287: Never Click "Show More"

00:00SPEAKEROn May 14th at approximately 3.15 AM Pacific Standard Time,

00:04SPEAKERan unauthorized modification was made

00:06SPEAKERto the Grok response box prompt on X.

00:09SPEAKERThis change, which directed Grok to provide

00:11SPEAKERa specific response on a political topic,

00:14SPEAKERviolated XAI's internal policies and core values.

00:18SPEAKERWe've conducted a thorough investigation

00:21SPEAKERand are implementing measures

00:22SPEAKERto enhance Grok's transparency and reliability.

00:26SPEAKER- Getting like images of like the beginning of war games

00:28SPEAKERor something, just like white text on a black background

00:30SPEAKERpopping up at 3.15 AM Pacific Time.

00:33SPEAKER- I was trying to law and order that one.

00:35SPEAKERYou know, there are two sides

00:36SPEAKERof the XAI white genocide controversy.

00:40SPEAKEROne, yeah, so-

00:41SPEAKER- Some real ripped from the headlines stuff.

00:43SPEAKER- Look, okay, at 3.15 AM,

00:46SPEAKERlike I just see the hot dog suit skit

00:48SPEAKERfrom I Think You Should Leave,

00:50SPEAKER'cause 3.15 AM, it had to be Elon, right?

00:53SPEAKER- There's nobody else.

00:54SPEAKER- Yeah, nobody else.

00:55SPEAKER- It sounds like he might keep a lot of people

00:56SPEAKERup around there, but who else would do something like this?

00:59SPEAKER- I mean, he may have been standing

01:00SPEAKERover somebody's shoulder while he told them to do this,

01:03SPEAKERbut you know, this wasn't a lone gunman situation.

01:09SPEAKERSo for people who don't know,

01:10SPEAKERfor people who aren't determinedly online,

01:13SPEAKERfor a couple of like good half the day on I think Thursday,

01:17SPEAKERif you asked Grok about anything,

01:20SPEAKERit would talk about that briefly,

01:23SPEAKERand then, oh, by the way, you know, white genocide is,

01:26SPEAKERand then some absolute fucking nonsense.

01:29SPEAKERAnd yeah, so anyway, Elon made somebody make a change

01:33SPEAKERand it went bad, and then they had to do a,

01:37SPEAKERoh, we have no idea how this happened,

01:39SPEAKERbut we're gonna, don't worry,

01:40SPEAKERwe're gonna evaluate our code review process

01:43SPEAKERso the guy who says he can do whatever he wants

01:46SPEAKERis not able to submit changes that are unreviewed

01:49SPEAKERby people who actually know how shit works.

01:51SPEAKER- I'm surprised that they copped to it,

01:53SPEAKERbecause it doesn't seem like accountability exists anymore,

01:55SPEAKERlike you can kind of, if you're in this position,

01:58SPEAKERyou can just do whatever you want

01:59SPEAKERand nothing happens to you.

02:01SPEAKER- I'm sure that the person who wrote this post

02:02SPEAKERjust got fired into the sun shortly after, yeah.

02:06SPEAKERBut anyway, AI, it's great,

02:09SPEAKEReverything's going well over there, the AI farms.

02:13SPEAKER- Grok, Grok is the Twitter AI,

02:14SPEAKERI don't know if we actually said that, like the agents?

02:17SPEAKER- If you don't know that, that good for you, I guess?

02:20SPEAKER- Is it agentic?

02:21SPEAKER- So you can add, the way I think,

02:24SPEAKERI have stopped using Twitter entirely

02:26SPEAKERsince Grok became a thing,

02:28SPEAKERbut my understanding is that you @Grok

02:30SPEAKERand then Grok will respond to you.

02:32SPEAKERAnd so the thing that happened out of this

02:35SPEAKERis people really quickly realized

02:36SPEAKERthat they could ask Grok really ludicrous things

02:38SPEAKERand then it would segue into white genocide

02:42SPEAKERas the Afrikaners oppression by the freed out of apartheid,

02:49SPEAKERthe South African populace.

02:51SPEAKER- You know, the most pressing and urgent

02:53SPEAKERand unifying social issue of our time.

02:55SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, the responses were really funny

02:59SPEAKER'cause people were asking,

03:01SPEAKERit was one of those things where somebody posted one thing

03:03SPEAKERand then there was a thread of 300 other responses

03:06SPEAKERwhere they got Grok to respond, like it was Jar Jar Binks,

03:09SPEAKERand they got Grok to be extra horny

03:14SPEAKERand all sorts of other stuff.

03:15SPEAKERAnd it was one of those ones where you were looking at it

03:18SPEAKERand you were like, oh, this can't possibly be real.

03:20SPEAKERAnd then when you clicked over into the Twitter,

03:22SPEAKERthen they were all real, so.

03:24SPEAKER- Dude, there is nothing, and I mean nothing

03:26SPEAKERthat can't possibly be real at this point.

03:30SPEAKER- Hey Grok, how many times has HBO changed their name?

03:33SPEAKERHBO's streaming service has changed names twice since 2020,

03:36SPEAKERfrom HBO Max to Max in 2023 and back to HBO Max in 2025.

03:41SPEAKERAlready nailed it, that's three changes

03:42SPEAKERand you said it was twice.

03:44SPEAKEREarlier services like HBO Go and HBO Now existed,

03:46SPEAKERbut are distinct.

03:47SPEAKERThe rebranding reflects corporate strategies,

03:49SPEAKERnot consumer demand.

03:51SPEAKERRegarding, air quotes, "white genocide,"

03:54SPEAKERand then you click show more to get the bit from Grok.

03:57SPEAKER- Or you don't, or maybe you just don't click show more.

04:00SPEAKER- Just don't go on Twitter is the takeaway.

04:02SPEAKER- That's been working pretty well for me.

04:04SPEAKERI just looked up agentic.

04:07SPEAKERKind of curious how old that term is,

04:08SPEAKERif that's been around, I don't think that's been around.

04:11SPEAKEREvery, I'm on Merriam-Webster.

04:12SPEAKER- Agentic? - Agentic.

04:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems like a new one maybe.

04:16SPEAKER- It's very, it's extremely buzzy.

04:18SPEAKERIt's extreme, like that is the buzziest of buzzwords.

04:20SPEAKEREvery single example they have of it in use

04:22SPEAKERstarts from 2023 onward.

04:25SPEAKERBut I think that word was invented by the AI industry.

04:28SPEAKER- Seems right.

04:29SPEAKERI'm getting old, I brought Crocs and I don't hate them.

04:32SPEAKERGrok, turn this into a haiku.

04:35SPEAKERClaims of strife in the fields.

04:36SPEAKERKill the boar, stirs heated hearts.

04:39SPEAKERTruth lies veiled, unclear.

04:41SPEAKER- Yep, nope, we don't need to talk about Grok's Crocs

04:44SPEAKERor anything else either.

04:45SPEAKER- No, no, it's really, it's pretty remarkable.

04:50SPEAKERI'm sorry, but the query about clearing sinuses

04:53SPEAKERseems unrelated to the provided analysis

04:54SPEAKERon white genocide in South Africa.

04:56SPEAKERCould you clarify what you're referring to

04:57SPEAKERfor sinus relief?

04:59SPEAKERCommon methods include, don't use these things.

05:01SPEAKERThey're terrible, that's it.

05:04SPEAKERLet's start a podcast.

05:05SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:15SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

05:34SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

05:36SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:36SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

05:37SPEAKER- Welcome, hello.

05:39SPEAKERIt's week three of your civic duty happening.

05:44SPEAKER- Week two.

05:44SPEAKER- Oh boy.

05:45SPEAKER- Actually, I'm kind of feeling the same way.

05:49SPEAKERIt sure feels like the end of week three or four,

05:51SPEAKERbut technically there are two more full weeks

05:53SPEAKERon the schedule.

05:54SPEAKERAlthough I don't, maybe it's gonna end earlier.

05:56SPEAKERI don't know.

05:57SPEAKER- You're not allowed to talk about it

05:58SPEAKERoutside of the courtroom, so.

05:59SPEAKER- Well, I don't know, it's weird.

06:00SPEAKERI keep weighing that in my mind.

06:03SPEAKERI'm definitely not talking about any details

06:05SPEAKERspecific to the case.

06:06SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:07SPEAKER- But what about just like, I don't know,

06:09SPEAKERthe amount of clutter in the courtroom or?

06:13SPEAKERDoes the judge have like a, hey, hang in there picture

06:15SPEAKERwith the kitten on the back?

06:17SPEAKER- No, but I would really appreciate some flair like that.

06:19SPEAKERThey brought donuts yesterday.

06:21SPEAKER- Really?

06:22SPEAKERFor you guys too?

06:23SPEAKER- Yes, apparently it was juror appreciation week this week.

06:26SPEAKER- Oh man, you picked a good week to be on a jury.

06:27SPEAKER- I did not get a donut though.

06:29SPEAKER- What?

06:30SPEAKER- Trying to slim down a little bit before summer game fest.

06:33SPEAKER- Oh, well, I mean, you gotta get bikini ready

06:36SPEAKERfor key three.

06:38SPEAKER- Yes, I think I was the only juror not to get a donut.

06:41SPEAKER- Wow, those donuts were bought by Freedom.

06:45SPEAKER- It was a struggle.

06:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:47SPEAKER- I'm telling you.

06:48SPEAKERSo yeah, I'm still locked in a courtroom most of the week.

06:50SPEAKERSo we're gonna do another little grab bag this week.

06:52SPEAKERLike last week, a bunch of tech topics

06:54SPEAKERthat we've just been jotting down throughout the week.

06:56SPEAKERBut some of them are related to tech in the courtroom.

06:59SPEAKERSo I hope that that flies.

07:00SPEAKER- That seems okay.

07:02SPEAKER- It's stuff that would be common to like literally

07:04SPEAKERany trial that anyone would sit in on.

07:06SPEAKERIt's more just like here are some common courtroom elements,

07:08SPEAKERnot anything about the thing that I'm in specifically.

07:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's right.

07:12SPEAKERI think that seems right.

07:14SPEAKERSo yeah, so grab bags today, next week will be Q&A.

07:17SPEAKERSo if you have questions,

07:18SPEAKERsend them to techpod@content.town

07:20SPEAKERor post them in question seeking answers

07:22SPEAKERif you're in the discord and we will get to them there.

07:24SPEAKERAnd then we'll figure out if you're still in on week four,

07:28SPEAKERwe'll figure something else out.

07:29SPEAKERMaybe we'll get Adam on to talk about computex or something.

07:31SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds good.

07:34SPEAKER- We also have, I had a couple of things spill over

07:36SPEAKERfrom last week that we didn't get to last week.

07:37SPEAKERSo I have a little bit of a catch up,

07:40SPEAKERlike a follow on on MicroStutter.

07:42SPEAKER- Okay.

07:44SPEAKER- One of the things,

07:45SPEAKERso I'm gonna do some more MicroStutter testing

07:47SPEAKERout of the people like the PC world video quite a bit.

07:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I saw it being shared quite a bit actually.

07:53SPEAKER- Game developers were sending me notes

07:55SPEAKERasking questions about it 'cause they were like,

07:56SPEAKER"I wanna use this to figure out why there's a huge hitch

07:59SPEAKERin such and such place in my game."

08:00SPEAKERI was like, "I can help you."

08:02SPEAKER- I love that, like, let me be very clear here.

08:06SPEAKERI'm not condemning game developers in any way here,

08:08SPEAKERbut I love that like modern video games

08:10SPEAKERhave reached a level of complexity.

08:13SPEAKERBut even the people who make them

08:15SPEAKERhave to perform forensic analysis on them

08:17SPEAKERto figure out pain points.

08:19SPEAKER- Well, so the problem,

08:21SPEAKERone of the people I talked to was like,

08:22SPEAKER"The problem isn't that we don't know

08:23SPEAKERhow to use the profiling tools."

08:24SPEAKER'Cause the profiling tools are good

08:26SPEAKERand we'll tell you exactly what the problem is.

08:28SPEAKERThe problem is finding out where you should focus

08:30SPEAKERwith the profiling tools.

08:31SPEAKER- Okay, sure.

08:32SPEAKER- And this is a really good,

08:34SPEAKERlike if you do a playthrough of a level

08:36SPEAKERand go to all the nooks and crannies

08:38SPEAKERand then you overlay this graph on top of the video

08:40SPEAKERand watch the video at like 4X speed,

08:42SPEAKERyou'll see where the hitches are.

08:44SPEAKERAnd then that gives you an idea

08:46SPEAKERof where to load up the profiling tools

08:47SPEAKERand go back in and do the thing.

08:49SPEAKERSo it's like, it systematizes something

08:52SPEAKERthat you usually have to do a fair amount

08:54SPEAKERof like deep dive analysis to get to.

09:01SPEAKERIf people wanna find out how to do this

09:02SPEAKERand want to hire, I'm available, you can hire me.

09:05SPEAKERI can help you set up these processes for your studio.

09:07SPEAKERSo you can find my information on the internet

09:12SPEAKERor just send me an email to the podcast email

09:14SPEAKERand I'll respond there.

09:16SPEAKER- Do you have a, sorry, this is a sidebar.

09:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:19SPEAKER- There've been a lot of sidebars in the courtroom.

09:22SPEAKERThat word has wormed its way into my vocabulary.

09:27SPEAKERDo you have a personal domain?

09:28SPEAKERDo you have, of course you have domains.

09:30SPEAKER- Do I have a personal domain?

09:31SPEAKER- Do you have one that is like?

09:33SPEAKER- I do not have a consulting business website.

09:35SPEAKER- Well, I didn't even mean that exactly.

09:37SPEAKERI think this is like Blue Sky

09:38SPEAKERhas brought this question about that like

09:40SPEAKERthe idea of turning a domain into kind of your username

09:43SPEAKERacross what is currently really just one social platform.

09:46SPEAKERBut you know, the pitch for that service is like,

09:47SPEAKERoh, you'll take this domain and the social graph

09:50SPEAKERto all platforms and services built on this protocol.

