29: Have Laser, Will Cut

00:00SPEAKERMy time is exact.

00:01SPEAKER- Wait, so is mine.

00:02SPEAKERThat was my news.

00:04SPEAKER- What, really?

00:04SPEAKER- Yeah, like I came in here, I was like,

00:06SPEAKERI wish to do the cold open about time.is

00:08SPEAKERbecause I have some exciting news about it

00:09SPEAKERand then you stole my thunder

00:11SPEAKERby saying the exact same thing.

00:13SPEAKER- I turned off automatic time syncing

00:15SPEAKERand then turned it back on to force a time sync

00:17SPEAKERsince there's not a button

00:18SPEAKERin the modern Windows control panel,

00:21SPEAKERthe settings app or whatever they call it now.

00:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I just-- - But yeah.

00:24SPEAKER- I have to, yeah, I just have to express my delight

00:27SPEAKERthat I opened a time.is and it says your time is exact,

00:30SPEAKERwhich has never happened in the long history

00:33SPEAKERof using this website to sync up our recordings.

00:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is the thing that we use

00:37SPEAKERto sync recordings when we're remote

00:39SPEAKERand mine is always at least one second off,

00:42SPEAKERso I was pretty excited that I got it to exact.

00:44SPEAKER- I think I've been as high as like 2.8 seconds or something,

00:46SPEAKERwhich is just like basically living in the past

00:49SPEAKERat that point. - I know.

00:50SPEAKER- Also--

00:51SPEAKER- Your financial transactions are all off.

00:53SPEAKER- Oh boy, let's not even talk about that.

00:55SPEAKER- Fair. - Speaking of,

00:57SPEAKERdid I hear you mentioned control panel?

00:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I love the control panel.

01:00SPEAKERIt's my favorite part of Windows.

01:01SPEAKER- The Windows control panel?

01:03SPEAKER- Oh God, like remember when they first added that

01:07SPEAKERand then they grouped everything and you're like,

01:08SPEAKER"Oh God, I can't find anything anymore."

01:10SPEAKERAnd then they just got rid of the good parts of it

01:13SPEAKERand now you can't, it's not even in the little pop-up menu.

01:15SPEAKER- I have no problem with control panel

01:17SPEAKERas long as it is the only thing you need,

01:19SPEAKERand to be clear, I'm talking about old XP control panel,

01:22SPEAKERnot new Windows settings.

01:25SPEAKERThe touch-based thing.

01:26SPEAKER- That happened with Windows 8, I think, right?

01:28SPEAKER- Yes. - Yeah, they added

01:29SPEAKERMetro settings app that had like 2/3 of the settings

01:32SPEAKERyou need and they left the control panel

01:34SPEAKERfor all the other crap.

01:35SPEAKER- Yeah, we got pretty deep into that, I think,

01:37SPEAKERin the ranking of Windowses.

01:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it was an important part of why Windows 8 blows.

01:42SPEAKER- Well, I have to tell you something.

01:43SPEAKER- Oh, is there good news?

01:44SPEAKERAre they finally getting rid of the settings app

01:45SPEAKERand we're going back to the control panel

01:46SPEAKERlike decent human beings?

01:48SPEAKER- I don't know if you're gonna consider this good news.

01:51SPEAKERAs much as I have complained about the fact

01:53SPEAKERthat there are two different settings in Windows

01:56SPEAKERand that you have to use both to do everything,

01:59SPEAKERI think there's a worse alternative,

02:01SPEAKERwhich is that the word is going around

02:03SPEAKERthat they are fully expunging the old control panel

02:06SPEAKERfrom the next build of Windows.

02:08SPEAKER- Well, I mean, as long as they take

02:09SPEAKERall of the important functionality,

02:11SPEAKERlike all of the stuff that you can't do

02:13SPEAKERin the sound settings app that you need

02:15SPEAKERfrom the sound control panel into the settings app,

02:18SPEAKERthat's fine, right?

02:18SPEAKERWhich is surely what they're going to do.

02:19SPEAKER- Yes, that's definitely, 100%,

02:21SPEAKERthey will account for every possible exception.

02:23SPEAKERThey will move all of the functionality

02:25SPEAKERover to the settings app.

02:26SPEAKER- Right now, I'm taking a really deep breath

02:28SPEAKERso I can get a really good sigh.

02:30SPEAKER(gasping)

02:31SPEAKER(sighing)

02:34SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:51SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

03:05SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.

03:08SPEAKER- I'm Brad, thanks for having me.

03:10SPEAKER- Hey, Brad, it's good to see you, man.

03:11SPEAKERHow you holding up?

03:12SPEAKER- I'm doing all right. - Things good?

03:13SPEAKER- It's good to see you too, virtually.

03:15SPEAKER- I know. - Digitally.

03:17SPEAKER- All of my friends are screens.

03:19SPEAKERYou've got quite a nice overexposure going on

03:23SPEAKERon this Saturday morning.

03:25SPEAKER- Yeah, if, hold on.

03:26SPEAKER- You were extremely blindingly white at the moment.

03:29SPEAKER- Well, hey, bad.

03:30SPEAKER- Not that anybody can see this, but.

03:32SPEAKER(laughing)

03:33SPEAKER- That's not too far from the norm.

03:36SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, fine.

03:37SPEAKER- What with never leaving the house now, so.

03:40SPEAKER- What's your day count?

03:41SPEAKERI believe I'm on day 13,

03:44SPEAKERsince I set foot out of this apartment.

03:46SPEAKER- This is 29.

03:47SPEAKER- Wow.

03:49SPEAKER- We, you know, we're almost a full month.

03:52SPEAKERLast night, I was gonna make pizza dough in the morning

03:54SPEAKERso we could make pizza

03:55SPEAKERand have family movie night last night.

03:57SPEAKERAnd we ended up, I was just like, at two o'clock,

04:01SPEAKERI was like, I'm not making dough.

04:02SPEAKERWe don't have enough, I can't waste the flour on the dough.

04:05SPEAKER- You just gotta ration, yep.

04:06SPEAKER- Yeah, and our favorite pizza place

04:08SPEAKERis doing contactless delivery.

04:09SPEAKERLike our local pizza joint does contactless delivery,

04:12SPEAKERalthough they're bad at it.

04:14SPEAKERSo I ordered a couple pizzas,

04:16SPEAKERand like having not eaten any out at all for the last,

04:22SPEAKERlike 30 days, 28 days is the longest

04:24SPEAKERI think we've gone without ordering

04:26SPEAKERsome sort of external food.

04:27SPEAKER- Was it like ambrosia?

04:28SPEAKER- Oh God, that pizza was so good.

04:31SPEAKER- Did you know, have you been getting a lot of deliveries?

04:33SPEAKERBecause you know, we're in the city

04:37SPEAKERon a very highly populated street.

04:39SPEAKERPlenty of people walking by all the time.

04:41SPEAKERAnd brand A, I feel bad about having to order

04:44SPEAKERa lot of stuff, but I just need a lot of gear

04:46SPEAKERfor the stuff I'm doing at home for work right now.

04:49SPEAKER- Yeah, you need a full studio in the house now.

04:52SPEAKER- Yeah, so I've probably taken eight or 10 deliveries

04:54SPEAKERsince this has been going on.

04:56SPEAKERBut they have both, FedEx and UPS have both taken

04:59SPEAKERto ringing the bell and just dropping the packages

05:01SPEAKERon the sidewalk and leaving.

05:03SPEAKER- Oh boy. - Which is incredible.

05:06SPEAKERLike I can't believe-- - When they know you're home,

05:07SPEAKERit's not like you're not there.

05:08SPEAKER- So my girlfriend made that exact point,

05:10SPEAKERbecause like the first couple times they did that,

05:12SPEAKERI was like, you just put like $250 worth of stuff

05:15SPEAKERin a little box just sitting on the,

05:18SPEAKERa lot of people walk by that door every minute.

05:20SPEAKERWell, maybe fewer right now.

05:22SPEAKERBut then yes, she made the point that like yes,

05:24SPEAKERthey know everybody is in the house right now.

05:26SPEAKERSo it is probably safe to assume that

05:28SPEAKERsomebody's gonna hear the bell and immediately come get it,

05:30SPEAKERwhich is what's happened every time.

05:32SPEAKERBut then also I cannot blame them

05:33SPEAKERfor not wanting to interact with people.

05:35SPEAKER- Yeah, like I gave my UPS driver a virtual fist bump

05:39SPEAKER'cause I was walking with my daughter in the afternoon

05:41SPEAKERand like we saw him and I was like, hey, how's it going?

05:45SPEAKERBut he had his full mask on and the whole thing.

05:46SPEAKERThose people--

05:47SPEAKER- I'm not blaming them at all.

05:48SPEAKER- Delivery people are heroes.

05:50SPEAKER- Definitely not, yeah.

05:51SPEAKERIt's something to be vigilant about.

05:54SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

05:55SPEAKERIt's, we've had, we get a lot of packages

05:58SPEAKER'cause we have a bunch of school stuff coming.

06:00SPEAKERHow's your, how's, can we talk about, I wanna,

06:02SPEAKERso first off, we didn't do a lot of questions last week,

06:05SPEAKERso we're gonna do another question episode this week.

06:07SPEAKER- Hopefully everybody, if you despise email episodes

06:11SPEAKERand don't want us to do too back-to-back like this,

06:13SPEAKERwell then, let us know.

06:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I'd say we probably,

06:16SPEAKERI can't imagine we would do one again in the future.

06:18SPEAKERNext week, I think we have another special guest lined up.

06:21SPEAKER- Oh, cool.

06:21SPEAKER- And we're gonna talk about something cool and old, so.

06:24SPEAKER- Oh, great, cool and old.

06:26SPEAKER- Yeah, but in the meantime, let's,

06:30SPEAKERI wanna hear how the studio stuff is, like we,

06:33SPEAKERoh, hey, by the way, on our walk yesterday,

06:36SPEAKERI saw something really important.

06:38SPEAKERThere were two 22-inch monitors from Acer

06:43SPEAKERon the side of the street. - What?

06:45SPEAKER- I almost grabbed them for you, I was like,

06:47SPEAKERthese are gonna be great, you can put two more in there,

06:48SPEAKERyou'll have like one normal-sized modern monitor.

06:52SPEAKER- Wait, what? - They were only VGA, though, so.

06:53SPEAKER- What? - Oh, wow.

06:55SPEAKER- Dude, come on, like even my monitors have DVI on 'em,

06:58SPEAKERcome on, I'm not doing analog in here.

07:00SPEAKER- I'm sure they have DVI, Brad.

07:02SPEAKER- I just, I have been dancing around this topic

07:04SPEAKERfor the last three weeks or so,

07:06SPEAKERand I feel like I should just come out with it,

07:08SPEAKERwhich is that both of those monitors are sitting

07:11SPEAKERon the floor of my living room right now.

07:14SPEAKER- I'm gonna take you one step farther,

07:15SPEAKERand you can do the exact same thing that my neighbor did,

07:18SPEAKERand put them out on your sidewalk and write free on them,

07:20SPEAKERand then they won't be your problem anymore.

07:22SPEAKER- Well, the situation is that I am using

07:25SPEAKERtemporary work monitors. - Yeah.

07:27SPEAKER- I got a second monitor in here for work, uh-huh,

07:30SPEAKERso I'm in a weird limbo where people keep giving me shit

07:33SPEAKERabout my old monitors, and like, deep down,

07:36SPEAKERI know, like, I'm not using those monitors right now.

07:39SPEAKER- I know, but if you get rid of the old ones,

07:41SPEAKERwhen you have to take the new ones back to work,

07:42SPEAKERit's gonna bring the whole thing to a head,

07:44SPEAKERand you're gonna have to make a decision.

07:45SPEAKER- So the reason I've been avoiding this topic

07:46SPEAKERis that I want to give people the triumphant feeling

07:50SPEAKERof catharsis that they're looking for with a socket

07:52SPEAKERwhen I get actual awesome new monitors,

07:55SPEAKERbut this is just a weird limbo right now

07:57SPEAKERwhere I have better monitors,

07:59SPEAKERbut they're not the ultimate monitors, you know what I mean?

08:02SPEAKER- Yeah, they're good enough, but they're not yours.

08:04SPEAKER- Right, and people don't want good enough

08:05SPEAKERout of this story, this long running--

08:08SPEAKER- No, God, I need catharsis at this point.

08:10SPEAKERI want you to turn something on

08:11SPEAKERand have it so blindingly glorious

08:13SPEAKERcompared to your old Garbo monitors

08:15SPEAKERthat your eyes are seared out of your skull.

08:18SPEAKER- The culmination of this story can't just be,

08:20SPEAKER"Oh, I got a couple of good enough monitors from work,"

08:22SPEAKERand that's it, so just pretend

08:24SPEAKERthat I'm still using the shitty old monitors for now.

08:30SPEAKERAnyway.

08:31SPEAKER- Yeah, so how's the home studio stuff going?

08:34SPEAKERWhat's your setup like?

08:35SPEAKERThese days, 'cause we get a--

08:36SPEAKER- It's good.

08:37SPEAKERI mean, I've done a hundred things

08:39SPEAKERsince I've been stuck here to get my console capture

08:42SPEAKERand spending all kinds of time learning

08:44SPEAKERthe ins and outs of OBS,

08:45SPEAKERwhich are idiosyncratic, to say the least.

08:49SPEAKER- Have you gotten a stream deck yet, Brad?

08:51SPEAKER- No, no, but I-- - You should get one of those.

08:53SPEAKERIt's real handy.

08:54SPEAKER- Jeff and Vinny both have wired up their own

08:56SPEAKERkind of homebrew sort of stream deck/kind of button interface

09:02SPEAKERlike Vinny took an old MIDI controller.

09:05SPEAKER- Yeah, if you have a mechanical keyboard that you can,

09:09SPEAKERif you have a keyboard that you can program macros into,

09:11SPEAKERyou can use that too, but the stream deck's pretty,

09:14SPEAKERso the stream deck is a little thing from Elgato.

09:15SPEAKERIt's basically like a little screen

09:17SPEAKERthat has some touchpad buttons on top of it,

09:20SPEAKERso the buttons are, it's like a capacitive screen,

09:23SPEAKERand the buttons trigger this thing,

09:25SPEAKERso you can have little images of whatever it is,

09:27SPEAKERand you can, the neat thing about it

09:29SPEAKERfor when you're streaming or doing audio stuff

09:31SPEAKERor recording or whatever is that you can program

09:33SPEAKERreally complicated macros that are like two-way macros,

09:36SPEAKERso like one turns something on,

09:38SPEAKERand that thing is like five things,

09:39SPEAKERand then one turns those five things back off

09:42SPEAKERor whatever setting you want.

