00:00SPEAKER- Hey Brad, I got a dog yesterday.
00:01SPEAKER- Wait, I'm sorry, what?
00:03SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:04SPEAKER- What?
00:05SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:05SPEAKER- This has got to be going somewhere insincere.
00:07SPEAKERI don't believe that you just got a new dog.
00:10SPEAKER- So we've been looking for a new Corgi
00:13SPEAKERfor like since the pandemic.
00:15SPEAKER- Wait, did you really get a new dog?
00:17SPEAKER- Yeah, we drove to Sacramento
00:18SPEAKERand brought back a six month old puppy yesterday.
00:20SPEAKER- What?
00:21SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:22SPEAKER- I thought you were gonna tell me like,
00:23SPEAKERah, we went to Costco and I got a dog for $1.50.
00:25SPEAKER- I did that on Tuesday.
00:26SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
00:27SPEAKER- It was delicious.
00:28SPEAKER- I also did that on Tuesday.
00:30SPEAKER- Wow, really?
00:31SPEAKER- Yeah, we went to Costco on Tuesday and got hot dogs.
00:33SPEAKER- We had Costco dogs and a pizza
00:35SPEAKERto celebrate the 400th episode of "The Full Nerd"
00:38SPEAKERand my last episode of "The Full Nerd".
00:40SPEAKER- Man, that's a pretty, oh, well that sucks.
00:42SPEAKER- It's been an eventful week actually.
00:43SPEAKER- I missed that part, but I was gonna say
00:45SPEAKERI do enjoy the idea of the Costco event celebration.
00:49SPEAKER- Yeah, it was pretty, like the kids love the Costco pizza,
00:51SPEAKERit turns out, for birthdays and stuff.
00:53SPEAKERAnd I love the Costco pizza for birthdays and stuff
00:55SPEAKER'cause it's real cheap compared to like
00:57SPEAKEReverything else pretty much.
00:58SPEAKER- Wait, last "Full Nerd", huh?
01:00SPEAKER- Well, my last "Full Nerd".
01:01SPEAKER- Yeah, yours, I mean.
01:02SPEAKER- They're gonna keep doing it.
01:04SPEAKERThey just didn't wanna pay me anymore, it turns out.
01:06SPEAKER- I don't think I realized that.
01:08SPEAKER- Yeah, well, we did, so, okay,
01:11SPEAKERthere's a lot going on here to unpack.
01:12SPEAKER- Yeah, this might be too many cold open topics, honestly.
01:16SPEAKER- This is a questions episode, it's not an oops,
01:18SPEAKERall cold open, but so, you know,
01:22SPEAKERI started at "The Full Nerd" when our friend Gordon got sick
01:25SPEAKER'cause they needed help to help cover him
01:27SPEAKERwhile he was recovering and then,
01:29SPEAKERunfortunately, he didn't recover, which was awful.
01:33SPEAKERAnd I stayed on to help them with that
01:35SPEAKERand help them figure that out.
01:36SPEAKERThey've started replacing,
01:37SPEAKERthey've hired a couple full-time people coming in
01:40SPEAKERand they're reducing their expenditure on contractors,
01:43SPEAKERwhich like, you know, they offered a lower rate
01:47SPEAKERand I wasn't interested in that, you know, which is fine.
01:50SPEAKERIt's how it goes sometimes.
01:52SPEAKERNo hard feelings, I love Adam to death, I love Elena.
01:54SPEAKERAnd like Brad Charkas is so fun because he started writing
01:58SPEAKERfor Maximum PC when we started the website
02:00SPEAKERin like 2006 or 2005 and he was writing news stories for us,
02:04SPEAKERlike Gawker-style news stories for us
02:07SPEAKERfor years and years and years.
02:08SPEAKER- I don't think I realized
02:09SPEAKERyou guys had worked together before.
02:11SPEAKER- Well, so we kind of hadn't 'cause he was a contractor
02:14SPEAKERand unless Norm was on vacation, Norm managed Brad
02:18SPEAKERand the people who were the contractors
02:21SPEAKERwriting on the website.
02:22SPEAKERSo I enjoyed his work and I was like,
02:26SPEAKERyeah, we should keep getting this guy to do this.
02:30SPEAKERBut we didn't really get Chad a whole lot
02:32SPEAKERand it was lovely to get to spend time with him and meet him
02:35SPEAKERand spend time with Adam and meet Adam and Elena.
02:36SPEAKERIt was another ex-future person.
02:40SPEAKERSo yeah, it was good.
02:40SPEAKERI'm sad to see it's gone.
02:42SPEAKERI'm kind of glad to have that time back
02:44SPEAKER'cause it was fairly time consuming
02:46SPEAKERand I'm looking for other things.
02:49SPEAKERI think I'm gonna launch a Linux podcast,
02:50SPEAKERwhich I alluded to on that Full Nerd episode.
02:53SPEAKERI know this may surprise you.
02:55SPEAKER- Ah, no, we've talked about it.
02:58SPEAKERThat was a performative whoa
02:59SPEAKERbecause you had mentioned that to me before,
03:01SPEAKERalthough I'm not sure quite what shape
03:03SPEAKERit's going to take yet.
03:04SPEAKER- I'm working on that.
03:05SPEAKERI did a couple of test things last week.
03:08SPEAKERAdam's in Taiwan for Computex for the next two weeks
03:13SPEAKERand we recorded an episode for this week
03:16SPEAKERand he's recording an episode for next week there
03:19SPEAKERand then I'm hoping that by the time he's back
03:21SPEAKERI'll have something to announce there
03:24SPEAKER'cause we're gonna do, I think,
03:25SPEAKERonce he's back we're doing four more episodes
03:27SPEAKERof Dual Boot Diaries
03:27SPEAKERand then we're gonna wind that down as well.
03:30SPEAKERBut I will have something new coming on the Linux front
03:32SPEAKERfor folks who are interested in that.
03:34SPEAKERAnd I think it's gonna be a melange of different flavors.
03:40SPEAKERI'll definitely continue doing some of the trip report,
03:42SPEAKERlike how stuff's going, what I'm learning,
03:44SPEAKERwhat I've found out type stuff.
03:47SPEAKERBut I'm gonna do some other stuff too.
03:49SPEAKERAnyway, but yeah, we got a dog yesterday.
03:51SPEAKER- I am.
03:52SPEAKER- So we got another Corgi, yeah.
03:54SPEAKERSo we met a breeder years ago who was very nice
04:00SPEAKERand her dogs are good and she does the stuff right.
04:03SPEAKERAnd I remain a little bit iffy
04:06SPEAKERon the whole breeder situation.
04:08SPEAKERBut we're like, hey, if you ever have one that comes back
04:10SPEAKERthat somebody can't take,
04:11SPEAKER'cause if you get a dog from a real breeder
04:14SPEAKERthen they say, hey, don't just surrender this dog
04:17SPEAKERif it doesn't go well for you, I'll take it back,
04:20SPEAKERwe'll figure it out.
04:22SPEAKERSo we've talked to her a couple of times,
04:25SPEAKERwe tried a couple of times and the dog wasn't a great fit.
04:27SPEAKERAnd we drove up to see her yesterday and the dog is dope.
04:31SPEAKERHis name's Toby, he's six months old.
04:34SPEAKERHe has the biggest floppiest ears I've ever seen, right?
04:38SPEAKERHe's very, he is extremely chill so far.
04:42SPEAKERHe's a little shell shocked 'cause he moved
04:44SPEAKERfrom his original home to her and back to us
04:48SPEAKERin a pretty short period of time.
04:49SPEAKERSo he's like, he's kind of figuring it out.
04:54SPEAKERBut he is a very, very good boy.
04:58SPEAKER- Man, congratulations.
04:59SPEAKER- I mean, maybe I'll just become a dog influencer.
05:01SPEAKERMaybe that's the next step here, I don't know.
05:02SPEAKER- Is that a thing?
05:03SPEAKERThat must be a thing.
05:04SPEAKER- People make, yeah, people, people,
05:06SPEAKERI know people whose dogs bought them houses.
05:08SPEAKER- What? - Yeah.
05:09SPEAKER- Man, where can I get a dog like that?
05:11SPEAKER- I mean, there you go.
05:13SPEAKER- Yeah, hopefully, I don't know if he's photogenic enough
05:15SPEAKERfor that, I also don't feel super great about exploiting him
05:18SPEAKERbut also that seems like better than an oscillator,
05:21SPEAKERI don't know.
05:22SPEAKER- You just let your dog be a dog.
05:24SPEAKER- Yeah, let the dog do dog stuff, that's what I say.
05:27SPEAKER(upbeat music)
05:43SPEAKER(upbeat music)
05:55SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.
05:58SPEAKER- I'm Brad, I have not recovered from that cold open yet.
06:01SPEAKER- That might be the first time in 341 episodes
06:03SPEAKERthat I legit shook you in the cold open.
06:05SPEAKER- It's a lot, it's just a lot to take in.
06:07SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:08SPEAKER- I wasn't expecting any of that.
06:09SPEAKER- Some real life changes this week in the Smith House.
06:11SPEAKERLike, it's weird 'cause like we watch other,
06:14SPEAKERwe have a couple of dogs that we dog sit occasionally
06:16SPEAKERand we've, so dogs are around but it's like,
06:20SPEAKERGina and I were talking about this morning
06:22SPEAKERand it's very much like the, that realization
06:24SPEAKERlike five days after you bring a baby home from the hospital
06:27SPEAKERyou're like, oh shit, this person's gonna live here
06:28SPEAKERfor the next 20 years.
06:30SPEAKERLike, we can't, there's no take backsies on this,
06:33SPEAKERyou're never gonna catch up on sleep again.
06:35SPEAKERAnd yeah, so you're like, oh right, this is gonna be,
06:39SPEAKERhe's gonna be a part of our lives for the next,
06:41SPEAKERhopefully 15 or 20 years and, or at least, you know, yeah.
06:45SPEAKERSo anyway.
06:46SPEAKER- That's cool.
06:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it's good.
06:48SPEAKERYou'll have to come meet, well, we'll bring him
06:49SPEAKERto the Presidio sometime, you'll have to come meet him.
06:50SPEAKER- Yes, that seems like a good venue for a new dog.
06:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:54SPEAKER- To do dog stuff.
06:54SPEAKER- Yeah, he's much chiller than Chloe Bananas was so far.
06:59SPEAKERWe'll see if that holds.
07:01SPEAKER- Toby not Bananas?
07:02SPEAKER- Toby, Toby. - So far?
07:03SPEAKER- Toby, yeah.
07:05SPEAKEROne of, another friend of mine said he was,
07:08SPEAKERhis ears are so big because he's a desert dog
07:10SPEAKERand I was like, oh, he's Mod Toby.
07:12SPEAKER- Is this like a different sub breed?
07:15SPEAKERIs it like, or is he just happens to have big ears?
07:19SPEAKER- I think he's a kind of, he's six months
07:22SPEAKERis kind of adolescent, so he's a little gangly.
07:24SPEAKER- Okay, he hasn't quite grown into the ears yet.
07:26SPEAKER- Hopefully he hasn't grown into the ears yet.
07:28SPEAKER- I'm Googling pictures of corgis with large ears
07:32SPEAKERright now to see if that's a thing.
07:33SPEAKER- Yeah, Chloe had pretty,
07:35SPEAKERI would say she was pretty median size ears.
07:39SPEAKEROne of the corgis my sister had had pretty small ears.
07:42SPEAKERSo I've never seen, he has some gigantor ears,
07:47SPEAKERbut they're very cute.
07:48SPEAKER- Well, you ever look at a dog and just see a wolf?
07:51SPEAKERYou ever just think, that used to be a wolf.
07:53SPEAKER- I mean, I wonder, 'cause like we get people
07:59SPEAKERwith coyote dog interactions here sometimes,
08:02SPEAKERsometimes positive, sometimes not.
08:05SPEAKER- That's bad stuff.
08:07SPEAKERI don't know, I could be wrong.
08:08SPEAKERI've always understood any dog-coyote interaction
08:13SPEAKERis heading toward bad.
08:14SPEAKER- It depends on the size of the dog is my understanding.
08:19SPEAKERBut yeah, I think they don't know.
08:21SPEAKERI don't think the dogs know that they used to be wolves.
08:23SPEAKERThat's the thing that's always-
08:24SPEAKER- Probably not.
08:25SPEAKER- Like, I think they look in the mirror and they're like,
08:27SPEAKER"I don't know, man, I'm just a dog."
08:29SPEAKER- Yep, yep, selective breeding is weird.
08:32SPEAKER- Selective breeding is weird.
08:34SPEAKER- Genetics are weird.
08:36SPEAKER- Look man, yeah, between the time we got Chloe and now,
08:43SPEAKERthey've done, there's a genetic test for the main bad thing
08:47SPEAKERthat happens to corgis, the degenerative myelopathy,
08:50SPEAKERthe DM, which causes them to basically lose sensation
08:53SPEAKERand they're starting at the end of one end of the spine
08:56SPEAKERand working up toward the brain.
08:57SPEAKER- Yikes.
08:58SPEAKER- It's not painful or anything, but it sucks.
09:01SPEAKERChloe had it and we didn't know
09:03SPEAKERuntil she was like 10, obviously.
09:06SPEAKERBut now they can test for it, which is awesome.
09:07SPEAKERSo we know that he's clear and that's not a problem,
09:10SPEAKERwhich is nice.
09:13SPEAKERBut that's not what we're here.
09:13SPEAKERWe're not here today to talk about the new dog.
09:16SPEAKER- Well, maybe we are,
09:17SPEAKERbut also we're here to answer some questions.
09:20SPEAKER- Yeah, questions.
09:21SPEAKERAnd I'll pay the tax for the Discord folks.
09:24SPEAKERI'll pay the tax in the Pets and Desks channel
09:27SPEAKERand I assume that I would be shocked
09:30SPEAKERif I don't also post some pictures on Blue Sky.
09:31SPEAKERThey're probably already there if you go check that out.
09:33SPEAKER- I gotta get back to that channel.
09:36SPEAKERThat used to be my favorite channel on the Discord
09:38SPEAKERand I've just kind of forgot about it for a bit.
09:41SPEAKER- During the pandemic when we were all locked up at home,
09:43SPEAKERit was like, oh, hey, I need a good dopamine hit.
09:47SPEAKERI'm gonna go scroll up a little bit here
09:48SPEAKERin the Pets and Desks.
09:49SPEAKER(laughing)
09:50SPEAKER- Frankly, a good pet or a good desk.
09:54SPEAKER- Either one.
09:55SPEAKER- Roughly about the equivalent
09:56SPEAKERon the dopamine release scale.
09:58SPEAKER- Yeah, show me your sick rig.
10:01SPEAKERShow me, let me see some chinchillas.
10:03SPEAKERI don't care, man, whatever, it's all good.
10:05SPEAKER- Yeah, all right, how about some questions?
10:09SPEAKER- Yeah, the email address is techpod@content.down.
10:12SPEAKERThe channel on the Discord, if you're in there,
10:15SPEAKERis Questions Seeking Answers.
10:17SPEAKERAnd if you're not in the Discord, why not?
10:19SPEAKERYou can go in there, it's part of the Patreon.
10:21SPEAKERYou get in for five bucks a month.
10:23SPEAKERThere's smart, beautiful people in there
10:24SPEAKERtalking about nerdy stuff all day long.
