everything's private, and I've seen i've seen some of their efforts in privacy, like rather than just the marketing stuff, I've looked at some videos about how they do privacy, like in Apple Maps, when you say I wanna go from here to here, rather than, I could be wrong in this, but I'm pretty sure, rather than working out how to get from point A to point Z, they cut it up into sections and they work out how to get between those sections in a variety of ways so that nobody can tell from your ID where you're going, where you're going from, where are you're going to.
00:53:46.31
Michael
Okay. Wait. Yeah. Okay.
00:53:50.94
Mark McCracken
It's only like in blocks. So that was quite interesting. So they they do a lot of privacy stuff. So I do you try to stick quite religiously to the only the Apple ecosystem. And also, like it makes things work better together. um But the one thing that I really like is the the home pods, ah like the little home pod, because it's got a feature called intercom. So you can just say, hey, Siri.
00:54:09.99
Mark McCracken
I don't want to do it now. i'mnna I'm going to tuck all my shit away before I say it.
00:54:12.29
Michael
yeah
00:54:13.15
Mark McCracken
But you can just say, hey, Siri, intercom, and then say some stuff. And it'll speak on the on the on the various home pods in the house. It's like, hey, Siri, hurry up and get that dinner on, or something like that. not no not not Nothing, so you know overtly feminist, anti-feminist.
00:54:23.56
Michael
Yeah.
00:54:26.74
Mark McCracken
But there we are.
00:54:27.44
Michael
Fred, have you sniffed traffic that's leaving your house? so
00:54:32.84
Fredrik
Ooh, working in the industry, I would probably should have said professionally that yes, of course I have. I have sniffed all the traffic and I'm completely sure that everything is perfectly fine and I have no leakage going to China.
00:54:43.47
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:54:46.33
Fredrik
I have kind of, no, I haven't done that. I have kind of more of approach to thought of, gonna more or less assume that some of the traffic is being exported else to destinations I don't wanna know about.
00:54:59.65
Fredrik
So with that in mind, can I control what type of data that is being exported and am I okay with that data being exported and being leaked? And I think going to a more of an ethical question about smart home and automation, that's probably one of the things consumers need to start asking themselves. You mentioned Michael, are we, have we reached a peak? No, we have definitely not reached a peak of a small smart home automation, at least not in my opinion.
00:55:24.72
Mark McCracken
Really disappointed that this desk isn't like Wi-Fi controllable to go up and down.
00:55:27.74
Fredrik
Exactly. No, but that is actually a very important question when talking about Smart Home, because Smart Home, as we already concluded, is a lot tied to digital communication.
00:55:38.57
Fredrik
And digital communication comes with security in mind, because we're living in the digital society, we have IT security as being a hot topic.
00:55:38.71
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:55:45.64
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:55:45.79
Fredrik
And we are quite reliant and dependent on security from third party companies and from the vendors of and the makers of the products.
00:55:46.24
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:55:54.13
Mark McCracken
yeah
00:55:54.91
Fredrik
We, for instance, we take for granted like when we get a operating operating system from, say, Apple or Microsoft that we tend to want to ensure that they are actually the ones making the patches for their own products, to keeping them secure and safe.
00:56:08.91
Fredrik
And we, of course, they're pushing the the updates. We are keen consumers to update whenever they want, of course.
00:56:16.50
Mark McCracken
ah think people definitely take yeah i think I think people definitely take the security aspect of it for granted.
00:56:16.84
Fredrik
Side notes, do update your products. It's a good thing to do.
00:56:22.76
Mark McCracken
like What normal person has got the time to be like, right, got this great new thing, really excited about it. Let's check the network traffic so I can maybe take it back if I don't like it.
00:56:31.97
Fredrik
Yep.
00:56:32.04
Mark McCracken
But like the security, it's hard. And also, if you're if you're making if you're a company making that product, You're like, you know we're agile, get the shit out the door ASAP, do some quick testing. We're like, oh, we got to do the security stuff.
00:56:43.20
Mark McCracken
like Fuck the security stuff. CEO says, get this thing shipped. There's a really interesting thing a while ago from any army where lots of you know army people, they like to keep fit, apparently.
00:56:53.86
Michael
Oh, I know where you're going with this, yeah.
00:56:54.13
Mark McCracken
Smug folks. Yeah, the Fitbit. Maybe it wasn't Fitbit.
00:56:57.35
Michael
It's a straw.
00:56:57.43
Mark McCracken
It was something like that.
00:56:57.84
Michael
It was a straw for me, yeah.
00:56:59.21
Mark McCracken
Strava. Strava run thing. And basically they would go for runs like around the boundary of wherever their camp was. And I think the Taliban basically just hacked Strava and be like, where, where are people using this Strava thing and say, okay, there's a really rigid routine of people going for runs in exactly this location.
00:57:06.37
Michael
Yeah.
00:57:18.28
Mark McCracken
That must be where the base camp is, which is obviously leads to bad effects.
00:57:18.40
Michael
to there was another one just like yeah There was another one just like that, which was the the the bodyguards of someone, maybe someone in politics, they would go running with him.
00:57:33.70
Michael
But they kept their stats public.
00:57:37.37
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
00:57:38.05
Michael
So like if you know who the bodyguards of a certain you know like a president or a prime minister, you know when when the prime minister's running and where and yeah.
00:57:43.01
Mark McCracken
Yeah. When they're running and where they're running.
00:57:46.82
Michael
yeah
00:57:47.30
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
00:57:49.36
Fredrik
Yeah, kind of dangerous data to have publicly.
00:57:50.08
Mark McCracken
Um, which is, yeah, which is kind of why people, there was a huge backlash, not so, not so long ago from a Euro. And I think that's an Amazon owned company, if I'm not mistaken. And they do loads of smart home stuff and basically there was nothing secure about it whatsoever.
00:58:04.17
Mark McCracken
It was a pretty terrible.
00:58:06.39
Michael
Yeah, they do, they do rooters and stuff, don't they?
00:58:06.60
Mark McCracken
But yeah, anyway.
00:58:09.99
Mark McCracken
Yeah, they do all sorts.
00:58:10.67
Michael
Yeah, like fishing stuff and things like that, yeah.
00:58:12.19
Mark McCracken
Yeah. I have one other thing on diagrams, but I think we'll leave that till next time. do we Should we get to do some news, Michael?
00:58:19.72
Michael
Yeah, let's do the news.
00:58:21.04
Mark McCracken
All right, what have you got in the news? You got you you got something.
00:58:22.75
Michael
so i yeah i i uh i found one and i probably was couldn't have been surprised i last week's ai one was really good i really enjoyed like ai with mitten but we didn't get to talk about ai jesus yeah might have to talk about ai jesus today i love to i love to find an ai jesus link but you can i think ai jesus they they have from memory i might get this wrong they've trained um
00:58:35.40
Mark McCracken
We didn't even get to talk about AI Jesus.
