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099: AaaS! (Adam as a Service) · Hemispheric Views

• (upbeat music) - It is November 25th, and for all those who celebrate, it is in fact, neat-vember, 2023. This is the third annual, third annual? Is that right? - Well, it almost wasn't. That's what we need to address, Jason, 'cause we had a massive diplomatic issue. I don't know if Adam even knows this. Maybe I'm-- - That's true. We should probably, let's do that part first, and then we'll recover from that so that people forget that. - Welcome, by the way, Adam. Good to have you. - Hello. Thanks for having me back. - The holiday you didn't even know you invented. - So we have a shared calendar for the show, as you would imagine. Any prosperous podcast-- - Enterprise. - Enterprise, thank you. Whether or not you're on A-Cast might have a shared calendar to keep track of things like show recordings, guest appearances for sacred holidays and such. I popped into my calendar the other day, just looking to see why I had a notification randomly. That's weird. It's kind of a holiday here for us in the US, so I wouldn't be expecting any meeting invites. Lo and behold, a little holiday we like to call Neat Vember was shown as being deleted from the calendar by one, I don't wanna call it, I won't mention his name. I'll just say his initials are Andrew Canyon. And I was like, whoa, wait a second. What has happened in the world to where Neat Vember has been canceled, Adam will never talk to us again? Long story short, it was a mistake. It was a fat finger, if you will. It has been restored to the calendar. It is now recurring yearly as the heavens above intended. So we're okay there, but we do apologize for that miscommunication for that holiday being removed from the calendar accidentally. - I was doing a little spring cleaning 'cause it is spring here in the Southern Hemisphere, cleaning up the calendars, tidying things up, making sure blocks weren't unfairly overlapping. And I just, I saw Neat Vember and I think I just accidentally deleted it, which is a terrible international incident. And I felt sick to my stomach when I realized what I'd done. So thank you, Jason, for diplomatically stepping in. Thank you, Adam, for not just eliminating me from your life. - I didn't even know this happened until now. So it's all good. - That's because we were so effective at managing the geopolitical situation that you weren't even aware. So we're bringing it up purely for entertainment purposes at this point. But our relationship with Andrew was pretty tenuous at that point. - I may have a way to fix it though, if you'll let me play. I've prepared, I have a prepared statement, if that's okay. If you all will listen to my prepared statement, I would like to share that with you now in hopes that I can repair this just atrocity that has happened. So let me just play that for you now. - Hey there, gather around. It's a digital rave in the world of omg.lol where the vibes are brave. Adam's at the helm, steering through cyber waves in Neat Vember where we dance in our virtual caves. Neat Vember, oh, you're a digital dream, pixels and codes and the coolest themes. Adam's leading the way in this cyber stream, Neat Vember, where we're all on the same team. Domains light up like stars in the night, each one unique, shining oh so bright. In this virtual space, creativity takes flight in Neat Vember where every idea feels just right. In this corner of the net where the cool cats play, we're making magic in the omg.lol way. Adam's vision, a beacon leading the day in Neat Vember where we all have a say. Neat Vember, a celebration of flair, a community vibe floating in the air. With Adam's guidance, we're a remarkable pair, Neat Vember, a digital affair. So here's to the moments in pixels we trust in Neat Vember where being neat is a must. With Adam and omg.lol in the digital dust, we're creating a world that's fair and just. - Wow. - Boy, that was epic. - What, where did that, where did that come from? What, how did that come to be? - I think you'll find it's a little known place known as the heart is where that came from, Adam. (laughing) - The prami. (laughing) - It almost got all the words right too. So I have to say, you know, things are getting better in the world of generative AI. (laughing) - Now for people who are very confused at this point, people who may be listening to Hemispheric Views later in the, what is it? Journey sounds very cliched and painful, the run, the feed, and who may not know who Adam Neubold is, our special guest. We're talking the creator of ongolol, as Jason calls it, or omg.lol. I'm pretty sure that's how you prefer to say it, Adam. Not ongolol, we're just confirming that on the show. - I'm cool with either pronunciation. There's no right or wrong way to do it. - Great, you're very flexible. And we've had him on before, Neat Vember's a lot of fun, and this is revisiting, seeing what he's up to. And maybe, from what I can see in the show notes here, something about fun facts about Kentucky. I'm very, very curious to see what you can bring out that you might not have already said. So listeners, thank you for joining the ride again. - Before we launch into that, I need to just, one thing. People are also gonna be saying, it's Adam Neubold, it's ongolol, why is it called Neat Vember? Can we just clarify that? - Oh yeah. - 'Cause that makes no sense if you don't know. - Yeah, so my tiny little company that I formed to kinda give myself legal protection against the internet is called Neat Nick, Neat Nick LLC. So yeah, I think that's the origin of the Neat Vember term. - Thank you, and now we're not here to talk to you about that at all. We're here to talk to you about Kentucky, so far away. What do you got for us? - Kentucky, oh my gosh. Okay, so wow. - Pressure's on. - I should have prepared. I didn't know this, I didn't have access to show notes or anything ahead of time, so I'm so sorry. But yeah, I know it's- - No, don't