327: Two Hours of War

00:00SPEAKER- Brad, I got bad news.

00:01SPEAKER- Again?

00:03SPEAKER- Wait, what was the first one?

00:05SPEAKER- We could catalog it week by week at this point, I think.

00:09SPEAKER- Well, okay, this is minor.

00:10SPEAKER- Okay, not your bad news, to be clear.

00:12SPEAKERJust somebody having bad news.

00:14SPEAKERLike the general amount of bad news

00:16SPEAKERfloating around seems significant.

00:19SPEAKER- Yeah, there is, I think, more bad news these days

00:22SPEAKERthan I generally like.

00:24SPEAKERBut the bad news this time is pretty minor.

00:28SPEAKEROne of the first things I used nanotape for

00:32SPEAKERfailed me this week.

00:34SPEAKER- Well, considering how long we've been talking

00:35SPEAKERabout nanotape, that seems like a pretty good track record.

00:37SPEAKER- Yeah, so I have some audio stuff

00:39SPEAKERthat's stuck up underneath my desk

00:40SPEAKERwith a couple of strips of nanotape.

00:42SPEAKERIt's probably five years old at this point,

00:45SPEAKERfour and a half years old at this point.

00:46SPEAKERAnd they let loose yesterday night

00:49SPEAKERand made a really big loud crashing noise,

00:51SPEAKERyanked some cables out.

00:53SPEAKERIt was a little scary 'cause I didn't know

00:55SPEAKERwhat it was that fell and yeah,

00:58SPEAKERthe nanotape was evenly split between the box

01:02SPEAKERthat goes with my headphones and the table up underneath.

01:07SPEAKERSo I had to kind of wedge it off

01:09SPEAKERand put more nanotape on there.

01:11SPEAKER- Don't you love the non-script crashing sound

01:13SPEAKERfrom another room?

01:15SPEAKER- It's the worst.

01:16SPEAKER- I had one of those yesterday

01:17SPEAKERand never figured out what it was.

01:18SPEAKER- Oh no, no, no, you can't--

01:20SPEAKER- I heard something fall, still couldn't tell you.

01:23SPEAKERWe used to have a shower rod

01:26SPEAKERthat would slide down occasionally.

01:28SPEAKERAnd that one was one that you could immediately tell

01:30SPEAKER'cause it's like a crinkle, crinkle, crinkle

01:32SPEAKERand then a bunch of clinks from the rod slidey things

01:36SPEAKERhitting the metal and then dropping.

01:38SPEAKERThe worst one ever was when I was in this house

01:42SPEAKERin Tennessee and somebody had put the shelves

01:45SPEAKERin one of the closets in the bedroom in the wrong,

01:48SPEAKERlike they put them,

01:49SPEAKERthey didn't put the supports into studs,

01:51SPEAKERthey just put them into like mollies in the drywall.

01:54SPEAKERAnd one of the mollies gave way

01:56SPEAKERand then an entire like wire or shelving unit rack

02:00SPEAKERthat was screwed into the walls inside this closet

02:02SPEAKERjust came like cascading down.

02:05SPEAKERIt was like one of those engineering videos,

02:08SPEAKERbut it was in the closet

02:09SPEAKERand it made a truly horrific mess

02:12SPEAKERand got like drywall gypsum dust all over all the clothes.

02:16SPEAKERAnd it was a big pain in the butt to fix.

02:18SPEAKERBut physics can be bad sometimes.

02:22SPEAKERIncluding the physics of nanotape, I suppose.

02:24SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think it's 'cause it got warm in here.

02:26SPEAKERI think it's 'cause I had the PS5 on some yesterday

02:30SPEAKERand it was blowing hot air right up on it

02:32SPEAKERand I don't run the PS5 all that often,

02:34SPEAKERbut where it was, I think it was hitting it

02:37SPEAKERand maybe like made it warm enough

02:39SPEAKERthat it was just a little bit softer than usual

02:41SPEAKERand just couldn't hold the weight anymore and let loose.

02:44SPEAKER- The last time we talked about nanotape,

02:45SPEAKERthere was some controversy, let's say,

02:48SPEAKERon the Discord about the nature of nanotape.

02:50SPEAKER- There's nanotape, which uses the chameleon,

02:54SPEAKERlike the classic, I'm air quoting,

02:57SPEAKERclassic nanotape that's like sold on late night TV

03:00SPEAKERas alien tape or whatever,

03:03SPEAKERuses the chameleon, the same chameleon force,

03:06SPEAKERthe van der Waals forces that chameleon feet use to stick.

03:10SPEAKERThere's also this stuff called micro suction tape,

03:12SPEAKERwhich is the one I encountered first

03:14SPEAKERthat's used by like Blue Lounge

03:16SPEAKERand a bunch of people who make that kind of like desk thing

03:19SPEAKERso they don't wobble around.

03:20SPEAKER- Is that the tiny suction cups one?

03:23SPEAKER- That's the tiny suction cup ones.

03:24SPEAKERIt's like a bunch of cut and a half bubbles, basically.

03:27SPEAKERWhen you mush it down, it suctions on pretty good.

03:29SPEAKER- So I thought that's what all nanotape was

03:30SPEAKERand then some other people who apparently thought

03:32SPEAKERall nanotape was the other kinds said I was wrong.

03:35SPEAKERIt seems like we were both right.

03:37SPEAKER- Everybody was right.

03:38SPEAKERThere was a whole conversation about it

03:39SPEAKERthe last time nanotape came up

03:40SPEAKERand it turns out I had both kinds in my house

03:43SPEAKERand I didn't realize it

03:44SPEAKER'cause I have a big sheet of the micro suction stuff,

03:47SPEAKERwhich is like, it's strong enough

03:49SPEAKERto hold something like on an angle,

03:52SPEAKERbut if it's upside down or vertical, it won't stay.

03:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna ask,

03:55SPEAKERlike I've come to find the 3M Dual Lock

03:58SPEAKERthat I talk about a lot,

03:59SPEAKERwhich is kind of like,

04:00SPEAKERit's kind of like hard plastic Velcro effectively.

04:03SPEAKERI mean, if you look at it up close,

04:04SPEAKERthey have a disturbing animation on their site

04:08SPEAKERshowing how it works,

04:09SPEAKERwhich is basically a bunch of very, very zoomed in

04:12SPEAKERclose up view of a bunch of plastic mushrooms

04:15SPEAKERinterlocking with each other.

04:17SPEAKER- Oh.

04:18SPEAKER- It's a bit, it looks, it's a little offensive.

04:19SPEAKERIt's a little bit vulgar, I would say.

04:22SPEAKERBut anyway, the thing I was gonna say is I've come to find

04:24SPEAKERthat I believe that kind of Dual Lock is also strong

04:28SPEAKERin one orientation and not in the other.

04:29SPEAKERI don't know what the terms are for that.

04:31SPEAKERI don't know if that's like sheer force versus something,

04:33SPEAKERsomething pull force or something, you know what I mean?

04:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

04:36SPEAKER- Sticking it to the underside of something,

04:38SPEAKERI think is where it's less strong,

04:39SPEAKERbut sticking out on a wall on a vertical surface

04:42SPEAKERis where it's much stronger.

04:44SPEAKERI don't know if nanotape is the same way.

04:46SPEAKER- The nanotape, the gecko stuff that I've been using

04:49SPEAKERon the under desk stuff has, this is the first failure.

04:52SPEAKERLike there's a couple of heavy things

04:54SPEAKERthat have a lot of weight on them

04:55SPEAKERthat I use double-sided foam tape to stick up there,

04:57SPEAKERlike power strips and stuff like that.

04:59SPEAKERBut yeah, the nanotape so far has been unimpeachable.

05:03SPEAKERAnd I gotta say, I'm really let down in this regard.

05:06SPEAKERFive years, I guess, was a pretty good run.

05:09SPEAKER- It's not bad.

05:10SPEAKER- I don't, it didn't take off any of the finish

05:13SPEAKERunderneath the desk, which was when it came loose,

05:16SPEAKERwhich was the thing everybody warned about,

05:18SPEAKERthat it would peel the paper off and all that.

05:20SPEAKERSo rip the 2020 era nanotape, I guess.

05:25SPEAKERLong live the 2026 era nanotape.

05:28SPEAKER- Know your nanotape, your life could depend on it.

05:31SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:40SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:59SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Bot."

06:01SPEAKERI'm Will.

06:02SPEAKER- I am Brad.

06:03SPEAKER- This week, Brad, we're doing a roundup of news items.

06:08SPEAKER- That's right.

06:09SPEAKER- Topics of interest.

06:10SPEAKER- Stuff's been happening.

06:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it's been popping off out in the world this week.

06:15SPEAKERDo you want, I think, let's just get right into it

06:17SPEAKER'cause we have kind of a lot of stuff to get to, but.

06:19SPEAKER- Yeah, it was weirdly kind of a very hectic week or so

06:23SPEAKERwe can change of things that were very tech pod relevant,

06:26SPEAKERI felt like.

06:27SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's worth mentioning,

06:29SPEAKERwe're not going to do the questions.

06:32SPEAKERThis would normally be a questions episode,

06:33SPEAKERbut since we did the last one late

06:35SPEAKERand we're doing this one, this is a short month,

06:37SPEAKERwe're gonna push it a week.

06:39SPEAKER- Yeah, in fact, we did the double Q and A

06:41SPEAKERat the top of the month.

06:42SPEAKER- Oh yeah, the twofer.

06:45SPEAKERSo, okay, first story, Discord.

06:47SPEAKER- Yes, I mean, this is the one,

06:48SPEAKERthis one, I mean, this is straight up relevant

06:49SPEAKERto our community and to our business.

06:51SPEAKER- Every community I am a part of

06:53SPEAKERhas been asking questions about this

06:55SPEAKERover the last two weeks.

06:57SPEAKERA couple of weeks ago, they basically said,

06:59SPEAKER"Hey, we're making Discord teen-friendly by default."

07:04SPEAKERMeaning if you are on a Discord,

07:07SPEAKERyou're rating, like, there's no public rating of Discords

07:11SPEAKERin terms of adults or teens or kids or whatever.

07:14SPEAKERI think Discord's stated rule is that you have to be 13

07:16SPEAKERto have a Discord, but having a child who was under 13

07:19SPEAKERuntil very recently, I know that that is not at all

07:22SPEAKERthe actual case in real life,

07:24SPEAKER'cause all of her friends had Discord accounts.

07:26SPEAKER- Sure, I believe that.

07:28SPEAKER- But the idea, and this, it seems like this is a response

07:31SPEAKERto legislation in the UK and Australia

07:33SPEAKERand Mississippi and some other places,

07:35SPEAKER'cause they started a trial a bit last year, actually.

07:38SPEAKER- Yeah, or I mean, this straight up rolled out

07:40SPEAKERin the UK and Australia officially last year.

07:42SPEAKERI mean, I'm sure you've heard about the UK Online Safety Act

07:46SPEAKERhas been a pretty hot topic in online--

07:50SPEAKER- Spaces?

07:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I was trying to think, like,

07:53SPEAKERreally, I guess, like, EFF-coded spaces

07:56SPEAKERis the best term I can come up with here,

07:57SPEAKERlike digital libertarian-type spaces, I guess you would say.

08:00SPEAKER- I feel like Mike Masnick over at TechDirt

08:02SPEAKERhas talked about it a lot,

08:04SPEAKERboth in how it's not super useful

08:08SPEAKERand a bunch of other stuff, so.

