32: Bless the Drive

00:00SPEAKER- Have you ever seen thiscatdoesnotexist.com?

00:02SPEAKER- As of, courtesy of some people we know,

00:05SPEAKERas of a few minutes ago, unfortunately I have.

00:08SPEAKER- So if you type that URL into your browser,

00:11SPEAKERit's gonna give you a picture of a cat.

00:13SPEAKER- And thiscatdoesnotexist.com, that's the address.

00:16SPEAKER- Thiscatdoesnotexist.com, yes.

00:19SPEAKERAnd when you type it in, it gives you a picture of a cat.

00:21SPEAKERAnd the cat looks pretty normal for a bit.

00:24SPEAKER- Yes.

00:25SPEAKER- And then, all of a sudden, whammo, nightmare fuel.

00:30SPEAKER- Is that what it takes?

00:31SPEAKERYou just have to keep going and going?

00:32SPEAKER- Yeah, you have to keep refreshing.

00:33SPEAKER'Cause what it's doing is it's machine generating pictures

00:35SPEAKERof cats based on millions of cats from the internet.

00:38SPEAKERAnd then you get beautiful things like this.

00:39SPEAKERAnd I think, I don't know if these are cached,

00:41SPEAKERbut maybe each of these is a one-off.

00:44SPEAKER- Why would you show me that?

00:45SPEAKER- Look, that cat got splinched, man.

00:47SPEAKERIt had a teleporter accident, it's fine.

00:50SPEAKER- Have you ever seen those infamous screenshots

00:52SPEAKERfrom, I forget, it was like one of those PS4 baseball games,

00:54SPEAKERlike MLB The Show or something,

00:56SPEAKERwhere like a couple of the players' faces glitched out

00:58SPEAKERin like the most just god-awful body horror style

01:01SPEAKERthat you've ever seen?

01:02SPEAKER- Do you not remember when we took,

01:05SPEAKERChloe was in the office one day

01:07SPEAKERwhen EA released some game face game,

01:09SPEAKERand we used her as the game face model?

01:11SPEAKER- Oh god, oh, nightmares.

01:13SPEAKERSo somebody, before I saw this cat does not exist,

01:17SPEAKERI saw this persondoesnotexist.com.

01:19SPEAKER- I find that one much worse.

01:20SPEAKER- And, but yeah, so before I knew what the concept was,

01:23SPEAKERI just assumed it was a bunch of pictures of dead people.

01:25SPEAKER(laughing)

01:27SPEAKERAnd between people who are actually deceased

01:30SPEAKERand non-people who are generated by machine,

01:32SPEAKERI really am not sure which one is more morbid.

01:35SPEAKER(upbeat music)

01:53SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

02:13SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

02:15SPEAKERI'm Will.

02:15SPEAKER- I'm Brad, and I think that I actually

02:17SPEAKERam starting to feel kind of comfortable

02:19SPEAKERwith this setup we have going.

02:20SPEAKER- Hey, welcome to the show, Brad.

02:21SPEAKERWe're really excited to have you here this week.

02:23SPEAKER- Oh, thanks, it's good to have you.

02:25SPEAKERThanks for having me as a guest on this podcast.

02:28SPEAKER(laughing)

02:30SPEAKERNo, I think I'm starting to actually kind of get a feel

02:32SPEAKERfor this remote thing that we're doing.

02:35SPEAKER- I mean, there's something about doing it

02:37SPEAKERfor eight hours a day, seven days a week

02:39SPEAKERthat probably is gonna boost your skill level, I would think.

02:42SPEAKER- You know what I've learned in a lot of ways

02:44SPEAKERin the last few weeks is that people can get used

02:46SPEAKERto just about anything.

02:47SPEAKER- There you go, there you go.

02:49SPEAKER- And including emails through the video conference.

02:52SPEAKER- It is, it is our favorite episode of the month.

02:54SPEAKERIt is email time.

02:56SPEAKERThis is the last episode of April.

02:57SPEAKERCan you believe it's already the last episode of April?

02:59SPEAKER- I, time has lied.

03:00SPEAKERIt's like it's becoming quickly a cliche right now.

03:03SPEAKERThe time has absolutely lost all meaning for me, so sure.

03:10SPEAKER- I went to get, I went to look up a Douglas Adams quote

03:13SPEAKERfrom a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy short story

03:14SPEAKERfor a snarky tweet the other day.

03:20SPEAKERAnd as a result, I'm now rereading Hitchhiker's Guide

03:22SPEAKERto the Galaxy for the first time in about 20 years, 15 years.

03:26SPEAKERAnd he says, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."

03:30SPEAKERIt's very true.

03:31SPEAKER- I could see that for sure.

03:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

03:34SPEAKERYou wanna jump right into it and get some,

03:36SPEAKERturn some cues into A's?

03:38SPEAKER- Yes, I started to bring up how we've been doing

03:40SPEAKERsome intermittent fasting around here.

03:41SPEAKERMaybe we should get into like the science of digestive.

03:45SPEAKER- You're dangerously near tech bro nonsense here, Brad.

03:48SPEAKERYou gotta be careful. - Metabolic, metabolic types.

03:50SPEAKERHey, it's cutting down on my caloric intake,

03:51SPEAKERif nothing else.

03:52SPEAKER- Look, back when I was a boy,

03:55SPEAKERwe used to call intermittent fasting skipping breakfast.

03:58SPEAKER- Yeah, that's basically exactly what it is.

04:01SPEAKERHey, it turns out if you only eat lunch and dinner,

04:05SPEAKERyou're fasting.

04:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I like to think of it as slowing.

04:09SPEAKER- That's basically how it's going around here.

04:10SPEAKERAll right, where did these emails come into again?

04:15SPEAKER- We have an email address at techpod@content.town.

04:19SPEAKERAgain, that's techpod@content.town.

04:24SPEAKER- All right, that's where these emails came into.

04:27SPEAKERFirst email, Sean from Vegas.

04:30SPEAKERCan you guys talk about the evolution of mice,

04:32SPEAKERPS2 to USB, ball sensors to laser sensors?

04:36SPEAKERWhat makes a modern mouse sensor good

04:38SPEAKERand why is it unnecessary or necessary

04:40SPEAKERto have 16,000 DPI sensors?

04:43SPEAKERMaybe talk about how that stuff translates

04:45SPEAKERacross different resolutions and screen sizes.

04:48SPEAKERThe Logitech Lightspeed Tech and how it is actually viable

04:51SPEAKERusing wireless mice in games now.

04:55SPEAKER- There's a lot here.

04:57SPEAKERThe mouse was invented by Xerox PARC in the late '60s.

05:02SPEAKER- Was it really that long ago?

05:03SPEAKER- It's '60s or '70s, the mouse is old.

05:08SPEAKER- Remember, Jobs went to PARC and saw the GUI

05:12SPEAKERrunning at PARC when he ripped it off for the Apple II,

05:15SPEAKERor sorry, the Mac.

05:17SPEAKER- I've seen Pirates of Silicon Valley.

05:19SPEAKER- Yes.

05:21SPEAKER- But, yes.

05:22SPEAKER- I was just saying, for all intents and purposes,

05:24SPEAKERpeople started using mice for personal computers

05:28SPEAKERreally in mass when Windows 3.1 came out.

05:31SPEAKER- Sure.

05:32SPEAKER- Before that, you didn't really need a mouse for DOS.

05:35SPEAKERIt didn't work in a lot of programs,

05:39SPEAKERand you would've needed an actual driver

05:42SPEAKERto be loaded at runtime, probably specific to your app

05:45SPEAKERbefore Windows made the mouse a universal tool.

05:48SPEAKER- Wow, application-specific mouse drivers, holy shit.

05:52SPEAKER- I mean, it may not have been

05:54SPEAKERthat it was an application-specific mouse driver,

05:56SPEAKERbut it might have been that you bought a mouse

05:58SPEAKERfrom a vendor who your software

06:01SPEAKERdidn't support their vendor's driver.

06:04SPEAKER- Yeah, so thinking back on stuff like that

06:06SPEAKERreally makes it very apparent

06:08SPEAKERhow much is taken for granted now,

06:10SPEAKERand how many things are happening under the hood

06:11SPEAKERthat you don't think about.

06:12SPEAKER- Yeah, each generation just virtualized

06:15SPEAKERmore and more stuff, right?

06:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I think things that it's tempting

06:19SPEAKERto assume just work don't just work.

06:21SPEAKERThere is something going on under there

06:22SPEAKERcontrolling absolutely everything.

06:24SPEAKER- Oh, if there's one truth in computing,

06:25SPEAKERit's that literally nothing just works.

06:28SPEAKER- Yes.

06:30SPEAKERHow many ball mice did you go through?

06:32SPEAKERI think we maybe just had the one in my family

06:35SPEAKER'cause I came to computers late enough

06:37SPEAKERthat I might have had a couple,

06:40SPEAKERbut I was on to a laser mouse

06:42SPEAKERor an optical mouse pretty quick.

06:44SPEAKER- So I had a Wang mouse that came with my Wang 386.

06:50SPEAKER- Wang.

06:51SPEAKER- Back then you would get a keyboard and mouse

06:53SPEAKERwith your computer, which was nice.

06:54SPEAKERYou'd go to Walmart and pick up the whole thing.

06:58SPEAKERI had a bunch of ball, I had ball mice

07:00SPEAKERuntil probably the Intellimouse Explorer 2 or 3,

07:06SPEAKERwhich is the first optical mouse I bought.

07:09SPEAKER- Wasn't that just about everybody's first optical mouse?

07:12SPEAKER- It was the first really good one, yeah.

07:16SPEAKERSo I had track balls, which are basically just a mouse

07:18SPEAKERthat's upside down and the ball is poking out more.

07:20SPEAKER- Sure, what do you like about a track ball?

07:23SPEAKERI've never seen the appeal.

07:25SPEAKER- It's good on your wrist, so if you have wrist problems,

07:28SPEAKERthe track ball keeps your hand up off the table

07:30SPEAKERand you can't use the track ball in a way

07:32SPEAKERthat's gonna damage yourself as easily.

07:34SPEAKER- That's fair.

07:35SPEAKER- It's bad.

07:36SPEAKERAlso, I read a Blues News post in probably 1996 or 1997

07:39SPEAKERwhere Jason Bergman, who's now at Bethesda, I think,

07:44SPEAKERtold how he, Looney Boy, he posted his one-handed

07:49SPEAKERquake technique, which was basic.

07:51SPEAKERDo you remember this?

07:52SPEAKER- No.

07:53SPEAKER- I think he bound the right mouse button to walk forward

07:56SPEAKERand he would play on a track ball.

07:57SPEAKER- Oh, I did the same thing.

07:58SPEAKERI was totally a right mouse to walk guy

08:00SPEAKERfor a very long time, probably a long time.

08:04SPEAKER- No, nobody invented ADS back then,

08:05SPEAKERso you didn't need the right mouse button for anything.

08:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

08:09SPEAKER- But anyway, yeah, the track ball's for a long time.

08:14SPEAKEROnce I switched over to adjustable DPI mice,

08:19SPEAKERit changed everything.

08:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

08:21SPEAKER- Like, that was a big deal.

08:22SPEAKER- You mean on mouse adjustment?

08:24SPEAKER- Yeah, so mice are complicated

08:29SPEAKERand why they're complicated depends

08:31SPEAKERon which operating system you use,

08:32SPEAKERbut assuming you're using Windows 10,

08:34SPEAKERbasically you should always leave your mouse sensitivity

08:37SPEAKERin the OS at whatever the stock setting is,

08:40SPEAKERturn off acceleration, and then do everything else

08:42SPEAKERon the mouse with the application that comes

08:44SPEAKERwith your fancy gaming mouse.

08:46SPEAKERIf it's a logic mouse, it's G hub.

08:48SPEAKERIf it's a Razer mouse, it's a Razer Synergy mouse.

08:54SPEAKERNo, that's not it, it's on my laptop, I'd have to look.

08:58SPEAKERBut the tool that Razer provides.

09:00SPEAKER- Does that have to do with sampling rates

09:02SPEAKERand making sure that things are,

09:04SPEAKERlike I'm assuming if you do that in Windows,

09:05SPEAKERit's potentially busting down some sampling rate

09:07SPEAKERor something that you don't want to be too low?

09:09SPEAKER- Well, so in Windows, it's just doing it,

09:11SPEAKERit's just slowing down the movement of the cursor,

09:13SPEAKERand if you do it in the tool, it's changing the rate,

09:17SPEAKERit's changing the sensitivity of the sensor.

09:19SPEAKER- Right.

09:20SPEAKER- So there's two numbers with the sensor that matter.

09:23SPEAKEROne is the DPI, which is basically

09:26SPEAKERthe measurements per inch that it registers, right?

09:29SPEAKER- The resolution, essentially.

09:31SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the resolution of the sensor.

09:33SPEAKERThe other is the polling rate, which is the refresh,

09:36SPEAKERhow often it sends updates to the system.

09:39SPEAKERSome computers with bad USB systems

09:42SPEAKERare not gonna like the higher polling rates for a mouse,

09:44SPEAKERlike the 1,000 hertz polling rates.

09:46SPEAKERSo if you have weird behavior, sporadic jumpiness,

09:48SPEAKERyou wanna turn that down to 500,

09:50SPEAKERbut generally, they're higher is better.

09:52SPEAKERWith the DPI, you wanna set that,

09:56SPEAKERbasically what you wanna do is turn your in-game sensitivity

09:59SPEAKERway, way down, and turn the DPI way, way up,

10:02SPEAKERso you're getting more data for each inch of travel

10:04SPEAKERon the mouse, which means that you don't,

10:08SPEAKERlike I don't know if you've ever played

10:08SPEAKERa first-person shooter or something,

10:10SPEAKERyou zoom in with a big scope,

10:11SPEAKERand you move the mouse a couple inches,

10:13SPEAKERand it kinda chunks over, like there's like stair steps.

10:16SPEAKER- Yep.

10:17SPEAKER- That's because your DPI is too low for the amount

10:19SPEAKERthat you're moving the mouse in-game,

10:22SPEAKER'cause often an in-game zoom will just be an FOV change,

10:27SPEAKERand then they pull the sensitivity on the mouse way back,

10:29SPEAKERso you're not flailing around like crazy

10:31SPEAKERwhile you're looking down the tube of a big telescope.

10:34SPEAKER- Right.

10:37SPEAKERLet's see, what else do we have in here?

