Reply All: #118 A Pirate In Search of a Judge

March 15, 2018 6:05 AM

One day, Cayden received an email from their internet provider that said "stop pirating TV shows or we'll cut off your internet!" Cayden had no idea what they were talking about. So Alex decided to investigate.Further Reading Vulture's recap of "Old Loves" (Girls Season 5, Episode 4)
posted by Tevin (10 comments total)

I was surprised when Breakmaster Cylinder didn't spontaneously find themselves in a chase sequence after combining the bass with those beats.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:35 AM on March 15, 2018

I'm a little surprised they didn't mention or link to a way to disable the public hotspot on Comcast routers, but here ya go.
posted by dnash at 7:58 AM on March 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

I had no idea that's how the Xfinity Wifi Hot Spot worked! So sneaky. I've never used it, but I see it as a local network in my area and my computer has tried to connect to it.

dnash, do you know if it's only something they can do if you have a Comcast-provided modem/router? I have my own modem and router.
posted by radioamy at 4:26 PM on March 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

dnash, do you know if it's only something they can do if you have a Comcast-provided modem/router? I have my own modem and router.

Correct, this is something that is built in to the Comcast-provided modem. (And even there, it can be turned off if you're savvy enough to know it exists and how to get to the controls). If you bring your own modem and router it's a non-issue.
posted by firechicago at 12:02 PM on March 16, 2018

Also, on an unrelated note. I love the little Breakmaster Cylinder serial that we've been getting at the end of each episode. Does anyone know if someone's done a supercut of all of the episodes? It would be fun to go back and listen to them one after the other.
posted by firechicago at 12:06 PM on March 16, 2018

I occasionally look for a breakmaster cylinder supercut and have yet to find one in the wild.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:14 PM on March 16, 2018

It just occurred to check Breakmaster Cylinder's twitter - he posts little pictures relating to the vignettes! Here's the latest!
posted by jazon at 7:51 PM on March 16, 2018

I'm not sure I understand the Xfinity Wifi thing. So if you have an Xfinity modem/router, there's a guest network on by default that any Xfinity user can use? But if you use someone else's Xfinity public Wifi then all your traffic get's associated with your account, not their's? If that's right, then turning off your the guest network (which you should probably do anyways) on your modem wouldn't prevent the issue discussed in this episode from happening, right?

Also, I'm surprised Alex kept pronouncing utorrent as "yoo-torrent" instead of "micro-torrent". It's a pretty popular torrent program, so I figured Alex would have heard of it before.
posted by noneuclidean at 9:58 AM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

As always, I enjoyed the podcast. But, it also seems that the overwhelming theme of Reply All lately seems to be, "the world is awful and everyone is either evil or stupid." I'm very grateful for the Breakmaster Cyllinder pallet cleansers.
posted by eotvos at 5:20 PM on March 17, 2018

Since they came back from the break, the show has felt a little less playful/inquisitive to my ears too. This episode was fine, nothing more.
posted by hijinx at 7:12 AM on March 18, 2018