Chit Chat Across the Pond

Have you always figured that astrophysics was a subject beyond your grasp? In this week's Chit Chat Across the Pond, Nobel Prize-winning Dr. Andrea Ghez from UCLA joins me to explain how she and her team proved there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy and she does it in _human friendly_ terms! In 2020 she became only the fourth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Steve and I were lucky enough to become friends with Andrea on our circumnavigation around Iceland and also on our trip to Antarctica. To be perfectly honest, we signed up for Antarctica _because_ we knew Andrea was going to be lecturing. Since this was such a momentous interview, we have audio _and_ video embedded of the interview with Dr. Ghez. Many thanks to Steve for putting the video together. If you'd like to learn more about Andrea and her team's work, and to see photos and video animations of their discoveries, follow the link to the UCLA Galactic Center Group. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript: CCATP_2023_06_22

This week our guest is Bart Busschots but this is not a Programming By Stealth episode, it's a Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite. At least within my personal definition of Lite! Bart joined the show this week to talk about visionOS, the new operating system that will power the Vision Pro headset Apple announced at their World Wide Developer's Conference. We talked about how we can see the future now in spatial computing as a big shift. Bart tells us about what he learned about visionOS from the Platforms State of the Union, as well as two sessions: Principles of Spatial Design and Design for Spatial Input. He gave us links to the chapterized videos so you can jump right to the parts he talks about if you like. As a bonus, my granddaughter Siena made her debut appearance on Chit Chat Across the Pond (she's an old hand at coming on the live show). It was a bit of a surprise and she didn't stay long but she did want to say hi. I made it a chapter mark just for fun! * Keynote - jump to the Vision Pro chapter: developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/101/ * Platforms State of the Union: developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/102/ * Principles of spatial design: developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10072/ * Design for spatial input: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10073/ Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.com podfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon Donation PayPal one-time donation Podfeet Podcasts Mugs at Zazzle Podfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and me Learn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and me Backblaze - One free month for me and you Setapp - One free month for me and you Eufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you. PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of us

This week our guest is your favorite psychological scientist, Dr. Maryanne Garry of the University of Waikato in New Zealand and garrylab.com Dr. Garry and four of her colleagues published a paper recently in the Royal Society Open Science called "Trivially informative semantic context inflates people's confidence they can perform a highly complex skill". The experiments built on previous studies which demonstrated that people have highly inflated beliefs of their capabilities doing highly complex tasks for which they are entirely unqualified. In particular, a high percentage of people have high confidence that they could land a commercial plane with no help from the tower. In this study, they tested whether watching a short, trivially informative video of two pilots landing a plane would influence that confidence level. As always with Dr. Garry, you'll learn a lot, you'll laugh along with us, and your dreams will be crushed as only she can. If you want to listen to more interviews with Dr. Garry, check out these episodes of Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite: * CCATP #727 – Dr. Maryanne Garry on How Everything You Remember is Wrong * CCATP #629 - Dr. Garry on Study of Language Skills vs Numeracy In Learning to Program * CCATP #576 - Dr. Maryanne Garry on Grammar Pet Peeves * CCATP #554 - Dr. Maryanne Garry on Persuasion with Facts and Data * CCATP #510 - Dr. Maryanne Garry on Many Memory Questions * CCATP #452 Dr. Garry Asks "Compared to What?" * CCATP #441 Dr. Maryanne Garry on Cognitive Biases, Learning and Aging

Adam Engst of TidBITS joins me on Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite to talk about the changes Apple made recently to the File Provider Extension. These changes had a fairly significant effect on how cloud storage providers like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box work with macOS. Whether you realize it or not, you've very likely been upgraded to new versions of these services. While the new File Provider Extension improves several things about our interface with these cloud storage providers, there are also some serious "gotchas" that may affect you. For example, before talking to Adam, I didn't realize that the change caused us to have local copies of our entire Google Drive and anything added there isn't being synced to the could. Being Adam, he's written an extremely well-researched and well-explained article on [tidbits.com/...](https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-mac-cloud-storage-changes/) where you can follow along with our conversation. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript: CCATP_2023_04_13 During the conversation, Adam referenced a couple of other articles: * Adam's TidBITS article from February 2022 predicting these problems: Cloud Storage Forecast Unsettled, with Possible Storms - TidBITS * LucidLink is a better alternative for people who used to use Dropbox as a cloud service provider for huge, shared video files LucidLink Offers Streaming Vision of Cloud-Based Storage * Adam and I said at the end of the conversation that the next time we'd talk it would be about doing clean installs of macOS. He sent me this link where he talks about three levels of clean installs: Level 2 Clean Install of Ventura Solves Deep-Rooted Problems

