00:00SPEAKERI've taken a number of 5 AM flights the last few months,
00:03SPEAKERwhich I mentioned this to you before we started.
00:07SPEAKERAnd you said that I'm a maniac, I think were your words.
00:10SPEAKER- Look, live your life in such a way
00:11SPEAKERthat you don't have to take 5 AM flights, that's my motto.
00:14SPEAKER- These were not planned.
00:14SPEAKERLet's say here were these were made under some duress.
00:17SPEAKER- Fair.
00:18SPEAKER- But I have data to report.
00:19SPEAKERWell, how many instances are required
00:22SPEAKERto call it data and not anecdotes?
00:24SPEAKER- Two. - Two?
00:25SPEAKER- You got more than two?
00:26SPEAKER- I think I've got three.
00:28SPEAKER- Did you write it down?
00:29SPEAKER- Yes, I do have three.
00:30SPEAKERI did not write it down,
00:31SPEAKERbut I have a pretty good memory or a lie.
00:33SPEAKER- If you didn't write it down, it's anecdote.
00:34SPEAKERIf you write it down, it's data.
00:36SPEAKER- Oh, I like to think I have a pretty good memory,
00:37SPEAKERbut of course that's what somebody
00:39SPEAKERwith a poor memory would say.
00:41SPEAKER- Look, contrary to what law and order
00:42SPEAKERwould have us believe,
00:44SPEAKERit's much better to have a video
00:46SPEAKERof somebody doing the crime
00:47SPEAKERthan a memory of somebody watching somebody do the crime.
00:50SPEAKER- This testimony about 5 AM flights
00:52SPEAKERis not admissible in a court of law, but okay.
00:55SPEAKER- What's your food strategy for a 5 AM flight?
00:58SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a rough one.
00:58SPEAKER- The airport?
00:59SPEAKER- That's a rough one.
01:00SPEAKERAnd I mean, that's hardly the first issue,
01:03SPEAKERbut I'll just go ahead and address it.
01:06SPEAKERYou can't grab food at the airport by and large
01:08SPEAKERbecause typically nothing is open.
01:10SPEAKERThere's been a couple of cases where I've seen
01:12SPEAKERlike one coffee shop open up at like four or 4.30.
01:16SPEAKERBut the best you're typically doing
01:18SPEAKERis I've been buying a big bag of beef jerky
01:20SPEAKERbefore the flight or before, you know,
01:22SPEAKERlike before I get there and subsisting on,
01:25SPEAKERand maybe some nuts in like a sandwich baggie.
01:27SPEAKERSo it's like yesterday, this is,
01:30SPEAKERI flew back to San Francisco
01:31SPEAKERon one of these flights yesterday
01:32SPEAKERand it was a beef jerky and nuts kind of day.
01:35SPEAKER- So, okay, I have a bunch of follow-up questions here.
01:38SPEAKERWhat's your beef jerky strategy at this point?
01:40SPEAKERAre you getting like, are you getting like branded?
01:42SPEAKERAre you getting like a pemmican
01:43SPEAKERor would you like a Tillamook kind of jerky?
01:45SPEAKER- Jack Links is typically the one I get.
01:48SPEAKER- Okay, I was gonna say I started,
01:50SPEAKERwhen we've been going back and forth to LA,
01:52SPEAKERwhen I started driving back and forth a lot,
01:54SPEAKERlike 10, 12 years ago,
01:56SPEAKERI started buying like the kind of lightly labeled,
01:59SPEAKERclearly made in somebody's garage jerky
02:01SPEAKERfrom the Central Valley and it's life-changing
02:04SPEAKER'cause sometimes it's crunchy,
02:05SPEAKERsometimes it just sucks all the moisture out of your mouth.
02:07SPEAKER- Sure.
02:08SPEAKER- Sometimes it's like so peppery
02:10SPEAKERthat like no human could eat it.
02:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, peppery is bad in this situation
02:15SPEAKER'cause you're also pretty limited
02:16SPEAKERon how much liquid you have to consume.
02:18SPEAKER- That's true.
02:19SPEAKER- Okay, we're really burying the lead here though.
02:21SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Which is this.
02:23SPEAKER- Yes, it's a nightmare to have to wake up at 2.30
02:26SPEAKERin the morning.
02:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I just stay up at that point probably.
02:29SPEAKER- In fact, yes, I was gonna say this is really,
02:32SPEAKERI think probably not better than a red eye
02:34SPEAKERin terms of the amount of swell.
02:35SPEAKERIt's pretty, you can at least technically sleep
02:38SPEAKERin your own bed for some number of hours
02:40SPEAKERunless you're like me where you can't sleep
02:41SPEAKERwhen you know you have to get up super early
02:43SPEAKERand you're so nervous about missing your alarm
02:44SPEAKERthat you lie there jittering all night
02:47SPEAKERand can't actually fall asleep.
02:49SPEAKER- Yeah, just keep waking up a little bit
02:50SPEAKERand you're like, roll over, so it's not time yet.
02:52SPEAKER- I'm asleep for another 25 minutes, yeah, that's the worst.
02:54SPEAKER- If you're good at sleeping, you could go to bed
02:56SPEAKERat like nine and get a good five hours of sleep or something.
02:59SPEAKERIt's not that bad, but okay, let me get
03:01SPEAKERto the actual point though.
03:01SPEAKERSo it's, of course it wrecks your sleep.
03:04SPEAKER- Yeah.
03:05SPEAKER- But every one of these trips has been without fail
03:08SPEAKERthe most comfortable airline trips I have had
03:10SPEAKERin like 20 years.
03:12SPEAKER- Like in terms of like number of passengers
03:13SPEAKERand stuff like that.
03:14SPEAKER- Let me put it to you this way.
03:17SPEAKEROn the flight out a few to three weeks ago,
03:20SPEAKERfrom here to Dallas, nobody on either side of me,
03:23SPEAKERI had the whole row, like on my side of the aisle.
03:25SPEAKER- My eyes got huge just for audio listeners.
03:27SPEAKER- Dude, that is nothing.
03:29SPEAKER- Yeah.
03:29SPEAKER- 'Cause flying back yesterday from Charlotte,
03:31SPEAKERNorth Carolina to San Francisco,
03:33SPEAKERwhich is a five and a half hour flight, cross country,
03:37SPEAKERI had the entire row on both sides of the aisle to myself.
03:40SPEAKER- What do you do with the row across from you?
03:42SPEAKER- Well, nothing, I mean, that's, yeah.
03:44SPEAKER- Okay, I was gonna say, like are you putting
03:45SPEAKERthe armrests up and like stretching out across the aisle?
03:48SPEAKER'Cause that's a bit rude.
03:49SPEAKER- You kind of could 'cause the entire back half of the plane
03:51SPEAKERwas basically one person per row.
03:53SPEAKERI have not seen that happen in,
03:55SPEAKERI am telling you like 20 or 25 years.
03:58SPEAKER- So I'm gonna tell you, there's a threshold
03:59SPEAKERbeyond which the flight being too empty creeps me out
04:01SPEAKERand I'm like, maybe I'm gonna get off of this one.
04:03SPEAKER- It was verging on, I mean, don't get me wrong,
04:06SPEAKERI was in my like utterly sleep deprived,
04:10SPEAKERlike 90 minutes of sleep state,
04:11SPEAKERI was, you know, to the extent
04:14SPEAKERthat I could be over the moon, I was over the moon.
04:16SPEAKERBut also yes, but also yes, it was a little bit creepy.
04:19SPEAKERLike I remember post 9/11, but like early enough
04:23SPEAKERthat flying post 9/11 was still novel
04:25SPEAKERand it was before we had to start taking our shoes off
04:27SPEAKERto go through security, so it was like probably early 2002
04:31SPEAKERwould be my guess, I had to fly to New York for something
04:33SPEAKERand I got on a flight that was,
04:36SPEAKERI think it was an early morning one,
04:37SPEAKERI didn't take a lot of red eyes at that point.
04:40SPEAKERAnd there were so few people on the airplane
04:42SPEAKERthat I was like, I don't think I wanna be on this,
04:45SPEAKERlike 'cause there's like, there's actual data about this,
04:48SPEAKERyou know this right?
04:49SPEAKER- Oh.
04:50SPEAKER- Like people cancel, doomed flights, people often cancel.
04:56SPEAKER- Huh. - Yeah.
04:57SPEAKER- What? - Yeah.
04:58SPEAKER- Is this some kind of clairvoyance thing?
05:00SPEAKER- Look, I apologize in advance,
05:03SPEAKERI'm sure I'm gonna get yelled at in the comments on this one
05:05SPEAKERbut when I look this up, somebody told me this
05:07SPEAKERlike 20 years ago when I was on a plane
05:09SPEAKERand I was like, that's crazy and then I looked it up
05:11SPEAKERand I was like, oh wow, okay.
05:13SPEAKERAlmost always, whenever something bad happens on a flight
05:16SPEAKERand there's loss of aircraft or people or whatever,
05:20SPEAKERalmost always fewer people on that flight than the normal.
05:23SPEAKER- Mm. - Yeah.
05:24SPEAKER- I'm an extreme skeptic about such things,
05:26SPEAKERso I'm gonna show off that coincidence but.
05:29SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, coincidence once or twice.
05:32SPEAKERCoincidence on all of them, maybe not, anyway.
05:36SPEAKER- We need to establish a clear cause and effect here though
05:38SPEAKERfor it to meet my bar but anyway,
05:40SPEAKERhey, you know what's pretty awesome
05:41SPEAKERwhen you have to fly cross country
05:43SPEAKERis not having anybody near you for the whole way.
05:46SPEAKER- That does sound like. - It was pretty good.
05:48SPEAKER- My shoulders are wide enough
05:50SPEAKERthat when I'm in the coach in the middle,
05:53SPEAKERI basically am like cockeyed either left forward
05:57SPEAKERor right forward the entire time
05:58SPEAKER'cause I'm always gonna be smashing
05:59SPEAKERinto the person next to me
06:01SPEAKERunless they have a very narrow frame.
06:03SPEAKERSo yeah, I love not having a middle seat,
06:06SPEAKERhaving somebody in the middle.
06:07SPEAKER- One other quick point to make here
06:10SPEAKERis that the previous trip, unfortunately,
06:13SPEAKERhad to book the day before I left.
06:15SPEAKERThis one I booked for about two weeks out
06:17SPEAKERwhich is still pretty close for other reasons.
06:20SPEAKERSo I booked the cheapest like basic economy.
06:23SPEAKERI assume you're familiar with how these work now.
06:25SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:26SPEAKER- Like every airline offers a super dirt cheap
06:29SPEAKERlike bargain basement rates
06:30SPEAKERbut you can't do X, Y, and Z normal things
06:33SPEAKERyou could do with your fare like change and get refunds.
06:35SPEAKER- No bathrooms.
06:37SPEAKER- Yep, that's right.
06:38SPEAKERThey just hand you a bottle when you get on.
06:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it's both in and out, it turns out.
06:44SPEAKERYou can't pick your seats in many cases.
06:46SPEAKERUnited apparently, I almost flew United on this trip,
06:48SPEAKERbut United apparently to this bargain fare
06:52SPEAKERhas added the caveat that you cannot bring a bag on board.
06:56SPEAKER- Yeah, even a shoulder bag, right?
06:58SPEAKER- You can bring your personal item.
06:59SPEAKERTypically it's one personal item
07:01SPEAKERand one actual bag that goes in the overhead.
07:04SPEAKERYou can no longer, you have to check that bag.
07:05SPEAKERYou can no longer bring anything
07:07SPEAKERbut something that goes under the seat.
07:08SPEAKERSo I did not fly United, but-
07:10SPEAKER- They're like three weeks away
07:12SPEAKERfrom adding surge pricing to the ticket prices.
07:15SPEAKER- They do that already.
07:16SPEAKERThey absolutely, like fares absolutely fluctuate
07:19SPEAKERbased on day of the week and IP address
07:20SPEAKERand all kinds of stuff.
07:21SPEAKERBut here's, okay, so here's the point I was gonna make.
07:23SPEAKERSo I've booked those super cheap fares
07:25SPEAKERbut all these times where I couldn't pick seats,
07:27SPEAKERin every case I got a window or an aisle.
07:30SPEAKERWhen they assigned to me the seat,
07:32SPEAKERthey have never assigned to be a middle seat yet
07:34SPEAKERon these fares where I can't pick my own seat.
07:36SPEAKER- I don't think we've ever flown anyplace together
07:38SPEAKERbut are you a window guy or are you an aisle guy?
07:40SPEAKER- Typically aisle, I love looking out the window
07:42SPEAKERon a plane, but the social, what's the word
07:47SPEAKERI'm looking for here?
07:48SPEAKER- The contract, like the, hey, you gotta bother two people
07:51SPEAKERto get up and go to the bathroom.
07:52SPEAKER- Yeah, it's more of the social convenience, I guess,
07:54SPEAKERof not having to ask people.
07:55SPEAKERAlthough, I mean, like, has there ever in airline history
07:58SPEAKERbeen a case of somebody refusing to get up
07:59SPEAKERto let somebody in the middle go to the bathroom?
08:01SPEAKER- Look, they're creating a problem for themselves.
08:03SPEAKER- Maybe, yes, I guess you're right about that.
08:05SPEAKERAnyway, like, but still, I like the liberty
08:08SPEAKERto just get up whenever I feel like it
08:09SPEAKERand not have to bother the person next to me.
08:11SPEAKERSo aisle, typically.
08:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm typically an aisle.
08:14SPEAKERI feel like I'll take a window in a pinch.
08:16SPEAKER- Yeah, although with the broad shoulders,
08:18SPEAKERyou do get the shoulder check as people pass you frequently.
08:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you're just constantly getting whacked.
08:24SPEAKERI feel like if I'm doing a long flight
08:27SPEAKERwhere I might have a chance, like I'm too tall
08:28SPEAKERto sleep in the airplane seats usually
08:30SPEAKERthat just doesn't work right with my shoulders
08:33SPEAKERand it's not good for me.
08:35SPEAKER- Yeah.
08:36SPEAKER- I'll often on a late night flight, I'll do a window
08:38SPEAKER'cause then I can take a blanket and roll it up
08:41SPEAKERand jam it against the wall and just smash my face
08:43SPEAKERover there and maybe get a little bit of a snooze.
08:45SPEAKERBut I don't like an early, like the thing I like to do
08:49SPEAKERis if I'm doing a flight that there's gonna be
08:51SPEAKERany kind of jet lag situation at all,
08:53SPEAKERI like to time it so that when I get to where I'm going,
08:56SPEAKERit's about time for me to go to sleep.
08:59SPEAKERSo then I just stay up, I maybe eat a meal.
09:01SPEAKERLike I used to fly to New York and I'd always try
09:03SPEAKERto get there around 11 o'clock.
09:05SPEAKERI'd ride the train into the city, dump my bag off someplace,
09:08SPEAKERgo find some all night food, grab some dope food,
09:11SPEAKERwalk around the city for a little while
09:13SPEAKERand then go to the air, go back to the hotel
09:15SPEAKERand lay down and go to sleep.
09:16SPEAKERAnd then I'd wake up and be normal the next day.
09:17SPEAKERSleep like eight or 10 hours, it'd be fine.
09:19SPEAKER- Sure.
09:20SPEAKERYeah, for business trips, that's fine.
09:21SPEAKERI should say for people who may be yelling at the radio
09:25SPEAKERabout X, Y, and Z factor in my booking,
09:29SPEAKERwhere I'm going a direct flight is absolutely not an option
09:32SPEAKERand probably never will be.
09:33SPEAKERAnd so the, I think the absolute shortest,
09:36SPEAKERdoor-to-door, like leaving my house here
09:38SPEAKERto getting to walking into the destination
09:41SPEAKERis like 10, 11 hours at an absolute minimum.
09:44SPEAKER- So let me ask you.
09:45SPEAKER- So basically that leads to a situation
09:47SPEAKERwhere if I don't leave as early in the morning,
09:49SPEAKERit starts to create an inconvenience
09:51SPEAKERfor the people on the other end.
09:52SPEAKER- Well, and you have--
09:53SPEAKER- I don't want people having to come get me
09:55SPEAKERat 11 o'clock at night is the point, so.
09:58SPEAKER- The flying into Tri-Cities, which is where
10:00SPEAKERthe Bristol, Kingsport, Johnson City,
10:02SPEAKERNortheast Tennessee Airport, which is a similar situation.
10:04SPEAKERIt's always connecting through Cincinnati
10:06SPEAKERor Atlanta or Charlotte or Dallas or Salt Lake.
10:11SPEAKERAnd then the flights would always,
10:13SPEAKERwe'd leave here at the crack of dawn
10:15SPEAKERand get in there at like 10 o'clock at night.
