259: Hey Google, It's Time for Bed!

00:00SPEAKER- They were recording at night.

00:01SPEAKER- That's weird.

00:02SPEAKER- Night cast.

00:04SPEAKER- I almost got trapped in my house today, man.

00:06SPEAKER- What?

00:08SPEAKER- They're digging up the sewer in front of my house.

00:10SPEAKER- I've heard, like literally.

00:11SPEAKER- I assume there's gonna be multiples,

00:13SPEAKER'cause at some point they're gonna have to dig up

00:15SPEAKERthe gas lines too, 'cause they're also the same age

00:17SPEAKERas the sewer lines, and I assume that the sewer lines

00:19SPEAKERare bad, also that means we have gas line problems

00:22SPEAKERin the future.

00:24SPEAKERIt's not what you want.

00:25SPEAKER- All the gas line problems went from theoretical

00:27SPEAKERto terrifyingly real, do you remember?

00:30SPEAKER- Yeah, the night of the live show.

00:31SPEAKERBig Live Live Show Live.

00:33SPEAKER- Was that 2010 or 2011, about 12, 13, 14 years ago?

00:36SPEAKER- It was one of the, it was September either 2010 or 2011,

00:40SPEAKER'cause it was literally the night we recorded

00:43SPEAKERthe Big Live Live Show.

00:44SPEAKER- I remember distinctly kind of being done

00:46SPEAKERwith the Big Live Live Show, and everybody was like

00:48SPEAKERcracking open a beer and celebrating, and then like,

00:51SPEAKER"Oh, did you see this news from San Bruno?"

00:53SPEAKER- Yeah, that's just over the hill from my house, you know?

00:55SPEAKER- Yikes.

00:56SPEAKER- It's like I could hike there.

00:58SPEAKER- That's like, that is like such existential terror

01:01SPEAKERthat you might as well not even think about it,

01:02SPEAKERbecause it's so unpredictable and unstoppable

01:05SPEAKERif it happens that we're talking about a gas line explosion.

01:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:09SPEAKER- This is not the cheeriest cold open ever.

01:11SPEAKER- No, but, well, yeah, it was bad.

01:15SPEAKERIt blew up a good part of a block, basically, when it went.

01:17SPEAKER- Yep, yep, attribute.

01:19SPEAKER- But the sewer line was just a mild inconvenience,

01:21SPEAKERso they were supposed to start working,

01:23SPEAKERlike this is the kind of civic thing that annoys me,

01:26SPEAKERright, 'cause we got a note on the door

01:28SPEAKERlike three days before this happened,

01:30SPEAKERand they were like, "Hey, we're gonna be doing

01:32SPEAKER"some work on your street.

01:33SPEAKER"We're gonna take up all the street parking spaces,"

01:36SPEAKERwhich doesn't affect us 'cause we have one car,

01:38SPEAKERso I was like, "That's fine."

01:39SPEAKERThey're like, "If you can not run water

01:42SPEAKER"between eight and five, that would be convenient,

01:44SPEAKER"'cause we're gonna have sewer open,"

01:46SPEAKERand I was like, "Okay, so no dumping

01:47SPEAKER"between eight and five, or--"

01:49SPEAKER- Happy to oblige.

01:50SPEAKER- If you do, somebody's gonna get the full view,

01:52SPEAKERthat's fine, I don't care.

01:55SPEAKERAnd then they're like, "But it shouldn't impact,

01:58SPEAKER"you should be able to get in and out all the time,

01:59SPEAKER"it's no big deal."

02:00SPEAKERAnd I was like, "That's okay, that seems minor."

02:03SPEAKERAnd then each day this week, when I needed to go out,

02:07SPEAKERit's been like, we gotta move four backhoes

02:09SPEAKERand a bunch of pipes and a truck,

02:12SPEAKERand I feel like an asshole, but also they didn't tell us,

02:15SPEAKERI would've parked on a different street if it was a problem,

02:17SPEAKERexcept there's no street parking 'cause it's Pacific

02:20SPEAKERand everybody has too many cars, so anyway, I'm grumpy.

02:24SPEAKER- Prisoner in your own home.

02:26SPEAKER- Look, I went out this morning

02:28SPEAKER'cause it's supposed to start at eight,

02:29SPEAKERand I went out at 7.55 to move the car,

02:32SPEAKERand they'd already blocked off my driveway,

02:33SPEAKERI was like, "Hey man, you gotta move the pipe,

02:34SPEAKER"I gotta get out."

02:36SPEAKER- That's just uncouth.

02:37SPEAKER- Yeah, you're five minutes early, it's fine, whatever,

02:40SPEAKERbut move the fucking pipe,

02:41SPEAKERI don't wanna hear anything about it.

02:42SPEAKER- Man, man, no water between eight and five,

02:45SPEAKERthat's kind of a tall order, I think, but--

02:47SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I guess specifically,

02:49SPEAKERit's don't put anything in this sewer between eight and five.

02:52SPEAKER- I see, I see.

02:52SPEAKER- So, you know, I took a shower, I flushed the toilet.

02:58SPEAKER- Okay.

02:59SPEAKER- I sent him a gift.

02:59SPEAKER- I see. (laughs)

03:01SPEAKER- Well, I expressed my displeasure

03:03SPEAKERthe only way I know how, with feces.

03:05SPEAKER(upbeat music)

03:22SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

03:33SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."

03:36SPEAKERI'm Will.

03:37SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

03:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a hell of a cold open, huh?

03:40SPEAKER- That's right, that's, mm-hmm.

03:42SPEAKER- This is nighttime, this is a tech pod after dark.

03:45SPEAKER- Things get weird after dark around here.

03:48SPEAKERVery appropriate, tomorrow's Halloween,

03:49SPEAKERso very appropriate that we're recording at night.

03:51SPEAKER- It is, I think when I was walking back

03:53SPEAKERfrom PC World today, I took BART home,

03:55SPEAKERwhich I don't often do, 'cause it's kind of a hike

03:58SPEAKERfrom their office to the BART station.

04:00SPEAKERBut I think I saw a basketball team

04:03SPEAKERleaving that hotel on Second Street,

04:06SPEAKERat the end of Second Street, and going down Second

04:09SPEAKERto go to the Chase Stadium,

04:14SPEAKER'cause they had a whole police cavalcade,

04:16SPEAKERand then it was a bus, like a charter bus.

04:18SPEAKER- We saw them talking like a professional basketball team?

04:20SPEAKER- I would assume if they're playing the Warriors,

04:22SPEAKERit was a professional basketball team.

04:23SPEAKER- Okay.

04:24SPEAKER- I don't know who, let me see if there's

04:26SPEAKERa Warriors game tonight, and I'll tell you who it was.

04:27SPEAKER- It could be a high school team, or something.

04:30SPEAKER- High school teams don't have charter buses,

04:31SPEAKERare you kidding? - I guess, I know, I know.

04:33SPEAKERThey get the activity bus.

04:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look, yeah, you get the school bus,

04:38SPEAKERthe windows are all down, there's kids hanging

04:40SPEAKERout the windows, the whole things are on.

04:43SPEAKERWednesday, October 30th at 7 p.m.,

04:45SPEAKERthe New Orleans Pelicans play the Warriors

04:47SPEAKERin San Francisco at home.

04:49SPEAKER- You sure that's a real team?

04:51SPEAKER- My understanding is that their beaks

04:52SPEAKERcan hold more than their Pelicans.

04:54SPEAKER- Okay, I shouldn't, I have nothing

04:56SPEAKERagainst the greater New Orleans area,

04:58SPEAKERI have just never heard of the Pelicans before.

05:00SPEAKER- I did not know that they had a basketball team

05:02SPEAKERin New Orleans, I will be the first to admit that.

05:04SPEAKER- I did not either.

05:05SPEAKER- Did you know that they have Wizards in Washington?

05:07SPEAKERI assume that's D.C., not State, but I don't know.

05:09SPEAKER- I have heard of the Washington Wizards.

05:10SPEAKER- Okay, that sounds like an ABA team that got brought over.

05:14SPEAKERSome bullshit right there.

05:16SPEAKER- Boy, to Caddy on this podcast.

05:18SPEAKER- Taking the shots tonight, man.

05:21SPEAKER- Yeah, well anyway, let's talk some tech.

05:24SPEAKER- Yeah, let's see.

05:26SPEAKER- I promise neither of us has been drinking.

05:28SPEAKER- No, okay, but it is, for us still,

05:31SPEAKERit's the second to last day of the month,

05:33SPEAKERwhich means we're still in time for Q&A.

05:35SPEAKERWe pushed Q&A last week so we could get the straight dump

05:38SPEAKERfrom your trip to North Carolina

05:40SPEAKERbefore it kind of faded in memory.

05:43SPEAKER- Didn't want to forget too much.

05:44SPEAKERI think we covered almost everything.

05:45SPEAKERThere were a couple of things I flagged.

05:46SPEAKER- Oh, power tools, that's, damn it.

05:49SPEAKERThat was supposed to be the cold open.

05:51SPEAKER- Hey Brad, what's the deal with power tools

05:52SPEAKERin North Carolina?

05:53SPEAKER- The one section we forgot to hit on the notes last week

05:55SPEAKERwas the thing I was gonna cold open about this week

05:57SPEAKERand then we totally just did a different cold open.

05:59SPEAKER- We could cold open about it next week if you want.

06:01SPEAKER- I got to use, okay, maybe we should save it then.

06:04SPEAKER(laughing)

06:05SPEAKER- We'll never remember, no chance we'll remember.

06:08SPEAKER- I'm gonna make a note of it.

06:09SPEAKER- Okay, put it in next week's show notes

06:11SPEAKERand we'll be good to go.

06:12SPEAKER- Cold open topics are too valuable to just burn.

06:16SPEAKER- Can you imagine, do you remember a day

06:17SPEAKERwhen we were so overburdened with cold open topics

06:22SPEAKERthat we did an all cold open episode?

06:24SPEAKER- Yeah, we've done several of those.

06:26SPEAKER- This is probably the time when we should announce

06:28SPEAKERour imminent dive back into the ranking of software,

06:32SPEAKERI guess is the real thing to do with this.

06:34SPEAKER- Well, I've got a ranking joke for this episode

06:37SPEAKERbanked already, so.

06:38SPEAKER- Nice, okay, perfect, put that in your pocket.

06:40SPEAKER- We'll get to that soon.

06:41SPEAKER- Okay, but yeah, this is the episode

06:44SPEAKERwhere we turn questions and answers.

06:45SPEAKERIt's a week late because we wanted to get

06:47SPEAKERBrad's take on North Carolina in,

06:49SPEAKERbut if you have a question, you can send an email

06:51SPEAKERto techpod@content.town.

06:54SPEAKERThat's techpod@content.town, it's the town

06:57SPEAKERwhere everybody wants to be.

06:58SPEAKEROr if you're a member of the Patreon

07:00SPEAKERand you're in the Discord, you can go to

07:01SPEAKERpatreon.com/techpod to find out how to get in there.

07:04SPEAKERIt's five bucks a month, you get the Discord,

07:05SPEAKERyou get the Patreon episode, you get to spend time

07:07SPEAKERwith Brad and me on the Discord talking about stuff.

07:10SPEAKERAnd you can post in the question seeking answers channel

07:13SPEAKERif you're in there, so.

07:15SPEAKER- Also, I swear I'll be back on the Discord soon.

07:17SPEAKERI don't think I've been back to discuss anything on there

07:19SPEAKERsince I got back into town.

07:20SPEAKERWe're just kind of catching up on a lot.

07:22SPEAKERIt's a lot of stuff to handle at the moment.

07:25SPEAKER- This morning, I thought of you 'cause I was like,

07:27SPEAKERyou couldn't have been on the Discord

07:28SPEAKERwhen you had satellite service only.

07:30SPEAKER- Yes.

07:31SPEAKER- But as I was going over San Bruno Mountain

07:33SPEAKERon an errand this morning, I had satellite service,

07:36SPEAKERI got the SOS.

07:37SPEAKER- Oh.

07:37SPEAKER- Like in the Bay Area.

07:39SPEAKER- Huh.

07:40SPEAKER- I was shocked.

07:40SPEAKER- Did you try sending an SOS?

07:41SPEAKER- No, I was driving.

07:43SPEAKER- Do those, does that just connect to any number?

07:45SPEAKERLike, can you just send a message to a phone number

07:47SPEAKERas usual and it'll get through?

07:48SPEAKER- So there was a good conversation about this

07:50SPEAKERin the Discord the other day.

07:51SPEAKERAnd yes, that is what happens.

07:52SPEAKERYou send the message to the other end.

07:54SPEAKERAnd if they're on an iPhone, at least,

07:56SPEAKERthey get a message that says,

07:57SPEAKER"Hey, this was sent via iMessage-satellite.

08:00SPEAKERResponses may be sporadic."

08:02SPEAKERAnd that's it.

08:04SPEAKER- Okay.

08:05SPEAKER- That's the difference.

08:05SPEAKER- That's cool.

08:07SPEAKERAll right, shall we dive into some questions here?

08:09SPEAKER- Yeah, should we do it, just turn some cues into A's?

08:11SPEAKER- Yes, well, this kind of dovetails

08:13SPEAKERfrom what we were just discussing.

08:14SPEAKERHere's a question from Sean.

08:16SPEAKERBeing a pair of good Southern boys,

08:17SPEAKERcan you clock different regional Southern accents

08:20SPEAKERlike folks in the UK seem so fond of doing?

08:23SPEAKER- Yes.

08:24SPEAKER- Also, did you modify your own accents

08:26SPEAKERwhen you started working in media?

08:27SPEAKER- No.

08:29SPEAKER- Just curious because I find accents so fascinating

08:32SPEAKEReven if I'm rubbish at distinguishing them.

08:34SPEAKERI don't know that I can.

08:36SPEAKERI mean, I can hear different regional Southern accents,

08:39SPEAKERbut I don't think I can put names to them.

08:41SPEAKER- There's a big difference between a South Georgia

08:43SPEAKERand a Northeast Tennessee and a Kentucky.

08:46SPEAKER- Sure.

