293: J-ing and K-ing

00:00SPEAKER- Okay, yesterday, my personal food safety standards

00:03SPEAKERmay have faced their greatest test ever.

00:06SPEAKER- You had a pickle go bad?

00:08SPEAKER- Wait, pickles can't go bad, can they?

00:09SPEAKER- No, pickles can't go bad.

00:11SPEAKERA hundred years from now, you find a jar of pickles,

00:12SPEAKERgo nuts.

00:13SPEAKER- It's kind of priced in to the whole thing, right?

00:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just pre-grossed.

00:18SPEAKER- Yes, indeed.

00:20SPEAKER- I love pickles just for the record.

00:22SPEAKER- Pickles are great.

00:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

00:24SPEAKER- You know what I've really gotten on though,

00:25SPEAKERas an alternative to pickles is sliced pepperoncinis.

00:28SPEAKER- Look, I'm gonna level you up one.

00:30SPEAKERJardiniere, Jardiniere, Jardiniere.

00:34SPEAKERI don't know how you say it.

00:35SPEAKER- Jardiniere?

00:36SPEAKER- Jardiniere, yeah, that stuff.

00:37SPEAKER- Yeah, that stuff rules.

00:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like pickles and they're like,

00:40SPEAKERI can't eat anymore 'cause it almost always has celery in it

00:42SPEAKERand it turns out the celery allergy is impactful

00:45SPEAKERin a negative way.

00:47SPEAKER- I don't think I could live without celery.

00:48SPEAKER- Well, sometimes I just take the hit and I'm like,

00:50SPEAKERmy face is gonna be weird for a week or two.

00:51SPEAKERI'll just eat the celery.

00:53SPEAKER- Sometimes it's worth it.

00:54SPEAKERAll right, so, okay, this started maybe a year or two.

00:57SPEAKERIt was based on like a,

00:59SPEAKERthere's like a wave of social media posts

01:01SPEAKERfrom people who would know about the subject.

01:03SPEAKERLike people working in food safety,

01:04SPEAKERyou know, microbiologist types.

01:07SPEAKER- Yeah, fermenters.

01:08SPEAKER- Yes, like a wave of public service announcements

01:11SPEAKERstarted going out on Twitter a year or two ago about mold.

01:14SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:15SPEAKER- On food.

01:16SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:17SPEAKER- And how you should have a zero tolerance policy about it.

01:19SPEAKER- I mean, I like penicillin,

01:20SPEAKERbut I don't eat mold on my food, that's correct.

01:22SPEAKER- Well, you definitely don't eat visible mold,

01:24SPEAKERbut I don't know about you,

01:25SPEAKERbut I had always been for my entire life,

01:27SPEAKERespecially on like cheese and bread,

01:28SPEAKERa cut around the mold and toss it

01:31SPEAKERand just eat everything else.

01:32SPEAKER- Look, this is where taking microbiology in college

01:36SPEAKERreally pays off because when you understand

01:38SPEAKERhow the mycelial network grows

01:40SPEAKERout of a single visible piece of mold

01:42SPEAKERinto everything that it can touch.

01:44SPEAKER- Okay.

01:45SPEAKER- You don't eat the food, but it has brown mold on it.

01:47SPEAKER- I think before you even finish that sentence,

01:49SPEAKERit justified the actions that were taken yesterday,

01:51SPEAKERdespite the fact that I was very resistant to them.

01:55SPEAKER- We went to Costco a week ago and Costco, at least here,

01:59SPEAKERCostco sources like a fair amount of local stuff, I think,

02:02SPEAKERor like my understanding is that Costco's inventory

02:04SPEAKERis like pretty tailored to the area.

02:07SPEAKER- It's like local adjacent, it seems like from what I see.

02:10SPEAKER- They have this amazing sourdough there

02:12SPEAKERthat you can get in a two pack, two loaves for like seven bucks.

02:15SPEAKER- Is it that, is it the one with the mill on the label?

02:19SPEAKERLike they're big kind of roundish bully loaves?

02:21SPEAKER- Yes, they're more round than long.

02:24SPEAKER- And it's like a yellow label.

02:25SPEAKER- We get those from Safeway too, they have them there too.

02:29SPEAKER- It's so good, it's some good sourdough.

02:31SPEAKER- It's delicious.

02:32SPEAKER- And then in about a week, we got through the first loaf.

02:34SPEAKERBoth of those loaves have just been sitting out

02:36SPEAKERon the countertop.

02:37SPEAKER- That's fine, that's a place for bread in the Bay Area.

02:40SPEAKER- And we got through the first loaf and I went to,

02:43SPEAKERwe got some excellent avocados from there as well.

02:45SPEAKER- Oh yeah, this is why you don't own a house,

02:47SPEAKERit's all this avocado toast you're eating.

02:48SPEAKER- I had five minutes to make food

02:50SPEAKERin between podcasts yesterday and I was so excited

02:53SPEAKERto go pull the biggest slices out of that loaf

02:55SPEAKERand make some really good avocado toast

02:58SPEAKERin the short window I had to eat.

03:00SPEAKER- Wow, I see where this is going.

03:02SPEAKER- It's, do you remember that scene

03:04SPEAKERfrom the first Ninja Turtles movie

03:05SPEAKERwhere they get down on their knees and like.

03:07SPEAKER- Why God, why?

03:08SPEAKER- Send off that pizza that was.

03:10SPEAKER- I don't remember that actually,

03:11SPEAKERdidn't stick with me that hard if I'm being honest.

03:13SPEAKER- That pizza that was gone too soon.

03:15SPEAKERMy girlfriend was immediately,

03:17SPEAKERthere were like two spots of mold on there

03:18SPEAKERand she was just like junket, whole thing out.

03:20SPEAKERLike again, we had not even opened the loaf

03:22SPEAKERand she was like, it's gone, just put it in the compost.

03:24SPEAKERAnd I was like, no.

03:26SPEAKER- Yep, you look, at least it was just bread

03:29SPEAKERand not something expensive.

03:30SPEAKER- Oh, totally, I mean, we're talking like three,

03:32SPEAKER$4 worth of food, but like to be clear,

03:35SPEAKERCostco was a rare event for us.

03:36SPEAKERLike we have to get a Zipcar, like, you know,

03:38SPEAKERthere are arrangements that have to be made

03:40SPEAKERto arrange transportation to go to Costco.

03:42SPEAKERIt's like an every two to three months thing.

03:44SPEAKERSo it was not the three to $4 that we were losing.

03:48SPEAKERIt was the, I really wanted to eat that bread.

03:50SPEAKER- Let me tell you a secret about the Safeway

03:52SPEAKERthat's around the corner from your house,

03:54SPEAKERanywhere in San Francisco.

03:56SPEAKERThey have the exact same bread there.

03:57SPEAKER- I bet they do.

03:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a dollar more.

03:59SPEAKER- I bet it's 50 cents to a dollar more

04:01SPEAKERand that changes everything, as you know.

04:04SPEAKER- That is my default.

04:07SPEAKERI'm making an egg sandwich bread.

04:09SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, sure.

04:10SPEAKER- 'Cause I'll toast that up real good,

04:12SPEAKERput a little scrambled egg on there, maybe some cheese.

04:16SPEAKERI get this yellow bird habanero hot sauce.

04:18SPEAKERIt's like a little spicy, but not too spicy.

04:21SPEAKER- Yep, I've had it, it's great.

04:22SPEAKER- Put that on there, and boom, perfect sando.

04:24SPEAKER- I wish yellow bird would advertise

04:26SPEAKERwith one of our podcasts again,

04:27SPEAKERso they would send me another gift box of hot sauce.

04:31SPEAKER- We don't take ads on this podcast.

04:32SPEAKER- Well, okay. - What?

04:34SPEAKER- Maybe another podcast then.

04:35SPEAKER- They sent you free hot sauce?

04:37SPEAKER- Oh, dude, they sent like a sample

04:38SPEAKERor like a full-size bottle

04:39SPEAKERof like their whole product line a couple of years ago.

04:42SPEAKER- I've been shilling their business for free.

04:44SPEAKER- It lasted me like a year.

04:47SPEAKER- My God, it's so good.

04:47SPEAKER- It was good stuff.

04:48SPEAKERAnyway, maybe I'll, you know,

04:51SPEAKERmy girlfriend's actually traveling this weekend.

04:53SPEAKERI'm batching it.

04:55SPEAKER- Oh. - As they used to say.

04:56SPEAKER- Goblin mode?

04:57SPEAKER- Maybe, well, yes, but I guess my goblin mode

05:00SPEAKERis maybe I'll stroll down to the Safeway

05:01SPEAKERand buy another loaf of that sourdough

05:03SPEAKERjust to make myself happy.

05:04SPEAKER- You know, anything that makes you happy, Brad.

05:06SPEAKER- That's true.

05:07SPEAKERActually, I have to say one other thing real quick

05:08SPEAKERbefore we go. - Yeah.

05:09SPEAKER- That was a good place.

05:10SPEAKEREvery week we try to strategically find a place

05:12SPEAKERto end the cold open, and that was-

05:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that was a probably, you teed it up.

05:16SPEAKERI fired it home.

05:17SPEAKER- Normally that would have been the place,

05:19SPEAKERbut I just wanted to point out

05:19SPEAKERthere's another two-pack of bread that we buy

05:22SPEAKERat the same time, typically, as the sourdough.

05:24SPEAKERI think it's oroweat.

05:25SPEAKERIt's like one of those more commercial.

05:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

05:28SPEAKER- That bread, last time we bought it,

05:29SPEAKERsat out on the counter for, let's say,

05:31SPEAKERupwards of six weeks.

05:33SPEAKER- Oh, I can beat that.

05:35SPEAKER- Never one bit of mold, which I'm just gonna say

05:37SPEAKERmaybe start questioning whether I wanna keep eating bread

05:40SPEAKERthat doesn't, that never molds on the counter.

05:42SPEAKER- So we're pretty reliable on sandwich bread.

05:46SPEAKERWe have some specific tastes and requirements there,

05:49SPEAKERbut like hot dog buns, hamburger buns,

05:51SPEAKERwhich we use in the summertime season a fair amount,

05:54SPEAKERwe just buy whatever's cheap, right?

05:56SPEAKER- Sure.

05:57SPEAKER- So Gina got some ballpark hot dog buns the other day

06:00SPEAKERthat the date on, when I looked at it, was April.

06:04SPEAKERThey're still good.

06:05SPEAKER- Okay.

06:06SPEAKER- Nothing on 'em, no weird smell.

06:07SPEAKERThey're not even really very stale.

06:09SPEAKER- Well, look, that bread is probably at least 60% food.

06:12SPEAKER- It's science bread, man.

06:16SPEAKER(upbeat music)

06:42SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

06:44SPEAKERI'm Will.

06:45SPEAKER- I'm Brad, hello.

06:46SPEAKER- I gotta say, Brad, I grossed out my daughter the other day

06:49SPEAKER'cause I had forgotten to put,

06:51SPEAKERwe had one leftover slice of pizza after pizza night

06:55SPEAKERand I forgot to put it in the fridge at the end of the night

06:57SPEAKERso I just put the box,

06:59SPEAKERusually I don't take the trash out at midnight

07:01SPEAKERor 11 o'clock when I'm cleaning up the kitchen

07:02SPEAKERjust 'cause I don't wanna be the loud, annoying neighbor

07:05SPEAKERso I put the empty pizza box on top of the toaster oven

07:08SPEAKERand then I take it out first thing in the morning, right?

07:10SPEAKER- Sure.

07:11SPEAKER- And I was going to do that the morning and I looked at it

07:14SPEAKERand I was like, oh man, there's a piece of pizza in here.

07:15SPEAKERMy daughter was like, you can't eat that,

07:16SPEAKERit's been out all night.

07:17SPEAKERAnd I was like, but it's just pepperoni, it's fine.

07:19SPEAKERIt's pepperoni, cheese and sauce.

07:21SPEAKER- It's cured.

07:21SPEAKER- I used to, like in the olden times, in the before times,

07:25SPEAKERI would have just stored the uneaten pizza in the oven

07:30SPEAKER'cause it's sealed.

07:31SPEAKERSo I ate it.

07:32SPEAKERShe's like, your stomach's gonna hurt.

07:33SPEAKERAnd I was like, no, it's gonna be fine.

07:34SPEAKERAnd then my stomach hurt.

07:35SPEAKERShe was right, not bad, not bad.

07:37SPEAKERBut like, definitely my intestinal tract was like,

07:41SPEAKERyou have done something unnatural to me,

07:42SPEAKERwhat are you doing, man?

07:43SPEAKER- Okay, all right, good to know.

07:44SPEAKER- You're too old for this shit.

07:45SPEAKER- Good to know.

07:47SPEAKER- I have a question for you.

07:48SPEAKER- Hit me.

07:49SPEAKER- I've noticed when we got in our call this morning,

07:52SPEAKERabove my name, next to my name,

07:54SPEAKERthere's a little lightning bolt that says tech

07:58SPEAKERto indicate my allegiance to the tech pod community.

08:01SPEAKER- We're talking on Discord, I think.

08:02SPEAKER- Yeah, on Discord.

08:03SPEAKERAnd I noticed yesterday, I was talking to Alex Navarro,

08:05SPEAKERyour friend and cohost from the Nextlander podcast

08:10SPEAKERand streaming show.

08:12SPEAKERAnd he has a little NXL next to his name, I noticed.

08:14SPEAKERSo this technology has come to both of our Discords.

08:17SPEAKERWe have, this is a two-part question.

08:20SPEAKERFirst is there's been some conversation on the Discord

08:22SPEAKERabout what our tag should actually say.

08:24SPEAKERI just chose tech and a lightning bolt that was purple

08:26SPEAKERbecause, well, our logo is purple

08:28SPEAKERand it's called the tech pod.

08:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that makes sense, but.

08:33SPEAKER- People had other ideas.

08:35SPEAKER- Such as?

08:36SPEAKERFirst of all, what's the character?

08:37SPEAKERI mean, the most important thing here

08:39SPEAKERis what's the character limit?

08:40SPEAKEROkay, four. - Up to four.

08:41SPEAKERAnd I think you can do emoji.

08:43SPEAKER- Oh, as a character or in addition?

08:45SPEAKER- As a character.

08:46SPEAKERYou get an icon that is some subset of their tags.

08:53SPEAKERIt's not great, if I'm being honest.

