263: The Smith Chart Is S-Tier

00:00SPEAKEROkay, Brad today's the day oh, it's it's the Super Bowl of Black Friday sales Black Friday

00:08SPEAKERBlack Friday is the Super Bowl of Black Friday isn't that a little tautological look?

00:12SPEAKERIt's just best not to think it look in a world where everything's on sale all the time

00:16SPEAKERAnd it's like I started getting Black Friday emails and it's like mid-september this year. It seems like yeah

00:22SPEAKERPartly, I think it's because we do this podcast but also partly because everything's like what Prime Day is it sometimes isn't

00:30SPEAKERThe summer is it like September? I don't know man. I get emails about Prime Day all the time

00:33SPEAKERI turned off emails from Amazon. I get so many emails about Prime Day. I don't need to know

00:36SPEAKERNope, I feel like we did we talked about deals on the full nerd this week

00:41SPEAKERLike PC building deals and went down category by category and it's like a little rough

00:46SPEAKERLike you don't don't buy a video card right now unless you really need a video card, right? Really?

00:50SPEAKERWhy is that rumor is that Intel is about to launch battle mage the the new thing?

00:54SPEAKERYou know their new second gen GPU, which is quite good because it's basically the GPU from lunar lake

00:59SPEAKERIt's anyway, we don't need to get into it. It's nice

01:03SPEAKERPresumably

01:04SPEAKERThere's big Nvidia and AMD keynotes as CES in like a month and five days

01:09SPEAKERYeah, leaks leaks are pointing to the 50 series and video cards being announced at CES

01:14SPEAKERYeah, and and also AMD has stated that they're they're basic. They're basic

01:20SPEAKERThey're there. They don't care about high-end. They're just going after like video cards normal people buy this generation

01:25SPEAKERThat'll seem smart. I mean, maybe it hasn't we've tried it before and it didn't work out great when they did it before but

01:30SPEAKERI don't know. We'll see

01:32SPEAKERPoint is don't buy a video card right now unless you like you you're you're could be your current one broke or something

01:37SPEAKERThe one place where there were some crazy good deals is on am4

01:42SPEAKERIf you have an old AMD motherboard, you know aim for the socket that refuses to die

01:48SPEAKERyou can get you could get like like a

01:53SPEAKERRyzen 57 X 3d 57 5700 X 3d, which is an 8 core

02:00SPEAKERv-cache like

02:01SPEAKERStill one of the top 5 CPUs for video games for like a hundred and seventy nine dollars

02:07SPEAKERWow, I've had to buy a bundle to get that but like it's crazy

02:11SPEAKERThe deals are they like their micro Center had them real cheap everybody there. They're

02:16SPEAKERReally really inexpensive. That's you know, look sometimes that long-lived CPU socket pays dividends

02:21SPEAKERYeah, it's it's it's the thing. It's the thing that strikes me about the the like AMD's coming out with a m5 and saying

02:29SPEAKERHey

02:29SPEAKERThis is gonna last for a long time

02:31SPEAKERGives you a big advantage because you can buy a cheap CPU now and plan to upgrade it in a few years when they're less

02:36SPEAKERExpensive and it's like it's kind of compelling. Yeah now going back to the shopping craze

02:42SPEAKERYeah

02:43SPEAKERwhere do you fall on the Black Friday versus Cyber Monday splits because there's like three things I'm on the hunt for and

02:49SPEAKERThere are some deals out there now. Yeah, I'm like because it's it is Black Friday at the time of this recording

02:54SPEAKERShould I pull the trigger today or should I wait until Monday and see if anything gets better?

02:58SPEAKERKnowing that there's a risk that the current deals could be gone by then

03:00SPEAKERWell, okay, so I've been in a real-life relationship with a human for pretty much the entirety of the Internet's existence

03:07SPEAKERSo I've never cybered before. Uh-huh

03:09SPEAKERASL I I don't know man. I don't I it's funny that the stuff that I buy

03:15SPEAKERFor deals like I bought a set of shelves like guitar hanger size shelves

03:21SPEAKERSo that I have a better way to store my guitar than putting it in the bag every time

03:25SPEAKERI'm done playing with it and hanging it up in the closet

03:27SPEAKERI don't I don't buy a whole lot of

03:30SPEAKERspecific stuff on

03:32SPEAKERI buy gifts for people I guess is the main thing

03:35SPEAKERso I I kind of just keep an eye peeled and then pull the trigger when I go and

03:42SPEAKERElena at PC world pointed out that because we're in that holiday return window time

03:48SPEAKERYour return windows on a lot of it on a lot of retailers right now are until like mid January or end of January

03:54SPEAKERSure, so you can buy the thing on Friday and if you get a better deal just cancel it and return it

03:59SPEAKEREspecially if it's some someplace that doesn't charge for returns front open returns

04:04SPEAKERAnd then and then you can get the best of both worlds if you're buying services, that's a little bit different thing

04:09SPEAKERYeah, right, cuz you probably can't just cancel those and get the money back

04:12SPEAKERI mean generally speaking their terms in the service terms of services specifically say hey

04:18SPEAKERYou can't cancel this and get you we're not giving your money back. You can't close out the remainder of your term, but we're no refunds

04:25SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't know man. I I

04:28SPEAKERMy other thing is that as soon as I buy the thing I

04:33SPEAKERKind of and I know I'm leaving money on the table by doing this. I try to stop obsessing over it

04:37SPEAKERYeah, that's probably the right way to go

04:40SPEAKERlike when we got the car I stopped looking at car deals because it was just gonna make me crazy and sad about the amount of

04:45SPEAKERMoney I spent that I could have saved. Oh you mean like back when I bought that that mini LED TV

04:50SPEAKERWhich like I don't hate that there's a couple things about it

04:52SPEAKERI wish were better, but I bought it because it was very reasonably priced compared to an OLED

04:57SPEAKERYeah, and then like two months later the OLED. I would have preferred to get was the same price well Brad

05:02SPEAKERLet me tell you about the OLED sales on Black Friday. Oh boy. They cheap. Yeah real cheap mmm

05:09SPEAKERI'm looking at I'm looking at the Panasonic thinking maybe it's time, but wait. It's also not time

05:14SPEAKERWait is that Panasonic OLED cheap no no no my old Panasonic. Oh, oh, you're you mean your pants like plasma

05:20SPEAKERYeah, my good TV. Yes. Yeah, it's time, but also we're gonna go

05:24SPEAKERWe're going to Vancouver in a week, so I'm not spending any money right now. Yeah, that's fair well look for every TV

05:30SPEAKERThere is a season

05:32SPEAKERturn turn turn

06:02SPEAKERWelcome to Brad will made a tech pot. I'm will I'm Brad

06:06SPEAKERSo yes, we're going to we're going to Vancouver to the last Taylor Swift era's showed have I talked about this in the show before

06:11SPEAKERNo, you know you have not and I was one does like how do I have friends in Vancouver?

06:14SPEAKERWhat's going on the coop? Yeah, so when when Taylor Swift came through San Francisco?

06:19SPEAKERWe didn't do Gina has been on the lottery for Taylor Swift tickets my daughter likes Taylor Swift and my wife likes Taylor Swift

06:25SPEAKERSince the and as a result I also buy the by the transitive

06:31SPEAKERTransitive yes, I believe I believe that would be the transitive property. Yeah transitive property. I also like Taylor Swift it turns out

06:37SPEAKERSo she got in the lottery the fan lottery to buy tickets not from scalpers every

06:42SPEAKERlike for for LA and San Francisco and Portland and Seattle and

06:47SPEAKERJust out of habit as the last stop on the this worldwide year and a half long tour is in Vancouver

06:54SPEAKERWhich isn't that that far for us?

06:57SPEAKERShe got tickets okay, all right and paid face value for pace face value Canadian

07:03SPEAKERfor tickets to Taylor Swift now

07:06SPEAKERWe that meant we had to go we have to go to Vancouver to see Taylor Swift

07:09SPEAKERWell now to be clear like a flight to Vancouver is basically a flight to Seattle right plus like 20 minutes or something

07:15SPEAKERYeah, 30 minutes, but the flights. There's a lot more flights into Seattle and a lot fewer flights into Vancouver

07:22SPEAKERSo we're ended we're flying into Seattle and then renting a car and driving across. Oh, how far is that drive like to an hour?

07:28SPEAKERAnd a half so far bad

07:30SPEAKERMainly because the hotels in Seattle in Vancouver because there's not that much hotel capacity in Vancouver are like

07:37SPEAKER$1,500 a night oh

07:39SPEAKERYeah, they Vancouver went into full-on gouging mode

07:42SPEAKEROh, you mean you're staying in Seattle and just driving to the show so we're staying

07:46SPEAKERWe're staying in Vancouver for the night of the show and and like outside Vancouver the night before boy

07:52SPEAKERYeah, it's a process elaborate. How are you are you going to the show yourself, or are you just a chaperone no?

07:58SPEAKERSee this was a we had this conversation because we could have sold my ticket for a fairly substantial amount of money

08:03SPEAKERMm-hmm, and I I am going to the show. I have a costume and everything Wow outfits

08:08SPEAKERYou have to get an outfit at some we're going to the last of the last show of the tour

08:12SPEAKERIt's a big deal, so you're you're a not-so-secret Swiftie it turns out. I mean look my my out

08:18SPEAKERDo you want to know what my outfit is sure?

08:20SPEAKERWell, you know she has that song and she talks about star-crossed lovers, but it sounds like she says Starbucks lover

08:26SPEAKERSo I got an apron that has the pattern from her album lover on the cover with the heart of the sparkly heart

08:31SPEAKERAnd I got a Starbucks

08:33SPEAKERStarbucks like barista apron

08:36SPEAKERPatch it's good material putting the patch on the on the apron so look you're in tune with you

08:42SPEAKERYeah, I understand what I understand what the kids crave uh-huh

08:46SPEAKERSo anyway, yeah, so also on an unrelated note

08:48SPEAKERWe have to record the podcast for next week early this week when I think about it because I'm gonna be gone next weekend

08:53SPEAKERWell, that's good to know yeah, I didn't I should have probably communicated that earlier, but anyway well you know okay

08:58SPEAKERWe've covered that business. Yeah, do you want listeners of this podcast crave answers? Uh-huh? That's right?

09:05SPEAKERI mean I look I want answers to I love answers once a month whether they like it or not you get the answers

09:11SPEAKERYeah, that's right. It's a Q&A episode if you have a question for the podcast you can send it to tech pod at content

09:16SPEAKERDot town or if you're a patron of this listener supported show you can go to

09:21SPEAKERThe discord which you have an access to as a patron of this listener supported show

09:26SPEAKERAnd go to the question seeking answer channel if you don't have access to the discord you can go to patreon.com

09:30SPEAKERSlash tech pod where for five bucks a month you can support the show and gain access to the discord

09:35SPEAKERWhich is a delightful place full of beautiful people that's right and listen to the patron episode

09:39SPEAKERWe just recorded about 20 minutes ago. Yeah, where we talked about

09:43SPEAKERProjects and things things that aren't probably full episodes, but are of general interest

09:47SPEAKERI talked about audio bookshelf you talked about your cable

09:51SPEAKERStarting lesson talk about the the great cable purge that is now underway around here look. We all have a cable problem

09:57SPEAKERThat's the first step is admitting it do I need 30 or 40 HDMI cables probably not

10:01SPEAKERBut what if given that some of them probably don't even run 1080p 60 you should just throw them all out

10:06SPEAKERLet's let God sort it out. What if I had 40 devices that use micro USB that I wanted to use all at one time

10:12SPEAKERYou're fine. Just plug them in with sequential. You'll be okay. You only have one set of hands

10:16SPEAKERYeah, most of these cables are going to be clear just like most of these questions are about to get answered

10:21SPEAKERYeah, we got it was a it was a fine crop this month just for the record quite a quite a appropriate for Thanksgiving

10:28SPEAKERYeah, good one which was yesterday at the time of this recording a cornucopia of questions here. It's true shall we dive in?