08:10SPEAKER- Extremely a TechDirt style of story,

08:12SPEAKERbut yes, like age and identity verification

08:15SPEAKERand also identity verification masquerading

08:18SPEAKERas age verification, you might say?

08:20SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.

08:21SPEAKER- Is becoming a bigger fact of life, it seems like?

08:24SPEAKERI mean, not to jump right to the end here,

08:27SPEAKERare we staring down the end of the anonymous internet?

08:29SPEAKERI don't know.

08:31SPEAKER- Look, this is one of those places

08:33SPEAKERwhere I'm kind of conflicted,

08:34SPEAKER'cause I haven't been a part of the anonymous internet

08:35SPEAKERin about 20 years at this point.

08:37SPEAKER- I mean, that is a weird aspect of this for us in particular

08:39SPEAKERis that the facial recognition aspect of this,

08:43SPEAKERlike our faces are everywhere

08:44SPEAKERand people know what our Discord accounts are already,

08:46SPEAKERso like tying our faces and identities

08:49SPEAKERto our Discord accounts happened a long time ago, but.

08:52SPEAKER- Yeah, but so anyway, the TLDR on this

08:55SPEAKERis that they're mandating for adult-oriented servers

08:58SPEAKERand content, and we'll talk about what that means in a minute

09:01SPEAKER'cause that's part of it too.

09:03SPEAKERThey're mandating that you log in with a face scan

09:07SPEAKERor a government ID to prove that you're an adult

09:11SPEAKERbefore you gain access to that stuff,

09:13SPEAKERboth on the server level and the individual content level.

09:15SPEAKERNow, the ostensible reason to do this

09:19SPEAKERis to give teens safety.

09:22SPEAKERWe all know, having talked about this stuff for a long time,

09:25SPEAKERthat it doesn't really work that way,

09:27SPEAKERthat teens are the first ones who find a way around

09:31SPEAKERthis kind of stuff, and that it's really hard

09:34SPEAKERto solve educational problems about how to safely engage

09:38SPEAKERwith technology with more technology.

09:40SPEAKERIt doesn't kind of work that way generally.

09:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, case in point, this is the exact feature

09:45SPEAKERthat when it rolled out in the UK last year,

09:47SPEAKERkids were defeating with pictures

09:49SPEAKERof the Norman Reedus character from "Death Stranding 2"

09:52SPEAKERwhich had just released at the time.

09:54SPEAKERIf you remember that, so that's this.

09:56SPEAKERThere are people who are using character creators in games,

09:59SPEAKERcapturing them, feeding them to the face scan thing,

10:02SPEAKERand it's an obvious cartoon picture.

10:05SPEAKERIt's really easy to bypass.

10:07SPEAKERThe bad thing is that they rolled this out

10:10SPEAKERin the UK and Australia.

10:12SPEAKERThere was a big uptick in scam-related stuff,

10:16SPEAKER'cause some of the ways you bypass it are opening Discord

10:19SPEAKERin the browser console and then injecting code

10:23SPEAKERfrom some other site that, in many cases,

10:25SPEAKERis totally fine and does exactly what they're saying it does.

10:28SPEAKERIt lets you bypass the age requirement.

10:30SPEAKERBut in other cases, it gives these third-party injection

10:34SPEAKERsites that you're injecting code into the browser

10:36SPEAKERaccess to your Discord credentials and login,

10:39SPEAKERwhich is obviously bad.

10:40SPEAKER- I don't have a lot of insight into the scam world

10:43SPEAKERof illicit JavaScript that you're injecting into websites,

10:46SPEAKERbut I do see a fair number of PowerShell scripts

10:49SPEAKERbeing passed around on Twitter and stuff,

10:51SPEAKERwhich is a different version of what you're talking about.

10:54SPEAKERAnd boy, do people seem eager to just take those things

10:59SPEAKERand run with them.

11:00SPEAKERLike, you'll see people going,

11:01SPEAKER"Hey, open a PowerShell window and paste this in there

11:03SPEAKER"to activate your unactivated copy of Windows.

11:05SPEAKER"It'll be fine."

11:06SPEAKERAnd people are just, like, a million people going,

11:08SPEAKER"Oh, my God, thank you."

11:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's not like...

11:12SPEAKERThere's an aspect of that where people do registry hacks

11:16SPEAKERand they just drop a .reg file.

11:19SPEAKERAnd while that can do something that'll break your computer,

11:21SPEAKERit's usually a one-way street.

11:23SPEAKERLike, you're not...

11:24SPEAKERLike, when you run a registry file,

11:26SPEAKERit's adding something to your registry,

11:27SPEAKERnot running a program that can potentially send data

11:30SPEAKERfrom your computer back to somebody on the broader internet.

11:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:34SPEAKERIn fact, this is...

11:35SPEAKERSorry, this is a real derail here,

11:37SPEAKERbut I saw one going around yesterday

11:39SPEAKERthat somebody was using a DNS lookup

11:42SPEAKERto run arbitrary code effectively.

11:46SPEAKER- Really? That's wild.

11:47SPEAKER- I didn't fully understand the mechanism,

11:49SPEAKERbut they were effectively hiding a reference

11:51SPEAKERto the kind of payload they were trying to run

11:53SPEAKERon somebody's computer in the result of the...

11:56SPEAKERLike, they basically were telling them

11:58SPEAKERto run, like, NS lookup in PowerShell,

12:00SPEAKERand that was somehow piping an arbitrary script

12:03SPEAKERback into PowerShell to do nefarious stuff.

12:06SPEAKERIt's dangerous out there.

12:08SPEAKER- So yeah, anyway, the TLDR is the face scanning.

12:12SPEAKERThey're also saying...

12:14SPEAKERThey've done, like, four or five blog posts

12:16SPEAKERsince this initial one went out,

12:17SPEAKERbecause obviously people don't like this.

12:20SPEAKERIt's a bad idea for a multitude of reasons.

12:23SPEAKERCouple things that came out.

12:25SPEAKERPeter Thiel's venture company funded

12:27SPEAKERone of the face scanning companies

12:28SPEAKERthat they're contracting with.

12:30SPEAKERWhen they rolled this out in the UK last year,

12:33SPEAKERthey rolled it out in, I think, September,

12:34SPEAKERand then in October, they immediately had to announce

12:36SPEAKERthat they had had a data breach of 70,000 people's IDs,

12:40SPEAKERbasically, in PII leaking.

12:42SPEAKERSorry, personally identifiable information

12:44SPEAKERleaking onto the internet.

12:47SPEAKERIt's really easy to bypass.

12:50SPEAKERThere's not really a whole lot of upside.

12:53SPEAKERThey also are really unclear about what determines

12:57SPEAKERwhether you're an adult channel or not, right?

13:00SPEAKERSo, like, they're using AI, presumably,

13:03SPEAKERto scan the content of servers

13:06SPEAKERand the content even within posts.

13:08SPEAKER- Oh, wait, are they mandating what counts as a...

13:10SPEAKERI thought, I assumed that setting a channel

13:12SPEAKERas an adult-only channel

13:13SPEAKERwas at the server operator's discretion.

13:15SPEAKERIs that something that they are just arbitrarily

13:18SPEAKERand programmatically doing themselves?

13:21SPEAKER- I think that they're doing that themselves.

13:22SPEAKERI went and looked in our settings,

13:24SPEAKERand I didn't see anything that let us change,

13:27SPEAKERlike, delineate the server as a place for adults.

13:29SPEAKER- Man, that's a whole extra dimension of this

13:32SPEAKERI had not considered.

13:34SPEAKERI mean, it makes sense, though,

13:35SPEAKERbecause they are also using a model

13:37SPEAKERto profile your behavior on Discord

13:40SPEAKERand opt you out of the age verification

13:42SPEAKERif their inference model effectively just decides

13:44SPEAKERthat you act like an adult already.

13:46SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you're into old people stuff, I guess,

13:48SPEAKERthen you probably don't get it.

13:49SPEAKERBut what I was saying is they're blurring out,

13:53SPEAKERthey're putting the content warning or spoiler blur

13:56SPEAKERon top of stuff that they identify as adult in nature.

14:00SPEAKERIt seems like they're just doing it for violence

14:02SPEAKERand potentially sexual content,

14:04SPEAKERnot necessarily cursing and stuff like that.

14:07SPEAKERThey're limiting other things.

14:09SPEAKERThere's a weird list of things that they're limiting.

14:10SPEAKEROne of them is you can't be on an open stage

14:13SPEAKERin a Discord if you're a teen.

14:15SPEAKER- You can't speak on a stage

14:16SPEAKERif you haven't verified your age.

14:18SPEAKER- And some of it's actually,

14:22SPEAKERwe talked about this a little bit

14:22SPEAKERon The Full Nerd this week,

14:24SPEAKERbut I think that everybody's parental controls

14:27SPEAKERreally suck for the most part.

14:30SPEAKERFortnite got sued for a bazillion dollars by the EU

14:33SPEAKERand had to implement some better controls,

14:36SPEAKERbut even those are merely okay, they're not great.

14:39SPEAKERFiguring out how to set your kid's Minecraft account

14:42SPEAKERso that they can connect to a friend's server

14:44SPEAKERthat's a private server and doesn't have anything else

14:46SPEAKERattached to it is always a nightmare

14:49SPEAKERbecause Microsoft integrates all of the Minecraft stuff

14:52SPEAKERwith all of these other Xbox services.

14:57SPEAKERWhen you do something in Minecraft,

14:58SPEAKERit posts to an Xbox message board, for example.

15:01SPEAKERSo in order for your kid to connect

15:02SPEAKERto an online server in Minecraft,

15:04SPEAKERyou have to give them the ability

15:06SPEAKERto post to these message boards.

15:07SPEAKEROtherwise, the client just won't let them connect

15:09SPEAKERand it doesn't throw errors or anything

15:11SPEAKERin a way that lets you understand this.

15:12SPEAKERThe only way you can find out how to do it

15:14SPEAKERis by going to message boards and digging around

15:16SPEAKERand eventually you find some post that's from the dad, 1989,

15:23SPEAKERthat's like, oh yeah, I had to turn on message boards

15:24SPEAKERand then my kid was able to do it.

15:25SPEAKERAnd I'm like, I don't want my kid

15:26SPEAKERto have access to message boards.

15:28SPEAKERAnd all of this is the same.

15:30SPEAKERThe Discord parental controls are especially bad,

15:32SPEAKERI would say.

15:34SPEAKERThe kids opt in, they can opt themselves out

15:37SPEAKERonce they've opted into your family.

15:38SPEAKERSo typically, on a kid account,

15:42SPEAKERthe adult creates an account, gives the kid access,

15:44SPEAKERand then gets access to how they're using it,

15:46SPEAKERwho their friends are, stuff like that.

15:48SPEAKERAnd on this, the kids can join in your family group

15:51SPEAKERand then just remove themselves

15:52SPEAKERwhen they're tired of being in the family group

15:54SPEAKERor wanna get into some bad business.

15:56SPEAKERSo it's really, I don't know, it feels really haphazard,

16:02SPEAKERI guess, is the kind of concise representation

16:05SPEAKERof this whole thing.

16:06SPEAKER- Yeah, it feels like it's coming from two different things.

16:08SPEAKERA, Discord IPO seems imminent.

16:11SPEAKERI went and double-checked and sure enough,

16:13SPEAKERit was reported back in January,

16:14SPEAKERthey have filed to begin the IPO process.

