106: That's So USB!

00:00SPEAKERWe're closing in on our last week in the desert, Brad.

00:02SPEAKERYeah. How's it been going down there?

00:03SPEAKERIt's warm.

00:04SPEAKERIs it a good warm or a...

00:06SPEAKERIt's been warm up here, which has been nice because, you know,

00:09SPEAKERSan Francisco in the summer is usually...

00:11SPEAKERAwful.

00:11SPEAKER...24/7 fog and 50 degrees.

00:14SPEAKERYeah, cold.

00:15SPEAKERBut I could see living in the desert, maybe warm is not such a positive all the time.

00:19SPEAKERLook, there are pros and cons.

00:20SPEAKERThe main pro is that we have air conditioning here.

00:23SPEAKERSo like when it's really hot, then we just turn the air conditioning on and come inside.

00:27SPEAKERAlso, the air conditioning is on all the time.

00:29SPEAKERYeah. Are you going to be able to give up air conditioning?

00:32SPEAKERI mean, I don't have a whole lot of choice.

00:34SPEAKERYeah, I know, but man, that might have been the single hardest

00:37SPEAKERthing about moving here from the East Coast was no more air conditioning.

00:40SPEAKERI don't mind it about nine months a year when we're into fire season.

00:45SPEAKERLike the constant threat of a heat wave combined with bad air and the fact that then that means

00:50SPEAKERI'm going to be cooped up in the house with three people breathing the same air for like

00:54SPEAKERtwo weeks sometimes and it'll be 90 degrees, like the walls will be 90 degrees within a couple of

01:01SPEAKERdays of that.

01:02SPEAKERYep, sure does.

01:02SPEAKERIt's not good.

01:03SPEAKERYes.

01:04SPEAKERIt's not what you want.

01:04SPEAKERFlashbacks to three or four different times last summer.

01:07SPEAKERYeah, no, last summer, like I'm here now because of last summer.

01:10SPEAKERLike we literally were like, let's leave during the bad time so that we don't have that problem again.

01:15SPEAKERYeah, I was super skittish about it this year,

01:17SPEAKERbut it's been way less bad in the city than it was before.

01:20SPEAKERWell, luckily the wind has been blowing the right way.

01:22SPEAKERYeah, like we just got lucky with the wind, right?

01:24SPEAKERIt's not like there were fewer fires.

01:25SPEAKERLike, in fact, I think the biggest fire to date happened like a month ago, right?

01:29SPEAKERThat didn't affect us.

01:30SPEAKERThe wind blew the other way.

01:31SPEAKEREat it, East Coast.

01:33SPEAKERCannot say that out loud.

01:35SPEAKERSorry.

01:35SPEAKERThat's not, we don't know about that.

01:37SPEAKERNo.

01:38SPEAKEROkay.

01:38SPEAKERIt's a fire.

01:39SPEAKERLook, we're all anti-fire here, just to be clear.

01:42SPEAKERI made a joke.

01:42SPEAKERI apologize.

01:43SPEAKERFires are no good for anyone.

01:45SPEAKERWell, no, actually that's not true.

01:46SPEAKERLike controlled, natural, like naturally occurring fires actually are like critical, right?

01:51SPEAKERLike, isn't that actually critical for the kind of boom and bust vegetation cycle?

01:55SPEAKERHaving been to the Living Desert Museum in Palm Desert, California this morning,

02:00SPEAKERI can tell you that-

02:01SPEAKERAm I about to learn something?

02:02SPEAKERYeah.

02:02SPEAKERFires are incredibly important for a large number of ecosystems.

02:06SPEAKERIn fact, some, lots of plants don't germinate.

02:10SPEAKERTheir seeds don't germinate unless they're exposed to the cleansing power flame.

02:13SPEAKERBoy, that's grim.

02:16SPEAKERIncluding the mighty redwood.

02:18SPEAKERSo, yeah.

02:19SPEAKERWell, those hang around for a while.

02:21SPEAKERHopefully we can, we've got time to make those up.

02:23SPEAKERThey have to have fire to burn, grow new trees.

02:25SPEAKERThat's what, you know, like the seeds have to have the fire and then once the fire grows,

02:28SPEAKERthen they can grow.

02:29SPEAKERNo, I'm just saying we have time.

02:30SPEAKERHopefully redwoods will be around for a little bit.

02:33SPEAKERThe ones we have, unless they burn.

02:35SPEAKERI mean, but they're pretty fire safe.

02:37SPEAKERLike generally speaking, like they're built in such a way that like the fires can go all

02:44SPEAKERaround them and usually like the undergrowth burns out of the redwood forest and then the

02:48SPEAKERmost of the trees are left behind.

02:50SPEAKERBut yeah, no, the Living Desert Museum in Palm Desert, California was super cool.

02:54SPEAKERAnd I highly recommend it.

02:54SPEAKERIt's kind of like half zoo, half botanical gardens.

03:00SPEAKERAnd we saw, they have like African Australian, North American deserts represented there in

03:07SPEAKERterms of like wildlife.

03:08SPEAKERAnd I don't think they have plants from the other places for kind of obvious reasons.

03:12SPEAKERWhat kind of fauna are we talking?

03:15SPEAKERI saw quokkas.

03:16SPEAKERI'm sorry?

03:17SPEAKERA quokka.

03:18SPEAKERA quokka is like a, it's a marsupial from, I think from Australia.

03:22SPEAKERI didn't read the plaque there.

03:24SPEAKERWe were in a pen with some wallabies.

03:26SPEAKEROoh.

03:27SPEAKERLike you just get to go into a sealed area and the wallabies are just chilling and they

03:31SPEAKERlike, they walk right by you.

03:32SPEAKERWell, they kind of hop.

03:33SPEAKERThey don't really walk.

03:34SPEAKERFriendly wallabies.

03:35SPEAKERThey were - wallabies fucking rip.

03:37SPEAKERWallabies are awesome, man.

03:38SPEAKERNot the ferocious kind.

03:40SPEAKERWe got to see some African wild dogs, like painted dogs.

03:43SPEAKERThat was really cool.

03:45SPEAKERAnd we got to talk to the keeper for them for a long time.

03:48SPEAKERAnd she told us all sorts of cool dogs.

03:49SPEAKERLike they're really cool animals.

03:51SPEAKERAnimals, it turns out are cool.

03:52SPEAKERWe should, we should do things to save the animals and the plants.

03:54SPEAKERI fully agree with you.

03:55SPEAKERAlso, it sounds like being at the zoo superior to not being at the zoo.

04:00SPEAKERI'm going to, I'm going to go and tell you, like, we got up early and we're there at like

04:04SPEAKER8 20, probably like they opened at seven and we quickly were like, why the hell is the

04:08SPEAKERzoo open at seven?

04:08SPEAKERWe immediately realized why the zoo opens at seven because it was 110 degrees by 10

04:14SPEAKERo'clock in the morning.

04:15SPEAKERYou mean, you mean this zoo in particular?

04:17SPEAKERYeah, this zoo opens early and it closes at one for like safety of the guests reasons.

04:24SPEAKERBoy.

04:25SPEAKERWe got to - Gina, there was the mountain lion, like the California mountain lion was - or

04:30SPEAKERcougar as they're called in some places.

04:33SPEAKERThey - she was just kind of chilling up against the edge of the cage and looking at us and

04:39SPEAKERwhen people would walk by, she would snarl and show her teeth and pin her ears back.

04:43SPEAKERLike that's the thing that I never want to see without a couple inches of glass between

04:46SPEAKERme and one of them, like a giant house cat is a terrifying concept, it turns out.

04:50SPEAKERMy grade school mascot was a mountain lion.

04:53SPEAKERThere was a stuffed one in the lobby of the grade school.

04:56SPEAKERWow.

04:57SPEAKERLike right outside the pathway into the principal's office, actually.

05:00SPEAKERYou don't want to get on the bad side of that mountain lion.

05:02SPEAKERSometimes hard to tell whether the mountain lion or the principal is worse.

05:16SPEAKER[Music]

05:35SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made at TechPod.

05:38SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:39SPEAKERI am Brad.

05:40SPEAKERIt may surprise you that I remain myself.

05:44SPEAKER106 episodes.

05:45SPEAKERI'm always shocked.

05:46SPEAKEREvery week you're thinking like, "Oh, maybe somebody besides Brad will show up this week."

05:51SPEAKERMan, thank God it's Brad again.

05:52SPEAKERI'm basically somebody else.

05:53SPEAKERWow, that's very flattering.

05:55SPEAKERIt would be exhausting to have to like do the whole hundred episodes again and be like, "Ah."

06:00SPEAKERThey could have gone very much the other direction of like,

06:02SPEAKER"Oh, thank God it's somebody as anybody else."

06:06SPEAKERI guess it depends whether you're half full or half empty kind of guy.

06:11SPEAKERIt probably tells you a lot about my psychology that I'm just like,

06:14SPEAKER"Oh, thank God he still wants to work with me."

06:16SPEAKERI got to warn you, I'm a little bit moist right now.

06:19SPEAKERI literally just jumped out of the pool.

06:21SPEAKEROh, that's good moist.

06:23SPEAKERThat's not skeezy moist.

06:25SPEAKERI don't know.

06:26SPEAKERIt's not like a gross moist.

06:28SPEAKERBut I'm definitely in the napping time after the hot, the sweat walk this morning for five hours.

06:38SPEAKERNo better time to record a podcast than when you're ready for a nap.

06:41SPEAKERAt one point, I went into the bathroom and I had my sun hat on and I just put it under the sink

06:48SPEAKERand got it soaking wet and then put it right back on my head and I was like, "Oh, that feels so good."

06:53SPEAKERThat sounds amazing.

06:54SPEAKERIt was very hot.

06:55SPEAKERWhat's your drying off process?

06:57SPEAKERJust a straight up cloth towel?

06:58SPEAKERYou got any kind of space age moisture wicking material going on?

07:03SPEAKERLook, the relative humidity is like half a percent in any given moment outside.

07:06SPEAKERSo, I just T-pose for about 45 seconds and I'm good.

07:10SPEAKERDon't pick it five steps from the pool before your bone dry again.

07:14SPEAKERIf I put the towel more than about 20 feet from the pool,

07:17SPEAKERmy skin is dry by the time I get to the towel and I just have to dry off the hair and beard.

07:24SPEAKERI got to check out Palm Desert, man.

07:26SPEAKERAll of that sounds like a nice change of pace.

07:30SPEAKERI think we're going to make this a regular thing we do.

07:34SPEAKERThis has been a really fun...

07:37SPEAKERIt's kind of weird because normally when you go someplace on a vacation or even like...

07:41SPEAKERThis is working vacation because she's doing school, I'm doing work and all that.

