318: System B or systemd?

00:00SPEAKER- Brad, we watched "Home Alone" last night.

00:02SPEAKER- It's classic, it's the time of year for it.

00:04SPEAKERI endorse it.

00:05SPEAKER- I started watching, it's damn near a perfect movie.

00:09SPEAKERI kind of wonder why nobody's made an immersive sim

00:12SPEAKERvideo game of "Home Alone."

00:14SPEAKER- Interesting.

00:14SPEAKER- I mean, there's a bad NES game.

00:16SPEAKER- Yes, true.

00:18SPEAKER- I mean, maybe it's not bad, I don't remember,

00:19SPEAKERbut I assume it's bad, given the era and the license.

00:22SPEAKER- You probably could very easily do a sort of recognizable

00:26SPEAKERbut non-infringing version of "Home Alone"

00:28SPEAKERin video game form.

00:29SPEAKER- I mean, I bet somebody's actually done that

00:30SPEAKERwhen I think about it and I never realized it.

00:32SPEAKER- That sounds great, actually.

00:34SPEAKERThe more I think about, planted a seed now,

00:37SPEAKERthat actually sounds pretty rad.

00:38SPEAKERJust defend a house, there's tools everywhere,

00:40SPEAKERbuild some traps, physics.

00:42SPEAKER- Well, this was when we did,

00:45SPEAKERwe had, what's his name, did "Breaking Bad."

00:50SPEAKERVince Gilligan, yeah, we had him on "Tested" once.

00:53SPEAKER- What?

00:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

00:55SPEAKER- Wait, what?

00:56SPEAKER- Yeah, we had a Vince Gilligan interview on "Tested"

00:58SPEAKERright after the end of "Breaking Bad."

00:59SPEAKER- What?

01:01SPEAKER- Well, Adam did that talking room show.

01:03SPEAKER- Right, Adam, of course.

01:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:05SPEAKER- Has connections, knows people.

01:07SPEAKER- Yeah, so we had Vince Gilligan-

01:09SPEAKER- Able to pull famous people, of course.

01:11SPEAKER- We went to LA and had Damon Lind,

01:13SPEAKERwe recorded stuff with Damon Lindelof and Vince Gilligan

01:16SPEAKERin the same like three day trip.

01:17SPEAKERIt was wild.

01:18SPEAKER- That is wild.

01:19SPEAKER- But we had Vince Gilligan on coming off the end

01:22SPEAKERof "Breaking Bad."

01:25SPEAKERWas it to talk about the car shrunk gun thing?

01:29SPEAKER- I don't know about that.

01:30SPEAKER- Okay.

01:31SPEAKER- But he, one of the things we talked about

01:32SPEAKERwas their writing strategy for each episode

01:35SPEAKERwas to write themselves into a whole.

01:37SPEAKERAnd then literally the writers would be on set

01:40SPEAKERand they'd walk around the house where they were shooting

01:42SPEAKERand look at things that they could,

01:44SPEAKERlike they would look for things in the environment

01:46SPEAKERthat the set designers had just put there

01:47SPEAKERso it looked like a normal house.

01:49SPEAKERAnd that's how they came up with like the U-lock

01:51SPEAKERthat they chained the guy to the post in the basement with

01:56SPEAKERand all this other stuff.

01:57SPEAKER- So they showed up to shoot the episode

01:59SPEAKERwithout an ending written?

02:01SPEAKER- No, no, the writers would be on set

02:03SPEAKERand they would adjust stuff as they went.

02:05SPEAKER- Okay, so they had an idea for an ending

02:07SPEAKERbut they would just tweak stuff.

02:08SPEAKEROkay, that's a little less irresponsible.

02:11SPEAKER- As he said, they had ins and outs

02:12SPEAKERthat they knew they wanted to hit,

02:13SPEAKERbut they kind of, like they were improving the other stuff

02:16SPEAKERalong the way a lot of times.

02:18SPEAKEROr they'd get there and they'd realize

02:20SPEAKERsomething wouldn't work and they'd have to change it

02:21SPEAKERor whatever.

02:22SPEAKERAnd the reason they did that one was 'cause they knew

02:25SPEAKERthat there was a motorcycle in the house

02:27SPEAKERand they were like, oh, he has a motorcycle,

02:28SPEAKERhe'll have a U-lock and we can use the U-lock

02:31SPEAKERto like keep this guy prisoner in the basement

02:34SPEAKERbefore we have to murder him or whatever.

02:37SPEAKERAnd I think a home alone,

02:39SPEAKERI think home alone works really well in an M-sim way.

02:41SPEAKER- Yeah, literally Googling the fro.

02:44SPEAKER- Oh, somebody already done it?

02:47SPEAKER- Yes, but are you ready for the monkey's paw to curl?

02:50SPEAKER- Oh no.

02:51SPEAKER- It's in Roblox.

02:53SPEAKER- Oh fuck, I knew it.

02:54SPEAKERI knew it was gonna be a Roblox or Fortnite there.

02:56SPEAKER- There is full on a thing called

02:57SPEAKERthe home alone experience in Roblox.

03:00SPEAKER- I don't think that's gonna be what we want.

03:01SPEAKER- That may not be the same thing, actually,

03:03SPEAKERnow that I'm looking at it.

03:04SPEAKER- No, I wanna have like waves of people coming at the house

03:09SPEAKERand have like a build period and then a defense period.

03:14SPEAKERAnd yeah, maybe I should stop talking about this

03:16SPEAKERand just email it to myself so I own it.

03:18SPEAKER- Like Rube Goldberg traps?

03:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

03:21SPEAKER- With a lot of physics involved

03:22SPEAKERand man, that does sound pretty rad.

03:24SPEAKER- Like the thing about it,

03:25SPEAKERwatching it is the traps aren't like super complicated,

03:27SPEAKERright? - Yeah.

03:28SPEAKER- It's just like, he puts just like glass light bulbs

03:33SPEAKERand matchbox cars and paint cans on strings.

03:36SPEAKER- How many systems do you need to model for this?

03:40SPEAKERSlippery, sharp, sticky, hot?

03:43SPEAKER- Hot, feather?

03:45SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

03:46SPEAKER- Saran wrap?

03:47SPEAKER- Yeah, look, this is all, like I played Breath of the Wild,

03:50SPEAKERthis is all doable.

03:51SPEAKER- Yeah, these are straightforward verbs

03:53SPEAKERand you just need to be able to combine them

03:54SPEAKERin a bunch of interesting, weird ways.

03:56SPEAKER- Somebody should go make that.

03:58SPEAKER- Man, if only I knew somebody who made video games.

04:00SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:20SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

04:29SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.

04:31SPEAKER- I'm Brad, happy holidays.

04:34SPEAKER- Happy, happy holidays.

04:36SPEAKERThis is, I guess this is the Sunday before Christmas, right?

04:39SPEAKER- It sure is.

04:40SPEAKER- It's like the fifth day of Hanukkah or something, I think.

04:41SPEAKER- Sure.

04:42SPEAKER- Sixth, maybe, I don't know, October.

04:44SPEAKER- Something like that.

04:46SPEAKER- It is, we're doing something that we kind of done before,

04:50SPEAKERbut not really, I think, this time.

04:52SPEAKER- It's a time for reflection, let's say.

04:54SPEAKER- Yeah, and we didn't wanna do,

04:58SPEAKERlike, I feel like Two People is not,

05:00SPEAKERdoes not make a great superlative pod.

05:02SPEAKERLike, if we wanted to do a best tech,

05:04SPEAKERA, it's a really broad topic,

05:06SPEAKERbut B, us just talking about it ends up being

05:09SPEAKERkind of less interesting 'cause there's only two of us.

05:11SPEAKERIf there were four of us, I think it'd be a different story.

05:13SPEAKER- Yeah, also, you know, this is not necessarily

05:15SPEAKERlike our full-time thing.

05:16SPEAKERSo we are professional on some of these topics

05:18SPEAKERand hobbyists on others, you know?

05:20SPEAKERLike, our expertise varies by topic

05:22SPEAKERand we can't cover everything.

05:23SPEAKERSo it would not be a comprehensive,

05:25SPEAKERlike, best and worst necessarily.

05:27SPEAKER- Yeah, but like, but I feel like we are

05:30SPEAKERin a unique position to talk about things

05:32SPEAKERthat we found noteworthy this year.

05:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

05:34SPEAKER- So we're doing a year in review.

05:35SPEAKER- We're tastemakers.

05:36SPEAKER- 2025 tech pod year in review.

05:39SPEAKER- Yeah, things we like.

05:41SPEAKER- It's like in the old days when you get a magazine

05:45SPEAKERand at the end of the year, they'd be like,

05:47SPEAKER"Hey, if you send us another 25 bucks,

05:48SPEAKERwe'll just send you a bound copy

05:50SPEAKERof all the magazines from this year."

05:52SPEAKERAnd you're like, "Wow, that would be great.

05:53SPEAKERI'd love to have a bound copy

05:54SPEAKERof all my copies of TV Guide for this year.

05:56SPEAKERThat'd be great."

05:57SPEAKERThen I know it was on TV on March 13th, 1983.

06:01SPEAKER- Look, I know I am getting into my dotage here

06:03SPEAKERin my old age, so this is unsurprising,

06:05SPEAKERbut you might be surprised, though,

06:08SPEAKERhow often recently I have wished that I had TV Guides

06:11SPEAKERor like the local newspaper listings for our local stations

06:14SPEAKERfrom the late '80s, early '90s.

06:16SPEAKERI have scoured.

06:18SPEAKERI've scoured the internet for, for example,

06:21SPEAKERWHNS Fox 21s out of Spartanburg, South Carolina.

06:25SPEAKERThey're a programming guide from, say, '89 to '93,

06:28SPEAKERand those things just don't exist anymore,

06:30SPEAKERbut I wish they did.

06:31SPEAKER- So, yeah, I've gotten down to this hole occasionally,

06:35SPEAKERbut there was a local kids' show.

06:40SPEAKERThere was a local kids' show that was broadcast

06:43SPEAKERout of an Asheville station

06:45SPEAKERthat we could only get in the winter months,

06:46SPEAKERand it was like a "Crusty the Clown" style.

06:52SPEAKERThe host was an old guy that wore a cowboy costume,

06:55SPEAKERlike "Howdy Doody" kind of vibes,

06:57SPEAKERand it was only on on Saturday mornings at like 6 a.m.

07:01SPEAKERwhen I was really, really little,

07:02SPEAKERlike six probably at the oldest.

07:04SPEAKER- Was that like an atmospheric thing,

07:06SPEAKERlike the dry air allowed the signal

07:07SPEAKERto reach further or something?

07:10SPEAKER- I think in the winter we get less solar radiation maybe,

07:13SPEAKERso thus the radio signals go farther with less interference.

07:17SPEAKER- I would believe that.

07:18SPEAKER- And also it was dark,

07:19SPEAKERso the sun wasn't out at six o'clock

07:21SPEAKERin the morning in the wintertime, so.

07:22SPEAKER- That's for sure.

07:23SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway.

07:25SPEAKERBut yeah, but this isn't the 1981 year in review.

07:28SPEAKERThis is the 2025 year in review.

07:32SPEAKER- Maybe we should do a 1981.

07:33SPEAKERI was two.

07:34SPEAKER- We should do a 1981 year in review also.

07:36SPEAKERThat would be really funny.

07:38SPEAKERBut yeah, so we're gonna talk about some things we like.

07:40SPEAKERWe're gonna talk about a couple of things we don't like.

07:41SPEAKERWe're not gonna linger.

07:42SPEAKERThere's plenty of stuff to not like this year.

07:44SPEAKER- We are not going to talk about the political situation

07:47SPEAKERor the DDR5 supply crunch or--

07:50SPEAKER- We think that they suck, just to be clear, both of them.

07:53SPEAKER- AI shitting everything up.

07:54SPEAKERI mean, those-- - AI sucks.

07:56SPEAKER- Those are all givens, and we've talked about them a lot.

07:58SPEAKER- Yeah, so we're not gonna,

07:59SPEAKERbut we are gonna get into some things that we don't like,

08:01SPEAKERand we're gonna do in the middle of the show

08:02SPEAKERso we don't end on bummers,

08:03SPEAKER'cause I realized the way we have the setup right now,

08:06SPEAKERwe're ending on bummers,

08:07SPEAKERbut we'll take like a break somewhere in the middle

08:09SPEAKERand be like, "Okay, let's talk about some stuff

08:10SPEAKER"that sucks for a minute."

08:11SPEAKER- Yeah, these are more like Andy Rooney bummers, though,

08:14SPEAKERand not like society destabilizing bummers.

08:17SPEAKER- You know what grinds my gears?

08:20SPEAKERYeah, okay, so I'm gonna kick it off.

08:22SPEAKERMy first one, not a surprise.

08:25SPEAKERYear in review, things I like.

08:27SPEAKER- Yes.

08:28SPEAKER- Turns out Linux on the desktop, pretty fucking good.

08:31SPEAKER- Whoa. - I know.

08:33SPEAKER- Is this the year of the Linux desktop?

08:36SPEAKER- So I started midway through 2024 joking

08:39SPEAKERthat 2025 was gonna be the year of Linux without,

08:42SPEAKERyou know, 'cause I've done that for the last 20 years.

08:43SPEAKERI figure eventually it'll hit, right?

08:45SPEAKERIt's like you predict, you Nostradamus your way into this,

08:49SPEAKERand eventually you're right.

08:51SPEAKERBut no, it's good, it's real good.

08:54SPEAKERI had no idea.

08:55SPEAKERI think a lot of it is Valve, for my personal use cases

08:59SPEAKERand the way I use PCs

09:00SPEAKERwhere it's a mix of work and game stuff,

09:02SPEAKERthe work that Valve's done on Proton and AMD drivers

09:06SPEAKERand all the supporting stuff that goes into making that work

09:09SPEAKERhas been really transformative in that now the only things

09:13SPEAKERI have to reboot for are like Fortnite games

09:17SPEAKERthat are explicitly designed to not work on Linux.

09:21SPEAKERAnd there's been something really empowering

09:24SPEAKERabout taking my computer that's the same

09:27SPEAKERas it's been for a long time

09:29SPEAKERand making it really super duper my own,

09:33SPEAKERnot just in a cosmetic sense,

09:35SPEAKERbut like in the way that I work

09:36SPEAKERand the way that I think about the computer

09:38SPEAKERand the way that I think about how I work with the computer

09:41SPEAKERand like tiling window managers are a big part of that.

