275: The Bottomless Q Hole

00:00SPEAKER- Okay, that 2032 asteroid that had,

00:02SPEAKERas of a couple of three days ago,

00:03SPEAKERlike a two plus percent chance of hitting us.

00:06SPEAKER- Is it going up or down?

00:07SPEAKER- It's been downgraded to basically nothing

00:09SPEAKERand I actually don't know how to feel about it.

00:11SPEAKERNot sure how I feel about that.

00:13SPEAKER- And I was excited.

00:14SPEAKER- Yeah.

00:15SPEAKER- Look, okay, here's the thing.

00:17SPEAKERDo I, in this, the year of our Lord 2025,

00:21SPEAKERfeel like we as a species could come together

00:24SPEAKERto prevent a city slash region destroying asteroid

00:28SPEAKERfrom impacting some probably not entirely identified place

00:35SPEAKERon the planet?

00:36SPEAKERAbsolutely not under any circumstances

00:38SPEAKERdo I think that is a thing that we as a species

00:41SPEAKERare prepared to deal with right now.

00:43SPEAKER- Agreed.

00:44SPEAKER- Would it be really, really amazing to watch it happen

00:46SPEAKERassuming you don't live in the potential destruction path?

00:49SPEAKERProbably less so than I think right now

00:51SPEAKERbut I was curious how it was gonna go.

00:53SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.

00:54SPEAKER- I read Seven Eves, I know how this works.

00:57SPEAKERI'm not quite irony poisoned enough yet

00:59SPEAKERto think it would be fun to watch an asteroid

01:01SPEAKERand impact the planet.

01:02SPEAKERBut yeah, something about the scenario

01:05SPEAKERthat you have just described was intriguing at least.

01:07SPEAKER- I mean, look, there's a global cooling aspect to it

01:10SPEAKERthat could be really good.

01:11SPEAKER- That's true.

01:12SPEAKER- We put a bunch of particulate in the air for a few years

01:14SPEAKERit just cranks us back to 1960s levels.

01:16SPEAKER- Let's try a nuclear winter for a little bit.

01:19SPEAKER- Well, no, no, no, that has other consequences there.

01:22SPEAKER- I mean, is it not still considered a nuclear winter?

01:24SPEAKER- No, 'cause you have to have the bombs

01:26SPEAKERto do the nuclear winter, it's just an equivalent.

01:28SPEAKERIt's roughly equivalent.

01:29SPEAKER- I thought the radiation was optional though.

01:31SPEAKERI thought it was just surround the planet

01:33SPEAKERwith a dust cloud for long enough and that counts.

01:35SPEAKER- I think that's just cloud winter.

01:37SPEAKERI think nuclear winter implies that we bomb ourselves

01:40SPEAKERinto like a road situation.

01:42SPEAKERAnd then it's just Viggo Mortensen and a can of peaches.

01:45SPEAKER- So is there such a thing as a volcano, a volcanic winter?

01:48SPEAKER- We had that in the 1800s, right when Krakatoa went.

01:51SPEAKER- Yes, oh yeah, we've had that many times in history.

01:53SPEAKER- Like in recorded history, it's happened a couple of times.

01:55SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, volcanic winter is a term actually.

01:58SPEAKERSo I guess nuclear winter does in fact

02:00SPEAKERhave to involve nuclear weapons.

02:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I assume that like if the frogs get wild

02:04SPEAKERand out of control, we can have a frog winter even, right?

02:08SPEAKEROr what if, consider a sky algae, right?

02:13SPEAKERWe got a sky algal bloom that turns all the clouds black

02:16SPEAKERand then next thing you know,

02:18SPEAKERmaybe that's a sky algae summer.

02:20SPEAKER- Yes, man, I would've liked to watch

02:22SPEAKERsome kind of deflection scenario play out successfully.

02:25SPEAKERLike which one would they go with, there's so many.

02:28SPEAKER- Here's the problem with the deflection scenario,

02:31SPEAKERjust generally speaking, I think, is that we wouldn't do,

02:34SPEAKERwe're not capable of getting our shit together fast enough

02:36SPEAKERto do like the slow and steady,

02:38SPEAKERlike, hey, let's just apply a little bit of force

02:40SPEAKERto this thing over a long period of time.

02:42SPEAKERBecause we're as a species kind of dipshits,

02:46SPEAKERwe would do the, let's just wait until the last minute

02:49SPEAKERand then pop off the bomb,

02:50SPEAKERsend Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck up there.

02:52SPEAKER- Yes, Armageddon has much to answer for.

02:55SPEAKER- Yeah, and then instead of it,

02:56SPEAKERlike being an easy 100% clean miss,

02:59SPEAKERwe would mess up in some important way.

03:01SPEAKERSomebody wouldn't carry a zero

03:02SPEAKERand we'd fire it into New York.

03:04SPEAKER- Yeah, say what you will about don't look up.

03:06SPEAKERBut if they were probably onto something

03:07SPEAKERwith the end of that movie.

03:09SPEAKER- That was maybe the most depressing movie

03:10SPEAKERI've ever seen in my life.

03:12SPEAKER- You know, now that you mentioned it,

03:13SPEAKERevery time I saw this asteroid thing

03:15SPEAKERtalked about on social media,

03:16SPEAKERthe number of replies from people

03:17SPEAKERwho were very excited about just blowing it up.

03:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

03:21SPEAKER- Makes me happy that we're just not gonna

03:22SPEAKERhave to deal with it.

03:23SPEAKER- Look, man, the president once said,

03:26SPEAKER"Hey, why don't we stop this hurricane

03:27SPEAKER"by firing a nuke or two at it?"

03:29SPEAKERAnd that's the mindset we're dealing with here.

03:33SPEAKERThese are not our best and brightest minds in charge.

03:35SPEAKER- Hi, man, nuclear weapons.

03:37SPEAKERWhat problems can't they solve?

03:38SPEAKER(upbeat music)

03:53SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:06SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Bot.

04:10SPEAKERI'm Will.

04:11SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

04:12SPEAKERI am Brad, it turns out.

04:14SPEAKERStill, continue to be.

04:15SPEAKER- I have so many Brad's in my life now, it turns out.

04:17SPEAKER- Wait.

04:18SPEAKER- Brad Charcus over PC World.

04:19SPEAKER- Right, yes, of course.

04:20SPEAKER- 2Xing Brad's these days.

04:22SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:23SPEAKER- Are you gonna do Brad Muir like that?

04:24SPEAKER- I don't see Brad Muir anymore.

04:25SPEAKERHe got, he went to Valve and disappeared.

04:27SPEAKER- Yep.

04:28SPEAKER(laughing)

04:28SPEAKER- What happens to everybody who goes to work at Valve?

04:30SPEAKERYou're like, "Oh, hey man, I used to see all the time."

04:32SPEAKERNo, nope, never again.

04:33SPEAKER- That's right.

04:34SPEAKERVanished into the Valve vortex.

04:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:36SPEAKER- He's not the only one I know.

04:37SPEAKER- He's in there out cranking out Deadfall or,

04:39SPEAKERwhat's that game, Dead?

04:41SPEAKERWhat's there, not Dota for first person Dota?

04:44SPEAKER- I'm starting to worry about myself.

04:46SPEAKERI should be able to remember things like this.

04:47SPEAKERIt's Deadlock, right?

04:49SPEAKER- Deadlock.

04:49SPEAKER- In my defense, there are a lot of dead blank games

04:52SPEAKERon Steam.

04:53SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not a great name.

04:55SPEAKER- Deadlock?

04:56SPEAKERYes, Deadlock.

04:57SPEAKERThere's a boomer shooter that came out

05:00SPEAKERin the last few years.

05:00SPEAKERI hate the term boomer shooter, but I just used it

05:02SPEAKER'cause we've, that ship has sailed.

05:04SPEAKER- Look, it's the Metroidvania of this decade.

05:06SPEAKERWe just gotta suck it up and get used to it.

05:08SPEAKER- It's not, it's not Deadlock.

05:09SPEAKERIt is, what is it called?

05:10SPEAKERI can, like, I can picture the box art,

05:13SPEAKERthe quasi box art on Steam of this other game

05:15SPEAKERI'm talking about right now in my head,

05:16SPEAKERbut I can't remember the name.

05:17SPEAKERIt's Dead something.

05:18SPEAKER- Deadlink?

05:19SPEAKER- Deadlink, that's the other one.

05:20SPEAKER- Deadlink rips.

05:21SPEAKERDeadlink is really good.

05:22SPEAKER- Oh, have you played it?

05:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I played it.

05:24SPEAKERI have played 22 hours of it, according to Steam.

05:27SPEAKER- Okay, that's like way beyond,

05:28SPEAKERI'm just gonna play this on a stream.

05:29SPEAKERThat's like, that's actually playing a game.

05:32SPEAKER- Also, I'm gonna tell you, it is not a boomer shooter.

05:34SPEAKERIt just kind of looks like one.

05:35SPEAKERIt's a roguelite.

05:36SPEAKERYeah, it's really good.

05:37SPEAKER- Maybe I should check that out.

05:38SPEAKER- It has a good progression.

05:39SPEAKERThe boss battles are fun.

05:40SPEAKERIt's smart.

05:41SPEAKER- Also, it's way newer than I thought.

05:43SPEAKERIt's like 18 months ago.

05:45SPEAKER- Yeah, I played it.

05:46SPEAKERI played it last year quite a bit.

05:47SPEAKER- But no, I have not played Deadlock,

05:48SPEAKERthe Valve's third person Dota.

05:51SPEAKER- I played that with a friend of the show,

05:53SPEAKERMatt Kessler, and friend of the show, Ben Pack,

05:56SPEAKERwhen it was, when the beta was new,

05:59SPEAKERand I'm not capable of learning that kind of complicated,

06:03SPEAKERlike, there's too much.

06:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it does a lot.

06:06SPEAKER- Oh man, Brad.

06:07SPEAKER- What?

06:08SPEAKER- The ice cream truck is outside.

06:09SPEAKER- Oh no.

06:10SPEAKER- It's outside my door.

06:11SPEAKER- But you're gonna tell me my DBX was jacked up again?

06:14SPEAKER- No, I'm gonna text my wife

06:15SPEAKERand tell her that the ice cream truck is outside.

06:17SPEAKERI'm gonna just tell her to get me something.

06:19SPEAKERThis is, we can just put this in.

06:20SPEAKERThis is, this is, this is my life.

06:22SPEAKER- Okay, all right.

06:22SPEAKERWell, internet enabled ice cream truck, here we go.

06:25SPEAKERWhat are your ideas for enhancing the ice cream truck

06:27SPEAKERexperience with modern connected internet technology?

06:30SPEAKER- So the ice cream truck has an app, right?

06:31SPEAKERI should, I can open the app and see where it is

06:36SPEAKERin the neighborhood on ice cream truck day.

06:37SPEAKERBut I wish it gave me a notification in the morning.

06:40SPEAKERI was like, hey, the ice cream truck's gonna be

06:41SPEAKERin your neighborhood at like three o'clock.

06:43SPEAKER'Cause then I could prepare.

06:44SPEAKERLike sometimes I don't have pants on,

06:45SPEAKERand then I have to walk further down the street

06:48SPEAKERto get the ice cream.

06:49SPEAKERIt's a real problem.

06:50SPEAKER- You don't need pants on to go get the ice cream?

06:52SPEAKER- I mean, okay.

06:54SPEAKERI don't need pants, but I don't, you know,

06:55SPEAKERsometimes I'm sitting around in like a pair of flannel pants

06:57SPEAKERor, you know, like loungewear.

07:00SPEAKER- That's what, man?

07:01SPEAKERFlannel pants and ice cream trucks go together like...

07:04SPEAKER- Eh, I'm too old to walk to the ice cream truck

07:06SPEAKERin my, in my jammie jams, I think.

07:09SPEAKERYou know what I'm not too old to do?

07:11SPEAKER- What is that?

07:11SPEAKER- Turn Qs into As.

07:14SPEAKER- That's right, it's a lifelong pursuit.

07:15SPEAKER- It's, it's every week, every month I know,

07:18SPEAKERI know that the end of the month is coming

07:21SPEAKERwhen it's time to turn Qs into As.

07:22SPEAKERNow this week...

07:23SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I mean, actually, scientists have determined,

07:26SPEAKERphysicists have determined, I don't know if you know this,

07:28SPEAKERthey have determined the quantity of Qs in the universe

07:31SPEAKERwill always exceed the quantity of As.

07:34SPEAKER- Really?

07:35SPEAKER- Until the end of the universe,

07:36SPEAKERthe quantity of As will never exceed that of Qs.

07:38SPEAKER- Is this like an entropy situation?

07:40SPEAKERThis is like...

07:40SPEAKER- I believe that's the case.

07:41SPEAKER- Wow, that's crazy.

07:42SPEAKER- Every A begets two additional Qs.

07:45SPEAKER- Wow, wow, I should have known, I should have known.