07:44SPEAKERBut usually I feel compelled to go do a bunch of stuff.

07:49SPEAKERYeah, totally.

07:50SPEAKERBut the combination of pandemic and weather means that I don't want anything to do with

07:55SPEAKERanything inside, so that is like 90% of the things we would do here.

07:59SPEAKERAnd the rest of the stuff is knocked out because it's 110 degrees.

08:02SPEAKERSo basically, we just hang out at the pool and we've done like three outings

08:06SPEAKERand it's been really good.

08:08SPEAKERIt's been really nice.

08:10SPEAKERHow many trips have you gone on where you felt like you could just lay around doing nothing?

08:14SPEAKERLike you said, it feels like you're wasting time if you're not

08:17SPEAKERgoing, going, going, seeing stuff every second.

08:19SPEAKERBut going to a place and just doing nothing sounds pretty great.

08:23SPEAKERBut it's also kind of freeing to just do your normal stuff.

08:27SPEAKEROr that's what I mean.

08:28SPEAKERAfter 18 months, doing normal work stuff in a room that's not the room I've been in for

08:32SPEAKERthe last 18 months, it just smells less dooded in here, which is really nice.

08:37SPEAKERThe humidity helps with that.

08:39SPEAKERYeah.

08:39SPEAKERThe humidity does definitely help.

08:41SPEAKERIt's like, you know, it's okay.

08:44SPEAKERYou should cut here.

08:45SPEAKERI was trying to make a joke and I couldn't make it happen, but you know what?

08:48SPEAKERActually just leave it in.

08:51SPEAKERGod damn it.

08:52SPEAKERGive him a peek behind the curtains.

08:53SPEAKEROh, yeah.

08:54SPEAKERI'm the one who needs the nap.

08:55SPEAKERI was trying to say something pithy and like the neurons would not connect properly and

08:59SPEAKERit just did not come out.

09:00SPEAKERBut we're recording at a novel time of day because I took the day off.

09:04SPEAKERSo I was trying to, I was trying to think of a more at less comparison because the less

09:07SPEAKERis the number of monitors you have more relaxation, fewer monitors.

09:12SPEAKERThat's the way we go.

09:14SPEAKERNot having a bunch of like, I miss my monitors.

09:17SPEAKERThat's that.

09:18SPEAKERThat is honestly like my bed in the, and having one extra monitor are the two things that

09:22SPEAKERI miss.

09:22SPEAKEREverything else I could leave.

09:25SPEAKERDon't have a good bed in there.

09:28SPEAKERIt's all Ikea mattresses.

09:29SPEAKERI miss, I miss the, look, I'm not going to talk about mattresses on this podcast unless

09:33SPEAKERsomebody pays us extremely.

09:35SPEAKERYeah.

09:36SPEAKERI, you know, I will, I will bad mouth Airbnb though, and say that somehow not surprised

09:41SPEAKERthat an Airbnb proprietor would skimp on the mattress quality.

09:46SPEAKERLike if I had a place that I've rented to people on Airbnb, I would do exactly what

09:50SPEAKERthese people do.

09:50SPEAKERThat's what I mean.

09:51SPEAKERLike the kitchens outfitted really nicely.

09:54SPEAKERThe it's nice furniture.

09:56SPEAKERThey have like reading lamps and stuff beside the bed.

09:58SPEAKERI got no complaints.

09:59SPEAKERIt's fine.

10:00SPEAKERExcept for the lack of monitors.

10:02SPEAKERShould we tell, this is my favorite, one of my favorite weeks of the month.

10:05SPEAKERYeah.

10:06SPEAKERIt's, it's Q into a month.

10:07SPEAKERYes.

10:07SPEAKERIt is conversion week around here.

10:11SPEAKERYes.

10:11SPEAKERWe are as always turning your questions into our answers.

10:14SPEAKERRight.

10:15SPEAKERIt's going to crank these cues through our patented process.

10:18SPEAKERDo you put like two quarters and a queue in the machine and you crank it out and then

10:22SPEAKERan a comes out the other end.

10:24SPEAKERIt's like when you go to the fishermen's wharf and you put the penny in there and you'd

10:27SPEAKERkind of, you know, you turn thing and it's, it elongates it into an oval.

10:31SPEAKERIt prints a little, the pretty little sailboat on there.

10:34SPEAKERThat was precisely what I was referring to.

10:36SPEAKERYes.

10:37SPEAKERThey have, they always have those machines at zoos also.

10:39SPEAKERSo front of mind.

10:41SPEAKERYes.

10:41SPEAKERYes.

10:43SPEAKERPeople have the queue.

10:45SPEAKERI'm sorry.

10:45SPEAKERThe Q and a episode is the smushed penny of podcasts.

10:49SPEAKERIf people have cues can we talk about the smush penny is a federal crime, right?

10:56SPEAKERYou're breaking the law in a major way.

10:58SPEAKERWhen you do that, you're defacing legal tender, right?

11:01SPEAKERIsn't that basically what's going on there.

11:02SPEAKERThat's not legal.

11:04SPEAKERI'm surprised in this, our litigious time that the smush penny machine people like an

11:10SPEAKERupstanding establishment, like a zoo or, or a penny arcade is allowed to do the smush

11:17SPEAKERpenny machine.

11:17SPEAKERI think that the secret service would crack down on them.

11:20SPEAKERAll right here, right from us currency.gov.

11:23SPEAKEROh, hold up.

11:24SPEAKERThis is the Google thing where it's serving it up to me and I can't read the whole thing.

11:27SPEAKERHere it is.

11:28SPEAKERCrimes related to us currency.

11:30SPEAKERGood Lord.

11:30SPEAKERThere's a lot of them.

11:31SPEAKERNumber two, second on the list, defacing us currency under section three 33 of the us

11:37SPEAKERcriminal code quote, whoever mutilates cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates or unites

11:43SPEAKERor cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill draft note or other evidence

11:49SPEAKERof debt issued by any national banking association, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

11:53SPEAKERwith intent to render such a shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than

11:58SPEAKERsix months or both.

12:00SPEAKERSo you're saying when I let my eight-year-old mash a penny today, that she could go to the

12:07SPEAKERbig house for until she's 14.

12:08SPEAKERThat sounded like that was just paper currency, bank bill draft note or other evidence of

12:14SPEAKERdebt.

12:16SPEAKERThat sounds like a penny's evidence of debt.

12:18SPEAKERI guess.

12:19SPEAKERTake a penny, leave a penny.

12:20SPEAKERI don't know.

12:21SPEAKERYes.

12:21SPEAKERCurrency experts around here.

12:23SPEAKERAlso question answering experts.

12:26SPEAKERSecret service came and yelled at us at Maximum PC once because we put

12:29SPEAKERpictures of real money in the magazine, which you're not allowed to do.

12:33SPEAKERWhat?

12:34SPEAKERYeah.

12:34SPEAKERYou can't put pictures of real money in print.

12:37SPEAKERYou have to, you have to.

12:38SPEAKERIt's a bizarre restriction.

12:40SPEAKERYou have to fake it.

12:41SPEAKERYou had to put fake money in.

12:43SPEAKERWe learned that when the secret service came and yelled at us for a little bit.

12:45SPEAKERAnd then they were like, Hey, don't do this again.

12:47SPEAKERWe're like, we're, we will not do this again, sir.

12:49SPEAKERI apologize unreservedly.

12:51SPEAKERAll right.

12:51SPEAKERIt's going to tie this whole conversation together.

12:53SPEAKERAnd then we're going to get to the questions.

12:54SPEAKERI was scrolling, I'm scrolling around Google maps as one does of one's surrounding environs.

13:01SPEAKERYes.

13:02SPEAKERLearning about the world around you is always good.

13:03SPEAKERDid you know that the San Francisco kind of, I don't know, office outpost, whatever you

13:08SPEAKERwant to call it of the United States secret service is right up by fishermen's wharf.

13:12SPEAKERIt's like two, three blocks away.

13:14SPEAKERFucking watching the penny rollers.

13:16SPEAKERThat's right.

13:16SPEAKERThat's right.

13:17SPEAKERThey're just waiting to pounce, man.

13:18SPEAKERJust watch yourself up there.

13:20SPEAKERWatch you.

13:20SPEAKERYeah.

13:20SPEAKERYou put that 51 cents in you mash your penny.

13:23SPEAKERYou better be ready to run.

13:25SPEAKERAlcatraz is right there.

13:26SPEAKERThey can just Chuck you right out there.

13:27SPEAKERYou'll never, never see your family again.

13:29SPEAKERThink about it.

13:30SPEAKERThey don't even staff that thing anymore.

13:31SPEAKERYou'll be left to your own devices out there.

13:34SPEAKERGood luck eating the lichen.

13:35SPEAKERYes.

13:36SPEAKEROkay.

13:36SPEAKERQuestions drawn from the Q and a channel on our discord.

13:41SPEAKERAnd also theoretically people who have, if people, so there's an important, uh,

13:48SPEAKERsomebody pointed to Trimanta pointed out this week, the mechanics of the Q and a channel

13:53SPEAKERare such that if you should not post private things in there, because other people who

13:57SPEAKERare in the channel at the exact moment that you post that question will be able to see

14:01SPEAKERwhatever personal identifying information you post in that channel.

14:04SPEAKERSo if you want to do that, use email.

14:06SPEAKERI believe the email address is techpod@content.town.

14:10SPEAKERYes.

14:10SPEAKERThank you.

14:10SPEAKERThank you.

14:11SPEAKERTry method.

14:11SPEAKERThat is a hot tip.

14:12SPEAKERI didn't even think so.

14:14SPEAKERI knew about that.

14:14SPEAKERThat is an unfortunate kind of artifact of the way discord works.

14:17SPEAKERThat the messages don't become hidden from you until you log off and back on.

14:21SPEAKERAnd then they all disappear.

14:22SPEAKERBut yeah, if you were looking at that channel, when somebody types something in there, you

14:25SPEAKERwill see it.

14:26SPEAKERSo be careful what you put in there.

14:28SPEAKERDon't confess to murders.

14:29SPEAKERDon't do murders.

14:31SPEAKERI also put a warning in the like MOTD on the channel.

14:34SPEAKERSo hopefully people will read that anyway.

14:37SPEAKERGreat.

14:38SPEAKERShall we begin?

14:39SPEAKERI think so.

14:40SPEAKERA question here from a runner Matty.

14:44SPEAKERWhen does the week start Monday or Sunday?

14:47SPEAKERA hundred percent Sunday.

14:48SPEAKERWow.

14:49SPEAKERReally?

14:49SPEAKERLike, Hmm, that's the right answer to me.

14:53SPEAKERYep.

