169: Don't Trust Alberta's Lies

00:00SPEAKER- It's 16 a.m., the wheels are turning slowly.

00:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

00:03SPEAKER- Faster than the speed of light.

00:06SPEAKER- It starts with a C, and it's not continuity, it's-

00:09SPEAKER- Like a causality paradox?

00:10SPEAKER- Causality, there we go, thank you.

00:12SPEAKER- Causality is weird.

00:13SPEAKERDo you know the whole theoretical thing

00:15SPEAKERabout if you were theoretically able to travel back in time

00:18SPEAKERand change events, that other events would still have

00:20SPEAKERto occur to make future outcomes stay the same?

00:23SPEAKER- Oh yes, the final destination paradox.

00:25SPEAKER- Wait, hang on, is final destination secretly

00:27SPEAKERthe most theoretically, physically accurate

00:30SPEAKERtime travel thing out there?

00:32SPEAKER- The idea of final destination is that if you cheat death

00:35SPEAKERone way, death will get you some other way

00:36SPEAKERthat's more amazing.

00:38SPEAKER- Sound backing in physics in the final destination series.

00:42SPEAKER- It's a little bit, between that and the butterfly effect

00:44SPEAKERfeaturing Ashton the cooch coocher,

00:46SPEAKERI feel like we're 90% of the way to none of that

00:52SPEAKERback to the future bullshit time travel stuff,

00:54SPEAKERlike actual real quantum physics time travel.

00:57SPEAKER- Maybe we should get Professor Coocher on this podcast.

01:01SPEAKER- I think he's available, he's probably promoting

01:02SPEAKERthat 90s show or something now.

01:03SPEAKERSo I mean, I guess he's around.

01:06SPEAKERIs that a real thing?

01:07SPEAKERSomebody was talking about that.

01:08SPEAKERI didn't even bother to look it up, I just assumed.

01:10SPEAKER- Is that a thing?

01:11SPEAKERThat is a thing?

01:12SPEAKER- Wow, really? - That's a thing.

01:13SPEAKERThat's a thing, it's coming out.

01:15SPEAKER- Is it all of them?

01:16SPEAKERLet me guess, it's all of them, but Danny Masterson.

01:17SPEAKER- Hang on, let's see.

01:19SPEAKERWell, I hope, I hope it's at least not him.

01:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:22SPEAKER- Kurt Wood Smith, I don't know all the actor's names.

01:28SPEAKER- Okay, Laura Prepon is in here, Topher Grace.

01:31SPEAKERLooks like Mila, oh no.

01:34SPEAKEROkay, I see what happened here.

01:36SPEAKERThe parents are the same.

01:38SPEAKER- Okay.

01:38SPEAKER- All the kids are guest stars.

01:40SPEAKER- Oh, so they're transitioning to be about the grandkids.

01:43SPEAKER- Yeah, so like Topher Grace is one episode,

01:45SPEAKERMila Kunis is one episode.

01:47SPEAKERDon't see Ashton Coocher on here at all.

01:49SPEAKERHe's too busy at university.

01:51SPEAKER- I wonder, I wonder what's gonna happen.

01:55SPEAKERLike what's the drug of choice in the 90s?

01:56SPEAKERIn the 70s, it makes sense.

01:57SPEAKERThey're all sitting in the basement smoking weed,

01:59SPEAKERbut like, weed was hard to get in the 90s.

02:01SPEAKER- Man, what was the drug of the 90s?

02:03SPEAKERLike the drug of the,

02:04SPEAKERthey ate Coke was definitely the drug of the 80s.

02:07SPEAKER- I think cheap Coke was the drug of the 90s

02:09SPEAKERwhere I grew up.

02:10SPEAKERI didn't ever, I didn't ever do that.

02:11SPEAKERIt was bad.

02:13SPEAKER- Whoa.

02:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, a lot of people ate mushrooms

02:16SPEAKERtoward the end of the 90s.

02:18SPEAKER- Okay, sure, yes, okay.

02:20SPEAKERI'd say psychedelic, like the rise of the fish,

02:24SPEAKERDave Matthews' jam band kind of scene.

02:27SPEAKER- Yeah, there were a lot of jam bands.

02:28SPEAKER- The Lollapalooza to Bonnaroo to et cetera.

02:32SPEAKERYeah, okay, I'd say sure.

02:33SPEAKER- Look, the kids these days can't understand this,

02:35SPEAKERbut there was a period of time

02:37SPEAKERwhen everybody was into jam bands.

02:41SPEAKER- Maybe not everybody.

02:42SPEAKER- Everybody was into jam.

02:43SPEAKERLike you couldn't not be into jam bands

02:45SPEAKER'cause they were everywhere.

02:46SPEAKERYou'd go to the grocery store

02:47SPEAKERand they'd be playing a damn Dave Matthews song.

02:49SPEAKER- What jam, was I into a jam band without realizing it?

02:52SPEAKER- I mean, I don't know.

02:53SPEAKER- Did you like "Widespread Panic"?

02:55SPEAKER- I don't even know what that is.

02:56SPEAKER- Oh yeah, you're a little younger than me.

02:58SPEAKER"Widespread Panic" played a lot of,

03:00SPEAKERdo you remember the Horde Festival?

03:02SPEAKERThat was the jam band.

03:03SPEAKERIt was like Lollapalooza for jam bands.

03:05SPEAKER- Right.

03:05SPEAKER- Yeah, like you'd get "Blues Traveler"

03:08SPEAKERand "Widespread Panic" would headline that.

03:11SPEAKER- No, you know, it was okay, "Blues Traveler" is a little bit.

03:13SPEAKER- "Blues Traveler" is fine?

03:13SPEAKERWhat about "Hootie"?

03:14SPEAKERYou like "Hootie"?

03:15SPEAKER- I think "Blues Traveler" is like jam band adjacent maybe,

03:18SPEAKERbut "Harmonica" is not, that's all right.

03:21SPEAKER- Let me tell you, if you see,

03:22SPEAKERlike I saw "Blues Traveler" live a couple of times.

03:25SPEAKER"Blues Traveler" on an album that was produced

03:27SPEAKERfor the MTV generation, not a jam band.

03:29SPEAKER"Blues Traveler" live, Jon Popper will sit there

03:32SPEAKERwith that harmonic for 20 minutes, no hesitation.

03:35SPEAKER- That sounds great.

03:36SPEAKERYou know what, I started to say,

03:38SPEAKERI was just starting to Google Jon Popper

03:40SPEAKER'cause I always thought he was kind of fun

03:41SPEAKERas a front man figure, but I don't know,

03:44SPEAKERI've got a certain hunch, maybe I shouldn't.

03:46SPEAKER- He, I--

03:47SPEAKER- Like I feel like he might be right there

03:49SPEAKERon the bubble of like--

03:51SPEAKER- Oh, you think he's a MAGA guy?

03:53SPEAKER- You don't want to know what this guy's politics are.

03:55SPEAKER- Oh, the "Meatloaf" slash Morrissey connection?

03:59SPEAKER- Oh God, yeah.

04:00SPEAKERMorris, okay, we have to end this.

04:02SPEAKER(laughing)

04:04SPEAKER- So anyway, I'm glad to know

04:05SPEAKERthat you're a fan of jam bands too, Brad.

04:07SPEAKER(groaning)

04:09SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:21SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:37SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."

04:39SPEAKERI'm Will.

04:40SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

04:40SPEAKER- I got a little bit of a cold, Brad,

04:41SPEAKERso if I sound weird, I apologize.

04:43SPEAKER- You're doing well.

04:45SPEAKERLike you let me hear the cough or the sniffle

04:48SPEAKERor something before this, and then I was like,

04:49SPEAKER"Oh yeah, that's a cold," but--

04:51SPEAKER- Yeah, the dose is a little dopped up.

04:54SPEAKER- You're hiding it well, you're soldiering on.

04:56SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

04:57SPEAKERI mean, look, it's not, as colds go, relatively minor, so.

05:00SPEAKER- Yeah, just, you know, if I'm sure you're the same,

05:04SPEAKERI would be thankful just for it to be a cold at this point.

05:07SPEAKERLike, for the last three years, it's like,

05:10SPEAKERif I'm going to get a sick, just give me a cold,

05:11SPEAKERI'm fine with it.

05:12SPEAKERLike, hey, I'll deal with the cold all day long.

05:14SPEAKER- Yeah, we had some kids over for sleepover last weekend,

05:18SPEAKERand then one of them had to cancel at the last minute

05:21SPEAKER'cause she had the Rona, and then my daughter

05:24SPEAKERstarted getting a sniffle at the end of the weekend,

05:26SPEAKERand we're like, "Aw, crap,"

05:27SPEAKERand we tested her multiple times.

05:29SPEAKERSo she's like, according to the antibody test, she's clean,

05:33SPEAKERbut then somebody at school got sick and they were like,

05:36SPEAKER"Well, they were negative on antibody tests,

05:37SPEAKER"but they were positive when we did a PCR."

05:40SPEAKERSo now we're like, "Shit, do we have to go get a PCR?

05:42SPEAKER"That's not what we want."

05:45SPEAKERBut anyway, here we are, we're podcasting.

05:47SPEAKERI don't feel like I have, like,

05:49SPEAKERthe last time I had the Rona,

05:50SPEAKERI knew something was bad was wrong.

05:52SPEAKER- Yes, yeah.

05:53SPEAKER- I feel probably okay.

05:55SPEAKERI feel pretty okay right now.

05:56SPEAKERI feel like I have the sniffles, so.

05:58SPEAKER- That's good, fingers crossed.

06:00SPEAKER- Fingers crossed.

06:01SPEAKERBrad, it is that time of month again.

06:04SPEAKER- It's the most wonderful time of the month.

06:08SPEAKER- Yeah, we're turning Qs into As or emails into answers.

06:12SPEAKERIf you have an email, as always,

06:13SPEAKERyou can send it to techpod@content.town.

06:17SPEAKER- That's techpod@content.town.

06:19SPEAKER- Do you think the answer conversion quotients of emails

06:22SPEAKERand Discord questions is the same?

06:24SPEAKERDo they both output the same quantity of answer?

06:29SPEAKER- I think the quantity of Qs submitted via email

06:32SPEAKERis significantly lower than the Qs submitted via Discord.

06:37SPEAKER- Do we have any mathematicians on the Discord

06:39SPEAKERthat can help us work?

06:40SPEAKEROr maybe that's more of a material science thing, right?

06:43SPEAKERIt's like an alloy thing.

06:44SPEAKER- Like what's the ratio?

06:47SPEAKER- Like an email yields a 0.8% pure answer

06:51SPEAKERcompared to a 1.0 from a Discord Q.

06:53SPEAKERWhat am I talking about?

06:54SPEAKER- The thing I will say is that the hit percentage

06:56SPEAKERon emails versus Qs is very high.

07:00SPEAKER- Sure.

07:01SPEAKER- If you send an email, much better chance of getting it read

07:04SPEAKER'cause typically we get a relatively small number of emails

07:06SPEAKERand a lot of Qs.

07:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

07:09SPEAKER- Mostly from cake batter.

07:10SPEAKER(laughing)

07:11SPEAKER- They're mostly good.

07:13SPEAKER- I think we could probably do an all cake batter

07:15SPEAKERone of these at some point if we wanted.

07:17SPEAKERBut if somebody's gonna go to the trouble

07:20SPEAKERof opening an email client or web browser

07:23SPEAKERand typing an address in and everything,

07:25SPEAKERthey probably have some intention to their question

07:28SPEAKERversus some of the drive by shit posting,

07:31SPEAKERlet's say, that takes place in the Discord channel.

07:34SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, like at this point,

07:36SPEAKERif I get an email from someone,

07:37SPEAKERI'm like, wow, this person really loves me.

07:39SPEAKERThey, like if my, when my family members

07:42SPEAKERare something sensitive, I'm like, wow, they really care.

07:45SPEAKERIt's almost as good as opening a piece of paper

07:48SPEAKERand writing with handwriting a letter at this point.

07:53SPEAKERSo yeah, but we got a shocking,

07:56SPEAKERI mean, I gotta say, we give cake batter some grief here,

07:59SPEAKERbut through the trials of fire and flame,

08:04SPEAKERtheir questioning asking prowess has grown

08:07SPEAKERuntil I had, I think I immediately greenlit

08:11SPEAKERthree cake batter questions this month, probably.

08:14SPEAKER- This question about the brown rat stopped me in my tracks.

08:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

08:19SPEAKER- There's a visual to it.

08:20SPEAKERI don't know if we'll be able to take it on here, but.

08:22SPEAKER- I learned some stuff.

08:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

08:25SPEAKER- I had to do some looking up.

08:26SPEAKERAnyway, we should start turning some cues and days.

08:29SPEAKER- Why don't you take the emails

08:30SPEAKERand then we'll get into the Discord cues.

08:31SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

08:32SPEAKER- I evolved my methodology this month.

08:34SPEAKERI don't know if you noticed.

08:35SPEAKER- No.

08:36SPEAKER- We go through a bold questions that we wanna take.

08:37SPEAKER- Yep.

08:39SPEAKER- I started highlighting mine in yellow instead.

08:41SPEAKER- Ooh, I thought about highlighting.

08:43SPEAKER- Now I know which one is one that I flagged

08:45SPEAKERand which one is one that you flagged.

08:47SPEAKER- I learned last night that Google Docs is bad

08:50SPEAKERat working with the keyboard on the iPad.

08:53SPEAKERThat's the thing I learned.

08:54SPEAKER'Cause I couldn't select all the emails.

08:57SPEAKERLike in Discord, what we usually do is just select

09:00SPEAKERall the emails and drag them down and then paste them

09:02SPEAKERinto a big long Google Doc and format accordingly.

09:05SPEAKERAnd that was impossible to do on an iPad.

09:07SPEAKERSo I had to go sit down in the real computer

09:09SPEAKERand then highlight stuff on the iPad.

09:10SPEAKERAnyway.

09:11SPEAKER- Do you mean the physical bolt-on keyboard?

09:13SPEAKER- Yeah, the bolt-on keyboard.

09:14SPEAKER- Interesting.

09:15SPEAKERI figured that would just kind of replicate

09:17SPEAKERlaptop functionality top to bottom.

09:18SPEAKER- I think it requires some sort of support

09:21SPEAKERon the app basis in order for it to work with the touchpad.