09:44SPEAKER- Does Windows not read those as keyboard presses,

09:46SPEAKERlike it's not taking key input for those?

09:48SPEAKEROkay.

09:49SPEAKER- So you can make the stream deck software

09:52SPEAKERmake a key, a button do a key press.

09:55SPEAKER- But they don't have to be key presses, right?

09:56SPEAKER- It does not have to be key presses.

09:58SPEAKER- The reason I ask is, if you wanna get all ambitious

10:03SPEAKERand program some hotkeys in OBS,

10:06SPEAKERor set up hotkeys for like start stream, stop stream,

10:08SPEAKERstart recording, et cetera, et cetera,

10:10SPEAKERyou should really make sure

10:11SPEAKERthat those aren't the exact same hotkeys

10:13SPEAKERthat you also set up in like, say, your music player

10:15SPEAKERfor play and pause and like new playlist and stuff.

10:18SPEAKER- Yep.

10:19SPEAKER- And then you definitely shouldn't find that out

10:21SPEAKERright in the middle of an important stream

10:22SPEAKERthat needs to not be effed up.

10:25SPEAKER- I have a bunch of nonsense in it.

10:26SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's why, anyway, yes, like it's--

10:28SPEAKER- Did you start playing Rihanna, Brad?

10:29SPEAKER- No.

10:30SPEAKEROh, I stopped the stream.

10:32SPEAKER- Oh, no.

10:33SPEAKER- That's what I'm saying.

10:34SPEAKER- Oh, no.

10:34SPEAKER(laughing)

10:35SPEAKER- That's like when I,

10:36SPEAKERand it happened to be an important podcast.

10:39SPEAKER- Oh, no.

10:39SPEAKER- That needed to not be interrupted,

10:41SPEAKERbut I thought I was getting cheeky

10:44SPEAKERand gonna play some music for the podcast,

10:45SPEAKERand instead I killed the stream

10:47SPEAKERand the recording at the same time.

10:48SPEAKER- Oops, oops.

10:49SPEAKER- Anyway, all right.

10:51SPEAKERSo the one thing, I mean, yeah,

10:53SPEAKERI've set up a ton of audio stuff.

10:54SPEAKERThe one thing, and special thanks to some of the folks

10:59SPEAKERin our Patreon Discord for their help with this stuff.

11:02SPEAKERI know a couple people might be interested

11:04SPEAKERto hear the conclusion of this story.

11:05SPEAKER- Really seamless plug there, by the way.

11:07SPEAKER(laughing)

11:09SPEAKER- I was taking analog audio out of this monitor

11:12SPEAKERthat I've got.

11:13SPEAKERIt's got HDMI in, which is what I'm running

11:15SPEAKERlike the consoles too,

11:16SPEAKER'cause I need a screen to play a console game on

11:18SPEAKERwhile I'm streaming.

11:19SPEAKERAnd the only audio out it has is an analog,

11:22SPEAKERjust a 3.5 millimeter analog jack.

11:26SPEAKERWas running that into both like the line in on my PC

11:29SPEAKERand like a cheap USB kind of sound card that I've got.

11:32SPEAKERAnd I was just getting wretched,

11:33SPEAKERjust nasty electrical interference, you know,

11:36SPEAKERlines and pops and buzzes and just gross, you know,

11:40SPEAKERyou know what electrical interference sounds like.

11:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it sounded like garbage.

11:42SPEAKER- On analog audio.

11:44SPEAKERAnd some people recommended getting

11:47SPEAKERan audio ground loop isolator.

11:49SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

11:50SPEAKER- Which I don't know if you...

11:51SPEAKER- I've never had those work for me.

11:52SPEAKER- So that's the thing with this.

11:56SPEAKERI finally got it 'cause, you know,

11:57SPEAKERAmazon shipping is taking a long time right now.

11:59SPEAKERSo it took a couple of weeks,

12:00SPEAKERbut I got it and literally just plugged it in line

12:02SPEAKERbetween the cord coming out of the monitor

12:05SPEAKERand the line in on my motherboard.

12:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

12:09SPEAKER- Absolutely like stunned.

12:10SPEAKERIt is as clean as you could ask for.

12:12SPEAKERLike it removed every bit of it.

12:14SPEAKERLike, 'cause you know, motherboard audio,

12:17SPEAKERanalog audio ports are like notoriously noisy themselves,

12:20SPEAKERregardless of like,

12:21SPEAKERif you've got a ground loop situation going on,

12:23SPEAKERbut like the audio coming in on that line in

12:25SPEAKERis like pristine.

12:25SPEAKERLike it's, I cannot believe it was a $15 little dongle.

12:29SPEAKERAnd I cannot believe how well it cleaned up that audio.

12:32SPEAKERLike it's just shocking to me.

12:34SPEAKER- So the last time I tried to use one of those

12:36SPEAKERwas probably five or 10 years ago

12:38SPEAKERwhen I had 5.1 speakers in my office

12:42SPEAKERstill back in the old days.

12:44SPEAKERAnd the speakers had to plug into a different plug

12:48SPEAKERthan the PC plugged into

12:49SPEAKERand happened to be on different circuits in the house.

12:51SPEAKER- Okay.

12:52SPEAKER- So like my PC and all that stuff plugs into one,

12:55SPEAKERone that I had wired in when I built,

12:56SPEAKERwhen we moved into the house.

12:58SPEAKERSo there'd be enough power in here

12:59SPEAKERfor all the stuff I wanted to do.

13:00SPEAKERThat's a brand new clean circuit.

13:02SPEAKERAnd the speakers had to plug in someplace else

13:03SPEAKER'cause I wanted the subwoofer back in the back corner.

13:06SPEAKERAnd I could never, the ground loop isolator

13:09SPEAKERwould never do what I needed to do

13:10SPEAKERacross different breakers, basically.

13:13SPEAKER- I am talking way out of my depth here,

13:15SPEAKERbut my understanding was that the ground loop happens

13:18SPEAKERwhen they're all on the same circuit.

13:21SPEAKEROr did I, do I have that wrong?

13:22SPEAKERIs that backwards?

13:23SPEAKER- Usually you can solve the ground loop problem

13:25SPEAKERby putting it, plugging everything into the same power strip.

13:27SPEAKER- I don't understand. - Interesting, okay.

13:28SPEAKERMaybe I've got some esoteric situation

13:30SPEAKER'cause my PC is plugged into a UPS and the monitor is on.

13:32SPEAKER- You might've also, yeah, you might've also had,

13:36SPEAKERwell, so that would definitely do it.

13:37SPEAKER- Okay.

13:38SPEAKER- You might also have been getting other noise.

13:40SPEAKERSo like, for example, if I move my headset microphone

13:43SPEAKERtoo close to my LED backlit mechanical keyboard,

13:47SPEAKERI get all sorts of weird EM noise into the microphone

13:50SPEAKERfrom the keyboard,

13:51SPEAKERfrom whatever electronics are on the keyboard.

13:53SPEAKER- Yeah, and to be fair, I've got a,

13:55SPEAKERthis is like a 20-foot aux cord,

13:57SPEAKERwhich like Vinny was saying. - That's a long 3.5.

13:59SPEAKER- Yeah, Vinny was saying a cord of that length

14:01SPEAKERis basically just acting as a giant antenna.

14:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:04SPEAKER- And it's threaded behind my desk

14:05SPEAKERwhere I've got all the cables routed

14:06SPEAKERbetween like, there's Raspberry Pi back there.

14:09SPEAKERThere's a little HDMI splitter.

14:10SPEAKERThere's a little USB capture device I'm using.

14:13SPEAKERLike there's a bunch of powered devices

14:15SPEAKERthat that cord is like winding its way through.

14:17SPEAKER- Well, and USB is noisy too.

14:19SPEAKERSo like if you, even if you have a USB cable crossing

14:24SPEAKERthat has data going across it, crossing an XLR cable,

14:26SPEAKERwhich is really well shielded

14:28SPEAKERand designed to not be a giant antenna,

14:30SPEAKERyou can get USB noise across the XLR even.

14:34SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah.

14:34SPEAKER- Okay.

14:35SPEAKER- USB power is not a problem, it's just data.

14:37SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.

14:38SPEAKERWell, so I shouldn't like pitch this thing

14:39SPEAKERas a one-size-fits-all panacea or anything like that,

14:44SPEAKERbut whatever specific interference situation

14:47SPEAKERI have going on, like I just plug that thing in

14:48SPEAKERand it completely cleaned it up and I could not believe it.

14:50SPEAKER- That's awesome that it worked, yeah.

14:51SPEAKER- It's 15 bucks on Amazon.

14:55SPEAKER- So it's funny, to solve that problem,

14:57SPEAKERrather than fix the cable routing

14:59SPEAKERso that my cables don't cross,

15:01SPEAKERI just use a pair of XLR studio monitors that I had

15:04SPEAKERand run XLRs around the back of the desk

15:06SPEAKERand they just run over everything

15:07SPEAKERand they're pretty bulletproof

15:08SPEAKERexcept for the occasional USB noise.

15:10SPEAKER- Sure.

15:12SPEAKER- So, okay, so you got the,

15:14SPEAKERyou got like a Elgato card or something to do some capture.

15:18SPEAKER- It's a Magewell, which is kind of,

15:21SPEAKERnot exactly a prominent brand.

15:22SPEAKEREverybody talks about Elgato

15:24SPEAKERand like, I think Blackmagic is a big one in that space,

15:27SPEAKERbut like Magewell, I think is a little company

15:29SPEAKERout of China probably that,

15:32SPEAKERI don't even know if they make internal cards.

15:33SPEAKERI know they make these kind of inline USB,

15:37SPEAKERUSB 3 capture devices, but anyway,

15:39SPEAKERthe one I've got is like four years old

15:41SPEAKERor something like that.

15:42SPEAKERThat's been working pretty well.

15:43SPEAKER- Okay.

15:46SPEAKERI have a Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4K in my streaming PC

15:52SPEAKERthat captures input from the TV,

15:55SPEAKERI mean, from the gaming PC.

15:56SPEAKER- Right, and that's an internal card?

16:00SPEAKER- That's, I have two of those,

16:01SPEAKERone's for the camera and one's for the other computer.

16:04SPEAKER- That's elaborate.

16:05SPEAKER- We also use them for food stuff, so.

16:07SPEAKER- Oh, okay, justifiable.

16:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a justifiable expense.

16:10SPEAKER- Are those PCI or PCI Express?

16:12SPEAKER- Those are PCI Express.

16:14SPEAKERI don't have any PCI,

16:15SPEAKERI don't think there's any PCI slots in my computer.

16:17SPEAKER- I not surprisingly have been eyeballing the specs

16:19SPEAKERon my motherboard a lot more in the last three weeks

16:21SPEAKERto see what all I could pull off in a pinch.

16:24SPEAKERAnd my board still has two old PCI slots.

16:27SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

16:28SPEAKERSo no, the 4K cards all have to be PCI Express, I think,

16:32SPEAKER'cause of the amount of bandwidth for the video.

16:34SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

16:35SPEAKER- The problem with those Blackmagic cards

16:37SPEAKERis they don't do gaming monitor resolutions.

16:39SPEAKERSo it does 1080p60, no problem,

16:42SPEAKERbut it doesn't know what to do with 1440p

16:44SPEAKERand it only does 4K at 30 hertz, I think, not 60 hertz.

16:49SPEAKERSo it's not like, the upshot is it's pretty easy

16:55SPEAKERto do a capture card at 1080p, like the Elgato ones are good,

16:58SPEAKERthe Blackmagic cards are great at 1080p60,

17:02SPEAKERbut things start to get weird beyond that.

17:05SPEAKER- Sure, we just gotta get to this glorious,

17:07SPEAKERfully compliant HDMI 2.1 future and everything will be fine.

17:11SPEAKER- It's, look, it takes so long.

17:16SPEAKER- I know. - It takes so long.

17:18SPEAKER- I know.

17:19SPEAKER- But yeah, so that's, I mean,

17:21SPEAKERmy setup is basically the same as it always has.

17:22SPEAKERI haven't changed anything.

17:24SPEAKERI have the audio interface,

17:25SPEAKERwhich I think we're gonna talk about in a few minutes

17:26SPEAKERand, you know, normal computer stuff.

17:31SPEAKER- Yeah, all right, should we get into some emails here?

17:33SPEAKER- Yeah, you wanna do some emails?

17:34SPEAKER- Sure. - Questions?

17:36SPEAKER- Where do these emails get sent to?

17:39SPEAKER- Oh, we have an email address.

17:40SPEAKERIt's techpod@content.town.

17:44SPEAKERIt's just the URL for the podcast,

17:46SPEAKERbut with an at instead of a dot

17:48SPEAKERbetween the first two words.

17:49SPEAKER- That is, that's fancy.

17:52SPEAKER- When you control the domain, you control everything.

17:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess so.

17:55SPEAKERI've been doing, I shouldn't even bring this up.

17:57SPEAKERI've been dabbling with some PowerShell scripting recently.

18:00SPEAKERSo as soon as you said that,

18:01SPEAKERmy mind immediately went to like,

18:03SPEAKER"How would you dynamically change out

18:06SPEAKER"one delimiter for another?"

18:09SPEAKERHow would you change that? - You get in the bash

18:10SPEAKERin the TCH, what's your?

18:12SPEAKER- So again, I've really, I swear to God,

18:15SPEAKERI'm not going out of my way to plug this discord,

18:17SPEAKERbut I have been talking to some folks in there

18:19SPEAKERabout that stuff.

18:22SPEAKERPowerShell is kind of a pain in the ass to work with.

18:24SPEAKER- Yeah, PowerShell sucks.

18:25SPEAKERI mean, people who are good at it, it's awesome,

18:27SPEAKERbut I'm not good at it, so it sucks.

18:29SPEAKER- Well, it's got some weird quirks.

18:30SPEAKERAnyway, that new Windows subsystem for Linux is coming soon.

18:36SPEAKERSo I think as soon as that happens,

18:38SPEAKERI'm gonna install that and start switching over

18:41SPEAKERto learning to do bash scripting and never look back.

18:44SPEAKER- You gotta get up that beard.

18:45SPEAKERYou got time to grow that thing.

18:46SPEAKER- I know. - Time to make it happen.

18:47SPEAKER- Anyway, okay, let's read some emails, I'm sorry.

18:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

18:51SPEAKER- This is not just my personal stream of consciousness,

18:53SPEAKERor maybe it is.