07:47SPEAKERSo we're hassling the end of the universe

07:49SPEAKERby answering all these Qs and turning them into As.

07:52SPEAKER- Pretty much.

07:53SPEAKER- If you have a Q that you would like to turn into an A,

07:55SPEAKERyou can send it to techpod@content.town or, alternately,

07:59SPEAKERyou can, if you're in the Discord,

08:01SPEAKERwhich you can get to by subscribing to the Patreon

08:03SPEAKERby going to patreon.com/techpod,

08:04SPEAKERgiving us five bucks a month,

08:06SPEAKERgetting access to the Discord

08:07SPEAKERand a wonderful community of delightful nerds,

08:10SPEAKERand also the Patreon exclusive episodes.

08:12SPEAKER- And it's bottomless Q-ole?

08:15SPEAKER- Yeah, we have a Q.

08:16SPEAKER- We should rename that the Q-hole.

08:18SPEAKER- The Q-hole.

08:19SPEAKER- Yeah, because that's what it is.

08:21SPEAKERPeople post Qs, the Qs disappear.

08:23SPEAKERIt's like a bottomless Q-hole.

08:24SPEAKER- That's right, it is.

08:25SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, you can post your Qs there.

08:28SPEAKERWe will turn them into As,

08:29SPEAKERmaybe on the next Questions Seeking Answers episode.

08:32SPEAKERAnd this is the,

08:33SPEAKERI thought this wasn't the last episode of the month,

08:34SPEAKERbut it actually is, isn't it?

08:36SPEAKER- Technically, it is.

08:36SPEAKERThis was a short month, as everyone knows about February.

08:39SPEAKER- Yeah, 30 days have September, April, June, and November,

08:42SPEAKERall the rest of 31, except for February,

08:44SPEAKER'cause it's fucked up.

08:45SPEAKERThat's how the run goes.

08:46SPEAKER- Is indeed fucked up.

08:47SPEAKERI'm sure you've seen that news report about February.

08:50SPEAKER- No, we'll talk about it later.

08:51SPEAKER- I've talked about it too much on podcast this month.

08:54SPEAKER- Okay.

08:54SPEAKER- Anyway, yeah, like we're, I mean,

08:56SPEAKERtechnically we are within guidelines

08:57SPEAKERto do the Q&A this week,

08:59SPEAKERalthough it is a short month, so it hasn't been that long.

09:01SPEAKERBut also, I think we have an exciting guest episode

09:03SPEAKERcoming up, hopefully soon.

09:04SPEAKER- We have a couple of exciting guest episodes coming up.

09:07SPEAKER- Yes, so that, we decided to go ahead

09:09SPEAKERand knock out the Q&A this week

09:11SPEAKERto make room for some fun guest action

09:13SPEAKERcoming in the near future.

09:14SPEAKEROne of those, one of those I'm very excited about.

09:17SPEAKERI mean, I'm excited about all of them,

09:18SPEAKERbut the one that is like-

09:20SPEAKER- I'm excited about both of them

09:21SPEAKERfor completely different reasons.

09:23SPEAKER- What I mean is the one that is enough in the works

09:26SPEAKERthat we're pretty sure it's gonna happen,

09:27SPEAKERthe one that has a Google Doc attached to it

09:29SPEAKERis what I'm saying.

09:29SPEAKER- Oh, gotcha.

09:30SPEAKER- Like that one is far enough along

09:31SPEAKERthat I'm confident we will-

09:33SPEAKER- You're stoked about it.

09:34SPEAKER- Actually do that one,

09:35SPEAKER'cause we're making notes about it with the guests now.

09:37SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, turn your Qs into As.

09:40SPEAKERBrad, we have a big giant list of Qs here.

09:42SPEAKERWe've already burned like 20 minutes

09:43SPEAKERtalking about nonsense and ice cream trucks.

09:44SPEAKERWhat do you got?

09:46SPEAKER- That's this podcast, right?

09:48SPEAKER- I mean, kind of, but also, you know, maybe not.

09:51SPEAKEROh, well, hold on, while you're looking for a question,

09:54SPEAKERI wanna thank everybody who signed up

09:55SPEAKERfor the newsletter this week,

09:56SPEAKER'cause it was very sweet and people were very excited.

09:59SPEAKERAnd if you'd like to know more,

10:00SPEAKERyou can go to next.content.town,

10:01SPEAKERanother fine Content Town product to check it out.

10:04SPEAKER- That's right.

10:05SPEAKERLet's come on down to Content Town.

10:07SPEAKER- That's what we say, come on down to Content Town.

10:10SPEAKER- Oh boy.

10:11SPEAKER- All right, I have not long ago registered my displeasure

10:15SPEAKERwith the term content on a different podcast.

10:17SPEAKER- Look, this is an ironic Content Town.

10:20SPEAKER- Yes, I hope so.

10:21SPEAKERWell, then that's a great lead in

10:24SPEAKERto the first email that I'm gonna read here.

10:26SPEAKERSpeaking of doing things ironically,

10:29SPEAKERWill in Vancouver, British Columbia.

10:31SPEAKERHey y'all, we pronounce .ca as the letter C-A,

10:35SPEAKERas in .ca, presumably because .ca sounds dumb.

10:38SPEAKER- Did you say .ca or did I say .ca?

10:40SPEAKER- I said .ca, I referred to,

10:42SPEAKERwhat was the candy site that we were talking about

10:44SPEAKERbuying Smarties and stuff on last week?

10:45SPEAKER- I don't know, some, yeah.

10:47SPEAKER- Let's say, you know, Canadian candy code .ca

10:49SPEAKERis what I said.

10:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't, I've never said .ca in my life.

10:52SPEAKERThis is the one time that I'm in the right on pronunciation.

10:55SPEAKER- Here's a little secret for you.

10:57SPEAKERI said .ca because it sounds dumb.

11:00SPEAKER- Hmm, interesting.

11:01SPEAKER- That's what we in the business

11:02SPEAKERlike to refer to as an affectation.

11:05SPEAKER- So it's like when I call .uk the ukes,

11:08SPEAKERis that the same?

11:09SPEAKER- Sure, sure, do you remember when Ryan Davis

11:12SPEAKERused to pronounce robot like robot?

11:14SPEAKER- Wait, that was a bit?

11:15SPEAKER- Of course it was.

11:16SPEAKER- Look, the one defining characteristic of Ryan Davis

11:20SPEAKERis that it was almost impossible to tell

11:22SPEAKERwhen he was serious about something

11:23SPEAKERwhen he was yanking a chain.

11:25SPEAKER- Well, okay, apparently that is somewhat the case

11:27SPEAKERwith me as well because I don't go around saying .ca

11:31SPEAKERexcept when I think it sounds funny on a podcast.

11:33SPEAKER- It was pretty funny.

11:34SPEAKERI didn't even clock it as the best, is the funniest thing.

11:36SPEAKERI was so tuned into the Smarties.

11:38SPEAKER- Also it's funny because it sounds like .com, but it's not.

11:41SPEAKERThat's the other reason, that's why it's so unsettling

11:44SPEAKER'cause you hear two thirds of it

11:45SPEAKERand think they're going to say .com

11:47SPEAKERand then you're like, oh, where did the DM go?

11:49SPEAKERThat's not right.

11:50SPEAKER- Arguably .ca is better 'cause it's one less letter.

11:53SPEAKERLike I would happily have a .ca website

11:55SPEAKERif I had the opportunity.

11:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, why are we not all just using .us?

11:59SPEAKER- Well, I mean, you know, there's a thing.

12:01SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, there's that.

12:03SPEAKERThere's also, did you know I actually registered a .us once?

12:06SPEAKER- Really?

12:07SPEAKER- I cannot apply privacy protections to the DNS records

12:10SPEAKERfor a .us or the registry records rather.

12:13SPEAKERYou can't like, you can't anonymize the ownership.

12:16SPEAKER- You gotta get that P.O. box.

12:17SPEAKERYou don't wanna have your home address up there.

12:19SPEAKER- Yeah, so I unregistered, I just had to eat the money

12:23SPEAKERI had registered the .us with right away.

12:26SPEAKER- Yep, I had a .pro at one point

12:29SPEAKERthat I had to do the same thing on

12:30SPEAKER'cause it also would not let you privatize.

12:33SPEAKER- Man, domains have gotten to be such a mess.

12:34SPEAKERLike there are so many out there,

12:36SPEAKERlike the kind of VIP premium type domains

12:38SPEAKERthat just by default are like hundreds of dollars a year now.

12:43SPEAKER- I look at one day, one day, Brad,

12:46SPEAKERthe little town, I wonder if there's a town called Content.

12:49SPEAKERIs there a city?

12:51SPEAKER- There's gotta be.

12:52SPEAKER- Named Content.

12:53SPEAKER- There's a town with just about any name

12:55SPEAKERyou can think of at this point.

12:56SPEAKER- Hmm, no, I don't see any town named Content at this point.

13:02SPEAKER- Well.

13:04SPEAKER- Someday somebody's gonna found a town called Content,

13:06SPEAKERMissouri or something and they're gonna be like,

13:07SPEAKER"Hey man, we need to get our domain."

13:11SPEAKERAnd then they're gonna come to us

13:13SPEAKERand they're gonna write a fat Content town check.

13:16SPEAKER- Yep.

13:17SPEAKER- It's our ticket out of this hellhole.

13:18SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

13:19SPEAKER- I like this hellhole, anyway.

13:21SPEAKER- I don't mind telling you before I move on,

13:23SPEAKERthe .us I registered was metrocity.us.

13:26SPEAKER- Metro city?

13:27SPEAKER- Metro city from Final Fight.

13:30SPEAKER- Wow, that's pretty good. - I was pretty stoked

13:31SPEAKERabout that domain until I looked at the registration on it

13:34SPEAKERand I was like, "Ah, let's not."

13:36SPEAKER- It's a good choice.

13:37SPEAKER- Yeah, let's see, here is an email from Aaron.

13:41SPEAKERI actually have not read this entire email yet.

13:42SPEAKERYou flagged it, so hopefully you've got something

13:44SPEAKERto say about it.

13:45SPEAKERI recently bought a neat little spectrum analyzer for work

13:48SPEAKERand thought I'd pass it along

13:49SPEAKERsince it seems like something you guys would be into.

13:52SPEAKERIt's called Tiny SA and it runs open source software

13:55SPEAKERand seems like a community driven project

13:57SPEAKERto provide a cheaper spectrum analyzer

13:59SPEAKERfor radio hobbyists and the like.

14:01SPEAKERI worked for a public utility

14:02SPEAKERand managed two large AMI networks for metering

14:06SPEAKERthat use RF for communication.

14:08SPEAKERAnd I grabbed it for some basic spectrum analysis

14:10SPEAKERfor testing equipment and potential interference.

14:13SPEAKERI haven't quite put it to the test yet,

14:14SPEAKERjust tinkering with it so far,

14:15SPEAKERbut I think it will end up useful.

14:17SPEAKERTinySA.org is the Wiki, very grassroots, tinkery stuff.

14:23SPEAKER- I think that's rad.

14:24SPEAKERI just thought it was a cool project

14:25SPEAKERand wanted to highlight it

14:26SPEAKER'cause I hadn't heard of that before,

14:27SPEAKERbut it has, it has very strong,

14:29SPEAKERlike pine cell, you know, pine cell

14:32SPEAKERand like the stuff that they do over there, vibes.

14:35SPEAKERSo I thought it was rad.

14:36SPEAKER- This thing does look cool.

14:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:38SPEAKER- It's just, it's just a little box with two coax jacks.

14:41SPEAKER- I was stoked that Aaron shared it with us.

14:44SPEAKER- And a screen on it, that looks neat.

14:46SPEAKERAnd the webpage looks very honest, I'll say.

14:50SPEAKERLike any open source project that has got a webpage

14:52SPEAKERthat looks like this, that is,

14:54SPEAKERlet's say of a style that was popular 20 years ago,

14:57SPEAKERis like, all right, they care about the project here,

15:00SPEAKERnot a cool looking webpage.

15:01SPEAKER- Yeah, this looks like a SourceForge webpage

15:05SPEAKERfrom before they had 50 million ads on SourceForge pages.

15:08SPEAKERSo yeah.

15:09SPEAKER- Just a very basic little Wiki.

15:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it's cool.

15:12SPEAKER- All right, you mentioned before we started recording,

15:14SPEAKERyou were looking up for isolation,

15:16SPEAKERso I should read this anonymously signed email, I suppose.

15:19SPEAKER- Yeah, let's go for it.

15:20SPEAKER- I've never noticed this feature

15:21SPEAKERin Windows security before.

15:23SPEAKERPoor isolation, I believe that's the kind of proceeding page

15:27SPEAKERthe way they've got it rendered here with a little arrow.

15:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

15:30SPEAKER- So like from the core isolation page to the feature,

15:32SPEAKERwhich is called memory integrity.

15:34SPEAKERI only recently moved to Windows 11,

15:36SPEAKERmaybe it is new or more obvious here than in Windows 10.