09:24SPEAKERAnyway.

09:27SPEAKERFirst email comes from Fernando.

09:28SPEAKEROh, sorry, from Xander.

09:30SPEAKERFernando sent a very nice email in.

09:31SPEAKERThank you, Fernando.

09:32SPEAKERIt was just kind and actually I'll do the Fernando one too.

09:35SPEAKERLike at this point I've shouted out Fernando.

09:37SPEAKERI got to read the email.

09:39SPEAKERI just finished having a really great talk

09:40SPEAKERwith another member of the Discord

09:41SPEAKERand it was a point of realization

09:42SPEAKERthat the TechPod Discord is the only server I'm in

09:44SPEAKERwhere every single member seems to be

09:45SPEAKERa genuinely nice person.

09:47SPEAKERAll my interactions have been knowledgeable, generous,

09:50SPEAKERgood people and it makes me wonder if this is by design

09:53SPEAKERand what are the steps you both take

09:54SPEAKERto attract this kind of person in your community.

09:55SPEAKERI'm generally grateful for putting together

09:57SPEAKERsuch a wonderful community.

09:58SPEAKERLike this sounds like an ad for the TechPod Discord.

10:01SPEAKER- Sure does.

10:02SPEAKER- But it was, I thought it was a really nice email.

10:04SPEAKERAnd like, it doesn't happen by accident.

10:07SPEAKERLike Brad and I are exceptional people.

10:09SPEAKER- That's right.

10:10SPEAKER- We're just wondering, no.

10:11SPEAKER- Who could achieve anything but excellence

10:13SPEAKERwhen they follow in our wake?

10:14SPEAKER- No, no, no.

10:15SPEAKERI think part of it is that we're old, honestly.

10:18SPEAKER- Sure, yes.

10:18SPEAKER- So we don't have the 14 year old contingent,

10:21SPEAKERlike angry 14 year olds have kind of weeded out

10:23SPEAKERof the community and mellowed.

10:24SPEAKER- Yeah, I think like we, I assume we, you know,

10:26SPEAKERwe probably, there are younger people,

10:28SPEAKERthere are people in their 20s on the Discord,

10:30SPEAKERbut you know, I think we probably attracted-

10:31SPEAKER- We have a couple of teenagers I think even.

10:32SPEAKER- Yeah, but like generally I would say the average age

10:35SPEAKERis a little older, definitely old enough

10:36SPEAKERwhere most people are just over that bullshit.

10:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:40SPEAKER- And also the paywall helps.

10:43SPEAKER- I mean, it is a low paywall.

10:45SPEAKER- It is low, but like that's been my experience

10:47SPEAKERwith forums and all sorts of stuff over the years.

10:49SPEAKERIf there's a little bit of a barrier to entry,

10:51SPEAKERit's really gonna filter out a lot of people

10:53SPEAKERwho are looking to stir up shit.

10:55SPEAKER- Yeah, the other thing is Brad and I,

10:58SPEAKERone of the reasons Brad and I are friends

10:59SPEAKERis that we're both of the anti-drama contingent

11:02SPEAKERof the internet, like we're early members of that club.

11:05SPEAKERAnd as a result, I think we've attracted people

11:08SPEAKERthat want to come listen to our bullshit

11:11SPEAKERthat are less into the drama and more into the content.

11:14SPEAKERSo anyway, but I really wanted to put this in there

11:18SPEAKERas a shout out to the people in the Discord.

11:19SPEAKER'Cause for me, this is a note from Fernando

11:22SPEAKERthat is as much about how awesome

11:23SPEAKERthe people in the Discord are

11:24SPEAKERis as much more about that than about us.

11:26SPEAKERSo good job, everybody.

11:28SPEAKERYou made Fernando happy.

11:29SPEAKERAnyway, Zander says, on a stream the other night,

11:33SPEAKERWill mentioned the imminent arrival

11:35SPEAKERof his home assistant, Yellow.

11:36SPEAKERHe also mentioned starting from scratch,

11:38SPEAKERtwo questions regarding how you envision

11:39SPEAKERrebooting your connected home.

11:41SPEAKEROne, are you planning on moving one device over at a time

11:44SPEAKERor just going buck wild and doing the whole thing at once?

11:46SPEAKERTwo, what are you looking forward to doing differently

11:48SPEAKERnow that you have years of experience

11:49SPEAKERmanaging your existing environment?

11:51SPEAKERSo this is a good question.

11:52SPEAKERI thought, hey, I started this up when I started doing this.

11:56SPEAKERI didn't really know what I was doing.

11:58SPEAKERAnd I figured maybe I'll just start from scratch

12:02SPEAKERand do it the way I would wanna do it.

12:04SPEAKERAnd then I sat down and looked at what I'd done

12:06SPEAKERand where I've gotten over the years with the integration.

12:09SPEAKERAnd I was like, man, it'd be a lot of work

12:11SPEAKERto do this whole thing from scratch.

12:13SPEAKERSo I deleted a couple of scenes that I don't use.

12:16SPEAKERI got rid of some old automations that I don't use.

12:18SPEAKERI cleared out a bunch of old integrations

12:21SPEAKERthat no longer have any devices attached to them.

12:24SPEAKERAnd then I just backed it up

12:25SPEAKERand backed up the Zigbee radio on the old device

12:29SPEAKERand plugged the Zigbee radio into the new device

12:32SPEAKERand restored the backup and then migrated the radio over.

12:35SPEAKERAnd it's exactly like it was before.

12:38SPEAKERAnd it was an incredibly easy transition.

12:41SPEAKER- That's cool. - Yeah.

12:42SPEAKERAnd it runs on power over ethernet.

12:43SPEAKERSo I just plugged it in.

12:45SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

12:46SPEAKER- I plugged it into the PoE port,

12:47SPEAKERone of the PoE ports on the switch in my hall closet.

12:50SPEAKERAnd it's just working in there in the middle of the house

12:53SPEAKERwhere the radio works really well and everything.

12:55SPEAKERSo.

12:56SPEAKER- That's rad.

12:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm super stoked about it.

12:57SPEAKERIt's really fun.

12:59SPEAKER- Yeah, we should talk more about that thing.

13:00SPEAKERI would love to hear more in depth,

13:01SPEAKERperhaps on a coming project episode.

13:03SPEAKER- Yeah, either a,

13:05SPEAKERI feel like doing a real actual episode about it was,

13:08SPEAKERI initially thought we'd do a real episode about it,

13:10SPEAKERbut I don't know that there's a whole lot to talk about

13:12SPEAKERother than it's really fast compared to the Pi 3 version

13:15SPEAKER'cause it uses a CM4, a compute module for a Pi 4.

13:21SPEAKERAnd it was like, it is a really tidy little piece of hardware

13:25SPEAKERso consider it endorsed, I guess.

13:29SPEAKER- Cool.

13:30SPEAKERI live in fear of losing my home assistant configuration

13:34SPEAKERbecause it's just setting all that stuff up again.

13:38SPEAKERIt doesn't help that my girlfriend decided to name

13:40SPEAKERall the smart plugs in the house like joke names

13:43SPEAKERrather than anything remotely identifiable.

13:45SPEAKERSo if I lose the association that's already in there of like,

13:49SPEAKERoh, this is the one that controls the fan,

13:51SPEAKERit's gonna take some doing to figure out what is where.

13:54SPEAKER- Wait, is the joke name themed

13:56SPEAKERbased on what the thing that it's plugged into does?

13:58SPEAKERLike is the fan have a Nimbus?

14:00SPEAKER- Not really. - Okay.

14:01SPEAKER- Not really, no.

14:04SPEAKER- The thing I will say is that I do the backups

14:07SPEAKERthat get saved, like I have the plugin

14:09SPEAKERfrom the community store that just saves backups

14:11SPEAKERdirectly to Google, my Google Drive.

14:14SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

14:14SPEAKER- And so there's a folder in my Google Drive

14:17SPEAKERcalled Home Assistant Backups

14:18SPEAKERand they all just automatically get uploaded there

14:20SPEAKERand then deleted from the home assistant.

14:22SPEAKER- Huh, I need to look at that stuff.

14:24SPEAKERI'm still running home assistant core

14:25SPEAKERwhich lacks a bunch of features.

14:27SPEAKERLike for one thing, it lacks kind of settings export.

14:30SPEAKERLike I have to just copy the config directory

14:32SPEAKERout of the home directory of the user that's running it

14:34SPEAKERto migrate and I don't know.

14:36SPEAKERI think the store might be another thing

14:37SPEAKERI might not have access to, I'm not sure.

14:39SPEAKER- I was gonna say the challenge now is that

14:42SPEAKERthe config.yaml doesn't actually hold

14:46SPEAKERall the configuration anymore.

14:48SPEAKERSo a lot of the apps that install,

14:51SPEAKERlike you go through an install process,

14:54SPEAKERdon't save their config files in the config.yaml.

14:57SPEAKERSo you need to do that backup.

15:00SPEAKERYou should be able to export the backup.

15:02SPEAKERThe backup's just a tar and you should just grab that

15:05SPEAKERand put that someplace safe and then you'll be fine.

15:08SPEAKERBut it was, literally I said it, I plugged it in,

15:10SPEAKERI was like, I'll noodle with this a little bit.

15:12SPEAKERI downloaded the Raspberry Pi OS installer,

15:14SPEAKERwhich one of the options for which OS you wanna install

15:17SPEAKERis a home assistant install for the Raspberry Pi yellow.

15:21SPEAKERAnd it was like, which version do you have?

15:23SPEAKERAre you doing it on an NVMe?

15:24SPEAKERAre you putting it on just the eMMC on the CM4?

15:27SPEAKERAnd I put it on the MCC, MMC on the CM4.

15:31SPEAKERThe MMC is like a flashcard that's built

15:33SPEAKERinto the compute module.

15:35SPEAKER- Too early for this many acronyms.

15:36SPEAKER- I know, it's a lot.

15:38SPEAKERBut it works, like it worked out of the box.

15:40SPEAKERLike it took-- - That's cool.

15:41SPEAKER- It was like, hey, the lights will stop blinking

15:42SPEAKERwhen the install's done.

15:43SPEAKERThe lights stopped blinking and I went to the IP address

15:46SPEAKERthat, you know, and it would just like started working.

15:49SPEAKERIt was, I was really impressed.

15:51SPEAKER- I'm guessing you can't just buy those things yet, right?

15:54SPEAKER- I ordered mine last, whenever we had Paulus

15:58SPEAKERon the home, on the tech, on the FOS pod,

16:02SPEAKERwhich if you haven't heard, it's a real good episode.

16:03SPEAKERHe talks about matter and all sorts of stuff

16:05SPEAKERabout home assistant yellow and all that.

16:08SPEAKERSo it was like six months ago probably.

16:10SPEAKERI think they're shipping, like they weren't in production

16:13SPEAKERwhen I ordered it.

16:14SPEAKERSo it's, they're now caught up with like pre-orders

16:16SPEAKERas of last June.

16:18SPEAKER- Oh yeah, actually, yeah.

16:19SPEAKERThis totally says limited items in stock.

16:21SPEAKERSo there are some options. - It's probably harder

16:24SPEAKERto get the CM, like I had a hard time getting the CM4.

16:27SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool.

16:30SPEAKERI might have to think about that at some point.

16:32SPEAKERThey really want you running that on its own device

16:34SPEAKERand not just alongside a bunch of other stuff.

16:36SPEAKER- Well, and it comes in a nice little box.

16:38SPEAKERYou can run other stuff underneath it,

16:40SPEAKERlike with the community store.

16:42SPEAKERLike there's, you can put a doc, you can just run Docker

16:44SPEAKERstuff on it if you want.

16:45SPEAKER- Okay, interesting.

16:47SPEAKERThink about that in the future.

16:47SPEAKER- Yeah, and like you can get a CM4 with 16 gigs of RAM

16:50SPEAKERor something ridiculous at this point, or eight gigs of RAM.

16:52SPEAKERSo like it runs really nicely on the two gig version

16:56SPEAKERthat I like, I literally just bought the first one

16:58SPEAKERI could find about six, about four months ago.

17:00SPEAKERAnd it's a two, it's a 16 gig storage with two gigs of RAM

17:04SPEAKERand no wifi.

17:05SPEAKERSo it works, works pretty well.

17:07SPEAKERAnd the PoE is worth the price of admission.

17:11SPEAKER- PoE's cool.

17:12SPEAKER- PoE.

17:14SPEAKER- Power over ethernet, I guess we should say.

17:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I have all of my switches that aren't the one

17:18SPEAKERin the garage or the hall closet running over PoE now,

17:20SPEAKERwhich is like the one in the entertainment center

17:23SPEAKERis all just an ethernet plug going into it.

17:26SPEAKERIt's real cool.

17:27SPEAKER- It's kind of magical, actually, just plug a network cable

17:30SPEAKERin and nothing else and make the thing go.

17:32SPEAKER- Yep.

17:33SPEAKERRalph asks, is it finally time to upgrade to Windows 11?

17:37SPEAKERIf I recall correctly, Brad, always the cautionary,

17:39SPEAKERwas still on Windows 10.

17:41SPEAKERI too am of the mindset, don't fix what ain't broke,

17:44SPEAKERbut surely sooner or later it will be time to upgrade.

17:46SPEAKERWindows keeps prompting me and I feel somewhat guilty

17:48SPEAKERevery time I reject the free upgrade.

17:50SPEAKERSurely by now, a lot of the early adopter flaws

17:53SPEAKERmust have been ironed out.

17:54SPEAKERHave you upgraded?

17:55SPEAKERAre you considering it?

17:56SPEAKERBest wishes, Ralph.

17:59SPEAKER- I am still on Windows 10.

18:00SPEAKERI actually like, the main reason is that I don't have a TPM

18:04SPEAKERin this seven year old motherboard.

18:06SPEAKER- So you'd have a switch now if you had the new hardware.

18:09SPEAKER- Most likely, yeah.

18:10SPEAKERLike I can't, like it flat out says on the upgrade

18:12SPEAKERin the Windows settings, it just says,

18:14SPEAKERthis PC is not eligible for Windows 11.

18:16SPEAKERSo I just have not, this thing is too old.

18:19SPEAKERI'm not gonna go out and get a TPM

18:20SPEAKER'cause I'm very close to, wheels are in motion, let's say.