18:54SPEAKER- That's what people are here for, Brad.

18:55SPEAKERThey wanna hear us talk about the shit

18:56SPEAKERthat we talk about in the discord chat all day long.

18:59SPEAKER- Anyway, big thanks to those folks

19:01SPEAKERfor giving me some pretty good actionable info

19:03SPEAKERon a variety of things.

19:06SPEAKER- I am looking- - In that domain.

19:08SPEAKER- Look, I am looking very hard.

19:10SPEAKERThe Mr. Conversation that is ongoing-

19:12SPEAKER- Oh my God, I don't know- - Has me so close.

19:14SPEAKER- I don't even know if we're gonna get through,

19:16SPEAKERget two emails, we could just talk about things

19:18SPEAKERthat have been going on lately.

19:19SPEAKERSo I got my DE10 nano in the mail.

19:22SPEAKER- Oh, you did?

19:23SPEAKERYou've ordered the parts?

19:24SPEAKER- Yeah, well- - So what else

19:25SPEAKERdo you have coming?

19:26SPEAKER- The thing that was stopping me

19:27SPEAKERwas that nobody had the SDRAM module in stock,

19:29SPEAKERwhich is the thing you need for pretty much everything.

19:32SPEAKER- Like any Neo Geo and- - More than that.

19:35SPEAKER- GBA cores and stuff like that.

19:36SPEAKER- The only cores I know of that don't run,

19:38SPEAKERor that run without the SDRAM are Genesis,

19:41SPEAKERmaybe PC Engine, but like- - Okay.

19:44SPEAKER- And maybe one or two of the old computers,

19:45SPEAKERbut just about every console needs the RAM.

19:49SPEAKER- We should explain what the Mr. is.

19:50SPEAKERIt's a FPGA-based hardware emulation.

19:54SPEAKERSo an FPGA is a kind of CPU

19:57SPEAKERthat can reconfigure itself dynamically-

19:59SPEAKER- Yeah, to be other chips.

20:01SPEAKER- Yeah, to mimic other chips.

20:03SPEAKERAnd basically what this is doing is,

20:06SPEAKERit's mimicking old console hardware-

20:09SPEAKER- Yeah. - On a little box

20:10SPEAKERthat's about the size of like a USB portable, USB charger.

20:14SPEAKERMaybe it's a little bit- - Well, it looks like a,

20:15SPEAKERit looks, the actual board is basically a Raspberry Pi.

20:17SPEAKERLike in terms of the way it looks and the form factor,

20:19SPEAKERit's that. - Yeah.

20:20SPEAKER- It's an SBC, a small board computer.

20:23SPEAKER- So then Mr. is a software project

20:24SPEAKERthat uses a specific FPGA that's pretty available

20:28SPEAKERfor what, like 150 bucks?

20:29SPEAKERIt wasn't, it's not super expensive.

20:30SPEAKER- So the DE 10 Nano is the name of the actual board

20:33SPEAKERpeople buy that is the basis of this thing.

20:34SPEAKERAnd yeah, that's, it's 100 and the base price is 130,

20:37SPEAKERdepending on where you get it.

20:39SPEAKERThe whole reason, I don't know if everybody knows this,

20:41SPEAKERbut the whole reason that thing is so cheap

20:42SPEAKERis 'cause Intel apparently subsidizes it pretty heavily.

20:45SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that.

20:46SPEAKER- Because like bigger and more capable FPGA systems

20:48SPEAKERare like way more expensive.

20:50SPEAKER- Yeah. - So the reason

20:51SPEAKEReverybody's using this thing is because it's so affordable.

20:54SPEAKER- FPGAs are expensive to manufacture.

20:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so real quick, I just have to,

21:00SPEAKERsomebody in the discord dropped this line

21:02SPEAKERand I apologize for forgetting who it is,

21:04SPEAKERbut it's the most like succinct way I've ever heard

21:06SPEAKERto explain what an FPGA actually does.

21:08SPEAKEROoh, which is that with normal software,

21:11SPEAKERyou're telling a CPU what to do.

21:14SPEAKERAnd with an FPGA, you are telling it what hardware to be.

21:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

21:19SPEAKER- So you're literally saying be the chips

21:22SPEAKERthat make up the Super Nintendo main board inside this chip.

21:24SPEAKERLike it is reconfiguring itself to like electrically, right?

21:28SPEAKERLike at the electrical level, it is becoming the chips.

21:32SPEAKERSo in fact, more or less,

21:33SPEAKERI think that's a simplified explanation.

21:36SPEAKER- So does that mean I can,

21:37SPEAKERlike if I load up the Genesis core, I can figure it,

21:39SPEAKERI can configure it to be the type of Genesis,

21:43SPEAKERlike the rev of Genesis that has the audio hardware

21:46SPEAKERI'm accustomed to?

21:48SPEAKER- I don't know if the core for the Genesis

21:51SPEAKERhas that level of specificity,

21:52SPEAKERbut I don't see any reason they couldn't do that

21:54SPEAKERif they wanted to offer different cores that had those.

21:57SPEAKER- But yeah, I don't know if people know

21:58SPEAKERthe different revisions of the Genesis

22:00SPEAKERhad slightly different versions of that Yamaha chip,

22:02SPEAKERso the music would sound a little bit different.

22:04SPEAKERSo like, depending on which Genesis you had as a kid,

22:06SPEAKERyou have a different idea

22:08SPEAKERof what the correct Genesis music sound is.

22:10SPEAKER- As a kid, I got a Genesis when I was in college, Brad.

22:13SPEAKER- Well, that's okay, we're not all.

22:16SPEAKER- Look, I played a lot of NHL and Madden,

22:18SPEAKERthat's all I'm saying, it was very popular.

22:20SPEAKER- Not all of our beards are quite that great yet, but...

22:24SPEAKER- So yeah, so just to expand on this stuff,

22:27SPEAKERI don't know if we have, have we talked about the Mr. Munch?

22:29SPEAKERIs this, are we retreading this?

22:32SPEAKER- No, we haven't really, look, we all do a lot of podcasts.

22:35SPEAKERI've talked about it on other podcasts.

22:36SPEAKERI don't think we've talked about it a bunch here.

22:38SPEAKER- The reason I ask is it's kind of topical right now,

22:41SPEAKERbecause I don't know if, are you familiar

22:42SPEAKERwith the SNES emulator, BSNES?

22:46SPEAKER- Yeah, we did an article on it and tested it

22:49SPEAKERyears and years ago when it was finished.

22:51SPEAKER- Like Higan or, I'm not sure how you pronounce it,

22:53SPEAKERbut there's a few.

22:54SPEAKER- Higan, I thought was how you say it, but I don't know.

22:55SPEAKER- So Bew is the author of those things, of those emulators.

22:59SPEAKERLike Higan in particular is known as like

23:02SPEAKERthe most accurate Super Nintendo emulator in the world.

23:04SPEAKERLike that was his whole, his whole goal with that thing

23:06SPEAKERwas cycle accurate emulation of that hardware.

23:10SPEAKER- And it takes an incredibly beefy computer

23:12SPEAKERto run computers. - So that's the thing

23:13SPEAKERI have forgotten. - There's those emulators.

23:14SPEAKER- That's the thing I had forgotten,

23:15SPEAKERand talking to people about the Mr. and the FPGA stuff,

23:18SPEAKERthat's what really drove home why this thing

23:20SPEAKERis so beneficial, is that, is that yeah,

23:23SPEAKERto get that level of accuracy for just the Super Nintendo,

23:26SPEAKERyou need like three to four gigahertz.

23:29SPEAKERAnd you're like maxing it. - Multiple cores.

23:31SPEAKER- And you're like maxing that horsepower

23:33SPEAKERto get that level of accuracy.

23:36SPEAKERAnd you're getting the same kind of accuracy

23:37SPEAKERon this little $130, like tiny, tiny little thing

23:42SPEAKERthat takes like no power, like.

23:43SPEAKER- Yeah, so it works, I mean, the other,

23:46SPEAKERthe more commercial versions of this type of thing

23:47SPEAKERare a company called Analog, it's I think in the EU or UK,

23:52SPEAKERmakes these really high-end, like,

23:55SPEAKERconsoles that you can put actual cartridges into

23:57SPEAKERthat use similar technology.

24:01SPEAKERBut I think this is the kind of homebrew version,

24:03SPEAKERand it seems like it's definitely, like,

24:04SPEAKERI've been on UPFs and stuff where Jeff busted his out,

24:08SPEAKERand we played old TI games, and they looked and felt

24:11SPEAKERexactly like I remember TI games.

24:13SPEAKERSo I mean, bad, they look bad.

24:15SPEAKER- The analog consoles, that's like the NT Mini,

24:19SPEAKERthe Mega SG, the Super NT, those are the names

24:22SPEAKERof those actual consoles.

24:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:24SPEAKER- Those things are known for being really accurate,

24:26SPEAKERlike their core development focuses on making sure

24:29SPEAKERthe emulation, or it's not emulation,

24:31SPEAKERbut the software runs accurately on the virtual hardware.

24:35SPEAKERBut I've seen some people saying that because

24:36SPEAKERof the open source nature of the cores on the MiSTer,

24:38SPEAKERthey are actually starting to achieve even better accuracy

24:40SPEAKERbecause, you know, just by nature of so many different

24:43SPEAKERpeople banging on the same development.

24:46SPEAKER- Well, the people who are really into whatever

24:49SPEAKERweird esoteric game that would find an error

24:52SPEAKERon something else will go in and fix their problems

24:54SPEAKERthat they find, and yeah, it's good.

24:56SPEAKER- It's a pretty exciting project.

24:57SPEAKERAnyway, the whole reason I brought all that up

24:59SPEAKERis that I finally got my package from a well-known

25:04SPEAKERelectronics reseller that will remain nameless.

25:07SPEAKER- Okay.

25:08SPEAKER- And it looks like somebody got the DE10 nano box

25:11SPEAKERwith a forklift.

25:13SPEAKERThere was a-- - Oh no, like it has

25:14SPEAKERa hole poked in it? - There's a straight up

25:15SPEAKERhole poked in the top of the box like pretty savagely.

25:19SPEAKERJust-- - Is the card okay?

25:20SPEAKER- So like based on what I could see,

25:22SPEAKERthe way things were laid out inside the box,

25:24SPEAKERthe board, the actual DE10 was not right underneath

25:28SPEAKERwhere the hole is, and it appears to,

25:30SPEAKERI haven't booted it up yet,

25:31SPEAKERbut it appears to be undamaged.

25:33SPEAKER- Whew.

25:34SPEAKER- But like, I don't know how that happens, man.

25:36SPEAKERIt's like frightening that they shipped that out.

25:38SPEAKERIt did not happen in shipping because the outside

25:40SPEAKERof the box was fine, and it was wrapped in bubble wrap

25:42SPEAKERinside, and that was all fine.

25:44SPEAKERIt had to have happened in the warehouse

25:46SPEAKERor before it was packed for shipping,

25:47SPEAKERbecause the actual retail box was just straight up punctured

25:52SPEAKERand the outside of the box was completely fine.

25:53SPEAKER- Are you sure that UPS didn't do it and repackage?

25:55SPEAKERI've had UPS reprint labels and reboxed stuff

25:58SPEAKERthat they've damaged before. - Oh, are you serious?

25:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

26:00SPEAKER- Oh, that's devious.

26:01SPEAKERI did not consider that.

26:03SPEAKER- It might have been USPS that I saw did that,

26:05SPEAKERbut like I had packages come that were damaged in shipping.

26:09SPEAKERThey were like, we used a new box.

26:11SPEAKER- They just wanted to cover their tracks?

26:12SPEAKER- No, no, no.

26:13SPEAKERIt was more like they didn't think

26:14SPEAKERthere was anything wrong with it,

26:15SPEAKERand they were like, hey, we want to go ahead

26:17SPEAKERand get this to you.

26:17SPEAKER- Oh, but they copped to it if they actually told you

26:20SPEAKERthat they had rebacked it?

26:21SPEAKER- Yeah, there was a letter inside.

26:23SPEAKERI want to say this was from the USPS.

26:25SPEAKERIt was like, hey, the original box this was shipping

26:27SPEAKERwas damaged in transit, so we replaced it with this one.

26:30SPEAKERIf there's something wrong, here's the number to call.

26:32SPEAKER- I did not get any such messaging.

26:35SPEAKERAlso, this was delivered by UPS.

26:38SPEAKER- Yeah, well.

26:39SPEAKER- I don't know.

26:40SPEAKERI feel weird about it.

26:41SPEAKERLike, I think it's fine.

26:42SPEAKERI should boot it up and try to make sure

26:43SPEAKERthat everything's good.

26:45SPEAKER- Yeah, I would just, if it works, then it's fine.

26:47SPEAKERIf not, I mean, who cares about the packaging?

26:49SPEAKER- Yeah, but it's just, it's a little alarming.

26:51SPEAKER- It's not great.

26:52SPEAKERIt's not what you want.

26:53SPEAKER- Get your new thing in the mail and see it just, yeah.

26:56SPEAKERAnyway.

26:56SPEAKER- Should we answer a question?

26:58SPEAKERWe're 28 minutes in.

27:00SPEAKERI feel like this is the time for questions.

27:01SPEAKER- You even have time for emails at this point?

27:03SPEAKEROkay.

27:04SPEAKER- It's hard to say.

27:05SPEAKER- All right, here we go.

27:08SPEAKERHere is the first email from Adam

27:12SPEAKERwith a subject line of regarding

27:14SPEAKERPoopy Windows 10 Blue Screen.

27:18SPEAKERIn episode 22, Will brought up Windows 10's

27:20SPEAKERfrowny face blue screen.

27:21SPEAKERThat's the generic blue screen that you get now

27:24SPEAKERthat doesn't actually change based on the nature

27:26SPEAKERof the error.

27:27SPEAKERIt's just the same QR code every time, right?

27:30SPEAKERThat just sends you to a generic landing page.

27:31SPEAKERIt's like, hey, something went wrong.

27:34SPEAKERCompletely useless.

27:35SPEAKER- This makes me sad just thinking about it.

27:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

27:38SPEAKERHe says, I've found that you should be able

27:41SPEAKERto change a registry entry to switch back

27:43SPEAKERto the classic Windows blue screen

27:44SPEAKERwith actual information on it.

27:46SPEAKERAnd he included a link and I've got it right here.

27:49SPEAKERI don't know if you just want me to read out

27:50SPEAKERa registry key right here on the podcast.