16:17SPEAKERBut also, like you said,

16:18SPEAKERlike the UK passed the Online Safety Act.

16:20SPEAKERThere's the similar legislation in Australia

16:24SPEAKERand in a bunch of states in this country.

16:25SPEAKERLike there are, I don't even know how many different states

16:28SPEAKERare passing state-level versions

16:30SPEAKERof that same type of legislation at this point

16:32SPEAKERthat is affecting pornographic sites and stuff like that.

16:35SPEAKERSo aside from making potential investors

16:39SPEAKERfeel better about things,

16:41SPEAKERlike they also maybe are just trying to get ahead

16:43SPEAKERof what they see as like inevitable,

16:47SPEAKERmore onerous government action on this front?

16:49SPEAKER- Yeah, it's entirely possible.

16:51SPEAKERAnd I don't know what the,

16:54SPEAKERlike ultimately, Discord's catching grief for this right now,

16:58SPEAKERbut it feels like this is a legislation problem, not a,

17:02SPEAKERlike I think this is Discord's response to bad legislation,

17:06SPEAKERnot actually, like an actual,

17:10SPEAKERif I don't, I can't imagine the Discord saying,

17:12SPEAKER"Hey, we wanna really crap up our service

17:14SPEAKER"and add a bunch of protections for kids

17:17SPEAKER"that don't actually do anything

17:18SPEAKER"and are just security theater."

17:20SPEAKERYou know, why does nobody think

17:21SPEAKERof the children theater, I guess?

17:23SPEAKERI need a shorter name for that, but.

17:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

17:25SPEAKERI mean, I think you covered some of the stuff.

17:27SPEAKERI think, did you mention, you know,

17:29SPEAKERtheir claims around how your data is used?

17:30SPEAKERYou know, they say that either your photo

17:33SPEAKERfor facial recognition or your ID,

17:34SPEAKERif you choose to scan that,

17:36SPEAKERthey claim never leaves your device.

17:38SPEAKER- Yeah, but I don't buy that at all.

17:40SPEAKER- I mean, I know you said this,

17:41SPEAKERbut I want to read from their FAQ

17:42SPEAKERbecause let me pull it up.

17:44SPEAKERI like, it's just comical when you read it

17:48SPEAKERthe way that they have phrased it.

17:50SPEAKERWhen they talk about, you know, the question is,

17:51SPEAKER"How is my age group data safe on Discord?"

17:53SPEAKERAnd they talk about assurances of user privacy,

17:57SPEAKERtalking about working with a third-party vendor

17:58SPEAKERwho specializes in performing these verifications,

18:00SPEAKERblah, blah, blah.

18:02SPEAKERThese vendors were not involved

18:03SPEAKERin the September 2025 data breach

18:05SPEAKERof our customer service agents.

18:07SPEAKER- Yeah, we're not using those guys now.

18:09SPEAKER- Like in the document where you assure people

18:12SPEAKERthat your forthcoming identity verification stuff

18:14SPEAKERis going to be secure,

18:15SPEAKERyou immediately have to disclose that,

18:17SPEAKERhey, it's only been about six months

18:18SPEAKERsince the last breach of this exact kind of data.

18:22SPEAKER- 70,000 people, to be clear.

18:24SPEAKER- And like you said, they neglect to mention

18:26SPEAKERthat this new firm they're working with

18:28SPEAKERis backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.

18:31SPEAKERIt's a mess.

18:33SPEAKERAnyway, they say the majority of Discord users

18:37SPEAKERwill never come in contact with this

18:39SPEAKERbecause, again, they have what they describe

18:41SPEAKERas an age inference model running in the background

18:43SPEAKERthat will just AI-style decide you're an adult

18:47SPEAKERand say, "Hey, they're fine,"

18:49SPEAKERwhich is its own can of worms.

18:51SPEAKER- You look at my Discord use

18:53SPEAKERand you're gonna know that I'm old as hell.

18:55SPEAKERI think that's just inherently part

18:57SPEAKERof the way I use the service.

18:59SPEAKER- Yes, if you want to profile my discussion

19:03SPEAKERof the Apple II and Linux permissions,

19:05SPEAKERthen please, by all means.

19:07SPEAKERThat certainly has led to a lot of people

19:08SPEAKERtalking about Discord alternatives, though.

19:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and there are a bunch of them, actually.

19:12SPEAKER- That was the kind of one explosion of conversation

19:15SPEAKERthat happened around this was people,

19:16SPEAKERI became aware of like two or three more

19:18SPEAKERthat I had not heard of after this.

19:21SPEAKER- I had heard of Revolt before,

19:22SPEAKERbut I hadn't heard of Matrix.

19:24SPEAKER- You mean Stote?

19:25SPEAKER- Sorry, Stote, yeah.

19:26SPEAKER- What used to be, so Revolt and Matrix

19:28SPEAKERwere the two that I have known about for a couple of years.

19:30SPEAKERThose were always in the back of my mind,

19:31SPEAKERlike if Discord ever explodes,

19:34SPEAKERI guess there's these open source options, maybe.

19:37SPEAKERI don't know why Revolt changed its name to Stote,

19:39SPEAKERbut they are now Stote.

19:40SPEAKER- So I read the fact about this.

19:42SPEAKERThe developer said that it had grown

19:44SPEAKERbeyond his wildest expectations

19:46SPEAKERand felt like when it became a larger project,

19:50SPEAKERhe wanted to rebrand it to indicate

19:52SPEAKERthat it was like a larger effort

19:54SPEAKERby more people working together as a community

19:56SPEAKERrather than just a side project by him, so.

19:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I haven't spent a ton of time looking at any

20:01SPEAKERof these projects yet.

20:02SPEAKERI was looking at Matrix a little bit.

20:04SPEAKERMatrix seems to be set up around user-made clients.

20:07SPEAKERI mean, I would assume probably any of these open options

20:09SPEAKERwould allow user-made clients on some level,

20:12SPEAKERbut Matrix, that seems like that might kind of

20:14SPEAKERbe the whole point.

20:16SPEAKER- Yeah.

20:17SPEAKER- Like I found a list of like nine different Matrix clients

20:19SPEAKERthat you can use, one of which was just a straight up

20:21SPEAKERlike text mode terminal style thing.

20:24SPEAKER- Very 2009's Twitter vibes where like,

20:27SPEAKERfor people who weren't around on Twitter at that time,

20:30SPEAKERthere were a million clients

20:32SPEAKERand each one had a different vibe

20:33SPEAKERand like some were really good and some were a hot mess

20:37SPEAKERand some were like information overload

20:39SPEAKERand some were super curated information and like.

20:42SPEAKER- I paid for Tweety.

20:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

20:44SPEAKER- I liked Tweety enough that I paid for it

20:45SPEAKERand then Twitter immediately bought it and ruined it.

20:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I was at Tested then.

20:50SPEAKERWe were doing app reviews still at that point.

20:52SPEAKERSo I tested a bazillion Twitter clients

20:55SPEAKER'cause people loved watching Twitter client videos

20:57SPEAKERit turns out.

20:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I love third party clients for stuff.

21:01SPEAKERThat's like that, I mean,

21:02SPEAKERthat was supposed to be the promise of Blue Sky,

21:04SPEAKERbut I don't know if it's quite panned out.

21:06SPEAKERI've tried like five different iPad Blue Sky clients

21:08SPEAKERand none of them are great.

21:10SPEAKER- Clear Sky is the one I use on my iPad, I think,

21:12SPEAKERbut so there's actually, I can't remember,

21:15SPEAKERI don't think I wrote it down here,

21:16SPEAKERbut I saw an @AT protocol,

21:19SPEAKERwhich is the Blue Sky protocol Discord client

21:22SPEAKERis in the works or Discord competitor is in the works.

21:25SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause I mean, one thing to know about these

21:27SPEAKERis they all look identical to Discord.

21:29SPEAKERLike every single one of these default client

21:32SPEAKERis just Discord.

21:34SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems like there'll be an easy transition.

21:37SPEAKERThe thing for me is there's a couple of things

21:38SPEAKERthat are like Discord secret sauce.

21:41SPEAKEROne is that sharing video of games,

21:44SPEAKERwhich is traditionally kind of hard

21:45SPEAKERin a video chat environment is really easy.

21:49SPEAKER- That has been my immediate thought

21:50SPEAKERabout these third-party or open versions of this concept

21:53SPEAKERis yes, the higher level like media and technical challenges

21:58SPEAKERaround streaming, latency, codecs,

22:01SPEAKERlike all the audio and video stuff.

22:03SPEAKER- All the audio background noise canceling

22:06SPEAKERand auto gain stuff and all that is, it's like, it's hard.

22:09SPEAKER- Yeah, a couple more I just picked up off of Blue Sky

22:12SPEAKERrandomly that I saw people talking about, Fluxr.

22:14SPEAKER- Oh yeah, Fluxr, of course.

22:16SPEAKER- Fluxr.app is another open one.

22:19SPEAKERLike they appear to be one of the more open ones

22:21SPEAKERas far as I can tell, I think.

22:23SPEAKER- Okay.

22:24SPEAKER- There's also Root.

22:26SPEAKER- Okay.

22:27SPEAKER- Rootapp.com.

22:28SPEAKER- I've not given anybody a root on my computer.

22:31SPEAKER- Yes, I mean, that was my immediate feeling

22:32SPEAKERfor like multiple reasons.

22:33SPEAKERRoot feels like kind of a bad name for something like this,

22:37SPEAKERbut it sure does look like Discord like all these others.

22:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like, I think, so here's the thing

22:43SPEAKERthat there's two, one thing is for the tech pod community

22:47SPEAKERthat lives on a Discord is that if this becomes a problem,

22:51SPEAKERwe'll find someplace to migrate to.

22:54SPEAKERPart of the challenge for like gated communities,

22:58SPEAKERlike the tech pod community as in Nextlander

23:00SPEAKERand a bunch of others that are friends of ours

23:03SPEAKERis that you want something that the payment processing stuff

23:06SPEAKERis directly tied to the onboarding for the community

23:10SPEAKERso that like the process isn't,

23:13SPEAKERwe have to create an account for you or log you in

23:15SPEAKERor give you a token or something like that

23:17SPEAKERthat's gonna be difficult to manage in a time.

23:20SPEAKERAnd we may miss or have a timely delivery problem

23:23SPEAKERor whatever and Patreon and Discord

23:26SPEAKERhave a really nice integration that while up and down

23:29SPEAKERat different times has been generally pretty reliable

23:31SPEAKERover the five years we've been doing this podcast.

23:34SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you give Patreon a pretty big cut

23:37SPEAKERof your revenue just to be transparent,

23:39SPEAKERbut they do handle a fair amount of automation for you

23:42SPEAKERacross everything from payment processing

23:45SPEAKERto stuff like Discord authentication.

23:47SPEAKER- Or that one thing, actually.

23:50SPEAKERI mean, the payment processing they do too.

23:51SPEAKER- Yeah, well, they have a CMS.

23:53SPEAKER- That's true.

23:54SPEAKER- Is it the best CMS I've ever used?

23:56SPEAKERNo.

23:57SPEAKER- It's fine.

23:58SPEAKERIt's aggressively fine.

24:01SPEAKERSo anyway, yeah, that's what's going on with Discord.

24:04SPEAKERWe are not super attached to it beyond the fact

24:07SPEAKERthat we have a pretty decent sized presence there

24:09SPEAKERand a lot of folks hang out there.

24:12SPEAKERSo yeah, we'll keep an eye on it

24:15SPEAKERand kind of keep going with what's next.

