64: That Cheapskate Cumulonimbus

00:00SPEAKER- These are my business antlers, Brad.

00:01SPEAKER- Of course, they're the ones with the sequins on them.

00:04SPEAKER- Yeah, like they come out after Thanksgiving,

00:06SPEAKERthey go away after New Year's.

00:08SPEAKERThey are a way to signify that this is business season

00:11SPEAKERon my Twitch stream.

00:13SPEAKER- You want the sparkly antlers,

00:14SPEAKERthat's how they know you mean business.

00:15SPEAKER- Look, you can't see it on the Twitch stream,

00:17SPEAKERbut there's also some Holly there.

00:18SPEAKERIt gets green screened out.

00:20SPEAKER- I don't know why it took me like three appearances

00:23SPEAKERof those antlers on one of these streams

00:25SPEAKERor these video chats before I realized,

00:27SPEAKERoh wait, you just have those zip tied to your headphones.

00:29SPEAKER- Yeah, but do you think I was putting them on every day?

00:31SPEAKER- I assumed you were just wearing them for funsies.

00:34SPEAKER- My head's too big to wear like a headband antler, it hurts.

00:37SPEAKER- I just figured you were coming

00:39SPEAKERfrom some child related activity

00:40SPEAKERand you didn't bother to take them off yet or something.

00:42SPEAKER- No, I was wearing my, I don't even know,

00:45SPEAKERI was wearing one of these orange skull dock workers hats,

00:49SPEAKERI don't know.

00:50SPEAKER- The beanie?

00:51SPEAKER- Beanie, yeah.

00:52SPEAKER- I mean, I don't know about you,

00:53SPEAKERI mean, I would call it a toboggan,

00:54SPEAKERbut that tendency has all but been beaten out of me by now.

00:58SPEAKER- Wait, no, toboggan has the puff on the top, doesn't it?

01:01SPEAKER- Does it?

01:02SPEAKER- Well, yeah.

01:03SPEAKER- I mean, if you recognize the word toboggan

01:04SPEAKERas referring to a hat, then you're already ahead

01:06SPEAKERof 99% of the Philistines in California.

01:09SPEAKER- Look, man, we don't need to talk about cold weather gear

01:12SPEAKERin California 'cause it's just gonna piss off all the locals.

01:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that's true.

01:15SPEAKER- I continue to be irked when it's like 45 degrees out

01:18SPEAKERand I see people walking around with like wool mittens

01:21SPEAKERand like a huge scarf and like a big giant toboggan.

01:25SPEAKERI'm like, man, I've lived here for 20 years,

01:27SPEAKERy'all assholes.

01:28SPEAKER- They've got the hood like with the drawstrings

01:30SPEAKERso that you can always see their nose.

01:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it's like, you don't know,

01:33SPEAKERwhen it's barely freezing-ish,

01:37SPEAKERyou don't have to worry about freezing your lungs.

01:39SPEAKERYou can breathe through your mouth still, it's okay.

01:41SPEAKER- That's true.

01:42SPEAKER- And when I was in Chicago a couple of winters ago,

01:45SPEAKERI was there in January

01:46SPEAKERand it was negative 20 before the wind chill.

01:49SPEAKER- Wow.

01:50SPEAKER- And I thought I had experienced cold in my life before,

01:52SPEAKERbut I had not.

01:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:54SPEAKER- Like when you got into the car,

01:56SPEAKERyou had to scrape the inside of the windshield

01:58SPEAKERbecause the condensation,

02:00SPEAKERlike the moisture from your breath

02:02SPEAKERthe last time you were in the car

02:04SPEAKERwould frost up on the inside of the glass.

02:06SPEAKERAnd that was horrific.

02:07SPEAKERLike that was, people shouldn't live there, it's no bueno.

02:12SPEAKER- I don't think I've ever experienced cold

02:14SPEAKERof that magnitude before.

02:15SPEAKERThat's like, I don't even know what that would feel like.

02:17SPEAKER- So my mom said that we had when we were kids,

02:21SPEAKERwhen you and I were both kids

02:22SPEAKERand we lived close to each other without knowing it,

02:25SPEAKERmom said that there was one year

02:26SPEAKERthat it got to negative 20 in Bristol.

02:29SPEAKERAnd we had like metal frame, sliding glass doors around,

02:35SPEAKERlike that was all the doors on our house.

02:37SPEAKERThere was one door

02:37SPEAKERthat wasn't a metal frame sliding glass door.

02:40SPEAKERAnd it was so cold that the moisture that was condensing

02:44SPEAKERon the inside of those doors

02:46SPEAKERwhere the metal was transferring is leaching heat out,

02:50SPEAKERfroze the doors shut.

02:52SPEAKERAnd so the only way we could get out of the house

02:55SPEAKERwas to go through the one door

02:57SPEAKERthat was just a normal-ass door.

03:00SPEAKEROr we had to like warm up those edges.

03:03SPEAKERWell, we hairdried them and then the power went out,

03:05SPEAKERwe were like, "Oh shit, we're gonna die in here."

03:07SPEAKER- Nope, that'll happen.

03:09SPEAKER- Yeah, rural life, man, it's good.

03:12SPEAKER- Yeah, it's good.

03:14SPEAKERI agree with you, that is good.

03:16SPEAKERDoes it ever feel like a little dizzying

03:20SPEAKERor maybe do you feel like a little sense of vertigo

03:21SPEAKERevery time you brush up against the extremely narrow range

03:26SPEAKERof conditions in which human beings can actually live?

03:28SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

03:29SPEAKERIt's like all it took was for the temperature to drop

03:32SPEAKERlike an extra 30, 40 degrees more than it normally might

03:36SPEAKERand all of a sudden, like the basic functioning

03:38SPEAKERof your house is breaking down, you know what I mean?

03:41SPEAKEROr like, another good example of that

03:43SPEAKERis like the boiling point of water

03:46SPEAKERbased on the atmospheric pressure.

03:48SPEAKER- Yeah, like you can't make tea on Mount Everest.

03:51SPEAKER- Right, totally.

03:53SPEAKER- It just doesn't work.

03:54SPEAKER- Who would want to go on Mount Everest

03:56SPEAKERif you can't make tea?

03:56SPEAKERBut you know what I mean?

03:57SPEAKERIt's like you can't exist in a vacuum

03:59SPEAKER'cause all the liquid in your body will just boil right out.

04:02SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

04:03SPEAKERThere's a lot you take for granted

04:05SPEAKERabout living on this planet

04:06SPEAKERin most of the habitable climates that you do.

04:09SPEAKER- Like even in the climates where life can exist

04:12SPEAKERon the planet, which is like, it's shocking, right?

04:14SPEAKERLike there's briny lakes underneath Antarctica

04:19SPEAKERthat are full of like weird microbes and shit

04:22SPEAKERthat only exist in one particular briny lake

04:24SPEAKERunder Antarctica.

04:25SPEAKERThere's the stuff that lives at the bottom

04:26SPEAKERof deep sea trenches.

04:27SPEAKERThere's the stuff that lives on Mount Everest.

04:29SPEAKERThere's the stuff that lives in volcanic vents.

04:31SPEAKERThere's all this, it's amazing and humbling.

04:38SPEAKERAnd it makes, like when you think about this stuff,

04:39SPEAKERit's when I feel the smallest, right?

04:41SPEAKER- Sure, yes.

04:42SPEAKER- That's not true.

04:43SPEAKERAfter last week's talk about black holes, pretty small.

04:47SPEAKER- That's fair.

04:48SPEAKER- Or I guess that was the patron episode.

04:49SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, like, yes, I feel very small

04:53SPEAKERwhen I think about how narrow a slice of things

04:58SPEAKERwe can live in.

04:59SPEAKER- I mean, when it comes down to it,

05:00SPEAKERI would rather live in Chicago than a black hole

05:02SPEAKERif you put it to me.

05:03SPEAKERSo at least there's that.

05:05SPEAKER- At least love can reach you in a black hole, Brad,

05:07SPEAKERbut in Chicago, I don't know.

05:09SPEAKER- That's a good point.

05:10SPEAKER- Nice hot dogs though.

05:12SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:19SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

05:38SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

05:40SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:41SPEAKER- I'm Brad, hello.

05:42SPEAKER- Hey, how's it going?

05:43SPEAKER- That's good, well.

05:44SPEAKER- Yeah, you're gonna get business handlers?

05:46SPEAKERAnd what are you gonna, you're gonna fancy up your hat?

05:49SPEAKER- I can tell you how I do the, how I do the zip ties.

05:52SPEAKER- Okay, well, let me figure out my antler

05:54SPEAKERor other headgear situation.

05:56SPEAKER- Okay.

05:56SPEAKER- 'Cause you know, there's also, there's as discussed,

05:58SPEAKERthere's elf ears, there's Santa hats, there's.

06:02SPEAKER- Get sexy elf ears.

06:03SPEAKER- Ooh, I don't know about, what kind of elves.

06:06SPEAKER- You can get a whole new audience.

06:07SPEAKERYou might, welcome, find Brad over on OnlyFans.

06:10SPEAKER- I don't know what kind of elfin audience

06:11SPEAKERyou're catering to, but.

06:14SPEAKER- The thing I'll say is I tried a Santa hat for a while.

06:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:18SPEAKER- But it's hot and itchy.

06:19SPEAKER- I can see it.

06:20SPEAKER- You don't want itchy on your head.

06:21SPEAKERYou want your head to air out in the middle of the stream.

06:24SPEAKERYou need ventilation, it's important.

06:25SPEAKERThat's why the antlers are good.

06:26SPEAKER- Only the herbiest of elves over here, okay.

06:29SPEAKER- I thought about stapling them,

06:31SPEAKERbut I thought that was a little too close to the Grinch

06:33SPEAKERand I didn't wanna, I don't wanna have any tragedies.

06:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:38SPEAKER- What are we talking about this week?

06:39SPEAKER- What are we talking about?

06:40SPEAKER- Well, you suggested it, man.

06:42SPEAKER- Oh, I'd look, it's the artifice of the podcast.

06:44SPEAKERSomebody has to ask the, then, you know, I was like.

06:47SPEAKERYou're the one that now has legitimate, honest to God,

06:50SPEAKERhands-on experience with 5G.

06:53SPEAKER- This is true.

06:54SPEAKERI have a phone that does the 5Gs now.

06:57SPEAKER- The 5th G has arrived.

06:59SPEAKER- And contrary to public opinion,

07:02SPEAKERBill Gates has not activated the Rona in me

07:04SPEAKERusing my 5G phone.

07:06SPEAKER- No.

07:07SPEAKER- Let's see, the weather radio still works.

07:10SPEAKERWeather radar still works.

07:13SPEAKERI don't have cancer or autism,

07:15SPEAKERso I feel good on all those fronts.

07:18SPEAKER- And also, I'm sure your life is radically different

07:20SPEAKERbecause of how fast your phone's data transfer is now, right?

07:23SPEAKERIt's completely different, right?

07:25SPEAKERAnd it's a whole different ball--

07:26SPEAKER- Well, you might be surprised, Fred.

07:27SPEAKER- It must be a night and day difference.

07:29SPEAKER- So the biggest change is that my phone

07:32SPEAKERhas a little tiny weird place on the side.

07:36SPEAKER- Oh, okay. - You can see it

07:36SPEAKERthrough the case. - A place.

07:38SPEAKER- There's like a window on the side.

07:40SPEAKER- Oh, what? - And that's where,

07:41SPEAKERthat's where the fast, here's the thing.

07:44SPEAKERThere's different 5Gs.

07:46SPEAKERThere's more than one 5G.

07:47SPEAKER- Oh, great, okay.

07:49SPEAKER- Okay, so there's low band 5G,

07:52SPEAKERwhich operates in one spectrum that is the low end

07:55SPEAKERfrom 600 to 850 megahertz.