15:39SPEAKERWondering if you could cover what this is and does

15:42SPEAKERand give any recommendations for why you would

15:44SPEAKERor would not turn it on.

15:46SPEAKER- So core isolation and memory integrity.

15:48SPEAKERCore isolation is the thing,

15:50SPEAKERis the overarching name for all of the features

15:53SPEAKERthat use virtualization based security.

15:55SPEAKERSo they run core Windows processes in a hypervisor,

15:59SPEAKERlike basically a VM that runs at the hardware level,

16:03SPEAKERso that malicious software that's running in Windows

16:07SPEAKERat user level can't interact with it

16:10SPEAKERor can't write into its memory spaces and stuff like that.

16:12SPEAKER- Yeah, is this new in Windows 11?

16:14SPEAKER'Cause I remember when 11 came out reading about

16:16SPEAKERa bunch of new virtualization and sandboxing stuff

16:19SPEAKERthey had built into it.

16:20SPEAKER- If I recall, this is a Windows 11 feature.

16:22SPEAKERI don't think this ever got rolled back to Windows 10,

16:24SPEAKERbut I'm not 100% on that.

16:25SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't realize that wasn't just enabled

16:27SPEAKERby default in all installs.

16:29SPEAKER- Well, so whether it's enabled by default or not

16:33SPEAKERdepends on a bunch of UEFI settings.

16:36SPEAKERSo like if you don't have virtualization acceleration

16:38SPEAKERon in your UEFI, which is often off by default

16:41SPEAKERon consumer PCs and consumer motherboards,

16:44SPEAKERit won't toggle it on when you boot Windows the first time.

16:49SPEAKERAlso, there's kind of famously a pretty,

16:52SPEAKERoh, okay, so hold on, memory integrity

16:55SPEAKERis a different part of that that prevents,

16:58SPEAKERthat basically labels certain processes

17:00SPEAKERas high security processes and physically, again,

17:04SPEAKERuses the virtualization-based protection

17:07SPEAKERto prevent other threads from being able to write

17:10SPEAKERto that memory through a variety of attacks and processes.

17:14SPEAKERThe TLDR is that on gaming machines,

17:18SPEAKERon normal computers like a laptop or whatever,

17:20SPEAKERit's work machines, stuff that you have specific stuff on,

17:23SPEAKERyou probably want to have this on

17:25SPEAKERif your machine supports it.

17:27SPEAKERIt's, they're good security things.

17:28SPEAKERIt's a little bit of a performance hit.

17:30SPEAKERIt's not the kind of thing you're gonna notice

17:31SPEAKERif you're using Excel and web browsers and stuff like that.

17:34SPEAKERIf you're playing games, there was a big thing

17:37SPEAKERa few years ago where a bunch of gaming hardware YouTubers

17:41SPEAKERcame out and were like, hey man,

17:43SPEAKERthese settings are eating 10% of your performance

17:46SPEAKERand the actual number is between like four and 10%,

17:49SPEAKERdepending on the benchmark and the test.

17:52SPEAKERIf you turn off specifically the memory integrity thing,

17:57SPEAKERI have it off on this machine

18:01SPEAKER'cause I was testing something

18:02SPEAKERand then forgot to turn it back on.

18:04SPEAKERI'm probably at the end, turning it on and off

18:07SPEAKERrequires a reboot, which is the only reason

18:08SPEAKERI didn't do it before we started the shows

18:10SPEAKER'cause I didn't want to have to reopen a bazillion windows.

18:12SPEAKERI'm probably gonna turn it back on.

18:15SPEAKERI feel like the downside of running it

18:19SPEAKERis not as significant as the,

18:23SPEAKERis not, the downside of not running it

18:25SPEAKERis not as good as the upside that you get

18:28SPEAKERfrom the extra performance in a handful of benchmarks.

18:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I tend to agree.

18:32SPEAKERYou know, cyber is getting kind of scary out there

18:35SPEAKERand I'm increasingly pro security features

18:38SPEAKERon stuff like this.

18:39SPEAKERMy memory integrity apparently was on by default

18:42SPEAKERas I pulled up here.

18:43SPEAKER- Yeah, so since you did a clean Windows 11 install recently

18:46SPEAKERand I bet you turned on virtualization

18:48SPEAKERsince you used VM sometimes,

18:51SPEAKERyou were probably headed on by default.

18:54SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, if you buy a laptop from Dell

18:57SPEAKERor Lenovo or something like that,

18:58SPEAKERit's gonna ship with this turned on.

19:00SPEAKERIt's not a bad feature.

19:01SPEAKERIt's something that's definitely worth using.

19:04SPEAKERAnd the only time I wouldn't turn it on probably

19:08SPEAKERis on a pure gaming machine

19:10SPEAKERthat I don't do any downloading applications.

19:13SPEAKERI don't download files from other people,

19:15SPEAKERnone of that stuff.

19:16SPEAKER- Like if you literally just have a Steam install

19:18SPEAKERand you just log into it and play games

19:19SPEAKERand like nothing else, like a home theater PC,

19:23SPEAKERsomething that's under your TV or whatever,

19:24SPEAKERlike that's probably fine,

19:26SPEAKERbut anything that you put any sensitive information on,

19:28SPEAKERany personal data, I would not.

19:30SPEAKER- Or more have a threat surface on,

19:34SPEAKERlike if you're downloading tools and stuff like that,

19:36SPEAKERor you're using different files from other people

19:37SPEAKERand all sorts of stuff like that.

19:39SPEAKERSo, yeah. - Yes, yeah.

19:40SPEAKERI, before we move on, speaking of computer security,

19:43SPEAKERI have successfully enabled secure boot

19:45SPEAKERon both of my computers after manually generating keys,

19:49SPEAKERsigning keys, signing the boot loaders on both machines,

19:53SPEAKERand then enrolling the keys into the UEFI.

19:55SPEAKERI'm very proud.

19:56SPEAKER- So did you back up your boot keys and all that stuff?

19:59SPEAKER- No, what took the longest,

20:02SPEAKER'cause the only information I could find

20:03SPEAKERwas for fully purging all the keys from your UEFI

20:06SPEAKERand generating all of your own, which seems insane.

20:10SPEAKERLike, let's be real, that seems insane

20:12SPEAKERbecause that's removing Microsoft signing keys,

20:15SPEAKERwhich ship with every new motherboard on the market.

20:17SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds crazy.

20:18SPEAKER- Means you would have to manually sign

20:20SPEAKERyour Windows bootloader

20:21SPEAKERand anything Windows is doing to make it work.

20:24SPEAKER- Nope.

20:25SPEAKER- So the thing that took me a little more time

20:26SPEAKERthat I couldn't find any guides or information about

20:29SPEAKERwas generating just one sign

20:32SPEAKERand one extra pair of signing keys,

20:34SPEAKERand then enrolling that public key

20:37SPEAKERon top of what ships with the motherboard.

20:39SPEAKERSo I finally figured that out.

20:40SPEAKERAnd I was very pleased when it actually worked.

20:43SPEAKERNow I still can't actually use secure boot

20:46SPEAKERon my NAS right now

20:47SPEAKERbecause I have to sign the ZFS kernel module

20:50SPEAKERthat makes ZFS work on my NAS.

20:52SPEAKER- Nope.

20:53SPEAKER- Like when Linux boots up to the point

20:55SPEAKERwhere it tries to load the ZFS module

20:57SPEAKERand then it alts on unsigned module.

21:00SPEAKERSo now I got to figure out

21:01SPEAKERhow to sign my kernel modules anyway.

21:03SPEAKER- This way madness lies.

21:04SPEAKER- Oh, I'm almost there.

21:05SPEAKERI was like 90% of the way there, you know?

21:07SPEAKERAnd the cool thing is if I set it up right from now on,

21:12SPEAKERit should sign all of my kernel modules

21:14SPEAKERgoing forward as they are built.

21:16SPEAKER- Oh, that's nice.

21:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so like I just have to do one time set up

21:19SPEAKERonce I figured that out.

21:20SPEAKERAnd then like any kernel modules

21:21SPEAKERthat get compiled going forward just get signed.

21:23SPEAKER- I like that.

21:24SPEAKER- Yeah, computer security.

21:27SPEAKERAll right, actually we got one more email

21:31SPEAKERkind of in the same vein.

21:33SPEAKERNot exactly, but it's more Windows compatibility stuff

21:36SPEAKERthat I feel like I want to touch on.

21:37SPEAKER- There's a couple about Windows 10 EOL

21:40SPEAKERif you want to talk about those.

21:41SPEAKER- That's the one.

21:42SPEAKERThis is one from Clifton here.

21:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

21:45SPEAKER- You guys have been discussing October of 2025

21:47SPEAKERand Windows 10.

21:48SPEAKERThat's for people who don't know

21:49SPEAKERthat's the end of life date for Windows 10

21:51SPEAKERwhen they theoretically are going to stop supporting

21:54SPEAKERWindows 10 unless they push that out,

21:55SPEAKERwhich I personally I don't think they're going to now.

21:59SPEAKER- I mean, they did it with seven, did they not?

22:00SPEAKERI'm pretty sure.

22:01SPEAKER- They've already pushed this one out a little bit.

22:02SPEAKER- They did extend the seven EOL significantly, didn't they?

22:06SPEAKER- Yeah, but I think the difference is

22:08SPEAKERthat Windows 11 is a much better product

22:10SPEAKERthan Windows 8 was.

22:12SPEAKER- Fair, I didn't consider it that way.

22:15SPEAKERI forgot about the product subsequent to Windows 7

22:19SPEAKERthat they were trying to paper over.

22:20SPEAKER- I'm going to go ahead and tell you the number of people

22:23SPEAKERwho when you're like, yeah, Windows 8 really stunk

22:25SPEAKERand they're looking at you with a blank stare

22:26SPEAKERlike what the hell are you talking about?

22:28SPEAKERWindows 8 has been completely memory holed

22:30SPEAKERby so many people.

22:31SPEAKER- That I fully believe.

22:32SPEAKERI barely ran it.

22:33SPEAKERI think I went back to seven, if I'm not mistaken.

22:35SPEAKER- Yeah, you did.

22:36SPEAKERI'm absolutely positive you did.

22:38SPEAKER- Probably most people did.

22:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

22:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know, maybe not.

22:42SPEAKERAnd also when you think about like the move

22:44SPEAKERto requiring the TPM, all the security stuff

22:46SPEAKERthat's built into 11,

22:47SPEAKERI could actually maybe see them wanting

22:49SPEAKERto rip the Band-Aid off and just say,

22:51SPEAKERyou know what, that's sorry, that's it.

22:53SPEAKER- It's a real choice, but anyway.

22:55SPEAKER- Yeah, in fact, actually the question from Warbird

22:57SPEAKERfrom the Discord that I wanted to read right after this

22:59SPEAKERalso touches on the subject.

23:01SPEAKERI imagine we're gonna be talking increasingly

23:03SPEAKERabout Windows 10's end of life as the year wears on.

23:06SPEAKER- I think there's probably at least two episodes in this,

23:08SPEAKERwhich we can talk about in a sec.

23:10SPEAKER- Yes, anyway, here's this email from Clifton.

23:12SPEAKERYou guys have been discussing October 2025 and Windows 10.

23:16SPEAKERSo I went to upgrade to 24H2 on my Dell Optiplex 3020.

23:20SPEAKERI currently run Windows 11 Pro 22H2.

23:23SPEAKERLike, okay, I know this is a lot of version numbers

23:26SPEAKERand years and stuff here, so I just wanna reiterate.

23:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:30SPEAKER- Clifton is already running Windows 11 Pro 22H2.

23:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:34SPEAKER- I am getting told I cannot upgrade.

23:37SPEAKERDell shows my machine is not Windows 11 capable.

23:40SPEAKERDo I own a brick now?

23:42SPEAKERAll I do with it is pay bills, job search,

23:44SPEAKERand occasionally CNC design through easel.

23:47SPEAKERSo again, in other words,

23:50SPEAKERhe's already on a version of Windows 11,

23:52SPEAKERbut trying to upgrade to the current version of Windows 11,

23:54SPEAKERit's telling him his machine is not compatible

23:56SPEAKERwith Windows 11, so what do you got?

23:58SPEAKER- Okay, so the problem is almost certainly

24:01SPEAKERthat they don't have the appropriate kind of TPM,

24:04SPEAKERwhich is a security module.

24:06SPEAKER- Well, would that not have prevented

24:07SPEAKERWindows 11 install in the first place?

24:09SPEAKER- Well, you know, it's funny you say that,

24:11SPEAKERbecause for a while you could install Windows 11

24:13SPEAKERwithout a TPM.

24:14SPEAKER- I knew that, but if this machine came from Dell, though,

24:17SPEAKERwouldn't everything have been

24:20SPEAKERon the up and up with the install?

24:21SPEAKER- So I looked up the specific machine.

24:25SPEAKERThey gave me a, did I not know about it?

24:30SPEAKERI didn't.

