00:00SPEAKEROkay Brad, some good science happened this week that I learned about on the blue skies.
00:05SPEAKERHang on, is there such a thing as bad science before we get into this?
00:09SPEAKERUm, I feel like there's been some medical research done at different periods of time in history that
00:15SPEAKERI would describe as probably bad science.
00:17SPEAKERThat's a darker place than I expected you to go with this. Maybe let's talk about the good science.
00:22SPEAKERYeah, so this is good science. They have figured out that there is a fixed ratio
00:29SPEAKERof total area of a puzzle to the amount of space you need to lay out all of the pieces of the puzzle
00:36SPEAKERunassembled so that you can see and access all the pieces so you know how big your table needs to be.
00:44SPEAKERYou can look at your table, figure out what its area is, and figure out what the biggest,
00:48SPEAKERthe maximum size puzzle you can use on that table is.
00:51SPEAKERTalk about a jigsaw puzzle to be clear.
00:53SPEAKERJigsaw, serious. This is serious science, Brad. Jigsaw puzzles, yes.
00:56SPEAKERI am no mathematician. I don't know if I've got my term straight. Is there some kind of transform
01:01SPEAKERor something that you need to do as you start completing the puzzle,
01:04SPEAKERonce you start putting the pieces in place, do the parameters change of the space required?
01:09SPEAKERWell, I think that area is going to get smaller, right? Because it gets more compressed, right?
01:12SPEAKERYeah, yes.
01:13SPEAKERBut the TLDR, and this was Madeline Bonsma Fisher posted this, who's mbonsma.bsky.social.
01:23SPEAKERThey have an archive post that explains the math behind it all.
01:28SPEAKERThe upshot is, an unassembled jigsaw puzzle takes up an area that is the square root of
01:33SPEAKERthree times the area of the assembled puzzle, or approximately 1.7 times the assembled area.
01:40SPEAKERThe neat thing about it is, it's independent of the number of pieces. You'd think smaller pieces,
01:44SPEAKERsmaller area, more compression, blah, blah, blah. Not true. If you have a 10-piece kid puzzle,
01:49SPEAKERor a 2,000-piece, "Hey, I have OCD" puzzle, both of them, same amount of space,
01:56SPEAKER1.7-ish times the assembled area. I love a formula that scales. I see that she
02:01SPEAKERanswered my question. She posted a graph that graphs the exact thing I was wondering about,
02:06SPEAKERassembled area against unassembled area. Over the lifespan of the puzzle completion,
02:11SPEAKERyou could see exactly how this is going to evolve.
02:14SPEAKERAnd the neat thing is, the data fits the plot almost perfectly. It's kind of bonkers. It's
02:19SPEAKERlike the kind you don't see ever. They showed some examples of nine-piece kid puzzles and
02:24SPEAKER2,000-piece adult puzzles. It's the same area each time.
02:30SPEAKERI have an unrelated jigsaw puzzle story.
02:34SPEAKERDo you like puzzles, Brad?
02:35SPEAKERI like puzzles. I haven't done one in 35 years, probably, but sure.
02:40SPEAKERWe did some puzzles a few years ago. It's fun. We did some pandemic puzzles. It was a good way
02:44SPEAKERto kill an afternoon.
02:45SPEAKERIt seems like one of those kind of flow state things that would be nice to just zone out on,
02:49SPEAKERkind of like painting or practicing a musical instrument. Just sort of
02:52SPEAKERlet your mind go slack as you do a thing.
02:56SPEAKERWell, it's collaborative too, which is nice. You can sit around a table,
02:59SPEAKERshare some time with each other, help people find pieces. I enjoy that.
03:03SPEAKERAnyway, the real quick thing I was going to bring up, are you familiar with the concept of a
03:07SPEAKERsidewalk library? People that don't live in cities or dense urban neighborhoods might not have seen
03:12SPEAKERthose little free libraries. Look, let me tell you, if you want to drive around the Northern
03:19SPEAKERCalifornia suburban neighborhood, I guarantee you our density of little free libraries is
03:24SPEAKERhigher than yours.
03:25SPEAKERThis is... Wait a minute.
03:26SPEAKERYeah.
03:27SPEAKERYou're talking about mine specifically?
03:28SPEAKERAnd in your neighborhood, yes.
03:30SPEAKERYou should come to this neighborhood and put that theory to the test,
03:32SPEAKERbecause there are about every two blocks here.
03:34SPEAKEROh, there are four on my street.
03:38SPEAKEROkay, fine. Anyway, it was a phenomenon of the pandemic, I think. They started popping up
03:43SPEAKERlike crazy during the pandemic. Also, a lot of them are very nice around here. It's like actual
03:47SPEAKERwoodworking and they're painted and they have hinged doors with windows in them and custom...
03:52SPEAKERHow else would you make a door without a hinge?
03:54SPEAKERWell, yes. I mean, look, it's been a long week.
03:57SPEAKERI helped Gary Witte put poor concrete to anchor theirs in place.
04:01SPEAKERWow.
04:02SPEAKERThe start of the pandemic, maybe the year before even, I can't remember.
04:05SPEAKERAnyway, those are all for books until somebody close to here, two blocks away,
04:11SPEAKERdid one for jigsaw puzzles.
04:12SPEAKEROoh, that's exciting.
04:13SPEAKERYes. I believe that they called it the Puzzle Palace.
04:16SPEAKERThat's pretty good.
04:17SPEAKERThere was a puzzle of Princess Diana in there for some time.
04:21SPEAKERWow.
04:21SPEAKERIt's on our route to the grocery store, which we go to once a week. And we always go on $5
04:27SPEAKERFridays. So we get a good weekly interval of walking by the Puzzle Palace. At some point,
04:32SPEAKERsomeone murdered a puzzle.
04:34SPEAKERWhat?
04:35SPEAKERAnd its innards were spread all up and down the block.
04:39SPEAKERNot okay, dude.
04:41SPEAKERI don't know exactly what sequence of events occurred,
04:45SPEAKERbut there were tiny puzzle pieces all up and down the street for weeks afterwards.
04:51SPEAKERWho would do such a thing?
04:51SPEAKERThat's horrific. That is the worst thing. Look, we have a fair amount of Lego in the garage
04:59SPEAKERbecause I have a fair way. Look, Gina and I went through, I mean, some would say we're
05:04SPEAKERstill going through it. We have a Lego. This is our Lego era. And sometimes you pull a
05:10SPEAKERLego off the shelf in the garage and the end's not closed and the Ziploc bag falls and it
05:16SPEAKERexplodes and all the pieces come out. And then you're looking for Lego on the floor
05:21SPEAKERof the garage for the next six weeks.
05:23SPEAKERAre you suggesting, I'm being too harsh, that maybe this was a small child that fumbled
05:27SPEAKERa puzzle trying to get it out of the palace? I'm saying maybe it was an accident. I see
05:31SPEAKERit can see it, but like, I feel like there's a, look at that point, once the pieces fall
05:35SPEAKERon the street, it's probably done, right? There's probably nothing you can do.
05:38SPEAKERAre you saying my campaign to promote prosecution, harsh prosecution of puzzle murder is premature?
05:43SPEAKERI'm just saying, you know, sometimes accidents happen, I assume best intent. And I'm going
05:48SPEAKERto say that maybe the person who packed the puzzle is at fault here, Brad.
05:52SPEAKERWell, those are words to live by.
06:22SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod. I'm Will.
06:25SPEAKERI'm Brad. Hello.
06:27SPEAKERHello. Hi.
06:28SPEAKERHi.
06:28SPEAKERBrad, something novel has happened.
06:31SPEAKERWhat's that?
06:32SPEAKERWell, so I started working at Maximum PC in 2000.
06:36SPEAKEROkay.
06:36SPEAKERAnd then I went straight from Maximum PC to Tested and I left Tested to start Foo. And
06:42SPEAKERas Foo was closing down, Chet sent me an email and was like, "Hey, you want to come play
06:46SPEAKERmy game?" And then I ended up going to work for Stray Bomb Bay. I'm officially leaving
06:51SPEAKERStray Bomb Bay at the start of the new year.
06:53SPEAKEROh, wow. Okay.
06:54SPEAKERI don't have a job for the first time in 23 years.
06:58SPEAKERThat's the novel part.
06:59SPEAKERThat's the novel part.
07:00SPEAKERHow does that feel?
07:01SPEAKERIt's not great.
07:02SPEAKEROkay.
07:02SPEAKERIt's not great. If people, if people, if people, I have a weird skill set, which makes it hard.
07:09SPEAKERLike if I was like a graphics programmer, it would be fairly straightforward because you
07:12SPEAKERjust go and look at the graphics programmer jobs. And, but when you're like the guy who
07:16SPEAKERknows how to make the computers do the things that are convenient and also can do like some
07:20SPEAKERsound stuff and make PowerPoint decks for business presentations and do the business
07:25SPEAKERpresentations and, and talk to the partners and all that. It's like, it's like 30 different
07:30SPEAKERlittle jobs that make one big job. But if anybody knows people who need that kind of
07:35SPEAKERskill set, please reach out. I'm available starting early next year. So yeah, weird stuff.
07:42SPEAKERYeah. Hire this man, if you're listening and you have a job.
07:45SPEAKERYeah. If you're, if you're, if you're, if you're a hiring manager, please reach out.
07:50SPEAKERI identify with you as I have a fairly similar skill set to yours and have worn a large number
07:56SPEAKERof similar hats over time. And I also live in fear of having to go get a real full-time
08:02SPEAKERjob if this ever goes away, because what do I say that I do? I can do a lot of things,
08:10SPEAKERbut not, not any one of them, or even the sum total of them really can be described
08:14SPEAKERas a specific job. I work in operations, I think operations and communications.
08:20SPEAKERSure. I don't know.
08:21SPEAKERSure. Yeah. It's like I can edit audio and video. I can write, I can do,
08:25SPEAKERyou know, like coding, like all kinds of stuff, but.
08:29SPEAKERYou're a generalist.