07:58SPEAKER- Okay, wait, is there seriously a sub-gigahertz segment

08:03SPEAKERof the 5G band, really?

08:05SPEAKER- Yeah, that's where 4G operates too.

08:08SPEAKERThis is the one that's been around.

08:09SPEAKER- I was promised like two dozen gigahertz.

08:11SPEAKER- Look, look, no, no, gigabits.

08:14SPEAKERThe gigahertz is just the wavelength,

08:15SPEAKERthe frequency. - Oh, I know,

08:16SPEAKERthat's what I'm saying.

08:17SPEAKERI was, I'm sitting here looking at weather forecasts

08:19SPEAKERat around 24, 23.8 gigahertz, something like that.

08:22SPEAKERAnyway, we'll get to it.

08:23SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, so, okay, so the low band,

08:26SPEAKERwhich is what everybody turned on in a pretty

08:29SPEAKERstraightforward way earlier this year and in 2019,

08:34SPEAKERis basically like 4G++, right?

08:36SPEAKERSo it's a little bit faster, it's not gigabit,

08:38SPEAKERso it's not gonna run at 1,000 megabits per second.

08:42SPEAKER- The theoretical max is around 250, 80 to 250

08:47SPEAKERfor each cell, so that means everybody that's connected

08:50SPEAKERto the cell radio will share that bandwidth.

08:53SPEAKER- Okay, that really does sound like 4G,

08:55SPEAKER'cause I, you know, I haven't done a honest-to-god

08:57SPEAKERspeed test on my phone over cellular recently,

09:01SPEAKERbut that sounds kind of in the ballpark

09:02SPEAKERof what I was getting already.

09:04SPEAKER- I would bet if you fired up your 4G phone speed test

09:08SPEAKERright now, you would get like 80 to 100 megabits

09:10SPEAKERwhere you live. - Yeah, yeah.

09:11SPEAKER- I typically see 50 to 80 megabits when I run a speed test

09:15SPEAKERif I'm out and about in Pacifica,

09:18SPEAKERwhen I'm on that kind of spectrum.

09:21SPEAKERAnd the nice thing about that is it works just like 4G,

09:23SPEAKERyou have similar, like the radio penetrates buildings,

09:27SPEAKERit has good range, so if you can see a tower someplace

09:30SPEAKERin a rural part of the country, you'll probably have signal,

09:33SPEAKERassuming it's the right brand radio, you know,

09:35SPEAKERassuming it's a Verizon radio for your Verizon phone

09:37SPEAKERor a Sprint radio for your Sprint, sorry,

09:40SPEAKERT-Mobile radio for your T-Mobile phone, whatever.

09:42SPEAKER- Can we just talk about the old EM for a second?

09:46SPEAKER- Yeah, electromagnetic magnetic radiation.

09:49SPEAKER- The penetration is just because of the shape

09:51SPEAKERof the wave form, right?

09:53SPEAKERIs that correct?

09:54SPEAKER- It's about the frequency. - Wavelength, rather.

09:56SPEAKER- Yes. - Wavelength.

09:57SPEAKERWavelength and frequency are inextricably connected.

10:00SPEAKER- Yes, well, they're the same thing, right?

10:01SPEAKER- Yeah. - Effectively.

10:03SPEAKER- It's two different measures of the same thing, basically.

10:05SPEAKER- So, and then what are the terms that is short and long,

10:09SPEAKERI guess, are the ways to describe?

10:11SPEAKER- So low is, long wavelength is--

10:15SPEAKER- Is lower on the spectrum, is that right?

10:18SPEAKERLike the lower the Hertz,

10:19SPEAKERthe longer the wavelength, is that correct?

10:22SPEAKER- That seems--

10:23SPEAKER- I think that's right.

10:24SPEAKER- No, the lower the Hertz, the higher the wavelength.

10:27SPEAKER- Okay.

10:27SPEAKER- 'Cause it's the number of waves per second

10:29SPEAKERis what the Hertz is measuring.

10:31SPEAKERSo the longer the wave, the fewer waves there are per second.

10:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:36SPEAKER- So it's inverse.

10:37SPEAKER- The longer the wavelength--

10:38SPEAKER- I apologize in advance for this.

10:40SPEAKER- That's a lot.

10:41SPEAKER- It's almost the end of the year, man.

10:43SPEAKERThis year has been a lot.

10:44SPEAKER- This is, I did not expect,

10:46SPEAKERI did not think about the actual math here.

10:47SPEAKERBut the upshot is--

10:49SPEAKER- I'm just trying to like conjure the image

10:51SPEAKERof the wavelength in people's heads.

10:52SPEAKERLike it's the longer the wavelength,

10:54SPEAKERthe longer before you get to another curve up and down,

10:57SPEAKERright?

10:58SPEAKERThat's what I'm trying to do. - Yeah, so the upshot is

10:59SPEAKERthere are certain wavelengths that penetrate

11:01SPEAKERwood and metal and concrete and the types of things

11:04SPEAKERthat we build buildings with, glass better than others.

11:08SPEAKERSome, the 600 to 850 megahertz range

11:11SPEAKERhas really, really good penetration

11:14SPEAKERfor typical building supplies,

11:15SPEAKERwhich is why we've been using it for years

11:16SPEAKERand years and years.

11:17SPEAKERIt's why we did TV in that range.

11:19SPEAKERLike early TV was in that same frequency spectrum.

11:22SPEAKERAnd it's because it goes, it'll go into your house, right?

11:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

11:26SPEAKERProbably worth noting, that's like a much lower

11:28SPEAKERor longer wavelength than even like typical home wifi.

11:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean--

11:33SPEAKER- Or going back a couple of decades,

11:35SPEAKEReven like your typical like off the shelf cordless phone,

11:37SPEAKERright?

11:38SPEAKER- It's in the same general range as the cordless phones

11:40SPEAKERwere, yeah.

11:41SPEAKERSo that 900 megahertz unlicensed range,

11:43SPEAKERwhich I don't think is,

11:44SPEAKERI think that might've changed recently.

11:45SPEAKERI haven't paid attention to it.

11:48SPEAKERThat was the first place that cordless phones showed up

11:50SPEAKERbecause they were all analog and they needed a massive

11:54SPEAKERamount of spectrum to work.

11:55SPEAKERBut they also had crazy, like my parents have a 900 megahertz

11:58SPEAKERphone that has ridiculous range still.

12:01SPEAKER- You might be talking about slightly older cordless phones

12:03SPEAKERthan I am.

12:04SPEAKERI was thinking about the 2.4 gigahertz cordless phones.

12:07SPEAKER- Oh, the 900 megahertz ones came out in the 90s,

12:09SPEAKERlike mid 90s probably.

12:10SPEAKERSo I had one of those when I was in college, I think.

12:12SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

12:13SPEAKER- And it, like I lived in an apartment,

12:16SPEAKERlike in one of those apartment complexes

12:18SPEAKERwhere college kids live.

12:19SPEAKERAnd there were probably 500 units in this apartment complex.

12:23SPEAKERAnd I could walk almost all the way across the apartment

12:26SPEAKERcomplex and still have my cordless phone more or less work.

12:29SPEAKER- Hey, remember cordless phones?

12:30SPEAKER- Cordless phones were good, man.

12:31SPEAKER- Hey, remember phones?

12:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

12:34SPEAKER- Remember landlines?

12:35SPEAKERDo you guys still have a landline?

12:36SPEAKER- No.

12:37SPEAKER- Well, really?

12:38SPEAKER- No.

12:39SPEAKERYeah, I pay for a number.

12:41SPEAKERI pay for our old number.

12:43SPEAKER- So do I.

12:43SPEAKERI can't unbundle it from my internet service,

12:45SPEAKERbut I've never actually hooked a phone up to it.

12:47SPEAKERI probably should.

12:49SPEAKER- Why?

12:50SPEAKER- I don't know.

12:50SPEAKER- Power goes out, that'll go down too

12:52SPEAKERif it's a computer internet.

12:52SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.

12:53SPEAKERYeah, you're right.

12:55SPEAKER- So, okay, so 600, 850 megahertz low band is low band.

13:00SPEAKERSo the other thing is the higher the wavelength,

13:02SPEAKERthe more data you can pack

13:04SPEAKERinto a smaller range of frequencies.

13:07SPEAKER- Okay.

13:08SPEAKER- So the low band signals, because it's congested

13:12SPEAKERand there's a bazillion phones on that and other devices,

13:16SPEAKERyour maximum channel width is like 100 megahertz.

13:19SPEAKERSo that's why you don't get a massive amount of data

13:23SPEAKERin that space.

13:26SPEAKERMid band is 2.5 to 3.7 gigahertz.

13:31SPEAKERThis is more limited in regions

13:32SPEAKER'cause that is a spectrum that is licensed differently.

13:35SPEAKERAll of this is wildly dependent on the region that you're in

13:38SPEAKERbecause the US, the EU, India, China, Japan, Australia,

13:44SPEAKERNew Zealand, African countries,

13:47SPEAKEReverybody licenses different spectrums for different stuff.

13:50SPEAKERAnd some of these bands are just not available

13:52SPEAKERin certain regions.

13:55SPEAKER2.5 to 3.7 gigahertz is much, much less congested.

14:00SPEAKERYou can do fatter channels and as a result, you can get,

14:04SPEAKERand the density on each per megahertz of channel

14:10SPEAKERyou have available is greater.

14:12SPEAKERSo you can get 100 to 900 megabits per second.

14:16SPEAKERI have not seen, first off, iOS doesn't expose this stuff.

14:19SPEAKERI haven't seen any speed tests

14:21SPEAKERthat indicate I'm connecting to these bands.

14:23SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

14:24SPEAKERSo that's one of the questions I was going to ask

14:25SPEAKERafter we get through these basics.

14:26SPEAKERBut so yeah, you're on an iPhone 12, just to be clear.

14:28SPEAKER- iPhone 12 Pro.

14:29SPEAKER- That is the handset that you are using

14:31SPEAKERto try out some...

14:32SPEAKER- Yes, I'm not using one of the Samsung phones

14:34SPEAKERor any of that stuff.

14:35SPEAKER- So they do, in fact, actually expose

14:36SPEAKERwhich type of band you're connected to?

14:38SPEAKEROr no, they don't?

14:39SPEAKER- No, they do not.

14:40SPEAKERYou have to infer it based on the performance

14:41SPEAKERthat you're getting.

14:42SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

14:43SPEAKERI thought you were saying that they would be an indicator.

14:46SPEAKER- I'm going to check and make sure,

14:46SPEAKER'cause we've had four or five iOS updates

14:48SPEAKERsince I looked at this last one.

14:49SPEAKER- What does it look like when you're,

14:50SPEAKERdoes it just say 5G?

14:52SPEAKER- Just says 5G.

14:53SPEAKER- Okay.

14:54SPEAKERJust like it's, well, what does it say?

14:55SPEAKERDoes it say LTE?

14:56SPEAKERI've gotten so used to the iOS display, I don't even,

14:59SPEAKERit doesn't register mentally anymore.

15:00SPEAKER- Mine says 5G, and let's see,

15:02SPEAKERwhen I go into settings and I go to general,

15:06SPEAKERor actually I should probably go to cellular.

15:07SPEAKER- It says LTE when you're on 4G, right?

15:10SPEAKERYes.

15:12SPEAKER- It does not tell me,

15:16SPEAKERlet me go look at about and make sure it's not there.

15:19SPEAKER- And you're on which network?

15:21SPEAKER- Verizon.

15:22SPEAKER- Verizon.

15:24SPEAKER- So, Verizon, it gives me my ID,

15:28SPEAKERbut it doesn't give me any indication

15:30SPEAKERof what I'm connected to on the radio side.

