00:00SPEAKER- Brad, I really like Vancouver a lot.
00:02SPEAKER- Oh, The Coove?
00:03SPEAKER- People are wildly uncomfortable when you call it that.
00:07SPEAKER- Like people up there?
00:08SPEAKER- I don't know why, man.
00:09SPEAKER- Oh, hang on, hang on.
00:10SPEAKERIs this the Vancouver version of Frisco?
00:13SPEAKERAm I doing that?
00:14SPEAKER- I think Frisco's totally acceptable.
00:15SPEAKERI feel like Matt Honan made Frisco happen.
00:18SPEAKER- Oh, when I moved out here,
00:19SPEAKERI was instructed never to refer to it as Frisco.
00:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I was too,
00:23SPEAKERbut that was by people who I don't know if I trust anymore.
00:26SPEAKER- I see, okay.
00:27SPEAKER- Well, I guess I will retire that pet name for Vancouver.
00:30SPEAKER- No, no, no, it's okay.
00:32SPEAKERI think they call it Van City
00:33SPEAKER'cause they love Ryan Reynolds so much.
00:36SPEAKER- Uh-huh, I bet.
00:38SPEAKEROh, is that where that?
00:38SPEAKEROh, he is Canadian, isn't he?
00:40SPEAKER- He lives in Vancouver.
00:42SPEAKERI think his Twitter handle was Vancity Ryan or whatever.
00:46SPEAKER- I think it's Vancity Reynolds.
00:47SPEAKERI don't know why I know that
00:48SPEAKER'cause I've never followed him before.
00:49SPEAKERBut anyway, did he make that up?
00:51SPEAKERI wonder where that came from.
00:52SPEAKER- No, I think that's what people call it.
00:53SPEAKERAt least maybe that's what Ryan Reynolds calls it.
00:56SPEAKERI don't know.
00:57SPEAKEROh, the Vancouver City Savings Credit Union,
01:00SPEAKERcommonly referred to as Van City.
01:03SPEAKER- There you go.
01:04SPEAKER- He's just a big fan of the credit union.
01:06SPEAKER- I mean, look, can't fault a good credit union.
01:11SPEAKERNo, so I just got back from Vancouver,
01:12SPEAKERwent to see Taylor Swift.
01:13SPEAKERIt was fantastic.
01:15SPEAKERAnd I ate a lot of Canadian food.
01:17SPEAKERWe went to, they have,
01:19SPEAKERokay, I'm American and I didn't know about this,
01:21SPEAKERbut apparently a lot of Commonwealth countries
01:24SPEAKERdo Christmas markets around the holiday season.
01:27SPEAKER- Oh, that is a very European thing, isn't it?
01:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess Germans, it seems German,
01:34SPEAKERlike a lot of German stuff.
01:36SPEAKER- It's quite continental.
01:36SPEAKERWhen I was on my YouTube city walking tour tear last year,
01:41SPEAKERsaw quite a few Christmas markets
01:43SPEAKERand some fine European capitals.
01:45SPEAKER- I'm gonna go and tell you,
01:46SPEAKERif we wanna appropriate some culture from another place,
01:48SPEAKERwe should steal Christmas markets
01:50SPEAKERbecause Christmas markets rip.
01:52SPEAKER- It seems like a pretty good time.
01:54SPEAKER- Like you pay a ticket and you get into this place.
01:57SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know there was a paid admission anyway.
01:59SPEAKER- Well, you gotta keep the riffraff out, right?
02:01SPEAKER- Yeah.
02:02SPEAKER- I mean, I think it's more that it takes
02:04SPEAKERa fair amount of effort to set up tents
02:06SPEAKERand like little stands and heaters and mulled wine stations.
02:10SPEAKERAnd like you could pay a couple bucks more
02:12SPEAKERand just the ticket was good indefinitely
02:14SPEAKERfor your whole family, which was nice.
02:16SPEAKERAnd then you went in, there were like little stands
02:19SPEAKERwith candles and hats.
02:22SPEAKERThere were a lot of like toboggans, I think it is.
02:27SPEAKER- The proper term, yes.
02:28SPEAKER- Is that the proper term?
02:29SPEAKER- That is absolutely.
02:30SPEAKER- Tooks, I think is the other one.
02:33SPEAKER- Beanie if you're a lunatic.
02:35SPEAKER- Yeah, wow, I wasn't judging, but okay.
02:39SPEAKERAnd then also an incredible food selection.
02:44SPEAKER- I bet, I bet.
02:45SPEAKER- So like there was a raclette booth
02:48SPEAKERwhere they had like the stinkiest cheese you've ever seen,
02:50SPEAKERlike all heated up and gooey inside it's rind.
02:52SPEAKERAnd then they just kind of scoop it out
02:54SPEAKERonto some bread and prosciutto,
02:55SPEAKERon like a crusty roll and a prosciutto.
02:58SPEAKER- Man.
02:59SPEAKER- And then you could walk around tasting amazing cheese
03:01SPEAKERand smelling like foot, it was really good.
03:03SPEAKER- It's a win-win.
03:05SPEAKER- Yeah, there was a sausage roll place.
03:09SPEAKERI'd never had a real sausage roll before.
03:10SPEAKERI didn't have them when I've been to the UK before.
03:13SPEAKERAnd we're gonna go and tell you like putting a giant sausage
03:17SPEAKERinside a piece of like flaky pie crust, delicious.
03:22SPEAKER- Yeah, and that's another thing we should import.
03:24SPEAKERIn fact, maybe we should import the compulsory voting
03:27SPEAKERfrom Australia and sausage roll reward,
03:29SPEAKERif you're familiar with that phenomenon.
03:30SPEAKER- But you get a sausage roll when you vote in Australia?
03:33SPEAKER- I don't know if it's compulsory.
03:34SPEAKERI don't know, I shouldn't say.
03:35SPEAKERI think voting is mandatory in Australia,
03:37SPEAKERor maybe it's like, but they get the national holiday,
03:40SPEAKERlike, hey, everybody's off work to vote thing.
03:42SPEAKER- Oh, that's nice.
03:43SPEAKER- That is the tradition in Australia.
03:45SPEAKERWhen you go vote,
03:46SPEAKERyou're provided with a sausage roll afterwards.
03:48SPEAKER- Man, that sounds fantastic.
03:49SPEAKERI bet everybody would vote.
03:50SPEAKERIf you got a sausage roll at the end of voting,
03:52SPEAKEReverybody would vote.
03:53SPEAKER- Yeah, look, maybe people should get on board
03:54SPEAKERwith our civic platform.
03:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
03:57SPEAKER(upbeat music)
04:16SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
04:26SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Bot."
04:28SPEAKERI'm Will.
04:29SPEAKER- I'm Brad, I'm early Brad, hello.
04:31SPEAKER- I'm early Will.
04:32SPEAKER- Is this the earliest we've ever done, or pretty close?
04:34SPEAKER- No, when you were working at Giant Bomb Still,
04:38SPEAKERwe would do like some six o'clock sometimes, I think.
04:40SPEAKER- God, really?
04:41SPEAKER- Yeah, we had it real early.
04:42SPEAKER'Cause you were like, I've never podcasted this early.
04:44SPEAKERI was like, this is literally the only time
04:46SPEAKERI've ever been allowed to podcast.
04:48SPEAKER- At six in the morning?
04:49SPEAKER- We would do six in the morning fairly regularly
04:51SPEAKERbecause of Adam's schedule when he was shooting.
04:53SPEAKER- Okay, sure.
04:54SPEAKEROh, sure, wow.
04:56SPEAKERThat's that TV celebrity schedule.
04:57SPEAKERThat's that like 4 a.m. call time.
04:59SPEAKER- Yeah, well, their call time would always be after dark,
05:02SPEAKERafter the sun was up.
05:03SPEAKERBut like, yeah, it was-
05:05SPEAKER- I just mean generally people that work in like TV and film
05:07SPEAKERlike you just hear about having to be on set
05:09SPEAKERor ready to go at four in the morning
05:11SPEAKERworking 12 hour days type stuff.
05:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I remember when I was a kid, I was like,
05:14SPEAKERman, I would love to be on the Today Show.
05:15SPEAKERAnd then somebody told me that they had to be in downtown,
05:18SPEAKERin Manhattan at like three, six a.m. or four a.m.
05:20SPEAKERor something to get ready.
05:21SPEAKERI was like, oh, no, I'm good.
05:23SPEAKERThat sounds terrible.
05:24SPEAKER- Yeah, of course.
05:24SPEAKERWhat time are they done though?
05:25SPEAKER- 10, but then they have a day of work, right?
05:27SPEAKER- No, no, I guess so, sure.
05:29SPEAKER- It's like at this point, they all,
05:31SPEAKERit's not like the old days
05:32SPEAKERwhere Brian Kumble and Katie Couric just showed up
05:33SPEAKERfor a few hours and drank some coffee and chatted
05:35SPEAKERand then went home.
05:36SPEAKER- That's fair.
05:37SPEAKER- Now, Al Roker is out.
05:39SPEAKERHe's probably out doing the nightly news for all I know.
05:43SPEAKER- Well, you know what?
05:44SPEAKERFor those salaries, for those contracts,
05:46SPEAKERI think I would be fine with that for a few years.
05:49SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
05:50SPEAKERSo yeah, Ryan Reynolds was at the Taylor Swift Show
05:54SPEAKERI was at, for what it's worth.
05:56SPEAKER- Wait, what?
05:57SPEAKERDid he tweet about it or something?
05:58SPEAKER- Yeah, everybody tweeted about it.
05:59SPEAKERI think the Gram is the landing place
06:04SPEAKERfor most of the Swiftie organization.
06:06SPEAKERAlthough surprisingly, a large number of Swifties
06:08SPEAKERon Blue Sky it turns out.
06:10SPEAKER- Yes, actually there was an influx,
06:11SPEAKERwasn't there around the time of the big exodus?
06:14SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I think the Brazilian Swifties
06:16SPEAKERhave always been there.
06:17SPEAKERI think that's always been where they landed.
06:21SPEAKER- That was maybe my favorite part of the Blue Sky move
06:24SPEAKERwas realizing that if people remember
06:27SPEAKERthere was that dust up between Twitter and Brazil.
06:30SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
06:30SPEAKER- Brazil banned Twitter nationally for a while
06:33SPEAKERand I think they lifted it eventually,
06:34SPEAKERbut it sounds like so many Brazilians
06:36SPEAKERwent to Blue Sky in the interim
06:38SPEAKERthat most of them just stayed.
06:39SPEAKER- Well, Brazil was already like one of the larger countries
06:43SPEAKERon Blue Sky, even before that.
06:46SPEAKERThere were a lot of like kind of oddly horny Brazilian guys
06:48SPEAKERon Blue Sky and like Japan and Brazil
06:53SPEAKERwere like both really large presences
06:56SPEAKEReven before the Twitter exodus.
06:58SPEAKER- Yeah, actually now that you mentioned it,
06:59SPEAKERlike when I first got on there recently
07:01SPEAKERand looked at the feeds,
07:02SPEAKERlike those were some of the languages
07:04SPEAKERthat floated to the top.
07:05SPEAKERLike add this feed to see all posts
07:08SPEAKERfrom the Japanese cluster.
07:09SPEAKERI don't know what the cluster is in Blue Sky terms, but.
07:12SPEAKER- Yep, that's it.
07:13SPEAKER- That kind of thing.
07:14SPEAKER- It's cluster.
07:15SPEAKERBut yeah, so we went to the last era,
07:19SPEAKERmy lovely wife got lottery tickets
07:21SPEAKERto the last eras tour show.
07:23SPEAKERAnd like while I like a 1989
07:26SPEAKERand I'm a fan of pop music generally speaking,
07:29SPEAKERI didn't ever in my life expected
07:30SPEAKERto go to a Taylor Swift show.
07:34SPEAKERAnd we've been to a kind of lot of music over the years,
07:38SPEAKERbut this was really unlike anything
07:40SPEAKERI'd ever been to in my life.
07:42SPEAKERLike ever, ever been to.
07:46SPEAKERYeah, like it made it, like so we saw Prince,
07:50SPEAKERwe saw Prince a few times in arena shows
07:52SPEAKERand it was an incredible performance,
07:54SPEAKERbut it wasn't like a full body.