14:54SPEAKERFor, for some like completely abstract arbitrary reason, like for, like for no particular

15:00SPEAKERreason at all Sunday, but Monday functionally.

15:05SPEAKERNo, it's Sunday functionally.

15:06SPEAKERThe end of the week is Saturday.

15:07SPEAKERThe start of the week is Sunday.

15:08SPEAKERIt's very simple.

15:09SPEAKERWe learned it in grade school.

15:10SPEAKERFunctional as Saturday and Sunday are barely distinguishable from each other in terms of

15:14SPEAKERwhat you're doing.

15:16SPEAKERLike they are the weekend Sunday, not part of the weekend.

15:20SPEAKERLook, when you're, when you're a parent, Saturday is soccer day.

15:24SPEAKERSunday is doing shit around the house day.

15:26SPEAKERI just, I can't, I'm never going to get past this labeling thing.

15:29SPEAKERLike Sunday is part of the weekend, which according to the name is the end of the week.

15:36SPEAKERBut, but the weekend is also the week beginning, Brad.

15:40SPEAKEROkay.

15:42SPEAKERYeah.

15:42SPEAKERLike we're going to get into weird temporal nature of time stuff here.

15:45SPEAKERThis is a, this is a, this is a conversation really, I was going to say we need Craig Nelson,

15:51SPEAKERbut we need Daniel Craig, I think, to weigh in on this as the ultimate arbiter of what

15:56SPEAKERis or is not the weekend.

15:58SPEAKERMight be the right answer.

15:59SPEAKERStart to make me bring up that article you sent me about the third thermodynamic nature

16:03SPEAKERof clocks.

16:04SPEAKERLook, all we need is an infinite amount of energy to generate enough entropy and we'll

16:08SPEAKERhave a perfect timepiece.

16:09SPEAKERYeah.

16:10SPEAKERYou know, there's, what is it?

16:11SPEAKERThere's an inverse relationship between information and entropy in terms of how accurate

16:15SPEAKERa clock is.

16:17SPEAKERThe weird thing about clocks from that article.

16:20SPEAKERYeah.

16:20SPEAKERDisperses entropy, the more accurate it is, it turns out.

16:24SPEAKERSo therefore it's, it's weird to me that the only way to measure time is to create entropy

16:28SPEAKERthough, right?

16:31SPEAKERLike that's, that's, I mean, I guess that's, that's what they, okay, we should explain.

16:35SPEAKERSo the article was somebody like 10 years ago was like, Hey, you know, nobody's ever

16:39SPEAKERfigured out what actually clocks are, like how they work.

16:42SPEAKERLike what is, what is like at a quantum?

16:43SPEAKERI think this was kind of from the view of quantum mechanics, right?

16:46SPEAKERYeah.

16:47SPEAKERAnd like how you measure time.

16:48SPEAKERCause like we have really accurate, incredibly ridiculously accurate clocks that are like

16:53SPEAKERthat measure the vibration of CZM atoms and stuff like that.

16:56SPEAKERBut, but there's a point at which there, you can't make them more accurate because we

17:00SPEAKERcan't measure the vibrations more for smaller things.

17:03SPEAKERAnd, and then you get into quantum realm and ant man becomes involved or something.

17:08SPEAKERThe upshot of this article was they were theorizing increasingly complicated ways to make

17:13SPEAKERclocks that are more and more accurate than your CZM atomic clocks.

17:16SPEAKERAnd this is when they realized that there's actually a formula for this.

17:20SPEAKERAnd the formula is basically entropy up energy, energy up, entropy up, accuracy up.

17:27SPEAKERYes.

17:27SPEAKERBut, you know, I guess if you want to burn a couple of supernovas, you can have a really

17:33SPEAKERaccurate time piece for a few minutes.

17:36SPEAKERYeah.

17:37SPEAKERYeah.

17:37SPEAKERThe upshot is it sounds like the, all that theory and research resulted in some, what

17:41SPEAKERthey described as like foundational thermodynamics equations, right?

17:45SPEAKERLike, like the, the other physicists looking at this work were like crazy excited about

17:49SPEAKERit.

17:50SPEAKERAnd things that will be applicable to quantum computing and stuff like that.

17:54SPEAKERRight.

17:55SPEAKERAnd also, not to get too heady here, but also reconciling general relativity and quantum

18:00SPEAKERmechanics, which traditionally have been completely incompatible.

18:04SPEAKERThis is the challenge of being a three-dimensional creature in a world where time flows from

18:09SPEAKERpast to present.

18:10SPEAKERSeriously, fuck linear time, man.

18:12SPEAKERFuck causation.

18:13SPEAKERCan we get a physicist in here?

18:15SPEAKERI want to know how to traverse the dimension of time back and forth.

18:20SPEAKERIf I could just go back a few years, fix a few things.

18:23SPEAKERThis is going to be the longest question and answer episode ever, but I watched the first

18:27SPEAKERepisode of Deep Space Nine the other day.

18:30SPEAKERIt came up after I was watching something else and he goes into the wormhole and meets

18:37SPEAKERthe fourth dimensional, the wormhole, the prophets, I believe, who are four dimensional,

18:45SPEAKERwho live in the fourth dimension.

18:48SPEAKERRight.

18:48SPEAKERIt was a very good explanation of what we're all talking about.

18:51SPEAKERInteresting.

18:52SPEAKERI don't, I mean, I haven't seen that episode since I was 16, I think is when that show

18:57SPEAKERcame out, but I did at the time.

18:59SPEAKERI was not acquainted with theoretical physics enough to pick up on that.

19:02SPEAKERThat's cool.

19:03SPEAKERYeah.

19:03SPEAKERIt went right over my head too.

19:04SPEAKERYeah.

19:05SPEAKERAnyway, we got another question?

19:06SPEAKERThinking, sorry, thinking about this is weird, heavy interstellar stuff as well.

19:11SPEAKERThe last thing I was going to say, we really need to get a physicist in here.

19:16SPEAKERWe can make that happen.

19:17SPEAKERThinking, thinking about the fourth dimension of time as being a, you know, as a higher

19:22SPEAKERdimension, higher dimensional being would experience it as a physical dimension that

19:26SPEAKERcould be traversed back and forth, right?

19:28SPEAKERThinking about it that way, like in a sense, but doesn't that imply that everything that

19:32SPEAKERis going to happen has already happened?

19:35SPEAKERIt's maybe now that you can traverse back and forth as you see it all at once.

19:38SPEAKERSo the same way that we can see depth on a three-dimensional object, we don't perceive

19:44SPEAKERthat axis as growing over time.

19:46SPEAKERWe perceive it all as happening, you know, growing as we look at down the dimension,

19:50SPEAKERwe perceive it all at once.

19:52SPEAKERSure.

19:52SPEAKERA fourth dimensional being, a higher dimensional being would presumably perceive what we

19:58SPEAKERperceive as time in that way too.

20:00SPEAKERRight.

20:01SPEAKERAnyway.

20:02SPEAKERPhysics is weird, man.

20:03SPEAKERI hope, I hope I'm not taking the wrong lesson from this or sound like I'm high or

20:06SPEAKERsomething, but like, it kind of makes me feel a little bit better about making mistakes

20:09SPEAKERbecause in a sense, like kind of already happened, right?

20:13SPEAKERWell, I mean, that's a, that's a philosophy question.

20:15SPEAKERDo we have free will or?

20:17SPEAKERYes, of course, straight up getting into predestination and determinism type stuff.

20:22SPEAKERThis is where I always kind of, I didn't get the math here, so I tuned out.

20:25SPEAKERYeah.

20:26SPEAKERYou know what I do tune in for though is turning Q's into A's.

20:29SPEAKERThat's right.

20:30SPEAKERLet's read more questions.

20:31SPEAKERNumber two.

20:34SPEAKERQuestion from, sorry, this episode is a real mess.

20:36SPEAKERShe's never recorded this time again.

20:39SPEAKERVoltage X writes in, what's the fastest internet connection you've ever used,

20:43SPEAKERincluding both upstream and downstream speeds.

20:45SPEAKERI've been, my answer is super boring.

20:48SPEAKERYeah.

20:49SPEAKERIt's the home internet connection I have right now.

20:51SPEAKERThis gigabit up and down fiber.

20:54SPEAKERDidn't CBS have some baller in it?

20:56SPEAKERNo, that's well, yes.

20:57SPEAKERAt the time it absolutely was astonishing.

20:59SPEAKERI mean, but even that, like I would speed test occasionally just to see how we were doing.

21:03SPEAKERAnd I never saw it more than like five to 700 megabits.

21:06SPEAKERBut was it, but so NC State was on internet too, right?

21:11SPEAKEROh, I don't know.

21:13SPEAKERI mean, I'm not super familiar with internet.

21:16SPEAKERI'm sure some research, I mean, that's a huge engineering school.

21:20SPEAKERLike I'm sure some department somewhere in there was connected to that, but not,

21:25SPEAKERcertainly not to the door.

21:26SPEAKERI mean, this is revealing my age, when I went there, the dorm I ended up in was one of the

21:31SPEAKERthree remaining dorms on campus that had not been wired for ethernet.

21:35SPEAKEROh.

21:35SPEAKERI fucking went to college and moved into a dorm and didn't get the good internet.

21:39SPEAKERI still had to use dial up.

21:41SPEAKERSo I went, I moved out of dorms the year that they wired dorms at UT.

21:47SPEAKEROkay.

21:48SPEAKERSo the boring answer is that it's, I've never had faster than gigabit because I've never had,

21:53SPEAKERI mean, the internet that I was connected to may have been faster when I worked at the

21:57SPEAKERuniversity and the department I was, did have high-end connections for the people that needed

22:02SPEAKERit.

22:03SPEAKERBut the main network was like 100 base T at that point.

22:07SPEAKERIt wasn't, it wasn't like, we had a lot of machines that were still on 10 base T co-ax,

22:13SPEAKERthe BNC connectors in 98 or 99, whenever that was.

22:19SPEAKERSo, I mean, it's not gigabit up, gigabit down at home, it turns out pretty much the best

22:24SPEAKERI've ever been exposed to.

22:25SPEAKERYeah.

22:25SPEAKERI mean, it's not an exotic answer, but it is notable that our home internet is now the

22:29SPEAKERfastest internet we've ever had, right?

22:31SPEAKERLike that's a good sign of progress to me.

22:32SPEAKERWell, and it's interesting because it's a, it's one of the places that the standards

22:37SPEAKERhave kind of lagged because like gigabit has been around for almost 15 years now, 15 or

22:41SPEAKER20 years, like in not, not around, it's been around longer than that, but like widely available

22:46SPEAKERin consumer hardware for a really long time.

22:48SPEAKERYeah.