00:58:40.94
Mark McCracken
do Do you want to recap on AI Jesus what we missed last time?
00:58:52.56
Michael
they've trained AI Jesus on the new or the Old Testament. They've literally just just just used that as their for their model. And then I think this is in Switzerland.
00:59:05.21
Michael
You can go into a confession booth and and have a confession with AI Jesus. And um some people are like, it's, there's a lot of people that's like, it's really good.
00:59:11.62
Fredrik
That's really interesting.
00:59:16.92
Michael
Like even people in the clergy, I think were like, this this is this is quite accurate.
00:59:21.39
Mark McCracken
This is groundbreaking. we We can learn a lot from this.
00:59:23.36
Michael
Yeah. Um, and there was, there was loads of the pesh mode puns in the article cause it was personal Jesus, but, um, yeah, that this, this one, uh, so there is a company called originality AI and then online AI detection platform.
00:59:28.08
Mark McCracken
Obviously very, very, very.
00:59:37.37
Mark McCracken
Yep.
00:59:39.27
Michael
So they looked at, uh, nearly 9,000 LinkedIn posts that are over a hundred words for a longer and found out that 54% of those posts are estimated to be AI generated.
00:59:44.89
Mark McCracken
Yep.
00:59:50.81
Michael
So, you know, a lot of the kind of thought leaders and, and you know, profound insight stuff is may well be.
00:59:51.13
Mark McCracken
wild thought leaders at all
00:59:58.30
Fredrik
yeah
00:59:58.41
Michael
Yeah. And it just, it may be kind of wonder you're like, I don't really kind of linked in all that much, but just how much this stuff out there is just bots and AI and just, it's kind of madness.
01:00:08.01
Fredrik
Yeah.
01:00:10.82
Fredrik
that That's actually was a really, really interest. I read through the article as well. It was really interesting because so LinkedIn provide their own AI toolset. So whenever you create a post through LinkedIn, and which I guess most of these content creators and senior executives do, they actually have the option to use the built-in AI toolkit from LinkedIn themselves to
01:00:21.83
Michael
yeah
01:00:32.60
Fredrik
generate this content. So it's not surprising that it's used to that extent. Alarming and what in one way, but because it creates this, I would say false, some kind of false sense of the authenticity of what you're actually reading.
01:00:40.67
Michael
Yeah. to steve
01:00:48.34
Fredrik
And at the end of the day, it's becomes so something something like a spam, you know, all the...
01:00:48.89
Michael
I'm assuming.
01:00:52.07
Michael
Yeah.
01:00:53.14
Fredrik
I remember at this point in life when you you came to realize the spam emails, it's like it it had its... and Enough is enough. And I'm starting to get the same feeling.
01:01:00.88
Michael
Yeah.
01:01:02.38
Fredrik
I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get the same feeling about a lot of content online.
01:01:06.47
Mark McCracken
You think like spam emails have like peaked and people are no longer bothering with spam emails?
01:01:10.49
Fredrik
Yeah, but at least if you think of a LinkedIn especially.
01:01:12.56
Mark McCracken
Phishing is still real, but they spam is like nobody's bothered with spam anymore.
01:01:17.55
Fredrik
Oh, but and but same thing. I would say the same thing about AI generated content because people don't really put the effort in and anymore to do actually the content themselves. You just make someone else or something else do it for you.
01:01:30.06
Fredrik
I'm not not saying that's a bad thing in all the cases, but for this particular one, it's so unpersonal, especially in a platform like LinkedIn, when you're supposed to meet and greet.
01:01:38.49
Mark McCracken
It's already um impersonal.
01:01:38.75
Fredrik
and
01:01:39.64
Mark McCracken
It's already like professional. You've taken all the fun out of it. yeah As Jess would say, it's the worst kind of social media.
01:01:42.30
Fredrik
yeah
01:01:42.38
Michael
i
01:01:45.28
Michael
the and the The last week I mentioned that there's an electronic artist I could worried about Satan.
01:01:52.18
Mark McCracken
Oh yeah, I did try that.
01:01:52.53
Michael
And and he he he put on a blog post and and he was he was very upset about AI art for album covers. And and and and the point of it was like youra you know you're a creative person.
01:02:07.06
Michael
you know You've been creative enough to make music and put music out there. And right at the last hurdle, when you can do something more creative, you've just like, I mean, I'm sure not everyone's doing this, but just like, you just throw some words into an AI generator and then you get an album cover and it's like, all right, it's really pissed him off.
01:02:22.01
Mark McCracken
That'll do. Just like we did for the podcast, yeah?
01:02:26.34
Michael
Oh yeah, yeah. I was going to say, as a content creator yourself, when you put stuff on LinkedIn, did it give you the option to AI anything?
01:02:36.60
Mark McCracken
AFI? No, I would. Well, I'm not much of a content creator. I'm like, here's the last year. Here's the latest brain dump I've had. Read it if you want.
01:02:44.80
Michael
Yeah.
01:02:45.60
Mark McCracken
um I don't know. I would i would never click it. I'm like, what what for? It's meant to be stupid in me.
01:02:51.03
Michael
Yeah.
01:02:52.59
Mark McCracken
other otherwise If it's not going to be very me, is it?
01:02:53.30
Michael
yeah
01:02:55.78
Mark McCracken
And people know me for being, I don't know, weird or whatever.
01:02:58.82
Michael
Yeah. like I kind of feel like we have to try out. Maybe maybe we don't, maybe maybe we have two and we have the AI5 version of it.
01:03:04.50
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:03:07.53
Michael
Thought leadership pieces on the smart homes. Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:11.59
Fredrik
This actually reminds a little bit of the dead internet theory. Have you heard about dead internet theory?
01:03:16.19
Michael
Yes, yeah. Yeah.
01:03:19.65
Fredrik
Oh yeah, even better.
01:03:22.67
Fredrik
Oh yeah, yes.
01:03:22.87
Michael
Yeah.
01:03:25.31
Michael
Remind me again though, what is it is that most of it is just AI generated crap that's feeding off of other AI generators.
01:03:25.41
Fredrik
It's in, it...
01:03:28.88
Mark McCracken
I think it came from like, came from like 4chan where somebody said, I think everyone else here is just bots.
01:03:29.39
Fredrik
Yeah.
01:03:35.30
Mark McCracken
It's just, it's just, it's just me. It's just the only one person ever visits this website done as you. um Anyway, I did see a really interesting video about a guy that managed to make a Mac mini cluster.
01:03:39.76
Michael
Yeah.