10:35SPEAKERYeah, sure why not okay? Well now that you've okay now. We have permission. We have go on question

10:41SPEAKERYou said the email address we plug the patreon we said you can post in the question seeking answers channel all of that

10:47SPEAKEREverything that I'm supposed to do is done. It's all you from here on out all inquisitive systems are go get in here

10:54SPEAKERI'll start with the emails as we often do here from Sean

10:58SPEAKERAny new board game recommendations as we enter holiday shopping season so this year for us

11:04SPEAKERWe haven't done a lot of new board games because we bought a like 13 or 14

11:10SPEAKERGame legacy game for Christmas last year got it got that for Christmas last year. We got to get to ride legacy. Which is a

11:17SPEAKERmodernization

11:18SPEAKERpretty dramatic improvement of the base ticket to ride like ticket to ride is is

11:23SPEAKERFirmly for me to get to ride is one of those games. It's firmly in the fine category, right?

11:27SPEAKERLike it's like it's it's workman-like you can play it you make your trains you build your network

11:32SPEAKERIt doesn't have like hard swings. It's not super dramatic

11:35SPEAKERIt's not like an opportunity to do something goofy with your friends

11:38SPEAKERYou just sit down and yet and some time goes away

11:41SPEAKERthe legacy version of that game starts with the birth of railroads on the East Coast just like running up and down the East Coast of

11:47SPEAKERthe United States and then you add regions as you go on and you like the players get to choose the regions and

11:53SPEAKERIt's quite fun. We played

11:56SPEAKERWe're like, I think game 10 of our campaign and so for folks who don't know legacy games

12:02SPEAKERLegacy games are games where you we've talked about them before in the show

12:05SPEAKERBut it's like you you basically the game evolves as you play it

12:09SPEAKERso like there's a the first one was risk legacy and as a as

12:14SPEAKERIt's designed to be played for like 12 to 14

12:17SPEAKERsessions and as you play and have Wars and things happen like

12:21SPEAKERThings like you can nuke Australia and then Australia is just off of the risk board at that point

12:26SPEAKEROh, I'll give the Australia thread on the discord something to talk about. Yep. Yep

12:31SPEAKERbut but so ticket right ticket to ride doesn't have nukes as far as we've gotten to yet, but you like there are like

12:37SPEAKERthere's a there's like mechanics around things like finding lost treasures and the in the you know in the Old West and

12:45SPEAKERYou know

12:46SPEAKERBuilding circuses out of Florida and stuff like that. It's it's it's quite good

12:50SPEAKERIt's been good with the kiddo

12:52SPEAKERwe the three of us have been playing it and

12:54SPEAKERit's the first time she's kind of engaged with a game that's like this where you get to put stickers on the board and change

12:58SPEAKERStuff up and do all sorts of crazy stuff and give yourself powers and stuff like that. So it's quite good. That's cool

13:04SPEAKERWe also played a fair amount of wavelength this year with just three of us. It's not really a game

13:09SPEAKERWe play to win but just to kind of it. This is a little bit older. It's a it's a party game about being

13:19SPEAKERPsychic the idea is you have this dial that has hidden numbers on it and you have a category that's like

13:25SPEAKERthings that are good and things that are evil and then you spin the dial randomly pick the position where the marker is and

13:33SPEAKEROne person has to pick a clue that tells people where on this all the way left or all the way, right?

13:39SPEAKERthat clue would be so like

13:42SPEAKERif it's like if one is savory and sweet and in the middle you have

13:47SPEAKERwhite bread

13:49SPEAKERLike that would be to me like a straight-up answer on wavelength. It's quite good. That's cool

13:53SPEAKERIt's very good with a group of people it ends up having interesting conversations because like last night we had one that was

13:59SPEAKERHot and cold and it was all the way almost to the hot side

14:03SPEAKERbut not all the way to the hot side and I was like the surface of the Sun and

14:07SPEAKERYou know you and I know that that there are things hotter than the surface of the Sun

14:11SPEAKEROh, yeah, like the core of the Sun

14:13SPEAKERyeah, or things in our laboratories in the in the in the on earth even or like I believe when the pistol shrimp fires it is

14:20SPEAKERbriefly hotter than the

14:22SPEAKERLike a micro dude look it up really the surface of the Sun is not that hot

14:26SPEAKERI mean it's hot but it's like not actually like as hot as you think you see this is the kind of conversation you get to

14:31SPEAKERHave it's going on pistol shrimp surface of Sun the energy physics of the pistol shrimp. Oh boy

14:37SPEAKERThis is a this is a this is course material at Stanford actually. Oh, okay, so don't need to go to Snopes to check this

14:43SPEAKERWhere is like actually I'm on this is literally from a physicist on reddit the temperature of the surface of the Sun

14:48SPEAKER400 or sorry 4,000 to 8,000 Kelvin is not very hot

14:51SPEAKERIt's similar to the temperature of the earth's core for instance says this there you go anyway. This is an answer nobody asked for

14:59SPEAKER4,000 Kelvin huh yes anyway, okay, so anyway my placement of that was a little bit low

15:04SPEAKERThen I should have I should have been higher

15:05SPEAKERI should have been the core of the Sun right case in point wavelength leads to interesting conversation

15:10SPEAKERYeah, the last one is blueprints of Mad King Ludwig. This was a Kickstarter that I backed years ago and just came out this year

15:16SPEAKERit's

15:18SPEAKERIt's a variant of castles of Mad King Ludwig is a classic game you have to build this crazy castle based on

15:25SPEAKERRequirements given you by a the Mad King Ludwig it comes with cool pieces

15:30SPEAKERAnd you have to play smaller on the board and this there's scoring. It's like a worker placement kind of game

15:34SPEAKERthe

15:35SPEAKERBlueprints one you draw the rooms that you want on a piece of vellum and you end up drawing a different castle each

15:41SPEAKERI'm is it is a fabulous fabulous game. I don't know how hard it is to get post Kickstarter

15:48SPEAKERBut if it if it comes up again, I would definitely if you like that kind of game

15:50SPEAKERI would definitely grab it um the only knock against it is that you do have to use a yellow

15:55SPEAKERColored pencil and as a result. It's sometimes kind of hard to see if your room is like we have a we have warm

16:02SPEAKERWarm filament bulbs in our dining room and the yellow pencil is basically invisible in that context. We have to play during the daytime

16:09SPEAKERand then the the one thing I will really recommend is

16:13SPEAKERFor Christmas last year. I got a table mat. That's a neoprene

16:18SPEAKERit's like a it's like an eighth of an inch thick neoprene that just rolls up and

16:23SPEAKERWe put it down on the table when we're when we're playing games

16:27SPEAKERAnd it's it's much better than working on a wood or cloth surface because it like the cards and pieces and stuff move freely

16:34SPEAKERIt's really easy to manage. It was like 50 bucks

16:36SPEAKERYou can get them custom sized for your table with the right curves and stuff if you want

16:40SPEAKERBut I I can't I literally can't recommend it highly enough. It is a fabulous addition if you play a lot of board games

16:46SPEAKERThat sounds cool

16:48SPEAKERHere is an email from Jan or perhaps you on

16:51SPEAKERDid I just get extremely lucky or is there no need for regular fresh installs of Windows nowadays?

16:56SPEAKERI'm running a machine. I built in 2015 and I actually never not even once did he reinstall

17:01SPEAKERIt is aside from a new GPU a second SSD and me having to receive my dims once it has been running for almost 10 years

17:09SPEAKERNow the software issues no hardware failures nothing

17:12SPEAKERFrom basically all of my old builds prior to this one. I remember me having to reinstall windows every so often like once a year at least

17:19SPEAKERReally feeling the need for a fresh install

17:22SPEAKERSince Windows 10 though. I've never felt that urge

17:25SPEAKERAs I often hear you and other people from the tech world talking about reinstalling windows every so often

17:29SPEAKERI was just wondering would you still recommend a fresh install or is this just an out-of-date habit? I

17:36SPEAKERHaven't my machines generally stay pretty

17:41SPEAKERReinstalled yes days. Yeah, same fine

17:43SPEAKERI'm at this point and I can say this because I've been through like multiple builds in the last couple years

17:49SPEAKERI'm pretty much like a one one good solid install at build time and then I'm kind of good from there

17:55SPEAKERIt seems like these days. Yeah, so the the if you upgrade motherboard

18:00SPEAKERSpecifically motherboard. I didn't even upgrade CPU. Although like AMD had some requirements about upgrading reinstalling windows when you move from like a

18:09SPEAKERto compute chiplet

18:12SPEAKERCPU to a one compute chiplet or vice versa. Yeah, I've seen they've since fixed that

18:17SPEAKERSo now it just detects and reconfigures when you reinstall the chipset drivers

18:21SPEAKERBut um, but yeah, generally speaking you can you just need to reinstall if you upgrade

18:28SPEAKERMotherboard more than anything. That's that's the big one for me. I will always do a fresh install on a new motherboard now

18:34SPEAKERI will tell you when my daughter's computer conked out and I switched her from Intel to AMD

18:38SPEAKERI did the thing that's not a good idea to do

18:41SPEAKERbut I didn't have time to do a full reinstall and move all of her stuff over I

18:48SPEAKERBooted it into the old Windows install and

18:52SPEAKERInstalled all the new drivers and then I opened up just a device manager and I clicked the show hidden

18:58SPEAKEROptions show hit amount item things and then just deleted all the show hidden items

19:03SPEAKERWell, you know, I mean, that's not the worst thing you could do that was like three years ago

19:07SPEAKERIt's still been fine chooses it all the time. So yeah, you know your mileage may vary. Yeah

19:13SPEAKERWindows has gotten much more resilient. It's just the short version. Yeah, and I think it's the Windows 10

19:18SPEAKERI think the Windows 10 cutter cut over is the one

19:20SPEAKERI feel like the way that they manage Windows installs now is much more robust than it used to be and you're much less likely

19:27SPEAKERTo have a bunch of old cruft hanging around that impacts your perf. Yes

19:31SPEAKERThe the other thing that I think people will do an upgrade for or reinstall for is if they have some sort of malware attack

19:37SPEAKERThat's that's a I would generally recommend that yeah operating systems like in general have just gotten a lot more resilient

19:43SPEAKERThey're like they're they're much more like I don't want to use the word containerized because that has a specific meaning in computing these days

19:49SPEAKERbut like they're much more kind of sandboxed and siloed off where they're like like Mac OS is the extreme example of that where the

19:55SPEAKERsystem

19:56SPEAKERVolume in Mac OS is read-only these days. Yeah, so it can't be messed with so there is no point in reinstalling there

20:02SPEAKERYou can just do the option that wipes all the user data and you've got a fresh system again

20:06SPEAKERLike, you know

20:06SPEAKERWe talked about like immutable Linux distros and like I know even Windows has gone in a more like sandbox direction in ways

20:13SPEAKERSo like I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. Well, there's stuff that Windows is doing to like

20:19SPEAKERLike if you have a if you have if you don't have permission to install an application you try to install an application

20:24SPEAKERinstead of either failing or requiring you to elevate it often

20:29SPEAKERWe'll just put it in your app data folder now in a special installation location stuff like that means that if you have a problem

20:35SPEAKERYou can fix it by nuking your profile and creating a new one, right?

