302: The System Tray Is No Man's Land

00:00SPEAKER- Okay, I'm gonna do podcast crossover here, I'm sorry.

00:03SPEAKER- Wait, two weeks running?

00:04SPEAKER- Yeah, but it's different.

00:05SPEAKEROkay, well, first go find Dual Book Diaries

00:07SPEAKERwherever fine podcasts are found.

00:09SPEAKERSecond, yesterday over at PC World,

00:11SPEAKERwe built in that teenage engineering free case,

00:14SPEAKERthe plastic one that they gave away.

00:16SPEAKER- Okay.

00:16SPEAKER- Friend of the show, Norman Chan,

00:18SPEAKERmultiple time guests over here,

00:21SPEAKERmanaged to get an order of one of those.

00:24SPEAKERAnd he was like, I'm not gonna do anything with this.

00:26SPEAKERDo you want it?

00:26SPEAKERAnd I was like, yes, I'll build a mini PC in that thing.

00:29SPEAKER- Did he get the free one or did he get the $9 one?

00:32SPEAKER- Well, there, it's the same line.

00:33SPEAKER- There's a huge difference.

00:34SPEAKER- Wait, what's the difference?

00:36SPEAKER- One of them costs $9.

00:38SPEAKER- Well, see, he said his costs $16 shipped.

00:41SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I'm being facetious, but like I,

00:43SPEAKERwhat they did, if I understood correctly,

00:45SPEAKER'cause I just saw this from the sidelines,

00:46SPEAKERI think they, didn't they kind of like surprise drop this

00:48SPEAKERand say, hey, free PC case,

00:50SPEAKERbut we're only doing X number.

00:52SPEAKERAnd it was a very small number.

00:53SPEAKERBut then shortly after that, they were like,

00:55SPEAKERoh, by the way, we're gonna sell these to their $9.

00:57SPEAKERSo like, I'm just goofing about whether he got in

01:00SPEAKERon that free drop or not.

01:02SPEAKERI mean, it's nine bucks, who cares, but.

01:04SPEAKER- The one that we had had a big giant cardboard thing

01:06SPEAKERon the front that said this is a $9 PC case,

01:09SPEAKERteenage engineering.

01:10SPEAKER- Maybe he actually bought it then.

01:12SPEAKER- But also, so they're the same case.

01:14SPEAKERIt's just like one was like the test run

01:16SPEAKERand one is the real thing that they're actually gonna sell.

01:18SPEAKER- Yes, but the free one was very exclusive.

01:20SPEAKER- Well, we, I think he got the free one, but I'm not sure,

01:22SPEAKER'cause I don't think the paid one is actually shipped yet.

01:24SPEAKERAnyway. - Oh, maybe not, okay.

01:25SPEAKER- I built in it yesterday.

01:27SPEAKERI built an ITX machine in there

01:29SPEAKERover on the PCWorld's YouTube channel.

01:31SPEAKERYou can watch that, but bearing the lead,

01:33SPEAKER'cause the important thing out of all this

01:36SPEAKERis that we also got a little taste

01:38SPEAKERof Selena Gomez in that stream.

01:40SPEAKER- Whoa. - Yeah.

01:41SPEAKER- Wait, hang on. - Yeah, hi.

01:43SPEAKERHello. - I don't know,

01:44SPEAKERI don't know how much further we can go down this road

01:46SPEAKERof phrasing it that way before this shit gets weird.

01:49SPEAKER- Look, all I'm saying is I went to Target.

01:52SPEAKER- Okay. - 'Cause that's their,

01:54SPEAKERit's an exclusive partner.

01:55SPEAKERI'm not shopping at Target on the reg right now,

01:57SPEAKERbut we went to Target and they're the exclusive partner

02:01SPEAKERfor Selena Gomez flavored Oreos.

02:04SPEAKER- Sure, yes. - Which are normal Oreos

02:06SPEAKERwith also a cinnamon cream

02:08SPEAKERadded to the normal interior goo.

02:11SPEAKER- So just plain old chocolate wafers as usual?

02:14SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I mean, they have a cinnamon essence

02:15SPEAKERjust 'cause they've been next to the,

02:17SPEAKERlike, they're quite good. - It infuses.

02:19SPEAKER- Is what I'm gonna say, yeah.

02:20SPEAKER- Okay, all right, you know, I could see,

02:22SPEAKERI could see Oreo with a tinge of cinnamon beyond,

02:25SPEAKERlike chocolate and cinnamon not normally a thing,

02:26SPEAKERI think, of going together, but that sounds okay.

02:28SPEAKER- I like a little pinch of cinnamon

02:30SPEAKERin my hot chocolate sometimes.

02:31SPEAKER- Okay, sure. - You know?

02:32SPEAKER- Yeah. - Or a cinnamon,

02:33SPEAKERa cinnamon, like a spice cake, a chocolate spice cake

02:35SPEAKERwill have some cinnamon and nutmeg in there.

02:37SPEAKER- Okay. - But yeah, I will say,

02:40SPEAKERapparently we missed, I missed the other,

02:42SPEAKERthis is the second celebrity Oreo crossover

02:45SPEAKERthey've done as far as I know.

02:46SPEAKER- Oh, who was the first?

02:47SPEAKER- So they had Post Malone flavored Oreos earlier this year.

02:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I missed those, but they were salted caramel

02:52SPEAKERand also reported to be quite good.

02:55SPEAKER- That sounds pretty good.

02:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I like a salted caramel,

02:57SPEAKERbut the Selena Gomez ones are delish, I'm a big fan.

03:00SPEAKERI assume my understanding,

03:02SPEAKERthe Post Malone ones had artificially flavored,

03:05SPEAKERthese did not, so I assume that these have like actual,

03:09SPEAKERlike there's, she's done something, is all I can tell.

03:12SPEAKER- Real ass cinnamon in there.

03:13SPEAKER- Yeah, or hair clippings or something,

03:15SPEAKERI don't know what the flavor is,

03:16SPEAKERbut yeah, where they're universally lauded,

03:20SPEAKERthe Selena Gomez flavored Oreos.

03:22SPEAKER- Can we get back to talking about PC cases?

03:24SPEAKER- Yeah, so you wanna talk about

03:26SPEAKERthe teenage engineering case?

03:27SPEAKER- Sure.

03:28SPEAKER- It was much better than I expected.

03:30SPEAKER- Is this thing made out of plastic entirely?

03:32SPEAKER- It is plastic, you fold and like,

03:34SPEAKERthere's a couple of places you have to cut,

03:36SPEAKERbut mostly you just fold it up and snap it into place.

03:40SPEAKER- How sturdy are we talking?

03:41SPEAKER- I don't think I can get the motherboard out of it

03:43SPEAKERthat I put in there, 'cause it snaps into place

03:45SPEAKERin a way that I don't think I can get it off

03:47SPEAKERwithout breaking the case.

03:48SPEAKER- Well, hey, for $9, maybe you just break the case.

03:51SPEAKER- I mean, but it's a collectible.

03:54SPEAKER- You could probably order another one.

03:56SPEAKER- Fair.

03:57SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:18SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

04:25SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

04:27SPEAKERI'm Will.

04:27SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

04:28SPEAKER- I ended up bringing that machine home.

04:29SPEAKERI was gonna try to use it as my stream machine just for,

04:33SPEAKERit's a 265K and a 860, i860 motherboard.

04:37SPEAKER- Man, sounds all right.

04:39SPEAKER- It's fine.

04:40SPEAKER- It's an Aero Lake.

04:41SPEAKER- It's Aero Lake, yeah.

04:43SPEAKER- How was Aero Lake doing?

04:44SPEAKER- You know, it's worse than the other guy's CPUs,

04:46SPEAKERbut it's still pretty good.

04:47SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.

04:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I was looking for something.

04:51SPEAKERI've been working on, can I make the stream machine,

04:55SPEAKERlike how small can I make the stream machine?

04:58SPEAKER'Cause right now it's a mid tower

05:00SPEAKERand it's in one of those old NZXT H5-10 maybe cases,

05:05SPEAKERthe small ones.

05:07SPEAKERAnd it's big because it needed to have a full motherboard

05:11SPEAKER'cause I needed a slot for a capture card.

05:13SPEAKER- Right.

05:14SPEAKER- But I've also been testing USB-C,

05:16SPEAKERyou know, high speed capture cards,

05:18SPEAKER10 gigabit capture cards.

05:20SPEAKER- Can I, I'm sorry, can I pause to be pedantic

05:23SPEAKERfor just a moment?

05:24SPEAKER- Yes, hi.

05:25SPEAKER- I don't know that I love this phenomenon

05:27SPEAKERof referring to USB capture devices as capture cards.

05:31SPEAKER- Okay, fair, that's fair.

05:32SPEAKER- Not, I'm actually not trying to be super pedantic,

05:35SPEAKERit's more confusing.

05:36SPEAKERLike when I hear it, my brain kind of short circuits,

05:38SPEAKERI'm like, wait a minute, capture card, but it's USB.

05:41SPEAKEROh, you're just calling it a card.

05:43SPEAKER- Well, so the interesting thing,

05:45SPEAKERso there's, you know, I'm paying attention

05:48SPEAKERto the Linux stuff these days,

05:50SPEAKERand this is a prime place to put like a LTS Linux machine

05:53SPEAKERset up for me, right?

05:54SPEAKER'Cause OBS runs great on Linux.

05:57SPEAKERThe weird thing is PCI Express internal capture cards

06:01SPEAKERreally, really lightly supported on Linux.

06:03SPEAKER- Really, interesting.

06:05SPEAKER- Yeah, like Blackmagic support is there,

06:07SPEAKERbut the consumer stuff that's set up for gamers

06:09SPEAKERthat can do gamer resolutions, like 1440p,

06:13SPEAKERgenerally speaking, not very well supported.

06:15SPEAKER- Really, the Zalgato card that I have

06:17SPEAKERmight not actually work, really?

06:19SPEAKER- The weird thing though,

06:21SPEAKERis that the USB standard includes a video capture spec,

06:25SPEAKERso the external boxes just plug them in and they work.

06:29SPEAKER- Yeah, are you talking about UVC?

06:30SPEAKER- UVC, exactly.

06:31SPEAKER- Was it universal?

06:33SPEAKER- Video connection.

06:35SPEAKER- No, not unlimited vacation club, Google, thank you.

06:38SPEAKER- Man, I wish I had an unlimited vacation club.

06:41SPEAKERUSB video class, I'm sorry, USB video device class.

06:44SPEAKER- Ah, there you go.

06:45SPEAKER- Is what that stands for.

06:46SPEAKER- It's the same as a webcam.

06:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, that's the thing that makes

06:48SPEAKERa lot of USB webcams just work when you plug them in.

06:51SPEAKER- So anyway, USB saves the day there.

06:54SPEAKER- I guess so.

06:55SPEAKERYou know, I've thought about USB capture devices

06:58SPEAKERfor a while now, 'cause I do give up a whole slot

07:00SPEAKERinternally for my capture card.

07:03SPEAKERAnd I've really wondered if it's actually worth doing that

07:05SPEAKERversus just getting a USB one,

07:07SPEAKER'cause they seem to be quite good these days.

07:09SPEAKER- Well, so I'm testing those for,

07:10SPEAKERI'm in the middle of testing those right now for PC world,

07:12SPEAKERI have two or three of them here.

07:13SPEAKER- Okay.

07:14SPEAKER- And doing everything from like testing capture quality,

07:17SPEAKERwhich really hard to compare it turns out,

07:20SPEAKER'cause like, you know, even if you run the same video source

07:22SPEAKERthrough something, the output's different every time

07:25SPEAKERbecause of the way video compression works.

07:26SPEAKER- Sure, like I guess my thought there

07:29SPEAKERhas just been like, you know, you avoid any potential

07:31SPEAKERlike bus contention issues over USB

07:33SPEAKERby having the card straight in the motherboard,

07:36SPEAKERbut how often is that actually going to be a problem

07:38SPEAKERthese days, probably not very.

07:40SPEAKER- Yeah, how much bus contention on USB

07:42SPEAKERdo you have for your 4K camera?

07:44SPEAKER- Depends on how many devices you have plugged in

07:45SPEAKERand also how shitty your USB controller is

07:48SPEAKERas I had experienced on my last PC setup.

07:51SPEAKER- Well, that's the big issue.

07:52SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, so it's that little teenage engineering machine

07:57SPEAKERbecause it's plastic, it's really quiet.

07:59SPEAKERLike even with fans in it and everything,

08:01SPEAKERit's like basically silent.

08:03SPEAKER- Like no vibrations?

08:04SPEAKER- Yeah, no vibrations, only good vibrations.

08:07SPEAKER- Of course.

08:09SPEAKER- You know what else is only good this month?

08:10SPEAKER- What's that?

08:11SPEAKER- Electronic mails.

08:12SPEAKER- Oh, I'd say every month.

08:14SPEAKER- I mean, I guess you could say every month

08:16SPEAKERis electronic mails month here at the tech pod.

08:18SPEAKER- That's for sure, last week of every month.

08:22SPEAKER- Yep, if you have a question for us,

08:24SPEAKERyou can send it to techpod@content.town.

08:26SPEAKERAgain, that's techpod@content.town.

08:28SPEAKERWe have a ripe crop this month.

08:31SPEAKER- That's right, a bumper crop.

08:32SPEAKERWe've said that many times, I got to come up with more.

08:36SPEAKER- I don't know.

08:36SPEAKER- More metaphors for like cornucopia, smorgasbord.

08:42SPEAKER- Metaphors.

08:43SPEAKER- A bounty.

08:44SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

08:45SPEAKER- Probably use that one.

08:47SPEAKER- Metaphors for lots of stuff.

08:49SPEAKER- Ooh, what do you got?

08:51SPEAKER- Accumulation.

08:53SPEAKER- Okay, yeah.

08:54SPEAKER- We have an embarrassment of riches.

08:55SPEAKERWe've done that one before.

08:56SPEAKERWe have a backlog, we have a boatload.

08:58SPEAKERI haven't had a boatload of anything in a while.

09:00SPEAKER- An abundance.

09:02SPEAKER- Did you have Bonanza when you were a kid?

09:04SPEAKER- We have a Bonanza of electronic males.

09:08SPEAKERI think Bonanza was a local chain

09:09SPEAKERin Northeast Tennessee where I grew up.