10:39SPEAKER- A light speed.

10:40SPEAKER- Yes.

10:41SPEAKER- Which is just--

10:42SPEAKER- I think we've talked about it a little bit,

10:43SPEAKERa few months ago.

10:44SPEAKERNothing 'cause you messed around with it, right?

10:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I've been using it, I have a,

10:48SPEAKERmy mouse that I use now is a Logitech G Pro that,

10:50SPEAKERI don't have to hold it up for the camera,

10:53SPEAKERthat Logitech sent me a few months ago,

10:54SPEAKERand the light speed thing is just a proprietary

10:58SPEAKERwireless standard that,

11:01SPEAKERit's a proprietary wireless technology from Logitech.

11:03SPEAKERIt is not a standard that lets them get higher polling rates

11:07SPEAKERat the expense of much higher battery use.

11:09SPEAKERSo, you know, a normal wireless mouse that uses Bluetooth

11:12SPEAKERis designed to make the battery last

11:14SPEAKERas long as humanly possible.

11:16SPEAKERThe light speed stuff basically just says,

11:17SPEAKERhey, we don't care about battery,

11:18SPEAKERwe're gonna plug this thing in at the end of every day.

11:21SPEAKERWe're gonna have a couple of two, three days

11:22SPEAKERworth of battery life,

11:23SPEAKERbut we're not gonna have six month battery life

11:25SPEAKERlike you would get on a productivity wireless mouse.

11:27SPEAKER- Right, right.

11:28SPEAKERAnd then you as a professional prize pot winning

11:32SPEAKERPUBG player are happy with the wireless?

11:36SPEAKER- Okay.

11:37SPEAKER- It is, I can't tell the difference

11:38SPEAKERbetween the wired and wireless.

11:39SPEAKERAnd actually, not having the wire is nice

11:42SPEAKER'cause you have a little bit less drag on the mouse.

11:44SPEAKERSo there's, you know, it's the same amount of muscle

11:47SPEAKERto move it an inch when it's all the way

11:49SPEAKERon the right side of the pad

11:50SPEAKERor all the way on the left side of the pad.

11:52SPEAKERWhereas even with like a nice mouse bungee

11:54SPEAKERwith the mouse cord, even with a light mouse cord,

11:57SPEAKERyou still have a little bit more drag than that.

11:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see the appeal there.

12:00SPEAKERSo one other topic he brought up, he mentioned PS2 ports.

12:02SPEAKERI think we talked about this a few months ago at some point,

12:05SPEAKERbut hey, why do we still have,

12:07SPEAKERremind me why we still have PS2 ports

12:08SPEAKERon a lot of motherboards

12:09SPEAKERand when are those finally going away?

12:13SPEAKER- I think my motherboard doesn't have a PS2 port.

12:15SPEAKER- Really?

12:16SPEAKERI'm just gonna stand up right now and check.

12:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I'll be right back.

12:26SPEAKER- All right, I'm back.

12:27SPEAKERI don't even know if you can hear me right now,

12:28SPEAKERbut I have a PS2 port, singular.

12:33SPEAKERWill is crawling around, I'm just gonna narrate.

12:36SPEAKERIt looks like he's been spelunking.

12:38SPEAKERI've been in the cable mines.

12:41SPEAKER- Brad.

12:41SPEAKER- Yes?

12:43SPEAKER- This is a shocking moment.

12:44SPEAKER- Okay.

12:45SPEAKER- It's the first computer I've ever owned

12:48SPEAKERsince the nineties that doesn't have a PS2 port.

12:50SPEAKER- Nothing?

12:51SPEAKER- Nothing, just USBs.

12:53SPEAKER- Jeez, you're free.

12:55SPEAKERYou're untethered.

12:56SPEAKER- It's a Z390 gigabyte board and I'm shocked.

13:01SPEAKER- Shocked.

13:01SPEAKER- I tell you.

13:02SPEAKER- I'm still on a Z170 gigabyte board

13:04SPEAKERand it has a single PS2 port on it.

13:08SPEAKER- We left PS2 ports 'cause for a long time,

13:10SPEAKERthey would get a higher,

13:11SPEAKERyou could get higher polling rates with PS2,

13:14SPEAKERwith PS2 ports than the mouse, the USB ports.

13:17SPEAKER- It's just one of those tenacious old technologies

13:19SPEAKERthat just has not quite let go yet.

13:22SPEAKER- I mean, also like it is possible

13:24SPEAKERthat you can kill a motherboard,

13:25SPEAKERkill the USB bus on a motherboard by like shorting,

13:28SPEAKERlike I've killed USB on a laptop before

13:30SPEAKERby plugging in an Arduino that I was working on

13:33SPEAKERand having the circuit wired up the wrong way.

13:36SPEAKER- Yikes.

13:37SPEAKER- And if you had a PS2 port and the USB bus was dead,

13:42SPEAKERyou would be able to presumably boot that thing up

13:44SPEAKERand tell what was wrong with it.

13:46SPEAKERBut realistically, who has PS2 keyboards anymore?

13:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

13:51SPEAKERAll right, let's go ahead and do this email

13:54SPEAKERsince we're talking about handheld input devices already.

13:58SPEAKERFrom Jeremiah, you talked about Joy-Con drift

14:01SPEAKERin the last podcast and it reminded me

14:02SPEAKERthat I have a slight drift in my Xbox elite controller.

14:06SPEAKER- Oh my God.

14:06SPEAKER- I know, right?

14:07SPEAKERIt recently developed so I haven't exactly gotten around

14:09SPEAKERto getting a hold of Microsoft or even daring to attempt it,

14:13SPEAKERI'm sorry, daring to attempt to fix it myself.

14:16SPEAKERBut I just thought you should know

14:17SPEAKERthere's a $160 stick drift to be wary of

14:21SPEAKERon top of our Joy-Con dilemma.

14:24SPEAKERDo you know what the warranty is on those things?

14:25SPEAKERThat's not a lifetime, surely not a lifetime warranty,

14:27SPEAKERbut maybe it's long enough for him

14:29SPEAKERto see if they'll do something.

14:30SPEAKER- You know, on a $50 controller,

14:33SPEAKERI would say you're probably out of luck

14:35SPEAKERon the $160 controller.

14:38SPEAKER- I would call and complain about that.

14:40SPEAKER- Oh definitely, definitely.

14:41SPEAKERThat might just be from a customer retention standpoint,

14:43SPEAKEReven if it's out of warranty,

14:45SPEAKERthey might just be like,

14:46SPEAKERoh, he was willing to buy the expensive controller,

14:47SPEAKERwe should probably make sure he stays a customer.

14:50SPEAKER- Yeah, this definitely feels like a situation

14:52SPEAKERwhere you should take care of your best customers.

14:56SPEAKER- Yes.

14:57SPEAKER- And I would not expect,

14:58SPEAKERI've used the hell out of my first gen elite controller

15:01SPEAKERand have had no drift problems.

15:03SPEAKERI haven't seen anybody complaining about drift problems

15:04SPEAKERon elite controllers.

15:05SPEAKER- This is the first time I've seen that as well.

15:07SPEAKERAlthough I forgot to mention last week

15:09SPEAKERwhen we were talking about the joy cons

15:10SPEAKERthat my best 360 controller

15:13SPEAKERhad pretty bad right stick drift.

15:15SPEAKER- Oh no, not the one with the twisty circle pad.

15:17SPEAKER- Yes, it was totally the one with the transforming D-pad.

15:19SPEAKERIt was my favorite controller,

15:20SPEAKERbut any first person shooter

15:22SPEAKERthat had a really small dead zone,

15:23SPEAKERlike I remember for whatever reason,

15:25SPEAKERBorderlands 2 was a major offender.

15:27SPEAKER- Yeah, Borderlands 2 had really wicked fast controls

15:31SPEAKERback in the day.

15:32SPEAKER- Any game with really sensitive look on the right stick,

15:34SPEAKERif I just took my thumb off of it,

15:35SPEAKERit's the aim, like the view would just start slowly drifting

15:38SPEAKERin random direction.

15:39SPEAKERIt was a great time, but.

15:41SPEAKER- I, my iFixit got the joy con sticks back in stock,

15:45SPEAKERso I ordered a couple and I'm gonna swap them out.

15:48SPEAKERMaybe I'll do it on stream

15:49SPEAKERor put it out for the patrons or something.

15:51SPEAKERI don't know.

15:52SPEAKER- I wanna hear how that goes.

15:53SPEAKERDo you have any sense of whether those

15:54SPEAKERare like genuine Nintendo replacement parts

15:56SPEAKERor are they aftermarket?

15:58SPEAKER- I'm going to look very closely at the markings

15:59SPEAKERwhen I unwrap them.

16:01SPEAKERI haven't opened the little anti-static pouches yet.

16:04SPEAKER- I figured if anybody got real parts,

16:06SPEAKERit would be iFixit versus the people on Amazon.

16:09SPEAKER- I'm not, I've never bought anything from them,

16:10SPEAKERbut I've used some of their guides before.

16:12SPEAKERThey seem pretty on top of their stuff from what I've seen.

16:15SPEAKER- So we did a whole series of videos with them

16:17SPEAKERthat tested over the years and they're awesome.

16:19SPEAKERKyle, Kyle Wiens is the CEO and is like,

16:24SPEAKERhe often was the guy taking iPhones apart

16:26SPEAKERin New Zealand and stuff like that.

16:28SPEAKER- Right.

16:29SPEAKER- They're, it's funny.

16:32SPEAKERHe came, I think he said he came to this because it came

16:34SPEAKERto iFixit and started iFixit because of environmentalism.

16:38SPEAKERLike he felt bad throwing away all the electronics

16:40SPEAKERhe did as a repair shop.

16:42SPEAKER- Oh, I definitely get that.

16:43SPEAKER- And wanted someplace that had a voice.

16:45SPEAKERSo yeah, highly recommend them.

16:46SPEAKERTheir toolkits are awesome.

16:47SPEAKERI have one of their, they're like screwdrivers

16:50SPEAKERwith the spinny tops are my all time favorite

16:53SPEAKERlike repair screw drops, screwdrivers.

16:55SPEAKER- I've never bought any tools from them

16:56SPEAKERbecause I have a bunch of cheapos already,

16:57SPEAKERbut I have people recommend those various controller.

17:01SPEAKERYou know, tri-wing screwdrivers

17:03SPEAKERand some of that more esoteric stuff.

17:04SPEAKERI see people recommending that stuff all the time.

17:07SPEAKERDid you see real quick, not to get off too much

17:09SPEAKERof a tangent here, but there was a link going around

17:11SPEAKERin our discord.

17:13SPEAKERI think it started on an imager post,

17:15SPEAKERbut a guy essentially built his own Nintendo Switch

17:17SPEAKERfor about $200 out of, purely out of parts.

17:21SPEAKER- Wow, really for 200 bucks?

17:23SPEAKER- Well, to be fair, like as soon as I saw that,

17:25SPEAKERI was like, maybe we could use a second switch around here

17:27SPEAKERfor that price, plus it would be fun to put together.

17:29SPEAKERBut then I, A, I looked at the parts list

17:31SPEAKERand I mean, I'm talking every part he sourced independently.

17:33SPEAKERI mean, everything.

17:34SPEAKER- Like the speakers and the whole thing?

17:36SPEAKER- Speakers, microphones, like I almost want to say

17:39SPEAKERlike card, like SD card reader,

17:41SPEAKERthat might be a little too itemized,

17:42SPEAKERbut like it looked like it was like a,

17:44SPEAKERprobably a 25 item long list of parts that he bought

17:48SPEAKERfrom individual like eBay auctions and stuff.

17:51SPEAKERBut it was like, main board was separate,

17:53SPEAKERLCD was separate, digitizer was separate.

17:56SPEAKERJust about every part that could be pulled apart

17:58SPEAKERin that thing was pulled apart.

18:00SPEAKER- I don't know how, I can't imagine that it's less

18:03SPEAKERthan 200 bucks to get all the pieces.

18:06SPEAKER- So I think a lot of these, a lot of these,

18:07SPEAKERI think were parted out from broken switches,

18:09SPEAKERlike switches that were broken in some other way.

18:11SPEAKERAnd it was just like, oh, they harvested the motherboard

18:13SPEAKERfrom this thing because the screen was broken or whatever.

18:16SPEAKER- Huh.

18:17SPEAKER- So that's what stopped me more than the labor

18:19SPEAKERof putting it together, which sounds kind of fun.

18:21SPEAKER- I wonder how janky it is.

18:23SPEAKER- Yeah, who knows?

18:24SPEAKERI mean, obviously if breaks or something goes wrong,

18:27SPEAKERyou're out of luck.

18:28SPEAKER- Well, but like also I have to imagine

18:30SPEAKERthat like getting the seal right between the screen

18:33SPEAKERand the digitizer and the front fascia is hard.

18:37SPEAKERLike getting the glue and stuff on there.

18:39SPEAKER- 'Cause you can buy aftermarket screen covers

18:41SPEAKERand digitizers and that seems fine

18:43SPEAKER'cause they come with the adhesive.

18:45SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

18:46SPEAKER- Ready to go.

18:47SPEAKERLike I've looked into replacing the digitizer before

18:49SPEAKERand that part looks like not a big problem.

18:51SPEAKER- Huh.

18:52SPEAKER- I just thought that was an incredibly clever way

18:54SPEAKERto put a switch together, like literally.

18:58SPEAKER- Get past the shortage.

18:59SPEAKER- Literally with the kind of the markup

19:01SPEAKERthat's out there right now being completely insane.

19:03SPEAKER- I wonder if you get, so I guess he ended up

19:07SPEAKERwith a V1, I guess he ended up with V1 hardware

19:10SPEAKERbecause of the, you know, because there's probably

19:13SPEAKERnot as much V2 hardware in the channel yet, right?

19:15SPEAKER- Probably, that's my guess, yeah.

19:17SPEAKER- Huh.

19:18SPEAKER- But interesting.

19:19SPEAKER- For 200 bucks to get a switch at all right now

19:22SPEAKERis pretty impressive.

19:23SPEAKER- Yeah, that's amazing.

19:24SPEAKER- I paid that for a light a couple of weeks ago.

19:26SPEAKER- Sure, let's see, how about this email from Lucas.

19:34SPEAKERDo you guys still see dual booting as something worthwhile?

19:37SPEAKERAnytime I've ever done it, while I've enjoyed

19:39SPEAKERusing the Linux side, especially when doing development,

19:42SPEAKERI always seem to use the Windows side more.