10:17SPEAKER- Yep, that's how it always goes.
10:18SPEAKER- It's a horrible long day.
10:20SPEAKERAnd yeah, I get that.
10:22SPEAKERI'd much rather arrive in the morning.
10:23SPEAKERWe did, when we used to go to Bristol for Christmas,
10:27SPEAKERwe would often do the red eye to Atlanta
10:30SPEAKERand then the short, like you'd basically arrive in Atlanta,
10:35SPEAKERget on the 6 a.m. flight to Tri-Cities
10:37SPEAKERand you'd be there at like eight o'clock in the morning,
10:40SPEAKERwhich was fantastic, except for I can't sleep
10:42SPEAKERon the airplane, so I would always come up.
10:44SPEAKERAnd anyway, it's bad.
10:45SPEAKERFlying's bad!
10:46SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, sure.
10:48SPEAKERI loved red eyes in my 20s when it didn't matter
10:50SPEAKERif I stayed up all night, but not really an option anymore.
10:53SPEAKERAnyway, we should start this podcast,
10:55SPEAKERbut did you know that free Wi-Fi
10:57SPEAKERis also just kind of becoming a thing now?
10:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
11:00SPEAKER- Like American and United have both just given me
11:02SPEAKERfree Wi-Fi in the last little bit.
11:03SPEAKERLike I have always been one of those like staunchly
11:07SPEAKERanti-paying-for-internet-on-a-flight people,
11:09SPEAKER'cause I've got books and the Switch, you know,
11:11SPEAKERand I like, you know, it seems like a good time to unplug.
11:15SPEAKER- See, I love-- - And enjoy a novel
11:17SPEAKERor something, but--
11:18SPEAKER- Look, I love getting work done,
11:20SPEAKERbut I love farting around on the internet even more.
11:22SPEAKERI will always pay for Wi-Fi every time.
11:24SPEAKER- Man, that's, okay, that's life choices.
11:26SPEAKERAnyway, I tried it yesterday.
11:28SPEAKERI got my MacBook out.
11:29SPEAKERI tried to SSH into a server in my house.
11:34SPEAKERI had over a second of latency.
11:36SPEAKER- Yeah, you're going to space and back.
11:38SPEAKER- It turned out to not be worth it.
11:40SPEAKERMan, I was sending my keystrokes into space.
11:43SPEAKER(upbeat music)
11:59SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
12:11SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."
12:13SPEAKERI'm Will. - I'm Brad.
12:15SPEAKER- That was the longest cold open we've ever done.
12:17SPEAKER- Look, people have opinions about air travel.
12:19SPEAKER- Look, yeah, it's, it's--
12:21SPEAKER- It's one of the, it's one of the few universal experience.
12:23SPEAKERWell, I guess some people maybe
12:25SPEAKERalmost never get on an airplane,
12:26SPEAKERbut, you know, most people these days have got
12:29SPEAKERstrong feelings about it.
12:30SPEAKER- It's funny, before the pandemic, I flew so much,
12:33SPEAKERand now I hardly ever go, like,
12:34SPEAKERit's like two flights a year, maybe on a big year.
12:37SPEAKER- It's all just family related for me
12:39SPEAKERat this point, basically.
12:41SPEAKER- I miss business travel.
12:42SPEAKERBusiness travel on somebody else's,
12:43SPEAKERwhen somebody was paying me to be someplace,
12:45SPEAKERoh, good times. - Sure.
12:47SPEAKERYeah, I mean, dude, I spent most of my twenties
12:50SPEAKERon airplanes for, especially for GameSpot,
12:53SPEAKERlike a little less for "Giant Bomb,"
12:54SPEAKERbut there was still a fair amount of travel for that.
12:56SPEAKER- Well, you guys traveled a bunch for "Giant Bomb."
12:58SPEAKER- I mean, I was like, I was like full on United,
13:00SPEAKERwhatever, Gold Elite, Platinum Status, whatever,
13:03SPEAKERlike could go in the lounge and everything,
13:04SPEAKER'cause we were just, you know,
13:05SPEAKERI was like racking up flights to Japan and Europe
13:08SPEAKERand all over the country, but it was business travel,
13:11SPEAKERso it was mostly get there,
13:13SPEAKERsitting in a conference hall or hotel suite,
13:16SPEAKERand then go right in a hotel room and then leave.
13:20SPEAKERBut anyway, you know-- - Yeah, crappy laptops,
13:22SPEAKERbad meals, lots of Cobb salads, and room service Cobb salads.
13:26SPEAKER- EVDO cards in the laptops.
13:28SPEAKER- Man, I remember doing a live blog
13:30SPEAKERof like the QuakeCon keynote with two different EVDO,
13:33SPEAKERone USB and one PCMCIA, so I had double internet
13:36SPEAKERjust in case one went down.
13:37SPEAKER- Man, we didn't have fallback.
13:39SPEAKERThat's, live blogging, like in the early, early days
13:42SPEAKERof cell internet, live blogging
13:45SPEAKERwas actually kind of exciting.
13:46SPEAKER- It was so fun.
13:47SPEAKERLike, I had to ice my wrists after the car mat,
13:50SPEAKERthree hours of car mat talking as fast as he could.
13:52SPEAKER- Yeah, that would not be fun.
13:55SPEAKER- Yeah, that and I would use press passes
13:59SPEAKERand shoot photos for Gizmodo sometimes
14:01SPEAKERwhen they first started doing photos in their live blog.
14:04SPEAKERAnyway, it's end of the month, it's question time.
14:07SPEAKERWe have a bunch of Qs, we're gonna turn them into As.
14:09SPEAKER- Just barely the end of the month, I think like this,
14:12SPEAKERtypically we do last Sunday,
14:14SPEAKERthe month is the question episode,
14:15SPEAKERand this next week, next week, Sunday is November 1st,
14:20SPEAKERso it was very much on the razor's edge of like,
14:24SPEAKERshould we hold it for one more week?
14:25SPEAKERBut then this also seemed to be like maybe the worst week
14:31SPEAKERin cybersecurity in history, so we thought about doing that,
14:35SPEAKERbut then I think we're gonna hold a week on that
14:37SPEAKERfor some postmortems to drop,
14:38SPEAKER'cause neither of us is a working infosec professional.
14:42SPEAKER- We should see if Elena wants to come on.
14:44SPEAKERShe covers that beat for PC World and would be a good,
14:46SPEAKERwould be a good guess for that.
14:47SPEAKER- Yeah, but you know, the short version is,
14:49SPEAKERI think we could probably do with a little more
14:52SPEAKERlike thorough documentation of everything that happened
14:54SPEAKERbefore we tried to discuss it with any intelligence.
14:57SPEAKER- Well, and there was more stuff that happened that kind of,
14:59SPEAKERlike there were so many things that dropped on that day
15:00SPEAKERthat like, some people I think used the,
15:04SPEAKER"Hey, everybody's having the worst IT day of their lives"
15:07SPEAKERto drop some other less severe,
15:10SPEAKERbut less public vulnerabilities, so yeah.
15:13SPEAKERNode.js had like two or three really bad ones
15:15SPEAKERthat kind of got glossed over
15:18SPEAKERbecause of the two really big ones.
15:20SPEAKER- And then like Railway had some public key leaks
15:22SPEAKERand there's some other stuff.
15:23SPEAKER- The Railway one was downstream of the PHP thing.
15:26SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
15:27SPEAKER- They got breached, but a whole lot of people, I think,
15:29SPEAKERmaybe got breached because of the PHP thing.
15:31SPEAKERAnyway, we will probably reconvene
15:33SPEAKERabout that topic next week.
15:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I had multiple conversations.
15:36SPEAKERI was playing PUBG with a friend the other night.
15:38SPEAKERWe were talking about it and he was like,
15:40SPEAKER"How's the back half of your week been?"
15:42SPEAKERHe's like, "Well, we did the mitigations
15:44SPEAKER"and got those out really fast
15:45SPEAKER"and then we had to patch a thousand servers
15:47SPEAKER"and that was less good."
15:49SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yep, there we go."
15:52SPEAKERIf you have queues you'd like us to turn into A's,
15:54SPEAKERyou can send them to techpod@content.town
15:57SPEAKERor alternately, you can, if you're in the Discord,
16:01SPEAKERyou can go into the Questions Seeking Answers channel
16:03SPEAKERand you can post them in there.
16:05SPEAKERThey'll disappear after a moment or two
16:06SPEAKERand then we will see them at the end of the month
16:09SPEAKERand we will pull them and put them in a big giant list
16:11SPEAKERand some of them will get bolded
16:12SPEAKERand some of them will get highlighted
16:14SPEAKERand we may or may not answer them.
16:15SPEAKERAnd if you're not in the Discord,
16:16SPEAKERyou can get in there by going to patreon.com/techpod
16:19SPEAKERwhere for $5 a month,
16:21SPEAKERget access to the fabulous TechPod Discord
16:24SPEAKERand the Patreon exclusive episode
16:26SPEAKERand you support the show, which we really appreciate
16:27SPEAKER'cause we're listener supported
16:28SPEAKERand wouldn't be here without you all.
16:29SPEAKER- True.
16:31SPEAKER- You got a question queued up, Brad?
16:33SPEAKER- Yes, I was debating whether we should save this one
16:35SPEAKERfor last 'cause I think people will have strong opinions
16:38SPEAKERbut I'm just going to start with this banger.
16:40SPEAKER- Okay.
16:41SPEAKER- From Nate in Fort Collins.
16:43SPEAKER- Look, there were three that I had in my head
16:45SPEAKERthat you could have been the banger
16:46SPEAKERyou're saving for the last or starting with.
16:48SPEAKERSo I'm glad you picked Nate's.
16:49SPEAKER- Okay, I have never played a Metal Gear game.
16:52SPEAKERI have never had Taco Bell.
16:54SPEAKERI have never tried sushi.
16:56SPEAKERIf I could only choose one of these to do for the first time
16:58SPEAKERnot considering cost or time investment, which should I do?
17:02SPEAKER- Okay, I don't know that I have a great answer
17:05SPEAKERon Metal Gear 'cause the only Metal Gear game
17:07SPEAKERI think I ever finished was that Ground Zeroes thing
17:08SPEAKERthat they released.
17:09SPEAKER- Okay, that's not a bad one.
17:11SPEAKERI have finished most, I've played all of them
17:13SPEAKERand finished almost all of them.
17:14SPEAKER- I finished the NES one, which was incredibly difficult.
17:18SPEAKER- Wow, wow.
17:19SPEAKER- I was like 10 years old, so I had time.
17:21SPEAKER- Not noted as one of the better Metal Gear games
17:23SPEAKERbut it's fair.
17:24SPEAKER- It was, it got a big spread in Nintendo Power
17:27SPEAKERtherefore I played it, you know.
17:29SPEAKER- Definitely, there is one clear answer here to me.
17:32SPEAKER- Sushi, man.
17:33SPEAKER- Yes, a hundred percent.
17:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
17:35SPEAKER- A hundred percent, that is a whole culinary world
17:37SPEAKERthat you have yet to experience.
17:39SPEAKER- Dude, I would get on a, if you were like,
17:41SPEAKERhey, Will, you wanna go to Japan with me for a week
17:43SPEAKERand just eat sushi all week, I would, like,
17:46SPEAKERI'm always gonna say yes to that if I can.
17:47SPEAKER- Especially factor, well, okay,
17:49SPEAKERthis is probably not practical for Nate, I assume,
17:51SPEAKERbut factoring in the hypothetical,
17:52SPEAKERthe not considering cost or time investment part of this,
17:56SPEAKERlike if you could just go fly to Japan and like, yeah.
18:00SPEAKERBut even-
18:00SPEAKER- Yeah, the Mercury poisoning tour, let's go.
18:04SPEAKER- Well, also an ironic thing about Japan,
18:06SPEAKERagain, getting back to the business travel
18:07SPEAKER'cause I went for TGS so many times,
18:09SPEAKERlike the cheapest kaiten sushi,
18:11SPEAKERkaiten is like the conveyor belt, you know,
18:14SPEAKERyou don't even need to speak Japanese,
18:15SPEAKERyou can just walk in
18:16SPEAKERand start grabbing plates off the conveyor,
18:18SPEAKERand then they'll just come give you a bill at the end,
18:21SPEAKERlike even that cheap, like, conveyor belt sushi
18:24SPEAKERnear the hotel was like some of the best I'd ever had.
18:27SPEAKER- My sister-in-law just got back, I saw her this morning,
18:30SPEAKERand she was telling me about her sushi,
18:32SPEAKERshe was like, I ate sushi twice a day a couple of times,
18:36SPEAKERand the yen is so weak right now
18:38SPEAKERthat everything is incredibly inexpensive,
18:41SPEAKERand she was like, yeah, I've eaten better here
18:43SPEAKERthan I've ever eaten on a trip before.
18:45SPEAKER- Well, you know, depending on where you live,
18:46SPEAKERlike plenty of good sushi in,
18:48SPEAKERI mean, I can't speak for Fort Collins,
18:50SPEAKERbut America also has a lot of good sushi
18:52SPEAKERif you can find it, so.
18:53SPEAKER- So what's your go-to?
18:54SPEAKERIf you're starting somebody out on sushi,
18:56SPEAKERdo you start 'em with like-
18:57SPEAKER- Oh, jeez, I have no idea,
18:58SPEAKERthat would be probably entirely dependent on the person.
19:01SPEAKER- I mean, so, yeah, but there's some like,
19:04SPEAKERthere's some bangers that are relatively-
19:07SPEAKER- Well, Webster's dictionary defines sushi as,
19:09SPEAKERthey're like, technically,
19:10SPEAKERlike sushi is the kind of rice configuration,
19:12SPEAKERit's not actually raw fish.
19:14SPEAKERLike raw fish can be a component,
19:16SPEAKERbut there's a bajillion things that can be sushi.
19:19SPEAKER- Yeah, like my advice would be to get some basic rolls,
19:22SPEAKERget one thing that's weird,
19:23SPEAKERand get a couple pieces of nigiri,
19:25SPEAKERand the nigiri is like the fish on the top of the rice.
19:27SPEAKER- Yeah, that's my favorite, typically.
19:29SPEAKER- I love a nigiri, I love, my favorite,
19:31SPEAKERthe thing I get is a chashudan with the,
19:34SPEAKERsorry, not a chashudana,
19:37SPEAKERthe sashimi bowl with the sushi rice,
19:40SPEAKERand the wasabi and stuff,
19:42SPEAKERand just, I just eat the,
19:44SPEAKERI grab those most 'cause I love a sashimi.
19:46SPEAKER- Sure, I like hand rolls are good.
19:48SPEAKER- Hand rolls are great.
19:50SPEAKERLike if you want something,
19:50SPEAKERif you wanna start with something
19:51SPEAKERthat's a little less intense,
19:53SPEAKERand like a piece of raw fish,
19:54SPEAKERyou can, you know, no shame in ordering a California roll,
19:58SPEAKERor a spicy tuna roll.
19:59SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, yeah, like yes,
20:01SPEAKERthe rolls, and you know, maybe if you're really skittish,
20:04SPEAKERlike rolls with entirely cooked or non-animal components,
20:07SPEAKERmaybe are a place to start,
20:08SPEAKERand kind of branch out from there, but.
20:10SPEAKER- Asparagus tempera is always good.
20:13SPEAKER- I really like the staple fishes though,
20:15SPEAKERand once you're getting into raw fish,
20:16SPEAKERlike frankly, frankly,
20:18SPEAKERjust like tuna, and salmon, and mackerel,
20:20SPEAKERand like some of them, you know,
20:21SPEAKERbut I have, I don't think I've really ever met a raw fish
20:25SPEAKERI didn't like, frankly, fatty tuna is the god.
20:29SPEAKER- Fatty tuna is really good.
20:29SPEAKERI don't get fatty tuna anymore,
20:30SPEAKER'cause it's a little iffy on a sustainability front,
20:34SPEAKERbut like, if I was in Japan,
20:36SPEAKERI would eat fatty tuna and not hesitate.
20:39SPEAKERI love a mackerel and a red snapper.
20:41SPEAKERThose are my favorites of the non-standards,
20:44SPEAKERand you can't go wrong with salmon and tuna.
20:45SPEAKER- I'm calling an end to this question,
20:47SPEAKER'cause I haven't eaten lunch, and I'm very hungry now.
20:49SPEAKER- Oh yeah, okay, well sorry about that.
20:51SPEAKERYou brought it up.
20:52SPEAKERThanks, Nate, enjoy, enjoy.
20:54SPEAKER- I think my only knock against sushi
20:56SPEAKERis it's not really realistic to enjoy it in the home.