15:33SPEAKER- Interesting.

15:34SPEAKER- I mean, what is more Apple than not telling you?

15:39SPEAKER- That's true.

15:40SPEAKER- But I mean, it's annoying.

15:42SPEAKER- But the carrier's marketing has focused so much on 5G.

15:45SPEAKERI'm not so, I'm surprised they don't try

15:47SPEAKERto get it in your face a little more.

15:50SPEAKEROf course, once they lock you into your plan,

15:52SPEAKERwhat do they care about how loud you are?

15:55SPEAKER- You know, that's a good point,

15:56SPEAKERbut also, you know, I don't understand

16:01SPEAKERthe marketing choices behind that kind of stuff.

16:05SPEAKERThe thing, it's weird to me,

16:08SPEAKERthere is a setting in iOS that you need to flip

16:10SPEAKERthat says allow more data.

16:12SPEAKERIf you go into your cellular settings,

16:14SPEAKERif you have unlimited data

16:15SPEAKERand don't mind it chunking data out,

16:17SPEAKERyou can mash the button that says allow more data on 5G.

16:19SPEAKERI may not have turned that on

16:20SPEAKERwhen I did the early testing on this stuff.

16:24SPEAKERI'm gonna see what speed test I get right now.

16:27SPEAKERI had to wipe my phone a few weeks ago

16:28SPEAKERand some of my settings weren't,

16:29SPEAKERI just did a clean install.

16:31SPEAKER- Wait, do you try to, do you restore backups

16:34SPEAKERfrom phone to phone typically?

16:35SPEAKER- Usually, yeah.

16:36SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.

16:37SPEAKER- No kidding.

16:38SPEAKERI gave that up a long time ago.

16:40SPEAKERIt just feels more performant to start with a clean slate.

16:45SPEAKER- I have used, I have way too many two factor things

16:47SPEAKERon my phone to feel comfortable doing that at this point.

16:50SPEAKER- That's fair.

16:51SPEAKER- I'm getting like 23 megs down

16:53SPEAKERand three megs up inside the house.

16:55SPEAKER- Mega bytes down?

16:57SPEAKER- Mega bits per second.

16:58SPEAKER- Mega bits?

17:00SPEAKER- Yeah, it's slow.

17:01SPEAKER- Yeah.

17:01SPEAKER- I'm in a shitty coverage area too.

17:03SPEAKER- Okay.

17:03SPEAKERWe'll get to that stuff.

17:05SPEAKERThat's probably the actual focal point of this topic, right?

17:08SPEAKERIs what the coverage is like at long distances

17:10SPEAKERbecause the deployment sounds like it's pretty fiddly.

17:13SPEAKER- So yeah, so the trick with the mid band

17:16SPEAKERis that it penetrates reasonably well.

17:18SPEAKERIt doesn't seem to be deployed where I am.

17:20SPEAKERI don't know if that's a US spectrum thing

17:22SPEAKERor if that's just a local Verizon in my neighborhood

17:25SPEAKERslash the places I go during the pandemic thing.

17:29SPEAKERThe other, the third place that this is interesting

17:32SPEAKERis with the high band stuff.

17:34SPEAKERSo high band is 25 to 39 gigahertz,

17:36SPEAKERwhich is 25,000 megahertz to 39,000 megahertz.

17:40SPEAKERAnd this is millimeter wave.

17:42SPEAKERSo this is a different spectrum.

17:46SPEAKERIt's closer to microwaves, I believe.

17:48SPEAKER- Huh, you're gonna be cooking food

17:50SPEAKERwith your phone at some point?

17:51SPEAKER- No, you're not gonna be cooking food with your phone.

17:52SPEAKERThat is what the crazy people say,

17:54SPEAKERbut it is not, you cannot cook an egg

17:57SPEAKERwith your own millimeter wave.

17:58SPEAKER- I am being flip.

18:00SPEAKERI have heard, I mean, yeah, the term millimeter wave

18:03SPEAKERhas definitely become like a buzzword, right?

18:04SPEAKERLike that is showing up in marketing

18:06SPEAKERand a lot of headlines.

18:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's really interesting

18:10SPEAKERbecause like that high frequency

18:14SPEAKERgives you a massive, massive theoretical maximum.

18:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean like that is a damn high frequency.

18:21SPEAKERLike if you've listened to that much of this podcast

18:23SPEAKERor if you listen to the podcast at all,

18:25SPEAKERyou probably already know that,

18:26SPEAKERbut like home wifi, like fast-ass home wifi

18:29SPEAKERis still in the like five to just now

18:31SPEAKERgetting into like the six gigahertz territory.

18:33SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and it's you're looking at,

18:37SPEAKERlike if you're looking at like the wireless PCI express stuff

18:40SPEAKERlike the UWB stuff that like for the Vive,

18:44SPEAKERfor the wireless VR adapters and stuff like that,

18:47SPEAKERyou're looking at like the same kind of ranges.

18:49SPEAKERLike those are, I think 60 gigahertz.

18:50SPEAKER- Oh, wow, okay.

18:52SPEAKER- So the downside, so the upside

18:54SPEAKERis you can get real fast performance

18:56SPEAKERup to theoretical maximums of like 10 gigabits for a cell,

18:59SPEAKERwhich is shared amongst all the users,

19:00SPEAKERbut still that's a shitload of bandwidth

19:01SPEAKERfor the 10 people or 15 people

19:03SPEAKERthat connect to a cell at any given moment.

19:04SPEAKER- Can I interrupt you real quick

19:05SPEAKERand get you to elaborate on exactly what constitutes a cell?

19:08SPEAKERLike, is that an antenna or is that a physical thing

19:11SPEAKERon the tower or like what, how does that work exactly?

19:13SPEAKER- So it's a shared radio transmitter

19:15SPEAKERand receiver on the tower.

19:17SPEAKER- Okay, so it is the physical kind of antenna sort of.

19:20SPEAKER- Often there's software now, but yeah,

19:21SPEAKERthere's like a physical,

19:23SPEAKERthere's a physical thing that connects

19:25SPEAKERand then there'll be a chip that drives

19:27SPEAKERand each of those chips can drive

19:28SPEAKERa certain number of connections

19:29SPEAKERand each of those is a cell.

19:31SPEAKER- So that's the point is that there is a hard limit

19:32SPEAKERon connections there.

19:33SPEAKER- Yeah, and so this is worth getting into too.

19:36SPEAKERThere are different types,

19:37SPEAKERthere are different scales of cell.

19:39SPEAKERSo there are like Megas, I think they have a,

19:43SPEAKERthey have a, yeah, they have different labels for them.

19:48SPEAKERThere's a Metro cell, which is like,

19:51SPEAKERthey're like in San Francisco, we have Sutro Tower,

19:52SPEAKERwhich is a huge radio tower

19:54SPEAKERon top of the biggest hill in town.

19:55SPEAKERAnd it's where all the TV broadcast is.

19:57SPEAKERI'm sure there's like all sorts

19:59SPEAKERof wireless internet stuff off there.

20:00SPEAKERYou would put a Metro cell on a big area

20:05SPEAKERand give it like 20,000 milliwatts of power, right?

20:09SPEAKERThey're really big, they cover a massive, massive area

20:13SPEAKERand they're relatively low bandwidth.

20:15SPEAKERThey'll use the lower band frequencies

20:19SPEAKERto give wide areas of coverage

20:21SPEAKERthat are not particularly fast, right?

20:22SPEAKER- Okay.

20:23SPEAKER- To hundreds and hundreds of people at a time, per cell.

20:26SPEAKERSo like there'll be 500 radios on that tower

20:30SPEAKERand each radio is capable of serving 250 or 300 people.

20:33SPEAKER- Interesting.

20:33SPEAKER- So you're looking at thousands to tens of thousands

20:35SPEAKERto hundreds of thousands of people.

20:37SPEAKEROr if you're in a rural area,

20:39SPEAKERthere'll be like one of those things

20:40SPEAKERand there'll be six cells

20:41SPEAKERthat all point in different directions

20:42SPEAKERor eight cells that all point in different directions

20:44SPEAKERand those will serve, again,

20:46SPEAKERa couple of hundred people per cell.

20:47SPEAKER- And do you know what tier of service those can reach?

20:51SPEAKERLike, are we talking like Edge and 3G or is 4G on?

20:55SPEAKER- I think Edge and 3G, I think Edge is retired.

20:57SPEAKER2G is retired now, Edge was 2G.

20:59SPEAKER- Right.

21:00SPEAKER- I think 3G is turned off in the US, I don't know.

21:03SPEAKERIt depends on your region.

21:04SPEAKER- Oh wow, huh.

21:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I haven't seen 3G in ages.

21:06SPEAKER- I just assumed there were some like super rural areas

21:09SPEAKERthat still hadn't gotten 4G deployment, but who knows?

21:12SPEAKER- Well, so what happens is usually those deployments

21:14SPEAKERget pushed even in rural areas

21:16SPEAKERbecause they wanna reclaim the unused parts of the spectrum.

21:19SPEAKERSo if there's frequency shifts,

21:21SPEAKERthen like Verizon will have to get out of that spectrum

21:23SPEAKERso they can toss that back and get money back

21:26SPEAKERor license it out to somebody else.

21:28SPEAKER- Sure.

21:29SPEAKER- So that's what happened to the 2G stuff.

21:31SPEAKERAnd I think the 3G stuff went that way too,

21:32SPEAKERbut I don't remember in the US at least.

21:35SPEAKER- But to ask the question from the other direction,

21:38SPEAKERcan 4G work on a Metrocell?

21:40SPEAKERLike can it protect over that big an area?

21:44SPEAKER'Cause where we're getting to is that like

21:46SPEAKERthe FUD you hear about 5G, like the real FUD,

21:49SPEAKERnot the like it's going to turn you into a lizard alien,

21:53SPEAKERbut the this is not all it's cracked up to be FUD

21:56SPEAKERis like that the range is incredibly short.

21:59SPEAKERIt has to be deployed on like every street corner

22:01SPEAKERblock by block to be effective.

22:03SPEAKERSo that's why I'm asking like 4G can cover a big area

22:06SPEAKERwith a relatively small number of like

22:08SPEAKERtower deployments, right?

22:10SPEAKER- And 5G does that too.

22:11SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

22:12SPEAKER- Like the 5G low band is exactly that.

22:14SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

22:15SPEAKER- For all intents and purposes,

22:16SPEAKER5G low band is just 4G.

22:19SPEAKER- With a little better.

22:20SPEAKER- That's a little bit better.

22:21SPEAKER- Okay.

22:21SPEAKER- You know when we talked about Wi-Fi 6

22:23SPEAKERand like 802.11ac, the new version of Wi-Fi

22:27SPEAKERversus the current version of Wi-Fi?

22:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

22:29SPEAKER- I mean, I guess Wi-Fi 6 is the new,

22:30SPEAKERso it's AX versus AC if you care about the 802.11s

22:33SPEAKERor five versus six if you pay attention to marketing.

22:37SPEAKERSix is basically five plus some shit

22:40SPEAKERthat makes the radios better for high density areas, right?

22:42SPEAKERSo like your neighborhood specifically,

22:44SPEAKERyou'll probably see a benefit going from five to six.

22:47SPEAKERMy neighborhood with, you have 50 APs

22:50SPEAKERwithin your house that you can hit.

22:52SPEAKER- Oh, way more than that.

22:53SPEAKER- I have 10.

22:54SPEAKEROkay, yeah, you're looking at hundreds.

22:55SPEAKERI'm looking at 10 or 20.

22:56SPEAKER- The site survey and my router interface tops out at 100

22:59SPEAKERand it hits that and seems there seem to be more past that.

23:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't have, I see 10 or 20

23:05SPEAKERwhen I do a site survey. - I'm so jealous.

