58: Lil' Doppler Redshift

00:00SPEAKERI'm having a hairstyle crisis.

00:01SPEAKERWhat kind of crisis? I mean, what?

00:04SPEAKERLook, it's hair, man. What kind of crisis could there be?

00:08SPEAKERJust get the clippers and remove it.

00:10SPEAKERThere's cool hair. I do not have cool hair.

00:12SPEAKERMy hair is flat and limp and like I'm looking at hairstyles that don't involve

00:16SPEAKERgetting my hair cut every three weeks by my wife, which she does an excellent job.

00:20SPEAKERAnd I love her very much. And she's awesome.

00:22SPEAKERBut it takes so long. Really?

00:24SPEAKERIt's not like you're trying to cut to a specific length.

00:27SPEAKERIs there like some precision? She's trying to just give me my normal haircut.

00:31SPEAKERIt takes like it takes a long time.

00:32SPEAKERI'm not going to say how long because it's embarrassing now that I'm thinking about it.

00:35SPEAKERLook, we all have to make sacrifices right now. OK. Yeah.

00:38SPEAKERSo I think what my sacrifice is going to be,

00:41SPEAKERI think I'm going to go for the Keanu Reeves like shoulder length, long hair.

00:45SPEAKERThe man. Wow. Yeah, that's the opposite.

00:47SPEAKERThat's the opposite direction of where I thought you were going to go.

00:49SPEAKERI'm just no, I put my head to weird shape to shave. I can't do that.

00:52SPEAKERHave you tried it? It's not a good look for me.

00:55SPEAKERIt's happened in the past. Yeah, positive.

00:57SPEAKERI was going to say, though, with the length of the mountain

01:01SPEAKERman level beard accumulation that you've got going on. Yes.

01:04SPEAKERI feel like it would be a good offset.

01:06SPEAKERIn fact, you would get the full on like head inversion.

01:09SPEAKERHere's the problem when you've got a giant beard and a shaved head.

01:12SPEAKERThere's there's there's subcultures that I do not want to associate

01:16SPEAKERmyself with that associate itself with that specific look.

01:19SPEAKERYeah, but how often are you going outside the house to mingle

01:22SPEAKERwith those subcultures or any others?

01:24SPEAKERI don't want people to like look at a thumbnail on Twitch and be like, man,

01:27SPEAKERthat guy's probably a white supremacist. Oh, that's OK.

01:30SPEAKERThat's not even what I thought you were talking about.

01:32SPEAKERBut I'm fine. Bikers are cool, man. I like them. They're OK.

01:34SPEAKERI feel like a cue ball and giant beard combo has a lot of versatility.

01:40SPEAKERI don't know. Anyway, like the real thing is I can't use sunscreen.

01:44SPEAKERSo then I have to be a hat guy full time.

01:46SPEAKERAnd like, that's a whole other problem.

01:47SPEAKERI don't I don't look at the candle Reeves like the shoulder, like the the chin

01:51SPEAKERlength, but cut with the split down the middle ish. Oh, that's a good look.

01:56SPEAKERI mean, well, if your goal is to minimize maintenance, then either

01:59SPEAKERshaving it all off or never touching it, just letting it go are your two options.

02:03SPEAKERSo, yeah, it's either that or like a karmak ponytail.

02:06SPEAKERWe don't need to talk about that.

02:07SPEAKERYeah. Who would? Nobody in their right mind would do something like that.

02:10SPEAKERNo, that's a bad idea.

02:21SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

02:45SPEAKERI'm Will. I'm Brad.

02:47SPEAKERI have emails, but you have stars.

02:49SPEAKERWhat's up with you? Are you in space?

02:51SPEAKERWhat? Oh, behind me.

02:53SPEAKERI can put emails behind me.

02:54SPEAKERYou want you want? No, no, no, no.

02:55SPEAKERKeep the space, please. I'm going to hold on.

02:57SPEAKERCould you OK, turn.

02:58SPEAKERDo you know what this picture is?

02:59SPEAKERThis is a famous picture.

03:01SPEAKERAlso, turn your turn your head.

03:02SPEAKERHold still about.

03:04SPEAKERThat's yes. Hold right there.

03:06SPEAKEROK, so what is a control?

03:09SPEAKERI'm sorry. No, it's it's a window key shift.

03:11SPEAKERAnd we just take a screenshot and OBS up too late.

03:13SPEAKERGot it. Snagged it.

03:15SPEAKERThe sky. God, it's full of stars.

03:17SPEAKERThe Windows 10 snipping tool to the rescue.

03:19SPEAKERThis is this is a famous picture.

03:21SPEAKERDon't tell me if you were to move your chair and head.

03:25SPEAKERWould I be able to tell?

03:27SPEAKERIs the is the focus of the picture right in the middle behind where you're sitting?

03:31SPEAKEROK, I thought it might be the fingers creation, but it's not that.

03:35SPEAKERIt's a it's not the it's not the horse head nebula.

03:38SPEAKERNo, those are probably the only two cosmological photos I know by name.

03:44SPEAKERThis is the Hubble 25th anniversary deep field survey.

03:48SPEAKERYeah, this is a deep field. This is like, wait, wait, how many how many deep fields have they done?

03:53SPEAKERThey do them all the time. They like they do them.

03:55SPEAKERThey they I mean, they don't do them all the time because it takes a lot of exposures over a long period of time, months.

03:59SPEAKERRight. But yeah, the point is this was they aimed at what was an empty patch of space.

04:04SPEAKERYeah. And then took a bunch of exposures over a period of months and then composite them all together.

04:09SPEAKERAnd this is what empty space looks like. Right.

04:11SPEAKERIf you gather light from that patch of empty space for, let's say, three months constantly.

04:16SPEAKERYeah. Or like three months. Yeah, it's it's a I like the deep fields.

04:21SPEAKERThe deep fields are my favorite pictures. I may not have seen this particular deep field.

04:24SPEAKERMaybe the maybe it's the first one they did that is so famous.

04:27SPEAKERThe first one is the famous one. Yeah. But that one is incredibly revealing.

04:33SPEAKERIf you are into quantifying the vastness of the cosmos.

04:37SPEAKERYeah. When you actually look at the numbers of what you're looking at, it's like, hey, each one of these dots is a galaxy that is hundreds of millions of light years away from us.

04:44SPEAKERRight. But yeah, it's just like, hey, these these points of lights are not stars. These are galaxies.

04:48SPEAKERThese are each one of these points represents billions of stars.

04:51SPEAKERThe thing I like about this one is that the blue stars are moving toward us and the red stars are moving away from us.

04:56SPEAKERYes. You can see the red shift in the blue. That's the that's the Doppler effect.

05:00SPEAKERYes, exactly. Doppler red shift there. I'm about to we're not even getting into emails at this rate.

05:06SPEAKERI'm about to type into Google how many galaxies are there in the universe because. OK, two million million.

05:15SPEAKERDoppler Redshift is my is my rap name, by the way.

05:20SPEAKERWe type that into yet another tab here so I can remember the episode title.

05:25SPEAKERSo this has been you tell me I don't know how much you keep up with cosmology,

05:28SPEAKERbut hasn't this been revised upwards pretty dramatically? The number of galaxies thought to exist in the known or in the observable universe?

05:35SPEAKERI thought that for a long time they thought the number was like 100 billion. And now they are saying two trillion.

05:42SPEAKERThis is the scale. This is so I keep track of space at certain scales, like solar system scale.

05:47SPEAKERTotally down on your regional neighborhood scale.

05:50SPEAKERNot really good at like I know what's up with Betelgeuse right now. We got a couple hundred thousand years before that thing blows in the window now.

05:57SPEAKERSolar system, pretty limited data set. Galaxy sparse, relatively easy to keep track of.

06:04SPEAKERYeah, get much. I have not been keeping track beyond the galaxy scale.

06:08SPEAKEROK, but I do know for a while we thought it was infinite.

06:13SPEAKERYou're not static. You're not into your friendly neighborhood local cluster.

06:16SPEAKERLook, I did read the Katie Mac book about the end of the universe, which was intense and good.

06:20SPEAKERWe got it. Oh, my God. I didn't know that existed. I should probably also read that.

06:24SPEAKERYou should be. It just came out earlier this year. We should try to get her or another cosmologist on the show.

06:30SPEAKERWhoever who would put tolerate us, whoever would tolerate my inane questions for fun.

06:35SPEAKERNonsense. I'm sure we can find somebody who would be into our life.

06:38SPEAKERThere is like there's honestly no topic that I am. I get more gooey about.

06:42SPEAKERBut I mean, like a fish, I mean, like a figurative sense, like, OK, an emotional goo.

06:49SPEAKERYou know, OK, never mind. I wasn't going to I was going to reference the whoa.

06:54SPEAKERNo, never mind. Let's just move on. Move on. E-mails.

06:57SPEAKERSure. A lot of galaxies out there. Brad, what's that email address? Do you remember?

07:02SPEAKERTechPod at Content.Town. Nice job. That's TechPod at Content.Town.

07:06SPEAKERI have a secret. I've never I've never not remembered the address.

07:11SPEAKERIt's just a badly executed bit on every podcast.

07:15SPEAKERYou have to have somebody who plays dumb and asks questions and somebody who has the answers to the questions.

07:20SPEAKERAnd yeah, turns out a little peek behind the production curtain.

07:25SPEAKERSometimes it's easier to be dumb rather than to play dumb.

07:28SPEAKERIt's true. Sometimes you actually want somebody to show up not having done the reading.

07:32SPEAKERThat was always my my process on Tested was to be the person who never had to know.

07:37SPEAKERI always did the reading, actually. I know. I wish I could say I was cool and didn't do the reading.

07:41SPEAKERSomebody. I like doing the reading. Somebody's got to know the facts.

07:45SPEAKERYeah, it's good. It turns out. Well, anyway, this this week we've both done the reading on these emails.

07:51SPEAKERYes. There are a passel of emails here that are that have cues that or maybe just statements that need to be turned into A's.

07:59SPEAKERSure. Yeah. So it's a spate of good questions here.

08:03SPEAKERYeah. That I'm going to begin reading here with this one from Alice in Los Angeles.

08:11SPEAKERShe's writing in about a conversation she had with someone back in 2005.

08:18SPEAKERThey were trying to convince me they could spend three thousand dollars on a PC that would be, quote, good enough for the rest of their life.

08:25SPEAKERBear in mind again, this is 2005. Ancient times. Yes. Do you think this is true?

08:31SPEAKERI've always balked at the idea, but recently I've been wondering what would be the breaking point.

08:35SPEAKERThe core two duos around that time were three gigahertz,

08:37SPEAKERbut also it feels like the baseline requirements for browsers and day to day stuff only gets higher as time goes on.

08:44SPEAKERAdditional caveats. They were a Linux nerd and mostly played open source games.

08:48SPEAKERSo I don't think gaming would be a hard requirement. I've tried to use a laptop from 2011 in the last year and it felt extremely slow.

08:56SPEAKERBut what if those are just my expectations changing from SSDs and of like.

09:01SPEAKERSo I'm going to say. First off, my MacBook is a 2013 edition MacBook Pro.

09:09SPEAKERIt's the last one with the good keyboard before they started going to the butterfly keys with the weird touch bar.

09:14SPEAKERAnd that laptop. Still pretty OK.

09:17SPEAKEROh, my God, I don't I don't want to get off on a tangent here, but the Friday before work from home started,

09:22SPEAKERliterally the last Friday we were in the office in March, I had exactly the same laptop you're talking about right now.