put pressure on yourself. It's really a bullet list of crap that we maybe will talk about. - Gotcha. - The floor is yours. - So you just want some fun facts about Kentucky? - Yeah, well, think about it. This is a bi-hemispherian show. Martin and I- - Global. - Martin and I down here- - It's a global phenomenon. - In the hot Southern Antipodes, we hear about this place called Kentucky. Our only reference point is the kernel and the chicken. I'm sure we're not the only ones, okay? And in the US, of course, they all know, oh yeah, it's the state, KY is the abbreviation, and K-O-O-L is what it is. But not everybody has that insight. So I'm just wondering if you could bring us to your home of Kentucky. What is it like? What's the vibe? - Yeah, it's a really nice state. No, sorry, it's a Commonwealth. We have four commonwealths in the United States. Kentucky, Virginia. Oh man, I didn't prepare for this. There's two other ones. (laughing) Hopefully Virginia's one. Hopefully I didn't get that wrong. But anyway, yeah, we have four things, four entities that don't wanna be called states. They wanna be called commonwealths. Kentucky's one of them. Yeah, it's a neat place. A lot of interesting history. Used to be really well known for its tobacco production before all that sort of came crashing down when the tobacco industry imploded in the '90s after all the whistleblowers and finding out about the deliberate attempts to get kids addicted to cigarettes. So tobacco production has fallen, but we managed to replace that with another hazardous vice, bourbon. So the bourbon industry is thriving here. - I thought you were gonna say vaping. (laughing) - No, no, there's plenty of that going on. I have two kids in high school and I hear all about that nonstop, the vaping that takes place all over the place. Kids vaping in classrooms, like literally vaping in front of teachers surreptitiously. Apparently there are ways to do that. I have no idea, but no, yeah, bourbon and horses are really big here. So another thing that's like embroiled in controversy and yeah, the horse racing industry is it's got a lot of really, really negative aspects to it. I mean, it's fun to watch horses fly around tracks and stuff. It's kind of cool, but like horses get hurt. It's not a great thing overall, but yeah. So this is kind of depressing. - Also all the horses that they make drink bourbon, that's not great either. That's not a good sport. - No. - We do not condone horses drinking bourbon here on the show. - The bourbon is huge though. - Brings back a memory of when I was a child and Jason, this is gonna be one for you in the show notes. It was an ad for, I don't know if it was Jim Beam or the black one, what should I call it? - Johnny Walker. - Thank you. But they showed, it was some like, yeah, they talked about it being, you know, stilled in barrels or, you know, aged in barrels. And they had this little barn as you walk, you know, and the narrator told a story about this bourbon and in the depth of Kentucky, I do remember this. Now, does everybody live in that sort of rural barn situation in Kentucky? 'Cause it was very-- - No. - No? - No, no, no. There's like three or four large cities in the state and then, you know, suburbs and things like that around them but you really don't have to drive far. It is interesting. You know, I could get in my car and drive for 30, 40 minutes in any single direction. And I will see those barns, like it doesn't take long. I'll be in a place where, yeah, there's a lot of rural stuff, pastures with horses. My wife and I actually were just on a drive earlier today and drove past a whole bunch of horse farms. And we were within like 20 minutes of our house, which is itself like in a big city. So yeah, the state, I mean, there's a lot of rural parts. But yeah, it's an interesting place. Although, I don't know, I get the sense that there's probably a lot of places that are like that where cities kind of have sort of well-defined boundaries and then you sort of get to the outskirts. It's a little bit of suburbs and then next thing you know, you're in rural land. I don't know what it's like in Australia. I don't know if it's like that there, but-- - Well, you do raise a good point and I'm sorry to derail it slightly, but I'm gonna go into a slight little bit of hemispheric game show just for the moment. - Oh. - Because I noticed you were saying a word, one of my most hated words ever. I used to work for an agricultural company and the word you were saying is one that I also was challenged with. And now I would like to just go around the table and have each of us say this word in the way that we think it should be said. And that word is spelled R-U-R-A-L. Okay, so Adam, we've just heard you say that a few times. So if you could just say in your best Kentucky accent. - I'm from New York originally, so I don't quite have the Kentucky accent, but I pronounce it as rural. - Okay, thank you. Martin. - Rural, rural, rural. - And Jason. - I either do an R-U-A-L, rural, or I do a rural, depending on how I'm feeling. - Okay, and now I'm embarrassed to say rural, rural, rural. - Oh gosh. - See, I can't do it, rural. - It's not an easy word to say. It's the same R that's in February. It's like, you don't really want to say it, but it's there. You kind of feel like you have to. - You have to acknowledge it. - I never knew how to say it. In all those years working for that guy, I had to leave the company 'cause I couldn't work in the industry anymore 'cause I couldn't say rural. - Okay, well now we have to go around and say the month that Adam just said. - Oh, okay. - 'Cause there's gonna be some difference there. - Sure. - Oh. - Oh, Feb-a-berry. - Okay, that's Jason's. Adam? - February. - Andrew? - Feb-o-rary. - And I say Feb-ry. So who knows what's going on? Although I probably sound like Feb-ry, hello. So who knows? - Feb-ry, hello there. Feb-ry, it's Feb-ry, first of Feb-ry. - Martin, I love how you took a four syllable word and got