22:49SPEAKERAnd it's only now that we're starting to see a need to go beyond that.

22:52SPEAKERI mean, Comcast is starting to sell greater than two, like two, two to five gigabit services

22:59SPEAKERfor consumers.

23:01SPEAKERThere are some ISPs in like Chattanooga and places like that, that are offering 10 gigabit

23:05SPEAKERto businesses.

23:06SPEAKERLike it's, it's, I kind of don't know what I would do with it, but I'll take it.

23:11SPEAKERI mean, we've talked about it, but that's the beautiful thing about running all this

23:14SPEAKERdark fiber, right?

23:14SPEAKERIs that the fiber itself can go way faster than a gigabit.

23:17SPEAKERIt's just, they don't, they don't have the other equipment deployed to make it happen

23:20SPEAKERyet, but the hard part is running the lines and that part's done.

23:24SPEAKERSo I wonder, I wonder if there's a time when I'm going to put an ethernet card in my computer

23:29SPEAKERagain, as opposed to, Oh, wait, like using onboard.

23:33SPEAKEROh, you mean to get something faster.

23:34SPEAKERI thought for a second, I thought you meant you were going to go wifi on your desktop,

23:37SPEAKERwhich what?

23:38SPEAKERNo, thank you.

23:39SPEAKERI'm doing that right now.

23:40SPEAKERIt's awful.

23:41SPEAKERThought I knew you.

23:43SPEAKERNo, I'd rather not.

23:45SPEAKERI have done exactly that.

23:46SPEAKERI mean, thanks to, thanks to a very generous member of our discord.

23:51SPEAKERI have got a 40 gigabit connection between my PC and my NAS currently.

23:56SPEAKERHow are you saturating?

23:57SPEAKERYou're saturating the hard drives in the NAS probably, right?

23:59SPEAKEROh, not even.

24:00SPEAKERI mean, yes.

24:01SPEAKERYes.

24:01SPEAKERThat's the bottleneck.

24:02SPEAKERYes, absolutely.

24:03SPEAKERYeah.

24:03SPEAKEROkay.

24:04SPEAKERAlthough it's been weird messing around with like windows.

24:06SPEAKERLike I cannot, I mean, you're familiar with Iperf the little network throughput benchmarking

24:11SPEAKERtool.

24:12SPEAKERYeah.

24:12SPEAKERLike I can't even come close to saturating 40 gigabit, even with Iperf, which theoretically

24:16SPEAKERwill saturate whatever you're aiming it at.

24:20SPEAKERLike I top out at like 20, 25 gigabit, which granted not so bad, but you know, different

24:27SPEAKERoperating systems, different TCP/IP stacks, different networking layers, et cetera, et

24:30SPEAKERcetera.

24:31SPEAKERLike there seems to be a lot more in that equation than just what the hardware can do.

24:35SPEAKERIt's it's it's it's it turns out it's when you have multiple potential bottlenecks, things

24:40SPEAKERget really complicated.

24:41SPEAKERYes, for sure.

24:43SPEAKERAnyway, the thing for me about having 10 gigabit is not trying to push one 10 gig download.

24:49SPEAKERIt's being able to do anything you want and never worry about hitting a ceiling.

24:53SPEAKERRight.

24:54SPEAKERLike like steam downloads, battle net downloads can saturate my gigabit.

24:57SPEAKERRight.

24:58SPEAKERYeah.

24:58SPEAKEROrigin, battle net, steam all will saturate me.

25:01SPEAKERRight.

25:02SPEAKERBut imagine getting like the gigabit gigabit and a half that origin or somebody is willing

25:05SPEAKERto serve you and still having all that other headroom to never have anything slow down

25:09SPEAKERor bottleneck.

25:10SPEAKERLike that's the that's the use to me.

25:12SPEAKERYeah.

25:12SPEAKERIt seems pretty good.

25:13SPEAKERSeems like more speed would be good.

25:15SPEAKERA question from Caleb.

25:17SPEAKERWhy don't they sell USB hubs with more USB ports?

25:20SPEAKERLike I hadn't really thought about it too much until I read this question, but I realized

25:24SPEAKERlike they do seem kind of stingy with USB ports on everything.

25:28SPEAKERThey just want you to buy adapters and daisy chain constantly.

25:31SPEAKERAnd that kind of sucks.

25:32SPEAKERSo there's not the problem is right as of like a year ago, just before the pandemic,

25:40SPEAKERwe were supposed to start seeing chips that allowed like the chip that is required to

25:49SPEAKERmultiplex USB-C didn't really exist.

25:53SPEAKERIt started to come out.

25:54SPEAKERIntel made is making them and is selling them.

25:57SPEAKERBut the products haven't emerged as fast as you'd expect.

26:01SPEAKERThere are a handful of USB-C hubs.

26:04SPEAKERThe other problem is that there's two categories that look almost identical from a like a

26:10SPEAKERuser perspective.

26:11SPEAKEROne is the Thunderbolt dock.

26:12SPEAKERThunderbolt is a protocol that lets you access PCI express lanes over USB or display port

26:18SPEAKERcables, I think, or special display port cables.

26:22SPEAKERAnd the Thunderbolt, you can get Thunderbolt docks that will have more than one USB-C port.

26:27SPEAKERAnd you can also get monitors that have Thunderbolt that use USB-C Thunderbolt as the

26:34SPEAKERdisplay interface instead of display port or HDMI.

26:38SPEAKERAnd then they might also have an additional Thunderbolt USB-C port that you can use to

26:43SPEAKERconnect a second monitor to your to your daisy chain.

26:46SPEAKERThe problem is and then you can also buy docks.

26:49SPEAKERYou can buy Thunderbolt docks that will have multiple ports and those will let you use

26:54SPEAKERthose for your laptop or something.

26:55SPEAKERSo you can hook up a monitor or two and some USB ports in your printer or whatever to your

26:59SPEAKERlaptop when you plug in at work.

27:02SPEAKERIt's weird to me that there aren't USB-C hubs with more USB-C ports.

27:08SPEAKERI think probably part of the problem is that USB-C is also a power delivery mechanism for

27:12SPEAKERa lot of people.

27:13SPEAKERI think the problem is it does too many things.

27:15SPEAKERIt's power delivery, it's display and it's like data slash utility.

27:20SPEAKERSo when you're doing all three of those things, there's not one product that's going to do

27:26SPEAKEReverything you want.

27:27SPEAKERLike the Thunderbolt hubs will do the monitor but might not do power.

27:31SPEAKERThe USB hubs will do data but not power or monitor and it's going to be really confusing

27:39SPEAKERto consumers, which is why I think we end up with the dongles and the adapters.

27:44SPEAKERMy audio interface is a USB-C plug on its end and the cable it came with is USB-A that

27:51SPEAKERjust is like 3.1 and power.

27:53SPEAKERIt's like 3.0 cable that does power basically and a little bit of data.

27:58SPEAKERSo, the long answer, the solution to your problem is probably that unless you're doing

28:05SPEAKERThunderbolt and need monitors or you're doing power to charge a laptop or something that

28:11SPEAKERit's a high draw, you probably want a USB-A to see that's the right spec.

28:16SPEAKERBecause you can get like a 3.0 or - I think you can get a 3.1 even but I'm not sure about

28:20SPEAKERthat.

28:21SPEAKERYou definitely get a 3.0 cable that is USB-A to USB-C and that's probably the right answer

28:27SPEAKERfor your particular problem.

28:29SPEAKERI am increasingly of the mind that USB will never be good.

28:34SPEAKERLook, we're both old enough to know what it was like before USB.

28:39SPEAKERIt was bad.

28:40SPEAKERYes, I mean it's better for sure but like there's a difference in my mind between good

28:45SPEAKERand good enough.

28:47SPEAKERLike it's good enough but it's not good.

28:50SPEAKERYeah, I mean there's a - it's not - the problem is it's not good, it's not simple.

28:55SPEAKERLike that's part of what I mean, it's like it's - if there's too much friction in the

28:59SPEAKERexperience of figuring it out and using it, that's - it's not good enough or it's not

29:02SPEAKERgood to me and there's a lot of friction.

29:05SPEAKERSo this is the thing that annoys me is when it was three different cables, you wouldn't

29:09SPEAKERthink - you don't think anything about having to have a DisplayPort cable for your monitor

29:13SPEAKERand a USB cable for your audio interface and a power cable for your power on your laptop.

29:20SPEAKERBut when they unified all those things in one cable, they - we all - like I thought it

29:26SPEAKERwas going to make it much easier and much simpler because we just use the same fucking

29:28SPEAKERcable for everything and that has absolutely not been the case.

29:33SPEAKERAnd that is the failing I think, is that it - we all expected it to reduce complexity

29:39SPEAKERand it actually just made things much more obtuse because all of a sudden you have - like

29:46SPEAKERit's like the Oculus - the wired Oculus link cable situation where you have a cable that

29:51SPEAKERis physically the right thing and when you plug it in, it doesn't work because electrically

29:55SPEAKERit's a USB-B instead of a USB - or USB-2 instead of USB-3 or whatever.

29:59SPEAKER- It's those damn consortiums.

30:01SPEAKER- Look, they just need to get their shit together.

30:03SPEAKER- They mean well.

30:04SPEAKERThey can just never seem to agree on the right things.

30:06SPEAKER- I mean, there will be a time in the future when you can buy a USB-C cable that will do

30:11SPEAKEReverything you want, I think.

30:12SPEAKER- Okay.

30:13SPEAKER- I think we're just - I think it's just - it's the normal - I mean, we are like nine

30:18SPEAKERyears into USB - like Norm and I saw our first USB-C connector in like 2010 or 2011 or 2012,

30:26SPEAKERI think. And I remember distinctly flipping the - like looking at it - flipping it over,

30:33SPEAKERlooking at it, flipping it over, looking at it, flipping over, we're like - it plugs in both ways.

30:36SPEAKER- It's very exciting.

30:38SPEAKER- We like - it was weird because it was at CES, it was one of those - one of those like big like - it

30:44SPEAKERwas like a hotel ballroom that they sell people like 15 by 15 foot booths to and a bunch of people

30:50SPEAKERwho didn't want to pay for a full CES booth set up in there and we were so excited. We were the

30:54SPEAKERonly people - the USB guy was so excited to talk to us because we were literally the only people

30:58SPEAKERthere the entire night that was excited to talk to them. I was like this is - it's all press.

31:04SPEAKER- Dude, what is not to be excited about with a reversible USB cable?

31:08SPEAKER- That's what we said.

31:09SPEAKER- That's the - dude, okay, that's why we do this podcast, I guess. At the same time,

31:13SPEAKERit's astonishing to me that they made a reversible plugs in either way USB cable

31:20SPEAKERand then found another way to make it even more confusing.

31:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think - realistically, I think moving the port, the power

31:28SPEAKERstuff like I think taken separately, I think each of them is a good thing. I think moving the power

31:34SPEAKERstuff to USB-C is a good thing. I think taking the Thunderbolt stuff and moving that off of

31:40SPEAKERDisplayPort onto USB-C is a good thing. I just - it's just not like the messaging around it is bad.

31:47SPEAKER- Yes, for sure. Yes, that was a very USB thing to do. That's so USB.

31:54SPEAKER- Let's take this thing that we have that's perfect and then put everything into it and

31:57SPEAKERmake it bad again. Thanks, USB.

32:00SPEAKER- Yep. Let's see here. How about - it's kind of - I almost brought this up during the

32:08SPEAKERcold open, but instead I will give Shags Magoo his moment in the spotlight.

32:15SPEAKERDid you know that to start a new zoo in the United States, you have to have at least one

32:19SPEAKERgrizzly bear, one brown bear and two black bears? It's the bear minimum. Thanks, Shags.

32:26SPEAKER- Thanks. The only reason I actually put this in here.

32:28SPEAKER- We have to have at least one dad joke per episode.

32:31SPEAKER- Actually, the reason I put it in here is because I wanted to talk about this because

32:34SPEAKERI was looking it up the other night and even though it's not really tech related at all,

32:37SPEAKERI found it on the internet. That's the tech angle. My girlfriend and I, for some reason,

32:41SPEAKERwanted to look up what to do when attacked by each type of bear because I knew the instructions are

32:47SPEAKERdifferent per bear. And this is going to test my information recall that I'm already forgetting

32:52SPEAKERwhich is which, but - - Grizzly, you make yourself as small as possible.

32:56SPEAKER- Yes. Grizzly and brown. You want to go prone on the ground. There you go. That's the mnemonic.

33:02SPEAKERGrizzly and brown, go prone on the ground. - That's good.

33:04SPEAKER- You want to lie on the ground, legs spread, and I believe hands over your head. What you're trying

33:09SPEAKERto do is make it as hard as possible for the bear to flip you over.

33:12SPEAKER- Yeah. You don't want it to be able to get to your soft intestinal parts.

33:16SPEAKER- Right. And I think generally what they were saying was you want to go prone like

33:20SPEAKERthat and hope that it leaves you alone. - Yeah. It seems like a real iffy strategy

33:24SPEAKERfrom where I sat. - Hope that it loses interest is essentially

33:27SPEAKERwhat they were saying. Whereas I want to say with the black bear, you're actually supposed to flee,

33:33SPEAKERlike you want to just run. - Yeah. The black bear, the black bears,

33:36SPEAKERI've seen black bears when I was backpacking on these coasts. They are, yeah, they're chill.

33:40SPEAKER- It sounds like, it sounds like they've got their line as well.

33:42SPEAKER- So the, the place that you, the thing I was told in, as a boy scout learning about backpacking in

33:48SPEAKERthat area is that if you see a black bear, the only time you're going to be in trouble is if

33:52SPEAKERyou're between a mom and cubs. - Okay.

33:55SPEAKER- And if you are, if you, if like the line, if the bear thinks that you are in the line of contact

34:02SPEAKERbetween the cubs, you're going to have a real bad time. But other than that, which is I think

34:07SPEAKERwhy you run, I don't know. - Yes. Yeah, that's fair. I mean,

34:10SPEAKERthis guy did allow for the worst case scenario of a black bear is after you,

34:14SPEAKERwho wants to eat your ass. And it was very much like, do not engage the bear,

34:18SPEAKERget the hell out of there. Like get to a high place, climb a tree.

34:20SPEAKER- Bear, they can climb trees. - I know. They were saying it's like,

34:23SPEAKERclimb up, it's up high in a place where the bear can't get to you is what they were trying to say.

34:27SPEAKERBut the really disturbing part is that in all cases, the end of the instructions was,

34:33SPEAKERif none of these other things work, essentially fist fight the bear. Like they straight up said,

34:37SPEAKERlike hit the bear in the face and hope that it discourages it and makes it leave you alone. And

34:41SPEAKERlike, I kind of figured by the time you get to the point where you're boxing the bear,

34:46SPEAKERyour luck has run out, but you tell me. - Yeah. This is like the surfers. I know

34:50SPEAKERthey're like, yeah, if you ever see a shark, just bop it in the nose, man. I'm like, no, no, no, man.

34:58SPEAKERThumbs down. Don't fight bears. Bears will mess you up.

35:02SPEAKERYou want to do a little kind of around the house home maker sort of block.

35:07SPEAKERYou know, a segment, we're doing a special red wheel round the house talking about housewares.

35:14SPEAKERYeah. Housewares such as, well, I'll read the question from Arcade Sage.

35:19SPEAKERWhat's more important to have in your kitchen, a kettle or a toaster?

35:22SPEAKERKettle. - Yeah. I would have

35:24SPEAKERtraditionally said toaster, but we just finally got a nice little thin neck. What is that? A

35:28SPEAKERgooseneck? Is that what you call that? - A gooseneck kettle. It's so nice.

35:30SPEAKER- Like a very nice fine temperature control electric kettle, like a good one.

35:34SPEAKER- Yep. - Yep. Which one did you get?

35:36SPEAKERDo you remember? - I don't remember the brand.

35:38SPEAKER- Okay. - It was one of the top rated

35:40SPEAKERAmazon ones. - Vida, Oxo has a good one. That was my understanding.

35:44SPEAKER- It's not, I'm familiar with those brands. This was not a brand I had heard of, which

35:48SPEAKERmeans it may be rebadged from some generic factory. I don't know.

35:51SPEAKER- Oh, that's fine. - But it's been working well so far.

35:54SPEAKER- I love for coffee making, for tea, for like, even for stupid stuff, like making,

36:01SPEAKERlike proofing yeast, like getting yeast ready to make bread or whatever is really nice.

36:07SPEAKERTemperature control kettle is awesome. - Yes. Having exact hot water on demand

36:11SPEAKERin moments is pretty good. I like to toast things, but only the toaster, we bought the

36:18SPEAKERtoaster that was recommended by the wire cutter at the time, but I have not been thrilled with it.

36:22SPEAKERSo maybe I just need a better toaster. Or maybe toasters are not good.

36:26SPEAKER- I had a Breville, like the Breville robot up down one that somebody gave us when we got married,

36:32SPEAKERI think, that was awesome. It was really, really good for a long time. It conked out last year.

36:38SPEAKER- Oh. - And we missed it.

36:39SPEAKER- Hmm. - Yeah.

36:41SPEAKER- Interesting. - We replaced it with an air fryer/toaster

36:45SPEAKERoven. And like, I'm going to go and tell you, I kind of wish we just didn't and I put the toast

36:50SPEAKERon top of the gas burner and let it rip. I feel like I could do that. I feel like I could make

36:55SPEAKERthat work. - If you have gas,

36:57SPEAKERthat sounds like a good way to go. We do not, sadly.

37:00SPEAKER- Minor fire hazard, I would say. - Yeah. Just got to watch it. Toast

37:03SPEAKERis pretty good though. I'm not going to lie. - I love toast. We got some thick wheat toast

37:07SPEAKERwhile we're here. It's been really nice. - Some desert toast.

37:10SPEAKER- Get an English muffin toasted. Yeah, desert toast.

37:12SPEAKER- All right. Question from Badfinger. When Brad said he had to vacuum every week,

37:17SPEAKEReven with a robo-vac, I was shocked by his adamant tone. How often do you clean your bathrooms?

37:22SPEAKER- Sundays. - Oh, really?

37:24SPEAKER- That's the start of the week, bathroom cleaning day.

37:26SPEAKER- Yes. The ancient Greeks knew it best, bathroom cleaning day.

37:31SPEAKER- I find we have to vacuum a lot because of the dust, because of no central air.

37:36SPEAKER- Does that make dust worse? I guess I hadn't considered that.

37:39SPEAKER- I mean, the HVAC system has a big filter on it.

37:42SPEAKER- I guess that's true. Yeah. I mean, yes. I have thought forever that the dust in

37:47SPEAKERour apartment seems way worse than it should be, and maybe that's why.

37:49SPEAKER- I think also urban areas, you get more soot from cars and stuff. When we used to live by the

37:57SPEAKERfreeway south of Market, like next to DNA Lounge, we used to get this black sooty crap on the

38:04SPEAKERwindowsill that was gross. But yeah, usually every week, sometimes I skip one. I'm in the

38:11SPEAKERbathroom cleaner in our house. - You're the designated bathroom cleaner?

38:13SPEAKER- Yeah. I don't like doing the tub, so I do that. The tub is definitely every other week, but like,

38:19SPEAKERI'll hit the scrubbing bubbles on the tiles once a week and clean the mirror and the sink and the

38:24SPEAKERtoilet. - Sure. Cleaning the bathroom is a

38:26SPEAKERpoint of contention around here. - I kind of like cleaning.

38:29SPEAKER- There are some things I have to do, such as vacuuming. There are other things that I'm like,

38:33SPEAKER"Oh, I could probably go a little longer." - So, the thing for me about the bathroom is like,

38:38SPEAKERif I have to choose... So, I also do the stove just because I'm good at doing the degreaser stuff on

38:43SPEAKERthe stove top. - Yes.

38:44SPEAKER- We use our stove a lot. - Cleaning the stove is another one I enjoy.

38:46SPEAKER- So, I like doing the bathroom because it's like, it's gross. It's uncomfortable. Gina also has

38:54SPEAKERback problems and I don't, so it's much easier for me to do a lot of that stuff.

38:57SPEAKER- Okay, that's a good point. - But like, I'd much rather... I'll always take the distasteful thing

39:03SPEAKERthat takes less time than the thing that is like more time-consuming but less gross.

39:08SPEAKER- Sure. - If we're divvying up chores.

39:10SPEAKER- That's noble. - No, that's just me. I'd

39:12SPEAKERlike to rather do something like, you know, I can min-max my bathroom cleaning.

39:16SPEAKER- Using a two-tier logistical advantage. - How often do you clean your bathroom? Hold on,

39:21SPEAKERwe didn't get to the bottom of this. - No, no, no. Let me clarify here.

39:25SPEAKERIt gets cleaned on a frequent basis. - Okay.

39:27SPEAKER- How often I am the one doing the cleaning is where the contention arises.

39:31SPEAKER- Well, I think the you is the plural in this case, the housekeeping team at each of our domiciles.

