194: All I Want Is Simple Determinism!

00:00SPEAKEROK, we were setting up to record and you just casually tossed off as we were about to press

00:04SPEAKERrecord.

00:06SPEAKERSomething along the lines of I just updated the weekly challenge in our game.

00:10SPEAKERYeah.

00:11SPEAKERAnd I was, I was a bit gobsmacked because when you describe a process like that, I assume

00:16SPEAKERit requires like three engineers and an hour of each person's time to do something like

00:22SPEAKERthat.

00:23SPEAKERAnd instead it sounds like you maybe like changed one value in a backend and really

00:26SPEAKERI just want to talk about your game's backend.

00:29SPEAKERSo wow.

00:30SPEAKERThat sounds filthy when you put it that way.

00:31SPEAKERSo I, I, I went to a control panel.

00:33SPEAKERThis is the anacrusis we're talking about.

00:35SPEAKERIt's available on Steam and X-Box you can mail it for 20 bucks.

00:37SPEAKERYou don't say.

00:38SPEAKERIt's a left for dead co-op shooter.

00:42SPEAKERWe shoot aliens made by Chet Valasek, the lead at Valve for left for dead.

00:49SPEAKERAnd we just, we just rolled out versus mode a couple of weeks ago.

00:53SPEAKERYes.

00:54SPEAKERIt's so updating the backend.

00:55SPEAKERIt's very exciting.

00:56SPEAKERI go to a webpage, are you with me so far?

00:59SPEAKERYes.

01:00SPEAKERAnd then I click on a thing that says game records.

01:05SPEAKEROkay.

01:06SPEAKEROkay.

01:07SPEAKERAnd then it opens up a page that has a text field in there.

01:09SPEAKERThat's got a bunch of Jason in it for all the stuff that we can configure outside of

01:13SPEAKERthe game without having to make a build.

01:15SPEAKERSo like we, we've, we've actually done a bunch of like, we have some special, like some,

01:19SPEAKERsome enemy spawns are in there so we can like, we can juice up the, the, the rarer enemies

01:25SPEAKERon special occasions if we want.

01:29SPEAKERWe can turn on and off things like boat kick and features that we weren't sure we're going

01:33SPEAKERto work right when we rolled them out.

01:34SPEAKERSo we didn't have to do a new build to fix them.

01:38SPEAKERBut in there also is the current weekly challenge.

01:40SPEAKERSo I've scrolled down until I got to the part where it says weekly challenge.

01:45SPEAKERAnd then I took the number that was in the weekly challenge slot and added one to it

01:50SPEAKERand I hit save.

01:52SPEAKEROkay.

01:53SPEAKERAnd then from the moment I did that, the next person who connected to the, to the, to the

01:57SPEAKERserver to, to set up matchmaking was in magic.

02:02SPEAKERI consider myself a connoisseur and aficionado of content management systems.

02:07SPEAKERThis is not a good one.

02:08SPEAKERHaving, having, yeah.

02:09SPEAKEROkay.

02:10SPEAKERI was going to get to that and having, having worked on websites for as long as I have,

02:13SPEAKERI have, I have been putting content into forms, pressing publish for over 20 years.

02:18SPEAKERAnd you've been there like, just to be clear for people who are like use WordPress today,

02:22SPEAKERwhat a CMS looked like when you started out at Gamespot, when I was working at Maximum

02:25SPEAKERPC is not what you would expect.

02:28SPEAKERLike they were not good.

02:30SPEAKERLike I became acquainted with the term R-Sync like 20 years before my recent like Unix open

02:36SPEAKERsource stuff, because the original Gamespot CMS like exposed to the R-Sync process as

02:43SPEAKERassets for being pushed to the website.

02:45SPEAKERWe had producers, we had people who, whose entire jobs it was to take articles and screenshots

02:50SPEAKERand turn them into articles on the thing because even the CMS that was built by the corporation

02:56SPEAKERfor that was too technical for normal people to do.

02:59SPEAKERWell, it's funny.

03:00SPEAKERWe always used to laugh at you all for having people that did that work for you.

03:02SPEAKERCause we had in magazine world, we had to do that cause they didn't care enough to put

03:05SPEAKERemployees on, you know, that, that kind of work.

03:08SPEAKERBut like.

03:09SPEAKERWell, I mean, I, a, because I was mostly doing previews where we were like trying to compete

03:14SPEAKERto be first with all the information, B just because it's me and my personality, I actually

03:19SPEAKERwent and learned all that stuff myself, the stuff the producers did and stopped sending

03:24SPEAKERcontent to them and just started doing all the markup and stuff myself, just to get the,

03:28SPEAKERcause you know, you had to send it over there and they might have a backlog and you might

03:31SPEAKERask them to like, Hey, this is priority.

03:33SPEAKERCan you get this done quicker?

03:34SPEAKERBut like it was way faster to just do it myself.

03:36SPEAKERBut, but I mean, it's important to note, we're not talking about like typing it into a field

03:41SPEAKERand uploading some pictures, like you had to size, you had to make the thumbnails, you

03:45SPEAKERhad to size all the images manually.

03:48SPEAKERYou had to, you had to often place HTML tags in for the images that referenced where the

03:54SPEAKERimage was going to be on the server when you put it there, because it probably wasn't there

03:58SPEAKERyet.

03:59SPEAKERAnd like there was a bunch, like it was weird when I was working at ours, we used front

04:03SPEAKERpage, which was a really funny, but I think about it now, but like it was, it was a WYSIWYG

04:09SPEAKEReditor and it would handle all the uploads, but it was also really stupid because if two

04:14SPEAKERpeople edited the front page file, there was no way to lock the file on the server side.

04:18SPEAKERSo if two people were in that file at the same time, whoever saved glass would erase

04:22SPEAKERthe other person's work.

04:23SPEAKERHad that experience many times.

04:25SPEAKERYeah.

04:26SPEAKERSo, yeah, I think we've talked about it before, but getting to WYSIWYG media and seeing the

04:31SPEAKEReditor that those guys had built, it was like, it was like a top five in my career moment

04:36SPEAKERof like, Holy shit, this is the future.

04:38SPEAKERLike, Oh my God, I'm working with some incredible people.

04:40SPEAKERThat was not to say, not to say that there were not a lot of incredible people at GameSpot,

04:45SPEAKERbut like corporate bureaucracy and, you know, like building new things at a giant corporation

04:50SPEAKERis a very different thing than it is a little startup.

04:53SPEAKERWell, yeah.

04:54SPEAKERAnd, and it's funny cause I, I think I actually made fun of when, when the AOL Engadget folks

05:01SPEAKERleft AOL to go start the Verge.

05:05SPEAKERAnd I think it was Josh Topolski was like, this is, we, one of the things that made us

05:08SPEAKERwant to move is we looked at their CMS and it was the best CMS we'd ever seen.

05:11SPEAKERAnd I was like, okay, so I would never say that publicly cause you sound like a doofus,

05:16SPEAKERbut also I totally get it because I had the same exact reaction cause we'd moved from

05:20SPEAKERDrupal, which was like relatively up to date and current and like WYSIWYG and you could

05:24SPEAKERdrag and drop images and the whole thing in the editor.

05:28SPEAKERBut seeing what, what Dave and Ethan and Andy and, and all those and Koontz and all those

05:32SPEAKERguys had made at WYSIWYG was a whole different world.

05:36SPEAKERMy corn, shout out to my corn too.

05:37SPEAKERDon't forget my corn.

05:38SPEAKERYeah.

05:39SPEAKERAnd the people over there making that stuff go up, that was an amazing tech shop.

05:42SPEAKERYeah.

05:43SPEAKERIt was, it was well, and they were building it good because they wanted it like a lot

05:48SPEAKERof times in corporate America at that time, especially you'd get something that was good

05:52SPEAKERenough.

05:53SPEAKERAnd they just built something that was good because, because also it was user because

05:56SPEAKERusers used it too.

05:57SPEAKERLike is that like the ultimate dog fooding basically that like, and in fact I remember

06:02SPEAKERthat being a selling point when I got there, it was like, Hey, the editor you guys are

06:05SPEAKERputting using to put content on the website is the same editor repeat like everybody else

06:09SPEAKERis going to use forum posts and Wiki content and like, yeah.

06:12SPEAKERWell, it's, it's one of those things.

06:14SPEAKERIt's funny.

06:15SPEAKERWe had the same thing happen with the Anacrusis.

06:16SPEAKERLike we, we built the game and then we added mod tools after it had been out for about

06:20SPEAKERsix months.

06:21SPEAKERRight.

06:22SPEAKERSo that, so that people could download a special version of it in real ed and make hats and

06:26SPEAKERplayer skins and all that stuff.

06:28SPEAKERAnd the moment we built a pipeline into the mod tool side to add hats to the game, adding

06:34SPEAKERhats to the game became infinitely easier for the artists.

06:37SPEAKERAnd all of a sudden they, they were like, I'm going to make a Valentine's day hat this

06:40SPEAKERyear.

06:41SPEAKERI'm going to make some Christmas hats and, and like, you know, the making the user facing

06:46SPEAKERpipeline, something that normal be like, I have put hats into our, into the game, right?

06:51SPEAKERSo I was able to go to sketch fab, download some assets and put a texture on them and

06:56SPEAKERsmack them up in the game.

06:57SPEAKERAnd they have blinky lights in the whole thing.

07:00SPEAKERIt's it's making something that's user facing and accessible makes it easier and faster

07:05SPEAKERfor everyone now, I will say users weren't allowed to update podcasts, the whiskey media

07:11SPEAKERthing.

07:12SPEAKERAnd when I asked Dave to put an hour, minutes and seconds timer, instead of just making

07:16SPEAKERme calculate how long a two hour and 20 minute podcast was in seconds, he said, well, you

07:20SPEAKERdo that once a week.

07:21SPEAKERAnd Ryan does that once a week and Rory does that once a week.

07:25SPEAKERSo that's three people's time.

07:26SPEAKERIt takes about 20 seconds to do it.

07:27SPEAKERIt would take me a day to put that in.

07:30SPEAKERSo you're going to keep calculating hours, minutes and seconds and seconds.

07:34SPEAKERI get it.

07:35SPEAKERYeah.

07:36SPEAKERYeah.

07:37SPEAKERReal quick.

07:38SPEAKERTwo things.

07:39SPEAKERIs this the Santa Cruz's back end?

07:40SPEAKERIs that something that like comes along with unreal engine or is that something that you

07:43SPEAKERall built yourself entirely?

07:45SPEAKERSo we work with a partner called Excel byte.

07:48SPEAKERThey handle they help us with matchmaking and they run turn servers and stuff like that.

07:52SPEAKERThey also host the so in order to do cross platform matchmaking, you have to have some

08:00SPEAKERplace that has a data store that lets you connect an Xbox accounts and steam accounts.

08:05SPEAKERAnd they do all of that stuff.

08:07SPEAKERThat's the reason we started out working with them.

08:09SPEAKERAnd then they have a bunch of other things that you can add on to that service.

08:14SPEAKERIt's interesting because anybody that does cross platform matchmaking, you're going to

08:17SPEAKERhave to have a third party account, which means there's gtpr requirements and ccpr requirements

08:22SPEAKERfrom California, which, you know, it's nice to have somebody manage.

08:26SPEAKERIt also means that you have to check that little box on steam that says this has a third

08:29SPEAKERthis requires a third party account.

08:32SPEAKEREven if you don't ever expose the account to users, which we don't.

08:36SPEAKERSo people get upset and think you're going to make them do like an account for a service

08:39SPEAKERthat they're not enthusiastic about.

08:41SPEAKERWell, that's a big ouch.

08:42SPEAKERI have my other question.

08:43SPEAKERSo it sounded like, did I understand correctly?

08:45SPEAKERYou were just editing a big, raw JSON form.

08:48SPEAKERIt's not taking all those values and exposing them as nice, tidy little web UI elements.

08:53SPEAKERIt is an enormous JSON form.

08:56SPEAKERHey, that's good to, okay, it sounds, it sounds like the CMS has a little way to go.

