315: Work-in-Progress Till I Die

00:00SPEAKER- Let me show you, I'm gonna give you a,

00:05SPEAKERsomething weird is happening.

00:06SPEAKERFunny Linux bug.

00:07SPEAKER- You're skipping bad.

00:09SPEAKER- Really?

00:10SPEAKEROh, it's when I open the share thing, I think on Jitsi.

00:12SPEAKER- Wait, are you in, is this a Linux issue?

00:15SPEAKERLook, this might be a Linux issue.

00:16SPEAKER- So sometimes Linux has funny bugs.

00:18SPEAKERSometimes it has annoying bugs.

00:20SPEAKER- You don't say.

00:21SPEAKER- You see my audacity window here.

00:23SPEAKERTotally normal audacity window.

00:24SPEAKERYou see my mouse cursor moving around in there?

00:27SPEAKER- No, because this window capture

00:28SPEAKERdoes not capture your mouse cursor.

00:30SPEAKER- Great googly moogly.

00:31SPEAKEROkay, hold on.

00:32SPEAKER- This entire endeavor is for naught,

00:34SPEAKERbut I am leaving all that Linux bug stuff in there.

00:36SPEAKERWe're recording now, by the way.

00:37SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I know.

00:38SPEAKEROkay, so now I'm just gonna share my screen

00:40SPEAKERso you can see the cursor, 'cause fuck it, you'll see my,

00:43SPEAKERokay, so you're gonna see, here's my screen.

00:46SPEAKERThis is my whole screen.

00:47SPEAKERAnd look, you see the cursor moving around.

00:50SPEAKEREverything looks normal, normal size cursor.

00:51SPEAKERIt's like floating around in the place

00:53SPEAKERwhere the audio files go in audacity.

00:56SPEAKERBut when I get over the window, Chrome.

00:58SPEAKER- Oh, look at that.

00:59SPEAKER- It's a big boy.

01:00SPEAKER- It's like on Mac OS,

01:01SPEAKERwhen you shake the cursor around a bunch.

01:03SPEAKER- Yeah, well, so that's my favorite of the Linux features

01:07SPEAKERis on KDE, if you shake the cursor,

01:09SPEAKERit just keeps getting bigger.

01:11SPEAKERAnd you can put handles on either side of that

01:13SPEAKERso it doesn't get too, too big.

01:15SPEAKERBut if you don't, you can make it larger

01:17SPEAKERthan the entire space that all of your screens take up

01:19SPEAKERand it'll fill up every monitor on your desktop.

01:21SPEAKERAnd it's amazing.

01:22SPEAKER- Great.

01:23SPEAKER- It takes like two minutes of shaking for that to happen.

01:25SPEAKER- You should stream that sometime.

01:26SPEAKER- I should really, it's pretty good.

01:28SPEAKERBut what I really wanted to talk about

01:30SPEAKERwas I went to the grocery,

01:31SPEAKERwe're recording this the day before Thanksgiving

01:32SPEAKERin the United States,

01:33SPEAKERwhich I have learned over the years

01:36SPEAKERis the worst grocery store day of the year.

01:39SPEAKER- Well, crap, I have to go myself in a couple hours.

01:43SPEAKER- I got bad news for you 'cause it's only gonna get worse.

01:45SPEAKERYou gotta go like seven o'clock in the morning

01:47SPEAKERif you wanna have a decent grocery store experience.

01:50SPEAKER- I only need one thing though.

01:51SPEAKER- I went in and it was like the end

01:53SPEAKERof the fucking warriors in there about 20 minutes ago.

01:57SPEAKER- Well, great.

01:57SPEAKER- Like there was a fire back by the frozen turkeys.

02:02SPEAKERThere were people stabbing each other in the stuffing aisle.

02:06SPEAKERI saw, I literally saw fists thrown

02:09SPEAKERover a bag of marshmallows.

02:11SPEAKERIt was bad, it was bad.

02:13SPEAKERBut there were about 50 times as many people

02:16SPEAKERas are normally in there.

02:18SPEAKERAnd the line for the normal non,

02:21SPEAKERso we have both self-checkout and express aisles.

02:25SPEAKERAnd the self-checkout aisles are sometimes full service

02:28SPEAKERand sometimes they're like express 15 items max.

02:32SPEAKERThe line for the long aisles was so long

02:35SPEAKERthat it merged into the self-checkout aisle

02:37SPEAKERand there had to be a whole negotiation

02:39SPEAKERwith the self-checkout person

02:41SPEAKERto like get everybody in the right place

02:44SPEAKERwhere nobody was skipping a line, it was terrible.

02:46SPEAKERIt was really, really bad.

02:47SPEAKER- I really wish I had gone yesterday

02:49SPEAKERand gotten my one thing yesterday.

02:50SPEAKER- Always go, always be grocery shopping on Monday.

02:53SPEAKERBut I had to go get broccoli 'cause we forgot

02:55SPEAKERto get broccoli, so anyway.

02:57SPEAKER- The thing I need is from the deli, so we'll see.

02:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

03:00SPEAKER- Deli will be a little quieter for once.

03:03SPEAKER- Here's, I got a pro tip.

03:06SPEAKERWell, one thing is sometimes you can buy stuff at the deli,

03:09SPEAKERyou can just pay for it there

03:10SPEAKERif it's like a sandwich counter deli.

03:11SPEAKER- Not at the Safeway, sadly.

03:13SPEAKER- The other option is if you have a Starbucks inside,

03:17SPEAKERif you only have like three or four things,

03:18SPEAKERyou can just check out, just get iced tea

03:21SPEAKERor coffee at the Starbucks.

03:23SPEAKER- They'll check out your groceries?

03:25SPEAKER- They will check out your groceries there.

03:26SPEAKER- Wild.

03:27SPEAKER- I know, well, 'cause it's a Safeway, it's not a Starbucks.

03:30SPEAKER- Can we talk about, what is this?

03:32SPEAKERIt's not brand new.

03:33SPEAKERThis has been at least probably a year now.

03:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

03:36SPEAKER- What is this California state law

03:37SPEAKERthat you can't take more than 15 items to the self-checkout?

03:40SPEAKER- It's not a California state law, is it?

03:42SPEAKER- That's what the Safeway signage says.

03:43SPEAKER- Huh.

03:44SPEAKER- The hell is that?

03:45SPEAKERCome on, Gavin Newsom, what the fuck?

03:47SPEAKER- I think that's part of the BS, hey, hey,

03:50SPEAKERwe have a problem that is mostly imagined

03:55SPEAKERabout people stealing stuff through self-checkout.

03:58SPEAKERLike it's a loss problem.

04:00SPEAKERSo there are some local laws, like Long Beach,

04:05SPEAKERso part of that is a jobs thing, right?

04:06SPEAKERIs that they don't want those checker jobs to go away.

04:10SPEAKERSo like Long Beach has a law about self-checkouts

04:15SPEAKERbeing for 15 people max,

04:17SPEAKERbut I don't see anything about a state law.

04:19SPEAKERThat's what their signage says.

04:21SPEAKERI don't know, there are never lines

04:23SPEAKERat the self-checkout at our Safeway

04:24SPEAKERand we've gotten the process down to like 30 seconds.

04:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:29SPEAKER- You can just whip through that thing

04:30SPEAKERand get the hell out of there.

04:30SPEAKER- Look, there was a period of time in my life

04:32SPEAKERwhen I lived like two blocks from a Whole Foods

04:34SPEAKERwhere I actually enjoyed going to the grocery store.

04:38SPEAKERI'm done, I don't enjoy that process anymore.

04:41SPEAKER- I know, I get it.

04:43SPEAKER- It's the worst of humanity in there every single time.

04:45SPEAKER- Well, when we finally move to our cabins in the woods,

04:49SPEAKERI'm to start a garden.

04:50SPEAKER- Look, one quarter acre per person,

04:52SPEAKERthat's a subsistence farm right there.

04:56SPEAKERThink about it.

04:57SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:19SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:24SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

05:27SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:28SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

05:29SPEAKER- It is the end of the month, Brad.

05:31SPEAKER- It is the end of the month.

05:32SPEAKER- It's the time that we traditionally

05:34SPEAKERlook deep into our hearts, dig deep into the Discord,

05:38SPEAKERdelve into the email minds and pull out

05:42SPEAKERonly the prime cuts of cues,

05:44SPEAKERwhich then through the power of the internet and magic

05:47SPEAKERare turned into A's.

05:49SPEAKER- Give thanks for this glorious bounty of questions

05:52SPEAKERthat has been delivered to our podcasting table.

05:55SPEAKER- There are some bangers in here this month.

05:56SPEAKERI'm just gonna say, you're not gonna wanna miss this.

05:59SPEAKER- I felt a little weird when I was going through

06:00SPEAKERthe Discord questions and was just like flagging

06:03SPEAKERquestion after question, like five questions in a row

06:05SPEAKERthat were, let me stop here for a second.

06:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:10SPEAKER- Do you ever wonder if the audience thinks

06:11SPEAKERwe are blowing smoke month to month

06:13SPEAKERabout how many good questions?

06:16SPEAKERAre we turning into LLMs or like a chat GPT

06:19SPEAKERof podcast Q and A's?

06:21SPEAKERLike, those are some amazing questions

06:23SPEAKERyou've provided audience, very perceptive of you.

06:26SPEAKER- Look, it's just like Adam says,

06:27SPEAKERthis is the best technology podcast on the internet.

06:30SPEAKERAnd I think that our audience is the best podcast audience

06:33SPEAKERon the internet.

06:33SPEAKER- That's right.

06:34SPEAKER- Whether they're just yelling at their radios

06:36SPEAKERas they drive down the freeway or, you know,

06:38SPEAKERtaking the time to sit down and share a story

06:42SPEAKERabout playing Gears of War in 2006 with Danny O'Dwyer

06:45SPEAKERfrom Malaysia to Ireland.

06:47SPEAKER- We are cranking this one out a little quickly here

06:50SPEAKERon late on Wednesday or Thanksgiving.

06:52SPEAKERSo I didn't actually read that entire email, but.

06:55SPEAKER- Oh.

06:56SPEAKER- Now that I hear about the Danny O'Dwyer connection,

06:57SPEAKERmaybe I will read that.

06:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

07:00SPEAKER- I will say if we sound overly effusive

07:03SPEAKERabout the quality of the questions every month

07:05SPEAKERor the number of questions or both, at least for me,

07:08SPEAKERit's straight up because it makes our job easier.

07:11SPEAKERLike full on the better, the more and better questions

07:14SPEAKERwe get, the easier this episode is.

07:15SPEAKERAnd I always am very appreciative

07:17SPEAKERwhen we just have a giant crop of great questions

07:20SPEAKERto talk about.

07:21SPEAKER- But for me, it's the thing that I love

07:23SPEAKERabout the question episode.

07:24SPEAKERAnd the thing I love about questions is questions

07:26SPEAKERon podcasts in general is it's the only kind of feedback.

07:31SPEAKERWe don't get a lot of feedback, you know,

07:32SPEAKERyou don't get a lot of feedback on what you're doing.

07:35SPEAKERAnd the thing that I love about a questions episode

07:38SPEAKERis that we get to hear, like we get a different filter

07:41SPEAKERthrough the things that we talk about.

07:43SPEAKER- Yeah, I would mostly agree.

07:44SPEAKERI mean, you know, we do get feedback on the Discord

07:46SPEAKERand we talk to people there.

07:47SPEAKER- Yeah, of course, of course.

07:48SPEAKER- But in terms of dialogue with the audience

07:51SPEAKERthrough the podcast itself, this is it?

07:53SPEAKER- Well, and the Discord's a relatively small slice

07:56SPEAKERof the audience, right?

07:57SPEAKERIt's like a couple of thousand people of a much larger pie.

08:00SPEAKERSo anyway.

08:02SPEAKER- True indeed.

08:03SPEAKER- If you have questions, you can send them to techpod@content.town

08:06SPEAKERor alternatively, you can post them in the Discord.

08:08SPEAKERI will say there's a trend that has happened

08:11SPEAKERover the last several months, especially on the emails

08:14SPEAKERwhere they're starting to get real long.

08:17SPEAKERThe likelihood of having a question read

08:19SPEAKERis directly proportional to the,

08:23SPEAKERinversely proportional to the length of the question.

08:26SPEAKER- That is a global podcast rule

08:28SPEAKERor at least on every podcast I've ever been on.

08:30SPEAKER- If you send us, like I read them all,

08:33SPEAKERif you send me a 3000 word thing, I'm gonna read it

08:35SPEAKERand I'll be like, wow, that was really cool.

08:37SPEAKERNo chance in hell I'm ever gonna read that on the podcast.

08:40SPEAKERUnless it's just like the most,

08:41SPEAKERlike we've read a couple of those,

08:43SPEAKERbut usually keeping it short and sweet

08:46SPEAKERhas a much better chance of getting your question read.

08:48SPEAKERSo anyway, without any further ado.

08:51SPEAKEROh, so yeah, techpod@content.town

08:53SPEAKERor the question seeking answers channel in the Discord

08:56SPEAKERare the two ways to send us questions.

08:59SPEAKERYou can send them other ways,

09:00SPEAKERbut they are never gonna get read.

09:01SPEAKERSo anyway.

09:03SPEAKER- I'm gonna start with an email or two

09:06SPEAKERthat are feedback on previous episodes.

09:08SPEAKER- Perfect.

09:09SPEAKER- There's one from Nathan.

09:11SPEAKERI had an original Nest thermostat

09:13SPEAKERthat I purchased and used

09:14SPEAKERfor the duration of the product's life.