19:45SPEAKERThe inconvenience of rebooting to play a game

19:47SPEAKERsometimes is too much.

19:50SPEAKER- So this is a tough question.

19:51SPEAKERI don't, I used to dual boot everything.

19:54SPEAKERLike I got, one of the first things I wrote for Maximum PC

19:56SPEAKERwas about how to dual boot four OSs or something

19:59SPEAKERon one computer, which was ludicrous.

20:03SPEAKERI don't, I think in the age of VMs,

20:05SPEAKERwhen all CPUs support hypervisors or the VT extensions,

20:11SPEAKERI think just run it in, if you wanna learn Linux,

20:13SPEAKERput it in a VM.

20:14SPEAKER- Yep, that is the beginning and the end of this question

20:16SPEAKERto me at this point.

20:17SPEAKER- The only exception is if you're doing it

20:20SPEAKERfor productivity reasons, like if you have,

20:22SPEAKERlike I work from home, my gaming computer

20:24SPEAKERis my work computer.

20:26SPEAKERAnd sometimes like it is challenging when I have shit

20:29SPEAKERthat I have to get done for work to sit down here

20:31SPEAKERand be like, oh man, I could be playing Overwatch

20:33SPEAKERor something instead.

20:36SPEAKERYou know, if back in the day when I was running Linux

20:40SPEAKERfor work and Windows for home, it was awesome

20:43SPEAKERto have a computer that was a work computer

20:45SPEAKERthat was just for doing work on.

20:47SPEAKERSo dual booting kind of gives you that on the same machine.

20:51SPEAKER- One of the rubs with this recently,

20:52SPEAKERand I don't know if this is like a UEFI thing

20:54SPEAKERor as the way that computers have booted has changed

20:58SPEAKERover the years, I'm not sure where this is coming from,

20:59SPEAKERbut it feels like the boot loaders have gotten

21:01SPEAKERmore complicated or the way they wanna take control

21:03SPEAKERof your system has gotten more onerous to the point

21:06SPEAKERthat like I looked into it actually not long ago,

21:08SPEAKERlike what would it take to run Windows 10 and Linux

21:10SPEAKERon a machine at the same time?

21:12SPEAKERAnd I saw a bunch of stuff about the,

21:14SPEAKERlike Grub is the bootloader for Linux

21:16SPEAKERand it wants to take over the whole system,

21:18SPEAKERbut then the Windows 10 bootloader can interfere with that

21:21SPEAKERand it can just turn into a gigantic mess

21:22SPEAKERin a way that it wasn't before.

21:24SPEAKER- The big problem is always that the Windows bootloader

21:27SPEAKERdoesn't acknowledge anything but Windows.

21:29SPEAKER- Okay.

21:30SPEAKER- So then Grub has to get one layer deeper

21:32SPEAKERthan the Windows bootloader.

21:34SPEAKERThe thing that I kind of wanna do is put a hypervisor

21:38SPEAKERon a machine where I can run multiple OSs

21:43SPEAKERon the same machine inside VMs.

21:46SPEAKER- So have you looked into that much?

21:48SPEAKER'Cause that's getting really popular

21:50SPEAKERand it's becoming very possible with the hypervisors

21:52SPEAKERand also just the raw level of hardware horsepower

21:55SPEAKERthat's out there.

21:55SPEAKER- So I know people who do that and keep like

21:57SPEAKERtheir dev environment in a VM that lives in the hypervisor.

22:02SPEAKERThe thing I haven't talked to anybody about

22:04SPEAKERis how well or haven't done any reading about

22:06SPEAKERis how well it works with things like, you know,

22:08SPEAKER3D accelerators for games and like if I'm gonna take,

22:11SPEAKERif I can shut down the second VM

22:13SPEAKERand have the main one get full resources,

22:16SPEAKERit's kind of interesting.

22:17SPEAKERIt's essentially what the Xbox One does

22:19SPEAKERfor its OS and games too 'cause it's a hypervisor.

22:23SPEAKER- It sounds like we're getting there.

22:24SPEAKERI mean, in the server world,

22:25SPEAKERthat's becoming pretty commonplace.

22:26SPEAKERAre you familiar with ESXi?

22:29SPEAKERI assume that's how you pronounce that.

22:30SPEAKERI've never heard anybody say it out loud.

22:31SPEAKERIt's the VMware bare metal hypervisor.

22:34SPEAKER- I think that's right.

22:35SPEAKERYou broke up a little bit, but I'm gonna say yes.

22:37SPEAKERThat is exactly how you pronounce it.

22:38SPEAKERYou nailed it, Brad.

22:39SPEAKER- ESXi is the acronym.

22:41SPEAKERI assume that you just say all those letters out loud.

22:43SPEAKERThere's also Proxmox, which is a kind of open source

22:48SPEAKERequivalent, I think.

22:51SPEAKERBut they're both low level hypervisors

22:52SPEAKERthat are meant to basically run multiple kind of server OSs

22:55SPEAKERside by side and not actually run any,

22:57SPEAKERlike only run the OS manager directly on the hardware.

23:01SPEAKERAnd so you've got like,

23:02SPEAKERI see people running like FreeNAS in one VM

23:04SPEAKERand Debian in another VM and like, you know,

23:06SPEAKERmaybe something else all on the same machine

23:08SPEAKERand that stuff seems to interoperate pretty well.

23:10SPEAKER- So the hyper, so if you don't know what a hypervisor is,

23:12SPEAKERthat is exactly it.

23:13SPEAKERIt's just a really thin OS that is basically just a host

23:17SPEAKERfor VMs for a specific brand of VM.

23:20SPEAKERI'm certain, I mean, servers have been doing that for years.

23:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:24SPEAKER- I mean, I think we even,

23:26SPEAKERI feel like we even had a dev server when we were at whiskey

23:28SPEAKERthat was when we had bad internet

23:30SPEAKERthat they could do test pushes on that ran

23:32SPEAKERall the different servers that we needed to test a site

23:35SPEAKERon one hypervisor machine.

23:38SPEAKERBut it's, I'm not sure it's there for consumers yet.

23:42SPEAKERI'd be interested to hear feedback from people

23:44SPEAKERif they've tried to do this.

23:46SPEAKER- I've heard stories, I won't name any company names,

23:48SPEAKERbut I've got a friend of a friend

23:49SPEAKERwho works at an extremely well-known television channel.

23:54SPEAKERNot the one I work for.

23:57SPEAKERAnd they are virtualizing all of their whole

23:59SPEAKERlike production pipeline with exactly that stuff.

24:01SPEAKERLike they are almost moving back

24:03SPEAKERto what sounds like a dumb terminal model

24:05SPEAKERof like all of the actual production stuff

24:08SPEAKERruns on distant servers.

24:09SPEAKERAnd they just sort of sit down at a terminal

24:11SPEAKERand do all of their video production work,

24:13SPEAKERyou know, with the compute bananas physically somewhere else.

24:16SPEAKERIt sounds amazing, but also like kind of frightening to me.

24:18SPEAKER- Well, I mean, in terms of like the developers

24:22SPEAKERthat I work for,

24:23SPEAKERa lot of them do their development environment.

24:25SPEAKERCause like at this point, if you're doing like unity work

24:28SPEAKERand you have a complicated pipeline with a bunch of plugins

24:30SPEAKERand a bunch of other stuff,

24:31SPEAKERit can take a day or two worth of human labor

24:34SPEAKERto get your pipeline working,

24:36SPEAKERlike to get your terminal set up again,

24:38SPEAKERif like windows bombs out or you have to reinstall windows

24:40SPEAKERor you have some driver eat something

24:42SPEAKERor something like that.

24:43SPEAKERAnd the nice thing about doing the VMs for that

24:45SPEAKERis that you can just roll back the state at any moment.

24:48SPEAKERYou know, you can go back

24:48SPEAKERto whatever your save snap last snapshot was.

24:51SPEAKER- Totally.

24:52SPEAKER- Which means that you can do things that are risky

24:54SPEAKERwithout actually having any risk or having very little risk.

24:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:59SPEAKERLast thing I'll say, I'll go ahead.

25:00SPEAKER- I was gonna say, if you need a good free VM

25:02SPEAKERvirtual box is a free, you can download from the internet.

25:05SPEAKERIt runs inside windows, inside Linux, inside Mac OS,

25:09SPEAKERwhatever other stuff you might potentially use it for.

25:12SPEAKER- Is it still good?

25:13SPEAKERI used it years ago, just to kind of dabbled a little bit,

25:15SPEAKERbut I didn't know if it had kept up with the times.

25:17SPEAKER- The price is correct for dabbling.

25:20SPEAKER- Okay.

25:21SPEAKER- There are better options out there for paid.

25:24SPEAKER- What about Hyper-V and Windows 10?

25:26SPEAKERIs that available in all versions of Windows 10?

25:28SPEAKER- I think that's just like a pro.

25:29SPEAKER- Okay, I've got a pro, so maybe that's the case.

25:32SPEAKER- Isn't that a hypervisor?

25:33SPEAKER- It is, yes.

25:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so then that's pushing your windows down a layer

25:38SPEAKERand Windows is running in the hypervisor

25:40SPEAKERif you have Hyper-V on.

25:42SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I meant for like,

25:43SPEAKERif you wanted to like spin up a Linux instance

25:45SPEAKERor something like that.

25:46SPEAKER- My experience has been that Windows VMs

25:48SPEAKERdon't do well with Linux, but that may have changed now

25:51SPEAKERsince Windows is more Linux friendly

25:54SPEAKERthan it has ever been before.

25:55SPEAKER- Yeah, like that's why this topic

25:57SPEAKERis kind of complicated for me is that I never quite know

25:59SPEAKERlike what's gonna run close to natively

26:01SPEAKERon any given situation versus like, you know,

26:03SPEAKERlike in the worst case scenario,

26:05SPEAKERa VM isn't gonna even have access to like graphics hardware

26:07SPEAKERand you're gonna be running at some like awful low resolution

26:09SPEAKERwith like just terrible, like, you know,

26:12SPEAKERdraw performance on the windows you're dragging around

26:14SPEAKERand stuff like that.

26:15SPEAKER- You're not gonna get the cool transparent window effects.

26:17SPEAKER- Yeah, then what's the point of using a computer?

26:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I want my Linux desktop

26:21SPEAKERto look like something from Hackers, man.

26:23SPEAKER- So I'm super excited about that.

26:25SPEAKERI can't believe I've become this person,

26:27SPEAKERbut I'm genuinely very excited about the Windows subsystem

26:30SPEAKERfor Linux 2 stuff as mouthy as that title is.

26:34SPEAKER- You've mentioned it.

26:35SPEAKERI don't know what to think of this, Brad.

26:36SPEAKER- I'm excited to check it out.

26:38SPEAKER'Cause I genuinely, I have like an actual use case

26:40SPEAKERfor having access to a Linux environment now,

26:42SPEAKERas opposed to just wanting to feel cool by messing with it.

26:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

26:46SPEAKER- So that's exciting.

26:47SPEAKERBut last thing I was gonna mention real fast

26:49SPEAKERand I just barely have even become aware of this scene

26:52SPEAKERin the last couple of days.

26:54SPEAKERThere is a movement to achieve exactly

26:56SPEAKERwhat you were talking about with direct access

26:58SPEAKERto graphics accelerators and stuff like that.

27:01SPEAKERLike there's a straight up subreddit out there

27:03SPEAKERfor people who are running Linux

27:05SPEAKERwith Windows in a VM passing through a second GPU.

27:09SPEAKER- Wow.

27:10SPEAKER- I assume that actually requires

27:11SPEAKERto install graphics cards, I'm not sure.

27:14SPEAKER- Or use the integrated and the discrete.

27:16SPEAKER- Oh, that's sure.

27:17SPEAKERThat would make sense.

27:18SPEAKERBut the whole point is to be able to play Windows games

27:21SPEAKERin a Windows VM in Linux.

27:23SPEAKERAnd it seems to be maybe a little hacky, but also possible.

27:26SPEAKER- Having spent a lot of time in the mid 2000s

27:29SPEAKERtrying to play Windows games in Linux,

27:32SPEAKERI know it has come a long way.

27:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

27:34SPEAKER- But still, like if your hobby is trying

27:37SPEAKERto play Windows games in Linux,

27:39SPEAKERthat is a thing everyone who was interested

27:40SPEAKERin that conceptually should try.

27:42SPEAKERIf you wanna play the games,

27:44SPEAKERjust fucking install Windows, man, or buy a PS4.

27:48SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.

27:51SPEAKERAnthony writes in, "Hey guys, on episode 30,

27:55SPEAKER"Mike Mica was talking about how CRTs work,

27:57SPEAKER"and Brad asked how the electron beam is steered

28:00SPEAKER"into the correct position on the phosphor.

28:02SPEAKER"It's actually quite simple.

28:04SPEAKER"There are alignment magnets that alter

28:07SPEAKER"their magnetic field to push the electron beam

28:09SPEAKER"horizontally and vertically.

28:10SPEAKER"Not really a question, but I hope it was interesting.

28:12SPEAKER"Have a good day."

28:13SPEAKER- Brad, they're even better than magnets.

28:15SPEAKER- Wait, what?

28:16SPEAKER- Yeah, they're electro.

28:18SPEAKER- How do they work?

28:19SPEAKER- Electro, well, I'm sorry.

28:21SPEAKER- I'm sorry.

28:21SPEAKER- You gotta talk to the ICP about that.

28:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm sorry.

28:23SPEAKER- They're electromagnets, man, they're electromagnetic coils

28:25SPEAKERand they can steer the electron beam.

28:28SPEAKER- Just based on the current that you feed them?

28:30SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

28:31SPEAKER- All right, okay.

28:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

28:32SPEAKER- Okay.

28:33SPEAKER- That's why if you put a big giant magnet

28:34SPEAKERby the back of your TV,

28:35SPEAKERyour TV used to get really wonky and weird looking.

28:37SPEAKER- Okay, that explains it.

28:38SPEAKERThat explains a lot about my childhood, actually.

28:41SPEAKEROkay, that's good to know.

28:42SPEAKERThat sounds so simple when you put it that way,

28:44SPEAKERI just never would have thought about it.

28:46SPEAKER- The more you know, ding, they have to be electromagnets

28:49SPEAKER'cause it had to happen very, very fast.

28:52SPEAKER'Cause it was moving a single beam of electrons

28:55SPEAKERback and forth across the CRT.