07:59SPEAKER- Sensory experience.
08:00SPEAKER- Yeah, that's exactly it.
08:02SPEAKERIt wasn't like, so I've seen shows with a big screen,
08:07SPEAKERwith screens and like big AV and stuff like that.
08:10SPEAKERLike Nightinch Nails has been doing that
08:11SPEAKERfor a really long time.
08:14SPEAKERAnd I've seen shows that were loud
08:16SPEAKERand there was a lot going on.
08:17SPEAKERAnd I've seen shows where people do a lot of dancing
08:19SPEAKERand moving around the stage and stuff like that.
08:21SPEAKERFirst off, this stage is really freaking enormous.
08:25SPEAKERIt was like to cross.
08:28SPEAKERSo it's like, it's wide and long and pokes out
08:32SPEAKERinto the floor, like two thirds of the way across the floor.
08:35SPEAKERI think this was the Vancouver,
08:38SPEAKERlike the main municipal auditorium thing.
08:41SPEAKERIt was basically the size of like Chase Center,
08:43SPEAKERlike a big basketball arena.
08:44SPEAKERI think they play indoor football there maybe.
08:46SPEAKER- Oh, they haven't actually named it
08:47SPEAKERafter a corporation yet?
08:48SPEAKER- I'm gonna go and tell you one of the best things
08:50SPEAKERabout Canada is it seems like they don't name things
08:52SPEAKERafter corporations.
08:53SPEAKER- Man, that sounds so nice.
08:55SPEAKER- Yeah, like I didn't, I went to a park
08:59SPEAKERand they just, it was like, this is just brought to you
09:01SPEAKERby the municipal park agency of Vancouver.
09:05SPEAKERI was like, oh, that's really nice.
09:07SPEAKERIt's everything's just like a place.
09:09SPEAKER- Yeah, speaking of our civic platform.
09:12SPEAKER- Okay, so just to be like aside on Canada,
09:15SPEAKEReverything was really clean.
09:17SPEAKERI've always kind of thought that the further north
09:19SPEAKERyou go up the West Coast, the cleaner
09:21SPEAKERand nicer the cities get.
09:23SPEAKER- I can see, yeah, sure, sure.
09:26SPEAKER- But like everything was really clean.
09:28SPEAKEREverybody took a lot of pride in Vancouver.
09:30SPEAKERWe were talking to a woman in the Christmas market
09:34SPEAKERwho was selling candles.
09:34SPEAKERShe's like, oh, you're from out of town.
09:35SPEAKERLet me give you some recommendations about places
09:37SPEAKERthat I like.
09:38SPEAKERAnd she's like, where are you staying?
09:39SPEAKERBlah, blah, blah.
09:40SPEAKERAnd she gave us like a sushi and a ramen place
09:43SPEAKERthat both, well, we didn't end up going to the sushi place,
09:45SPEAKERbut the ramen place was amazing.
09:48SPEAKERAnd it was like really inexpensive and it was delicious.
09:50SPEAKERSo everybody was really kind, like even the people
09:53SPEAKERworking on like trash pickup in the parking lot
09:57SPEAKERat a Walmart were like doing a really nice job.
10:01SPEAKERIt was very, it was nice to be someplace
10:02SPEAKERwhere people had a lot of pride in their city.
10:04SPEAKER- That's pleasant.
10:05SPEAKER- We don't get that so much here anymore.
10:06SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah.
10:09SPEAKER- So, but yeah, so the stage was really long, really wide.
10:13SPEAKERLike when she was running from one side
10:14SPEAKERof the diamond part of the stage to the other,
10:17SPEAKERit was like a full speed run for like eight or 10 seconds
10:21SPEAKERto get from one side to the other,
10:23SPEAKERto like engage with audience on either side of the stage.
10:25SPEAKER- Wow. - It was a really big stage.
10:27SPEAKER- Yeah, like I saw photos of the, you know,
10:29SPEAKERthis show made a lot of news, let's say,
10:30SPEAKERlike headlines were everywhere of like, okay,
10:33SPEAKERthe era's tour has concluded,
10:34SPEAKERthe final show has been played, blah, blah, blah.
10:36SPEAKERSo I've seen like a fair number of like press photos of it.
10:38SPEAKERAnd it got me thinking about,
10:40SPEAKERyou do see a giant screen in there,
10:41SPEAKERbut it got me thinking about that is like about as big
10:43SPEAKERan arena as you could imagine somebody playing in.
10:45SPEAKERLike, how do you project to that many people
10:48SPEAKERwhen like the actual performer
10:50SPEAKERis maybe not quite the size of an ant,
10:52SPEAKERbut not too much bigger from the nosebleeds, you know?
10:54SPEAKERLike, I assume there are like a lot of modern innovations,
10:57SPEAKERyou know, in the same way that like football games,
10:59SPEAKERtelevised football games have gotten way more interesting
11:02SPEAKERfrom a broadcast standpoint
11:04SPEAKERwith the weird camera tricks and stuff.
11:05SPEAKERLike I'm kind of imagining the modern arena shows
11:08SPEAKERare also getting more technological
11:10SPEAKERin the way they kind of communicate to the audience.
11:13SPEAKER- Yeah, there was a lot of stuff with that.
11:16SPEAKERThey, so the entirety of the stage
11:19SPEAKERthat pokes out onto the floor was a screen as well.
11:22SPEAKERAnd also bits and pieces of it move up and down
11:25SPEAKERso that people on the floor
11:26SPEAKERand in the higher seats could see her.
11:29SPEAKER- Wow.
11:30SPEAKER- And see the band and see the dancers and stuff.
11:32SPEAKERThey also used a ton of like really huge, like props.
11:37SPEAKERSo like the show opens.
11:38SPEAKERYou can, the first version of the tour is on Disney+.
11:41SPEAKERIf you're interested in this, you can watch it.
11:43SPEAKERThe only thing that changes between that and the back half
11:45SPEAKERis that the album that came out earlier this year
11:47SPEAKERis integrated into the show now.
11:48SPEAKERAnd it wasn't when they recorded the Disney+ show.
11:51SPEAKEROr yeah, it's a SoFi short tour or whatever it was.
11:56SPEAKERBut she comes out with a lot of big props.
11:58SPEAKERLike the fans that they walk out with,
12:00SPEAKERthat the dancers come out with
12:01SPEAKERbefore she comes out at the beginning of the show
12:03SPEAKERare like 30 feet tall, it looks like.
12:05SPEAKERAnd they make this huge stage seem really small.
12:10SPEAKERAnd then she comes out and there's screens everywhere.
12:13SPEAKERLike they had the big Jumbotron screen
12:15SPEAKERthat's in the middle of the arena lit up
12:17SPEAKERso that everybody could see.
12:18SPEAKERSo everybody had a pretty good view.
12:22SPEAKERIt was remarkable.
12:24SPEAKERThey also, before we get into the technology stuff,
12:28SPEAKER'cause there's technology stuff here, Vancouver,
12:32SPEAKERlike a Vancouver artist or civic collective or something,
12:35SPEAKERthere's a sign at the waterfront in Vancouver
12:37SPEAKERthat's like a tourist destination that says
12:39SPEAKERit's like a lighted sign that says Vancouver,
12:41SPEAKERit's down by the water.
12:42SPEAKERAnd people go and take their pictures with it.
12:44SPEAKERAnd they took off the van part of the Vancouver
12:46SPEAKERand just changed it to Swift Cooper.
12:48SPEAKERAnd then also made similar signs with song lyrics
12:54SPEAKERand kind of put them all over downtown
12:55SPEAKERat interesting places.
12:57SPEAKERAnd made like photo ops and a scavenger hunt.
13:00SPEAKERAnd what ended up happening because of that
13:03SPEAKERis a bunch of people were going around
13:05SPEAKERand trading bracelets and doing all the stuff
13:09SPEAKERthat they do at Taylor Swift shows,
13:11SPEAKERbut just all through downtown Vancouver
13:13SPEAKERover the entire weekend.
13:15SPEAKERAnd it ended up having, it was real ARG or PAX vibes.
13:21SPEAKER'Cause there were a couple of secret ones
13:22SPEAKERthat weren't posted anywhere.
13:24SPEAKERBut also it was very much like when you went,
13:27SPEAKERmy favorite part of going to PAX was going in
13:30SPEAKERand setting up at the board game free play area
13:32SPEAKERwith a game I didn't know how to play
13:33SPEAKERor I kinda knew how to play.
13:35SPEAKERAnd you'd take a little sign that said,
13:36SPEAKERhey, I wanna play this game and I kinda know how to play it.
13:38SPEAKERI'm willing to learn.
13:40SPEAKERAnd then somebody would sit down and be like,
13:41SPEAKERoh yeah, I know this game, I'll totally, let's play.
13:43SPEAKERAnd the whole city felt like that
13:46SPEAKERbecause this huge number of people came in for this show.
13:50SPEAKERThe city was really welcoming.
13:51SPEAKERAnd they also did a bunch of art installations
13:54SPEAKERand cool things to show.
13:55SPEAKERAnd because it's Vancouver and because it's Canada,
13:58SPEAKERthe signs, the lighted up signs that they made
14:01SPEAKERwith the show lyrics are all getting repurposed now
14:04SPEAKERto be like Christmas signs and have holiday messages.
14:08SPEAKERAnd they're putting them in, I assume, same places,
14:11SPEAKERbut rearranging the letters and stuff like that,
14:12SPEAKERwhich I thought was like,
14:13SPEAKERrather than just chucking them in the landfill
14:15SPEAKERas soon as the show's over,
14:16SPEAKERwhich is what I think probably we would do here.
14:19SPEAKERSo, okay, so when you're in the show,
14:22SPEAKERwhen you come into the show,
14:23SPEAKERfirst thing is tickets work differently
14:24SPEAKERthan I'd had work at a big show like this before.
14:27SPEAKERIt's a new Ticketmaster thing, which, you know,
14:29SPEAKERboo Ticketmaster.
14:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, they're still the monopoly, right?
14:32SPEAKERLike they're basically, you're not going to deal
14:34SPEAKERwith anyone but Ticketmaster or something like this, right?
14:37SPEAKER- I think unless you really go out of your way
14:40SPEAKERto not deal with them, you have to deal with Ticketmaster.
14:42SPEAKERYeah. - Yeah.
14:45SPEAKER- And like the fees that they charge are exorbitant,
14:48SPEAKERblah, blah, blah, Ticketmaster fucking sucks, we all know.
14:51SPEAKERThe tickets are not just a QR code anymore.
14:55SPEAKERSo they're like have their QR code
14:56SPEAKERwith a little like swiping bar across the front of it.
14:59SPEAKERAnd you have to transfer it with the app
15:02SPEAKERif you want to give a ticket to someone else.
15:05SPEAKER- Swiping bar?
15:06SPEAKER- It's like the bar animates across the front
15:08SPEAKERof the QR code bit and yeah.
15:12SPEAKER- Are you doing that in a specific,
15:13SPEAKERin the Ticketmaster app or is that something they control?
15:16SPEAKER- So you can do it in the Ticketmaster app
15:18SPEAKERor you can add it to wallet
15:19SPEAKERand it'll still animate in the wallet.
15:20SPEAKERBut it's like synced and timed almost like a two factor code
15:24SPEAKERor something like that.
15:25SPEAKER- I did not realize there had been such innovations
15:28SPEAKERin QR code technology.
15:30SPEAKER- Well, so they're worried about like forgeries.
15:35SPEAKER- Oh, sure.
15:36SPEAKER- And also people stealing tickets.
15:39SPEAKER- Yeah, honestly, it's not exactly social engineering,
15:43SPEAKERbut the potential for a QR code to just like get caught
15:45SPEAKERon video or to somehow get captured somewhere
15:48SPEAKERwhere like your codes are very simple.
15:50SPEAKERThey're just encoded text, right?
15:51SPEAKERLike you could probably- - Just a picture, yeah.
15:53SPEAKER- With just like the right tools,
15:55SPEAKERyou could very much lift somebody's QR code
15:57SPEAKERwith probably a pretty small amount of incidental data.