08:30SPEAKERYes. I think you introduced me to the phrase aggressive generalist, and I like that a lot,
08:35SPEAKERbut I don't know if the hiring world does.
08:37SPEAKERI'm going to put that on my LinkedIn actually. Well, I mean, the upshot is it means that we're
08:40SPEAKERgood for small companies and maybe not great companies, which is fine.
08:43SPEAKERLike I have never had a better time in my career than the early days of Giant Bomb.
08:48SPEAKERYeah. When it was just see a thing that needs to be done and do it. And if you don't know how
08:53SPEAKERto do it, figure it out. Cause that is the environment in which I thrive absolutely the most.
08:57SPEAKERI do. That is, that is what I like about working in small companies. I look, I try a big company.
09:02SPEAKERI'm not, I'm not, I'm not, let's not close any doors here. That's what I'm saying.
09:06SPEAKERTheir money is equally green.
09:07SPEAKERYeah. It would be nice to work someplace that I don't know how many that I don't, I don't know
09:12SPEAKERthe explicit details of the financials of the company. I've done that for the last 10 years.
09:17SPEAKERI mean, it's, it's, you know, maybe not the best. It's stressful, more stressful. I would,
09:21SPEAKERI wouldn't mind as stressful on a, in a different axis for a little bit maybe, but yeah. So that's
09:27SPEAKERwhat I got going on. Life has come, life sometimes comes at you fast, I guess is the, is the phrase.
09:34SPEAKERI'm not going to get into it, but.
09:35SPEAKERYou've talked about it in other venues.
09:37SPEAKERWell, kind of, it's a lot of family stuff happening. It's been a bad month for my family.
09:43SPEAKERI'm sorry, Brad.
09:44SPEAKERThank you. I appreciate it. I don't actually like talk about stuff like this publicly,
09:48SPEAKERbut I bring it up because, Hey, we're here to do a supplemental Q and A this week. And I hope
09:53SPEAKERpeople don't mind an extra Q and A this month. Cause it was about what we had the capacity to
09:58SPEAKERget together.
09:58SPEAKERWell, yeah. So, so we were, we, the initial plan was to do a 30th anniversary doom episode
10:03SPEAKERbecause this is the 30th anniversary doom week. I think we'll probably at some point in the future,
10:07SPEAKERstill do that. Cause I would like to talk about that.
10:09SPEAKERYes. I would love to.
10:10SPEAKERBut it's not going to happen this week is the TLDR. So, so apologies in advance.
10:15SPEAKERWe should, we should do that. The weird, the weird rules that I impose on myself. I'm like,
10:19SPEAKERI'm like, well, did we do it in the week of the anniversary? No, then we can't do it. And I'm like,
10:23SPEAKERthen I stop and I'm like, what if we came back in mid January and we're like, Hey,
10:27SPEAKERlast month was the 30th anniversary of doom. Let's do an episode about it.
10:30SPEAKERI think that's the reason we can't do that. See, I don't, I don't believe in the podcast rules,
10:34SPEAKERso I say we should do that. Okay.
10:37SPEAKERI'm highlighting stuff in the Q's and the A's, but so we went back the last couple of months,
10:41SPEAKERactually have been ripe for questions. We didn't get through anywhere near the number of questions
10:45SPEAKERthat either of us wanted to. So a bonus pre holiday Q and A, and depending on how stuff goes
10:51SPEAKERwith your, with your personal stuff, we might have some guest hosts for the next couple of weeks,
10:54SPEAKERjust as a full warning for people going forward. Yes.
10:59SPEAKERTo be clear, we, we are not taking any of the next month's questions. These are all,
11:03SPEAKERthese are all questions we had flagged and just didn't get to previously. So, so if you,
11:06SPEAKERif you ask any December questions, those, those are not in the hopper yet.
11:10SPEAKERAnd just in case, I know people will be worried, but, but like your,
11:13SPEAKERyour family stuff is not like you're healthy and I am healthy. Yes.
11:18SPEAKERI will leave it at that. Okay. Perfect. If people have questions, you can email them to us at
11:24SPEAKERtechpod@content.town, or if you're in the discord, if you're a patron you can go to the question
11:29SPEAKERseeking answers channel. And that is where we pull all of these questions from. Here's the first one.
11:34SPEAKEROkay. First question from FBC here. Hello, Will and Brad, any ad blocking tips now that YouTube
11:41SPEAKERseems to be cracking down on most ad block extensions? So I have a 10 year old. We watched
11:47SPEAKERa lot of YouTube in this house. I actually just pay them. Yeah. That was going to be my first
11:51SPEAKERsuggestion as well. I have, I think we've talked about it some recently since, especially since I
11:55SPEAKERgot this new TV, I've been watching a ton of YouTube as well. And I also am just like,
11:59SPEAKERmaybe I should just pay them. I, so my, my feeling on ad blocking is complicated,
12:06SPEAKERpartly because I worked in a business that was supported by ads for the first 20, 15,
12:10SPEAKER20 years of my career. Yes. I very much feel the same. I, my feeling is that as long as the
12:16SPEAKERpublishers and publications are operating in good faith, I generally don't block ads on their sites.
12:22SPEAKERYes. And the moment I see a fucking toenail fungus or like earwax removal or some sort of scam ad or
12:31SPEAKERan ad for an app that removes the clue that you can upload somebody's picture to, and then it
12:35SPEAKERposts a naked picture of them. Thanks, Twitter. I'll never see an ad on their site again. So they
12:42SPEAKERget added. So I start with a blank list and only block the malicious advertisers and the malware
12:48SPEAKERadvertisers and stuff like that. Yeah. That's something nice you can do for publications that
12:54SPEAKERyou respect and want to support is allow them in whatever browser, you know, browser extension,
12:58SPEAKERor if you use pie hole for like kind of whole network ad blocking, but allowing sites you want
13:03SPEAKERto support, you know, display ads are not worth what they used to be, let's say, but, but it's
13:09SPEAKERstill, it helps. And the, and the thing, the thing I'll say is that generally I don't feel any
13:14SPEAKERcompunctions about blocking network ads. I don't feel compunctions about blocking ads that look
13:19SPEAKERlike content, but aren't so things like the, the, the, the, I can't remember Joomla or something.
13:27SPEAKERThat's not it. It's not Joomla. It's Taboola. The, the, you know, the ads that, that they
13:33SPEAKERstyle to look like your news, your more news item blocks that are offsite ads that are just
13:38SPEAKERpaged farms basically are the pits. So yeah, no, I I'm also with the rise of malware,
13:46SPEAKERlike just to be clear, I don't blame anybody for blocking ads with the amount of malware that's
13:52SPEAKERdistributed on advertising networks these days. So also tracking like tracking actually has
13:56SPEAKERbecome a big one for me ever since we did that online security episode ages ago, like the amount
14:01SPEAKERof the amount of information that is being phoned home about what you're doing to people who are
14:06SPEAKERaggregating it for like ad serving purposes and stuff is gross. Block all the Facebook,
14:10SPEAKERblock all the Twitter buttons, block all that crap. So I, yeah, you block origin is still the
14:15SPEAKERrecommended choices. It's what I've been using for years. And then I do run a pie hole for iOS
14:22SPEAKERdevices, basically. Although that requires a little bit of, if you have IPv6 set up on your
14:27SPEAKERiOS device, you have to do some shenanigans to get it to block, to get it to go through the pie hole
14:33SPEAKERfor DNS. I don't remember what the cost of YouTube, like just YouTube premium. I think I pay 16 bucks
14:41SPEAKERfor a family one, which is my daughter's account. Right. So you can do family stuff. They also roll
14:46SPEAKERit in with like YouTube music, right. And some other stuff. So there's a bunch of bundles you
14:49SPEAKERcould get, but I think, what is it? Is it like 10 a month is the premium? Or is it like, wow,
14:56SPEAKERindividual is 13 bucks a month. May they jack the price up on it. That's for also YouTube music,
15:01SPEAKERthough. I wonder, I wonder if they're not actually selling just YouTube premium anymore. Maybe you
15:05SPEAKERhave to get the bundle with music. I wonder if when I canceled, I got bumped up to the new one.
15:10SPEAKERIt's 22.99 a month for a family of five people, which is kind of bonkers. You can do a student
15:16SPEAKERmembership for eight bucks, which is probably pretty easy to back into. That's kind of
15:21SPEAKERunfortunate that you can't get it without music bundled because I would probably rather use a
15:24SPEAKERdifferent music streaming service if I could help it. But anyway, and, and you can't, you know, even,
15:31SPEAKEReven if you jump through the hoops to block it on your computer in a browser, you still wouldn't be
15:34SPEAKERblocking the ads on any other device you might watch YouTube on. So no, the pie hole doesn't
15:38SPEAKERhelp with that either. As far as I can tell, you kind of have to have to pay if you want the whole
15:42SPEAKERAtlas experience, but I like YouTube absolutely has its problems, but it's also, if you're using
15:48SPEAKERit well, you know, it's a, it's a pretty good service. It's probably worth paying for. I mean,
15:53SPEAKERso just to be clear, if my kid, if it wasn't my kid's primary source of video viewing,
15:59SPEAKERI wouldn't pay for it. I don't use it enough to not tolerate an occasional ad. But, but she does.
16:07SPEAKERAnd I, and honestly I want her insulated from the ads as much as possible because the internet ads
16:12SPEAKERare bad. Yes, for sure. I don't remember. I feel like I read how it was that they were cracking
16:18SPEAKERdown on this, but I don't remember, but they were, I feel like there was some aspect wasn't
16:22SPEAKERthere. Like they caught people blocking ads on YouTube, but they were starting to do something.