10:26SPEAKERAnd there is a channel called Desks and Pets
10:29SPEAKERwhere people post pictures of their desks
10:32SPEAKERand/or their pets.
10:34SPEAKERWe have some very good dogs in the Techbot Discord.
10:36SPEAKERVery good animals in general, pets.
10:38SPEAKER- Yep, animals are cool.
10:40SPEAKER- Animals are cool.
10:42SPEAKER- All right.
10:43SPEAKER- Brad, what's our first, you got our first cue?
10:45SPEAKER- Let's hope these questions are cool as well.
10:48SPEAKER- Look, we were talking before the show,
10:49SPEAKERthis was a banner crop this month.
10:51SPEAKERThe ratio of answer to not answer questions
10:54SPEAKERis off the charts.
10:55SPEAKER- Like a good variety.
10:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
10:58SPEAKER- A good broad cross section of stuff to talk about.
11:01SPEAKERAll right, let's just get started.
11:03SPEAKERKurt from Mississauga, Ontario.
11:07SPEAKERI've gone through the same emotional journey
11:08SPEAKERof not loving that every alarm you set in iOS
11:11SPEAKERsaves it forever,
11:12SPEAKERbut also not wanting to do the math for a longer timer.
11:14SPEAKERI should say like 800 different people, I think.
11:17SPEAKER- We got this.
11:18SPEAKER- Sent some form of this advice after that episode.
11:20SPEAKERSo here we are.
11:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I got it on Blue Sky.
11:24SPEAKERSomebody sent me a message on Twitter.
11:25SPEAKERIt was, I'm sure I got a telegram coming.
11:28SPEAKERIt seems important to disseminate this information widely.
11:30SPEAKERI found a method that works for me.
11:32SPEAKERJust delegate the math to Siri.
11:34SPEAKERAsk her to set a timer that will end at 3.15 PM
11:37SPEAKERand you're good to go.
11:39SPEAKERIf you've got a few timers going at once,
11:40SPEAKERyou can also label them.
11:42SPEAKERAsking to quote, set a go get the kiddo timer
11:45SPEAKERthat will end at 3.15 PM.
11:47SPEAKERWe'll set the appropriate timer
11:48SPEAKERand display that text when it goes off.
11:51SPEAKER- I use that.
11:52SPEAKERI use the name thing all the time when I'm cooking.
11:54SPEAKER'Cause it's great. - I've occasionally done that.
11:57SPEAKERBut I did not know, I did not know that you could just,
11:59SPEAKERand you don't even have to say that we'll end that.
12:01SPEAKERYou can just say set a timer for 3.15
12:04SPEAKERand it does a timer instead of an alarm
12:06SPEAKERand then it doesn't crap up your alarm list.
12:07SPEAKER- Yep, they've thought of everything.
12:09SPEAKER- Yeah. - Maybe not everything.
12:12SPEAKERAI Siri doesn't seem to,
12:14SPEAKERwhat is it going on with Apple's AI stuff?
12:16SPEAKER- I turned it off.
12:18SPEAKERI turned it off.
12:19SPEAKER- But there's also that stuff they announced,
12:20SPEAKERlike two, has it been two?
12:22SPEAKERIt's been almost two years now, right?
12:23SPEAKER- It's two versions of iOS ago.
12:25SPEAKERAs of June, it'll be two WWDCs ago
12:28SPEAKERthat they announced all those AI features
12:29SPEAKERthat never came out.
12:30SPEAKER- Hey, you want some Genmoji?
12:32SPEAKERYou can do that.
12:33SPEAKERNobody cares.
12:34SPEAKER- I'm good.
12:35SPEAKER- Yeah.
12:36SPEAKER- Let's put NPUs in everything
12:37SPEAKERand then not think of anything good to use them for.
12:39SPEAKER- I mean, look, devote a double digit percentage
12:43SPEAKERof your die space to NPUs
12:45SPEAKERthat nobody knows what to do with.
12:46SPEAKERGreat idea, guys.
12:48SPEAKER- I found out right before this podcast
12:49SPEAKERthat there's a Wildcat Lake Skew
12:51SPEAKERthat does not have an NPU in it.
12:52SPEAKERAnd now I'm excited.
12:54SPEAKER- That's even better.
12:54SPEAKER- I'm excited that my eventual router box
12:56SPEAKERwill have that in it.
12:57SPEAKERSo who needs AI stuff you're not gonna use?
13:01SPEAKER- I think that there's a real chance
13:02SPEAKERif we do this right,
13:03SPEAKERwe could be the number one Wildcat Lake podcast
13:06SPEAKERon the internet.
13:07SPEAKER- I think that's like SEO wise, I would hope so.
13:09SPEAKERI think the first time I said those words
13:11SPEAKERwas like two years ago or something.
13:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
13:14SPEAKER- All right.
13:14SPEAKER- Well, fingers crossed.
13:16SPEAKER- Okay, Joshua.
13:17SPEAKERI'm a university computer science instructor
13:19SPEAKERand was excited to hear about your recent discovery
13:21SPEAKERof communications of the ACM.
13:24SPEAKERIt is indeed the ACM's official publication
13:26SPEAKERand Brad's observation
13:27SPEAKERthat it's full of nerdy computer science stuff is spot on.
13:30SPEAKERDid you know that the ACM
13:32SPEAKERis the organizing body behind SIGGRAPH?
13:34SPEAKERI did not know that.
13:35SPEAKERGiven your extensive background in video games
13:37SPEAKERand computer graphics,
13:38SPEAKERhave you ever attended or thought about attending?
13:41SPEAKERI think you'd both get a lot out of it.
13:42SPEAKERIt's in LA this year,
13:43SPEAKERso you wouldn't have to travel too far.
13:47SPEAKERI hate to say that since I read this email
13:49SPEAKERand went and looked at the website,
13:51SPEAKERI have considered the possibility
13:52SPEAKERof trying to go to SIGGRAPH.
13:54SPEAKER- I mean, it's like the unfortunate thing
13:56SPEAKERis it's the week before I'm going to LA for another thing.
13:59SPEAKER- Yeah, like it's kind of at a bit of a rough time in July.
14:02SPEAKERAlso, I have no idea what it would be like to even get in.
14:04SPEAKERI don't know that we could get in.
14:05SPEAKERI don't know.
14:06SPEAKER- They'll give press passes.
14:07SPEAKERThey invited us at Maximum PC for years and years
14:09SPEAKERand I was never able to go
14:10SPEAKER'cause the timing was always, I think,
14:13SPEAKERI wanna say it used to be around the same weekend
14:14SPEAKERas Comic-Con and we had a booth at Comic-Con,
14:16SPEAKERso I had to go to Comic-Con.
14:18SPEAKER- Okay.
14:19SPEAKERTime and logistics allowing,
14:20SPEAKERI would love to go to SIGGRAPH.
14:21SPEAKERI have wanted to go to SIGGRAPH
14:23SPEAKERsince I became aware of it in the late '90s.
14:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so looking at the schedule,
14:28SPEAKERit's one of those things that I feel like
14:31SPEAKERthe percentage of talks and things
14:33SPEAKERthat I would actually get anything useful out of.
14:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, there is this.
14:38SPEAKER- It's got the GDC tech track problem,
14:40SPEAKERwhich is that the first five minutes of every single talk
14:43SPEAKERare really interesting to me
14:44SPEAKERand then I don't have the technical knowledge
14:45SPEAKERto go beyond that.
14:46SPEAKER- Yep.
14:48SPEAKER- But I definitely have watched a bunch of SIGGRAPH videos.
14:51SPEAKERI watched when Pixar did the Universal UDF file format
14:58SPEAKERfor 3D stuff, that one was really fascinating.
15:02SPEAKERI've watched a bunch of these talks over the years.
15:04SPEAKERI watched a bunch of the real-time ray tracing stuff.
15:05SPEAKERI've watched a bunch of the theoretical talks about,
15:09SPEAKERI mean, I don't know, I've watched a bazillion of them.
15:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess we should say, for people who don't know,
15:13SPEAKERthat SIGGRAPH is effectively the E3 of computer graphics.
15:16SPEAKERLike it is the kind of leading industry sort of trade
15:20SPEAKERand knowledge exchange events for computer graphics research
15:24SPEAKERand like emphasis on research.
15:25SPEAKERThis is all like pretty bleeding edge,
15:27SPEAKERlike white paper level stuff.
15:29SPEAKER- Yeah, it's-
15:30SPEAKER- This is not like,
15:30SPEAKER"Hey, we're gonna debut a new GPU here."
15:33SPEAKER- No, it's the computer science portion
15:34SPEAKERof computer graphics and vision.
15:37SPEAKERAnd like, we had talked about pitching at Foo
15:42SPEAKERbecause we were doing some weird stuff with animation
15:44SPEAKERand all that that was maybe interesting.
15:48SPEAKERThere's, like, yes, I would love to go.
15:52SPEAKERI don't know if I can do it this year.
15:53SPEAKERMaybe next year we should look and plan it in advance
15:56SPEAKERand make the trip.
15:58SPEAKERI think more than going to the talks,
16:00SPEAKER'cause you can always watch the talks on the thing,
16:02SPEAKERI would like to just walk around and talk to people.
16:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the main-
16:04SPEAKER- I think that's really interesting.
16:06SPEAKER- Yeah, just surveying the show floor is the main thing
16:08SPEAKERthat I thought would be cool.
16:09SPEAKER- Yep.
16:11SPEAKER- You could sit on some talks.
16:13SPEAKER- I mean, look, maybe if I find an Airbnb down there
16:16SPEAKERthat I can get a weekly rate on that's not too bad,
16:17SPEAKERI'll just go a week early.
16:19SPEAKERI gotta see what the kiddo's schedule is like.
16:20SPEAKERGot camp and stuff this summer.
16:22SPEAKER- I did look, and they're always around here.
16:24SPEAKERThey're always in like Anaheim or Colorado or like-
16:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
16:27SPEAKER- It's not like it's a rare opportunity
16:29SPEAKERthat it's like once in a decade
16:31SPEAKERon the West Coast or something, so.
16:32SPEAKER- No, I thought it was in LA always for a long time.
16:36SPEAKERAnyway.
16:37SPEAKER- They've been kind of rotating it around the last few years.
16:39SPEAKERVancouver last year, Denver, Los Angeles, Vancouver,
16:42SPEAKERLos Angeles, Los Angeles, Vancouver.
16:44SPEAKER- Yeah, there you go.
16:46SPEAKERAnd I'm also LA basically.
16:47SPEAKER- Pretty local, but like I became aware of SIGGRAPH
16:50SPEAKERthrough like in the late nineties,
16:51SPEAKERlike some of the people I knew online
16:53SPEAKERthat were fellow diehard Quake players
16:55SPEAKERalso happened to turn out to be like 3D modelers
16:58SPEAKERand animators, and so they were aware of it
17:01SPEAKERfrom their discipline.
17:03SPEAKER- Yeah, well it came-
17:04SPEAKER- So it kind of been in the back of my mind ever since then.
17:06SPEAKERAlso like knowing those people is how I knew
17:09SPEAKERwhat ray tracing was and how implausible it was
17:11SPEAKERwhen real time, cause I distinctly remember a conversation
17:14SPEAKERwith one of those people around 2000 or somewhere
17:18SPEAKERwhere they told me basically, they were like,
17:19SPEAKERif we have like infinite horsepower,
17:21SPEAKERwe would just ray trace everything in games,
17:23SPEAKERbut that will never happen in our lifetimes.
17:26SPEAKERThis is how it was put to me.
17:27SPEAKERSo about 20 years later when the video was like,
17:30SPEAKERhey, guess what?
17:31SPEAKERI was like, oh my God, wow, shit.
17:33SPEAKER- Yeah.
17:34SPEAKER- Anyway. - Yep.
17:35SPEAKER- Okay, Nick from SF, which I assume is San Francisco,
17:40SPEAKERbut I suppose it could be Santa Fe.
17:42SPEAKER- San Fernando.
17:43SPEAKER- Santa Fe or something like that.
17:46SPEAKER- South Philly.
17:47SPEAKER- That's the wrong-
17:50SPEAKER- South Philly.
17:51SPEAKER- I would think you of all people would know
17:52SPEAKERhow Philly is spelled.
17:53SPEAKER- From West Philly.
17:54SPEAKER- Oh, yes.
17:56SPEAKERMy partner has a bunch of old issues of a magazine
17:58SPEAKERon a niche topic and she was thinking about scanning them all
18:02SPEAKERand uploading them to the internet archive.
18:04SPEAKERThese issues are all around 20 years old
18:06SPEAKERand the magazine stopped running a long time ago,
18:08SPEAKERbut the magazine's publisher is still around and active.
18:12SPEAKERCopyright law is sadly clear on this matter,
18:15SPEAKERbut since Will used to work in magazines,
18:17SPEAKERwe wondered how much would the original publishing company
18:20SPEAKERcare about these issues, finding their way online?
18:23SPEAKERTo borrow a term from the software world,
18:26SPEAKERare these issues essentially abandoned where at this point?
18:32SPEAKER- I'm not a lawyer.
18:33SPEAKERI don't represent this company.
18:34SPEAKERI don't know what company it is.
18:36SPEAKERIt depends on the publisher and the likelihood
18:40SPEAKERthat they're able to sell that content currently.
18:43SPEAKER'Cause usually when you, especially in that time period
18:46SPEAKERwhen you wrote something for a magazine,
18:48SPEAKERyou as the author would by U.S. law own the copyright
18:53SPEAKERthat assigned the copyright in perpetuity to the magazine.
18:58SPEAKERAnd even if you retained the copyright on the copy,
19:03SPEAKERthe magazine layout and the images and all that stuff
19:05SPEAKERaround it would be owned by the magazine publisher.
19:09SPEAKERThat said, most publishers aren't going
19:11SPEAKERto give a damn about this.
19:14SPEAKERIn fact, there's some real benefit
19:16SPEAKERto having archival versions of your stuff available online,
19:20SPEAKERespecially for a publishing company
19:22SPEAKERthat's still publishing stuff in the same spaces.
19:26SPEAKERNow the other thing I was gonna say is
19:27SPEAKERif you're in the Bay Area, you might actually wanna reach out
19:32SPEAKERto one of the magazine preservation groups.
19:35SPEAKERThe Video Game History Foundation does some of this
19:37SPEAKERfor gaming books.
19:38SPEAKERThere's other folks that do it for other books
19:41SPEAKERthat are, other types of magazines that are associated
19:43SPEAKERwith the internet archive.
19:44SPEAKERAnd it may be that you wanna talk to somebody,
19:48SPEAKERlike the setup that they have for scanning magazines
19:52SPEAKERat the Video Game History Foundation is really good.
19:54SPEAKERAnd it may be that you wanna talk to somebody over there
19:57SPEAKERand see if you can borrow time on that to scan these
20:01SPEAKERso that you get high quality scans instead of kind
20:03SPEAKERof those busted ass, like, you know, the warped edge scans
20:08SPEAKERand all that stuff that are synonymous
20:10SPEAKERwith internet archive.
20:11SPEAKERSo I do think the Video Game History Foundation
20:15SPEAKERscanning process is maybe destructive though.
20:16SPEAKERI'm not 100% on that.
20:18SPEAKER- I think it, well, I don't wanna speak for them.