15:59SPEAKER- Yeah, so they, you know, like one of the things,
16:05SPEAKERlike people were really worried
16:06SPEAKERabout their tickets getting stolen
16:08SPEAKER'cause obviously their resale value
16:10SPEAKERon the tickets for that show were stupid.
16:15SPEAKERThe transfer process for selling a ticket
16:17SPEAKERor buying a ticket from someone was that you,
16:20SPEAKERsomebody listed the, you'd list the ticket on StubHub
16:24SPEAKERand then StubHub had no confirmation
16:26SPEAKERthat you actually owned the ticket,
16:27SPEAKERbut the penalties for selling a ticket you don't have
16:29SPEAKERare pretty enormous in terms of cash outlay.
16:33SPEAKERAnd then you'd have to release the ticket
16:36SPEAKERto the person who bought it in StubHub
16:37SPEAKERvia email address or a phone number
16:40SPEAKERand couldn't do it until three days before the show.
16:42SPEAKERSo like it was an interesting,
16:45SPEAKERthat was an interesting process.
16:47SPEAKERA couple of, one of my daughter's friends
16:48SPEAKERwas there for the same show
16:49SPEAKERand they had bought aftermarket tickets
16:51SPEAKERand were like, we wanna be the first ones in the door
16:55SPEAKERso that if we get, like if the people
16:58SPEAKERwho sold our tickets sold them twice,
17:00SPEAKERwe wanna be the ones that make sure we get in.
17:02SPEAKER- Yeah, that's pretty scary with only a three hour,
17:04SPEAKERthree day window, especially if you're traveling in
17:06SPEAKERfrom out of town, like this is somewhat similar.
17:09SPEAKERThere's this week long interstellar run at IMAX
17:12SPEAKERgoing on right now on the roof of New.
17:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
17:15SPEAKER- And I was super bummed.
17:16SPEAKERI didn't find out until it started.
17:17SPEAKERSo the tickets were long gone
17:19SPEAKER'cause I would have killed to see interstellar in an IMAX.
17:21SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it was really good.
17:22SPEAKER- But apparently, oh wait, did you see?
17:24SPEAKER- Yeah, I saw it in IMAX when it came out.
17:25SPEAKERIt was incredible. - Oh, first time.
17:26SPEAKERYeah, yeah, yeah.
17:28SPEAKERBut apparently, like I saw on Reddit,
17:30SPEAKERthe San Francisco show,
17:31SPEAKERwhich Metreon is one of the better IMAXs in the country,
17:33SPEAKERpeople were traveling in from out of town to see it here.
17:36SPEAKERAnd like the 70 millimeter projector broke down
17:38SPEAKERand they had to cancel shows.
17:39SPEAKER- Oh my God, that's the worst.
17:41SPEAKER- At the Metreon, I saw people on Reddit,
17:42SPEAKERlike I blew in from out of town to watch this movie
17:45SPEAKERand they canceled my showing, like that's rough.
17:48SPEAKER- Well, we met some Austrians the night of the show
17:54SPEAKERwho had flown in from Vienna.
17:56SPEAKER- Wow.
17:57SPEAKER- And they had had tickets to the Vienna
17:59SPEAKER'cause she had to cancel the Vienna shows
18:02SPEAKERbecause of a terrorist thing.
18:04SPEAKER- Wow.
18:05SPEAKER- So yeah, somebody threatened to attack the venue.
18:08SPEAKER- Wow.
18:09SPEAKER- And like they were stoked to be there
18:12SPEAKERand get to see it after all.
18:13SPEAKERAnyway, so okay, so when you did your ticket,
18:18SPEAKERyou walked into the show
18:20SPEAKERand then somebody handed you a bracelet.
18:21SPEAKERThere was like a little nylon,
18:23SPEAKERlike a ribbon bracelet with Taylor Swift era show
18:29SPEAKERand a QR code and this big chunky plastic white box
18:35SPEAKERand a pull tab and they said,
18:36SPEAKER"Hey, pull the tab when the show starts."
18:38SPEAKER- Not until the show starts, not just when you go in.
18:40SPEAKER- I think when the show starts is what is...
18:43SPEAKERLook, the people had grabbing these things out of trash cans
18:46SPEAKERand handing them to every single person that walked in,
18:48SPEAKERmaybe not the most communicative, Brad.
18:50SPEAKER- Yeah.
18:51SPEAKER- But that thing was a tiny radio and RGB light
18:55SPEAKERand it let the entire audience light up basically
18:59SPEAKERon command according to the show,
19:02SPEAKERwhat was happening in the show.
19:03SPEAKERThere was a Wired article from the start of this tour
19:06SPEAKERlast year that explained how they did it.
19:07SPEAKERA company called PixMob does it.
19:10SPEAKER- Okay.
19:11SPEAKER- And like you would be...
19:12SPEAKERSo I was sitting there and I was like,
19:14SPEAKER"Oh, there's like three ways they could do this, right?"
19:16SPEAKERThere are some sections would light up with like hearts
19:20SPEAKERor stars or spirals or there'd be stripes occasionally.
19:24SPEAKERAnd then midway through the show,
19:26SPEAKERI guess spoilers for the Taylor Swift Heirs Show tour
19:29SPEAKERthat you can now no longer see.
19:32SPEAKERWhen she starts singing the Reputation songs,
19:35SPEAKERthen a snake starts moving through
19:37SPEAKERlike around the entire stadium,
19:39SPEAKERlike a giant half section high snake.
19:43SPEAKER- This is effectively like a drone show,
19:44SPEAKERbut using human beings instead.
19:46SPEAKER- Yeah, basically.
19:48SPEAKERSo this Wired article explained how they did it.
19:50SPEAKERBasically there's three ways.
19:52SPEAKEROne is that they tie the band to your seat.
19:56SPEAKER- Right.
19:56SPEAKER- So they know where you're supposed to be sitting,
19:57SPEAKERbut then that doesn't work if people move or whatever.
20:01SPEAKERThe other is that they have a bunch of stations
20:03SPEAKERset up throughout the stadium to let them ID the band.
20:05SPEAKERAnd the bands have IR transmitters,
20:09SPEAKERso they can ID each band and address them individually
20:12SPEAKERbased on where they are.
20:13SPEAKER- Okay, now that's amazing.
20:14SPEAKERLike the key to seat number thing is obvious.
20:18SPEAKERAnd I assumed the only way they could do this,
20:20SPEAKERbut like to be able to dynamically positionally
20:23SPEAKERaddress everything is like kind of insane.
20:25SPEAKER- Works like twinkly, basically.
20:28SPEAKERAnd then the other one, the third way is that in,
20:31SPEAKERfor K-pop shows, they can let you Bluetooth them
20:34SPEAKERto your phone.
20:37SPEAKERAnd it turns out the audience in Korea
20:40SPEAKERis more likely to engage with that
20:42SPEAKERwhen they've tried it here.
20:43SPEAKERIt doesn't really work very well.
20:44SPEAKER- I was gonna say expecting an opt-in option
20:47SPEAKERto work collectively here.
20:49SPEAKER- That's a pretty big ask.
20:50SPEAKER- Yeah, so, I mean, I think the upshot
20:53SPEAKERon the Bluetoothing into the phone
20:55SPEAKERis you get some special stuff when you do that,
20:56SPEAKERwhich is compelling to the audience,
20:58SPEAKERbut here people don't bother.
21:01SPEAKERSo I put a video, we will link the video
21:04SPEAKERand the Wired article,
21:05SPEAKER'cause the Wired article was interesting.
21:06SPEAKERThere's a lot more detail in there.
21:08SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fascinating.
21:09SPEAKERAnd that's like such a crazy sign of the times
21:11SPEAKERbecause like the technology in the bracelet
21:13SPEAKERthat you're talking about, 20, 25 years ago.
21:17SPEAKERIt was like extreme, advanced future tech.
21:19SPEAKERAnd now it's just in a disposable thing
21:21SPEAKERthat you're gonna use for two hours
21:23SPEAKERand then throw in the trash.
21:24SPEAKER- Or, you know, make it into a Christmas ornament
21:26SPEAKERor something.
21:27SPEAKER- Or more, yeah.
21:28SPEAKER- It's a keepsake, Brad, I think.
21:30SPEAKER- Given the dedication of the average Swiftie,
21:32SPEAKERI'm guessing most of those don't go in the trash,
21:33SPEAKERto be fair.
21:34SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I can't imagine anybody
21:35SPEAKERchucked them in the trash.
21:37SPEAKERSo it's worth mentioning,
21:40SPEAKERwe were there for the last show
21:41SPEAKERand there were people filling the streets
21:42SPEAKERaround the stadium, singing along,
21:44SPEAKER'cause you could hear the music outside the stadium.
21:48SPEAKERBut the, and the people who'd been on previous nights
21:51SPEAKERhad their bands on and some of them were flashing
21:53SPEAKEReven in the general vicinity,
21:56SPEAKER'cause they still have a radio.
21:57SPEAKER- So that's why I was asking if they told you explicitly
21:59SPEAKERnot to pull the tab until the show started,
22:01SPEAKER'cause I was wondering if it only had
22:02SPEAKERlike two to three hours of battery life or something.
22:04SPEAKER- So the pro tip for Swifties was that you save
22:08SPEAKERthe little tab that you pull out
22:09SPEAKERso you can jam it back in at the end of the show
22:11SPEAKERso it's not flashing all night
22:12SPEAKERand annoying you in your hotel room.
22:14SPEAKER- Sure.
22:15SPEAKER- That seemed to be the right choice to jam it back in,
22:18SPEAKER'cause we did that when we got back to the hotel room.
22:20SPEAKERThe, I mean, I think you can probably
22:23SPEAKERpull the tab for a while.
22:25SPEAKERMy guess is just like watch coin cell batteries in there.
22:29SPEAKERI have not taken one apart yet.
22:31SPEAKERI'm sure that that has happened online.
22:34SPEAKERAnd then the last thing that's technology related
22:36SPEAKERis I'm an earplugged guy at concerts
22:38SPEAKERbecause I have tendonitis and I don't like it getting worse.
22:42SPEAKER- Understandable.
22:43SPEAKER- I have used both like fancy,
22:48SPEAKERlike the partial noise blocking ones
22:50SPEAKERthat are supposed to reduce the overall level
22:52SPEAKERof all different ranges.
22:53SPEAKERSo you get still a pretty good music experience,
22:57SPEAKERalbeit a little bit muffled.
22:58SPEAKERAnd then for really loud shows,
23:00SPEAKERI've used like the kind of earplugs that airport,
23:03SPEAKERthat people that work on the line at the airport do.
23:07SPEAKERThey're just like the foam minus 30 decibel deals.
23:11SPEAKERI once went to a Jack White show that was so loud
23:14SPEAKERthat those minus 30 decibel plugs were not good enough.
23:19SPEAKERAnd that was the loudest,
23:21SPEAKERI mean, it was literally louder than when I saw like
23:23SPEAKERMegadeth at an outdoor festival.
23:28SPEAKERSo it was indoors.
23:29SPEAKERIt was indoors at Bill Graham versus outdoors
23:31SPEAKERat like Lollapalooza or something.
23:33SPEAKER- You saw Megadeth?
23:35SPEAKER- I saw Megadeth.
23:35SPEAKERIt was at a festival, it doesn't count.
23:37SPEAKER- Wow.
23:38SPEAKER- Yeah.
23:39SPEAKER- I went to a lot of festivals when I was in college, man.
23:41SPEAKER- Okay, fair.
23:44SPEAKER- So this wasn't as loud as that.
23:47SPEAKERThis was like a peak of like 9,500 decibels,
23:50SPEAKERI think is what the watch said.
23:52SPEAKERBut I used my AirPod Pros 2.
23:55SPEAKERIs it AirPod Pros 2 or AirPod Pro 2s?
23:58SPEAKER- AirPod Pro 2s, AirPods Pro 2, AirPod Pros 2.
24:02SPEAKERThere's a lot of options there.
24:03SPEAKER- It's like attorneys general, right?
24:04SPEAKER- Yes, something like that.
24:05SPEAKER- Anyway, I used my AirPod Pros.
24:07SPEAKERAnd because recently Apple got the AirPod Pro 2s
24:12SPEAKERspecifically approved as a hearing protection device
24:16SPEAKERbecause of the active noise canceling.