20:59SPEAKERI mean, you can make it yourself, of course,
21:01SPEAKERbut what I mean is like really good,
21:02SPEAKERprofessionally prepared sushi.
21:04SPEAKERSo even by the time you get it home,
21:07SPEAKERlike if you really hustle,
21:08SPEAKERlike if you can pick it up somewhere
21:09SPEAKERand get it home in like five minutes, you're fine.
21:11SPEAKER- There's a place that's like 10 minutes away from us
21:13SPEAKERthat we're able to take out from sometimes,
21:16SPEAKERand it's like in the realm, it's safe.
21:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't even mean like safe or not safe.
21:21SPEAKERI'm not even talking food safety, just freshness.
21:24SPEAKERLike you can just, you can start to tell a difference
21:26SPEAKERif it sits for more than like 20, 30 minutes.
21:29SPEAKER- Yeah, don't go to the, the thing I would say
21:31SPEAKERis don't go to the grocery store
21:32SPEAKERand get stuff in the rack there.
21:34SPEAKER- I've eaten a lot of Safeway sushi, actually.
21:38SPEAKER- I mean, I have too, but if you're trying it
21:39SPEAKERfor the first time, that's like a hey.
21:42SPEAKERLike the thing I would do, honestly,
21:44SPEAKERis find a place that people in your town like
21:46SPEAKERand go sit down at the sushi bar
21:48SPEAKERand tell the chef that you've never had sushi before
21:51SPEAKERand like let them just choose some stuff for you
21:53SPEAKERand go nuts.
21:54SPEAKER- Yes, actually, that is really good advice.
21:56SPEAKERJust find, yes, that's kind of the best thing
21:58SPEAKERabout the bar part of the sushi place
22:00SPEAKERis that you can interact with the chef.
22:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like a guided food tour
22:06SPEAKERof things that you're gonna find delicious or weird,
22:09SPEAKERand some of it you like and some of it you want,
22:10SPEAKERand that's fine.
22:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, okay.
22:13SPEAKERWe have to move on.
22:14SPEAKER- I want sushi now, Brad, this is your fault.
22:16SPEAKER- Extreme same.
22:19SPEAKERJason from Texas.
22:20SPEAKERA few months ago, I replaced my Ring doorbell
22:23SPEAKERand security cameras due to the revelation
22:25SPEAKERof Ring sharing video with third parties.
22:27SPEAKERIt was probably there in the fine print,
22:29SPEAKERbut who reads that?
22:30SPEAKERI replaced my Ring ecosystem with a self-hosted option.
22:34SPEAKERWhat can I do with my unused Ring devices?
22:36SPEAKERIn a normal situation, I would give them away or sell them,
22:39SPEAKERbut if I do that,
22:39SPEAKERI might as well just keep using them myself.
22:41SPEAKERShould I destroy them and recycle the parts
22:43SPEAKERor keep them and hope that someone finds a way
22:45SPEAKERto use them in a self-hosted environment?
22:48SPEAKERAm I overthinking this?
22:49SPEAKER- So I looked a little bit to see if there's projects
22:51SPEAKERthat take these over, 'cause like people have resurrected
22:55SPEAKERnow unsupported Nest thermostats and stuff like that.
22:58SPEAKER- Yeah, by and large, that would be the go-to answer here
23:01SPEAKERis like, oh, I'm sure somebody's jailbroken it
23:03SPEAKERand kind of gotten it doing things it wasn't supposed to do,
23:05SPEAKERbut you tell me, probably you're making a face,
23:07SPEAKERso maybe not.
23:08SPEAKER- So there's not a ton.
23:10SPEAKERLike while their backend security with your video
23:13SPEAKERis kind of crappy, their firmware level security
23:15SPEAKERseems pretty good 'cause I didn't see a bunch
23:17SPEAKERof aftermarket firmwares for them.
23:18SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, jailbreaking is pretty hard
23:21SPEAKERin this day and age, it seems, unless like specific types
23:25SPEAKERof vulnerabilities present themselves.
23:27SPEAKER- Unless, yeah, unless somebody specifically does something
23:29SPEAKERto make them accessible.
23:31SPEAKER- Yeah, like in the age of certificates
23:34SPEAKERand signed firmware and that kind of thing,
23:36SPEAKERlike it's not super easy to do.
23:39SPEAKER- The thing I wasn't able to find is if the parts
23:41SPEAKERare standard enough that it's worth like getting
23:44SPEAKERthe reflow station out and de-soldering the cameras
23:46SPEAKERand all the chips and stuff.
23:48SPEAKERI kind of feel like I would just take it to electronics
23:51SPEAKERrecycling and send it on its way and not worry about it
23:54SPEAKERtoo much and, you know.
23:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I can tell you what my strategy
23:59SPEAKERwould be to put it in a drawer and hope that someday
24:01SPEAKERsomebody jailbreaks it and does something cool with it,
24:03SPEAKERbut that's entirely down to your tolerance
24:06SPEAKERfor holding onto stuff that's not doing anything.
24:09SPEAKER- Also, my new policy on putting things in drawers
24:12SPEAKERis that things with batteries don't go in drawers.
24:14SPEAKER- That's probably a good policy.
24:16SPEAKER- Those ring doorbells all have batteries.
24:19SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:21SPEAKERSo this is just going to be more and more of a question
24:24SPEAKERabout more and more device categories over time.
24:26SPEAKER- It is, it is 100%, that is 100% true.
24:30SPEAKER- Okay, Michael writes in, this is kind of more
24:32SPEAKERof a trip report than a life report rather than a question.
24:37SPEAKERIt's about the drone delivery.
24:39SPEAKER- Oh, the potatoes from the air.
24:40SPEAKER- Yeah, the potatoes from the sky business
24:42SPEAKERthat we talked about.
24:43SPEAKER- Nathan's potatoes.
24:44SPEAKER- Two, three weeks ago, I live in Denton, Texas,
24:47SPEAKERwhich happens to be a place
24:48SPEAKERwith those nightmare delivery drones.
24:50SPEAKERThey are limited to two and a half or three pounds.
24:53SPEAKERThere's a big drone that gets where it's going
24:55SPEAKERand then there's a smaller drone inside of it
24:57SPEAKERthat seems to lower down,
24:58SPEAKERwhich is what employees at Walmart fill
25:00SPEAKERand that's what sets the package down on the ground.
25:04SPEAKERThey are fairly loud and hard to tune out.
25:07SPEAKERAs someone who lives a mile and a half from them,
25:09SPEAKERI think he means like from the kind of distribution point.
25:13SPEAKER- The drone center? - Yes, the drone hive.
25:16SPEAKER- Like this is giving me strong like,
25:18SPEAKERhey, I just unlocked the RTS unit
25:20SPEAKERthat flies the drones around vibes.
25:22SPEAKER- Oh, the Walmart drone hive.
25:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
25:25SPEAKER- Someone who lives in a mile and a half from there,
25:27SPEAKERthey go over my yard frequently, they feel very invasive
25:30SPEAKERand quite frankly have kind of stolen the fun
25:32SPEAKERout of doing yard projects.
25:34SPEAKERI know I sound like that old curmudgeon shouting,
25:36SPEAKER"Not on my lawn," but they sincerely make me uncomfortable.
25:40SPEAKERA lot of people in my neighborhood order them
25:41SPEAKERfor the novelty and they're fast enough
25:44SPEAKERto get you a last minute item within an hour
25:46SPEAKERof when you need it,
25:46SPEAKERso it's easy for like condiments and stuff.
25:50SPEAKERWalmart employees said that they're a nightmare to work with
25:52SPEAKERand just add more labor to their job.
25:54SPEAKERI'll send a second email with photos
25:56SPEAKERand maybe a video of one taking off
25:58SPEAKERbecause they're constantly taking off
26:00SPEAKERfrom the big nightmare cube that they live in,
26:03SPEAKERwhich is fenced in better than our local county jail.
26:06SPEAKERThey are extremely interesting at first
26:08SPEAKERand then they become an absolute nightmare
26:10SPEAKERand they are loud as shit.
26:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I wonder if we're gonna get one of these emails
26:14SPEAKERbecause that was like,
26:16SPEAKERI looked at the number of propellers on those things
26:18SPEAKERand it's like 12, I think, total.
26:20SPEAKER- Yikes.
26:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I can wait an extra three hours to get my potatoes
26:27SPEAKERfrom the TaskRabbit person or whatever.
26:29SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
26:30SPEAKERThis is a real quick one that I think I know the answer to
26:32SPEAKERunless it's something I'm not thinking of,
26:34SPEAKERbut Tim asks, "What was the OBS thing you were talking about
26:37SPEAKER"for different video backgrounds for Zooms and Teams calls?"
26:40SPEAKER- Oh, so I was talking about using virtual camera,
26:42SPEAKERwhich is an OBS feature that lets you take a scene
26:45SPEAKERor a source in OBS and turn it into a camera input
26:49SPEAKERthat any other device on your OS can do.
26:51SPEAKERSo it's basically a pointer for video.
26:53SPEAKER- Yeah, basically it'll show up as a new video output device
26:56SPEAKERand if you go into Zoom or Teams
26:58SPEAKERand it asks you what camera do you wanna use,
26:59SPEAKERyou'll see something like OBS virtual camera
27:01SPEAKERand you pick that instead.
27:03SPEAKER- Yeah, the neat thing is because an OBS scene will work,
27:06SPEAKERyou can do things like have filters on
27:08SPEAKERthat do background removal or,
27:10SPEAKERso you can do either a green screen
27:12SPEAKERif you have a green screen
27:13SPEAKERor you can just use the NVIDIA broadcast
27:15SPEAKERbackground removal tool if you have an NVIDIA card
27:18SPEAKERand clip out the background
27:19SPEAKERand put whatever you want in there instead.
27:21SPEAKER- Yeah, it's our issue.
27:23SPEAKERIf you've ever seen the clip of a second Dan Reichert
27:26SPEAKERwalking around in the background of Dan Reichert
27:28SPEAKERtalking into a camera.
27:30SPEAKER- It's very good.
27:31SPEAKER- It's probably how he accomplished that.
27:33SPEAKER- I've used it before when I was doing like,
27:37SPEAKERif I wanna have the same background I always have
27:41SPEAKERbut I'm not in the room where I always am
27:42SPEAKERthen I'll just clip out the background
27:44SPEAKERand then drop the, I'll record blank video
27:46SPEAKERof the normal background and just put that behind me.
27:49SPEAKERWorks great.
27:50SPEAKER- I've talked before about wanting to,
27:51SPEAKERthinking about green screening the poster frames behind me
27:54SPEAKERso I could just put, rotate and do posters in and out.
27:58SPEAKERThat's how I would do that as well.
28:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't--
28:01SPEAKER- If I were to ever do that.
28:03SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a bunch of weird fun stuff you can do.
28:06SPEAKEROnce you start poking around with the things
28:08SPEAKERyou can do inside an OBS scene,
28:10SPEAKER'cause you can have multiple layers, you can put text,
28:12SPEAKERyou can put other images on top, you can superimpose stuff.
28:16SPEAKERMy friend Gordon Young used to do,
28:18SPEAKERhe would wear different t-shirts that matched like Star Wars
28:22SPEAKERor Star Trek or whatever and then his background would be
28:25SPEAKERhim sitting in the, it would make him look like
28:27SPEAKERhe's sitting in the NC, you know,
28:29SPEAKERthe Enterprise's bridge or whatever, 1701.
28:32SPEAKER- First time I did the full nerd with him
28:33SPEAKERand he was just sitting in the cockpit of an X-wing.
28:35SPEAKERI was very confused.
28:37SPEAKERI did not know that was just an all the time thing for him.
28:39SPEAKER- Yeah, he had the seat in the Lebowski bowling alley
28:44SPEAKERis one of them, it's all of his favorite stuff, it was good.
28:47SPEAKER- Gordon was quite a character.
28:48SPEAKER- Gordon, definitely a character.
28:50SPEAKERHe would have fit in well on USA.
28:53SPEAKER- Okay, Andrew in Chicago.
28:56SPEAKER"As a tech enthusiast of a certain age,
28:58SPEAKERI find myself managing my household's collected electronics
29:01SPEAKERsuch as multiple desktops, a laptop, a home lab
29:04SPEAKERand some game consoles.
29:06SPEAKERConsidering the wildly increased price and difficulty
29:09SPEAKERin replacing or even repairing any of these devices
29:12SPEAKERshould they go down.
29:13SPEAKERIs there anything I can be proactively doing
29:15SPEAKERto increase their lifespan?
29:17SPEAKERBuy new coolers for everything?
29:19SPEAKERUnderclock the various components via the BIOS?
29:22SPEAKERInstitute a strict weekly dusting regimen?
29:24SPEAKERGiven the production realities of the world at large,
29:27SPEAKERI'd gladly trade in 10 or 15% of reduction in performance
29:32SPEAKERfor an extra few years of life."
29:35SPEAKER- It's funny, I am much better about turning things off
29:39SPEAKERthan I was a few years ago.
29:40SPEAKER- Interesting, okay, sure.
29:42SPEAKER- I think if you have a bunch of fans,
29:43SPEAKERlike making sure there's no dust in your radiators
29:47SPEAKERand stuff is really important now.
29:48SPEAKER- Keeping dust cleaned out and airflow good,
29:50SPEAKERlike underclocking or undervolting
29:52SPEAKERare not actually bad ideas for,
29:54SPEAKERI mean, you're really not losing a lot of performance
29:56SPEAKERthe way things work these days
29:58SPEAKERto shave that top end off the power consumption
30:00SPEAKERand that probably wouldn't hurt.
30:02SPEAKER- And definitely doing things like not overclocking.
30:05SPEAKERI mean, I still overclock my RAM,
30:06SPEAKERwhich feels like it's living on the edge, but-
30:08SPEAKER- Well, when you say overclock,
30:10SPEAKERare you talking about like whatever the XMP or the like-
30:12SPEAKER- I'm running the XMP profile, which is an overclock.
30:14SPEAKERIt's not Gen Ed. - Oh yeah,
30:15SPEAKERand I know it is technically an overclock.
30:17SPEAKERI've always just felt like if they put the speed on the box,
30:20SPEAKERit should be considered rated to run at that speed, but-
30:23SPEAKER- Yeah, but- - I don't know.
30:25SPEAKER- Will they actually send me new sticks if these burn out?
30:27SPEAKERI don't know.
30:28SPEAKER- Yeah, at this point, almost certainly not.
30:30SPEAKERLike there's stories everywhere about companies
30:32SPEAKERrefusing to honor warranties and basically like,
30:34SPEAKERthere's all those stories of they'll just,
30:36SPEAKERthey'll give you the purchase price,
30:37SPEAKERwhat you paid originally for the thing
30:39SPEAKERrather than fixing it for you.
30:41SPEAKER- Absolute bunk.
30:42SPEAKER- Even though that's like a fifth
30:45SPEAKERof the current price or whatever.
30:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I think turning your power off
30:49SPEAKERwhen you're not using stuff is actually the big one.
30:52SPEAKER- Yeah, this is one specific case, but hard drives.
30:56SPEAKERYou know, I've talked on here recently
30:58SPEAKERthat one of the drives in my NAS is starting to go.
31:01SPEAKERI don't know how like scientific this is,
31:03SPEAKERbut I was reading a discussion on a forum
31:05SPEAKERabout hard drive longevity.
31:07SPEAKERAnd the people there seem to talk about lifespans
31:10SPEAKERin terms of like power on hours, like spending hours.
31:14SPEAKERAnd I leave this thing on 24/7,
31:17SPEAKERwhich really made me think like,
31:18SPEAKERoh man, I'm gonna get so many fewer real world years
31:22SPEAKERout of these drives because I've left them on all the time
31:24SPEAKERinstead of like only using them eight hours a day
31:26SPEAKERor whatever.
31:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it's interesting though.
31:28SPEAKER'Cause like I often use my Plex server
31:30SPEAKERin the wee hours of the morning and that's, you know, like.
31:33SPEAKER- Well, it's two things.
31:34SPEAKERIt's that, yes, it's availability.
31:35SPEAKERIt's just wanting to be able to like listen to music
31:37SPEAKERor stream video or whatever, like whenever I want.
31:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
31:41SPEAKER- The other one was that I had always heard
31:43SPEAKERit was worse for the drives
31:44SPEAKERto spin them up and down all the time mechanically,
31:46SPEAKERlike that you were inviting mechanical failure faster
31:48SPEAKERbecause of that rather than just leaving them running.
31:50SPEAKERBut I don't know who's right.
31:52SPEAKER- Well, specifically the thing that happens
31:53SPEAKERin that case that you wanna avoid is that
31:56SPEAKERwhen the drives run for a long time
31:58SPEAKERand they've been on for a long time,
31:59SPEAKERyou don't probably wanna turn them off
32:01SPEAKERbecause the lubricants can change viscosity
32:04SPEAKERand stuff like that.
