00:00SPEAKER- Brad, my kid's gotten real into repo.
00:02SPEAKER- Oh. - Yeah.
00:03SPEAKER- How could you let this happen?
00:05SPEAKER- Yeah, like look, she knows what the bad guys are called.
00:08SPEAKER- Wait, they have names?
00:09SPEAKER- Oh yeah, there's a whole thing.
00:12SPEAKER- Is this like an inky blinky type situation?
00:16SPEAKER- The names are fair, like one of them,
00:18SPEAKERthe nightmare thing that comes out
00:20SPEAKERwhen you pop the red balloons is called the birthday boy.
00:23SPEAKERThere's a cleanup crew that like has a bunch
00:25SPEAKERof lumpy faces on its back.
00:27SPEAKERThere's the big head guy is called the head man, you know.
00:32SPEAKER- This just sounds like some Five Nights at Freddy's slop.
00:35SPEAKERIt just sounds like Freddy slop.
00:36SPEAKER- Wow, I mean, does Freddy have Prox chat?
00:40SPEAKERI don't think it does, does it?
00:41SPEAKER- No, I have no idea, it's just--
00:42SPEAKER- I've never played Five Nights at Freddy's.
00:43SPEAKER- Those names sound like the types of characters
00:45SPEAKERyou would get from that style of game.
00:47SPEAKERMaybe I'm generalizing too much, I don't know.
00:49SPEAKER- Yeah, like, well, that's a whole thing
00:50SPEAKERthat I really like in games.
00:52SPEAKERLike, remember when PUBG came out
00:54SPEAKERand the map didn't have labels on it
00:56SPEAKERexcept for like the five big cities.
00:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so everybody just came up with that.
00:59SPEAKERYeah, totally, coming up with your own vernacular
01:01SPEAKERfor a game is awesome.
01:02SPEAKERIn fact, what were those names?
01:04SPEAKERI don't remember.
01:05SPEAKER- Well, it was like you had prison and you had--
01:09SPEAKER- School?
01:10SPEAKER- School, well, school was labeled, I think.
01:12SPEAKER- Oh, it was, okay.
01:13SPEAKER- Maybe not, but like--
01:14SPEAKER- I just remember dropping at school a lot for some reason.
01:17SPEAKER- Yeah, that was one of the hot drops,
01:19SPEAKERbut there were all these other places were named
01:21SPEAKERand then eventually they put the names on the maps
01:24SPEAKERand some people found out they were wrong
01:26SPEAKERand some people found out they were right
01:27SPEAKERand all was right in the world.
01:29SPEAKER- And I miss early PUBG.
01:31SPEAKER- God, really?
01:31SPEAKER- I guess I'm preaching to the choir here.
01:34SPEAKER- Yeah, well, but I mean, there's a thing about PUBG,
01:37SPEAKERit's funny, I was talking with a client about this
01:39SPEAKERthe other day and there's a thing about,
01:43SPEAKERlike, everybody in, there was a blue sky post yesterday
01:47SPEAKERthat I really liked that was super smart
01:49SPEAKERand made something clear that I hadn't really thought
01:50SPEAKERabout this way before, but like Fortnite,
01:53SPEAKERpeople don't play Fortnite because,
01:56SPEAKERI mean, some people play Fortnite because they love Fortnite
01:58SPEAKERbut Fortnite is a multiplayer competitive game
02:01SPEAKERthat you can play with friends
02:02SPEAKERwith wildly different skill levels
02:04SPEAKERand it's a good way to just hang out, right?
02:07SPEAKERLike you don't, it's not like Counter-Strike
02:10SPEAKERwhere you're always doing something,
02:11SPEAKERyou have to hold the right corner and it's high stress
02:13SPEAKERand if somebody messes up,
02:14SPEAKERthen it jacks up your entire team's game.
02:17SPEAKERIt's not, it's pretty low stakes in terms of like competition
02:22SPEAKERbecause with the Battle Royale,
02:24SPEAKERlike there's 25 other teams you expect to lose, right?
02:28SPEAKERWinning is not a 50/50 outcome,
02:30SPEAKERwinning is a one in 25 chance of happening
02:33SPEAKERon a four player squad game.
02:35SPEAKERAnd like a lot of co-op games kind of work the same way
02:39SPEAKERbut not a lot of multiplayer games do,
02:41SPEAKERlike PVE games do, so it's, yeah, it's a weird,
02:45SPEAKERPUBG had that same vibe for me,
02:46SPEAKERlike PUBG was a game that had a lot of downtime,
02:49SPEAKERthere was a lot of time to fart around
02:50SPEAKERand chat with your friends and hang out
02:53SPEAKERand then also occasionally shoot people in the face.
02:56SPEAKER- Yeah, and like every match,
02:57SPEAKERthere would be a 30 second critical event
02:59SPEAKERthat determined the entire rest of the match.
03:01SPEAKER- Yeah, or a couple, a sequence of those, right?
03:04SPEAKER- Sure, do you think the term slop is becoming overused?
03:07SPEAKER- I think it's interesting that like slop in games
03:12SPEAKERis a positive, like friend slop,
03:14SPEAKERlike is it the $10 Prox chat game?
03:16SPEAKER- I always feel like it's at best a backhanded compliment
03:19SPEAKERand at worst, like profoundly pejorative,
03:22SPEAKERbut like the ease with which my brain
03:24SPEAKERjust popped out Freddy slop earlier
03:26SPEAKERtells me that maybe we're getting a little too saturated.
03:29SPEAKER- You think you're too slop-pilled?
03:31SPEAKER- Yes, the slop slop has got to end.
03:37SPEAKER- Look, people are gonna keep slop maxing
03:39SPEAKERas long as the games allow.
03:41SPEAKER- That's for sure.
03:42SPEAKER(upbeat music)
03:49SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
04:10SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made at TechPod, I'm Will.
04:13SPEAKER- Hi, I'm Brad.
04:16SPEAKER- I was going to talk about a game
04:18SPEAKERthat I really liked actually,
04:19SPEAKERand I couldn't figure out how to segue over to an intro.
04:21SPEAKERSo I'm just gonna say it here.
04:22SPEAKER- Say it.
04:24SPEAKER- I know you like a typing game.
04:25SPEAKER- I do.
04:26SPEAKER- There's this game called "Glyphica Typing Survival"
04:29SPEAKERthat's out on Steam.
04:30SPEAKER- Okay, that name sounds cool.
04:34SPEAKER- It was like under 10 bucks and it's basically,
04:37SPEAKERyou have a guy in the middle of a room
04:40SPEAKERand you have guns and different kinds of weapons
04:42SPEAKERyou can kind of do your business on as you're progressing.
04:46SPEAKER- It's like a typing roguelike I'm seeing.
04:49SPEAKER- It is, and as the words come,
04:50SPEAKERas the bad guys come towards you,
04:52SPEAKERyou type the word that's above them
04:55SPEAKERto shoot in their general direction.
04:57SPEAKERAnd there are like bosses that have different abilities.
05:00SPEAKERSome of them you can't target directly.
05:01SPEAKERSo you just have to like line up your shots
05:04SPEAKERwith something else behind them as they circle around you
05:06SPEAKERand stuff like that.
05:07SPEAKERIt's quite good.
05:08SPEAKER- This looks intense.
05:09SPEAKERIt's got a very spare aesthetic to it.
05:12SPEAKERI'm trying to think what this looks like.
05:14SPEAKER- It's kind of reminiscent of like,
05:16SPEAKERit's not a colorful "Geometry Wars."
05:18SPEAKERIt's like a muted "Geometry Wars" type situation.
05:21SPEAKER- Sure, I'll always get down with the typing game.
05:24SPEAKERWhat happened to "Final Sentence?"
05:26SPEAKER- They're still finishing it, is my understanding.
05:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I think they had had,
05:31SPEAKERoh, they've pushed it to Q2 now on the Steam page.
05:33SPEAKERI think it was Q1, which is up in five days or so.
05:37SPEAKERSo that's a ways out.
05:39SPEAKER- This game reminds me of,
05:40SPEAKERdo you remember that iOS game "Prune"
05:42SPEAKERthat you had to like cut the,
05:44SPEAKERit was the same kind of like beige background
05:48SPEAKERwith foreshadows in the foreground
05:50SPEAKERand you had to cut the branches off the tree
05:52SPEAKERand to make it grow in the right direction.
05:54SPEAKER- This might be the game I was trying to think of
05:56SPEAKERthat Galifika looks like.
05:57SPEAKERIt's like kind of the exact same color palette
05:59SPEAKERand sort of muted gradient sort of look.
06:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like beige and maroon kind of vibes.
06:06SPEAKERIt's quite good.
06:08SPEAKERIt turns out you don't see many games that look like this.
06:10SPEAKER- No. - And for what it's worth,
06:13SPEAKERGalifika is early access as well,
06:14SPEAKERbut it's my chill out game at the end of the night
06:18SPEAKERand it has workshop support, which is cool.
06:20SPEAKER- Cool, I had to put down,
06:22SPEAKERwell, I mean, A, final sentence is not out,
06:24SPEAKERalthough I think that demo might actually
06:27SPEAKERstill be up and functional.
06:28SPEAKER- Oh, is it?
06:29SPEAKER- But B, yeah, I think so.
06:31SPEAKERB, I'll say real quick, quick programming note,
06:33SPEAKERI will be out on the podcast next week.
06:35SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah.
06:36SPEAKER- I had to stop playing final sentence
06:38SPEAKER'cause I've got some ongoing nerve issues
06:40SPEAKERthat I'm going to get fixed next week, so.
06:44SPEAKER- So you're saying, like you're getting
06:45SPEAKERthe Tommy John surgery for your final sentencing?
06:48SPEAKER- Something like that.
06:49SPEAKER- Okay, so yeah.
06:52SPEAKER- Anyway, I'll be back and ready to type in a few weeks
06:55SPEAKERonce all of the hardware comes off.
06:58SPEAKER- And we'll have a guest next week, maybe the week after.
07:02SPEAKERWe'll see how things go.
07:03SPEAKER- Oh, I think I should be fine the week after.
07:05SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, but anyway.
07:08SPEAKER- This week, though.
07:09SPEAKER- This week, you wouldn't miss
07:11SPEAKERthe most important week of the month.
07:12SPEAKER- No, absolutely not, my favorite week of the month.
07:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it's questions turning into answers week.
07:17SPEAKER- Not only because the audience
07:19SPEAKERprovides our discussion topics for us.
07:22SPEAKER- There's a lot to be said for that, it turns out.
07:23SPEAKER- Yeah, it helps.
07:25SPEAKER- Yeah, keep your finger on the pulse, you know?
07:27SPEAKER- Thank you to everyone who writes in, for sure,
07:29SPEAKERbut also it's just like a fun grab bag, if you will,
07:32SPEAKERa potpourri of topics, it's a, you know.
07:34SPEAKER- We always hit on a bunch of stuff
07:36SPEAKERwe would not have hit on on these Q&A episodes,
07:38SPEAKERbecause people write in about stuff
07:40SPEAKERwe hadn't thought to talk about.
07:42SPEAKER- Often the stuff that people want to talk about
07:43SPEAKERis surprising and fun for us.
07:46SPEAKERSo anyway, if you want to help us be surprising and fun,
07:50SPEAKERyou can go to your electronic mail client,
07:54SPEAKERor emails, as the kids call them,
07:56SPEAKERand type techpod@content.town to that email address,
08:00SPEAKERsend us a short-ish message.
08:03SPEAKER- The short ones have a better chance of being read
08:05SPEAKERthan the long ones, it turns out.
08:07SPEAKER- Yes, for sure.
08:08SPEAKER- If you're in the Discord, if you're a patron,
08:09SPEAKERyou can go to the Question Seeking Answers channel
08:12SPEAKERand post something there, it'll disappear for you,
08:14SPEAKERbut we'll see it.
08:15SPEAKER- That's right.
08:16SPEAKER- And if you're not in the Discord, you can get in there
08:17SPEAKERby going to patreon.com/techpod and support the show
08:20SPEAKERfor five bucks a month and get access to the Discord,
08:22SPEAKERand also get our patron exclusive episode,
08:25SPEAKERwhere we talk about usually a wide variety of topics as well.
08:30SPEAKER- You know that old saying?
08:32SPEAKERThere's no business like show business?
08:34SPEAKER- Brevity is the soul of getting your question read
08:36SPEAKERon a podcast.
08:37SPEAKER- That is exactly true, yeah.
08:38SPEAKERMy dad always used to say that.
08:40SPEAKERI met my dad's dad before him.
08:42SPEAKER- Uh-huh, that's right.
08:44SPEAKER- Actually, did I have any grandparents alive
08:45SPEAKERwhen podcasts were, yeah, I did.
08:48SPEAKERI still had living grandparents when they were podcasts.
08:51SPEAKER- God, that's grim.
08:52SPEAKERYeah, I did too.
08:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
08:54SPEAKER- Time marches on, anyway.
08:56SPEAKER- Yeah, the old.
08:59SPEAKER- I had a weird late night thought last night,
09:01SPEAKERactually, I don't know where, was I half asleep?
09:04SPEAKERI kind of like started envisioning.
09:05SPEAKER- Do we need like a late night thought
09:07SPEAKERwith thoughts with Brad theme song?
09:08SPEAKERLike late night thoughts with Brad.
09:10SPEAKER- I don't know why I started thinking about
09:12SPEAKERwhat one of my grandmothers would have been like
09:14SPEAKERif she had lived in the social media age for some reason.
09:19SPEAKER- It's nice to have untainted memories,
09:22SPEAKERmemories of my grandparents untainted by social media.
09:26SPEAKER- Oh, strongly agree.
09:27SPEAKER- Yeah.
09:28SPEAKER- Anyway, all right.
09:29SPEAKER- 'Cause it wouldn't have been good for most of them.
09:31SPEAKER- No, no.
09:32SPEAKERAll right, shall we get into it?
09:33SPEAKER- Let's go.
09:34SPEAKER- Yeah, the less said about that, the better.
09:35SPEAKER- Yeah, my grandfather's username
09:39SPEAKERwould have been Scalia was right.
09:41SPEAKER- Oh, man.
09:41SPEAKER- You know, it would have been bad.
09:43SPEAKER- Wow, all right.
09:43SPEAKER- It would have been real bad.
09:45SPEAKER- Okay, well, on that note,
09:47SPEAKERI'm going to do a couple of emails here
09:49SPEAKERthat touch on some like podcast feed technology.
09:53SPEAKER- Okay.
09:53SPEAKER- To start, Brian near Seattle
09:56SPEAKERwas listening to a recent podcast
09:59SPEAKERand Brad mentioned Nextlander.
10:01SPEAKERApple, I guess, auto transcript pulled out the mention
10:04SPEAKERand then showed a link in the app.