24:31SPEAKERIt's a four series Intel CPU,

24:33SPEAKERwhich is before the TPM2 was available.

24:36SPEAKER- Wait, as in fourth gen?

24:38SPEAKER- Fourth gen, yeah, Intel Core 2 for something,

24:41SPEAKER49, 57, I think, if I remember right.

24:46SPEAKERSo it's probably actually not supported,

24:48SPEAKERbut there's a lot of machines in the kind of mid,

24:51SPEAKERthe like seventh, I think it's Sandy Bridge on.

24:54SPEAKERYou could put a TPM module onto the motherboard.

24:57SPEAKERThere's a header for it.

24:58SPEAKERIt looks kind of like a USB header, but it's not.

25:01SPEAKER- Yeah, my Z170 board that I ran a Kaby Lake,

25:03SPEAKERa 7700K in for a long time, has a TPM header on it.

25:07SPEAKERI never bought a TPM for it,

25:08SPEAKER'cause what did I know about TPMs in 2017?

25:11SPEAKER- Well, and some of those were TPM 1.0 module headers as well

25:16SPEAKERwhich are not supported.

25:17SPEAKER- So this came up on the Discord a few days ago.

25:19SPEAKERI was talking to some people on there about it.

25:20SPEAKERThe consensus seems to be that eighth gen is the first gen

25:23SPEAKERthat is like 100% definitely for sure compatible

25:25SPEAKERwith Windows 11.

25:27SPEAKER- Pretty consistently eighth gen,

25:28SPEAKERif you have the right motherboard, is okay.

25:31SPEAKERMy ninth gen machine, I was able to flip a toggle

25:33SPEAKERin the BIOS and it just worked.

25:35SPEAKER- Yeah, it sounded like an open question for seventh gen

25:38SPEAKERand earlier that even if you did put a TPM on that header

25:40SPEAKERon your board, it may or may not still need the requirements.

25:44SPEAKERWas it the sound of things?

25:45SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and there's also a 16 gig

25:47SPEAKERmemory requirement too.

25:48SPEAKERSo the machine that he has is configured

25:51SPEAKERwith not enough RAM and also the TPM is a problem.

25:57SPEAKERThe nice thing is it's a pretty old computer at this point.

26:02SPEAKERI think the thing I would do is look at like B-Link

26:04SPEAKERand MSI and Asus all have small form factor boxes

26:11SPEAKERthat are essentially, they're gonna be smaller

26:13SPEAKERthan that machine, they're gonna be a lot more powerful.

26:16SPEAKERAnd they'll be like, you can get a 10th gen dual core,

26:20SPEAKERquad core Intel B-Link often for under $150.

26:26SPEAKERAnd that's probably the path I would take for this problem.

26:30SPEAKEROr the other option is there's a lot of Linux

26:33SPEAKERthat will run very well on this era machine.

26:37SPEAKERIt doesn't have the TPM requirements

26:39SPEAKERand it'll actually run much better with eight gigs of memory

26:42SPEAKERthan even your Windows 10 will.

26:45SPEAKER- Yeah, we should probably do a desktop Linux episode

26:49SPEAKERat some points.

26:50SPEAKERSo that's what my whole secure boot odyssey

26:52SPEAKERwas actually just a prelude to.

26:53SPEAKERWe've talked about this before,

26:54SPEAKERsetting up refined to the boot menu on my PC,

26:57SPEAKERwhich I now have on here.

26:58SPEAKERAnd like I spent a few minutes theming it

26:59SPEAKERand it's actually pretty awesome.

27:01SPEAKERIt looks pretty similar to when you hold down an option

27:04SPEAKERon a Mac when you boot it and it just shows

27:06SPEAKERlike the different OS boot options it has found.

27:09SPEAKERIt's basically exactly that.

27:10SPEAKERSo it's kind of cool to have that.

27:12SPEAKERBut anyway, the whole point of setting that menu up

27:14SPEAKERwas to have a fallback for slapping multiple Linux distros

27:18SPEAKERon this machine.

27:19SPEAKERSo I think maybe once we spend some more time with that,

27:21SPEAKERwe should maybe do a thing.

27:23SPEAKER- And it's interesting because one of the biggest questions

27:29SPEAKERI've got on the newsletter is about Linux

27:31SPEAKERfor this October, 2025 problem.

27:33SPEAKERSo I have used in the past, I've used,

27:36SPEAKERI think it's called Chrome Flex.

27:38SPEAKER- Chrome OS Flex.

27:39SPEAKER- Chrome OS Flex, which is Google's like,

27:43SPEAKER"Hey, you have a laptop that's too old

27:45SPEAKERand you want to put Chrome OS on it, OS?"

27:47SPEAKERIs that like the real-ass Chrome OS experience

27:53SPEAKERof like everything is like a menu and an icon

27:55SPEAKERand you don't really have access to the file system and stuff?

27:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like Linux that you can't use

27:59SPEAKERany of the Linux stuff on.

28:00SPEAKERSo it's not like, if you just needed something,

28:04SPEAKERif you just need a web browser, it's great for that.

28:06SPEAKERIf you need to run some applications, maybe is not ideal.

28:12SPEAKERAlso, I was wrong on the system requirements for Windows 11.

28:15SPEAKERIt's four gigabytes of RAM, not 16.

28:19SPEAKERI can't imagine using Windows 11 with four gigabytes of RAM.

28:23SPEAKER- Before we move on here,

28:24SPEAKERI want to allow for the possibility

28:26SPEAKERthat he may have actually, there may just be a typo here

28:28SPEAKERand that he meant he was on Windows 10 Pro 22H2

28:31SPEAKERbecause being on a fourth gen machine,

28:33SPEAKERlike there's no realistic possibility

28:35SPEAKERof getting Windows 11 onto that machine

28:37SPEAKERunless you kind of knew that you were circumventing

28:39SPEAKERthe requirements anyway, so.

28:41SPEAKER- No, you could do it.

28:42SPEAKERIf you built your boot key using Rufus,

28:44SPEAKERyou could flip a flag that would skip the TPM requirement.

28:47SPEAKER- That's what I mean.

28:48SPEAKER- There were a bunch of how-tos on it.

28:49SPEAKER- To do that, you would have to know

28:50SPEAKERthat you had done that, is what I'm saying.

28:52SPEAKER- Yeah, they did it on 110.

28:53SPEAKERI'm looking at their system about page right now.

28:56SPEAKERThey did it on the 10th of January in 2023,

28:59SPEAKERand the version they have is 22H2.

29:01SPEAKERSo it is like, just to be clear,

29:04SPEAKERI had done the exact same thing with my Core i9 9900K machine

29:11SPEAKERwhen the TPM was disabled.

29:14SPEAKEROr, alternately, I had disabled the TPM

29:17SPEAKERafter I did the install.

29:18SPEAKERI don't know which one I did,

29:19SPEAKERbut I was in a situation where I was stuck on 22H2

29:21SPEAKERand it wouldn't upgrade me any further.

29:23SPEAKER- Interesting.

29:23SPEAKERWindows 11, you mean?

29:25SPEAKER- Windows 11, yeah.

29:26SPEAKER- Man, what a mess.

29:27SPEAKER- It's like, just to be clear,

29:30SPEAKERMicrosoft is handling this spectacularly poorly.

29:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, sure,

29:34SPEAKERbut it's also just a very complicated issue in general.

29:37SPEAKER- But it's antithetical to the entire ethos of Microsoft,

29:41SPEAKERwhich is, hey, your old stuff is always gonna work,

29:44SPEAKERand they're gonna abandon a billion computers

29:47SPEAKERwhen they flip the switch in October.

29:50SPEAKER- I mean, I think this was always gonna be

29:51SPEAKERa messy transition though,

29:51SPEAKERbecause it's kind of like the move from BIOS,

29:54SPEAKERlike legacy booting to UEFI though, right?

29:56SPEAKERIt's like the BIOS,

29:58SPEAKERand I didn't realize this until recently,

30:00SPEAKERlike the BIOS has its origins

30:01SPEAKERin the literal original-ass IBM PC from the early '80s.

30:06SPEAKERYou know, like at a certain point,

30:07SPEAKERlike we were on legacy systems for long enough

30:10SPEAKERthat they are just holding us back,

30:11SPEAKERand it's time to move on,

30:12SPEAKERand the transition is always a mess.

30:14SPEAKER- Yeah, but like the transition from the BIOS

30:17SPEAKERto the UEFI stuff happened over three versions of Windows,

30:21SPEAKER'cause it started with Windows Vista 64-bit,

30:23SPEAKERif I remember right,

30:24SPEAKERand then happened with Windows 7 and Windows 8,

30:27SPEAKERand it wasn't until Windows 10 that it was a requirement.

30:29SPEAKERMaybe not even Windows 10. - That sounds right.

30:31SPEAKERI don't think it's even a requirement in 10, is it?

30:33SPEAKERI think you can- - I don't remember.

30:35SPEAKER- I think you can boot regular BIOS in VR

30:39SPEAKERwith Windows 10, I think. - Yeah, but that's my point,

30:42SPEAKERis like having this hard requirement

30:44SPEAKERwhen it's fairly arbitrary for the,

30:48SPEAKERand leaving all these machines that don't support this

30:50SPEAKERthat are less than 10 years old in some cases.

30:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you could argue

30:54SPEAKERit's a little too aggressive,

30:55SPEAKERlike they could have waited for Windows 12

30:57SPEAKERto enforce this requirement,

30:58SPEAKERand by then, most of the machines

31:01SPEAKERthat lack this hardware probably would be out of use.

31:04SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway. - Or quite a few of them.

31:05SPEAKERAnyway, all right, last, since I already brought it up,

31:08SPEAKERwe'll go ahead and read this question from Warbird

31:09SPEAKERfrom Discord entitled, "Do I even keep using Windows?"

31:14SPEAKERI'll condense this one a little bit,

31:15SPEAKER'cause this is less about sticking with Windows 11

31:17SPEAKERand more like does the average person

31:20SPEAKEReven need a Windows machine in general?

31:22SPEAKERWith EOL of Windows 10 approaching,

31:24SPEAKERI'm finding myself at a bit of a loss

31:26SPEAKERas to what to do regarding the Windows desktop in my home.

31:29SPEAKERWith two kids and my spouse and I working full-time jobs,

31:31SPEAKERI primarily find myself using my MacBook Pro

31:33SPEAKERfor quick or uninterrupt, or I'm sorry,

31:35SPEAKERquick or interruptible tasks.

31:37SPEAKERWhen able, my Windows machine hasn't really been powered on

31:40SPEAKERmuch at all in the last year or so.

31:42SPEAKERAnd even then, it's basically only for games,

31:45SPEAKERwhich have also taken a huge hit in the time spent metrics.

31:48SPEAKERI honestly can't really think of a reason

31:50SPEAKERto keep a Windows machine around beyond edge cases

31:52SPEAKERlike Windows-only software or games that don't play nice

31:55SPEAKERwith ARM and/or virtualization.

31:58SPEAKERI'm half thinking it would be best to just grab a Steam Deck

32:00SPEAKERfor easier and more interruptible gaming

32:02SPEAKERwith suspend mode than the Mac offers,

32:04SPEAKERand either ditching running Windows on a desktop entirely,

32:07SPEAKERor at most, getting a small form factor set up

32:10SPEAKERwith modest settings, which is exactly

32:12SPEAKERwhat you just described on the last email.

32:15SPEAKERI've kind of increasingly been thinking for a long time

32:18SPEAKERthat people who don't need specific things about,

32:21SPEAKERor don't have specific needs that a Windows desktop meets

32:24SPEAKERprobably don't need a Windows desktop anymore.

32:26SPEAKER- Because if you don't need a big,

32:28SPEAKERgiant, discrete graphics card,

32:30SPEAKERI would much rather have a laptop than--

32:33SPEAKEREven if you do, in a lot of cases now,

32:35SPEAKERyou can get an external enclosure for the graphics card

32:37SPEAKERand plug it into a laptop or a little B-link or something.

32:40SPEAKER- So the external enclosures,

32:41SPEAKERwe've been doing some testing on them over at PC World,

32:44SPEAKERand Adam really likes them a lot.

32:46SPEAKERThey're definitely up and down on whether they're usable

32:48SPEAKERand whether you're getting the--

32:51SPEAKERThey're definitely a compromise solution for that, right?

32:54SPEAKER'Cause even the best external enclosures

32:57SPEAKERare going through some other weird interface,

32:59SPEAKERand you're not getting full PCI Express lanes,

33:02SPEAKERyou're getting an old version of PCI Express,

33:04SPEAKERor there's something else in the way

33:05SPEAKERthat's making your video card run slower.

33:09SPEAKERThe reasons I like desktop PCs

33:12SPEAKERare that they're appliances, right?

33:14SPEAKERThey're relatively quiet, they're always on.

33:16SPEAKERWhen I need big muscle, then the fans spin up

33:19SPEAKERand they start generating heat

33:20SPEAKERand I'll warm up my whole office.

33:22SPEAKERBut for the most part, it's just a computer

33:27SPEAKERthat's always available.