09:28SPEAKERYeah. A 2013 retina MacBook Pro. It's a good MacBook. The last of the great ones.

09:33SPEAKERTotally fine with. IT came along and requisitioned that laptop and issued me a 2019 MacBook Pro in its place.

09:41SPEAKERWell, the 2019 is the last one without the good the fixed keyboard, right?

09:46SPEAKERWhat do you mean by the fixed keyboard? Fixed keyboard?

09:49SPEAKERWell, so the keyboard, the super thin butterfly switches, they started putting in the 2016 2014 MacBook.

09:58SPEAKERAnd all the MacBook Pros with the low profile keys has a flaw in that if any dust gets under the keyboard, the key just stops working.

10:04SPEAKERAnd there's nothing you can do about it. I haven't had any problem with keys not working, but they do feel very thin and slight in the action.

10:11SPEAKERSo I don't know if that's the same the same mechanism or not, but that's the bad mechanism, but they fixed it at some point.

10:16SPEAKEROK, I wouldn't say it feels great to type on, but, you know, also, I hate that touch bar.

10:21SPEAKERThe touch bar is useless. Yeah. The having touch idea on the laptop seems like it would be nice.

10:25SPEAKERThat's nice. I will admit that's nice to not have to log in with the password.

10:29SPEAKERIf they had just put a physical escape key, I could live with the rest of the touch bar. But yeah.

10:34SPEAKERAnyway, I'm sorry. I don't mean to derail Alice's question here, but I mean, the question basically is I did.

10:40SPEAKERI feel like maybe we should take this more in a current day context rather than a 2005 context, because even if it's possible now,

10:47SPEAKERit was too early then to expect to build a PC that would last you forever.

10:51SPEAKERWell, I mean, but are we going to get to that point? I so here's the thing.

10:55SPEAKERThree gigahertz then and three gigahertz now are very different amounts of math happening inside a processor like we didn't.

11:02SPEAKERWe we talked about this a little bit last week and we didn't get into it, but we should have like your your older CPU and my newer CPU,

11:09SPEAKEReven though they're running at the same clock speed, are doing dramatically different amounts of math each clock cycle.

11:14SPEAKERLike that's the benefit of what we get is that we're doing more math at lower power and the same clock rate with newer hardware these days.

11:22SPEAKERSo. I mean. My mom had a desktop computer that was from that era in 2005, the hard drive conked out and she had to buy a new computer.

11:32SPEAKERI was like, literally go buy any laptop that you can find and it's going to be faster than what you have.

11:37SPEAKERAnd when she got it, she's like, I had no idea Windows could actually be this fast, partly because the amount of memory you get now, RAM you get now is dramatically higher.

11:45SPEAKERAnd that makes you feel faster. And partly because, as as Alice said, SSD is now are a massive, massive performance increase in terms of like load time and stuff like that for your apps.

11:57SPEAKERMy hunch is we're in that same boat now with future hardware. Right.

12:03SPEAKERSo if if we're talking about buying a laptop, buying a computer today.

12:09SPEAKERA computer from 2005, the physical hard drive is going to have broken. Your fans are going to be gunked up and noisy at best and probably not working as well as they should.

12:19SPEAKERLike there's a reason we replace computers every five or 10 years. And it is that this stuff does not last that long.

12:26SPEAKERAnd memory memory starts going. The memory in my streaming PC just conked out last week and I had to replace it.

12:31SPEAKERAnd it's just because, like the stress of running at high temperatures with a lot of electrons running through it eventually causes the electrons to bleed through the transistor channels and stop working as well.

12:40SPEAKERYeah. CPUs will die after enough time, right?

12:43SPEAKERYes. It's just I think it tends to be a good bit longer than most people are likely to actually use them, right?

12:47SPEAKERWell, they don't they don't have moving parts. Right.

12:49SPEAKERSo there's no like friction wearing down bearings, causing the bearings to fail and no lubricant to fail, stuff like that inside the actual the semiconductors.

12:58SPEAKERBut yeah, they do still fail. And and yeah, so I would say like in in I think a decade is a long time for any anything with moving parts or that runs at high temperatures or high clock speeds or whatever to continue working.

13:15SPEAKERSure.

13:16SPEAKERAnd once you get past that threshold, you're going to assume that things are going to start to fail.

13:19SPEAKERAnd when you have parts that are that old, it's probably more like if your RAM dies in a 15 year old computer at this point, it's probably cheaper to buy a new computer than to replace that RAM totally with with new.

13:31SPEAKERI mean, you can probably find used relatively inexpensively, but even like 2005, you could even be looking at like Rambus, probably not in 2005, but 2003 to be looking at Rambus.

13:40SPEAKERSure. God only knows where you get Rambus in 2020. I mean, I'm sure it cost a fortune because it's only like some poor schmuck who has a mission critical server that runs Itanium or something.

13:50SPEAKERThen they need that for those ancient pieces of hardware because they need that to keep running.

13:55SPEAKERWas DDR3 available back then or are we still on DDR2 still at that point?

14:00SPEAKEROr even like, you know, a socket compatible motherboard, if your old motherboard dies, can be damn near impossible to find depending on how old it is.

14:07SPEAKERYeah. When I when my when my last desktop machine conked out, it was a DDR3 machine getting triple channel memory that was the right configuration and speed and all that was just it was going to cost a ridiculous amount of money.

14:22SPEAKERAnd it was it made much more sense to invest in a current platform where the hardware is readily accessible than to continue fixing the old thing.

14:32SPEAKERSure. I'd kind of like to approach this question or reframe this question in a more abstract way, though.

14:39SPEAKERYeah. Setting aside just the mechanical, like practical concerns of things physically breaking down over time.

14:45SPEAKERDo you think we're going to get to a point where let's say, like, what are the common pieces of software that everybody has to use, like an operating system or a browser?

14:54SPEAKERIs there anything else like those are the two common denominators, right?

14:58SPEAKERI think so. I can't think of anything else that like you are basically required to use on a computer, right?

15:03SPEAKERMaybe some sort of messaging app like Slack or WhatsApp or something like that.

15:06SPEAKERI mean, but a lot of that stuff is browser based at this point.

15:08SPEAKERYou know, it's kind of like you're it's like your parents software lineup, right?

15:12SPEAKERIt's like the things that the most casual, like light computer user is going to need.

15:17SPEAKERYeah. Are we going to get to the point where, like, you know, the Windows 10 requirements, the Chrome requirements, whatever are just going to stabilize and not continue.

15:26SPEAKERThat happened 10, 15 years ago, right? Like, that's kind of what I'm getting at.

15:29SPEAKERYou know, like, could you let's say you buy like a nice computer now.

15:33SPEAKERCould that last? Let's say, you know, again, if it doesn't break down in an ideal world where the hardware holds up, could you use it for the next 20 years?

15:41SPEAKERSo just doing those those basic things.

15:43SPEAKERI think the increasing RAM requirements are going to be the thing that gets you always like phones on phones, on desktops, on laptops, whatever.

15:52SPEAKERBecause if you think about it, like when I went to a 32 gig machine on this 9900 machine a year and a half ago, two years ago, it felt kind of extravagant.

16:02SPEAKERAnd now we're starting to see some games that actually will use more than 16 gigs of memory if you give them the option.

16:08SPEAKERI think Flight Simulator is one of those.

16:10SPEAKERFlight Sim is one of them. I feel like one of the Call of Duty's is one of them.

16:14SPEAKERLike there's it's it's shocking, but it's happening now.

16:17SPEAKERSo to be fair, games are kind of an edge case there, though.

16:21SPEAKERI mean, I think so. But but I mean, that's fair.

16:24SPEAKERYeah. If you're if you're just using basic OS stuff like that, you know, there's no reason that those requirements have to keep going up.

16:30SPEAKERRight. Like, I mean, there isn't a reason that they have to keep going up.

16:34SPEAKERBut but like if you keep upgrading your OS and keep upgrading your software with OS upgrades, like like you don't really have a choice whether you upgrade Firefox now or Chrome now just updates automatically in the background.

16:48SPEAKERSo I feel like I feel like maybe we are on an eternal upgrade cycle.

16:53SPEAKERIt's not like you can run your 2005 era version of Linux and be safe on the Internet in 2020.

17:01SPEAKERThat's fair. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I think, you know, the thing to do if you want to make hardware last a really long time is when you get to the end of the life cycle for whatever type of memory you have in that machine or whatever the spec is for your hard drives.

17:13SPEAKERRight. Like at some point, SATA ports will go away and we'll all have NVMe drives and that's all we'll use.

17:19SPEAKERSo I can't wait for that day. I mean, you'll want to wait for you want to stock up on the RAM so that you have a spare when when that's needed.

17:30SPEAKERI think no such thing as a forever computer. I don't think we're going to have forever.

17:34SPEAKERI mean, the closest thing to a forever computer is a Chromebook that you plug in and it just downloads all of your crap from from Google's cloud.

17:42SPEAKERAnd it just works exactly the same on the next one as the current one.

17:45SPEAKERYeah. All right. Well, I have to I have to read this email next, because it's about a very similar topic.

17:52SPEAKEROK. It's from Jeff. Very pleased to hear you sing the praises of upgrading and otherwise improving old tech in favor of constantly purchasing the latest and greatest and contributing to our disposable culture.

18:04SPEAKERI don't know how it works in the iPhone world, but there is at least one Android project maintaining up to date versions of the OS for old model phones, namely Lineage OS.

18:14SPEAKERHe's got a link here, but you should be able to Google that pretty easily. I've been using them for several years now on my OnePlus One released in April 2014, and I am now on Android 10, released September 2019.

18:27SPEAKERI'll upgrade eventually for more storage, but otherwise I'm quite happy. Thanks for the podcast and for taking a stance against electronic waste like that's that is the great thing about open source and community driven open platforms like this.

18:41SPEAKERRight. Like if there's a need for something like this, that enough people feel collectively they're going to get together and just do it.

18:49SPEAKERWell, I mean, yeah, I think that's that is the argument against buying Apple products, because for a long time they were really bad at supporting old, old hardware, older hardware.

18:59SPEAKERThey still are. Well, I mean, what's your what's your cutoff? Because I've got an iPhone five that I use as kind of a workout phone, like I take it out to walk or jog.

19:08SPEAKERI just want you know, I don't want to drop my current phone and bring it like an MP3 player or something like a tracker and stuff.

19:14SPEAKERI should I should just find my old diamond rio probably. But you know what? Anyway, the SD card.

19:20SPEAKEROh, no, sorry. See, what was that weird card that those things used come was it's compact wasn't compact flash.

19:26SPEAKERNo, I feel like they used compact flash, but they use the other one, the flimsy one that oh, smart, smart, but what I don't even know smart media.

19:35SPEAKERYeah. Huh? Anyway. Yes. So Apple supports back to the iPhone six s now with iOS 14, which is which is like your signal to it's probably time to think about upgrading a phone.

19:51SPEAKERI don't like I feel like they cut they have a history of cutting loose hardware way before they should.

19:58SPEAKERLike the Apple Watch is the most egregious example where they like the first general one, the series zero was three years old, I think two years old when they stopped supporting it with new versions of the OS.

20:08SPEAKERI mean, that's insane. I agree. It's offensive. Yeah. But but by by cut loose, you mean stop offering upgrades for software upgrades?

20:16SPEAKERYeah, I'm going to have the timing on that wrong. I'm sure it was it was it was that came out in 2015. And by 2018, you weren't getting the new OS releases.

20:26SPEAKERRight. They released the two OS releases in the first year, I think. So it was like the iOS, the Apple OS for Apple Watch OS for something that it didn't support.