20:39SPEAKERAnd and that's that's as it should be that's that's how Unix has worked for decades and it's nice that Windows has caught up

20:46SPEAKERYeah, all right, kind of like a trio of emails here that are more like

20:51SPEAKERFYI's than questions I would say, okay

20:54SPEAKERLet's see. Here's one from Pat

20:56SPEAKERListening to the last Q&A you mentioned all of our outlets

20:59SPEAKERElectro outlets should not be the face meaning the two prongs and then the ground on the bottom that makes kind of a little face

21:05SPEAKERAnd we all know in the US as the only way you ever see electrical outlets installed. Basically, apparently it's not to code

21:12SPEAKERThey should be flipped upside down. So we talked about that last time you mentioned all outlets should not be the face

21:17SPEAKERThey should be flipped upside down

21:18SPEAKERThe reason for that is that you put the ground at the top

21:22SPEAKERSo that if something metal slips down between a loose plug and the wall

21:26SPEAKERIt doesn't arc between the positive and negative terminals. It just hits the ground and doesn't complete the circuit

21:31SPEAKERSo I saw two different responses to this one was this one from Pat which is which is I believe that the rationale

21:39SPEAKERThe other thing I saw was somebody who linked to a YouTube video on a camera with the YouTube video is I want to say

21:43SPEAKERIt was technology connections

21:44SPEAKERBut I'm not a hundred percent where they tested this to see if it actually works to see if if it's possible to have a partially

21:50SPEAKERunplugged

21:51SPEAKERUS style outlet and have something drop across it in short and they couldn't make it happen and trust randomly

21:58SPEAKERI mean would it because it'd be also contacting the ground at the same time? No, it would just have to be

22:03SPEAKERJust travel through the object, right? It would have to go the trick

22:06SPEAKERThe problem was it would always bounce off the wall or roll or whatever

22:09SPEAKERSo like a screwdriver because of the thickness of the handle was too thick to fit down in that gap

22:15SPEAKERSo it was a low percentage

22:17SPEAKERupshot was

22:19SPEAKERMaybe apocryphal. I couldn't make it happen. It seems like the kind of thing an engineer would come up with right

22:24SPEAKERI mean to really test that you kind of have to do an artificial test, right?

22:27SPEAKERYou have to like very carefully place a metal object across the two prongs and make sure everything's touching and see what happens

22:32SPEAKERBut I did that as a kid once it made a really big spark a huge bang and then shut off the electricity in half

22:37SPEAKEROf the house and then I got yelled at weird. That sounds fun. Yeah, my close calls with electricity are varied and long. Yes

22:45SPEAKERHere's one from Evan and they're near the beginning of episode 261. You guys had some trouble with the port flanger

22:51SPEAKERThe term flanging comes from mastering audio on magnetic tape

22:55SPEAKERthey would play two copies of the same track on tape decks running at the same time and

22:59SPEAKERSomeone would push on the flange of one of the reels causing it to slow down and fall out of sync with its counterpart

23:05SPEAKERresulting in the quote flange effect

23:07SPEAKERThought you might find this interesting and hopefully it clears up the pronunciation. I love I love how many I

23:14SPEAKERLove it when something has a deeply analog

23:18SPEAKERorigin

23:19SPEAKERRight, like like there was another one. Somebody else was talking about an effect where you'd pull extra tape out and then

23:25SPEAKERPull it through faster or slower

23:28SPEAKEROn an old reel to reel. Yeah, this is good. This is cool. Thank you for sending this in happen. Yeah

23:34SPEAKERLast one of those that I mentioned is from Cullen

23:37SPEAKERRegarding a mid-duty pay once audio editing software. What you want is called Reaper. We got a lot of this

23:43SPEAKERYeah, I've been staring at Reaper for years. I

23:46SPEAKERAm just I'm just intimidated by it

23:48SPEAKERI spent a good amount of time learning to use Reaper about right when we started this podcast like you're like

23:54SPEAKERRunning you weren't you running ultra shawl?

23:56SPEAKERYeah, I tried that that was a disaster which is the sort of podcast seeing plug-in is does it have an official plug-in?

24:02SPEAKERIt's it's just an overlay or this is more of a mod

24:07SPEAKERYeah, it's closer to like a game mod than ever anything else you download Reaper and you pay for it and then you upgrade

24:12SPEAKERWith this with this overlay that's mostly in German but has a kind of iffy English translation

24:18SPEAKERthe upshot on Reaper was

24:21SPEAKERI couldn't there were two problems if I recall one

24:24SPEAKERwas that it was hard to sync because the the waveforms displayed on

24:29SPEAKERThe thing that we used to sync didn't always exactly line up in the right places with where they were and stretching audio in

24:36SPEAKERReaper was challenging

24:39SPEAKERThe other problem was that I couldn't get it to sound right that the bigger problem was I couldn't get it to sound right

24:45SPEAKERSo we had we had issues getting

24:48SPEAKERLike we use a our audition tool chain

24:53SPEAKERBasically, I couldn't replicate it in a way that made both of us sound the same way we usually do right

24:59SPEAKERThat's not that's not a knock on Reaper or to say that you can't do it in Reaper like as so much as you just didn't

25:04SPEAKERGet there because like to be clear Reaper is extremely highly respected. Yeah, I

25:09SPEAKERWas doing at a time when I didn't have a ton of free time. So

25:12SPEAKERIt's entirely possible that I could do it now and I should probably actually revisit

25:16SPEAKERI think my license is still valid, but I'll have to check it's 80 bucks. It's a it's a 150 for commercial

25:22SPEAKERI think less nose to 25 last I checked it was 60 for personal and 225 for commercial

25:27SPEAKEROkay, we would we would need commercial obviously because we are using it for commercial purposes, but

25:33SPEAKERTheir upgraded policy is extremely generous also since we're talking about pay once software

25:37SPEAKERYeah, you get you get all of the major version you buy and all of the next one as well

25:42SPEAKERSo if I like if you they're on seven point two seven right now

25:46SPEAKERBut if you bought it as seven point oh one you get all the way up through eight point nine nine on a license

25:51SPEAKERWhich is that's pretty generous. That's pretty amazing

25:55SPEAKEREvery Reaper is a full-on DAW

25:57SPEAKERLike it's just I think it's just more than I need like audacity

26:01SPEAKERHas been getting a lot better actually remember we have Martin on the phosphide

26:04SPEAKERyeah, not super long after he and music group took over audacity like I did what acid he has been a little bumpy as they've

26:10SPEAKERBeen adding a much new features to it, but it's finally they're working out a lot of the bugs and stuff so it's

26:15SPEAKERIt's more meeting my needs now than it has been in the past, so I think I'm okay with it, but like I've

26:20SPEAKERI've been interested in Reaper for a long time, but I think it's just way more

26:23SPEAKERWay more DAW than I need like to put it in perspective. I went to their site and pulled up the user guide

26:30SPEAKER460 pages yeah, it's a it's a lot

26:33SPEAKERit's it's it's

26:35SPEAKERYeah, it's like then the unfortunate thing about audition is it really shoots the gap in the way that like the affinity software does

26:42SPEAKERon the on the graphic design side where it does like most of the things that you need and

26:48SPEAKERThe stuff that it doesn't do you're probably fine without like it has it has

26:52SPEAKERLike the neat thing about Reaper is you can use DAW plugins and get like whatever you can get a software mimic of whatever weird

26:59SPEAKERCompressor that you want right I?

27:01SPEAKERDon't need I don't know how to work that I just need a compressor

27:05SPEAKERSure, I just need a noise gate. You know it's it's yeah. It's a little different market

27:10SPEAKERBut I'll I'll explore Reaper again. It's free to try to so yeah, they have they have a generous

27:16SPEAKERTrial period I believe yeah, it's 60 days full full functionality. No weird no no voice

27:23SPEAKERNo weird audio prints nothing weird about it. You can just try it yeah

27:28SPEAKERAnd also you don't need the commercial license unless you make more than $20,000 a year

27:33SPEAKERGross revenue so also. I think I mentioned this every time it comes up fun fact

27:37SPEAKERIt's developed by Justin Frankel the creator of Winamp. Well. That's cool

27:41SPEAKERShout out to Justin Frankel whips the llama's ass a fun. Where are they now all right?

27:46SPEAKERWhy don't we dive into some discord questions? Yeah sure let's do it gosh. There's so many of them

27:51SPEAKERThere's a lot of good people people you can tell the winter months are upon us because the questions improve dramatically yes

27:57SPEAKERDC actual has a good question why do games need to compile shaders on my PC?

28:02SPEAKERIs everyone set up so unique that they can't just have an AMD and Nvidia set of shaders. Oh boy short answer is yes

28:08SPEAKERIt is

28:09SPEAKERIt's not just it's not just hardware. It's it's CPU and GPU combination it

28:15SPEAKERalso for people to know the shaders are the things that like they're little tiny programs that are

28:21SPEAKERPassed from the CPU to the GPU that describe how typically surfaces are manipulated, but sometimes it's for Texas and stuff like that

28:27SPEAKERYeah, you can actually do all kinds of weird stuff and shaders programs like fluid simulation and stuff like that, but yeah

28:32SPEAKERYeah, like it's yeah

28:34SPEAKERfor shaders for grass a lot of like leaves

28:38SPEAKERTransparency on leaves where light shines through them stuff like that

28:40SPEAKERYeah, there's a bazillion little shader programs that run on every game and when you play on a console because there are

28:47SPEAKEREven in the case of the Xbox there's only two skews of Xbox series X and two skews of Xbox

28:53SPEAKEROr three skews of Xbox one you just pre compute all of those and you bundle them up and you download the right one for

29:00SPEAKERYour console when you download the game

29:02SPEAKERWith with PC's it's a little more complicated because it's the the

29:09SPEAKERConfiguration of the specific GPU you have the specific CPU you have and your graphics driver revision

29:15SPEAKERSo what happens is when you update your graphic drivers often you have to recompute the shaders

29:19SPEAKERYeah, cuz I would assume whatever interpreter or compiler and runtime they use or the shaders is even changing from driver version

29:26SPEAKERTo driver version. Yeah, if you do like if you if you and render or two

29:31SPEAKERSo if you switch from Vulcan to DirectX 12 or vice versa, you'll have to recompute shaders often in that case

29:36SPEAKERyeah, and I was also would assume the

29:39SPEAKERarchitecture of the compute units changes at least subtly from one graphics card generation to the next like too many variables to account for here is

29:46SPEAKERThe points like I could never they could never pre-compile shaders that would cover every use case

29:51SPEAKERI'm I understand is the capability can change even within the same family

29:54SPEAKERSo like you have three thousand a three thousand series like a thirty forty, which is a mobile part. I think

30:01SPEAKERTotally. Yeah, they'll be a complete different shader computation for that

30:08SPEAKERThe the so the reason you do this is because

30:12SPEAKERthe engines have to

30:15SPEAKERWhat's the right way to say this when you encounter a surface that uses a shader or material that uses a shader in the game

30:20SPEAKERWhich is constantly right if it's not already compiled the game will have to compile it ideally before that frame starts rendering

30:29SPEAKERDigital Foundry has done a bunch of great stuff about what what shader compiling is and how it works

30:33SPEAKERSo you should go check out their YouTube and dig into that if you're if you're curious and want to know more but they

30:39SPEAKERwhen those shaders compile

30:41SPEAKERIt's gonna cause a hitch if it happens on the same frame or even sometimes a frame or two before

30:47SPEAKERBecause it has to happen on the CPU and it stalls the whole thing while it waits for that compiled shader to land

30:53SPEAKERSome games some engines will do the compiles like a few frames in advance, right?