01:03:45.84
Mark McCracken
he's got five different configurations of the new M4 Mac Mini, and he's connected them together using Thunderbolt and decided, can I run this LLM? He's got OpenLama 3 or whatever, and he's got like 10 different models from ah Facebook's OpenLama thing.
01:04:03.52
Mark McCracken
and said can i run this and that was kind of an interesting experiment in and of itself find nobody no nobody makes your own little apple home server cluster. But the thing that i find interesting about it was apparently this is relatively and i use the word relatively loosely relatively cheap compared to like.
01:04:22.91
Mark McCracken
um
01:04:24.53
Michael
nvidia
01:04:25.51
Mark McCracken
Yeah, because with Nvidia, you get you know all your GPU stuff, but the maximum amount of RAM that you can get on that is like 24 gigabytes of RAM for whatever reason. One of the top end models is the most RAM you can get. But because of the way Apple Silicon works and the architecture is like, there's like a shared memory, I think they call it unified memory RAM, where the CPU and GPU can share the same RAM. So you can get up to like 192 gigabytes on the RAM if you really want. And that's all available to the GPU as well. So we said, this is actually not a terrible idea because you get a lot more, cheap like if you've got the right kind of profile that you know that you need, then it's more cost-effective in some really niche cases. Otherwise they would just, Apple would just get back into the server game. um But that was kind of interesting.
01:05:10.72
Michael
did you think do you think that person has bought this like they've bought this rig like i did do you think apple is helping them out and like yes yeah you're not going to get that apple job if you keep talking
01:05:15.81
Mark McCracken
I don't know why, like he's a YouTube guy. I'm i'm wondering, because i'm wondering is he is he like is he buying it and then just taking it back within two weeks? Apple's got this great policy where you can buy something and if you don't like it, just take it back within two weeks. And I have made liberal use of this at times. So when I when i joined my previous place, I was like, I need a laptop. And they're like,
01:05:36.41
Mark McCracken
Whoa, whoa, whoa. We'll hold that there.
01:05:38.83
Michael
Yeah, you can see where you're going.
01:05:39.17
Mark McCracken
But yeah, i'veve I've used the returns policy. and It's a great policy. And they should be applauded for it.
01:05:44.33
Michael
And they should hire me.
01:05:45.45
Fredrik
Wait, is that Apple specific in the UK? Or is it something that's actually regulated by law?
01:05:48.27
Mark McCracken
I don't
01:05:49.63
Fredrik
Because in Sweden, that's regulated by law. You have for all these 14 days of return fee your policy like for any consumer electronics that you buy.
01:05:57.74
Mark McCracken
know. Some people make it difficult for sure. um But you just take a thing back and be like, I don't want this anymore. And they're like, sure.
01:06:03.76
Fredrik
ah
01:06:04.28
Mark McCracken
There you go. I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't return stuff very often. This is, you see, I do my research and then I buy a thing. I'm like, but if I'm buying something small, I'm like, it's going to cost more money in my time and effort to return this five pound thing than it is to just write it off.
01:06:21.01
Michael
Yeah, yeah.
01:06:21.30
Mark McCracken
Um, so I tend to try and and never return anything because I'm like, that'll be a faff. So if I was thinking maybe I'll return this, I'll just not buy it. But with, with, you know, 2000 pound items, I'm like, yep, I'll take it back in a heartbeat.
01:06:33.18
Mark McCracken
I'll go out of my way.
01:06:33.58
Michael
i I had a i had ah another one, which is, I think you you've kind of, you've told me about dark reading and I'm not, dark reading, I'm not sure.
01:06:42.21
Mark McCracken
Dark reading.
01:06:44.19
Michael
One that one of the news things you sent was that it was on dark reading and and it's it's, yeah.
01:06:48.02
Mark McCracken
Oh, yeah.
01:06:48.99
Michael
and and
01:06:49.35
Mark McCracken
The fancy bear neighbor nearest neighbor thing.
01:06:49.84
Michael
um I'm not sure I'm happy about that. I know about data readings. It's making me feel really upset and worried and stuff. But this was, did you, did you read about Yakuza victim data leaked in Japanese agency attack?
01:06:57.39
Mark McCracken
I did very briefly.
01:07:02.63
Michael
This was bad.
01:07:03.58
Mark McCracken
Give us a gist.
01:07:03.67
Michael
Yeah. Uh, so if you're, if you somehow been involved with, with organized crime in Japan and and you want to, as yeah and and you want to leave that life, like, um, you know, maybe you, you.
01:07:12.25
Mark McCracken
As you do. As you don't.
01:07:18.44
Michael
So this is evading extortion or disentangling romantically. So, you know, it kind of sounds almost like not witness protection, but, you know, you're you're trying to get away from it.
01:07:27.52
Mark McCracken
You want to get out of UK so you go to the Japanese 5.0.
01:07:30.08
Michael
You go to one of these, ah you go to somewhere like the Kumamoto Prefecture Violence Prevention Movement Promotion Center and you give them your details. And then what's happened is there's been a data breach.
01:07:45.95
Mark McCracken
Great.
01:07:46.03
Michael
Oh, dear.
01:07:47.08
Mark McCracken
And there were absolutely zero consequences in everyone left happily ever after.
01:07:50.36
Michael
Yeah, I hope so. But to instrument the information could include addresses, phone numbers and names.
01:07:52.61
Mark McCracken
ah Probably not.
01:07:57.09
Mark McCracken
Oh, great.
01:07:58.24
Fredrik
Oh, that's bad.
01:07:59.03
Michael
That's not good, is it?
01:08:00.08
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:08:01.16
Michael
Yeah. Anything happier than that in the news?
01:08:03.96
Mark McCracken
ah No.
01:08:04.90
Michael
No. ah
01:08:06.96
Mark McCracken
Have you gone down a rabbit hole with this dark reading website?
01:08:09.04
Michael
Yeah, I have.
01:08:09.77
Mark McCracken
ah the The Fancy Bear nearest neighbour thing was quite interesting. Somebody wanted to attack like some government building in Washington DC.
01:08:12.64
Michael
Yeah.
01:08:16.37
Mark McCracken
They had to be on the same Wi-Fi and couldn't do that. But they just broke into the literally the closest geolocated building and said, ah that's close enough to be on the Wi-Fi.
01:08:27.15
Mark McCracken
That'll do.
01:08:28.08
Michael
Well, they jumped over, i I read this more, they they jumped over a few Wi-Fi networks, right?
01:08:33.06
Mark McCracken
How do you jump over multiple wifi networks?
01:08:35.18
Michael
I don't know, yeah.
01:08:35.78
Mark McCracken
Reveal your secrets, Michael.
01:08:37.32
Michael
then The line I wrote down was, the threat act was thousands of miles away and an ocean apart. That's how far they were from the building thats that they got into in the first place.
01:08:48.56
Michael
That's mad, like, yeah, yeah.