20:35SPEAKERBut again, to clarify, by cut loose, you mean like you can no longer install the next iOS on this device?

20:40SPEAKERSo that is correct. Like I feel like it's in my experience, it's been the opposite. I've had my first iPhone was a 3G. My second one was a five. In both of those cases, I kept taking the updates they offered me until the phone became unusable.

20:53SPEAKERWell, so that's the thing is they will let you update it to the point that it is no longer usable.

20:57SPEAKERThat's what I'm saying is like this this iPhone five. It's not even on the cell network anymore. I literally just put podcasts on it from Wi-Fi and just trying to scroll through and play podcasts is a like it sucks.

21:09SPEAKERIt is beyond infuriating. I mean, it's literally it's literally a touch device that is giving you no feedback when you swipe your phone for like seconds at a time. It is awful.

21:16SPEAKERSo I think they're better at that now. I don't have a success around to actually I might have a success because I think it was Gina's last phone before she went on the upgrade plan.

21:25SPEAKERBut but like I feel like the work that's happening in Android is much better in this space. And Lineage is the probably the gold standard for that. I know there are several other distros that are similar.

21:39SPEAKERBut that's that's awesome. I wish I had an option like that.

21:43SPEAKERI mean, on the other hand. Yeah, I mean, I guess as phones become less of a commodity devices and less something you just upgrade every two years, because if you don't, you're getting hosed by your by your carrier because you're not you know, you're not letting him subsidize a new phone for you.

22:00SPEAKERWhen we're looking at phones that cost a thousand thirteen hundred dollars in some cases, it's it's a different situation. And yeah, we should these things should last, especially especially if the batteries are replaced, like the way the phones are put in even iPhones now.

22:14SPEAKERThey're much more replaceable and much easier to get out, much easier to fix if something goes wrong. I'm I'm all for not trashing the old stuff and continuing to find use for it.

22:25SPEAKERAbsolutely. I wanted to ask you, I don't know if you know or not, but do you have any sense of why the iPhone why there are no similar projects available for iPhone?

22:34SPEAKERNobody's been able to get I don't know how to name it. Is it is it just is it the security just that it's harder?

22:40SPEAKERIt's harder to root and unload the unlock the bootloaders is my understanding. Like like you'll have a the the thing about iOS bootloader exploits is that they are ephemeral in that they will be good. Like you'll have one that's good for three point releases of iOS twelve.

22:56SPEAKERAnd then once you upgrade to the next point release or to iOS thirteen, that bootloader exploit goes away. And as a result, like there's no it's much more difficult to reliably put your own software.

23:09SPEAKERAnd because of that, the market for people doing that is probably pretty small.

23:14SPEAKERI think the people who are doing the bootloader exploits on iOS are jailbreakers in a very small percentage.

23:20SPEAKERBut I think it's mostly security people who are trying to find ways to get data off of, you know, seized iPhones and stuff like that.

23:29SPEAKERSure. Sure. That's a shame. I would totally install. I don't know what I don't even know what form that would take some some other alternative iOS on an old iPhone or an option.

23:38SPEAKERI mean, in a perfect world, Apple would say, OK, here your phone is reaching end of life.

23:44SPEAKERYou know, here's the minimum viable OS for this phone and we're going to make it put it in grandma mode at this point or grandpa mode at this point where it's good for mail and browser.

23:57SPEAKERAnd we turn off all the other background crap and we're going to let you know when the battery starts to get hinky and you should probably take it in to get the battery service.

24:03SPEAKERBecause like that's the other side, like with these devices that have batteries in them, I know I need to go out and clear the stuff out of my garage because I know that there's a PSP in there that has a battery and it's a ticking time bomb.

24:14SPEAKERAnd I know that I have a couple of other old handhelds that have lithium polymer lithium ion batteries in there that I need to to pull the batteries out of and probably just get rid of the devices before they cause a problem for me.

24:28SPEAKERFair. Or I could just put a smoke detector in the garage and call it a day. It'll probably be fine. Yeah.

24:34SPEAKERI'm sure nothing else will be ruined that's packed deeply in the box next to those things. Look, at this point, a good garage fire would probably be a favor for me.

24:43SPEAKERBlessing in disguise. Yeah. Let's see, Daniel in Iowa. Why don't we see E Ink in use in more places? Why hasn't E Ink taken over the world with low power persistent displays?

24:58SPEAKERFor example, my cordless vacuum only shows the power level when it is running using an LED screen. Wouldn't an E Ink display that could show the power even when it wasn't running be more useful?

25:09SPEAKERAre there cost barriers or other barriers that prevent this type of use?

25:13SPEAKERIf you don't know what E Ink is, they're really neat displays that have a little bit of fluid floating with balls floating in them. The balls have charged sides.

25:23SPEAKERWhen the right charge is applied, the balls spin all in one direction. The light side is up or the dark side is up. The only time they draw power, for the most part, is when the state of each pixel changes from dark to light.

25:37SPEAKERThey're really cool. They're used in stuff like the original Kindles, but not the Kindle fires. Those are LCD or LED or whatever.

25:44SPEAKERThey're really neat because once they're lit, once they fire, then the display stays in that state more or less without any power added.

25:53SPEAKERThe reason I think you don't show them and you don't see them popping up in consumer electronics more often is that they're inexpensive.

26:01SPEAKERWhen you compare them to the price of a comparable LCD and the controller to display stuff like that, just browsing Mouser, I wasn't able to find a super small E Ink display that's two inches wide by half an inch high.

26:19SPEAKERThat didn't cost a couple of bucks with the controller and another couple of bucks for the controller, whereas you're able to find LCD displays in that price range with a backlight and a controller for like 35 to 75 cents in some cases.

26:33SPEAKERFive times the price, 10 times the price for a comparable display means that the electronics world is never going to use them.

26:43SPEAKERIs there any chicken and egg aspect to that problem of it's just an economy of scale thing of enough devices don't use them so they haven't gotten cheap enough for a lot of devices to use?

26:52SPEAKERIt's because we sell a billion phones that use LCD screens a year and we don't sell a billion E Ink devices that use E Ink screens a year.

26:59SPEAKERSure. Do you think there was there kind of a secondary issue there with like, I don't know if this cordless vacuum is a great example of this, but like he's talking about having the static screen display, what you assume is a constant charge when you're not using the thing, it just stays at the same battery level, but like batteries do sort of leak or dissipate over time without use.

27:17SPEAKERRight. So like something would have to be there updating that screen to be accurate, because if you don't use the vacuum for, say, X number of weeks.

27:26SPEAKERThe state that screen, the state, I mean, maybe, maybe I'm splitting hairs here. Maybe that's not actually a huge consideration.

27:31SPEAKERI mean, that's a UI problem, right? You make your, your, your icon for your battery life is five has like five chunks in it. And you just, when it goes from 80, a hundred percent to 80%, you just update it once over that three month period, right?

27:43SPEAKERJust engineered yourself a bunch of wiggle room. That makes sense. That's smart thinking. You should go into vacuum design.

27:49SPEAKERIf only I could get a job there. That sounds great.

27:52SPEAKERI guess I could see that being all right. I look, I would love, I would love to be the consultant that comes in and yells at people who do consumer electronics about how shitty their user interfaces are.

28:03SPEAKERLike, like the people who designed microwave ovens and washer, washing it, washer and dryer interfaces. They, they should be in the Hague.

28:10SPEAKERI feel like this is an episode idea in the making right now is we need to just do it a whole show on terrible consumer electronics.

28:18SPEAKERI mean, I say that, but then like, I look at what's the smart, the June smart oven thing. It's like a little convection oven for your desk, for your countertop that has like, it's, it's smart. It has software and stuff.

28:30SPEAKERThey've released, they announced the third generation of that thing. And every time I've looked at it, I was like, why would anybody spend money on this stupid thing?

28:36SPEAKERAnd then I go and yell at my microwave oven because like, there's no way, like I physically can't get it to run at a low enough power to not make butter explode when I'm trying to melt butter in it, which is really anyway.

28:48SPEAKERAnswer your own question.

28:49SPEAKERYeah.

28:50SPEAKERYep.

28:51SPEAKERLet's see here. Here is a very self-serving email on my part from Chris. He says, Bradford, well, I'll explain the context here. Bradford, your poster, just hang a green screen poster behind you and show a cycle of different posters on it.

29:08SPEAKERThat would be a fun project. The context is if you've seen any of the giant bomb streams we've been doing at home here, I've got a couple of movie posters behind me.

29:16SPEAKERThey're full on like 40 by 27, one sheet size. Like you get one of them actually it's a Sin City is actually the one from a movie theater that I got from a friend of mine who was managing a theater at the time.

29:29SPEAKERYeah. Like I have nothing against Sin City, but I don't love it. I just thought it was cool that I got an actual theater poster and I wanted to frame it.

29:35SPEAKERBut anyway, long story short, I have been trying to think of other movies I want to buy posters for, but I can't decide on any movies and be the ones I do like, like it's impossible to get one sheets of any quality for less than like $500 because they're like super collectors items.

29:50SPEAKERYes.

29:51SPEAKERSo I wonder if this is actually, is he joking or is this any kind of viable solution?

29:56SPEAKEROh no, we did this at whiskey. It was in the basement. We haven't really made one out of green poster board.

30:01SPEAKERIt sounds too easy to be actually viable, but no, it'd be super simple. You just stick it in your frame, hang it up there, put it, don't put glass on front of it. So there's no reflection.

30:11SPEAKERI was going to say you probably couldn't use the frame part, right?

30:13SPEAKERWell, you use the frame edge, but you just take the glass off. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

30:17SPEAKERAnd then, uh, yeah, you put whatever you want. And the trick is you'll have to re align it every time you change the camera position.

30:24SPEAKERBut like, as long as your shots pretty straight, it won't be a problem.

30:27SPEAKERWait, are you talking about just manually compositing it into the scene and OBS or, or like track?

30:32SPEAKERWell, I mean, if, if, if I was doing that, I don't need poster board. I could just do it myself, right?

30:36SPEAKERNo, cause you're in front of the, in front of the frames.

30:38SPEAKERIt's for the cutout when, when I get in front of the frames.

30:41SPEAKERCause otherwise you have to rotoscope yourself and you don't want to get in that business.

30:43SPEAKERI see. I see.

30:44SPEAKERThat's a lot of manual labor.

30:46SPEAKERYeah, that makes sense. I guess you should.

30:47SPEAKERYou should a hundred percent do this. I encourage this actually.

30:49SPEAKERHuh?

30:50SPEAKERI think this is a brilliant idea. Nothing could possibly go wrong with it.

30:53SPEAKERAnd then I'm not, I'm not even constrained to movie posters at that point. I can put whatever I want in there.

30:57SPEAKERIf you want to put like a little bit of gameplay up there, you can do that. You can do something, do the weather.

31:01SPEAKERPut something animated in there.

31:03SPEAKERYeah.

31:04SPEAKERYeah. The weather you have, man, I've been, I've been meaning to get that weather channel simulator going for a very long time.

31:08SPEAKERYeah. Look, I think that there's a real market as a Patreon, look as a tech pod to premium.

31:14SPEAKERIf you did an annual, a daily weather report at the 10 or $15 tier, I bet people would sign up for that.

31:20SPEAKERLocal Brad on the eights.

31:23SPEAKERYeah. Brad, Brad traffic and weather on the nines.

31:25SPEAKERI think if I had green screens in those frames, I would, I don't know if this actually exists.

31:31SPEAKERSurely somebody has digitized this at this point, the very subtly animating paintings, portraits from the Disneyland haunted house.