08:56SPEAKERIt's like 12 things.

08:57SPEAKERNone of them scream tech pod to me.

08:59SPEAKERBut you do also, I think you can put emoji in.

09:07SPEAKERSo people suggested NAS,

09:11SPEAKERwhich seems like that's on brand.

09:13SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

09:15SPEAKER- People suggested, there were a bunch of,

09:18SPEAKERyou know, as happens with the tech pod Discord,

09:21SPEAKERthere were a lot of funny ones.

09:23SPEAKER- Some less than serious options.

09:25SPEAKER- There were less than serious options.

09:26SPEAKERThere was town for, you know, Shout Out to Content Towns.

09:29SPEAKER- How about this?

09:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:31SPEAKER- How about pod?

09:33SPEAKER- I thought about pod or pods with a Z.

09:36SPEAKER- What if we just like climb the hierarchy

09:38SPEAKERand we're sitting right at the top of the mountain

09:40SPEAKERunderneath all of the other podcasts

09:42SPEAKERwe have slain on our way to the top

09:44SPEAKERand we have claimed to the word pod?

09:46SPEAKER- Well, they're not exclusive.

09:47SPEAKER- Okay.

09:49SPEAKER- My other Discord is Ds, 'cause we're idiots.

09:52SPEAKER- Yeah, that's pretty good.

09:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I should have done a poll,

09:54SPEAKERbut I just decided not to.

09:57SPEAKER- Now what happens on click?

09:58SPEAKERDoes it just like direct you to the Discord?

10:00SPEAKERDoes it like spawn an invite?

10:01SPEAKER- You know, you would think that it just pops up

10:03SPEAKERyour profile.

10:04SPEAKERIt pops up a window that shows you the tech pod Discord,

10:06SPEAKERlike go to the server thing.

10:08SPEAKER- Oh, and you can adopt the tag right there, it looks like.

10:11SPEAKER- If you're in that Discord,

10:13SPEAKERotherwise you have to go to the Discord, yeah.

10:14SPEAKER- Okay.

10:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, we're working on it.

10:18SPEAKERI think I kind of like comp, I kind of like town,

10:21SPEAKERI kind of like tech and I like pod.

10:24SPEAKER- I think tech is probably the way to go, honestly.

10:26SPEAKERI mean, it's right there in the name.

10:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:29SPEAKER- It's the first part of the name,

10:30SPEAKERif you say the short name, which most people do.

10:32SPEAKER- I think, I gotta look at the emoji.

10:34SPEAKERIf there's like a pod bay door,

10:36SPEAKERlike a 2001 kind of pod or an iPod maybe,

10:40SPEAKERI might do TEK pod if we think Shatner

10:44SPEAKERwon't come after us, I don't know.

10:47SPEAKER- Shatner might come after us.

10:48SPEAKER- I mean, I think that's probably good press if he does,

10:50SPEAKERif I'm being honest.

10:52SPEAKER- I cannot believe he's still around.

10:54SPEAKERWe shouldn't get, if we have questions to get to,

10:56SPEAKERI shouldn't even broach the subject,

10:57SPEAKERbut how the fuck is William Shatner 95?

10:59SPEAKER- I followed him down an escalator to a party

11:02SPEAKERthat we were both going to at Comic-Con one time.

11:06SPEAKERAnd I was afraid to go up and like introduce,

11:10SPEAKERlike say hello and do the fan interaction with him

11:13SPEAKERbecause he has such a fucking toxic reputation

11:15SPEAKERto being an asshole.

11:16SPEAKER- Yes, he does.

11:18SPEAKERI'm trying to think like in the range of time

11:21SPEAKERwithin which you would have been

11:22SPEAKERprofessionally going to Comic-Con.

11:25SPEAKER- This was in like 2014 or 2013.

11:27SPEAKER- So he was still in his 80s at that point.

11:30SPEAKER- He was, he had a fairly large posse

11:33SPEAKERfor a Star Trek guy.

11:34SPEAKER- Okay.

11:35SPEAKER- 'Cause like most of the Star Trek people

11:36SPEAKERjust kind of walk around maybe with one other person,

11:39SPEAKERbut Shatner had a whole crew.

11:40SPEAKERI couldn't help if they were like, you know,

11:42SPEAKERhis people or if it was just people walking with him.

11:44SPEAKER- Sure, but I was pretty spry, I guess, for his age,

11:48SPEAKERif he's going to parties.

11:49SPEAKERI mean, I'm sure it was not like a rager,

11:51SPEAKERbut still just anybody in their 80s

11:53SPEAKERgoing to any kind of party, I guess.

11:56SPEAKER- Yeah, in terms of people I bumped into,

11:57SPEAKERlike on vertical modes of transit at conventions,

12:02SPEAKERhe's high on the list, right?

12:04SPEAKERI rode an elevator with Reggie one time at E3

12:06SPEAKERin Santa Monica.

12:07SPEAKER- That's good.

12:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't recognize him,

12:09SPEAKERwhich was kind of embarrassing in retrospect.

12:11SPEAKERHe was new at the point still, I was, you know,

12:13SPEAKERI was a PCI, whatever.

12:15SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

12:16SPEAKER- You know what I do have,

12:17SPEAKERI know nobody has questions about that,

12:19SPEAKERbut you know what people do have questions about?

12:21SPEAKER- Well, a lot of other subjects.

12:22SPEAKER- But like lots and lots of things this month.

12:24SPEAKERWe have a lot of questions again.

12:26SPEAKERSo thanks to everybody who sent in the fantastic questions.

12:29SPEAKERYou can go to, you can send them to techpod@content.town

12:33SPEAKERor you can post in the Questions Seeking Answers channel

12:35SPEAKERin the Discord where they'll disappear

12:37SPEAKERuntil we unearth them several weeks later

12:39SPEAKERand turn them into a word, a Google document

12:43SPEAKERthat we can then scroll through

12:44SPEAKERand pick out our favorites from.

12:46SPEAKER- I know we say this every month, but like it's legit.

12:48SPEAKERLike there has just been a shocking number of questions

12:50SPEAKERthe last few months.

12:51SPEAKERLike we're not just saying that to flatter the audience.

12:55SPEAKERSo I'm thinking back to the lean years

12:58SPEAKERwhen we didn't get those many questions.

12:59SPEAKER- I, look, I for one am glad that more people

13:03SPEAKERare not doing their own research anymore.

13:05SPEAKERInstead, they're asking us verified experts on the internet

13:08SPEAKERand we're here to help.

13:09SPEAKERSo you can send them to techpod@content.town

13:12SPEAKERor again, the Questions Seeking Answers channel

13:14SPEAKERin the Discord.

13:14SPEAKERWe appreciate y'all.

13:16SPEAKER- A shocking number of emails, actually.

13:17SPEAKERI think we could, we will not,

13:19SPEAKERbut we could do an all emails episode this month.

13:21SPEAKER- I mean, maybe it's just the organization

13:24SPEAKERand fast mail's a lot better.

13:25SPEAKERI'm just able to hotkey through the messages

13:27SPEAKERand just VI and up and down, left and right

13:30SPEAKERthrough that thing like crazy, just copying.

13:33SPEAKER- J and K and reckless abandon.

13:35SPEAKER- Just J and K all day long, huh?

13:37SPEAKER- Mm-hmm.

13:38SPEAKER- It's the way to be.

13:40SPEAKERLet me tell you about the little G and big G.

13:42SPEAKER- What? - GG, actually, GG.

13:45SPEAKER- Also one of my favorite Studio Ghibli characters.

13:47SPEAKER- Yes, GG goes to the top of the document,

13:49SPEAKERcapital G goes to the bottom.

13:51SPEAKER- Wow, you know, I just use my home and end keys for that.

13:55SPEAKER- You know, I thought J and K might be a good episode title,

13:58SPEAKERbut I just wrote it out and it does not read.

14:02SPEAKER- Nope, Jing and King.

14:04SPEAKERI think you'd have to put the hyphens in there

14:06SPEAKERafter the J and the K.

14:08SPEAKER- Yes, I considered that.

14:09SPEAKERI may well pursue that.

14:11SPEAKERAll right, questions? - What do we got?

14:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:15SPEAKER- Let's start with a couple of time questions.

14:16SPEAKERHere's one from Kurt.

14:17SPEAKERJust finished the June 22nd project potpourri episode

14:20SPEAKERand had one question.

14:22SPEAKERDiscussion of building a network time server

14:24SPEAKERversus making an atomic clock was interesting,

14:26SPEAKERbut I was left thinking to what end?

14:29SPEAKERI don't think the why of it all was ever explained.

14:30SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right, I think we maybe got derailed

14:33SPEAKERon the conversation and I never actually said why.

14:36SPEAKER- The why is implied, I think the why is because you can.

14:39SPEAKER- Because it would be rad, but I'll finish the email.

14:44SPEAKERMaybe I'm a bit dense,

14:44SPEAKERbut why would someone want to roll their own time server

14:47SPEAKERas opposed to relying on various operating systems

14:49SPEAKERalready running in your home?

14:51SPEAKERWhat would the potential benefit be?

14:52SPEAKERIs it something quantifiable against whatever the input cost

14:55SPEAKERof the project would be?

14:58SPEAKERYou guys have given me plenty of inspiration over the years

14:59SPEAKERto tinker with similar ideas, et cetera, et cetera.

15:02SPEAKERThank you for the kind words.

15:04SPEAKER- Thanks, Kurt.

15:05SPEAKER- Yes, so two things there.

15:08SPEAKERFirst of all, when you say,

15:09SPEAKERas opposed to relying on operating systems

15:11SPEAKERaround your house, those operating system...

15:15SPEAKERSorry.

15:16SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

15:20SPEAKER- So like a couple of things here to start with,

15:23SPEAKERwhen you say, as opposed to relying

15:24SPEAKERon various operating systems already running in your home,

15:27SPEAKERthose operating systems are themselves relying

15:29SPEAKERon NTP servers across the internet somewhere.

15:31SPEAKER- Yeah.

15:32SPEAKER- Like, you know, the computers in your house

15:33SPEAKERare not themselves their own source of time truth.

15:37SPEAKERLike they have to hit something on the internet

15:39SPEAKERand like, technically there's like some number

15:41SPEAKERof milliseconds latency between sending a time request.

15:45SPEAKER- They correct for the milliseconds latency, man.

15:48SPEAKER- I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff there

15:49SPEAKERto try to correct things.

15:51SPEAKER- I'm wearing the most accurate wrist time piece ever made,

15:54SPEAKERthanks to the miracle of time sync and latency amelioration,

16:03SPEAKERI guess.

16:04SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

16:05SPEAKERSo I mean like, again, the real answer

16:07SPEAKERto why would you do this is because it's cool and you can,

16:10SPEAKERand it's actually quite cheap.

16:12SPEAKERLike some people, I think I talked

16:14SPEAKERabout those time machines incorporated boxes last week

16:16SPEAKERthat are like 350 and new, or a couple of hundred bucks

16:19SPEAKERon eBay used, but some people on the Discord were like,

16:21SPEAKERyeah, with the Raspberry Pi and like a $20 GPS receiver,

16:24SPEAKERyou can actually do this pretty easily yourself.

16:27SPEAKERNow, like I'm not gonna sit here and quantify

16:29SPEAKERwhat the difference would be in time accuracy.

16:32SPEAKERBut if that, if you have a thing on your network

16:34SPEAKERhitting GPS directly to pull the time down,

16:36SPEAKERthen everything on your LAN has only got

16:38SPEAKERto go across your LAN.

16:39SPEAKER- That's true, one hop.

16:42SPEAKER- So theoretically you're probably getting it down

16:44SPEAKERto pretty low, I don't know, single milliseconds of latency

16:49SPEAKERbetween the clients and the thing that has the time.

16:52SPEAKER- So I'm reading this book right now

16:53SPEAKERcalled "Bannerless" by Kerry Vaughan.

16:55SPEAKERIt's a post, it's like an agrarian post-apocalypse.

16:58SPEAKERSo it's like the apocalypse went bad, things got gnarly,

17:01SPEAKERand now they're like, you know,

17:03SPEAKERthey're in a post-climate disaster, agrarian world,

17:08SPEAKERbasically a small community of people.

17:09SPEAKERIt seems like maybe the California coast.

17:11SPEAKERAnd the technology from the before times that still work

17:14SPEAKERis stuff like solar cars and panels

17:16SPEAKERstill generate some electricity,

17:17SPEAKERand they use that for things like medical stuff.

17:20SPEAKER- Imagine, if you will, a world where we don't have

17:24SPEAKERaccurate timekeeping anymore,

17:26SPEAKERand you're the person that has the one atomic clock

17:29SPEAKERand NTP server, you could be the timekeeper

17:32SPEAKERfor your whole little post-agrarian society.

17:34SPEAKER- Can you hook an NTP server up to a sundial?

17:37SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, why not, absolutely.

17:39SPEAKER- Sundials always going to work, right?

17:41SPEAKER- Look, this is why I want to get a section.

17:43SPEAKERThat's all I'm saying, sure, yeah.

17:45SPEAKER- You know what a really interesting question would be

17:48SPEAKERthat I think would have to be answered

17:49SPEAKERby a domain expert is,

17:52SPEAKERif something like that,

17:54SPEAKERin the event of a technological societal collapse,

17:57SPEAKERhow long would GPS satellites continue functioning

17:59SPEAKERwithout any maintenance?

18:00SPEAKERLike, I assume they're probably made to go

18:02SPEAKERfor a very long time without being touched, right?

18:06SPEAKER- Yeah, but they degrade over time.

18:08SPEAKER- Right, and maybe there's also software maintenance

18:10SPEAKERthat has to happen there,

18:11SPEAKEReven outside of physical mechanical maintenance.

18:14SPEAKER- But also they have a limited amount of,

18:19SPEAKERthruster juice, like a propellant, right?

18:22SPEAKERSo those monopropellants are limited,

18:25SPEAKERand that defines the life of most low LEO satellites.

18:29SPEAKERThat didn't drag on the atmosphere.

18:31SPEAKER- I didn't realize those things had to correct

18:32SPEAKERtheir trajectory or velocity or whatever.

18:34SPEAKERI figured they got put in synchronous orbit

18:36SPEAKERand just kind of went.