39:39SPEAKER- In that case, it is about a week-ish. It's just, I don't know. Much like you,

39:44SPEAKERI choose to do other things instead. - Our rule on housekeeping is that if

39:52SPEAKERone of us has what the other one feels are unreasonable expectations about cleaning things,

39:59SPEAKERit's their problem. Like, for example, one of us feels that the sheets should be replaced and

40:03SPEAKERcleaned much more often than the other one does. So it's their problem and not the other person's.

40:10SPEAKER- I see. Okay, that's kind of where we're at then. That sounds like a

40:13SPEAKERkind of standing rule of if you want it done sooner, then it's up to you.

40:16SPEAKER- But you can't, you can, like, you can kind of get dangerously close to evil with that though.

40:21SPEAKER- That's true. - Just be like a cop-out for like,

40:23SPEAKERI don't want to do shit. I don't know. I feel like you use, with great power comes great

40:28SPEAKERresponsibility. - Yes, for sure. Speaking of living in a city.

40:31SPEAKER- Yes, hot times. - Question from Roland Stasek.

40:36SPEAKERCan you talk about why you both still live in the San Francisco area?

40:39SPEAKERDo you intend to remain there for the foreseeable future? He's got a little bit of an anecdote here.

40:44SPEAKERAs someone who recently lived in the expensive DC metro area, but moved to Vermont just over

40:48SPEAKERfive years ago now to escape housing prices and endless commutes, among other things,

40:53SPEAKERI can't believe I waited so long. Now I live in a... Are you sighing?

40:57SPEAKER- Yeah, this all sounds real good. - Yeah, I know. Yeah, well, yes.

41:02SPEAKERNow I live in a still reasonably populous area where housing prices are more reasonable and

41:07SPEAKERwhere friends and coworkers will say to me with a straight face things like,

41:10SPEAKER"Traffic was so terrible, it took me 25 minutes to get out of Burlington."

41:15SPEAKERAre you still in San Francisco because you love the area, the culture,

41:17SPEAKERyour partner's jobs aren't as portable as yours or something else?

41:21SPEAKERIf you have the chance, I highly recommend selling a small

41:23SPEAKERand not that great house in a big city suburb. I wish I even had one of those.

41:28SPEAKERAnd moving to a more distant area and spending half as much on a house that is twice as big

41:32SPEAKERand three times as nice. I think you can rest assured that we've both thought at length

41:37SPEAKERabout this exact question. - So the time for us to move

41:41SPEAKERwas probably a year ago, just because my daughter's in third grade and we're to the point

41:49SPEAKERnow that if we don't do it soon, we're stuck here for a fairly long time. I look at the tax rate in

41:56SPEAKERCalifornia, I look at the amount of house I can afford, I look at the number of places I want to

42:01SPEAKERlive versus the places I can afford to live. I don't know. We're on the edge, I would say.

42:10SPEAKER- Yeah. I am kind of in the same spot. I mean, my partner's job is pretty tied to this area.

42:17SPEAKERSo that is a consideration for sure. But also it's only been in the last, since the pandemic

42:24SPEAKERstarted really that the remote work has become so in vogue and we have largely been decoupled from

42:30SPEAKERphysical location, right? - Honestly, the thing that worries me

42:34SPEAKERabout moving someplace like Vermont is that if I did move to Vermont and then needed to

42:41SPEAKERget another job at some point, I'm afraid that the job situation for somebody that does what I

42:46SPEAKERdo might not be sufficient. I might have to just move back, which would suck.

42:52SPEAKER- Sure. - Because the one thing I do know is that

42:56SPEAKERif we sell our house here, there's very little chance we'll ever be able to buy anything here

43:00SPEAKERagain. - Right. That's another

43:02SPEAKERconsideration wherever you're going right now because the housing market is so completely

43:06SPEAKERbuck wild, right? - Buck wild, yeah.

43:09SPEAKER- I don't know if there's any end in sight on that.

43:11SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I think there's gonna be some regulation, but there's some real skeezy business

43:15SPEAKERhappening in the real estate market right now nationwide. So the other side of it is that right

43:21SPEAKERnow if we move, we're not going to be able to get... We will not get a house that is twice as

43:26SPEAKERbig and three times as nice for half the money anymore. We will spend 25% less and get a house

43:34SPEAKERthat is bigger and nicer, but it is not a, "Hey, our million dollar house here turns into a

43:40SPEAKER$500,000 palace someplace else anymore." Unless we move someplace we probably don't want to live.

43:45SPEAKER- Yes. Even the housing prices where I'm from have all but doubled since the last time I looked.

43:51SPEAKER- If there had been a... Vermont is totally on our list though.

43:54SPEAKER- Interesting. - It seems appealing from

43:56SPEAKERboth a climate change and a place I would like to live perspective.

44:00SPEAKER- There is a lot I would miss about San Francisco though, the culture and particularly the food.

44:05SPEAKER- I mean, food. Yeah. Honestly, when I go to grocery stores on the East Coast,

44:10SPEAKERI'm always bummed out. California grocery stores have ruined me. Of course, I haven't been in a

44:15SPEAKERgrocery store in a year and a half, so maybe it doesn't matter.

44:17SPEAKER- Yes. Truly one of the great food cities. - Yeah.

44:21SPEAKER- This is sort of housing-ish related from Kyle. What do you do with the boxes

44:28SPEAKERyour electronics came in? Which do you keep and which do you throw away? Until recently,

44:32SPEAKERI kept the box for most of the electronics I've purchased over the last few years.

44:36SPEAKERI've never needed them, but for years resisted throwing them away in the off chance I would

44:40SPEAKERhave a reason to have them. I never have. - Recycle it all.

44:44SPEAKER- Yeah. It's cardboard, man. Just let it return to the earth. I get it. I used to be a chronic

44:51SPEAKER- You might be surprised to find out. I used to be a habitual box keeper, but Apartment Living

44:58SPEAKERcompletely cured me of that because you cannot. Like, you just cannot store things like that in

45:03SPEAKERapartments, so they are gone. My PS5 and Series X boxes have been gone for months at this point.

45:08SPEAKER- I keep boxes for things that I might. So, for a while, when I was having to ship computers

45:15SPEAKERfor VR stuff, I would keep like case boxes and I kept a couple of monitor boxes that I actually

45:20SPEAKERneed to go find in the garage and recycle at this point. I kept a big TV box for a little

45:29SPEAKERbit because I wasn't sure if I was going to keep it and that felt weird. But yeah, get rid of boxes.

45:34SPEAKER- You're right. That is the one exception. I've got boxes for my PC cases and my keyboard,

45:41SPEAKERlike piano keyboard, and like a couple of other big things that I would want to move and I would

45:45SPEAKERnot want to trust to just move without protection. But even those like flatten.

45:50SPEAKER- Yeah. And realistically, you're going to pay for movers probably if you move again, right?

45:54SPEAKER- Yeah. I often think that I would probably rent a car if I were moving,

45:59SPEAKERlike an Outback or something with a lot of cargo space.

46:02SPEAKER- Yeah, and just do a bunch of trips.

46:04SPEAKER- Like not a bunch, but like just the PCs, just basically the things like my NAS,

46:09SPEAKERlike things that are like sentimental value. My boxes of old video games from childhood,

46:13SPEAKERlike the bare minimum of things that I absolutely could not stand to see you get lost or broken

46:19SPEAKERand drive it there myself and let everything else go in the movers.

46:22SPEAKER- Gina and I always haul a couple of loads of keepers,

46:25SPEAKERlike the special stuff, like houseplants fell in that as well for a long time, right?

46:30SPEAKER- Yeah, they're members of the family.

46:32SPEAKER- Yeah, they count. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I would do.

46:37SPEAKER- I think I am so cutthroat about like getting rid of stuff that you can just buy again on

46:43SPEAKERthe other end. - There is that.

46:44SPEAKER- That I actually think about using one of those storage pods if I ever move,

46:48SPEAKERlike they drop it off outside, you load it, and then they just drop it off wherever you're going.

46:52SPEAKER- We did a storage pod for a little bit to send some stuff from the East Coast to here,

47:00SPEAKERsend some furniture from my parents to here. And it worked really well. Like the trick is it has to

47:06SPEAKERbe packed super well. We also, when we moved into the current house we're in, we actually paid for

47:11SPEAKERpretty good movers. Like instead of the normal two guys in a van, ultra cheap, whatever budget movers,

47:18SPEAKERwe paid for people who packed everything up and like they did a better job wrapping up like TVs

47:25SPEAKERand stuff than I would have. - Okay, that's good to hear. I've

47:28SPEAKERjust heard so many horror stories about movers, but I'm sure there are good ones out there.

47:32SPEAKER- Well, it's the normal thing of like if you get the person who bids the least and you're not

47:38SPEAKERreally lucky, then you might have a bad time. - Yes, that makes sense. Do you have any idea

47:43SPEAKERhow much those storage pods get tilted back and forth? Are they kept pretty level?

47:46SPEAKER- I think they're pretty level. They're on a flatbed truck usually.

47:49SPEAKER- Yeah, okay. Just wondering how much stuff tipping over is a problem with those things.

47:54SPEAKER- We also, when we had to do a re-flooring a few years ago, we put one of those in the driveway for

48:00SPEAKERa month or two and hauled everything out of my office. And we had to refinish the floor in there

48:06SPEAKERfor reasons. And it was super convenient to not have to clear enough space in the garage for all

48:14SPEAKERthe shit that lives in my office. And we just emptied out the room into that thing and then

48:19SPEAKERput it all back in when the floor was fixed. - Sounds pretty handy. Okay.

48:22SPEAKER- Yeah, it was good. - Last kind of homey

48:25SPEAKERquestion here from Yasirg, I guess is how you say that. Oatmeal or Grits?

48:30SPEAKER- Oh, man, they're both... I can't pick. - Oh, really? This makes me a terrible

48:34SPEAKERsoutherner, but I would say oatmeal anytime. - So honestly, since I started making both in

48:41SPEAKERthe rice cooker... - Ooh.

48:42SPEAKER- Oh, dude, did you not make Grits in the rice cooker?

48:45SPEAKER- Oh, I've never made Grits in the rice cooker. That sounds pretty good.

48:47SPEAKER- So you put them in the night before and put a little bit of butter in there.

48:51SPEAKER- Damn. - And then the normal

48:53SPEAKERkind of porridge amount of water for your rice cooker. And they come out so freaking good.

48:58SPEAKER- Okay. - I love Grits. I love

49:02SPEAKERlike Grits with a fried egg and maybe some bacon chopped up in there and a little bit of

49:05SPEAKERchopped onion or something. - Oh, yes. I mean...

49:07SPEAKER- Just stir it all up. - Yeah, cheese Grits.