31:40SPEAKERYou know what I'm talking about?

31:41SPEAKEROh, those, yeah.

31:42SPEAKERIs that Disneyland?

31:43SPEAKERDisneyland and Disney world both have the haunted mansion. Yeah.

31:46SPEAKERYes. But, but I mean, with the portraits, with the people's faces and like you stare at them and you can't quite tell if they're moving or not, but they totally are.

31:52SPEAKERWell, there was a whole thing like around the time we started tested that was briefly popular in like a really specific art world niche that was making still photos that were very subtly animated called cinema graphs, I think.

32:07SPEAKERHuh?

32:08SPEAKERAnd they were like super high res Jeffs. They were huge.

32:12SPEAKERAnd there was even, um, the people who bought, who made Jiffy bought the company called electric objects. That's like a photo.

32:21SPEAKERIt's like a digital picture frame that can play Jeffs. And yeah, it was a cool thing briefly, but not like Boeing Boeing. Cool. Not real people. Cool.

32:31SPEAKERDo you know how proud I am of myself that I did not bring up your pronunciation of that word?

32:35SPEAKERWhat? Jiffy? Through three separate usages. Look, the site it's how fast, how fast does he watch this thing? It's in a Jiffy. It's not like it's a Quibi. That's a stupid word.

32:45SPEAKERI just decided bad people just decided to live and let live on that one.

32:48SPEAKERYeah. I feel like by mentioning it, you lose all kudos you got for your restraint earlier on.

32:53SPEAKERSmall victories.

32:55SPEAKEROkay. I might do that. That's very tempting.

32:59SPEAKERIt would look really ugly for the decor in this room when I'm not on a stream though.

33:05SPEAKERWell, I mean, when are you ever not on a stream though? Really?

33:08SPEAKEROh God, that's really depressing.

33:12SPEAKERI have a gigantic green curtain hanging behind me. I don't want to hear about it.

33:16SPEAKERYeah. Do you, do you, I'm fully going to derail this podcast. Do you have any amount of your stream set up that you take out, like you put up and tear down between streams or is a hundred percent of it just there permanently, like as a fixture now?

33:28SPEAKERIncluding the green screen, I suppose.

33:32SPEAKERSo I can roll up the green screen if I want.

33:34SPEAKEROkay.

33:35SPEAKERIt's on, it's on, I got a film roller and like the thing, you know, the thing is if you go to like a photo studio, they have the paper drapes and they're on those.

33:44SPEAKERSo I have those hooks screwed into the ceiling and there's a cord that I can pull that makes it go up and down.

33:50SPEAKERWow. Nice. Fancy.

33:52SPEAKERBut it's still hanging up there. Like it's, it's there. It's not great.

33:56SPEAKERYou know what's there.

33:57SPEAKERBut I mean, the nice thing is there's a lot of good storage back there where I can just pile shit up and get it out of the way. And then nobody knows it's there. Nobody'll know.

34:05SPEAKERIt's pretty convenient.

34:06SPEAKERIt's where the spare chair is that my daughter sits in when we play games or something together.

34:11SPEAKERI mean, I ask because like I've got, I've got this big key light and nice muralist camera rig and all this other stuff that I use for streams and so far between streams, I take this whole light and camera rig down. I wind up every cable that is around and put it away.

34:28SPEAKERLike, you know, we've talked about how much I desire an extremely and imminently tidy desk.

34:32SPEAKERI've been shaking my head this whole time. You should leave the, like the amount of time you're burning, setting up lights and nonsense is ridiculous.

34:39SPEAKERThat's why I ask because it's becoming prohibitive. I think, I think the stream deck that I got this, this Elgato.

34:46SPEAKERYeah. So I've got the XL here, which the XL, I think was maybe a bad choice because there are so many buttons that I've just put off setting it up.

34:55SPEAKERI literally looked at the application and I was like, this is so many buttons. I have no idea what I'm going to put all these. And then I just.

35:00SPEAKERJust start with one row.

35:02SPEAKERI have not bothered to do any setup on that thing for the month that I've had it because I just, I don't know.

35:07SPEAKEROh, it's really hint.

35:08SPEAKERI know it is, but, but like, if you want a smaller one, I can hook you up. I'll trade you straight out the gate. No problem.

35:13SPEAKERTake that into consideration. Yeah. But anyway, I asked because I think that stream deck might be one device too many for me to want to set up and run cables and plug stuff in blah, blah, blah.

35:24SPEAKERIf you're breaking lights every time that's insane. Well, it's not that bad. It's on a stand. It's on a portable, like a weighted stand.

35:32SPEAKEROh, so it's not like bolted to the desk.

35:34SPEAKERGod, no, that would be insane. But it's, it's on a free moving stand, but I could just sit in the corner of the room and I'm not using it.

35:41SPEAKERThe camera is attached to the light. So that's, but I still have to wind cables and run stuff all over the place.

35:46SPEAKERDon't do that. Just leave it up.

35:49SPEAKERLook, look, imagine, think about this. What if you're, what if something you're playing a game, what if you're playing, you know, Spelunky 2 and like something amazing happens, you're like, shit, I got to stream this right now.

35:59SPEAKERThis is so good. I don't want people to miss it. Right. Think about the time you'd have like, if it's all set up, you just turn on the stream PC, hit the button and boom, you're gone. You're up there. You're ready to go.

36:09SPEAKERJust living out our whole lives on the internet at this point.

36:13SPEAKERYeah. Well, you know, that's, there's a whole other conversation to have about the wisdom of that, but assuming we're too late to have that conversation, what would it be in 2020 and you having done this for 20 years now, you should just move on and answer the next question.

36:27SPEAKERI'd rather read more emails than question my life decisions. Let's see here. A question from CJ.

36:39SPEAKERMy wife and I just had our first kid. Congratulations. So we're taking a lot of photos.

36:45SPEAKERCongratulations.

36:46SPEAKERYeah, totally. We started a Google photo album that we share between us for adding all our photos of our daughter. You guys always talk about backing up all your files multiple times.

36:56SPEAKERSo I was wondering if there is a simple way to automatically download these files from our shared Google, Google photo album to my computer's hard drive.

37:04SPEAKERYou tell, you tell me if you disagree, but I feel like if you've got your stuff on Google, you're probably fine.

37:14SPEAKEROf all of the commercial services for you to host files on, like, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like if something so catastrophic happens that you cannot get your photos from Google, we have got way bigger concerns than photos at that point.

37:28SPEAKERSo you tell me.

37:31SPEAKERI'm of two minds here because one is that, yes, if anybody is going to not fuck this up, probably it's Google. On the other hand, Google closes, kills products with reckless abandon all the time.

37:44SPEAKERI assume that because Google photos is tied to OneDrive and there's money attached to it and all that stuff, like they're not going to kill it without some sort of a heads up and time to back up your stuff.

37:57SPEAKERThe other thing about Google is it's pretty easy to use Google takeout to grab just the photos from your Google photos library.

38:03SPEAKERIf you so desire, you'll hit a button, you'll tell it what you want to get. It'll bundle that all up into a bunch of zip files, and then it'll give you like 10 terabytes of shit to download a day or two from then.

38:13SPEAKERSo I don't know, I back up my photos separately before they go up to Google rather than after, but I also, I guarantee you there are photos on Google photos that are not backed up anywhere else and I feel like I'm probably okay with that.

38:27SPEAKERLike the number of things that they would, I trust Google more than most other companies to not make a mistake that would cause loss of data on their end.

38:37SPEAKERAnd realistically, if they did something, I probably would never know because there's just so much stuff up there.

38:43SPEAKERWe went from taking like 1500 photos a year to 12,000 for the first five years that our daughter was born.

38:49SPEAKERThat's a lot of photos.

38:51SPEAKERIt's just like going through and making the photo albums of those first few years was a multi-week process by both of us in like spending an hour or two a night at it, and it was horrific.

39:03SPEAKERI was going to say, that's like, I'm just fuzzy math in my head. Isn't this like 30 plus photos a day or so?

39:09SPEAKEROh, but I mean, there's burst photos and all sorts.

39:12SPEAKERYeah. If you're just hitting, if you're, if you're planning to like take 12 photos per instance and only keep one of them or like the best one, I guess that's different.

39:19SPEAKERAnd also, but so the lesson there is delete the bad ones immediately. Don't think you're going to do it in the future because you're not, right?

39:26SPEAKERNever will.

39:27SPEAKERRight. You're never going to go back and be like, well, I should delete this one.

39:30SPEAKERThe other thing is like, you end up like when one person's at work and one person's at home, the person at home often is like taking pictures.

39:37SPEAKERCause they're like, I want to show you this cool thing that happened today. And like, that's, that's awesome. I love that.

39:42SPEAKERSo whereas I was taking pictures of my lunch, so I had that going for me too.

39:47SPEAKERI don't know. The answer is probably, I, I, people are going to say, Google kills everything all the time.

39:52SPEAKERGoogle photos is a service that is used by millions of people that has not stopped Google from killing stuff in the past.

39:58SPEAKERHowever, there is money tied to this in Google and it is one of the main selling points of ant.

40:02SPEAKERLike if you buy a pixel phone, you get free storage for every photo that you take on that pixel phone.

40:07SPEAKERAnd that is a major, major, major selling point and a key differentiator for Apple who charges you to store all the photos that you, that you take on their devices.

40:16SPEAKERAnd, and I think that that is, I feel confident that that is not a product that is going to go away.

40:22SPEAKERIt might change form. We may not like what they change it into. I feel like it's probably okay.

40:27SPEAKERYeah. But for, yeah, peace of mind. I could see having a local backup being nice. What did you say? The Google takeout is a Google takeout.

40:33SPEAKERSo I think it's just takeout.google.com.

40:36SPEAKERSo that is, that is a Google product, not a third party thing.

40:38SPEAKERYeah. Fitz did that. Yeah. That was, that was his, one of his things before he left Google.

40:43SPEAKEROh, that's cool. There you go. Yeah. Grab those photos and I don't know, put them on a USB hard drive and put them in your safe deposit box or something.

40:51SPEAKERIt is a yeah. Takeout.google.com. And when you click there, it asks you which account you want to use. You sign in, you do all your stuff and then you tell it like you can even download all of your YouTube uploads and stuff there.

41:03SPEAKERYou can download all your YouTube comments.

41:05SPEAKERIs that a little bit, wait, is that literally just a portal to anything you've ever put on Google?

41:09SPEAKERIf you would like to get all of your calendar entries and all of your Gmail and all of that stuff, you can choose which services you want to pull from.

41:15SPEAKERAnd then we'll give you a bundled file with all that stuff. And also like the JSON stuff that you need to make sense of it or XML, depending on which services it is, it is a phenomenal thing.

41:27SPEAKERIt works like 90% of the time.

41:29SPEAKERThat's pretty awesome. That's pretty awesome. I love when companies open things up like that and just let you have at it.

41:34SPEAKERIt's really important to look at the size of, like at one point I was like, we should back up all of the tested YouTube videos. And then I mashed the button to do it and it gave me a file that was larger than every hard drive we had in the office at the time.

41:47SPEAKERWow. That's pretty intense. Wait, what format is that file?

41:51SPEAKERIt's just a, it's like a series of, it wasn't one file. It was a series of zips that were like each 500 gigabytes or something.

41:57SPEAKERYikes.

41:58SPEAKERAnd it was 24 terabytes of video.

42:00SPEAKERThat's pretty intense.

42:02SPEAKERBecause they save the uploads, right? So they save the uploads and then transcode them down so they look shitty. So they fit in with everything else on YouTube.