10:06SPEAKERAlso, in case you didn't know, Apple is now auto chaptering.
10:09SPEAKERIt doesn't override the existing ones,
10:10SPEAKERbut adds to ones that don't have it already.
10:12SPEAKERAnd he included a screenshot and sure enough, there is a,
10:16SPEAKERyou know what's crazy is the screenshot's kind of small.
10:19SPEAKERIt looks like it's not only linking
10:21SPEAKERto the Nextlander podcast,
10:22SPEAKERit looks like it's linking to a specific episode.
10:24SPEAKER- It's linking to the referenced episode.
10:26SPEAKERYeah, I went and looked it up.
10:27SPEAKER- Well, maybe I shouldn't be as surprised by that as I am.
10:30SPEAKERLike, like speech parsing,
10:32SPEAKERtext parsing has gotten pretty good these days.
10:35SPEAKERLike, it's surely good enough to,
10:37SPEAKERif I mentioned a specific episode,
10:39SPEAKERalthough I don't think I ever mentioned it
10:41SPEAKERby name or number.
10:42SPEAKER- You probably mentioned it by topic though,
10:44SPEAKERand it knows what topics are.
10:45SPEAKER- Right, that's, but that is definitely a fuzzier input
10:48SPEAKERthan I would expect it to be able to handle.
10:50SPEAKERI don't know.
10:51SPEAKERI guess that's cool.
10:52SPEAKERIs that cool?
10:53SPEAKERI don't know.
10:54SPEAKER- I...
10:55SPEAKER- It's definitely good for cross-promoting businesses
10:56SPEAKERacross different shows, but.
10:58SPEAKER- I mean, here's the thing.
11:00SPEAKERIt's notoriously difficult to get people
11:02SPEAKERto do stuff out of podcasts,
11:03SPEAKERlike to sign up for, to click a link or something,
11:05SPEAKERbecause most often people are listening to podcasts
11:08SPEAKERin a place where they're not able to like touch their phone,
11:11SPEAKEReither they're driving or they're cooking or, you know,
11:14SPEAKERlike I think about all the places I listen to podcasts
11:16SPEAKERand I'm never gonna click links
11:17SPEAKERor never gonna type something in.
11:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean.
11:20SPEAKER- So conceptually, I like this feature
11:22SPEAKERas a person who does a podcast.
11:23SPEAKER- Link to another podcast that you mentioned on the podcast
11:26SPEAKERright there in the app where I'm sure it's basically one tap
11:28SPEAKERto open that other episode.
11:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
11:31SPEAKER- Probably good for cross-promotional purposes.
11:33SPEAKERI mean, there's always the potential for speech
11:35SPEAKERto be misinterpreted, but this is like fairly benign
11:39SPEAKERas that goes, like the auto chapters are maybe a little,
11:43SPEAKERI guess that's, I don't know.
11:44SPEAKERI'd be curious to hear how people think that works
11:47SPEAKERor how well it works, I should say.
11:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I was trying to find our podcast
11:50SPEAKERon the thing to find the chapters and I can't,
11:54SPEAKERI can't find it on Apple Podcasts.
11:56SPEAKERSo that goes straight to the next question,
12:00SPEAKERbut there's a post script on this one.
12:02SPEAKERSo table that, table not being able
12:03SPEAKERto find the podcast for a second.
12:05SPEAKER- Okay.
12:06SPEAKER- Because there's a complete non sequitur
12:08SPEAKERof a post script on this email.
12:10SPEAKERI miss Windows Phone.
12:11SPEAKER- I was gonna call that out.
12:13SPEAKER- I also miss Windows Phone actually.
12:15SPEAKER- Windows Phone was good actually.
12:17SPEAKER- Windows Phone was good, like straight up.
12:20SPEAKERWell, there's an interesting phenomenon,
12:24SPEAKERespecially as operating systems are talked about
12:26SPEAKERa lot these days where it's like,
12:28SPEAKERit's impossible to make a very broad normative statement
12:31SPEAKERabout any kind of platform
12:32SPEAKERbecause everybody has a completely different interpretation
12:35SPEAKERof what it means when you say it.
12:37SPEAKER- That's true.
12:38SPEAKER- Like when I say, for example,
12:40SPEAKERlike if I say Mac OS is good.
12:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
12:43SPEAKER- Period.
12:44SPEAKERLike I'm mostly thinking about the plumbing of Mac OS,
12:46SPEAKERyou know, like all the kinds of Unix underpinnings
12:48SPEAKERand like the process may, you know,
12:51SPEAKERlike it's technically very sound operating system,
12:54SPEAKERbut somebody else who is more like user interface focused
12:56SPEAKERis just going to think about like, for example,
12:58SPEAKERthe, I don't know, the lack of window snapping in Mac OS
13:01SPEAKERor things about the interface of dealing
13:04SPEAKERwith the windowing that they hate.
13:06SPEAKERAnd to them, like they hate Mac OS
13:08SPEAKERbecause they don't like using it.
13:09SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
13:10SPEAKERSo it's like, like in the Windows Phone example, you know,
13:13SPEAKERlike you and I probably are thinking of like live tiles
13:16SPEAKERwere awesome and like the aesthetics of the,
13:18SPEAKERlike the Metro tile layout were pretty nice,
13:21SPEAKERbut then other people would be like, well, it had no apps.
13:23SPEAKERSo it was terrible.
13:24SPEAKERAnd it's like, in my mind, like that's not a platform
13:27SPEAKERor, you know, that's a more of a business problem
13:29SPEAKERthan a like core technical issue with the platform.
13:32SPEAKERYou get what I'm saying?
13:33SPEAKER- Well, it was both, right?
13:34SPEAKERBecause they couldn't get developers to come on their platform
13:38SPEAKERbut like, no, you're right.
13:39SPEAKER'Cause like my, also that changes over time.
13:42SPEAKER'Cause if in like 2008, I said, wow,
13:46SPEAKERMac OS is really impressive.
13:47SPEAKERI like Mac OS.
13:48SPEAKERI was thinking about like Exposé and the fact
13:51SPEAKERthat when I closed the lid on my MacBook,
13:53SPEAKERthe battery, it turned off and it didn't heat up my bag.
13:55SPEAKERYou know, stuff like that.
13:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
13:58SPEAKER- And these days that's probably much more of a,
14:01SPEAKERhey, at least it's not full of garbage.
14:03SPEAKERAnd also I still kind of like,
14:05SPEAKERI like how the icons bounce in the dock
14:07SPEAKERand Exposé is pretty good.
14:08SPEAKERAnd like, you know.
14:09SPEAKER- It's actually Mission Control now.
14:11SPEAKERI think I liked Exposé better.
14:13SPEAKER- I don't like Mission Control.
14:14SPEAKERDid they get rid of Exposé?
14:15SPEAKERI see I don't use a Mac over anymore.
14:16SPEAKER- It's the same thing, they just renamed it.
14:18SPEAKERWell, it does more.
14:19SPEAKERI think they extended the Exposé functionality
14:21SPEAKERand then renamed it Mission Control.
14:23SPEAKER- Oh, right.
14:24SPEAKERIt works now like the Gnome kind of smart tasks,
14:26SPEAKERwhich are thingy, right?
14:27SPEAKERWhere you see like a dock,
14:29SPEAKERyou see like a list of open workspace.
14:31SPEAKERAnyway, we don't have to get into it.
14:33SPEAKER- Yeah.
14:34SPEAKER- Yeah, I love it when somebody's signature.
14:36SPEAKERMy hope is this is Brian near Seattle signature
14:39SPEAKERand it's not just a one-off that he put on his email to us.
14:42SPEAKERLike that's my dream.
14:44SPEAKER- Is this the sent from my iPhone?
14:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
14:47SPEAKER- That he's got configured because that's even better?
14:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that would be amazing.
14:50SPEAKERAlso, if he lives near Seattle,
14:51SPEAKERmaybe he like worked on Windows Phone, I don't know.
14:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
14:54SPEAKERWell, it's funny 'cause we were talking about Windows 8,
14:57SPEAKERwe were talking about how Microsoft
14:58SPEAKERhas whiffed every alternating versions of Windows
15:03SPEAKERfor now like two decades.
15:05SPEAKERYou know, 'cause like Windows XP was pretty good,
15:06SPEAKERVista stunk, 7 was good, then 8.1 stunk, 10 was okay,
15:13SPEAKER11 has been an absolute turd sandwich.
15:16SPEAKERAnd like the commonality is every time
15:18SPEAKERthey try to jam new technologies down our throats,
15:20SPEAKERwhether we want them or not, it's bad.
15:23SPEAKERNow, like the business case of,
15:26SPEAKERhey, let's make our core product Windows
15:30SPEAKERthat's used by billions of people,
15:32SPEAKERlike let's tune that for touch interfaces
15:35SPEAKERthat a thousandth of a, 10,000th of a percent
15:37SPEAKERof those users is gonna have was a real choice.
15:42SPEAKERBut man, the phone version of that was pretty good.
15:44SPEAKER- It was awesome. - It turns out, yeah.
15:45SPEAKER- Like those tiles, like it's just a nice way
15:47SPEAKERto organize a phone screen.
15:48SPEAKER- I just wish there was a way to play Hexic
15:50SPEAKERon my phone these days.
15:52SPEAKER- Like now I'm thinking back,
15:53SPEAKERI mean, I thought it looked nice,
15:54SPEAKERbut I'm thinking back on why I liked it so much.
15:56SPEAKERI think that like the ability to resize the tiles
15:58SPEAKERto standard sizes was a big part of why I liked it,
16:02SPEAKERbecause you could, like imagine your like iPhone screen
16:05SPEAKERwhere you can dictate which icons are big
16:08SPEAKERand which ones are small and the bigger they are,
16:09SPEAKERthe more information they can expose in a live way.
16:13SPEAKER- It was, well, and the tiles actually were pretty good
16:17SPEAKERfor navigating, like I don't know if the tiles
16:19SPEAKERwould still work in a world where I have 250 apps
16:22SPEAKERon my phone or whatever it is now.
16:23SPEAKER- Yeah, you'd need some kind of paginating, paginating.
16:26SPEAKER- Yeah, or better search or something,
16:28SPEAKERbut like it did multitasking well.
16:31SPEAKERIt did, like it was a robust phone OS.
16:34SPEAKERIt just failed because Windows blew at the time.
16:37SPEAKER- Yes, yes, indeed.
16:39SPEAKERThe table was old as time.
16:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
16:41SPEAKER- Okay, I've gotta find that other email now
16:44SPEAKERbecause it was relevant.
16:46SPEAKERHere it is, okay.
16:47SPEAKERFrom Oscar, newly listening on Linux.
16:51SPEAKERI just switched from Windows to Linux
16:53SPEAKERand at the same time started using casts for podcasts.
16:56SPEAKERSo that's casts with a K.
16:58SPEAKERI don't listen to too many podcasts,
17:00SPEAKERso recreating my list was not too bad,
17:02SPEAKERbut finding the tech pod required more effort
17:05SPEAKERthan I thought, scrolling down a bunch,
17:07SPEAKERdespite almost full name search.
17:10SPEAKERDid you know that the period at the end of the name
17:11SPEAKERapparently screws with certain search algorithms a lot?
17:14SPEAKEROr is that accidental filtering of potential listeners?
17:19SPEAKERIt is not an effort to filter listeners,
17:22SPEAKERalthough that's, I think, encoding some kind of like filter,
17:27SPEAKERsome kind of great filter for your audience
17:29SPEAKERinto your name is kind of a funny concept.
17:32SPEAKER- So there was a follow-up email to this.
17:33SPEAKERI think I didn't copy over,
17:35SPEAKERbut it wasn't the period at the end of the name, actually.
17:38SPEAKERIt's that we do tech space pod, not tech closed pod.
17:43SPEAKERA lot of people, colloquially has become one word, I guess.
17:47SPEAKER- Yeah, so I'll add the closed to the simple cast backend
17:51SPEAKERand that should fix the problem.
17:53SPEAKER- Oh, sure.
17:54SPEAKERMaybe we should just rebrand.
17:56SPEAKER- Yeah, you want to close tech pod instead of tech pod?
17:59SPEAKER- That seems like something to do after seven years.
18:02SPEAKER- I mean, we could.
18:03SPEAKERWhat do you think?
18:04SPEAKERWhat are you looking for, another will?
18:06SPEAKER- It's not unheard, no, no.
18:07SPEAKERI mean, like just shorten it to tech pod or make it,
18:09SPEAKERI don't know.
18:10SPEAKERIt's fine.
18:11SPEAKER- The tech pod, that tech pod,
18:12SPEAKERthere's a tech dad pod.
18:14SPEAKER- Oh, boy.
18:15SPEAKER- There's the hashtag Miami tech pod.
18:18SPEAKER- The thing I'll say about the period
18:19SPEAKERis I have become extremely vigilant about dots
18:22SPEAKERin the age of, I don't know.
18:26SPEAKERIt's not just Vim.
18:27SPEAKERIt's like, there's so many things that you search for
18:29SPEAKERin Linux that respect regular expressions
18:33SPEAKERand don't just interpret a period as a period.
18:36SPEAKERAnd you basically can't search for an actual period
18:38SPEAKERunless you escape it.
18:40SPEAKERSo you gotta be real wary about those dots.
18:43SPEAKER- Dots are important, it turns out.
18:46SPEAKER- How was your regular expression game?
18:48SPEAKER- It's bad.
18:48SPEAKER- Yeah, same.
18:50SPEAKER- My regex game is one of the things
18:52SPEAKERthat I get help from AI on occasionally.
18:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I've got just a test site
19:00SPEAKERwhere you can go just type in,
19:01SPEAKERuse your regex on some sample text.
19:04SPEAKERLike every time I need to do anything more complex
19:06SPEAKERthan like, I could basically do like anything
19:08SPEAKERfrom this character to the end
19:10SPEAKERor anything up to this character is about the extent of it.
19:13SPEAKERAnd anything more complex than that,
19:15SPEAKERI have to go look at preference.
19:16SPEAKER- My strategy is often to find a query on stack exchange
19:20SPEAKERthat does more or less what I want
19:22SPEAKERand then adapt it to suit.
19:24SPEAKERI haven't bothered to learn how that stuff works.
19:26SPEAKERAnd I went and looked at our tag list for the podcast.
19:29SPEAKERTech closed pod is in there.
19:32SPEAKERSo it's probably cast isn't searching properly.
19:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I'll real quick, I'll say the regular expression
19:39SPEAKERtest site, there's a ton of them,
19:40SPEAKERbut the one I use is r-e-g-e-x-r.com, regexer.com.
19:48SPEAKER- The regexer?
19:50SPEAKER- Everybody says regex, but regular expressions?
