289: Computer Shangri-La

00:00SPEAKER- Brad, I don't know what Windows sounds mean anymore.

00:02SPEAKER- Did you ever?

00:04SPEAKER- Yeah, you used to have the little doot-doot

00:06SPEAKERthat was like something disconnected

00:07SPEAKERor the doot-doot, something connected.

00:10SPEAKEROr you had Brian Eno coming on and be like,

00:11SPEAKER"Yo, Windows is booting up."

00:13SPEAKER- Yep, that's exactly how that went.

00:14SPEAKER- Actually, that would be kind of like,

00:16SPEAKERwe should make a Windows sound,

00:17SPEAKERlike a Windows XP sound pack that's just like--

00:20SPEAKER- I've thought about that before.

00:21SPEAKER- Yeah, not music, just, "Yo, Windows is booting up."

00:25SPEAKERBut yeah, no, I don't know what any of the,

00:28SPEAKERI don't, because they change the chimes

00:30SPEAKERevery new version of Windows,

00:33SPEAKERI don't think I know what the new ones are supposed to mean

00:35SPEAKERother than just like general vibes.

00:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and like outside of USB device

00:40SPEAKERconnected and disconnected,

00:41SPEAKERI feel like they're all used so broadly and generically

00:44SPEAKERthat it's impossible to learn what they mean anyway, you know?

00:47SPEAKER- Yeah, like I just got a ch-ch-ch one.

00:50SPEAKERI don't know what that means.

00:51SPEAKERI think that might be, maybe that's Discord?

00:55SPEAKERLike that almost sounds like Recycle bin emptying sound.

00:59SPEAKER- No, no, no, whoa, I don't know.

01:01SPEAKERAlso, I don't, oh, here we go, sounds.

01:04SPEAKEROkay, so asterisk, that's the,

01:08SPEAKERI still know what that one is.

01:10SPEAKERWould have been really smart for me to set it up

01:11SPEAKERso I could just play these into the file.

01:13SPEAKER- It would have.

01:14SPEAKER- Let me take two seconds.

01:15SPEAKEROkay, so I just got another one.

01:17SPEAKERI'm getting doodle-doo-n, doodle-doo-n,

01:18SPEAKERdoodle-doo-n, doodle-doo-n, all the time.

01:21SPEAKER- I think we've buried the lead here.

01:22SPEAKERYou're getting a bunch of phantom sounds

01:24SPEAKERas we have been setting up to record here.

01:27SPEAKER- Yeah, but I have the notifications turned,

01:28SPEAKERdo not disturb, oh, oh no, that's the problem.

01:33SPEAKERWindows turned my do not disturb off

01:34SPEAKERwhen it updated Windows yesterday.

01:36SPEAKER- Wait, do you just roll with do not disturb

01:38SPEAKERon constantly? - 24/7 D&D, baby.

01:41SPEAKER- So you never get notifications at all?

01:42SPEAKER- I don't, my phone is for, phones are for notifications,

01:46SPEAKERcomputers are for leaving me the fuck alone.

01:48SPEAKER- Man, I've gone the other way.

01:50SPEAKERMy phone notifications now come through

01:51SPEAKERto my Windows install, which I have come to regret deeply,

01:55SPEAKERbut not enough that I've bothered to turn it off.

01:57SPEAKER- So I, okay, which one, are you using the phone link

02:00SPEAKERor using a Unison?

02:01SPEAKER- I am using phone link.

02:02SPEAKERIs Unison better?

02:03SPEAKERPhone link is the one built into Windows

02:04SPEAKERfor people who don't know,

02:05SPEAKERand Unison is the Intel kind of equivalent

02:08SPEAKERthat you can install.

02:09SPEAKER- But the Intel one works on,

02:10SPEAKERyou can put it on AMD machines or whatever,

02:12SPEAKERit works on everything.

02:13SPEAKERUnison's fabulous, they're end of lifeing it in June,

02:15SPEAKER'cause anything nice Intel makes,

02:17SPEAKERthey shut down after like six months.

02:18SPEAKER- Of course, well, okay, no reason to switch then, I guess.

02:21SPEAKER- Don't switch.

02:22SPEAKERUnison lets you like share your screen.

02:23SPEAKERSo like I hooked my iPad up to my laptop

02:25SPEAKERand I use it as a second screen when I'm out and about.

02:28SPEAKER- And it sounds pretty good. - Yeah, it's so cool.

02:30SPEAKER- That sounds pretty good.

02:31SPEAKERPhone link is distressingly limited, I have found.

02:33SPEAKERLike I installed it solely to try to get

02:36SPEAKERbasically an iMessage client on my computer.

02:38SPEAKER- That's what I use it for.

02:39SPEAKER- On my Windows machine.

02:40SPEAKERBut like it doesn't work with group chats,

02:42SPEAKERit doesn't work with a bunch of,

02:43SPEAKERlike it doesn't always sync messages coming and going

02:46SPEAKERafter the fact, like the group chat one is the biggest one.

02:49SPEAKERLike you cannot message multiple people

02:51SPEAKERat one time with it.

02:52SPEAKER- Yeah, so I don't use group chats,

02:53SPEAKERso it's not really a problem.

02:55SPEAKERBut I do, I am an unwilling participant

02:58SPEAKERin several group chats and I have messed them up using it.

03:01SPEAKERSo anyway, yeah, so I put do not disturb mode on,

03:06SPEAKERwhich like also, can I complain a little bit

03:10SPEAKERabout the do not disturb icon?

03:12SPEAKER- What else is this podcast for?

03:14SPEAKER- Fair, but like the do not disturb icon

03:16SPEAKERwas on on my taskbar next to the clock and the date.

03:19SPEAKERAnd then when I went up there, it was like,

03:21SPEAKERdo not disturb is off at the top and I was like,

03:23SPEAKERoh, let me click the thing that says do not disturb is on.

03:25SPEAKERAnd now I guess it goes away when you turn it on.

03:27SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, 24/7 do not disturb.

03:31SPEAKER- Yeah, what if your devices didn't nag you so much?

03:34SPEAKER- My devices don't nag me anymore.

03:35SPEAKERI did a newsletter about this.

03:36SPEAKERI'm down under 65 notifications a day on my phone.

03:42SPEAKER- Man, that's still a pretty high bar.

03:44SPEAKER- It's not great.

03:45SPEAKER- Like the problem is, like our laundry is in the bath,

03:48SPEAKERis in the garage, right?

03:50SPEAKERAnd the way that the washer note tells us

03:52SPEAKERthat the load is done 'cause you can't hear the buzzer

03:53SPEAKERfrom outside the house is that I get a notification.

03:57SPEAKER- Sensible.

03:58SPEAKER- And we have a kid.

03:58SPEAKERYeah, so we do a lot of laundry, it turns out.

04:00SPEAKERI also set up a camera to,

04:02SPEAKERhave I talked about the coyote situation?

04:05SPEAKER- Yeah, a little bit, yes.

04:05SPEAKERWe talked about spores and such last week, I believe.

04:07SPEAKER- Yeah, there was poo.

04:09SPEAKERSo I set up a camera in the backyard

04:10SPEAKERand it's a cheap camera.

04:11SPEAKERSo it notifies me every time like dust flies

04:15SPEAKERin front of the camera.

04:16SPEAKER- Is it just motion activated?

04:17SPEAKER- It's just motion.

04:18SPEAKERIt's just like when pixels change in the camera image

04:21SPEAKERand it's not particularly discerning.

04:23SPEAKERSo like bugs come up 'cause they're interested

04:26SPEAKERin the infrared light and that triggers it.

04:30SPEAKERA leaf blowing on my blueberry plants will trigger it.

04:33SPEAKER- Does it send you an image of the motion?

04:35SPEAKER- No.

04:35SPEAKER- Man, that would be cool.

04:36SPEAKER- It's completely useless.

04:38SPEAKERAll it does is tell me I need to go log into the thing.

04:40SPEAKERNow I will say, night before last I got like,

04:44SPEAKERit was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

04:46SPEAKERjust hammering me.

04:47SPEAKERI was like, what the hell's going on?

04:49SPEAKERThere was a spider, right?

04:53SPEAKERIt's a wide angle camera on a bubble dome camera.

04:58SPEAKERAnd there was a spider that was on the glass

05:00SPEAKERdirectly in front of the lens.

05:02SPEAKERSo it was like, I just saw like spider body and legs

05:06SPEAKERthat covered the entire field of view of the thing.

05:09SPEAKER- Gross.

05:10SPEAKER- And I was like, this is, I'm not gonna sleep tonight, man.

05:12SPEAKERThis is bad.

05:12SPEAKER- That spider did not give an F about your notifications.

05:15SPEAKER- No, no, that spider was just like,

05:18SPEAKERhell yeah, give me that infrared light.

05:19SPEAKERI'm gonna eat all these little bugs.

05:21SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:42SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

05:49SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made at TechPod.

05:52SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:53SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

05:54SPEAKER- Brad.

05:54SPEAKER- Hi, hello.

05:56SPEAKER- How was your first full week back

05:58SPEAKERout of your mandatory government service?

06:00SPEAKER- It's going, it's starting to rediscover real life.

06:03SPEAKERThe chatter, speaking of group chats,

06:06SPEAKERthe chatter in the jury pool group chat

06:09SPEAKERhas started to die down.

06:11SPEAKER- Oh, you had a group chat with the jury?

06:13SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

06:14SPEAKERThe jury started a group chat after.

06:16SPEAKER- Aw.

06:17SPEAKER- It was never super active, but you know,

06:19SPEAKERpeople have been kind of bouncing stuff around

06:21SPEAKERin there a little bit,

06:21SPEAKERbut I think everybody is like getting back to real life now.

06:24SPEAKER- Yeah, did you share like links covering the trial

06:26SPEAKERor anything?

06:27SPEAKER- A little bit, but that's where I got those articles

06:28SPEAKERthat we've talked about about past events

06:30SPEAKERrelated to the plaintiff and the case and stuff.

06:33SPEAKERBut the thing I've been meaning to drop in there

06:35SPEAKERis that I found on the SF Superior Court site,

06:38SPEAKERlike you can just do case searches.

06:40SPEAKER- Ooh.

06:41SPEAKER- I was able to pull up the case on kind of the backend

06:45SPEAKERwhere you can look at every single milestone

06:46SPEAKERthat has ever happened with that case

06:48SPEAKERsince it was filed in 2022,

06:50SPEAKERof which there are 53 pages.

06:53SPEAKER- Wow, I'm not gonna read that.

06:54SPEAKER- Like to maybe 15, 20 entries per page.

06:57SPEAKERI mean, that's every single like appearance

06:59SPEAKERbefore the judge, motion that was filed,

07:01SPEAKERlike deposition, blah, blah, blah.

07:03SPEAKERBut it was cool to be able to,

07:04SPEAKERyou can pull up a lot of documents.

07:05SPEAKERLike there are tons of PDFs on there of documents

07:08SPEAKERyou can pull up of things that happened in the trial.

07:10SPEAKERSo I can like-

07:11SPEAKER- See all the stuff they didn't show you?

07:13SPEAKER- Yes, well, it's not so much evidence.

07:15SPEAKERIt's more like motions that were filed

07:16SPEAKERand briefs and declarations and stuff.

07:18SPEAKERSo it's like,

07:20SPEAKERand I'm gonna start forgetting this stuff very rapidly

07:22SPEAKER'cause it's not like I did a daily journal or anything.

07:23SPEAKERBut as of right now, I can still remember enough

07:25SPEAKERthat it'll be like, oh, that Friday,

07:27SPEAKERthat Friday before like the week before it was done

07:29SPEAKERwhen they dismissed us all at like three o'clock

07:31SPEAKERand they were like,

07:32SPEAKER"Hey, you can go home for the weekend, you're done."

07:33SPEAKERNow I can see the documents that were filed

07:36SPEAKERthat describe what was going on.

07:39SPEAKERThat turned out to be the reason we had to leave,

07:40SPEAKERif that makes sense.

07:42SPEAKERWhich in this case, it turns out is that the city filed,

07:45SPEAKERor actually it was an oral motion.

07:46SPEAKERI don't know if that counts as filing a motion,

07:48SPEAKERbut they essentially made an oral motion

07:50SPEAKERto get the case tossed out.

