355: Spindly, Greebly

00:00SPEAKER- Brad, one of the longest serving pieces of tech

00:03SPEAKERin my house died last week.

00:05SPEAKER- Oh man, that's, hmm, how many years really?

00:08SPEAKERWell, hang on.

00:09SPEAKER- Yeah?

00:09SPEAKER- I already know what it is.

00:10SPEAKERI was gonna play a guessing game with you

00:12SPEAKERand say how old is it and I'll try to figure out what it is,

00:14SPEAKERbut spoiler, I know what it is, so.

00:17SPEAKER- My coffee scale let loose the coil.

00:20SPEAKER- Oh man.

00:21SPEAKER- I know, it was 15 years old.

00:22SPEAKERI bought it in-- - Only 15?

00:24SPEAKERWait, you don't have anything older

00:25SPEAKERthan 15 years serving in your house?

00:28SPEAKER- I said one of.

00:29SPEAKER- Okay.

00:30SPEAKER- Yeah, look, I have a microwave oven that's older.

00:33SPEAKERI have a, wow, this is, like going around

00:38SPEAKERand finding what the oldest piece of tech in the house is

00:40SPEAKERwould probably be an interesting,

00:41SPEAKERwhen do we buy those receivers?

00:42SPEAKERThat's probably up there.

00:43SPEAKER- That's a fun challenge.

00:45SPEAKERWait, do we have the same?

00:46SPEAKEROh yeah, you do have--

00:46SPEAKER- We have that same Sony receiver, yeah.

00:48SPEAKER- I think I got mine in 2012.

00:50SPEAKER- Yeah, that's about when I got mine.

00:51SPEAKER- That's getting up there.

00:52SPEAKERI think these Cambridge SoundWorks speakers

00:54SPEAKERare probably always gonna be it for me.

00:56SPEAKER- Oh yeah, your Cambridge SoundWorks far and away.

00:59SPEAKEREasily at least 25 years old, a little more, 26, 27.

01:03SPEAKER- I think my Sony 90s TV,

01:05SPEAKERbut that hasn't had continuous service.

01:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know, do CRTs count?

01:11SPEAKERThose are like a vintage, that's like something you came in,

01:13SPEAKEReven though it is old, you came into it recently,

01:15SPEAKERso I don't know if that's quite the same thing.

01:16SPEAKERLike something you bought new and are still using,

01:18SPEAKERI think, is the spirit of the question.

01:20SPEAKER- I went back, I went to my storage unit last week,

01:24SPEAKERand I realized I had a 19-inch Sharp in there

01:26SPEAKERthat's just been aging this whole time.

01:28SPEAKERI had completely forgotten about it.

01:30SPEAKERIt was way back in the back.

01:31SPEAKERSo anyway, yeah, the scale died.

01:35SPEAKERI somehow managed to get coffee into it.

01:38SPEAKERIt capillary actioned around the edge of my brewer,

01:45SPEAKERand up and around and over and down,

01:47SPEAKERand when I picked it up, water poured out of the,

01:49SPEAKERcoffee poured out, technically, I guess, of the USB port,

01:52SPEAKERwhich was already a little hinky.

01:54SPEAKERLike it was one of those ones

01:55SPEAKERwhere I had to hold the micro USB

01:56SPEAKERin the exact right position for it to charge.

01:59SPEAKERAnd anyway-

02:01SPEAKER- It already had USB charge on it?

02:03SPEAKER15 years old, like that sounds early for-

02:06SPEAKER- Micro USB charge.

02:08SPEAKER- That seems early for putting USB charge ports

02:10SPEAKERon non-computer devices,

02:12SPEAKERbut maybe that's been a thing for longer than I remember.

02:15SPEAKER- It was probably right after the EU,

02:18SPEAKERso it was a Hario, which is a Japanese brand,

02:20SPEAKERand it was probably right after the EU decision

02:23SPEAKERthat said anything that was rechargeable had to have USB.

02:25SPEAKER- Sure.

02:26SPEAKER- 'Cause it was micro,

02:28SPEAKERwhich would have been around like the rise of Android,

02:30SPEAKERlike it would have been like 2012, 2011, somewhere in there.

02:33SPEAKER- That checks out.

02:35SPEAKER- And yeah, so anyway, I took it apart,

02:37SPEAKERand I looked at it and I was like,

02:38SPEAKER"Okay, I can clean this up and probably make it work."

02:40SPEAKERBut then I have to re-solder the USB

02:42SPEAKERand a bunch of other things,

02:44SPEAKERand also I wanted to make coffee the next day.

02:46SPEAKERSo I ordered a Booku B-O-O-K-O-O scale Ultus,

02:52SPEAKERI think, from Amazon, who's here the next day.

02:56SPEAKERAnd it's real fancy, I think it's a Chinese knockoff

03:00SPEAKERof the fancy flow rate coffee scales

03:04SPEAKERthat does ratio brewing or flow rate brewing.

03:07SPEAKERYou can connect it to an app with Bluetooth.

03:09SPEAKERI'm sure there's an ESP32 in there.

03:13SPEAKERIt's smart, and I'm a little frustrated by it.

03:16SPEAKER- Oh, these are priced like real kitchen implements.

03:18SPEAKERThese are not, I was envisioning like 10 to $15

03:21SPEAKERfor a kitchen scale.

03:23SPEAKERThat's not what we're talking about here.

03:24SPEAKERKitchen scales aren't 10 or $15 anymore, sadly.

03:27SPEAKER- Well, at least some of them are.

03:29SPEAKERMaybe they're not worth having, though.

03:31SPEAKER- If you want a 10th of a gram precision,

03:33SPEAKERyou're buying a weed scale or a coffee scale.

03:36SPEAKERAnd I want a 10th of a gram is what you use for coffee.

03:39SPEAKERSo they ranged from like 70 to 100 bucks.

03:44SPEAKERWell, okay, they ranged from 70

03:45SPEAKERto more than I was going to pay.

03:47SPEAKERI think they got this one for 70.

03:49SPEAKERIt was on sale the other day with a coupon or something,

03:51SPEAKERsome business, and it's fine.

03:54SPEAKERIt does ratio brewing, which I like,

03:58SPEAKERbut it doesn't have labeled buttons.

04:04SPEAKERIt just has two kind of touch sensors on either side.

04:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm having a little hard time

04:08SPEAKERparsing the interface on this thing.

04:11SPEAKERIt's got graphic design on it.

04:13SPEAKER- No, no, that's clear.

04:14SPEAKERYou can see the electronics through the top shelf,

04:17SPEAKERwhich I do.

04:18SPEAKERThat's why I've got that one 'cause I was like,

04:19SPEAKERthis looks cool.

04:20SPEAKERThis is very futurey and cool.

04:21SPEAKERIt's also small, which I like.

04:23SPEAKERIt's real fast, the registration on the temperature impact

04:27SPEAKERis very fast, which is good.

04:30SPEAKERIt has three modes.

04:32SPEAKEROne is just normal scale,

04:33SPEAKERbut in that normal mode, I want scale plus timer

04:36SPEAKER'cause I use the timer when I'm brewing coffee

04:38SPEAKERto figure out whether I'm going too fast or too slow.

04:42SPEAKERIt does flow rate, which I didn't have a stand for

04:44SPEAKERuntil I 3D printed one last night.

04:47SPEAKERSo now I can have just the brewer on the scale

04:51SPEAKERand not have the, just the carafe on the scale

04:55SPEAKERand not the brewer.

04:55SPEAKER- Did you design that stand or download it?

04:58SPEAKER- I downloaded it from the internet.

05:00SPEAKERLike, look, here's the dark secret of 3D printing, Brad,

05:04SPEAKERis that if I like this and I end up using this

05:08SPEAKERon the day-to-day, I'm gonna design one that I really like

05:11SPEAKERrather than use this one.

05:13SPEAKERBut when I could just load it up my phone last time,

05:15SPEAKERbe like, hey, I should print a brewer,

05:16SPEAKERand then four hours later it was done.

05:18SPEAKERI was like, I'm just hitting the button.

05:22SPEAKEROkay, so it also has a bunch of auto features,

05:26SPEAKERwhich you can turn on automatically.

05:28SPEAKERAnd like, the controls are weird,

05:30SPEAKER'cause like if you wanna change it from grams to ounces,

05:32SPEAKERyou tap the left button eight times.

05:36SPEAKER- Okay.

05:36SPEAKER- Which is kind of a crazy--

05:38SPEAKER- That's a lot of interaction

05:39SPEAKERfor something you're probably gonna do often.

05:42SPEAKER- Well, it turns out usually in the old scale,

05:45SPEAKERI had to unscrew the back to change it

05:47SPEAKERfrom grams to ounces.

05:48SPEAKER- Wait, that's worse.

05:49SPEAKER- So usually I just used my phone

05:51SPEAKERto convert grams to ounces when I needed ounces.

05:54SPEAKERI need to get, the thing I realized is

05:57SPEAKERwe're a two-scale kitchen, right?

06:00SPEAKER'Cause like this scale is good for up to three kilograms,

06:02SPEAKERwhich is quite a bit.

06:03SPEAKERWhat I really need also is like a baking scale

06:06SPEAKERthat has pretty good precision

06:08SPEAKERand has a removable eyeball,

06:11SPEAKERlike a removable gauge thing

06:15SPEAKERso that I can have like a big giant bowl on the scale

06:18SPEAKERand then still be able to see the numbers

06:19SPEAKER'cause this one's too small

06:21SPEAKERto do like a big bowl of flour on or something.

06:24SPEAKERAnyway, it has this auto mode that's inexplicable

06:28SPEAKERand every time I update the software

06:29SPEAKERon the firmware on the scale,

06:31SPEAKERwhich is a whole other thing I don't even think I need,

06:33SPEAKERI don't like having scales that have firmware, I don't think.

06:37SPEAKEREvery time I do that,

06:38SPEAKERit changes the way the auto mode works.

06:41SPEAKERSo like when it's in the auto mode before,

06:43SPEAKERyou'd put the thing on it,

06:45SPEAKERyou'd put the brewer on it and it would tear

06:47SPEAKERand then you'd pour some water in

06:49SPEAKERand then after a minute or two,

06:50SPEAKERit would tear again for no apparent reason.

06:52SPEAKERSo it's completely useless for the way I brew coffee.

06:55SPEAKERThe new one seems to work better

06:57SPEAKER'cause you can set it to only tear when stuff comes off.

07:00SPEAKERBut like, I'm happy to learn how to,

07:03SPEAKERI'm working my coffee flow around the machine,

07:05SPEAKERnot making the machine work around my coffee, I guess.

07:09SPEAKER- Man should not have to fight with his kitchen scale

07:11SPEAKERjust to make a cup of coffee.

07:13SPEAKER- You're damn right.

07:15SPEAKER(upbeat music)

07:43SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made in Tech Pod, I'm Will.

07:46SPEAKER- I am Brad.

07:47SPEAKERThere's one other thing I was gonna say about the scale

07:48SPEAKERas I gaze at it,

07:49SPEAKERwhich is that they have integrated Chinese characters

07:52SPEAKERinto their company logo on this scale.

07:55SPEAKER- Yeah, right.

07:56SPEAKER- And I'm kind of way into that.

07:58SPEAKER- Like the whole aesthetic is real good.

08:00SPEAKER- Like let's just make all of our,

08:01SPEAKERlet's make everything look like Blade Runner.

08:02SPEAKERLet's just realize the Blade Runner future.

08:05SPEAKER- Literally, I looked at it and I was like,

08:08SPEAKER"Oh right, this is Blade Runner, I should buy this."

08:10SPEAKER- If we're gonna get the shitty dystopian future,

08:13SPEAKERcan we at least get the cool aesthetics

08:14SPEAKERthat go along with that?

08:16SPEAKER- Yeah, it's weird.

08:17SPEAKERSo I bought the Themis Ultra is what it's called.

08:20SPEAKERAnd like I said, this is a thing that knocks off

08:23SPEAKERfour or five other scales that have been around

08:25SPEAKERfor a long time at a third of the price basically, so.

08:31SPEAKER- A lot of that going around.

08:31SPEAKERThere's a lot of stuff.

08:33SPEAKERAnd I mean, we talked about the HODO power tools last week.

08:37SPEAKERLike there's a lot of like,

08:39SPEAKERI don't wanna say race to the bottom stuff necessarily,

08:42SPEAKER'cause I think these are generally pretty good,

08:44SPEAKERbut like, and knockoff also sounds,

08:47SPEAKERit's hard to describe these in normal language

08:49SPEAKERwithout sounding like you're denigrating them in some way,

08:52SPEAKER'cause I think most of them are like probably doing fine

08:54SPEAKERfor their price class.

08:56SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, I mean, like, look,

08:59SPEAKERthis is what happened with Anker.

09:01SPEAKERAnker came in and kind of took over the cable

09:04SPEAKERand USB battery and stuff space.

09:07SPEAKER- But then they went and inflated themselves

09:09SPEAKERback up to previous levels, you know,

09:11SPEAKERlike their stuff has gotten pretty pricey

09:13SPEAKERat the top end now, but you know what I mean?

09:15SPEAKERThese are like facsimiles of very high,

09:17SPEAKERmuch higher end devices than you used to see knockoffs for.

09:20SPEAKER- That's true.

09:21SPEAKERAnd it's happened in 3D printing

09:23SPEAKERand laser cutting actually a lot.

09:25SPEAKERSo like the laser cutters,

09:27SPEAKERthe Chinese laser cutters went from being a thing you got

09:31SPEAKERif you kind of didn't like to have functioning eyes,

09:34SPEAKERor if you wanted to have a laser cutter

09:35SPEAKERthat was gonna last for like 100 hours or 150 hours,

09:39SPEAKERto the market leaders,

09:41SPEAKERalmost in like the space of 10 years, basically.

09:46SPEAKERSo yeah, anyway, it's interesting.

09:48SPEAKERLike it's a weird product.

09:49SPEAKERI don't know how I feel about it.

09:51SPEAKERI'm not sure if I'm gonna keep it.

09:52SPEAKERI'm still in the return window,

09:54SPEAKERbut I do like the design on the top.