28:57SPEAKER- Right.

28:58SPEAKER- 480 lines worth 60 times a second.

29:01SPEAKER- Quite a few hertz.

29:02SPEAKERI have good news for you,

29:04SPEAKERelectricity moves at the speed of light, it turns out.

29:07SPEAKERI don't know about you,

29:08SPEAKERbut after talking to Micah about that stuff,

29:11SPEAKERI had a kind of extended moment of panic

29:13SPEAKERabout the vanishing CRTs that he described.

29:17SPEAKER- Look, I went on eBay before we posted that episode

29:20SPEAKERand I looked up those Sony reference monitors.

29:22SPEAKER- Oh, the TVMs?

29:23SPEAKER- Maybe I should get one of these finally.

29:25SPEAKERI've been thinking about it for years.

29:26SPEAKERThen I looked at how much they cost,

29:28SPEAKERand I was like, nope, that's a no for me.

29:30SPEAKER- I think we're moving squarely

29:31SPEAKERinto sort of collector territory,

29:33SPEAKERlike demand pushing prices up on those things significantly.

29:36SPEAKER- Like I can get away with a lot

29:38SPEAKERof making a lot of dumb purchases,

29:40SPEAKERbut if I come in with a CRT in the year of our Lord 2020,

29:44SPEAKERmy wife is gonna have a real serious conversation with me.

29:46SPEAKER- Sure.

29:47SPEAKER- And she will be right too.

29:50SPEAKER- I got so paranoid about that stuff

29:51SPEAKERthat I actually FaceTimed with my mom the other day

29:53SPEAKERand had her do a walkthrough in their basement

29:56SPEAKERjust to do a quick audit of the CRTs

29:59SPEAKERthat they haven't thrown out that are still down there.

30:01SPEAKER- Oh, Mike, see if they have anything good.

30:03SPEAKER- They've got some good stuff.

30:04SPEAKERI'm pretty excited.

30:05SPEAKER- You got any Trinitrons?

30:06SPEAKERYou got a square, a flat Sony?

30:07SPEAKER- Three different Sonys down there.

30:09SPEAKEROne of them is my old CRT computer monitor.

30:11SPEAKERIt's a 21 inch, it's Trinitron inside,

30:15SPEAKERbut it's actually Silicon Graphics branded.

30:18SPEAKER- Oh, fancy.

30:19SPEAKER- And not the crappy later era SGI logo,

30:22SPEAKERbut the good original one, the Jurassic Park era one.

30:25SPEAKER- Where the hell did you get that?

30:26SPEAKERLike on surplus from university or something?

30:28SPEAKER- Yes, I got it on eBay back in the day.

30:29SPEAKERThis was around like 2000, 2001 probably.

30:32SPEAKERIt was the last monitor I ever bought

30:33SPEAKERbefore LCDs became a thing.

30:35SPEAKERAnd I got it for dirt cheap on eBay

30:37SPEAKERand it was like brand new in the box.

30:39SPEAKERI'm not sure it had ever really been used,

30:42SPEAKERbut it's a nice 21 inch Trinitron monitor

30:44SPEAKERthat's got a BNC component or like, you know.

30:47SPEAKER- Wow. - I don't know if that's RBG, RGB inputs

30:50SPEAKERor whatever.

30:51SPEAKERThey've got a Vega from roughly that time period.

30:56SPEAKERIt's like one of the flat 27 inches

30:58SPEAKERthat I think has component in.

30:59SPEAKER- It's a gold mine.

31:01SPEAKER- And they have one of the mid 90s Trinitrons

31:05SPEAKERin the black case that's more,

31:06SPEAKERa little bit more standard curved screen.

31:08SPEAKERAnd I need to check, but I think that's one of the models

31:11SPEAKERthat you can mod for RGB pretty easily.

31:13SPEAKER- Ooh. - And those are about 27 inch.

31:15SPEAKERSo it's like, they're sitting on a gold mine

31:17SPEAKERof cathode ray tubes.

31:19SPEAKER- I had, the last CRT I had was a 24 inch,

31:24SPEAKER16 by 10 flat Sony Trinitron.

31:29SPEAKERAnd I think I put it on the free table at work

31:32SPEAKERwhen I got the 24 inch Dell flat panels.

31:36SPEAKERAnd I'm pretty bummed about that now

31:38SPEAKERwhen I think about it. - I was just about to ask

31:40SPEAKERhow much you regret that decision.

31:41SPEAKER- I mean, it was, that thing weighed 50 or 60 pounds.

31:45SPEAKERIt seemed like it was, - Oh yeah.

31:47SPEAKER- Like it was, it was the kind of thing

31:48SPEAKERthat you could carry with one person,

31:50SPEAKERbut it was big enough that like the penalty

31:53SPEAKERfor failure was tragic.

31:54SPEAKERSo. - Yes, absolutely.

31:56SPEAKER- Yeah, it was always a two person carry.

31:58SPEAKER- I would have to double check with Vinny

32:00SPEAKERon the exact specs of this.

32:01SPEAKERBut when he moved out here, the, he brought an HD.

32:04SPEAKERIt was, it was, it was one of those HD Trinitron CRTs.

32:07SPEAKER- Jesus. - Like you remember

32:08SPEAKERthat monitor or TV. - It was a television

32:10SPEAKERand I'm pretty sure it was a 36 inch.

32:13SPEAKERAnd I have a pretty good memory of it

32:15SPEAKERrequiring him, me and Dave Snyder to move that thing.

32:19SPEAKER- So I bought at Best Buy after,

32:23SPEAKERin the Super Bowl sale one year,

32:25SPEAKERa floor model Panasonic 36 inch CRT.

32:29SPEAKER- Boy. - That was four by three.

32:31SPEAKERAnd I left it in Knoxville when I moved to California

32:34SPEAKERbecause I was like, there's no way this thing is getting here.

32:36SPEAKER- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

32:37SPEAKER- And it was, it was like, it took three people

32:41SPEAKERto carry it up the stairs into our, into my apartment.

32:43SPEAKERAnd we didn't even make it.

32:45SPEAKERWe had to set it down and the dipshit

32:47SPEAKERthat was carrying it with me,

32:48SPEAKERit got scratched on the way in the door.

32:50SPEAKERIt wasn't a bad scratch,

32:51SPEAKERbut it was just like the kind of thing

32:52SPEAKERthat you know is there and just eats at you.

32:54SPEAKER- Oh, that's terrible.

32:56SPEAKER- I gave it to my sister-in-law.

32:57SPEAKERShe loved it.

32:58SPEAKERIt was great.

33:00SPEAKER- Last thing I'll say real fast.

33:02SPEAKERBack, you probably saw, it was probably just under a year ago

33:05SPEAKERwhen Digital Founders, you ran a video or two

33:06SPEAKERabout how great CRTs are.

33:08SPEAKER- Yeah, destroying the market for them.

33:10SPEAKER- And there was kind of a, right, and there was, yes, exactly.

33:12SPEAKERAnd there was kind of a surge in public interest

33:14SPEAKERin CRTs again and prices start going up and stuff.

33:16SPEAKERBut I had, I saw people talking about like,

33:18SPEAKERwhy don't they just go ahead and start making them again

33:20SPEAKERif they're that good?

33:20SPEAKERAnd besides like the environmental impact

33:22SPEAKERand the cost of manufacturing and stuff,

33:24SPEAKERsomebody pointed out, and I don't remember the screen size,

33:26SPEAKERbut I remember reading that the biggest CRT ever made

33:29SPEAKERweighed something like 400 pounds.

33:32SPEAKER- I mean-

33:33SPEAKER- And it still wasn't that big a screen by modern standards.

33:35SPEAKERSo it's like, okay, there you go.

33:36SPEAKERThat's why they don't make them anymore.

33:37SPEAKER- Yeah, the 36 inch Panasonic weighed well over 100 pounds

33:41SPEAKERand they didn't put fucking handles on it.

33:43SPEAKERSo it was impossible to move.

33:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

33:46SPEAKER- Yeah, it was, it was bad.

33:47SPEAKER- It's just not worth it.

33:48SPEAKER- No, like-

33:49SPEAKER- I get it, but-

33:50SPEAKER- Like a cocktail arcade cabinet is the biggest CRT

33:53SPEAKERI ever want to see again, right?

33:55SPEAKER- Yes, that sounds good.

33:57SPEAKER- Yeah. - That sounds about right.

33:58SPEAKER- Okay, how about Ted in Boston?

34:02SPEAKERI'm wondering what you guys think about Windows 10 X.

34:05SPEAKERIt's essentially a new version of Windows 10

34:07SPEAKERthat's designed to be significantly more locked down.

34:10SPEAKERUnlike S mode, and I'm not super clear

34:13SPEAKERwhat S mode means.

34:14SPEAKERI don't think he defines that here, but-

34:16SPEAKER- It's the arm only version, I believe.

34:18SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

34:19SPEAKER- But I could be wrong.

34:20SPEAKER- So yeah, actually, before we get into this,

34:21SPEAKER'cause he doesn't even mention this part,

34:23SPEAKERbut 10 X is primarily targeted at the foldable market.

34:26SPEAKERIs that correct?

34:27SPEAKER- That was what they were originally pushing it as.

34:29SPEAKER- Okay, but do you think it's gonna grow beyond that?

34:30SPEAKER'Cause his question is much bigger

34:32SPEAKERthan like kind of foldables and portable platforms,

34:36SPEAKERbut let me read the rest of the email

34:39SPEAKERand then we can suss that out.

34:42SPEAKEROkay, so he says, "Unlike S mode,

34:44SPEAKERit supports all Win32 apps, but they run in a container

34:48SPEAKERand can't touch the rest of the system.

34:50SPEAKERIn theory, this means things are less likely to break,

34:52SPEAKERare more secure, and the core of the OS is smaller,

34:56SPEAKERbut you lose control of your system.

34:58SPEAKERIs this the future of Windows?

35:00SPEAKERDo you want something that acts more like a modern mobile OS?

35:04SPEAKERIf not, do you think Microsoft will continue

35:06SPEAKERto support Win32 indefinitely?

35:09SPEAKERAs a fun side note,

35:10SPEAKERwhat's your favorite dead operating system?

35:11SPEAKERThink BOS."

35:14SPEAKER- BOS is real good.

35:17SPEAKEROkay, so this 10 X, Windows 10 X is,

35:23SPEAKERdo you remember when Microsoft released Windows 8,

35:25SPEAKERthe Windows for tablets,

35:26SPEAKERwhen there were no tablets and no touch screens on the market

35:28SPEAKERand they focused on tablets and touch screens exclusively

35:31SPEAKERon a thing that they shipped to a billion people

35:33SPEAKERand it was really bad.

35:34SPEAKER- It was, in fact, one of the worst Windowses ever.

35:36SPEAKER- That's the word on the street.

35:38SPEAKER- So this time, Microsoft has announced,

35:41SPEAKERthey announced that foldable PC,

35:43SPEAKERwhich was called the Surface Neo,

35:46SPEAKERwhich is basically two,

35:47SPEAKERit's a laptop with just two screens

35:48SPEAKERinstead of a screen and a keyboard.

35:50SPEAKERAnd Windows 10 X is the redesigned Windows

35:54SPEAKERthat goes with that particular hardware

35:57SPEAKERand other similar foldable PCs.

36:00SPEAKERThere's a whole cottage industry in these.

36:03SPEAKERThey're like bigger than a, like a big tablet,

36:07SPEAKERlike a big phone, but they're way, way smaller

36:10SPEAKERthan a laptop and they're very popular

36:13SPEAKERin like electronics markets in China and stuff like that.

36:18SPEAKERMy hunch is that Windows 10 X is them doing

36:22SPEAKERthe complete redesign of Windows 10's user interface

36:27SPEAKERthat has been needed since Windows 8

36:29SPEAKERand starting it on the hardware that they control entirely

36:34SPEAKERrather than forcing it out to people

36:35SPEAKERwho don't want it on their existing legacy installs.

36:38SPEAKERSo yeah, I would assume that this is the future of Windows,

36:41SPEAKERbut probably not in the two to three year period,

36:44SPEAKERin a one to three year timeframe.

36:46SPEAKER- So you think they are using this as a test bed

36:48SPEAKERfor what will eventually roll out to everything?

36:50SPEAKER- I think it's, I mean, look, it's Microsoft,

36:52SPEAKERso they could get two years into this and be like,

36:54SPEAKERwell, we're just gonna put normalize Windows on this.

36:57SPEAKER- If you're not super familiar with this product

36:59SPEAKERand you kind of want a sense of what we're talking about,

37:01SPEAKERjust Google Windows 10 X start menu,

37:03SPEAKERbecause they have done a full overhaul visual redesign

37:07SPEAKERof the start menu specifically for 10 X

37:09SPEAKERthat looks quite frankly, like a lot more elegant

37:12SPEAKERor at least like cleaner if nothing else

37:14SPEAKERthan the existing Windows 10 one.

37:16SPEAKER- Looks like a, it looks like a, like a tablet OS,

37:22SPEAKERit looks like more like iOS or.

37:23SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair, I'm not sure I love the way

37:26SPEAKERthe icons are laid out like a tablet,

37:28SPEAKERbut the point is it's like, it's a full visual refresh.

37:31SPEAKER- Well, they're getting rid of the Metro crap,

37:33SPEAKERit looks like.

37:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I mean, they're expunging the Metro,

37:36SPEAKERthe tile based stuff from Windows 8 is no longer there.

37:39SPEAKER- And from the, yeah, I read a Windows Central article

37:42SPEAKERthat basically like showed you the visual changes

37:46SPEAKEReither from hands-ons with the Surface Neo prototypes

37:49SPEAKERat CES or something else.

37:50SPEAKERAnd I mean, it looks like they're taking the pieces

37:54SPEAKERthat are already there, like the, hey, there's a search,

37:56SPEAKERthere's a search menu that searches the stuff

37:58SPEAKERon your computer and the internet, right?

38:01SPEAKERThere's a task bar and it has all the things there,

38:03SPEAKERbut there's no Metro live tiles, it's just icons,

38:06SPEAKERwhich is all people want 'cause live tiles suck.

38:10SPEAKERLike it seems like a good thing,

38:12SPEAKERbut it also seems like a thing that's designed

38:13SPEAKERto be a pure touch for the most part interface.

38:17SPEAKERAnd for example, on the Windows 10 X,

38:20SPEAKERon the default screens on the Surface Neo demos,

38:23SPEAKERlike Windows apps could only be full screen, right?