it down to two syllables. That's very efficient. - It's very Australian. - That's all, that's like the number one thing they know how to do is like, let's take any amount of language and cut it down by like a sixth. - Well, it's funny you say that because I kind of pronounce it with the same, and I'm not trying to sound, I don't know what the word is, cultivated, but I think English, as in the way Australians borrowed from British English, would, we say things like laboratory and territory with those kind of, it's a different spelling. And then I kind of apply that to-- - Aluminium. - Well, yeah, anyway, Feb-ry and that sort of thing. So yeah, aluminium, that's a good one. Yeah, that's my favorite. - Well, speaking of Kentucky and words that have unexpected R's in them, when I first moved here in the '90s, I was 12 going on 13, massive culture shock for me 'cause I grew up in a really small town in upstate New York and moved to a large city, the largest city in Kentucky, Louisville. Louisville is how you're supposed to pronounce it. - Whoa, whoa, oh my God. - Yeah, that's a whole other story. We can talk about the-- - Oh no. - How to pronounce the city. But I started to encounter people here who, you know, the accent was like, you know how when you're in unfamiliar territory, everything is sort of, like in your mind, it's kind of exaggerated. So the accents all sounded so much more intense to me at first. I mean, I was really just trying to adapt to everything. And, but the biggest shock of all was the first time I heard somebody say the word "warsh." Like they're going to warsh their car. And I'm like, what, what, what did that person just say? Like, was that a mistake? No, no, like that's how some people pronounce the word "wash" here. There's an R in there and I don't know where it comes from or, it's the R once again, like we're all haunted by this crazy R. (upbeat music) - We talked horses, we talked bourbon, but we forgot the one in the middle, the second most important thing, which is that every iPhone that gets delivered in the United States goes through Adam's backyard. He's responsible for delivering every iPhone in the United States. They go through Anchorage, then they go to his house, and then they go to all of our houses. That's a pretty big deal. - Really? It's a depot, is it? - No, we do have the UPS world port here, as it's called. And world port is massive. You can drive on Interstate 65, Interstate 264. These are two large expressways here. And you can see the UPS facilities just like going on endlessly visually. They just built a huge new hangar, which is really cool. It's like a huge thing and a big site to behold. But yeah, this is the hub for North America for UPS. So pretty much everything coming in internationally and a lot of domestic stuff will get routed through here. It's pretty crazy. - So can I just, kind of deducing from what you've been saying here, are we fair to conclude that with this bombshell, you personally misplaced Andrew's first iPhone? - No, no, I said US. I specifically said US for a reason. - I went international there, I wanna make sure. - Why do you think I deleted that calendar entry, huh? (laughing) - I followed the saga of Andrew's phone. Even the reference to it, I think, what, just in the last episode, it was brought up again. And yeah, I followed it with great disappointment and embarrassment on behalf of, well, really on behalf of nothing at all because we didn't touch it. It didn't enter the United States at all, I don't think. - On behalf of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, that's right. - Look, the fault lies entirely with Star Trek, a division of Australian Post. - Yeah, and every time you, is that actually spelled like the same as the series? Like, are you saying Star Trek, T-R-E-K? - No, I'm saying Star Trek. - Oh, Trek, okay. I kept thinking you were saying Star Trek. It's the accent, sorry. And I'm like, that is the most like, like lawsuit charged name for a delivery company imaginable. Like, Gene Roddenberry's descendants are getting ready to send a cease and desist. - Especially when they don't deliver. Can you imagine, like that just, now it's just defamatory. (laughing) - Oh, well, no, Star Trek, terrible company, terrible. Terrible. - Terrible. - Not a sponsor. - Another way to say, terrible. (upbeat music) - So I suppose we should ask you, Adam, away from all this silliness and blaming you for issues with Star Trek/Trek, what has actually been happening over the past year at Omglol/omglol? I can see some things that Jason and Andrew, I think have popped on our end, but be good to hear from you. What have you been excited about? What's been going on? - Yeah, there was a lot of things that I started earlier in the year, and then I had a really busy second half of the year. So it's been a little tough. It's been a little frustrating for me, to be honest, because there's a lot I wanna do. I mean, there's so much I wanna do. There's things that I've started to work on and things that I have planned that I'd like to work on. And time is just not on my side. I mean, I have a full-time job. I have a career outside of this. I have a family. I have a lot of things that pull my attention away from the passion project that Omglol is. And so, yeah, that's been a little frustrating. But no, earlier this year, I launched, well, at the tail end of last year, I launched a weblog, and my goal was to steadily work on that throughout the year. And I kind of failed at that goal, to be honest. Like, I've done things to it here and there. Yeah, I'm getting the thumbs up from Jason, which I appreciate. But yeah, there's still so much more to do with it. And I think there's a bunch of people out there that really enjoy using it, but I feel so bad that it's not in the state that I want it to be. I mean, I know I'll get it there eventually, but launched a new photo sharing thing earlier this year as well, and tons of plans for that. But just haven't had