09:00SPEAKERWell, you know, all I know is that this week's weekly challenge is called no safety and it

09:06SPEAKERmeans that the airlocks are malfunctioning.

09:09SPEAKERSo you have to hold off giant hordes of aliens while you wait for the doors to open before

09:14SPEAKERyou can get to safety.

09:15SPEAKERAlso it's all maps where the airlocks are really super scary.

09:19SPEAKERSo good luck.

09:20SPEAKERBig thanks to Jason.

09:22SPEAKERShout out.

09:51SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

09:54SPEAKERI'm Will.

09:55SPEAKERI'm Brad.

09:56SPEAKERHello.

09:57SPEAKERHello.

09:58SPEAKERUm, this week we got something a little bit unusual planned.

10:01SPEAKERDo we?

10:02SPEAKERI mean, it's, it's not, it's not, we've done, we've done, we've, we've worked in this realm

10:07SPEAKERbefore, but this is a new twist on the, on the, on the taste that we've done.

10:10SPEAKERWe had, let's say two to three topics that we didn't think would sustain a full episode.

10:17SPEAKERThey're kind of, they're kind of, uh, follow ups to things we've done in the past.

10:21SPEAKERTalked about in the past or updates, and we wanted to kind of delve in and, uh, you know,

10:28SPEAKERlet people know what's going on with some of the stuff that we've talked about in recent

10:31SPEAKERweeks, either on the patron episode or on Q and a or other places.

10:35SPEAKERYeah.

10:36SPEAKERSome of, some of the stuff is, is, is, is our topic.

10:39SPEAKERSome of these are topics, subject verb agreements.

10:42SPEAKERTopics are hard.

10:43SPEAKERUh, that, that we've, that we've kind of only touched on casually, like, like, like we're

10:47SPEAKERgonna talk about wire guard here cause we've both been working with that a good bit lately.

10:50SPEAKERBut like, I think we, I think we only casually talked about that on the patron episode this

10:54SPEAKERmonth.

10:55SPEAKERI don't think we've ever even covered that one.

10:56SPEAKERI, in the past, I have said that wire guard is good, which I stand by.

11:00SPEAKERYes.

11:01SPEAKERI've, I've always known it was good conceptually, but I never had a functional enough set up

11:04SPEAKERto like say so in practice, but now I do and it rules.

11:08SPEAKERYeah.

11:09SPEAKERUm, for people who don't know, wire guard is a lightweight VPN that you can run to give

11:13SPEAKERyou an easy way to connect to your house safely so that you don't have to have a bunch of

11:16SPEAKERports with services that may or may not be super secure exposed to the internet.

11:20SPEAKERYeah.

11:21SPEAKERUm, what else were we talking about today?

11:23SPEAKERUh, well, so, so I did my fourth or fifth long, maybe sixth now long road trip with

11:29SPEAKERthe, with the bolt.

11:30SPEAKERWe're two and a half years into having this thing and I wanted to kind of, the last time

11:34SPEAKERwe talked about it was a fair amount of time ago and things have changed a little bit.

11:37SPEAKERThings are, some things are better, some things are worse.

11:39SPEAKERIt was interesting cause this time we drove during the hottest summer on record through

11:44SPEAKERareas that were 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 50 degrees Celsius ish.

11:50SPEAKERIt's pretty hot.

11:51SPEAKERUh, so we're gonna talk about that.

11:52SPEAKERTalk about what we've learned.

11:53SPEAKERI have some questions for the community and I were, you know, like I said, we're two and

11:57SPEAKERa half years into a three year lease on this car.

11:59SPEAKERI think at this point, both my wife and I are pretty committed to the electric car lifestyle.

12:03SPEAKERSure.

12:04SPEAKERI didn't, okay.

12:05SPEAKERI didn't realize it was decision time.

12:06SPEAKERYeah.

12:07SPEAKERAnd we, and we're, we're thinking about what's next and I want to get a little feedback from

12:10SPEAKERthe audience on that.

12:11SPEAKERAnd what else you got, Brad?

12:13SPEAKERWell, you proposed this, but I have, I have material here, a little coffee update couple

12:17SPEAKERweeks after the cough.

12:18SPEAKERI've I'm a couple of weeks into daily cold brewing and I thought I might briefly describe

12:23SPEAKERwhere I'm at with that and how it's going.

12:26SPEAKERYeah.

12:27SPEAKERI, um, people really liked the coffee episodes.

12:28SPEAKERWe'll do some more food tech if, if folks are into it.

12:31SPEAKERYeah.

12:32SPEAKERI was, I was, I was pleased, pleasantly surprised at the response to the coffee episode.

12:36SPEAKERUm, I, uh, have been people that have asked about, uh, the bypass brewers, which we talked

12:43SPEAKERabout in that episode a little bit.

12:44SPEAKERI am waiting, I've looked at what's available and for what I make, I'm looking at, I'm waiting

12:50SPEAKERfor the next level pulser, uh, brewer to come available, which is like a single serving

12:54SPEAKERbypass brewer.

12:55SPEAKERAnd when we do that, we'll, we'll, I'll report when it, when that comes out, it's supposed

12:58SPEAKERto be released in August, um, which is now.

13:01SPEAKERSo when that's out, I'll, um, I'll update it and I'll, I'll, I'll get one and update

13:06SPEAKERyou all.

13:07SPEAKEROh, thanks.

13:08SPEAKERYou're good.

13:09SPEAKERI hope.

13:10SPEAKERHopefully updates are good.

13:11SPEAKERCause we're about to do a bunch.

13:12SPEAKERYeah.

13:13SPEAKERLet's get, let's get to it.

13:14SPEAKERWhat's what's going on.

13:15SPEAKERUh, so, so you're, okay.

13:16SPEAKERSo for people, I don't even think we need to get into what we talked about the patron

13:18SPEAKERepisode, but yeah, no, I I've been using WireGuard at home for like three years now as part of

13:25SPEAKERmy home assistant install.

13:26SPEAKEROh wow.

13:27SPEAKERI thought you just set it up recently.

13:28SPEAKERNo, no, no.

13:29SPEAKERI set it up, um, before I went to Palm desert the first time in 2021 so that I could, um,

13:35SPEAKERso I could connect to, uh, my server and stuff inside the house without having to open a

13:40SPEAKERbunch of scary ports.

13:42SPEAKERUm, and it's, it's been absolutely flawless.

13:44SPEAKERI use it almost the only time I messed up was when I, when AT&T decided they were going

13:48SPEAKERto reset my router and I didn't turn the port back on for it.

13:51SPEAKERUm, and then that was a problem.

13:53SPEAKERIt turns out.

13:54SPEAKERYeah.

13:55SPEAKERYeah.

13:56SPEAKERIt's pretty set and forget.

13:57SPEAKERI would say from what I've seen so far.

13:58SPEAKERUm, so I should we talk about just the basics of what it is a little bit, I guess.

14:02SPEAKERWhat is your, what is your history with VPNs?

14:04SPEAKERMy, my history with VPNs is like every company, every big company I have worked for has required

14:09SPEAKERone of some nature and they all suck to varying degrees and are a huge pain in the ass.

14:14SPEAKERSee, this is where future and, uh, and real companies have separated each other and future.

14:20SPEAKERThey were like, eh, that's probably fine.

14:22SPEAKERJust open up supports.

14:23SPEAKERWow.

14:24SPEAKERI could call the up until about 2005 I could call the IT guy and be like, Hey, I need,

14:28SPEAKERI need port.

14:29SPEAKERUh, I need a public facing IP address with port 80 on it.

14:33SPEAKERAnd they'd be like, Oh yeah, sure.

14:34SPEAKEROkay.

14:35SPEAKERI gotcha.

14:36SPEAKERYeah.

14:37SPEAKERYou know, something that also just occurred to me, I say every company I have worked for,

14:40SPEAKERbut actually they're all, all of the big companies I've worked for have just been various permutations

14:44SPEAKERof the same big company.

14:46SPEAKERThat's true.

14:47SPEAKERYeah.

14:48SPEAKERDifferent incarnations.

14:49SPEAKERDifferent ownership and names.

14:50SPEAKERUh, but, but there was always, there was always like some very annoying like Cisco VPN client

14:55SPEAKERyou had to install on your work machine or something that you had to use to access any

14:58SPEAKERresources at work.

14:59SPEAKERSo like VPN became synonymous with something that was an extreme pain and like, you know,

15:05SPEAKERit would like the connection was not stable.

15:07SPEAKERIt would like the computer went to sleep, it might drop or something like that.

15:10SPEAKERIt was extremely, and it was slow.

15:11SPEAKERYeah.

15:12SPEAKERWasn't, it was never performant.

15:13SPEAKERWe used IPSEC for a long time at the end days of future and it was always slow.

15:19SPEAKERUm, so, so WireGuard is like pretty new.

15:22SPEAKERIt's like what, five, six, seven years, it's sometime in the last decade.

15:28SPEAKERYeah.

15:29SPEAKERYeah.

15:30SPEAKERUm, it's a much simpler VPN.

15:31SPEAKERIt's uh, it kind of acts more like the way SSH uses public and private key pairs, um,

15:38SPEAKERwhere all it's doing is encrypting the traffic going back and forth between two end points.

15:42SPEAKERThere's no server concept.

15:43SPEAKEREvery, everything is just a peer quote unquote.

15:46SPEAKERUm, and point to point, there's no, there's no multi-point, right?

15:49SPEAKERYes.

15:50SPEAKERYeah.

15:51SPEAKERSo you can do things like, and we'll get into it.

15:52SPEAKERThis is what I've done with it.

15:53SPEAKERYou can do things where like you have a single peer behind your firewall, your router, and

15:57SPEAKERyou can't access your whole LAN where that WireGuard peer is acting as sort of a gateway

16:01SPEAKERto everything else.

16:02SPEAKERYeah.

16:03SPEAKERBut as far as WireGuard is concerned, every connection is just two machines talking to

16:07SPEAKEReach other.

16:08SPEAKERUm, yeah, all it's doing is encrypting the traffic back and forth based on validating

16:13SPEAKERthose public and private keys.

16:14SPEAKERSo as long as that, that is set up, everything just works.

16:18SPEAKERAnd it's not like, like, I don't know what kind of VPN you used, what the, the, the IPSec

16:23SPEAKERlike IPSec was used in the future.

16:25SPEAKERIt's like, I don't know if that was wrapped in any like corporate client or, or anything

16:30SPEAKERlike that.

16:31SPEAKERBut like, like, I guess, I guess what I'm trying to explain, and it's been so long since

16:34SPEAKERI used some of those old VPNs, it's hard to characterize, but you always thought of it

16:38SPEAKERas like an active connection, something that had to be maintained, you know, something

16:41SPEAKERyou had to like, click a connect button and like go through a login and like hope the

16:45SPEAKERconnection stayed up.

16:46SPEAKERAnd yeah, it almost worked like a modem login for a lot of ways.

16:50SPEAKERYes.

16:51SPEAKERThat's, that's what I'm trying to get at.

16:52SPEAKERLike WireGuard feels much more passive to me and in the background and seamless and

16:55SPEAKERjust there and not something you actually have to think about.

16:58SPEAKERYeah.

16:59SPEAKERLike if you put it on your phone or your iPad or whatever, you can literally set it up as

17:03SPEAKERa VPN entry in iOS and then just flip the VPN toggle on the settings page and it'll

17:09SPEAKERrun everything through that, through that connection.

17:12SPEAKERRight.

17:13SPEAKERAnd if things are set up well enough, it's performant enough and low overhead enough

17:16SPEAKERthat you can kind of leave that connected all the time.

17:18SPEAKERI often forget to turn it off when I don't need it anymore and don't notice for days.

17:23SPEAKERYeah.

17:24SPEAKERSo I'm, I'm never going to turn it off.

17:25SPEAKERI think.

17:26SPEAKERReally?

17:27SPEAKERI think I'm, I think I'm getting to the point where I am just going to leave it on, on my

17:29SPEAKERphone all the time.

17:30SPEAKERWell, I mean, that's kind of a thing now.