23:07SPEAKER- And if I switched from AC to AX,

23:10SPEAKERI probably won't see much difference, but you will.

23:13SPEAKERThis is a similar situation.

23:14SPEAKERLike they're doing better housekeeping.

23:16SPEAKERWe're better at running these kinds of radios.

23:17SPEAKERThe frequencies have changed a little tiny bit.

23:19SPEAKER- Huh, okay.

23:21SPEAKER- But more or less, it's the same as 4G

23:23SPEAKERand that's the baseline going forward.

23:24SPEAKERSo the 4G stuff will eventually go away.

23:27SPEAKERThe 5G stuff will replace it.

23:28SPEAKERYou'll be able to keep your 4G phone

23:30SPEAKERfor at least five years, probably more.

23:33SPEAKER- Okay, so this is new to me,

23:34SPEAKERhearing that low tier 5G is like actually good and usable

23:37SPEAKERand here now and stuff, because all you hear about is the,

23:40SPEAKERI guess it must be the millimeter wave stuff.

23:42SPEAKERIt's just dominating all the coverage.

23:44SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the millimeter wave stuff is interesting

23:46SPEAKER'cause like Verizon is saying,

23:47SPEAKER"Hey, you can get gigabit internet on your phone,"

23:49SPEAKERwhich is true, kind of.

23:51SPEAKERIn reality, like, okay,

23:54SPEAKERI haven't been to downtown San Francisco

23:56SPEAKERduring the pandemic, right?

23:57SPEAKER- At all?

23:58SPEAKER- Not at all.

23:59SPEAKER- Man, it's depressing, it's rough.

24:01SPEAKER- I mean, there's nobody there.

24:02SPEAKERThere's no reason for me to go.

24:03SPEAKER- No, no, but I mean, that's why it's depressing,

24:04SPEAKERlike specifically seeing all those like stores

24:06SPEAKERand restaurants boarded up.

24:08SPEAKERIt's just, you know, it's like the economic impact

24:11SPEAKERreally smacks you in the face when you go down there

24:13SPEAKERof just like, man, this is a lot of people out of work.

24:14SPEAKER- I should actually go look,

24:16SPEAKERexcept we're supposed to stay home right now,

24:17SPEAKERso I'm not going to.

24:18SPEAKERBut anyway, the upshot is the places that I've been,

24:21SPEAKERincluding some shopping, like outside targets and shopping,

24:24SPEAKERlike I've been to ceremony mall to do pick curbside pickups

24:27SPEAKERand stuff like that.

24:28SPEAKERI have yet to see, every time I stop and park the car

24:31SPEAKERsomeplace and wait for a package,

24:32SPEAKERI open up the phone and do a speed test.

24:34SPEAKERI have yet to see anything approaching 100 megabits

24:38SPEAKERon the real life testing.

24:40SPEAKER- Interesting.

24:40SPEAKER- Like I get 80, 80 is pretty reliable

24:44SPEAKERat the like Colma and Daily City.

24:46SPEAKERI'm never seeing anything over 100.

24:49SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.

24:50SPEAKER- So the high band, the 29 to 39 gigahertz

24:54SPEAKERis millimeter wave, and that right now PC mag

24:57SPEAKERdid testing, pays for testing every year,

24:59SPEAKERand they do good wireless testing around the country.

25:02SPEAKERThey saw 1.8 gigabits per second as the high speed

25:06SPEAKERon AT&T's actual 5G network.

25:09SPEAKER- Wait, hang on, did you repeat that?

25:11SPEAKERDid you say, can you repeat that?

25:12SPEAKERDid you say 1.8?

25:13SPEAKER- Gigabits per second.

25:15SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.

25:15SPEAKER- That's kind of crazy.

25:17SPEAKER- It's bonkers.

25:18SPEAKER- That's pretty fucking fast.

25:19SPEAKERLike I thought I misheard you for a second.

25:21SPEAKER- No, but it's also not representative of.

25:24SPEAKER- Oh, sure, yeah, like.

25:26SPEAKER- And most of the 5G, this is the other gotcha.

25:29SPEAKERMost of the 5G low band right now is slightly slower

25:33SPEAKERon some networks than the 4G low band,

25:36SPEAKERbecause the rate, the number of radios

25:40SPEAKERthat are deployed for 5G versus the number of radios

25:42SPEAKERthat are deployed for 4G right now

25:43SPEAKERis skewed probably in favor of the 4G.

25:46SPEAKERThis is my theory, this isn't anything anybody's written,

25:49SPEAKERbut they have to deploy, the radios get shifted

25:52SPEAKERas the demand for the new spec shifts.

25:55SPEAKERSo we'll see that change.

25:57SPEAKERBut as it rolled out initially,

25:59SPEAKERprobably not quite as fast as the existing 4G,

26:02SPEAKERnot so much that you'll notice.

26:04SPEAKER- We have to be like mega early in the deployment, right?

26:07SPEAKERLike, 'cause until the iPhone 12 came out,

26:09SPEAKERI didn't realize it.

26:09SPEAKERGranted, I don't keep up with Android handsets very well,

26:11SPEAKERbut like I didn't realize that 5G

26:13SPEAKERwas really commercially even available yet.

26:15SPEAKER- So the 5G stuff that was, the early 5G chipsets

26:19SPEAKERwere actively bad is my understanding.

26:22SPEAKERLike the early Qualcomm chipset

26:24SPEAKERthat was in the Android phones,

26:25SPEAKERthe first 5G Android phones was,

26:28SPEAKERdrew an incredible amount of power

26:29SPEAKERand got really hot and killed your battery

26:32SPEAKERand didn't really show you

26:32SPEAKERa whole lot of performance benefit.

26:34SPEAKERSo it was a real, real like don't buy this device, right?

26:38SPEAKERThey're better now, because this always happens.

26:41SPEAKERThe first couple of generations of the radios

26:43SPEAKERare almost always hinky and then they get okay.

26:45SPEAKERAnd then they get good

26:46SPEAKERand then you don't think about them anymore for five years.

26:48SPEAKERAnd then they roll out a new standard

26:49SPEAKERand we do the whole thing again.

26:51SPEAKERThe big problem with the millimeter wave stuff,

26:54SPEAKERand I think this is like, we talked about this

26:57SPEAKERwhen we talked about Stadia and Google was saying,

27:00SPEAKER"Look, 5G is gonna make game streaming possible."

27:03SPEAKERBecause like 5G inherently is good, right?

27:07SPEAKERLike they do the latencies better, the throughputs better.

27:13SPEAKERBut like for gaming, the latency is for a quarter,

27:18SPEAKERwhat it is on 4G.

27:21SPEAKERSo you're looking at like theoretical eight to 12 milliseconds

27:26SPEAKERVerizon reports early 5G is at like 30 milliseconds

27:30SPEAKERfor stuff that uses normal internet.

27:33SPEAKER- Is that end-to-end latency

27:35SPEAKERor is that just their addition to latency?

27:36SPEAKER- That's over the air latency.

27:37SPEAKERSo that's radio to radio.

27:39SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

27:40SPEAKER- Radio latency is high because you're doing shared cell

27:42SPEAKERso they're splitting all these radios.

27:43SPEAKER- Okay, so in other words, that doesn't take into account

27:45SPEAKERregular internet latency on top of that.

27:47SPEAKER- Yeah, and they're saying that we can get this down

27:50SPEAKERto 10 or 20 milliseconds round trip by deploying servers

27:52SPEAKERat the data centers connected to the back halls

27:56SPEAKERfor the carriers.

27:59SPEAKER- Should I ask you to define the term back hall

28:01SPEAKERor should that just be obvious?

28:02SPEAKER- It's the connection.

28:04SPEAKER- Is that just a backbone type thing?

28:06SPEAKER- It's their connection to the main network rather than...

28:09SPEAKERSo basically what they're saying is they want to,

28:12SPEAKERyou know how CDN, like Akamai works,

28:15SPEAKERwhere they just put data centers in all the ISP.

28:19SPEAKERThey basically connect a data center

28:20SPEAKERto the ISP's network so it doesn't have to go out

28:23SPEAKERto the internet before you get your YouTube videos

28:26SPEAKERor your Netflix videos, same thing.

28:28SPEAKER- Okay.

28:31SPEAKER- Okay, well hold on, I want to go back to,

28:33SPEAKERbefore we get back, I'm going to do this too.

28:37SPEAKERI know how I'm going to do this now.

28:40SPEAKERThe problem with the millimeter wave stuff

28:41SPEAKERis it doesn't penetrate anything.

28:43SPEAKERThere are like YouTube videos of people holding up

28:45SPEAKERa sheet of paper, putting it over the little five,

28:47SPEAKERthe millimeter wave radio and watching the speeds go down.

28:49SPEAKER- I thought by anything you meant like concrete and metal

28:53SPEAKERand maybe brick and wood

28:55SPEAKERand other common construction materials,

28:57SPEAKERbut not like a water and paper.

28:59SPEAKER- Well, what does a microwave heat up in your oven, Brad?

29:02SPEAKERDoes it heat up the food

29:03SPEAKERor does it heat up the water in the food?

29:04SPEAKER- Yeah, the water, of course, but like...

29:07SPEAKER- Same thing, like the water blocks,

29:09SPEAKERthe water in your finger, if you put it over the window,

29:10SPEAKERis going to block the thing from working.

29:12SPEAKER- Paper don't got much water in it.

29:15SPEAKER- Well, that's true.

29:17SPEAKERI don't, I haven't been able to, like I said,

29:19SPEAKERI haven't been able to find any millimeter wave cell towers

29:22SPEAKERin places that I go, so I don't know.

29:24SPEAKERI haven't gotten to repeat this,

29:25SPEAKERso it's potentially apocryphal.

29:27SPEAKERI apologize for sharing this.

29:29SPEAKERI've seen multiple YouTube videos where people do this.

29:32SPEAKERI don't, this seems to me like the millimeter wave stuff

29:36SPEAKERis better for fixed installations.

29:38SPEAKERWe'll get into that in a little bit,

29:39SPEAKERbut like, for example,

29:40SPEAKERmy parents who live in rural Virginia have a 4G,

29:44SPEAKERtheir internet connection is a fixed 4G installation.

29:47SPEAKERSo there's a 4G cell on a tower that they can see

29:51SPEAKERfrom a pole by their house.

29:52SPEAKERThey put a fixed antenna that aims at that tower,

29:55SPEAKERand that's, it's like a dedicated connection

29:59SPEAKERbetween the tower and their house,

30:01SPEAKERand it uses 4G cellular radios,

30:03SPEAKERbut it doesn't connect to AT&T or Verizon or Sprint

30:06SPEAKERor something like that, like your phone hotspot does

30:08SPEAKERor your phone does.

30:09SPEAKERIt's a private 4G network that only works for them

30:13SPEAKERand the people that subscribe to this.

30:14SPEAKERThe provider that specializes in,

30:16SPEAKERis that their only option or is that just their best option?

30:18SPEAKERThat's it, it's that or satellite.

30:20SPEAKERNo kidding, wow.

30:21SPEAKERYeah, so they don't have cell service there,

30:23SPEAKERso you can't even like use a hotspot or something.

30:25SPEAKERHow do you find it just day-to-day using it there?

30:29SPEAKERIs it significantly noticeably different?

30:32SPEAKERI assume it would be at least a little more latent

30:33SPEAKERthan your average like wired, you know, hardline broadband.

30:37SPEAKERIt's worse than cable.

30:39SPEAKERIt seems analogous to like good DSL.

30:44SPEAKEROkay, well.

30:45SPEAKERLike it was, I wasn't, I didn't do,

30:48SPEAKERlike you're able to watch Netflix,

30:49SPEAKERyou're able to watch streamed videos.