16:27SPEAKERI can't remember what it was. They were doing, they were making videos take a really long time
16:30SPEAKERto load. Maybe that's what it was. They also do that for Firefox just because I think that was a
16:36SPEAKERbug. I think that was, I air quoted that just for audio listeners, AKA everybody listening to the
16:41SPEAKERshow, but that's a weird one. You know, like degrading the quality of the service to punish
16:45SPEAKERpeople is, seems like it's as, it is as likely to just drive them away as it is to correct the
16:50SPEAKERbehavior. I don't know. It's like, it's like giving a cosmetic item that adds a VAC band to
16:56SPEAKERyour Dota account. I cannot believe that. Do we know if that was a one-off? Did they do that
17:02SPEAKERcustom for somebody? Bunch of people. Oh, a bunch of people got it? Bunch of people got them
17:05SPEAKERreportedly. So if people don't know, you can probably go on Twitter and find this or somewhere
17:09SPEAKERelse. Just Google about it, I guess. It'll be on YouTube and Twitch too. Yeah. They, they started
17:14SPEAKERissuing account bands to Dota players, prominent Dota players, like streamers in the form of like
17:20SPEAKERloot boxes, essentially. Like loot boxes you receive as part of the holiday thing. It seems
17:24SPEAKERlike it's like a seasonal, a seasonal like gift bag or whatever their holiday chest is for this
17:29SPEAKERyear. And then they, people are opening it and finding a like toxic lump of coal in there. And
17:34SPEAKERas soon as they opened it, it banned their account. It's good for a five day VAC ban or something.
17:39SPEAKERYeah. It's nuts. It's really impressive stuff. I mean, it's yeah. Level of spite. I'm impressed
17:45SPEAKERwith anyway. Yes. All right. Well, actually talking about Valve, how about I read this
17:51SPEAKERquestion from Warbird? Sure. Given, given Valve's ongoing commitment to Linux and remote streaming
17:57SPEAKERof games do you feel there is a market for a stream OS box that does for remote first gaming,
18:03SPEAKERwhat SteamOS and Steam Deck have done for ease of use Linux gaming? I think you could probably make
18:10SPEAKERthat really easily without having to like, yes. I do. I think that Valve should make a, an inexpensive
18:17SPEAKERlow power box. You can plug it into your TV to stream stuff from your giant PC in the other room.
18:21SPEAKERA hundred percent. Like a new steam link, essentially a steam link to something much more
18:27SPEAKERcapable than the very outdated steam link. Yeah. The steam link, the first gen steam link, I think
18:32SPEAKERonly had native 11 and I think maybe it had AC. I can't remember. But it's also limited to an EP,
18:39SPEAKERyou know, greater than 60 Hertz, no HDR. I don't think it needs to be a whole new OS that, that to
18:47SPEAKERme, the thing that you described, it sounds like a steam OS device that just doesn't have a screen or
18:52SPEAKERcontrollers attached to it. Yeah. Although the thing with valve is they emphasize they're built
18:56SPEAKERin steam streaming and that is great for steam games, but it's not so great for non steam games.
19:01SPEAKERLike there are solutions like moonlight, but that is not something valve seems interested in
19:05SPEAKERsupporting. You can run moonlight and, and Chiaqui and green light on top of steam OS
19:11SPEAKERreally easily. That was the point. You can set that up. Yeah. I'm kind of thinking for
19:16SPEAKERpeople who would want just something that worked out of the box for like everything they play on a
19:19SPEAKERPC. Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to, yeah. I mean, it's, it's not that hard to add
19:27SPEAKERmost third, but like most third party stuff works pretty well. Now it's the windows store
19:32SPEAKERgame pass games that are the real hard ones to add to steam these days. Yeah. But also
19:39SPEAKERyou can stream those from X cloud really easily for the most part. So like that there's solutions
19:44SPEAKERfor those problems. Yes. A question from, this is an inside baseball question from Shags Magoo.
19:50SPEAKERWhat topics do you guys consider out of bounds for the tech pod? What is technology, Brad?
19:57SPEAKERTechnology. I'm not going to be, I'm not even going to try to sing that stupid song. I almost
20:02SPEAKERwant to turn this question around on the audience and say like, what do and don't you want us to
20:06SPEAKERtalk about? Like, I, I, I tend to think I probably have a far too narrow view of the things we should
20:13SPEAKERbe talking about on here. Like every time we do something that feels like it's not tech related,
20:17SPEAKERI'm like, should we be talking about that? Is that actually science or tech? And then I'm like,
20:20SPEAKERwait, who cares? It's our podcast. I, I, my feeling there's some things I avoid just cause
20:26SPEAKERI don't want the drama that comes with talking about them. There's, but, and I'm not going to
20:32SPEAKERgive examples of that. So don't ask. There are actually I can't give like sex toys. I'm not going
20:41SPEAKERto get, we're not going to get into like, into like sex toys just because it, it creates every
20:46SPEAKERtime we've tried it in the past on other stuff, it's been a disaster. You tried it in the past.
20:52SPEAKERUm, I know we didn't untested, but I felt I consulted on other sites where it became ish
20:58SPEAKERproblematic. Interesting. Like, like, um, and just to be clear, it wasn't because the intended
21:05SPEAKERaudience was bad. It was cause the unintended audience was bad. Sure. That makes sense. Yep.
21:09SPEAKERSure. Um, we were not going to probably do drug stuff. Yeah. Like I don't think I'd do a lot of
21:16SPEAKERweed tech. I might joke about it, but like, I just don't need that in my life. So it's been done.
21:22SPEAKERThere's other people that are doing it better. So, um, but yeah, no, I think anything that
21:27SPEAKERlike technology is this is, this is Roman has had a good answer for this that I don't remember
21:32SPEAKERexactly what it is. So I'm not going to try to repeat it, but he's like, look, everything's
21:34SPEAKERdesigned. Sure. Every at this point, everything's technology, cars are technology, boats are
21:40SPEAKERtechnology. Farming is technology. Um, I think, you know, should we do a Monsanto episode?
21:46SPEAKERProbably not, but I think we would fit in the mandate if we wanted to. Yeah, I think so. Um,
21:51SPEAKERbut I also fully expect there are people who would just say like, Hey, we're just listening
21:54SPEAKERto the podcast to hear you and you can talk about whatever you want. So yeah, you know, you kinda,
21:59SPEAKERyou kinda, you know, we, we did set out to do like a sort of topic based show. So I guess we
22:04SPEAKERdo want to kind of keep it on topic as much as we can. I mean, I think that's the question going
22:08SPEAKERforward, right? I think we we've this year, especially partly because we've both been busy
22:14SPEAKERon other things a lot. Um, but the single topic format is hard because not because you run out
22:20SPEAKERof topics, but because like you run out of the topics that don't require extensive, like,
22:27SPEAKERjust to be clear, usually when we do a topic episode, it's, it's at least a half dozen hours
22:31SPEAKERof research externally for one or both of us. Um, and as we get deeper down the list of those
22:39SPEAKERtopics, like you get to a point where the six hours becomes 20 hours and we're like, we should
22:46SPEAKERhire an external producer to help us with this. And then all of a sudden the, the financial,
22:50SPEAKERlike the, the financials of the podcast don't work as well. Um, and, and that like that colors
22:57SPEAKERthat decision. So I guess, yeah, I don't, I don't know. Like I don't want to do a news roundup show
23:01SPEAKERbecause I don't, there's enough people doing that, you know, friends who are at daily tech do a good
23:05SPEAKERjob with that stuff. Um, but, but I, I, I would be curious what people think. So if people have
23:10SPEAKERthoughts about this, please send them in or post them in the feedback thread on the discord.
23:13SPEAKERYeah, absolutely. Question from Narfinger. Uh, will we ever see a mid range graphics card for
23:19SPEAKERunder $800 US? Man, I, I don't know. I, we, I think we should. I think the fact that the
23:27SPEAKERmid range has crept up from 500, from 200 to 500 to $800 over the last decade is unfortunate.
23:34SPEAKERIt is unfortunate. And how much of that is inflation and how much of that is quote unquote
23:38SPEAKERinflation, you know, how much of that is, is profit seeking. I mean, you know, Nvidia has got
23:42SPEAKERlike massive R and D to account for now. Like what goes into, they always have though. Well,
23:46SPEAKERI know, but like, if you like, there's a lot, you can knock on Nvidia in terms of like their
23:51SPEAKERbusiness model or like the price increases and stuff like that. But like the, the product
23:55SPEAKERoffering, and I don't mean to like exclude Intel or AMD here, like they're doing good stuff too.
23:59SPEAKERBut like, if you like, if you look at what comprises a graphics card now versus 20 years ago,
24:04SPEAKERlike all the machine learning stuff, all of the like broadcast features that go along with that,
24:10SPEAKERlike DLSS as its own performance boosters, you know, kind of ports even like, like, like, like,
24:18SPEAKERlike the NVENC video encoding stuff, like, like what you get out of that card now versus what it
24:23SPEAKERcould do 20 years ago, which was just play games is kind of nuts. I'm not justifying the soaring
24:29SPEAKERcosts, but there is a lot in the package now. I mean, so the thing is the cost of a,
24:39SPEAKERthis is something we, we talked about a lot in the, as we were coming up on 1.0 for,
24:43SPEAKERfor the anacrusis is like, what should the min spec be? Cause the card will run on like a 900
24:48SPEAKERseries Nvidia card, which is a eight year old, nine year old card at this point. It's not a great
24:54SPEAKERexperience, but it's as good as the Xbox one experiences, which the game also will run on. So
24:59SPEAKERlike, you know, I would like a 10 ADP we're in a weird spot with GPUs where often the
25:08SPEAKERthing is the gate is actually the amount of video RAM cause like a 16 gig system with a three gig
25:14SPEAKERvideo card in it right now will often crash in games that it will run fine on because it runs
25:20SPEAKERout of system. It runs out of memory and starts churning and, and the threads get out of whack
25:24SPEAKERand then the whole thing crashes. Right. And not just in our, I mean, we fixed that in our game
25:30SPEAKERcause we're running the Xbox one, but a lot of games that aren't running on older hardware have
25:33SPEAKERthat, have that issue. So yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, there's a weird perception still
25:40SPEAKERamong a lot of people who play games that like a 2080 is a pretty modern up-to-date machine.
25:46SPEAKERAnd the bad news is like a 2080 at this point is a six year old card. Right. It's an old,
25:51SPEAKERit's an old GPU. Yeah. Like, like former high-end or especially two to three to four generations
25:57SPEAKERold high-end doesn't stay high-end forever. At some point, a high-end card becomes a low end.