07:51SPEAKER- Oh, so you might've been cut loose a week earlier.

07:54SPEAKER- Yes, but apparently the judge did not agree,

07:57SPEAKERbut the city effectively,

07:59SPEAKERit was right after the plaintiff rested.

08:00SPEAKERThe city was basically like,

08:02SPEAKERaccording to the documents I looked at,

08:03SPEAKERlike I looked up what a judgment of non-suit means

08:05SPEAKERin California.

08:07SPEAKERApparently it means they were arguing that,

08:08SPEAKER"Hey, the plaintiff has completely failed

08:10SPEAKERto prove their case,

08:11SPEAKERwhy don't we just stop doing this?"

08:13SPEAKERBut the judge did not go for it.

08:14SPEAKERJudge did not go for it.

08:16SPEAKER- Yeah, good try.

08:17SPEAKER- It's cool to also that backend,

08:19SPEAKERlike the Superior Court backend is ancient.

08:23SPEAKER- Really?

08:24SPEAKER- It is the URL,

08:25SPEAKERlike it's kind of some kind of session based thing.

08:27SPEAKERSo you can't link to documents to people

08:29SPEAKERbecause it's some like purely individualized session

08:32SPEAKERwhen you go on there and search for a case.

08:34SPEAKERLike I'm just-

08:35SPEAKER- Oh, you're loading a CGI bin with a token.

08:37SPEAKER- Not even, the URL ends in .dll.

08:42SPEAKERSo I think it's some Windows server based infrastructure.

08:47SPEAKER- Front page or something, that's terrible.

08:48SPEAKER- Yes, it's fun.

08:50SPEAKERAnyway, that's been fun to look through.

08:52SPEAKERBefore we get into the meat of this week's episode,

08:53SPEAKERI also have to issue the first time ever a correction

08:56SPEAKERor an addendum.

08:58SPEAKER- We've corrected stuff before.

08:59SPEAKER- Well, okay, first time for everything for me.

09:02SPEAKER- Okay.

09:03SPEAKER- Weird, right?

09:04SPEAKER- We've corrected your stuff before, it's been a while.

09:06SPEAKER- Yeah, we posted the patron episode of a day or two ago.

09:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:11SPEAKER- This is not a huge deal,

09:12SPEAKERbut we talked about reverse proxies on there.

09:14SPEAKERI made a comment that I just wanted to add to really quickly

09:17SPEAKERwhich is that I said you can set up HTTPS

09:20SPEAKERon your reverse proxy.

09:22SPEAKERAnd I think the way I put it was like,

09:24SPEAKERthe only reason that you would do that

09:25SPEAKERis to make your browser stop nagging you

09:27SPEAKERabout your sites being insecure.

09:29SPEAKER- Oh, but you were talking about

09:30SPEAKERin the context of inside your land.

09:32SPEAKER- Yes, I omitted the part where that's for my use case,

09:35SPEAKERthat's the only reason to do it

09:36SPEAKERbecause I'm not opening that proxy up to the open internet.

09:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:41SPEAKER- But if you were to actually expose your reverse proxy

09:43SPEAKERto the open internet, you absolutely would want to set up

09:46SPEAKERHTTPS to encrypt the traffic going in and out of your land.

09:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.

09:50SPEAKER- So that is a much more actually

09:52SPEAKERlike crucial reason to do that.

09:55SPEAKERAlthough I think we might've mentioned this a little bit,

09:57SPEAKERwe talked about VPSs on that episode.

10:00SPEAKER- If you wanna listen to this episode

10:01SPEAKERand you're not a patron, you can go to patreon.com/checkpod

10:04SPEAKERand give us $5 and then you get a whole new feed

10:08SPEAKERwith 68 or 69 podcasts in it.

10:11SPEAKER- That's right.

10:12SPEAKERAnd 62, I think two, 62.

10:15SPEAKER- Was it 62?

10:16SPEAKEROkay, so there's a couple of extras in there too.

10:18SPEAKERSo we had some unnumbered ones, but anyway.

10:21SPEAKER- And you'll get access to the fabulous Discord

10:24SPEAKERwhere this was said when I mentioned that

10:27SPEAKERand I dropped that in the thread for that episode

10:30SPEAKERand networking channel VIP cake batter popped in

10:34SPEAKERand mentioned that actually you probably don't want

10:37SPEAKERto expose your reverse proxy to the open internet

10:39SPEAKERto begin with, that you probably wanna put

10:41SPEAKERCloudflare tunnel in front of it,

10:44SPEAKERor you wanna like put the proxy on like a separate server

10:47SPEAKERfrom your home connection, so.

10:50SPEAKER- So the Cloudflare tunnel, I think I'm gonna,

10:52SPEAKERI can use that to obscure my home IP address.

10:55SPEAKER- It seems like everybody is using it for that.

10:58SPEAKERLike I went and registered that VPS last November

11:01SPEAKERat Black Friday.

11:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:04SPEAKER- And then immediately after that found out

11:05SPEAKERabout Cloudflare tunnel, which basically kind of does

11:07SPEAKERfor free what I was planning to use that VPS for, so.

11:10SPEAKER- So also shout out to Cloudflare.

11:12SPEAKERThey have a job opening that is exactly the kind of thing

11:15SPEAKERI would like to do.

11:16SPEAKERSo if anybody listening works at Cloudflare

11:19SPEAKERand would like to reach out and refer me,

11:21SPEAKERI would love that.

11:22SPEAKER'Cause I don't know anyone who works at Cloudflare.

11:24SPEAKERIt's a black box for me.

11:27SPEAKER- Well, you might soon.

11:28SPEAKERI'm tempted to ask about the details of that job,

11:29SPEAKERbut maybe I'll let you tell me offline.

11:31SPEAKER- I'll talk, it's an editor-in-chief of their blog.

11:33SPEAKERSo they have a really good technical blog.

11:35SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, sure.

11:36SPEAKER- And they need somebody who can do editorial

11:39SPEAKERthat hits a wide audience.

11:41SPEAKERAnd it's exactly the kind of thing I've spent

11:42SPEAKERthe last 20 years doing in my career.

11:45SPEAKER- That sounds cool.

11:46SPEAKERAnyway, I've reassured myself that this VPS

11:50SPEAKERwas worth the hassle because now I can tell myself like,

11:52SPEAKERI'm not putting this in the hands of a corporation

11:54SPEAKERthat might change their policies or start charging

11:55SPEAKERfor that service at some point.

11:57SPEAKERBut I'm just trying to make myself feel better.

11:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

12:00SPEAKER- Anyway.

12:02SPEAKER- Okay, so this week, we got into two things this week.

12:05SPEAKEROne, so with apologies to our Midwestern listeners

12:09SPEAKERand shout outs to a bunch of listeners and readers

12:11SPEAKERthat I met yesterday.

12:13SPEAKERI made my first trip to a Micro Center ever.

12:15SPEAKER- Ever?

12:16SPEAKER- Ever.

12:17SPEAKER- Oh, I figured you would have been the one back in the day.

12:19SPEAKER- So I don't think I knew about the one back in the day.

12:21SPEAKER- Okay.

12:22SPEAKER- And it also was, it was only around for a little while

12:25SPEAKER'cause it was, so there was one down south

12:27SPEAKERand it was open and then there was some construction

12:29SPEAKERthat happened somewhere that ended up shutting,

12:32SPEAKERlike destroying, they knocked down the shopping center

12:34SPEAKERthat it was in, so they closed it in like 2012.

12:37SPEAKERAnd I was firmly a fries and central person back then.

12:40SPEAKERAnd I don't think I understood,

12:42SPEAKERA, my car wasn't super reliable at that time frame,

12:46SPEAKERbut B, the like driving down there

12:51SPEAKERwhen I could just go to central in the city

12:52SPEAKERwas probably not a thing I was gonna do.

12:54SPEAKER- Sure.

12:56SPEAKER- So yeah, we'll talk about that

12:57SPEAKERat the end of the show though.

12:58SPEAKER- The grand opening.

12:59SPEAKER- You have grand opening, like they had the honchos there.

13:02SPEAKER- Wow.

13:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

13:04SPEAKER- No kidding.

13:05SPEAKER- So Dan Ackerman, who runs the Micro Center blog,

13:07SPEAKERbut I know him from his days at Gizmodo and CNET.

13:11SPEAKER- Wait, that's CNET Dan Ackerman?

13:12SPEAKER- CNET Dan Ackerman, you know Dan Ackerman.

13:15SPEAKER- I don't know that I've ever met him.

13:16SPEAKERI knew his wife from the games press.

13:19SPEAKERI don't think I've ever met Dan, but I saw the name

13:22SPEAKERand just assumed it was coincidentally

13:23SPEAKERsomehow like a different Ackerman.

13:26SPEAKER- No, no, so Dan was there, he was hanging out

13:29SPEAKERand talking to folks and like we got to take

13:33SPEAKERthe full tour of the store and met a bunch of people

13:34SPEAKERwho were waiting in line to get in.

13:36SPEAKERThey had some doorbuster kind of deals and stuff like that.

13:39SPEAKERSo anyway.

13:40SPEAKER- I started to ask a question, but I'll reserve it.

13:42SPEAKERI think we're going to do the more

13:43SPEAKERuniversally actionable topic first.

13:47SPEAKER- So the reason, but just in general,

13:48SPEAKERthe reason Micro Center is interesting is like,

13:51SPEAKERit is generally, imagine if Best Buy was a store

13:56SPEAKERwhere people were knowledgeable and excited

13:58SPEAKERabout DIY PC building.

13:59SPEAKER- Cool, that sounds good.

14:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's pretty good.

14:03SPEAKERSo, okay, so the thing we're gonna talk about first

14:05SPEAKERis GeForce Now.

14:07SPEAKERThe excuse we're talking about is that GeForce Now

14:09SPEAKERjust released their Steam Deck client.

14:13SPEAKERPreviously, it's been a web-based thing,

14:15SPEAKERkind of like the Xbox cloud sharing on edge

14:18SPEAKERfor the Steam Deck, which is fine.

14:21SPEAKERGeForce Now didn't run as well.

14:22SPEAKERI think the edge cloud streaming for Xbox ran pretty well.

14:26SPEAKERThe GeForce Now web experience was less good

14:28SPEAKERwhen I tested it a year or two ago at this point.

14:31SPEAKER- When you say edge, you're talking about the browser edge?

14:33SPEAKER- Yeah, the browser edge.

14:34SPEAKERSo you install edge on Linux.

14:35SPEAKER- I didn't realize there was a Linux version of edge.

14:37SPEAKER- Of course there is.

14:38SPEAKERMicrosoft loves Linux now.

14:39SPEAKERIt's the 21st century.

14:40SPEAKER- Yes, the Ballmer era is long gone, yes.

14:42SPEAKER- Yeah, but yeah, so it was a browser-based implementation

14:46SPEAKERbefore it was just fine,

14:47SPEAKERbut I often had like a little bit of jank with controls

14:50SPEAKERand stuff like that, especially in docked mode.

14:52SPEAKERThe new version is a flat pack,

14:54SPEAKERwhich means it works with arch and arch derivatives,

14:58SPEAKERincluding the Steam Deck, obviously,

15:00SPEAKERwhich is what it's built for,

15:01SPEAKERbut it'll work on other distros is my understanding as well.

15:05SPEAKERIt doesn't work with bazite,

15:06SPEAKER'cause that's based on Fedora Blue, stuff like that.

15:09SPEAKERMy assumption is that people will unbundle the packaging

15:13SPEAKERthat's in the flat pack and re-bundle it

15:15SPEAKERand put it in the normal repos

15:17SPEAKERor other distros pretty quickly,

15:19SPEAKER'cause it seems to be pretty desirable.

15:23SPEAKERIt works just like GeForce Now does on the PC.

15:25SPEAKERSo you connect your account to the PC game stores

15:29SPEAKERlike Steam and Epic, Ubisoft, EA, all the kind of usuals.

15:35SPEAKERAnd then for the stores that,

15:38SPEAKERfor the games that have been flagged as compatible

15:40SPEAKERwith GeForce Now in the back ends,

15:43SPEAKERwhich is something that developers

15:44SPEAKERor publishers have to do,

15:45SPEAKERyou just kind of hit a button and hit play

15:47SPEAKERand the game just runs off of one of NVIDIA's data centers

15:51SPEAKERnear you and streams that output as video

15:53SPEAKERand input back to the game.

