 It's time for Mackie Gabb and listener Bruce brings us our quick tip of the week with a follow-up from last week There is a very simple way to show or hide normally invisible files in the Finder and that is by pressing command shift period More quick tips like this plus your questions answered today on Mackie Gabb 9 79 for Monday, May 1st 2023 Looks and welcome to Mackie Gabb the show where you send in tips like that and it was That that particular tip came from Bruce and Eric and Ben and Wayne and so many of you I missed it during the show because I wasn't paying attention Next time I endeavor to do better, but you send in quick type quick tips like that We share your quick tips you send in your cool stuff found we share cool stuff found you send in your questions We try to answer your questions. We stitch it all together into an agenda and the goal is such that by doing all of that and Following through the agenda we each learn at least five new things every single time we get together Sponsors for this episode include collide comm slash mgkolide.com slash m g g We'll talk more about what you will get when you go there But it's awesome zero trust tailor-made for octa cool stuff For now here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton And here in Fairfield, Connecticut. This is John of Brown and here in lead in Hampshire's pilot Pete listening to the British jets going home overhead. I think they're gone now. Okay. Yeah Yeah, it's been loud over my house and then Pete's house as a bunch of Bunch of jets are leaving from P's Air Force Base Air Force Base, right? Right kind of down the road from us both. So all right. Let's Let's get into this cool stuff There's quick tips here because we have yet another follow-up In fact, we've got some great quick tip follow-ups here. We were talking in episode 978 about The the tip for moving messages moving among messages in mac os and using control tab or shift control tab And scott says rather than using control tab, which I find unnatural to use within an application He says I use it to shift between applications I simply changed the keystroke in settings keyboard keyboard shortcuts app shortcuts messages to use command up arrow and command down arrow That makes more sense to me. This is one of the coolest things about mac os that you can set Your own keystrokes to do things and you can make them system-wide Or app specific so that they aren't getting in the way of what command up arrow and down arrow do in other apps It's very cool. And and then he shares. I like that So thank you for that scott. He also shares a bonus tip, which is sort of a quick tip revisited He says if you've got contacts pinned You can use command one through command nine to access Up to you know, you can have nine contacts pinned and or And you can access them that way by the way pinning contacts is not just about Individual contacts you can pin group chats as well So if you have a like a family group chat or a work group chat That you want to pin you can pin that too It's you can anything that's a chat can be pinned so Hopefully lots of quick tips there for you. I don't know. Yeah, that's what I got. Yep That's what we got for today Uh, actually, no, that's not true. We have more john. We have one from henry also a reference to show. Yes, we do Um last week's ios safari tip reminded me of another feature available when the address bar is fully visible If you swipe left or right on the address bar You'll switch to your next or previous tab and if you're on the very last tab swiping left will open a new tab You can tell you're on the last tab if there is no hint of another address bar peaking into the right of your current address bar By the way tapping on that little bit that peaks in will also take you to the next tab Similar thing on the left for previous tab, but those require more precision Than swiping. Yeah, I find that harder to do Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and this is on iphone. Uh, and maybe ipad. I can't remember how Probably not ipad because on ipad you actually get to see your tabs at the top. So yes, this is on iphone. Yeah Yeah, I like uh, that's good. That's good. Yeah, I um I like it all um I noticed the other day if you are If if you are a twitter user who recently lost your ability to use sms for two factor authentication If you like had a check mark before and then it went away Uh, you now you need the the check mark in on twitter in order to have two two factor authentication Using sms and so it will force you the next time you log in after you lose your check mark to uh To to to change that or if you haven't been using it, you can't use sms unless you pay the eight bucks a month However There is still the possibility of using two factor authentication on twitter You just have to do it with like the you know the the one time passwords And I think maybe there's another way to do it But I you know, I just changed mine to using one time passwords which for me I store in in one password And uh, and so now I'm back to having 2fa on on twitter and you don't have to pay for the the privilege I guess sms messages probably cost them something in fact. I'm certain they do that's sort of how that works So they probably limit that to just people who are paying them But but you can still do two factor authentication on twitter just You have to You have to go in and actually do it again. So it was not obvious to me the path that they sent me down It was like, oh, you just lose the ability to do 2fa. I'm like, I don't like that that sort of worries me Well, good news. You can go get it back. Just Just knock on the door a little bit harder I recently guys, you know, I've had fiber for a couple of years john mp I recently changed My connection I moved it as I mentioned I think on the show from the office over to the house because the house has the generator and I just want all the network Gear over there so that I don't have to deal with you know, it just has an automatic generator So all good to go. So in doing that I moved from Even though it's sort of the same provider They changed brand names I moved from having a ppp oe connection To having a dhcp connection which All else being equal is way better. My ip address doesn't change three times a day anymore. In fact, it doesn't change at all anymore I don't need to have a router that supports ppp oe even though I still do right like it's a it's a better way of Going about it. The one thing though is that unlike cable modems The fiber at least my fiber connection and for those of you that I've talked with who are also using dhcp on fiber The fiber connection Stores your the mac address the hardware ethernet address of your router In the provider's database and the provider is the only one who can change it, right with a cable modem Your cable modem grabs the the mac address when it powers up And if you need to change like if you get a new router You just power cycle your cable modem and then it lets you put your new router in no problem You don't have to make any phone calls. You don't have to open a support ticket With fiber that is not the case. You do have to open a support ticket to change Well, I mean fine But I knew this going in and so what I did was I asked the the tech Because I could I could have gotten this information myself But it's way better if I get what they think my mac address is so I asked the tech I said Tell me what your system says my mac address is now that I'm set up with my router and all of that stuff And he was like sure, you know, he showed it to me on his computer screen and I put it in my Entry in one password that also logs me into You know my provider's website like to pay the bill and all that stuff And so now I have the mac address for the Device that is authenticated