01:08:48.67
Mark McCracken
Wow.
01:08:49.10
Fredrik
It's quite a sophisticated attack.
01:08:52.14
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:08:52.18
Fredrik
But you really have to know what you're doing. and But this was also the, yeah ah what's the group called? The beer group.
01:09:00.48
Mark McCracken
Yeah, like when it comes to like hacking stuff, if you're a foreign state and you can just keep keep throwing and more and more and more money at it, there's like no end.
01:09:05.08
Michael
yeah i can't
01:09:07.27
Fredrik
Fancy beer.
01:09:08.39
Mark McCracken
The most interesting one I've seen was an Apple hack where somebody had tried to target somebody by running some remote execution stuff and they realized In PDF, that they could make PDF into like a Turing-complete language by having it run arbitrary execution code. But somebody needs to open the PDF. And they managed to get around that by encoding the PDF and changing the file extension to a GIF. And if you send the GIF to somebody on iMessage, it automatically plays the GIF.
01:09:36.57
Mark McCracken
So it automatically executes the PDF and automatically runs the code inside the PDF to inject some malware into the iPhone. And I was like, who's got the time to work that out? That was that was interesting. So I'll find a link to that and send it in the show notes.
01:09:48.94
Michael
i can't tell if it's the uh like every time i turn on my news thing it it seems to be stuff like this and i don't know if it's the yeah exactly like is it is it is are things getting way worse or is this the sort of echo chamber like oh he's red one let's just let's keep this
01:09:49.25
Mark McCracken
but i'm
01:09:56.05
Mark McCracken
You got some sort of algorithm that only gives you the bad news?
01:10:04.07
Mark McCracken
He loves the bad shit.
01:10:06.10
Michael
I'm dealing with the plumbing stuff, but...
01:10:07.45
Mark McCracken
um No, but we got plenty more bad news. We got plenty, but should we should we should we cover some more bad news?
01:10:11.02
Michael
Okay, yeah, sure. Yeah, well.
01:10:13.56
Mark McCracken
All right, more bad news.
01:10:14.48
Fredrik
Go for it.
01:10:14.63
Mark McCracken
um The workplace has become a surveillance state, so Cisco are doing some weird stuff. Maybe it's not exactly Cisco, but effectively, They can use Wi Fi access points to detect motion through a building of objects or people, which makes sense I've heard some crazy stuff in the past about CIA being able to detect you know what's being said in a room by the vibrations of a window.
01:10:36.97
Michael
Oh, well.
01:10:37.24
Mark McCracken
And that that's that's pretty wild.
01:10:38.01
Michael
OK.
01:10:38.84
Mark McCracken
I'll see if I can take that out but effectively Cisco can monitor. how much people are in the office or moving around the office or doing any stuff based on wifi signals. And I think they've potentially productized that on a little bit.
01:10:51.89
Mark McCracken
And it's just like watching, are you doing, it's like, it's no longer watching people that are just watching. Are you moving around? Are you doing stuff? Are you talking to people? Are you doing anything? It's just more and more pervasive. And I find it quite interesting.
01:11:02.64
Mark McCracken
I always wanted to know more about that thing that you had, um, jellyfish. Can you tell us what jellyfish, Michael?
01:11:07.00
Michael
a would i remember I think it was from memory, and I might be wrong because it was a few years back, but it runs on, you'd point it at a source like GitHub, and it would look at just activity.
01:11:20.59
Mark McCracken
yeah Yeah.
01:11:26.10
Michael
So it would try and look at activity in GitHub and just kind of work out. So it sounds quite basic when you say that, right?
01:11:34.53
Mark McCracken
yeah Yeah.
01:11:35.52
Michael
Who's interacting with with with GitHub on ah on you know on a regular basis? and and And I don't know.
01:11:39.99
Mark McCracken
But it does it with lots of tools, right?
01:11:43.92
Michael
I think git GitHub or GitLab were the first ones. But is it some sort of pseudo productivity thing? you know is it Is it almost back to those like, remember the days of lines of code?
01:11:50.08
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:11:53.35
Michael
I mean, I think they were a bit before my time, but like that's lots of lines of code.
01:11:53.41
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:11:56.81
Michael
You must be the best developer, or she must be the best. So yeah, I think I left before.
01:11:59.10
Mark McCracken
yeah Yeah.
01:12:01.97
Michael
Did it ever go anywhere? I don't know. but
01:12:03.80
Mark McCracken
So Microsoft has something that's quite interesting. interesting It depend depends on your perspective. So they've got a thing called Viva Insights. So if you're in a big org and you've paid for Viva Insights, it will tell you who you're who the people are that you interact with the most and the middle and the end.
01:12:11.85
Michael
Okay.
01:12:18.69
Michael
Yeah, I've seen this, yeah.
01:12:21.30
Mark McCracken
It'll tell you behaviors about meetings. so do you How often do you set meetings? Do you give enough advance warning for your meetings? Do you turn up on time? do you I don't know. It works out what your meeting etiquette is like. So all of these kind of things.
01:12:32.46
Mark McCracken
It works out how much free time you've got and how much spent time you've got and how much time you spend on different documents and stuff.
01:12:37.68
Michael
You can ask it to schedule schedule focused on for you, can't you?
01:12:39.30
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:12:40.64
Michael
And he goes, are you normally free on the money?
01:12:40.69
Mark McCracken
And yeah, things like that. Yeah. And schedule time for reminders to check whether or not, you know, checking with your colleagues and stuff, but it's, it's great, but it's all presented to you from the, this is just about me perspective, but I'm sure there's a manager.
01:12:43.06
Michael
Yeah.
01:12:54.65
Michael
Yeah.
01:12:57.17
Mark McCracken
There's gotta be a manager mode to this be like, show me what everyone on my team is doing and how busy are they and how much free time are they got?
01:12:57.58
Michael
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
01:13:02.87
Mark McCracken
And how much of that free time were they using to work on documents or work on code and do stuff?
01:13:06.59
Michael
yeah
01:13:07.20
Mark McCracken
And that's probably pretty insidious as well.
01:13:09.63
Fredrik
There's always the manager perspective all of this.
01:13:11.33
Mark McCracken
Always the manager mode, hidden manager mode. Yeah.
01:13:13.35
Michael
yeah weird that i wonder like that there must be i was thinking about this with was i thinking about this jellyfish i was thinking about this with linkedin like i i was i don't know if i've talked to you about this before but i was wondering you know no i was wondering like you know because imagine linkedin monetized imagine linkedin reached out to you know like employers and said hey i know i know you know i know about
01:13:21.19
Mark McCracken
yeah
01:13:24.97
Mark McCracken
It's linked in like the opposite signal. He's been on LinkedIn for this many hours during the day. I know who's leaving.