08:48SPEAKER- The further South you get,

08:49SPEAKERwhen you get down toward Southern Mississippi

08:51SPEAKERand Southern Alabama and Northern,

08:52SPEAKERthose all kind of sound the same to me.

08:54SPEAKERBut North Carolina mountains versus North Carolina coastal

08:57SPEAKERis a wildly different accent.

08:59SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, yeah.

09:00SPEAKER- It's like the sharp eyes are much more there for me.

09:04SPEAKERBut I didn't, my parents aren't from the South

09:07SPEAKERand they beat the accent out of me at a young age.

09:09SPEAKER(laughing)

09:11SPEAKER- See, I'm generations untold of my family

09:14SPEAKERhave lived there, so I am dyed in the wool, I guess,

09:18SPEAKERis the term.

09:19SPEAKER- You don't have an accent though.

09:20SPEAKER- Well, I guess that goes to this other question.

09:22SPEAKERDid you modify your own accents

09:23SPEAKERwhen you started working in media?

09:24SPEAKERI think it kind of naturally evaporated.

09:28SPEAKER- I was gonna say, I kind of want to go back

09:30SPEAKERto like some 2004 era Brad videos

09:32SPEAKERand see what early Brad sounded like.

09:35SPEAKER- I think it's probably quite a bit more pronounced.

09:37SPEAKERIn fact, I've had people write in

09:38SPEAKERand say it kind of vanished over time.

09:41SPEAKER- I can see that.

09:41SPEAKER- And there was definitely for quite a while,

09:43SPEAKERif I drank enough, it would start coming back out.

09:47SPEAKER- I can see that too.

09:48SPEAKER- Even that I think has maybe,

09:50SPEAKERI think it's just kind of like kind of gone-ish.

09:53SPEAKERYeah, actually it takes like 20 minutes on the phone

09:56SPEAKERwith my parents to start coming back, I think.

09:58SPEAKER- So my wife does that when she talks to her sister,

10:01SPEAKERthe one that lives in Tennessee still,

10:04SPEAKERshe will, it'll come back for a few hours

10:08SPEAKERand then it goes away.

10:09SPEAKER- Yeah, and I started like when I was out there

10:10SPEAKERfor almost three weeks,

10:12SPEAKERyou'd definitely start feeling like turns of phrase

10:14SPEAKERcoming back that you haven't used in 30 years.

10:16SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

10:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see that.

10:20SPEAKERLike I used to work with a woman who said

10:23SPEAKERthat he looked so mad.

10:24SPEAKERHe looked, oh God, what was it, it was really funny.

10:27SPEAKERHe looks like somebody who licked

10:29SPEAKERthe red off his candy cane.

10:31SPEAKERHe looks like somebody licked the red off his candy cane,

10:33SPEAKERwhich meant he looked pissed.

10:35SPEAKER- I've never heard that one.

10:36SPEAKER- That's, I think that's a Kentucky one,

10:38SPEAKERif I had to guess, like Eastern Kentucky.

10:40SPEAKER- One I heard quite a bit was that you would wear the balls

10:43SPEAKERoff of a brass billy goat.

10:45SPEAKER- Wow, which is like the balls of the billy goat's feet,

10:48SPEAKERthey don't have, or it's a testicle thing.

10:51SPEAKER- I think it's, I don't know actually.

10:53SPEAKER- Brad's leading hard into the tech pod after dark.

10:56SPEAKER- Which is basically just a way of saying you were exhausting.

11:00SPEAKER- I can see that.

11:01SPEAKER- I, yeah, we didn't, the ones that always get me

11:05SPEAKERare the very specific regional things from where I grew up.

11:08SPEAKERLike people would say chimney instead of chimney.

11:11SPEAKER- Huh.

11:11SPEAKER- And like a thing that you stick into cloth

11:18SPEAKERto hold two pieces of cloth together,

11:19SPEAKERlike a small piece of pointed metal,

11:21SPEAKERnot a needle, but the other one,

11:23SPEAKERand a writing utensil that uses ink, identical words.

11:27SPEAKER- Interesting.

11:28SPEAKER- I thought that those were the same words for the long,

11:30SPEAKERmore like when I came home from school one day

11:33SPEAKERin second grade or first grade, a new kid came to class

11:36SPEAKERand I was like, mom, I made a new best friend.

11:38SPEAKERThere's this awesome kid, his name is Jif,

11:40SPEAKERlike the peanut butter.

11:42SPEAKERHis name was not Jif, like the peanut butter, it was Jif.

11:44SPEAKER- I see.

11:45SPEAKER- But he said his name was Jif.

11:47SPEAKER- Is this a good time for me to get on my soapbox

11:49SPEAKERabout the phrase bless your heart?

11:51SPEAKER- Oh, bless your heart is not a thing you say

11:53SPEAKERin kindness and love.

11:55SPEAKER- Wait, are you one of them?

11:57SPEAKER- What, no, I don't say,

11:59SPEAKERI'm not a 50 year old Southern woman.

12:01SPEAKER- Where I'm from, it absolutely is.

12:03SPEAKER- Oh no, it's usually meant in an extreme condescending

12:07SPEAKERmanner in my experience.

12:08SPEAKER- That is exactly the opposite of my experience.

12:11SPEAKER- Oh, well, you were surrounded by kinder people.

12:14SPEAKER- I assure you when my grandmother finally got to meet

12:16SPEAKERher beloved Richard Petty.

12:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

12:19SPEAKER- And asked if she could hug his neck.

12:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

12:21SPEAKER- And said, bless your heart to him.

12:23SPEAKER- I mean, that's a different situation.

12:25SPEAKER- I assure you, she was not sassing him.

12:28SPEAKER- No, no, okay, okay.

12:29SPEAKERSo there's context awareness here, I guess.

12:32SPEAKER- Yeah, of course, I mean, of course.

12:33SPEAKERBut like, I see this all over Twitter now,

12:35SPEAKERpeople who are not from the South have internalized the idea

12:37SPEAKERthat bless your heart is just a polite way to say fuck you,

12:41SPEAKERwhich is extremely is not where I'm from.

12:44SPEAKER- Well, so I think when you're talking about A,

12:47SPEAKERTwitter is full of bad people now,

12:48SPEAKERso not necessarily a good place to source material.

12:53SPEAKERBut B, I think if I'm talking to someone,

12:57SPEAKERif like my grandmother says bless your heart,

13:00SPEAKERI think that she's being kind to me, right?

13:01SPEAKER- Of course, that's exactly it.

13:03SPEAKER- But if a stranger says bless your heart,

13:05SPEAKERthen they're like two steps away from fighting words

13:07SPEAKERas far as I'm concerned.

13:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess, I mean, even my parents' generation,

13:11SPEAKERmy family still say it all the time,

13:12SPEAKERand they like 99.9% of the time it is used sincerely.

13:17SPEAKER- Oh, anytime, anytime, like when I was invited

13:21SPEAKERto some kid's sleepover so that they could try

13:24SPEAKERto take me to church and save me the next day,

13:26SPEAKERI got a lot of bless your hearts, and those were not kind.

13:28SPEAKERBless your hearts.

13:29SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I can, yes, I could see that,

13:31SPEAKERbut almost always with the older people in my family,

13:34SPEAKERit's either to express sympathy or gratitude.

13:38SPEAKERAlmost always. - Yes, yeah, yeah.

13:41SPEAKERBut if somebody in the line at Kmart says bless your heart,

13:45SPEAKERthat's not a, they don't mean it kindly.

13:47SPEAKER- Yes, it can be used that way.

13:49SPEAKER- This is like y'all, the y'all die,

13:51SPEAKERlike everybody's using, people not from the South

13:54SPEAKERhave started using y'all as a gender inclusive-

13:57SPEAKER- Yes, I've noticed that. - Pronoun,

13:59SPEAKERwhich I don't have any, I think that's great.

14:02SPEAKER- No, that's fine.

14:02SPEAKERI'm not worried about that one. - Fantastic.

14:03SPEAKERThey usually spell it wrong though.

14:05SPEAKER- I'm not worried about that one,

14:05SPEAKERbut I do see some people go like,

14:08SPEAKERI'm trying to figure out how they,

14:09SPEAKERlike how they know how to say this,

14:11SPEAKERbut the attitude is basically like y'all really?

14:13SPEAKERCome on, like as if it's like insane

14:15SPEAKERor trying too hard to use a word like y'all,

14:18SPEAKERlike what are you talking about?

14:19SPEAKER- I mean- - It's a perfectly,

14:20SPEAKERit's a perfectly useful contraction.

14:22SPEAKER- Yeah, perfectly promulant word.

14:26SPEAKER- What I mean, what are we gonna say, you all?

14:28SPEAKER- Folks, I say folks. - Yuns, yuns.

14:31SPEAKER- No, don't say yuns, that's so hot.

14:32SPEAKER- Have you ever had yuns?

14:33SPEAKER- Oh, that's a Ohio thing.

14:35SPEAKERLook, if the Gen Z kids have taught me anything

14:37SPEAKERthat said everything from Ohio is bad.

14:40SPEAKER- I mean, we had, is that the Midwest thing?

14:42SPEAKER'Cause there were definitely people that I knew

14:44SPEAKERthat said yuns.

14:45SPEAKER- The kid I knew that said yuns was from Columbus, Ohio.

14:48SPEAKERMaybe Cleveland. - I thought it was yens.

14:49SPEAKERI thought it was yens that was more of a Midwest thing.

14:51SPEAKER- He said pop instead of Coke too, and people are weird.

14:54SPEAKER- Yes.

14:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, we've taken that,

14:58SPEAKERwe've talked about that New York Times thing

15:00SPEAKERwhere you put in the,

15:01SPEAKERwhere it asks you a bunch of questions

15:02SPEAKERabout what you call things,

15:03SPEAKERand then it tells you where you lived growing up.

15:05SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah, it's good.

15:07SPEAKERYou should do that.

15:08SPEAKER- I think that thing was pretty accurate for me.

15:10SPEAKER- Yeah, shockingly accurate.

15:11SPEAKER- Yes, a question from Zach real quick

15:14SPEAKERbefore we move on from the emails.

15:16SPEAKERListen to you guys for a while,

15:17SPEAKERand I've always been interested in Home Assistant.

15:21SPEAKERWhat's the best way to get started?

15:23SPEAKERJust buy the board and some stuff and kind of figure it out.

15:25SPEAKERI buy some stuff, I think he means like some smart-

15:28SPEAKER- Like radios and smart stuff.

15:30SPEAKER- Plugs, you know, yeah, light bulbs, stuff like that.

15:34SPEAKERJust buy the board and some stuff

15:35SPEAKERand kind of figure it out as you go,

15:37SPEAKERor do you have some resources to get started with it?

15:40SPEAKERI am tech savvy and that I'm the one in my family,

15:42SPEAKERor the one that my family comes to for tech problems,

15:45SPEAKERbut Home Assistant will be my most tech heavy thing

15:47SPEAKERI have ever done.

15:49SPEAKERAlso, I'm leaning toward the Home Assistant green

15:51SPEAKERfor simplicity at the start.

15:53SPEAKERIs this a good starting point?

15:55SPEAKER- So it's like anytime you're starting

15:58SPEAKERwith the internet of shit things,

16:01SPEAKERit's kind of like you don't wanna jump in whole hog, right?

16:06SPEAKERYou buy one and you buy a controller

16:10SPEAKERand then you buy some stuff

16:12SPEAKERand then you kind of wanna dig in from there, I think,

16:15SPEAKER'cause you're gonna learn things

16:17SPEAKERabout how you want these things to work

16:19SPEAKERand that's gonna shape the purchasing decisions

16:20SPEAKERyou make on everything else.

16:22SPEAKER- Yes.

16:22SPEAKER- And you're also gonna learn stuff

16:23SPEAKERabout how your house works, frankly.

16:24SPEAKERMy house, I would love to have smart switches

16:27SPEAKERin every room in the house,

16:30SPEAKERbut in order to do that, I have to buy really expensive ones

16:33SPEAKERbecause I don't have a neutral wire in my electrical system.

16:40SPEAKERAnd I wouldn't have known that.

16:41SPEAKERIf I'd gone out and bought a bunch of switches

16:42SPEAKERbefore I knew that, then I would have had to return

16:44SPEAKERa bunch of switches, a big pain in the butt.

16:47SPEAKERBut yeah, I think starting with a green,

16:49SPEAKERthe green is a $99 box.

16:51SPEAKERIt doesn't use a Pi.

16:52SPEAKERThe Home Assistant makes two pieces of hardware now.

16:55SPEAKEROne is the Home Assistant Yellow,

16:57SPEAKERwhich uses a Raspberry Pi CM4 module, Compute Module 4.

17:02SPEAKERAnd then the green is a newer box

17:05SPEAKERthat uses a slightly less capable ARM processor

17:10SPEAKERand has like 32 gigs of storage

17:12SPEAKERand two gigs of memory or eight gigs of memory,

17:14SPEAKERI think, I can't remember which.

17:16SPEAKERSo the green is just all in one.

17:17SPEAKERYou don't have to supply your own thing to stick into it.

17:20SPEAKERYeah, it's an all in one box.

17:21SPEAKERIt has fewer radios.

17:23SPEAKERSo it doesn't have a thread radio, I think,

17:28SPEAKERout of the box or a Zigbee radio out of the box.

17:29SPEAKERYeah, I think of Zigbee it also doesn't have.

17:31SPEAKERWhich you may not need.

17:32SPEAKERLike the thing I would say is if you buy stuff

17:34SPEAKERlike Casa smart plugs or what's the other company

17:41SPEAKERthat makes the good RGB bulbs that I have.

17:44SPEAKEROh God, I'm trying to think.

17:46SPEAKERIs Life X one of them?

17:48SPEAKERLife X was one of the old ones, but it's.

17:51SPEAKERThey're still around.

17:51SPEAKERI can't remember who makes the common bulbs these days.

17:54SPEAKERSo there's a bunch.

17:55SPEAKERCree makes bulbs that are pretty good.

17:58SPEAKERThere's the ones that I bought

18:00SPEAKERwere really surprisingly cheap.

18:01SPEAKERLike you can get a pack of bulbs for like $8 each.

18:06SPEAKERSo you get three bulbs for 25 bucks.