to use on my account Most routers will let you do what's called mac address cloning So if my router blows up and I need to put a new router in I know what mac address to tell it to masquerade as to let me back in So you don't have to open a ticket So I don't have to open a ticket at 3am on a sunday morning when I have no idea if they're going to be there to answer and and help me Right So well, that's great. Yeah, can I go get mine off of my Can I just look at my I should be able to look at my router see what the mac address is and that would be it right Correct You just want to make sure you grab the mac address of the wan port that you are using Some routers have multiple ports that can be used for the the wan Like the Synology routers for example have two They have two and one of the here's a here's another, you know So now the tangential quick tip on the Synology routers Uh at least the rt6600 the current one The uh, and this is probably true of others There's one wan port and then there's a four port switch for the LAN Right port one on that four port switch can also be used for the wan if you want to have like fail secondary backup or Yeah, in your case you were using cable and I was I've I've I've turned off cable. I have it all wired up It take it'll take me a couple hours to like call them and have them turn it back on I wanted to stop paying them 40 bucks a month. So it's fine um However, even without using a secondary connection. I'm not using my wan port I am using my LAN one port for my fiber connection because That port is the only port of the five on my router that supports 2.5 gig ethernet and my Device from my my provider also supports well, it'll support up to 10 gig ethernet So I figured why not give it the head room I don't need these other, you know, I don't need the one port there. I connected to a bigger switch anyway So That's why I can't just read the bottom of my router and say I know what my wan ports IP mac address is I do know what my wan ports mac address is But that's not the one that my fiber provider knows because I've they've never seen it Well, is the so that begs the question for me is is the other one Is that limited to one gig? It is It is unclear in the documentation I had to ask support this because I was like, I think there's something broken with my router I'm like, I'm only getting 2.5 on the on the LAN one port not on the wan port. They're like, you know, that's as design Like, okay. It was just worded Yeah, flip that around you'd want your Wan port to be the one that handles the most traffic in your backup to be if you got a limit one Here's why it's not I think I didn't ask them this once they confirmed for me that it that it was what I was seeing I was like, okay, great. I know what to do. Perfect. I'm on it the reason I think that they do this p is because That way you as if they're only going to pay to put one 2.5 gig port on there by putting it as the first port of the the the you know the the LAN switch And giving it the option of being used on the wan you now as the user have the option of saying, okay I want to use that 2.5 gig port for my wan or I want to use it for my LAN connection because maybe I want to plug it into like a network storage device that Uh, that would benefit from from having that right and arguably that might be the smart move for me too Like I I don't know that I would ever wind up using more than One gig, you know on my internet connection Whereas maybe I would use more than one gig on my on a NAS drive Yeah, because because even though the rest of the ports and we'll get into this a little bit here just to explain But even though the rest of the ports on the switch are only one gig per second if you have Two devices connected to you know each port Then each of those gets one gig per second And that means they can each talk to the 2.5 gig port at their own full speed So assuming the device on the 2.5 gig port is capable of transmitting data You know of like the hard drives on your NAS can can you know generate data that fast then great Okay, you could you could talk to multiple devices at at full speed Gotcha, does that make sense that does actually yeah, okay that at first it didn't it's like well That's just silly. 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They don't fix the problem within a set time Well, they're blocked collides method means fewer support tickets less frustration and most importantly 100 fleet compliance visit collide com slash mgg to learn more or book a demo. That's k o l i d e dot com slash mg g and our thanks to collide for sponsoring this episode And while we're here I've got a show to tell you about look when the new yorker magazine asked mark zuckerberg how he gets his news He said the one news source. He definitely follows his tech meme for four years now The tech meme ride home podcast has been silicon valley's favorite tech news source The podcast has become so successful In fact that it launched a venture fund where the listeners to the show are the limited partners in the fund The tech meme ride home is like t l d r as a service. It's not just the latest headlines from the world of tech It's also the context around the latest news of the day It's all the top stories the top posts and tweets and conversations about those stories As well as the behind the scenes analysis Guests who have come on the show to lend their expertise include andreese and horowitz is christ dixon Then bloomberg's apple rumor king mark german the folks at tech meme are online all day reading everything So they can catch you up and me too. I've added this to my podcatcher I listen to tech meme ride home all the time So listen to the one podcast anyone who's anyone in silicon valley listens to every single day Search your podcast app now for ride home and subscribe to the tech meme ride home podcast And our thanks to the team over there for doing this swap with us All right, let's do some questions john. I think jed has jed found an interesting thing Yeah, I've actually run into this myself, but um Jed says just wanted to send in this warning question mark So I have mint mobile and never needed a lot of data But last fall in this spring. I'm noticing that if I have maps on for an hour or three and a minute and I'm driving kids to various sports and social stuff. My data hit its cap I just checked the map eight Up 20 gigs this weekend. That's in like three to four hours. So I may be going back to ways or google maps Just thought I would let people know Um, and yeah, you can see this dave if you go to um, uh Settings cellular it'll list Your various apps and how much data they use and and I actually had Had this happen when I switched over to 5g all of a sudden I blew my data cap in like less than an hour Is that because you were doing a bunch of speed tests? No, no, I wasn't oh No, and then I looked and I I did the same thing, you know I looked in settings cellular and weather was taking up gigabytes of data. It's like why Yeah, I remember you saying that now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting Fascinating Huh The only time I had maps take up data like that was like on a long road trip You know last summer we drove to florida It it but I don't I don't recall it hitting my cap right away I mean I hit the I hit the cap that month and that's why I switched on limited like that So you did so probably but maps um Maps chewed up that much like gigabytes of data I think what it was is we were just on the road for two days and And so I wasn't on wi-fi and so you know, I tend to like for instance, uh I listened to sirius xm Cheap cheap cheap pilot not that not that audio takes up a lot, but cheap pilot trick here folks So we pay for the sirius xm from a wife's car And so I get the app on my phone and I