09:16SPEAKEREight months ago, I moved from my old house

09:18SPEAKERinto another older house.

09:20SPEAKERI left the Nest at the previous house, factory reset it

09:24SPEAKERand thought I'd never have to think about it again.

09:26SPEAKERI still get monthly reports from the Nest

09:29SPEAKERreporting for the old house, despite factory resetting it.

09:33SPEAKERConcerned about the privacy of the person

09:35SPEAKERthat currently owns my old house.

09:37SPEAKERI contacted Google.

09:38SPEAKERI could only ever get in touch with our old friend,

09:40SPEAKERthe AI chat bot who AI explained over and over

09:44SPEAKERthat I had to remove it from my account

09:46SPEAKERand factory reset it.

09:48SPEAKERI have no ability to do so

09:49SPEAKERas it doesn't show up on Google Home

09:52SPEAKERand I have no access and do not know the person.

09:55SPEAKERI asked for them to submit a ticket.

09:57SPEAKERI'm sorry, by them.

09:58SPEAKERI think they are talking about the AI chat bot here.

10:02SPEAKER- Oh, maybe.

10:02SPEAKER- Not the previous owner of their house

10:04SPEAKER'cause they just said they'd-

10:05SPEAKER- Oh, they don't know the person who bought the house.

10:06SPEAKERYeah, yeah, yeah.

10:07SPEAKER- They don't know the person.

10:08SPEAKERI asked for them to submit a ticket to the tech ops side

10:11SPEAKERto look into this.

10:12SPEAKERIt said it could do that,

10:13SPEAKERbut would never confirm that it had actually done it.

10:16SPEAKERSo I still get the reports and have no way to stop it

10:18SPEAKERdespite support discontinuing.

10:21SPEAKERAin't Google great?

10:22SPEAKER- I would just file a can spam lawsuit against Google

10:26SPEAKER'cause you've not, no, that's bad advice.

10:29SPEAKERThis sucks.

10:31SPEAKERI don't know that there's a way to fix it.

10:33SPEAKERI'm never buying another Nest product again.

10:36SPEAKERAnd I will say we got so much feedback about thermostats

10:40SPEAKERafter talking about my Nest thermostat going end of life

10:43SPEAKERand apparently everyone else's also

10:46SPEAKERthat we could do an entire thermostat,

10:48SPEAKERlike maybe a thermostat episode is worth doing.

10:51SPEAKERI think-

10:52SPEAKER- Okay, well, do you mind if I just,

10:53SPEAKERif I just expense a mortgage?

10:55SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

10:56SPEAKERNo, I'll put that right on, yeah.

10:57SPEAKER- Thermostat.

11:00SPEAKER- Look.

11:00SPEAKER- I'll just put, I'll just put a new house on the company.

11:04SPEAKER- Look, I wanted to get a laptop a couple of years ago

11:06SPEAKERand you're like, "I don't know about that one."

11:07SPEAKERBut yeah, mortgage is probably fine.

11:11SPEAKER- I actually, I shouldn't do this

11:12SPEAKERbecause it's the whole point of renting.

11:14SPEAKERWe've talked about this before,

11:15SPEAKERbut when you told me that a new thermostat is $10.

11:19SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:20SPEAKER- I kind of thought about going out

11:20SPEAKERand getting a new thermostat for this apartment

11:22SPEAKERjust to be able to install a thermostat

11:24SPEAKER'cause it sounds fun.

11:26SPEAKER- It's just two wires and some screws.

11:28SPEAKER- Also, I busted the face plate

11:29SPEAKERon our current very old thermostat, so.

11:32SPEAKER- Look, if you want a vintage one,

11:34SPEAKERyou can go over to Urban Ore in Berkeley

11:36SPEAKERand get one probably that's the exact same one

11:38SPEAKERthat you have in there now

11:39SPEAKER'cause they have bins and bins of old thermostats,

11:43SPEAKERlike cool round ones from the '50s.

11:45SPEAKER- Oh God, I could get a smart thermostat for this place

11:49SPEAKERand just take it with me if we move.

11:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:51SPEAKER- Now that you mention it.

11:52SPEAKER- Yeah, you can do whatever you want.

11:53SPEAKER- Mm.

11:55SPEAKER- So yeah, we got a lot of notes about thermostats.

11:57SPEAKERWe got a couple of notes about ESP home

12:00SPEAKERand ESP 32-based devices.

12:02SPEAKER- That is a whole, I think I might've said this

12:04SPEAKERon a recent podcast, but ESP 32 and ESP home

12:07SPEAKERare a whole rabbit hole that I would love to go down

12:09SPEAKERat some point if I ever had the time.

12:10SPEAKER- So I did some reading about it

12:12SPEAKERand I think at some point it's on the,

12:14SPEAKERI put it on my list of things I wanna do episodes about

12:16SPEAKERin the future.

12:17SPEAKERIt's gonna be more, we're not reading into those questions

12:20SPEAKERbecause we're gonna do a whole episode about it

12:21SPEAKERat some point. - Yeah, yeah.

12:22SPEAKER- I guess the TLDR there.

12:24SPEAKER- Yeah, and I mean, I can't speak for you.

12:25SPEAKERI just don't know enough about it

12:26SPEAKERto give any kind of detail yet.

12:29SPEAKER- So I would block those emails from Google

12:32SPEAKERand I would send a paper letter to the,

12:36SPEAKERsend a paper letter to your old address

12:38SPEAKERand tell them to factory reset the thermostat

12:40SPEAKER'cause you're still getting emails for it

12:41SPEAKERand to claim it on their account.

12:43SPEAKER- That's probably a good idea.

12:44SPEAKER- But also if it's the first gen NES thermostat,

12:47SPEAKERit's no longer supported

12:48SPEAKERand shouldn't be generating those emails anymore.

12:50SPEAKERSo something's clearly broken.

12:52SPEAKER- True. - Yeah.

12:53SPEAKER- And I have, I don't wanna digress too much here.

12:55SPEAKERWe should move on, but there is no worse feeling

12:58SPEAKERof helplessness that I can think of,

12:59SPEAKERat least aside from like actual really bad ones.

13:03SPEAKERBut it's a terrible feeling to have something like this

13:05SPEAKERslip through the cracks of a company's kind of

13:08SPEAKERByzantine backend or support structure or what have you,

13:12SPEAKERyou know what I mean?

13:13SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it stinks.

13:14SPEAKER- Like the cloud saves on my PlayStation account

13:16SPEAKERgot super jacked up on the PS4.

13:18SPEAKERI think I basically had too many games is what it was.

13:22SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

13:23SPEAKER- Because this is not a situation

13:24SPEAKERpeople run into very often. - I'm so sorry, Brad.

13:26SPEAKEROh, I'm so sorry.

13:27SPEAKERWhat a big problem you've had.

13:29SPEAKER- Yes, I know games media problems.

13:31SPEAKERI had several hundred games on my PS4 account,

13:33SPEAKERbut it kind of like broke cloud save functionality

13:36SPEAKERat some point where-

13:37SPEAKER- 'Cause you used up all the space that they allotted?

13:39SPEAKER- It's not space, it is number of items.

13:41SPEAKERThat's the kind of error I was getting

13:42SPEAKERwas like too many items,

13:44SPEAKERtoo many individual files or whatever.

13:46SPEAKERAnd it's a problem that still occasionally rears its head.

13:50SPEAKER- So which cloud saves did you delete?

13:52SPEAKER- That wasn't the problem.

13:53SPEAKERIt was a little more nuanced than that.

13:54SPEAKERLike I could eventually,

13:55SPEAKERI could manually go in and make the save sync,

13:57SPEAKERbut they would always fail to auto sync

13:59SPEAKERis what the problem was.

14:00SPEAKER- Oh, that stinks.

14:01SPEAKER- Which kind of defeats the whole purpose.

14:02SPEAKER- That's a stinking sync if you ask me.

14:04SPEAKER- The point is, or like, you know,

14:05SPEAKERI had a driver's license get lost

14:07SPEAKERin the California DMV system for three months one time,

14:10SPEAKERwhich took a lot of time on the phone

14:12SPEAKERto finally track down and get.

14:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:16SPEAKER- But the point is like, I just, man,

14:17SPEAKERthat feeling of that Kafka-esque feeling

14:19SPEAKERof just having something slip through the cracks

14:22SPEAKERlike this is the worst.

14:24SPEAKER- Terry Gilliam made a whole movie about that.

14:26SPEAKER- He sure did.

14:27SPEAKER- It's pretty good.

14:29SPEAKERI just saw it for the first time a few months ago.

14:30SPEAKER- Oh really?

14:31SPEAKER- Yes.

14:32SPEAKER- Oh man.

14:33SPEAKER- We're talking about Brazil for people.

14:34SPEAKER- Which version did you watch?

14:35SPEAKER- Gosh, I'd have to listen to the next Lander watch cast

14:39SPEAKERto find out more.

14:39SPEAKER- Okay, okay, okay.

14:40SPEAKER- I mean, we would definitely say on there,

14:42SPEAKERit might've been longer version.

14:43SPEAKER- It's probably the director's cut.

14:44SPEAKERThere's like a TV cut that's terrible

14:46SPEAKERthat has a happy ending.

14:47SPEAKER- Yes, we talked about that, but definitely not that.

14:49SPEAKERIt was probably a director's cut.

14:50SPEAKER- Then the original cut is kind of okay, but not great.

14:53SPEAKERRobert De Niro is a delight in that movie.

14:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:57SPEAKERAll right, email from Corey.

14:59SPEAKERI heard the words Sega and channel together

15:02SPEAKERand it prompted me to write this email.

15:03SPEAKERI loved the Sega channel.

15:05SPEAKERI would stay up until midnight on the last day of the month

15:07SPEAKERto see the game list roll over and see what was new.

15:10SPEAKERI got to try so many games that I never would have

15:12SPEAKERif the service didn't exist.

15:14SPEAKERThere were even exclusive games

15:15SPEAKERlike Mega Man, The Wily Wars.

15:17SPEAKERThat's a good example.

15:18SPEAKERI totally forgot that existed.

15:19SPEAKER- Wow.

15:21SPEAKER- This is crazy.

15:22SPEAKERI did not know about this.

15:24SPEAKEROne of my favorite memories was the preview build

15:26SPEAKERof Mortal Kombat 3.

15:27SPEAKERThe full game was too big to download

15:29SPEAKERto the Sega channel's memory,

15:30SPEAKERso they broke the game up into two ROMs,

15:33SPEAKEReach with half the characters.

15:35SPEAKERIt was such a weird and unique thing to experience.

15:38SPEAKERI've been looking for these special MK3 ROMs since then

15:40SPEAKERwith no luck.

15:41SPEAKERWith the new MK collection out,

15:43SPEAKERI've emailed Digital Eclipse

15:44SPEAKERto see if they might have any leads.

15:46SPEAKERThey were able to obtain the special WaveNet version

15:48SPEAKERof MK3 Arcade, so anything is possible.

15:52SPEAKER- This is incredible.

15:52SPEAKERI didn't know this existed.

15:53SPEAKERAnd what a weird way to shape

15:56SPEAKERhow you think about that game, right?

15:58SPEAKERI think about, I often think about old game demos

16:01SPEAKERand how much people played Q3 DM17,

16:06SPEAKERbecause that was one of the maps

16:07SPEAKERthat shipped with the demo.

16:10SPEAKERAnd I wonder if this person, if Corey ended up with like,

16:17SPEAKERoh yeah, no, I only like this with this half

16:19SPEAKERof the characters, the other half, not so much.

16:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I only play the version with Cabal,

16:23SPEAKERbut the Striker version is bullshit.

16:25SPEAKER- Exactly.

16:27SPEAKER- I did a quick Google here.

16:29SPEAKERI spent literally 10 seconds on this,

16:30SPEAKERso I can't give you much detail,

16:32SPEAKERbut on a site on forums.sonicretro.org

16:35SPEAKERin a thread entitled "More Sega Channel Prototypes Dump,"

16:39SPEAKERwhich has been going since 2011, by the way.

16:42SPEAKER- Wow.

16:43SPEAKER- From last November, about a year ago,

16:45SPEAKERhere is a big list of what I take to be new ROM dumps.

16:49SPEAKERMortal Kombat 3 contest demo, Mortal Kombat 3 demo,

16:54SPEAKERMortal Kombat 3 two parts, and that one is listed as,

16:58SPEAKERthat one is like file name or short name,

17:00SPEAKERMK3 part A, MK3 part B.

17:02SPEAKER- There you go.

17:03SPEAKER- Seems like those weird Sega Channel versions

17:05SPEAKERmight have actually been dumped at some point.

17:07SPEAKER- Who was in each part, do we know?

17:09SPEAKER- I don't have that information here.

17:11SPEAKER- Oh.

17:12SPEAKER- Might be out there somewhere.

17:13SPEAKER- Like, I wonder if that's like the,

17:14SPEAKERyou think that's like the Ed Boon tier list

17:17SPEAKERfor MK3 characters?

17:19SPEAKER- Well-

17:20SPEAKER- Or you think that's like-

17:20SPEAKER- Wouldn't you wanna, you'd probably,

17:22SPEAKERyou would wanna put half of your S tier characters

17:24SPEAKERin each version, right?

17:25SPEAKER- I mean, I don't know.

17:26SPEAKER- You wanna make sure, no matter what version you play,

17:28SPEAKERyou wanna make sure people are getting to play

17:30SPEAKERsome of the best characters.

17:31SPEAKER- I get, I mean, I guess, I don't know,

17:33SPEAKERlike, it's, look, there's a bunch of ways

17:36SPEAKERto slice this pickle.

17:37SPEAKER- Yeah, it's true.