19:55SPEAKER- Look man, yeah, I'm just gonna say regular from now on.
20:00SPEAKER- All right, good stuff.
20:03SPEAKERXylo writes in, do you guys experience any issues
20:07SPEAKERwith your memory?
20:08SPEAKERI find that as I get older,
20:10SPEAKERboth short-term and long-term are getting spotty.
20:12SPEAKERI'm still in my mid thirties,
20:13SPEAKERbut I find my memory is much worse than most people 10,
20:17SPEAKER20 or even 50 years older than me.
20:20SPEAKERDo normal people just have less stuff in their brain?
20:23SPEAKERMaybe it's just getting old,
20:24SPEAKERbut I often wonder if it's actually my hobbies,
20:26SPEAKERgaming, movies, coding, music,
20:29SPEAKERall exposing me willingly to a constant barrage of content.
20:33SPEAKERI have millions of media fragments from the last 30 years
20:35SPEAKERrolling around in there, lots of it I'll never even need.
20:38SPEAKERMeanwhile, some days I feel like I have to relearn
20:40SPEAKERhow to do my job from scratch
20:42SPEAKERbecause I keep forgetting the details.
20:44SPEAKERYou consume content, how are your brains holding up?
20:49SPEAKER- So I turned 50 last year, which I don't recommend.
20:53SPEAKERIt's not good.
20:54SPEAKERI mean, it's fine, whatever, it could be worse.
20:58SPEAKERI have found, so I had the classic eidetic memory,
21:03SPEAKERthe kids have, where I remembered everything
21:06SPEAKERthat I consumed until I was probably 14 or 15.
21:09SPEAKERAnd it made school and stuff like that really easy.
21:11SPEAKERTalk to a lot of kids who had similar experiences
21:16SPEAKERwhere they were never challenged
21:18SPEAKERin a typical public school education and that's often it.
21:23SPEAKERSo my memory has been in constant decline since youth.
21:27SPEAKER- Sure.
21:28SPEAKER- 'Cause that gets worse as you get older.
21:30SPEAKERYou lose that ability as you get older, typically.
21:32SPEAKER- Sure, on the people older than me with better memories,
21:37SPEAKERI mean, A, I don't have an explanation for that,
21:39SPEAKERbut B, that seems very subjective
21:41SPEAKERand hard to quantify on the spot.
21:43SPEAKERSo that might be more your perception.
21:45SPEAKERBut I mean, your memory definitely worsens as you age.
21:48SPEAKER- I think, well, it definitely worsens as you age.
21:51SPEAKERI've found that as I get older,
21:54SPEAKERdoing bad sleep habits have much bigger impact
21:57SPEAKERon my cognitive ability on the day to day.
22:00SPEAKERLike it used to be that I could do four hour,
22:02SPEAKERfour or five hours of sleep every night
22:03SPEAKERfor ages with no problem.
22:06SPEAKERIn fact, through most of my 20s and 30s,
22:09SPEAKERI didn't sleep much more than five hours a night,
22:12SPEAKERfive or six on a good night.
22:13SPEAKERAnd as I've gotten older, I can't do that.
22:16SPEAKER- Yeah, it's bad.
22:17SPEAKER- It's definitely true.
22:18SPEAKERThe other thing is, if you,
22:21SPEAKERI find that things that I'm excited about
22:27SPEAKERor interested in are really easy to remember
22:29SPEAKERand things that I'm not excited and bored about are not.
22:31SPEAKERAnd that's sometimes a thing
22:33SPEAKERthat you should talk to your doctor about.
22:35SPEAKER'Cause that can be a sign of like ADHD,
22:39SPEAKERadult onset ADHD and stuff like that is my understanding.
22:42SPEAKERNot a therapist, not a doctor,
22:44SPEAKERbut talk to your medical professional
22:46SPEAKERif that is a thing you're realizing.
22:48SPEAKER- Yeah, do you ever watch those
22:50SPEAKERwired tech support videos on YouTube?
22:52SPEAKER- No.
22:53SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
22:54SPEAKER- I've never even heard of them.
22:56SPEAKER- I feel like they're everywhere,
22:57SPEAKERbut that's because I watch them,
22:58SPEAKERso of course they keep serving me more.
23:00SPEAKER- Yeah, see, my YouTube,
23:02SPEAKERI'm getting a lot of "Toads Sings"
23:04SPEAKERdifferent songs videos on my YouTube
23:06SPEAKERbecause my daughter got a hold of my iPad the other day.
23:09SPEAKER- Also valid.
23:10SPEAKER- "Toads Sings" is pretty good though, it's pretty funny.
23:12SPEAKER- I think it's wired,
23:13SPEAKERbut I'm surprised they haven't split this off
23:15SPEAKERinto its own channel 'cause they seem to do enormous views,
23:17SPEAKERbut they're very striking
23:18SPEAKERbecause they're basically always shot
23:20SPEAKERagainst a white background.
23:21SPEAKERIt's just a person typically at a desk
23:23SPEAKERstaring into the camera with a white background
23:25SPEAKERand some props, but-
23:27SPEAKER- Is this like a penthouse forum,
23:29SPEAKERsuch that I never thought it would happen to me, but-
23:32SPEAKER- Well, there have been some sex ones actually,
23:35SPEAKERbut they're not really tech support.
23:37SPEAKERThat's just the label.
23:38SPEAKERIt's always expert from some domain.
23:41SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
23:42SPEAKERI like that.
23:44SPEAKER- Like scientist answers, microbiology questions,
23:46SPEAKERmicrobiology support, geopolitics support,
23:51SPEAKERold Hollywood history support.
23:53SPEAKERIt kind of really runs the gamut anyway.
23:54SPEAKERI bring it up because there was a sleep scientist one
23:58SPEAKERthat I watched recently.
23:59SPEAKEROne factoid that came out of that
24:01SPEAKERthat I was kind of surprised by is that sleep is maintenance
24:05SPEAKERfor your brain among many other things.
24:07SPEAKERAnd he actually got pretty deep
24:09SPEAKERinto the actual sort of physiological mechanics
24:12SPEAKERof what maintenance is going on in there.
24:13SPEAKER- You're flushing out spent neurotransmitters
24:16SPEAKERand stuff like that.
24:16SPEAKER- All kinds of cruft getting purged out of there.
24:19SPEAKERBut he said, if you pull one all-nighter,
24:21SPEAKERif you stay up all night one night,
24:23SPEAKERit takes seven nights of good, solid, full nights of sleep
24:28SPEAKERto fully get over the deleterious effects
24:32SPEAKERof that one all-nighter.
24:33SPEAKER- Well, that's if you're a baby.
24:34SPEAKERWhat if you're good like me?
24:35SPEAKERI have some special, it's like Q-tips.
24:37SPEAKERYou're not supposed to put the Q-tip in your ear,
24:38SPEAKERbut I got a special technique, man.
24:41SPEAKERYou got to scoop out and then it's totally fine.
24:43SPEAKER- Gotta get the ice cream scoop.
24:45SPEAKER- Yeah, don't Q-tip your ears also.
24:47SPEAKER- Yeah, or be careful with it at least.
24:49SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, no.
24:51SPEAKERThe whole thing, everybody thinks they're careful.
24:52SPEAKERNobody's careful, it's hard to do.
24:55SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, fair.
24:56SPEAKER- Okay.
24:57SPEAKER- All right, question from Bertron.
25:00SPEAKER- Shout-outs to Bertron.
25:00SPEAKER- Yeah, absolutely.
25:02SPEAKERWhat are your thoughts on joining class action suits
25:05SPEAKERor settlements, particularly for PC hardware and software?
25:08SPEAKEREvery year I see notices for at least one or two settlements
25:10SPEAKERI could join, but I've never bothered.
25:13SPEAKERRecently, I saw a notice about a settlement
25:14SPEAKERin a case against G.Skill for misleading advertising
25:18SPEAKERin regards to memory speeds.
25:20SPEAKERConsidering the trouble I had actually
25:22SPEAKERhitting the advertised speeds
25:23SPEAKERon my last DDR4 G.Skill modules,
25:25SPEAKERI am considering opting into the settlement
25:27SPEAKERjust out of spite, even if I only get a few bucks.
25:30SPEAKERIs there anything to watch out for
25:32SPEAKERwith these kinds of settlement cases?
25:33SPEAKERPS, the link for this G.Skill settlement
25:35SPEAKERis gskilldramsettlement.com.
25:39SPEAKER- So there's RAM settlements happening kind of,
25:42SPEAKERthe Corsair one happened last year
25:44SPEAKERand it's closed now, I think.
25:45SPEAKER- Yes, I signed up for that one, actually.
25:46SPEAKER- I got 60 bucks.
25:48SPEAKER- Oh, wait, did that go through already?
25:50SPEAKER- It came through like earlier this week.
25:51SPEAKER- Oh, crap, I have to check my email.
25:53SPEAKERI haven't looked, should I do that live?
25:55SPEAKER- Yeah, do it live.
25:56SPEAKERI got 60 bucks, which at the time
25:58SPEAKERwhen they submitted the responses,
26:00SPEAKERI was like, man, 60 bucks,
26:01SPEAKERI'll be able to buy us a pretty good chunk of a RAM pack.
26:04SPEAKERAnd now I can buy a 10th of a RAM pack with that $60.
26:08SPEAKER- Did that come in the mail mail or email?
26:09SPEAKER- Paper email, electronic mail.
26:11SPEAKER- Okay, maybe mine hasn't shown up yet.
26:13SPEAKERI did register for that one.
26:14SPEAKERI bet 60 to 80% of the class action settlements
26:21SPEAKERI hear about are RAM related, it feels like.
26:23SPEAKER- Right now they are, yeah.
26:24SPEAKER- Or definitely now, maybe people will just have
26:26SPEAKERthe crosshairs on those companies more so,
26:28SPEAKERbut I feel like over time, well, I mean,
26:30SPEAKERwe've heard for years about price fixing
26:32SPEAKERin the RAM space, right?
26:35SPEAKER- Price fixing and like G.Skill had,
26:38SPEAKERI think the G.Skill one is specifically
26:40SPEAKERthat they were advertising numbers
26:42SPEAKERthat you couldn't hit on standard, on regular hardware.
26:45SPEAKER- That's actually bad.
26:46SPEAKERI think the Corsair one or one of them
26:48SPEAKERwas actually like shockingly pedantic or nitpicky.
26:51SPEAKER- Yeah, they're always nitpicky.
26:53SPEAKER- Reading the fine print, it actually really didn't feel
26:56SPEAKERlike a big deal what they were being accused of,
26:58SPEAKERbut apparently the lawyers disagree.
27:00SPEAKER- Well, so I generally don't bother filling these out
27:05SPEAKERbecause often they're not worth it.
27:07SPEAKERLike there was an Apple one a few years ago
27:10SPEAKERand the thing that they were gonna give you
27:12SPEAKERif they won was like a $5 Apple gift card,
27:16SPEAKERwhich wasn't worth having my personal information
27:18SPEAKERin the class action lawyer's database, right?
27:22SPEAKER- Yeah.
27:23SPEAKER- The RAM one was kind of substantial.
27:25SPEAKERIt was like 10 bucks per affected stick
27:27SPEAKERand I have bought a lot of Corsair RAM over the years.
27:30SPEAKER- That's something.
27:30SPEAKER- So yeah, like, I don't know.
27:33SPEAKERI feel like if you feel like the thing
27:36SPEAKERthat you're gonna get out of is worth it,
27:38SPEAKERthere's no downside.
27:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I submitted for the Sony,
27:42SPEAKERthe PlayStation 3 other OS class action,
27:44SPEAKERremember where they advertised the ability
27:47SPEAKERto install Linux on a PS3.
27:48SPEAKER- Gotta get your Linux money, yeah.
27:50SPEAKER- I never cashed the check 'cause it was for $10 and change
27:53SPEAKERand the having the check was more valuable to me.
27:55SPEAKER- Yeah, you should frame that.
27:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
27:57SPEAKER- It belongs in a museum.
27:58SPEAKER- It's in a box around here.
28:00SPEAKERMy crowning achievement in class actions,
28:02SPEAKERI talked about it on a cold open,
28:03SPEAKERlike this has been two or three years ago now,
28:05SPEAKERyou may remember.
28:06SPEAKERI don't know if this was RAM related.
28:07SPEAKERI can't remember what this one was for,
28:11SPEAKERbut I got a check for like 100 and I don't know,
28:14SPEAKER150 bucks or something in the mail.
28:16SPEAKER- Wow.
28:17SPEAKER- For it.
28:18SPEAKERAnd then some time passed.
28:21SPEAKERAnd then I guess the terms of the class action
28:23SPEAKERwere such that anybody who had originally like submitted
28:26SPEAKERto be part of the class and then never claimed there
28:29SPEAKERor maybe never cashed there,
28:31SPEAKEReffectively everybody who had cashed their first check
28:33SPEAKERafter a time period elapsed,
28:35SPEAKERall the undistributed money from people
28:37SPEAKERwho had not cashed their checks.
28:39SPEAKER- Whoa.
28:40SPEAKER- Was then divvied up and distributed to the people
28:42SPEAKERwho had cashed their first check.
28:43SPEAKERSo then another check showed up.
28:45SPEAKER- Wow.
28:45SPEAKER- And it ended up being, I think, like $300 total.
28:49SPEAKER- That's pretty good.
28:50SPEAKER- Like that one was like, all right.
28:52SPEAKER- So Gordon used to work with these folks.
28:55SPEAKERLike he had a couple of class action attorneys
28:57SPEAKERthat he would work with
28:58SPEAKERwhen he was doing the watchdog column of maximum PC.
29:01SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.
29:02SPEAKER- Like for like the IBM 75 GXP thing,
29:05SPEAKERwhich just to be clear had real damages, right?
29:08SPEAKER- That was the hard, was that the Death Star?
29:11SPEAKER- That was the Death Star.
29:12SPEAKERYeah, the, hey, wow, this new hard drive
29:15SPEAKERwith the glass platters is insanely fast.
29:18SPEAKERWow, this new hard drive with the glass platter
29:19SPEAKERseems to fail a little higher than normal.
29:22SPEAKEROh, wow, this new hard drive with the glass platters
29:24SPEAKERfails 100% of the time if it runs long enough.
29:29SPEAKERAnd it turns out data loss failures in that space
29:32SPEAKERare generally frowned upon.
29:37SPEAKERAnd yeah, there was a class action on that that resulted in,
29:40SPEAKERbut like that was,
29:43SPEAKERI think the trick with the class actions
29:44SPEAKERis you have to find one that people have a hard time finding
29:48SPEAKERbecause you're gonna get more of that
29:50SPEAKERsweet class action cheddar as a result.