listened to sirius xm on my phone Using apple carplay so why pay for two radios when you get the app and an apple carplay Yeah, they're probably gonna hear that and shut that down now. No, I don't know how they could but um, yeah, that's right No, that's a smart. I like that tip. I like that. Yeah, I I I can't imagine why Maps would use gigabytes of data like this like it doesn't It doesn't make sense to me We haven't heard if if others are out there seeing that they'll let us know feedback at mackeycap.com like We definitely want to know Where feedback at mackeycap.com Feedback at mackeycap.com. That's true um I when when his email came in I looked because I just reset my cellular stats, uh, two months ago on February 22nd So about two months ago, uh, and I use maps almost exclusively While driving right it is my mapping app Um, and I have the same provider. I use mint not that that's relevant here, but um in two months Maps is used for me a grand sum total of 500 less than 500 469 megabytes of cell data Um, and that's in my top 10 apps, right like in terms of data usage And I've done I did a trip down to new york like I've I've done some longer road trips But I use maps all the time So I'm just I'm I'm curious as to what it would take to get it to burn 20 gigs of data. That's interesting That's a lot my my biggest one for the last two months is speed test At 2.2 gigs speed tests, especially on 5g if you're getting um You know if you're getting that that you know 100 to 200 to 300 megabit per second connection That will chew up, you know a quarter gig per speed test Uh, just why I yeah interesting and by the way Uh the part about being on mint mobile that is relevant is You know mint is a a an mvno for t-mobile meaning they use t-mobile's network, right? Because they're an mvno, there's some part about the deal I'll say that means they Can't or don't Show when you're on 5g versus the 5g uc or whatever t-mobile calls it like the the ultra wideband, you know, whatever Whatever that is, but mint does support the 5g uc or uw or whatever it is. It just doesn't show it On iphones, you know like it does if you had a t-mobile connection You'd either see 5g or 5g uc. I think john m verizon uc 5g and 5g uw I think but uh he'll he'll confirm eventually Yes, I've seen that before yeah um But like though you do get those speeds with mint even though you're not seeing the the distinction happen it with the 5g Thing and so yeah, I've I've had some speed tests on mint that are like over 400 megabits per second on 5g Which is amazing, but that's why I burned 2.2 gigs One other thing about maps though briefly is that uh, that they're slowly getting the functionality of ways I've gone off of ways they they alert to speed checks and hazards and that sort of thing. It just needs more people playing I report the hazards report report the speed checks. Yeah, although, you know syria and her infinite lack of wisdom Spirit, you know, hey syria. Oh, sorry. Hey, yes lady, uh Speed check at this location Yeah You deserve that pete. Yeah, I did For those that didn't hear it. She said that's all good. Yeah, thanks a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, you'll you'll say. Yes lady Speed check at this location. I can't show you that while driving. It's like oh dear god make it stop Make it stop. That's right. Yeah. Yeah I'm trying to figure out where I was when I just recently got a A speed test for it was like 420 megs a second. I think it was local here. It's maybe boston or something, but Yeah, you can 5g 5g can be fast. It's fun. Yeah. Yeah yeah All right. Well, if you do see the maps using that up folks, let us know like this this would be an interesting data point But I'm hoping that it's unique to jed and especially hoping that it was unique to just that weekend for you jed Not happening all the time Uh, we got a couple of follow-ups about our discussion on tail scale in 976 Uh, including a big discussion Kind of follow on discussion in our discord channel, which I'll I'll put a link to but um You know, I talked about in 976 how I'm using Tail scale to get to my specific machines and then how I have my Synology vpn for if I want to get to the whole network and then I have You know a separate vpn I use private internet access if I just want to get to the outside world and not deal with, you know My home network or whatever And many of you including robert pointed out that you can Use tail scale to To be that outward vpn And it's You set up one of your devices That's you know, sort of permanently at your house or office or whatever You use tail scale and you set that up as an exit node And what that means is that not only can it be a device that you can just attach directly to That it can also be your path out to the internet just like a normal vpn And the nice part is you don't have to set up a normal vpn You don't even have to have a router that will let you do that because tail scale will do it So it just needs to be an always on device So your network if you have a nas like a Synology distation or something That's the perfect place to do it But it gets even better and this was the part that blew my mind when somebody Really explained this to me in a way that it finally sunk and it was I think mq richards I want to say in our in our discord. I can't remember off the top of my head Something like that The the post is out there. So you get full credit but The idea was you know, you don't have to put tail scale on all of your computers You only need to put it on one device in your network and the reason is It supports something called being a subnet router And what that will do is let you connect use that one tail scale device to be the gateway to your network Which means that not only do you not have to install tail scale on all your other devices You don't need to meaning you can access devices like printers where you couldn't install tail scale Anyway, even if you wanted to so you set up the and and and The idea is you really only need to set up one device at home with tail scale Turn on exit node and subnet routing capabilities for it And there's docs about how to do this. It's really not all that complicated and then When you're connected to your tail scale You can you're you know, you're going through a vpn if you want to get to the outside world no matter where you are and you can get to your inside world just by Without needing to put tail scale on anything. So I immediately did that I'm going to stop running tail scale on all of my computers except for my my Synology disk station and and that'll be that but It's kind of blew my mind that this is the right way to do this It makes life way way way simpler because you can just be connected to tail scale all the time on your phone and your laptop And no matter where you are You just get to all your devices as though you are at your home or your office wherever your primary network is Does that make sense peat? Did I did I explain that right? Pete you are muted that there's I knew you were trying to talk to me Yeah, kind of lost me a little bit but okay, it's that's why I asked yeah So So I have it on the Mac mini in the basement and that's the one I run is perfect node when I run when I want to run it right um But I have to have it on my laptop if I want to be on that network Correct, okay, you would you would want it on your mobile devices your laptops Your phone my iPad your phone your iPad the things that aren't that are going to be traveling away from home with you But and I need it on my on my Synology drive my NAS drive in order to See that's what I'm saying It with the subnet router you don't need it on more than one device At home because if you let's say you make your mac mini right your tail scale device And it can be your exit node if you want it to be