30:51SPEAKERI was able to like browse my Google Photos library

30:53SPEAKERand do voice calls and stuff like that,

30:55SPEAKERbut it was very much a situation where if like

30:57SPEAKERI had an important call that I had to make

30:59SPEAKERand it was a Zoom or something,

31:00SPEAKERI had to like get everybody else

31:02SPEAKERto not use the internet for that 20 minutes.

31:03SPEAKERYeah, that's a little troublesome.

31:05SPEAKERBut I mean, it's better than satellite,

31:07SPEAKERholy shit, and way cheaper too.

31:10SPEAKERYou don't live on the side of a mountain

31:11SPEAKERor in the middle of the woods or something,

31:12SPEAKERyou gotta make some trade-offs.

31:13SPEAKERWell, and here's the thing,

31:15SPEAKERis if this millimeter wave stuff works

31:16SPEAKERfor those kinds of fixed installations,

31:19SPEAKERthen during the times when there's not something

31:21SPEAKERblocking the radio waves, like rain or snow.

31:25SPEAKERPassing cloud.

31:26SPEAKERYeah, it's great, right?

31:28SPEAKERIt works really well.

31:31SPEAKEREven if like the 4G stuff even worked during rain and snow,

31:34SPEAKERlike we were there when it was raining and snowing

31:35SPEAKERand it was fine.

31:36SPEAKERLike there was definitely a degradation in performance,

31:39SPEAKERbut it wasn't like you can't use the internet

31:41SPEAKERor you can't take a phone call.

31:42SPEAKERIt was like, oh, the streaming is like a little blockier

31:46SPEAKERthan I would like maybe.

31:49SPEAKERSo the way you get around this in like an...

31:51SPEAKERThe upshot on this is that the microwave stuff

31:54SPEAKERis gonna be really relevant I think for installations

31:57SPEAKERand maybe for urban installations.

31:59SPEAKERSo like imagine you're walking to your office

32:03SPEAKERin San Francisco and you're on a corner on Second Street

32:06SPEAKERin Market and like that's a really dense high traffic area.

32:10SPEAKERThere's a bazillion people walking there all the time.

32:12SPEAKERPeople are always on their phones.

32:13SPEAKERYou'll probably have really dope internet

32:15SPEAKERon like corners like that.

32:17SPEAKER- Okay, so like, yeah, this is kind of answering

32:20SPEAKERthe question I haven't asked yet,

32:21SPEAKERwhich is that the conception that's forming in my mind

32:24SPEAKERof this millimeter wave stuff is that it sounds like

32:26SPEAKERit has both the upsides and the downsides of wifi.

32:29SPEAKER- Pretty much.

32:30SPEAKER- In a lot of ways.

32:31SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's fair.

32:32SPEAKER- And so given that that is apparently the case,

32:34SPEAKERlike, is that really-

32:35SPEAKER- Wifi penetrates though.

32:37SPEAKER- Well, to some degree, yes.

32:38SPEAKERBut so does that really just make the big benefit

32:41SPEAKERof the millimeter wave stuff

32:43SPEAKERthat you're essentially gonna get wifi like service

32:45SPEAKERwithout having to bother like hunting down an access point

32:48SPEAKERand authenticating with it in a public space or whatever.

32:50SPEAKERIt's like, instead of trying to get on this place's

32:53SPEAKERwifi hotspot that's probably faster than my phone,

32:56SPEAKERmy phone provider Verizon or whoever probably just has

33:00SPEAKERwhatever the equivalent, what is the local equivalent?

33:03SPEAKERWhat is the like block by block equivalent of a Metrocell?

33:06SPEAKERLike they probably have some of those up

33:08SPEAKERand I'm just going to enjoy wifi like performance

33:11SPEAKERwithout having to hunt down wifi

33:12SPEAKER'cause it's just my cell phone, right?

33:14SPEAKER- So yeah, there absolutely are.

33:15SPEAKERAnd you probably don't notice the block by block equivalents

33:18SPEAKER'cause they usually disguise them in the building facades

33:20SPEAKERand stuff like that.

33:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't mean you would see them

33:23SPEAKERor anything like that, but like-

33:24SPEAKER- But they're there, yeah.

33:26SPEAKERSo like if you look at busy corners,

33:28SPEAKERthey use these things on micro cells

33:30SPEAKERand they're either built into like the corners of buildings

33:33SPEAKERor the facades, or they're on light poles

33:36SPEAKERor bus power poles or something like that.

33:39SPEAKERThey're around, they're part of the background noise

33:41SPEAKERof our urban environments, we don't notice them anymore.

33:44SPEAKERBut those serve up to a couple of hundred users per cell.

33:51SPEAKERThey'll provide much higher speeds

33:54SPEAKERand they cover a few hundred square meters,

33:57SPEAKERlike a radius of a few hundred meters in the direction

34:00SPEAKERthey point.

34:01SPEAKERSo you're literally looking at like a half a city block

34:03SPEAKERand you put them on every corner and it works itself out.

34:06SPEAKER- Do you have any idea how the handoff technology works

34:08SPEAKERwith those things?

34:09SPEAKER'Cause I can't imagine like what mechanics are going on

34:11SPEAKERwhen you're like on the bus or even driving or whatever,

34:13SPEAKERlike to bounce from one to the next of those rapidly

34:17SPEAKERin succession, like especially maybe streaming a video

34:20SPEAKERor something like that.

34:21SPEAKERLike, it's kind of amazing to me that they are actually able

34:23SPEAKERto hand that connection off that fast.

34:26SPEAKER- Well, so it depends on the version of the spec

34:30SPEAKERand it used to depend on the provider.

34:32SPEAKERI think it's unified now across all the providers

34:34SPEAKER'cause like in the old CDMA GSM days,

34:37SPEAKERthe CDMA phones were able to do the handoff a lot better

34:40SPEAKERbecause the GSM phones assume

34:43SPEAKERthat you're always gonna connect

34:44SPEAKERso there's no confirmation phase

34:46SPEAKERand the CDMA stuff waits until the confirmation

34:49SPEAKERthat you've connected to the next cell pops

34:51SPEAKERbefore you disconnect from the old one.

34:53SPEAKER- God, I forgot about the days where you had to care about

34:55SPEAKERwhether you had a CDMA or GSM phone.

34:57SPEAKER- Backwards when I think about it.

34:59SPEAKERI think GSM did it badly and CDMA did it well.

35:03SPEAKERI don't know how 4G does the handoff

35:05SPEAKERand I definitely haven't looked

35:06SPEAKERat how 5G does the handoff.

35:08SPEAKERI know that I haven't had that, hey, you missed a handoff

35:11SPEAKERand your call disconnected thing happened in years.

35:14SPEAKERI also don't really use the phone in the car anymore.

35:15SPEAKER- Oh, sure, there's that.

35:17SPEAKER- The video stuff is easier 'cause the protocols,

35:20SPEAKERthe network protocols will handle that.

35:22SPEAKERYour video player will buffer

35:24SPEAKERand you'll have three seconds of extra video.

35:26SPEAKER- Of course, there's a lot of resilience there, of course.

35:28SPEAKER- That's actually also why if you're watching Twitch

35:31SPEAKERon a mobile device, then you often will have way more latency

35:34SPEAKERon a live stream even with the mobile version

35:37SPEAKERthan you do on a home wired browser or something like that.

35:41SPEAKER- Sure.

35:43SPEAKER- So, okay, so micro cells cover urban areas.

35:45SPEAKERThere's also these things called pico cells

35:48SPEAKERthat are for much, much smaller areas a few hundred meters.

35:54SPEAKERSorry, tens of meters that are used in train stations

35:58SPEAKERand shopping malls and interior installations.

36:01SPEAKERSo those fill in the additional gaps.

36:04SPEAKERThe way this works is the phone providers actually go out

36:06SPEAKERand they survey the entire city either by placing radios

36:11SPEAKERon cabs or buses or people or whatever

36:14SPEAKERor collecting data from your GPS enabled phones

36:18SPEAKERto tell you when the signal drops

36:19SPEAKERand they go out and they put a new radio there

36:20SPEAKERto fill in those holes.

36:22SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.

36:23SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's kind of it.

36:26SPEAKERThat's the big thing.

36:28SPEAKERI wouldn't get super excited about the millimeter wave radio

36:31SPEAKEReven though your phone has a new little window in it

36:33SPEAKERthat's supposed to let these special radio waves in.

36:35SPEAKER- What is that window?

36:36SPEAKERIs it glass or what does it look like?

36:37SPEAKER- I assume it's glass, it's just like a little,

36:40SPEAKERit's a little different colored thing

36:41SPEAKERon the side of the phone.

36:43SPEAKERHere, I'll pull the case down so you can see,

36:45SPEAKERbut it's like--

36:48SPEAKER- It's very blurry, it's hard to,

36:50SPEAKERit's just kind of a big shiny mess.

36:51SPEAKERI'll take a picture and we can use that as the photo for the--

36:55SPEAKER- But I mean, I guess the other half of the point

36:58SPEAKERI was trying to make about like the millimeter wave 5G

37:01SPEAKERis basically just wifi except cell,

37:03SPEAKERis that like, you tell me,

37:07SPEAKERwas it always unrealistic to expect?

37:09SPEAKERI guess, let me rephrase this.

37:11SPEAKERWhat I expected when I heard 5G was on the way was like,

37:14SPEAKERoh, it'll be wifi like performance at distance,

37:17SPEAKERat scale like 4G was.

37:19SPEAKERIt's like, oh, 4G is just way faster cell,

37:21SPEAKERbut you still get the benefits of like--

37:24SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it is just in really specific circumstances

37:27SPEAKERthat no one's gonna see in real life.

37:28SPEAKER- Right, well, that's what I mean is like,

37:29SPEAKERwe're not just, we're not gonna get the wide scale rollout

37:32SPEAKERlike we did with 4G where same range on transmitters

37:36SPEAKERand stuff like that, but way faster, right?

37:37SPEAKERLike there are gonna be inherent limitations

37:39SPEAKERto the super fast 5G that sound like

37:41SPEAKERthey're just physics related, right?

37:43SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, the TLDR on the 5G stuff

37:46SPEAKERis that 4G is really good.

37:47SPEAKERAnd they're like, it is definitely not a 3G to 4G situation.

37:53SPEAKER- That's more what I'm getting at, yes.

37:55SPEAKER- You go from like mobile internet being kind of shitty,

37:57SPEAKERbut working okay to like, oh, actually now my phone

38:01SPEAKERdoes work while I'm at PAX, right?

38:03SPEAKERRemember when we used to go to PAX

38:04SPEAKERand our phones wouldn't work for three days?

38:05SPEAKER- Yep.

38:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I switched to Verizon to fix that.

38:08SPEAKER- No, yep.

38:09SPEAKER- But yeah, so like we're definitely,

38:13SPEAKERwe're in a situation where this stuff

38:14SPEAKERis becoming more mature.

38:16SPEAKERThere's other parts of the spec that we didn't talk about

38:18SPEAKERthat are kind of interesting about

38:23SPEAKERdifferent standards for different types of uses.

38:28SPEAKEROne of them, the enhanced mobile broadband

38:30SPEAKERis what we're talking about with like phones, obviously.

38:34SPEAKERUltra reliable low latency is for things

38:37SPEAKERthat are robust, like emergency services.

38:40SPEAKERI assume that this is what like a modern pager equivalent

38:43SPEAKERwill connect to, or medical devices, stuff like that.

38:46SPEAKERThings that you want to have constant uptime

38:49SPEAKERand uninterrupted data.

38:50SPEAKERAnd then like internet of things applications

38:53SPEAKERalso apply here for devices that are more,

39:02SPEAKERwhat's the word, that need to be connected

39:05SPEAKERto a wide area network and not a local network.