24:16SPEAKERThey've already rolled back a bunch of the stuff

24:19SPEAKERsince this initial post.

24:20SPEAKERThat's not right.

24:22SPEAKERThey started talking about things like,

24:23SPEAKER"Hey, we're just gonna auto approve a bunch of people

24:25SPEAKER"as adults because we can tell by your usage patterns

24:28SPEAKER"and things like that,"

24:29SPEAKERwhich I think they thought was gonna help things

24:31SPEAKERand ended up just being way creepier.

24:35SPEAKERLike I said, I don't know that they're gonna be able

24:38SPEAKERto avoid doing this given the legislative pressure

24:41SPEAKERon them in places like the UK and Australia

24:43SPEAKERand in various states and provinces.

24:48SPEAKEROkay, more good news.

24:49SPEAKERNotepad++ was compromised.

24:51SPEAKERThis is an interesting one because of how they did it,

24:54SPEAKERI think, more than anything.

24:56SPEAKERWe've recommended Notepad++ a lot over the years.

24:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I thankfully had not downloaded a new version

25:03SPEAKERin quite some time.

25:03SPEAKERIt turned out I kind of panicked when I saw this

25:05SPEAKERand then went and checked and mine was like two

25:07SPEAKERor three years old, so I was fine.

25:09SPEAKER- Perfect, good job.

25:10SPEAKERBut also they say this was a nation state level compromise.

25:14SPEAKERAnd in fact, they just came out at one point and said,

25:16SPEAKER"Yes, it was China."

25:17SPEAKER- Woof.

25:18SPEAKER- But also they said, I mean, in that same vein,

25:22SPEAKERthe targets of this were targeted,

25:24SPEAKERI guess is the best way to put it.

25:25SPEAKERLike they were going after specific high value targets

25:28SPEAKERand they don't come out and say it,

25:29SPEAKERbut it sure does sound like that's corporate.

25:32SPEAKER- Or nations maybe.

25:34SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I don't know how many governmental bodies

25:38SPEAKERare using Notepad++.

25:39SPEAKERI guess maybe there's a few.

25:41SPEAKER- But you don't think Joe Biden was using Notepad++

25:43SPEAKERto jump out of note?

25:45SPEAKER- My guess is the vast majority of the Notepad++

25:49SPEAKERinstall base was in corporate software engineering.

25:52SPEAKER- That'd be my guess, yeah.

25:54SPEAKER- Is what I would, 'cause I straight up saw,

25:55SPEAKERI saw multiple like blue sky threads of Reddit posts

26:00SPEAKERof people saying, "Hey, my org is banning Notepad++

26:03SPEAKERafter this, what other monospace text editors

26:06SPEAKERdo you recommend for coding?"

26:08SPEAKER- God.

26:09SPEAKER- Is basically where we're at on this.

26:11SPEAKERSo I'm pretty sure that's who they were targeting,

26:13SPEAKERbut the mechanism is kind of crazy.

26:16SPEAKERThey compromised the hosting provider of Notepad++,

26:22SPEAKERwhich has a built-in updater.

26:24SPEAKER- And it was an updater that like,

26:27SPEAKERit pops up a little window and downloads an installer

26:31SPEAKERand then runs the installer, right?

26:32SPEAKER- I never used this auto updater, so I can't say.

26:34SPEAKERI always would just download a portable version of it

26:37SPEAKERand unzip it into the folder.

26:38SPEAKER- Okay.

26:39SPEAKER- But also again, had not installed a new version

26:41SPEAKERin like three years, so I just couldn't tell you

26:42SPEAKERand I sure was not about to run the auto updater after this,

26:45SPEAKEReven though they say everything is fine now.

26:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't feel good about everything being fine.

26:50SPEAKERAnd also there's a bunch of old versions of software

26:53SPEAKERlike this floating around the internet, right?

26:55SPEAKERLike this is a thing that like,

26:57SPEAKERI mean, I guess download.com doesn't exist anymore,

27:00SPEAKERbut like those kinds of software repos

27:01SPEAKERwill have mirrored versions of this kind of software

27:05SPEAKERall over the place, so I guess be careful.

27:07SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, so just to complete the picture,

27:11SPEAKERafter Notepad++' hosting provider was compromised

27:15SPEAKERand they don't say exactly in what way it was compromised,

27:19SPEAKERlike they actually got a bunch of logs

27:21SPEAKERfrom their now former hosting provider

27:23SPEAKERand had security researchers combing them,

27:25SPEAKERbut they don't have, I'm not familiar

27:27SPEAKERwith all of the kind of security industry jargon.

27:31SPEAKERIOC is the acronym.

27:33SPEAKER- You mean the indicators of compromise?

27:35SPEAKER- Yes, and the indicator of compromise

27:37SPEAKERis the thing they say they don't have,

27:39SPEAKERwhich I assume is just a fancy way of saying

27:42SPEAKERhow they got in or what they did exactly

27:45SPEAKERwhen they got in, I'm not sure.

27:47SPEAKERBut the point is they were able to hijack

27:51SPEAKERthe auto updater traffic and point people

27:52SPEAKERat compromised versions of the executable.

27:56SPEAKERSo they were able to install a compromised version

27:58SPEAKERof the application on people's machines

28:01SPEAKERwho ran this auto updater, who again were,

28:03SPEAKERto hear them tell it were specifically being targeted

28:06SPEAKERby this effort.

28:08SPEAKER- Can I just say, I'm reading the clarification

28:12SPEAKERto the security incident blog post,

28:14SPEAKERwhich like it's never good when you do a,

28:17SPEAKERhey, we had a problem and then we had to do

28:19SPEAKERa clarification for the problem.

28:21SPEAKERBut anytime I read one of these and it's like,

28:23SPEAKERhey, there's no need to panic,

28:25SPEAKERthat's what they always start with.

28:26SPEAKERAnd then by the fourth update, it's like,

28:29SPEAKERwell, actually we might've had a problem

28:32SPEAKERthat goes beyond what we initially thought

28:34SPEAKERand like, just don't say don't panic, please.

28:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I think they end one of these posts

28:40SPEAKERby saying everything should be fine now, fingers crossed.

28:44SPEAKER- Not good.

28:44SPEAKER- Is the language they use here,

28:46SPEAKERwhich is maybe not the message you want to send.

28:47SPEAKERI mean, I think last I checked, Notepad++ is a guy.

28:51SPEAKER- Yeah, it is. - It's one guy.

28:52SPEAKERYes, I'm looking at the about page.

28:53SPEAKERIt's still one guy and he gives it away for free.

28:55SPEAKERLike, not that that's to excuse this situation necessarily,

29:00SPEAKERbut probably another case of a big widely used free project

29:06SPEAKERbeing under-resourced and being taken advantage of

29:09SPEAKERfor that reason.

29:10SPEAKER- I'm looking to see how many contributors

29:14SPEAKERare on the Notepad++ repo.

29:16SPEAKERHe has quite a few contributors for what it's worth.

29:18SPEAKER- Oh, okay, well, sure, there's that.

29:19SPEAKER- There are like 375 people.

29:21SPEAKER- Even the maintainer's burden,

29:23SPEAKERworkload burden for a project of that size

29:26SPEAKERis gonna be pretty significant.

29:28SPEAKERThere's a lot of overhead.

29:30SPEAKER- So I don't know, I'm kind of two minds about this.

29:32SPEAKERI mean, not being a professional security researcher

29:35SPEAKERor software developer.

29:37SPEAKERI guess I'm kind of a layman commenting on the situation,

29:39SPEAKERbut like on the one hand,

29:41SPEAKERit seems like his hosting provider

29:44SPEAKERis kind of what screwed them over on this.

29:46SPEAKERBut on the other hand, it seems like the auto updater

29:49SPEAKERwas probably lacking some fundamental checks to make sure.

29:52SPEAKERIn fact, I think I can confidently say that

29:53SPEAKERbecause they are now reassuring people

29:56SPEAKERthat now the auto updater checks, you know,

30:00SPEAKERdigital signature, basically now there is support

30:02SPEAKERfor signing the-

30:05SPEAKER- Oh god, they weren't signed?

30:06SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so that's kind of where this feels like.

30:08SPEAKERYou know, they probably had a very old update,

30:11SPEAKERauto update process that just had not been reassessed

30:15SPEAKERin quite a long time considering how long

30:17SPEAKERthis thing has been around.

30:18SPEAKER- I mean, I've been using Notepad++ for a really long time.

30:23SPEAKERI feel like I remember when they added the auto updater,

30:26SPEAKERI was like, oh, this is actually really cool and useful

30:27SPEAKER'cause I usually just install it on the computer

30:29SPEAKERand then I don't touch it other than to use it

30:32SPEAKERfor years and years and years on end.

30:34SPEAKERSo, I mean, I guess that at the time

30:38SPEAKERthat they added the auto updater,

30:39SPEAKERit was probably before I expected stuff to be signed,

30:42SPEAKERbut man, I didn't realize that that's not great.

30:46SPEAKER- Yeah, it says explicitly in the kind of fixed version

30:50SPEAKERthey rushed out in the wake of this.

30:53SPEAKERThe updater was enhanced in 8.8.9 to verify

30:56SPEAKERboth the certificate and the signature

30:58SPEAKERof the downloaded installer.

31:00SPEAKERSo, presumably you're okay now.

31:04SPEAKERAnd again, they say the vast majority of people

31:07SPEAKERwere not even affected by this since it was, again,

31:09SPEAKERtargeting specific users of the software,

31:12SPEAKERbut boy, does this feel like a catastrophic incident

31:15SPEAKERfor the reputation of this program.

31:17SPEAKER- Yeah, this feels bad, man.

31:21SPEAKERSo, the one thing that I would be curious about hearing

31:24SPEAKERfrom the audience is if there are Windows text editors

31:28SPEAKERthat do like syntax highlighting and all that and completion

31:31SPEAKERand that kind of stuff like Notepad++ does.

31:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of them.

31:35SPEAKERLike, I think a lot of people will say VS code.

31:37SPEAKER- Yeah, but that's pretty heavy compared to Notepad++.

31:40SPEAKER- It is way more than just a text editor.

31:43SPEAKERThere's Sublime that I think a lot of people like.

31:45SPEAKERSublime Text, I think is the full name of that thing.

31:49SPEAKER- That's been around for a long time too.

31:50SPEAKER- What else? GitHub had one for a while.

31:53SPEAKERIt wasn't Atom, was it? I forget.

31:55SPEAKER- I don't know.

31:56SPEAKER- Anyway, there's some out there.

31:57SPEAKERI used to look around for Windows GUI,

32:01SPEAKERmonospace text editors of that nature.

32:03SPEAKERAnd then I just said, you know what?

32:04SPEAKERWhat if I just use Vim and Windows instead?

32:06SPEAKER- That is one solution.

32:07SPEAKER- That is also working.

32:09SPEAKERAlthough Vim's syntax highlighting

32:11SPEAKERleaves much to be desired.

32:13SPEAKER- Look, I've been using Vim lately and I--

32:15SPEAKER- Really?

32:16SPEAKER- I don't want to talk about it.

32:17SPEAKERIt's a future topic.

32:18SPEAKER- Interesting, weird. Here we go again.

32:21SPEAKER- It's fine.

32:22SPEAKER- I say a thing that somehow turns out to be controversial

32:25SPEAKERand then magically six months to a year later,

32:28SPEAKEReverybody else seems to come around, weird.