17:38SPEAKER- You know?

17:39SPEAKER- Anyway, that's a fun factoid, I didn't know about that.

17:42SPEAKER- Like, what a weird, what a weird time,

17:44SPEAKERwhat a weird artifact of a weird time.

17:46SPEAKER- Yes, okay, this is another email

17:49SPEAKERfrom the multiplayer gaming episode.

17:52SPEAKERWhen I moved to Malaysia in 2006,

17:54SPEAKERthe halos on the various Xboxes became Skype with headshots,

17:58SPEAKERa way for me to keep in touch

17:59SPEAKERwith my best mate back in Ireland.

18:01SPEAKERWith no family in Malaysia and few regular commitments,

18:04SPEAKERI'd often hop online for a game after a very late night out

18:07SPEAKERwith new friends before going to bed.

18:09SPEAKEROne morning, when I stumbled home

18:11SPEAKERwithout having organized a play date with anyone back home

18:13SPEAKERdue to the seven to eight hour time difference,

18:16SPEAKERI jumped online for a few games of Gears of War 2.

18:18SPEAKERAs it was early morning, Koala Lumpur time,

18:20SPEAKERI was getting matched with players in the EU and Australia.

18:23SPEAKERThis was also the height of headset play

18:25SPEAKERand online jibber jabber, so active chat was not unexpected,

18:29SPEAKERbut I was surprised to hear a familiar voice on chat.

18:33SPEAKEROne half of Citizen Game and later GameSpot,

18:35SPEAKERGiant Bomb and Noclip, Danny O'Dwyer.

18:38SPEAKERDanny and his mates were also a little worse for wear.

18:41SPEAKERLate night Ireland equaled early morning in Malaysia.

18:45SPEAKERWe played a couple of mutually drunken rounds

18:47SPEAKERbefore signing off.

18:48SPEAKERThis is the only famous person I've ever met online,

18:50SPEAKERbut what truly made this stick in my mind

18:52SPEAKERis how this shortened the distance between players,

18:55SPEAKERbut from the other side of the world,

18:56SPEAKERI could accidentally link up with players from home.

18:59SPEAKER- That's amazing.

19:00SPEAKER- There's a link here to a post from Danny on Blue Sky,

19:02SPEAKERapparently verifying this whole thing.

19:04SPEAKER- Danny literally says,

19:05SPEAKER"Oh yeah, McNassy Prime's burned in my mind."

19:08SPEAKER- Your username is burned into my brain

19:10SPEAKERlike the kids in my first classroom.

19:12SPEAKER- Yeah, so there you go.

19:13SPEAKER- That's good stuff.

19:14SPEAKER- I love this 'cause like, yeah,

19:18SPEAKERit's number of magical moments that happen

19:20SPEAKERbecause of Xbox Live plus one.

19:23SPEAKER- Yep.

19:23SPEAKER- Cool, thanks for sharing.

19:25SPEAKER- Yes, indeed.

19:27SPEAKEROne more email here at least before we move on

19:30SPEAKERto the Discord stuff.

19:32SPEAKERJames in the UK.

19:33SPEAKERI have a question about thermal paste.

19:35SPEAKERI have a mid-age PC build, a Zeus Z690 board,

19:39SPEAKER4080, 12700K, which is air cooled

19:43SPEAKERby one of the bigger heat exchangers.

19:45SPEAKERI've not touched the CPU since building.

19:48SPEAKERMy idle temps remain around 35C,

19:50SPEAKERbut I've noticed my light use temps

19:52SPEAKERare starting to rise from 45 to more like 55 plus,

19:56SPEAKERwhich is noticeable

19:57SPEAKERbecause my fans are kicking up a gear at 60.

20:00SPEAKERI recently finished an extensive playthrough

20:01SPEAKERof Star Wars Outlaws,

20:03SPEAKERduring which my temps sat at about 75C.

20:06SPEAKERThat game is notoriously CPU heavy.

20:08SPEAKERI think I may have cooked my paste.

20:11SPEAKERI've never had to remove thermal paste before,

20:12SPEAKERbut YouTube makes it look reasonably simple.

20:15SPEAKERShould I try and what are the dangers?

20:17SPEAKERAlcohol everywhere, tissue?

20:20SPEAKERThanks in anticipation.

20:22SPEAKER- Yeah, so thermal paste doesn't last forever.

20:25SPEAKERThis is the thing that it's important to remember

20:28SPEAKERis that you do like every,

20:31SPEAKERdepends on the paste,

20:32SPEAKERbut at least if you leave it on

20:33SPEAKERfor more than a couple of years,

20:34SPEAKERyou're gonna have to replace.

20:36SPEAKERAnd that sign that you're getting

20:38SPEAKERwhere the light use temperature,

20:40SPEAKERidle temperatures are stable,

20:41SPEAKERlight use temperatures are going up,

20:42SPEAKEReither means your fans are really,

20:44SPEAKERyou've got dust problems,

20:47SPEAKERsomething clogging up your air cooler and or your fans,

20:51SPEAKERor alternately the paste has dried out

20:53SPEAKERand it's not conducting the heat as well.

20:56SPEAKERThe 12700K came out,

20:57SPEAKERdepending on when you bought it,

20:59SPEAKERit was what, five years ago now?

21:03SPEAKER- Not quite, four?

21:06SPEAKER- You know, I typed 12700K

21:07SPEAKERand I don't get a Wikipedia link anymore,

21:09SPEAKERso thanks Google.

21:11SPEAKERActually, I think it might've been about three years.

21:14SPEAKER- Oh no, it's good.

21:15SPEAKERWell, anyway, the point is you're in the window

21:19SPEAKERfor when you need to start thinking about that.

21:20SPEAKERIt's really easy to do.

21:22SPEAKERThere's a couple of,

21:24SPEAKERyou can use isopropyl rubbing alcohol.

21:26SPEAKERI usually use a very high percentage

21:28SPEAKERand 90 or higher is good.

21:32SPEAKER- That's what I've, I think I've got 91.

21:34SPEAKERI've seen you could get up to 99 if you can find it.

21:36SPEAKER- When you use those high percentages of isopropyl,

21:39SPEAKERanything above 75, you need to wear gloves

21:41SPEAKER'cause it'll, it's bad for your skin.

21:43SPEAKER- Really?

21:45SPEAKER- But the other option is that,

21:48SPEAKERI mean, if you don't do a lot of PC building,

21:50SPEAKERit's less important,

21:51SPEAKERbut if you're swapping coolers and stuff all the time,

21:54SPEAKERArctic Clean, the Arctic Silver folks,

21:56SPEAKERmake a two-stage cleaner

22:00SPEAKERfor removing dried thermal grease

22:03SPEAKERfrom your CPUs and coolers.

22:07SPEAKERAnd the first stage takes off the grease

22:08SPEAKERand then the second one is just a little bit acidic

22:11SPEAKERand kind of polishes off the copper

22:13SPEAKERor the interface materials.

22:17SPEAKERIt costs practically nothing.

22:18SPEAKERIt's less than 10 bucks for a tub.

22:21SPEAKERThe last one I bought has lasted me more than a decade

22:25SPEAKERand I build a fair number of PCs

22:28SPEAKERand they're just in little eyedroppers.

22:29SPEAKERSo if you're using rubbing alcohol,

22:31SPEAKERwhat I usually do is put the alcohol onto a paper towel

22:35SPEAKERor a lint-free, a clean, relatively lint-free cloth.

22:38SPEAKERAnd then I use the wet paper towel to take the stuff off.

22:43SPEAKERAnd it takes three or four passes.

22:45SPEAKERIf you're doing the Arctic Clean,

22:47SPEAKERit's in an eyedropper-type bottle

22:48SPEAKERand you can just put three drops right on the top

22:50SPEAKERand smear it around.

22:52SPEAKERYou want to make sure the PC's unplugged,

22:54SPEAKERbut it's pretty hard to mess up.

22:56SPEAKERAnd even if you're on a Ryzen or something

22:58SPEAKERthat has those cutouts in the side of the heat spreader

23:01SPEAKERand the excess old thermal goo gets in the side there,

23:04SPEAKERyou don't have to worry about it.

23:05SPEAKERYou can pop it out with a Q-tip or a toothpick

23:08SPEAKERor something like that, or you can just leave it.

23:12SPEAKERIt's fine, it's not gonna hurt anything.

23:13SPEAKER- Yeah, it won't hurt anything.

23:14SPEAKERI was once gifted a hand-me-down CPU from a friend

23:18SPEAKERquite a while ago that, I'm not gonna name any names,

23:22SPEAKERhad a god-awful paste mess all over it.

23:24SPEAKER- Some people who maybe listen to this podcast

23:27SPEAKERlike to use too much paste.

23:28SPEAKER- This was, it was not one of the recent AMD

23:31SPEAKERwith the holes on the sides.

23:32SPEAKERIt was an older Intel, so no mess inside.

23:35SPEAKERThe heat spreader, but the point is I use 90% alcohol

23:39SPEAKERand just a tissue.

23:41SPEAKERThis was bad enough that by the time I got it out of there,

23:44SPEAKERa tiny little bit was around on the underside,

23:46SPEAKERlike on the, those are not BGA, whatever.

23:51SPEAKER- The bracket thing?

23:52SPEAKER- LGA, I guess those are LGA pads.

23:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:55SPEAKER- Like the actual contact pads on the underside of the CPU.

23:57SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

23:58SPEAKER- Anyway, I straight up just 90% alcohol and tissue

24:02SPEAKERto all over that CPU until it cleaned.

24:05SPEAKER- Oh god, don't do the pads, that's scary.

24:07SPEAKER- Then I microfibered them.

24:09SPEAKER- That's, yeah, just, just.

24:11SPEAKER- I mean, I figured it was better

24:13SPEAKERthan leaving paste on there.

24:14SPEAKER- Probably, yeah, if you have to take stuff off the pads,

24:18SPEAKERwhat I've always done anytime that's happened

24:20SPEAKERis used a Q-tip that's been dipped in the isopropyl.

24:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:24SPEAKER- I'm terrified of using fiber cloths on that

24:28SPEAKERfor fear it'll generate static across the--

24:30SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, sure, it might've been a Q-tip I used.

24:32SPEAKERAnyway, point is I never had a problem

24:34SPEAKERwith that CPU after I cleaned it.

24:35SPEAKER- It's like generally you're gonna be fine.

24:38SPEAKERIt's pretty, it's surprisingly difficult to kill something.

24:41SPEAKERYou're much more likely to mess up the pins inside the thing.

24:44SPEAKER- Yes.

24:45SPEAKER- And just to be clear, when you're doing this,

24:47SPEAKERyou don't have to take the CPU out.

24:49SPEAKERYou can leave the CPU in the board, lay it flat,

24:52SPEAKERand then, 'cause the thing you're gonna do,

24:55SPEAKERlike you may damage something with wet,

24:57SPEAKERyou're much more likely to damage the pins

24:59SPEAKERtaking the CPU in and out

25:00SPEAKERif you don't do it fairly regularly, so.

25:02SPEAKER- Which is infinitely more horrifying

25:04SPEAKERthan the CPU is way, way, way more resilient

25:07SPEAKERthan those pins.

25:08SPEAKER- And you can use 75% isopropyl for this as well

25:11SPEAKERif you want, just give it a little extra time to dry

25:13SPEAKER'cause it has more water in there.

25:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I think I've talked before about,

25:17SPEAKERI mean, that PC I had for the longest I've ever had a PC,

25:19SPEAKERI bent a bunch of the pins on that socket

25:22SPEAKERwith my t-shirt leaning over the board.

25:24SPEAKER- Yep, that'll happen. - At one point,

25:25SPEAKERand spent like an hour meticulously bending pins back.

25:29SPEAKER- That's why I always do all my builds in the nude.

25:31SPEAKER- Yeah, and that will work,

25:33SPEAKERbut that machine ran for seven years, eight years, just fine.

25:39SPEAKER- So the other thing is,

25:40SPEAKERif you don't wanna have to fool with this,

25:41SPEAKERthere are thermal pastes that are built for long duration.

25:44SPEAKER- Yeah, or.

25:46SPEAKER- Or you can use a graphite pad.

25:48SPEAKER- You know what does last forever, it's a graphite pad.

25:52SPEAKER- Well, there's actually two different things now,

25:54SPEAKERthere's the graphite pad, and then there's also this like,

25:57SPEAKERGod, I can't remember the name of it, it's some Honeywell,

25:59SPEAKERit's some. - It's that straight up

26:01SPEAKERresearch material on a thermal interface material

26:05SPEAKERthat's like got an alphanumeric name.

26:07SPEAKER- Yeah, Thermal Grizzly actually resells it now.

26:09SPEAKER- Oh, they do, interesting.

26:10SPEAKERI was waiting for somebody to make that more commercial

26:13SPEAKERfor PC builders, 'cause it was not for that application

26:15SPEAKERoriginally, I don't believe.

26:17SPEAKER- So yeah, it was originally for industrial type stuff.

26:22SPEAKERThe minus pad, I think, is what it's called.

26:25SPEAKER- PTM 7950, I believe, is the original material name.

26:28SPEAKER- Yep, that's the one.

26:31SPEAKERAnd yeah, so it basically is a phase change material

26:34SPEAKERthat at the temperatures the CPU operates,

26:37SPEAKERgets a little more liquidy, and then when it cools back down

26:40SPEAKERit turns into a solid again.

26:42SPEAKERBut you can also use the graphite pad.

26:43SPEAKERYou can get, Thermal Grizzly sells a long duration

26:47SPEAKERthermal paste called Duronaut that's for long-term use

26:52SPEAKERthat doesn't dry.