18:24SPEAKERWheels are turning on a new PC, I'm hoping,

18:27SPEAKERin the next, say, six to eight weeks it will be done.

18:31SPEAKER- Is the new, you're gonna do Windows 11

18:33SPEAKERon the new PC though, right?

18:34SPEAKER- Probably, the only thing is,

18:37SPEAKERman, this is a bit of a rabbit hole.

18:39SPEAKERI've, a kind user on the Discord hooked me up with,

18:44SPEAKERgosh, it is Windows 10 for workstations,

18:48SPEAKERI believe is the name of it.

18:50SPEAKER- Okay.

18:51SPEAKER- Are you familiar with this?

18:51SPEAKERYeah, Windows 10 Pro for workstations.

18:53SPEAKERIt's like a second tier of Pro

18:56SPEAKERthat has a bunch of like advanced networking.

18:57SPEAKERIt has ReFS in it, which is their,

19:00SPEAKERMicrosoft's like advanced next gen file system.

19:03SPEAKERBut it's got a bunch of advanced networking stuff in it,

19:06SPEAKERincluding RDMA Direct, I believe it's called,

19:08SPEAKERor I'm sorry, SMB Direct.

19:10SPEAKER- Oh, that's cool.

19:11SPEAKER- Which is like a super fast low CPU usage version of SMB.

19:16SPEAKER- That seems like the kind of thing

19:17SPEAKERyou'd put on all of your clients, but what do I know?

19:20SPEAKER- Yeah, so like you need that tier of Windows.

19:23SPEAKERI kinda, I wanna see if that key will maybe translate

19:25SPEAKERto the Windows 11 version of that before I commit.

19:28SPEAKERBut like, whatever, I'm rambling here.

19:30SPEAKERThat would be a faster way to like network file shares

19:33SPEAKERwith my NAS and stuff.

19:34SPEAKERBut generally all things being equal,

19:37SPEAKERlike I think it's probably time to go to Windows 11.

19:39SPEAKERWhen I build that new machine,

19:40SPEAKERI most likely will find a way to go to 11

19:43SPEAKERrather than installing that version of 10.

19:45SPEAKER- I have been running 11 now for a long time.

19:47SPEAKERWhen I built the new machine last year, I did 11.

19:50SPEAKERAnd it's been like pretty flawless.

19:53SPEAKERI haven't, the only real complaint I have

19:56SPEAKERis the new redesigned task manager is heavier,

19:59SPEAKERfeels heavier than it should be.

20:01SPEAKER- The task manager feels like the one part.

20:03SPEAKERLike, okay, I know I and a lot of other people

20:05SPEAKERhave complained a lot about the weird

20:09SPEAKERkind of anachronistic quality of modern Windows,

20:11SPEAKERbecause there are dialogues in there

20:12SPEAKERgoing back to probably '98 still.

20:15SPEAKERLike the old control panel was still in there,

20:16SPEAKERet cetera, et cetera.

20:17SPEAKERLike it's a huge pain in the ass,

20:18SPEAKERbut I feel like task manager is the one exception

20:20SPEAKERto that rule where it should never change.

20:22SPEAKERLike it should always just be old, reliable task manager.

20:25SPEAKERSo if they have made it less reliable

20:27SPEAKERor slower or whatever, they have messed up.

20:29SPEAKER- Well, so the new one has some stuff in there that's nice

20:32SPEAKERand you can actually see like GPU usage now,

20:34SPEAKERwhich was kind of opaque before.

20:37SPEAKERSo like it tells you whether you're using the video encoder,

20:40SPEAKERdecode sections of the GPU, whether using like the GPU,

20:44SPEAKERthe 3D portion of the GPU, all that stuff.

20:48SPEAKERAnd it shows you the throughput in and out of the GPU,

20:51SPEAKERwhich is one of the things

20:51SPEAKERthat's like the most common bottlenecks.

20:54SPEAKERBut yeah, it doesn't feel as slow on this machine

21:01SPEAKERas it did on the 9900K.

21:04SPEAKERSo it could have just been that I was under spec'd

21:06SPEAKERfor what Windows 11 wants with a 9900K.

21:09SPEAKER- For 9900K, it's not enough for Windows 11.

21:12SPEAKERThere might be a problem.

21:13SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

21:14SPEAKER- You know, I probably have to be on Windows 11

21:17SPEAKER'cause I'm most likely, well, I can't say for sure,

21:19SPEAKERbut there's a decent chance I'm gonna end up with a CPU

21:22SPEAKERthat almost certainly will need Windows 11 to work properly.

21:25SPEAKER- I mean, that's the thing.

21:26SPEAKERIt seems like if you're doing what, 11th Gen Intel

21:29SPEAKERor 5,000 series or newer.

21:32SPEAKER- So it's 12th and 13th Gen.

21:34SPEAKERIt's Alder Lake and Raptor Lake on the Intel side

21:36SPEAKERare the first with the mixed cores

21:38SPEAKERthat Windows 10 doesn't quite know what to do with.

21:40SPEAKER- The bigs and littles.

21:42SPEAKER- The regular 7,000 risons I think are fine

21:44SPEAKERbecause they're all the same core, but then these 3D,

21:47SPEAKERdid you keep up with the X3D stuff out of CES?

21:51SPEAKERThat stuff's weird.

21:52SPEAKERI am looking forward to speaking with some people

21:55SPEAKERwho are knowledgeable about such things

21:57SPEAKERin the near future about those things.

21:59SPEAKER- It's weird because the 3D parts are the ones

22:01SPEAKERthat have the 3D vertically stacked cache, L3 cache,

22:06SPEAKERthat they did the 5,800 X version of.

22:09SPEAKERSo they've rolled those out for the 7,000 series,

22:11SPEAKERbut that stacked cache is not across all the core complexes,

22:15SPEAKERall the CCDs.

22:16SPEAKER- Oh, so it's only for certain cores.

22:18SPEAKERSo they get big and little on AMD now.

22:21SPEAKER- So it's weird.

22:22SPEAKERThe cores themselves are the same,

22:23SPEAKERbut the amount of cache they have is different.

22:25SPEAKERSo it's gonna be this weird situation

22:27SPEAKERof like some games run better on the cores

22:30SPEAKERthat have more cache, some games run better

22:32SPEAKERon the other ones, because the ones with less cache

22:34SPEAKERare probably gonna be clocked at a higher frequency.

22:37SPEAKERSo it's gonna be this weird situation of like,

22:40SPEAKERI don't know, I saw a friend of the show,

22:43SPEAKERGordon on Twitter seemed maybe a little skeptical

22:46SPEAKERabout the ability of either the CPU or Windows or both

22:50SPEAKERto intelligently know like which cores

22:52SPEAKERshould this game run on?

22:53SPEAKERWhich cores should this other one run on?

22:54SPEAKER- Well, I mean, yeah, that seems like a,

22:57SPEAKERlike it seems like they've added another access

22:59SPEAKERfor scheduling that's gonna be challenging.

23:01SPEAKER- Yeah, that's exactly it.

23:03SPEAKERAnd so I don't know, I'm torn.

23:06SPEAKERI actually, I'm not sure what I'm gonna get,

23:08SPEAKERbut there's a lot of options now.

23:09SPEAKERSo I'm gonna get something too.

23:12SPEAKER- Well, that's it for questions.

23:14SPEAKERTechpod@content.town is the email address.

23:16SPEAKERYou can send them there.

23:16SPEAKERWe love to get them.

23:17SPEAKERSo thanks everybody for sending in this week.

23:20SPEAKER- Yeah, all right.

23:22SPEAKERHow about we move on to the Discord questions?

23:26SPEAKER- I love a Discord question.

23:28SPEAKER- Ray in reverse, is console versus PC fair

23:31SPEAKERin multiplayer gaming?

23:31SPEAKERNow the games like "Call of Duty" have them playing

23:33SPEAKERon the same server?

23:35SPEAKER- Man, I don't know.

23:36SPEAKERI get owned by people on Xbox and Switch all the time

23:38SPEAKERplaying "Fortnite."

23:39SPEAKER- Really?

23:40SPEAKER- I mean, not all the time, but like,

23:41SPEAKERit's not like it's an immediate win,

23:43SPEAKERlike it used to be.

23:44SPEAKER- That's fascinating.

23:45SPEAKERThat's especially fascinating 'cause I mean,

23:46SPEAKERXbox obviously is controller,

23:48SPEAKERbut I bet a large portion of the "Fortnite,"

23:50SPEAKERI mean, the Switch players are probably using gyro aiming,

23:53SPEAKERwouldn't you say?

23:54SPEAKER- So Switch and PS4 probably are both using gyro.

23:56SPEAKER- Oh sure, yeah.

23:57SPEAKER- PS5, you can do gyro on both.

24:01SPEAKER- But that's just, that's yet another factor to the,

24:03SPEAKERyou know, there's another variable in the mix, right?

24:05SPEAKERThere's probably like three fairly popular control schemes

24:08SPEAKERgoing on now.

24:09SPEAKER- Yeah, the gyro aim, like that,

24:10SPEAKERwhen we launched "Antichrist,"

24:11SPEAKERthat was the first big request we got was,

24:13SPEAKER"Hey, you gotta put gyro aim in."

24:14SPEAKERI didn't, didn't even occur to me that that was a thing.

24:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it's been like a slow realization for me,

24:19SPEAKERjust seeing people talk about it and realizing that like,

24:22SPEAKERoh, there are people who are like very hardcore

24:24SPEAKERabout this specific control scheme

24:27SPEAKERand seem very good with it.

24:29SPEAKERLike, especially if you play like "Splatoon 3" or whatever.

24:32SPEAKER- It seems specifically gyro and flick stick, yeah,

24:35SPEAKERis the thing people like, so.

24:37SPEAKER- And like, I kinda, yeah, I get it.

24:39SPEAKERLike in some ways, in some ways the gyro aiming,

24:41SPEAKERI think probably mirrors the capabilities of a mouse

24:44SPEAKERmore than a stick does.

24:45SPEAKER- Well, yeah, it's a finer control based on the,

24:48SPEAKERversus the number of inputs that most analog sticks have.

24:51SPEAKERI mean, I think you could probably make an analog stick

24:54SPEAKERthat has the number of, like has the precision of a mouse,

24:58SPEAKERbut I don't know that anybody actually puts those

25:00SPEAKERin mass market controllers.

25:02SPEAKER- Yeah, the other difference there for me though,

25:04SPEAKERis that sticks have a neutral position

25:06SPEAKERand mice and gyro don't, and sticks also have resistance.

25:10SPEAKERSo you let off of them, they return to neutral.

25:12SPEAKERSo there's a, you're fighting a tension there

25:14SPEAKERthat you're not with those others.

25:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I tried to learn gyro controls a couple of years ago

25:20SPEAKERand I find it, like I'm better with a game pad,

25:25SPEAKERI'm best with a mouse and keyboard.

25:27SPEAKERBut like, I mean, I played Call of Duty with friends

25:29SPEAKERwho play game pad on a mouse, on a PC even,

25:33SPEAKERand they're like, I feel like the big vendors

25:37SPEAKERhave gotten good at doing the assist stuff

25:40SPEAKERthat they need to do to get the controllers

25:43SPEAKERto be comparable to mouse and keyboard players.

25:46SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I felt like I was getting pretty good

25:48SPEAKERwith the gyro stuff when I played Splatoon for a few weeks.

25:52SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:53SPEAKER- That's something, you can adapt to it for sure.

25:54SPEAKER- Splatoon, I have a hard time,

25:55SPEAKER'cause I usually play Splatoon not on the TV,

25:58SPEAKERI play it on the handheld and it's weird.

26:01SPEAKERI've also, using the Steam Deck,

26:03SPEAKERI've done a lot of gyro stuff 'cause the Steam Deck,

26:06SPEAKERlike if you're playing a first person shooter

26:08SPEAKERon the Steam Deck, the gyro is the way to control that thing

26:11SPEAKERif it supports it, so.

26:13SPEAKER- Does Fortnite throw mobile players in the same hopper?

26:16SPEAKER- I don't think so by default.

26:18SPEAKERI think if you're a mobile player,

26:20SPEAKERyou can play with a friend in one of the main hoppers,

26:22SPEAKERbut right now, the main hopper in Fortnite,

26:24SPEAKERI often see PS4, Switch, and Xbox players.

26:29SPEAKERMaybe it's just PS4 and Xbox player,

26:30SPEAKERor PS5 and Xbox players, and maybe the Switch players,

26:34SPEAKERI only see when I play with my daughter, actually,

26:36SPEAKERwhen I think about it.

26:37SPEAKER- Okay, that's fascinating.

26:38SPEAKERIf you can opt in as a mobile player to other matches,

26:41SPEAKERlike the idea that there are four different aiming schemes

26:44SPEAKERat work in the same matches is really kind of cool.

26:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I think, I mean, the other benefit

26:49SPEAKERof the game pads now is that the analog triggers,

26:53SPEAKERdepending on what your game uses them for,

26:56SPEAKERcan kind of be a pro.

26:59SPEAKERLike if they give you finer control over steering

27:01SPEAKERand gas and stuff in a car.

27:03SPEAKERAlso, analog movement is really nice,

27:07SPEAKER'cause you don't have to deal with,

27:09SPEAKERyou don't have a hard modifier for crouch or whatever.

27:11SPEAKERYou can just push the stick a little bit

27:12SPEAKERand walk slower and quieter.

27:14SPEAKER- Yes, that is definitely an advantage there.

27:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

27:18SPEAKER- Let's see, all right.

27:20SPEAKERAuthentic Sporks, what are your favorite sci-fi robots?

27:24SPEAKERDo you swing more function over form?

27:26SPEAKERFor example, R2-D2 or humanoid, like C-3PO.

27:29SPEAKERAlso, should they speak like us or in random machine noises?

27:32SPEAKERI've been watching a lot of Star Wars.

27:35SPEAKER- Man, I like that, I like the robots from the black hole.

27:38SPEAKERThe Slim Pickens robot is real good.

27:42SPEAKER- Is that voiced by Slim Pickens or modeled after Slim Pickens?

27:45SPEAKER- It's voiced by Slim Pickens, I believe.

27:48SPEAKERAnd it's like a trashcan robot, like R2-D2.

