Crashing Clockwise #570: ‘It’s a Worm’
My barging in (and not so subtle attempt to someday be a guest) on “the tech podcast once again hosted by Dan Moren.”
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Mikah Sargent: What is your go-to external storage option?
This is an easy one. I really only have one external storage thing in use, and it’s a Samsung T-something SSD that’s always hanging off my Mac mini for Time Machine backups. I used to partition it off to have some “cold storage” for large media files, but I realized that I never went looking for them. So one day I simplified and now just have everything I want to keep on my Mac mini’s internal SSD, and therefore backed up to the external SSD with Time Machine.
That said, I am a heavy user of iCloud Drive for almost all my files. Plus a smattering of other cloud storage for random projects and archives I’ve picked up over the years.
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Bryan Guffey: What’s your favorite collaboration tool?
If we’re talking realtime collaboration, I’ve never used anything as solid as the Google Docs and Co suite of web apps. They just seem to work with as many people editing live as you could want. Shared Apple Notes and Reminders come in at a close second, but I’m rarely dong live collaboration there. My wife and I just share a lot of stuff that way.
I recently had the opportunity to use Canva for putting together a legal document and, boy, it was like driving a F150 down an old English cobblestone street. Sure, it could be done, but it was way too much tool for the job at hand.
For asynchronous collaboration, I still have fond memories of using Basecamp. Its slower and more opinionated approach really worked for me. (Even if the opinions of the Basecamp founders really don’t work for me these days.)
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Dan Moren: What drives your smartphone upgrade cycle these years?
I used to be on the iPhone Upgrade Program and got a brand-new phone every years for three or four years in a row. Then I got my beloved iPhone 13 mini and said “No” to every upgrade since 2021, holding out hope that the mini size would make a return.
I’ve since given up that hope, and now the allure of Apple Intelligence, better battery life, satellite messaging, a fresh design (Dynamic Island!) and camera upgrades are all calling my name.
So, yeah, I’ll probably pick up a new phone this year. But I sure as hell won’t be trading in my 13 mini. That little guy is going into my Hall of Fame.
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Owen JJ Stone: Do you think, in our lifetime, we’re going to have a Skynet scenario, and if we do, who do you think is going to do it?
Confession: I’ve never seen The Terminator and only have a vague sense of what Skynet really is. But no, I don’t think I’ll see an AI super-intelligence that “takes over” or threatens humanity in my lifetime. Possible eventually? Maybe, on an infinite timescale, but I’m not too worried about that eventuality, to be honest.
If I were to peg a company that would create a Skynet-like AI threat, I guess I would point to OpenAI’s weird behavior surrounding their Safety Team as a potential red flag. I wouldn’t put it past Google to go too far, too fast and have one of their Moonshot experiments get out of hand. They’ve got access to the most data, so Google is probably the biggest threat.
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Bonus Topic: What is the oldest piece of clothing that you still wear?
I have a pretty substantial collection of clothes from high school that still fit and are in the rotation. But to point out one article in particular, it’s probably a BSA Tiger Cub T-Shirt that I picked up secondhand to wear on Tiger Cub Tee Tuesdays while working at summer camp for many years. It’s in rough shape, but I love that shirt.
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Overtime Topic: What sort of tech support do you think you might need as you get older?
I’m not so confident that I’ll never need tech support, although Mikah does make the solid point that we (the tech nerds) have developed the skill to look up answers on our own. So maybe I’ll continue to be stubborn and just figure things out myself. But I’m sure there will come a time where I just don’t have the interest or energy to figure out yet another new tech product, service, or computing paradigm and I’ll start to get left behind.
I’m already not super in-tune with the short-form video creation for TikTok and Instagram Reels that’s all the rage these days. I’ve not had to ask for help yet, but that does eventually comes for us all.
Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock. Bye everybody!