18:08SPEAKERDon't buy Hue stuff.

18:09SPEAKERHue stuff is really freaking expensive

18:11SPEAKERand is a Wyze is the bulb.

18:12SPEAKERIs the bulb.

18:13SPEAKERA Wyze, yes, right.

18:14SPEAKERYou can do a lot of decent stuff.

18:15SPEAKERThe trick is you want to get stuff

18:17SPEAKERthat doesn't require an internet connection to work.

18:20SPEAKERSo you want the home assistant integration

18:23SPEAKERthat you used to be able to talk to it directly,

18:24SPEAKERwhich TP-Link and the Wyze integration,

18:27SPEAKERif you set it up right, will both do.

18:29SPEAKERYeah, one thing I was going to say is like,

18:31SPEAKERyou're in a good position

18:33SPEAKERwhere you don't have a bunch of smart stuff already.

18:36SPEAKERThe whole reason I landed on home assistant

18:37SPEAKERwas because like I've said this before,

18:39SPEAKERbut like we've got a bunch of TP-Link smart plugs

18:42SPEAKERthat we bought on various sales.

18:43SPEAKERGot a couple of Belkin ones for some reason.

18:45SPEAKERI can't remember.

18:46SPEAKERI've got some iDevices stuff

18:47SPEAKERthat like an advertiser sent to us.

18:49SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

18:49SPEAKERLike I ended up with home assistant

18:51SPEAKERbecause we had so many different things

18:53SPEAKERthat we just needed one common ecosystem

18:55SPEAKERthat would make everything work together.

18:57SPEAKERBut since you're buying stuff new,

18:58SPEAKERyou're in a position where you can spend time

19:00SPEAKERon the home system forums and see what works best,

19:03SPEAKERboth for your use case

19:04SPEAKERand also just generally what is most compatible.

19:07SPEAKER- Well, and the other thing that's nice about home assistant

19:09SPEAKERis it lets you use things that are like our home kit

19:12SPEAKERor smart things or whatever, all the different,

19:14SPEAKERyou know, use Zigbee radios or use apps, whatever.

19:19SPEAKERIt'll also let you have stuff,

19:21SPEAKERuse your stuff out to other services.

19:24SPEAKERSo for example, if you use an iPhone

19:25SPEAKERand your partner uses an Android phone,

19:28SPEAKERyou can hook both of those up

19:30SPEAKERso that you can each use the native implementation

19:34SPEAKERon the devices where they make sense.

19:36SPEAKER- Right.

19:36SPEAKER- If you have a bunch of like Google smart screens

19:38SPEAKERand Apple audio speakers,

19:42SPEAKERyou can use the Google smart screens to control,

19:45SPEAKERyou can use the Google smart screens to,

19:47SPEAKERthis is really hard to say.

19:48SPEAKER- It's a mouthful.

19:49SPEAKER- You can use the Google smart screens to control stuff

19:52SPEAKERand pipe music out to the Apple speakers

19:55SPEAKERand it all just works.

19:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

19:57SPEAKER- And that's the powerful thing about home assistant.

19:59SPEAKERThat's why you fool with home assistant

20:01SPEAKERinstead of just doing smart thing

20:02SPEAKERor using the Alexa integration

20:04SPEAKERor using a Google home app or whatever.

20:05SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

20:06SPEAKERPrepare for a learning curve though.

20:07SPEAKERLike there is absolutely,

20:08SPEAKERlike home assistant is not the most intuitively laid out

20:11SPEAKERthing or like a lot of the concepts are,

20:13SPEAKERlike there are devices, there are entities,

20:16SPEAKERthere are scenes, there are automations,

20:17SPEAKERlike there's a lot of jargon

20:18SPEAKERto kind of learn the difference between.

20:20SPEAKER- So I did a clean setup when I did the yellow install

20:23SPEAKERa year, year and a half ago.

20:24SPEAKERAnd I think that my old install had a lot of cruft on it.

20:30SPEAKER- And mine does too, definitely.

20:32SPEAKER- Like the new user experience for new users

20:36SPEAKERis quite good now.

20:37SPEAKER- Okay.

20:38SPEAKER- The most important thing is you wanna run everything

20:40SPEAKERthrough home assistant and then filter it out from there

20:43SPEAKERto the other services that you use.

20:45SPEAKERSo you don't wanna like hook it up with home kit

20:47SPEAKERand then switch it, like run home kit to home assistant

20:51SPEAKERand then back to home kit again, 'cause that'll be weird.

20:53SPEAKER- Yes, you wanna add all the devices

20:54SPEAKERdirectly to home assistant.

20:56SPEAKER- I was gonna say the other thing is you can also just,

20:58SPEAKERif you have like a Raspberry Pi two or three sitting around

21:01SPEAKERand you wanna noodle around with it,

21:02SPEAKERyou can install a home assistant on an old Raspberry Pi.

21:07SPEAKERIt's like even a really old one.

21:08SPEAKERI don't think it works on one anymore,

21:10SPEAKERbut twos and threes, which are like 10, 12 year old

21:12SPEAKERRaspberry Pis at this point will work.

21:14SPEAKERAnd like buy your $10 pack of three smart switches

21:19SPEAKERand noodle around with it and set up one room at a time.

21:21SPEAKERWhen you decide you wanna do it,

21:23SPEAKERset up one room at a time, figure out how you use that room

21:26SPEAKERand then integrate that with the other thing

21:27SPEAKERand learn how to use automations and scenes

21:30SPEAKERand like all that stuff to get the home and away stuff

21:33SPEAKERgoing the way you want it to.

21:34SPEAKERBut it's pretty straightforward.

21:37SPEAKER- It's pretty neat, you do a lot of stuff with it.

21:39SPEAKER- It's like, it's all stupid in that

21:43SPEAKERit's not stuff that like is necessary,

21:46SPEAKERbut it's really nice when I come home

21:48SPEAKERand I don't have to turn on the front porch light

21:50SPEAKERwhen I'm back into the driveway 'cause it just turns on

21:52SPEAKERand the lights all turn on when I'm coming into the house

21:54SPEAKERwithout the whole arm load of groceries.

21:56SPEAKERAnd I don't have to, like I say it's time for bed

22:01SPEAKERand it turns off the lights, all the lights in the house.

22:04SPEAKER- Wait, is that really your trigger?

22:05SPEAKER- I say, I have multiples, I'd say it's time

22:10SPEAKERfor the kiddos bed and then I say it's time for our bed.

22:12SPEAKER- Huh.

22:13SPEAKER- And I don't, I mean, I don't wanna say the thing

22:16SPEAKERthat I say 'cause it'll turn off every light in the house,

22:17SPEAKERbut yeah. - Do it, do it.

22:19SPEAKER- I say, okay Google, it's time for bed

22:21SPEAKERand then it turns off all the lights in the house

22:23SPEAKERand leaves the night lights on and all that stuff.

22:26SPEAKERGo away Google, be quiet.

22:29SPEAKER- None of the lights in your room went off at least,

22:31SPEAKERI can say that. - No, no, I kept talking

22:32SPEAKERso it didn't get the command.

22:35SPEAKER- Yeah. - But basically

22:36SPEAKERI have that stuff, like you can set that stuff up

22:38SPEAKERto trigger scenes and automations and things like that

22:40SPEAKERwhich make it easy to like put your house

22:42SPEAKERin the same state every day.

22:44SPEAKERIt's kind of like playing Loop Hero, honestly.

22:47SPEAKER- Oh.

22:47SPEAKER- 'Cause like you wanna start each day

22:50SPEAKERfrom a known state and you wanna end each day

22:53SPEAKERat a known state and then you have to get

22:54SPEAKERfrom that end of day known state

22:56SPEAKERto the start of day next state.

22:57SPEAKER- Do I know what Loop Hero is?

22:59SPEAKER- Have you ever played Loop Hero?

23:00SPEAKER- Have I not played Loop Hero?

23:01SPEAKERIt sounds like something I've played,

23:02SPEAKERbut like am I? - Oh man.

23:04SPEAKER- Oh, oh, yes. - It was an indie darling.

23:05SPEAKER- Yes, yes, I totally forgot the name of this game,

23:08SPEAKERbut yes, like the game's awesome.

23:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it was really cool.

23:10SPEAKER- It's very cool, it's very hard though.

23:11SPEAKER- It's very hard, unless you're good at recursive thinking

23:15SPEAKERin which case it's not that hard.

23:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I think I ended up tapping out on it

23:18SPEAKERjust due to the number of runs that went extremely bad.

23:20SPEAKER- It was the game that I was like,

23:23SPEAKERI wish this was on iPad 'cause I would sit

23:24SPEAKERand watch TV and play this all the time,

23:26SPEAKERbut now I have a home stream Steam Deck

23:27SPEAKERso I should probably try it again.

23:29SPEAKER- Oh, did they never put those on?

23:30SPEAKERYeah, that would have been a really good mobile game.

23:31SPEAKERThe reason I forgot what it was

23:33SPEAKERis that the name Loop Hero

23:34SPEAKERsounds like some kind of Guitar Hero derivative.

23:36SPEAKER- Yeah. - But it's very much not that.

23:38SPEAKERIt's like this kind of Gothic fantasy,

23:41SPEAKERroguelike sort of thing.

23:42SPEAKER- It's a game about using recursion to do things.

23:45SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it's a very cool game.

23:47SPEAKER- A cool game.

23:48SPEAKER- Okay, all right, let's do some Discord questions here.

23:51SPEAKERThere's one from Crow.

23:53SPEAKERHave you ever used a Windows File Explorer alternative?

23:56SPEAKERThroughout the years, I've heard you guys complain

23:58SPEAKERabout certain aspects of a file explorer

24:00SPEAKERor file management in general.

24:02SPEAKERSo I find it surprising

24:03SPEAKERthat you don't use something like Directory Opus.

24:06SPEAKERI've been using it for years

24:07SPEAKERand now I can't live without it.

24:09SPEAKERFun fact about it, it's been around since the Amiga days.

24:12SPEAKER- Wow. - It's still being maintained

24:14SPEAKERby the same guy, Jonathan Potter.

24:16SPEAKER- So, yeah, no, go ahead.

24:20SPEAKER- I've thought about this numerous times.

24:22SPEAKERThe thing that always stops me,

24:24SPEAKERand this is a problem that now affects

24:25SPEAKERparts of actual File Explorer,

24:27SPEAKERis that there are so many hooks in the operating system

24:29SPEAKERin Windows to spawning file management windows,

24:32SPEAKERand there's no provision in Windows

24:34SPEAKERfor designating a different custom app

24:36SPEAKERto replace File Explorer.

24:38SPEAKER'Cause there are so many other things

24:40SPEAKERthat will spawn a folder.

24:41SPEAKERLike, I'm struggling to think of many right now,

24:44SPEAKERbut there's all kinds of cases

24:45SPEAKERwhere it'll pop a File Explorer window up.

24:47SPEAKER- Like when you finish unzipping something

24:50SPEAKERand you click the open this after it's done,

24:52SPEAKERit always opens in File Explorer.

24:53SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a good one, stuff like that.

24:55SPEAKERAnd those are always going to open in File Explorer anyway,

24:58SPEAKEReven if you're using an alternative,

25:00SPEAKER'cause they don't give you a way to replace that

25:03SPEAKERat the system level.

25:05SPEAKERSo that's kind of the thing that's really just stopped me

25:07SPEAKERfrom ever trying to adopt something else.

25:09SPEAKERThat problem also manifests now

25:11SPEAKERin that there's no way to tell it to open those links

25:15SPEAKERin the same File Explorer window you already have open,

25:18SPEAKERnow that they have tabs.

25:20SPEAKER- Oh.

25:21SPEAKER- There's no toggle for that.

25:22SPEAKERI really wish they would add a setting

25:23SPEAKERwhere you could say open all new File Explorer windows

25:26SPEAKERin the same existing window.

25:27SPEAKER- I think that's in 24H2 now.

25:29SPEAKER- Is it really?

25:30SPEAKER- You can duplicate tabs in File Explorer finally.

25:33SPEAKER- Okay.

25:34SPEAKER- I want to say that I saw that,

25:35SPEAKERbut that might've been something that somebody had

25:37SPEAKERon the list of things that they still haven't done.

25:39SPEAKERI can't remember.

25:40SPEAKER- Yeah, opinions on that feature seem very split

25:43SPEAKER'cause I've searched for it before

25:44SPEAKERbecause I couldn't believe that wasn't already in there.

25:45SPEAKERAnd I saw a lot of people on places like Reddit going like,

25:48SPEAKER"No, that sounds terrible, why would you want that?"

25:49SPEAKERSo it should probably be a toggle

25:51SPEAKERand not just a default behavior,

25:52SPEAKERbut I really wish they would put in a,

25:54SPEAKERjust like any time Windows needs to spawn

25:57SPEAKERa new File Explorer window, just if there's one open,

25:59SPEAKERjust make it a tab in that window.

26:01SPEAKER- So-

26:02SPEAKER- 'Cause the whole point of tabs is to not have

26:03SPEAKERa bunch of extra windows floating around,

26:04SPEAKERbut that happens anyway.

26:05SPEAKER- Agreed.

26:06SPEAKERI wish, I mean, honestly, one of the things I wish

26:09SPEAKERis that for apps with tabs like browsers and File Explorer

26:13SPEAKERand stuff like that now,

26:14SPEAKERyou could just right click on it in the task bar

26:16SPEAKERand merge all of the tabs into one window.

26:19SPEAKER- Wait, you can do that now?

26:20SPEAKER- No, I wish you could do that.

26:21SPEAKER- I wish you could do that. - That would be wonderful.

26:22SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, that would be nice.

26:24SPEAKER- I've never used these things

26:26SPEAKERbecause I spent enough of my life writing

26:28SPEAKERand helping people understand software and windows better,

26:34SPEAKERthat not running the defaults seems like a mistake.

26:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

26:39SPEAKER- So I tried files for a while a few years ago,

26:42SPEAKERwhich is an alternate, a File Explorer alternate,

26:44SPEAKERthat's a kind of a up and coming one

26:45SPEAKERthat's in the Microsoft store, and it was fine.