time to really unfurl all that and really get into it. But I'm really excited about what's coming up around the corner. I've got some more plans around bringing more things in-house and relying on external entities a little bit less for things like DNS. All of the different subdomains that are managed on omg.lol all go through this large DNS provider that I use that they're really great. They're great folks. They do an amazing job, but it's really kind of expensive. And I want to bring a little bit more of that in-house and at the same time, give more people more flexibility over DNS, allow people to set up things like DNSSEC, which is like a new security protocol around DNS. So I've got some plans around that. And I'm also working on just beefing up the general hosting infrastructure. And so I have some things in the works around that as well that I'm really excited about. - So it sounds like you voluntarily taking on the worst part of the internet, which is DNS. That makes absolutely no sense to anybody. You change one thing, you wait four hours to see if you got it wrong or right. Like you're taking that on as a project. You're nuts, mate. - Not to mention running like social service stuff on Mastodon, which has its own risk of having to moderate people. So you're a busy man. - I'm confused though. 'Cause like, it sounds like you're very busy, but like, what are the rest of your 4,600 plus employees doing? That's what I don't understand. I'm very confused. It sounds like you're almost like a one person shop doing all of this. Like what is everyone else doing? That's what I wanna know. - I'm just really bad at delegating. No, I'm kidding. Actually, that's not. That is true. People who know me professionally will like laugh and agree probably angrily. But no, I am a one person deal here. It's a sole proprietorship, just me kind of doing my thing. And I keep thinking at some point, maybe I'll figure out the right next move and turn this into something slightly bigger and slightly more industrious, and maybe be able to take some folks on that I can actually afford to pay and turn it into something a little bit bigger. But the thought of that is also really intimidating as well. Because when it's just you doing your own thing, sort of being your own boss, everything feels so much more, I don't know how to really describe it. It just feels neatly self-contained. And the universe, you can see all ends of it from start to finish. And as soon as something gets large enough that you're paying other people to help you with it, it takes on a life of its own. And it changes, I think, in a way. So that's kind of exciting and scary at the same time. I'm not there yet, so I don't have to worry about it, but it's something I think about from time to time. - It feels like the last year since we spoke to you, probably the big change has been the absolute explosion or implosion of Twitter/X and the transition to Mastodon as a viable alternative, particularly for the nerds. You run now a Mastodon instance, the best Mastodon instance on the net, social.lol. I love it, but I can't even imagine how challenging that must be. And I also live in fear of like, is this costing you time and money? It seems like quite a big enterprise, especially as Mastodon has grown. Can you just speak to us a little bit about all of that? - Yeah, yeah, no, I do run social.lol. Social.lol is the little social wing of Omgolol. And yeah, it's really fun to run that. It's not hard, actually. I mean, I don't wanna give anybody the impression that spinning up a Mastodon instance and running it is easy, 'cause it's not. It comes with its share of technical challenges. Every now and then something breaks. But we've got a really great community. We've got a really wonderful group of people that are plugged into this. It's not an open instance. Most of the Mastodon instances out there are ones that anybody can just pick one and walk into it, sign up, you're good to go, you're posting. Tons of open instances out there, and I think they're wonderful. And I think the people that run them are doing the internet a great service. I'm not running one, though. I'm running a private instance. It's just for Omgolol members. And because of that, it keeps 100% of the riffraff out. Moderation is a dream. Like, there's never a moderation report that comes in about or against any of our users. The only moderation stuff that comes in is people that are reporting stuff from other instances, and they just want me to know about it so I can either block that instance if it's a problematic instance, or filter out or block the user that's causing problems. It's very rare. It happens very infrequently. There was one a couple days ago. It was just a scam bot that was from a different instance, and it was DMing people. And it's like, okay, no problem. Just click a button, they're gone. But yeah, overall, I'm really lucky to be able to run an instance that is, it's not huge, it doesn't have thousands and thousands of people. I think the total active user, I haven't actually looked at the stats in a while, but as of a few months ago, it was around 700 and something active users. So, it doesn't cost a fortune to run. I think it's on a 30 or $40 a month server. So, it's not free, but the Yomgolol revenue more than covers it. So, it's all pretty straightforward. It's a great place. I love the people that are on it. I mean, that's really the best part of all of it is the really interesting, creative, fun people that have put themselves out there on social.lol and are making things and sharing things and sharing ideas, sharing their work. There's a ton of really creative people in this community, and I'm really grateful for that. - Everyone send Adam $4.25 USD right now. - $4.25, why that amount? That actually, that was my first hourly rate in 1994. It was the federal US minimum wage in the '90s was $4.25 an hour. So, I don't know if that's a reference to that, probably not, but. - I feel like that is