30:58SPEAKERBecause they can see the frames in the future and they'll know oh we need this one

31:01SPEAKERLet's do this shader compile real quick still can cause hitches because then you're sad you're saturating memory buses and stuff like that

31:10SPEAKERNow this ray of light on the steam deck

31:14SPEAKERBecause it's a fixed platform

31:16SPEAKERValve just pre compiles the shaders for everything and you download them when you download a steam deck game and it says hey

31:21SPEAKERI'm downloading your pre compiled shaders and then you don't have to do that on the steam deck, which is really nice

31:27SPEAKERTheoretically there's a world where we could when we compile our shaders for Call of Duty on our steam game

31:33SPEAKERIt says hey

31:34SPEAKERDo you want to upload this and the first person who does that uploads it and just everybody else downloads their pre compiled shaders from?

31:39SPEAKERThat point forward for the exact same hardware configuration now

31:44SPEAKERWhether that's a good idea in practice. I don't know. It seems like it's probably a

31:47SPEAKERprobably some security concerns there if nothing else but also

31:51SPEAKERIt means that valve would have to maintain a giant database of all the graphics cards all the configurations all the sub

31:58SPEAKERConfigurations inside there and all the drivers and all that and it's probably easier to just spend ten minutes compiling shaders when you install a new

32:04SPEAKERgame, yeah

32:06SPEAKERThe thing I'm confused about in this context is why more games don't just do the upfront like lengthy shader

32:12SPEAKERPre-compilation like I think Call of Duty does that but you don't see it that often for how many people are out there

32:17SPEAKERVery vocally and despising the shader stutter you get in games for the reasons you're talking about. Like yeah surprised more games

32:24SPEAKERDon't take the preemptive step of just pre computing everything before you start

32:28SPEAKERI wonder I really just wonder is like they don't want the bad look of having somebody fire up their new game and then having

32:32SPEAKERTo sit and watch progress bar for ten minutes

32:34SPEAKERI mean part of it is that Elden Ring is a

32:36SPEAKERGood example of this because Elden Ring every time you hit a new shader you get a frame hitch. Yeah, and it and it stinks

32:43SPEAKERThe people really complain about the hitches

32:47SPEAKERMore than anything else on Steam reviews

32:49SPEAKERLike if you have micro stutter on you're gonna get most of the negative on launch on Steam reviews

32:53SPEAKERI would absolutely rather wait an extra ten minutes to pre-compile everything versus deal with the stutter

32:59SPEAKERBut I also wonder is it even possible to account for everything you would need to compile in a preemptive fashion?

33:04SPEAKERWell, so like as with most things if you think about it up front when you're starting then yeah

33:08SPEAKERYou can flag everything and have a compile

33:11SPEAKERShader compilation step in your in your initial install if you didn't flag all those and you started writing shader programs

33:17SPEAKERAnd just to be clear like in unreal or a unity

33:20SPEAKERwriting a shader program is opening up the blueprint editor and connecting a couple of materials to each other and

33:25SPEAKERconnecting a couple of scripts that probably shipped with unreal or one of your graphics programmers wrote and

33:30SPEAKERAnd like you can make a bazillion shaders without realizing you're making a bazillion shaders

33:35SPEAKERSo if your data is clean and everybody's flagging stuff appropriate will do it

33:39SPEAKERBut the engine doesn't just do that for you

33:41SPEAKERYou have somebody along the way like the engine will let you write shaders and the engine will let you pre-compile shaders

33:47SPEAKERbut somewhere along the way somebody has to make a list of all the things that need to get past the pre-compiler so that it

33:53SPEAKERhappens and

33:55SPEAKERYou know Call of Duty Activision's typically pretty good at this because people really give a shit about micro stutter in

34:01SPEAKERcompetitive first-person shooters

34:03SPEAKERFortnight handles this by just doing it the first time you load the map every time they update the map or you update your drivers

34:09SPEAKERwhich means

34:11SPEAKERSometimes you load up a game of fortnight and you get to the end of the flight path and you'd load in right at the very

34:16SPEAKEREnd because you're compiling shaders through the entire lobby waiting period

34:22SPEAKERIt's like there's no perfect solution for this. Unfortunately the the

34:27SPEAKERActually, the perfect solution is the graphics card vendors maintain a list of known good because they actually probably have the infrastructure to test

34:35SPEAKERand generate these in advance and

34:38SPEAKERThey're generating them and uploading them and delivering them to you through drivers or through nvidia app or whatever

34:42SPEAKERYou know the prize and master or whatever sure. Yeah, okay problem. Yeah, it's a complicated problem for sure

34:50SPEAKEROkay, how about a question from?

34:54SPEAKERtactical tug

34:56SPEAKERI've been going through the backlog of episodes lately and an episode 139 Brad seems a little surprised about apartments having washing machines

35:04SPEAKERIs this not a normal thing in the US for me growing up and living in Norway?

35:08SPEAKERIt seems like the most common thing ever and I don't think I've ever been in a house or apartment that hasn't had a washing

35:13SPEAKERmachine

35:14SPEAKERAnd if it is common for apartments not to have their own washing machine why please explain to this. Thanks

35:19SPEAKERI think for the purpose of this question, they're they're definitely talking about in the unit right not in the building

35:24SPEAKERI would assume so. Yeah, I have never seen an apartment in

35:28SPEAKERMy apartment I'm trying to think if I might have been like in a really nice one downtown once or twice that might have had

35:35SPEAKERTheir own washer/dryer. I had I had my last two apartments had washers and dryers

35:38SPEAKERWell in the city at least in the city. I should be clear. I'm trying to think like

35:43SPEAKERI mean, I think I had to buy them. I think I provided them really. Yeah, we'll see

35:49SPEAKERThe apartment I lived in Raleigh, but that was almost more of like a duplex II townhouse II kind of apartment like that

35:54SPEAKERYeah, that definitely had

35:57SPEAKERUrban areas, it seems like it's a little more rare in cities

36:00SPEAKERI have never lived in an apartment in San Francisco that had washer/dryer in the unit

36:04SPEAKERSo we had I mean in fairness

36:07SPEAKERWe didn't look at apartments that didn't have washers dryers in the unit after the first place

36:11SPEAKERWe lived it didn't have one and that was not good for us sucks. I hate it so much

36:16SPEAKERYeah, it's really nice to be able to just wash laundry whenever you want sure is

36:20SPEAKERTo be clear we have one in the garage here, which is you just walk down a flight of stairs

36:24SPEAKERSo it's not the end of the world, but it coins but it is coin off which is the problem

36:28SPEAKERAnd it's like, you know, it's three bucks total to wash and dry a load, which is not terrible

36:32SPEAKERBut that means you have to keep quarters around all the time, which is a real pain

36:36SPEAKERI have a friend who lives in Burlingame and their apartment doesn't have in unit but it does in the basement and

36:42SPEAKERIt's just a constant. It's a constant struggle of her going to the bank all the time to get

36:47SPEAKERCoins, yeah like that. My girlfriend god bless her is on coin duty

36:51SPEAKERShe goes to the bank every six weeks or something and takes a gang of quarters out and then you know

36:57SPEAKEROccasionally you have to fight not fight, but you have to wait on somebody else to yeah

37:02SPEAKERThere's their laundry, which is generally fine

37:04SPEAKERUnless you're one of those people and nobody in this building is thank God but the type of people who leave their laundry

37:09SPEAKERDone in the dryer for hours. Nope is a very awkward situation. I

37:16SPEAKERSo before we had the internet connected washing machines, I put a motion sensor

37:20SPEAKERI just stuck a motion sensor on the side of our old washing machine inside of the dryer so I could tell when it was

37:25SPEAKERRunning it would they vibrate enough that it was triggering the motion sensor

37:29SPEAKERAnd then you'd know that it was off when it was off and it would pop me a notification

37:32SPEAKERMm-hmm. I would totally do that if I had basement units

37:37SPEAKERBecause then you'd know the moment it's done you can just walk down there

37:40SPEAKERYeah, I I I don't know why it is. I think it's because we don't require it like San Francisco added a requirement that people had to

37:47SPEAKERHave a dishwashers a few years ago as a water conservation measure. Oh

37:52SPEAKERAnd people were really at like obviously landlords were very upset about it because it's another

37:57SPEAKER$800,000 thing that they have to put in the units. But um, but yeah, it's it's it seems like a thing

38:05SPEAKERIt it seems like a necessity. I think there's also a difference in

38:10SPEAKEREurope versus most of North most of the United States where there's an expectation that

38:15SPEAKEREventually you buy a house if you can

38:18SPEAKERIn the Bay Area, that's not exactly the case because houses are prohibitively expensive here. Yep

38:24SPEAKERbut in in most of the you know, the non like where renting is a is a not a

38:33SPEAKERRenting is weird here in the United States, I guess outside of urban areas, especially sure

38:39SPEAKEROr just anywhere or anywhere. Yeah, actually, I should just move straight on to this question from I think we're alone

38:46SPEAKERBecause it's kind of about living in this area

38:48SPEAKERI'm in my fourth year studying computer science in Canada and will be graduating this spring

38:53SPEAKERI'm planning on pursuing a master's next year and possibly a PhD

38:57SPEAKERI'm currently applying to several schools in Canada

39:00SPEAKERBut also a couple of top schools in the US that specialize in my interests among these are Stanford and Berkeley

39:06SPEAKERMy question is what's it like living in California?

39:09SPEAKERAttending a top US school has some advantages but living in California seems hard to imagine

39:13SPEAKERIs it as dense and chaotic and expensive as it sounds to an outsider is living in and around Silicon Valley really a career advantage?

39:21SPEAKERIsn't it and is it an enjoyable lifestyle or one you put up with?

39:25SPEAKERFor some context. I have lived in larger and smaller cities across Canada and attended larger and smaller universities

39:31SPEAKERMy current city and school are smaller and I think that has contributed to my success

39:36SPEAKERWe have great schools here in Canada. But my impression is that attending a Stanford or Berkeley could be a career maker. What do you think?

39:44SPEAKERso living

39:46SPEAKEROkay, there's a lot done back here

39:48SPEAKERStart let's start at the back

39:50SPEAKERGoing to Stanford if you want to work in a tech startup situation is absolutely a career maker

39:57SPEAKERIt can be like is that for is that for networking reasons as much as for both educational?