18:37SPEAKER- Well, so the way most satellites work

18:40SPEAKERis that they have gyroscopes, like multiple gyroscopes,

18:43SPEAKERthat they can control orientation with,

18:44SPEAKERbut they can't do lateral and translational movements with.

18:46SPEAKERSo they need some sort of propellant to correct

18:50SPEAKERthe drag by the micro atmosphere at the high altitudes

18:53SPEAKERand stuff like that.

18:53SPEAKER- And I guess, I don't know if there's maybe a bunch

18:55SPEAKERof very small gravitational tugs from other objects

18:58SPEAKERthat are constantly being corrected for as well.

19:02SPEAKER- Yeah, so according to CraterMoon on Reddit,

19:05SPEAKERGPS satellites orbit at 12,600 miles, which is pretty high,

19:09SPEAKERbarring collisions with debris, they should last a long time.

19:13SPEAKERThe current spacecraft that we're adding

19:15SPEAKERto the constellation now, 12 years ago, by the way,

19:18SPEAKERhave a design life of 12 years, but in reality,

19:21SPEAKERthey usually last longer than that.

19:23SPEAKER50 years is their upshot, is what they figure.

19:26SPEAKER- Okay, that's still pretty good.

19:27SPEAKER- Yeah. - I guess.

19:28SPEAKERI've always read the GPS satellites have to correct

19:31SPEAKERfor their own relativistic effects,

19:33SPEAKERlike they're going fast enough that there is enough.

19:35SPEAKERI mean, we're talking about- - That's just math.

19:37SPEAKER- Right, but I mean, we're talking about,

19:40SPEAKERtalking about, I don't know, billionths of a second

19:44SPEAKERor something, but these are devices that where time needs

19:46SPEAKERto be absolutely accurate, so it matters even

19:48SPEAKERat that tiny scale, but they are going fast enough

19:51SPEAKERthat they are experiencing enough time dilation

19:53SPEAKERto throw their clocks off from that on Earth.

19:57SPEAKER- Yep.

19:58SPEAKER- Which is a fascinating thing.

19:59SPEAKER- The math is hard.

20:01SPEAKER- Yep.

20:03SPEAKEROne more question about time here from James.

20:06SPEAKERPrecision time protocol version two is a protocol used

20:11SPEAKERfor synchronizing clocks in networked measurement

20:13SPEAKERand control systems, achieving high accuracy

20:15SPEAKERtime synchronization, often in the sub-microsecond range.

20:19SPEAKER- Wow.

20:20SPEAKER- It is defined in IEEE 1588-2008

20:24SPEAKERand is not backwards compatible

20:25SPEAKERwith the earlier 2002 version.

20:27SPEAKER- Can't believe they throw that out.

20:29SPEAKER- PTPv2 utilizes a series of messages to synchronize clocks

20:33SPEAKERbetween a kind of central clock and client clocks.

20:36SPEAKERI think that's pretty much how-

20:37SPEAKER- Yeah. - NTP works as well,

20:39SPEAKERat least there, and this part I don't get.

20:41SPEAKERIt's also used for transfer of high digital video.

20:45SPEAKERI think like uncompressed SDI video over ethernet.

20:47SPEAKERI'm not sure what that part means.

20:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know what that means.

20:50SPEAKER- Anyway, NTP isn't accurate enough, smiley face.

20:54SPEAKER- There we go.

20:55SPEAKER- I mean, you could see probably

20:56SPEAKERin like scientific computing type situations

20:59SPEAKERyou're needing better than NTP accuracy.

21:02SPEAKER- Look, if you wanna synchronize the time

21:04SPEAKERwhen you're atomic clock,

21:05SPEAKERyou need something better than NTP accuracy.

21:07SPEAKER- That's right.

21:08SPEAKER- Otherwise, why bother having an atomic clock?

21:11SPEAKER- Here's an email from Jim.

21:12SPEAKERWe got two different emails from people in the UK

21:14SPEAKERthat said basically the same thing.

21:16SPEAKER- Yeah.

21:16SPEAKER- So this must've been somewhat widespread.

21:18SPEAKER- It happened here too.

21:19SPEAKERWe had another, there was a comment in the message thread

21:22SPEAKERabout this, about doing the same thing in the U.S. as well.

21:24SPEAKER- Wait, did these, well, I'll read the thing.

21:26SPEAKERI'm curious if they use this exact same solution.

21:28SPEAKERIt was about us talking about jury duty

21:30SPEAKERduring the early pandemic

21:32SPEAKERwhen they didn't wanna put people

21:33SPEAKERin the same courtroom together.

21:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

21:36SPEAKER- This is from Jim.

21:38SPEAKERFor part of the pandemic,

21:39SPEAKERI was back in my home country of Scotland

21:40SPEAKERand got summoned for jury service on a criminal trial.

21:43SPEAKERThe trial was held in the courthouse in my town,

21:45SPEAKERbut the jury were sent to a closed cinema in a nearby town.

21:50SPEAKERThe jurors were given assigned seats in the cinema

21:52SPEAKERso that we were all adequately socially distanced

21:54SPEAKERand the trial was live streamed onto the cinema screen.

21:58SPEAKERThere was a camera feed of our auditorium

21:59SPEAKERback to the courtroom, but no open mics on our end.

22:02SPEAKERSo if we had questions,

22:03SPEAKERwe had to tell a court staff in the auditorium

22:05SPEAKERwho would send a text to the courtroom.

22:08SPEAKERWe were brought packed lunches

22:09SPEAKERand had to stay in our assigned seats to eat them.

22:12SPEAKERThe trial lasted four days

22:13SPEAKERand was quite a surreal experience.

22:14SPEAKER- I wonder if they got to use the Coke freestyle machine

22:16SPEAKERat the movie theater.

22:18SPEAKER- That would have made that day go by a little bit easier,

22:20SPEAKERat least in my experience.

22:22SPEAKER- Like imagine if you were sitting there

22:23SPEAKERwith like a full-on stadium seat recliner

22:27SPEAKERand the judge is like,

22:28SPEAKER"Hey, juror number eight, no reclining past 30 degrees."

22:32SPEAKER(laughing)

22:35SPEAKERYou look a little snoozy, pay attention.

22:37SPEAKER- Juror number seven, eyes up here, please.

22:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

22:40SPEAKER- Man, provided lunches,

22:42SPEAKERthat would have changed everything for me.

22:44SPEAKERI mean, not everything,

22:45SPEAKERbut that was certainly,

22:46SPEAKERgetting lunch out of the whole thing would have been nice.

22:48SPEAKER- I gotta imagine you're like looking at

22:51SPEAKERlike a piece of white bread and like one piece of turkey

22:54SPEAKERand maybe some mustard.

22:55SPEAKER- Some like Fyre Fest level of five o'clock meal.

22:59SPEAKERLike I got paid for my jury service.

23:01SPEAKER- What'd you get, like 35, 40 bucks?

23:03SPEAKER- The check finally showed up.

23:04SPEAKERI was about $228, I think.

23:06SPEAKER231, somewhere around there.

23:08SPEAKER- You should quit this podcast game

23:09SPEAKERand get on that jury business.

23:10SPEAKER- Yeah, right, it was only three weeks of my life.

23:15SPEAKERIt was itemized, there was like a per diem

23:17SPEAKERand then also like a transit, a daily transit fee.

23:20SPEAKER- Do you have to report that on your taxes?

23:21SPEAKER- I don't think so.

23:23SPEAKER- Okay. - I doubt it.

23:24SPEAKER- Okay.

23:25SPEAKER- Let's just never speak of it again.

23:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:29SPEAKER- The other person, I don't know if I can find it real fast.

23:33SPEAKER- It was up at the top.

23:34SPEAKER- Fraser wrote in.

23:36SPEAKERIn their case, each juror had an individual camera

23:40SPEAKERpointed at them in the movie theater, it sounds like.

23:42SPEAKERBut I also, we've kind of buried the lead here,

23:44SPEAKERwhich is I just, I think that the idea

23:46SPEAKERof watching a live stream trial on a giant movie screen.

23:50SPEAKERIt's really funny. - That sounds like hell.

23:51SPEAKER- It's really funny to me.

23:53SPEAKER- Think about how big the lawyers would have been.

23:55SPEAKER- Yep.

23:56SPEAKERDude, yes.

23:57SPEAKERSome of the stuff I saw and heard,

23:59SPEAKERI don't think I could have handled that on the big screen.

24:01SPEAKER- Yeah, and like imagine like six months later

24:04SPEAKERyou go to see a movie and you roll into that same theater

24:06SPEAKERand you're like, oh God, I spent three weeks in here.

24:08SPEAKERThat's seat seven, that's where I sat for five days a week.

24:13SPEAKER- Might just never go to that theater again.

24:15SPEAKER- Yeah, no, that would be dead to me.

24:17SPEAKER- Andrew from Maine.

24:19SPEAKERMy Wii U still gets you.

24:20SPEAKERI think we talked about the Wii U at some point recently.

24:22SPEAKER- I love a Wii U.

24:23SPEAKERI think she was thinking about taking it out

24:24SPEAKER'cause my daughter's really into 3D, Mario 3D Land,

24:27SPEAKERor 3D World.

24:28SPEAKER- 3D World is the Wii U one.

24:30SPEAKER- And I was like, you should play Mario Galaxy

24:32SPEAKER'cause I think that's the best of those.

24:33SPEAKER- Yeah, well, they're kind of different games actually.

24:36SPEAKER- Well, but they're 3D,

24:37SPEAKERin the 3D world of 3D platformers, they're the same, right?

24:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, this is my games media

24:44SPEAKERand a long time video games man hat coming on.

24:46SPEAKERLike Galaxy is in the Mario 64 lineage

24:49SPEAKERof like fully 3D go anywhere platformers.

24:52SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's 3D World though.

24:53SPEAKER- No, 3D World is a little more constrained.

24:55SPEAKERLike the camera is more fixed and the levels are short

24:58SPEAKERand like 3D World is in kind of

25:01SPEAKERthe new Super Mario Brothers lineage of like,

25:03SPEAKERit was, they were trying to marry 3D Mario

25:06SPEAKERwith the smaller, more level-based

25:08SPEAKERlike original Super Mario Brothers style.

25:10SPEAKERI mean, you're straight up jumping

25:11SPEAKERonto a flagpole at the end, right?

25:13SPEAKER- Yeah, but yeah, I mean,

25:15SPEAKERyou can control the camera in it though.

25:17SPEAKERIt has full camera movement.

25:18SPEAKER- Somewhat, I don't remember

25:19SPEAKERif it was fully free camera movement or not.

25:21SPEAKERMaybe it was.

25:22SPEAKER- I played it yesterday, it has fully free camera movement.

25:24SPEAKER- Okay, but the levels are like more linear and constrained.

25:28SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, fair, it's hybrid.

25:31SPEAKER- They're cousins, let's say.

25:33SPEAKER- There's a whole, like there's a project

25:35SPEAKERthat is figuring out the lineage

25:37SPEAKERof all of the mechanics in Super Mario Brothers

25:40SPEAKER'cause it's such a weird hodgepodge at this point

25:41SPEAKERthat it's hard to like, anyway.

25:44SPEAKER- Especially in this modern era

25:45SPEAKERwhere they like practically every level

25:46SPEAKERhas its own little like micro mechanic.

25:49SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but also there's no like,

25:50SPEAKERlike the variation in jumps, like the triple jump,

25:55SPEAKERthe slide jump, the squat and reverse jump, the wall jumps.

25:59SPEAKERSome games have those, some games don't.

26:01SPEAKER- It's really confusing. - Mm-hmm.

26:03SPEAKER- Okay, Andrew from Maine.

26:05SPEAKERMy Wii U still gets used when nieces and nephews come over.

26:08SPEAKERRecently, I started thinking about

26:09SPEAKERhow I've been using it for a long time

26:10SPEAKERwith some electrical tape over a place

26:12SPEAKERwhere some of the outside casing had opened up

26:15SPEAKERat the connection to the power brick.

26:17SPEAKERI ordered a used one from someone off of eBay

26:20SPEAKERas I was worried a new knockoff would be unsafe.

26:24SPEAKERIt wasn't visible on the listing,

26:25SPEAKERbut the one I received had the same issue,

26:27SPEAKERthough not as severe as mine.

26:29SPEAKERIt seems this is not uncommon

26:31SPEAKERand I'm thinking it's probably a design flaw

26:32SPEAKERon Nintendo's part, which is a bummer.

26:35SPEAKERI'd always thought that wrapping electrical tape

26:36SPEAKERaround a sketchy part of a cable

26:38SPEAKERwas the normal thing to do, but now I'm questioning that.

26:41SPEAKERIs this a typical practice and how bad is it

26:43SPEAKERand how do you feel about third-party power cables?

26:46SPEAKER- So there's two parts of this, right?

26:49SPEAKEROne is that wrapping electrical tape around something

26:52SPEAKERthat doesn't get a lot of mechanical stress,

26:53SPEAKERI think is pretty fine.

26:55SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems pretty standard practice.

26:58SPEAKERYou could put heat shrink on instead

27:00SPEAKERif you wanted something a little more permanent.

27:01SPEAKER- Well, so if you want to do heat shrink,

27:03SPEAKERgenerally you have to dismantle the cable

27:05SPEAKERand then reassemble it, which is more fraught

27:07SPEAKERbecause you can't get the heat shrink

27:09SPEAKERover the fat end of the cable usually.

27:10SPEAKER- Oh, I guess, do they not make giant heat shrink

27:13SPEAKERthat just shrinks a lot?

27:14SPEAKER- Well, they do, but it doesn't shrink enough generally

27:16SPEAKERto do the thing that you want to do.

27:17SPEAKERAlso, if it's on the mechanical end of the joint,

27:20SPEAKERthat is probably not gonna provide the mechanical strength

27:23SPEAKERthat you want there to solve the problem on a high track.

27:25SPEAKERAnyway, so probably you can find

27:30SPEAKERthird-party replacement power supplies,

27:32SPEAKERbut if it is a design flaw,

27:34SPEAKERthen they're all gonna have the same problem.

27:35SPEAKERI can go look at my Wii U.

27:36SPEAKERI don't know if it has the problem or not.

27:38SPEAKERI don't recall this.

27:42SPEAKERI think the electrical tape solution is fine.