42:08SPEAKERThese are the source files that you have uploaded?

42:10SPEAKERSource uploads.

42:11SPEAKEROh my God. That's amazing.

42:12SPEAKERYeah. But like also, yeah, it was a lot.

42:17SPEAKERThat's intense. Wow. That's cool. Good job Fitz.

42:21SPEAKERHe hasn't worked on it a long time. He hasn't been there like eight years or something.

42:24SPEAKERYeah.

42:26SPEAKERLet's do a couple more quick emails. Here is a question from Rahul. "I was curious how you use Discord. I'm a Patreon member and have popped into the TechPod Discord on occasion, but because it works in such a different way to other social media, I find it quite daunting to jump into any discussions because it feels like, it feels a bit like hovering near a group of people having a chat at a party, but not knowing when you can join in."

42:50SPEAKERI'm going to give you a little piece of advice. If you are self-aware enough to have that feeling of being an interloper.

42:56SPEAKERYou're fine.

42:57SPEAKERYou're probably cool enough that you're not going to bother anybody.

43:01SPEAKERYeah. Get in there. If you feel like you have something to share, have a question to answer, go for it.

43:05SPEAKERQuite literally, that is a good litmus test of if you were concerned enough about other people's feelings and level of comfort to think about things in those terms, then you're probably fine. But I'll finish reading the email here.

43:20SPEAKER"Perhaps your experience is different, especially because you have more of a history of using discussion boards, but I'm interested to know how you use Discord in this context."

43:29SPEAKERI totally get what he's saying. I don't join a lot of big public Discords. I usually...

43:35SPEAKERNone of any.

43:36SPEAKERYeah. I joined the OBS one when I needed some specific OBS help and I got on the classic gaming one when I needed some Mr. Help, but it's kind of pretty targeted usage of servers like that.

43:47SPEAKERBut I get it. It can be a little intimidating when you've got a big crew of regulars and you don't want to just butt in.

43:54SPEAKERWell, but I mean, so here's the thing. I hope that what we've built with the TechPod Discord specifically, like I use different Discords in different ways. I definitely have ones that I dip into for tech support help on specific products that are product...

44:06SPEAKERLike when I had a problem with Hades frame rate, I posted in the Supergiant Discord and one of the folks that works at Supergiant responded was like, "Hey, send me your DX diag." And then he was like, "Change these two settings and stuff will be fine."

44:17SPEAKERI was like, "Okay." And it worked. Fantastic. That is a beautiful tech support experience.

44:22SPEAKERA+ interaction.

44:23SPEAKERYes. If I didn't already love that game, I would love it even more after that. The other one is that I'm in a lot of community Discords for Twitch channels that I subscribe to or follow or whatever.

44:35SPEAKERAnd those are much more like, I want to dip in and see what people are talking about about a new game coming out. Or if there's a podcast I like, then I know that the Spelunky show, which is now I think called Eggplant, is going to have all the hot roguelike information about the games that I should be...

44:57SPEAKERMaybe not playing right now, but keeping my eye on stuff like that. On something like the TechPod Discord or my Twitch Discord, or I assume the Giant Bomb Discords are like this, but I don't know.

45:09SPEAKERI kind of dip into the things. I graze. I definitely don't try to read everything that's in there because even on the TechPod Discord, which is like 1200 or 1300 members, it's way too much to read everything that happens in every channel, even if that was my full-time job.

45:26SPEAKERBut I dip into the PC one when I have something new or interesting that I'm curious about there. I dip into the Hades one, the game section, when I want to talk about Hades and see what builds people are using and stuff like that.

45:39SPEAKERAnd I just kind of dip in and dip out. I don't know if your experience is different on that.

45:43SPEAKERIt depends on how invested I am in being part of the community, but this actually reminds me of going all the way back to IRC in the 90s. The best advice I could give if you want to actually really become part of a community is just lurk for a while.

46:00SPEAKERJust hang out and listen and watch. That's what I would even do on IRC channels where I was new. That's what I did when I started posting on Shaq News 20 years ago. I was literally going to mention Shaq News as being, excuse me, the Quake-holio when I started there.

46:14SPEAKEROf course. But yeah, that's the best way to become, that's the best way to go from being an outsider to a regular is just to hang out and lurk and see what everybody's mannerisms are and what the kind of modes of interaction are, I guess, for lack of a better term.

46:30SPEAKERYou know what I mean? Just like kind of hang out and get the vibe of the place. And then just like once you feel comfortable and you will eventually you will feel comfortable just by having absorbed enough of kind of what the tone of the place is to begin with.

46:40SPEAKERI mean, and the thing is, even in the tech pod discord where we have like we have literal rocket scientists, right?

46:46SPEAKERYes. It still blows my mind.

46:49SPEAKERIt's right. I mean, it's still a place where you are going to have some expertise that you probably don't even realize is expertise that you can share and that people will be super stoked about. Like somebody the other day was talking about repairing, I think, tractors in my discord and somebody else popped up with some really specific information that he was like, wow, this is incredibly useful.

47:15SPEAKERHe's like, yeah, I never thought I'd be talking about this here. But we all know something that's amazing and useful and good. This is the lesson I've tested is that if you sit down and start talking to somebody who cares so deeply about something that they're willing to spend their time and or money on it, right?

47:32SPEAKERLike they're going to have information that is worth sharing and worth spreading and worth appreciating. And, and, you know, whenever we sat down and talked to somebody that was some high school kid who had done a project on like maglev build it building a scale model maglev train or, you know, a person who made a electric skateboard from scratch. Like you, everybody's interesting. That's the TLDR.

47:57SPEAKERYeah. That's kind of how, whoa, careful microphone arm. That's kind of how I've always felt about communities. They're really passionate about like deep subjects like this, especially technical ones. Like they're to me, they're kind of, there are two ways you can bring value to a community like that. You can offer your own knowledge or you can give someone else an opportunity to offer their knowledge. You know what I mean?

48:16SPEAKERYeah. Like you can either bring something new to it yourself or, you know, people wouldn't be there unless they were very passionate about subjects that they love talking about. So if you don't have something you want to offer yourself, but you want to give them a chance to offer you something, you know what I mean? Like it's equally gratifying to either learn something or to teach somebody something.

48:36SPEAKERYeah, exactly. And, and like, we all have weird, weird things that we know way more about than we should. Right. Like, like, even if you think, you know, nothing about nothing there's, which is, I feel like that's the, that's the thing that, that people like, I was talking to a friend the other day, who's helping with fundraising on some, some stuff for their kids' school.

48:58SPEAKERAnd, and they were like, it turns out I've gotten, I've been doing this for like six years cause I have two kids and I've been doing this since the first one was in first grade. And as a result, I have a lot of endemic knowledge about how to do fundraising stuff. And I never ever in a million years would have thought it would be useful.

49:13SPEAKERBut when they joined a community full of people that are like trying to learn how to do fundraising stuff, because they suddenly have kids that are in that, in that age range, then, then, then they were able to give a lot of valid and really useful information and share a lot of insight that it usually is gained the hard way.

49:30SPEAKERSo yeah, just jump in. Like we have an inclusive community. Don't be totally, totally. Yeah. That's the only rule is don't be a jerk to other people and try not to be a mansplainer. Like, like, you know, don't come in and start explaining how car stuff works. Cause probably there's somebody who, if you don't really know because there's somebody there who probably designs cars anyway.

49:52SPEAKERYeah. Well, we have really honestly, from what I've seen, haven't really had any issues of that nature. It's been the most gentlest of feedback has helped solve any of the problems that we've had, which is always a good sign. We don't have mods.

50:05SPEAKERWe've never had moderators on that discord, which I feel like is pretty telling.

50:09SPEAKERWe could, I could argue that maybe we would be better well served by adding some people to help wrangle content and like perk the good stuff up to the top, but that's a different conversation.

50:17SPEAKERYeah, sure. All right. Last email real quick from Eric. What would be the ramifications of just deleting num lock from every keyboard right now?

50:25SPEAKERI mean, I use a num lock. I bind my mute soft key to num lock. So when it's lit, my discord is muted. And when it's not, my discord isn't.

50:35SPEAKERThat is the true use of num lock is that it's just a dummy key for whatever else you want to assign to it at this point.

50:41SPEAKERYou know what? That's not true. Cause I'm on a 10 key list. I use scroll lock for that. Not num lock.

50:45SPEAKERI see. Yeah. On this Apple keyboard, num lock is actually labeled clear and does not have a light on it.

50:52SPEAKERWhat?

50:53SPEAKERAnd yet there are plenty of windows applications that might need you to use the number pad and.

50:58SPEAKERYeah. How do you knock your, lock your nums?

51:00SPEAKERIt's still, no, it's still, that's what I'm saying. It still works as num lock. It's just called clear and doesn't actually tell you if it's locked or not. If the nums are locked, there's no way of knowing.

51:08SPEAKERThe light using scroll lock for the mute was, has been a, is, is like before I got the stream deck and have a physical button for it, it was real good because I would hit that and I would know I was clear.

51:18SPEAKERI should probably get a full, another keyboard. I've got that. I've got that amazing mechanical.

51:25SPEAKERIt's time man.

51:26SPEAKERI've got, I've got that amazing mechanical keyboard that twinkle Twinkie sent me from the discord.

51:32SPEAKERThere's a whole channel about those keyboards.

51:34SPEAKERI just, I'm so attached to that one is a 10 key list. I believe is the level that one's at, right?

51:40SPEAKERThat is a 10 key list. The one I think they sent, maybe it's, it might be a 60 person keys.

51:44SPEAKERMaybe it's a, yes, it does have function keys.

51:46SPEAKERYeah. So it's, it's a 10 key list probably.

51:48SPEAKERI've just, I am so, I don't know.

51:52SPEAKERYou hate things that are awesome.

51:53SPEAKERI'm so married to the numeric key pad.

51:57SPEAKERWell, I need 104 keys, man.

51:59SPEAKERLook, Brad, for about $10, you can get a USB keyboard.

52:03SPEAKERYeah, but then that's one more pull out when you need it.

52:06SPEAKERThat's one more cord across my desk. And you know how I feel about that.

52:08SPEAKERWell then get a Bluetooth one for 20 bucks.

52:11SPEAKERYou know what I did though? I, uh, buy, uh, is a, I bought one of the new Logitech MX518.

52:18SPEAKEROoh.

52:19SPEAKERThat's why I had them for 20 bucks.

52:21SPEAKERThe mice, the second, it's like the respin of the old mouse.

52:24SPEAKERHell yeah, man. It's the best mouse ever made.

52:26SPEAKERWow.

52:27SPEAKERDid you ever have an MX518?

52:29SPEAKERMan, I used to, when that came out, I was reviewing mice still. It's a good mouse. It's fine.

52:34SPEAKERThe MX518 is the last mouse I had before. Oh, is actually, is this true?

52:38SPEAKERI was going to say, I think I put Teflon tape on the bottom of that one, but maybe that's not true.

52:42SPEAKERMaybe it did have Teflon.

52:44SPEAKERIt had Teflon feed.

52:45SPEAKERDid it?

52:46SPEAKERYeah, it has, well, it has the little disks that had small pads.

52:49SPEAKERThe pads were smaller than you might like.

52:51SPEAKEROkay. Maybe it was the Intella mouse I had before that, that I put the Teflon tape on.

52:54SPEAKERThe Intella mouse, you definitely have to replace the tape yourself.

52:57SPEAKEROkay. Anyway, MX518 is the best mouse ever made.