09:56SPEAKERThey did a nice job with the kind of like,

09:59SPEAKERif I can figure out how to get the software

10:01SPEAKERto do what I want,

10:02SPEAKERit's gonna be exactly what I was looking for for ages.

10:07SPEAKERAnd I did 3D print the flow rate stand.

10:09SPEAKERSo I'll let you know how that goes next week.

10:12SPEAKER- Cool, fabrication.

10:13SPEAKER- Fabrication, it's a...

10:16SPEAKERSo you were out a little bit over the last couple of months

10:19SPEAKERand we had some questions left over from that time period

10:22SPEAKERthat were explicitly Brad questions.

10:27SPEAKERWe had a huge crop of questions last week

10:29SPEAKERwhen we did the questions episode.

10:31SPEAKER- Yes, we've got a bunch of extras there too.

10:33SPEAKER- So we're digging back into the question well.

10:35SPEAKERWe have, just as a point of order

10:38SPEAKERfor the next couple of weeks,

10:40SPEAKERthis is the time that if we're gonna watch "General Magic"

10:43SPEAKERwhile you're off for "Nextlander" next week,

10:45SPEAKERI think is the plan.

10:46SPEAKER- I swear I'm never gonna call it,

10:47SPEAKERI called it "Practical Magic" yet again last night

10:49SPEAKERwhen I proposed this.

10:50SPEAKERI'm never gonna stop calling it "Practical Magic."

10:53SPEAKER- Look, when I went to see "Spider-Man with the Kiddo"

10:55SPEAKERthe other day, there was a trailer for "Practical Magic 2."

10:57SPEAKER- Wow.

10:59SPEAKER- A 30 to 40 year sequel to a movie from the '90s.

11:02SPEAKERWhat if I show up next week having watched "Practical Magic?"

11:06SPEAKER- Then we'll talk about "Practical Magic."

11:07SPEAKERI love that movie, that's great.

11:08SPEAKER- I've never seen it,

11:09SPEAKERbut I'd much rather watch "General Magic."

11:12SPEAKER- I mean, "General Magic."

11:13SPEAKERSo "General Magic" is the story of "General Magic," right?

11:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so I didn't realize until,

11:18SPEAKERthis is again, to be clear,

11:19SPEAKERthis is for next week's episode

11:20SPEAKERwhere I think it's just good to give people a heads up

11:22SPEAKERthat we're gonna be watching a thing for next week.

11:24SPEAKERBut this is a documentary about, yes,

11:27SPEAKERa company also called "General Magic."

11:28SPEAKERAnd I did not realize that was the case,

11:30SPEAKERthat the company was the same name as the documentary.

11:33SPEAKER- My assumption is there will also be "Midnight Margaritas."

11:35SPEAKER- Wait, what?

11:37SPEAKER- That's the famous scene from "Practical Magic,"

11:39SPEAKERwhen they get "Midnight Margaritas" and dance.

11:41SPEAKER- Wow, there's a whole cultural education

11:44SPEAKERI have yet to undergo, I guess.

11:47SPEAKER- But yeah, I'm excited about "General Magic"

11:49SPEAKER'cause it's one of those places, it's like Xerox PARC,

11:52SPEAKERwhere a lot of the underpinnings

11:54SPEAKERof the modern age took place there.

11:56SPEAKER- This is pretty much the limits

11:57SPEAKERof what I know about this documentary

11:59SPEAKERand the company that it's based on

12:01SPEAKERis that it was founded by a bunch of former

12:03SPEAKERoriginal Macintosh team people.

12:05SPEAKERLike I'm looking right now at the list of founders

12:07SPEAKERand it's Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld.

12:09SPEAKERLike those are pretty much some of the biggest names

12:12SPEAKERaround the original Macintosh that you will ever see.

12:15SPEAKER- It's a lot of the initial Apple diaspora folks

12:21SPEAKERleft and went there.

12:22SPEAKERIt's kind of Rivian to Apple's Tesla.

12:25SPEAKER- Right, and it sounds like they are indeed

12:26SPEAKERa lot of very foundational technology

12:28SPEAKERthat we kind of take for granted

12:30SPEAKERthat's everywhere these days.

12:31SPEAKER- Like touch screens was one of the things

12:33SPEAKERthat they were really excited about.

12:35SPEAKER- Should I tease it by reading off this list

12:37SPEAKERon Wikipedia real quick?

12:38SPEAKER- You can.

12:39SPEAKER- The company developed precursors to USB, software modems,

12:42SPEAKERsmall touch screens, touch screen controller

12:44SPEAKERintegrated circuits, ASICs, multimedia email,

12:48SPEAKERnetworked games, streaming TV and early e-commerce.

12:52SPEAKER- Yeah, they were just a well-funded technology think tank

12:54SPEAKERback in the days when that was a positive thing

12:56SPEAKERinstead of a negative.

12:57SPEAKER- Yes, so anyway, General Magic is the name of that

12:58SPEAKERdocumentary about that company

13:00SPEAKERand we are gonna check that out

13:02SPEAKERand talk about it next week.

13:03SPEAKERSo watch that ahead of time if you would like to keep up.

13:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I think what our AMC friends say

13:08SPEAKERis watch this space in this timeframe.

13:11SPEAKERSo anyway, but this week we're gonna go back

13:15SPEAKERand delve into the well of questions

13:16SPEAKERand get some more good, good questions out.

13:20SPEAKERBrad, you got anything queued up

13:21SPEAKERor you want me to vamp for a minute?

13:22SPEAKEROh, the email address I always say

13:25SPEAKERis techpod@content.town.

13:26SPEAKERYou can send an email there

13:27SPEAKERand we may or may not read on the show.

13:30SPEAKERTry to keep them short and to the point.

13:33SPEAKERWe love those.

13:34SPEAKER- Yeah, how about we start with a cake batter?

13:36SPEAKER- Okay.

13:37SPEAKER- I recently adopted a Casio watch,

13:40SPEAKERno smart technology, just a watch.

13:42SPEAKERHow do you feel about dumb tech,

13:44SPEAKERstuff that doesn't need an internet connection

13:45SPEAKERnor subscription to operate for decades?

13:49SPEAKER- I kinda like it, it turns out.

13:51SPEAKERI miss my scale that was dumb tech and didn't have a, yeah.

13:54SPEAKER- I started with this question exactly

13:56SPEAKERbecause of your scale and now,

13:57SPEAKERwell, I mean, how smart is the new one?

14:00SPEAKER- It's, I mean, it will continue working.

14:02SPEAKERYou don't need to use an app to make it work.

14:04SPEAKERSo it'll continue working indefinitely.

14:06SPEAKERMy feeling is that once I have it set up the way I want it,

14:08SPEAKERI'm probably never gonna touch the app again.

14:10SPEAKER- Sure.

14:11SPEAKER- But yeah, like it's neat

14:13SPEAKER'cause I can lock in the ratio for the,

14:17SPEAKERI can lock in the amount of beans that I brew,

14:19SPEAKERwhich is the same, it's always 25.2 or 0.3 grams.

14:22SPEAKERSo now I have a thing that'll tell me exactly

14:24SPEAKERwhat the ratio of brewing is,

14:25SPEAKERbut like, I don't know, I wouldn't, look, we'll see.

14:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:30SPEAKER- I could do wet brew versus dry brew with it.

14:32SPEAKERLike it seems nice, but I miss my old scale.

14:35SPEAKER- This is maybe not the most egregious example.

14:37SPEAKERWell, it is an egregious example.

14:38SPEAKERIt just didn't affect me that much.

14:39SPEAKERBut the first example that comes to mind for me

14:41SPEAKERis that we inherited an, this is hard to say,

14:44SPEAKERan ANOVA, Suvide thing, the company ANOVA.

14:48SPEAKER- You probably need an old Android phone

14:49SPEAKERto make that thing work now.

14:50SPEAKER- Right, so by the time we inherited it,

14:52SPEAKERthey were about six months away

14:53SPEAKERfrom intentionally end of lifing the app

14:56SPEAKERthat controls that thing

14:58SPEAKERand effectively rendering it useless.

15:00SPEAKERLike there was no supported company provided way

15:02SPEAKERto continue using that thing.

15:04SPEAKERNow I think somebody hacked together

15:07SPEAKERlike a Python control system for it

15:09SPEAKERthat could still technically talk to it,

15:10SPEAKERbut I just didn't bother even caring at that point.

15:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I have a couple of things like that.

15:16SPEAKERI have a digital, I bought that electric objects frame

15:19SPEAKERfrom Kickstarter when it was the first big photo frame.

15:23SPEAKERAnd then Jiffy bought them and then somebody bought Jiffy.

15:28SPEAKERAnd now that doesn't get, it doesn't work anymore

15:30SPEAKER'cause it required a service on the internet to work.

15:33SPEAKERBut somebody wrote a hacked firmware for it

15:36SPEAKERthat just you point your,

15:38SPEAKERyou point your firmware to a Flickr gallery.

15:41SPEAKERSo I still have a Flickr account with like 12 photos in it

15:43SPEAKERthat this thing cycles through, so.

15:46SPEAKERAlso people have done, like there's a nice in-between

15:50SPEAKERwhere when people have done, have bought enough of them

15:53SPEAKERand it's the right kind of people,

15:54SPEAKERthen you end up with weird hacked firmwares or solutions.

15:59SPEAKERI don't know that I would disassemble a sous vide cooker

16:02SPEAKERjust 'cause of the proximity to water and electricity.

16:05SPEAKERBut yeah, that's annoying.

16:06SPEAKERI'm sending you a link, Brad, that you should look at

16:09SPEAKERfor things that are analog and are dope.

16:12SPEAKERSomebody on, I was looking on Maker World last night.

16:16SPEAKERYou don't have to hand it to Bamboo

16:17SPEAKER'cause they have some problems right now.

16:19SPEAKERBut this popped up on my feed,

16:21SPEAKERon one of my feeds on my Glantz app.

16:25SPEAKERAnd it's a double, it's an Aliens double Casio wristwatch.

16:30SPEAKER- Was that a thing in Aliens?

16:31SPEAKERI don't remember there being a double wristwatch in Aliens.

16:34SPEAKER- One of the characters wears an Alien,

16:36SPEAKERa double wristwatch, an Alien, not an Aliens.

16:38SPEAKER- Oh, it's an Alien, really?

16:39SPEAKER- Alien, I believe.

16:40SPEAKER- Oh, I see it.

16:41SPEAKEROh, it's, Gorny Weaver is wearing that apparently.

16:44SPEAKERThat's, okay.

16:45SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, sure.

16:46SPEAKERSomebody seems to have made that basically.

16:48SPEAKERYou can make that and jam two of them onto your,

16:52SPEAKERyou can take the guts out of two Casio watches

16:55SPEAKERand jam them into this 3D printed band, which I love.

16:57SPEAKER- That's pretty eye-catching.

16:59SPEAKEROne is yellow and one is purple.

17:00SPEAKERThose are complimentary colors.

17:02SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.

17:03SPEAKER- That's cool.

17:04SPEAKER- I think they did a G-Shock maybe, it looks like,

17:05SPEAKERor an AE 1200W is what they want.

17:09SPEAKER- That's neat.

17:10SPEAKERSpeaking of smart stuff, did you,

17:12SPEAKERI don't know where I got this link from.

17:13SPEAKERWas it on our Discord or did you send it to me

17:16SPEAKERabout smart TVs and what a lot of the apps are doing

17:19SPEAKERwith IP proxying these days?

17:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I sent that to you.

17:23SPEAKERThey were talking about the Discord later, but yeah.

17:25SPEAKER- Yeah, like effectively there are,

17:27SPEAKERand it's mainly on WebOS, which is LG's TV OS,

17:31SPEAKERand Tizen, which is the Samsung one.

17:33SPEAKERI guess this is forbidden on like Google TV and...

17:37SPEAKER- I think it was also on TCL's Roku TVs maybe.

17:41SPEAKER- No, it's in that article Roku also banned this practice,

17:43SPEAKERalthough it seems like they were a bit late to the party

17:45SPEAKERon forbidding it, but effectively it's all these

17:48SPEAKERlike screensaver apps and little like dumb arcade games

17:51SPEAKERand like fireplace apps and stuff like that

17:55SPEAKERthat force you to agree to terms of service

17:57SPEAKERthat allow them to proxy their own internet traffic

18:00SPEAKERthrough your home IP, through your house.

18:03SPEAKER- Yep.

18:04SPEAKER- And none of them really come out

18:05SPEAKERand say exactly what that traffic is.

18:07SPEAKER- Well, the assumption is that it's AI web crawlers.

18:10SPEAKER- It's mostly web scraping seems to be the case, but...

18:13SPEAKER- Because there's a big business right now

18:16SPEAKERin blocking AI web traffic to your site,

18:19SPEAKERbecause it's enormously invasive.

18:23SPEAKERYeah, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

18:24SPEAKER- The security group audited something like 6,000 apps

18:27SPEAKERand like a third of them were doing this basically,

18:30SPEAKERand it's kind of horrifying.

18:31SPEAKERAnd like presumably these are at least

18:33SPEAKERlike above board enough companies

18:35SPEAKERthat they would not be sending anything outright illegal

18:37SPEAKERthrough your connection.

18:38SPEAKERBut like, aren't you on the hook for any traffic

18:41SPEAKERthat goes in and out of your house?

18:43SPEAKER- Well, hold on, but it's not the TV companies

18:46SPEAKERthat are doing this.

18:47SPEAKERIt's the companies that are publishing the app

18:48SPEAKERon the TV stores, which is like...

18:50SPEAKER- It's actually, it's not even that.

18:51SPEAKERIt's because these are middleware, like SDKs or whatever.

18:55SPEAKERSo it's actually these like pure data broker firms

18:58SPEAKERthat are providing these SDKs to app makers

19:00SPEAKERand they're integrating it's like bright,

19:02SPEAKERoh gosh, I forgot the name.

19:03SPEAKERBright data, I think is one of them.

19:05SPEAKER- Yeah.

19:06SPEAKER- So, but like that's always been my understanding

19:08SPEAKERand it's always been why I've been paranoid

19:10SPEAKERabout things like open wifi is that like

19:13SPEAKERif your wifi network is open and somebody comes on it

19:15SPEAKERand does something like extremely illegal, then like...