27:45SPEAKERIf it's on the 120 volt,

27:46SPEAKERor if it's on the main side of the power brick,

27:50SPEAKERthat's scarier to me than if it's on the low voltage

27:52SPEAKERand DC side of the power brick,

27:55SPEAKER'cause typically the low voltage end

27:57SPEAKERis like some variant of USB.

27:59SPEAKERIt's not gonna be super high.

28:00SPEAKERIt's not gonna hurt you if you get shocked.

28:02SPEAKER- You're talking about the end

28:03SPEAKERbetween the brick and the console?

28:04SPEAKER- Yeah, if you're on the other end,

28:06SPEAKERif you're on the end between the AC power

28:09SPEAKERcoming out of the wall and the brick,

28:11SPEAKERthat's where you burn your house down if you mess it up.

28:14SPEAKERSo keep an eye on it, but I think it's probably fine.

28:17SPEAKERAnd yeah, if you have a tear in the middle of a cable,

28:20SPEAKERit's relatively straightforward to cut the cable,

28:23SPEAKERput heat shrink tubing on the thing,

28:26SPEAKERsplice it back together, shrink both individual,

28:31SPEAKERor all three individual wires,

28:33SPEAKERand then put a bigger piece of heat shrink

28:34SPEAKERover the whole thing, and that'll fix your cable up.

28:38SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.

28:40SPEAKER- The other end is scarier,

28:42SPEAKER'cause there's usually more cables

28:43SPEAKERand there's a lot of little ones in there.

28:44SPEAKER- Interesting, that little CRT I inherited recently,

28:48SPEAKERwhich again, thank you very much to the benefactor

28:50SPEAKERwho gave me that, but it had some damage on the power cable

28:53SPEAKER'cause it was a sidewalk fine.

28:56SPEAKERAnd I thought about trying to replace the whole power cable,

28:58SPEAKERalthough I don't think it's necessary,

29:00SPEAKERbut that requires opening up the TV

29:02SPEAKERand you're probably still gonna have to cut the power cable

29:05SPEAKERsomewhere to attach it even to the TV's stuff,

29:09SPEAKERunless you can find exactly the right type of cable,

29:11SPEAKERwhich you probably can't.

29:13SPEAKERBut what you just described sounds like a pretty,

29:15SPEAKERlike the shrinking each of the three wires inside the cable

29:19SPEAKERand then putting more shrink over the whole thing

29:21SPEAKERsounds like a pretty robust solution.

29:23SPEAKER- So then the other thing you can do

29:24SPEAKERis just get a replacement power cable,

29:25SPEAKERopen the whole thing up, de-solder the ends on the,

29:28SPEAKERor they're probably even just mechanical points

29:30SPEAKERon the internal end and then replace the entire cable.

29:35SPEAKERIt's a bigger job.

29:36SPEAKER- Yeah, also then you have to be pretty confident

29:39SPEAKERin your soldering, I guess.

29:40SPEAKER- It's easy soldering, big power cables are big,

29:43SPEAKERthey're fat solders, so it's no big deal.

29:45SPEAKER- Sure, fair, but also this TV has been working just fine

29:49SPEAKERwith the electrical tape that's already on the cable,

29:51SPEAKERlike I kind of gave up or forgot about that project.

29:54SPEAKER- Yeah, like the thing, if you use electrical tape

29:57SPEAKERfor this type of situation, just pay attention to it.

30:00SPEAKERLike don't, when you move it, when you touch it,

30:03SPEAKERmake sure that it's, when you vacuum under

30:06SPEAKERwhere the cable might get bumped,

30:08SPEAKERmake sure you're not knocking the cable loose

30:09SPEAKERand 'cause you wanna get it before the electrical tape

30:12SPEAKERloses its stickiness and like leaves an air gap

30:15SPEAKERfor stuff to get into.

30:16SPEAKER- Yep.

30:18SPEAKEROkay, you flagged this one.

30:20SPEAKERI have not read this entire email yet, but here we go.

30:23SPEAKERFrom Ty, have you ever considered an episode

30:25SPEAKERon the tech behind a golf broadcast?

30:28SPEAKERAnd I'm not gonna speak for Will, I can't say that I have,

30:31SPEAKERor maybe any large outdoor event.

30:34SPEAKERI'm currently driving back

30:34SPEAKERfrom a professional golf tournament

30:36SPEAKERI attended over the weekend.

30:37SPEAKERI've been watching golf for years on TV

30:39SPEAKERand this was the first time I was able to get on a course

30:41SPEAKERfor a live event.

30:43SPEAKERI found myself enthralled with the little things

30:45SPEAKERthat were happening behind the scenes

30:46SPEAKERthat were clearly in service of both the live broadcast

30:49SPEAKERand the long-term stats used to track player performance.

30:53SPEAKERThe main things I could pick out

30:54SPEAKERwere the track man system used to track balls in the air,

30:58SPEAKERwhich provides stats like ball speed and apex,

31:00SPEAKERas well as draw the on-screen shot tracer.

31:04SPEAKERThere were individuals all over with tablets

31:06SPEAKERwho were recording the location of every shot by hand.

31:09SPEAKERThose on the green seem to have a small camera set up

31:12SPEAKERon a tower that helps them pinpoint.

31:15SPEAKERFinally, you had the cameras, microphones,

31:16SPEAKERand miles of fiber optic cables to bring it all together.

31:20SPEAKERThe entire event just blew me away

31:21SPEAKERfrom a logistics and tech standpoint.

31:23SPEAKERIt seems like it can be an interesting topic

31:24SPEAKERif you could find the right sources.

31:25SPEAKERActually, you were not wrong.

31:27SPEAKERThat does all sound extremely interesting.

31:30SPEAKER- Yeah, so famously golf is doing live golf on television

31:37SPEAKERwas a huge technical challenge

31:41SPEAKERbecause the action on the sports takes place over 18 holes.

31:46SPEAKERThere's a bunch of different teams.

31:47SPEAKERIt requires a ton of cameras.

31:49SPEAKERModern video live mixing was largely used

31:54SPEAKERfor live golf on TV,

31:56SPEAKERas opposed to, say, a football game

31:58SPEAKERwhere they would just point one camera at the 50-yard line

32:00SPEAKERand aim that at the field,

32:01SPEAKERand then they'd have another camera for closeups

32:03SPEAKERand they could switch back and forth between those two.

32:06SPEAKERSo they didn't do live.

32:09SPEAKERUnfortunately, I tried to look this up beforehand,

32:11SPEAKERand you can't find it now

32:13SPEAKERbecause of the fucking live golf series,

32:17SPEAKERwhich Google thinks you want

32:18SPEAKERwhen you search for live TV golf.

32:21SPEAKERBut when I took a broadcast TV class,

32:27SPEAKERthe 1958 PGA Championship was, I think,

32:31SPEAKERthe first one that they broadcast on TV live,

32:36SPEAKERwhich was at that time, just to be clear,

32:41SPEAKERat that time, a lot of TV shows

32:43SPEAKERwere shot on film,

32:44SPEAKERand then when they would broadcast them,

32:48SPEAKERthey would project the film in front of a TV camera,

32:50SPEAKERand they'd shoot the video on live TV

32:54SPEAKERusing film projection, basically.

32:56SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah, so.

32:59SPEAKER- I'm looking around to see

33:00SPEAKERif there's any footage of any 1958 golf.

33:04SPEAKER- I'm sure the quality is not what you want.

33:07SPEAKER- Oh, wait, 1958 PGA Championship

33:10SPEAKERat, I don't even know how to pronounce the location

33:12SPEAKERthis was held.

33:13SPEAKERThere's a little bit of footage.

33:15SPEAKER- Is it someplace in Wales?

33:16SPEAKERIt has a weird name.

33:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it does sound Welsh, actually.

33:20SPEAKERI'm not even gonna try to pronounce it,

33:21SPEAKERbut yeah, there's, I mean, it's a short vintage,

33:23SPEAKERlike four minutes of footage here.

33:24SPEAKERYou can kind of get a sense of what it looked like, though.

33:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's the ability to do,

33:32SPEAKERlike, now we, like, you know,

33:34SPEAKERnow somebody with a desktop PC or a laptop and OBS

33:37SPEAKERcan do the stuff that was,

33:39SPEAKERthat took millions and millions of dollars

33:41SPEAKERand a team of the smartest people in television to do.

33:46SPEAKERBut yeah, now it's a little more straightforward.

33:50SPEAKERAnd now the stuff that they're doing with like radar

33:51SPEAKERand golf ball tracking and all that stuff

33:53SPEAKERmakes it look like a video game almost.

33:55SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, that stuff is amazing.

33:56SPEAKERLike I am the furthest thing from a sports guy,

33:59SPEAKERbut that actually turns out to be kind of cool

34:00SPEAKERbecause I watch football like maybe at best once a year

34:04SPEAKERfor the Super Bowl, but typically longer even than that.

34:06SPEAKERSo I go long enough between looking at football

34:09SPEAKERthat every time I turn it on,

34:10SPEAKERI get to be like suitably amazed again

34:12SPEAKERat all the innovations that they've come up with

34:14SPEAKERsince the last time of like,

34:16SPEAKERare they putting cameras on like zip lines or something?

34:19SPEAKERIt feels like, or surely they're not using drones.

34:21SPEAKERIt feels like there's like kind of these like panning,

34:23SPEAKERsoaring shots over the field these days.

34:26SPEAKER- So that's a Jamie Heineman patent, I think.

34:29SPEAKERHe's involved with the people who made that.

34:31SPEAKERYeah, it's the camera, what it's called.

34:34SPEAKERBut yeah, there's basically cameras suspended

34:37SPEAKERon two long wires and they track along,

34:40SPEAKERor maybe it's four long wires,

34:42SPEAKERand the motors go in and out on either side

34:45SPEAKERto consume above the third.

34:47SPEAKER- I can visualize how that would work.

34:48SPEAKER- Occasionally people punt the football

34:51SPEAKERand it hits the thing and they have to do it over.

34:53SPEAKERThey have to have a do over.

34:54SPEAKER- Wait, they literally do the play?

34:55SPEAKERWell, I mean, if the ball is having its trajectory.

34:58SPEAKER- By the wire or the camera or something, yeah.

35:00SPEAKER- Of course.

35:01SPEAKER- It doesn't happen that often.

35:03SPEAKERThey've gotten pretty good at like placing the cameras

35:06SPEAKERin such a way that it's not the same.

35:07SPEAKER- The other thing that's changed over the last 10, 15 years

35:09SPEAKERis that now most stadiums have like a track

35:13SPEAKERthat a high-speed camera goes,

35:15SPEAKERthat a high-speed dolly goes back and forth on

35:19SPEAKERso that it stays exactly even with the ball

35:23SPEAKERas the play is happening in the football field

35:25SPEAKERor soccer pitch.

35:26SPEAKERAnd yeah, there's a bunch of cool stuff.

35:29SPEAKERHaving been going to a bunch of basketball games lately

35:31SPEAKERand it's been really fun.

35:32SPEAKERBaseball has a lot of crazy stuff too.

35:33SPEAKERThey've had radar and baseball for years,

35:36SPEAKERso they know like pitch speeds and bat contact speeds

35:39SPEAKERand where they can draw the picture of the strike zone

35:43SPEAKERand it's sports and TV.

35:46SPEAKERThe last bastion of interesting TV production stuff.

35:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, the way you put it,

35:52SPEAKERmaking it look more like a video game is pretty accurate.

35:57SPEAKERIt's pretty cool to watch a live broadcast

35:58SPEAKERand just consistently go like, how the hell did they do that?

36:01SPEAKERThat doesn't seem...

36:02SPEAKER- Look, and then they do things like

36:06SPEAKERput ads on the basketball court.

36:08SPEAKER- Yeah, great, good.

36:09SPEAKERWait, have they actually done that on the court surface?

36:12SPEAKER- Look, they project...

36:14SPEAKERWell, okay, so they've been doing...

36:17SPEAKERIf you go to like a major league baseball stadium these days

36:20SPEAKERthe area behind home plate is generally

36:24SPEAKERlike green screen or keys in such a way

36:26SPEAKERso they can put different ads there,

36:28SPEAKERdifferent sections of the game.

36:28SPEAKER- It's sort of a retaining wall barrier type

36:30SPEAKERlike behind the action kind of thing I can live with.

36:33SPEAKERI mean, it's not great, but I can live with it.

36:34SPEAKERBut like literally on the playing surfaces

36:37SPEAKERis kind of a bit much.

36:38SPEAKER- Yeah, but it shows up underneath the players

36:40SPEAKERand all that, so it just looks like it's painted on the floor.

36:42SPEAKER- It's still distracting.

36:44SPEAKERI mean, it's cool.

36:45SPEAKERIt's cool from a keying standpoint.

36:47SPEAKERLike the fact that they can do that live that well is cool.

36:49SPEAKERBut like also...

36:51SPEAKER- What if you're watching the basketball game

36:53SPEAKERand you're like, "Man, I wish I had some blue chew."

36:54SPEAKERAnd then you're like, "Hey, there's an ad for blue chew

36:57SPEAKERright there under the player's feet."

36:59SPEAKERPerfect.

37:00SPEAKER- It's got a funny feeling all of a sudden.

37:02SPEAKERI don't know where it's coming from.

37:02SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.

37:03SPEAKERThat's the blue chew, man.

37:05SPEAKER- Yes.

37:06SPEAKERAll right, TK writes in about, I think,

37:10SPEAKERI don't remember when this was,

37:11SPEAKERsome weeks back we were talking about blogs

37:14SPEAKERand the indie web or the small web

37:15SPEAKERand getting away from the four platforms

37:18SPEAKERthat everybody uses on the internet now.

37:20SPEAKER- That's a good idea.

37:21SPEAKER- Yes, TK wrote in about that subject.

37:24SPEAKERFirst, a little history.

37:26SPEAKERWeb rings and directories were originally built

37:28SPEAKERbecause search engines didn't exist

37:29SPEAKERor weren't very good early on.

37:31SPEAKERSo in order to find anything online,

37:32SPEAKERyou had to hear about it from some other source.

37:35SPEAKERAs search engines degrade and more and more people

37:37SPEAKERget fed up with the modern social internet,

37:40SPEAKERthey are returning to recommendations from other users,

37:42SPEAKERweb rings and directories.

37:45SPEAKERWes mentioned a couple in the episode he was on,

37:47SPEAKERwas that, that was probably the RSS episode.

37:49SPEAKER- It's only two years ago.

37:50SPEAKER- Couple years ago now, God, where does the time go?