29:54SPEAKERI would have liked, like if,
29:56SPEAKERI wish that Corsair would replace,
29:58SPEAKERwould just give me a RAM kit.
30:00SPEAKERI would much rather had a RAM kit right now
30:01SPEAKERthan $59 or whatever it was.
30:04SPEAKER- God, that stuff is getting so crazy.
30:05SPEAKERI'm sure you saw that thing going around about that,
30:08SPEAKERthat pre-built systems builder in Australia
30:11SPEAKERthat's like trying to dodge warranty claims on faulty RAM.
30:14SPEAKER- Oh.
30:15SPEAKER- And stuff like that.
30:16SPEAKER- Yeah, the hub people fixed that problem though,
30:19SPEAKERas I recall.
30:19SPEAKER- I'm sure they did.
30:21SPEAKER- But there's so much of that stuff right now.
30:26SPEAKERI wanna say, I saw somebody that was just not doing,
30:32SPEAKERlike the warranty terms gave them the opportunity
30:34SPEAKERto give them cash valid purchase price back
30:36SPEAKERor replacing the hardware.
30:37SPEAKERAnd they're just giving like the purchase price
30:38SPEAKERwith a RAM back now,
30:40SPEAKERwhich is a similar situation and equally skeezy.
30:43SPEAKER- Right, initial price, not the current value, man.
30:47SPEAKER- Yeah. - Gross.
30:49SPEAKER- Yeah.
30:50SPEAKERWell, and at the same time,
30:53SPEAKERopening, I shut down SORI yesterday
30:55SPEAKERand all of the demand is tied up in paper purchases,
30:58SPEAKERnot real purchases.
30:59SPEAKERSo who knows, hopefully this bites everyone in the ass.
31:03SPEAKER- Yep, fingers crossed.
31:06SPEAKERAll right, we got a couple of emails
31:07SPEAKERabout the Notepad++ situation.
31:09SPEAKERHere's one from Aaron in Orlando.
31:12SPEAKER"I manage user devices for a medium-sized business
31:14SPEAKERfor a living.
31:15SPEAKERThis includes Windows laptops, desktops, MacBooks,
31:17SPEAKERiPads, iPhones, et cetera.
31:19SPEAKERWe use Microsoft Intune to manage the Windows side
31:22SPEAKERand J-A-M-F for the Apple side."
31:26SPEAKERJamf. - Yep, Jamf.
31:28SPEAKER- I'm clicking through to Jamf.
31:30SPEAKERI don't actually see Jamf,
31:31SPEAKERdoesn't define their acronym very clearly.
31:35SPEAKER- Wow. - Here.
31:36SPEAKER- It's just another Mac. - Why Jamf?
31:40SPEAKERWhy Jamf indeed?
31:41SPEAKERWhat is Jamf, it's SAP uses it.
31:44SPEAKER- All right, I've scrolled through their entire about page
31:47SPEAKERand I don't see anywhere that delineates
31:49SPEAKERwhat Jamf stands for anyway.
31:51SPEAKER- That's disappointing.
31:52SPEAKER- Yeah, both of these are mobile device management solutions.
31:56SPEAKERYou can absolutely wipe a device remotely.
31:59SPEAKERThe command exists for both ecosystems.
32:00SPEAKERThey also offer how much do you want to wipe,
32:03SPEAKERsuch as user profiles, the OS entirely,
32:06SPEAKERfull factory reset, total wipe, et cetera.
32:09SPEAKERWe did have around 30 users using Notepad++
32:11SPEAKERand we removed it remotely via a remote PowerShell scripting
32:15SPEAKERand some patch management software.
32:17SPEAKERThis isn't the first time we've had to pull software
32:19SPEAKERfrom a user's device though.
32:20SPEAKERUsually our EDR, CrowdStrike, will sandbox or quarantine
32:25SPEAKERanything that is actively affecting a user's device.
32:29SPEAKERWe have fairly strict compliance standards we need to meet.
32:32SPEAKERWe do not allow our users typically to be administrators
32:35SPEAKERon their work devices and manage software
32:37SPEAKERand OS updates remotely through the MDM tools.
32:40SPEAKERBitLocker and FileVault keys are also escrowed
32:43SPEAKERin their respective MDMs and users do not have access
32:45SPEAKERto them, same with the UEFI or BIOS password.
32:50SPEAKERThis would also, this is a reference
32:51SPEAKERto a recent Nextlander Ramblecast,
32:53SPEAKERbut this would also be how the old MacBook
32:56SPEAKERVinny got his hands on would still be attached
32:58SPEAKERto the school district.
33:00SPEAKERIt's most likely locked to the school's
33:02SPEAKERApple School Manager account via the system board.
33:06SPEAKER- So it's funny 'cause I had the same thing.
33:08SPEAKERWhen I scrounged up the old Mac Mini
33:12SPEAKERfor the BlueBubbles experiment,
33:15SPEAKERthe IT admin had to, like I wasn't able to boot off of it.
33:18SPEAKER- Interesting. - I wasn't able to wipe it.
33:21SPEAKERAnd then I got to the point where the IT person was like,
33:25SPEAKERoh, by the way, I flipped the switch on that Mac Mini
33:27SPEAKERthat he sent me the serial of.
33:28SPEAKERAnd then immediately it worked, it was wild.
33:31SPEAKER- So commit type of thing typically survive
33:34SPEAKERan entire full low level wipe of the system drive?
33:38SPEAKER- On the Mac side it can 'cause they have
33:41SPEAKERlike their offing when you log into the OS
33:43SPEAKERthe first time, right?
33:44SPEAKER- And then I'm sure there might be stuff
33:45SPEAKERbuilt into, I don't know, not the PRAM,
33:48SPEAKERbut some kind of persistent non-volatile storage
33:52SPEAKERoutside of the system drive or something.
33:54SPEAKER- This is a good, like when they first started
33:56SPEAKERrolling out the IT manages your iPhone stuff
34:01SPEAKERin like 20, that was probably 2010 if I had to guess.
34:05SPEAKERIt was relatively early in the iPhone's life,
34:07SPEAKERbut like after the first couple.
34:11SPEAKERThe original thing you could do to that
34:13SPEAKERwhen somebody left your organization
34:14SPEAKERwas just nuke their phone.
34:16SPEAKERSo like when Gina left a job,
34:18SPEAKERwhen we were in the whiskey basement,
34:20SPEAKERthey were like, the IT guy was like, hey, I'm sorry,
34:22SPEAKERI know that's your personal phone,
34:24SPEAKERbut the only way I can get our stuff off of it
34:25SPEAKERis to wipe it. - The fuck?
34:27SPEAKER- Back up your pictures and shit
34:29SPEAKERand then I'm gonna hit the button.
34:30SPEAKER- Oh my God. - And she was like,
34:31SPEAKERwhat the fuck are you talking about?
34:34SPEAKERYeah. - Did they do it?
34:35SPEAKER- Yeah. - Oh my God.
34:36SPEAKERSo this happened to us at CBS.
34:38SPEAKERWe all used our iPhones constantly for email and stuff
34:42SPEAKERat Giant Bomb while we were at CBS.
34:44SPEAKERAnd then that exact edict came down that like,
34:47SPEAKERhey, if you want to continue using company resources
34:50SPEAKERlike email on your phone,
34:52SPEAKERwe have to install this and this management thing.
34:54SPEAKERBy the way, that'll give us the ability
34:55SPEAKERto remotely wipe the entire device.
34:57SPEAKERAnd we were all like, fuck the fuck off.
35:00SPEAKER- Yeah, at that point it becomes,
35:02SPEAKERif you would like me to answer emails
35:03SPEAKERand do things in my off hours,
35:05SPEAKERthen you need to provide me a device.
35:07SPEAKERI am not going to connect my personal device to you.
35:09SPEAKERIt's like, don't connect your personal device
35:11SPEAKERto work email people.
35:12SPEAKER- Yes, that was my response.
35:14SPEAKERAlthough frankly, I didn't really want to carry,
35:17SPEAKERA, they don't think they would have given me
35:18SPEAKERanother second phone if I had asked,
35:20SPEAKERor A phone, a work phone.
35:21SPEAKERB, I didn't really want to carry two phones.
35:23SPEAKER- No, fuck no, of course not.
35:25SPEAKER- Instead, we all just became less connected to our job,
35:27SPEAKERwhich probably was the best outcome.
35:30SPEAKER- Everybody wins.
35:31SPEAKER- Anyway, although it actually just made it harder
35:33SPEAKERto keep checking my email remotely.
35:35SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it turns out you don't need
35:36SPEAKERto check email 24 hours a day most of the time.
35:39SPEAKER- Probably right.
35:41SPEAKER- Like look, I had that conversation
35:43SPEAKERwith the kiddo the other day.
35:44SPEAKERShe was like, my email message dinged
35:48SPEAKERbecause I have like a half dozen people
35:51SPEAKERthat get notification status in email.
35:53SPEAKERShe was like, what does that sound?
35:54SPEAKERI've never heard that one before.
35:55SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, that's just an email.
35:56SPEAKERAnd she was like, why do you have a notification for email?
35:58SPEAKERI was like, well, this is gonna blow your mind.
36:01SPEAKERBut in the olden times, we used to be excited
36:04SPEAKERwhen we would get an electronic mail.
36:07SPEAKERLike when I first got a phone that could connect to email,
36:09SPEAKERI had notifications on for all of the emails.
36:11SPEAKER'Cause I was like, this is gonna be something good.
36:13SPEAKERIt's an email.
36:15SPEAKER- You've got mail. - She was crazy.
36:16SPEAKERShe was like, you're okay grandpa, whatever.
36:18SPEAKER- You've got mail, became a catchphrase for a reason.
36:20SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a movie.
36:22SPEAKER- Yeah.
36:23SPEAKER- It's like a, yeah, electronic version
36:24SPEAKERof "Sleepless in Seattle."
36:26SPEAKER- All right, what do you got?
36:28SPEAKER- Pat from Chicago.
36:31SPEAKERI'm moving to Ireland from the United States
36:33SPEAKERwith my wife in a couple of months.
36:35SPEAKERI just recently graduated from the console life
36:38SPEAKERto a home-built PC about two years ago.
36:40SPEAKERWe will be moving abroad with literally three checked bags
36:43SPEAKERfilled with clothes and some photos,
36:45SPEAKERhence no room for a full-size PC.
36:48SPEAKERWhat do you reckon is the best strategy
36:49SPEAKERfor me moving forward?
36:51SPEAKERShip the PC, sounds pricey, sell the PC parts,
36:54SPEAKERmake a million off my DDR5 RAM.
36:57SPEAKERAlthough I don't even know how to begin selling used PC parts
37:01SPEAKERor just sell the custom-built PC whole cloth.
37:03SPEAKERFor reference, my PC specs are listed below.
37:07SPEAKERThis is a Ryzen 7700X.
37:10SPEAKER- So it's AM5, like this is a fine computer.
37:14SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.
37:16SPEAKERI hate that AMD's numbering got weird the way it did.
37:19SPEAKERThat you're right, it is AM5, Zen4.
37:22SPEAKERAlthough now they're on Zen5, AM5.
37:25SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, so it's a 7700X.
37:26SPEAKERThere is 32 gig of DDR5 6000
37:31SPEAKERand a Radeon 7900 XT just for reference.
37:36SPEAKERBut I don't, man, shipping a PC overseas seems fraught,
37:43SPEAKERbut I don't know.
37:44SPEAKER- Well, so shipping the PC is actually not that hard,
37:46SPEAKERespecially if you have the box that the case came in
37:48SPEAKER'cause you just put it in the case box, close it up.
37:51SPEAKER- I would pop the video card out before you do that.
37:54SPEAKER- And probably-
37:54SPEAKER- And if you have an air cooler,
37:55SPEAKERI would pop the air cooler off.
37:57SPEAKER- I was gonna say the CPU cooler too.
38:00SPEAKER- Although if it's screwed in, it's fine.
38:01SPEAKERIf it's, the coolers that used to pop off
38:05SPEAKERand smash around people's computer cases
38:09SPEAKERwere always those Intel Pentium 4 ones
38:12SPEAKERthat you just snapped into place
38:14SPEAKERand they had a little plastic pins
38:16SPEAKERthat held them through the holes.
38:17SPEAKERThe ones that screw into the mounting bracket on the fine,
38:19SPEAKERyou can ship that, it's fine.
38:21SPEAKER- I was gonna say if you're flying,
38:24SPEAKERyou can pay more money for extra checked bags.
38:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say that's probably cheaper,
38:29SPEAKEReven if you bring the whole PC,
38:31SPEAKERthat's probably cheaper. - Yeah, so what I would do
38:32SPEAKERis pull the RAM and the video card
38:35SPEAKERand put the computer in the box, check it at the airport,
38:39SPEAKERand carry on the video card and the RAM
38:41SPEAKER'cause just 'cause stealing RAM
38:44SPEAKERhas gotta be some real gold right now
38:47SPEAKERfor the baggage handlers.
38:49SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
38:51SPEAKER- But yeah, I wouldn't,
38:53SPEAKERlike you're gonna spend so much money trying to get,
38:56SPEAKERlike A, island life is expensive,
38:58SPEAKEReven though Ireland's a pretty big island,
39:02SPEAKERyou're gonna spend a lot of money
39:04SPEAKERgetting the RAM and the hardware there.
39:08SPEAKER- Yeah. - I don't know
39:09SPEAKERwhat the power supply situation is there.
39:10SPEAKERI don't know if you can use the existing power supply
39:12SPEAKERand switch the mode.
39:13SPEAKERYou might have to buy a new power supply
39:15SPEAKERwhen you get there in order for it to work.
39:17SPEAKER- That's definitely something to check.
39:18SPEAKERMy first response to this was I would pull out the parts
39:20SPEAKERthat are actually pretty valuable
39:23SPEAKERand travel with as little hardware as you can
39:26SPEAKERand just buy, like sell the case,
39:28SPEAKERmaybe even the motherboard, like some of the bigger stuff,
39:31SPEAKERbring these small valuable parts with you
39:34SPEAKERin like a cheque bag and just rebuild the system
39:37SPEAKERwith the cheaper parts when you get there.
39:38SPEAKERBut just like the power supply standard,
39:41SPEAKERyou would also wanna see what prices look like
39:43SPEAKERon the other side to see if that makes sense.
39:44SPEAKER- Well, but yeah, like if you pull the video card
39:46SPEAKERand the SSD and the RAM and the CPU,
39:51SPEAKERand I might not even keep the CPU.
39:53SPEAKERI'm like, you're gonna get a better CPU
39:54SPEAKERfor about the same money right now.
39:57SPEAKERBut yeah, if you pull the video card and the RAM
40:00SPEAKERand the SSD and then just buy a new 870 chipset
40:04SPEAKERor 850 chipset motherboard and a new CPU
40:07SPEAKERand new power supply when you get there, you're good to go.
40:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I would look into that for sure.
40:12SPEAKER- Free upgrade, yay. - Yeah, yeah.
40:15SPEAKER- As for selling stuff, Facebook Marketplace is good.
40:18SPEAKERCraigslist is good.
40:19SPEAKERDo the trades at like a grocery store parking lot
40:21SPEAKERor a fire department parking lot or something like that.
40:23SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.
40:25SPEAKERYeah, I think I've seen too many horror stories
40:27SPEAKERabout eBaying stuff, particularly as a seller
40:32SPEAKER'cause my understanding is that in disputes,
40:36SPEAKEReBay sides with the buyer like almost 100% of the time.
40:39SPEAKER- In the modern era, yes, eBay exclusively sides
40:43SPEAKERwith the seller is my understanding.
40:45SPEAKER- Just reading a thread yesterday.
40:46SPEAKER- Or buyer rather.
40:47SPEAKER- Yeah, like I'm just reading a thread yesterday
40:49SPEAKERof people who sold stuff on eBay, shipped it,
40:52SPEAKERlike saw that it was delivered
40:53SPEAKERbut then the buyer immediately marked it as lost or whatever
40:56SPEAKERand like they just lost their item and the money.
40:58SPEAKER- Yep.
40:59SPEAKER- Which just makes me not even want to touch
41:01SPEAKERsomething like that, anyway.
41:03SPEAKER- I don't wanna sell stuff on eBay, no.
41:05SPEAKER- Yeah.
41:05SPEAKEROkay, last email from Harrison.
41:08SPEAKERRay tracing was a hot topic and point of excitement
41:10SPEAKERfor many at the beginning of this generation
41:12SPEAKERand I've been impressed with some of the games
41:13SPEAKERthat utilize it well
41:14SPEAKERbut I still don't fully understand why.
41:17SPEAKERHearing discussions about it on podcasts
41:18SPEAKERand reading preview content prior to seeing it for myself,
41:21SPEAKERI was confused.
41:22SPEAKERWikipedia describes it as quote,
41:24SPEAKER"A technique for modeling light transport
41:26SPEAKER"for use in a wide variety of rendering algorithms
41:29SPEAKER"for generating digital images."
41:32SPEAKERThat's a pretty broad statement.
41:33SPEAKER- Yeah.
41:34SPEAKER- That's cool and all but I remember playing
41:36SPEAKERthe Resident Evil remake on the GameCube in 2002,
41:38SPEAKERseeing reflections of the 3D model characters on the floor
41:41SPEAKERin the mansion and my brain exploding.
41:44SPEAKERIn that game, using pre-rendered backgrounds,
41:46SPEAKERI'm guessing they could allocate
41:47SPEAKERfor rendering the main character twice.
41:50SPEAKERSo while the techniques used
41:51SPEAKERare assuredly completely different,
41:53SPEAKERI can't help but think the results are similar.
41:56SPEAKERModeling light transport seems to be the keyword here
41:59SPEAKERbut how does lighting create a mirrored image?
42:02SPEAKERI've read ray tracing is demanding
42:03SPEAKERbut isn't rendering a character twice?
42:05SPEAKERCould we have gotten similar results
42:07SPEAKERutilizing different means earlier?
42:09SPEAKERCan you render the sky and effects twice once in a puddle?
42:12SPEAKERDo I misunderstand what ray tracing is entirely?
42:15SPEAKERThank you.
42:18SPEAKER- So as always, the answer is complicated.
42:21SPEAKERThe benefit of doing ray tracing,
42:23SPEAKERso to your Resident Evil example in the GameCube in 2002,
42:28SPEAKERyeah, like every time you saw a reflection
42:31SPEAKERor something that is analogous to a ray traced effect,
42:35SPEAKERit was basically happening
42:36SPEAKERbecause of some sort of simple trick and nonsense.
42:38SPEAKERLike we built these fixed function math lighting pipelines
42:43SPEAKERthat basically used textures as light maps.
42:46SPEAKERSo a light map is a texture that says,
42:48SPEAKERokay, this part of the map is dark,
42:50SPEAKERthis part of the map is light,
42:51SPEAKERand then the renderer handles that kind of automatically
42:57SPEAKERas part of the texturing pipeline, right?
43:01SPEAKERIn the GameCube example,
43:03SPEAKERthey probably were rendering the same character twice
43:05SPEAKERon both sides,
43:07SPEAKERwhich at the time would have been fairly expensive.
43:10SPEAKERLike, if you think about, I think about,
43:13SPEAKERwhat was it, was it Geist that was on the GameCube
43:16SPEAKERthat had a bunch of monitors and you could,
43:18SPEAKERit had like a bunch of that game
43:20SPEAKERwas looking at stuff in monitors.
43:22SPEAKER- That might be, that sounds right, yeah.
43:23SPEAKER- Yeah, so they did render view ports for-
43:26SPEAKER- That's a deep cut.
43:27SPEAKER- At that game, it's one of my all-time favorite games.
43:29SPEAKER- Really?
43:30SPEAKER- It was a late, it's, yeah, well,
43:33SPEAKER'cause it was weirdly emergent in an era
43:36SPEAKERwhen there weren't that many games
43:37SPEAKERthat had like open-ended play like that.
43:39SPEAKERYou could do some really wild stuff in that game.
43:41SPEAKER- I think I cover up, now I'm looking at the game.
43:44SPEAKER- You would have been in GameSpot then.
43:46SPEAKER- Yeah, definitely.
43:47SPEAKERI'm pretty sure I previewed that game.
43:49SPEAKERI'm looking through old articles.
43:52SPEAKERYes, here's one written by me in 2004,
43:55SPEAKERcovering that game at E3.
43:56SPEAKER- I saw a preview of that game on,
43:59SPEAKERprobably GameSpot or IGN or something,
44:01SPEAKERand then Jerry at Penny Arcade wrote about it
44:03SPEAKERin a blog post where I was like,
44:04SPEAKER"Oh, this sounds wild, I gotta try this."
44:06SPEAKERAnd I powered through that thing in like three hours,
44:09SPEAKERI think, it was like, I went right down the hole.
44:12SPEAKERBut anyway.
44:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think a key thing to understand
44:15SPEAKERabout those old reflection examples
44:16SPEAKERthat you're talking about
44:17SPEAKERis that every time you saw something like that in a game,
44:20SPEAKERnot only was it expensive to render everything twice,
44:24SPEAKERbut also they had to do specific work
44:25SPEAKERfor each instance of that in the game to make that happen.
44:28SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:29SPEAKER- And the point of ray tracing
44:31SPEAKERis that this is a broad oversimplification,
44:33SPEAKERbut it is bouncing light around the world
44:36SPEAKERin a way that is roughly analogous
44:38SPEAKERto how real light bounces.
44:39SPEAKERI mean, it's vastly simplified from that, but.
44:41SPEAKER- Well, yeah, so like, my point is in the old days,
44:45SPEAKERwe used a bunch of tricks
44:46SPEAKERto mimic the way light works kind of, right?
44:48SPEAKERSo we were building gross approximations of how light works
44:53SPEAKERto be able to display stuff in video games.
44:54SPEAKERAnd the downsides of that
44:56SPEAKERwas that there were always artifacts, right?
44:58SPEAKERSo either if the light maps weren't high enough resolution,
45:02SPEAKERand then the gradients between dark and light areas
45:06SPEAKERwould be, there'd be dithering,
45:08SPEAKERand there'd be weird artifacts,
45:09SPEAKERthere'd be stair-stepped artifacts and stuff like that
45:11SPEAKERbased on the angle of the incidence of the light
45:13SPEAKERand stuff like that.
45:14SPEAKEROr in the reflections,
45:17SPEAKERyou wouldn't see shadows on the objects in the reflections
45:19SPEAKER'cause it was too expensive
45:20SPEAKERto render the shadows twice, actually.
45:22SPEAKEROr like, if there's a light source,
45:26SPEAKERif your body, if your character's body
45:29SPEAKERor something that moves was obstructing a light source,
45:32SPEAKERthat light source,
45:33SPEAKERthose shadows wouldn't be reflected on other dynamic objects,
45:36SPEAKERother objects that can move in the environment,
45:37SPEAKERstuff like that.
45:38SPEAKER- Yeah, not only were there drawbacks to different techniques
45:41SPEAKERbut also it was a lot of extra work doing all this fakery.
45:44SPEAKERIt's like you might have one technique
45:46SPEAKERfor faking reflections,
45:47SPEAKERyou might have another technique for faking bounce lighting.
45:50SPEAKERAll the different types of things are shadowing,
45:52SPEAKERambient occlusion,
45:53SPEAKERall the things that light does in a physical space,
45:56SPEAKERlike every one of those examples required extra work
45:59SPEAKERto fake in one way or another.
46:01SPEAKER- Yeah.
46:02SPEAKER- The whole point of ray tracing
46:03SPEAKERis that you get all of those effects globally, everywhere,
46:06SPEAKERkind of automatically.
46:07SPEAKERI mean, obviously-
46:08SPEAKER- You don't have to do the fakery.
46:10SPEAKERNow, the unfortunate thing is
46:12SPEAKERin the current kind of ecosystem,
46:15SPEAKERthere's not, high-end PCs can do ray tracing
46:18SPEAKERand like the PS4 Pro can kind of do ray tracing,
46:22SPEAKERthe Switch 2 can kind of do ray tracing.
46:23SPEAKER- Or PS5 Pro. - PS5 Pro, sorry.
46:25SPEAKER- Yes, you're right.
46:26SPEAKERIt's really, it is really the PS5 Pro
46:28SPEAKERand the Switch 2 are the only consoles
46:29SPEAKERthat have any like actual significant ray tracing capability
46:33SPEAKERon the market right now.
46:34SPEAKER- Yeah, the Xbox series and the PS5
46:37SPEAKERare basically doing,
46:39SPEAKERlike they can be used for limited ray tracing
46:42SPEAKERfor like shadows and reflections and stuff like that
46:45SPEAKERfor a handful of things.
46:46SPEAKERIf you think about the difference
46:47SPEAKERbetween say cyberpunk's path trace,
46:49SPEAKERbut actually cyberpunk's a great example
46:50SPEAKER'cause you can run this in like five different ways.
46:53SPEAKERAnd the reason a lot of people
46:54SPEAKERdon't like the technology in general
46:56SPEAKERis that the fakery is real good.
46:59SPEAKERLike the fakery looks real good at this point.
47:01SPEAKER- The fakery has gotten very good
47:02SPEAKERand is also very performant.
47:04SPEAKERSo people have gone, people for a long time
47:06SPEAKERhave associated very good visuals
47:07SPEAKERwith very high performance
47:08SPEAKERand ray tracing is not there yet.
47:13SPEAKER- Yeah, so like if you turn on full path tracing mode
47:16SPEAKERon cyberpunk, you get a much more cohesive,
47:21SPEAKERmuch more realistic environment.
47:23SPEAKERBut at the same time, if you play a lot of video games
47:27SPEAKERand you're used to looking at stuff
47:28SPEAKERwith traditional raster renders,
47:31SPEAKERyou probably don't notice the things that look bad
47:34SPEAKERabout faked video game environments anymore.
47:36SPEAKERYou don't notice that like a character's nose
47:39SPEAKERdoesn't cast a shadow on the other side of their face
47:41SPEAKERor something, you know, like-
47:42SPEAKER- Right, or the lighting in a scene
47:44SPEAKERdoes not really correspond to what the lights
47:46SPEAKERlike on the ceiling, for example,
47:48SPEAKERlook like they should be casting.
47:49SPEAKERLike you get in a lot of cases,
47:50SPEAKERa lot of the side-by-side you'll see
47:52SPEAKERlike the lighting will look relatively flat in a scene
47:55SPEAKERthat looks like it should be a lot more dynamic
47:57SPEAKERbased on the actual light sources you can see.
48:00SPEAKERAnd then the ray traced version of that,
48:01SPEAKERyou get a lot more dynamics, you know,
48:03SPEAKERshadows and corners and bounce lighting
48:06SPEAKERoff of multiple surfaces and stuff like that.
48:08SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like if you have an object sitting on a table,
48:11SPEAKERlike if you have a plate with a lip sitting on a table,
48:13SPEAKERthere'll be a little shadow under that lip
48:14SPEAKERin most environments.
48:15SPEAKERAnd like you don't get that
48:17SPEAKERwith the traditional raster renderer.
48:21SPEAKERIt's all small stuff is the thing.
48:23SPEAKERI mean, it's not all small stuff.
48:25SPEAKER- The actual end result long term goal of this
48:29SPEAKERis that in a few years,
48:30SPEAKERwhen all the hardware that's out can run ray tracing,
48:34SPEAKERwe'll get rid of the raster pipelines entirely.
48:37SPEAKER- Yes, that's the thing people don't want to hear,
48:39SPEAKERbut everything is gonna be ray traced in like 10 years.
48:42SPEAKERBut nobody will care at that point
48:44SPEAKERbecause when the hardware and the techniques catch up
48:45SPEAKERand it runs better, people will stop objecting
48:50SPEAKERonce the performance catches up to the conceptual part.
48:54SPEAKER- Well, and also we'll see,
48:56SPEAKERlike Resident Evil Requiem is a good example
48:58SPEAKER'cause Resident Evil Requiem runs on existing consoles
49:01SPEAKERand there's some ray traced reflections and stuff in there
49:03SPEAKERon the existing consoles as I understand it.
49:06SPEAKERBut like there were lots of places
49:09SPEAKERwhere you're playing in a dark, scary room
49:11SPEAKERand there's a piece of glass there
49:13SPEAKERand like you could walk up to that glass
49:15SPEAKERand see a monster behind you.
49:16SPEAKERAnd they don't do it every time,
49:17SPEAKERpartly because it's bad to do that every time
49:19SPEAKER'cause then you expect it and it's not scary anymore.
49:21SPEAKERBut also partly because a full majority of their audience
49:25SPEAKERisn't gonna see those reflections
49:27SPEAKERon the hardware that they're playing on.
49:29SPEAKERSo like, yeah, it just takes time like anything else.
49:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, the general thing to understand here
49:37SPEAKERbased on this specific question
49:38SPEAKERis that ray tracing is not just about reflections.
49:41SPEAKERReflections are just one prominent example of what it does,
49:44SPEAKERbut really you're bouncing light off of every surface
49:47SPEAKERin the scene.
49:49SPEAKERSome of those surfaces are reflective,
49:50SPEAKERso you get reflections.
49:51SPEAKERSome of them are refractive.
49:53SPEAKERSo you get some kind of distortion
49:54SPEAKERlike through transparent glass or water.
49:56SPEAKERSome of them- - 'Cause they're matte.