19:19SPEAKER- Guess what, guess who's gonna have to find a new provider.

19:22SPEAKER- Like the law or even worse,

19:24SPEAKERlike the law is coming at you if this...

19:27SPEAKER- You're gonna have to prove it wasn't you at that point.

19:29SPEAKER- Right, right.

19:30SPEAKERAnd yeah, good luck.

19:32SPEAKERGood luck in the modern law enforcement bureaucracy

19:35SPEAKERwhere people are getting arrested for having usernames

19:38SPEAKERthat are like one character away from the perpetrator

19:42SPEAKERthey're actually looking for, like good luck.

19:45SPEAKER- Yeah, I think if it's encrypted, you're probably okay

19:49SPEAKERif the proxies are encrypted, but yeah.

19:53SPEAKERLook, this is why I turned off the Roku TV on my home,

19:56SPEAKERlike I had a Roku on my bedroom TV for years

19:59SPEAKERand I turned on the pie hole and saw how many,

20:03SPEAKERthe voluminous number of DNS hits that that thing hit

20:07SPEAKERgoing to a million different scripting and ad services

20:09SPEAKERand a bunch of nonsense.

20:10SPEAKERAnd I was like, no, I'm not gonna participate

20:13SPEAKERin this anymore.

20:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that article has convinced me to...

20:17SPEAKERI do think you should put your TV online long enough

20:20SPEAKERto check for updates because they do push out

20:21SPEAKERactual software updates that fix basic problems

20:24SPEAKERwith smart TVs, like things like input selection

20:26SPEAKERor HDR or whatever.

20:28SPEAKER- But once it works, man, just don't let it ever talk

20:31SPEAKERto the internet again.

20:32SPEAKER- Or like never put wifi credentials into it,

20:35SPEAKERonly plug it into a network to do that

20:36SPEAKERand then pull the cable when you're done.

20:38SPEAKERAnd specifically, I think I'm done signing into my TV.

20:42SPEAKER- Oh yeah, no.

20:43SPEAKER- I think it's like Apple TV or nothing for me now

20:45SPEAKERfor TV apps.

20:47SPEAKER- This is why I like the dumb TV.

20:50SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, that's just not a...

20:53SPEAKERThat will never be, I have fully abandoned the idea of like,

20:56SPEAKERoh, the home theater monitor, why is nobody doing that?

20:58SPEAKERWhy isn't anybody just making a nice screen

21:00SPEAKERwith no compute in it or no apps?

21:02SPEAKERAnd it's because you see how much money they are now making

21:05SPEAKERfrom the apps and the data harvesting and marketing

21:07SPEAKERthat goes along with that.

21:09SPEAKER- Look, you just need to get a really nice projector, okay?

21:11SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe.

21:13SPEAKERMost probably have apps too at this point, right?

21:15SPEAKER- Sure they do, yeah.

21:18SPEAKER- Here's an interesting one from Tactical Tug.

21:21SPEAKER- Okay.

21:22SPEAKER- Do either of you have any experience using cron

21:24SPEAKERand the RTC wake feature on the motherboard

21:28SPEAKERto make your PC turn itself on in the middle of the night,

21:30SPEAKERrun an update script and then turn itself back off?

21:34SPEAKER- I've never tried to do that.

21:35SPEAKERI've known it was a thing to do.

21:37SPEAKER- I've been playing with the idea,

21:39SPEAKERbut not sure how well it would work

21:40SPEAKERas I technically still dual boot my system.

21:45SPEAKERHave you also considered a similar thing using other tools?

21:48SPEAKERI'm gonna say, A, I've never considered doing this.

21:51SPEAKERB, I don't know if we're talking,

21:52SPEAKERI mean, he's talking about dual booting,

21:53SPEAKERso I assume auto updating Linux

21:55SPEAKERis what he's talking about here.

21:56SPEAKER- I don't think so, yeah.

21:58SPEAKER- I would not, I don't...

22:00SPEAKER- I don't auto update Linux.

22:01SPEAKER- I don't, I would not advocate for unattended auto updating.

22:06SPEAKERI would like that that stuff is just rickety enough

22:08SPEAKERthat it's a good idea to do it intentionally

22:11SPEAKERwhen you are ready to do it

22:12SPEAKERand to keep an eye on what's being updated.

22:14SPEAKER- Even on the rolling, especially on the rolling OS.

22:17SPEAKERYeah, 'cause like, often I will do something

22:21SPEAKERand it will throw an error

22:23SPEAKERand then I'll have to wait a little while to do it again

22:25SPEAKERbecause like the mirrors are out of sync.

22:27SPEAKERLike there's one package that's out of sync

22:29SPEAKERwith the other packages on the mirror or something like that.

22:31SPEAKER- Yeah, different distros

22:32SPEAKERare more or less prone to this kind of thing,

22:34SPEAKERbut some distros, this seems like a good way

22:36SPEAKERto come back to a not entirely working system

22:39SPEAKERthe next morning in extreme cases.

22:41SPEAKERSo I think I would not pursue this strategy,

22:46SPEAKERalthough it actually does bring up the interesting aspects

22:51SPEAKERof the RTC wake feature,

22:53SPEAKERwhich I've never even thought about before.

22:55SPEAKERLike you see it in the UEFI,

22:56SPEAKERlike as it's right next to like the wake on LAN,

22:59SPEAKERat least in my BIOS settings.

23:01SPEAKER- Some BIOSes don't have it.

23:02SPEAKERLike my Beelink BIOS doesn't have it.

23:03SPEAKERIt's there, but it's like not exposed to the UI.

23:06SPEAKER- I guess we should say RTC is real-time clock

23:09SPEAKERin this case, the thing that runs off a watch battery

23:11SPEAKERthat keeps the time in your PC.

23:13SPEAKERBut effectively, and again,

23:14SPEAKERI've never even thought about what this feature did before,

23:16SPEAKERbut I guess it's basically allowing you

23:17SPEAKERto have the PC turn itself on at a specific time

23:20SPEAKERas opposed to with the wake on LAN,

23:21SPEAKERletting you turn it on over the network, et cetera.

23:24SPEAKER- So when I first put a server in the house, I did that.

23:27SPEAKERSo I set it to turn on at like seven o'clock,

23:29SPEAKERsix o'clock in the morning and to turn off at like 1 a.m.

23:33SPEAKERor 2 a.m.

23:34SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause I had never really thought about

23:35SPEAKERwhat the use of that feature would be,

23:37SPEAKERbut I guess that is one.

23:38SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause then, but then the thing I realized was a,

23:42SPEAKERone time when the kiddo was sick

23:44SPEAKERand we were like watching "Curious George"

23:47SPEAKERat three o'clock in the morning,

23:48SPEAKERthe server cut off and "Curious George" went away.

23:51SPEAKERAnd then I had to get up and like go turn the server back on.

23:54SPEAKERLike it was a big pain in the butt.

23:56SPEAKER- And also I was turning off the power.

23:58SPEAKERI was saving power when the power

24:00SPEAKERwas the absolute bottom cheapest that it gets here.

24:04SPEAKERSo it wasn't like super useful.

24:06SPEAKER- I kinda wanna sidebar here real quick

24:08SPEAKERabout electrical plans.

24:09SPEAKERSpeaking of time of use, electrical plans.

24:12SPEAKERPG&E, our power company, the dashboard on my account

24:16SPEAKERhas been saying for a little bit like,

24:18SPEAKER"Hey, you could be saving money on a different plan."

24:21SPEAKERAnd I clicked in there and they have estimates

24:23SPEAKERfrom the last like six months of your use data,

24:25SPEAKERlike how much you might save on other plans.

24:28SPEAKERWe're currently on the time of use plan that is like,

24:30SPEAKERI think it's 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. is the most expensive,

24:33SPEAKERwhich is maybe not the best 'cause that's when I, well.

24:37SPEAKER- You're not working too much at 4 p.m.

24:39SPEAKER- No, the desktop is off, but the TV is,

24:42SPEAKERI guess it's probably still better than,

24:43SPEAKERI'm sure the desktop is pulling more power

24:45SPEAKERthan like the TV and the PS5.

24:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:48SPEAKER- Although I think the PS5 is like 30 something watts

24:51SPEAKERat least, so it's probably not that much.

24:52SPEAKERAnyway, but the plan they're pushing me to

24:55SPEAKERis the one intended for,

24:58SPEAKERI believe it's the one with people who own EVs.

25:02SPEAKER- Well, you have to have an EV to get the EV one.

25:04SPEAKER- So yeah, that's what I thought was strange is that,

25:06SPEAKERbecause I want a showing like savings of $200 a year,

25:09SPEAKERbut it's very explicitly targeted at people with EVs.

25:12SPEAKER- We had to put a VIN in when we switched to that.

25:14SPEAKER- Okay, so I didn't click through enough

25:16SPEAKERto see if it would let me do it

25:18SPEAKER'cause I didn't want to commit to it

25:19SPEAKERwithout knowing what I was getting into,

25:21SPEAKERbut okay, so I didn't know you had to actually

25:23SPEAKERliterally verify ownership of an EV to get that 'cause--

25:26SPEAKER- I got a VIN, like all you need to get a VIN

25:28SPEAKERis just to walk around till you see an EV

25:30SPEAKERand then like look at the windshield.

25:32SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

25:33SPEAKER- Okay.

25:34SPEAKER- I can get you a VIN by three o'clock today.

25:36SPEAKER- All right, let's talk later then.

25:39SPEAKER- So the time of use has been really good for us,

25:42SPEAKERbut it does require a little bit of a shifting

25:44SPEAKERand it means that we like never run the dishwasher until,

25:47SPEAKERlike we always set the dishwasher and the timer

25:48SPEAKERto run at like 3 a.m., right?

25:51SPEAKER- Yeah, we definitely avoid stuff like that

25:53SPEAKERoutside those hours when possible.

25:55SPEAKER- The washing machine and dryer are like,

25:59SPEAKERit's weird 'cause like all of our heavy duty stuff

26:01SPEAKERis gas here except for the car and the computer and the TV

26:05SPEAKERand the rest of it's more or less the same as always.

26:09SPEAKERI feel like PG&E is screwing us at a really high level

26:12SPEAKERthough when I look at what electricity costs

26:14SPEAKEReverywhere else in the country.

26:15SPEAKER- I think that's probably true

26:17SPEAKERof numerous things around here, but what can you do?

26:21SPEAKER- Move, you can move, Brad.

26:23SPEAKER- Well, not necessarily.

26:25SPEAKER- Well, fair.

26:26SPEAKER- A large number of concessions would have to be made

26:30SPEAKERin my personal life for that to happen, so.

26:33SPEAKER- Look, I'm stuck here until my kid's done

26:35SPEAKERwith high school at this point probably.

26:36SPEAKER- Right.

26:38SPEAKERThis is an interesting question from Stev, I think,

26:41SPEAKERis how I'm gonna pronounce that.

26:43SPEAKER- I thought that was Steve.

26:44SPEAKER- It might be Steve, but there's no E on the end.

26:48SPEAKERYou've mentioned fast mail a bunch of times.

26:50SPEAKERDo you use your custom domain for all of your email?

26:53SPEAKERAre you concerned about domain hacking or theft?

26:56SPEAKERIn other words, someone gaining access to your DNS records

26:59SPEAKERand changing your MX records,

27:01SPEAKERthus stealing all future incoming emails.

27:04SPEAKERA wonderful way to reset all your passwords

27:06SPEAKERand steal your life.

27:08SPEAKEROne of the online security rules I've always practiced

27:10SPEAKERwas to use a major provider's domain for important accounts

27:13SPEAKERas it's unlikely a bad actor could gain access

27:16SPEAKERto Google's domain registration of gmail.com.

27:18SPEAKERYeah, I think that goes without saying.

27:21SPEAKERIn practice, what this has turned into

27:23SPEAKERis using my gmail address for account creation

27:25SPEAKERand my custom domain for personal emails.

27:28SPEAKERTurns out all that information related to online accounts

27:30SPEAKERis the stuff I'm interested in getting out of Google's hands

27:34SPEAKERalso turns out other than my kid's school,

27:36SPEAKERI don't send or receive very many personal emails these days.

27:39SPEAKERShould I be worried at all about losing access

27:41SPEAKERto my custom domain's DNS record for email

27:44SPEAKERor am I being paranoid?

27:46SPEAKER- Well, so, okay, there's a couple of things here.

27:48SPEAKEROne is if you lock down the domain transfer,

27:52SPEAKERyou have to provide them with a code

27:54SPEAKERin order to move your domain,

27:56SPEAKERwhich you should do for any domain

27:58SPEAKERyou use for anything serious.

27:59SPEAKER- Yes, and you should also two-factor up

28:00SPEAKERall of your anything that your domain registrar,

28:03SPEAKERif you use a separate DNS service,

28:05SPEAKERlike anything that controls your domains,

28:08SPEAKERyou should have as secured as possible.

28:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and if your domain registrar doesn't support

28:12SPEAKERtwo-factor or, I guess, pass keys at a minimum,

28:17SPEAKERI use a hardware key for my domain registrars,

28:21SPEAKERbut yeah, have all that stuff done, lock down,

28:24SPEAKERdo the domain security thing so that the domain

28:26SPEAKERis locked down and can't be transferred, and you're okay.

28:30SPEAKERAnything serious, I still do run through that.

28:34SPEAKERSo, years ago, I set up the advanced account control

28:38SPEAKERor the, I can't remember what they call it,

28:40SPEAKERbut Google has an account type for people

28:45SPEAKERwho are likely to get hacked, journalists.

28:47SPEAKER- We did an episode about that even years ago

28:48SPEAKERat this point, I can't remember when.

28:50SPEAKER- It's journalists, politicians,

28:53SPEAKERanybody who's experienced identity theft, stuff like that.

28:59SPEAKERAnd I set that up years ago and used that

29:03SPEAKERfor anything serious.

29:04SPEAKERSo, my domain registrar account goes through there.

29:08SPEAKERI have to use a hardware pass key or my phone,

29:11SPEAKERa hardware key pass key or the pass key on my phone to log

29:15SPEAKERinto that, you can't, there's no other logins without that.