33:28SPEAKER- Yeah, for people who aren't doing heavy streaming

33:31SPEAKERor media work or stuff,

33:33SPEAKERthings that require a workstation.

33:35SPEAKERAnd obviously, the market has reflected that

33:37SPEAKERwith the massive move toward laptops, right?

33:40SPEAKERI think laptops and tablets dwarf desktop PC sales

33:43SPEAKERat this point, right?

33:44SPEAKER- Laptops are orders of magnitude larger

33:46SPEAKERthan desktop PC sales at this point,

33:47SPEAKEReven if you count in all-in-ones and stuff like the Beelinks.

33:52SPEAKERThe other thing that's happened over the last few years

33:53SPEAKERis if you wanna spend a little tiny bit more money,

33:56SPEAKERyou can get something that's like an APU,

33:59SPEAKERyou can get Beelinks that have APUs from AMD,

34:02SPEAKERand then you get a really nice CPU

34:04SPEAKERand are decent, better than integrated,

34:07SPEAKERnot quite as good as discrete graphics,

34:09SPEAKERall in the same die.

34:11SPEAKERAnd they're more expensive than the Intel options,

34:13SPEAKERbut it's essentially what's in a Steam Deck,

34:15SPEAKERand then you can put whatever you want on.

34:17SPEAKERYou can put Windows, you can put Linux, whatever you want.

34:19SPEAKER- Yeah.

34:20SPEAKER- So yeah, I'm a big fan of the Steam Deck.

34:22SPEAKERIf you want something that's...

34:24SPEAKERThe one thing I will say is you're not gonna do 4K gaming

34:27SPEAKERon an APU or a Steam Deck, right?

34:29SPEAKERYou're gonna play 1080p at the outside,

34:32SPEAKERand it's compromised, but that's probably fine.

34:35SPEAKER- Indeed.

34:37SPEAKERHere's a question from Cat Will Mu.

34:39SPEAKERWhat's the difference between M.2 and NVMe anyway?

34:42SPEAKER- M.2 is the socket,

34:43SPEAKERand NVMe is the protocol that runs across the socket.

34:46SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and NVMe is basically...

34:49SPEAKERWell, let me back up.

34:50SPEAKERM.2, like you said, is the socket.

34:51SPEAKERIt can be both NVMe or SATA, or technically other things.

34:55SPEAKER- They're keyed differently, but yeah.

34:56SPEAKER- But yeah, like typically most sockets,

34:59SPEAKERI mean, check your motherboard manual,

35:00SPEAKERbut most sockets, or quite a few sockets,

35:02SPEAKERcan take either an NVMe drive or a SATA drive.

35:05SPEAKER- Typically, on modern motherboards,

35:07SPEAKERyou might have one socket that will work with SATA,

35:12SPEAKERand the rest are PCI Express.

35:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, there is the element of SATA

35:16SPEAKERjust kind of declining slowly

35:19SPEAKERfrom consumer boards in general.

35:20SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and the thing about the SATA ones,

35:23SPEAKERI found one the other day when I was cleaning up my desk,

35:25SPEAKERand I don't know what I did with it now.

35:28SPEAKERSo they're keyed opposite.

35:29SPEAKERSo the SATA ones have a key on,

35:31SPEAKERif you're holding the drive with the contacts up,

35:34SPEAKERthe keys on the left side,

35:36SPEAKERand the PCI Express ones are on the right side.

35:39SPEAKERThe NVMe drives will give you

35:42SPEAKERa dramatically faster connection

35:45SPEAKERbetween the drive and the computer than the SATA ones will.

35:48SPEAKERThe SATA is limited to SATA speeds,

35:50SPEAKERwhich is like six gigabits per second,

35:52SPEAKERand the NVMe drives run at PCI Express lanes,

35:55SPEAKERso like 20, 40, 60 gigabits per second.

35:58SPEAKER- Right, yeah, NVMe stands for non-volatile memory express.

36:01SPEAKERIt basically is just the storage standard for PCI Express.

36:05SPEAKER- Yeah, and it contains,

36:08SPEAKERit basically tells your computer

36:10SPEAKERhow to talk to an SSD directly.

36:12SPEAKER- Yeah, but the M.2 socket is also an interface

36:15SPEAKERto just the standard PCI Express bus

36:17SPEAKERand the computer in general,

36:18SPEAKERso you can also find peripherals like USB controllers

36:21SPEAKERor extra SATA controllers or network cards.

36:24SPEAKER- You can get, I believe that you can get M.2

36:28SPEAKERto PCI Express slot bridges now.

36:31SPEAKER- I would believe that.

36:32SPEAKER- You plug a thing into your M.2 slot

36:34SPEAKERand then it just turns into a PCI Express slot

36:37SPEAKERthat you can just jam a normal-ass card in.

36:39SPEAKER- I would believe that, actually.

36:41SPEAKERYeah, I think that esoteric or weird M.2 accessories

36:45SPEAKERis a very interesting category of thing.

36:48SPEAKER- I don't, it's funny, I didn't see a whole lot of SATA,

36:51SPEAKERlike in the SATA days,

36:52SPEAKERyou didn't see a whole lot of M.2 weirdness.

36:54SPEAKERIt was basically just a handful of SSDs

36:56SPEAKERand it was mostly for mobile stuff

36:58SPEAKER'cause it was like on the desktop,

36:59SPEAKERyou'd be better off using a PCI Express SSD

37:02SPEAKERor just using a normal SATA drive 'cause they were cheaper.

37:06SPEAKER- Right, but basically, yeah, yeah.

37:08SPEAKER- Question from Patch, in the USB power supply world,

37:12SPEAKERthere has been, they're talking about,

37:14SPEAKERthey're talking about like a little Walmart USB chargers.

37:17SPEAKERIn the USB power supply world,

37:18SPEAKERthere have been a huge rise in gallium nitride.

37:22SPEAKERSome of these now provide up to 500 watts, God, really.

37:25SPEAKER- I didn't know that they go up to 500 watts.

37:28SPEAKER- Class side check that we're hitting like 200 watts,

37:30SPEAKERwhich already sounded kind of scary.

37:32SPEAKERSome of these now provide up to 500 watts

37:34SPEAKERof simultaneous charging across multiple ports

37:38SPEAKERin a relatively small size.

37:39SPEAKERHow come we haven't really seen this happening

37:41SPEAKERin the PC power supply space?

37:43SPEAKERI feel like there is a gap there,

37:44SPEAKERespecially for small form factor PSU.

37:47SPEAKER- There's not a ton of good answers on this

37:49SPEAKERwhen I looked at like why it isn't happening

37:51SPEAKERother than some fairly obvious ones, I think.

37:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, the little bit I was able to find about this

37:56SPEAKERis basically just that it's more expensive

37:58SPEAKERfrom a materials cost standpoint

37:59SPEAKERand that what they're already using

38:01SPEAKERin consumer power supplies for PCs

38:03SPEAKERis doing the job well enough,

38:05SPEAKERbut it's probably not worth jacking up the prices.

38:07SPEAKERI was able to find one made by Corsair.

38:10SPEAKERIt is the AX1600i.

38:13SPEAKERIt's a 1600 watt power supply

38:15SPEAKERwith using gallium nitride transistors.

38:19SPEAKERIt's $610.

38:21SPEAKER- That's a pretty spendy PSU.

38:24SPEAKER- That might offer a clue as to why they are not using

38:26SPEAKERgallium nitride in a lot of PC power supplies

38:28SPEAKERbecause like, you know, competitive prices

38:30SPEAKERis absolutely the name of the game in that market, right?

38:33SPEAKERLike it's probably hard to justify to the average,

38:35SPEAKERlike a gaming PC buyer to spend an extra three to $400

38:39SPEAKERon a power supply for better heat.

38:41SPEAKER- Look, what if you put some really sick LEDs on it?

38:44SPEAKER- You might be on something.

38:45SPEAKERI mean, dude, this thing comes with ARGB PSU cable strips.

38:49SPEAKERHow does it, what does that even mean?

38:51SPEAKERAre these powered cable strips?

38:53SPEAKER- Probably they have lights inside the,

38:55SPEAKERinside the cable, the runners that go to the motherboard.

38:58SPEAKER- They absolutely do.

39:00SPEAKER- That's so sick.

39:02SPEAKER- Add more color to your PC with RGB PSU cable strips

39:07SPEAKERand add on for your PSU cables using a scalable design

39:09SPEAKERto fit any form factor cable,

39:11SPEAKERa hundred individually addressable RGB LEDs each.

39:15SPEAKER- I mean, the other benefit of using GaN,

39:17SPEAKERthese are labeled often GaN, capital G, lowercase a,

39:21SPEAKERcapital N when you look at USB chargers,

39:25SPEAKERthey're more efficient is my understanding as well.

39:27SPEAKERSo there's less waste.

39:28SPEAKER- Right, that's why they're able to get higher wattage

39:30SPEAKERand smaller form factor for the wall warts, I believe.

39:34SPEAKER- This is, I've never seen this before.

39:36SPEAKERThis is bonkers.

39:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:39SPEAKER- You also, like if you're building a machine

39:42SPEAKERfor a warm place, you probably keep efficiency up at this,

39:46SPEAKERwith these versus traditional,

39:48SPEAKERI think it's GAS is the traditional ones.

39:52SPEAKERBut yeah, I don't know.

39:53SPEAKERI, for what it's worth, you can buy IT,

39:58SPEAKERlike micro ITX form factor power supplies

40:00SPEAKERthat are like 1400 watts now.

40:02SPEAKERSo it seems like making them smaller

40:05SPEAKERhasn't required anything particularly like novel,

40:10SPEAKERnovel materials or whatever, so.

40:12SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe if the gallium nitride materials cost

40:15SPEAKERcomes down, you'll start seeing more of that, I don't know.

40:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I would assume so,

40:20SPEAKERbut my guess is that the demand for those power supplies

40:23SPEAKERis so high that the, you know,

40:26SPEAKERit's gonna go to the USB laptops more than anything else.

40:29SPEAKER- Sure.

40:30SPEAKER- Like I really care about the size of my power brick

40:32SPEAKERfor my laptop, and I really don't care

40:34SPEAKERabout the size of my power supply for my PSU.

40:36SPEAKERIt's like got a whole trough for it under there.

40:39SPEAKER- How do you feel about the size of the power brick

40:40SPEAKERfor your graphics card?

40:43SPEAKER- I mean, it's look.

40:45SPEAKER- I don't know how this has become

40:46SPEAKERa practically a PC only Q&A here,

40:49SPEAKERbut here's a question from Annoyed and Tired.

40:52SPEAKERWe were talking to Adam, our friend at PC World

40:54SPEAKERthe other day about this subject.

40:57SPEAKERSeems like power creep on GPUs is a real issue.

40:59SPEAKERDo you think there will be a GPU which requires people

41:01SPEAKERto plug their computer into a 20 amp breaker?

41:04SPEAKERThis is slightly different from what we were talking about

41:06SPEAKERto when we were talking to Adam the other day

41:08SPEAKERand I invoked the Voodoo 5.

41:09SPEAKER- Voodoo 5 6000.

41:11SPEAKER- Voodoo 5 6000, which plugged directly into the wall.

41:13SPEAKERThere was a power cable that had a power brick

41:15SPEAKERand a cable that went straight from the wall

41:16SPEAKERinto your graphics card.

41:18SPEAKER- If I recall right, it had a big giant external power brick

41:21SPEAKERthat was about the same size as the one that shipped

41:23SPEAKERwith the original Dell XPS laptops

41:25SPEAKERthat had probably a GeForce 2 in it, I can't remember.

41:30SPEAKERBut yeah, we had a test, they sent us a dev board

41:34SPEAKERof the Voodoo 5 6000 at maximum PC.

41:36SPEAKERI think it was a four, I think it had a four,

41:40SPEAKERlike it was before the GPU nomenclature,

41:42SPEAKERbut I think it had four, it had two texture units per,

41:48SPEAKERit wasn't compute unit, but whatever, a pixel unit.

41:52SPEAKERAnyway, it was-

41:54SPEAKER- I feel like that's something that gets glossed over

41:55SPEAKERa lot these days, especially people who are not around

41:58SPEAKERfor early 3D accelerators in the 90s,

42:00SPEAKERthat like the term GPU coming about with the GeForce 256.

42:05SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:06SPEAKER- Graphics cards were not GPUs prior to that by name.

42:09SPEAKER- Yeah, they were just triangle setup and texture cards

42:12SPEAKERbasically.

42:13SPEAKER- So like talking about what hardware was on a 3D

42:15SPEAKERaccelerator back then was a little more complicated

42:18SPEAKERor not directly analogous to what we've got now.

42:20SPEAKER- Well, and it was interesting 'cause I wanna say

42:22SPEAKERlike the original 3D effects Voodoo card had one

42:26SPEAKERtriangle setup card and one texture card,

42:30SPEAKERif I remember right?