39:09SPEAKERAnd some of those applications are like,

39:11SPEAKERthat's not like, people always suggest autonomous cars

39:14SPEAKERin that, but that's not really what you're thinking about.

39:16SPEAKERYou're thinking more about like weather sensors

39:18SPEAKERand drones that you provide Wi-Fi to firefighters for,

39:26SPEAKERor that you use as repeaters for 5G signal

39:30SPEAKERto come in to disaster areas, stuff like that.

39:32SPEAKER- Critical infrastructure type stuff.

39:34SPEAKER- Critical infrastructure is exactly it.

39:36SPEAKERAnd that would be limited to first responders

39:38SPEAKERand people like that. - That's cool.

39:39SPEAKER- Yeah. - That's neat.

39:42SPEAKER- Started to ask, I mean, I don't know if are we at the,

39:44SPEAKERjust Brad asks random questions that came to mind.

39:46SPEAKER- Yeah, go for it, man.

39:47SPEAKER- I mean, I started to ask if, is there going to be a 6G?

39:49SPEAKERLike, is there anywhere else in the spectrum

39:51SPEAKERto go from here?

39:52SPEAKERBut then I just happened to pull up

39:53SPEAKERthe radio frequency Wikipedia page,

39:56SPEAKERwhich apparently tops out at 300 gigahertz.

39:58SPEAKERSo I don't know how much more of that spectrum

40:00SPEAKERis accessible by telecom companies, but.

40:04SPEAKER- Well, when you get up into those high frequencies,

40:07SPEAKERyou end up like cooking things.

40:08SPEAKER- Yeah, so maybe that actually segues

40:10SPEAKERinto the controversies and concerns segment of this,

40:15SPEAKERwhich is that one of the genuine concerns

40:17SPEAKERis the weather prediction, weather forecast stuff.

40:21SPEAKER- Yeah, well, okay.

40:23SPEAKERFirst off, I was told by the president

40:25SPEAKERthat America is leading in the 6G race.

40:28SPEAKER- Okay, we're there already.

40:31SPEAKERLet's just increment the number by one.

40:33SPEAKERIt's very impressive when you just say,

40:36SPEAKERthis thing is bigger than that other thing.

40:37SPEAKERPeople love it.

40:39SPEAKER- So just to be clear,

40:41SPEAKERI wanted to make sure I get this right,

40:43SPEAKER'cause I kind of messed it up earlier.

40:45SPEAKERMicrowaves range from 300 megahertz to 300 gigahertz.

40:48SPEAKERIt's this entire range, right?

40:50SPEAKEREverything we're talking about here,

40:51SPEAKEReverything from 300 megahertz on.

40:53SPEAKERThe bands where we cook are in the 2.4 gigahertz range,

41:04SPEAKERand they're really high power compared

41:06SPEAKERto what we're using in phones.

41:08SPEAKERSo we're talking about milliwatts for phones,

41:13SPEAKERand you're talking about 800 watts on a,

41:15SPEAKERseven and 800 watts on a commercial microwave oven, usually.

41:18SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

41:21SPEAKER- So anyway, but okay, so your question was about,

41:26SPEAKERI answered a question that you didn't ask.

41:27SPEAKER- I started to ask a bunch of more EM questions

41:30SPEAKERthat we probably should--

41:31SPEAKER- Oh, you asked--

41:32SPEAKER- Either dedicate an entire episode to,

41:34SPEAKERor get a physicist on here to talk about.

41:36SPEAKER- We can totally get a physicist on to talk about--

41:38SPEAKER- I would, dude, I am super fascinated

41:40SPEAKERby that whole, that entire topic.

41:43SPEAKER- Yeah, so the TLDR is that at this point,

41:46SPEAKERwe've had enough longitudinal studies

41:49SPEAKERabout EM radiation interfering, affecting humans.

41:52SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I'm not worried about that stuff.

41:54SPEAKER- Well no, but I just want to say it,

41:55SPEAKERbecause we are confident that you are fine.

41:58SPEAKERThis stuff is not causing lasting damage to people.

42:01SPEAKERIt doesn't cause autism.

42:02SPEAKER- In the radio frequency, specifically,

42:04SPEAKERwhich is what we use for frequency.

42:06SPEAKER- All these frequencies are radio frequencies.

42:07SPEAKER- Well, you were talking about, okay,

42:09SPEAKERwell, here is a potentially ignorant question.

42:11SPEAKERIs microwave just part of the radio frequency?

42:14SPEAKER- So the entire EM spectrum, from x-rays to microwaves,

42:18SPEAKERthey're all, it's all the same stuff.

42:21SPEAKERIt's just a different--

42:22SPEAKER- No, I know that, I know that.

42:22SPEAKERWhat I'm saying is like RF is a specific range, right?

42:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:26SPEAKER- And I thought microwave was a distinctive range from RF.

42:29SPEAKERIs it actually, is RF inclusive of microwave?

42:34SPEAKER- Yes.

42:35SPEAKER- Should I be asking these questions on this podcast?

42:37SPEAKER- I'm making sure, I'm making,

42:38SPEAKERone is a super set of the other,

42:39SPEAKERand I can't remember which is which.

42:40SPEAKER- Okay, so that's what I was trying to establish.

42:42SPEAKERI didn't realize that.

42:42SPEAKERI thought they were totally separate, exclusive.

42:46SPEAKERI thought they were mutually exclusive segments

42:48SPEAKERof the EM band.

42:51SPEAKER- The segments that we learned in middle school

42:53SPEAKERor high school or wherever we learned that stuff

42:55SPEAKERin science class is non-definitive, I would say.

43:01SPEAKER- Okay.

43:02SPEAKER- It's a construct rather than a definition.

43:05SPEAKER- I see.

43:06SPEAKER- Does that make sense?

43:07SPEAKER- Well, okay.

43:08SPEAKERI mean, I could just look at the numbers, right?

43:09SPEAKERI apologize to everyone listening to this podcast.

43:12SPEAKERRadio frequency is from 20 kilohertz to 300 gigahertz.

43:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:17SPEAKER- Microwave is from 300 megahertz to 300 gigahertz.

43:22SPEAKERSo it has to be part of the RF spectrum then.

43:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:25SPEAKERIt's all part of the EM spectrum.

43:27SPEAKERThe radio spectrum is a lower frequency.

43:29SPEAKER- Again, I know that, I just thought that microwave

43:32SPEAKERwas entirely separate from RF,

43:34SPEAKERwhich apparently is not the case.

43:35SPEAKER- No, no.

43:36SPEAKERThese are all just the same thing.

43:37SPEAKERThese are all the same photons,

43:38SPEAKERjust different frequencies and wavelengths

43:44SPEAKERand energies, I guess.

43:48SPEAKERSo yeah, it's fine.

43:49SPEAKERYou're not gonna hurt anything.

43:50SPEAKERThe 5G is not activating the COVID

43:53SPEAKERthat Bill Gates and Elon Musk have distributed

43:55SPEAKERaround the world using, sorry.

43:57SPEAKERBill Gates and Tim Apple have distributed

43:59SPEAKERaround the world using their technology rays.

44:01SPEAKER- The details are very important.

44:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I gotta get this right.

44:04SPEAKERThe chem trails are not real,

44:05SPEAKEReven though we've talked about them for years.

44:08SPEAKER- Make sure you don't fudge any minor detail,

44:11SPEAKERany of the minutia of this extremely specific

44:13SPEAKERand well-tested theory.

44:16SPEAKER- The radio, the microwave, sorry,

44:19SPEAKERmillimeter wave radios interfering with Doppler radar,

44:23SPEAKERwhat is actually a real thing?

44:24SPEAKER'Cause they do work in the same kind of frequency ranges.

44:28SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I was starting to touch on earlier.

44:29SPEAKERWhat is it?

44:30SPEAKERThe water in the atmosphere is reactive

44:32SPEAKERat around 24 gigahertz, I believe.

44:35SPEAKER- Well, the water reacts at a bunch of different frequencies

44:37SPEAKERbut the Doppler radar that we use in the U.S.

44:40SPEAKERuses 24 gigahertz, yeah.

44:43SPEAKERThe upshot is that the FCC and NOAA

44:46SPEAKERand I think NASA got together and they,

44:50SPEAKERit seems like I, it's shocking

44:53SPEAKERbut there isn't really reliable data coming out

44:55SPEAKERof the FAA or FCC these days.

44:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I tried to find a definitive answer to this

44:59SPEAKERand it was tough to track down.

45:01SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it's the home of FUD.

45:03SPEAKER- It seems like they all agreed to not allow

45:06SPEAKERthe spectrum that overlaps, the part of the spectrum

45:08SPEAKERthat overlaps with Doppler radar in the U.S.

45:11SPEAKERSo our 5G suffers a little bit in a way

45:13SPEAKERthat probably doesn't affect any actual human beings

45:16SPEAKERand the Doppler weather radar,

45:17SPEAKERwhich saves probably thousands of lives a year,

45:21SPEAKERremains unaffected.

45:22SPEAKER- I hope you're right about that.

45:23SPEAKERI can't say for sure.

45:25SPEAKERAll I could, the best I could find was a story from May

45:27SPEAKERsaying that the FCC had in fact approved a plan

45:30SPEAKERfrom Legato Networks.

45:32SPEAKER- Okay. - But I couldn't figure out

45:33SPEAKERexactly what the plan is or I can,

45:35SPEAKERI'm all literally on the site trying to figure out

45:40SPEAKERwhat their plan entailed.

45:41SPEAKER- Okay.

45:42SPEAKER- There were some quotes from Ajit Pai,

45:44SPEAKERthe head of the FCC kind of like shitting on what the NOAA

45:49SPEAKERand NASA had had to say about their concerns,

45:51SPEAKERsaying that he trusted their experts

45:53SPEAKERand that he thought everything would be fine.

45:55SPEAKERSo I'm not--

45:56SPEAKER- The current administration seems to trust business

45:59SPEAKERinstead of scientists.

46:00SPEAKER- That's the upshot of what I was getting from that.

46:02SPEAKERI'm not 100% convinced that we're out of the woods here.

46:05SPEAKERI do have some actual real detail about this though,

46:08SPEAKERfrom a story in Wired from about a year and a half ago.

46:11SPEAKER- Okay.

46:12SPEAKER- Where they talked to some people at the NOAA

46:14SPEAKERabout this stuff.

46:15SPEAKER- Oh, I like that.

46:16SPEAKER- This came out of some hearings that happened in Congress,

46:21SPEAKERbut the acting chief of the NOAA at that time,

46:25SPEAKERI was kind of surprised they were able to quantify

46:27SPEAKERthis stuff to this degree.

46:28SPEAKERI'll quote from this,

46:29SPEAKER"Said that interference from 5G wireless phones

46:32SPEAKERcould reduce the accuracy of weather forecasts by 30%."

46:36SPEAKERThat's equivalent, he said,

46:37SPEAKERto the quality of weather predictions four decades ago.

46:42SPEAKER- Well, that sounds great.

46:43SPEAKER- Yeah, and skimming down a little further,

46:45SPEAKERthey actually give some more context to that.

46:46SPEAKERThat reduction would give coastal residents

46:48SPEAKERtwo or three fewer days to prepare for a hurricane,

46:51SPEAKERfor example, and it could lead to incorrect predictions

46:55SPEAKERof the storm's final path to land.

46:57SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the good news is we can always Sharpie

46:59SPEAKERa new path onto the map if they print,

47:00SPEAKERso it'll probably work itself out, right?

47:02SPEAKER- Fair point, I suppose.

47:04SPEAKER- I mean, look, two or three days worth of predictions

47:07SPEAKERis billions of dollars in property loss, human life loss,

47:11SPEAKERlike, you know, yeah, it seems like we should not do that.