29:18SPEAKERSo, I feel like I'm pretty safe there.

29:21SPEAKERI don't use, most of the stuff that goes

29:23SPEAKERinto the FastMail accounts are the kind of throwaway

29:26SPEAKERaccounts, like if Domino's wants an account to order

29:28SPEAKERa pizza, I put a, that goes into FastMail,

29:32SPEAKERinto a one-off email.

29:35SPEAKER- Yeah, man, expendable email addresses seems

29:37SPEAKERlike a nice thing to have.

29:38SPEAKER- It is, the fact that it also integrates

29:41SPEAKERwith my password manager is the best.

29:45SPEAKERI literally can open up a password manager.

29:47SPEAKERIt's like, hey, do you wanna create a masked email for this?

29:50SPEAKERAnd then I have it and it's tied to that

29:51SPEAKERand it's not hooked to my Apple ID, which is really nice.

29:54SPEAKER- Speaking of your password manager,

29:55SPEAKERor should I bring this up?

29:56SPEAKERIs this a sore subject?

29:58SPEAKERAre you gonna stay on one password?

29:59SPEAKER- I'm hoping, I sent him an angry letter that was like,

30:03SPEAKERyo, I've been paying you guys for 15 years at this point.

30:05SPEAKERI will absolutely move if you give,

30:09SPEAKERfor folks who don't know, the guy who makes Omarchi,

30:13SPEAKERDHH is a noted white supremacist and kind of shit heel.

30:19SPEAKERAnd Omarchi is a, I don't know,

30:22SPEAKERit's an opinionated Linux distro is what he calls it.

30:25SPEAKER- Yeah, a lot of people would argue that it is very generous

30:29SPEAKERto call that thing a distro, but.

30:31SPEAKER- Yeah, before I realized what a bad guy he was,

30:34SPEAKERI installed it on a test machine

30:37SPEAKERwhen we were doing dual boot diaries.

30:39SPEAKERAnd then like five minutes after I installed it,

30:41SPEAKERI got the, hey, this guy sucks note

30:45SPEAKERpopped across the news feeds.

30:48SPEAKERAnd he basically, like, it's basically just hyper land

30:52SPEAKERwith some stuff pre-installed for AI coding basically.

30:56SPEAKERHe put, he got some of his cronies to put what,

30:59SPEAKER$9 million into a foundation to.

31:02SPEAKER- I think it was past 10 at this point.

31:03SPEAKER- Yeah, to drive money toward open source projects

31:07SPEAKERthat align with his goals.

31:10SPEAKERAnd 1Password, which is the default password manager

31:13SPEAKERon Omarchi, put money in.

31:15SPEAKERFramework has given them a couple of hundred dollars

31:17SPEAKERa month here and there.

31:19SPEAKERI don't think they are anymore.

31:20SPEAKERI can't, I'm not sure.

31:22SPEAKER- Yeah, although that's a difference of scale here

31:24SPEAKERbecause the contributions we're talking about

31:25SPEAKERare in the six to seven figures.

31:27SPEAKER- Yeah, 300K from 1Password is a deal breaker for me.

31:31SPEAKER- They've already doubled down on the contribution

31:33SPEAKERso that they're not walking that back.

31:34SPEAKERI don't know if you saw the real like slack messages

31:36SPEAKERbeing leaked yesterday that from management,

31:40SPEAKERbasically making it clear they're standing by this.

31:42SPEAKER- Well, my 1Password is annual

31:44SPEAKERand it resubs in about 11 months.

31:46SPEAKERSo I'll cancel and see if they change between now and then.

31:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:51SPEAKER- Anyway. - Yes.

31:53SPEAKER- 1Password integrates with Fastmail in a really lovely way.

31:56SPEAKER- Yeah, sorry, I'll say real quick

31:59SPEAKERthat Worden is still working fine for me,

32:01SPEAKERalthough there have been some recent concerns

32:04SPEAKERabout just kind of plain Jane shitification there,

32:07SPEAKERnothing like socially objectionable,

32:09SPEAKERbut there's a big leadership change there

32:11SPEAKERand some like kind of private capital people

32:14SPEAKERwho specialize in acquisitions and stuff

32:16SPEAKERhave come into the leadership there

32:18SPEAKERand changes in language on their page

32:20SPEAKERabout their mission statement and stuff.

32:22SPEAKERLike people are pretty worried.

32:23SPEAKERThey're gearing up to try to get bought

32:25SPEAKERand then shitify themselves.

32:26SPEAKER- Is there not an open source at this point?

32:30SPEAKER- It's KeyPass and its derivatives

32:32SPEAKERare still the thing in the open source world.

32:34SPEAKERI get the sense.

32:35SPEAKERI did a little bit of looking around at this

32:36SPEAKERwhen this all, when the Bitwarden thing

32:38SPEAKERfirst started spinning up.

32:39SPEAKERI think, don't quote me on this,

32:41SPEAKERbut I get the sense that KeyPass XC

32:44SPEAKERis probably the most robust KeyPass fork

32:47SPEAKERthat people recommend these days.

32:50SPEAKERI have not done a ton of looking into it,

32:52SPEAKERbut I think that's probably the one to look at

32:55SPEAKERif you want to go a whole hog open source,

32:57SPEAKERwhich I'm not sure that I do, honestly.

32:59SPEAKERLike I don't know that I want a purely self-hosted,

33:02SPEAKERself-maintained open source password manager solution.

33:05SPEAKERLike I kind of would like a little bit

33:08SPEAKERof more institutional resilience there, but.

33:11SPEAKER- Like one of the nicest things about 1Password

33:14SPEAKERfrom a family perspective is that

33:16SPEAKERif something happens to me or Gina,

33:19SPEAKERthen we can hit the button in the 1Password control panel

33:23SPEAKERthat gives us access to the other person's password vault

33:25SPEAKERwithout them having to have it the whole time.

33:27SPEAKER- Right, yeah, like some people asked

33:30SPEAKERwhen we did the Notes episode,

33:31SPEAKERlike some people seemed, you know, given my proclivities,

33:34SPEAKERsome people were surprised that I was hosting

33:36SPEAKERthe Joplin database on Dropbox,

33:37SPEAKERbut it was because Dropbox has way more redundancy

33:41SPEAKERthan my NAS or my VPS, you know,

33:43SPEAKERlike that's a single point of failure

33:45SPEAKERif I'm hosting that myself,

33:46SPEAKERand to not be able to get to secure Notes

33:48SPEAKERand stuff like that at any time.

33:51SPEAKERAnd I also, I didn't want to have to VPN

33:53SPEAKERevery time I wanted to access that stuff.

33:55SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

33:56SPEAKER- So anyway, sorry,

33:58SPEAKERlet me get back to the original question here,

34:00SPEAKER'cause there's one other thing I wanted to say

34:01SPEAKERabout this idea of not being on Gmail

34:03SPEAKERand hosting your own email domain and that kind of thing.

34:06SPEAKERAnd to be clear, that is hosting just your own email domain,

34:09SPEAKERnot your own email server.

34:10SPEAKER- Don't host your own email server.

34:12SPEAKER- Nobody, with the exception of maybe a couple of people

34:15SPEAKERon our Discord should be hosting their own mail server.

34:19SPEAKERBut so we had, all I will say is I would describe it

34:22SPEAKERas a very minor security incident with email this week,

34:27SPEAKERwith Gmail, nothing, it turned out to be kind of nothing,

34:30SPEAKERI think.

34:31SPEAKER- You did?

34:32SPEAKER- Yeah, we'll get into the details,

34:33SPEAKERbut like it was a, there was a brief moment of like,

34:37SPEAKERoh man, was that a bad thing to access?

34:40SPEAKER- Oh boy.

34:41SPEAKER- Like in terms of I'm gonna run a virus scanner now,

34:43SPEAKERlike long story, it's not worth getting into.

34:45SPEAKERAnd it seems like it was nothing.

34:46SPEAKERIt seems like it turned out to be nothing,

34:48SPEAKERbut it was enough to raise my hackles

34:50SPEAKERand make me go digging into the Google like admin console

34:55SPEAKERfor the kind of corporate tier Gmail,

34:58SPEAKERlike, you know, workspace, that kind of thing.

35:01SPEAKERAnd because I've talked recently about wanting

35:03SPEAKERto get off of Google because of their embrace of AI

35:05SPEAKERand having AI scraping all of your emails

35:07SPEAKERand all that stuff, and it's just kind of gross.

35:10SPEAKERI might have thought twice now about getting off of Gmail

35:15SPEAKERafter this incident, because I was fairly heartened,

35:20SPEAKERlet's say at what I found in the admin console,

35:22SPEAKERthe level of like security auditing and access logs

35:26SPEAKERfrom eight different angles that they keep

35:29SPEAKERand like easy ability to basically see by IP, by device,

35:34SPEAKERby sort of session attestation, you know,

35:38SPEAKERby all these different parameters,

35:39SPEAKERwho's accessing all of your Google resources

35:42SPEAKERon a given account.

35:44SPEAKERAnd there's like some other subsystems,

35:46SPEAKERwhich I don't know if,

35:47SPEAKERI'm sure these are not totally unique to Google,

35:48SPEAKERbut I'm guessing they're pretty like leading edge

35:50SPEAKERon some of the stuff.

35:51SPEAKERLike, for example, they're doing a thing now

35:53SPEAKERwhere browser sessions are now tied to,

35:57SPEAKERI believe it's hardware identifier.

35:59SPEAKERIt's like DBSC is the acronym.

36:02SPEAKERLet me just remind myself what that stands for.

36:05SPEAKER- It's a huge pain in the butt when you dual boot,

36:08SPEAKERbecause it sees the same hardware ID

36:10SPEAKERon two different machines,

36:12SPEAKERand then it logs you out on one of them constantly.

36:14SPEAKER- Is it abstracted by OS as well?

36:15SPEAKER- I believe that it's, I think that that's the problem.

36:19SPEAKERSo I dug in, I talked to him,

36:20SPEAKERremember I talked about this a few weeks ago

36:21SPEAKERwhere one of my Linux machine keeps getting logged out

36:24SPEAKERof all the Google services.

36:26SPEAKERAnd I believe that this is the cause,

36:27SPEAKERbut from investigation, but.

36:29SPEAKER- Okay, device bound session credentials

36:31SPEAKERis what this is called.

36:32SPEAKERThat's what the DBSC thing I mentioned.

36:34SPEAKERWhat it means is basically something I found out

36:37SPEAKERin the course of this brief moment of panic

36:39SPEAKERwas that session hijacking is becoming a pretty,

36:42SPEAKERpretty common vector for taking over people's accounts

36:44SPEAKERfor things because the session is kind of like

36:46SPEAKERthe set of cookies that,

36:48SPEAKERthat's what keeps you logged into a site

36:50SPEAKERthat you have already authenticated with.

36:52SPEAKERLike if you've logged into and two factored your way

36:54SPEAKERinto a site that you then don't have to do that for,

36:56SPEAKERfor 30 days or whatever,

36:58SPEAKERthere's an active browser session that can be hijacked.

37:01SPEAKERAnd if somebody is able to access that,

37:02SPEAKERthen they can get into your account past your password

37:05SPEAKERand two factor and all that stuff.

37:07SPEAKERSo like seeing stuff like that in there,

37:09SPEAKERlike I'm sure it creates some headaches

37:10SPEAKERin different contexts,

37:12SPEAKERbut like knowing that if my session had been stolen,

37:15SPEAKERthat somebody couldn't necessarily just use that session

37:18SPEAKERto get into the account,

37:19SPEAKERif it blocked it on the grounds that it was from a device

37:22SPEAKERhundreds or thousands of miles away

37:23SPEAKERwas maybe somewhat encouraging.

37:26SPEAKER- Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, that stuff is,

37:30SPEAKERthat stuff is interesting and yeah, I don't know.

37:34SPEAKERI actually don't know.

37:35SPEAKERLike I'm honestly, I'm so annoyed at this point

37:37SPEAKERthat when I order something from Amazon,

37:39SPEAKERit says a home goods item has shipped instead

37:42SPEAKERof the actual item,

37:43SPEAKERbecause they don't want Google to know what you've gotten

37:46SPEAKERthat like, I'm, I'll take the chance.

37:50SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.

37:50SPEAKERI mean, I may get a bunch of feedback on the discord

37:53SPEAKERabout why some of these security measures are bad actually,

37:56SPEAKERbut more research to do there.

37:59SPEAKERBut I mean, there are systems in place

38:01SPEAKERthat seem like they are actually handy.

38:04SPEAKER- The thing you want on all your domains

38:06SPEAKERthat you're using and buying is the transfer lock

38:09SPEAKERand then the authorization code stuff.

38:12SPEAKERSo in order to turn that off,

38:13SPEAKERI have to get an authorization code from my vendor.

38:17SPEAKERI have to, I can change that.

38:19SPEAKERI can generate new ones constantly.

38:22SPEAKERIt's worth making sure that stuff's on on your domains.

38:26SPEAKER- Yeah, yep.

38:27SPEAKERPeter Capriccio writes in,

38:30SPEAKERit's not even a question so much as it's just a link

38:33SPEAKERto virtualosmuseum.org.

38:36SPEAKER- Oh my God, this came in while you were gone.

38:37SPEAKERIt's so cool.

38:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I had actually seen this right before I left

38:40SPEAKERand was quite excited about it when I saw it.

38:43SPEAKERIt is a collection of, I believe they are.

38:46SPEAKERYes, they are over 1700 installs now

38:48SPEAKERof basically it's a bunch of pre-made like VMs

38:51SPEAKERthat you can download that they claim on,

38:53SPEAKERat least on Windows and Linux are basically

38:55SPEAKERone double click launch for like kind of every operating

39:00SPEAKERsystem in history, basically.

39:03SPEAKER- Well, old stuff for sure.

39:04SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I mean, not necessarily modern stuff,

39:06SPEAKERbut it's like, I'm just scrolling through here.

39:09SPEAKERLike if you want to see,

39:11SPEAKERI've never even heard of a lot of these operating systems,

39:13SPEAKERlike every, like CPM and all these like Unix works,

39:17SPEAKERlike Unix variants on the big heavy workstations

39:19SPEAKERof the nineties and.