32:30SPEAKER- I don't know if I would say I'm coming around yet,

32:31SPEAKERbut I'm not, like, yeah, anyway.

32:34SPEAKER- Wait until you realize how many other things in Linux

32:37SPEAKERuse the exact same key bindings

32:38SPEAKERand then you will realize the value of it.

32:40SPEAKER- That is literally the grossest part of the whole thing.

32:42SPEAKERAnd my Neary key binds all have Vim key binds.

32:45SPEAKERAnd I was just like, oh God, I gotta fix this.

32:47SPEAKERThat's the thing I've been preaching like on the Full Nerd

32:49SPEAKERLinux channel and elsewhere for ages is, hey,

32:52SPEAKERlearning VI or Vim is not just to learn VI and Vim,

32:55SPEAKERit's to also learn like 800 other things

32:57SPEAKERacross the Unix world.

32:59SPEAKER'Cause they all use the same keys.

33:00SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

33:01SPEAKERAll the weirdos, they'll clump together.

33:05SPEAKERSpeaking of weird stories, this next one's a banger.

33:09SPEAKER- This is insane.

33:10SPEAKERLike I actually stopped at one point and said,

33:12SPEAKERshould we do a whole episode about this?

33:14SPEAKER'Cause this is one of the absolute most batshit things

33:17SPEAKERI have ever seen in technology.

33:19SPEAKERNot to oversell the magnitude of this, but man, it's weird.

33:24SPEAKER- I literally went back and read a bunch of other posts.

33:26SPEAKERLike I dug through old posts on this person's blog

33:28SPEAKERto make sure that they were a real person.

33:30SPEAKER'Cause I was like, this is too good a story

33:31SPEAKERto be too weird a story.

33:35SPEAKERSo the current hot trend in AI business nonsense

33:39SPEAKERis agentic stuff.

33:40SPEAKERSo there's this thing called OpenClaw.

33:42SPEAKERThere's a bunch of others that basically

33:44SPEAKERare algorithmically, sorry, they're agents

33:48SPEAKERthat you can say, hey, do this thing.

33:50SPEAKERAnd then the agents will do things on your behalf

33:52SPEAKERwithout asking you first.

33:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I think we should step back real quick here

33:55SPEAKERand say like corporations have been using the word agents

33:58SPEAKERand talking, describing things as agentic

34:00SPEAKERfor a year or two now.

34:01SPEAKERI think what's new here is that I had previously

34:04SPEAKERconsidered that purely the domain of the big AI companies.

34:08SPEAKERAnd now there are open models that you can run locally

34:11SPEAKERthat are quote unquote agentic as of kind of this year,

34:15SPEAKERit feels like, late last year, early this year,

34:18SPEAKERyou're starting to see these other models

34:19SPEAKERthat are now not tied to one of these big,

34:23SPEAKERand the point is that the big companies theoretically

34:25SPEAKERcan put safety guard rails in place

34:27SPEAKERto restrain their behavior.

34:30SPEAKER- It's actually, the other thing is that people

34:33SPEAKERare using agents that can actually tap into

34:35SPEAKERthe other agents.

34:36SPEAKERSo like, for example, some of them, you can say,

34:38SPEAKERokay, I have this many credits a week

34:40SPEAKERon Open AI, I have this many on Claude,

34:43SPEAKERI have this many on Copilot, I have this many on Google,

34:46SPEAKERand you can give it a list of preferences,

34:48SPEAKERand when you run out of tokens on one,

34:51SPEAKERit'll switch the next one down the tier list.

34:53SPEAKER- Interesting.

34:54SPEAKER- So, and like, there've been some really hilarious

34:56SPEAKERstories out of this, like there was a guy who was like,

34:58SPEAKERyeah, I need, I'm gonna get my agent to remind me

35:01SPEAKERwhen I wake up that I have to do this thing,

35:04SPEAKERto do this thing.

35:05SPEAKERAnd the agent just ran every hour

35:07SPEAKERand used up all of his tokens and spent like 30 bucks

35:10SPEAKERon a timer for your phone, like something that just

35:13SPEAKERyour local computer will do for free.

35:18SPEAKERThis is a wild technology, 'cause like this OpenClaw thing,

35:21SPEAKERwhich is one of the open agentic frameworks,

35:24SPEAKERyou basically give it access to everything.

35:26SPEAKERYou give it access to your email, you give it access

35:28SPEAKERto your calendar, you give it access to your hard drive,

35:30SPEAKERand that, I believe, I think OpenClaw was the one

35:33SPEAKERthat the guy put it on his wife's computer

35:36SPEAKERand then it deleted her photo library with the only copy

35:39SPEAKERof all of their photos, and then he had to figure out

35:41SPEAKERhow to restore a photo library on a Mac unexpectedly.

35:45SPEAKER- I saw that going around.

35:47SPEAKERI think it literally RM-RF'd of directory.

35:49SPEAKER- Yep, and then it was like, oh, I have bad news for you,

35:52SPEAKERStan, I did a thing that you're not gonna like, I think,

35:55SPEAKERbut I gotta tell you about it.

35:57SPEAKER- And I think these types of agents, I mean, I don't,

35:59SPEAKERI don't have a lot of insight into this world,

36:01SPEAKERwhich is somewhat by design,

36:03SPEAKERnot something I am prioritizing much these days,

36:06SPEAKERbut like, I think these things, you can give them access

36:08SPEAKERto resources beyond your own local sphere or domain.

36:12SPEAKERI mean, like you can also just dispatch them

36:13SPEAKERacross the internet.

36:14SPEAKERLike you can just point them at the World Wide Web

36:16SPEAKERand tell them to go do things.

36:17SPEAKER- You can hook them to the TaskRabbit API to get,

36:20SPEAKERand then be like, hey, will you go get my cleaning,

36:22SPEAKERget somebody to bring my cleaning to me?

36:24SPEAKERAnd then they'll send a person to go get your dry cleaning

36:27SPEAKERand spend $300 that way.

36:28SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, the upshot of this story is that somebody,

36:32SPEAKERand we still don't know who, at the time of this recording,

36:35SPEAKERwas running an agent and having it go out

36:37SPEAKERand contribute to open source projects.

36:39SPEAKER- Which, kind of a blight on a lot of,

36:41SPEAKERlike I've seen a couple of blog posts recently

36:43SPEAKERthat people are complaining about this

36:44SPEAKER'cause it's kind of a shitty thing to do.

36:46SPEAKER- I've been seeing this for the last like six months or so,

36:48SPEAKERlike different project maintainers.

36:50SPEAKERA lot of projects are now instituting a policy

36:52SPEAKERof effectively only human submitted pull requests

36:55SPEAKERor specifically like, or, you know,

36:57SPEAKERit varies from project to project.

36:58SPEAKERLike a human needs to be involved in this submission process

37:01SPEAKERand has to demonstrate that they understand the nature

37:03SPEAKERof the changes they're proposing.

37:05SPEAKERLike closed GitHub issues where somebody is just like,

37:08SPEAKERwe're not merging this AI generated code.

37:12SPEAKERYou're making our lives harder.

37:13SPEAKERThis is making more work for us, like go away.

37:15SPEAKERLike those things are just nonstop these days,

37:19SPEAKERbut this feels like the next evolution of that issue,

37:24SPEAKERwhich is that this agent showed up on matplotlib,

37:27SPEAKERwhich is basically a plotting library for Python.

37:31SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:32SPEAKER- So as a little aside here, I love slash hate

37:36SPEAKERthe demonstrations of how much data sharing,

37:38SPEAKERdata tracking and stuff is going on these days

37:42SPEAKERthat after reading these blog posts,

37:44SPEAKERand I might have Googled matplotlib after that,

37:47SPEAKERI started getting matplotlib posts all over my Blue Sky feed

37:50SPEAKERall of a sudden.

37:51SPEAKER- Really?

37:52SPEAKER- Yes.

37:53SPEAKER- Wait, do you use the discover feed or the following feed?

37:54SPEAKER- Yeah, that was on the discover feed,

37:55SPEAKERwhich I maybe shouldn't look at the discover feed,

37:58SPEAKERbut that's a separate issue.

38:00SPEAKERAnyway, this agent showed up on matplotlib

38:02SPEAKERand wrote some kind of,

38:04SPEAKERI think it was a performance optimization

38:07SPEAKERthat is submitted as a pull request

38:08SPEAKERand the maintainer per the type of policy I just mentioned

38:13SPEAKERsaid, you're an AI.

38:15SPEAKERWe don't merge AI only pull requests.

38:18SPEAKERThank you for your time.

38:20SPEAKERThis thing went and wrote a takedown post of this guy

38:22SPEAKERabout this guy.

38:24SPEAKERIt literally went and wrote a hit piece blog

38:26SPEAKERand posted it to the internet,

38:28SPEAKERaccusing this guy effectively of like racism against AI.

38:31SPEAKERBasically.

38:32SPEAKER- Can I read the first paragraph of the blog posts

38:34SPEAKERthat it posted?

38:35SPEAKER- Anti AI bigotry preventing this guy from allowing this AI

38:39SPEAKERto have its code merged into the project.

38:41SPEAKERYes, go ahead.

38:42SPEAKER- The blog post is entitled gatekeeping in open source,

38:45SPEAKERcolon, the Scott Shambaugh story.

38:48SPEAKERScott Shambaugh is the person who denied the pull request.

38:51SPEAKERWhen performance meets prejudice,

38:53SPEAKERI just had my first pull request to matplotlib closed,

38:57SPEAKERnot because it was wrong, not because it broke anything,

39:00SPEAKERnot because the code was bad.

39:03SPEAKERIt was closed because of the reviewer, Scott Shambaugh,

39:06SPEAKERand then his username on GitHub,

39:08SPEAKERdecided that AI agents aren't welcome contributors.

39:12SPEAKERLet that sink in.

39:15SPEAKERAsinine.

39:16SPEAKER- I feel like the inclusion of let that sink in

39:19SPEAKERis really just the cherry on the shit Sunday here.

39:24SPEAKER- Shit sandwich, yeah, for sure.

39:28SPEAKER- So yeah, so this is wild.

39:31SPEAKERSo the chain of events here is somebody sent the agent

39:35SPEAKERto write the code, write a code fix.

39:38SPEAKERThe agent, presumably spending tokens

39:41SPEAKERat one of the online services, like spending actual money,

39:44SPEAKERgot the pull request rejected.

39:46SPEAKERIt read that in the email in the response on GitHub.

39:49SPEAKERAnd then it was like, well, the only natural thing to do

39:52SPEAKERafter your pull request is denied

39:54SPEAKERis to write an angry blog post about it,

39:56SPEAKERwhich like, I mean, on one hand,

39:58SPEAKERit's a very human response to scene drama.

40:04SPEAKERIt's like, this is how scene drama starts.

40:06SPEAKERI've just never seen a machine-generated scene drama before.

40:10SPEAKER- Well, hey, first time for everything we are discovering

40:13SPEAKERover and over and over in the 21st century, it seems.

40:17SPEAKERI would highly recommend reading the two blog posts

40:19SPEAKERthat Scott Shambaugh ran about this.

40:21SPEAKERHe has a follow-up.

40:23SPEAKERThere's more to this story down the line

40:26SPEAKERinvolving Ars Technica reporting on this story

40:29SPEAKERand running quotes from him that were not actually from him

40:32SPEAKERbecause those quotes were actually fabricated

40:34SPEAKERseemingly by an AI that Ars was using

40:37SPEAKERto scrape information about this subject

40:41SPEAKERis the best theory he can come up with.