42:31SPEAKER- That might be right, isn't that where the name TNT

42:33SPEAKERcame from for Nvidia, wasn't it twin texel?

42:35SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that, I didn't remember that.

42:37SPEAKERI believe it was Nvidia twin texel is which I think

42:40SPEAKERtexture texel was basically like texture elements, right?

42:43SPEAKER- Yes.

42:44SPEAKER- Yes, TNT suffix refers to the chip's ability to work

42:47SPEAKERon two texels at once.

42:48SPEAKER- Well, and then the Voodoo 2 was basically the same

42:54SPEAKERvertex setup chip just with two texture chips on it.

42:58SPEAKER- Right.

42:59SPEAKER- So you could multi, you could apply to 'cause people

43:02SPEAKERwere starting to do multiple texture passes in one game,

43:06SPEAKERwhich is really funny now 'cause like your modern,

43:08SPEAKERyour modern video game scene is does the butt loads

43:12SPEAKERof texture of different, they're not textures,

43:16SPEAKERbut they're textures applied different ways for transparency

43:19SPEAKERand lighting and all the millions of things we do, so.

43:22SPEAKER- Shader passes and stuff like that.

43:23SPEAKER- But I guess everybody in games was using one for lights

43:26SPEAKERand one for the texture of the material back then.

43:30SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.

43:31SPEAKER- So that made Quake real fast as the TLDR.

43:34SPEAKER- Yes, anyway, like with all the hand wringing

43:36SPEAKERabout the 12 volt H power cable and melting 50 90s

43:41SPEAKERand stuff back in the news again, like,

43:43SPEAKERand we just throw all that shit out

43:44SPEAKERand just plug the graphics card straight into the wall.

43:46SPEAKERLike, what are we doing here?

43:48SPEAKER- The plugging the graphics card straight into the wall

43:50SPEAKERis not a fantastic solution for as anybody who had an Xbox

43:54SPEAKERone knows because those power bricks get hot

43:57SPEAKERand you always put them someplace where they're not gonna

43:58SPEAKERget good air flow.

43:59SPEAKER- Those power bricks had fans on them.

44:01SPEAKERThe Xbox power brick literally had a fan in it.

44:04SPEAKERIt was almost as like, yeah, the Xbox 360 was really loud.

44:08SPEAKERThe brick was really loud.

44:09SPEAKERThe Xbox one was pretty quiet,

44:10SPEAKERbut the power brick was really loud.

44:12SPEAKERI don't want external power bricks.

44:14SPEAKERTony, I've said this before in the podcast,

44:15SPEAKERbut I interviewed, I think Tony Tomasi of Nvidia

44:19SPEAKERat like the GeForce three launch.

44:21SPEAKERAnd I asked him what the upper limit on what they could do

44:24SPEAKERwas and he pointed at the plug on the wall and was like,

44:26SPEAKERI think the most we can pull from this is 1600 Watts.

44:29SPEAKERSo to answer the question is I don't think we're gonna get

44:31SPEAKERto a point where we have 20 amp breakers required

44:33SPEAKERfor PCs, but like every watt of savings that the CPU vendors

44:41SPEAKERgive us the Nvidia is going to take.

44:46SPEAKER- Probably right.

44:47SPEAKER- And if you wanna hear more about the melting power

44:48SPEAKERconnectors on the 1590, we talked about on the full nerd

44:51SPEAKERthis week.

44:52SPEAKER- What's the 10 second TLDR there?

44:55SPEAKERIs it the card's fault or the cable's fault or user error?

44:58SPEAKERWhat are we doing?

44:59SPEAKER- The 10 second answer is that I'm not an electrical

45:03SPEAKERengineer.

45:04SPEAKERThe folks who have done, who I tend to trust and are not

45:08SPEAKERkind of over the top with this kind of stuff feel like

45:12SPEAKERthey're flying too close.

45:13SPEAKERLike they're trying to deliver too much power for 1590s

45:16SPEAKERexplicitly over, you know, they're trying to deliver

45:20SPEAKER575 Watts over a 600 or 625 watt cable.

45:24SPEAKERThere's also a fair number of cables that fit that spec

45:28SPEAKERthat were rated for 475 Watts that predate the,

45:31SPEAKERyou know, there's been three versions of the spec.

45:33SPEAKERThere was the one that they rolled out with the 3080,

45:36SPEAKERwhich doesn't have the four communications pins.

45:39SPEAKERThere's the 12 volt high power,

45:41SPEAKERwhich came out with the 4090.

45:44SPEAKERAnd then there's the 12 volt two by six.

45:47SPEAKERThey're all kind of compatible with each other,

45:49SPEAKERbut their spec varies slightly between each other.

45:53SPEAKERAnd then the place that it seems like you have problems is

45:56SPEAKERif you have a failed connection on one or more of the load

46:00SPEAKERwires and rather than detecting that there's some problem

46:05SPEAKERwith the cord, it just pushes all of the current

46:08SPEAKERover the wires that are working,

46:11SPEAKERwhich causes them to overheat and potentially cause problems

46:14SPEAKERis what it seems like is happening.

46:16SPEAKER- Well, great.

46:17SPEAKER- And we still, as always is the case,

46:21SPEAKERit's definitely a problem.

46:23SPEAKERIt's unclear how many people it's affecting.

46:25SPEAKERIt's also unclear if they're actually selling any of these

46:28SPEAKERcards because it seems like supply is still incredibly

46:30SPEAKERconstrained.

46:31SPEAKERSo as, as Elena said on the full nerd this week,

46:35SPEAKERlike it's only going to be something that we learn what

46:39SPEAKERactually is happening if somebody's house burns down

46:41SPEAKERprobably.

46:42SPEAKERSo don't run for Mac for Mark and leave your 1590 unattended.

46:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:47SPEAKER- Mark will heat up your machine.

46:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:50SPEAKER- Pretty substantial.

46:51SPEAKERIt wasn't, isn't the 12,

46:52SPEAKER12 volt H power cable design is an ATX thing, right?

46:55SPEAKER- It's so the 12 volt H power was an Nvidia one.

46:58SPEAKERThey got into the PCI express the PCI 3.0 standard.

47:04SPEAKER- ATX 3.0 what do you mean?

47:05SPEAKER- The 12 volt two by six.

47:06SPEAKER- You mean, you mean ATX 3.0?

47:08SPEAKER- Is it ATX 3.0?

47:09SPEAKER- I've got an ATX 3.0 power supply.

47:11SPEAKERI think they're up to 3.1 now.

47:13SPEAKER- Yeah, 12, the 12 volt two by six is the, is the standard.

47:15SPEAKERThe Nvidia one was the 12 volt high power.

47:18SPEAKER- Oh, so that was a design contributed to the spec

47:21SPEAKERby Nvidia?

47:21SPEAKER- That's how it always works, yeah.

47:22SPEAKER- I thought, I thought it was a spec designed by consensus

47:26SPEAKERthat was adopted by Nvidia,

47:27SPEAKERwhich would make way more sense, I think.

47:29SPEAKERBut anyway.

47:29SPEAKER- Everyone else had their input into it.

47:32SPEAKERThen there's slight changes between the 12 volt high power

47:34SPEAKERand the 12 volt two by six.

47:36SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

47:37SPEAKER- Also, other thing, don't buy bootleg or not bootleg,

47:42SPEAKERbut don't buy janky aftermarket 12 volt,

47:45SPEAKERtwo by six or 12 volt high power cables

47:47SPEAKERif you're using a 1590.

47:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that was the whole thing.

47:49SPEAKER- Use the ones that come with your power supply.

47:50SPEAKER- Yes, that was the whole reason I asked was because

47:52SPEAKERoriginally when this started happening with 40 series,

47:54SPEAKERit was mostly all blamed on aftermarket,

47:56SPEAKERlike cable mod is one of the makers of like right angle.

48:00SPEAKER- Well, they had to do a recall.

48:02SPEAKERThey had to do a big recall.

48:03SPEAKERThe problem with the initial launch of the 4090

48:05SPEAKERwas that people weren't getting the cables plugged

48:07SPEAKERall the way in.

48:08SPEAKERSo again, all of the current was going over,

48:11SPEAKERnot all of the cables and problems ensued.

48:13SPEAKER- Right, so that's why I was asking about on the fifties,

48:15SPEAKERlike, is this happening with stock cables,

48:17SPEAKERnot just aftermarket, like weird right angle stuff?

48:21SPEAKER- One of the ones I've seen was an aftermarket cable.

48:25SPEAKEROne of them was a stock cable.

48:26SPEAKEROne of them was a stock cable from a hardware reviewer

48:29SPEAKERwho's probably done, as someone in our chat yesterday

48:32SPEAKERor the other day at The Full Nerd pointed out,

48:34SPEAKERprobably has done way more than the 50 insertions

48:37SPEAKERthat these cables are rated for

48:38SPEAKER'cause they test video cards all the time.

48:40SPEAKERSo like, it's,

48:45SPEAKERthey're flying too close to the sun.

48:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

48:47SPEAKER- Like you shouldn't be able to wear down

48:49SPEAKERan ATX power cable with 50 insertions

48:55SPEAKERbut also most people are never gonna do 50 insertions

48:59SPEAKERon a 12 volt high power.

49:02SPEAKER- Yeah, my stance on this is that I am pretty pleased

49:05SPEAKERthat I am happy at 1440p in terms of my performance needs

49:08SPEAKERand also maybe slap a little power limit on your GPU

49:12SPEAKER'cause you're not really gonna miss anything.

49:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, the nice thing right now

49:16SPEAKERis that the power limiter that's in the Nvidia app,

49:18SPEAKERwhich is a relatively new feature.

49:19SPEAKER- They put that in there.

49:20SPEAKERI still use MSI afterburner for that.

49:21SPEAKER- It doesn't work.

49:22SPEAKERI want it to nap right now. - Great.

49:24SPEAKER- It indicates that it works, but it doesn't work right now.

49:26SPEAKER- Okay, well maybe continue installing MSI afterburner

49:29SPEAKERfor a while then 'cause that definitely works just fine.

49:32SPEAKERAll right, let's do a couple of questions

49:33SPEAKERnot about PCs real quick.

49:35SPEAKER- That sounds great.

49:36SPEAKER- Narfinger asks, trying to get away from Amazon,

49:38SPEAKERwhat are you using to read and buy eBooks?

49:41SPEAKERI've still got a Kindle.

49:42SPEAKERLike I bought a decent Kindle like two, three years ago

49:46SPEAKERthat I have not moved away from yet.

49:48SPEAKERI mostly get books from the library though.

49:51SPEAKERSo I guess that counts as kind of getting away from Amazon.

49:55SPEAKERAnd of course that only helps you

49:56SPEAKERif you have a public library nearby

49:58SPEAKERthat serves eBooks onto Kindles.

50:01SPEAKER- There are a lot of public libraries

50:02SPEAKERthat will give you a card for digital library loans

50:05SPEAKEReven if you aren't in their service area.

50:07SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I think we've talked about that before.

50:09SPEAKERI guess the SF one is so good here.

50:10SPEAKERI've never felt a need to go outside of it though.

50:13SPEAKER- Yeah, so I use Libby a lot for that,

50:16SPEAKERbut through the San Mateo,

50:18SPEAKERBrad and I, despite living 10 miles apart,

50:20SPEAKERlive in different counties, Libby's great.

50:24SPEAKERAnd it lets you dump books from its app over to the Kindle

50:27SPEAKERso I can read them on the ebook reader if I want.

50:30SPEAKER- That's cool.

50:31SPEAKER- I've been buying stuff from Kobo lately.

50:34SPEAKERAnd then I also, Humble does a lot of DRM.

50:38SPEAKERWell, they do a lot.

50:40SPEAKERThere's a bunch of books on Humble.

50:41SPEAKERLike I bought a complete Ursula K. Le Guin collection

50:44SPEAKERa few months ago for like $35.

50:46SPEAKERAnd I downloaded them for the Kobo store

50:50SPEAKERand then just stripped the DRM from them using Calibre

50:53SPEAKERand put them on the thing.

50:54SPEAKERWorth mentioning, if you're listening to this

50:56SPEAKERwhen the episode comes out,

50:57SPEAKERyou have like three days left

50:59SPEAKERto download all of your Kindle purchases

51:02SPEAKER'cause Amazon is removing the ability

51:04SPEAKERto download the Kindle files

51:08SPEAKERand manually put them on your Kindle.

51:10SPEAKER- I didn't know you ever had the option to.

51:12SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause in the old days,

51:13SPEAKERthe Kindles weren't connected to the internet

51:14SPEAKERand you were allowed to download the Kindle,

51:18SPEAKERdownload the book, plug it into USB,

51:20SPEAKERcopy the protected file over to the Kindle

51:22SPEAKERand it would work.

51:23SPEAKERThey're turning that off.

51:25SPEAKER- So I need to do this.

51:26SPEAKERSo to be clear, to get out in front

51:28SPEAKERof whatever policy change is coming,

51:29SPEAKERyou just need to download the files

51:30SPEAKERas long as you've got files locally.