39:21SPEAKER- QNX, Plan 9.

39:24SPEAKER- Here, yeah, yeah, Plan 9.

39:25SPEAKERHere are two Temple OS VMs side by side.

39:29SPEAKERIt's basically just a gallery, a runnable gallery

39:32SPEAKERof what they claim is 1948 to the present

39:36SPEAKERof kind of every operating system you can think of

39:38SPEAKERif you just want to very quickly try one out,

39:40SPEAKERwhich I think is kind of rad.

39:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought it was very cool.

39:44SPEAKER- Did you know that there's an Amiga Unix, apparently?

39:48SPEAKER- I did not know that, but I'm not surprised.

39:51SPEAKER- Somebody made Unix for the Amiga.

39:53SPEAKERI've been kind of interested in the history

39:55SPEAKERof the Amiga recently.

39:58SPEAKER- I never knew anybody with an Amiga,

39:59SPEAKERso I have no point of reference at all.

40:02SPEAKERI didn't even know anybody with a Commodore 64 before that.

40:04SPEAKERYou know, like I just had no insight

40:06SPEAKERinto that world of computers at the time,

40:08SPEAKERbut apparently the Amiga like really could have been a thing

40:11SPEAKERbecause like, I think I saw like a bite magazine

40:15SPEAKERthat somebody linked on Blue Sky at some point

40:17SPEAKERand I actually read their cover story on the Amiga

40:19SPEAKERwhen it came out.

40:22SPEAKERI barely looked at this.

40:24SPEAKERIf I get any details wrong, please forgive me, Amiga fans.

40:26SPEAKERBut my understanding of the Amiga is that they went

40:28SPEAKERand made a bunch of like custom silicon on it

40:32SPEAKERto handle things in hardware

40:33SPEAKERthat were not being handled in hardware at the time.

40:35SPEAKER- That's it, yeah.

40:36SPEAKER- This is back when the Apple II was still fairly supreme

40:39SPEAKERor, you know, it was like all the 8-bit computers

40:41SPEAKERthat just had an 8-bit CPU and not much else, right?

40:45SPEAKERAnd they went and made a bunch of custom chips

40:46SPEAKERto handle like graphics and multimedia stuff.

40:48SPEAKER- Sound and color and all sorts of stuff, yeah.

40:50SPEAKER- Like the Amiga was apparently just like pretty ahead

40:52SPEAKERof its time in hardware design

40:53SPEAKERand all the hardware accelerated capabilities that it had.

40:56SPEAKERAnd like, it could have caught on in a way

40:58SPEAKERthat could have like changed things more than it did.

41:02SPEAKER- I mean, people who love the Amiga

41:04SPEAKERreally, really love the Amiga brand.

41:08SPEAKERThe thing that's interesting to me about that

41:10SPEAKERis it's from the time before...

41:13SPEAKEROkay, so this is an aside.

41:16SPEAKERPhil Tippett shut down his studio last week,

41:19SPEAKERwhich we didn't talk about in the show,

41:20SPEAKERbut in the tested days, we regularly went over there

41:24SPEAKERand shot video with them because A, it was convenient,

41:26SPEAKERand B, Phil and the folks who worked for him,

41:29SPEAKERlike Mark Deboe and a bunch of Frank Ippolito

41:31SPEAKERand a bunch of other folks at the time were awesome

41:34SPEAKERand fun to talk to about making movie props

41:37SPEAKERand doing stop motion animation,

41:39SPEAKERdoing computer animation and stuff like that.

41:40SPEAKERIt was really good.

41:41SPEAKERWalking around that studio was kind of like

41:43SPEAKERwalking around Phil's memory palace in a lot of ways.

41:45SPEAKER'Cause like you'd walk around with him

41:47SPEAKERand he would tell stories about...

41:50SPEAKERLike he literally had stories about every single thing

41:52SPEAKERthat was on display there from like the cane Robocop

41:57SPEAKERstop motion animation figurine all the way down

42:01SPEAKERto like a gloopy slime monster from Mad God.

42:12SPEAKERAnd one of the things that he had on display there

42:15SPEAKERwere the armatures that they built to animate the dinosaur.

42:19SPEAKER'Cause the story on "Jurassic Park"

42:20SPEAKERis that Spielberg originally hired him

42:22SPEAKERto do stop motion on the dinosaurs.

42:24SPEAKERAnd then the computer animation came back so good

42:26SPEAKERthat he was like, well, I guess I'm extinct.

42:29SPEAKERAnd that's where the line in the movie comes from

42:32SPEAKERwhere Grant says, I guess I'm extinct at the end.

42:36SPEAKERI guess you're extinct or Ian Malcolm says you're extinct.

42:39SPEAKERAnyway, the point is they didn't have tools

42:42SPEAKERto do 3D animation in software at that point, right?

42:45SPEAKERLike there was no frame animation tools for computers.

42:49SPEAKERAnd their solution was they built an armature

42:51SPEAKERthat was instrumented so they could measure the position

42:54SPEAKERof each joint on the dinosaur model.

42:58SPEAKERAnd they aligned those armatures with the way the bones

43:02SPEAKERand stuff in the rigs on the dinosaurs were lined up

43:06SPEAKERso that when they moved to the head half a degree,

43:10SPEAKERthen it moved to the eventual render

43:13SPEAKERof the dinosaur half a degree.

43:15SPEAKERThey were able to get really believable animation

43:16SPEAKERout of that.

43:19SPEAKERThat stuff's just sitting around.

43:20SPEAKERIt was just sitting around there.

43:21SPEAKERIt was like in a glass case and you got to look at it.

43:24SPEAKERAnd it's the same timeframe.

43:25SPEAKER'Cause like the Amiga was building all the stuff

43:26SPEAKERthat we didn't, like I said,

43:29SPEAKERI'm gonna bring it all back around here.

43:31SPEAKERBut the Amiga was building,

43:32SPEAKERthey were building stuff for the Amiga

43:33SPEAKERthat they didn't know that they needed.

43:35SPEAKERAnd this was the same thing.

43:36SPEAKERThey built this 'cause they didn't know,

43:38SPEAKERnobody had up until that point thought,

43:39SPEAKERoh, we need to do a computer animation thing

43:41SPEAKERthat can take these really complicated models

43:43SPEAKERand generate frames of animation out of it.

43:48SPEAKERSo Phil just did it the old fashioned,

43:49SPEAKERbuilt a digital version of an analog,

43:52SPEAKERthe analog way that he'd done this

43:53SPEAKERfor 30 years at that point, 20 years at that point.

43:56SPEAKERAnyway, the little magic left the world

43:58SPEAKERwhen Phil had to shut his studio down this week at six.

44:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm sad I never went over there.

44:01SPEAKERI mean, I could have gone for the fire sale or the,

44:03SPEAKERI mean, it wasn't an auction.

44:04SPEAKERThey were just selling stuff.

44:06SPEAKER- Yeah, they hired a state sale people to come in and,

44:09SPEAKERI mean, to be clear, they pulled off a lot of stuff,

44:11SPEAKERis my understanding.

44:12SPEAKER- Yeah, it sounds like all the--

44:13SPEAKER- And 209 wasn't there.

44:14SPEAKER- Right, like all the high value stuff

44:16SPEAKERwas gone to more private channels

44:18SPEAKERby the time they opened it up to everybody.

44:21SPEAKER- Yeah, one of the other Phil story I'll tell,

44:27SPEAKERwe, when we went over there the first time,

44:30SPEAKERit was when he was, they were remaking,

44:33SPEAKERthey were making basically a cane hot toy.

44:36SPEAKERThe cane is the bad guy from RoboCop 2.

44:39SPEAKERThe notable thing about cane is that they designed it

44:41SPEAKERto be impossible for people in the East

44:45SPEAKERto make knockoff toy versions of it.

44:48SPEAKERIt's like incredibly complicated.

44:49SPEAKERIt has a bazillion moving parts.

44:51SPEAKERIt's really hard to cast

44:53SPEAKER'cause one of the things that annoyed Ed was when,

44:56SPEAKERone of the things that annoyed Phil

44:57SPEAKERwas when RoboCop 1 came out

45:00SPEAKERand immediately there were toy versions of Ed 209

45:04SPEAKERthat were bootleg unlicensed ones

45:06SPEAKERbecause it was really easy.

45:07SPEAKERIt was too easy for them to make.

45:09SPEAKERSo cane, when 30 years later,

45:12SPEAKERwhen people wanted to get toy versions of cane,

45:14SPEAKERit turned out to be incredibly complicated to make that

45:17SPEAKERand the manufacturing was not worthily complex.

45:21SPEAKER- It is, it's a real, I don't know what the term is

45:23SPEAKERfor that kind of robot, but it's a real spindly, greebly.

45:28SPEAKER- It's tons of greeblies, greebles.

45:31SPEAKERIt's all, it's really, really,

45:34SPEAKERI wanna say it was like 350 pieces.

45:36SPEAKERWhen we saw the original cane the first time,

45:38SPEAKERit was just in a box and all the pieces were loose

45:41SPEAKER'cause it had fallen apart at some point

45:42SPEAKER'cause it was fiddly at that level.

45:44SPEAKER- I mean, you can Google what it looks like,

45:46SPEAKERbut it kind of is like a proto Michael Bay

45:47SPEAKERTransformers design of just a bunch

45:50SPEAKERof tiny little intricate parts everywhere.

45:53SPEAKER- I feel like the mechs from the third Matrix movie

45:58SPEAKERpull a lot from cane.

45:59SPEAKER- Sure.

46:01SPEAKER- Look, the goofy design of putting the fleshy human bits

46:05SPEAKERon the battle side.

46:07SPEAKER- I had no idea that that was a primary design consideration.

46:10SPEAKERI have a soft spot for Robocop 2.

46:12SPEAKERI'm not sure it's actually good,

46:14SPEAKERbut I liked it a lot as a child and I had no idea

46:18SPEAKERthat's part of where the cane design came from.

46:20SPEAKER- Yeah, Phil took it and was personally offended

46:23SPEAKERthat they knocked off ED-209 so quickly.

46:25SPEAKER- Sure, the failed Robocop 2's sequence from that movie

46:29SPEAKERis like one of my favorite movie sequences from the '80s.

46:32SPEAKER- It's funny, I remember like that was a movie I watched

46:35SPEAKERa lot 'cause it was on, we had satellite at that point

46:38SPEAKERand it was on whatever movie channel was on the satellite

46:41SPEAKERwe were usually pointed at.

46:43SPEAKERBut I don't remember anything about it other than that.

46:46SPEAKERAnd also that was the one that had like the drug trailer,

46:49SPEAKERright, with the, it has Nuke,

46:51SPEAKERthe one of the best fake drugs.

46:53SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

46:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:55SPEAKER- And also a prepubescent drug lord.

46:58SPEAKER- Oh, right.

46:59SPEAKER- Like the child in that movie becomes like a drug kingpin

47:01SPEAKERand he's like, if I remember, isn't he wearing a suit?

47:04SPEAKERHe's like 10 years old and he's wearing a suit

47:05SPEAKERwith his hair slicked back because he's like-

47:08SPEAKER- Because '80s, he's Gordon Gekko.

47:10SPEAKER- He has become a crime, a drug boss.

47:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't remember that part.

47:14SPEAKERI like a child villain though.

47:17SPEAKER- Okay, question from Kat Willmew.

47:19SPEAKERI would like to know the answer to this.

47:21SPEAKERDoes "Bunny Fiend" actually specify

47:22SPEAKERthat they should be referred to with an octothorpe

47:25SPEAKERor is that just how you choose to pronounce the pound sign?

47:28SPEAKER- I call the pound sign by its given name, octothorpe.

47:34SPEAKER- I had never heard the term octothorpe

47:35SPEAKERbefore you started saying it for that.

47:38SPEAKER- Occasionally they have said octothorpe in their name.

47:43SPEAKER- But which came first?

47:44SPEAKER- Oh, I started calling it octothorpe years before that.

47:47SPEAKER- Okay, Wikipedia calls that symbol the number sign.

47:49SPEAKERThat's their canonical name for-

47:51SPEAKER- That's fine, they can call it what they want.

47:53SPEAKER- I think these days I would usually reflexively refer

47:55SPEAKERto it as a pound sign.

48:00SPEAKER- So when people started calling it the hashtag,

48:03SPEAKERthere was a conversation about what it's actually called.

48:06SPEAKER- But it's not, it in itself is not a hashtag.

48:09SPEAKERIt's like that plus a word is a hashtag.

48:11SPEAKER- People, well, I mean, so it's a hash then I guess,

48:14SPEAKER'cause the hash is the part in the, yeah.

48:15SPEAKER- That is historical though.

48:18SPEAKER- Yeah, but the actual name, as I understand it,

48:22SPEAKERfor the sign that is a tic-tac-toe board is the octothorpe.

48:27SPEAKER- Okay. - 'Cause it holds,

48:28SPEAKERI don't know why it's called octo

48:29SPEAKER'cause it has nine holes actually.

48:32SPEAKER- That came about in 1968, I can tell you.

48:35SPEAKER- Ah, there you go.

48:36SPEAKER- According to Wikipedia, the octothorpe was invented

48:38SPEAKERby workers at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1968.

48:42SPEAKER- There you go, octothorpe.

48:44SPEAKER- The more you know.

48:45SPEAKER- There was a, I feel like there was a 99 PI episode

48:49SPEAKERor something about it a hundred years ago

48:50SPEAKERwhen hashtags took off.

48:52SPEAKER- That seems like something they would do.

48:55SPEAKERHere's a quick question from Jamie or maybe not super quick,

48:58SPEAKERbut I'm looking to upgrade my router

49:00SPEAKERfrom a TP-Link Archer AX73

49:03SPEAKERto something that's a bit more prosumer.

49:06SPEAKERI'm not a network expert,

49:07SPEAKERbut I'd like something that supports VLAN

49:09SPEAKERand routing settings so I can manage the data coming

49:12SPEAKERand going to devices like my smart TV, Ugreen, NAS,

49:15SPEAKERand other internet of shit things.