you turn that on or off And you if you go enable subnet routing now that mac mini will not just be a gateway to the outside world Aka the exit node it will be a gateway to the inside world via subnet routing It they use that subnet routing is the wrong term right exit node For some reason like the english equivalent of that makes good sense It should be an you know inbound node, right? So it is just the path to your network and then you use your your local network ip's and you can get to everything From wherever and it doesn't matter where you are right. Okay. That's beautiful then because correct I mean I still love it because the fact is You know with my other show I put I have a ton of data. Well, I need to offload that from my laptop So that I don't have gigabytes and gigabytes of of past shows that I don't have anymore So I put that on a NAS only folder But I can't access that from the outside world until tail scale came along last right Now I can get to it from anywhere in the world and I there is no harm In it that I found in having tail scale on more than one device in your network So what you're doing with it on your mac mini and on your your NAS like there's no reason to stop that necessarily But there's also no reason to set that up necessarily you just set it up on one And then add this subnet routing a k a the inbound node And and then you could hit you via your mac mini you could access your your Synology all the time anyway Then let me ask this and it may be because what I do now is I go to the tail scale app Yep, or you know right up in the top in the menu bar and I go down to Network devices my devices Yeah And it shows my disk station there I click on that and it copies the IP address of my disk station Then I go to finder and I hit connect and I use that IP address. I no longer need to do that. I can just go to my 168.4 Correct. That's correct. You would use the same local IP address Whether it was whether you're in Dubai or in lee new Hampshire or in the living room. Okay, correct Yeah, Dubai or the living room. That's a much better way. Yeah, see that's that's the marketing phrase right there Yep, okay Yeah, it right it it it keeps you from having all these different addresses for the same devices All that being said Because of the Boy Scout enemy always be prepared right, uh If you are if you know that you're going to be accessing your Synology a bunch from remote You don't and and you're going to need to rely on that because of this data folder that you said you had out there I would not be too Hasty to remove tail scale from the Synology because Once you do it is reliant on your Mac mini being up and running and not having crashed or you know, like Murphy's law, right? So yeah, so like There's a world where it's okay to do both is I guess what I'm saying Yeah, you turn the Mac mini off. It won't work Correct, but leave that on there. It'll work even with the Mac now you got to back up, right? You know, so yeah, yeah It's still it says that these guys at tail scale are brilliant They are yeah, they um, we have a question in the the chat at mackeykev.com slash discord from uh p.m. Conaway Saying uh, can you only use those features if you have a custom domain? I'm using a google account No, I am also using a google account and a hundred percent of the features. We've just talked about work So in and most of us who signed up for tail scale early on Are doing the google account way because that's the only way it was possible to do it early on Now you can sign up with a custom domain and in fact, they just came out with new pricing plans That add more features to all of this including Giving you up to three users for free not just one user for free, which is huge However, those of us on google accounts still only get one user for free Because you have to be on a custom domain to add more than one user to your account And I believe somebody please correct me if i'm wrong that All of those users need to be on the same domain That's how it does what it does and this is why at the moment anyway, they're working on it They say but at the moment you can only have one gmail User per domain because otherwise they would let every gmail user gmail.com user Onto every other gmail.com users account and that would be Super bad. So they're not doing that now that being said my wife has a separate Computer her own iMac And I just put my tail scale account on there. So I don't need another user Correct if you're fine with someone having full access to everything and also being logged into your google account Which is fine with your wife and then you're great. Yeah exactly exactly And you could get creative and and create a second gmail account That's only used for these purposes and then it doesn't matter. Yeah, but I just got an idea though Mom's 97 lives in a nursing home Her only connection to the outside world is the ipad and that thing is always giving her trouble I need to put tail scale on her ipad Yes, so I can give her support remotely Yes, you know, it's frozen up. I can't get email to do this or that. Yeah, yeah, you can let me hang on mom I'll take care of that. Yeah. Yeah, right right right. Yep Yeah, no tail scale Thank goodness for tail scale. They also it's worth reading their article again It's linked in the show notes at macgeekab.com or mgg.fm slash 979 if you want to go right there And it'll be in your email box if you sign up for our weekly emails at macgeekab.com but they talk about why they are able to offer a free plan for free and how that works and how they are able to Not just make you the customer or you the product, right? You are we are still the customer They know that by doing this They see more uptake on their paid plans and and so it's the freemium model not the We're going to sell your data model. Uh, and they're very transparent about all this So it is worth giving a good read All right, um More questions, let's uh, let's go to craig here Craig says Does anyone use the logitech circle view home kit camera? We have a few and all of them cut out daily showing no response The fastest and only way I've found to resolve it is to switch off the power Uh, you know cycle the power on the camera and that works every time until the next time It's not ideal, especially if we're away and I can't access the plugs I'm considering buying a couple of wemo smart sockets. So if we are away theoretically I should be able to turn them off and on remotely to solve the cut out problem If it happens while I'm away. Does anyone else? Have these cameras have you had this problem and have you found a solution and several of you? Uh reported using these cameras and seeing this exact problem So maybe not so many of the logitech circle view home kit cameras need to be purchased going forward That's a little psa Anecdotally anyway, you know, there's there's like four people. So, you know Factor that into your your purchasing decisions I have found this though That the the symptom that craig Highlighted is that he goes into the home app and it says no response on the kind of the You get that main sort of dashboard screen, right? And you see your favorite devices and your cameras and all that stuff on the on the dashboard screen for home kit Uh The cameras will say no response there. I see that sometimes with the cameras I have I have a combination of ufi cameras, which are, you know, direct to home kit support and I have a bunch of non Home kit cameras like ring and and like a fos cam camera and and others that I use home bridge to connect to home kit and Equally with both of those the ufi home kit cameras and the non, you know via home bridge cameras I will Routinely see the same no response in the dashboard However, if I tap on the camera and force it to go and like try and talk to the camera It wakes right up and I see the image live right there and good to go. So There is something about home kit being perhaps impatient on waiting for a response back from the camera I don't know what it is But if you do see this issue before you presume that you have a camera that's just bogus Tap on it and dig in and see because You might you might be pleasantly surprised. You might also be, you know Unpleasantly frustrated. I can't promise what's gonna happen. I can just share what happens with me and others that I know Do you use any home kit cameras Pete do you use home kit at all? Uh, I don't I need to okay. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I I don't rely on home kit I use home kit as sort of the convenient aggregate of all of the other things that I use because Like sure, I could run the ufi app or the ring app to see Each of you know, the separate cameras that I have in those obviously But launching the home app is super convenient because it I have everything aggregated there I've set up home bridge, which is a Open source engine. I have it running on my disk station, but you could run it on your mac I'll put a link in the show notes So I have home bridge running which which essentially becomes a gateway for all non many not all most most non home kit devices to be Visible in and controllable in home kit. It's it's quite nice. So I use home kit as kind of the the the convenience Default way to look at it. It's nice because it's available on my max And so I don't have to have the ring software on my mac I can just launch the home app and see things But it's kind of buggy is as bryman row in the chat says Home kit is just buggy garbage. Well, that's true, but it's convenient garbage It's right at the tip of my fingers So I but I wouldn't rely on the home. I may have misstated the home app is different than home kit No, no the home app is your view into home kit. Okay. Yes. Yes. So well So I misstated it then I I use it a little bit when s lady won't turn off a later turn on a late I can open the home app and go all right, you know, let's go my favorite one is hey s lady You know turn on the living room lamp and I get the error the google I don't know why you get that error. I've seen it too. Yeah, you get it more than You needed to have installed to make this work isn't there. I'm like that has nothing to do with google It's a it's a phillips hue light And I just told s lady turn it on and she wants a google app for it. I'm like, no The phillips hue light is home kit native Yeah That's why it's particularly frustrating That was a really kind way of communicating that sentiment piece Okay, you know, yeah, so I do want to take a baseball bat and go hit that home bridge down in the basement and Yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah Yeah, no home bridge has been great because again, it just sort of aggregates all these things together and it's Now that they have Native home bridge for Synology. I don't have to run it in a docker container and manage that It's an I don't think I should say that but I I'm pretty sure yeah um Now that they have that I think it's through Synology community or something like it it really is not It it it's not for The faint of heart. I'm gonna say that but it's pretty good You know, there's some of the configurations of getting it set up with each of your Different things is a little bit of a deal but you can do it if you're listening to the show You can do it. I have faith in you and if you have any trouble come to our discord and ask I'm there, you know, there's others there using home bridge. Like it's a good place to it's a good resource that like Yeah, what I haven't done yet though and I had a discussion when I was down in Tennessee with my nephew this week And he's gonna he's getting ready to do it and I went, you know, that's not a bad idea It's setting up a DMZ and putting all those internet of things devices on that Separate from you're talking about a guest network not yeah Not a DMZ is sort of the opposite of what you would want to do right Okay, well, I think he used the term DMZ, but I'm thinking okay I want a zone where I put where I put all those internet of things that can't access my network Oh, yeah, no, that's not what most routers what DMZ means Is and it's it it's, you know demilitarized zone is the term and so this is already a misnomer But fine, you know is it is a way of setting one device as The one that gets all of the traffic that just floods into the outside of your network that your your router by nature of its sort of de facto firewall capabilities keeps out like normally Unsolicited packets that arrive at your router's doorstep are just Ignored because your router doesn't know what to do with them, right? You know unless you've set up some port forwardings then it'll forward them But a DMZ on most routers is port forward everything that I haven't told you about to this other device and let it handle it Okay, so it's a missed misstatement of terms that yeah, but what it what it sounds like he's doing is setting up a separate You know a a a guess network. Yeah, like yeah a guess network or or you know some version of that where it's it's Segregated so that those things can only talk to the outside world and not impact his other devices the problem with that I've always had is What convenience are you giving up for that with something like a ring camera for example? No problem because you're never talking directly other than when you set it up You're never talking directly to your ring camera It talks to the internet you talk to the internet and that's where you meet your ring camera And actually get the data so it's it's a super inefficient thing from a networking standpoint. It works totally fine Like it's it's it's great. So that would work fine But what if you've got a device that's like, uh, you know a foscan camera or something where it can do both And you can talk to it locally Which would be all of your home kit devices you're talking with locally Right. So, you know, you're you have to get on that network in order to talk directly to Correct instead of your Yeah, so I I've always sort of felt like That's a it is a solution But it's a baby versus the bathwater solution. You're just like it's your you know We talk about the the continuum between security and convenience and that's way closer to security than convenience Well, and you and I have a different and john we have different Needs, I mean in the show that that we are Isolated enough that uh, that there's not a lot now He's in a in an apartment slash townhome complex where there's a lot of wi-fi networks able to interact with each other and People can they're gonna interfere with each other, but they're not going to interact with each other. I guess I'm thinking about being a a place for someone to try and hack and mess around with your wi-fi Yeah, sure, you know and try and get into your network using your You light bridge or your you know and I know that's difficult But the I guess my point is the internet of things devices. They're better now early on they were totally open Totally. Oh, and that wouldn't whether you're you know alone in the country or in an apartment building like the The easiest attack vector is the same. It's come in over the internet And poke that hole in your You know off-brand camera or off-brand printer that has you know, security swiss cheese in its default linux core Embedded linux core that where all the passwords are you know like defaults or whatever And and then it has and then once you're in once you you know have root access on that device Then you you know and presumably that device is connected to the network now you have access just like you're on the network So that yeah that issue I mean it's still potential