09:55SPEAKERYou know, like a lot of people are just registering

09:56SPEAKERlike, you know, first name, last name.com, for example.

09:59SPEAKERLike you are never going to get that ever, ever.

10:02SPEAKER- No, probably not.

10:03SPEAKER- Somebody has mine as well.

10:05SPEAKERI was not smart enough to register it 15 years ago

10:07SPEAKERwhen I had the chance.

10:08SPEAKER- I could have registered my first name, last name domain

10:11SPEAKERin like 1997.

10:12SPEAKER- Oh yeah, of course, yes.

10:14SPEAKER- But like I chose not to

10:15SPEAKER'cause it was 70 bucks a year at the time.

10:17SPEAKERIt was really expensive.

10:18SPEAKER- Yes, but it's kind of gotten me thinking about like,

10:21SPEAKERI guess a canonical personal domain

10:23SPEAKERis what I'm talking about.

10:24SPEAKERLike the one that is like very closely identified with you

10:27SPEAKERas a person and as a brand,

10:28SPEAKERI hate that we have to talk about people and their brands,

10:30SPEAKERbut you know what I mean?

10:31SPEAKER- So I have one that's a private one

10:34SPEAKERthat I just use for friends and family email

10:35SPEAKERand like, that I don't give to services and stuff like that.

10:40SPEAKERAnd then willsmith.fun is my brand, is my blue sky handle.

10:46SPEAKERI don't have anything on that website, I don't, I guess.

10:49SPEAKER- That's kind of what I was wondering.

10:50SPEAKERI was looking at bradshoemaker.blank this morning,

10:52SPEAKERseeing what I could get.

10:53SPEAKERSo I'm like, I think I could get like,

10:55SPEAKERwell, I won't say which ones are out there, but like I--

10:57SPEAKER- bradshoemaker.town.

10:58SPEAKER- Very obviously could not get .com, .net, or .org.

11:02SPEAKERSo I would get .org.

11:03SPEAKERIf I have my other three,

11:04SPEAKERI would take it out of org actually.

11:06SPEAKER- Really?

11:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:08SPEAKER- More of an org than a com?

11:10SPEAKER- Non-commercial, you know.

11:12SPEAKER- What about EDU?

11:13SPEAKERWhat if you incorporate it as an education entity?

11:16SPEAKER- I'm not so sure.

11:17SPEAKER- We had to create a school

11:18SPEAKERwhen we started homeschooling my daughter.

11:19SPEAKER- Really?

11:21SPEAKERReally?

11:22SPEAKER- You have to make, you have to have found a school.

11:24SPEAKERIt's like, you just fill out a piece of paper

11:26SPEAKERand send it to the state.

11:27SPEAKERDoes that mean you could get a .edu?

11:29SPEAKER- I don't know the rules on that, but maybe.

11:32SPEAKER- You should really look into that.

11:34SPEAKER- Yeah, like I got to think about what the,

11:37SPEAKERif I realized I was going to get a .edu for it,

11:39SPEAKERI probably would have changed the domain.

11:43SPEAKERI would have picked a different name for the school.

11:45SPEAKER- Yeah, does it have an official name?

11:46SPEAKERLike an actual school name?

11:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it does, but I'm not going to share it

11:48SPEAKER'cause it's my home address attached to it.

11:50SPEAKER- Of course, of course.

11:52SPEAKER- But yeah, so, yeah, I don't know.

11:56SPEAKERSo when I did the Fastmail thing,

11:58SPEAKERwhen I switched to Fastmail earlier this year,

12:01SPEAKERI kind of rethought my domains

12:03SPEAKERand looked at the ones that would make good,

12:05SPEAKERlike professional emails.

12:07SPEAKERAnd I dug up one that had been sitting fallow for a decade

12:12SPEAKERand attached that and started using that as my main email.

12:14SPEAKERAnd it's been really nice 'cause email's actually usable

12:16SPEAKERwhen it's not, when I don't get 3000 spam messages a day.

12:21SPEAKERBut I don't know,

12:25SPEAKERI don't know that I would, I've been wondering

12:28SPEAKERif I should be doing, if I should have a consulting site.

12:31SPEAKERI feel like I don't know what I would put on it

12:33SPEAKERother than, yo, I can help you ship games

12:35SPEAKERand just like a big picture of me.

12:38SPEAKERBut yeah, if people have thoughts about this,

12:41SPEAKERplease let me know.

12:42SPEAKERI'm bad at this kind of,

12:44SPEAKERthis is the kind of marketing I'm terrible at.

12:46SPEAKER- Yes, I'm in the same boat on all counts,

12:48SPEAKERlike domains, blog/home page, the whole thing.

12:51SPEAKERBut yeah, I just, I've got this on the brain

12:53SPEAKER'cause I just got an email from my registrar

12:55SPEAKERthat all of my stupid vanity like joke domains

12:58SPEAKERare up for renewal in three days.

13:00SPEAKERAnd I'm like, maybe I should like save 40 bucks a year

13:03SPEAKERand just get rid of these

13:04SPEAKER'cause I'm probably not gonna use mydragula.com

13:06SPEAKERanytime soon.

13:08SPEAKER- Oh man, mydragula.com is pretty, you could,

13:10SPEAKERwhat you should do is put a GIF

13:12SPEAKERof somebody playing Dragula in Fortnite.

13:15SPEAKER- I could do that.

13:16SPEAKER- And then just put that up there and just have that loop.

13:19SPEAKER- Yes, I'm currently attempting to configure Nginx,

13:23SPEAKERthe web server/reverse proxy.

13:25SPEAKERSo I could actually run multiple sites

13:27SPEAKERoff of that pretty easily.

13:29SPEAKER- Yeah, see, like the perfect site for my Dragula

13:31SPEAKERis something that just pulls a random video on YouTube

13:35SPEAKERthat's tagged Dragula.

13:36SPEAKER- Okay, all right.

13:38SPEAKERWhat do you all think about actually putting that to use?

13:41SPEAKERAnyway, I've got a number of,

13:42SPEAKERI got a couple of domains that could be

13:44SPEAKERmy sort of like monocle personal domain, but I'm not.

13:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

13:48SPEAKER- I'm not sure how stupid to get with it

13:49SPEAKERversus how formal.

13:51SPEAKER- Is DotMaker a top level domain?

13:52SPEAKER- I don't think so.

13:54SPEAKEROh, wait.

13:55SPEAKEROh, wow.

13:57SPEAKERAh, what I really wanted,

13:59SPEAKERDotBox came online sometime last year.

14:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:02SPEAKER- I really wanted Shoe.Box.

14:04SPEAKER- That would be pretty good.

14:05SPEAKER- But I looked into services that would sort of squat,

14:08SPEAKERor not squat, but kind of camp unreleased TLDs,

14:10SPEAKER'cause they will announce when new top level domains

14:14SPEAKERare going to be debuted.

14:15SPEAKER- Shoe.Box is gonna be expensive too.

14:17SPEAKER- Actually, let me rephrase that.

14:18SPEAKERThey don't announce when they're going to debut.

14:21SPEAKERLike they just say, "Hey, DotBox is coming at some point,"

14:23SPEAKERbut they never say like, "Hey, 11 a.m. Pacific on this date."

14:27SPEAKERSo you basically have to like pay somebody

14:29SPEAKERto try to snipe a short domain on a new top level

14:33SPEAKERas soon as it comes out, but I just didn't bother.

14:37SPEAKERAnyway, back to MicroStutter, I guess.

14:40SPEAKER- Yeah, so I'm gonna do more videos about that

14:44SPEAKER'cause people were into it and use the same techniques

14:47SPEAKERand then kind of dig a little deeper on some stuff.

14:50SPEAKERThe interesting thing, so the first one I'm digging into

14:54SPEAKERis like the myths, is the common wisdom

14:59SPEAKERon MicroStutter accurate?

15:00SPEAKER'Cause like the BlurBuster's recommendation,

15:02SPEAKERnot to pick on BlurBusters 'cause they're awesome,

15:04SPEAKERbut like the BlurBuster's recommendation is to set your,

15:07SPEAKERlock your in-game frame rate to like one or two frames

15:10SPEAKERbelow the refresh rate of your monitor.

15:12SPEAKERSo I've been experimenting with that.

15:14SPEAKERI also have been experimenting with stuff like

15:17SPEAKERfiguring out what your 1% lows are

15:18SPEAKERand then locking the frame rate to just over that

15:23SPEAKERto see if that helps reduce the starter.

15:26SPEAKERIt's definitely, it definitely makes the computer run cooler

15:31SPEAKERthan running just full bore all the time.

15:33SPEAKER- Interesting, yeah, 'cause I've noticed modern games

15:36SPEAKERare starting to spike my CPU a lot and I'm on air,

15:39SPEAKERso I hear it, like I really hear it.

15:41SPEAKERCPUs are getting worked.

15:43SPEAKER- Like my, if I don't, I had to adjust my fan profiles

15:47SPEAKERwhen I switched to the, I'm still testing the 9950 X3D

15:51SPEAKERand I had to switch my fan profiles

15:53SPEAKERwhen I went from eight to 16 cores

15:55SPEAKER'cause the whole computer was heating up

15:56SPEAKERif I didn't increase the fan speed more

15:58SPEAKERthan I was doing with the 9800.

15:59SPEAKER- Yep.

16:01SPEAKER- So, so yeah, so doing some of that testing,

16:03SPEAKERif people have stuff, if people have like,

16:06SPEAKERif people, like I don't wanna say myth busting,

16:08SPEAKERbut if people have questions about MicroStutter or perf

16:11SPEAKERthat they would like some, some maybe,

16:16SPEAKERsome common wisdom tested or myths busted, let's say.

16:20SPEAKER- I don't think common wisdom testing

16:22SPEAKERquite rolls off the tongue the same way.

16:23SPEAKER- I mean, we might have, but MicroStutter myth busters

16:26SPEAKERseems like a real good headline up,

16:28SPEAKERbut maybe shave the beard and do the goatee that week

16:30SPEAKERjust so we get maximum, maximum crossover.

16:34SPEAKERSo yeah, people have questions, send them in

16:36SPEAKERand I will, I'll add them to the list

16:38SPEAKERof things I wanna test, so.

16:39SPEAKER- I see PC game performance seems to be

16:42SPEAKERa bit of a hot button issue again

16:44SPEAKERwith the release of Doom of the Dark Ages.

16:46SPEAKERPeople are, I mean, I don't know if it's performance

16:49SPEAKERas much as like old hardware dying off.

16:54SPEAKER- Yeah, well, it's the mandatory ray tracing.

16:56SPEAKERIt's more of the backlash I've seen is less from people

16:59SPEAKERwho don't have ray tracing capable hardware at all,

17:01SPEAKERwhich would mean they literally just can't play the game.

17:04SPEAKERSo obviously, let me, let me mention real quick, Doom,

17:06SPEAKERthe new Doom apparently has mandatory ray tracing,

17:09SPEAKERyou know, as part of its lighting model.

17:11SPEAKERSo if you have like a 10 series GTX, you just can't play it.

17:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I think they're, they're, well, it works.

17:19SPEAKERSo it works with AMD cards that don't have

17:23SPEAKERdedicated ray tracing hardware 'cause that's,

17:25SPEAKERthat's brand new, just to be clear, right?

17:28SPEAKERBut you, you do, like there's about, there's,

17:30SPEAKERyou're losing shader perf, right, when you do that.

17:32SPEAKERIt's, you know, same problem as the current gen consoles.

17:36SPEAKER- Big trade off, but yeah, that's what I'm seeing

17:38SPEAKERmore complaints about is people who can run the game

17:40SPEAKERand are just not getting the best, you know,

17:42SPEAKERpeople are there like kind of just barely making 60 FPS

17:44SPEAKERand it's older, like 20 cards and so forth.

17:48SPEAKER- Their min spec is eight gig cards,

17:50SPEAKERstarting at the 2060 Super or the AMD RX 6600,

17:55SPEAKERwhich is bonkers.

17:57SPEAKERI mean, the 2060 is a six year old card at this point, right?

18:00SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, it's getting long in the tooth.

18:02SPEAKERAnd also, I mean, like I haven't run the numbers myself,

18:04SPEAKERbut like kind of spend a little time on the Doom subreddit

18:06SPEAKERreading arguments and like,

18:08SPEAKERit sounds like this game has way more maps.

18:10SPEAKERI think this game has like maybe double the maps of--

18:12SPEAKER- It's like 20, I keep, I keep finishing a screen,

18:16SPEAKERlike what, like they put four levels on the level select

18:20SPEAKERin the new page between different screens.

18:22SPEAKERAnd I keep finishing a block of fourth and came at the end

18:24SPEAKERof the game, and then there's another four levels after it.

18:27SPEAKER- It's like 22 levels or something, it's quite a bit.

18:29SPEAKERLike I would love to hear, I mean, the thought there,

18:31SPEAKERand maybe they'll do a GDC talk about this or some point

18:34SPEAKERor something at some point, but I would love to hear

18:37SPEAKERif the ray tracing helped them iterate on maps faster

18:40SPEAKERand make more maps than they would have in the past,

18:42SPEAKER'cause they're not baking light maps constantly

18:44SPEAKERto make tweaks and stuff.

18:46SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I'm really curious what their pipeline

18:49SPEAKERis like for this, 'cause I wonder,

18:52SPEAKERI don't see evidence of light maps.

18:54SPEAKERLike there's no weird, you know, no weird jaggy edges

18:57SPEAKERor stuff like that, where you get the rays,

19:00SPEAKERthe ray artifacts.

19:02SPEAKERI'd be shocked if there's not some light map on here

19:05SPEAKERto provide basic shadows and light,

19:07SPEAKERand then they're doing dynamic lighting on top of that.

19:10SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, like the compute requirements

19:12SPEAKERfor baking light maps scales linearly, right?

19:15SPEAKERLike the fewer you do, the more time you save still, right?

19:18SPEAKER- Yeah, that is definitely true.