15:55SPEAKER- Okay. - It works really well.

15:56SPEAKER- So all that contractual business

15:57SPEAKERdid get handled at some point.

15:59SPEAKERI have not checked in on the business end of GeForce Now

16:03SPEAKERsince I don't remember 2018, 2019.

16:06SPEAKERI remember this being a news story

16:07SPEAKERwe covered on the bomb cast when GeForce Now was new,

16:10SPEAKERbecause if you remember when they first started out,

16:13SPEAKERthey were just letting you stream any game you owned on Steam

16:17SPEAKERthrough their service.

16:17SPEAKERYou remember that?

16:18SPEAKER- Yeah, it kind of just works is the thing.

16:21SPEAKER- Well, what I'm talking about is the part

16:22SPEAKERwhere developers or publishers now have to opt in.

16:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so they-

16:26SPEAKER- What the controversy was around them,

16:29SPEAKERagain, enabling access to literally everything

16:31SPEAKERin your Steam library,

16:32SPEAKERand then some developers started going,

16:34SPEAKER"You know, we haven't given you permission

16:36SPEAKERto start monetizing our game through your service."

16:39SPEAKER- Okay, so two things.

16:41SPEAKER- So I was, and then especially

16:42SPEAKERsince you've worked in development,

16:43SPEAKERI was just curious like what the backend like business is

16:46SPEAKERthat happens now, but go on.

16:47SPEAKER- Yeah, so I don't know that it's weird.

16:51SPEAKERI don't know that I would call this monetizing.

16:54SPEAKERIs that like, is that a weird thing to get hung up on?

16:56SPEAKER- I don't know.

16:57SPEAKERI mean, I'm not, I'm just describing what happened.

16:59SPEAKERI'm not like making a value judgment here.

17:02SPEAKERI'm just saying that, excuse me,

17:03SPEAKERthere was a lot of ire from certain developers

17:07SPEAKERtoward NVIDIA over them,

17:10SPEAKERincluding their games on the service without asking.

17:12SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and there's some games

17:13SPEAKERthat like just aren't available.

17:15SPEAKERLike I think PUBG is still not available on GeForce Now.

17:17SPEAKERI'm not 100% on that right now.

17:20SPEAKER- I was just curious, and you may not know,

17:22SPEAKERI'm just curious if like, is there a licensing fee

17:24SPEAKERor like what is going on when a game gets opted

17:26SPEAKERinto GeForce Now, like are developers getting money for that?

17:31SPEAKER- No, okay, so the way GeForce Now works is it's not like,

17:34SPEAKERit's not like a streaming service

17:35SPEAKERlike Netflix or Xbox, or Xbox Game Pass, right?

17:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I know that.

17:39SPEAKER- Yeah, so you connect it to your game stores

17:44SPEAKERand then you play games that you've bought on those stores.

17:46SPEAKERSo theoretically, it's just that instead of using a computer

17:49SPEAKERthat's sitting in your living room,

17:50SPEAKERyou're using a computer that you pay them for access to.

17:53SPEAKERAnd I think a lot of the complaint was actually,

17:56SPEAKERfrom developers, was actually around the idea

17:59SPEAKERthat they were selling exclusive streaming service access

18:03SPEAKERto their games, and then NVIDIA coming in

18:06SPEAKERand offering this took that, made that was no longer,

18:09SPEAKERmade them in breach of their contracts, right,

18:11SPEAKERwith the providers that they had signed up for.

18:15SPEAKERWhat I will say is that on the Steam backend,

18:20SPEAKERthere's a checkbox that says,

18:21SPEAKER"Do you wanna enable GeForce Now support?"

18:23SPEAKER- Oh, so that's it?

18:24SPEAKER- And then you press that,

18:25SPEAKERand then you push those changes to Steam,

18:27SPEAKERand then your game is on GeForce Now.

18:29SPEAKER- Interesting, all right.

18:30SPEAKER- The way it works from Steam side,

18:32SPEAKERSteam is the jankiest of the services, I think,

18:34SPEAKERwhich is a little bit unfortunate.

18:36SPEAKERLike you need to have a public profile

18:39SPEAKERthat lists all of your games.

18:41SPEAKERAnd if your game list is private

18:45SPEAKERby your privacy settings in Steam,

18:47SPEAKERGeForce Now is like, "Hey man,

18:48SPEAKER"we don't know what games you have.

18:49SPEAKER"You have to make this public so we can scan them."

18:51SPEAKER- That's really weird that that relies on a public listing

18:53SPEAKERand not just like backend access.

18:55SPEAKER- It is pretty janky.

18:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

18:58SPEAKER- So I generally, my games list is private

19:00SPEAKERjust 'cause I don't like having

19:01SPEAKERthat kind of information out there.

19:03SPEAKERI don't want people to know that I'm spending 300 hours

19:05SPEAKERplaying "Hello Kitty Island" adventures or whatever.

19:08SPEAKER- No shame in it.

19:09SPEAKER- I don't have any shame,

19:10SPEAKERbut you know, it's just the way I live my life.

19:15SPEAKERSo you, so I just flip it.

19:19SPEAKERWhen I buy new games, I flip the thing private,

19:21SPEAKERhit the scan button in GeForce Now,

19:23SPEAKERand then set it back private again,

19:26SPEAKERset my account private again.

19:29SPEAKERI do a lot of streaming from my PC to the Steam deck.

19:32SPEAKERSo I have my gaming PC in the office,

19:34SPEAKERand if I'm sitting on the couch and wanna hang out

19:35SPEAKERor something while I'm playing a game, I'll do that.

19:38SPEAKERIt's always, it works pretty well these days,

19:41SPEAKERespecially with "Moonlight and Sunshine."

19:43SPEAKERIt's always a little janky,

19:44SPEAKERespecially with brand new titles

19:46SPEAKERbefore the software has kind of,

19:48SPEAKERlike, before everything's settled out.

19:51SPEAKERSo I often have to get up and walk into the other room

19:54SPEAKERto change a game from borderless to full screen

19:56SPEAKERor adjust the resolution or something like that

19:58SPEAKERbefore the Steam deck, before "Moonlight"

20:00SPEAKERor the Steam link streaming can kind of hook up to it.

20:05SPEAKERAnd stuff like running at too high a resolution on the desktop,

20:09SPEAKERlike if I run at the 4K resolution my desktop works at,

20:12SPEAKERsometimes you wanna actually turn those resolutions down

20:14SPEAKERso you get a little bit smoother frame rate,

20:15SPEAKER'cause the scaling can introduce some stutter and stuff.

20:20SPEAKERThis was great.

20:21SPEAKERGeForce Now on the Steam deck with the client

20:23SPEAKERwas much better, was really nice and equivalent

20:27SPEAKERin a lot of ways to that local streaming

20:28SPEAKERfrom the good gaming PC.

20:29SPEAKER- I assume, or at least I would hope,

20:31SPEAKERit eliminates some of the fiddliness

20:33SPEAKERaround having to change resolutions

20:35SPEAKERand stuff like that, like-

20:37SPEAKER- Yeah, generally speaking, the GeForce Now games,

20:40SPEAKERwhen you launch them, they just work, right?

20:42SPEAKERThey're optimized, especially with this client.

20:44SPEAKERI haven't used the PC client as much, but on this client,

20:48SPEAKERit generally set the game to 1280 by 800

20:51SPEAKERand gave you reasonable settings

20:53SPEAKERfor visual fidelity at that thing.

20:56SPEAKERAnd the nice thing about it is,

20:58SPEAKERbecause you're running on GPUs in the cloud

21:00SPEAKERand not on the local GPU on the Steam deck,

21:03SPEAKERlike you can do stuff that isn't supported,

21:06SPEAKERlike run ray tracing and stuff like that,

21:07SPEAKERassuming you're paying for the tier of GeForce Now

21:09SPEAKERthat includes ray tracing.

21:11SPEAKER- Yeah, what are the pricing tiers at this point?

21:13SPEAKER- So there's a free tier that they don't specify

21:16SPEAKERwhat kind of GPUs you get access to.

21:22SPEAKEROkay, so the main differentiators on the tiers

21:24SPEAKERare the features you get access to GeForce wise,

21:27SPEAKERlike the high-end ultimate tier is a 4080 class GPU.

21:31SPEAKERThe mid tier, I don't think they specify what it is,

21:35SPEAKERbut it's, you do have RTX for the mid tier.

21:40SPEAKERI don't think it goes, I think it's 1440p

21:42SPEAKERis the max resolution for the mid tier one.

21:47SPEAKEROkay, so here's the breakdown on the tiers.

21:49SPEAKERThe basic here, they list as a four vCPU rig.

21:53SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, these aren't like dedicated boxes

21:55SPEAKERin a data server someplace, they're slicing up big giant,

21:59SPEAKERlike GPU compute cloud GPUs,

22:02SPEAKERand they're handing them off in small chunks to players.

22:06SPEAKERSo the free one's ad supported, you can,

22:09SPEAKERthe queue times are sometimes pretty long,

22:11SPEAKERespecially at like prime time,

22:12SPEAKERbut it's usually like three or four minutes at most

22:15SPEAKERwhen I've looked at it.

22:16SPEAKERThe big thing that they use to gate the different tiers

22:19SPEAKERis resolution and session length.

22:21SPEAKERSo free goes up to 1080p and the maximum session is an hour.

22:25SPEAKERThere's nothing that stops you from like reaching the end

22:28SPEAKERof your first hour and then just disconnecting

22:29SPEAKERand reconnecting, so you can do this indefinitely.

22:31SPEAKERInteresting, but it'll end the session, right?

22:34SPEAKERYou couldn't like leave the game paused

22:35SPEAKERand disconnect and reconnect.

22:37SPEAKERIt resets the virtual server.

22:40SPEAKERAnd so you basically save your game, exit out,

22:43SPEAKERrestart and come back right back where you were.

22:45SPEAKERCan I jump in here really quick and just reassure

22:47SPEAKERthat this is not a sponsored episode, by the way?

22:49SPEAKEROh yeah, yeah, no, they're not paying us any time.

22:52SPEAKERWe just like start running down features

22:53SPEAKERon something we've been messing with.

22:55SPEAKERLike I think like after that Fast Mail episode,

22:57SPEAKERsomebody was like, were you guys being paid

22:59SPEAKERby Fast Mail for that?

23:00SPEAKERLike, absolutely not.

23:01SPEAKERNo, if we were being paid by somebody, we'll disclose.

23:03SPEAKERYes, like it would be extremely obvious

23:05SPEAKERif we were to ever do something like that,

23:06SPEAKERbut this is just you testing something and talking about it.

23:10SPEAKERYeah, so I did a PC World video and it was,

23:13SPEAKERand spent like that video ended up being

23:15SPEAKERa three minute YouTube short.

23:17SPEAKERAnd I didn't get to talk about all the stuff

23:18SPEAKERthat I learned using this.

23:20SPEAKERA short, a vertical.

23:21SPEAKERA vertically oriented short?

23:23SPEAKERYeah, we do PC World shorts now.

23:26SPEAKERDo you crop the footage or do you just letterbox it?

23:29SPEAKERI shot that one, like it was gonna be a short

23:32SPEAKERwhen I shot it, I just shot it vertically.

23:34SPEAKERNot your face.

23:35SPEAKERI'm talking about any game footage that goes in.

23:37SPEAKERDoes that get cropped to the vertical orientation?

23:40SPEAKERSo the format that I use for PC,

23:42SPEAKERwe use for PC World verticals is usually floating head

23:45SPEAKERon top of cropped, zoomed in footage.

23:47SPEAKEROkay.

23:48SPEAKERYeah.

23:50SPEAKERSo anyway, maximum session length is an hour.

23:53SPEAKEROn the performance tier, which is the mid tier,

23:55SPEAKERit's up to six hours.

23:57SPEAKERWild, they cap, even it's eight for the ultimate,

24:00SPEAKERwhich is the 40, 80 tier.

24:02SPEAKERLike I'm surprised that there isn't a tier

24:04SPEAKERthat just lets you play as long as you want.