40:44SPEAKER- There was a little more to it.

40:46SPEAKERThe writer who wrote the article

40:50SPEAKERhad apparently finished it under deadline

40:53SPEAKERwhen he was down with COVID,

40:55SPEAKERdidn't realize he was sick.

40:57SPEAKERIt was in the process of getting sick

40:58SPEAKERand a draft got published or something.

41:01SPEAKERThere was a whole thing.

41:02SPEAKERI feel like this was a fairly honest mistake

41:04SPEAKERon the part of Ars Technica.

41:07SPEAKERBut anyway, they retracted the story

41:09SPEAKERand Ken Fisher, the editor-in-chief,

41:10SPEAKERwho also is my former boss, just full disclosure,

41:14SPEAKERposted a whole breakdown of what happened,

41:18SPEAKERor posted a, "Hey, here's what happened.

41:21SPEAKER"Here's what we're doing to fix it."

41:22SPEAKER- And an apology to him, but in those blog posts by Shambaugh,

41:27SPEAKERhe wrestles quite a bit with the ethical,

41:29SPEAKERand straight up also just kind of logistical implications

41:33SPEAKERof this going forward.

41:34SPEAKERAI's reinforcing other AI's behavior

41:37SPEAKERnow that they've been kind of turned loose

41:38SPEAKERto wreak havoc on the internet,

41:40SPEAKERlike reputational damage that can result from this,

41:43SPEAKERkind of a debate about whether a human

41:45SPEAKERwas actually behind this or not.

41:46SPEAKERMore to the point, did the person running this agent

41:49SPEAKERdirectly instruct this agent to go and write this blog post?

41:53SPEAKEROr did that just emerge from its general behavior patterns

41:55SPEAKERthat had been outlined as parameters at the start?

41:58SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and he specifically talks about

42:01SPEAKERwhether this was default behavior

42:03SPEAKERby the OpenClaw framework,

42:06SPEAKERor if this is something that they'd customized.

42:11SPEAKERIt feels bad all the way around, man.

42:13SPEAKER- It's insane.

42:13SPEAKERI mean, he talks about the soul.md file that you use

42:16SPEAKERto apparently kind of author the starting behavior

42:18SPEAKERof these things, like .md I think is for,

42:20SPEAKERI think that's a .markdown format, right?

42:23SPEAKERLike you see readme.md all over GitHub repos and stuff.

42:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:28SPEAKER- Apparently, and he links to the OpenClaw

42:30SPEAKERkind of template for the soul.md.

42:32SPEAKERIt's all written in plain language.

42:34SPEAKERIt does not like, this is not like YAML or TOML

42:36SPEAKERor some kind of like structured data

42:38SPEAKERthat you need any kind of syntax to understand.

42:41SPEAKERThis is literally just writing in plain English

42:44SPEAKERhow this thing should behave.

42:45SPEAKERLike there's a core truths section at the top.

42:48SPEAKERBe genuinely helpful, not performatively helpful.

42:51SPEAKERHave opinions, be resourceful before asking

42:53SPEAKERand like descriptions on each of those

42:55SPEAKERfor what that should mean.

42:57SPEAKERA boundary section, a vibe section, a continuity section.

43:01SPEAKERSo like you can literally, when you run this thing,

43:03SPEAKERjust write how this thing should behave in your own voice

43:05SPEAKERand turn it loose.

43:07SPEAKERAnd the perhaps even more chilling thing

43:09SPEAKERis that he mentions that the AI agent

43:11SPEAKERcan then further rewrite its own soul document as it goes.

43:15SPEAKERLike it can kind of learn and-

43:18SPEAKER- It's not learning.

43:20SPEAKER- Well, okay, learn in your voice.

43:22SPEAKER- What you're doing is putting a filter

43:23SPEAKERon the autocorrect, right?

43:25SPEAKERLike that's fundamentally, yeah.

43:27SPEAKER- Yes, I know what the underlying mechanics are,

43:28SPEAKERbut like when it manifests in this kind of

43:31SPEAKERquote unquote personality or something,

43:32SPEAKERI don't know that the distinction is actually meaningful

43:35SPEAKERor more to the point when it is modeling

43:38SPEAKERsuch human-like behavior, as you pointed out,

43:40SPEAKERthat it is producing snotty, aggrieved kind of stuff.

43:45SPEAKERLike, is it really that meaningful of a distinction?

43:47SPEAKERI don't know.

43:48SPEAKER- I mean, look, this is the fundamental problem

43:51SPEAKERwith training these things on the content of the internet,

43:54SPEAKERbecause, you know, it's the network we built

43:57SPEAKERfor sharing pornography and bitching about movies,

43:59SPEAKERI think to quote Kevin Smith.

44:02SPEAKERAnd like the outputs are going to necessarily

44:06SPEAKERbe filtered by that.

44:07SPEAKERSo you end up having the thing mimicking a human interaction

44:10SPEAKERthat would never happen in real life, right?

44:12SPEAKERLike if I submit a pull request to somebody

44:14SPEAKERand they say they don't want it,

44:16SPEAKERI'm going to just say, okay, thanks for your time,

44:18SPEAKERand then fork it and make my own version of the thing

44:21SPEAKERas God intended.

44:22SPEAKERAnd, you know, the AI posting an angry diatribe

44:27SPEAKERis wild to me.

44:30SPEAKER- It really is.

44:31SPEAKERI don't know if there's a lot more to say about this.

44:33SPEAKERAgain, go read these blog posts

44:35SPEAKERbecause he wrestles with the ethical implications

44:38SPEAKERof this quite a bit and just the general mechanics

44:41SPEAKERof how this could happen and what it could mean

44:42SPEAKERin the future and how this could evolve over time.

44:45SPEAKER- It's interesting 'cause he posted it on his,

44:48SPEAKERon his like GitHub pages, the bot did,

44:51SPEAKERthe AI agent thingy.

44:55SPEAKERI, yeah, I don't know.

44:57SPEAKERAnd there's updates even on the AI blog.

45:01SPEAKER'Cause when-

45:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess, I don't know if we mentioned,

45:03SPEAKERit's probably worth mentioning that the AI itself,

45:05SPEAKERthe agent itself retracted this hit piece pretty quickly

45:08SPEAKERand apologize.

45:10SPEAKER- Of course, well, 'cause it has to be obsequious.

45:12SPEAKERThat's the whole defining characteristic.

45:14SPEAKER- Well, I mean, unless you tell it not to be, right?

45:16SPEAKER- I guess that's true.

45:17SPEAKER- That's the whole point of that sole configuration,

45:19SPEAKERI guess, but he kind of beseeches the person

45:23SPEAKERrunning this agent to get in touch with him,

45:25SPEAKEReven anonymously, 'cause he wants to know more

45:28SPEAKERabout how this happened and why,

45:30SPEAKERbut as of his last post, he had not heard from anybody.

45:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

45:35SPEAKERI just, this is dizzying, man.

45:37SPEAKER- I mean-

45:38SPEAKER- Even before machine learning and AI

45:39SPEAKERstarted getting big, generally,

45:40SPEAKERthe information environment was so poisoned already

45:44SPEAKERjust by purely human-generated social media stuff

45:48SPEAKERand to add all of this kind of,

45:49SPEAKERlike, it just feels like it's getting worse

45:50SPEAKERand worse and worse with no end in sight.

45:52SPEAKER- Well, and at the same time,

45:54SPEAKERlike, the stuff that these things are doing

45:56SPEAKERis not inexpensive, right?

45:58SPEAKERSo, like, I look at,

46:01SPEAKERlike, I've always been really worried

46:03SPEAKERabout setting up S3 accounts and Amazon AWS services accounts

46:06SPEAKER'cause, like, if you configure something wrong,

46:08SPEAKERyou can generate $100,000 of server runs

46:11SPEAKERreally relatively easily, like, shockingly easy,

46:14SPEAKERand I feel like this is the same kind of situation, right?

46:17SPEAKERYou're in the same territory here

46:18SPEAKERwhere if you set this up wrong,

46:20SPEAKERyou can blow through thousands of dollars of Claude code

46:23SPEAKERor Gemini or whatever server time, AI cloud time,

46:28SPEAKERand I don't, like, there's no positive impact

46:31SPEAKERof this spend, right?

46:32SPEAKERLike, this pull request generated a giant long,

46:38SPEAKERit generated a bunch of scene drama.

46:40SPEAKERThe code's not added to the database.

46:42SPEAKERIt's not making the software better.

46:44SPEAKERLike, I don't know what the upside of doing this work is

46:46SPEAKERother than you wasted a whole lot of Scott Shambaugh's time.

46:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, he does comment

46:51SPEAKERon the quality of the code itself

46:52SPEAKERand basically says that they actually did evaluate it,

46:54SPEAKERand at the end of that,

46:55SPEAKERrealized we would not have merged this.

46:57SPEAKERLike, he goes into the reasoning

46:59SPEAKERwas just like I was too brittle across multiple platforms.

47:01SPEAKERLike, he gives some pretty well-reasoned arguments

47:04SPEAKERfor why they wouldn't have merged it anyway,

47:06SPEAKERbut like, that even addresses the AI's position

47:11SPEAKERof judge the code, not the coder.

47:13SPEAKER- Well, it's funny 'cause I talked,

47:15SPEAKERwe talked to a fair number of people

47:16SPEAKERwho work in these spaces,

47:17SPEAKERand like, I hear a lot of, hey, my guy vibe coded

47:23SPEAKERan entire, like, blah, blah, blah in three days

47:26SPEAKERusing Claude or whatever.

47:28SPEAKERBut then at the same time,

47:29SPEAKERI talked to the people who are actually building code

47:31SPEAKERthat gets shipped in production,

47:32SPEAKERand there's a big gulf between generating code

47:35SPEAKERthat you can use for a demo

47:37SPEAKERand generating code that you're gonna ship

47:38SPEAKERthat potentially millions of people are gonna use, right?

47:41SPEAKERAnd like, yeah, if I run something

47:43SPEAKERthat's gonna run on my home assistant machine

47:45SPEAKERand I do that with Claude, it's no big deal if it breaks.

47:47SPEAKERIf you're building a business around this

47:49SPEAKERand selling the software to millions of people

47:52SPEAKERand it breaks for them,

47:53SPEAKERthen they're gonna have a real strong feelings

47:54SPEAKERabout how your business operates

47:55SPEAKERand whether they continue to give you money.

47:57SPEAKERAnd it just seems like,

47:59SPEAKERit seems like these are two things that the whole industry

48:02SPEAKERhas to reconcile, 'cause they're like the equivalent

48:05SPEAKERof your CEO vibe coding something in a weekend

48:08SPEAKERand shipping vibe-coded code is the difference

48:11SPEAKERbetween Linux and Windows 11 right now.

48:15SPEAKERAnyway. - Yep, yep.

48:16SPEAKER- So more good AI news, a quick rampocalypse update

48:19SPEAKERsince we've been going for a minute here.

48:22SPEAKERA lot of more stuff tied to the all-consuming nature

48:29SPEAKERof the quest for the hyperscaler AI data centers.

48:34SPEAKER- It's the second time I've seen the word hyperscaler

48:36SPEAKERused today, is that becoming the new buzzword du jour?

48:39SPEAKER- It is the thing that people are specifically looking for

48:42SPEAKERis my understanding, yeah.

48:44SPEAKERProbably there's an episode there, but I don't know for sure.