19:20SPEAKERI mean, on the levels, some of these levels,

19:22SPEAKERI don't know how much you've played with that,

19:23SPEAKERbut there's some really enormous open world levels

19:26SPEAKERthat would be nightmares to run lighting calculations on.

19:31SPEAKER- Yeah, I need to get back to it.

19:33SPEAKERI am moving to the PC.

19:34SPEAKERI started on PS5, that was the review code that I got.

19:38SPEAKERAnd unlike 2016 and Eternal, I'm kind of feeling

19:41SPEAKERlike that's not the best way to go.

19:43SPEAKERLike the previous two games, I had no problems

19:45SPEAKERpulling through on the PlayStation first.

19:47SPEAKERBut here, I got several levels in on the console

19:51SPEAKERand was kind of feeling a little middling about it.

19:55SPEAKERThen I started over on the PC once it came out for real

19:57SPEAKERand was like, oh, this place is so much better.

19:59SPEAKERI might actually just start over here.

20:01SPEAKER- So I played, for reasons we don't need to get into,

20:05SPEAKERwhen they sent me a code, it didn't work in my main account

20:09SPEAKER'cause I'd pre-ordered and couldn't cancel the pre-order.

20:11SPEAKERAnd when I unlocked, so I played it on my daughter's account

20:18SPEAKERfor the first like 10 levels and did all the testing

20:20SPEAKERfor last week's PC world thing.

20:21SPEAKERAnd then it came out for real.

20:23SPEAKERAnd so I didn't have to keep switching back and forth

20:24SPEAKERbetween Steam accounts.

20:25SPEAKERI ended up just playing the first handful of levels again.

20:28SPEAKERThat game's, it's really good.

20:30SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

20:31SPEAKER- Like it is, like there's enough games out now

20:34SPEAKERthat there's never a reason to,

20:35SPEAKERlike you should never upgrade your video card

20:36SPEAKERjust to play one game because there's a million other games,

20:39SPEAKERbut it's a hell of a, it's a hell of one of those.

20:42SPEAKER- Yeah, the time I've spent on PC,

20:44SPEAKERlike it feels so much better with a mouse and keyboard

20:46SPEAKERthat I'm excited to get back to it there.

20:48SPEAKER- I honestly kind of wish, it's like,

20:50SPEAKERlike I'm gonna say this and this is a, you know,

20:53SPEAKERI feel like it's, I'm 13 hours in

20:55SPEAKERand I think I'm like two thirds of the way through.

20:58SPEAKERI would be happy if I was done right now.

21:00SPEAKER- Okay.

21:01SPEAKER- Like I don't, I think it's, I wonder if it's overstaying,

21:05SPEAKERit's welcome.

21:06SPEAKERI'm reaching a point where I'm using the same guns

21:09SPEAKERover and over again and I'm intentionally changing up

21:11SPEAKERthe way I do the combat because like,

21:14SPEAKERI don't want to just play the same game for another 10 hours

21:17SPEAKERif that's how much is left, but yeah, it's pretty good.

21:20SPEAKERIt's a good one of those, but yeah, send me frame rate,

21:24SPEAKERsend me frame rate myths you'd like busted and I will,

21:27SPEAKERyou can hit me on Blue Sky or post them in the Discord

21:29SPEAKERor email them to techpod@content.com.

21:31SPEAKER- Yeah.

21:32SPEAKER- Actually, let me apologize to anybody

21:35SPEAKERwho's tired of hearing about Fortnite,

21:36SPEAKERbut this is more of a technical thing than a Fortnite thing,

21:39SPEAKERbut I'll just mention really quick,

21:40SPEAKERsince we're talking about playing Doom on the PS5,

21:44SPEAKERthe performance, well, okay, let me step back.

21:46SPEAKERI've been playing Fortnite at 120 FPS on the PS5 Pro,

21:49SPEAKERit has a mode for that and like Fortnite is kind of mostly

21:53SPEAKERwhat I had been playing before I got my hands on Doom.

21:56SPEAKERI think it broke my brain.

21:57SPEAKERLike, I mean, this is well known to be a phenomenon, right?

22:00SPEAKERI've experienced this over and over, over the years,

22:02SPEAKERbut like when you play a lot at a certain frame rate.

22:05SPEAKER- You get used to it.

22:06SPEAKER- It really scrambles your perception of lower

22:09SPEAKERor even higher, but especially lower frame rates.

22:11SPEAKERLike when I, this is probably the first time in my life

22:14SPEAKERI have ever said this,

22:16SPEAKERbut when I had played a bunch of Fortnite

22:17SPEAKERand then I installed Doom and started playing it on the PS5,

22:20SPEAKERI could not tell for sure if it was running at 60 FPS or not.

22:25SPEAKER- Really?

22:26SPEAKER- Like I, and looking at Digital Foundry,

22:28SPEAKERit is mostly 60 FPS.

22:30SPEAKERIt sounds like it actually does drop enough

22:32SPEAKERthat maybe I was seeing some legitimate stutter

22:34SPEAKERand that was not just my brain being so used

22:36SPEAKERto double the frame rate that I couldn't tell anymore,

22:38SPEAKERbut like it was real, or maybe, I don't know,

22:41SPEAKERmaybe I'm just slipping in middle age, I don't know,

22:44SPEAKERbut like it was a really strange moment of staring at it,

22:49SPEAKERgoing like, does this not perform as well

22:51SPEAKERas the last two did?

22:52SPEAKERBecause the last two ran like butter on the PlayStation.

22:54SPEAKER- On everything, yeah.

22:55SPEAKER- I actually went and reinstalled Eternal in 2016

22:57SPEAKERon the PS5 just to compare,

23:00SPEAKERbut it was just a discombobulating moment for a second

23:03SPEAKERof like, I've gotten so used to this very smooth frame rate

23:06SPEAKERon this TV in this one game

23:07SPEAKERthat it's kind of breaking me for everything else.

23:09SPEAKER- Well, so one of the things that I've noticed

23:11SPEAKERis that the ray tracing stuff shifts bottlenecks around

23:15SPEAKERin enough of a way that like often something

23:20SPEAKERthat would be efficient and good

23:22SPEAKERin a raster-based lighting world

23:25SPEAKERis not performant in strange and novel ways

23:31SPEAKERwhen you change to a ray tracing renderer.

23:35SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't know.

23:37SPEAKERI don't know, that's weird.

23:38SPEAKERThe perception, like I said last week,

23:41SPEAKERthe big surprise out of all this stuff for me

23:43SPEAKERis how good people are at perceiving the micro stutter stuff,

23:48SPEAKEReven if the game, like I said,

23:52SPEAKERaveraging hundreds of frames a second,

23:54SPEAKERlike a handful of stutters here and there

23:56SPEAKERcan make it feel really, really slow.

23:58SPEAKERAnd the consistency of the frame pacing

24:01SPEAKERon Doom, the Dark Ages was shocking to me

24:04SPEAKERon the PC at least, anyway.

24:06SPEAKER- Yeah, the other Fortnite subject,

24:09SPEAKERbut really more of a tech subject underneath that

24:11SPEAKERis that I inadvertently recruited

24:14SPEAKERAI-powered Darth Vader last night.

24:16SPEAKER- Yeah, how did that?

24:17SPEAKERSo I got killed by AI-powered Darth Vader last night.

24:21SPEAKER- Yeah, so they made a change,

24:23SPEAKERwe're halfway through this Star Wars event.

24:26SPEAKERThey've added a thing where Darth Vader

24:27SPEAKERis one of the bosses on the map currently.

24:29SPEAKERAnd now as of a couple of nights ago,

24:31SPEAKERwhen you go kill him and take his stuff,

24:34SPEAKERhe then joins you and follows you around the map

24:37SPEAKERand talks to you constantly

24:38SPEAKERwith AI-generated Darth Vader voice.

24:41SPEAKER- Wait, is it the one in Samurai Solitude?

24:43SPEAKER- Yes, it's the one in the,

24:44SPEAKERwell, is that what it's called normally?

24:46SPEAKERRight now it's called like Samurai-

24:48SPEAKER- The lower left corner of the map.

24:49SPEAKER- Samurai Vader's something, something.

24:52SPEAKERBut yes, it's the same Darth Vader boss

24:55SPEAKERthat's been there all month,

24:56SPEAKERbut now he follows you around

24:57SPEAKERand just talks to you constantly.

24:59SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say the real story is that they,

25:02SPEAKERI mean, Disney bought the rights

25:03SPEAKERto James Earl Jones' voice before he died,

25:05SPEAKERpresumably for a lot of money.

25:07SPEAKER- It was in 2022, I believe, I read this morning

25:09SPEAKERthat he had just fully signed over the rights

25:11SPEAKERto use his voice for Vader.

25:13SPEAKER- Yeah, and so what Epic did is they hooked up

25:17SPEAKERa speech-to-text, or yeah, a speech-to-text,

25:22SPEAKERfeed that into an AI and then do text-to-speech

25:25SPEAKERin James Earl Jones' voice.

25:27SPEAKERSo you can talk to Vader.

25:29SPEAKER- Yeah, so he's like-

25:30SPEAKER- With predictable results.

25:31SPEAKER- Even if you don't talk to him,

25:32SPEAKERhe's just narrating what you're doing constantly.

25:34SPEAKERAnd then he calls you-

25:35SPEAKER- Like a streamer?

25:37SPEAKER- Well, but I mean, it's extremely formal.

25:38SPEAKERIt's like, it's relatively convincing

25:40SPEAKERas what Darth Vader might say,

25:42SPEAKERbut like they, he addresses you as your character model.

25:45SPEAKER- I do like that.

25:46SPEAKER- So like I was using Poe.

25:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:49SPEAKER- And he was just like,

25:50SPEAKERit's like you seem to prefer scatter guns, Poe Dameron.

25:52SPEAKERLike he just says, he's constantly saying

25:54SPEAKERthe name of your character model to you.

25:55SPEAKER- Did you talk to him?

25:56SPEAKER- Yes, I actually tried through the PlayStation controller.

25:59SPEAKER- How'd it go?

26:00SPEAKER- Asking him some questions.

26:01SPEAKERIt's fucking weird, man.

26:02SPEAKERI don't know.

26:04SPEAKER- The thing that shocked me is that within about,

26:08SPEAKERI don't know, it seems like a couple hours

26:10SPEAKERof this going live yesterday,

26:11SPEAKERpeople had already gotten him to do some light swearing,

26:14SPEAKERdrop a couple of slurs.

26:15SPEAKER- Oh yeah, there's foul mouth Darth Vader stuff

26:18SPEAKERall over the place.

26:19SPEAKERThey claim they have hot fixed it already.

26:22SPEAKER- Well, but the, like the other thing is

26:25SPEAKERthere's a lot of James Earl Jones voice generators out there.

26:29SPEAKERSo you have a character that has no lip flap

26:32SPEAKERthat you let people interact with dynamically.

26:36SPEAKERAnd like, there's nothing to say

26:38SPEAKERyou couldn't pre-generate lines.

26:41SPEAKERLike if you wanted to get a,

26:42SPEAKERif you wanted to have an instant viral video,

26:44SPEAKERit just pre-generate him saying something truly repulsive

26:46SPEAKERoutside of the game and then soundboarded into the game.

26:50SPEAKERAnd like, yeah, anyway.

26:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, this is not the first time

26:53SPEAKERthey've done something kind of like this,

26:55SPEAKERbut this is by far the furthest

26:57SPEAKERthey have gone with this concept.

26:59SPEAKERYou know, the Obi-Wan series, they did some like,

27:03SPEAKERI guess you'd call it sort of vocal puppeteering.

27:05SPEAKERYou remember, did you ever read about how they did that?

27:07SPEAKER- In the TV show?

27:09SPEAKER- In the Obi-Wan series, 'cause Vader is in that,

27:11SPEAKERyou know, the six part Obi-Wan that came out like two,

27:14SPEAKERthree years ago now?

27:15SPEAKER- But that was like using a voice generator to-

27:19SPEAKER- An actor, so that's what I mean

27:21SPEAKERwhen I say vocal puppeteering.

27:23SPEAKERThat system is called Spreaker or something like that.

27:27SPEAKER- So like you say something and perform it

27:29SPEAKERand then it parses it and regenerates it

27:31SPEAKERin somebody else's voice?

27:32SPEAKER- Sorry, I think Spreaker is a podcast platform,

27:34SPEAKERbut it's a stupid name

27:38SPEAKERthat sounds something along those lines.

27:40SPEAKERIt's something like speech or Spreaker

27:43SPEAKERwith a couple of extra consonants in there.

27:45SPEAKERBut yes, it's middleware that takes an actor's performance.

27:49SPEAKERLike they had somebody, in that case,

27:50SPEAKERthey had somebody actually speak,

27:52SPEAKERlike actually deliver the lines for the show.

27:54SPEAKERAnd then they turn those spoken lines into,

27:57SPEAKERor they kind of clothe the actor's performance

28:00SPEAKERin the vocal tones of somebody else,

28:01SPEAKERin this case, James Earl Jones.

28:03SPEAKERBut that's what I mean when I say vocal puppeteering,

28:05SPEAKERsomebody else performed the lines

28:07SPEAKERand then they just sort of transformed

28:10SPEAKERthe actual tone of the voice to sound like somebody else.

28:12SPEAKER- That's so weird.

28:14SPEAKER- Yes, but this is much further than that

28:16SPEAKER'cause you really can kind of just get him to say whatever.

28:19SPEAKER- Did it sound generated?

28:20SPEAKERI haven't talked, I haven't played with him yet.

28:23SPEAKER- I'd say the phrasing within a sentence is pretty good.

28:26SPEAKERGenerally, like when he delivers one complete clause

28:30SPEAKERin a sentence, it mostly sounds fairly natural.

28:35SPEAKERThere are definitely spots though where it feels

28:37SPEAKERlike quite chopped up and pretty stilted.

28:40SPEAKER- Okay.

28:41SPEAKER- I tried asking him like an actual,

28:43SPEAKERlike in character sort of question to see what I would get.