17:32SPEAKERLike if you subscribe to Apple's all in one, you know, they're, they're souped up iCloud

17:38SPEAKERthat has music and games and Apple arcade and all that stuff, then they'll give you

17:44SPEAKERan always on VPN connection to mask your traffic to the, to the larger, to wherever you're

17:52SPEAKERconnected through.

17:53SPEAKERInteresting.

17:54SPEAKERThat's cool.

17:55SPEAKERI did not know that.

17:56SPEAKERYeah.

17:57SPEAKERAll the the also there's like an official WireGuard client for, for Mac OS for windows,

18:00SPEAKERfor iOS, et cetera, et cetera, but they all let you set up a kind of inclusion exclusion

18:07SPEAKERrules for connections, basically like say if I connect to any of these specific wifi

18:14SPEAKERSSIDs connect automatically, or if I connect to any wifi that is not one of these SSIDs

18:20SPEAKERconnect automatically.

18:21SPEAKERIf I go onto cellular connect, you know, you know what I mean?

18:24SPEAKERSo like what I'm, what I'm saying is like, I can basically tell it like, okay, if my

18:28SPEAKERiPhone is on my home wifi, don't use it obviously.

18:31SPEAKERYeah.

18:32SPEAKERBut the second I go out the door and that wifi disconnects and I dropped a cellular,

18:35SPEAKERit just in those two just connect over.

18:37SPEAKERYeah.

18:38SPEAKERIt's really nice.

18:39SPEAKERIt's cool.

18:40SPEAKERThe, the, the, the, and the reason you would do this, there's two reasons you would do this.

18:44SPEAKEROne is so that if you're on a public wifi, people can't snoop on your traffic, whatever

18:48SPEAKERyou're doing.

18:49SPEAKERCause your traffic all goes through your home network at that point too, is so that you

18:53SPEAKERcan access stuff inside your home network while you're not at home.

18:55SPEAKERSo whether it's like a home assistant server without having to have the ports open, whether

18:59SPEAKERit's you know, your, your Plex server, whether it's being able to remote into your machine,

19:03SPEAKERwhether it's be able to access an SMB share on a windows machine or even a, you can do

19:07SPEAKERall of that stuff with the, with the remote client on the, on the, on the VPN.

19:11SPEAKEROkay.

19:12SPEAKERSo what are you, what are you running?

19:13SPEAKERSo I'm running this on a home assistant plugin.

19:14SPEAKERThe install for that was literally going to the home assistant community store and searching

19:19SPEAKERfor WireGuard and pressing install.

19:21SPEAKERAnd then I had to copy, I think I had to copy two files.

19:25SPEAKEROne was a configuration file.

19:27SPEAKERThat's like a text config with the SSH key pairs.

19:30SPEAKERAnd then the other one is just a QR code that I aim my phone at and it, and it just magically

19:35SPEAKERsets up the connection inside the WireGuard app.

19:37SPEAKERYeah.

19:38SPEAKERThere are a lot of different ways to set this up.

19:39SPEAKERI mean, you can do it like if you really want to get down in the weeds, you can set it up

19:44SPEAKERon just a basic clinics machine, but then you have to like, you know, make sure the

19:47SPEAKERkernel module loads and do a bunch of configuration and stuff, but there are a bunch of much easier

19:51SPEAKERways to set it up.

19:53SPEAKERA lot of people on our discord really like tail scale, which is a commercial service

19:57SPEAKERthat they use WireGuard at the core.

20:00SPEAKERI've never used it, but I think they actually extend the concept and basically make like

20:04SPEAKERa mesh network of WireGuard peers is my understanding.

20:08SPEAKERIt is, it is a commercial service, but they have a free tier.

20:11SPEAKERJust, just to be clear, this isn't a sponsored conversation.

20:14SPEAKERNo, no, no, no, no.

20:15SPEAKERThis is, this is, this is me having gone off the discord a bunch of times talking about

20:19SPEAKERWireGuard and a bunch of people saying like, just use tail scale.

20:21SPEAKERLike it's super easy.

20:23SPEAKERYou should just use that.

20:24SPEAKERAnd I'm like, oh, but I want to do it the hard way.

20:26SPEAKERYes.

20:27SPEAKERSo we have not used the service or had any interaction with it, but that is the recommendation.

20:32SPEAKERThe free tier gives you up to three users, up to a hundred devices.

20:35SPEAKERSo there's, there's that if you want to check that out, there's if you, if you have a raspberry

20:40SPEAKERpie, you want to run this on, there's something called pie VPN, which is a little open source

20:45SPEAKERproject that's I think it's kind of like a wizard sort of step through a bunch of choices

20:51SPEAKERtype configuration and just go through it that way.

20:54SPEAKERIs there a pie?

20:55SPEAKERIs it part of the pie installer, pie OS installer?

20:57SPEAKERNo, it's a, it's a separate thing.

20:59SPEAKERYou set it up kind of like pie hole.

21:00SPEAKEROkay.

21:01SPEAKERI mean, they're, they're totally unrelated, but it's a similar kind of thing.

21:04SPEAKERSo you install raspberry pie OS and then grab a package from a repository someplace.

21:09SPEAKERIt's a couple of command line commands, but they tell you exactly how to do it.

21:13SPEAKERIf you just go to pie VPN dot IO, I haven't tried this one either, but this was another

21:16SPEAKERrecommendation a lot of people had of like, oh, if you want to run on a pie this will

21:21SPEAKERmake that pretty easy.

21:23SPEAKEROkay.

21:24SPEAKERSo if you want to run on a pie VPN more and more router options are starting to have it

21:28SPEAKERbuilt in.

21:29SPEAKERYeah.

21:30SPEAKERThe, the, the, the dream OS ubiquity stuff, you can download it as a plugin as I recall.

21:35SPEAKEROkay.

21:36SPEAKERSo yeah.

21:37SPEAKERPretty much all the, like, so all, all the sort of DIY router OS's that people use like

21:42SPEAKERPF sense, open sense via OS.

21:44SPEAKERThose all have it built in, tightly integrated.

21:48SPEAKERI don't know what the state of like consumer level routers is yet.

21:51SPEAKERI don't know if any, any of the net gears or, you know, the TP link archers or anything

21:55SPEAKERare starting to include it or not.

21:57SPEAKERI haven't.

21:58SPEAKERSo the, the mesh, the Google mesh ones don't have it.

22:02SPEAKERI have used those recently cause my parents have those.

22:05SPEAKERYeah.

22:06SPEAKERI haven't looked at I haven't looked at the other third party routers and the long consumer

22:10SPEAKERlevel routers at a long time.

22:11SPEAKERYeah.

22:12SPEAKERI'm guessing, I'm guessing none of, none of them have it built in like out of the box or

22:16SPEAKERyou'd have to do something weird, like run like, you know, tomato or open WRT or something

22:22SPEAKERlike that.

22:23SPEAKEROpen WRT is a big one.

22:24SPEAKERI want to say there might be another, yeah.

22:27SPEAKERLike if you flash a third, like an open source thing, you can do it that way.

22:31SPEAKERThe other option is instead of, so if you do it on the, on the router, it simplifies

22:34SPEAKERa lot of the routing and so forth because the routers already doing all the routing.

22:39SPEAKERIf your router can't do it, you can run it behind your firewall on something like I'm

22:42SPEAKERdoing it on a PI four.

22:43SPEAKERYeah, the only, the only catch of running it behind your firewall on a PI four is that

22:47SPEAKERyou have to have different private IP addresses for each network or else the routing gets

22:53SPEAKERweird.

22:54SPEAKERSo like if you, if you have, if you're on a way network, that's one 92 to one six eight

22:58SPEAKERdot one dot something in the home network is one 92 to one six eight dot one dot something.

23:02SPEAKERSometimes that can be weird.

23:03SPEAKERSometimes it works itself out.

23:04SPEAKERSo I, I, I felt a little smug because I changed my, I changed my, my lands address range like

23:12SPEAKERtwo or three years ago for this exact reason.

23:14SPEAKEREven though I didn't have VPN then to 10, 15 or something.

23:17SPEAKERYeah.

23:18SPEAKERBecause you can't be, you can't be on somebody else's wifi that is using the same address

23:21SPEAKERrange as yours.

23:22SPEAKERAnd like you said, every router out of the box uses one 92 dot one 68 because the addresses

23:29SPEAKERwill collide.

23:30SPEAKERYou'll have addresses, you'll have the same address happening on their land and somewhere

23:33SPEAKERon your land and it won't go what to do with it.

23:35SPEAKERSo I, again, I haven't tried any of the, like the PI VPNs, tail scales, stuff like that

23:41SPEAKERthat handles all that stuff.

23:42SPEAKERI assume they help automate some of that stuff as well.

23:47SPEAKERBut I believe that the home assistant set up when it does it, it's, it looks at what

23:52SPEAKERyour IP address is internally and sets up a second, a different range for the, for the

23:57SPEAKERwire guard.

23:58SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, I think you can do, I think you can have, it's, it's that the

24:03SPEAKERwire guard and the adjacent networks can't be the same.

24:06SPEAKERI think that the, the two networks you're tunneling between may be able to actually be the same because they get translated through the wire guard address.

24:13SPEAKERYes.

24:14SPEAKERThat might be right.

24:15SPEAKERIf you're, I've, I've been doing a lot of networking set up with the stuff I, I learned

24:19SPEAKERwhat IP masquerading is finally in this process.

24:23SPEAKERYeah.

24:24SPEAKERThat was, that was a big one that let's, that, that, that saved us from IP before pain a long

24:28SPEAKERtime ago.

24:30SPEAKERI finally made myself learn exactly how a subnet mask works finally, permanently for

24:35SPEAKERall time.

24:36SPEAKERYou've got to just, just keep adding zeros until it works.

24:39SPEAKERThat's the plan.

24:40SPEAKERYes.

24:41SPEAKERUh, anyway, I had, um, rod bun, who was my first boss out of college, sat down with me

24:46SPEAKERin front of a chalkboard at the university of Tennessee at the biology department one

24:49SPEAKERafternoon.

24:50SPEAKERCause I was like, I don't understand how IP addresses work.

24:52SPEAKERAnd he was like, okay, here you go.

24:54SPEAKERAnd he wrote down an IP address and then he put the subnet mask underneath it.

24:59SPEAKERAnd he's like, and he showed, he, he did four different IP addresses in four different subnet

25:03SPEAKERmasks.

25:04SPEAKERSo the way the subnet, the subnet mask is basically saying, okay, we're limiting this

25:08SPEAKERblock of numbers to the same block, right?

25:10SPEAKERSo if it's a two 55, that means the, if you have one 92 to one six eight dot one dot whatever,

25:16SPEAKERthen two 55 is saying in the first set of numbers is saying that one night that it's

25:20SPEAKERalways going to be one 92 to 55 in the second set of numbers saying it's always going to

25:23SPEAKERbe one six eight to 55 in the third set of numbers is saying it's always going to be

25:27SPEAKERthe same number there.

25:29SPEAKERSo, if you put zero there, it can be anywhere from zero to 255 and you can change that number

25:35SPEAKERas, as, as you, as you see fit 255 means that, that, that octet, that, that number is fixed.

25:43SPEAKERZero means it can be anything.

25:45SPEAKERIt gets harder because there are different types of notation to express the same concept.

25:49SPEAKERLike there's the one you're talking about, but there's a slash 24, there's a slash something

25:53SPEAKERlike it, I, the thing I finally clued into is that that slash whatever is the number

25:58SPEAKERof bits, which is why you generally see it as a multiple of eight because an IPv4 address

26:04SPEAKERis four eight bit numbers.

26:06SPEAKERSo if it's like slash 24, that means three of the four octets are fixed on the last one

26:11SPEAKERgenerally is not, or whichever one is denoted by zero.

26:14SPEAKERYeah.

26:15SPEAKERYeah.

26:16SPEAKERAnd I think it has, I mean, I guess it could be one of the other ones, but the routing

26:19SPEAKERwon't work right then.