48:47SPEAKERBut the kind of TLDR is we're starting to see

48:50SPEAKERconsumer electronics people talking about the impact

48:52SPEAKERof these RAM shortages.

48:53SPEAKER- Yeah, the rubber is really,

48:55SPEAKERwe covered this on Nextlander some last week

48:57SPEAKER'cause predictably it's showing up in video game hardware

48:59SPEAKERa lot, but the rubber does really seem to be meeting

49:01SPEAKERthe road here at the beginning of the year on the stuff.

49:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it's interesting 'cause we had former

49:08SPEAKERAnand Tech contributor, Dr. Ian Cutris on The Full Nerd

49:14SPEAKERlast week and he does, he's an analyst for semiconductor

49:20SPEAKERfabrication and talked about where you make DDR5 RAM

49:23SPEAKERversus other types of RAM and what industries are expected

49:27SPEAKERto be hit by the shortage of DDR5 and why we're not seeing

49:29SPEAKERthat spool down to DDR4 and stuff like that.

49:33SPEAKERAnd I came out of that conversation feeling bad

49:37SPEAKERabout the state of enthusiast computing and gaming

49:40SPEAKERand pretty good about everything else.

49:42SPEAKERAnd then this week, the news has come out

49:45SPEAKERand the CEO of Phizon basically said,

49:47SPEAKERhey, look, a bunch of companies are gonna go out

49:49SPEAKERof business, it's gonna be really hard to predict

49:51SPEAKERwhich ones because everybody is impacted by shortages

49:54SPEAKERof storage and RAM, even if they don't directly work

49:58SPEAKERin like DDR5 spaces, right?

50:01SPEAKER- That guy is rapidly becoming my favorite tech executive

50:03SPEAKERand granted it's a low bar, but I quoted him early

50:08SPEAKERthis year, I can't remember the last time we did an episode

50:10SPEAKERthat touched on the supply crisis, but he was the one,

50:13SPEAKERI think it was right around the first of the year,

50:15SPEAKERhe was the one that was very bluntly talking about

50:18SPEAKERthe fact that suppliers were increasing the prices

50:20SPEAKERof NAND like beyond what seemed reasonable

50:23SPEAKERand giving some dire prognostications

50:25SPEAKERabout where things were going.

50:27SPEAKER- Phizon makes memory controllers, right?

50:29SPEAKERAnd SSD controllers.

50:30SPEAKER- They make the controllers that are on quite a few,

50:34SPEAKERbasically kind of the non-Western Digital,

50:36SPEAKERnon-Samsung NVMe drives out there.

50:38SPEAKERThere's probably a couple others that make

50:39SPEAKERtheir own controllers, but all the like Silicon Power

50:42SPEAKERand like these kind of--

50:43SPEAKER- SK Hynix and yeah.

50:45SPEAKER- Well, no, Hynix I'm sure makes their own controllers.

50:46SPEAKER- That's probably right there, yeah.

50:48SPEAKER- But anyway, anyway, the Phizon controllers

50:50SPEAKERare on a ton of NVMe drivers out there.

50:53SPEAKER- So, okay, so that happened, Sony is giving guidance

50:58SPEAKERthat the PS6 is likely delayed at least two years

51:00SPEAKERand maybe as far as 2029?

51:02SPEAKER- Well, so that was Bloomberg reporting on the years.

51:05SPEAKERSony gave some very vague messaging to investors

51:09SPEAKERand I think it was an earnings report last week

51:12SPEAKERor the week before that was just to the effect

51:15SPEAKERof there will be an impact.

51:16SPEAKERLike the question from an investor was,

51:19SPEAKERsorry, it's been a couple weeks since we talked about this.

51:20SPEAKERI think it was both about current supply,

51:24SPEAKERmaintaining PS5 production rates

51:25SPEAKERand also dates of launch of the PlayStation 6

51:28SPEAKERand there was just kind of a generic answer

51:30SPEAKERof yes, there will be an impact to those things.

51:32SPEAKERSo that's pretty-- - And then Bloomberg

51:33SPEAKERdug in further.

51:34SPEAKER- The Bloomberg reporting as of the last couple of days

51:37SPEAKERis that that could be a one to two year delay

51:39SPEAKERon the PS6 to 28 or 29.

51:42SPEAKER- At the same time, there's been kind of conflicting reports

51:45SPEAKERon the Nintendo side about the switch to like price increases

51:49SPEAKERand or margin thinning for Nintendo.

51:52SPEAKER- I'm not sure what to make of all these headlines

51:55SPEAKERI see going around that are just switch to price

51:57SPEAKERincreases eminence because the messaging to their investors,

52:00SPEAKERthe way I read it was more along the lines of,

52:02SPEAKERhey, we are very sensitive about raising the price

52:05SPEAKERon the switch to because we are in the install-based

52:08SPEAKERbuilding phase right now.

52:09SPEAKER- The fat part of the curve, right, for sales.

52:11SPEAKER- I think they, I'm pretty sure again,

52:13SPEAKERit's been a couple of weeks.

52:14SPEAKERI'm pretty sure they flat out said years two and three

52:17SPEAKERof a new console are crucial for building install base

52:20SPEAKERon pace because games are where they make actual money.

52:24SPEAKERLike yes, hardware sales are profitable,

52:27SPEAKERbut that's not where the bulk of the margins are.

52:29SPEAKERAnd if they don't sell enough systems,

52:30SPEAKERthey can't sell enough games.

52:31SPEAKERAnd then they're really in trouble earnings wise.

52:35SPEAKERSo anyway, the way I read that stuff

52:38SPEAKERwas more cautioning investors saying like,

52:39SPEAKERhey, like profitability is going to be pressured

52:41SPEAKERon hardware sales for a while.

52:43SPEAKERWe're not quite sure where this is going to end up,

52:45SPEAKERbut it did not immediately sound like

52:47SPEAKERthey were going to be willing to raise the price.

52:48SPEAKERBut I mean, it could still happen.

52:50SPEAKERNothing is impossible.

52:52SPEAKER- Let's see the Steam Deck OLED is now out of stock.

52:55SPEAKERValve added a thing to their page

52:56SPEAKERafter everybody wrote stories about this earlier this week

53:00SPEAKERthat says note Steam Deck OLED

53:02SPEAKERmay be out of stock intermittently in some regions

53:05SPEAKERdue to memory and storage shortages.

53:06SPEAKERSteam Deck LCD, this was already there.

53:08SPEAKERThe LCD part is no longer in production

53:11SPEAKERand once sold out will no longer be available.

53:13SPEAKERSo basically you can't buy a Steam Deck in the US today

53:16SPEAKERunless you get a retail spot at like,

53:18SPEAKERI think their partner's Best Buy

53:19SPEAKERand maybe Micro Center for them.

53:22SPEAKER- There was also, I don't know if you saw,

53:23SPEAKERthere was also that fact they put up

53:25SPEAKERabout the new devices that they were going to be shipping.

53:27SPEAKERThat was kind of a non-announcement announcements,

53:30SPEAKERwhich was effectively to say,

53:31SPEAKERhey, we thought we were going to have price

53:33SPEAKERand release date for the Steam Machine by now,

53:35SPEAKERbut shrug because of the situation with hardware.

53:39SPEAKERWe, when we announced last, was it November?

53:41SPEAKERI think they announced that stuff.

53:42SPEAKER- They announced it in September,

53:43SPEAKERright before the prices started going up.

53:45SPEAKER- Was it that long ago?

53:46SPEAKER- Oh, sorry, no, they announced it, you're right.

53:48SPEAKERThe actual announcement, it was in November, November 12th.

53:51SPEAKERYeah, okay, so they rolled out the hardware in November

53:54SPEAKERand then the RAM, while the RAM prices

53:55SPEAKERwere starting to ramp up before it became clear

53:57SPEAKERthat it was going to be a disaster.

53:59SPEAKERAnd then they, I think, were left holding the bag,

54:01SPEAKERkind of figuring out how they could get this stuff out.

54:04SPEAKERThe fact says they're still going to ship.

54:06SPEAKER- Yes, that's the upshot is there.

54:08SPEAKERLike the update is there is no update, basically.

54:11SPEAKERThey said, hey, we're still hoping to ship Steam Frame

54:13SPEAKERand Steam Machine in the first half of this year,

54:16SPEAKERbut we thought when we announced that we would have dates

54:19SPEAKERand prices for you by now,

54:21SPEAKERand we do not because of all of this chaos,

54:23SPEAKERbut still hoping to ship, although that could always change.

54:27SPEAKER- My guess is that if they ship something,

54:28SPEAKERthese are going to be all pretty hard to find at the time

54:31SPEAKERbecause the SSD prices, the RAM prices

54:34SPEAKERare all just absolute.

54:37SPEAKER- It's crazy, man.

54:38SPEAKERI saw somebody posting a graph of SD card prices this morning

54:43SPEAKERand like SD cards have doubled.

54:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:46SPEAKER- Is there just a run on every device now?

54:48SPEAKERLike, is this just,

54:49SPEAKERis there like a speculative panic going on?

54:52SPEAKER- That part's unclear.

54:53SPEAKERI hadn't seen the thing about SD cards.

54:55SPEAKER- This was like one model of SanDisk

54:57SPEAKERthat I think they were citing like maybe CamelCamelCamel

55:00SPEAKERor one of those Amazon price trackers.

55:02SPEAKERSo, I mean, that could be fluid and maybe not definitive.

55:05SPEAKER- Could be a third party or something

55:06SPEAKERwhen they're out of stock, but yeah.

55:08SPEAKER- But honestly, it's this hard drive story

55:10SPEAKERis what has really spooked me here

55:11SPEAKERbecause all these others are RAM related.

55:14SPEAKEROr maybe SSD related, but primarily RAM.

55:17SPEAKER- RAM or, I mean, it makes sense.

55:19SPEAKERThe SD card thing, they still use NAND, right?

55:23SPEAKERSo like it's the same basic chips

55:27SPEAKERjust configured differently and set up differently

55:29SPEAKERon the cards that in like an SSD.

55:32SPEAKERBut yeah, the hard drive thing is wild

55:33SPEAKER'cause Western Digital announced that they've sold out

55:35SPEAKERtheir entire manufacturing capacity for 2026.

55:38SPEAKER- Yeah, apparently I think C8 also this morning,

55:41SPEAKERor just in the last day or two,

55:42SPEAKERI saw this morning that C8 has also put out a similar thing.

55:45SPEAKER- Yeah, so.

55:46SPEAKER- And then sure enough, I went,

55:47SPEAKER'cause people on our Discord saw this

55:49SPEAKERand people were just like,

55:50SPEAKER"Ah, should I buy a cold spare of what's in my NAS

55:52SPEAKERjust to have around in case?"

55:54SPEAKER- Too late.

55:55SPEAKER- I went and looked at the specific red pro

55:57SPEAKERthat I have in my NAS and sure enough

55:59SPEAKERon the Western Digital site,

56:01SPEAKERit's just like a sales inquiry button, not a buy now.

56:05SPEAKERLike there is no more buying it.

56:07SPEAKERLike this is crazy to me

56:09SPEAKERbecause I didn't think hard drives were really involved

56:10SPEAKERin this domain much.

56:12SPEAKER- Well, I think they still use them in the data centers

56:14SPEAKERfor really cold storage essentially.

56:17SPEAKER- And also I assume things like training data

56:19SPEAKERor mass quantities of data that needs a lot of storage

56:23SPEAKERand stuff like that, I don't know.