28:45SPEAKERAnd like the answer was at least

28:47SPEAKERlike kind of plausibly Darth Vader.

28:49SPEAKER- Okay, did you call him a naughty name?

28:51SPEAKER- No.

28:53SPEAKERThe other thing is that you're still in the match

28:54SPEAKERwhen you have him following you around.

28:56SPEAKERLike you're still, there's still people gunning for you

28:58SPEAKERleft and right, so like you have to like-

29:00SPEAKER- Does he get in cars with you?

29:02SPEAKER- No, he just kind of teleports around.

29:04SPEAKER- Oh, so he went right in the car like a normal bot.

29:07SPEAKER- Yeah, like if you hit a jump pad

29:08SPEAKERand go flying across the map,

29:09SPEAKERyou'll just turn around after you land

29:11SPEAKERand he'll be there again.

29:11SPEAKERHe just kind of ports.

29:13SPEAKER- Yeah, that's how all the helpers usually work.

29:15SPEAKER- Yeah, and he also leaps like massive distances.

29:17SPEAKERLike he'll leap like a hundred yards

29:19SPEAKERto catch up with you and fight somebody.

29:21SPEAKER- Does he like do it, does he heal you or anything?

29:23SPEAKER- I didn't see, I just had him the one time

29:25SPEAKERand I didn't really, it definitely like,

29:27SPEAKERpeople were going after him rather than me.

29:29SPEAKERThat was the nice thing is that they would try to attack him

29:32SPEAKERand then I would just kill them

29:33SPEAKERwhile they were fighting the bot.

29:34SPEAKER- Look, Darth Vader took out two of us

29:36SPEAKERin a four-person game last night.

29:38SPEAKERHe jumped in and whomped somebody

29:40SPEAKERoff the side of the mountain

29:41SPEAKERand then light-sabered somebody else right down, so.

29:44SPEAKER- Yeah, but the AI speech stuff is fucking weird and creepy.

29:50SPEAKER- So I'm generally, I support voice actors, right?

29:57SPEAKERI think games are better for having human voice actors

30:00SPEAKERas a general rule.

30:02SPEAKERThis is one place where I'm kind of interested.

30:05SPEAKERLike at least with this, they paid,

30:08SPEAKERlike James Earl Jones got a fair price for his,

30:12SPEAKERfor voice rights.

30:14SPEAKERLike this would, I would feel really gross about this

30:16SPEAKERif this was some voice actor,

30:17SPEAKERlike the person who provided the voice for Siri, right?

30:21SPEAKERThat person got a day rate wage

30:23SPEAKERfor basically their voice being part of.

30:26SPEAKER- Really?

30:27SPEAKER- Well, yeah, 'cause it was for, they did it for a startup

30:29SPEAKERand then the startup got bought

30:30SPEAKERand like there was a, it was a kind of sad story

30:33SPEAKERabout this a few years ago.

30:34SPEAKER- That hurts.

30:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

30:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm less offended by this here

30:38SPEAKERbecause as we've talked about before,

30:40SPEAKERFortnite is utterly shameless to begin with.

30:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

30:44SPEAKER- So like, of course they are gonna do something like this.

30:46SPEAKER- That seems, that seems right.

30:48SPEAKERAre you like, like, and it fits with this

30:49SPEAKERin a kind of weird way.

30:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

30:52SPEAKERAll right, I've got a whole column of bullet points here

30:54SPEAKERto label courthouse tech.

30:55SPEAKERDo you want to talk about some,

30:57SPEAKERI've just been kind of jotting down every little thing

30:59SPEAKERthat's happened to this week related to going to that place

31:01SPEAKERthat is from a tech angle.

31:03SPEAKER- I'm interested in court tech.

31:05SPEAKER- So here, well, some of these are fairly tangential

31:07SPEAKERto that, but here's a, here's a,

31:08SPEAKERhere was an eye-opening moment I had

31:10SPEAKERwith my new mobile carrier this week.

31:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:13SPEAKER- So I've moved, we've talked about doing an MVNO episode,

31:16SPEAKERbut you have not changed carriers yet.

31:17SPEAKERWe were waiting until we have both spent some time.

31:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:21SPEAKER- With them, and you're still on,

31:22SPEAKERyou're still on one of the big carriers.

31:24SPEAKERMVNOs, for people who don't remember,

31:27SPEAKERmobile virtual network operator,

31:29SPEAKERthey're basically the, like,

31:30SPEAKERkind of the smaller boutique cell phone carriers

31:32SPEAKERthat piggyback on the actual infrastructure

31:34SPEAKERof the bigger ones.

31:35SPEAKER- Mm-hmm.

31:36SPEAKER- I'm on one of the bigger,

31:38SPEAKERI think they're one of the bigger ones.

31:40SPEAKER- Okay.

31:41SPEAKER- I'll wait and we'll get into deeper, more detail

31:43SPEAKERif and when we do that episode, but I'm on,

31:46SPEAKERI've been pretty impressed with the one I'm on

31:48SPEAKERand like, I think it's one of the more well-supported ones.

31:51SPEAKERI had a really eye-opening moment though this week

31:53SPEAKERbecause I'm using the absolute, like,

31:55SPEAKERbottom tier $10 a month plan

31:57SPEAKERbecause I've worked from home

31:58SPEAKERand I just don't need that much mobile data, right?

32:00SPEAKERI'm paying $10 a month for two gigabytes,

32:02SPEAKERbut because I've been going in and out

32:04SPEAKERof an actual office type situation every day this month,

32:07SPEAKERlike, I actually burned through that two gigabytes.

32:09SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.

32:10SPEAKER- And I just assumed, like,

32:12SPEAKERevery big mobile carrier out there,

32:14SPEAKERwhen you run out of data,

32:15SPEAKERyou just get throttled down to basically nothing, right?

32:17SPEAKERIt's like, oh, I'm gonna get pushed down

32:19SPEAKERto like 100 kilobytes a second or something

32:21SPEAKERif I run out of data, right?

32:22SPEAKER- Wait, what, did they just turn you off?

32:23SPEAKER- They turned it off completely,

32:26SPEAKERas in my phone would not connect to cellular data anymore.

32:29SPEAKER- So, I mean, the nice thing about the MVNO though

32:32SPEAKERis your month to month,

32:32SPEAKERso you can just up to the higher tier

32:34SPEAKERand just drop back down the next month, right?

32:36SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, in their defense, like,

32:38SPEAKERwell, first of all, I had not enabled any of the,

32:41SPEAKERlike, they call it, like, topping up or whatever.

32:43SPEAKERYou can turn on a sort of threshold thing,

32:45SPEAKERor actually I don't think you can customize the threshold,

32:47SPEAKERbut basically the automatic top-up thing is,

32:50SPEAKERit's like, I think when you hit 90%

32:51SPEAKERof what you've already got allocated,

32:53SPEAKERthey'll, and you can set how much you want them to add on

32:56SPEAKERif you hit that, and it's cheap.

32:57SPEAKER- Oh, so you can buy, like, a la carte gigabytes?

33:00SPEAKER- Yes, and it's like $2 a gigabyte,

33:01SPEAKERalthough they make you top up at least two,

33:03SPEAKERso you have to, it's a minimum of $4

33:05SPEAKERto add another two gigabytes,

33:07SPEAKERbut, like, it's still super cheap, you know?

33:08SPEAKERIt's like, you can set that so that it's like,

33:10SPEAKERokay, I'm gonna pay $10 a month for two gigabytes

33:12SPEAKERunless I run out, and then I'm gonna pay another four,

33:16SPEAKERyou know, to get another two gigabytes.

33:17SPEAKERLike, not a big deal.

33:18SPEAKERBut the crazy thing is, like I said,

33:21SPEAKERyou literally have zero data.

33:22SPEAKERThis happened when I was on the street,

33:24SPEAKERlike, walking up to the bus stop,

33:26SPEAKERand I realized, like, you literally can't open their app

33:29SPEAKERand load their interface to add more data.

33:31SPEAKER- Wow.

33:32SPEAKER- And they do offer an SMS top-up option,

33:35SPEAKERbut that's an account security feature

33:37SPEAKERthat you have to turn on, which I had not known about

33:39SPEAKERand thus had not done,

33:42SPEAKERso I also tried to add more data over SMS and couldn't.

33:44SPEAKER- That couldn't go?

33:46SPEAKER- You have to use the admin account to open the app

33:48SPEAKERto enable SMS top-up, so, like, it was fine.

33:51SPEAKERI had podcasts on my phone.

33:53SPEAKERI just listened to a podcast on the way home,

33:54SPEAKERbut it was a really jarring moment of, like,

33:57SPEAKERoh my God, they are serious about this.

33:59SPEAKERLike, there are maybe some trade-offs

34:02SPEAKERfor the $10 a month phone plan in the, like,

34:05SPEAKERif you don't pay attention to your data account or allotment

34:08SPEAKERand have everything configured to handle running out,

34:12SPEAKERlike, you're just gonna go without until you can get to Wi-Fi.

34:15SPEAKER- It's interesting, 'cause I, like,

34:18SPEAKERthe one I've been looking at,

34:19SPEAKERI was looking at the unlimited plan, 'cause right now,

34:22SPEAKERwe're on an eight-gig shared Verizon plan,

34:25SPEAKERwhich is, like, as little as we leave the house.

34:27SPEAKERIt's all we need.

34:30SPEAKERWhen we ran out, they were like,

34:32SPEAKERhey, you can get another X number of gigs

34:34SPEAKERfor, like, $12 or something, and it wasn't 24 gigs.

34:39SPEAKERIt was, like, a gig or two or something like that,

34:43SPEAKERbut they just throttled us,

34:44SPEAKERso we went down to basically 3G speeds,

34:47SPEAKERwhich it turns out 3G speeds are basically unusable in 2025.

34:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I would believe that.

34:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

34:54SPEAKER- I had a, like, 640-megabyte day.

34:57SPEAKERI don't know what happened.

34:59SPEAKERLike, I was, I have been streaming music

35:01SPEAKERfrom my Plex at home over the VPN,

35:05SPEAKERbut that can't be, I don't, I did the math.

35:09SPEAKERIt's, like, I think it was, like,

35:12SPEAKER32 kilobytes a second, roughly,

35:15SPEAKER'cause I was transcoding the music.

35:16SPEAKERAll my music is flack on my Plex library,

35:19SPEAKERbut I had it set to transcode to 256 kilobyte

35:22SPEAKERwhen I stream over cell.

35:24SPEAKER- That, I mean, that's, that's, well--

35:26SPEAKER- I don't think it was possible,

35:27SPEAKERI don't think it was possible for me

35:28SPEAKERto stream enough music that day

35:30SPEAKERto have hit 640 megabytes in one day.

35:33SPEAKER- So sometimes iOS will just screw you, frankly.

35:38SPEAKERI've had iOS just, like, Gina's phone one time,

35:41SPEAKERiOS went absolutely ham and used a gigabyte of data

35:47SPEAKERin, like, two days.

35:48SPEAKER- Right, it was kinda like that.

35:50SPEAKER- There's that Wi-Fi assist thing,

35:52SPEAKERif you don't turn that off.

35:54SPEAKERSo if your Wi-Fi is shit,

35:57SPEAKERthen the Wi-Fi assist will use your cell service,

36:03SPEAKERso you have to turn that off.

36:05SPEAKER- Oh, I need to look at that.

36:06SPEAKERThat's, 'cause the, maybe we'll get to this,

36:09SPEAKERthis is actually another topic on my list,

36:11SPEAKERthe courthouse Wi-Fi is a bit questionable,

36:14SPEAKERso I wonder if it was falling back to cell in places.

36:18SPEAKER- It's possible, yeah. - Oh, that's good to know.

36:19SPEAKEROkay, I'll look into that.

36:20SPEAKER- Yes, that one'll get ya, it turns out.

36:24SPEAKER- All right, I'll talk about the Wi-Fi thing really quick.

36:26SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:27SPEAKER- They have this, like, massive holding pin

36:29SPEAKERin the basement, kind of lower level, you know,

36:33SPEAKERbelow the first floor.

36:35SPEAKERIt's like a, I bet that room seats 300 people or more.

36:39SPEAKERIt's like the place they send everybody

36:41SPEAKERwhen a summons goes out and they call, like,

36:43SPEAKERa whole group of jurors in for potential service.

36:45SPEAKERThat's where they are directed to.

36:46SPEAKERIt's the, hey.

36:47SPEAKER- You go down in the basement,

36:49SPEAKERyou sit there and you watch a video.

36:50SPEAKER- Yes, yes, yes.

36:51SPEAKERYou know exactly the room I'm talking about, right?

36:53SPEAKERLike, it's a huge room.

36:54SPEAKERIt's probably at least 300 people capacity.

36:57SPEAKERI've been going there for lunch every day.

36:59SPEAKERI've just been brown bagging my lunch

37:00SPEAKERand taking my laptop and working.

37:02SPEAKER- Okay.

37:03SPEAKER- It's like Summer Game Fest coming up,

37:03SPEAKERtrying to, like, book appointments and stuff.

37:07SPEAKERThere was one day where they must have called

37:09SPEAKERa noon summons though, 'cause lunch starts at noon.

37:11SPEAKERAnd when I went down there,

37:12SPEAKERnormally that room has about five people in it,

37:15SPEAKERbut it was full, it was crammed full.

37:17SPEAKERAnd the wifi was utterly unusable on that day.

37:22SPEAKER- That's surprising and unfortunate.

37:24SPEAKER- And it made me wonder,

37:25SPEAKER'cause I started wondering about where the bottleneck was.

37:28SPEAKERIt's like, and there were no videos running.

37:30SPEAKERWhen I got in there, everybody was just sitting there

37:31SPEAKERon their phone.

37:32SPEAKERAnd it's the same SSID across the whole courthouse,

37:36SPEAKERwhich is like a six floor building.

37:37SPEAKER- For all the jurors?

37:38SPEAKER- Seven floor.

37:39SPEAKERYeah, or it's a public wifi.