26:54SPEAKERSo yeah, there's a lot of options.

26:56SPEAKER- Yeah, all right, let's move on to some Discord questions

26:59SPEAKER'cause there are a ton of them.

27:00SPEAKERAoli writes in, this is a good question.

27:03SPEAKERSmartphones seem to have stagnated a fair bit

27:05SPEAKERin that each generation has mostly minor improvements

27:07SPEAKERto existing hardware and software.

27:10SPEAKERI've read a few articles saying that the current type

27:11SPEAKERof smartphone may have plateaued and found its optimal form.

27:16SPEAKERWhat other product categories have hit a similar plateau,

27:19SPEAKERand what product categories can we expect to see

27:21SPEAKERdrastic updates or improvements in the coming years?

27:23SPEAKER- It's like carcinization, but for phones.

27:26SPEAKERYou know about this?

27:27SPEAKER- Oh yeah, the tendency-

27:28SPEAKER- Cancerization, rather, yeah.

27:30SPEAKER- No, it is carcinization.

27:31SPEAKER- Carcinization, yeah.

27:32SPEAKER- The tendency of numerous disparate life forms

27:35SPEAKERto all turn into crabs.

27:37SPEAKER- The evolutionary shape of crab is very good,

27:39SPEAKERit turns out.

27:40SPEAKER- It turns out crabs are highly adapted to a lot of things.

27:43SPEAKER- I think there's room for phone technology improvements,

27:49SPEAKERbut I think there needs to be some material stuff

27:53SPEAKERthat changes as a result.

27:55SPEAKERSo we need better batteries and folding screens

28:02SPEAKERfor things to change on phones.

28:04SPEAKERI see the flip phones with the folding screens in them,

28:09SPEAKERand I'm like, "That looks rad."

28:10SPEAKERAnd then I see what it looks like

28:11SPEAKERafter somebody's used it for three months,

28:13SPEAKERand I'm like, "This would make me absolutely crazy,

28:14SPEAKERthere's no way I can buy this."

28:17SPEAKERBut I would love to have a slightly smaller phone

28:19SPEAKERthat has the same volume, but that can be folded in half,

28:22SPEAKERso it fits in my pocket better.

28:24SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, I can see it.

28:25SPEAKERI kinda like where phones are at.

28:27SPEAKERAnd when I saw the iPhone 17 at the store a few months ago,

28:30SPEAKERI was just like, "You know, this is kind of all I would need

28:32SPEAKERin a phone probably ever personally,

28:35SPEAKERbut my phone needs are pretty light, to be fair."

28:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think this is the place.

28:42SPEAKERI'm on a 15, I think, still, 15 Pro,

28:47SPEAKERand I don't really see any reason to upgrade

28:50SPEAKERfor the foreseeable future.

28:51SPEAKERMy wife has the one with the good camera,

28:53SPEAKERand when we need to take a picture of something,

28:55SPEAKERI borrow her phone if we want it to be good.

28:59SPEAKERBut even for normal stuff, my phone camera's fine.

29:03SPEAKERAnd then the rest of it is like,

29:04SPEAKERI would like it to be lighter and smaller.

29:06SPEAKERSo I looked at the Airs this year,

29:08SPEAKERand I was like, "Oh no, this is not enough camera for me."

29:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I get it. - Anyway.

29:14SPEAKER- I think my girlfriend's gonna get a 17 soon,

29:16SPEAKERso we'll have one of those in here for me to see.

29:19SPEAKERShe's still on a 10R, which is becoming extremely creaky

29:22SPEAKERat this point, so it's time.

29:25SPEAKER- Other categories that have hit the same spot,

29:29SPEAKERI think the PC gaming handhelds,

29:32SPEAKERwe're seeing some explosive,

29:34SPEAKERI think we're gonna see a lot of evolution there.

29:37SPEAKERI do, and I'm not talking about the Steam Deck in this case,

29:39SPEAKERI'm talking about the smaller stuff

29:41SPEAKERfrom the Chinese electronics markets, right?

29:46SPEAKER- Or your Ambernicks and so forth.

29:47SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause those folks are making,

29:51SPEAKERthey're doing mad science stuff with those form factors

29:55SPEAKERto the point that now there's dual screen devices

29:58SPEAKERand there's all sorts of cool stuff

29:59SPEAKERthat's happening over there.

30:01SPEAKERAnd they're working at a scale that Asus and Lenovo

30:05SPEAKERjust can't sell machines.

30:07SPEAKERThey can't sell machines in the kind of volumes

30:11SPEAKERthat Ambernick is happy to sell volumes at.

30:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I think I've read that a lot of their products,

30:16SPEAKERthey sell like 10,000 units or something like that,

30:19SPEAKERand that's like fine for them.

30:21SPEAKER- I think Russ from Retro Game Core,

30:23SPEAKERI think is where Russ is from,

30:24SPEAKERtold me that 10,000 is a pretty good number for those guys.

30:28SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool.

30:30SPEAKERIt's cool that that can exist.

30:32SPEAKER- And then the other one is I think the,

30:36SPEAKERwhat do you call it, the FPGA stuff is,

30:38SPEAKERI think those, I think we're getting to a point

30:41SPEAKERwhere people are selling enough of those

30:43SPEAKERthat we'll start seeing some interesting

30:44SPEAKERlow cost applications for them now finally,

30:47SPEAKERin the same way that like the Arduino and Raspberry Pis

30:51SPEAKERof 15 years ago,

30:53SPEAKERbegat a whole bunch of really interesting microcomputer

30:55SPEAKERand kind of microcontroller applications.

30:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I would be curious to see if we get any FPGA

31:00SPEAKERbased stuff that's not gaming oriented at some point.

31:03SPEAKERLike other uses for those things.

31:05SPEAKER- Like we wouldn't, and the thing that,

31:07SPEAKERthe thing that this happened before,

31:08SPEAKERlike when you look at what happened

31:09SPEAKERwith the Arduinos especially,

31:12SPEAKERthat kind of microcontroller becoming inexpensive

31:16SPEAKERand becoming a thing that people were buying

31:17SPEAKERfor like home projects and DIY electronic stuff

31:22SPEAKERmade it possible for a lot of the keyboards,

31:25SPEAKERthe mechanical keyboard stuff that's happening now,

31:26SPEAKER'cause they're all using those same kinds of controllers.

31:28SPEAKERAnd like when something gets cheap for one category,

31:32SPEAKERit can spin off a bunch of other interesting categories.

31:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool.

31:36SPEAKERI know another thing I would add here

31:37SPEAKERthat I think maybe has plateaued,

31:39SPEAKERbut definitely should plateau in my opinion is TV standards.

31:43SPEAKERAnd let me make a distinction here.

31:45SPEAKERI'm not talking about TV display technology.

31:48SPEAKERSo like your OLED still has room for improvement,

31:51SPEAKERlike micro LEDs not even widely available yet,

31:53SPEAKERand that's even better.

31:54SPEAKERI'm not talking about the physical medium

31:56SPEAKERfor displaying the image.

31:58SPEAKERI'm talking about like resolution and color standards.

32:01SPEAKERLike 4K and current HDR, I think is pretty goddamn good.

32:04SPEAKERLike I was actually thinking this the other day.

32:07SPEAKERIf we were on 4K and current HDR standards

32:10SPEAKERfor the rest of my life,

32:12SPEAKERI think I'd probably be fine with that.

32:14SPEAKERI think we finally hit the point of diminishing returns

32:16SPEAKERwhere at the size of screen I'm likely to ever have.

32:19SPEAKERI don't think I'll ever need better than that.

32:22SPEAKER- I just want a screen that's painted

32:23SPEAKERover every wall in my house, like in back to the future.

32:26SPEAKERAnd I want phone calls to pop up on that automatically

32:29SPEAKER'cause that doesn't sound like a nightmare.

32:31SPEAKER- Yes, now again, like I'll point out like HDR might be great

32:35SPEAKERbut you might still need a TV that can get brighter

32:37SPEAKERthan TVs currently get to truly appreciate it.

32:40SPEAKERSo again, there's room for improvement there

32:42SPEAKERbut on the standards end,

32:43SPEAKERI feel like TV is in a pretty good place.

32:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I want, it's funny, in the Simpsons Fortnight,

32:50SPEAKERthey put the giant Mr. Burns TV,

32:52SPEAKERthe biggest TV in the world in.

32:53SPEAKER- I saw that.

32:54SPEAKER- And it cracks me up every time I see it.

32:57SPEAKERAnd I can't imagine that I would ever want that,

32:59SPEAKERanything like that size.

33:01SPEAKER- Is that from the show, that TV?

33:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's from an episode.

33:03SPEAKER- I never saw that episode.

33:05SPEAKERBut yes, that TV is too big.

33:07SPEAKERI think like 65 is a pretty good edge of size for me.

33:09SPEAKERLike if I had a bigger room, I could see,

33:11SPEAKERmaybe go into like 77.

33:13SPEAKERBut I think that's probably about the biggest TV

33:15SPEAKERI could ever imagine owning.

33:16SPEAKER- Like if we lived someplace where we had basements,

33:21SPEAKERI would love to have a room with like six or eight recliners

33:26SPEAKERand risers for the people in the back

33:29SPEAKERand like a big giant projector and some loud ass speakers

33:33SPEAKERso I could watch big ass movies or play games

33:35SPEAKERin like an optimal situation.

33:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I get it.

33:39SPEAKERI mean, everybody's different, but for me,

33:40SPEAKERI found that there is a minimum distance to size ratio.

33:44SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

33:45SPEAKER- Like the bigger something gets,

33:46SPEAKERthe farther away I need to sit from it to still enjoy it.

33:49SPEAKERSo there is a cap on that stuff for sure.

33:52SPEAKER- See, I could just rest my eyeballs on the screen.

33:53SPEAKERI'm fine, it turns out.

33:55SPEAKER- All right, more power to you.

33:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

33:57SPEAKER- Okay, Sergeant Sphinx,

34:00SPEAKERhow long before a work in progress

34:02SPEAKERstops being in progress?

34:04SPEAKERI ask because an old computer I have

34:05SPEAKERthat I had intended to get up and running again

34:07SPEAKERhas been a work in progress for almost five years now.

34:10SPEAKER- Well, look, it's even older computer now, so it's-

34:12SPEAKER- You know, I'm gonna say,

34:16SPEAKERnot to get too macabre here,

34:17SPEAKERI'm gonna say it's still in progress

34:18SPEAKERuntil you're dead in the ground.

34:20SPEAKER- Wow.

34:21SPEAKER- 'Cause you might always get back to it at some point.

34:23SPEAKER- Okay, so this week or last week, last Thursday,

34:27SPEAKERThursday's e-waste day at the Pacifica recycling yard,

34:30SPEAKERshout outs to the Pacifica Recycling,

34:32SPEAKERor Revco, whatever the company is that does recycling.

34:36SPEAKERAnd I've had a printer here,

34:38SPEAKERthe perfectly good Brother printer,

34:41SPEAKERbut the A, it's a fax machine printer scanner combo.

34:46SPEAKERAnd so it's huge.

34:48SPEAKERAnd B, it got enough paper slivers in the rollers

34:52SPEAKERthat every time you print anything,

34:53SPEAKERit makes a horrible squeaking sound.

34:56SPEAKERAnd C, none of the current printers use

35:00SPEAKERthe same toner cartridge,

35:01SPEAKERso the toner was starting to get expensive.

35:03SPEAKEROr I'd have to buy the cheap bootleg toners

35:05SPEAKERthat were, like, often I would buy two

35:09SPEAKERand one of them would be worth a shit

35:10SPEAKERand the other one I'd have to send back and complain,

35:12SPEAKERand like, it's just more, so I, anyway,

35:15SPEAKERTLDR is like last year and a half ago,

35:17SPEAKERI bought another printer.

35:19SPEAKERAnd I've had the old printer sitting next to my desk

35:21SPEAKERfor a year and a half, 'cause I was like,

35:22SPEAKERwell, you know, I could take this apart

35:24SPEAKERand clean out the paper slivers,

35:25SPEAKERand then I have a perfectly good printer

35:27SPEAKERthat I can give someone.

35:28SPEAKERAnd the other day I was going to electronics e-waste

35:30SPEAKERrecycling and I was like, you know what?

35:32SPEAKERI've tripped over this printer for the last year and a half.

35:36SPEAKERI'm getting rid of it.

35:37SPEAKERI'm not gonna think about it, I'm not gonna worry about it,

35:39SPEAKERI'm not gonna even feel bad about it,

35:40SPEAKER'cause I'm not gonna, realistically,

35:41SPEAKERI'm not going to go through the hassle

35:43SPEAKERof disassembling this thing to create a printer

35:47SPEAKERthat will be a problem for some other poor bastard

35:49SPEAKERthat I gift it to.

35:50SPEAKERSo it's in e-waste now.

35:52SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah.

35:54SPEAKERSometimes you just have to let go.

35:55SPEAKERThat's what I'm saying. - That's right, yes.

35:56SPEAKERI mean, you could argue that my separating myself

36:00SPEAKERfrom this plasma television is still in progress.

36:04SPEAKER- I still have my plasma television.

36:06SPEAKER- Well, you use it.

36:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I love it.

36:09SPEAKER- Does this TV look like it's in use to you?

36:10SPEAKER- Oh no, Brad, oh no.

36:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:13SPEAKER- I didn't even clock that that's what that was

36:15SPEAKERall this time, I've been looking at it for years.

36:17SPEAKER- I should really get rid of that TV.

36:19SPEAKER- You know what you should do?