09:44SPEAKERNeary is like literally everybody I know

09:49SPEAKERthat has been like, okay, I thought you were crazy

09:51SPEAKERwhen you were talking about how good

09:52SPEAKERthe scrolling tiling window manager thing is.

09:55SPEAKERAnd then they try it and they're like,

09:56SPEAKERno, you were absolutely right, this is unbelievable.

09:58SPEAKERAnd it's changed the way I think about how computers work.

10:04SPEAKERSo yeah, it's been really transformative for me.

10:07SPEAKERIt gave me the impetus to finally drop my Adobe subscription

10:09SPEAKERfor the first time in like 15 years.

10:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:12SPEAKER- I appreciating, you've talked about this in the past

10:16SPEAKERand I think I didn't really internalize

10:17SPEAKERwhat you're talking about,

10:18SPEAKERbut like there's a difference between figuring out

10:21SPEAKERhow to do something and then actually learning

10:23SPEAKERhow stuff works.

10:25SPEAKER- I have absolutely experienced that arc as well

10:27SPEAKERin my Linux trials and tribulations.

10:30SPEAKER- Yeah, and there's something like one of the neat things

10:33SPEAKERabout Linux is 'cause it's all built on systems

10:35SPEAKERthat are designed to interact with each other,

10:37SPEAKERregardless of whether it's like system A

10:38SPEAKERis designed to interact with system B.

10:41SPEAKERIt means--

10:41SPEAKER- I'm sorry, did you say system B or system D?

10:44SPEAKER- I'm not, look, we're not just system D yet.

10:46SPEAKERI'm still on system A, but like,

10:49SPEAKERI guess what I'm thinking about is like,

10:52SPEAKERthe way Linux is set up, the way it draws desktop

10:54SPEAKERis based on all these kind of unrelated things

10:58SPEAKERworking together through well-defined APIs and methods.

11:02SPEAKERAnd it's almost all configured in text files,

11:06SPEAKERsystem D aside.

11:07SPEAKERWe'll talk about that on another episode

11:08SPEAKERat some point, I'm sure.

11:10SPEAKERBut it's actually something you can understand

11:13SPEAKERhow it works.

11:14SPEAKERAnd like one person isn't gonna understand

11:16SPEAKERhow the whole thing works,

11:18SPEAKERbut like you can get to a point of deep knowledge

11:22SPEAKERon things relatively quickly

11:24SPEAKERbecause there's a lot of documentation.

11:27SPEAKERAnd also you can kind of just get in and futz with it

11:29SPEAKERand figure out, like you can tinker with it

11:31SPEAKERin the same way that you tinker with a car,

11:33SPEAKERlike an old pre-electric car.

11:36SPEAKERIt's very good, I've enjoyed it a lot.

11:38SPEAKER- Especially at an age where everybody's got

11:40SPEAKERan old computer or laptop sitting around,

11:41SPEAKERor you can just run a virtual machine.

11:43SPEAKERLike there are ways, there's so many ways to sandbox it

11:45SPEAKERin a way you can just play with it

11:46SPEAKERand not worry about breaking anything important

11:48SPEAKERthat's going to disrupt your workflow that like, yeah,

11:51SPEAKERthe tinkering possibilities are limitless.

11:53SPEAKERThe thing you said about making your computer yours.

11:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:58SPEAKER- Was I don't think I ever really said this

12:00SPEAKER'cause I'm not sure it actually cohered in my mind

12:02SPEAKERuntil later.

12:03SPEAKERThat's the reason I got so deep into like

12:06SPEAKERtrying to master Secure Boot earlier this year,

12:08SPEAKERor like why I kind of still am intending

12:11SPEAKERto start encrypting all of my drives eventually.

12:13SPEAKERLike it's that same impulse.

12:16SPEAKERAnd I've said before,

12:17SPEAKERsome of this descends from the state of society, let's say,

12:21SPEAKERand the need to feel like you have control

12:22SPEAKERover something in your life.

12:23SPEAKERBut like locking your computer down

12:25SPEAKERand making it do exactly what you want

12:27SPEAKERand nothing you don't want

12:29SPEAKERis kind of exactly why I got into that stuff.

12:31SPEAKERAnd it's the same reason Linux is exciting

12:34SPEAKERor FreeBSD or Haiku or whatever.

12:37SPEAKERLike I kind of feel, and here I go,

12:41SPEAKERI'm not joining the Free Software Foundation, I swear.

12:44SPEAKER- Oh, here he goes, the beard's coming in.

12:46SPEAKER- I kind of feel like the future of computing

12:49SPEAKERshould be non-commercial operating systems.

12:51SPEAKERLike hot take perhaps, not lukewarm take

12:54SPEAKERin present company, I guess.

12:55SPEAKERBut like the less profit motive,

12:57SPEAKERideally zero in your operating system, the better.

13:00SPEAKERI'm not gonna like, I'm not, I'm gonna exclude like

13:03SPEAKEReverything from Dropbox to Steam to, you know,

13:07SPEAKERservices run by companies that want to make money,

13:09SPEAKERfine, whatever, you can install those on top.

13:10SPEAKERBut like the operating system, I feel like,

13:13SPEAKERshould be kind of sacred ground

13:16SPEAKERwhere nobody's trying to make money.

13:18SPEAKERThey are just trying to give you a solid workable platform

13:21SPEAKERto use your computer.

13:23SPEAKERAnd like, that's, I mean, to take it all the way,

13:25SPEAKERlike that's why I tend to lean toward like your Debions

13:27SPEAKERand Fedoras, the community distros and not the, you know,

13:30SPEAKERthere's nothing wrong with Ubuntu if it's working for you,

13:32SPEAKERbut like Canonical is a company that wants to make money

13:34SPEAKERoff of Linux, you know, Red Hat is a company

13:37SPEAKERthat makes extraordinary amounts of money off of Linux.

13:39SPEAKERAnd like there are plenty of community distros

13:42SPEAKERthat are just there to be used and not to make money.

13:45SPEAKERAnd like that just kind of gives you a reassuring purity

13:49SPEAKERfocus on their part, you know, like, you know,

13:51SPEAKERto be clear, community distros come with downsides.

13:53SPEAKERLike there are certainly, I mean, you know, nothing,

13:56SPEAKERstop me if you've heard this,

13:57SPEAKERnothing in computers is perfect.

13:58SPEAKER- No, and I was just saying the baggage

14:01SPEAKERwith the community distros is that like in a lot of cases,

14:05SPEAKERthey're not making like,

14:07SPEAKERthey're not just not making a ton of money,

14:09SPEAKERthey're not making any money.

14:10SPEAKERI think framework sponsored Kashi the other day

14:15SPEAKERand the Kashi people were really excited.

14:17SPEAKERThey were like, this is like 10% of all of our revenue.

14:19SPEAKERAnd it was 250 bucks a month.

14:20SPEAKERAnd I was just like, wait, what, that's it?

14:22SPEAKER- It's insane.

14:23SPEAKEROkay, so I've got another unrelated topic on this list

14:26SPEAKERthat we'll get into funding of open source in a little bit.

14:28SPEAKERBut if you remember the last time we went to the flea market,

14:31SPEAKERwhich I'm also about to talk about,

14:33SPEAKERwhen I talked your ear off about a system D network debug

14:36SPEAKERthat made its way into Debian.

14:37SPEAKERAnd there was a big fight on the mailing list

14:38SPEAKERwith some real classic open source sniping at each other

14:42SPEAKERabout whose fault it was and how fast it should be fixed

14:45SPEAKERand all this stuff.

14:46SPEAKERBut one of the arguments that really it came down to

14:48SPEAKERwas somebody that was part of the Debian project saying,

14:50SPEAKERthis is a bug that is going to affect

14:52SPEAKERmore of our enterprise and corporate customers.

14:54SPEAKERAnd that is very likely to hit the funding

14:57SPEAKERthat they pump into the donations

14:58SPEAKERthat they pump into the project.

15:00SPEAKERAnd so, yes, you're right.

15:02SPEAKERLike funding is kind of the constant problem

15:04SPEAKERwith the community distro and that manifests

15:06SPEAKERand like packages might not be fully up to date

15:09SPEAKERin every case or like the Wiki might have gaps in it

15:12SPEAKERbecause nobody wants to spend their free time updating it.

15:15SPEAKERSo like there are downsides there.

15:16SPEAKERBut anyway, I'll get off the soapbox right now,

15:19SPEAKERbut like I'm excited that more people are embracing the idea

15:22SPEAKERthat like the hardware you buy

15:25SPEAKERshould be made to do what you want it to do.

15:27SPEAKERAnd it should be free as in speech, I guess.

15:33SPEAKERPlease don't let me turn into one of those people.

15:35SPEAKER- Well, it's really nice to be able to take something

15:41SPEAKERand not just adapt yourself to how it works,

15:43SPEAKERbut instead adapt it to you.

15:46SPEAKERAnd that feels like an essence of tool making

15:48SPEAKERthat I hadn't, like the last time I tried Linux desktop,

15:51SPEAKERit wasn't possible to do that.

15:53SPEAKERAnyway, what do you got?

15:53SPEAKERWhat's your, you wanna hit flea market?

15:55SPEAKERYou wanna get in?

15:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I've got a couple that actually

15:58SPEAKERI just mentioned sort of here.

15:59SPEAKERSo what is the official name of that flea market?

16:03SPEAKERThe Saratoga Electronics Flea Market.

16:06SPEAKERSaratoga Electronics Flea Market, something like that.

16:09SPEAKEROkay, technically I'd start going to that last year.

16:12SPEAKERThis was also my second year

16:14SPEAKERgoing to the Vintage Computer Festival

16:15SPEAKERat the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

16:17SPEAKER- I'm bummed I didn't get to go to that.

16:19SPEAKERThat sounded amazing.

16:20SPEAKER- So good.

16:21SPEAKER- We were in LA, I think that weekend.

16:22SPEAKER- It's like the electronics flea market times a thousand.

16:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

16:27SPEAKER- I'm just grateful to, okay, first of all,

16:30SPEAKERI have not had a whole lot of a social life

16:32SPEAKERsince before COVID started.

16:35SPEAKERLike the lockdown transitioning into five years

16:40SPEAKERof working for myself from home.

16:42SPEAKERMaybe not been the best for getting out of the house

16:45SPEAKERand seeing people.

16:47SPEAKER- Look, yes, I like going to PC World two times a week.

16:50SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

16:51SPEAKER- It's been healthy for me, it turns out.

16:53SPEAKER- And to be fair, I'd say about two times a week

16:55SPEAKERat an office sounds about ideal, maybe not five.

16:59SPEAKER- Yeah, two, three at the most is what I would want, I think.

17:03SPEAKER- Yeah, and also the crew that we go to those things with

17:06SPEAKERare extremely my people, let's say.

17:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a bunch of sweaty nerds, it's really fun.

17:11SPEAKER- People who are into exactly the same

17:13SPEAKERdeeply nerdy shit that I am.

17:15SPEAKERAnyway, I realize not everybody has the geographical

17:19SPEAKERadvantage of living kind of a stone's throw

17:22SPEAKERfrom the birth of the computing industry,

17:23SPEAKERso I'm very lucky in that respect.

17:25SPEAKERBut there are, what, six finished computer festivals

17:30SPEAKERaround the country or something?

17:31SPEAKERThere are probably electronics-focused flea markets

17:34SPEAKERand screwdriver shops kind of all over the place.

17:37SPEAKER- I don't know how many screwdriver shops there are anymore.

17:39SPEAKERMy bet is that there's ham festivals and stuff like that

17:42SPEAKERthat have some overlap with this.

17:44SPEAKERBut this is, from what I've been able to tell

17:47SPEAKERtalking about it on this podcast

17:48SPEAKERand talking on the PC World podcast,

17:50SPEAKERthis seems fairly unique, the Bay Area vintage,

17:53SPEAKERthe vintage computer festival and the electronics market.

17:56SPEAKER- Well, look for what's around if you--

18:00SPEAKER- Finding your people is good.

18:01SPEAKER- Finding your people and finding stuff nearby

18:04SPEAKERthat represents the things you're into,

18:06SPEAKERlike you might be surprised.

18:08SPEAKER- The thing I've noticed at the flea market

18:10SPEAKERthat I really like, and actually my daughter's

18:12SPEAKERexpressed interest in going, 'cause she's like,

18:15SPEAKERshe's a Stranger Things kid and loves '80s stuff

18:19SPEAKERas a result and is like, they have cassette players,

18:22SPEAKERthey're dead, and I was like, yeah, they have cassette,

18:24SPEAKERyeah, you want cassette players, we've got cassette players.

18:26SPEAKER- I hear Gen Alpha is way into '80s technology.

18:29SPEAKER- Yeah, so they like the analog stuff.

18:31SPEAKERIt's like that, what's that game Routine

18:33SPEAKERthat has the Sony, like the weapon, have you played this?

18:36SPEAKER- The one that just came out?

18:37SPEAKERRoutine? - The one that just came out?

18:38SPEAKER- I really want to play Routine, it's on my list.

18:41SPEAKER- The gun that you use looks like it was designed

18:44SPEAKERby Sony in like 1983. - Great, great.

18:46SPEAKER- It's very good. - Great.

18:49SPEAKERBut yeah, it's been really fun going to that

18:52SPEAKERand seeing those people and seeing more young kids there

18:55SPEAKERand just like sitting down and talking to somebody

18:59SPEAKERwho had like, I remember one week,

19:00SPEAKERI don't remember if you were there,

19:01SPEAKERbut there was a older woman who had

19:04SPEAKERa buttload of Quantum Bigfoot drives,

19:07SPEAKERwhich was like a five and a quarter inch hard drive

19:08SPEAKERfrom the late '90s.

19:09SPEAKERI was like, why do you have so many Quantum Bigfoots?

19:11SPEAKERShe's like, oh, my dad worked at Quantum

19:13SPEAKERand just had a bunch left over when they shut down

19:16SPEAKERor got sold or whatever that he put in the garage

19:19SPEAKERand I found them, so here they are.

19:21SPEAKERAnd I was like, okay.

19:21SPEAKERAnd there's a lot of that.

19:23SPEAKERI want to say friend of the show, Steve,

19:26SPEAKERwhen we were down there one time was like,

19:27SPEAKERyeah, this seems like the kind of place where people

19:30SPEAKERwho stole a bunch of stuff from their office

19:31SPEAKERlike 20 years ago come to get rid of it

19:33SPEAKERwhen they're cleaning their garage.

19:35SPEAKER- That's like half of that flea market.