38:25SPEAKERIt's a small device and it kind of makes sense

38:27SPEAKERin a tablet context, but when you plug in a monitor,

38:30SPEAKERthen presumably you can do full-size window manipulation

38:32SPEAKERand stuff like that.

38:34SPEAKERI don't think Microsoft's gonna make that mistake again.

38:36SPEAKERSo what we're talking about here is pretty much entirely

38:40SPEAKERsuperficial, like user interface type stuff.

38:42SPEAKERBut what he's mentioning is a much more fundamental

38:45SPEAKERunderlying kind of compartmentalization of the way

38:48SPEAKERthat the OS handles software.

38:50SPEAKERDo you think that is gonna roll out as well?

38:52SPEAKER'Cause that seems like it could be pretty controversial

38:54SPEAKERif it comes to the desktop.

38:56SPEAKER- Well, so the idea, this is something that they floated

38:59SPEAKERa long, long time ago, but the idea that Windows

39:01SPEAKERis just gonna become a hypervisor and each app

39:03SPEAKERwould run a VM and they'd just be distributing VMs,

39:06SPEAKERbasically, right?

39:09SPEAKERI don't know that that's a terrible idea,

39:10SPEAKERespecially in a world where you might have an ARM laptop

39:14SPEAKERand an Intel on your desktop and then you just download

39:18SPEAKERthe right VM for your platform and things just work

39:23SPEAKERregardless of where you are.

39:28SPEAKERI mean, if that's the direction they're going to go,

39:30SPEAKERthis is the right way to do it, to roll it out slowly.

39:32SPEAKERI think containerizing applications and maintaining ability

39:37SPEAKERto share between them by copying and pasting

39:39SPEAKERand drag and dropping and stuff like that is crucial.

39:43SPEAKERBut if they can do that, I think this is a good change.

39:46SPEAKERIt means you're less likely to have one malicious

39:49SPEAKERapplication mess up everything on your system.

39:51SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, like the security benefits are pretty obvious,

39:53SPEAKERbut I mean, he does drop that ominous phrase,

39:55SPEAKERyou lose control of your system.

39:56SPEAKERAnd I don't know how much of that is sort of

39:59SPEAKERlike the general, like standard type of FUD

40:01SPEAKERthat goes along with the sort of change versus like

40:03SPEAKERhow much it would legitimately impact

40:05SPEAKERthe use of your computer.

40:07SPEAKER- I mean, I think that that's definitely,

40:10SPEAKERit's definitely a concern.

40:12SPEAKERWhen Microsoft switched from making selling us OSs

40:14SPEAKERto selling us a service that's disguised as an OS,

40:17SPEAKERI think we ended up, that was the big step on this path

40:23SPEAKERthat he seems to concerned about.

40:25SPEAKERI don't know that any of this is gonna happen.

40:27SPEAKERAlso, the NEO, there were rumors earlier this month

40:31SPEAKERthat the NEO is delayed until out of 2020.

40:34SPEAKERIt was originally gonna release 2020.

40:36SPEAKERIt's delayed, they didn't say it was related to coronavirus

40:39SPEAKERor anything like that, but presumably supply chains

40:42SPEAKERhave been impacted and development timelines on the OS

40:44SPEAKERhave been impacted and things like that, so.

40:46SPEAKER- Sure, got a little more time.

40:50SPEAKER- Yeah, it remains to be seen whether they're gonna release

40:51SPEAKERthe OS to manufacturers without the NEO.

40:54SPEAKERI would be shocked if this is something you can get

40:56SPEAKERon your normal-ass Windows PC for at least a year or two.

41:00SPEAKER- Yeah, get a little more time to cling

41:02SPEAKERto your old Win32 executables.

41:04SPEAKER- Yeah, and I mean, but the beautiful thing

41:07SPEAKERabout this approach is if you have old Win32 executables--

41:11SPEAKER- What?

41:11SPEAKER- It's an exe--

41:12SPEAKER- What the fuck are you saying?

41:16SPEAKER- Executable.

41:17SPEAKER- You just have a Windows 32 VM that lives inside

41:20SPEAKERwith everything else and that's where

41:21SPEAKERyour old dumb bullshit runs.

41:23SPEAKER- You're trying to bait me there with that one.

41:24SPEAKERI'm not taking the bait, I'm sorry.

41:26SPEAKER- Look, you just gotta get those executables, man.

41:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess realistically,

41:31SPEAKERif they implement the support correctly,

41:33SPEAKERit's not like you're not still gonna be able to run stuff.

41:35SPEAKER- Yeah, it'll still work.

41:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:37SPEAKER- That's the whole, I mean, look,

41:38SPEAKERMicrosoft's whole goal for all of the history

41:41SPEAKERof the company has been to make sure that no software

41:43SPEAKERthat ever ran on a Windows machine won't still run

41:46SPEAKERif you try hard enough, so they're not gonna throw

41:48SPEAKERthat away now.

41:49SPEAKER- No Win32 application left behind.

41:52SPEAKER- God help us.

41:54SPEAKER- Speaking of kind of development and release timelines

41:57SPEAKERfor computer products, here's a question from Matthew.

42:02SPEAKERTwo separate friends asked me this week

42:03SPEAKERabout building a new PC, but I'm a bit reticent

42:06SPEAKERto recommend buying before new hardware comes out.

42:09SPEAKERHowever, I'm also concerned about supply side problems

42:12SPEAKERwhen those new Z490s and Ampere parts hit the shelves

42:16SPEAKERin the summer and fall.

42:17SPEAKERShould I spec out builds for them now

42:19SPEAKERor tell them to wait for the new hotness?

42:23SPEAKER- I have a stock answer for this.

42:25SPEAKER- Oh boy, I'm guessing it's going to be very different

42:28SPEAKERfrom my stock answer, but let's hear it.

42:30SPEAKER- Oh, so, I don't know that my stock answer,

42:34SPEAKERI don't know that the stock answer applies.

42:36SPEAKERMy stock answer is if you need a computer,

42:38SPEAKERyou need a computer, buy the computer now.

42:40SPEAKER- Yes, that goes without saying.

42:41SPEAKER- If you need one.

42:42SPEAKER- Yeah, if you, a lot of it depends on what they're doing.

42:47SPEAKERIf they're using a computer to play, you know,

42:50SPEAKERnot Doom Eternal and upcoming New Crisis and Cyberpunk

42:54SPEAKERand stuff that is gonna be computationally hard

42:58SPEAKERon the machine, probably, like if they want a laptop,

43:01SPEAKERit doesn't matter.

43:02SPEAKERIf they want a gaming PC, that's a different story.

43:04SPEAKERThere are new video cards supposedly maybe gonna be

43:06SPEAKERannounced later this next month, May 14th by Nvidia,

43:10SPEAKERand then AMD presumably will follow that.

43:14SPEAKERI mean, I've recommended, people who've asked me lately,

43:17SPEAKERI've told, hey, if you have an existing video card,

43:20SPEAKERit's probably safe to buy a CPU and motherboard and memory

43:23SPEAKERand put your old video card in that

43:25SPEAKERand then upgrade the video card when the new video cards

43:27SPEAKERare announced later this summer and available.

43:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that's okay, this is a more nuanced approach

43:32SPEAKERthan I thought I was gonna hear.

43:34SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the other wild card here is,

43:37SPEAKERwe're in a situation where, like if you are a single person

43:40SPEAKERliving by yourself, the computer is a literal lifeline

43:44SPEAKERto social and like to your sanity in a lot of ways, right?

43:49SPEAKERSo if that's the situation that your friends are in,

43:53SPEAKERfuck it, buy whatever you want, go crazy, spend away.

43:56SPEAKER- If they don't have something that is meeting their needs

43:58SPEAKERright now, then it goes without saying, just get a computer.

44:00SPEAKER- But yeah, get the computer now.

44:02SPEAKER- I'm guessing a big chunk of our audience

44:03SPEAKERhas a good functional or a decent functional machine already

44:07SPEAKERand if they're anything like me, sometimes the upgrade itch

44:11SPEAKERjust starts getting hard to ignore and that's a little bit,

44:15SPEAKERthat's a more nuanced situation of, like the one attitude

44:19SPEAKERI don't much care for in this situation is,

44:22SPEAKERthere's always something better around the corner,

44:24SPEAKERjust buy something.

44:25SPEAKER- I mean, that is 100% true.

44:28SPEAKER- It is true that there is no perfect time

44:30SPEAKERto buy new computer stuff,

44:31SPEAKERbut sometimes they're better than others.

44:33SPEAKER- I mean, the place we're at right now with new consoles

44:36SPEAKERcoming presumably this winter is that the next,

44:42SPEAKERprobably the next GPU is going to be on par

44:45SPEAKERif you get the right one with what's in the consoles,

44:48SPEAKERwhich will give you a certain amount of future proofness

44:50SPEAKERthat you don't necessarily have buying

44:52SPEAKERwhat's available today.

44:54SPEAKER- Yes, yes, so the consoles, especially if you're in games

44:57SPEAKERare a major factor because development trends

44:59SPEAKERare gonna trickle down from those.

45:01SPEAKERAlso the CPU arms race is in a weird spot right now

45:04SPEAKERbecause the 10th generation Intel core chips

45:08SPEAKERare supposed to be announced like any day now,

45:10SPEAKERlike potentially next week.

45:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

45:12SPEAKER- But that said, it seems like Intel has been struggling

45:15SPEAKERto keep up for the last couple of generations

45:17SPEAKERand it sounds like this one is going to be a kind of a whiff

45:21SPEAKERfrom what I've been reading.

45:22SPEAKER- I mean that, so yes,

45:25SPEAKERthe price performance goal right now,

45:28SPEAKERthe price performance winner right now is AMD by far

45:31SPEAKERand even the performance performance winner is AMD

45:33SPEAKERin a lot of cases, depending on your workload.

45:35SPEAKER- Yes, so it's going that way

45:37SPEAKERand the next generation AMD architecture

45:39SPEAKERis due out later this year.

45:42SPEAKERSo there's that and so I think it's Comet Lake

45:45SPEAKERis the Intel chips that are about to be announced

45:47SPEAKERand those are yet another iteration

45:49SPEAKERof the Skylake architecture that started like what,

45:51SPEAKERfive, five years ago at this point?

45:54SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause it went from Broadwell to Skylake, right?

45:57SPEAKER- And it's thought that those are gonna top out

45:59SPEAKERat 10 cores, which is pretty paltry compared

46:01SPEAKERto what AMD's got going on right now.

46:02SPEAKERIt's based on a five year old architecture.

46:04SPEAKERIt sounds like they still haven't moved

46:06SPEAKERto a smaller process.

46:08SPEAKERSo the talk is like the TDP is gonna be very high

46:10SPEAKERon these things.

46:11SPEAKERSo these sound like a pretty disappointing refresh

46:13SPEAKERbut the actual next successor Intel architecture

46:17SPEAKERto Skylake is supposed to be the chip after these,

46:19SPEAKERwhich potentially would be next year.

46:21SPEAKER- This seems like the last gasp of the platform

46:24SPEAKERbut also you never, I mean, you kind of know on Intel

46:27SPEAKER'cause the channel leaks a lot.

46:31SPEAKERHere's my secret.

46:33SPEAKERI don't really think CPUs matter for most people

46:35SPEAKERwho are playing games anymore.

46:37SPEAKER- Maybe not.

46:38SPEAKERWe're kind of getting back into that territory though,

46:40SPEAKERagain, especially with streaming now

46:41SPEAKERwhere you actually do have some amount of heavy lifting

46:44SPEAKERtaking place on a CPU.

46:45SPEAKERPlus again, like you can't ignore the nature

46:49SPEAKERof the next consoles.

46:50SPEAKER- Right.

46:51SPEAKER- They've got much beefier CPUs

46:52SPEAKERso that absolutely could start mattering again.

46:54SPEAKER- Well, and they have more than four cores available

46:56SPEAKERto games, which is the big change.

46:58SPEAKERSo we might be in a situation

47:00SPEAKERwhere you want an eight or 10 core CPU next generation

47:05SPEAKERwhere you absolutely didn't need it

47:07SPEAKERjust to play games this generation.

47:09SPEAKER- Right, so with the impending new console hardware

47:12SPEAKERand the nature of where PC platforms are at,

47:15SPEAKERI mean, we didn't even mention like the transition

47:17SPEAKERto PCI express 4.0 and some stuff like that

47:20SPEAKERthat's going on right now.

47:21SPEAKERLike we're kind of like--

47:22SPEAKER- That stuff doesn't matter, just to be clear.

47:25SPEAKERIt kind of does, but it really like,

47:28SPEAKERif you're looking at PCI express 3.0 versus PCI express 4.0,

47:32SPEAKERyou're better off, like you're better off getting more,

47:36SPEAKERgetting faster memory than getting a PCI express 4.0 card.

47:39SPEAKER'Cause every unreal engine game that's out there

47:41SPEAKERis going to be--

47:42SPEAKER- I'm not talking about for graphics,

47:43SPEAKERthat bus is relevant for storage devices now.

47:45SPEAKERNow that there are actually NVME drives

47:48SPEAKERout there on the market,

47:48SPEAKERthey can actually come close to saturating it.

47:50SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, the workload that most people do,

47:54SPEAKEReven if you're playing games and loading games

47:56SPEAKERoff of an SSD onto the, into memory,

47:59SPEAKERyou're not gonna like, it'll be the difference between,

48:03SPEAKERyou know, 1.5 seconds and 1.3 seconds on a load.

48:06SPEAKERAnd you're not going to notice.

48:08SPEAKER- I know math, 1.3 is smaller than 1.5.

48:11SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, look, I can't argue with that.

48:13SPEAKER- That's all the saleable logic.

48:16SPEAKER- I just feel like--

48:17SPEAKER- Oh, I get it, I get the diminishing returns argument

48:20SPEAKERfor sure.

48:20SPEAKERBut again, with the consoles focusing on fast storage,

48:23SPEAKERlike it just, people don't really know

48:25SPEAKERwhere this stuff is gonna go.

48:26SPEAKERAnd I just feel like now is kind of a particularly bad time

48:29SPEAKERto be buying in on a large scale.

48:32SPEAKER- I mean, so here's the question always is,

48:37SPEAKERare you the, is the person who's asking this question,

48:39SPEAKERis the person who's asking for PC buying up advice,

48:42SPEAKERare they going to keep the same computer

48:45SPEAKERand never open the box?