26:48SPEAKERI had a lot of little problems with it

26:49SPEAKERthat ended up making it measurably worse

26:52SPEAKERthan just using File Explorer and sucking it up

26:54SPEAKERand dealing with the problems that it has.

26:57SPEAKERBut also the loss of the ability to know,

27:02SPEAKERit's like when you're making a game,

27:05SPEAKERit's always good to have some people on the team

27:07SPEAKERthat use just default settings for everything,

27:09SPEAKER'cause you wanna know what that,

27:11SPEAKERif you fuck up something on that default experience

27:13SPEAKERfor people, you wanna know sooner rather than later.

27:16SPEAKERAnd it's important, I find it important for me to use the,

27:20SPEAKERnow, of course I'm not, I don't practice what I preach

27:23SPEAKER'cause I immediately turn off the search being

27:26SPEAKERwhen you do file, when you do start menu searching

27:29SPEAKERand stuff like that, but, yeah.

27:32SPEAKER- Well, that's just looking out for yourself.

27:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

27:34SPEAKERI'm just glad that they don't put one,

27:38SPEAKERthe reason I switched to files in the first place

27:40SPEAKERwas the stupidest reason ever,

27:42SPEAKERwhich was that they put OneDrive

27:44SPEAKERat the top of the quick list,

27:47SPEAKERno matter whether you used OneDrive at all.

27:49SPEAKER- Yep, they sure did.

27:50SPEAKER- And it annoyed me so much that I was just like,

27:52SPEAKERI'm not gonna use this anymore,

27:53SPEAKER'cause I use that quick link,

27:55SPEAKERI use that quick list all the time.

27:57SPEAKERIt's where I link all the stuff

27:58SPEAKERthat I use on the day-to-day there.

28:00SPEAKER- Yeah, same.

28:01SPEAKER- Yeah, so it just irritated me.

28:04SPEAKER- There's probably a registry hack

28:05SPEAKERfor getting rid of those OneDrive links.

28:07SPEAKER- It's gone now, 23H2, it's gone.

28:10SPEAKER- 24H2? - 23H2.

28:12SPEAKER- Oh, wait, really?

28:13SPEAKER- It's not at the top of my list.

28:14SPEAKER- Wait, I've still got mine.

28:16SPEAKER- Well, you gotta uninstall OneDrive or something.

28:19SPEAKER- I don't have OneDrive running,

28:20SPEAKERso that's maybe what does it.

28:21SPEAKERYeah, you can turn it off now.

28:23SPEAKER- I still do, I don't know why.

28:25SPEAKERJust extra cloud storage, just in case.

28:27SPEAKER- It's bad cloud storage.

28:31SPEAKER- Real quick, I've not used this.

28:32SPEAKERI don't even know if it's ready for use.

28:34SPEAKERI think it's still in alpha, let me see.

28:37SPEAKER- The Dopus?

28:38SPEAKER- Oh no, Space Drive.

28:40SPEAKER- Oh.

28:41SPEAKER- I am not in the slightest vouching for this.

28:42SPEAKERI just saw this going around, I think on Twitter.

28:45SPEAKERThere's a GitHub repo for it.

28:46SPEAKERThe account is Space Drive app.

28:48SPEAKERThe repo is just called Space Drive.

28:50SPEAKERI'll just read the description.

28:52SPEAKERAn open source cross-platform file manager

28:54SPEAKERpowered by a virtual distributed file system written in Rust.

28:58SPEAKERSo it's a common,

28:59SPEAKERit's purporting to be like a common file management utility

29:03SPEAKERacross Windows, Mac, and Linux.

29:06SPEAKERBut I don't know what all this

29:07SPEAKERvirtual distributed file system business is.

29:09SPEAKERIt sounds like some abstraction layer

29:11SPEAKERto make a bunch of different local and cloud storages

29:14SPEAKERall show up as the same kind of common storage pool,

29:17SPEAKERwhich I'm not sure I'm super into that idea.

29:21SPEAKER- This seems like a bad idea,

29:23SPEAKERbut maybe it's a good idea, I don't know.

29:25SPEAKER- If you could ignore the virtual file system stuff

29:28SPEAKERand just keep exposing all your normal drives

29:31SPEAKERand everything discreetly.

29:32SPEAKER- I wonder if you have to have all the devices

29:34SPEAKERon at the same time.

29:35SPEAKER- I don't know.

29:36SPEAKER- Or if it's dumping up in the cloud someplace.

29:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not, I barely have wrapped my head around

29:41SPEAKERwhat exactly they're trying to do with this thing.

29:42SPEAKERBut anyway, there are like modern file management.

29:45SPEAKER- This is interesting.

29:46SPEAKER- Efforts going on, yeah.

29:49SPEAKERThis may bear a little more investigation,

29:51SPEAKERbut I absolutely am not saying,

29:52SPEAKERyes, they are on alpha 0.4.2.

29:55SPEAKER- Yeah, they're almost about ready to go into beta,

29:57SPEAKERis what it says on their GitHub page.

30:00SPEAKER- Anyway, there is work ongoing

30:02SPEAKERon modern file management stuff.

30:04SPEAKER- Rust, huh?

30:05SPEAKER- Yep.

30:07SPEAKERYeah, what about it?

30:08SPEAKER- No, I'm just, I was just saying Rust, huh?

30:11SPEAKER- Man, my, I hate Twitter,

30:14SPEAKERbut like every time I bring up Twitter,

30:16SPEAKERI feel more and more day by day that I should stop using it.

30:19SPEAKERLike I'm finding quite a few more people

30:21SPEAKERjumping to Blue Sky lately,

30:22SPEAKERand I'm really starting to think

30:23SPEAKERmaybe it's time to pull the ripcord for real.

30:25SPEAKER- Blue Sky's real active these days, man.

30:27SPEAKERAnd a bunch of people I haven't seen in years

30:29SPEAKERare showing up there now.

30:30SPEAKER- Like it feels irresponsible

30:31SPEAKEReven talking about Twitter at this point,

30:33SPEAKER'cause it's such a fucking sewer

30:34SPEAKERthat I feel like I shouldn't even like

30:36SPEAKERsay the word out loud anymore.

30:38SPEAKER- Look, I had a Blue Sky post go kind of big last night,

30:42SPEAKERand you know what it was?

30:43SPEAKER- What's that?

30:44SPEAKER- You know how I know Twitter

30:45SPEAKERreally is actually dead for real?

30:48SPEAKERWill Smith just did a home run in the World Series,

30:50SPEAKERand I didn't get a single tweet about it.

30:52SPEAKER- Interesting, all right.

30:53SPEAKER- Not one.

30:54SPEAKER- That could be a canary in a coal mine, for sure.

30:56SPEAKER- I mean, I haven't, I haven't,

30:57SPEAKERI didn't know when he played in a game.

30:59SPEAKERI didn't know that there's a Will Smith

31:00SPEAKERwho plays hockey for the Sharks.

31:02SPEAKER- Look.

31:03SPEAKER- These are all things I would have known before,

31:04SPEAKERand I don't think anybody's using it anymore.

31:06SPEAKER- Progress.

31:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:07SPEAKER- But the whole reason I brought that up

31:09SPEAKERwas that my Twitter kind of for you algorithm

31:11SPEAKERfor some time was getting infected

31:13SPEAKERby people arguing over programming languages.

31:16SPEAKER- That means that, look, sometimes the machine knows you,

31:20SPEAKERman.

31:20SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you're not wrong.

31:23SPEAKERThere was a lot of people talking about Rust,

31:25SPEAKERand Zig, and C3, and kind of all these modern

31:27SPEAKERsuccessor languages that are trying to be the new C.

31:31SPEAKERI'll talk about Rust out there.

31:32SPEAKERA lot of strong feelings about Rust.

31:34SPEAKER- Mine, mine is just people yelling at each other

31:36SPEAKERand being angry.

31:37SPEAKER- Yep, yep, plenty of that.

31:39SPEAKERWell, that's everywhere you go now.

31:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:42SPEAKER- All right, let's move on to another question

31:45SPEAKERfrom Xylotism.

31:47SPEAKERWhat's the tech industry word that you mispronounced

31:50SPEAKERfor the longest or still mispronounced today?

31:52SPEAKERI've mentally locked myself into saying pseudo

31:55SPEAKERinstead of su-do.

31:57SPEAKER- What?

31:58SPEAKER- It's su-do, man.

32:00SPEAKER- Oh.

32:01SPEAKER- And I'm still not sure if C-I-S-A is pronounced

32:04SPEAKERlike see-saw, see-sa, or see-za.

32:07SPEAKERI don't even know, what is C-I-S-A?

32:08SPEAKERI should know that.

32:11SPEAKER- I don't know what C-I-S-A is.

32:12SPEAKERI was saying it was.

32:14SPEAKER- We've talked about this.

32:15SPEAKERYes, it's the federal, what does it stand for?

32:18SPEAKERCybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency.

32:21SPEAKERSecurity agency, sorry.

32:22SPEAKER- Ah.

32:23SPEAKER- Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

32:25SPEAKER- It's not a Certified Information Systems Auditor?

32:28SPEAKER- Well, I mean, that could be what they're talking about here

32:30SPEAKERbut this is America's cyber defense agency.

32:33SPEAKER- Or is it community involved in sustaining agriculture?

32:36SPEAKER- It could be any number of things.

32:39SPEAKERAll with different pronunciations.

32:41SPEAKER- Yeah.

32:42SPEAKER- On the pseudo su-do thing,

32:45SPEAKERI have started leaning very strongly

32:47SPEAKERin the direction of pronouncing things

32:48SPEAKERin a way that kind of like implies what they do

32:51SPEAKERor what they mean or what they stand for.

32:54SPEAKERSo super user do.

32:56SPEAKER- So wouldn't that be S-U-do?

32:58SPEAKER- Or substitute user do.

33:00SPEAKERI mean, do at least implies you are doing something.

33:02SPEAKERThe command is going to do something.

33:04SPEAKER- I don't like this.

33:05SPEAKER- I think also the famous pseudo alternative do as.

33:10SPEAKERHow are you going to pronounce that, dos, dos?

33:13SPEAKER- Multiple problems with what you said there

33:15SPEAKER'cause I don't think it's that famous and B, no thank you.

33:17SPEAKER- Anyway.

33:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know.

33:21SPEAKERI like to think I say everything properly.

33:23SPEAKER- Right, yeah, I mean, I guess you yourself

33:25SPEAKERare not necessarily going to be aware

33:26SPEAKERthat you are mispronouncing something.

33:29SPEAKERI guess, let's see.

33:30SPEAKERI don't have a good pronunciation for U-E-F-I

33:32SPEAKERwhich I think is a little too wordy to say by letter

33:35SPEAKERbut I hear people say like wefy and stuff.

33:38SPEAKER- U-F-E is how we say it at work, U-F-E world.

33:42SPEAKERBut usually that's a derisive thing.

33:44SPEAKERIt's a bless your heart situation.

33:46SPEAKER- Well, my real answer is I'm never going to say that at all.

33:48SPEAKERI'm going to say BIOS until the day I die.

33:51SPEAKER- I mean, that is like the right answer

33:52SPEAKERis that you pronounce U-E-F-I BIOS.

33:54SPEAKER- Yes, look, I am going into the BIOS.

33:57SPEAKERI'm going to change BIOS settings.

33:59SPEAKERThat's just the way it is.

34:00SPEAKER- I mean, when you talk to motherboard vendors,

34:02SPEAKERthey still all say BIOS too.

34:03SPEAKER- Okay, okay, that's very encouraging.

34:05SPEAKER- I like the Asus, Asus thing.

34:08SPEAKERI had multiple times in my life when I've been corrected

34:10SPEAKERby people from the company with contradictory answers.

34:16SPEAKERLike, yeah, I don't know.

34:20SPEAKERWacom was the one that got me

34:22SPEAKER'cause we always called them Wacom tablets.

34:24SPEAKER- Oh, probably until you just said that just now,

34:27SPEAKERI thought it was Wacom.

34:29SPEAKER- The preferred pronunciation by the vendor

34:32SPEAKERwas always Wacom.

34:33SPEAKER- Interesting.

34:34SPEAKERWhich is a weird, like, why would you,

34:36SPEAKERit's like, I was doing a thing about Windows CE.

34:40SPEAKERDo you remember Windows CE?

34:43SPEAKER- No.

34:43SPEAKER- W-I-N-C-E was the abbreviation for it.

34:46SPEAKERWince?

34:47SPEAKER- Oh, yes, yes, yes, Wincey, yes.

34:48SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the base.

34:49SPEAKER- That's what ran on the Dreamcast, right?

34:51SPEAKER- Dreamcast, the Zune, it's what became Windows Mobile.

34:54SPEAKERIt became Windows Phone eventually,

34:58SPEAKERbut it started as their answer to the Palm.

35:01SPEAKERIt was a PDA thing, and it stood for Windows Embedded,

35:08SPEAKEREmbedded, it's not computer, Impeded Compact, I think,

35:11SPEAKERor Imbedded-

35:14SPEAKER- Windows Imbedded Compact is what's coming up here?

35:17SPEAKER- Yeah, Imbedded Compact, yeah.

35:19SPEAKER- Wouldn't that be Windows EC, but I guess not.

35:21SPEAKER- Right, you couldn't say it was Wince if it was that,

35:25SPEAKERbut yeah, anyway.

35:26SPEAKER- So is that anything like Windows New Technology?

35:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that was a lot like Windows New Technology.

35:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

35:34SPEAKER- Anyway, yeah, so I don't know.

35:35SPEAKERTech acronyms are weird.

35:37SPEAKER- Yep, they sure are. - I can say it's Jif.

35:38SPEAKER- Yes, I-

35:39SPEAKER(chuckles)

35:41SPEAKER- Final word, let's move on.

35:43SPEAKER- I wasn't even gonna take this question,

35:45SPEAKERbut now that you've said that from Helen C,

35:48SPEAKERokay, but how do you pronounce dot J-F-I-F?

35:51SPEAKER- Jif.

35:52SPEAKER- Is that, I assume that's an actual file extension?

35:54SPEAKER- No. - You know, it's,

35:56SPEAKERI'm sure I'm not telling you anything.

35:57SPEAKERIt's awfully hard to Google for file extensions these days.