53:02SPEAKERAnd I'm going to go pick it up from Best Buy soon.

53:05SPEAKERI, wow.

53:07SPEAKERCause it was 20 bucks.

53:08SPEAKERI really like my Logitech G Pro.

53:10SPEAKERYeah, I mean, I'm sure there are better mice, but it was 20 bucks.

53:13SPEAKER20 bucks is a bright pipe. Is it a laser sensor now or is it an optical?

53:17SPEAKERYeah, no, it's like, it's updated.

53:18SPEAKERIt's modern hardware.

53:19SPEAKERSo they're, they're whatever their modern internals are.

53:21SPEAKERIt's real comfy for a Palm, for a Palm grip person.

53:24SPEAKERYes, that's, that's me. I think.

53:26SPEAKERI've switched to a, a claw as I've gotten older.

53:30SPEAKERIt turns out midway between a claw and a modified grip, something like that.

53:35SPEAKERA hybrid grip.

53:36SPEAKERBrad, I've got one more thing.

53:38SPEAKEROne more thing? What is this, an Apple keynote?

53:41SPEAKERThere's nothing under your chair, if that's what you're asking.

53:44SPEAKERI have been testing for the last couple of weeks.

53:47SPEAKEROne of Nvidia's new 360 Hertz G-Sync displays with reflex latency analyzer.

53:53SPEAKERThat's too many Hertz.

53:54SPEAKERIt's a lot of Hertz.

53:55SPEAKERThat's a lot of times per second.

53:57SPEAKERLook, I'm going to go ahead and tell you, I'm not going to say it made me better at games, but I'm pretty sure it's made me better at games.

54:03SPEAKERLike I don't have any data.

54:04SPEAKERIt just, the games feel good and I'm real fast now.

54:07SPEAKERLike I feel like I'm about 10 years younger and I got instincts.

54:10SPEAKERI got the eye of the tiger.

54:11SPEAKERI got the thrill of the fight.

54:13SPEAKERI've been, I, I killed a professional streamer in PUBG the other day.

54:17SPEAKERWait, how did you play a professional streamer in PUBG?

54:19SPEAKERLook, there's not that many people playing PUBG anymore.

54:21SPEAKERSo when you, when you get in there, they're like, they just like to show up in your games.

54:25SPEAKEROh, that's a famous name.

54:26SPEAKERI know that person.

54:27SPEAKERWait, is this PUBG dying?

54:29SPEAKERUh, Brad, I got that news for you.

54:32SPEAKERIs this a bad question to ask?

54:34SPEAKERWhen was the last time you played PUBG?

54:35SPEAKERAbout two years ago.

54:37SPEAKERYep. So same for everyone else.

54:39SPEAKERThey had a cheater problem and then they had some, look, that's a whole different topic for another day.

54:44SPEAKERThere's still a lot of people playing PUBG, but there's not, there's like five or six games going in any given moment.

54:50SPEAKERNot like 30 games going at any given moment.

54:52SPEAKERMaybe if my monitor was able to refresh 360 times a second, I would play more PUBG.

54:57SPEAKERUh, it's well, okay.

54:58SPEAKERSo first off, PUBG is not a great game for the 360 cause it's like even with a 3080 and a pretty good CPU and fast ram and all that business, I peek out at like 240, 250 frames a second.

55:09SPEAKERBut, uh, moving from a 60 Hertz monitor to a 360 Hertz monitor, I will tell you that right out of the gate, uh, flick shots, headshots, seeing stuff in windows,

55:19SPEAKERwhen you're driving by at a hundred miles an hour, um, uh, peak advantage goes like it's trimmed way down.

55:27SPEAKERPeekers, do you know, do you know about Peekers advantage?

55:29SPEAKERVaguely, like intuitively from the name?

55:31SPEAKERYes, but I'm not quite sure I understand the, I don't, I don't understand it on a mechanical level why it happens.

55:35SPEAKERExactly.

55:36SPEAKEROkay. Okay. So the basic idea is if you are sticking, if you're, if you're like playing Valorant or CSGO, something that's really, really fast runs at a ridiculous frame rate and you stick your head around the corner.

55:48SPEAKERSo you want to cover a corner, right?

55:51SPEAKERCorrect.

55:52SPEAKERNo, no. At that point you are the person that is defending.

55:54SPEAKERYou were the peaky?

55:55SPEAKERYou're the person who is being peaked. The person at the other end of that hallway who sticks their head around the corner has an advantage in, in that your computer will not draw them until, uh, the packet that says, Hey, this person's peeking around the corner, travels to the server, comes down to you.

56:14SPEAKERAnd then your computer has to still render that stuff through the CPU pipeline, through the GPU pipeline and through the frame buffer and out to the monitor.

56:20SPEAKERIs this a, is this an artifact of a client server client side prediction?

56:24SPEAKERThis is an artifact. It's a little bit about client side prediction, but it's mostly just like time to flight of packets.

56:30SPEAKERSo the upshot is if you are peeking a corner in a game like Counter-Strike or, or PUBG or Valorant, you have an advantage in that you will not be just drawn on your opponent's screen who is holding that corner for, you know, anywhere from 50 to 150 or 200 milliseconds, depending on what their, their network latency and the render latency, the system latency of the rendering pipeline on their computer is.

56:56SPEAKERTriple digit latency sounds like plenty of window for somebody to straight up headshot you before you even have a chance to see them.

57:05SPEAKERThat is, that is, so in games where the time to kill is low, so something like a Halo or maybe a Battlefield, it doesn't matter as much, right? Because like who gets the first shot in Halo matters a lot less than who managed to hold the, hold the stream of bullets on the person the entire time. More so even than like two people shooting at the same person makes, makes more of a difference.

57:27SPEAKERThat said, I will say that even the little bit that I dabbled in Trials of Osiris, no, it was by the time I got to it, it was Trials of the Nine, not Osiris in Destiny. You know what I'm talking about? Like, like the, the weekend that I spent with some extremely savage people at Destiny multiplayer.

57:44SPEAKERIt was horrific. It's horrific, right? Well, what I was gonna say is they, I mean, they got me my kill streak or my win streak, but even in a game like that with shields and recharging health and all kinds of like time to kill buffers, they were still pre-firing corners and all that stuff, you know, like they were still doing all the compensation that you do to try to get around this.

58:02SPEAKERWell, so that's exactly it. Like people who are really good at a game or people who are professionals learn tricks. So for example, they will accelerate past where they, where their eyes and the monitor tell them that they should be putting the crosshair because they know that by the time they shoot and the bullets register, the server will have the other player in that spot.

58:19SPEAKERThat is really interesting that you mentioned that because there have been a number of times, mostly in single player games, because I guess I'm just, I'm not good enough in multiplayer these days. I'm too old for this. I'm like five years older than you, dude. More than that. That's true. And you are a, you are a prize winning PUBG player.

58:35SPEAKERI have one money playing video games as an adult. What I was gonna say is like, I never consciously realize I'm going to do it until after the fact, but there are definitely times where I feel like I will whip the mouse past where I think the person is and shoot in front of them. And obviously that's leading them, which is pretty standard, but like, I feel like there might be a gut level reaction that sort of helps you compensate for the stuff, even when you don't think about it.

58:57SPEAKERWell, so when Nvidia rolled this stuff out and we were in the pre-briefs for the reflex stuff specifically, which we'll get to in a sec, they explicitly said the difference between pros and normal people is that normal people react to what's on the screen and the pros train themselves to react to what they know that's happening.

59:11SPEAKERAnd part of that is simple stuff like pre-firing corners and things like that. But a lot of it is just, you know, you gain an innate sense when you play thousands and thousands and thousands of hours at the same game as to what you need to do.

59:25SPEAKERAnd what Nvidia posited, I don't know if I buy it yet, is that having a higher refresh rate display helps cut down some of that disadvantage for more normal players or people who play, maybe they're not normal, maybe they're, you know, you're nine to five, I'm going to play like four hours a game a week guy.

59:45SPEAKERBut there's somebody who devotes themselves to Fortnite or PUBG or Valorant or Call of Duty or something like that. And that's the main game that they play.

59:53SPEAKERSo I've been testing the 360 hertz stuff. I don't have a ton of experience with like with lower refresh rate monitors that aren't 60 hertz monitors, but huge, huge performance increase going from 60 hertz to anything faster than 60 hertz is what I would describe so far.

1:00:09SPEAKERThe latency testing, the system latency testing stuff and the reflex API bits are interesting, too, but I think less interesting to normal people and more interesting maybe to us.

1:00:23SPEAKERReflex is an API that Nvidia rolled out that basically moves the kind of G-Sync anti judder and anti frame rate, like micro stutter compensation stuff a little bit further back in the pipeline for games that support it.

1:00:41SPEAKERSo if you have a game that's really, really, really GPU bound where the CPU is hardly doing any work, it can feed more information than the GPU pipeline really knows how to handle, if that makes sense.

1:00:56SPEAKERSo that things can end up getting rendering all at once or really fast. So it's basically times things out so that the GPU is getting the most accurate information for each time it has to render a new frame.

1:01:07SPEAKERAnd the upshot there is that you don't see as many micro stutters when you're running at like 360 frames a second in CSGO.

1:01:15SPEAKERWell, CSGO is not a good example because it doesn't actually support it. But in Fortnite, in Valorant, in COD, and I think in Overwatch, I'm not sure about Overwatch.

1:01:28SPEAKERIt's Call of Duty Warzone, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Valorant and Fortnite right now.

1:01:33SPEAKEROkay. And I believe this goes back to the, what is the 900 series, the Maxwell cards? Is that Maxwell?

1:01:42SPEAKERThis stuff works on a lot of older cards, yes.

1:01:45SPEAKERAt least Pascal, the 1080, the 10 series.

1:01:49SPEAKERThey recommended some testing on a 1660.

1:01:53SPEAKEROkay.

1:01:54SPEAKERSo that you could make it so that you can make the game's GPU bound a little bit easier.

1:01:58SPEAKERAnd it seems like the reflex support in engine is only, like the games have to actually actively support it.

1:02:08SPEAKERRight.

1:02:09SPEAKERAnd that's separate, that's totally separate from like your fancy high refresh monitor and also like plugging a mouse straight into that monitor and all that stuff, right?

1:02:16SPEAKERThat seems to be the case. I'm not 100% on that when I think about it. It's something I didn't ask if the reflex stuff is hardware specific.

1:02:24SPEAKERSo I will, I'll check that and maybe post on Twitter when we post the podcast.

1:02:31SPEAKERWhat I mean is like, I think that you get some benefit from the software reflex implementation.

1:02:36SPEAKERAbsolutely.

1:02:37SPEAKEREven if you don't have the fancy hardware is what I'm saying.

1:02:40SPEAKERIf you have a G-Sync monitor and a supported video card, you will see benefit and you're running games.

1:02:46SPEAKERIt's probably more likely that you're not running games in GPU bound configurations rather than, like this really benefits when there's a deep render queue.

1:02:56SPEAKERWhen there's a lot of information queued up in the pipeline, in the graphics pipeline than it does in like the way you would play the game.

1:03:04SPEAKERLike realistically, in order for me to get Fortnite GPU bound on a 3080, I had to turn on like ray tracing and a bunch of nonsense that I would probably never turn on if I was a competitive Fortnite player.

1:03:15SPEAKERIf that makes sense.

1:03:16SPEAKERYeah.

1:03:17SPEAKERSo this is, this is a little bit more of a, this is something that, that professional people who play professionally and at a really high level are probably going to use, I think more than normal people.

