00:00SPEAKER- Okay, we gotta make this quick.
00:01SPEAKERI got two gallons of Nog in the bath.
00:03SPEAKER- It's Nog time, the Nog season is upon us again.
00:05SPEAKER- Look, I don't know what day it is today
00:07SPEAKERfor people who are listening,
00:08SPEAKERbut for me, it's December 18th, 2024,
00:12SPEAKERand the Nog time is upon us.
00:14SPEAKER- That's right.
00:15SPEAKERSome might say the Nog time never ends, but you know.
00:17SPEAKER- Look, I'm gonna go and tell you,
00:19SPEAKERlast year I found a lost jar of Nog
00:22SPEAKERin the back of the fridge behind all the beer
00:24SPEAKERand all the other stuff in June.
00:26SPEAKER- What?
00:28SPEAKERHow did we not talk about this?
00:29SPEAKER- Oh, look, it was a little bit embarrassing.
00:32SPEAKERI didn't wanna get into it, but--
00:33SPEAKER- I was like, see why you wouldn't wanna bring that up?
00:35SPEAKERI'm sorry, just to clarify again, reiterate,
00:38SPEAKERsix months, roughly, we're talking about?
00:40SPEAKER- June-ish, it was summertime, it was not a Nog season.
00:43SPEAKER- That's a long time for a milk product
00:45SPEAKERto hang out in the fridge.
00:46SPEAKER- So I looked at it and I was like,
00:49SPEAKERoh, Gina, we made a mistake.
00:51SPEAKERAnd she was like, yeah, we did.
00:52SPEAKERAnd then my initial thought was just,
00:56SPEAKERI should just put it back in there
00:57SPEAKERand then not think about it anymore.
00:58SPEAKER- Yeah, which was saving for next year.
01:00SPEAKER- Not the right instinct, yeah.
01:02SPEAKERMy second thought was, oh, it's trash day,
01:05SPEAKERI'm just going to put this directly in the trash
01:07SPEAKERand not open it, which is what I did.
01:09SPEAKERSo I assume that at some point in the future,
01:12SPEAKERarcheologists will be digging
01:13SPEAKERin the San Francisco Municipal Landfill
01:16SPEAKERand they will find an intact jar of Nog and then--
01:20SPEAKER- fossilized?
01:21SPEAKER- Yeah, like people will extract ingredients from it
01:24SPEAKERand try to discern what it was.
01:25SPEAKERAnd they'll be like, it seems to be
01:27SPEAKERsome sort of curdled milk product.
01:29SPEAKERThis must be what the people
01:30SPEAKERof the early 21st century really enjoyed was--
01:33SPEAKER- Yes, the anthropologists will draw sweeping conclusions
01:36SPEAKERabout the entirety of our culture based on this one artifact.
01:38SPEAKERThe thing I was going to ask is,
01:41SPEAKERokay, I fully support your all or nothing,
01:44SPEAKERthrow it in the trash, just forget about it
01:45SPEAKERand move on with your life strategy?
01:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
01:49SPEAKER- First of all, it was in glass, right?
01:50SPEAKER- It was in a mason jar.
01:51SPEAKERI deliver, I do quart mason jars of Nog generally.
01:54SPEAKER- Is there, there's nothing about glass
01:56SPEAKERthat would render that jar unusable though, right?
01:59SPEAKEROr is it like somehow porous enough
02:01SPEAKERthat like a bad enough product could soil it forever?
02:05SPEAKER- Like the jar was totally redeemable,
02:08SPEAKERbut the price of a mason jar is such that I did not care
02:11SPEAKERto the mental and psychic trauma of disposing
02:15SPEAKERof six month old milk products,
02:17SPEAKERmilk and egg products, just to be clear.
02:19SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I get it, don't get me wrong.
02:21SPEAKER- Like I shook it a little bit
02:22SPEAKERto see what the consistency was like in there.
02:24SPEAKERAnd it was like, it wasn't quite soft cheese yet,
02:28SPEAKERbut it was chunkier than you want,
02:30SPEAKERsomething that your nostrils are exposed to.
02:34SPEAKER- Is there both yolk and white in there or?
02:37SPEAKER- All yolk, so I used to separate at the,
02:40SPEAKERso look, I've learned a lot making Nog over the years.
02:42SPEAKERThe first couple of years I did like three or four gallons,
02:44SPEAKERI think, and we would just buy pallets of eggs
02:48SPEAKERfrom the restaurant supply place.
02:51SPEAKERAnd then I think somebody actually on the podcast,
02:53SPEAKERsomebody who listens to the podcast was like,
02:54SPEAKERhey, you know, you can buy commercially pasteurized
02:57SPEAKERand homogenized egg yolks in cartons.
03:00SPEAKERAnd I was like, wait, what?
03:02SPEAKER'Cause the hardest part of the Nog previous to that
03:05SPEAKERwas what you do with 140 eggs worth of whites.
03:09SPEAKER- Well, you know, it's a lot of omelettes.
03:11SPEAKERI bet I have said that's a lot of omelettes
03:14SPEAKERon another podcast.
03:15SPEAKER- That is precisely what you said.
03:17SPEAKERAnd what I will tell you is there's no way
03:20SPEAKERthat three people will eat that many egg white omelettes
03:22SPEAKERbefore they are horrific.
03:24SPEAKER- Okay, that is precisely what you said
03:26SPEAKERnow that I think about it.
03:27SPEAKERBut did we talk about like before you got that,
03:31SPEAKERwere you self-pasteur?
03:32SPEAKERI mean, were you doing the pasteurization yourself?
03:34SPEAKER- Well, I do the pasteurization again anyway.
03:36SPEAKERSo that's why the Nog's in the bath now.
03:40SPEAKERIt does 90 minutes-ish in 162 Fahrenheit bath.
03:44SPEAKER- And that's not hot enough to like cook the egg at all?
03:47SPEAKER- It does not cook the egg,
03:48SPEAKERbut it does pasteurize the, kills 99,
03:51SPEAKERlike lower temperature than that will kill 99.999%
03:54SPEAKERof the things.
03:55SPEAKER- Okay, but the problem is that that 0.0001 hung out
03:59SPEAKERin that jar for another six months.
04:01SPEAKER- Well, I think the problem is that just the,
04:04SPEAKERso there's pasteurization, there's ultra pasteurization.
04:07SPEAKERI don't think we're ultra pasteurizing here.
04:09SPEAKERI think we would have to go longer to get the last,
04:12SPEAKERthe fifth one, right?
04:14SPEAKERBut yeah, it wasn't good.
04:18SPEAKERSo I didn't want to open it.
04:19SPEAKERI didn't want to expose my nostrils
04:21SPEAKERto that kind of food crime.
04:23SPEAKERAnd I sacrificed one mason jar.
04:27SPEAKER- Yeah, to the future, understandable.
04:28SPEAKERMy last question, did you ever consider
04:31SPEAKERjust dumping enough booze in there that it wouldn't matter?
04:35SPEAKER- Well, so the weird thing is,
04:36SPEAKERI think if I had boozed the Nog,
04:38SPEAKERit would have probably been okay.
04:39SPEAKER- Wow, you mean up front?
04:41SPEAKER- Yeah, so like, 'cause a lot of people do this
04:44SPEAKERlike five, six weeks in advance and put booze in
04:47SPEAKERand then let it age with the booze and the pasteurization.
04:51SPEAKERAnd that's a different, that's a different thing.
04:53SPEAKERBut we have enough people that don't drink
04:55SPEAKERor like, there's a big split between like,
04:59SPEAKERdo you put bourbon in, do you put rum in,
05:01SPEAKERdo you put spiced rum in, do you put dark rum,
05:03SPEAKERdo you put a rye, do you put something else
05:05SPEAKERthat I don't even, like I haven't even thought of?
05:08SPEAKERSo we just don't do, and also we have enough friends
05:12SPEAKERwho don't drink that I don't want to accidentally
05:14SPEAKERgive somebody the booze Nog when they're not there,
05:17SPEAKERyou know, recovering alcoholic or something,
05:19SPEAKER'cause that would be uncool.
05:20SPEAKER- Yeah, that's entirely sensible.
05:22SPEAKER- So we just don't do the, we don't do the booze.
05:24SPEAKER- Yes, and then you end up with a time bomb in your fridge.
05:28SPEAKER- Look, it didn't, it hadn't puffed up
05:30SPEAKERthe top dome of the, of the, of the mason jar yet.
05:34SPEAKERYou know, the little, like the pop down
05:36SPEAKERthat hadn't popped up.
05:37SPEAKERSo I figured probably okay.
05:39SPEAKER- Well, hey, there's always next year.
05:41SPEAKER(upbeat music)
06:09SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Check Pod.
06:12SPEAKERI'm Will.
06:13SPEAKER- I'm Brad, hello, hi.
06:14SPEAKER- Brad, I'm coming off hot.
06:15SPEAKERWe did, we did the best ofs for the full,
06:17SPEAKERthe nerdies yesterday for the Full Nerd.
06:20SPEAKER- Oh, has that run, that was public live?
06:23SPEAKER- We do it live every week.
06:24SPEAKER- Not something you're keeping under wraps.
06:26SPEAKER- No, you can go over to the Full Nerd channel on YouTube
06:29SPEAKERor go to wherever fine podcasts are found and find out.
06:32SPEAKERI brought, I feel like I maybe brought
06:35SPEAKERtoo much energy to that though.
06:36SPEAKERI feel like, I feel like I was too,
06:39SPEAKERlike I didn't have the pushback I was expecting.
06:43SPEAKERI was expecting like an old giant bomb
06:46SPEAKERwar room level of pushback.
06:48SPEAKERAnd I think people were like, I can't argue with that.
06:51SPEAKERAfter I said stuff and I was like, this is bad.
06:53SPEAKERI've gone too far.
06:54SPEAKER- Maybe your arguments were just that good.
06:56SPEAKER- Maybe, I don't know.
06:57SPEAKER- You could not be, they were just that convincing.
07:00SPEAKER- It was fun, it was a good year for tech.
07:01SPEAKERIt's a fun conversation with Adam and Brad and Elena.
07:06SPEAKER- Yeah, can I ask, can you give me like one or two things
07:09SPEAKERthat were highlighted?
07:10SPEAKERI'm just curious what asked muster.
07:12SPEAKER- Yeah, so they did, I think we did five categories.
07:15SPEAKERWe did best CPU, best GPU, best accessory,
07:17SPEAKERwhich is like kind of anything you can plug
07:20SPEAKERinto a PC, software or hardware.
07:22SPEAKERWe did, we started out with best innovation,
07:24SPEAKERbut then we realized we'd rather do best trend.
07:26SPEAKERSo we changed it to best trend on the fly
07:29SPEAKERand did worst trend to kind of counterpoint.
07:33SPEAKER- Actually, I'm gonna stop you with only five categories.
07:35SPEAKERI think people should just go listen for themselves.
07:37SPEAKER- I mean, they can, but like-
07:39SPEAKER- I don't wanna give anything away here.
07:40SPEAKER- What I will say is the conversation about CPU,
07:44SPEAKERlike I brought a little bit of wild card energy in there
07:46SPEAKERand we were talking about CPU and I was,
07:49SPEAKERtheir motto over there, they have two mottos at PC world.
07:52SPEAKEROne is bigger bar better
07:54SPEAKERand then the other one is always be testing.
07:55SPEAKERApparently they've always said,
07:56SPEAKERalways be testing over there since the very beginning.
07:58SPEAKER- True, that was weird.
07:59SPEAKER- It seemed familiar to me, but whatever.
08:04SPEAKER- Since bigger bar is better, I just was like,
08:06SPEAKER"Hey man, what about the 14900K?"
08:08SPEAKERThey re-released it this year.
08:09SPEAKERThey fixed the performance problems.
08:11SPEAKER- That's brilliant.
08:12SPEAKER- Still faster than everything out there.
08:15SPEAKER- As a current user of a 14900K, I find this very funny.
08:19SPEAKER- It's not catching on fire anymore
08:21SPEAKERif you have the right updates installed.
08:22SPEAKEREverything's cool.
08:23SPEAKER- I think mine's fine.
08:24SPEAKERI think it's been pretty stable.
08:27SPEAKER- Yeah.
08:28SPEAKER- Maybe it is the best.
08:28SPEAKER- We had a good conversation.
08:30SPEAKER- You know, as energy consumption bars go
08:33SPEAKERis certainly the biggest bar.
08:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
08:36SPEAKERThey have so many biggest bars over there,
08:38SPEAKERthey can't even keep track of them all.
08:39SPEAKER- They have the biggest bar in every category.
08:41SPEAKER- Most CPUs torched, most power consumed in full load,
08:45SPEAKERmost cores.
08:46SPEAKER- Most CEOs excised.
08:48SPEAKERI mean, that's not really the reason he got hostile,
08:52SPEAKERbut anyway.
08:53SPEAKER- Yeah, so it was a good conversation, it was worthless.
08:55SPEAKERIf you're looking for podcasts to fill your holiday voids,
08:58SPEAKERI will definitely hit a download.
09:00SPEAKER- That sounds right up my alley.
09:03SPEAKERBut we're here today to do something a little different.
09:06SPEAKERWe don't believe in superlatives here at the tech pod.
09:09SPEAKERWe just think that every question submitted
09:11SPEAKERis the best question we've ever received.
09:12SPEAKER- That's right, until the next one.
09:14SPEAKER- Yeah, and then we turn them into A's.
09:15SPEAKERSo if you think about it,
09:18SPEAKERif you start with our first question and answer episode,
09:20SPEAKERlike two, three years ago,
09:22SPEAKEReach question is better than the one that came before it.
09:25SPEAKERSo that means these questions now are orders of magnitude
09:29SPEAKERbetter than the ones that we had on those first few episodes.
09:32SPEAKER- I have to tell you something.
09:33SPEAKER- What's up, Brad?
09:34SPEAKER- When you say our first question and answer episode
09:38SPEAKERtwo to three years ago is over five years ago.
09:42SPEAKER- We've been doing this for five,
09:43SPEAKERoh, we have been doing this for five years.
09:45SPEAKER- Dude, we blew past the five-year mark
09:47SPEAKERlike three months ago.
09:48SPEAKER- Oh, wow, okay, well.
09:49SPEAKER- Anyway.
09:50SPEAKER- Yeah, look, 2020 to 2022 is basically
09:54SPEAKERone three-week chunk in my brain, so.
09:58SPEAKERAnyway, we're turning questions into answers this week.
10:00SPEAKER- Yes, I don't know if I should bring this up,
10:02SPEAKERbut I feel like I have to, so we don't step in it.
10:04SPEAKERWe are recording this out of order.
10:06SPEAKER- So if we talk about something this week
10:07SPEAKERthat we didn't mention last week and there's any weirdness,
10:11SPEAKERit's just because we've never done this before
10:12SPEAKERand we're bad at it.
10:13SPEAKER- Yes, yes, for reasons, we are recording,
10:17SPEAKERoh, God, I am losing track.
10:18SPEAKER267, we're doing 266 right now.
10:21SPEAKER- This is no, this is 267, we have to do 266 on Friday.
10:24SPEAKER- Okay, currently the plan is we will do a ranking
10:28SPEAKERof connectors and cables and ports.
10:31SPEAKER- I'm sure that episode was fantastic.
10:33SPEAKER- Yes, it was the best thing we've ever recorded
10:35SPEAKERor will record anyway.
10:37SPEAKER- Look, hey, Brad, why aren't we doing a ranking
10:40SPEAKERof startup chimes and startup noises for Windows,
10:45SPEAKERstartup noises for consoles and devices
10:48SPEAKERand Windows this week?
10:49SPEAKER- But because Remap very fairly beat us to that banger
10:53SPEAKERof an idea and I think you're saying that
10:55SPEAKERbecause you suggested we do that for a holiday episode
10:57SPEAKERand I was like, I thought you knew that they did it
11:00SPEAKERwhen you said that. - I did not.
11:01SPEAKER- I was like, why isn't it?
11:02SPEAKERSurely he knows that Remap just did this.
11:04SPEAKER- No, I think they did it on their one year anniversary
11:09SPEAKERstream, right?
11:10SPEAKER- It was a charity stream.