24:06SPEAKERI mean, eight hours, pretty long time, but still.

24:10SPEAKERYeah, I was gonna say it's like,

24:14SPEAKERI never hit the eight hours.

24:15SPEAKERI've been using it for a couple, three weeks now.

24:17SPEAKERLike gaming doesn't work that way anymore, unfortunately.

24:19SPEAKERYeah, that's fair.

24:20SPEAKERI just, if I were paying for the highest tier,

24:22SPEAKERI think I might get a little annoyed when it said,

24:24SPEAKER"Hey, you have to disconnect now," but.

24:26SPEAKERYeah.

24:28SPEAKERSo then the other thing is they do, you only get HDR.

24:31SPEAKERI think you get RTX at the two paid tiers.

24:35SPEAKERSo the ray tracing, basically.

24:37SPEAKERYou don't get things like reflex and frame gen

24:40SPEAKERuntil you pay for the most expensive tier.

24:43SPEAKERBut also the most expensive tier

24:45SPEAKERis capped at 240 frames a second.

24:47SPEAKEROn the Steam Deck client,

24:48SPEAKEReverything's capped at 60 frames a second right now.

24:50SPEAKEREven if you have one of the handhelds

24:52SPEAKERthat does higher frame rates,

24:54SPEAKERthat's something that they had on the list of,

24:57SPEAKERhere's the stuff we're going to address.

24:59SPEAKERSo anyway, it works really well out of the box.

25:03SPEAKERIt works by default with most games at 1280 by 800.

25:06SPEAKERSometimes if you have like a game that you've played

25:07SPEAKERon a PC that has a higher resolution saved

25:10SPEAKERin the cloud save settings,

25:12SPEAKERyou'll have to like go in

25:13SPEAKERand manually tweak your resolutions and stuff.

25:15SPEAKERBut also it didn't matter when I tried it.

25:17SPEAKERSo it was fine.

25:18SPEAKER- You mean like it just scaled down

25:19SPEAKEReven if the resolution was too high?

25:21SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty much.

25:22SPEAKER- All right.

25:23SPEAKERAnd like the thing that was interesting about this

25:25SPEAKERis the Steam Deck hardware

25:27SPEAKERis relatively modest at this point, right?

25:29SPEAKERIt's basically like console,

25:33SPEAKERlike this generation of console perf

25:36SPEAKERat the resolution that you,

25:38SPEAKERlike you can run this generation's console games

25:39SPEAKERat 1280 by 800 pretty well on that machine.

25:42SPEAKER- Like 30 FPS maybe higher.

25:44SPEAKERMaybe a little higher.

25:45SPEAKER- 30, 40, 60, somewhere in there, yeah.

25:46SPEAKER- Apparently people got "Doom of the Dark Ages"

25:48SPEAKERrunning on it.

25:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:50SPEAKER- At like 30, I think it's probably,

25:52SPEAKERI only know this by passively absorbing information about it

25:57SPEAKERas I have been looking at insufferable arguments

26:00SPEAKERon "Blue Sky" about ray tracing.

26:02SPEAKERThat's a conversation for another day.

26:04SPEAKER- Look, I don't want to talk about

26:06SPEAKERthe ray tracing stuff right now, but the,

26:10SPEAKERyeah, I was interested,

26:11SPEAKERI was curious to see how they managed to make that work.

26:13SPEAKERThe thing that like,

26:14SPEAKERthe thing that bums me out about the "Dark Ages" thing is

26:18SPEAKERI look at how, was it machine games

26:22SPEAKERthat did "Indiana Jones?"

26:23SPEAKER- Yes.

26:24SPEAKER- I look at how machine games used light in that game

26:29SPEAKERand it sold the need for ray tracing, right?

26:31SPEAKERLike you use your torch to solve puzzles

26:33SPEAKERand you're holding the torch up in front of you

26:35SPEAKERto see things in tombs and stuff like that.

26:38SPEAKER- I gotta play that game at some point.

26:39SPEAKER- It is incredible.

26:40SPEAKERIt is both a game design and technological showcase.

26:45SPEAKERDoom has all this cool dynamic light, ray traced light stuff

26:49SPEAKERand they don't, there's no gameplay impact

26:52SPEAKERfor almost any of it.

26:53SPEAKER- Yeah, did you know that they're using ray tracing,

26:56SPEAKERhardware ray tracing in that game

26:58SPEAKERto trace individual pellets of the shotgun shots?

27:01SPEAKER- That makes sense.

27:02SPEAKER- That's actually something really interesting to me

27:04SPEAKERis the non-graphical, non-visual uses

27:07SPEAKERof ray tracing hardware.

27:09SPEAKER- There was a talk at GDC about somebody

27:10SPEAKERusing the ray tracing stuff to do positional audio.

27:13SPEAKER- So yes, you're starting to see a lot more audio engines

27:15SPEAKERthat are using that hardware,

27:16SPEAKERbut this was specifically the first use of hit detection

27:20SPEAKERI've ever seen and I think in this case,

27:22SPEAKERthey're using it for the location-based damage

27:26SPEAKERon the meshes, you know, like kind of like trying to-

27:28SPEAKER- So you get hit reactions

27:29SPEAKERbased on where the pellets actually hit?

27:31SPEAKER- And not just reactions,

27:32SPEAKERbut that game is incredibly gnarly

27:33SPEAKERabout like carving chunks of flesh off the enemies,

27:36SPEAKERdepending on where you shoot them.

27:38SPEAKERApparently they're using ray tracing hardware for that.

27:40SPEAKER- That's really cool.

27:43SPEAKEROkay, so the reason I wanted to write about this

27:47SPEAKERand the reason I was interested in it is

27:50SPEAKERit seems like PC gaming,

27:52SPEAKERit opens up the whole spectrum of PC gaming.

27:56SPEAKERIf you have like a Steam Deck

27:58SPEAKERor one of these little handhelds,

28:01SPEAKERthen you can play the AAA games,

28:02SPEAKERyou can play the stuff with anti-pirate CBS

28:04SPEAKERthat doesn't run right on Linux.

28:06SPEAKERYou can play the games that have

28:07SPEAKERtoo high system requirements for this hardware.

28:09SPEAKER- Oh, let me stop you there.

28:10SPEAKERSo are you saying, I mean, I don't know if this is apparent

28:12SPEAKERby looking at UI or whatever,

28:13SPEAKERbut are you saying these cloud instances are Windows-based?

28:17SPEAKER- No, how would they must be?

28:18SPEAKER- 'Cause you said, so it'll run,

28:21SPEAKERlike what are the big Steam-based anti-cheat games?

28:24SPEAKER- I played Fortnite on it.

28:24SPEAKERI played Call of Duty.

28:26SPEAKER- Oh, or actually, yeah, this isn't just Steam,

28:27SPEAKERit's all the services, so you can play anything.

28:29SPEAKER- Like Fortnite, which has anti-piracy stuff

28:31SPEAKERthat doesn't run on PC.

28:33SPEAKER- Right, I think Destiny, Destiny won't either, right?

28:35SPEAKER- I did try Destiny.

28:36SPEAKER- Valorant maybe is another one.

28:39SPEAKERAnyway, long story short,

28:40SPEAKERyou're saying all the big system level anti-cheat games

28:43SPEAKERwork fine here?

28:44SPEAKER- The ones that are enabled for GeForce Now do, for sure.

28:46SPEAKER- Sure, right.

28:47SPEAKER- Let me see if Valorant, I'm curious if the,

28:50SPEAKERI don't think Valorant is on,

28:52SPEAKERoh, I don't have Valorant on my account, so,

28:54SPEAKER'cause I didn't hook my Riot account up to it.

28:56SPEAKERBut yeah, so like I was able to play Fortnite

28:59SPEAKERon my Steam deck.

29:01SPEAKER- Okay.

29:02SPEAKER- In Linux.

29:02SPEAKER- All right.

29:03SPEAKER- Running on GeForce Now, which I guess is on Windows,

29:05SPEAKERto your point.

29:06SPEAKER- Sure.

29:08SPEAKER- Like this seems like if you have somebody,

29:12SPEAKERif you're somebody who wants to play PC games,

29:14SPEAKERit's like it's another step up the entry into PC games,

29:17SPEAKERright, so like the Steam deck gives you a handheld

29:20SPEAKERthat's really good at playing like an indie games

29:22SPEAKERand older games and like low intensity stuff.

29:25SPEAKERAnd then this gives you a way that you can plug it

29:27SPEAKERinto a monitor and get like 4K gaming out of that same box,

29:31SPEAKERwhich is kind of compelling for the, you know,

29:34SPEAKERthe cost of the Steam deck plus a subscription fee

29:36SPEAKERor whatever.

29:37SPEAKER- Like this seems like this would be the best

29:39SPEAKERfor people who don't have a gaming PC,

29:41SPEAKERthey only have a Steam deck.

29:42SPEAKER- Yeah, like in a world where GPUs are like,

29:46SPEAKERin the U.S. at least right now,

29:48SPEAKERa 30% markup over MSRP and kind of hard to find

29:52SPEAKERin a lot of cases, although we'll talk about that

29:54SPEAKERin a minute, this seems like an increasingly viable

29:58SPEAKERalternative if you're willing to throw a little money at it.

30:01SPEAKER- It's good to have options.

30:02SPEAKER- The perf was really good on the handheld.

30:04SPEAKERI was seeing like 60 frames a second on everything I tried.

30:09SPEAKERThey gave me an ultimate code to put on my account

30:13SPEAKERto try that for a bit.

30:15SPEAKERI also tried it with the base free

30:17SPEAKERand like I found that the free settings

30:20SPEAKERwith the exception of that one hour time limit,

30:21SPEAKERwhich kind of sucked, the free settings were quite good

30:26SPEAKERfor the 1280 by 800 resolution of the handheld.

30:28SPEAKER- How do the ads manifest on the free tier?

30:31SPEAKER- I like, let me go and tell you some secret, Brad.

30:33SPEAKER- Oh.

30:34SPEAKER- Inside my pie hole, I didn't see any ads.

30:36SPEAKER- Interesting, I assume that means those are display ads,

30:42SPEAKERprobably like pop-up style.

30:44SPEAKER- I bet that you get a pre-roll ad before the game starts

30:47SPEAKERor while you're queuing for the game, I guess,

30:49SPEAKERbut I don't know for sure.

30:51SPEAKERWeird coincidence, sorry about that.

30:53SPEAKERSorry I didn't get to test that, folks.

30:54SPEAKER- Okay.

30:57SPEAKER- Yeah, a couple of things that I thought were really nice,

30:59SPEAKERthe client tells you how many gigs per hour

31:02SPEAKERyou're gonna use at the settings you have

31:04SPEAKERfor any particular game.

31:05SPEAKER- Oh, that's helpful.

31:06SPEAKER- So if you have bandwidth caps,

31:07SPEAKERyou can kind of plan around that.

31:10SPEAKERI think if you have a really kind of oppressive

31:12SPEAKERbandwidth caps, this is definitely not a service for you.

31:14SPEAKERAt the 1280 by 800, I think it was like six gigs an hour.

31:18SPEAKERSo not, like more than you'd want to use over cellular

31:21SPEAKERif you don't have an unlimited cellular plan.

31:22SPEAKER- Oh yeah, for sure.

31:23SPEAKER- But not so much that it was gonna,

31:26SPEAKERit would break you on like a one terabyte Comcast plan

31:29SPEAKERor something like that.

31:30SPEAKERAnd I still can't believe that data caps not withstanding

31:32SPEAKERwere even talking about being able to stream video games

31:35SPEAKERover cell connection.

31:37SPEAKER- Right.

31:38SPEAKER- That it's a financial limitation,

31:40SPEAKERnot a technical one that is stopping you from doing that.

31:42SPEAKERLike it's still insane to me that cell has gotten that fast.

31:45SPEAKER- I talked to a listener after we talked about

31:49SPEAKERrural broadband the other day who had just signed up

31:51SPEAKERfor 5G home internet.

31:54SPEAKERAnd they were like, it's really good.

31:55SPEAKERLike it is a dramatic improvement in their quality of life

31:58SPEAKER'cause they were someplace that they couldn't really get

32:00SPEAKERbroadband before.

32:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see that.

32:03SPEAKER- So there's a few things that were kind of janky.

32:07SPEAKERGeForce now doesn't seem to cast shaders for a lot of games.

32:10SPEAKER- Oh no.

32:11SPEAKER- I couldn't tell if it's all games

32:13SPEAKERor if it's like they have to automatically,

32:15SPEAKERthey have to opt stuff in or whatever.

32:16SPEAKERBut like I played a bunch of about on this,

32:18SPEAKERwhich is that Obsidian RPG that came out earlier this year,

32:21SPEAKERlate last year, I can't remember.

32:22SPEAKER- Yeah, February, that game rules.

32:23SPEAKER- Yeah, the game's really good.

32:26SPEAKERIt compiles shaders every time you launch the damn game.

32:29SPEAKER- Oh no, oh no.

32:30SPEAKER- And it's like, depending on which server,

32:33SPEAKERit's funny 'cause like I think the servers that they're on

32:35SPEAKERare mostly Threadrippers is my understanding.

32:39SPEAKERThe ones that are slow clocks, man, it takes forever.

32:45SPEAKERThe docked experience is kind of a mess

32:48SPEAKERin that it doesn't automatically adjust the resolution

32:50SPEAKERto suit your docked resolution.

32:53SPEAKERIt stays at 1280 by 800.

32:55SPEAKERSo you have to go in and kind of manually adjust some stuff.

32:57SPEAKER- I didn't realize you had a Steam Deck dock.

32:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I bought a dock to test stuff when it first came out.

33:02SPEAKER- Is it the Valve dock?

33:03SPEAKER- I got the Valve one.

33:05SPEAKERYeah, it's fine.

33:08SPEAKERJust in general, as a long time Steam Deck user,

33:10SPEAKERthe dock's a little janky.

33:12SPEAKERLike it often has trouble with figuring out

33:14SPEAKERwhat resolution you're supposed to be on

33:15SPEAKERand stuff like that.

33:16SPEAKERIt just now got CEC support.

33:19SPEAKERSo it'll start your TV up automatically

33:20SPEAKERwhen you power on the dock,

33:21SPEAKERthe deck when it's plugged into the dock.

33:25SPEAKERThe controller support was hit and miss.

33:27SPEAKERLike there were a couple of games I had to start

33:28SPEAKERmultiple times in order to get controllers working,

33:32SPEAKERwhich wouldn't be a big deal,

33:33SPEAKERexcept for if you're on the free tier,

33:35SPEAKERthen that queue time is kind of like,

33:37SPEAKERyou have to watch another ad theoretically

33:38SPEAKERand the queue time is a little bit of a hassle.

33:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

33:44SPEAKER- It also is fiddly because of the kind of nested nature

33:48SPEAKERof Steam instances.

33:49SPEAKER'Cause you have like the Steam controller support

33:52SPEAKERfor the Steam Deck level and then you're into

33:55SPEAKERthe GeForce Now thing, which has a Steam,

33:57SPEAKERwhich has a controller translation layer,

33:59SPEAKERwhich then talks to Steam on the virtual instance,

34:02SPEAKERwhich has a translation layer.

34:04SPEAKERSo like everything has to align for it to work right.

34:07SPEAKERAnd it did most of the time, but occasionally it was weird.

34:09SPEAKER- I wonder if that adds any significant latency.

34:13SPEAKER- It did not add any latency that I was able to detect

34:16SPEAKERbeyond just, hey, it's like six milliseconds

34:18SPEAKERto get the video.

34:19SPEAKER- Right, probably not enough to surpass the legacy

34:23SPEAKERof the stream to begin with.

34:24SPEAKER- Yeah, it's worth mentioning.

34:25SPEAKERI tested this on my home network,

34:27SPEAKERwhich is connected to like it's AT&T gigabit fiber.

34:31SPEAKERI have Wi-Fi six and 60 access points all through the house.

34:34SPEAKERThere were like short drops when I would switch

34:36SPEAKERbetween access points,

34:37SPEAKERbut the client would automatically recover pretty much.

34:44SPEAKERSometimes you actually get access

34:46SPEAKERto the Nvidia hosted Steam interface,

34:49SPEAKERwhich only it's really funny

34:51SPEAKER'cause each of those Steam interfaces

34:53SPEAKERonly has the single game that's in there.

34:56SPEAKER- I see what you're seeing.

34:57SPEAKERYou're seeing the client front end, essentially.

34:59SPEAKER- Yeah, so like you don't see your Steam.

35:01SPEAKERYou see Nvidia's Steam with just that one game.

35:05SPEAKERSo it's not like you can shell back out to their Steam

35:07SPEAKERand switch games inside your instance.

35:09SPEAKERYou have to go back out to the web UI,

35:10SPEAKERto the client UI and close that one

35:13SPEAKERand then restart another one, which is weird.

35:15SPEAKERI get why they do it.

35:18SPEAKERAnd then, yeah, the other thing that is super frustrating

35:24SPEAKERis the on Steam specifically,

35:26SPEAKERyou have to have your profile be public

35:28SPEAKERso they can keep an updated list of games,

35:30SPEAKERwhich it feels goofy.

35:32SPEAKERSo anyway, that's GeForce Now.

35:34SPEAKERI was pleasantly surprised, right?

35:35SPEAKERIt's 200 bucks a year for the ultimate one.

35:38SPEAKERYou can get day passes that are-

35:40SPEAKER- What is that, $16 and something a month?

35:43SPEAKER- Yeah, it's 16.

35:44SPEAKERYeah, look, it's less than the cheapest 1080p GPU

35:49SPEAKERyou can buy right now annually,

35:52SPEAKERwhich is how I, like I was talking,

35:55SPEAKERit's funny, I was talking to somebody yesterday

35:56SPEAKERabout this at Micro Center and they were like,

36:00SPEAKER"Yeah, I've been using GeForce Now

36:02SPEAKERsince my last PC died in the pandemic."

36:04SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh, how's that going for you?"

36:04SPEAKERAnd he's like, "It's great.

36:05SPEAKERI pay 150 or 200 bucks a year or something

36:08SPEAKERand I didn't have to chase a thing."

36:11SPEAKERBut then they were taking advantage of some bundles

36:13SPEAKERthat Micro Center has today.

36:14SPEAKER- I've got a friend that also decided they were done

36:16SPEAKERwith maintaining a local gaming PC and switched to this

36:21SPEAKERand seemed quite happy with it.

36:21SPEAKERIt also seems like kind of thing if you are that,

36:24SPEAKERif you are that like Steam Deck and no PC owner,

36:28SPEAKERhypothetical person, you could maybe dip in and out

36:30SPEAKERof something like this.

36:31SPEAKERLike there's probably plenty of games

36:33SPEAKERthat run just fine locally on your Steam Deck.

36:35SPEAKERSo you could just like turn this on for a month

36:36SPEAKERwhen you want to play something big.

36:38SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say, so that's the other thing is,

36:40SPEAKERlike I have a friend who I play Half-Life 2 DM with

36:43SPEAKERonce a week probably, and he's a long time Mac user

36:47SPEAKERand he just has a GeForce Now thing.

36:48SPEAKERSo we play for an hour and then he disappears

36:50SPEAKERand he comes back for a minute

36:51SPEAKERand then we play a little bit more

36:52SPEAKERand then we're usually done.

36:52SPEAKER- Sure.

36:55SPEAKER- If you want to try it and not commit to the full,

36:57SPEAKERthe plans are priced based on day passes,

37:00SPEAKERone month plans or six month plans.

37:02SPEAKERSo the day pass for the 1440p tier is like four bucks.

37:07SPEAKERIt doesn't include ads.

37:08SPEAKERYou can try it out for a day or two and see what you think.

37:11SPEAKERI think it's seven or eight for the ultimate one,

37:14SPEAKERwhich seems expensive, but whatever.

37:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:16SPEAKERBefore we move on to Micro Center,

37:18SPEAKERI want to sidebar real quick and ask,

37:19SPEAKERwhat kind of access points do you have?

37:21SPEAKER- I'm using Ubiquiti 6e.

37:24SPEAKERI have one 6 and one 6e.

37:25SPEAKER- I see.

37:26SPEAKER- I have a six extended range one in the garage

37:29SPEAKERthat covers the backyard and like kind of surprisingly

37:32SPEAKERlarge chunk of my neighborhood.

37:34SPEAKERAnd then I have the 6e one that's like close enough

37:37SPEAKERto my lights that sometimes they don't connect.

37:39SPEAKER- I see.

37:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:41SPEAKER- I've been, my wifi is fine,

37:44SPEAKERbut I'm still on a wifi five slash 802.11ac access points.

37:49SPEAKERAnd I've just kind of been getting the itch to upgrade,

37:51SPEAKERbut it's not bad enough.

37:53SPEAKERIt's not bad at all to be clear.

37:55SPEAKERIt's more that I'm now two versions behind on wifi.

37:58SPEAKERAnd I'm like, ah, it might be nice to upgrade.

38:00SPEAKER- You live in a neighborhood that's dense enough

38:03SPEAKERthat you benefit from the seven stuff.

38:04SPEAKER- The signal, the competition for spectrum around here

38:09SPEAKERis a nightmare.

38:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:12SPEAKER- I can pick up, whenever I've done a site survey,

38:14SPEAKERI can pick up as many networks as that site survey

38:16SPEAKERwill display at one time, like a hundred plus SSIDs.

38:20SPEAKERNo problem here.

38:22SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:24SPEAKERSo an addendum on the game support stuff,

38:28SPEAKERthe stores that they support are Steam, Epic, UB,

38:31SPEAKERXbox, Electronic Arts, and GOG.

38:34SPEAKERThey don't support Battle.net

38:35SPEAKERand they don't support League stuff, Riot stuff.

38:38SPEAKERSo no Valorant.

38:40SPEAKERDestiny two is on the list,

38:42SPEAKERbut League and Valorant and that is not.

38:45SPEAKERI think Counter-Strike two is.

38:48SPEAKERSo they can do those kinds of fast games.

38:50SPEAKERBut anyway.

38:52SPEAKER- All right.

38:54SPEAKER- Should we talk about Micro Center?

38:55SPEAKER- Sure.

38:56SPEAKER- You know, you can get an access point at Micro Center.

38:58SPEAKERThey have them there.

39:00SPEAKER- I don't know what to get though.

39:02SPEAKERI have become dead set on getting an access point

39:04SPEAKERthat does not require an external controller.

39:06SPEAKERI'm just tired of dealing with it.

39:08SPEAKERLike I really want,

39:09SPEAKERI really want an access point that runs its management

39:11SPEAKERinterface on the access point.

39:14SPEAKER- I don't know if you're gonna find that.

39:16SPEAKERUnless you go back to a consumer one.

39:17SPEAKER- It exists.

39:18SPEAKERNo, there are some.

39:19SPEAKERLike I've never, I still have not,

39:20SPEAKERI'm not gonna buy one of these.

39:22SPEAKERI still have not settled on how to say the company's name.

39:24SPEAKERZ-Y-X-E-L, Z-I-Z-L.

39:26SPEAKER- Z-I-Z-L?

39:27SPEAKER- Z-I-Z-L.

39:28SPEAKERI don't know.

39:28SPEAKERNobody seems to know.

39:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:30SPEAKERIt's impossible.

39:31SPEAKERMost of their, most of their access points run management

39:35SPEAKERon the access point,

39:36SPEAKERbut they got a pretty rocky history with bad security flaws

39:40SPEAKERand stuff.

39:40SPEAKERSo I'm not, not doing that, but, but you're right.

39:43SPEAKERMost of the, most of the consumer facing access points

39:46SPEAKERor even like prosumer Soho stuff needs a controller.

39:50SPEAKERAnd I'm not, I'm just,

39:52SPEAKERI'm just tired of dealing with that stuff.

39:54SPEAKER- I mean, my controller, for what it's worth,

39:56SPEAKERlives in a container on my NAS.

39:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:00SPEAKER- It's been relatively like, it's, it's like,

40:02SPEAKERI just set it up three years ago

40:04SPEAKERand then haven't touched it since then, really.

40:06SPEAKER- Yeah, now that I'm running actual containers with Podman,

40:09SPEAKERlike it would be somewhat easier to just stand up

40:11SPEAKERat Ubiquiti, like the U, whatever they're calling,

40:13SPEAKERthe unified--

40:14SPEAKER- Command console or whatever.