51:32SPEAKER- I think you need to download them

51:33SPEAKERand probably need to strip the DRM from them with Calibre

51:36SPEAKERbefore the change happens on whatever day,

51:38SPEAKERTuesday or Wednesday, it's next week.

51:41SPEAKER- All right, I'll get on that.

51:43SPEAKER- For what it's worth, Calibre makes it very easy.

51:46SPEAKERSo shout out to Calibre.

51:48SPEAKER- Okay, a question from Chip Shirley.

51:51SPEAKERYou all ever find yourselves changing your behavior

51:53SPEAKERon purportedly private digital platforms

51:56SPEAKERlike a calendar or a reminder app?

51:58SPEAKERYou too, skepticism over how private they really are?

52:01SPEAKERFor example, I'll use something like Take Rx

52:04SPEAKERas opposed to using an actual prescription name

52:06SPEAKERin a daily reminder.

52:07SPEAKERI think that is a fine idea personally.

52:10SPEAKER- I do things because I don't want them

52:12SPEAKERto be subpoena-able sometimes.

52:14SPEAKER- Okay, that's not the answer I was expecting.

52:17SPEAKERI mean, I think a more generic version of that

52:20SPEAKERis maybe always use digital technology

52:23SPEAKERwith the assumption that somebody else

52:24SPEAKERmight read it at some point.

52:26SPEAKER- I would argue that if you think that your calendar

52:29SPEAKERor to-do list are not secure,

52:31SPEAKERthen you should probably change your calendar

52:33SPEAKERor to-do list app.

52:34SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean like human error always happens as well.

52:36SPEAKERLike it's not just the inherent security of the thing,

52:39SPEAKERyou know, like you might accidentally make something

52:41SPEAKERglobal to other people. - Yeah, that's true.

52:44SPEAKER- There's always the possibility that a slip-up could happen

52:46SPEAKEReven if the security of the actual product is sound.

52:49SPEAKERBut I think like drug names,

52:51SPEAKERlike the names of the prescriptions you take

52:53SPEAKERmight be a great example of information

52:56SPEAKERyou would not want other people to have.

52:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know.

53:03SPEAKERI try not to be paranoid about stuff like Google.

53:06SPEAKERAnd I know that there's widespread conspiracy theories

53:11SPEAKERabout people saying something in front of their phone

53:15SPEAKERand then their phone showing them ads

53:16SPEAKERfor the thing that they said about in front of.

53:19SPEAKERAnd like I stopped using Facebook

53:21SPEAKER'cause I did not put that past Facebook, right?

53:24SPEAKERThat felt like a thing that Facebook would do.

53:25SPEAKER- Like that sounds like absolutely something

53:27SPEAKERthat some of these companies would be willing to do

53:29SPEAKEReven if they're not currently doing it.

53:31SPEAKERI mean, I do think it is also possible

53:33SPEAKERthat people do talk about subjects in front of their phone,

53:37SPEAKERbut then maybe also forget that they also Googled

53:39SPEAKERthose subjects at some point in the last two, three days.

53:42SPEAKERAnd like, hey, guess what?

53:43SPEAKERYour search history through data being sold

53:46SPEAKERto other companies follows you onto other services

53:48SPEAKERthat run ads.

53:49SPEAKER- And it's not even your search history.

53:51SPEAKERIt's just that you ended up on a page with an ad

53:53SPEAKERthat has a cookie from whatever company.

53:54SPEAKERAnd then you're in the Instagram,

53:56SPEAKERFacebook loop of ad happiness.

53:58SPEAKER- It is very easy to forget

53:59SPEAKERthat you have come into contact with subjects

54:01SPEAKERthat you are seeing ads for in some benign way.

54:04SPEAKERAnd that's another way that can happen.

54:06SPEAKERThat said, like you said, I mean,

54:08SPEAKERthere have been scandals around like Amazon

54:11SPEAKERstoring too much Alexa recordings.

54:14SPEAKER- Or Amazon leaving all the Ring footage

54:16SPEAKERfor all the cameras they collected on an open server

54:19SPEAKERin some Ukrainian data house data center.

54:21SPEAKER- Yes, like there are just way too many examples

54:23SPEAKERof companies being reckless with data

54:25SPEAKERthat you would think is more buttoned up.

54:27SPEAKER- I tend to only put my data, like I don't give,

54:31SPEAKERI don't have a Ring camera for very specific reasons,

54:34SPEAKERbut I do have a couple of Google homes around the house.

54:36SPEAKERAnd I tend to trust Google.

54:39SPEAKERGod help me to not, to be predictable

54:43SPEAKERand not unpredictable about how they handle

54:45SPEAKERthe data they collect from those devices.

54:48SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, there's an aspect of the Unix philosophy

54:52SPEAKERthat I kind of have like tried to adapt

54:53SPEAKERto security a little bit, that one,

54:56SPEAKERthe thing in the Unix philosophy is that, you know,

54:59SPEAKERthere's the whole thing about design the output

55:01SPEAKERof your program, that it could be ingested

55:04SPEAKERas the input of a different and currently

55:07SPEAKERas yet unknown program, right?

55:08SPEAKERLike, hey, just make your program spit out data

55:11SPEAKERso that like if somebody else makes another program later on

55:13SPEAKERthey could take that input and use it intelligibly.

55:16SPEAKERLike I've kind of adapted that a little bit

55:18SPEAKERto like practice security for a threat model

55:21SPEAKERthat is currently unknown or that does not quite yet exist.

55:23SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

55:24SPEAKER- Oh, I thought you were gonna say you live by the pipe

55:26SPEAKERand you die by the pipe.

55:27SPEAKER- I mean, I do, trust me.

55:28SPEAKERI'm piping into grep instead all day long over here.

55:30SPEAKER- Oh man, I love a good grep pipe.

55:33SPEAKER- I guess all I'm saying is like, you know,

55:34SPEAKERmaybe like dialing your security up like one notch

55:38SPEAKERabove where you currently need it is not the worst idea

55:40SPEAKERbecause your needs may change at some point

55:42SPEAKERor your use case may change.

55:43SPEAKERAnd like later on, you might be glad

55:45SPEAKERthat you put that work in.

55:46SPEAKERBut you know, I'm not saying go completely nuts, but.

55:49SPEAKER- I think that's a hundred percent true.

55:50SPEAKERI think like you're never gonna go wrong

55:52SPEAKERby being a little bit more conservative.

55:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:55SPEAKER- I don't think you need to be paranoid though.

55:57SPEAKER- That said, I actually meant to touch on this earlier

55:58SPEAKERabout the Windows memory integrity.

56:00SPEAKERI enabled Intel total memory encryption.

56:03SPEAKER- Oh no.

56:04SPEAKER- In my UEFI, I did it just because there's like

56:06SPEAKERa kernel error in Linux that pops

56:08SPEAKERif you don't have that turned on.

56:10SPEAKERAnd I turned it on just to make that error go away.

56:12SPEAKERLike it's not actually, you know what that does?

56:14SPEAKER- Isn't it gonna make your computer really slow

56:16SPEAKERwhen you play games?

56:17SPEAKER- I didn't see, well, that's on the server.

56:19SPEAKERThat's not on my desktop.

56:20SPEAKERFirst of all, I couldn't find any evidence

56:22SPEAKERof a real performance penalty on that.

56:26SPEAKERThe thing that protects against though

56:27SPEAKERis literal physical access to the data in memory.

56:31SPEAKER- So like if somebody puts a CAT scanner

56:33SPEAKERor something on the memory chips?

56:35SPEAKER- I think somebody would have to actually

56:36SPEAKERlike physically probe the ICs on the RAM modules

56:42SPEAKERto get that data, which was a very funny

56:45SPEAKERsecurity measure to take.

56:47SPEAKER- Isn't that gonna cause problems if your memory,

56:49SPEAKERif like a cosmic ray flips a bit on your memory?

56:52SPEAKER- I don't know.

56:52SPEAKERWell, I've got ECC memory in that machine,

56:54SPEAKERso I probably am fine there.

56:57SPEAKERI might go back and look and see

56:58SPEAKERif there is actually a performance penalty.

57:01SPEAKERLike I said, I just turned it on

57:02SPEAKERto see if it would make that error go away.

57:03SPEAKER- Well, on the server, I wouldn't really care so much.

57:06SPEAKEROn the desktop PC, I'd probably not flip that one on.

57:08SPEAKER- It's not a huge deal.

57:10SPEAKERLet's see here, one or two more quick ones here.

57:13SPEAKER- Yeah, we can do a couple more.

57:14SPEAKER- Couple people wrote in about bit rot.

57:16SPEAKERHere's one from Andreas 3000.

57:18SPEAKERHave you considered doing an episode on disk and data rot?

57:21SPEAKERAs a believer in physical media,

57:23SPEAKERI got concerned about my Blu-rays and started Googling

57:25SPEAKERand it's more interesting than I thought.

57:27SPEAKERIt's hard to find any actual hard numbers

57:29SPEAKERon data loss per medium

57:30SPEAKERand the impression I get is no one really knows.

57:33SPEAKERInternet Archive has started testing for disk rot

57:36SPEAKERand their numbers are very low,

57:38SPEAKERbut the PDF I read didn't give bytes or time spans.

57:42SPEAKERWatching some videos about it now

57:43SPEAKERand it's turning into an interesting rabbit hole.

57:45SPEAKER- Yeah, it's really interesting

57:47SPEAKER'cause like when you bought CD-ROM, CD-R disks

57:50SPEAKERin like the early 2000s, they were like,

57:52SPEAKER"Hey, you buy the gold disks the last 20 years

57:55SPEAKERor a hundred years or whatever."

57:57SPEAKERThe only way they can test that is by doing fast cycles

58:00SPEAKERon temperature and light and stuff like that

58:02SPEAKERand the writeable and especially rewritable disks

58:07SPEAKERhave not aged well is my understanding.

58:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I've got a bunch of, well, not a bunch,

58:11SPEAKERbut I've got a decent number of kind of turn of the century

58:13SPEAKERto late 90s CD-Rs in the closet,

58:16SPEAKERbut maybe I should pull out and see if they work or not.

58:20SPEAKERI always heard, I think you always heard at the time

58:22SPEAKERthe CD-Rs were not forever.

58:23SPEAKER- Well, especially if they're exposed to sun

58:25SPEAKERbecause they're an optical dye, yeah.

58:27SPEAKER- But I think the more recent revelation

58:28SPEAKERis that even stamped disks, factory-made disks

58:31SPEAKERalso don't last forever.

58:32SPEAKER- Yeah, on CDs, there's a problem

58:34SPEAKERwhere there's a metal reflective layer

58:38SPEAKERor like a Mylar reflective layer in the disk

58:41SPEAKERthat is protected with a little bit of lacquer

58:43SPEAKERand if it's exposed at the edge of the disk

58:47SPEAKERand the edge of the disk wasn't protected,

58:49SPEAKERthat it can get eaten away over time, basically.

58:52SPEAKER- Yeah, entropy comes for everything.

58:54SPEAKERIt doesn't matter if it was made in a factory or not.

58:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so the real answer to this

58:59SPEAKERis if you're worried about stuff,

59:01SPEAKERthen you should just copy it off the disks

59:03SPEAKERand put it on a hard drive and then cycle the hard drives,

59:06SPEAKERplan to cycle the hard drives.

59:08SPEAKERThis is a spinning disks hard drive,

59:10SPEAKERnot SSDs every few years.

59:12SPEAKER- Yeah, SSDs are not great for long-term data integrity

59:15SPEAKER'cause I mean- - They need power.

59:16SPEAKER- It's probably not likely in a normal use case,

59:18SPEAKERbut if an SSD goes unpowered for long enough,

59:20SPEAKERit will lose the data on there.

59:22SPEAKERI mean, to be fair, that's like,

59:23SPEAKERI think that's now a period of years without power, but-

59:26SPEAKER- The number I always hear is no,

59:28SPEAKERlike once you get past five years,

59:30SPEAKERyou're through the looking glass.

59:31SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:32SPEAKER- But I think that probably depends

59:34SPEAKERon model by model variants and-

59:36SPEAKER- What I mean, just to be clear,

59:38SPEAKERwhat I mean is like don't put like priceless family photos

59:41SPEAKERon an SSD and then put it in a safe deposit box

59:44SPEAKERand let it sit for a decade

59:45SPEAKERbecause there will likely be nothing left.

59:47SPEAKER- I mean, I think that there's an interesting story here

59:50SPEAKERthat the other thing that they didn't touch on

59:52SPEAKERis the Internet Archive is doing some neat stuff

59:54SPEAKERabout scanning the reflective layers,

59:56SPEAKERnot with a CD-ROM drive,

59:57SPEAKERjust taking us like a scanning electron microscope

1:00:00SPEAKERto look at them.

1:00:01SPEAKER- Wow.