32:05SPEAKERAnd then I don't know that it happens in modern drives.
32:08SPEAKERThe thing that used to happen in old drives
32:09SPEAKERis that when the kind of formulation of the lubricant changed
32:15SPEAKERdue to the extended use, when it cooled down
32:18SPEAKERand the drive stopped spinning, it would be more viscous.
32:20SPEAKERAnd then the motors wouldn't have enough juice
32:22SPEAKERto break that viscosity of the broken down lubricant.
32:27SPEAKERSo the thing that you did to fix that
32:29SPEAKERwas actually hit the side of the drive with a screwdriver.
32:31SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
32:32SPEAKER- It was like, I don't know that it happens
32:34SPEAKERwith modern drives.
32:35SPEAKERI feel like we're in a different lubricant situation
32:37SPEAKERthan we were in the '90s now.
32:38SPEAKER- Probably, probably.
32:39SPEAKER- I would just say that one thing I do do often
32:42SPEAKERis on games that I'm not using
32:43SPEAKERthat I don't actually wanna run
32:44SPEAKERat the full refresh rate of my monitor,
32:46SPEAKERI'll lock the frame rate cap to like 120 hertz or 90 hertz.
32:52SPEAKERSo if I'm playing something that I don't need the GPU
32:54SPEAKERrunning a full bore, absolutely will throttle the frame rate
32:57SPEAKERand that'll reduce the power consumption dramatically.
32:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I actually cap the frame rate
33:00SPEAKERin the Nvidia drivers now, just globally I limit it.
33:03SPEAKERIn fact, did we ever talk about this?
33:05SPEAKERI found an article that somebody had written
33:07SPEAKERthat was a very good case
33:08SPEAKERfor why you should always limit your frame rate
33:10SPEAKERto like say four hertz or maybe did you send this to me?
33:14SPEAKER- Yeah, you wanna be one to four hertz
33:17SPEAKERunder your monitor's refresh rate basically.
33:19SPEAKER- It's for frame pacing reasons
33:20SPEAKERthat keeps the frame pacing more consistent
33:23SPEAKERthan to try to output as fast as the monitor will go.
33:26SPEAKER- The BlurBusters folks did a really good deep dive
33:29SPEAKERinto how this stuff works with like G-Sync and FSR
33:32SPEAKERand all that kind of stuff.
33:34SPEAKERAnd the TLDR is you end up with much less monitor,
33:38SPEAKERit's much less micro stutter
33:40SPEAKERbetween the frame buffer and the monitor
33:42SPEAKERif you cap a few frames per second
33:44SPEAKERunder your monitor's maximum refresh rate.
33:46SPEAKERNot all games let you do that though.
33:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that's why I do it at the driver level
33:49SPEAKERand that's just global for everything.
33:51SPEAKERYeah, I've got a 144 hertz monitor that I cap at 140
33:55SPEAKERand it seems to work well.
33:56SPEAKERAnd it gets around that problem you mentioned
33:58SPEAKERof like games with uncapped frame rates in the menus
34:00SPEAKERor whatever, just like sending all of your fans to the moon.
34:03SPEAKER- Nothing like loading up a opening rendering video
34:06SPEAKERand see it hit 800 frames a second.
34:09SPEAKER- Quick question from Ben.
34:10SPEAKERThis is another just a quick follow-up fill in.
34:14SPEAKERI remember you mentioning that you had problems
34:15SPEAKERfinding a good USB fingerprint reader that works with Linux.
34:19SPEAKERI don't remember if you actually mentioned
34:20SPEAKERwhich one you ended up with.
34:21SPEAKERHaving just picked up a new machine that is missing one,
34:23SPEAKERI'm really missing it,
34:24SPEAKERespecially for unlocking my password manager.
34:27SPEAKERI don't suppose you could share which one you ended up with?
34:29SPEAKER- So the one that I found that worked well
34:31SPEAKERwas recommended by Ernie Smith on Blue Sky
34:34SPEAKERand it's a chip sailing CS9711 chip set.
34:38SPEAKER- Chip sailing?
34:39SPEAKER- Chip sailing is a company that makes fingerprint sensors.
34:41SPEAKER- Aha, okay.
34:43SPEAKER- The unfortunate thing is I bought it from Timu
34:46SPEAKERand that model's not actually available anymore.
34:48SPEAKERThe time-honored way to find them
34:50SPEAKERis to buy about five different models
34:52SPEAKERfrom Amazon or AliExpress or Timu
34:55SPEAKERand then just return the ones that don't work.
34:57SPEAKER- Yep, that is an option.
34:58SPEAKERI wonder if that's a case also
34:59SPEAKERwhere you could just try to find other models
35:01SPEAKERthat have that same chip on them.
35:03SPEAKER- That is one of the more common chips.
35:06SPEAKERThere's a pretty good driver for it
35:08SPEAKERthat's in the AUR and in other packages for other OSs.
35:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that's something you find
35:15SPEAKERif you spend a lot of time on Linux
35:17SPEAKERfor accessories, for plug-in accessories like that,
35:19SPEAKERlike Wi-Fi dongles or what you're talking about
35:21SPEAKERor Bluetooth or whatever, 90% of the time
35:24SPEAKERyou care more about what chip is inside them
35:26SPEAKERthan what brand is on the outside of them,
35:28SPEAKERlike oh, you wanna find this one specific real tech chip
35:32SPEAKERin your Wi-Fi adapter
35:33SPEAKER'cause that has better driver support.
35:35SPEAKER- The nice thing about that CS9711
35:37SPEAKERis it also works with Windows Hello
35:39SPEAKERand it saves stuff, fingerprints are saved on the host
35:43SPEAKERrather than on the device necessarily.
35:45SPEAKERThe hashes are saved on the device
35:46SPEAKERso you can actually use it with both OSs at the same time
35:50SPEAKERwithout having to do any screwy configuration stuff.
35:52SPEAKER- Wait, it shares the fingerprint between both?
35:55SPEAKER- On Linux side, no, you have to set it up individually
35:58SPEAKERin each OS, it just saves it on the host
35:59SPEAKERso you don't have, it's not like saved
36:01SPEAKERin the firmware of the device with a salted hash
36:04SPEAKERthat prevents it from being accessible to the other OS.
36:06SPEAKER- Is that touching the TPM, I assume?
36:09SPEAKER- I don't, on the Hello side, it probably is,
36:11SPEAKERbut it's probably saving the stuff in the TPM
36:14SPEAKERwould be my guess.
36:15SPEAKER- Windows Hello absolutely does use the TPM.
36:18SPEAKERI have a low grade suspicion that the TPM
36:21SPEAKERis very underutilized for most people's use cases
36:24SPEAKERor that there's a lot more we could be doing with it
36:26SPEAKERfor security stuff.
36:27SPEAKER- I think with the rise of pass keys,
36:30SPEAKERthat's probably less true now than it was
36:31SPEAKERa couple of years ago.
36:32SPEAKER- But there are probably ways to store pass keys in the TPM,
36:35SPEAKERthat's what I'm getting at, like there are,
36:36SPEAKERit's a pain to set up, but there are ways
36:38SPEAKERin both Windows and Linux, for example,
36:39SPEAKERto store your SSH keys in your TPM, that kind of thing,
36:42SPEAKERlike that's what I'm talking about is like--
36:43SPEAKER- There's limited space too, isn't there?
36:45SPEAKER- I think there's, I mean, an SSH key is like, what,
36:48SPEAKER64 bytes or something?
36:49SPEAKER- It's not big, yeah.
36:51SPEAKER- It's just a big text string.
36:53SPEAKERI think there's a lot of, like I've been messing around
36:55SPEAKERwith like the BitLocker encryption
36:58SPEAKERand the ways you can use the TPM for that,
37:00SPEAKERand anyway, we should--
37:02SPEAKER- We should do a TPM episode?
37:04SPEAKER- Yeah, look into that stuff.
37:05SPEAKERWell, if and when I ever put Linux on this desktop,
37:09SPEAKERsince I've done my huge--
37:10SPEAKER- It's time, man.
37:11SPEAKER- That kind of big relaying out of partitions and stuff,
37:15SPEAKERwe will touch on that stuff then, for sure.
37:17SPEAKER- It's time.
37:19SPEAKER- Okay, I'm gonna read, I think, this last email
37:22SPEAKERand segue that right into a similar Discord question
37:25SPEAKERthat is related.
37:26SPEAKER- Okay.
37:27SPEAKER- Eric from Norway.
37:29SPEAKERThis is a follow-up to, was it two weeks ago,
37:32SPEAKERwe talked about my site-to-site VPN
37:35SPEAKERthat I ended up setting up while I was,
37:36SPEAKERand it was for the reason that I wanted to get the Apple TV
37:39SPEAKERat that location connected to the Plex
37:42SPEAKERor the Jellyfin here,
37:44SPEAKERand didn't want to deal with WireGuard apps on the Apple TV.
37:48SPEAKEROkay, Eric from Norway writes in.
37:50SPEAKERJust wanted to chime in that Tailscale offers
37:52SPEAKERan app store app on the Apple TV.
37:54SPEAKERI've just used this for a little while,
37:55SPEAKERbut I'm amazed at the ease of use of Tailscale.
37:58SPEAKERMaybe you could find reasons why I should not use Tailscale
38:01SPEAKERfrom your point of view.
38:03SPEAKER- So this is to do a tunnel, like a proxy tunnel?
38:06SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:07SPEAKERSo, I mean, are you familiar with Tailscale?
38:08SPEAKERI've never used it. - I've never used Tailscale, no.
38:11SPEAKER- This is all stuff I've absorbed through Osmosis
38:13SPEAKERso people can correct me, but what I have gathered,
38:15SPEAKERit uses WireGuard as the underlying protocol.
38:18SPEAKERTailscale is basically, as far as I can tell,
38:20SPEAKERjust a bunch of admin automation on top of that
38:23SPEAKERto make it easier to connect a bunch of devices
38:26SPEAKERinto what I think they call a tailnet,
38:28SPEAKERwhich is basically, configuring WireGuard
38:31SPEAKERis a little bit of a pain.
38:32SPEAKERYou have to generate keys and then make the public
38:34SPEAKERand private keys match on either end of the connection.
38:36SPEAKERIt's not that hard once you know how it works,
38:39SPEAKERbut it does take a little bit of work.
38:41SPEAKERAnd I think Tailscale basically is automating that.
38:44SPEAKER- So it gives you an easy-to-manage password interface
38:47SPEAKERor something like that?
38:48SPEAKER- I think that's basically how it works.
38:49SPEAKERAnd they have a free tier and they also have
38:50SPEAKERa self-hosted option called Headscale
38:52SPEAKERif you don't wanna go through their servers.
38:55SPEAKER- I like that.
38:56SPEAKER- But I think you do have to set it up per machine.
38:59SPEAKERSo that's the gist, as I have gathered,
39:02SPEAKERnot having used it myself.
39:03SPEAKERBut the reason I don't use it is,
39:07SPEAKERI've talked about this before.
39:08SPEAKERI feel like I'm becoming a bit of a zealot about this,
39:11SPEAKERbut I am really just trying to reduce my dependence
39:14SPEAKERon corporate products that could pull the rug out
39:17SPEAKERfrom under me at some later time if they get acquired
39:19SPEAKERand start to inshitify or if they run out of money
39:22SPEAKERand shut down or make some other decision by fiat
39:26SPEAKERthat I don't like and that puts me in a worse position
39:29SPEAKERand then I'm dependent on them
39:30SPEAKERand then I have to find another option.
39:31SPEAKER- And it's hard to inshitify a protocol.
39:33SPEAKER- Well, yeah, that's exactly it.
39:34SPEAKERSo that is 100% it, is that WireGuard is like
39:38SPEAKERa minuscule amount of code.
39:40SPEAKERIt's baked into not every,
39:42SPEAKERI wish it was actually baked into every operating system.
39:44SPEAKERThere are no, there's no kernel level implementation
39:47SPEAKERfor Windows or Mac, but user space,
39:49SPEAKERyou know, you can still download,
39:50SPEAKERbut FreeBSD, Linux, like most of the big open source
39:55SPEAKERoperating systems, it's literally built into their kernels.
39:57SPEAKERLike it's just, it's everywhere and very simple,
40:00SPEAKERlike the operation of it is really simple
40:02SPEAKERif you look into how it works
40:03SPEAKERand so like the odds of anybody being able to take that away
40:06SPEAKERfrom you are next to nothing, so.
40:09SPEAKER- Well, but I mean, a self-hosted option
40:12SPEAKERgets you like most of the way there.
40:13SPEAKER- That helps, yeah, but.
40:15SPEAKER- But then you need to put on a VPS someplace,
40:16SPEAKER'cause if you're just hosting it inside your own land,
40:18SPEAKERthen there's like, you're right back to where you started.
40:21SPEAKER- And also the bigger point there for me is
40:23SPEAKERif I'm already going to the trouble
40:24SPEAKERof trying to self-host their self-hosted version
40:28SPEAKERof their management layer,
40:29SPEAKERwhy don't I just put that effort
40:30SPEAKERinto doing the low level configuration instead?
40:33SPEAKERHere's the other thing that has just occurred to me
40:35SPEAKERliterally this week.
40:37SPEAKERI don't know exactly what Tailscales admin stuff
40:40SPEAKERis built out of, but I feel like the lesson of the last week
40:44SPEAKERand all the vulnerabilities popping up
40:46SPEAKERand where we're going with the kind of LLM driven hunt
40:50SPEAKERfor exploits and bugs and so forth is that the,
40:53SPEAKERlike the thicker your stack for doing any particular thing,
40:56SPEAKERlike the more componentry involved in doing a thing,
40:59SPEAKERthe bigger the attack surface.
41:01SPEAKERBecause not only is there the underlying protocol stuff
41:05SPEAKERin this case, but you need to think about,
41:07SPEAKERthere's also every bit of the software
41:09SPEAKERthat they built on top of that to do things for you.
41:12SPEAKERAnd any one of those layers
41:14SPEAKERcould have their own vulnerabilities.
41:15SPEAKER- Especially for stuff that faces the broader internet.
41:18SPEAKER- Yeah, now I'm not like attacking Tailscale here.
41:20SPEAKERLike from everything I've seen,
41:21SPEAKERthey seem like a proper nerdy company
41:24SPEAKERthat really cares about security.
41:25SPEAKERAnd I think has designed their product quite thoughtfully
41:28SPEAKERfrom what I can tell from a distance,
41:30SPEAKERbut still like the more complexity,
41:32SPEAKERthe more possibility for there to be some vulnerability
41:37SPEAKERin some layer of that complexity.
41:39SPEAKERAnd so in addition to wanting to,
41:42SPEAKERI feel like I'm turning into some kind of like
41:44SPEAKERdigital libertarian or something,
41:45SPEAKERbut in addition to wanting like control of everything I have
41:48SPEAKERwhere somebody can't tell me what to do with it,
41:50SPEAKERthere's also this aspect of it now
41:51SPEAKERof just the simpler it is, hopefully,
41:53SPEAKERthe more I shouldn't say bulletproof,
41:56SPEAKERbut you know what I mean?
41:57SPEAKER- The more robust. - Yeah, yeah, the more robust,
41:58SPEAKERthe less vulnerable it is, so time will tell.
42:01SPEAKER- I realized we danced around this.
42:02SPEAKERWe didn't actually say,
42:04SPEAKERwe'll get into the actual stuff
42:06SPEAKERthat happened last week, next week,
42:08SPEAKERwhich I realize is confusing.
42:10SPEAKERBut I talked about it some on take control,
42:14SPEAKERwhich isn't up yet.
42:15SPEAKERBy the time you hear this, it'll be up later this week.
42:17SPEAKERBut if you haven't updated your stuff yet, update your stuff,
42:22SPEAKERupdate your devices, your phones, your browsers,
42:25SPEAKERyour laptops, your computers.
42:27SPEAKERAnd then also, if you're running hosted home lab stuff
42:31SPEAKERthat faces the broader internet, make sure you update that.
42:34SPEAKERThere's a Plex vulnerability that's hitting--
42:36SPEAKER- I heard about that Plex vulnerability.
42:38SPEAKERSounds real bad. - Some older Plex servers.
42:39SPEAKERIt's gnarly, stuff like that.
42:42SPEAKER- Yeah, it's rough out there.
42:43SPEAKER- We're reaching a time now where I think
42:46SPEAKERwe're all gonna have to start updating for zero days
42:48SPEAKERin a way that we haven't really up until this point.
42:51SPEAKER- Yeah, or like don't face services to the open internet
42:54SPEAKERif you absolutely can help it and that kind of thing.