37:53SPEAKERWes mentioned a couple like RSS.joy and ooh.directory.

37:58SPEAKERThat's O-O-H, dot directory.

38:02SPEAKERIn the indie web, there's a fair number of web rings as well

38:05SPEAKERset up by users who want to help promote each other's work,

38:07SPEAKERwhether commercial or not.

38:09SPEAKERAnother more useful way people in the indie web

38:11SPEAKERpromote each other is via blog roles,

38:12SPEAKERwhere whether somewhere on their site

38:15SPEAKERas a static page updated over time

38:16SPEAKERor at the end of scheduled posts like week notes.

38:20SPEAKERSome people even write newsletters or blogs

38:22SPEAKERspecifically to promote and endorse

38:24SPEAKERwhat others are getting up to on the indie web.

38:27SPEAKERAs to Brad's lament that blogs feel very commercial,

38:30SPEAKERyou are absolutely right.

38:31SPEAKERMany, many blogs are trying to sell something,

38:34SPEAKERwhether it's a book or the blogger's other work,

38:37SPEAKERbut just as many blogs are much more

38:38SPEAKERcasual, personal things.

38:40SPEAKEROne of my favorites is islandinthenet.com,

38:44SPEAKERwhich is obsessively about technology and photography

38:47SPEAKERin equal measure, but is mostly just photos of birds.

38:51SPEAKERYou just need to know where to look for them.

38:52SPEAKERIn a lot of ways,

38:53SPEAKERI found that you just need one good rock to turn over

38:55SPEAKERto start digging into the indie web.

38:57SPEAKERFor me, it was the website and personal blog

38:59SPEAKERof a person I know from a Discord server, his week notes

39:01SPEAKERalways include a little section of posts he's been reading.

39:04SPEAKEROne of these recommendations led me

39:06SPEAKERto someone else's work I was interested in.

39:09SPEAKERTwo weeks later, her week notes led me

39:11SPEAKERto Shellshark Scrolls' newsletters,

39:14SPEAKERshellsharks.com/scrolls,

39:16SPEAKERevery edition of which gives me new things to read

39:18SPEAKERfrom new perspectives,

39:18SPEAKERand none of it is commercial in focus.

39:20SPEAKERToo long, didn't read.

39:22SPEAKERThe small, weird web never went away.

39:24SPEAKERIt's just not very searchable with modern search engines

39:26SPEAKERand tends to get buried under the layer of the net

39:28SPEAKERwhere everyone is hustling to get paid and stay afloat.

39:31SPEAKER- I mean, there's definitely a lot of the,

39:33SPEAKEReverybody getting hustling to get paid and stay afloat.

39:38SPEAKERIt's funny, I do the thing at the end of the newsletter

39:41SPEAKERevery week that it's like,

39:42SPEAKERhey, here's the thing I read this week that I liked.

39:45SPEAKERAnd it's, I'm starting to get recommendations for those.

39:49SPEAKERI love getting recommendations for those

39:50SPEAKER'cause it's A, it's helpful,

39:53SPEAKERand B, it's almost always something that's worth reading.

39:55SPEAKERSo thanks to folks for sending those in.

39:58SPEAKER- Yeah, those directories, RSS.joy and oo.directory

40:01SPEAKERsound pretty useful also as a starting place.

40:04SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a ton of good stuff.

40:06SPEAKERThere's a ton of good stuff.

40:07SPEAKERAnd a lot of it is people who are trying to make money

40:09SPEAKERdoing a newsletter, which is like, look, I get that.

40:13SPEAKERI don't think I've written a newsletter

40:14SPEAKERthat didn't take me the better part of a day

40:16SPEAKERto minimum to write, much less do the research and stuff for.

40:21SPEAKER- I generally think that a lot of people

40:23SPEAKERwho consume content maybe underestimate the amount of time

40:25SPEAKERit takes to generate content or at least I have gotten

40:29SPEAKERthat vibe over the years.

40:30SPEAKERAnyway, I keep thinking about putting a blog up.

40:34SPEAKER- I highly recommend it.

40:35SPEAKERIt's nice just to have a place to dump links

40:36SPEAKERthat you think are interesting if nothing else.

40:38SPEAKER- Okay, maybe that's a good use for it

40:39SPEAKER'cause I'm worried I would never update it.

40:41SPEAKERBut on my random carousel of half-finished projects

40:45SPEAKERthat occasionally come back up,

40:47SPEAKERI'm back to thinking about that VPS again

40:49SPEAKERthat I got last November and have not touched.

40:52SPEAKERIt was actually setting up this reverse proxy here

40:54SPEAKERgave me enough experience with Nginx

40:56SPEAKERthat I think I could settle that up on that VPS now to-

40:59SPEAKER- To proxy it and run it out of your house?

41:01SPEAKER- Point two, point two, like a ghost instance

41:03SPEAKERon my NAS here or my server here or something like that.

41:06SPEAKERBut I'm really worried.

41:08SPEAKERI'm worried I would kind of just never update it,

41:10SPEAKERwhich is fine, I guess that's fine on a personal blog.

41:12SPEAKERI guess you get to update it exactly as often as you want.

41:15SPEAKER- That's part of the process, man.

41:17SPEAKER- But I'm kind of worried I would put the blog up

41:18SPEAKERand make like three posts and then never touch it again,

41:20SPEAKERwhich is kind of a bummer.

41:22SPEAKER- I was gonna say there's a couple other places

41:27SPEAKERI like for recommending sites.

41:30SPEAKERI think it's fine to have a personal blog

41:33SPEAKERthat you never update, right?

41:34SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

41:35SPEAKER- Like you're doing it for you,

41:36SPEAKERit's a place you go to store links, whatever, that's fine.

41:40SPEAKERKotke.org, which is Jason Kotke's personal blog

41:43SPEAKERthat's been running for like a hundred years now

41:45SPEAKERis fantastic for like weird, interesting,

41:48SPEAKERcool shit on the internet.

41:50SPEAKER- How do you spell that?

41:51SPEAKER- K-O-T-K-E, I think it might be two Ts.

41:57SPEAKERYeah, it's two Ts when I look at it.

41:59SPEAKER- Okay.

42:00SPEAKER- I really, like it kind of fills the void,

42:03SPEAKERlike I used to read Boing Boing every day

42:05SPEAKERback in the early 2000s and it's not quite the same

42:10SPEAKERas it used to be.

42:11SPEAKERThey felt the pressure of monetization

42:12SPEAKERin the same as everyone else.

42:15SPEAKERAnd it kind of changed the tenor of the thing a little bit.

42:18SPEAKER- Sure.

42:19SPEAKER- Actually, I'm looking at Daring Fireball a couple weeks ago

42:22SPEAKERlike I only, that's Gruber, right?

42:23SPEAKER- That's Gruber.

42:25SPEAKER- Like I basically only look at that site

42:26SPEAKERwhen we do an Apple episode,

42:28SPEAKERbut I was reminded looking at it,

42:29SPEAKERlike some of his posts are actually like,

42:31SPEAKERfirst of all, 80% of the post is a quote from somebody else.

42:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:35SPEAKER- And second of all, the overall post is tiny,

42:37SPEAKERwhich means that he wrote like two sentences

42:39SPEAKERattached to a quote and that was a post.

42:41SPEAKERLike it makes me realize like,

42:42SPEAKERoh, you don't have to sit down

42:43SPEAKERand have to write a five paragraph thesis

42:44SPEAKERevery time you make a blog post.

42:46SPEAKERLike it could kind of just be as minimal as you want.

42:49SPEAKER- So the thing I will say,

42:49SPEAKERhaving been the person who writes those kinds of news posts

42:52SPEAKERfor computer sites for over the years,

42:56SPEAKERis that the time spent making that kind of blog

42:59SPEAKERisn't in the writing up that one post,

43:01SPEAKERit's the reading the 80 other things

43:03SPEAKERthat you didn't decide were worth sharing, right?

43:06SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:07SPEAKER- Like you have to just voraciously

43:08SPEAKERbe reading stuff all the time.

43:11SPEAKERThe other one I like is Laughing Squid,

43:14SPEAKERwhich I think is still around.

43:16SPEAKER- Heard of that.

43:17SPEAKER- Laughing Squid was a project by,

43:21SPEAKERit was an ISP for a long time.

43:24SPEAKERAnd it's just like a New York culture blog,

43:28SPEAKERbasically by Scott Beal,

43:30SPEAKERwho was started in the 90s in San Francisco

43:33SPEAKERas probably like some well adjacent thing or something.

43:37SPEAKERAnd it's quite good.

43:39SPEAKERIt's kind of fills that boing boing,

43:41SPEAKERthe hole that boing boing has left for me.

43:44SPEAKERThe well is a name I have not heard in a very long time.

43:47SPEAKER- Hmm, Bruce Sterling still posts notable well denizen,

43:53SPEAKERBruce Sterling, it's been posting on Blue Sky again lately,

43:56SPEAKERwhich I quite like, it's very exciting.

43:58SPEAKER- The whole earth electronic link.

44:00SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

44:01SPEAKER- Electronic.

44:02SPEAKER- Electronic.

44:03SPEAKER- Yep, that's one of the most 90s phrases

44:07SPEAKERI think I've ever heard.

44:08SPEAKER- Look, it was cyberpunk before cyberpunk was cyberpunk.

44:11SPEAKER- Sure.

44:13SPEAKERLet's see, email from Kevin in Toronto.

44:15SPEAKERI swear we'll get to some discord questions.

44:18SPEAKERYou've mentioned home cameras before

44:20SPEAKERand I've never heard you mentioned Frigate.

44:22SPEAKERI use it for my small self-hosted camera system.

44:25SPEAKERIt works entirely offline as object recognition

44:28SPEAKERintegrates with home assistant and works with any IP camera

44:31SPEAKERthat makes its RTSP feed available.

44:34SPEAKERPersonally, I use an Amcrest AD410 doorbell

44:37SPEAKERand a few Raspberry Pis streaming RTSP feeds.

44:41SPEAKERI really recommend checking it out.

44:43SPEAKER- That sounds fantastic, I really like it.

44:46SPEAKERIn the world of home assistant integrated stuff

44:49SPEAKERthat I love, I also added music assistant

44:52SPEAKERto my home assistant install the other day,

44:54SPEAKERwhich basically unifies all of the Apple and Google

44:58SPEAKERand whatever other endpoints, Sonos endpoints in my house

45:01SPEAKERinto one easy interface and it conglomerates

45:05SPEAKERall the places that music come from in my house

45:07SPEAKERand podcasts so I can like pipe my audio books feeds,

45:11SPEAKERmy Apple music, my local stored music

45:16SPEAKERand I wanna say my podcast feed.

45:19SPEAKERI can't remember, there's something else that goes in there

45:21SPEAKERand they all show up in the same place

45:22SPEAKERso I'll definitely check out Frigate.

45:24SPEAKERThanks for the recommendation.

45:26SPEAKER- Okay, email from Jeremiah.

45:27SPEAKERWill, you said you'd be interested for suggestions

45:29SPEAKERand what else to use a foot pedal for.

45:31SPEAKERI love playing first and third person games on PC

45:34SPEAKERwith keyboard and mouse but I really hate holding down W

45:36SPEAKERwith my middle finger for an entire evening.

45:39SPEAKERNow I use a pedal bound to W to keep walking

45:42SPEAKERor running forward while my fingers can hit other buttons

45:44SPEAKERlike strafe, map, inventory, crouch, jump,

45:47SPEAKERswitch items, et cetera.

45:49SPEAKERI also liked using auto hotkey to help holding down a key

45:53SPEAKERbut some games manage to prevent the software from working

45:56SPEAKERsuch as Helldivers.

45:57SPEAKERThe pedal registers as a keyboard and always works.

46:01SPEAKER- So auto hotkey will get you banned from some games

46:03SPEAKERjust FYI. - Really?

46:04SPEAKER- Yeah, the people look at it as macroing and cheating

46:07SPEAKERwhich they crowd upon, yeah.

46:08SPEAKER- I mean, I guess I could see the argument there.

46:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I got a lot of notes from people that were like,

46:13SPEAKERhey, I use my stuff for Helldivers.

46:16SPEAKERSo some guy was like, I do my respawn people macro

46:19SPEAKERin Helldivers is just bound to my foot stomp pedal

46:22SPEAKERso that I can bring the people back no matter what.

46:27SPEAKER- That's pretty, you know what, like I think of stomping,

46:29SPEAKERI mean, you can stomp precisely but I think of stomping

46:32SPEAKERas a bit of like a frantic desperation action.

46:34SPEAKERSo if you're just like in the middle of the shit

46:37SPEAKERtrying to get somebody up as fast as possible

46:39SPEAKERkind of stomping your emergency revived pedal

46:42SPEAKERhas some appeal.

46:43SPEAKER- Well, the thing I find with the pedal

46:45SPEAKERis that I have to not wear shoes

46:47SPEAKERin order to be able to detect the difference

46:50SPEAKER'cause it has three buttons.

46:51SPEAKERIt has one in the middle and two on the sides.

46:53SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.

46:54SPEAKER- And yeah, being able to feel the side ones,

46:57SPEAKERI need the size, it needs to be sock feet.

47:01SPEAKERBut yeah, like somebody sent a picture

47:03SPEAKERof their Helldivers configuration for their stream deck

47:08SPEAKERwhich is just a bunch of buttons with the icons

47:10SPEAKERand it does all that.

47:11SPEAKERYou just hit the button for the macro you want

47:13SPEAKERfor whichever gun you have at any given time

47:15SPEAKERwhich I was like, that's pretty clever.

47:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I've thought for ages about checking out auto hotkey

47:20SPEAKERand just never have, like I don't really have

47:22SPEAKERa specific use for it at the moment in mind

47:24SPEAKERbut it seems like the kind of thing

47:25SPEAKERwhere once you learn to use it,

47:27SPEAKERyou would think of a bunch of uses for it.

47:29SPEAKER- Yeah, when the only tool you have is a hotkey,

47:32SPEAKEReverything becomes hotkey-able.

47:33SPEAKER- Yeah, well, my understanding of it,

47:35SPEAKERmaybe I have like an overdeveloped sense of what it can do.

47:40SPEAKERLike I think it can do a lot of like window management

47:42SPEAKERtype stuff as well, right?

47:43SPEAKERIt's not just an elaborate like macro hotkey maker.