19:37SPEAKERThat's why there's all kinds of deck alphas

19:39SPEAKERand SGI machines and anyway.

19:42SPEAKERAgain, I know I'm lucky to have access to stuff like that,

19:44SPEAKERbut if you're into similar stuff, look around.

19:46SPEAKERI didn't know about that flea market until late last year

19:49SPEAKERand so this was the first year we went into the year

19:52SPEAKERgeared up and ready to go to every one of them

19:54SPEAKERor as many as we could.

19:55SPEAKERAnd it was just-

19:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I think we only missed one or two.

19:56SPEAKER- Yeah, a nice way to get out of the house

19:58SPEAKERand kind of have some community again

20:00SPEAKERaround something that's very fun.

20:02SPEAKER- Well, and like, just to be clear,

20:04SPEAKERI don't like, none of us are buying a whole lot there.

20:07SPEAKERYou bought that porn.

20:08SPEAKER- Ah, come on.

20:12SPEAKERI feel like that still needs to be qualified.

20:14SPEAKERIt is a BBS ready CD of vintage erotica from the 90s,

20:18SPEAKERwhich is still in the shrink wrap.

20:20SPEAKER- Uh-huh, sure, sure it is, Brad.

20:22SPEAKERI bought one CRT.

20:23SPEAKERMy wife would have been much happier

20:24SPEAKERif I came home with porn instead of that second CRT,

20:27SPEAKERjust to be clear.

20:28SPEAKER- That CD doesn't take up a lot of space.

20:29SPEAKERI did go on archive.org to see if it was on there

20:31SPEAKERand it's not.

20:32SPEAKER- Oh, there you go.

20:33SPEAKER- So I'm actually sort of tempted to open it

20:35SPEAKERand image it and put it on there.

20:36SPEAKER- Put that porn on a BBS and then send them a link

20:38SPEAKERto the BBS and be like, hey,

20:39SPEAKERwe got some fresh 90s porn here.

20:43SPEAKERCan I spin off of that from CRTs coming back

20:48SPEAKERinto my life, which is one of my list items.

20:50SPEAKER- Yes, I actually, I'm piggybacking on this one

20:52SPEAKER'cause I also came into a CRT this year and it's fun.

20:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I went that first electronic flea market.

20:59SPEAKERI think we were walking around and I saw my vintage,

21:02SPEAKERlike the TV that I grew up playing the NES

21:04SPEAKERand TI-99 4A on, which was an old GE,

21:08SPEAKERlike I think it was built as a portable like 10 inch TV

21:11SPEAKERor nine inch TV or something like that.

21:13SPEAKERAnd so I paid 40 bucks for that without hesitation

21:16SPEAKERand brought it home and started playing games on it.

21:18SPEAKERIt's a little janky 'cause it's RF only and not great.

21:21SPEAKERAnd then the last electronic flea market of the year,

21:24SPEAKERwe were walking around and there was somebody selling

21:26SPEAKERlike a, what is it?

21:27SPEAKERA 19 inch Trinitron, I think.

21:29SPEAKER- Yeah, or 20 something like that.

21:30SPEAKER- 20 inch Trinitron.

21:31SPEAKERIt's like, I would describe these as like,

21:34SPEAKERthat is the TV that I wanted when I went to college

21:36SPEAKERand I bought a TV and instead of paying $500 for a TV,

21:39SPEAKERI bought like a $200 sharp probably

21:42SPEAKER'cause it was nearly as good and 200 bucks.

21:45SPEAKERAnd oh my God, it is so nice to have a fancy TV to play.

21:50SPEAKERIt's so much better to play games on.

21:52SPEAKER- I don't mind saying again

21:53SPEAKERthat I wish I had bought that TV.

21:56SPEAKER- But that guy has been there multiple times

21:58SPEAKERand he said he had more TVs.

21:59SPEAKERHe said that was the last one he had that day.

22:00SPEAKERSo your time may come in the spring.

22:02SPEAKER- Yeah, well, hey, a friend of the show kindly gifted me

22:05SPEAKERa 14 inch Toshiba, though I think we talked about that

22:08SPEAKERearlier this year.

22:09SPEAKER14 inch, good size for an apartment.

22:11SPEAKER- Good size, yeah, the 20, like I wouldn't mind,

22:13SPEAKERI would take a 14 over the 20, the 20 is a bit big,

22:17SPEAKERbut it is nice when I'm playing for player

22:19SPEAKERlike Mario Kart 64 or something.

22:21SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, for a 14,

22:22SPEAKERI do kind of have to roll right up to it, but that's fine.

22:25SPEAKERThe TV was a sidewalk find actually in San Francisco,

22:29SPEAKERbut then it's got, I think I've talked about this before,

22:31SPEAKERit's got a shocking range of inputs.

22:33SPEAKERIt's got everything from RF and composite

22:36SPEAKERthrough S-video and component, like kind of-

22:38SPEAKER- You have component on that thing, a 14?

22:39SPEAKER- Component is apparently like a very rare component

22:42SPEAKERon a screen that small, so.

22:44SPEAKER- Yeah, that's wild.

22:45SPEAKER- Pretty excited about it.

22:46SPEAKERI think getting back into CRTs is gonna be the thing

22:48SPEAKERthat requires me to, at some point, get more comfortable

22:50SPEAKERwith electronics repair because the last couple of times

22:53SPEAKERI've turned it on, I've heard a little bit of a,

22:55SPEAKERkind of a ticking sound coming out of it.

22:57SPEAKER- Sometimes that's just a peace warming up,

22:59SPEAKERbut sometimes it's impending doom.

23:01SPEAKER- Sure, it's just settling in a little bit, it'll be fine.

23:04SPEAKER- Yeah, look, that GE had a real good burning dust smell

23:07SPEAKERthe first few times I turned it on,

23:09SPEAKERand then that worked itself out.

23:11SPEAKERAnd like the switches were a little janky at first,

23:13SPEAKERso I blasted them with some contact cleaner

23:15SPEAKERand then they were fine.

23:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I know, I mean, I am also very interested

23:18SPEAKERin the other direction of this, which is like modern,

23:20SPEAKERyou know, the retro tanks of the world using FPGAs

23:23SPEAKERto massage digital signals, to look analog,

23:27SPEAKERto look shadow masked, et cetera.

23:29SPEAKERBut that's a, you know, that's a $700 piece of equipment.

23:32SPEAKERLike the CRT is both more authentic and cheaper

23:34SPEAKERto get into, and so I think that's a fun place to start.

23:39SPEAKER- I will say, I really enjoyed the time I spent

23:42SPEAKERwith one of those high refresh rate OLED monitors

23:44SPEAKERand the shaders that blank out

23:48SPEAKERand like mimic phosphor glow, basically.

23:51SPEAKERIt was really, really nice.

23:52SPEAKER- That BlurBuster CRT beam simulation shader

23:54SPEAKERis something I hope to play with one day.

23:56SPEAKER- It is, that thing is magic.

23:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:59SPEAKER- What else you got, you wanna hit one?

24:01SPEAKER- Speaking of magic, I have spent about a week

24:03SPEAKERwith these AirPods for a three now.

24:05SPEAKER- Was I right?

24:07SPEAKER- I'm not the only one to say this.

24:09SPEAKERA couple of people on the Discord also, I think,

24:11SPEAKERsaid this in the wake of that last episode,

24:12SPEAKERat which point I had not tried them yet.

24:14SPEAKERThey seem like they might be kind of life-changing.

24:17SPEAKER- Dude, they are, they would be on the top of my,

24:21SPEAKER"Hey, here's some stuff I love" list every single year.

24:24SPEAKER- Like I am, I try to be conscious of not coming off

24:26SPEAKERtoo much like an Apple zealot on this podcast,

24:28SPEAKER'cause I know plenty of people that listen,

24:30SPEAKERdon't use or care about Apple stuff.

24:31SPEAKERBut can I describe the extent of my pairing actions

24:36SPEAKERregarding these, I mean, you know what they are,

24:38SPEAKER'cause you own a pair.

24:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:40SPEAKER- I pulled them out of the box, I opened the case

24:42SPEAKERnear my iPhone and a big thing popped up

24:44SPEAKERwith a button on it that said pair.

24:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:47SPEAKER- And that's it.

24:48SPEAKER- And now it's also paired with every other

24:49SPEAKERApple device you own.

24:50SPEAKER- And now whatever Apple device I am using,

24:52SPEAKERand I play podcasts directly from my watch all the time,

24:55SPEAKERbecause I like to go out and exercise without my phone,

24:59SPEAKERjust 'cause it's a bulky, expensive thing

25:00SPEAKERand it won't bounce around in my pocket.

25:01SPEAKERAnd like, the idea that audio just plays to those headphones

25:04SPEAKERout of whatever device I happen to have on

25:07SPEAKERand am using at the time is just kind of insane.

25:09SPEAKER- Wait until you get a new Apple TV.

25:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

25:12SPEAKERLike, oh, wait, I won't even have to pair it with those,

25:14SPEAKERright, or with that.

25:16SPEAKER- And like, if you guys wanna watch something together,

25:20SPEAKERbut not be loud in the room or whatever,

25:22SPEAKER'cause it's later or just like your, you know,

25:24SPEAKERwhatever reason, you can both pair to the same TV

25:27SPEAKERat the same time. - Yeah, that's cool.

25:28SPEAKER- It is, they are transformative technology.

25:32SPEAKERIt's completely changed the way I think about Bluetooth

25:34SPEAKERand wireless headphones.

25:36SPEAKERAnd when you're using, like,

25:39SPEAKERif you get to a point where you're using Linux more,

25:41SPEAKERthere's even tools like Liberapods

25:43SPEAKERthat lets them work with Steam Deck

25:45SPEAKERand Linux desktops and laptops in the same way.

25:49SPEAKER- So I've been afraid to pair them with any non-Apple thing

25:52SPEAKER'cause I'm worried about it kind of interfering

25:54SPEAKERwith the magic, is that not a problem?

25:55SPEAKER- It's usually okay, sometimes it's weird.

25:59SPEAKERI feel like it's gotten better over the years

26:01SPEAKERsince they came out.

26:02SPEAKER- Okay, I like it. - On the first pair

26:04SPEAKERthat I had, it was a little bit of a hassle sometimes.

26:06SPEAKER- Yeah, like in particular, I was worried

26:07SPEAKERthat if I pair 'em with something else

26:09SPEAKERand then come back to the Apple stuff,

26:10SPEAKERdo you have to pair it again with the phone before it'll?

26:13SPEAKER- No, no, no, it'll save multiple pairings,

26:15SPEAKERbut you might have to connect to it

26:16SPEAKERthe first time you bring it back into, like,

26:18SPEAKERif you pair it with your Switch,

26:20SPEAKERyou'll have to go and connect to it with the Switch,

26:21SPEAKERand then when you bring it back to the phone,

26:23SPEAKERusually you have to connect to it again.

26:24SPEAKER- Okay, that's fine. - But that's it.

26:27SPEAKER- And we have had our first kind of magic moment

26:30SPEAKERa couple days ago of me realizing

26:32SPEAKERwe both had the headphones in, excuse me,

26:34SPEAKERlistening to something,

26:35SPEAKERand we just started talking to each other.

26:37SPEAKER- And it works.

26:38SPEAKER- And like, we were just able to hear each other,

26:40SPEAKERand it paused our audio as we were talking.

26:42SPEAKERSeamlessly, we can interact and listen to podcasts

26:44SPEAKERat the same time, it's, they're expensive,

26:48SPEAKERbut I mean, they're literally eight times more,

26:53SPEAKERI have only ever owned cheap, crappy wireless earbuds,

26:57SPEAKERlike $20 to $30 earbuds,

27:00SPEAKERand these are quite a bit more than that,

27:01SPEAKERbut so far, like between the sound quality,

27:03SPEAKERalso the noise canceling is amazing, like the--

27:06SPEAKER- The microphone quality is really good

27:07SPEAKERwhen you call people too. - Sure.

27:08SPEAKERLike the gestures on the, there's a tactile pad on there,

27:12SPEAKERso you know exactly where to press,

27:13SPEAKERand there's haptics in there,

27:15SPEAKERso you know when it's registering that you're changing volume

27:18SPEAKERor changing modes or whatever, they just started--

27:20SPEAKER- That's new, by the way, that's not in my twos.

27:22SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.

27:23SPEAKER- So now there's a little, like,

27:24SPEAKERit's just kind of a little indentation

27:26SPEAKERon the front of the stem,

27:26SPEAKERso you know exactly where to touch to register--

27:29SPEAKER- Yeah, the indentation's there, but there's no,

27:31SPEAKERthere's no, like, haptic feedback on the whole one.

27:33SPEAKER- Oh, really?

27:34SPEAKEROkay, so there's just a tiny little click

27:35SPEAKERin the same way that the track pads on the laptops

27:37SPEAKERhave a fake haptic click.

27:38SPEAKER- Oh, it might do that, actually.

27:40SPEAKER- Anyway, they're just incredibly, like,

27:42SPEAKERsometimes, again, my MO is always to kind of

27:45SPEAKERbuy something cheap and disposable,

27:46SPEAKER'cause, well, what if I want something better later,

27:48SPEAKERand then I always just continue buying

27:49SPEAKERthe cheap and disposable thing, but,

27:51SPEAKERwell, sometimes it's nice to trade up to the good thing.

27:54SPEAKER- I will say, I bought mine right when they came out,

27:57SPEAKER'cause I'd wanted the ones, and I bought the twos.

28:00SPEAKERI might have already, I might have bought the ones

28:01SPEAKERand given them to somebody else, I can't remember.

28:03SPEAKERBut they were immediately good,

28:07SPEAKERlike, I was immediately thrilled with them,

28:10SPEAKERand I kept, when my, I bought the AppleCare on 'em

28:13SPEAKERwhen I bought them, and they swapped 'em,

28:15SPEAKER'cause the connection and the ear detection

28:17SPEAKERwas getting wonky, and they just gave me a new

28:20SPEAKERrefurb pair at the end of the AppleCare period.

28:23SPEAKER- That's pretty good.

28:24SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, they're one of my all-time favorite

28:26SPEAKERpieces of technology, I'm glad you're enjoying 'em.

28:28SPEAKER- Oh, thank you, now I am staring at the AppleCare

28:31SPEAKERnotification and settings, which straight up

28:34SPEAKERhas a timer ticking down, you have 54 more days

28:36SPEAKERto sign up for AppleCare, now I'm thinking for a wearable

28:39SPEAKERthat are something this tiny, maybe, I don't know,

28:41SPEAKERmaybe I should look into that.