27:52SPEAKER- Oh wow, that is a serious trashcan.

27:54SPEAKER- Have you seen it?

27:55SPEAKERIt's painted on.

27:56SPEAKER- I'm looking at it with the eyeballs on this thing.

27:59SPEAKERI don't, oh boy.

28:01SPEAKERYeah, have I seen the black hole?

28:03SPEAKER- You should watch the black hole if you haven't seen it.

28:05SPEAKERIt's pretty exceptional.

28:06SPEAKER- We have this other podcast where we watch a lot of movies.

28:09SPEAKERMaybe I should throw that on the list.

28:11SPEAKEROr maybe we should do it on this podcast.

28:13SPEAKER- Look, if you're gonna do that on that podcast,

28:14SPEAKERI would like a guest spot

28:15SPEAKER'cause I wanna come talk about the fucking black hole.

28:17SPEAKERIt is a weird ass movie.

28:19SPEAKER- Okay, I will put your name down next to that for sure.

28:22SPEAKERMy stock answer for this question,

28:24SPEAKERI apologize if I've given this before,

28:26SPEAKERare Case and TARS from Interstellar.

28:29SPEAKER- Oh, they're like, that's the real answer

28:31SPEAKERto the question, I think.

28:32SPEAKER- Those are all time imaginative

28:34SPEAKERand it's entirely possible that they lifted that concept

28:37SPEAKERfrom some other science fiction.

28:38SPEAKER- They lifted it from DARPA.

28:40SPEAKER- Oh wait, is that sort of thing actually in development?

28:43SPEAKER- That was a, the rotating spiral design

28:50SPEAKERwas a DARPA design that never went anywhere, I think.

28:54SPEAKEROr that we know of.

28:55SPEAKER- It's funny 'cause in the movie,

28:56SPEAKERthey are surplus Marine Corps robots.

28:59SPEAKERSo they, even in the fiction,

29:01SPEAKERthey straight up came out of the American military.

29:03SPEAKERBut if you haven't seen those robots,

29:04SPEAKERthey are just rectangles.

29:07SPEAKERThey are just slabs of, like a rectangular slab of metal

29:10SPEAKERwith a ton of points of articulation in there.

29:13SPEAKERSo they can kind of like dynamically transform themselves

29:17SPEAKERinto whatever shape they need to be.

29:18SPEAKERAnd I think that the way they get around really fast

29:21SPEAKERis to turn themselves into kind of a wheel and just roll.

29:24SPEAKER- Yeah, so they can kind of shuffle

29:25SPEAKERlike just by moving two prongs, like legs,

29:28SPEAKERbut then they can turn into like an asterisk

29:31SPEAKERand basically roll.

29:33SPEAKERAnd it's a pretty neat design.

29:35SPEAKER- It's also just an amazing

29:36SPEAKERlike sort of science fiction plot device

29:38SPEAKER'cause you can kind of have them turn into any shape

29:40SPEAKERthat you can think of that serves the needs of the characters

29:43SPEAKERat the moment.

29:44SPEAKER- Also, like just the BB-8 design

29:47SPEAKERand the way that they did that robot

29:50SPEAKERin the "Star Wars" postquels was accepted.

29:54SPEAKERLike it's a cool frigging robot.

29:57SPEAKER- The toys of that thing were a real

30:01SPEAKEReye-opening moment for me

30:02SPEAKERbecause like you see it in the movie

30:04SPEAKERand you're like, oh, that's a special effect.

30:05SPEAKERLike, wow, you know, of course that looks good

30:07SPEAKER'cause it's in a very big budget movie.

30:09SPEAKERBut then I saw toys that basically

30:11SPEAKERare the exact same thing in real life.

30:13SPEAKERAnd I was like, holy shit, like toy technology

30:15SPEAKERor just like locomotion technology,

30:18SPEAKERwhatever you want to call it,

30:19SPEAKERnavigate like automatic navigation,

30:21SPEAKERlike all the things that thing does,

30:23SPEAKERlike that stuff has gotten amazingly good very quickly.

30:26SPEAKER- The Sphero one that they made

30:28SPEAKERthat was like the hamster ball,

30:29SPEAKER'cause we had some of those hamster ball robots

30:31SPEAKERaround the whiskey basement back in the day.

30:32SPEAKER- Okay.

30:33SPEAKER- Chloe famously liked to chase one of them,

30:38SPEAKERbut they just put the head on top

30:40SPEAKERand painted it BB-8 colors and it is a cool toy.

30:44SPEAKERThey made practical ones of the BB-8 too

30:46SPEAKERfor the movies as well.

30:47SPEAKERLike they were rolling around set.

30:48SPEAKERThat was, people would visit the set and be like,

30:51SPEAKERI can't, how do they, how are you, how does this work?

30:54SPEAKERThis is, what?

30:56SPEAKERYeah, anyway, robots are cool, man.

30:59SPEAKER- Yeah, they're cool.

31:01SPEAKEROkay, question from, is it Y-Cross?

31:04SPEAKERHave we decided?

31:05SPEAKERHave you ever waited? - Y-Cross is how I,

31:06SPEAKERY-Cross is a regular in my stream.

31:07SPEAKERSo I I've been Y-Cross for a long time.

31:09SPEAKER- Is that, is that, is that the way?

31:11SPEAKER- I have not been corrected.

31:12SPEAKER- Yes, I also have never been corrected.

31:13SPEAKERSo I'm gonna assume that's fine.

31:15SPEAKERIs dot C-H-D pronounced C-H-D or chud?

31:18SPEAKER- I've always said C-H-D, but now I'm gonna say chud.

31:20SPEAKER- Oh no, oh no.

31:21SPEAKERI don't need a chud file in my life.

31:25SPEAKERHang on, were you acquainted with dot C-H-D

31:27SPEAKERbefore like the last year or two?

31:29SPEAKER'Cause I only became aware of it

31:30SPEAKERin the context of the mister and people.

31:34SPEAKERIt's a, it's a, I don't know.

31:35SPEAKER- It's an image file, right?

31:36SPEAKERI don't know if it's a generalized compression format

31:38SPEAKERor if it's specifically for image files.

31:40SPEAKERI assume the latter, I think it has to be,

31:41SPEAKERbut it's basically, it's basically a compressed way

31:45SPEAKERto store like a BenQ or an ISO type disk image.

31:48SPEAKERYou can use it for, for your libraries.

31:51SPEAKEROkay, yeah.

31:52SPEAKER- It's only for archiving PlayStation disks, it seems like,

31:55SPEAKERor optical disks for game preservation.

31:59SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause I see people using it for like Sega CD

32:01SPEAKERand PC Engine CD libraries and stuff as well.

32:04SPEAKERBut yeah, it's basically just a way

32:05SPEAKERto compress your disk images for stuff like that.

32:08SPEAKER- I feel like I was exposed to them

32:10SPEAKERat some point in the past,

32:11SPEAKERwhen like ripping PlayStation one and Sega CD

32:16SPEAKERand Saturn disks was a thing.

32:19SPEAKERBut yeah, I have never,

32:23SPEAKERlike as I was reading this question last night,

32:25SPEAKERI looked it up and I was like, man,

32:27SPEAKERI have enormous gaps in like Sega CD and PlayStation.

32:30SPEAKER'Cause I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have a place,

32:33SPEAKERbut PlayStation came out when I was in college

32:35SPEAKERand didn't have any money.

32:36SPEAKERAnd I bought an N64,

32:38SPEAKERwhich like I wanted to play the Nintendo games.

32:41SPEAKERI don't regret that choice.

32:42SPEAKER- As one does.

32:43SPEAKER- Yeah, but I also, it also means that by the time

32:47SPEAKERI was like working in the industry

32:49SPEAKERand was running, working at Maximum PC,

32:51SPEAKERlike I bought a PS2 and I played a bunch of the,

32:53SPEAKERlike I went through the, late in the generation,

32:56SPEAKERI went through the PS2 bangers, right?

32:58SPEAKERBut I never went back to play the PS1 games.

33:00SPEAKERSo like, I have no idea what's,

33:02SPEAKERwhat is cool or why on the PlayStation one.

33:05SPEAKERAnd I feel like I need to go back and explore that,

33:07SPEAKERthat gap.

33:08SPEAKER- That's a big question.

33:09SPEAKERThat thing was so popular.

33:10SPEAKERThere are thousands of games for it.

33:12SPEAKERIt's, it's, it's,

33:14SPEAKERespecially now that we've got things like the Mr.,

33:16SPEAKERyou know, emulators are also very good

33:17SPEAKERand you kind of are tempted to store an entire library

33:21SPEAKERof those things.

33:22SPEAKERThe PlayStation makes that difficult

33:23SPEAKER'cause I'm sitting here tallying right now.

33:25SPEAKERThe PC engine is still counting up.

33:27SPEAKERI can tell you a full Sega CD set,

33:29SPEAKERlike every game ever released for the Sega CD

33:31SPEAKERis 124 gig.

33:33SPEAKER- Yeah, the PlayStation one's probably three terabytes,

33:35SPEAKERright?

33:36SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what mine is showing the turbo graphics CD

33:39SPEAKERor PC engine CD is 214 gigabytes.

33:42SPEAKERSo those are like reasonable.

33:43SPEAKERIf you've got a decent size storage volume,

33:45SPEAKERlike I'm like, okay, sure.

33:46SPEAKERI'll have every game released for those,

33:48SPEAKERthose CD systems, but the PlayStation is terabytes.

33:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

33:52SPEAKER- And it definitely gets into like,

33:54SPEAKERdo I really need every PlayStation game ever released?

33:57SPEAKERSome of those are pretty bad.

33:58SPEAKER- Well, and also like, I don't know,

34:01SPEAKERlike it's hard enough.

34:03SPEAKERLike it's enough pre the modern internet

34:06SPEAKERthat like there's not even,

34:08SPEAKERlike there's like IGN lists of the top 100 PS1 games

34:12SPEAKERor whatever, but that doesn't give me the context

34:14SPEAKERof those games when they like,

34:16SPEAKERlike I kind of want to know the context of those games

34:18SPEAKERwhen they came out, right?

34:18SPEAKERLike I want to know why people were excited

34:20SPEAKERabout Chrono Cross or whatever.

34:23SPEAKERAnd I mean, I know why they were excited about Chrono Cross,

34:26SPEAKERbut like the context around those games

34:29SPEAKERis as important for games that age as the games themselves,

34:32SPEAKERI think now.

34:33SPEAKERSo anyway, that's the answer.

34:36SPEAKER- Before we move on in the context of .chud files,

34:41SPEAKERI know this is juvenile.

34:43SPEAKERI became aware of the existence

34:44SPEAKERof a .ask file over the weekend.

34:46SPEAKER- What do you use the .ask file for?

34:49SPEAKER- What do you want to use it for?

34:51SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it's.

34:53SPEAKER- It's a subtitle format, apparently.

34:55SPEAKER- Really?

34:56SPEAKER- Like a very cool subtitle format.

34:57SPEAKERActually, I had no idea what it was

34:58SPEAKERuntil I looked into it,

34:59SPEAKERbut look, I dabbled with a little bit of anime.

35:04SPEAKEROkay, so I'm out of print, old anime.

35:06SPEAKERI was just reliving my high school.

35:08SPEAKER- Anime editor, tech pot anime editor,

35:11SPEAKERBrad Shoemaker added again.

35:12SPEAKER- That's me.

35:13SPEAKERI don't know if it's still in wide use,

35:16SPEAKERbut people in Discord were saying apparently .ask,

35:18SPEAKERlike the ask format for subtitles.

35:21SPEAKERSorry, I can't help it, it's funny.

35:25SPEAKER- So here's my question.

35:26SPEAKERThe .ask file, I don't know if it's still

35:28SPEAKERas popular as it used to be.

35:30SPEAKERReal quick, I'll just tell you what it is.

35:32SPEAKERSo you can store custom fonts?

35:34SPEAKER- Oh, so you can properly display papyrus

35:36SPEAKERwith avatar using an .ask.

35:37SPEAKER- Yes, exactly.

35:39SPEAKEROh God, I didn't even think about that.

35:41SPEAKERIt's interesting though, like if you FF probe an MKV

35:45SPEAKERthat has .ask subtitles in it.

35:47SPEAKER- Don't probe your .ask file, Brad.

35:48SPEAKER(laughing)

35:50SPEAKERIt's not a good idea.

35:52SPEAKER- Is that the title of the show, is that permissible?

35:55SPEAKER- I mean, we can put ask, as long as you put the dot

35:58SPEAKERbefore ask so people know we're talking about

35:59SPEAKERthe file format and not something untoward.

36:02SPEAKER- I've written this down, I'm gonna stare at it

36:04SPEAKERand think about it a little bit.

36:05SPEAKER- Think about what you've done.

36:07SPEAKER- It's cool though, so it, like if you FF probe the file,

36:12SPEAKERit'll just literally say like stream number four

36:14SPEAKERis a true type font file, like you can literally

36:17SPEAKERjust embed standard font files in the container.

36:20SPEAKER- Oh, that's cool.

36:21SPEAKER- And they also can store positional data,

36:23SPEAKERso you can, subtitles don't just default

36:26SPEAKERto the bottom of the screen,

36:27SPEAKERyou can put them anywhere on the screen.

36:28SPEAKERSo you can like put subtitles like right next to a signage

36:31SPEAKERor something in the frame and with custom fonts and stuff.

36:35SPEAKERIt's super neat, but that also led me to,

36:39SPEAKERI don't know if it was proprietary originally,

36:41SPEAKERbut now there is an open source library,

36:43SPEAKERwhich of course is called lib.ask.

36:45SPEAKER- Of course.

36:47SPEAKER- That lets you work.

36:49SPEAKER- Does that predate the Blu-ray font subtitle format,

36:53SPEAKERwhich also has some similar features?

36:55SPEAKER- I don't know.

36:56SPEAKERThe little bit I looked around at the .ask stuff

36:58SPEAKERseemed like it came into being maybe around '07, '08,

37:01SPEAKERwhich is right when Blu-ray took off.

37:02SPEAKER- Oh, that would be it.

37:04SPEAKERMaybe as a response, a necessity to the Blu-ray.