24:18SPEAKER- Right.
24:19SPEAKER- And there's three, it was a fantastic experience.
24:22SPEAKERI highly recommend it.
24:24SPEAKER- Interesting.
24:25SPEAKER- It was like transformative in the way I listen to music
24:29SPEAKERat the live show.
24:30SPEAKER- Yeah, like turning them into kind of hearing aids.
24:32SPEAKERI mean, they're not like full.
24:34SPEAKERI think they're for like--
24:35SPEAKER- They're over the counter hearing aids,
24:36SPEAKERhearing assistive devices.
24:37SPEAKER- Yeah, like moderate hearing loss, right?
24:39SPEAKERLike for like extreme hearing loss,
24:40SPEAKERyou still need like actual custom devices.
24:42SPEAKERBut for the hearing aid thing,
24:45SPEAKERlike that alone was a cool development,
24:47SPEAKERbut I had never even considered the idea of using these
24:49SPEAKERto act as earplugs at concerts,
24:52SPEAKERbut also better than earplugs, you know,
24:53SPEAKERlike to actually like enhance the experience rather
24:57SPEAKER'cause with earplugs, you're protecting yourself,
25:00SPEAKERbut you're kind of dampening the oral experience, let's say.
25:03SPEAKER- Yeah, it wasn't as...
25:08SPEAKERSo yeah, like using earplugs, I...
25:11SPEAKERLook, everybody should use earplugs if you go to live music
25:14SPEAKER'cause it's always too loud and you're gonna hurt your ears.
25:16SPEAKERThis was three and a half hours long
25:17SPEAKERand I was honestly worried about,
25:20SPEAKERyou have to nonstop three and a half hours long.
25:22SPEAKERAt one point, at the end of the acoustic set,
25:24SPEAKERshe just dives into a hole in the floor
25:27SPEAKERand then like an animation plays on the floor
25:29SPEAKERand then like 20 seconds later,
25:31SPEAKERshe pops up on the other end in a different outfit.
25:33SPEAKERSo it was incredible.
25:36SPEAKER- Real quick, did she get a significant break
25:38SPEAKERin the three and a half hours or was she just going?
25:40SPEAKER- The whole time.
25:41SPEAKER- Wow, okay.
25:42SPEAKER- Dude, the way she trained for this,
25:44SPEAKERmy wife likes Taylor Swift a lot.
25:46SPEAKERI learned a lot about Taylor Swift as a result.
25:48SPEAKERThe way she trained for this was to just sing
25:51SPEAKERthe entire three and a half hour set
25:52SPEAKERwhile she was running on her treadmill at like full speed.
25:55SPEAKER- Okay.
25:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I was exhausted after three and a half hours
26:00SPEAKERand I was just standing there and dancing and singing.
26:02SPEAKERIt was nuts.
26:04SPEAKEROkay, so back to the AirPods.
26:08SPEAKERSo you have the three modes, the noise canceling,
26:10SPEAKERthe transparency and the adaptive.
26:12SPEAKERThe transparency and the adaptive do the same amount
26:15SPEAKERof noise reduction, of attenuation,
26:19SPEAKERI think is the technical term.
26:21SPEAKERAnd depends on where you are
26:24SPEAKERin terms of the overall noise level of the place you're in,
26:27SPEAKERthey do more at louder levels.
26:32SPEAKERI think the transparency mode does a little bit less
26:35SPEAKERbut sounds clearer, basically.
26:37SPEAKERSo at a 90 to 95, at a 90 decibel environmental noise level,
26:42SPEAKERthis is from the Apple support page about this feature.
26:45SPEAKERAt a 90 decibel environmental noise level,
26:48SPEAKERyou get six to nine decibels of attenuation.
26:52SPEAKERSo it's like a reduction by double or triple, I guess.
26:58SPEAKERI don't know, I don't know, the math is weird.
27:00SPEAKERI think every three decibels is a halving energy level.
27:05SPEAKERSo at 95, it's nine to 12 decibels.
27:09SPEAKERAnd while you're wearing them,
27:13SPEAKERthe noise app on your watch will say,
27:14SPEAKERokay, this is the level that's coming through
27:17SPEAKERto your ears right now.
27:19SPEAKERThis is the level that is without them.
27:21SPEAKER- Oh, wow. - When you change modes
27:22SPEAKERso you see the updates, so you know what you're getting
27:24SPEAKERand how loud it is. - That's cool.
27:26SPEAKER- I don't know how accurate it is.
27:28SPEAKERI assume it's fairly accurate since they got approval
27:31SPEAKERfor this, the transparency mode sounded
27:34SPEAKERlike I didn't have anything in my ears.
27:37SPEAKERBut just quieter, when I pulled the earplug out,
27:39SPEAKERit was really loud.
27:40SPEAKERWhen I put the earplug, when I put the headphone back in,
27:43SPEAKERit just sounded like I was at a concert.
27:45SPEAKER- That's cool as hell.
27:45SPEAKERLike I don't go to a lot of live music these days,
27:48SPEAKERbut if I did, I think I would be looking at these
27:50SPEAKERjust for that reason alone, that's pretty awesome.
27:53SPEAKER- Yeah, the adaptive mode reduced the level a lot more.
27:58SPEAKERAt, again, at the 90 decibel,
28:01SPEAKERit was 22 to 25 decibels of reduction.
28:04SPEAKERThere was a little bit more distortion,
28:05SPEAKERbut it was still, the music was really good.
28:07SPEAKERThe weird stuff was that it would occasionally
28:09SPEAKERpick up somebody singing really loud
28:10SPEAKERbehind you or beside you, and just amplify the shit
28:13SPEAKERout of that instead of the music that you wanted to hear.
28:16SPEAKERBut switching modes would usually fix that.
28:18SPEAKERSo, and the battery lasted the whole three hours,
28:21SPEAKERthree and a half hours, no problem.
28:22SPEAKERSo I'm taking these to every concert I go to from now on.
28:26SPEAKERIt was frickin' incredible.
28:27SPEAKER- That's awesome, that's very cool.
28:30SPEAKER- So that's it, that's, oh, and it's worth mentioning,
28:32SPEAKERI replaced the default tips on my AirPods
28:34SPEAKERwith Comply soft foam tips
28:36SPEAKERbecause they're more comfortable, that's it.
28:38SPEAKER- Are those a lot more sound in than like a silicone would?
28:40SPEAKER- I would think less, but I don't know, I don't have any,
28:43SPEAKER'cause they're more material, more solid
28:46SPEAKERthan just the kind of silicone flaps.
28:48SPEAKER- Oh, I see, okay.
28:49SPEAKER- But I don't know.
28:51SPEAKERSo that's Taylor, it was awesome.
28:53SPEAKERYou should go see the Aerostore.
28:54SPEAKER- I'm gonna clap. (laughs)
28:56SPEAKERI'm gonna write on that, that's fun, that's cool.
28:59SPEAKER- They were shooting a movie, it looked like,
29:00SPEAKERwhile we were there.
29:01SPEAKERSo they had like people on stage
29:03SPEAKERthat aren't normally on stage.
29:04SPEAKERThe whole other thing about this show
29:07SPEAKERthat I don't think people realize is that every night
29:10SPEAKERon TikTok and Twitch and YouTube, people were live stream,
29:14SPEAKERlike there were people who were live stream aggregators
29:17SPEAKERthat would take people who were at the shows
29:19SPEAKERand posting, like posting live feeds on TikTok or whatever,
29:22SPEAKERand aggregate them and post them out
29:25SPEAKERto the larger audiences and like switch between cameras
29:30SPEAKERand the whole thing.
29:31SPEAKERSo you could watch grainy live streams of all of these shows.
29:33SPEAKER- Oh, that's crazy. - It's nuts, yeah.
29:35SPEAKER- Do individual people stream entire concerts these days?
29:38SPEAKERLike you see clips all the time,
29:39SPEAKERbut is anybody just standing there
29:41SPEAKERstreaming the entire thing?
29:42SPEAKERAnd do the artists generally just allow that?
29:45SPEAKER- So the artists have wildly varying feelings about this.
29:47SPEAKERShe allowed it, and as a result, like a lot of culture,
29:51SPEAKERlike a lot of community stuff grew up around the shows,
29:53SPEAKERright, like there's chants that people shout at her
29:57SPEAKERat breaks in songs, and people do certain things
30:02SPEAKERat specific times.
30:03SPEAKERThere's certain times they hold up their phones
30:04SPEAKERwith the flashlights on, and there's like,
30:06SPEAKERthere was this whole kind of community thing that happened
30:09SPEAKERbecause of the grainy live streams, right?
30:11SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, in her case,
30:13SPEAKERthat seems like a net positive
30:14SPEAKERfor her kind of community audience building,
30:16SPEAKERbut also I don't think she's hurting for revenue
30:18SPEAKERif a few people watch her concert for free.
30:21SPEAKERIt's like different for smaller artists.
30:23SPEAKERI think the next step is, like,
30:26SPEAKERthe grainy live streams made me want to go to the show.
30:30SPEAKERI think she understands the community stuff,
30:32SPEAKERand she's, it honestly reminds me of old ARGs for games,
30:36SPEAKER'cause it was like, the community building around that
30:39SPEAKERwas very similar to the Halo 2 ARG,
30:42SPEAKERwhere people are forming communities
30:44SPEAKERand finding somebody in Prague to go to the right cell phone,
30:47SPEAKERright payphone at the right time to answer the call
30:49SPEAKERand stuff like that, like, it was very supportive.
30:52SPEAKERLike, people were sharing confetti that fell at the end
30:56SPEAKERin these Facebook groups and the discords
30:59SPEAKERand stuff like that, so it's a very wholesome thing.
31:02SPEAKER- That's cool, I'm glad you guys had fun.
31:04SPEAKER- It was a lot of fun.
31:06SPEAKER- Well, while you were up there doing that.
31:08SPEAKER- Yeah, it sounds like you were having a lot of fun too.
31:11SPEAKER- I was doing some shucking.
31:13SPEAKER- Oh boy, it's oyster season here in San Francisco.
31:16SPEAKER- That's right, oh God, right, okay, well,
31:18SPEAKERokay, shucking corn is what I had always thought of
31:20SPEAKERas the metaphor for this,
31:21SPEAKERbut I guess oysters work just as well,
31:23SPEAKERI never considered that, actually.
31:25SPEAKER- You don't need a tool to shuck corn,
31:26SPEAKERyou need a tool to shuck oysters.
31:27SPEAKER- Okay, then that's more applicable, definitely.
31:31SPEAKERYeah, I think we've talked about this
31:33SPEAKERa little bit here and there,
31:34SPEAKERbut I don't know that we've ever just done
31:35SPEAKERlike a little primer on hard drive shucking before.
31:38SPEAKER- It's worth doing 'cause it's a little tricky.
31:41SPEAKER- Yeah, and this is my first time
31:42SPEAKERrunning into the really tricky part, actually,
31:44SPEAKERand so it's all fresh in my mind,
31:46SPEAKERso I figured we'd just kind of run through some stuff here.
31:48SPEAKER- I love it.
31:49SPEAKER- Real quick, 'cause the shucking was good on Black Friday,
31:52SPEAKERor the deals were.
31:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so for folks who don't know,
31:56SPEAKERthe reason you do this is that typically external,
31:59SPEAKERlike enclosures in USB, sorry, hard drives,
32:03SPEAKERfull-size hard drives in USB enclosures
32:04SPEAKERare typically a lot cheaper than a comparable,
32:08SPEAKERlike NAS, NAS class drive.
32:12SPEAKERSo if like you're filling out a NAS
32:14SPEAKERto store stuff that's not super, super essential,
32:17SPEAKERor you have a lot of redundancy built into your NAS setup
32:20SPEAKERor something like that,
32:21SPEAKERit's totally acceptable to buy a bunch of these cheap drives
32:24SPEAKERand then pop the enclosures open
32:25SPEAKERand lift the drive out of them,
32:28SPEAKERjust knowing that they're gonna fail at a higher rate
32:31SPEAKERthan the NAS drives will,
32:32SPEAKERbut probably not in a way that you notice.