28:42SPEAKER- The thing I figured, well, so here's the thing,

28:44SPEAKERyou can, they sell for 250 bucks,

28:46SPEAKERyou can usually get 'em for 200 if you don't mind

28:48SPEAKERwaiting a little bit and waiting for them

28:50SPEAKERto go on sale someplace.

28:51SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I got 'em for with that gift card back.

28:55SPEAKER- Yeah, and-- - Effectively.

28:56SPEAKER- And like, I think the AppleCare worked out

29:00SPEAKERto two bucks a month when you paid for it a year in advance.

29:03SPEAKERAnd I was like, it's 50 bucks on 200 to 200 bucks

29:07SPEAKERis a little bit iffy for me, but since I was able to go in

29:11SPEAKERand be like, yeah, I have this problem that was kind of

29:13SPEAKERimpossible to replicate, and they were like,

29:14SPEAKERoh yeah, we'll just give you a new one, it's no big deal.

29:16SPEAKER- Oh, they didn't even care about verifying it?

29:18SPEAKER- They looked at the logs on 'em and were like,

29:20SPEAKERoh yeah, something's weird here.

29:23SPEAKERAnd they made sure it was clean and all that,

29:25SPEAKERlike, 'cause the detection areas get dirty

29:27SPEAKERand then it doesn't detect right.

29:29SPEAKER- I wish I could read the logs on my earbuds,

29:32SPEAKERI'm doing it again, EarPods, AirBuds, AirPods.

29:36SPEAKER- I think you can, actually.

29:37SPEAKER- Wait, what? - Yeah.

29:39SPEAKER- How? - I think I could pull 'em.

29:40SPEAKERI think there was a way I could get 'em from the debug folder

29:43SPEAKERin the config on the phone, I can't remember.

29:46SPEAKER- This bears further investigation, I'll report back.

29:48SPEAKER(laughs)

29:50SPEAKER- Okay, I gotta shout out communities this year,

29:54SPEAKER'cause launching the Dual Boot Diaries

29:56SPEAKERkind of smashed all of my different communities together

29:58SPEAKERwith one common cause.

30:00SPEAKERSo people in the Twitch community and the tech pod community

30:04SPEAKERand the full nerd Dual Boot Diaries community

30:08SPEAKERand all the YouTube comments,

30:10SPEAKEReverybody has been incredibly excited

30:13SPEAKERand supportive and helpful.

30:16SPEAKERAnd there's not been a lot of like,

30:19SPEAKERyo, you should just read the man page

30:20SPEAKERor post the right format for the bug report

30:23SPEAKERand all that stuff.

30:25SPEAKERPeople have been really cool

30:26SPEAKERand the Linux community has been a delight,

30:29SPEAKERcontrary to every other time I've done this

30:31SPEAKERwhere there's some sassy neckbeard saying,

30:33SPEAKER"Yeah, have you considered reading the fucking manual?"

30:37SPEAKERSo shout out to communities, communities of rule.

30:39SPEAKER- You know, I like to think the sassy neckbeards

30:41SPEAKERare in a distinct minority, but then again,

30:43SPEAKERyou only remember the sassy neckbeards.

30:45SPEAKER- I think the other thing is that more new people

30:48SPEAKERare coming in and are remembering how much nicer it is

30:51SPEAKERif you don't get yelled at by some grumpy old guy, so.

30:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, this is not the gen two forums or something.

30:58SPEAKER- Hey, I think the gen two forums are probably fine.

31:00SPEAKER- You're probably actually, I just picked,

31:02SPEAKERI just picked a hardcore Linux out of thin air.

31:05SPEAKERI apologize to.

31:06SPEAKER- Slackware, it's the Slackware people

31:08SPEAKERthat you got to watch out for at this point.

31:09SPEAKER- Yep.

31:11SPEAKER- You wanted to hit one, you got another one?

31:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I've got one more.

31:14SPEAKERIt's not really exact, it's more tangentially Linux related.

31:16SPEAKERIt's more open source-y, but let's do something

31:18SPEAKERnon open source operating systems for a second.

31:22SPEAKER- I got one for you.

31:22SPEAKER- Oh, well, okay.

31:23SPEAKER- Oh, okay, oh, okay, go ahead.

31:25SPEAKER- Let's do this pair of switch related ones.

31:27SPEAKER- I was gonna say that's what I was gonna pull out actually.

31:29SPEAKER- Okay, I got a switch too, as we talked about.

31:31SPEAKERThe thing I'm calling out here is screen protectors

31:35SPEAKERhave gotten kind of foolproof from what I can tell.

31:38SPEAKER- Did you get the one with the plastic frame

31:39SPEAKERthat you snap on?

31:40SPEAKER- So that's kind of the crazy part.

31:42SPEAKERI think they're all the one with the plastic frame now.

31:44SPEAKERI think you technically could find

31:46SPEAKERlike a sub $10 switch too.

31:48SPEAKER- Yeah, you can still get the ones without the frame.

31:50SPEAKER- But even the like $12 Amfilm that gets you two of them,

31:54SPEAKERI think it's like, I think it was 12 last I checked.

31:56SPEAKERAn Amfilm is a good one, that's what I had on my Switch 1.

31:59SPEAKEREven that one comes with the installation frame now.

32:01SPEAKER- I buy the Spigen ones, I think.

32:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the other one that I see called out

32:06SPEAKERquite a bit as being good.

32:08SPEAKER- They're good, I've cracked a couple on my phone

32:11SPEAKERand when you complain to them about it,

32:13SPEAKERthey just send you another two.

32:15SPEAKER- Yeah, that happened to me with my set of Amfilm

32:18SPEAKERon the Switch 1, I had like some minor issue with one of them

32:20SPEAKERand they just sent me a whole new, brand new set of two.

32:23SPEAKER- It just shows up for Amazon or whatever.

32:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

32:26SPEAKER- I'm a big fan, I used one of the Spigen ones

32:28SPEAKERon the Switch 2s in the house here.

32:30SPEAKERI think the Switch 2 actually only comes with one

32:32SPEAKERfor the Spigen one.

32:34SPEAKEROn the phones, they usually give you a two pack.

32:38SPEAKER- Yeah, so for the Switch 2, I paid the dbrand surcharge

32:43SPEAKER'cause it was a work purchase and I wanted to see

32:45SPEAKERif it was worth the money and it's a lot

32:48SPEAKERfor a screen protector, it's 35 bucks,

32:50SPEAKERbut I really, they were talking it up so much,

32:52SPEAKERI was like, okay, this is worth putting on the company

32:55SPEAKERjust to see how well this works.

32:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

32:58SPEAKER- I gotta say it was completely flawless

33:00SPEAKERin like two minutes.

33:02SPEAKER- They do the thing where they have like a sticky layer

33:04SPEAKERthat goes down and pulls all the crap off, right?

33:07SPEAKER- That's the thing, I had dust under my,

33:09SPEAKERI only put on, I put the screen protector

33:11SPEAKERon the Switch 1 once and it had dust under there

33:14SPEAKERforever after and I never quite cared enough

33:16SPEAKERto pull it off and try again and it always kind of annoyed me

33:19SPEAKERbut yes, this one, the way they describe it on here

33:22SPEAKERis that it's got, what do they call it?

33:26SPEAKERA statically charged peel layer is what they say.

33:28SPEAKERLike when you, the way their frame works,

33:31SPEAKERwhen you pull the tab and pull the sticky part off,

33:34SPEAKERsupposedly there's some static element to the layer

33:38SPEAKERthat you're pulling that kind of gathers dust to it

33:41SPEAKERas you're pulling it off and sure enough,

33:43SPEAKERzero air bubbles, zero dust, like it's perfectly aligned.

33:46SPEAKERBut again, you can get pretty close to this

33:48SPEAKERwith a screen protector set

33:50SPEAKERthat is less than half the price of this thing.

33:52SPEAKER- Well, so yeah, somebody told me years ago

33:55SPEAKERto do the screen protector,

33:56SPEAKERlike to steam up the bathroom real good

33:58SPEAKERbefore he gets a shower and do that.

33:59SPEAKER- I also did that.

34:01SPEAKER- I pitched Intel when we went to the data set to the fab

34:06SPEAKERto see if they'd let us apply some screen protectors

34:08SPEAKERinside the fab.

34:10SPEAKERIt was like, there's gonna be no less dusty place

34:13SPEAKERin the world where they're like,

34:14SPEAKERno, you can't take your phone into the fab.

34:15SPEAKER- Whip your Switch 2 out in the Intel 18A facility.

34:18SPEAKER- Yeah, here's a multi-billion dollar facility.

34:21SPEAKERI'm gonna put a $3 screen protector on.

34:23SPEAKER- Yeah. - But yeah, I love that.

34:25SPEAKER- Yeah. - It's really cool.

34:26SPEAKER- As somebody who struggled with alignment and dust

34:28SPEAKERand stuff like that, it was really nice to see that like,

34:30SPEAKEReven kind of across the price spectrum,

34:33SPEAKERthese things are getting harder and harder to screw up.

34:36SPEAKER- It's funny, screen protectors are one of those things

34:38SPEAKERthat I really eschewed the first few years

34:40SPEAKERof the smartphone era.

34:41SPEAKERAnd then as I've gotten older and I've started keeping

34:44SPEAKERphones longer, honestly, is the big thing.

34:46SPEAKERThe time and the micro scratches that just are unavoidable

34:51SPEAKERfrom like putting something in and out of your pocket

34:52SPEAKERall the time kind of make me crazy.

34:54SPEAKERIt's the one thing I don't like about my older watch

34:57SPEAKERis that the micro scratches on it are super visible

35:01SPEAKERand bright sunlight now and it kind of irritates me.

35:03SPEAKER- Yeah, the Series 8 that I just traded in for this 11

35:06SPEAKERwas just like all the way around the edge

35:08SPEAKERwas just scratch city.

35:10SPEAKER- I think it's why I'm gonna get an ultra

35:11SPEAKERwhen I finally replace the 7 that I have.

35:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

35:15SPEAKER- So I found, we talked about this briefly,

35:17SPEAKERbut I wanted to shout it out

35:18SPEAKER'cause I was playing a lot of Metroid Prime recently.

35:23SPEAKERAnd I found Switch 2 grips that I like finally.

35:26SPEAKERPeople ask me about this all the time.

35:27SPEAKERIt's maybe the thing that people ask me the most

35:29SPEAKERabout the tech bot of anything right now

35:32SPEAKERthat's not Linux related.

35:33SPEAKERAnd it's the Skull & Co Neo grips.

35:36SPEAKERThey come in either all black grips or red and blue,

35:41SPEAKERlike Nintendo red and blue.

35:43SPEAKERAnd they have three different grabbies on them.

35:47SPEAKERSo you can do three different,

35:49SPEAKERI wanna say length of protrusions.

35:52SPEAKERThere's a big one, a medium one, a small one.

35:54SPEAKERSo you can have the amount of grip to hold on to

35:57SPEAKERthat you want.

35:58SPEAKERAnd you can still put it in the dock with the grip on.

36:01SPEAKERThe only thing I don't like about it

36:03SPEAKERis that it's kind of hard to take the Joy-Cons off.

36:08SPEAKERLike you have to take the grip off to take the Joy-Cons off.

36:11SPEAKERBut I wasn't able to find anything

36:14SPEAKERthat let you take the Joy-Cons off easily,

36:18SPEAKERstill go in the dock and didn't look super janky

36:21SPEAKERor wasn't like just soft silicone

36:26SPEAKERthat wasn't actually gonna give you anything to grip onto.

36:29SPEAKERSo this is, to be clear, I bought four of them and sent

36:33SPEAKERthree of them back and this is the one that I kept.

36:35SPEAKERSo it's pretty good.

36:37SPEAKERIt's kind of expensive.

36:37SPEAKERIt's like 30 bucks.

36:39SPEAKERI think the ones that I liked was the Target House brand

36:42SPEAKERthat I used to buy for the Switch One were 14.

36:45SPEAKERSo it's a pretty substantial increase in price.

36:47SPEAKERSome of that may be tariff related, I don't know.

36:50SPEAKERBut these are good.

36:51SPEAKERAnd with the three adjustable, three different grip sizes,

36:55SPEAKERthey stay on, the replaceable grips stay on really nicely.

36:58SPEAKERAnd I was able to find something that was comfortable

37:00SPEAKERout of those three.

37:01SPEAKER- Yeah, that thing is big.

37:03SPEAKER- It's big and it's heavy enough.

37:04SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like how to invest in your ergonomics.

37:07SPEAKER- You mean I have enough RSI problems

37:09SPEAKERthat I wanna not jack up my wrist, making it worse.

37:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:14SPEAKER- Let's see, I could do, I got a rack for my bike

37:18SPEAKERthat I can put small amounts of cargo on.

37:21SPEAKERAnd this isn't technology really.

37:23SPEAKERIt's just a thing, like it's a piece of metal

37:25SPEAKERthat screws onto the frame.

37:26SPEAKER- A bike is mechanical technology.

37:28SPEAKER- That's true.

37:29SPEAKER- 'Cause it's just a bike, not an e-bike or anything.

37:32SPEAKER- We'll talk about e-bikes in a minute.

37:35SPEAKERBut yeah, it's been really, it's been nice

37:38SPEAKER'cause it means that like if I wanna go get,

37:40SPEAKERlike pick up a quick run for small amount of groceries

37:42SPEAKERor something, I just chuck that on there

37:44SPEAKERwith a box on the back and run to the grocery store

37:46SPEAKERand it takes less time.

37:49SPEAKERLike actually, it's just nice to have the dead time

37:52SPEAKERwhen I'm pedaling, you know what I mean?

37:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:55SPEAKER- So yeah, using the bike a little bit more

37:57SPEAKERhas been really nice.

37:58SPEAKERExercise, convenience, probably.

38:00SPEAKERI would say, I would assume, I assume it's convenient.

38:03SPEAKER- It's kind of a pain in the butt to get out of the garage.

38:04SPEAKERI need to figure, I need to make that easier.

38:06SPEAKER- I was thinking kind of like at the grocery store,

38:08SPEAKERI assume they have bike racks there.

38:10SPEAKER- You know, you'd think that.

38:11SPEAKER- Oh.

38:12SPEAKER- They do, they're just in a weird spot.

38:13SPEAKER- Okay.

38:14SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:18SPEAKERBut the big thing for me is like,

38:22SPEAKERI live a mile and a half from the grocery store.