48:46SPEAKERAnd in five years when it's slower,

48:48SPEAKEReight years when it's slower,

48:50SPEAKERfour years when it's too slow for them,

48:52SPEAKERgive it to somebody else, sell it to somebody else,

48:53SPEAKERget rid of it.

48:54SPEAKEROr are you gonna be upgrading video cards

48:57SPEAKERand putting bigger SSDs in and doing all that stuff?

48:59SPEAKERAnd if you're the former, it really matters, fuck all.

49:03SPEAKERLike really, it doesn't, especially--

49:04SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

49:05SPEAKER- Especially if you're playing games at like 1080p,

49:08SPEAKERit doesn't fucking matter what's in the computer.

49:10SPEAKERThe new video cards aren't gonna make a difference.

49:12SPEAKERNone of that shit's gonna matter

49:13SPEAKERbecause whatever video card you buy today

49:15SPEAKERis gonna drive your shit at 1080p

49:16SPEAKERand it's gonna look great and it's gonna run fine.

49:19SPEAKER- That's a fair point.

49:20SPEAKERI am definitely in that latter category of like,

49:22SPEAKERI wanna know what expandability does this machine have now

49:26SPEAKERbecause I'm gonna wanna put different things in it

49:28SPEAKERin three years or whatever.

49:29SPEAKER- But at the same time, when was the last time

49:31SPEAKERyou upgraded a CPU without upgrading a motherboard?

49:33SPEAKER- Well, it's been quite a while,

49:35SPEAKERbut that's largely because of just the way

49:36SPEAKERthat Intel does things.

49:38SPEAKER- Well, yeah, Intel sucks

49:39SPEAKERand they don't let you do that really.

49:40SPEAKER- They don't let you do that

49:41SPEAKERand that's been largely an effect

49:42SPEAKERof their market position, right?

49:44SPEAKERLike they can get away with that.

49:46SPEAKERBecause now that AMD is back on the scene,

49:48SPEAKERtheir upgrade path is much, much more generous than Intel's.

49:52SPEAKER- Well, yes.

49:52SPEAKER- They stick with the same socket for much longer.

49:55SPEAKERYou can put much more advanced chips in older motherboards.

49:58SPEAKER- So that's a strategic choice.

50:01SPEAKERI think the benefit of Intel's insistence

50:06SPEAKERon shit canning old, perfectly viable

50:08SPEAKERmotherboard chipsets on the reg

50:10SPEAKERis that you get faster memory and things like that.

50:13SPEAKERYou know, if you put a new CPU in a machine

50:17SPEAKERwith old, slow ass launch DDR4 memory,

50:20SPEAKERyou're gonna have a bad, you're not gonna have

50:22SPEAKERas good an experience as you could have, right?

50:24SPEAKERSo you have some flexibility,

50:25SPEAKERbut it comes at the cost of raw performance.

50:28SPEAKER- Sure.

50:29SPEAKER- I don't know.

50:30SPEAKERI feel like, yeah, like if,

50:35SPEAKERI feel like anybody listening to this podcast

50:36SPEAKERknows which category they fall in

50:37SPEAKERand whether they're safe upgrading now or not.

50:40SPEAKERI feel like if you're advising your friends,

50:42SPEAKERthink about how they're gonna use their computers

50:44SPEAKERand just help them get a computer

50:46SPEAKERso they can be less bored during the lockdown.

50:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:50SPEAKERYeah, I guess there is no one size fits all

50:52SPEAKERanswer to this question.

50:53SPEAKERIt does depend on the person.

50:55SPEAKER- Sadly, no.

50:56SPEAKERAnd if it's a friend who's gonna require

50:58SPEAKERa lot of tech support,

50:59SPEAKERI would strongly encourage you to recommend

51:01SPEAKERthat they buy computers from somebody

51:03SPEAKERthat will do the tech support for them

51:04SPEAKERso that you don't have to do that.

51:06SPEAKERI mean, I'm serious.

51:07SPEAKER- Oh, totally.

51:08SPEAKERI mean, given all the things that can go wrong

51:10SPEAKERwith a PC that you build yourself,

51:12SPEAKERyou don't wanna be on the hook

51:13SPEAKERfor somebody else's machine in that capacity.

51:15SPEAKER- My deal when I help somebody build a computer

51:17SPEAKERis always that they're on their own for support

51:18SPEAKERand I'll be happy to refer them

51:20SPEAKERto somebody that's better than Geek Squad.

51:22SPEAKER- That's a good policy.

51:23SPEAKER- I don't take support calls.

51:24SPEAKER- It's good to be upfront about that stuff.

51:26SPEAKER- Yeah, it's important to be upfront about that stuff.

51:28SPEAKEROtherwise you'll end up having fewer friends.

51:30SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely.

51:32SPEAKERQuestion from Andrew.

51:33SPEAKERWhat is the first piece of tech

51:34SPEAKERthat you remember breaking down

51:36SPEAKERand being able to reassemble and to have it all work?

51:39SPEAKERAny fun stories where it went awry

51:41SPEAKERand you had to call in some assistance?

51:43SPEAKER- Oh man.

51:48SPEAKERBoy, I don't remember.

51:49SPEAKERSo I was always afraid to open up TVs and stuff

51:52SPEAKERwhen I was a kid.

51:53SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I still am.

51:54SPEAKERI mean, I didn't even know the dangers back then,

51:55SPEAKERbut then I do now.

51:56SPEAKERBut getting inside of a CRT is a special kind of bad,

52:03SPEAKERobviously.

52:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:04SPEAKER- I mean, the first answer that comes to mind for me

52:06SPEAKERis the original PlayStation.

52:08SPEAKER- Okay, wow, you opened a PlayStation?

52:10SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I modded three or four PlayStations.

52:13SPEAKER- How did you mod that?

52:14SPEAKERI didn't ever do that.

52:15SPEAKERHow did the PlayStation mod work?

52:17SPEAKER- It also happened to be my first experience with soldering.

52:19SPEAKERI'm pretty sure.

52:20SPEAKERI think that's the first time I ever soldered anything.

52:22SPEAKER- What did you have to solder?

52:23SPEAKER- It was just a mod chip.

52:26SPEAKER- Oh, I don't know how this works.

52:29SPEAKER- Oh, I just assumed you were...

52:31SPEAKEROkay, I just figured you must have done that.

52:33SPEAKER- No, no, no, I didn't have a PlayStation.

52:35SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, no.

52:36SPEAKERIt was just a chip that you bought online.

52:37SPEAKERIt was like a little four.

52:39SPEAKERI think you soldered it to four points

52:40SPEAKERon the motherboard or something like that.

52:42SPEAKER- Was it like a CMOS chip with the things on either side?

52:44SPEAKER- I'm not sure.

52:46SPEAKERNo, no, no, it was a...

52:47SPEAKERAnd I'm not sure of the terminology.

52:49SPEAKERIt was kind of a free floating chip with wires sticking out.

52:52SPEAKERThey generally came wrapped in electrical tape.

52:54SPEAKERSo I don't think I ever pulled the tape off

52:56SPEAKERand examined the chip too closely.

52:58SPEAKER- Oh my God.

52:58SPEAKER- Which in retrospect,

53:00SPEAKERmaybe soldering a chip onto the electronic device

53:02SPEAKERwithout knowing what it does is a questionable decision.

53:05SPEAKER- Look, you're on a list now, Brad.

53:06SPEAKER- Yeah, it was super easy to just look up online

53:09SPEAKERwhat to do and figure it out myself.

53:11SPEAKERMy crowning achievement, A, was learning to solder

53:15SPEAKERand getting those things to work and boot

53:16SPEAKERand play the games and everything properly.

53:19SPEAKERBut the last one I ever did was the last PlayStation I bought

53:22SPEAKER'cause those things failed a lot

53:23SPEAKERand I kept having to buy new ones.

53:25SPEAKERI bought a little rocker switch at Radio Shack

53:29SPEAKERand wired that switch into, I think,

53:31SPEAKERthe ground wire on the chip.

53:32SPEAKER- So you could turn it off?

53:34SPEAKER- Drilled out a little spot on the back of the PlayStation

53:36SPEAKERand mounted the switch and they're all nice.

53:37SPEAKERSo you could turn the mod chip on and off.

53:40SPEAKER- Wow. - I was very proud.

53:41SPEAKERI was very proud.

53:43SPEAKERI took apart one of my friends in college's computer

53:47SPEAKERbefore I knew how to build a computer,

53:48SPEAKERbefore I built my first computer

53:50SPEAKER'cause he was having some problems

53:51SPEAKERand needed a fan replaced and I swapped that out.

53:54SPEAKERI took apart the toaster when I was about 12.

53:56SPEAKER- Okay, now we're talking.

53:58SPEAKER- Yeah, because it needed to be completely disassembled

54:01SPEAKERto be cleaned and I got it back together,

54:03SPEAKERbut it was a little hairy.

54:05SPEAKER- Nobody got electrocuted though?

54:06SPEAKER- The first hard thing I took apart

54:09SPEAKERthat wasn't like a laptop or a PC

54:11SPEAKERwas probably a GBA to put the light mod in it.

54:14SPEAKER- Okay.

54:15SPEAKER- You know, the backlight?

54:16SPEAKER'Cause remember the GBA launched with no backlight

54:18SPEAKERand I paid 60 bucks for a kit from someplace

54:22SPEAKERand pried the thing apart and put it in there

54:25SPEAKERand got a shitload of lint in there.

54:27SPEAKERSo I always was able to see the lint and yeah.

54:29SPEAKER- Was that the afterburner?

54:31SPEAKER- That was the afterburner, I think, yeah.

54:32SPEAKERYou had to carve out a little bit of,

54:36SPEAKERI had a Dremel at that point,

54:37SPEAKERso I had to carve out a little bit of the plastic

54:39SPEAKERto get it to fit, I think.

54:40SPEAKER- Sure.

54:41SPEAKERWhat was the most recent one?

54:42SPEAKER- I'm trying to think of the most recent example

54:44SPEAKERI can think of that's like outside of my kind of

54:45SPEAKERnormal domain of experience was my AV receiver.

54:50SPEAKER- Wow.

54:51SPEAKER- It's not worth getting into what I had to replace,

54:53SPEAKERbut I had to order a new front panel for it

54:54SPEAKERand a couple of other parts that got damaged.

54:57SPEAKER- Wow.

54:58SPEAKER- For a variety of reasons, but,

55:00SPEAKERso I didn't pull like every circuit board out of that thing

55:02SPEAKERand I certainly didn't touch the transformer

55:04SPEAKERor any of the electrical stuff.

55:06SPEAKERI was very careful in there,

55:07SPEAKERbut I did get a good look at what the inside

55:10SPEAKERof my AV receiver looked like.

55:12SPEAKERAnd it's like, oh, there's the little board

55:14SPEAKERwith all the HDMI ports on it and there's that.

55:17SPEAKERLike I was kind of able to get a good sense of like,

55:19SPEAKERoh, you know, on some level,

55:20SPEAKERthis is just a different type of computer

55:21SPEAKERthat mostly just processes audio and video signals.

55:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:25SPEAKER- But that felt good to like go on the

55:27SPEAKERkind of Sony repair parts, you know,

55:29SPEAKERwhatever super dry gray beard electrical supply part

55:33SPEAKERreseller website I ended up on and order the right parts

55:36SPEAKERand put that stuff back together.

55:38SPEAKERThat was fun.

55:39SPEAKER- My all time favorite of that kind of hack

55:42SPEAKERwas probably the TiVo hard drive hack.

55:44SPEAKER- Okay, you could put a bigger hard drive in, right?

55:47SPEAKER- Oh dude, but do you know how it worked?

55:49SPEAKERIt's so good.

55:50SPEAKERSo in the old days, like when the TiVo came out

55:54SPEAKERin like 2007 or 2008 or something like that,

55:57SPEAKERGina bought one cause she's like,

55:58SPEAKERthis thing is, one of her friends had one.

56:00SPEAKERShe was like, this thing is incredible.

56:01SPEAKERYou got to see this.

56:02SPEAKERAnd she, it's the first consumer electronics

56:03SPEAKERshe ever was excited about and was like,

56:05SPEAKERwent to Best Buy and picked out and brought home.

56:08SPEAKERAnd it was, I think a 14 gig drive in there

56:13SPEAKERand it used MPEG2 video.

56:14SPEAKERSo it was good for like three or four hours of recording.

56:16SPEAKER- Right.

56:17SPEAKER- And we use that TiVo for ages.

56:18SPEAKERI paid for the lifetime service, the whole thing on it.

56:21SPEAKERAnd when we moved to California, multiple,

56:24SPEAKERlike a hundred gig drives were starting to get cheap

56:27SPEAKERor maybe probably a hundred gig drives.

56:30SPEAKERSo the way the hack worked was you had to boot into Linux.

56:34SPEAKERYou put the drive in and you had to do this thing

56:37SPEAKERand it was called blessing the drive,

56:39SPEAKERwhich basically was just writing some shit

56:42SPEAKERto the beginning of the hard drive that told the TiVo

56:44SPEAKERthat it was a drive and how big it was.

56:47SPEAKERAnd then you put in the TiVo

56:47SPEAKERand the TiVo did all the formatting and stuff.

56:50SPEAKERAnd once you had done that,

56:51SPEAKERthen you could do any drive up to the size

56:54SPEAKERthat the drive controller on the TiVo could understand.

56:57SPEAKER- Wow.

56:58SPEAKER- Which was maybe it was a 30, I don't remember.

57:00SPEAKERIt was, the limit was an LBA limit on that first TiVo.

57:04SPEAKERSo like you couldn't make it bigger

57:06SPEAKERthan a certain amount of gigs,

57:07SPEAKEReven if it was a bigger drive.

57:09SPEAKERAnd it was always terrifying because if you mess that up,

57:13SPEAKERthen you would bless your boot drive in your PC.

57:18SPEAKER- Yes, sure.

57:19SPEAKER- And that would have some bad effects.

57:20SPEAKER- Yes, I'm sure.

57:22SPEAKER- But it was, the people who came up with that,

57:24SPEAKERit was a lovely hack.

57:25SPEAKERAnd of course at this point, I'm sure for a long time,

57:27SPEAKERthey would just, like the people who were good at

57:29SPEAKERwould just sell drives that were pre-blessed.

57:31SPEAKER- Sure.