appropriate for what we're talking about, yeah. - I'll send you $6.13 Australian because that was my first rate of pay. - Yeah, if you could just send your first job hourly rate to Adam, that would be great, thank you. - Well, I just wanna say quickly about social.lol. One of the things that I'm really grateful for, for your service, and I say services in, one of the many services within the service, it's just layer upon layer of service. - Adam as a service. - It's just huge. What I really love about it, although you also have the weblog element too, it kind of, 'cause we all came here, people who've listened to the show for a while know about micro.blog as the thing that brought us together. But Twitter/X was always this kind of thing of, do I use it the same way as that? Or what's the micro.blog situation? But having social.lol as this beautiful, openly connected Fediverse element with the security of a kind of paid subscription meant that it actually freed me up to use things like micro.blog or other blogging services for those purposes and bring that kind of conversation and the best of Twitter kind of interaction to your service. So personal thank you very selfishly for kind of, I don't know, you gave me some direction in how to use things and I don't miss Twitter at all because I have this wonderful thing that taps into Mastodon, so kudos to you. - Well, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Forget Twitter. Oh, Jason has his hand raised. - I have a question for Martin, the PhD in the realm of social media. - Not yet, but thank you. - There's this whole, and I'm gonna preempt myself and save you from having to add bleeps in here. So I'm gonna keep this-- - I thank you. - Non-bleepable. Yeah, I forget who's editing, but whoever's editing, you're welcome ahead of time. There's this like Twitter or X, formerly known as Twitter thing that's in like every article. And I honestly can't be bothered. That's your problem for ruining your own branding. What's the kind of media ecology outlook on this in terms of this like X, formerly known as Twitter thing? 'Cause as a individual, you ruined your own brand. That's not my fault. Like, sorry, not sorry. What is your take on this? I'm just curious. Sorry, this is a whole side tangent, but you were talking about it. So I'm very curious. - Are you asking me or Adam? - I'm asking you because you're like in this stuff as like a professional. - Oh, okay, cool. Well, I'll start and others can join in. How about that? I'm sure I'll have views. It is hemispheric views after all. Andrew, you have your hand up. - It is. Yeah, I have a business point to raise. Just popped into my head, but you go first. - Business comes second. Go ahead, Martin. - Look, I haven't read all of the literature on this specific topic, right? Or this case study. But my view of it is it kind of highlights the invisible materiality of the internet and the web and how it actually affects branding decisions. So if you think, oh, Elon Musk walks in and goes, "This is now X." And everyone goes, "Oh, okay, sure." First of all, there's the brand to consider. So you've got all of this cultural currency and it's in the vernacular, tweets, you know, words that- - I knew he was gonna have something good. - That mean, thank you. That means something. But he's obviously thought, "Oh, we'll do away with that. "I'm transformative. "I'll bring the new language in, who cares?" But he suddenly hit this roadblock of, if you type in twitter.com, or all of these URLs that link to Twitter, not to mention all of the icons across the web that actually point to it, there are servers behind all this. There is actual digital infrastructure which necessitates or is lengthening this thing that we've all called Twitter. And I'm sure Adam would have a lot to say about this as someone who runs servers and digital assets, right? We're still calling it Twitter/X or having to moderate it or make sense of all of this because although we're becoming more, quote unquote, comfortable with the idea of it being called X, it still is twitter.com. And so much of it is based on Twitter. So I think it kind of highlights that for all of the wonderful airy-fairy brand decisions that might've been made in some corporate HQ kind of office, when push comes to shove and you actually have to make these digital things transfer to something else, there's actual physical stuff that has to be changed. So we're in this uncomfortable transitional period. Hope that'll make sense. - I found that to be a very nice and very diplomatic answer. I'm just frustrated that the question even has to exist. I think, you know, I'll just say it. I'll be the bad guy here. Like, I think there's only one person in the entire world that thinks that the renaming was a good idea. And I've never met or encountered or heard from anyone else that thinks that it was the right move. So, yeah. - It was idiotic. That's what it was. - Yeah. Thank you for calling it like it is. Yeah, I think most of us are just waiting for, like hoping that it's just like a phase and waiting for the name to just kind of revert back. At least that's how I feel. Like every day I hear somebody talk about X and I roll my eyes and it's like, that's gotta be temporary. Like it's gonna go back to Twitter. It has to, but I don't know. We'll see. - So my business corner hot take, and I have not thought about this at all, and I've not heard anybody else mention it, so it's probably entirely wrong, is that perhaps it's some balance sheet management option because you have Twitter as goodwill, like an intangible asset, the brand, you get rid of that and suddenly you offload a lot of goodwill from a balance sheet. So the valuation goes down because you're no longer carrying that goodwill. I have no idea. I have no idea, but I know that he owes banks and financiers a lot of money and maybe if you adjust the valuation of the company through eliminating goodwill intangibles, you might be doing yourself a favor. I