11:11SPEAKERI can't remember what charity it was for,
11:12SPEAKERbut it was a very-- - Oh, it was a Palestinian
11:14SPEAKERcharity stream. - Yeah, I think that's right.
11:15SPEAKERYeah, it was a very long stream.
11:16SPEAKERI think they spent like four hours on that ranking
11:19SPEAKERor something.
11:20SPEAKER- Well, they were there, they went to,
11:21SPEAKERthey met in New York or something for a weekend, I think,
11:23SPEAKERand basically streamed all weekend,
11:25SPEAKERwhich was, I watched a bunch of that.
11:26SPEAKERI missed that one entirely, which I was,
11:29SPEAKERmaybe I knew it happened, but it's lost to time now,
11:32SPEAKERI'm lost to my memory, but. - Yep.
11:34SPEAKER- So yeah, we're ranking connectors
11:36SPEAKERon a variety of categories and criteria
11:41SPEAKERfor last week's episode, which you already heard,
11:42SPEAKERknow that we did that and it was awesome,
11:45SPEAKERbut there aren't any emails about that in this episode.
11:47SPEAKER- If there's anything temporarily incorrect
11:49SPEAKERabout this episode, though, you know why.
11:51SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you have a question,
11:52SPEAKERyou can send it to techpod@content.town.
11:55SPEAKERAgain, the email address is techpod.content.town,
11:57SPEAKERor if you are a patron, you can go into the Discord,
12:01SPEAKERwhich you can get access by going to patreon.com/techpod,
12:05SPEAKERand you can join the Question Seeking Answers channel
12:08SPEAKERand post your question there.
12:09SPEAKERIt'll disappear into the void a few seconds
12:11SPEAKERafter you post it, but we'll see it.
12:13SPEAKERIt'll be there, we'll know it's there,
12:14SPEAKERand when we look deep into our hearts
12:16SPEAKERand pick the best questions and mourn the ones
12:20SPEAKERthat we had to skip because we either didn't have
12:21SPEAKERa good answer or maybe they were,
12:26SPEAKERsometimes they're a little long, Brad.
12:27SPEAKER- True, yeah.
12:28SPEAKER- Yeah, it's true.
12:30SPEAKERDo you wanna hit the first question?
12:31SPEAKERYou got one off the top for us.
12:33SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, why don't I peel this one off
12:34SPEAKERof the email stack.
12:36SPEAKER- Okay.
12:37SPEAKER- From Nate in Fort Collins.
12:39SPEAKERHaving a job again and joining meetings and doing calls
12:42SPEAKERhas led me to a very frustrating conundrum.
12:45SPEAKERI, like many, use Bluetooth headphones at work.
12:47SPEAKERI absolutely hate it when an application swaps
12:49SPEAKERto the headset device to handle calls
12:52SPEAKERbecause the earphone audio quality drops
12:54SPEAKERand makes everything sound like poop.
12:56SPEAKERWhy in the year of our corporate overlords 2024
12:59SPEAKERcan't Bluetooth maintain decent audio quality
13:02SPEAKERwhen using the microphone?
13:04SPEAKERI find myself setting my laptop's microphone
13:06SPEAKERas the input device so I can get
13:07SPEAKERacceptable audio quality otherwise.
13:09SPEAKERHope you both have a great holiday.
13:11SPEAKER- So Windows is traditionally really bad at this
13:14SPEAKERif you're using Windows.
13:15SPEAKERMac is surprisingly good at this.
13:17SPEAKERThe Macintosh, in my experience,
13:19SPEAKERespecially if you're using Apple headphones,
13:20SPEAKERjust works, as you would expect.
13:22SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, yes.
13:24SPEAKER- 'Cause the thing that you're having is there's,
13:26SPEAKERtypically there's two profiles.
13:27SPEAKERThere's the headset profile and then there's the H-U-D-P
13:29SPEAKERprofile and the H-U-D-P profile is a higher bit rate,
13:33SPEAKERhigher bit depth on the audio samples
13:36SPEAKERas it sounds like music versus like brainy-ass GSM
13:41SPEAKERphone calls from 2005.
13:45SPEAKERIf you want to force it and your hardware supports it,
13:48SPEAKERthen you can write, you can go to devices and printers
13:52SPEAKERin your device and go to properties
13:58SPEAKERand then there's a services tab
14:00SPEAKERif the driver is set up right for it.
14:02SPEAKERAnd on that services tab,
14:04SPEAKERyou can disable the hands-free telephony
14:06SPEAKERand headset audio gateway and you should be able to use,
14:11SPEAKERand then it should default back to advanced audio
14:14SPEAKERwhich will give you the thing that you want.
14:16SPEAKER- Oh, but is that, does the headset has to support
14:19SPEAKERthat codec is that what we're talking about here?
14:21SPEAKER- The answer to that is it's complicated.
14:23SPEAKERIt seems like it's the Bluetooth adapter
14:25SPEAKERhas to support that preferences sheet.
14:27SPEAKER- Okay.
14:28SPEAKER- 'Cause some, I looked at two different machines
14:30SPEAKERbefore we did this.
14:31SPEAKERMy desktop machine has the preferences sheet
14:34SPEAKERand my laptop does not.
14:35SPEAKERAnd they both have, they use different Bluetooth controllers
14:37SPEAKERso, and to connect to the same device, so.
14:42SPEAKER- Bluetooth audio codecs are a nightmare,
14:43SPEAKERlike most things about Bluetooth.
14:46SPEAKERI don't know how much time you spend looking into that stuff
14:48SPEAKERbut that's probably one reason we have never gotten around
14:50SPEAKERto our Bluetooth triptych.
14:52SPEAKER- I have a big giant notes doc that's like a third
14:55SPEAKERof the way done for the Bluetooth triptych, but yeah.
14:58SPEAKER- There are a lot of, just for audio,
15:00SPEAKERthere are a lot of codecs, a lot of Bluetooth codecs
15:02SPEAKERand like, which one does your headset support?
15:04SPEAKERWhich one does your laptop or adapter support?
15:07SPEAKERYou know, like which one is it falling back to?
15:10SPEAKER- It's, yeah, it looks for the least common denominator
15:13SPEAKERand often the least common denominator is headset audio,
15:17SPEAKERwhich is the bad one that you don't want.
15:18SPEAKER- That makes sense, when you mentioned earlier that
15:21SPEAKERit's like Mac OS just tends to kind of just work
15:23SPEAKERwith the stuff, like I think you were talking mostly
15:25SPEAKERabout Apple hardware, so I started thinking about like,
15:28SPEAKERI have used a number of other, like kind of lesser
15:31SPEAKERBluetooth audio devices with Mac OS.
15:32SPEAKERI'm like, even in those cases, I think generally
15:35SPEAKERthe quality is good, the connectivity is good.
15:36SPEAKERLike it is pretty reliable at pairing and staying paired
15:41SPEAKERand everything, like I think maybe the Mac OS
15:43SPEAKERjust has a better Bluetooth stack in general.
15:45SPEAKER- I think that's a fair assessment.
15:48SPEAKER- It definitely has like a better audio stack in general,
15:50SPEAKERI can say that for sure, so.
15:52SPEAKER- I think they have, I think there's a difference in,
15:57SPEAKERmy guess is that Microsoft airs toward
16:00SPEAKERthis default will work and Apple airs toward
16:03SPEAKERthis is gonna work great with Apple hardware
16:05SPEAKERand everybody else can go fuck themselves.
16:07SPEAKER- Yeah, yep, yep, all right.
16:11SPEAKERWe've got a lot of good Discord questions this month, so.
16:14SPEAKER- It's a banner crop.
16:15SPEAKER- I'm just gonna dump, I'm going to dive in here
16:18SPEAKERand pick one, this is an easy one.
16:20SPEAKERLet's start with this one, Shags Magoo.
16:23SPEAKERWhat kind of mouse grip do you find gentlemen use?
16:24SPEAKERPalm, fingertip or claw?
16:27SPEAKER- I'm fingertip.
16:28SPEAKER- I've never quite been able to answer this question
16:30SPEAKER'cause like even as I'm holding my mouse as we speak,
16:34SPEAKERI'm kinda, I feel like I'm halfway between palm
16:36SPEAKERand fingertip, I'm not sure.
16:38SPEAKER- Does your hand touch, does the palm of your hand
16:40SPEAKERtouch the mouse?
16:41SPEAKER- Just barely, that's the thing, like kind of the ball
16:43SPEAKERof my hand sort of is barely resting
16:45SPEAKERon the back of the mouse,
16:46SPEAKERbut otherwise it's kind of like fingertips only.
16:49SPEAKER- So.
16:51SPEAKER- 'Cause like, in fact, it's hard for me
16:53SPEAKERto fully palm a mouse if that's what we're talking about
16:55SPEAKERwith palm grip, like get the whole body
16:56SPEAKERof the mouse in the palm, like I don't even see
16:59SPEAKERhow you can move a mouse like that.
17:00SPEAKER- The modern ones are too small.
17:02SPEAKERDo you move with your wrist or do you move with your arm?
17:05SPEAKER- Wrist, in fact, I've been using,
17:07SPEAKERI used to have a lot of wrist problems, RSI I guess it was,
17:10SPEAKERlike pretty severe ache in my right wrist.
17:13SPEAKERBeen using just a basic little gel wrist rest for ages
17:15SPEAKERand pivot off of that, like that's kind of the pivot point
17:18SPEAKERthat my wrist moves back and forth on
17:21SPEAKERand those problems pretty much went away, so.
17:23SPEAKER- So when, so I use a wrist rest as well,
17:25SPEAKERbut when I got into PUBG, a friend of mine
17:28SPEAKERwho was a professional Counter-Strike player for a while
17:31SPEAKERwas like, hey, when I watch you it looks like you're aiming
17:34SPEAKERwith your wrist, and I was like, yeah,
17:37SPEAKERwhat's wrong with that?
17:38SPEAKERHe's like, well, you're gonna mess up your wrist real bad,
17:40SPEAKERbut also you have better precision with your hand
17:44SPEAKERand your arm and your fingertips,
17:46SPEAKERso you move your fingertips to do like precise movements
17:50SPEAKERand move your arm to do big movements,
17:53SPEAKERand he helped me do that and turn my sensitivity way down
17:57SPEAKERand it made a fairly substantial difference
17:59SPEAKERin how I shoot in multiplayer games.
18:02SPEAKERSo I do the fingertip,
18:04SPEAKERI always had done the fingertip grip before,
18:07SPEAKERbut I use the fingertip for like fine up and down
18:09SPEAKERand side to side movements,
18:11SPEAKERand then the whole elbow movement for the faster stuff.
18:15SPEAKER- Okay, and you use ambidextrous mice, right?
18:18SPEAKER- I, my current mouse is a G Pro super lighter,
18:22SPEAKERtwo super light, I can't remember which one it is,
18:24SPEAKERI think it's the first gen one.
18:25SPEAKERSo it's, yes, it's ambidextrous,
18:26SPEAKERbut the buttons are only on the right thumb.
18:29SPEAKER- I've been on whatever the MX518 form factor is
18:32SPEAKERsince that mouse was current.
18:33SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
18:34SPEAKER- It was body succession of mice with that.
18:36SPEAKERIt's got, basically it's got the thumb groove
18:38SPEAKERkind of carve into the left side,
18:39SPEAKERso it's very much a right-hand mouse.
18:41SPEAKER- And it's got a big hump too.
18:42SPEAKER- Yes.
18:43SPEAKER- Yeah.
18:44SPEAKER- Yeah, so that, like having that thumb grip
18:46SPEAKERon a specific side kind of dictates
18:47SPEAKERhow you hold it in my case.
18:49SPEAKER- Yeah, the super light's a little bit thinner,
18:52SPEAKERand I only use the side button,
18:55SPEAKERthe thumb buttons I use for marking for ping usually,
18:58SPEAKERand for push to mute when I'm talking to people,
19:00SPEAKERwhen I'm talking to like a stream and leaving the chat,
19:03SPEAKERlike the people I'm on Discord with muted.
19:06SPEAKERSo yeah, that's where I am.
19:08SPEAKER- All right, oh, here's a question from Rykenpo,
19:11SPEAKERI think is how you might say your name.
19:12SPEAKERThis might've been a good ranking topic actually.
19:15SPEAKER- Well, there's still time.
19:17SPEAKER- Yeah, that's true.
19:17SPEAKEROver the years, we have seen the rise and fall
19:20SPEAKERof many different processing units.
19:22SPEAKERSome have stuck around and some have faded
19:24SPEAKERinto the annals of history.
19:26SPEAKERDo you think the NPU is likely to fade or stick around?
19:29SPEAKERBonus question, do you think FPGAs could have a place
19:32SPEAKERas one of the next additions to CPUs?
19:34SPEAKER- Okay, so other PUs that have been around
19:38SPEAKERare the physics processing unit.
19:40SPEAKER- The PPU, obviously the GPU.
19:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
19:43SPEAKER- The APU is still a thing.
19:45SPEAKER- What's an APU?
19:46SPEAKER- I mean, that's what AMD calls their all-in-one.
19:48SPEAKER- Oh, right, right, right.
19:49SPEAKER- Maybe that's a question for Adam at PC World
19:51SPEAKERor somebody in the know.
19:52SPEAKER- It's like an SOC though.
19:54SPEAKER- That's what I mean is like,
19:55SPEAKERis APU just kind of a marketing term really?
19:57SPEAKER'Cause all it really is is just a CPU, GPU,
19:59SPEAKERfull system on a chip kind of thing.
20:01SPEAKER- Yeah.
20:02SPEAKER- So maybe that's just a marketing differentiator
20:05SPEAKERthey came up with.
20:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't think APU fits this category,
20:07SPEAKERbut like Bigfoot tried to pitch networks
20:12SPEAKERas a network processing unit.
20:14SPEAKERThey're non-host-based network cards
20:17SPEAKERthat had janky drivers that would reduce your latency.
20:20SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, 'cause all the compute
20:21SPEAKERfor the network overhead was on the card.
20:23SPEAKER- Yeah, but by that time there were already multi-core CPUs
20:25SPEAKERand it really didn't matter.
20:26SPEAKER- Yeah, didn't, I mean, you could probably argue
20:29SPEAKERthere were some like sound processing units
20:31SPEAKERon like some of the more elaborate creative labs cards.
20:34SPEAKERRemember when onboard sound started becoming a big deal
20:37SPEAKERon motherboards and creative kind of got desperate
20:39SPEAKERand started trying to like cram new features
20:41SPEAKERand higher quality stuff into their sound cards
20:43SPEAKERto stay relevant.
20:44SPEAKER- Well, before that even, Arielle had those accelerators
20:47SPEAKERthat would do HRTFs on the board,
20:50SPEAKERbut I don't think they ever called them PUs.
20:52SPEAKER- No, I mean, yeah, I don't think they gave it a name.
20:54SPEAKERI haven't thought about Arielle in a long time.
20:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
20:57SPEAKER- They're long gone, right?
20:59SPEAKER- Oh, they got bought by somebody who then got bought
21:01SPEAKERby somebody in probably creative labs or HP
21:03SPEAKERor somebody owns them now.
21:06SPEAKERI think the NPU, so there's benefit to having dedicated
21:12SPEAKERlinear algebra and like neural acceleration
21:16SPEAKEReven if AI stuff all goes away.
21:19SPEAKERJust like the quality of background blur
21:22SPEAKERon a copilot plus laptop is as good
21:25SPEAKERas the Nvidia broadcast stuff.
21:27SPEAKERAnd support for that's just built into Windows.
21:30SPEAKERIt's pretty good.
21:31SPEAKERSame thing for like live transcription
21:32SPEAKERand that kind of like, it's like,
21:36SPEAKERI kind of think of that as table stakes now
21:39SPEAKERfor the AI stuff.
21:41SPEAKERAnd it's honestly the AI stuff that I like the best.
21:45SPEAKER- Yeah, absolutely.
21:46SPEAKERI think we've been on this soapbox a little bit
21:49SPEAKERin the past recently, but I think it's becoming
21:52SPEAKERmore and more pressing for people to make a distinction
21:54SPEAKERbetween kind of, I keep calling it signal processing AI,
21:57SPEAKERthat term has not caught on,
21:58SPEAKERbut something that takes a basic data input
22:01SPEAKERand spits it out in a mutated transformed kind of form.