40:03SPEAKERLike I assume you're just gonna you're gonna be immersed in

40:05SPEAKERNothing, but other people who want to do the same thing. I mean if you're studying the right thing at the right time

40:12SPEAKERYou know people were hiring PhDs out of Stanford for AI stuff a couple you did currently probably

40:18SPEAKERFor hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and and putting them in research labs and stuff like that

40:23SPEAKERRight funding research the whole deal and also this is I mean, this is more of kind of a unicorn thing

40:28SPEAKERBut if you read about the history of so many startups that have become giant companies

40:32SPEAKERIt's kind of funny to find out how often the founders were like PhD candidates, you know

40:36SPEAKERLike they like Google for example, I think like weren't they were Stanford Stanford students. Yeah

40:42SPEAKEROkay, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Yeah, like yeah, they were they were like doctoral candidates who took their like algorithmic research and

40:50SPEAKERTurned it into Google PageRank. They took the thing that they were working on for their doctorate, right?

40:57SPEAKERyou'll find there's a networking component to where people you'll meet people who

41:03SPEAKERAre in the programs with you who end up going like even if you it doesn't work out for you

41:07SPEAKERit'll work out for somebody else and that like

41:10SPEAKERSay what you will it's moves the way, right?

41:13SPEAKERGood or bad. It's phenomenally expensive

41:17SPEAKERDepending on where you are in Canada like compared to Vancouver. It's not super expensive. It's similar kind of price range. Toronto is also

41:23SPEAKERfairly comparable I think these days but but compared to anywhere else in North America outside of like

41:30SPEAKERNew York and

41:33SPEAKERVancouver and maybe Seattle and LA is an incredibly expensive place to live. Yeah, extremely

41:40SPEAKERThe South Bay I think is worse than San Francisco at this point. It it wildly varies

41:45SPEAKERyeah, like you can it depends on like if you if you're okay living in a in a

41:50SPEAKERLike in a rental house with five other people you can find some deals

41:54SPEAKERBut it's it's a it's not it is gonna be more expensive than you think even if you think it's really expensive

41:59SPEAKERYeah, I like it here. The people are great. There's a live and let live attitude to the entire region

42:05SPEAKERThat's quite nice and refreshing compared to the rest of the United States

42:08SPEAKERYeah, like other honestly other than the cost of living. I don't really have a lot of complaints like it's beautiful

42:12SPEAKERIt is yeah, just from a natural standpoint

42:15SPEAKERLike it's one of the I'm five we are both from I don't know about you

42:18SPEAKERBut I happen to think Western North Carolina is one of the most beautiful places on the planet

42:23SPEAKERBut this Northern California is up there for sure. I I miss green like

42:29SPEAKERCalifornia's it's brown about nine months of the year. Well, it didn't used to be that bad

42:33SPEAKERYou know, it used to be a lot better about that

42:35SPEAKERI mean it was there was always there's always been a dry period but then we hit this period of years-long drought where

42:41SPEAKERIt was kind of always dry

42:43SPEAKERYeah, but I mean even when it even on years when it when it rains the way the about it usually does

42:48SPEAKERIt's still like you get up to Napa and stuff in the summer and it's brown brown hills and brown

42:53SPEAKERYeah, like you don't you're not wrong

42:55SPEAKERI went to visit my parents in DC during the summer a couple years ago, and I forgot how

43:01SPEAKERGreen and dense the undergrowth is everywhere that there's not an active attempt to keep it from growing up on it, right?

43:07SPEAKERIt's swamps. Yeah

43:10SPEAKERSo so yeah, like it's definitely weird. It's weird not having seasons for all intensive

43:14SPEAKERYeah, we have we have like wet and then the rest of the year

43:17SPEAKERIce nose. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I do actually miss the really pronounced seasons that I grew up with

43:23SPEAKERYeah, and that's a matter of taste though. Yeah, I mean

43:27SPEAKERLike you probably good on winter having lived in Canada for a long time. Yeah

43:33SPEAKERIncredible incredible food area. Yeah, it's good. Good. Good like lots of good food from around the world

43:39SPEAKERSan Francisco is one of the walkable one of the few walkable cities in North America

43:43SPEAKERI think like, you know, you don't have to have a car to live

43:46SPEAKERThe South Bay a little bit less. So yeah, you didn't need a car down there for sure

43:51SPEAKERbut yeah, I think I think it's like if you if you get into Stanford

43:58SPEAKERIn a doctoral situation or master situation, they can punch your ticket in a way that is life-changing. Yeah

44:04SPEAKERIt's not for everybody. You're still gonna have to work really fucking hard, but I

44:08SPEAKERWould not hesitate to go to Stanford if you get into Stanford. I don't know if the outcome is the same for Berkeley

44:12SPEAKERI feel like Berkeley's a little bit less of a of a pole for that kind of career by that kind of degree

44:18SPEAKERI don't know how it is these days

44:19SPEAKERI mean obviously

44:21SPEAKERStart to say in the late 70s like BSD came out of there like it was a big deal at one time, but yeah

44:26SPEAKERThat's been a while. Yeah

44:28SPEAKERAll right about

44:31SPEAKERUnimaginative pseudonym. How do you clean your USB C port on your phone say what you will about the lightning connector ports?

44:37SPEAKERThey were easy to get pocket land out of I still have a lightning port. So I'm gonna look at mine right now

44:42SPEAKERClean as a whistle. Yeah mine. I use mine every day

44:45SPEAKERI plug it into the car and what I needed to clean out just go like this

44:48SPEAKERI get it right up and get my mouth up to the hole and I go

44:52SPEAKERAll right, and then it's clean. There's an audio demonstration for you. Yeah, you're welcome America

44:58SPEAKERAlso, I have that little bro. I have a little brush

45:01SPEAKERWe've talked about it before but I use it to clean off the keyboard and like dust at the top of the microphone and stuff

45:05SPEAKERAnd it has a little probe

45:08SPEAKERThat is exactly the thickness to get in between the edge of the USB C connector and you can just kind of gently get it

45:14SPEAKERIn there now, here's a question I have for you and people listening. Yes. What is your default pocket orientation for your phone?

45:21SPEAKERMine is right side up screen facing out Oh screen facing out. Are you mad?

45:26SPEAKERI guess I mean you bump into something. I mean, I'm just careful with my hip I guess. Oh, no

45:32SPEAKEROkay, so I'm left front pocket

45:35SPEAKERscreen down

45:36SPEAKERGlass toward my thigh screen down screen down meaning the top of the screen is toward my feet Wow

45:42SPEAKERSo you're like completely the opposite of me. Well, so I can so then when I put my hand in my pocket

45:47SPEAKERI just whip the phone out. Yeah. No, I I get that. Yes. That's right. Did you go make sense?

45:50SPEAKERI thought I think I think my first of all, I haven't thought about this in about ten years

45:53SPEAKERbut I think my thinking at the time was

45:56SPEAKERThe screen would withstand a lot more friction if it was up against your thigh

46:00SPEAKERBut yeah, but I have a screen protector on mine. So I don't yeah

46:02SPEAKERYeah, I've never done screen protectors also like the phone glass used to scratch way worse 15 years ago than it does now

46:07SPEAKERWell, so the thing is if you look at a screen the reason I do screen protectors still is that if you use the phone

46:14SPEAKERFor two years and then you look at it in bright light where you can see all the micro scratches

46:18SPEAKERIt's still gonna have a ton of little tiny scratches on it

46:21SPEAKERYeah

46:22SPEAKERAnd they make me crazy and I can just peel off the screen projector and put a new $8 one on and they're back in business

46:28SPEAKERYes, I mean my real secret is I just don't care about the phone that much anymore. I mean, there's that

46:34SPEAKERAnyway, there you go. Let's see. This is um, this is a question I have been wrestling with myself

46:40SPEAKEROkay Bertrand

46:42SPEAKERHow do you judge when to spend the extra money on purchasing parts or components from vendors with track records for high quality parts?

46:48SPEAKERVersus whatever is cheapest but legit looking on sites like Aliexpress or Amazon

46:53SPEAKERThese days even the humble clip lead is no longer safe as this video from Matthias Vondel shows

47:00SPEAKERI don't know what a clip lead is, but I gather it's like an alligator clip. I was gonna say okay electrical in nature

47:05SPEAKERYeah

47:05SPEAKERHe noticed higher than expected resistance across some new leads and found they were copper plated steel wire and could be picked up with

47:12SPEAKERa magnet that is nuts

47:15SPEAKERSo, okay. So I think it's a little disingenuous to jam Aliexpress in with Amazon, although maybe not far

47:22SPEAKERI don't know if there's as much difference as you think Aliexpress is like dudes with

47:27SPEAKERpeople with stalls

47:30SPEAKERSure, and Amazon is I mean

47:36SPEAKERHow many of those no-name Amazon vendors are just drop shipping those same parts

47:39SPEAKERI think it's more I think it's a little more structured than that, but you're not wrong

47:44SPEAKERI think that I think for me

47:47SPEAKERSo I definitely buy stuff without logic from Aliexpress without thinking about it

47:52SPEAKERRight, like when I wanted cheap keyboard switches

47:55SPEAKERI bought bags a couple bags of them from from Aliexpress because even if they had high fail rates

48:01SPEAKERThey were cheaper than buying from like a boutique shop in the United States

48:05SPEAKERAnd I can I could wait three months for them to arrive

48:08SPEAKERI think when you start talking about things with logic it gets a lot more iffy, right? So like

48:14SPEAKERwe

48:15SPEAKERWe bought some like they're like Gameboy sized

48:20SPEAKERemulation boxes

48:21SPEAKERFor six dollars from one of those sites of Aliexpress or Timo or something. Oh, we did our we were so shitty

48:27SPEAKERThey weren't even worth talking about

48:29SPEAKERI have yours here if you want it. It's really really bad. It's fine

48:33SPEAKERunusable

48:35SPEAKERThe the stuff like the copper-plated steel wire is really like that that to me feels like the buying alligator clips is something I would

48:41SPEAKERBuy from an electronics place. Yeah, rather than Amazon

48:45SPEAKERThings things that I buy from Amazon are things that are boxed goods that are reasonably easy to tell if they're counterfeit

48:52SPEAKERso

48:53SPEAKERFor example, I would hesitate to buy we talked about on the patron episode this 15 in one cable tester for the continuity tester

49:01SPEAKERI probably would buy that from an electronic supplier rather than Amazon, right?