38:24SPEAKERSo it's like a 10 minute ride.

38:25SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fun.

38:26SPEAKER- And it's a nice distance

38:28SPEAKERand it feels like I've done something productive

38:30SPEAKERand it's time to think that's not,

38:32SPEAKERthat has no other pressure on me, which is nice.

38:35SPEAKER- Especially 'cause it's not like city traffic

38:36SPEAKERdown there, right?

38:37SPEAKERI assume it's not like crazed drivers every which way.

38:40SPEAKER- Oh, people are absolutely unhinged

38:42SPEAKERacross the Bay Area these days.

38:44SPEAKER- That's just driving in America these days, it sounds like.

38:47SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a general lack of civility on the road

38:50SPEAKERthat is worrisome to terrifying

38:52SPEAKERdepending on how big your car is, I guess.

38:54SPEAKER- Distressing, well, hey, what if you had a car

38:56SPEAKERthat was less prone to break down?

38:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I put electric cars on my list.

39:02SPEAKERThis is I think our fifth year having an electric car.

39:06SPEAKERIs that right?

39:07SPEAKERWe got the first one in 2021, I think.

39:09SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.

39:10SPEAKER- So it'll be end of April will be the end of the fifth,

39:13SPEAKERstart of the fifth year, I guess.

39:15SPEAKER- Okay.

39:16SPEAKER- They're fabulous.

39:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I kind of, I wanted to bring this up

39:19SPEAKER'cause I mean, I'm not in a position to buy a car right now,

39:21SPEAKERbut I feel like I'm at the point

39:22SPEAKERwhere I probably will get an EV by the time

39:24SPEAKERI am ready to get one,

39:27SPEAKERwhich it just seems like the benefits

39:29SPEAKERjust continue to mount up.

39:31SPEAKER- Look, if you want, they're starting to make EVs

39:35SPEAKERthat mimic in a skeuomorphic way manual transmission cars,

39:42SPEAKERthat IONIQ 5N is wild.

39:44SPEAKER- That's always been the tension for me

39:46SPEAKERas I've always wanted to own one more manual transmission

39:48SPEAKERin my life and like those, I don't know, those are cool,

39:51SPEAKERbut knowing that it's entirely fake, I don't know.

39:54SPEAKERI almost wish they would build the car in such a way

39:55SPEAKERthat you had to do the shifting and for some reason,

39:58SPEAKERthen I would have, I don't know, find it more satisfying.

40:02SPEAKERBut I guess that's just not how electric vehicles work,

40:04SPEAKERright?

40:05SPEAKER- Well, not really, no, they're just all,

40:07SPEAKERthere's no transmission, it's all one gear.

40:09SPEAKER- Right, right, exactly, there aren't gears as such.

40:12SPEAKERHere's the thing that, the thing I read recently

40:14SPEAKERthat was the, I think this was the lightning bolt moment

40:17SPEAKERof, oh, it might actually be insane not to buy an EV.

40:21SPEAKERAnd maybe you have more insight into this.

40:22SPEAKERThis was a thread on Blue Sky, all anecdotal,

40:25SPEAKERso correct me or them if this is not actually a thing.

40:30SPEAKERWhat was being claimed was that dealerships

40:33SPEAKERare starting to go out of their way.

40:36SPEAKERThey're starting to do anything they can

40:38SPEAKERto not sell you an EV.

40:40SPEAKER- A lot of dealerships do not like EVs at all.

40:43SPEAKER- And the reason for that is that they make so much money

40:45SPEAKERfrom ongoing maintenance of the vehicle you bought from them

40:48SPEAKERand the EVs require so little maintenance

40:51SPEAKERthat they are just grumpy as hell

40:53SPEAKERover the fact that they're gonna sell you a car

40:55SPEAKERand then maybe never see you again or very rarely.

40:58SPEAKER- The maintenance, so like we get free,

41:00SPEAKERso we bought the, we leased the Hyundai,

41:02SPEAKERwhich comes with free maintenance,

41:04SPEAKERfree like right scheduled maintenance

41:07SPEAKERfor a hundred thousand miles or something.

41:09SPEAKERAnd like we bring it in, they rotate the tires,

41:13SPEAKERthey apply whatever software updates or recalls have applied

41:17SPEAKERthat have happened to it and it's usually there

41:19SPEAKERfor like nine hours and then I pick it up and it's gone.

41:22SPEAKERNow, whether dealers dislike it or not

41:25SPEAKERvaries wildly from dealer to dealer.

41:27SPEAKERSo like in the Bay Area, they're pretty pro electric

41:32SPEAKERand we haven't had those problems

41:33SPEAKEReither with the Chevrolet or with the Hyundai.

41:36SPEAKERI have heard there's the Ionic subreddit

41:39SPEAKERgets a lot of horror stories from dealers

41:41SPEAKERwho do shit that actively damages cars

41:44SPEAKERbecause they don't wanna fool with electrics

41:46SPEAKERand stuff like that.

41:47SPEAKER- That seems illegal. - Now it's the normal,

41:49SPEAKERwell, it's the normal thing where like

41:51SPEAKERyou only hear the complaints, yada yada.

41:53SPEAKERThere's also been a kind of widespread large problem

41:56SPEAKERwith the Ionic 5s specifically

41:58SPEAKERwhere they have a component fail that prevents the battery

42:01SPEAKERfrom the 12 volt battery from charging,

42:04SPEAKERnot the big battery.

42:07SPEAKERBut like generally speaking, yeah, it's great.

42:09SPEAKERWe had that Bolt, the Bolt was incredible around town.

42:12SPEAKERIt was a relatively small battery,

42:14SPEAKERcharged it off the 120 volt

42:15SPEAKERand we didn't even put up fast charger in for that.

42:19SPEAKERIt was not great on long trips

42:20SPEAKER'cause the high speed charging was pretty slow.

42:24SPEAKERThe Ionic is incredible on long trips.

42:26SPEAKERWe drove to LA a couple of times this year.

42:28SPEAKERLike it was one time we could have made it all the way

42:32SPEAKERfrom San Francisco, from Pacifica to North Hollywood

42:36SPEAKERonly stopping to charge once.

42:38SPEAKERWe would have come in real hot

42:39SPEAKERand we weren't sure what the charger situation

42:40SPEAKERwas like at the hotel.

42:42SPEAKERWe would have rolled in with like 9% battery left,

42:44SPEAKERwhich is 20 miles.

42:46SPEAKERSo we did stop and just do a quick like two minute charge

42:50SPEAKERsomeplace along the way.

42:51SPEAKERBut like that's unbelievable.

42:53SPEAKERIt's 400 miles, 380 miles or something.

42:56SPEAKER- And when you factor in the progress from the Bolt

42:58SPEAKERto that Ionic in five years or so,

43:00SPEAKERlike imagine how much better

43:01SPEAKERthere'll be in another five years.

43:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I kind of wonder if we're actually gonna see that

43:05SPEAKER'cause I think we're,

43:07SPEAKERthe charging infrastructure is much better now.

43:09SPEAKERThe thing about the Ionic is it goes

43:12SPEAKERfrom whatever percentage you're at to 80% in like 20 minutes

43:15SPEAKERno matter what.

43:16SPEAKERWhereas the Bolt would go,

43:18SPEAKERit could take up to like 90 minutes to get to 80%.

43:21SPEAKER- Yikes.

43:23SPEAKER- Depending on how, like worst case,

43:25SPEAKERif it's really hot out or something like that.

43:26SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:27SPEAKER- This is a pretty good experience all around.

43:30SPEAKER- Yes, this whole conversation might make me

43:33SPEAKERponder the notion that the car dealership is obsolete,

43:38SPEAKERbut perhaps it's time for direct sale

43:41SPEAKERto consumer, apologies to any listeners

43:43SPEAKERwhose family owns the car dealership, but.

43:45SPEAKER- That was the, I mean, that was the pitch

43:48SPEAKERthat Elon Musk made for Tesla early on.

43:50SPEAKER- I know that was one of the big Tesla innovations

43:52SPEAKERand you certainly don't have to hand it to Elon Musk,

43:54SPEAKERbut maybe.

43:56SPEAKER- I will say it's really nice having a place

43:59SPEAKERto take the car when they need to apply.

44:00SPEAKERLike we got the fix for the ICCU problem

44:03SPEAKERand I would have, it would have been annoying

44:06SPEAKERto have to drive 100 miles to like take,

44:09SPEAKERgo to a service center or something, right?

44:10SPEAKERAssuming the car could even make the 100 mile trip.

44:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair, that's fair.

44:15SPEAKER- So like, but I think part of it is that

44:18SPEAKERthe incentive structure and the, all that needs to change.

44:21SPEAKERLike it is an industry that if the electric shift continues

44:25SPEAKERis gonna have problems.

44:26SPEAKERAnd also it's also worth mentioning,

44:28SPEAKERwe do live in a very temperate climate.

44:30SPEAKERSo it's not like when it's cold and we run the heater,

44:32SPEAKERthen you get a lot less mileage and it's not ideal,

44:35SPEAKERbut 99% of the time it's like,

44:39SPEAKERthe last time we rented a car and we were like,

44:40SPEAKERoh, we should get a gas car was when we were driving up

44:43SPEAKERinto the kind of rural Eastern or Western Sierras

44:47SPEAKERSouth of, between Yosemite and Tahoe.

44:50SPEAKERAnd we were like, I don't know that there's gonna be

44:52SPEAKERelectricity where we're going much less a place to charge.

44:56SPEAKERSo we rented a big SUV and with four wheel drive.

44:59SPEAKERSo we wouldn't have to do chains and all that stuff.

45:00SPEAKER- Yeah, and in fairness, the ceiling on EV improvement

45:03SPEAKERis largely capped by battery technology.

45:05SPEAKERAnd that seems to not be going anywhere anytime soon, so.

45:09SPEAKER- Yeah, do you wanna talk?

45:12SPEAKERI think that's it, is that all of our stuff?

45:14SPEAKER- I've got one more.

45:15SPEAKER- Oh, and then we have consumed community noms.

45:17SPEAKER- Yes, okay, last one for me,

45:20SPEAKERthis is the other open source-y one that I wanted to mention.

45:22SPEAKER- Okay.

45:23SPEAKER- I got this tip from the Linux channel

45:26SPEAKERon the full nerd discord.

45:27SPEAKERSomebody posted an episode of the Linux unplugged podcast.

45:30SPEAKER- Okay.

45:31SPEAKER- I'm sorry to bring a competing Linux podcast in here.

45:34SPEAKER- Wow, wow.

45:35SPEAKER- But they did score an interview with Kent Overstreet,

45:38SPEAKERwho was the maintainer and kind of main developer

45:40SPEAKERof BcashFS.

45:42SPEAKER- Okay.

45:43SPEAKER- And this is not really about the file system,

45:44SPEAKERit's more about something he said

45:45SPEAKERthat really struck me in that interview.

45:47SPEAKERBut I'll say very briefly, we should probably do,

45:51SPEAKERmaybe we should do an episode on copy on write file systems

45:53SPEAKERat some point, but BcashFS is a new kind of next generation

45:58SPEAKERsuper modern file system mainly being developed

46:00SPEAKERfor Linux right now that I think the short version is

46:03SPEAKERit's basically looking like it might become

46:05SPEAKERwhat ButterFS never could, which is a ZFS equivalent

46:10SPEAKERthat is licensed compatible with the Linux kernel.

46:13SPEAKER- And lightweight enough that you can actually

46:14SPEAKERrun it on real hardware.

46:16SPEAKER- Yeah, he talks about that.

46:16SPEAKERKent talks about that some in that he, it's funny.

46:19SPEAKEROkay, here I go talking about file systems.

46:20SPEAKER- I will listen to this interview, this sounds great.

46:21SPEAKER- It's quite good.

46:23SPEAKERHe lauds ZFS quite extensively in that interview.

46:29SPEAKER- ZFS, just to be clear, one of the reasons

46:31SPEAKERwe started this podcast six years ago, five years ago.

46:33SPEAKERA primary fixation of mine as I tinker with my server here,

46:37SPEAKERbut he praises ZFS extensively in there.

46:40SPEAKERHe never utters the word ButterFS once.

46:42SPEAKER- Okay.

46:45SPEAKER- And to be clear, look, people use ButterFS

46:47SPEAKERfor all kinds of things.

46:48SPEAKERLike it does the jobs that it does seemingly pretty well.

46:51SPEAKERIt has had reliability problems over time

46:53SPEAKERthat it has not been able to shake,

46:55SPEAKERwhether still extent or in the past, it's got a reputation.

46:59SPEAKERAnd that's kind of the reason this file system even exists

47:01SPEAKERis it's kind of a second stab at.

47:04SPEAKER- But like the hate reproducibility

47:06SPEAKERand like letting you do shadow volumes and stuff like that.

47:09SPEAKER- File integrity, snapshots, logical volume management.

47:12SPEAKERWe'll get into it later, but.

47:14SPEAKER- I want to talk more about this, this sounds fun.

47:16SPEAKER- The conversation was about the funding model

47:18SPEAKERfor this thing and the way he's supporting himself right now,

47:21SPEAKERwhich is effectively entirely on the support of Patreon.

47:25SPEAKER- Okay.

47:26SPEAKER- And like, they didn't get into this too much.

47:27SPEAKERApparently he's like, this sounds crazy.

47:29SPEAKERHe's apparently like living out of a van in South America

47:32SPEAKERright now.

47:33SPEAKER- Wow.

47:34SPEAKER- Like by choice, they didn't go too much into it.

47:36SPEAKERIt sounds like he's just by choice

47:38SPEAKERliving kind of a nomadic lifestyle.

47:39SPEAKER- Is he a van life influencer too?

47:41SPEAKER- I pulled up a couple of talks with him after this.

47:43SPEAKERHe's got long hair.

47:44SPEAKERLike he seems like a bit of a free spirit, but anyway.

47:46SPEAKER- Okay.

47:48SPEAKER- Here's why I'm bringing this up

47:50SPEAKERand what the conversation was actually about

47:51SPEAKERwas he was lamenting the fact

47:53SPEAKERthat there has not been a lot of corporate support

47:55SPEAKERof development of BcashFS so far.

47:58SPEAKERThis may sound reminiscent to you

47:59SPEAKERof like the conversation with John Baptiste Kempf

48:04SPEAKERaround VLC, for example.

48:06SPEAKER- We had this conversation with multiple people

48:08SPEAKERwhose software was used by hundreds of millions of people

48:10SPEAKERaround the world.