47:14SPEAKERI don't know.

47:14SPEAKER- He said we can't move away from 23.8 gigahertz

47:17SPEAKERor we would, but that is the, I'll quote again,

47:24SPEAKER"That's because water vapor emits a faint signal

47:26SPEAKERin the atmosphere at a frequency of 23.8 gigahertz."

47:30SPEAKERThat is extremely close to the one sold

47:32SPEAKERfor 5G wireless communications at 24 gigahertz.

47:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

47:37SPEAKER- Here's the last thing I'll mention about this,

47:40SPEAKERwhich I thought was super interesting.

47:42SPEAKERI'll just read this last paragraph here.

47:44SPEAKER- Is this in the same article?

47:45SPEAKER- Yes.

47:46SPEAKERIn the meantime, Girth, that's the NOAA official,

47:51SPEAKERsays this issue probably won't go away anytime soon.

47:54SPEAKERThe FCC plans future 5G auctions

47:56SPEAKERfor the radio frequency bands near ones used

47:59SPEAKERto detect rain and snow at 36 to 37 gigahertz,

48:02SPEAKERatmospheric temperature at 50.2 to 50.4 gigahertz,

48:08SPEAKERand clouds and ice at 80 to 90 gigahertz.

48:12SPEAKERThis is not one and done, Girth added.

48:15SPEAKERToday it's 23.8, tomorrow it's 36.

48:18SPEAKER- So if the weather wants to be measured accurately,

48:21SPEAKERit needs to fucking pony up at the auctions, right?

48:23SPEAKERThat's how capitalism works.

48:24SPEAKER- They should just pay for their spectrum auction

48:27SPEAKERjust like everybody else.

48:28SPEAKER- Let the clouds pay, man, that's what I say.

48:31SPEAKERThe clouds got all those computers,

48:32SPEAKERthey can pay for the radio that they need.

48:35SPEAKER- Damn cheapskate, cumulonimbus.

48:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I hate a Cirrus, they're so lazy.

48:41SPEAKER- Yeah, but it was interesting to see all this stuff

48:43SPEAKERquantified and also kind of gloomy to realize

48:46SPEAKERthis is gonna be an ongoing problem for a while.

48:48SPEAKER- Hey, the good news is when you're home for the holidays,

48:51SPEAKERactually don't go home for the holidays,

48:52SPEAKERbut if you're talking to relatives at the holidays

48:54SPEAKERand they're like, "Well, elections don't matter,"

48:56SPEAKERyou can explain to them that the shitty weather forecasts

48:58SPEAKERthey'll get in the future will be because

49:00SPEAKERthey voted for the wrong asshole.

49:01SPEAKER- Yeah, let them know.

49:02SPEAKER- That's all I'm gonna say.

49:03SPEAKER- Hey, remember how the weather forecast was in the '80s?

49:07SPEAKER- Welcome back.

49:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:09SPEAKER- The guy who did the weather in the '80s in Bristol

49:12SPEAKERhad the weirdest haircut of all time.

49:14SPEAKER- Oh, yeah?

49:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it made his head kind of mushroom shaped.

49:17SPEAKERIt was like down on the sides

49:21SPEAKERand then it curved back in around his ears,

49:22SPEAKERbut you couldn't see his ears.

49:24SPEAKERIt was a strange haircut.

49:25SPEAKER- Do you remember his name by any chance?

49:30SPEAKER'Cause I want to see it now.

49:32SPEAKER- Man, he was on channel 11, which was the CBS.

49:35SPEAKERWJHL was the-

49:37SPEAKER- We'll do some offline research.

49:39SPEAKER- Yeah, we can dig into this.

49:41SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:43SPEAKER- I think that's, unless you feel like you have

49:45SPEAKERmore hot questions about-

49:48SPEAKER- I think that's a pretty good primer.

49:50SPEAKER- Well, actually, we should talk about what this means

49:52SPEAKERif you're buying a phone.

49:53SPEAKERIt probably doesn't matter.

49:55SPEAKER- Okay, that's pretty short and to the point.

49:58SPEAKERDon't worry about it right now.

49:59SPEAKER- If you keep your phone for less than five or 10 years,

50:01SPEAKERyou're gonna be fine getting a 4G phone right now.

50:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:06SPEAKER- I think that-

50:06SPEAKER- Oh, God, actually, it just occurred to me

50:08SPEAKERthat I am totally in this exact position

50:10SPEAKERand hadn't really thought about that.

50:11SPEAKERI was thinking about upgrading

50:14SPEAKERto either an iPhone SE or a 12.

50:18SPEAKER- Well, so I think that the, from my experience,

50:22SPEAKER4G is fine for most of the stuff that I do.

50:25SPEAKER- Especially for my use case for a phone and mobile data,

50:28SPEAKERI have no complaints with 4G.

50:30SPEAKER- Yeah, the things that, like the other things

50:33SPEAKERthat a new phone will give you

50:34SPEAKERare going to be much more impactful,

50:35SPEAKERlike a new camera or faster face ID or better thumbs

50:39SPEAKERor whatever it is you do.

50:39SPEAKER- Yeah, that all goes without saying,

50:40SPEAKERbut I mean, the one thing you pointed out

50:43SPEAKERthat I hadn't considered is that 4G support

50:45SPEAKERwill literally go away at some point,

50:47SPEAKERbut it sounds like that is a good long way off.

50:49SPEAKER- It'll be a while.

50:50SPEAKERYou have time.

50:50SPEAKER- Okay.

50:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:53SPEAKERI don't, I don't, I wouldn't,

50:55SPEAKERlike if you'd asked me this last year

50:57SPEAKERand you were an Android customer,

50:58SPEAKERI would have probably recommended against buying a 5G phone

51:03SPEAKERbecause the Android chipsets were bad.

51:05SPEAKERI think now they're probably fine.

51:07SPEAKERLooking at the reviews of the 5G, the current crop,

51:10SPEAKERthis year's crop of 5G Android phones,

51:12SPEAKERI think you're probably fine.

51:13SPEAKERThe iPhone, I haven't noticed bad battery life

51:15SPEAKERor anything like that.

51:16SPEAKERIt doesn't get hot when I'm on the 5G radio.

51:18SPEAKERI haven't gotten the millimeter wave yet stuff.

51:20SPEAKERThey didn't set it so you can turn it off

51:22SPEAKERif you don't want to use it.

51:23SPEAKERSo I think you're probably, I think we're probably okay.

51:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:27SPEAKER- But, but like I wouldn't,

51:29SPEAKERif you have a perfectly good 4G phone that you're happy with

51:32SPEAKERand you don't feel a need to upgrade for other stuff,

51:33SPEAKERI would not go upgrade it just to get on the 5G.

51:36SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

51:37SPEAKERThat's the bigger point here, right?

51:38SPEAKERThis is 5G is absolutely not something

51:39SPEAKERto go running out the door, trying to acquire.

51:41SPEAKER- Exactly.

51:45SPEAKERBut yeah, I think that's, I think that's it.

51:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I got a better understanding of the stuff.

51:48SPEAKERLike I said, you know, the millimeter wave,

51:50SPEAKERthe doesn't penetrate anything,

51:52SPEAKERthe doesn't go further than like two city blocks stuff

51:55SPEAKERis like all I had ever heard about 5G.

51:57SPEAKERSo it's nice to know that there is more to it

51:58SPEAKERand that some of it is actually okay.

52:01SPEAKER- Yeah, like it seems like at worst,

52:05SPEAKERit's as good as the status quo.

52:08SPEAKERI mean, maybe not right at this moment,

52:09SPEAKERbut it will be as they shift radios from 4G to 5G.

52:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:13SPEAKER- Shift cells from 4G to 5G.

52:14SPEAKER- Yes.

52:17SPEAKER- As always, this is the part of the show

52:19SPEAKERwhere we thank the people who make the show possible,

52:21SPEAKERour wonderful patrons over at patreon.com/techpod.

52:27SPEAKER- Big thanks to them and also thanks to everyone else

52:28SPEAKERwho listens and puts up with us,

52:31SPEAKERfumbling our way through our spotty,

52:34SPEAKERincomplete understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum.

52:37SPEAKER- Look, this is, we said it on the patron episode,

52:41SPEAKERNovember, it turns out is the worst month of the year

52:43SPEAKERfor both of our like day job situations

52:47SPEAKER'cause we were both just absolutely swamped over

52:49SPEAKERthe last four weeks.

52:50SPEAKER- Oh boy, yeah.

52:52SPEAKER- I think I'm excited about December

52:55SPEAKERjust because it's back to normal-ish,

52:58SPEAKERat least for a little bit.

53:01SPEAKERAnd yeah, we do appreciate you all bearing with us

53:03SPEAKERand thanks to everybody.

53:05SPEAKERWe get such good tweets.

53:06SPEAKERI've been trying to retweet them when I see them,

53:10SPEAKEReither asking questions about the show

53:11SPEAKERor sharing what you like about the show

53:12SPEAKERor sharing what you don't like about the show.

53:15SPEAKERAnd we appreciate all of those.

53:17SPEAKERLetting your friends who are into this kind of stuff

53:19SPEAKERknow about what we do is definitely appreciated.

53:22SPEAKER- You know what my favorite EM fact is?

53:25SPEAKER- Yeah, I'd love an EM fact.

53:26SPEAKER- You wanna hear one?

53:27SPEAKERWelcome to EM facts.

53:29SPEAKER- It's our new podcast.

53:30SPEAKER- That's right.

53:31SPEAKER(laughs)

53:32SPEAKERThe visible spectrum is made up of, you know,

53:36SPEAKERthe seven prime grid Roy GBF, right?

53:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

53:39SPEAKER- The colors, starts with red, ends with violet.

53:42SPEAKER- Yeah.

53:43SPEAKER- What is the spectrum before the visible spectrum?

53:48SPEAKER- The red end or the blue end?

53:50SPEAKER- Yeah, before the red end.

53:52SPEAKER- Infrared.

53:53SPEAKER- Infrared.

53:53SPEAKERWhat comes after the violet?

53:55SPEAKER- Ultraviolet.

53:57SPEAKER- Whoa, close.

53:59SPEAKER- That's close.

54:00SPEAKER- Ultraviolet.

54:00SPEAKER- Yes.

54:01SPEAKERYeah.

54:02SPEAKERIsn't that cool?

54:03SPEAKER- What's after ultraviolet though?

54:04SPEAKER- Isn't that cool?

54:05SPEAKERIs it X-ray?

54:07SPEAKER- Yeah, that is correct.

54:09SPEAKER- I think it's X-ray and then gamma, right?

54:11SPEAKERSo if you go too purple, you turn into the Hulk.

54:14SPEAKER(laughs)

54:14SPEAKER- That's right.

54:15SPEAKER- And if you go too red, you get cooked.

54:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:18SPEAKERThe gamma's it, right?

54:19SPEAKERThat's it.

54:20SPEAKER- That's it.

54:21SPEAKER- That you're in exploding,

54:22SPEAKERyou're in supernova territory at that point.

54:24SPEAKER- The wavelengths are very small.

54:26SPEAKERGamma rays are what they use to carve low,

54:32SPEAKERvery low process size chips now is my understanding.

54:37SPEAKER- Really?

54:38SPEAKER- Or at least that's what we're working toward.

54:39SPEAKER- Nanoscale lithography, is that what we're?

54:41SPEAKER- Yeah, nanometer size.

54:43SPEAKER- Wow, that's crazy.

54:44SPEAKER- Cuts in the chips.

54:46SPEAKER- That came up, I know we need to end this podcast,

54:48SPEAKERbut that came up on another podcast I was on yesterday.

54:52SPEAKER- Wait, you do another podcast?

54:54SPEAKERAre you cheating on me?