26:20SPEAKERCause you've accepted the router to be one anyway, it gets, it gets weird cause you can

26:24SPEAKERhave non-standard, you can have like slash 20, which means like part of one of the, we

26:30SPEAKERshouldn't get into it.

26:31SPEAKERYeah.

26:32SPEAKERNo, this is a different, this is a different episode.

26:33SPEAKERI did not go that far in understanding it.

26:34SPEAKERHopefully this is what this is communicating is that if you choose to set all this stuff

26:37SPEAKERup yourself, you're going to have to learn a lot of pretty low level networking stuff.

26:42SPEAKERYeah.

26:43SPEAKERMy advice is just do the home assistant install.

26:45SPEAKERIt's really easy.

26:46SPEAKERYeah.

26:47SPEAKERSo I think just about anybody should choose one of the easier options to set this stuff

26:51SPEAKERup.

26:52SPEAKERWhat are your resources online to figure out how to do this stuff?

26:56SPEAKERSo I learned something interesting while I was away this time because I usually only

26:58SPEAKERuse the VPN on my phone.

27:00SPEAKERI don't often use it on my computer, but I turned out to need, I need to do some typing

27:04SPEAKERin terminals while I was gone.

27:06SPEAKERAnd in order to do that, I set up the VPN on my home machine.

27:12SPEAKERI'd only ever set up one tunnel before though.

27:15SPEAKERAnd yeah, this makes perfect sense in retrospect, but you got to have a tunnel per machine if

27:20SPEAKERyou want them to be connected simultaneously.

27:22SPEAKERYes.

27:23SPEAKERAnd when you tried to connect two machines to the same tunnel at the same time, unsurprisingly

27:27SPEAKERweird things happened.

27:28SPEAKERI bet.

27:29SPEAKERDo by tunnel, you mean like literally both of the external clients were trying to be

27:33SPEAKERthe same peer with the same IP address and everything?

27:35SPEAKERFrom the same IP address also.

27:37SPEAKERYeah.

27:38SPEAKERYes.

27:39SPEAKERI can see that.

27:40SPEAKERIt was not like that.

27:41SPEAKERI assume that the DNS mask on the, on the router on one end of the other just didn't

27:45SPEAKERknow what to do with what was coming in.

27:48SPEAKERAnd like you'd get, you'd get, it would, it would work fine for about two minutes and

27:53SPEAKERthen it would be weird for a minute and then it would work fine for about two minutes and

27:57SPEAKERit'd be weird for a minute.

27:58SPEAKERYeah.

27:59SPEAKERI could see that being an issue.

28:00SPEAKERYeah.

28:01SPEAKERTurning off VPN on the phone solved the problem immediately.

28:02SPEAKERYes.

28:03SPEAKERI mean, I guess how you set this up is going to determine how much of this you even see,

28:07SPEAKERbut the, like the, the thing behind your firewall or your router, whatever it is at home that

28:10SPEAKERyou set this up on its configuration will have a different peer section for each client

28:15SPEAKERyou want to connect it to because they all need their own, their own settings.

28:19SPEAKERSo like I've got, I've got phone, tablet and laptop and each one of those is its own little

28:24SPEAKERpeer configuration.

28:26SPEAKERThat stuff is exposed on the home assistant one in a text file, just in the config file

28:30SPEAKERfor the home assistant install.

28:32SPEAKERAnd it's, it's relatively easy to get into.

28:34SPEAKERGot it.

28:35SPEAKERLet's see here.

28:37SPEAKERYeah.

28:38SPEAKERLike I probably shouldn't get into all of the very arcane routing stuff I had to do.

28:43SPEAKERI'm, I'm just running this on a PI four.

28:45SPEAKERDid you get multicast to work?

28:46SPEAKERThat was the other.

28:47SPEAKEROkay.

28:48SPEAKERSo I haven't, I have not gotten there yet.

28:49SPEAKERI've been looking at it and thinking about whether I actually want to go through that

28:52SPEAKERpain or not what I, what I wanted, like the basic explanation of what I'm doing is I'm

28:57SPEAKERrunning it on a PI four because my router is too slow.

29:01SPEAKERBasically like the throughput on doing it on my edge router is just way too slow.

29:05SPEAKERWe should mention that like, like any VPN there's encryption here.

29:08SPEAKERSo the speed of the device you're running it on will determine what kind of throughput

29:11SPEAKERyou're getting because it has to crunch all that encryption.

29:13SPEAKERWell, and also specifically if you have hardware support for the encryption that WireGuard

29:17SPEAKERuses, which I think is AES 256, but I can't remember.

29:20SPEAKERYeah.

29:21SPEAKERIt uses a bunch of cryptography that is supposedly, you know, pretty, pretty selected for speed

29:25SPEAKERfor performance.

29:26SPEAKERYeah.

29:27SPEAKERAnyway, the PI four I've got is like an order of magnitude faster than the edge router for

29:32SPEAKERthis.

29:33SPEAKERSo I'm doing it on the PI four, but that means the PI four has to be able to be the mediator

29:38SPEAKERbetween the WireGuard network and my LAN.

29:40SPEAKERSo that took a bunch of routing stuff that I had to set up that I had never done before

29:43SPEAKERand it didn't work.

29:45SPEAKERAnd then it did.

29:46SPEAKERThis is a good project for learning how network stuff works.

29:50SPEAKERThat's exactly what this has been like.

29:52SPEAKERDon't subject yourself to this if you don't care about any of this stuff, but I have absolutely

29:55SPEAKERcome away from this, like with a much better basic understanding of, of, of basic networking.

30:02SPEAKERAnd I apologize.

30:03SPEAKERIt isn't, it isn't, it is a cha cha 20 for symmetric encryption, not AES.

30:09SPEAKERIt's fun.

30:10SPEAKERIf you go to wireguard.com, they straight up show you the white papers for how all this

30:13SPEAKERstuff works.

30:14SPEAKERIf you just want to see the like academic description of all this stuff.

30:19SPEAKERThat's how, that's how encryption should work, Brad.

30:21SPEAKERYeah.

30:22SPEAKERBut it's extremely well-respected I should say like, like every networking professional

30:26SPEAKERI know, or, you know, just generally the industry, this, this, this thing is seen as the gold

30:31SPEAKERstandard for security in this space, but absolutely all you have to do if you're running it behind

30:38SPEAKERyour firewall, not on the firewall, all you have to do is open one port to point to whatever

30:43SPEAKERWireGuard is running on.

30:44SPEAKERAnd my understanding is if the key pairs, the private and public keys are not in place

30:49SPEAKERto do the authentication, it'll just reject any packet that comes from anything that doesn't

30:53SPEAKERhave, have those in place.

30:55SPEAKERSo it's, it's like the attack surface is extremely small.

30:59SPEAKERYep.

31:00SPEAKERYeah.

31:01SPEAKERAnd like you said, one port, so, and it's a weird port that nobody, nobody else uses.

31:04SPEAKERYou can also configure it to be whatever port you want.

31:06SPEAKERYeah.

31:07SPEAKERA couple other quick notes, you can in the configuration, you specify like how much,

31:11SPEAKERhave like what ranges of addresses you want to be WireGuarded, I guess I would say.

31:17SPEAKERSo you can do things like make a split tunnel where you say like, okay, all the, I want

31:21SPEAKERthe address range of my land to be part of this, but not anything else.

31:25SPEAKERAnd that means that traffic to your house, to anything in your house goes through the

31:29SPEAKERWireGuard encryption, but traffic out to the bigger internet just goes straight from you

31:32SPEAKERto the internet.

31:33SPEAKERSo, cause otherwise you're tunneling all your traffic back and forth through your house

31:36SPEAKERand you may not want that.

31:38SPEAKERSo, yeah.

31:39SPEAKERSo that's what I've actually done.

31:40SPEAKERSo it's just, just stuff to my house will go through the WireGuard.

31:43SPEAKEREverything else will just go to the internet.

31:44SPEAKEROh, see, I want it all through the, through the WireGuard.

31:47SPEAKERCertainly also valid.

31:48SPEAKERAnd then that's what you would want if you were like, so I'm going to set up a different

31:51SPEAKERprofile to use in like airports and coffee shops.

31:53SPEAKERRight.

31:54SPEAKERAnd that one, you absolutely want everything to go through.

31:57SPEAKERThere's a, there's, this is a thing that people decide they want after they've learned how

32:00SPEAKERIP sniffers work and sit on a public, public on a public wifi access point sometime and

32:07SPEAKERsee, just watch the traffic going, just watch it moving.

32:10SPEAKERYes.

32:11SPEAKERI think we've, I think I mentioned this on the patron episode.

32:13SPEAKERI became acquainted with TCP dump in the, in the process of setting all this stuff up.

32:18SPEAKERAnd if you just run that thing on, even on your LAN and you see all the traffic flying

32:23SPEAKERback and forth all the time, when you think nothing is actually happening, I can't even

32:28SPEAKERwhat it looks like on, on a public wifi.

32:30SPEAKERIt's also stuff like DNS queries, right.

32:32SPEAKERLike even stuff that's not necessarily like you, you, yeah.

32:35SPEAKERAnyway, it's, it's weird internet of things, things talking to each other and stuff like

32:39SPEAKERthat.

32:40SPEAKERBut what else here one, one quick little thing I'll mention that that was a happy surprise

32:45SPEAKERfor me that I did not plan.

32:48SPEAKERI use my pie holes here.

32:49SPEAKERI use as the DNS servers for my network.

32:52SPEAKERYou have a redundant series of pie holes as DNS servers, as I recall.

32:55SPEAKERYes.

32:56SPEAKERAnd what I've seen is all the clients on my land, see the two pie holes discreetly as

33:02SPEAKERthe DNS servers.

33:03SPEAKERI use DHCP to, to distribute that here.

33:06SPEAKERSo when I set those up as the DNS and my wire guard config manually, and even think about

33:12SPEAKERthis working this way, but even when I don't do a full tunnel to my house, when I'm doing

33:16SPEAKERthat split tunnel where the internet traffic just goes straight out without going through

33:20SPEAKERthe wire guard.

33:21SPEAKEROh, you still get the DNS ad blocking on the pie hole.

33:23SPEAKERMy wire guard clients are still querying my pie holes at home as their DNS.

33:27SPEAKERSo I'm still getting the benefits of, of the ad, the DNS level ad blocking without, without

33:32SPEAKERthe traffic actually having to tunnel through my house.

33:35SPEAKERSo it's still faster.

33:37SPEAKERYou might've just convinced me to to set up the VPN to turn on automatically when I leave

33:42SPEAKERthis.

33:43SPEAKERThat is, that was the moment when I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna leave this on

33:45SPEAKERall the time.

33:46SPEAKERYeah.

33:47SPEAKERThat's pretty good.

33:48SPEAKERIt's pretty good.

33:49SPEAKERIt's pretty good.

33:50SPEAKERSo yeah, this is yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's one of the things that I like to do when

33:51SPEAKERI leave the wire guard, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's one of the things that I wasn't

33:54SPEAKERsure was going to be useful, but I set it up cause it was easy and then I use it all

33:57SPEAKERthe time.

33:58SPEAKERYes.

33:59SPEAKERYes.

34:00SPEAKERMy, my setup was not easy.

34:01SPEAKERUh, I don't recommend it unless you really just want to throw yourself in the deep end

34:04SPEAKERand figure out how networking stuff works.

34:07SPEAKERI did.

34:08SPEAKERThe other thing is I'm going on a trip for a lot of August and did not have time to,

34:12SPEAKERI want to replace this edge router, but I didn't have time to like pick a box and set

34:16SPEAKERup an open, open sense or Vio S or something in the couple of weeks I had.

34:20SPEAKERBut I do have this PI four and then I found out, Oh, why are guard runs extremely fast

34:23SPEAKERon a PI four?

34:24SPEAKERI'm just going to do that.

34:25SPEAKERYeah.

34:26SPEAKERMine's, mine's running on a PI four and it's great.

34:27SPEAKERIt's running in a Docker container on home assistant and it's fantastic.

34:30SPEAKERIt does.