36:21SPEAKERYou should put it up on that table behind you,

36:24SPEAKERand then you have a heater in the winter.

36:25SPEAKER- That's true.

36:26SPEAKER- But also something you can put on your screen.

36:27SPEAKER- That's true.

36:28SPEAKER- So you have cool backdrops.

36:29SPEAKER- I wonder if plasma wouldn't flicker on camera.

36:34SPEAKER- Oh, 600 hertz, baby.

36:35SPEAKER- No, I mean, it does strobe though, so I don't know.

36:38SPEAKER- Well, there's only one way to find out, Brad.

36:39SPEAKER- That's true, I guess so.

36:41SPEAKER- Look, you have that game frame.

36:42SPEAKERThat's a screen for babies.

36:43SPEAKERYou could have a screen for men behind you.

36:45SPEAKER- That's true, you could have a 55 inch.

36:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:49SPEAKER- And also, the best part about that TV,

36:51SPEAKERreally the only thing that makes me wanna replace that TV

36:54SPEAKERat this point, 'cause I've just given up now,

36:57SPEAKERis that when you walk by in the summertime,

36:59SPEAKERyou can feel the heat radiating off of it.

37:02SPEAKER- Oh, you sure can.

37:03SPEAKER- Yeah, it's toasty, yeah.

37:05SPEAKER- And nice TVs are really cheap now, you.

37:08SPEAKER- I know.

37:09SPEAKER- The 4K, the 4K is fine, like 1080p still looks good,

37:12SPEAKERbut the thing that blew me away,

37:14SPEAKERbut I've said this before, is the HDR.

37:16SPEAKERThe HDR is what you don't know you're missing.

37:19SPEAKER- I know what I'm missing.

37:20SPEAKERMy wife likes the old TV and is resistant to change, so.

37:23SPEAKER- That's fine, that's fine.

37:24SPEAKER- Therefore, I like the old TV and I'm resistant to change.

37:26SPEAKER- Well, you have a bunch of nice monitors, so.

37:28SPEAKER- That's true, I am my whole.

37:30SPEAKER- Yes, my, just real quick before we move on

37:33SPEAKERfrom this question, I have the deadly combo

37:35SPEAKERof short attention span and not enough free time.

37:39SPEAKERSo I am just surrounded by half-finished projects

37:43SPEAKERfrom months to years ago.

37:46SPEAKER- Look, the secret is to not have enough space

37:48SPEAKERto store anything that's not actively being worked on,

37:51SPEAKERand then it really puts a sharp focus on your problems.

37:55SPEAKER- You can only have so many half-finished projects around.

37:57SPEAKER- Something has to go.

37:59SPEAKER- We were right about the three year anniversary

38:01SPEAKERof me buying that hard drive enclosure

38:03SPEAKERto do backups for my NAS on that.

38:05SPEAKER- You're almost there.

38:05SPEAKER- Pie down the hall, and I got to about the 90% mark

38:09SPEAKERa few months ago, that's still not done.

38:13SPEAKERThere's always five other more interesting things

38:15SPEAKERto look at every time I'm almost done with something, anyway.

38:18SPEAKER- And it's always the last 10% is harder

38:20SPEAKERthan the first 90% invariably.

38:22SPEAKER- Or more boring or whatever,

38:23SPEAKERthat's actually the real problem.

38:26SPEAKERThink, has wait for program to respond ever worked?

38:29SPEAKER- Nope.

38:32SPEAKER- I generally agree with you.

38:33SPEAKERI feel like there's been like a very rare occasion

38:35SPEAKERwhere something actually did come back,

38:36SPEAKERbut I think there is a, we didn't name for this law.

38:41SPEAKERIf it's past like 30 seconds, it's never coming back.

38:44SPEAKERLike if it's going to come back,

38:45SPEAKERit's going to do it in the first like 20 seconds.

38:47SPEAKER- I've had some network stuff that came back

38:50SPEAKERat a shockingly long period of time,

38:52SPEAKERbut just if you get that thing pop up,

38:54SPEAKERjust assume it's dead and kill it.

38:55SPEAKERDon't even think about it.

38:57SPEAKERIt's like, it's the zombie rule, right?

39:00SPEAKERThat's not your mom anymore.

39:01SPEAKERYou gotta just put one in her head and move on.

39:03SPEAKER- Yes. - Same situation.

39:04SPEAKERThat process is dead to you.

39:06SPEAKER- Yes. - Let it go, man.

39:07SPEAKER- Agreed.

39:09SPEAKEROkay, cake batter, this is a good two-part question.

39:11SPEAKER- Okay. - Will owns a yard.

39:13SPEAKER- That's true.

39:14SPEAKER- Okay, did we talk about you

39:15SPEAKERtrying to get a network somewhere as a precursor

39:18SPEAKERto this email or this question?

39:20SPEAKER- I've talked about putting cameras in the backyard

39:24SPEAKERspecifically to see if it's a coyote

39:26SPEAKERor just a really backed up raccoon

39:28SPEAKERthat's crapping in the middle of my yard.

39:30SPEAKER- Okay, that's right.

39:31SPEAKERI was trying to remember

39:32SPEAKERif there was an antecedent to this question.

39:34SPEAKERWill owns a yard.

39:36SPEAKERHas Will ever considered trenching direct burial ethernet

39:39SPEAKERto the far end of the yard for wifi

39:40SPEAKERor for a PoE-powered Raspberry Pi all-sky camera?

39:45SPEAKER- Well, okay.

39:46SPEAKERSo I have considered trenching direct burial ethernet

39:49SPEAKERto the back end of the yard

39:50SPEAKERfor the aforementioned backed up raccoon/coyote/mountain lion

39:54SPEAKERpoop.

39:56SPEAKERTurns out it was a raccoon.

39:57SPEAKER- Oh.

39:58SPEAKER- It has some irritable raccoon bowel disease or something.

40:01SPEAKERIt was really bad.

40:02SPEAKER- It's odd.

40:03SPEAKER- Not okay, not what you want.

40:06SPEAKERThe trenching was easy.

40:08SPEAKERI ended up untrenching it almost immediately

40:10SPEAKER'cause the yard crew that comes and does our mowing,

40:15SPEAKERfucking mowed over my ethernet cable.

40:18SPEAKER- That sucks.

40:19SPEAKER- And I lost a hundred foot flat ethernet cable

40:22SPEAKER'cause I can't really put new ends on that.

40:23SPEAKERAnyway, hashtag not bitter.

40:26SPEAKER- Maybe you just gotta mow your own yard.

40:28SPEAKER- Look, I would love to.

40:30SPEAKERThe all-sky camera is something I was not familiar with.

40:34SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's the other part of this question

40:36SPEAKERthat made me want to read this.

40:37SPEAKERI also had to look that up and that's cool as hell.

40:39SPEAKERIt's like a 360 degree kind of point this at the sky

40:44SPEAKERand take photos of space all night.

40:46SPEAKER- Yep, or all day too.

40:48SPEAKERYou can do sky photos during the day.

40:49SPEAKERNow, I live one mile from the Pacific Ocean

40:53SPEAKERin the San Francisco Bay Area region.

40:57SPEAKERWe're in a foggy ass, foggy zone.

41:01SPEAKERI feel like if you have one of those gray Heather sweatshirts

41:05SPEAKERlike the classic gray sweatshirt

41:07SPEAKERand you took your phone camera and held it like three inches

41:10SPEAKERfrom the sweatshirt and took a picture of it,

41:12SPEAKERthat's gonna be like 300 days a year of sky at my house.

41:15SPEAKERNighttime or daytime.

41:16SPEAKER- I think people who don't live near coasts

41:18SPEAKERdon't appreciate just how much of a craft shoot it is here,

41:22SPEAKERwhether you're even gonna see the sky on a given day or not.

41:25SPEAKER- Like on, I want to say on the last solar eclipse,

41:29SPEAKERwe got in the car and drove inland three hours

41:31SPEAKERbefore we got to clear skies enough to see the solar eclipse.

41:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:35SPEAKER- So not super useful where I live.

41:39SPEAKERIf I lived, I actually have a friend who lives in North Carolina

41:42SPEAKERnear your folks, actually.

41:45SPEAKERSomebody I used to play PUBG with

41:47SPEAKERwho has been doing a lot of astronomy photography

41:49SPEAKER'cause he moved up in the mountains and there's no light.

41:51SPEAKERAnd it's crazy.

41:52SPEAKER- The mountains would be amazing

41:53SPEAKERif and when I ever lived there again,

41:55SPEAKERI might try something like this.

41:57SPEAKER- Yeah, and he's, I think this is exactly his jam,

42:02SPEAKERbut yeah, no, I don't, like it would be light gray,

42:05SPEAKERdark gray, yellowy pink gray on the foggy nights here.

42:10SPEAKERSo probably a pass.

42:12SPEAKER- At this time of year, I mean, when it gets cold,

42:13SPEAKERthere's way less fog for a couple, three months.

42:16SPEAKER- Yeah, but it's still, you still get,

42:19SPEAKERit's still unpredictable when we get fog.

42:21SPEAKERWe get fog even when it's cold.

42:22SPEAKER- Yeah, and a lot of the time the fog comes in at night.

42:25SPEAKER- Yeah, now the thing I will say is often

42:27SPEAKERat like one o'clock in the morning, it rolls back out

42:29SPEAKERand it's completely clear and really pretty

42:30SPEAKEReven in the summertime, so who knows?

42:34SPEAKERI buried ethernet, speaks to my love of hidden technology.

42:38SPEAKERI, yes, yes, yes, you can send internet through the air.

42:41SPEAKERWhat if you sent it underground

42:42SPEAKERand it was way faster and more reliable?

42:44SPEAKER- So we did that at my parents' house when I was a kid.

42:47SPEAKER- Yeah, you've mentioned that before.

42:48SPEAKER- We trenched over to the barn that the foals were born in.

42:52SPEAKERAnd it was, it's really like,

42:53SPEAKERyou just get a flat sided spade and dig a slit trench

42:56SPEAKERand just put the ethernet at the bottom and mash it down.

42:58SPEAKERAnd it's fine until somebody hits it with a shovel.

43:00SPEAKER- Yeah, like I think that's cool enough

43:03SPEAKERthat I would almost want like a little shed in the backyard

43:05SPEAKERjust as an excuse to run cable out to it.

43:09SPEAKERNot necessarily 'cause I need a shed.

43:10SPEAKER- The nice thing about living in the Bay Area

43:12SPEAKERis that our house, our lot is small enough

43:15SPEAKERthat I can get like my long range access point

43:19SPEAKERthat lives in the garage covers a pretty good chunk

43:21SPEAKERof our neighborhood.

43:23SPEAKERSo I have ether, I have wifi wherever I'm walking

43:25SPEAKERin within like a block of the house.

43:27SPEAKER- Fair, fair. - Yeah.

43:30SPEAKER- Let me take a couple of networking.

43:31SPEAKER- Well, kind of already on the networking subject.

43:33SPEAKERLet's do a couple more.

43:34SPEAKER- Okay.

43:35SPEAKER- Here's a question from Person.

43:37SPEAKERAm I realistically going to see a performance benefit

43:39SPEAKERwith a DIY Open Sense or Open WRT router on nice hardware

43:43SPEAKERversus a high-end retail router?

43:46SPEAKERSpecifically in terms of moderate local network loads,

43:48SPEAKERbut nothing wild, moonlight streaming,

43:50SPEAKERfile transfers, et cetera.

43:52SPEAKERI can find a lot of build your own router articles and videos

43:55SPEAKERbut no one seems to actually have

43:56SPEAKERany performance comparison.

43:58SPEAKERI would say probably the reason for that

44:00SPEAKERis 'cause there actually probably won't be

44:02SPEAKERa huge performance comparison.

44:04SPEAKERIn my experience, the value of the DIY router

44:07SPEAKERis not for speed, it's for stability

44:09SPEAKERand reliability I guess is the best term I would use.

44:14SPEAKER- And configuration options.

44:15SPEAKER- And yes, also you can,

44:16SPEAKERthere are way more options typically on there.

44:18SPEAKER- Yeah, like if you, a lot of ISP provided routers

44:23SPEAKERespecially don't let you do things like set your own

44:25SPEAKERDHCP servers and DNS servers and things like that.

44:30SPEAKERYou also might have trouble with certain kinds

44:32SPEAKERof port forwarding or setting up appropriate VLANs

44:35SPEAKERor doing like actually routing stuff to inside the network

44:42SPEAKERversus say running a port forwarding or something like that.

44:51SPEAKERI question the reliability thing.

44:53SPEAKERI think it's pretty hard to beat the reliability

44:56SPEAKERon the kind of embedded device style modern router.

44:59SPEAKER- I think that is highly dependent on which company

45:03SPEAKERwe're talking about and which model we're talking about.

45:05SPEAKERSome are supported better than others.

45:07SPEAKERI mean, the example I would use is the thing

45:09SPEAKERthat drove me to this, I'm not on a DIY router,

45:12SPEAKERI'm on an edge router, which is a whole other topic.

45:15SPEAKERBut what drove me from the old ASUS router

45:18SPEAKERI was on to the edge router is that that old ASUS

45:21SPEAKERhad some issue with multicast traffic.

45:23SPEAKERI don't remember what it was.

45:25SPEAKERIt was a thing that I Googled and started seeing

45:27SPEAKERa bunch of people going like, oh yeah,

45:28SPEAKERif you're trying to do this and this,

45:31SPEAKERthis line of routers from ASUS just chokes on this traffic.

45:34SPEAKER- They just don't turn that on, yeah, it's bad.

45:35SPEAKER- For the record, multicast is used in things

45:38SPEAKERlike device discovery on networks.