49:57SPEAKER- Right, like if they're matte,
49:59SPEAKERthen they will kind of absorb and diffuse the lights.
50:01SPEAKERLike it's really just testing,
50:03SPEAKERbouncing a bunch of light rays around,
50:05SPEAKERdefining each surface as having a specific type
50:08SPEAKERof material surface and then-
50:10SPEAKER- Or multiple characters. - Or multiple, yes.
50:12SPEAKER- Yeah, like multiple, like every surface in your game
50:16SPEAKERhas anywhere from like five to 20 materials properties
50:22SPEAKERadded to it, right?
50:23SPEAKERAnd those can be how reflective they are,
50:25SPEAKERhow matte, how bumpy, how rough, how smooth,
50:28SPEAKERhow metallic, how emissive they are.
50:32SPEAKERHow much do they emit light?
50:34SPEAKERDoes light penetrate and bounce around inside them?
50:36SPEAKERStuff like that.
50:37SPEAKER- I mean, really, since the beginning of 3D graphics,
50:41SPEAKERlike the ultimate goal is to generalize your solutions
50:44SPEAKERas much as possible instead of having to use,
50:46SPEAKERagain, a bunch of very bespoke techniques
50:48SPEAKERfor different things and ray tracing
50:51SPEAKERis basically the sort of like final generalization
50:54SPEAKERof lighting in one pipeline
50:57SPEAKERthat kind of does everything for you automatically, so.
51:00SPEAKERAll right, should we get into some Discord questions?
51:03SPEAKER- Yeah.
51:04SPEAKER- This is a crazy one from Jass, J-A-S.
51:09SPEAKER- Okay.
51:10SPEAKER- Listening to Brad talk about Linux firewalls
51:12SPEAKERand rejecting packets reminded me of something.
51:15SPEAKERHave you ever looked into port knocking?
51:18SPEAKERI've successfully used it quite a few times in the past
51:20SPEAKERto protect a service I wanted available
51:22SPEAKERon the open internet without using a VPN.
51:24SPEAKERDo you know what this is?
51:26SPEAKERI looked this up.
51:27SPEAKERFirst of all, port knocking sounds like-
51:29SPEAKER- Sounds filthy.
51:29SPEAKER- Vaguely, yeah, vaguely obscene,
51:31SPEAKERbut I'm just gonna read the description
51:33SPEAKERfrom the Arch Wiki on the subject.
51:37SPEAKERPort knocking is a stealth method to externally open ports
51:40SPEAKERthat by default, the firewall keeps closed.
51:43SPEAKERIt works by requiring connection attempts
51:45SPEAKERto a series of predefined closed ports.
51:48SPEAKER- What?
51:49SPEAKER- With a simple port knocking method,
51:51SPEAKERwhen the correct sequence of port knocks
51:53SPEAKERor connection attempts is received,
51:55SPEAKERthe firewall then opens certain ports to allow a connection.
51:58SPEAKERIt's basically, this is basically like putting
52:01SPEAKERlike a digital keypad on your firewall
52:03SPEAKERwhere if you, you know, I assume you could define
52:07SPEAKERlike as many ports required as you want,
52:10SPEAKERlet's say if a connection tries to connect to these six
52:14SPEAKERspecific closed ports in a specific sequence,
52:17SPEAKERthey've effectively punched in the code
52:19SPEAKERand now we will open the actual port they want.
52:21SPEAKERThis sounds insane.
52:22SPEAKER- Is six enough?
52:23SPEAKERLike 12 would give you like 42 million possibilities.
52:25SPEAKER- I'm just, I was just making up a number there,
52:27SPEAKERbut I mean, I should read there's a big red warning box
52:30SPEAKERright below this on the Arch Wiki.
52:32SPEAKERPort knocking should be used as part of a security strategy,
52:35SPEAKERnot as the only protection,
52:37SPEAKERwhich would be a fragile security through obscurity.
52:40SPEAKERSo like, don't use this as your only solution, I guess.
52:45SPEAKER- That's wild, I've never heard of this before.
52:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it's cool this exists.
52:50SPEAKERI would not use it personally because it seems too fraught.
52:54SPEAKERIt seems too-
52:55SPEAKER- I mean, you could hit ports real fast.
52:57SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, and I mean, I assume there are firewall
53:00SPEAKERmechanisms for just dropping all connections
53:03SPEAKERfrom a specific IP after enough failed connection attempts
53:06SPEAKERor something like that.
53:07SPEAKER- Yeah, you can do that, yeah.
53:09SPEAKER- But you know, I mean, this is basically
53:11SPEAKERlike a combination lock for your firewall
53:13SPEAKERto open a specific port.
53:14SPEAKERThis is very amusing in concept, but this is not for me.
53:20SPEAKERAlso, I don't know how you would really do it from a phone,
53:24SPEAKERfor example, which like-
53:26SPEAKER- Probably if you have an app, right?
53:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you could probably set up
53:29SPEAKERlike an iOS shortcut to try to hit a bunch of ports
53:32SPEAKERin sequence in a way that would trigger this, I bet.
53:36SPEAKER- And then open the app in question immediately following.
53:39SPEAKER- It would actually not be that hard to do,
53:41SPEAKERbut I'm happy enough just running a VPN
53:44SPEAKERthat I connect to with my mobile devices.
53:47SPEAKER- Wire guards are really easy, it turns out.
53:49SPEAKER- Yeah, yep, but this is cool that this exists,
53:51SPEAKEReven if it's like, I don't know, maybe a little dodgy.
53:56SPEAKERQuestion from Brain, the latest questions episode
54:02SPEAKERWill mentioned it's easier than ever to switch to Linux.
54:04SPEAKERMy daily laptop is running Fedora,
54:06SPEAKERbut my desktop is still on Windows.
54:09SPEAKERThe biggest hurdle is that I do
54:10SPEAKERdirect input music recording on Windows.
54:13SPEAKERSupport for my plugins seems sparse on Linux.
54:15SPEAKERWhat should I do, wine/proton or buy a Mac mini?
54:20SPEAKER- I mean, look, the Mac mini,
54:22SPEAKERI'm pleased with the Mac mini so far,
54:26SPEAKERbut what I was actually gonna say is I don't actually know,
54:29SPEAKERI know that the infrastructure for like your standard,
54:35SPEAKERwhat's the standard plugin format for audio stuff?
54:37SPEAKERI'm completely blanking on it right now.
54:38SPEAKER- VST.
54:39SPEAKER- Yeah, VSTs and all that.
54:42SPEAKERIt's pretty robust, more robust than I expected,
54:46SPEAKERbut my real answer is there are people in the music channel
54:50SPEAKERthat do music on Linux full-time,
54:53SPEAKERand I would go ask there,
54:55SPEAKER'cause this is a Discord question, you're in the Discord.
54:59SPEAKERUnfortunately, I do not make music,
55:03SPEAKERbut I do know that the latency,
55:05SPEAKERlike setting up my stream machine
55:07SPEAKERwith Jack and Pat Chance and all that,
55:11SPEAKERor Patchage, I guess, was the one I used,
55:14SPEAKERlets me pipe stuff in and out of the different buses
55:18SPEAKERon my mixer better than anything
55:19SPEAKERI've ever done on Windows before.
55:21SPEAKER- Yeah, some people in the Linux channel
55:22SPEAKERwere talking about this recently on the Discord,
55:24SPEAKERand yeah, I get the sense that with the advent
55:26SPEAKERof things like Jack and Pipewire,
55:28SPEAKERthat like virtual audio routing at the low level,
55:32SPEAKERat the operating system level in Linux
55:33SPEAKERhas gotten pretty good in a way that seems kind of rad.
55:37SPEAKER- It's like, I literally have an app that I open up
55:39SPEAKERwhen I wanna connect something in.
55:41SPEAKERSo the setup I have is a Behringer XR18,
55:45SPEAKERwhich is an 18-port mixer that I bought during the pandemic
55:48SPEAKERbecause it was what I could get.
55:51SPEAKERAnd basically what I have is like,
55:54SPEAKERI have an output from Discord going into one bus,
55:57SPEAKERI have my output from the PC going on a different bus,
56:00SPEAKERI have my microphone going on a bus,
56:02SPEAKERI have software from the PC,
56:04SPEAKERlike sounds coming across USB into a third bus
56:08SPEAKERand using the patch-based stuff
56:10SPEAKERthat there's 15 million different apps that'll run this,
56:13SPEAKERbut it all ties into Jack and Pipewire and all that.
56:16SPEAKERLike I can pipe stuff into specific audio inputs in OBS.
56:21SPEAKERSo I can set up an audio input capture in OBS,
56:24SPEAKERand then that shows up as another input option
56:26SPEAKERin the patch bay, and you just drag connections
56:29SPEAKERbetween the mixer and the audit software
56:32SPEAKERin a way that has never been possible on Windows.
56:35SPEAKER- Yeah, it basically seems like voice meter kind of stuff,
56:39SPEAKERbut at the operating system level and much more robust,
56:43SPEAKERit seems awesome.
56:43SPEAKERIt's one of the things I've seen recently
56:46SPEAKERthat has kind of made me think a little bit
56:48SPEAKERabout desktop Linux again.
56:50SPEAKER- The thing I'll say is I'm loving it
56:52SPEAKERfor the stream machine especially,
56:54SPEAKER'cause it's become like having that second machine set up,
56:57SPEAKERit's almost like an appliance now, right?
56:58SPEAKERLike I don't have, the stream decks are all connecting
57:01SPEAKERto that machine over the network.
57:03SPEAKERI'm not doing anything plugged directly into it anymore.
57:06SPEAKERAnd basically I turn it on and hit the go live button
57:12SPEAKERand it's good to go, which is really nice.
57:14SPEAKER- Does that include video inputs?
57:16SPEAKER- Uh-huh.
57:17SPEAKER- Wait, how are you sending video to it now?
57:19SPEAKER- Through an HDMI capture.
57:21SPEAKER- Oh wait, oh, I'm sorry.
57:22SPEAKERI thought you meant you were sending footage
57:23SPEAKERto that machine over the network.
57:25SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.
57:26SPEAKER- You're still using HDMI out into it.
57:28SPEAKER- I'm using an HDMI out into that machine,
57:30SPEAKERbut everything else is controlled over the network.
57:32SPEAKER- I took you very literally
57:34SPEAKERwhen you said nothing physical was going into it.
57:37SPEAKER- Oh yeah, no, no, no.
57:38SPEAKER- I thought you meant even the video capture.
57:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I have analog audio coming out of my Motu
57:43SPEAKERon my game PC, both for Discord and for the game.
57:48SPEAKER- Yeah, of course in fairness, that is how I do.
57:50SPEAKERI do send video over the network
57:52SPEAKERfrom my PC to my NAS when I stream.
57:54SPEAKER- Yeah, it's funny, when I did that,
57:56SPEAKERpeople always complained about AV sync problems,
57:58SPEAKERbut that was also in like 2017
57:59SPEAKERand I was using NDI instead of other stuff.
58:03SPEAKER- Maybe not the best solution for that.
58:05SPEAKERI've never had sync issues,
58:06SPEAKERbut there's definitely latency.
58:07SPEAKERThere's definitely like my,
58:09SPEAKERthe stream is like three seconds behind real time
58:11SPEAKERor something like that.
58:12SPEAKERIt definitely adds extra delay.
58:14SPEAKERBut all right, I got one more question here
58:16SPEAKERon the Linux tips since we've, in fact,
58:18SPEAKERwe were kind of just talking about this exact subject.
58:21SPEAKERTactical tug.
58:23SPEAKERBrad was clearly the Linux nerd going on.
58:25SPEAKEROh, sorry, this starts.
58:26SPEAKERListening back to some older episodes.
58:29SPEAKERBrad was clearly the Linux nerd going on about command lines,
58:31SPEAKERNeoFetch scripts and everything else that goes with it.
58:34SPEAKERAnd Will was a bit less enthusiastic,
58:37SPEAKERI guess is a way of putting it.
58:39SPEAKERNow it seems like the opposite
58:40SPEAKERwhere Will has a Linux podcast
58:42SPEAKERand Brad seems to be happy, question mark, with Windows.
58:46SPEAKERWhat happened, did Brad just give up on Linux
58:47SPEAKERor does he still fiddle around with it?
58:49SPEAKERI am in Linux all day long.
58:51SPEAKER- Yeah.
58:51SPEAKERI typically, right now I am signed
58:55SPEAKERinto five different Linux instances around the house.
58:58SPEAKER- Wow.
58:59SPEAKER- Which is, well, I've been doing a bunch
59:01SPEAKERof Raspberry Pi work on like this.
59:03SPEAKER- Oh, I'm aware.
59:04SPEAKER- As I've said recently, this drive encryption
59:06SPEAKERand backup scheme has gotten a bit more complex.
59:09SPEAKERSo there's a couple of Pis in the mix that I've typically,
59:12SPEAKERbut typically I have like three different Linux sessions
59:17SPEAKERgoing into different machines at any given time.
59:20SPEAKER- To be clear, the post-processing for every episode
59:23SPEAKERof this podcast has gone through your Linux machine
59:25SPEAKERat least on one end.
59:27SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yes, yes.
59:28SPEAKER- So different evolutionary paths.
59:32SPEAKER- Yes, that's pretty much it.
59:33SPEAKERI use Linux constantly, but it's always in a command line.
59:36SPEAKERI don't have any kind of desktop or GUI Linux thing going.
59:39SPEAKERAnd the main reason for that is that our,
59:42SPEAKERespecially on Nextlander,
59:43SPEAKERlike the needs of our production schedule are such
59:45SPEAKERthat I just don't really have time
59:46SPEAKERto maintain two operating systems.
59:48SPEAKERAnd for better or worse, Windows is the,
59:52SPEAKERLinux is a subset of what we need to do for that business.
59:56SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
59:57SPEAKERMarathon is a great example where you had to reboot
59:59SPEAKERinto Windows to stream Marathon with us the other day.
1:00:02SPEAKERAnd like that's the type of thing, even if it's like,
1:00:04SPEAKERor Fortnite or whatever, like even if it's like few
1:00:07SPEAKERand far between examples like that,
1:00:09SPEAKERit's still just enough that it's like,
1:00:11SPEAKERI can't go full-time Linux
1:00:12SPEAKER'cause I'm always gonna need Windows for reasons like that.
1:00:14SPEAKERSo for now it is just a practical reality
1:00:17SPEAKERthat it's easier to just keep Windows going.
1:00:20SPEAKERAnd like, if I didn't have this,
1:00:22SPEAKERif I was in a completely different line of work there,
1:00:24SPEAKERI think there's a decent chance.
1:00:27SPEAKERI might be just daily driving Linux
1:00:29SPEAKERand not even installing Windows these days.