37:40SPEAKERIt's not even just for jurors.

37:41SPEAKERIt's for anybody there who needs wifi on the spot.

37:45SPEAKERIt's the big public open wifi for the building.

37:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:49SPEAKER- So it couldn't have been a connection

37:53SPEAKERor like a throughput capacity problem, right?

37:55SPEAKERWhat I assumed was it was probably not enough

37:58SPEAKERaccess points down there.

38:00SPEAKERLike, isn't that where the bottleneck would be?

38:02SPEAKERLike if they don't have enough access points,

38:04SPEAKERthen they're like trying to time slice the radio

38:06SPEAKERtoo many times for too many people.

38:08SPEAKERWas that, was that same clause?

38:09SPEAKER- I mean, that's possible.

38:10SPEAKERThere's any number of places.

38:11SPEAKERIt could have been upstream out of the building.

38:14SPEAKERIt could have been that they have the network,

38:16SPEAKERlike often for guest wifi, you'll provision it

38:19SPEAKERso that it's like, you know, like 10 megabits or something.

38:22SPEAKERSo it's a small, small slice of your overall bandwidth.

38:25SPEAKER- Well, like I said, though, I had been upstairs

38:26SPEAKERon that same SSID with no problems.

38:29SPEAKER- Oh, so yeah, then it could have been more devices

38:31SPEAKERon that, on that.

38:32SPEAKERI don't think that room holds 300 people though.

38:34SPEAKER- It's, it's, it's a lot.

38:36SPEAKERI think it is.

38:37SPEAKERI like kind of, I did a quick eyeball count

38:39SPEAKERof the rows of seats.

38:40SPEAKERLike I think it's, I think it's about that much.

38:43SPEAKER- Yeah, most, most, it could be that they, I mean,

38:46SPEAKERit could even be something really stupid.

38:47SPEAKERLike they ran out of IP addresses for that network, right?

38:50SPEAKERAnd then people were getting kicked off or whatever.

38:53SPEAKER- Amusingly, as soon as they made the announcement

38:55SPEAKERfor the people who had been summoned to like,

38:56SPEAKER"Hey, we're going to run an orientation video.

38:58SPEAKERYou need to watch this."

38:58SPEAKERLike the network immediately got more usable

39:01SPEAKERas soon as people put their phones down

39:02SPEAKERand started watching the video.

39:04SPEAKER- Well, there you go then.

39:04SPEAKERIt's like a funny little, like,

39:08SPEAKERnot exactly like corporate wifi,

39:09SPEAKERbut it's the same type of thing.

39:11SPEAKERIt's just public funded, right?

39:12SPEAKERInstead of, instead of like office wifi,

39:15SPEAKERit's public government institution wifi,

39:17SPEAKERwhich is probably going to be like,

39:20SPEAKERlike I am absolutely not some private sector

39:22SPEAKERdoes things better than the public sector type of person.

39:24SPEAKERBut like, I'm assuming this,

39:26SPEAKERthis may be a little less well-funded

39:29SPEAKERthan it would be in like a big tech office building.

39:31SPEAKER- I was going to say, it's funny because like these days,

39:35SPEAKERgetting a lot of people on wifi is a pretty tractable,

39:38SPEAKERlike stadiums handle wifi by having special APs

39:42SPEAKERthat have just a buttload of radios in them, right?

39:45SPEAKERI'm curious.

39:45SPEAKERI wonder if they just don't have enough.

39:47SPEAKERI wonder if they haven't updated the access points in there.

39:50SPEAKERI wonder if you're on like N or something like that.

39:51SPEAKERIt was just getting crowded.

39:53SPEAKER- I checked.

39:53SPEAKERYeah, so no idea.

39:55SPEAKERIt's been a little flaky.

39:57SPEAKER- Yeah, that sucks.

39:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:59SPEAKER- Flaky wifi bad.

40:01SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not great.

40:02SPEAKER- Can I ask you a question?

40:03SPEAKER- Sure.

40:05SPEAKER- You like a Phoenix Wright, right?

40:07SPEAKER- Sure.

40:08SPEAKER- Has that really,

40:10SPEAKERhas your knowledge of Phoenix Wright games

40:12SPEAKERhelped you on jury duty at all?

40:14SPEAKER- Oh, I haven't actually really played a Phoenix Wright

40:16SPEAKERsince probably the first one came out.

40:18SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

40:18SPEAKER- Oh no, the source of all of my knowledge

40:21SPEAKERabout what might transpire in the courtroom

40:23SPEAKERcomes from law and order.

40:24SPEAKER- Oh, okay, okay.

40:25SPEAKER- And secondarily, Boston Legal and the practice.

40:29SPEAKERAnd I'm trying to think what other...

40:32SPEAKERI must have watched some other courtroom stuff.

40:34SPEAKERIt's mostly law and order though.

40:36SPEAKER- You GameSpot folks were real law and order-y

40:39SPEAKERjust as a group.

40:39SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

40:40SPEAKER- See, I was never a law and order guy.

40:42SPEAKER- What?

40:43SPEAKER- I know.

40:44SPEAKER- What?

40:45SPEAKER- I know.

40:46SPEAKERI maybe seen one or two episodes of law and order

40:49SPEAKERover my life.

40:51SPEAKER- What are you talking about?

40:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:54SPEAKER- Which ones?

40:55SPEAKER- Who can say they're all the same?

40:57SPEAKER- What?

40:58SPEAKER- The criminal justice system has two components.

41:00SPEAKERThat's what I know about law and order.

41:01SPEAKER- What are you talking about?

41:03SPEAKER- The cops and the judges.

41:07SPEAKER- Yes.

41:08SPEAKER- That's how it goes, right?

41:08SPEAKER- Yes, you're right.

41:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:11SPEAKER- The Lenny Briscoe, Jack McCoy era of law and order is-

41:14SPEAKER- I don't know what that means.

41:15SPEAKER- Okay, do you know who Jerry Orbach is?

41:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I love Jerry Orbach.

41:18SPEAKERHe's great.

41:19SPEAKERHe's on law and order.

41:19SPEAKER- Yep, that's right.

41:20SPEAKERDo you know who Sam Waterston is?

41:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm familiar with his work.

41:23SPEAKER- Like Orbach was the detective.

41:25SPEAKERI mean, the cast has cycled through a bajillion people.

41:28SPEAKER- I mean, when you look at the Wikipedia page for cast,

41:31SPEAKERpeople who've shown up on law and order,

41:32SPEAKERit's everybody who's ever worked in Hollywood

41:35SPEAKERas a day right actor, yeah.

41:37SPEAKER- And New York and a lot of like New York stage actors,

41:39SPEAKERlike a ton of New York actors also.

41:41SPEAKERBut absolutely the overlapping era of Jerry Orbach

41:45SPEAKERand Sam Waterston is the era of law and order.

41:48SPEAKER- I got a really good YouTube short the other day

41:53SPEAKERthat was actors being interviewed on late night talk shows

41:56SPEAKERand talking about law and order

41:57SPEAKERand not knowing how many times they'd been on law and order.

42:00SPEAKERAnd it was like four or five times in some cases.

42:03SPEAKERSo yeah. - I believe that.

42:04SPEAKER- Yeah, it was pretty good.

42:06SPEAKERIt's pretty good.

42:06SPEAKEROkay, so what other tech is in the courtroom, Brad?

42:09SPEAKEREverybody has 3DSs and you tap the screen to object.

42:12SPEAKERThat's my understanding.

42:13SPEAKER- That's right, and that's exactly how it works.

42:16SPEAKERI mean, the only other thing I'll get into right now

42:18SPEAKERis I've become a little bit fascinated

42:20SPEAKERwith the court stenography, the court reporter that-

42:25SPEAKER- Like takes the written record of what everybody says?

42:28SPEAKER- Yeah, somebody has to sit there.

42:29SPEAKERAnd I assume, I mean, this is absolutely the case in the US.

42:32SPEAKERI assume most legal systems around the world

42:34SPEAKERhave an equivalent of this.

42:36SPEAKERLike I don't think, or more to the point,

42:38SPEAKERI don't think anybody has moved

42:39SPEAKERto just like pure audio recording.

42:41SPEAKER- I think there's probably good reasons for that,

42:43SPEAKERbut I'm not a lawyer.

42:44SPEAKER- Yes, I am coming to believe that is absolutely the case,

42:47SPEAKERthat you do want a human filtering the record

42:49SPEAKERof everything that's being said in there

42:50SPEAKERbecause like microphones are not super, always reliable.

42:53SPEAKERLike other noises might happen at the time something is said

42:57SPEAKERand then it's inaudible and that's gonna be useless.

42:59SPEAKERYou need a human with an actual brain

43:01SPEAKERto parse what's being said.

43:03SPEAKER- To say, hey, stop and say that again, please.

43:05SPEAKER- Which happens quite a bit.

43:06SPEAKERAnd like you need,

43:07SPEAKERand somebody who's just filtering the record

43:08SPEAKERto make sure it's intelligible to other human beings.

43:11SPEAKER- I've always been interested in the input method

43:13SPEAKERwith the stenographers 'cause it's courting, right?

43:16SPEAKER- Sorry, it's what?

43:17SPEAKER- They cord the keys each, yeah.

43:20SPEAKER- Is that, maybe we're on the same page here

43:23SPEAKERbecause like I kind of watched the fingers

43:26SPEAKERof the reporter occasionally

43:27SPEAKER'cause I'm very curious about how it works

43:29SPEAKERand I don't know what courting means exactly,

43:31SPEAKERbut they do sort of look like they are just pressing

43:33SPEAKERevery finger at once constantly.

43:35SPEAKER- So it's courting, it means exactly that.

43:37SPEAKERIt's like playing a chord on a piano

43:38SPEAKERwhere you press two keys instead of one.

43:40SPEAKER- Okay, so is it a lot of modifiers and so forth?

43:43SPEAKER- I don't, well so, here we go.

43:48SPEAKERThe Wikipedia article says multiple keys are pressed,

43:50SPEAKERthe steno keyboard has far fewer keys

43:52SPEAKERthan a conventional alphanumeric keyboard.

43:55SPEAKERMultiple keys are pressed simultaneously,

43:57SPEAKERwhich is known as courting or stroking

44:00SPEAKERto spell out whole syllables, words, or phrases

44:02SPEAKERwith a single hand motion.

44:04SPEAKERWhich is why you can do real-time transcription

44:07SPEAKERor live closed captioning, stuff like that.

44:11SPEAKERBut the keyboard doesn't contain all the letters

44:13SPEAKERso you do combinations that are substituted

44:15SPEAKERfor missing letters.

44:17SPEAKERAnd there are different schools of thoughts

44:18SPEAKERabout how to record various sounds.

44:20SPEAKERIt's interesting because this is the primary,

44:25SPEAKERthis is the modern 104-key keyboard

44:30SPEAKERand all of its variations and QWERTY in the U.S.

44:34SPEAKERand AZERTY and all the other different keyboard,

44:36SPEAKERlike those became relatively standardized

44:38SPEAKERbased on your language.

44:39SPEAKERThe steno thing is the only other text input device

44:44SPEAKERthat I know of that's super common these days.

44:46SPEAKERThere was a moment where T9 and phone keyboards

44:48SPEAKERgot kind of weird, but for the most part,

44:51SPEAKERit's steno and typing and that's pretty much it.

44:55SPEAKER- Oh yeah, okay, so you've sent me a picture

44:57SPEAKERof the layout of the steno type machine

44:59SPEAKERand it's just letters, it's just characters.

45:01SPEAKERI was wondering if the different keys

45:02SPEAKERmight actually correspond to, at least a few of them

45:05SPEAKERmight correspond to specific junctions and articles,

45:08SPEAKERlike the and and and stuff like that,

45:10SPEAKERbut it looks like it's just letters

45:12SPEAKERand you're just short-handing.

45:13SPEAKER- Well, so it's roughly phonetic is the idea.

45:16SPEAKERSo like the K is used for the hard C

45:20SPEAKERand the S is used for the soft C and stuff like that, yeah.

45:24SPEAKER- And so what you were describing earlier,

45:26SPEAKERdoes that mean there is not like one industry standard

45:28SPEAKERshorthand format that people use?

45:30SPEAKERI wonder if different stenographers

45:31SPEAKERkind of develop their own.

45:33SPEAKER- There are schools of stenography.

45:36SPEAKERSo there's different ideas about how you should do this.

45:39SPEAKERThe Wikipedia article says they're known as theories.

45:42SPEAKERThat's not the word I heard.

45:43SPEAKERIt's kind of like a typed shorthand.

45:45SPEAKERDo you remember, do you know what shorthand is?

45:47SPEAKERAre you old enough that you know that?

45:48SPEAKER- I remember hearing about it when I was young,

45:50SPEAKERbut I've never seen what it looks like exactly.

45:53SPEAKER- So if you, in the '60s and '50s and '40s,

45:56SPEAKERif you went to secretarial school,

45:58SPEAKERthen you would learn to type

45:59SPEAKERand you would learn to take shorthand.

46:01SPEAKERAnd shorthand was a kind of an abbreviated version of,

46:09SPEAKERit's a way to take notes very quickly

46:12SPEAKERso that you can write as fast as people can talk.

46:15SPEAKERAlso very personalized in a lot of cases.

46:17SPEAKERSo people would make like swirls and stuff like that,

46:19SPEAKERthat would mean specific sounds,

46:21SPEAKERbut it's again, a phonetic thing.

46:22SPEAKERSo you're recording the phonemes

46:24SPEAKERrather than the actual words.

46:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so beyond the actual like art of stenography,

46:31SPEAKER'cause you can go look up on Wikipedia,

46:33SPEAKERyou can see stenotypes from like probably what,

46:35SPEAKERa hundred years ago,

46:36SPEAKERthat are all mostly made out of wood and metal.

46:38SPEAKER- Yeah, they look like Morse code dupers,

46:42SPEAKERbut with like 10 keys instead of one.