1:03:29SPEAKERUnless, unless, I mean, I do know that some people are much more sensitive to the micro stutter stuff than, than we do.

1:03:35SPEAKERSo there you go.

1:03:37SPEAKERSure.

1:03:38SPEAKERAnd then the other part of this thing that I think is super neat, cause we tried to, we tried to test this 13 years ago at Maximum PC and couldn't figure out how to do it on the budget that we had available.

1:03:48SPEAKERIs that they've added a system latency tester to the monitor so you can actually, and I apologize for the wood chipper that's going in, one of my neighbors is cutting down a tree, but there's like a low grumble that I'll try to edit out, but I don't know if it's going to happen.

1:04:03SPEAKERSlice of life, man.

1:04:04SPEAKERPeople enjoy it sometimes.

1:04:05SPEAKERWe're not recording in the studio right now. So anyway.

1:04:09SPEAKERWhen your neighbor fires up his boat, sometimes people think it's a fun little detail at a little window into Will Smith's life and not so much in a recording annoyance.

1:04:17SPEAKERYeah, no, I did manage to filter that anyway.

1:04:19SPEAKERThe, so the average system latency tester lets you break down the CPU part of the pipeline, the GPU part of the pipeline, and then also now the mouse click to CPU part of the pipeline. So you can see how much latency your mouse adds, how much latency your CPU part of the pipeline adds, and how much latency the GPU part of the pipeline adds.

1:04:41SPEAKERAnd you can tell overall how much latency there is between the time you click and the time the shot registers on the screen, which is, I think, super cool.

1:04:51SPEAKERIt's pretty wild.

1:04:52SPEAKERSo wait, does the monitor read that stuff out or is that on, are you getting that through software in Windows or like how, how does that stuff work?

1:05:01SPEAKERWell, so the way it works is you plug the monitor, the mouse into the monitor.

1:05:04SPEAKEROkay.

1:05:05SPEAKERThat's the whole, that's the situation where there's like the specific reflex USB port that you have to use.

1:05:09SPEAKERThere's a red USB port on the ASUS monitor that I'm using.

1:05:13SPEAKERYes.

1:05:14SPEAKERAnd you, so you plug the mouse into there, you tape off the bottom of the mouse when you're doing benchmarks so that you don't actually accidentally move the mouse and jack up the frame timing for the scene.

1:05:26SPEAKEROnce you pick the spot that you're going to, you're going to test in and then you shoot and you put a box using the HUD, like the, like the onscreen display on the monitor on the place where the muzzle flash displays.

1:05:39SPEAKERSo it's literally looking for like frame changes to calculate.

1:05:43SPEAKERYeah. It's looking for pixels to get, go from dark to bright. So you need to find a dark spot in the scene and you, you put that up there and then it pops up in G-Force experience. You can put that little performance HUD up and it will show you exactly how long it takes between the time the mouse is clicked and the muzzle flash happens.

1:06:02SPEAKERDo they recommend specific games that have like an instantaneous muzzle flashes? Cause I'm sure there are some games where the firing animation takes longer to really ramp up, like more frames to truly ramp up than others. So I wonder what, like what, what is the fastest gun in the West as far as like first person shooters are concerned?

1:06:17SPEAKERWell, so Fortnite had shockingly good latency compared to the other games I tested. I was seeing like 18 frames a second with reflex on, sorry, 18 milliseconds, 18 to 19 milliseconds. The average was like 18.6 with reflex on and with reflex off, I was seeing 22 to 23 with an average of like 22.4 milliseconds.

1:06:40SPEAKERSo like it's not, it's like a six, six millisecond swing basically, which isn't, isn't huge, but I did notice a significant reduction in micro stutter when I was actually playing the game, which, which is, which is I think the big win here.

1:06:53SPEAKERThe Call of Duty numbers were closer, like I didn't see as big a drop. Also Call of Duty is running at a much lower frame rate than, than Fortnite was in the situation, like with, with ray tracing on and all this stuff I needed to do to get the game GPU bound on the, on the hardware in the system.

1:07:11SPEAKERWas that last year's game or the beta for the new one?

1:07:13SPEAKERThis is a modern warfare and I was testing that actually in the, in the battle royale training mode where you go to the quarry and there's a tower, there's a specific spot.

1:07:24SPEAKERThey listed several spots that were good to test stuff in each of the games. Fortnite was happening in creative mode, so there was less stuff on screen.

1:07:31SPEAKERIt wasn't, it was just those little small areas that they start you out in, not the larger kind of, you know, main Island with twist tilted towers and all that business.

1:07:44SPEAKERThis wood chipper is really loud.

1:07:46SPEAKERI can't even hear it, but I assume that this video call is filtering it out for me.

1:07:50SPEAKERThe noise gate is probably getting it on my mic.

1:07:53SPEAKERMaybe they can't even hear it.

1:07:55SPEAKERI like that optimism.

1:07:57SPEAKERAnyway. All right. So like you get the latency number on the monitor. I mean, I think you also can get it in windows, right?

1:08:04SPEAKERSo it pops up like an overall latency on the monitor with the frame rate display that's built into the monitor.

1:08:09SPEAKERIf you turn that on it's, it's huge and like the top left of the screen. So I wasn't using that.

1:08:14SPEAKERThere's a special version of G force experience that was pre-release for our testing purposes that you bring up the performance overlay and set it to the latency one.

1:08:23SPEAKERAnd it breaks down everything with like PC latency, CPU latency, GPU latency, mouse latency.

1:08:32SPEAKERAnd then they bundle all of that together as system latency.

1:08:35SPEAKERNow there's a couple of gotchas. One of them is that only certain mice work.

1:08:39SPEAKERSo there's like a list of, I think, six mice, including the Logitech G Pro, the Asus Shockrum Core.

1:08:49SPEAKERAre these existing mice, not mice that have been rolled out for this feature?

1:08:52SPEAKERThese are mice that were commonly used in the esports world.

1:08:56SPEAKEROh, interesting. Oh, is that, do you think that's something where they are having to add support for those mice in software or something like that?

1:09:02SPEAKERMy guess is that they worked with the mouse manufacturers to add whatever it is that they need.

1:09:07SPEAKERWhat I mean is what I'm getting at though is it's not like you need a specific mouse with, you know, you know, the way that G-Sync monitors need G-Sync hardware in them.

1:09:14SPEAKERYou're not, it's not a situation where the mouse needs specific hardware in it or something like that.

1:09:17SPEAKERI don't believe so. I mean, I assume that that is not the case.

1:09:20SPEAKERI assume that they're doing something on the driver level so that GeForce Experience can tap into the mouse to see the, to, to, my guess is that they're looking at pipeline numbers and then the total click registered by the monitor and going forward from there.

1:09:34SPEAKERAnd, and, and they're subtracting the system, the CPU and GPU latency from the total latency reported by the monitor.

1:09:41SPEAKERAnd that's how they get the mouse latency.

1:09:43SPEAKERSo I was able to, the G Pro is a wireless mouse. I was able to test it wired and wireless.

1:09:47SPEAKERI tested this Shockworm Core mouse from Asus.

1:09:51SPEAKERThe Shockworm Core was consistently half a millisecond.

1:09:54SPEAKERThe Logitech mouse was like 2.6 milliseconds wireless and like 1.6 wired.

1:09:59SPEAKERI don't think the one millisecond is enough for me to wire up the cordless mouse.

1:10:04SPEAKERProbably not.

1:10:06SPEAKERBut it's like, is that the, to be clear, is that the mouse to CPU latency specifically?

1:10:11SPEAKERThat is the, that is the time between when the mouse registers the click and the system, the game acting on it.

1:10:18SPEAKERYeah. Okay.

1:10:20SPEAKERThe, the interesting thing about all of this is that we tried to do something similar to measure click to photon latency on a system in like 2007 at maximum PC.

1:10:28SPEAKERAnd we got to the point that we were looking at renting, you know, 10,000 frame per second high speed cameras.

1:10:34SPEAKERAnd that's when we stopped because those were too expensive to rent on the magazine's budget at the time.

1:10:40SPEAKERSo I love, I love how there's something just delightfully mechanical about the way you have to measure this stuff, you know, like you like typically you feel like, Oh, there must be some sort of, sort of programmatic way to just profile this performance and pull these numbers out of the ether.

1:10:53SPEAKERBut like you're sitting here talking about pointing a camera at a monitor and putting a piece of tape over a sensor on the mouse.

1:10:59SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

1:11:00SPEAKERLike, this is so, this is so fast that you have to like get back into the physical realm to, to actually to measure it, you know?

1:11:07SPEAKERWell, I mean, realistically, the way you would measure this, if you weren't doing the, if it wasn't built into the monitor and with support for the mice is you would get a really high speed camera pointed at a screen, have it lit bright enough that you could actually see the mouse button move on the high speed.

1:11:25SPEAKERAnd then you'd have to measure when the actuation point is on that, on that button press, and then you'd count frames and you'd, you'd, you'd multiply that by the frame rate of the camera and get the number of milliseconds it took on the screen.

1:11:37SPEAKERAnd it's incredibly fiddly.

1:11:39SPEAKERIt takes a long time.

1:11:40SPEAKERAnd, and like, realistically, it takes a couple of hundred iterations to do it, to get a reliable number here.

1:11:47SPEAKERCause I saw a pretty good variance on the, on the, on the frame results and most of the games that I tested.

1:11:53SPEAKERSo yeah, it's, it's if you plug in a, so there's a couple of things to note.

1:11:58SPEAKERIf you plug in a mouse that's not on the supported list, then you get then basically they have common mice in a database and they'll just give you the number that they've recorded, which I think is probably fair.

1:12:10SPEAKERBecause I didn't, I once, once the mouse part was not the part that varied the CPU and the GPU parts were the parts that varied more than anything else.

1:12:18SPEAKEROccasionally the monitor wouldn't pick up the flash if something happened, like if there was lightning or something on the screen.

1:12:24SPEAKERBut yeah, that's, that's pretty much it.

1:12:27SPEAKERAnd the mice that are supported out of the box are Logitech G Pro.

1:12:32SPEAKERThe ASUS Republic of Gamers, Chachram Core, the Razer Deathadder V2 Pro, and the SteelSeries Rival 3.

1:12:42SPEAKERLogitech will be the, I have a special BIOS firmware for the mouse that is not going to be available at launch, but it'll be supported later on this year is my understanding.

1:12:54SPEAKEROkay.

1:12:55SPEAKERAll right. I have, I have one real actual question here, which is once you have that big fat number.

1:13:00SPEAKERYeah.

1:13:01SPEAKERIs that actionable information? Is that something you can actually use to optimize or is that just like for funsies to gawk at and go like, oh, that's good to know?

1:13:08SPEAKERI feel like it's probably a number that reviewers will care about more than anything.

1:13:13SPEAKERI, although I will say I had a problem with the driver installed on my computer and it told me that something was wrong.

1:13:19SPEAKERLike the numbers I was getting were enough to know that something was jacked up with the driver install, which had me then reinstall windows on another SSD, see if it worked there.

1:13:28SPEAKEREverything was fine.

1:13:29SPEAKERSo I came back and did like a bunch of driver cleaning and got everything back in.

1:13:34SPEAKERIs that actually a thing?

1:13:35SPEAKERI kind of assumed that in modern times that was just, it was either leftover FUD from back in the day, or it was just kind of an urban legend that bad driver installs can actually jack things up.

1:13:46SPEAKERI don't know.

1:13:47SPEAKERI didn't troubleshoot to see what was actually happening, but I, my performance was two and a half times less than it was supposed to be than it is now.