36:01SPEAKER- Yeah, it's you have to Google the file extension

36:03SPEAKERwith a period in front of it

36:04SPEAKERand then put file extension after it,

36:06SPEAKERand it still isn't very good.

36:07SPEAKER- And in quotation marks.

36:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:09SPEAKER- 'Cause otherwise you're gonna get,

36:10SPEAKERbut even the sites that do address file extensions

36:12SPEAKERare mostly all like just auto-generated garbage

36:14SPEAKERat this point.

36:15SPEAKER- There's a lot of auto-generated garbage these days.

36:18SPEAKER- Dot J-F-I-F is a JPEG file interchange format.

36:23SPEAKER- Wait, really, it's a real thing?

36:25SPEAKER- Oh yeah, no, that's a real extension.

36:26SPEAKER- Oh no, that's J-F-I-F.

36:28SPEAKER- J-F-I-F, I mean, that is like the er example

36:31SPEAKERof my ideology around pronouncing extensions

36:37SPEAKERand acronyms and so forth.

36:39SPEAKERThere's already a J-I-F, so how do you pronounce J-I-F

36:42SPEAKERif G-I-F is Jif?

36:45SPEAKER- It's J-F-I-F.

36:46SPEAKER- That's, nope.

36:47SPEAKER- It's J-F-I-F though, isn't it?

36:49SPEAKER- No, no, no, there's a dot J-I-F.

36:50SPEAKERThis is a totally separate extension.

36:52SPEAKERThere's already- - Whoever did that

36:52SPEAKERis a fucking war criminal and should go to jail.

36:55SPEAKER- There is a dot J-I-F, and how are you going to say that

36:57SPEAKERif you already say Jif for the one with the G?

37:00SPEAKER- That's dot Jeff.

37:01SPEAKER- That's, man, all right.

37:04SPEAKERThese questions are folding back in on themselves.

37:06SPEAKER- I'm choosing crime.

37:08SPEAKER- All right, well, here's the last email

37:10SPEAKERor question rather about letters and acronyms.

37:14SPEAKERFrom Chip Shirley, this is a profound observation.

37:18SPEAKERHave you all ever noticed that some letters

37:20SPEAKERare cooler than others?

37:22SPEAKERPutting R-X-T after the name of a car or a graphics card

37:25SPEAKERwould be cool, but putting K-L-B or A-F-H would not.

37:30SPEAKER- I read an article about this a few years ago.

37:32SPEAKER- Wait, really?

37:33SPEAKER- There's a linguistics theory behind this.

37:35SPEAKER- Oh, I have to read that.

37:37SPEAKERCan you please find that link?

37:38SPEAKER- It's an episode of The World, I think.

37:42SPEAKER- Okay. - Nope, 404 not found.

37:44SPEAKERMan, the internet sucks now.

37:46SPEAKER- Yeah, it sure does.

37:47SPEAKERI mean, this is not wrong.

37:48SPEAKERThis is, you're absolutely correct that RX,

37:50SPEAKERokay, like what are the good letters?

37:52SPEAKERNormally before, let's say like two years ago,

37:55SPEAKERI would have said X is a gray letter, but not now.

37:58SPEAKER- Okay, so here's a Paste Magazine article.

38:01SPEAKERThis isn't what I was looking for,

38:02SPEAKERbut they ranked the letters of the alphabet

38:04SPEAKERfrom lamest to coolest.

38:05SPEAKER- That was my ranking joke.

38:07SPEAKER- Oh man, we should totally do this.

38:08SPEAKER- That was the ranking joke that I had saved up

38:10SPEAKERfor this question that I mentioned 20 minutes ago.

38:13SPEAKER- This is next month's patron episode right now.

38:16SPEAKER- We have found our next ranking

38:17SPEAKERand it is ranking of letters.

38:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't actually know.

38:22SPEAKERI can't find the article that I read,

38:25SPEAKERbut there was a really fascinating article by a linguist,

38:28SPEAKERprobably, God, I can't remember her name,

38:31SPEAKERthe woman who hosts The Illusionists,

38:33SPEAKERwhich is a great linguistics podcast.

38:36SPEAKERI would guess that she linked it on Twitter

38:37SPEAKERlike 10 years ago, probably at this point.

38:40SPEAKERBut there's theory about sounds

38:44SPEAKERand what those sounds do to your brain

38:45SPEAKERwhen you hear them about what makes the letters

38:47SPEAKERcooler than others.

38:48SPEAKERLike S is a cool letter 'cause S is a good sound

38:52SPEAKERand it's like S, it makes good brain things happen

38:56SPEAKERwhen you say it.

38:57SPEAKER- This is sounding like kind of a tautological argument.

39:00SPEAKERIt's like S is a good sound because it's a good sound.

39:02SPEAKER- Also, it has the cool S, which is inherently a cool thing.

39:05SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

39:06SPEAKER- Kids today still love the cool S, man.

39:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, obviously Nvidia figured this out,

39:10SPEAKERwhat, 20 plus years ago?

39:13SPEAKER- Yeah, they have all the cool letters.

39:14SPEAKERThey've got N's and V's.

39:16SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but also like GTX was the,

39:18SPEAKERdid they use that with the first GeForce?

39:20SPEAKERI can't remember. - GeForce GTX, yeah.

39:22SPEAKER- The very first one, 'cause that was 25 years ago.

39:24SPEAKER- Oh.

39:25SPEAKER- I can't remember if they started,

39:26SPEAKERwhen did they start using GTX or was that later?

39:27SPEAKER- GTX might've been this eight series.

39:30SPEAKER- Was that, that was definitely,

39:31SPEAKERI definitely remember when it was like,

39:32SPEAKERwhen they were getting into the 10 series and so forth.

39:35SPEAKER- Let's go.

39:37SPEAKERIt might've been the first time they reset the numbers

39:39SPEAKERis when they switched to GTX.

39:41SPEAKER- Okay, that might be right.

39:42SPEAKERAnd now they're on RTX, obviously, like all good letters.

39:46SPEAKER- Yeah, well, like TX is a good,

39:49SPEAKERlike you think about it, you say TX, it's easy to say.

39:53SPEAKERIt's like, yeah, it's all about how easy stuff is to say.

39:59SPEAKERLike I stumbled on something a minute ago,

40:01SPEAKER'cause it was like three words

40:02SPEAKERthat started with S together and that's hard to say, right?

40:05SPEAKERSo like when you're writing a,

40:08SPEAKERlike I've been writing a lot of scripts

40:09SPEAKERfor these YouTube shorts I do over at PC World lately.

40:12SPEAKERAnd I often spend time thinking about

40:14SPEAKERhow the words are gonna sound when I say them.

40:15SPEAKERAnd if they're hard and awkward, but I can stick them,

40:20SPEAKERthen it's good and it's gonna sound good

40:22SPEAKERand weird and interesting,

40:23SPEAKER'cause people don't normally talk that way

40:26SPEAKERbecause it's hard to do.

40:28SPEAKERAnd yeah, anyway, I think about this stuff a lot.

40:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:32SPEAKERI'm trying to think of other cool letter combinations

40:35SPEAKER'cause most of these don't actually stand for anything.

40:37SPEAKER- No.

40:38SPEAKER- Like RDNA is a pretty good one.

40:41SPEAKER- I think RDNA actually does stand for something.

40:42SPEAKERDoes RDNA stand for something? - Does RDNA stand for something?

40:44SPEAKER- Oh, maybe, I don't know.

40:46SPEAKERWait, radion deoxyribonucleic acid?

40:49SPEAKER- I don't, I think it's the implication of what DNA is.

40:51SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I know.

40:52SPEAKER- It's the juice that makes it special.

40:53SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

40:56SPEAKERI didn't think of too many other cool letter combinations

40:58SPEAKERthat are in common use in tech lately.

41:02SPEAKER- Oh, Esquire had a fun write-up

41:04SPEAKERin which it ranked the letters of the English alphabet

41:06SPEAKERin order of stylishness and popularity.

41:08SPEAKER- Okay, well, not an original idea, clearly.

41:10SPEAKERAlso, I don't think I'm funny enough

41:12SPEAKERto pull off a ranking of the alphabet anyways.

41:15SPEAKERMaybe better left to the professionals.

41:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know.

41:19SPEAKERMaybe we should get a guest in for that.

41:20SPEAKER- Sure.

41:22SPEAKERI came up with NXL for next lander.

41:25SPEAKERWhat do you think of?

41:26SPEAKER- NXL is good.

41:27SPEAKER- Okay, I thought that flowed pretty well.

41:29SPEAKER- Yeah, you can say it.

41:30SPEAKERIt like, it implies the thing that you're talking about.

41:33SPEAKERIt's a good branding thing.

41:34SPEAKER- Yes, yes, yes.

41:35SPEAKERNXT, NXT was already in use, so.

41:38SPEAKER- But why didn't you come with something good

41:39SPEAKERlike that for tech pod?

41:41SPEAKER- I don't know.

41:42SPEAKER- BPD or BWPD.

41:45SPEAKER- I can tell you, I have in my R clone set up,

41:48SPEAKERI have all of my cloud buckets kind of abbreviated.

41:53SPEAKERI use TPD for tech pod.

41:56SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds like it might be,

41:58SPEAKERI don't wanna be part of the PD.

41:59SPEAKER- D, D is not a cool letter, I'm gonna say.

42:03SPEAKERTPD. - No, I don't think D,

42:04SPEAKERyou don't ever want Ds.

42:06SPEAKER- TPD sounds like it's describing some kind of disorder.

42:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:11SPEAKER- Maybe, maybe better not.

42:12SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I don't want the tech pod disease.

42:16SPEAKER- TPO?

42:18SPEAKER- TP, mm.

42:20SPEAKER- I'm not so sure about that either.

42:21SPEAKER- What about T pod?

42:22SPEAKER- T pod.

42:23SPEAKER- That sounds like it. - Yeah, it works.

42:24SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe, I don't know.

42:26SPEAKER- I think you have to pronounce all the letters out

42:28SPEAKERone by one for this experimental work.

42:30SPEAKER- TPOD. - Yeah.

42:32SPEAKER- Yeah. - If it's a word

42:34SPEAKERthat is pronounceable,

42:35SPEAKERthen that's a different category entirely.

42:37SPEAKERAnyway, we've probably talked enough about this subject.

42:42SPEAKERLet's see, question from Lunchbox 700.

42:46SPEAKERI have an Apple Watch Series 9,

42:47SPEAKERit's the first Apple Watch I've had.

42:49SPEAKERAlmost a year into ownership,

42:51SPEAKERI still struggle with finding apps.

42:53SPEAKERI don't even know what I want

42:54SPEAKERand the curation on the App Store is pretty minimal.

42:57SPEAKERWhat apps beyond the preloaded stuff do you use

42:59SPEAKERand how do you find out about new and must have apps?

43:02SPEAKERI don't go looking for Apple Watch apps at all.

43:04SPEAKERLike everything I use on there is a derivative of a phone app

43:08SPEAKERit's all stuff that has trickled down from

43:11SPEAKERlike my two-factor authenticator, for example,

43:14SPEAKERor Overcasts, or I'm trying to think

43:17SPEAKERwhat other third-party apps I use on the watch.

43:19SPEAKER- I think Libby has an app maybe,

43:20SPEAKERor maybe I wished that Libby had an app

43:22SPEAKER'cause I was listening to an audio book the other day.

43:24SPEAKER- Oh, oh, for, okay.

43:25SPEAKERDude, don't even get me started

43:26SPEAKERabout getting audio onto an Apple Watch.

43:28SPEAKER- It's, well, you know the secret, right?

43:30SPEAKER- Are you talking about just to control

43:31SPEAKERwhat's playing on your phone from your watch?

43:33SPEAKER- Well, no, 'cause that's just the normal,

43:36SPEAKERthat's an iOS feature.

43:37SPEAKER- I'm talking about having Libby copy the audio book

43:40SPEAKERthat I'm listening to onto the watch.

43:42SPEAKER- Yes, that's what's, that's what is a nightmare.

43:44SPEAKER- No, it's easy.

43:45SPEAKERThe secret is you turn off Bluetooth and then you sync it.

43:47SPEAKER- No, I do that.

43:48SPEAKERIt's still a pain in the ass though.

43:49SPEAKER- It is a pain in the ass.

43:50SPEAKER- There are still, like with Overcast,

43:52SPEAKERfirst of all, like Overcast won't sync

43:54SPEAKERfrom the phone to the watch automatically.

43:56SPEAKERLike, oh, it's supposed to,

43:57SPEAKERbut like sometimes I have to hit refresh half a dozen times

44:00SPEAKERand it still doesn't go.

44:01SPEAKERAnd then I come back later and it's finally decided to sync.

44:03SPEAKER- How often do you go out with just the watch?

44:04SPEAKERI hardly ever go out with just the watch.

44:06SPEAKER- Like almost every day.

44:07SPEAKER- Oh, there you go.

44:08SPEAKER- I go out to exercise.

44:09SPEAKERI don't want to bring my phone.

44:10SPEAKER- That's an interesting idea.

44:12SPEAKER- Which is like half the reason I got the watch, frankly,

44:14SPEAKERwas I don't want the phone bouncing around in my pocket

44:17SPEAKERwhen I'm out trying to get some exercise.

44:19SPEAKER- We get that.

44:20SPEAKER- You have to, you have to wait,

44:21SPEAKERyou have to finally wait for that sync to happen

44:23SPEAKERor let the podcast start downloading over Bluetooth,

44:26SPEAKERwhich takes forever,

44:27SPEAKERand then turn off Bluetooth in the settings

44:30SPEAKERand it'll fall back to wifi, which is like 10 times faster.

44:34SPEAKER- Yeah, the wifi is way faster.

44:35SPEAKER- And Marco's the overcast guy, right?

44:38SPEAKER- Marco Arma, yeah.

44:40SPEAKER- I've seen him say those are all like

44:42SPEAKERApple API limitations, like it's all imposed by Apple.

44:45SPEAKERThey're very restrictive about what they will

44:47SPEAKERand will not let the watch do.

44:49SPEAKER- Well, he's also said that there's,

44:51SPEAKERhe also just redid overcast, basically.