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite, Rod Simmons of the SMR Podcast and BBQ and Tech joins me to talk about password managers. After the recent breaches and more importantly breaches of trust from LastPass, Rod migrated over to 1Password and changed all 400 of his passwords. We talk through what LastPass did wrong, and what Rod appreciates about 1Password and misses about LastPass. I found it a really interesting conversation about UI design, trust, and what makes an app feel right. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript: CCATP_2023_03_01 Rod mentioned Okta’s annual report on business tools: okta.com/... LastPass’s final report: blog.lastpass.com/... 1Password forum on merging accounts into a family: 1password.community/...

In this final Chit Chat Across the Pond of the year, Bart Busschots joins us to talk about what verification really means, how you know a website is what it says it is, and how verification is accomplished and then explains how Twitter and Mastodon do their respective verification. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript: CCATP_2022_12_17 This episode also has full shownotes at CCATP #756 — Bart Busschots on the Meaning of Verification and Twitter/Mastodon Implementations

On this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite, we're joined by developer Casey Liss of the Accidental Tech Podcast and creator of the iOS apps MaskerAid and Peek-a-View. I asked Casey to come on the show to talk about automation. In particular, we talked about Unnecessary or overly-complex automations, automations that mysteriously run but we can't remember how or why they're running, automations we're really proud of, and darn it, these just make me happy automations. You can find Casey on Mastodon @CaseyLiss@mastodon.social, and on Micro.blog at . View an unedited transcript of this podcast auto-generated by Auphonic Speech Recognition Engine using Whisper by OpenAI (Beta).: CCATP_2022_12_08

This week our guest on Chit Chat Across the Pond is Nic of Nic’s HomePod Repair. You might remember the article about Steve’s amazing experience with Nic repairing our big-girl HomePod a month or so ago. It wasn’t just that some guy repaired our HomePod, it was how he did it and how he broadcast live video of the repair as it was happening that made it even more interesting. I wanted to know more about how Nic got into doing this and how he creates his videos so I asked him to come on to talk about it. I expected to have a fun, nerdy conversation, and that definitely happened, but what I didn't expect was to find a very kind, thoughtful person who exudes good karma. Whether you care about HomePod repairs or not, I'm sure you'll find this a delightful conversation. View an unedited transcript of this podcast auto-generated by Auphonic Speech Recognition Engine using Whisper by OpenAI (Beta): CCATP_2022_12_04

WiFi GenerationsIn this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite, I asked Dave Hamilton of the Mac Geek Gab to come on to talk to us about mesh routers and why we might care about WiFi 6E. In order to get to that though, I asked him to lay out some groundwork. Remember when we used to talk about 802.11a then b then g then n and ac. All of us geeks memorized the speed of those different IEEE standards. And then one day the numbering scheme changed completely. I asked Dave to explain what happened and what the new numbers mean. From there Dave refreshed our memory on how mesh routers work, and how backhaul is the communication between the mesh access points. It took some work keeping the numbers and terminology straight but by the time we were done he had explained why WiFi 6E on the backhaul matters, even though we very likely don't have any WiFi 6E devices. You can find Dave Hamilton on Twitter @davehamilton and @macgeekgab and on Mastodon at @davehamilton@podcastindex.social.

This week our guest on Chit Chat Across the Pond is Bart Busschots with a talk that's part Security Bits, part Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite. Bart has been asked to speak at a Mac User's Group on the subject of security and he worked up a presentation on the subject. His goal in the presentation is to provide listeners with a better understanding of the types of threats that are out there and what the motivations of the threat actors are. There's a call to action in this talk by Bart. He wants to know if _you_ think the information he presents will be valuable to a Mac User Group. I (mostly) kept my opinions to myself because we want to hear from you. The best way to provide this feedback is to use our Podfeet Slack at podfeet.com/slack, or you can Tweet Bart at @bbusschots, or you can make a comment on the blog post for this episode. The slide deck presentation for Bart's talk can be viewed at [busschotsh-my.sharepoint.com/...](https://busschotsh-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/bart_busschots_ie/ESJOmYQKiORBiox-54y7NdEB660FYB3N54nrnBcBKl8yIA?e=TaBXcK)