47:47SPEAKERI think it, isn't it a whole like scripting language

47:49SPEAKERthat you can like tell it to kind of like place

47:52SPEAKERand resize windows and stuff like that?

47:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I always thought it was more for like filling forms

47:57SPEAKERand stuff like that, like just macro stuff.

48:01SPEAKER- I used it to play that 64 clicker a few months ago

48:06SPEAKERor maybe a year ago now.

48:07SPEAKER- Sure, I mean, I'll take a look at, you know,

48:10SPEAKERpeople in the Discord thread for the episode

48:12SPEAKERlike auto hotkey and have recommendations

48:14SPEAKERthat I would be curious to hear them.

48:16SPEAKER- I did, for what it's worth, I did get a notification

48:19SPEAKERwhen I was playing something, I can't remember what it was,

48:20SPEAKERit might've been Valorant that was like,

48:22SPEAKERhey, you have to turn this off before you play Valorant,

48:24SPEAKERit's against the rules.

48:26SPEAKER- That makes sense, gives you the freedom

48:28SPEAKERto automate any desktop task is how the website pitches it.

48:31SPEAKER- Yeah, and it can move the mouse as well

48:34SPEAKERis my understanding, that's the big deal.

48:36SPEAKER- Right, it sounds pretty powerful, also we'll move on here,

48:39SPEAKERbut this reminds me, I also never got around

48:41SPEAKERto checking out the text expander, Esponso.

48:46SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

48:47SPEAKER- Remember me talking about that?

48:48SPEAKER- Yeah, we talked about it.

48:49SPEAKER- Where you could type like, you could create text expansion

48:52SPEAKERfor like typing colon date, we'll replace that

48:55SPEAKERwith the current date and whatever you're typing.

48:57SPEAKER- I like that.

48:58SPEAKER- Stuff like that, like that's,

48:59SPEAKERI've really got to check that out.

49:02SPEAKER- Like that kind of stuff, using that to do

49:05SPEAKERlike the hammer time shortcuts for time and discord

49:07SPEAKERand stuff like that would be incredibly useful.

49:09SPEAKER- Absolutely, huge.

49:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:12SPEAKER- Okay, Louis, I just ran into this yesterday myself.

49:17SPEAKERSince January, 2025, I have been bombarded

49:20SPEAKERby websites asking for or demanding that I spend time

49:23SPEAKERsetting up pass keys instead of using my password.

49:26SPEAKERSome days I can't access my Hotmail account

49:29SPEAKERwithout two or three requests to make a pass key.

49:32SPEAKERHitting the do it later button does not always work.

49:35SPEAKERWhen and why did the IT bozos decide

49:37SPEAKERthat my password is no longer good enough

49:38SPEAKERfor me to access their precious websites?

49:41SPEAKER- Dammit, IT bozos.

49:42SPEAKER- Like I feel like Amazon and for whatever reason

49:45SPEAKERhas gotten really bad about this.

49:47SPEAKERLike every time I go to Amazon, I get hit with two prompts.

49:49SPEAKERFirst for, first bid warden prompts me

49:52SPEAKERand asks if I want to make a pass key.

49:53SPEAKERAnd when I cancel out of that,

49:54SPEAKERthen I get a Windows hello pop-up asking the same thing.

49:57SPEAKER- Well, so that happens because you're,

50:02SPEAKERthe website's asking you to create a pop.

50:03SPEAKER- Oh, I know, yeah.

50:05SPEAKER- The part of the failure here is that Windows

50:07SPEAKERdoes a bad job of, well, browsers do a bad job

50:11SPEAKERof managing pass keys through external password managers.

50:15SPEAKERSo like I get the same thing with one password, right?

50:18SPEAKER- Sure. - One password prompts me,

50:19SPEAKERthen the browser prompts me, and then Windows is like,

50:21SPEAKER"Hey, man, you want a pass key?"

50:23SPEAKERThe real answer to this question is that pass keys

50:27SPEAKERare actually really good.

50:28SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not denying that.

50:30SPEAKER- No, I know, but I think people are generally

50:32SPEAKERkind of skeptical of stuff that's new in these areas

50:34SPEAKERand a little worried about it.

50:37SPEAKERThe nice thing about pass keys is that they're,

50:41SPEAKERyou can't make an insecure pass key

50:43SPEAKERin the same way that you can make an insecure password,

50:45SPEAKERright? - Yes.

50:46SPEAKER- If you're already using two-factor,

50:48SPEAKERthe valuable, whether they're valuable or not

50:51SPEAKERis a little bit more questionable,

50:53SPEAKERbut it's like, generally speaking,

50:55SPEAKERI recommend people do the prompts to set up the pass keys.

50:59SPEAKERNow that you can do the thing where the pass keys

51:02SPEAKERare portable and they can go in your password vault

51:04SPEAKERand all that, and that is pretty well supported

51:07SPEAKERacross the industry, it seems like now,

51:10SPEAKERI think they're much more practical.

51:11SPEAKERAlthough the other side of it is there's absolutely

51:13SPEAKERnothing wrong with having individual pass keys

51:15SPEAKERon each device, 'cause then the benefit of that

51:19SPEAKERis that then if you lose your phone,

51:21SPEAKERyour phone gets stolen, your Windows gets compromised,

51:23SPEAKERwhatever, you can just disallow the pass keys

51:26SPEAKERthat are compromised and keep the ones that aren't.

51:28SPEAKER- Yeah, like that's probably what I would do,

51:30SPEAKERlike that is what I do with SSH keys,

51:33SPEAKERlike I generate separate keys from my laptop

51:35SPEAKERfrom the ones on my desktop, so like I agree,

51:38SPEAKERlike pass keys are good, like the only thing to know

51:41SPEAKERis you need to, like you just said,

51:42SPEAKERyou need to manage them in a way

51:43SPEAKERthat you are not gonna lose the pass keys.

51:45SPEAKER- The reason the IT bozos decided your password

51:48SPEAKERis no longer good enough is that like 90% of people

51:51SPEAKERuse terrible passwords, and like you're in the,

51:54SPEAKERlike if you're listening to this podcast,

51:55SPEAKERyou're probably in the percentage

51:56SPEAKERthat's using good passwords.

51:58SPEAKER- Right, like I have pretty good password discipline already

52:00SPEAKERI mean the bigger thing here though about this email

52:02SPEAKERis just, is the amount of like getting in your face

52:04SPEAKERabout it, like how do I disable that prompt on Amazon?

52:07SPEAKERI have no idea, like is there a new setting?

52:09SPEAKER- You create a pass key, and then they stop bothering you.

52:11SPEAKEROn any device, you can use the password

52:13SPEAKERon the other devices.

52:14SPEAKER- Yeah, totally, but the bigger thing though

52:16SPEAKERis like has Amazon exposed a way to turn off that nag?

52:18SPEAKERProbably not.

52:19SPEAKER- No, of course not.

52:20SPEAKER- That's the thing I can do.

52:21SPEAKER- They want people to use that nag

52:22SPEAKER'cause it reduces the fraud and all that stuff.

52:25SPEAKER- I get it, I guess when I make the transition

52:27SPEAKERto pass keys, I'm going to do it globally,

52:29SPEAKERnot because like one corporate platform

52:32SPEAKERbugged me into doing it enough, you know?

52:33SPEAKERLike I would rather kind of do it on my own time, but.

52:35SPEAKER- Well, I got bad news for you, Brad.

52:37SPEAKER- Yep, yep, should we move into,

52:40SPEAKERwe should do some Discord queues.

52:41SPEAKER- We should do some queues, yeah.

52:42SPEAKERI think we hit most of the emails that got flagged.

52:47SPEAKER- Yes, we got through a lot of them.

52:48SPEAKERWe have a patron episode coming up very shortly,

52:50SPEAKERso maybe we'll clean up some more of these.

52:52SPEAKER- Yeah, there were a bunch of really good,

52:54SPEAKERlike both questions and queues.

52:56SPEAKER- Yes, indeed.

52:58SPEAKERHow about a question from the Discord from Wesley?

53:03SPEAKERI recently updated Ubuntu and after the update,

53:05SPEAKERmy second monitor does not show any video

53:07SPEAKERafter the computer wakes from sleep.

53:10SPEAKERAfter some troubleshooting failed, I gave up

53:12SPEAKERand for the last week, every time I sit down at my PC,

53:14SPEAKERI changed the resolution of the monitor,

53:16SPEAKERthen immediately hit revert

53:18SPEAKERto go back to the previous setting

53:19SPEAKERso the monitor works again.

53:21SPEAKERThis leads me to my question.

53:22SPEAKERHave you had any weird workarounds

53:24SPEAKERor switch jiggling routines with your PCs over the years?

53:29SPEAKER- I have, my second PC at my desk,

53:34SPEAKERsporadically doesn't connect to USB devices,

53:37SPEAKERso I just put a USB switch in between the keyboard and mouse

53:41SPEAKERand just keep hammering that until it works.

53:44SPEAKER- That's a solution, sure.

53:45SPEAKER- It's not great.

53:46SPEAKERI don't feel good about it.

53:47SPEAKERI'm not proud of my choices and I wish it was better.

53:51SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

53:53SPEAKER- We're talking about your DBX now, Brad?

53:55SPEAKER- Oh God, dude, let's not even,

53:57SPEAKERthis fucking channel strip has got,

54:00SPEAKERwell, we talked about it before.

54:02SPEAKER- We've talked about it before.

54:02SPEAKER- It's the audio processor I go through

54:04SPEAKERthat occasionally makes me sound fuzzy.

54:05SPEAKERSometimes it makes me like half the volume I should be

54:08SPEAKERunless I power cycle it.

54:11SPEAKERI haven't RMA'd it because I didn't have reading

54:13SPEAKERto see people talking about RMAing it

54:15SPEAKERand getting one back that was just as bad or worse.

54:17SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems fast.

54:19SPEAKER- Like the crapshoot of I might actually end up

54:20SPEAKERwith a worse problem if they don't fix it right

54:22SPEAKERis just, anyway, whatever.

54:24SPEAKERI don't know, I am very stubborn about annoyances like this

54:27SPEAKERto the point that I will spend an unhealthy amount of time

54:30SPEAKERdigging into ways to fix them

54:32SPEAKERthat don't require me to annoy myself constantly.

54:35SPEAKER- So I have another one I realized.

54:39SPEAKERDo you see on my camera that side is darker than that side?

54:42SPEAKER- Sure.

54:43SPEAKER- Well, so I have two lights hung up there on the ceiling

54:44SPEAKERthat backlight the stuff behind me, right?

54:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:47SPEAKER- And my Wi-Fi access point and one of the lights

54:49SPEAKERare right next to each other

54:51SPEAKERand you're not supposed to have things

54:53SPEAKERwithin a couple of feet of Wi-Fi access points

54:55SPEAKERbecause too much radio, I guess, I don't know.

54:57SPEAKER- Sure.

54:58SPEAKER- That one about every four days

55:00SPEAKERjust doesn't turn on in the morning

55:01SPEAKERwhen I hit the button to turn it on over the network.

55:03SPEAKER- Interesting.

55:04SPEAKER- And I have to power cycle it

55:05SPEAKERso I have to reach up there and hit the power button

55:07SPEAKERand then wait a second and then hit the power button again

55:09SPEAKERand then it works again.

55:11SPEAKERI don't feel good about this.

55:12SPEAKER- Well, I get it, get it.

55:14SPEAKER- I hate this.

55:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm looking around my room.

55:16SPEAKERI don't think I, I can't think of many other like.

55:19SPEAKER- This is the kind of thing that makes you crazy, I know.

55:21SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

55:22SPEAKERI will go to great lengths to defeat whatever thing

55:25SPEAKERis getting on my nerves.

55:26SPEAKER- I got another one.

55:27SPEAKER- Okay.

55:28SPEAKER- On my keyboard, I have one LED

55:30SPEAKERthat's just a little bit dimmer than the others.

55:32SPEAKER- Oh no.

55:33SPEAKER- On the J key.

55:34SPEAKERSo I just turned off all the lights.

55:35SPEAKER- That's, look, I don't run the lights on my keyboard

55:38SPEAKERin general, just for battery life reasons.

55:40SPEAKERLike I just want the keyboard to last longer.

55:42SPEAKER- Mine's plugged in, so I don't care about battery life.

55:44SPEAKER- Sure.

55:44SPEAKER- I like lights.

55:45SPEAKER- Yeah, lights are cool.

55:47SPEAKER- So now it just lights up when I type.

55:49SPEAKERSo like the keys light up as I hit them

55:51SPEAKERand then it kind of lingers for a minute.

55:53SPEAKERSo when I'm typing really fast,

55:54SPEAKERmy keyboard gets all lit up

55:55SPEAKERand I miss my Northern lights though.

55:58SPEAKER- How often are you looking at your keyboard anyway?

56:00SPEAKER- Almost never.

56:01SPEAKERWhen I sit, it's nice to have it on if the room's dark

56:03SPEAKERand I come into the room

56:04SPEAKER'cause then there's a little bit of light

56:05SPEAKERI don't have to stumble around in the dark.

56:07SPEAKER- No.

56:09SPEAKERI guess the only one I can think of is the,

56:11SPEAKERwhen I got these new monitors five years ago,

56:13SPEAKERcan you believe it's been five years

56:14SPEAKERsince I got rid of my old monitors?

56:16SPEAKER- Well, it hasn't been five years

56:17SPEAKERsince you got rid of the old monitors.

56:19SPEAKERIt's been five years since you got the new monitors.

56:20SPEAKER- Since I stopped using them.

56:22SPEAKER- Yes.

56:23SPEAKER- I've been using these new monitors, quote unquote.

56:25SPEAKERI don't even know if these monitors count as new anymore.

56:28SPEAKER- No, they're old monitors now.

56:29SPEAKER- Yes, they kind of are.

56:30SPEAKERAnyway, these monitors have got auto,

56:32SPEAKERI've complained about it before,

56:33SPEAKERthe auto input switching.

56:34SPEAKERIf they, if it loses signal on an input

56:37SPEAKERand it's getting input for on another,

56:39SPEAKERif it's getting signal on another input,

56:41SPEAKERit will immediately switch to that other input

56:42SPEAKERwithout asking you and there's no way to turn that off.

56:44SPEAKERAnd I fucking hate it.

56:46SPEAKER- Yep.