20:20SPEAKERI think like if it's a glued, like bound spine,
20:23SPEAKERI think that yes, you have to pull it apart permanently.
20:25SPEAKERObviously if it's a stapled one,
20:27SPEAKERyou should be able to put it back together, I think.
20:29SPEAKER- I do also know that the internet archive
20:31SPEAKERhas page scanners that will work on bound stuff
20:35SPEAKERwithout unbinding.
20:35SPEAKER- Oh, that's cool.
20:37SPEAKER- So it's worth finding somebody
20:39SPEAKERwho has a similar collection and maybe reaching out
20:41SPEAKERto them and seeing where they got their stuff scanned
20:45SPEAKERrather than just like putting it on the flatbed.
20:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, obviously it's a judgment call,
20:48SPEAKERlike you said about how likely you are
20:51SPEAKERto face repercussions.
20:52SPEAKERBut I kind of feel like unless the publisher
20:55SPEAKERis just especially litigious,
20:56SPEAKERlike the value of preserving stuff like that
20:58SPEAKERis starting to outweigh the possibly infinitesimal risk.
21:03SPEAKER- Well, and I was just saying the other thing is
21:05SPEAKERthe internet archive has an, oh God, what's it called?
21:08SPEAKERIt's not an offset, a setback.
21:10SPEAKERThat's a real estate thing.
21:11SPEAKERBut basically they have a dispensation
21:14SPEAKERfrom the Library of Congress to violate,
21:16SPEAKERto bypass copyright on certain archival stuff.
21:20SPEAKERI don't know if magazines fall under that.
21:22SPEAKER- I did not know that.
21:23SPEAKER- Yeah. - That's cool.
21:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
21:25SPEAKER- For now.
21:27SPEAKER- I mean, don't, I hesitate to talk about it.
21:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
21:32SPEAKER- Because sometimes people knowing about things is bad.
21:34SPEAKER- Possibly, all right.
21:36SPEAKERHere's an email from Jessica.
21:38SPEAKERIn regards to the dot codes from printers
21:40SPEAKERthat you talked about on episode 338,
21:43SPEAKERmuch like both of you, I had a vague idea
21:45SPEAKERthat these dot codes existed on color laser
21:48SPEAKERand color inkjet printers.
21:50SPEAKERA friend was being stalked and harassed last fall
21:52SPEAKERand I educated myself on this to help her.
21:55SPEAKERIt's my understanding that these codes
21:56SPEAKERwere created for tracking in the cases
21:58SPEAKERof counterfeit currency production.
22:00SPEAKERSo the printer needs to have a certain fidelity,
22:03SPEAKERincluding resolution and color range,
22:05SPEAKERat which point the manufacturer is required
22:07SPEAKERto include the dot codes.
22:09SPEAKERThe Electronic Frontier Foundation did have a program
22:12SPEAKERwhere you could just send them a test page from printers.
22:15SPEAKERThey didn't have cataloged,
22:16SPEAKERso they could be documented for the public.
22:18SPEAKERHowever, I don't believe the program is running anymore.
22:22SPEAKERThe dot code is supposed to reveal the make and model
22:24SPEAKERand a timestamp for the prints
22:27SPEAKERand possibly a serial number, though I don't recall.
22:30SPEAKERI educated myself on this last fall
22:33SPEAKERwhen my friend was being stalked,
22:34SPEAKERwhich included physical printouts.
22:36SPEAKERThanks to dot codes, I was able to show the authorities
22:39SPEAKERthat all the printouts were coming from the same printer,
22:41SPEAKERwhich helped them catch the individuals.
22:44SPEAKERActually, if you want to try this out yourself,
22:46SPEAKERany USB microscope with a 40X zoom
22:49SPEAKERshould be able to read the codes,
22:51SPEAKERthough locating them and documenting the code
22:53SPEAKERis an exercise in patience and eye strain.
22:55SPEAKER- I can't imagine finding these,
22:57SPEAKERbut this was super useful.
22:59SPEAKERI had completely forgotten about the FF thing.
23:01SPEAKERThey were doing that years ago.
23:03SPEAKERWe talked about it at the magazine back in the day.
23:05SPEAKER- Oh, that's cool.
23:06SPEAKERYeah, that's all good to know.
23:07SPEAKERAnd also, just as a side thing,
23:08SPEAKERI suddenly want to know way more about USB microscopes.
23:12SPEAKERThat is a tool product category that I was not aware of.
23:15SPEAKER- Brad, I'm gonna say we should just buy
23:17SPEAKERa couple of USB microscopes
23:18SPEAKERand then do a USB microscope episode
23:20SPEAKERbecause they are really, really freaking cool.
23:23SPEAKER- Wow, I don't know.
23:24SPEAKERI can't speak to the quality of any of these,
23:25SPEAKERbut there's some like very no-namey sounding companies
23:29SPEAKERthat are selling them on Amazon for like $35.
23:33SPEAKER$50, $60, like it looks like you can get
23:35SPEAKERsome halfway decent stuff.
23:37SPEAKER- My guess is you can get something really good
23:39SPEAKERfor way less money than you would expect.
23:40SPEAKERI don't know about 35 bucks.
23:42SPEAKER- Could you use this for soldering?
23:43SPEAKERIs it good enough for that?
23:44SPEAKER- It's probably the wrong,
23:45SPEAKERthat's probably too much magnification for soldering.
23:48SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.
23:49SPEAKERI said they're mostly showing off using these
23:50SPEAKERfor like zoom in on coins and things like that.
23:52SPEAKER- There's, you want like for soldering and stuff like that,
23:56SPEAKERyou want like two to 10X probably.
23:59SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.
24:00SPEAKER- 40X is gonna be a lot for that.
24:02SPEAKERBut like dissecting scopes work great for soldering.
24:05SPEAKERI actually, we haven't talked about this yet,
24:08SPEAKERbut I bought a pair,
24:11SPEAKERwhen I was at the eye doctor the other day,
24:13SPEAKERI asked the eye doctor what I should get to do.
24:16SPEAKER'Cause I was like jeweler's loops
24:17SPEAKERrequire me to hold the thing too close.
24:19SPEAKERI need it further away.
24:20SPEAKERAnd she's like, you want dentist loops.
24:22SPEAKEROr surgeon's loops, they're called sometimes.
24:24SPEAKERAnd you clip them onto your glasses
24:26SPEAKERor can screw them into your glasses even.
24:28SPEAKERAnd they're the ones that sit in front of your eyes
24:30SPEAKERand they're designed to be held at hand length, arm length.
24:33SPEAKERSo you can, they're super good, highly recommended.
24:36SPEAKERYou won't be able to see the dots with those though.
24:39SPEAKER- Speaking of episodes, we should think about doing,
24:41SPEAKERI also, I had to put this on pause when I had that surgery,
24:44SPEAKERbut I was also in the process of sort of revising my,
24:47SPEAKERI don't know, eyewear regime, let's say,
24:50SPEAKERbecause these regular progressive lenses are super not
24:52SPEAKERcutting it at the computer anymore.
24:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so.
24:55SPEAKER- Spent a fair amount of time talking to the eye doctor
24:56SPEAKERabout options for glasses sitting at computers
24:59SPEAKERand there's all kinds.
25:01SPEAKER- Yep.
25:02SPEAKER- And it's kind of a hard decision to make, honestly.
25:04SPEAKER- I literally have four prescriptions
25:06SPEAKERsitting in my hands right now.
25:08SPEAKERAnd I can't decide which way I'm gonna go.
25:11SPEAKERThe progressives for my prescription are so, so expensive
25:14SPEAKERthat I'm afraid almost to do them
25:18SPEAKERbecause I'm not, I'm gonna be stuck with them
25:20SPEAKERif they don't work out.
25:21SPEAKERAnd like, yeah, so anyway, I'm with you.
25:25SPEAKERI also saw an ad when I was driving out of San Francisco
25:27SPEAKERlast night for Zeni's IR face tracking blocking lenses now.
25:34SPEAKERZeni's the cheap Chinese lens place.
25:37SPEAKERAnd I'm like, oh wow, this is a,
25:39SPEAKERI have blue light blocking on the current ones,
25:41SPEAKERbut I could get infrared blocking.
25:43SPEAKERThat's maybe, but what if I block all light
25:45SPEAKERand they're just like, they keep me safe from seeing anything
25:48SPEAKERso I'll get better.
25:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I asked my eye doctor, I was like,
25:51SPEAKERcan I just get some that sort of correct
25:53SPEAKERfor about two and a half feet in front of me?
25:55SPEAKERAnd she was like, sure, you can do that if you want,
25:57SPEAKERbut then you're not gonna be able to see anything else
26:00SPEAKERaround you at all, so.
26:01SPEAKER- My eye doctor was super into this idea.
26:03SPEAKERShe was like, yeah, you should absolutely do that.
26:05SPEAKER- Well, so I mean, there are all kinds of options for this,
26:07SPEAKERbut where the decision comes in is how much of each lens
26:10SPEAKERis devoted to which correction factor.
26:12SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
26:12SPEAKER- So it's like, do you want,
26:13SPEAKERand that even varies by lens maker.
26:15SPEAKERLike this practice only deals in Zeiss lenses
26:18SPEAKERand they have a whole line of lenses that are like 80%
26:22SPEAKERfor computer and like 20% of the,
26:24SPEAKERor like 15% at the bottom for super up close,
26:28SPEAKER5% at the top for distance for the room or what it,
26:31SPEAKERyou know, it's just like some.
26:33SPEAKER- Who is doing like?
26:34SPEAKER- Well, it's just to give you a little bit so that you,
26:36SPEAKERotherwise, 'cause again, that's like I was saying,
26:39SPEAKERif you have a pair that is just for the distance you sit
26:41SPEAKERfrom a monitor, then you can't see anything,
26:43SPEAKERbut at the distance of the monitor.
26:45SPEAKERSo at that point you just have to put on another pair
26:47SPEAKERto get up and walk around.
26:49SPEAKER- That could Boca though.
26:49SPEAKER- So yeah, there's a lot of decisions to make
26:52SPEAKERaround custom eyewear for, not custom, but you know,
26:55SPEAKERspecific eyewear design for computers.
26:58SPEAKER- We literally had the same conversation
27:00SPEAKERwith our eye care professionals.
27:01SPEAKERAnd I think I'm gonna end up doing a pair of computer
27:04SPEAKERglasses and then a pair of everything else glasses
27:07SPEAKERthat are maybe progressive.
27:08SPEAKER- Yeah, that's probably where I'm going to land as well.
27:11SPEAKER- And then I have sunglasses for outside
27:14SPEAKERthat are still good.
27:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
27:17SPEAKERMark H from the UK.
27:20SPEAKERIt was better in the good old days was always what we were
27:23SPEAKERtold growing up, but now it seems like for a lot of things,
27:25SPEAKERthat's true in tech, web apps replacing software,
27:29SPEAKERdiscord replacing forums for support, et cetera.
27:32SPEAKERAlso true outside of it, such as tickets for events
27:34SPEAKERgoing from a few dollars to hundreds.
27:37SPEAKERHow do you guys reconcile or pounds, I should say,
27:40SPEAKERin this case being from the UK.
27:42SPEAKERHow do you guys reconcile when someone brings up the,
27:44SPEAKERor brings in the new shiny and try to assess it fairly
27:48SPEAKERand make sure you're not resorting to the older way
27:51SPEAKERclearly seems better to an old crank like me.
27:54SPEAKERI get it's a different life for people in their twenties
27:57SPEAKERthese days, but it just seems worse in a lot of ways.
27:59SPEAKERAnd people had things taken from them without knowing.
28:02SPEAKERMaybe I'm having a midlife crisis.
28:05SPEAKERI don't want to be a cranky old man.
28:06SPEAKERAnd I do always try the new way,
28:08SPEAKERbut sometimes I like my old way is fine.
28:10SPEAKEROh man, maybe I finally turned into my dad.
28:14SPEAKER- How do you do fellow kids?
28:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know.
28:17SPEAKERThe only thing I can think of to say in response to this
28:20SPEAKERis like, you can just kind of check yourself
28:23SPEAKERand make sure there's something that you think is better
28:26SPEAKERthese days is a good barometer.
28:29SPEAKER- Yeah, like-- - To try to figure out
28:30SPEAKERif you're clinging to the past too much.
28:31SPEAKERLike there's all kinds of stuff in computing
28:33SPEAKERthat I would say is unequivocally better
28:35SPEAKERthan it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.
28:37SPEAKER- Yeah, even like I complain a lot about like
28:40SPEAKERthe complexity of modern PC, like the UEFI,
28:45SPEAKERall the disaggregated architectures
28:49SPEAKERand the asymmetric architectures and stuff like that
28:52SPEAKERand how complicated that's made everything.
28:53SPEAKERI wouldn't go back to a Nehalem.
28:56SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.
28:58SPEAKER- Like I'm not gonna get rid of my iPhone 15
29:00SPEAKERand go back to an iPhone 4, even though,
29:04SPEAKERwas the iPhone 4 the best iPhone of all time?
29:06SPEAKER- Maybe, do we ever rank those?
29:08SPEAKERWe should do that.
29:09SPEAKER- Oh boy, just iPhones?
29:11SPEAKER- Yeah. - That's dodgy.
29:12SPEAKERI don't think I touched enough iPhones to--
29:16SPEAKER- I think that's even better.
29:17SPEAKERYou can make some fully formed opinions.
29:19SPEAKER- I missed some crucial iPhones in there, but yeah.
29:22SPEAKERI mean, frankly, at a technical level,
29:24SPEAKERlike I would practically say that everything is better
29:27SPEAKERin computing at a low technological level
29:29SPEAKERin terms of progress and evolution.
29:31SPEAKERLike all of the most, maybe I should say
29:34SPEAKERmost of the problems these days are driven by policy.
29:37SPEAKER- Yeah, for the most part, we're doing more
29:39SPEAKERwith less power and like it's faster and better
29:42SPEAKERand more reliable and like--
29:44SPEAKER- Like the ubiquity of cheap compute is like a,
29:48SPEAKERlike a pure net good, right?
29:50SPEAKERLike computers are faster and cheaper outside
29:53SPEAKERof the current crisis.
29:55SPEAKER- Like, but also the underlying software
29:58SPEAKERis fundamentally more reliable and more robust, right?
30:01SPEAKERThe problem is the stuff that's layered
30:03SPEAKERon top of that base layer of software
30:06SPEAKERand the fact that we have decided as a species
30:10SPEAKERto trade our time and attention for subsidized cost
30:14SPEAKERon software or whatever services is the disaster.
30:20SPEAKERAnd I think that's manageable at this point.
30:22SPEAKERI'm feeling a lot better about that now
30:24SPEAKERthan I was six months ago.
30:27SPEAKERMy wife the other day for the first time ever
30:29SPEAKERwas like, "Hey, do we need to get off of Google?"
30:32SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh wow, I wasn't expecting
30:34SPEAKER"to have this conversation with you ever."
30:36SPEAKERBut yeah, like yes, long-term, short-term,
30:39SPEAKERno, we're probably fine.
30:41SPEAKERYou know, it's like the fact that hey,
30:45SPEAKERGoogle's getting rid of search and replacing it
30:47SPEAKERwith this AI garbage has filtered down
30:49SPEAKERto ship these GCs was shocking to me.
30:53SPEAKERSo yeah, like that stuff's bad.