09:11SPEAKERIt was like Sizzler, it was that kind of situation, yeah.

09:14SPEAKER- Never heard of that at all.

09:15SPEAKERDonkey Kong's favorite restaurant.

09:17SPEAKER- The restaurants were always shaped like a barn.

09:19SPEAKER- Okay, what about inside?

09:22SPEAKER- Looked like a barn.

09:23SPEAKER- Great.

09:24SPEAKER- It was barn themed.

09:25SPEAKERIt turns out you don't have

09:26SPEAKERthat many barn themed restaurants.

09:27SPEAKER- Really, really playing to the audience

09:28SPEAKERin that part of the country.

09:29SPEAKER- Yeah, they're like, look, and it wasn't,

09:32SPEAKERit wasn't like a classy red barn either.

09:33SPEAKERIt was the kind of like, hey,

09:35SPEAKERyou got some hemlock lumber that turned all gray and real.

09:40SPEAKERLooks like if you just brush up against the side

09:42SPEAKERof the outside, you're gonna get splinters.

09:43SPEAKERThat's what Bonanza looked like.

09:45SPEAKERSo anyway, yeah, let's open the email hoard.

09:48SPEAKERLet's see what we got.

09:49SPEAKER- Let's dive in here.

09:49SPEAKERA hoard, yes, we have a hoard of emails.

09:51SPEAKER- Yeah, like dragons sitting upon a pile of gold.

09:54SPEAKER- Now we're talking.

09:55SPEAKER- We roost atop our emails.

09:56SPEAKER- Okay, I like this.

09:57SPEAKERI like the imagery this is evoking.

10:00SPEAKER- Somebody will draw this now and that's,

10:02SPEAKERwe don't need that.

10:03SPEAKER- Okay, first email comes in from Simeon.

10:06SPEAKERThis is a little problem that he has posed here

10:09SPEAKERthat we are putting to the audience

10:10SPEAKERto see if anybody else has experienced this.

10:12SPEAKER- So I've gone back and forth with him on this a lot

10:14SPEAKERand I don't have, I'm out of ideas.

10:16SPEAKER- 'Cause you have not been able to replicate this.

10:18SPEAKER- I can't replicate it locally.

10:19SPEAKERIt's a problem specific to our podcasts.

10:22SPEAKERThis is real inside baseball.

10:23SPEAKER- Is it?

10:24SPEAKER- But I'm curious if anybody else uses the same stack.

10:27SPEAKERAnd yeah.

10:29SPEAKER- I shouldn't say this 'cause A,

10:31SPEAKERI don't wanna incriminate myself

10:32SPEAKERand B, I might actually just be dreaming this up,

10:34SPEAKERbut I almost want to say somebody

10:36SPEAKERon the Nextlander Discord said the same thing.

10:38SPEAKER- About the TechPod or about the Nextlander podcast?

10:40SPEAKER- About the Nextlander podcast, I could be wrong.

10:43SPEAKER- Oh boy.

10:44SPEAKER- I could be wrong, let's find out.

10:45SPEAKER- You and I talked about this already, so,

10:47SPEAKER'cause it came in a while ago.

10:48SPEAKER- Okay, it might've just been this podcast then.

10:50SPEAKER- Okay.

10:51SPEAKER- I should actually read the thing we're talking about.

10:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:53SPEAKER- On the Pocket Casts web player,

10:55SPEAKERthe TechPod only has left channel.

10:58SPEAKERThe other podcasts I listened to aren't affected.

11:00SPEAKER- Yeah, more information.

11:03SPEAKERThey use the Brave browser primarily.

11:07SPEAKERAnd it works right in Firefox, but Brave, it's always left.

11:11SPEAKERAnd they've tested it with multiple headphones,

11:15SPEAKERBluetooth or wired, on the direct link to the laptop

11:19SPEAKERand on a desktop, same problem across the board.

11:23SPEAKER- Okay.

11:24SPEAKER- So, curious if anyone else has experienced this.

11:27SPEAKERPlease write in to techpod@contact.town if you have,

11:30SPEAKER'cause like if we're doing something wrong

11:32SPEAKERwith the audio on the podcast,

11:33SPEAKERI would like very much to know about it.

11:34SPEAKER- I don't see how that's possible.

11:36SPEAKERI mean, I encode a mono MP3 and upload it to simple cast,

11:39SPEAKERand then they take over from there.

11:40SPEAKERDid you say it does work right in Firefox though?

11:44SPEAKER- I'm not, I didn't hear it in Firefox on Windows 11.

11:46SPEAKERI tested it with the Firefox on Windows 11.

11:48SPEAKER- You said for them it works in Firefox, but not Brave.

11:50SPEAKER- They said they've been using Firefox as a workaround,

11:53SPEAKERbut their everyday browser is Brave.

11:55SPEAKER- Okay, I'm gonna say if one browser does it right

11:57SPEAKERand the other does not, the problem.

11:59SPEAKER- The problem exists between browser and chair.

12:02SPEAKER- So all of their other podcasts work fine.

12:04SPEAKERI wonder if, the thing I wondered is if there's a hidden,

12:07SPEAKERlike a setting that used to be active

12:08SPEAKERwhere you could do balance on a per podcast basis,

12:11SPEAKERand then they turned it off on the web version

12:13SPEAKERof Pocket Casts or something.

12:14SPEAKERSo there's like a lingering cookie maybe.

12:16SPEAKERAnyway.

12:17SPEAKER- Okay, I don't think it would have anything to do

12:19SPEAKERwith our file though.

12:21SPEAKER- Yeah, no, of course, but I'm always,

12:23SPEAKERI'm always a little paranoid about that just in general,

12:25SPEAKER'cause like the famous example of the podcast

12:28SPEAKERthat crashed head units in, I think Honda's or something,

12:32SPEAKER99 PI did an episode about it years ago.

12:34SPEAKER- Was it Mazda?

12:35SPEAKER- Mazdas, yeah.

12:37SPEAKER- Yeah, so it was like one character

12:40SPEAKERthat the Cars Entertainment Center

12:42SPEAKERdidn't know how to deal with in the, yeah.

12:43SPEAKER- And it just would hang the whole head unit

12:45SPEAKERevery time you tried to play that podcast.

12:46SPEAKERAnyway.

12:47SPEAKER- Computers.

12:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

12:49SPEAKER- I'll read the rest of Simeon's email here just to.

12:52SPEAKERAlso, Will is right about letting smart TVs

12:54SPEAKERonto the internet.

12:55SPEAKERI use a Chromecast with my Hisense model,

12:57SPEAKERwhich is common here in the UK.

12:59SPEAKERI updated the firmware and the whole system is now fucked.

13:01SPEAKERCEC basically doesn't work anymore.

13:04SPEAKERAnd now there is a stupid art mode,

13:05SPEAKERwhich cannot be turned off.

13:06SPEAKERI'm annoyed about it.

13:08SPEAKER- Yeah, for folks who don't remember,

13:11SPEAKERget your TV working, update it when you get it,

13:13SPEAKERmake it all work.

13:14SPEAKERAnd then the moment it works,

13:16SPEAKERcut it off from the internet forever.

13:18SPEAKER- So my Hisense, which I'm actually coming up on,

13:21SPEAKERI think two weeks from now will be two years

13:23SPEAKERsince I got it, roughly.

13:26SPEAKERRecently in the last, say three to four or five months

13:29SPEAKERhas developed an issue where occasionally

13:31SPEAKERthe sound will just stop.

13:33SPEAKER- Whoa.

13:34SPEAKER- And I have to reboot the TV to get sound back.

13:36SPEAKER- That's wild.

13:37SPEAKER- So yeah, updating smart TVs, I don't know.

13:40SPEAKERI don't know.

13:41SPEAKERI might, I'm seriously thinking about,

13:44SPEAKERI happened to look at the MacRumors Buyer's Guide

13:46SPEAKERthe other day as I sometimes do.

13:48SPEAKER- That's a mistake.

13:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I do.

13:50SPEAKERI'm due for a refresh on practically all of my Apple stuff

13:53SPEAKERshort of like maybe laptop.

13:55SPEAKER- We got a phone a couple of years ago, right?

13:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I've got the third gen SE.

14:00SPEAKER- I see, yeah.

14:01SPEAKER- So, but I heard that notch is all the rage these days.

14:04SPEAKERI might have to see what that's about.

14:05SPEAKER- Kids love a notch.

14:06SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean like my iPad is like basically

14:09SPEAKERunsupported at this point, et cetera, et cetera.

14:10SPEAKERAnyway, apparently an Apple TV hardware refreshes

14:14SPEAKERis reportedly imminent.

14:17SPEAKERAnd I might thinking about maybe grabbing an Apple TV

14:19SPEAKERwhen they put out a new one.

14:21SPEAKER- It's funny, the one that's hooked up to the bedroom TV

14:23SPEAKERis a original 1080p model.

14:25SPEAKERAnd it's, I think an A4 processor.

14:28SPEAKER- Oh, that's pretty old.

14:29SPEAKER- Feel a little pokey these days.

14:31SPEAKERAnd I was looking at swapping out,

14:32SPEAKERbut I'm gonna hold off and see.

14:34SPEAKER- Sounds like maybe later this year, they think.

14:36SPEAKER- Makes sense.

14:37SPEAKER- Anyway, I'm just thinking about getting the Apple TV

14:40SPEAKERand then just never thinking about the capabilities

14:41SPEAKERof that TV again.

14:42SPEAKER- It's incredibly freeing.

14:45SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

14:46SPEAKERAnd all I have to do is give up one HDMI port.

14:49SPEAKERAll right, here's a good email I thought from Beach Rave

14:53SPEAKERfor the person trying to teach a computer class.

14:55SPEAKERI suggest using old computers.

14:57SPEAKERThey can be obtained for cheap or free,

14:59SPEAKERcan still do useful things.

15:01SPEAKERAnd the kids can bang on them

15:02SPEAKERwithout destroying expensive equipment.

15:04SPEAKERLearning how to install and use Linux

15:06SPEAKERwas a formative experience for me.

15:07SPEAKERAnd it teaches a lot of fundamentals

15:09SPEAKERfor anything beyond using an iPad.

15:11SPEAKERI think I might add to that that like using older hardware

15:14SPEAKERmight force you to, this thought is not fully formed.

15:18SPEAKERLike you have to go kind of minimal on older hardware.

15:21SPEAKERYou would have to put like a pretty minimal,

15:23SPEAKERlike say Linux distro or other operating system on there,

15:26SPEAKERwhich might be a good way to teach some basics.

15:30SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

15:30SPEAKER- You're not gonna put like a full Windows 11 install

15:32SPEAKERon a much older computer, for example.

15:35SPEAKERLike it might be a good way to kind of teach

15:37SPEAKERfrom the ground up to have to-

15:38SPEAKER- I can see that.

15:39SPEAKER- Go a little more minimal on old hardware to start.

15:42SPEAKER- Well, and if you're doing other kinds

15:44SPEAKERof like computer learning, you could do,

15:48SPEAKERlike you could put something like Chrome OS Flex or something

15:51SPEAKERon it to do like web-based scratch or whatever coding.

15:54SPEAKERAnd then you're good to go.

15:56SPEAKER- That's the kind of thing I was thinking.

15:57SPEAKERI thought that was a cool idea.

15:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a neat idea.

16:00SPEAKER- All right, Asman from Norway.

16:03SPEAKERI was lucky and got my hands on a 28 inch CRT

16:05SPEAKERthat was about to be thrown out.

16:07SPEAKER- Oh my God.

16:08SPEAKER- It has RCA composite, S-video, RF and SCART

16:11SPEAKERand two big front pointing speakers.

16:13SPEAKERYou did get lucky.

16:15SPEAKERThat's like all of them.

16:17SPEAKER- The SCART, I mean, obviously you're gonna get SCART TVs,

16:21SPEAKERbut that's a banger.

16:23SPEAKER- Short of component, but you don't really need component

16:25SPEAKERand SCART at the same time.

16:27SPEAKERI was wondering about using it with a mister

16:29SPEAKERinstead of using it with the different consoles

16:30SPEAKERI have in storage bins.

16:32SPEAKERGuessing my best option is to get a VGA to SCART cable

16:35SPEAKERor is it better to use RCA or S-video?

16:38SPEAKERWe can just take these questions one at a time.

16:40SPEAKERI guess that comes down to preference.

16:41SPEAKERI don't think I've ever actually seen SCART in person.

16:44SPEAKERSo I can't speak from experience,

16:47SPEAKERbut my immediate gut instinct would be say SCART

16:49SPEAKERbecause back in the day when CRTs were new,

16:51SPEAKERI always wanted the sharpest, cleanest signal

16:53SPEAKERthat the TV would support.

16:55SPEAKERBut I actually, I know even people that are active

16:58SPEAKERis like very active in the retro game space

17:00SPEAKERthat for example, prefer S-video to SCART.

17:02SPEAKERSome people seem to think SCART is a little too clean,

17:05SPEAKERa little too sharp.

17:06SPEAKER- You need a little muddy in there.

17:08SPEAKER- And then of course, I mean, I think these people are crazy

17:10SPEAKERbut there are people who grew up with composite or RCA

17:12SPEAKERand actually prefer that look the best, you know,

17:14SPEAKEReven though it is by far the fuzziest of all of those,

17:17SPEAKERshort of RF, which I don't think anybody should use.

17:19SPEAKER- But I mean, I use RF 'cause my TV only,

17:22SPEAKERone of my CRTs only supports RF.

17:24SPEAKERBut for MR purposes, you can get the analog board

17:29SPEAKERand use the VGA to SCART adapter.

17:33SPEAKERIt's like they're readily available on the MR add-on site.

17:37SPEAKER- Yeah, now it is.

17:38SPEAKERIt's worth knowing you need a specific VGA to SCART cable

17:42SPEAKERto use with the MR.

17:43SPEAKERIt's, I forget what the exact, what the specifics are,

17:46SPEAKERbut it needs a certain resistor in line on the cable

17:49SPEAKERto work right with the specific MR setup.

17:51SPEAKERBut MR add-ons or any of Ultimate MR,

17:53SPEAKERlike any of those MR vendors have the right SCART cable

17:56SPEAKERwith the right resistor.

17:58SPEAKER- So you're in Europe.