45:40SPEAKERSo like your printer or AirPlay speakers or like-

45:44SPEAKER- Internal video streaming.

45:45SPEAKER- Or like smart plugs or something.

45:46SPEAKERSo like if you, any kind of thing where you get like a,

45:49SPEAKERyou get the device on the network and then the thing

45:52SPEAKERthat wants to see the device just sees it.

45:54SPEAKERLike, oh, iTunes just sees your AirPlay speakers

45:57SPEAKERor home system just sees your smart plugs.

45:59SPEAKERThat's multicast and that was not working right

46:02SPEAKERwith that old router.

46:03SPEAKERIt's edge cases like that is another place where the,

46:06SPEAKERthe bigger and open source routing packages excel

46:11SPEAKERbecause they tend to, they tend to handle

46:13SPEAKERall those subsystems in a more robust way

46:15SPEAKERthan occasionally some manufacturers

46:18SPEAKERlike Shitty implementation.

46:19SPEAKER- Well, but okay, so there's basically three classes

46:22SPEAKERof four classes of routers.

46:24SPEAKERMaybe there's the one that your ISP provides,

46:26SPEAKERwhich is probably gonna be really functional

46:28SPEAKERin a vanilla kind of, I'm not doing anything weird way.

46:32SPEAKERThere's-

46:33SPEAKER- But might have some weird limitations like they might-

46:35SPEAKER- Almost certainly.

46:36SPEAKER- They might require you to use that router

46:38SPEAKERor there might be-

46:39SPEAKER- They might not do loopback back properly.

46:41SPEAKERSo like if you hit, if you try to hit a port

46:43SPEAKERthat's external and come back into the thing,

46:45SPEAKERit's not gonna work right.

46:47SPEAKERThen there's like the high end consumer routers,

46:50SPEAKERlike the ASUS, the ones with 15 antennas that look like,

46:53SPEAKERI don't know, they look like weird spiders usually.

46:56SPEAKERThere's the prosumer stuff,

46:58SPEAKERlike the Ubiquiti and the TP Sense, TP-Link,

47:03SPEAKERArcher.

47:04SPEAKER- Archer is the TP-Link one.

47:06SPEAKER- And those are like,

47:07SPEAKERthose are almost small business home office,

47:10SPEAKERsmall office home office kind of routers

47:12SPEAKERthat are designed for,

47:15SPEAKERoften they'll have like point to point VPN functionality

47:17SPEAKERand stuff in them so that like,

47:19SPEAKERif your IT department at work wants you to VPN directly

47:23SPEAKERwithout using a client on your computer,

47:24SPEAKERyou'll, they'll set one of those up for you

47:27SPEAKERand give you your own dedicated

47:28SPEAKERinternet connection for that, right?

47:31SPEAKERAnd then there's the DIY home build,

47:35SPEAKEROpen Sense, PF Sense type deals.

47:39SPEAKERAnd I think they all have different strengths and weaknesses.

47:43SPEAKERI generally advocate for buying a router

47:46SPEAKERthat's independent of your access points,

47:49SPEAKERbecause then you don't have to upgrade that.

47:51SPEAKERThat hardware is relatively expensive.

47:53SPEAKERYou don't have to upgrade it

47:54SPEAKERevery time you want to get a new Wi-Fi standard,

47:57SPEAKERwhich is the case,

47:58SPEAKERwhich you can't do with the ISP provided

48:01SPEAKERor those retail ones,

48:04SPEAKERlike the Asus one with 15 antennas, right?

48:06SPEAKERSo that means every time you're replacing that,

48:08SPEAKERinstead of buying a hundred dollar access point

48:11SPEAKERand replacing that,

48:12SPEAKERyou're replacing a $300 router or $400 router.

48:14SPEAKER- Which you can get like decent

48:16SPEAKERhundred dollar Wi-Fi seven access points now,

48:18SPEAKERif you just want Wi-Fi seven.

48:20SPEAKERNow we should point out,

48:22SPEAKERthere's nothing to stop you from pairing

48:23SPEAKERa standalone access point like that

48:25SPEAKERwith that 15 antenna Asus.

48:28SPEAKER- That's true.

48:28SPEAKER- You just need to go into the Asus

48:29SPEAKERand turn off the Wi-Fi in that, right?

48:31SPEAKERYou can still use like an all-in-one consumer router

48:34SPEAKERas just a router and not the Wi-Fi,

48:36SPEAKERif you just kind of go in and turn the radios off

48:38SPEAKERand use the access point instead.

48:40SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

48:41SPEAKERAnd you can do it the other way too.

48:42SPEAKERYou can use it as just an access point

48:43SPEAKERif you plug it into the LAN side

48:45SPEAKERand turn off the DHCP server.

48:47SPEAKER- Yeah, you just want to put it in kind of,

48:48SPEAKERsome kind of bridge mode at that point.

48:50SPEAKER- Yeah.

48:51SPEAKER- Yeah, a lot of options there.

48:52SPEAKERI guess the thing I would say generally,

48:54SPEAKERif you have a commercial router

48:55SPEAKERand it's working fine for you,

48:57SPEAKERif you're not having problems with it

48:58SPEAKERand you can't think of any projects,

49:00SPEAKERnetwork projects you want to do with it

49:02SPEAKERthat it can't already handle, you're fine.

49:04SPEAKERLike you don't need to replace your router

49:06SPEAKERunless you're having issues with it

49:08SPEAKERor it's too feature poor to do things you want it to do.

49:11SPEAKER- That's exactly it.

49:13SPEAKERLike the place that OpenSense and PFSense,

49:17SPEAKERsome of them do support the weird things

49:19SPEAKERthat you might want to, like, for example,

49:21SPEAKERmy ISP requires my router to be in the chain, right?

49:24SPEAKER- That was the classic, the AT&T fiber

49:26SPEAKERwas the classic example I was giving of like,

49:28SPEAKEReven if you want to use your own router,

49:29SPEAKERyou still have to have their router plugged in too

49:31SPEAKERand that's annoying.

49:32SPEAKER- Well, there's ways around that now with OpenSense

49:33SPEAKERand PFSense, so you don't have to leave it plugged in.

49:35SPEAKER- Oh.

49:36SPEAKER- There's, the loopback thing is another classic one

49:40SPEAKERwhere you have to have a separate internal address

49:45SPEAKERfor Plex when you're inside your house

49:46SPEAKERand use an external address when you're outside your house

49:48SPEAKERif loopback doesn't work right.

49:50SPEAKERIf loopback works properly,

49:52SPEAKERthen you can just use that external address everywhere

49:54SPEAKERand it should just connect and you'll get internal speeds

49:57SPEAKEReven when using the external address.

49:58SPEAKERAnyway, it's like the basic stuff is fine until it isn't,

50:03SPEAKERis my kind of answer.

50:05SPEAKER- I might say in the broadest sense,

50:07SPEAKERthe move toward more DIY routers

50:09SPEAKERis part of this general move toward people

50:11SPEAKERtrying to take more control

50:12SPEAKERof their computing devices generally.

50:14SPEAKER- I think that's true.

50:16SPEAKERAnd in that vein, I might suggest there is a fifth category

50:21SPEAKERof router.

50:22SPEAKER- Oh boy.

50:23SPEAKER- Which is just hardware running and operating systems

50:25SPEAKERsuch as OpenBSD or Linux.

50:27SPEAKER- No, I--

50:29SPEAKER- Do not do that.

50:30SPEAKER- Yeah, don't do that.

50:31SPEAKER- I am going to do that.

50:32SPEAKER- The other fifth category, the second fifth category

50:36SPEAKERis people running open firmwares on commercial hardware,

50:41SPEAKERwhich like is another thing you can absolutely do.

50:43SPEAKERSo DDWRT or one of those on ASUS routers or whatever,

50:48SPEAKERtotally valid.

50:50SPEAKER- Question from Tactical Tug.

50:52SPEAKERWhy are there two different ways of writing a URL?

50:54SPEAKERSome are blank.domain.com

50:56SPEAKERand others are domain.com/blank.

50:59SPEAKERIs there any difference between the two?

51:01SPEAKERWould setting up chrome.google.com

51:03SPEAKERbe different to setting up google.com/chrome?

51:06SPEAKERAre there any practical reasons behind the choice?

51:08SPEAKERTechnical, does it really matter?

51:09SPEAKERYeah, those are completely different things.

51:12SPEAKERThe blank.domain.com, domain.com is the domain there,

51:16SPEAKERblank is a sub domain.

51:18SPEAKERSo you're defining what that sub domain points to

51:22SPEAKERthrough DNS, which is the thing that resolves the domain

51:24SPEAKERinto a numeric IP, which is the, you know,

51:26SPEAKERthe IP is what the actual server on the internet is.

51:29SPEAKERThe other one, domain.com/blank,

51:32SPEAKERin that situation, blank is a, I mean,

51:34SPEAKERthis could vary based on the internal setup

51:36SPEAKERon the web server, but typically blank is a directory

51:39SPEAKERon the machine that is running the web server.

51:42SPEAKERSo whatever web server is on domain.com,

51:44SPEAKERblank is a directory on there

51:46SPEAKERand they are serving a specific page out of that directory.

51:49SPEAKERSo it's kind of a matter of, ultimately,

51:53SPEAKERthere are two different ways of pointing you

51:55SPEAKERat a specific webpage with specific assets

51:58SPEAKERthat are being served to you, but on the backend,

52:00SPEAKERthey are extremely different in terms of what is handling,

52:04SPEAKERdirecting you to those resources.

52:06SPEAKER- This used to make a lot more difference

52:09SPEAKERthan it does now, 'cause in a modern context,

52:11SPEAKERyou can use either of these in whichever,

52:14SPEAKERlike when you set up your servers,

52:16SPEAKERyou can use these kind of interchangeably

52:18SPEAKERon a, if you have a modern backend.

52:20SPEAKER- Yeah, well, yeah.

52:21SPEAKERI mean, now again, the setup will be very different

52:23SPEAKER'cause you don't need extra DNS settings

52:25SPEAKERfor the, just the slash blank directory stuff,

52:28SPEAKERbut yeah, as a person who is just a consumer

52:30SPEAKERof web content going to an address,

52:32SPEAKERlike it's all exactly the same stuff.

52:34SPEAKERIt's just different methods of directing you to a webpage.

52:37SPEAKER- Yeah, agreed.

52:38SPEAKERLike in the old days, you did that specifically

52:40SPEAKERbecause you had, you wanted to separate your load

52:44SPEAKERacross multiple servers and now there's a whole tech backend

52:48SPEAKERthat will do that load separation for a user.

52:50SPEAKERNow it's more of just a choice

52:52SPEAKERthan it was in the old days.

52:54SPEAKER- Yes, if and when I ever get around to setting up my VPS

52:58SPEAKERwith game servers and stuff,

52:59SPEAKERI still want to do the classic like q1.whatever.com.

53:04SPEAKER- Oh, hell yeah.

53:05SPEAKER- Q2, whatever.com, even though you don't really have

53:07SPEAKERto do that these days.

53:09SPEAKER- Just all ports.

53:10SPEAKER- But I wanna.

53:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

53:12SPEAKER- Okay, question from Third Eye.

53:14SPEAKERLoved the Valve hardware episode with Norm.

53:17SPEAKERWhat if the successor to the Steam Link

53:18SPEAKERwas a really nice, fully fledged media set top box,

53:22SPEAKERsomeone with an aging Nvidia shield.

53:24SPEAKERI keep looking for the next big thing,

53:25SPEAKERbut I haven't seen much movement in the space.

53:28SPEAKERWhen are we getting something

53:29SPEAKERwith AV1 support, for instance?

53:31SPEAKERWould a box that could play anything you throw at it

53:33SPEAKERplus natively stream from Steam

53:35SPEAKERget you to move away from the Apple TV?

53:37SPEAKER- Probably not.

53:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it's hard for me.

53:40SPEAKERLike a Valve is too open and too anything goes

53:42SPEAKERto want to curate any kind of like app ecosystem

53:45SPEAKERto handle different streaming services.

53:47SPEAKERI just, that just seems tangential to their whole thing.

53:52SPEAKER- Yeah, and trying to do video streaming

53:55SPEAKERfrom the services on Linux isn't as bad as it used to be

53:58SPEAKERand now it actually works because you can use browsers

54:01SPEAKERthat have the appropriate kind of DRM in them.

54:03SPEAKERHowever, you still get weird stuff happening.

54:06SPEAKERLike you only get 10 AP streams on Linux for some reason.

54:10SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just hard for me to see Valve ever investing

54:13SPEAKERin that space in a way that would satisfy

54:15SPEAKERover the currently available options.

54:17SPEAKER- And it doesn't make any money for them.

54:18SPEAKERSo like, what's the incentive?

54:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:22SPEAKER- I like the thing that you want with AV1 support

54:25SPEAKERis the Apple TV 4K second gen.

54:28SPEAKER- So I was just looking into this.

54:29SPEAKERI don't know if you've seen, there is a new Apple TV 4K

54:33SPEAKERimminent, supposedly any day now,

54:36SPEAKERif you believe Mac rumors.

54:37SPEAKER- 'Cause the one right now is like an A8 or something.

54:40SPEAKERIt's an ancient processor, right?

54:41SPEAKER- No, it's not that old.

54:42SPEAKERIt came out three years ago, I think.

54:44SPEAKERI think the current one is three years old.

54:45SPEAKERI think it's like an A15, which is not too bad.

54:49SPEAKERI mean, it's not, it's certainly not bad.

54:50SPEAKERLike if you buy an Apple TV today, it's fine,

54:52SPEAKERbut you know how Apple does.