01:13:39.68
Michael
I know he's leaving, I know he's looking, I know he's, that's, I mean, if anyone ever found out it'd be over, right? It'd be, it'd be over, but, yeah.
01:13:45.84
Mark McCracken
Oh, that'd be bad. But you'd find out so fast. i'm like People can't keep their mouths shut. So as soon as one person finds out about that, like, could you believe LinkedIn are doing this? And then that would be game over within a week.
01:13:53.83
Michael
Yeah, it'd just be, it ended. See, you think they don't, yeah.
01:13:58.23
Mark McCracken
i I wouldn't put it past them.
01:13:59.88
Michael
What about, what about Microsoft though? What about, yeah.
01:14:01.69
Mark McCracken
But just by the fact that people can't keep their mouths shut, they're like, look what we got from LinkedIn. We got all this stuff. And then we kept all these people and we'll see if there's loads of money. There's no way that would stay a secret.
01:14:10.84
Fredrik
I don't think to be honest, I don't even think that's, that's required because you have this LinkedIn feature where you can, you know, say that you're up for work or up for new positions.
01:14:21.20
Mark McCracken
Yeah, then you can hide it. You can choose to hide it from your employer. But does your employer just pay more to say, show me it, even if they've said they want to hide it from their employer?
01:14:23.65
Fredrik
Yes.
01:14:27.97
Mark McCracken
Is it like an arms race of who's going to pay the most to keep it a secret that you're looking?
01:14:30.48
Fredrik
Yeah, right. Well, I'm i'm pretty actually pretty confident that LinkedIn knows more about the patterns of employees more than you think. And considering that they have so much data about so many companies and so many employees all around the world and all the data ah with AI, I'm pretty sure that they can actually try to find these patterns.
01:14:46.46
Mark McCracken
So do you pay for LinkedIn Premium?
01:14:50.36
Fredrik
Personally, no, I don't.
01:14:51.89
Michael
right Yeah.
01:14:52.04
Mark McCracken
So i've've I've paid for it a few times. so And there's some quite interesting stuff on there. like when you When you're looking at a prospective company, you can see like attrition rates and growth rates, just based on people saying, I work here, I no longer work here.
01:15:04.53
Mark McCracken
and That's often quite interesting. If you see like the attrition rate is not like, people are leaving this company at a reasonably steady rate. You're like, shit, no point going there. It'll be redundancy within no time. um So but it is quite interesting.
01:15:14.68
Michael
Well.
01:15:16.22
Mark McCracken
And the whole in meal thing, like you can message anybody you want. i'm like
01:15:19.39
Michael
Yeah.
01:15:19.94
Mark McCracken
Do I want that? Only if I'm like really actively looking for a job. So I've paid for it a few times and I've thought maybe there's jobs, maybe I'm going to be looking for jobs. And at that point I'm like, right. It's got to like, when it gets to panic stations, when you're like, right, need a new job, like stat, I'm like, right.
01:15:33.40
Michael
Yeah, reactivate, reactivate.
01:15:35.90
Mark McCracken
You know the way the recruiters are like constantly cold messaging people?
01:15:38.64
Michael
Yeah.
01:15:38.86
Mark McCracken
I'm like the opposite. I'm not cold calling recruiters being like, have you got jobs? Have you got jobs? Great. Tell me more. Call me back.
01:15:46.26
Michael
you you You were talking about that feature that hides your, the feature that hides your status.
01:15:46.34
Mark McCracken
So um it's worth it then.
01:15:51.24
Michael
i remember I remember seeing that and it was when I worked for Gamesys or Balleys or one of the other 10 or 15 different names I had thinking, which company is it going to hide that status to?
01:16:03.16
Michael
like you know like because you know at some point we were game system we became parties but all the people that still say they work for games it's like did they did they see you hiding it from button anyways it doesn't matter now obviously but like
01:16:08.72
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:16:13.97
Mark McCracken
Don't know. Yeah. um And the other news, all of our other news was, you know, quite depressing.
01:16:24.58
Mark McCracken
Oh, the last one was quite interesting. The NHS have had a cyber attack in somewhere. ah So a major hospital in Wirral, which I've not heard of. I'm glad it's not right in the corner for me. But, um oh, right.
01:16:34.95
Michael
Liverpool, near Liverpool I think.
01:16:36.52
Mark McCracken
Okay. Yeah. Well, you've you've you've you've read more than just my AI summary. Well done. um but it's it's been since Monday and it's been so bad that they've gone back to using pen and paper.
01:16:47.73
Michael
Oh well.
01:16:48.82
Mark McCracken
um
01:16:48.83
Michael
I was going to say some, some I don't know, mate is this good news?
01:16:48.98
Fredrik
Wow.
01:16:52.43
Michael
So you sent me this thing about Indonesia and Apple.
01:16:56.17
Mark McCracken
Yeah, that was that's kind of not terrible.
01:16:56.54
Michael
Yeah, I mean ah they're sticking up, sticking up for themselves, yeah.
01:16:59.90
Mark McCracken
so So I think long and short about this, um the iPhone 16 is banned in Indonesia because Indonesia have said if you want to sell it here, you must produce a minimum number of components that make the thing here.
01:17:12.82
Mark McCracken
So you must help our economy by manufacturing at least 40% of it here or something to that effect.
01:17:18.60
Michael
Yeah.
01:17:19.10
Mark McCracken
um
01:17:20.71
Michael
and And they're sticking to their guns amazon on how you say, yeah.
01:17:21.52
Mark McCracken
Or you can, yeah, or you can not do that and just give us a load of money.
01:17:25.87
Michael
And not saying friends.
01:17:26.55
Mark McCracken
You can be, it rather rather than building 40% of the stuff here, you can give us money and we can boost our economy and in that fashion. And basically Apple's offered them a hundred million dollars and they've said, nah.
01:17:38.13
Mark McCracken
nah your iphone 16 is banned here and i imagine people are like oh yeah well fine it's kind of like the apple intelligence thing where you're like oh that's out in the united states and it's not out here and then after a week you're like so what well i'm kind of fine with it yeah it's pretty good but when it comes to actually using it i've been like
01:17:49.38
Michael
yeahm um left go life goes on so
01:17:52.75
Fredrik
Apple Intelligence, I find that's probably the most clever buzzword in all of the year, like using the word AI and make coming up with Apple Intelligence is like the perfect...
01:17:53.15
Michael
ah
01:18:07.81
Mark McCracken
I've been more annoyed that I've had to switch from English UK to English US than I have been pleased by what it can do. So I've been like, oh, this is not that impressive. I think I might turn this off until they bring it. they well they are but like They've had this whole battle with the EU because I think the core of this is that.