30:56SPEAKERI find like the Linux stuff day-to-day
30:58SPEAKERhas been full of joy for me 'cause it's all,
31:01SPEAKERit feels like the good parts of computing
31:03SPEAKERin the old days with the good parts of hardware
31:07SPEAKERand reliability and stuff today.
31:09SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I would say where computing
31:12SPEAKERis constrained by what we can do,
31:14SPEAKEReverything is excellent.
31:16SPEAKERWhere computing is constrained by what somebody
31:18SPEAKERhas chosen to do is where all the bad stuff is.
31:21SPEAKERLike it's all policy choices being made
31:23SPEAKERby the gatekeepers of this stuff.
31:25SPEAKER- Yeah, that's exactly it.
31:27SPEAKER- At the low level, what the hardware has become
31:29SPEAKERand can do is pretty marvelous, so.
31:31SPEAKER- And also, you can choose not to engage
31:33SPEAKERwith the gatekeepers, like that's optional at this point.
31:36SPEAKER- Yeah, mostly, mostly.
31:38SPEAKER- And also, you might be having a midlife crisis
31:39SPEAKERjust to be like, look.
31:41SPEAKER- Oh, you definitely are, everyone does.
31:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look, it's been a weird 13, 10 years,
31:48SPEAKERwhatever we're at, 12 years at this point
31:51SPEAKERfor a whole host of reasons.
31:54SPEAKERI told a friend the other day who was like,
31:55SPEAKER"Hey, I'm having a midlife crisis.
31:56SPEAKER"I think I wanna get a racing rig
31:58SPEAKER"for my computer," and I was like,
32:00SPEAKER"You should absolutely do that."
32:01SPEAKERIn terms of midlife crisis, that's a pretty cheap one,
32:04SPEAKERand you're gonna have a lot of fun,
32:05SPEAKERand then when you're done with that thing,
32:06SPEAKERyou can sell it and you'll make your money back, right?
32:08SPEAKERLike, go have fun.
32:09SPEAKER- Yep, yep.
32:11SPEAKER- So pick something cheap and don't yell
32:14SPEAKERat the kids too much.
32:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I go back and forth on how to address this
32:16SPEAKERbecause you run the risk of people thinking
32:18SPEAKERyou're defending the status quo,
32:20SPEAKERbut I occasionally feel like recommending to people like,
32:22SPEAKER"Hey, it might be good to cultivate some interests
32:24SPEAKER"in the computer space that are less capital intensive,
32:29SPEAKER"less requiring like extreme new hardware."
32:32SPEAKERI don't know what those are for any given person.
32:34SPEAKERLike in my case, it turned out that I like tinkering
32:37SPEAKERwith open source stuff and Linux
32:39SPEAKERand writing some amount of code and et cetera,
32:42SPEAKERand you can do that basically for free
32:43SPEAKERon anything these days, and that's cool.
32:45SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
32:46SPEAKERLike that kind of thing.
32:47SPEAKERThat is not to excuse the fact
32:49SPEAKERthat you need to do things like that,
32:50SPEAKERbut like just as a measure towards sustainability
32:55SPEAKERin an uncertain world, let's say,
32:56SPEAKERwhere you are subject to all kinds of forces
32:59SPEAKERthat you have very little control over.
33:02SPEAKERIt's good to have some stuff in your back pocket
33:04SPEAKERthat you can fall back on when the next time graphics cards
33:07SPEAKERincrease five X in price again.
33:09SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
33:10SPEAKER- Et cetera.
33:11SPEAKER- And if all else fails, touch grass.
33:13SPEAKERAll is good. - Yeah, yes.
33:14SPEAKERAlso just go outside and talk to people or go do stuff.
33:16SPEAKER- But you don't even have to talk to them.
33:17SPEAKERJust go walk around, just be in the world.
33:19SPEAKER- That works too.
33:20SPEAKERTake your Zune out and go on a walk.
33:22SPEAKERThat's what I say.
33:22SPEAKER- Yeah.
33:24SPEAKERAll right, big head mode is the signature on this email.
33:27SPEAKER- Okay.
33:28SPEAKER- Beats, B-E-E-T-S, is a command line music tag manager.
33:33SPEAKERIt has a good library of plugins
33:35SPEAKERand supports any configuration you can imagine.
33:37SPEAKERIt can support automatic tagging
33:39SPEAKERand can run nearly unsupervised.
33:41SPEAKERYou might want to back up your library and start slow
33:43SPEAKERbecause by default it moves your library
33:45SPEAKERand applies tags to your music,
33:47SPEAKERbut you can configure it to not do that.
33:50SPEAKERSo, okay, we talked about this a little bit last month,
33:53SPEAKERmaybe, was it last month or no?
33:54SPEAKER- Yeah, you flagged this for reading.
33:56SPEAKERI can't remember what occasioned this email response,
34:00SPEAKERbut we must've talked about tagging at some point.
34:02SPEAKER- The problem, well, it was probably in relation
34:03SPEAKERto the Zune, 'cause we talked about that
34:05SPEAKERand it called open a few weeks ago.
34:06SPEAKER- Right.
34:09SPEAKER- So I tried several things.
34:10SPEAKERI tried easy tag manager,
34:14SPEAKERwhich is just an ID3 tag manager.
34:17SPEAKERIt did a bunch of weird renaming and stuff.
34:19SPEAKERI tried Music Brain's Picard,
34:21SPEAKERwhich uses the fingerprint of the song
34:23SPEAKERto identify and properly tag.
34:26SPEAKERIt was a little scary 'cause it also changed stuff,
34:29SPEAKERkind of unprompted.
34:30SPEAKERYou had to press the apply button on it,
34:32SPEAKERbut it didn't do it unprompted.
34:34SPEAKERThe things I ended up landing on are Kid3, K-I-D-3,
34:39SPEAKERwhich I guess is a K-D-E-I-D-3 tag manager
34:41SPEAKERthat they've also ported to other platforms.
34:44SPEAKERAnd Beats is also quite good.
34:47SPEAKERBoth of those are really, really good.
34:48SPEAKERSo highly recommended.
34:51SPEAKERI think Music Brain Picard's,
34:53SPEAKERa lot of people really like Music Brain's Picard.
34:58SPEAKERThe interface I found a little bit confusing
35:00SPEAKERand I probably should have started a folder at a time
35:03SPEAKERinstead of just, or an artist at a time
35:05SPEAKERinstead of dumping the entire folder in.
35:07SPEAKERI feel like once you get to a basic level of clean,
35:10SPEAKERthen that's gonna do what you want.
35:13SPEAKERAnd maybe, like my MP3s are pretty clean
35:16SPEAKER'cause I just have stuff that I've ripped off of my own CDs.
35:19SPEAKERSo the worst thing I've done is do disc one, disc two
35:24SPEAKERin the album title for multi-disc sets and stuff like that.
35:28SPEAKERAnd it didn't know how to handle that exactly
35:31SPEAKERthe way I would have wanted, but Kid3 did, so it worked out.
35:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that's why I don't actually run anything like that.
35:36SPEAKERI've certainly considered it.
35:37SPEAKERI've looked at Beats before
35:39SPEAKER'cause I hold music libraries on my server.
35:41SPEAKERSo shouldn't I just run a headless thing on the server
35:44SPEAKERthat keeps all the tags in order?
35:45SPEAKERBut the problem is it keeps them in the order
35:47SPEAKERthat it thinks are in order and not what I think is in order.
35:50SPEAKERAnd I have too many opinions about things
35:53SPEAKERlike capitalization standards for that.
35:55SPEAKER- No, no, here he goes again.
35:57SPEAKER- I ain't letting some robot tell me
35:58SPEAKERthat from should be capitalized.
36:01SPEAKER- Wow.
36:02SPEAKER- It's a preposition of four letters or more.
36:04SPEAKERSo it's capitalized.
36:06SPEAKER- I think if it's capitalized on the album art,
36:08SPEAKERit should be capitalized in the title.
36:12SPEAKERIt's an artistic choice.
36:13SPEAKER- See, so many differing opinions.
36:14SPEAKERThe only choice is to maintain your own tags.
36:16SPEAKER- Yeah, there you go.
36:17SPEAKERJust do it manually.
36:18SPEAKER- Anyway, yes, there are a lot of options
36:19SPEAKERfor auto tagging out there for sure.
36:21SPEAKER- Look, I have a puppy.
36:22SPEAKERI don't have time to tag stuff manually.
36:24SPEAKERAre you crazy?
36:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.
36:27SPEAKERThis is an interesting email from Joey in Oakville, Ontario.
36:30SPEAKER- Okay.
36:31SPEAKER- 'Cause I talked to Adam a couple of days ago
36:34SPEAKERabout he, after our cooling episode the other day
36:37SPEAKERor last week, he dropped the idea of,
36:40SPEAKERwell, I'll just read this email
36:41SPEAKERand then say Adam also has suggested something similar,
36:44SPEAKERbut here's more detail.
36:45SPEAKERI just listened to the episode about CPU coolers
36:47SPEAKERand fan curves and wanted to share the fairly simple curve
36:50SPEAKERthat I use that works very well.
36:52SPEAKERI'm cooling my 13700K with a dark rock elite air cooler.
36:56SPEAKERAnd this rig is primarily used for gaming with an RTX 4090.
37:00SPEAKERTo start, I have all my case fans running
37:02SPEAKERat a constant speed of 50%.
37:04SPEAKERThey are all 140 to 200 millimeter fans
37:06SPEAKERand are fairly quiet for the amount of air they move.
37:09SPEAKERI then run my CPU cooler fans at a constant 60%.
37:13SPEAKERThe fans that come with the dark rock elite
37:15SPEAKERare 135 millimeter and are fairly quiet at 60%.
37:18SPEAKERI then set my CPU curve to only ramp CPU
37:21SPEAKERand exhaust fans to 100% when my CPU is 90 degrees or higher.
37:25SPEAKERThis is all Celsius, of course.
37:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
37:27SPEAKER- This works great because on the minimal times
37:30SPEAKERmy CPU temp reaches 90 during gameplay,
37:32SPEAKERuser usually during shader compilation runs.
37:36SPEAKERMy 4090 is usually at full load.
37:38SPEAKERSo you can't hear the CPU runs famping up.
37:42SPEAKER- The few CPU runs famping up?
37:43SPEAKER- This is a lot.
37:46SPEAKERThe 4090 is usually at full load.
37:47SPEAKERSo you can't hear the CPU fans ramping up over the GPU fans.
37:51SPEAKER- Look, everybody loves a ran stamping.
37:53SPEAKER- Yes, just wanted to share this
37:54SPEAKERas it has made the noise coming out of my PC
37:56SPEAKERfar more consistent
37:57SPEAKERand my components are running very cool and reliably.
38:00SPEAKER- This is a totally valid way to approach this.
38:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't, like I said,
38:03SPEAKERAdam made the suggestion the other day as well.
38:05SPEAKERAnd I don't think I had ever encountered
38:08SPEAKERthis kind of philosophy,
38:09SPEAKERbut it seems pretty viable to me.
38:12SPEAKER- This is what I do on my daughter's small form factor.
38:15SPEAKERSo, and it works great, all air cooled,
38:18SPEAKERjust static speeds with end of the curve
38:22SPEAKERfor when something weird happens.
38:24SPEAKER- Sure, sure.
38:25SPEAKERYeah, I might give this a try.
38:28SPEAKERI'm still, I am staring at AIOs as we speak.
38:31SPEAKER- How many tabs do you have open on Amazon right now?
38:33SPEAKER- Zero, I have not done like a tab run on AIOs.
38:37SPEAKERI've just occasionally pulled up a couple of rankings
38:39SPEAKERhere and there to see what the performance is like.
38:42SPEAKERI just don't think I can bring myself
38:44SPEAKERto get that Arctic liquid freezer
38:46SPEAKER'cause I just don't want to deal with contact frame.
38:48SPEAKER- I get that.
38:49SPEAKERThere's a bunch of other good options
38:51SPEAKERthat are similarly priced.
38:52SPEAKERLike there's, I have some real problems
38:55SPEAKERwith some of the stuff NZXT has done in the last few years,
38:58SPEAKERbut their AIOs have been really reliable for me in the past.
39:01SPEAKERAnd they have a nice range of prices and sizes.
39:05SPEAKERAnd they're also well supported by like liquid control
39:08SPEAKERand HWMOD and stuff like that.
39:10SPEAKER- I'll start looking around.
39:11SPEAKERIt's funny, it's not even the priming.
39:12SPEAKERObviously I don't want it to break the bank,
39:13SPEAKERbut it's not even the price so much
39:15SPEAKERas I just want something without a lot of frills.
39:17SPEAKERLike so many of them are just so RGB'd out
39:20SPEAKERor they've got a big screen on the water block or whatever.
39:22SPEAKERAnd I'm never gonna see any of that stuff
39:25SPEAKERand I just don't want it.
39:26SPEAKER- So the thing I will say is having a small screen
39:28SPEAKERif it doesn't cost a lot of money
39:29SPEAKERthat just displays the liquid temperature
39:31SPEAKERis kind of a nice safety factor.
39:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I could see that, sure.
39:35SPEAKER- But yeah, you have a case with no windows.
39:37SPEAKERYou don't need a bunch of RGB nonsense
39:39SPEAKERand that's what they charge a lot for.
39:41SPEAKER- That's exactly it.
39:42SPEAKER- Somebody also pointed out that at no point
39:44SPEAKERduring that episode last week did we say
39:46SPEAKERthat AIO is an all-in-one water cooling solution
39:50SPEAKERfor PC loops.
39:52SPEAKERSo it's for the CPU loop usually.
39:53SPEAKERIt's usually a small water block with a copper
39:58SPEAKERor some other metal plate that goes on top of your CPU
40:01SPEAKERand has a pump and a little reservoir there
40:04SPEAKERand then two hoses that go to and from a radiator
40:06SPEAKERwith a bunch of fans attached to it.
40:08SPEAKER- All in one. - Sorry about that.
40:09SPEAKERThat's our bad.
40:11SPEAKER- Okay.
40:13SPEAKER- We do this Jordan one next.
40:14SPEAKER- Yes, you highlighted the,
40:15SPEAKERI'm just gonna let you read it since you highlighted it.
40:19SPEAKER- I'm a bit confused by Brad's statement
40:21SPEAKERat the end of the pod, oh, this is from Jordan.
40:24SPEAKERI'm a bit confused by Brad's statement
40:25SPEAKERat the end of the podcast about Mac being bad
40:27SPEAKERat non-Apple monitors in different resolutions.
40:29SPEAKERHe said it's been a while since he tried this,
40:31SPEAKERmaybe it was a decade or so ago,
40:33SPEAKERbut I have a MacBook M4 with an Alienware 3840
40:36SPEAKERby 1600 monitor and it's great.
40:38SPEAKERThe only downside is it doesn't have USB-C input
40:40SPEAKERso I have to use a dongle.
40:42SPEAKERSo yes, doing the laptop plugin is great
40:44SPEAKERand just switching computers when you're gaming works.
40:47SPEAKERThanks.
40:48SPEAKERThat was at 8.20 a.m. on May 25th.
40:51SPEAKERAt 2.35 p.m. on May 25th,
40:54SPEAKERI am actually now noticing bad text rendering.
40:57SPEAKERThanks Brad Lowell.