34:31SPEAKERIt doesn't require a lot of juice.

34:32SPEAKERIt turns out.

34:33SPEAKERYeah.

34:34SPEAKERThat's pretty awesome.

34:35SPEAKEROkay.

34:36SPEAKERThird big drive, uh, this summer we went to Palm desert, which is 500 miles almost exactly.

34:44SPEAKERIt's a nine and a half hour drive.

34:47SPEAKERIf there's light traffic, um, God, I didn't know it was that long with an hour and a half

34:51SPEAKERof charging at least maybe two hours.

34:53SPEAKERIf it's slow.

34:54SPEAKEROh my God.

34:55SPEAKERThat is a long day.

34:56SPEAKERI don't think I realized it was that big of a commitment.

34:58SPEAKERIt's a big drive.

34:59SPEAKERUm, so the, we bought a bolt, uh, we released a bolt two and a half years ago now.

35:06SPEAKERWe talked about it around the time we got it.

35:08SPEAKERSome things have changed.

35:09SPEAKERThe batteries degraded a little bit.

35:10SPEAKERIt's it's, it's still, you know, it's still a three charge drive down for the most part.

35:16SPEAKERUm, is that just anecdotal or does it actually expose any kind of tools or any diagnostic

35:21SPEAKERinfo where you can see that the runtime is less than it used to be?

35:24SPEAKERIt doesn't expose information, but I plugged an ODBD ODBE, uh, connector into the, to the,

35:31SPEAKERto the car.

35:32SPEAKERSo I can pull out the actual, uh, capacity and stuff from the, from the data that doesn't

35:36SPEAKERusually provide to users.

35:38SPEAKERUm, so this was the hottest summer ever, Brad.

35:41SPEAKERI don't know if you've heard that.

35:43SPEAKERHave heard.

35:44SPEAKERYes.

35:45SPEAKERI mean, it's probably the hottest summer ever until next summer or the summer after if we're

35:49SPEAKERbeing real.

35:50SPEAKERUm, but it was 115 air temperature Fahrenheit, which is 47 degrees Celsius for our European

35:56SPEAKERand Australian friends, um, on the drive down.

36:00SPEAKERAnd then there were some consequences that we hadn't experienced before as a result of

36:04SPEAKERthat.

36:05SPEAKERUm, the on pavement temperature when we would get out in the central, so central valley

36:09SPEAKERof California for people don't know is, is very hot.

36:12SPEAKERUh, even, even at the best of times, this was the hottest I've ever experienced it.

36:17SPEAKERAnd, um, the temperature on the pavement was 120 plus most places.

36:22SPEAKERI think I took a picture where the car thermometer was like, it's 128 degrees outside.

36:26SPEAKERUm, like all batteries, the car battery has an optimal, both discharge and charge temperature.

36:35SPEAKERAnd most cars have some sort of system to help manage that temperature.

36:39SPEAKERBasically this comes up in, in like, in the idea that you have to heat the battery in

36:43SPEAKERwinter so that you get like it, like the energy you put in to bring the battery up to temperature

36:48SPEAKERis less than the energy you lose by running the battery when it's cold.

36:52SPEAKERUm, so, so like often if you're, so if you live someplace cold, if you live in Vermont

36:57SPEAKERor Montana or something, you leave your car plugged in, even if it's charged so that the

37:01SPEAKERcar's heater will turn on and keep the battery at like 50, you know, 30 Celsius, 25 Celsius, whatever.

37:12SPEAKERIt's going to be a problem when summers are hot, too, because once the batteries get above

37:15SPEAKERabout 105 degrees, the way they charge starts changing.

37:21SPEAKERSo, they have to cool them as well.

37:23SPEAKERAnd newer, like Tesla's do a heat pump, the heat pump has to have multiple valves to control

37:29SPEAKERthe, the airflow cause like the, the, um, or the glycol flow, I guess in the case of

37:35SPEAKERthe Tesla, uh, because the battery needs to be hotter than you're going to want.

37:39SPEAKERLike the heat pump will also serve the cabin of the car.

37:41SPEAKERSo like the heat pump for the battery, the temperature, the battery wants to be at will

37:45SPEAKERbe 20 degrees warmer than the temperature the cab wants to be at.

37:48SPEAKERSo you have to have them multiple.

37:49SPEAKERIt's a couple, it's a little bit of a complicated thing.

37:52SPEAKERUh, the real quick, remind me where your battery is again in the car.

37:57SPEAKEROh, it's, they're almost always low in the frame.

37:59SPEAKERSo on the, on underneath the frame somewhere low, like often is subject to potentially

38:06SPEAKERsome effects of whatever's going on down there, temperature wise, it's usually pretty well

38:11SPEAKERinsulated just because they're, they also want to have firewall in case there's a puncture

38:16SPEAKERor something.

38:17SPEAKERThere's a fire in the battery.

38:18SPEAKERRight.

38:19SPEAKERYes.

38:20SPEAKERUm, the, uh, the, the thing on this one is the bolt has a, has a compressor, like a normal

38:27SPEAKERair conditioning compressor.

38:28SPEAKERIt uses a resistive heater for the winter, which is a little bit less efficient.

38:32SPEAKERUh, it's also a cheap car, so you know, you get what you pay for.

38:36SPEAKERUm, and I think at the time that they were originally designing the bolt, the heat pump

38:39SPEAKERidea was relatively new.

38:41SPEAKERUm, so anyway, uh, the optimal charging temperature seems to be around a hundred Fahrenheit, maybe

38:47SPEAKERup to a hundred and three hundred and four.

38:49SPEAKERIt started to slow down dramatically once you got much above a hundred and two, it seemed

38:53SPEAKERlike from, from what I was pulling from the ODB sensor and our experience watching the

38:59SPEAKERchargers.

39:00SPEAKERUm, it's, and, but by slow, I mean the fastest our car will charge is 50 watt, 50 kilowatts

39:07SPEAKERper hour or kilowatt hours per hour, I guess for a total capacity of 58 or 60 kilowatt

39:14SPEAKERhours.

39:15SPEAKEROkay.

39:16SPEAKERBut, uh, the, the bolt is notorious for actually being a slow charger because Chevrolet was

39:20SPEAKERvery conservative with the charging profile.

39:22SPEAKERSo once you get to about 55 or 60%, it starts to slow down.

39:26SPEAKERUm, just in the same way that like your iPhone slows down, once it gets to 80% charge, the

39:31SPEAKERbolt slows down when it gets half full.

39:33SPEAKERSo by the time you get to like 70%, you're going at 25 or 30 kilowatt hours per hour.

39:38SPEAKERAnd the closer you get to a hundred, the slower it gets.

39:40SPEAKERCan I, can I jump in real quick and ask if there's, is there any kind of community like

39:44SPEAKERhomebrew community for like modifying charging profiles on this or other cars?

39:48SPEAKERI have intentionally not looked at that because I have a leased car and not a purchased car.

39:52SPEAKERSure.

39:53SPEAKERThat's smart.

39:54SPEAKERI'm also, yeah, I'm definitely not saying you should partake of that, but I would be

39:56SPEAKERshocked if there is not some like hardcore car forum out there with people talking about

40:01SPEAKERtweaking the charging profiles.

40:03SPEAKERWell, so, um, the part of it is that you don't want to do that cause you're going to decrease

40:08SPEAKERthe battery life, right?

40:10SPEAKERLike the harder you charge, the less long the battery is going to cost and the batteries

40:13SPEAKERare 10 or 12 grand, right?

40:14SPEAKERThey're expensive batteries.

40:15SPEAKERSo that is the conventional wisdom, of course, but you know, some, some people like to throw

40:19SPEAKERcaution to the wind on things like that.

40:21SPEAKERYeah.

40:22SPEAKERI mean, it is flying close to the sun.

40:24SPEAKERUm, the, the, the upshot is that when we hit the first charge at Harris ranch, it was 126

40:31SPEAKERdegrees on the pavement and we charged at about 25 kilowatt hours per hour the entire

40:36SPEAKERtime, which meant that it took a long time to charge a pretty big decrease.

40:40SPEAKERUm, and like even, even before we're getting into temperature ranges, like just you describing

40:45SPEAKERon a good day, the charging overhead for this trip being what did you say?

40:48SPEAKERLike 90 minutes?

40:49SPEAKERAn hour and a half is the best case probably.

40:51SPEAKERLike even that sounds like, you know, if you think about it in combustion engine terms,

40:55SPEAKERyou know, spending an hour and a half stopping at gas stations, like that's already a lot

41:00SPEAKERof overhead.

41:01SPEAKERSo when you like double that, that's rough.

41:03SPEAKERSo the experience, um, the experience we've had is that it's usually like one fairly long

41:08SPEAKERstop, like one 45 minute stop and then a couple of 25 or 30 minute stops.

41:12SPEAKERUm, you know, actually that's maybe you think about it in like health terms, getting up

41:16SPEAKERand walking around after sitting that long, maybe not the worst thing.

41:19SPEAKERWell, yeah, realistically the short stops are you get up, you walk, you go to the bathroom,

41:23SPEAKERyou maybe grab a snack, you walk around for five minutes and then it's time to go, which

41:27SPEAKERis, which is pretty, it's much more humane than pulling into a gas station, making everybody

41:32SPEAKERstay in the car or run into the bathroom, driving through the McDonald's drive through

41:36SPEAKERand, and, uh, blasting off.

41:38SPEAKERIt means that I often will get like, honestly, it means that instead of eating a burger and

41:43SPEAKERfries, I often will get a salad and sit and eat the salad on, on a, at a picnic bench

41:48SPEAKERat the charging stop.

41:49SPEAKERIf we're not someplace, it's 130 degrees outside.

41:52SPEAKERThat sounds like being humane to yourself.

41:54SPEAKERI went to, I went to school about a five hour, like the minimum five hour drive from, from

41:59SPEAKERmy parents' house.

42:00SPEAKERAnd I spent like the entire time visiting family while I was in college, trying to make

42:04SPEAKERthat drive without stopping.

42:07SPEAKERYep.

42:08SPEAKERThat's probably not good.

42:09SPEAKERYou should probably stop every so often and move around because circulation in your legs

42:13SPEAKERis a thing.

42:14SPEAKERYeah.

42:15SPEAKERYeah.

42:16SPEAKERUm, so I, yeah, like I don't, I wish that the car, I wish that all of the stops for

42:20SPEAKERthe car were like the 18 or 20 minute stops and not the, the 45 minutes, the 45 minute

42:25SPEAKERstop is a pain.

42:26SPEAKERThat one's a, that one's a little rough, especially, especially when it becomes 90 minutes.

42:30SPEAKERYeah.

42:31SPEAKERSo the challenge, so we didn't actually do any 90 minutes.

42:34SPEAKERWe just did shorter, shorter, more shorter stops, which was fine.

42:41SPEAKERIn retrospect, if we'd gone the slightly longer route down 101, which is down the coast where

42:46SPEAKERit's a lot cooler and also there's less competition for chargers, we probably would have made

42:53SPEAKERit there in the same or slightly faster time.

42:56SPEAKERThat's insane that you're like, I mean, we're all having to think about a lot of factors

43:00SPEAKERwe didn't used to have to think about, but like planning your route partially based on

43:03SPEAKERhow hot it's going to be to, to go faster.

43:06SPEAKERYeah.

43:07SPEAKERWell, and then there's, there's the added benefit of 101 being not a road where everybody's

43:13SPEAKERgoing 90 miles an hour.

43:15SPEAKERSo your efficiency is better because you're going 65 or 70 instead of 75 or 80.

43:19SPEAKERSure.

43:20SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, like going seven, if you've never driven on I five down the central

43:24SPEAKERvalley, if you don't keep up with traffic, you will die.

43:26SPEAKERYeah.

43:27SPEAKERUm, it is, it is nothing but long, straight, flat highway.

43:31SPEAKERAnd people go, um, actually it's better these days, but in the old days, people would go

43:36SPEAKER80 miles.

43:37SPEAKERLike it was an, if it was an 80 mile, if you weren't going 80 miles an hour, people would

43:40SPEAKERblow by you like they were standing still and you'd get like super tailgated and the

43:44SPEAKERwhole thing.