27:54SPEAKER- Look, this is the content people crave.

27:56SPEAKERGive me all those good registry keys, Brad.

27:58SPEAKER- We'll put this, how many other podcasts

28:00SPEAKERon the internet can you go to for hot registry flips?

28:04SPEAKER- Our new tagline, the number one source

28:07SPEAKERof hot Windows registry keys.

28:10SPEAKER- Brad and Will made a tech pod.

28:12SPEAKER- Okay, we'll put it in the show notes

28:14SPEAKERif people actually want it,

28:15SPEAKERbut it's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl.

28:22SPEAKERYou create a new D-word value called display parameters

28:25SPEAKERand set it to one.

28:26SPEAKER- Oh yeah, give me those good D-word values.

28:28SPEAKER- Anyway, it's a super easy, I mean, anybody that's fiddled

28:30SPEAKERin the registry knows that takes 30 seconds to do.

28:33SPEAKERI just think it's ironic that we are actually seeking out

28:36SPEAKERthe old blue screen these days,

28:38SPEAKERconsidering how everybody used to feel about it.

28:40SPEAKER- Well, so before I found out about this,

28:42SPEAKERI used to use the Windows debugger to do kernel debugging,

28:45SPEAKERwhere you set the blue screen to save a dump or a mini dump,

28:50SPEAKERwhich is basically like the parts of memory

28:52SPEAKERthat are relevant to the crash.

28:54SPEAKERAnd then you can go in and look and see

28:55SPEAKERwhat actually segfaulted or whatever.

28:58SPEAKERBut this seems much better,

28:59SPEAKER'cause then you can just look at it on the screen

29:01SPEAKERand then type that thing in and have valid information.

29:04SPEAKER- Yeah, and you can get back to seeing like what,

29:06SPEAKERwhich driver or file caused the error

29:09SPEAKERand that kind of thing.

29:10SPEAKER- So the word I heard on the QR code

29:14SPEAKERfrom an unnamed source inside that is positioned to know

29:18SPEAKERis that the reason there's only one QR,

29:21SPEAKERlike originally somebody was like,

29:22SPEAKER"Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the QR code took you

29:23SPEAKERto an error for the blue screen?"

29:26SPEAKERAnd then when they started actually doing it,

29:28SPEAKERthen the number of QR codes that would be required

29:32SPEAKERtook a lot of space and memory space.

29:35SPEAKERAnd that space is,

29:37SPEAKERlike the kernel has to fit into a relatively small amount

29:39SPEAKERof space in the memory.

29:41SPEAKER- I'm surprised QR codes can't just be encoded on the fly.

29:44SPEAKERI mean, is there not, there's gotta be just a standard.

29:47SPEAKER- I'm sure they can,

29:49SPEAKERbut then they'd have to have the program then code,

29:50SPEAKERlike if you're trying to fit this all into 640K

29:53SPEAKERor whatever ridiculous, weird.

29:55SPEAKER- I guess that algorithm would have to live

29:56SPEAKERin some protected space where it would actually still run

29:59SPEAKERafter everything else crashed, right?

30:00SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think it sounded like it was,

30:04SPEAKERhey, this was a good idea,

30:07SPEAKERbut then once it impacted the reality of Windows,

30:11SPEAKERwas not able to be implemented

30:13SPEAKERin the way it was originally envisioned.

30:15SPEAKERSo instead it just became a link to the,

30:17SPEAKERhey, sorry, your Windows is broken, right?

30:20SPEAKER- How hard is it to enable that kernel debugger?

30:24SPEAKER- You have to download it, I think.

30:25SPEAKER- Oh, okay, that's-

30:27SPEAKER- It might be a default thing.

30:28SPEAKERIt's win-debug, win, W-I-N-D-B-G,

30:31SPEAKERand you do

30:37SPEAKERkd/kl to launch it, kd-kl.

30:41SPEAKERSpace dash. - I'll probably just make

30:42SPEAKERthis registry change and move on,

30:44SPEAKERbut also I don't think I've seen a blue screen

30:45SPEAKERin years at this point, so.

30:48SPEAKER- When you get real into low latency audio stuff,

30:51SPEAKERyou're gonna see more blue screens,

30:52SPEAKER'cause when the timing gets out of whack,

30:54SPEAKERthen they bomb out the whole system.

30:56SPEAKER- And you might be running drivers that are less than ideal.

31:00SPEAKERLook, the people who make audio hardware

31:02SPEAKERand the people who write drivers, good drivers,

31:05SPEAKERthere's those, that Venn diagram doesn't overlap at all.

31:08SPEAKER- Sure, I bought a, speaking of which,

31:11SPEAKERI bought a USB 3 expansion card,

31:13SPEAKERlike a PCIe card with a bunch of USB 3 ports on it,

31:16SPEAKERjust 'cause I'm running out of ports,

31:17SPEAKER'cause I'm plugging so many things in now.

31:19SPEAKER- Have you considered a hub?

31:21SPEAKER- Uh, yeah, but I kind of wanted some stuff

31:23SPEAKERjust right in the back of the PC.

31:24SPEAKER- Okay. - And it was cheap.

31:25SPEAKERBut that's the thing, though, then I had to eyeball like,

31:27SPEAKERoh, what USB chip set does this use?

31:29SPEAKERWhat are the drivers like for this?

31:30SPEAKER'Cause if I have to go get some no-name driver,

31:33SPEAKERthat's gonna make my system super unstable.

31:34SPEAKERThis is super not worth it,

31:35SPEAKERbut they said it's got a built-in Windows driver,

31:37SPEAKERit's plug and play, so I'm guessing that'll be fine.

31:40SPEAKER- Does it come yet?

31:41SPEAKER- No, that's like a month out. (laughs)

31:43SPEAKER- Hey, well, let me know how it goes.

31:44SPEAKERI've had mixed results with those.

31:46SPEAKERI delved into that world when VR was new,

31:51SPEAKERand I was trying to have two VR headsets

31:52SPEAKERplugged in all the time,

31:53SPEAKERso I didn't have to go unplug and replug

31:55SPEAKERwhen I was searching between Oculus and Vive development.

31:59SPEAKERIt's not, it didn't,

32:01SPEAKERputting a USB card in did not solve that problem.

32:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I did see one Amazon review on this particular card

32:07SPEAKERsaid that it didn't work well with their Oculus Rift,

32:09SPEAKERso that's probably a concern,

32:11SPEAKERbut I don't, that's not a problem for me,

32:12SPEAKER'cause I'm not using an Oculus Rift.

32:15SPEAKER- The first-gen Oculus used a shitload of USB bandwidth

32:18SPEAKERand power because it had two webcams

32:21SPEAKERand the headset were all powered by USB.

32:23SPEAKER- So maybe it was just, this card is just not,

32:25SPEAKERdoesn't fit with the spec that thing needs.

32:27SPEAKER- Yeah, the motherboards that were, what was it,

32:30SPEAKERI can't remember what the chipset was like,

32:33SPEAKERit was one, two generations back now,

32:36SPEAKERdidn't, their USB bus implementation was bad for that,

32:39SPEAKERso you had to plug,

32:40SPEAKERlike when you added a third Oculus camera,

32:42SPEAKERyou had to plug two into USB 3

32:44SPEAKERand one of them had to be plugged into USB 2,

32:46SPEAKERor else it would overload the amount of bandwidth

32:48SPEAKERthat you had available on the USB 3.1 bus

32:51SPEAKERshared between all the devices.

32:52SPEAKER- I'm just gonna make a,

32:53SPEAKERI'm gonna render an opinion here,

32:55SPEAKERthat's too many USB ports to require

32:57SPEAKERfor a single device.

32:59SPEAKER- I mean, they don't sell it anymore

33:00SPEAKERfor pretty good reason, I think.

33:01SPEAKER- That's fair, that's fair.

33:02SPEAKERI have to say, honestly,

33:04SPEAKERmy favorite thing about the Windows Mixed Reality headset

33:06SPEAKERI have is just how simple the setup is.

33:09SPEAKERYou literally plug the HDMI cable into your video card

33:12SPEAKERand one USB 3 port into the motherboard

33:15SPEAKERand you're done, that's it.

33:16SPEAKER- Well, so that's the way the Rift S works.

33:19SPEAKERIt's the way the index works.

33:21SPEAKER- Right.

33:22SPEAKER- I really wish--

33:23SPEAKER- But does the Rift S have inside-out tracking yet?

33:25SPEAKER- Yeah, Rift S is inside-out tracking.

33:27SPEAKER- So that's equivalent then,

33:28SPEAKER'cause this thing, you know, unlike the Vive,

33:29SPEAKERthis thing has no external sensors.

33:31SPEAKERI mean, that's literally all you do.

33:32SPEAKERYou plug those two things in

33:33SPEAKERand it uses the built-in cameras for the tracking

33:35SPEAKERand that's it.

33:36SPEAKER- Yeah, the index,

33:41SPEAKERfor a while they were selling a dongle

33:43SPEAKERthat would let you plug into the USB-C port

33:46SPEAKERon your Nvidia card, 'cause the RTX,

33:48SPEAKERI think it's just the RTX cards.

33:50SPEAKER- Do your cards have USB-C ports now?

33:52SPEAKER- Yeah, the RTX card has a USB 3.1 port

33:54SPEAKERthat's compatible, USB-C port,

33:57SPEAKERthat's compatible with the VR over all one cable spec,

34:01SPEAKERwhich was part of USB 3.1, I think.

34:05SPEAKERBut it's a separate, like it's a $70 dongle

34:08SPEAKERand it's functionally equivalent

34:09SPEAKERto just plugging in the headset to the power

34:13SPEAKERand the USB and HDMI or DVR, whatever it has, DisplayPort.

34:18SPEAKER- Does that USB-C port on the video card also support,

34:20SPEAKERI forget how they refer to the standard.

34:22SPEAKERI think it has to support Thunderbolt, which means display,

34:25SPEAKERlike it can do DisplayPort over USB-C.

34:27SPEAKER- I believe so, yes.

34:27SPEAKER- So you can plug that into a monitor.

34:29SPEAKER- I have not tried it, but I believe that that is the case.

34:32SPEAKER- What are they still putting

34:33SPEAKERto DisplayPort ports on there as well?

34:36SPEAKER- I think I have three DisplayPorts, one HDMI and the USB-C.

34:39SPEAKER- Wow, all on that one video card?

34:41SPEAKER- All I want, yeah, 'cause it's a double-wide video card.

34:43SPEAKER- That's Genesis, that's generous.

34:47SPEAKER- Look, man, now you're playing with power.

34:49SPEAKER- Too much mister on the brain lately.

34:52SPEAKER- All right, let's move on to another email.

34:54SPEAKER- Yeah, question of the second.

34:56SPEAKER- This is from Martin in London, day eight of quarantine.

35:00SPEAKER"Do you guys think the Folding@Home project

35:02SPEAKERwill ever achieve anything notable?

35:04SPEAKERIt's seemingly the biggest coming together

35:06SPEAKERof compute power in history,

35:08SPEAKERbut it's not making the news that much.

35:10SPEAKERMoreover, we've never had a pandemic

35:12SPEAKERwith the tech humanity now has available to help.

35:15SPEAKERCan AI, for example, be useful?"

35:18SPEAKERI don't think we're there with AI yet.

35:19SPEAKERThat's just my personal gut feeling.

35:22SPEAKERMaybe in some limited cases,

35:23SPEAKERthere's some heavy processing that it could.

35:26SPEAKER- So the machine learning stuff that we do now

35:29SPEAKERis really good at finding unspecific patterns,

35:32SPEAKERbut it requires you have a good data set to start.

35:36SPEAKERI think we talked about this a few weeks ago.

35:38SPEAKERSo I don't actually know if Folding@Home has ever,

35:45SPEAKERI'm sure Folding@Home has done stuff.

35:47SPEAKERWe live in California where if you go above the amount

35:51SPEAKERof power that your neighbors are using,

35:52SPEAKERyour rate goes up dramatically for every power,

35:55SPEAKERevery clump of power you're using more than your neighbors.

35:58SPEAKERSo I haven't run a shared computing thing

36:02SPEAKERon my computers in 20 years, since I moved out of Tennessee.

36:08SPEAKERSo I really don't have any idea.

36:10SPEAKERI know the SETI@Home people never found aliens.

36:13SPEAKERI think they did find some interesting stuff along the way.

36:16SPEAKERI, like when I look at their,

36:21SPEAKERhey, here's what we accomplished with Folding@Home page.

36:24SPEAKERThe most recent one I was able to find was from 2015.

36:29SPEAKERAnd mostly it's about upgrading infrastructure

36:31SPEAKERto support more clients.

36:33SPEAKER- Okay.

36:35SPEAKER- And not like, here's the diseases they're targeting.

36:40SPEAKERHere's the stuff, like I'm not seeing like,

36:43SPEAKERhey, we discovered the way of protein folds

36:46SPEAKERthat changed the way we treat cancer or anything like that.

36:48SPEAKERI feel like we would have probably heard about that.

36:50SPEAKERSo I don't know, I'm curious.

36:53SPEAKERI'm also curious how Folding compares to say,

36:58SPEAKERa modern supercomputer cluster

37:00SPEAKERthat includes a fuck ton of CPU's and GPU's

37:04SPEAKERand is able to do exa flops of data per second.

37:09SPEAKER- Especially as more and bigger cores

37:13SPEAKERper CPU are becoming a thing.

37:15SPEAKER- Well, and having talked to people

37:17SPEAKERat multiple supercomputer centers over the years,

37:20SPEAKERlike the hard part is dealing with latency

37:23SPEAKERin a lot of cases.

37:24SPEAKERSo like, you know, Turing machines are interesting

37:29SPEAKERbecause all of our computers are based on the idea

37:31SPEAKERthat we have like infinite memory

37:33SPEAKERand you have like, it's all linear, right?

37:37SPEAKERSo like a modern computer is still essentially

37:40SPEAKERa Turing compatible computer

37:41SPEAKER'cause it all runs on one tape.

37:43SPEAKERLike the memory can be a tape, a paper tape

37:46SPEAKERthat has ones and zeros punched into it

37:47SPEAKERthat's infinity long for all intents and purposes.

37:51SPEAKERAnd with like managing the latency between a million cores

37:58SPEAKERso that everything's not just stalled all the time

38:00SPEAKERwaiting on more data coming in,

38:02SPEAKERit turns out is a lot of the challenge

38:04SPEAKERof modern supercomputer clusters,

38:07SPEAKERlike scaling them above a certain point.

38:09SPEAKERAnd Folding just blows right through that number.