49:18SPEAKERWhat would you recommend for this?

49:19SPEAKERGet a cheaper router that supports open WRT

49:21SPEAKERor just get something like a Ubiquiti Dream router

49:24SPEAKERand don't mess with the firmware?

49:26SPEAKER- I think I answered this,

49:27SPEAKERbut I am worried about running your own router

49:30SPEAKERunless you're a specific, unless you have specific knowledge

49:33SPEAKERabout that.

49:34SPEAKER- Oh, well, yeah, but that brings into question,

49:36SPEAKERwhat do you mean by running your own router?

49:38SPEAKER'Cause that's running something with open WRT

49:40SPEAKERis not running your own router,

49:41SPEAKERthen you're just replacing software.

49:43SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's 100% true.

49:45SPEAKER- Frankly, at this point, I would say the only thing

49:47SPEAKERthat really qualifies as rolling your own router

49:49SPEAKERis running just a stock OS on it

49:51SPEAKERand doing all the network configuration yourself.

49:53SPEAKER'Cause even something like PF Sense or Open Sense

49:55SPEAKERis like intensively maintained.

49:57SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

49:58SPEAKER- Certainly more intensively maintained

50:01SPEAKERthan the ASUS software on your ASUS router.

50:03SPEAKER- Oh, 100% and for a longer time too.

50:06SPEAKER- Like having had to fix a kind of half broken

50:10SPEAKERNetgear router in the last few months for someone,

50:13SPEAKERlike the kind of low tier, relatively inexpensive

50:17SPEAKERlike vendor consumer routers,

50:18SPEAKERlike that software is not what I would describe

50:20SPEAKERas robust or secure or well-maintained at all.

50:23SPEAKER- The benefit of using one of those Ubiquiti Dream machines

50:26SPEAKERused to be that it ran your Ubiquiti manager tool

50:30SPEAKERand the router as well.

50:31SPEAKERAnd you can also run a couple apps on it,

50:33SPEAKERalmost like you would on like a Synology NAS

50:35SPEAKERor something like that.

50:36SPEAKERI think at this point I would do a PF Sense or Open Sense

50:39SPEAKERrather than do that.

50:40SPEAKER- That's what I would have and did recommend

50:43SPEAKERfor the last several years.

50:44SPEAKERThe only problem with that now is that hardware to run that

50:47SPEAKERis getting so insanely expensive.

50:49SPEAKERLike that proposition, like getting a little mini PC

50:52SPEAKERand putting your own RAM and SSD in it was awesome

50:56SPEAKERwhen you could get the RAM and SSD combined for like $75

50:59SPEAKER'cause you don't need that much of either.

51:01SPEAKERBut like even at a minimum,

51:03SPEAKERnow you're looking at like several hundred dollars

51:05SPEAKERjust to populate one of those mini PCs

51:08SPEAKERand run Open Sense on it.

51:09SPEAKER- Do you have a sense of what you need to run

51:13SPEAKERlike different speeds of internet?

51:16SPEAKER- Sort of.

51:17SPEAKER- Like I've always wondered 'cause I have Gigabit,

51:20SPEAKERrealistically I'm gonna die with Gigabit at this point.

51:22SPEAKERI don't think I'm gonna see faster internet where I live

51:24SPEAKERunless I move.

51:25SPEAKER- I mean, well, I mean, in this area,

51:27SPEAKERif you stayed in that house for the rest of your life,

51:29SPEAKERI could absolutely see like Sonic is like fairly aggressively

51:32SPEAKERexpanding 10 Gigabit around here.

51:33SPEAKER- Maybe.

51:34SPEAKER- But not many ISPs are gonna do it the way they do it.

51:37SPEAKER- Yeah, like I could get five Gigabit here right now

51:40SPEAKERfrom AT&T, but it's pretty expensive.

51:42SPEAKERAnd also I'd have to rewire the run,

51:45SPEAKERthe pain in the ass run from my garage to my office.

51:47SPEAKER- Yeah. - Right.

51:48SPEAKER- Yes, that's a complicated question

51:50SPEAKERbecause you get into the territory

51:51SPEAKERwhere if you're running your own like just little x86 box

51:54SPEAKERwith open sense or whatever on it,

51:56SPEAKERit's doing all of the routing and packet filtering

51:58SPEAKERand software on the CPU.

52:00SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:01SPEAKER- And a lot of the consumer router, even consumer routers

52:03SPEAKERand especially prosumer ones

52:04SPEAKERare doing a lot of hardware acceleration.

52:07SPEAKERSo they might have much weaker CPUs

52:10SPEAKERthan you would put in your x86 thing,

52:11SPEAKERbut they have specific like closed source drivers

52:14SPEAKERattached to little ASICs that are doing the hardware

52:18SPEAKERlike NAT and packet filtering and stuff like that,

52:20SPEAKERthat makes them much faster, so it's a weird case

52:23SPEAKERwhere you could have like an x86 box

52:24SPEAKERthat can't keep up with Gigabit

52:26SPEAKERwhere your little $100 router can

52:28SPEAKERbecause it's got that custom hardware in it.

52:30SPEAKERSo that said, to route one Gigabit,

52:33SPEAKERyou don't need that much CPU at all.

52:35SPEAKERLike those, the N100s,

52:38SPEAKERwhich have been out for several years now,

52:39SPEAKERcan pretty comfortably route 10 Gigabit

52:41SPEAKERis my understanding. - Okay.

52:43SPEAKER- Or pretty close to- - If that's all they're doing.

52:45SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty close to saturate 10 Gigabit.

52:47SPEAKERSo that's not really a problem these days.

52:49SPEAKER- Okay, hmm, interesting, okay.

52:52SPEAKER- The only other answer I'll give to this question,

52:54SPEAKERand this is barely an answer

52:55SPEAKER'cause I have just started looking at it,

52:56SPEAKERbut I saw somebody on the Discord talking about it.

52:59SPEAKERGLInet, which is a company that is mainly known

53:02SPEAKERfor their little travel routers.

53:04SPEAKER- Okay. - That's how I became aware of.

53:06SPEAKERThey're kind of the go-to

53:07SPEAKERif you need a good solid travel router

53:09SPEAKERthat just runs stock OpenWrt.

53:12SPEAKER- Okay. - They're the go-to,

53:13SPEAKERbut it seems like they have been expanding

53:14SPEAKERinto your more like TP-Link Archer style

53:18SPEAKERall-in-one home router with WiFi antennas on the back of it.

53:21SPEAKER- So it's like a box that you can plug in,

53:25SPEAKERbut it's running OpenR,

53:26SPEAKERlike it's a box you can buy that runs OpenWrt.

53:28SPEAKER- Yeah, so as far as like all their products,

53:30SPEAKERlike I saw the GLInet Flint 2 talked about

53:34SPEAKERon the Discord recently.

53:35SPEAKERI think like the Flint 3 is out

53:37SPEAKERand the 4 is like on the way now.

53:39SPEAKER- Okay. - But they all run OpenWrt,

53:41SPEAKERwhich is an open router operating system,

53:44SPEAKERwhich I assume would handle like VLANs and stuff like that.

53:47SPEAKERBut they're pretty reasonably priced.

53:51SPEAKERLike the Flint 2 is 170 bucks.

53:53SPEAKERIt's got WiFi 6 in it and they claim VPN speeds,

53:56SPEAKERlike WireGuard and OpenVPN speeds, like close to gigabit.

54:00SPEAKERSo it must be pretty powerful.

54:02SPEAKER- Okay. - But I frankly,

54:04SPEAKERif you want to stay in that,

54:05SPEAKERlike I just want to buy a router with WiFi in it

54:07SPEAKERand not think about it too much area,

54:09SPEAKERbut don't want to be tied to like, again,

54:12SPEAKERlike an ASUS or a NET gear

54:14SPEAKERthat's probably going to end of life the model in two years

54:16SPEAKERand never update it again,

54:17SPEAKERlike these things seem like maybe a thing to look at

54:21SPEAKER'cause OpenWrt is very actively developed

54:23SPEAKERand should stay up to date for the foreseeable future.

54:26SPEAKER- I mean, in fairness,

54:27SPEAKERthey don't end of life stuff in two years.

54:29SPEAKERIt's just- - It depends

54:31SPEAKERon who we're talking about.

54:32SPEAKER- Okay, fair.

54:33SPEAKER- So like I'm, okay, not to get too into the weeds here,

54:35SPEAKERbut I'm in the extreme end of that

54:37SPEAKERwith the edge router that I have.

54:39SPEAKER- Yeah, but you bought that when it was already old.

54:40SPEAKER- Oh, dude, that thing was a month old when I bought it.

54:43SPEAKER- Oh. - It came out in early 2018

54:45SPEAKERand I bought it in May, 2018.

54:47SPEAKER- Oh. - What happened

54:48SPEAKERis exactly what I was talking about earlier,

54:50SPEAKERwhich is that that thing has an SOC in it

54:52SPEAKERfrom a company called Cavium.

54:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:55SPEAKER- That makes little or made little low-power embedded SOCs

55:00SPEAKERthat have like network closed design,

55:03SPEAKERnetwork acceleration hardware on them,

55:06SPEAKERwhich made them perfect for things like prosumer routers,

55:08SPEAKERlike the edge router.

55:10SPEAKER- Huh.

55:11SPEAKER- They then immediately got acquired

55:13SPEAKERlike six months after that thing came out.

55:15SPEAKERThey got acquired by Marvell

55:17SPEAKERand Marvell like killed that whole product line

55:19SPEAKERand stopped supporting it.

55:21SPEAKERAnd so that thing will never get a kernel update again

55:23SPEAKERbecause the company that provided the closed driver

55:26SPEAKERto make all that shit work.

55:28SPEAKER- No longer exists.

55:29SPEAKER- Has been absorbed into a giant corporation

55:31SPEAKERthat killed all of its products.

55:32SPEAKERSo like- - Gotcha.

55:33SPEAKER- That thing is a fantastic piece of hardware

55:36SPEAKERthat is insanely out of date on the OS end,

55:40SPEAKERpurely for like corporate fuckery reasons.

55:43SPEAKERAnd like stuff like that is why I want to get away

55:45SPEAKERfrom closed vendor type, you know what I mean?

55:50SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it's the right answer.

55:52SPEAKER- Yeah, but-

55:53SPEAKER- Like not being beholden to some venture pool

55:58SPEAKERbuying the thing that you bought.

56:00SPEAKER- Like the Linux kernel on my router went end of life

56:03SPEAKERalmost four years ago, like end of life,

56:05SPEAKERlike end of support, not came out four years ago.

56:08SPEAKER- You're not getting security updates anymore.

56:10SPEAKER- Yes, they stopped doing security updates

56:11SPEAKERfor it four years ago.

56:12SPEAKERAnd now we're in this world of LLMs

56:15SPEAKERfinding like way more vulnerabilities

56:17SPEAKERand things constantly. - Yeah, that's scary.

56:18SPEAKERI don't think I would want to run that anymore.

56:19SPEAKER- I'm feeling more and more antsy about running this router

56:23SPEAKERthat's not getting security updates.

56:25SPEAKERWe're not getting kernel updates at least.

56:26SPEAKERLike it's, yeah.

56:28SPEAKER- I didn't realize, I thought you bought that

56:30SPEAKERwhen it was coming up, when it was an elderly product.

56:33SPEAKERI didn't realize that it was three months old

56:35SPEAKERwhen you bought it, Jesus.

56:36SPEAKER- It's the Edge Router 4,

56:37SPEAKERlike was basically brand new when I got it.

56:40SPEAKER- That sucks.

56:41SPEAKER- And I kind of abandoned it way too quick.

56:43SPEAKERAnyway, that's one of my origin stories

56:46SPEAKERthat is driving me onto like a generic open router platform

56:49SPEAKERthat I will never have to worry about EOLing again.

56:54SPEAKER- Yep, you wanna do one or two more?

56:57SPEAKER- Yes.

56:58SPEAKER- I have one.

56:58SPEAKER- Okay, if you want.

57:00SPEAKER- William Pacifica writes in,

57:01SPEAKER"Hey guys, thanks for the advice last week.

57:04SPEAKERI ended up getting a lot of notes from people.

57:07SPEAKERThe one I went with was software

57:09SPEAKERI already had on my devices.

57:11SPEAKERFantastical, it turns out.

57:13SPEAKERIt has a fairly reasonably priced annual service

57:16SPEAKERthat will keep multiple calendars in sync."

57:18SPEAKERThere were several others out there that will do the same.

57:22SPEAKERAnd right now it's set up so that it copies

57:25SPEAKERall of my info in, in a shared like bi-directional way

57:31SPEAKERwhere I see the contents of the meetings

57:36SPEAKERfrom the external client email addresses

57:41SPEAKERinto my main calendar and then dumps free,

57:43SPEAKERbusy stuff back out from the main calendar

57:46SPEAKERinto the other external calendars.

57:48SPEAKER- Okay, and that's pretty reliable.

57:51SPEAKER- So far it's been fun.

57:52SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, all right, that sounds workable.

57:55SPEAKER- Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I was grandfathered

57:59SPEAKERinto a lot of the Fantastical premium,

58:02SPEAKERlike annual subscription services

58:04SPEAKER'cause I paid for Fantastical too

58:06SPEAKERwhen that was a paid product.

58:08SPEAKERIt's like an overcast situation

58:09SPEAKERwhere if you paid at some point,

58:12SPEAKERthen they give you some of the stuff,

58:13SPEAKERbut some of the services are walled off still.

58:15SPEAKERAnd I didn't realize this was even a service they offered.

58:17SPEAKER- I just saw that when overcast raised their prices recently

58:20SPEAKERbut if you had gotten in before a certain date,

58:22SPEAKERyou were not subject to the increase.

58:24SPEAKERBut now it's like 30 bucks a year

58:26SPEAKERif you're a new customer.

58:28SPEAKER- Yep.

58:29SPEAKER- Software pricing.

58:30SPEAKER- Look, he's got to pay for all those Mac minis.

58:33SPEAKER- I saw a picture of his rack with all the Mac minis on it.

58:35SPEAKERThat seems like he bought, this is Marco Arment,

58:38SPEAKERwe're talking about who runs

58:39SPEAKERthe popular podcasting app Overcast.