40:15SPEAKER- The unified network application this month.

40:17SPEAKERBut when I was doing that manually,

40:19SPEAKERit was a fucking nightmare getting that thing working.

40:22SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

40:23SPEAKER- It relied on like an old version of MariaDB or MondoDB

40:27SPEAKERor whatever database it uses that like,

40:29SPEAKERhad to use like a two versions old Ubuntu install

40:31SPEAKERthat still included that old version.

40:33SPEAKERAnyway, whatever, we don't need to get into it.

40:34SPEAKERBut it's still just kind of a hassle

40:37SPEAKERhaving to run extra software to administrate your wifi.

40:40SPEAKER- So it's funny, I had just bought the Ubiquiti stuff

40:42SPEAKERwhen all the drama happened with them.

40:44SPEAKERAnd as a result, I never connected to their cloud service.

40:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

40:48SPEAKERThat's the other thing is I would love a thing

40:49SPEAKERthat doesn't even have the option for cloud management,

40:51SPEAKERbut at least as long as you can opt out of it,

40:53SPEAKERI'm fine with it.

40:54SPEAKER- I'm increasing, we talked about this about

40:56SPEAKERthe thermometers and the thermostats.

40:57SPEAKERI'm increasingly of the no cloud.

40:59SPEAKER- Yep.

41:00SPEAKER- Like just not buying anything that connects to the cloud,

41:02SPEAKERthe home automation stuff.

41:04SPEAKER- I don't even want hooks, even if it's optional,

41:06SPEAKERI don't even want hooks into the device

41:07SPEAKERfrom somebody's servers.

41:09SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway.

41:10SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway.

41:11SPEAKER- So Micro Center, like I said,

41:13SPEAKERbilled as the, people have always talked about this,

41:15SPEAKERlike it's-

41:17SPEAKER- Shangri-La.

41:19SPEAKER- They're right.

41:20SPEAKERIt's real good.

41:21SPEAKER- Okay, all right.

41:22SPEAKER- The vibes, okay, so it was grand opening.

41:23SPEAKERSo people were there, they were really excited.

41:25SPEAKERThey kind of soft opened last weekend.

41:27SPEAKERSo people have been trickling in and out

41:29SPEAKERand like walking in and being like,

41:30SPEAKER"Hey, is this place open?"

41:32SPEAKER- This is Santa Clara?

41:33SPEAKER- This is right on the edge of Santa Clara in San Jose.

41:35SPEAKER- Which, yeah, so that's like an hour south of San Francisco

41:38SPEAKERfor people who don't know.

41:39SPEAKER- It took me 40 minutes from Pacifica, I think,

41:41SPEAKERto get there.

41:42SPEAKER- That's not too bad.

41:42SPEAKERShould I get a list of locations?

41:44SPEAKERI've always been curious about Micro Center

41:46SPEAKER'cause I've heard for years and years how great they are,

41:48SPEAKERbut-

41:49SPEAKER- They have 29 locations now is my understanding.

41:51SPEAKER- Mostly Southwest, right?

41:53SPEAKER- No, Central, like Midwestern, it's Chicago and-

41:57SPEAKER- Oh, really?

41:58SPEAKER- They spread out from Chicago is my understanding.

42:00SPEAKER- What were your apologies to Midwesterners for then?

42:02SPEAKERLike they've had Micro Center for so long,

42:05SPEAKERthis is old hat?

42:05SPEAKER- Yeah, us talking about this is like saying,

42:07SPEAKER"Hey, let me tell you about a grocery store.

42:09SPEAKER"The produce is on the right

42:10SPEAKER"and the frozen stuff's on the left."

42:12SPEAKER- Yeah, look, I bet they are happy to sit there

42:14SPEAKERand nod sagely at things we're saying

42:17SPEAKERand be like, "Yeah, it's great, isn't that right?

42:18SPEAKER"Now you know."

42:19SPEAKER- Well, I talked to a friend who is from Chicago

42:22SPEAKERand I was like, he was in town yesterday and was like,

42:25SPEAKER"Hey, you wanna grab lunch?"

42:26SPEAKERI was like, "I can, I'm going

42:27SPEAKER"to the Micro Center grand opening."

42:28SPEAKERHe's like, "What the hell are you going

42:30SPEAKER"to a Micro Center grand opening for?"

42:32SPEAKER- Fair.

42:33SPEAKER- And I was like, "You have no idea

42:34SPEAKER"how good you've had it, man."

42:36SPEAKERAnd yeah, so anyway.

42:37SPEAKER- I'm looking at some pictures here of the inside.

42:40SPEAKERI need to go here.

42:42SPEAKER- Yeah, we should go on a field trip sometime.

42:44SPEAKER- Yeah, we should.

42:45SPEAKEREven if I'm not gonna buy anything,

42:46SPEAKERI mean, we'll get into this as you talk about it,

42:48SPEAKERbut it would really be nice to be able to just go to a place

42:50SPEAKERand look at like PC cases.

42:51SPEAKERI mean, Central has some of that, but-

42:53SPEAKER- Not really, not like this.

42:55SPEAKER- At least the Central in San Francisco is very small

42:58SPEAKERby comparison to what into these pictures I'm looking at.

43:00SPEAKER- Yeah, and also like, okay, so let's just get into it.

43:07SPEAKER- Okay.

43:07SPEAKER- Like they have a bunch of the stuff

43:09SPEAKERthat you wanna be able to handle and look at and touch

43:12SPEAKERand see how it works, they have out for the most part.

43:15SPEAKERSo like-

43:16SPEAKER- So what is that?

43:17SPEAKERLike what are cases? - Cases, keyboards, mice.

43:20SPEAKER- Okay, like keyboards out to type on?

43:23SPEAKER- Not all of them, but they have a lot of floor samples.

43:26SPEAKERLike the Keychron section had, I think, a bazillion.

43:31SPEAKERI could be misremembering, I saw a lot of stuff yesterday.

43:34SPEAKERI thought that the Keychron had almost all of their models

43:37SPEAKERout where you could handle them.

43:38SPEAKER- Wow, man, that's cool.

43:40SPEAKER- The cases, they had two or three rows of cases

43:43SPEAKERwhere the cases were just on like wire racks.

43:44SPEAKERYou could pick them up, you could open them up,

43:46SPEAKERyou could take them off the shelf.

43:48SPEAKERYou could see like which pieces are riveted in,

43:51SPEAKERwhich pieces are screwed in, all of that stuff.

43:54SPEAKER- Great.

43:54SPEAKER- It was really, really good.

43:56SPEAKER- Monitors?

43:58SPEAKER- They had a buttload of monitors out

43:59SPEAKERthat was on the other side of the store.

44:01SPEAKER- Like on and so you can-

44:02SPEAKER- On and I mean, it's like normal display mode bullshit

44:05SPEAKERthough, so it was like, they were real bright,

44:07SPEAKERbut you could see them.

44:08SPEAKER- In my case, I've never seen an OLED monitor.

44:10SPEAKERI mean, I've seen OLED TVs, of course,

44:11SPEAKERso I basically know what the screen is like,

44:13SPEAKERbut I'd still love to see some OLED monitors in action

44:15SPEAKER'cause I'm really starting to get an itch

44:18SPEAKERfor an OLED monitor.

44:20SPEAKER- They had a, like a SIM sled, like a racing sled set up

44:26SPEAKERwith a Samsung G12 extreme ultra widescreen monitor on it

44:32SPEAKERthat I got to play with and like I wasn't the fan of tech.

44:35SPEAKERIt was the company that's kind of knocked them off.

44:39SPEAKERMoku, I think is the name of it.

44:42SPEAKERLike F1 direct drive racing wheel on it.

44:45SPEAKERIt was real good.

44:47SPEAKERUltra wide monitors.

44:48SPEAKERI don't think I want an ultra wide monitor

44:49SPEAKERfor my desktop ever, but if I ever get into SIM racing,

44:53SPEAKERlike when I get a little bit more middle-aged

44:54SPEAKERand I'm like, yeah, it's time for me

44:56SPEAKERto get real into something stupid.

44:57SPEAKERI'm gonna get into SIM racing

44:59SPEAKERand get a big giant widescreen monitor for it.

45:02SPEAKER- Yeah, that works.

45:04SPEAKER- They had a ton of 3D printers up on the back wall,

45:07SPEAKERlike up in, a lot of them were just running.

45:09SPEAKER- Okay, so this is not just a computer store.

45:12SPEAKERThis is like a general technology store, you would say.

45:16SPEAKER- So they didn't have stereos and stuff like that.

45:18SPEAKERIt wasn't like Best Buy.

45:18SPEAKERThere were no refrigerators.

45:22SPEAKERIt was all computer nerd shit at the end of the day.

45:24SPEAKERLike they had a big, they had a whole aisle

45:26SPEAKERfull of Arduino and Raspberry Pi and like soldering stuff.

45:30SPEAKERAnd like you could buy spools of cable there if you wanted.

45:34SPEAKERThey had a big, pretty good networking section.

45:37SPEAKER- Hang on, this is not like a modern day Radio Shack

45:40SPEAKERcompetitor with like drawers full of capacitors and stuff.

45:45SPEAKER- They had bags full of capacitors.

45:46SPEAKERThey did not have drawers full of capacitors.

45:48SPEAKER- I mean, they sell capacitors though.

45:51SPEAKER- Brad, I almost bought some PC speakers.

45:52SPEAKERThey had PC, they had like Raspberry Pi project speakers

45:56SPEAKERthat we could have soldered on speakers too.

45:59SPEAKER- Man, I need to go here.

46:01SPEAKER- Yeah, we can go there.

46:02SPEAKERI wish I had bought, there are two things I wish I bought.

46:04SPEAKERThey had a whole section of like little handheld keyboards

46:09SPEAKERfor like living room PCs and stuff like that.

46:11SPEAKERAnd I wish I'd bought one of those to use on my Raspberry Pi,

46:14SPEAKERmy Mr. and my Steam Deck.

46:17SPEAKERLike to have a Bluetooth keyboard for those.

46:19SPEAKER- Yeah, that's neat.

46:21SPEAKER- They, I also wish I had bought the stuff

46:23SPEAKERto make PC speakers.

46:25SPEAKERThe line was really long.

46:26SPEAKERI didn't think we were gonna buy anything.

46:27SPEAKERAnd then by the time we did,

46:28SPEAKERI had forgotten what I wanted to buy

46:29SPEAKERand I just remembered it was the PC speaker stuff.

46:31SPEAKERAnyway. - That's a good reason

46:32SPEAKERto go back.

46:33SPEAKERIt would take me.

46:36SPEAKER- Man, you'd have to ride down to Colma

46:38SPEAKERand we'd have to drive together.

46:40SPEAKER- Two hours and 55 minutes on public transit to get there.

46:42SPEAKER- Yeah, no, but you'd ride to BART

46:44SPEAKERand we would drive together.

46:46SPEAKER- That is much, that's doable.

46:48SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause you'd have to ride like Caltrain

46:49SPEAKERor something down there, right?

46:50SPEAKER- This is four or five different connections to get there.

46:53SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

46:56SPEAKERSo the other thing is that they have two big BY,

47:01SPEAKERagain, this is not sponsored.

47:03SPEAKERI just think this is cool.

47:03SPEAKERI'm stoked that it's here.

47:05SPEAKERThey have two big DIY PC build areas.

47:09SPEAKEROne is their knowledge bar.

47:12SPEAKERIt's not full of geniuses, it's full of knowledgeable people

47:16SPEAKERwhere you can bring your busted ass DIY computer in

47:20SPEAKERand they'll help you figure out what's wrong with it.

47:23SPEAKERThey'll also do stuff for you.

47:26SPEAKERLike they had a menu up that had like,

47:29SPEAKERhey, if you want hard tube water cooling put in your PC,

47:32SPEAKERhere's how much it costs.

47:33SPEAKER- Oh, just like they'll--

47:35SPEAKER- They'll just do it for you.

47:36SPEAKER- Do it for you, okay.

47:36SPEAKER- Yeah, it was expensive.

47:37SPEAKERIt was like 800 bucks.

