Chit Chat Across the Pond

Bart Busschots joins me to talk about his trials and tribulations finding a good bookmark manager to replace Pocket, which he never really liked in the first place. He tells us everything he loves about Raindrop.io. Unlike most Chit Chat Across the Pond episodes, there's a full blog post in the show notes if you'd rather read than listen ... or do both! Referral Links: Setapp - 1 month free for you and meParallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

On Chit Chat Across the Pond #814, Adam Engst and I discussed the results of a VPN survey he conducted with the TidBITS subscribers. From there, we got into a discussion where Adam challenged the common wisdom that we need a VPN when we're on public WiFi networks. We got a bit mired in some of the discussion, where we almost had enough knowledge to explain our positions. Networking is a topic on which Bart has a depth of knowledge, and he's here to clarify some of the things we talked about. The recording you're about to hear was created for the Security Bits segment on NosillaCast #1048, but I felt it was important for the Chit Chat Across the Pond audience to hear it as a follow-up to our discussion with Adam. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_06_08 Referral Links: Setapp - 1 month free for you and meParallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst joins me to talk about two recent articles he wrote for TidBITS. The first topic is life-changing for me. Have you ever wanted to send someone a link to a specific spot on a long web page? With text fragments, most, if not all, web browsers now allow you to select some text, right-click, and select "Copy Link with Highlight". This link will not only take them to the right spot on the page, but it will highlight the text you selected. Learn the details in Adam's article: Text Fragments Enable Deep Linking on Web Pages. Next up, we talk about a survey Adam conducted amongst TidBITS readers asking them about their usage of VPNs. We had a fun discussion about how he figured out what four simple questions to ask before he even started the survey. He walks through the results, and we talk about some of the more surprising results. you can read the full article here: Do You Use It? VPN Use Is Widespread During our discussion, we talked a little bit about Tailscale, and we referred to the article that the great Glenn Fleishman wrote on the topic: Tailscale Gives You Remote Access to Your LAN from Anywhere

This episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond is going to be a bit different. On the NosillaCast #1042 for April 27th, Bart Busschots and I recorded his usual segment on Security Bits, but the majority of it was a deep dive. The subject was whether cryptography as we know it is doomed because of quantum computing. His explanation was so good that I wanted to be able to point people directly to the audio instead of referencing the chapter mark or a time stamp so we decided to make it a standalone Chit Chat Across the Pond. If you want to listen to the rest of the original recording of Security Bits, be sure to subscribe to the NosillaCast and look for episode #1042. You can find Bart's shownotes for the episode of Security Bits at Security Bits — 27 April 2025 — Deep Dive into Quantum Computing. [audio mp3="https://media.blubrry.com/nosillacast/traffic.libsyn.com/nosillacast/CCATP_2025_04_29.mp3"] mp3 download Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_04_29 Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzleNosillaCast 20th Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst from TidBITS talks about how traditional search engines like Google and Bing no longer provide valuable information because they surface unreliable content first. Instead of using traditional search engines, he's been testing tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Claude to see how well they search the web. He calls these tools "Answer Engines" when they're used to search the web rather than generate their own responses to your prompts. You can read Adam's extensive blog post about Answer Engines, and his see his research results at tidbits.com/... Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_04_29 Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzleNosillaCast 20th Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

This week, Adam Engst joins us to talk about some work he did to try to measure the accuracy of several different AI models in creating audio transcriptions. He let me help him with some of the transcriptions so I was invested in his findings. We'll learn about ways to measure accuracy, including Word Error Rate aka WER. You can read Adam's article where he describes in detail the process he followed and the rather unsatisfying results at [tidbits.com/...](https://tidbits.com/2025/02/28/comparing-audio-transcription-in-notes-audio-hijack-and-macwhisper/). Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_03_23

You know I’m not a music person, but I’ve invited Steve Mallard onto the show to talk about a topic he’s quite passionate about - the evolution of music tech. He is not an expert in this field, he just finds the history fascinating. Steve will take us back to the first acoustic guitars, and explain why electric guitars needed to be invented. He'll talk a little bit about the early effects that could be added with vacuum tube amps and how the invention of the transistor revolutionized the music industry. Things accelerate after that up to where digital signal processing began allowing new music effects and replication of tone became possible. At the end, we get into a bit of a debate on whether this democratization of music creation has ruined music. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_03_04 Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

This week, the delightful Adam Engst of TidBITS joins us to talk about how he learned to write so well, what it's like having an editor, and then moves into how he uses the AI tool Grammarly to improve his writing. It's great fun as always and convinced me to pay for one month of Grammarly to see if it will make me as awesome of a writer as Adam. You can read all the details of his use of Grammarly in his article entitled ["Why Grammarly Beats Apple’s Writing Tools for Serious Writers" on tidbits.com](https://tidbits.com/2025/01/30/why-grammarly-beats-apples-writing-tools-for-serious-writers/) Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