54:55SPEAKERThe new Apple TV is going to come out at the same price

54:57SPEAKERthen you know, the next day after you buy it,

55:00SPEAKERthe new one could come out and then you could have gotten

55:02SPEAKERa three years newer one for the same price.

55:05SPEAKER- Yep.

55:06SPEAKER- So the current Apple TV 4K does AV1,

55:09SPEAKERbut it does, it only does software decode.

55:11SPEAKERSo that's one of the big things I was kind of,

55:13SPEAKER'cause I have finally gotten sick enough of the apps

55:16SPEAKERon my TV that I think I am in for the next Apple TV.

55:21SPEAKERSo I was looking at features and AV1 hardware decode

55:24SPEAKERis one of the big ones that people think or hope

55:26SPEAKERwill be in the new Apple TV.

55:28SPEAKERYou know, there's other stuff like, I forget,

55:31SPEAKERlike uncompressed Dolby true HD or whatever, you know,

55:35SPEAKERdifferent audio standards people are hoping

55:36SPEAKERwill be supported and stuff like that.

55:38SPEAKERDolby vision profiles, things like that.

55:40SPEAKERBut that's, those are some of the big feature requests

55:44SPEAKERI was seeing on Reddit that people were talking about.

55:48SPEAKER- I think that makes sense.

55:49SPEAKERI like, if it was just me in the house too,

55:55SPEAKERI'd have a different set of requirements

55:57SPEAKERand I actually don't watch as much TV

55:59SPEAKERand don't stream very much.

56:00SPEAKERSo I just need something that runs Plex pretty well,

56:02SPEAKERpretty much.

56:04SPEAKERThe, having the other people that have to use it,

56:07SPEAKERhaving something with a decent remote

56:09SPEAKERthat can turn the TV on and off

56:11SPEAKERand all the other stuff in the chain is the big stuff.

56:14SPEAKERAnd while I'm sure Valve will be able to do that,

56:17SPEAKERnobody's going to want to use a game pad to control that.

56:20SPEAKER- Yeah, setting up.

56:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:22SPEAKER- Sorry, setting up Apple, those Apple TVs

56:24SPEAKERfrom my parents a couple of years ago,

56:25SPEAKERit was pretty eye-opening of just how elegant

56:27SPEAKERand seamless that whole experience is now.

56:30SPEAKER- Well, and the convenience of being able

56:31SPEAKERto just use your phone to turn the TV on and off,

56:34SPEAKERor that hits here with a, hey,

56:36SPEAKERwill you turn the TV off for me?

56:38SPEAKEROr, hey, put the football game on, whatever,

56:41SPEAKERis super, super nice.

56:43SPEAKER- The only thing that it's missing,

56:44SPEAKERand I don't think they've added this yet,

56:46SPEAKERis the ability to change inputs through the Apple TV.

56:49SPEAKER- You can, but it just changes to the Apple TV input.

56:52SPEAKERIt just changes, when you hit the power button,

56:55SPEAKERit always just switches to the TV,

56:57SPEAKERthe input the Apple TV is plugged into.

56:59SPEAKER- What I mean is after the TV's on,

57:01SPEAKERchange it to other inputs.

57:02SPEAKER- Yeah, they're not in that business, unfortunately.

57:04SPEAKER- I know, what I mean is never having to touch

57:06SPEAKERyour TV remote again and just use,

57:08SPEAKERbecause that's the only thing the Apple TV can't do

57:10SPEAKERas far as I know.

57:11SPEAKER- Well, so the solution is that you don't use any devices

57:13SPEAKERother than Apple TVs or other devices

57:15SPEAKERthat will switch inputs as well.

57:16SPEAKER- I bet they would love that.

57:18SPEAKER- So like, but no, no, like for real,

57:20SPEAKERlike our TV essentially just has a switch,

57:23SPEAKERthe switch dock, a steam deck dock,

57:26SPEAKERand the Apple TV plugged in at this point, right?

57:29SPEAKERAnd each of those will wake up the TV,

57:31SPEAKERturn it on, put on the right input if you power it on.

57:33SPEAKER- Well, what if the Apple TV is already on

57:35SPEAKERand you turn on your PS5 though?

57:36SPEAKERLike, I still don't-

57:37SPEAKER- It doesn't matter, the PS5 will wake it up, will switch.

57:41SPEAKER- I still feel like CEC is inconsistent enough

57:45SPEAKERthat there's gonna be some edge case behavior.

57:47SPEAKERThis is gonna drive me crazy, but we'll see.

57:49SPEAKER- I don't know, man, I've been doing it

57:50SPEAKERfor like five years, it's never a problem.

57:51SPEAKER- Maybe if I get an Apple TV, well, I mean, I will,

57:53SPEAKERI will try it when I get an Apple TV

57:55SPEAKERand see if maybe it works the way I want it to.

57:57SPEAKER- I will tell you what the edge case problem is.

58:00SPEAKERIt's when I plugged in my MiSTer to the HDMI port

58:02SPEAKERand it crashed the CEC chain on every device in the thing

58:05SPEAKERand I had to unplug the entire thing to fix it.

58:07SPEAKER- Well, you just get a little dongle

58:08SPEAKERthat strips the CEC in for that.

58:10SPEAKER- I know that now, but yeah.

58:12SPEAKER- But you know, there are cases where like

58:14SPEAKERI turn on the PS5, but I don't actually wanna use it

58:16SPEAKERfor a couple of minutes, you know?

58:18SPEAKERSo I turned on and let it get to the login screen.

58:20SPEAKERI don't want it to necessarily take over

58:22SPEAKERthe second I turned it on, but.

58:24SPEAKER- I'm not letting edge cases shape my decisions anymore.

58:27SPEAKERI'm just living that mainstream life on the TV, baby.

58:30SPEAKER- The thing I'm more curious about is,

58:32SPEAKERdo you do any steam streaming to the Apple TV

58:34SPEAKEReither with the Steam Link app or Moonlight?

58:36SPEAKER- No, I use the Steam Deck for that.

58:38SPEAKER- Okay, do you have any idea how good it is?

58:41SPEAKER- The last time I tried to use it,

58:42SPEAKERthe latency on the controllers was so bad I couldn't do it.

58:45SPEAKERThat was, I don't know.

58:47SPEAKERThat like, I have the last,

58:49SPEAKERI have the last, last version of the Apple TV 4K.

58:52SPEAKER- Okay.

58:53SPEAKER- And also every single release of the Apple TV OS

58:57SPEAKERsince like three years ago,

58:59SPEAKERsince they started putting PlayStation controllers

59:01SPEAKERon the pictures of the Apple TV page,

59:04SPEAKERthey've said, "Hey, our controller latency's getting better.

59:07SPEAKERIt's way better this time than it was before."

59:09SPEAKERAnd then I, so I haven't tried it.

59:11SPEAKERLike once I got the Steam Deck,

59:12SPEAKERI stopped bothering 'cause the Steam Deck works great.

59:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that's something I would keep an eye on then

59:16SPEAKERthat might, maybe we'll get even better

59:18SPEAKERwith a new hardware model then,

59:20SPEAKER'cause I don't have a good way to Steam stream to my,

59:22SPEAKERthe Steam Link app on my TV is basically unusable.

59:26SPEAKER- Yeah, no, the TV-based ones were bad.

59:28SPEAKER- Yeah, so I would love a little,

59:31SPEAKERa nice little streaming box that I want to use

59:33SPEAKERfor other things anyway that could also stream from Steam

59:35SPEAKERwould be fantastic.

59:37SPEAKER- When I used it, it was fine for stuff

59:39SPEAKERthat wasn't latency dependent.

59:41SPEAKERLike we played Jackbox games

59:44SPEAKERand stuff like that on the Apple TV.

59:46SPEAKERI never had any luck, but like I said,

59:48SPEAKERI haven't tried, I tried it when we first got that box,

59:50SPEAKERwhich was like during the pandemic.

59:52SPEAKERI haven't tried it since then.

59:54SPEAKER- Uh, a couple more questions real quick here.

59:57SPEAKERWesley, "On episode 314,

1:00:00SPEAKERBrad uttered the phrase text expansion.

1:00:02SPEAKERDoes this mean he is using Espanso?

1:00:04SPEAKERI'm just gonna tell you right now, no,

1:00:05SPEAKERbut I've been intending to install it for like two years

1:00:07SPEAKERand I don't know why I have not.

1:00:10SPEAKERText expanders are really cool and you should use them.

1:00:13SPEAKEREspanso saves me so many keystrokes

1:00:15SPEAKERfor stuff I type all the time.

1:00:17SPEAKERFor example, I do a weekly podcast

1:00:18SPEAKERand when I started a decade ago,

1:00:20SPEAKERI made the mistake of using a really long file name

1:00:23SPEAKERfor the MP3 files.

1:00:25SPEAKERAnd then I stuck with that convention so long

1:00:26SPEAKERthat I certainly can't change it now.

1:00:29SPEAKERIt is, I know that pain.

1:00:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:33SPEAKER- Somebody who names a lot of podcast files every week,

1:00:35SPEAKERI get it.

1:00:36SPEAKER- Look, the one for this is only a test was,

1:00:39SPEAKERthis is only a test hyphen, a three digit

1:00:42SPEAKERor maybe a four digit episode number.

1:00:44SPEAKERAnd then the date in YYYYMMDD format dot MP3.

1:00:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I use that little Python utility I wrote

1:00:53SPEAKERto compress and tag podcasts, handles all this stuff now,

1:00:57SPEAKERbut I've got it down to kind of podcast short name,

1:01:00SPEAKERwhich is like eightish characters, depending on the podcast,

1:01:03SPEAKERunderscore episode number, underscore,

1:01:06SPEAKERand then the title kind of stripped of special characters

1:01:09SPEAKERdown to lowercase.

1:01:11SPEAKERAnd that's the whole file name now, but anyway.

1:01:12SPEAKER- Do those survive the clients?

1:01:16SPEAKERDo the clients not rename the file names on the download?

1:01:19SPEAKER- Well, that's very possible.

1:01:21SPEAKERSome of them do and some of them don't.

1:01:22SPEAKERLike I believe Patreon just serves the MP3 that you upload,

1:01:25SPEAKERif I'm not mistaken.

1:01:25SPEAKERBut I think like Simplecast, I think is crunching the file.

1:01:29SPEAKERI don't remember, but even to like have the files locally,

1:01:32SPEAKERit's still useful to have a very legible file name.

1:01:35SPEAKERAnyway, Wesley goes on.

1:01:38SPEAKERMy podcast file name is 43 characters long,

1:01:40SPEAKERinvolving eight underscores, as I said, it was a mistake.

1:01:44SPEAKERNow with the Sponso, I just type colon EP without the space

1:01:48SPEAKERand it automatically enters everything

1:01:50SPEAKERup to the number that I type in.

1:01:52SPEAKERA small thing that saves me every week

1:01:54SPEAKERfrom a dumb decision I made years ago

1:01:56SPEAKERthat I am too stubborn to change.

1:01:57SPEAKERYeah, that thing sounds awesome.

1:01:59SPEAKERESPANSO is the name of that thing.

1:02:02SPEAKERIt is, I believe it is open source and cross platform,

1:02:04SPEAKERif I'm not mistaken.

1:02:05SPEAKER- That sounds fun.

1:02:06SPEAKER- But it is literally what he's describing here.

1:02:08SPEAKERIt's just a like customizable text expansion

1:02:11SPEAKERfor whatever you want.

1:02:13SPEAKERI have a couple of,

1:02:15SPEAKERyou guys really need to talk about shell startup files

1:02:17SPEAKERon the Dolby diaries at some point.

1:02:19SPEAKER- I keep trying to get Adam to do it.

1:02:20SPEAKERHe's been dancing around it for the last couple of weeks,

1:02:22SPEAKER'cause he's not there yet.

1:02:23SPEAKER- I heard him falling in love with NeoFetch

1:02:25SPEAKERor I guess his FastFetch is what everybody uses now.

1:02:27SPEAKER- FastFetch, yeah, yeah.

1:02:28SPEAKER- I heard him wanting the terminal to do a thing

1:02:30SPEAKERevery time he opens it and I was like,

1:02:34SPEAKERsounds like somebody's ready to open their Bash RC.

1:02:37SPEAKERBut I, sorry, I have a couple of aliases there.

1:02:41SPEAKERI have like today and now.

1:02:43SPEAKER- Okay.

1:02:44SPEAKER- So like now is a formatted, like, what is it?

1:02:47SPEAKERI think I've got four digit year dash month dash day

1:02:50SPEAKERunderscore and then the full time out to the seconds.

1:02:54SPEAKERSo I can just like, I can just do a command substitution now

1:02:57SPEAKERinto a file name anytime I'm at the command line

1:02:59SPEAKERand have it just dump the current date and time

1:03:03SPEAKERonto the file name or whatever.

1:03:04SPEAKERStuff like that comes in super handy, like having something

1:03:08SPEAKERglobally like that in Windows sounds amazing.

1:03:09SPEAKERWhy have I not installed this already?

1:03:11SPEAKERI don't know.

1:03:12SPEAKEROkay, last question.

1:03:14SPEAKERThis is kind of a thorny one.

1:03:15SPEAKERI don't know quite what the answer is here.

1:03:19SPEAKER- Oh boy.

1:03:19SPEAKER- Person stuff.

1:03:21SPEAKERI've been watching some of Gamers Nexus coverage of Nvidia.

1:03:24SPEAKERAnd while I don't think any of their competitors

1:03:26SPEAKERare good guys between their partnerships with Palantir

1:03:29SPEAKERand their contributions to the weird circular AI economy,

1:03:33SPEAKERI'm not feeling good about putting a new Nvidia GPU

1:03:35SPEAKERin my PC.