37:07SPEAKER'Cause like Blu, like I can't remember,

37:09SPEAKERthere's a, I think it's a Guy Ritchie movie

37:11SPEAKERor something that the subtitles are placed underneath

37:12SPEAKERthe people who are talking and each character

37:16SPEAKERhas like a unique twist on the font

37:18SPEAKERor a different font treatment.

37:21SPEAKER- And I feel like that was one of the showcases

37:23SPEAKERfor shit you can do on Blu-ray that you couldn't do on DVD.

37:26SPEAKER- I could see that.

37:26SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:29SPEAKER- Okay.

37:31SPEAKER- Now I'm glad I learned about the .ask file, Brad.

37:33SPEAKER- I can't not laugh at it.

37:35SPEAKERI know it's dumb.

37:37SPEAKEREverybody else got over this 10 years ago, at least,

37:39SPEAKERbut yeah.

37:41SPEAKERLet's see.

37:42SPEAKERA question from Pat Bear, friend of the show.

37:44SPEAKER- Hey, Pat.

37:45SPEAKER- When you're installing new software,

37:47SPEAKERwhy do they call it a wizard?

37:48SPEAKER- Oh man.

37:49SPEAKEROkay, so I went and looked this up

37:50SPEAKERto make sure that I got this right.

37:53SPEAKER- Is there an answer?

37:54SPEAKERI didn't know the direction.

37:55SPEAKER- Yeah, there is an answer.

37:55SPEAKERSo, okay.

37:57SPEAKERHere's the thing that people don't remember

37:59SPEAKERin the 21st century.

38:01SPEAKERInstalling software used to be hard.

38:04SPEAKERLike even on Windows, in like the Windows 3.1 days,

38:07SPEAKERwhen you got like a copy of Photoshop or something,

38:09SPEAKERyou had to install, it would have a folder in the thing,

38:13SPEAKERon the disc or on the, like a supplements,

38:16SPEAKERfloppy disc sometimes, that would have all of the stuff

38:20SPEAKERthat Photoshop depended on that you had to install to.

38:23SPEAKERIf you didn't install that stuff,

38:24SPEAKERPhotoshop wouldn't work right.

38:26SPEAKERSo what the, and the important technology cultural thing,

38:33SPEAKERin the olden days of computers,

38:34SPEAKERbefore everybody got phones and laptops and all that stuff,

38:40SPEAKERnerds called the people who were the real nerds wizards.

38:42SPEAKERLike people would sign their Usenet posts,

38:46SPEAKERsoftware wizard or Emacs wizard or whatever.

38:50SPEAKER- Okay.

38:51SPEAKER- So when the first company built an installer package

38:55SPEAKERthat would install all of the,

38:57SPEAKERyou could give it a list of all the stuff

38:58SPEAKERthat needed to be installed,

39:00SPEAKERpackaged it on the disc with it,

39:01SPEAKERand it would install all of the visual C++ libraries

39:04SPEAKERand all of that stuff in the appropriate places,

39:06SPEAKERthey called it a wizard.

39:09SPEAKERMimicking the, presumably mimicking the people,

39:13SPEAKERthe people who self-identified as wizards.

39:15SPEAKERAnd like, there's even facts about what a wizard is

39:18SPEAKERin terms of computer use,

39:19SPEAKERwhere somebody who's kindly and helpful

39:21SPEAKERand generous with their time and, you know,

39:23SPEAKERGandalf's not Radagast the Brown or anything like that.

39:26SPEAKERAnyway.

39:27SPEAKER- Radagast is all right.

39:29SPEAKER- Look, he just likes the animals more than the people.

39:31SPEAKERThat's fine, I can respect that.

39:33SPEAKER- I feel like those movies did him a little disservice.

39:36SPEAKER- His red velvet pancake puppies were the bomb though.

39:38SPEAKERThat's what I will say.

39:40SPEAKER- Fair.

39:42SPEAKER- So yeah, they called it a wizard.

39:44SPEAKER- It's funny, we talk about this on the episode

39:47SPEAKERof the FOSPOD that I think will be out next week,

39:49SPEAKER'cause we talk about Debian a lot,

39:51SPEAKERas we have one of the Debian maintainers on.

39:53SPEAKER- Yeah, project leader.

39:55SPEAKER- Project leader, yeah.

39:56SPEAKERAnd it was a fascinating conversation to think,

40:00SPEAKER'cause now it's hard to remember a time

40:02SPEAKERwhen installing software was a challenge,

40:05SPEAKERbut it used to be that even on Windows,

40:07SPEAKERit'd be like installing software on Linux prior to apt

40:11SPEAKERand PKG, DPKG was hard.

40:16SPEAKERInstalling software on Windows prior to Windows 95,

40:19SPEAKERyou could mess it up.

40:20SPEAKERYou could have problems, so yeah.

40:22SPEAKER- That's weird, I completely forgot about that stuff.

40:24SPEAKERIt's almost like you're installing dependencies

40:26SPEAKERfor your Windows application at that point.

40:29SPEAKER- Yeah, you very much were, 'cause depending

40:31SPEAKERon which compiler people use to make the Windows software,

40:36SPEAKERlike you'd have to install a Borland C library or whatever,

40:38SPEAKERand now we just don't need, that stuff just happens

40:41SPEAKERin the background automatically,

40:42SPEAKERso we don't even think about it.

40:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:46SPEAKERNext question, which I had,

40:47SPEAKERand then immediately scrolled away from.

40:50SPEAKER- Oh, idle scrolling screws us again.

40:52SPEAKER- That's a bad thing to do.

40:57SPEAKEROh boy, can you fill for a moment?

40:58SPEAKER- Yeah, give me a pick, I got a quick one.

41:01SPEAKER- Okay, go for it.

41:02SPEAKER- MSC says, "Do you still feel that Linux is only free

41:05SPEAKER"if you value your time at zero?"

41:07SPEAKER- That's, you know, I was gonna take this one to you later.

41:09SPEAKERThat one is an interesting question to me.

41:12SPEAKER- Like that was the joke for a long time, just to be clear.

41:15SPEAKERIs, like that was the, I mean, I think some people

41:19SPEAKERthought it was a joke, I think the Windows people

41:20SPEAKERthat posted it on form probably didn't think it was a joke.

41:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:25SPEAKER- I don't know that I've felt that way

41:26SPEAKERfor a pretty long time.

41:27SPEAKERLike Linux is a profoundly useful piece of software.

41:30SPEAKER- For sure, for sure.

41:31SPEAKERAlso, I mean, that came about back in the day

41:33SPEAKERbecause software back then was very expensive, right?

41:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:37SPEAKER- You had to, you kind of don't have to pay for Windows now,

41:40SPEAKERlike they basically give it away.

41:41SPEAKER- Well, no.

41:42SPEAKER- But back then, like a Windows license was expensive,

41:44SPEAKERlike Visual C++ was expensive, you know?

41:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:48SPEAKER- We talked about that on the Blender FOSPOD, you know,

41:51SPEAKERback when Blender started, a C++ compiler

41:55SPEAKERcost hundreds of dollars, right?

41:56SPEAKERAnd so like, Linux wasn't just a free operating system,

41:59SPEAKERit was also free development tools, you know?

42:01SPEAKERSo it was actually a big deal that you could get

42:04SPEAKERa full suite of, you know, tools to make software

42:08SPEAKERwithout paying anything.

42:09SPEAKER- Or Windows even.

42:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:12SPEAKER- Right, like the thing though,

42:14SPEAKERalso it was, that became popular in the time

42:17SPEAKERwhen people were trying to run Linux on the desktop

42:19SPEAKERas an alternative to Windows in a less constrained way

42:24SPEAKERthan most people who run Linux on the desktop do.

42:26SPEAKERYeah, like I think most people who are running Linux

42:28SPEAKERon the desktop now are probably running Chromebooks

42:30SPEAKERand Chromeboxes and stuff like that, right?

42:32SPEAKERThey're not running Debian stable on their desktop.

42:39SPEAKERI don't think that's been, I mean, look,

42:42SPEAKERI have two or three Linux boxes in the house,

42:45SPEAKERdepending on whether you count like Raspbian installs

42:48SPEAKERas Linux boxes.

42:50SPEAKERThey're incredibly useful and I don't,

42:53SPEAKERI would value them that much greater than zero

42:56SPEAKERgiven the stuff that they do for me.

42:59SPEAKER- Yes, I think the one place that still kind of holds true

43:01SPEAKERis when you just have a goal in mind, a project,

43:04SPEAKERyou're trying to get some service running,

43:05SPEAKERHome Assistant or Plex or blah, blah, blah,

43:07SPEAKERand you get mired in like, we need a term for this,

43:11SPEAKERlike the kind of Google hell of like Googling error messages

43:16SPEAKERand various terminology that you don't understand.

43:18SPEAKERAnd like you spend days trying to understand

43:20SPEAKERwhy something isn't working.

43:21SPEAKERLike that's still the one place where it feels like,

43:23SPEAKERoh man, okay, I don't know if this is actually

43:26SPEAKERa great use of my time,

43:27SPEAKERbut like the place where Linux feels super valuable for me

43:30SPEAKERis just learning about it.

43:31SPEAKERIt's like when I'm not being frustrated by it,

43:33SPEAKERbut instead I am filled with wonder

43:35SPEAKERof all the stuff you can do.

43:36SPEAKERLike that's where it feels like truly valuable.

43:39SPEAKER- Well, and it's interesting 'cause like those places

43:41SPEAKERthat you get mired, like I just went through that

43:42SPEAKERwith the Plex install.

43:43SPEAKERI think I talked about it in the episode last week,

43:44SPEAKERa little bit, but like the entirety of that problem

43:49SPEAKERcould have been bypassed if Intel's driver installation

43:54SPEAKERwas clearer about what version of the kernel

43:57SPEAKERit needed to have in order to work right, right?

44:00SPEAKERLike if it had said, hey, you need this version of the kernel

44:01SPEAKERor newer in order for this to work,

44:03SPEAKERI would have, it would have been a 30 minute project for me

44:06SPEAKERand I would have been up and running in no time.

44:07SPEAKERSo thanks Intel.

44:10SPEAKER- You know what, I.

44:11SPEAKER- I guess I could submit a note and patch notes, but.

44:15SPEAKER- Dude, it feels good to stay tuned

44:18SPEAKERfor the shocking reveal in the FOS pod about.

44:21SPEAKER- Yeah, Brad's new gig.

44:23SPEAKER- About filing bugs and et cetera with open source projects.

44:27SPEAKERAnyway, next week.

44:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:30SPEAKER- You know what?

44:31SPEAKERI screwed myself with this new methodology.

44:33SPEAKER- Oh no.

44:34SPEAKER- I scrolled right past the yellow highlighted questions.

44:37SPEAKER- Oh yeah, they're invisible.

44:39SPEAKER- My brain was only looking at the bolded questions.

44:41SPEAKERAnd since I flagged this one in yellow,

44:43SPEAKERI completely bypassed it,

44:45SPEAKERbut this is the one I was looking for from Slam Donk.

44:48SPEAKER- It's a good name, it's a good name.

44:50SPEAKER- What do you think will become of the knowledge shared

44:52SPEAKERand dispersed across forums

44:54SPEAKERand other persistent searchable communities

44:55SPEAKERas more of these small communities move to more ephemeral,

44:58SPEAKERless queryable locations like Discord?

45:01SPEAKERWill the web forum always have a place

45:03SPEAKERor do you think we risk losing some tribal knowledge

45:05SPEAKERas they fall out of vogue?

45:07SPEAKERI think that is definitely a risk.

45:10SPEAKERWhat was it?

45:11SPEAKEROh, it was Twitter.

45:12SPEAKERGod, it was Twitter.

45:13SPEAKERI mean, Twitter is a more recent example

45:14SPEAKERthan internet forums,

45:15SPEAKERbut like when Musk took over in the future of the platform,

45:18SPEAKERlooked very much in doubt and I guess it still is,

45:20SPEAKERbut the number of like journalists and historians

45:24SPEAKERthat were coming out of the woodwork going like,

45:27SPEAKERholy shit, if this all goes away,

45:28SPEAKERthere is a massive amount of the last like 15 years

45:31SPEAKERof culture documented on this platform.

45:33SPEAKERThe Arab Spring organizing and all kinds of stuff,

45:36SPEAKERinvestigative reporting.

45:38SPEAKER- The blue dress, gold dress day.

45:40SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, the most important cultural text.

45:42SPEAKER- Only the most important stuff.

45:44SPEAKER- But even like documentary video evidence

45:46SPEAKERof war crimes and stuff,

45:49SPEAKERlike some serious, serious stuff

45:51SPEAKERis contained in this platform

45:52SPEAKERthat everybody just assumed would persist forever

45:54SPEAKERand all of a sudden it seems at risk of maybe going away

45:58SPEAKERand that would be a massive loss.

45:59SPEAKERI mean, granted there's a lot of important stuff

46:03SPEAKERon something awful forums,

46:04SPEAKERbut maybe nothing that quite rises to that level,

46:06SPEAKERalthough there was some investigative reporting

46:08SPEAKERthat came out of there,

46:09SPEAKERbut like even then,

46:10SPEAKERlike even early internet stuff contained

46:13SPEAKERon like fan communities and forums and stuff like that,

46:15SPEAKERlike that's all culture that is valuable

46:19SPEAKERand the way back machine can only do so much, I feel like.

46:24SPEAKERTo me, it used to be that like the good,

46:28SPEAKERif you had a technological problem too,

46:31SPEAKERthe good way to solve that problem

46:33SPEAKERwas to type the problem you had

46:34SPEAKERand then put message board or forum at the end of it, right?

46:37SPEAKERAnd you'd get a thread on some stack exchange

46:41SPEAKERor some relevant forum

46:43SPEAKERthat would give you a good kicking off point

46:46SPEAKERto find the solve for your problem.

46:48SPEAKERI think the thing to me that stood out about this question

46:51SPEAKERis that the general degradation of search quality

46:56SPEAKERover the last couple of years is the larger problem, right?

47:00SPEAKERLike we're already seeing even pre GPT and all that stuff,

47:05SPEAKERwe're seeing a dramatic degradation

47:08SPEAKERin the quality of search results

47:10SPEAKER'cause you get those paid.

47:11SPEAKERWhen you search for something, you get like the,

47:14SPEAKERif you search for lollipop creation,

47:18SPEAKERthen you get a page that's like,

47:19SPEAKERwhat is it most important about lollipop creation?