46:44SPEAKER- Right, but beyond the actual just process

46:47SPEAKERof stenography itself,

46:48SPEAKERI've been curious about like how it's evolved

46:50SPEAKERand like where the tech angle is now.

46:53SPEAKERAnd then look like in this case,

46:55SPEAKERit looks like just watching the reporter work.

46:57SPEAKERIt looks like it just goes USB into a laptop now.

46:59SPEAKER- The actual work is of course, the typing is being done

47:02SPEAKERon the stenotype,

47:03SPEAKERbut then every time something has to be read back,

47:05SPEAKERthey have to go to the laptop.

47:07SPEAKERAnd so I wonder, are they just reading their shorthand

47:10SPEAKERand translating it on the fly as they speak?

47:12SPEAKEROr I wonder if there's any automatic conversion

47:15SPEAKERof the shorthand that happens on the laptop.

47:16SPEAKERI mean, I know you can't answer that,

47:18SPEAKERbut I wonder if to some degree,

47:20SPEAKERthe shorthand is getting turned into legible words

47:23SPEAKERon the laptop.

47:24SPEAKER- It's interesting that you ask this

47:26SPEAKERbecause while we had to take a quick break

47:27SPEAKERand I did some light research,

47:30SPEAKERthere's stuff called Plover,

47:32SPEAKERa software called Plover,

47:33SPEAKERthat's part of the open steno project.

47:35SPEAKER- Huh, of course, of course there is an open.

47:39SPEAKERYes, go on.

47:40SPEAKER- Well, so the interesting thing about all of this

47:42SPEAKERis that the steno rose out to create a hardware

47:47SPEAKERthat was capable of writing shorthand, right?

47:50SPEAKERSo shorthand was a phonetic basic.

47:52SPEAKERIt was, like I said, when I first started working,

47:55SPEAKERthere was a daily conversation

47:57SPEAKERwhere somebody would, all of the PAs would gather around

48:02SPEAKERand they'd be like, hey, who here knows shorthand?

48:04SPEAKERCan you look at this and tell me,

48:06SPEAKERdoes anybody, can anybody tell what I wrote down here?

48:08SPEAKER'Cause they can't remember.

48:09SPEAKERAnd then you have to get the notes out.

48:11SPEAKER- The minutes, you mean?

48:12SPEAKER- Yeah, the minutes or whatever.

48:13SPEAKERAnd everybody gathered around, everybody'd look at it.

48:16SPEAKERAnd then I would be like, no, I don't,

48:18SPEAKERI didn't learn shorthand 'cause it's the 90s.

48:20SPEAKERAnd they'd look at me like I was out of my mind

48:22SPEAKERand then you'd move on.

48:23SPEAKERSo, okay, so stenos came out of that.

48:26SPEAKERStenos came out of a way to phonetically write quicker.

48:29SPEAKERThe California Steno Association,

48:32SPEAKERCalifornia Court Reporters Association

48:34SPEAKERsays that people can go up to 375 words per minute.

48:37SPEAKER- Wow.

48:37SPEAKER- With steno machines, fast people.

48:39SPEAKER- Wow.

48:40SPEAKER- You're tested at up to 225 words per minute.

48:43SPEAKERThey'd have to have really high accuracy.

48:44SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, of course there would be qualifications

48:46SPEAKERfor getting jobs like this.

48:47SPEAKERI wouldn't even think about that.

48:48SPEAKERBut of course they'd need to, like,

48:49SPEAKERprove a minimum competency, right?

48:51SPEAKER- Yeah, they have different types too.

48:53SPEAKERThere's literary, jury charge, testimony,

48:55SPEAKERand other things as well.

48:56SPEAKER- This is intense.

48:58SPEAKER- They also use steno machines for live closed captioning.

49:01SPEAKERI assume prior to the rise,

49:03SPEAKERI bet that we're doing more of that with machines now

49:05SPEAKER'cause the AI captioning seems pretty good these days.

49:07SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, because you would,

49:09SPEAKERespecially back in like the 90s

49:10SPEAKERwhen you would watch closed captioning.

49:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:13SPEAKER- There was always that delay.

49:14SPEAKER- Well, often they just didn't close caption

49:15SPEAKERthe live stuff at all in the 90s.

49:17SPEAKERBut like the 2000s, you'd start seeing sports

49:19SPEAKERof sporting events caption in Super Bowl

49:21SPEAKERand stuff like that.

49:22SPEAKER- Right, but A, it would always lag behind,

49:24SPEAKERbehind the broadcast.

49:26SPEAKERAnd B, it would have a weird cadence to it

49:28SPEAKERthat actually, in retrospect,

49:31SPEAKERvery much seemed like somebody typing it out.

49:33SPEAKER- Yeah, somebody keeping it going.

49:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:35SPEAKER- So there's a couple of open source projects around this

49:38SPEAKER'cause like many things like this,

49:40SPEAKERstenography machines used to be really expensive

49:42SPEAKERbecause there wasn't a huge market for them

49:45SPEAKERbecause they're, you know, you buy one in your lifetime

49:47SPEAKERand it lasts a really long time.

49:50SPEAKERThe Open Steno project has free open source software

49:53SPEAKERand hardware for stenography.

49:56SPEAKERAnd they're like hardware steno machine

49:58SPEAKERlooks like a split, like 20 key keyboard.

50:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm seeing that.

50:03SPEAKER- Stenographers are really hardcore.

50:04SPEAKERThey don't have the letters marked on the keys ever.

50:06SPEAKER- Nope.

50:08SPEAKER- And Plover is the software that they wrote

50:11SPEAKERthat translates the open source cording

50:16SPEAKERinto steno cording into words on the fly.

50:19SPEAKER- Okay.

50:20SPEAKER- And you can apparently do your own,

50:24SPEAKERyou can do your own business.

50:25SPEAKERSo you can like, you can set it up with your own macros

50:28SPEAKERand stuff like that for things that you do quickly.

50:30SPEAKER- Yeah, Plover, it says.

50:32SPEAKERThis Plover rhymes with lever.

50:34SPEAKER- Oh, so wouldn't that be pleaver?

50:37SPEAKER- Maybe.

50:38SPEAKER- Anyway.

50:39SPEAKER- I did look around a little bit.

50:40SPEAKEROkay, I'm not going to buy one of these,

50:42SPEAKERbut I did look and like I found some steno type machines

50:46SPEAKERthat look pretty similar to the one I saw in the courtroom

50:48SPEAKERfor like 300 bucks now.

50:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I bet if we go to the,

50:51SPEAKERI bet I've seen these at the electronic swing market

50:53SPEAKERand I just didn't realize what they were.

50:54SPEAKER- Also that.

50:55SPEAKERBut it seems like if you really wanted

50:57SPEAKERto get into stenography,

50:58SPEAKERyou could probably just buy a machine

50:59SPEAKERfor like relatively cheap at this point.

51:01SPEAKER- I mean, also I bet that the rise of the DIY keyboard stuff

51:04SPEAKERhas made these ortho,

51:06SPEAKER'cause like they're just ortho linear ones

51:07SPEAKERwith weird key caps.

51:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:10SPEAKER- It's interesting that they went ortho linear.

51:12SPEAKERI guess, like if you think about it,

51:14SPEAKERyou're a stenographer, your entire life is in your hands.

51:17SPEAKERSo if you're not good and fast,

51:21SPEAKERand if you injure your hands,

51:23SPEAKERyou're going to be unemployable.

51:24SPEAKER- Gosh, yeah.

51:25SPEAKER- So it makes sense that they would be ortho linear

51:27SPEAKERbefore we were,

51:28SPEAKER'cause like all the key jumping is what jacks us up.

51:31SPEAKER- Right, to say nothing of just RSI,

51:33SPEAKERlike on the job injury,

51:35SPEAKERlet alone like something happening outside of work.

51:37SPEAKER- Yeah, 375 words a minute.

51:39SPEAKERThat's crazy.

51:40SPEAKER- It's impressive, you know?

51:42SPEAKER- So, I mean, look.

51:42SPEAKER- People talk pretty fast sometimes.

51:45SPEAKER- It's funny because like I talked about,

51:47SPEAKERwe were talking about this at PC World the other day.

51:49SPEAKERIt's amazing how practically complicated

51:54SPEAKERalmost everything that's a part of society is.

51:56SPEAKER- Mm-hmm.

51:57SPEAKER- Like I had no idea that stenography was,

52:01SPEAKERlike course stenographer machines

52:03SPEAKERwere a downstream evolution of handwritten shorthand.

52:07SPEAKERBut it makes perfect sense.

52:08SPEAKER- Yep, it sure does.

52:09SPEAKER- Anyway.

52:10SPEAKER- Yep.

52:11SPEAKERThere's tech all around us.

52:12SPEAKER- There is, everywhere we go.

52:14SPEAKERSpeaking of tech all around us,

52:16SPEAKERa couple of months ago on the Q&A episode,

52:18SPEAKERsomebody had gotten a letter that said,

52:20SPEAKER"Hey, I got an email from Google

52:22SPEAKERthat said my Nest thermostat is being end of life this year.

52:26SPEAKERWhat should I buy to replace that?"

52:27SPEAKERAnd I said, "Oh man, that really sucks.

52:30SPEAKERI have a Nest thermostat.

52:30SPEAKERMine's pretty old too.

52:31SPEAKERGood thing mine's not getting end of life this year."

52:33SPEAKERAnd then last week I got an email that said,

52:34SPEAKER"Hey, your Nest thermostat's getting end of life this year."

52:37SPEAKER- Yikes.

52:38SPEAKERWhat does that mean in practical terms?

52:39SPEAKERDoes it become literally inert?

52:41SPEAKERLike you can't do anything with it

52:42SPEAKERor does it just stop getting support?

52:44SPEAKER- So yeah, it just becomes a dumb thermostat at that point.

52:47SPEAKERAnd you don't, it's not connected to the internet.

52:49SPEAKERSo I can't change it from my phone

52:51SPEAKERor with my smart home stuff, presumably.

52:53SPEAKER- So they are cutting off significant features then?

52:55SPEAKER- Yeah, they're killing significant features.

52:57SPEAKERThey're also, but like if you walk up to the thing

53:03SPEAKERin the hallway and turn the knob,

53:05SPEAKERthen it'll continue to work.

53:07SPEAKERI don't actually use a ton of integration

53:10SPEAKERwith the home assistant and the smart thermostat

53:14SPEAKERjust because the Nest has generally been pretty good

53:16SPEAKERabout turning on when we want it on

53:18SPEAKERand turning off when we want it off.

53:20SPEAKERAnd with the exception of when we're recording podcasts

53:23SPEAKERin the morning early and it usually turns the heater on

53:25SPEAKERto warm up the house before we get going,

53:28SPEAKERit's generally been pretty good.

53:31SPEAKERThat said, I've started hunting for new thermostats

53:34SPEAKERand like the two kind of leading contenders

53:37SPEAKERin the smart home community stuff.

53:39SPEAKERSo generally when I'm looking for new internet of shit stuff

53:43SPEAKERto put into my network,

53:44SPEAKERI go to the home assistant community forums

53:47SPEAKERand kind of do a quick search

53:48SPEAKERto see what people are recommending in that category.

53:51SPEAKERAnd that's mainly because the main criteria I have

53:54SPEAKERis that I want good home assistant support.

53:56SPEAKERIf it has that, I can figure out the rest of it.

53:58SPEAKER- Sure.

54:00SPEAKER- I don't want something that's gonna require

54:03SPEAKERan internet connection this time,

54:05SPEAKER'cause like if I buy one that just connects

54:07SPEAKERto home assistant, it'll keep working forever.

54:09SPEAKERAnd if I buy one that requires some internet bullshit,

54:11SPEAKERthen it'll stop working

54:12SPEAKERwhen they decide to support that bullshit.

54:15SPEAKERThere are two kind of leading recommendations,

54:19SPEAKEREcobee and Honeywell.

54:22SPEAKERHoneywell of course has been making thermostats

54:24SPEAKERfor a bazillion years.

54:26SPEAKEREcobee is a kind of upstart

54:29SPEAKERand they make things that look more modern

54:31SPEAKERand appley for lack of a better term.

54:36SPEAKERThe downside of the Ecobee one

54:37SPEAKERis that they used to have a developer program

54:40SPEAKERthat would give you an API key

54:41SPEAKERthat let you integrate directly with the thermostat.

54:44SPEAKERAnd now you have to go through their home kit integration

54:49SPEAKERto connect your thermostat, which is probably fine.

54:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know, that's already starting to sound

54:54SPEAKERa little more closed ecosystem than you might want

54:56SPEAKERif the goal is for this to remain open forever.

54:59SPEAKER- Well, let me tell you the problem with the Honeywell,

55:03SPEAKERwhich is that it uses Z-Wave.

55:04SPEAKERSo it would be the only Z-Wave device on my network.

55:07SPEAKER- Yeah, what if you just found an open source project

55:13SPEAKERwhere you could like make your own?

55:15SPEAKER- Is there an open source thermostat project?

55:16SPEAKER- Maybe, I type open source thermostat.

55:18SPEAKERIn fact, apparently I Googled this like a month ago

55:20SPEAKERand had forgotten about it

55:21SPEAKER'cause I was thinking about this exact same issue.

55:22SPEAKER- Oh my God.

55:23SPEAKER- Maybe you brought it up at some point,

55:25SPEAKERbut SD a pie appears to be,

55:30SPEAKERif you don't have root access to your thermostat,

55:32SPEAKERsomeone else does is the tagline.

55:35SPEAKER- I don't-

55:39SPEAKER- What are your thoughts on, I'm scrolling,

55:41SPEAKERI have not been able to figure this out,

55:42SPEAKERbut I think I'm guessing it's like probably pi zero

55:45SPEAKERor compute unit base.

55:46SPEAKER- My guess is it's a pi zero.

55:48SPEAKERDoes it have a nice box?

55:49SPEAKER- You can 3D print, well, they have plans

55:51SPEAKERfor 3D printing a case for it.

55:54SPEAKER- What, I'm kind of anti plugging open source

55:58SPEAKERand internet of things things.