57:32SPEAKER- And you like, you would get it, you plug it in,

57:33SPEAKERyou could, it mattered whether it was the first drive

57:35SPEAKERin the system or the second drive in the system.

57:37SPEAKERThere was a whole series of processes,

57:39SPEAKERbut it was a, it was a cool, that was a cool thing.

57:42SPEAKER- How good did that feel when you got that working?

57:44SPEAKERDid you feel like you got away with something?

57:46SPEAKERBecause that's how I typically feel.

57:47SPEAKER- You always feel like you're stealing something.

57:49SPEAKER- I have got, I have got a passion for subverting overpriced,

57:53SPEAKERlike integrated add-on stuff like that

57:54SPEAKERby finding ways to DIY it.

57:57SPEAKER- Well, on that one, you couldn't,

57:59SPEAKERlike you could bless a drive that would make it way bigger

58:02SPEAKERthan any of the existing drives

58:04SPEAKERthat TiVo actually sold in their machines.

58:07SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

58:07SPEAKER- So you could have like 200 hours of video storage

58:09SPEAKERon that thing, it was amazing.

58:11SPEAKER- I did that, I don't know if you ever did this,

58:12SPEAKERI did something similar with the Xbox 360 hard drive add-on.

58:15SPEAKER'Cause you remember how it was modular,

58:16SPEAKERit just plugged into the side.

58:17SPEAKERLike even the drives, I mean, even the consoles

58:19SPEAKERthat came with the drive in the box,

58:21SPEAKERit was still a, technically a separate piece

58:23SPEAKERthat could be attached. - Yeah, you chunked it

58:24SPEAKERinto the top, it made a good click.

58:26SPEAKER- And I think, I wanna say when it launched,

58:27SPEAKER20 gig was the only hard drive size.

58:29SPEAKER- I thought it was 14 or 10, it was small.

58:31SPEAKER- It was small, but like, you know, over time,

58:33SPEAKERthey rolled out like 120 gig model

58:34SPEAKERand then a 250 gig and stuff.

58:36SPEAKERAnd instead of going out and buying

58:38SPEAKERthe overpriced new drive in the new enclosure,

58:40SPEAKERI just busted the old one open.

58:41SPEAKERAnd there was a very similar process

58:43SPEAKERof you could just buy an aftermarket laptop drive

58:45SPEAKERand plug it into your PC.

58:46SPEAKERAnd then you had to run some Microsoft stuff on it

58:48SPEAKERto similarly basically bless the drive.

58:51SPEAKER- Could you copy your old saves and stuff over?

58:54SPEAKERDid you have to back them up to USB or something?

58:57SPEAKER- I don't know if I ever bothered

58:58SPEAKERor if anybody ever bothered because it was easy enough

58:59SPEAKERto just back those up to like a memory card or USB stick.

59:02SPEAKER- Yeah, you could extract those easily enough.

59:06SPEAKERSo I think I just did the bare drive,

59:07SPEAKERbut like, you know, again,

59:08SPEAKERI just kind of cracked that little plugin module open

59:11SPEAKERand, you know, stuck the modded new hard drive in there

59:14SPEAKERand off to the races.

59:15SPEAKER- As I was setting up my daughter's switch

59:18SPEAKERand I was putting just 128 gig micro SD card into it,

59:22SPEAKERI was like, that was $20 or something.

59:24SPEAKERI was like, wow, this is, it's incredible to me still,

59:28SPEAKERthat this thing that's smaller than my pinky fingernail.

59:31SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

59:32SPEAKER- Holds 128 gigs of data, anyway.

59:34SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

59:36SPEAKERLast thing I'll mention, not that it's super related,

59:38SPEAKERbut did I ever tell you that I turned my 360 Skyrim save

59:42SPEAKERinto a PC Skyrim save?

59:44SPEAKER- Yeah, we talked about this.

59:45SPEAKER- Did we talk about that?

59:46SPEAKEROkay, okay.

59:47SPEAKER- I feel like we talked about it on a tested podcast

59:48SPEAKERyears ago, but it's a good thing.

59:50SPEAKERIt was a cool process.

59:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it was related to the fact

59:54SPEAKERthat they let you start copying save games

59:56SPEAKERover to your own USB stick.

59:57SPEAKER'Cause in the early days,

59:58SPEAKERthey sold those proprietary memory cards.

1:00:00SPEAKER- Yeah, and that was the only way the 360 OS

1:00:02SPEAKERwould let you get those saves off.

1:00:04SPEAKER- Goofy.

1:00:05SPEAKER- But you know, yeah, at some point they relented

1:00:06SPEAKERand let you just start formatting your own USB sticks,

1:00:08SPEAKERwhich immediately led to people writing homebrew utilities

1:00:11SPEAKERto unpack those save files and get data out of them.

1:00:14SPEAKER- You could do that for Mass Effect too, as I recall.

1:00:16SPEAKER- Yeah, and it turned out inside whatever 360 wrapper

1:00:19SPEAKERthat they had to embed that Skyrim save in,

1:00:21SPEAKERit was just the exact same save file format

1:00:22SPEAKERthat was used on the PC.

1:00:24SPEAKERSo I just unpacked that thing

1:00:25SPEAKERand put that save in my Skyrim directory on PC.

1:00:28SPEAKERThere it went.

1:00:31SPEAKER- It's amazing to me.

1:00:32SPEAKERWhat was it, I saw a game the other day.

1:00:34SPEAKERIs it The Witcher that will pull your PC save

1:00:36SPEAKERonto the Switch now?

1:00:37SPEAKER- Yeah, and that's actual Steam integration.

1:00:39SPEAKERIf I understand correctly, I should try it just to do it.

1:00:42SPEAKERBut my understanding is you sign into your Steam account

1:00:46SPEAKERon the Switch in The Witcher for Switch.

1:00:49SPEAKER- That's bananas.

1:00:50SPEAKER- And it ties into your Steam cloud support

1:00:52SPEAKERand just pulls your Steam saves.

1:00:54SPEAKER- Will it send it back up too?

1:00:55SPEAKEROr do you know?

1:00:56SPEAKER- I believe it does.

1:00:57SPEAKERI wanna say that I read that it does sync both ways.

1:00:59SPEAKER- Man, that is all I ever wanted in a handheld.

1:01:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's incredible.

1:01:03SPEAKERAnd CD Projekt seems so sort of customer focused

1:01:07SPEAKERthat they would do something like that,

1:01:08SPEAKERwhich you wouldn't expect from a lot of developers

1:01:11SPEAKERwithout monetizing it.

1:01:12SPEAKERBut all right. - That's awesome.

1:01:15SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that's fun stuff.

1:01:18SPEAKER- You wanna do one or two more?

1:01:19SPEAKER- Yeah, should we move into the final stage of the show?

1:01:23SPEAKER- Yeah, so before we move on. - You wanna disclaim it?

1:01:26SPEAKER- Yeah, before we move on,

1:01:26SPEAKERwe wanna let people know.

1:01:28SPEAKERWe have heard people say that they don't,

1:01:30SPEAKERit's nice to have podcasts where you don't talk

1:01:32SPEAKERabout coronavirus or COVID-19 all the time.

1:01:36SPEAKERSo from this point on,

1:01:36SPEAKERwe have a couple of coronavirus adjacent questions.

1:01:41SPEAKERThere's nothing scary or bad.

1:01:42SPEAKERIt's just like questions about face ID and masks

1:01:46SPEAKERand voice chat and stuff like that.

1:01:48SPEAKERBut this is your content warning.

1:01:50SPEAKERSo from this point on,

1:01:51SPEAKERwe are going to talk about some coronavirus adjacent things.

1:01:55SPEAKER- Yeah, nothing too frightening though.

1:01:59SPEAKERHere's one from Martin in Sweden.

1:02:01SPEAKERAs everybody is affected by COVID-19

1:02:03SPEAKERand many can need to connect online to family and friends,

1:02:07SPEAKERtips for gear to older people in specific would be great.

1:02:11SPEAKERMy mom and dad use Facebook Messenger on the phone

1:02:14SPEAKERto call us and a mirror the screen to their Chromecast

1:02:17SPEAKERon the TV for better visibility.

1:02:19SPEAKERWould a Bluetooth conference mic or speaker

1:02:22SPEAKERor an speaker rather be a good investment

1:02:25SPEAKERto increase the quality of their call?

1:02:27SPEAKERIs Skype or Zoom a better choice than Messenger?

1:02:30SPEAKERAny tips would be appreciated.

1:02:32SPEAKER- We have done this, my parents live far away

1:02:35SPEAKERand often on like Christmas morning,

1:02:38SPEAKERwe'll FaceTime them and then put the FaceTime up on the TV

1:02:41SPEAKERusing the Apple TV AirPlay stuff.

1:02:44SPEAKERIt's not a great experience.

1:02:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:47SPEAKER- So if you've listened to the podcast for a while,

1:02:50SPEAKERyou know that we don't generally advocate signing up

1:02:53SPEAKERfor new Facebook services but since your parents

1:02:55SPEAKERare already there and seem pretty comfortable

1:02:57SPEAKERand that's the thing they like to use,

1:02:59SPEAKERFacebook actually sells a line of products

1:03:02SPEAKERthat are designed for home video conferencing

1:03:04SPEAKERto make it easier.

1:03:05SPEAKERYou may not be able to get them now

1:03:06SPEAKERbecause anything with a camera on it

1:03:09SPEAKERseems to be in really short supply.

1:03:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah there's a great crisis

1:03:14SPEAKERof webcam availability going on right now apparently.

1:03:18SPEAKER- But so the products you want are called

1:03:20SPEAKERthe Facebook portal, the portal mini and the portal TV.

1:03:24SPEAKERThe portal and portal mini are just smart screens

1:03:26SPEAKERwith cameras on them that tie into

1:03:27SPEAKERthe Facebook messengers video calls.

1:03:30SPEAKERThe portal TV is a like, it looks like the connect kind of,

1:03:33SPEAKERit's like a big wide camera

1:03:34SPEAKERwith a bunch of microphones on it

1:03:35SPEAKERthat you sit on bot on the bottom above or below your TV

1:03:39SPEAKERand it basically turns your TV

1:03:40SPEAKERinto a giant video calling window.

1:03:45SPEAKERThere are similar products from other things.

1:03:47SPEAKERI think those are probably the most consumer oriented ones.

1:03:52SPEAKER- The thing you said a second ago

1:03:53SPEAKERactually goes to the heart of this matter for me

1:03:56SPEAKERwhich is to just let people use what they wanna use

1:03:59SPEAKERand are comfortable with.

1:04:00SPEAKERLike I tried for years to get my parents to kind of,

1:04:03SPEAKERsome of the stuff you talk about like,

1:04:05SPEAKERlike oh what is, if you AirPlay your iPad to the TV

1:04:07SPEAKERyou'll see me bigger or oh if you Skype on this Xbox

1:04:11SPEAKERinstead of using your iPad this will be easier

1:04:13SPEAKERbut like it's never actually worth the hassle,

1:04:16SPEAKERit's just confusing, confusing for people

1:04:18SPEAKERthat don't like live and breathe this stuff.

1:04:20SPEAKERIt's just, it's never worth it.

1:04:22SPEAKERSo we just kind of, we've regressed back to

1:04:24SPEAKERjust like they hold their iPhone up or their iPad

1:04:26SPEAKERon the table at a cockeyed angle

1:04:28SPEAKERwhere I can barely see the top half of their face

1:04:31SPEAKERor whatever but it's like whatever.

1:04:33SPEAKERJust getting it to work expeditiously

1:04:35SPEAKERand just communicating is much more important

1:04:37SPEAKERthan actually like trying to maximize everybody's AV quality.

1:04:41SPEAKER- One of the things like look, yeah part of our role

1:04:44SPEAKERas the young people in these relationships

1:04:46SPEAKERis to sacrifice our experience

1:04:47SPEAKERso that they can have a better one.

1:04:49SPEAKERMy dad insists on buying these huge folio cases

1:04:54SPEAKERfor his iPad that are, I guarantee you not licensed cases

1:05:00SPEAKERso they don't have the holes in the right places

1:05:02SPEAKERfor the microphone so there's always some shit

1:05:04SPEAKERrubbing on one of the microphones

1:05:05SPEAKERwhich makes all the noise canceling stuff stop working.

1:05:09SPEAKERWe just, my daughter just goes,

1:05:12SPEAKERPap has a terrible, terrible microphone.

1:05:17SPEAKEROh that Pap.

1:05:20SPEAKERHere's one more email from Adam.

1:05:22SPEAKERAnd I think we've touched on this before

1:05:24SPEAKERso we can kind of maybe update on this topic a little bit.

1:05:27SPEAKERIn this new age of mask wearing we find ourselves in,

1:05:30SPEAKERwhat does this mean for users using Face ID?

1:05:33SPEAKERI'm hearing mixed results on if it works or not

1:05:35SPEAKERbut given that we're in this for a while,

1:05:37SPEAKERwhat are alternatives or other things

1:05:39SPEAKERthat might make it work better?

1:05:41SPEAKERI might just be clueless as I sit here

1:05:42SPEAKERwith my notchless iPhone 8.

1:05:44SPEAKERSo my friend Danielle Baskin who is an artist

1:05:47SPEAKERand tech person in the Bay Area launched a product

1:05:51SPEAKERkind of, I say kind of because she started it as a goof

1:05:58SPEAKERand then it kind of became a thing.

1:06:01SPEAKERYeah and I think we talked about this a few weeks ago

1:06:03SPEAKERwhen it first happened. We did.

1:06:04SPEAKERVery briefly. We did.

1:06:05SPEAKERSo she has a site called faceidmasks.com.

1:06:09SPEAKERYou send her a picture, sign up

1:06:12SPEAKERand she will send you a mask back

1:06:15SPEAKERwhen they're in production with your face on it

1:06:17SPEAKERthat's contoured in such a way

1:06:18SPEAKERthat it should work with Face ID,

1:06:20SPEAKERat least in her tests up until this point they've worked.

1:06:23SPEAKERAnd there you go, it's faceidmasks.com.

1:06:28SPEAKERAs she says, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you,

1:06:30SPEAKERshe says, "How can I get one?"

1:06:32SPEAKERShe said, "If you enjoy late stage capitalism,

1:06:34SPEAKER"facial recognition, respirator masks

1:06:36SPEAKER"will retail for $40 per mask.

1:06:38SPEAKER"They are still in development.

1:06:40SPEAKER"We will not be making these while there is still

1:06:42SPEAKER"a global mask shortage."