43:45SPEAKERThat's, that's how it was back home when I was driving between the mountains and Raleigh.

43:49SPEAKERAlso it was like 80, 85 or you're dressed in the slow lane.

43:53SPEAKERNorth Carolina drivers are notorious too, Brad, I don't want to say anything, but your

43:57SPEAKERpeople don't know how to, don't know, don't know how to work an interstate.

44:02SPEAKERYeah.

44:03SPEAKERSo the other thing that was happening was that the chargers were overheating.

44:07SPEAKERSo like we were, we were parked next to like ionics, which are really incredibly fast chargers,

44:15SPEAKERcharging cars.

44:16SPEAKERAnd they were saying they were seeing like half the speed because the chargers were running

44:20SPEAKERless efficiently because of the intense heat, because a lot of the charging stations don't

44:24SPEAKERhave shade in the valley and that's going to change.

44:27SPEAKERI think that they're going to have to put shade on all of them now because the ones

44:31SPEAKERthat were shaded were fine and the ones that weren't were not.

44:35SPEAKERBut like the thing that was happening to us is the car couldn't keep up, the air conditioning

44:40SPEAKERin the car couldn't keep up with keeping the battery cool and keeping the cabin cool.

44:44SPEAKERSo we had to choose to either turn the AC off in the car while it was charging in sweat

44:50SPEAKERor just take the slow charge.

44:53SPEAKERWe chose the slow charge.

44:56SPEAKERAs hot as it gets there, I was concerned that if we let the AC, if we turn the AC off and

45:01SPEAKERjust turn the car off to charge, by the time we got back in the car, we would never get

45:07SPEAKERthe car cool again because it was so insanely hot.

45:13SPEAKERAnd then the other thing is that the chargers were really congested.

45:17SPEAKERWe drove down the weekend before 4th of July, it was the most competition for chargers I've

45:22SPEAKERever seen.

45:23SPEAKERI am never, ever going to do a trip that long, like a three-charge trip.

45:28SPEAKERJust to be real, three-charge trips probably are not great.

45:34SPEAKERYou want to start with a full battery, you want to drive 250 miles, you want to charge,

45:39SPEAKERand then you want to be where you're going.

45:41SPEAKERSo you want to be a 300-350 mile trip.

45:44SPEAKERBasically, LA is one stop and then maybe a top off when you get close to that town from

45:51SPEAKERSan Francisco.

45:55SPEAKERThe three-charge stops, it's stressful to worry about whether there's going to be spaces

46:00SPEAKERand how long you're going to have to wait for a charge spot and all that stuff.

46:03SPEAKERMaybe we made our country too big.

46:06SPEAKERI mean, it's possible.

46:08SPEAKERThe West, especially, when I was a kid, would we have tried to drive 500 miles in a day?

46:15SPEAKERNo, we would have stopped midway and got a Motel 6 and piled up the next morning and

46:19SPEAKERdriven 250 miles each day.

46:21SPEAKERI think occasionally, not that I am planning to move back home, but I think occasionally

46:26SPEAKERabout what would be involved if I did.

46:28SPEAKERAnd part of that would be a cross-country drive.

46:31SPEAKERAnd now I'm thinking about the logistics of driving cross-country in an electric car,

46:35SPEAKERand that seems like a lot.

46:37SPEAKERSo it's not, if you do-

46:39SPEAKERNot that I would do that, but now it's a thought experiment and that seems maybe not entirely

46:45SPEAKERviable.

46:46SPEAKERWell, so we went through the whole process.

46:48SPEAKERIf the car charged, for example, the car that we're looking at, we talked to a bunch of

46:52SPEAKERpeople at charge stops about how they like their cars.

46:55SPEAKERAnd the one that everybody loves most is the Ioniq, which is a Hyundai.

46:59SPEAKERIt's one of the faster-charging non-Teslas.

47:01SPEAKERThat's the same brand as the chargers you were talking about?

47:07SPEAKERThose are also them?

47:08SPEAKEROr did I mix up branding?

47:10SPEAKERWhat was the brand of the chargers?

47:12SPEAKERThe charger brand is Electrify America.

47:14SPEAKERThat's the ones that we generally find to be the most reliable.

47:17SPEAKERThe Ioniq is a brand of car.

47:19SPEAKEROkay.

47:20SPEAKERI thought you had also said the chargers were Ioniq.

47:22SPEAKERI misremembered.

47:23SPEAKERNo, no, no.

47:24SPEAKERSo talking to those folks, it charges at 350 kilowatt hours per hour, right?

47:32SPEAKEROne of the women next to us pulled in with the 8%, the same 8% we had.

47:35SPEAKERBy the time we were at 27%, she was at 80%.

47:39SPEAKERSo if you have that, it's literally 15, 20 minutes each time you stop.

47:46SPEAKERSo you go in, you grab some food, you go to the bathroom, you eat, you unplug and go.

47:53SPEAKERIt just means that you eat sitting in the car at the charge stop or in the restaurant

47:56SPEAKERor whatever, rather than shoveling food down your mouth while you're driving down the highway

48:00SPEAKERat 80 miles an hour, which is probably an improvement for everyone on the road.

48:08SPEAKERWhen Gina and I moved out here, I think we did four 500-mile days, five 500-mile days,

48:14SPEAKERwhich was basically 10 hours of driving a day in the U-Haul.

48:21SPEAKERI would do that in a heartbeat with not our car.

48:25SPEAKERIt's just the bolt charges slow.

48:30SPEAKERI'm never driving on a holiday weekend again.

48:31SPEAKERWhen we returned on Tuesday, the first Tuesday in August, it was fine.

48:37SPEAKERThere were no competition for chargers.

48:40SPEAKEREverything was available.

48:41SPEAKERIt was a piece of cake.

48:42SPEAKERThen, it's funny, I was talking to Norm about this because he has a Model 3.

48:48SPEAKERThe charging situation for road trips on the Tesla is such, because the Tesla software

48:52SPEAKERtalks to the battery and knows what the battery is.

48:56SPEAKERIt knows where all the superchargers are.

48:58SPEAKERIt's like, "OK, you're going here.

49:00SPEAKERHere's where I think you're going to charge.

49:02SPEAKERIf you do better on your consumption, then you can go a little bit further to this next one.

49:06SPEAKERIf you don't, then you can stop here."

49:08SPEAKERThe problem with the non-Teslas is that we would often be at 30% battery, where the tool

49:16SPEAKERthat I use to plan routes wanted us to stop, and that meant we would miss 18% of our fastest

49:24SPEAKERcharging time.

49:25SPEAKERThe time from 10% to 50% is the fastest charging you can do.

49:30SPEAKERYou want to min-max that time.

49:33SPEAKERIt's like some video game business happening here.

49:35SPEAKERYou want to get as close to 10% as you can and then charge up to 50% or 60% rather than

49:42SPEAKERstarting at 28% and going to 70%.

49:45SPEAKERThere's a tool, we've talked about it before, called A Better Route Planner, which is an app.

49:48SPEAKERIt's a website.

49:50SPEAKERYou can hook it up to the ODB data out of the port in the car.

49:53SPEAKERBut it's still way fiddlier than it needs to be for route planning.

50:00SPEAKERIt doesn't account for things like the Bolt being -- it accounts for the Bolt being shitty

50:05SPEAKERat charging, but not in a way that lets you min-max that as efficiently as possible.

50:10SPEAKEROn the way back, we ended up doing the whole trip in 10.5 hours, which is I think the best

50:15SPEAKERtime we've ever done.

50:16SPEAKEROh, okay.

50:17SPEAKERThat's respectable.

50:18SPEAKERA lot of what you're describing sounds like it's just a lot of teething pains and this

50:23SPEAKERvery extremely distinctive category of car, you know what I mean?

50:29SPEAKERThis type of driving, this technology has not been around that long in the grand scheme

50:33SPEAKERof how long cars have existed, so hopefully a lot of this will get worked out.

50:37SPEAKERI think it's a combination of that, and also the fact that there's not -- one of the big

50:42SPEAKERchanges that's happened in the three years we've been doing this drive is that there's

50:47SPEAKERa lot more chargers on that corridor now, all the way through.

50:51SPEAKERIt used to be that there was a charger dead spot that was 80 miles along from Grapevine

50:55SPEAKERto Santa Clarita.

50:57SPEAKERNow there's chargers at the top of the Grapevine, there's chargers -- there's multiple chargers

51:01SPEAKERall the way down, not quite at every stop, but every second or third exit on the way

51:06SPEAKERnow it seems like you can find some sort of charging.

51:09SPEAKERSo missing one or having one that's full and going onto the next one or whatever isn't

51:14SPEAKERas much of a disaster as it would have been, say, three years ago.

51:16SPEAKERThat's good.

51:17SPEAKERThere's also a lot more electric cars on the road, so there's a lot more competition for

51:20SPEAKERthose spaces.

51:21SPEAKERVary, real quick, I know we covered this when we did the full episode on this, but what's

51:25SPEAKERthe payment structure generally like for these third-party charging stations?

51:30SPEAKERSo you have an app, you either pay per time spent at the plug or per kilowatt hour.

51:37SPEAKERTypically it costs me $20, $25 to drive 500 miles, not counting what I have in the car

51:42SPEAKERwhen I leave my house in the morning.

51:45SPEAKERSo I think we paid 16 bucks on the way up on Tuesday for three charges, which is like,

51:53SPEAKERyou couldn't do that for any gas car, I don't think.

51:57SPEAKERJust kind of stuff that we have covered here that seems like it needs to change or will

52:01SPEAKERchange, like cooling of batteries and charging stations.

52:03SPEAKERI mean, it's a sad commentary on the state of things, but I assume that car manufacturers

52:08SPEAKERare going to maybe start thinking more about cooling batteries as well as heating them.

52:13SPEAKERYeah.

52:14SPEAKERI mean, they already do think about cooling batteries, but I think the question is, is

52:19SPEAKERthe cooling going to be adequate for the challenges of the changing climate?

52:24SPEAKERThat's what I really meant.

52:25SPEAKERThey're going to think more about increasing the range of cooling they can handle.

52:28SPEAKERWell, yeah.

52:29SPEAKERAnd also stuff like not putting the chargers and the charging spots in direct sun, right?

52:34SPEAKEREven when it was 105 degrees out and we were in a shaded spot, the air conditioner in the

52:40SPEAKERcar didn't have to work as hard to keep the car cool as it did when we were in the direct

52:43SPEAKERsun and the car temperature was reading 130 degrees.

52:48SPEAKERIt's interesting because I really enjoy the min maxing aspect of trying to figure out

52:56SPEAKERwhere the stops should be and all that.

52:58SPEAKERIt drives my wife absolutely bonkers.

53:01SPEAKERIt sounds fun to me too when you talked about, even though a better route planner is maybe

53:04SPEAKERnot ideal, that sounds like a fun efficiency problem of charting all that stuff out.

53:10SPEAKERYeah.

53:11SPEAKERIt's exactly what I like about satisfactory and factorial and all those kinds of things.

53:14SPEAKERAnd it's like, she's like, I don't want to do calculus in my head to figure out where

53:19SPEAKERI should charge.

53:20SPEAKERSo no, thank you.

53:21SPEAKERThat was the other big category besides battery cooling that I was thinking about that may

53:25SPEAKERhopefully will get better is maybe the other manufacturers will try to come up with a more

53:30SPEAKERTesla like solution for that sort of thing.

53:32SPEAKERAlthough, although based on the little bit I've done looking into the quality of car

53:36SPEAKERmanufacturer designed entertainment systems and entertainment software, maybe relying

53:41SPEAKERon them to create that kind of software is not great.

53:45SPEAKERYeah.

53:47SPEAKERIt's weird because you'd think that that car information would be available through CarPlay.

53:53SPEAKERAnd I don't know if it's just that the version of CarPlay that's in my car is old or if the

53:58SPEAKERspecs for CarPlay, I went and looked at it before the show and it's unclear without the

54:01SPEAKERdeveloper license, which is different for CarPlay stuff because they only license Ford

54:06SPEAKERand Mercedes and places like that.