01:18:23.23
Mark McCracken
If they're going to make a feature available in their operating system, then it has to also be available to other third-party developers. And Apple's like, well, we don't trust these third-party developers to use these sensitive APIs. So we're not going to make it available. um But it is coming anyway in April. So they're going to release it in the EU in April. um But I'm like, I don't really care that much. We cover their ads already, which are wacky enough. But yeah, that was so that that was that was a good bit of news. Is that enough to bring us on to recommendations, Michael?
01:18:51.51
Michael
Yeah, I'll quickly try and think of some way you guys get first.
01:18:54.18
Mark McCracken
Well, we we had last week's recommendations, if I can look at them.
01:18:57.70
Michael
Yeah.
01:18:58.97
Mark McCracken
I did try a few of these. One that I've been absolutely hooked on is Father John Misty, who's been absolutely fantastic.
01:19:03.82
Michael
Yeah.
01:19:05.14
Mark McCracken
That a Pure Comedy album is great.
01:19:05.54
Michael
Yeah. yeah
01:19:07.13
Mark McCracken
It's one of those albums where I listen to the first six songs and then I'm like, shit, that was a good song, go back. And now I haven't heard the second half of the album really at all.
01:19:13.36
Michael
I'm going to find that lyric about, and about ah what's the name?
01:19:13.73
Mark McCracken
um
01:19:22.08
Michael
Milisaurus?
01:19:24.26
Mark McCracken
I didn't quite get that, but ah coincidentally, we released the podcast on Friday and he dropped a new album on Friday.
01:19:24.66
Michael
Mario Taylor Swift.
01:19:29.66
Michael
Here we go.
01:19:30.04
Mark McCracken
Same day as Kendrick, um so they're having a little thing. um
01:19:33.32
Michael
These lyrics are ah bedding Taylor Swift every night inside the Oculus Rift.
01:19:39.49
Mark McCracken
Ah, that's the one, yeah.
01:19:40.49
Michael
yeah
01:19:41.76
Mark McCracken
Now that you say it in a slower fashion, I'm like, oh yeah, I didn't know that one, yeah.
01:19:44.71
Michael
Yeah.
01:19:46.25
Mark McCracken
Yeah, I did try worried about Satan, which was great.
01:19:48.50
Michael
Yeah.
01:19:48.58
Mark McCracken
um Again, another yeah another badly named artist because
01:19:48.80
Michael
Good, good, good coding music. Yeah.
01:19:54.64
Michael
It doesn't, it doesn't, you, you think it's going to be a.
01:19:55.84
Mark McCracken
Yeah, no, nothing at all. I was like, shit, what is this shit going to be? And I was like, oh, this is great. This is some nice, very chill electric music. Yeah, any other rec? Did you try any of the recommendations last week, Michael?
01:20:07.19
Mark McCracken
Or you're just throwing this out.
01:20:08.90
Michael
I.
01:20:08.98
Mark McCracken
You're not you're not here to you're you're not here to take the recommendations you give the recommendations. so
01:20:13.51
Michael
but No, I did. Um, I took one of Mittens, I took one of Mittens and I enjoyed it.
01:20:19.16
Mark McCracken
Yeah. I did watch one episode of monk and I was like, this is shit. Turned it off after 10 minutes.
01:20:24.59
Michael
The who spent his whole honeymoon in New Zealand.
01:20:25.64
Mark McCracken
Oh honeymoon watching five, at five, what three or five series of monk.
01:20:26.43
Michael
like
01:20:29.56
Mark McCracken
And I was like, this is shit. I'm not watching this.
01:20:30.94
Michael
Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm still reading my book. I've not managed to, I've not managed to turn it, could you?
01:20:34.26
Mark McCracken
Cool. Is that the one?
01:20:35.58
Michael
Yeah. I've not turned that around in a week, but, um, I've been listening to, uh, another of
01:20:38.34
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Yeah.
01:20:42.10
Michael
worried about Satan's side projects called ghosting season.
01:20:44.96
Mark McCracken
There we go.
01:20:46.11
Michael
Better name. Yeah. said and yeah ah I didn't try.
01:20:48.60
Mark McCracken
I mean, I don't know we're gonna find out. Yeah. Did he try bolt or cursor?
01:20:55.47
Mark McCracken
I've got that much time yet, but you did do something else this week.
01:20:55.57
Michael
Oh yeah.
01:20:58.36
Mark McCracken
What what what it what what what did you publish yesterday?
01:21:01.71
Michael
and I knew you'd drop me in it. Yeah.
01:21:04.73
Mark McCracken
you just yeah Yeah Quite some time
01:21:05.04
Michael
ah finally I finally finally finally yes they wrote a blog post after like threatening to do it for a decade because you read it. Thanks. I think I think if I look at my stats, you're the only person who's ready.
01:21:17.91
Michael
Yeah, so.
01:21:18.81
Mark McCracken
So you paid you paid for the medium like custom domain thing, right?
01:21:22.07
Michael
Yeah, what are you saying? Yes.
01:21:24.39
Mark McCracken
but Well, nothing.
01:21:24.56
Michael
ah This this is why do I pay for things because I think I'm going to use.
01:21:25.11
Mark McCracken
It's just but that that it like, Michael has bought all of the equipment required to do a blog.
01:21:32.19
Michael
Yeah, I've got after look I've got I've finally got my next video back up, so I need I need 64 gig around and
01:21:34.38
Mark McCracken
but
01:21:38.88
Mark McCracken
Whereas I have bought all of the equipment required to do a podcast and keep getting told your audio sounds shit, man. think What are you doing? You're equalizing this terribly.
01:21:46.16
Michael
But yeah, I wrote one and I'm going to write another one and then I'm going to see how it goes and then going to run out of, run out of content group.
01:21:48.59
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:21:51.83
Mark McCracken
Yeah. So any any any other recommendations? So where hang on, let's let's get let's get into the detail into this blog.
01:21:56.10
Michael
Yeah.
01:21:59.24
Michael
Okay.
01:21:59.72
Mark McCracken
How did you find it? How long did it take you to produce this article this this masterpiece?
01:22:03.42
Michael
ah Not long. I think I'd had it on my mind for a while and I was thinking about why to, I was thinking about why to write it.
01:22:06.49
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:22:08.60
Michael
So I was like, I kept kind of going, am I going to post it? Am I not going to post it? Am I going to post it? on And I was like, why am I doing it? Who wants to?
01:22:14.00
Mark McCracken
And now you've taken the hard step of posting it untold. One person.
01:22:17.55
Michael
Yeah, that's fine. I don't care. But ah was thinking about so so the next thing I was going to write is basically like, why am I posting this? And and you when when you spoke to me about the podcast, you said that this is how I remember. I think you remember it differently, but you said, I want to do a podcast because it's going to make me accountable.