48:11SPEAKER- Right, so he was kind of saying,

48:12SPEAKERyou know, we haven't seen a lot of support from companies

48:14SPEAKERwho might already be, I mean,

48:15SPEAKERit's an experimental file system.

48:17SPEAKERSo it's, he said it is starting to show up in production,

48:20SPEAKERbut it's still pretty early, but you know, he's like,

48:22SPEAKERI'm mostly getting by on support from end users right now.

48:25SPEAKERAnd the hosts were like,

48:27SPEAKERhow does that make you feel?

48:28SPEAKERBecause if this thing goes where it seems like it's going,

48:32SPEAKERthis becomes a linchpin of like big enterprise

48:35SPEAKERLinux storage deployments in the future.

48:37SPEAKERHow do you feel about the fact that a bunch of corporations

48:40SPEAKERare going to make astronomical amounts of money

48:42SPEAKERover the next 10 or 20 years

48:43SPEAKERon the work you're doing right now?

48:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

48:45SPEAKER- And he had like the most magnanimous answer

48:47SPEAKERI think I have ever heard to something like that,

48:48SPEAKERwhich was effect, I'm paraphrasing,

48:51SPEAKERbut he was basically like, I don't care about that.

48:54SPEAKERI don't think about that.

48:55SPEAKERWhat I care about is writing good, clean code

48:57SPEAKERthat end users can run on their computers.

49:01SPEAKER- Wow.

49:02SPEAKERHe's a bigger man than I am.

49:03SPEAKER- I care about, yeah, right.

49:05SPEAKER- If I wrote something that 100 million people were using

49:07SPEAKERand I was making $30 a month on it,

49:09SPEAKERI'd be fairly upset, I think.

49:10SPEAKER- That's like kind of the curl thing though, again.

49:12SPEAKERYou know, like we interviewed, oh my gosh,

49:15SPEAKERDaniel Stenberg, the maintainer of curl has just,

49:18SPEAKERlike there are billions of installations of curl

49:20SPEAKERin the world.

49:21SPEAKER- It's run on Mars.

49:22SPEAKER- Right, like it's on practically every device

49:24SPEAKERthat has an open source operating system on it

49:26SPEAKERand is used for something.

49:27SPEAKERBut you know, like it's, I mean, it's that classic problem,

49:29SPEAKERbut like he was just, Kent was just like so open about,

49:33SPEAKERlike I care about the people on our,

49:36SPEAKERactually, sorry, not Discord, IRC.

49:38SPEAKERThey have an IRC channel, of course, not a Discord.

49:40SPEAKERBut like, he was like, I care about the people on IRC,

49:42SPEAKERthe people who are sending me bug reports

49:45SPEAKERand helping me debug issues and people who are

49:47SPEAKERjust running things in their home labs.

49:49SPEAKERHe was like, I love home labbers 'cause they're the ones

49:51SPEAKERwho actually send you issues and will send you logs

49:54SPEAKERto help you fix them and like, you know,

49:55SPEAKERhe very much was like, he very much was like,

49:58SPEAKERI'm doing this for the love of the work

50:00SPEAKERand the quality of the work and I'm doing it

50:02SPEAKERfor the little guy, the people on the ground

50:05SPEAKERwho are gonna benefit from it, not the, you know,

50:08SPEAKERnot enterprise companies that are gonna sell

50:10SPEAKERstorage appliances for $100,000 using my file system

50:13SPEAKERin 10 years or whatever, which was just,

50:15SPEAKERit was just kind of really refreshing to hear.

50:18SPEAKER- One of the things that's been really interesting

50:20SPEAKERis like submitting bug reports to Neary

50:22SPEAKERand Noctalia Shell and stuff like that,

50:24SPEAKERhow both, like I submitted a bug report

50:28SPEAKERfor something that had been fixed and I just,

50:29SPEAKERit was in the fixed but not released yet category

50:32SPEAKERand I just missed it and they were like,

50:33SPEAKERoh yeah, no big deal, hey, we fixed this,

50:35SPEAKERit'll be in the upcoming release, if you wanna get it,

50:37SPEAKERyou can subscribe to the Git one instead and blah, blah, blah

50:39SPEAKERand I was like, oh, that's amazing, thank you so much

50:41SPEAKERand like, there wasn't a hey, noob, we fixed this already.

50:44SPEAKERThey were legit thrilled that somebody was willing

50:48SPEAKERto take the time to submit a bug report.

50:50SPEAKERAnd yeah, it's heartwarming.

50:54SPEAKER- Yes, I think I've mentioned this.

50:55SPEAKER- This is awesome.

50:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I think I've mentioned this before,

50:57SPEAKERbut like probably the first really eye-opening,

51:00SPEAKERheartwarming open source experience I had

51:01SPEAKERwas filing a couple of bugs on GitHub for OwnTone,

51:04SPEAKERwhich is the, it's the music server

51:07SPEAKERthat basically emulates kind of iTunes style AirPlay,

51:10SPEAKERlike it serves music to AirPlay targets in your house.

51:13SPEAKERAnything that can play AirPlay, it'll see that

51:15SPEAKERand can stream music to it and like the maintainer,

51:19SPEAKERat one point the maintainer literally just forked the project

51:21SPEAKERand made one little change and said,

51:23SPEAKERhey, pull down this repo that I just spun off here

51:28SPEAKERand build that and run it and then send me this log output.

51:31SPEAKER- That's amazing.

51:32SPEAKER- And I sent it to him and within like half a day,

51:34SPEAKERhe had fixed the bug I was having and it was just,

51:36SPEAKERand he seemed very appreciative that I had filed the bug

51:38SPEAKERand was willing to do the testing

51:40SPEAKERand like that's another free piece of software.

51:43SPEAKERYou know, that's not making billions of dollars,

51:44SPEAKERbut like it's still somebody leveraging their expertise

51:47SPEAKERto just make something cool and put it out in the world

51:49SPEAKERthat people can benefit from.

51:51SPEAKER- I love it.

51:52SPEAKER- It's a good thing.

51:53SPEAKERThe last, real quick, this is like actually newsworthy.

51:56SPEAKERIt came out of that interview on Linux Unplugged

51:58SPEAKERthat Valve is sponsoring BcashFS now.

52:01SPEAKER- Oh, nice.

52:02SPEAKER- He didn't go into a ton of detail

52:03SPEAKERother than he talked kind of obliquely about effectively

52:07SPEAKERlike Valve has really stabilized the funding situation here

52:10SPEAKERand has made, 'cause he said like, it's a file system.

52:13SPEAKERIt needs five or seven engineers on it, not just me.

52:16SPEAKERSo it's largely about getting him some help,

52:18SPEAKERbut like I am hopeful slash a little desperate

52:24SPEAKERfor that thing to become the thing.

52:26SPEAKER- Should we, I was gonna say, should we make 2026

52:28SPEAKERthe year that we sponsor some Linux projects?

52:30SPEAKER- Maybe, maybe, maybe.

52:33SPEAKERI don't know.

52:33SPEAKER- We're not like, it's not like we're incredibly flush

52:36SPEAKERover here, we could chuck 50 bucks a month or something.

52:38SPEAKER- Should we just become a conduit

52:40SPEAKERfor some kind of charitable nonprofit, something, something?

52:43SPEAKERBut the thing I was gonna say though is like,

52:46SPEAKERI really hope that bcashFS gets there

52:48SPEAKERbecause Linux, the modern file system situation on Linux

52:53SPEAKERis kind of dire and it needs it

52:54SPEAKERand Valve getting behind this

52:57SPEAKERand giving it their stamp of approval

52:58SPEAKERand presumably helping out at least monetarily,

53:02SPEAKERif not also development-wise seems like a very good sign

53:05SPEAKERthat this thing is going to get where it needs to get to.

53:09SPEAKER- Does Steam Deck do butter FS?

53:11SPEAKERI think it does.

53:12SPEAKER- I don't know.

53:13SPEAKERThat's not, I mean, like I should say,

53:15SPEAKERif we ever do the copyright episode,

53:16SPEAKERlike they're not necessarily

53:18SPEAKERthe most performant file systems.

53:20SPEAKERThey're not for that.

53:21SPEAKERThey're for resilience.

53:22SPEAKERThey're for making sure that the data doesn't get eaten

53:24SPEAKERor that is replicated, et cetera.

53:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it may be that like Valve

53:32SPEAKERmay be putting money behind this

53:34SPEAKERbecause they run Steam servers

53:35SPEAKERin addition to Steam, you know, client software.

53:37SPEAKERSo yeah, it's cool.

53:38SPEAKERThat's awesome.

53:40SPEAKEROkay, so we have a couple more categories here.

53:42SPEAKERWe have things that weren't great

53:44SPEAKERbut then we also have, I started a thread,

53:46SPEAKERthe Discord and asked for community noms

53:48SPEAKERand we got a bunch of good suggestions.

53:50SPEAKERSo let's do the grind our gears,

53:52SPEAKERthe Andy Rooney segment first

53:55SPEAKERand then close with the community stuff.

53:56SPEAKER- There's just a couple of them.

53:57SPEAKERThey're not a huge thing.

53:59SPEAKER- You want to go first?

54:00SPEAKERYou want me to go first?

54:01SPEAKER- Again, compared to some of what's going on out there

54:04SPEAKERthat everybody knows about.

54:05SPEAKER- Yeah, the larger, like I said, AI, politics,

54:10SPEAKEReconomic collapse, climate,

54:14SPEAKERwe could just go on, and shitification.

54:17SPEAKERI fucking hate when parents give their kids,

54:21SPEAKERI'm air quoting here, toys that aren't really toys

54:25SPEAKERor that they don't understand.

54:27SPEAKERSo we have an e-bike gang in Pacifica.

54:31SPEAKER- Oh, wait.

54:32SPEAKER- They're like middle school kids

54:33SPEAKERthat ride around on like e-bikes

54:36SPEAKERthat are effectively electric motorcycles

54:38SPEAKERthat go about 40 miles an hour.

54:40SPEAKER- Damn, do they really go that fast?

54:41SPEAKER- They go insanely fast.

54:44SPEAKERAnd A, they're completely unsupervised

54:48SPEAKERand the response in the community has been,

54:50SPEAKERoh, boys will be boys.

54:52SPEAKERBut also they're going to fucking die.

54:54SPEAKER- I was gonna say that those are extremely unsafe speeds

54:57SPEAKERto be, because that's not a bicycle speed.

55:00SPEAKERThat is a, I hope they're wearing helmets at least,

55:03SPEAKERbut that is a fall off and that is,

55:05SPEAKERthat's a wreck and potentially kill yourself speed.

55:06SPEAKER- So it's not even that.

55:08SPEAKERIt's that they're riding these 40 mile an hour

55:12SPEAKERelectric motorcycles in the same way

55:14SPEAKERthat they would ride bikes,

55:15SPEAKERbut they're doing stuff like riding down the middle of US1,

55:19SPEAKERwhich is a four lane undivided highway,

55:21SPEAKERdoing wheelies and shit.

55:23SPEAKER- What?

55:24SPEAKERIsn't that the one that goes by the Taco Bell?

55:25SPEAKER- Yep, it's a big road.

55:27SPEAKER- The one that goes by the beach?

55:28SPEAKER- Yep.

55:29SPEAKER- That's like the highway.

55:30SPEAKER- And they're like 12, 13 years old, yeah.

55:31SPEAKER- That's like the highway that goes through that area.

55:33SPEAKERWhat the fuck?

55:34SPEAKER- 50 mile an hour highway, yeah.

55:35SPEAKER- That seems insane to ride a bike on that.

55:38SPEAKER- They get out on the beach and ride in the surf.

55:41SPEAKER- Great.

55:42SPEAKER- Which is illegal for a couple of different reasons.

55:45SPEAKERAnd they do things like ride in the wrong side of the street

55:48SPEAKERat, you know, the cars go 25 miles an hour

55:51SPEAKERin the neighborhoods and they're going 40 miles an hour

55:53SPEAKERand like in all sorts of traffic and without lights on

55:56SPEAKERand wearing all black and all that.

55:57SPEAKERDon't get your kids toys that they're gonna be unsupervised

56:03SPEAKERif you're not gonna teach them

56:04SPEAKERand make sure that they use them right.

56:06SPEAKER- This also applies, just to be clear, to things like

56:09SPEAKERstuffed animals that use AI to talk to your children.

56:12SPEAKERFor the love of God, don't get those for your kids

56:14SPEAKERor grandkids or whatever because they're going to learn

56:17SPEAKERall sorts of horrible stuff from the unregulated AI

56:20SPEAKERand like it's just, it's like don't give access to people.

56:26SPEAKERWe know now social media is bad for a whole host of reasons

56:30SPEAKERbut the LLM stuff is profoundly damaging.

56:35SPEAKERThey literally made a horror movie about this

56:36SPEAKERlike three years ago.

56:38SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

56:39SPEAKER- Take a lesson.

56:40SPEAKER- There's three of them.

56:41SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

56:42SPEAKER- What you got?

56:44SPEAKER- Mine is not a new thing

56:46SPEAKERbut I am very frustrated that it's still around.

56:49SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

56:50SPEAKER- Which is, I fucking hate when you buy a product

56:53SPEAKERthat isn't cool.

56:55SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:56SPEAKER- And then you find out that they just cheaped out

56:57SPEAKERon manufacturing.

56:59SPEAKER- It's the worst.

56:59SPEAKER- And so it doesn't work right.

57:00SPEAKERBut specifically it's like if the product sucked conceptually

57:04SPEAKERlike in the design sense, whatever, it was bad anyway.

57:09SPEAKERWhat drives me crazy is when,

57:12SPEAKERI know I've invoked this many times

57:13SPEAKERbut for example, that DBX channel strip I've got

57:15SPEAKERlike that thing has a fantastic feature set.

57:17SPEAKERLike it's kind of everything that I need

57:19SPEAKERin a postprocessor behind my microphone.

57:22SPEAKERIt just doesn't work right.

57:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:25SPEAKER- And here's the more recent one

57:26SPEAKERthat is really bumming me out.

57:28SPEAKER- Oh no.

57:29SPEAKER- I've had to become familiar with the concept of chattering

57:31SPEAKERin the context of mechanical keyboards.

57:34SPEAKERAre you familiar with this?

57:36SPEAKER- No.

57:36SPEAKER- Have you heard about this?

57:37SPEAKER- No.

57:38SPEAKER- You've never heard, okay, well you've probably

57:39SPEAKERmaybe have got better mechanical keyboards than me.