54:09SPEAKERIt's unclear if that information is even accessible or if it's the manufacturers are choosing

54:13SPEAKERnot to pass that through to apps potentially.

54:16SPEAKERI understand why they wouldn't give your phone app access to the two way communication with

54:22SPEAKERthe cars, like telemetrics and telemetry and all that stuff.

54:27SPEAKERBut it does seem like having apps that have that information would make it much easier

54:33SPEAKERto find charging.

54:35SPEAKERI also am curious if, like I did a little bit of research before we left to find out

54:39SPEAKERif ABRP is still the best option for this.

54:42SPEAKERIf there's some other tool, I would love to hear it.

54:46SPEAKERIf people have had better success with some other tool, I would love to hear about it

54:49SPEAKERbecause it's interesting because Gina and I can set up the app on our phones exactly

54:57SPEAKERthe same way with exactly the same data and exactly the same route.

55:01SPEAKERAnd she will get completely different results than I do.

55:04SPEAKERThat's not what you want.

55:07SPEAKERWhich is, I don't know, it's just frustrating.

55:13SPEAKERIt's frustrating when you know that there's a better route that you should be able to

55:16SPEAKERmake and it won't confirm or deny.

55:18SPEAKERIt won't let you just say, "Hey, go here.

55:21SPEAKERI want to go here and charge.

55:23SPEAKERI think that this one's going to be better and it won't tell you what the time split

55:27SPEAKERis."

55:28SPEAKERSo anyway.

55:29SPEAKERDeterministic route planning or bust?

55:31SPEAKERYeah, exactly.

55:32SPEAKERAll I want is simple determinism.

55:37SPEAKERBrad, what's up with coffee?

55:38SPEAKERHow are you doing in the cold brew?

55:39SPEAKERWhat's up with coffee is coffee is pretty good, man.

55:42SPEAKERI don't know if you've heard.

55:44SPEAKERLook, I did a French press the entire time I was in the desert.

55:47SPEAKERIt turns out I like a French press.

55:49SPEAKERWho knew?

55:50SPEAKERYeah.

55:51SPEAKERYeah.

55:52SPEAKERYou know, I've gotten some French press experience here.

55:53SPEAKERYeah.

55:54SPEAKERQuick coffee update.

55:55SPEAKERI'm two weeks now into daily cold brew, so I thought I would maybe touch on where I'm

55:59SPEAKERat with that.

56:00SPEAKERSo your strategy has been to make concentrate and then dilute it with hot water to warm

56:04SPEAKERit up so it's drinkable as a hot coffee rather than like you're not making cold iced coffee

56:09SPEAKERwith your cold brew.

56:10SPEAKERNo, no, no.

56:11SPEAKERYes.

56:12SPEAKERSo getting the ratio where I want it, I'm not sure I'm actually there yet, but I'm getting

56:14SPEAKERcloser.

56:15SPEAKERLike that's been probably the hardest part is figuring that out.

56:19SPEAKERWhat to do the brewing in is also a point of contention.

56:24SPEAKERI think those are probably the two big variables I'm still dialing in.

56:27SPEAKERI started out trying to do a very concentrated concentrate.

56:30SPEAKERYeah.

56:31SPEAKERThat's more challenging.

56:32SPEAKERRight?

56:33SPEAKERYeah.

56:34SPEAKERYeah.

56:35SPEAKERI'm talking like one to four coffee to water, one to five, but it's like at that, at that

56:40SPEAKERpoint it almost gets hard to immerse all the grounds in enough water to actually do the

56:45SPEAKERbrew properly.

56:46SPEAKEROh yeah.

56:47SPEAKERI assume you have to just pour the, pour the grounds into the coffee and then filter them

56:50SPEAKERout.

56:51SPEAKERRight?

56:52SPEAKERYes, pretty much so.

56:53SPEAKERLike I wanted something that concentrated because I liked the coffee hot and you need

56:56SPEAKERto add a lot of hot water to liquid that's been in the fridge, obviously to make it hot.

57:01SPEAKERThat makes sense.

57:02SPEAKERBut, but yeah, it has kind of turned out to not be super practical to do something that

57:07SPEAKERconcentrated.

57:08SPEAKERYou had recommended a one to 10.

57:10SPEAKERThat's what I usually do for my, but I do iced and then add milk to it usually.

57:13SPEAKERYeah.

57:14SPEAKERSo you don't, you don't have the heat component to worry about.

57:16SPEAKERI've seen everything from like I've seen everything from like a one to seven, one to eight, one

57:20SPEAKERto 10 out there.

57:22SPEAKEREvery site, every coffee site has its own opinions about what is ideal.

57:26SPEAKERSo the coarseness of the grind is another one that I still haven't fully settled on.

57:29SPEAKERSome places say do as course as your grinder can do.

57:33SPEAKERAnd then others are like, ah, if you actually put it at about like 80% course or something,

57:38SPEAKERit's maybe going to be a little sweeter.

57:39SPEAKERWell, if you, and also if you're doing a paper filter versus a metal mesh, like if you're

57:45SPEAKERusing a French press to strain out the grounds, you want it coarse so you don't have chunks

57:48SPEAKERthat come through.

57:49SPEAKERRight.

57:50SPEAKERIf you're using a, if you're running it through a paper filter, you can go finer and get more

57:53SPEAKERextraction.

57:54SPEAKERThat's probably how you make your more, more concentrated concentrate actually.

57:59SPEAKERYeah.

58:00SPEAKERThe other, the other, so, so there's the concentrate ratio.

58:02SPEAKERThe other ratio to think about is the drinkable ratio and for that I have mostly seen recommendations

58:06SPEAKERbetween like one to 15 to one to 18 ish.

58:10SPEAKERAnd this is the amount of concentrate to hot water you're adding?

58:13SPEAKERYes.

58:14SPEAKERWell, no, that's the eventual ratio of coffee to water.

58:18SPEAKERSo, so for example, if you're doing a one to nine you know, coffee, coffee to water to

58:25SPEAKERbrew, then you double the one, double the amount of liquid you do half and half boiling

58:28SPEAKERwater and concentrate.

58:30SPEAKERGot it.

58:31SPEAKERAfter the fact.

58:32SPEAKERAnd that's, that's where I've landed, I've been doing one to nine and then when I pour

58:36SPEAKERthe concentrate to, to heat it up, to drink it, I'll, I'll put in an amount and then just

58:40SPEAKERdouble it.

58:41SPEAKERThat makes the math very easy.

58:42SPEAKEROh, okay.

58:43SPEAKERTo, and that my, our kettle goes to two, two, two 12 obviously.

58:48SPEAKERSo I jacked it all the way up and I, I get, I get what I just barely consider hot enough

58:53SPEAKERto drink liquid out of fridge cooled concentrates and boiling water.

58:59SPEAKERThat sounds pretty good.

59:00SPEAKERBasically like it's, it's, I have to drink it pretty quick or it starts getting lukewarm

59:04SPEAKERin a way I don't love.

59:05SPEAKERI don't know how you feel about less than hot coffee, but

59:07SPEAKERI just drank my last sip and it's probably about 140 right now.

59:12SPEAKERIt's not great.

59:13SPEAKERYeah.

59:14SPEAKERYeah.

59:15SPEAKERIt's, it's a little, it's like, it's like flat beer.

59:16SPEAKERIt's just not, it does not go.

59:20SPEAKERWe did a, we did a story about this.

59:22SPEAKERThere was a study you've done about this that we wrote about it right up and tested years

59:25SPEAKERand years ago where there's like, there's a sweet spot above 160 Fahrenheit.

59:30SPEAKERAnd then once you get below a hundred, like colder is, is actually good.

59:34SPEAKERYes.

59:35SPEAKERI could tell you that.

59:36SPEAKERBut yeah.

59:37SPEAKERLike you, like you want hot or cold.

59:38SPEAKERYou don't want in the middle.

59:39SPEAKERNo.

59:40SPEAKERI mean, I'm finding at that ratio, I'm still finding like the body.

59:43SPEAKERSo yeah.

59:44SPEAKERSee, I'm able to, I'm using what I learned in that coffee episode a couple of weeks ago.

59:48SPEAKERThe, the body is still quite rich.

59:50SPEAKERI find at that concentration.

59:52SPEAKERSo you could add more hot water theoretically to that.

59:55SPEAKERI could.

59:56SPEAKERI could.

59:57SPEAKERBut also I love how kind of thick and velvety it is.

59:59SPEAKERIt's got a nice mouthfeel when you get, when you get a good immersion brew, right?

1:00:04SPEAKERReally it tastes so much better.

1:00:05SPEAKERI can't, we've been, I've, I'm actually using Dunkin Donuts whole beans right now for this

1:00:09SPEAKERand even that is quite good.

1:00:11SPEAKEROkay.

1:00:12SPEAKERWith the cold brew I'm finding.

1:00:13SPEAKERHave you done your homework?

1:00:14SPEAKERHave you gone to the fancy coffee shop yet?

1:00:17SPEAKERNot yet.

1:00:18SPEAKERNot yet.

1:00:19SPEAKERBut sure enough.

1:00:20SPEAKERYou're right.

1:00:21SPEAKERThis, I looked at the Dunkin Donuts.

1:00:22SPEAKERIt's, it's a, it's a medium roast.

1:00:23SPEAKERLike you said, all the, all the classic American coffee is a medium roast.

1:00:27SPEAKERYep.

1:00:28SPEAKERThat's, that's what people like.

1:00:29SPEAKERYes.

1:00:30SPEAKERSo I think, I think I'm pretty happy with the ratio I've got going for now.

1:00:34SPEAKERI have been using the French press daily to make enough for myself and my partner.

1:00:41SPEAKERSo you do it at night or the morning, you do it in the morning and then it sits for

1:00:44SPEAKER24 hours?

1:00:45SPEAKERCause that's the other, the time, the time it extracts is the other variable.

1:00:49SPEAKERThere are so many variables.

1:00:50SPEAKERThere's coarseness of grind, there's ratio, there's how long you steep it.

1:00:54SPEAKERYeah.

1:00:55SPEAKERI think you had recommended not to go past 24 hours.

1:00:58SPEAKERI've kind of been aiming for like 18 to 20 hours.

1:01:01SPEAKERThat seems, I think, I think in my experience for at least cold brew for, for iced coffees,

1:01:07SPEAKERthere's not a lot of difference between any more than 12 and less than 24.

1:01:11SPEAKEROnce you get beyond 24, you get to start, start getting a little bitter in my experience.

1:01:14SPEAKERInteresting.

1:01:15SPEAKERMaybe I should start trying like 12 and see if I can actually tell the difference because

1:01:18SPEAKERif there's not much to be gained by going longer than maybe I could simplify things

1:01:22SPEAKERbecause planning the lead time for this has been a whole thing, you know, like I'm essentially

1:01:27SPEAKERmaking two days from now's coffee today.

1:01:31SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

1:01:32SPEAKERIt's like, Hey, I got to put this in and let it go for most of the day.

1:01:35SPEAKERAnd then harvest.

1:01:36SPEAKERI've been using the term harvest the coffee, but like do that the night before.

1:01:41SPEAKERSo basically I'm like, like the coffee I'm making Wednesday afternoon, I'm going to drink

1:01:45SPEAKERFriday morning, basically.

1:01:47SPEAKERSo are you going to invest, are you going to invest in a, in a dedicated device for

1:01:52SPEAKERthis?

1:01:53SPEAKERI've thought about it.

1:01:54SPEAKERI think the Tadi one, there's also some recommendations for the OXO cold brew that I think we talked

1:01:59SPEAKERabout those a little bit.

1:02:00SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:01SPEAKERThe OXO is the one like the OXO seems good.

1:02:03SPEAKERThe Tadi is too big is at least the one that I had was, was ridiculously big, really icky.

1:02:12SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:13SPEAKERAnd we're, we're pretty short on counter space also.