18:00SPEAKERSo my guess is you're probably not gonna buy

18:01SPEAKERfrom MR add-ons 'cause they're in North America

18:03SPEAKERand that seems fraught right now.

18:05SPEAKERThe standard spec has a VGA output, I believe, right?

18:09SPEAKERThe MR add-ons new analog card runs everything out

18:13SPEAKERthrough that Saturn mini den 10 pin.

18:17SPEAKER- To summarize, MR add-ons has done kind of his own

18:20SPEAKERupgraded design to the IO board.

18:22SPEAKER- Yeah.

18:23SPEAKER- It requires a different cable,

18:24SPEAKERbut if you're getting like the reference

18:25SPEAKERMR analog IO board design,

18:27SPEAKERI believe that standard VGA to SCART cable should work.

18:31SPEAKERAnyway, I don't own a MR yet,

18:32SPEAKERbut I'm wondering about getting one of the clones,

18:34SPEAKERlike the MR Pi.

18:35SPEAKERI think, I mean, the MR Pi seems perfectly fine.

18:37SPEAKERIf you can get ahold of one, everybody that I have seen

18:39SPEAKERthat has one seems to like it just fine.

18:42SPEAKERThere's another company on AliExpress

18:44SPEAKERthat is also making MR clones

18:46SPEAKERlike independent of the MR Pi outfit.

18:49SPEAKERYou don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do you?

18:50SPEAKER- I stopped paying attention to what's going on

18:53SPEAKERon AliExpress because it's basically unattainable

18:55SPEAKERto those of us in the United States now.

18:57SPEAKER- Oh, right, yes, there is that.

18:58SPEAKERQM Tech, yeah, that's what I thought.

19:00SPEAKERSo QM Tech is the other company that, in fact,

19:02SPEAKERI think came out with clones for the MR

19:05SPEAKERbefore Retro Remake, the MR Pi company did.

19:09SPEAKERSo those are also out there.

19:10SPEAKERI, as far as I know, all the clones are just fine.

19:13SPEAKER- Okay.

19:14SPEAKER- But I can't say for sure.

19:15SPEAKERLastly, do you know if I could use

19:16SPEAKERa PlayStation snack adapter to get light guns

19:19SPEAKERto work with the CRT on the MR?

19:20SPEAKERThe gun connects by the yellow RCA cable,

19:23SPEAKERso I can't use SCART, I guess, if I want to use a light gun.

19:26SPEAKERThat is way outside of my wheelhouse.

19:28SPEAKERI looked around a little bit on Reddit,

19:30SPEAKERsee what I could find.

19:31SPEAKERHere's a random person who says,

19:33SPEAKER"I use a GunCon1 with a PlayStation snack adapter

19:36SPEAKER"and a YC active encoder to hook the MR up to a CRTV."

19:40SPEAKERThat's all you need, so.

19:41SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

19:42SPEAKER- I would say more research required there,

19:44SPEAKERbut I believe it looks like tentatively you can use,

19:47SPEAKERsnack is the thing on the MR

19:49SPEAKERthat lets you use original controllers,

19:50SPEAKERlike plug in your actual controllers straight into the thing.

19:54SPEAKER- Yeah, but my understanding is that you can't use a zapper

19:56SPEAKERwith the MR on the snack.

19:58SPEAKER- Wait, you mean like the NES zapper?

20:01SPEAKER- Yeah, the NES, you can't use like an NES zapper

20:03SPEAKERwith a snack.

20:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that may be true.

20:05SPEAKERIt sounds like what he's talking about

20:07SPEAKERfor PlayStation light guns that would work though.

20:09SPEAKERAnyway, it sounds like everything

20:10SPEAKERhe's talking about is possible.

20:12SPEAKERAll right, next email, Tom from New Jersey.

20:15SPEAKER"I've heard you discuss your ripped Blu-ray collections.

20:17SPEAKER"I used to maintain a collection myself,

20:18SPEAKER"but fell off for some time.

20:20SPEAKER"At the time I used Handbrake and AnyDVD and was content.

20:24SPEAKER"After a clean install of Windows,

20:25SPEAKER"I realized I can no longer install and use AnyDVD,

20:27SPEAKER"which has made Handbrake ineffective.

20:30SPEAKER"What is your process for backing up your Blu-ray collection?"

20:32SPEAKER- So I don't do a ton of backing up anymore.

20:36SPEAKERI don't know where you're at.

20:37SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

20:39SPEAKERUnfortunately, at this point,

20:40SPEAKERmy process is that I don't have a process.

20:42SPEAKERI have to tell you, getting a 4K TV

20:45SPEAKERkind of made it feel pointless to rip Blu-rays because--

20:49SPEAKER- Just all streaming services all the time?

20:51SPEAKER- Well, it's, I mean, 1080p looks just fine on a 4K TV.

20:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, I can't really tell.

20:57SPEAKERBut well, look, it's less the 4K and more the HDR, honestly.

21:02SPEAKER- HDR is nice.

21:03SPEAKER- HDR is a way bigger perceptual difference than 4K.

21:06SPEAKERI mean, you can definitely tell the difference

21:07SPEAKERon a really nice 4K transfer,

21:09SPEAKERbut it's feeling like the 1080p rips are suddenly obsolete.

21:13SPEAKERAnd then also 4K discs are,

21:15SPEAKERI don't want to own more 4K discs

21:17SPEAKERand those files are gigantic.

21:19SPEAKERLike I kind of just don't want to deal with it anymore.

21:22SPEAKER- They are really, really large.

21:24SPEAKER- Yes, so I've fallen off hard

21:26SPEAKERfrom ripping discs in general

21:27SPEAKERand just have kind of been thinking about,

21:30SPEAKERI don't know, I'm not sure.

21:32SPEAKER- Look at all those hard drives in your Plex server

21:33SPEAKERand thinking, you know, what if I didn't?

21:36SPEAKER- I've kind of been thinking like,

21:37SPEAKERmaybe I bought too many hard drives to be perfectly frank.

21:39SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

21:41SPEAKER- But I know, right?

21:42SPEAKERBut I was using MakeMKV and I believe you were as well

21:45SPEAKERback when I was doing a lot of ripping.

21:46SPEAKERI think that's like the defacto standard

21:48SPEAKERfor ripping discs these days.

21:50SPEAKER- Yeah, so any DVD had,

21:53SPEAKERthey realized that they had a finite number of users

21:56SPEAKERand did some janky, some unfortunate,

21:59SPEAKERlike basically sunsetting

22:02SPEAKERof what should have been lifetime licenses

22:05SPEAKERabout 10 years ago now, 10 or 13 years ago.

22:08SPEAKERAnd then they did it again.

22:12SPEAKER- Okay.

22:13SPEAKER- MakeMKV is a single,

22:15SPEAKERI think it's a single person that makes that.

22:16SPEAKERIt's a really, really phenomenal tool

22:20SPEAKERthat basically you load up a disc

22:21SPEAKERand it gives you the entire structure of the disc

22:23SPEAKERand lets you can pull out just the audio

22:25SPEAKERand video streams that you want.

22:27SPEAKER- Yep.

22:27SPEAKER- And then it dumps them all into an MKV file

22:29SPEAKERthat you can then feed into Handbrake to recompress,

22:31SPEAKERor you can just leave them in an uncompressed MKV

22:35SPEAKERand chuck them on your NAS if you want.

22:37SPEAKER- Yep.

22:38SPEAKER- Now, MakeMKV had some problems too,

22:40SPEAKER'cause Mike, the guy that MakeMKV sometimes disappears

22:44SPEAKERfor weeks or months at a time.

22:46SPEAKER- Interesting, so I haven't used it in a few months,

22:48SPEAKERbut it's got this interesting thing

22:49SPEAKERwhere it's technically still in beta.

22:51SPEAKERLike you can give him money for it,

22:52SPEAKERbut it's in perpetual beta.

22:54SPEAKERIt's been in beta for years and years.

22:56SPEAKERAnd on the forums, there is a pinned post that says,

22:59SPEAKER"MakeMKV is free while in beta."

23:01SPEAKERAnd every two months, the current beta expires

23:04SPEAKERand you have to go on that forum post and grab another key

23:07SPEAKERand put it in the client,

23:08SPEAKER'cause it won't run every two months.

23:10SPEAKERIt basically says like, "This copy has expired

23:11SPEAKERand put a new beta key in."

23:13SPEAKERMaybe, I think I might see where this is going.

23:15SPEAKERThere have been times where for like a day or two,

23:17SPEAKERhe hadn't posted the new beta key on the forums.

23:20SPEAKERAnd so nobody can use it for a couple of days.

23:23SPEAKER- So, and the benefit of paying is that if you pay,

23:25SPEAKERthen you get a key that's good forever.

23:27SPEAKER- Yes.

23:28SPEAKER- The, now, so he didn't post the new beta key

23:31SPEAKERand also the store ran out of forever keys.

23:34SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.

23:35SPEAKER- So people kind of panicked for a minute.

23:37SPEAKER- Okay.

23:37SPEAKER- But then he showed back up again

23:38SPEAKERand posted a new beta key

23:39SPEAKERthat's good through the end of September.

23:40SPEAKERSo we're back on the normal schedule.

23:42SPEAKEREverything seems to be cool with MakeMKV again.

23:45SPEAKER- That is like, that's a real XKCD,

23:48SPEAKERlike load-bearing Jenga tower block situation

23:51SPEAKERof a whole lot of people rely very heavily

23:53SPEAKERon that software at this point.

23:55SPEAKER- So there was a big giant thread

23:56SPEAKERin the MakeMKV subreddit that I found that was like,

23:59SPEAKER"Hey, what are you guys using instead of MakeMKV?"

24:01SPEAKERAnd there were a bunch of people in there,

24:04SPEAKERbut it is like, it almost feels like we've gotten

24:07SPEAKERto the point where the tools to do the ripping,

24:12SPEAKERit's such a pain in the butt to rip 4K discs at this point,

24:15SPEAKER'cause you have to have specific drives

24:17SPEAKERwith the right firmwares and there's a whole black market

24:20SPEAKERin people selling the right firmware on the right drives

24:23SPEAKERand optical drives are getting kind of hard to find now too

24:26SPEAKERon just like in general, like not,

24:28SPEAKERthey're not like CRT level

24:30SPEAKERwhere they're not making them or anything anymore,

24:31SPEAKERbut like the number of drives that you can rip discs with

24:34SPEAKERis relatively low and none of them are shipping

24:37SPEAKERwith the right firmwares on them anymore,

24:39SPEAKERor it's not guaranteed that you're gonna get

24:41SPEAKERthe right firmware on the right drive anymore.

24:44SPEAKERSo you have to do some shenanigans

24:46SPEAKERwhere you can make them work

24:47SPEAKERand people are selling those drives.

24:49SPEAKER- Sure enough, I'm looking on Amazon,

24:51SPEAKERthe, oh my God, you're right.

24:53SPEAKER- There were never a ton of 4K Blu-ray drives

24:55SPEAKERfor PCs anyway in the first place.

24:58SPEAKER- The internal LG BD-ROM that I have,

25:00SPEAKERor actually it's writable, yeah, it is a rewritable.

25:05SPEAKERNo longer available,

25:07SPEAKERnor is the slightly more expensive upgraded model.

25:09SPEAKERI mean, it was like 50 bucks when I bought it in 2018,

25:11SPEAKERaccording to this Amazon page.

25:13SPEAKERIt's now a third-party seller only for $155

25:16SPEAKERand the other model is unavailable.

25:18SPEAKER- Well, the Blu-rays weren't that hard,

25:20SPEAKERbut the 4K Blu-rays were challenging always.

25:23SPEAKERSo anyway, so it's getting to a point

25:26SPEAKERwhere it's kind of hard to do.

25:29SPEAKERAnd like, I actually think that the people who are,

25:33SPEAKERwell, A, the pirates are just stripping DRM

25:38SPEAKERfrom the download services files or analog hole,

25:41SPEAKERlike running them through non-HTCP monitors

25:45SPEAKERand capturing the feeds directly out of the playback video

25:47SPEAKERor something like that.

25:48SPEAKERI don't know exactly how they're doing that.

25:49SPEAKERSo it's, again, the situation where the people

25:52SPEAKERwho buy the disks are gonna get screwed

25:54SPEAKERand it's not gonna impact the pirates at all.

25:56SPEAKERSo great, good job, everyone.

25:59SPEAKER- So I did that firmware flash you were talking about

26:01SPEAKERwhen I bought that $50 drive a few years ago.

26:04SPEAKERAnd those drives like this,

26:05SPEAKERit's mine was an LG WH-14NS40.

26:11SPEAKERAnd so those basic Blu-ray drives

26:13SPEAKERactually could be upgraded by firmware to read 4K disks.

26:16SPEAKERSo it was only like 50 bucks

26:17SPEAKERand like a little bit of your time to do the firmware flash

26:19SPEAKERto get a 4K reader.

26:22SPEAKERBut now that those drives are unavailable,

26:24SPEAKERsuddenly that, yes, that has actually,

26:25SPEAKERI'm shocked to see that,

26:26SPEAKERthat has become substantially more complicated

26:29SPEAKERnow that these are not so easy to find

26:31SPEAKERand have gotten way more expensive.

26:32SPEAKER- Well, when you locked down the case aisle at Micro Center

26:34SPEAKERand there's only three cases

26:35SPEAKERthat have five and a quarter inch external drive bays,

26:38SPEAKERyou understand why there's not so many optical drives

26:40SPEAKERfor sale anymore.

26:41SPEAKER- Yeah, and I now I kind of wish I had bought a backup.

26:45SPEAKER- I have three in my garage.

26:46SPEAKERSo let me know if you need one, we're good.

26:48SPEAKER- Sounds good.

26:49SPEAKERAll right, Brian from near Seattle.

26:53SPEAKERMy biggest memory of Windows 95 is me in the dorms.

26:56SPEAKERI was starting my sophomore year

26:57SPEAKERat the University of Illinois,

26:59SPEAKERthe birthplace of NCSA Mosaic.

27:02SPEAKERI was a student net tech.

27:04SPEAKERMy job was going to other students' dorm rooms

27:06SPEAKERand getting them connected to ethernet and the internet.

27:09SPEAKERThe previous year, helping people do it via Windows 3.1

27:12SPEAKERand Trumpet/Windsock or Windows for Workgroups 311

27:16SPEAKERwith TCP/IP often had challenges.