32:34SPEAKER- Yeah, you don't hear a lot of people
32:36SPEAKERtalking about them failing rapidly,
32:37SPEAKERbut yeah, that is the definition of shucking,
32:39SPEAKERjust harvesting a three and a half inch hard drive
32:41SPEAKERout of a commercial retail, off-the-shelf USB enclosure.
32:46SPEAKERIt seems like, in my experience,
32:47SPEAKERit's mostly a Western digital phenomenon.
32:49SPEAKERI've tried to find instances of people shucking Seagate's
32:52SPEAKERand I saw a few references to the backup plus line
32:54SPEAKERfrom Seagate, but it seems 90% very predominantly centered
32:59SPEAKERon the Western digital brands.
33:01SPEAKERI've got multiple brands that I've gotten over time.
33:04SPEAKERI've got several Western digital elements
33:06SPEAKERis the ones I have mostly run into.
33:07SPEAKERThere's also the Western digital, my book line.
33:10SPEAKERAnd then the ones I got over Black Friday,
33:13SPEAKERthere was a killer deal on the Western digital easy store,
33:17SPEAKERwhich it'll research turns out to just be a Best Buy
33:20SPEAKERexclusive brand or product label.
33:24SPEAKERThe enclosure is slightly different,
33:25SPEAKERbut it's basically the same deal.
33:26SPEAKERI don't know why Best Buy gets its own line,
33:28SPEAKERbut anyway, they do.
33:29SPEAKERBut those are the brands to look for.
33:31SPEAKERLike you said, the main reason it is is cheaper,
33:35SPEAKERbut kind of a corollary of that,
33:36SPEAKERthat I actually was just looking this up
33:38SPEAKER'cause I didn't realize this.
33:39SPEAKERYou kind of can't get drives this size
33:41SPEAKERin a lot of the common cost-effective hard drive lines.
33:44SPEAKERLike Western digital blue only gives up to eight terabytes,
33:47SPEAKERfor example, which I did not realize.
33:49SPEAKERLike they're kind of modest,
33:51SPEAKERlike mainstream middle of the road hard drive
33:53SPEAKERjust does not go up into the high teens, 20 terabytes.
33:57SPEAKERYou're getting into NAS and data center hard drives
33:59SPEAKERtypically to get capacities like that.
34:01SPEAKER- Which means you're paying enormous prices
34:03SPEAKERto get the bigger drives.
34:05SPEAKER- Yes, so that's the main pro.
34:08SPEAKERIt's way cheaper for the price to terabyte ratio.
34:11SPEAKERThat's what you're looking for here.
34:12SPEAKERThe thing to worry about with shucking
34:14SPEAKERis the price to terabyte ratio.
34:16SPEAKERIt's like they used to be priced a gigabyte,
34:18SPEAKERbut now we're firmly in the terabyte era.
34:20SPEAKERDid you know that the roadmaps
34:22SPEAKERare predicting a hundred terabyte hard drives
34:24SPEAKERby the end of the decade?
34:25SPEAKERDid you know that?
34:26SPEAKER- Really?
34:27SPEAKER- Yes.
34:27SPEAKER- Oh wow, I thought we hit a couple of walls along the way
34:29SPEAKERand it was slowing down.
34:31SPEAKER- That was like beginning of this decade,
34:32SPEAKERSeagate and Western Digital were predicting that.
34:34SPEAKERI don't know if that may slow down still,
34:36SPEAKERbut that was the roadmap.
34:38SPEAKERAnyway, it's just simple math.
34:39SPEAKERYou're just dividing the cost of the hard drive
34:42SPEAKERby the number of terabytes.
34:44SPEAKERMy sense is that like $16 a terabyte right now
34:49SPEAKERis a good price.
34:51SPEAKER- That seems right.
34:52SPEAKER- It's fuzzy, it goes back and forth
34:54SPEAKERdepending on what's available,
34:54SPEAKERbut I think that's like something to shoot for probably.
34:58SPEAKERMy biggest reference for this,
34:59SPEAKERand I think we've probably mentioned this site before
35:00SPEAKERis Shuck Stop.
35:02SPEAKER- You mean shucks.top?
35:04SPEAKER- Yes, shucks.top, we'll put it in the show notes.
35:08SPEAKERThey only track Western Digital drives.
35:09SPEAKERLike case in point, I think it's mostly,
35:13SPEAKERit's not a lot of Seagate being used for this stuff,
35:15SPEAKERalthough you can.
35:16SPEAKER- I think traditionally in the old days,
35:18SPEAKERat least Seagate drives had more problems
35:21SPEAKERbeing used outside the enclosure.
35:23SPEAKER- That might be true, I don't know.
35:24SPEAKER- But also people tend to like Western Digital drives
35:27SPEAKERfor NAS use these days for some reason.
35:29SPEAKER- Yes, so Shuck Stop does like almost a heat map,
35:34SPEAKERlike a color coded, prices are good if they're blue,
35:37SPEAKERlike bad if they're red kind of thing.
35:39SPEAKER- And they put metals on like the all time prices
35:41SPEAKERand the annual, your best and stuff like that.
35:44SPEAKER- That was what got me to jump on the 20 terabyte easy store,
35:46SPEAKERbut a $16 terabyte is blue on there,
35:50SPEAKERso that's currently considered pretty good.
35:52SPEAKERThe 20 terabytes I got were 1250 a terabyte.
35:54SPEAKER- Holy crap, Brad.
35:56SPEAKER- Historic all time low for a 20 terabyte drive.
35:59SPEAKER- That is crazy.
36:00SPEAKER- It was pretty good.
36:03SPEAKERSo like I said, the pro is you are getting a bigger drive
36:06SPEAKERfor way cheaper than if you bought
36:07SPEAKERone of those high end lines off the shelf.
36:09SPEAKERThe cons of this are the warranties are shorter
36:13SPEAKERand you don't know what you're gonna get inside.
36:15SPEAKER- Also, once you take it out of the shell,
36:17SPEAKERyou're gonna have a hard time with the warranty
36:18SPEAKERprobably is my experience.
36:19SPEAKER- Yeah, well, we'll get to disassembly in a minute,
36:21SPEAKERbut I have read people saying if you're very gentle
36:24SPEAKERand reassemble it properly, you can still RMA it
36:27SPEAKERand they won't say anything.
36:28SPEAKER- Okay.
36:29SPEAKER- But that is situational and you would definitely
36:31SPEAKERhave to make sure you don't like break anything
36:33SPEAKERon the enclosure 'cause then they would know.
36:36SPEAKERBut like I said, you don't know what kind of drive
36:39SPEAKERyou're gonna get.
36:39SPEAKERWestern Digital does the white label thing
36:41SPEAKERwhere the drive inside has a just a white label
36:43SPEAKERwith all the serial numbers and model numbers
36:45SPEAKERand blah, blah, blah on it.
36:47SPEAKERPeople out there will match those numbers up
36:49SPEAKERto different things like looking in product databases
36:52SPEAKERand data sheets to try to kind of define
36:55SPEAKERwhat kind of drive you have gotten.
36:56SPEAKERIt's like, oh, these 20 terabytes are ultra star drives,
37:00SPEAKERwhich are I think their data center line.
37:02SPEAKERSometimes it'll be like, oh, these are like red pros in here.
37:04SPEAKER- Wow.
37:05SPEAKER- But even that said, like this is where you get
37:07SPEAKERinto the real fuzzy like Reddit scuttlebutt
37:09SPEAKERor serve the home forums 'cause you see people
37:12SPEAKERdiscussing the stuff all the time.
37:13SPEAKERThere's a lot of like speculation or like,
37:16SPEAKERoh, I know a guy in the storage industry or whatever
37:18SPEAKERthat says that like these drives can be of kind of,
37:21SPEAKERI don't know if dubious origin is the right way to put it,
37:23SPEAKERbut it's like they might be new old stock
37:27SPEAKERor they might be like drives that were not binned
37:29SPEAKERas well as the ones that went
37:30SPEAKERinto the actual high-end retail channel.
37:32SPEAKERThe craziest stuff I've seen, and this is all unverified,
37:35SPEAKERbut I've seen it suggested that like sometimes
37:37SPEAKERyou'll get a drive that's actually physically
37:39SPEAKERa bigger capacity than what it said on the box.
37:41SPEAKERAnd they like firmware flashed it to be a smaller drive
37:44SPEAKERbecause it had too many bad sectors
37:45SPEAKERand they like worked around the bad sectors.
37:48SPEAKERAgain, I don't know if that's actually legit.
37:50SPEAKERI've also seen people say that some of them
37:52SPEAKERare firmware performance limited because they don't-
37:54SPEAKER- That's weird.
37:55SPEAKER- Because basically the stance there would be like,
37:58SPEAKERhey, if you want the full speed of these 7,200 RPM drives,
38:01SPEAKERyou're gonna pay for the Red Pro or the data center price.
38:04SPEAKERSo like some people will say, oh, the, you know,
38:07SPEAKERthe white label drives are 30% slower
38:09SPEAKERby firmware limitation, but again,
38:11SPEAKERthis is all like unverified stuff,
38:12SPEAKERbut it is something to be aware of
38:14SPEAKERif you're going this route.
38:15SPEAKER- But also kind of the point of this is that
38:18SPEAKERif you're doing deep storage or even like media serving,
38:21SPEAKERyou don't need super high-performance drives for this, right?
38:24SPEAKERYou just need something that holds data
38:26SPEAKERand spins and is reliable.
38:27SPEAKER- And if you're aware of these possibilities,
38:29SPEAKERyou should be building redundancy in any way.
38:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
38:32SPEAKER- You should be doing mirrors or a parody setup in RAID.
38:37SPEAKER- But or FS or, yeah, something.
38:38SPEAKER- There's ZFS or, and also have backups.
38:41SPEAKERLike RAID is not backup.
38:42SPEAKERLike we've been over this, you know.
38:45SPEAKEREven the best hard drive on the market
38:47SPEAKERshould not be entrusted with your data solely.
38:51SPEAKERSo those are all things to know,
38:52SPEAKERbut also things you can absolutely work around.
38:55SPEAKER- Cool. - Okay.
38:56SPEAKER- So this time I've always gotten the enclosures open fine,
39:01SPEAKERbut sometimes it's a pretty fiddly process.
39:03SPEAKERIt's always like every product on the market.
39:05SPEAKERIt's the plastic seam.
39:07SPEAKEREverything is like flipped together
39:09SPEAKERwith internal locking mechanisms.
39:10SPEAKERNothing just has screws that you can't lift out anymore.
39:14SPEAKER- Were these more like the elements
39:16SPEAKERor more like the My Books?
39:17SPEAKERI find the elements are pretty easy to get open
39:19SPEAKERand the My Books are a pain.
39:21SPEAKER- I don't think I've ever gotten to My Book before.
39:22SPEAKERI think all of mine previously have been elements.
39:25SPEAKERThe easy stores are quite similar to the elements
39:27SPEAKERin the process of getting them open.
39:29SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like a U-shaped sleeve
39:32SPEAKERthat you kind of just pop an edge off of
39:34SPEAKERand then you can get in there.
39:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so on the TrueNAS forums of all places,
39:38SPEAKERI found, I just happened to Google this time,
39:40SPEAKERand I found what I consider now to be the ultimate guide,
39:43SPEAKERlike the Bible on getting hard drive enclosures open,
39:47SPEAKERor maybe anything, well, especially hard drive enclosures,
39:49SPEAKERsomething like a dual shock or dual sense.
39:52SPEAKERIt's still a taller order for separating the enclosure on.
39:56SPEAKERBut this TrueNAS guide, which I will link,
40:00SPEAKERcalls for a dozen Fender guitar picks.
40:03SPEAKER- Okay.
40:04SPEAKER- I went and bought a little baggie of Fender 351s,
40:07SPEAKERwhich is what this person recommends
40:08SPEAKER'cause they're like the exact right width and smoothness,
40:11SPEAKERso you don't mark up the enclosure
40:14SPEAKERin case you want to RMA for four bucks.
40:15SPEAKER- And they're right bendiness too, right?
40:18SPEAKER- Yeah, they're flexible, they're strong,
40:20SPEAKERand it's just a process of inserting the guitar picks
40:23SPEAKERaround the right points in the seam,
40:25SPEAKERand then sticking like three of them stacked together
40:28SPEAKERin the front to kind of pop the front open,
40:29SPEAKERand at that point, it just slides right off.