22:06SPEAKERLike you're talking about, like taking the data
22:09SPEAKERof your camera background and turning it into something else
22:11SPEAKERor blurring it out in a nice elegant way.
22:14SPEAKERThe LSS we keep talking about is a prime example of this.
22:18SPEAKERNoise removal from microphone input or whatever,
22:20SPEAKERlike just basic stuff like that.
22:22SPEAKERThose are good, solid, productive uses of AI.
22:25SPEAKERIt's like it's the generative AI stuff
22:27SPEAKERthat obviously is so odious to so many people
22:30SPEAKERfor understandable reasons.
22:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think the NPU, like, here's the thing.
22:36SPEAKERThe amount of die space they're devoting to this stuff
22:40SPEAKERis still relatively low.
22:41SPEAKEROn CPUs, the die space is a little bit less competitive
22:44SPEAKERthan say GPUs.
22:46SPEAKERAnd I think the benefits of having dedicated,
22:49SPEAKERlike having a dedicated floor of 40 tops or whatever it is
22:54SPEAKERthat the Co-Pilot Plus stuff requires is probably
22:58SPEAKERworth keeping around.
23:02SPEAKERNow that said, if we don't find better uses for it,
23:07SPEAKERI think it might get squeezed down until it's 10 tops
23:11SPEAKERor whatever the background blur requires to be pretty good.
23:16SPEAKERNow the question about FPGAs, I think,
23:17SPEAKERis even more interesting, right?
23:19SPEAKER- It is interesting.
23:20SPEAKERI don't know that I have a great answer, but I don't see it.
23:22SPEAKERI mean, we're definitely not experts in CPU chip design,
23:25SPEAKERbut I don't see a pressing reason to put one on CPU die
23:29SPEAKERversus dedicated implementations where they're needed.
23:32SPEAKER- I don't, I actually, like the reason you won't see them
23:36SPEAKERis because they're for specialty applications, really.
23:41SPEAKER- Right, yeah. - Right?
23:42SPEAKERSo like audio processing and stuff like emulation
23:45SPEAKERand things like that, you'll see them be used as add-on cards
23:50SPEAKERor as standalone machines rather than integrated.
23:54SPEAKERLike Intel builds CPUs to sell a billion copies
23:57SPEAKERof the same CPU, right?
23:59SPEAKERThey don't wanna make one-offs that are specials.
24:02SPEAKERNow, if the disaggregated architecture stuff takes off,
24:04SPEAKERthen maybe you'll be able to buy some specialty
24:06SPEAKERlike data center stuff that has FPGAs in it or whatever.
24:08SPEAKERBut I think that's further down the line.
24:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I think, I don't know for a minute,
24:13SPEAKERthis is based on very limited experience.
24:14SPEAKERI think FPGAs have like a pretty significant
24:17SPEAKERspeed limitations compared to your average
24:19SPEAKERlike high-end CPU these days.
24:20SPEAKERSo I don't know that it would mix well from that perspective.
24:23SPEAKER- They're slow and like the time,
24:27SPEAKERlike shifting them from one mode to another
24:29SPEAKERis really expensive computationally
24:32SPEAKERin terms of the time it takes.
24:33SPEAKERLike think about how long it takes to change cores
24:36SPEAKERon the MiSTer or something like that.
24:37SPEAKERAnd like, you're not, it's not,
24:41SPEAKERtypically it's faster to just run it on a CPU
24:43SPEAKERthan it would be to load up the FPGA
24:46SPEAKERwith the stuff you need and then switch over to that
24:47SPEAKERthen switch back to whatever else it was running.
24:49SPEAKERAnd like it's, they're not for general purpose computing.
24:53SPEAKER- Yeah, that does seem to be the case.
24:56SPEAKERQuestion from Beifu,
24:57SPEAKERdo you have any favorite tech-related anime,
24:59SPEAKERexamples being Serial Experiments Lain or Gundam?
25:02SPEAKER- Oh man. - You got anything?
25:03SPEAKER- I don't really have any favorite anime.
25:06SPEAKER- Wow, all right, well.
25:08SPEAKER- I mean, I like Totoro.
25:09SPEAKER- The gauntlet has been thrown down.
25:12SPEAKER- Look, it's okay, I'm old.
25:14SPEAKER- Yeah?
25:15SPEAKER- We didn't have, like we got a little,
25:17SPEAKERVoltron is a thing that they played on Saturday afternoon
25:19SPEAKERif the baseball game got rained out when I was a kid.
25:21SPEAKER- Okay, sure.
25:23SPEAKER- And like, so the anime that I was exposed to
25:26SPEAKERwas like Transformers and GoBots and--
25:29SPEAKER- That's kind of a funny thing about people our age.
25:31SPEAKERWe were kind of watching anime
25:33SPEAKERwithout realizing it in the 80s.
25:35SPEAKER- They called it, they had worse names for it back then.
25:38SPEAKER- Yes, for sure.
25:39SPEAKER- But yeah, like we, I just, by the time Dragon Ball
25:43SPEAKERand all that stuff kind of exploded onto the scene,
25:46SPEAKERI was too old.
25:47SPEAKER- I like, I like Cowboy Bebop and all that stuff
25:49SPEAKERas much as the next person.
25:51SPEAKER- I was wondering, I've never seen that.
25:52SPEAKERI was wondering if that was a good example though.
25:53SPEAKER- Oh my God, you've never seen Cowboy Bebop?
25:55SPEAKER- Nope, nope.
25:56SPEAKER- Oh, Brad, okay.
25:57SPEAKER- Kind of got in the sense that that one
25:59SPEAKERmight fall into this category pretty well.
26:00SPEAKER- You should just watch the Netflix live action thing.
26:03SPEAKERPeople say it's great.
26:03SPEAKERIt's gonna be exactly what you want from it.
26:05SPEAKER- I've heard it's just as good, right?
26:07SPEAKERLike you're getting the exact same experience.
26:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just like that,
26:09SPEAKERbut with that guy from Star Trek.
26:11SPEAKER- Largely, I took this question
26:13SPEAKERbecause I have now seen Serial Experiments Lain
26:15SPEAKER'cause we've watched that on the next Lander Watch cast.
26:17SPEAKER- Ooh.
26:18SPEAKER- And yeah, like that, I mean,
26:21SPEAKERthat anime is computer-ish shit.
26:23SPEAKERIt's cyber-ish shit.
26:24SPEAKER- Like it's like cyber punky and like.
26:26SPEAKER- It came out in like '98,
26:27SPEAKERso the internet was starting to become more widely available
26:30SPEAKERgenerally to people,
26:31SPEAKERbut like it does kind of like prefigure
26:33SPEAKERsome of the early online internet communities
26:36SPEAKERand the anonymity and global network stuff.
26:38SPEAKERAnd like, there's also,
26:41SPEAKERthis stuff is much more like nebulous.
26:43SPEAKERIt's not grounded in any kind of reality,
26:44SPEAKERbut there's just a lot of really good computing imagery
26:46SPEAKERin that thing,
26:48SPEAKERas we'll get into like spoiling the nature
26:51SPEAKERof what's going on exactly,
26:52SPEAKERbut the girl's bedroom just becomes more and more full
26:56SPEAKERof bigger and more gnarly looking computers over time.
26:59SPEAKER- Okay, I like that.
27:00SPEAKER- Without any explanation to the point
27:02SPEAKERthat it's still my phone lock screen
27:05SPEAKERlike a year and change later.
27:07SPEAKER- That's pretty good.
27:08SPEAKER- Just a shot of her from sitting at this monitor
27:11SPEAKERwith all these other monitors
27:12SPEAKERand weird tubes and computers around her.
27:14SPEAKER- Is it like red NEC, ATXT clones and stuff like that?
27:19SPEAKER- It starts getting a little more surreal than that,
27:22SPEAKERlet's say.
27:23SPEAKER- Okay.
27:24SPEAKER- It's a lot of like weird tubes
27:26SPEAKERand monitors at weird angles.
27:28SPEAKERAnd there are some weird red lights and stuff.
27:29SPEAKERIt's not, it's very little like recognizable
27:32SPEAKERas like off the shelf computers at that point.
27:35SPEAKER- At one point I asked a friend of the show,
27:39SPEAKERlike if, hey, if I want to get into Gundam,
27:41SPEAKERwhere should I start?
27:43SPEAKERAnd about an hour later I was like,
27:45SPEAKERI think I'm probably okay.
27:47SPEAKERI think I'm scared now, this is too much.
27:50SPEAKER- Sure, could see it.
27:52SPEAKER- So yeah, I don't know.
27:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm like you though.
27:55SPEAKERI have not seen enough anime beyond lane
27:57SPEAKERto really comment on that too much, but drop some.
28:01SPEAKER- You should watch Cowboy Bebop is good.
28:03SPEAKERYou should watch Cowboy Bebop.
28:04SPEAKERIt's like 14 episodes too, it's easy.
28:06SPEAKER- You should probably watch that at some point.
28:07SPEAKER- Like the problem with a lot of the way they showed
28:11SPEAKERwhen you did get something that was anime
28:13SPEAKERand you were like, man, this is really cool,
28:15SPEAKERbut it was all designed to be watched serially.
28:17SPEAKERAnd it also had bad translations often.
28:20SPEAKERAnd the people who were airing it
28:21SPEAKERdidn't give a shit what order they showed it in.
28:24SPEAKERSo you'd get like episode one.
28:26SPEAKERIt was, you know, it got the firefly treatment.
28:28SPEAKERYou'd get episode one, then you get episode 23,
28:29SPEAKERthen you get episode four, then you get episode seven.
28:31SPEAKERAnd like, you had no idea what was going on.
28:33SPEAKER- Or if you wanted the real stuff,
28:34SPEAKERyou had to go to the Suncoast video at the mall.
28:37SPEAKERI never engaged in this,
28:38SPEAKERbut I knew people who were into this sort of thing.
28:40SPEAKERIt was like, what was it, like $35 for a VHS
28:43SPEAKERwith like two or three episodes of Ranma 1/2 on it.
28:47SPEAKER- Yeah, they were so expensive.
28:49SPEAKER- It was a dark time.
28:50SPEAKER- I did watch, I watched a bunch of Legends
28:53SPEAKERof the Galactic Heroes.
28:55SPEAKER- Okay, I think I've heard of that.
28:57SPEAKER- Which is like a, it's like a Milsim,
28:59SPEAKERSpace Milsim type thing.
29:01SPEAKER- All right, there were a lot of those.
29:03SPEAKER- I mean, it was, I feel like, what is that?
29:06SPEAKERBattleship Yamamoto.
29:08SPEAKER- Or Yamato.
29:09SPEAKER- Battleship Yamamoto.
29:10SPEAKER- I think that's right.
29:11SPEAKER- People are just gonna be screaming
29:12SPEAKERat their radios right now.
29:14SPEAKER- Hang on, well, if I just type Yamamoto into Google.
29:18SPEAKER- You're gonna get something else.
29:18SPEAKER- Of course that'll give us exactly
29:20SPEAKERwhat we're looking for.
29:21SPEAKER- Yeah, Space Battleship Yamamoto.
29:23SPEAKERLike that was one of the things that was shown
29:25SPEAKERon like Saturday afternoon baseball rainouts,
29:30SPEAKERcompletely out of order.
29:32SPEAKER- Ooh, okay, it is in fact called Space Battleship Yamamoto.
29:36SPEAKERThat is some good '70s looking anime right there.
29:38SPEAKER- Oh, it was so, like I remember watching that
29:41SPEAKERand thinking, man, this is the coolest stuff I've ever seen.
29:44SPEAKERI wish I had any idea what was going on.
29:47SPEAKERSo yeah, anyway.
29:48SPEAKER- All right, well, there you go.
29:50SPEAKERLet's see, here's a question from Ambush Penguin Charlie.
29:54SPEAKERConsidering the interesting times we are
29:56SPEAKERand soon will be living in,
29:59SPEAKERhow useful is an encrypted service like Signal
30:01SPEAKERif no one else in your social circle is using it
30:03SPEAKERor something similar?
30:05SPEAKERAre encrypted services an all or nothing kind of thing
30:07SPEAKERor do I get some benefit even if no one else is using them?
30:09SPEAKERNo, they are in fact an all or nothing.
30:11SPEAKER- Well, I think it encrypts your stuff on your end
30:13SPEAKERbut the other end will be unencrypted.
30:15SPEAKERLike the encrypted services in general
30:17SPEAKERare only as good as your friends are.
30:19SPEAKER- Right, but I think the case of something like Signal,
30:22SPEAKERI don't think you even, or WhatsApp,
30:24SPEAKERlike you can't even communicate with people
30:26SPEAKERunless they're using the same app on the other end.
30:28SPEAKER- No, but also you can do,
30:30SPEAKERyour friends on the other end can do stupid stuff
30:32SPEAKERlike not encrypt their,
30:33SPEAKERthey can save logs and not encrypt the logs
30:37SPEAKERand then you might as well,
30:39SPEAKERlike I said, you're only as secure as your friends are.
30:42SPEAKER- Yes, yes, but I think that's a different situation
30:44SPEAKERthan something like the Messages app on iOS
30:46SPEAKERwhere you might be sending iMessages to some people
30:48SPEAKERand SMS to other people and maybe even RCS
30:51SPEAKERto yet other people.
30:52SPEAKER- I think on Signal on Android, you can send SMS.
30:55SPEAKER- Really?
30:56SPEAKER- It can be, I don't know if it still can,
30:58SPEAKERfor a long time it could be your SMS client
31:00SPEAKERon the Android side.
31:03SPEAKER- Okay.
31:03SPEAKER- I think Google might have changed that actually
31:05SPEAKERa few years ago when I think about it, but.
31:07SPEAKER- The nice thing about at least like Signal and WhatsApp
31:09SPEAKERis that generally they'll tell you right there
31:11SPEAKERin the message window
31:11SPEAKERif your conversation is encrypted or not.
31:14SPEAKER- That is actually true.
31:15SPEAKER- Like it'll just say, hey, your conversation
31:17SPEAKERis end to end encrypted with this person
31:19SPEAKER'cause it'll just detect that, so at least you know.
31:22SPEAKER- Yeah, and you wanna make sure you have,
31:27SPEAKERyou're connected directly to the Signal service with Signal.
31:30SPEAKERI don't think that they let you,
31:32SPEAKERI'm trying to see, I'm trying to figure out
31:34SPEAKERif they let you do archives, run archives anymore
31:37SPEAKERand I can't tell, here we go chats.
31:43SPEAKERYou can clear chat history,
31:44SPEAKERbut I don't think you can turn history off entirely anymore.
31:47SPEAKERSo anyway.
31:48SPEAKER- We should revisit the subject of RCS at some point.
31:51SPEAKERI don't know if it's quite there yet,
31:52SPEAKERbut we've talked about it before,
31:53SPEAKERRCS is the successor protocol to SMS,
31:56SPEAKERwhich is kind of more or less brings you the features
32:00SPEAKERof something like iMessage, but in a carrier and phone
32:03SPEAKERand platform agnostic format.
32:05SPEAKER- Kind of, asterisk.
32:07SPEAKER- Yeah, the problem is the original spec for RCS
32:10SPEAKERdid not include encryption.
32:11SPEAKERI think we've maybe touched on this briefly.
32:12SPEAKER- I think that was an intentional choice by some, yeah.
32:15SPEAKER- Maybe, well, but they're working on it now though,
32:17SPEAKERlike Apple in particular was pretty surly about the fact
32:21SPEAKERthat it didn't have encryption and so they were trying
32:24SPEAKERto add that to the spec last I checked.
32:26SPEAKERSo the point is, who knows how many years
32:28SPEAKERit'll take from now, but if they get all that stuff in place
32:30SPEAKERand all the phones that don't support it,
32:31SPEAKERphase out of the market slowly, like eventually we might get
32:35SPEAKERto the point where kind of all phone-to-phone communication.
32:39SPEAKER- So it's 10 years, 10?
32:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it could be something like that.
32:43SPEAKEREventually maybe everything will just be encrypted
32:45SPEAKERas a matter of course.
32:46SPEAKER- Be nice.
32:47SPEAKER- But we are nowhere near there yet.