54:55SPEAKER- No, it's just a one and done guest spot, I promise.

54:59SPEAKER- God.

55:00SPEAKER- It was about the likelihood of refresh consoles

55:03SPEAKERoff this new cycle, like they did the PS4 Pro

55:05SPEAKERand the One X.

55:06SPEAKER- Oh yeah, like a process size shrink or whatever, yeah.

55:07SPEAKERBut yeah, I didn't get into that territory,

55:09SPEAKERbut I almost brought that up.

55:10SPEAKERLike, I don't think there's a lot of headroom

55:13SPEAKERto die shrink and 'cause there are even setting aside

55:17SPEAKERlike a pro, like a faster model,

55:19SPEAKERlike that was typically what would precipitate the,

55:21SPEAKERlike, you know, there was the fat ugly PS3,

55:24SPEAKERthen there was like the PS3 slim, which is smaller.

55:26SPEAKERAnd then there was like the PS3 tiny

55:28SPEAKERat the end of the generation, you know?

55:30SPEAKERAnd like, if you go read about those models,

55:32SPEAKERlike every one of those, like the main chip and the system

55:35SPEAKERwent through like a pretty significant die shrink,

55:37SPEAKERbut these things are already seven nanometer.

55:39SPEAKERAnd like, maybe they could go to five at some point

55:41SPEAKERin the next five, seven years or whatever.

55:43SPEAKERBut like, I don't know if we're gonna see that cycle

55:46SPEAKERso much anymore.

55:48SPEAKER- Well, I mean, they use the chiplet stuff though.

55:50SPEAKERSo presumably there's opportunity to optimize the design

55:55SPEAKERof those chiplets based on things that they learned

55:57SPEAKERfrom actual practice.

55:58SPEAKER- That's fair, that's a good point, yeah.

55:59SPEAKER- Like if you look at the Xbox 360 and PS3 is interesting

56:02SPEAKER'cause they kept combining,

56:04SPEAKERlike those weren't system on the chips,

56:05SPEAKERthose were systems on a board and there were a bunch of chips

56:07SPEAKERthat made the thing work.

56:09SPEAKERAnd then toward the end of, by the end of the 360,

56:11SPEAKERthey just jammed everything into one big giant die

56:13SPEAKERpretty much, I think.

56:14SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair, that's a good point.

56:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know, I'm interested to see.

56:19SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:23SPEAKER- There will be things, the thing is,

56:28SPEAKEReven though they can't do die shrinks,

56:30SPEAKERthey can still add more pipelines

56:32SPEAKERand add more like raster and compute and shader pipelines.

56:39SPEAKERSo like there's still, I think we've reached a point

56:45SPEAKERwhere we're not gonna see performance increases in general

56:47SPEAKERfrom shrinking process sizes for very much longer.

56:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

56:49SPEAKERLike they're gonna see by going more parallel.

56:51SPEAKER- Totally, they can absolutely scale out performance.

56:53SPEAKERI was thinking more just like,

56:55SPEAKERthis was more in the kind of thermal,

56:57SPEAKERlike the TDP territory of like,

56:59SPEAKERare we gonna see a PS5 slim

57:00SPEAKERif they can't exactly shrink the current SOC down much?

57:04SPEAKER- No, we're gonna see it.

57:06SPEAKERThe next PS5 is gonna be PS5 thick with two Cs,

57:11SPEAKERwhere like the core is even bigger.

57:13SPEAKER- Like how are they gonna make a smaller PS5

57:15SPEAKERif they can't shrink that chip down?

57:16SPEAKER- Look, here's how you do it.

57:18SPEAKERYou get a bucket, a drywall mud bucket,

57:20SPEAKERand you put two hoses into it

57:22SPEAKERand you connect those hoses to the PS5.

57:24SPEAKERAnd that thing is your heat reservoir.

57:26SPEAKERAnd when it starts boiling,

57:27SPEAKERyou have to go change the water.

57:28SPEAKER- Yeah, sounds like some solid engineering to me.

57:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that thing will never overheat.

57:33SPEAKERIt'll be great.

57:35SPEAKERBut yeah, thanks.

57:37SPEAKERWe were thinking our patrons, Brad, I'm sorry.

57:39SPEAKERThank you all for supporting the show.

57:41SPEAKERIf you wanna support the show

57:42SPEAKERand join the fabulous TechPod discord,

57:44SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful nerds just like you.

57:48SPEAKERLook, I hate calling people out individually,

57:52SPEAKERbut the guy we talked about on the patron episode,

57:56SPEAKERhis nemesis from college.

57:58SPEAKER- Oh, I just saw that right before we started recording.

58:00SPEAKERI just happened to glance in there and landed.

58:02SPEAKERI was scrolling around looking to see

58:04SPEAKERif he ever elaborated on why that was, did he?

58:06SPEAKER- I didn't wanna ask, I was afraid to ask.

58:09SPEAKERI felt bad, but now I brought it up and it's even worse.

58:11SPEAKER- I hope that was like a jovial nemesis,

58:13SPEAKERlike kind of like, you know,

58:15SPEAKERa good natured rivalry sort of situation

58:17SPEAKERand not something truly bad.

58:19SPEAKER- I really hope so.

58:20SPEAKER- Perhaps they were just professional rivals

58:22SPEAKERand there was some kind of, you know,

58:23SPEAKERsome friendly, professional one-upsmanship going on.

58:26SPEAKER- Yeah, let's say that's, let's hope that that's the case.

58:30SPEAKERThe other thing that was cool was this morning,

58:33SPEAKERwe had a conversation about the weather forecasts

58:38SPEAKERon the different, like how AccuWeather is kind of bad now.

58:40SPEAKERAnd they've gone to for-profit weather forecasting

58:43SPEAKERand somebody recommended a, I'm not gonna say what it was

58:47SPEAKER'cause I don't wanna out anybody,

58:48SPEAKERbut like they recommended a site.

58:50SPEAKERThey're like, oh yeah, I actually work on that.

58:51SPEAKERI'm glad you guys like that, that's really cool.

58:54SPEAKERAnd that was a delight.

58:55SPEAKERSo it is such a wonderful group of nerds.

58:59SPEAKERWe're getting new people in every day

59:01SPEAKERwith like just such a wide range of interests and expertise.

59:05SPEAKERIt is a delightful place to hang out.

59:09SPEAKERYou can join for two bucks a month

59:12SPEAKERif you sign up for the Patreon.

59:15SPEAKERAnd we appreciate everybody, whether you're, like I said,

59:18SPEAKERwhether you're sharing the word about the show

59:19SPEAKERor chatting in the Discord or whatever,

59:21SPEAKERit's great to have you.

59:23SPEAKER- Absolutely.

59:24SPEAKER- But extra special thanks, as always,

59:26SPEAKERto our executive producer level patrons,

59:28SPEAKERJacob Chappell, Andrew Cotton, David Allen,

59:30SPEAKERand James Kamik, who we appreciate all of y'all

59:36SPEAKERand hope you enjoy what we do.

59:38SPEAKERYou can find out more about the Patreon

59:40SPEAKERat patreon.com/techpod.

59:45SPEAKER- That's right. - Brad?

59:46SPEAKER- Yes.

59:47SPEAKER- You looked like you had something to say there.

59:49SPEAKER- I don't know, I probably did.

59:50SPEAKERIt's gone though. - You're just walking away.

59:51SPEAKER- Yup.

59:52SPEAKER- I think you should get a flat Christmas tree

59:54SPEAKERto go on your headphones.

59:55SPEAKER- Thanks, wait, what?

59:57SPEAKER- I think you should get like a felt Christmas tree

59:59SPEAKERthat just felt.

1:00:00SPEAKER- Okay, that sounds a little top heavy to me, I don't know.

1:00:04SPEAKER- Yeah, it shouldn't be round.

1:00:05SPEAKERIt should be flat.

1:00:06SPEAKER- I mean, I'm kind of, I'm angry

1:00:07SPEAKERthat you already took the best idea in the antlers

1:00:09SPEAKERand I've got to come up with some,

1:00:11SPEAKERthere's nothing is going to be either as good as that

1:00:14SPEAKERor as easy to find as that, because--

1:00:15SPEAKER- They're so sparkly.

1:00:16SPEAKER- The antler headband makes perfect sense,

1:00:18SPEAKERbut like, what else is there in that category?

1:00:21SPEAKERI don't know.

1:00:22SPEAKER- You could do the Christmas tree

1:00:23SPEAKERand then you could put some lights.

1:00:25SPEAKERYou could like wire up some LEDs on there

1:00:26SPEAKERand have them twinkle.

1:00:27SPEAKER- Yes, that idea has already been proposed

1:00:30SPEAKERin this household, unfortunately, in the last hour, so.

1:00:32SPEAKER- I can't do green 'cause of the green screen.

1:00:36SPEAKERSo the tree's out for me.

1:00:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it does seem like this is going to end

1:00:40SPEAKERwith me wearing a battery pack for a while.

1:00:43SPEAKER- I like this, I like where this is going.

1:00:44SPEAKER- Yeah, good stuff.

1:00:45SPEAKER- Okay, we'll see you all next week.

1:00:46SPEAKERThanks for listening, everybody.

1:00:48SPEAKERHope your holiday season is starting well

1:00:51SPEAKERand oh, hey, just as a fair warning,

1:00:55SPEAKERshipping times are getting real bad.

1:00:56SPEAKERSo if you're trying to order stuff for Christmas,

1:00:58SPEAKERthis is the week to do it, it seems like.

1:01:00SPEAKER- Jeez, man.

1:01:01SPEAKER- Things are hairy.

1:01:02SPEAKER- Dude, it's the fifth of December.

1:01:04SPEAKERI need like another 15 days.

1:01:06SPEAKER- Look, now's the time.

1:01:09SPEAKERAnd then you can just sit back

1:01:10SPEAKERand drink your eggnog after this,

1:01:12SPEAKERwhich the noggining is coming.

1:01:14SPEAKER- Oh God, are you guys doing that?

1:01:16SPEAKEROh my God.

1:01:17SPEAKER- Oh, hell yeah.

1:01:17SPEAKER- Last year was the first year

1:01:18SPEAKERyou gave us any of that eggnog

1:01:19SPEAKERand I like stretched it out as long as I possibly could.

1:01:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:24SPEAKER- I was like, maybe I could add a little water to this

1:01:26SPEAKERand just kind of thin it out.

1:01:28SPEAKER- You put bourbon in there, man.

1:01:29SPEAKER- I did not.

1:01:30SPEAKERWell, no, I did that.

1:01:31SPEAKERI'm just saying, 'cause it was very good,

1:01:34SPEAKERis what I'm saying.

1:01:35SPEAKERI didn't want it to end.

1:01:36SPEAKERI was trying to make it last as long as humanly possible.

1:01:39SPEAKERIt was just incredible eggnog.

1:01:41SPEAKER- When I was putting out the,

1:01:42SPEAKERI'll post the recipe on the meatloaf cult

1:01:44SPEAKERso people can find it.

1:01:45SPEAKERWhen I was putting Christmas lights up last weekend

1:01:48SPEAKERon the house, the neighbors started doing the casual,

1:01:51SPEAKER"Hey, you guys doing the eggnog again this year?"

1:01:53SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yeah."

1:01:54SPEAKER- I don't wanna do that again.

1:01:55SPEAKER- I wasn't planning on it, but I guess I am now.

1:01:57SPEAKER- The nog is that good.

1:01:59SPEAKERThe shame goes out the window.

1:02:01SPEAKER- Exactly.

1:02:01SPEAKER- Whatever you have to do at that point.

1:02:04SPEAKER- Anyway, see you all next week.

1:02:05SPEAKERBye, everybody.

1:02:05SPEAKER(upbeat music)

1:02:18SPEAKER(upbeat music)