don't know. It's just a hot take. - That audio clip right there, Andrew, will be entered into evidence in an SEC hearing that Elon Musk will have to attend at some point. So well done making the federal government's case on what's going on there. - I think what I find fascinating about the word intangible that you used, Andrew, is that it kind of shows how ridiculous and unusual we are as humans compared to every other being on the planet, where we take things and make them totally abstract. We imagine things that never exist or have any kind of physicality, and then we make them real and we make these problems for ourselves. So it's just a gigantic shit show of imagination and poor business decisions. - Adam, what's One Prime Plus? Do you know about it? Are you familiar with this? - One Prime Plus, absolutely. I am a One Prime Plus member. Everyone should be a One Prime Plus member. - Everyone should, yeah. - Yeah, it's like, you know, it's every, you know, you should get a driver's license. If you need to drive, you should vote, and you should join One Prime Plus at oneprimeplus.com. Like, these are just, you know, civic things that are, you know, they're just staples of daily life for everyone, or they should be anyway. - Globally, it's like the one true globalism is that everyone should really be One Prime Plus. - It unites the hemispheres. It is the common denominator amongst us all, oneprimeplus.com. - You do get hemispheldic news. - That's one, that's one benefit, yeah. - It's fun, okay? You get fun stuff. So there you go. Best sales pitch of them all, and it's not even on Acast, so there you go. Subscribe, oneprimeplus.com, it's in the long game. (upbeat music) Of something that no one in the internet knows about, including the three of us, how they work. You've implemented these, so clearly you know what they are. And those are pass keys. Those are these things that everybody tells us, they're the best thing in the world, you're never gonna need passwords again, and they solve all the world's problems, no one knows how they work. Can you elaborate at all on what is a pass key? Why do we want a pass key? And just what are they? Why are they good? - Yeah, no, I'd love to. Pass keys are awesome. I mean, they're new. It's a new technology. So like any new technology, it's gonna be a little bumpy at first. I run into problems and I hear from other people who have some glitches here and there, and that's just part of it being a new thing. But I think before long, they'll be really stable and they'll be, I honestly think that they're gonna kill passwords. It's inevitable that the password, I know it sounds like a really big deal. Like, we've just all had passwords all our lives and we can't imagine a world in which we don't use passwords but pass keys are going to, they're gonna bring us to that world. So what is a pass key? A pass key is, I'm actually not really good at explaining this kind of stuff, but I'll do my best. - You're better than we are. - It uses, so for all the nerds out there, and there's plenty of you out there, it uses public key cryptography, which is like the same thing that, that's been around for a while now. And people were sending emails with PGP keys and things like that. So some people may be familiar with that. It's really the same technology. It's a public key and a private key, and your pass key is effectively both of those things. And your device holds onto the private key because it's private and it doesn't go anywhere else. It doesn't leave your device. It's ultra secure. Most implementations are backed by biometric protection. So if you're in the Apple ecosystem, you're gonna use face ID or touch ID to unlock your pass keys to use it. And the public key, the corresponding public key that goes with your private key, that's what the different services that you're logging into and the different things that you're visiting on the internet, that's what they have. And that's okay for them to have that 'cause it is by definition a public key. So the public key and the private key and a pass key are, the public key is derived from the private key. So a public key is able to determine if a piece of data that's presented to it is in fact its private key. Or maybe I got that backwards. See, like I said, I'm not really great at explaining this kind of stuff. But basically with the private key on your device, I believe the way it really works is your private key signs a message that only can be signed with the private key. And the public key can validate that the message was signed with that private key. So all this takes place really quickly when you log into a website with a pass key. Basically there's this little handoff of a message that gets signed and then it gets validated. And then the service is like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, that really is you holding that private key that goes with this public key. So we're gonna let you log in now. But on the surface, it really does feel like magic. If folks haven't tried this yet, I encourage everyone to just find a piece of software on your chosen device or operating system that supports pass keys and just play around with it. It really does feel like magic. It almost feels insecure in a way because it's so easy and fast and simple, but it actually is tremendously secure. And it's more secure than a password. A password is something that can get out there. Whereas a pass key, it's really hard to, especially in the Apple ecosystem, you have to work really hard to get at that private key and export it or move it around or something. It's so much more secure. You don't have to worry about forgetting your password. You can't forget a pass key. You've just got it in your device. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of pass keys. I really do feel like they are the future. The security benefits are tremendous. And the only downside at this point is just the kind of shaky implementation in certain different pockets of browsers and operating systems. It's just not all there yet, just because it's so new. - Two questions. Number one, how many NFTs do I need to be able to use pass keys? Question two, can you give us a website purely at random where pass keys are available to try out? - Yeah, so no NFTs needed. I know I mentioned public key cryptography and I know that that word is gonna, it's gonna inevitably make some people involuntarily squint and feel uncomfortable. Public key cryptography, I can't speak, has been around forever. It long predates Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and things like that. It's good stuff. But no, no NFTs necessary. You can use all the fungible tokens you want with your pass keys. And all right, as for trying pass keys, actually there's a, let me find it real quick. Somebody set up a really nice demo. - No, no, no, no, no. - I know, I know, I know. - No, no, let me just stop you there trying to push something else here. Question number two, re-edit. What's a website where someone could go to try one of these wonderful pass keys? - Well, I happily support them on omg.lol. - There it is. - But if you wanted to try it for free and not have to sign up for omg.lol. You can go to passkey, it's passkeys.io. There's a really nice free demo there if anyone wanted to give that a spin. - Martin and Andrew, you saw, like I tried. Can you just say, no, like I tried and-- - This passkeys.io dude better sign up to oneprimeplus.com. (laughing) - Well, I still think pass keys are weird personally. And I like, yeah, the future, whatever, I get it. But I think we'll get there. I appreciate the like extra like talk about it. I still think it's gonna be a while for people. Like people still don't understand passwords, frankly. Like somehow that's still like, wait, what do you mean I have to have like a different password for a different website? Like what, I don't understand. Like it's still gonna be a while, but I guess I'm happy that maybe this will be easier in the future for the vast majority of people. I don't know. Andrew, Martin, do either of you have passkeys, use passkeys, care about passkeys? - Aware of them, not actively using them, but this is now an excuse to actually spend a spare five minutes looking at it at omg.lol. But yeah, I agree that most people have, eh, what's this thing? Why do they have to be different? I mean, I know neighbours who are just like, yeah, just toss the key under the mat, it's all right. It's like really lacks views on any form of security. So I doubt computers are even high on the list. But again, kudos to you, Adam, for trying to make a difference and educate people here. - Yeah, I use them on omg.lol. I don't know if I've enabled them anywhere else where they exist. I think because I use 1Password as my password manager and so passwords themselves are not a giant hassle 'cause it auto fills. So I just, the effort of converting any, I haven't bothered. - Plus it's Electron, so it's a great experience. You're really happy with it. (explosion) - It's still a terrible, I miss the old one. I am one, if I didn't use a PC at work, I would have given up 1Password. But because I use a PC, they keep me in that net. But yeah, pass keys, I'm excited by their potential. But humans are bad. - They are bad. I guess, can I be a Luddite for a second and just say like the whole pass key thing, the area that I find concerning, in your 1Password world, I have literally 1Password, the name of the app, to get into this vault of all of these human readable things in an absolute catastrophe emergency. Flash forward to this future of pass keys of these indistinguishable blobs of garbage that I can't read or type out anywhere or even put forth as something to be accepted. We have to get to a point where that is 100% accessible. And when all of this shit is on AWS or whatever, and AWS goes down every other week, it's just not, doesn't fill me with confidence yet. And I'm not trying to be like a anti-technology person, but at this point where I go to sign in to do a thing that is imperative for me to do right now and XYZ service is down, so I can't reach my pass keys, and I have no fallback to a human readable gobbledygook password of 30 characters, that doesn't fill me with confidence for the future. And again, I know I completely sound like a anti-technology person, but that's where I feel like pass keys are right now. They're great, I think they're going to be great, but they're still really early. And if they don't work, you better as well, if I can't get into omg.lol right now to change my header image, probably going to be fine. If I can't get into get my healthcare record that I need for a thing, that seems more critical. So yeah, I'm wondering if there's going to be a fallback at some point of everything is always local, or I don't ever have to reach the internet. It just feels like another thing that's tied to the internet almost in a way that now I'm relying on the internet again and if I'm offline, 'cause I have crappy cell signal of my glorious 5G, 6G, 10G, I don't know. It just, I feel like that is where people are going to be a little bit skeptical of the whole thing. I'm done being anti-technology by now, actually. Let me just put the line in now. Now I'm all for pass keys, let's go. - No, those are really good concerns. Those are really good concerns. And I think a lot of the implementations, I'm not sure about 1Password. I know Apple's implementation has all your pass keys are synced on device. So you could go into airplane mode and you're, I mean, well, you wouldn't be connecting to a thing that uses, that needs a pass key in airplane mode, but you don't have to worry about not having them with you. I don't know if 1Password does the same. Like if the pass key is locally cached, it may be, but every service out there that does pass key authentication, the one common denominator at all of this is like the email fallback, the ability to sign into something with a link