40:59SPEAKER- Yeah, so I guess that's what I was thinking of.
41:01SPEAKERSome other people on the Discord.
41:03SPEAKER- We got several of these too for the record.
41:05SPEAKER- Really, the people just noticing?
41:06SPEAKEROh, that's, sorry. - You ruined people's lives.
41:08SPEAKER- Sorry, that's, look man.
41:09SPEAKER- Yeah, the more you know.
41:11SPEAKER- What you don't know can't hurt you, I suppose,
41:13SPEAKERor maybe it can.
41:14SPEAKERBut somebody on the Discord I wish I had in front of me,
41:16SPEAKERI could maybe pull it up.
41:17SPEAKERSomebody explained why this happens
41:19SPEAKERand I can't, it's something about Apple's font rendering
41:22SPEAKERmaybe depends on certain--
41:23SPEAKER- Sub pixel, something.
41:25SPEAKER- Certain characteristics of the monitors
41:26SPEAKERand if those things are not present on the screen
41:29SPEAKERyou plug your Mac into,
41:31SPEAKERthen the font rendering will look bad, I don't know.
41:33SPEAKER- I wonder if that's why like the monitor vendors,
41:36SPEAKERI know like ASUS and Acer both have pro,
41:39SPEAKERthey call them like pro content monitors or something.
41:42SPEAKERASUS has pro art monitors that I wonder
41:44SPEAKERif they're the right sub pixels for Apple systems.
41:49SPEAKER- All right, another question from Levi here.
41:51SPEAKERI just got a secondhand Steam Deck.
41:52SPEAKERDo you folks have recommendations for games, accessories,
41:55SPEAKERor general tips and tricks?
41:58SPEAKER- It's, well, okay.
41:59SPEAKERSo the Steam Deck is not a super accessory necessary console.
42:03SPEAKERIt's not like the Switch where you want
42:05SPEAKERlike some sort of regular game pad to go with it
42:06SPEAKERor something like that.
42:09SPEAKERAnd you don't need grips 'cause the grips are built in.
42:11SPEAKERIt comes with a case for the most part.
42:16SPEAKERIf you travel a bunch and wanna have more
42:18SPEAKERthan the kind of two to four hours of battery
42:20SPEAKERyou're gonna get out of it,
42:21SPEAKERmaybe consider a big giant battery
42:23SPEAKERas the one accessory that is useful.
42:25SPEAKERI have one of those big like 24 milliamp,
42:29SPEAKER24,000 milliamp hour batteries that's like,
42:32SPEAKERyou know, that'll give me a couple more hours of use
42:35SPEAKERif I'm on a long plane ride.
42:36SPEAKER- Sure.
42:37SPEAKER- I play a lot of 2D and kind of indie stuff on it,
42:40SPEAKERbut I also occasionally fire up
42:42SPEAKERlike I played some Submonautica 2 on it the other day
42:44SPEAKERand it runs great.
42:46SPEAKERI think like I tend to have always a couple of indie,
42:54SPEAKERlike I've been playing some Hollow Knight Silksong again.
42:57SPEAKERI have, I almost always have Dead Cells on it.
42:59SPEAKERI have Hades and those kinds of games.
43:02SPEAKERI play a lot of Sektori.
43:04SPEAKERI've been playing, what's that, Terratech Legion?
43:07SPEAKER- I was just about to say Terratech Legion.
43:09SPEAKERThat's like probably the most widely amplified
43:13SPEAKERgame recommendation I've made in a minute
43:15SPEAKERon the Nextlander podcast.
43:16SPEAKERSome paper on the Nextlander discord
43:18SPEAKERbrought it to my attention.
43:19SPEAKERSo it's not like I discovered this.
43:21SPEAKER- Dude, it is a banger.
43:22SPEAKER- But I've seen a bunch of people
43:24SPEAKERtalk about playing that game since I mentioned it.
43:26SPEAKERIt's basically a vampire survivors
43:28SPEAKERwith a vehicle builder component.
43:30SPEAKER- You described it to me as a Nuts and Bolts
43:32SPEAKERlike vehicle builder.
43:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm trying to walk back from that
43:35SPEAKER'cause there's gotta be newer and more widely played game.
43:37SPEAKERLike that, I can't believe I'm saying this.
43:40SPEAKERIt occurred to me in the course of talking about this game,
43:42SPEAKERthat Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts is 18 years old.
43:46SPEAKER- Oh no.
43:47SPEAKER- That game is almost 20 years old.
43:49SPEAKERSo, which means Giant Bomb is also almost 20 years old.
43:52SPEAKERAnyway.
43:53SPEAKER- Look man, in a just and perfect world,
43:56SPEAKERwe would be playing a new Nuts and Bolts alike every year
44:00SPEAKERinstead of a Metroidvania.
44:01SPEAKER- Yeah, well, there are things beyond the vehicle building
44:03SPEAKERand Nuts and Bolts that were pretty singular to that game
44:05SPEAKERthat I don't know that just anybody could recapture,
44:08SPEAKERbut I'm with you.
44:09SPEAKER- Yeah, but the vehicle building was--
44:11SPEAKER- It was great.
44:12SPEAKER- Yeah, amazing.
44:13SPEAKER- It was fantastic.
44:14SPEAKERBut the point I'm making is there have to be
44:16SPEAKERmore widely played and newer games
44:17SPEAKERthat also use that same style of kind of block-based
44:20SPEAKERvehicle building with component stuff.
44:22SPEAKER- I mean, arguably that's how the fort building
44:23SPEAKERin Fortnite works,
44:24SPEAKERthat they don't let you hang a jet booster
44:26SPEAKERoff the side of your building in Fortnite.
44:28SPEAKER- So anyway, this is like--
44:29SPEAKER- It's a real missed opportunity, honestly.
44:30SPEAKER- It's like a Vampire Survivors
44:31SPEAKERwhere you can place all the weapons yourself
44:33SPEAKERwhere you want on the vehicle
44:35SPEAKERto control what direction they shoot and how they shoot,
44:38SPEAKERwhich is just endless fun.
44:42SPEAKER- I made a car that has like 12 wheels on it the other day.
44:45SPEAKER- Whoa, interesting.
44:47SPEAKER- It goes fast and turns real good.
44:49SPEAKER- Wait, hang on, are the wheels additive?
44:52SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
44:53SPEAKER- Is it the more wheels you put, the more--
44:54SPEAKER- Plus, plus.
44:55SPEAKER- What?
44:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:56SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't realize it worked like that.
44:57SPEAKER- It is the stupidest possible way to implement that
45:01SPEAKERand it works, you can do real crimes.
45:03SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
45:04SPEAKER- I made basically a one-sided battleship
45:07SPEAKERthat I just circle stuff always on the right.
45:09SPEAKER- Wow.
45:10SPEAKER- And it just always be blasting.
45:12SPEAKER- I gotta get more creative with my layouts.
45:14SPEAKER- Yeah, you gotta min-max that shit, that shit.
45:16SPEAKER- That game's very cool.
45:18SPEAKER- It is extremely good.
45:18SPEAKER- And a lot of people are playing it on Steam Deck
45:20SPEAKERfrom the feedback I've gotten.
45:22SPEAKER- Yeah, so let's see.
45:23SPEAKERIt's a little chunky on Steam Deck,
45:25SPEAKERbut there is a Steam Deck mode, it doesn't default to that.
45:27SPEAKERWhen you switch it to that, it runs fine.
45:30SPEAKERThat's the one piece of advice I have,
45:31SPEAKERis that often games will have, sometimes they're hidden,
45:35SPEAKERsometimes they're not.
45:36SPEAKERWe've talked about it before, but the ProtonDB site
45:39SPEAKERhas a Steam Deck preset section and they'll help you,
45:44SPEAKERif you have a game that doesn't run
45:45SPEAKERthe way you would expect, they help you get there.
45:48SPEAKER'Cause in fairness, that hardware is pretty old
45:50SPEAKERat this point, it's like RDNA 2 graphics,
45:52SPEAKERwhich is two full generations back.
45:55SPEAKERIt's a relatively low power APU,
45:57SPEAKERit only runs at like 15 watts, it's not.
46:01SPEAKERBut because they've sold a bunch of them
46:03SPEAKERand people are tuning for it,
46:05SPEAKERyou can get a really good experience out of it,
46:07SPEAKERon a shocking range of games.
46:10SPEAKER- Indeed. - But have fun.
46:11SPEAKER- Indeed. - And then, oh,
46:13SPEAKERlast thing I was gonna say is adding the retro stuff.
46:17SPEAKERThere's a couple of packages that are specifically
46:21SPEAKERfor Steam Deck emulation, if you're interested in that.
46:25SPEAKERSo you can get a SNES emulator, GameCube emulator,
46:28SPEAKERwhatever you want.
46:29SPEAKER- Yeah, my tip and or trick
46:31SPEAKERfor buying a secondhand portable device
46:34SPEAKERis dunk that thing in isopropyl alcohol.
46:36SPEAKER- Okay. - I mean,
46:37SPEAKERdon't actually do that, but.
46:38SPEAKER- No, but wipe it off. - It probably does not hurt
46:41SPEAKERto wipe that thing down before wide usage.
46:45SPEAKEROkay. - A little UV,
46:46SPEAKERput it out in the sun for a couple of hours.
46:48SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, kinda spiff it up a little bit.
46:51SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah.
46:52SPEAKER- Helen C. asks on Discord,
46:54SPEAKERwe're moving into Discord questions here.
46:56SPEAKER- Okay. - Are there any websites
46:58SPEAKERwhere you have allowed notifications?
47:00SPEAKERIf you had to genuinely allow notifications for one website
47:03SPEAKERthat you don't already have an app for, what would it be?
47:05SPEAKERI don't think I ever have.
47:06SPEAKERI genuinely do not think I have ever said yes
47:09SPEAKERto notifications from website.
47:10SPEAKER- I use a web-based calendar with fast mail,
47:13SPEAKERso I have notifications on for that.
47:15SPEAKER- Okay, I don't know if that counts
47:18SPEAKERfor the spirit of this question though,
47:20SPEAKERbecause that just happens to be a web-based app
47:23SPEAKERthat is part of a service you've chosen to use.
47:25SPEAKERI feel like this, I mean, technically, yes,
47:28SPEAKERthe letter of the question is satisfied,
47:30SPEAKERbut I'm thinking of the endless websites
47:33SPEAKERthat nag you about enabling notifications
47:35SPEAKERfrom whom you definitely don't want notifications.
47:39SPEAKER- I'm going into my Firefox settings
47:41SPEAKERto see what I've turned on.
47:42SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, good call.
47:43SPEAKERI don't know where that's buried in Chrome,
47:45SPEAKERand also I should really probably stop using Chrome,
47:47SPEAKERbut anyway.
47:49SPEAKER- Okay, I've turned on notifications
47:51SPEAKERfor inspector.twitch.tv, which is the site you use
47:54SPEAKERto test your stream stability on Twitch.
47:58SPEAKERI have it on for mail.google.
48:01SPEAKERI have it on for app.fastmail.
48:04SPEAKERI have it on for Embark Games, apparently.
48:07SPEAKERTurning that off.
48:07SPEAKER- Interesting.
48:08SPEAKER- Block.
48:09SPEAKERI have it on for Google Drive,
48:11SPEAKERso I get share notifications,
48:12SPEAKERand I have it on for Google Meet,
48:13SPEAKERbecause I do use Google Meet for reasons.
48:16SPEAKER- That makes sense.
48:17SPEAKER- I do not have a single site flagged for notifications.
48:21SPEAKER- Okay.
48:22SPEAKER- I'm gonna keep it that way.
48:23SPEAKER- Firefox has a check mark that says,
48:25SPEAKER"Block new requests to allow notifications."
48:27SPEAKERThat seems useful.
48:28SPEAKER- Yeah, yep.
48:30SPEAKER- Notifications on websites are blight, generally speaking.
48:32SPEAKER- Yes, agreed.
48:35SPEAKERWarbird has perhaps the question of our time.
48:40SPEAKER- This is the repeat question for the last six months?
48:43SPEAKER- No, no, this is an urgent issue.
48:46SPEAKERIs there some preferably German term
48:48SPEAKERfor the feeling of despair
48:50SPEAKERthat comes from finding a super interesting project
48:52SPEAKERthat fits some hyper-specific interest of yours
48:55SPEAKERonly to check the source code and find that it's AI slop?
48:58SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
48:59SPEAKER- I fully identify with this feeling.
49:02SPEAKERI've had this experience three or four times,
49:05SPEAKERprobably, at this point.
49:06SPEAKER- Yeah, you get to the end, and it's like,
49:08SPEAKER"Hey, I don't know how well this is gonna work.
49:10SPEAKERI just asked Claude to write this, and this is what I got."
49:13SPEAKER- And so, I mean, that's maybe the most insidious part
49:16SPEAKERof this whole thing is that you really have to develop
49:18SPEAKERa sense of how much is too much.
49:19SPEAKERI mean, it's perfectly acceptable to say
49:20SPEAKERany amount is too much.
49:22SPEAKERBut there is a difference between,
49:25SPEAKERokay, you'll find projects out there where it's like,
49:28SPEAKERpeople are making like 30 commits a day
49:31SPEAKERof hundreds of lines each, you know?
49:33SPEAKERLike, it is just very obvious
49:35SPEAKERthey are just having a chatbot churn out some shit
49:38SPEAKERand merging it without even paying attention
49:40SPEAKERto what it's doing.
49:41SPEAKERBut then there are situations like,
49:44SPEAKERthere is retro achievements support on the MiSTer now.
49:47SPEAKERI don't know if you've seen this.
49:48SPEAKER- What, really?
49:49SPEAKER- Do you know what retro achievements is?
49:50SPEAKER- Yeah.
49:51SPEAKER- It's like a centralized repository
49:52SPEAKERwhere they have come up with a whole framework
49:54SPEAKERfor adding achievements to classic emulated games.
49:57SPEAKERThere are versions of all the MiSTer,
49:59SPEAKERmaybe not all, but I think slowly they're adding
50:01SPEAKERmore and more versions of the MiSTer cores
50:03SPEAKERthat have retro achievements support.
50:05SPEAKERAnd then I dug into it a little bit,
50:06SPEAKERand the author of those cores is using AI to help with that.
50:10SPEAKERBut I also dug into, like, I kind of looked at them
50:12SPEAKERchatting with other developers on the MiSTer discord,
50:14SPEAKERand this person is like clearly a programmer
50:16SPEAKERand like knows hardware.
50:18SPEAKERSo like that's way more of a gray area where like,
50:21SPEAKERand I think I even saw them saying they've like built a,
50:23SPEAKERthey've built a cartridge interface
50:25SPEAKERthat can wire retro achievements into like a real NES,
50:28SPEAKERyou know, like they clearly have got
50:29SPEAKERactual hardware development chops.
50:31SPEAKER- I think there's a difference,
50:33SPEAKERwell, we've talked about this a little in the past,
50:35SPEAKERbut I feel like there's a difference between,
50:37SPEAKERhey, I've never written software before,
50:39SPEAKERand I just ask the machine to write a thing
50:41SPEAKERthat does a task for me.
50:43SPEAKERAnd hey, I write a lot, I architect a lot of software,
50:47SPEAKERand I ask the machine to write a function
50:49SPEAKERthat does this particular thing to whatever input for me.