26:01SPEAKERYeah. Well, and, and because of the pandemic and the shortages around the Bitcoins, the Ethereum
26:05SPEAKERstuff, like a lot of people kind of in their heads, skipped the 3000 series cards entirely
26:10SPEAKERand that whole generation. And, and as a result, like that 2080 still, it still feels new. Like
26:18SPEAKERI'm not faulting the players for this. I'm just saying it's like, it's a, it's, it is a perception.
26:23SPEAKERAnd as we start seeing PS5 and Xbox series native games launch, those players are going to get left
26:31SPEAKERbehind because they're there. Those games will not run on the old hardware. Can I jump in? I could be
26:36SPEAKERwrong, but do you remember, wasn't, wasn't the 20 series, like it wasn't, it wasn't this issue,
26:41SPEAKERespecially acute with those. Because if I remember like the raster performance uplift was actually
26:46SPEAKERvery small from the 10 series, cause they put all the work into the debuting the ray tracing stuff.
26:50SPEAKERYeah. It had DLSS and ray tracing was like it had the, it had the, the, the, the, the tensor cores
26:57SPEAKERor the, not the tensor course, but the compute, the machine learning cores, which let it do DLSS
27:04SPEAKERbasically. And, and a little bit of ray tracing. So, so I think even the 20 series was not that
27:09SPEAKERbig a leap in traditional performance over the 10 series other than DLSS. So that one is extra kind
27:14SPEAKERof outdated. Yeah. And I think I have to look at the hardware specs on the Nvidia, on the, on the,
27:19SPEAKERthe next gen consoles. I think it's the one that's probably the most aligned with the next gen
27:24SPEAKERconsoles, except you're not going to get the, the SSD throughput on that because it's a PCIe three.
27:32SPEAKERThose are those, those systems are probably PCIe three systems.
27:35SPEAKERWhich ones, the consoles or the, no, the, the, the, those machines,
27:39SPEAKERthe machines from that is a machine of that 2017, 2018 era is going to be a is going to be a PCIe
27:47SPEAKERthree machine. I think. Yeah. I want to say the console GPUs are in the 2070, 2080 ballpark.
27:53SPEAKERYeah. But they have more PCIe four. Yes. They faster storage. Yeah. Yeah. And,
27:58SPEAKERand you can eat more performance out of console hardware, shared memory between the CPU and the
28:03SPEAKERGPU, which is a huge perf anyway. So anyway, like back to the actual question, like it probably
28:10SPEAKERmakes the most sense to figure out what mid range even is like a pulled up the steam steam survey,
28:15SPEAKERhardware survey results here, like looking at the cross-generational trends is probably a better way
28:20SPEAKERto go. So like in the top, they don't number these, but I'm guessing it, you have to go about
28:24SPEAKER12 spots down on this list of graphics cards before you get anything above a 70. Also,
28:29SPEAKERI should mention the first like 15 cards are Nvidia. You have to go almost 20 spots down and
28:33SPEAKERyou hit an AMD and then an Intel Iris integrated, but it's the first like 15 are all Nvidia cards,
28:38SPEAKERbut the first 80, which is a 30, 80 is at least number 12 to 14. It's all, it's all 50 and 60
28:46SPEAKERcards except for one 70. Yeah. Right now, Nvidia is something like 75% of the market. Yeah. But
28:53SPEAKERaccording to steam hardware survey, right. That's not like the bulk of people are buying 50 and 60
28:57SPEAKERcards is, is what this, this seems to show. Well, and then the other thing is is that like,
29:07SPEAKERI think mid range at this point is 10 ADP and 30 to 60, depending on what games you're playing.
29:13SPEAKERRight. The, the, sorry, the low end is 10 ADP 30 to 60. The mid range, the thing that shocks me is
29:20SPEAKERthat people expect shooters, especially to run it faster than 60 Hertz, even if they have like a
29:26SPEAKER20, 70 or 30, 70 or something like that, which is a, which is a mid range, mid range, older mid range
29:32SPEAKERcard. So yeah, it's, it's, uh, I people's people's expectations. It's impossible to predict what
29:42SPEAKERpeople's expectations are. Yes, that's for sure. Um, I don't know that we have a great
29:47SPEAKERcomprehensive answer to this question. I'm glad that the steam hardware survey exists,
29:52SPEAKERhonestly. Yeah. That's, that's nice information to have, uh, graphics cards just seem expensive
29:57SPEAKERfor the time being. And I'm not equipped to say if that's going to moderate at some point.
30:03SPEAKERWell, so I mean, the thing, the thing that has always been true remains true, right? Like if you,
30:07SPEAKERif you plan your purchases around console generations, you can generally buy one video card
30:12SPEAKERper console generation and be fine, right? You just need to stagger it then, right? Like you
30:17SPEAKERwant to be off a couple of years, wait, you want to make sure you're buying your for your next GPU,
30:22SPEAKERlike some, some years after the consoles came out and that's assuming you are doing something
30:26SPEAKERridiculous, like trying to play games at greater than 4k or, or do you want to play 100, 244 Hertz
30:33SPEAKERat 4k or something like that? Yeah. Yes. Um, uh, question here from Cat Will Mew.
30:42SPEAKERDo you ever get random notifications about class action settlements in your inbox? How do you know
30:46SPEAKERif one of these is legit? I look for news stories about them usually. Uh, I don't know if those come
30:52SPEAKERthrough email. I don't know if I've ever seen one in my inbox. I've all the ones I've gotten that
30:57SPEAKERare the least that I've noticed have been in traditional mail. I got it. I get them. I got
31:01SPEAKERone for Fortnite. I get them for, I got one for a phone carrier. I used to use stuff like that.
31:06SPEAKERYeah. Interesting. Uh, I always just anything, anything legal, anything associated with any
31:11SPEAKERlegal context, I feel like should come through an actual mail. Maybe I feel like I get more
31:16SPEAKERphishing attempts in mail these days than that are, that are difficult to distinguish from
31:22SPEAKERphishing attempts in, in physical mail than email. Um, I, I don't, I generally like I,
31:29SPEAKERI read the news and then I go look at the class action site cause you can usually find them
31:33SPEAKERattached to the lawyer's sites that did the class actions. They're hardly ever worth
31:38SPEAKERfilling out for. Yeah. I was going to ask, I was going to ask what's your,
31:40SPEAKERwhat's your cutoff to make it actually worth participating during the class. 30 bucks.
31:43SPEAKER30 bucks. Okay. 30 bucks. Yeah, sure. It's a nice lunch. Uh, what's, what's the best one
31:49SPEAKERyou ever gotten? I don't know. I got a lot of V bucks back from Fortnite cause they defrauded me.
31:54SPEAKERWait, I, they didn't actually pay you in V bucks I assume. I don't think they paid me in V bucks.
32:00SPEAKERJust making sure. I don't think I've actually seen anything from that yet either for what it's worth.
32:03SPEAKERThe world has gotten strange, but, but I don't think, I don't think we're doing,
32:07SPEAKERwe're doing legal settlements and in virtual video game currency.
32:11SPEAKERI got, I got a hundred bucks for something once. I think that was related to bank fraud. Um,
32:18SPEAKERcause my bank, uh, the, the, the bank let the, the ATM, basically the bank was bad at keeping
32:28SPEAKERthe credit card numbers or the bank account numbers secret and exposed us to a fair amount
32:33SPEAKERof risk. And you could either sign up for, uh, uh, uh, money plus like credit monitoring,
32:40SPEAKERwhich we already had from some other class action settlement or just money. And you got the cash
32:45SPEAKERvalue of the credit settled. If you didn't need the credit monitoring, you got the cash value
32:50SPEAKERof the credit monitoring, which was kind of expensive. So, I mean, I guess that was nice.
32:53SPEAKERThat's not bad. Um, not long. I think like a year ago I got like 75 bucks from something
32:59SPEAKERApple related. I think it had to do with genius bar repairs. I cannot remember exactly what the
33:04SPEAKERdeal was, but something I had gotten a Mac book repaired at some point and sure enough,
33:10SPEAKERseven 75 felt like a score. Yeah. That's pretty good. Um, I still have the check for, I, I didn't
33:16SPEAKERwant the money, but I, I, I joined the PlayStation three other OS class action suit. Yep. Just cause
33:23SPEAKERI thought it was a bizarre situation that I wanted to be in there. And so I still have the $10 check
33:27SPEAKERfrom that. Oh, that was the most powerful computer ever made. That's right. And you weren't able to,
33:34SPEAKERall it was worth was 10 bucks to not be able to run Linux on it anymore. Terrorists were going to
33:39SPEAKERbe doing missile guidance on that thing. That's my understanding. Yes. Remember that class action
33:46SPEAKERsuits. They're silly. Yeah. There's a question from the moon room. Uh, why don't programs that
33:54SPEAKERstop responding in windows ever seem to recover? I was watching a streamer play legal company and he
33:59SPEAKERgot the, the program has stopped responding. Pop-up after about 10 seconds, the game recovered.
34:04SPEAKERI have literally never had this happen on any of my computers. Why is that? I don't think I could
34:09SPEAKERpossibly wait 10 seconds to find out if it was going to recover all for relaunch baby every time.
34:14SPEAKERYeah, it depends on what it is. If it's like, if it's like a copy operation on data that you think,
34:18SPEAKERlike from say like a USB drive that might be bad or something, you probably don't want to
34:22SPEAKERNope. Kill it, move on. Um, I guess my, my best answer to this is that there are probably a
34:29SPEAKERthousand different things under the hood that could be going on to hang a program like that.