1:00:31SPEAKERI don't know.
1:00:32SPEAKER- I'm gonna say like the number of games that I play
1:00:35SPEAKERon the reg that are a problem is pretty low.
1:00:38SPEAKERIt's almost exclusively big multiplayer titles.
1:00:41SPEAKERBut you also do play stuff that's brand new,
1:00:44SPEAKERlike the day it comes out, which is always a little hinky.
1:00:47SPEAKERLike the one time a week I consistently reboot into Windows
1:00:51SPEAKERis when I'm doing an next lander stream,
1:00:53SPEAKERjust 'cause I don't want my bullshit
1:00:56SPEAKERto be causing you guys problems
1:00:58SPEAKERwhen you're trying to get your show out.
1:00:59SPEAKER- Yeah, and that extends to like games coverage.
1:01:01SPEAKERYou know, like if we're talking about a PC,
1:01:03SPEAKERa new PC game on the podcast,
1:01:04SPEAKERlike I can't be sitting there wasting time saying like,
1:01:07SPEAKERwell, I had this and this problem with it,
1:01:09SPEAKERbut I don't know if that's the game or Linux
1:01:11SPEAKERor the clinics compatible, you know what I mean?
1:01:12SPEAKERLike it's a more pure environment to play the game
1:01:15SPEAKERon the platform it's intended for.
1:01:17SPEAKERAnd then if something goes wrong,
1:01:19SPEAKERit's probably easier to say it's the game.
1:01:22SPEAKER- So the other side of that is I've been looking for people
1:01:26SPEAKERwho cover Linux gaming in the way that like
1:01:30SPEAKERthe old bomb cast did,
1:01:31SPEAKERwhere you talk about what's available each week
1:01:32SPEAKERand what's, and like that doesn't kind of exist
1:01:35SPEAKERin the market right now.
1:01:36SPEAKER- I think if that's like the whole focus of your show,
1:01:39SPEAKERthat's fine, 'cause that's what people are there for.
1:01:40SPEAKERBut I, you know, a more general gaming audience,
1:01:43SPEAKERlike the number is growing for sure.
1:01:46SPEAKERLike the number of people who would care to hear
1:01:47SPEAKERabout the Linux stuff is growing.
1:01:49SPEAKER- Dozens of us, dozens.
1:01:51SPEAKER- It's still gonna be a pretty tiny fraction
1:01:53SPEAKERof the overall audience, so.
1:01:55SPEAKER- Yeah, and so my motivation for switching was more,
1:01:59SPEAKERI got annoyed with Microsoft at a pretty high level
1:02:02SPEAKERand the Windows 11, like where Windows 11 is going.
1:02:05SPEAKER- We're gonna have to revisit.
1:02:07SPEAKERThis is like the third time this episode
1:02:08SPEAKERI have resisted bringing up.
1:02:09SPEAKERAnd now I'm going to bring up that open letter kind of thing
1:02:12SPEAKERthat Microsoft posted this week about Windows 11.
1:02:14SPEAKERWe're gonna have to talk about that soon.
1:02:16SPEAKER- Maybe we'll talk about that next week
1:02:17SPEAKERon the next week's episode, 'cause they keep--
1:02:19SPEAKER- Or the next one I'm here, I'm out next week,
1:02:21SPEAKERbut I really, I would love to dig into that.
1:02:23SPEAKER- They keep dribbling out other things
1:02:25SPEAKERthat they realize people are annoyed by
1:02:26SPEAKERand that they have to fix.
1:02:28SPEAKERLike the, hey, maybe it wasn't a great idea
1:02:30SPEAKERto use React in the start menu, who knew?
1:02:33SPEAKER- Yep, their numbers must be terrible
1:02:35SPEAKERfor them to be putting out messaging like this.
1:02:37SPEAKER- I was gonna, yeah, for making, like this is right up there
1:02:40SPEAKERwith the #FixPubG campaign of 2018 in terms of,
1:02:45SPEAKERhey, we've made a mistake now, will they actually do it?
1:02:48SPEAKERI don't know.
1:02:50SPEAKERI was gonna say, I highly recommend,
1:02:53SPEAKERand we should maybe do an episode about this.
1:02:55SPEAKERIt's an old Neal Stephenson essay
1:02:57SPEAKERthat he publishes a book eventually.
1:02:59SPEAKER- Oh, yes, in the beginning there was the command line?
1:03:03SPEAKER- Yeah, in the beginning was the command line, yeah.
1:03:05SPEAKER- We've gotten requests to cover that in the past.
1:03:07SPEAKERWe should look at that.
1:03:08SPEAKER- I have a signed paper copy of that someplace, I think.
1:03:11SPEAKER- That's cool.
1:03:12SPEAKER- But it's, he's talking, he was just basically talking
1:03:16SPEAKERabout the power of like using a computer
1:03:19SPEAKERwith the limited interface versus a GUI.
1:03:22SPEAKERAnd then of course, like three years after Mac OS X came out,
1:03:25SPEAKERhe switched to a Mac and was like,
1:03:26SPEAKERyeah, I don't fuck with the command line anymore.
1:03:28SPEAKER- Sure, I get it.
1:03:30SPEAKERGod, we have so many questions left
1:03:32SPEAKERand we're almost out of time.
1:03:33SPEAKERWe might have to, maybe we'll do some on the patron episode.
1:03:35SPEAKER- Do a patron questions, yeah.
1:03:37SPEAKER- This month, 'cause these are all Discord queues.
1:03:39SPEAKERTry to do a couple more here.
1:03:41SPEAKER- Just so folks know, that's why we usually do
1:03:43SPEAKERthe emails first is 'cause we answer emails
1:03:45SPEAKERon the Q&A episode that goes out to everyone
1:03:49SPEAKERand then the patron questions for the Discord
1:03:52SPEAKERwe sometimes spill over into the patron episode.
1:03:54SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, where anybody who wrote in the question will--
1:03:58SPEAKER- Presumably have access. - Will have access
1:04:00SPEAKERto the episode.
1:04:02SPEAKERHow about, okay, you flagged this one.
1:04:04SPEAKERThis is another tactical tug.
1:04:05SPEAKERI don't have an answer for this,
1:04:06SPEAKERbut I assume you do.
1:04:09SPEAKERWhy is it that blowing off electronics
1:04:10SPEAKERwith a small handheld leaf blower
1:04:12SPEAKERor a spray can with compressed air
1:04:14SPEAKERare generally considered safe,
1:04:16SPEAKERbut using a vacuum cleaner to suck off the dust
1:04:18SPEAKERcan create static electricity
1:04:19SPEAKERthat can damage the components?
1:04:21SPEAKERThe air itself moves across the components either way.
1:04:24SPEAKERSo is it the motor in the vacuum cleaner
1:04:26SPEAKERthat can create the static?
1:04:27SPEAKERAnd if so, why doesn't the small electric blower
1:04:30SPEAKERcreate the same problem?
1:04:31SPEAKER- It has to do with how vacuum cleaners used to work.
1:04:35SPEAKERSo a blower is typically just a fan that's spinning.
1:04:38SPEAKERIt doesn't generate a lot of static electricity.
1:04:40SPEAKERA lot of, especially older vacuum cleaners,
1:04:42SPEAKERit's less common these days
1:04:44SPEAKERwith the new Venturi-style vacuum cleaners.
1:04:47SPEAKERBut the older ones had a big rubber belt in there,
1:04:50SPEAKERand that rubber belt would rub against stuff
1:04:52SPEAKERand create a shitload of static electricity.
1:04:55SPEAKERAnd if you're talking about your 1979-era Lady Kenmore
1:04:59SPEAKERthat had a metal hose that was electrically connected
1:05:02SPEAKERto the main body of the vacuum,
1:05:05SPEAKERyou could arc a spark across like three inches
1:05:08SPEAKERwith that thing.
1:05:10SPEAKERSo yeah, that's why people say not to use vacuum cleaners.
1:05:14SPEAKERIt's probably fine, especially if you're using
1:05:16SPEAKERlike a modern Dyson or something like that
1:05:17SPEAKERthat doesn't have the big, giant rubber belt in there.
1:05:21SPEAKERBut also, one of the kindest things you can buy for yourself
1:05:26SPEAKERis a $20 electric canned air machine, and just buy that.
1:05:32SPEAKER- Yep, just take your computer outside and blow it out.
1:05:35SPEAKER- Yep, or do it in the kitchen.
1:05:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's nice.
1:05:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I told the kiddo to clean her computer
1:05:40SPEAKERa few weeks ago, and she was like, "I got it."
1:05:42SPEAKERAnd she's, next thing I see,
1:05:43SPEAKERshe's blasted it out on the kitchen counter.
1:05:45SPEAKERI was like, "Man."
1:05:46SPEAKER- Oh, man.
1:05:47SPEAKER- I hope there were no like open dishes in the room.
1:05:49SPEAKER- Then we, no, all the stuff on the drying rack
1:05:51SPEAKERgot to go back in the dishwasher, it was fine.
1:05:53SPEAKER- Sorry, I meant like open dishes of food
1:05:56SPEAKERthat were being cooked or whatever.
1:05:57SPEAKER- No, no, no.
1:05:59SPEAKERAlso, shout out to the 1979 Lady Kenmore.
1:06:02SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:06:03SPEAKER- Given the way that appliances used to be built,
1:06:05SPEAKERthat thing's probably still running.
1:06:07SPEAKER- I, like here's, so we, we've had vacuum cleaner strife
1:06:13SPEAKERin our house over the last couple of years,
1:06:14SPEAKER'cause I advocated for buying this Miele stick vac
1:06:19SPEAKERthat sucks better than any stick vac I've ever had before,
1:06:23SPEAKERbut also is fairly heavy, and certain members
1:06:26SPEAKERof our household don't like the extra weight.
1:06:29SPEAKERI am constantly blown away by how good the stick vacs are,
1:06:35SPEAKERbut it definitely feels like an LCD monitor situation
1:06:38SPEAKERwhere they didn't suck as well as the old kind
1:06:42SPEAKERof vacuum cleaners for a long, long time,
1:06:44SPEAKERand we're just now getting back to that point.
1:06:46SPEAKERI don't know, man, vacuum cleaners are hard.
1:06:48SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:06:49SPEAKER- Can I just say, there was one recurring theme,
1:06:51SPEAKERwe're listening, we hear you.
1:06:53SPEAKERA lot of folks want us to get one Brad Shoemaker
1:06:56SPEAKERas a guest on Dooboo Diaries in the future.
1:06:58SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
1:06:59SPEAKER- All parties are willing, I believe,
1:07:00SPEAKERis safe to say at this point.
1:07:02SPEAKER- Yeah, the only reason I've been hesitant
1:07:03SPEAKERis that you guys are so desktop focused
1:07:05SPEAKERand I just don't have a ton of desktop experience,
1:07:07SPEAKERso I don't know how useful I will be, but.
1:07:10SPEAKER- I think that we could do some,
1:07:12SPEAKERI think it would be really helpful to have you come on
1:07:14SPEAKERand explain System D.
1:07:15SPEAKER- Sure, oh boy.
1:07:16SPEAKER- Like stuff like that.
1:07:17SPEAKER- System D is-- - No pressure though.
1:07:19SPEAKER- That's a can of worms for many reasons.
1:07:22SPEAKER- System D's what?
1:07:23SPEAKER- You know.
1:07:26SPEAKER- I shouldn't even, we need to end this podcast,
1:07:27SPEAKERI shouldn't bring this up.
1:07:28SPEAKERDid you see the hubbub this past week or two?
1:07:30SPEAKER- No.
1:07:31SPEAKER- Where somebody, they merged a pull request
1:07:33SPEAKERwith a birthdate field into the--
1:07:36SPEAKER- Oh no.
1:07:37SPEAKER- Basically into the System D user DB,
1:07:38SPEAKERwhich I didn't even know existed.
1:07:39SPEAKERLike I am deep in writing System D services myself
1:07:43SPEAKERand stuff like that these days,
1:07:44SPEAKERand I didn't even know it had a facility
1:07:45SPEAKERfor storing user data, but basically people see it
1:07:48SPEAKERas a prelude to age verification,
1:07:51SPEAKERsneaking its way into Linux.
1:07:54SPEAKERAnd Leonard Pottering, the maintainer of System D
1:07:57SPEAKERwas just like, "Hey, it's a completely optional field
1:07:59SPEAKERthat you can just not put anything in
1:08:01SPEAKERif you don't want to deal with it."
1:08:02SPEAKER- Scene drama.
1:08:04SPEAKER- Anyway, that's, I mean, there's probably a whole episode
1:08:08SPEAKERaround the state level, it seems like,
1:08:10SPEAKERI think it's just California and Colorado so far,
1:08:12SPEAKERthe state level age verification requirements
1:08:15SPEAKERin your operating system legislation.
1:08:17SPEAKER- Do we not talk about this here?
1:08:18SPEAKERWe only talk about it in the full nerd, I guess.
1:08:19SPEAKER- I don't think we've discussed it on here.
1:08:22SPEAKER- Yeah, the state level requirements are goofy
1:08:24SPEAKER'cause it's just a field you press the data in.
1:08:27SPEAKERIt's gonna be like when they started making porn sites
1:08:30SPEAKERput age verification on, that's just a yo, are you 18,
1:08:34SPEAKERyes or no.
1:08:35SPEAKER- It seems like the kind of thing you can just fake.
1:08:38SPEAKERI mean, I get the concerns about it being a slippery slope.
1:08:39SPEAKER- It is a slippery slope, yeah.
1:08:41SPEAKER- For sure.
1:08:41SPEAKERAlso, who was it?
1:08:44SPEAKERI think it was the CEO of System 76 posted on Mastodon
1:08:48SPEAKERrecently that he met with the kind of lead sponsor
1:08:52SPEAKERof the Colorado bill.
1:08:53SPEAKERAnd that sponsor, the legislator basically said,
1:08:56SPEAKERwell, maybe we could just exempt open source
1:08:58SPEAKERoperating systems from this.
1:09:00SPEAKER- Done, perfect.
1:09:01SPEAKER- But I think that the California bill pass already,
1:09:04SPEAKERI'm not sure.
1:09:04SPEAKER- It's passed, there's still time to amend it.
1:09:08SPEAKERLike there's session between now and when it goes live.
1:09:11SPEAKERI think even like I don't,
1:09:14SPEAKERI think we all know how I feel about Newsom, it's not great.
1:09:16SPEAKERBut even he said when he signed it
1:09:18SPEAKERthat this bill has problems,
1:09:19SPEAKERit has to be adjusted before it goes live.
1:09:22SPEAKER- Fingers crossed.
1:09:23SPEAKER- So whether the GOP super majority,
1:09:25SPEAKERI mean the Democratic super majority in California
1:09:28SPEAKERcan get their shit together and do it or not in time,
1:09:30SPEAKERremains to be seen.