49:10SPEAKER- Oh, yeah. - Quite damn good. I mean,

49:11SPEAKERmy grandma, God rest her soul, used to make red eye gravy. We put on the Grits. That was just,

49:16SPEAKERyes, chef's kiss. But I don't know if it was something about the way my family always made

49:20SPEAKERGrits that they can't be out for more than like 20 minutes before they just become this like

49:24SPEAKERcongealed rubbery mass that you can just pick up with your hand.

49:27SPEAKER- No, that's just what Grits... That's what happens with Grits.

49:28SPEAKER- Is that just Grits? Okay. - That's the cycle of life, yeah.

49:31SPEAKER- That's a big turn off for me. They don't last very long.

49:33SPEAKER- At the same time, like if you were asking about rolled oats, rolled oat meal, I would send that,

49:39SPEAKERjust fire that shit in the sun. It's one of the worst foods in the world. But the steel cut stuff

49:44SPEAKERand even like the steel cut with a little bit of the rolls rolled in there.

49:46SPEAKER- You're the one that taught me that trick and it's been fantastic. You just throw a little

49:50SPEAKERhandful of the rolled oats on top of your big thing of steel cut and you get a little bit of

49:54SPEAKERan extra creamy thing going on. - Yeah. It's real good.

49:57SPEAKER- Yes. Steel cut oats are fantastic. I find them to be very versatile. There's all kinds

50:02SPEAKERof stuff you can do. - If I had to pick,

50:06SPEAKERI think I'd probably go with oatmeal and then I just substitute polenta in for Grits.

50:10SPEAKER- Okay. - And not tell anybody.

50:12SPEAKER- Sure. - Life finds a way.

50:15SPEAKER- Yes. So it does. Let's see. - We got a lot in here.

50:19SPEAKER- We got a lot of good questions this week. We might have to take some... We've got a

50:24SPEAKERpatron episode coming up next week. We might have to take some more of these on there because...

50:26SPEAKER- Yeah. I think that's a good idea. - If you don't like that, I should say,

50:29SPEAKERI'm gonna stop myself here. If you don't like that, if you prefer we not do more Q&As on the

50:33SPEAKERpatron episode, please let us know. - Yeah.

50:35SPEAKER- I hate to double dip if people aren't into it, but we have an embarrassment of riches in the Q&A

50:40SPEAKERchannel in terms of good questions. So we can't... Even with two episodes, we couldn't get to half of

50:46SPEAKERthese. So... - Can we do Julian's question

50:49SPEAKERabout the batteries? I think it's pretty good. - Oh, yes. Yes. That was on my list.

50:51SPEAKERJulian Wheels has a question. How do you manage NIMH batteries like in loops as they age?

50:57SPEAKER- Wait. - As someone with a kid... I'm sorry.

50:59SPEAKER- Nickel metal hydride. - Yes. Come on.

51:02SPEAKER- This isn't the secret of NIMH. - That's why I say it that way. Every

51:05SPEAKERtime I see that, it just makes me think about the secret of NIMH and I can't help myself.

51:08SPEAKER- Okay. Okay. Okay. - Excuse me, nickel metal hydride.

51:12SPEAKERAs someone with a kid, we have dozens of AA and AAA batteries, and I have no idea which ones might

51:18SPEAKERbe lower capacity at this point. Their website says you can charge them 2,100 times. So maybe

51:23SPEAKERit doesn't matter. - It doesn't matter. Like the thing is,

51:29SPEAKERwhat we do is we have a big giant collection of the white enel loops, which are the 2,100 charge

51:36SPEAKERcycle, mid power ones. The things that I need to last for a long time, like flashlights and stuff

51:44SPEAKERlike that, we buy the slightly more expensive, fewer charge cycles, but higher capacity ones.

51:50SPEAKERAnd those we know we only put in certain things like flashlights and - sometimes I put them in

51:56SPEAKERXbox controllers, but don't tell anybody. When they stop working, you'll know - we had some

52:04SPEAKERit tested after years and years and years. Like some of the ones we inherited from the whiskey

52:08SPEAKERoffices on Front Street that Vinny had bought in like 2010, conked out in like 2014 after

52:15SPEAKERthousands of charge cycles. And then they eventually they just stopped holding it.

52:19SPEAKERThey just stopped charging. Like you put them in the charger and it's like,

52:22SPEAKERin the charger is like, yo dog, these aren't going to work. And then we recycled them.

52:26SPEAKER- You guys just recharging those things like daily almost?

52:29SPEAKER- Sometimes. Yeah. We used them in the battery, in the wireless packs.

52:32SPEAKER- Oh, okay. Sure. - It tested. We used a lot of wireless packs.

52:35SPEAKER- Okay. Yes. Yes. You would not be sitting in a chair in front of a TV for most of your recording

52:40SPEAKERstuff like we were? - No. Yeah. No, we would have - we like,

52:44SPEAKEReven in the shop, we would use wireless packs usually because it was easier than having to

52:47SPEAKERdeal with cables in there. - Right.

52:49SPEAKER- For what it's worth, the only ones that I've had at home die in normal home use after - I think

52:57SPEAKERwe wrote about these in 2010 first, is when I started swapping them out. I've only had the ones

53:02SPEAKERthat I accidentally stole from work die. So... - My slightly less technical solution is that I

53:08SPEAKERbought kind of different color variety packs. - Yeah.

53:12SPEAKER- So, which makes them easy to pair up so that I at least - I at least know that every two - every

53:17SPEAKERpair of double A's has been in use together for the whole time I've had them so that I know that

53:22SPEAKERI don't have like one good battery and one older battery mixed together, which might be bottlenecking

53:26SPEAKERthe capacity. - Well, you've got to be careful

53:28SPEAKERthough because the - on the end loops at least, the different colors are different capacities.

53:32SPEAKER- No, this is just a - this was a fun variety pack of their like sparkly colors,

53:36SPEAKERthey're like for kids probably and they're like purple and orange and green.

53:41SPEAKER- I think Vinny's strategy was to - when he bought a new batch, he would put a different color,

53:46SPEAKERlittle dot sticker or piece of gaff tape on each one.

53:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that works too. - And that worked pretty well.

53:51SPEAKERIt was weird because the blue ones used to be cheaper and lower capacity. I mean,

53:56SPEAKERthe thing is for kids toys especially, it doesn't matter because if they wear out faster,

53:59SPEAKERyou literally just go get another one from the drawer and put those back on the charger

54:02SPEAKERand it's fine. So yeah, I don't worry about it too much.

54:07SPEAKER- Yes. Let's see, you wanna do one more? - Yeah, let's do one more.

54:12SPEAKER- Oh, okay. This is - I like this one. It's from Bolt Breaker 1. What are your thoughts on using

54:17SPEAKERM discs for data storage instead of a NAS? - Oh man, M discs are so stupid.

54:22SPEAKER- Wait, you know what an M disc is? Oh, this is very exciting.

54:24SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the - these are burnable CDs, but instead of using an organic dye layer,

54:30SPEAKERthey use like a stone amalgam that you can - that basically melts into pits and lands, right?

54:37SPEAKER- That's what it is? It's stone? - It's a stone-like amalgam,

54:40SPEAKERis what they described it as. - Wow. So they're up to Blu-rays now. I think

54:44SPEAKERthey - I'm not sure if they have B100, but they definitely have 50 gig ones.

54:48SPEAKER- 25 and 50. I don't know if they have dual layer. I think they only have 25s.

54:51SPEAKER- Uh, you might be right. I'm not sure. I could go look.

54:54SPEAKER- Okay, so here's - here's the thing. Do you remember when CDRs came out and they were like,

55:00SPEAKER"Hey man, these are going to last a hundred years. It's the perfect - buy the gold ones.

55:04SPEAKERThey cost a lot more, but they're going to last forever." And then these - then we did that again

55:09SPEAKERand again and again. And here we are with the latest generation of, "This is going to last

55:13SPEAKERa thousand years." And guess what? - You have really buried the lead here,

55:16SPEAKERwhich is that they claim these Blu-ray writable discs last for a thousand years.

55:20SPEAKERLike that's - that's the tagline. - So in 20 years when you've burned

55:26SPEAKERa bunch of shit to these discs, A, here's the double - here's the two - well, first off,

55:31SPEAKERNASAs and M-disks are two totally different - are solutions for two totally different problems.

55:38SPEAKER- Different use cases, for sure. - Yeah.

55:39SPEAKER- NASAs is not a backup. Like RAID is not a backup and NAS is not a backup.

55:43SPEAKERIt's a convenience device. I saw somebody put it really well in our Discord the other day.

55:47SPEAKERRAID is not a backup. RAID is for uptime. - That's exactly it.

55:50SPEAKER- A drive failed and your thing is still going. You can swap that drive out and it's back to

55:54SPEAKERfull resilience. But in the meantime, it stayed up, right? But it's not - you should never depend

56:00SPEAKERon an act like a live NAS as your only backup solution. You definitely want to have another

56:05SPEAKERfallback. - So the thing about - the thing about

56:10SPEAKERthe M-disks is that they do - they do like heat cycles, they do light cycles, they do all sorts

56:15SPEAKERof different stuff on these. And then somebody looks at how long they - like what horrible things

56:20SPEAKERthey have to do to these disks to get them to not hold data reliably anymore. And they make up a

56:25SPEAKERnumber that is like a thousand years at that point. And it's a number that looks great on a box so

56:31SPEAKERthat when you're buying the really expensive burner, you're like, "Oh man, I should get this

56:34SPEAKERone that burns the rock disks. That sounds awesome." - So the compatibility is shocking.

56:39SPEAKERLike the random $50 Blu-ray drive in my PC right now can do them. Like they are compatible with

56:45SPEAKERlike most of the writable Blu-ray drives on the market. - Yeah, it's - I just don't trust them.

56:51SPEAKERAnd also even if they're - even if they're up to 50 gigs now, 50 gigs is not - no data.

56:55SPEAKER- So you're not wrong. So they do - I'm on Amazon right now. They do have 100 gig ones now, BDXL.

57:00SPEAKER- Okay. - Which made by - so they're

57:04SPEAKERabout 10 bucks a piece. 100 gig disk is roughly $10 and change made by Verbatim. So it's at least

57:11SPEAKERlike a known brand. - Okay. 100 gigs. I have - my NAS is 14 terabytes. So 14000 divided by 100 is 140

57:23SPEAKERdisks. So that's only $1,400 to back those up and probably like six weeks.

57:28SPEAKER- Yeah, totally. You're not going to back up your NAS with them, but those old disintegrating VHS

57:34SPEAKERtapes of our - the last 40 years of home movies that my parents had digitized, like those will

57:39SPEAKERfit on one of those 100 gig disks. - Here's an interesting thing you can do that's free,

57:44SPEAKERthough, too. You can also just put them on YouTube and make them unlisted.