42:56SPEAKERI think people are gonna have to start getting
42:58SPEAKERa lot more buttoned up about how they handle
43:01SPEAKERtheir own personal security.
43:02SPEAKER- Or use a VPS and a reverse proxy
43:04SPEAKERor something to get access to those things.
43:08SPEAKERI feel like the number of days that I'm gonna have
43:10SPEAKERa Plex port open on my LAN is waning.
43:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not, I swear I'm not trying to be smug here
43:17SPEAKERor anything, but I've always just been,
43:18SPEAKERthis is why I have WireGuard set up here,
43:20SPEAKERis I'm very afraid to face anything to the open internet.
43:23SPEAKERAnd this is feeling very validating, I guess I would say.
43:26SPEAKER- Look, just 'cause you were paranoid
43:27SPEAKERdoesn't mean you were right.
43:29SPEAKER- Or wrong.
43:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:32SPEAKER- As the case may be.
43:34SPEAKEROkay, I'm gonna read, let's move into the Discord questions.
43:37SPEAKERThere's a question from Feral Pug here
43:39SPEAKERthat is kind of in the same vein.
43:42SPEAKERWhat's the best and safest way to expose
43:43SPEAKERa private game server for friends?
43:46SPEAKERI could give WireGuard keys to people,
43:48SPEAKERbut I don't love the idea of keys that can access
43:50SPEAKERmy network just floating around.
43:52SPEAKERShould I set up tail scale?
43:54SPEAKERShould I just port forward and hope that traffic is secure?
43:58SPEAKER- So I think if the game server is just something
44:00SPEAKERthat you fire up on Tuesday night for like four hours,
44:03SPEAKERport forwarding and turning it on and off
44:05SPEAKERwhen you're using it is totally fair play.
44:07SPEAKER- Probably, but, or at least before the last like six months
44:11SPEAKERI would have agreed with you, but now who knows?
44:14SPEAKER- It depends on the server, is the other thing is.
44:16SPEAKERIf you're running something that's maintained
44:17SPEAKERand updated and current and that's great.
44:20SPEAKERIf you're running a Quake server from like 1996,
44:23SPEAKERdon't do that, you know?
44:25SPEAKER- I don't know, I would think, I mean,
44:26SPEAKERQuake's been open source for 20 something years,
44:29SPEAKERI would hope that it's fairly secure at this point.
44:31SPEAKER- I don't know, I don't mean a Quake fork, a Quake variant.
44:34SPEAKERI mean, if you're running the Quake server from 1996,
44:38SPEAKERdon't, I would not do that today.
44:39SPEAKER- I would still, I don't know, we should.
44:41SPEAKER- You think it's okay?
44:42SPEAKER- I would think it has been pretty well combed over by now.
44:45SPEAKER- Okay, okay, well anyway, the point is,
44:47SPEAKERI think that's fine, if you're running like a Valheim
44:49SPEAKERor a satisfactory server that's up 24 hours a day,
44:51SPEAKERseven days a week, you probably wanna set up
44:53SPEAKERsome infrastructure to get your friends onto that.
44:55SPEAKERAnd I don't think WireGuard is the right answer.
44:57SPEAKERI think you're looking at, I think you want a VPS
44:59SPEAKERor a reverse proxy or something like that, don't you think?
45:02SPEAKER- Yeah, well, but even behind a VPS or whatever,
45:07SPEAKERit's still gonna be open to the internet.
45:10SPEAKER- Well, that's true.
45:11SPEAKER- Traffic from anybody can still reach it,
45:13SPEAKERso if there's a vulnerability in it,
45:14SPEAKERthen anybody can exploit that vulnerability.
45:16SPEAKER- But if you put the proxy on,
45:18SPEAKERyou can allow list your friend's IP addresses.
45:20SPEAKER- Well, yeah, sure, sure, but you can also do that at home
45:22SPEAKERwith your home firewall.
45:25SPEAKER- If your router, like my router won't give me
45:27SPEAKERthat functionality.
45:29SPEAKER- I've never tried, but I assume you could probably
45:32SPEAKERlike allow specific IPs, or I assume you could just filter
45:35SPEAKERat the firewall level for specific IPs,
45:37SPEAKERbut that requires you to know your friend's IPs
45:39SPEAKERand if they change, you're gonna have to keep up with that,
45:42SPEAKERwhich is a pain.
45:43SPEAKER- Well, so like, yes, you could do that
45:45SPEAKERif your router's fully functioning.
45:47SPEAKERLike my router that AT&T provides
45:49SPEAKERabsolutely does not allow me to that level of access.
45:51SPEAKER- But you could still, you could run an additional firewall
45:54SPEAKERon whatever machine was running the server
45:59SPEAKERand do the firewalling there.
46:00SPEAKER- Yeah, except for that machine's gonna see the IP address
46:02SPEAKERof my router probably, isn't it?
46:03SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, it's gonna get added to that, I guess.
46:06SPEAKERWe're not network engineers, that is a thorny one.
46:10SPEAKER- This is a conversation that happens
46:11SPEAKERin the networking channel fairly regularly.
46:13SPEAKER- Yeah, you could, yeah.
46:14SPEAKER- Yeah, like we're probably not the best person
46:16SPEAKERto actually answer this.
46:17SPEAKER- But a VPN is absolutely more secure
46:20SPEAKERthan just opening a port and praying,
46:22SPEAKERwhether it's WireGuard or Tailscale's probably easier.
46:25SPEAKERAgain, I haven't used it, but at that point,
46:27SPEAKERyou would be asking them, I think,
46:28SPEAKERto install the Tailscale client in order to connect.
46:32SPEAKER- It's kind of like, what was the thing
46:33SPEAKERthat people used to use to play Battle.net games,
46:35SPEAKERnot on Battle.net on the LAN?
46:36SPEAKER- Oh, gosh.
46:38SPEAKER- Do you know what I'm talking about?
46:39SPEAKER- There's Kali, there were a bunch of them out there.
46:40SPEAKER- There's another one.
46:41SPEAKERIt's not Kali, it's, oh boy, can't remember.
46:45SPEAKERBasically, sort of like a local network emulator.
46:48SPEAKER- It was basically a low-key.
46:50SPEAKER- Like a LAN to IP kind of thing.
46:51SPEAKER- It was an unencrypted VPN, basically, yeah.
46:54SPEAKER- Like just a tunnel.
46:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
46:57SPEAKER- If you know WireGuard well,
46:58SPEAKERit's actually not that hard to get people onto it
47:01SPEAKERbecause you can just, the configuration is just a few lines
47:03SPEAKERof text that you can send them.
47:05SPEAKERAnd in fact, you don't even need to do that
47:07SPEAKERbecause once you do write the config for them,
47:09SPEAKERyou can send it to them in like a zip file
47:11SPEAKERand the OS clients, like the desktop clients,
47:14SPEAKERwill just import it from like a zip file of the text,
47:16SPEAKERor you can even generate a QR code
47:18SPEAKERand let them do it that way.
47:19SPEAKER- But then you're giving them access
47:21SPEAKERto the entirety of your LAN?
47:22SPEAKER- No, absolutely not.
47:23SPEAKERSo you choose in the WireGuard config
47:26SPEAKERwhat network resources the other endpoint has access to,
47:29SPEAKERand so you can filter it down to the specific IP
47:32SPEAKERon your LAN that you, like that site-to-site topology
47:36SPEAKERthat I set up at my mom's house was specifically created
47:42SPEAKERto let everything on one LAN talk to everything
47:44SPEAKERon another LAN, but that is just one option.
47:46SPEAKERThat's just a, that's one layout that you could do,
47:49SPEAKERbut by and large, you would constrain what,
47:53SPEAKERbasically the kind of quote-unquote client,
47:55SPEAKERthe remote machine, like you can tell it,
47:57SPEAKERyou can set in the config exactly what on your LAN
48:00SPEAKERthat thing can see.
48:01SPEAKERSo you would drill down to,
48:04SPEAKERI don't know if you can specify just a port number
48:06SPEAKERin the WireGuard config, I'm sure you can,
48:07SPEAKERbut basically you could say this--
48:10SPEAKER- You can just say you can access this IP address
48:11SPEAKERin this port.
48:12SPEAKER- This remote client can only see this one IP
48:14SPEAKERon the network, and probably, I've never tried it,
48:17SPEAKERbut I assume only on this specific port,
48:20SPEAKERand then it wouldn't know anything else about your LAN.
48:22SPEAKER- Hamachi is the thing that I was talking about.
48:25SPEAKER- Yes, yes, yes, yes, I've never used that,
48:26SPEAKERbut I do remember that going around.
48:28SPEAKERAnyway, that's probably enough half-informed networking talk,
48:32SPEAKERbut I think, I mean, it's only more important
48:36SPEAKERto understand this stuff as things get crazier out there.
48:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and like I said, the TLDR is,
48:42SPEAKERI think short windows, you turn it on and off,
48:45SPEAKERit's fine to do the port.
48:46SPEAKER- Probably, and like, you know, popular game servers
48:49SPEAKERlike Satisfactory or Valheim, I would hope
48:52SPEAKERare gonna get updated pretty frequently
48:53SPEAKERif anything is actually found in them.
48:55SPEAKER- If you're running like a freelancer server
48:57SPEAKERthat hasn't been updated since 2004,
48:59SPEAKERprobably consider doing a VPN for that.
49:02SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, better safe than sorry.
49:05SPEAKER- Yeah.
49:07SPEAKER- Let's see, D3 Jake, I'm currently in the market
49:11SPEAKERfor a five and a quarter drive bay insert
49:13SPEAKERfor my desktop to give me more front-facing ports.
49:17SPEAKERThe one king wind brand option at Micro Center
49:19SPEAKERdoesn't quite fit my needs, so I started looking online.
49:22SPEAKERAs you would imagine, I found a wall of no-name products
49:24SPEAKERthat could fit my needs.
49:26SPEAKERThis brought up a question, is there a good way
49:27SPEAKERto filter out which products may be terrible
49:30SPEAKERor is it all a roll of the dice hoping that it will last?
49:34SPEAKER- I look at user, like quantity of user reviews for this.
49:37SPEAKER- Yeah, and what they're saying as well, of course,
49:40SPEAKERbut yeah, it's the best thing I can come up with.
49:44SPEAKER- Like, I generally, now that we have a Micro Center,
49:47SPEAKERI often will look at what the Micro Center option is
49:49SPEAKER'cause they do a pretty good job of vetting
49:51SPEAKERthis kind of screwy product.
49:53SPEAKERLike this is, the problem with this
49:54SPEAKERis it's a little bit of a weird product category
49:56SPEAKER'cause it's relatively easy to build these
49:58SPEAKERand there's a lot of kind of janky clones
50:00SPEAKERand if you get one, it'll have a bunch of USB 3 ports
50:02SPEAKERthat work really well and you're gonna get full power
50:05SPEAKERto all of them and if you get the wrong one,
50:07SPEAKERyou're gonna have USB 2 ports that have full power
50:10SPEAKERbut that are very, very slow when you're trying
50:11SPEAKERto actually transfer files and stuff off of them.
50:13SPEAKERSo buy it from someplace you can return it
50:17SPEAKERand buy the one with the most user reviews,
50:19SPEAKEReven if it's like, if there's 1,000 four-star reviews
50:23SPEAKERand eight five-star reviews,
50:25SPEAKERI'll do the 1,000 four-star reviews all day long.
50:27SPEAKER- Sure, oh yeah, absolutely.
50:29SPEAKERBigger, bigger sample size, better, of course.
50:31SPEAKERI also love looking at both the best reviews
50:34SPEAKERand the worst reviews 'cause if there's like,
50:37SPEAKERif you're talking about 1,000 reviews
50:38SPEAKERand there's 3/10 of a percent of one-star reviews,
50:43SPEAKERthat's still a couple of dozen reviews
50:45SPEAKERand you'll learn a lot about whether the problems
50:48SPEAKERpeople are having are self-inflicted
50:49SPEAKERbecause they don't know what they're doing
50:51SPEAKERor are actually some problem with the device.
50:54SPEAKER- I feel like we should say in this very specific case,
50:58SPEAKERlike kind of routing internal ports to external connectors
51:01SPEAKERis notoriously fraught.
51:02SPEAKERLike case ports, like anything like a USB
51:05SPEAKERthat has to go through an additional cable,
51:07SPEAKERlike those are always a little jank.
51:10SPEAKERLike I would kind of just gird yourself
51:13SPEAKERfor maybe not getting max speed
51:14SPEAKERor like not enough wattage out of your USB
51:17SPEAKERor whatever it is you're doing.
51:18SPEAKERLike there's always like weird little behavioral quirks
51:22SPEAKERwith those types of ports.
51:23SPEAKER- I was gonna say it's also,
51:25SPEAKERif you just want power for those,
51:28SPEAKERit's a very different thing
51:29SPEAKERthan if you want high speed data, right?
51:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
51:32SPEAKER- Like getting four USB-C 3.2 ports
51:35SPEAKERon the front of your computer,
51:36SPEAKERit turns out really difficult.
51:37SPEAKERLike my motherboard doesn't have headers for that.
51:39SPEAKER- Right.
51:40SPEAKER- So yeah.
51:41SPEAKER- And we should add if you're like,
51:42SPEAKERif you're putting in an extra card
51:44SPEAKERor an M.2 thing that gives you more USB ports,
51:47SPEAKERthat's gonna be a different type of USB controller
51:49SPEAKERthan what's on your motherboard
51:50SPEAKERand it may suck in some way.
51:52SPEAKER- Or it may be better depending on the motherboard.
51:54SPEAKER- Yeah, that is entirely possible.
51:55SPEAKERI have had motherboards with some real shit
51:57SPEAKERUSB controllers on them.
51:59SPEAKER- So say we all.
52:02SPEAKER- Okay, console command.
52:03SPEAKER- Yes.
52:04SPEAKER- Brad's mention of making use of what you have
52:06SPEAKERreminded me of a Home Assistant Yellow,
52:08SPEAKERwhich is a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 with, wait.
52:12SPEAKER- So the Home Assistant Yellow is a-
52:14SPEAKER- What?
52:15SPEAKER- So the Raspberry Pi,
52:17SPEAKERthe Home Assistant Yellow was their second gen hardware
52:20SPEAKERthey built themselves.
52:21SPEAKER- But do they mean RAM?
52:24SPEAKER- So you can get them,
52:26SPEAKERyou can get them three or four different ways.
52:28SPEAKERThey have EMC storage as well as up to 32 gigs of RAM
52:33SPEAKERon those compute modules.
52:34SPEAKER- Oh my God.
52:35SPEAKER- So at the time when I bought mine,
52:37SPEAKERmy 32 gig one was like a hundred bucks.
52:40SPEAKER- Remember when 32 gig of memory was nothing like in cost?
52:43SPEAKERLike that's how much my perception of these things
52:45SPEAKERhas become skewed that the idea of 32 gig on this thing now
52:49SPEAKERis like, okay, I guess you're made of money over there,
52:51SPEAKERbut yeah, it's like, what's it been like three years
52:53SPEAKERsince that was absolutely nothing?
52:54SPEAKER- Four years, so I don't know if this is,
52:56SPEAKERI don't think there's a 32 gig RAM configuration.
52:59SPEAKERI think this is probably a 32 gig EMC configuration.
53:02SPEAKER- Okay, that's for storage.
53:03SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause I think 16 is the highest
53:07SPEAKERthat the actual Pi, like SBCs go.
53:10SPEAKER- I think it's as high as the Pi 4 goes.
53:11SPEAKERI think the five, you can go higher theoretically.
53:14SPEAKER- All right, anyway, yes.
53:18SPEAKERThey have a Home Assistant Yellow sitting around.
53:21SPEAKERThere's over a year between ordering it and receiving it.
53:23SPEAKERAnd in that time, I set up Home Assistant on a new NAS.
53:26SPEAKERSo when it arrived, I didn't have much use for it.
53:28SPEAKERAny ideas on what I can use it for?
53:30SPEAKERI'm guessing it's basically a Raspberry Pi,
53:32SPEAKERbut are there any unique projects
53:35SPEAKERthat can handle that a regular Pi may not?
53:39SPEAKER- So I looked into this a lot.
53:41SPEAKERThere's a bunch of projects
53:42SPEAKERthat use Raspberry Pi compute modules.
53:44SPEAKERThe only difference between the compute module
53:46SPEAKERand a Raspberry Pi on a board
53:48SPEAKERis that the compute module exposes the headers
53:50SPEAKERin a smaller connection.
53:52SPEAKERSo you can jam it onto a custom board
53:55SPEAKERand then they expose whatever headers
53:56SPEAKERthey want through the custom board.