1:13:57SPEAKERThat's pretty significant.

1:13:58SPEAKERYeah, it was, it was something, my guess is that when I installed the 20, the 3080 on top of the 2080 drivers, something got jacked up during that driver reinstall since I was putting the same version of the driver on top of the same version of the driver and didn't do a clean install.

1:14:13SPEAKERSo the, the lesson here is probably do a clean install when you update your video card of the driver.

1:14:18SPEAKERBut anyway, it's all good now.

1:14:21SPEAKERAnd then the last thing is that these are coming out by the end of the year, I think as early as next month is when they're going to start shipping.

1:14:28SPEAKERBut I don't think we have official prices yet.

1:14:31SPEAKERNvidia didn't, I was, I'm waiting on a couple of words from a couple of vendors to see anything, but I haven't heard back yet. And we, we've run out of time. So the one thing I will say is that the monitor, these monitors are listed on some e-tailers at 700 bucks, I think for a 1080p 360 Hertz monitor, which is like, it is a one of a kind device.

1:14:55SPEAKERMy understanding is that the latency stuff is just part of the core G-Sync hardware. It won't be rolling back into old monitors, but it will be in, it's up to the manufacturer.

1:15:07SPEAKERAll the manufacturer has to do is put the special USB port in, which is, and I was told an extremely low cost change.

1:15:15SPEAKERSo I'm hopeful that this will be a standard feature in G-Sync monitors going forward.

1:15:20SPEAKERI started to say that makes that a definitely an enthusiast item, but I think actually it's more of a professional slash competitive level item.

1:15:27SPEAKERWell, so yeah, I think the 300, I think there's two different things here. One is the 360 Hertz. One is the, one is the one is the, the latency testing, the reflex I think is supported everywhere.

1:15:38SPEAKERThe latency, I'm sorry, go ahead.

1:15:41SPEAKERNo, I was going to say the latency testing, I think like I would have spent a thousand dollars to be able to do that when I was testing video cards and mice regularly.

1:15:48SPEAKERThe 360 Hertz is for people who are incredibly serious about a very small subset of games that actually run at that speed.

1:15:56SPEAKERYeah. That's what I meant is the, the, the refresh at that level is, is the one that's like pretty niche use case.

1:16:03SPEAKERLike the, the latency stuff obviously has much broader applications.

1:16:05SPEAKERLike, like what, what games does Dota run at 360 frames a second?

1:16:10SPEAKERWell, I don't know if there's like, if there may be like arbitrary engine limitations there, but if not, like it is definitely a very fast performer if that's what you mean. Like it's one of those games that you know what really fucking screams on a good graphic card?

1:16:23SPEAKERStarcraft 2?

1:16:24SPEAKERQuake 3.

1:16:25SPEAKEROh man.

1:16:26SPEAKERJust pull down the console, punch in com underscore show FPS one.

1:16:30SPEAKERYeah.

1:16:31SPEAKERYou're off to the races. I bet you could, I mean, you could get, you could get more than 360 frames a second in Quake 3 like 10 years ago.

1:16:39SPEAKERMaybe we should throw it all away, Brad, and just be Quake 3 pros.

1:16:43SPEAKERWe should play some Quake 3. Well, it's Quake Live now, but you know.

1:16:46SPEAKERI want to go back to the real stuff. I don't want any of this bouncy physics. I don't want any of the real business.

1:16:52SPEAKERI assume that I imagine that Quake Live is actually a better product in every way, but in the, in the magical, optimistic, idealized future where I set up those Quake servers.

1:17:03SPEAKERYeah.

1:17:04SPEAKERIt'll be a Quake 3 server.

1:17:05SPEAKERSo.

1:17:06SPEAKERCause that's what I grew up with.

1:17:08SPEAKERI, the, the thing I'll say is I was kind of a skeptic on the high refresh rate stuff for a long time until I started doing more VR work.

1:17:15SPEAKERAnd I've, I've held off mainly because 1440 is hard for streamers because it's not a streaming friendly resolution to scale down to 1080.

1:17:25SPEAKERAnd I had a 4k panel that was running at 60 Hertz that scaled down to 1080 beautifully.

1:17:30SPEAKERCause you just, you know, run that special four times.

1:17:32SPEAKERAnd it ended up scaling up.

1:17:34SPEAKERYeah. The, the difference in the way, like playing Hades at 360 Hertz, even at 1080P, it looks like a piece of paper that's just animated almost.

1:17:46SPEAKERWow.

1:17:47SPEAKERLike it's still backlit and all that, but it's, it's, it's bonkers.

1:17:50SPEAKERThat's actually, would you put it that way? I would almost be more interested in seeing that than something like a Fortnite or a PUBG or some 3d shooter.

1:17:59SPEAKERI mean, I don't think there's any appreciable benefit. It just looks, it just looks nice.

1:18:03SPEAKERAnd again, I don't think that there's any, like, I think that the takeaway here should be, you know, get next time you buy a monitor, get a fast refresh rate monitor, not necessarily get a ridiculous 360 Hertz E-sports monitor. Right?

1:18:18SPEAKERLike, like I will, will this, but I'm going to, I, so I haven't been able to track my, the, the kind of stat of the performance stat that most people pay attention to in PUBG is average damage per round because it's a last hit game.

1:18:32SPEAKERSo like the person who gets the final shot in can do one damage and get the kill, which I know is familiar from other things.

1:18:40SPEAKERThe, the, I haven't been able to track because of stuff that we don't need to get into, but I've been playing in a ways that don't necessarily reflect overall performance.

1:18:51SPEAKERI'm going to take a week or two and just play like I normally would and, and go out at hard and see what the ADR, see if there's an increase in ADR since I've gotten this monitor versus the times before.

1:19:03SPEAKERCause my, my average damage has been really static at around 200 and between 200 and 250 for like years now.

1:19:10SPEAKERSo we'll see, see what changes.

1:19:13SPEAKERScience. Yeah, science. Testing. It's been fun. This is a neat thing. It's, it's weird having such an incredibly low resolution monitor on my desk again. I will say that.

1:19:22SPEAKERWell, fine. Can't have everything, man.

1:19:25SPEAKEROh, and these are all IPS panels.

1:19:28SPEAKERThey do all sorts of strobing on the backlights to reduce blur. So the back, like you can set it to a backlight setting that produces good blacks and makes videos and stuff like that look like they should.

1:19:38SPEAKERWhen you put it in the gaming mode, it, it, it blows out everything because that's the way, you know, that's the way the high refresh rate anti strobe anti blur gaming stuff works.

1:19:48SPEAKERYeah. So it, I mean, it looks good with video and all the things you'd want. It also has HDR, but when you turn on HDR support, the, the high refresh rate stuff gets changed. So it's, it's a little fiddly.

1:19:59SPEAKERI think that's just a necessity of the bandwidth on the HDMI port though.

1:20:04SPEAKERWe're in the future.

1:20:06SPEAKERThe future 360 Hertz is a lot of it's a lot of Hertz. Yes.

1:20:13SPEAKERSo, yeah, that's it. That's the 360 years. If you have questions about the 360 years stuff, I've been answering them in the discord and the PC channel all day and we'll continue doing that. Or you can send in questions to tech pod@content.town.

1:20:28SPEAKERShould we, should we thank our patrons? Yes, please. As, as always this podcast is brought to you with the support of let's see, I think 1300 and some wonderful patrons.

1:20:40SPEAKERGeez. Thank you so much.

1:20:41SPEAKER1204 wonderful patrons.

1:20:43SPEAKERIt's very flattering.

1:20:44SPEAKERThank you all so much for your support and especially thanks to our executive producer level patrons, Jacob Chapel, Andrew Cotton and David Allen.

1:20:52SPEAKERAs always, if you would like to support the tech pod, you can find out how to do that by going to patreon.com/techpod for as little as two bucks a month, you can get access to the fabulous tech pod discord, where we talk about things like 360 Hertz monitors and cooking.

1:21:07SPEAKERAnd there's a movies and TV channel I noticed today.

1:21:10SPEAKERI made that on request yesterday. I also made a channel for work.

1:21:13SPEAKERWhat work for work and like career development stuff. People want a place to talk about work and so they got their virtual water cooler.

1:21:21SPEAKERThere you go. I like it. We have a big tech announcement channel, so we don't pollute the general chat when there's a new iPhone or Android phone announcement happening, all sorts of cool stuff.

1:21:29SPEAKERNew radiance coming up next week. So I guess that channel will get some more action.

1:21:33SPEAKERA little heat. Yeah.

1:21:35SPEAKERYeah. And then, uh, the $5 tier, you gets the monthly, I don't know, bonus episode, I guess is what we call it.

1:21:43SPEAKERWhat are we going to talk about? Are we gonna talk about the jaunt this month?

1:21:45SPEAKEROh yeah. God.

1:21:46SPEAKERMan, that was a, I don't, I don't want to burn it.

1:21:48SPEAKERDon't burn the material. We should have recorded that conversation like right after you finished that story. I'm so excited to talk about this.

1:21:54SPEAKERI'm glad I've had a little bit of time to digest. It's, it's, it's, it's a lot.

1:21:58SPEAKERIt's a lot to think about.

1:21:59SPEAKERYeah.

1:22:00SPEAKERYeah. Um, do you read anything else in that book?

1:22:02SPEAKERI have, I, it turns out I had read that book before.

1:22:04SPEAKEROkay. Okay.

1:22:05SPEAKERI was reading the one, the kind of, the one about the monster, the oil slick monster in the pond, in the lake.

1:22:12SPEAKEROh yeah.

1:22:13SPEAKERThe raft, I think is what that's called.

1:22:14SPEAKERThe raft is, that's yes. There's some pretty gruesome imagery in that one.

1:22:17SPEAKERIt's the thing I will say about that collection as a whole is that it is delightfully macabre in the same way as like old Twilight zones, like 50s Rod Serling Twilight zones.

1:22:27SPEAKERSure.

1:22:28SPEAKERI've enjoyed it quite a bit.

1:22:29SPEAKERYes. That's good stuff. But yes, we will be talking about the, the Stephen King short story, the jaunt.

1:22:34SPEAKERNot jaunt VR, which is a different thing.

1:22:36SPEAKEROn, on the next, um, next patron bonus episode in a week?

1:22:42SPEAKERYeah, sometime in the next week. We can record that this weekend if you want.

1:22:44SPEAKERYeah, we should, I just, I just want to talk about that.

1:22:46SPEAKERI think I'm going to reread this story again, just so it's fresh.

1:22:48SPEAKERI think it is, in some ways it is one of the most horrifying things that I have read or seen or consumed in any media related fashion.

1:22:56SPEAKERSo if you want to...

1:22:57SPEAKERI'll explain why.

1:22:58SPEAKERThat's in Skeleton Crew, which is I think Stephen King's first short story collection.

1:23:04SPEAKERSecond one. Night Shift was, I think Night Shift might actually be even better than Skelet Crew.

1:23:09SPEAKERHis short stories are very good.

1:23:10SPEAKERThey're both fantastic. They're two of my favorite books ever.

1:23:13SPEAKERI love when Stephen King writes science fiction. It's my favorite.

1:23:15SPEAKERYes, yes, for sure.

1:23:17SPEAKERSo that'll do it for us this week. Thank you all for listening.

1:23:20SPEAKERAgain, the address is patreon.com/techpod if you'd like to find out how to sign up and support the show and get some fabulous benefits for doing so.

1:23:28SPEAKERBut yeah, I guess we'll see you all next week. Always a pleasure, Brad. Bye everybody.

1:23:45SPEAKER[music]