44:54SPEAKERHe rewrote the main thing.

44:55SPEAKERAnd I think that the watch thing is a better,

44:58SPEAKERis part of the list of things that are going to get improved

45:01SPEAKERwith this new infrastructure.

45:03SPEAKER- That may be true.

45:04SPEAKER- Although I did have overcast Mark A podcast

45:06SPEAKERthat I was about 10 minutes into as played.

45:09SPEAKER- That makes me crazy.

45:10SPEAKER- When I was in the middle of a long walk

45:14SPEAKERand there is no way to just single tap and tell it,

45:17SPEAKERthis is not played, this is the, I was listening to this,

45:19SPEAKERplease let me start it over.

45:21SPEAKERIt literally will not let you play it over again.

45:23SPEAKER- Oh, that sucks.

45:24SPEAKER- Like, you know what I had to,

45:26SPEAKERwhat I had to do was load it up at the very end of the file

45:29SPEAKERand then sit there and hitting the 10 seconds

45:31SPEAKERrewind button about 5,000 times.

45:34SPEAKERBack to where I was.

45:35SPEAKER- The place that it hoses me

45:37SPEAKERis if you accidentally press the button,

45:39SPEAKERthe fast forward or rewind button,

45:40SPEAKERit accelerates the longer you hold it down.

45:43SPEAKERI don't know if it does that on the watch,

45:44SPEAKERbut it does that on the phone.

45:45SPEAKER- Interesting.

45:46SPEAKER- So I've like, I've blasted all the way

45:48SPEAKERthrough the end of an episode before, which stinks.

45:50SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, sorry.

45:51SPEAKERThis is just kind of digressing from your question,

45:53SPEAKERbut yeah, I don't actually know of really any watch only

45:57SPEAKERor watch first apps to recommend because like I said,

46:01SPEAKERI'm just using everything that is interfacing with my phone.

46:04SPEAKER- I'm opening my watch app right now

46:06SPEAKERso I can see what I have installed on my phone,

46:08SPEAKERbut I don't think like I have 1Password and Authy,

46:12SPEAKERwhich I never use.

46:13SPEAKERI have FantasticOwl, which I have just to have

46:16SPEAKERcomplications on.

46:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:18SPEAKER- I have Home Assistant, which is a pain in the ass

46:20SPEAKERto set up and I've never used.

46:21SPEAKERI have the app for my car, which I do use

46:24SPEAKER'cause it's cool to start your car from your watch

46:25SPEAKER'cause like James Bond shit.

46:27SPEAKER- That is pretty cool.

46:28SPEAKER- I have Paprika 3 'cause it lets me do timers.

46:32SPEAKERIt lets me show timers that are running in the food app,

46:35SPEAKERbut since I always use Paprika on the iPad,

46:37SPEAKERit doesn't matter.

46:39SPEAKERAnd then I have a bazillion things here

46:41SPEAKERthat I could install, but I never have, so.

46:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:44SPEAKER- Yeah, the only time I install an app for something

46:47SPEAKERis if I want the complication on the watch face.

46:50SPEAKER- Right, yeah, the watch is really kind of

46:52SPEAKERa utility device for me.

46:54SPEAKERAlthough I do use the Apple News app on there,

46:56SPEAKERjust like if I'm standing in the kitchen waiting

46:58SPEAKERfor some water to boil or something like that.

47:01SPEAKERLike I'll just stand there and read the headlines

47:02SPEAKERon my watch 'cause I don't carry my phone around

47:04SPEAKERto my pocket all day at home.

47:06SPEAKER- I just, if I'm someplace without my phone

47:08SPEAKERand I have five minutes to kill,

47:09SPEAKERI think about the pointlessness of everything.

47:11SPEAKER- That works too.

47:12SPEAKER- Existential dread fills that time for me.

47:15SPEAKER- Ironically, I've kind of embraced

47:16SPEAKERthat sort of raw dogging philosophy

47:18SPEAKERwhen I am out with my phone, like more and more these days.

47:21SPEAKERLike if I'm on BART or the bus or something,

47:22SPEAKERI just kind of like look out the window

47:24SPEAKERand take in the sites rather than sit there on my phone

47:28SPEAKER'cause it just feels like at some point

47:31SPEAKERI started feeling, I don't know if guilty is the right word,

47:34SPEAKERbut I just started having reservations

47:36SPEAKERabout constantly just having my nose buried in my phone

47:38SPEAKEReverywhere I go all the time.

47:40SPEAKERIt's just like, I feel like I should maybe

47:41SPEAKERbe a little more aware of my surroundings

47:43SPEAKERand just kind of like take the world in.

47:46SPEAKER- I was on BART tonight and I was looking around at people

47:48SPEAKERand I made unfortunate eye contact with a lot of people

47:50SPEAKERand I'm ready to go back to looking at the phone.

47:51SPEAKER- Fair. - Exclusively.

47:53SPEAKER- That is fair.

47:54SPEAKERAnyway, I mentioned the Apple News app on there.

47:57SPEAKERIt only shows you like the most recent seven headlines

47:59SPEAKERand there's no way to change that, so.

48:01SPEAKER- Do you have to pay to get that or is it just the freebies?

48:03SPEAKER- No, but it's just summaries.

48:04SPEAKERYou can't read the article.

48:05SPEAKERIt's just all you can do is bookmark it

48:07SPEAKERfor reading later on an actual device.

48:09SPEAKER- That would make me crazy.

48:10SPEAKER- Right, so I was looking for something like that

48:12SPEAKERthat has a little more actual meat to it,

48:14SPEAKERlike a news app on the watch,

48:16SPEAKERbut I haven't been able to find anything.

48:18SPEAKER- I don't wanna read my watch.

48:20SPEAKERI just want it to tell me when people are texting me.

48:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's like I said,

48:24SPEAKERit's just the rare occasion that I'm just like

48:26SPEAKERin the other room for five minutes.

48:29SPEAKER- I use the walkie-talkie thing a lot with the kiddo.

48:34SPEAKER- Does that just go over iCloud?

48:37SPEAKER- It goes over the internet.

48:38SPEAKERIt basically, I think it sends a secret iMessage

48:41SPEAKERthat doesn't display that says,

48:42SPEAKER"Hey, you wanna open a point-to-point connection?"

48:45SPEAKERAnd then you have like a press-to-talk channel.

48:47SPEAKER- Oh, that's neat.

48:48SPEAKER- I wish it was on the phone too.

48:49SPEAKERIt's annoying that it's just on the watch.

48:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

48:52SPEAKERAll right, here's a kind of a somewhat

48:54SPEAKERslightly related question from Teal.

48:56SPEAKERWhat's your most successful way of discovering new music?

48:59SPEAKERI'll let you answer this

49:00SPEAKER'cause I don't really listen to a lot of new music.

49:03SPEAKER- Oh, I have two really good ways.

49:04SPEAKERI have an 11-year-old daughter

49:06SPEAKERand teen pop is pretty good right now.

49:10SPEAKERI don't know if you're aware,

49:11SPEAKERbut there's a thing happening with female pop vocalists.

49:16SPEAKERThey're quite good.

49:17SPEAKERAnd then I have a friend, Mike,

49:18SPEAKERwho's really good at music stuff,

49:20SPEAKERand Frank are also good at music stuff,

49:23SPEAKERand shout-outs to Mike and Frank.

49:26SPEAKERThey often share music in a Discord,

49:28SPEAKERwhich I then go and add to my Apple music,

49:30SPEAKERand then I listen to it, and sometimes I like it,

49:32SPEAKERand sometimes I don't.

49:33SPEAKER- All right.

49:34SPEAKER- And if you do that for a little while,

49:36SPEAKERthen your programmatic feeds on Apple Music or Spotify

49:40SPEAKERor Tidal, I guess, I don't know,

49:43SPEAKERstart recommending other stuff that's like that,

49:45SPEAKERso it's pretty good.

49:46SPEAKER- Sure.

49:46SPEAKERSo children or friends?

49:48SPEAKER- Children and friends.

49:49SPEAKER- Yeah, all right.

49:51SPEAKER- It's good to have a friend who's really into music.

49:54SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong about that.

49:56SPEAKERWho's good in teen pop these days?

49:59SPEAKER- Well, I mean, Taylor Swift, real popular right now,

50:02SPEAKERbut like Olivia Rodrigo's pretty good,

50:04SPEAKERSabrina Carpenter's pretty good.

50:06SPEAKER- Those were two of my guesses,

50:07SPEAKERso I mean, granted, that's all just from time spent

50:09SPEAKERon Twitter, but...

50:10SPEAKER- Charli XCX did a fucking great album this summer.

50:15SPEAKERSZA had some bangers last year, earlier this year, I guess.

50:19SPEAKERI don't know, time's immutable at this point.

50:22SPEAKER- Sure.

50:23SPEAKER- But yeah, like, it's good stuff.

50:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:25SPEAKER- All right, here's a quick little tip from last week

50:28SPEAKERfrom Desmo001 regarding the sideways prong.

50:32SPEAKERYou remember when we talked about the standard...

50:35SPEAKER- There's a bazillion North American prongs

50:37SPEAKERthat I didn't know about.

50:38SPEAKER- Yes, so you're...

50:41SPEAKER- Also, we all have our plugs upside down.

50:44SPEAKER- Oh?

50:45SPEAKER- Yeah, they're all supposed to be not a face.

50:46SPEAKERThey're supposed to be the two down

50:48SPEAKERis what the standard says.

50:49SPEAKER- Wait, really?

50:50SPEAKER- That's what the person, somebody linked it on Discord,

50:52SPEAKERso I assume it's, I can only assume it's true.

50:54SPEAKERThis entire nation is out of spec then

50:56SPEAKERbecause I have never seen them placed that way.

50:59SPEAKER- If somebody put prongs in for me upside down,

51:02SPEAKERI would make them flip them 'cause it would look weird.

51:04SPEAKER- Yep, all right.

51:06SPEAKERWell, here's an explanation from Desmo001.

51:09SPEAKERNormal outlets can handle 15 amps,

51:11SPEAKERbut the outlets with the horizontal prong can supply 20 amps.

51:15SPEAKERIf a device requires 20 amps and won't run on 15,

51:17SPEAKERthe plug will have the sideways prong,

51:19SPEAKERso you can only plug it into a 20 amp outlet.

51:22SPEAKERThe wiring determines what amperage the outlet can be.

51:25SPEAKER14 gauge for 15 amps and 12 gauge for 20 amps.

51:28SPEAKERSmaller gauge means larger wire.

51:31SPEAKERSo you can't just put a 20 amp breaker and call it good.

51:33SPEAKERHope that helps.

51:35SPEAKER- I am gonna say I have a lot of 20 amp breakers in my house

51:39SPEAKERand I don't have any of those weird sideways plugs.

51:42SPEAKER- Interesting, all right, well, I'm prepared at least.

51:45SPEAKER- I mean, look, I can do all sorts of stuff.

51:49SPEAKERIt's also worth mentioning that last month,

51:52SPEAKERor I guess it was last month now,

51:54SPEAKERwhen we were talking about volts and amps through wall warts

51:56SPEAKERand what would make the magic smoke come out,

51:58SPEAKERI got it backwards.

52:02SPEAKER- Wait, which part?

52:05SPEAKER- Well, I said that either volts or amps,

52:08SPEAKERif it was too high, would make the magic smoke come out,

52:10SPEAKERbut I can't remember what I said now.

52:11SPEAKER- Okay, I was waiting for something ominous.

52:14SPEAKERThis sounded ominous,

52:15SPEAKERlike you got some core piece of electrical information

52:18SPEAKERbackwards and somebody burned their house down or something.

52:21SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, just about 15 people wrote in

52:23SPEAKERand it's been a while,

52:24SPEAKERso I meant to put it at the start of the episode

52:26SPEAKERand I forgot until we started talking about this.

52:28SPEAKER- Okay.

52:29SPEAKER- But yeah, the idea that all of our plugs are upside down

52:33SPEAKERand the ground is supposed to be at the top

52:34SPEAKERis shocking to me and I can't even cope with that.

52:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:41SPEAKEROkay, question from VoltageX, appropriate username.

52:47SPEAKER- Oh, this is probably bad.

52:49SPEAKER- This has probably been asked before,

52:50SPEAKERbut what note-taking and knowledge management things

52:52SPEAKERdo you use, Obsidian, OneNote, ImportantDoNotLose.txt?

52:57SPEAKERI am not too far off from ImportantDoNotLose.txt,

53:02SPEAKERexcept that I use SimpleNote.

53:04SPEAKERI've been using SimpleNote for extremely forever.

53:07SPEAKERSo my to-do list is just a text file

53:10SPEAKERstored in SimpleNote basically,

53:11SPEAKERwhich at least it's cross-platform,

53:14SPEAKERbut I've kind of been meaning to get off of SimpleNote

53:16SPEAKERfor a while now 'cause I'm kind of surprised

53:18SPEAKERthey're still around and I keep waiting for my whole.

53:21SPEAKER- I think it's open source, isn't it?

53:22SPEAKER- SimpleNote?

53:23SPEAKERNo, I don't think so.

53:25SPEAKER- I feel like it's an open source thing

53:27SPEAKERthat lives on top of,

53:28SPEAKER'cause isn't it Joplin, a SimpleNote client too?

53:31SPEAKER- That may be the case,

53:32SPEAKERbut SimpleNote itself is a commercial service,

53:34SPEAKERlike they are still a company.

53:36SPEAKER- Oh.

53:37SPEAKER- Oh, they're part of automatic apparently.

53:40SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

53:40SPEAKER- To talk with, you know, boy.

53:42SPEAKER- WordPress.

53:43SPEAKER- We're not even gonna get into that, are we?

53:45SPEAKER- I don't think we should.

53:46SPEAKER(laughing)

53:47SPEAKER- I think it's probably.

53:48SPEAKER- I know just enough about that to get myself

53:49SPEAKERinto real trouble and not know what I'm talking about, so.

53:51SPEAKER- The ongoing drama in the WordPress community

53:54SPEAKERis probably a whole episode unto itself.

53:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

53:57SPEAKER- But I also am not really qualified to speak to it.