56:46SPEAKER- I used to leave this,

56:47SPEAKERthe NAS plugged into one of the other inputs

56:50SPEAKERso I could monitor the video output

56:52SPEAKER'cause it's good for troubleshooting occasionally,

56:54SPEAKERwhich meant that these monitors,

56:55SPEAKERthe monitor could never go to sleep

56:56SPEAKERbecause it was always getting video

56:57SPEAKERfrom a 24/7 headless machine.

57:00SPEAKER- Nope.

57:01SPEAKER- Or supposedly headless.

57:02SPEAKER- Nope, that's bad.

57:04SPEAKER- There was no way that I,

57:05SPEAKERI went to great lengths digging into VCP codes and stuff

57:08SPEAKERto see if I could figure out how to turn that behavior off.

57:10SPEAKERAnd my ultimate solution was to get a Pi KVM

57:13SPEAKERand now I don't have to have the server,

57:17SPEAKERthe server doesn't have to be plugged into a monitor anymore

57:19SPEAKERbecause it's being plugged into a video capture device

57:21SPEAKERthat is network enabled instead.

57:23SPEAKERAnd that's way better, it turns out.

57:24SPEAKER- Oh my God.

57:25SPEAKER- Anyway.

57:26SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:27SPEAKER- All right, Andy H.

57:30SPEAKER"Our Philips smart TV," smart as in sneer quotes,

57:33SPEAKER"is driving me mad.

57:35SPEAKERThe Android TV functionality keeps trying

57:37SPEAKERto hijack the screen when we're watching from HDMI,

57:39SPEAKERwhich is exclusively what we do from a UK Sky Q box.

57:44SPEAKERThen it refuses to go back to HDMI inputs,

57:46SPEAKERhowever commanded, often until it's hard reset.

57:49SPEAKERAlso the CEC is sketchy at best,

57:52SPEAKERsometimes great, sometimes like it doesn't exist.

57:55SPEAKERAny way to flash the TV and ditch the smart features?

57:58SPEAKERIf all it did was power up in response to the CEC

58:01SPEAKERand automatically stay on the HDMI input all the time,

58:03SPEAKERI would be as happy as a pig and shit."

58:06SPEAKERI don't think I've heard.

58:07SPEAKER- Do you think pigs are really happy and shit?

58:09SPEAKER- I don't know.

58:11SPEAKER- I think this is an unfair categorization of pigs.

58:13SPEAKER- Maybe, but this is the first time, I think,

58:15SPEAKERthat I've ever heard somebody outside

58:16SPEAKERof the Southern United States use that phrase.

58:19SPEAKER- I feel like that feels uniquely Scottish, but okay.

58:22SPEAKER- Really? I heard that.

58:23SPEAKERWell, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a,

58:24SPEAKERof course there's a tremendous Scots-Irish population

58:27SPEAKERin the South here, but I heard that phrase plenty growing up.

58:32SPEAKER- That always came from people

58:33SPEAKERwith suspiciously red hair in my neck of the woods.

58:35SPEAKER- I see, okay.

58:37SPEAKERAnyway, I think you're hosed.

58:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm kind of surprised there isn't more

58:43SPEAKERof a subculture around hacking smart TVs

58:46SPEAKERto do weird stuff with them,

58:47SPEAKERonly because like every other device on the planet

58:50SPEAKERwith any amount of compute in it,

58:51SPEAKERI feel like there's a little pocket community

58:54SPEAKERabout hacking it to do things.

58:56SPEAKER- So there's a fairly substantial community of people

58:58SPEAKERwho buy smart TVs and are really aggressive

59:01SPEAKERabout never giving them network access.

59:03SPEAKER- That is absolutely true, I see that a lot.

59:05SPEAKERAnd I frankly feel like you should at least keep your TV

59:08SPEAKERup to date, even if you keep it unplugged

59:10SPEAKERthe rest of the time, because they, oh.

59:12SPEAKER- I don't think, if it works the way you have it

59:13SPEAKERwhen you get it and it's working the way you want it

59:16SPEAKERand all the HDMI CEC stuff works and everything,

59:19SPEAKERnever plug it in.

59:20SPEAKER- I don't know, I've seen enough cases of like stuff

59:23SPEAKERlike HDR or high refresh getting fixed post release.

59:26SPEAKERLike I've seen too many cases of TVs

59:28SPEAKERwith broken features at launch that get you fixed

59:32SPEAKERthree months later that you should at least update

59:34SPEAKERthe software probably.

59:35SPEAKER- But that's not it working when you get it, right?

59:37SPEAKERLike that's it being busted and then fixing some stuff.

59:40SPEAKER- There's always, at least for me,

59:41SPEAKERthere's always the nagging feeling of like,

59:43SPEAKERit might look like it's working,

59:45SPEAKERbut it might actually be subtly not right in some way.

59:47SPEAKER- If you can't tell, it's fine, that's my new policy.

59:50SPEAKERLook. - I suppose.

59:51SPEAKER- Look, I think you get your TV working

59:55SPEAKERthe way you want it to, and then you disconnect it,

59:56SPEAKERyou ban it from your wifi and you never let it back on.

1:00:00SPEAKERThis problem goes away.

1:00:01SPEAKER- I think it would be rad, of course I do.

1:00:04SPEAKERThis is absolutely something I would probably tinker with.

1:00:06SPEAKERI think it would be rad if there was like a,

1:00:08SPEAKERkind of like a coordinated effort to root smart TVs

1:00:12SPEAKERand there was some like open source smart TV OS replacement

1:00:16SPEAKERthat did nothing but what you want it to,

1:00:17SPEAKERbut it doesn't seem like anything that,

1:00:19SPEAKERI assume that A, it's probably somewhat hard to root TVs

1:00:23SPEAKERand B, there are just such an endless number of models

1:00:26SPEAKERof different TV out there that it would be like impossible

1:00:28SPEAKERto keep up with everything.

1:00:29SPEAKER- Yeah, and probably there's variations

1:00:32SPEAKERinside the same model even. - Right.

1:00:35SPEAKER- I'm kind of surprised.

1:00:37SPEAKERSo okay, in like, if you wanna buy a range or a stove,

1:00:44SPEAKERif you buy a cheap one, they're dumb.

1:00:47SPEAKERIf you buy a mid-range one, like anything from like $1,000

1:00:50SPEAKERto four or $5,000, they have all this electronics nonsense

1:00:53SPEAKERin them, they're connected to wifi and a bunch of bullshit.

1:00:56SPEAKERAnd then if you buy like a $10,000 Viking range,

1:00:59SPEAKERthen those are all really dumb.

1:01:01SPEAKERThere's just barrels and metal, right?

1:01:04SPEAKERThere isn't really a consumer equivalent of a TV

1:01:08SPEAKERthat you can get that's just dumb.

1:01:09SPEAKERNow, like if you wanna get into the really expensive stuff,

1:01:12SPEAKERyou can get like commercial digital signage TVs,

1:01:16SPEAKERbut they often are more for like putting on arrival

1:01:19SPEAKERdeparture signs at airports and stuff like that.

1:01:21SPEAKERAnd they don't have like, or at least the last time

1:01:24SPEAKERI looked at them, they didn't have the kind of fancy HDR

1:01:30SPEAKERand all the stuff that they didn't have the HDMI 2.2 inputs

1:01:34SPEAKERand all the stuff that you want for like a modern TV

1:01:37SPEAKERthat you might hook a game console

1:01:39SPEAKERor watch HDR movies and stuff on.

1:01:41SPEAKER- And even if they did, I would worry

1:01:43SPEAKERabout something like that.

1:01:43SPEAKEREven if the specs looked good on paper,

1:01:45SPEAKERthey might have like bad response time

1:01:47SPEAKERor something that actually made them bad for games,

1:01:49SPEAKEReven if they looked good on the box.

1:01:52SPEAKER- I mean, kind of the place to do this is monitors,

1:01:55SPEAKERcomputer monitors, but also they don't,

1:01:59SPEAKERlike they kind of cap out at about 40 inches,

1:02:01SPEAKER44 inches these days.

1:02:03SPEAKERSo like you're not, or projectors maybe, I don't know.

1:02:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I had high hopes, so I've talked about it before

1:02:10SPEAKERwhen Panasonic got back into the consumer TV space

1:02:13SPEAKERwith their OLEDs and they were pushing like,

1:02:15SPEAKERoh, ours are like reference quality, you know,

1:02:17SPEAKERlike color timed by Hollywood professionals type stuff.

1:02:20SPEAKERLike I saw that and I was like,

1:02:22SPEAKERoh man, are they making monitors?

1:02:23SPEAKERAre they just making a giant TV monitor without smart shit?

1:02:26SPEAKERAnd it's just, hey, here's the best picture you can get

1:02:28SPEAKERand nothing else and that's absolutely not

1:02:30SPEAKERwhat they did, sadly.

1:02:31SPEAKER- The one thing I will say,

1:02:33SPEAKERand I did a little bit of reading about this.

1:02:36SPEAKERThere's a, this is like a regular thread

1:02:38SPEAKERon the home theater subreddit and also buy it for life,

1:02:42SPEAKERwhich is one of my new favorite subreddits.

1:02:44SPEAKER- Oh, I like the sound of that.

1:02:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's, they talk about boots a lot

1:02:50SPEAKERand the Terry Pratchett boots theory.

1:02:53SPEAKER- The default image in this, when I pulled up the subreddit

1:02:56SPEAKERis a picture of a hand holding a shoe.

1:02:58SPEAKER- Yeah, their point is the common thread seems to be,

1:03:05SPEAKERif you buy really, really cheap,

1:03:08SPEAKERlike TVs that seem too cheap to be real,

1:03:12SPEAKERthey're going to do things that push you to connect them

1:03:14SPEAKERbecause they're making their money on stuff,

1:03:18SPEAKERthe ads that are pushed to you

1:03:19SPEAKERand data that's collected post-sale, right?

1:03:22SPEAKERSo they need you to keep those devices connected

1:03:24SPEAKERand as a result, they're going to be janky

1:03:26SPEAKERand weird when you're not connected.

1:03:28SPEAKERIf you buy a more expensive TV

1:03:30SPEAKERand the things that are cited are like the Samsung

1:03:32SPEAKERand LG OLEDs and stuff like that,

1:03:34SPEAKERyou get a better experience generally

1:03:36SPEAKERif you leave them unconnected.

1:03:38SPEAKERSo you get what you pay for, I guess.

1:03:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I should say really quick,

1:03:41SPEAKERI should offer an addendum here

1:03:43SPEAKERand I have not looked into this world much at all.

1:03:45SPEAKERI'm just kind of barely aware of it,

1:03:46SPEAKERbut there is plenty of activity

1:03:48SPEAKERand like an open source TV watching software and stuff,

1:03:52SPEAKERbut it's around boxes, not TV.

1:03:53SPEAKERSo it's around like there are a bunch of little,

1:03:55SPEAKERI forget any, again, I don't know a lot about this world.

1:03:58SPEAKERI forget the brands that I've seen,

1:03:59SPEAKERbut there are a bunch of sort of like Apple TV style

1:04:03SPEAKERlittle boxes that are marketed as like, hey, this is open.

1:04:06SPEAKERYou can just put Android on it.

1:04:07SPEAKERYou can put like whatever Linux-y stuff on here

1:04:10SPEAKERto watch TV with.

1:04:11SPEAKERSo like you can get that kind of thing,

1:04:13SPEAKERbut you do need a box for it.

1:04:15SPEAKER- I want to say, I want to say I think it's craft computing,

1:04:18SPEAKERJeff over at craft computing, but maybe it's not.

1:04:21SPEAKERI saw a video of an open source,

1:04:24SPEAKERlike, hey, here's this, here's a,

1:04:28SPEAKERI can't find the video on craft computing's channel,

1:04:30SPEAKERbut it's like a little set top box

1:04:33SPEAKERthat you can use to watch TV

1:04:35SPEAKERin a completely open infrastructure

1:04:38SPEAKERwith what looked like a really nice UI

1:04:40SPEAKERand the whole thing, so yeah.

1:04:42SPEAKER- That's cool.

1:04:43SPEAKERAlthough I will say when I looked briefly at those boxes,

1:04:46SPEAKERlike the good ones that did all the HDR you want

1:04:48SPEAKERand everything and had all the codec support

1:04:49SPEAKERwere close enough in price to an Apple TV

1:04:51SPEAKERthat I was like, I'd probably,

1:04:54SPEAKERlook, just get an Apple TV.

1:04:55SPEAKER- There's a, what's your time worth?

1:04:58SPEAKERAnd everything doesn't have to be a hobby, right?

1:05:03SPEAKERYou can have some things that are just like,

1:05:04SPEAKERhey, I just want to sit down and not think about this

1:05:06SPEAKERand watch the baseball game.

1:05:08SPEAKER- And as long as an Apple TV,

1:05:09SPEAKERI mean, they seem like they are flexible enough

1:05:11SPEAKERabout what they will allow on the app store these days

1:05:14SPEAKERthat you can probably do most everything you would need

1:05:17SPEAKERwith one of those.

1:05:18SPEAKER- There's Plex and Jellyfin clients

1:05:19SPEAKERand like streaming game stuff and it's all fine.

1:05:22SPEAKERThere is a, I'm trying to think the name of it.

1:05:25SPEAKERIt starts with an I, there is a video playback app

1:05:27SPEAKERthat people swear by on iOS now.

1:05:31SPEAKER- Look, they have-

1:05:32SPEAKER- I cannot remember the name of it.

1:05:33SPEAKER- I haven't used them, but they have the things

1:05:35SPEAKERthat will do like a Plex library pulled straight

1:05:37SPEAKERfrom BitTorrent or Usenet or whatever.

1:05:40SPEAKERAnd it's all in the app store.

1:05:42SPEAKERApple doesn't give a shit anymore.

1:05:43SPEAKER- Yeah, somebody will post it in the Discord.

1:05:47SPEAKERI am positive, I just cannot remember the name of that app.

1:05:49SPEAKERPeople seem to really like it.

1:05:50SPEAKER- Okay, that was a perfect segue.

1:05:53SPEAKERLet's do a couple more questions real quick here,

1:05:55SPEAKERbut here's a perfect segue into this email

1:05:57SPEAKERthat I had wanted to read from Zylo.

1:06:00SPEAKERYou ever feel like you give yourself too much

1:06:01SPEAKERcognitive load from your hobbies?