1:03:37SPEAKERA lot of personal opinion and politics,

1:03:39SPEAKERbut do we need to start treating Nvidia like Facebook

1:03:41SPEAKERand just avoid their products whenever possible?

1:03:44SPEAKERThey probably won't feel the hit anyway,

1:03:45SPEAKERsince their main product is their stock at this point.

1:03:49SPEAKERBut not the first time I've seen somebody on our discord

1:03:51SPEAKERwas talking about this like yesterday.

1:03:53SPEAKERSo not the first time I have seen this sentiment come up.

1:03:56SPEAKER- Yeah, it's tough, right?

1:03:59SPEAKERI don't know, like I don't buy Facebook stuff

1:04:02SPEAKERfor a multitude of reasons, some of which are public

1:04:04SPEAKERand some of which aren't.

1:04:07SPEAKERI don't have the same relationship with Nvidia, I guess.

1:04:14SPEAKERThat said, I don't, like I think that the AI bubble

1:04:21SPEAKERis going to pop and hurt a billion people probably.

1:04:27SPEAKERAnd Nvidia is one of the companies

1:04:29SPEAKERthat's been profiting off of that more than anybody else.

1:04:31SPEAKERLike, I think probably there's other,

1:04:34SPEAKERyou know, this is something I talked about with,

1:04:36SPEAKERI've talked about this a bunch over the last year,

1:04:38SPEAKERyou know, as there's different boycotts

1:04:39SPEAKERand different things going on about how we as consumers

1:04:44SPEAKERunder capitalism interact with those types of things,

1:04:48SPEAKERwhether it's the Target boycott or the thing

1:04:53SPEAKERthat's targeting Xbox and Disney Plus,

1:04:57SPEAKERand I can't remember what that one is.

1:04:59SPEAKERThat's the genocide in Palestine one, right?

1:05:02SPEAKERAnd I feel like everybody has to make their own decisions

1:05:05SPEAKERabout what they want to support and what they don't.

1:05:08SPEAKERSo like, if you feel that way, I absolutely respect that.

1:05:11SPEAKERI'm probably going to make different decisions,

1:05:14SPEAKERbut that's okay.

1:05:16SPEAKERAnd like, the good thing is

1:05:18SPEAKERthere's a bunch of alternatives these days.

1:05:20SPEAKER- Yeah, it's getting better.

1:05:21SPEAKERI mean, it is still tricky at the high end.

1:05:23SPEAKERThere has not been a GPU from another company

1:05:25SPEAKERthat competes with Nvidia's high end for a very long time.

1:05:29SPEAKERWell, it even gets close to this generation, really.

1:05:32SPEAKER- That's what I mean.

1:05:33SPEAKERAnd for a long time, they were so far ahead

1:05:36SPEAKERon stuff like DLSS and ray tracing

1:05:38SPEAKERand hardware video and code and like X, Y, and Z,

1:05:42SPEAKERyou name it, other technology on board,

1:05:45SPEAKERthat it was like genuinely tough.

1:05:47SPEAKERThere were kind of weren't alternatives

1:05:48SPEAKERto a lot of those technologies.

1:05:50SPEAKER- So those gaps are closing.

1:05:51SPEAKER- Until recently, until recently.

1:05:52SPEAKEROur DNA for cards from AMD have finally started catching up

1:05:56SPEAKERin a more profound way.

1:05:57SPEAKERAlthough, frankly, AMD is like making some business deals

1:06:00SPEAKERof its own that are like they're getting into the,

1:06:04SPEAKERthey bought Xilinx a few years ago specifically

1:06:06SPEAKERto get into the AI game in the same way or not entirely.

1:06:09SPEAKERI mean, they have other purposes as well,

1:06:11SPEAKERbut they are attempting to move into similar territory.

1:06:14SPEAKERLike it's all kind of fraught.

1:06:16SPEAKER- Well, but the other, like the thing that's changed

1:06:19SPEAKERin the last generation of GPUs specifically

1:06:21SPEAKERis that AMD ships with tensor cores on the GPU now,

1:06:24SPEAKERwhich they hadn't in the past.

1:06:26SPEAKERSo you can do things like AI upscaling

1:06:28SPEAKERand things like that on your games.

1:06:30SPEAKERAnd they're featured,

1:06:31SPEAKEReven if they're not performance compatible

1:06:33SPEAKERor comparable with the five series cards from Nvidia,

1:06:36SPEAKERthey are feature compatible.

1:06:38SPEAKERSo you get, you're not making an enormous,

1:06:43SPEAKERit's a much smaller sacrifice

1:06:44SPEAKERthan it would have been on the last generation of AMD cards,

1:06:46SPEAKERI guess is the way to put it.

1:06:47SPEAKER- Yeah, to be clear,

1:06:48SPEAKERI can't remember what they had the headline about AMD.

1:06:50SPEAKERIt was that I saw a week or two ago,

1:06:52SPEAKERbut it was something, some partnership or something

1:06:54SPEAKERthat a bunch of people were going like, huh, really?

1:06:56SPEAKERSo like, I don't want to, you know,

1:06:59SPEAKERI maybe I shouldn't have brought that up

1:07:00SPEAKERwithout remembering exactly the nature

1:07:01SPEAKERof the deal they were talking about

1:07:03SPEAKERor whatever strategic direction it was.

1:07:04SPEAKERBut the point is like the entire industry

1:07:07SPEAKERseems to be shifting in this direction right now.

1:07:09SPEAKER- At the end of the day, well, I mean,

1:07:10SPEAKERit's cause there's an enormous amount of money there

1:07:12SPEAKERfor the next X number of weeks until the bubble bursts.

1:07:16SPEAKERI, you know, like I said, I go back to there's,

1:07:19SPEAKERthere being no ethical consumption under capitalism and,

1:07:23SPEAKERbut also at the same time, I have to buy toothpaste somewhere.

1:07:26SPEAKERSo, you know, you, you, you make your choices and,

1:07:31SPEAKERand you know, everybody makes their own choices

1:07:34SPEAKERand some of them are good and some of them are bad

1:07:35SPEAKERand we live with our own stuff.

1:07:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you know, again,

1:07:39SPEAKERthe good news is that the alternatives

1:07:41SPEAKERare finally getting better.

1:07:42SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:07:44SPEAKERWell, and, and honestly, like moving into Linux,

1:07:48SPEAKERI really am feeling the loss of the high-end AMD card

1:07:51SPEAKERthis generation, because if they had a high-end competitor,

1:07:54SPEAKERI would absolutely drop that in just because everything's

1:07:56SPEAKERa shitload easier on Linux these days.

1:07:58SPEAKER- Same. - Yeah.

1:07:59SPEAKER- Yeah, like I'm, I'm, I'm only on a,

1:08:01SPEAKER- Only. - Only.

1:08:02SPEAKERI say I'm only on a 4090 because you're on a 5090.

1:08:05SPEAKERThat's the only reason I say only.

1:08:07SPEAKERBut the point I was gonna make is even, even for a 4090,

1:08:11SPEAKERwhich is the last gen flagship card,

1:08:13SPEAKERit's still a pretty big step down

1:08:14SPEAKERthrough the highest end AMD card right now.

1:08:17SPEAKER- Yeah, the fastest AMD card is like

1:08:19SPEAKERthe last gen 7900 XTX.

1:08:22SPEAKERAnd like, that's a deeply compromised card.

1:08:25SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I'm talking about the 1970 XT is still,

1:08:27SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah.

1:08:28SPEAKER- Is still, is still behind a 4090,

1:08:30SPEAKERwhich is a good, a good bit older.

1:08:31SPEAKER- Yeah, the 1970 XT is a really good 1440p card

1:08:35SPEAKERor a kind of iffy 4K card in my book.

1:08:37SPEAKER- That's what I mean is like to move to AMD at all for me

1:08:39SPEAKERwould be a step down, pretty significant one

1:08:42SPEAKERfrom what I have now.

1:08:43SPEAKERSo hopefully that improves in the future.

1:08:45SPEAKER- Yeah. - Anyway.

1:08:47SPEAKER- Is that as good a place as any to wrap it up, I guess?

1:08:49SPEAKER- I think so.

1:08:50SPEAKER- As always, if you have a question,

1:08:52SPEAKERyou can send it to techpod@content.town

1:08:54SPEAKERor if you are in the Discord,

1:08:57SPEAKERyou can go to the question seeking answers channel

1:08:59SPEAKERand leave it there and it will disappear.

1:09:01SPEAKERAnd then in anywhere from one to 30 days,

1:09:05SPEAKERwe will dig deep into that channel

1:09:08SPEAKERand copy and paste those questions out

1:09:10SPEAKERand select the ones that we want to answer

1:09:12SPEAKERand answer them on the show.

1:09:14SPEAKERAnd if you're not in that Discord,

1:09:15SPEAKERdon't know how to do that.

1:09:16SPEAKERYou can get into the Discord by joining the Patreon.

1:09:19SPEAKERIt's five bucks a month.

1:09:21SPEAKERYou get access to the Discord

1:09:22SPEAKERwhere people talk about cool nerdy shit all the time.

1:09:25SPEAKERAnd it's a lovely community full of great folks.

1:09:30SPEAKERYou can also get access

1:09:32SPEAKERto the monthly Patreon exclusive episode

1:09:34SPEAKERwhere we sometimes take spillover questions.

1:09:37SPEAKERSometimes we talk about random projects we have going.

1:09:40SPEAKERSometimes the carbon dioxide levels

1:09:42SPEAKERin our offices are real high

1:09:43SPEAKERand we just get a little loopy for a couple of 30,

1:09:47SPEAKER45 minutes or an hour.

1:09:48SPEAKER- I've taken a cue from you mentioning that

1:09:50SPEAKERa couple of times recently.

1:09:51SPEAKERI mean, I knew about it before,

1:09:52SPEAKERbut you reminded me that it's a thing.

1:09:55SPEAKERI don't know how good the ventilation is in this apartment,

1:09:57SPEAKERbut I have taken to opening the back door

1:09:59SPEAKERand the window in this office,

1:10:00SPEAKERwhich creates a good kind of a cross breeze through,

1:10:04SPEAKERstraight through the house.

1:10:05SPEAKERI'd swear I feel a little more clear-headed

1:10:07SPEAKERand alert in the mornings now than I used to.

1:10:09SPEAKER- Well, so for me, it's always the end of the day

1:10:11SPEAKERafter I've been in here with the door shut all day

1:10:13SPEAKERand then it gets stuffy.

1:10:15SPEAKERI actually, a few years ago, I was in Home Depot

1:10:18SPEAKERand I saw they have Vornado, the air circulator people.

1:10:24SPEAKERThey're not fans, they're circulators.

1:10:27SPEAKERHave a window slot mounted circulator

1:10:31SPEAKERthat you just put in your window,

1:10:34SPEAKERyou block off the rest of the gaps

1:10:35SPEAKERand then you can flip it forward or back

1:10:37SPEAKERso it either sucks or blows.

1:10:39SPEAKERAnd at the end of the day, I flipped that thing on

1:10:42SPEAKERto get some fresh air in here

1:10:44SPEAKERor alternately, I opened the window

1:10:45SPEAKERand just waved the door open and shut

1:10:47SPEAKERfor a couple of minutes to pull air through.

1:10:50SPEAKERIt makes a big difference.

1:10:52SPEAKERCarbon dioxide, it's good for plants, not for people.

1:10:54SPEAKER- It's got its uses, but you know.

1:10:56SPEAKER- It does have what plants crave.

1:10:59SPEAKERYeah, so patreon.com/techpod.

1:11:01SPEAKERIf you wanna figure out how to support the show,

1:11:03SPEAKERyou can go there.

1:11:04SPEAKERWe appreciate it.

1:11:04SPEAKERWe don't take ads or anything.

1:11:05SPEAKERIt's just listener support.

1:11:07SPEAKERSo we are here because of you all.

1:11:10SPEAKERAnd on that note, I would like to thank our patrons,

1:11:13SPEAKERespecially our executive producer tier patrons,

1:11:17SPEAKERincluding James Kamik, David Allen, Twinkle Twinkie,

1:11:20SPEAKERBunny Jerk, Jordan Lippett, Andrew Slosky,

1:11:24SPEAKERInfelicitous Rips, Jason Lee, and Pantheon,

1:11:29SPEAKERmakers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

1:11:32SPEAKERIt's the end of the month, so we also wanna give a shout out

1:11:33SPEAKERto our associate producer tier patrons,

1:11:35SPEAKERincluding Graham Banks, Thomas Shea, Jad Rita, P Tibbs,

1:11:40SPEAKERSteve Lynn, Tom Fuller, Just Associate Wedge,

1:11:44SPEAKERNathan Phelps, Ben Tallman, Tom Hilton,

1:11:47SPEAKERAndre M. Burke, PE, Andrew Dicey Scholdyce,

1:11:52SPEAKERAlejandro Navarro, Matt Walker,

1:11:54SPEAKERparentheses Walkman8080, close parentheses,

1:11:57SPEAKERSanchik Kumar, Felix Kramer, Kerp, Brutal Kerfuffle,

1:12:03SPEAKERand Eric.

1:12:03SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.

1:12:04SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you.

1:12:05SPEAKER- Yeah, we are thankful for everybody for keeping us going.

1:12:09SPEAKER- Very much so, very much so.

1:12:10SPEAKERAnd we will be back next week

1:12:12SPEAKERwith another edition of the TechPod.

1:12:14SPEAKERUntil then, please consider the environment

1:12:18SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.