38:12SPEAKERSo I don't, I'd be, if anybody's listening

38:17SPEAKERand knows the answer, I guess what I'm saying is send it

38:18SPEAKERand we'll talk about it more.

38:20SPEAKERI'm curious whether I don't know the answer,

38:24SPEAKERwasn't able to find it, so.

38:25SPEAKER- So what you're saying is that daisy chaining

38:27SPEAKERthousands of CPU's together doesn't just work.

38:30SPEAKER- No, I mean, they've done it, like just to be clear,

38:33SPEAKERI don't want to diminish what they've done

38:34SPEAKER'cause the work that they've done is incredible.

38:36SPEAKER- No, no, what I mean is in terms of computing,

38:37SPEAKERyou can't just parallelize all that stuff

38:40SPEAKERand expect it to go, is what I'm saying.

38:42SPEAKERLike you have to do a lot of work

38:43SPEAKERto make sure it all actually is working together.

38:45SPEAKER- Like you have to do a lot of work

38:46SPEAKERif all the computers in the same building,

38:48SPEAKERif the computers are spread out a lot,

38:49SPEAKERdistributed around the world.

38:51SPEAKERLike that's amazing and is really cool,

38:55SPEAKERbut I don't know what the output of it is.

38:57SPEAKERAnd I don't run it because I don't want to pay more

38:59SPEAKERfor electricity, I'm cheap.

39:00SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I had to, I'll go ahead.

39:07SPEAKER- If you want to do something that you can do at home,

39:09SPEAKERthe thing to do is to make masks.

39:12SPEAKER- Okay, well actually that's a good segue into

39:17SPEAKERthe next question which I had starred here and I lost it.

39:23SPEAKERHere it is, it's from Eric in Wisconsin.

39:26SPEAKERUnless, we didn't talk about 3D printing last week, did we?

39:30SPEAKER- I don't think so.

39:31SPEAKER- I really hope I didn't read this email last week.

39:33SPEAKERI think I was going to and ran out of time.

39:35SPEAKERAll right, apologies if we talked about this.

39:38SPEAKERTime is a flat circle.

39:40SPEAKERCan't really keep up so much these days.

39:41SPEAKEREric in Wisconsin, I'd love to hear your thoughts

39:44SPEAKERon 3D printing, the different technologies utilized

39:46SPEAKERin the hobby, the use cases you have found

39:48SPEAKERand recommendations for hardware and software.

39:51SPEAKERI've considered diving into the hobby in the past

39:53SPEAKERand now my kids ages seven and nine are showing interest.

39:56SPEAKERSo I thought of that because you're seeing a lot of stories

40:00SPEAKERout there about 3D printing being used

40:02SPEAKERfor masks and respirators.

40:03SPEAKERAnd like you're even seeing people talking about

40:06SPEAKERlike valves for ventilators being made in 3D printers

40:09SPEAKERin a pinch and some stuff like that.

40:11SPEAKERSo like it's kind of topical.

40:13SPEAKER- So most of the home printers are FDM printers,

40:17SPEAKERfused deposition model, which means you melt something

40:21SPEAKERand it gets really hot and goopy.

40:23SPEAKERAnd then you have a nozzle that squirts it

40:25SPEAKERonto the layer below that.

40:26SPEAKERAnd it just keeps building up from the bottom.

40:28SPEAKER- And so does that still come out with that sort

40:30SPEAKERof layered spaghetti look?

40:32SPEAKER- I mean, the thing that you saw when we worked together,

40:36SPEAKEReight years ago on the reg is indistinguishable.

40:40SPEAKERI mean, is not representative of what modern FDM printers

40:45SPEAKERcan do.

40:46SPEAKER- No relation to current tech, okay.

40:48SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you have a good Prusa or Ultimaker

40:51SPEAKERor whatever your favorite FDM printer is,

40:54SPEAKERyou can make stuff that has a 10th of a micron.

41:00SPEAKERYes, you'll still be able to see the ridges

41:03SPEAKERif you get really close to it and use your close up eyes

41:06SPEAKERor a magnifying glass.

41:07SPEAKER- It's a much higher resolution is what you're saying.

41:09SPEAKER- It is a much, much higher resolution.

41:10SPEAKERAnd the motors are, like the other thing that's happened

41:12SPEAKERis the motors are much faster and better.

41:15SPEAKERPeople have gotten better at designing chassis

41:17SPEAKERto avoid slack in the end of the motors

41:19SPEAKERso the movements are more precise.

41:22SPEAKERAnd they're much, much, much more better,

41:24SPEAKERmuch better than they were when we were doing

41:27SPEAKERa lot of 3D printing stuff at Tested even in,

41:29SPEAKERlike when I was doing 3D printing stuff at Tested in 2015.

41:33SPEAKERThe big change, the other thing that's changed

41:37SPEAKERis that other types of printers are available.

41:38SPEAKERI haven't spent a lot of time with these,

41:40SPEAKERbut like SLA printers, is it SLA?

41:43SPEAKERYeah, I think so.

41:45SPEAKERSLA printers use light to cure a resin.

41:48SPEAKERSo they build, so basically you have a laser

41:54SPEAKERthat can cure an entire area in the build area

41:58SPEAKERin like a couple of fractions of a second,

42:00SPEAKERand then it lowers the build platform down

42:02SPEAKERso the models build down into this goop, into the resin.

42:08SPEAKERAnd then there's processing that goes at the end of those,

42:11SPEAKERso like you have to wipe them,

42:12SPEAKERyou have to clean them off with isopropyl

42:14SPEAKERand set them in a UV thing to cure

42:16SPEAKERso they get super hard over a period of time.

42:20SPEAKERBut you can build much higher precision

42:23SPEAKERat a little bit faster speed with that.

42:25SPEAKERWe're seeing a lot of, I've seen a lot of people

42:27SPEAKERbuilding stuff with FDM printers.

42:29SPEAKERI'm seeing a lot of people building face shield holders.

42:33SPEAKERSo the things that go around your head,

42:36SPEAKERand then you can put a piece of clear plastic on that

42:38SPEAKERand have an impromptu face shield.

42:39SPEAKERThat is something I wanted to ask about

42:41SPEAKER'cause I had seen people talking about

42:42SPEAKERprinting face shields for this crisis,

42:44SPEAKERbut okay, so the thing I was gonna ask was

42:46SPEAKERcan you print transparent stuff like that,

42:48SPEAKERbut it sounds like you need to source

42:49SPEAKERthe actual mask part separately.

42:51SPEAKERSo you can get transparent filament,

42:53SPEAKERbut it won't be clear enough to work through

42:55SPEAKERin a medical context, I would think.

42:56SPEAKERBut what people are doing is getting the clear bendy

42:59SPEAKERtransparent plastic, which is I think--

43:01SPEAKER- Apart from where? - PTFE or PTG

43:03SPEAKERor something like that.

43:05SPEAKERAnd then you cut that to size and put a couple holes in it

43:09SPEAKERand mount it into your frame.

43:11SPEAKERThe other thing is a friend of mine,

43:12SPEAKERJeff Solon in Chicago recently posted

43:18SPEAKERdesign for a laser-compatible plastic headband,

43:24SPEAKERprinted headband and frame for face shields as well.

43:28SPEAKERThe benefit there is that while it may take hours

43:30SPEAKERto print one or two or three pieces on a big 3D printer,

43:34SPEAKERthe laser can do all the cuts needed

43:37SPEAKERin like two or three minutes for a mid-range

43:40SPEAKERGlowforge or epilogue or something like that.

43:42SPEAKER- Yeah, and is it still the case that if you're,

43:44SPEAKERI mean, you probably need to be in a fairly major city

43:46SPEAKERfor this, but there are still maker shops out there

43:48SPEAKERwhere you can just rent time and go do stuff like that?

43:51SPEAKER- I bet all of that stuff is closed right now.

43:53SPEAKER- Well, not right now, but I mean just generally,

43:55SPEAKERlike that is still a thing or did that-

43:58SPEAKER- So the big commercial one was Tech Shop

44:01SPEAKERand they went under two or three years ago now.

44:03SPEAKER- So that was my question was if that was just kind of a fad

44:05SPEAKERthat came and went or if it was an actual

44:08SPEAKERsustainable business.

44:09SPEAKER- So there are maker spaces, like the thing that's funny

44:12SPEAKERthat's happened is a lot of libraries,

44:14SPEAKERa lot of public libraries have put in maker spaces.

44:19SPEAKERA lot of schools like the Field Museum in Chicago

44:22SPEAKERhas a maker space that's available to every Chicago resident.

44:26SPEAKER- I should look into that.

44:26SPEAKERLike SF has a pretty decent public library system.

44:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know if our public library,

44:31SPEAKERthe thing is 3D printers are not great for maker spaces

44:35SPEAKERbecause they take a long time to run.

44:36SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

44:38SPEAKER- So if you want to get into 3D printing,

44:40SPEAKERwhat I would do is look at low end,

44:45SPEAKERlike the difference between a low end and a high end

44:47SPEAKER3D printer isn't necessarily resolution, it's speed.

44:50SPEAKERSo if you're setting up in the garage

44:52SPEAKERand just gonna let it run and want to have a thing

44:56SPEAKERto do with your kids, getting a cheap 3D printer

44:58SPEAKERthat's slow isn't gonna mean you're not able to print stuff

45:01SPEAKERand they resell pretty well.

45:03SPEAKERSo like you can buy a cheap one, use it for a little bit.

45:06SPEAKERIf it's good and you're gonna get into it,

45:08SPEAKERthen you can upgrade, sell the old one and upgrade

45:11SPEAKERor keep the old one as a way to do secondary parts.

45:15SPEAKERAnd then move on to a higher end model

45:18SPEAKERwhen you're ready to spend more time or money on it.

45:20SPEAKER- Sure, okay, so it sounds like still providing

45:23SPEAKERyour own hardware is the big barrier to entry.

45:27SPEAKER- I mean, I think the library is a good place to start,

45:29SPEAKERbut you're not gonna print something

45:31SPEAKERthat takes 14 hours at the library, right?

45:33SPEAKER- Right, yeah.

45:34SPEAKER- And when I see the interesting stuff

45:36SPEAKERthat people are building for the most part,

45:38SPEAKERit is, this is a four or five,

45:40SPEAKERlike I'm not even gonna print something

45:41SPEAKERthat takes three hours.

45:41SPEAKERI don't wanna hang out at the library for five hours

45:43SPEAKERon a Saturday if I can help it.

45:45SPEAKER- Worst places to spend a few hours, but I get it.

45:47SPEAKERLook, I like the library, but yeah.

45:50SPEAKER- Yeah, the library was a nice place to go

45:52SPEAKERwhen I set up the VPN for my house

45:55SPEAKERand then he did an external internet connection.

45:57SPEAKER- Wait, what?

45:58SPEAKER- I walked down to the library.

45:59SPEAKER- You were just testing?

46:00SPEAKER- I walked down to the library with my laptop

46:01SPEAKERand VPNed to my house from two blocks away

46:03SPEAKERto make sure it was gonna work.

46:05SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

46:06SPEAKER- That works.

46:07SPEAKER- Okay, I can see that, yeah.

46:09SPEAKER- Real quick, just because he asked about

46:11SPEAKERlike just some practical uses,

46:12SPEAKERlike I haven't done this myself, obviously,

46:14SPEAKERbut are you familiar with a site called My Mini Factory?

46:18SPEAKER- No, I've not seen that, I've not heard of that before.

46:20SPEAKER- It's the first time I've been,

46:21SPEAKERI just got linked to it from the Discord again.

46:24SPEAKERAnd it looks like, and I'm sure there's a ton of these,

46:27SPEAKERit looks like a site where people basically upload

46:29SPEAKERlike 3D print designs and you can pay, in this case,

46:32SPEAKER$19.95 and download the design files and print yourself.

46:35SPEAKER- Oh, that's cool.

46:36SPEAKER- But in this case-

46:37SPEAKER- So this is designs, not printing.

46:40SPEAKER- That appears to be the case.

46:41SPEAKERLike there's an add files to cart button

46:44SPEAKERon this design, so I'm assuming you pay the $19.95

46:47SPEAKERand you get the whatever format of files

46:51SPEAKERyou need to load into the program to print.

46:52SPEAKERAnyway, it's an ass case, it's like a tiny little,

46:55SPEAKERand it always comes back to NASA's around here,

46:57SPEAKERbut it's a tiny, tiny little PC case

47:01SPEAKERwith like a vented like mesh looking front.

47:04SPEAKERSo like good airflow and space for a bunch of hard drives,

47:08SPEAKERkind of close together and like good fan coverage on those.

47:11SPEAKERBut it's like a tiny, tiny looking little case

47:13SPEAKERthat would hold like a full on,

47:15SPEAKERI'm guessing it's mini ITX.

47:17SPEAKERYes, it's a mini ITX motherboard form factor,

47:21SPEAKERtiny little case that holds a bunch of hard drives.

47:24SPEAKERSo yeah, that's like 20 bucks for the design plus you print

47:27SPEAKERand you can make your own little mass case.

47:29SPEAKERSo I guess what I'm saying more generally

47:31SPEAKERis like it's a good way for, like, you know,

47:34SPEAKERthere are PC cases out there for most purposes,

47:36SPEAKERbut like finding the exact thing you want

47:38SPEAKERin the exact size you want is not always super easy.

47:41SPEAKERSo like, so here's somebody that was just like,

47:43SPEAKERI'm just gonna design my own super small mass case

47:45SPEAKERthat you can put in a corner and not have to think about.

47:48SPEAKER- So the thing I would say about PC cases

47:51SPEAKERis that the precision required for those to work right

47:54SPEAKERis pretty high.

47:55SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

47:57SPEAKER- I'm not sure that,

47:59SPEAKERI don't know that I would try 3D printing a case

48:02SPEAKERfor things that have moving parts inside.

48:04SPEAKER- Okay.

48:05SPEAKER- Like I would absolutely without hesitation print a case

48:07SPEAKERfor a Raspberry Pi or a Mr. or something like that.

48:10SPEAKER- Totally.

48:11SPEAKER- And then you're gonna just wedge it in there

48:12SPEAKERand it doesn't require like lining up

48:13SPEAKERwith the mounting holes.

48:14SPEAKER- And obviously this, like I'm looking at the pictures

48:16SPEAKERand there's like a bunch of screw holes

48:17SPEAKERand some hinges on it and stuff.