57:42SPEAKER- I bought a really expensive,

57:43SPEAKERI own two really expensive mechanical keyboards.

57:46SPEAKER- So I have a Keyfron K5 Max and like I knew Keyfron

57:49SPEAKERwas kind of an entry level brand when I got in.

57:53SPEAKERI bought it a year ago, September.

57:54SPEAKERSo it was about 15 months of straight usage since I got it.

57:59SPEAKERI love the keyboard.

58:00SPEAKERLike it is everything I could want in a starter

58:02SPEAKERmechanical keyboard in terms of the wireless features

58:04SPEAKERand how it feels.

58:05SPEAKERAnd like, it's a QMK keyboard.

58:08SPEAKERI assume you've messed with that.

58:09SPEAKERLike the flashable firmware.

58:10SPEAKER- Oh yeah, my control drop is a QMK keyboard.

58:13SPEAKER- So you can customize all kinds of, right.

58:15SPEAKERYou can like flash all kinds of cool customizations

58:18SPEAKERto it in firmware.

58:20SPEAKERLike there's nothing I would change about it design wise.

58:23SPEAKERAnd I would have happily paid like another 50 bucks for it.

58:25SPEAKERIt was a hundred bucks or like 110 or something.

58:28SPEAKERLike I happily would have paid more for it.

58:30SPEAKEROh, sorry.

58:31SPEAKERI should have said what chattering is.

58:32SPEAKERChattering is when the keys start registering

58:35SPEAKERmultiple presses on one physical press or multiple.

58:37SPEAKER- So I had this happen with my mouse switches

58:39SPEAKERa few years ago when Logitech was using

58:41SPEAKERthose switches.

58:43SPEAKER- Okay, so that's what the mouse switch problem was.

58:45SPEAKEROkay.

58:46SPEAKER- It was either registering none or doubles.

58:48SPEAKERLike, and it would sometimes register singles,

58:51SPEAKERbut it was sporadic.

58:51SPEAKERIt was really frustrating.

58:52SPEAKER- Okay, I think I'd probably take doubles over none

58:55SPEAKERif I had to pick.

58:56SPEAKER- Well, for a person who plays a lot of first person shooters

58:59SPEAKERdoubles were real bad.

59:00SPEAKER- Depends on what you're doing for sure.

59:02SPEAKERBut I need to investigate it some more.

59:06SPEAKERI'm not quite sure where I'm at with it right now,

59:10SPEAKERbut everything I've read about this is like mostly seen

59:12SPEAKERpeople saying like, yeah, chattering is a way

59:14SPEAKERthat cheaper mechanical keyboards start to fail.

59:18SPEAKERAnd again, I love this keyboard.

59:20SPEAKERI bought a second cosmetic set, a different colored key set.

59:24SPEAKERAnd I was thinking about buying a third.

59:26SPEAKERLike, I really like this thing.

59:28SPEAKERAnd I don't know if it's like classic cold solder problem

59:33SPEAKERor what this is.

59:35SPEAKER- It could just be bad switches, you try switching switches.

59:37SPEAKER- So a little bit, yes.

59:38SPEAKERThat's why the $99 one of these has this kind of non user

59:43SPEAKERor non hot swappable switches, I should say,

59:45SPEAKERlike you have to solder.

59:46SPEAKERI paid the extra 10 or 20 bucks and got the one

59:48SPEAKERwith the hot swappable switches.

59:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:52SPEAKER- The thing is the switches I have swapped so far

59:54SPEAKERhave not always necessarily fixed the problem

59:56SPEAKERor maybe more to the point, there are so many keys

1:00:00SPEAKERon this keyboard that are randomly doing the double inputs,

1:00:03SPEAKERbut it's hard for me to believe that it's all the switches

1:00:05SPEAKERfailing at one time.

1:00:07SPEAKERAnd it makes me worry that it's more in the electronics

1:00:09SPEAKERof the board itself because like it just does not seem

1:00:12SPEAKERplausible to me that so many, I mean, it's been like

1:00:15SPEAKERtwo dozen different keys on this keyboard.

1:00:18SPEAKERIt's at one time or another in the last month

1:00:19SPEAKERhave been started doing double inputs and then stopped.

1:00:22SPEAKERLike they'll, it'll come and go.

1:00:25SPEAKERAnd it's just hard for me to believe it's,

1:00:27SPEAKERI should swap some more switches,

1:00:29SPEAKERbut I worry that it's an underlying problem with the board

1:00:31SPEAKERand not individual switches.

1:00:33SPEAKER- So I had, I bought cheap switches at one point

1:00:37SPEAKERto test something out and I had them all fail

1:00:40SPEAKERand they started, they failed on like a bell curve

1:00:43SPEAKERdistribution where like at first one or two got janky.

1:00:47SPEAKERI think this was, it actually wasn't a cheap,

1:00:49SPEAKERit wasn't a cheap keyboard.

1:00:50SPEAKERIt was an old Logitech G Pro that had,

1:00:54SPEAKERthat worked with Cherry MX switches.

1:00:56SPEAKERAnd I had bought a bunch of different types of switches

1:00:58SPEAKERfrom AliExpress to try them.

1:00:59SPEAKERSo they were almost certainly knockoffs of real switches.

1:01:04SPEAKERBut they literally started failing on a bell distribution

1:01:06SPEAKERwhere like first a couple were going to every once in a while

1:01:09SPEAKERand then a whole bunch failed at once.

1:01:11SPEAKERAnd then it kind of tapered off.

1:01:13SPEAKERAnd then pretty soon I realized I'd switched

1:01:15SPEAKERevery fricking switch on the keyboard.

1:01:18SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't know.

1:01:20SPEAKERIt could, it could, it may not be, it may not be disaster.

1:01:23SPEAKER- Okay, switches are not super, I mean, in fact,

1:01:25SPEAKERI have a huge amount of replacement switches that I bought.

1:01:28SPEAKERThese are Gaterons, which I think are decent.

1:01:31SPEAKERI think that's a decent switch brand.

1:01:32SPEAKERAnd I bought them straight from them

1:01:33SPEAKERso they can't be knockoffs or counterfeit, but.

1:01:36SPEAKER- Just, just make sure you keep the bad ones separate

1:01:39SPEAKERfrom the good ones.

1:01:40SPEAKER'Cause that's the, that's the real tragedy.

1:01:42SPEAKER- I've got a batch of used ones already.

1:01:43SPEAKERBut I mean, did you ever have them like go bad

1:01:46SPEAKERand then stop being bad?

1:01:47SPEAKER'Cause that's what's happening to me.

1:01:48SPEAKERLike they, it'll be, it'll be these six keys one day

1:01:51SPEAKERand then the next day it'll be a couple of arrow keys.

1:01:53SPEAKER- That seems like it's not switches.

1:01:55SPEAKER- That's exactly what I mean is that it comes and goes

1:01:56SPEAKERon different keys depending on the day.

1:02:00SPEAKER- On the mouse double clicks,

1:02:01SPEAKERonce it started getting worse, it just never got,

1:02:03SPEAKERit was not gonna get better.

1:02:05SPEAKER- Man, I love this keyboard.

1:02:07SPEAKERLike again, it's everything I could want in a keyboard.

1:02:10SPEAKERThat's such a bummer.

1:02:11SPEAKERAnd like, how is soldering the thing that doesn't seem

1:02:16SPEAKERto like. - Look, I don't know, man.

1:02:20SPEAKERI don't understand how you can make something

1:02:22SPEAKERthat's a soldered board professionally

1:02:24SPEAKERand have it be bad at being soldered.

1:02:26SPEAKERBut Sony and DBX and a bunch of other companies

1:02:29SPEAKERhave cold solder problems.

1:02:30SPEAKER- We both have the same ish Sony receiver

1:02:33SPEAKERthat had that problem on the screen.

1:02:34SPEAKERThat was the same thing.

1:02:35SPEAKERIt's just like, how many decades have we been manufacturing

1:02:38SPEAKERconsumer electronics?

1:02:40SPEAKER- I mean. - How is this still a problem?

1:02:42SPEAKER- I played Kaizen factory manager.

1:02:43SPEAKERI know how this works.

1:02:44SPEAKERYou have the little robots, they push the thing there.

1:02:46SPEAKERAnd then the solder happens,

1:02:47SPEAKERand then you push it to the next one.

1:02:48SPEAKER- I'd say 5 cents per unit.

1:02:50SPEAKER- Yep.

1:02:52SPEAKERShould we take, okay.

1:02:52SPEAKERSo we have a handful of community knobs

1:02:54SPEAKERthat people submitted.

1:02:55SPEAKERI think there's some real bangers in here.

1:02:57SPEAKERI wanna, since we're talking about keyboards,

1:02:59SPEAKERI wanna talk about Patches DIY keyboard

1:03:01SPEAKERthat he made over this year.

1:03:06SPEAKERPCB design and the whole thing manufactured.

1:03:09SPEAKER- Wow.

1:03:11SPEAKER- And they shouted out,

1:03:13SPEAKER"Hey, just the whole custom keyboard scene in general

1:03:16SPEAKERon top of the ability to get low volume PCBs

1:03:19SPEAKERmanufactured now.

1:03:20SPEAKERIt's not necessarily new,

1:03:22SPEAKERbut it feels like it took off in a big way this year."

1:03:23SPEAKERAnd I think that's really rad.

1:03:27SPEAKERWe've come a long way.

1:03:29SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely.

1:03:31SPEAKER- A ton of people talked about Bizite,

1:03:33SPEAKERthe immutable kind of,

1:03:36SPEAKERit's not really a fork of Steam OS,

1:03:37SPEAKERbut it's like Steam OS for non-Steam, non-handheld consoles

1:03:41SPEAKERand for other non-Steam deck handhelds.

1:03:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it's Fedora underneath,

1:03:45SPEAKERif I'm not mistaken.

1:03:46SPEAKER- It's Fedora Blue, yeah.

1:03:47SPEAKER- But it's got all the aiming stuff you need in it,

1:03:50SPEAKERkind of just built in.

1:03:51SPEAKERSo you basically can just kind of install it

1:03:52SPEAKERand start playing games.

1:03:53SPEAKER- And importantly, it'll do, for handhelds,

1:03:57SPEAKERit comes with pre-configured mappings for controllers

1:04:02SPEAKERfor like the ASUS ROG Ally, stuff like that.

1:04:06SPEAKERAnd it will let you boot directly

1:04:07SPEAKERinto the 10 foot interface

1:04:08SPEAKERif you wanna set it up as like a console

1:04:09SPEAKERfor your living room.

1:04:12SPEAKER- A lot of people talked about self-hosting stuff,

1:04:14SPEAKERmoving out of commercial cloud

1:04:15SPEAKERand moving to self-hosting using NASAs and Tailscale

1:04:17SPEAKERso you can have secure, safe access everywhere,

1:04:20SPEAKERwhich I think is rad.

1:04:21SPEAKER- I think that was the most common one in there

1:04:23SPEAKERis people moving to self-hosted music collections

1:04:26SPEAKERor Google Photos replacements

1:04:28SPEAKERor setting up their own mass, mass, mass.

1:04:31SPEAKERThat B-Link Mi Mini seems to be pretty popular

1:04:34SPEAKERin the Discord.

1:04:35SPEAKER- Yeah, people like the B-Link Mi Mini,

1:04:38SPEAKERI think C-Music shouted out the M4 Mac mini as well,

1:04:44SPEAKERwhich is a good call out

1:04:45SPEAKER'cause for like the $600 or whatever that thing costs,

1:04:47SPEAKERit's pretty incredible.

1:04:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that Mi Mini is rad.

1:04:51SPEAKERHave you seen it?

1:04:52SPEAKER- No.

1:04:53SPEAKER- It's kind of almost old school Mac trashcan style.

1:04:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it looks very friendly.

1:04:59SPEAKER- Yeah, it's kind of got a nice little

1:05:01SPEAKERembedded Apple-ish look to it.

1:05:03SPEAKERIt's got six NVMe slots in it.

1:05:05SPEAKER- Oh, it's that thing.

1:05:06SPEAKERYeah, I have seen this.

1:05:07SPEAKER- It's basically an N150.

1:05:08SPEAKERIt's like the Alder Lake N,

1:05:10SPEAKERlike kind of the little embedded x86 router box type things.

1:05:14SPEAKER- I need to get this in to test for PC World.

1:05:16SPEAKER- You guys should do it.

1:05:18SPEAKERThere is one caveat,

1:05:19SPEAKERand I don't know how many people in Discord

1:05:20SPEAKERhave run into this.

1:05:21SPEAKERApparently, depending on how power hungry the SSDs are

1:05:24SPEAKERthat you use with it,

1:05:24SPEAKERit maybe has issues supplying enough voltage to all of them.

1:05:29SPEAKERSo that might be something

1:05:29SPEAKERthat would be worth you guys testing, but-

1:05:32SPEAKER- Well, it also only has 16 gigs of memory max, I think,

1:05:36SPEAKERand it's soldered, which stinks.

1:05:38SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is a low impact,

1:05:40SPEAKERbut it's like perfect for a tiny little thing

1:05:43SPEAKERthat sits on a shelf that makes no noise

1:05:44SPEAKERbecause there's no spinning drives.

1:05:47SPEAKER- Is it an, yeah, it's an N150.

1:05:48SPEAKERSo that was the other thing,

1:05:49SPEAKERis people shouted out the N series Intel processors

1:05:52SPEAKERhave been really good for like low power consumption,

1:05:56SPEAKERhigh power home lab.

1:05:58SPEAKERSo if you live someplace where electricity is expensive

1:06:00SPEAKERand you don't want to run

1:06:01SPEAKERlike a hundred watt machine all the time,

1:06:03SPEAKERthese things are dope and idle at like five to 15 watts.

1:06:06SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and you know,

1:06:08SPEAKERlike it's just the idea of the all SSD NAS

1:06:10SPEAKERis actually becoming a thing,

1:06:11SPEAKERwhich is something I've always been interested in

1:06:13SPEAKERbecause it's-

1:06:14SPEAKER- We're getting there.

1:06:14SPEAKER- I see people occasionally say like,

1:06:16SPEAKERwhat do you need with six NVME drives in a NAS

1:06:18SPEAKERwhen it's going over like a one gigabit network connection?

1:06:21SPEAKERAnd it's not about the speed,

1:06:22SPEAKERit's about the quiet and the cool.

1:06:24SPEAKER- Yeah, and no moving parts.