47:38SPEAKERI will do, if somebody wants hard tube water cooling

47:40SPEAKERput in their PC, I'll do it.

47:42SPEAKERI think that probably includes some of the hardware too.

47:44SPEAKERYeah, my assumption is that's like a prepackaged hardware

47:48SPEAKERand labor project.

47:49SPEAKER- Okay, that makes sense.

47:50SPEAKERI wonder if you could just like,

47:53SPEAKERI mean, I would rather do this at home personally,

47:55SPEAKERbut I wonder if you could just like go buy a full computer's

47:57SPEAKERworth of parts there and then like sit down

47:59SPEAKERand put it together in the store in that area

48:01SPEAKERand maybe just ask questions as you go or something.

48:03SPEAKER- Well, so that's the next part.

48:04SPEAKERI don't know about that actually,

48:05SPEAKERbut the DIY build your own section is like a third

48:11SPEAKERof the store, quarter of the store probably.

48:13SPEAKERIt's like all the shelves on one side of the store,

48:15SPEAKERlike rows and rows and rows of stuff.

48:17SPEAKERAnd it's like closed cabinets with CPUs and memory

48:20SPEAKERand SSDs and video cards and all that stuff in it.

48:22SPEAKERAnd then the cases are down at the other end.

48:25SPEAKERAnd if you go up to the DIY bar, the BYO

48:29SPEAKERor build your own bar, then like there are people there

48:32SPEAKERthat will come grab a cart,

48:35SPEAKERwalk with you up and down those aisles

48:36SPEAKERand help you navigate picking compatibility

48:40SPEAKERwith like CPUs and RAM and motherboards.

48:42SPEAKER- Man, that's cool.

48:43SPEAKER- Make sure that you're putting everything

48:44SPEAKERinto a case that fits.

48:45SPEAKERThey had like some small form factor cases,

48:47SPEAKERincluding like the usual kind of,

48:49SPEAKERthey didn't have any like super niche stuff,

48:50SPEAKERbut they had like nice fractal cases and stuff like that.

48:53SPEAKER- That sounds fun.

48:54SPEAKERThat's, I don't know why this comes to mind.

48:55SPEAKERThat sounds like a fun, like retirement job.

48:57SPEAKERLike if I were retired and you know,

49:00SPEAKERlike when sometimes when people retire,

49:01SPEAKERyou get like a part-time job to pass the time,

49:04SPEAKERlike it would be fun to just help people go up and down

49:07SPEAKERand make like, just ask them what their budget is

49:09SPEAKERand what they want to do and just help them spec out a PC,

49:11SPEAKERlike in like kind of supermarket sweep style

49:15SPEAKERor Toys R Us style.

49:16SPEAKER- It's like one of my favorite teachers

49:19SPEAKERwas a retired chemist who came back

49:21SPEAKERto teach high school chemistry.

49:22SPEAKER- Right.

49:23SPEAKER- Right, and yeah, like, yeah.

49:25SPEAKERThat's the equivalent for you and me.

49:28SPEAKER- Yes, something to aspire to.

49:32SPEAKERCan I talk about the filament selector thing?

49:34SPEAKER'Cause it was really cool for 3D printers.

49:36SPEAKERThey had like, it was kind of like paint chips

49:38SPEAKERwhen you go to like a paint store.

49:40SPEAKERThey had a bunch of 3D printed filament samples

49:44SPEAKERwith a barcode on them.

49:45SPEAKERAnd they had like a rack after rack after rack of them,

49:48SPEAKERlike 50 or a hundred on a rack.

49:51SPEAKERAnd you pulled the color and the material you wanted.

49:54SPEAKERAnd then you walked over to this other thing

49:56SPEAKERabout 20 feet away and you scan that barcode.

49:58SPEAKERAnd the thing was like, do you want 1.75 millimeter PLA

50:02SPEAKERin crimson red?

50:04SPEAKERAnd you were like, yes.

50:05SPEAKERAnd then it had a big giant rack on like,

50:08SPEAKERyou know, remember the rack, those shelves in Wally

50:10SPEAKERin his house that had all the shit on them?

50:12SPEAKERAnd it would like run on like kind of a,

50:15SPEAKERlike the shelves would go up and down

50:16SPEAKERon a kind of Ferris wheel type mechanism.

50:18SPEAKERIt's like that, but for hundreds and hundreds

50:21SPEAKERand hundreds of spools of filament.

50:22SPEAKERSo then the shelf would get to the right place

50:24SPEAKERon the filament, for the filament you selected.

50:27SPEAKERAnd then there were little lights along the front

50:29SPEAKERof the table that would light up on the exact section

50:33SPEAKERof that big long 25 foot wide shelf

50:35SPEAKERwith the filament that you wanted.

50:37SPEAKER- I need to see that in action to fully appreciate it.

50:40SPEAKER- We're going to put that.

50:41SPEAKERSo there's going to be a PC world video next week sometime.

50:43SPEAKERSo we'll, I'll post that in the discord when we get it,

50:45SPEAKERbut I will definitely watch that.

50:47SPEAKERAnd on blue sky as well.

50:51SPEAKERSo yeah, it was really nice.

50:54SPEAKERIt's weird.

50:55SPEAKERLike central is a place that you can get all the,

50:59SPEAKERyou can buy all the same stuff.

51:00SPEAKERThe deals are probably pretty equivalent.

51:02SPEAKERLike the, the deals were the things,

51:04SPEAKERthe things that they had that were like doorbusters

51:05SPEAKERfor the grand opening where that they had,

51:08SPEAKERI think they're doing like 30 or 40 founders edition,

51:10SPEAKER50 nineties a day at MSRP.

51:13SPEAKER- Geez.

51:13SPEAKER- Which is like a significant discount

51:16SPEAKERfor a $2,000 video card, which is crazy to say.

51:21SPEAKERThey also had a bunch of other, like they, this was,

51:24SPEAKERthis was the most video cards I've seen in one place

51:26SPEAKERsince the pandemic since Bitcoin mining, honestly.

51:29SPEAKER- Sure. What were the general price,

51:31SPEAKERlike brand opening doorbuster stuff aside?

51:33SPEAKERLike, were they being, were they all being sold in MSRP?

51:36SPEAKEROr do you know?

51:37SPEAKER- No, they were being sold at the street prices for like

51:40SPEAKERthe 50 nineties ranged up to like $3,700

51:43SPEAKERfor the water cooled all in one crazy ones.

51:46SPEAKERIt was $2,700.

51:47SPEAKERIt was, they were expensive.

51:49SPEAKERThe, but, but like the Intel

51:54SPEAKERand the Intel cards,

51:56SPEAKERthe 90 70 XTs were a little bit marked up,

51:59SPEAKERbut not too, too bad as my recollection.

52:01SPEAKERI wasn't paying that much attention to prices, but like,

52:04SPEAKERdon't buy a 50 60, but they had a lot of 50 60s at MSRP.

52:08SPEAKERIt looked like so.

52:09SPEAKER- What about other stuff?

52:10SPEAKERI mean, I know this is a hard question to answer

52:11SPEAKERafter one day at the grand opening, but like non GPU,

52:14SPEAKERlike non hostile pricing sorts of goods, like SSDs and Ram,

52:17SPEAKERand like kind of more middle of the road stuff.

52:20SPEAKERLike does it seem-

52:21SPEAKER- So I didn't look at any of that stuff, unfortunately.

52:23SPEAKERI wonder, I wonder how competitive their prices are

52:24SPEAKERwith online retail in general.

52:27SPEAKER- The, the, my guess is that they're going to be equivalent

52:31SPEAKERor a little bit low, a little bit higher rather.

52:34SPEAKERThe benefit here is like, we,

52:37SPEAKERso we talked to a lot of people, right?

52:38SPEAKERWe interviewed a bunch of people

52:39SPEAKERand those videos will be up on PC world.

52:41SPEAKERYou should watch the videos.

52:42SPEAKERWe had some really, we met some really fun people.

52:44SPEAKERAnd, and like a lot of people who listen to this podcast

52:47SPEAKERand the PC world podcast,

52:49SPEAKERand even go all the way back to like maximum PC days.

52:51SPEAKERSo shout outs to, to listeners, but, but we had a lot of,

52:57SPEAKERa lot of conversations with people who were like, oh, well,

52:59SPEAKERyou know, I'm kind of new to PC building.

53:01SPEAKERI just started during the pandemic,

53:02SPEAKERor I just started when I built my last PC,

53:04SPEAKERcause it was hard to get whatever I wanted,

53:06SPEAKERblah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

53:07SPEAKERAnd it feels like,

53:09SPEAKERlike this feels like a little bit of a safety net, right?

53:12SPEAKERCause like, if you don't, you think about how hard,

53:14SPEAKERI think about how hard it was for me to get into building

53:16SPEAKERPCs in the nineties when I didn't have a friend to kind of

53:19SPEAKERlike ask stupid questions of,

53:22SPEAKERand even like how often I pick up the, like in,

53:26SPEAKERafter I'd been out of it for a little bit and then started

53:29SPEAKERcoming back in and needed to build a PC in like 2015,

53:31SPEAKERwhen I would just text Gordon and be like, Hey, what, what,

53:35SPEAKERI don't understand how this works.

53:37SPEAKERCan you explain this to me?

53:38SPEAKERAnd that, and you get that kind of help when you're,

53:41SPEAKERwhen you're going to a place like this, which is nice.

53:43SPEAKER- And if you super, even if you super,

53:44SPEAKERsuper know what you're doing,

53:45SPEAKERthat's still invaluable to just have a place that you can

53:47SPEAKERjust go and get a thing on short notice, if you need it,

53:50SPEAKERand not have to special order it or wait a couple of three

53:53SPEAKERdays, if you need it right then.

53:54SPEAKER- Well, and like central's good.

53:56SPEAKERCentral has been good, good for that for,

53:58SPEAKERcentral's our local like screwdriver shop.

54:00SPEAKERIt's been good for that for a long time,

54:01SPEAKERbut their stock is usually fairly limited.

54:03SPEAKERAnd this was, this was, there's a lot of stock here.

54:07SPEAKER- Do they, do they sell Apple stuff in quantity?

54:10SPEAKER- Yeah, so they had computers. I didn't see any phone stuff.

54:13SPEAKERThey had like cases and chargers and stuff like that,

54:15SPEAKERbut they had, they had a whole big Mac section, right?

54:17SPEAKERWhen you walk in, they had a tub, we didn't talk about this,

54:20SPEAKERbut they had a ton of like pre-built desktop and small form

54:24SPEAKERfactor PCs from like MSI and companies that sell rebuilt

54:29SPEAKERPCs.

54:30SPEAKER- Okay, so not,

54:30SPEAKERnot PCs that they're building in-house to sell?

54:33SPEAKER- I don't actually know if they're doing,

54:35SPEAKERI would assume you see like CyberPower and iBuyPower and

54:37SPEAKERstuff like that there.

54:37SPEAKERI don't know if they have a house brand for PCs.

54:40SPEAKERWe, we kind of looked through that stuff did,

54:43SPEAKERdid a couple of laps through that stuff.

54:44SPEAKERAnd I looked at some of those machines and like the, the,

54:48SPEAKERit felt like the value you were getting on those PCs was

54:53SPEAKERlike, they were, they were well, it was, it was,

54:55SPEAKERif somebody came to me and said, Hey, I have $1,500.

54:58SPEAKERWhat would you build?

54:59SPEAKERThey were pretty close to what I would build.

55:02SPEAKERLike, and, and no big emissions for the most part.

55:05SPEAKERThe, the other things they do,

55:07SPEAKERa bunch of bundles is my understanding is like when they do,

55:10SPEAKERthey don't do sales on individual components all that much.

55:12SPEAKERBut if you like their bundles have a reputation for being

55:17SPEAKERthe bundles that are actually a value and not like two

55:20SPEAKERthings you want bundled up with one thing you don't want.

55:23SPEAKERSo there's no, like,

55:24SPEAKERthere's no copies of Cameo in those launch bundles,

55:26SPEAKERI guess.

55:27SPEAKER- Don't talk about Cameo that way.

55:28SPEAKER- I like, I like Cameo actually, but anyway.