54:01SPEAKERAnyway, I don't know, maybe SimpleNote will not go away.

54:03SPEAKERI've just kind of,

54:04SPEAKERI don't know what their business model is.

54:06SPEAKER- They charge for syncing if you don't use Dropbox to sync.

54:09SPEAKER- Okay.

54:11SPEAKERAnyway, I've been storing text in SimpleNote since 2010,

54:15SPEAKERI think 2011, and it's still there.

54:17SPEAKERSo I guess that's something.

54:19SPEAKERBut yeah, I have thought about Obsidian or Notion, right?

54:23SPEAKERIs the other big one, right?

54:24SPEAKER- So I use Notion about, I don't know.

54:27SPEAKERWe talked about this a long time ago,

54:29SPEAKERbefore this podcast even.

54:31SPEAKERI used to use SimpleNote and it ate a shitload of notes

54:34SPEAKERone time on a bad sync and just wiped them out.

54:37SPEAKERAnd that was the end of my relationship with SimpleNote.

54:39SPEAKERI've gone through all of them.

54:40SPEAKERI used Evernote, I used Notion, I used Obsidian.

54:43SPEAKER- I think Obsidian's pretty is of,

54:47SPEAKERthe problem I have is that fundamentally I want something

54:49SPEAKERthat I can use with the iPad and the pencil

54:52SPEAKERand draw and write on that will sync to a Windows PC.

54:56SPEAKERAnd as near as I can tell, that just doesn't exist.

54:58SPEAKER- Yes, that is the pain of being in the Apple ecosystem,

55:02SPEAKERbut still being a frequent Windows user

55:04SPEAKERis that there's a ton of stuff that is kind of just works

55:07SPEAKERacross all Apple devices.

55:09SPEAKERAnd if only it would also just work to your Windows machine,

55:11SPEAKEReverything would be perfect.

55:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I really like, what is it?

55:15SPEAKERFreeNote, that thing that they do,

55:17SPEAKERor free camera it's called, it's an Apple,

55:21SPEAKERit's an iPad only, maybe it's on both now,

55:23SPEAKERbut it's an iPad app that you basically get infinite canvas

55:26SPEAKERto draw on and it's fabulous.

55:28SPEAKER- Sounds neat.

55:29SPEAKER- So yeah, but, and it syncs across all your stuff

55:31SPEAKERthrough iCloud, blah, blah, blah, really, really easy,

55:34SPEAKERbut there's no viewers on Windows and there's no tool

55:36SPEAKERthat lets you use it on Windows, so it's useless to me.

55:38SPEAKER- Yep, yep, yep.

55:40SPEAKERI don't know if that's really an answer to that question.

55:42SPEAKER- No, but I mean, what I will say is we used Confluence

55:45SPEAKERat Stray Bomb Bay, I used Google Keep with Foo,

55:51SPEAKERwe used that to share notes and documentation

55:53SPEAKERacross the company.

55:55SPEAKERI really like Notion a lot.

55:57SPEAKERTheir free version is pretty good and fully featured enough

56:01SPEAKERto use for real personal note-taking,

56:04SPEAKERbut if you wanna blow it out and use it for everything

56:07SPEAKERfrom task management and deliverables and stuff like that

56:09SPEAKERand have waterfall charts and the whole deal

56:12SPEAKERwith nested multiple steps of finishing and requirements

56:17SPEAKERand all that stuff like you would with Jira or Trello

56:20SPEAKERor something like that, it's really good.

56:22SPEAKERI also kinda like Trello for note-taking, honestly.

56:24SPEAKERTrello's quite good and you do the cards

56:26SPEAKERand put each topic on the card,

56:29SPEAKERbut it's definitely not made for that.

56:32SPEAKERI wouldn't mind having a thing that is like Trello

56:35SPEAKERthat is a note-taking stack, basically.

56:39SPEAKER- Interesting, I never thought about using Trello that way.

56:42SPEAKERYou may have just convinced me to give Notion a try.

56:45SPEAKER'Cause I assume it's got some built-in facility

56:47SPEAKERfor a proper to-do list, like check off type functionality.

56:51SPEAKER- Yeah, well, it's basically a Wiki and it's all command,

56:56SPEAKERit's all like typing-based.

56:57SPEAKERSo when you wanna make a new page off of a page,

57:00SPEAKERyou just type /page.

57:01SPEAKER- I like it.

57:02SPEAKER- And then it takes you to the new page

57:04SPEAKERand the link from the old page becomes the title.

57:08SPEAKERThe title of the new page becomes the link

57:09SPEAKERfrom the old page and you can kind of organize them

57:12SPEAKERand move them around.

57:13SPEAKERYou can make task lists, you can put dates on the tasks,

57:16SPEAKERstuff like that.

57:17SPEAKERSo yeah, it works pretty well.

57:19SPEAKERThere's some weird, it's weird sometimes

57:22SPEAKERand it's definitely like a programmer

57:24SPEAKERkind of like software development productivity tool,

57:28SPEAKERnot necessarily like a grocery list tool,

57:31SPEAKERbut it's quite good.

57:33SPEAKERHonestly, the other thing I do is when we do meal planning

57:35SPEAKERin Paprika, I really use their grocery shopping functionality

57:40SPEAKERa lot 'cause you tell it what you just always keep stock

57:42SPEAKERof like sugar and flour and eggs and stuff like that.

57:45SPEAKERAnd then it'll generate a list of,

57:48SPEAKERand sometimes the quantities are stupid,

57:50SPEAKERbut it's like, you can eyeball that

57:52SPEAKERand you know that you need to get basil

57:54SPEAKERand bread and whatever else.

57:56SPEAKER- Sure, sounds useful.

57:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it's good.

57:59SPEAKERPaprika is pretty good.

58:00SPEAKER- I have been finding, I'm keeping even that crappy

58:03SPEAKERlittle text to-do list has been helping me tremendously

58:06SPEAKERin getting things done lately.

58:08SPEAKER- Oh, it's like as soon as you have more

58:11SPEAKERthan you can keep track of at a time,

58:12SPEAKERit reduces my mental load a lot.

58:15SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, for sure.

58:16SPEAKERLike I've always kind of prided myself

58:17SPEAKERon not having to take notes or keep track of things.

58:19SPEAKERLike when I reviewed games, I never took notes on anything.

58:21SPEAKERIt was all just from memory.

58:23SPEAKERBut at some point I've got enough to do at this point

58:26SPEAKERthese days that I just like,

58:27SPEAKERI cannot keep everything in my head at this point.

58:30SPEAKER- Well, for me, it's just that I don't,

58:31SPEAKERI would rather, I didn't often forget things,

58:36SPEAKERbut I would much rather spend my time thinking

58:38SPEAKERabout what's next than worrying

58:39SPEAKERthat I'd forgotten something,

58:41SPEAKERwhich is what always was the case, so.

58:43SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

58:45SPEAKER- It is not a sign of weakness to write things down.

58:47SPEAKERIf you don't write things down, they don't happen.

58:49SPEAKER- No, in my case, it was just I was too lazy

58:51SPEAKERto want to manage it.

58:52SPEAKERLike I just didn't want to have to like,

58:54SPEAKERit felt like more work, but not doing the work

58:58SPEAKERmakes things harder.

58:59SPEAKER- And when we were doing editorial,

59:01SPEAKERlike straight editorial jobs,

59:02SPEAKERI often would move straight from one thing to the next.

59:05SPEAKERSo it wasn't like I had,

59:07SPEAKERlike I knew that I had five things hanging over me,

59:09SPEAKERbut they were five well-established things

59:10SPEAKERand they were on a list

59:11SPEAKERthat somebody else was keeping track of.

59:13SPEAKERSo I didn't have to have like sub deliverables or whatever.

59:17SPEAKERAnd it's like more complicated now.

59:19SPEAKER- That's yes, for sure.

59:20SPEAKERI mean, like not coincidentally,

59:22SPEAKERa lot of the kind of busy work administrative stuff

59:25SPEAKERI'm talking about has to do with part owning two companies

59:28SPEAKERand all of the tiny little tasks

59:31SPEAKERthat endlessly pop up around that.

59:33SPEAKER- There are a million one-off things.

59:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:38SPEAKERAll right.

59:39SPEAKERNot that I'm complaining to be fair.

59:41SPEAKERIt still beats working for a giant company.

59:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:45SPEAKER- All right.

59:46SPEAKERI should have rolled this into the electricity talk earlier,

59:48SPEAKERbut I'm going to attempt to answer this.

59:52SPEAKERRoland Stasic wrote in.

59:55SPEAKERI occasionally see the recommendation

59:57SPEAKERthat you replace surge protectors every so many years

1:00:00SPEAKERbecause their protective ability wears out

1:00:01SPEAKERor something like that.

1:00:03SPEAKERI have probably 10 to 12 surge protectors in my house

1:00:05SPEAKERand they're all at least five years old.

1:00:08SPEAKERIt would cost me more time and money

1:00:09SPEAKERthan I would like to replace all of these.

1:00:12SPEAKERDo normal people using surge protectors

1:00:13SPEAKERunder normal conditions

1:00:14SPEAKERreally need to regularly toss out surge protectors?

1:00:17SPEAKEROr is this just the sort of thing

1:00:19SPEAKERthat only particularly sensitive

1:00:20SPEAKERand fussy people should care about?

1:00:22SPEAKERPlease keep in mind in your answer

1:00:24SPEAKERthat I am absolutely not buying 10 new surge protectors

1:00:26SPEAKERno matter what you say.

1:00:28SPEAKER- Okay.

1:00:29SPEAKERSo the reason you do this

1:00:31SPEAKERis that there's a maximum number of joules

1:00:33SPEAKERthat the thing that makes it a surge protector can absorb.

1:00:36SPEAKER- Right, yeah.

1:00:37SPEAKERAnd you can find that in the specs.

1:00:38SPEAKERI think I may have talked about it a little bit

1:00:40SPEAKERand like the, my parents' basement,

1:00:42SPEAKERlike the nice surge protector they had got flooded out

1:00:45SPEAKERand they're probably going to replace,

1:00:46SPEAKERbut, or maybe when I bought that.

1:00:47SPEAKERAnyway, long story short,

1:00:48SPEAKERlike when I bought that surge protector for them,

1:00:51SPEAKERI found in the specs how many joules

1:00:52SPEAKERthe surge protector was rated to absorb.

1:00:55SPEAKERAnd my understanding has always been

1:00:58SPEAKERfor X number of joules that are absorbed

1:00:59SPEAKERin the surge protector,

1:01:00SPEAKERit loses that much capacity to continue absorbing, right?

1:01:03SPEAKERLike, I mean, it's common sense, right?

1:01:05SPEAKERBased on the specs is that the more it,

1:01:07SPEAKERif it's only rated to absorb so many joules,

1:01:10SPEAKERthen once it's done that,

1:01:11SPEAKERit's going to lose this ability to absorb surges.

1:01:14SPEAKER- That's my understanding as well.

1:01:16SPEAKERAnd, but I mean, the real answer to this question is

1:01:18SPEAKERwhat do you use surge protectors for?

1:01:20SPEAKER- Right, like where do you live

1:01:22SPEAKERand what are the conditions there?

1:01:23SPEAKER- Well, but even more, okay, yeah.

1:01:25SPEAKERSo if you live in Florida

1:01:26SPEAKERwhere there's a lot of lightning and storms

1:01:28SPEAKERand there's surges through the power system

1:01:31SPEAKERmultiple times a week sometimes,

1:01:35SPEAKERversus living where we live in Northern California

1:01:36SPEAKERwhere we have maybe one thunderstorm a year,

1:01:39SPEAKERit's a, you're in a different threat zone.

1:01:42SPEAKERBut the real thing you need to look at

1:01:44SPEAKERis what you have plugged into your surge protectors.

1:01:46SPEAKER'Cause a lot of people these days use a surge protector

1:01:49SPEAKERas a way to turn one plug into multiple plugs

1:01:52SPEAKERand the shit you're plugging into it doesn't matter, right?

1:01:55SPEAKERLike if you torch a $5 iPhone charger, it's no big deal.

1:02:00SPEAKERLike go nuts.

1:02:03SPEAKERIf you have a $20,000 home theater setup

1:02:05SPEAKERhooked into a surge protector,

1:02:07SPEAKERI would probably replace that one every three or four years.

1:02:10SPEAKER- Yes.

1:02:11SPEAKER- Mainly because if you buy a nice surge protector

1:02:14SPEAKERyou also get insurance for surge destruction

1:02:17SPEAKERon that hardware.

1:02:18SPEAKERAnd that's worth 50 bucks.

1:02:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:22SPEAKER- But yeah, I don't, like my computer has a currently

1:02:25SPEAKERupdated surge protector plugged in,

1:02:28SPEAKERbut that's pretty much it.

1:02:30SPEAKERThe TV's cheap to replace at this point.

1:02:33SPEAKER- Well, yours is 'cause it's very old.

1:02:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, but like-

1:02:37SPEAKER- Depends on if you've got a nice high end of lid

1:02:39SPEAKERor something, I would definitely still put that

1:02:40SPEAKERon a good surge protector.

1:02:42SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, but if you have a $400 high sense

1:02:44SPEAKERthen who cares, you're gonna,

1:02:46SPEAKERreplacing the surge protectors every five years

1:02:48SPEAKERwill cost more than the TV's worth three times in.

1:02:50SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:51SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, the only stuff I've got plugged

1:02:53SPEAKERinto good surge protectors around here

1:02:55SPEAKERis all my computer stuff, TV, game consoles,

1:02:57SPEAKERlike stuff I really don't want to lose.

1:02:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:00SPEAKER- Like even these monitors, like monitors and camera

1:03:03SPEAKERand stuff on my desk are not plugged into,

1:03:05SPEAKERlike they're plugged into old, modern price ones

1:03:07SPEAKERthat are, I don't know how many years old.

1:03:10SPEAKER- One of the things I've been told is if you have

1:03:14SPEAKERthe kind of surge protector that has a fuse in it,

1:03:16SPEAKERyou can just replace the fuse and that solves the problem.

1:03:19SPEAKER- I haven't had a surge protector with a fuse

1:03:21SPEAKERin like 15 years probably.