Today, but as you said like many most many I don't want to say most many including most of the The top name brand vendors have gotten better about this, but there's still those holes So I get it like I get the desire of doing this you just I don't know it it feels like more trouble than it's worth for most people Yeah, interesting. Yeah, interesting point. So I'm actually glad I brought it up now I see less of a need for it than than initially when he mentioned, you know, yeah Yeah, I mean if there's a need for it, but it's gonna introduce complications that You can route around but it's you know, it's gonna be You're gonna be the one. Well, here's what's gonna happen. Let me tell you folks. Here's what's gonna happen So Pete's gonna if you're not gonna you're probably not gonna do this But if you did this here's how the flow works that I've learned over the last decade or so is Pete sets up this this, you know, new shiny security protocol and then Pete goes off to travel because he has to that's how he pays for the new shiny things that he gets and and then Pete's wife calls Pete and says I can't turn the lights on and off anymore And then Pete calls me and says Dave My lights won't turn it off anymore. What do I need to do? What do I need to do? So I stop everything I'm doing and and then we try and figure this out and I Ask well, what did you change? I didn't change anything and then you know within about 15 minutes We get to well, I mean I I did that thing that I mentioned on the show. It's like that that's when I that's when I hit my Particularly frustrated moment. We're like, what did you do that? Right, I told you you idiot I told you not to do that I told you so You know, it's just one of it's like but it like this is true of all of the things that we all do all of the time I mean, thank you for letting me, you know, use you as the the punching bag on that one, Pete But like this is this is the the the thing is you you presume some of the ripple effects of the the changes that we make to our networks and our computers and our phones like any device And then there are the ripple effects that actually happen the ones that we didn't predict and That's why this show exists. So you send your questions in feedback at mackeykev.com. It's great. Yeah There you go There you go. All right, john Maybe we can do a couple more questions before we have to run today. This has been fun Uh, do you well first do you have like do you how do you use home kit? Uh, no You See see how john see what john just did I intentionally didn't ask a yes or no question and it didn't matter. It didn't matter. I love it No, I really really don't use it um Yeah, when I look at the home app I think My apple tv is part of the club my uh Home pod minis are part of the club, but that's really it So you could use home bridge to join all of your smart things devices to the club And and it doesn't preclude you from using your smart things devices the way you currently do It just adds that convenience layer of putting everything together In that one interface that's that that's accessible on all of your max and in control center and like all that stuff So like I do recommend doing the home bridge thing It if if you have a blend of home kit and non home kit devices because when it works Home kit is super convenient. Uh, it's just that you know, we're talking about maybe 60 of the time All right, take us to uh, take us to listen to john. We've got a couple of apple watch things to talk through. Yeah um John says I somehow developed a problem on my 24 inch iMac. I try to unlock with my apple watch and nothing happens It works fine on my macbook pro on the iMac I went to touch id and password and flipped the switch to enable apple watch But as soon as I do it flips back to off That's frustrating. Um, both devices are on the same apple id and as I said it works on my macbook pro Any idea of what is wrong and how to fix it Um I don't know. This is a rough one guys um I mean i've uh on my system. I've had the apple watch setting disabled But turning it back on worked. I never heard of it turning itself off again uh I mean a few thoughts one restart. I'm sure you've done that already, but you know can't hurt Um, make sure you have latest software updates. I seem to recall some of the recent ones had something to do with the watch Um, and the third thing maybe it's a cache. Isn't it always? Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, maybe clean things up with onyx maintenance cleaning options I like that idea Yeah, I I mean, I've certainly seen this where when it says that it's on it doesn't work And and in those scenarios turn it off reboot turn it back on often Fixes it you've got to have your watch near you've got a pair And and maybe that's part of the issue here Like is the watch close enough is bluetooth on on the mac like it uses both bluetooth and wi-fi and I don't know probably the phase of the moon or something But it it yeah I like the idea of cleaning caches because if you can't get it to even attempt to turn on The rest is obviously an on starter. So yeah Huh Yeah Yeah, but mine I had turned off and I didn't realize I went into system settings and Typed in unlock and it came up with the ability to go right to you know allow your app watch to unlock your mac So I turned it on it came right on so I don't know what uh I've just been using the fingerprint ID, you know, that's On your on your a laptop. Yeah laptop. Yeah, it just seems that's it because when I need to turn it on I'm already touching the keyboard anyway. So it's right there and comes right on Yeah, and I don't know I'm assuming that capability has stayed with all the latest generation laptops Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's that's a that's a yeah, that's a so the need to turn it on with your apple watch is almost Less secure because you could be in the next room and someone could you know open your machine and turn it You'll get a little notification on your watch that how how often have you learned to ignore that? Oh, I'm I'm real good at ignoring that Yeah, yeah Yeah, I I noticed, you know lately I have been wearing my apple watches less Uh, or my apple why I guess I have to I'm my og one and I have the you know the serious five I've been wearing them less Simply because I've been enjoying wearing my you know my mechanical watches. I I love my mechanical watches. Um and I have noticed Two things like first of all where I really miss it Most regularly is my iMac in the office doesn't unlock anymore. I have to type my password fine. Okay Uh, but whatever like that's fine. I wish my phone could be that Like if my phone's in close proximity and unlock couldn't it unlock my mac like wouldn't that be an interesting way to do Anyway, um, I digress the other thing that I've noticed to your point Pete is phantom taps on my wrist I will be wearing a mechanical watch that does not have haptic capabilities And I will look at my wrist because I am certain I got a notification And I am wrong. So the yeah, uh, that's that's a real phenomena too. I read about it years ago about Uh, people feel the phone vibrating in their pocket. Yeah that too. Yeah, I don't notice that as much anymore But I have yeah Yeah, yeah Crazy. All right Let's stay with apple watch here and see maybe this is a little bit of a geek challenge But john you might have an answer for for mr. Mike here Uh, all right. Well, we'll see um Mike says I'm thinking of dumping at&t for cricket But the ladder doesn't have a cellular watch plan. Can I keep my watch on at&t and switch My phone plan to cricket Um Well, I only have a wi-fi watch so I I couldn't test this myself But um, they have an article calling setup mobile on apple watch and it's kind of confusing, Dave Okay, Pete. Um So they have one