27:18SPEAKERWait, I have to stop this email for a second.

27:20SPEAKERDid Windows for Workgroups 311 ship with TCP/IP?

27:22SPEAKER- It had TCP/IP, but you didn't have a dialer.

27:25SPEAKERLike you couldn't slip, you couldn't do the,

27:28SPEAKERyou needed other software to get the terminal sign

27:31SPEAKERand the hyperterm or something.

27:32SPEAKER- So it actually connects to something.

27:35SPEAKERWild, I did not know that.

27:37SPEAKERWhen Windows 95 came out, it made TCP/IP way easier.

27:40SPEAKERI helped countless people get online.

27:43SPEAKEROddly, I almost never saw a Windows 95 box or official CD.

27:47SPEAKEREveryone just somehow got it installed.

27:50SPEAKERThat thankfully wasn't my concern.

27:53SPEAKER- Did we talk about the past key just being 1111111?

27:58SPEAKER- Yeah, we came to discover that.

27:59SPEAKERI don't know if that has to be an official thing

28:01SPEAKER'cause I think these were like official legit ISOs

28:03SPEAKERwe were downloading to use an 86 box, but like-

28:06SPEAKER- Or maybe somebody hacked the ISO.

28:07SPEAKER- I mean, it's possible, but the thing I read that off of

28:11SPEAKERsaid you can just use 1111111 to install Windows 95

28:15SPEAKERor plus like all Windows 95 products

28:17SPEAKERor however it was phrased.

28:18SPEAKERLike they kind of implied that anybody could just do that.

28:22SPEAKERI don't know, I was a little confused, but anyway.

28:25SPEAKER- That's cool.

28:26SPEAKERThe people who did that at University of Tennessee,

28:29SPEAKERwe didn't have wired dorms while I was there,

28:32SPEAKERbut the kids who did that after they wired the dorms

28:35SPEAKERwere literally the, like they did really,

28:40SPEAKERthey were very kind people

28:42SPEAKER'cause that seemed like a horrible job

28:44SPEAKERto go door to door in the dorms and hook people's stuff up.

28:47SPEAKER- Especially on Windows 3.1.

28:49SPEAKER- I can't imagine doing it on Windows 3.1.

28:52SPEAKER- Sam writes in,

28:54SPEAKER"I recently stumbled onto the concept of cyber decks.

28:58SPEAKERThis is essentially scratch building

28:59SPEAKERand enclosing a portable computer,

29:01SPEAKERusually in a cyberpunk fashion.

29:04SPEAKERJust curious if you guys have ever heard of this,

29:06SPEAKERwhat your thoughts on it are,

29:07SPEAKERand would you want to do something like this yourselves?

29:09SPEAKERI'm just a tad bit curious, but I've never built a PC,

29:12SPEAKERlet alone a faux laptop."

29:14SPEAKERYeah, my understanding of the cyber deck is it's like,

29:18SPEAKERI don't know, imagine like the Henry Rollins character

29:21SPEAKERfrom Johnny Mnemonic, for example.

29:24SPEAKERIt's like what he would- - Imagine.

29:25SPEAKER- It's like, oh, wait, are you saying you are him?

29:28SPEAKER- No, I'm just saying, keep imagining, go on.

29:31SPEAKER- Okay, it's like what he would roll around

29:34SPEAKERwith that hanging off of his belt or something,

29:36SPEAKERor attached to the chain on his belt loop or whatever.

29:39SPEAKERIt's like your little portable cyber hacking terminal

29:43SPEAKERthat you would plug into the local ATM

29:45SPEAKERto hack money out of it, or you know what I mean?

29:47SPEAKERIt's like, I feel like there's a cyber deck subreddit,

29:49SPEAKERyou can go see what these things look like,

29:51SPEAKERbut people are basically just making little mini computers

29:54SPEAKERlook as cool and compact and cyber as possible.

29:57SPEAKER- So this is a concept directly lifted

29:59SPEAKERfrom William Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy.

30:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe that.

30:02SPEAKER- The Ono Sendai decks were the desirable ones,

30:07SPEAKERwhat somebody made as sandbenders, I believe,

30:10SPEAKERwas the one that the hero used, I can't remember.

30:14SPEAKER- I should really read Neuromancer at some point.

30:16SPEAKER- You should really read Neuromancer, but yeah.

30:20SPEAKERSo people build them, like in the old days,

30:23SPEAKERpeople would build these as kind of cosplay props

30:26SPEAKERfor people who wanted to dress up like console cowboys,

30:31SPEAKERI think, is what we called them back in the '80s.

30:33SPEAKER- Sure.

30:34SPEAKER- But now, because SOCs have gotten really small

30:38SPEAKERand you can buy screens and tiny keyboards

30:40SPEAKERand all this stuff, people are building

30:42SPEAKERactual functional computers, either off Raspberry Pis

30:45SPEAKERor other similar SOCs, and making these things

30:50SPEAKERfunctional real computers that you can plug into the network

30:54SPEAKERand do all sorts of stuff, they're really cool.

30:55SPEAKER- Man, there are some really fucking cool designs

30:58SPEAKERon this subreddit, a lot of them are just kind of hacked

31:00SPEAKERand cobbled together, but some of these look like

31:02SPEAKERthere have been actual injection molding

31:04SPEAKERor at least 3D printing done on some bespoke cases,

31:07SPEAKERlike that one I just sent you that's got two screens on it,

31:09SPEAKERlooks like a prop out of a movie.

31:13SPEAKERThat's pretty rad, I might just make this the show hard.

31:17SPEAKER- The one, there's a bunch, there's a bunch of people

31:21SPEAKERthat actually sell this stuff too, sell kits for these

31:23SPEAKERthat are 3D printed frames for Pis

31:27SPEAKERand other microcontrollers.

31:29SPEAKERCarboncomputers.us does a bunch of them.

31:31SPEAKERI've never actually bought anything from them,

31:33SPEAKERbut they've been around for ages and do runs of

31:39SPEAKERnice resin printed cases, they look like real made things.

31:45SPEAKERAnd they have both sandwich style, 90s style PDAs,

31:49SPEAKERlike those old Casio PDAs that would flip open

31:52SPEAKERor Sharp PDAs that would flip open,

31:54SPEAKERand then also more kind of slate style designs.

31:58SPEAKERAnd they're kind of cool, like honestly,

31:59SPEAKERkind of that dolphin, that hacker,

32:02SPEAKERthe dolphin hacker thing kind of fits in this category too,

32:04SPEAKERif you ask me, right, like the dolphin flipper.

32:08SPEAKER- Oh, flipper zero?

32:09SPEAKER- Flipper zero, yeah.

32:10SPEAKER- Yeah, although that thing, I always feel like

32:12SPEAKERI'm gonna get arrested if I have one of those

32:14SPEAKERand use it for something.

32:15SPEAKER- I mean, I'm gonna go and tell you,

32:16SPEAKERit's how they're stealing a lot of cars with them these days.

32:19SPEAKER- Really?

32:20SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause you can clone people's radio signal

32:23SPEAKERwhen they lock and unlock their car.

32:25SPEAKER- Oh, so you have to, I was gonna say,

32:26SPEAKERdo you have to like be waiting in the bushes basically

32:28SPEAKERto like capture the signal when they use it?

32:31SPEAKER- My understanding is that depending on the car

32:33SPEAKERand the range and where you put your keys in your house,

32:36SPEAKERthey can stand outside your front door

32:37SPEAKERand catch your beep, and yeah, anyway, yeah.

32:41SPEAKER- That's intense.

32:42SPEAKERCan you even get cars with like physical keys anymore?

32:44SPEAKER- They all have physical keys.

32:46SPEAKER- Do they? - Yeah.

32:47SPEAKER- Oh.

32:48SPEAKER- Like my car has a physical key,

32:49SPEAKERyou just have to pop open a thing to get to it.

32:50SPEAKER- Oh, okay. - Yeah.

32:51SPEAKER- I might stick to that.

32:53SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems like a real pain in the butt.

32:55SPEAKERAlso, all you need to pop most car doors

32:58SPEAKERis a pretty good sized screwdriver

33:00SPEAKERand enough torque to just force it open.

33:03SPEAKER- Well.

33:04SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.

33:05SPEAKER- I guess we're all boned then.

33:06SPEAKER- Locks are just, you know,

33:08SPEAKERlocks are not for security, they're for disincentivizing.

33:13SPEAKER- All right, Neurotica.

33:15SPEAKERAt the most basic level,

33:17SPEAKERI understand that when I'm playing on xCloud or GeForce Now

33:20SPEAKERor whatever, I'm remoting into some kind of virtual machine

33:22SPEAKERon a server rack somewhere.

33:24SPEAKERMy question is more related to the differences in quality

33:27SPEAKERthat I see between the services and what impacts that.

33:30SPEAKERFor example, if I load up the xCloud Game Pass version

33:33SPEAKERof a Valve, there is that classic streaming haze

33:36SPEAKERand streaming artifacts, et cetera,

33:39SPEAKERbut the GeForce Now version also through Game Pass

33:41SPEAKERseems like it's local.

33:43SPEAKERCaveats for this example, same device accessing both services

33:47SPEAKERwhich is a Steam Deck, same internet speed.

33:50SPEAKERSo I would, you know, I assume that comes down

33:53SPEAKERto various codec and video compression settings

33:57SPEAKERthey're using, like probably some streaming protocol stuff

34:01SPEAKERplays into that in some way as well,

34:03SPEAKERbut it's probably primarily video compression,

34:04SPEAKERI have to guess.

34:05SPEAKER- Well, yeah, so there's,

34:07SPEAKERI did some research on this this afternoon.

34:09SPEAKERI was looking into see if anybody's posted like white papers

34:12SPEAKERor anything explaining how their stuff works.

34:14SPEAKERAnd it's all super proprietary.

34:16SPEAKERNo one's shared anything.

34:17SPEAKER- That's what I figured.

34:18SPEAKER- I know that Google specifically

34:20SPEAKERwhen they were doing Stadia wrote a whole new video codecs

34:24SPEAKERspecifically for low latency video streaming

34:26SPEAKERand compression.

34:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe that.

34:28SPEAKER- I also know that for a while

34:32SPEAKERwhen Microsoft started the xCloud stuff,

34:33SPEAKERmy understanding was that they just had a whole bunch

34:35SPEAKERof Xbox ones in racks in a data centers on place

34:39SPEAKERand we're connecting people to those remotely.

34:41SPEAKERAnd I'm sure that that's not the case anymore

34:43SPEAKERthat they're doing the thing where they have multi GPU,

34:49SPEAKERnormal rack mount machines that they're time slicing CPUs

34:52SPEAKERand giving one GPU or a slice of a GPU

34:56SPEAKERto each of the xCloud clients.

35:00SPEAKERI do know that when you upload your game to Microsoft,

35:05SPEAKERyou're not, there's not a separate xCloud version, right?

35:09SPEAKERSo you're, they're using the same package

35:13SPEAKERthat you use for local play on a normal Xbox on xCloud.

35:21SPEAKERBut the TLDR on this question is that there's a lot

35:25SPEAKERof variability in bit rates and compression settings

35:28SPEAKERand codecs that you use and the way they compress

35:32SPEAKERand the balance of quality to latency to speed

35:39SPEAKERis gonna vary wildly based on your distance

35:42SPEAKERto the data center and the connection you get

35:44SPEAKERon a given day and what their load is like

35:45SPEAKERon any given day.

35:47SPEAKER'Cause like there are days that G-Force Now

35:49SPEAKERis just like doesn't accept new connections, right?

35:51SPEAKERWhen they're really busy and under high load, so.

35:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess I'm not surprised to hear the G-Force Now

35:55SPEAKERis better quality considering all the work NVIDIA has done

35:59SPEAKERon the NVENC.

36:00SPEAKER- It makes sense.

36:01SPEAKER- Real time compression for streaming in their cards.

36:04SPEAKERSo they've got a lot of institutional knowledge there.

36:07SPEAKER- Low latency, high quality streaming is part of,

36:12SPEAKERit turns out it's funny 'cause when VR stuff started

36:14SPEAKERand we were looking at the latency on any kind

36:19SPEAKERof HD H264 compression in 2015, 2016,

36:24SPEAKERit was so high you couldn't do like live stream video

36:29SPEAKERwith head tracking because it was, it lagged too much

36:31SPEAKERand people got immediately motion sick.

36:34SPEAKER- Sure.

36:34SPEAKER- So the difference in compression times per frame

36:39SPEAKERover the last 10 years is, like once there was a use case

36:43SPEAKERfor lower compression time per frame,

36:46SPEAKERpeople started focusing on that.

36:47SPEAKERNow that's fractions of 10, 12 milliseconds in some cases.

36:52SPEAKER- Yeah, there's been a tremendous amount of work

36:53SPEAKERon that stuff.

36:54SPEAKERAnd like you said, a lot of it is proprietary.

36:56SPEAKERLike remember Mixer?

36:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:58SPEAKER- Like Mixer had its own streaming protocol called FTL

37:02SPEAKERbefore they got shut down.

37:03SPEAKERLike I know Parsec, if you've ever used Parsec,

37:05SPEAKERlike they also have their own,

37:08SPEAKERI think they have the Bud protocol.

37:10SPEAKER- Yep.

37:11SPEAKER- If I'm not mistaken, like all these companies basically,

37:13SPEAKERlike you said, are kind of writing their own stack

37:14SPEAKERfor this stuff.

37:15SPEAKERSo there's a lot of competition in that space.

37:17SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's all super proprietary

37:19SPEAKERand they don't ever talk about it.

37:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:22SPEAKER- It seems like.

37:22SPEAKER- Understandably so.

37:24SPEAKERWash in the wind, I guess you could kind of maybe PS

37:26SPEAKERthis one off the back of that Windows 95 email.

37:28SPEAKERThis is all caps.

37:30SPEAKERTalk about Bonsai Buddy.

37:32SPEAKERDo you know what Bonsai Buddy was, Brad?

37:34SPEAKER- Yeah, this is a little delightful,

37:35SPEAKERlittle purple ape that promised you a prize

37:38SPEAKERif you were only to click a few hundred times.

37:41SPEAKERI can't remember exactly how it worked.