50:53SPEAKERAnd one of those feels better than the other,
50:55SPEAKERand I don't exactly know why or if it's fair.
50:57SPEAKER- Right, yeah.
50:58SPEAKER- But-- - Well, I mean, yeah,
50:59SPEAKERthey should definitely feel different.
51:00SPEAKERI mean, or in that case, you know, it could be like,
51:01SPEAKERoh, I write software all the time,
51:02SPEAKERbut I don't know anything about Verilog or VHDL,
51:05SPEAKERyou know, like the languages you write FPGA designs in,
51:08SPEAKERfor example, like I can see
51:09SPEAKERthat being a little more acceptable.
51:11SPEAKERI don't know, I still feel like in a perfect world,
51:13SPEAKERI'd rather not run any AI code at all.
51:17SPEAKER- But that's-- - But you got bad news.
51:18SPEAKER- Seems like a pipe dream.
51:20SPEAKERI mean, even-- - You run Windows, right?
51:21SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, but you know, Linux is kind of the same, like--
51:24SPEAKER- Yeah, how do I know?
51:25SPEAKER- Linux has got a, I'd have to pull up the policy,
51:27SPEAKERbut like, Linus Torvalds has talked some about,
51:30SPEAKERlike they have a policy for the kernel, like it's--
51:33SPEAKER- Yeah, but I have like three packages
51:34SPEAKERthat are controlled by that policy,
51:36SPEAKERand then I have another 2,000 that are, you know,
51:40SPEAKERthe arbitrary policy of whoever started
51:42SPEAKERwhatever project I'm running.
51:43SPEAKER- But to the point, I mean, what I mean is even a project
51:46SPEAKERis sanctified and long running as the Linux kernel
51:48SPEAKERis going to allow some AI code in there,
51:51SPEAKERso like it is, like you're just probably not going
51:53SPEAKERto get away with never running any AI code,
51:56SPEAKERprovided you even knew you were in the first place,
51:58SPEAKERwhich in most cases you won't.
51:59SPEAKER- This is the mid 2020s version of the feeling
52:02SPEAKERof finding like a blog, like having a problem
52:06SPEAKERand finding a post about it from like 15 years ago
52:10SPEAKERand not being able to, and then it's one person
52:12SPEAKERwho nobody ever responded to,
52:14SPEAKERand they have the exact same problem you're having,
52:15SPEAKERand you're like, well, how did you do this, brother?
52:18SPEAKER- Or the slightly more modern version of that,
52:20SPEAKERthe Reddit thread containing a solution for your problem,
52:24SPEAKERexcept the solution post has been mass deleted
52:27SPEAKERby the person who got mad about that Reddit,
52:29SPEAKERthat Reddit policy change a couple years ago.
52:31SPEAKERI mean, they weren't wrong to do it
52:33SPEAKERbecause like the only value that Reddit has now,
52:36SPEAKERit seems like, is that it ranks really high on Google
52:38SPEAKERinexplicably still, so, but yeah, that's terrible.
52:44SPEAKERIt sucks every time.
52:46SPEAKER- Park, when did click, pause, click become the standard
52:52SPEAKERfor renaming files in a file explorer?
52:55SPEAKERYou got to live that F2 life.
52:58SPEAKER- F2 is like probably my most used F actually.
53:04SPEAKER- Oh, it's click, pause, click.
53:05SPEAKERDo they mean they click the name of the file
53:07SPEAKERand wait for it?
53:08SPEAKER- Yeah, what they're talking about is,
53:09SPEAKERand I think this is okay.
53:10SPEAKERThis definitely works in Mac OS and Windows,
53:12SPEAKERand I'm guessing most of the Linux desktops
53:15SPEAKERthat have icons on the desktop allow the same thing
53:18SPEAKERor do the same thing.
53:19SPEAKERLike GNOME doesn't really do desktop icons
53:21SPEAKERunless you mod that, but KDE-
53:23SPEAKER- Nautilus does not do this.
53:26SPEAKERDoes not let you kind of soft second click to rename, really.
53:30SPEAKER- No. - Interesting.
53:31SPEAKERI thought that was just kind of gooey standard these days.
53:33SPEAKER- I've been in F2 or right click rename
53:35SPEAKERfor 20 years at this point, but I'm not gonna change.
53:39SPEAKER- I always click icon F2.
53:40SPEAKERIn fact, F2 turns out to work in places
53:43SPEAKERthat are not file managers in a lot of cases.
53:45SPEAKERThere's like- - Really?
53:46SPEAKER- A surprising number.
53:46SPEAKERI can't think of, there's been a couple of applications
53:49SPEAKERrecently where I reflexively hit F2
53:51SPEAKERjust 'cause that's what I'm used to.
53:52SPEAKERMy brain says F2 equals rename and it actually worked.
53:55SPEAKERAnd so that's one of those like soft hotkeys
53:58SPEAKERthat is kind of honored in places you might not expect.
54:01SPEAKER- How, okay, so F1 always was help.
54:03SPEAKERF5 is always refresh.
54:05SPEAKER- Yes.
54:07SPEAKER- What are F3 and F4?
54:08SPEAKER- I don't know.
54:09SPEAKERI mean, I can tell you what Alt-F4 is.
54:11SPEAKERWhy don't you- - Should I try that?
54:12SPEAKER- Yeah, why not?
54:13SPEAKERGive it a shot.
54:14SPEAKER- I don't think it's gonna do anything in Linux.
54:15SPEAKER- I don't, I don't know.
54:17SPEAKERF6, wait, which one is help, did you say, F1?
54:21SPEAKER- F1, okay, Fred doesn't need help.
54:23SPEAKERThat's a flex.
54:24SPEAKERI mean, what is it, F5 and F9 in games
54:27SPEAKERfor quick save and quick load or the-
54:29SPEAKER- F6 or F9, I think. - Was it F6 and F9?
54:31SPEAKER- I think some people did F5, some people did F9.
54:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know.
54:36SPEAKERI can't think of any other major Fs, but-
54:39SPEAKER- I can think of some other major Fs.
54:40SPEAKER- Yeah, F2 to rename though.
54:42SPEAKER- Oh, Logitech has a page for this.
54:44SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
54:45SPEAKER- F1 is the help menu, F2 is renames.
54:48SPEAKERF3 is search, Alt-F4 closes the current window.
54:52SPEAKERF5 refreshes the page or current document.
54:56SPEAKERF6 moves the cursor to the address bar in browsers, really.
54:59SPEAKERI always use Control-L for that.
55:00SPEAKER- Yeah, Control-L is my go-to there.
55:02SPEAKERI didn't, wait, does that really work?
55:03SPEAKER- That works, yeah, no.
55:04SPEAKER- Oh, look at that, okay.
55:05SPEAKER- F7 activates spell check in Microsoft Office apps,
55:08SPEAKERa thing that I definitely do all the time.
55:10SPEAKER- And in Google Docs, I can tell you.
55:13SPEAKER- F8 boots into safe mode in older Windows versions.
55:16SPEAKER- True.
55:17SPEAKER- F9 refreshes documents in Word,
55:19SPEAKERsends or receives the email in Outlook.
55:22SPEAKERAnd F10 activates the menu bar or right-clicks
55:25SPEAKERif you hold down Shift.
55:27SPEAKER- Okay.
55:28SPEAKER- There you go.
55:29SPEAKER- The more you know.
55:29SPEAKER- Yeah, this is wild.
55:31SPEAKEROh, F11 is full screen mode in browsers.
55:32SPEAKER- Oh, of course, yes.
55:33SPEAKER- There you go, I do use that.
55:35SPEAKER- F12 is usually developer tools.
55:37SPEAKER- Or save as in Word, apparently.
55:39SPEAKERHey, the more you know.
55:41SPEAKER- Yes, okay, question from Bertron.
55:43SPEAKERBoth of you have experimented with Plex alternatives.
55:46SPEAKERHow has that experience evolved over the last few years?
55:49SPEAKERHow well do the FOSS alternatives stack up against Plex
55:52SPEAKERin 2026?
55:53SPEAKERStarting July 1st, Plex is raising the price
55:56SPEAKERof their lifetime Plex pass by $500,
56:00SPEAKERjumping all the way up to $750 from the current 250.
56:05SPEAKER- That is insanity.
56:06SPEAKER- That's a lot, that is a lot.
56:08SPEAKER- I--
56:09SPEAKER- I increasingly wish I had just paid the 125
56:13SPEAKERor whatever it was when they were about to raise it
56:16SPEAKERthe first time, but I stubbornly was like,
56:18SPEAKERand this is still true, I was not super thrilled
56:21SPEAKERwith where Plex was at at the time
56:22SPEAKERand did not necessarily feel great about dumping money
56:25SPEAKERinto it at the time.
56:26SPEAKERThey were adding emulators and live TV
56:28SPEAKERand all this other stuff that really felt like
56:31SPEAKERit was diluting what Plex was supposed to be about.
56:34SPEAKER- Look, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you,
56:35SPEAKERI'm pretty smug about happily signing over the 125 bucks
56:39SPEAKERor 150 bucks, whatever it was,
56:41SPEAKERback in the day for the Plex annual.
56:43SPEAKER- The worst part is that occasionally once a year,
56:45SPEAKERit would go on sale for like 75.
56:47SPEAKER- I should have, I don't know.
56:49SPEAKERI don't know how I feel about this view,
56:51SPEAKERbut I have spoken to people on Discord
56:54SPEAKERwho feel like it's kind of unethical
56:56SPEAKERthat they charge money like this
56:58SPEAKERfor a product that's built entirely
56:59SPEAKERon open source components.
57:01SPEAKERLike they use FFmpeg under the hood
57:04SPEAKERto handle all the heavy video lifting of Plex, for example.
57:08SPEAKER- Look, they share their code that they modify,
57:12SPEAKERlike this is the law, they're following the rules.
57:14SPEAKER- Like I said, I'm not sure that I necessarily
57:16SPEAKERfully agree with that, but.
57:18SPEAKER- All right, look, they, this software didn't exist
57:22SPEAKERat all before Plex, right?
57:23SPEAKERLike if you wanted this, it was.
57:25SPEAKER- Was this Plex the first one?
57:27SPEAKER- Well, Plex was the first one that didn't suck.
57:29SPEAKERThere were a bunch of things that used like DLNA
57:31SPEAKERand stuff like that that were terrible.
57:33SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say, yeah, I mean,
57:34SPEAKERI think you could argue that stuff
57:36SPEAKERlike Xbox Media Center predates Plex
57:38SPEAKERand probably actually started this whole thing.
57:40SPEAKER'Cause isn't MB, MB is actually a fork
57:43SPEAKERof Xbox Media Center, isn't? - MB is a fork of that, yeah.
57:46SPEAKERBut the thing is, those didn't do the important thing,
57:49SPEAKERwhich was-- - Yeah, the library management.
57:52SPEAKER- Well, no, no, it's the library management
57:54SPEAKERand the transcode for endpoints.
57:55SPEAKERSo like if you were playing on a PC
57:59SPEAKERor something that had a really robust decoder,
58:02SPEAKERlike an Nvidia Shield, it didn't matter what you played on.
58:06SPEAKERBut like the fact that this just worked
58:09SPEAKERand it was fairly idiot-proof and you could run a server
58:11SPEAKERreally easily on a computer you already had,
58:14SPEAKERand it would work with your Roku and your Apple TV
58:16SPEAKERand your Google TV and all of this stuff,
58:18SPEAKERlike the stuff that's built into your TV,
58:21SPEAKERlike it's a lot of work.
58:23SPEAKERThey maintain a buttload of client apps
58:25SPEAKERand like that's the place. - Really?
58:28SPEAKERI guess they do, yeah. - Yeah, 'cause it's,
58:30SPEAKERall the platforms and the tvOS and yeah.
58:34SPEAKER- Plex app on Apple TV is not great.
58:36SPEAKERFor example, like some of the clients are better than others
58:38SPEAKERor some clearly get more attention than others.
58:40SPEAKER- Yeah, but the basic functionality
58:42SPEAKERis the same across all of them.
58:44SPEAKERAnd that's the problem with the Jellyfin stuff
58:46SPEAKERin my experience.
58:48SPEAKERThe server is way heavier.
58:50SPEAKERI can't run the Jellyfin server on my N100 machine.
58:53SPEAKERIt's too slow.
58:54SPEAKERIt eats all the available resources
58:56SPEAKERand everything else on the machine goes to hell.
58:59SPEAKERSo like in that regard,
59:03SPEAKERthe server is more robust and reliable.
59:05SPEAKERNow, is it worth $800 to use? - Absolutely not.
59:09SPEAKER- No, I don't think so.
59:11SPEAKER- What's their monthly pricing?
59:12SPEAKERI think that this is-- - I don't know.
59:13SPEAKERI don't have it in front of me.
59:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm looking and I can't find it.
59:17SPEAKER- I have even less interest in engaging
59:19SPEAKERwith that pricing model. - No plans.
59:21SPEAKERSo the Stream Anywhere, the remote watch
59:24SPEAKERis two bucks a month, which is reasonable.
59:27SPEAKERAnd the Plex Pass is still $7 a month.
59:30SPEAKERSo like I can't imagine paying $750 for the lifetime.
59:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I agree.
59:38SPEAKERThere are exactly two pay walled Plex features
59:41SPEAKERthat I can think of that I would ever use,
59:42SPEAKERwhich are transcoding and the ability
59:44SPEAKERto download music to Plex amp locally.
59:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:48SPEAKER- But Jellyfin does both of those already.
59:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see that.
59:52SPEAKER- So it's kind of tough for me to, I don't know, man,
59:55SPEAKERbut Jellyfin's not quite-- - You have a way beefier server.
59:58SPEAKER- Well, the other, the bigger thing is I never transcode.
1:00:00SPEAKERLike I don't even use these things much in general.
1:00:03SPEAKERLike I use Plex, Plex amp is my most used
1:00:06SPEAKERpart of Plex probably.
1:00:08SPEAKER- See, I just actually don't stream that much video.
1:00:11SPEAKERLike realistically, I'm mostly playing video games
1:00:13SPEAKERor tinkering with computers or stuff.
1:00:16SPEAKER- I don't, but the people in my house do.
1:00:19SPEAKERSo therefore I am, you know.
1:00:21SPEAKER- So I'm not servicing some like clientele
1:00:24SPEAKERthat needs more advanced video features.
1:00:27SPEAKERSo I'm actually good, but Jellyfin has a ways to go.
1:00:29SPEAKERIt's getting there, but.
1:00:31SPEAKER- I think to me, the dopey part of this decision
1:00:34SPEAKERis that, like the thing about Jellyfin is it's in the part
1:00:38SPEAKERof the curve right now that where the improvements
1:00:41SPEAKERstart coming really fast and the open source alternatives
1:00:45SPEAKERto Plex are going to bypass the main Plex
1:00:48SPEAKERin the not too distant future.
1:00:50SPEAKER- Jellyfin has done some project reorganization
1:00:53SPEAKERin terms of the way they handle contributions.
1:00:55SPEAKERAnd then they also did like a big database overhaul.
1:00:58SPEAKERI believe it was last fall where they basically,
1:01:00SPEAKERthere was an update that came out that they were just like,
1:01:02SPEAKERhey, we are addressing like years of tech debt
1:01:05SPEAKERin this thing.
1:01:06SPEAKERWe are modernizing our database.