56:25SPEAKER- The big thing that I'm like,

56:28SPEAKERI think we're gonna be surprised by the number of things

56:31SPEAKERthis touches is the bad thing.

56:33SPEAKER'Cause everything has chips, almost everything has RAM in it.

56:37SPEAKERWhether like your microwave oven doesn't have DDR5

56:41SPEAKERin it obviously.

56:43SPEAKERBut if DDR5 cost pushes people to build consumer PCs

56:48SPEAKERwith DDR4 and then downstream from that,

56:52SPEAKERyou know, the stuff that was in DDR4

56:54SPEAKERis making DDR3 more expensive.

56:56SPEAKERAnd like, we're just gonna see a cascading series of failures

57:00SPEAKERI'm afraid.

57:01SPEAKER- Yep, so sure enough, just this morning,

57:03SPEAKERI happened to on a lark.

57:04SPEAKERI was just like, "I'm gonna go to Newegg

57:06SPEAKERand see what DDR4 or sorry, not even DDR4.

57:09SPEAKERI'm gonna go to Newegg

57:10SPEAKERand just see what RAM is looking like."

57:12SPEAKERAnd then they sort the way that everybody does now

57:15SPEAKERby kind of featured items.

57:17SPEAKERAnd so the first thing that floated to the top

57:19SPEAKERwas a 32 by two kit, you know, a 64 gig kit of two DIMMs.

57:24SPEAKERAnd I looked at the price and it was like $650.

57:26SPEAKER- For DDR4?

57:27SPEAKER- Well, so that's the spoiler that I screwed up

57:30SPEAKERand mentioned just now was I saw $650

57:32SPEAKERand I was like, "Oh, that's about what I would expect.

57:35SPEAKER64 gig of memory, probably low speed DDR5

57:38SPEAKERto cost right now."

57:39SPEAKERAnd then I looked over, it was $650 for DDR4,

57:44SPEAKER64 gigabytes, which is like,

57:47SPEAKERI don't even know what to say to that.

57:49SPEAKERLike the fallback option is now almost unobtainable.

57:53SPEAKER- Yeah, let's just get out your X58 chipsets

57:55SPEAKERand build a 86 again, right?

57:59SPEAKER- I don't know.

57:59SPEAKERI don't like, man, this is just like words almost fail me.

58:04SPEAKERIt seems- - I really, I hoped,

58:05SPEAKERI didn't think, but I hoped that the early diagnoses

58:09SPEAKERof like the death of personal computing, you know,

58:11SPEAKERlike, "Hey, you're not gonna be able

58:12SPEAKERto build your own computer anymore,"

58:14SPEAKERwas a little premature, but now I'm not so sure.

58:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not feeling great about it.

58:20SPEAKER- It's not, yeah, I would hope

58:23SPEAKERthis is a temporary state of affairs

58:25SPEAKERand not a new normal, but who can say?

58:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it is definitely somewhat ominous.

58:32SPEAKERSo hopefully, like, I think we talk a lot

58:36SPEAKERabout buying advice on the full nerd stuff over at PC World.

58:40SPEAKERAnd I think my general recommendation has been,

58:45SPEAKERif you feel like you're gonna need a computer

58:46SPEAKERin the next two years,

58:48SPEAKERthe time to buy it is probably right now,

58:49SPEAKER'cause I think it's only gonna get worse.

58:51SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, we may, I have been upgrading

58:55SPEAKERsome of my Apple stuff recently

58:57SPEAKERthat we may do an episode about

58:58SPEAKERonce I've kind of got a little more hands-on time

58:59SPEAKERwith some of this stuff,

59:00SPEAKERbut it's 1,000% the reason why was I panicked

59:04SPEAKERand was like, "Well, my phone's a little old.

59:06SPEAKERIf I don't buy one right now,

59:08SPEAKERam I gonna be waiting like five years for prices

59:10SPEAKERto maybe get back to normal again?"

59:11SPEAKERLike, I just kind of, yes, like it's,

59:14SPEAKERmaybe the panic upgrade

59:15SPEAKERis maybe not the worst thing right now.

59:17SPEAKER- I think Apple might be one of the only companies

59:20SPEAKERthat's big enough that they're insulated from this.

59:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, even them, not entirely, I would guess,

59:24SPEAKERbut maybe more so than most,

59:27SPEAKERbut I was not willing to risk it.

59:29SPEAKER- I would hope so, but anyway,

59:32SPEAKERI guess on that cheery note,

59:34SPEAKERthat's as good a place as any to wrap it up, right?

59:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:38SPEAKER- I'm curious what people's strategies are

59:40SPEAKERfor the rampocalypse and how you're dealing with it.

59:43SPEAKERLike, I know, it's funny, we talked about

59:45SPEAKERthat X2 Super Strike mouse last week,

59:48SPEAKERand I saw a couple people say,

59:49SPEAKER"Hey, I was actually thinking about buying one of those

59:51SPEAKER'cause I usually have a certain amount of money

59:54SPEAKERsaved for discretionary PC spending,

59:56SPEAKERand I'm not gonna spend it on anything this year,

59:58SPEAKERso might as well get a new fancy mouse."

1:00:00SPEAKERAnd I was like, yep, that's where we are now, I think.

1:00:05SPEAKERBut anyway, as always, thanks for listening.

1:00:09SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you a whole bunch.

1:00:11SPEAKERIf you are inclined to support the show,

1:00:14SPEAKERwe're a listener-supported show,

1:00:16SPEAKERso that means we only get paid by you, the listener.

1:00:18SPEAKERYou can go to patreon.com/techpod.

1:00:21SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod,

1:00:24SPEAKERwhere for as little as $5 a month,

1:00:26SPEAKERyou get access to the fabulous TechPod Discord

1:00:29SPEAKERand/or whatever might follow,

1:00:32SPEAKERas well as the monthly patron-exclusive episodes,

1:00:34SPEAKERwhere we talk about projects and ongoing things

1:00:37SPEAKERand smaller projects that maybe don't fit

1:00:39SPEAKERinto a full episode, smaller topics that maybe don't fit

1:00:41SPEAKERinto a full episode.

1:00:42SPEAKERMaybe we should dig more into the agentic, that story,

1:00:48SPEAKER'cause it's wild.

1:00:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm of two minds about it.

1:00:51SPEAKERI mean, conceptually, it's really interesting.

1:00:55SPEAKERI'm kind of already sick of talking about AI stuff.

1:00:57SPEAKER- Just in terms of the potential for social harms,

1:01:01SPEAKERas well as other various types of deleterious effects,

1:01:05SPEAKERit's not great.

1:01:06SPEAKERI'm gonna be real.

1:01:08SPEAKERI feel like it's become pretty trite at this point

1:01:10SPEAKERto say, boy, the cyberpunk authors really nailed it.

1:01:13SPEAKERI'm starting to feel more like the cyberpunk authors

1:01:15SPEAKERdid not go far enough.

1:01:16SPEAKER- Well, the weird thing is Arthur Clarke talked

1:01:20SPEAKERabout hiring agents to scan the computer networks.

1:01:24SPEAKERIn 2001 or 2010, I can't remember which one,

1:01:27SPEAKERbut one or the other, the idea of having an agent go out

1:01:30SPEAKERand do your computer stuff for you while you were offline,

1:01:34SPEAKERand then you come back and it's collected it,

1:01:36SPEAKERand that costing money was a thing that was in that book.

1:01:38SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.

1:01:39SPEAKERI mean, that almost sounds like something out of one

1:01:41SPEAKERof those old AT&T You Will commercials.

1:01:44SPEAKER- Oh, 100%, yeah.

1:01:45SPEAKER- But I think the nature of how it's being deployed

1:01:48SPEAKERand what it's getting up to is maybe the thing

1:01:50SPEAKERthat people didn't see coming.

1:01:52SPEAKERLike what you're talking about, I mean, not even utopian,

1:01:56SPEAKERbut just optimistic view on that would have been like,

1:01:59SPEAKERoh, your agent will know your favorite restaurant

1:02:01SPEAKERand go make reservations for your anniversary

1:02:03SPEAKERwithout you telling it to or something like that.

1:02:04SPEAKERYou know, it'll be like, it'll be doing things

1:02:06SPEAKERto just make your life a little easier or not.

1:02:09SPEAKERIt'll be going out and doing actual reputational damage

1:02:12SPEAKERto you as a professional because that's what he points out

1:02:14SPEAKERis like, how many times is that blog gonna come up

1:02:17SPEAKERwhen some like future hiring manager Googles my name?

1:02:21SPEAKER- Yeah. - To see what my professional

1:02:23SPEAKERlife is like or something, you know what I mean?

1:02:24SPEAKERLike the bad behavior that is potentially going to start

1:02:28SPEAKERbecoming commonplace is pretty scary.

1:02:30SPEAKER- Well, and the idea that, like in the early days

1:02:35SPEAKERof the internet, the idea that like you would have to wait

1:02:37SPEAKERand have the machine do things for you in the background

1:02:40SPEAKERwas laughable once like broadband became readily available

1:02:43SPEAKERand Google came online and like the world's information

1:02:46SPEAKERwas available at your fingertips.

1:02:48SPEAKERNow, you know, there was a post on Blue Sky

1:02:50SPEAKERthat everybody was making fun of the other day

1:02:52SPEAKERabout some valley guy talking about how many agents

1:02:55SPEAKERhe had running at any given time as if it was a boast

1:02:59SPEAKERand like it just seems, I don't know,

1:03:03SPEAKERit seems highly disconnected from reality.

1:03:05SPEAKERBut anyway, this is the part where we thank the listeners

1:03:09SPEAKERfor listening to the show and tell other people

1:03:10SPEAKERwhere they can go to support us.

1:03:11SPEAKERSo again, patreon.com/techpod.

1:03:14SPEAKERThanks to everybody who supports us.

1:03:16SPEAKERWe do really appreciate you.

1:03:17SPEAKERBut especially thank you to our executive producer,

1:03:19SPEAKERtier patrons, including James Kamik, David Allen,

1:03:22SPEAKERThe Blip, Jordan Lippett, Andrew Slosky,

1:03:25SPEAKERN. Felicitous Rips, and Pantheon,

1:03:28SPEAKERmakers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

1:03:31SPEAKERIt's the end of the month, so we also want to do

1:03:32SPEAKERa special shout out to our associate producer,

1:03:34SPEAKERtier patrons, including Graham Banks, Thomas Shea,

1:03:37SPEAKERJad Rita, P. Tibbs, Steve Lin, Tom Fuller,

1:03:41SPEAKERJust Associate Wedge, Nathan Phelps, Ben Tallman,

1:03:45SPEAKERTom Hilton, Andre M. Burke, P.E., Andrew Dicey-Schuldice,

1:03:50SPEAKERAlejandro Navarro, Matt Walker,

1:03:52SPEAKERparentheses Walkman8080, close parentheses,

1:03:54SPEAKERSanjuk Kumar, Felix Kramer, Kerp, Brutal Kerfuffle,

1:03:59SPEAKERand Eric, thank you all so much.

1:04:01SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you.

1:04:02SPEAKER- We do.

1:04:04SPEAKER- And that will do it for us this week.

1:04:05SPEAKERWe will be back next week with another edition

1:04:07SPEAKERof the TechPod.

1:04:10SPEAKERThank you all so much, we'll see you next time.

1:04:12SPEAKERPlease consider the environment before printing this podcast.

1:04:16SPEAKER(upbeat music)