1:02:14SPEAKERSo I'm going to keep trying to work with what we have for now that I did not have a lot

1:02:19SPEAKERof French press.

1:02:20SPEAKERI had, in fact, I had zero French press experience before I started doing this cleaning a French

1:02:24SPEAKERpress every day has already gotten old enough that I don't think I want to do it anymore.

1:02:29SPEAKERYou know that the bottom unscrews, right?

1:02:31SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:32SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:33SPEAKERBut that's exactly why it takes a little bit longer than I want to deal with every day

1:02:36SPEAKERto take the whole thing apart and scrub it all.

1:02:38SPEAKERAnd Oh, I just unscrewed it and put it in the dishwasher.

1:02:42SPEAKEROh, okay.

1:02:43SPEAKERWell, we don't, we don't run the dishwasher every day for two people.

1:02:46SPEAKERSo that's not an option there anyway.

1:02:50SPEAKERI think I'm going to ditch the French press.

1:02:52SPEAKERI might've mentioned this before.

1:02:54SPEAKERWe have a rumble jar.

1:02:56SPEAKERWhat's a rumble jar.

1:02:57SPEAKERThat sounds like, that sounds like you, like you get, you get in it with the pink ladies

1:03:00SPEAKERdown at the sock hop.

1:03:01SPEAKERUh huh.

1:03:02SPEAKERI'm not gonna leave that there.

1:03:06SPEAKERWhat's a rumble jar, Brad?

1:03:07SPEAKERI'll just leave that there.

1:03:08SPEAKERI'm trying to pull up their website so I can give you some actual measurements.

1:03:11SPEAKERIt's just a, it's just a metal cylinder with a little rubber lid that snaps onto it.

1:03:16SPEAKEROh, is it a thing that like you put it in a, in a bigger picture or something?

1:03:20SPEAKERIt is, it is exactly a size to fit the average Mason jar.

1:03:24SPEAKEROh, okay.

1:03:25SPEAKERSo like a one quart Mason jar.

1:03:27SPEAKERSo with the rubber lid on, it actually like hugs the, the, the mouth of the Mason jar

1:03:31SPEAKERand kind of not too tightly, but it fits snugly enough to kind of sit.

1:03:37SPEAKERIt's just a metal cylinder with some extremely small, like machined micro holes.

1:03:42SPEAKERYeah.

1:03:43SPEAKERI'm, I'm again, trying to find, I could tell you how big the holes are if I can just find

1:03:46SPEAKERthem, but I mean, the idea is that you have a metal filter that lets you do your coffee

1:03:50SPEAKERwithout having to do a,

1:03:53SPEAKERI found it.

1:03:54SPEAKERYes.

1:03:55SPEAKERExcuse me.

1:03:56SPEAKER200 micron holes.

1:03:57SPEAKEROh, those are laser holes.

1:03:58SPEAKERThose are tiny holes.

1:03:59SPEAKERThey're tiny holes.

1:04:00SPEAKERThey're like, they're almost too small to see unless you hold it up close to your face.

1:04:04SPEAKERLike a cone.

1:04:05SPEAKERSo, so the reason I wasn't using it before, just to get a little bit more into the nitty

1:04:08SPEAKERgritty when I was making that super concentrate or trying to that small amount of water, because

1:04:13SPEAKERit's such a thin cylinder.

1:04:15SPEAKERIt's a pretty tall column of grounds.

1:04:17SPEAKERYeah.

1:04:18SPEAKERIt was not even enough water to fully immerse the grounds.

1:04:20SPEAKERIt was actually not.

1:04:21SPEAKERThat won't work.

1:04:22SPEAKERBut now that I'm doing nine to one, I think that actually will be enough.

1:04:25SPEAKERSo I'm going to try that because then you would just take a giant Mason jar, fill the

1:04:29SPEAKERrumble jar with coffee, pour all the water in, let it sit much easier.

1:04:34SPEAKERYou can also, so the Hario that I use, I wasn't grinding fine enough for when, when I couldn't

1:04:42SPEAKERget all of the grounds submerged in the amount of water I was supposed to be using, it was

1:04:45SPEAKERbecause I wasn't grinding the coffee fine enough because the finer ground coffee will

1:04:49SPEAKERbe less volume.

1:04:50SPEAKERSo is that why everybody recommends course grind for cold brew, the filtering, not because

1:04:55SPEAKERof some extractive factor, because it's easier to filter out the grounds and you don't want

1:05:00SPEAKERto overextract like overextracting tastes bad.

1:05:03SPEAKERSo that might be my last big question.

1:05:05SPEAKERAnd that's certainly something that's hard to measure is not just for the quality of

1:05:09SPEAKERthe coffee, but especially how much caffeine I'm consuming.

1:05:12SPEAKERI'm wondering, I'm wondering like, are you definitely getting more caffeine the longer

1:05:17SPEAKERyou, you steep, do you know, or is that something that levels off after 12 hours?

1:05:22SPEAKERHaven't the foggiest.

1:05:23SPEAKEROkay.

1:05:24SPEAKERI anecdotally it's hard to, it's hard to evaluate your own perception, but I feel like I'm probably

1:05:30SPEAKERmore caffeinated than I used to be.

1:05:32SPEAKERI don't ever feel like I can see through time after drinking the cold brew that I make.

1:05:36SPEAKEROkay.

1:05:37SPEAKEROkay.

1:05:38SPEAKERLike I'm not super affected by caffeine.

1:05:41SPEAKEROkay.

1:05:42SPEAKERI am.

1:05:43SPEAKERThat's something I really need to be conscious of.

1:05:44SPEAKERSo anyway, that's probably the last thing that I'm really trying to dial in, but enjoy

1:05:49SPEAKERthe coffee a lot more.

1:05:51SPEAKERIt's tastes significantly better.

1:05:53SPEAKERThe thing about the cold brew is it, it is a, is a really reliable way to make a really

1:05:57SPEAKERnice cup of coffee.

1:05:58SPEAKERYes.

1:05:59SPEAKERYes.

1:06:00SPEAKERIt's a little fiddlier in the morning because I have to get up, I get up, filter water and

1:06:03SPEAKERthen boil the water in the kettle and then get the scale out and have to like measure

1:06:06SPEAKERout the concentrate to the, you know, it's, it's just slightly more work even after the

1:06:10SPEAKERfact to drink it, but it's, it's worth it.

1:06:13SPEAKERTastes good.

1:06:14SPEAKERThere you go.

1:06:15SPEAKERSo I think that's a show there's, there's three updates, three things we've been doing

1:06:19SPEAKERlately that we're like probably in retrospect, maybe we could have gotten a whole episode

1:06:23SPEAKERout of WireGuard, but I feel like, I feel like, I feel like VPNs are, VPNs are a weird

1:06:29SPEAKERspace cause they're like niche.

1:06:32SPEAKERI didn't think I needed one until I had one.

1:06:34SPEAKERAnd then I was like, Oh, this is, it turns out it's pretty good.

1:06:36SPEAKERYes.

1:06:37SPEAKERYeah.

1:06:38SPEAKERIt's sorry.

1:06:39SPEAKERThat may have been a little jumbled with that section.

1:06:40SPEAKERLike it's, it's something that I understand just well enough to start worrying that I

1:06:43SPEAKERdon't understand it well enough to explain it to somebody, but it it's been pretty awesome.

1:06:49SPEAKERAnd I feel like there are more and more use cases for the average person as people are

1:06:53SPEAKERrunning like Plex or Jellyfin at home and want to be able to access that.

1:06:57SPEAKERAnd judging by the number of podcasters that are advertising VPN software on a, on a week

1:07:04SPEAKERto week basis, apparently they're very popular.

1:07:07SPEAKERSo yeah, I, you know, just, just as a, as another basic piece of information, we should

1:07:12SPEAKERmention like this does not replace a commercial VPN service.

1:07:16SPEAKERThis is just VPN ending into your house.

1:07:18SPEAKERAll your traffic is still going through your ISP from your house.

1:07:21SPEAKERYeah.

1:07:22SPEAKERIf you're using a VPN to say, mask your IP address because you're doing something that

1:07:25SPEAKERyou don't want any multinational media conglomerates to know about this WireGuard solution will

1:07:30SPEAKERnot solve that problem for you.

1:07:32SPEAKERYes.

1:07:33SPEAKERBut you can, and people on our discord do this, and it seems like it's getting easier

1:07:36SPEAKERall the time.

1:07:37SPEAKERYou can just like make your own VPN of that nature by getting a, like a, a VPS virtual

1:07:43SPEAKERprivate server.

1:07:44SPEAKERYou can just set up WireGuard on that.

1:07:46SPEAKERAnd then you do have a secure tunnel through the internet, although then you're subject

1:07:51SPEAKERto whoever provides that cloud instance.

1:07:54SPEAKERAnd instead of, instead of a VPN company, you're dealing with cloud companies.

1:07:57SPEAKERWell, and you have to maintain it yourself when like you're running your $5 a month line

1:08:00SPEAKERnode, it probably costs more than just paying somebody to do VPN for you.

1:08:04SPEAKERYeah.

1:08:05SPEAKERWell, I mean the, the bigger concerns there are people worry about commercial VPN providers,

1:08:09SPEAKERlike logging what they do and stuff like that.

1:08:11SPEAKERMaybe they're not as private as they are advertised to be.

1:08:14SPEAKERDon't do illegal stuff on the internet is the other way to handle this.

1:08:18SPEAKERYou could just take that tack anyway.

1:08:19SPEAKERYou know what's not illegal though?

1:08:21SPEAKERWhat's that?

1:08:22SPEAKERSupporting your favorite broadcast, Brad.

1:08:23SPEAKEROh, that is both legal and morally correct.

1:08:26SPEAKERYeah.

1:08:27SPEAKERDid you know that Brad and Will Made of TechPod is a 100% listener supported show?

1:08:31SPEAKERI did know that.

1:08:32SPEAKERWe don't take, like you can listen to us talk about how awesome WireGuard is because you

1:08:36SPEAKERknow that we've not taken any advertising money to talk about VPNs.

1:08:41SPEAKERBut we do that because listeners like you support the show through our Patreon at patreon.com/techpod.

1:08:46SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod, where for five bucks a month, you get access to the

1:08:51SPEAKERfabulous Patreon exclusive episode, as well as access to the TechPod Discord, which is

1:08:57SPEAKERfull of beautiful nerds just like you, who have an incredible amount of information to

1:09:04SPEAKERshare about a wide variety of topics, from mechanical calculators all the way down to

1:09:11SPEAKERsetting up audio gear and getting good lights for your battle station at home.

1:09:17SPEAKERThe coffee conversation that happened after the coffee episode two weeks ago, it's still

1:09:21SPEAKERgoing.

1:09:23SPEAKERI think we're going to have to do a coffee channel for the spinoff from the coffee conversation.

1:09:29SPEAKERI liked that midway through that conversation about the coffee stuff, there was a scotch

1:09:34SPEAKERand whiskey fork of that conversation.

1:09:36SPEAKERI was just about to bring that up.

1:09:37SPEAKERI didn't mean to hijack the coffee chat with whiskey chat, but that was fun, too.

1:09:42SPEAKERLook, if you want to put some dirt in your booze, I'm not going to judge you.

1:09:49SPEAKERIt was coffee time, Brad.

1:09:53SPEAKERIt's a wonderful group of people.

1:09:57SPEAKERWe are lucky to have you all as part of the community around the weird show that we do.

1:10:05SPEAKERAs always, we like to thank all of our patrons, but especially our executive producer tier

1:10:10SPEAKERpatrons, including Nick Johnston, Paddle Creek Games, makers of Fractured Veil, Andrew Slosky,

1:10:16SPEAKERJordan Lippett, Bunnyfiend, Just Wedge 3.0, Joel Krauska, Twinkie, The General Contractor,

1:10:23SPEAKERDavid Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

1:10:30SPEAKERThat's us this week.

1:10:32SPEAKERThanks for listening, everybody.

1:10:33SPEAKERWe will be back next week with another tech pod.

1:10:37SPEAKERSee you all then!

1:10:40SPEAKER(upbeat music)