37:42SPEAKER- He would do things for you.

37:43SPEAKER- I never clicked that stupid thing, but no, wait, no, wait.

37:46SPEAKERThat was something that was installed, right?

37:47SPEAKER- You installed it.

37:48SPEAKERIt was malware. - That's right.

37:49SPEAKERI think later it became like a lot

37:50SPEAKERof like banner display ads, right?

37:52SPEAKER- I think it replaced ads.

37:54SPEAKERI think the way it was malware was it replaced ads

37:57SPEAKERon your desktop.

37:58SPEAKERThe guy who made it, the Bonsai system team, rather.

38:04SPEAKERIt was created by a pair of brothers named Joe and Jay Bonsai

38:08SPEAKERand it would share jokes and facts, manage downloads,

38:12SPEAKERsing songs, and talk among other functions.

38:15SPEAKERBut it was based on the Microsoft agent technology

38:18SPEAKERthat was originally built for Clippy.

38:19SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, I was gonna say.

38:21SPEAKERI was just imagining a giant paper clip here

38:23SPEAKERinstead of a purple ape.

38:24SPEAKER- Yeah, so there was a lot.

38:25SPEAKERIt's funny, there was kind of a lot of stuff like this

38:27SPEAKERthat was designed to make computers easier to use,

38:32SPEAKERbut actually just annoyed you.

38:35SPEAKERAnd a couple of people were talking about Bonsai Buddy

38:39SPEAKERin a stream I was in the other day.

38:40SPEAKERAnd I wanted to make sure that we talked about Bonsai Buddy

38:43SPEAKER'cause he's a little purple ape was his look.

38:47SPEAKER- And apparently they were sued and fined

38:50SPEAKERand all kinds of stuff over the invasiveness

38:52SPEAKERof that software.

38:54SPEAKER- Turns out malware and spyware in the early 2000s

38:56SPEAKERis very popular, so.

38:58SPEAKER- It was the wild west.

38:59SPEAKER- Yep.

39:00SPEAKER- All right, last email before we move on

39:02SPEAKERto some Discord questions.

39:04SPEAKERFrom Tommy Tank, I asked this on the Discord,

39:09SPEAKERbut this is about a previous user to be clear.

39:11SPEAKERThis is about a, presumably a separate user.

39:14SPEAKERThis is not the same user with a different username,

39:16SPEAKERI don't think.

39:17SPEAKERBut this is about a different frequent questioner

39:19SPEAKERon these episodes.

39:21SPEAKERI asked on the Discord, but does Brad know a tactical tug,

39:24SPEAKERthey've sent multiple emails into you,

39:25SPEAKERmeans to wank sneakily.

39:29SPEAKERPlease put my mind at ease

39:30SPEAKERand that Brad is just a naive and innocent lad.

39:33SPEAKER- Okay.

39:35SPEAKERI thought that this was some sort of military tugboat.

39:38SPEAKER- I also, you and I talked about this beforehand

39:42SPEAKERand we both immediately agreed.

39:44SPEAKERWe had both visualized a tugboat

39:46SPEAKERevery time we read that username.

39:48SPEAKER- This is one of those classic,

39:50SPEAKERhey thongs mean a different thing in Australia

39:52SPEAKERthan they do in the United States.

39:56SPEAKERYeah, I've never heard this phrase before in my life.

39:59SPEAKERSo apologies to all of our, I'm guessing English

40:02SPEAKERor Australian, or maybe New Zealand listeners

40:05SPEAKERfor whom we've been reading a wildly inappropriate username

40:09SPEAKERfor the years.

40:11SPEAKERIt's maybe lightly inappropriate.

40:13SPEAKER- Mildly inappropriate.

40:14SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.

40:15SPEAKER- I don't know.

40:17SPEAKERThanks for letting us know.

40:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:21SPEAKER- Here's, all right, Discord questions.

40:23SPEAKERHere is a kind of companion question

40:24SPEAKERto that earlier question about ripping disks from Narfinger.

40:28SPEAKERWhat do you do with old DVDs that you don't want anymore?

40:30SPEAKERLooking on the used market, DVDs are worthless.

40:33SPEAKERI would donate those things to a library.

40:35SPEAKER- So I disagree with the idea

40:38SPEAKERthat used DVDs are worthless.

40:40SPEAKER- Okay, go on.

40:41SPEAKER- The DVD era represented in many ways

40:46SPEAKERthe high water mark for bonus features and extra stuff.

40:49SPEAKER- True, that's actually a pretty good point.

40:51SPEAKERLike DVD commentaries are unmatched, the Blue Ray era,

40:55SPEAKERwe still saw some, but like a lot of those

40:57SPEAKERare only distributed on different DVDs.

40:59SPEAKERAs an example, there are a couple of movies

41:01SPEAKERthat I have like two or three different versions of on DVD

41:04SPEAKERthat I got for pennies on the dollar

41:07SPEAKERbecause of like a commentary by a specific person or people.

41:13SPEAKERSo yeah, like for example, the Criterion Edition

41:17SPEAKERof Armageddon has a commentary with Ben Affleck

41:21SPEAKERwhere he is just absolutely shit faced

41:24SPEAKERand just describing everything that happens on the screen.

41:26SPEAKERIt is very, very good.

41:28SPEAKER- You know, I've heard about that actually.

41:29SPEAKERI think that's pretty legendary.

41:30SPEAKERI should probably check that out.

41:32SPEAKER- It's an all timer, but yeah.

41:35SPEAKERThe thing I haven't done, which I should do,

41:37SPEAKERis probably go out and pull the commentary tracks

41:39SPEAKERfrom the old DVD rips and then re-sync them

41:42SPEAKERwith the other ones.

41:43SPEAKER- That's exactly what I was gonna recommend.

41:45SPEAKER- But it just seems like a huge pain in the ass

41:47SPEAKERthat I'm not gonna bother you.

41:48SPEAKER- It's not that hard.

41:49SPEAKER- The thing I have done,

41:51SPEAKERso I don't have a bazillion jewel cases around,

41:53SPEAKERis I've pulled all of the discs out of old jewel cases

41:56SPEAKERand I have them in like hanging files basically for discs.

42:01SPEAKERI did that for Xbox 360 games and PS2 games, PS3 games,

42:04SPEAKERand all the old games are in that category too.

42:06SPEAKER- Yes, I did the same thing with,

42:08SPEAKERI have dozens of old music CDs

42:10SPEAKERthat I did the same thing with.

42:11SPEAKERThey're all in a giant case logic binder

42:14SPEAKERwith all the liner notes kind of shoved in the front now.

42:17SPEAKER- Yup, yup.

42:19SPEAKER- But if you really don't want those discs, like I said,

42:21SPEAKERlike see if your local library will take them

42:23SPEAKER'cause a lot of people will still watch DVDs.

42:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it turns out,

42:27SPEAKERmy library loans a ton of DVDs out all the time.

42:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe it.

42:32SPEAKERSFPL, I always call it SFPL,

42:34SPEAKERSF Public Library also still has like huge shelves

42:37SPEAKERfull of DVDs.

42:38SPEAKER- Yeah, and Switch games apparently.

42:41SPEAKERWhen I was in the San Francisco library the other day.

42:44SPEAKER- Interesting, you don't know that.

42:47SPEAKER- Also, I think we've talked about this before,

42:49SPEAKERbut for people who live in California at least,

42:52SPEAKERlike get library cards every time you go to another city.

42:54SPEAKER- Yeah, you have to physically be there.

42:58SPEAKER- You have to physically be there in person

42:59SPEAKERI think for most of them,

43:00SPEAKERbut like Sacramento and LA

43:02SPEAKERhave ridiculous ebook collections.

43:04SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.

43:05SPEAKER- Dude, next time I am in LA,

43:07SPEAKERI am totally going to the political library.

43:08SPEAKER- Yeah, libraries are cool, man.

43:10SPEAKERSigning up for that while libraries still exist.

43:13SPEAKER- It means that when I hit a library hold on Libby,

43:16SPEAKERthat I usually get the book that it's like,

43:18SPEAKER"Hey, it's gonna take three weeks for this one."

43:19SPEAKERI usually get it in like four days.

43:21SPEAKERI'm reading Mike Drucker's Good Game Well Played,

43:25SPEAKERhis kind of memoir.

43:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:27SPEAKER- And I literally was like,

43:29SPEAKER"Hey, this is gonna be 23 days

43:31SPEAKERat my San Mateo County library."

43:33SPEAKERAnd then three days later, I got a note that was like,

43:35SPEAKER"Hey, we found this earlier for you and blah, blah, blah."

43:38SPEAKER- Wait, could Libby just cross-reference multiple libraries

43:40SPEAKERthat you have memberships at

43:41SPEAKERand just like give it to you from whichever one is up first?

43:44SPEAKER- When you search, it tells you

43:45SPEAKERwhich one's gonna be first.

43:46SPEAKERAnd then sometimes you get a notification that's like,

43:48SPEAKER"Hey, we can get this earlier here.

43:49SPEAKERDo you want this?"

43:50SPEAKER- That's pretty rad.

43:51SPEAKER- It's pretty rad. - I know that.

43:52SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:54SPEAKER- Question from Fishy J, "Prefixes or suffixes?"

43:58SPEAKER- Oh.

43:59SPEAKER- It's a broad question.

44:00SPEAKER- Man, that's tough.

44:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:03SPEAKERWhere does your mind go when you hear that question?

44:05SPEAKER- Well, prefixes, I think about pre as a prefix.

44:09SPEAKER- Okay.

44:10SPEAKER- And suffixes, I think about es as a suffix.

44:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that's quite literal.

44:13SPEAKER- So like, it's hard to say, right?

44:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, my computer brain,

44:19SPEAKERI immediately go to like internet protocols

44:23SPEAKERand I'm trying to think like what comes immediately.

44:26SPEAKERYou know what comes immediately to mind

44:28SPEAKERis like in the open source world,

44:30SPEAKERlike lib is a very common prefix, you know?

44:34SPEAKERLib retro, lib channel.

44:36SPEAKERThere are 10 bajillion of them

44:38SPEAKERand now I can't think of any of them.

44:39SPEAKERLike lib PGP or, you know, like it's short for library,

44:43SPEAKERright?

44:44SPEAKERLike lib C, you know, for example,

44:46SPEAKERthis is the standard C library.

44:47SPEAKERLike the suffix that comes to mind is D.

44:51SPEAKER- D is what?

44:52SPEAKER- As in demon.

44:54SPEAKER- Oh, oh.

44:55SPEAKER- As in like, you know, I mean,

44:56SPEAKERsystem D is the infamous example now,

44:58SPEAKERbut I'm trying to think like,

44:59SPEAKERI think there's probably like mail D or journal D,

45:01SPEAKERor I'm trying to think of.

45:03SPEAKER- Seriously, anything that ends with a D

45:05SPEAKERmeans it's like a background server process type thing

45:08SPEAKERand that's cool.

45:09SPEAKER- I was thinking about file name extensions,

45:11SPEAKERlike as a suffix, like, you know,

45:13SPEAKERit's very descriptive, right?

45:15SPEAKER- Indeed.

45:16SPEAKER- But then for prefixes, I think about like classes

45:20SPEAKERwhen you're writing like Python,

45:21SPEAKERlike little functions or something.

45:22SPEAKERAnd like, you want those prefixes.

45:25SPEAKERThose prefixes are really important

45:27SPEAKER'cause it's how you keep everything organized.

45:29SPEAKERSo I'm gonna go with prefixes 'cause you know what?

45:33SPEAKER- You know what suffixes don't help with?

45:36SPEAKER- What's that?

45:37SPEAKER- Type ahead, tab completion.

45:38SPEAKER- I guess that's true, actually.

45:39SPEAKER- Yeah, so suffix is useless for tab completion.

45:42SPEAKERBut prefixes, vital.

45:44SPEAKER- You have to use like regular expressions or something

45:47SPEAKERto make the suffix work for that sort of thing.

45:49SPEAKER- I'm never gonna do that.

45:50SPEAKER- No.

45:51SPEAKER- Nope, I'm never gonna learn how to use regular expressions.

45:53SPEAKER- I'm looking at what Ds I have running

45:55SPEAKERon my NAS right now,

45:56SPEAKERbut they're mostly all components of system D.

45:58SPEAKERSo that's like kind of boring, resolve D,

46:00SPEAKERsystem D, network D, login D, UDEV D.

46:04SPEAKER- Never thought you were gonna list all of the Ds.

46:06SPEAKER- Yep, well, here we are.

46:07SPEAKERAvahi DNS Conf D, there's a lot of Ds in here.

46:10SPEAKER- Oh, that's a pretty good one, yeah.

46:12SPEAKER- Yep, yep, anyway.

46:13SPEAKERPat Mac 19, which I wouldn't have known how to pronounce

46:16SPEAKERif they hadn't included a handy pronunciation guide here.

46:20SPEAKERWhat is the default pickle relish?

46:22SPEAKERI was out to dinner with some friends

46:23SPEAKERand one person ordered a burger with relish on it.

46:26SPEAKERAnd when it came out, after taking a few bites,

46:27SPEAKERwas grossed out that it had sweet relish.

46:30SPEAKER- Phew.

46:31SPEAKER- The rest of the party was split.

46:32SPEAKERSome, myself included, said that sweet relish is the default.

46:36SPEAKERThe other said dill relish is the default.

46:38SPEAKEREveryone agreed the menu should have said

46:40SPEAKERwhat kind of relish it was.

46:42SPEAKER- Okay, I went to the baseball game last night.

46:45SPEAKER- Okay.

46:46SPEAKER- And I got a hot dog, a bratwurst,

46:49SPEAKERI guess technically as one does.

46:51SPEAKER- All right.

46:52SPEAKER- And they asked me what I wanted on it.

46:53SPEAKERAnd I said, relish and mustard.

46:54SPEAKERAnd they said, oh no, we only have onions and peppers

46:57SPEAKERthat are grilled or sauerkraut.

46:58SPEAKERI was like, okay, give me both of those

47:00SPEAKER'cause that sounds great.

47:01SPEAKERNow my take on this is that the default relish

47:04SPEAKERdepends on what you're eating.

47:06SPEAKERSo a hot dog default relish, definitely sweet relish.

47:09SPEAKER- Really?

47:10SPEAKER- But a burger default relish has to be dill.