32:49SPEAKER- No.
32:50SPEAKER- Let's see, question from Meatball.
32:53SPEAKERMan, these are big numbers.
32:54SPEAKERI'm looking into waiting, I'm sorry,
32:56SPEAKERI'm looking at waiting into 300 plus gigabytes
32:59SPEAKERand over 33,000 personal and family photos
33:02SPEAKERthat were either scanned or taken digitally
33:04SPEAKERin the last 50 to 60 years.
33:06SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
33:07SPEAKER- I was really hoping AI would be at a point now
33:09SPEAKERthat I could just point at it and say,
33:10SPEAKERfind and remove duplicates and then go through
33:12SPEAKERand organize and tag all of it so that I and future family
33:15SPEAKERcan easily find stuff and know who all those old people are
33:18SPEAKERin the pictures, but I don't think we're there yet.
33:21SPEAKERAny experience with any apps that could help
33:23SPEAKERor ways to go about cleaning up
33:24SPEAKERand organizing all the photos?
33:27SPEAKER- So I don't have, I mean, 33,000,
33:31SPEAKERI think when we looked at it,
33:32SPEAKERI think we took 10,000 pictures
33:34SPEAKERthe year that my daughter was born.
33:36SPEAKER- Damn.
33:37SPEAKER- Which is not unusual when we talk
33:39SPEAKERto other people about it.
33:40SPEAKER- Yeah, but I assume necessarily quite a few of them
33:42SPEAKERare not exact duplicates, but pretty close
33:44SPEAKERto like just kind of rapid fire.
33:47SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a lot of 10 pictures to get one good one.
33:49SPEAKER- Right.
33:51SPEAKER- And if you're not really fastidious about deleting,
33:53SPEAKERyou end up with a massive data problem.
33:55SPEAKER- My solution for that has been to just upload everything
33:57SPEAKERto Google Photos and then not think about it anymore,
34:00SPEAKERwhich worked really, really well
34:02SPEAKERuntil they started hooking Gemini up to it
34:04SPEAKERand now it's gone to shit.
34:06SPEAKERLike I'm actively looking at moving something,
34:08SPEAKERmoving off of Google Photos.
34:10SPEAKERI haven't found any local store,
34:15SPEAKERlike self-hosted thing that seems viable.
34:18SPEAKERThe Apple Photos app seems pretty good now.
34:21SPEAKERIt still has some weird problems.
34:23SPEAKERIt's one of those things that if you come into it now
34:27SPEAKERand you haven't looked at it in a while,
34:27SPEAKERyou're like, oh, this is pretty good.
34:28SPEAKERBut if you used to use iPhoto, then you're like,
34:30SPEAKERoh man, they still don't have my favorite feature
34:32SPEAKERfrom 12 years ago.
34:35SPEAKERI don't know that there is a good solution.
34:38SPEAKERThis is an intuitification situation as far as I can tell.
34:41SPEAKER- Yeah.
34:42SPEAKER- 'Cause it really, to be clear,
34:44SPEAKERthe thing that's happening with Google Photos for me
34:46SPEAKERis that when I open up a month and a date
34:49SPEAKERthat I know that there's a photo,
34:51SPEAKERthe photo's just not there.
34:54SPEAKERAnd you used to be able to search by keywords
34:56SPEAKERfor things inside the photos.
34:57SPEAKERThat seems to have degraded.
35:02SPEAKERA few months ago, it just deleted all the face tags
35:05SPEAKERin my, I think I must have missed an email that said,
35:07SPEAKERhey, you have to re-opt into this
35:09SPEAKERif you wanna keep face tags.
35:10SPEAKERAnd now I have to recreate all the face tags
35:13SPEAKERthat I added over the last nine or 10 years
35:15SPEAKERor whatever it's been of using Google Photos.
35:17SPEAKER- Cool.
35:18SPEAKER- Yeah, it's--
35:19SPEAKER- So it's like some form of corporate bit rot,
35:21SPEAKERlike corporately mandated bit rot.
35:22SPEAKERLike there's no reason this had to happen
35:24SPEAKERother than the policies change.
35:26SPEAKER- It's pretty frustrating, yeah.
35:29SPEAKER'Cause it seems like there's,
35:30SPEAKERit seems like, it almost seems like you're losing metadata.
35:33SPEAKER'Cause like there's big categories of photos
35:35SPEAKERthat it's like, hey, we don't know what date this photo is,
35:37SPEAKERbut it's very clearly on a date
35:39SPEAKERwhen there were 35 other photos taken.
35:42SPEAKERAnd it's the same line of photos.
35:44SPEAKERIt just decided that that one doesn't have the data.
35:46SPEAKERSo anyway, I set up,
35:50SPEAKERI set up, what is it, G-Sync?
35:51SPEAKERNo, G-Clone.
35:54SPEAKERWhat's the R-Clone?
35:56SPEAKER- R-Clone.
35:57SPEAKER- I set up R-Clone and pulled everything off.
35:59SPEAKERI just haven't delved into that data pool at this point.
36:03SPEAKER- That's a lot of files.
36:04SPEAKER- It is a lot of files.
36:06SPEAKER- That's a lot of, you know,
36:07SPEAKERsometimes this massive data that you accumulate
36:10SPEAKERkind of ends up hanging around your neck, I find.
36:13SPEAKER- Yeah, and the thing that I found looking at it briefly
36:16SPEAKERis that there's a bunch of open source projects
36:18SPEAKERand kind of commercial projects
36:19SPEAKERthat seem like they're pretty good,
36:21SPEAKERbut not all the way there.
36:23SPEAKERIf people have stuff that they've used and recommend,
36:25SPEAKERI would love it if you'd write into techpod@content.town
36:28SPEAKERand I'll take a look at them and evaluate them
36:29SPEAKERand we'll do an episode about it
36:30SPEAKERat some point in the future.
36:31SPEAKER'Cause like there's a, it's a problem.
36:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
36:35SPEAKERI actually wonder, going back to the question about MPUs,
36:38SPEAKERas that hardware starts to proliferate,
36:40SPEAKERas more cheap GPUs have machine learning,
36:42SPEAKERand then it starts getting shoved into more CPUs,
36:44SPEAKERlike as more of that capability is out there,
36:47SPEAKERif more open projects will start springing up
36:50SPEAKERto take advantage of it and leverage it
36:52SPEAKERfor stuff like photo organization,
36:54SPEAKERlike the compute's not there yet in a critical mass
36:57SPEAKERfor it to be worth making something like that yet,
36:59SPEAKERbut it will get there.
37:01SPEAKER- If you look at it though, it is.
37:03SPEAKERThe GPUs have been around for a long time
37:04SPEAKERthat can do this stuff.
37:05SPEAKERSo like, if you have a dedicated machine,
37:08SPEAKERit's a piece of cake.
37:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I just, you know,
37:12SPEAKERlooking at the way open source projects spring up,
37:14SPEAKERI could definitely see people just looking
37:15SPEAKERat the amount of extra machine learning capability
37:18SPEAKERout there at some point and just going like,
37:20SPEAKER"Hey, we should start using this for good."
37:22SPEAKER- That's true.
37:22SPEAKER- Start doing something like what we're talking about here.
37:25SPEAKERThis is not really in the same category
37:26SPEAKERas the photo organization,
37:27SPEAKERbut have you heard of paperless NGX?
37:29SPEAKER- Is this the thing that you scan your documents into
37:32SPEAKERand then they become, yeah, that sounds nice.
37:34SPEAKER- Or you can feed it existing documents as well.
37:37SPEAKERI haven't looked into it too much.
37:38SPEAKERI am totally gonna set it up at some point though.
37:40SPEAKERIt's basically a document organization library.
37:42SPEAKERIt's an open source project.
37:44SPEAKERI think it'll take all the documents you feed it
37:46SPEAKERand convert them into some kind of standard PDF form
37:51SPEAKERfor searchability,
37:52SPEAKERbut it'll also keep all the original documents
37:53SPEAKERthere alongside.
37:55SPEAKERBut it's just like a web interface that indexes
37:57SPEAKERall the documents you feed it
37:58SPEAKERand makes them searchable and everything.
37:59SPEAKERIt seems pretty great.
38:01SPEAKERI'm gonna check that out at some point.
38:03SPEAKER- So the one, the thing that I've looked at
38:05SPEAKERthat I think is the one I'm gonna start trying
38:08SPEAKERis called photo structure.
38:10SPEAKERIt was recommended by folks.
38:13SPEAKERThere's a thread about this from not too long ago,
38:16SPEAKERa few years ago in our data hoarders.
38:19SPEAKERAnd it's a big, it's a big giant project.
38:22SPEAKERIt's paid.
38:24SPEAKERIt's not super expensive.
38:26SPEAKERIt's like, it's one of those ones
38:28SPEAKERwhere like the light version is really good
38:30SPEAKERand you get more stuff
38:32SPEAKERif you give them 50 bucks a year or something.
38:35SPEAKER- Sure.
38:36SPEAKER- It seems pretty good.
38:37SPEAKERI don't know, I haven't tested it,
38:39SPEAKERbut it's where I'm gonna start
38:40SPEAKERand then I'm gonna go from there.
38:42SPEAKER- All kinds of stuff out there.
38:43SPEAKER- Yeah.
38:44SPEAKER- Actually, let's see, I have a question.
38:47SPEAKEROkay, this dovetails with the last one pretty well
38:50SPEAKERfrom Patch.
38:51SPEAKERThere's been a lot of talk over the past few episodes
38:53SPEAKERabout curbing hoarding habits in meatspace,
38:55SPEAKERbut what about in cyberspace?
38:57SPEAKERAny tips for rationalizing all the data I have
39:00SPEAKERacross my various, or across my NAS,
39:02SPEAKERvarious cloud services and computer hard drives?
39:05SPEAKERI've worked out in total,
39:06SPEAKERI have about 10 terabytes of storage
39:08SPEAKERI've accumulated over the past decade or so.
39:11SPEAKERHow do I decide what to keep versus delete
39:12SPEAKERand what's a good way to sort through it all
39:14SPEAKERfrom duplicated data?
39:16SPEAKER- I say don't worry about duplicated data.
39:17SPEAKERThat's just free backups.
39:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:21SPEAKER- For real though, de-duping stuff is scary
39:23SPEAKERand it's how you lose data.
39:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.
39:26SPEAKERI mean, there are applications out there
39:27SPEAKERthat will find duplicated stuff for you,
39:29SPEAKERbut yes, be very careful to make sure you know
39:32SPEAKERthat it's definitely an exact dupe.
39:34SPEAKER- I don't worry about digital hoarding
39:36SPEAKERas long as I can find the stuff that I need.
39:38SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
39:39SPEAKER- I have four folders, one is for video,
39:41SPEAKERone is for music, one is for documents,
39:43SPEAKERand one is for just assorted things.
39:45SPEAKER- Okay, that seems sensible.
39:47SPEAKER- Yeah, that's all the data you need
39:49SPEAKERcould fit in those four buckets.
39:51SPEAKER- Yep, this doesn't help for sorting so much,
39:54SPEAKERbut I mean, we've advocated everything,
39:56SPEAKERthe void tools, everything,
39:58SPEAKERis a great way to index all of your data
40:00SPEAKERso you can at least search it very quickly
40:01SPEAKERand that could help you sort through
40:03SPEAKERand find things to delete.
40:04SPEAKER- Then you don't have to sort it though
40:06SPEAKERif you index everything appropriately.
40:07SPEAKER- Yeah, that's true.
40:08SPEAKER- Of course you have to know what you're looking for.
40:10SPEAKER- That's true.
40:11SPEAKER- A search tool is great for targeted retrieval of something
40:14SPEAKERbut if you just want to browse everything
40:16SPEAKERand it's a gigantic mess, it doesn't help so much.
40:18SPEAKER- But if I wanted to find my X-Men Legends 2 ROM disk
40:22SPEAKERthat I pulled off of a GameCube copy, I'm good to go.
40:25SPEAKER- Yep, yeah, everything has been amazing
40:27SPEAKERfor sorting through the gigantic mystery library
40:30SPEAKERthat I have accumulated, for example.
40:32SPEAKERI wish I had a better answer here
40:33SPEAKER'cause I am also in this boat badly
40:35SPEAKERand I can't think of much besides just brute forcing it.
40:38SPEAKERYou just got to set some time aside and get in there
40:40SPEAKERand I've got so many whole hard drive backups on my NAS
40:45SPEAKERfrom the last 15 to 20 years of computers.
40:48SPEAKERThere are entire Windows installs in there
40:49SPEAKERbecause I was too lazy to, once I backed up
40:52SPEAKERan entire hard drive, go in there
40:54SPEAKERand delete application files I don't need.
40:56SPEAKER- Here's the way you do it is easy.
40:59SPEAKERYou have on your desktop,
41:00SPEAKERyou have a folder called my old C drive
41:04SPEAKERand then you go into C users in that old C drive
41:08SPEAKERand on the desktop folder there,
41:09SPEAKERthere's one that says old C drive there
41:11SPEAKERand then you just keep going back in time
41:13SPEAKERuntil you're like a 25 meg 386 hard drive.
41:17SPEAKER- I've got countless nested old desktop folders on the NAS
41:20SPEAKERfrom about the time I moved out here in 2003.
41:25SPEAKER- The big problem I have right now is that I have
41:27SPEAKERin my garage, there's a cardboard box
41:30SPEAKERthat's on the low shelf that has about 50 hard drives in it
41:34SPEAKER'cause I just pull the hard drive from every old computer.
41:36SPEAKER- Yep, well, I at least have started disposing
41:39SPEAKERof the drives after I back them up now.
41:41SPEAKER- Oh, that's good.
41:41SPEAKER- E-wasting them, so that's the real answer
41:44SPEAKERto this question is just every three years or so,
41:46SPEAKERjust wait for a good shucking deal or something,
41:48SPEAKERjust buy more hard drives
41:50SPEAKERand then you don't have to think about it anymore.
41:51SPEAKER- E-waste it all.
41:53SPEAKER- It's a constant problem.
41:54SPEAKER- It is, it's a real problem.
41:57SPEAKER- Now let's stay on the theme of old stuff here
41:58SPEAKERa little bit.
41:59SPEAKER- I love old stuff.
42:00SPEAKER- Question from Park, who may not love old stuff so much.
42:04SPEAKERI've never enjoyed platformers, Metroidvanias,
42:06SPEAKERor boomer shooters, but it feels like so many
42:08SPEAKERof the personalities we love are obsessed with those.
42:11SPEAKERI just don't know how we are supposed to handle that anymore.
42:15SPEAKERIt's like the old guy at your job that has radio control
42:18SPEAKERthat doesn't stop listening to classic rock.
42:20SPEAKER- I feel kind of attacked here.
42:21SPEAKER- A bit.
42:23SPEAKER- I don't know that I like boomer shooters just to be real.
42:27SPEAKERMaybe I do.
42:28SPEAKER- I like the ones I grew up with.
42:29SPEAKER- But that's just a retro game though,
42:31SPEAKERthat's not a boomer shooter.
42:32SPEAKER- I like Doom and Quake and to a much lesser extent,
42:35SPEAKERDuke 3D and some other stuff like that.
42:37SPEAKERBut I've got nothing against the current,
42:40SPEAKERthe modern day retro, like throwback first person shooters
42:42SPEAKERthat come out.
42:43SPEAKERI just don't play a ton of them.
42:46SPEAKER- Yeah, like if I had a bumper sticker,
42:48SPEAKERit would say I'd rather be playing Quake 3.
42:50SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
42:52SPEAKERI am like, believe it or not,
42:54SPEAKERafter like two or three years of talking about this,
42:55SPEAKERI am inching closer to my ultimate dream
42:58SPEAKERof running full-time Quake servers out of here.
43:01SPEAKER- Oh, I thought you were going to say growing
43:02SPEAKERJohn Romero hair and...
43:04SPEAKER- Oh, I tried that.
43:05SPEAKER- Okay.
43:06SPEAKER- That way lies madness if you're not John Romero, but...
43:09SPEAKER- I mean, the thing that I was going to hook on here
43:12SPEAKERis the idea that the personalities we love
43:14SPEAKERare obsessed with those.