34:33SPEAKERAnd it really depends on what the nature of that is called the root cause, whether it resolves
34:37SPEAKERitself or not. It's funny. Yeah. I was watching a streamer play Fortnite the other day and like the
34:42SPEAKERgame hung and looked like it had crashed and then it just started working again. I was like, wow,
34:46SPEAKERthat has literally never happened to me. That must be nice. Yeah. I don't know. Well, you know,
34:50SPEAKERyou think about all the things that could be going wrong, you know, like some kind of like buffer
34:53SPEAKERunderruns or overflows or like reading from bad storage media, or do you tell me what else could
35:01SPEAKERbe causing something like that? Like some, some of those things are going to like complete and
35:05SPEAKERresolve themselves. And some of them are not is about the best I've got for you. I mean,
35:10SPEAKERsometimes something else will hang, hang up, like, like if, if a game's downloading in the background,
35:15SPEAKERsteam will flood the drive and that can, but yeah, I don't know. Usually if stuff hangs,
35:22SPEAKERit doesn't come back in my experience. Sometimes browser tabs, sometimes I will say sometimes
35:26SPEAKERFirefox tab crashes, the whole thing hangs for a second and then it kills the tab thread and it
35:30SPEAKERrestarts and everything's cool. So good job Firefox. Yes. You deserve your half a percent
35:35SPEAKERmarket share. Is it fallow now? It's it's bad. It's not until you Firefox, Firefox market share
35:44SPEAKERis bad. That's grim. It's it's not, it's not great here. Let's see. Oh no. I opened up. Oh wow.
35:52SPEAKERThat is, that is, I can't even, I can't even, it's like down there with opera now. It's sad.
35:58SPEAKERThat's pretty rough. I am, I am, I am a Chrome user largely because like I use so many web apps
36:05SPEAKERthat like everything is tested against Chrome primarily. So it's just a compatibility play.
36:09SPEAKERYou know, I just want, you know, I like given a week, I use at least three different video
36:15SPEAKERcall services, if not more. So like, I just want everything to work. And Chrome is kind of the
36:20SPEAKERthing that is the most guaranteed that everything's going to work in. Wow. Edge is 5.5 overall.
36:27SPEAKERI can't get Firefox to pop up because it's in with like Samsung internet and opera.
36:32SPEAKERDude, that's 3.2, 4% overall, 6% of all of desktop. That's that's, that's,
36:38SPEAKERthat's multiple whole numbers. Use Firefox. Firefox is good. I don't have any problems with it.
36:42SPEAKERYeah. I, I, like I said, I would use it if like we, we would run into issues with like Jitsi
36:47SPEAKERoccasionally or the next call or something like that. Not being exactly perfect on there. And
36:53SPEAKERwhen you're like trying to get a stream going and you don't have time to deal with a browser,
36:55SPEAKERnot behaving itself, like it's kind of easy to just default to the thing everybody uses.
36:59SPEAKERThat's true. In full disclosure, I'm using Chrome to do this Jitsi call right now.
37:07SPEAKERYou've been there. I have to use edge when I talk to my therapist. So, you know,
37:13SPEAKERinteresting. It's a dark time. Starting those conversations off on the wrong foot every week.
37:18SPEAKERIs it over teams? It is not over teams. It's not that bad. No.
37:22SPEAKEROkay. Therapy over teams. No, thank you. Just don't.
37:27SPEAKERHey, I will say teams has added a couple of new features lately that are both,
37:31SPEAKERthat are very interesting. They added a speaking coach that tells you when you're talking too fast
37:38SPEAKERor too slow or using too many filler words. It also will now let you mute anybody. Anybody can
37:45SPEAKERmute anybody else in the call and it doesn't tell you who muted you. I wouldn't suggest that people
37:53SPEAKERshould abuse that feature, but it's nice to know it exists. Are those all machine learning
37:59SPEAKERdriven features, would you guess? The muting is just you right click on the person you don't
38:03SPEAKERwant to hear from anymore and you can mute them in whatever size call you want.
38:06SPEAKERYeah, more like the language profiling and stuff like that.
38:09SPEAKERI assume the language profiling is machine learning based. Yeah.
38:11SPEAKERI feel like as rumors about Windows 12 swirl and, you know, you see like every major tech company,
38:17SPEAKERlike AI is the thing they're chasing. And like we talked about with the next, with the next Intel
38:23SPEAKERCPUs, Meteor Lake stuff with their tiles, like they've got the NPU, you know, everybody is
38:27SPEAKERbuilding machine learning compute and all their stuff. Like we are just going to see an explosion
38:32SPEAKERof AI driven OS features. Aren't we soon? Real half-assed bad features. Yes.
38:37SPEAKERYes. Like, especially on the Microsoft, like the, the Microsoft tendency to try to implement
38:42SPEAKERtheir own version of everything under the sun. Like what is Windows 12 even going to look like?
38:46SPEAKEROkay. So just to be clear, Apple and Google have been doing this for a while. Like the,
38:50SPEAKERthe image identification, like the, the context aware image search has been on Google photos for
38:56SPEAKERyears now. And, and, and iPhoto has had their photos on the, on the iOS devices has had the
39:03SPEAKERsame thing where you could type dog and it shows you all the pictures of dogs and it's
39:07SPEAKERshockingly accurate. The, the it's the, the next layer of that is, Hey, we'll write some shit for
39:14SPEAKERyou. That is full of lies and inaccuracies is like where it goes from being a thing that makes
39:20SPEAKERit easier to search and understand when you're like, what's the, what's the word? Like, like if
39:24SPEAKERyou say, if you search for snacks, you eat during movie, if you search for popcorn, it's like, Oh,
39:28SPEAKERHey, I didn't find popcorn, but a lot of people eat junior mints during movies. Do you want to
39:32SPEAKERlook for junior mints? Like that's a valuable, that's useful and good, right? It's the, Hey,
39:38SPEAKERdo you want me to write this report for you? And then it just makes a report full of lies or writes
39:43SPEAKERyour legal brief and cites cases that don't exist or, you know, whatever stupid excuse use you've
39:48SPEAKERhad that day or generates images out of stolen images from other people. All of those are bad.
39:54SPEAKERYes. It's, I mean, to me, it's the difference between like better search is a, is a useful
39:57SPEAKERhelper function, right? Like, like who wouldn't want like more effective search, but like when
40:02SPEAKERit's trying to substitute itself for you, you know, it's like, Hey, maybe we should give you
40:06SPEAKERsome advice on what you should be saying right now, or how you should be talking. You know,
40:10SPEAKERit's like when, when the AI starts trying to fill in for what you would normally be doing itself,
40:15SPEAKERI feel like is when it's overstepping. Well, it is. And it does things like tell you,
40:19SPEAKERHey, you're talking over somebody or you're you're interrupting the same person over and over again.
40:24SPEAKERIt's like, Hey man, if you use non-inclusive language, it yells at you for that. Although
40:30SPEAKERyou can use extremely colorful language with no complaints. So interesting. We were testing the
40:37SPEAKERboundaries on it at work the other day. Fair, fair. Jason Schreier article coming soon. I assume.
40:43SPEAKEROkay. I want to ask if that was a, it was a sanctioned event. Okay. I was going to say
40:48SPEAKERthat was a test in a vacuum and a controlled environment. We were, we were, yeah. Okay.
40:53SPEAKERSometimes you blow off steam after a game release and do it in an inclusive way that doesn't impact
40:59SPEAKERanybody in a negative way. Everybody fucking hates teams. So teams is actually pretty good,
41:04SPEAKERbut don't tell anybody. We're just going to move on. Actually, since we were just talking
41:08SPEAKERabout Chrome, here's a question from cake batter. I can't visually distinguish any Google app anymore.
41:15SPEAKERThey're all in ambiguous shape, the same four colors and always impossible to find
41:20SPEAKERwhen will Google realize this is a bad idea? Like the Google they're not wrong. It's not wrong.
41:25SPEAKERLike the Google look is extremely well understood and well-defined at this point, right? Yeah. It's
41:30SPEAKERred, yellow, blue, and Google translate has an all has the old app still. And smart lock has the old
41:36SPEAKERapp now still, but man, everything else you're right. Everything else is like white background,
41:43SPEAKERred, blue, yellow, green, and then like a pin for maps, 31 with a box around it for calendar.
41:52SPEAKERCause it's just 31 days in some months. Photos is just some half circles. I don't know what that
41:57SPEAKERmeans. Maybe it's a pinwheel. Yeah. Yeah. I had to go get Google home to set up my TV. Cause it's
42:02SPEAKERa Google TV. I'm like, it looked exactly like every other Google app on my phone. It's just
42:06SPEAKERlike, how would one tell the difference? Yep. It's a picture. It's a tiny picture of a home.
42:13SPEAKERGoogle one is a one I drive as a triangle for some reason. I don't know if I have a
42:18SPEAKERgood answer to this other than design language evolves and hopefully they'll evolve away from
42:22SPEAKERthis at some point. Why is Google assistant for different size dots that are kind of looked like
42:28SPEAKERa backwards P maybe that's a forward speed. No, it's a backwards P somebody thought that
42:32SPEAKERwas a good idea. Somebody did a lot of market research and focus group testing to derive that
42:38SPEAKERdecision. Right. But I mean, the thing is, I feel like this is the kind of thing that wouldn't have
42:42SPEAKERhappened when Marissa Meyer was still there. Cause she was actually good at this kind of visual
42:45SPEAKERlanguage stuff. Like, like super good at it. I think early Google was really cohesive and smart
42:50SPEAKERand good. And admittedly it was a dramatically less broad platform back then, but still,
42:56SPEAKERyeah. I don't know. It's the company that's too big for any one person to probably make an impact
43:02SPEAKERon at this point. You're probably right. Let's see question from Evie Nix. When I was a kid,
43:09SPEAKERI had a game shark for my Nintendo 64, like many janky third-party cheat devices of its era. It
43:14SPEAKERsometimes didn't work. For example, it wouldn't boot up in response. My dad would tell me to put
43:20SPEAKERit in the freezer for a time and then give it a go after letting it thaw out again. In hindsight,
43:26SPEAKERI genuinely have no idea what this was meant to accomplish. And I'm not sure it ever actually
43:30SPEAKERdid anything. Is there some weird nineties electronics lore that could explain this behavior?