47:14SPEAKERIt's too much sweet for a burger.

47:15SPEAKER- I don't know if I agree about the sweet relish

47:17SPEAKERon a hot dog though.

47:18SPEAKER- What?

47:19SPEAKER- I don't know.

47:20SPEAKER- Sweet, like if you say, hey, I want a hot dog with relish

47:24SPEAKERand you don't specify dill relish,

47:25SPEAKERit's gonna be sweet relish 99% of the time.

47:27SPEAKER- I guess you're right.

47:28SPEAKERI'm not saying, I'm not talking about what's common.

47:30SPEAKERI'm talking about what I like.

47:32SPEAKER- Oh, I like dill relish across the board

47:33SPEAKERbetter than sweet relish.

47:34SPEAKER- Yes. - 100%.

47:35SPEAKER- Extreme same.

47:37SPEAKER- But I'm the only one in this house that feels that way.

47:39SPEAKERSo I live in a sad world of sweet.

47:42SPEAKERLike if I want dill pickles on a hot dog,

47:44SPEAKERI gotta slice up a couple of dill pickle spears.

47:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I get it.

47:48SPEAKER- Which is a fine way to do it.

47:49SPEAKER- I kind of grew up not liking sweet pickles

47:51SPEAKERof any kind, honestly.

47:53SPEAKER- My mom made sweet pickles that were real good.

47:55SPEAKER- I mean, they can be very good, don't get me wrong.

47:57SPEAKERBut I was pretty much all dill all the time in our house.

48:01SPEAKER- See, we were all sweet and sour.

48:03SPEAKERLike burgers would be a jar of mom's pickles

48:06SPEAKERand they'd be sweet and sour pickles on a burger,

48:09SPEAKERwhich is pretty good. - Interesting.

48:10SPEAKER- Pretty interesting, all right.

48:11SPEAKERI mean, I can see the sweet relish on a hot dog

48:13SPEAKERif you have enough tart to cut it with.

48:16SPEAKER- Mustard, mustard counters it out, right?

48:18SPEAKER- Yeah, onions and mustard.

48:19SPEAKERAnd I've become very partial to the Chicago hot dog.

48:22SPEAKER- Chicago hot dog is a God tier hot dog

48:24SPEAKERas far as I'm concerned.

48:25SPEAKER- You tell me if I'm betraying our roots, but-

48:28SPEAKER- No, well, chili dog always.

48:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, okay, yeah, sure.

48:32SPEAKERThe chili dog is on the eternal pantheon.

48:34SPEAKER- Yeah, God tier hot dog.

48:36SPEAKER- But the Chicago dog is pretty good.

48:39SPEAKER- Chicago dog, for people who don't know,

48:41SPEAKERis like a slice of tomato, some pickles,

48:44SPEAKERsome pickled peppers, that nuclear mint green relish.

48:48SPEAKERUsually it's a poppy seed bun and then mustard.

48:51SPEAKER- Yep, awesome. - Very good.

48:53SPEAKER(overlapping chatter)

48:56SPEAKER- So Brad, next time we're down south,

48:58SPEAKERwe need to go to Wiener, what we need to do

49:01SPEAKERis we need to go to Micro Center and Wiener Schnitzel.

49:02SPEAKER- Okay, that sounds like a day.

49:04SPEAKER- Wiener Schnitzel, they do two hot dogs

49:07SPEAKERand you can get one Chicago and one chili dog.

49:09SPEAKER- Wait, what?

49:10SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, they don't do the poppy seed buns

49:14SPEAKERand their relish isn't as green as I like

49:16SPEAKERfor a real Chicago dog, but it's okay.

49:18SPEAKER- I've never been to a Wiener Schnitzel before,

49:20SPEAKERso maybe we should fix that.

49:21SPEAKER- Yeah, what would you say is the quality

49:24SPEAKERof a Wiener Schnitzel?

49:25SPEAKERLike, can you compare it to a different fast food restaurant

49:27SPEAKERin terms of like, are we talking like taco?

49:30SPEAKER- Like cleanliness?

49:31SPEAKER- Yeah, cleanliness, like quality of ingredients, you know?

49:33SPEAKERIs this, is this a question I'm better off not asking?

49:37SPEAKER- No, like, I think Wiener Schnitzel,

49:39SPEAKER- Like the Taco Bell?

49:41SPEAKER- I think better than your normal Taco Bell, probably.

49:44SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

49:45SPEAKER- Because it's also a tasty,

49:47SPEAKERlike Wiener Schnitzels are also tasty freezes usually.

49:49SPEAKER- Okay.

49:50SPEAKER- It's like, it's, I would say it's generally cleaner

49:53SPEAKERthan a Dairy Queen.

49:54SPEAKER- All right, okay.

49:55SPEAKER- If that gives you anything.

49:57SPEAKER- Kind of.

49:57SPEAKER- Like not as good as like your In-N-Out or your Five Guys,

50:02SPEAKERyour kind of fancy, but better than a Carl's Jr. usually.

50:06SPEAKER- Okay.

50:07SPEAKER- They're usually clean.

50:08SPEAKER- All right, that sounds good.

50:09SPEAKER- I don't know.

50:10SPEAKER- I mean, I would have gone regardless, I was just curious.

50:12SPEAKER- I mean, they're selling hot dogs,

50:13SPEAKERbut I think that they,

50:14SPEAKERI think they give you an all beef option on the hot dog.

50:16SPEAKERI think you can choose original premium beef or Polish

50:21SPEAKERas your hot dog choice.

50:22SPEAKER- Okay, we should make an afternoon out of this sometime.

50:25SPEAKER- Yeah, I'll go down there.

50:26SPEAKER- All right, question from Wesley.

50:29SPEAKERI hate when website login buttons open a new tab

50:31SPEAKERfor the login screen.

50:32SPEAKERWhy would they do that?

50:33SPEAKERWhat possible benefit could it provide?

50:36SPEAKERAnyway, what small web or computer thing

50:38SPEAKERmakes you irrationally angry?

50:40SPEAKER- Man, I, yeah, like, hey, let's have a pop-up window

50:43SPEAKERthat doesn't have a bar

50:44SPEAKERso you can't use your password manager to log in easily.

50:48SPEAKERThose people just rot in hell.

50:50SPEAKERIt's the worst thing you can do.

50:51SPEAKER- Yep, agreed.

50:53SPEAKER- I hate, I hate when you install Windows.

50:58SPEAKERThere's a lot I don't like

50:59SPEAKERabout the Windows installer these days.

51:01SPEAKERI hate that you have to jump through hoops

51:02SPEAKERto get a local account made.

51:05SPEAKERThat makes me a little bit crazy.

51:06SPEAKERBut what I really hate is that every time Windows

51:08SPEAKERdoesn't install, it dumps four partitions on every,

51:12SPEAKERon the drive that it touches.

51:14SPEAKERAnd if you need to reinstall Windows

51:16SPEAKERand you want to delete those four partitions,

51:18SPEAKERit's like click and then wait a minute

51:19SPEAKERand then click and then wait a minute

51:20SPEAKERand then click and then wait a minute

51:21SPEAKERand click and wait a minute.

51:22SPEAKERYou can't just say, hey, wipe this entire drive.

51:25SPEAKER- I got a tip for you.

51:26SPEAKER- Oh, what's your tip?

51:27SPEAKER- You're gonna be very excited here.

51:28SPEAKER- Okay.

51:29SPEAKER- Okay, open, well, hang on.

51:31SPEAKERDo you have to do this from outside of Windows?

51:32SPEAKEROr what are you--

51:33SPEAKER- This is during the install process for Windows, yeah.

51:36SPEAKER- Oh, right, okay, yes.

51:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:39SPEAKER- Okay, in that case, you would have to do this

51:41SPEAKERfrom within Windows.

51:42SPEAKERSo actually this would not save you any time

51:44SPEAKER'cause you're in the installer at that point.

51:46SPEAKER- Well, and you can't do it from the disk management panel

51:50SPEAKER'cause the recovery partitions and stuff are protected.

51:53SPEAKER- Right, right.

51:54SPEAKERI was going to recommend the command line utility disk part.

51:58SPEAKER- I love disk part.

51:58SPEAKER- Okay.

51:59SPEAKER- Big fan.

52:00SPEAKER- You can literally just select the right disk

52:01SPEAKERand disk part and then just run clean

52:03SPEAKERand it'll wipe the partition table.

52:05SPEAKER- I guess you could hit shift F10, open up the terminal

52:08SPEAKERbefore you get to the partitioning page.

52:10SPEAKER- I bet you could disk part that thing.

52:12SPEAKERYeah, I bet you could just wipe that thing

52:14SPEAKERright out of existence.

52:15SPEAKER- Just wipe that thing.

52:16SPEAKER- Weird that a lot of our complaints

52:17SPEAKERseem to be Windows related lately.

52:21SPEAKERI fucking hate Windows taking away features.

52:24SPEAKERLike Windows 11 took away like half a dozen

52:26SPEAKERlittle UI tricks that I've relied on.

52:28SPEAKER- Yep.

52:29SPEAKER- That now I'm already forgetting what some of them were

52:32SPEAKERbecause it's been several months,

52:33SPEAKERit's been like a year or more now and they're just gone.

52:36SPEAKERLike a lot of little window management stuff has vanished

52:38SPEAKERthat was in Windows 10.

52:41SPEAKERThey made a change recently where I use

52:43SPEAKERvirtual desktops a lot.

52:45SPEAKERAnd it used to be that if you're on a virtual desktop

52:48SPEAKERand you didn't have an app running,

52:49SPEAKERlike File Explorer is the one that I always run into.

52:52SPEAKERIf the app was not running on that desktop

52:54SPEAKERand you clicked it on the taskbar,

52:56SPEAKERit would just launch a new window of it.

52:57SPEAKER- Yep, that's great.

52:58SPEAKER- Now, if you have File Explorer running

53:01SPEAKERon any other virtual desktop

53:02SPEAKERand you click that bare File Explorer,

53:05SPEAKERnow we will transition you to the desktop

53:08SPEAKERwhere you already have File Explorer open

53:09SPEAKERand raise that window instead.

53:11SPEAKER- What's the point of having virtual desktops?

53:13SPEAKER- Yeah, right, what the fuck are you doing?

53:14SPEAKERThese are supposed to be isolated workspaces.

53:17SPEAKERI want to launch this thing in the workspace that I'm in.

53:20SPEAKERI go back to a different workspace

53:21SPEAKERthat I'm very intentionally not using right now.

53:23SPEAKER- I had a good one today.

53:25SPEAKERI've reached a point with the Linux desktop on the laptop

53:27SPEAKERthat when I'm using my Windows machine,

53:29SPEAKERit feels like I'm going back in time.

53:31SPEAKER- Great, okay, you're doing it.

53:33SPEAKER- I'm getting there.

53:34SPEAKER- All right.

53:35SPEAKER- Today I plugged in another monitor

53:37SPEAKERand so I had three monitors.

53:38SPEAKERI wanted to mirror one of them

53:40SPEAKER'cause it's actually, the monitor's a capture card.

53:42SPEAKERIt doesn't matter.

53:43SPEAKERThe point is I plugged this in, I set it up,

53:47SPEAKERand when it did the duping,

53:51SPEAKERit put the display panel on a monitor

53:56SPEAKERand it set the monitors diagonally touching at the corner

54:00SPEAKERso you couldn't move the cursor from one monitor to the other.

54:02SPEAKER- Except through a very tight window through the corner?

54:05SPEAKER- No window.

54:05SPEAKER- Not even through the corner?

54:07SPEAKER- Wow.

54:08SPEAKER- I couldn't figure out how to get the cursor

54:10SPEAKERto the other monitor

54:11SPEAKERand every time it switched resolutions,

54:13SPEAKERit moved that back to the monitor that was inaccessible.

54:17SPEAKERAnd I was like, this is a Kafka-esque nightmare.

54:20SPEAKER- I'm just imagining yakety sacks playing

54:22SPEAKERwhile you're trying to navigate this.

54:24SPEAKER- It literally took me 20 minutes.

54:25SPEAKERLike I was sitting here, the way I ended up fixing it

54:28SPEAKERwas I was able to highlight the display settings panel

54:32SPEAKERon my main monitor, the one that I could access,

54:35SPEAKERright click it and go to the move setting

54:38SPEAKERand then move it with the cursor one notch

54:40SPEAKERand then wiggle the mouse

54:41SPEAKERand then that locked my mouse cursor to the monitor

54:43SPEAKERthat was otherwise inaccessible.

54:45SPEAKERBut so then I could move the arrangement of the monitors

54:47SPEAKERso it worked and hit the keep it on this monitor button.

54:51SPEAKERBut it was ridiculous.

54:52SPEAKERIt was like, yeah.

54:53SPEAKERAnd I didn't like why it ended up diagonal, no idea.

54:57SPEAKERSuper weird.

54:57SPEAKER- Good stuff.

54:58SPEAKER- So yeah, Windows is my answer.

55:00SPEAKER- Windows, yes.

55:01SPEAKERI just remembered one of those features

55:03SPEAKERthey took away from Windows 10.

55:04SPEAKERYou used to be able to shift right click

55:05SPEAKERon an application in the taskbar.

55:07SPEAKER- That doesn't work anymore?

55:08SPEAKER- Well, no, so they, well, there is a different menu

55:11SPEAKERthat pops up now, but it's a useless,

55:13SPEAKERit's the same menu you get anyway, basically.

55:15SPEAKERIt used to have a command or an option on that menu

55:18SPEAKERwhere if you have multiple windows open

55:20SPEAKERfor a given application, if you shift right click,

55:22SPEAKERyou could just minimize all those windows

55:24SPEAKERand then you could restore them back

55:25SPEAKERto their previous positions with another click.

55:28SPEAKERAnd they have completely just done away with that option.

55:31SPEAKER- One of my favorite KDE things, speaking of Linux,

55:35SPEAKERis the pull all the windows onto this monitor.

55:39SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

55:40SPEAKER- Like you can just bind a keyboard shortcut to that,

55:43SPEAKERwhich is incredibly useful, really good.

55:45SPEAKER- Weird how letting you customize

55:47SPEAKERthe way you use your software somehow makes it more useful.

55:49SPEAKER- Sometimes it's a bit much.