53:58SPEAKER- 'Cause it doesn't have the ports of the proper SBC,
54:00SPEAKERthe small board computer, right?
54:01SPEAKERLike it's kind of just a board with the chip on it
54:03SPEAKERand the header and not,
54:05SPEAKERlike it doesn't have ethernet and USB on it itself, right?
54:07SPEAKER- Or any of the pins for hats or any of that stuff.
54:10SPEAKER- Right.
54:10SPEAKER- But, so A, you could go find a project
54:13SPEAKERthat uses one of those CM4 compute module boards,
54:17SPEAKERwhich is, like I said, it's essentially the same
54:20SPEAKERas a Raspberry Pi 4
54:21SPEAKERthat comes in a bunch of different configurations.
54:24SPEAKERSo if you, but if you can't find a project that does that,
54:26SPEAKERthere's a couple of like arcade boards
54:27SPEAKERand all sorts of stuff like that.
54:29SPEAKERYou also can buy a thing from Raspberry Pi
54:31SPEAKERcalled the Raspberry Pi compute module IO board,
54:34SPEAKERwhich when I looked was like, it was 30 bucks or something.
54:38SPEAKERAnd with that, 3850 from pyshop.us,
54:44SPEAKERthat gives you basically the board pinouts
54:47SPEAKERof a normal Raspberry Pi board with that compute module.
54:50SPEAKERSo it turns it into a more or less normal.
54:52SPEAKERI don't think it fits with hats,
54:54SPEAKERbut you get like USB-C and HDMI and all that stuff.
54:56SPEAKER- Okay, all right, yeah, so that's cool.
54:58SPEAKERYou could basically turn it
54:59SPEAKERinto a fully functional computer.
55:01SPEAKER- Yeah, it even has like a little PCI express
55:03SPEAKERone by one slot, it looks like.
55:04SPEAKERIt's kind of wild.
55:05SPEAKER- That's neat.
55:06SPEAKER- Yeah.
55:07SPEAKER- Yep.
55:08SPEAKER- The other big thing to look at is
55:10SPEAKERthere's a bunch of laptop and like keyboards with HDMI,
55:15SPEAKERlike keyboards that basically are computers.
55:17SPEAKERYou can jam one of those compute modules into
55:19SPEAKERand it'll turn into like a full-ass Linux computer.
55:21SPEAKER- Oh, that's neat.
55:22SPEAKER- Which I think is really cool.
55:23SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff
55:25SPEAKERyou could find to do with that thing.
55:28SPEAKERGrand Wizard Patch the Pedant,
55:30SPEAKERI believe that might be a Halloween.
55:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so yeah, we're into the, 'tis the season.
55:34SPEAKER- There's a good number of Halloween-ish usernames in here.
55:39SPEAKERYou marked this, I have no answer for this,
55:41SPEAKERbut please tell us what your favorite pin is,
55:44SPEAKERand if it's different, what pin you would use
55:46SPEAKERfor jotting things down so we can all judge you.
55:49SPEAKERBonus question, do you have a favorite type of notebook,
55:51SPEAKERField Notes, Moleskine, Midori MD, Habinichi, et cetera?
55:56SPEAKERI have no answer for any of this other than to say
55:59SPEAKERI don't know a thing about pens or notebooks.
56:01SPEAKER- Do you use paper anymore even really?
56:02SPEAKER- Barely, almost ever.
56:04SPEAKER- So I do a lot of sketching and note-taking for stuff,
56:07SPEAKERespecially when I'm working on projects.
56:09SPEAKERThe pen, I don't use pens very much anymore though.
56:11SPEAKERI mostly am a pencil person these days, it turns out.
56:13SPEAKER- Yeah, we've talked about the high-end
56:15SPEAKERmechanical pencils out there recently.
56:17SPEAKER- But yeah, I do a Uniball Signo Micro 207,
56:20SPEAKERwhich is I think a 20 mil, 0.2 mil pen.
56:24SPEAKERIt's a gel ink, so it's smooth and feels nice.
56:28SPEAKER- Is it, wait, is that a newer ink?
56:29SPEAKER- No, I mean, it's 20-year-old technology
56:33SPEAKERat this point probably.
56:34SPEAKER- I typically use whatever pen I have handy
56:36SPEAKERfrom the vet's office or the bank or whatever.
56:39SPEAKERI still have pens from CNET, from when I worked at CNET.
56:44SPEAKER- Wait, does the pen from the bank
56:45SPEAKERstill have the chain attached to it,
56:46SPEAKERor do you take the ones that they, the complementary ones?
56:48SPEAKER- I don't mean that kind of pen.
56:49SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
56:50SPEAKER- I mean the ones for customers to take.
56:52SPEAKER- The pencil I use these days most often
56:55SPEAKERis a Tombow monograph, and it's a fine ink,
57:00SPEAKERa fine 0.5 mil lead
57:04SPEAKERand has the good mono plastic eraser in the top.
57:08SPEAKERAnd I've gone through two of those erasers
57:10SPEAKERand replaced the lead a couple of times,
57:11SPEAKERso that thing's fabulous.
57:15SPEAKERMirror Universe Shags Magoo.
57:17SPEAKERKitKats are the best candy to receive
57:19SPEAKERwhile trick-or-treating.
57:20SPEAKERDiscuss, and by discuss, I mean agree with me.
57:23SPEAKER- KitKat's a high tier for me.
57:25SPEAKER- I'm not not agreeing with you.
57:26SPEAKERKitKat is absolutely up there.
57:28SPEAKER- It's not like, it's in the, look,
57:33SPEAKERon the A, on the S tier, I have like 100 grands, Twix.
57:39SPEAKER- Twix, yeah.
57:40SPEAKER- If they made tiny Whatchamacallits,
57:42SPEAKERthat would be up there.
57:43SPEAKERLike man, Whatchamacallit is so cool.
57:46SPEAKERWhatchamacallit is a sleeper, top tier candy bar.
57:48SPEAKERDo you remember the Whatchamacallit ad from the late 80s
57:51SPEAKERthat really out there animated Whatchamacallit
57:54SPEAKERwith the super catchy theme song?
57:57SPEAKER- It looked like it was made by the same people
57:58SPEAKERwho made the OK soda commercials like five years later.
58:01SPEAKER- It was in fact directed and animated
58:04SPEAKERby like very notable director and animator pair.
58:07SPEAKERI can't remember what they had worked on,
58:08SPEAKERbut they had done like some pretty-
58:10SPEAKER- That's cool.
58:11SPEAKER- Pretty well-respected animation previously
58:13SPEAKERbefore they got hired.
58:14SPEAKERI forget, like if you find it on YouTube,
58:15SPEAKERlike the comments, you'll immediately see
58:17SPEAKERwho I'm talking about.
58:18SPEAKERI forget, it was like a German director,
58:20SPEAKERI think of some note.
58:21SPEAKER- I'll dig it up and put it in the show notes.
58:23SPEAKER- That is the best candy commercial ever made
58:25SPEAKERas far as I'm concerned, but-
58:26SPEAKER- I like, I'm a sucker for whatever weird candy science
58:31SPEAKERReese's does at any given year.
58:34SPEAKER- Well, okay, so I need to divert this conversation here.
58:37SPEAKERDid you see this business recently where the,
58:40SPEAKERlike the air of the founder of the Reese's candy company-
58:43SPEAKER- Oh no.
58:44SPEAKER- Sent like an angry letter to the board of whoever,
58:46SPEAKERlike, you know, I guess Reese's is like a public company now
58:49SPEAKERbecause they have started cutting so many corners
58:51SPEAKERon the product that he's like pissed
58:53SPEAKERat how crappy it has gotten now.
58:55SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I think the cups are worse
58:56SPEAKERthan they've ever been.
58:57SPEAKERI would agree with that.
58:58SPEAKER- Like the peanut butter, the filling has no relation
59:01SPEAKERto actual peanut butter at this point,
59:02SPEAKERbut the bigger one is that,
59:03SPEAKERand I think this is like an industry-wide thing
59:05SPEAKERthat I need to follow up on apparently.
59:06SPEAKERDo you remember when chocolate got super expensive
59:08SPEAKERlike two or three years ago?
59:10SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:11SPEAKER- Like, I think this might be,
59:12SPEAKERthat might be when this started that like,
59:14SPEAKERI think kind of the whole candy industry
59:16SPEAKERhas started cutting corners on chocolate ingredients
59:19SPEAKERand like subbing in, you know-
59:22SPEAKER- Sawdust and toenails.
59:23SPEAKER- Basically like lesser facsimiles
59:25SPEAKERof certain components and chocolate
59:27SPEAKERand that it's all worse now, basically.
59:29SPEAKER- I can see that, that seems right.
59:30SPEAKER- This was being held up as an example
59:32SPEAKERof just the general degradation of everything in society
59:35SPEAKERthat I was reading about.
59:37SPEAKER- Everything's shittier.
59:39SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah, that's bad.
59:42SPEAKER- I don't know, I've always felt like Snickers
59:44SPEAKERis the king of candy bars.
59:45SPEAKER- See, I don't like a Snickers really.
59:46SPEAKER- Oh man, there's just so much in there
59:48SPEAKERand there's so much going on.
59:49SPEAKER- It's like one thing too many.
59:52SPEAKERTake us a nougat, you know, just all caramel and nuts.
59:55SPEAKER- That was always my go-to.
59:57SPEAKER- They do make an all caramel Snickers now,
59:58SPEAKERwhich I will tell you is strong.
1:00:01SPEAKERIt's caramel and nuts.
1:00:02SPEAKER- All right.
1:00:03SPEAKER- A caramelo God tier.
1:00:05SPEAKERSomebody puts caramelo squares in my bucket.
1:00:07SPEAKER- Well, that's a little too much sticking in the teeth
1:00:09SPEAKERfor me, but I can respect it.
1:00:12SPEAKER- I'm putting a bag of potatoes out next to the candy
1:00:16SPEAKERto see if any of the kids take potatoes.
1:00:20SPEAKER- You do that.
1:00:21SPEAKER- I'll let you know how it goes in a couple of weeks.
1:00:22SPEAKER- All right, I'm just nodding here.
1:00:25SPEAKERQuestion from that goth girl,
1:00:26SPEAKERI should have mentioned this earlier
1:00:27SPEAKERwhen we were talking about monitors,
1:00:29SPEAKERbut when considering a new monitor
1:00:31SPEAKERas someone who isn't very frame rate sensitive,
1:00:33SPEAKERis there much of a difference between 120, 144, 165,
1:00:37SPEAKERand 240 Hertz monitors?
1:00:39SPEAKERIs it all for being able to have a clean multiple
1:00:41SPEAKERof lower refresh rates to go into?
1:00:44SPEAKER- Yes.
1:00:45SPEAKER- You think so?
1:00:46SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you're watching video,
1:00:48SPEAKERhaving a 240 Hertz monitor is much better
1:00:50SPEAKERthan having a 165 or 144.
1:00:53SPEAKER- I didn't think about that, sure.
1:00:54SPEAKER- 'Cause it's just, you know,
1:00:55SPEAKERyou show each frame of a 24 Hertz movie 10 times.
1:00:58SPEAKER- Oh, I did not consider that angle on this.
1:01:01SPEAKER- Same thing for 120.
1:01:02SPEAKER- I was gonna say that makes me wonder
1:01:04SPEAKERif I should be running my desktop at 120 instead of 144.
1:01:07SPEAKER- Well, so 144, 144 is a clean multiple tube,
1:01:11SPEAKER165 is not.
1:01:13SPEAKER- Okay.
1:01:14SPEAKER- So, wait, is that right?
1:01:16SPEAKERIs 24, does 24 go into 144?
1:01:19SPEAKER- Maybe.
1:01:20SPEAKER- Let me calculator here.
1:01:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I think so, yes, because it does,
1:01:22SPEAKERyes, it does into 120,
1:01:23SPEAKERand that's just one more iteration of 24.
1:01:25SPEAKERI'm doing math the weird way in my head right now,
1:01:27SPEAKERbut yes, it does. - Yeah, six frames.
1:01:29SPEAKER- For 24 Hertz, yes, for 60, no.
1:01:32SPEAKER- Yeah, that's exactly it.
1:01:33SPEAKERThat's what I mean is that watching 60 Hertz
1:01:36SPEAKERor even 30 Hertz is probably not a clean, I don't know.
1:01:42SPEAKER- So 240 and 120 both have clean multiples
1:01:45SPEAKERfor 24 and 60, which is good.
1:01:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:01:49SPEAKER- It matters less for games and stuff like that.
1:01:52SPEAKER- Yeah, absolutely. - I would say.
1:01:53SPEAKER- Like I can't really tell a difference from 120 up.
1:01:57SPEAKERI'm sure some people like professional esportsists
1:02:00SPEAKERwould disagree, but like I can't tell the difference
1:02:03SPEAKERbetween 120, 144, et cetera.
1:02:05SPEAKER- I will say when I moved off of the 360 Hertz monitor
1:02:09SPEAKERto the 165 Hertz monitor,
1:02:12SPEAKERI feel like getting like the quick flick head shocks
1:02:15SPEAKERgot harder again, it took some adjustment.
1:02:17SPEAKER- I fully believe there is like some kind of,
1:02:19SPEAKERyou could probably subconsciously get habituated
1:02:21SPEAKERto a higher refresh to the point
1:02:23SPEAKERthat it would hurt to get off of it,
1:02:25SPEAKERbut I don't think I would ever notice it consciously.
1:02:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it is like anything else,
1:02:30SPEAKERI think that there's a spectrum of human perception
1:02:32SPEAKERon this stuff and that probably,
1:02:35SPEAKERif you don't feel like you're perceptive,
1:02:37SPEAKERI definitely, I will say the difference between
1:02:39SPEAKERa 60 Hertz panel and a 120 Hertz panel,
1:02:42SPEAKERlike on phones, pad tablets, whatever,
1:02:44SPEAKERI don't ever wanna go back below 120 Hertz.
1:02:48SPEAKER- I think that's the point that needs to be made here
1:02:49SPEAKERis that it is definitely a diminishing returns thing
1:02:52SPEAKERof like above 120, it's harder to tell,
1:02:55SPEAKERbut like from 60 to 120 is like night and day.
1:02:58SPEAKER- Agreed.
1:02:58SPEAKER- That even from like 60 to 90 in games
1:03:00SPEAKERthat have like variable or that you can set
1:03:02SPEAKERat different whatevers.
1:03:04SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:03:04SPEAKER- Like I can very much see a difference
1:03:06SPEAKERbetween 60 and 90 and 60 to 120 is a huge leap.
1:03:09SPEAKERIt's specifically once you get way up
1:03:11SPEAKERinto the three digit refresh that I can't really tell.
1:03:14SPEAKER- The other asterisk on that is when you get
1:03:16SPEAKERto the really, really high refresh rates,
1:03:18SPEAKERespecially with OLED, you can do all sorts
1:03:20SPEAKERof neat shader stuff where you're mimicking
1:03:21SPEAKERlike frame blur and stuff like that from phosphor glow
1:03:25SPEAKERfrom CRTs, but that's a little bit of a specialty thing
1:03:28SPEAKERand those monitors are phenomenally expensive.
1:03:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm sure that is, I wonder,
1:03:32SPEAKERand this is like, we should get John Linneman
1:03:35SPEAKERfrom Digital Foundry on here
1:03:37SPEAKERbecause he is very passionate about the subject,
1:03:38SPEAKERbut I wonder if maybe in the future,
1:03:42SPEAKERlike super high refresh is going to be the antidote
1:03:44SPEAKERfor the problem of sample and hold displays these days
1:03:48SPEAKER'cause I don't know a ton about the subject,
1:03:51SPEAKERso I don't want to speak out of turn,
1:03:52SPEAKERbut basically when we went from,
1:03:54SPEAKERwe went from like lower persistence displays,
1:03:56SPEAKERlike CRTs and plasmas to LCDs and OLEDs,
1:04:00SPEAKERthose displays don't refresh as fast and have,
1:04:03SPEAKERlike basically you get a ton of motion blur
1:04:05SPEAKERon modern displays that you did not get
1:04:07SPEAKERon those older technologies.
1:04:09SPEAKERAnd I'm wondering if getting like 600 Hertz panels
1:04:12SPEAKERthat just display, like they take a 60 Hertz signal
1:04:15SPEAKERand just display each, like they refresh each frame 10 times.
1:04:19SPEAKERLike I wonder if that's gonna maybe be the end goal
1:04:23SPEAKERfor just eliminating the motion blur
1:04:26SPEAKERon these current sample and hold type screens.
1:04:28SPEAKERI don't know.
1:04:29SPEAKER- I don't know, we'll see.
1:04:30SPEAKER- Anyway.
1:04:31SPEAKER- We should get John Linneman,
1:04:31SPEAKERI'd love to talk to him about that.