55:33SPEAKERSo yeah, like,

55:33SPEAKERand then they also had a much wider range of laptops and

55:37SPEAKERI've seen it like Best Buys or E-Targets or whatever.

55:40SPEAKERSo it's like they had, they had a handful of like,

55:42SPEAKERlow end Chromebooks and cheap laptops and stuff like that.

55:45SPEAKERThey also had a huge selection of really like compelling

55:49SPEAKERgaming laptops kind of ranging from low end AP use all the

55:55SPEAKERway up to like dedicated with discreet workstation graphics

55:58SPEAKERand stuff like that.

55:59SPEAKERSo.

55:59SPEAKER- Cool.

56:00SPEAKER- It was cool.

56:01SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:02SPEAKER- And TVs, they had TVs as well.

56:03SPEAKER- Oh wow.

56:04SPEAKER- And then they also had like a three foot by two foot box

56:08SPEAKERwith a PS5 Pro and an Xbox Series X and an Xbox Series S

56:14SPEAKERand then a whole bunch of different colored controllers

56:16SPEAKERin it.

56:17SPEAKER- Oh, that's neat.

56:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:19SPEAKERSo that's Micro Center.

56:20SPEAKER- Okay. I wonder,

56:22SPEAKERI live for this stuff and it's too early for this location

56:26SPEAKERto have it yet probably,

56:27SPEAKERbut I wonder what kind of like clearance stuff they have or

56:29SPEAKERwill have.

56:31SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

56:32SPEAKER- I live for,

56:33SPEAKERI live for just rolling into the retail place and just

56:34SPEAKERseeing what's like price to move.

56:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:37SPEAKER- And I will tell you, I don't think they had,

56:40SPEAKERI think the price to move stuff,

56:41SPEAKERyou had to be there at like seven o'clock the night before.

56:43SPEAKER- I'm talking like months from now,

56:45SPEAKERsix months from now when they've got stuff

56:46SPEAKERand you just need to clear out.

56:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I am a,

56:50SPEAKERhere's the thing.

56:51SPEAKERNext time we go down to the flea market,

56:52SPEAKERit's not that far to go over to Micro Center from there.

56:55SPEAKER- Okay.

56:56SPEAKER- So we could go to the flea market in the morning and then

56:58SPEAKERzip over to do a field trip to Micro Center afterwards.

57:01SPEAKERYeah.

57:02SPEAKERI had a nice burrito from the place next door to it too.

57:04SPEAKER- Great.

57:05SPEAKER- Yeah. So like a real win-win situation, but anyway,

57:09SPEAKERI guess that'll do it for us.

57:10SPEAKER- Yeah. Exciting things are happening.

57:12SPEAKER- Yeah. It feels like things like honestly,

57:16SPEAKERthe nicest thing about the Micro Center thing.

57:18SPEAKERAnd the reason I wanted to talk about in the podcast is it

57:21SPEAKERwas really fun to be around a group of people like everybody

57:24SPEAKERin that store was into PC building yesterday,

57:25SPEAKERpartly because it was the grand opening,

57:26SPEAKERbut partly because it's Micro Center and like,

57:30SPEAKERwhether it was somebody who was brand new to it and was just

57:32SPEAKERfiguring it out for the first time and like had questions,

57:35SPEAKERor like we talked to a guy who's been running Linux as his

57:38SPEAKERmain OS for the last 20 years.

57:40SPEAKER- Wow. Wow.

57:41SPEAKERIs that the right video? We're going to be on the video.

57:43SPEAKER- I think so. Yeah.

57:44SPEAKER- Great.

57:45SPEAKER- Yeah. So, so like it was, it was, it was the,

57:50SPEAKERI think I've talked about this before,

57:51SPEAKERbut like the first day I came to Maximum PC in 2000,

57:56SPEAKERwhen they were trying to recruit me to move to California

57:58SPEAKERand they were like, why don't you just fly out and hang out?

58:00SPEAKERWe'll, we'll talk and you can see what it's like to be here

58:02SPEAKERand all that. And I was like, yeah, sure. Okay.

58:05SPEAKERAnd I worked in that office and it was the first time I'd

58:07SPEAKERbeen around people who were as excited about like PC

58:10SPEAKERbuilding and computer hardware as I was.

58:14SPEAKERThis whole, everybody in this place felt like that.

58:16SPEAKERAll the people that worked there were really excited.

58:18SPEAKERAnd like, like we talked to a bunch of,

58:21SPEAKERof their associates who were really knowledgeable and really

58:24SPEAKERhelpful. And like, like when they didn't know something,

58:28SPEAKERthey told you that they didn't know it.

58:29SPEAKERAnd then we're like, let me go see what I, let me go,

58:31SPEAKERlet me go talk to somebody or look this up and I'll come

58:33SPEAKERback and get an answer for you.

58:34SPEAKERAnd then they got the right answer, which is,

58:36SPEAKERwhich is really nice.

58:37SPEAKERA lot of times you don't get that in a retail situation.

58:39SPEAKERSo that's cool.

58:40SPEAKERAnyway, last question.

58:42SPEAKERHow does the, how does this compare to classic fries?

58:45SPEAKERMuch less sleazy than classic fries.

58:47SPEAKERLike there's an era of grime at a classic fries, right?

58:51SPEAKERBoth, both like physical dirt and also metaphysical in

58:56SPEAKERthe, the, the, the, like you feel the,

58:59SPEAKERthe kind of psychic trauma that happens in a fries.

59:02SPEAKEROkay. I never, I never did manage to set foot in a fries.

59:05SPEAKERSo this was, oh my God, it sounds scandalous to me, but.

59:08SPEAKERLook, the thing about fries is you'd be walking down,

59:10SPEAKERlike the power supply aisle.

59:11SPEAKERAnd if you went a little bit too far,

59:12SPEAKERyou'd be into like the behind the red cur,

59:14SPEAKERbehind the bead curtain section of the video store where

59:17SPEAKERthey had a bunch of like weird hentai and tentacle porn and

59:20SPEAKERstuff like that.

59:21SPEAKERWow. Fries, huh?

59:22SPEAKERFries, fries, look fries didn't fries didn't sign up for any

59:28SPEAKERpuritanical they'd sell you jerky in porn at the exact same

59:32SPEAKERtime. Yeah.

59:34SPEAKERGreat.

59:35SPEAKERAnyway, I think,

59:36SPEAKERI think when they did the expansion and they added fries as

59:38SPEAKERin like Texas and all the rest of the country,

59:40SPEAKERI don't think they had the porn section in those.

59:42SPEAKERI think that was a Bay area experience,

59:43SPEAKERbut I don't know for sure.

59:45SPEAKERI wonder if this is a one-off or if micro center is going to

59:47SPEAKERbe expanding more into other territories.

59:49SPEAKERSo they said during the ribbon cutting that they try to do

59:53SPEAKERone, no more than one or two stores a year.

59:56SPEAKEROkay.

59:57SPEAKERSo they are, that is a reasonable growth.

1:00:00SPEAKERIt seems like, and on the site, it says, Hey,

1:00:05SPEAKERI have an in-store 18 minute in-store pickup,

1:00:08SPEAKERwhich means I don't know what that means.

1:00:11SPEAKERI'm curious.

1:00:12SPEAKER18 minutes.

1:00:13SPEAKERYeah.

1:00:14SPEAKERMeaning it can maybe,

1:00:15SPEAKERmaybe it can be ready to pick up in 18 minutes from time of

1:00:18SPEAKERpurchase or something.

1:00:19SPEAKERI think that is correct.

1:00:19SPEAKERThey want to have it ready for you within 18 minutes.

1:00:22SPEAKERAll right.

1:00:23SPEAKERThere you go.

1:00:24SPEAKERAnd it's not available between black Friday and Christmas.

1:00:26SPEAKERSo anyway, that's it for this week, I guess.

1:00:29SPEAKERYeah.

1:00:30SPEAKERShout outs to micro center.

1:00:31SPEAKERHey, we're open to sponsorships from micro center.

1:00:33SPEAKERThey seem okay.

1:00:34SPEAKERYeah. Oh, there's wow.

1:00:35SPEAKERThere's one of these in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1:00:37SPEAKERI did not know that.

1:00:38SPEAKERYeah. There you go.

1:00:39SPEAKERThat's cool.

1:00:40SPEAKERYeah. It's it's, it's a very nice, definitely check it out.

1:00:44SPEAKERAnd yeah, if you like the show, please consider subscribing.

1:00:48SPEAKERWe're a listener supported podcast without you all,

1:00:50SPEAKERwe wouldn't be here.

1:00:51SPEAKERTrue.

1:00:52SPEAKERAnd we appreciate everyone's support.

1:00:56SPEAKERYou can go to patrion.com/tech pod and give us $5 a month,

1:01:00SPEAKERwhich goes to support both us and our families,

1:01:02SPEAKERwhich we appreciate very much.

1:01:05SPEAKERAnd yeah, the,

1:01:07SPEAKERthe thing you get for that is access to the discord,

1:01:10SPEAKERwhich is full of nerds.

1:01:11SPEAKERJust like I met in micro center yesterday.

1:01:13SPEAKERNope.

1:01:15SPEAKERAgain,

1:01:16SPEAKERa knowledgeable group of wonderful people who are excited

1:01:18SPEAKERabout sharing the things that they're excited about.

1:01:20SPEAKERVery true.

1:01:21SPEAKERAnd you get access to 62 and rising patron episodes

1:01:27SPEAKERwhere Brad and I dig into things that maybe didn't quite

1:01:29SPEAKERmake the cut for a regular full episode of the show.

1:01:31SPEAKERYes. When we talked this week, I was reminded,

1:01:34SPEAKERwe talked about the scourge of no name VPN apps on phones.

1:01:38SPEAKEROh God.

1:01:39SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:40SPEAKERThe children are apparently using in schools to bypass.

1:01:43SPEAKEROkay.

1:01:43SPEAKERPresumably to bypass like school internet filtering, but.

1:01:47SPEAKERSo I've done that too.

1:01:49SPEAKERWhen I've been at my daughter's school working,

1:01:51SPEAKERI've used my VPN to bypass their terrible filtering.

1:01:54SPEAKERThat's fine.

1:01:55SPEAKERIt's just, you should know what you should,

1:01:56SPEAKERyou should vet the VPN that you're connecting to in order to

1:01:59SPEAKERdo that is all I'm saying.

1:02:01SPEAKERI think I trust me pretty, pretty, quite a bit.

1:02:03SPEAKERAnyway, patrion.com/checkpod.

1:02:05SPEAKERIt's five bucks a month.

1:02:06SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you listeners,

1:02:09SPEAKERsupporters, whatever.

1:02:10SPEAKERIt's all good.

1:02:11SPEAKERIf you, if you don't want to sign up for the Patreon,

1:02:13SPEAKERmaybe, maybe, you know, think about leaving a review.

1:02:15SPEAKERThis is something other podcasts always tell people to do.

1:02:17SPEAKERAnd I've never really done consistently,

1:02:19SPEAKERbut apparently if you leave a review on something like

1:02:22SPEAKERiTunes that exposes our podcast to more new audiences and

1:02:27SPEAKERmore people, which is good for us as well.

1:02:29SPEAKERWe appreciate that too.

1:02:30SPEAKERYes, we do.

1:02:32SPEAKERAnd that will do it for us this week.

1:02:34SPEAKERThanks for listening.

1:02:34SPEAKERWe'll be back next week with another edition of the tech pod.

1:02:37SPEAKERThanks for listening.

1:02:38SPEAKERYes. I don't know what we're doing next week,

1:02:40SPEAKERbut I'm leaving for LA for summer game fest on Friday.

1:02:43SPEAKERSo it might be.

1:02:44SPEAKERIt's a busy time of year.

1:02:45SPEAKERYes. I don't, I don't know exactly what I'm saying here.

1:02:47SPEAKERWe'll have something, but I'm not quite sure what yet.

1:02:49SPEAKERWith the travel and so forth.

1:02:50SPEAKERWe're going to shoot, we're shooting for a guest.

1:02:51SPEAKERI'm working on a guest, but we'll see.

1:02:53SPEAKERAnd as always,

1:02:55SPEAKERplease consider the environment before printing this podcast.

1:02:58SPEAKERThanks for listening.

1:02:58SPEAKER(upbeat music)