section and it says your iphone and apple watch must use the same network provider Okay, that's one statement. That's clear Um, unless the watch was set up for a family member who doesn't have an iphone If you change network providers on your iphone, you need to remove the previous service plan on your apple watch and sign up for a new plan Okay, so the way I read that is you got to reset up your carrier access on the watch Yeah so I wonder I would love to hear from somebody who's tried this right because I think I think that little clause in the middle there is separate from the others, right? Because if we take that out the The but You know if we say your iphone and apple watch must use the same network provider If you change network providers on your iphone You need to remove the previous service plan on your apple watch and sign up for a new plan Okay, like that makes sense This this little clause of unless the watch was set up for a family member who doesn't have an iphone I think lives on an island. I don't think it's related to the rest of those two statements uh However, you might be on to something here like If I have an iphone on mint mobile which mint at least at the moment doesn't have Uh an apple watch plan. I don't think unless it changed this morning or something. I'm not aware but Uh, let's presume I would I can't add my apple watch to the plan like you john I don't have a cellular apple watch. So this is a non issue for me But we'll go with this right so I can't have my apple watch to the plan And because I use mint on my iphone my presumption was There was no world where I could get an apple watch and put it on say at&t or you know one of the the you know Blessed carriers that can talk to apple watch However, what if I treat my apple watch like it is a family Uh member You know owned by a family member who doesn't have an iphone And attach it to at&t My guess is what that would mean is I would have to have it on a different apple id And it couldn't be on my apple id. This is a guess But my presumption is that as soon as The watch sees that it is connected to my Main apple id the one that was also connected to my phone. It's gonna say. Oh, no, no, no These have to be the same I could be wrong about that But my I would not surprise me if that if it needs to be a completely separate thing So that that watch and that phone don't share notifications. They don't share any of that stuff They're just you know, one is they're both members of the same family plan and that's the extent of their Relationship for lack of a better term But I don't know I I'm I'm guessing at this but I'm I'm get I'm I I wouldn't be surprised Can you even have an apple watch independent of an iphone? I don't even remember Well, that that's what they're saying pete is yes If you don't have an iphone If you're part of a family plan your family member can set up your apple watch without You having an iphone and therefore it can be on A carrier separate from your non-existent iphone But I think that's the the key point is your non-existent iphone as soon as you have an iphone Now they need to be on the same plan That would be my guess but I like this little geek challenge and there's a loophole here There's a loophole in the language. The question is is there the same technical loophole and my guess is no Because otherwise we'd hear about people doing this all the time But maybe it's just something we haven't heard about Great. Yep. Kurt Kurt noticed something Kurt says I have a 2021 m1 iMac with eight gigs of ram running monoray still and says oh, this is interesting This this actually well now it's possible that this My theory holds He says I open a lot of windows between browsers and office products when I first got the mac with all the programs running I would get the message saying I was using most of my memory and running out of memory Recently the memory issue or at least the alert does not happen. Did apple fix something? so You might remember if you've listened to this show for more than about six weeks That there was a period of time where we were talking a lot about All of these memory alerts that we were getting on our max and what you know out of memory alert What does it mean? Do I need to pay attention to it? How do I pay attention to it? What do I do to fix it? What do I do? Is it anything or is it nothing? and We had a lot of speculation there were certain things that you look at and okay, you're running out of swap space You're you know doing this. Okay. That's bad. This is bad. But these sort of generic non specific memory errors did exist and a lot of the sort of conjecture and conclusions that we came to was Eh, it doesn't seem to be anything to do Just ignore it and now We stopped hearing about all of those messages and curt noticed this So i'm wondering if curt's right. Did apple fix it? There have been updates to monoray, you know security updates But apple has been known to bake some things into these updates that go beyond security, especially nuisance fixes So did they remedy this problem? Or did they just simply Rerealign the alert threshold so that it wasn't so annoying because if we were hearing about it regularly here I also know who else was hearing about it a lot more frequently, right, you know So like I really I wonder if that threshold was just like somebody said all right If we're not going to be specific about this and tell users what they need to do How to to fix it then we can't be getting these phone calls And so it just raised the tolerance level. I don't know. I again more conjecture I don't know where they fixed it outright. Or did they fix it? Right? Who knows? Who knows? You know If they fix that I've got a list of things I'd like to have them take a look at now that uh, that's off their list because Especially in ventura like say core audio and ventura. I'm just Is there a problem with core audio and ventura pete? I you know what here Dave? I got a suggestion We can find out okay upgrade your podcasting machine to ventura and see if that works. Okay. Okay. Oh, wait a minute You tried a minute already wait. This sounds very familiar It sounds like you tried that and it was a total disaster. It was a total disaster Speaking of avoiding disaster pete You got a cool stuff found for us my friend today Um, I I do hang on hang on. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I had to find out which one which one we were talking about um So in in my regular updates for security I got a warning that came across my desk Last week and it said the fbi warns against using the phone charging stations that scammers are using to attack your phone So when traveling, you know, we drain our batteries on devices most airports hotels Public places have free charging areas and usb ports, you know, like under the seats in the waiting area that sort of thing Yep Beware. All right There's a thing called juice checking and you should avoid using free charging stations at airports hotels Shopping centers that sort of thing and here's how it works a scammer puts a malware Or a monitoring software into a public usb port and that gives them the ability to steal data off of your phone Or even lock your phone up, you know, it could take passwords addresses banking information all that you you know How you have your entire life on that little thing in your pocket? They can get to it What can you do you ask to stop such a thing? There's a thing called a juice What's it called a juice jack defender? Yeah juice jack defender and I found one on amazon for for less than six dollars And essentially what it is it's a little usb a to usb a Plug like a pass through device. Yeah pass through device and what it boils down to is it Doesn't have any wires inside it that allow data to transfer only power Ah So you can