1:04:33SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure.
1:04:35SPEAKEROkay, a couple of quick keyboard ones, I think.
1:04:39SPEAKERGriogear, I think might be how you say this username.
1:04:42SPEAKERI don't know.
1:04:43SPEAKEROn a recent episode,
1:04:44SPEAKERyou both mentioned macros and keyboard shortcuts.
1:04:46SPEAKERI recently switched to a split mechanical keyboard
1:04:49SPEAKERto ease my RSI.
1:04:51SPEAKERIt only has 54 keys and is configurable with layers
1:04:54SPEAKERfor different functions, such as the numpad.
1:04:56SPEAKERAnd I have a few macros programmed into it.
1:04:58SPEAKERI'm wondering if either of you have thought about that.
1:05:01SPEAKER- So I'm terrible about automating stuff.
1:05:05SPEAKER- In general?
1:05:06SPEAKER- I'm just bad at it, I don't do it.
1:05:07SPEAKERI never, I almost never do it.
1:05:09SPEAKERMy workflows are such that I hardly ever am doing
1:05:11SPEAKERthe exact same keystrokes in the same way.
1:05:13SPEAKERIt's not like I'm copying and spacing
1:05:16SPEAKERand doing all this kind of stuff.
1:05:18SPEAKERThat said, somebody asked me the other day,
1:05:21SPEAKERif I was gonna vibe code an app, what would I vibe code?
1:05:25SPEAKERLike, what was the thing that I would want?
1:05:27SPEAKERAnd it's a thing that watches my keystrokes
1:05:29SPEAKERand like picks out keystrokes I repeat constantly
1:05:32SPEAKERthroughout the day and just my brain doesn't notice
1:05:34SPEAKERthat I'm doing that and then makes me macros for it.
1:05:38SPEAKER- Interesting, okay, yeah, sure.
1:05:40SPEAKERI could see that or that could also be done traditionally.
1:05:43SPEAKERBut that is a good idea for a piece of software though.
1:05:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I went and looked after I pitched this concept
1:05:49SPEAKERand I couldn't find anything that does that, so.
1:05:52SPEAKERAlso, I don't think I would want somebody else
1:05:53SPEAKERwriting a piece of software that has that level of access
1:05:56SPEAKERto my keystrokes.
1:05:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say you're basically making
1:05:58SPEAKERa de facto key logger at that point, which is maybe fraught.
1:06:02SPEAKER- Yeah. - I don't know.
1:06:04SPEAKER- Do you use macros and stuff?
1:06:06SPEAKER- Not user defined, well, in a few places like Audacity,
1:06:11SPEAKER'cause I edit a lot of podcasts every week.
1:06:13SPEAKERI absolutely have set up a ton of custom shortcuts.
1:06:16SPEAKERI mean, I love--
1:06:17SPEAKER- But that's different than a macro, right?
1:06:19SPEAKER- Yeah, sure, I guess it is.
1:06:20SPEAKER- Like a macro--
1:06:21SPEAKER- Those are just custom shortcuts.
1:06:23SPEAKER- When I was working for the magazine, we were doing tests
1:06:25SPEAKERand I used to have a macro that would generate
1:06:27SPEAKERlike all the head matter for like a draft of an article
1:06:31SPEAKERor something.
1:06:32SPEAKER- I mean, I think a macro for the purpose of this discussion
1:06:34SPEAKERis like combining multiple actions into one action, right?
1:06:37SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:06:39SPEAKER- Yeah, not so much.
1:06:40SPEAKERAnd actually, ironically, I do that in Audacity as well,
1:06:42SPEAKER'cause when I do the post-processing on our audio,
1:06:45SPEAKERit's, God, what is it?
1:06:49SPEAKERLike loudness normalization, compression, de-essing, EQ,
1:06:55SPEAKERanother compression stack, the point is--
1:06:57SPEAKER- Oh, right, 'cause you can't do those as a FX stack.
1:06:59SPEAKER- It's a bunch of different filters in a chain
1:07:02SPEAKERthat run into the macro, but like OS wide, not really.
1:07:06SPEAKER- Yeah. - Not really my thing.
1:07:07SPEAKERAlso, in case you're asking about the split keyboard aspect
1:07:10SPEAKERof this, I am, for whatever reason,
1:07:13SPEAKERI'm a real traditionalist about input devices.
1:07:16SPEAKERSo I kind of, I like the full 104 keys or whatever it is.
1:07:21SPEAKER- Wild.
1:07:22SPEAKER- But anyway.
1:07:23SPEAKER- See, I have a removable 10 key, 80 keys life, baby.
1:07:28SPEAKER- Dragon, J Ragon, I'm not sure is the username here.
1:07:33SPEAKERThe other keyboard question.
1:07:35SPEAKERWith the expense that basically all hardware has gotten
1:07:38SPEAKERexcept for displays, my brain remembered
1:07:40SPEAKERthat flash in the pan idea
1:07:42SPEAKERthat never really materialized the Optimus keyboard.
1:07:44SPEAKER- Oh God.
1:07:45SPEAKER- Do you know what that is?
1:07:46SPEAKERI have to look at that. - Oh, I remember.
1:07:47SPEAKEROh, do I remember it?
1:07:48SPEAKERWe had it in the magazine.
1:07:50SPEAKER- Oh, wait.
1:07:51SPEAKEROkay, well, I'll finish the question first.
1:07:52SPEAKERLCD tech has really improved in the last two decades,
1:07:55SPEAKERboth in capabilities and cost.
1:07:58SPEAKERHas anyone taken a proper shot at that idea?
1:08:00SPEAKERI realize it would be DOA without wide software support,
1:08:03SPEAKERbut it's still fun to think about.
1:08:04SPEAKERIs it really that old?
1:08:05SPEAKER- Yeah, the original pitch was like it might've been tested,
1:08:08SPEAKERbut it was a long time ago.
1:08:10SPEAKER- I mean, they mentioned in the past two decades.
1:08:12SPEAKERSo I assume this was like roughly 20 years ago.
1:08:15SPEAKERWhat the Optimus is or was is basically envision
1:08:19SPEAKERa stream deck, but a keyboard.
1:08:21SPEAKERLike the keyboard is a giant LCD screen
1:08:23SPEAKERwith a bunch of transparent keys over top of it.
1:08:25SPEAKERAnd then the keys can like dynamically display
1:08:28SPEAKERwhatever kind of value you want.
1:08:30SPEAKERAnd I guess I assume the idea for that
1:08:32SPEAKERwas you would run different applications
1:08:33SPEAKERand like you'd run Photoshop
1:08:35SPEAKERand it would show all the keyboard shortcuts on the keys
1:08:37SPEAKERfor all the different Photoshop shortcuts
1:08:39SPEAKERand that kind of thing.
1:08:40SPEAKERIs that correct?
1:08:41SPEAKER- That is right.
1:08:43SPEAKERI think, however, it wasn't,
1:08:45SPEAKERlike the stream deck is a screen
1:08:46SPEAKERwith a bunch of clear plastic keys over it.
1:08:48SPEAKERThe Optimus was 104 tiny OLED keys each on each, yeah.
1:08:52SPEAKER- Oh, this would have been before OLED, right?
1:08:54SPEAKER- No, it was OLED, OLED was around.
1:08:56SPEAKER- That long ago?
1:08:57SPEAKER- Yeah, OLED was around for a long time.
1:08:59SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.
1:08:59SPEAKERI guess like the Sony handhelds
1:09:01SPEAKERwere using AMOLED quite a while ago.
1:09:02SPEAKER- Yeah, like the Zune HD is an OLED screen.
1:09:05SPEAKER- Right, sure, yeah.
1:09:06SPEAKERWait, so it was a bunch of tiny screens per key?
1:09:09SPEAKERThat sounds insane.
1:09:10SPEAKER- A bunch of tiny screens, one on each key.
1:09:12SPEAKER- It seems like at this point
1:09:13SPEAKERyou would just do one big display
1:09:14SPEAKERwith like segmented keys or a few ports.
1:09:16SPEAKER- It would feel crappy and mushy though.
1:09:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I don't know that this is a great idea
1:09:21SPEAKERin any case personally,
1:09:22SPEAKERbut there are too many compromises, I think.
1:09:25SPEAKER- Yeah, fundamentally the problem is that
1:09:28SPEAKERI don't look at my keyboard ever.
1:09:30SPEAKER- Yeah, there is that.
1:09:31SPEAKER- Well, I don't either, but I, you know,
1:09:33SPEAKERif I were in something as sprawling as Photoshop,
1:09:35SPEAKERI might actually look if it helped me
1:09:37SPEAKERget to the thing I was trying to do faster.
1:09:40SPEAKER- That's true.
1:09:41SPEAKERSo they announced it. - But generally I'm with you.
1:09:43SPEAKER- The initial design was featured on Slashdot in 2005.
1:09:47SPEAKER- Just saying it was on Slashdot
1:09:49SPEAKERkind of dates this whole thing.
1:09:50SPEAKER- Yeah, and then by 2006, it was number 10
1:09:54SPEAKERon Wired magazines of 2006 vaporware awards.
1:09:57SPEAKER- All right.
1:09:59SPEAKER- There's been other keyboards that do that.
1:10:01SPEAKERI mean, the Stream Deck is probably
1:10:02SPEAKERthe most popular of those.
1:10:05SPEAKERI think the fundamental issue is that
1:10:06SPEAKERI would rather have a keyboard that feels good
1:10:08SPEAKERthan looks good because I don't really want to,
1:10:10SPEAKERI don't care what it looks like.
1:10:11SPEAKERI don't ever look at it.
1:10:13SPEAKERLike if you could get it to repel dust and hair,
1:10:15SPEAKERI'd be all about that.
1:10:17SPEAKER- Let me ask a quick mechanical keyboard
1:10:19SPEAKERsidebar question here.
1:10:20SPEAKER- Yes.
1:10:21SPEAKER- Is it expected that switches just wear out over time
1:10:23SPEAKERand need to be replaced?
1:10:24SPEAKER'Cause I've been getting a lot of weird repeats,
1:10:28SPEAKERlike double inputs lately on different keys that come and go.
1:10:32SPEAKER- Sometimes that's a software,
1:10:33SPEAKERlike your debounce setting is bad,
1:10:35SPEAKERyou need to dial it back.
1:10:37SPEAKER- In fact, this is a Keychron and they put out a firmware
1:10:40SPEAKERsome months or a year ago
1:10:41SPEAKERthat did adjust the debounce algorithm.
1:10:43SPEAKERAnd in fact, you can change the debounce yourself,
1:10:45SPEAKERbut I've just, I've never tweaked it further
1:10:47SPEAKERbecause I assume the risk on the other side of that
1:10:49SPEAKERis if you get too aggressive with it,
1:10:51SPEAKERthen you start kind of like missing quick inputs, right?
1:10:54SPEAKER- Yeah, but you have to, they have to be real quick.
1:10:56SPEAKERThere's a pretty wide gulf between debounce isn't effective
1:10:59SPEAKERand you're missing inputs.
1:11:01SPEAKER- Okay, maybe I should just further up that number
1:11:04SPEAKERa little bit then from the sound of it,
1:11:06SPEAKERor maybe what's the answer to that question though?
1:11:09SPEAKERLike would you expect switches to wear out
1:11:11SPEAKERor should they pretty much last?
1:11:13SPEAKER- So I don't think they wear out.
1:11:15SPEAKERI think the problem is often they're defective
1:11:16SPEAKER'cause when you're buying bulk switches,
1:11:18SPEAKERthey're generally not super tested.
1:11:20SPEAKERSo that's why like you buy,
1:11:23SPEAKERif you're buying switches for an 80 key keyboard,
1:11:25SPEAKERthey give you 88 keys in the bag.
1:11:27SPEAKERIt's 'cause there's a certain amount
1:11:28SPEAKERthat you expect to be bad
1:11:31SPEAKERor for you to mess up during the install or whatever.
1:11:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I wonder in my case though,
1:11:35SPEAKERit really comes and goes per key.
1:11:37SPEAKER- That to me sounds like it sounds like debounce.
1:11:39SPEAKER- Okay, maybe I'll just tweak that.
1:11:41SPEAKERLike I said, I was just afraid to push it too high
1:11:43SPEAKER'cause I thought I could end up
1:11:44SPEAKERgetting counterproductive with it.
1:11:46SPEAKER- I mean, I think if you start seeing,
1:11:48SPEAKERyou type faster than I do.
1:11:50SPEAKERSo like, I don't know how lightly you're grazing switches.
1:11:54SPEAKER- Not very.
1:11:55SPEAKER- It's like I would experiment with that setting,
1:11:58SPEAKERbut it's also really easy to swap switches out these days.
1:12:01SPEAKERSo I would, if you have one that's consistently sticking
1:12:04SPEAKERor failing or like that you have to hit a couple of times
1:12:06SPEAKERto get to go, then that's probably the time
1:12:07SPEAKERto swap that one.
1:12:08SPEAKER- No, that's the thing.
1:12:09SPEAKERIt's super random and it happens to be--
1:12:11SPEAKER- It's extra hits almost exclusively.
1:12:13SPEAKER- Yeah, it's always like a double input.
1:12:15SPEAKER- Yeah, so like on my old Logitech mice,
1:12:18SPEAKERthe ones that I had to replace the switches on,
1:12:20SPEAKERthat's what I was getting.
1:12:21SPEAKERIt's just sometimes it would be a double hit,
1:12:23SPEAKERalmost always a double click rather than a single click.
1:12:26SPEAKERAnd that was a failing switch.
1:12:28SPEAKERThose were those Omron crappy switches
1:12:30SPEAKERthey used to put in those things.
1:12:32SPEAKER- Okay, all right, let's do one last quick round of...
1:12:36SPEAKERWell, hopefully these will be quick, we'll see.
1:12:39SPEAKERActually, I don't know, this is a big question.
1:12:40SPEAKERIt's from Warbird.
1:12:41SPEAKER- Oh boy.
1:12:42SPEAKER- This is a very Warbird question.
1:12:43SPEAKER- Yeah, we all hate Lane Kiffin Warbirds.
1:12:46SPEAKER- Is AI and vibe coding just the eternal September
1:12:49SPEAKERat a societal scale?
1:12:51SPEAKER- It sure seems that way.
1:12:56SPEAKERAs previously discussed,
1:12:58SPEAKERI think you were there for the eternal September.
1:13:00SPEAKER- I was a member.
1:13:01SPEAKERI'm a member of the eternal September.
1:13:02SPEAKER- In fact, I believe you were one of the perpetrators.
1:13:04SPEAKER- I'm part of the problem.
1:13:06SPEAKERI was the one who came into all binaries, Barney,
1:13:09SPEAKERdie, die, die and ruined the internet the first time.
1:13:15SPEAKERYes, no, maybe, I don't know.
1:13:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it's tough to say.
1:13:19SPEAKERThis is maybe, I feel like we need to revisit this question
1:13:22SPEAKERin like five years.
1:13:23SPEAKER- I feel like there's a really powerful thing
1:13:28SPEAKERto letting people who don't think that they can make software
1:13:33SPEAKERmake software that's useful for them, right?
1:13:35SPEAKER- Yes.
1:13:36SPEAKER- There's a really nice virtuous loop that happens
1:13:38SPEAKERwhen somebody learns to make something
1:13:40SPEAKERand even if they're not doing it the right way,
1:13:42SPEAKERthey've made something that they find useful
1:13:43SPEAKERand then that's gonna make them start looking at
1:13:46SPEAKERthe way they use their tools differently.
1:13:48SPEAKER- For personal use, I totally agree.
1:13:49SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:13:50SPEAKER- I think when you start getting out into communities
1:13:53SPEAKERand flooding the zone with bullshit, as it were.
1:13:56SPEAKER- Yeah, and then I also start seeing people talking
1:13:59SPEAKERabout their CEO doing commits that break entire pipelines
1:14:02SPEAKERand stuff like that and that's a bad, that feels bad.
1:14:05SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:14:05SPEAKER- So maybe eternal September, some of it was good
1:14:10SPEAKERand some of it was bad and yeah,
1:14:12SPEAKERmaybe this is the same situation.
1:14:14SPEAKERI don't know.
1:14:15SPEAKEREternal September wasn't built on enormous scale theft
1:14:17SPEAKERand a potential global economic collapse, so who knows.
1:14:24SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, perhaps too early to say.
1:14:26SPEAKERThe effect on different fan communities,
1:14:28SPEAKERlike passionate communities of people making things
1:14:31SPEAKERhas been profoundly negative.