1:06:44SPEAKERSo there you go.

1:06:45SPEAKER- Sure, that's good, that's good to hear.

1:06:47SPEAKER- I also want to read the,

1:06:47SPEAKER"Is this a joke?" section of the website.

1:06:50SPEAKER"Is this a joke? Yes, period.

1:06:52SPEAKER"No, period.

1:06:53SPEAKER"We're not sure.

1:06:54SPEAKER"Viruses are not a joke.

1:06:55SPEAKER"Wash your hands when you can.

1:06:56SPEAKER"Get vaccines when you can."

1:06:58SPEAKERSo yes.

1:06:59SPEAKER- That's good advice.

1:07:00SPEAKER- She's not taking anyone's money

1:07:01SPEAKERbut you can sign up for the list

1:07:02SPEAKERif you want to sign up for one when she sells it.

1:07:05SPEAKER- To touch on this question a little more broadly,

1:07:09SPEAKERobviously this pandemic is not gonna last forever

1:07:11SPEAKERor at least not be as severe as it is forever.

1:07:15SPEAKERBut there is the idea that masks, for example,

1:07:18SPEAKERare culturally very accepted in Asia already

1:07:20SPEAKERand very common.

1:07:21SPEAKERAnd you've seen the idea that, oh,

1:07:23SPEAKERmaybe that cultural shift will also occur over here.

1:07:26SPEAKERSo provided that we do move into a more mask-heavy future,

1:07:31SPEAKERcan you think of any other sort of biometric options

1:07:33SPEAKERbesides facial recognition

1:07:34SPEAKERthat might become commonplace in phones?

1:07:37SPEAKER- Iris scanning, retina scans, DNA swabs.

1:07:42SPEAKERLet's think about this.

1:07:44SPEAKERWhat if there's a little sensor on the front of your phone

1:07:46SPEAKERthat you have to lick

1:07:47SPEAKERevery time you want to log into your phone?

1:07:49SPEAKER- Yeah, oh man, that thing's filthy already.

1:07:52SPEAKER- What if you embed an NFC chip in your fingertip

1:07:57SPEAKERand you have to touch your fingertip to the NFC sensor

1:07:59SPEAKERon the back of the phone to unlock it?

1:08:02SPEAKER- So we all have to become cyborgs?

1:08:03SPEAKER- I mean, look, it's time to embrace your future, Brad.

1:08:07SPEAKERYou can't go outside without a mask.

1:08:08SPEAKER- Transhumanism is here.

1:08:10SPEAKERIt's time to become more.

1:08:11SPEAKER- My mask project is gonna be putting a bunch of IR LEDs

1:08:15SPEAKERunder the mask

1:08:16SPEAKERso it blows out all the facial recognition cameras.

1:08:18SPEAKER- That's pretty good.

1:08:19SPEAKER- And yeah.

1:08:20SPEAKER- That's some good like digital anarchism.

1:08:24SPEAKER- I mean, on the plus side,

1:08:25SPEAKERif we do get into a place

1:08:27SPEAKERwhere everybody's wearing masks all the time

1:08:28SPEAKERand you kind of want to

1:08:29SPEAKERand it's socially acceptable and all that,

1:08:31SPEAKERit means that like face-tracking stuff

1:08:34SPEAKERis going to have real problems, which is great.

1:08:36SPEAKERI think that's a good thing for society, so.

1:08:39SPEAKER- Sure, that's a good point.

1:08:40SPEAKER- It's not all bad.

1:08:42SPEAKER- Yes, perhaps not.

1:08:44SPEAKER- Shaved my beard.

1:08:47SPEAKER- I can't help mentioning this real quick

1:08:49SPEAKERjust because he said iPhone 8.

1:08:51SPEAKER- Yes.

1:08:52SPEAKER- I'm thinking really hard about trading in my iPhone 8

1:08:54SPEAKERfor an iPhone SE2.

1:08:56SPEAKERTell me how stupid that is.

1:08:57SPEAKERI know exactly how stupid that is.

1:08:58SPEAKER- The 8 for the SE?

1:08:59SPEAKER- It's practically the same phone.

1:09:01SPEAKERIt's practically the same phone.

1:09:02SPEAKER- But the processors, the 13X is hella fast.

1:09:06SPEAKER- It is much faster, yes.

1:09:07SPEAKERThe CPU is the difference.

1:09:09SPEAKERI guess it's got another gig of RAM in it,

1:09:10SPEAKERif you know, so that kind of matters as well.

1:09:12SPEAKER- RAM doesn't matter that much on iOS.

1:09:14SPEAKER- I know, but the iPhone 8 already has an A11 in it.

1:09:17SPEAKERIt's not like it's a slow phone.

1:09:18SPEAKERLike I can't complain about the performance

1:09:20SPEAKERin real world situations.

1:09:21SPEAKER- Did the 8 come out the year the 10 came out?

1:09:23SPEAKERIt did, right?

1:09:24SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

1:09:25SPEAKER- So you and I have the same age phone

1:09:26SPEAKERwith more or less the same processor, I think.

1:09:28SPEAKER- If you have a 10, then we have the same processor.

1:09:30SPEAKERIt's just that mine looks like the 6, you know,

1:09:32SPEAKERit's that form factor with the touch ID and that whole thing.

1:09:35SPEAKER- I'm holding out for the 12

1:09:37SPEAKERis when I'm gonna upgrade probably.

1:09:38SPEAKER- That's probably what I should do.

1:09:40SPEAKERWell, the SE2 is so cheap.

1:09:41SPEAKER- It's like 500 bucks, right?

1:09:42SPEAKER- Okay, it's 549 is the biggest one you can get.

1:09:46SPEAKERI think the, I think 399 is the big one.

1:09:49SPEAKER- What's the big one, 128, 256?

1:09:52SPEAKER- 256 for 549, and I can get enough trade-in credit

1:09:55SPEAKERto knock that down significantly.

1:09:59SPEAKER- I wish that they'd put a slightly better camera on it.

1:10:01SPEAKERThat's the only thing that bums me out.

1:10:03SPEAKER- Well, so I don't know if maybe the optics aren't better,

1:10:06SPEAKERbut maybe it's that the processing is sufficient

1:10:08SPEAKERto do some of the better tricks.

1:10:10SPEAKER- Does it have all this stuff to do with AR?

1:10:11SPEAKERDoes it have a wide angle?

1:10:12SPEAKER- It does have, I'm not so sure.

1:10:16SPEAKERI wanna say it's got the same lenses and stuff as an 8.

1:10:20SPEAKERLike if you go down the list, it's like same screen,

1:10:22SPEAKERsame chassis, same optics, same almost everything

1:10:25SPEAKERexcept CPU and memory and like one other thing.

1:10:27SPEAKER- So the scuttlebutt I hear from friends who would know,

1:10:33SPEAKERis that there's going to be something cool coming

1:10:36SPEAKERwith the next iPhone in terms of like all the features

1:10:40SPEAKERthat give you things that you don't have currently.

1:10:44SPEAKER- Okay, is one of those things not having a notch?

1:10:47SPEAKER- I don't know, I'm talking about something

1:10:49SPEAKERthat's real and matters.

1:10:51SPEAKER- Damn it.

1:10:54SPEAKEROkay, well, either way, it sounds like I should wait

1:10:56SPEAKERtill September and not just go get a new phone

1:10:59SPEAKERthat is almost exactly like my old phone.

1:11:00SPEAKER- I feel like this phone is for people

1:11:01SPEAKERwho have one of those SEs, the five.

1:11:05SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, if you're on the old SE

1:11:07SPEAKERor like an iPhone 6 or something

1:11:08SPEAKERand you like that form factor,

1:11:09SPEAKERlike if I hadn't already bought this iPhone 8,

1:11:11SPEAKERI would rush out and get one of these right now.

1:11:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I think sometimes you have to decide,

1:11:17SPEAKERplus how often are you really on your phone right now?

1:11:19SPEAKERYou're in your house all the time, you got a big PC.

1:11:21SPEAKER- Right now, so much.

1:11:24SPEAKER- Look, if you think you're going anywhere before September,

1:11:26SPEAKERthen hopefully you're right, I don't know.

1:11:32SPEAKER- My phone is pretty much a controller

1:11:34SPEAKERfor the little LED light strip

1:11:35SPEAKERthat I have mounted behind my desk right now.

1:11:37SPEAKERSo yeah, you're probably right about that.

1:11:42SPEAKER- I think that's as good, you got one more?

1:11:45SPEAKER- Well, no, not another email.

1:11:46SPEAKERI was gonna mention, since you brought up swabs,

1:11:48SPEAKERI don't know if you wanna talk about that whole thing.

1:11:49SPEAKER- Oh yeah, you got swabbed, how was it?

1:11:51SPEAKERIt sounded horrible.

1:11:52SPEAKER- I got the COVID-19 test, if you wanna talk to me.

1:11:55SPEAKERI don't know how tech related that is.

1:11:58SPEAKERWell, it was yesterday, so I can't tell you just yet, no.

1:12:01SPEAKER- Do you have results yet?

1:12:02SPEAKEROr are you still Schrodinger?

1:12:04SPEAKERYou may or may not have COVID-19

1:12:07SPEAKERand we won't know until you--

1:12:08SPEAKER- I have no reasonable expectation that I have it.

1:12:11SPEAKERThis was pre-op screening for a sinus procedure.

1:12:16SPEAKERUnrelated, but because it's a respiratory thing,

1:12:21SPEAKERif I have the virus, it's bad for the people

1:12:22SPEAKERthat are treating my sinus issue.

1:12:25SPEAKER- Nobody wants to be in the room

1:12:27SPEAKERwhile they ream it out your nose.

1:12:29SPEAKER- Yes, I'm not symptomatic.

1:12:31SPEAKERI don't have any reasonable expectation that I have it,

1:12:33SPEAKERbut they have to be sure before they can treat me

1:12:35SPEAKERfor this other nose thing.

1:12:35SPEAKER- That makes sense.

1:12:37SPEAKERSo what was the process like?

1:12:38SPEAKERYou went to the, did you go to a drive-through clinic

1:12:41SPEAKERor something?

1:12:43SPEAKER- I went to an urgent care,

1:12:43SPEAKERwhich is what my doctor recommended.

1:12:46SPEAKERThankfully, I didn't have to deal with the process

1:12:48SPEAKERof calling somebody and convincing them to test me,

1:12:50SPEAKERwhich sounds like it's still pretty arduous

1:12:53SPEAKERfor a lot of people.

1:12:54SPEAKERThankfully, I just had doctor's orders, so I just did it.

1:12:56SPEAKER- So you went to an urgent quick care

1:12:58SPEAKERin the network for your doctor and--

1:13:00SPEAKER- Well, he recommended one he had spoken to

1:13:02SPEAKERthat would be willing to do it.

1:13:05SPEAKERI'd almost want to talk more about the scene

1:13:07SPEAKERat the urgent care than I do the actual test,

1:13:09SPEAKERwhich is like fairly uneventful.

1:13:11SPEAKER- Before we, yes, agreed.

1:13:13SPEAKERBut what was the test like?

1:13:14SPEAKERI've heard that it's horrible.

1:13:17SPEAKER- So I had also been led to expect it to be horrible.

1:13:20SPEAKERAnd I'm gonna say it's significantly less than horrible.

1:13:23SPEAKER- How long was the thing they jammed up your nose?

1:13:24SPEAKER- It's not pleasant.

1:13:25SPEAKERIt was up there for probably 10 seconds.

1:13:27SPEAKER- But it was like, have you had a flu test

1:13:29SPEAKERwhere they do that too?

1:13:30SPEAKER- I don't think I've ever had a flu test.

1:13:32SPEAKERIt could very well be the exact same thing for all I know.

1:13:35SPEAKER- So the flu test, they jam a thing

1:13:37SPEAKERthat looks kind of like a pipe cleaner

1:13:38SPEAKERon a stick up your nose and rain it around for a minute

1:13:40SPEAKERand then pull it back out.

1:13:41SPEAKER- That's what it was.

1:13:42SPEAKERThat was the biggest surprise to me

1:13:43SPEAKERwas that I expected just an extra long Q-tip,

1:13:46SPEAKERcotton swab type thing.

1:13:47SPEAKERAnd it was not that.

1:13:48SPEAKERIt was a, like you said, it was a very thin spindly,

1:13:51SPEAKERlike plastic abrasive pipe cleaner-y looking kind of thing.

1:13:54SPEAKER- It feels real weird. - It was like sharp.

1:13:56SPEAKERIt's not pleasant, but it's not like,

1:13:58SPEAKERI didn't, I expected it to be much worse

1:14:00SPEAKERbased on what I had heard about it than it actually was.

1:14:02SPEAKERI will say the only actual really,

1:14:05SPEAKERI mean, it was not comfortable,

1:14:06SPEAKERbut the only really bad thing about the test itself

1:14:09SPEAKERwas suppressing the urge to sneeze

1:14:11SPEAKERthe whole time it was up there,

1:14:13SPEAKER'cause I was fucking dying to sneeze.

1:14:15SPEAKER- I'm sure they would love that.

1:14:16SPEAKERThat's what, that's what-

1:14:17SPEAKER- She was like, she was like, "Oh, are you okay?

1:14:19SPEAKERDoes it hurt?"

1:14:20SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yeah, I'm just trying."

1:14:21SPEAKER'Cause you know, it's very awkward

1:14:23SPEAKERto have this person granted in a borderline hazmat suit

1:14:26SPEAKERstanding right in front of me

1:14:27SPEAKERthat I am trying not to sneeze on.

1:14:29SPEAKERSo as soon as she pulled it out, I had to turn around.

1:14:31SPEAKERAlso, we were in the back alley.

1:14:32SPEAKERShe took me out in the back alley to swab me.

1:14:34SPEAKER- You literally got a back alley COVID-19 test?

1:14:37SPEAKER- Well, the facility itself was extremely modern

1:14:39SPEAKERand nice and upscale and very well kept

1:14:42SPEAKERand we'll get into that.

1:14:43SPEAKERBut for the actual swabbing process,

1:14:45SPEAKERthey took me out at the back alley,

1:14:47SPEAKERwhich I can't blame them for.

1:14:48SPEAKER- Wow, okay.

1:14:50SPEAKER- Yeah. - Okay, so tell me a tale,

1:14:52SPEAKERBrad, tell me of the urgent care center.

1:14:56SPEAKER- What was actually the most fascinating part to me