49:06SPEAKERBut like a fluke multimeter that I that I can tell if it's the real thing when I get it that I'd probably buy from Amazon

49:13SPEAKERThat seems okay

49:14SPEAKERSo if it's not something I can identify that it's a counterfeit or if I don't care that it's counterfeit in the case of the keyboard

49:20SPEAKERswitches

49:22SPEAKERThose are the two places. I would probably go

49:24SPEAKERI just I also know when I buy the keyboard switches that there's gonna be a higher than expected fail rate because they don't test

49:29SPEAKERThem at Aliexpress. So I buy like 20% more than I need interesting. It still ends up being way cheaper

49:33SPEAKERI didn't realize that counterfeit keyboard switches would be a thing let alone like okay to use I guess

49:39SPEAKERI guess it's not that complicated switch is a switch man. Yeah, that's fair

49:43SPEAKERI

49:44SPEAKERRan into this problem just this week. I need to buy I want three six-foot USB 3 extension cables. Mm-hmm like no logic

49:52SPEAKERNo, no, I mean that's just that's just electrical signal being passed along, right? Yeah

49:55SPEAKERIt's run from the back of my NAS around my desk to where I can plug like external hard drives in easily

50:00SPEAKEREvery single extension cable and again, this is just literally

50:04SPEAKERMale to female USB 3 that's it

50:06SPEAKEREvery single one I looked up on Amazon or places like that had some user review somewhere going like hey

50:12SPEAKERthis thing only rings up as USB 2 when I plug it in like

50:14SPEAKERLike my the transfer speed is that of USB 2 when I do a transfer speed test and not what I was getting with a direct

50:21SPEAKERCable into the motherboard, you know like that. Yeah

50:24SPEAKERYeah

50:24SPEAKERLike there's just concerns about signal integrity or things like that not working right like the race to the bottom on parts like that

50:30SPEAKERHas gotten so annoying but I ended up just not buying anything. I was like, you know, I

50:35SPEAKERHave to be clear to be clear the way my NAS is sandwiched behind the desk against the wall

50:39SPEAKERI have to move furniture around to get to it to plug things into it and I finally throw my hands

50:44SPEAKERI was like

50:45SPEAKERI

50:45SPEAKERGuess I'll just move furniture around every time I need to plug an external drive in and do it directly because I can't trust any

50:50SPEAKEROf these extension cables. I'm seeing so I had that same problem

50:55SPEAKERWhat I was doing, so I have a couple of these anchor

50:58SPEAKERCameras that need not anchor Elgato cameras that need a USB 3.1 connection to work

51:04SPEAKERBecause they're high frame rate and high depth

51:08SPEAKERthe maximum length on USB 3 or 3.1 cables is 9 feet and

51:14SPEAKERWhat that means is that it works with most stuff at 9 feet, but in reality you really want 6-foot cables

51:20SPEAKERYes, and I had to find I had to I had to go I had the same exact problem

51:25SPEAKERI went through some extenders and I ended up just buying longer

51:29SPEAKERpoint-to-point cables

51:31SPEAKERSo instead of buying an extension cable, I would do whatever that a the fat a and point or whatever is

51:37SPEAKERYeah, and then you have just one cable because the extenders are the the problem isn't necessarily the cable

51:43SPEAKERthe problem is the length the total length exceeds 9 feet once you do the once you do the

51:49SPEAKERExtension the 6-foot extension plus the 6-foot cable that it comes with probably, you know

51:53SPEAKERI didn't account for that possibility that the people complaining were doing something inadvisable

51:57SPEAKERMaybe or also the more mate the more physical connectors you have in the chain the less distance

52:02SPEAKERYou're gonna get out of it to us. Yes voltage drop and stuff like that

52:05SPEAKERI mean that does cut the versatility down dramatically to have to pick a specific

52:09SPEAKERconnector to terminate on because some of the lot of these USB drives use the weird little hybrid

52:14SPEAKERMicro-USB with the extra notch on it. You know, like yeah, that's that's a pretty pretty limited use case

52:20SPEAKERyeah, it's a hard and a hard embed a cable in when I could have like a

52:24SPEAKERgeneric USB a to plug anything but so the other thing you could do is

52:29SPEAKERbuy like a cheap thunderbolt or USB USB dock and plug that in under the desk and then just have a cable that goes straight

52:35SPEAKERInto that it's true actually and that gives you then you'd have multiple ports coming out of that that are short

52:40SPEAKERYeah at that point you're limiting yourself to the bandwidth of a single port

52:43SPEAKERBut also it's hard drives like you're fine. USB 3 is 5 gigabits per second. So you're probably fine. You're gonna be fine

52:50SPEAKERYeah

52:51SPEAKERYeah, yeah. Anyway, like I it's almost it's almost like the mid-duty software thing

52:56SPEAKERI kind of like I'm ready for like a mid-duty

52:59SPEAKERSort of like electrical accessory cable brand to come along like I you know

53:04SPEAKERI would pay 30 or 40 percent more for cables that are like a hundred percent rock-solid guaranteed to work. You said mid-duty

53:13SPEAKERWhat you said mid-duty what you said mid-duty cable, um, sorry

53:20SPEAKERI'm an idiot the this is what happens when we record two podcasts in a row the

53:24SPEAKERThe thing so the this is the other reason I like Amazon for this stuff

53:28SPEAKERI know Amazon like there's a strike don't buy from Amazon right now. Yada yada. It's bad

53:33SPEAKERTheir return policy is really good on this stuff

53:36SPEAKERSo if you buy a cable and it doesn't work

53:37SPEAKERThen you just take it to the UPS store around the corner from your house

53:40SPEAKERYou don't have to pay anything to ship it back. Oh, I know. Yeah, it's not that the worst and it's more just the

53:45SPEAKERyou know if you're busy the time commitment of having to test and the uncertainty of is this working or not and like

53:51SPEAKERMaybe it's not clear if it's not working up to spec or not. And like yeah, it's just it's just too much overhead

53:56SPEAKERSo here's the other thought and this is a little bit crazier. The other thing you could do

54:02SPEAKERLike a I would expect most newer external drives to have USB C ports rather than the mini extended ones

54:10SPEAKERnow

54:12SPEAKERYou also could just shuck those drives and get a hard drive dock that you slam the drive down into

54:17SPEAKERThat's one of the things I have that I need to plug in. The crazy thing is that uses USB 3b

54:23SPEAKERUSB B for the tall the tall like

54:27SPEAKERTall a plug. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, you remember you remember regular USB B that you bought like your printer into yeah

54:33SPEAKERDid you use so the driving culture I have uses a 3.0 version of that

54:36SPEAKERSo that's that's the other reason that just getting a long cable is is weird because that's even more specific than

54:42SPEAKERThat yeah micro

54:45SPEAKERYou your NAS also has a bunch of drive bays. You could just put one of those things inside

54:49SPEAKERDrive cage inside the the five and a quarter inch drive bay. Those are those are gonna be full soon

54:55SPEAKEROkay

54:56SPEAKERAbout I bought some new drives. Okay. Okay, the shucks the shucking the shucking has been good

55:01SPEAKERThis is the season. Yes

55:05SPEAKERYou can always tell when Black Friday is because the best to deal on any drive price counter resets to zero on shucks

55:11SPEAKERDot-top. Yes. Yes on the the 20 terabyte on shucks

55:15SPEAKERStop had an icon that I've never seen before that when you hover over literally says stop reading and buy this drive

55:20SPEAKEROh, really? Cuz it was the historic all-time low price on the 20 terabyte. Oh, that's really funny

55:25SPEAKERTake my last I laughed out loud when I saw that and then I ordered the drive

55:32SPEAKERAnyway, all right

55:34SPEAKERhow about

55:36SPEAKERAnnoyed and tired

55:38SPEAKERwith a question

55:40SPEAKERAside from Apple wallets. Do you recommend saving credit card information anywhere for quicker checkout?

55:45SPEAKERI do it for Amazon, but the impetus for the question stems from switching to a password manager like one password

55:51SPEAKERI keep my stuff in my password manager for two reasons one is it makes it easy to fill in when you're buying stuff

55:58SPEAKERtoo if you ever lose your wallet or something when you're traveling you have a record of the cards and I make sure I

56:02SPEAKERPut the 800 number on the back of the card so I can call and cancel it. Oh sure

56:05SPEAKERYeah, that's that's a good one. For sure. I I still

56:10SPEAKERI try to avoid saving card information with like retailer X like Amazon has mine for now

56:16SPEAKERYou're trying to think like B&H. I think I'd save one in there because I trust them

56:20SPEAKERWell, I save them everywhere. Everybody gets it really. Yeah

56:25SPEAKEROr something, you know like in the event of a breach you just cancel the card immediately and I'm sitting

56:29SPEAKERHopefully it's a bank problem. Not me right problem

56:32SPEAKERBut generally the fraud protection should be good enough on a card

56:34SPEAKERNow debit cards is a totally different story debit cards are scary do not do not save your debit card information with anybody ever

56:41SPEAKERWell, I mean I keep it in my one password vault, but by what if I if my one password vault gets breached

56:46SPEAKERI have larger problems. I met with a retailer. Yeah, don't save your debit card information with random retailers

56:52SPEAKERDon't give your bank account information to people, right?

56:54SPEAKERI mean, I think that's something you have to do in Europe sometimes. But anyway, yes, I've been thinking kind of like

57:00SPEAKERtangentially to this question like Apple Wallet is great, but I have been thinking about how much is tied up in my phone these days that I

57:09SPEAKERResigned myself to that being unavoidable like I know more of the point

57:12SPEAKERI've just kind of started think about like man if I ever lost my phone

57:14SPEAKERIt would be a real pain in the ass to

57:16SPEAKERDisentangle all the stuff I've got in there and have to set it up again somewhere else or in a lot of cases lose access

57:20SPEAKERTo it like well, I don't like I use genius scan to scan on documents into PDF

57:25SPEAKERYeah

57:26SPEAKERI've gone on a hardcore like no hard copy crusade of like any any you know

57:33SPEAKERName something that comes in the mail on a sheet of paper that you don't want sitting around

57:36SPEAKERLike I turned it into a PDF and then get rid of it

57:39SPEAKERYeah, but I don't I should probably pay for ginty the paid tier of genius scan that has iCloud sync

57:44SPEAKERBut right now all those PDFs are just on my phone, which is not great. Well, hold on Dropbox just does that now

57:50SPEAKERDo they do document scanning like document scanning turn it into a PDF or image and it'll save it in a folder in your drive?

57:56SPEAKERSo then it's covered that is another issue

57:58SPEAKERI've been using genius scan since like 2010 and like I know the notes app on iOS also does that now?

58:03SPEAKERso I've probably also should just

58:06SPEAKERTransition to something like that. Yeah, just copy it over to something else

58:09SPEAKERAlthough I haven't found anything that does grayscale quite as well as genius scan

58:12SPEAKERMaybe I should try drop boxes version like the notes app didn't do it as well where it turns a grayscale and flattens the document

58:18SPEAKERto make it look like it's photocopy, but I should look at some more of those services that I actually do pay for and see

58:23SPEAKERHow well they're doing it these days because I mean actually feel bad for genius scan

58:27SPEAKERI guess they got Sherlock, but it sounds like everything I have does this functionality as well now

58:32SPEAKERIt was incredibly valuable like 10 or 12 years ago

58:35SPEAKERAnd it was the only thing that did that and I switched to dropbox probably a decade ago and haven't looked back

58:40SPEAKERYeah, yeah, I'll check that out

58:43SPEAKEROkay, I got a couple of Mac questions here actually, how about we start with this one from patch?

58:48SPEAKERWhich I do have an answer for and then we'll do one a little more iffy on that's a third or fourth favorite version of Logan

58:56SPEAKERFrom the x-men someone with eye patch, but they call him patch, but he's not Wolverine. Okay, it took me a minute under no circumstances

59:03SPEAKERShould you describe him as Wolverine? He's patch got it

59:05SPEAKERAll right patch asks with the recent changes in the Mac lineup including backdating the minimum 16 gigabytes of RAM to both the m3 and m2

59:12SPEAKERMacBook Air you think Apple has flipped the value proposition on its head to the point where they are a default

59:18SPEAKERRecommendation for family and friends in the m4 Mac mini base model and the updated into MacBook Air base model

59:24SPEAKERWhat they're talking about here is that Apple went and recently after after being on minimum 8 gigabytes of RAM

59:30SPEAKERFor the cheap for the cheap version right at the base cheaper pricing for like what if 10 years in years

59:37SPEAKERYeah, they finally just recently refreshed the entire product line company-wide to

59:42SPEAKERStart at 16 gigabytes minimum. Thank God. I would say yes to this, but I also would have recommended it even before that

59:49SPEAKERFrankly, so having spent some time on the PC laptop side lately over at PC world. I I am

59:57SPEAKERIt's it's weird. Like if you're in the thousand dollar laptop price range, I think that yeah, it's a safe bet, right?