43:16SPEAKERAnd I feel like there are people like, for example,
43:20SPEAKERthere are people whose work that I love
43:22SPEAKERthat are into like cozy games and farming Sims
43:25SPEAKERand stuff like that.
43:26SPEAKERAnd like, look,
43:27SPEAKERdid I play a lot of Rusty's retirement this year?
43:29SPEAKER- Yes, but also when I played Rusty's retirement,
43:32SPEAKERit was just kind of running at the bottom
43:33SPEAKERof my second monitor and I wasn't,
43:35SPEAKERI was engaging with it ever so lightly.
43:38SPEAKERIt's not like I find it's okay for me to appreciate stuff
43:44SPEAKERwithout having the same kind of love or obsession
43:47SPEAKERor whatever somebody that's really, really into it is.
43:49SPEAKER- For sure.
43:50SPEAKER- Or just not like, there's some stuff that I,
43:52SPEAKERlike Brad, there's stuff that you like
43:54SPEAKERthat I just don't give a shit about and that's fine.
43:56SPEAKER- Much to my ongoing chagrin,
43:57SPEAKERI can't tell you about Vim whenever I want to.
43:59SPEAKER- Look, I don't wanna hear about your weird Vim stuff, man.
44:02SPEAKER- And it's not telling you how I'm like,
44:04SPEAKERI'm way more productive with it, I'm not joking.
44:08SPEAKER- I love your growth hacking and I'm proud of you
44:10SPEAKERfor engaging and expanding your horizons.
44:14SPEAKERI don't do enough text editing to need Vim.
44:16SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair, that's totally fair.
44:19SPEAKERI wish I had this study in front of me that has been,
44:21SPEAKERI've been seeing some people on social media posting.
44:23SPEAKERI don't even know if it's a new study or not,
44:25SPEAKERbut it seems to prove like very, very definitively that,
44:29SPEAKERin fact, I think you had heard of this
44:31SPEAKERwhen I brought it up to you off air,
44:32SPEAKERthat the ages between 10 and 15 are pretty much
44:35SPEAKERlike universally recognized by everyone on earth
44:38SPEAKERas the best time in their lives in terms of like,
44:41SPEAKERyou know, the study is asking specific questions
44:43SPEAKERabout like, when were the best movies released?
44:45SPEAKERWhat really, you know, when was your favorite music?
44:48SPEAKERAnd it's like, without fail,
44:50SPEAKERthere's just a kind of bell curve right in the middle
44:52SPEAKERof like age 12 or so for everyone.
44:56SPEAKER- So yeah, I'm looking at the Washington Post article
44:58SPEAKERthat was going around today with this.
45:00SPEAKERIt was by Andrew Van Dam, whose profile picture
45:03SPEAKERlooks like one of those AI generated user icons,
45:07SPEAKERwhich bums me out.
45:08SPEAKERBut anyway, he says that this is a YouGov thing
45:13SPEAKERwho surveyed a bunch of people.
45:15SPEAKERAnd the commonality is that
45:17SPEAKERit's when you're 10 to 15 years old, basically.
45:20SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's not exactly news to people.
45:22SPEAKERLike that mom and aunt has been incredibly evident
45:25SPEAKERin video games for a very long time.
45:26SPEAKERYou know, like you can chart what is popular
45:29SPEAKERin a retro sense with like the age of people
45:32SPEAKERrelative to when they were about that age.
45:33SPEAKERYou know, it's like Final Fantasy VII remakes
45:37SPEAKERfully came about because all the people who were 12
45:39SPEAKERwhen Final Fantasy VII came out
45:40SPEAKERare in their prime disposable income years.
45:44SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the people who are into retro hardware
45:48SPEAKERwatched this happen with the NES and the SNES
45:50SPEAKERand the Genesis and the Saturn.
45:52SPEAKER- And we're now moving into late '90s
45:55SPEAKERand early 2000s versions of that stuff.
45:57SPEAKER- Wait, so my GameCube stuff is worth,
45:59SPEAKERXbox One is worth something now?
46:01SPEAKER- Oh, dude, people are modding original Xboxes
46:03SPEAKERleft and right.
46:04SPEAKERHave we not talked about this?
46:05SPEAKER- No, we should do an episode about this.
46:06SPEAKER- Oh my God, are you kidding me?
46:07SPEAKER- Yeah.
46:08SPEAKER- People are coming up with homebrew interposers
46:11SPEAKERto put a different CPU socket in an original Xbox.
46:13SPEAKER- What?
46:14SPEAKER- So they can put a faster era appropriate Intel CPU in there.
46:17SPEAKER- That is nuts.
46:18SPEAKER- Yes, there are some crazy videos on YouTube
46:21SPEAKERyou can go find.
46:22SPEAKER- Was the original Xbox like a Celeron 700 or something?
46:24SPEAKER- I believe that's about right, actually.
46:26SPEAKERIt's like a 733 gigahertz cell or something like that.
46:28SPEAKERPeople are putting like 1.4 gigahertz Intel CPUs
46:31SPEAKERinto the original Xboxes now
46:33SPEAKERand like quadrupling the system memory and stuff.
46:36SPEAKER- That's crazy.
46:37SPEAKER- It's wild.
46:38SPEAKER- So yeah, anyway, the point is,
46:40SPEAKERStephen King wrote about this years and years ago
46:42SPEAKERin his On Writing book, or maybe one of the other books,
46:47SPEAKERbut his thesis was always that when you look in the mirror,
46:51SPEAKERyou see yourself as you were 19.
46:53SPEAKER- Yep.
46:54SPEAKER- And I bought into that for a long time.
46:56SPEAKERI think 15 is maybe younger.
46:58SPEAKERI was not, my best years were not when I was 15.
47:02SPEAKERLet's say I was 15 in 1990, so it was like Guns N' Roses.
47:05SPEAKERAnd like, for me, 20 was much better than 15.
47:09SPEAKERWe'd grunge, we had alternative, hip hop was good.
47:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:14SPEAKERAnyway, all your favorite personalities aren't obsessed
47:17SPEAKERwith boomer shooters, I swear.
47:18SPEAKERNow on to this next question from ptown356.
47:21SPEAKER- This is a serious question for serious people.
47:23SPEAKER- Better doom shotgun, a single or double barrel?
47:26SPEAKER- Double barrel, baby.
47:27SPEAKER- Wait, really? - No hesitation.
47:28SPEAKER- Oh, I like, I think I'm partial to the single shot.
47:32SPEAKER- What?
47:33SPEAKER- There's something about it.
47:34SPEAKERSomething about the firing rate and the sound effect.
47:38SPEAKER- Oh, the chonk and then the, like you had to be thoughtful
47:42SPEAKERusing that double barrel 'cause it took so long to reload.
47:45SPEAKER- That's for sure.
47:46SPEAKERI just, I don't, I also find the spread on it that useful.
47:49SPEAKERLike the double barrel is good for running up to an enemy
47:52SPEAKERthat takes a lot of damage and dumping into them
47:54SPEAKERand killing them faster.
47:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:56SPEAKER- But I would never use it on like a crowd
47:58SPEAKERof smaller enemies.
47:59SPEAKER- No, shotguns aren't for crowds.
48:01SPEAKERLike look, you walk right up to a pinky demon in the face
48:03SPEAKERand you pop that thing with a double barrel,
48:06SPEAKERit goes to sleep forever, Brad.
48:07SPEAKER- Yeah, it's true, it's true.
48:09SPEAKERI don't know.
48:10SPEAKERI kind of feel like the Doom, the regular Doom shotgun
48:12SPEAKERis the Quake rocket launcher of Doom.
48:15SPEAKER- I mean, I would say the rocket launcher
48:16SPEAKERis the Quake rocket launcher of Doom.
48:18SPEAKER- I mean, the Doom rocket launcher's fine,
48:19SPEAKERbut it's not necessarily my favorite weapon.
48:22SPEAKER- When I used to play a lot of Doom multiplayer,
48:24SPEAKERhonestly, the big chain gun was probably the thing,
48:28SPEAKERlike as a person who almost exclusively played against people
48:31SPEAKERwho only played with the keyboard and I was using the mouse,
48:33SPEAKERso I was like a god amongst men,
48:36SPEAKERthe chain gun made you an unstoppable killing machine
48:39SPEAKER'cause it was hitscan, you could just stick it on the person,
48:43SPEAKERyou didn't have to aim, I mean, you had to aim,
48:45SPEAKERbut it was really easy with the mouse.
48:48SPEAKERAnd I was not a big shotgun multiplayer guy at all.
48:52SPEAKER- Sure, I could see it.
48:54SPEAKER- You did an unimaginative pseudonym one?
48:57SPEAKER- Sure, well, I was saving that for last, actually.
48:59SPEAKER- Oh, okay, okay. - Let's come back to that one.
49:01SPEAKER- Okay.
49:01SPEAKER- I think that's a good closer for the holidays here.
49:04SPEAKER- Okay.
49:04SPEAKER- I've got a few that I've pulled from past episodes
49:07SPEAKERthat we didn't get to that I've really wanted to.
49:09SPEAKERLet's see, here's one from Zed XED.
49:11SPEAKERI have a Razer Orb Weaver MMO keypad
49:14SPEAKERthat has been unsupported for a long time,
49:15SPEAKERwhich I've continually had to reanimate
49:18SPEAKERby replacing switches, et cetera.
49:20SPEAKERThis is because my wow muscle memory
49:21SPEAKERis fully tied to it now, even going as far as filming
49:25SPEAKERa switch replacement for others in the same predicament.
49:28SPEAKER- Oh, man.
49:29SPEAKER- What pieces of old technology have you committed
49:30SPEAKERto keep running, whether due to reliance
49:32SPEAKERor you just prefer them to what's out there currently?
49:35SPEAKER- Boy, that's tough.
49:36SPEAKERI did, I kept Natural Keyboard Pro going
49:40SPEAKERfor a really, really long time.
49:42SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, you could see that.
49:44SPEAKER- Other old stuff, like I don't,
49:46SPEAKERI mean, my Sennheiser HD 580s,
49:50SPEAKERI've replaced all the hardware on them,
49:52SPEAKERand this cables, headband, pads.
49:54SPEAKERI had to re, like I broke the arm off of them one time,
50:00SPEAKERand I had to fix that.
50:02SPEAKER- That's a classic headphone.
50:04SPEAKER- I don't use them on the day-to-day anymore,
50:05SPEAKER'cause I use these wireless ones now.
50:07SPEAKER- Yeah, that's understandable.
50:08SPEAKERThat is, that is maybe the classic headphone.
50:11SPEAKER- I feel like there was an audio file,
50:14SPEAKERlike an audio file blog that did an article about them,
50:16SPEAKERa retrospective a few years ago that was like,
50:19SPEAKERthis is the thing that kicked off high-end headphones.
50:21SPEAKERLike, those headphones kicked off
50:23SPEAKERthe whole high-end headphones scene.
50:25SPEAKER- Totally, totally.
50:25SPEAKERI got a slightly lower-end Sennheiser model
50:28SPEAKERaround the time those got big,
50:29SPEAKERand I bought 'em refurb when I was in college,
50:30SPEAKER'cause I didn't have a lot of money,
50:31SPEAKERbut yes, like, getting your hands on your first pair
50:34SPEAKERof Sennheisers around the turn of the century
50:36SPEAKERwas a very eye-opening or ear-opening moment.
50:38SPEAKER- There's a video of me going into, like,
50:41SPEAKERthe Silent Sound booth on the CES floor
50:43SPEAKERat the Sennheiser booth in probably 2011 or 2012
50:48SPEAKERthat I got to put on a pair of $4,000 headphones.
50:51SPEAKER- Wow.
50:52SPEAKER- I mean, and like, part of the value of that
50:56SPEAKERwas being in a quiet room on the floor
50:59SPEAKERof the CES show was real nice,
51:03SPEAKERbut also they sound, the headphones sounded like,
51:06SPEAKERit was not, it was not a, just to be clear,
51:09SPEAKERnot a listening environment
51:10SPEAKERthat you could reasonably compare
51:14SPEAKERand evaluate a multi-thousand dollar pair of headphones,
51:17SPEAKERwhich is a ridiculous purchase.
51:19SPEAKER- Fair.
51:20SPEAKER- They sounded real good, though.
51:21SPEAKER- I bet, I bet.
51:23SPEAKERMy answer, the only answer I could come up with here
51:25SPEAKERis actually also sound-related.
51:26SPEAKERIt's these Cambridge Soundworks PC works.
51:28SPEAKER- And those are, yeah, those are classics.
51:31SPEAKER- Things are built like a tank.
51:32SPEAKERThey still sound quite good.
51:34SPEAKERI don't, like, I'm sure they're a bit, well,
51:36SPEAKERactually I don't know if there are better sounding speakers
51:38SPEAKERout there. - I think the Klipsch 2.1s,
51:40SPEAKERthat the Klipsch 1.2 2.1s probably are better
51:44SPEAKERor comparable at worst.
51:46SPEAKER- But these are, these are still actually quite good
51:48SPEAKERfor what they are and they take up so little desk space,
51:50SPEAKERwhich is great.
51:52SPEAKERAlso, I'm just very attached to them
51:54SPEAKERfrom a nostalgic standpoint at this point.
51:56SPEAKERLike the fact that, the fact that these are the ones
51:58SPEAKERI bought in college when Quake 3 got big
52:00SPEAKERand they're still going just kind of makes me feel
52:04SPEAKERa little connected to those halcyon days, I guess.
52:07SPEAKERAnd also the subwoofer has been powered on
52:10SPEAKERalmost continuously for the last 20 something years
52:13SPEAKERand it's still going.
52:14SPEAKER- So I at the same time bought a set
52:16SPEAKERof Altec Lansing ACS-48s, which was the other,
52:20SPEAKERthe other, like the two 2.1 speakers/subwoofer
52:25SPEAKERspeaker sets came out at about the same time
52:27SPEAKERand the Soundworks was one of them,
52:29SPEAKERthe ACS-48s were the other.
52:31SPEAKERThe ACS-48 subwoofer was wood and it had this,
52:35SPEAKERthis kind of a thin, thin stretched nylon.
52:39SPEAKERIt was almost like foam that was stretched,
52:41SPEAKERbut it wasn't, it was cloth.
52:43SPEAKERBut the cloth broke down over time and turned yellow
52:45SPEAKERand got transparent and then eventually started crumbling
52:48SPEAKERand I got rid of mine when that happened.
52:49SPEAKER- That's a shame.
52:50SPEAKER- And I have regrets.
52:51SPEAKER- Yep, yep.
52:52SPEAKEROld speakers tend to hold up when they're good.
52:56SPEAKERI found, I found an eBay auction of a,
52:58SPEAKERI think it was a four speaker 'cause remember
52:59SPEAKERthey started doing like four point versions
53:01SPEAKERof the PC works.
53:02SPEAKER- Didn't they do 4.2s even?
53:04SPEAKER- I think there were some of those, yes.
53:06SPEAKERBut this, this was a black one, minor beige,
53:09SPEAKERand it was like a, not new inbox,
53:11SPEAKERbut a good shape inbox, like black set of these
53:13SPEAKERand I should have bought it.
53:15SPEAKERIt just felt frivolous to buy.
53:17SPEAKER- That's true.
53:18SPEAKER- I would love to have a black set of these things
53:18SPEAKERand maybe I'll keep looking at eBay for that.
53:20SPEAKERAlso, the last thing I'll say real quick,
53:22SPEAKERI probably have said this exact thing before
53:24SPEAKERon this podcast, but it turned out that my sister
53:26SPEAKERhad also bought these same speakers when she was in college.
53:29SPEAKER- Oh, that's amazing.
53:30SPEAKER- A few years after me and didn't use them that much.
53:34SPEAKERAnd then I discovered them in the parent,
53:35SPEAKERin my parents' basement a few years ago.
53:37SPEAKER- Oh man.
53:38SPEAKER- And hoovered that whole set up immediately.
53:41SPEAKERAnd so now I have an entire backup set
53:43SPEAKERthat is very lightly used of these same speakers.
53:45SPEAKER- Oh my God.
53:46SPEAKER- And considering this, this set of speakers
53:48SPEAKERhas lasted me since 99 or 2000.