1:09:31SPEAKER- Yeah, more to come on that probably.
1:09:33SPEAKERAll right, speaking of policy change,
1:09:36SPEAKERhere's the last question from Cakebatter.
1:09:39SPEAKERNow that British Columbia has gotten rid of daylight savings
1:09:42SPEAKERto the UTC seven all year round,
1:09:46SPEAKERnow would be a good time to dive into explaining
1:09:48SPEAKERhow time zone tracking libraries handle an update like this.
1:09:52SPEAKER- Yeah, it turns out there's just a shitload of people
1:09:54SPEAKERdoing a lot of work.
1:09:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:09:56SPEAKER- There's a time zone database that's maintained,
1:10:00SPEAKERit's called the Olson database
1:10:02SPEAKER'cause that was the founding contributor.
1:10:05SPEAKERAnd it's the, well, okay.
1:10:08SPEAKERSo there's multiple time zone databases.
1:10:09SPEAKERThere's TZ data, which is a zone info database,
1:10:13SPEAKERor also the IANA time zone database,
1:10:16SPEAKERwhich is the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority database.
1:10:19SPEAKERThat's the people that dole out IP addresses, I believe.
1:10:21SPEAKER- TZ data is a very common time zone package
1:10:24SPEAKERacross different open source operating systems.
1:10:27SPEAKER- Yeah, but the TLDR is that this guy, Paul Eggert,
1:10:31SPEAKERhas maintained this for a really long time
1:10:34SPEAKERwith the organizational backing of ICANN.
1:10:37SPEAKER- It's one guy.
1:10:38SPEAKERLook, man, it's that there's an XKCD as always for this.
1:10:45SPEAKERIt's the one little-
1:10:46SPEAKER- One Jenga tower?
1:10:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that Jenga tower with that one guy
1:10:49SPEAKERat the bottom holding up the whole thing.
1:10:51SPEAKER- I mean, I think that might be
1:10:52SPEAKERthe most cited XKCD at this point.
1:10:55SPEAKER- It's either that one or the 15 standards one.
1:10:59SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, that one also is a classic.
1:11:00SPEAKERThis seems like the kind of thing
1:11:01SPEAKERthat should be more standardized at an institutional level
1:11:04SPEAKERin a theoretical world where we still cared about standards
1:11:08SPEAKERor-
1:11:10SPEAKER- I mean, it seems like ICANN is paying Paul Eggert,
1:11:12SPEAKERso somebody cares.
1:11:13SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.
1:11:15SPEAKER- I think, well, okay, so there's two things.
1:11:18SPEAKEROne is I'm really curious to see it.
1:11:20SPEAKERWe did a time zone episode years ago.
1:11:22SPEAKERIf you haven't heard it, you should go back and find it
1:11:23SPEAKER'cause it's fantastic.
1:11:27SPEAKERThe changing to full-time daylight savings
1:11:30SPEAKERhas never worked for a long period of time.
1:11:32SPEAKER- I am so jealous of British Columbia.
1:11:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I would like to go on that journey
1:11:37SPEAKERof discovery with them and find out why it sucks firsthand.
1:11:41SPEAKER- They're on permanent, regular, they're on permanent.
1:11:44SPEAKERBC went on permanent standard time.
1:11:46SPEAKER- No, I thought they went on permanent daily savings.
1:11:49SPEAKER- Now that British Columbia has gotten rid
1:11:50SPEAKERof daylight savings to be UTC seven all year round,
1:11:55SPEAKERso they're on permanent standard time, which is the dream.
1:11:57SPEAKER- But isn't UTC minus seven daylight savings time?
1:12:00SPEAKER- I, well, it varies.
1:12:01SPEAKER- 'Cause they're Pacific time.
1:12:02SPEAKERWe're minus eight. - Are they, are they?
1:12:04SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:12:04SPEAKER- Maybe they're easterly- - They're always sprung forward.
1:12:06SPEAKER- Maybe they're easterly enough to be in seven and not eight.
1:12:10SPEAKERI don't know.
1:12:10SPEAKERAnyway, I mean, it seems pretty definitive,
1:12:12SPEAKERgotten rid of daylight savings, so it must be standard.
1:12:14SPEAKER- Yeah, no, no, no.
1:12:16SPEAKERThey, yeah, they sprung forward
1:12:17SPEAKERand they're never falling back.
1:12:18SPEAKERSo they're on daylight savings times forever.
1:12:20SPEAKER- Oh, maybe he's got it backwards then?
1:12:22SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I think- - I don't know.
1:12:24SPEAKER- I think getting rid of implies to me
1:12:25SPEAKERthat they're not changing the clocks anymore,
1:12:27SPEAKERnot which one they land on.
1:12:28SPEAKER- We will hear from cake batter on the subject, I'm sure.
1:12:31SPEAKER- But my point is I'm curious to see how long,
1:12:34SPEAKERhow long it takes them before they revert.
1:12:39SPEAKER- As was discussed in that episode of several years ago.
1:12:42SPEAKER- Yeah, the Russians did it.
1:12:43SPEAKEREvery time somebody's tried this,
1:12:44SPEAKERthey've not stuck with it.
1:12:46SPEAKER- We tried this in the US in the '70s
1:12:47SPEAKERand did not even make it through the probationary period
1:12:49SPEAKERof two years before everybody was like, "Fuck this."
1:12:52SPEAKER- Yeah, now the real answer to the problem,
1:12:54SPEAKERas we discussed during the episode,
1:12:56SPEAKERand this is like a, "Yo, we should get rid of pennies,"
1:12:59SPEAKERor, "Hey, like the official map of the United States
1:13:02SPEAKERuses the wrong projection,
1:13:04SPEAKERso the Greenland looks really big
1:13:05SPEAKERand like idiots want to capture it
1:13:07SPEAKERas a defensive perimeter for the country,
1:13:09SPEAKERwhatever, yada, yada," diagonal time zones.
1:13:14SPEAKERThat's the real answer,
1:13:16SPEAKERis that you don't go with the longitude lines.
1:13:18SPEAKERThey're all slanted time zones.
1:13:22SPEAKER- That's adjusting for the tilt of the earth
1:13:24SPEAKERso that people have more consistent daylight hours.
1:13:26SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause remember the thing that we learned
1:13:28SPEAKERin the Daylight Savings Time episode
1:13:29SPEAKERis that the more northwesterly you are in the time zone,
1:13:32SPEAKERthe earlier you die.
1:13:33SPEAKER- Yes, yes, like you get screwed,
1:13:36SPEAKERDaylight Savings screws you
1:13:37SPEAKERbased on where you live in your time zone.
1:13:39SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:13:40SPEAKER- Just one of the many reasons we should do away with it.
1:13:42SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, please write your angry letters
1:13:47SPEAKERabout time zones to somebody that's not us.
1:13:51SPEAKER- Don't want to hear about it.
1:13:52SPEAKER- We don't care.
1:13:53SPEAKERWe believe you, we appreciate you, we hear you,
1:13:55SPEAKERand we're sorry.
1:13:58SPEAKER- Sure.
1:14:00SPEAKER- Why not?
1:14:02SPEAKER- I ain't reading all that,
1:14:04SPEAKERbut I'm happy for you or sorry that happened.
1:14:08SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly, exactly.
1:14:10SPEAKERI'm sorry that did or did not happen to you.
1:14:13SPEAKER- All right.
1:14:13SPEAKER- That's as good a time as any
1:14:15SPEAKERto wrap it up for the weekend, I guess, huh?
1:14:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I think so. - Or for the week.
1:14:19SPEAKERAs always, thanks to everybody for writing in.
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1:14:37SPEAKER- What is five bucks at this point?
1:14:40SPEAKER- I bought a bag of candy,
1:14:41SPEAKEREaster candy for five bucks the other day.
1:14:43SPEAKER- I was gonna say, you can still get a candy bar
1:14:45SPEAKERfor less than five bucks, although that is creeping up.
1:14:48SPEAKERThat's like, candy bar is like 250, pushing three bucks now.
1:14:52SPEAKER- Yeah, you can get gas station coffee.
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1:16:32SPEAKERso thank you all so much.
1:16:33SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you for listening.
1:16:35SPEAKER- And yeah, if anybody wants to help me figure out
1:16:37SPEAKERhow to make a DKMS package so that my drivers
1:16:44SPEAKERfor my AIO update automatically when I change the kernel,
1:16:48SPEAKERthat would be dope too.
1:16:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems like a rabbit hole.
1:16:50SPEAKERThat's the level of Linux administration
1:16:54SPEAKERthat I have been afraid to ever touch
1:16:55SPEAKERis like autom, or not autom, sorry, not automatically,
1:16:58SPEAKERbut manually dealing with like module,
1:17:00SPEAKERkernel module building or like building your own kernel
1:17:02SPEAKERand that kind of thing.
1:17:03SPEAKERLike that stuff, that type of stuff is still the domain
1:17:06SPEAKERof the package manager to me.
1:17:07SPEAKERWell, so, but obviously they're not packaging
1:17:09SPEAKERthe thing you need here.
1:17:10SPEAKER- No, so I wrote a script that will automatically
1:17:14SPEAKERmod probe the driver in when I, when I boot the machine,
1:17:17SPEAKERbut then every once in a while it throws an error
1:17:18SPEAKER'cause I've gotten a kernel update that I didn't notice
1:17:20SPEAKERand I have to recompile it or whatever.
1:17:22SPEAKER- I think you, I think you wanna probably do a modprobe.d file
1:17:25SPEAKERfor that drop-in file.
1:17:27SPEAKER- Oh, is that how you do that?
1:17:28SPEAKER- Yeah, there's- - That might recompile it?
1:17:30SPEAKER- Oh, no, not to build the module.
1:17:31SPEAKERThat's just- - Oh, yeah.
1:17:32SPEAKER- But to load it at boot, there is a standard facility
1:17:34SPEAKERfor telling it which modules to load,
1:17:36SPEAKERwhich is to go look up /etc/modprobe.d,
1:17:40SPEAKERI believe is where you wanna be.
1:17:42SPEAKER- The thing is I wanna do it manually
1:17:43SPEAKER'cause I wanna see the error pop when it doesn't go
1:17:45SPEAKERor else I start playing a game
1:17:46SPEAKERand then my fans sound like a jet engine
1:17:48SPEAKERand I don't know why.
1:17:48SPEAKER- So you should probably do it as a systemd service
1:17:51SPEAKERso that the output of it gets absorbed into the journal,
1:17:54SPEAKERthe system journal.
1:17:55SPEAKER- Well, so the other thing I was thinking I could do
1:17:57SPEAKERis just write a script that does, like, if this fails,
1:18:00SPEAKERthen it runs the compile thing.
1:18:02SPEAKER- Okay.
1:18:03SPEAKER- 'Cause the compile only takes like a half a second.
1:18:04SPEAKER- I should come on and talk to you about systemd then
1:18:06SPEAKERbecause this is exactly what that thing was made for
1:18:09SPEAKERis that my understanding is in the sys5 init days,
1:18:14SPEAKERlike startup ordering of services was a complete nightmare.
1:18:17SPEAKER- It was, yeah.
1:18:18SPEAKER- But so like it's specifically built to deal
1:18:21SPEAKERwith dependencies between different services
1:18:23SPEAKERso you can, you have a lot of control
1:18:26SPEAKERover when that service runs on how.
1:18:28SPEAKER- Oh, that's nice.
1:18:29SPEAKER- Like you can make, you can like,
1:18:31SPEAKERit's a very fraught subject,
1:18:33SPEAKERbut there's some cool things about it.
1:18:34SPEAKERBasically, it turns every single resource in,
1:18:37SPEAKERnow I'm just burning dual boot diaries and stuff,
1:18:39SPEAKERbut every single resource in the machine, in the OS,
1:18:43SPEAKERbecomes a unit, quote, unquote.
1:18:45SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:18:46SPEAKER- Like services, drive mounts, or storage mounts,
1:18:50SPEAKERUSB device, like every hardware device,
1:18:52SPEAKERnetwork connections and whether connections are up or not.
1:18:56SPEAKERAnd you can set up dependency chains with all of that stuff.
1:18:59SPEAKERYou can be like, you can be like only run this service
1:19:01SPEAKERafter this network interface is up
1:19:03SPEAKERand configured and connected, connectable.
1:19:05SPEAKER- Oh, so you can do dependencies on stuff in there?
1:19:07SPEAKEROh, that's awesome.
1:19:08SPEAKER- You can say only run the service
1:19:09SPEAKERwhen this specific USB device is plugged in.
1:19:12SPEAKER- Oh.
1:19:13SPEAKER- Like you can do all kinds of cool stuff like that.
1:19:14SPEAKERSo like you would, absolutely,
1:19:16SPEAKERif you make this into a service, then you can tell it,
1:19:19SPEAKERdon't run the service until these other things are present
1:19:22SPEAKERand ready to go to prevent errors when things run.
1:19:26SPEAKER- So then I can have like my cooler control service
1:19:28SPEAKERnot run until after the hwmon driver,
1:19:31SPEAKERthe kernel driver, loads for this.
1:19:33SPEAKER- 100%.
1:19:33SPEAKER- Oh, that's some hot business.
1:19:34SPEAKERI need to get you to help me figure this out.
1:19:36SPEAKER- It's a lot.
1:19:37SPEAKERIt is a fucking lot though.
1:19:38SPEAKERI kind of hate dealing with.
1:19:41SPEAKER- Okay, I'm less enthusiastic now.
1:19:43SPEAKERI found it consistently very hard to master,
1:19:45SPEAKERbut it is very powerful.
1:19:48SPEAKER- What I really need is somebody else
1:19:49SPEAKERto package this up for me.
1:19:50SPEAKERSo I don't have to think about it.
1:19:51SPEAKERThat's the TLDR.
1:19:53SPEAKER- Right, what if you became the package maintainer?
1:19:55SPEAKER- Look, I looked at what was involved
1:19:57SPEAKERand first I have to figure out how to package the thing.
1:20:00SPEAKERAnd then I have to make a DKMS version of that.
1:20:04SPEAKERSo that means I have to learn how to do GitHub automation.
1:20:06SPEAKERSo it compiles automatically when there's an upstream update
1:20:09SPEAKERthat I can pull in.
1:20:10SPEAKERAnd at that point, my eyes glazed over.
1:20:12SPEAKERI was like, this seems like a lot of actual work and yeah.
1:20:15SPEAKER- It sure is.
1:20:16SPEAKERIt sure is.
1:20:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:20:19SPEAKERWell, so we'll be back next week with more TechPod.
1:20:20SPEAKERThanks everybody.
1:20:22SPEAKERPlease consider the environment before printing this podcast.