1:14:33SPEAKERLike I don't wanna spend too much time on it right now,
1:14:35SPEAKERbut I don't know if you saw the decomp.dev
1:14:36SPEAKERjust straight up shut down this week
1:14:38SPEAKERbecause they cited so much bad behavior
1:14:41SPEAKERon the part of people driving by with AI
1:14:43SPEAKERand fucking things up.
1:14:44SPEAKER- But at the same time, like if the out,
1:14:46SPEAKERif the five-year outcome of this
1:14:48SPEAKERis that everything is essentially open source at that point,
1:14:52SPEAKERthen if the ability to decomp closed source software
1:14:57SPEAKERmeans that everybody's treating their software
1:14:59SPEAKERlike it's open source, that's probably a net good.
1:15:02SPEAKERSo I don't know, the answer is it's complicated, I think.
1:15:06SPEAKER- One other quick thing, I've been staring at this tweet
1:15:08SPEAKERfor the last 24 hours thinking about it.
1:15:11SPEAKERI floated this idea on Nextlander,
1:15:12SPEAKERI think last week when we talked about,
1:15:15SPEAKERI think it was when we talked about the decomp.dev thing,
1:15:17SPEAKERbut Fur Tech, who is one of the kind of more bad-ass,
1:15:22SPEAKERlow level mister developer types,
1:15:24SPEAKERlike one of the people who's out there
1:15:25SPEAKERlike decapping the chips on arcade boards
1:15:28SPEAKERto try to document how they work and stuff like that.
1:15:31SPEAKERLike some of their work has been pretty instrumental
1:15:34SPEAKERin getting stuff like Ninja Turtles working,
1:15:36SPEAKERsome important mister stuff.
1:15:38SPEAKERLike that's one of the many scenes
1:15:40SPEAKERwhere this is a like the topic.
1:15:42SPEAKERIt's like all anybody's talking about
1:15:43SPEAKER'cause every scene like that is just getting flooded
1:15:45SPEAKERwith vibe coded nonsense right now.
1:15:48SPEAKERThe Fur Tech tweet says, "Maybe one good thing
1:15:51SPEAKER"with the flood of FPGA slop cores
1:15:53SPEAKER"reaching a critical point, poser douches."
1:15:56SPEAKERJust hit their language.
1:15:58SPEAKER"Poser douches are losing interest
1:16:00SPEAKER"since they no longer feel competitive,"
1:16:02SPEAKERwhich is their only interest,
1:16:03SPEAKER"and they are fucking off from the hobby."
1:16:05SPEAKERSo like I kind of said something similar on Nextlander,
1:16:08SPEAKERwhich is that it seems like the types of people
1:16:10SPEAKERwho are just showing up and want to like
1:16:12SPEAKERclaim internet glory by like shitting out some thing
1:16:15SPEAKERfaster than anybody else.
1:16:16SPEAKERLike eventually they're gonna get bored of that
1:16:18SPEAKERor in this case, like they're saying here,
1:16:20SPEAKERlike everybody else is gonna be doing the same thing
1:16:23SPEAKERto the point that it's not sexy anymore.
1:16:24SPEAKERAnd that like my hope is that the people
1:16:27SPEAKERwho don't actually care about the work
1:16:29SPEAKERand the output that much
1:16:31SPEAKERare just gonna kind of drift away over time
1:16:33SPEAKERand everything will kind of self-correct, but who knows?
1:16:36SPEAKER- That reads to me.
1:16:38SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:16:38SPEAKER- Like I hope that that's the case.
1:16:41SPEAKER- Yeah, me too.
1:16:43SPEAKEROkay, let's wrap up
1:16:45SPEAKERwith a pair of animatronic cake batter questions.
1:16:48SPEAKER- Okay, happy Halloween.
1:16:51SPEAKER- It says spooky in parentheses.
1:16:52SPEAKERThe full name is animatronic cake batter
1:16:55SPEAKERin parentheses spooky.
1:16:56SPEAKER- Pretty good.
1:16:57SPEAKER- Should a clubhouse sandwich have chicken breast
1:16:59SPEAKERor sliced turkey?
1:17:01SPEAKER- Wait, what's a clubhouse sandwich?
1:17:02SPEAKERIs this a club sandwich?
1:17:03SPEAKER- That was my exact response to this.
1:17:04SPEAKERIt's gotta be a Canadian thing, right?
1:17:06SPEAKER'Cause I also immediately in my head said,
1:17:08SPEAKER"Is that just a club sandwich?"
1:17:09SPEAKER- I saw this and I intentionally didn't Google it
1:17:11SPEAKERuntil now, so I'm gonna look.
1:17:13SPEAKERThis is probably some Canadian thing
1:17:14SPEAKERwe've never heard of before, Brad.
1:17:16SPEAKER- If it is a, okay, I Googled clubhouse sandwich
1:17:18SPEAKERand the club sandwich Wikipedia page is the first match, so.
1:17:22SPEAKER- Yes.
1:17:23SPEAKER- If it is in fact club sandwich turkey all the way,
1:17:25SPEAKERI didn't even know you could put chicken.
1:17:26SPEAKERThat's something else entirely, isn't it?
1:17:29SPEAKER- I like a sliced chicken.
1:17:30SPEAKER- Sliced turkey is the canonical club sandwich meat.
1:17:33SPEAKER- Look, I'm not one to not swap turkey for chicken.
1:17:37SPEAKERLike I'll take a roast chicken sliced.
1:17:39SPEAKERI'm a big fan of that.
1:17:40SPEAKER- Oh yeah, that's yeah, nothing wrong with it.
1:17:42SPEAKERBut I'm not sure it's a club sandwich at that point.
1:17:44SPEAKER- Wow, so judgy.
1:17:46SPEAKERLook, from where I sit, the bigger question here
1:17:49SPEAKERis about the clubhouse situation
1:17:50SPEAKER'cause that seems unnatural to me.
1:17:53SPEAKER- Okay, here is the way more tech pod of the two questions.
1:17:57SPEAKER- Okay.
1:17:58SPEAKER- I am fascinated by this question.
1:18:00SPEAKER'Cause knowing cake batter,
1:18:02SPEAKERhe's definitely serious about this.
1:18:05SPEAKERIs launching my own CubeSat for bragging rights
1:18:08SPEAKERa worthwhile use of $20,000?
1:18:10SPEAKER- What would you use the satellite for?
1:18:12SPEAKER- Well, in his case, he does all kinds of weird
1:18:14SPEAKERlike GPS timekeeping stuff and weather,
1:18:18SPEAKERweather data aggregation and stuff like that.
1:18:20SPEAKERSo I wouldn't, well, the question says for bragging rights,
1:18:23SPEAKERbut I would assume there's probably
1:18:25SPEAKERsome actual use case here.
1:18:28SPEAKERThis is somebody who has trash can,
1:18:29SPEAKERliteral metal trash cans configured
1:18:32SPEAKERas like weather data collectors.
1:18:34SPEAKER- I don't know, with radios in them.
1:18:35SPEAKER- So I think there is some kind of like public data gathering
1:18:38SPEAKERfascination here.
1:18:39SPEAKER- Look, can I interest you in a sponsorship
1:18:41SPEAKERfor a podcast for $20,000?
1:18:43SPEAKERWe can do a lot with that.
1:18:46SPEAKERLook, if you have something cool to do with a CubeSat,
1:18:48SPEAKERI say go for it.
1:18:49SPEAKER- I had to look up what a CubeSat is
1:18:51SPEAKERand didn't realize that there are very,
1:18:53SPEAKERwell, I mean, I could gather from the name
1:18:55SPEAKERroughly what it is.
1:18:56SPEAKERWhat I mean is I didn't realize
1:18:57SPEAKERit's like very strictly standardized,
1:18:59SPEAKERlike the dimensions and weight and everything.
1:19:01SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
1:19:02SPEAKER- It is like, let me make sure I've got the numbers here.
1:19:04SPEAKERIt is a form factor of 10 centimeters,
1:19:08SPEAKER10 cubic centimeters, mass of no more than two kilograms,
1:19:13SPEAKERoften use commercial off the shelf components.
1:19:15SPEAKERAnd anyway, I mean, whatever I should,
1:19:18SPEAKERof course I should know that any kind of like
1:19:19SPEAKERlaunch capacity situation,
1:19:21SPEAKEReverything is gonna be very strictly regulated
1:19:23SPEAKER'cause of the cost per pound
1:19:25SPEAKERto launch things into orbit is very high.
1:19:27SPEAKER- Do you know how they launch them, Brad?
1:19:28SPEAKER- No.
1:19:29SPEAKER- So there's a hole on the space station.
1:19:32SPEAKERYou can jam them into it.
1:19:32SPEAKERIt just fires them out into space.
1:19:35SPEAKER- Wow.
1:19:35SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:19:36SPEAKERThey also like go up and they'll use excess weight
1:19:40SPEAKERon launches that have like a big shroud around the payload.
1:19:44SPEAKERAnd there'll be a rack of like CubeSat launchers
1:19:47SPEAKERunderneath or beside,
1:19:49SPEAKERor it goes out with like the second stage
1:19:50SPEAKERor something like that.
1:19:52SPEAKERAnd they'll fire them out when you're doing that.
1:19:55SPEAKER- I would assume there were some
1:19:57SPEAKERNewtonian considerations, right?
1:19:58SPEAKERThey're not just chucking them out the window, right?
1:20:00SPEAKER'Cause I mean, you'd have to worry about speed
1:20:02SPEAKERto make sure the orbit is steady.
1:20:04SPEAKER- They can control the speed.
1:20:05SPEAKERIt's not like they have a slingshot.
1:20:07SPEAKER- I'm mostly joking.
1:20:08SPEAKERYou kind of made it sound like they just flush them
1:20:10SPEAKERdown the toilet of the ISS.
1:20:12SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty much.
1:20:13SPEAKER- And they just drift out there.
1:20:14SPEAKERBut I assume-
1:20:14SPEAKER- Go out the cube hole, baby.
1:20:16SPEAKER- I assume the orbital stability
1:20:20SPEAKERis being taken into consideration.
1:20:22SPEAKER- Well, so they don't last very long is the thing.
1:20:24SPEAKERSo we interviewed some folks who make them,
1:20:26SPEAKERwho made some of the early ones,
1:20:27SPEAKERlike 15 years ago it tested
1:20:29SPEAKER'cause they were at Maker Faire
1:20:30SPEAKERand some DARPA stuff that we used to go to.
1:20:33SPEAKERAnd part of it is the kind of processors
1:20:36SPEAKERthat they use are off the shelf.
1:20:37SPEAKERThey're not really radiation hardened.
1:20:39SPEAKERSo they have a relatively limited shelf life.
1:20:41SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't even think about that, of course.
1:20:43SPEAKER- And then the other thing is that they use
1:20:44SPEAKERoff the shelf solar panels generally.
1:20:45SPEAKERSo again, those get torched pretty fast
1:20:48SPEAKERin the hot and cold of space.
1:20:50SPEAKER- Sure.
1:20:51SPEAKER- But yeah, the idea is that you,
1:20:52SPEAKERfor a relatively low amount of money,
1:20:54SPEAKERlike a college class can launch a satellite
1:20:56SPEAKERand collect some data and do some science,
1:21:00SPEAKERwhich is really cool.
1:21:01SPEAKER- I say, go for it.
1:21:02SPEAKERIf you have the means, go for it.
1:21:04SPEAKER- What I want to know from the community
1:21:05SPEAKERis what they should use,
1:21:06SPEAKERwhat cake batters should use the satellite for,
1:21:09SPEAKERbeyond bragging rights.
1:21:11SPEAKER- Yeah, probably there's a whole world of possibilities.
1:21:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:21:14SPEAKER- Orbital plex server.
1:21:15SPEAKER- I mean, look, we've talked about the thermodynamics
1:21:18SPEAKERof computers in space.
1:21:19SPEAKERIt's not gonna fit in a cube.
1:21:21SPEAKER- Not for long.
1:21:22SPEAKER- But yeah, this is as good a place as any
1:21:24SPEAKERto wrap it up for this episode.
1:21:26SPEAKERThanks everybody for listening and submitting questions.
1:21:27SPEAKERWe had a huge crop of them this month.
1:21:29SPEAKERSo thanks everybody for sending your stuff in.
1:21:31SPEAKERAgain, the email address is techpod@content.town.
1:21:34SPEAKEROr if you're in the Discord,
1:21:36SPEAKERyou can go to the Question Seeking Answers channel
1:21:38SPEAKERand post your question there.
1:21:40SPEAKERAgain, don't post anything secret
1:21:41SPEAKER'cause other people might see it
1:21:42SPEAKERif they happen to be in the channel at the same time.
1:21:44SPEAKERAnd we will definitely see it in the future.
1:21:46SPEAKER- Yes, don't post your unencrypted environment variables
1:21:48SPEAKERin that channel 'cause somebody might see them.
1:21:51SPEAKERAnd then you're gonna have to rotate all of your API keys.
1:21:53SPEAKER- If you have a top level cert,
1:21:55SPEAKERdon't post the password even if it's just four.
1:21:58SPEAKER- Dude, I cannot believe that shit.
1:22:00SPEAKERI don't want to cannibalize next week's material.
1:22:03SPEAKERBut my favorite theory,
1:22:05SPEAKER'cause I assume you looked at all the keys.
1:22:07SPEAKER- Yeah, they're all bad. - All eight of them.
1:22:09SPEAKERIt's not just that they're all bad.
1:22:11SPEAKERMy favorite theory, I don't know if this is legit.
1:22:13SPEAKERI have no idea what happened there.
1:22:15SPEAKERBut my favorite theory is that somebody
1:22:17SPEAKERon the creating end of that whole situation
1:22:19SPEAKERlooked at 384-bit key.
1:22:22SPEAKER- Oh my God, you're not.
1:22:23SPEAKER- And took that to mean that they should pick numbers
1:22:25SPEAKERbetween zero and 384, because all of them are.
1:22:29SPEAKERAll of them are numbers between zero and 384.
1:22:33SPEAKER- My assumption was that somebody made
1:22:35SPEAKERa bunch of practice certificates, like test certificates,
1:22:38SPEAKERand then they shipped those by accident in production,
1:22:41SPEAKERbut damn.
1:22:42SPEAKER- But again, the contents of the keys are one to four,
1:22:45SPEAKERsorry, one to three digits.
1:22:46SPEAKERAnd a proper key of that size is like a pretty-
1:22:49SPEAKER- 150 or something, right?
1:22:50SPEAKER- Pretty lengthy alphanumeric string.
1:22:53SPEAKER- Mother of God.
1:22:55SPEAKERAnyway, patreon.com/techpod, if you're not in the Discord,
1:22:58SPEAKERyou can get in there, you can sign up for the Patreon.
1:23:01SPEAKERYou can support the show, which we really appreciate.
1:23:03SPEAKERAnd you get access to the monthly Patreon exclusive episode,
1:23:06SPEAKERwhere we talk about projects as they're going.
1:23:10SPEAKERI don't know, all sorts of stuff.
1:23:11SPEAKERWe take extra questions sometimes.
1:23:14SPEAKERSometimes we just talk about what's on our minds
1:23:16SPEAKERand what's going on with technology,
1:23:18SPEAKERwhat we're working on, what we're having a hard time with,
1:23:20SPEAKERwhat's going well.
1:23:21SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod,
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1:23:26SPEAKER- We do.
1:23:27SPEAKER- Yeah, we don't have ads.
1:23:28SPEAKERIt's a listener-supported show.
1:23:30SPEAKERAnd since this is the last episode of the month,
1:23:32SPEAKERHalloween aside, this is where we read
1:23:36SPEAKERboth the executive producer
1:23:38SPEAKERand the associate producer tier's names.
1:23:40SPEAKERSo first, our executive producers are James Kamik,
1:23:46SPEAKERBunny Emoticon, Demon Emoticon,
1:23:49SPEAKERInfelicitous Rips, and Jordan Lippett.
1:23:51SPEAKERAnd our associate producer tier patrons are
1:23:54SPEAKERThomas Shea, Ryerson, Jadrena, Steve Lin,
1:23:58SPEAKERNathan Phelps, Ben Tallman, Refund Please, uh-oh.
1:24:03SPEAKER- Whoa.
1:24:04SPEAKER- Andre and Burke, parenthesis dot P dot E,
1:24:08SPEAKERAndrew Dicey Scholdice, Felix Kramer,
1:24:11SPEAKERBrutal Carfuffle, and Eric, thank you so much.
1:24:13SPEAKER- Thank you, yes.
1:24:15SPEAKER- We will see you all next week
1:24:19SPEAKERwith another edition of the Tech Pod.
1:24:21SPEAKERThanks everybody for supporting the show.
1:24:23SPEAKERWe do really appreciate it.
1:24:24SPEAKERAnd as always, please consider the environment
1:24:27SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.
1:24:28SPEAKER(upbeat music)