43:35SPEAKERI don't know. It's like, this is like blowing in cartridges, right? Right. You gotta slow down,
43:39SPEAKERyou gotta slow down the electrons, you know? Well, okay. So I feel like when you had hard drives at
43:44SPEAKERthe bearings seized, you, one of the things you would do is tell people to put them in the freezer
43:48SPEAKERfor like 10 minutes so that the oil would get viscous. And then as it, as it feels, it, it
43:54SPEAKERbreaks the torque, the tension on it, the friction on or something. I can't remember how that works.
43:59SPEAKERI would, I would think you'd have to warm it up to make it more viscous, not cool and interesting.
44:03SPEAKERI feel like maybe that was, that one was paired with a, when you spin it up, you whack it once.
44:08SPEAKERSo it has a shock that before the heads are unparked that that, that will release the tension
44:15SPEAKERon the, on the viscous liquid. I'm just going to, before you move on, I'm going to jump in.
44:21SPEAKEREspecially as I'm about to go back out to my parents again soon, like I've got a stack of
44:25SPEAKERlike five old hard drives from 30 years ago that I want to try to get stuff off of at some point.
44:30SPEAKERBuy one of those USB tubers. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I would get for the interface,
44:34SPEAKERbut you're describing, you're describing this issue with old hard drives is exactly what keeps
44:38SPEAKERstopping me is I'm terrified that I'm going to try to spin them up and they won't and then they'll
44:42SPEAKERseize or whatever. Well, I mean, here's the thing, the data, if it's, if the data is still on the
44:46SPEAKERdisks, it'll, it's like you plugging it in isn't going to remove it from the disks. Oh, I know
44:50SPEAKERthat. I'm more worried about something mechanical failing permanently in there. I mean, the thing
44:54SPEAKERis when you turn it on, when you, the rule on old hardware is when you turn it on the first time,
44:58SPEAKERyou should be prepared to get everything off of it with the assumption it's not going to work again.
45:03SPEAKERRight. Absolutely. Absolutely. I will, I will DD that drive instantly. Yeah. But like this is,
45:09SPEAKERthis feels like blowing in cartridges, which I believe my understanding is never did anything
45:14SPEAKERexcept for maybe if you had dust in them. Yeah. I think I saw somebody talking about the NES
45:20SPEAKERcartridge thing recently. I think those contacts were like known to corrode somewhat or something
45:25SPEAKERalong those lines. This is why that was such a common problem. That would make sense.
45:33SPEAKERMy mental floss did a thing that the, the moisture could damage the connections.
45:39SPEAKERMental floss did a thing that said, Hey, the, the original NES design was kind of faulty. And
45:45SPEAKERsometimes what you were really doing was having another chance at seeding it and unseating it
45:50SPEAKERor unseating it and seeding it, which would cause the fix the problem more than blowing in it.
45:55SPEAKERI believe that the, that the that the Japanese NES is, which were just top loaders didn't have
46:02SPEAKERthe problem. It was our weird caddy ones in the U S that were the issue. Yeah. I was, this is random.
46:09SPEAKERI was reading a Twitter thread recently about the way that cartridge based consoles work. And this
46:14SPEAKERmakes total sense when you see it spelled out this way, but I'm not an electronic electrical engineer.
46:18SPEAKERSo I never thought about it before, but the way they phrased it, like they were talking about like,
46:22SPEAKERoh, console or cartridge based consoles are so elegant. They're so elegantly designed.
46:26SPEAKERHere's how they work. The innards of the console are essentially just an incomplete circuit
46:31SPEAKERand plugging the cartridge in and hitting power is just, you're literally just completing the
46:35SPEAKERcircuit and allowing it to do what it would do. Yeah. Once, once they can, you know,
46:39SPEAKERcan run the whole loop. I thought that I just thought that was a really cool,
46:42SPEAKERelegant way to think about that. It's it's yeah, it's kind of bonkers, right? Yeah.
46:50SPEAKERShould we do a couple more here? We can do some more question from, okay. This has to be, I mean,
46:57SPEAKERit's, it's an octothorpe or hash. It's a bunny emoji and it's like a devil. It's like, that's a
47:03SPEAKERfiend. Yeah. That was funny to me by math is right. Is that the name? Is that the actual name
47:07SPEAKERof that emoji? A fiend, you know, sometimes it's bunny crimes. You never know. I think that's a,
47:13SPEAKERI think originally we're back to the old school. That's a bunny fiend to me. If I poured chocolate
47:18SPEAKERmilk into the glass, I've been drinking Arnold Palmer's from all day. Do I drink the chocolate
47:22SPEAKERmilk or throw it out? That's a big no for me, dogs. Yeah. I gotta agree that, that chocolate
47:28SPEAKERmilk is forfeit. It's going to be curdled and weird. It's not, it's not like, honestly,
47:34SPEAKERchocolate milk is kind of suspect on the best of times for me. Wait, what? Oh no, no, no. Really?
47:41SPEAKERHave you had chocolate milk as an adult, Brad? Oh no, no. I haven't had chocolate milk in 20
47:44SPEAKERplus years, 30 years. You buy a thing of chocolate milk and then we'll talk about it next week. Okay.
47:48SPEAKERI mean, that was, that was ambrosia as a child though. Yeah, but that's just cause our,
47:52SPEAKERlook, you had never had, our palates were limited as, as youth. It's, it's not the nectar that you
47:59SPEAKERremember doing. My palate was largely limited to the fare of, to the institutional lunch fare of
48:05SPEAKERthe North Carolina public school system. Yeah. We look, this is, this is, this is one of the
48:11SPEAKERgreat food questions though. Like, like what's the mixture. Like if I, if I have like a soda
48:17SPEAKERand then I put water in on top of that ice, cause I want ice water and don't want to have to get,
48:22SPEAKERuse more ice than the, and the water is a little Brown after that. That's probably fine. I'll
48:26SPEAKERdrink that all night. That's no, no issue, but like milk and anything with acid is going to be
48:31SPEAKERa hard no. Like coffee, like an iced coffee with water after it is gross. That's horrifying.
48:41SPEAKERI don't know. Milk, any kind of, anything that dilutes milk is going to be gross.
48:46SPEAKERYes. I'm with you. I just, I don't, I'm not feeling that. Yeah. I do respect the Arnold
48:51SPEAKERPalmer game though. So anybody who takes the effort to have the lemonade and the iced tea
48:55SPEAKERaround to make an Arnold Palmer during the normal workaday life, that's, that's a baller move.
49:00SPEAKERI don't think I've ever had an Arnold Palmer. God, Arnold Palmer. Why is that slightly a tongue
49:06SPEAKERtwister? So they look, there's a bunch of questions about the Arnold Palmer. I'm not
49:09SPEAKERgoing to take any more questions on this topic. The right answer is that you put a half a thing
49:13SPEAKERof lemonade and then you put the iced tea on top and let the iced tea kind of sink down into
49:18SPEAKERthe lemonade. You do not stir the Arnold Palmer. You tip it in such a way that you get a little
49:23SPEAKERsip of lemonade, a little sip of iced tea. Interesting. Yeah. Is it, is it kind of like
49:26SPEAKERa black and tan where you're trying to like suspend one on the other? Also, also I have,
49:31SPEAKERI have become aware that black and tan is a name for that drink. I don't know what an alternative
49:35SPEAKERas yet. Oh, half beer, half Guinness, half lager. It is, oh God, what is it? I knew this at one
49:42SPEAKERpoint. It's not, it's not lager. I don't think it's a certain kind of ale. Is it Boddington's
49:46SPEAKERor something? No. Bass? I think, I think it's like Guinness and bass. That's right. Yeah. I used to
49:52SPEAKERdrink a lot of those. But anyway, as, as, as that term relates to kind of Irish history and
49:58SPEAKERliberation, it's not great, but I don't know if there's an alternative for it yet. Anyway, like
50:03SPEAKERthose types of, those types of two tone, like liquid suspended on top of other liquid drinks
50:08SPEAKERare really interesting. Yeah. I, I, I drink, I drink, we have a lemon tree and make iced tea
50:14SPEAKERin the summertime. So that's a straight summertime bev for me. People do boozy old Palmers,
50:20SPEAKERI feel like, or am I thinking about Long Island iced teas? So people make, people make it on a
50:25SPEAKERPalmer with a, with a, like, I am okay. A not, I'm not judging, but I'm, I am a little bit, maybe you
50:33SPEAKERcan get like a bottle Arnold pump. Snapple will sell you an Arnold Palmer that has both lemonade
50:38SPEAKERand iced tea in it. Does not contain the magic of the real drink. You can also get a boozy malt
50:45SPEAKERliquor, like a fancy wine cooler. That's Arnold Palmer flavored. I'm sure that gets the job done,
50:50SPEAKERbut probably not for me. Yeah, that's fair. You have standards. Okay. That said, I've been known
50:57SPEAKERto float in a pool in Arizona in the summertime and drink iced tea and bourbon. So I shouldn't
51:02SPEAKERknow what, I shouldn't be judging no one. That's fair. Yeah. I'm going to go tell you iced tea and
51:06SPEAKERbourbon. Very good. Yeah. I can see it. Caffeine and alcohol though. I don't know. Look, it worked
51:12SPEAKERfor, it worked for what do you call it? What was that stuff? I can't remember. Think of Sparks.
51:21SPEAKERSparks was one of them. There was the other one though. We always had, there was one that was
51:25SPEAKERalways floating around the whiskey media basement. That's the one that looked like a battery.
51:30SPEAKERIt looked like an alkaline battery. That seems right. Yeah. Sparks or.
51:36SPEAKERThere was a lot of talk about getting your hands on some contraband pre-banned Sparks
51:40SPEAKERfrom before the caffeine was banned. There was another one that came on after that though.