1:06:04SPEAKERI've always been a gamer, but I also really enjoy movies,

1:06:06SPEAKERTV, learning programming.

1:06:08SPEAKERAnd meanwhile, I still have to keep up with being a dad,

1:06:10SPEAKERhusband, brother, podcast enjoyer, family tech support

1:06:14SPEAKERand so on, not to even mention the things I'd like to do

1:06:17SPEAKERlike reading and cooking.

1:06:19SPEAKERThere's not enough time in the day even for a min-maxer

1:06:21SPEAKERand even less when so much of it carries mental weight.

1:06:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:06:26SPEAKER- I am asking myself this question constantly.

1:06:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I tend to, I try to delineate things

1:06:33SPEAKERthat are things I want to think about a lot

1:06:36SPEAKERand things that I don't want to think about a lot.

1:06:38SPEAKERLike, I mean, I feel like we talk about this a lot, right?

1:06:40SPEAKERLike I bought a Synology instead of rolling my own NAS

1:06:44SPEAKERlast time around 'cause I was just like,

1:06:45SPEAKERI just want this to work

1:06:46SPEAKERand not have to think about it too much.

1:06:48SPEAKERAnd I have been increasingly thrilled with that choice.

1:06:53SPEAKER- Fair, that's fair.

1:06:54SPEAKER- But like there's some stuff like the learning programming

1:06:58SPEAKERI've really been enjoying

1:06:59SPEAKERand it's like really positive mental,

1:07:01SPEAKERlike it's mental load that's fun and enjoyable to me.

1:07:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that's gotta be the key.

1:07:04SPEAKERLike that's why I did roll my own and run a big server

1:07:07SPEAKERand just put bare Linux on it

1:07:09SPEAKERand don't have any web GUIs or anything like that.

1:07:10SPEAKERLike I enjoy learning the internals of stuff

1:07:13SPEAKERand how to administrate it myself.

1:07:14SPEAKERLike if it's not fun, if you're not enjoying

1:07:17SPEAKERthe work part of the hobby,

1:07:19SPEAKERthen you absolutely shouldn't be doing it.

1:07:21SPEAKER- I was talking to a friend about,

1:07:23SPEAKERwho has a kid younger than mine, about navigating Roblox.

1:07:27SPEAKER'Cause Roblox, like A, when they asked me,

1:07:31SPEAKERhey, should I let my kid get on Roblox

1:07:33SPEAKERsince they're like seven or eight

1:07:34SPEAKERand all their friends are there?

1:07:35SPEAKERI said, no, under no circumstances

1:07:36SPEAKERlet your child be on Roblox.

1:07:38SPEAKERWe talked about why and how it's predatory and yada yada.

1:07:42SPEAKERAnd if I knew what I knew now,

1:07:43SPEAKERI would have just bought my kids friends switches

1:07:45SPEAKERso that they could play Animal Crossing together

1:07:48SPEAKEReven if the parents didn't want to buy a switch.

1:07:51SPEAKERBut the upshot was,

1:07:55SPEAKERthe good thing about my daughter being on Roblox

1:07:57SPEAKERis that we had the conversation about games,

1:08:00SPEAKERlike the things that you do for fun

1:08:02SPEAKERshould make you feel good, right?

1:08:04SPEAKERSo like when she was playing games on Roblox

1:08:07SPEAKERshe would come back angry and upset

1:08:08SPEAKERand it's because of predatory monetization

1:08:11SPEAKERand like bad gambling for children and stuff like that.

1:08:14SPEAKERAnd I was like, does playing this game make you feel good?

1:08:16SPEAKERAnd she was like, no, I feel terrible right now.

1:08:18SPEAKERI was like, yeah, then that's not a game.

1:08:20SPEAKERYou should not do that.

1:08:21SPEAKERAnd the same thing applies to hobbies, right?

1:08:23SPEAKERIf your hobby isn't fun, then get another hobby.

1:08:26SPEAKERYou should go do something else

1:08:27SPEAKERand if you're doing tech support at work all day

1:08:30SPEAKERand then you come home and you do tech support at home

1:08:32SPEAKERall day, that doesn't sound fun to me

1:08:33SPEAKERunless you just really love doing tech support,

1:08:35SPEAKERbut just like, that's fine.

1:08:36SPEAKERI'm not gonna kink shame anybody.

1:08:38SPEAKER- Now where that breaks down though

1:08:39SPEAKERis when you do want to do the thing

1:08:41SPEAKERand you do think it's fun,

1:08:42SPEAKERbut you just feel like you don't have the mental capacity

1:08:45SPEAKERto continue doing it, you know what I mean?

1:08:46SPEAKERLike, I don't know if,

1:08:47SPEAKERI'm certainly not some cognitive scientist or whatever,

1:08:49SPEAKERbut like whatever, it feels more to me,

1:08:53SPEAKERmaybe this is, I don't know if this is a symptom

1:08:54SPEAKERof middle age or maybe it's like post COVID thing or what,

1:08:58SPEAKERbut like, I feel like I've got a very finite

1:09:00SPEAKERmental store these days in a way

1:09:03SPEAKERthat maybe I didn't as much when I was younger,

1:09:04SPEAKERbut also my hobbies these days have trended much more toward

1:09:08SPEAKERlike what this person is talking about

1:09:10SPEAKERof like kind of higher cognitive load.

1:09:13SPEAKERLike whether it's like running the server

1:09:16SPEAKERor wanting to learn to write code in various languages

1:09:19SPEAKERor like piano or, you know what I mean?

1:09:20SPEAKERIt's like, it's all like a lot of fairly technical stuff

1:09:23SPEAKERthat you really need to like focus and drill down

1:09:25SPEAKERand concentrate on to learn.

1:09:26SPEAKERAnd like, sometimes when it's like,

1:09:29SPEAKERsometimes when you've got 45 minutes

1:09:30SPEAKERat the end of a long workday,

1:09:31SPEAKERlike you just don't have it, you know,

1:09:33SPEAKERlike you're not gonna do anything productive there.

1:09:37SPEAKERAnd you know.

1:09:38SPEAKER- But I mean, so that's the thing though.

1:09:40SPEAKERIf it's a hobby and it's not something that like

1:09:43SPEAKERis gonna mess up everybody in your family

1:09:44SPEAKERif you don't get it done when you need to,

1:09:46SPEAKERthen you can put that aside and go to dinner

1:09:48SPEAKERand do something that's chill.

1:09:50SPEAKERAnd like, it's when you get in a situation

1:09:53SPEAKERwhere you're like, oh God, I fucked up the DNS for the house

1:09:55SPEAKERand now everybody's internet's down.

1:09:56SPEAKERHow am I gonna fix this?

1:09:57SPEAKER- Oh, I've got a story about that.

1:09:59SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it's always DNS, huh?

1:10:00SPEAKER- It was a high pressure situation actually.

1:10:03SPEAKERWe'll talk about, I think it was just a box on the discord,

1:10:07SPEAKERhad a good suggestion for a follow up to last week's

1:10:09SPEAKERlike aspirational projects episode.

1:10:12SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

1:10:13SPEAKER- Which was a post-mortem review of projects we've done

1:10:16SPEAKERand whether they were worth the hassle or not.

1:10:18SPEAKERAnd like what issues we ran into.

1:10:20SPEAKERAnd I had a fun, high pressure,

1:10:24SPEAKERI've got to get the internet working immediately situation

1:10:26SPEAKERwith the blocky transition recently at a power outage

1:10:29SPEAKERand having a flight I had to pack for

1:10:31SPEAKERand leave for in like 90 minutes.

1:10:33SPEAKER- Oh boy.

1:10:34SPEAKER- It was a fun one.

1:10:34SPEAKER- I love that.

1:10:35SPEAKER- We'll get back to that later.

1:10:36SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

1:10:37SPEAKER- The thing I meant though with the hobbies though

1:10:38SPEAKERis like the tension is when you would like

1:10:40SPEAKERto be able to do those things and you just like are too busy

1:10:43SPEAKERor mentally overwhelmed to like learning to write code,

1:10:47SPEAKERespecially if you're like wanna like tinker

1:10:50SPEAKERwith like amateur game development or something like that

1:10:52SPEAKERis like that is not a light pursuit, you know?

1:10:54SPEAKERIt's like that's something you need to pour a lot of time

1:10:57SPEAKERand mental focus into and like it can be a bummer

1:11:00SPEAKERwhen you wanna do something like that,

1:11:01SPEAKERthat you just kind of had at some point have to go like,

1:11:03SPEAKERyou know what, I just don't have room in my life

1:11:05SPEAKERto like learn this to a really effective degree right now.

1:11:09SPEAKER- Well, and at the same time,

1:11:11SPEAKERyou have to balance your other stuff.

1:11:13SPEAKERLike right now, you know, my daughter just turned 12, right?

1:11:17SPEAKERWhich is shocking to me, but it's brought into sharp relief

1:11:20SPEAKERthat like her time living here with us as a kid

1:11:24SPEAKERis basically like two thirds done at this point.

1:11:27SPEAKERAnd also the time that she's gonna wanna spend with us

1:11:30SPEAKERis gonna decline over the next six years.

1:11:32SPEAKERSo I'm much less likely to embark on some enormous project.

1:11:36SPEAKERAnd when she says, hey, do you wanna play a game

1:11:38SPEAKERor do you want to go on a walk or something?

1:11:39SPEAKERMy answer is yes, you know?

1:11:41SPEAKERAnd so those priorities change.

1:11:43SPEAKERThere'll be time for me to come back and, you know,

1:11:45SPEAKERdo bare metal, some I'll install the Rust version of Linux

1:11:49SPEAKERat some point in the future, I'm sure,

1:11:50SPEAKERbut that'll be it when she's not around as much.

1:11:52SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.

1:11:53SPEAKERSometimes the decision gets made for you.

1:11:55SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:11:56SPEAKER- All right, I'm calling it there.

1:11:58SPEAKER- That's it? - Yep.

1:12:00SPEAKER- That was a lot of questions, man.

1:12:01SPEAKER- It was.

1:12:02SPEAKER- Thanks to everybody who wrote in, we really appreciate it.

1:12:06SPEAKERIt's increasingly difficult to pick the questions

1:12:08SPEAKERevery month and that's because you all are sending in

1:12:10SPEAKERreally good questions, so thanks to everybody.

1:12:13SPEAKER- We might do more of these on the patron episode this month

1:12:16SPEAKER'cause there are a lot of Discord questions here still.

1:12:18SPEAKER- It's like 80% bangers, I'm gonna say.

1:12:22SPEAKER- Yes, and like I had planned to go on there

1:12:25SPEAKERand talk about all these power outages

1:12:26SPEAKERwe've been having around here lately

1:12:27SPEAKERand how that's jacked up things around here,

1:12:30SPEAKERbut maybe I'll save that.

1:12:31SPEAKERThat might be something to save for that post-mortem.

1:12:33SPEAKER- I don't even, yesterday was a complete shit show

1:12:36SPEAKERbecause of power outages down here, it was really bad.

1:12:38SPEAKERAnyway, thanks to everybody who wrote in.

1:12:40SPEAKERIf you have a question, you can send it

1:12:41SPEAKERto techpod@content.town.

1:12:44SPEAKERThat's techpod.content.town.

1:12:49SPEAKERWait, no, it's techpod@content.town.

1:12:51SPEAKER- Yes, that's right. - Did I say that right?

1:12:52SPEAKER- Well, techpod.content.town

1:12:54SPEAKERis where you go to get this podcast.

1:12:55SPEAKER- Yeah, you've already gone there, you know that.

1:12:57SPEAKERYou don't need me to tell you that.

1:12:59SPEAKER- As always, this is a listener-supported show,

1:13:02SPEAKERso without you, the listeners, we would not be here.

1:13:04SPEAKERIf you would like to support us,

1:13:07SPEAKERyou can send five bucks a month to patreon.com/techpod,

1:13:11SPEAKERand we will be eternally grateful,

1:13:14SPEAKERand you will also get access to the Patreon-exclusive episode

1:13:17SPEAKERwhere we answer more often sillier questions.

1:13:22SPEAKERWe sometimes talk about ongoing projects.

1:13:24SPEAKERSometimes we talk about things

1:13:25SPEAKERthat aren't worth a full episode,

1:13:27SPEAKERbut we think they're interesting anyway,

1:13:28SPEAKERand we talk about 'em there.

1:13:31SPEAKERSo you can go, again, to patreon.com/techpod,

1:13:34SPEAKERand you also get access to the Discord,

1:13:36SPEAKERwhich is full of delightful human beings

1:13:38SPEAKERwho are smart and funny and charming

1:13:40SPEAKERand full of good ideas and good questions, it turns out.

1:13:44SPEAKER- True.

1:13:46SPEAKER- As always, this is the last episode of the month,

1:13:48SPEAKERso we're gonna thank both our executive producer

1:13:50SPEAKERto your patrons and our associate producer to your patrons.

1:13:54SPEAKERStarting with the executive producers,

1:13:55SPEAKERthanks to Andrew Slosky, David Allen, gbeast.bunnycrimes.com,

1:14:01SPEAKERJames Kammack, Jason Lee, Jordan Lippitt,

1:14:04SPEAKERPantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer,

1:14:07SPEAKERand Twinkle Twinkie, thank you all so, so much.

1:14:10SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you.

1:14:11SPEAKER- We absolutely do.

1:14:12SPEAKERI need to go to gbeast.bunnycrimes, is it a .com?

1:14:16SPEAKER- Is that gbeast or gbeast?

1:14:18SPEAKER- I always said it, gbeast,

1:14:20SPEAKERbut there was a lot of yeasting as well.

1:14:21SPEAKERThat was a .com, right?

1:14:22SPEAKER- That was a .com.

1:14:24SPEAKER- The Bunnycrimes Cinematic Network is in full effect now.

1:14:27SPEAKER- Oh, okay, all right.

1:14:27SPEAKER- Let's go to Nextlander.

1:14:29SPEAKER- It sure does.

1:14:29SPEAKER- Okay, after that. - Thank you for that.

1:14:31SPEAKER- And then a very special thank you

1:14:33SPEAKERto our associate producer to your patrons,

1:14:35SPEAKERincluding Alejandro Navarro, Andre M. Burke, P.E.,

1:14:39SPEAKERAndrew Dicey Shodice, Joel Dice, sorry, Andrew,