55:50SPEAKERIf you'd like to hear about that,

55:51SPEAKERyou can go listen to the dual boot diaries.

55:53SPEAKER- Yes.

55:55SPEAKERAll right, Desmo001 has a question

55:59SPEAKERthat is a good follow up to that question.

56:02SPEAKERSteam, the Epic Games Launcher and the Xbox app

56:04SPEAKERall live in my system tray and I launched them from there.

56:08SPEAKERWhy do the first two require a double click to start

56:10SPEAKERwhile the Xbox app needs only a single click?

56:13SPEAKERSo like inconsistent tray icon behavior

56:16SPEAKERis another one for me, for sure.

56:19SPEAKERLike having to remember what needs a double click,

56:21SPEAKERwhat needs a single click,

56:22SPEAKERwhat I need to right click on to do anything useful with,

56:24SPEAKERyou know, like which applications minimize to the tray,

56:27SPEAKERwhich ones don't, you know, like the tray is no man's land.

56:33SPEAKER- Well, yeah, this is what happens

56:34SPEAKERwhen you don't have somebody at like the OS headquarters

56:39SPEAKERsaying here are the rules for accessing this

56:43SPEAKERand if you want to be on our platform,

56:45SPEAKERyou have to follow these rules or else.

56:47SPEAKER- Standards.

56:49SPEAKER- I just realized, this question made me realize

56:51SPEAKERthat I never left click stuff in the tray.

56:55SPEAKERI always right click.

56:56SPEAKER- Interesting.

56:57SPEAKER- So then I go straight to a context menu

56:59SPEAKERthat lets me open things automatically.

57:03SPEAKERHey, I have another annoying thing.

57:05SPEAKER- Go on.

57:06SPEAKER- I don't like hardware that installs the drivers for you,

57:09SPEAKERwhether you want it to or not.

57:11SPEAKERSo for example, at PC World,

57:12SPEAKERone of the things that we use on the,

57:15SPEAKERwe have a Razer mouse on the bench

57:17SPEAKERthat no matter if you plug it into a computer,

57:19SPEAKERit's gonna install some Razer software,

57:21SPEAKERwhether you want it to or not.

57:22SPEAKER- What the fuck?

57:23SPEAKERWhat is the mechanism that's triggering that?

57:25SPEAKER- I think it has a USB autoplay,

57:27SPEAKERbut I don't know for sure.

57:29SPEAKERThe inverse of this is something I quite like

57:32SPEAKERis ASUS now is dumping driver hub

57:35SPEAKERthe same way they used to do armory create in my ASUS.

57:38SPEAKERAnd that driver hub thing, if you haven't used it before,

57:41SPEAKERis basically like the Intel driver manager, the old one,

57:45SPEAKERin that it's just a little tiny front end

57:47SPEAKERthat takes you to a webpage.

57:48SPEAKERThere's no heavy application running.

57:51SPEAKER- Nice.

57:52SPEAKER- I mean, it will install Norton

57:53SPEAKERand a bunch of other nonsense if you click the wrong button,

57:56SPEAKERbut it also will do just your driver updates

57:58SPEAKERand like ME firmware and all that stuff if you need that, so.

58:02SPEAKER- Sounds like an improvement.

58:03SPEAKER- So that's pretty good.

58:04SPEAKERBut like, hey, I don't want my mouse driver

58:07SPEAKERever to install automatically a bunch of nonsense.

58:11SPEAKERI'm looking at you Razer Chroma hub,

58:13SPEAKERwhich is turning on a bunch of Razer garbage in my tray.

58:16SPEAKER- You talk about ways to convince me

58:17SPEAKERto never buy a Razer product.

58:18SPEAKERYou have just done so.

58:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:20SPEAKER- No, thank you.

58:23SPEAKERSquibworth has a good question here.

58:24SPEAKERHow often do you clean your keyboards?

58:26SPEAKERLike just wiping down the tops of the keys

58:28SPEAKERor doing a deep clean by popping the keys off,

58:30SPEAKERcleaning them and getting everything underneath?

58:34SPEAKER- I have my handy dandy keyboard cleaning brush right here.

58:38SPEAKER- Oh, I need to get one of those.

58:39SPEAKER- And every time I look down and I'm like,

58:41SPEAKERoh, there's dust or cruft or like beard

58:44SPEAKERor whatever in the gaps of my keyboard.

58:47SPEAKER- Dander.

58:48SPEAKER- Yeah, dander, like it gets a wipe.

58:51SPEAKERI do the keys, I have white key caps.

58:54SPEAKERSo when I look down and I'm like,

58:57SPEAKERoh yeah, there's some stuff on there.

58:58SPEAKERI pop them off and chuck them in the old ultrasonic cleaner

59:01SPEAKERfor a few minutes and blast all the gunk off.

59:04SPEAKER- Does that keyboard brush get down like deeply

59:07SPEAKERin between the keys or is that just

59:08SPEAKERfor the like exposed areas where?

59:12SPEAKER- So on my drop control, I bought the one without the edges.

59:16SPEAKERLike it's just a flat surface

59:19SPEAKERwith this keys sticking out of it.

59:20SPEAKERI can't remember what they call those,

59:22SPEAKERbut it doesn't have like, it doesn't have.

59:25SPEAKER- There's no kind of like bezel around the keys, right?

59:27SPEAKERMine is the same way.

59:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:29SPEAKER- Like it's like keys all the way

59:30SPEAKERto the edges of the keyboard, right?

59:31SPEAKER- Exactly, well, and there's no like rim

59:34SPEAKERaround the edges of the keys on the edge of the keyboard.

59:37SPEAKERSo there's, it's just one plane and then there's switches

59:40SPEAKERand then the caps on top of that.

59:42SPEAKERSo I bought that specifically

59:44SPEAKER'cause I can get down in between the key caps

59:46SPEAKERand there's someplace for the stuff to go

59:48SPEAKERwhen I brush it off.

59:50SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

59:51SPEAKER- I, and if I take the key caps off,

59:53SPEAKERit's a piece of cake to get down in between.

59:56SPEAKER- Sure.

59:57SPEAKER- But then when I take the key caps off,

59:59SPEAKERI usually get in with rubbing alcohol and some Q-tips

1:00:03SPEAKERand do like clean off the areas

1:00:05SPEAKERthat aren't normally visible underneath the key caps.

1:00:08SPEAKER- I am coming up on a year

1:00:10SPEAKERsince I switched to a mechanical keyboard.

1:00:12SPEAKERSo I have an answer for this question too.

1:00:14SPEAKER- Yeah, how long has it been

1:00:16SPEAKERsince you cleaned your mechanical keyboard, Brad?

1:00:17SPEAKER- About six months.

1:00:18SPEAKER- Okay.

1:00:19SPEAKER- I got a Keychron K5 Max, which I quite like a lot.

1:00:23SPEAKER- It's a good keyboard.

1:00:24SPEAKER- Yeah, I've enjoyed it quite a bit.

1:00:26SPEAKERAbout six months after I got it,

1:00:27SPEAKERI went and bought a second set of keys

1:00:29SPEAKERbecause I just wanted to change it up a little bit, you know?

1:00:33SPEAKER- That's the benefit.

1:00:34SPEAKER- The aesthetic quality of the mechanical keyboard,

1:00:37SPEAKERit turns out, is somewhat appealing.

1:00:39SPEAKERAnyway, I think I'm feeling like six months

1:00:41SPEAKERis like a good interval for me.

1:00:42SPEAKERI don't know, is that gross?

1:00:44SPEAKER- I mean, this is why I bought the white key caps, honestly,

1:00:47SPEAKERso I can tell.

1:00:48SPEAKER- See, mine are all dark, so I don't know.

1:00:50SPEAKERThe set that came with it is like their stock Keychron,

1:00:53SPEAKERlike gray, with a couple of orange accents,

1:00:55SPEAKERand the ones I got are actually like a deep navy blue,

1:00:58SPEAKERso they're even harder to see if they're grimy,

1:01:00SPEAKERbut maybe I'm better off not knowing.

1:01:01SPEAKER- I'm gonna take a picture of my key caps,

1:01:03SPEAKERand I'm gonna send it to you in Discord,

1:01:06SPEAKERand you can tell me.

1:01:07SPEAKERI'll give you the ESDF, ASDW, whatever,

1:01:10SPEAKERso you can see the heavy use, the deep business.

1:01:15SPEAKERI don't think it's that bad.

1:01:17SPEAKERIt seems actually pretty good to me, if I'm being honest.

1:01:20SPEAKERAnd I could probably cross-reference Blue Sky,

1:01:24SPEAKER'cause I think every time I take the key caps off

1:01:26SPEAKERand dump them in the ultrasonic cleaner,

1:01:29SPEAKERwhich I think you can't use that

1:01:31SPEAKERif you have double shot caps, if you have specific, yeah.

1:01:35SPEAKER- Certain types of key printings will come off, right?

1:01:39SPEAKER- If you, A, if there's stick-on labels,

1:01:41SPEAKERwhich fancy keyboards wouldn't have, I guess,

1:01:44SPEAKERbut if you have the decal labels

1:01:48SPEAKERon an old-style keyboard, they'll come off.

1:01:51SPEAKERAnd if you have double shot key caps

1:01:52SPEAKERwhere there's literally two sets of injections,

1:01:55SPEAKERif there's any voids, the ultrasonic cleaner

1:01:58SPEAKERcan make those voids get bigger

1:02:00SPEAKERand can cause them to separate.

1:02:01SPEAKER- Oh, that's not good.

1:02:02SPEAKER- Which is obviously not desirable.

1:02:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I just, when I bought this second set,

1:02:06SPEAKERI just checked the first set in a bowl with some dish soap,

1:02:08SPEAKERand just kinda-

1:02:09SPEAKER- That'll work.

1:02:10SPEAKER- Agitated manually.

1:02:13SPEAKERThe ultrasonic cleaner does a really great job,

1:02:16SPEAKERbut, you know, be careful, I guess.

1:02:18SPEAKER- Yep.

1:02:19SPEAKER- So this looks yellow because of the light,

1:02:21SPEAKERbut I think the caps are, they're clean.

1:02:23SPEAKERI don't see any finger gunk.

1:02:25SPEAKER- Doesn't look too bad.

1:02:26SPEAKER- I don't eat a whole lot at my computer,

1:02:28SPEAKERit turns out, also.

1:02:30SPEAKER- They all look off-white.

1:02:31SPEAKERAre they supposed to look that way?

1:02:32SPEAKER- They are.

1:02:33SPEAKERI mean, that's the light that you're sitting at.

1:02:35SPEAKERIt needs to be white-balanced, probably.

1:02:37SPEAKER- That's acceptable.

1:02:37SPEAKERThat's just on this side of acceptable, I'm gonna say.

1:02:42SPEAKER- Yeah, like the C and the F,

1:02:44SPEAKERthere's a little bit of dust on the sides,

1:02:45SPEAKERis what I'm seeing in the closeup.

1:02:48SPEAKERAnd yeah, yeah, it's probably getting close to time,

1:02:52SPEAKERlet's say.

1:02:53SPEAKER- All right.

1:02:54SPEAKEROh, okay.

1:02:54SPEAKERI'm glad you flagged this email, or this question,

1:02:57SPEAKER'cause I wasn't going to, but I wanted to hear about it.

1:02:59SPEAKERFrom PlantaPlant, "For Will,

1:03:03SPEAKERI remember when the Maximum PC No BS Podcast #100 hit,

1:03:07SPEAKERwhere you went with a musical format.

1:03:10SPEAKERI thought it was pretty funny and special,

1:03:11SPEAKERthen I realized a bunch of people hated it.

1:03:14SPEAKERCan you go into more detail into how that planning went,

1:03:16SPEAKERhow the team came up with that idea

1:03:18SPEAKERand the whole recording process?

1:03:20SPEAKERIt must've been really funny,

1:03:21SPEAKERhaving a bunch of nerds singing their way

1:03:23SPEAKERthrough a musical podcast.

1:03:25SPEAKERThanks for all these years of information and laughs."

1:03:28SPEAKER- So at that point, Cat Auk,

1:03:31SPEAKERwho is Dan Amrick of Paliswap Ninja's partner,

1:03:39SPEAKERwas one of our art directors.

1:03:41SPEAKERAnd Dan Amrick was working at OXM just across the hall.

1:03:45SPEAKER- God, OXM, this must've been a while ago.

1:03:48SPEAKER- So yeah, this was in 2009, probably.

1:03:50SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

1:03:51SPEAKEROkay.

1:03:52SPEAKER- It was 100 episodes.

1:03:52SPEAKERIt was 2008 or 2009, probably.

1:03:57SPEAKERAnd at some point, somebody said something stupid like,

1:04:02SPEAKER"Man, it would be really funny if we did a musical episode

1:04:06SPEAKERfor the 100th episode of the magazine."

1:04:10SPEAKERAnd it's the kind of thing that normally you say,

1:04:11SPEAKERand it's like a one-off,

1:04:12SPEAKERand then nobody ever thinks about it again.

1:04:15SPEAKERBut sometimes things go in the wormhole.

1:04:18SPEAKERAnd so for folks who don't know,

1:04:20SPEAKERDan and Cat and Paliswap Ninja as a partnership,

1:04:23SPEAKERthey do, Dan and his friend Jude started Paliswap Ninja,

1:04:28SPEAKERand they do Weird Al-style parody video game songs.

1:04:33SPEAKERBut then a few years ago, they did a Sgt. Pepper,

1:04:38SPEAKERStar Wars crossover called Princess Leia's

1:04:40SPEAKERStolen Death Star Plans

1:04:43SPEAKERto Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

1:04:45SPEAKER- Got it.

1:04:46SPEAKER- And they rewrote all of the songs

1:04:48SPEAKERfrom Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

1:04:49SPEAKERto tell the story of Star Wars.

1:04:50SPEAKERIt's fierce.

1:04:51SPEAKER- It's a lot.

1:04:53SPEAKER- It's really good.

1:04:53SPEAKERLike, they spent an incredible amount of time on it.

1:04:55SPEAKERThey actually did a full live recording at Berkeley

1:04:58SPEAKERat the symphony with an orchestra and the whole thing.

1:05:01SPEAKERLike, it's very good and very stupid,

1:05:05SPEAKERlike in the best possible way.