57:48SPEAKERAnd then they're just there and you don't have to worry about it.

57:50SPEAKER- Who knows if YouTube is going to be around forever.

57:52SPEAKER- I think - look, Brad, Google makes a buttload of money on YouTube. I think YouTube's probably

57:59SPEAKERfine. - Probably. Look, 10 bucks, burn some important sentimental stuff on there, throw it

58:04SPEAKERin your fire safe. - For - yes. For the important sentimental stuff, yes, 100%.

58:09SPEAKER- I might do a trip report here. For that price, I might give it a shot. Just a little extra piece

58:15SPEAKERof mind. - I just put my computer in a case that doesn't have an optical drive for the first time

58:18SPEAKERin like the last 30 years. - Never. Never. - I can't - I don't know. I think I'm probably fine.

58:27SPEAKER- Actually, I mean, honestly, the thing I wanted to say about these is my concern is not the disk

58:31SPEAKERwearing out or becoming unreadable. My concern is all of the drives disappearing that can read them.

58:36SPEAKERLike 30, 40 years from now, the disk might be useless because you might not be able to

58:41SPEAKERfind a drive that's still working enough to read it, right? - Or even if you have a drive like - okay,

58:47SPEAKERso CD-ROMs are forwards compatible with DVD and Blu-ray, which has turned out to be really

58:52SPEAKERconvenient because if it hadn't been, where are you going to find a motherboard with a PATA port

58:58SPEAKERthat you can plug in? Like you can still buy kind of adapters that plug into USB and will bridge USB

59:04SPEAKERto PATA, which means that you could still use those drives. But like it won't be too long before

59:09SPEAKERthose things are not accessible anymore. And the interfaces, the drives, there's a whole host of

59:15SPEAKERproblems. Just keep copying it from hard drive to hard drive. - Like what do you think? Like maybe

59:19SPEAKER10 years out from getting hard to buy an optical drive? - I think we're probably closer. I think

59:25SPEAKERthe SATA ports going away is probably going to be before that, but I could be wrong. - You know,

59:29SPEAKERthere's a lot of USB adapters out there to be fair. - There are a lot of USB adapters. I mean,

59:33SPEAKERmaybe the tech is ubiquitous enough at this point that it's not a problem. All I know is that if I

59:37SPEAKERwant to buy a VHSC adapter to capture stuff off of VHS tapes in my VHS player, they are shockingly

59:47SPEAKERexpensive now. - Interesting. - Because the camcorder conked out like 10 years ago. - Yeah,

59:51SPEAKERsure. - And the VHSC adapters are like 50 bucks when I looked last time and I don't know that I

59:59SPEAKERI'll probably just borrow a VHC camcorder from somebody to do that copy at some point. - That's

1:00:03SPEAKERthe way to go. I've been eyeing an IDE to USB adapter for a while. - Yeah, I have one of those.

1:00:10SPEAKER- Do you? - Yeah, they're really useful. - Yeah, all those old hard drives in my parents' basement,

1:00:14SPEAKERI wouldn't mind dumping those just to complete my lifetime of data collection. - I used it to look

1:00:20SPEAKERat all the hard drives that are in the box in my garage. And when I was like, yeah, I can probably

1:00:24SPEAKERjust thermite all of these, they'll be fine. - Yeah. I'm gonna throw one fifth mile, this may

1:00:30SPEAKERnot be fast. - Bonus question. - One bonus question in, a little follow on to the homemaking segment.

1:00:37SPEAKERIt's from one of our networking gurus from the frozen north of Canada, Cakebatter.

1:00:44SPEAKERBeans and chili, yes or no? - Oh, man. Oh, wow. - I mean, this is an instant easy answer for me,

1:00:51SPEAKERwhich is yes. - So. - Yes. - The traditional culinary answers that no, there are no beans

1:00:57SPEAKERand chili. - That's just a sauce, man. What is that? - If you've ever had like a real thick,

1:01:05SPEAKERmeaty Texas chili. - That's just meat gruel. - Have you ever been to the Texas chili parlor in

1:01:11SPEAKERAustin? - I have not. All of my business trips to Austin were dominated by barbecue,

1:01:16SPEAKERprobably for good reason, but. - The barbecue is pretty good. The Texas chili parlor, we went to

1:01:22SPEAKERone time when I was there for South by and this was before Death Proof, I'm sure it's a nightmare

1:01:28SPEAKERto get into now, but like I kind of became a convert on that moment. It's a good chili,

1:01:35SPEAKERlike it's a wholesome filling experience. I was delighted, my taste buds were overwhelmed.

1:01:41SPEAKERIt was everything I expected from chili and all the beans do is absorb flavor. Plus,

1:01:47SPEAKERif you're going to put it on a hot dog, which is the like God tier use of chili,

1:01:52SPEAKERyou don't want beans on your wiener. - So you're definitely right about that. But again,

1:01:59SPEAKERI think of that as a sauce. The Texas Pete that we bought, that we put on hot dogs for my entire

1:02:04SPEAKERyouth said chili sauce right there on the can. - But you were Texas, we were Hormel no beans

1:02:09SPEAKERpeople. - No, we were Texas Pete. - Sometimes stag if things were thin. - My dad had very particular

1:02:15SPEAKERtastes about certain things. One of them was hot dog chili, another one was hot sauce,

1:02:19SPEAKERwhich was Texas Pete. - You know, when I was a kid, I thought that if a product was named after a

1:02:25SPEAKERstate, then it was only named that if you're outside that state. So like I thought that

1:02:32SPEAKERArizona Iced Tea was called Tennessee Iced Tea when you were in Arizona. - That's amazing.

1:02:36SPEAKER- Yeah. Yeah. Think about it. Tennessee Pete. So yeah, very will centric. Will centric view of the

1:02:42SPEAKERworld, I guess. - All right. - I think that's a good place to wrap it up. If you have questions,

1:02:46SPEAKERyou can submit them in the patron only discord to the accused seeking A's channel, or you can

1:02:52SPEAKERsend them to the email address, which is? - Yes. I know what it is. You want me to say it? - I

1:02:58SPEAKERwant you to say it. - It's techpod@content.town. - Techpod@content.town. That's where people can

1:03:03SPEAKERsend emails. - That's right. It is techpod@content.town. - I did this bit the other day

1:03:07SPEAKERon a work video. - Oh yeah. - And as always, if you want to get access to that patron only discord,

1:03:13SPEAKERit is a wonderful community full of delightful human beings where Brad and I spend a shocking

1:03:17SPEAKERamount of time hanging out. You can find out how to sign up at patreon.com/techpod. People talk

1:03:25SPEAKERabout bears a lot. I don't know exactly. I missed the origin of the bear conversation. - Oh, is that

1:03:29SPEAKERwhere that question came from? - I assumed. - Certain topics just kind of take over the

1:03:34SPEAKERdiscord briefly here and there. - Yeah. Yeah. We've enabled threads since last we spoke,

1:03:42SPEAKERI think. We've allowed a handful of, it's audio so you can't see it. I'm air quoting, trusted

1:03:49SPEAKERpatrons to join the thread club. They can make new threads to kind of lightly corral conversation.

1:03:57SPEAKER- We've put the power of threads in the hands of the people or at least a

1:04:01SPEAKERsmall selection of the people. - A subset. Yeah. I mean, look,

1:04:06SPEAKERI think we accidentally made it all Canadians also. I'm not sure about Wedge. - Not intentional.

1:04:10SPEAKER- But I know at least two of the three thread club members are Canadian.

1:04:21SPEAKERIt's a lovely community and you should come hang out there. If you like the podcast, you will like

1:04:25SPEAKERthe folks that are in there because they all like the podcast too. - Yes. And they like a lot of

1:04:29SPEAKERother stuff too, and you can talk to them about it and learn a lot. - Yeah, exactly. - And have a good

1:04:34SPEAKERtime. - So again, the address is patreon.com/techpod. If you can't sign up the Patreon, just tell a

1:04:41SPEAKERfriend, let people know about the podcast. That's the way we get new folks in here. And we love to

1:04:46SPEAKERhave new audience members all the time. This is the part of the show where we thank a lot of

1:04:53SPEAKERpatrons, Brad, because it's the end of the month. We thank our associate producer tier patrons and

1:04:57SPEAKERour executive producer tier patrons. So I'm going to start with our executive producer tier patrons,

1:05:06SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Fractured Veil/The Paddle Creek Games Company, makers of such wonderful games

1:05:15SPEAKERas Fractured Veil, David Allen, Jacob Chappell, James Kamik, Joel Krowska, The Bunny Fiend, and

1:05:23SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie are at our executive producer tier. And then Alejandro Navarro, Andre M. Burke,

1:05:30SPEAKERArthur Giese, Brian Rabe, Dan Brockman, Dave Julian, Graham Banks, Jad Rita, Jason Nieland,

1:05:38SPEAKERJay Mabey, Jorge Pereira, Josh Klein, Julian, Mike Bell, Ricin, Sanchik Kumar, Terry Cox,

1:05:47SPEAKERThomas Shea, and Wedge are all associate producer tiers. So thank you all so, so much. We really

1:05:51SPEAKERappreciate it. Thank you to all of our producers. Thank you to all of our other patrons. Thank you

1:05:55SPEAKERto everyone who listens. As always, as we always say, it's a 100% listener supported show. We don't

1:06:01SPEAKERtake ads and this is what pays the bills over here. And we really do appreciate it.

1:06:08SPEAKERYes.

1:06:09SPEAKERAnd if you want to find out how to join again, it's patreon.com/techpod.

1:06:13SPEAKERI think we'll be back next week. There's a patron episode coming up probably over this weekend,

1:06:18SPEAKERwould be my guess. Maybe early next week.

1:06:20SPEAKERYes. In the coming days.

1:06:21SPEAKERWe got to do it before I drive back next Wednesday.

1:06:23SPEAKEROh, right. We got to, yes, have some overhead to plan around. Logistics.

1:06:27SPEAKERWe got to plan around my nonsense. I'll be honest, I'm not super looking forward to the drive back.

1:06:33SPEAKERI think we might drive up the coast instead of coming up five. So maybe it'll be more fun.

1:06:36SPEAKERThat sounds nice.

1:06:38SPEAKERYeah. As long as you can make it in one day.

1:06:40SPEAKERI am not staying in a hotel.

1:06:42SPEAKEROkay.

1:06:42SPEAKERNo, thank you, sir. We'll sleep in the car on the side of the road. You'll be fine.

1:06:46SPEAKERPacifica or bust.

1:06:48SPEAKERExactly. Have a lovely, lovely week, everyone. We'll see you next Sunday. Bye.

1:06:57SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]