48:18SPEAKERLike there's definitely moving parts,

48:19SPEAKERbut I will say in the description,

48:21SPEAKERit says the first 100% 3D principal mini server

48:25SPEAKERand NAS chassis in its class that's truly principal

48:27SPEAKERhas been printed, has been assembled,

48:29SPEAKERhas been beta tested by an international team

48:31SPEAKERand even modified by others.

48:33SPEAKER- So I think in order,

48:37SPEAKERthis is not a good start.

48:38SPEAKERWhat I'm trying to say is this is not a good starter project.

48:40SPEAKER- No, no, no, definitely not.

48:41SPEAKERI'm just saying this is an example of--

48:43SPEAKER- This is a hard 3D print.

48:44SPEAKER- Yeah, this is just an example of things

48:45SPEAKERthat people are starting to use this stuff for.

48:48SPEAKERAnd there's a gallery of people who have printed this

48:50SPEAKERand uploaded photos, which is kind of cool to look at.

48:52SPEAKER- Yeah, so this site looks like Thingiverse,

48:55SPEAKERbut it gives you the option of charging for your stuff,

48:57SPEAKERwhich is exciting.

48:59SPEAKERSo I'm into this, I hadn't seen this.

49:02SPEAKERIf you want laser cut Mr. cases and stuff like that,

49:05SPEAKERthat's something I can do, by the way.

49:06SPEAKER- Okay.

49:08SPEAKER- So I don't have a working three,

49:10SPEAKERI have a 3D printer that's not hooked up right now.

49:13SPEAKERI find myself using the laser way more

49:15SPEAKERthan I use the 3D printer, just because,

49:17SPEAKERI mean, the entry point for the laser cutter

49:19SPEAKERis much higher than they start.

49:21SPEAKERI mean, you can get a cheap Chinese laser

49:22SPEAKERfor like five, 600 bucks,

49:24SPEAKERbut it's not gonna last very long and it's huge

49:26SPEAKERand it's gonna be expensive to get rid of.

49:29SPEAKERThe glow forges and stuff like that,

49:31SPEAKERyou can get for, I think they start at 2,500 bucks

49:34SPEAKERand it is eminently useful.

49:36SPEAKERWe find ourselves cutting stuff fairly,

49:38SPEAKERespecially right now, we're cutting stuff a lot,

49:40SPEAKERjust 'cause it's fun to laser stuff.

49:42SPEAKER- I mean, have laser will cut is the old saying, right?

49:47SPEAKER- My friend, Dan, who owns,

49:48SPEAKERwho's the president of Glowforge says,

49:50SPEAKERonce you have a, when the tool you have is a laser,

49:53SPEAKEReverything looks like it should be cut.

49:55SPEAKER- Sure.

49:56SPEAKER- Which is fair, yeah, for sure.

50:01SPEAKER- Let's see, why don't we do a couple of old pieces

50:06SPEAKERof old PC emails real fast?

50:10SPEAKERDaniel from Los Angeles.

50:12SPEAKERI'm thinking of replacing the motherboard

50:13SPEAKERand CPU in my old computer,

50:15SPEAKERor maybe just building an entirely new PC.

50:18SPEAKERWhat's your preferred method of reselling old PCs

50:20SPEAKERand computer parts?

50:21SPEAKERI live in a small apartment and I don't like wasting space.

50:23SPEAKERAlso, I like money.

50:25SPEAKER- I like money too, Daniel.

50:27SPEAKER- I've never, so I don't have a good answer for this

50:30SPEAKER'cause this is a problem that has plagued me

50:32SPEAKERfor the last 20 years.

50:34SPEAKERI have never tried to resell a computer

50:36SPEAKERbecause by the time I'm done using it,

50:37SPEAKERit's so old that I don't think it has a lot of value.

50:42SPEAKERI guess you can always get rid of something for 50 bucks.

50:44SPEAKERI mean, somebody will always find a use for an old,

50:47SPEAKERlike an eight-year-old computer, but.

50:50SPEAKER- Yeah, so in the old days,

50:53SPEAKERbefore school systems had IT and charities

50:56SPEAKERhad IT departments, you would,

50:58SPEAKERthe answer to this question would have been,

51:00SPEAKERgo find an elementary school

51:01SPEAKERthat doesn't have enough computers

51:02SPEAKERand give them your old computer

51:03SPEAKER'cause it'll probably be better than what they have.

51:05SPEAKERBut now they all use Chromebooks and iPads

51:07SPEAKERand stuff like that, so it's like there's less,

51:09SPEAKERthere's less, like your average school IT guy

51:14SPEAKERisn't going to take my five-year-old busted gaming PC.

51:18SPEAKERThey're gonna be like, just recycle that

51:20SPEAKERor donate it to a charity or something.

51:22SPEAKER- You just made me worry that we're part of a dying breed

51:24SPEAKERof people who cares about buying or building computers.

51:27SPEAKERI mean, that's probably not true.

51:28SPEAKERThere's a thriving industry of gaming, DIY stuff, but.

51:33SPEAKER- I mean, I think that the rise of stuff like the Mr.

51:37SPEAKERand the people making custom embedded systems

51:41SPEAKERmakes me not worry.

51:43SPEAKERPeople have been worrying about that

51:44SPEAKERsince I started at Ars Technica and Maximum PC in 2000.

51:47SPEAKERI'm not worried about that.

51:48SPEAKER- Obviously, building your own computer

51:49SPEAKERis not going anywhere, but.

51:51SPEAKER- No, we'll be able to do that for a long time.

51:54SPEAKERI mean, when the iPad landed, everybody's like,

51:56SPEAKERwell, this is the end of the desktop PC,

51:58SPEAKERhas not at all been the case.

52:01SPEAKERSo I, electronics recycling for stuff

52:04SPEAKERthat's too old to be worth fooling with.

52:07SPEAKERI have all of every old hard drive I think I've ever owned,

52:10SPEAKERexcept for the one that was in my very first Wang

52:12SPEAKERis in a huge box in my garage.

52:16SPEAKERI don't, I look, I just,

52:17SPEAKERI haven't bothered to pay to have them shredded.

52:19SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, I also have a box of old hard drives

52:23SPEAKERand old cards, you know, various,

52:26SPEAKERI don't know if there's any Visa local bus cards in there,

52:28SPEAKERbut there's definitely old PCI cards and stuff like that.

52:31SPEAKER- I donated a bunch of my old cards to the,

52:33SPEAKER'cause I had a bunch of weird prototype video cards

52:35SPEAKERand stuff from Maximum PC Days,

52:37SPEAKERand I donated those to the Computer History Museum.

52:39SPEAKERI think they also wanted one of them at the end.

52:43SPEAKERSo, okay, so here's what I would say.

52:45SPEAKERIf you have a friend or family member,

52:47SPEAKERif it's something that's new enough that has value,

52:50SPEAKERCraigslist is better than eBay for me as a buyer.

52:55SPEAKERLike I don't generally buy stuff from eBay

52:57SPEAKERthat's used electronics because it's just really easy

53:01SPEAKERto get burned, so I would advise against selling stuff

53:03SPEAKERon eBay for the exact same reason.

53:05SPEAKERYou don't want to, like, you don't want to hear

53:09SPEAKERfrom the person you sold the thing to on eBay

53:11SPEAKERthree days later and have them be like,

53:13SPEAKERhey man, that video card you sold me for 50 bucks

53:15SPEAKERdoesn't work, 'cause then it's gonna eat way more

53:17SPEAKERthan 50 bucks worth of time dealing with lunatic eBay buyers.

53:23SPEAKERCraigslist is good.

53:26SPEAKERDonating, like I pass down a lot of hardware,

53:28SPEAKERlike old laptops go to my parents and they are thrilled

53:33SPEAKER'cause like a three year old laptop for me

53:36SPEAKERis infinitely newer than what they have.

53:38SPEAKER- Totally, I have built a computer for my parents

53:40SPEAKERout of old stuff, although even they are just

53:42SPEAKERon MacBooks now, so like you said,

53:44SPEAKERa lot of society has just moved on from this.

53:47SPEAKER- I finally got my mom to get rid of the Dell

53:49SPEAKERthat she's had, I mean she hasn't gotten rid of it,

53:52SPEAKERbut like she's using a laptop now instead of a Dell,

53:55SPEAKERlike a Dell desktop because she moves around a fair amount

53:59SPEAKERand it's nice to be able to sit in the living room

54:02SPEAKERand use the computer to do her stuff while she's watching TV

54:04SPEAKERinstead of being locked in the little computer room

54:07SPEAKERthat was a laundry room 20 years ago.

54:09SPEAKER- So here's something I just thought of

54:10SPEAKERwhile we're talking about this,

54:12SPEAKERwhich is that we've kind of talked about this before

54:15SPEAKERand we need a good term for it that we have reached.

54:19SPEAKERThere's some intersection of like the computing needs

54:22SPEAKERlike horsepower and memory that like a modern OS

54:24SPEAKERor whatever needs and the progress of that stuff,

54:28SPEAKERI feel like we have hit an inflection point where like,

54:31SPEAKERoh, the needs of like, you're just running an OS

54:33SPEAKERfor web browsing and email and like the basics,

54:36SPEAKERif you're not playing games and stuff,

54:37SPEAKERlike cheap good hardware have blown past those needs.

54:41SPEAKER- So I would argue that happened in like 2010.

54:43SPEAKER- Yes, totally, so let me just kind of illustrate

54:46SPEAKERwhat I'm talking about here,

54:48SPEAKER'cause it ties into this question.

54:49SPEAKERSo in 2010, I built a Core i7 860,

54:53SPEAKERwhich is hopelessly outdated now, right?

54:55SPEAKERLike it's not, it's very power inefficient.

54:58SPEAKERIt doesn't have the horsepower

55:00SPEAKERyou need to do most modern stuff.

55:02SPEAKERBut what I'm on right now is an i7 7700K,

55:06SPEAKERwhich is also getting a little older.

55:08SPEAKERIt's not totally obsolete yet,

55:11SPEAKERbut like we're getting to the point where

55:13SPEAKERI'm gonna need something new

55:14SPEAKERin the next two, three years at latest.

55:16SPEAKER- I upgraded off of that generation of CPU last year

55:19SPEAKERand I absolutely did not need to.

55:20SPEAKERI only did it because I wanted to.

55:22SPEAKERThat's where I'm going with this is that

55:23SPEAKERI feel like the next time I upgrade,

55:24SPEAKERit's gonna be a different situation

55:25SPEAKERthan it's been in the past because in all those cases,

55:27SPEAKERthe computer I was getting rid of

55:28SPEAKERis kind of too old and slow to do much with

55:31SPEAKERor even really want to give away.

55:33SPEAKERBut if I build like a new Ryzen system next year

55:36SPEAKERor the year after like this,

55:37SPEAKERit's not like the 7700K is gonna be useless, you know?

55:41SPEAKERIt's like we actually are finally,

55:42SPEAKERI think getting the point where like your old computer

55:44SPEAKERcould actually still totally be repurposed for something

55:46SPEAKERor be of value to somebody

55:48SPEAKERjust because we've passed that point where like

55:51SPEAKERyour four-year-old computer can still run

55:52SPEAKERthe current version of Windows 10 just fine, right?

55:55SPEAKER- Well, I mean, we've been at that point for a long time.

56:00SPEAKERThe computer that my mom is using at home, the desktop,

56:02SPEAKERis a machine that I think shipped with a Windows 7

56:05SPEAKERand like six, eight gigs of memory or something.

56:08SPEAKERIt's not a beefy computer and it's fine.

56:10SPEAKER- Yeah, for Windows 10.

56:12SPEAKER- The thing I've been doing

56:14SPEAKERis moving my old gaming PC into the NAS box,

56:18SPEAKERmoving the hardware from that into the NAS box,

56:20SPEAKERwhich there's pros and cons to that.

56:22SPEAKERIt uses way more power than you should for a NAS box,

56:25SPEAKERbut it is a really beefy computer.

56:26SPEAKERIf you wanna do something stupid

56:27SPEAKERlike transcode video on it, you can.

56:30SPEAKERThe thing that happens with those

56:33SPEAKERis eventually the CPUs start getting wonky

56:36SPEAKERbecause they run 24/7 for years.

56:40SPEAKERLike the last one I had was that same generation

56:42SPEAKERas your CPU, was the generation of...

56:46SPEAKERSo I went from whatever the six-core version

56:50SPEAKERof the CPU that you listed first, the A60,

56:54SPEAKERto a Broadwell-E,

56:59SPEAKERand it was fine.

57:02SPEAKERI didn't need to upgrade that server at all.

57:04SPEAKERI just had the...

57:05SPEAKERI replaced the hardware in my main PC

57:08SPEAKERand I had a spare motherboard and CPU memory.

57:10SPEAKERI was like, "Well, this one's starting to get a little janky.

57:12SPEAKER"It's crashing more than I'd like.

57:13SPEAKER"I'm gonna put the new hardware in there at this time."

57:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so when you say wonky,

57:18SPEAKERyou're basically talking about

57:19SPEAKERjust the kind of total lifespan of the CPU.

57:21SPEAKERI think I've seen, what is it, like a decade or something?

57:23SPEAKERIs this kind of the most you should expect

57:25SPEAKERto get out of a CPU before it kind of goes south?

57:27SPEAKERIs that right?

57:31SPEAKER- What happened to me was actually the memory was failing,

57:34SPEAKERand getting eight-year-old memory was more expensive

57:38SPEAKERthan just replacing the, just switching out

57:42SPEAKERthe other hardware.

57:43SPEAKERIt was gonna be 350 bucks to get eight gigs

57:46SPEAKERof ancient-ass memory to replace the eight gigs

57:48SPEAKERthat were breaking.

57:49SPEAKER- I mean, the reason I ask is like,

57:50SPEAKER"Yeah, do you know what's causing that breaking?

57:52SPEAKER"Like, electrically or at the hardware level,

57:54SPEAKER"do you know what is degrading?"

57:56SPEAKER- I'm sure it's just electrical.

57:58SPEAKERI'm sure it's just like the overtime,

58:00SPEAKERthe-- - Transistors can't--

58:02SPEAKER- The leakage between traces on the memory or something.

58:06SPEAKER- I see, yeah, so just kind of materials degradation?

58:08SPEAKER- Yeah, over time, those things are running at reasonably,

58:12SPEAKERlike, they're not running at like 400 degrees,

58:14SPEAKERbut they're running at a couple hundred degrees

58:16SPEAKERFahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius-ish.

58:19SPEAKERAnd over time, the hardware, the silicon degrades.

58:22SPEAKER- That makes sense, okay.