1:05:08SPEAKERBut Cat was like,

1:05:10SPEAKER"Oh, if you guys want to do a musical episode,"

1:05:12SPEAKERshe's like, "Dan and I will help write the songs."

1:05:15SPEAKERAnd suddenly the hard part was done.

1:05:17SPEAKER- Okay, sure, yeah.

1:05:18SPEAKER- So we did like a rock opera version

1:05:22SPEAKERof one of our interns or associate editors

1:05:26SPEAKERneeding to buy a new computer.

1:05:28SPEAKER- Okay.

1:05:29SPEAKER- Like his quest to get a new computer

1:05:30SPEAKER'cause the computer sucked.

1:05:32SPEAKERAnd we pulled a bunch of people in to help with it

1:05:34SPEAKERand we did like six songs or something.

1:05:37SPEAKERAnd then we fucked up the backing track

1:05:40SPEAKERand posted it with the backing track for the wrong key

1:05:44SPEAKERfor like half of the songs

1:05:46SPEAKER'cause we had multiple versions of the backing track.

1:05:49SPEAKER- And that went out live?

1:05:50SPEAKER- And it went out.

1:05:51SPEAKERAnd also, I don't know if you know,

1:05:54SPEAKERsometimes computer nerds are fairly humorless

1:05:56SPEAKERso they didn't get the joke.

1:05:57SPEAKER- Sure, okay.

1:05:59SPEAKER- And they were like,

1:06:00SPEAKER"If I wanted to hear people sing badly,

1:06:02SPEAKER"I could just go listen to myself in the shower."

1:06:04SPEAKERWe're like, "Well, fair."

1:06:05SPEAKERBut sometimes you swing and you miss,

1:06:07SPEAKERsometimes you swing and you hit.

1:06:09SPEAKERI still think it was funny.

1:06:10SPEAKERYeah, it was very funny.

1:06:12SPEAKERThe high point, Nathan Edwards of The Verge these days,

1:06:17SPEAKERdid a really, he took on the scariest part

1:06:19SPEAKER'cause he sang Bohemian Rhapsody basically.

1:06:22SPEAKER- Wow.

1:06:24SPEAKER- And then Veronica Belmont of Revision 3

1:06:29SPEAKERand CNET, I think, fame.

1:06:33SPEAKERAnd also she does a science fiction podcast

1:06:36SPEAKERcalled Science Fiction Fantasy Podcast

1:06:38SPEAKERwith Tom Merritt called,

1:06:40SPEAKERoh God, I can't remember, Robot.

1:06:42SPEAKERAnyway, it doesn't matter.

1:06:43SPEAKER- It looks like she was at Tekzilla at the time

1:06:44SPEAKERbecause I have found this podcast on archive.org.

1:06:47SPEAKER- She was at Tekzilla and was also working

1:06:51SPEAKERfor the PS4 digital thing that we made at Future called Core.

1:06:57SPEAKERBut yeah, she sang the song from the end of Portal,

1:07:03SPEAKERa version of that.

1:07:04SPEAKER- Okay, features, the talents of Dan Ammerick,

1:07:07SPEAKERCat Ock, Captain Spalding, Norman Chan,

1:07:09SPEAKERNathan Edwards, Gordon Hmong.

1:07:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:12SPEAKER- Will Smith, Jeremy Williams, and very special guests,

1:07:14SPEAKERTekzilla's Veronica, I need to hear Gordon sing.

1:07:17SPEAKER- Gordon didn't sing.

1:07:18SPEAKER- He did not?

1:07:19SPEAKER- No. - Spoken word?

1:07:20SPEAKER- Spoken word.

1:07:21SPEAKER- Gordon sings more like spoken word kind of guy.

1:07:23SPEAKER- Look, it started as a normal podcast that broke into song.

1:07:25SPEAKERIt was high concept, yeah.

1:07:27SPEAKERI clicked play on this after I found it.

1:07:28SPEAKERAnd then you were talking in my ears

1:07:31SPEAKERwhile you were talking in my ears.

1:07:32SPEAKER- And that'll happen.

1:07:33SPEAKER- That was not something I could deal with.

1:07:34SPEAKERSo I am not-

1:07:35SPEAKER- Could you hear the Miles?

1:07:36SPEAKER- I have not listened to this yet.

1:07:37SPEAKER- Did I sound fresh faced and young?

1:07:39SPEAKER- Yeah, something like that.

1:07:41SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:07:42SPEAKER- All right, that's fun.

1:07:43SPEAKERI will put that in the show notes.

1:07:45SPEAKERPeople need to know.

1:07:47SPEAKERI had no idea that you guys had done that.

1:07:49SPEAKERThat's pretty wild.

1:07:50SPEAKER- It was, I mean, look, it was a different time.

1:07:51SPEAKERIt was before Serial came out, the podcast.

1:07:54SPEAKERBy this point, podcast had already had one big boom cycle

1:07:57SPEAKERand we're already failing again.

1:07:59SPEAKERAnd like people at the company were yelling at us

1:08:01SPEAKERto stop wasting our time with podcasts.

1:08:03SPEAKERSo you'd never be able to monetize.

1:08:04SPEAKER- That is, yep, that is the common experience

1:08:07SPEAKERof doing a podcast in the late 2000s.

1:08:09SPEAKER- And also, when we posted in the wrong key,

1:08:15SPEAKERI was afraid to post the fixed one

1:08:18SPEAKERbecause like it would have cost us double the money

1:08:21SPEAKERfor that episode 'cause we were paying for distribution.

1:08:24SPEAKERAnd yeah, so anyway.

1:08:26SPEAKER- Rough.

1:08:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel really bad.

1:08:27SPEAKERPoor Nathan took the brunt of it 'cause he ended up,

1:08:30SPEAKERhe's saying it right

1:08:31SPEAKERand then we put the wrong backing track on it

1:08:33SPEAKERand it was, yeah, anyway, mistakes were made.

1:08:35SPEAKERNo fault of anybody's but mine.

1:08:37SPEAKERI should have held it and not posted it.

1:08:40SPEAKER- Should we call it there?

1:08:41SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

1:08:42SPEAKER- Shall we call it there?

1:08:43SPEAKER- You don't wanna answer questions about macaroni and cheese?

1:08:48SPEAKER- Yeah, we could take that, yeah.

1:08:50SPEAKERWe do have a patron episode coming up.

1:08:52SPEAKER- Oh, that's true.

1:08:53SPEAKERWe could bank a few of these for that this weekend.

1:08:55SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, like we usually save the nonsense

1:08:57SPEAKERfor the Patreon episode.

1:08:59SPEAKER- That's true.

1:08:59SPEAKERYeah, we could do a couple more here.

1:09:02SPEAKER- I just needed to stall a second

1:09:03SPEAKER'cause I didn't open the list of producers, so.

1:09:06SPEAKER- Perfectly fair.

1:09:07SPEAKERAll right, well, now I will read

1:09:09SPEAKERthis macaroni and cheese question from Fishy J.

1:09:11SPEAKERIs macaroni and cheese called Mac

1:09:13SPEAKERbecause it's short for macaroni

1:09:14SPEAKERor is it because Mac is an acronym for macaroni and cheese?

1:09:17SPEAKER- I had never, ever considered this before.

1:09:20SPEAKERNor had I, I'm gonna say it's short for macaroni in my mind.

1:09:25SPEAKER- Yeah, in my head, it's short for macaroni,

1:09:27SPEAKERbut I like the acronym version better.

1:09:29SPEAKERI feel like it would be capitalized

1:09:30SPEAKERif it was an acronym, though.

1:09:33SPEAKER- Capitalized and/or periods, I think,

1:09:35SPEAKERwould really set that off a little better.

1:09:37SPEAKER- I also think about, this is the second time

1:09:39SPEAKERthis has come up this week,

1:09:40SPEAKERbut the sitcom that Matt LeBlanc's character was on

1:09:44SPEAKERin "Friends" called Mac and Cheese where he was a human

1:09:48SPEAKERand his cop buddy was a robot, I think, called Cheese.

1:09:52SPEAKER- Okay.

1:09:52SPEAKER- I don't know, that's all I know.

1:09:53SPEAKER- All right.

1:09:54SPEAKER- Came up on the live stream yesterday.

1:09:56SPEAKER- Deep friends knowledge.

1:09:57SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:09:59SPEAKERI guess that'll do it for us this month.

1:10:00SPEAKER- Yeah, well, you know, I'm gonna read one more here

1:10:03SPEAKERsince we're talking about food.

1:10:04SPEAKERRK Harris 62, what's your go-to Waffle House order?

1:10:07SPEAKER- Slathered, smothered, and covered.

1:10:10SPEAKER- What is slathered?

1:10:12SPEAKER- I think it has salsa on it.

1:10:14SPEAKER- Oh, really?

1:10:15SPEAKER- Waffle House.

1:10:16SPEAKER- I can never keep the, that's just hash browns though.

1:10:18SPEAKERI mean, like total order though.

1:10:20SPEAKER- I mean, you need more than just hash browns?

1:10:22SPEAKER- Yeah, while you look that up, I will say,

1:10:23SPEAKERI think you can't go wrong with the All Star Special.

1:10:26SPEAKERThat was what I always got.

1:10:27SPEAKERBut I would say, I would say 90% of my Waffle House visits

1:10:31SPEAKERin my life were while I was in college at 3 a.m.

1:10:35SPEAKER- Oh yeah, always 3 a.m.

1:10:37SPEAKER- Fairly inebriated, so.

1:10:40SPEAKER- Yeah, on the way down, one or the other.

1:10:41SPEAKER- Yes, so All Star Special was kind of like

1:10:44SPEAKERthe big breakfast, and that's like kind of what you need

1:10:47SPEAKERin that state, I would say.

1:10:49SPEAKER- I, there was a Waffle House that was right down the street

1:10:52SPEAKERfrom the bar that I like to go to,

1:10:55SPEAKERand it was on the walking path between the bar

1:10:57SPEAKERand my apartment, or my dorm, I guess.

1:11:01SPEAKERSo I would roll into there, and I don't know if people,

1:11:04SPEAKERlike dark business happens in Waffle House

1:11:09SPEAKERafter about, after bar is closed.

1:11:11SPEAKERIt doesn't matter where you are.

1:11:12SPEAKER- It's after the time that the bar is closed.

1:11:14SPEAKER- Oh, it's become a whole thing on social media.

1:11:16SPEAKERI don't know if you've seen.

1:11:17SPEAKER- The 3 a.m. thing?

1:11:18SPEAKER- There's been this campaign.

1:11:21SPEAKERHarada, the producer of the Tekken series,

1:11:23SPEAKERlike regularly fields questions on Twitter these days.

1:11:26SPEAKER- Okay.

1:11:27SPEAKER- People have been trying to get him to put Waffle House in

1:11:29SPEAKERas a background in the next Tekken for a long time now.

1:11:32SPEAKER- Oh, I heard about this from a video game podcast,

1:11:36SPEAKERNextlander, I believe.

1:11:38SPEAKER- He seems somewhat receptive to the idea.

1:11:41SPEAKERI, I've often, I like, I, one of my dream,

1:11:46SPEAKERlike if I could, if I could get sponsored

1:11:48SPEAKERto do something really, really stupid,

1:11:51SPEAKERI would fly people that I want to have interesting

1:11:53SPEAKERconversations with, and I would set up a recording booth

1:11:57SPEAKERin like the corner booth at a Waffle House at like 2 a.m.

1:12:00SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

1:12:01SPEAKER- And we would just record a podcast that starts there

1:12:02SPEAKERand just, we just, just chat and eat some Waffle House.

1:12:05SPEAKER- Just see what happens.

1:12:07SPEAKER- Yeah, see what happens.

1:12:08SPEAKER- Make it about 2.30.

1:12:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:12:11SPEAKER- About 30 minutes after whenever the local jurisdictions,

1:12:14SPEAKERliquor laws require bars to close.

1:12:16SPEAKER- Yeah, that's exactly it.

1:12:18SPEAKERSo I like scattered, smothered, and covered is the thing.

1:12:21SPEAKER- Do you have, do you have just a good list?

1:12:23SPEAKER- So they don't, I don't think they have a menu.

1:12:26SPEAKERI might be able to, hold on, here we go.

1:12:28SPEAKER- The Waffle or the hash brown preparation

1:12:30SPEAKERwas like kind of a secret,

1:12:31SPEAKERlike you have to be in the know kind of thing, right?

1:12:33SPEAKER- No, it's just on the menu.

1:12:34SPEAKER- Is it really?

1:12:35SPEAKER- Yeah, there's no secret menu at Waffle House,

1:12:36SPEAKERare you kidding?

1:12:37SPEAKER- Been a while.

1:12:39SPEAKER- Hold on, I'm trying to find a, it's shockingly difficult

1:12:42SPEAKERto find a Waffle House menu.

1:12:44SPEAKERHere we go.

1:12:45SPEAKERThis location is a different time zone than me, that's fine.

1:12:48SPEAKERHash browns, oh, they do bowls now, that's wild.

1:12:52SPEAKER- Hash brown bowls?

1:12:53SPEAKER- Hash, it's like a, it's like a KFC shame bowl,

1:12:58SPEAKERbut with hash browns as the base instead of.

1:13:00SPEAKER- I've got it.

1:13:01SPEAKER- Okay.

1:13:02SPEAKER- Smothered, sauteed onions.

1:13:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds great.

1:13:05SPEAKER- Covered melted cheese.

1:13:07SPEAKER- American cheese, it's important to note.

1:13:09SPEAKER- Like smothered and covered is like

1:13:10SPEAKERthe classic preparation, right?

1:13:11SPEAKERLike that's the one everybody refers to,

1:13:13SPEAKERbut I don't think I want cheese on my hash browns.

1:13:16SPEAKER- Personally.

1:13:17SPEAKER- I like a cheese.

1:13:17SPEAKERIt depends on whether I'm having like a runny egg.

1:13:19SPEAKERIf I want a runny egg, then the cheese is good.

1:13:22SPEAKER- Now some sausage gravy, I would absolutely.

1:13:24SPEAKERLet me, okay, chunked is grilled hickory smoked ham.

1:13:26SPEAKER- Nope.

1:13:27SPEAKER- Diced, nope, what?

1:13:29SPEAKER- No ham.

1:13:30SPEAKER- Dude.

1:13:30SPEAKER- I don't like ham.