53:51SPEAKERSo this, this is the first sounding weird,
53:53SPEAKERso it's not sounding weird,
53:54SPEAKERbut I might never use another pair of,
53:56SPEAKERanother model of PC speakers in my entire life.
53:59SPEAKER- It's really funny 'cause like I,
54:02SPEAKERthese days I have a set of monitors,
54:05SPEAKERlike big, like nice monitor, studio monitor speakers
54:09SPEAKERthat I don't ever use because the number of wires
54:12SPEAKERthat you need for them to work right is just,
54:14SPEAKERit's just too much.
54:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:17SPEAKER- So I am, I am jelly of your, of your soundworkses.
54:20SPEAKER- Yeah, they're, they're pretty damn good.
54:22SPEAKER- You're coming for the rest of your life, man.
54:24SPEAKER- Yeah, that's right.
54:25SPEAKERIt's kind of a good feeling, you know?
54:25SPEAKER- Okay to go.
54:26SPEAKER- It's like that Fight Club thing
54:27SPEAKERwith the living room set, you know?
54:30SPEAKERI've got the speakers, whatever else happens,
54:32SPEAKERI've got the speaker thing covered.
54:33SPEAKER- I don't think that was a good thing, what it's worth.
54:35SPEAKER- No, it was not.
54:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:38SPEAKER- This is a good question from Try.
54:40SPEAKERI recently purchased an entry-level mirrorless camera
54:43SPEAKERfor photography.
54:44SPEAKERIt came with a bonus power bank
54:45SPEAKERthat focuses on jump-starting dead car batteries.
54:49SPEAKERWhile yes, it does have USB ports,
54:50SPEAKERit doesn't appear that my camera can charge
54:52SPEAKERthe battery through USB.
54:54SPEAKERSo my question is, what's the weirdest thrown-in freebie
54:56SPEAKERthat you've gotten with a high-cost purchase?
54:59SPEAKER- I don't think I've ever gotten a freebie,
55:01SPEAKERlike, like some weird off thing.
55:04SPEAKER- Yeah, the only one I can think of,
55:06SPEAKERthis was not a high-cost purchase by any means,
55:08SPEAKERbut I bought, I had a couple of,
55:11SPEAKERI believe it was these network,
55:12SPEAKERit was either the network, no,
55:13SPEAKERI think it was my host bus adapter.
55:15SPEAKERIt was one of the server-pulled PCIe cards
55:18SPEAKERthat is in my PC and NAS now
55:20SPEAKERthat lets you use a bunch of extra hard drives
55:22SPEAKERand do the 40 gigabit networking and all that.
55:24SPEAKERI think it was the, anyway.
55:26SPEAKERIt came with, you know, like for a 1U rack mount,
55:29SPEAKERlike half-height mounting bracket on a PCIe card.
55:33SPEAKERThe card I got only had that half-height
55:35SPEAKERand I needed the full height
55:36SPEAKERto mount it in a regular ATX case.
55:38SPEAKERSo I had to go out there and find the exact right bracket.
55:42SPEAKERMaybe it was these network cards, I don't remember, anyway.
55:44SPEAKERI had to go find the right bracket to fit on the,
55:46SPEAKERto replace on the card to mount it in my actual case.
55:49SPEAKERThey sent, it was like a pair of the brackets.
55:51SPEAKERWith the brackets came a melon slicer.
55:55SPEAKER- Oh!
55:55SPEAKER- Have you ever seen one of these like rotating,
55:56SPEAKERlike on a-
55:57SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
55:58SPEAKER- Like kind of like a, I don't know how you describe it.
56:00SPEAKER- It's like an old apple peeler and slicer and corer,
56:03SPEAKERbut it's a melon size, right?
56:04SPEAKER- A series of blades on like a little hinge kind of thing
56:07SPEAKERthat you just roll it along and slide,
56:08SPEAKERlike carve out little chunks of melon as you roll it.
56:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds dope.
56:12SPEAKER- Like, why did I get a melon slicer
56:14SPEAKERwith this server mounting bracket hardware?
56:17SPEAKER- There was a guy selling those at Fog Fest last year.
56:20SPEAKERThat sounded great.
56:21SPEAKERI almost bought one.
56:22SPEAKER- I regret to say we never actually tried it
56:24SPEAKERand then we ended up donating it.
56:25SPEAKER- Oh, well, you know, it could have been amazing.
56:28SPEAKERCould have changed your life.
56:29SPEAKER- It was, you know, it was fun just to contemplate
56:32SPEAKERwhy the hell they did that.
56:33SPEAKER- I remember the first time I bought it,
56:35SPEAKERI bought the, my microphone chalk mount
56:38SPEAKERhas these rubber bands that occasionally,
56:40SPEAKERI mean, you know what?
56:42SPEAKERI say occasionally, when I first bought this microphone,
56:45SPEAKERI went through like six of them in no time
56:46SPEAKERand then it hasn't broken at all in three years.
56:48SPEAKERSo knock on wood.
56:50SPEAKERBut I ordered replacement rubber bands from Sweetwater.
56:54SPEAKERAnd when I opened it up and there was a little pack
56:55SPEAKERof hard candy in there, I was real excited.
56:57SPEAKERThat's the best thing I've gotten, I think.
56:59SPEAKER- Do you eat the candy?
57:00SPEAKER- Uh, I mean, I probably had a mint.
57:03SPEAKERI'm not, butterscotch is a, like,
57:08SPEAKERbutterscotch was not hot when I was 10 to 15 years old.
57:11SPEAKERTherefore, I did not feel strong nostalgia for it.
57:13SPEAKER- Man, you don't like butterscotch candy?
57:14SPEAKER- No, fuck butterscotch, it's bad.
57:16SPEAKER- Well, is butterscotch original or is that its own thing?
57:19SPEAKER- I think it's butterscotch.
57:20SPEAKERI think that's butterscotch original.
57:21SPEAKERButterscotch, I'll give it an exception to it.
57:24SPEAKERI bet my teeth would hurt now if I ate butterscotch.
57:26SPEAKER- Oh yeah, you can't bite down on that.
57:28SPEAKER- I mean, even if I just sucked on them, probably.
57:30SPEAKER- Yes.
57:32SPEAKERLet's see here.
57:33SPEAKERQuestion from C Music.
57:34SPEAKERThis one is from late November.
57:36SPEAKER- Okay.
57:37SPEAKER- I am about to buy an iRacing subscription.
57:39SPEAKERWhat's the worst thing you've bought on Black Friday?
57:42SPEAKER- I bought an iRacing subscription last Black Friday.
57:44SPEAKERAnd then I used it like four times
57:46SPEAKER'cause setting up the wheel is such an enormous pain
57:48SPEAKERin the ass that I hardly ever do it.
57:50SPEAKER- I can see that.
57:51SPEAKER- Yeah.
57:52SPEAKERI need a rec room is the lesson, right?
57:54SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it goes.
57:55SPEAKER- I would love to have a basement
57:57SPEAKERthat I could just chuck a sled in
57:59SPEAKERand hook up a spare monitor and that would be so nice.
58:02SPEAKER- Yep, that's the dream.
58:05SPEAKERI don't know if this is like a,
58:05SPEAKERthis is not a worst purchase necessarily,
58:08SPEAKERbut I bought a year of a virtual private server
58:11SPEAKERon Black Friday.
58:12SPEAKER- That seems like an awesome thing to do
58:13SPEAKERif you want to host games at home.
58:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
58:15SPEAKERLike I said, I'm getting closer to my dream
58:17SPEAKERof running quick servers and related stuff.
58:20SPEAKERI have not spent a lot of time with it.
58:22SPEAKERI'm still working on home stuff
58:23SPEAKERthat before I can really get into that more,
58:26SPEAKERbut that was a fun one.
58:27SPEAKERI got a good deal on it.
58:29SPEAKERThey just send you the hosts that I went with.
58:32SPEAKERAgain, it was a very good deal.
58:34SPEAKERIt was maybe not the most recommended host out there,
58:35SPEAKERbut it was very cheap.
58:37SPEAKER- That's fine.
58:38SPEAKER- They just email you the root login.
58:40SPEAKERLike the default.
58:41SPEAKER- You should probably change that, I would change that one.
58:43SPEAKER- The stock Rocky Linux image that they deployed on my VPS
58:46SPEAKERright after I bought it just has root SSH login enabled
58:50SPEAKERand they just emailed me the login.
58:52SPEAKER- That's probably, that seems fine.
58:53SPEAKER- And then I, you know, nobody got into it,
58:55SPEAKERbut I did leave it running overnight the first night,
58:58SPEAKERgot up the next morning and logged back into it.
58:59SPEAKERAnd it said roughly there were something like 571
59:03SPEAKERfailed login attempts to the VPS overnight
59:06SPEAKERwhile I left it running.
59:07SPEAKER- Yep.
59:08SPEAKER- And I disabled root login and change the SSH port
59:11SPEAKERimmediately, but there is much work yet to be done
59:13SPEAKERon that thing.
59:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that's, that's a yeah.
59:16SPEAKERGreat power comes great responsibility in that situation,
59:18SPEAKERBrad.
59:19SPEAKER- You know, it's fun though, if you spend a lot of time
59:20SPEAKERSSHing into machines in your house all the time.
59:23SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:24SPEAKER- And then later you get a VPS and you realize,
59:26SPEAKERoh, I'm actually just doing the same thing
59:27SPEAKERto a data center in Texas now that I have been doing
59:29SPEAKERin my house for the last five years.
59:32SPEAKERIt's like, oh, this is exactly the same stuff.
59:34SPEAKERI've actually prepared myself well for this.
59:36SPEAKER- Yep.
59:37SPEAKER- And I'm excited to mess around with that.
59:38SPEAKER- I'm excited to hear that goes.
59:40SPEAKERI hadn't ever considered using one of those as a proxy
59:42SPEAKERto host servers, but it's a good idea.
59:44SPEAKER- That's well, so in the case of like the quake servers,
59:46SPEAKERlike those are, you know, that's 30 year old software,
59:49SPEAKERpractically like I could just run those right on the VPS.
59:52SPEAKERThere's really no reason to proxy those to my house
59:54SPEAKERother than the wish fulfillment of, I would love to know
59:57SPEAKERthat the quake servers are running on the box
59:59SPEAKERnext to my desk.
1:00:00SPEAKER- Well also, depending on how, I can't remember how,
1:00:03SPEAKERquake might be bigger than your, like often on those,
1:00:06SPEAKERthose cheap VPSs, the storage is only like a hundred gigs
1:00:10SPEAKERor something like that, so you might actually fill it up
1:00:12SPEAKERdepending on, or no, no, it's not even that.
1:00:14SPEAKERIt's like 12 gigs or something is my line out.
1:00:16SPEAKER- I got very good specs.
1:00:18SPEAKERLike I said, this was not one of the high end providers
1:00:20SPEAKERthat charges a lot.
1:00:22SPEAKERI got shockingly good specs for about five bucks a month
1:00:24SPEAKERon this one.
1:00:25SPEAKER- Okay, that's pretty good.
1:00:26SPEAKER- I'm not sure how fast it is though.
1:00:27SPEAKERIt seemed like maybe a little sluggish.
1:00:29SPEAKERAnyway, I'm sure we'll talk about that more
1:00:31SPEAKERwhen I dig into it more.
1:00:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I'd be interested to hear how it goes.
1:00:34SPEAKER- Let's see, here's another Shags Magoo question.
1:00:36SPEAKERHow many tabs do you have open at this exact moment?
1:00:39SPEAKERWhat do you think is the optimal number of tabs
1:00:40SPEAKERto have at any general time?
1:00:42SPEAKER- I can't, there's no easy way to count, but it's,
1:00:45SPEAKERI have to scroll when I open up the little list of tabs
1:00:48SPEAKERon the side of Firefox.
1:00:49SPEAKER- I'd say at most, I probably end the day,
1:00:53SPEAKERI'm just ballparking here, anywhere from 50 to a hundred,
1:00:57SPEAKERprobably not a hundred.
1:00:58SPEAKERA hundred is like I've been deep down a rabbit hole
1:01:00SPEAKERof pursuing some project that I'm trying to figure out
1:01:02SPEAKERor some dealing with some Linux issue or something.
1:01:06SPEAKERLike normal, normal day,
1:01:07SPEAKERlike maybe two or three dozen at a time.
1:01:10SPEAKERYou're still counting.
1:01:11SPEAKERYou're just sitting there making mouth-
1:01:12SPEAKER- 62.
1:01:13SPEAKER- You have to talk when you move your mouth.
1:01:14SPEAKER- 62 is where I ended up.
1:01:16SPEAKER- All right.
1:01:18SPEAKERYeah, sure, that sounds, I mean,
1:01:19SPEAKERthat's a kind of a heavy load for me at a time,
1:01:21SPEAKERbut not that many.
1:01:23SPEAKER- That's, looking at the start, it's, yeah, no, I, yeah,
1:01:29SPEAKERthis is a several different days worth of searching on,
1:01:33SPEAKER'cause I don't use my desktop computer a lot
1:01:35SPEAKERin the middle of the week sometimes, so.
1:01:36SPEAKER- Wait, do you sleep?
1:01:37SPEAKER- Huh?
1:01:38SPEAKER- Do you sleep a PC?
1:01:40SPEAKER- No, but I just restore all my tabs.
1:01:42SPEAKER- Oh, see, I clean slate everything every morning.
1:01:44SPEAKER- No, I can't, I would never be able
1:01:46SPEAKERto remember what I was talking,
1:01:47SPEAKERlike I have everything from where to find
1:01:50SPEAKERfrozen Mariah Carey in Fortnite chapter six
1:01:53SPEAKERto some news stuff to like some gift stuff
1:01:57SPEAKERthat I'm looking at to, do you have pins?
1:02:01SPEAKERDo you do pin tabs that always open?
1:02:03SPEAKERNot often, in fact, kind of never actually.
1:02:06SPEAKER- Oh man, I keep all my emails open in pin tabs,
1:02:09SPEAKERI keep Blue Sky in pin tabs,
1:02:11SPEAKERI keep the Twitch control panel, Home Assistant.
1:02:14SPEAKER- All right, now here's a question.
1:02:14SPEAKER- A couple other things.
1:02:15SPEAKER- Do you just use one big browser window
1:02:17SPEAKERfor admin with a million tabs in it?
1:02:19SPEAKER- So it depends, if I'm doing, the one thing I do do
1:02:22SPEAKERis if I'm doing like a big project
1:02:24SPEAKERthat's gonna open up a bazillion tabs,
1:02:25SPEAKERlike for example, we already, clearly at the time
1:02:29SPEAKERwe're recording this episode, we already did a bunch
1:02:31SPEAKERof research about connectors and we're preparing
1:02:35SPEAKERto rank a bunch of connectors, but when I did that
1:02:37SPEAKERI definitely opened up a new tab, a new window rather,
1:02:40SPEAKERand then put all the tabs in there,
1:02:42SPEAKERand then that way that window is saved as well,
1:02:45SPEAKER'cause I have an extension that I use
1:02:47SPEAKERthat I can just save an entire window state
1:02:51SPEAKERas a bookmark basically, and then open it again
1:02:53SPEAKERwhen I want it.
1:02:54SPEAKER- That's cool, I should look into something like that.
1:02:55SPEAKERYeah, I'll have like four to seven different windows
1:02:58SPEAKERopen at any given time, like I try to keep tabs
1:03:00SPEAKERsort of loosely sorted in windows based on subject.
1:03:04SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it's only two windows for me at most.
1:03:07SPEAKERWell, unless I'm doing a video call,
1:03:09SPEAKERlike right now I have Chrome open with our call in it,
1:03:12SPEAKERand then I have two Firefox windows open.
1:03:14SPEAKERThe thing I'll say is saving the bookmarks as a group
1:03:18SPEAKERis really nice when I'm like, when I've done something
1:03:21SPEAKERon the server and I wanna remember what I used
1:03:24SPEAKERto figure out how to do it, it's a good tool
1:03:27SPEAKERto come back to that.
1:03:28SPEAKER- Sure, I've kind of become aware via social media recently
1:03:33SPEAKERthat some people get like weirdly precious
1:03:35SPEAKERabout their browser tabs, as in they have hundreds
1:03:38SPEAKERto thousands open at a time and try to maintain them
1:03:41SPEAKERfor months on end.