40:32SPEAKERLike I could not believe how fast and easy it was.
40:34SPEAKERIt came off perfectly, 'cause I've broken tabs
40:36SPEAKERon my previous shucks pretty consistently.
40:39SPEAKERYou know, they still, it's fine,
40:41SPEAKERbut it is easy to break little plastic tabs off.
40:44SPEAKERThese came off like butter,
40:46SPEAKERtook like 30 seconds per drive to get it open.
40:49SPEAKERLike I could not believe how easy it was.
40:50SPEAKER- Boy, that's really good.
40:51SPEAKERI always used spudgers for these before.
40:53SPEAKERSpudgers are like little nylon sticks
40:56SPEAKERthat have pointy and wedgy ends.
40:58SPEAKER- Yeah, this guide explicitly said,
41:00SPEAKER"Hey, this guitar pick method works better than spudgers,"
41:02SPEAKERwhich are easier to break things
41:04SPEAKERor mark the enclosure up or whatever.
41:06SPEAKERSo anyway, I highly recommend this guide.
41:08SPEAKERGet yourself a little baggy of 351s.
41:11SPEAKER- Yeah, this is amazing.
41:13SPEAKERFor what it's worth, we used guitar picks
41:16SPEAKERto do iPad screen removals.
41:18SPEAKER- Oh, okay, yeah. - 'Cause you get 'em
41:19SPEAKERunder there and, yeah, anyway.
41:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and then the fenders are also just high quality,
41:23SPEAKERlike very obviously like good, thick plastic
41:26SPEAKERthat's not gonna scratch or break easily.
41:29SPEAKERI had saved my parts on my old shucks.
41:32SPEAKERThis thing, I kinda took the view from this guide
41:36SPEAKERto go further and put the parts for each shuck
41:38SPEAKERin a little baggy and store that inside the enclosure,
41:41SPEAKER'cause previously I'd just thrown all the screws
41:43SPEAKERin the USB interface board and all that stuff
41:45SPEAKERback in the enclosure loose.
41:47SPEAKER- Yeah, you'll figure it out.
41:48SPEAKER- Can kinda run the risk of closing the enclosure
41:51SPEAKERback up on the board or breaking something
41:53SPEAKERthat you would need to make it portable again.
41:56SPEAKERTo be clear, a lot of people just toss the enclosures
41:58SPEAKERwhen they're done shucking 'cause they have no intention
42:00SPEAKERof ever using them again.
42:01SPEAKERI keep 'em all for RMA purposes and also like,
42:04SPEAKERyou might wanna turn that drive back
42:05SPEAKERinto a portable at some point.
42:08SPEAKER- I just keep one usually for each type of driver I have.
42:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I wonder if they are compatible with different sizes.
42:14SPEAKERI can't imagine they're going to the trouble
42:16SPEAKERof making the USB controller in each thing
42:18SPEAKERonly except the drive it came with, but I don't know.
42:22SPEAKERHave you ever tried it?
42:23SPEAKER- I've never had one of these drives fail.
42:26SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, in my case, like I don't trust RMA.
42:31SPEAKERI've gotten refurbished RMA drive replacements back
42:34SPEAKERthat then went on to fail pretty quickly.
42:36SPEAKERSo I'm not really likely to RMA a drive
42:39SPEAKERand never trust it again, but it's more, in my case,
42:41SPEAKERit's more, and we'll get it, I just did this,
42:43SPEAKERwe'll get to it, but it's more for being able to use it
42:45SPEAKERas a portable again later.
42:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it's funny, once the drive has lived in the NAS
42:51SPEAKERfor more than like two years,
42:52SPEAKERI'm probably not gonna use it for anything else.
42:54SPEAKER- Yeah, remember what I said,
42:56SPEAKERI bought a bunch of stuff for backups
42:58SPEAKERand then never actually did the backups.
43:00SPEAKER- Yeah, but sometimes it's the thought that counts, Brad.
43:03SPEAKER- Let's say these old drives are very lightly used,
43:05SPEAKERso I'm fine putting them back into portable service again.
43:09SPEAKER- Fair, fair, fair.
43:11SPEAKER- But anyway, yeah, like putting all your parts
43:12SPEAKERin a little baggie in the enclosure,
43:13SPEAKERif you're going to save all that stuff is a good idea there.
43:16SPEAKER- Okay.
43:17SPEAKER- Okay, oh, actually, since we're talking about disassembly,
43:20SPEAKERI'll just get to it now.
43:22SPEAKERThe 20 terabytes are replacing a couple of old
43:25SPEAKER10 terabyte shucks from five, six years ago.
43:28SPEAKER- Double storage.
43:29SPEAKER- So getting those elements drives back together
43:33SPEAKERin the enclosure and figuring out the geometric puzzle
43:35SPEAKERof how the rubber blocks went back into the enclosure
43:38SPEAKERwas a 30, 45 minute challenge,
43:41SPEAKERbecause there are not a lot of reassembly guides out there,
43:43SPEAKERand so you have to really just figure out
43:45SPEAKERhow everything fits together.
43:46SPEAKER- Well, and then the weird thing is also
43:48SPEAKERthere's like weird light pipes that move lights
43:50SPEAKERfrom the circuit board out to the flashy light
43:53SPEAKERon the front of the drive and all sorts of other weird stuff.
43:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it was pretty frustrating,
43:57SPEAKERbut then satisfying once I finished it
43:58SPEAKERto actually get the drive back together,
44:01SPEAKERand those two 10 terabytes worked fine
44:02SPEAKERas portables again now.
44:04SPEAKER- So the thing I want to talk about, though,
44:07SPEAKERis that you had the 3.3 volt issue,
44:09SPEAKERwhich has never happened to me yet.
44:11SPEAKER- Really?
44:12SPEAKER- No. - No kidding.
44:12SPEAKER- I've never had it.
44:13SPEAKER- So I think it really is the first time for me as well,
44:16SPEAKERand I think it really depends
44:17SPEAKERon what you're putting your shucked drive into,
44:20SPEAKERalthough it's very inconsistent even from drive to drive.
44:22SPEAKERI know Jeff Gershman for China Bomb has shucked quite a few,
44:25SPEAKERand I think he's run into the 3.3 volt quite a bit,
44:29SPEAKERbut I think he puts all his drives in PCs
44:31SPEAKERor has until recently, and so are you putting,
44:34SPEAKERare you putting shucked drives into like,
44:35SPEAKERfor example, a Synology, is what you're talking about?
44:37SPEAKER- So I'm putting shucked drives, let's see,
44:39SPEAKERthe current shucked drives are in a Synology.
44:41SPEAKERPreviously, I put them in a FreeNAS machine,
44:43SPEAKERbut I can't, I might've bought NAS drives till then.
44:45SPEAKERI can't remember, 'cause the NAS drives
44:48SPEAKERdidn't start getting really expensive
44:49SPEAKERuntil like the last five years.
44:51SPEAKER- Yeah, when the capacity has really started soaring
44:53SPEAKERis when you start getting up into like $400,
44:56SPEAKERthree, 350 to $400 drives, which is pretty rough.
45:00SPEAKERSo what we're talking about here
45:01SPEAKERis kind of known as the 3.3 volt issue,
45:05SPEAKERand I think it might just be a Western Digital thing.
45:07SPEAKERI'm not 100% sure, like I said,
45:08SPEAKERyou just don't see a lot of Seagate shucks in general,
45:11SPEAKERso I can't verify.
45:12SPEAKER- Yeah, my understanding is the Western Digital thing
45:14SPEAKERto keep people from doing exactly
45:16SPEAKERthe thing that we're doing.
45:17SPEAKER- Yes, I will say one thing I forgot to mention real quick,
45:19SPEAKERbut the, one of the Seagate shucks
45:22SPEAKERI did find somebody showing pictures of,
45:23SPEAKERthey got a branded IronWolf drive out of their Seagate shuck
45:27SPEAKERwhich is- - The surveillance ones, right?
45:30SPEAKER- No, that's their NAS drive,
45:31SPEAKERthat's the equivalent of the RED Pro
45:34SPEAKERfor Western Digital, so, but again,
45:37SPEAKERthat could be old stock or something,
45:38SPEAKERyou still don't know that,
45:39SPEAKEReven just 'cause it's got a retail label on it
45:41SPEAKERif it's actually great or not, anyway, okay.
45:45SPEAKERSo what will happen with a fair number
45:47SPEAKERof the Western Digital drives that you shuck,
45:50SPEAKERand again, it sounds like this depends
45:51SPEAKERon what kind of power supply you're hooking them up to,
45:54SPEAKERis if there's a 3.3 volt pin on the power connector
45:58SPEAKERon a SATA drive, it's part of the SATA connector spec,
46:03SPEAKERand if the drive, if the drive has this problem,
46:05SPEAKERwhich they don't all have,
46:07SPEAKERbut if it does have this problem
46:08SPEAKERand it's getting power on the 3.3 volt pin,
46:10SPEAKERit will just refuse to spin up
46:11SPEAKERwhen you turn your computer on.
46:13SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
46:15SPEAKER- And I, this is the first time I've run into this
46:17SPEAKERand I don't know what the distinction is here,
46:20SPEAKERI have always, every drive I've ever shucked
46:22SPEAKERuntil this time has gone into this little
46:24SPEAKERfour bay USB enclosure I have that was like a hundred bucks,
46:28SPEAKERand every drive has worked,
46:29SPEAKERlike I've never had this problem before,
46:31SPEAKERand I've also talked to other people
46:32SPEAKERwho have never had a shucked drive
46:33SPEAKERnot work in an external bay,
46:36SPEAKERso I'm thinking this might be a PC power supply problem
46:40SPEAKERonly, or pretty close to it.
46:43SPEAKER- Well, okay, so while you were talking,
46:45SPEAKERI did a little quick research.
46:47SPEAKERThe Synology provides the 3.3 volts on the drive rails,
46:52SPEAKERSynologies have for a long time,
46:53SPEAKERapparently, as of six years ago.
46:56SPEAKER- Okay.
46:57SPEAKER- So that's why they work there without any problem.
46:59SPEAKER- I see.
47:00SPEAKER- It might just be that it's a PC power supply, yeah.
47:03SPEAKER- That's kind of the gist of what I've seen,
47:05SPEAKERis that most people running into this
47:06SPEAKERare putting them in actual computers,
47:07SPEAKERhooked up to actual power supplies.
47:10SPEAKERHere's the crazy thing though,
47:11SPEAKERI put two identical drives.
47:15SPEAKER- Okay.
47:16SPEAKER- In a PC for the first time that I had shucked.
47:18SPEAKERIdentical, same size, same, they were both elements,
47:20SPEAKERthey were bought at the same time,
47:22SPEAKERlike could not be more identical other than serial number.
47:25SPEAKEROne of them worked and one of them didn't.
47:27SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the thing that it really says.
47:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I found people out there who were like,
47:32SPEAKERI had three identical drives bought at the same time,
47:34SPEAKERand two of them refused to spin up and one worked.
47:36SPEAKERSo there's no rhyme or reason to which hard drives are
47:39SPEAKERand are not going to spin up with this problem.
47:41SPEAKER- My understanding is that there are some sizes
47:44SPEAKERthat are more likely to have the problem
47:45SPEAKERthan other sizes, other capacities.
47:47SPEAKERSo based on the drives that they're putting
47:49SPEAKERinto those capacities, my understanding.
47:51SPEAKER- It's a weird phenomenon, but like you said,
47:54SPEAKERit's primarily they're just trying to stop people
47:56SPEAKERfrom doing this, which is just getting cheap, big drives.
48:00SPEAKER- The good news is there's a pretty easy fix.
48:02SPEAKER- Well, there are multiple solutions to this problem.
48:06SPEAKERThe one I chose, I think the best one,
48:08SPEAKERbut it required some very delicate work.
48:12SPEAKERAll you have to do is prevent power
48:14SPEAKERfrom getting to that 3.3 volt pen.
48:16SPEAKERSo there are multiple ways to do that.
48:18SPEAKERHere are the common solutions.
48:20SPEAKERYou can put a little piece of tape over that pen.