1:00:03SPEAKER- And yeah, so there's like,

1:00:06SPEAKERthere's ways to get this stuff for priceless information,

1:00:09SPEAKERlike commercial Blu-ray, commercial DVD, whatever,

1:00:12SPEAKERyou're probably not gonna care enough about

1:00:15SPEAKERto pull that data off.

1:00:16SPEAKER- Yeah, like- - I think it'd be

1:00:17SPEAKERa good topic for an episode 'cause there's a lot to it.

1:00:19SPEAKER- Yeah, if you're talking about optical media,

1:00:21SPEAKERlike it sounds like you are in this discord question,

1:00:23SPEAKERlike, yeah, just back those disks up immediately

1:00:25SPEAKERand put them on.

1:00:26SPEAKERYou know, this is where redundancy comes in.

1:00:27SPEAKERThis is where having something like a NAS

1:00:28SPEAKERwith some amount of redundant hard drives

1:00:32SPEAKERand also like a file system that does checksumming

1:00:34SPEAKERand data integrity like CFS or something similar.

1:00:38SPEAKERThere are some others out there,

1:00:39SPEAKERbut something that's able to check its own data integrity

1:00:42SPEAKERand fix problems from redundancy and parity

1:00:46SPEAKERis kind of a must if you want things to last forever,

1:00:49SPEAKERwhich they definitely will, right?

1:00:51SPEAKER- Apparently, according to Wikipedia, HD DVDs,

1:00:55SPEAKERespecially those produced by Warner Brothers

1:00:57SPEAKERbetween 2006 and 2008,

1:01:00SPEAKERdeveloped discrot shortly after production.

1:01:02SPEAKER- Very well-known problem.

1:01:03SPEAKERI think I've talked about maybe a giant bomb, but not here,

1:01:07SPEAKERbut yes, that was,

1:01:08SPEAKERI think HDVs generally did not last super long,

1:01:11SPEAKERbut those Warner Brothers were basically defective.

1:01:13SPEAKERLike they worked for a very short time.

1:01:15SPEAKERSomebody sent their HD DVD drive

1:01:18SPEAKERfor the 360 into giant bomb

1:01:19SPEAKERwith their whole collection for it.

1:01:21SPEAKERThere were multiple Warner discs in there

1:01:23SPEAKERstill in the shrink wrap.

1:01:25SPEAKERNone of them worked.

1:01:26SPEAKER- Wow.

1:01:27SPEAKER- Literally the case had never been opened before

1:01:28SPEAKERand I opened them all and put them in there

1:01:30SPEAKERand none of them works

1:01:31SPEAKERbecause they all were afflicted by that problem.

1:01:33SPEAKER- That's amazing.

1:01:34SPEAKER- Yep, kind of a mess.

1:01:36SPEAKERAll right, last question here.

1:01:38SPEAKER- Okay.

1:01:39SPEAKER- From Grant, what would a printed podcast look like?

1:01:42SPEAKERIs it a transcript of the podcast?

1:01:44SPEAKERJust a string of ones and zeroes?

1:01:46SPEAKERA waveform over time sketched out on a seismograph?

1:01:49SPEAKER- I was thinking like a label printer

1:01:51SPEAKERwith like a spool of the heat paper.

1:01:54SPEAKER- Okay.

1:01:54SPEAKER- Where it just does the waveform.

1:01:55SPEAKER- Yeah, all right, sure, I can see it.

1:01:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:59SPEAKER- That would be the most cinematic, I think.

1:02:00SPEAKER- I think that's the coolest way to print.

1:02:03SPEAKER- Label, maybe seismograph has an actual needle, right?

1:02:07SPEAKER- Yeah, seismograph would be very fancy.

1:02:09SPEAKER- That's what I would vote for.

1:02:11SPEAKERI want to see the actual needle sketching the wave out.

1:02:15SPEAKER- I thought you were gonna ask the next question.

1:02:17SPEAKER- Oh, the one after that?

1:02:19SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:19SPEAKER- What about a Fortnite?

1:02:21SPEAKER- Fork knife?

1:02:22SPEAKER- Okay, fine, we'll talk about it.

1:02:23SPEAKEROkay, you can talk about Fortnite.

1:02:24SPEAKER- The kids love Fork knife.

1:02:26SPEAKER- I will abstain from JC.

1:02:29SPEAKERMy kids and I have just gotten into Fortnite.

1:02:31SPEAKERAny tips on getting good,

1:02:32SPEAKERespecially how to help the kids along?

1:02:34SPEAKERI'm slightly more than casual, so I'm doing fine for me,

1:02:37SPEAKERbut I have no idea how to help 10 year olds

1:02:38SPEAKERin their first shooter.

1:02:39SPEAKERAlso, I can tell this game has a very tight reward loop

1:02:42SPEAKERand will be very addictive.

1:02:43SPEAKERAny tips on managing that with kids,

1:02:46SPEAKEReven you've navigated it yourself?

1:02:47SPEAKER- Yeah, so we just played for a long time

1:02:51SPEAKERand she didn't care so much

1:02:53SPEAKERand we got matched into bot games pretty regularly

1:02:56SPEAKERand romped bots and over time,

1:02:59SPEAKERshe learned to shoot pretty well,

1:03:02SPEAKERmostly just by encouraging her to use the mouse and keyboard

1:03:06SPEAKERand helping her get default settings for the mouse

1:03:08SPEAKERthat were good for her

1:03:10SPEAKERand that she could move and do what she wanted to.

1:03:15SPEAKERWe're at the point now where she needs to learn

1:03:17SPEAKERhow to lead shots with one gun

1:03:20SPEAKERand then switch to another one

1:03:21SPEAKERwhen she gets up close and stuff like that

1:03:23SPEAKERand that's been a little bit trickier,

1:03:25SPEAKERbut she's interested.

1:03:27SPEAKERIt took a long time before she was interested in getting good

1:03:30SPEAKERfor a long time, she just wanted to play

1:03:31SPEAKER'cause it was a fun to hang out with dad

1:03:32SPEAKERand we got to go drive around in cars and stuff like that,

1:03:35SPEAKERwhich is totally fine.

1:03:37SPEAKERSo I would suggest very no to very light pressure,

1:03:41SPEAKERdepending on how your kid is gonna react to that.

1:03:44SPEAKERThe time it turns, so the TLDR is in the last month or so,

1:03:50SPEAKERshe started playing on her own when she has free time.

1:03:54SPEAKERShe usually only plays like two or three games

1:03:56SPEAKER'cause it's pretty stressful for her

1:03:57SPEAKERand she's like, the reward loop is good,

1:04:00SPEAKERbut also she gets super stressed out about it

1:04:02SPEAKERand just doesn't wanna play more,

1:04:03SPEAKERso I don't have a good answer for that.

1:04:06SPEAKERThe parental controls that Epic does

1:04:08SPEAKERtells you how many days, how many hours each week

1:04:10SPEAKERyour kid plays, so you can kind of keep track of it

1:04:13SPEAKERby keeping an eye on those emails.

1:04:15SPEAKERAnd yeah, when they start wanting to play on their own

1:04:21SPEAKER'cause they wanna practice some,

1:04:23SPEAKERthat's when you start giving them advice

1:04:24SPEAKERon things like switching weapons and which weapons to use

1:04:27SPEAKERand explaining between light ammo and medium ammo

1:04:31SPEAKERand heavy ammo and all that stuff and all that.

1:04:33SPEAKERBrad, if you wanna learn to play Fortnite,

1:04:35SPEAKERI've done it once, I can do it again.

1:04:36SPEAKER- I'll keep it behind.

1:04:38SPEAKERI'm having a good time with Void Crew right now,

1:04:40SPEAKERI think I might stick with that.

1:04:41SPEAKER- That game rips, it's really good.

1:04:43SPEAKERCheck back Monday maybe.

1:04:45SPEAKER- Yes, dying to play more.

1:04:46SPEAKER- I literally was looking at the single player mode

1:04:49SPEAKERthe other day and was like, I don't think I'm gonna do this.

1:04:51SPEAKER- Oh, do it.

1:04:52SPEAKER- Do it?

1:04:53SPEAKER- Absolutely, you'll gain,

1:04:53SPEAKERI racked up like three skill points in one session.

1:04:56SPEAKER- That's more skill points

1:04:58SPEAKERthan we got the entire session on Monday.

1:05:00SPEAKER- 'Cause that number was zero.

1:05:01SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:05:02SPEAKER- It is a good way, Void Crew is kind of a space sea

1:05:05SPEAKERof thieves like, it's a multiplayer,

1:05:07SPEAKERlike everybody crews a different system on your spaceship

1:05:10SPEAKERkind of game and yeah, I would highly recommend

1:05:13SPEAKERgetting in there with single-player ship

1:05:15SPEAKERand just learning all the systems

1:05:17SPEAKERso we could switch around more and know what's going on.

1:05:19SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.

1:05:20SPEAKERI was explaining it to somebody as if you had like,

1:05:24SPEAKERas if you had FTL, as if you were playing Phasmophobia,

1:05:29SPEAKERas if you were playing FTL like it was Phasmophobia

1:05:31SPEAKERand there weren't a bunch of jump scares.

1:05:33SPEAKER'Cause like I love the mechanics

1:05:35SPEAKERand all the prox chat stuff and like Phasmophobia

1:05:37SPEAKERand Lethal Company and all those games,

1:05:39SPEAKERbut I hate the jump scares and I love science fiction stuff

1:05:42SPEAKERand I love putting on space suits

1:05:44SPEAKERand going outside of airlocks and it's very good.

1:05:47SPEAKER- Yeah, if you get four skill points,

1:05:49SPEAKERyou can double the oxygen capacity of your space suit.

1:05:52SPEAKER- I love that, that sounds great.

1:05:53SPEAKER- Do it.

1:05:54SPEAKER- But that's, I guess, a place for us

1:05:55SPEAKERto wrap up our questions for this week.

1:05:57SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

1:05:58SPEAKER- Brad, if people wanna send emails in,

1:06:00SPEAKERthey can send them to techpod@content.town, correct?

1:06:03SPEAKER- So I hear.

1:06:04SPEAKER- Or, alternately, you can go

1:06:06SPEAKERto the Question Seeking Answers channel,

1:06:07SPEAKERsoon to be called the bottomless question hole

1:06:10SPEAKERin the Discord.

1:06:11SPEAKERI don't know if I'm actually gonna change that, but I might.

1:06:13SPEAKER- Nah, let's not like, Question Seeking Answers

1:06:15SPEAKERhas got a nice aspirational vibe to it.

1:06:19SPEAKER- Local answers near you, hot answers near you, I don't know.

1:06:24SPEAKERBut yeah, when you sign up for the Patreon,

1:06:26SPEAKERyou get access to the Discord,

1:06:27SPEAKERyou get access to the Question Seeking Answers channel,

1:06:30SPEAKERyou get a monthly patron-exclusive episode,

1:06:33SPEAKERwhich we have to record sometime in the next 10 or so days.

1:06:37SPEAKERAnd you might get your name right on the podcast.

1:06:41SPEAKER- You might.

1:06:42SPEAKER- Like our executive producer tier patrons, including--

1:06:45SPEAKER- Or you will, in fact.

1:06:46SPEAKER- Well, 100% you will, yeah, I guess, that's a certainty.

1:06:51SPEAKERIncluding our executive producer tier patrons,

1:06:53SPEAKERJason Lee, Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett,

1:06:57SPEAKERBunny Crimes Enthusiastically recommends next.content.town.

1:07:02SPEAKERI didn't put them up to that, they did ask if it was okay.

1:07:06SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik,

1:07:09SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

1:07:13SPEAKERIt says it's the end of the month,

1:07:15SPEAKERand I thought this was a fake end of the month,

1:07:16SPEAKERnot the actual end of the month,

1:07:17SPEAKERbut it's the real end of the month.

1:07:19SPEAKERWe also thank our associate producer tier patrons,

1:07:22SPEAKERincluding Alejandro Navarro, Andre M. Burke, P.E.,

1:07:26SPEAKERAndrew Dicey Scholdyce, Arthur Geese, Ben Tolman,

1:07:29SPEAKERBrutal Kerfuffle, Eric Klein, Felix Kramer,

1:07:34SPEAKERGraham Banks, Jad Rita, Just Associate Wedge,

1:07:38SPEAKERMatt Walker, Walkman8080, Mike Etheridge,

1:07:43SPEAKERNathan Phelps, Sanchik Kumar, Steve Lin, Thomas Shea,

1:07:46SPEAKERTom Hilton, and Xbox Playdates.

1:07:50SPEAKERSo anyway, I guess that'll do it for us this week.

1:07:52SPEAKERWe will be back next week with,

1:07:53SPEAKERif everything goes well, a special guest.

1:07:55SPEAKER- I hope so, yeah.

1:07:56SPEAKEROr maybe the week after, we'll see.

1:07:58SPEAKER- Maybe the week after, we'll see.

1:07:59SPEAKERBut I hope everybody has a lovely, lovely week.

1:08:01SPEAKERAnd, as always, please consider the environment

1:08:04SPEAKERbefore you print this podcast.