47:22SPEAKERWell, lollipop creation starts at the candy factory.

47:25SPEAKERCandy factories are a place where blah, blah, blah, blah,

47:27SPEAKERblah, and they're just nonsense pages

47:28SPEAKERthat are completely devoid of valuable information.

47:31SPEAKERAnd like when I've explored like,

47:36SPEAKERso I did a, I posted a tomato soup recipe

47:39SPEAKERon shitty.blog a few weeks ago.

47:41SPEAKERAnd somebody was like, I'm gonna tell you,

47:44SPEAKERyou should check out, it's a real good tomato soup recipe.

47:48SPEAKERBut somebody was like, hey, I only read recipes

47:50SPEAKERif there's like a really long heartfelt story

47:53SPEAKERabout the origin of the recipe

47:56SPEAKERand like how you were ostracized as a child

47:59SPEAKERfor liking that particular food

48:00SPEAKERand how you turn around people's lives by changing that.

48:04SPEAKERSo I was like, okay.

48:05SPEAKERAnd I went and typed that prompt into chat GPT

48:07SPEAKERand then pasted it onto the blog post.

48:09SPEAKERAnd now there's a garbage,

48:10SPEAKERthere's like four paragraphs of garbage text

48:13SPEAKERthat fit the format of recipe blog, heartfelt story

48:18SPEAKERwith stunning revelations and like a little bit

48:21SPEAKERabout the politics of tomatoes.

48:23SPEAKERAnd like, it's, we're hosed, like it's a real problem.

48:27SPEAKER- Yeah, seriously, man.

48:30SPEAKERShould I actually, maybe I'll just move on to the next.

48:33SPEAKERI have a related question here.

48:34SPEAKERI'm trying to find it.

48:35SPEAKER- I think Google is gonna give up the search.

48:38SPEAKERLike search, I think we've had 20 years of a time

48:41SPEAKERwhen search was useful and I'm worried

48:43SPEAKERthat that time has passed.

48:44SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure, for sure.

48:46SPEAKERAlso, I mean, if I could be a little like inward looking

48:48SPEAKERfor a minute, I mean, you know,

48:51SPEAKERI have been through the experience once

48:53SPEAKERand it wasn't a complete experience,

48:55SPEAKERbut it pretty close of like work I did

48:57SPEAKERjust vanishing from the internet on GameSpot.

49:00SPEAKERAll the reviews I wrote are still there and et cetera,

49:02SPEAKERbut a lot of the custom built feature content on that site

49:05SPEAKERis just gone.

49:07SPEAKERAnd you can find some of it on the way back machine

49:09SPEAKERand some of it's like slightly broken on there,

49:11SPEAKERbut like watching years of your life just kind of vanish,

49:15SPEAKERyears of your kind of professional output is rough.

49:18SPEAKER- I made a magazine that people read on the toilet

49:20SPEAKERand then threw it in the recycling bin every month.

49:22SPEAKER- Fair, I guess.

49:23SPEAKERI don't know, maybe it's not a unique experience, I guess,

49:25SPEAKERbut archiving that stuff is a topic of concern for me.

49:31SPEAKERIt's hard to, I don't, I lack the web design prowess

49:35SPEAKERto use the right words here, but like the, you know,

49:39SPEAKERthe way web pages are put together these days,

49:41SPEAKERyou can't just save as a web page

49:43SPEAKERand get a static page that works.

49:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:45SPEAKER- Like all the dynamic units and blah, blah, blah.

49:47SPEAKERLike again, I can't quite articulate what I'm saying.

49:49SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

49:50SPEAKERLike it's tough.

49:52SPEAKERIt's tough to go archive stuff that is like served

49:54SPEAKERin the way the web pages are served now.

49:57SPEAKERAnd so I've been talking to some people on the discord

49:59SPEAKERabout like backing up like my giant bomb profile

50:01SPEAKERand stuff like that.

50:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that is, it's an interesting,

50:07SPEAKERit's a real problem.

50:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:10SPEAKER- Like that archival, I mean, we should get something

50:12SPEAKERfrom Internet Archive on to talk about this

50:14SPEAKER'cause it's an interesting challenge.

50:15SPEAKERAnd they have a really good approach to that now, I think.

50:20SPEAKER- Are they, they are in the city, right?

50:23SPEAKERThey're here.

50:23SPEAKER- They're mostly East Bay, I think.

50:24SPEAKERJason's got some, an acquaintance.

50:27SPEAKERI cannot, he has agreed to be on the podcast in the past

50:29SPEAKERand then the pandemic happened

50:31SPEAKERand we stopped recording in person and we haven't,

50:32SPEAKERoh, I haven't followed back up with him.

50:34SPEAKERSo I don't know if we should put this in the show.

50:37SPEAKER- I think it's probably fine.

50:38SPEAKER- Okay.

50:39SPEAKER- I'm looking, there's a building near here

50:41SPEAKERthat I think might be,

50:43SPEAKERwell, maybe it's not their whole operation,

50:45SPEAKERbut I'm looking up.

50:46SPEAKEROkay, that is absolutely it.

50:48SPEAKERThere is, I live walking.

50:51SPEAKERYes, yeah, it's a building with columns

50:55SPEAKERand like stately kind of presentation

50:59SPEAKERthat I have walked by numerous times.

51:01SPEAKERI think I might've seen a sign,

51:02SPEAKERmaybe that's what tipped me off, but yeah, like, okay, yes.

51:04SPEAKERI thought that that was their building.

51:07SPEAKERProbably not their server farm.

51:08SPEAKER- I believe.

51:09SPEAKER- That's probably not their data center,

51:10SPEAKERbut I think that might be their headquarters.

51:13SPEAKERWe should do that, that would be fascinating.

51:16SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:16SPEAKER- Okay, speaking of AI and stuff, question from Warbird.

51:22SPEAKERWhat is the over under that Apple is using

51:24SPEAKERAI powered chat bots to field level

51:26SPEAKERon tech support questions?

51:27SPEAKERI just had an interaction that I frankly wouldn't be

51:30SPEAKERsurprised was automated in nature,

51:32SPEAKERbut was of a better quality

51:33SPEAKERthan what you usually see for chat bots.

51:36SPEAKER- Yes, I know that isn't how over under works.

51:38SPEAKERNo, I do not care.

51:39SPEAKERI think we've lost the battle on over under.

51:43SPEAKER- I don't know how over,

51:44SPEAKERI don't know that I ever knew how over under works.

51:47SPEAKER- So it's a gambling thing, it's a gambling framework.

51:52SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:53SPEAKER- The house picks a, I don't know what the term is.

51:57SPEAKER- It's like a base number, so you say like,

52:00SPEAKERif it's a football game, you say like 70 points combined.

52:03SPEAKER- Something like, yeah, they'll pick a specific outcome

52:05SPEAKERand then you bet on the over or the under,

52:07SPEAKERyou bet that it's going to be higher than that or lower.

52:09SPEAKER- What if it's exactly that, you lose?

52:10SPEAKER- I don't know, that's a good question.

52:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know, I don't like gambling.

52:14SPEAKER- I blame Ryan because he's the first person

52:16SPEAKERI ever heard using that term.

52:19SPEAKERPretty sure, pretty sure he knew how it worked, but.

52:22SPEAKER- Yeah, he would have known how it worked.

52:23SPEAKER- It caught, yeah, but yes, I went to horse races with him.

52:26SPEAKERI'm pretty sure he knew what worked,

52:28SPEAKERbut it seems to have just become a stand in

52:32SPEAKERfor what are the odds, which I know that I am,

52:35SPEAKERthat half the people listening to this podcast

52:38SPEAKERare rolling their eyes right now because who cares?

52:41SPEAKER- I think it's pretty likely that everybody,

52:43SPEAKERif they aren't using it already, the,

52:47SPEAKERbut look, okay, so it's a math problem, right?

52:49SPEAKERThe answer to this question is a math problem.

52:50SPEAKERIs it cheaper to pay somebody

52:52SPEAKERin an inexpensive developing country

52:55SPEAKERto sit on the keyboard typing stuff into the keyboard

52:59SPEAKERto answer questions, or is it cheaper

53:02SPEAKERto use the energy required to generate high quality

53:05SPEAKERchat interactions using an AI chat algorithm?

53:09SPEAKERProbably it's cheaper to use the computer,

53:12SPEAKERwould be my guess.

53:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

53:16SPEAKER- I think we're in, I think there's a really dark time

53:20SPEAKERcoming, if we're not careful, where we kill off

53:25SPEAKERa lot of the low skill jobs and then increasingly

53:31SPEAKERhigh skill jobs without having a way

53:34SPEAKERfor people to support themselves

53:37SPEAKERthat's gonna end up in a real grim Ready Player One

53:41SPEAKERkind of, I think, look, here's the bummer.

53:45SPEAKERThis is the bummer theme of the episode.

53:48SPEAKERWhat if the thing that Ready Player One got right

53:50SPEAKERisn't the stupid metaverse, which they kind of,

53:53SPEAKERwith all the, everybody's favorite pop culture references

53:55SPEAKERfrom the '80s, but the stacks of mobile homes

53:58SPEAKERpiled up on top of each other,

54:00SPEAKERwhich is where people actually live in the real world,

54:02SPEAKERbecause that's all anybody could afford.

54:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I would have to be a downer.

54:07SPEAKERI think I would remove the qualifier you just gave

54:09SPEAKERof if we're not careful, we're gonna end up in a dark time.

54:12SPEAKERI think it's just a flat, we're going to end up

54:14SPEAKERin a dark time.

54:15SPEAKER- Look, I'm a little more of an optimist than you, Brad.

54:18SPEAKER- Well, the bellwether for me is,

54:20SPEAKERthis feels like it just came out of nowhere,

54:22SPEAKERbasically since New Year's.

54:23SPEAKERThe degree to which you are seeing the investor

54:28SPEAKERand management classes now talking excitedly

54:31SPEAKERabout replacing jobs with AI is very alarming to me,

54:34SPEAKERbecause when the people with all the money

54:36SPEAKERget really excited about it

54:37SPEAKERis when it starts getting dangerous.

54:39SPEAKER- Well, that's true.

54:40SPEAKER- That it's going to become actualized

54:42SPEAKERand not just theoretical.

54:43SPEAKER- What if, what if, now here's a thought,

54:46SPEAKERwhat if we replace all the hedge fund managers with AI?

54:48SPEAKER- Now you're talking.

54:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:50SPEAKER- I mean, that's entirely possible.

54:51SPEAKERIt is very possible that AI could do a better job

54:54SPEAKERof managing investments like that than a human being.

54:56SPEAKER- Well, the problem is the people will just pay

54:58SPEAKERthe machines, will pay for the machines

55:00SPEAKERand use those as tools rather

55:01SPEAKERthan replace themselves with them

55:03SPEAKER'cause they're the money people.

55:04SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, fair.

55:05SPEAKERSomehow they always find a way to remain on top.

55:09SPEAKER- Look, they're first against the wall

55:11SPEAKERwhen the revolution comes, Brad.

55:12SPEAKER- Oh man, it's gonna be a whole thing.

55:17SPEAKERAll right, another question.

55:18SPEAKERAnother Warbird question.

55:20SPEAKER- Oh no.

55:22SPEAKER- Congratulations to Warbird on the twofer.

55:26SPEAKER- Neither of them are about college football.

55:29SPEAKER- Oh no.

55:32SPEAKER- What is the over under on Apple

55:34SPEAKEReventually integrating AirTag functionality

55:36SPEAKERinto all of their portable hardware?

55:38SPEAKEROne of my favorite AirPod pros,

55:41SPEAKERI think this is a little case pro

55:43SPEAKERbecause there is an AirPod pro product, right?

55:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:46SPEAKER- I think what he's saying is one of my favorite pros

55:48SPEAKERof the AirPods is the ability to ping the case.

55:52SPEAKERSame goes for the watch and phone combo.

55:54SPEAKERTo have the ability to point my phone around

55:56SPEAKERand figure out where the hell the baby put the damn iPad

55:58SPEAKERwould be amazing.

56:00SPEAKERTo be clear, I mean more of the 3D space tracking deal

56:02SPEAKERyou can do with newer phones, not just the find my stuff.

56:06SPEAKERAgain, yes, I know about over under.

56:07SPEAKERNo, I do not care.

56:10SPEAKER- Look, the most obvious place that they could do this

56:16SPEAKERis the remote for the Apple TV.

56:19SPEAKER- Okay.

56:20SPEAKER- Because if you have a kid, that remote,

56:22SPEAKERGod only knows where it is.

56:23SPEAKERIt's probably in a peanut butter jelly sandwich someplace

56:26SPEAKERcovered in gooed up and covered in jelly.

56:29SPEAKERI mean, my kid's pretty tidy at this point,

56:30SPEAKERbut the point remains.

56:32SPEAKERThe number of hours I've spent looking for an Apple TV

56:34SPEAKERremote over the last year and a half to 10 years is enormous.

56:38SPEAKERAnd I literally waited the last time I bought a new Apple TV

56:43SPEAKERfor the living room a couple of years ago.

56:44SPEAKERI was waiting until they announced the 4K,

56:47SPEAKERnot the latest 4K ones, but the second to latest 4K ones

56:49SPEAKERto see if they put an AirTag in the remote.

56:51SPEAKERAnd they did not, and I was sad.

56:54SPEAKER- I have to, I mean, the AirTags are so small.

56:56SPEAKERI have to assume that a technical limitation

56:58SPEAKERwould not prevent them from doing what he's suggesting.

57:00SPEAKERIt would just be a business limitation, right?

57:02SPEAKEROf, hey, we have this whole product aligned

57:04SPEAKERfor these things and we don't want to cannibalize that

57:05SPEAKERby just putting it in all our other products.

57:07SPEAKER- I would replace every remote in the house

57:09SPEAKERif they sold remotes.

57:10SPEAKERIf I could buy extra remotes that have the AirTag built in,

57:13SPEAKERI would replace every single remote I own with those.

57:16SPEAKER- So I didn't, I mean, the AirTag's fine.

57:19SPEAKERLike I just didn't really have a use case for it.

57:20SPEAKERLike I was not personally interested in it

57:22SPEAKERuntil this past holiday

57:23SPEAKERwhen all the air travel chaos happened.

57:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:26SPEAKER- And I became aware of this phenomenon

57:27SPEAKERof people putting AirTags in their suitcases

57:29SPEAKERwhen they travel.

57:30SPEAKER- Lufthansa prevents, makes, prohibits that.

57:33SPEAKER- Oh no.

57:34SPEAKER- You're not allowed to do that.

57:35SPEAKER- Wait, just by policy or do they have a technical means

57:37SPEAKERof blocking it?

57:38SPEAKER- No, no, they say you're not allowed to do that.

57:40SPEAKER- Oh, I see.

57:41SPEAKER- I think their reason is 'cause they don't want you

57:42SPEAKERto know where your luggage is.

57:43SPEAKER- I was gonna say, try and stop us cops,

57:46SPEAKERairplane, airport, airplane cops.

57:49SPEAKER- Yeah, like I followed a couple of Twitter threads

57:51SPEAKERover the holidays.

57:52SPEAKERIt was just interesting to watch this play out

57:54SPEAKERof people whose luggage got lost in,

57:57SPEAKERI think mostly the Southwest kerfuffle.

58:00SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:00SPEAKER- Who were extremely intensively tracking the location

58:03SPEAKERof their suitcase as it moved around in real time.

58:06SPEAKER- Well, the neat thing about it is the AirTags work

58:09SPEAKERby using everybody that has an iPhone's Bluetooth.

58:12SPEAKERSo if you're in range of somebody who has an iPhone,

58:14SPEAKERwhich is like 40% of the world's population

58:17SPEAKERthat has smartphones at this point,

58:19SPEAKERyou can tell where your stuff is.

58:21SPEAKERGoogle apparently has one of these things coming too.

58:23SPEAKER- Is that something you can opt out of as an iPhone user?

58:27SPEAKER- You know, that is a very good question, Brad.

58:29SPEAKER- Interesting, I mean, I don't have a problem with it.

58:31SPEAKERI wouldn't, I don't think I would opt out

58:33SPEAKERif that was an option.

58:35SPEAKERI'm just curious 'cause it does seem like

58:36SPEAKERthat maybe something they should offer.

58:38SPEAKER- They hash the information that comes out

58:41SPEAKERso that your, when you bump the information back

58:44SPEAKERto the network, it's not a, it doesn't include

58:49SPEAKERany personally identified information

58:50SPEAKERfor the person who's doing the narking.

58:52SPEAKERSo I don't think it's an issue.

58:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe that.

58:55SPEAKERIt's more just that they're using your data.

58:56SPEAKERYou know, like, I mean, I'm sure it is kilobytes of data.

58:59SPEAKERI'm sure it is not a big deal,

59:00SPEAKERbut like adding any amount of network traffic

59:02SPEAKERto your device that you didn't ask for

59:04SPEAKERis maybe a little questionable.

59:05SPEAKER- Well, the interesting thing I wonder is

59:07SPEAKERif they're gonna make like the baggage handlers

59:09SPEAKERput their phones in a blocker or something

59:11SPEAKERbefore they go out and are walking around the bags.

59:14SPEAKER- Yeah. - For the company, yeah.

59:15SPEAKER- I didn't see how it resolved.

59:16SPEAKERThere was one Twitter thread that went viral

59:18SPEAKERover the holidays of a lady who...

59:21SPEAKEROh, what airline was it?

59:22SPEAKERI guess I shouldn't put any of them on blast,

59:25SPEAKERbut she had been tracking her bag

59:27SPEAKERand the location of the bag was extremely not

59:30SPEAKERwhat the airline was telling her it was.

59:31SPEAKERIt was at somebody's apartment.

59:33SPEAKER- Oh, oops.

59:34SPEAKER- And she tracked it like,

59:37SPEAKERshe tracked it making a trip to McDonald's one day.

59:40SPEAKERAgain, I didn't see how it resolved.

59:41SPEAKERI'm guessing what it is is that they were using

59:44SPEAKERlike third-party contractors for kind of the bag,

59:47SPEAKERI don't know, retrieval or storage or delivery or whatever.

59:50SPEAKERAnd this person kind of in the same way

59:52SPEAKERthat, you know, like Comcast will send a third party,

59:55SPEAKERlike a contracted installer to your house,

59:56SPEAKERnot a Comcast employee.

59:58SPEAKERI assume it was something like that.

1:00:00SPEAKERI assume she got her bag eventually,

1:00:01SPEAKERbut the airline support was being kind of shitty to her.

1:00:04SPEAKERLike she posted a screenshot of the chat

1:00:08SPEAKERwith the rep quite literally said,

1:00:09SPEAKER"Calm down, your bag is fine at one point,"

1:00:11SPEAKERwhich like, even if that's the case,

1:00:14SPEAKERprobably not the best thing to say to a customer

1:00:16SPEAKERin the age of social media.

1:00:17SPEAKER- Look, my policy is you never check anything

1:00:20SPEAKERthat's worth more than $600 combined.

1:00:22SPEAKERAnd you assume that it's gone

1:00:24SPEAKERthe moment you put it on the belt.

1:00:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I just, as a matter of policy,

1:00:29SPEAKERdo everything I can not to check bags these days.

1:00:32SPEAKERI just try to travel as light as possible

1:00:34SPEAKERso I don't have to worry about stuff like this.

1:00:35SPEAKERBut anyway, it was just an interesting thing

1:00:37SPEAKERto see play out in the context of like,

1:00:39SPEAKERwhat modern consumer tech is empowering people to do

1:00:43SPEAKERthat they couldn't do before,

1:00:44SPEAKERsuch as see exactly where their lost luggage is.

1:00:46SPEAKERIt was kind of cool.

1:00:47SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool.

1:00:51SPEAKER- How about, I'm just trying to decide

1:00:54SPEAKERwhen to move into the big cake batter finish here.

1:00:58SPEAKER- Oh, you're gonna do like two more regular,

1:01:00SPEAKERlike we had such a bounty,

1:01:02SPEAKERwe might have to do a patron Q&A episode this month

1:01:05SPEAKER'cause they're real good.

1:01:07SPEAKER- Yeah, we have been getting a ton of,

1:01:08SPEAKERI know we keep saying this, but like we seriously get,

1:01:12SPEAKERthis could almost be an all questions show.

1:01:13SPEAKERI think at this point we get so many good ones.

1:01:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:17SPEAKER- Do you want to do this one for Matbot about,

1:01:21SPEAKERhere, I'll just read it.

1:01:22SPEAKERYou can answer if you want.

1:01:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I highlighted this one

1:01:25SPEAKER'cause I had an answer for this.

1:01:27SPEAKER- If you had 100% of all medical expenses covered for a year,

1:01:30SPEAKERwhat kind of testing or treatments would you get done?

1:01:32SPEAKERI hit my deductible early this year

1:01:34SPEAKERand I'm looking for ideas.

1:01:35SPEAKER- So I literally had that happen last year

1:01:37SPEAKER'cause of my gallbladder stuff happened

1:01:39SPEAKERin the spring in January.

1:01:42SPEAKERAnd I'm gonna go and tell you,

1:01:43SPEAKERI fucked up and didn't get anything done.

1:01:45SPEAKER- Oh no, oh no.

1:01:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:48SPEAKER- That's like free, well, not free.

1:01:49SPEAKERYou probably still would have had to pay something,

1:01:50SPEAKERbut that's a heavily discounted medical care.

1:01:52SPEAKER- I got distracted and I didn't get anything booked.

1:01:55SPEAKERAnd by the time I realized I'd messed up, it was too late.

1:01:57SPEAKERSo.

1:01:58SPEAKER- Man, I had just,

1:01:59SPEAKERI know we complained about health insurance a lot.

1:02:01SPEAKERI guess I apologize, although it is extremely lamentable.

1:02:05SPEAKER- It sucks.

1:02:06SPEAKER- Deplorable is a better word,

1:02:07SPEAKERbut like I'm sure people in other countries

1:02:10SPEAKERare just like having their heads spin

1:02:12SPEAKERwhen they hear conversations like this,

1:02:14SPEAKERthat yes, if you hit your deductible early in the year,

1:02:17SPEAKERyou wanna try to cram more medical stuff in while it's cheap

1:02:20SPEAKERbecause at the beginning of the next year,

1:02:22SPEAKERthat whole thing resets

1:02:22SPEAKERand then you have to pay thousands of dollars

1:02:24SPEAKERout of pocket again.

1:02:25SPEAKERThat happened to me.

1:02:26SPEAKERThat happened to me with the vocal cord issue stuff.

1:02:29SPEAKERI was, I had some speech therapy

1:02:31SPEAKERthat was not covered by my insurance

1:02:33SPEAKERuntil I paid a lot of money for it.

1:02:37SPEAKERAnd the therapist had scheduled all of my appointments

1:02:41SPEAKERthrough the end of the year.

1:02:42SPEAKERSo that roughly half of them were going to be covered.

1:02:45SPEAKERAgain, I had to pay the whole cost out of pocket,

1:02:47SPEAKERwhich was hundreds of dollars per appointment

1:02:49SPEAKERuntil insurance, I think kicked in 80% after that.

1:02:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:53SPEAKER- And literally,

1:02:56SPEAKERliterally after the last appointment

1:02:58SPEAKERthat I had to pay full price on

1:02:59SPEAKERbefore the insurance would kick in,

1:03:01SPEAKERI never found out what happened,

1:03:02SPEAKERbut the therapist had to cancel

1:03:03SPEAKERthe rest of our appointments for the year

1:03:05SPEAKERand wanted to reschedule them for the new year.

1:03:08SPEAKER- Oh no.

1:03:09SPEAKER- Cool.

1:03:09SPEAKERNow I get to pay full price for the rest of these as well.

1:03:12SPEAKERLike just due to a shitty calendar technicality,

1:03:15SPEAKERthat's the American healthcare system.

1:03:19SPEAKER- I've been scheming with my GP to figure out,

1:03:23SPEAKERdon't tell anybody, this is all off the record, right?

1:03:27SPEAKERTo figure out how to get like the full body MRI

1:03:29SPEAKERso we have a baseline.

1:03:31SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.

1:03:32SPEAKERIs that a preventative thing that people do now?

1:03:34SPEAKER- So you can pay to have it done.

1:03:35SPEAKERIt's pretty expensive.

1:03:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:37SPEAKER- I also am not sure I can do an MRI.

1:03:38SPEAKERLike, I feel like I might,

1:03:40SPEAKERlike I don't generally get claustrophobic, but maybe,

1:03:43SPEAKERI don't know, it's pretty small in there.

1:03:46SPEAKERAnyway, like I feel like that's probably the thing I would,

1:03:48SPEAKERif I was gonna do anything,

1:03:49SPEAKERit would be some sort of full body image

1:03:51SPEAKERso you have a baseline from like whatever age,

1:03:55SPEAKERmid forties, early forties, mid thirties, whatever.

1:03:58SPEAKER- I mean, that's another issue.

1:03:59SPEAKERI mean, I can tell you,

1:04:00SPEAKERknowing people who work in medical field,

1:04:01SPEAKERthat is a huge problem of people neglecting preventative

1:04:04SPEAKERcare.

1:04:05SPEAKERI mean, that MRI, like an unsolicited MRI

1:04:08SPEAKERis maybe a little bit, like that's extremely proactive.

1:04:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:04:12SPEAKER- But even more basic preventative stuff,

1:04:14SPEAKERlike people neglect it all the time

1:04:15SPEAKERbecause they can't afford it

1:04:16SPEAKERor they have to pay too much out of pocket for it.

1:04:18SPEAKERAnd that leads to all kinds of worse outcomes

1:04:21SPEAKERbecause people don't catch things early

1:04:22SPEAKERbecause they weren't getting checked for them.

1:04:25SPEAKERAnd then by the time you can't ignore the problem anymore,

1:04:28SPEAKERit's a bad situation.

1:04:29SPEAKER- Get your colonoscopies and pap smears and all that stuff.

1:04:32SPEAKERFolks, mammograms.

1:04:34SPEAKER- I might line up a hearing test, honestly.

1:04:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I wonder about that.

1:04:42SPEAKERI have some hearing loss and I can't tell if it's,

1:04:44SPEAKERI can't tell if it's hearing loss or a neuro problem.

1:04:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:04:48SPEAKER- Cause like I have trouble picking out voices in crowds.

1:04:51SPEAKER- Interesting, I'm kind of getting there a little bit.

1:04:53SPEAKERI've had like a problem talking over people

1:04:55SPEAKERon these video calls more lately that I can't seem to lick.

1:04:58SPEAKERAnd I've also got like pretty profound tinnitus

1:05:01SPEAKERin my right ear for the last four or five months.

1:05:03SPEAKERLike it's high-pitched, just, it sucks.

1:05:07SPEAKERIt really sucks.

1:05:09SPEAKER- Do you know about the tapping the back of the bone

1:05:11SPEAKERbehind your ear?

1:05:12SPEAKER- No.

1:05:13SPEAKER- That kind of resets the nerves when you have tinnitus.

1:05:17SPEAKER- Interesting, yeah.

1:05:20SPEAKERYeah, I think I might wear earbuds too much.

1:05:23SPEAKER- Oh, that would do it.

1:05:23SPEAKER- I really wonder not, I mean for myself

1:05:25SPEAKERand like as a society, the amount of earbud use

1:05:29SPEAKERseems like it might be precarious.

1:05:32SPEAKER- I feel like there's gonna be,

1:05:33SPEAKERI'm just waiting for the,

1:05:35SPEAKERhey, it turns out what we thought

1:05:36SPEAKERwere the safe hearing limits

1:05:37SPEAKERwere really weighed dramatically too high for a long time.

1:05:40SPEAKERSo I don't know.

1:05:42SPEAKER- Yeah, to be fair, this kind of ringing in the ear

1:05:44SPEAKERcan be all kinds of stuff.

1:05:45SPEAKERIt can be genetics and age

1:05:46SPEAKERand like all sorts of other factors as well.

1:05:50SPEAKERMy ENT kind of just said, get over it,

1:05:54SPEAKERwhich sounds like a very common experience

1:05:56SPEAKERthat there isn't a real treatment for it,

1:05:59SPEAKERlike the official recommendation

1:06:01SPEAKERis like you're gonna have to find a way to live with it.