1:01:07SPEAKERWe are laying the groundwork for this thing
1:01:10SPEAKERto become much better in the near future.
1:01:12SPEAKERAnd so I think they are gonna,
1:01:15SPEAKERhopefully they are gonna continue making progress.
1:01:18SPEAKER- I should update it again and try it
1:01:20SPEAKERbecause the last time I did the server
1:01:23SPEAKERwas more than a year ago.
1:01:24SPEAKERAnd it was turning on like the asset management
1:01:29SPEAKERwith the size of my library was the problem.
1:01:31SPEAKERIt seemed like, so the other thing is the client stuff
1:01:35SPEAKERhas to be better.
1:01:35SPEAKERThis clients that I tested on some of the iPhone,
1:01:38SPEAKERApple devices were frigging terrible.
1:01:40SPEAKERThe Android stuff was consistently better across the board.
1:01:43SPEAKERSo if you're on Android,
1:01:44SPEAKERit's a little bit better situation than iOS.
1:01:47SPEAKER- Swiftfin is supposed to be the big iOS client,
1:01:49SPEAKERbut I think development has stalled on that.
1:01:52SPEAKERAnd there's just some basic stuff about Jellyfin
1:01:53SPEAKERthat's still, the two things that I have issues with
1:01:56SPEAKERare thumbnails are still not universal.
1:01:59SPEAKERLike they just added thumbnails like in the last year
1:02:01SPEAKERor two period.
1:02:02SPEAKERAnd there's some clients that still don't support them well
1:02:05SPEAKERor at all.
1:02:06SPEAKER- Nothing like changing to the new hot client
1:02:08SPEAKERand realizing that all of your thumbnails are bad
1:02:10SPEAKERand you've got to spend 10 hours having it go through those
1:02:13SPEAKERand download the new sites.
1:02:15SPEAKER- Well, I like that part.
1:02:15SPEAKERI like watching the progress bar
1:02:17SPEAKERas it crunches thumbnails from,
1:02:19SPEAKERI can imagine writing the thumbnail extractor for that.
1:02:23SPEAKERThat's not a problem.
1:02:24SPEAKERWhat I'm saying is they don't display thumbnails.
1:02:26SPEAKERLike the client just does not show thumbnails,
1:02:28SPEAKERwhich is kind of a deal breaker for scrubbing.
1:02:31SPEAKERI also have issues with HDR reproduction in Jellyfin.
1:02:34SPEAKERLike the HDR just doesn't look right for some stuff.
1:02:37SPEAKERLike I can side by side it with Plex
1:02:39SPEAKERand Plex will play it just fine.
1:02:42SPEAKERAnd then it doesn't look right.
1:02:43SPEAKERLike the, I don't know if that's tone mapping or what, but.
1:02:45SPEAKER- It's a hard problem.
1:02:46SPEAKERIt took Plex years and years to get that right.
1:02:49SPEAKERAnd again, it's another one of those things
1:02:50SPEAKERthat requires beefy computers.
1:02:52SPEAKER- Yeah, and there's not a music playback app
1:02:56SPEAKERas good as Plex amp that I have found on iOS either.
1:02:59SPEAKERThere's like several that are okay,
1:03:01SPEAKERbut none of them are quite there, so.
1:03:03SPEAKER- Plex amp is rad.
1:03:04SPEAKERIt's super good.
1:03:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it's pretty good.
1:03:07SPEAKER- So yeah, but like, I think my point is if you pay,
1:03:13SPEAKERbefore you reach $750 in $7 a month,
1:03:17SPEAKERyou're going to, there'll be a better alternative to Plex.
1:03:20SPEAKERThey've essentially put a time limit
1:03:22SPEAKERon their own death warrant by doing the pricing like this.
1:03:25SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's probably right.
1:03:27SPEAKERAlso, maybe it's just that they don't want
1:03:30SPEAKERto do lifetime subs and this is their way of saying, hey.
1:03:34SPEAKER- Yes, that's what this actually is.
1:03:36SPEAKERThey want to, I don't like, you know,
1:03:37SPEAKERon one level I get the argument.
1:03:39SPEAKER- Yeah, a hundred percent.
1:03:41SPEAKER- They want to support ongoing development
1:03:43SPEAKERand they need more money to do that.
1:03:45SPEAKERBut anyway, man, we've probably gotten feedback
1:03:49SPEAKERon the pronunciation of this username before,
1:03:51SPEAKERbut I've forgotten it, Mangix or Mangix.
1:03:54SPEAKERWhat's your bet on how long we'll be in the Nandpocalypse?
1:03:57SPEAKERDo you think we'll see more devices built
1:03:59SPEAKERwith upgradeability in mind as a result?
1:04:01SPEAKERIt'd be nice if I could just update the screen
1:04:03SPEAKERor processor on my Steam Deck
1:04:05SPEAKERand preserve my existing RAM and storage, for example.
1:04:10SPEAKER- Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
1:04:11SPEAKER- Yeah, and I think they're using Nandpocalypse
1:04:14SPEAKERto also include RAM here.
1:04:15SPEAKERI think that's the, really the everythingpocalypse
1:04:18SPEAKERon computer hardware.
1:04:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think it's impossible to predict, right?
1:04:23SPEAKER'Cause we're not going to know until we won't know,
1:04:27SPEAKERyou don't know the bubble's going to pop
1:04:28SPEAKERuntil the bubble pops.
1:04:29SPEAKER- Yeah, the earliest predictions I saw from analysts
1:04:32SPEAKERwhen all this stuff really started getting bad
1:04:34SPEAKERwas through the end of the decade.
1:04:35SPEAKERAnd I am just kind of sticking to that general outlook
1:04:38SPEAKERuntil I hear different.
1:04:40SPEAKER- The earliest I've seen was end of 2027,
1:04:44SPEAKERwhich seems like a hundred years from now,
1:04:46SPEAKERbut it's also the end of next year, apparently.
1:04:48SPEAKER- Yeah, it's actually not that far off.
1:04:49SPEAKERDid you see, I saw this on Digital Foundry,
1:04:51SPEAKERI don't know who originally reported it.
1:04:52SPEAKERIt might've been them that, I think it was Corsair,
1:04:56SPEAKERis going to start sourcing DDR5
1:04:58SPEAKERfrom a Chinese fabrication outfit for their graphics cards.
1:05:03SPEAKEROr no, for their, sorry, for their DRAM,
1:05:05SPEAKERlike for their DIMMs, just full on system memory.
1:05:08SPEAKER- Yeah, so Chinese fabs are ramping up
1:05:10SPEAKERon both RAM and NAND.
1:05:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I forget the name of the company,
1:05:14SPEAKERbut there is a company in China
1:05:15SPEAKERthat is ramping up pretty quickly on this stuff.
1:05:17SPEAKERI mean, I think most DRAM is fabbed at 10 nanometers,
1:05:20SPEAKERso maybe that's slightly less insanely complicated
1:05:24SPEAKERthan the really high end processor stuff that TSMC does.
1:05:28SPEAKER- So I talked to a friend who works in fabs.
1:05:30SPEAKERThe problem is that you require specific tooling
1:05:33SPEAKERfor NAND and for RAM.
1:05:35SPEAKERSo it's not like you need to take a 10 nanometer CPU fab
1:05:38SPEAKERand make it into a NAND fab, necessarily.
1:05:40SPEAKERAt least not, it has, it's not a turnkey solution.
1:05:44SPEAKERIt has overhead and capital expenses and stuff like that.
1:05:47SPEAKER- Yeah, hopefully that makes it less complicated
1:05:50SPEAKERfor new build outs though.
1:05:51SPEAKERBut I mean, I also don't know where import/export controls
1:05:53SPEAKERmight factor into, let's say, let's say,
1:05:58SPEAKERat least here in America,
1:05:59SPEAKERthey're not super stoked about computing products
1:06:01SPEAKERcoming out of China lately
1:06:03SPEAKERin terms of federal government policy.
1:06:05SPEAKERSo I don't know if that will be possible in this market,
1:06:08SPEAKERbut I mean, even something that relaxes demand
1:06:11SPEAKERin a different territory would presumably
1:06:13SPEAKERhave the knock-on effect of creating more supply
1:06:16SPEAKERfrom other suppliers here.
1:06:18SPEAKER- They do love putting tariffs on stuff from China.
1:06:22SPEAKER- Yep, they sure do, again, assuming they allow
1:06:24SPEAKERthe products to be sold here at all.
1:06:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:06:27SPEAKER- But anyway, that's a big non-answer to say
1:06:31SPEAKERwe'll have to wait and see, I guess.
1:06:33SPEAKERExpect the best, prepare for the worst.
1:06:35SPEAKER- Let's put it this way.
1:06:37SPEAKERWe were at a, I was at a barbecue
1:06:38SPEAKERwith a whole bunch of huge computer nerds last weekend.
1:06:41SPEAKERAnd one of the conversations that I had multiple times was,
1:06:44SPEAKERshould I clock my memory down right now?
1:06:48SPEAKERAnd the consistent answer was,
1:06:51SPEAKERyeah, it doesn't seem like it hurts.
1:06:53SPEAKER- Yeah, it definitely can't hurt.
1:06:54SPEAKERI tend to feel like if you're running the speed on the box
1:06:57SPEAKERor even more to the point, if you're running XMP
1:06:59SPEAKERor what's the AMD equivalent?
1:07:01SPEAKER- Expo.
1:07:02SPEAKER- Expo, like if you're running what's,
1:07:03SPEAKERif you're running the exact settings on the box,
1:07:08SPEAKERyou're probably fine.
1:07:09SPEAKER- Probably fine.
1:07:10SPEAKER- You're probably fine, but I would not push past that.
1:07:13SPEAKER- Probably fine.
1:07:14SPEAKER- You probably don't want to kill your RAM.
1:07:16SPEAKER- No, this is a bad time to kill your RAM.
1:07:19SPEAKER- We have time for a couple more.
1:07:20SPEAKER- We can do one or two more, yeah.
1:07:23SPEAKER- Okay, Mono, it's mostly a question for you.
1:07:27SPEAKERI have Carvana scheduled to pick up my old ICE Kona
1:07:31SPEAKERand drop off a 2024 IONIQ 5
1:07:33SPEAKERwith 20,000 miles on it in just a few days.
1:07:36SPEAKERMy first EV.
1:07:38SPEAKERAny first time EV owner suggestions generally
1:07:40SPEAKERand IONIQ 5 impressions if you're still driving it?
1:07:43SPEAKER- I still love it, it's great.
1:07:46SPEAKERThe thing I would say is before you do your,
1:07:48SPEAKERdon't stress out too much about battery and battery
1:07:51SPEAKERmaintenance, the software in the cars
1:07:52SPEAKERis generally pretty good.
1:07:54SPEAKERIt's maybe worth getting a 12 volt jumper.
1:07:58SPEAKERYou're probably okay, but you never know how people
1:08:00SPEAKERran that before and the Hyundai's and Kia's
1:08:04SPEAKERboth have problems with what's called the ICCU,
1:08:07SPEAKERwhich is the thing that turns the high voltage battery
1:08:11SPEAKERon and off, basically, and that's powered by the 12 volt.
1:08:15SPEAKEROne of the problems you can have with that
1:08:16SPEAKERis the 12 volt battery kind of sucks.
1:08:18SPEAKERThey put in these 'cause it doesn't get a lot of load,
1:08:20SPEAKERso they tend to die before you would expect
1:08:22SPEAKERin a comparable ICE car.
1:08:24SPEAKERThe other thing is that this ICCU thing can blow up
1:08:27SPEAKERand then you have to take the car to the,
1:08:28SPEAKERthe car has to be towed to the dealer
1:08:30SPEAKERand they have to replace it and it's a whole,
1:08:32SPEAKERit's a whole thing.
1:08:35SPEAKERThe other thing I would say is,
1:08:36SPEAKERwe've talked about it before, but a better route planner,
1:08:38SPEAKERABRP is the app for planning your route,
1:08:44SPEAKERso you're like a longer than one charge drive,
1:08:48SPEAKERso you can go in, you can put in and say,
1:08:50SPEAKERlike when I went to pick up the dog yesterday,
1:08:52SPEAKERI put where we were going,
1:08:53SPEAKERI said we were driving back on the same day,
1:08:55SPEAKERit was like, yeah, you're gonna have to charge
1:08:56SPEAKERbefore you get back, you're gonna roll in with 5% battery,
1:08:59SPEAKERand it does, it both tracks the status,
1:09:03SPEAKERyou have to pay for our service, which I turn on and off
1:09:06SPEAKERwhen we're gonna do road trips,
1:09:08SPEAKERbut it will tell you which chargers have availability
1:09:11SPEAKERon a moment-to-moment basis,
1:09:13SPEAKERit tracks things like current weather conditions,
1:09:16SPEAKERso if you're driving upwind,
1:09:18SPEAKERyou're gonna have less mileage
1:09:19SPEAKERthan if you're driving downwind.
1:09:21SPEAKERIf it's hot, you get better mileage than if it's cold.
1:09:25SPEAKERYeah, you don't have to consider this,
1:09:27SPEAKERbut it's one of those things that having this
1:09:31SPEAKERwill mean that you spend a little bit less time
1:09:32SPEAKERsitting at chargers and a little more time
1:09:34SPEAKERgetting where you wanna be.
1:09:36SPEAKERSo for example, when we're driving down south
1:09:39SPEAKERin the summertime and I'm like,
1:09:40SPEAKERokay, it's 45 degrees cooler on the coast
1:09:44SPEAKERthan it is in the valley,
1:09:46SPEAKERis it gonna be better for me to drive in the valley,
1:09:48SPEAKERin the coast, even though it's a little bit longer
1:09:50SPEAKERthan it is to take the valley route down five,
1:09:52SPEAKERwhere everybody goes 10 miles an hour faster,
1:09:55SPEAKERand it will do the math for you on,
1:09:58SPEAKERis it faster to take the shorter route
1:10:00SPEAKERwhere everybody drives faster so you get less mileage
1:10:03SPEAKERthan it is to take the coastal route
1:10:04SPEAKERwhere you're probably not running the air conditioner
1:10:05SPEAKERas hard all the time and everybody's going 60 miles an hour
1:10:08SPEAKERinstead of 80 miles an hour,
1:10:10SPEAKERand you can math the whole thing out so you know exactly,
1:10:14SPEAKERand I will say, on like 500-mile-plus drives,
1:10:18SPEAKERit has been unbelievably accurate in how it does,
1:10:22SPEAKERassuming you put in the stats of your car and stuff, right?
1:10:25SPEAKER- Much to consider.
1:10:28SPEAKER- The other answer, having been now five years
1:10:32SPEAKERinto EV ownership, is actually no,
1:10:36SPEAKERyou don't have to consider,
1:10:36SPEAKER'cause last night, I didn't do this
1:10:38SPEAKERwhen we drove up north yesterday,
1:10:40SPEAKERand I just, when we were driving back,
1:10:42SPEAKERI was like, "Oh, we're not gonna make it back.
1:10:43SPEAKER"We gotta charge someplace.
1:10:44SPEAKER"Can you find a charger someplace between here and there?"
1:10:46SPEAKERAnd then we found one next to an In-N-Out
1:10:48SPEAKERand one got burgers while the car charged, and it was fine.
1:10:50SPEAKER- All right, yeah.