1:03:23SPEAKER- Yeah, the little bit, I tried to research this

1:03:25SPEAKERand there are a lot of like conflicting pieces

1:03:27SPEAKERof information out there, or like, you know,

1:03:28SPEAKERyou want to hear it from a stronger authority

1:03:31SPEAKERthan, I won't name any names, but some of the sites

1:03:34SPEAKERthat come up with this information

1:03:35SPEAKERthat I don't necessarily want to trust immediately.

1:03:39SPEAKERBut I think the ones with fuses are just power strips

1:03:42SPEAKERand not surge protectors, is that correct?

1:03:45SPEAKEROr do I have that wrong?

1:03:46SPEAKER- That I don't know.

1:03:47SPEAKERBecause like I found a guide on UL, like no less than,

1:03:51SPEAKERwhat does that stand for?

1:03:52SPEAKERUnderwriters Laboratory?

1:03:53SPEAKER- Underwriters Laboratory, yeah.

1:03:54SPEAKER- Like the UL, where, you know, the UL logo

1:03:57SPEAKERthat you see on every electronics device you own

1:03:59SPEAKERis assuming it's actually been tested.

1:04:01SPEAKERLike they have a page on their site

1:04:03SPEAKERthat is kind of a good surge protector explainer,

1:04:05SPEAKERbut they just happen to not address the subject

1:04:08SPEAKERof when should you replace your surge protector?

1:04:10SPEAKERSo I can't quite comment there, but I thought that,

1:04:14SPEAKERI thought what they said was that a power strip

1:04:16SPEAKERwithout surge protection has a fuse you can replace.

1:04:19SPEAKERI could be wrong.

1:04:20SPEAKER- Maybe.

1:04:22SPEAKERThe other thing, the other thing that,

1:04:24SPEAKERso it's interesting 'cause Consumer Reports

1:04:26SPEAKERdoesn't actually have a recommendation

1:04:28SPEAKERabout how often you need to replace these,

1:04:30SPEAKERwhich I was kind of surprised by, I expected them to.

1:04:33SPEAKERBut they do say if you live someplace

1:04:35SPEAKERwhere there's a whole boatload of lightning,

1:04:37SPEAKERlike Central Florida, you can get

1:04:39SPEAKERa whole home surge protector that goes on your breaker box

1:04:42SPEAKERand costs 500 bucks.

1:04:43SPEAKER- Interesting.

1:04:44SPEAKERAnd that might be the better alternative.

1:04:46SPEAKER- Yeah, actually that's not the worst suggestion, I guess.

1:04:51SPEAKER500 bucks for a whole house is not actually that bad.

1:04:53SPEAKER- Yeah, also UPSs serve a similar purpose

1:04:56SPEAKERand the batteries in them die over time,

1:05:02SPEAKERbut I don't know what the surge protection situation

1:05:04SPEAKERis there.

1:05:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I might actually, now that you mentioned it,

1:05:07SPEAKERmy cyber power is coming up on five years in January.

1:05:10SPEAKER- Time.

1:05:11SPEAKER- Probably time to check the battery in that thing.

1:05:15SPEAKERI understand the battery costs about

1:05:17SPEAKERas much as the whole unit.

1:05:18SPEAKER- The battery is the cost, yeah.

1:05:21SPEAKER- Anyway, I think I mentioned this before,

1:05:24SPEAKERbut that nice trip light that I had my parents get,

1:05:26SPEAKERand I actually have one here on my TV and consoles too,

1:05:29SPEAKERhas a light on it, a surge protection light.

1:05:32SPEAKER- You're not supposed to trust those, right?

1:05:33SPEAKER- Well, I don't know, you tell me.

1:05:35SPEAKER- I've always been told that you're not supposed

1:05:36SPEAKERto trust those.

1:05:37SPEAKER- I did hear, I mean, we talked about last week,

1:05:39SPEAKERI got a couple of comments from like electricians,

1:05:42SPEAKERpeople that work on stuff professionally

1:05:44SPEAKERthat said they trust trip light pretty well.

1:05:47SPEAKERSo I would hope that light is somewhat trustworthy.

1:05:50SPEAKERI mean, yes.

1:05:51SPEAKERIs it valid to question whether the people

1:05:53SPEAKERwho have an interest in selling you more surge protectors

1:05:55SPEAKERare honest about whether your surge protector

1:05:58SPEAKERis still working or not?

1:05:59SPEAKERI'm sure.

1:06:00SPEAKER- So this is a guide from an electric company that says,

1:06:05SPEAKERhey, the lights will tell you when they need to be replaced.

1:06:07SPEAKERAnd if it's an expensive one, they're useful.

1:06:09SPEAKERAnd if it's a cheap one, they're not.

1:06:10SPEAKER- Okay, what is the cutoff for expensive?

1:06:13SPEAKER'Cause that trip light was about 50 bucks.

1:06:14SPEAKER- They do not say.

1:06:15SPEAKERI would think a trip light is probably counts

1:06:17SPEAKERas an expensive one.

1:06:18SPEAKERI think a cheap one is one that is $5 at Walmart

1:06:21SPEAKERor $10 at Walmart.

1:06:22SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:06:23SPEAKERI'm gonna watch that light and see where it ends up

1:06:25SPEAKERin some number of years.

1:06:26SPEAKERAnd if the light goes out, I will buy another one.

1:06:28SPEAKER- I don't, yeah.

1:06:29SPEAKERI mean, for me, it's the difference.

1:06:32SPEAKERLike the things that, like, I'm not worried about things

1:06:35SPEAKERthat plug in through an AC to DC adapter,

1:06:38SPEAKERlike a laptop charger or something like that,

1:06:40SPEAKERbecause that charger will eat the charge

1:06:42SPEAKERand not pass it onto the computer.

1:06:43SPEAKERAnd honestly, the computers aren't plugged in

1:06:45SPEAKERall that often anymore.

1:06:47SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't worry as much about electricity

1:06:52SPEAKERfrying my stuff as I used to.

1:06:56SPEAKER- I just had the fear of God put in me

1:06:58SPEAKERfrom all the thunderstorms growing up in the summer,

1:07:00SPEAKER'cause it was like-

1:07:01SPEAKER- Yeah, no, we used to unplug stuff.

1:07:03SPEAKER- Yes, it was like practically a daily occurrence

1:07:06SPEAKERin the afternoon to have a short thunderstorm

1:07:08SPEAKERever again in the summer.

1:07:09SPEAKERAnd B, it was Brad turn off that damn video game.

1:07:13SPEAKERWell, unplugged, yes, it was all right.

1:07:15SPEAKERTime to unplug everything in the house.

1:07:16SPEAKER- We had lightning hit our aerial one time

1:07:19SPEAKERand fried our air conditioner.

1:07:20SPEAKER- Yikes.

1:07:21SPEAKER- We didn't have air conditioning

1:07:22SPEAKERfor years and years and years after that.

1:07:24SPEAKERIt made a real strong impact.

1:07:25SPEAKER- That's no good.

1:07:27SPEAKER- No, it was hot there too.

1:07:28SPEAKER- That sucks.

1:07:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:30SPEAKER- All right, let's do a couple more very quick ones

1:07:33SPEAKERas we wrap this thing up.

1:07:35SPEAKER- Sounds good.

1:07:36SPEAKER- Dude, I've had a lot of people scoff

1:07:38SPEAKERat my choice of drinking instant coffee.

1:07:40SPEAKERI've always defended that even the cheap grocery store

1:07:42SPEAKERbranded instant coffee is a lot better than it used to be.

1:07:45SPEAKERWould Brad say instant coffee is good now?

1:07:47SPEAKERSo I had, I think it's a little Nescafe packets.

1:07:51SPEAKERI believe it's Nescafe is the brand that we had out there.

1:07:55SPEAKERAnd then we also had a little canister

1:07:57SPEAKERof Starbucks dark roast instant.

1:08:00SPEAKER- I was gonna say the Starbucks instant stuff I've had

1:08:02SPEAKERis as good as Starbucks gets.

1:08:04SPEAKERI think they over roast their coffee generally.

1:08:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I wish I had, I wish we had had like the medium

1:08:08SPEAKER'cause I also think that their dark roast

1:08:10SPEAKERis a little too dark or too roasty.

1:08:13SPEAKERBut I wish I had tried one of the lighter ones,

1:08:15SPEAKERbut yeah, it was, it tasted like coffee to me basically.

1:08:19SPEAKER- So we, I can, I'm gonna talk about this

1:08:21SPEAKER'cause it's been more than 10 years

1:08:22SPEAKERand I don't care anymore.

1:08:24SPEAKERWhen we went to NASA, to Johnson Space Center

1:08:27SPEAKERto talk about food in outer space

1:08:29SPEAKERwith David Chang and Tracy Desjardins,

1:08:33SPEAKERone of the things we got to taste

1:08:34SPEAKERwas the coffee that they serve on ISS.

1:08:38SPEAKERAnd because, because you can't mix things in space,

1:08:43SPEAKEReach person, each astronaut's coffee preference

1:08:46SPEAKERgets mixed up into a, into one of their drinking pouches

1:08:49SPEAKERand then they just add hot water to it

1:08:51SPEAKERwhen it's time to drink.

1:08:52SPEAKERSo like they put dehydrated milk and sugar

1:08:55SPEAKERand instant coffee in to make them the desired strength.

1:08:59SPEAKERAnd we got to try a bunch of different people's coffees,

1:09:01SPEAKERwhich was fun.

1:09:03SPEAKERThe coffee they used after doing a lot of kind of,

1:09:07SPEAKERkind of gentle leaning to get it out of the people

1:09:09SPEAKERthat worked there is hula girl.

1:09:11SPEAKER'Cause at the time it was the only instant coffee

1:09:14SPEAKERI'd ever had that didn't taste terrible.

1:09:16SPEAKERAnd it was quite good.

1:09:18SPEAKERIt was a really nice mellow roast Kona, I believe,

1:09:23SPEAKERmade in America, of course, 'cause it's NASA.

1:09:25SPEAKERAnd yeah, quite, quite good, highly recommend it.

1:09:28SPEAKERI take it camping when I go camping

1:09:29SPEAKERand don't take coffee stuff.

1:09:31SPEAKER- Interesting.

1:09:32SPEAKERYeah, but there are a lot more instant,

1:09:33SPEAKERlike the stuff that Starbucks makes

1:09:37SPEAKERin the little dissolve in water pouches is quite good.

1:09:40SPEAKERLike Taster's Choice still sucks,

1:09:42SPEAKERbut what are you gonna do?

1:09:43SPEAKERIt's the same stuff they've made for 50 years.

1:09:46SPEAKER- I'm not gonna say the Nescafe is amazing either,

1:09:48SPEAKERbut in a pinch, I kind of didn't care.

1:09:50SPEAKER- Look. - It gets the job done.

1:09:52SPEAKER- Yeah, when you had other stuff to worry about than coffee.

1:09:56SPEAKER- Yeah, although I still, once in a while at the island,

1:10:00SPEAKERwe still got a bunch of it left.

1:10:01SPEAKERI will have some around here occasionally.

1:10:04SPEAKERI have not been drinking coffee as a rule lately,

1:10:06SPEAKERbut if the mood strikes, like it's fine, it serves.

1:10:11SPEAKER- Yep, that's what I want out of a cup of coffee.

1:10:13SPEAKERIt's fine.

1:10:15SPEAKER- Is instant coffee just dehydrated coffee

1:10:18SPEAKERkind of scraped into crystals?

1:10:19SPEAKERIs that all it is?

1:10:20SPEAKER- That's why they brew the coffee

1:10:22SPEAKERand then they run it through the dehydrator

1:10:24SPEAKERuntil it's just the crystallized fats and solubles.

1:10:30SPEAKER- All right. - Yeah.

1:10:31SPEAKER- Okay, last question from Tri.

1:10:35SPEAKERAs a non-American from New Zealand,

1:10:38SPEAKERwhat's the deal with candy corn?

1:10:40SPEAKERIt's not something we have here

1:10:41SPEAKERand it's common enough in media

1:10:43SPEAKERthat I've always wondered about it

1:10:44SPEAKER'cause I have no idea what it tastes like.

1:10:46SPEAKERI assume it's like a Tic Tac in texture and mouthfeel.

1:10:50SPEAKER- Well, so candy corn,

1:10:51SPEAKERor as the native Americans call it, candy maze.

1:10:54SPEAKER- Oh boy.

1:10:55SPEAKER- Is a product of the North American bios,

1:10:57SPEAKERno, it's, hmm.

1:10:59SPEAKER- Not like a Tic Tac at all.

1:11:00SPEAKERTic Tacs are, for people who have not had a Tic Tacs,

1:11:02SPEAKERare hard, hard candy.

1:11:05SPEAKERIt's basically a breath mint, a Tic Tac.

1:11:07SPEAKERIt's not something you could even chew.

1:11:08SPEAKERIt's too hard to chew.

1:11:10SPEAKER- Oh, you could chew 'em.

1:11:11SPEAKER- Well, you can.

1:11:12SPEAKERYou could break it with your teeth.

1:11:12SPEAKERIt's more like you're breaking it with your teeth

1:11:14SPEAKERinto powder rather than actually chewing it as such.

1:11:17SPEAKERBut candy corn is firm but soft and kind of grainy,

1:11:23SPEAKERI would say.

1:11:24SPEAKER- I would describe it as waxy and grainy simultaneously.

1:11:26SPEAKER- Waxy and grainy, those are the words.

1:11:28SPEAKER- And it's just sweet with like a little hint of vanilla

1:11:31SPEAKERalmost.

1:11:32SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.

1:11:33SPEAKER- Maybe corn syrup flavor more than anything.

1:11:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that checks out, yeah.

1:11:37SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not very good.

1:11:38SPEAKER- No, I mean, I don't hate it.

1:11:41SPEAKERSome people I feel like have kind of turned it

1:11:44SPEAKERinto a personality trait to hate candy corn.

1:11:46SPEAKER- Yeah, it's become like the anti-bacon.

1:11:48SPEAKERRemember how popular bacon used to be?

1:11:50SPEAKER- Yes.

1:11:51SPEAKER- Boy, I'm glad that's done.

1:11:52SPEAKER- Yes.