58:23SPEAKER- Yeah, it doesn't, my, I could, again,

58:26SPEAKERthis is me remembering stuff from like conversations

58:30SPEAKER10 years ago while drinking at CES.

58:32SPEAKERMy understanding is that over time,

58:34SPEAKERthe silicon insulates less well between the traces,

58:38SPEAKERbut I don't know that that's the case.

58:40SPEAKERPlease correct me if that's wrong.

58:42SPEAKER- The good news if you're running like a home server

58:44SPEAKERor a NAS or something is that like these beefy gaming CPUs

58:48SPEAKERthat we're using to run our boxes,

58:49SPEAKERlike by the time those crap out or you need something new,

58:52SPEAKERlike the base level, like core I3 category of CPU

58:55SPEAKERis superior to those in every way.

58:58SPEAKER- Well, and also with Linux-based systems,

59:02SPEAKERit's pretty easy to just pull out the old machine,

59:05SPEAKERFreeBSD or Linux-based systems.

59:08SPEAKERIt's easy to swap the old hardware out,

59:09SPEAKERdo a clean install, and then just connect your data pool

59:12SPEAKERand restore the system set.

59:14SPEAKER- Yeah, totally, totally.

59:16SPEAKERAll right, couple more emails real fast,

59:20SPEAKERexcept I totally lost the one that I was going to read.

59:23SPEAKERSo let me just fill here.

59:25SPEAKERHere it is.

59:27SPEAKERJoey in Burlington, Ontario.

59:30SPEAKERI have a Corsair HX650W80+ Gold certified power supply

59:36SPEAKERthat I purchased in 2010 that I have used

59:38SPEAKERin the various incarnations of my main gaming PC ever since.

59:42SPEAKERThis thing has stood up to SLI video cards,

59:44SPEAKERoverclock CPUs, tons of fans, the works.

59:47SPEAKER10 years later, it is still working well

59:49SPEAKERwith seemingly solid stability,

59:51SPEAKERbut it is now three years out of warranty

59:53SPEAKERand I'm starting to get a little nervous

59:55SPEAKERabout running a decade old power supply

59:57SPEAKERin my main gaming rig.

59:59SPEAKERIs it time for a replacement

1:00:01SPEAKERor should I write it out a little longer?

1:00:03SPEAKERI guess pretty related question actually

1:00:05SPEAKERto what we were just talking about

1:00:06SPEAKERexcept about power supplies.

1:00:07SPEAKERI don't have a good answer for this.

1:00:10SPEAKERLike I've-

1:00:11SPEAKER- My power supply is probably close,

1:00:13SPEAKERit's probably seven or eight years old.

1:00:15SPEAKERIt's been a long time since I upgraded a power supply.

1:00:18SPEAKERI mean, I find, usually I can tell

1:00:21SPEAKERthat power supplies are dying

1:00:22SPEAKERbecause the machine starts crashing for random reasons.

1:00:25SPEAKERLike there's no, basically like you get it under load

1:00:28SPEAKERand sometimes it crashes and sometimes it doesn't.

1:00:30SPEAKER- Yes.

1:00:30SPEAKER- Usually it crashes more in the summer when it's hot,

1:00:33SPEAKERwhen you have a hotter room.

1:00:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:35SPEAKER- If your machine's not crashing,

1:00:36SPEAKERif stuff's not acting weird, I wouldn't,

1:00:39SPEAKERlike if you're worried about it being out of warranty,

1:00:41SPEAKERyou could buy a replacement and just let it sit in a box

1:00:43SPEAKERin your closet so it's ready to go when it conks out

1:00:45SPEAKER'cause it will die eventually.

1:00:48SPEAKER- I guess the big question is like,

1:00:50SPEAKERis there any real potential for it to damage

1:00:52SPEAKERthe other hardware when it goes?

1:00:54SPEAKER- Well, so the way power supplies are designed

1:00:56SPEAKERis that when they fail, they're supposed to isolate,

1:00:58SPEAKERlike they're not supposed to surge

1:01:00SPEAKERinto the DC side of the power supply.

1:01:02SPEAKERSo the computer side of the power supply.

1:01:04SPEAKER- So you should be relatively protected there?

1:01:06SPEAKER- I mean, I mean, the whole point is-

1:01:09SPEAKERNothing's guaranteed.

1:01:10SPEAKERThe whole point of the power supply is like,

1:01:11SPEAKERif your house gets hit by lightning

1:01:13SPEAKERand the lightning goes into your computer,

1:01:15SPEAKERthe point is that the power supply is supposed to blow up

1:01:18SPEAKERbefore the energy comes in and fries your computers,

1:01:23SPEAKERthe delicate parts of your computer.

1:01:24SPEAKERI feel like letting the power supply ride

1:01:26SPEAKERis probably not gonna hurt anything.

1:01:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:29SPEAKER- But I mean, I'm doing it, that's the, yeah.

1:01:33SPEAKER- Mine's getting up there too.

1:01:34SPEAKERThe only time I ever remember losing a power supply,

1:01:37SPEAKERthe way it manifested was that the machine

1:01:39SPEAKERwould spontaneously reboot itself a lot.

1:01:41SPEAKER- Yeah, specifically like when I would fire up a game

1:01:43SPEAKERand stuff like that.

1:01:44SPEAKERSo that's maybe one thing to look for.

1:01:45SPEAKER- That's, so it's tricky because that's often memory too.

1:01:50SPEAKER- Sure.

1:01:51SPEAKER- 'Cause memory tends to clock out after five,

1:01:52SPEAKERfour or five years in my experience.

1:01:54SPEAKEREspecially if you're like talking about high clocked

1:01:56SPEAKERgamer memory, that's maybe not cooled

1:01:58SPEAKERas much as it should be.

1:02:00SPEAKERThe troubleshooting, like part of the hard part

1:02:07SPEAKERof having a computer where you have one computer

1:02:09SPEAKERin your house is when something goes wrong,

1:02:12SPEAKERyou don't have a bunch of spare parts around

1:02:14SPEAKERto swap in and see, like isolate exactly what's going on.

1:02:18SPEAKERSo having that second power supply,

1:02:21SPEAKERmaybe not a terrible idea, especially like

1:02:23SPEAKERif you're working from home and you need like a day

1:02:26SPEAKERwithout the computer is a day without you getting paid.

1:02:28SPEAKERYou might wanna, it's maybe worth thinking about

1:02:31SPEAKERadding a little bit of backup.

1:02:33SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a good feeling to have a backup.

1:02:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:38SPEAKER- Okay, two more emails real fast.

1:02:41SPEAKERThis one was signed from Brad's old monitors.

1:02:44SPEAKERI don't appreciate that at all, but here we go.

1:02:48SPEAKER- More now.

1:02:49SPEAKER- Yeah, Will, you mentioned living

1:02:51SPEAKERin a about a thousand square foot house.

1:02:54SPEAKERDo you have any tips or advice for maintaining

1:02:56SPEAKERa happy family in such a relatively small space?

1:03:00SPEAKERMy partner and I are expecting our first kid this year

1:03:02SPEAKERand we're living in approximately a thousand square feet,

1:03:04SPEAKERthough with a big yard.

1:03:06SPEAKERWe both grew up in larger homes with more space

1:03:08SPEAKERand more room.

1:03:09SPEAKERI'm worried we don't have enough space

1:03:11SPEAKEReven though we certainly do.

1:03:14SPEAKER- I grew up in a much larger home

1:03:16SPEAKERwith 15 acres surrounding it.

1:03:18SPEAKERSo I def, oh, first off, congratulations.

1:03:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:23SPEAKER- I don't, look, I think the benefit of living

1:03:29SPEAKERin a small house says the coastal urban elite

1:03:35SPEAKERis you end up, like your kid is by necessity

1:03:40SPEAKERgoing to be more empathetic than they would be

1:03:42SPEAKERif they could just fuck off into the basement

1:03:44SPEAKERand be left alone whenever they want.

1:03:47SPEAKERLike you have to be, one of the things that Gina and I

1:03:51SPEAKERtalked about when we moved into this house

1:03:53SPEAKERand it was just us 10 years ago is that,

1:03:56SPEAKER'cause we had moved from a much larger apartment

1:03:57SPEAKERwith multiple bathrooms, is that you have to do the things

1:04:03SPEAKERto help each other without somebody asking.

1:04:05SPEAKERLike if you see a mess, we just have to stay on top of mess

1:04:09SPEAKERand clutter and stuff like that all the time.

1:04:11SPEAKER- 'Cause everybody there is-- - Also gets out of control.

1:04:12SPEAKER- Everybody is subjected to the same messes.

1:04:15SPEAKER- Yeah, and like you can't be like,

1:04:17SPEAKERhey, did you see the thing on the kitchen counter?

1:04:19SPEAKERYou gotta clean that up.

1:04:20SPEAKERYou gotta just do it in advance.

1:04:22SPEAKERAnd you, like my daughter knows, knew it for that,

1:04:27SPEAKERlike when she was done eating, she picked up the plate

1:04:28SPEAKERand put it in the sink.

1:04:31SPEAKERPart of it is, like this is just normal human advice,

1:04:34SPEAKERbut it's not tech advice, but just paying attention

1:04:37SPEAKERto the things that make your partner and the other people

1:04:39SPEAKERthat live in your house crazy and doing what you can

1:04:42SPEAKERto minimize your impact on that,

1:04:44SPEAKER'cause everybody has stuff that makes them crazy.

1:04:47SPEAKERAnd yeah, like you just end up being really,

1:04:53SPEAKERyou try to be more self-aware of your footprint

1:04:57SPEAKERand your nightmare.

1:04:58SPEAKER- Be considerate of the people around you.

1:05:00SPEAKER- Yeah, this is not revolutionary advice.

1:05:04SPEAKER- One simple trick for cohabitating with other human beings.

1:05:07SPEAKER- But I mean, and then the nice thing about the kid

1:05:10SPEAKERis that ramps gently.

1:05:12SPEAKERSo the bad thing that we've done,

1:05:14SPEAKERand I don't really regret it, but it is frustrating,

1:05:16SPEAKERis that we have a bookshelf in our dining room.

1:05:20SPEAKERYou've seen it, the toy bookshelf in our dining room

1:05:23SPEAKERis like, my daughter's bedroom is very small.

1:05:26SPEAKERWe have a big bed in it, so when guests come,

1:05:27SPEAKERthey can stay with us, and she either sleeps

1:05:31SPEAKERin a sleeping bag in my office or in bed with us.

1:05:34SPEAKERAnd it means that she doesn't have a lot of room to play

1:05:38SPEAKERor for a big shelf full of toys in her bedroom.

1:05:41SPEAKERSo that shit's all in our dining room.

1:05:43SPEAKERAnd it's not ideal, but it works.

1:05:46SPEAKERYou have to pick and choose where you're gonna have

1:05:48SPEAKERyour compromises and where you're gonna hold firm.

1:05:50SPEAKER- Sure.

1:05:51SPEAKER- Tell your in-laws and your family

1:05:53SPEAKERnot to get a bunch of fucking toys, though.

1:05:55SPEAKER- Oh, man.

1:05:58SPEAKERThis really is just my stream of consciousness.

1:06:00SPEAKER- Yeah, let's do it. - This week.

1:06:01SPEAKER- Man, we're this deep in already.

1:06:03SPEAKER- This just popped into my head.

1:06:06SPEAKERDo you have any tips on repairing an air mattress?

1:06:09SPEAKER- Just buy a new air, is it one of the ones with the motor,

1:06:12SPEAKERor is that like when you have--

1:06:13SPEAKER- It's a nice one that is relatively new

1:06:15SPEAKERand hasn't even been used much and is fully motorized

1:06:17SPEAKERand everything, and let's say we left it out in the floor,

1:06:22SPEAKERrolled up, but it did expose.

1:06:25SPEAKER- Oh, no, it got brittle?

1:06:27SPEAKER- No, while a couple of small rodents

1:06:29SPEAKERwere being allowed to roam freely.

1:06:33SPEAKER- You got pigged.

1:06:34SPEAKER- And one of them thought that it looked like something

1:06:38SPEAKERthat would be fun to take a bite out of.

1:06:40SPEAKERIt's a tiny, tiny, tiny little puncture hole.

1:06:43SPEAKER- It came, the mattress came with a kit

1:06:45SPEAKERthat has the right glue for the material

1:06:47SPEAKERthe mattress is made out of.

1:06:48SPEAKER- I don't think this one did.

1:06:49SPEAKERI read-- - They always do.

1:06:51SPEAKER- Well, we must've tossed it then, because I Googled

1:06:53SPEAKERand I couldn't find that this model came with the patch kit,

1:06:55SPEAKERbut if it did, we threw it out, we don't know where it is.

1:06:59SPEAKERI ordered, there's a bunch of vinyl seal,

1:07:03SPEAKERvinyl repair, chemical adhesive,

1:07:06SPEAKERsuper gluey type things out there.

1:07:08SPEAKERI ordered one of those for six bucks.

1:07:09SPEAKERThe Amazon reviews seemed pretty glowing,

1:07:13SPEAKERunless those have been manipulated, that this works.

1:07:16SPEAKER- So find out what material the mattress is made out of,

1:07:19SPEAKERand then match the kit to that.

1:07:21SPEAKERIf it's a vinyl kit, use a vinyl kit.

1:07:22SPEAKER- Shit.

1:07:23SPEAKER- The glue, glue's hard.

1:07:28SPEAKER- Okay, I should've, maybe I should've done my research

1:07:30SPEAKERa little better, I assumed this thing was vinyl.

1:07:33SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it probably is.

1:07:34SPEAKERThe one that we have is vinyl, just make sure,

1:07:40SPEAKER'cause if you use the wrong glue,

1:07:42SPEAKERI mean, in some cases they don't even use glue,

1:07:44SPEAKERthey just use solvent that melts the top few layers

1:07:47SPEAKERand lets you like rebind atoms

1:07:49SPEAKERat a real molecular level, so it's not even glue,

1:07:51SPEAKERit's just like dissolving bonds

1:07:53SPEAKERand then letting the bonds reform

1:07:55SPEAKERwhen the solvent evaporates.

1:07:57SPEAKER- Okay.

1:07:58SPEAKER- The, if you use the wrong glue,

1:08:02SPEAKERit'll melt all the way through

1:08:03SPEAKERand it'll fuck up the thing much, much worse.

1:08:05SPEAKER- Yikes.

1:08:05SPEAKER- If you use the right glue,

1:08:06SPEAKERit'll probably fix it for a while.

1:08:07SPEAKERI've not had fantastic luck fixing holes in vinyl.