48:23SPEAKER- Okay.
48:23SPEAKER- So I never bought Kapton tape before.
48:26SPEAKER- I use that for 3D printing
48:27SPEAKER'cause it's heat and thermally.
48:29SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah.
48:30SPEAKER- You bought a big roll of it the last time
48:32SPEAKERwe were at the electronics flea market
48:33SPEAKERand I wasn't sure what your use case
48:35SPEAKERfor a big roll of it was, but that explains it.
48:37SPEAKER- It's really good if you have something flat
48:39SPEAKERthat you need to make thermally insulated.
48:42SPEAKER- Sure, yes.
48:43SPEAKERYou can use other types of tape, it sounds like,
48:45SPEAKERbut Kapton is the best under temperature
48:47SPEAKERand for just being a long lasting solution.
48:50SPEAKERIf you look at the pens on a SATA power connector,
48:52SPEAKERthey are tiny.
48:53SPEAKER- Yeah, pens on all connectors are tiny these days,
48:55SPEAKERit turns out.
48:56SPEAKER- So it took me half a dozen tries
48:59SPEAKERto cut exactly the right size tiny strip of tape
49:03SPEAKERand position it just right over that one pen
49:05SPEAKER'cause you don't wanna block the other pens next to it,
49:07SPEAKERof course, 'cause those need power potentially.
49:09SPEAKER- So the thing I did when I had to cut the Kapton tape
49:13SPEAKERfor a similar thing but not the 3.3 volt problem,
49:16SPEAKERI needed to do it for an HDMI pen and--
49:19SPEAKER- And those are even smaller.
49:21SPEAKER- I printed out the physical layout of the thing
49:28SPEAKERand then put that down under a piece of glass
49:30SPEAKERand cut it on the glass with an X-Acto knife.
49:32SPEAKER- Okay, sure.
49:33SPEAKER- And that, or acrylic, I guess, probably,
49:35SPEAKERbut that made it relatively easy
49:37SPEAKER'cause I was just cutting to,
49:38SPEAKERI was tracing at that point.
49:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I did some more--
49:41SPEAKER- But then I had this tiny piece of tape
49:42SPEAKERthat I had to manage with a pair of needle nose scissors
49:44SPEAKERand it was still hard.
49:46SPEAKER- But that was the hard, well, both were hard.
49:48SPEAKERI did a similar thing.
49:49SPEAKERI just, I used a box cutter and a ruler
49:50SPEAKERand then like getting that, holding it in place
49:53SPEAKERand not having a curl up and getting it in position
49:55SPEAKERon the pen was a challenge, but it worked on the first try.
49:57SPEAKER- Pairs of tweezers are, it turns out, really helpful.
50:00SPEAKER- That's probably a good way to go.
50:02SPEAKERAnother option I've seen out there,
50:04SPEAKERwhich I think is bad based on multiple anecdotal experiences
50:09SPEAKERis a Molex adapter.
50:11SPEAKERIf you, you know, you still have,
50:13SPEAKERin modular power supplies, you'll get cables
50:16SPEAKERthat terminate in Molex connectors rather than SATA.
50:18SPEAKER- Yeah, the old four-pen, red, yellow, black.
50:21SPEAKER- Right, so you can get a Molex to SATA adapter for those
50:26SPEAKERand go Molex out of the power supply
50:28SPEAKERand then an adapter to SATA
50:29SPEAKERand that will strip the 3.3 volt.
50:32SPEAKER- Okay.
50:33SPEAKER- But, in theory, that should be just fine,
50:36SPEAKERbut it sounds like I, it took me almost no time
50:39SPEAKERto find somebody posting photos of the fire
50:41SPEAKERthat started in their computer from a crappy Molex adapter.
50:46SPEAKER- I was gonna say.
50:47SPEAKER- Jeff mentioned to me that he tried this once
50:49SPEAKERand it killed the drive instantly.
50:51SPEAKERSo maybe, maybe don't trust this electrical solution.
50:55SPEAKERIt does not sound great.
50:56SPEAKER- I think the larger solution, the larger answer there
50:59SPEAKERis maybe don't buy janky adapters.
51:02SPEAKERBuy your adapters from like reputable places
51:04SPEAKERand also probably nobody reputable
51:06SPEAKERis making a Molex to SATA power at this point.
51:08SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I would not go that route at all.
51:12SPEAKER- There was a period of time when like your motherboards
51:14SPEAKERcame with Molex to SATA adapters.
51:15SPEAKERI'm sure those are fine.
51:17SPEAKERThey're hard to find now though.
51:18SPEAKER- Yeah, they're not that common.
51:20SPEAKERThe other, the final options
51:22SPEAKERare to get a little more destructive.
51:23SPEAKERYou can cut and tape off the 3.3 volt line
51:27SPEAKERon the cable out of the power supply.
51:29SPEAKER- Like the SATA power cable?
51:30SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, which the drive will work fine
51:33SPEAKERand it will fix this problem.
51:34SPEAKERThe other one, which I considered doing
51:36SPEAKER'cause it sounds dead easy and hard to screw up,
51:39SPEAKERbut it's destructive is to just break the 3.3 volt pin
51:42SPEAKERoff of the drive itself, off of the power connector.
51:45SPEAKERAnd apparently like you just, I saw some pictures.
51:47SPEAKERYou just take a box cutter and wedge it under the pin
51:49SPEAKERand bend it up and move it back and forth
51:51SPEAKERand it'll break off in 10 seconds.
51:52SPEAKERAnd apparently that's just fine.
51:54SPEAKERI saw no end of people saying,
51:56SPEAKERyeah, I have had drives running for years like this
51:58SPEAKERand it worked just fine.
51:59SPEAKER- But that always seemed really scary to me.
52:01SPEAKER- Yes, I agree.
52:02SPEAKERLike I thought about doing it
52:05SPEAKER'cause I didn't have any other way to do it at the moment.
52:07SPEAKERAnd I was like, man, I really just want to get this done
52:08SPEAKERand installed and move on.
52:11SPEAKERBut I resisted 'cause that is a little too permanent
52:13SPEAKERfor my taste.
52:14SPEAKERAnd so I, instead I ordered some captain tape
52:16SPEAKERand waited for that for a day or two and that was fine.
52:20SPEAKER- The captain tape is a useful thing to have around anyway.
52:22SPEAKERSo it's worth having a roll of captain.
52:24SPEAKERLike when we were at the electronic swing market
52:26SPEAKERand I saw a guy selling rolls of, they were thin rolls,
52:28SPEAKERbut they were rolls of captain tape for like $2.
52:31SPEAKERI was all about that.
52:33SPEAKER- Yeah, it's good to just have stuff around.
52:34SPEAKERLike we've talked about, like you can never,
52:36SPEAKERyou can't buy like a tiny one little unit
52:38SPEAKERof anything anymore.
52:39SPEAKERYou're gonna buy 36 feet of captain tape
52:41SPEAKERor 800 nylon standoffs instead of the four you need
52:45SPEAKERor whatever.
52:45SPEAKERBut also speaking from recent experience,
52:47SPEAKERlike it's kind of nice to just have a parts drawer of stuff
52:50SPEAKER'cause having things when you need it is pretty awesome.
52:53SPEAKERSo anyway. - That's pretty good.
52:55SPEAKERWhat are you putting the drives in, Brad?
52:57SPEAKER- So I, like I said, I mostly put them in an enclosure
52:59SPEAKERfor backups that I never actually do.
53:00SPEAKERBut now I've started putting them in my actual server,
53:04SPEAKERwhich again, that's probably where you're gonna run
53:05SPEAKERinto the 3.3 volt issue.
53:07SPEAKERThis has gotten me looking at external enclosures
53:09SPEAKERa little more closely
53:11SPEAKER'cause as I have been doing some backups now finally
53:13SPEAKERto this, I have the Cyba SYBA 4 bay.
53:17SPEAKERIt's a 4 bay USB 3.0 enclosure.
53:20SPEAKERAnd the speeds I'm getting to this thing are like way slower
53:22SPEAKERthan what four hard drives should be writing at one time.
53:25SPEAKERAnd that has gotten me,
53:26SPEAKERI guess this is a little aside for the end here.
53:28SPEAKERThat's gotten me looking at USB transfer standards.
53:31SPEAKER- Oh boy. - Data transfer standards.
53:34SPEAKERAnd apparently all enclosures
53:35SPEAKERare not created equal out there.
53:37SPEAKER- It's not, I'm not surprised.
53:38SPEAKER- Is what I have learned.
53:40SPEAKERSo like a couple of things to know about enclosures
53:42SPEAKERthat I have read up on in recent days.
53:44SPEAKERAnd to be clear, we're not talking about your average
53:46SPEAKERlike Synology or QNAP like NAS device.
53:50SPEAKER- You're not talking about something with a CPU, right?
53:51SPEAKERYou're talking about something that shows up
53:53SPEAKERas an endpoint for storage.
53:56SPEAKER- Yeah, so like stuff like you have
53:57SPEAKERthat has compute on an operating system.
53:59SPEAKERThat's an all in one thing.
54:00SPEAKERLike we're talking about dumb enclosures
54:02SPEAKERthat are just meant to connect to an actual computer
54:05SPEAKERand just show up as like an external drive.
54:08SPEAKERSo there are two standards there.
54:10SPEAKERThere is USB 3.0 bot.
54:13SPEAKER- Bot? - Bulk only transport.
54:15SPEAKERSo apparently this is one of those things
54:17SPEAKERwhere everybody knows USB,
54:18SPEAKERbut nobody thinks about what's going on
54:20SPEAKERunder the level under USB
54:22SPEAKERor in the sub category of how is the USB working.
54:25SPEAKERSo bulk only transport apparently is like the data standard
54:28SPEAKERfrom the beginning of USB through USB one and two.
54:32SPEAKER- Okay, so this is like what thumb drives and stuff use?
54:34SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and older like about 15 years ago,
54:37SPEAKERexternal hard drives and stuff like that.
54:38SPEAKERSo that standard has carried on to USB three.
54:41SPEAKERWe don't need to get too much
54:42SPEAKERinto how the signaling protocol works,
54:43SPEAKERbut it sounds like it's serial
54:44SPEAKERwhere it's like it can only send one command at a time
54:47SPEAKERin a single queue.
54:48SPEAKERIt's like, it's slow.
54:50SPEAKERAnd it turns out this cyber I have
54:52SPEAKERis a bulk only transport enclosure,
54:55SPEAKERwhich I didn't know to research when I bought it.
54:57SPEAKERSo, you know, kind of a bottleneck.
54:59SPEAKERIt's nowhere near USB three,
55:01SPEAKERlike theoretical or even practical maximum speeds.
55:04SPEAKERThis has led me to discovering something called UASP,
55:07SPEAKERUSB attached SCSI protocol.
55:10SPEAKER- Oh man.
55:11SPEAKER- Which is like 10 years old now from the looks of things.
55:13SPEAKER- You can get SCSI again?
55:15SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is basically SCSI over USB.
55:17SPEAKER- Oh man, that's awesome.
55:19SPEAKER- Which unlike bot, it's a parallelized standard.
55:24SPEAKERSo it can like send parallel commands
55:26SPEAKERwithout having to wait for one to finish,
55:27SPEAKERyou know, that kind of thing.
55:28SPEAKERIt does a lot more things in parallel over the blink.
55:32SPEAKER- And can it address individual drives inside the cage?
55:35SPEAKER- Oh, you know, that's something I forgot to mention.
55:37SPEAKERSo either one can do that actually.
55:39SPEAKERSo you see a lot of people saying like,
55:41SPEAKERI don't do RAID on an external enclosure
55:43SPEAKER'cause the USB controller always obfuscates
55:45SPEAKERwhat the drives are doing.
55:46SPEAKERBut if you just look for JBOD,
55:48SPEAKERwhich anybody who's into RAID and storage is familiar.
55:52SPEAKER- You mean just a bunch of disks?
55:53SPEAKER- Yes, just a bunch of disks.
55:55SPEAKERLook for JBOD support on whatever enclosure you buy.
55:57SPEAKERAnd that means it will expose each drive
55:59SPEAKERas just a block device to the operating system.
56:02SPEAKERAnd then you're fine.