1:03:43SPEAKER- I--
1:03:44SPEAKER- It just seems, given how much memory modern browsers
1:03:49SPEAKERtend to consume, maybe seems a bit dubious.
1:03:52SPEAKER- Well, so that's why I stopped using Chrome
1:03:53SPEAKERand started using Firefox originally,
1:03:55SPEAKERis Firefox would sleep tabs that are not, have not been
1:03:58SPEAKERtouched in a while.
1:03:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I think Chrome does that too now.
1:04:01SPEAKER- Chrome does that now too.
1:04:03SPEAKERYou can turn it off in Chrome if you want.
1:04:05SPEAKER- I think I turned it off 'cause I have 64 gig of memory
1:04:07SPEAKERand I don't keep that many tabs open,
1:04:08SPEAKERso I just want them to respond immediately.
1:04:11SPEAKER- Yeah, see, I'm comfortable waiting 10 seconds.
1:04:14SPEAKERBut yeah, I don't worry too much.
1:04:18SPEAKEROccasionally, I just declare a tab bankruptcy
1:04:21SPEAKERand open the first tab and then right click
1:04:23SPEAKERand say close everything on the right of this.
1:04:25SPEAKER- Yup.
1:04:26SPEAKER- That works.
1:04:27SPEAKER- Yup, sometimes it feels good to just purge everything,
1:04:29SPEAKERstart fresh.
1:04:30SPEAKEREvery day, every morning, cold boot, fresh browser.
1:04:33SPEAKER- That's madness, that way lies madness.
1:04:36SPEAKER- The way to live.
1:04:37SPEAKERAnd so you've highlighted this Tyler W.
1:04:39SPEAKER- Oh, I was just idly clicking, but it's a good question.
1:04:42SPEAKER- Now I've said it, I have to read it.
1:04:43SPEAKERI know you guys are deep in the business
1:04:44SPEAKERof learning new skills, especially when they benefit
1:04:48SPEAKERyour work or home life, but are there any skills
1:04:49SPEAKERthat you have preemptively excused yourself
1:04:51SPEAKERfrom ever learning for whatever reason?
1:04:54SPEAKERFor me, it's making espresso.
1:04:55SPEAKERI love coffee and I love espresso, but once I stared
1:04:58SPEAKERinto the abyss of the cost of having my own machine,
1:05:00SPEAKERoperating and maintaining it, I became perfectly fine
1:05:03SPEAKERwith letting espresso be a rare treat
1:05:05SPEAKERthat someone else makes for me.
1:05:07SPEAKERWhat about you?
1:05:08SPEAKER- Man, espresso is precisely where I live with that.
1:05:14SPEAKERWhen I wrote the PC building book at Maximum PC,
1:05:17SPEAKERI took some of my money that I made from that
1:05:19SPEAKERand I bought a thousand dollar espresso machine
1:05:24SPEAKERthat I put on the counter and I kept filtered water
1:05:27SPEAKERaround for it and I descaled it every two and a half months
1:05:30SPEAKERor three months and I never once, and I bought a good grinder
1:05:35SPEAKERand I learned how to do all the stuff.
1:05:36SPEAKERAnd I went to the coffee shop downtown, I took a class
1:05:40SPEAKERand I still never really got a good cup of coffee out of it.
1:05:42SPEAKERLike it was okay, but it was not like the best
1:05:47SPEAKERthat I ever did was on par with like a shitty Starbucks.
1:05:53SPEAKERAnd as a result, it's just not, it's so much hassle.
1:05:58SPEAKERIt takes so long for the thing to warm up.
1:06:00SPEAKERYeah, anyway, there are better espresso machines
1:06:03SPEAKERon the market now than that one.
1:06:04SPEAKERLike you can get for 500 bucks at Breville.
1:06:06SPEAKERThat's quite nice is my understanding, but like Tyler W,
1:06:10SPEAKERI'm happy to just let somebody do that for me.
1:06:13SPEAKERI also think after trying it a few times,
1:06:16SPEAKERI don't know that I'm gonna ever write,
1:06:18SPEAKERlike I think I'm always gonna be the kind of person
1:06:20SPEAKERthat can look at a script or look at some Python
1:06:22SPEAKERor something and kind of fuck with it
1:06:24SPEAKERuntil it works the way I want it to.
1:06:25SPEAKERBut I don't think I'm ever the person
1:06:27SPEAKERthat's gonna start with a blank page
1:06:28SPEAKERand end up with something that's usable.
1:06:30SPEAKERReally?
1:06:30SPEAKEROh, I thought you were saying, okay,
1:06:32SPEAKER'cause it's the opposite for me.
1:06:33SPEAKERI don't know, I write a ton of code,
1:06:34SPEAKERbut I have very much found in the last couple of years
1:06:36SPEAKERthat writing code is infinitely easier than reading it,
1:06:39SPEAKERreading somebody else's.
1:06:40SPEAKERIt's really funny 'cause I have such a hard time
1:06:42SPEAKERknowing where to start with anything
1:06:44SPEAKERand I can always parse out how it works.
1:06:46SPEAKERInteresting, interesting.
1:06:47SPEAKEROr not always, but often,
1:06:50SPEAKERespecially with stuff that's human readable,
1:06:51SPEAKERlike Python and PowerShell script and stuff like that.
1:06:55SPEAKERStuff like Python is much easier to parse
1:06:57SPEAKERthan C or whatever, which I dabbled with just a little bit.
1:07:00SPEAKERBut yeah, I've got a number of 75 to 400 line
1:07:03SPEAKERlittle Python utilities that I use
1:07:06SPEAKERfor all kinds of work stuff these days.
1:07:12SPEAKERHave you looked at like Advent of code and stuff like that?
1:07:14SPEAKERYeah, I'm familiar with it.
1:07:15SPEAKERI've never had time to get into it, but it's embarrassing,
1:07:18SPEAKERbut I guess everybody's gotten them.
1:07:19SPEAKERMaybe this is a good answer to this question.
1:07:21SPEAKEREverybody's got like hobbies they tap out of
1:07:22SPEAKERdue to lack of time and mental energy and stuff.
1:07:24SPEAKERBut I've had multiple aborted attempts
1:07:27SPEAKERto get into some lower level coding
1:07:29SPEAKERover the last couple of years.
1:07:30SPEAKERLike I got six or seven chapters into the Rust book.
1:07:34SPEAKERBrad's Rust adventure, I remember that.
1:07:36SPEAKERBefore I put it down, I got it.
1:07:38SPEAKERI started going through and I might pick this back up.
1:07:40SPEAKERI started going through the classic Kernighan Ritchie,
1:07:42SPEAKERthe C programming language.
1:07:44SPEAKER- I remember, yeah, yeah.
1:07:45SPEAKER- Like the one, maybe I've talked about that,
1:07:46SPEAKERbut that one also, I was making some good progress,
1:07:49SPEAKERbut stuff always just comes up and it's hard to stick
1:07:52SPEAKERto something intensely technical like that
1:07:54SPEAKERif it's not your job.
1:07:55SPEAKER- For me, there's something really satisfying
1:07:58SPEAKERabout going to the coffee shop and just being like,
1:08:00SPEAKER"Hey, here's $5, please make me a nice cup of coffee."
1:08:03SPEAKERAnd you get to watch them do it
1:08:04SPEAKERand you have a nice little conversation and like, you know,
1:08:08SPEAKERand it's like a special treat.
1:08:10SPEAKER- But the espresso example is a good one
1:08:12SPEAKERof like diminishing returns is not the right phrase,
1:08:15SPEAKERbut it's something that requires so much commitment
1:08:18SPEAKERand time and trial and error
1:08:19SPEAKERto get even like moderately competent at,
1:08:23SPEAKERthat at a certain point, like there are other disciplines
1:08:26SPEAKERor skills you could gain way more proficiency in
1:08:31SPEAKERwith the same amount of time
1:08:32SPEAKERthat you are just barely scrambling to do anything
1:08:34SPEAKERwith a spread, you know what I'm saying?
1:08:36SPEAKER- Well, yeah, 'cause if you look, if you compare that
1:08:38SPEAKERto brewed coffee, like I'm, at this point,
1:08:43SPEAKERit takes me longer than a professional,
1:08:45SPEAKERlike somebody who's good at it would to dial in new beans
1:08:48SPEAKERor whatever and figure out exactly what my temperature
1:08:51SPEAKERand grind and like linger time and all that stuff
1:08:54SPEAKERshould be in the brew bed.
1:08:56SPEAKERBut I can, by the time I get to an end of a bag of coffee,
1:09:00SPEAKERI'm making really fricking good brewed coffee, right?
1:09:04SPEAKERLike better than I'm gonna get in most coffee shops.
1:09:07SPEAKERAnd I did not, after spending two years
1:09:10SPEAKERwith the espresso machine,
1:09:10SPEAKERI didn't think I was ever going to reach,
1:09:12SPEAKERI thought I'd probably plateaued
1:09:14SPEAKERwithout spending a lot of money on hardware.
1:09:16SPEAKER- That's probably a good general answer to that question
1:09:18SPEAKERis when the return on time investment
1:09:21SPEAKERdoes not seem high enough to justify the time.
1:09:24SPEAKER- Yeah, like the neat thing, for me,
1:09:26SPEAKERthe hard stuff is always, I think about like trying
1:09:30SPEAKERto learn an instrument as a kid, right?
1:09:32SPEAKERAnd I think about, so it's one of the things
1:09:37SPEAKERthat I really like about what Rocksmith does actually
1:09:39SPEAKERwith teaching you how to play guitar is they give you,
1:09:44SPEAKERthey give you a real sense of progress
1:09:47SPEAKERon almost every step along the way,
1:09:49SPEAKERwhether it's like learning a chord, learning how to strum
1:09:52SPEAKERor learning how to palm mute or whatever technique
1:09:56SPEAKERit is you're learning, they then turn it around into,
1:09:58SPEAKERhey, why don't you try this song and you can play like
1:10:01SPEAKERthe easy version of this song with the thing
1:10:04SPEAKERthat you just learned, and because they have this huge
1:10:07SPEAKERlibrary of music attached to that they understand
1:10:10SPEAKERwhat is being applied at different levels of difficulty
1:10:13SPEAKERand all that in the game, it makes it, it takes away
1:10:18SPEAKERthat hey, I've been doing the same thing for six weeks
1:10:21SPEAKERand I haven't made any progress feeling that was so common
1:10:24SPEAKERwhen I was like learning and taking piano lessons
1:10:27SPEAKERas a kid or whatever.
1:10:28SPEAKER- Yeah, sometimes it's just about finding the right course
1:10:30SPEAKERof study or teaching tool or something.
1:10:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I still like learning new stuff,
1:10:34SPEAKERlearning new stuff is always fun.
1:10:36SPEAKERAnd if people have recommendations on the programming thing,
1:10:38SPEAKERlike I would, I just, I am, I have a hard time
1:10:42SPEAKERlooking at a book, I know that works for you,
1:10:44SPEAKERbut it is not the way I work on that kind of stuff.
1:10:47SPEAKER- It actually doesn't work for me as well as you might think
1:10:49SPEAKERthat might be why I tapped out on those.
1:10:50SPEAKERLike, I mean, I can learn from books, but it's like
1:10:53SPEAKERthe thing that always works for me, and this is actually
1:10:55SPEAKERpretty tough to just contrive something in this space,
1:10:58SPEAKERbut having a goal in mind before I start, like every time
1:11:03SPEAKERI have learned the most, it's mostly been Python,
1:11:04SPEAKERbut every time I've learned the most of it is when I went
1:11:07SPEAKERlike, man, I wish I could automate this thing that I do
1:11:09SPEAKERall the time for work and like the drive to automate that,
1:11:13SPEAKERyou know, like the drive to like, man, if I could save
1:11:15SPEAKERmyself 30 minutes a week for the next three years,
1:11:17SPEAKERthis would be worth it.
1:11:19SPEAKERLike having the goal in mind, then you just start learning
1:11:21SPEAKERthe things you need to do to accomplish that goal.
1:11:24SPEAKERAnd that's the best kind of the way that I learned
1:11:26SPEAKERin the most motivated way.
1:11:28SPEAKER- The thing for me is the, so I want, like the advent
1:11:35SPEAKERof code is a really good example, 'cause it's this nice
1:11:37SPEAKERpackage set of almost puzzles, right?
1:11:39SPEAKERLike they're like programming puzzles and they give you
1:11:42SPEAKERa unique data set, so you have to like parse this huge
1:11:46SPEAKERamount of data and then come up with the answer,
1:11:48SPEAKERwhich is like a number you type into a field on a website.
1:11:51SPEAKERAnd they're all personalized.
1:11:53SPEAKER- The part that it's missing is they expect you to have
1:11:57SPEAKERa base level of competency.
1:11:59SPEAKERAnd I wish that they had, there was some, I wish I knew,
1:12:01SPEAKERI wish I could find something that was like that,
1:12:04SPEAKERthat started with, you know, CS 100 stuff.
1:12:08SPEAKERLike here's how you place your headers and here's how you,
1:12:10SPEAKERhere's how you run this and here's how you do this stuff.
1:12:12SPEAKER'Cause like that's the part that I don't, I don't even,
1:12:16SPEAKERit's often the problem, we talked about this a lot
1:12:18SPEAKERon Still Entitled with Adam.
1:12:21SPEAKEROften when you're looking, it's like when you're making
1:12:23SPEAKERsomething and you don't, you know what the thing is,
1:12:25SPEAKERyou know that the part exists, you know you've seen it,
1:12:28SPEAKERbut you don't know that it's called like a left-handed
1:12:30SPEAKERflange, so you don't have a way to search for it
1:12:33SPEAKERon the internet and you can't just say, hey, yeah,
1:12:35SPEAKERI want something that looks like this,
1:12:36SPEAKERbut it's the other way.
1:12:38SPEAKERSo figuring out what the thing is that you're looking for
1:12:42SPEAKERis actually the hard part, not looking for it, I guess.
1:12:45SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a constant problem, learning stuff like that.
1:12:49SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:12:50SPEAKER- All right, we're running a little long here,
1:12:52SPEAKERso I will spare you this question about Nix OS.
1:12:55SPEAKER- We can save it for the Patreon episode.
1:12:57SPEAKER- As much as I'm excited to talk,
1:12:58SPEAKERI would like to talk about Nix OS for the handful
1:13:00SPEAKERof Nix OS sickos on the Discord.
1:13:03SPEAKER- Shout outs to Nix OS.
1:13:04SPEAKER- Some other time, I don't have time to learn it.
1:13:06SPEAKERSpeaking of learning things, I don't have time to learn
1:13:09SPEAKERa whole new programming language to administrate
1:13:11SPEAKERmy Linux install, but I would love to.
1:13:14SPEAKER- Look, this is a good example of a thing that the reward
1:13:17SPEAKERis not worth the time invested.
1:13:18SPEAKER- Yeah, the Nix users on the Discord would maybe disagree.
1:13:23SPEAKERI mean, what if you were effectively programming
1:13:25SPEAKERyour operating system, which is to say you were like
1:13:27SPEAKERwriting a single program that if your entire boot drive
1:13:30SPEAKERever got hosed, you could reinstall Nix,
1:13:34SPEAKERapply that configuration and it would just
1:13:35SPEAKERdo everything again.
1:13:37SPEAKERLike, it's declarative Linux is what it is.
1:13:39SPEAKERWe should not get into this.
1:13:40SPEAKER- Well, that's what like Vagrant and all that stuff does,
1:13:43SPEAKERbut for environments, like I get it.
1:13:44SPEAKER- Or like Ansible for, we're just getting IT stuff here now,
1:13:47SPEAKERor DevOps or whatever, it's just like reproducible,
1:13:51SPEAKEReasily archived configurations for stuff, but anyway.
1:13:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I get the appeal as somebody whose dev environment
1:13:58SPEAKERis a two day setup minimum.
1:14:01SPEAKER- I mean, honestly, the thing that really got me thinking
1:14:02SPEAKERabout Nix was that EBS, you know, it's like if something
1:14:06SPEAKERever happened to that EBS and frankly, you would hope
1:14:08SPEAKERthe corporation with a data center has better backup
1:14:10SPEAKERstrategies than you have at home, but you know.