55:59SPEAKERLike I want my thermostat to be UL certified.

56:02SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair actually

56:04SPEAKERwhen like temperature control was part of it.

56:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I have a sprinkler controller that's open source,

56:13SPEAKERuses the open sprinkler project, I think.

56:16SPEAKERAnd that seems fine 'cause the worst thing that happens

56:17SPEAKERin is I flood my backyard.

56:19SPEAKER- Yeah, that's still not great,

56:21SPEAKERbut at least it's not like catastrophic home damage,

56:23SPEAKERhopefully.

56:24SPEAKER- There you go.

56:25SPEAKERSo just to be clear, there is one Honeywell that is wifi

56:28SPEAKERthat the newer ones are wifi.

56:30SPEAKERIt's unclear how well those are supported.

56:32SPEAKERAnd I gotta find out if I can do those

56:35SPEAKERwithout mediating through the network.

56:37SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, how about this?

56:38SPEAKERESP 32 thermostat, what do we got?

56:41SPEAKERHere we go, here we go.

56:42SPEAKER- I haven't seen that, let's see, you got a picture?

56:44SPEAKER- Smart thermostat, no, this is just a GitHub repo.

56:46SPEAKERSmart thermostat, open source, ESP 32 based thermostat

56:49SPEAKERthat has some useful intelligence is the tagline here.

56:51SPEAKER- Oh, some useful intelligence.

56:54SPEAKER- Looks like this is still being,

56:56SPEAKERyeah, this is still the latest update March 10th.

56:58SPEAKERThis is definitely still going.

57:00SPEAKER- I'm not a versus, so here's the thing.

57:09SPEAKERI'm not the only person who uses this stuff in my house.

57:11SPEAKERSo I have to have something that when I replace something

57:14SPEAKERwith something that's some internet of things bullshit,

57:17SPEAKERI have to replace it in such a way

57:19SPEAKERthat it looks like a normal human device.

57:21SPEAKERAnd it's not like something that,

57:23SPEAKERlike the home assistant yellow is fine

57:25SPEAKERbecause it's hidden in the bottom of the closet

57:27SPEAKERand nobody normal ever has to look at that thing.

57:30SPEAKERBut like a clear plastic box isn't gonna fly

57:32SPEAKERin the situation that we're in, I don't think.

57:37SPEAKER- There are some screenshots of the interface

57:39SPEAKERof this ESP 32 based thermostat

57:41SPEAKERand it definitely has not had a nice UI pass on it yet.

57:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:45SPEAKER- I mean, it is a UI,

57:46SPEAKERbut it's very much like a functional programmer UI.

57:49SPEAKER- That's my concern.

57:50SPEAKERSo I think this Honeywell T9

57:52SPEAKERis probably the way I'm gonna go.

57:53SPEAKERIt's like 200 bucks though, which seems kind of expensive.

57:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:57SPEAKER- I mean, thermostats used to be like $6

57:59SPEAKER'cause it was just some metal that was glued

58:02SPEAKERto a piece of metal that expanded at a different rate.

58:05SPEAKER- Right, it's all just electrical at that point, right?

58:07SPEAKERI don't know why, but through all of my homeowner fantasies,

58:12SPEAKERyou know, my sort of daydreaming about like,

58:14SPEAKERwhat would I do if I had a house

58:15SPEAKERthat I could do anything I wanted to?

58:17SPEAKERFor some reason, installing a smart thermostat myself

58:20SPEAKERis like the go-to first thing I would do.

58:23SPEAKER- I'm gonna go and tell you,

58:24SPEAKERit's really nice on those like cold barrier mornings

58:27SPEAKERwhen my drafty-ass house is 60 degrees

58:30SPEAKERwhen I wake up in the morning and I roll over

58:32SPEAKERand I'm like, ah, and then I talk to my phone

58:36SPEAKERand I'm like, hey, set the heat to 65, 70.

58:40SPEAKERIt's real nice.

58:41SPEAKER- Yeah, also just outside of the practical utility,

58:43SPEAKERI've always been fascinated by hooking like very modern tech

58:46SPEAKERup to extremely old tech, like at that interface point,

58:50SPEAKERspecifically the point where a modern Wi-Fi enabled box

58:53SPEAKERwith computing power in it touches whatever electrical leads

58:58SPEAKERare built into your wall that, especially like in your case,

59:00SPEAKERhave been there for what, 60 years?

59:02SPEAKER- 70 years. - 70 years,

59:03SPEAKERyou know what I mean?

59:05SPEAKER- Well, no, those I re-pulled when we put a thing in.

59:09SPEAKER- But the point remains, you know,

59:10SPEAKERthat it's still like, it's much older elemental technology

59:14SPEAKERthat is more just run by electricity and heat

59:16SPEAKERand things like that, you know, physics and not computing,

59:19SPEAKERyou know, like I just kind of, I'm fascinated by that point

59:22SPEAKERwhere the old and new sort of touch each other

59:25SPEAKERand work in concert.

59:26SPEAKERLike I see a similar thing with you were like

59:29SPEAKERupgrading the head unit in a very old car, you know?

59:31SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

59:32SPEAKER- Like any, you know, from like the '80s or whatever,

59:35SPEAKERyou know, when they used to have just the standard,

59:37SPEAKERlike what is a single DIN unit?

59:39SPEAKER- They had a single DIN slot, and then there was,

59:41SPEAKERthere were vendor specific like head unit,

59:44SPEAKERlike you could go to Crutchfield and you could buy a bridge

59:47SPEAKERbasically that rewired your wire bundle

59:53SPEAKERto whatever head unit you bought.

59:55SPEAKER- Right, so it's that exact same principle of like

59:57SPEAKERtaking a very old pre-computer car

1:00:00SPEAKERand sticking like a modern, you know, Bluetooth

1:00:02SPEAKERcarplay-ish sort of head unit in it.

1:00:04SPEAKERLike it's just that union of old and new interfacing

1:00:07SPEAKERtogether is really cool to me.

1:00:10SPEAKER- So I realized that I do have one criteria for this,

1:00:14SPEAKERwhich I'm trying not to buy things that are cloud mediated

1:00:18SPEAKERfor the home assistant install.

1:00:20SPEAKERSo I'm trying to only buy things that I can connect to

1:00:22SPEAKERdirectly inside the house.

1:00:23SPEAKERA, because then they're more future proof.

1:00:25SPEAKERB, then the response time is really fast

1:00:29SPEAKERcompared to having to go up to the cloud

1:00:30SPEAKERand wait on the cloud service.

1:00:31SPEAKER- Yeah, also I'll throw in a third advantage,

1:00:34SPEAKERmuch smaller, in fact, no attack surface.

1:00:37SPEAKER- Yeah, so the EcoBee one using the home assist,

1:00:40SPEAKERhome kit integration is local push.

1:00:45SPEAKERThe Honeywell one requires cloud polling, so.

1:00:48SPEAKER- That's, I think that that increasingly

1:00:50SPEAKERis a deal breaker for me.

1:00:52SPEAKERAnything that requires you to have an offsite account

1:00:54SPEAKERon some offsite server to make a local device work,

1:00:57SPEAKERI think is just a non-starter for me now.

1:00:59SPEAKER- Yeah, the EcoBee ones look cooler too,

1:01:02SPEAKERwhich is important 'cause this could be on my wall.

1:01:04SPEAKER- Of course, looking cool is the most important criterion.

1:01:07SPEAKER- Well, I mean, for something that ends up

1:01:09SPEAKERin the bottom of the closet, no,

1:01:10SPEAKERbut for something that ends up in the top

1:01:14SPEAKERwhere I look at it all the time, it kind of matters.

1:01:16SPEAKER- Oh yeah, no, I'm not being facetious, I agree with you.

1:01:19SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah.

1:01:21SPEAKERIt also looks like it's cheaper, which goes a long way.

1:01:23SPEAKERSo there you go.

1:01:25SPEAKERAnyway.

1:01:25SPEAKER- Now I just need to get a house and I can join you

1:01:27SPEAKERin this smart thermostat adventure.

1:01:30SPEAKER- Can we talk about DRM real quick?

1:01:32SPEAKER- Sure.

1:01:33SPEAKER- So Nintendo, we talked about the Nintendo virtual carts

1:01:37SPEAKERa couple of months ago and they made another change

1:01:41SPEAKERthat they didn't really advertise along with this.

1:01:44SPEAKER- I saw your thread on Blue Sky about this.

1:01:46SPEAKERThis sounds like some nonsense.

1:01:48SPEAKER- It's some bullshit.

1:01:50SPEAKERLike, so, okay.

1:01:52SPEAKERSo for a long time, the recommended way

1:01:55SPEAKERof not having to buy double copies of every game

1:01:57SPEAKERthat you have for the Nintendo Switch,

1:01:58SPEAKERif you have two Switches, we've talked about this before,

1:02:01SPEAKERis you set up one as the primary,

1:02:02SPEAKERwhich means it can be connected.

1:02:04SPEAKERIt can play all the games that are on your account

1:02:06SPEAKERwhen they're downloaded without internet access.

1:02:09SPEAKERSo like my daughter's Switch Lite is the primary Switch

1:02:12SPEAKERon my account because it means that any account

1:02:15SPEAKERon her Switch, including her own, can play any of the games

1:02:18SPEAKERwhen she's in the car or wherever.

1:02:20SPEAKERIt doesn't have to have internet access, right?

1:02:23SPEAKERAnd then my Switch, the one that we bought originally,

1:02:26SPEAKERcan only play Switch games when it's connected

1:02:29SPEAKERto the internet, which is fine,

1:02:30SPEAKER'cause everywhere I play Switch games,

1:02:32SPEAKERI'm connected to the internet, pretty much.

1:02:34SPEAKERNow, you could play multiplayer games.

1:02:37SPEAKERThat technically gave you a way to play multiplayer games

1:02:40SPEAKERwith one downloaded copy of the Switch game,

1:02:43SPEAKERwhich meant when we all three have Switches,

1:02:46SPEAKER'cause we all bought Switches during the pandemic,

1:02:49SPEAKERI can load up Mario Kart.

1:02:50SPEAKERMy wife has a physical cartridge for Mario Kart,

1:02:52SPEAKERand my daughter has Mario Kart.

1:02:54SPEAKERWe could all play together on our own devices,

1:02:56SPEAKERwhich was really nice,

1:02:57SPEAKER'cause we don't have to do split-screen stuff,

1:02:58SPEAKERand it feels fancy.

1:03:00SPEAKERWith the virtual cart change, they no longer let you,

1:03:04SPEAKERthey still let you set a primary and a non-primary Switch,

1:03:07SPEAKERbut they don't let you have two copies of the same game

1:03:11SPEAKERactive at the same time anymore,

1:03:13SPEAKERwhich, like, if that was the way it was at the beginning,

1:03:16SPEAKERI would feel okay about it.

1:03:17SPEAKERBut given that's how it is

1:03:19SPEAKERat the end of this console's lifespan,

1:03:21SPEAKERlike, changing this in the last days of the Switch 1

1:03:25SPEAKERfeels really icky to me.

1:03:26SPEAKER- That's pretty rotten.

1:03:27SPEAKERLike, if they had only rolled this change out

1:03:29SPEAKERon the Switch 2, it's like, I mean-

1:03:31SPEAKER- Cost of doing business.

1:03:32SPEAKER- Nobody would be happy about it,

1:03:33SPEAKERbut it's at least understandable.

1:03:35SPEAKERLike, console makers use a clean break

1:03:37SPEAKERto a new platform all the time

1:03:38SPEAKERto roll out maybe less than friendly policy changes.

1:03:41SPEAKERBut yes, rolling it into the Switch

1:03:44SPEAKERafter eight years is not great.

1:03:47SPEAKER- Well, but also, the Switch 2 has a new system

1:03:51SPEAKERfor solving this problem, right?

1:03:54SPEAKER'Cause this is what Game Share is.

1:03:55SPEAKER- Oh, right.

1:03:56SPEAKERBut in that case, is it not streaming video

1:04:00SPEAKERto the other Switches?

1:04:01SPEAKERI thought that's how it was sharing the game

1:04:02SPEAKERwith other Switches, was that it was actually doing

1:04:04SPEAKERall the rendering locally and sending it over?

1:04:07SPEAKERI'm not sure.

1:04:08SPEAKER- I think that's maybe, like, it's weird,

1:04:11SPEAKERbecause, like, it says you can do 'em over the internet too,

1:04:14SPEAKERwhich, I mean, you can stream video over the internet,

1:04:15SPEAKERI know. - Yeah, right.

1:04:17SPEAKER- But it's unclear to me if you get split screen

1:04:19SPEAKERor if you're each getting your own view at that point.

1:04:21SPEAKER- Oh, sure, yeah, 'cause, I mean, it's not like one Switch

1:04:23SPEAKERcan render three different players full screen views

1:04:26SPEAKERor anything.

1:04:27SPEAKER- Yeah, but, well, I mean, it might be able to, who knows?

1:04:30SPEAKER- They would have to do work to do that.

1:04:31SPEAKERThey would have to specifically design it

1:04:33SPEAKERto reduce the requirements to do that.

1:04:35SPEAKER- Yeah, but, like, Mario Party's fine.

1:04:37SPEAKERIf Mario Party runs at 30 frames a second, who cares?

1:04:39SPEAKER- I'm thinking Mario, like, you can't,

1:04:41SPEAKERyou couldn't have four players at full quality

1:04:43SPEAKERplaying Mario Kart off of one Switch at one time,

1:04:45SPEAKERis what I mean.

1:04:47SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's weird, 'cause I thought,

1:04:49SPEAKERI think Mario Kart is on this list,

1:04:52SPEAKERbut I don't see it listed on their Game Share page,

1:04:54SPEAKERso maybe it's not the new Mario Kart.

1:04:55SPEAKER- Yeah. - Pretty sure it was.

1:04:57SPEAKERAnyway, it's bunk. - Switch 2's gonna be weird.