sent to your email or something like that. And it's nice, but it's also like, it's just another terrifying reminder of just how important our email account security is. And yeah, that's a whole other topic for a whole other day probably. But yeah, everybody is only as secure as your email account is. (upbeat music) - Adam, is there any other things you're looking forward to as we round out the neat Vember for 2023? Things you're looking forward to in the rest of 2023 or 2024? - I'm looking forward to hopefully finding ways of just boosting my own productivity. And I've got a bug list for Omgulol that's a mile long. I mean, they're all minor bugs. There's nothing major, but there's a lot of pesky things that people have been asking for for a while. And I'm really hopeful that I can figure out like maybe get some Merlin man productivity levels of action going over here so that I can finally start to knock out those bug lists, I don't know. But yeah, I'm looking forward to a lot of housekeeping and just a lot of basic fundamental stuff, trying to maybe, I think I did a lot last year. I started to throw a lot of things out there and planted a lot of really cool seeds. And now it's time to like help them grow. And part of that involves boring stuff like weeding and fertilizing. And so yeah, we're gardening metaphors here. Sorry about that. But yeah, I'm looking forward to putting on my gardening hat and gloves and just taking care of things and helping to keep everything healthy and going in a good direction. - I think the fact that you've put out so many things in the last 12 months, I don't think it would be any kind of admission of guilt to say like, hey, let's work on some of the things that are already existing. 'Cause there's so many, if I had to take a quiz right now of how many just little, if you log into your account, how many little blocks are there for different thingies that exist, there's no way in hell I could name them all 'cause there are that many and they're all really great already. So now, and that was with like, per your kind of take on it, like little effort, I'll say in your own kind of, I feel like you're saying you've kind of just like put stuff out and like never touched it again, but like they basically went out as finished things in most people's eyes. So to go back now and do like a round two on a lot of this stuff is gonna be fantastic. So I think that would be welcomed by all who pay for OMG and all those who will come in the next year. - And I wanna throw in here for people listening, there's no, this whole episode is not based on some sponsorship arrangement or some backdoor business corner deals with fiscal blah, blah, blah. Adam's on the show because we like him and we like his service. So if you haven't tried it and you think it might be interesting, whether it was pass keys, web blogs, having a profile page on the web, whatever, go and check out OMG.lol, see how cool it is and how fun it is. And the cool thing is you don't have to use all of it, but you can. And yeah, I think this is just a lot of fun to do this sort of thing and just talk to friends on the web. That's what this podcast is all about. So don't think this is some shifty business thing. We're just here 'cause we like his stuff. So you should too. Go and try it out. - Email me directly and I'll give the first 10 people a year of OMG. Boom, horn. I did say 10, right? I said 10. - You said 10. - Did I say 10? - Yeah, you said 10. - You said 10. - Okay, good. Just wanna make sure that wasn't open-ended. And I am now personally financing all of OMG for the next year. Nope. (upbeat music) - Speaking of giving away things, have we got something, we were doing a giveaway. - Giveaway. Horn, horn, horn. Insert horn noise. We did do a giveaway two episodes ago? Three episodes ago. 90. - It was in a track. - It was 97. So it was two episodes ago. 'Cause this is 099 right before 0100. No, 100, sorry. We did the giveaway for the Johnny Decimal workbook, right, in episode 97. Where we asked folks to go through the entire back catalog, listen to every episode end to end, and find where we mentioned Johnny Decimal in past episodes. And submit that timestamp in Johnny Decimal format. A lot of steps, I know. But it was worth it. Because we got many entries. We dumped them in physically. I wrote them on ping pong balls. I dumped them in to a big number cage thing. I turned it around 100 times, and out popped one ping pong ball with a name on it. It was actually an email address. It was written really small. I won't give the email address right now. Don't wanna dox anyone. But the RNG gods have responded with, for the winner, the Johnny Decimal workbook, worth, is it 47 or 37? - 37? - Somewhere between 37 and 47 US dollars. The winner is Pascal. - Woo! - Boom. Horn, horn, horn, confetti, balloons, fireworks, explosions. Congratulations, you have won the Johnny Decimal workbook from episode 97. - Congratulations, we will follow up. - And we will email you back with said code to redeem your Johnny Decimal workbook. Now what you have to do is go rearrange your entire existence around Johnny Decimal, and then reply back to that email with your new folder structure based on Johnny Decimal. That's the only caveat that you signed up for. You didn't know, but that was part of signing up for this contest, so thank you. - Fine print, baby. - Yeah, you never, they never read the fine print ever. - They accept the EULA every time. - They clicked accept so hard. They're like, give me that free book. Oh, little stars all over the place. (upbeat music) - Adam, thank you for taking the time to join Hemispheric Views again. You place a lot of trust in us as, I know we're pretty cashier, we do whatever, you know. Anyway, good to have you. Thanks for sparing the time. - Well, thank you again for having me back. It was a lot of fun. - We love having you, it's great. (upbeat music) - Domains light up like stars in the night, each one unique, shining oh so bright.