58:42SPEAKER- Yeah, among other things.

58:43SPEAKER- Yeah, he just launched some new to-do app thing

58:47SPEAKER'cause everybody has to have a to-do app.

58:49SPEAKER- He's always been about productivity stuff,

58:51SPEAKERbut he also makes the tool that you use

58:53SPEAKERto do chapters and stuff on the next podcast, right?

58:55SPEAKER- Yeah, Vinnie uses that.

58:56SPEAKERI have not, God, what is that thing?

58:58SPEAKERIt's been so long since I used that,

58:59SPEAKERI don't remember what it's called.

59:01SPEAKERWhat is that chapter tool he released for Mac OS?

59:05SPEAKER- It's basically, there's limited tools that do this

59:08SPEAKERand that's the one that he liked.

59:10SPEAKERThat's the, like he made one

59:11SPEAKER'cause there wasn't one that existed that was good.

59:13SPEAKER- So I also did that.

59:14SPEAKERI wrote my own three years ago in Python

59:16SPEAKERand have been using that ever since.

59:18SPEAKER- Oh, very good, you should open source that.

59:21SPEAKER- Eh, I've thought about it.

59:23SPEAKERWhat I thought about it,

59:24SPEAKERit was the first like long thing I ever wrote in Python.

59:27SPEAKERIt's like 375 lines or something.

59:29SPEAKERAnd I thought about going in the code channel

59:31SPEAKERon the Discord when I did that

59:32SPEAKERand saying like, "Hey, rate my work."

59:34SPEAKERBut I was too insecure about it.

59:36SPEAKER- Yeah, you should just--

59:37SPEAKER- I'm pretty sure that I tortured the concept

59:38SPEAKERof a Python class beyond recognition in that thing.

59:41SPEAKER- Take a cue from Claude,

59:43SPEAKERjust submit it to a bunch of GitHubs.

59:46SPEAKER- The other thing is it is so bespoke

59:48SPEAKERfor my exact workflow and needs

59:50SPEAKERthat I don't think it would actually be super useful

59:52SPEAKERto anybody else.

59:53SPEAKER- That's all, that's, yeah.

59:55SPEAKER- You need to fulfill like six different conditions

59:58SPEAKERfor that thing to be useful.

59:59SPEAKERYou know, like you need to be using Audacity

1:00:01SPEAKERand doing this with chapters

1:00:03SPEAKERand uploading to a thing called Nexilent,

1:00:04SPEAKERyou know what I mean?

1:00:05SPEAKERLike, anyway, I got real acquainted

1:00:07SPEAKERwith a Python MP3 library in the course

1:00:11SPEAKERof figuring out how to do those chapters.

1:00:13SPEAKER- Yep, seems right.

1:00:15SPEAKER- It saved me a lot of time since though.

1:00:18SPEAKEROkay, last question from Tactical Tug.

1:00:21SPEAKERAt one point is hardware ready for an upgrade?

1:00:23SPEAKERI know the obvious answer is when it's no longer working

1:00:26SPEAKERas you want it to,

1:00:27SPEAKERbut when does the upgrade in efficiency and performance

1:00:29SPEAKERbecome worth the actual cost?

1:00:32SPEAKERFor example, I'm on a Ryzen 9 5900X and 64 gig of DDR4.

1:00:38SPEAKERI almost can't believe that they're asking this question

1:00:40SPEAKERat this particular point in computing history,

1:00:42SPEAKERbut do I upgrade to AM5 and DDR5?

1:00:45SPEAKERDo I wait until DDR6 and AM6?

1:00:48SPEAKERWindows good enough, stop being good enough.

1:00:51SPEAKERFor context, I do a bit of everything, Python, gaming,

1:00:53SPEAKER3D modeling, photos and editing, basic browsing.

1:00:58SPEAKERI'm on Linux, thanks Will,

1:01:00SPEAKERso no Windows limitations or anything else

1:01:02SPEAKERto take into consideration.

1:01:03SPEAKER- Okay, so two things.

1:01:05SPEAKEROne is AMD, a friend of the show, Adam Patrick Murray,

1:01:08SPEAKERlast week wrote in to let us know

1:01:10SPEAKERthat AMD is carrying through with AM5 through 2029.

1:01:15SPEAKERNow they've committed to it, Computex.

1:01:19SPEAKER- So that's like probably two more CPU generations.

1:01:22SPEAKER- Or maybe, yeah, at least one and then some stragglers.

1:01:27SPEAKERLike they often will do like bend down versions

1:01:31SPEAKERof the flagship parts for different regions and stuff.

1:01:34SPEAKER- Man, if they only launch one new CPU generation

1:01:37SPEAKERin the next three years,

1:01:39SPEAKERwe are really in some uncharted waters.

1:01:41SPEAKER- I don't know, man.

1:01:41SPEAKER- 'Cause those used to be annual.

1:01:43SPEAKER- Yeah, or at least every 18 months.

1:01:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:48SPEAKER- The RAM and storage prices are such now

1:01:50SPEAKERthat we're getting 64 gigs of DDR5

1:01:52SPEAKERis gonna cost you almost $1,000.

1:01:54SPEAKER- Yeah, it is, and that's like, you're not exactly

1:01:57SPEAKERon a bad system for a DDR4 system.

1:02:01SPEAKER- No, I was gonna say a 5900X should be fine.

1:02:05SPEAKERI think that they're making 7800X3D,

1:02:07SPEAKERor sorry, 5800X3Ds again, 5900X3Ds again.

1:02:12SPEAKERSo if you want an upgrade,

1:02:13SPEAKERthen you can probably upgrade your CPU.

1:02:15SPEAKER- Yeah, although the 5900X is this 12-core one, right?

1:02:19SPEAKER- I think that's the two, yeah,

1:02:20SPEAKERtwo six-core CCDs if I remember right.

1:02:22SPEAKER- Yeah, so you're still pretty good there.

1:02:27SPEAKER- Look, I think you're firmly in fine territory, right?

1:02:31SPEAKER- Yeah, did not mention a GPU here, crucially.

1:02:33SPEAKERWe don't know whether that could be another variable, but.

1:02:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so, okay.

1:02:38SPEAKERSo for me, when I started thinking about an upgrade,

1:02:41SPEAKERwhen I start getting antsy about upgrading

1:02:42SPEAKERis when I'm doing things that start to feel slow,

1:02:45SPEAKERand I know that they could be faster.

1:02:49SPEAKERThat hasn't been because of desktop software use

1:02:51SPEAKERin 15 years at this point, I don't think.

1:02:53SPEAKER- I will say that that 7700, God, I'm losing my mind.

1:02:59SPEAKERIt took me a minute to remember what the chip was,

1:03:00SPEAKER7700K that I was using.

1:03:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:03SPEAKER- The one I used for like eight years,

1:03:04SPEAKERthe one I was on for way too long until three years ago,

1:03:07SPEAKERlike, well, it goes both ways.

1:03:09SPEAKERLike, the thing definitely was getting clunky

1:03:12SPEAKERand slow in Windows,

1:03:14SPEAKERbut also you don't necessarily know what you don't know.

1:03:17SPEAKERAnd like, I didn't feel it

1:03:19SPEAKERbecause I didn't have a frame of reference.

1:03:20SPEAKERI had been using that machine for so long.

1:03:22SPEAKERAnd that was a quad core, you know,

1:03:23SPEAKERthat's a quad core chip from like 2018 or 17 even.

1:03:27SPEAKERSo it was definitely slowing down

1:03:29SPEAKERin Windows 10 at some point,

1:03:30SPEAKERbut like, I didn't really notice it until I upgraded.

1:03:32SPEAKERAnd then I was like, oh, this is way faster.

1:03:34SPEAKERBut like, you might not necessarily notice

1:03:36SPEAKERsome minor slowdowns if you can live with them.

1:03:39SPEAKERI guess it's more of an experiential,

1:03:41SPEAKERjust like, does this feel bad to you or not?

1:03:44SPEAKER- Well, often the thing that drives my upgrades recently

1:03:46SPEAKERhas been something's getting janky too.

1:03:49SPEAKERLike, the memory is starting to get wobbly

1:03:51SPEAKERand then the machine gets unstable.

1:03:52SPEAKERAnd as a result of that, it's like,

1:03:54SPEAKERdo I wanna spend X amount of dollars on some old RAM

1:03:57SPEAKERthat I'm never gonna use on another computer

1:03:59SPEAKERor is this the sign that it's time to upgrade, right?

1:04:03SPEAKERAnd a lot of whether I do that

1:04:05SPEAKERdepends on whether the old computer

1:04:06SPEAKERis gonna find a new home downstream, right?

1:04:08SPEAKERSo if the old computer is gonna roll downhill to my daughter

1:04:12SPEAKERthen I might do an upgrade, right?

1:04:14SPEAKERI might buy the RAM.

1:04:16SPEAKERIf I'm gonna e-waste or give it to a friend

1:04:18SPEAKERor something like that, then I'll cut that hardware loose

1:04:23SPEAKERand just do a clean upgrade.

1:04:25SPEAKERThe RAM pricing right now is such that I wouldn't do any,

1:04:29SPEAKERunless something's on file.

1:04:30SPEAKERLiterally, I posted a thing on Blue Sky

1:04:32SPEAKERthat did numbers the other day that was like,

1:04:35SPEAKERhey, if RAM prices, if my RAM gets wobbly,

1:04:39SPEAKERI'm just gonna sell all my worldly possessions

1:04:41SPEAKERand become a monk.

1:04:42SPEAKERAnd people were like, hell yeah, that's where I'm at.

1:04:45SPEAKERBecause it is so freaking expensive right now.

1:04:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I can definitely tell you if it were me

1:04:51SPEAKERand I have the system you're talking about,

1:04:52SPEAKERI would sit tight on it for as long as possible.

1:04:55SPEAKERLike I would basically use it until the wheels fell off

1:04:57SPEAKERand like it really calls into question

1:05:01SPEAKERwhere we're at in this whole thing.

1:05:02SPEAKERLike where are we at in the curve?

1:05:04SPEAKERLike have prices peaked yet or are they gonna keep going up?

1:05:06SPEAKER'Cause like you could definitely ask your,

1:05:08SPEAKERyou could do the risk analysis of,

1:05:11SPEAKERokay, things are expensive now,

1:05:12SPEAKERbut if I wait even longer,

1:05:14SPEAKERis it more likely they're gonna go down or further up?

1:05:17SPEAKER'Cause like you could be in an even worse shape

1:05:19SPEAKERin six months.

1:05:20SPEAKERYou could be in better shape if we have peaked

1:05:22SPEAKERand don't know it yet, or maybe it's not a curve

1:05:26SPEAKERor maybe it's not gonna be like a bell curve in prices.

1:05:29SPEAKERMaybe it's just gonna be a plateau.

1:05:30SPEAKERLike maybe things are gonna peak

1:05:31SPEAKERand then never come back down.

1:05:32SPEAKERWe just don't know yet.

1:05:33SPEAKER- I wanna say last month,

1:05:35SPEAKERMicron said that they expect it to continue to increase

1:05:37SPEAKERthrough the end of 2027 at the earliest.

1:05:39SPEAKER- There have been comments

1:05:40SPEAKERand Samsung also just put out something

1:05:42SPEAKERthat they've sold through their whole memory allocation

1:05:44SPEAKERthrough, I forget, end of next year or something like that.

1:05:46SPEAKERLike it's not looking good

1:05:49SPEAKERfor the next at least couple of years, unfortunately, but.

1:05:52SPEAKER- Yep.

1:05:53SPEAKER- Yeah, so I mean, if you're on a system

1:05:54SPEAKERthat's falling apart or like truly outdated,

1:05:56SPEAKERlike eight or 10 years old,

1:05:58SPEAKERyou might need to hold your nose

1:06:00SPEAKERand do the best upgrade you can right now

1:06:02SPEAKERto try to make it through whatever it is to come.

1:06:04SPEAKERBut like, if you're on a pretty decent modern system,

1:06:07SPEAKERmodern-ish, 'cause that's pushing six years old now

1:06:11SPEAKERfor that chip, so that's.

1:06:13SPEAKER- Yeah, but it, so that was the first of the good,

1:06:16SPEAKERthe real good risings, I think, that generation.

1:06:18SPEAKER- Yes, Zen 3 was the first generation where it was like,

1:06:20SPEAKERoh, this might be better than Intel now.

1:06:22SPEAKER- Yeah, and I feel like the benefits

1:06:25SPEAKERyou're gonna get from upgrading at this point

1:06:26SPEAKERaren't gonna be substantial enough

1:06:28SPEAKERto justify having to buy $1,000 worth of RAM.

1:06:30SPEAKER- Yeah, the upgrade. - That's where you're at.

1:06:32SPEAKER- Yeah, the upgrade from the system you're talking about

1:06:33SPEAKERis gonna be incremental, right?

1:06:35SPEAKERLike it's gonna be better,

1:06:36SPEAKERbut it's gonna be marginally better,

1:06:38SPEAKERnot like a sea change in what you're able to do.

1:06:41SPEAKER- I think that's right.

1:06:42SPEAKERIt's a tough time for that stuff.

1:06:45SPEAKER- Should we do this always be corgi one at the end?

1:06:47SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

1:06:50SPEAKERWhat's the earliest memory you have of your fellow co-host?

1:06:53SPEAKERIs it meeting at the Whiskey Media offices,

1:06:54SPEAKERpassing each other like Quake ships in the night on a LAN,

1:06:58SPEAKERor did you manage to cross paths

1:06:59SPEAKERin the magazine game coverage days?

1:07:01SPEAKER- So I think the first time I met you

1:07:03SPEAKERwas at QuakeCon, wasn't it?

1:07:05SPEAKER- My memory's getting not great for certain things like that.

1:07:09SPEAKER- We might've known each other before, kind of casually.

1:07:12SPEAKER- I've only been to one QuakeCon.

1:07:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I remember you and Rob Smith and I

1:07:16SPEAKERsitting in a bar at the-

1:07:18SPEAKER- Okay, that's very awesome.

1:07:19SPEAKER- And I think the Gaylord in Mesquite

1:07:22SPEAKERor wherever it is in Texas.