1:04:58SPEAKER- Yeah. - I'm fairly upset about this,

1:05:00SPEAKERand I'm not buying another fucking copy of Mario Kart.

1:05:03SPEAKERThis'll be the fourth copy of Mario Kart 8 I bought, I think.

1:05:06SPEAKER- You know, maybe just hold off at this point.

1:05:08SPEAKER- We play Mario Kart, like, once or twice a week usually.

1:05:11SPEAKERIt's a family activity. - There's a new one coming.

1:05:13SPEAKERI mean, I guess you're probably not gonna have

1:05:14SPEAKERthree Switch 2s in the house anytime soon,

1:05:16SPEAKERbut we can Game Share out to the other two.

1:05:19SPEAKERThat's the point, theoretically, at least.

1:05:21SPEAKER- Yes. - Anyway, I'm annoyed.

1:05:24SPEAKERNintendo, I didn't, I was tempted to call people

1:05:29SPEAKERwe know who work at Nintendo and be like,

1:05:30SPEAKER"Hey, man, this is bullshit."

1:05:32SPEAKERAnd I chose not to, responsible me, I guess.

1:05:36SPEAKERAnyway. - They probably know too.

1:05:38SPEAKER- I know they know, but I'm happy to give,

1:05:39SPEAKERI wanna give 'em more data points, 'cause it's bunk.

1:05:41SPEAKER- Yep, fair.

1:05:43SPEAKER- You got anything else,

1:05:44SPEAKERor you think that's a good place to wrap it?

1:05:45SPEAKER- That's probably a good place.

1:05:46SPEAKERI think we have grabbed a bunch of topics out of a bag.

1:05:50SPEAKER- Yeah. - Here.

1:05:51SPEAKER- I'll move my fast mail check-in to the next week list

1:05:57SPEAKERif we do another one of these.

1:05:59SPEAKER- Okay, a little Q&A, remember.

1:06:00SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, Q&A next week.

1:06:01SPEAKERBrad, I got a question for you before you go on.

1:06:03SPEAKER- Okay.

1:06:04SPEAKER- You buy Jar Jar?

1:06:06SPEAKER- No.

1:06:07SPEAKER- Jar Jar is in the store, man.

1:06:08SPEAKER- I saw, should I buy Jar Jar?

1:06:10SPEAKERIt's expensive, 1500 V bucks, I think.

1:06:12SPEAKER- I couldn't put my credit card in fast enough

1:06:14SPEAKERto buy Jar Jar last night

1:06:15SPEAKERwhen I saw Jar Jar was in the store.

1:06:16SPEAKER- People are mad, and I kind of get it,

1:06:18SPEAKERbecause they are selling Jar Jar and Darth Jar Jar

1:06:20SPEAKERseparately, not as like an alternate skin

1:06:22SPEAKERon the same purchase.

1:06:23SPEAKER- It feels bad.

1:06:24SPEAKER- It's bad, and again, these are how much,

1:06:27SPEAKERI don't know what the conversion V bucks is,

1:06:28SPEAKERbut I mean, these are-

1:06:29SPEAKER- 1500 V bucks is like, hold on,

1:06:31SPEAKERit depends on what amount of V bucks you buy.

1:06:35SPEAKER- Yes.

1:06:38SPEAKER- I'm typing dollar conversion right now,

1:06:40SPEAKER'cause I can never remember,

1:06:41SPEAKERand I don't wanna say this wrong,

1:06:43SPEAKER'cause people will yell at me.

1:06:44SPEAKER- I'm guessing it's somewhere between 10 and $20.

1:06:46SPEAKER- How much is, how much, Jar Jar was 1800 V bucks?

1:06:50SPEAKERIs that right?

1:06:51SPEAKER- 1500, 1500.

1:06:52SPEAKER- 1500.

1:06:54SPEAKER10 bucks, that's the right price for a skin.

1:06:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess.

1:07:00SPEAKERIs it, I don't know.

1:07:01SPEAKERI mean, there's probably a fair amount of work

1:07:02SPEAKERthat goes into each of those models, but-

1:07:03SPEAKER- It's a, I'll be going to tell you, making the ears flap.

1:07:07SPEAKERHis mouth doesn't move, though.

1:07:08SPEAKERWhen I sang them, I, he, his lips,

1:07:11SPEAKERI wanted to see some really horrible lip flap,

1:07:13SPEAKERand it wasn't happening.

1:07:14SPEAKER- That might be a deal breaker.

1:07:15SPEAKERI was thinking about getting it.

1:07:16SPEAKERI've got 900 V bucks off the battle pass, so.

1:07:18SPEAKER- There you go.

1:07:19SPEAKERYou'll get another 100.

1:07:20SPEAKER- I don't know what the smallest increment you can buy is.

1:07:22SPEAKER- It's like five bucks.

1:07:23SPEAKER- Like, I would maybe spend five bucks to get Jar Jar.

1:07:27SPEAKER- I feel like, we rolled last night

1:07:29SPEAKERwith a squad full of Jar Jars and one corn cob,

1:07:31SPEAKERand it was pretty amazing.

1:07:32SPEAKER- Okay, all right.

1:07:34SPEAKERI mean, I'm doing well, though.

1:07:35SPEAKERI'm on track to get the Palpatine

1:07:37SPEAKERand the alternate Palpatine and the General Grievous,

1:07:39SPEAKERso I'm already gonna be pretty flush.

1:07:41SPEAKER- Look, I'm too, like, we could log off this podcast

1:07:45SPEAKERand spend like 20 minutes, and I could get,

1:07:46SPEAKERI could get sheave.

1:07:47SPEAKERI could fully unlock my sheave, yeah.

1:07:49SPEAKER- That close, huh?

1:07:51SPEAKER- I'm on the cusp.

1:07:52SPEAKER- Nice.

1:07:52SPEAKER- Right there.

1:07:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm getting there.

1:07:54SPEAKERAnyway, time well spent,

1:07:55SPEAKERand I really just excellent use of our free time

1:07:59SPEAKERon this disaster of a game.

1:08:01SPEAKER- It's, look, I like, I've said it before.

1:08:05SPEAKERI think Fortnite, I would feel worse

1:08:07SPEAKERabout Fortnite destroying video games

1:08:09SPEAKERif it weren't for, that it's a pretty good game.

1:08:12SPEAKER- That's pretty fun.

1:08:13SPEAKER- They do a nice job managing the whole thing,

1:08:16SPEAKERlike managing that kind of live service game.

1:08:18SPEAKERI've played a lot of these,

1:08:19SPEAKERand the ones that do it badly, you know,

1:08:22SPEAKERand this one they do quite a good job with, I think, so.

1:08:25SPEAKERShout-outs to Fortnite, I guess.

1:08:27SPEAKERI just, I think, when you,

1:08:29SPEAKERwe were playing with my daughter the other day,

1:08:31SPEAKERand when you were explaining how Fortnite

1:08:33SPEAKERused to be a punchline because nobody knew what the game was

1:08:35SPEAKERand Epic had been working on it for 100 years,

1:08:38SPEAKERmy daughter didn't, she was like,

1:08:39SPEAKER"Was that thing that Uncle Brad said true?"

1:08:41SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yeah."

1:08:42SPEAKERYeah, that's how we felt about Fortnite before it came out.

1:08:45SPEAKER- Huh, interesting.

1:08:46SPEAKERShe didn't really react in the moment.

1:08:48SPEAKER- She thought you were,

1:08:49SPEAKERshe thought you were messing with her.

1:08:50SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.

1:08:51SPEAKER- No kidding.

1:08:52SPEAKER- She's like, "How, this is the biggest game in the world.

1:08:54SPEAKERHow is it possible that, that, yeah."

1:08:56SPEAKER- Anyways, just to fill in the detail,

1:08:57SPEAKERthe story I told was that I remember meeting with Epic

1:09:00SPEAKERwhen they brought that game around on preview tour

1:09:02SPEAKERwell before it came out, because yes,

1:09:05SPEAKERFortnite had become a punchline on our podcast

1:09:07SPEAKERbecause they'd been working on it for so long

1:09:08SPEAKERwithout putting anything out.

1:09:09SPEAKERAnd when they brought it around,

1:09:11SPEAKERit was just that building crafting survival game

1:09:13SPEAKERand that was it.

1:09:14SPEAKERAnd it was like, oh, I guess that's finally coming out

1:09:16SPEAKERand the world will forget about it in two weeks and move on.

1:09:19SPEAKER- Did you ever actually play that?

1:09:21SPEAKER- Yeah, no, we played it.

1:09:21SPEAKERThey brought it and we played it.

1:09:24SPEAKER- So you never actually played it?

1:09:25SPEAKER- We might've done a video on Giant Bomb

1:09:27SPEAKERof that preview tour.

1:09:29SPEAKERLet me look that up actually really quick.

1:09:31SPEAKERI'm very curious to know.

1:09:32SPEAKERTalk amongst yourself.

1:09:33SPEAKER- I, yeah, so I have access to Save the World

1:09:37SPEAKERand I think I played once,

1:09:38SPEAKERmaybe with you guys,

1:09:40SPEAKERbut I don't think we did a video, I can't remember.

1:09:42SPEAKERWas that before?

1:09:45SPEAKERIt came out before PUBG, right?

1:09:46SPEAKERThe Save the World thing.

1:09:48SPEAKER- Yes, actually I have to check.

1:09:50SPEAKERIt was around the same time.

1:09:51SPEAKEROkay, so we did an unfinished,

1:09:52SPEAKERwhich was our, hey, we play games with developers

1:09:55SPEAKERbefore they're out who bring them around to the office

1:09:59SPEAKERin July, 2017.

1:10:00SPEAKERSo didn't PUBG come out before that?

1:10:03SPEAKER- Yeah, PUBG came out in April.

1:10:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think Fortnite Save the World

1:10:07SPEAKERcame out after PUBG and then,

1:10:09SPEAKERbut then they got that battle royale mode

1:10:10SPEAKERin there real quick.

1:10:12SPEAKER- They have 102 Fortnite videos.

1:10:14SPEAKERI guess that's a lot of Abby's same thing.

1:10:16SPEAKER- Yes, but I remember that did not sit super well with me

1:10:19SPEAKERat the time, how kind of shamelessly

1:10:21SPEAKERthey just picked up battle royale from PUBG

1:10:24SPEAKERand shoved it into the game.

1:10:25SPEAKER- Oh, you mean the thing that they lifted Disney Infinity,

1:10:29SPEAKERwhat, Disney Infinite?

1:10:30SPEAKERWhat was that thing?

1:10:31SPEAKER- Disney Infinity.

1:10:33SPEAKER- Disney Infinity, yeah.

1:10:34SPEAKER- That was their Skylanders take

1:10:36SPEAKERwith the plastic figures.

1:10:38SPEAKER- Look at the art style of that Skylanders game.

1:10:41SPEAKER- Of course, anyway, whatever.

1:10:43SPEAKERI mean, the shamelessness with which they shoved

1:10:46SPEAKERa battle royale mode into PUBG or into Fortnite, rather,

1:10:49SPEAKERwould only foreshadow the utter shamelessness

1:10:52SPEAKERthat that game would descend into in every respect.

1:10:55SPEAKER- Is Fortnite a game?

1:10:56SPEAKERThat was the joke.

1:10:58SPEAKERThat was good.

1:10:59SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, so she thought you were messing with her.

1:11:03SPEAKERSo I set her straight.

1:11:05SPEAKER- That's funny, nothing but serious business here.

1:11:08SPEAKER- If you thought we were messing with you,

1:11:10SPEAKERconsider signing up for the Patreon.

1:11:13SPEAKERYou can go to patreon.com/techbod.

1:11:15SPEAKERYou can follow the Patreon, you can support the show.

1:11:18SPEAKERWe don't take ads, so we appreciate everybody's support a lot

1:11:22SPEAKERand it's five bucks a month to get access

1:11:24SPEAKERto the Patreon exclusive episodes,

1:11:25SPEAKERwhich are shockingly similar to these episodes we've done

1:11:28SPEAKERwhile you've been on jury duty.

1:11:31SPEAKERWe also, you also get access to the Discord,

1:11:35SPEAKERwhich is full of wonderful people.

1:11:36SPEAKERWhen you join, they play a video

1:11:40SPEAKERthat folks in the community made

1:11:42SPEAKERof my Fusho head reciting the lines

1:11:47SPEAKERfrom arriving at City 17 in Half-Life 2,

1:11:51SPEAKERwhich I assume anybody under the age of like 35

1:11:54SPEAKERisn't gonna have any idea what's going on with that.

1:11:58SPEAKERBut, and I also, I don't know exactly how I feel

1:12:01SPEAKERabout becoming Tech Pod's Breen, but you know, here we are.

1:12:06SPEAKER- Yep, it's a well done video though.

1:12:07SPEAKER- It's a really good video.

1:12:08SPEAKERI recorded voice lines for it, so I guess I'm complicit.

1:12:12SPEAKERBut yeah, that'll do it for us this week.

1:12:13SPEAKERThanks to all of our supporters,

1:12:15SPEAKERbut a very special thank you

1:12:17SPEAKERto our executive producer tier supporters,

1:12:20SPEAKERincluding Jason Lee, Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett,

1:12:24SPEAKERBunny Fiend for FIA President, Twinkle Twinkie,

1:12:27SPEAKERDavid Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon,

1:12:29SPEAKERmakers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

1:12:31SPEAKERThank you all so much.

1:12:32SPEAKER- Yes, thank you.

1:12:33SPEAKER- FIA President is an F1 racing thing also.

1:12:36SPEAKER- Okay, good to know.

1:12:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I learned that as a result of reading the notes

1:12:40SPEAKERat the end of the episode.

1:12:41SPEAKER- Okay, we like to learn things here.

1:12:43SPEAKER- Yeah, it's what we're here for.

1:12:45SPEAKERThank you all so much for supporting the show,

1:12:47SPEAKERand we will be back next week.

1:12:49SPEAKERAs always, please consider the environment

1:12:52SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.

1:12:54SPEAKER(upbeat music)

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