01:22:35.81
Mark McCracken
Oh no, that's not, that that that's not, that's not, that's slight twist of what I said. What I said was, I would love to do a podcast, but if I did it on my own, I'd never be bothered to keep up with it.
01:22:43.98
Michael
Okay. Okay.
01:22:45.38
Mark McCracken
So if I had one other person as a co-host, that would keep me accountable.
01:22:45.45
Michael
Yeah.
01:22:48.67
Mark McCracken
And here you are, you stupidly said, yes, I don't know why you keep saying yes to me.
01:22:48.78
Michael
yeah yeah yeah um but i was like you know if i if i i've basically written this post about how i'm going to do loads of skilling up and i've i've kind of put it out there publicly and now everyone's going to be like how's the skilling up going and i'm going to be like o so i need not yet no not yet but um uh yeah it's just uh no it's just like i don't i don't know i kind of i just feel awkward i think
01:23:02.18
Mark McCracken
Have, So have you, have you, have you put it out there publicly? Did you post, you didn't, you didn't post it on LinkedIn yet. You still like got jitters about that. Now it's going to check some typos first of all.
01:23:16.37
Mark McCracken
We got to balance out the AI bullshit on LinkedIn from the influencers with like real stuff.
01:23:19.35
Michael
Yeah, with some honest stuff. so i was goingnna I was going to wait for the second one where I talk about why I'm doing this.
01:23:21.65
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:23:25.33
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:23:25.57
Michael
and but but yeah kind of there a does i am the Have you ever read of Something Habits? it's so
01:23:33.00
Mark McCracken
I bought that book at an airport and I read at least one chapter.
01:23:37.32
Michael
but but what i i think yeah and mr But I think, I think one of the, yeah,
01:23:38.07
Mark McCracken
I get emails every day from fucking James Clear saying, you should do this three, two, one steps. I'm like, just, I don't know the heart to unsubscribe him.
01:23:46.92
Michael
one of One of the things that I do remember, if I've got my books right, is that and you know when they talk about habits, if you like, instead of saying something like, I'm trying to run, or I'm, i'm you know, it's the mental thing where you go, I'm a runner.
01:24:01.12
Mark McCracken
Oh yeah, the mental distinguishing between. Yeah, I am that thing rather than I'm trying to.
01:24:05.74
Michael
I am nothing rather than trying, you've read more than one chapter, so.
01:24:07.14
Mark McCracken
Yeah. You're a, you're a blogger.
01:24:10.10
Michael
Yes, and not, I'm a blogger, but I thought, you know, I thought think if I write, like, I'm gonna do all this,
01:24:11.66
Mark McCracken
Well, you are now.
01:24:15.17
Michael
If I'm going to do all this upskilling stuff, then I kind of put it out there and now I feel like I have to do it.
01:24:19.97
Fredrik
What's the address to your blog, Michael?
01:24:20.03
Michael
So we'll see.
01:24:23.81
Michael
Blog.heyitsmichael.com. Not the Swedish way.
01:24:27.65
Mark McCracken
There we go.
01:24:28.57
Michael
Not the Swedish way.
01:24:29.71
Mark McCracken
There we go.
01:24:30.51
Michael
There we go.
01:24:30.53
Mark McCracken
we'll put that We will definitely put that on the show notes.
01:24:32.32
Michael
You're just going to drop me anyway. so
01:24:33.67
Mark McCracken
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:24:34.21
Michael
yeah
01:24:34.40
Mark McCracken
I mean, that's the point. of with The point of being accountable to like just me.
01:24:39.02
Michael
and What's everyone else been up to? Recommendations, music.
01:24:41.74
Mark McCracken
Well, but just just quickly touching on that.
01:24:43.32
Michael
Not not blogging.
01:24:43.38
Mark McCracken
Fred, have you ever fred have you we ever had a blog?
01:24:46.75
Fredrik
I haven't read a ah written a blog myself. I've been thinking actually to do it funny enough about Smart Home for quite some time.
01:24:53.08
Michael
okay so yeah it's easier to cross sell this book off and then maybe mark will get his nano leaf no yeah
01:24:53.59
Fredrik
um But I'd actually never have it taken the time.
01:24:54.06
Mark McCracken
There we go.
01:24:58.66
Fredrik
Yeah, exactly.
01:25:02.51
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe a blogger with a nano leaf and be like, this is such a fucking waste of money. It's so expensive for these little tiny leaves.
01:25:08.64
Fredrik
yeah
01:25:09.07
Mark McCracken
Um, yeah.
01:25:11.12
Fredrik
Now, I could probably talk about smart homes forever and hours and hours, but yeah, the thing, the thought of writing a blog post have actually been on my mind for a couple of few years, partially for good use, but also because it's an interesting topic.
01:25:13.77
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:25:28.11
Mark McCracken
Do it. Do it. If you follow Michael's 100-step guide, eventually at the end, you'll have done all the all the procrastination will be done, and you'll be straight into it.
01:25:32.28
Fredrik
I probably will end up writing a blog post. hey Yeah.
01:25:36.08
Michael
Yeah.
01:25:37.84
Mark McCracken
um Recommendations. What have we got to recommend, Michael?
01:25:42.42
Michael
Ghosting season.
01:25:43.74
Mark McCracken
yeah
01:25:44.26
Michael
Ghosting season.
01:25:45.49
Mark McCracken
Ghosting Season by Word about Satan.
01:25:46.26
Michael
Yeah.
01:25:47.37
Mark McCracken
All right, cool.
01:25:47.44
Michael
Well, no, ghost sorry, ghosting season is one of his other projects.
01:25:50.39
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:25:51.06
Michael
Yeah, I'm going to go for that.
01:25:51.50
Mark McCracken
All right.
01:25:52.17
Michael
I've not read any other books. Actually, no, I have actually. I've been reading observability engineering.
01:25:58.47
Mark McCracken
Wow.
01:25:59.41
Michael
It's really good. and it's It's because i'm um like said I'm in an SRE role.
01:26:03.90
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:26:04.19
Michael
And, uh, you know, even like, uh, it's by, um, uh, it's by three authors, the only one whose name I can remember is Charity Majors.
01:26:10.72
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:26:13.16
Michael
Um, who is quite high up at Honeycomb, maybe the CTO, maybe more than that.
01:26:17.53
Mark McCracken
Will they get a good rate?
01:26:18.08
Michael
So, um, yeah, that was really just, yeah. I mean, it's not a, you know, sit and read it on the beach or something, but it's like, uh, you know, it's, it's good read.
01:26:24.18
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:26:25.34
Michael
Like just even, just even the whole start of that, just like, you know, can like comparing observability and monitoring how everyone kind of
01:26:28.28
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:26:33.83
Michael
mixes them up and and and stuff like that. So yeah, I really enjoyed that.