1:10:52SPEAKER- It's a lot easier now than it was
1:10:53SPEAKERwhen we first started talking about this four years ago,
1:10:55SPEAKERfour or five years ago.
1:10:59SPEAKER- I think I have spiritually fully come around,
1:11:01SPEAKERnot that I'm in the market for a car at the moment,
1:11:03SPEAKERbut I think I have finally internalized the fact
1:11:05SPEAKERthat I will never own another five-speed,
1:11:08SPEAKERand then-- - I can't imagine
1:11:09SPEAKERever buying another ICE car at this point.
1:11:11SPEAKER- By the time I am ready to get a car at some point
1:11:13SPEAKERin the indeterminate future, it's gonna have to be an EV,
1:11:16SPEAKERbecause the advantages are just undeniable at this point.
1:11:19SPEAKER- Just even with the problems that some of them have
1:11:22SPEAKERwith weird components that just maybe aren't great
1:11:24SPEAKERor don't stand up to stress over time,
1:11:27SPEAKERyou're still gonna spend way less
1:11:28SPEAKERkeeping an EV running than an ICE car.
1:11:30SPEAKER- That's what it is, it's the lack of maintenance
1:11:32SPEAKERand the offset on gas, 'cause the other thing,
1:11:37SPEAKERmy deeply held life goal at this point
1:11:39SPEAKERis to have solar and a cool compact EV
1:11:43SPEAKERwith a solid-state battery, 'cause that's the other thing,
1:11:45SPEAKERis that it seems like solid-state batteries
1:11:47SPEAKERare coming relatively quickly.
1:11:49SPEAKER- It seems faster than I would have expected.
1:11:52SPEAKERTo give context, we drove 300 miles yesterday.
1:11:56SPEAKERI filled up with about 30 miles to go on the drive.
1:12:01SPEAKERI went to 80%, 'cause I didn't wait
1:12:03SPEAKERthe extra 20 minutes to go to 100, and it cost $22.
1:12:08SPEAKERSo an equivalent amount of gas in the cars
1:12:11SPEAKERthat I've had up to that point
1:12:12SPEAKERwould have been 80 bucks, I think, so.
1:12:14SPEAKER- Pretty good, that's pretty good.
1:12:16SPEAKERAnd if you have solar, your gas comes out of the sky.
1:12:20SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look, that would be nice.
1:12:22SPEAKERI gotta get a new roof before I can get solar.
1:12:24SPEAKERLet me tell you about my GoFundMe.
1:12:25SPEAKER- Okay, last one, I'm just gonna turn my speakers up
1:12:29SPEAKERand play them toward the microphone for this from Scoot.
1:12:33SPEAKERI know it's been a while since you've ranked startup sounds,
1:12:35SPEAKERbut whose insane idea was it to make this
1:12:38SPEAKERthe default ICQ startup sound?
1:12:40SPEAKER- Hold on, before you play this,
1:12:41SPEAKERdid you listen to it yet?
1:12:43SPEAKER- Well, yes, but I also remember it from,
1:12:45SPEAKERI was an avid ICQ user.
1:12:47SPEAKER- I was too, but I must have turned it off immediately
1:12:49SPEAKERand used Trillium for the last 10 years I used ICQ,
1:12:52SPEAKERso I don't have any idea what this is gonna be.
1:12:54SPEAKER- Oh, wait, you didn't listen to it yet.
1:12:56SPEAKER- I didn't listen to it. - Oh, wow.
1:12:57SPEAKEROkay, well, here we go then.
1:12:59SPEAKER- I'm excited.
1:13:01SPEAKER(horn blowing)
1:13:03SPEAKERIt's just a horn?
1:13:04SPEAKER- It is just a horn, it's like a foghorn.
1:13:07SPEAKER- What the hell were they thinking?
1:13:08SPEAKER- I don't know.
1:13:10SPEAKER- It's not friendly, it's not inviting, it's not welcoming,
1:13:12SPEAKERit doesn't make me happy to turn this on,
1:13:14SPEAKERit makes me tense up, and like, why, why?
1:13:19SPEAKER- Why indeed, why indeed? - F tier.
1:13:21SPEAKER- Okay, all right. - F tier, Brad,
1:13:22SPEAKERabsolute F tier.
1:13:23SPEAKER- I mean, for people who didn't use ICQ,
1:13:26SPEAKERI'm a little more excited to let you hear
1:13:28SPEAKERwhat the message sound sounded like.
1:13:30SPEAKER- Oh, the message sound's an all-timer.
1:13:31SPEAKER- I know you know what that one is,
1:13:33SPEAKERI'm just gonna play it, give me a second before you react,
1:13:36SPEAKERI'm just gonna play it a couple of times.
1:13:37SPEAKER- Okay.
1:13:38SPEAKER(horn blowing)
1:13:43SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:13:44SPEAKER- So many people wanna talk to me.
1:13:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:13:47SPEAKER- My friends are out there.
1:13:49SPEAKER- Why did they make the message sound say uh-oh?
1:13:52SPEAKER- We started Ars Technica on ICQ.
1:13:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:13:55SPEAKER- Like, that's the only way I talked to those guys
1:13:56SPEAKERfor years.
1:13:57SPEAKER- I think it was the first instant messenger
1:13:58SPEAKERof any real import.
1:14:00SPEAKERIt was definitely big before AIM got big.
1:14:04SPEAKER- And even once AIM got way bigger than ICQ,
1:14:07SPEAKERthe real people, nobody used AIM.
1:14:11SPEAKERIt wasn't until I came to work at Future
1:14:13SPEAKERand worked in a corporate environment
1:14:14SPEAKERwhere people were like, "Yeah, you gotta have AIM."
1:14:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it was also a regional thing.
1:14:19SPEAKERI think ICQ continued to be really big
1:14:21SPEAKERin like maybe Eastern Europe, I want to say,
1:14:24SPEAKERor like some other territories.
1:14:25SPEAKERICQ continued to be huge.
1:14:27SPEAKER- The hyping bastard Quake scene,
1:14:30SPEAKERQuake League scene was all ICQ and IRC, so.
1:14:35SPEAKER- Yep, yep.
1:14:35SPEAKERDid you hit, you had to hit control enter
1:14:37SPEAKERto send a message in ICQ rather than just enter?
1:14:39SPEAKERIs that the case?
1:14:40SPEAKER- I think that was an option, but probably,
1:14:42SPEAKERyeah, that seems right.
1:14:43SPEAKER- That's some real ancient UI shit
1:14:45SPEAKERin my brain floating back up.
1:14:47SPEAKERI remember, I still remember my ICQ number, do you?
1:14:49SPEAKER- 1129645.
1:14:51SPEAKER- Oh, see, I wouldn't say mine out loud
1:14:53SPEAKERbecause I've still got some sneaking suspicion
1:14:54SPEAKERthat it could be used against me if I revealed it.
1:14:57SPEAKER- Oh.
1:14:58SPEAKER- I don't know why that could possibly be the case, but.
1:15:01SPEAKER- I'm clean.
1:15:02SPEAKER- How many digits was that?
1:15:03SPEAKERI didn't count, was that seven digits?
1:15:05SPEAKER- Seven digits.
1:15:05SPEAKER- Wow, man, mine was eight.
1:15:08SPEAKERShit.
1:15:09SPEAKER- Yeah, seven digits.
1:15:09SPEAKERI had a five digit one, but I lost the password on it.
1:15:13SPEAKER- Man.
1:15:13SPEAKER- Or somebody hacked it, I don't remember.
1:15:14SPEAKER- You probably could have sold that for like money.
1:15:17SPEAKER- Could have gotten $30 for it, I bet.
1:15:19SPEAKER- Probably more than that.
1:15:21SPEAKERThe low digit ICQ number was pretty desirable.
1:15:24SPEAKER- That's true.
1:15:25SPEAKERLook, they assigned, they looked deep into our heart
1:15:27SPEAKERand they assigned us a number based on the order
1:15:29SPEAKERin which we joined, so.
1:15:30SPEAKER- Yep, yep, the tale as old as time.
1:15:33SPEAKERAnyway, yep, those are the ICQ sounds.
1:15:35SPEAKERThanks for writing it.
1:15:36SPEAKER- So I guess now you do shift enter on Discord
1:15:40SPEAKERto do multiple lines.
1:15:42SPEAKER- Yes, oh, wait.
1:15:43SPEAKER- To do line breaks.
1:15:44SPEAKER- Has that not always been the case?
1:15:46SPEAKERI've been doing that for years.
1:15:47SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, I'm just saying they flipped it.
1:15:49SPEAKERSo instead of having to do control enter to send,
1:15:52SPEAKERyou did shift, now it's enter by default to send,
1:15:55SPEAKERbut if you want to do line separations
1:15:58SPEAKERor something like that in a Discord message,
1:16:01SPEAKERyou have to press a modifier, so.
1:16:03SPEAKER- Maybe that's why ICQ did it that way.
1:16:05SPEAKERI think they did, anyway.
1:16:06SPEAKER- I don't think if you could do line breaks on ICQ,
1:16:08SPEAKERI don't remember.
1:16:09SPEAKERI stopped using the main ICQ client probably in 2000
1:16:13SPEAKERand switched to Trillion.
1:16:14SPEAKERAs soon as Trillion was out,
1:16:16SPEAKERI started using that exclusively
1:16:18SPEAKERand then I switched to Pigeon when that became a thing, so.
1:16:21SPEAKER- So here's a fun thing.
1:16:22SPEAKER- I love a fun thing.
1:16:23SPEAKER- If I search my ICQ number on my NAS with everything.
1:16:26SPEAKER- Oh, boy.
1:16:27SPEAKER- I find a file name, which is my number.dat,
1:16:30SPEAKERwhich I believe is all of my ICQ logs.
1:16:32SPEAKER- Oh, Brad, that's your incriminating data right there.
1:16:34SPEAKERYou gotta encrypt that thing, just don't let that get out.
1:16:37SPEAKER- This is a 19 megabyte file dated from October 31st, 2001.
1:16:44SPEAKERI've gotta find a way to read that file.
1:16:46SPEAKER- I'm wildly curious to hear how they see what's in there.
1:16:50SPEAKER- I've got to find out if there's a way to decrypt
1:16:52SPEAKERor otherwise render ICQ logs out of a dat file.
1:16:55SPEAKER- Dear Abit.
1:16:57SPEAKER- Yeah, that's, I don't know.
1:16:59SPEAKERI was in college at this point, it was probably a bit more.
1:17:02SPEAKER- Who's gonna go to the kegger tonight?
1:17:04SPEAKER- Perhaps a bit more scandalous than asking people
1:17:07SPEAKERabout motherboards a bit anyway.
1:17:09SPEAKER- Are there girls there?
1:17:10SPEAKER- Maybe.
1:17:11SPEAKER- Oh, boy.
1:17:12SPEAKER- Okay, anyway, end of podcast.
1:17:14SPEAKER- See, I knew my wife before ICQ existed,
1:17:17SPEAKERso I'm clean here.
1:17:19SPEAKEROn that note, this is as good a time as any to wrap it up.
1:17:24SPEAKERThanks, everybody, for writing in.
1:17:25SPEAKERAgain, the email address is techpod@content.town.
1:17:28SPEAKERWe still have a lot of questions in the queue,
1:17:30SPEAKERso I think probably the Patreon episode
1:17:33SPEAKERis gonna be more queues turned into A is my vote,
1:17:36SPEAKERmaybe with a side of a puppy story.
1:17:40SPEAKERBut if you wanna find out how you can support the show,
1:17:43SPEAKERif you wanna find out how you get into the Discord
1:17:44SPEAKERto send questions into the void
1:17:46SPEAKERof the Question Seeking Answers channel,
1:17:48SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:17:51SPEAKERIt's five bucks a month.
1:17:52SPEAKERThat's like, I don't know, it's not much these days.
1:17:55SPEAKERIt's like you can get a thimble of creamer
1:17:57SPEAKERat Starbucks for that.
1:17:59SPEAKERYou can get a dirty Dr. Pepper at all the fast food joints
1:18:03SPEAKERif you want that creamer put into your Dr. Pepper.
1:18:06SPEAKER- I don't like this phenomenon
1:18:07SPEAKERof people talking about dirty sodas.
1:18:09SPEAKER- It's foul.
1:18:10SPEAKER- It's like possibly the worst branding
1:18:11SPEAKERI have ever encountered.
1:18:12SPEAKER- I'm gonna okay boomer myself here
1:18:14SPEAKERand just say no, no, sir, thank you.
1:18:18SPEAKERBut yeah, again, it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:18:20SPEAKERWe appreciate the support.
1:18:21SPEAKERWe're listener-supported.
1:18:22SPEAKERWe don't take money from advertisers,
1:18:23SPEAKERso you are the only people we work for,
1:18:26SPEAKERand we appreciate each and every one of you.
1:18:28SPEAKERBut we especially appreciate our associate
1:18:31SPEAKERand executive producer tier patrons
1:18:32SPEAKERon this, the last episode of the month.
1:18:34SPEAKERSo starting with the associate producers,
1:18:37SPEAKERthat shout-outs to Thomas Hsieh, Jad Rita,
1:18:40SPEAKERP. Tibbs, Steve Lin, Nathan Phelps,
1:18:43SPEAKERBen Tolman, Tom Hilton, Andre M. Burke, P.E.,
1:18:49SPEAKERAndrew Dicey-Schuldeis, Alejandro Navarro,
1:18:52SPEAKERMatt Walker, parentheses Walkman8080,
1:18:54SPEAKERSanchik Kumar, Felix Kramer, Kerp,
1:18:58SPEAKERBrutal Kerfuffle, and Eric, thank you all so much.
1:19:02SPEAKERAnd thanks to our executive producer tier patrons,
1:19:05SPEAKERincluding James Kamik, David Allen,
1:19:09SPEAKEROctothorpe Bunny for Work, Jordan Lippett,
1:19:12SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, InfelicitousRips,
1:19:14SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:19:17SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:19:18SPEAKER- Thank you.
1:19:19SPEAKER- Now I'm gonna go and take a dog for a walk,
1:19:23SPEAKERand I will see you. - Good luck.
1:19:26SPEAKER- Probably don't need a lot of luck.
1:19:27SPEAKERI'm guessing walking a dog is pretty straightforward.
1:19:29SPEAKER- I mean, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you, man,
1:19:33SPEAKERyeah, it should be fine.
1:19:35SPEAKERI expect no danger, no excitement,
1:19:39SPEAKERjust some sniffing and maybe a little pooping, so.
1:19:42SPEAKER- You just said that like an AI chatbot.
1:19:45SPEAKERNo danger, no excitement, just some pooping.
1:19:47SPEAKERLike, let's get out of here.
1:19:49SPEAKER- Look, man, I didn't say,
1:19:51SPEAKERyou look, Brad, that's a really fantastic observation.
1:19:53SPEAKERI've never had anybody observe anything
1:19:55SPEAKERquite that clear for me before.
1:19:58SPEAKERIt's very helpful and very insightful.
1:20:01SPEAKERYou're easily the smartest person I've ever talked to,
1:20:04SPEAKERand I talk to several billion people a day,
1:20:05SPEAKERso thanks for your contribution.
1:20:08SPEAKER- No filler, no chitchat, just the end of this podcast.
1:20:11SPEAKER- We will be back next week.
1:20:13SPEAKERAs always, please consider the environment
1:20:14SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.