1:00:03SPEAKERI think other people are making good laptops

1:00:06SPEAKERBut you have to do a little bit of reading and research and the Apple laptops are pretty pretty safe to recommend

1:00:12SPEAKERThe weird thing to me is that there's not a lot of stuff in the 500 to $1,000 worth 600 to $1,000 range, right?

1:00:18SPEAKERThere's like there's a lot of laptops in the under 500 buck range and there's a lot of stuff

1:00:23SPEAKERThat's like there's a lot of gaming laptops that are like 850 to a thousand

1:00:27SPEAKERBut there's not a lot of like $700 laptops that are worth buying

1:00:31SPEAKERand and I think like for me a

1:00:35SPEAKERThousand like I mean I've had a thousand I've been buying thousand dollar plus laptops for the last 10 15 years

1:00:40SPEAKERit still feels like too much money consistently and

1:00:44SPEAKERI I think that using my wife's m1 MacBook Air, which is an 8 gigabyte model

1:00:51SPEAKERIt doesn't I was surprised by how nuts like if I used a Windows laptop that only had 8 gigs of RAM in 2024

1:00:57SPEAKERIt would be unusable

1:00:59SPEAKERWell now there's a thing here that I think a lot of people don't really know that there is a big difference between the way

1:01:04SPEAKERMac OS handles memory versus windows on laptops or just in general rather

1:01:08SPEAKERYeah, and the reason for that is that Apple runs their entire stack software and hardware from top to bottom and the storage

1:01:14SPEAKERThey are using in those laptops is so fast that it is actually an appreciable

1:01:17SPEAKERFraction of the speed of the RAM at this point their page file can be crazy fast, basically. So yes, they are on

1:01:24SPEAKERmachines with lower amounts of memory

1:01:26SPEAKERThey're very aggressively paging out to this very fast storage

1:01:29SPEAKERWhich helps it feel way snappier than you would on Windows with an equivalent amount of RAM that said I've watched some like YouTube

1:01:36SPEAKERtests of the way this works because of course I have and

1:01:40SPEAKERThe problem is that on an 8 gigabyte machine is paging constantly

1:01:44SPEAKERSo you're wearing your SSD to us and on a machine where you can't remove the SSD and replace it easily or at all

1:01:50SPEAKERUnless you send it to some specialty shop little solder new memory on for you or a new flash, right?

1:01:55SPEAKERYeah, it is hitting the wear leveling on your storage pretty fast

1:01:58SPEAKERI mean, is it gonna be fast enough to like wear your storage out before the practical end of the laptops lifespan?

1:02:03SPEAKERLike likely not but it's still not amazing. Oh like yes

1:02:07SPEAKERI get I get that eight gigabytes feels paltry and I sure I sure got

1:02:11SPEAKER16 on my m1 a couple years ago when I have the choice

1:02:14SPEAKERBut like it's not as bad as it would be on an equivalent Windows machine. I the the big thing for me is I

1:02:21SPEAKERhesitate to recommend an OS change

1:02:24SPEAKERDepending on the person right? Yeah like

1:02:28SPEAKERWhen my wife wanted to get a laptop a few years ago

1:02:30SPEAKERI was like you should look at the max and she tried it and she used it a lot in the return window because she was

1:02:35SPEAKERWorried she might want to send it back because she was a Windows person prior to that

1:02:39SPEAKERwhen

1:02:41SPEAKERWhen but I would never recommend to my parents for example to switch to a Mac at this point in their lives, right?

1:02:47SPEAKERIt's too much change

1:02:49SPEAKERAlthough buying a Windows 11 laptop when they're used to Windows 8 probably might be just as big a change

1:02:55SPEAKERSo, you know, maybe rip the band-aid off. I don't know

1:02:57SPEAKERyeah, like maybe not as big a change but I definitely know what you mean like the number of people I see out there who switch

1:03:02SPEAKERfrom Windows to Mac and

1:03:03SPEAKERComplain endlessly about things about Mac OS that really just amount to it's different than what I'm used to

1:03:08SPEAKERYeah

1:03:09SPEAKERIt makes me think like you were spot-on with this like a lot of people like you'll see you'll see people complaining about like hotkeys

1:03:14SPEAKERBeing different or like window behavior being different, you know, and it's like yeah, like that's not like really qualitatively better or worse

1:03:21SPEAKERIt's just different than what you're used to like

1:03:24SPEAKERindividual person's tolerance for change and having to learn and adapt to new standards

1:03:30SPEAKERProbably has a lot to do with whether you would get somebody to switch or not

1:03:32SPEAKERI mean just for what it's worth as somebody who's used both a Mac and a PC regularly for a long time

1:03:39SPEAKERHaving to switch which finger is the control equivalent, you know is is always a pain. I always have to think about it

1:03:46SPEAKERYeah, you're not you're not wrong. Yeah, but you know when we started whiskey

1:03:50SPEAKERI started a giant bomb I moved to a Mac for the first time in my life and like yeah, there was absolutely a

1:03:55SPEAKERLearning curve and an adjustment period but once I got all the keyboard shortcuts dialed in and like set up a few little

1:04:01SPEAKERCustomizations like I felt like I was way faster working in Mac OS than I ever was in Windows

1:04:05SPEAKERYou were young back then though. Your brain is still plastic

1:04:08SPEAKERWell also Windows has caught up in some ways

1:04:10SPEAKERBut like that's back when expose was still fairly new and like the auto window management stuff

1:04:15SPEAKERThey were doing was pretty unique that was back in the days when we reinstalled windows every year whether it needed it or not

1:04:19SPEAKERYeah

1:04:21SPEAKERindeed

1:04:22SPEAKERLet's see. The other Mac question real quick here comes from another Brad it just to be clear

1:04:27SPEAKERHe signed it Brad you added the another Brad. Yes. I'm just saying it's not from me potential substitute Brad's

1:04:33SPEAKERThis is an email actually as I'm slowly dipping into the Apple ecosystem after being a longtime Android and PC person

1:04:39SPEAKERThe announcement of the updated Mac minis has sparked a very strange question

1:04:42SPEAKERHow would you view the viability of the new M4 mini as a light gaming option?

1:04:47SPEAKERHave games on Steam and epic started to account for the new chips and work well enough to consider. I

1:04:52SPEAKERI don't it depends on the game, right?

1:04:55SPEAKERYes

1:04:56SPEAKERBut so this is the other question that I mentioned earlier that I'm interested in but don't have a great answer for

1:05:01SPEAKERlike steam

1:05:02SPEAKERlast I checked steam still does not have a native arm client on Mac you would have to run the

1:05:07SPEAKERx86 steam with Rosetta and I think that would probably go for most games as well, but I don't actually know

1:05:16SPEAKERYeah, and it's weird cuz like for example frostpunk 2 has a Mac build right brand relatively new game came out this year

1:05:24SPEAKERYour selection of games that are available to you is going to be very low compared to an x86 or

1:05:32SPEAKEROr whatever, you know you a more open platform. Yeah

1:05:37SPEAKERNow the thing you do get is access to Apple arcade, which I think has Mac games. Yes

1:05:44SPEAKERI

1:05:45SPEAKERLooked when I when we got this question

1:05:47SPEAKERI tried to figure out how to see which games were available on Mac in the Mac App Store and

1:05:53SPEAKERYou can't I can't I can't see it on my computer on a personal computer

1:05:57SPEAKERI don't think I think they filter that by what platform they detect you using it just says hey these sucks

1:06:03SPEAKERYeah, these are the apps you love from a place you can trust and I'm like, well, that's not what I'm looking for

1:06:07SPEAKERbut like for example

1:06:10SPEAKERValheim is available on the Mac App Store

1:06:13SPEAKERSo go simulator is available with these five different versions of go simulator on the on the Mac App Store

1:06:20SPEAKERYeah, actually nothing now that you mentioned that they are starting to push more games like on iOS

1:06:24SPEAKERYou know Death Stranding, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Resident Evil 4 like there are games showing up there that I think also work on Mac OS

1:06:30SPEAKERI think the stuff you're gonna see is the stuff that has enormous

1:06:34SPEAKERcross

1:06:35SPEAKERJohn cross generational impact like five nights at Freddy's all of those are available on the Mac App Store

1:06:41SPEAKERIt looks like open up. That's iPad. Sorry the

1:06:45SPEAKERThis is the other thing that's the problem with

1:06:47SPEAKERbrowsing this preview thing is you have to keep drilling down to see if you can get into them and

1:06:50SPEAKERAnd it mixes up the Mac and the and the iOS stuff pretty reliably the the big thing

1:06:57SPEAKERI think if you're gonna live that Mac life, you're probably looking at cloud stuff

1:07:01SPEAKERSo you're gonna sign up for GeForce now or maybe Xbox game pass and play stuff through there would be my guess. Yeah

1:07:09SPEAKERThe dark horse option here really want to get insane is install

1:07:14SPEAKERAsahi Linux on it instead

1:07:16SPEAKERYeah, and then you can then you can use all the proton

1:07:20SPEAKERLinux based valve stuff to play way more games

1:07:23SPEAKERBut you have multiple translation layers because you're going from x86 to arm though at that point and yes

1:07:29SPEAKERAnd it's gonna I think that that experience is gonna be bad. I don't know for sure

1:07:32SPEAKERI've seen people say it's actually quite good at this point

1:07:35SPEAKERBut the bigger thing is I've kept an eye on Asahi for a while and I think they're getting there slowly

1:07:40SPEAKERBut surely but there are still like I think they're still fairly major components of the hardware that aren't supported yet. It's it's

1:07:46SPEAKERLike it's an it that's always gonna be an inimical relationship between Apple and the people making that and it's not gonna be what you want

1:07:52SPEAKERYeah, the people making Asahi from everything I've seen seem incredibly smart. But also yes, it's like they're swimming upstream against Apple's

1:08:00SPEAKERclosed ethos that that said the new Mac minis are some hot business and yeah, and I think the price is really catching people's eye because

1:08:07SPEAKERThe isn't the base M4 Mac mini like $5.99. They're really that cheap. Holy cow. This is the case

1:08:12SPEAKERThat's the cheapest Mac that you could buy from for in recent memory. Yes, I believe that's the case

1:08:19SPEAKERHow quickly starts at $5.99?