51:48SPEAKERAfter Sparks was already banned, I think. I think you're not, you're probably not wrong. I can't
51:52SPEAKERremember though. Yeah. There's a lot of, boy, there are a lot of, this is, this is a search
51:59SPEAKERterm that looks expensive. Yeah. Also, also whatever you do, don't make an Arnold Palmer
52:04SPEAKERout of the Panera charged lemonade. Jesus. That can't, that can't be on the market much longer,
52:09SPEAKERright? Look, man, sometimes I wake up in the morning and I'm like, you know what? I would
52:14SPEAKERlike to have a lemonade that might take my life. All right. Let's move on. This question came in
52:24SPEAKERfrom millhouse of horrors six because it's because it's from October and that's probably not what
52:29SPEAKERthey're going by anymore, but that's what I've got here. Which game controller do you think lends
52:34SPEAKERitself best to inputting text when interacting with text fields and games? Also, do you have a
52:38SPEAKERpreference for having an onscreen keyboard to interact with or are you more of a fan of just
52:43SPEAKERbeing able to scroll through the alphabet with the up and down on a d-pad or similar?
52:48SPEAKEROh, wow. Okay. So I'm a big fan of anything that pops up a notification on my phone. That's like,
52:53SPEAKERHey, you want to just type it in here? Yeah, sure. That's pretty good. That's probably
52:58SPEAKERbetter than any controller based on the screen keyboard. I feel like the Xbox app lets you do
53:02SPEAKERthat, but I don't, it turns out I don't play a lot of console games that involve game text input,
53:08SPEAKERI guess. Yeah. It's mostly like signing into accounts and stuff like that or searching for
53:13SPEAKERthings. Yeah. Like on the X, like I had to sign in my daughter's Xbox account on her Switch the
53:17SPEAKERother day and I just aimed a QR code at my phone and then logged in on my phone, which was really
53:22SPEAKERnice. That's my favorite now. I don't think the consoles have quite gotten there yet, but I hope
53:26SPEAKERthey do because yes, just pointing your phone at screen and then, and then half the time you're
53:30SPEAKERalready signed into whatever service it is on your phone anyway. I'm trying to think, I think I nuke,
53:35SPEAKERI had to nuke my Xbox the other day and I think I was able to do a phone sign in with that.
53:41SPEAKERI think I just named it a QR code when I set up the machine and it was like, Oh, you're this.
53:45SPEAKERAnd then you approved it on another machine. You're right. I haven't set up an Xbox since
53:50SPEAKER2020, but I think, yeah, I think as of the series X launch, you could just do it all through your
53:54SPEAKERphone. Yeah. Well, and they're Microsoft authenticator, which I have problems with
53:58SPEAKERbecause you can't use a third party authenticator, but it lets you do, it lets you do like two factor
54:03SPEAKERsign in just by signing into your phone and saying, yes, I approved this device, which is great.
54:09SPEAKERLet's see the PS5. And I think the PS4 also have, they have the gyroscope aiming for the
54:14SPEAKERonscreen keyboard. It's not bad. It's very sensitive though. It's really easy to overshoot
54:19SPEAKERwhat you're trying to do. Can you use, is it like one, you can also use the touch pad for the PS5.
54:25SPEAKERThat's right. Actually. Yeah. That's my favorite on the PS5. I think I've tried that. Maybe I
54:29SPEAKERshould give that a shot actually. Steam Deck does a thing where each stick is one half of the
54:35SPEAKERkeyboard. Like left stick is left half of the keyboard, right stick is right half of the
54:37SPEAKERkeyboard. And you pull the appropriate trigger on the, on the side to tap it in, but also the
54:43SPEAKERSteam Deck's a touch screen device. So you can just touch the screen in most games. Sure.
54:48SPEAKERI hate the ABA through Z. So that's a war crime. Yes. Absolutely. As to the other question, the
54:55SPEAKERscrolling through the alphabet for every character is an abomination. The worst. Yeah. Those people
55:00SPEAKERshould be fired out of the, out of the, they should be fired into the sun. Yeah. Like I do.
55:05SPEAKERAnd then there's been kind of a move toward that in a lot of UI lately for whatever reason. Like
55:09SPEAKERI see it in parts of iOS and parts of windows where it's like every single digit, that's all
55:14SPEAKERyou've got. It's like a, it's like a radio wheel. Microsoft was super in love with that as part of
55:18SPEAKERthe Metro designs. I think, I think that's where it still pops up in windows is stuff that's
55:24SPEAKERdescended from that or whatever. iOS, tvOS is the worst for that tvOS always when you're searching,
55:30SPEAKERbut also tvOS has a microphone on the remote. So you can just hit the voice button and talk to it.
55:35SPEAKERYeah. Also I deal with a lot of CMSs and CMSs, we're also doing that for data entry a lot,
55:40SPEAKERwhich is just, it's also bizarre to see design trends just like propagate through the industry.
55:46SPEAKERI think it was the Drupal date widget was maybe the all time worst example of this where
55:52SPEAKERyou had to scroll through months, days and years. There's no pull down or type ahead option. I think
55:59SPEAKERit was Drupal. I can't remember. It was terrible. I had been whatever, whatever framework we used
56:03SPEAKERfor the whiskey sites back in the day. What in the world is Drupal?
56:06SPEAKERDrupal is a, it's like a, it's like a WordPress with no, with no, that's just the backend stuff.
56:12SPEAKERAnd then you apply your own front end to it. It's the same stuff that we, it's like what we
56:16SPEAKERused for whiskey. It's the, I think Drupal's PHP. I can't remember. It might be Python now.
56:21SPEAKEROh, it's a framework. Okay. But it's like a framework that lives on top of your web stack.
56:26SPEAKERSure. Another cake batter question here. Salt and pepper, freshly ground or pre-ground,
56:32SPEAKERfor example, Maldon sea salt or a bulk container of Kirkland pepper. Is there ever, I absolutely
56:39SPEAKERdo not know. I'm okay. I'm getting the eyes from the other room. Strong vote for freshly ground
56:45SPEAKERfrom the doorway here. I am no culinary expert. Is there ever a time you would, that freshly ground
56:50SPEAKERwouldn't be better? I don't think it matters for salt. Yeah, maybe not. Cause there's nothing to
56:55SPEAKERgrate in salt. It's just minerals that are going to be the same always. I freshly grind pepper most
57:00SPEAKERof the time. Yeah. Unless I'm doing like a huge bulk thing. Yes. So do we. Yeah. I actually do
57:06SPEAKERhave, I have a coarse grinder and a fine grinder too. We've got a little OXO that's got a little
57:11SPEAKERslidey thing on it. It may not be the most precise, but it gets the job done. Yeah. We
57:16SPEAKERhave a big red. It's like a knobbly. It's like the thing, it's like the thing that the guy has prime
57:20SPEAKERrib uses when he, when he peppers your salad. Oh, is it wooden? It's wooden with like enamel
57:26SPEAKERpaint, red enamel paint on the top. Big gigantic wooden knob on the top of it. You can tighten the
57:32SPEAKERscrew or loosen it to make it finer or less fine. I find that it's better to have that. That one's
57:37SPEAKERusually the cracked one. And then the, the fine one, we have a one with a crank on the top for.
57:42SPEAKERSure. Let's see. This might be the last question. It's kind of, kind of ties into your career stuff
57:49SPEAKERa little bit from Sub-Zero spells. As two people who have pivoted their careers over the past half
57:55SPEAKERdecade, do you have any advice for someone who might have lots of career experience in one field
58:00SPEAKERwanting to get into an adjacent field? For example, in my case, having over 10 years of
58:04SPEAKERexperience in device repair, IT support and server and networking installations and wanting to move
58:10SPEAKERtowards a more electrical engineering and product design world. Boy, I don't have any idea. I, I like,
58:18SPEAKERI don't know how you do that intentionally. Yeah, that's, this is probably going to be an
58:24SPEAKERunsatisfying answer, but yes, I think you're probably right. This is something that you
58:28SPEAKERend up backing into or that there's no real prescribed pathway to do. Yeah. I think this
58:34SPEAKERone came from the discord. I would love if there's a conversation about this. I would love, I mean,
58:39SPEAKERI think, so the classic answer is be prepared to do a job that pays either dramatically less
58:46SPEAKERor is free for a little bit to learn if that's even a thing you want to do. That's hard. I think,
58:52SPEAKERI think you're, if you're willing to take pay cuts, it's easier or able to take pay cuts,
58:57SPEAKERit's easier. I have absolutely, I'm thinking of a couple of specific examples, especially like,
59:02SPEAKERyou and I were in the press and we know a lot of people that have gone into like PR or game
59:06SPEAKERdevelopment or other things like that. And I absolutely have heard stories of people
59:10SPEAKERtaking even successive pay cuts in some cases to get into the thing that they wanted to do
59:15SPEAKERand then building back up, which is also not an unsatisfying answer. No, it's I mean, if you're,
59:22SPEAKERif you have like electrical engineering is a specific, like there's some skill skills,
59:28SPEAKERlike the, you did degrees and certifications for a lot of that work. Right. So that, that,
59:32SPEAKERthat's an easier one. If you go to school, you know, if you do the whole, I'm going to do school
59:36SPEAKERand work at the same time and, and get a degree that makes it easier because then you, you,
59:40SPEAKERand pass your boards, that's a whole different thing. Yeah. I actually just this very morning
59:44SPEAKERheard about an old family friend who's about our age, who spent his entire career in fine dining
59:49SPEAKERuntil recently, and then up and went to nursing school. So that's, so that's, yeah. So like that,
59:54SPEAKERthat's a tough one though, like midlife, if you have like family commitments or financial
59:58SPEAKERresponsibilities to just up and go back to school is not especially easy.
1:00:03SPEAKERThe other thing is I find that like soft skills stuff transfers pretty well. So, you know,
1:00:10SPEAKERif you know about contracts in one, one era area of business, that contract work can transfer over
1:00:17SPEAKERto pretty much any place else that people sign contracts, which is depending on the business,
1:00:21SPEAKERa lot of different places. And that might give you an in someplace else that you want to where
1:00:25SPEAKERsomebody has a limited need for that, some subset of your skill set. So for example,
1:00:30SPEAKERif you wanted to get into game stuff and you do a lot of IT support and server and like making
1:00:36SPEAKERwindows and computers do the things you want to do, like with weird scripts and stuff like that,
1:00:40SPEAKERthat is an incredibly valuable thing that is not a full-time job at most game studios, but is like,
1:00:46SPEAKERis a desirable, important part of, of those, those jobs, you know, a subset of somebody's job there.