1:08:10SPEAKER- That's not encouraging at all.

1:08:13SPEAKER- It also depends on where it is.

1:08:15SPEAKERLike if it's in a place that's flat, that'll be easy.

1:08:17SPEAKERIf it's in a place that's on a bend, then you're boned,

1:08:20SPEAKERprobably.

1:08:20SPEAKER- Is there a place that creases when we fold it up?

1:08:23SPEAKER- So, that might be, I mean, look,

1:08:26SPEAKERit's not gonna make it worse by trying to fix it.

1:08:28SPEAKER- No, definitely not.

1:08:29SPEAKERYeah, it's just very frustrating.

1:08:32SPEAKER- Just make the guinea pig sit there with her paw on it

1:08:35SPEAKERand hold her finger over the hole anytime somebody's--

1:08:37SPEAKER- Don't worry, her criminality has been discussed heavily

1:08:40SPEAKERover the last couple days.

1:08:42SPEAKER- Which pig, which pig, which, which, which?

1:08:44SPEAKERI'm not gonna name names.

1:08:46SPEAKER- I'm not gonna put any guinea pigs on blast here, but.

1:08:48SPEAKER- Wow.

1:08:49SPEAKER- Othlin's number 8880 Air Stop is the stuff that I bought.

1:08:54SPEAKER- Yeah, let it rip.

1:08:55SPEAKER- Anything that's named after like the guy

1:08:57SPEAKERwho founded the company and has a number in the product name,

1:08:59SPEAKERI feel like is gonna be hardcore, so that's what.

1:09:02SPEAKER- All your best glues have a number.

1:09:04SPEAKERI like a Super 77, that's a 3M product.

1:09:07SPEAKER- Totally. - It's great.

1:09:08SPEAKERGlue all sorts of stuff to stuff with that.

1:09:10SPEAKER- Air mattresses is the first thing on the package listed.

1:09:12SPEAKERIt says small repairs of air mattresses, ground sheets,

1:09:16SPEAKERrainware, pools, boats, and toys.

1:09:19SPEAKERSo. - Yeah, yeah, I mean.

1:09:21SPEAKER- Hopefully. - Not gonna make it worse.

1:09:22SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.

1:09:25SPEAKERThis packing tape over the hole has not been working out.

1:09:28SPEAKERAll right. - No, packing, no, yeah.

1:09:29SPEAKER- It's not airtight in my experience.

1:09:32SPEAKEROkay, last email.

1:09:34SPEAKERI'm gonna keep this one anonymous by request.

1:09:37SPEAKERBut this person is an MD, MPH at a major hospital.

1:09:41SPEAKER- Like Neil Patrick Harris?

1:09:43SPEAKER- No, MPH.

1:09:45SPEAKER- Oh, oh, I thought you were talking about,

1:09:46SPEAKERI thought that they were very young

1:09:47SPEAKERand they were Doogie Howser-ing maybe.

1:09:49SPEAKER- I believe that is Masters of Public Health,

1:09:51SPEAKERnot Neil Patrick Harris.

1:09:52SPEAKERNot Neil Patrick Harris. - Neil Patrick, I thought.

1:09:55SPEAKERThis whole bit is really awkward now.

1:09:58SPEAKER- Okay, anyway.

1:10:00SPEAKERAnyway, this person does seem to be quite credentialed.

1:10:03SPEAKERSo I feel pretty good about this information.

1:10:07SPEAKERI really enjoyed the latest episode on coronavirus.

1:10:10SPEAKERAlso, this is a coronavirus email if you don't wanna,

1:10:13SPEAKERif you're done with that, if you're looking to escape,

1:10:16SPEAKERthen--

1:10:17SPEAKER- We're not gonna do anything else good

1:10:19SPEAKERfor the rest of this episode.

1:10:20SPEAKERThis is it. - Yes, this is it.

1:10:21SPEAKER- We're gonna talk about the Patreon.

1:10:23SPEAKERSign up for the Patreon.

1:10:24SPEAKERIt's at patreon.com/techpod.

1:10:28SPEAKERIf you don't wanna hear about coronavirus, you can go now.

1:10:29SPEAKERWe'll see you next week.

1:10:30SPEAKERThanks for listening. - I think this is really

1:10:31SPEAKERgood information for people to have though,

1:10:32SPEAKERas testing is in the news more and more.

1:10:36SPEAKERI found this stuff pretty edifying.

1:10:38SPEAKER- It's important background for how the tests work

1:10:41SPEAKERand why the different ones are important

1:10:42SPEAKERthat we didn't get into last week or maybe made errors on.

1:10:45SPEAKER- Yeah, he says, "Yeah, I enjoyed the latest episode

1:10:47SPEAKER"on coronavirus and its effects on society and economy.

1:10:50SPEAKER"However, I have to make a correction to your statements

1:10:53SPEAKER"about PCR and serologic testing."

1:10:56SPEAKEROkay, here we go.

1:10:57SPEAKERSo it's a bit of info, but...

1:11:00SPEAKERPCR testing is an extremely important component

1:11:03SPEAKERof detecting infectious diseases.

1:11:05SPEAKERAt the hospital where I work, we run PCR tests

1:11:08SPEAKERfor influenza and another common virus in children

1:11:11SPEAKERcalled respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV,

1:11:15SPEAKERwhenever they are admitted for a respiratory illness.

1:11:18SPEAKERFrom the emergency room, this test comes back

1:11:20SPEAKERin one to two hours, much faster than the 24-hour

1:11:23SPEAKERturnaround time quoted in the episode.

1:11:26SPEAKEROur current COVID-19 PCR test outsourced to a local lab

1:11:29SPEAKERwith deliveries from our hospital being made

1:11:31SPEAKERseveral times per day.

1:11:33SPEAKERIt takes about a day to come back

1:11:34SPEAKERbecause we have to wait for the sample to go to the lab,

1:11:36SPEAKERtests to be run, and then results to be sent back

1:11:39SPEAKERto our medical record system.

1:11:40SPEAKERIn short, PCR is very fast.

1:11:43SPEAKERThe main downside it has is that it can't differentiate

1:11:45SPEAKERviable virus, in other words, capable of causing infection,

1:11:49SPEAKERfrom the remnants of dead virus that has already been

1:11:52SPEAKERinactivated by a person's immune system,

1:11:54SPEAKERheat, or other factors.

1:11:56SPEAKERPCR is generally very sensitive and specific,

1:12:00SPEAKERmeaning that it has very few false positives

1:12:02SPEAKERand false negatives, depending on the test in question.

1:12:04SPEAKEROkay, with me so far?

1:12:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I gotcha.

1:12:07SPEAKERI used to do PCRs when I was in, I feel like, in college,

1:12:12SPEAKERbut it was different than what they do now.

1:12:13SPEAKER- Okay, so yeah, PCR is looking for traces

1:12:15SPEAKERof the actual virus.

1:12:17SPEAKER- Yes.

1:12:18SPEAKER- Okay, next second half of this.

1:12:20SPEAKERSerologic testing is important, and it can tell you

1:12:22SPEAKERif there's an acute immune response to an infection

1:12:25SPEAKERand/or a prolonged immunologic memory of a past infection.

1:12:29SPEAKERMost tests involve testing for two molecules

1:12:32SPEAKERcalled immunoglobulin M and immunoglobulin G.

1:12:36SPEAKERI will refer to them as M and G from here.

1:12:39SPEAKER- Okay.

1:12:40SPEAKER- M is usually a marker of acute infection,

1:12:42SPEAKERwhile G means that there was an infection in the past

1:12:45SPEAKERthat your body remembers, meaning that it should be able

1:12:47SPEAKERto recognize the infectious agent again in the future.

1:12:51SPEAKER- Acute infection means you are actively sick at the moment.

1:12:54SPEAKER- And actively infected, okay.

1:12:56SPEAKERAn example of this would be varicella or chickenpox.

1:13:00SPEAKERSomeone who's had chickenpox or received the vaccine

1:13:02SPEAKERwill have G antibodies present, but M antibodies absent.

1:13:06SPEAKERBy contrast, someone with an active chickenpox infection,

1:13:09SPEAKERblisters and fever and all, would probably have M present,

1:13:13SPEAKERbut G present only later, closer to when they're recovering.

1:13:17SPEAKERThere are exceptions to this GM division,

1:13:19SPEAKERbut for most of diseases, this is how it works.

1:13:22SPEAKERSerologic tests aren't necessarily faster.

1:13:24SPEAKERThey probably take a similar amount of time as PCR tests.

1:13:28SPEAKERWe get some serologies back in ours as well.

1:13:32SPEAKERThe bottom line is that both tests are important,

1:13:34SPEAKERbut in the acute phase of this pandemic

1:13:36SPEAKERin which we need to find people who have viral particles

1:13:39SPEAKERsomewhere in their upper respiratory tract,

1:13:41SPEAKERPCR is, in my opinion, the more important test right now,

1:13:44SPEAKERand the one being focused on by most testing labs

1:13:46SPEAKERand public health departments.

1:13:50SPEAKERAnd that's pretty much it, so.

1:13:52SPEAKER- There we go, that's super good info.

1:13:54SPEAKERThank you so much, anonymous listener, for sending that in.

1:13:57SPEAKER- So PCR are looking for people who are actively sick,

1:13:59SPEAKERor at least have traces of the virus present,

1:14:03SPEAKERbut it seems like the serological testing

1:14:05SPEAKERis gonna become more important later,

1:14:06SPEAKERand like in a later phase of this,

1:14:08SPEAKERwhen we need to start figuring out who has had it.

1:14:10SPEAKER- Well, I mean, they're already looking for people

1:14:12SPEAKERwho have been sick and recovered

1:14:13SPEAKERthat they can harvest antibodies from

1:14:15SPEAKERto give to the sickest people, I think,

1:14:17SPEAKERin New York and other places.

1:14:18SPEAKER- But also, just in terms of, you know,

1:14:20SPEAKERthey're talking about there being a lot of people

1:14:22SPEAKERwho are borderline asymptomatic,

1:14:25SPEAKERthat don't actually know they've had it,

1:14:27SPEAKERlike you're gonna need to identify those people as well

1:14:29SPEAKERand know that they are presumably fairly immune

1:14:33SPEAKERand actually safe to maybe go back out into society.

1:14:36SPEAKER- This is a thing I was joking about

1:14:39SPEAKERwith people on Twitter weeks ago,

1:14:41SPEAKERwhere the people who quarantine

1:14:43SPEAKERand just stay quarantined forever

1:14:45SPEAKERare gonna become one faction in the after times.

1:14:48SPEAKER- Oh boy. - And the people

1:14:49SPEAKERwho got sick and got better are gonna be the other faction.

1:14:51SPEAKERAnd you're gonna be able to tell us apart from our beards.

1:14:53SPEAKER- I don't like where this is going.

1:14:54SPEAKER- 'Cause if you're in quarantine,

1:14:56SPEAKERyou gotta not have a beard, so the mask works.

1:14:59SPEAKERAnd if you're a post-infection scab,

1:15:02SPEAKERthen yeah, this is too dark, sorry.

1:15:06SPEAKER- That is way over the Mad Max threshold.

1:15:08SPEAKERLet's just pull it back a little bit for this week.

1:15:12SPEAKER- So I guess that'll do it for us this week.

1:15:14SPEAKERIf you have questions,

1:15:15SPEAKERyou can send them to techpod@content.town.

1:15:19SPEAKERIf you would like to tell your friends about the podcast,

1:15:21SPEAKERwhich we love, it's our favorite thing in the world,

1:15:23SPEAKERis when we see people saying,

1:15:24SPEAKER"Hey, there's this great podcast I listen to.

1:15:27SPEAKER"I should tell my friends."

1:15:28SPEAKERYou can tell them where to find it at techpod.content.town.

1:15:33SPEAKER- Yeah, and always love suggestions

1:15:35SPEAKERon what we have been talking about,

1:15:36SPEAKERwhat you would like us to talk about,

1:15:38SPEAKERwhat you want us to stop talking about.

1:15:41SPEAKERI would just love to know what people want to hear more of.

1:15:44SPEAKER- When we plan out far enough in advance

1:15:48SPEAKERto have next week's topic well in advance,

1:15:51SPEAKERI think we're gonna start posting that stuff

1:15:53SPEAKERin the Discord so that people can find out,

1:15:56SPEAKERand you can get access to the Discord

1:15:57SPEAKERby signing up for the Patreon.

1:15:59SPEAKERThe address for that, again, is patreon.com/techpod.

1:16:03SPEAKERIf you have signed up

1:16:04SPEAKERand you do not have Discord access yet,

1:16:07SPEAKERplease, please, please, please, please

1:16:09SPEAKERmash that message button on Patreon,

1:16:11SPEAKERand one of us will help you figure out how to get in,

1:16:14SPEAKER'cause it seems like the Patreon

1:16:16SPEAKERto Discord syncing process kind of sucks.

1:16:19SPEAKERWe have several hundred backers,

1:16:23SPEAKERwe've only had a handful of people

1:16:24SPEAKERthat have not been able to connect,

1:16:25SPEAKERbut I definitely have had some people

1:16:27SPEAKERthat through no fault of their own

1:16:28SPEAKERhave not been able to connect,

1:16:29SPEAKERand we wanna get you in there

1:16:30SPEAKERif you're supporting the show.

1:16:32SPEAKERWe're up to 300 Patreon patrons.

1:16:35SPEAKER- That's awesome, yeah.

1:16:36SPEAKERSuper, super grateful for everybody's support,

1:16:40SPEAKERand again, I know I just keep a broken record here,

1:16:43SPEAKERbut just the amount of knowledge

1:16:44SPEAKERthat this group of people has

1:16:46SPEAKERis just absolutely astonishing.

1:16:49SPEAKERAs we have been doing,

1:16:51SPEAKERlet's see, this week we added,

1:16:55SPEAKERthe only thing we added this week

1:16:56SPEAKERwas food and other things that you put in your mouth.

1:16:58SPEAKER- Yes, yes. - Food and other things we eat.

1:17:00SPEAKER- But yes, the channel list is slowly growing there,

1:17:03SPEAKERso that's fun.

1:17:05SPEAKER- But I mean, we're managing it,

1:17:07SPEAKERwe're paying attention

1:17:08SPEAKERto what people are talking about in general,

1:17:09SPEAKERand when it gets too in the weeds,

1:17:12SPEAKERwe just add a new channel

1:17:13SPEAKERand move the conversation in there.

1:17:15SPEAKER- We have that power.

1:17:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I think we need a gaming channel,

1:17:18SPEAKERprobably is my guess,