1:06:26SPEAKER- Maybe not, yes, maybe not, maybe not cool,

1:06:27SPEAKERbut like it's the size and yes,

1:06:29SPEAKERit's size and noise and stuff like that.

1:06:30SPEAKERIt's no moving parts, it's tiny,

1:06:32SPEAKERsits on a little shelf as opposed to a giant case

1:06:35SPEAKERwith a bunch of hard drives in it.

1:06:37SPEAKERI will say real quick on the back of the N150 stuff,

1:06:39SPEAKERI've said it before,

1:06:41SPEAKERvery excited about the Wildcat Lake stuff next year,

1:06:44SPEAKERwhich all the rumors are that that is the successor

1:06:47SPEAKERto the Alder Lake end chips based on manufacturer on 18A.

1:06:51SPEAKERI think we talked about that with Adam a little bit.

1:06:53SPEAKER- I asked about it when we were at the Intel thing,

1:06:55SPEAKERno, they wouldn't talk about it, honestly.

1:06:56SPEAKER- I think it's only been basically leaks

1:06:58SPEAKERand presentation slides that have come out about it so far,

1:07:00SPEAKERbut as a successor to those little N100 boxes,

1:07:05SPEAKERit sounds like an absolute beast

1:07:07SPEAKERand I hope to make one my router one day.

1:07:09SPEAKER- As somebody who's using one of those N100 boxes

1:07:12SPEAKERas my main server,

1:07:14SPEAKERI'm like A, that thing's getting a little long in the tooth

1:07:19SPEAKERand I would very much like to have,

1:07:21SPEAKERI'd like to wait till I'm waiting until that hits to replace.

1:07:25SPEAKER- Now, if only there are consumer SODIMMs available for sale

1:07:28SPEAKERby the time that thing goes out to even put in one.

1:07:31SPEAKER- Don't even joke.

1:07:32SPEAKER- I had an even worse thought.

1:07:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:35SPEAKER- Because like I said, Wildcat Lake is by all accounts

1:07:37SPEAKERfabbed on 18A, Nova Lake, Intel's next desktop partner

1:07:40SPEAKERis going to be 18A.

1:07:42SPEAKERWhat if 18A is so good or at least good enough

1:07:46SPEAKERthat all of Intel's new fab capacity on 18 and 14A

1:07:51SPEAKERgets consumed by Nvidia and data center stuff,

1:07:54SPEAKERjust like all the RAM storage.

1:07:56SPEAKERWhat if it's so lucrative for them to fab GPUs

1:07:59SPEAKERfor AI data centers that the fabrication also starts

1:08:04SPEAKERgoing the way of the memory?

1:08:05SPEAKERI shouldn't even say this out loud.

1:08:06SPEAKER- Don't say it out loud.

1:08:07SPEAKERLook what you've done.

1:08:08SPEAKERYou did this, this is your fault, man.

1:08:11SPEAKERRatman shouted out tiling window managers,

1:08:13SPEAKERwhich I fricking love tiling window managers.

1:08:16SPEAKERI don't know that I can go back now.

1:08:19SPEAKERAnd Pete and a bunch of other people talked about

1:08:21SPEAKERthe AYN Thor, which is that dual screen software emulator

1:08:26SPEAKERbox DS 3DS.

1:08:28SPEAKER- Yes, I mean, that's in the tradition of the Ambernix

1:08:31SPEAKERand those other small Chinese manufacturers

1:08:34SPEAKERthat make handhelds that basically are,

1:08:36SPEAKERhey, this is a DS or hey, this is a PSP.

1:08:38SPEAKERLike they're not ashamed of just ripping off

1:08:42SPEAKERclassic handheld designs wholesale.

1:08:44SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not hidden, really.

1:08:45SPEAKER- But those things are very cool.

1:08:48SPEAKERThere's a lot of cool stuff out there.

1:08:49SPEAKER- It's good stuff, man.

1:08:50SPEAKERIt's been a good, look, it's like they always say

1:08:54SPEAKERthat you take the good, you take the bad.

1:08:57SPEAKERYou take it all and then you get sad, is that right?

1:08:59SPEAKERNo, I don't remember the rest of the song,

1:09:01SPEAKERbut it's been a good, it's been an okay year.

1:09:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot going on.

1:09:07SPEAKERLet's, you know, we promise not to get into it.

1:09:09SPEAKERNobody needs to hear it all relitigated again,

1:09:12SPEAKERbut hopefully there's some stuff you can find

1:09:14SPEAKERto bring you some comfort to, you know.

1:09:18SPEAKER- And like, it's nice 'cause it's not just all stuff to buy.

1:09:21SPEAKERLinux is free.

1:09:22SPEAKERYou can just do Linux.

1:09:24SPEAKERLike it's been so fun learning a new OS at this level.

1:09:28SPEAKERI haven't, I didn't expect my brain

1:09:30SPEAKERto get these feelings again.

1:09:31SPEAKERAnd it's like when I first saw Windows 95

1:09:33SPEAKERor Windows NT 20 years ago, and I'm 30 years ago,

1:09:35SPEAKERand I'm kind of getting back in there again.

1:09:37SPEAKERSo it's been a lot of fun.

1:09:39SPEAKER- There's a, I don't know if this is a good time

1:09:40SPEAKERto bring this up.

1:09:41SPEAKERThere's a principle that I've had

1:09:42SPEAKERand have formed in my mind for a number of years now.

1:09:45SPEAKERI don't have a good name for it necessarily,

1:09:46SPEAKERbut do you ever feel like there's like

1:09:49SPEAKERtoo much compute around?

1:09:51SPEAKEROr do you ever wish there was less compute?

1:09:54SPEAKERDo you ever wish you had to make do with less?

1:09:56SPEAKER- I've never in my life wished I had less compute.

1:09:58SPEAKERNot one time.

1:09:59SPEAKER- Practically I agree with you,

1:10:01SPEAKERbut there's a certain part of me.

1:10:02SPEAKEROkay, maybe this is the Linux on PlayStation principle.

1:10:08SPEAKER- Okay.

1:10:09SPEAKER- Like when the PS2 and the PS3 could install Linux,

1:10:11SPEAKERyou know, and you could straight up use them as a computer.

1:10:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:10:14SPEAKERNorth Korea made nuclear bombs for them, I remember.

1:10:16SPEAKER- Right, yes.

1:10:17SPEAKERThe missile guidance, the whole thing.

1:10:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:10:20SPEAKER- Sometimes I wish I had to do that.

1:10:23SPEAKER- Oh, what the William Gibson version of the future?

1:10:26SPEAKER- The what is it?

1:10:26SPEAKER- The dystopian dumpster diving cyberpunk future.

1:10:29SPEAKER- The Henry Rollins, Johnny Mnemonic future.

1:10:31SPEAKERDo you have to scrounge old video game consoles

1:10:34SPEAKERout of, yes, out of a dump too,

1:10:35SPEAKERbecause there's no more computing to go around.

1:10:37SPEAKERHey, don't worry, we're getting there.

1:10:38SPEAKERBut like, it's a kind of a,

1:10:42SPEAKERinstead of doing something like that because it's fun

1:10:44SPEAKERand then forgetting about it as soon as you're done,

1:10:45SPEAKERbecause you go back to your real computer,

1:10:47SPEAKERlike sometimes I wish like we had to do with,

1:10:49SPEAKERmake do with less because it would present

1:10:51SPEAKERa lot more interesting projects and problems to solve.

1:10:54SPEAKER- I feel like I moved here maybe five years too late

1:10:57SPEAKERto go to like the HP campus and dumpster dive.

1:11:00SPEAKER- Right.

1:11:01SPEAKER- Like that was, I feel like that was very much a thing

1:11:04SPEAKERright in the like run up to the beginning of Boot Magazine

1:11:08SPEAKERin '96, like those guys were going out and doing that some.

1:11:11SPEAKER- Right.

1:11:12SPEAKER- And by the time I got here,

1:11:13SPEAKERthey started padlocking all of their fucking dumpsters.

1:11:16SPEAKER'Cause you know, you don't want the riffraff

1:11:19SPEAKERto get the good leftover CRTs, I guess.

1:11:21SPEAKERI don't know.

1:11:22SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

1:11:23SPEAKEROr, you know, another version of this I've mentioned before,

1:11:25SPEAKERlike, I'm kind of sad that I missed the true multi-user

1:11:28SPEAKERtimesharing era of computing, like the-

1:11:31SPEAKER- Oh, I don't miss that at all, that was awful.

1:11:33SPEAKER- I probably would have hated it if I'd ever touched it,

1:11:35SPEAKERbut like- - It stunk.

1:11:36SPEAKER- You know, on mainframes and many computers where,

1:11:38SPEAKERyou know, there was only so much computing go around,

1:11:40SPEAKERso you had to run multiple users on the same machine.

1:11:42SPEAKERLike, yes, that's very limiting,

1:11:44SPEAKERbut it also sounds like a really fun,

1:11:45SPEAKERinteresting problem to tackle to like-

1:11:47SPEAKER- Nope, it just sucked.

1:11:49SPEAKER- I'm sorry.

1:11:49SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, sure.

1:11:50SPEAKER- This is good nostalgia and bad nostalgia.

1:11:54SPEAKERWhat I will say is,

1:11:56SPEAKERI don't mean to take this away from you, Brad.

1:11:57SPEAKERI'm sorry, I shouldn't be so negative.

1:11:58SPEAKER- No, it's fine, it's fine.

1:11:59SPEAKERI mean, yes, I, you know,

1:12:01SPEAKERif I was actually dealing with that day to day,

1:12:02SPEAKERI would probably hate it.

1:12:04SPEAKER- There's an idea in the Neal Stephenson book, "Seveneves,"

1:12:08SPEAKERthe one about the end of the world with the moon exploding.

1:12:11SPEAKERThat's not a spoiler.

1:12:12SPEAKERIt's literally the first sentence of the book.

1:12:14SPEAKERBut they get to a point where he's like,

1:12:17SPEAKERhe's talking about IC design, integrated circuit design,

1:12:21SPEAKERand literally says,

1:12:25SPEAKERthe peak of this was this period of time,

1:12:27SPEAKERbecause after that, the electromagnetic,

1:12:30SPEAKERlike you had to have such a perfect confluence of events

1:12:33SPEAKERin order to build four nanometer circuits

1:12:37SPEAKERthat they're not robust outside of

1:12:41SPEAKERthis very specific point in time and yada yada.

1:12:43SPEAKERAnd I think about that a lot.

1:12:45SPEAKERI think about like, have we built technology that's like,

1:12:50SPEAKERthe technology stack has become more and more brittle

1:12:52SPEAKERas we've added more complexity to it.

1:12:54SPEAKERAnd I look at things like the dual multi chip packages,

1:13:04SPEAKERa system of chips package designs and things like that.

1:13:07SPEAKERAnd look at all the complexity that goes into something

1:13:10SPEAKERthat used to be simple, like where do threads run?

1:13:13SPEAKERAnd I wonder if we're over complicating things

1:13:15SPEAKERto the point that it's all gonna collapse at some point.

1:13:18SPEAKERI don't think it will.

1:13:19SPEAKER- No, probably not.

1:13:20SPEAKER- But it is getting increasingly complicated

1:13:24SPEAKERin a way that is challenging.

1:13:26SPEAKERIt's one of the things I like about Linux

1:13:27SPEAKERis 'cause it buries you back down

1:13:30SPEAKERto the kind of bare bones version of things.

1:13:32SPEAKERAnyway.

1:13:33SPEAKER- What if that guy who's serving his homepage on a Wii?

1:13:37SPEAKER- Is he still doing that?

1:13:38SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I think so.

1:13:40SPEAKER- It's amazing.

1:13:40SPEAKER- I think I've got it bookmarked somewhere.

1:13:41SPEAKERWhat if, I love loading a webpage

1:13:44SPEAKERthat I know is being served off of some guy's hack Wii,

1:13:46SPEAKERbut what if he was doing that not just because it's cool

1:13:49SPEAKERto serve your homepage from a Wii,

1:13:51SPEAKERbut because a Wii was all he had to serve a homepage with?

1:13:54SPEAKER- This is like, look, I think about the mesh network poke

1:13:57SPEAKERand look, this is the future we deserve, right?

1:14:04SPEAKERAnyway, I think that's as good a place as any to wrap it up.

1:14:07SPEAKER- Yeah, happy 2025.

1:14:08SPEAKER- Happy 2025, maybe 2026 will be better in every way,

1:14:11SPEAKERif possible.

1:14:12SPEAKER- One can hope.

1:14:15SPEAKER- And that'll do it for us this week.

1:14:16SPEAKERThanks everybody for listening.

1:14:18SPEAKERAs always, if you would like to talk about this,

1:14:20SPEAKERyou can get in the Discord.

1:14:21SPEAKERYou can go to patreon.com/checkpot

1:14:24SPEAKERand sign up for five bucks a month

1:14:25SPEAKERto get access to the Discord,

1:14:27SPEAKERwhere you can let us know what you thought

1:14:28SPEAKERabout this list of things that we listed here.

1:14:31SPEAKERYou can give us your own suggestions

1:14:33SPEAKERfor things that you think are dope.

1:14:34SPEAKERMight do a follow-up in the Patreon episode.

1:14:37SPEAKERAnd yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

1:14:40SPEAKERYou can go to, again, it's patreon.com/checkpot.

1:14:43SPEAKERAnd we want to thank all of our patrons,

1:14:45SPEAKERbut a very special thank you to our executive producer,

1:14:48SPEAKERto your patrons, including Jason Lee.

1:14:50SPEAKERNexlander.net, it's .com.

1:14:53SPEAKERI don't know what that's all about.

1:14:55SPEAKER- I'm not sure.

1:14:56SPEAKERDoes somebody else own the .net?

1:14:57SPEAKERI don't know.

1:14:58SPEAKEROh, the site does not support a secure connection.

1:15:01SPEAKERClosing the tab.

1:15:02SPEAKER- Uh-oh, uh-oh.

1:15:04SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett, Bunny Jerk,

1:15:06SPEAKERDavid Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon, makers

1:15:10SPEAKERof the HS3 iSpeed 3D printer.

1:15:12SPEAKERAnd I think I got Jason Lee at the beginning,

1:15:14SPEAKERbut maybe I didn't.

1:15:15SPEAKERSo thanks to Jason Lee as well.

1:15:16SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.

1:15:17SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you.

1:15:19SPEAKER- We sure do.

1:15:20SPEAKER- Please, if you can't support the show financially,

1:15:23SPEAKER'cause times are tough, we get it.