still charge your device, but there's no route in there by which data can pass in order to Take data off your phone or to put a virus or data onto your phone. That sort of thing. So Right there if you're traveling a lot highly recommend that if you don't carry a battery pack Something to recharge yourself Then then have one of these little devices for less than five less than six bucks Plugged into the end of your charging cord for public use and never Grab a Look, there's a cord Right, right, right. Yeah. Well, let me just use that g. What could go wrong, right? Yeah, they can put data on there there is a there is A safety mechanism in the iphone where you have to allow the device that you plugged into trust this device To trust this device screen. Thank you. Yeah, exactly But let's say you you grab a cord that you just found and you plug it into your computer to charge It's gonna say trust this device. Well, yeah, it's my computer. Of course. Yeah, that's fair And there's no telling that there isn't something in there. Yep. Um, that's how You know that the iranian centrifuges were yeah, no, you're right. Yeah years ago. Yep Cool. All right. Well on the uh charging front john you had a cool stuff found to share with us for today Yeah, yeah, so um I got this for my birthday because I put it on my wishlist, Dave. Nice. Um What do you do if you're out and about and you need to charge your apple watch, but there's no charging station anywhere Well, maybe you should get this device that I found called portable charger for apple watch And it's a little battery pack 1000 milliamp hours. So you will get a couple of charges at least Um That's really it. Yeah. Yeah, what how much is it? It's like 15 bucks. There you go. Yeah good option For uh, when you're on the road, you need to charge. So for the listeners that can't see what we're looking at It's basically the size of a keychain. Yes Mm-hmm. Yeah little key fob That is awesome. The one thing I will share about this is it has a battery in it Which means if you're flying on a plane it needs to stay in your carry-on You can't just put it in your charger bag as a spare and and forget about it because you can't put batteries In a checked bag. How so unless you could disable it turn it off. Yeah, right, right Yeah, that's a whole another thing There is for 12 dollars a two pack Of these little things that I carry and I have I always keep one of them Actually, I keep one in my travel like my carry-on and I also have one in my charger bag Because for 12 bucks, they're cheap and it is just a usba to apple watch puck Similarly a little keychain thing. I keep a spare of these all the time. I have one in my car It is super handy to have these around And uh, and I've even been known to just give them away if if you come up to me and ask Do you have an apple watch charger? I can borrow. It's like nope. I have one you can have here you go Because they're 12 bucks. So now now I now I just I'm gonna put myself in the poor house because everybody's gonna come up Hey, everybody will be at Dave's after the show. That's right. Yeah Speaking of what you would see at Dave's after the show. I uh, I've I've been you know, I you know me I I like my nases my network storage devices and I like them to be able to run As hardware transcoding for my media library for my plex library and all of that stuff and synology Up until very recently was not including hardware transcoding engines in their devices and so I started looking elsewhere talked about qnap and qnap Has some devices certainly has some devices that are very much built for transcoding I found another brand though called terra master and I've been I got one of their terra master f4 423 It's a four bay nas. It's got a cellar on chip in it for which has Transcoding it's a it's the cellar on n 50 95. So it's a quad core And it'll do you know 4k transcoding it I've been testing it for a while. It's fantastic I like it's web-based user interface Much better than uh, the qnap interface It's it's actually very similar to the synology web interface. The one thing I will say it is Dollar for dollar less expensive than the qnap For you know features for per dollar However, and so compared to if you want just something that's going to do hardware transcoding And you don't want to wait for you know, the perfect synology new model to appear that would do it This is a good option to look at the issue Is that synology Has way more features In terms of its apps than terra master or qnap have neither of them has And an analog to the synology office suite, which I find to be spectacular I love being able to use synology office. It's like you're running your own google office google docs google sheets, you know Web-based collaborative. It's awesome. That doesn't exist on terra master But if you're looking for a a nap they do have cloud syncing So you can run your own, you know private net private cloud Just like your own private dropbox terra master has that they have native apps for mac and iphone and ipad as well as you know windows and and such and android And you know, it's a it's a solid nas offering and I like what they're doing. It's pretty cool How's your price point Dave? Um, you know the one that I have with this celeron in it bear is 499 So that's you know, that's that's about 150 bucks less than you'd spend on a synology It's about the same price you'd spend on a qnap. So um, so yeah, I've been I've been uh I've been happy with it. You know, it's a it's a it's like I said, it's a solid offering So that's uh, that's where we go Always good to see competition and things like that because it keeps us the other prices down Well, and it keeps like the feature set is sort of the important thing like the fact that this exists The fact that qnap is doing what they're doing the fact that we've been saying what we've been saying and I I will I will reiterate that You know, our community's voice has been no small part Of why Synology took a second look at transcoding on what they're doing the marius hosting's community Similar, right? Like we we definitely, you know joined Joined a similar mission with marius on this and and and he joined with us. So it it's But you know like it's good to have these things out there so that you can see what the options are And compare and contrast. Yeah, it's good. The competition is great. I agree That's what we got time for today folks. Thanks for hanging out with us. Sounds like the band is playing the band's playing man Champing at the bit as it were Yeah We chomp at the bit We chomp at the bits we champ the horse champs at the bit, but do we Here on the show what is what we're doing like chomping at the bits or are we chomping and spitting the bits And then you get the bits and your You your computer your iphone takes the bits and transforms them back into an analog signal that goes into your ear holes And then that's what we did here. I don't know. It's something about the bits All right, uh That's what we got you got anything else to share john No Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for checking out our sponsor collide.com slash m gg Of course, you can see all of our sponsors at Mackie cub comm slash sponsors, but make sure please go to mackie cub comm sign up for the mailing list there You get the show notes delivered We don't spam you at all unless you consider having the show notes lovingly handcrafted with links Delivered right to your door right to your email box Thanks to cash fly providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you Thanks for hanging out john You must have one last piece of advice. That's not one word, but maybe Two three words. Can we get three words out of here? Yeah, I see it on a peach shirt And the three words are don't get caught made All right, cool fun