1:06:03SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:06:07SPEAKERSometimes when you get that response from a doctor,

1:06:08SPEAKERthe right answer is to find a better doctor.

1:06:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess so.

1:06:13SPEAKER- Depends on how you feel about how they are.

1:06:15SPEAKER- I guess you're right.

1:06:16SPEAKEROkay, quick question from Aaron MT here.

1:06:18SPEAKERThis is a, I have a personal interest here.

1:06:21SPEAKERHow's latency in wireless computer peripherals these days?

1:06:24SPEAKERAre wireless mice and keyboards good for gaming,

1:06:26SPEAKERgood enough that it's not an issue?

1:06:27SPEAKERI'm always looking to reduce cords,

1:06:29SPEAKERbut I am wary of the time when wireless tech

1:06:31SPEAKERin the early days sucks.

1:06:33SPEAKERHow is it now?

1:06:34SPEAKER- I use a Logitech light speed mouse,

1:06:36SPEAKERone of the G3 Pro super lights.

1:06:39SPEAKERIndistinctible from a wire.

1:06:41SPEAKER- Oh, don't, oh no.

1:06:42SPEAKERThat's a whole tangent I didn't even intend to get into.

1:06:44SPEAKERFirst of all, I'm probably,

1:06:46SPEAKERI'm pretty close to pulling that I've been putting off,

1:06:49SPEAKERpulling the trigger on a light speed mouse myself

1:06:51SPEAKER'cause I wanna go cordless.

1:06:52SPEAKERAlso this MX518 is kind of falling apart.

1:06:55SPEAKER- Yeah, that's an old mouse at this point.

1:06:57SPEAKER- Well, this was the reissue.

1:06:58SPEAKERThis was the, I just bought it a couple of years ago.

1:07:01SPEAKERKind of surprised how quickly it started malfunctioning.

1:07:05SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, it's pretty much all fine, right?

1:07:08SPEAKERLike I use a Bluetooth keyboard for gaming

1:07:10SPEAKERand I've not noticed any issues with latency.

1:07:13SPEAKER- So the super light isn't Bluetooth.

1:07:15SPEAKERI mean, the Logitech stuff has both a 2.4 gigahertz high,

1:07:20SPEAKERlow latency, high refresh, like thousand hertz

1:07:24SPEAKERrefresh cycle connection to the Bluetooth.

1:07:28SPEAKERThe difference is that like the amount of battery

1:07:30SPEAKERthat's in this mouse gives you like 30 days on Bluetooth

1:07:33SPEAKERor three on the light speed.

1:07:35SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.

1:07:36SPEAKER- For that reason, I do the pad.

1:07:38SPEAKERI have the charge pad underneath it.

1:07:40SPEAKER- Oh, but that means you still have a cord.

1:07:42SPEAKER- It's one cord and it comes straight out.

1:07:45SPEAKERI also have a wired keyboard.

1:07:46SPEAKERSo I have a mechanical keyboard with lights

1:07:48SPEAKERand I do wired for that just 'cause it's like the battery

1:07:50SPEAKERusage is such.

1:07:52SPEAKER- You're not as obsessive about desk clutter as I am.

1:07:55SPEAKER- No, I am like, it turns out I have grown to realize

1:07:59SPEAKERthat I embrace and enjoy a small amount of desk clutter.

1:08:02SPEAKER- It's fair.

1:08:03SPEAKER- And by that, I mean, moderate piles.

1:08:04SPEAKER- That's fair.

1:08:05SPEAKER- My desk will give you hives, Brad.

1:08:07SPEAKER- Oh boy, let's not, let's just not.

1:08:11SPEAKERThe tangent I almost got off on here was looking at reviews

1:08:14SPEAKERfor different mice.

1:08:15SPEAKERI became aware of the phenomenon of the light mouse.

1:08:18SPEAKER- Oh, the light mouse is real good.

1:08:19SPEAKER- Like there's a whole cult.

1:08:22SPEAKERYes, it seems a little cultish.

1:08:24SPEAKER- Look, the final mouse people, they're a little crazy.

1:08:27SPEAKER- Is that where it came from?

1:08:28SPEAKERLike there are people, I mean, there are people out there

1:08:29SPEAKERmodding their mice to make them lighter at this point.

1:08:31SPEAKERLike people want.

1:08:32SPEAKER- I've done that.

1:08:34SPEAKERI pulled bits out of my old mouse to make it lighter.

1:08:37SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah.

1:08:37SPEAKER- There's like, I don't know if there's a subreddit for it,

1:08:39SPEAKERbut I've seen a bunch of Reddit posts when I was Googling

1:08:41SPEAKERabout it of people like cutting sections out of the casing.

1:08:44SPEAKERLike those mice you see with the honeycomb hole pattern

1:08:47SPEAKERin them are definitely, those are trying to reduce weight,

1:08:49SPEAKERbut it's people, it's people modding their mice

1:08:52SPEAKERwith dremels and stuff at this point to like remove

1:08:54SPEAKERas many materials as they can.

1:08:56SPEAKERSo, so I was just about ready to pull the trigger

1:08:59SPEAKERon a G502X, I think it's, there's a bunch of bottles.

1:09:04SPEAKERThey rolled out a refresh of the G502,

1:09:06SPEAKERwhich I believe is the X and then the X plus has RGB.

1:09:09SPEAKERI think that's the distinction.

1:09:10SPEAKERAnyway, the new G502 that just came out like three months

1:09:13SPEAKERago, I was all ready to buy it.

1:09:14SPEAKERAnd then I looked at the weight and I saw people going like,

1:09:16SPEAKERah, the only real dock against this is pretty heavy.

1:09:19SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh no, am I, is my mouse too heavy?

1:09:21SPEAKERAm I buying too heavy a mouse?

1:09:22SPEAKERAm I screwing up here?

1:09:23SPEAKERI can't decide.

1:09:25SPEAKER- So the thing I will say as a former proponent

1:09:28SPEAKERof the heavy mouse is that landing flick shots in like PUBG

1:09:33SPEAKERand Fortnite and stuff like that,

1:09:34SPEAKERwhere you move the mouse very quickly and stop on a,

1:09:36SPEAKERon a very high precision point seems easier

1:09:39SPEAKERwith the light mouse.

1:09:40SPEAKER- That's fair.

1:09:41SPEAKER- You're also operating at a higher level of play than me.

1:09:45SPEAKER- I don't think it matters if you're not playing pretty

1:09:48SPEAKERcompetitive games.

1:09:49SPEAKER- Yeah. Okay.

1:09:51SPEAKER- But I used to be the guy who loaded up all the weights

1:09:54SPEAKERin the mouse.

1:09:55SPEAKERAnd as soon as I stopped doing that,

1:09:56SPEAKERI immediately got better at first person shooters.

1:09:59SPEAKERSo.

1:10:00SPEAKER- All right.

1:10:02SPEAKERQuick, let's see, hang on.

1:10:04SPEAKERThere are 15 cake batter questions in here.

1:10:07SPEAKER- How many are highlighted?

1:10:10SPEAKER- Which is that lightning round one from Safed?

1:10:12SPEAKER- Oh gosh.

1:10:13SPEAKERWe might have to save that one.

1:10:15SPEAKER- Okay. Okay.

1:10:16SPEAKER- For time here.

1:10:17SPEAKERWe'll get back to that.

1:10:18SPEAKERYou're right. That's a good one.

1:10:19SPEAKER- It's any real good.

1:10:21SPEAKERWe can do it next month if we don't do it this month.

1:10:22SPEAKER- Or we just tack it on next week or something.

1:10:24SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:10:26SPEAKERShould we do the, should we do the Alberto one?

1:10:28SPEAKER- Yes, that one's I'll finish with that one.

1:10:31SPEAKER- Pickles, slice length wise or width wise?

1:10:34SPEAKER- Always length.

1:10:35SPEAKER- Really?

1:10:36SPEAKER- Sandwiches, everything.

1:10:37SPEAKERI get the long, I get the long slices and everything.

1:10:39SPEAKERI guess we're basically talking chips versus strips here.

1:10:43SPEAKER- I look, I like a spear.

1:10:44SPEAKER- Okay, spears are, well spears are good for eating.

1:10:47SPEAKERThey're not so good for sandwiches 'cause they're not flat.

1:10:49SPEAKER- Yeah, no, but I like a slice long for sandos.

1:10:53SPEAKER- The stacker, I believe the stacker is the term

1:10:56SPEAKERthat is used in the marketing mostly now.

1:10:57SPEAKER- That's a brand.

1:10:59SPEAKER- Is it?

1:11:00SPEAKER- It's owned by Clawson, I believe.

1:11:01SPEAKER- Okay.

1:11:01SPEAKER- Or Vlasic.

1:11:02SPEAKER- Those are the thin length wise,

1:11:05SPEAKERlike they're basically the thickness of chips,

1:11:06SPEAKERbut just the whole length of the plant.

1:11:12SPEAKERWe only had chips growing up,

1:11:13SPEAKERlike pickles were just little chips to me.

1:11:16SPEAKER- Were you sweet and sour?

1:11:18SPEAKER- We mostly had dill around the house.

1:11:19SPEAKER- See, we were all sweet and sour first.

1:11:22SPEAKERFor slices, we were all sweet and sour.

1:11:24SPEAKERFor eating, we were all dill.

1:11:26SPEAKER- Yes, the dill absolutely was the thing

1:11:28SPEAKERyou would just grab out of the fridge and eat.

1:11:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm gonna tell you, like for eating,

1:11:34SPEAKERI'm a whole pickle guy.

1:11:36SPEAKER- Give me the whole.

1:11:37SPEAKER- Sure.

1:11:38SPEAKER- The whole, the thick boy.

1:11:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:11:40SPEAKER- We're just gonna chop that thing, crack the skin.

1:11:42SPEAKER- I did a fair amount of eating whole pickles myself.

1:11:45SPEAKERYou know what else was good?

1:11:47SPEAKER- What?

1:11:48SPEAKER- And perhaps still is a big old jar

1:11:49SPEAKERof whole pepperoncinis.

1:11:51SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I'll, look.

1:11:53SPEAKER- Just grab a couple of those.

1:11:54SPEAKERYou gotta be careful though, 'cause they hold the liquid,

1:11:56SPEAKERthey hold the brine.

1:11:57SPEAKER- Well, you know what?

1:11:58SPEAKER- If you bite down those things wrong,

1:12:00SPEAKERyou get a stream of brine shooting everywhere.

1:12:02SPEAKER- A chopped up pepperoncini on top of a sando though.

1:12:05SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

1:12:06SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:12:06SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

1:12:07SPEAKER- Just like make a little relish there.

1:12:08SPEAKER- It's top tier.

1:12:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:12:11SPEAKER- We keep both around, actually.

1:12:12SPEAKERWe keep whole pepperoncinis and also like a,

1:12:15SPEAKERkind of a diced jar.

1:12:17SPEAKER- I think my first introduction to the pepperoncini

1:12:20SPEAKERas a condiment was when Papa John's came to my hometown.

1:12:24SPEAKER- I think you're right.

1:12:25SPEAKER- And like they chucked a couple of those in

1:12:26SPEAKERwith the pizza and you're like,

1:12:27SPEAKERwhat are these weird pepper, oh man, these are good.

1:12:29SPEAKER- Sure.

1:12:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:12:32SPEAKER- Okay, let's do like one or two more quick ones.

1:12:40SPEAKERSome of these are toe shoes.

1:12:42SPEAKERWhy are they controversial?

1:12:44SPEAKER- People are weird about feet, man.

1:12:46SPEAKER- I guess that's true.

1:12:47SPEAKERI don't know if there is a certain.

1:12:50SPEAKER- Look.

1:12:51SPEAKER- Yeah, you know that I started to say

1:12:52SPEAKERthere's a certain fashion issue there, but you know what?

1:12:55SPEAKERThose are kind of ridiculous enough to be cool.

1:12:58SPEAKER- There's no, there's no,

1:12:59SPEAKERthey're no different than wearing sandals

1:13:01SPEAKERfor all intents and purposes,

1:13:03SPEAKERexcept for some people get really squeezed out by them.

1:13:05SPEAKERI enjoyed when we worked in the basement office

1:13:08SPEAKERand I was writing Bart to work every day

1:13:10SPEAKERand I did the video for those

1:13:11SPEAKERand wore them on Bart every day.

1:13:12SPEAKERI got a lot of questions about like more than anything else.

1:13:15SPEAKERLike I got more questions about that than like Google Glass

1:13:18SPEAKERor having an early smartphone or anything like that.

1:13:21SPEAKERPeople would come up and be like,

1:13:21SPEAKERhey, what the hell's the deal with your shoes?

1:13:23SPEAKERAnd then you'd talk about them and they'd be like,

1:13:25SPEAKERoh, that's interesting.

1:13:26SPEAKERAnd like, it's like a walking barefoot.

1:13:27SPEAKERI was like, yeah, it's like walking barefoot.

1:13:28SPEAKERNow walking barefoot is not, does not seem like a desire.

1:13:32SPEAKERLike that seems like a young man's game.

1:13:34SPEAKERNow I want like some heavy arch support.

1:13:36SPEAKERI want a big foamy sole.

1:13:37SPEAKERI want to not feel the ground under my feet.

1:13:40SPEAKER- Yes, I increasingly am with you.

1:13:43SPEAKEROkay.

1:13:44SPEAKERIs it sacrilegious to put a scoop of ice cream

1:13:47SPEAKERin a glass of stout instead of root beer

1:13:50SPEAKERand have an ice cream beer float?

1:13:52SPEAKER- Have you ever, I've always seen that.

1:13:53SPEAKERI've never tried it.

1:13:54SPEAKER- Is that a thing?

1:13:54SPEAKERIs that something people do? - Yeah, that's a thing.

1:13:56SPEAKERThat's a thing people, you can get that at bars.

1:13:58SPEAKER- I don't know if, I don't know if I'm like,

1:13:59SPEAKERI'm trying to think what, you know, what stout you would use.

1:14:01SPEAKERI don't, Guinness is maybe a little too-

1:14:03SPEAKER- It would be like a, I don't know if,

1:14:06SPEAKERMagnolia used to do that with like, with fancy by right ice.

1:14:09SPEAKERYou'd get a fancy scoop of by right vanilla ice cream,