01:26:37.03
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:26:37.96
Michael
Very sad, but yeah.
01:26:38.06
Mark McCracken
In a similar vein, I've been reading a work-related book called a Standard for Program Management, which has been really, I mean, from an outsider perspective, incredibly dry, but full of good, sensible standards that look pretty reasonable.
01:26:44.19
Michael
Okay.
01:26:48.92
Michael
Okay.
01:26:51.96
Michael
Cool.
01:26:52.28
Mark McCracken
So that's been pretty good.
01:26:53.48
Michael
Cool.
01:26:53.94
Mark McCracken
ah Fred, you got any recommendations?
01:26:56.92
Fredrik
Ooh, that's a really good question. um Can I put me on the spot there? ah Give me a couple of minutes and I'll have to think about it.
01:27:03.93
Mark McCracken
I did, yeah.
01:27:05.60
Michael
but so What's your music recommendation, Mark, while we go through it?
01:27:07.79
Mark McCracken
My music record, nothing, just much, much, much farther John Christie.
01:27:09.22
Michael
Oh, Misty. Oh, Misty.
01:27:11.63
Mark McCracken
Yeah, Christie, Mesty, I keep getting that wrong.
01:27:11.72
Michael
Yeah. Misty.
01:27:14.35
Fredrik
You have to think that it's Christmas time nowadays as well.
01:27:14.41
Michael
You know what, I think...
01:27:14.44
Mark McCracken
um
01:27:16.75
Fredrik
so
01:27:17.22
Mark McCracken
Yeah. um So that's that's been great.
01:27:18.26
Fredrik
ah
01:27:19.34
Mark McCracken
And it's it's it's kind of Christmassy kind of vibe a bit. um I did watch a movie this week. I watched back to back. I've been on my own, so I've been watching a lot of movies. um And I watched horror movie, which is not really very me kind of vibe.
01:27:31.65
Mark McCracken
I don't really like horror movies because who likes to jump.
01:27:34.55
Michael
Yeah.
01:27:34.64
Mark McCracken
But it wasn't like jumping. It was ah we it would be gory. called The Platform, which is a foreign film. And long and short, to people go into this prison or not prison. Sometimes they go in voluntarily, but they're like not under the illusion that it's going to be lovely. And there's like 300 floors and go in and you they only ask you when you go in, you can take one item, you choose whatever item you want when you go in, and you can choose one food.
01:28:00.55
Mark McCracken
and they go in and they go go in with their item and they're they're on a platform with two with one other cellmate and they have their item and then the food comes down so the food comes on a platform that kind of goes through all of the different floors and it's like at the top it's like world-class amazing looking food and then but the people at the top they're like greedy and they eat all the food so by the time you get to like level 50 it's like scraps and you're just kind of eating like rubbish stuff you don't really like
01:28:16.29
Michael
Yeah.
01:28:22.02
Michael
Okay. Yeah.
01:28:24.94
Mark McCracken
The time you get to like level 100, there's nothing there. And you've got to basically kill your cellmate to eat food.
01:28:27.66
Michael
That sounds very cool.
01:28:30.93
Mark McCracken
And this guy decides he's going to um he's going to have a revolt and do something different in this system to try and show it wrong. um So I watched that. And that way it was quite interesting. And then I immediately went in straight straight away after I finished the first one straight into watching the second one, because it came up next on Netflix.
01:28:46.83
Mark McCracken
And I was like, oh, well, we'll give this a go. And I was skeptical, because the first one had a seven IMDB rating. The second one's only got five IMDB rating. And it's mostly because the ending was a bit like you have to interpret it in some way.
01:28:57.66
Mark McCracken
You know, like when you watch the end of like the Matrix 2 and you're like, what was going on there?
01:28:57.79
Michael
when i
01:29:00.80
Michael
and You have to go and read your thing off, just to understand.
01:29:02.82
Mark McCracken
That was, yeah, you have to go and read something afterwards. You're like, well, what was going on there? So it was a bit like that, but it was it was was it was good. Would recommend the platform and the platform too, which was a bit, a bit gory at times, but not like jump.
01:29:08.93
Fredrik
Yeah.
01:29:14.09
Mark McCracken
Scary. Yeah.
01:29:16.01
Michael
right
01:29:16.03
Fredrik
I saw it as well, the first platform movie. I thought it was a really good movie as well, mostly because it was kind of, it was extremely different from what you usually tend to see in a movie.
01:29:20.01
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:29:22.74
Mark McCracken
yeah
01:29:24.34
Fredrik
And even though the story was quite, up you could tell they had a lot of really deep meanings of the movie itself and the the the outcome and the story.
01:29:30.79
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:29:33.80
Fredrik
But it was a really interesting way, both how it was semantically filmed and the way it was composed. It was extremely ah interesting movie.
01:29:38.51
Mark McCracken
Yeah.
01:29:39.94
Fredrik
So I highly recommend as well to anyone to see it.
01:29:41.94
Mark McCracken
Yeah. I've also been watching, uh, I've been watching the day of the Jackal and sky and I thought, Oh, it's based on, you know, the classic movie, the day of the Jackal.
01:29:46.22
Michael
i
01:29:49.45
Mark McCracken
So I went back and watched the classic movie, the day of the Jackal. And now I'm like, have I just ruined the series for myself or are they going to do something different? So now I'm wondering, is this going to end and exactly the same way? And I'm like, it's going to be shit.
01:30:00.44
Mark McCracken
So I'm going to go watch it with my mum now in a minute.
01:30:02.04
Michael
You're going to read the book as well, or or is that enough?
01:30:03.46
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Yeah, I think I might read the book too.
01:30:05.14
Michael
enough inspiration ah Go all in.
01:30:06.15
Mark McCracken
Maybe the book's different from the original movie, and I'll just do the like three different endings of this of this show.
01:30:07.99
Michael
Yeah. Why not? Yeah.
01:30:10.39
Mark McCracken
Yeah, why not?
01:30:11.63
Michael
Cool.
01:30:12.04
Mark McCracken
Yeah. Wicked. I think that's it. We're at the end.
01:30:15.78
Michael
letly That right?
01:30:16.87
Mark McCracken
Call it a day.
01:30:17.42
Michael
Only the weekends.
01:30:17.69
Mark McCracken
Wicked. Fred, it's been an absolute pleasure.
01:30:20.10
Michael
Yeah.
01:30:20.19
Mark McCracken
Thanks like for coming on.
01:30:20.27
Fredrik
Thank you very much. And likewise, it was great to have myself on board.
01:30:20.95
Michael
Thanks for being on.
01:30:23.39
Mark McCracken
Yeah, all right. The end. Bye.
01:30:25.40
Michael
Bye, mate.
01:30:25.43
Mark McCracken
Bye. Bye.