If you’ve been on the Internet before, and you’ve heard of a little fruit company called Apple, then you’ve probably seen Jason Snell's famous Six Colors charts on Apple earnings. In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, we don't talk about earnings, we talk about the magic behind how he creates his famous charts. It's full of nerdy fun like how he decides when to use a serape chart vs. a bar chart, how he calculates a rolling average, how he gets the data for the charts, and how he gets the charts from Apple Numbers into his website. His joy at finding people who want to talk about the nerd side of this is evident in his enthusiasm. * Apple Q1 Earnings charts on Six Colors including video of Jason Snell and Dan Moren discussing what the numbers mean. * How Jason automated creating the blog posts from Numbers: Chart Party at sixcolors.com. * Jason's podcasts: The Incomparable, Upgrade, and other appearances Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

Adam Engst of TidBITS joins us to talk about a bug in macOS Sequoia 15.2 that affected a low-level system tool called Apple System Restore or ASR. This tool is the path for developers of backup tools to create true bootable backups, and the bug makes it now impossible to create bootable backups. We talk about the different viewpoints of the developers of Superduper!, Carbon Copy Cloner, and Chronosyc regarding the future of bootable backups. Then Adam talks about whether we really _need_ bootable backups anymore. We then segue into a survey Adam conducted on backup strategies with TidBITS readers and he discusses the relative merits of the different strategies. Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

Andrea Jones-Rooy is a data scientist, a standup comedian, _and_ a circus performer. Andrea delves into the realms of data science, its significance, and how it is often misunderstood in mainstream narratives. Andrea begins by reflecting on their journey to becoming a data scientist. Andrea was a professor of data science at NYU Center for Data Science and they taught an undergraduate course called "Data Science for Everyone". The cool thing is you can watch Andrea teach the same material for free in a video series of the same name: Data Science for Everyone on YouTube. I watched all 20 episodes, and I have to tell you it was fascinating. I may have gushed just a little bit about how awesome it was. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_01_10 Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Bart talks about his job as a cybersecurity specialist. We get a bit silly in our early part of the chat, the reasons for which will become obvious when you listen to the beginning but he successfully gives a flavor of what "a day in the life" is like for him. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_12_29 Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

Certified Apple Consultant Pat Dengler joins me to tell the harrowing story of how her neighbor was seconds away from being scammed out of $30,000. In an elaborate web of lies with multiple people involved, she was connected supposedly to Amazon, the FBI, lawyers, and more, and every single person gave their IDs and return phone numbers. Pat saved her literally in the nick of time. This story aired as part of the NosillaCast on December 1st, 2024 but I made it a standalone episode so folks can point directly to it to help raise awareness. If you need a Certified Apple Consultant, Pat can be contacted at pat@denglerconsulting.com. Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

Adam Engst of TidBITS back again to talk about an unusual and clever scam experienced by one of his TidBITS readers. It involved fake obituaries triggering iPhone security warnings triggering App Store downloads. You can find Adam's written article on the topic at [tidbits.com/...](https://tidbits.com/2024/12/06/beware-obituary-scam-sites-and-fake-iphone-security-warnings/). Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationApple Pay or Credit Card one-time donationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youSetapp - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst and I discussed his October 24th article entitled [Exposé Reveals Ongoing Smartphone Location Tracking Threats](https://tidbits.com/2024/10/23/expose-reveals-ongoing-smartphone-location-tracking-threats/). He explained how much easier it is now for your precise location to be determined because of your online activity, in spite of the safeguards Apple has instituted in an attempt to anonymize your data. Adam gives chilling examples of what's possible today. Adam doesn't leave us with doom and gloom though, he arms us with some tools to fight this tracking as best we can in his article, [Protect Yourself Against Location Tracking Abuses](https://tidbits.com/2024/10/27/protect-yourself-against-location-tracking-abuses/). [audio mp3="https://media.blubrry.com/nosillacast/traffic.libsyn.com/nosillacast/CCATP_2024_11_12.mp3"] mp3 download Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_11_12