1:14:12SPEAKER- Fill one end with hopes and the other.
1:14:15SPEAKER- And I could just learn something like Ansible
1:14:16SPEAKERand apply that to any Linux distro, but.
1:14:19SPEAKER- Or you could just put everything in Docker containers
1:14:21SPEAKERand then export your Docker files.
1:14:23SPEAKER- Yeah, well, you've always got file sharing
1:14:25SPEAKERand firewall and all kinds of base level stuff to set up.
1:14:30SPEAKERAnyway, all right.
1:14:31SPEAKERMaybe we'll get back to that question another time.
1:14:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:14:35SPEAKER- Let's end with the unimaginative pseudonym question
1:14:38SPEAKERthat we alluded to earlier.
1:14:39SPEAKERDoes Will train his child to accept the surveillance state
1:14:42SPEAKERby having an elf on the shelf in his home?
1:14:45SPEAKER- Fuck that elf, oh, sorry.
1:14:47SPEAKERHold on, you gotta put an edit here because we gotta say
1:14:51SPEAKERif you have kids in the car or something,
1:14:53SPEAKERmaybe pause the podcast and I'll give you a few seconds
1:14:55SPEAKERto hit the pause button.
1:14:56SPEAKER- Yes.
1:14:57SPEAKEROkay, that's long enough.
1:14:59SPEAKER- Fuck that elf, man.
1:15:00SPEAKERThat elf is a fucking narc.
1:15:01SPEAKER- Man, I feel like the worm has turned hard
1:15:04SPEAKERon the elf on the shelf and like this year
1:15:06SPEAKERor maybe last year I started seeing a lot of like resentment
1:15:09SPEAKERtoward the elf.
1:15:11SPEAKER- No, man.
1:15:11SPEAKERParents, okay, so do you know how the elf works?
1:15:15SPEAKER- Vaguely, like don't you move it around?
1:15:18SPEAKERI mean, the elf moves around on its own.
1:15:19SPEAKERLike every night, doesn't it appear somewhere else
1:15:21SPEAKERor something?
1:15:22SPEAKER- Okay, so first off, they marketed it as the elf
1:15:26SPEAKERon the shelf, a Christmas tradition,
1:15:28SPEAKERbut it appeared out of nowhere like 10 years ago.
1:15:30SPEAKER- Oh, that sucks.
1:15:31SPEAKER- 2005 is when it first came out.
1:15:34SPEAKER- Are they like fooling people into thinking
1:15:36SPEAKERthis thing's been around since the '60s or something?
1:15:38SPEAKER- That is precisely what's happening is that it's like
1:15:41SPEAKERthey manufactured a tradition and sold it
1:15:45SPEAKERwith a book and merch.
1:15:46SPEAKER- Oh, that's gross.
1:15:47SPEAKER- And the story is that the elf hides in people's homes
1:15:51SPEAKERto narc on them to Santa Claus when they fuck up.
1:15:54SPEAKERAnd when it goes to bed, whenever he goes to bed,
1:15:56SPEAKERit goes to the North Pole, narcs to Santa,
1:15:59SPEAKERand then comes back about good and bad stuff,
1:16:02SPEAKERand then comes back in a different place.
1:16:05SPEAKEROkay, so for real, parents with kids in the car,
1:16:09SPEAKERespecially if you're in on the elf-narking,
1:16:11SPEAKERturn off the radio now.
1:16:13SPEAKER- So is this thing just a behavior control mechanism?
1:16:16SPEAKERIs that what you're saying?
1:16:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a behavior control mechanism.
1:16:18SPEAKERSo, but that means somebody has to move the doll around.
1:16:23SPEAKERThe kids aren't allowed to touch the doll
1:16:25SPEAKER'cause if you touch it, if somebody moves it,
1:16:28SPEAKERand most people don't know this,
1:16:30SPEAKERbut if somebody touches it, the magic gets drained away,
1:16:33SPEAKERand then it's just a crappy elf doll.
1:16:35SPEAKERSo like if you go into somebody's house
1:16:37SPEAKERand you grab their elf on the shelf,
1:16:38SPEAKERand you're like, oh, you have an elf on the shelf,
1:16:40SPEAKERthat's really cool, you've killed the elf.
1:16:41SPEAKER- Oh my God.
1:16:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:16:43SPEAKER- That's too much responsibility.
1:16:44SPEAKER- Yeah, so don't touch me, my magic might go,
1:16:49SPEAKERis what it says in the book,
1:16:50SPEAKERand Santa won't hear all I've seen or I know.
1:16:53SPEAKER- Wait, this thing is a psy-op.
1:16:55SPEAKER- It is super fucked up, dude.
1:16:58SPEAKER- Man.
1:16:59SPEAKER- When you, when we, I had not engaged with it at all
1:17:04SPEAKERuntil we went to elementary school,
1:17:06SPEAKERuntil my daughter went to elementary school,
1:17:07SPEAKERand then she was like, hey, why don't we have an elf?
1:17:09SPEAKERAnd I was like, what the hell's the elf?
1:17:11SPEAKERAnd I looked at it, I was like, oh, hell no,
1:17:12SPEAKERwe're not getting an elf,
1:17:13SPEAKERthis is the worst thing I've ever heard.
1:17:15SPEAKER- That's devious.
1:17:16SPEAKER- So, yeah.
1:17:17SPEAKER- That's some full on De Beers,
1:17:19SPEAKERlike Diamond is Forever engagement ring,
1:17:21SPEAKERlike this has been a thing forever,
1:17:23SPEAKERand not just like in the 20s that we ginned up
1:17:26SPEAKERto make people pay five times too much for diamonds.
1:17:28SPEAKER- Yep, so, okay, so here's the story on Wikipedia
1:17:33SPEAKERquoting this is it was written by Carol Abersold
1:17:36SPEAKERand her daughter, Chanda Bell,
1:17:39SPEAKERand that this was based on their family tradition
1:17:41SPEAKERof an elf sent from Santa
1:17:43SPEAKERthat watches over the children at Christmas time.
1:17:46SPEAKERAnd then they used the other daughter's Krista Pitts'
1:17:52SPEAKERexpertise in sales and marketing,
1:17:54SPEAKERand spent three years promoting their self-published book,
1:17:57SPEAKERand then they released the toy, and now it's in Target,
1:18:00SPEAKERand it's literally marketed as the elf on the shelf,
1:18:04SPEAKERa Christmas tradition, which is icky.
1:18:06SPEAKER- That's, I don't like that phrasing at all,
1:18:09SPEAKERis it still big?
1:18:10SPEAKERLike, I think I first heard about it
1:18:12SPEAKERlike 10, 12 years ago or something, maybe.
1:18:15SPEAKER- My guess, okay, so there's a lot of stuff
1:18:17SPEAKERthat you get roped into as parents,
1:18:21SPEAKERthat like, so it's like Roblox.
1:18:23SPEAKERLike, when your kid's like, hey, can I play with my friend,
1:18:26SPEAKERthey're on Roblox, and you're like, sure, Roblox sounds,
1:18:29SPEAKERlike, that's a thing I've heard of before,
1:18:30SPEAKERwe should put them on there,
1:18:31SPEAKERnot knowing that it's like a toxic hell stew
1:18:34SPEAKERof like the worst monetization and microtransaction box game
1:18:41SPEAKERthat like, worse even than Korean MMOs,
1:18:44SPEAKERin terms of like psychological damage and exploitiveness.
1:18:48SPEAKER- Sure.
1:18:49SPEAKER- It's like that, like, if you don't do your research
1:18:51SPEAKERbefore you're like, oh yeah, we can get an elf,
1:18:53SPEAKERthat sounds fun, look, don't get the elf,
1:18:57SPEAKERdon't get Roblox, they're both bad, that's the TLDR.
1:19:01SPEAKERDo your homework, like, this is,
1:19:03SPEAKERone of the rules I tell people when they have a new kid,
1:19:06SPEAKERwhen you, like, don't ever buy a baby, a toy for a little kid
1:19:10SPEAKERthat makes noise without listening,
1:19:13SPEAKERlike, there's a bunch of, like,
1:19:14SPEAKERthere's a bazillion things you can squeeze a paw on a bear
1:19:16SPEAKERor something, and it sings a song.
1:19:19SPEAKERIf you don't sit in the store and listen to that song,
1:19:20SPEAKERlike, eight times in the row before you buy it,
1:19:23SPEAKERyou've made a mistake, because when you give a young child
1:19:25SPEAKERa thing that makes noise like that,
1:19:28SPEAKERit's gonna make, they're gonna just hammer the button
1:19:30SPEAKERuntil you go slowly insane.
1:19:32SPEAKERSo, like, don't buy toys that make noise for people,
1:19:36SPEAKERthat's a crime, don't bring the Elf on the Shelf
1:19:38SPEAKERinto their house, don't give them Roblox gift cards,
1:19:42SPEAKERdon't do anything that's going to commit them
1:19:44SPEAKERto this kind of lifestyle, anyway.
1:19:48SPEAKERThere's a whole, the criticism section
1:19:51SPEAKERon the Elf on the Shelf Wikipedia page
1:19:53SPEAKERis larger than the history of publication
1:19:57SPEAKERor the plot section.
1:19:58SPEAKER- Oh, I've gotta read that.
1:19:59SPEAKER- And it starts with, the Atlantic columnist Kate Tuttle
1:20:02SPEAKERcalls Elf on the Shelf a marketing juggernaut
1:20:04SPEAKERdressed up as a tradition whose purpose is to spy on kids.
1:20:09SPEAKERYeah, anyway, a dangerous, David Kyle Johnston calls it
1:20:13SPEAKERa dangerous parental crutch.
1:20:15SPEAKER- All right, well.
1:20:16SPEAKER- Anyway, yeah, so, there you go.
1:20:19SPEAKERI hope I didn't ruin Christmas for anybody, I'm sorry.
1:20:21SPEAKER- Oh, look, maybe you're just setting some children free
1:20:23SPEAKERfrom the Elf's tyranny.
1:20:25SPEAKER- Look, they just, look, kids, if your parents
1:20:27SPEAKERhave this stuff over you, just grab the Elf
1:20:29SPEAKERand shake it and the magic will go away.
1:20:31SPEAKER- The Elf has no power over you.
1:20:32SPEAKER- Yeah, the Elf, you're free of the Elf.
1:20:35SPEAKER- Man, fraud.
1:20:36SPEAKER- I, yeah, I don't know, I feel like,
1:20:39SPEAKERI feel like an Elfagy, is that a thing?
1:20:43SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.
1:20:44SPEAKER- Our Effigy's bad, I feel like Effigy's
1:20:45SPEAKERprobably are usually bad, but in this case
1:20:46SPEAKERI'm gonna allow it.
1:20:47SPEAKER- I think it's, I think the Effigy can be used
1:20:49SPEAKERin all manner of ways.
1:20:50SPEAKER- Oh my God, there was a Food Network show too,
1:20:52SPEAKERa real confluence of evil.
1:20:54SPEAKER- Yep, yep, all right, I'm declaring end of questions.
1:20:58SPEAKER- Okay, the questions have been answered.
1:20:59SPEAKERThis is the last show of the year, Brad.
1:21:01SPEAKER- It is, it sure is.
1:21:02SPEAKER- Happy New Year.
1:21:03SPEAKER- Yeah, happy holidays and New Year to everyone.
1:21:05SPEAKERI guess New Year is a holiday, but anyway.
1:21:08SPEAKER- I feel like we're gonna do some,
1:21:09SPEAKERI'm about to do some real Douglas Adams tense work,
1:21:11SPEAKERbut I hope you will have had a good Christmas.
1:21:14SPEAKER- It checks out, it's intelligent.
1:21:15SPEAKER- And I hope you'll have a happy New Year
1:21:18SPEAKERand I hope everybody who's listening to the show
1:21:20SPEAKERhas the same and has had the same,
1:21:22SPEAKERwhatever you celebrate and wherever you are.
1:21:24SPEAKER- Yeah, same.
1:21:26SPEAKER- As always, Brad and Will Made at TechPod
1:21:28SPEAKERis a listener supported show.
1:21:30SPEAKERWe're only here because of you.
1:21:31SPEAKERI mean, it's nice to talk to you, Brad.
1:21:33SPEAKERI like talking to you, but getting paid is nice too.
1:21:36SPEAKERAnd if you wanna find out how you can support the show,
1:21:40SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:21:42SPEAKERIt's five bucks a month.
1:21:43SPEAKERYou get access to the Patreon exclusive episode
1:21:45SPEAKERwhere we talk about more of the stuff
1:21:46SPEAKERthat we talked about today.
1:21:48SPEAKERI don't think I'm gonna talk about Elf on the Shelf again,
1:21:50SPEAKERbut maybe, who knows?
1:21:52SPEAKERAnd you get access to the fabulous TechPod Discord,
1:21:55SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful nerds, just like you,
1:21:57SPEAKERwho talk about things like NixOS and Vim.
1:22:00SPEAKERSo that Brad has outlets for this behavior
1:22:02SPEAKERthat don't include me.
1:22:04SPEAKER- I mean, look, you don't have to ever go
1:22:05SPEAKERinto the next channel
1:22:06SPEAKERand then you don't have to worry about any of that crap
1:22:07SPEAKERif you don't care about it.
1:22:08SPEAKER- No, but there's also good channels for other stuff too,
1:22:10SPEAKERlike keyboards and headphones and covers and parenting.
1:22:14SPEAKER- And food.
1:22:15SPEAKER- And yeah, food.
1:22:16SPEAKERThe food channel is popping off this time of year.
1:22:18SPEAKERI gotta post Nog pictures there actually later today
1:22:20SPEAKERwhen I think about it.
1:22:21SPEAKERBut yeah, so it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:22:26SPEAKERIt's the end of the month,
1:22:27SPEAKERwhich means in addition to thanking
1:22:28SPEAKERour executive producers, your patrons,
1:22:29SPEAKERwe also thank our associate producer, dear patrons.
1:22:33SPEAKERAnd I'm gonna start with the executive producers
1:22:34SPEAKERjust 'cause they're at the top of the list.
1:22:36SPEAKERSo thanks to Andrew Slosky, Bunnyfiend, Crow, David Allen,
1:22:41SPEAKERJames Kamik, Jordan Lippett, Twinkle Twinkie,
1:22:44SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 High Speed 3D Printer.
1:22:49SPEAKERAll a very special thank you goes out
1:22:51SPEAKERto our associate producer, dear patrons,
1:22:52SPEAKERincluding Alejandro Navarro, Andre M. Burke, P.E.,
1:22:57SPEAKERAndrew Dicey Scholdyce, Arthur Gies, Ben Tallman,
1:23:00SPEAKERBrutal Kerfluffle, Eric, Eric Klein, Felix Kramer,
1:23:05SPEAKERGraham Banks, Jad Rita, Just Associate Wedge,
1:23:09SPEAKERMatt Walker, parentheses Walkman8080, close parentheses,
1:23:13SPEAKERMike Etheridge, Nathan Phelps, Sanchik Kumar,
1:23:16SPEAKERSteve Lin, Thomas Jay, and Tom Hilton.
1:23:18SPEAKERAnd I think Patreon flipped on the ability
1:23:23SPEAKERfor us to do gift subs.
1:23:24SPEAKERSo if you have friends or family members
1:23:27SPEAKERyou think would like to be part of the Discord community
1:23:29SPEAKERor would like the patron episodes,
1:23:31SPEAKERyou're already listening to them,
1:23:32SPEAKERyou can gift them subs now on the patreon.com/techbod.
1:23:36SPEAKER- Give the gift of us.
1:23:37SPEAKER- Yeah, more Brad.
1:23:38SPEAKEREverybody needs more Brad and Will in their lives.
1:23:40SPEAKER- True, I can attest.
1:23:42SPEAKER- Yeah, so that'll do it for us this year.
1:23:45SPEAKERWe'll be back next year with more Techbod.
1:23:46SPEAKER- That's right, one week of the year you can save it.
1:23:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I did it right this time.
1:23:51SPEAKERAs always, thank you all again for listening
1:23:53SPEAKERand I hope everybody had a good holiday season
1:23:55SPEAKERand we will see you next year.
1:23:57SPEAKERBye everybody.