56:03SPEAKERSo there don't seem to be that many UASP
56:06SPEAKERenabled enclosures out there.
56:08SPEAKERLike you can find some
56:09SPEAKERand they're not even that much more expensive.
56:11SPEAKERIt just doesn't seem like it's that widely supported,
56:13SPEAKERwhich is kind of a bummer.
56:14SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems like a really specialty use case.
56:17SPEAKER'Cause typically if you're doing USB storage,
56:18SPEAKERyou probably don't care about perf too much.
56:20SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
56:21SPEAKERWell, the one place this matters
56:22SPEAKERis when you get like four bays and higher,
56:24SPEAKER'cause you can find like six, eight bay
56:27SPEAKERhard drive enclosures out there now.
56:29SPEAKEROnce you have that many drives in parallel,
56:31SPEAKERdepending on what kind of RAID layout you're using,
56:33SPEAKERyou might actually hit the limits of the USB speed.
56:36SPEAKERLike if you've got four or six hard drives in there
56:38SPEAKERall reading from a striped array,
56:40SPEAKERwhich means each drive is reading in parallel,
56:42SPEAKERyou're getting effectively four times
56:44SPEAKERthe speed of a single drive.
56:45SPEAKERAnd so the speed does matter
56:47SPEAKERif you're doing something like that.
56:49SPEAKERI mean, ultimately this thing is gonna be attached
56:50SPEAKERto a Raspberry Pi over the network.
56:53SPEAKERSo I'm not gonna hit these speeds anyway,
56:54SPEAKERbut doing these initial backups from my NAS
56:57SPEAKERhas been painfully slow.
56:58SPEAKER- Yeah.
56:59SPEAKER- When I know the drives in there could be going way faster
57:02SPEAKERif the USB wasn't a bottleneck.
57:05SPEAKERThe UASP thing in fairness,
57:07SPEAKEReverything in your chain has to support it for it to work.
57:10SPEAKERSo the enclosure has to support it.
57:11SPEAKERThe USB controller on the computer you're hooking it up to
57:13SPEAKERhas to support it.
57:14SPEAKERThe operating system has to support it,
57:16SPEAKERwhich to be fair, every Windows Sense 8 has,
57:19SPEAKERlike Linux has it.
57:20SPEAKEREvery operating system has it now,
57:22SPEAKERbut you need the hardware all the way through the chain
57:24SPEAKERas well to make it work.
57:25SPEAKER- So the drives have to support it too, or no?
57:27SPEAKER- No, no, no.
57:28SPEAKERThe drives don't know about it or care about it.
57:30SPEAKERIt's purely a USB thing.
57:31SPEAKER- And do all the modern USB controllers support it?
57:35SPEAKER- I would assume so.
57:36SPEAKERI didn't, since my thing doesn't support it
57:37SPEAKERand I don't think I'm gonna get one.
57:38SPEAKERI didn't bother researching,
57:39SPEAKERbut I have to assume like every good USB controller
57:43SPEAKERon a motherboard that's part of a vendor chip set
57:45SPEAKERsurely supports it by now 'cause it is like 10 years old.
57:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that's interesting.
57:49SPEAKERI didn't know this existed, so this is cool.
57:52SPEAKER- If I ever buy another enclosure,
57:53SPEAKERI will definitely be on the lookout for this feature,
57:55SPEAKERalthough I'm just gonna roll with this cheap one I've got
57:58SPEAKER'cause it's fine for a network backup.
58:00SPEAKER- The interesting thing is there's also,
58:02SPEAKERlike there was eSATA and stuff like that for a while,
58:04SPEAKERbut all that kind of fell off.
58:05SPEAKER- Yes, so my, in fact, most of the enclosures,
58:08SPEAKERincluding mine, have eSATA ports on them,
58:10SPEAKERbut like, would you have to get an extra card?
58:12SPEAKERYou'd have to get a card for that, right?
58:13SPEAKERYou'd have to get an external, like a PCIe eSATA card?
58:16SPEAKER- No, you don't.
58:17SPEAKERYou can just do a pass-through,
58:18SPEAKERso you can run a SATA cable from your ports
58:21SPEAKERon your motherboard to a back panel, a back plate.
58:25SPEAKER- I'll have to look, but it has to be eSATA on both ends?
58:27SPEAKERIt won't go to a regular SATA thing
58:29SPEAKERon the motherboard, right?
58:30SPEAKER- eSATA is just SATA.
58:31SPEAKER- Oh, I'll have to look.
58:32SPEAKER- It's just a different connector that latches
58:34SPEAKER'cause it's external.
58:35SPEAKER- Oh man, I may have wished I had looked at this
58:37SPEAKERbefore I started this big transfer.
58:39SPEAKERIt came with an eSATA cable.
58:41SPEAKERI should look at what's on the other end of that cable
58:42SPEAKERand see what it would plug into,
58:43SPEAKERor maybe you can get an adapter.
58:45SPEAKER- You can buy like a motherboard header adapter,
58:47SPEAKERlike the kind of thing that you use to put extra USB ports
58:50SPEAKERfrom your USB motherboard headers and plug,
58:52SPEAKERjust slot that into an empty slot on the back of your case.
58:55SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.
58:56SPEAKERYeah, eSATA, you're right though.
58:58SPEAKERLike eSATA is considered pretty much moribund at this point,
59:01SPEAKERso not a lot to do there unless you jump through the hoops.
59:05SPEAKERBut anyway, that's kind of a little primer on stuff
59:08SPEAKERI've been doing with cheap hard drives
59:10SPEAKERand how to maybe get a quick, cheap raid together
59:14SPEAKERif you're inclined.
59:15SPEAKER- I'm glad you're living that Shuck life.
59:17SPEAKERThe bad news is the time to buy drives
59:19SPEAKERis almost always Black Friday,
59:20SPEAKERbut there's also usually another sale in the post-Christmas.
59:25SPEAKERUsually they also go on sale around New Year's
59:27SPEAKERpost-Christmas.
59:28SPEAKER- Yeah, and again, Shuck stop is the thing to check.
59:31SPEAKERI don't know if they have notifications set up.
59:33SPEAKERI haven't looked, but keep an eye on that.
59:35SPEAKERYou can only load it once a day
59:36SPEAKERand just check if you're in the market for hard drives
59:38SPEAKERand hope to catch a good deal.
59:40SPEAKER- Yeah, the deal over time aspect of that
59:43SPEAKERis really, really nice.
59:45SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:46SPEAKER- I guess that's a good place to wrap it up.
59:48SPEAKERI got a late-breaking Swiftie announcement.
59:50SPEAKER- Oh?
59:51SPEAKER- Yeah, my wife sent me a story this morning
59:55SPEAKERthat Rogers, the cellular provider at BC Place
59:58SPEAKERwhere the show was,
1:00:01SPEAKERfans used over 11 terabytes of mobile data on December 8th,
1:00:05SPEAKERsetting a new Canadian record for data usage
1:00:08SPEAKERduring a single event.
1:00:09SPEAKERThis broke the previous record of 7.4 terabytes
1:00:12SPEAKERset during her Toronto concert at Rogers Center
1:00:15SPEAKERon November 21st.
1:00:18SPEAKERAnd they installed a 5G network for this show, basically.
1:00:22SPEAKERYeah, equivalent to uploading 2100 hours of video.
1:00:26SPEAKER- That's really interesting 'cause 11 terabytes
1:00:28SPEAKERsounds enormous in a cellular data context.
1:00:32SPEAKERIt sounds tiny from a number of people at a Taylor Swift show
1:00:35SPEAKERand outside the arena kind of context.
1:00:37SPEAKER- Yeah, right.
1:00:39SPEAKERThey fully reduced,
1:00:40SPEAKERthey boosted network capacity by 38 times.
1:00:42SPEAKERI will say, shout out to Rogers
1:00:44SPEAKER'cause my cellular worked pretty much the entire time
1:00:46SPEAKERI was downtown, even with 180,000 extra people in town.
1:00:49SPEAKER- Yeah, the cell phone doesn't work at the trade show.
1:00:52SPEAKERPhenomenon seems to mostly have gone away, which is crazy
1:00:55SPEAKER'cause I thought that would just be a fact of life forever.
1:00:57SPEAKER- It seems like a problem that was solved with money, so.
1:01:01SPEAKER- Sure, like most problems.
1:01:03SPEAKER- And let's see, this article also says
1:01:06SPEAKERthat they set up a temporary mobile units
1:01:09SPEAKERoutside the stadium for the crowds
1:01:11SPEAKERthat were gathered around outside.
1:01:14SPEAKEROver three nights of performances,
1:01:16SPEAKERfans used 32 terabytes of data on Rogers 5G.
1:01:19SPEAKERThat's, I got two gigabytes from Verizon.
1:01:22SPEAKERThey were like, you have two gigabytes
1:01:23SPEAKERwhile you're international.
1:01:24SPEAKERDon't use more than that.
1:01:25SPEAKER- Yeah, no live streaming for you.
1:01:27SPEAKER- No live streaming for me, it's fine.
1:01:29SPEAKERI was enjoying the show.
1:01:31SPEAKERThat'll do it for us this week.
1:01:32SPEAKERAs always, "Brad and Will Made a TechPod"
1:01:34SPEAKERis a listener supported show.
1:01:36SPEAKERWe wouldn't be here without you, the listener.
1:01:38SPEAKERThank you, listeners.
1:01:39SPEAKER- Thank you, thank you, indeed.
1:01:40SPEAKER- I am, I'm excited you got into shucking, Brad.
1:01:43SPEAKERI didn't think you were gonna walk this path.
1:01:45SPEAKER- Well, like I said, I've been doing it for a while,
1:01:47SPEAKERbut I have been doing it just as a backup solution.
1:01:49SPEAKERAnd now like some of those are ending up in my main machine.
1:01:52SPEAKERSo. - There you go.
1:01:53SPEAKER- As always, we're listening to support.
1:01:55SPEAKERIf you wanna support the show,
1:01:56SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:01:58SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod,
1:01:59SPEAKERwhere for five bucks a month,
1:02:01SPEAKERyou get access to the Discord,
1:02:02SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful nerds
1:02:04SPEAKERtalking about Taylor Swift in Canada.
1:02:06SPEAKERAnd I got a ton, I got a ton of Vancouver tips
1:02:09SPEAKERfrom people in the Discord.
1:02:11SPEAKER- That's awesome.
1:02:12SPEAKER- And a bunch of invitations to do lovely stuff.
1:02:15SPEAKERWe weren't there for very long,
1:02:16SPEAKERso I didn't get to do a meetup or anything,
1:02:18SPEAKERbut I would love to come back sometime,
1:02:20SPEAKER'cause it was a lovely city,
1:02:21SPEAKERand I'd like to have people spend more time.
1:02:23SPEAKERThere was apparently on the north side of town
1:02:26SPEAKERat this light garden over a gorge
1:02:29SPEAKERwhere they had Christmas lights
1:02:30SPEAKERand had Swiftied it all up
1:02:32SPEAKERand hung a friendship bracelet across the gorge
1:02:34SPEAKERon their suspension bridge.
1:02:36SPEAKERWe didn't get a chance to go up there and do that,
1:02:38SPEAKERbut that seemed like it was pretty dope, too.
1:02:42SPEAKERAgain, patreon.com/techpod, it's five bucks a month.
1:02:45SPEAKERAs always, thank you to all of our listeners,
1:02:47SPEAKERbut a very special thank you
1:02:48SPEAKERto our executive producer, to your patrons,
1:02:50SPEAKERincluding Andrew Slosky, Crow, Jordan Lippitt, Bunny Fiend,
1:02:54SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik,
1:02:57SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:03:01SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:03:02SPEAKER- Yes, we appreciate you very much.
1:03:04SPEAKER- And that will do it for us this week.
1:03:06SPEAKERWe'll be back next week with another episode of the Tech Pod.
1:03:08SPEAKERUntil then, I don't know, man,
1:03:11SPEAKERlisten to some Taylor Swift or something.
1:03:13SPEAKER- Stay Swiftie?
1:03:14SPEAKER- Yeah, stay Swiftie, there you go.
1:03:16SPEAKERBye, everybody.
1:03:17SPEAKER(upbeat rock music)