1:08:21SPEAKERThere you go. Yeah, that's that's that is a that is a cheap computer is a very very fast one

1:08:27SPEAKEROn on the just all I'll say on the Asahi topic

1:08:30SPEAKERI I look forward to putting Asahi on my m1 MacBook Pro in like say

1:08:35SPEAKERFive or six years that when you retire it from your daily use whenever that laptop feels like it's no longer my daily driver

1:08:41SPEAKERI look forward to putting Linux on it at that point. That seems right. All right

1:08:45SPEAKERShall we close with this cake batter question? Oh boy. Yeah, I'm ready. You're gonna have to help me fill out a list here

1:08:51SPEAKERCan we get a chart tier list? I think the line chart is a tier and the Smith chart is S tier

1:08:57SPEAKERI don't even know what a Smith chart is. Well, that's because you're not over on Wikipedia on Wikipedia org slash wiki slash chart

1:09:03SPEAKEROh, wow, you get the list of common charts and less common charts. Look at that. That is that's a beautiful chart

1:09:12SPEAKERWhich one is this? Oh the Smith chart? Oh boy. That's like a it's like looking down a hole

1:09:16SPEAKERI know it's there's something there's a there's a dimensionality to it. It looks 3d in a way

1:09:20SPEAKERI mean, I'm a fan of the Smith chart personally

1:09:22SPEAKEROkay, so I don't know that I could drive a lot of useful information from it personally

1:09:26SPEAKERBut it looks cool. This is like maybe this is our April Fool's episode

1:09:29SPEAKERThere's like 50 different kinds of charts on this on this page here. Oh god, we have

1:09:35SPEAKERlet's just do the

1:09:37SPEAKERThe most let's just do common charts because there's four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve there

1:09:44SPEAKEROkay, we have the histogram the bar chart the pie chart the line chart

1:09:51SPEAKERthe timeline chart the org chart or

1:09:55SPEAKEROrganizational chart the tree chart a flow chart area chart cart O'Gram

1:10:02SPEAKERWhich appears to be a map with stuff overlaid on it?

1:10:05SPEAKERpedigree chart and the radial tree

1:10:08SPEAKERso like tree chart is like a

1:10:12SPEAKERHey, you start with one thing at the top and it spreads out to have other things underneath it

1:10:17SPEAKERKind of like a pedigree chart, but a pedigree chart. It seems to be purely

1:10:21SPEAKERGenomics related. Yeah pedigree chart is what you imagine like a family tree looking

1:10:26SPEAKERYeah, a flow chart obviously started with one place and go through a series of decisions to get to the other end

1:10:32SPEAKERArea charts are just line charts with stuff underneath them. It's easy

1:10:36SPEAKERI'm trying to figure out like the distinction between a histogram and a bar chart seems somewhat academic

1:10:42SPEAKERhistogram is a is a count of

1:10:45SPEAKERIs it is a chart is listing counts and it's a specific bar chart

1:10:51SPEAKEROkay, so so all histograms are bar charts, but not all bar charts or histograms

1:10:56SPEAKERI am NOT a statistician, but I'm gonna say yes. All right

1:11:00SPEAKERA histogram is this series of tabular frequencies shown as adjacent rate rectangles

1:11:06SPEAKERErected over discrete intervals with an area equal to the frequency of the observations in the interval first introduced by call up your son

1:11:13SPEAKEROr literally sounds exactly like a bar chart, of course

1:11:17SPEAKEROkay, I'm gonna say as as it is

1:11:21SPEAKERInternational pie for breakfast day in the United States today pie number one. That's very sure

1:11:29SPEAKERSmith Smith chart also S tier. Yeah, I mean that's not in this

1:11:35SPEAKERThis list of 12 basic charts that you have defined but sure look people might

1:11:40SPEAKERAccuse me a bias

1:11:42SPEAKERIf Charlie looks right like it's like again, it looks it looks there's an element of the artistic to it. Yeah, and also

1:11:50SPEAKERPhenomenal naming, you know like a good a good plain bar chart easy to read communicates. Well, you know, I think no

1:11:57SPEAKERI think it's too easy to manipulate because you could change the scale on a bar chart

1:12:00SPEAKERLike you can't change the scale on a pie chart, right? It's always a hundred percent. That's fair

1:12:05SPEAKERThat's you know, you're right actually the number of the number of like Fox News infographics

1:12:09SPEAKERI've seen that very misleadingly manipulate the scale. Yeah, like you cut off the last you cut off all but the last 2%

1:12:15SPEAKERThe 2% that shows the change on a bar chart and it looks like crime stats are a nightmare

1:12:20SPEAKERSo it does yeah, so bar chart F for me about the line chart similar problem

1:12:26SPEAKERLet's get like time over data though or data over time. Yes. Yes. Same. That's nice

1:12:30SPEAKERAnd without a line chart you wouldn't have an area chart. I think I like the area chart better

1:12:35SPEAKERThat does look anything that looks like it should be on a scientific instrument is cool

1:12:38SPEAKERYeah

1:12:40SPEAKERI don't know. I think a line charts a solid C for me. All right. I don't know

1:12:46SPEAKERWhat do you think? Where would you put it line charts? Yeah, like a B maybe B. Okay

1:12:52SPEAKERI think an area charts better. I think an area charts a

1:12:55SPEAKERFor sure. Is there a tick-tock filter to make this easier? I'm having trouble keeping up with where we are with everything

1:13:01SPEAKERThat's that's just everything these days org chart F

1:13:05SPEAKERHey, where's the org chart? So it's an organization charts. Yes. Yeah

1:13:10SPEAKERSure

1:13:11SPEAKERJust make everything should be flat. Everybody's in charge. It's useful. Yeah, is it is it really? Yes

1:13:17SPEAKERCan I can I see the anarchists organizational chart? What's the org chart for tech pot?

1:13:22SPEAKERIt's just to be two boxes right next to each other. Yep. Yep. Perfect org chart right there

1:13:26SPEAKERYeah flow charts pretty good though, right like we describe an algorithm with a flow chart. Yes or a circuit. Yeah all sorts of stuff

1:13:33SPEAKERYeah, it's flow charts like an a I think it feels like a strong a to me

1:13:39SPEAKERtree charts

1:13:40SPEAKERAnd figure out how the tree chart if greeted different diff agrees if we got in this podcast

1:13:45SPEAKERI'm trying to figure out how the tree chart differs from the pedigree chart. I think the tree chart doesn't rank

1:13:50SPEAKERIt doesn't even have a wiki page. There's no link for it. I

1:13:53SPEAKEROkay, yep doesn't count. Yeah pedigree chart. I don't know with Mendel seemed to be into them again

1:14:00SPEAKERI feel like we should just reiterate if you really want to

1:14:03SPEAKERReally want to get the most out of this extremely engaging conversation go to the chart page on Wikipedia

1:14:09SPEAKERSo yeah, it's probably common charts. Yeah. Yeah

1:14:12SPEAKERI don't know and then go and then go look at the Smith chart because you need to see it

1:14:15SPEAKERYeah, it's down further. You can scroll down and see it. I I'm gonna say I think pedigree pretty high

1:14:21SPEAKERGonna be seeing true. This reminds me the question. We didn't do this quite the question, but it was like hey

1:14:26SPEAKERIt was about pain thresholds. Oh, right. Yes left save that one. Yeah, we can do that next month

1:14:32SPEAKERWe talked about this occasionally internally. Sometimes I would like to do a supplemental Q&A

1:14:38SPEAKERFrom time to time because we have so many good questions that we don't have time to get to you this month

1:14:42SPEAKERThere was a an embarrassment of riches, but there's there's a concern about doing too many Q&A's

1:14:47SPEAKERSo if you have an opinion out there in the audience about how many Q&A's is too many let us know

1:14:52SPEAKERTree map tree map down in the less common charts. I'd put that as an S tier that looks like that to me looks like

1:14:59SPEAKERWindis windier stat right there now, which is which is what it is

1:15:05SPEAKERYeah, I don't know man. I'm gonna say okay. I think pie S tier

1:15:10SPEAKERSmith S tier clearly

1:15:13SPEAKERflowchart a or

1:15:17SPEAKERArea chart a line chart be

1:15:22SPEAKERBar chart D

1:15:25SPEAKERYou know many C's let's just chuck cartogram and T chart and two tree chart and timeline chart into C's

1:15:32SPEAKERall right, I'm good with that and

1:15:34SPEAKERYeah, but I have to confess. I don't have very strong feelings about most of these charts. Yeah, I'm I

1:15:41SPEAKERLook, I took statistics for business because it qualified as my statistics requirement for my science degree

1:15:47SPEAKERBecause I didn't want to take real statistics. It was scary and hard. I could I could see that. Yeah

1:15:52SPEAKERIt turned out to be a mistake. It would have made a lot of my further downstream classes

1:15:56SPEAKERA lot easier if I knew the science statistics stuff instead of knew about Gantt charts and a bunch of bullshit

1:16:01SPEAKERBut you know here we are we this is how we learn why tackle today what you can put off

1:16:07SPEAKERFor 30 years you get 30 or 35 years exactly. I guess that'll do it for us this week. Yeah

1:16:14SPEAKERThanks everybody for listening. Hope everybody in the United States had a good Thanksgiving and everybody else had a nice Thursday

1:16:21SPEAKERThe the fourth best day of the week I made a joke this morning

1:16:25SPEAKERBecause somebody was talking about Canadian Thanksgiving and Black Friday deals not being good in Canada

1:16:29SPEAKERI was like, well, it's cuz don't you guys celebrate Black Friday in October or something?

1:16:33SPEAKERRight didn't it didn't land that turn that joke didn't play. I was disappointed. Yeah

1:16:39SPEAKERBetter like next year. Yeah, maybe with a little luck

1:16:42SPEAKERAs always Brad will made a tech pot is a listener supported show

1:16:45SPEAKERWe wouldn't be here without you all the listeners and we appreciate everybody who listens to the show and leaves reviews and all that stuff

1:16:52SPEAKERBut we especially appreciate people who support the show

1:16:56SPEAKERVia the patreon which you can do by going to patreon.com slash tech bod

1:17:00SPEAKERwhere for five dollars a month you get access to the discord you get access to

1:17:05SPEAKERThe monthly patron episode which we just recorded before we did this one

1:17:09SPEAKERAnd you get to join the community on the on the on the discord

1:17:13SPEAKERWhich is like I said full of beautiful nerds who who are just it's just a good scene up there. You should check it out

1:17:20SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com slash tech tech pod and this is the last episode of the month

1:17:25SPEAKERWe want to thank in addition to our executive producer to your patrons

1:17:29SPEAKERWe also want to thank our associate producer to your patrons. So I'm gonna start with executive producers

1:17:34SPEAKERIncluding Andrew Slosky bunny fiend crow David Allen James kammok Jordan lippie

1:17:41SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie and pantheon makers of the HS 3 high-speed 3d printer. Thank you all so so much. Yeah, thank you

1:17:48SPEAKERAnd since it's a associate producer time, we want to thank our associate producer level supporters as well

1:17:53SPEAKERIncluding Alejandro Navarro Andre and Burke Andrew dicey shoal dice

1:17:58SPEAKERArthur geese Ben Tolman brutal brutal kerfuffle

1:18:03SPEAKEREric Eric Klein Felix Kramer Graham Banks Chad Rita just associate wedge

1:18:09SPEAKERMatt Walker parentheses walking in 8080

1:18:12SPEAKERClose parentheses Mike Etheridge Nathan Phelps Sanchik Kumar Steve Lin Thomas Shay and Tom Hilton

1:18:19SPEAKERThank you all so so much. We were thankful for you. Very thankful for everybody here

1:18:25SPEAKERAnd I guess that'll do it for us this month friend or this week rather. It's true

1:18:29SPEAKERWe will be back next week with another edition of the tech pod

1:18:32SPEAKERI'm gonna be away so we'll figure out when we're gonna record that in the interim

1:18:35SPEAKERBut yes, hope everybody has a lovely lovely week and we will see you next time

1:18:40SPEAKERStay techie. I don't know. I got nothing there. It's like I need it. We need a catchphrase

1:18:48SPEAKERThat's just nodding not saying anything