1:00:52SPEAKERAnd like, you, you might be able to use that as an end to get in someplace. And then
1:00:57SPEAKERwith, with the stated goal going in of expanding out into some area that you're maybe not an expert
1:01:03SPEAKERin to, to, to, to fill a niche. Yeah. Also, if you're willing to take on the scut work in order
1:01:10SPEAKERto learn something new, that's a, that's a pretty good sell in a lot of places in my experience.
1:01:14SPEAKERYeah. Also, this probably doesn't even need to be said, but if you're looking to pivot to another
1:01:17SPEAKERdiscipline within your existing company, then you've got a pretty big leg up because you can,
1:01:21SPEAKERyou can just socially try to go start, you know, like, don't bother people while they're working
1:01:26SPEAKERor whatever, but, you know, like try to try to, try to rub elbows with the people doing the stuff
1:01:31SPEAKERyou would like do a little bit, like pick their brains, you know, maybe see if you can.
1:01:35SPEAKERWell, talk to managers, make that part of your performance, performance plans. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
1:01:42SPEAKERSo good luck though. It's always fun. Yes. Will the fourth, we'll take this next one here
1:01:51SPEAKERfrom, from Will the fourth. Is it worth buying a new office or gaming chair or just getting
1:01:55SPEAKERa used one? I am in need of a new chair for my home office and I don't know what is a feature
1:01:59SPEAKERand what is a gimmick. What do you look for when buying an office chair? So you bought a refurbed,
1:02:04SPEAKERlike a, like a, like a third party refurbed. I have a new chair. Yes. I have a, I have a
1:02:09SPEAKERrefurbed steel case leap V2. Yeah. I have a steel case gesture that I got for doing some sponsorship
1:02:14SPEAKERwork for them, clear, full disclosure. Yours was new is the point. It was new out of the box. I
1:02:20SPEAKERalso had bought two over the years, two Herman Miller reaction chairs from like office refurb,
1:02:27SPEAKERoffice furniture resellers, right. That who had bought used chairs and cleaned them up
1:02:33SPEAKERand resold them. I don't think that there's any reason not to buy a used one for the most part.
1:02:40SPEAKERI've had pretty good luck. I got mine from BTOD.com. No like no relationship there. I
1:02:45SPEAKERjust paid for it. Not endorsing them necessarily, but I think, I think all the refurbs are kind of
1:02:52SPEAKERthe same. Like they replaced the gas cylinder. They, well, some of them vary, like some of them
1:02:56SPEAKERwill put a new cushion on. Some of them will kind of like steam and refurb the existing cushion,
1:02:59SPEAKERbut they will recover it. But like most of the wear and tear parts, like the things that
1:03:05SPEAKERlike, like the gas cylinder that, that need to be replaced, they'll go ahead and do that. So it's
1:03:09SPEAKERlike, I'm not going to say it's a like new chair, but like mine hadn't, you know, a little bit of
1:03:13SPEAKERcosmetic scuffing on it, but otherwise felt pretty new. This was like half the price.
1:03:19SPEAKERYeah. I think, I mean, it also, like I wanted to get a specific, I, so literally I got the
1:03:25SPEAKERsponsorship because I sent them a note and was like, Hey, I'm getting ready to buy this chair,
1:03:28SPEAKERbut if you guys want to do some sort of thing, we can talk. And they were like, Oh,
1:03:32SPEAKERwe'd love to do something. We love, we love Twitch and podcasts and stuff.
1:03:35SPEAKERMan, I should try that sometime. It doesn't always work. But the, the,
1:03:40SPEAKERso I got a specific color pattern, right? Which is harder to do when you're doing a refurb chair.
1:03:46SPEAKERI, I would look at the warranty on whatever you're doing, whether it's refurb or not. The new ones,
1:03:52SPEAKERthe new chairs from Steelcase have like a 12 year warranty or something. I would look at the stuff
1:03:59SPEAKERthat the refurb places cover specifically. They're not going to do cosmetic stuff, but I would,
1:04:03SPEAKERyou know, if like an arm falls off or the chair gets loud and squeaky or something like that,
1:04:08SPEAKERI would expect them to take care of that. I, when I'm looking for a chair, I profoundly,
1:04:14SPEAKERas a general rule, I really dislike gaming chairs. I think that they're often like re-marketed,
1:04:20SPEAKERre-badged aftermarket car chairs. They don't last particularly well. So the benefit of buying a nice
1:04:27SPEAKERtask chair versus a gaming chair is that the task chair was designed to last for 10 or 12 years.
1:04:31SPEAKERAnd the gaming chair is designed to be replaced every two years. So it's like, it's the classic
1:04:36SPEAKER$50 work boots versus $300 work boots problem where they cost the same thing over 10 years.
1:04:42SPEAKERIf you have the money upfront, you're usually better off buying the task chair.
1:04:46SPEAKERIn this case, you're also better off buying the nice chair because, because typically they're
1:04:51SPEAKERbetter for better ergonomics than a gaming chair that's designed to be set in for a couple hours a
1:04:57SPEAKERday. Yeah. That's exactly how I arrived at getting this chair was the, like my, I had to resist my
1:05:02SPEAKERnatural inclination to get the cheap, good enough thing because, because exactly what you said, like
1:05:07SPEAKERif you're, especially if you work at home or you just play games, a lot of your pieces or whatever,
1:05:10SPEAKERlike you're sitting in that thing for that many hours a day for years on end, you know,
1:05:14SPEAKERmake, make the investments in your, in yourself and your posture, your ergonomics. It's like
1:05:19SPEAKERmattresses, right? You buy a good mattress. The, the things I look for are adjustable back,
1:05:24SPEAKERadjustable seat pan, adjustable arms. If you like a headrest, headrest is good, but, but having arms,
1:05:31SPEAKERlike the, the reason I like the gesture specifically is because the arms go up and down,
1:05:35SPEAKERbut they also go in and out. So like when you're playing a console game, you can have them resting
1:05:40SPEAKERin. So your forearms just rest on them in the neutral position. Your hands are crossed at your
1:05:44SPEAKERlap with the controller in place. I can make it go low enough that I can use a wheel and lower my
1:05:49SPEAKERdesk down to be in like car racing mode. It's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a comfy chair. And I
1:05:55SPEAKERsit in it a lot. I mean, the best advice I can give, and this may be tricky depending on where
1:05:59SPEAKERyou live, but if at all possible, go try to sit in whatever model you're considering because
1:06:05SPEAKEReverybody's body is different and you're not going to know a hundred percent, no matter what
1:06:08SPEAKERyou read about any chair online, you're not going to know exactly how you conform to it
1:06:13SPEAKERuntil you try it. The other thing is most people don't realize is chairs come in sizes and the
1:06:17SPEAKERsizes are based on both the size of your body and your, and your weight. So you want to get
1:06:22SPEAKERsomething that's rated for your weight and you want to get something that's sized appropriately
1:06:26SPEAKERfor you. If you're very short, you don't want a chair that's sized for somebody that's six feet,
1:06:29SPEAKERsix feet five, because you're, you're going to get the lumbar of support is going to be the wrong
1:06:33SPEAKERplace. It's not going to feel good. It's going to feel like you're sitting in a, like you're a tiny
1:06:37SPEAKERkid sitting in an enormous chair. Yeah. Also I'll add on here, like a foot rest might be
1:06:42SPEAKERsomething to invest in regardless of what kind of chair you get. Like, you know, there, there are
1:06:47SPEAKERspecific parameters about how your legs, you know, there's, you know, I forget what they are, you
1:06:52SPEAKERknow, it's like, oh, right angles. Like, you know, a seat pan should only be X inches from the back
1:06:57SPEAKERof your knee. You don't want to put a lot of weight on the underside, the underside of your
1:07:01SPEAKERthighs because you'll cut off circulation, get yourself nerve damage if you do it long enough.
1:07:05SPEAKERRight. So, so whatever seating arrangement you end up in, like a foot rest might help to correct
1:07:10SPEAKERsome of that stuff as well. Yeah. There's, there's a, I bought a $30 memory foam foot rest that has
1:07:17SPEAKERtacky stuff on the bottom that's been fabulous from Amazon. I can, I can put a link for that
1:07:22SPEAKERin the show notes if you want. Yeah. But yeah, but it's worth it. Like Brad said, try it out,
1:07:30SPEAKERwatch some posture videos on YouTube about how to set up your workspace properly so you don't
1:07:34SPEAKERhurt yourself. And, and yeah, that's pretty much it. Indeed. And I think that might be it for
1:07:41SPEAKERquestions. Oh, well, if you have a question, you can send them to techpod@content.town or
1:07:47SPEAKERif you're on the Patreon, you can post them on the question seeking answers channel. Thanks
1:07:51SPEAKEReverybody who sent in questions and thanks for bearing with us this week. It's been,
1:07:56SPEAKERit's yeah, sometimes it's hard. As always, if you would like to support the show, you can do so.
1:08:03SPEAKERYou can become a patron of the show and support Brad and Will Made At TechPod, which is a 100%
1:08:08SPEAKERlistener supported show by going to patreon.com/techpod. Again, it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:08:14SPEAKERAnd for five bucks a month, you get access to the fabulous TechPod discord. You get access to the
1:08:20SPEAKERmonthly patron exclusive episodes and you can even pay a little bit more and get your name read
1:08:26SPEAKERmonthly or weekly, depending on where you end up. So, as always, thanks to everybody,
1:08:31SPEAKERbut a very special thanks to our executive producer, to your patrons, including Nick
1:08:35SPEAKERJohnston, Paddle Creek Games, makers of Fractured Veil, Andrew Selosky, Jordan Lippett, Bunny Themed,
1:08:41SPEAKERJust Wedge, Joel Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon, makers of the
1:08:47SPEAKERHS3 high-speed 3D printer. Thank you all so much. And that'll do it for us this week. Thanks,
1:08:54SPEAKEReverybody, for listening. And we will see you next time on the TechPod. Bye, everybody.