1:07:23SPEAKER- That is possible, I definitely knew Rob Smith.

1:07:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I think Rob introduced you and me to each other.

1:07:28SPEAKERI think by that point I knew Dave.

1:07:30SPEAKERI'd known Mike Tatum who was at CBS with you all

1:07:33SPEAKERat that point for a hundred years at that point.

1:07:35SPEAKERI'd kind of casually known Jeff

1:07:37SPEAKERjust 'cause we saw each other around, it came stuff.

1:07:42SPEAKERBut I didn't know, and I knew Greg

1:07:44SPEAKER'cause I interviewed for a hardware editor job

1:07:46SPEAKERat GameSpot at one point.

1:07:48SPEAKER- Wait, did I know that?

1:07:50SPEAKER- Have I ever told you this?

1:07:50SPEAKER- I don't know that, it's possible.

1:07:51SPEAKERMaybe you came in the off,

1:07:52SPEAKERmaybe you walked right by my desk at GameSpot

1:07:54SPEAKERand I didn't even know it.

1:07:56SPEAKERDid you have the beard then?

1:07:58SPEAKER- I would not have had the beard then, I don't think.

1:08:00SPEAKERThey, in like 2004, 2005,

1:08:04SPEAKERdecided they wanted to do PC hardware

1:08:06SPEAKERand Tatum, who's at CBS CNET at the time,

1:08:09SPEAKERwas like, "Hey, you should come interview for this."

1:08:11SPEAKER- Oh, wild. - And referred me over

1:08:13SPEAKERand I came over, did a writing test.

1:08:15SPEAKERI talked to Greg for like two hours.

1:08:19SPEAKERI think the reason I ended up not taking

1:08:20SPEAKERis 'cause they'd already hired someone

1:08:23SPEAKERwho was a little more junior

1:08:24SPEAKERand we couldn't figure out how to make that work

1:08:26SPEAKERwithout being crappy for them and me.

1:08:29SPEAKERAnd then I ended up getting a promotion at Maximum PC

1:08:33SPEAKERthe next day out of nowhere, as soon as I said no.

1:08:36SPEAKERSo it worked out.

1:08:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I do remember when we hired a hardware editor,

1:08:40SPEAKERso I know roughly when you're talking about.

1:08:42SPEAKER- Yeah, it was after Steam kind of started,

1:08:46SPEAKERyou all were like,

1:08:47SPEAKER"Hey, we think this might be a real thing."

1:08:49SPEAKER- Yes. - Good instincts there.

1:08:52SPEAKERBut no, I only went to two or three Quake cons

1:08:56SPEAKERand I remember distinctly going to get drinks

1:08:59SPEAKERand Rob was like, "Oh, hey, this is Brad from Giant Bomb.

1:09:02SPEAKER"He's a Quake guy."

1:09:02SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh, okay."

1:09:04SPEAKER- That sounds-- - From GameSpot.

1:09:06SPEAKER- Sure, that sounds plausible.

1:09:08SPEAKERThe earliest memory I can recall a mental image for

1:09:13SPEAKERis just in Sausalito when--

1:09:15SPEAKER- When we came downstairs.

1:09:17SPEAKERWe used to come downstairs in podcasts

1:09:18SPEAKERand you all had to be quiet.

1:09:19SPEAKER- God, did that happen?

1:09:21SPEAKER- Remember, we didn't have a closed off podcast area.

1:09:23SPEAKER- How am I forgetting so much?

1:09:24SPEAKERYou guys really podcasted downstairs in our area?

1:09:27SPEAKER- Only for like three months, four months.

1:09:28SPEAKER- I have no memory of that, man.

1:09:30SPEAKER- 'Cause we moved in June out of Sausalito, right?

1:09:33SPEAKERIn the summer?

1:09:34SPEAKER- Yes.

1:09:35SPEAKER- I think it was July 2010 is when we moved into the city.

1:09:40SPEAKER- And we launched the tested site in March.

1:09:43SPEAKERSo we had three or four months of podcasting.

1:09:46SPEAKERI think a lot of the time we did it in the evening.

1:09:48SPEAKERNorm and I might've stayed late.

1:09:50SPEAKERSo we were out of your way.

1:09:51SPEAKER- That sounds a little more familiar.

1:09:52SPEAKERI have a really good memory for hard information

1:09:56SPEAKERlike dates, for example,

1:09:57SPEAKERand apparently a terrible memory for more fuzzy memories

1:10:00SPEAKERlike when did I meet you or at what event

1:10:04SPEAKERor where did we go, you know what I mean?

1:10:07SPEAKER- It's funny, I have the exact opposite.

1:10:09SPEAKERSo I'm bad at actual dates

1:10:11SPEAKERand real good at the fuzzy stuff.

1:10:13SPEAKERBut yeah, so we used to sit down at that wobbly IKEA table

1:10:17SPEAKERand Ryan had set up that M-Audio,

1:10:20SPEAKERthat bad M-Audio audio interface.

1:10:22SPEAKERWe plugged it into our MacBooks

1:10:24SPEAKERand recorded using GarageBand.

1:10:26SPEAKERAnd we were down to, you'd go down the stairs

1:10:28SPEAKERand to the right was Giant Bomb

1:10:30SPEAKERand the left was just a table in a little nook, kind of,

1:10:33SPEAKERbut it wasn't like sealed or anything.

1:10:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:10:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:10:37SPEAKER- I've had occasion to listen to some old bomb casts recently

1:10:41SPEAKERand all I can hear is the questionable audio production.

1:10:44SPEAKER- I mean-

1:10:45SPEAKER- Like none of us knew or cared about things

1:10:47SPEAKERlike audio baffling or like, you know,

1:10:49SPEAKERthe furniture not being creaky the thing was sitting on.

1:10:52SPEAKER- Those chairs were so creaky.

1:10:53SPEAKER- Like just the audio quality is so

1:10:57SPEAKERnot up to modern standards, let's say.

1:10:59SPEAKER- Well, we leveled it up when we moved into the basement,

1:11:02SPEAKERI think, 'cause we had the closed room.

1:11:03SPEAKER- Yes, although even podcasts recorded in there

1:11:05SPEAKERhave like way too much reverb on them

1:11:07SPEAKER'cause walls were too bouncy

1:11:09SPEAKERand that room was too small and stuff.

1:11:11SPEAKER- The, at Maximum PC, when we did the No BS podcast,

1:11:15SPEAKERwe did that with headset mics,

1:11:17SPEAKERlike not good headset mics, just crappy like gamer heads.

1:11:20SPEAKERWe literally went into the lab

1:11:22SPEAKERand pulled a bunch of gamer headsets off the shelf

1:11:23SPEAKERto record the first episode.

1:11:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:11:26SPEAKER- And then we recorded it over Skype, I think.

1:11:28SPEAKER- These days you could probably just hold your iPhone

1:11:29SPEAKERup to your face and have a pretty good sounding podcast.

1:11:32SPEAKER- That is the thing I have had a couple of guests do

1:11:34SPEAKERin the past, yeah.

1:11:37SPEAKERSo yeah, that's it.

1:11:38SPEAKERI'm sorry I wasn't memorable, Brad.

1:11:40SPEAKERI really, it was a really,

1:11:42SPEAKERI was like, oh man, this is Brad from GameSpot.

1:11:44SPEAKERI love those guys.

1:11:45SPEAKER- Too excited that knowing the rage was on the premises.

1:11:48SPEAKER- Look, I was a game, I was,

1:11:49SPEAKERthat was, I think that was the trip that I,

1:11:52SPEAKERthat Gearbox was like, hey, I saw you're in Texas,

1:11:55SPEAKERyou wanna come see Borderlands.

1:11:56SPEAKER- Yes, I absolutely did that.

1:11:58SPEAKERI absolutely did the like, hey, before you leave town,

1:12:00SPEAKERwhy don't you come check out?

1:12:01SPEAKERWhy don't you come like test this or, you know,

1:12:03SPEAKERI feel like it was informal.

1:12:04SPEAKERIt was not for like a formal preview.

1:12:07SPEAKERIt was more just like, hey,

1:12:08SPEAKERdo you wanna like come play Borderlands off the record

1:12:10SPEAKERjust to see where it's at?

1:12:12SPEAKER- They were, in retrospect now,

1:12:15SPEAKERit was a monitored play test

1:12:16SPEAKER'cause they were absolutely watching us all play

1:12:17SPEAKERto see how we engaged with it.

1:12:19SPEAKER- Sure.

1:12:20SPEAKER- After everybody left, I played a long time.

1:12:22SPEAKERI was having fun and they were like,

1:12:23SPEAKERyou can keep going whenever.

1:12:24SPEAKERAnd Randy was sitting there watching me play.

1:12:26SPEAKERAnd then I turned around and talked to Randy

1:12:27SPEAKERfor like 15 minutes.

1:12:28SPEAKERI was like, hey, do you mind if we record this?

1:12:30SPEAKERNo PR people around.

1:12:32SPEAKERAnd Randy was like, oh yeah, sure, whatever.

1:12:34SPEAKERSo I plopped the audio recorder down

1:12:36SPEAKERand that was the interview that he was like,

1:12:37SPEAKERyeah, the thing I'm most worried about in PC gaming

1:12:39SPEAKERis Valve, which, you know, like, yes,

1:12:44SPEAKERhis instinct of having one company in charge

1:12:47SPEAKERof distributing all PC games probably is not great,

1:12:51SPEAKERcontinued to this day.

1:12:53SPEAKERThe way he said it was pretty inflammatory

1:12:56SPEAKERand it was like the front page of Dig for 36 hours

1:12:58SPEAKERor something.

1:12:59SPEAKER- Dig.

1:13:00SPEAKER- Dig.

1:13:01SPEAKER- We're just dating yourselves now.

1:13:03SPEAKER- 2K PR got real upset with me on that one,

1:13:06SPEAKERif I recall.

1:13:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I could see it.

1:13:08SPEAKER- A long history of that.

1:13:09SPEAKER- I mean, he said it.

1:13:10SPEAKER- That's what I said.

1:13:10SPEAKERI was like, I'll send you the tape.

1:13:12SPEAKERI have audio recording of him saying it.

1:13:14SPEAKERI didn't misquote or anything.

1:13:16SPEAKERThey're like, is there anything you can do?

1:13:17SPEAKERI was like, well, yeah, I could just not change it

1:13:19SPEAKERand then not make this worse for you.

1:13:21SPEAKERAnyway.

1:13:22SPEAKER- Yeah, sometimes they just need to grouse.

1:13:25SPEAKER- Yeah, that's it.

1:13:26SPEAKER- Probably they needed to be able to tell their boss

1:13:28SPEAKERthat they made an effort to do something about it.

1:13:31SPEAKER- And probably somebody should have been in the room

1:13:33SPEAKERif you left, like they should have known by then.

1:13:36SPEAKERIt wasn't a surprise what he was gonna do.

1:13:38SPEAKER- Look, we've all learned a lot in the last 20 years.

1:13:41SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:13:43SPEAKERBrad, I think that's as good a time as any to wrap it up.

1:13:45SPEAKERIf you have questions,

1:13:46SPEAKERyou can send them to techpod@content.town

1:13:48SPEAKERor if you're in the Discord,

1:13:50SPEAKERyou can post them to the Questions Seeking Answers channel.

1:13:52SPEAKERAnd if you're not in the Discord,

1:13:54SPEAKERhow do you get in there, you might ask?

1:13:56SPEAKER- How do you get in there?

1:13:57SPEAKER- Well, you go to patreon.com/techpod

1:14:01SPEAKERwhere for $5 a month, you can support the show

1:14:04SPEAKERand get access to the Discord

1:14:06SPEAKERand get access to that Questions Seeking Answers channel

1:14:10SPEAKERand get the monthly patron exclusive episode where we,

1:14:13SPEAKERI feel like we just talked about

1:14:15SPEAKERa bunch of random stuff this month.

1:14:16SPEAKERIt was a nice conversation, as I recall.

1:14:21SPEAKER- I couldn't tell you a thing that we talked about right now.

1:14:23SPEAKEROh, hotkeys.

1:14:24SPEAKER- Hotkeys, yeah.

1:14:25SPEAKER- And dishwashers.

1:14:27SPEAKER- And dishwashers.

1:14:27SPEAKER- I didn't put that in the show notes.

1:14:29SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, we appreciate everybody

1:14:33SPEAKERwho supports the show.

1:14:34SPEAKERWe don't take ads, so we wouldn't be here without you all

1:14:37SPEAKERand we appreciate each and every one of you.

1:14:40SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod.

1:14:43SPEAKERIf you want to have your name read every month, though,

1:14:46SPEAKERyou have to sign up for the, every week though,

1:14:48SPEAKERyou have to sign up for the executive producer tier,

1:14:51SPEAKERjust like Infelicitous Rips,

1:14:56SPEAKERBunny Jerk,

1:14:58SPEAKERJordan Lippett,

1:14:59SPEAKERDavid Allen, and James Kamik have.

1:15:01SPEAKERThank you also.

1:15:02SPEAKEROh, and did I say Bunny Jerk?

1:15:03SPEAKERYeah, I said Bunny Jerk.

1:15:04SPEAKER- Yes, no Octothorpe this time.

1:15:06SPEAKER- No Octothorpe this time.

1:15:07SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.

1:15:08SPEAKER- Yes, thank you.

1:15:10SPEAKER- And that'll do it for us this week.

1:15:11SPEAKERWe will be back next week with another episode.

1:15:13SPEAKERReminder, watch General Magic,

1:15:15SPEAKERor if you're Brad, watch Practical Magic.

1:15:17SPEAKERI'm sure they're both the same.

1:15:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of overlap there.

1:15:21SPEAKER- I can't believe University of the Midnight Margaritas.

1:15:23SPEAKERIt's a famous scene.

1:15:26SPEAKERThey referenced it in the trailer for Practical Magic 2.

1:15:30SPEAKER- Wow, okay, I gotta get up to speed.

1:15:32SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.

1:15:33SPEAKERSee y'all next week.

1:15:34SPEAKERAs always, please consider the environmental

1:15:36SPEAKERfor printing this podcast.