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sam King, chief revenue officer for eSIM provider GigSky. As an unwritten policy, I don’t generally interview people who sell products or services, but since it’s my own guideline, I can color outside the lines when I want to, and this is one of those times. We do a fair bit of international travel, and I have always chosen my eSIM by going to esimDB and choosing the best combination of data and length of time of my stay for the price. On our last two trips, GigSky met our needs the best. But I didn't understand something pretty fundamental about choosing an eSIM provider. Sam explained that most eSIM providers are simply resellers. That matters because if there are any network or installation issues, these companies have no way of fixing the problem and lack any accountability. It turns out there are only a handful of eSIM companies (including GigSky) that are network operators who supply their own US-based eSIMs. He went on to explain that network operators actually can fix network problems, including automatically moving you to a different local provider with that same eSIM. I highly encourage you to listen to the interview to understand the subtleties of Sam's explanation. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_11_03 During our conversation, we started talking about how eSIMs are generally just data, and the various ways to maintain your own cell number while on travel. You may not care about making phone calls, but you may need to receive SMS messages to log into certain services, such as banks. This very problem happened to Steve on our trip to Africa when everyone was using WhatsApp but he hadn't installed it on his iPhone yet. He had to receive an SMS to authenticate but he didn't have his home cell number enabled for fear of getting huge roaming charges from AT&T. And that's when Sam told me about an interesting hack that he says will allow you to use your US phone number with your data eSIM for SMS and WiFi calling. Disclaimer: I have not tested this process, so this is exactly as written by Sam to you. I definitely plan on trying it before our next international travel. Sam's process: 1. Purchase a data plan from an eSIM data provider (like GigSky :)) Make sure your eSIM from your preferred provider is installed and the plan activated before you take off from home (this is my night before my flight routine). 2. Make sure that you have Wifi calling set up on your home account (this is important for when you arrive in country) 3. Before you leave, tell your home operator customer service that you want international roaming turned off. For this, you have to contact customer service and tell them that you do NOT want to get an offer for their roaming service while you are overseas, that you want a zero % chance that you will get charged for roaming. If you do this, your home operator SIM will not attach to a network when you land in overseas (and that's a good thing). 4. As you're taxing to the gate in your destination country - turn on your eSIM in cellular settings and set "Cellular Data" to GigSky (or whichever provider you chose) and set the "Default Voice Line" to your home network. 5. Because you are overseas AND your home SIM is 1) Configured for WiFi calling &2) has no connection outside of the US, iOS will try to fall back on the WiFi calling feature. It turns out that a cellular connection over the eSIM works exactly the same way! So you'll see in the status screen (what you see when you swipe up on an iPhone) Top SIM: GigSky LTE & Bottom SIM: Home Operator e.g. Verizon using cellular data. For all intents and purposes you can continue to use your phone as if you were in the USA... Verizon treats it as WiFi calling from a billing standpoint; you can send SMS, make voice calls, get your voicemail, etc. at no additional cost because Verizon thinks you're at home using WiFi calling even though you're in Europe! Calls to...

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst of TidBITS joins us to join in the fun conversation about limiting your iPhone's charging to 80%. He wrote up an article entitled Does Limiting an iPhone’s Battery Charging to 80% Increase Lifespan? in which he references an article by Juli Clover of MacRumors. Juli used her iPhone 15 Pro Max for a solid year with charging set to a max of 80%. Juli freely admits this was not a terribly scientific effort to determine whether it helps because there are far too many variables at play and not enough data points to form any conclusions. That doesn't stop me and Adam from pretending to do science with her results, Adam and my results charging normally, and even more anecdotal data collected by Nick Heer on Pixel Envy. I even threw around a pivot table I made with this "data" which is well known to turn anecdotes into scientifically derived proof. On top of that, I nerdily referenced Battery University that sheds a wee bit of light on the subject. Before we kicked into that topic, we spent a few minutes revisiting our topic from last time, the annoying monthly popups to allow recording of your screen and microphone. Since we last talked, people have hacked the plist that contains the timing of the nagging, and Jordi Bruin has even written an app called Amnesia to help you hack it. I suggest this proves it's security theater if you can bypass it. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_10_02 Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youSetapp - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude

Adam Engst joins me again, this time to talk about the patently wrong decision by Apple to include repetitive permissions requests for screen recording in the macOS Sequoia beta. As he explains in his article on TidBITS.com entitled Apple Reduces Excessive Sequoia Permission Requests, Shifts to Monthly, changing from weekly permissions requests to monthly is 4 times less wrong, but still 12 times per year wrong. We discuss the types of applications this will affect, from screenshot utilities like CleanShot, to menu bar modifiers like Bartender and Ice, as well as apps like Photoshop that simply use an eye dropper to let you choose colors outside of the app interface. Adam has a no whining policy in his community, so this isn't just a big complaint conversation, he explains some ideas he has the Apple could implement which might give users the desired security protections without causing them permissions fatigue. Even in this rather fist-shaking episode, Adam is a delight and we had a lot of fun chit chatting.

This week our guest is the venerable Adam Engst of TidBITS. Adam wrote an article recently about his solar inverters that ended up being a story about troubleshooting. That inspired me last week to tell you our troubleshooting story about our home network. We thought it would be fun to go through Adam's story and pick out ideas for troubleshooting and where our own weaknesses are. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_08_06

CCATP #793 for July 9, 2024, and I'm your host, Allison Sheridan. In case you missed the announcement, Adam Engst of TidBITS is now a member of the Podfeet Podcasts family as a continuing contributor to Chit Chat Across the Pond. In this week's episode, we talked about why Adam believes we need persistent calendar and reminder notifications. Adam is hyper-focused and when he's writing it's not uncommon for him to easily dismiss a notification of an upcoming event. Articles referenced in the conversation: * A Call to Alarms: Why We Need Persistent Calendar and Reminder Notifications. * In Your Face Provides Persistent Notifications for Events and Tasks * Just Due It: Persistent Notifications for Tasks - TidBITS * CalAlarm app Adam is testing for iOS Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_07_09 Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.compodfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon DonationPayPal one-time donationPodfeet Podcasts Mugs at ZazzlePodfeet 15-Year Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and meLearn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and meBackblaze - One free month for me and youSetapp - One free month for me and youEufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you.PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of usCleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude