67: Nog Ambitions

00:00SPEAKER- The nog has landed.

00:01SPEAKER- Man, you have no idea how much nog has landed.

00:04SPEAKER- Wait, really?

00:05SPEAKER- I made five and a half gallons of nog.

00:08SPEAKER- Whoa, all in one container?

00:10SPEAKERHow do you store that much nog?

00:12SPEAKER- Let me tell you,

00:14SPEAKERI did not adequately plan out my nog making plans.

00:17SPEAKERSo middle of the, I made two batches,

00:20SPEAKERone that was about like, you know, a gallon,

00:23SPEAKERand then one that was 15 liters.

00:26SPEAKERAnd I didn't adequately think about

00:29SPEAKERhow you would mix up 15 liters of egg nog

00:32SPEAKERwhen I was making that first batch.

00:33SPEAKER'Cause it should, like my biggest container is a chem,

00:36SPEAKERlike one of those plastic chemo prep bins

00:39SPEAKERthat they use at restaurants.

00:40SPEAKERThat's 15, that's 12 liters

00:42SPEAKERthat I use for like sous-viding stuff.

00:45SPEAKERAnd it was not adequate to mix.

00:48SPEAKERSo I had nog in three containers and then had to mix it.

00:52SPEAKERLike, you know that puzzle in "Die Hard,"

00:56SPEAKERthe third "Die Hard" movie,

00:57SPEAKERwhere they have like a five liter bucket

01:00SPEAKERand a three liter bucket,

01:01SPEAKERand they have to get four liters of water in the bucket.

01:04SPEAKER- I haven't seen that movie in 20 years,

01:05SPEAKERbut I'll just go along with you, yes?

01:06SPEAKER- Okay.

01:08SPEAKERBasically, Gene and I were doing that

01:09SPEAKERand like ladling back and forth

01:12SPEAKERto get everything mixed up right.

01:13SPEAKERThen it turned out okay.

01:15SPEAKER- Okay, I was gonna ask,

01:16SPEAKERis there any kind of agitating process in the nog making?

01:19SPEAKERIs there, like, does it need to be circulated?

01:22SPEAKEROr, I mean, are you doing it in those,

01:24SPEAKERyou're making bathtub nog, what's going on?

01:25SPEAKER- Well, okay, so it's a multi-step,

01:28SPEAKERit's a two-step process.

01:29SPEAKERFirst step is, well, it's a three-step process.

01:32SPEAKERFirst, you have to separate out a bazillion eggs

01:34SPEAKER'cause you just need the yolks.

01:36SPEAKERSo Gina spent a couple hours cracking eggs.

01:39SPEAKER- Wait, it's the yolks?

01:40SPEAKER- It's only the yolks.

01:42SPEAKER- Oh, I thought it, why did I think it was the whites?

01:43SPEAKER- No, the whites would be,

01:45SPEAKERthe whites you use if you do like a foam or a froth

01:47SPEAKERor make meringue or something like that, yeah.

01:49SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

01:50SPEAKER- Or an egg cream, I think, has whites.

01:52SPEAKER- It is distinctly not yellow.

01:54SPEAKER- Well, it's 'cause of all the cloves.

01:56SPEAKERThe cloves make it kind of darker color.

01:59SPEAKER- Interesting.

02:00SPEAKER- So it starts out bright yellow

02:01SPEAKERand then when it sits for a day, it turns a little brown.

02:03SPEAKER- No kidding.

02:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:07SPEAKERSo she cracked 110 eggs, I think.

02:10SPEAKER- Wow.

02:11SPEAKER- And then we added to that three and a half gallons of milk

02:17SPEAKERa gallon and a half of heavy cream.

02:20SPEAKERNo, yeah, a gallon and a half of,

02:22SPEAKERno, a gallon of heavy cream, five pounds of sugar,

02:27SPEAKERsix pounds of sugar, some, like a half a bottle of cloves,

02:33SPEAKERa half of, sorry, a quarter of a bottle of cloves,

02:34SPEAKERhalf a bottle of nutmeg and let that,

02:38SPEAKERlet stir all that up with a whisk.

02:41SPEAKERNow this is where the problem came in

02:42SPEAKER'cause we had at this point 15 liters of liquid

02:46SPEAKERand a 12 liter container, so.

02:49SPEAKER- You had Nog ambitions this year.

02:51SPEAKER- Mistakes from, also, also we bought the wrong lid.

02:55SPEAKERSo apparently every hipster in North America

02:57SPEAKERhas gotten into canning during the back half of the car.

02:59SPEAKERAll the people making sourdough in April are canning there.

03:02SPEAKER- Last year it was a chicken coop.

03:04SPEAKERThis year it is canning on the list of things

03:06SPEAKERthat my grandparents did just as a matter of course

03:08SPEAKERwhile I was growing up that people are, you know,

03:11SPEAKERadopting in urban environments now.

03:13SPEAKER- Well, the TLDR is you can't get canning supplies.

03:16SPEAKERSo I couldn't get Mason jars or lids

03:18SPEAKERand we ordered narrow neck jars and wide neck lids

03:23SPEAKERand those are not compatible.

03:26SPEAKERSo we had to, anyway, work was done

03:28SPEAKERand it all worked out in the end but.

03:30SPEAKER- Thank you so much.

03:30SPEAKER- You're welcome.

03:31SPEAKER- I instantly put the jar in the very back of the fridge

03:35SPEAKERor the shelf in the fridge so that I wouldn't be tempted

03:37SPEAKERto just grab it.

03:38SPEAKER- Well, I mean, you have enough.

03:39SPEAKERYou're gonna drink like the tiniest bit at a time

03:42SPEAKERif you're like me.

03:43SPEAKER- Look, it's never enough, okay?

03:45SPEAKER(laughing)

03:47SPEAKER- Are you a rum nog or a bourbon nog?

03:49SPEAKER- Gotta deploy that nog strategically.

03:51SPEAKERYou gotta stretch it out.

03:54SPEAKERI think I only, hmm.

03:56SPEAKERI think I only tried bourbon last year.

03:59SPEAKERI don't think I tried.

04:00SPEAKERI didn't know you could do rum.

04:00SPEAKERI thought it was purely a brown whiskey type situation.

04:05SPEAKER- Like usually, traditionally I think it's dark rum,

04:08SPEAKERlike a Myers type, you know.

04:12SPEAKER- Okay, maybe I'll give that a shot.

04:13SPEAKERThat sounds all right.

04:14SPEAKER- I'll do a little bit of a, I'm usually a burp.

04:16SPEAKERLike I like a mild, like a sip and bourbon,

04:18SPEAKERlike a basil Hayden or a rye sometimes maybe.

04:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I got some rye here.

04:24SPEAKER- And just do, just a splash.

04:25SPEAKERYou just want that, a hint, right?

04:27SPEAKERYou don't want to taste the booze.

04:29SPEAKER- Of course.

04:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:31SPEAKER- Wait, I can't put a full, a whole shot in there?

04:34SPEAKER- I'm not telling you what to do.

04:35SPEAKERYou do you.

04:37SPEAKER- Look, you have your nog ambitions.

04:39SPEAKERI have mine, all right?

04:40SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:46SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:06SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

05:08SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:09SPEAKER- I'm Brad, happy holidays.

05:09SPEAKER- Happy holidays.

05:11SPEAKEROkay, we got to talk about food safety

05:12SPEAKERfor just a second though, because this is important.

05:15SPEAKERHere's the thing that people don't know.

05:16SPEAKERIt's not the bacteria that you eat and makes you sick.

05:18SPEAKERIt's the byproducts of the bacteria that make you sick.

05:20SPEAKERSo if you have food that is spoiled,

05:23SPEAKERit is the bacteria and the whatever fungus,

05:25SPEAKERwhatever's in there that's making it bad

05:27SPEAKERis it is excreting poison.

05:30SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not the bacteria, it's the bacteria's poop.

05:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so when you heat up the food to kill the bacteria,

05:37SPEAKERthat only does something if it hasn't excreted the poison yet

05:40SPEAKERthe poison will still be there if you cook it.

05:43SPEAKERSo this is why eating canned stuff that has botulism

05:46SPEAKERwill still mess you up is because you still have botulism,

05:50SPEAKERthe botulism toxin.

05:52SPEAKERSo you got to do the pasteurization and the cooking

05:56SPEAKERbefore it goes bad in order, anyway, that's it.

05:59SPEAKERThat's my food safety thing.

06:00SPEAKER- Be warned is what you're saying.

06:02SPEAKER- Yeah, don't jack around with the nog is what I'm saying.

06:05SPEAKER- Or again, just marinate your pork in...

06:08SPEAKER- Battery acid.

06:08SPEAKER- Or just a bottle of whiskey.

06:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that works.

06:13SPEAKER- Don't actually do that.

06:14SPEAKER- That would be really gross.

06:15SPEAKER- That only applies to nog.

06:16SPEAKER- Brad, what are we doing this week?

06:17SPEAKERWhat are we talking about?

06:18SPEAKERThis is the last episode of the year of 2020.

06:19SPEAKER- It is the last episode of the year.

06:21SPEAKERAnd I guess let's look back on this accursed 90s year.

06:30SPEAKER- This reminds me of the classic "Star Trek" Voyager

06:33SPEAKERseason finale, the year of hell.

06:37SPEAKER- I don't, you know what, I started to very snarkily say

06:41SPEAKERthere are no classic episodes of Voyager.

06:43SPEAKERAnd then you said that one and I've never seen that episode,

06:45SPEAKERbut that is the episode I always see cited as like,

06:49SPEAKERif more Voyager was like this episode,

06:51SPEAKERit would have been pretty okay.

06:51SPEAKER- So you know what they were gonna do with that originally?

06:53SPEAKERSo the setup is the shit starts going bad on the Voyager

06:57SPEAKERand like people start dying

06:59SPEAKERand like you're watching this episode like,

07:01SPEAKERGod, they just killed off half the crew.

07:03SPEAKERAnd like, it eventually ends up

07:05SPEAKERwith like Janeway's descent into madness, right?

07:08SPEAKERThat was originally gonna be a whole season arc.

07:11SPEAKERAnd they chickened out and only did two episodes.

07:14SPEAKER- Huh, it's a two parter?

07:15SPEAKER- It's a two parter.

07:16SPEAKERIt's the best of both worlds.

07:17SPEAKERIt's like season finale, season opener.

07:20SPEAKER- Huh, and does it literally, as the name implies,

07:22SPEAKERdoes it literally take place over the course of a year?

07:24SPEAKER- Over the course of a year, yeah.

07:26SPEAKER- That in itself, even if they chickened out

07:28SPEAKERof the season idea, like that's kind of cool.

07:30SPEAKERLike the idea of an episode that takes place

07:31SPEAKERover that long period of time.

07:33SPEAKER- It is a very good, it is, I haven't watched all Voyager.

07:36SPEAKERIt is the one episode of Voyager that I watched.

07:38SPEAKERSo this is as good as anything else

07:39SPEAKERthat "Star Trek" has ever done.

07:40SPEAKER- I should, I should, I should pull that up.

07:42SPEAKER- Yeah, you have enough context to know what's going on.

07:44SPEAKERVoyager is fine.

07:46SPEAKER- Ah, that's not gonna be hasty, man.

07:48SPEAKER- Look, I mean, we've done three cold openers now.

07:56SPEAKERVoyager is as good as the first two or three seasons of TNG.

08:00SPEAKER- Ooh, I don't think about what you're saying.

08:02SPEAKER'Cause the first two seasons of TNG are pretty rough.

08:06SPEAKER- I included the third season intentionally.

08:08SPEAKERThe first season in particular is borderline unwatchable.

08:14SPEAKER- Yes, I've having gone back and watched all of those

08:16SPEAKERrecently, the first two seasons are,

08:18SPEAKERuntil Riker gets that beard, it's just stay away, man.

08:21SPEAKER- Yes, yes, there's the Riker beard rule

08:23SPEAKERand the uniform collar rule.

08:25SPEAKER- Yeah, when Picard gets that shirt with the open,

08:28SPEAKERthe Vel's Velour shirt with the open front.

08:30SPEAKER- Yeah, well, when they got the collars on the,

08:32SPEAKERthey weren't wearing the spandex jumpsuits anymore

08:34SPEAKERand they had like proper collars, that's the rule.

08:38SPEAKER- What, so we're gonna talk about the year that was.

08:41SPEAKERSometimes I wake up and I feel like I've just taken

08:43SPEAKERa series of naps and it's still March.

08:46SPEAKERTwo days before Christmas when we record this.

08:49SPEAKER- Absolutely.

08:51SPEAKER- But I am eminently thankful and I think we both put this

08:54SPEAKERat the top of our list at the, like I was talking

08:59SPEAKERto my daughter, we were talking about the flu pandemic

09:01SPEAKERin the 1916, '18 flu pandemic the other day.

09:05SPEAKERShe was like, well, did they get vaccines for that?

09:07SPEAKERAnd I was like, sweetie, they hadn't invented vaccines yet

09:08SPEAKERwhen that happened and like so a hundred years ago.

09:13SPEAKERIt's kind of incredible that in a century we've gone from,

09:19SPEAKERoh, well, you just gotta let this burn itself out

09:22SPEAKERto, well, we can eradicate diseases now,

09:25SPEAKERbut it takes some like massive moonshot level effort

09:31SPEAKERand 50 years to get rid of something like polio

09:33SPEAKERand smallpox and like these common, what used to be

09:37SPEAKERcommon diseases that had really massive impacts

09:41SPEAKERto like now where we're developing a vaccine

09:44SPEAKERwith brand new technology that we've never deployed before.

09:47SPEAKERAnd undoubtedly we've spent moonshot levels of money on it.

09:52SPEAKERWe're seeing first results nine months, 10 to a year

09:56SPEAKERafter the virus started appearing at the end of 2019.

10:02SPEAKERThat's incredible.

10:04SPEAKER- It's crazy.

10:05SPEAKERWhen I think back on like just recent history,

10:07SPEAKERlike the things that, the state of things within say

10:11SPEAKERmy grandparents' lifetimes.

10:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:13SPEAKER- It's the invention of the vaccine and the invention,

10:17SPEAKERor maybe you would call it the discovery of antibiotics.

10:20SPEAKERI guess that's a semantic debate, but those two things

10:24SPEAKERor more specifically the absence of those things

10:26SPEAKERwhen I think back a hundred years,

10:27SPEAKERlike the thought of what life was like when like the wrong,

10:32SPEAKERI don't know, like stepping on a nail

10:34SPEAKERor like the wrong kind of cut or scrape or whatever

10:37SPEAKERcould turn into an infection

10:38SPEAKERthat would just straight up kill you.

10:39SPEAKER- My mom got her arm caught in a, like a ringer,

10:43SPEAKERlike a dryer, like before dryers, washers and dryers

10:47SPEAKERthey had when she was a kid growing up in England,

10:49SPEAKERthey had like a manual ringer

10:51SPEAKERthat you ran the clothes through.

10:53SPEAKERShe got her arm caught in that and got blood poisoning.

10:56SPEAKERAnd like the doctor was like, well, we have this new thing.

10:58SPEAKERWe're gonna try on you.

10:59SPEAKERAnd it was penicillin.

11:01SPEAKERAnd like, she probably would have died

11:03SPEAKERhad it not been for penicillin in the--

11:05SPEAKER- Was it, oh, I should double check before I say this.

11:08SPEAKERWas it during World War II, I think?

11:10SPEAKER- During World War II, yeah.

11:11SPEAKER- Like, have you ever read about like the literal,

11:13SPEAKERit was in England, right?

11:14SPEAKERIn Britain is where it was first developed, I believe.

11:16SPEAKER- I always get Jonas Salk who's the polio guy, I think.

11:20SPEAKER- I wanna say that's right.

11:20SPEAKERBut if you ever read about the,

11:22SPEAKERI think he was like quite literally the first test subject

11:24SPEAKERfor penicillin, I think.

11:26SPEAKER- No, I don't, I'm looking at,

11:27SPEAKERI'm on the Wikipedia page right now.

11:29SPEAKER- This is from memory.

11:29SPEAKERSo I hope I'm not getting anything wrong.

11:31SPEAKER- Alexander Fleming.

11:32SPEAKER- Basically he had some kind of,

11:34SPEAKERwhoever the test subject was had some kind of infection

11:36SPEAKERand they tested the penicillin on him and it worked.

11:40SPEAKERBut because it was in such short supply,

11:42SPEAKERbecause it was experimental and they needed it for,

11:44SPEAKERyou know, more military purposes and so forth,

11:47SPEAKERthey were not able to give him enough

11:49SPEAKERto fully fight the infection off

11:50SPEAKERand it came back and killed him.

11:52SPEAKERLike, they literally found a miracle cure

11:54SPEAKERthat would have saved his life,

11:55SPEAKERbut they couldn't make enough of it in time

11:58SPEAKERto actually save him and he died anyway.

12:00SPEAKER- Good news, bad news situation, I guess.

12:01SPEAKER- Yeah, but just thinking about the range of things

12:03SPEAKERthat we consider really kind of trivial these days

12:05SPEAKERthat were straight up death sentences, you know,

12:08SPEAKERa hundred years ago when the absence

12:09SPEAKERof those two developments is like,

12:12SPEAKERfun to think about.

12:13SPEAKER- Well, it's, I mean, it's funny, it's changed.

12:19SPEAKERLike those, that is very definitely

12:21SPEAKERone of the medical advancements that's changed

12:22SPEAKERhow we approach every, like people have fewer kids now

12:26SPEAKERbecause you don't need to have,

12:28SPEAKERyou're not gonna lose a kid or two to stuff like measles

12:32SPEAKERand, you know, getting infection and things like that.

12:35SPEAKERIt's like, everything about our society has changed

12:39SPEAKERas a result of vaccines and antibiotics.

12:42SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure.

12:43SPEAKER- And the mRNA vaccines are like,

12:46SPEAKERit's absolutely fascinating, you know,

12:47SPEAKERhaving talked to some people who work on that stuff,

12:50SPEAKERhow that works is, like, it means that we're able

12:55SPEAKERto design the vaccine to do what we want instead of,

12:58SPEAKERinstead of hoping to isolate something

13:01SPEAKERthat will do what we're looking for.

13:04SPEAKER- It's really cool, interesting.

13:05SPEAKER- Yeah.

13:06SPEAKER- So the, I mean, I haven't followed the development

13:08SPEAKERof the, well, I'll start to say this vaccine,

13:10SPEAKERbut it seems there are in fact several vaccines.

13:14SPEAKER- Well, they're all, they're both mRNA vaccines, so.

13:17SPEAKER- Okay, well, I think there's at least one more

13:19SPEAKERin the wings, right?

13:19SPEAKER- There's another one that's not approved yet

13:21SPEAKERand there's more coming, I'm sure.

13:23SPEAKER- That's what I mean, like there, so I think I heard,

13:26SPEAKERI read somewhere back in March, April,

13:28SPEAKERwhen this was all really popping off that like,

13:32SPEAKERhow was it that they put it?

13:35SPEAKERThey were just kind of doing everything in parallel

13:37SPEAKERand as redundantly and as kind of excessively as possible,

13:41SPEAKERyou know, like they were just, they were not,

13:43SPEAKERI guess what I mean is they were not waiting

13:44SPEAKERfor like the typical kind of phase structure of like,

13:46SPEAKERokay, let's do this and this and then we'll do, you know,

13:49SPEAKERwe'll do X and Y and then we'll do Z once X and Y

13:51SPEAKERor whatever, it's like, no, we're gonna do X, Y and Z

13:53SPEAKERall at once, we're gonna do everything we possibly can

13:56SPEAKERand I assume that's a big part

13:57SPEAKERof why this rollout was so accelerated.

14:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's that they were spending

14:03SPEAKERincredible amounts of money doing things

14:05SPEAKERthat normally would happen sequentially.

14:07SPEAKER- Right.

14:08SPEAKER- And trying, you know, they had like my,

14:12SPEAKERI have a relative who works

14:13SPEAKERfor one of the big biotech companies in the Valley

14:16SPEAKERand she, like they had, all teams were pulled off

14:21SPEAKERof what they were working on for the most part

14:23SPEAKERand shifted over, if they had the right expertise,

14:26SPEAKERthey were shifted over to trying whatever their approach was

14:30SPEAKERfor what they were working on onto this.

14:33SPEAKER- Right, was it, I think I wanna say,

14:36SPEAKERso it's Pfizer and Moderna are the two that are approved.

14:38SPEAKER- Those are the ones that are approved right now, yeah.

14:39SPEAKER- I wanna say AstraZeneca is also working on one.

14:41SPEAKER- That one is in phase three now,

14:43SPEAKERbut I don't think there's results yet.

14:45SPEAKER- So like throwing more resources at the problem,

14:47SPEAKERtotally fine, like the part that gets scary

14:50SPEAKERis if you wonder if they fudged any of, not fudged,

14:53SPEAKERbut kind of like rushed through some of the testing phases,

14:56SPEAKERI don't know if that's the case.

14:56SPEAKERI assume they still tested it in the same quantity

14:59SPEAKERthat they would have.

15:00SPEAKER- So we talked, I talked to Kishore who was on the podcast

15:03SPEAKERin the spring talking about coronavirus and he is,

15:07SPEAKERhe's on the California, you know, the task force

15:11SPEAKER'cause he's a science communicator and like worked in,

15:14SPEAKERworked on anti-vax stuff for a long time

15:17SPEAKERand he said specifically that they can't cheat

15:20SPEAKERthe phase three trials.

15:21SPEAKERLike they still set up the trial in the same way,

15:22SPEAKERso it's double blind so that the company doesn't know

15:26SPEAKERwho got which samples, you know, nobody knows

15:30SPEAKERwhich results are which until after the results are all in

15:33SPEAKERand all of that stuff is still, like it's,

15:38SPEAKERthe stuff that was accelerated

15:39SPEAKERwas the developing 50 things simultaneously,

15:42SPEAKERnot the, by the time it got to phase three trials,

15:44SPEAKERit's the normal trial.

15:46SPEAKERThe thing that did accelerate is because we're so bad

15:49SPEAKERat wearing masks, we got much faster data about efficacy.

15:57SPEAKERI mean, and look, this is one of the things like people,

15:59SPEAKERI get just as pissed off as everybody else

16:01SPEAKER'cause I look at the news and I see the pictures

16:03SPEAKERof people in bars and like I yelled at my mom this morning

16:06SPEAKERfor going to the fucking fishmonger to get crab.

16:10SPEAKERLike you just don't have, you don't need crab, it's fine.

16:13SPEAKERYou'll be fine if you don't have crab at Christmas.

16:16SPEAKER- I found out recently someone I know

16:18SPEAKERjust went to a church choral service.

16:21SPEAKER- Well, don't hang out with them.

16:24SPEAKER- Yeah, well, they're not near here.

16:26SPEAKER- But I mean, the point though is that like,

16:30SPEAKEReven though there's a small number of people

16:31SPEAKERwho are being maniacs and making everything worse,

16:35SPEAKERstill like at least 70-ish percent of people

16:38SPEAKERhave been doing the same thing that you and I

16:40SPEAKERhave been doing, stay in their houses,

16:41SPEAKERdoing their work from home,

16:42SPEAKERgoing out only when it was absolutely necessary,

16:44SPEAKERall that for the last nine months.

16:45SPEAKERAnd like, it would be a lot worse if it weren't

16:49SPEAKERas bad as it is now.

16:52SPEAKERAnyway, it's like the Manhattan Project.

16:54SPEAKERI think you wrote that in your thing.

16:55SPEAKER- I wrote that in the notes here.

16:57SPEAKERYeah, yeah, I don't know how much you know about that,

16:58SPEAKERbut my understanding of the general way

17:00SPEAKERthat thing was conducted was that they had,

17:03SPEAKERthey had so much redundancy in their expertise

17:05SPEAKERthat every single time they hit a fork in the project,

17:08SPEAKERyou know, vaccine science is pretty well understood.

17:10SPEAKERI mean, at this point they were working

17:12SPEAKERwith barely understood nuclear physics,

17:14SPEAKERlike inventing technology from whole cloth, right?

17:16SPEAKERBut like every single time they hit a fork

17:19SPEAKERwhere it's like, okay, the right way to do this

17:21SPEAKERcould be this way or it could be that way.

17:22SPEAKERLet's just do both of them at the same time.

17:24SPEAKERAnd they would literally just fork the entire project

17:27SPEAKERand try both at the same time.

17:28SPEAKERAnd that just kept happening.

17:29SPEAKERAnd that's how you end up with,

17:32SPEAKERmy understanding of "Fat Man" and "Little Boy"

17:34SPEAKERis that they are totally distinct,

17:36SPEAKERbut both viable designs for an atomic weapon.

17:39SPEAKER- Yeah, that's my, the third bomb was the same.

17:42SPEAKERLike literally ended up with totally different bombs

17:45SPEAKERat the end of the project.

17:46SPEAKER- I mean, you also ended up with like-

17:48SPEAKER- Through that method, which is kind of the same thing

17:50SPEAKERwith these vaccines, right?

17:51SPEAKER- You also ended up, at some point

17:53SPEAKERwhen we can meet in person again,

17:55SPEAKERwe'll have Phil Funeranian Labs fill on to talk about.

18:01SPEAKER- I'd love to talk to him about,

18:03SPEAKERit's kind of a heavy subject.

18:05SPEAKERThere's a lot of interesting stuff from an abstract-

18:07SPEAKER- Well, he's- - Scientific perspective.

18:09SPEAKER- He does these great Twitter threads

18:11SPEAKERcalled Choose Your Own Radiological Adventure.

18:13SPEAKERHe did a bunch of them this year

18:14SPEAKERwhere like he presents a common situation

18:18SPEAKERranging from Manhattan project level disasters

18:22SPEAKERdown to, "Hey, we have a big sphere of beryllium in this lab

18:27SPEAKER"and we don't know where it came from.

18:28SPEAKER"Can you help us figure out who it belongs to

18:30SPEAKER"and what to do with it?"

18:32SPEAKER- Just don't touch it with a screwdriver.

18:34SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.

18:37SPEAKERAnd yeah, it's a good topic.

18:41SPEAKERShould we, I've spent this year,

18:46SPEAKERI spent a lot of time using the laser cutter.

18:47SPEAKER- Yeah, laser cut me some stuff,

18:50SPEAKERbut I know you've laser cut some more important stuff

18:53SPEAKERthan what you did for me.

18:54SPEAKER- Well, it's funny, I did, in the beginning,

18:57SPEAKERI made face shields for like friends and neighbors

18:59SPEAKER'cause I have a couple of neighbors

19:00SPEAKERwho are frontline workers.

19:02SPEAKERI think I offered to make some for you guys,

19:04SPEAKERbut you ended up not needing them in the end.

19:07SPEAKERAnd I learned how to cut PETG or PTEG,

19:11SPEAKERI can't remember which one.

19:13SPEAKERPT, PT, anyway, it doesn't matter.

19:15SPEAKERIt's one of the plastic types that's laser cutterable.

19:17SPEAKERIt's totally clear, it bends, it's comfortable.

19:22SPEAKERAnd we were able to make laser face shields at,

19:27SPEAKERI was able to make as many face shields as I wanted

19:28SPEAKERin about three minutes per, which is pretty fast

19:32SPEAKERcompared to what we were doing in 3D printers

19:33SPEAKERand stuff like that.

19:35SPEAKERBut I've also made a bunch of like picture frames

19:38SPEAKERand I made a Mr. Case and I made you a Raspberry Pi,

19:41SPEAKERI made me a bunch of Raspberry Pi cases.

19:42SPEAKER- Yeah, you made maybe a Pi case and a fan mount

19:45SPEAKERfor my Mr. Actually.

19:48SPEAKER- And it's like, it turns out,

19:49SPEAKERI've had 3D printers around the house for years

19:51SPEAKERand I don't really use them very much

19:52SPEAKER'cause they're kind of a pain in the ass.

19:54SPEAKERThe one that I have is old and not very good at this point.

19:57SPEAKERLike if I was gonna do any 3D printing,

19:59SPEAKERI would probably just shake hand that

20:01SPEAKERor give it to the neighborhood kid or something

20:02SPEAKERand get something better.

20:05SPEAKERBut like it is a really viable

20:09SPEAKERand like it got to the point that I needed a funnel

20:11SPEAKERfor some dry stuff the other night

20:12SPEAKERto go into a really small hole,

20:13SPEAKERa hole smaller than I have a funnel for.

20:15SPEAKERSo I just cut a cone out of the plastic

20:19SPEAKERand put a couple of hooks, like I drew it in Fusion 360.

20:22SPEAKERI've learned how to use Fusion 360 enough

20:24SPEAKERthat I can just jam out a project

20:26SPEAKERlike for something simple in like 10 minutes,

20:27SPEAKERwhich I was really stoked about.

20:28SPEAKERI didn't realize I was there yet.

20:31SPEAKERAnd I'm really thankful for that.

20:33SPEAKERI think that's so cool.

20:34SPEAKER- The little device case stuff you made for me

20:37SPEAKERwas my first probably firsthand experience

20:39SPEAKERgetting some custom laser cut stuff done.

20:41SPEAKERLike obviously laser cutters arguably have

20:43SPEAKERlike kind of more limited applications than a 3D printer

20:45SPEAKER'cause it kind of needs to be a flat surface.

20:47SPEAKERBut for those applications, I feel like it's so much nicer.

20:52SPEAKERLike that nice smooth, shiny acrylic is just such a,

20:55SPEAKERespecially for something you're gonna look at

20:57SPEAKERis such a nicer kind of end product, I feel like than the.

21:00SPEAKER- Well, that's, yeah, it's so much faster

21:04SPEAKERis the other thing.

21:05SPEAKERLike it's impossible to overestimate

21:08SPEAKERthe difference in time between like making,

21:11SPEAKERif I had 3D printed one of those Raspberry Pi cases,

21:14SPEAKERit's like a four or five hour print

21:15SPEAKERon the printer that I have.

21:17SPEAKER- Holy cow.

21:18SPEAKER- Versus like five minutes on the cutter.

21:21SPEAKER- No kit for all those layers?

21:22SPEAKER'Cause that was, that design is like 10 layers?

21:24SPEAKER- You put one sheet of acrylic in and just let it rip

21:27SPEAKERand it does all the pieces at the same time.

21:29SPEAKERAnd then you go in and pull all the pieces out.

21:31SPEAKER- Man, that's cool.

21:32SPEAKER- It takes longer to peel the paper,

21:33SPEAKERthe protective backing off of the pieces

21:36SPEAKERthan it does to do the cuts usually.

21:39SPEAKER- Also, I was not prepared for the smell.

21:41SPEAKER- Oh yeah, the burning of acrylic smell is horrific.

21:43SPEAKER- Oh, I don't, is it?

21:44SPEAKER- It's bad, I hate it.

21:45SPEAKER- There's something like kind of like sickly sweet about it.

21:48SPEAKERLike kind of, well, maybe it's different in the moment

21:51SPEAKERwhen it's actually burning.

21:52SPEAKERI'm talking about, you know,

21:53SPEAKERby the time I got my hands on it, it was like,

21:55SPEAKERI assume at least a few hours since you would cut it.

21:58SPEAKERMaybe it's a lot worse.

21:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I think I cut it that morning.

22:00SPEAKER- I could see it maybe being a lot more accurate

22:02SPEAKERin the moment, but by the time I got it,

22:04SPEAKERit's just like, it's almost like a,

22:06SPEAKERit's not quite cinnamon, it's not quite nutmeg,

22:08SPEAKERbut there's like kind of a, like, you know what I mean?

22:10SPEAKERThere's like a kitchen spice kind of smell to it.

22:13SPEAKER- It smells like burning like Aunt Jemima,

22:15SPEAKERhigh fructose corn syrup, pancake mix, pancake stuff.

22:18SPEAKER- I didn't hate it.

22:20SPEAKER- I wear the respirator when I,

22:23SPEAKERlike I'm, the laser cutter vents outside obviously,

22:27SPEAKERbut I put the vent too near the door to the garage.

22:29SPEAKERSo like I either have to shut the garage door

22:32SPEAKERor I usually just wear the respirator when I'm out there

22:34SPEAKER'cause I really hate it, it gives me a headache.

22:36SPEAKER- That's probably smart.

22:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

22:39SPEAKERWhat else have you got?

22:41SPEAKER- Well, we mentioned the mystery,

22:42SPEAKERI'll bring it up real quick.

22:43SPEAKERI mean, I don't even know if we,

22:44SPEAKERdid we actually really say what the idea of this episode is?

22:47SPEAKERIt's just kind of like some stuff,

22:49SPEAKERsome tech stuff that we enjoyed from this year.

22:51SPEAKER- I think it's the high, yeah, I mean high points, right?

22:53SPEAKER- A little look back at this strange year

22:55SPEAKERand some of the things that were good

22:58SPEAKERabout it in this space.

23:00SPEAKERLook, I feel like starting with the coronavirus vaccine

23:03SPEAKERand then like we immediately go down about 10 orders

23:06SPEAKERof magnitude of importance to,

23:09SPEAKERhey, laser cutting stuff's cool.

23:11SPEAKER- Yeah, like fucking the mystery or whatever.

23:12SPEAKERI mean, somebody very close to me is getting the first dose

23:16SPEAKERof the vaccine this very day.

23:18SPEAKER- That's awesome.

23:19SPEAKER- So it's like, it is hitting somewhat close to home.

23:24SPEAKERYeah, I wrote the mystery on here

23:25SPEAKERand we've talked about it a little bit.

23:27SPEAKERMaybe it was just on a patron episode.

23:29SPEAKERI don't know if we talked about it on a main line.

23:31SPEAKER- We did an episode about it

23:32SPEAKERand then we talked about it a lot for a little bit

23:34SPEAKERand then we said we had to stop talking about it

23:35SPEAKER'cause we were talking about it all the time.

23:36SPEAKER- Did we do an actual full episode about it?

23:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I did.

23:40SPEAKER- These things are all running together.

23:41SPEAKER- You tell us.

23:42SPEAKERI've had enough naps.

23:43SPEAKER- I am waiting for the day.

23:45SPEAKEROkay, this happens all the time

23:46SPEAKERin my kind of day job, main line of work.

23:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:50SPEAKER- When somebody will be like,

23:51SPEAKER"Oh, remember what you said about spy fiction

23:54SPEAKERon the PlayStation 2 when you reviewed it at GameSpot?"

23:57SPEAKERAnd I'm like, "I don't remember

24:00SPEAKERthat there exists a game called spy fiction,

24:02SPEAKERmuch less that I have ever played it

24:03SPEAKERand in fact reviewed it."

24:04SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

24:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I miss.

24:06SPEAKER- I'm waiting for that to happen with this podcast

24:07SPEAKERwhere it's like, we're gonna record an episode

24:11SPEAKERabout like battery tech or something and post it.

24:13SPEAKERAnd people are gonna be like,

24:14SPEAKER"You guys did that exact same episode

24:16SPEAKERlike a year and a half ago."

24:17SPEAKER- I mean, I tried to do that.

24:19SPEAKERDidn't I try to do something in August

24:20SPEAKERthat we had already done in like April or May early on?

24:23SPEAKER- It was entirely possible.

24:25SPEAKERAnd I think we did at least two like coronavirus

24:28SPEAKERquarantine tech episodes.

24:29SPEAKER- Well, that was a developing situation.

24:31SPEAKERI feel like that's, yes.

24:33SPEAKERAnyway, I had a lot of fun tinkering with the mister.

24:37SPEAKERYou made me that case, which was nice.

24:39SPEAKERIt was fun building that thing.

24:40SPEAKERIt's been fun playing stuff on there.

24:44SPEAKERThing that like really touched me though

24:45SPEAKERwas have I ever talked on this podcast

24:47SPEAKERabout dumping my save files from my SNES carts?

24:49SPEAKER- I don't know if we've ever talked about it on the podcast.

24:51SPEAKERYou and I have definitely talked about it,

24:52SPEAKERbut it's fascinating.

24:53SPEAKERAnd I know I've talked about it on "Giant Bomb."

24:55SPEAKERI dumped those carts live on a stream one time.

24:58SPEAKER- Did you use a Retron or something?

25:00SPEAKER- Retrode, I want to say is the name of that thing.

25:02SPEAKER- This is some weird thing Jeff has.

25:04SPEAKER- Yes, and it is not easy to get these days.

25:06SPEAKERI believe the only place still making them

25:08SPEAKERis some place in Germany that's hand building them.

25:12SPEAKERAnd so they're only available occasionally.

25:14SPEAKER- Wow.

25:15SPEAKER- Yes, I just went to retrode.com and at the very top,

25:18SPEAKERit says, "About the retrode, we're quitting.

25:21SPEAKERAs of summer 2013, we have stopped producing

25:23SPEAKERthe retrode and its accessories."

25:25SPEAKER- Wow.

25:26SPEAKER- Yeah, like you can still get them, but they're not cheap.

25:29SPEAKERLuckily for me, Jeff already had one

25:30SPEAKERand I could just use his for the 30 minutes

25:33SPEAKERthat I needed it.

25:34SPEAKERIt's just, I think they make it for different consoles.

25:37SPEAKERIn this case, it was just a Super Nintendo

25:39SPEAKERkind of cartridge slot to USB adapter.

25:42SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

25:43SPEAKER- And then you plug it into the computer

25:45SPEAKERand Windows sees it as a USB storage device

25:47SPEAKERand you literally just like drag and drop the ROM

25:49SPEAKERand the save file off of the cart.

25:51SPEAKER- Oh man, that's bonkers.

25:53SPEAKER- But so I pulled those off and I don't think

25:55SPEAKERI even had to convert them on the Mr.

25:57SPEAKERI think I maybe changed the file extension or something.

26:00SPEAKERThat was it.

26:01SPEAKERSo, but like that is the actual most touching thing

26:05SPEAKERabout the Mr. and this dovetails with like it being

26:07SPEAKERthe holidays and stuff is that I dumped all those save files

26:10SPEAKERoff my Super Nintendo games, which mean a lot to me.

26:13SPEAKERAnd suddenly here I am playing like, you know,

26:17SPEAKERmy original Final Fantasy three save

26:18SPEAKERthat I played through in 1994, you know?

26:21SPEAKEROr like the one that's super relevant to me

26:24SPEAKERis my 96 star, like a hundred percent clear save

26:27SPEAKERin Super Mario World that I started

26:29SPEAKERon Christmas day, 1991, 92, 91.

26:33SPEAKER- Oh man, Brad, I have--

26:35SPEAKER- Hang on, let me double check.

26:37SPEAKERYes, so yeah, the Super Nintendo came out in 91

26:39SPEAKERand like, it was just like, it was like a time machine,

26:42SPEAKERhonestly, like loading up that Super Mario World save

26:45SPEAKERfrom almost 30 years ago and like, just kind of like,

26:49SPEAKERoh, this is the level that I left off on 28 years ago,

26:53SPEAKERthe last time I played this or whatever,

26:54SPEAKERyou know what I mean?

26:55SPEAKERLike, it's such a weird, like kind of window on your past,

26:59SPEAKERyour distant past to do stuff like that.

27:01SPEAKER- So apparently, so I have a Retron five

27:05SPEAKERthat I haven't used at all since I got the Mr.

27:08SPEAKER- You, yeah, I think, I believe the Retron

27:12SPEAKERcan actually do some of that stuff.

27:13SPEAKERI totally forgot about that.

27:15SPEAKERYou should, yeah, if you have a Retron five,

27:17SPEAKERyou should look into that.

27:18SPEAKERI think that-- - Oh, maybe I'll set that up.

27:20SPEAKERThat would be a fun stream.

27:21SPEAKER- For at least some of the cartridges that it can,

27:24SPEAKERmaybe all of them, I don't know.

27:25SPEAKER- Well, it looks like it could do GB for sure.

27:27SPEAKER- Oh my God, how did I forget about that?

27:29SPEAKERI actually, this is getting a little inside baseball,

27:32SPEAKERbut there was one game that Retrode wouldn't work with.

27:36SPEAKER- Oh, yeah?

27:37SPEAKER- I think it was Super Mario RPG

27:38SPEAKERand I think it was because it was one of those games

27:40SPEAKERthat had a special chip, you know,

27:41SPEAKERall the Super Nintendo add-in chips,

27:44SPEAKERlike the Super FX, remember all that stuff?

27:45SPEAKERLike there were like 10 different specialty chips

27:48SPEAKERthat could be on the cartridge.

27:50SPEAKERThe Retrode couldn't handle whatever format

27:53SPEAKERcame through that chip,

27:53SPEAKERbut I had to borrow a Retron to get that saved.

27:55SPEAKERSo yeah, you totally can do that.

27:56SPEAKER- We should, at some point I want to do an episode

27:59SPEAKERwhere we talk about all of the weird,

28:00SPEAKERwe should get like Micah or Frank Sifaldi or--

28:04SPEAKER- Oh, Sifaldi would be great.

28:05SPEAKER- Maybe like somebody who can talk up,

28:07SPEAKERmaybe Dylan, what's his name from Pixel Junk.

28:15SPEAKER- Q, is that Q Studios?

28:17SPEAKER- Oh, Dylan, Dylan Cuthbert?

28:20SPEAKER- Dylan Cuthbert, yeah.

28:21SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, he's the programmer of Star Fox.

28:24SPEAKER- Well, yeah, 'cause he's one of the people that was like,

28:26SPEAKER"Hey, you know, if you put this chip on the cartridge,

28:27SPEAKER"you can do all this weird stuff."

28:29SPEAKERAnd yeah, but yeah, we should--

28:32SPEAKER- Modern technology being applied

28:34SPEAKERto reverse engineering old technology

28:36SPEAKERin the form of old games is like so fascinating.

28:38SPEAKERI mean, you know, the Mr. FPGA is recreating old consoles

28:41SPEAKERis kind of the biggest example of that,

28:43SPEAKERbut like, you know, stuff like leveraging USB

28:46SPEAKERto access the contents of a Super Nintendo cartridge,

28:48SPEAKERyou know what I mean? - That's bonkers.

28:49SPEAKERDid you see the thing last week?

28:50SPEAKER- Stuff like that is so fascinating, sorry.

28:52SPEAKER- Did you see the thing last week where they did the,

28:56SPEAKERwhere somebody took the SNES cart

28:58SPEAKERand jammed in an FPGA that could do ray tracing?

29:01SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

29:01SPEAKER- Yeah, like that stuff's so fun.

29:03SPEAKER- Yes, that stuff's wild.

29:04SPEAKER- Ridiculous and over the top.

29:05SPEAKERI've really enjoyed, like my mystery has been great.

29:07SPEAKERMy daughter has like, it is so nice playing those games

29:11SPEAKERon an HGTV with no input lag.

29:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

29:16SPEAKER- And you can actually play them, which is fricking cool.

29:19SPEAKER- Speaking of your daughter playing games.

29:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I-

29:23SPEAKER- Wait, wait, what about your daughter developing games?

29:29SPEAKER- Oh, no, she's not developing her own game.

29:31SPEAKERNo, no, no.

29:32SPEAKER- No, no, this is watching my kid play

29:34SPEAKERand make her own games in 2020.

29:35SPEAKER- So when I say that, I mean,

29:37SPEAKERlike instead of just going into Animal Crossing

29:40SPEAKERand playing Animal Crossing,

29:41SPEAKERshe and her friends will load up one of their islands

29:43SPEAKERand all get on the same island

29:44SPEAKERand they'll go play hide and seek or freeze tag or-

29:46SPEAKER- Okay.

29:47SPEAKER- Like scavengers hunt or whatever.

29:49SPEAKER- I was embellishing a little bit about her developing games

29:52SPEAKERbut I thought you meant like something in Roblox

29:54SPEAKERor something like that.

29:55SPEAKERLike something like one of those games

29:56SPEAKERthat has some logic in it that you can actually play with.

29:58SPEAKERYou're talking more like,

29:59SPEAKERyou're talking more of the power of the imagineering.

30:02SPEAKER- Yeah, they're doing, they're doing like,

30:04SPEAKERthen they've been doing this since, it's fun.

30:05SPEAKER'Cause like one of the things that has made this year

30:09SPEAKERtolerable is that when we can't do social activities

30:12SPEAKERoutside the house for all of us,

30:14SPEAKERlike my wife, my daughter and I

30:15SPEAKERare all playing a lot of multiplayer games

30:17SPEAKERand spending time on voice chat

30:20SPEAKERand hanging out and having fun with friends.

30:23SPEAKERAnd there was a moment,

30:25SPEAKERI think it was on Thanksgiving night

30:26SPEAKERwhen I was sitting on the couch

30:27SPEAKERand I was just like doom scrolling on the phone

30:31SPEAKERand my wife was playing Animal Crossing on one switch

30:34SPEAKERwith her sister who had just gotten a switch

30:36SPEAKERso she could play Animal Crossing with us.

30:38SPEAKERMy daughter was playing Minecraft in the other room

30:40SPEAKERon her switch and they were both on FaceTime,

30:43SPEAKERboth with their phones pointed at the ceiling,

30:45SPEAKERtalking, you know, using it like a video speaker phone

30:49SPEAKERwhile they're playing games that don't have voice built in.

30:53SPEAKERAnd like what, it made me think what would have happened

30:58SPEAKERif this had all happened in like the late 90s

31:00SPEAKERbefore the internet.

31:03SPEAKERAnd like just the act of getting books.

31:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:08SPEAKER- So we had more books to read would have been challenging.

31:12SPEAKER- Sure.

31:13SPEAKER- Like think about like you wouldn't have had any way

31:15SPEAKERto get information.

31:16SPEAKERIf you had a presidency where the administration

31:19SPEAKERwas actively working to hide information from the public

31:22SPEAKERabout how bad things were.

31:24SPEAKER- I mean.

31:25SPEAKER- There would have been no way for that to get out.

31:26SPEAKER- Thank God we'll never have to deal with

31:28SPEAKERsuch a horrifying reality.

31:31SPEAKER- But anyway, this is definitely opening

31:34SPEAKERa large can of worms about whether the internet

31:37SPEAKERis a net positive or negative on the whole,

31:40SPEAKERbut you're totally right though.

31:41SPEAKERI mean, like there definitely have been a lot of enormous,

31:44SPEAKERbut you know, video conferencing.

31:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:47SPEAKER- Like there have been a lot of huge benefits for sure.

31:51SPEAKER- I mean, the ability to order things

31:54SPEAKERwithout having to go someplace or, you know,

31:58SPEAKERbut like books and like entertainment and food

32:02SPEAKERand all of these things.

32:05SPEAKERSan Francisco, I mean, you know, a lot of smaller towns

32:08SPEAKERobviously only have one library,

32:09SPEAKERbut like San Francisco has got what two dozen,

32:12SPEAKERthree dozen branches and they closed all but one of them

32:15SPEAKERfor most of this pandemic.

32:16SPEAKERAnd the one was downtown,

32:17SPEAKERmeaning I would have to go get on a bus to go there

32:19SPEAKERand like going on a bus is not a great idea, you know,

32:24SPEAKERmuch less going to a library.

32:25SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

32:26SPEAKERLike if they didn't have eBooks,

32:27SPEAKERif I needed to go get books or Blu-rays or whatever,

32:30SPEAKERlike that's not an appealing proposition

32:33SPEAKERto have to travel somewhere to do that.

32:34SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I mean, even if,

32:35SPEAKERlike I'm thinking about the town I grew up in,

32:37SPEAKERwe had two branch libraries and one main library.

32:41SPEAKERAnd like, I don't even think they had a parking lot.

32:44SPEAKERSo you'd street park for all of them

32:47SPEAKERand they're not really an opportunity for curbside pickup

32:50SPEAKERor anything like that even.

32:51SPEAKERI'm sure they have it now, but like it's just,

32:55SPEAKERit is, yeah, I'm very thankful (laughs)

33:00SPEAKERthat what this, I'm sad, continue to be sad that this has all

33:04SPEAKERhappened 'cause it is awful, but I'm very grateful

33:08SPEAKERthat it happened in a time when like the internet

33:12SPEAKERis as developed as it is.

33:13SPEAKER'Cause even in the dial-up days, this would have been rough.

33:16SPEAKER- Yeah.

33:18SPEAKER- But yeah, the games thing, like we're starting to play,

33:22SPEAKERI said, I realized I had enough spare parts around

33:25SPEAKERto build her a pretty decent computer with like a 1080 Ti

33:29SPEAKERand like, you know. - Damn.

33:31SPEAKER- That's not insignificant for a child's first computer.

33:36SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it also is the stuff that I had

33:38SPEAKERjust laying around that was old parts, right?

33:41SPEAKER- I love hearing those stories.

33:43SPEAKERAnd I think it's just because I get such a thrill

33:44SPEAKERout of using old stuff instead of throwing it away.

33:47SPEAKER- Well, it's-- - Like I just,

33:47SPEAKERI love hearing about parents building their kids

33:49SPEAKERhand-me-down computers out of stuff.

33:51SPEAKER- Well, this one is the guts of,

33:54SPEAKERwhen I first started doing VR stuff,

33:55SPEAKERbefore there were laptops that could run VR headsets,

34:00SPEAKERthis is the guts of the small form factor

34:02SPEAKERthat I used to schlep around with a handle on it

34:05SPEAKERto do VR demos.

34:07SPEAKERAnd it's nice that it's getting use again.

34:10SPEAKERAnd updating that version of the 2017 version of Windows

34:16SPEAKERuntil it ran, the 2020 version of Windows

34:19SPEAKERwas a multi-day affair, but it's all working now

34:21SPEAKERand it's good and I'm, yeah, pretty stoked about it.

34:24SPEAKER- That's cool.

34:27SPEAKERLet's see, do you wanna talk about SSDs?

34:32SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

34:34SPEAKERAgain, speaking of games, I mean,

34:36SPEAKERthese new consoles came out and that's been weird.

34:40SPEAKERYou know, especially in my line of work,

34:42SPEAKERnever having actually gone somewhere

34:44SPEAKERto see them before release, you know?

34:46SPEAKER- Well, right, normally we would have gone to E3 this year

34:48SPEAKERand seen them all then.

34:50SPEAKER- Maybe, yeah.

34:51SPEAKER- GDC probably even.

34:52SPEAKER- Probably would have announced them by E3, I guess.

34:55SPEAKERIt's hard to say, but we'll never know, you know?

34:56SPEAKER'Cause like so many things were up in the air

34:59SPEAKERbecause of the pandemic and also like a lot of things

35:01SPEAKERwere up in the air about E3, regardless of the pandemic.

35:05SPEAKERBut yeah, like we would have, I would like,

35:09SPEAKERstarting with the 360, like I went to play,

35:11SPEAKERI think Full Auto was the first 360 game I ever played

35:14SPEAKERbefore the 360 came out.

35:15SPEAKER- Wow.

35:16SPEAKER- And I played it on a gigantic dev kit.

35:18SPEAKERLike there were no final 360 consoles

35:20SPEAKERin the hands of the developers at that point.

35:21SPEAKER- Were those like G5s or something?

35:25SPEAKER- Maybe, that might've been the guts of it.

35:27SPEAKERI mean, it was a bespoke, like it was a hand-built,

35:29SPEAKERlike bespoke box.

35:30SPEAKERIt was a gigantic thing.

35:33SPEAKERPoint is though, like covering consoles before they come out,

35:36SPEAKERlike that's the cycle, you know?

35:37SPEAKERIt's like, you're going four or five months

35:39SPEAKERbefore they come out, you're somewhere with the controller

35:41SPEAKERin your hands playing one of the games, you know?

35:43SPEAKERAnd like, we didn't have any of that this time.

35:44SPEAKERSo like not seeing them in action,

35:47SPEAKERnot feeling what the controllers were like,

35:49SPEAKERlike having everything wait until they actually came out

35:51SPEAKERwas like kind of surreal.

35:53SPEAKER- I remember taking PC demos even in like 2000,

36:00SPEAKERthe E3 before the 360 came out,

36:01SPEAKERwhich would have been what, 2007?

36:04SPEAKER- For which one?

36:05SPEAKER- For the 360.

36:06SPEAKER- Oh, that was 2005 is when the 360 came out.

36:09SPEAKER- God, really?

36:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:10SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, it was, I remember taking PC demos

36:13SPEAKERthen where they were like, "Hey, check this out."

36:15SPEAKERAnd they whipped out a wired 360 controller

36:18SPEAKERand you were like, (gasps)

36:20SPEAKER- Controllers on a PC?

36:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

36:22SPEAKER- Controllers.

36:23SPEAKER- Do you have a game port?

36:24SPEAKERDo you have a game port on that machine?

36:24SPEAKER- Yeah, how are you plugging this thing in?

36:25SPEAKERYou got an adapter?

36:26SPEAKERThat's some sort of dongle.

36:29SPEAKER- Anyway, I bring all that up to say that, you know,

36:31SPEAKERnot seeing these things before release,

36:33SPEAKERlike you kind of wondered like,

36:34SPEAKER"Boy, they sure are harping on these SSDs and these things

36:36SPEAKER"and how fast they're gonna be

36:38SPEAKER"and how that's gonna change everything."

36:39SPEAKERLike, I hope they're not just blowing smoke about that.

36:42SPEAKEREspecially, you know, because like,

36:44SPEAKERso you don't have either one of them, right?

36:45SPEAKER- I wouldn't know, Brad.

36:46SPEAKER- Okay, I'm sorry.

36:48SPEAKER- It turns out they're a little bit difficult

36:49SPEAKERto get right now.

36:51SPEAKER- Glad to be an authority here.

36:53SPEAKER- Console slash anime editor, Brad Shoemaker.

36:56SPEAKER- But I mean, you know, like the usable storage space

36:59SPEAKERin these things is a dramatically short

37:00SPEAKERof what you would expect from previous gen consoles,

37:02SPEAKERyou know?

37:03SPEAKERLike the usable space in a PS5 is like 600 and something gig.

37:06SPEAKERIt's not much.

37:07SPEAKER- I mean, that's more than my launch PS4 or Xbox One had.

37:12SPEAKER- That was seven years ago, man.

37:13SPEAKERGames have ballooned exponentially since then.

37:16SPEAKER- I mean, look, I'm aware of the size of a Call of Duty.

37:19SPEAKERAll I'm saying is like, you know,

37:21SPEAKERthere are very obvious downsides to going to these SSDs.

37:24SPEAKERSo you really hoped like, boy,

37:25SPEAKERI hope that the upsides are worth like this reduction

37:27SPEAKERin space and stuff like that, but they totally are.

37:29SPEAKERLike-

37:30SPEAKER- Are the downloads faster for the new console?

37:32SPEAKER'Cause like-

37:33SPEAKER- So, yes, but I don't know how much of that

37:35SPEAKERto lay at the feet of like the storage versus, you know,

37:38SPEAKERthe CPU's are also way faster.

37:39SPEAKERAlso, maybe they've upgraded their CDNs, who knows?

37:42SPEAKERLike there could be a lot of factors there, right?

37:44SPEAKER- I'm just curious if it's like viable

37:46SPEAKERto like play something and then delete it.

37:48SPEAKERAnd then when you want to play it again,

37:49SPEAKERdownload it again, if you have good internet.

37:51SPEAKER- Obviously that depends on data cap situation

37:54SPEAKERand speed of internet and stuff like that.

37:55SPEAKERBut like, I am lucky enough to not have a data cap

37:58SPEAKERand have gigabit.

37:59SPEAKERAnd the downloads on the PS5 are insanely fast.

38:02SPEAKER- Oh, sweet.

38:05SPEAKER- I wish that they broke out transfer speed.

38:06SPEAKERThe Xbox does that when you watch a download.

38:08SPEAKERThe PS5, you just kind of have to eyeball

38:10SPEAKERhow fast the number's ticking up.

38:12SPEAKERBut I've seen downloads on the PS5

38:15SPEAKERdamn near saturate my gigabit.

38:16SPEAKERLike they absolutely look like they were downloading

38:19SPEAKER80 to 100 megabytes a second.

38:20SPEAKER- That's a huge, 'cause like the PS4.

38:22SPEAKER- Yes, PS4 was notoriously awful about download speeds.

38:26SPEAKERSo like they, PS5 downloads and Xbox is no slouch.

38:29SPEAKERLike I'm routinely seeing Xbox downloads

38:32SPEAKERgo in five, 600 megabits a second.

38:34SPEAKER- Yeah, even the Xbox One, even my launch Xbox One

38:37SPEAKERwill do a, it doesn't saturate the gigabit,

38:41SPEAKERbut it gets, it goes fast, right?

38:44SPEAKER- Yeah, they're very nice.

38:45SPEAKERBut it really is just the experience of playing the games

38:48SPEAKERwith these things.

38:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:49SPEAKER- Like you hear about like Astro Bot and Miles Morales,

38:52SPEAKER'cause those are first party games that were like made

38:54SPEAKERwith the full, you know, knowledge of what the hardware

38:57SPEAKERwas gonna be as early as possible.

38:58SPEAKERAnd like, those are the ones where there is not even

39:00SPEAKERa loading screen.

39:01SPEAKERIt's literally like, it fades to black for like two seconds

39:04SPEAKERand then you're in.

39:05SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:05SPEAKER- But even games like, like Immortals, the Ubisoft,

39:10SPEAKERkind of open world, Ancient Greece, Breath of the Wild

39:12SPEAKERkind of thing, like that game still has loading screens.

39:15SPEAKERLike they didn't bother to take them out

39:16SPEAKERon the next gen versions, but like they almost might

39:19SPEAKERas well not be there.

39:20SPEAKER- I can't-

39:21SPEAKER- That's a game, that's a game that is multi-platform,

39:23SPEAKERmeaning that they, you know, had to spread their efforts

39:25SPEAKERacross a bunch of different platforms.

39:27SPEAKERIt's an early launch game, so they didn't have like a lot

39:29SPEAKERof time to, you know, come to grips with like the new

39:31SPEAKERlibraries and stuff like that.

39:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

39:33SPEAKER- Like it's a worst case scenario is what I'm saying.

39:34SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:35SPEAKER- It's like, here is a game that is probably as hamstrung

39:38SPEAKERin development as a game is gonna get on these platforms.

39:40SPEAKERAnd even it is loading so fast that like you can kind of

39:44SPEAKERjust barely read the first tool tip on the loading screen.

39:47SPEAKER- How does that compare-

39:48SPEAKER- It's like five seconds, it's like five seconds, it's crazy.

39:50SPEAKER- How does that compare to like, are you seeing the same

39:53SPEAKERbenefits on PC or not so much?

39:55SPEAKER- It's comparable.

39:56SPEAKER- Okay.

39:57SPEAKER- It's absolutely faster in some cases, like in Spider-Man's

40:00SPEAKERcase, for example, it is night and day, even from a PC.

40:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean it's-

40:04SPEAKER- I did some, not that I'm like in the hardware benchmarking

40:08SPEAKERgame, but I tried my hand at some load time benchmarking

40:11SPEAKERfor a video like a year or two ago, a year and a half,

40:13SPEAKERon just a commercial SATA3 SSD.

40:16SPEAKERAnd like you were seeing loading times like seven, eight,

40:18SPEAKER10 seconds.

40:19SPEAKER- Wow.

40:20SPEAKER- On a PC, which is like good.

40:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:24SPEAKER- But it's not hit X at the menu on the PS5 on Spider-Man

40:28SPEAKERand like I clocked it from launching the game from the

40:31SPEAKERconsole UI to moving around in the game at like seven and a

40:35SPEAKERhalf seconds or something like that.

40:36SPEAKER- Does Spider-Man-

40:37SPEAKER- The title screen, like loading your save game,

40:39SPEAKERit's like maybe two seconds tops.

40:40SPEAKER- Does Spider-Man, see, this is the thing like for Animal

40:44SPEAKERCrossing, I would love to have, like, I want this for

40:48SPEAKERAnimal Crossing because that's a game I want to load up and

40:49SPEAKERplay for like 15 minutes.

40:50SPEAKERAnd it takes five minutes to go from like home screen to

40:54SPEAKERtitle screen to like walking out of my house.

40:57SPEAKER- And there are a bunch of little loads in there every time

40:59SPEAKERyou go in and out of a building and stuff like that.

41:02SPEAKER- Yeah, that's not as bad anymore.

41:03SPEAKERIt's like a black screen, but yeah.

41:06SPEAKER- But stuff like that is kind of non-existent once you can

41:08SPEAKERload this fast, right?

41:09SPEAKER- And also like the loading other people's islands and stuff

41:12SPEAKERover the internet, it tastes so long.

41:14SPEAKER- Oh my God, that would probably be on my list of the worst

41:20SPEAKERthings of this year was dealing with the turnip economy and

41:23SPEAKERtrying to get into, hanging out on turnip.exchange.

41:29SPEAKER- Look, you got to get that turnip.exchange.

41:31SPEAKER- Trying to get into other people's islands,

41:33SPEAKERit was such a mess.

41:34SPEAKERLike, oh, somebody's in their inventory right now.

41:37SPEAKERSo you can't connect to this island.

41:39SPEAKERWhat?

41:39SPEAKER- We did that this weekend for my sister-in-law because

41:43SPEAKERshe's got a new island and she needs some,

41:45SPEAKERshe needed fat stacks of bells.

41:47SPEAKER- Oh my God.

41:48SPEAKER- And we ran a couple of bricks to some guy that had a 630

41:55SPEAKERprice and he had four, four slots is too many slots, Brad.

41:59SPEAKERThat's the thing we learned on turnip exchange is two slots.

42:02SPEAKERThat's the most you can bring in and out.

42:04SPEAKERAnyway.

42:05SPEAKER- That's good, that's good to know.

42:07SPEAKER- I got a hardware audio mixer this year.

42:09SPEAKERIt was a real quality of life improvement

42:10SPEAKERon the streaming game.

42:12SPEAKER- The Behringer?

42:13SPEAKER- I got a Behringer XR18,

42:15SPEAKERwhich was recommended by Vinny, Jason,

42:18SPEAKERand the fine folks in the,

42:20SPEAKERin the tech pod music creators channel as like a really good,

42:27SPEAKERlike punching way above its weight digital mixer.

42:30SPEAKERAnd I didn't really appreciate what digital mixers do

42:34SPEAKERuntil I started noodling with this versus like the old

42:37SPEAKERYamaha's and whatever that we used to use

42:38SPEAKERin the whiskey basement.

42:40SPEAKERAnd it is, it is a lot smaller than an analog mixer

42:44SPEAKERbecause it doesn't have the big control panel.

42:45SPEAKERIt's all software.

42:47SPEAKERBut B I can do so much weird stuff with it.

42:51SPEAKERAnd, and all of like my audio processing all happens

42:55SPEAKERin the file now, instead of like me having to open up

42:59SPEAKERand run a bunch of processing and noise reduction

43:02SPEAKERand stuff like that and no gates and compressors

43:04SPEAKERand all that.

43:05SPEAKERAnd it lets me run compressors on the audio

43:09SPEAKERthat comes from my computer.

43:10SPEAKERSo if I'm listening to like a Twitch stream

43:12SPEAKERor watching something and it's going to blow out the audio,

43:15SPEAKERmy ears don't, my ears don't suffer

43:17SPEAKEReven though I've had phones on, which is nice.

43:19SPEAKERI love it.

43:20SPEAKER- It's kind of like on a film set,

43:21SPEAKERlike any visual effects that you can do in camera on set.

43:25SPEAKER- You talking about the volume?

43:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so like any pre-processing you can do, let's say,

43:30SPEAKERlike anything you can do upfront before it all goes in

43:34SPEAKERis less you have to do on the backend

43:36SPEAKERafter the fact to fix things, right?

43:37SPEAKER- Anytime somebody says, fuck it, let's do it in post.

43:40SPEAKERThat's going to cost like 50 or a hundred grand.

43:41SPEAKER- Yep, yep, exactly, exactly.

43:44SPEAKERYeah, that stuff sounds cool.

43:45SPEAKERIt's just, it's a lot, it's a lot.

43:49SPEAKER- Like here's the thing, realistically, this is an XR.

43:52SPEAKERI got the XR 18 and I only got it

43:54SPEAKERbecause it's the smallest one that they sell

43:56SPEAKERthat has a digital output.

43:59SPEAKERSo that it has like a USB interface to the computer.

44:02SPEAKER- It does, I don't, okay.

44:03SPEAKER- So if you're not using, if you go to the XR 12

44:07SPEAKERor I think there's an XR 10 or an eight or something,

44:09SPEAKERthose are both analog outs only.

44:12SPEAKERSo you can't, like you, in order to get audio out of them,

44:17SPEAKERyou have to plug them into another audio interface.

44:19SPEAKERIt's in the back of the computer.

44:21SPEAKER- I had not even considered how you were actually

44:23SPEAKERgetting the audio into the computer from the mixer.

44:25SPEAKER- Yes, so I have, I plugged the USB into the stream computer

44:29SPEAKERand the analog outs go into an audio interface

44:33SPEAKERon my game PC, which is what I listened to,

44:36SPEAKERwhich is how like you're getting audio right now.

44:40SPEAKERBut on the stream PC, I have a DAW, a workstation,

44:45SPEAKERI use voice meter to route all of the different channels

44:49SPEAKERcoming out of the mixer independently.

44:51SPEAKERSo like Discord only gets a voice channel

44:53SPEAKERand I get a Streamlabs, I get stream notifications back

44:58SPEAKERand all of that kind of, it's a trip.

45:02SPEAKERBut it means I get an actual mix of the thing

45:05SPEAKERthat I'm streaming and I don't have to open a video window

45:08SPEAKERand deal with three seconds of delay or whatever it is, so.

45:10SPEAKER- Yeah, a lot of new workflows to figure out this year.

45:14SPEAKER- Turns out, workflows. - A lot of stuff.

45:16SPEAKERI've got this stream deck still sitting here

45:18SPEAKERthat I haven't actually set up yet 'cause it just.

45:22SPEAKER- Look, once you read three body problem,

45:24SPEAKERyou can set that up, that's my permission.

45:29SPEAKER- It's been a lot of doing work to do work this year,

45:32SPEAKERyou know what I mean?

45:33SPEAKERLike it's been hours and hours of figuring out

45:35SPEAKERhow to do things in this situation

45:38SPEAKERso you can actually do things, you know what I mean?

45:40SPEAKERIt's been, it has quite literally been

45:42SPEAKERlike a whole second job at times.

45:44SPEAKERLike there have been weeks where like half my work week

45:47SPEAKERwas me crawling around under the desk,

45:48SPEAKERlike plugging in, running video cables,

45:52SPEAKERlike trying to understand like video compression

45:55SPEAKERand all kinds of stuff like that.

45:57SPEAKER- Figuring out how to do multiple camera inputs

46:00SPEAKERon a remote stream, it turns out is really hard, who knew?

46:04SPEAKER- Man, yeah.

46:06SPEAKER- What are you using your NAS for these days, Brad?

46:09SPEAKER- I'm not, I will say I'm not super happy

46:13SPEAKERwith how my little list turned out here

46:15SPEAKER'cause it feels very self-serving.

46:16SPEAKER- Well, that's what this kind of list is, dude.

46:18SPEAKER- Well, I guess, I had intended to go into this

46:20SPEAKERto say like, here are like the five developments in tech

46:23SPEAKERthat I liked this year.

46:24SPEAKERLike, oh, here, you know, I was like,

46:25SPEAKERoh, maybe I'll get a space news story in there.

46:28SPEAKERLike what happened in cosmology, you know what I mean?

46:31SPEAKERLike that kind of thing.

46:32SPEAKER- Oh, Cyreflex was pretty cool.

46:33SPEAKER- And instead I just ended up like,

46:35SPEAKERoh, here's all the stuff I'd spend my time with this year.

46:37SPEAKER- But that's what, I think that's the interesting, like,

46:43SPEAKERso when I do this kind of list as a story,

46:45SPEAKER'cause I've been writing about tech for a long time now,

46:48SPEAKERmy favorite part about this is when somebody says,

46:50SPEAKERoh, I totally did the exact same thing you did,

46:52SPEAKERbut then I also did this other thing.

46:55SPEAKERAnd I wanna hear the things that people have done.

46:59SPEAKERLike I'm sharing this stuff because I wanna know

47:01SPEAKERwhat are the things that have made your life better?

47:03SPEAKERBecause if it made your life better,

47:05SPEAKERit can make a bunch of other people's lives better.

47:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I know we've talked about that before.

47:09SPEAKERThat's the fun, that is the most gratifying aspect of this

47:12SPEAKERis you can either teach people about stuff

47:14SPEAKERor you can learn stuff from them.

47:16SPEAKER- Both at the same time.

47:18SPEAKER- Right, it's just like two way exchange of information.

47:23SPEAKERAnyway, having this NAS turned out to be like indispensable

47:26SPEAKERfor the work that I ended up having to do here.

47:29SPEAKERLike I suddenly needed to archive

47:31SPEAKERtens to hundreds of gigabytes of video at a time.

47:34SPEAKER- Did you just have a big stack of hard drives

47:36SPEAKERin the side there?

47:38SPEAKER- In the NAS?

47:39SPEAKER- Like outside, are you still filling up the NAS with the--

47:42SPEAKER- Oh no, it all just fits on the NAS.

47:43SPEAKERI don't keep stuff, like I'm not keeping stuff

47:46SPEAKERfor months at a time.

47:47SPEAKERThat's just like one week's worth of,

47:49SPEAKERone or two weeks worth of video would be--

47:51SPEAKER- Oh, so you archive and then put them on S3 or something.

47:54SPEAKER- I'm archiving stuff at like 30 gigabit.

47:56SPEAKERI mean, megabits here to upload to the site

47:59SPEAKERand be recompressed, so that's why it's so big.

48:01SPEAKERSo like, I'm trying to do the fuzzy math here,

48:04SPEAKERlike a two, two and a half hour stream

48:07SPEAKERcould be 40, 50 gigabytes.

48:09SPEAKERLike it adds up quickly.

48:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a good thing you have fiber.

48:13SPEAKER- Absolutely, yes, not everybody on the staff

48:15SPEAKERwas lucky enough to benefit from that kind of thing,

48:16SPEAKERbut having that bulk storage on the network

48:20SPEAKERto dump footage on was super useful.

48:24SPEAKERHaving built it with a 6700K,

48:25SPEAKERwhich seemed very excessive at the time I did it,

48:28SPEAKERturned out to be nice because I ended up

48:30SPEAKERlike learning enough FFmpeg

48:32SPEAKERthat I ended up doing some footage conversion on the box

48:35SPEAKERwithout having to like copy it over, which was nice.

48:38SPEAKERAnd then like, honestly, the big thing is this year,

48:40SPEAKERthis is the year that I probably turned the corner

48:43SPEAKERon like being in a Unix-y kind of environment.

48:46SPEAKER- Yeah, you've gotten, you started writing Bash scripts

48:49SPEAKERand all sorts of crazy stuff.

48:49SPEAKER- Like just little stuff, not enough and too crazy.

48:52SPEAKER- But that's how it works, right?

48:54SPEAKER- Yeah, but yes, like I got comfortable enough in a shell

48:57SPEAKERand like piping stuff, you know, like Unix pipes

49:01SPEAKERand stuff like that and Bash, yeah,

49:02SPEAKERlike some shell scripts and some stuff like that.

49:04SPEAKERLike it all just kind of like,

49:07SPEAKERthat's kind of all computing, right, as you're like flailing

49:10SPEAKERaround in the dark for months to years at a time.

49:13SPEAKERAnd then one day, like you solve a problem

49:14SPEAKERwithout knowing that you would be able to solve the problem.

49:17SPEAKERAnd then it's like, oh, I guess I understand this now.

49:19SPEAKER- Honestly, it's like the Fusion thing.

49:21SPEAKERLike I'd been using SketchUp and tools like Fusion 360

49:24SPEAKERfor a really long time.

49:25SPEAKERI did that Mr. Case, which is probably the most ambitious

49:28SPEAKERthing I've ever tried to do.

49:30SPEAKERAnd then one day I was like,

49:31SPEAKERI'm just gonna stream me finishing this.

49:34SPEAKER'Cause I don't, I'm kind of at a loss.

49:36SPEAKERI didn't know exactly how to do like the final steps

49:39SPEAKERto pretty stuff up.

49:40SPEAKERAnd I feel like Y-Cross from the Discord

49:43SPEAKERand from my Twitch channel popped up in that stream

49:46SPEAKERand was like, hey, I use this all the time.

49:49SPEAKERDo you want some help?

49:50SPEAKERDo you want backseating?

49:51SPEAKERI was like, yes, please backseat me.

49:53SPEAKERAnd I learned so much in like 20 minutes

49:56SPEAKERof having somebody who knew what they were doing

49:57SPEAKERwatch over my shoulder and tell me,

50:00SPEAKERoh, you can do it this way and it'll take a long time.

50:02SPEAKERBut if you just click this and click this

50:03SPEAKERand then hit that button, then it'll do it.

50:05SPEAKERAnd the upshot is that now when I open up Fusion,

50:08SPEAKERI know where to start.

50:09SPEAKERAnd I feel like you had that same turn

50:10SPEAKERon the command line stuff this year.

50:13SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

50:14SPEAKERI've just been spending inordinate amounts of time,

50:18SPEAKERhonestly, since I built that thing a couple of years ago,

50:20SPEAKERbut especially this year.

50:22SPEAKER- Well, and it's like the difference between

50:23SPEAKERlike looking for an example script

50:26SPEAKERto figure out how to adapt it, to do what you wanna do

50:29SPEAKERand just starting out the script

50:30SPEAKERand then looking for the commands to do the thing

50:32SPEAKERthat you need the script to do.

50:33SPEAKER- Totally, totally.

50:34SPEAKERAt one point, I just wrote a script

50:35SPEAKERand then I was like, oh,

50:37SPEAKERthen I had to find out what P-Rep does.

50:38SPEAKEROr I was like, oh, I need something

50:40SPEAKERthat can search running processes

50:42SPEAKERand filter stuff through there.

50:43SPEAKERAnd it's, yeah.

50:46SPEAKERA lot of running into problems

50:48SPEAKERand having to solve them is how you learn stuff like that.

50:51SPEAKER- That's how I learned how to do computer stuff 30 years ago.

50:54SPEAKER- Like the time that I threw the FreeNAS interface,

50:57SPEAKERI was like, oh, I should see what these ACLs are about

50:59SPEAKERon my network share.

51:01SPEAKERAnd then I hosed all of the permissions

51:03SPEAKERacross the entire NAS.

51:04SPEAKER- Nice work.

51:05SPEAKERDid you recover?

51:06SPEAKERDid you have to rebuild?

51:06SPEAKER- Couldn't access anything.

51:08SPEAKERSo that was how I quickly had to,

51:11SPEAKERlike I kind of, I mostly do what's,

51:12SPEAKERyou know, how to use chmod,

51:14SPEAKERbut like I really had to learn how to do it.

51:17SPEAKERI really had to like, okay, in the space of one command,

51:19SPEAKERhow can I set every directory on this NAS?

51:24SPEAKEROr how can I flip the execute flag on

51:26SPEAKERfor every directory on this NAS

51:27SPEAKERwithout doing it on every file and stuff like that?

51:29SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

51:30SPEAKER- Oh my God.

51:31SPEAKER- You're yawning enormously.

51:33SPEAKER- Oh, no, that's just a nightmare.

51:35SPEAKERI've had nightmares about that.

51:36SPEAKER- I know it's a little bit in the weeds.

51:39SPEAKER- Look, you're one step ahead of me on that.

51:41SPEAKERI don't mess with command line outside of jails

51:44SPEAKERon the FreeNAS box 'cause I'm afraid I'll mess up something

51:47SPEAKERand jack up the permissions.

51:48SPEAKER- That was actually like the best thing I did all year,

51:50SPEAKERand I don't know why I never did this before,

51:52SPEAKERwas all the jails on there.

51:53SPEAKERI just have, they're all kind of single purpose.

51:55SPEAKERIt's like, here's my Plex jail, here's the CUPS jail,

51:58SPEAKERwhich is the print server, stuff like that.

52:01SPEAKERBut I was like, why don't I just make

52:02SPEAKERa multi-purpose general purpose one

52:04SPEAKERthat I can just do whatever with and not worry about,

52:06SPEAKER'cause you can just delete it and start over, right?

52:08SPEAKERSo I just made a jail, I was like, you know what?

52:10SPEAKERI'm just gonna install anything I can think of

52:11SPEAKERand want to tinker with in here and don't care about.

52:14SPEAKER- And then spin it out into its own later on?

52:17SPEAKER- If you wanna use it, it's just kind of a temp,

52:21SPEAKERmakeshift jail for whatever I'm gonna mess with,

52:24SPEAKERI'm gonna try messing with some FFmpeg stuff here

52:27SPEAKERor whatever, whatever thing I wanna install and mess with.

52:30SPEAKERIt's just like this thing is disposable and I can just

52:32SPEAKERhose it and start over without any risk.

52:35SPEAKER- I never even considered that.

52:37SPEAKER- Like that's where I did all the kind of scripting

52:38SPEAKERand stuff that, and I just mounted all my storage pool

52:42SPEAKERin there so I could access the files

52:43SPEAKERand like, yeah, it's very handy.

52:47SPEAKER- Well, I mean, is there a performance?

52:49SPEAKERI guess there's a little bit of a performance overhead

52:51SPEAKERon having each jail, not really?

52:53SPEAKER- No, no, 'cause you're not really virtualizing anything.

52:56SPEAKER- Yeah, you just--

52:57SPEAKER- Jail's in BSD and the equivalent in Linux is LXC,

53:00SPEAKERI guess is how you say it.

53:01SPEAKERI don't know if anybody pronounces it Lexi,

53:03SPEAKERit's the acronym is LXC for Linux containers.

53:07SPEAKERIn both cases, all they're using is name spacing

53:09SPEAKERand like kind of--

53:11SPEAKER- It's like a permissions bucket kind of, right?

53:13SPEAKER- Yes, it's like an arbitrary kind of sandboxing basically.

53:16SPEAKERAll it's doing is the kernel is just saying these processes,

53:19SPEAKERthese user accounts, whatever exist within this sandbox

53:22SPEAKERthat can't touch the rest of whatever's running in memory.

53:25SPEAKERAnd so, yeah, there's essentially no performance overhead

53:28SPEAKER'cause it's all just running on the system kernel.

53:33SPEAKER- There was one news story that I thought

53:35SPEAKERwas really interesting this year

53:36SPEAKERthat was a techie and relevant.

53:39SPEAKERAnd that's that people, I mean,

53:42SPEAKERpeople have used streaming tech

53:44SPEAKERfor more than just games for a long,

53:45SPEAKERlike we did a talk show 10 years ago, right?

53:49SPEAKERLike a weekly like magazine style,

53:55SPEAKERthe happy hour every week.

53:57SPEAKERSo people were doing more than just game stuff

53:59SPEAKERfor a really long time.

54:00SPEAKERBut I feel like the coverage on the ground

54:06SPEAKERof the Black Lives Matter protests

54:08SPEAKERthat happened in the summer and fall

54:10SPEAKERwas the first time I saw that being used more

54:15SPEAKERby more than like news organizations and things like that.

54:17SPEAKERAnd the fact that like people were streaming,

54:21SPEAKERlike there was on the ground truth,

54:24SPEAKERlive video of on the ground truth,

54:26SPEAKERhours and hours and hours of the scenes

54:29SPEAKERfrom those protesters.

54:30SPEAKERSo you could actually see what was happening

54:32SPEAKERversus just having the one side say one side thing

54:36SPEAKERand one side say the other,

54:38SPEAKERwhich is what's always happened in the past.

54:39SPEAKERAnd we saw a little bit of that with Occupy

54:41SPEAKERand stuff like that.

54:41SPEAKERBut the stuff that was, the way they,

54:45SPEAKERthe streaming technology wasn't good enough

54:47SPEAKERfor the video that was coming out of it.

54:49SPEAKERSo you couldn't, like as soon as anything started moving,

54:51SPEAKERthe video would break down

54:52SPEAKER'cause 3D cellular wasn't fast enough.

54:54SPEAKERAnd now we saw like really like unequivocal footage

54:59SPEAKERof a lot of things so that it wasn't just a one side

55:04SPEAKERsaid one thing, one side said the other.

55:05SPEAKERYou could see where it started.

55:07SPEAKER- We finally hit the tipping point

55:09SPEAKERon the quality of the tech where like there,

55:11SPEAKERit's kind of a historic moment, honestly,

55:14SPEAKERwhere the tech can actually affect sociological change now.

55:17SPEAKERIt's like the analogy that I thought of

55:19SPEAKERis the way that wasn't kind of earlier social media

55:23SPEAKERpretty instrumental in the Arab spring.

55:25SPEAKER- Yeah, that was the one I was gonna mention.

55:27SPEAKER- And that was like early Facebook and stuff like that.

55:29SPEAKER- It was Twitter.

55:30SPEAKERIt was almost all Twitter.

55:31SPEAKER- Was it Twitter?

55:32SPEAKER- People were using, they weren't blocking Twitter

55:34SPEAKER'cause it came over SMS in Egypt.

55:36SPEAKERAnd I wanna say Jordan maybe,

55:39SPEAKERbut I can't remember where the other ones were.

55:41SPEAKER- I'm looking for a date.

55:42SPEAKER- That was in 2000.

55:44SPEAKER- Considered to be kind of 2010 is when it started.

55:47SPEAKER- 10 or 11, I think.

55:47SPEAKER- So that was pretty early Twitter and that sort of thing.

55:50SPEAKER- Well, and because Twitter operated over SMS,

55:52SPEAKERthey couldn't, they didn't block SMS,

55:54SPEAKERTwitter for a long time.

55:56SPEAKERSo they were using 144 character messages

55:58SPEAKERas to organize and say where to be and where not to be

56:04SPEAKERso that it was harder for the government

56:05SPEAKERto crack down on them.

56:06SPEAKER- Right, yeah.

56:07SPEAKERSo yeah, like this totally has the feel of that to me

56:09SPEAKERof like the tech hit a point

56:11SPEAKERwhere it's actually very useful in this role

56:14SPEAKERand not just kind of a sideshow.

56:16SPEAKERIt's like crucial to what's in place.

56:20SPEAKER- The other thing is because everybody has phones

56:22SPEAKERand everybody has 4G connections that were good,

56:24SPEAKERyou were actually seeing multiple viewpoints

56:26SPEAKERof the same thing.

56:27SPEAKERSo there wasn't like there was enough video to watch

56:30SPEAKERand see, okay, here's the video of the person

56:35SPEAKERthrowing the bottle at the police line.

56:37SPEAKERHere's the video of the police firing,

56:40SPEAKERhundreds of rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets

56:42SPEAKERand all of that shit back at people

56:44SPEAKERbecause one maniac hooked something at them

56:46SPEAKERand like, yeah, it becomes really clear.

56:51SPEAKERAnd I mean, there's bad stuff that comes with that too.

56:54SPEAKERLike there was a lot of like online sleuthing

56:57SPEAKERabout who threw the bottle

56:58SPEAKERthat ended up being really bad information

57:00SPEAKERand like hurting people who had done nothing wrong

57:03SPEAKERand things like that.

57:05SPEAKERBut also we found like at the same time

57:07SPEAKERyou found the people who were responsible

57:09SPEAKERfor doing bad stuff.

57:10SPEAKERSo anyway, it's a good thing I think.

57:12SPEAKER- Yeah, on the whole to me,

57:13SPEAKERit's kind of the upside of the internet's ability

57:16SPEAKERto like disseminate propaganda and misinformation

57:18SPEAKERand kind of radicalize people as a result.

57:22SPEAKERThis is sort of the, I don't know, how would you put it?

57:27SPEAKERThis kind of has a chastening effect on that sort of thing

57:29SPEAKERof being able to say here, no, here's what actually happened.

57:32SPEAKERHere is the video, like this is hard to refute

57:35SPEAKERat least until we enter the awful deep fake future

57:38SPEAKERin another five or 10 years

57:39SPEAKERwhere you can no longer trust video.

57:41SPEAKER- Well, then you have to have your machine learning algorithm

57:43SPEAKERthat's trained to recognize deep fake video

57:46SPEAKERto tell you whether the video is true or false.

57:48SPEAKERSo just robots fighting other robots is where we're headed.

57:51SPEAKER- Electronic thumb.

57:52SPEAKERI mean, one of the things and one of the recurring themes

57:55SPEAKERwhen we started out with this podcast,

57:57SPEAKERwe were both in a place where like I wasn't sure

58:02SPEAKERthat the internet was a good thing anymore.

58:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:06SPEAKER- And it was one of the things

58:07SPEAKERthat we were talking about a lot.

58:08SPEAKERAnd I feel like, I mean, like most technology,

58:14SPEAKERit is not an unequivocal good or bad thing.

58:17SPEAKERThere are good and bad aspects to everything

58:19SPEAKERthat we've done over the last 20 years.

58:21SPEAKERBut I feel like I'm starting to see things

58:24SPEAKERthat give me hope that maybe the internet is actually good.

58:28SPEAKERAnd the stuff that's happened in 2020

58:30SPEAKERhas accelerated that in a lot of ways.

58:33SPEAKERBoth the good and the bad, frankly.

58:34SPEAKERI mean, we saw the bad in the election,

58:37SPEAKERthe post-election nonsense from the president and anyway.

58:42SPEAKER- Yes, yes, it can be hard to maintain optimism,

58:45SPEAKERbut social change happens slowly.

58:48SPEAKERAnd I guess you have to remember that it may feel

58:50SPEAKERlike we are entering a period of permanent dystopia,

58:52SPEAKERbut maybe that's not actually the case

58:54SPEAKERand that some of these things are self-correcting over time.

58:57SPEAKER- Hopefully.

58:58SPEAKERI got us a couple of small things,

59:00SPEAKERlike products that I have added

59:02SPEAKERthat have made my life a little bit better.

59:07SPEAKERCan we talk about your monitors?

59:09SPEAKERAre you happy with monitors?

59:10SPEAKERAre you happy to have new monitors?

59:11SPEAKEROr are they still kind of a mixed bag?

59:13SPEAKER- Mixed bag.

59:14SPEAKER- Mixed bag.

59:15SPEAKER- I had not played any games on them

59:16SPEAKERwhen I was first bellyaching about their downsides.

59:19SPEAKERAnd pretty good for games.

59:21SPEAKER- 360 hertz monitor that Nvidia sent me to try

59:24SPEAKERhas been a life altering change.

59:27SPEAKER- These are not 360 hertz cool, but they are not bad.

59:31SPEAKER- I mean, for most games, you're not gonna hit 360 hertz.

59:33SPEAKERSo like 144, 165, whatever's fine.

59:36SPEAKER- You play a game at a semi professional level, right?

59:41SPEAKER- I mean, not as much as I used to, but yes, kind of.

59:45SPEAKERI got velour ear cups for my headphones.

59:48SPEAKERI needed to replace them and somebody had said,

59:51SPEAKER"Hey, why don't you check out these,

59:52SPEAKERthere's velour and like you can get like suede ones too."

59:57SPEAKER- Are those made by the manufacturer or are they aftermarket?

1:00:00SPEAKER- These are aftermarket.

1:00:02SPEAKERThe ones I got are brainwaves and they fit on my HMD 380s.

1:00:07SPEAKERBut you can get them for almost any like

1:00:10SPEAKERSennheiser Audio Technica kind of like production headphones

1:00:13SPEAKER'cause they're all designed to have

1:00:15SPEAKERremovable headband pads and cups.

1:00:18SPEAKERAnd these have memory foam with velour on the outside

1:00:21SPEAKERand they made the headphones sound a little bit different,

1:00:24SPEAKERbut they're very comfy.

1:00:26SPEAKERAnd they don't get anywhere near as sweaty

1:00:28SPEAKERas the fake leather ones did.

1:00:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know what it is about ear cups on headphones

1:00:33SPEAKERhaving a propensity to break down over time,

1:00:36SPEAKERcome apart or get gross, but.

1:00:38SPEAKER- It's, I mean, the foam doesn't last forever, right?

1:00:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.

1:00:42SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:44SPEAKER- I've got a pair of old PS3 era Sony wireless headphones.

1:00:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:49SPEAKER- I know that actually they have their own USB adapter,

1:00:51SPEAKERbut anyway, they'd been in a drawer for some number of years

1:00:55SPEAKERand I got them out and they had just like the,

1:00:57SPEAKERI don't know, is it foam?

1:00:59SPEAKERI don't know what the black covering over the ear cups is.

1:01:02SPEAKER- It's usually a soft plastic.

1:01:04SPEAKER- It had just disintegrated and was just in bits

1:01:06SPEAKERall over the drawer.

1:01:07SPEAKER- So it's funny, I have a set of Sony, those MDR,

1:01:11SPEAKERwhatever the cheap references,

1:01:13SPEAKERlike the a hundred dollar studio reference headphones are,

1:01:16SPEAKERI have a couple of pairs of those

1:01:17SPEAKERand every single one of those,

1:01:18SPEAKERthe pads have done that same thing.

1:01:20SPEAKERLike they basically, like whatever the coating is

1:01:23SPEAKERon the outside of the pad has just melted.

1:01:25SPEAKER- Yeah, I think they'd maybe stop using material like that,

1:01:28SPEAKERbut.

1:01:29SPEAKER- I mean, you can't sell more pads

1:01:30SPEAKERif the pads stay good forever, Brad.

1:01:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:34SPEAKER- I figured out what kind of keyboard switches I like

1:01:35SPEAKERafter trying a bunch.

1:01:37SPEAKER- Nice.

1:01:38SPEAKER- And I got a life hack for getting those

1:01:40SPEAKERand not spending a bazillion dollars doing it.

1:01:43SPEAKERI just ordered for 15 bucks,

1:01:46SPEAKERyou can get like 60 keys from AliExpress.

1:01:50SPEAKERIt takes two months to get here,

1:01:52SPEAKERbut I got 15 bucks worth of four different kinds of keys.

1:01:56SPEAKER- Wow.

1:01:57SPEAKER- And for what I would have paid for a complete set

1:02:00SPEAKERof the normal keys for my keyboard.

1:02:04SPEAKER- That's intense.

1:02:05SPEAKER- If I'd bought them in the US

1:02:06SPEAKERand I like kale silent blacks, it turns out they're linear.

1:02:11SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.

1:02:12SPEAKER- They're a little heavier than the red,

1:02:13SPEAKERso I don't accidentally,

1:02:14SPEAKERI don't like rest my keys on the keyboard

1:02:16SPEAKERand type a bunch of Ds, but they feel really good.

1:02:20SPEAKERAnd I like them a lot.

1:02:21SPEAKER- One day I will be brave enough to take the plunge

1:02:23SPEAKERand order something from AliExpress,

1:02:25SPEAKERbut I haven't quite gotten there yet.

1:02:27SPEAKER- Look, you just have to give them your credit card

1:02:29SPEAKERand your social security number, it's fine.

1:02:32SPEAKER- They sure do have some cheap stuff on there though.

1:02:34SPEAKER- You don't really have to give them

1:02:35SPEAKERyour social security number also.

1:02:36SPEAKER- No, of course, specifically they have cheap stuff

1:02:39SPEAKERthat is the same stuff that is more expensive elsewhere.

1:02:41SPEAKER- That is exactly it.

1:02:42SPEAKER- That's what it is.

1:02:42SPEAKERIt's not just, oh, they have cheap stuff.

1:02:44SPEAKERIt's, oh, it's that same thing I saw on Amazon,

1:02:46SPEAKERexcept for like two thirds the price.

1:02:48SPEAKER- I feel like you could probably arbitrage

1:02:50SPEAKERa real good business out of selling keyboard switches

1:02:54SPEAKERon Amazon.

1:02:55SPEAKER- I assume that is exactly

1:02:56SPEAKERwhat some of those people were doing.

1:02:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:01SPEAKERI got Gina for her birthday, we got her a Nest Hub Mini,

1:03:04SPEAKERone of those little Nest things with the screen.

1:03:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:08SPEAKER- And it's hooked up to Google Photos.

1:03:10SPEAKER- That's great.

1:03:11SPEAKER- And it uses machine learning and algorithms

1:03:13SPEAKERto post pictures of us and our family

1:03:15SPEAKERdoing fun things from the past.

1:03:17SPEAKERAnd it's been a source of real joy.

1:03:20SPEAKERLike having a digitally connected photo frame is very cool.

1:03:25SPEAKER- People need more sources of joy right now.

1:03:28SPEAKER- Yeah, you got anything you wanna drag?

1:03:31SPEAKERAnything that sucks, Brad?

1:03:32SPEAKER- Yeah, video conferencing platforms could be better.

1:03:36SPEAKER- I'm probably good never video conferencing again

1:03:38SPEAKERat this point.

1:03:39SPEAKER- That's probably not totally fair.

1:03:42SPEAKER'Cause most of them are fine

1:03:43SPEAKERfor what they are actually used for

1:03:45SPEAKERor for their intended purpose.

1:03:47SPEAKERIt's just that we are trying to use them

1:03:48SPEAKERfor things that they are not really meant for.

1:03:51SPEAKER- I feel like they could all be better.

1:03:54SPEAKER- Let's say if you were trying to have a video conference

1:03:56SPEAKERand to get all of those feeds into a stream

1:03:59SPEAKERto send back out, that's where the problems arise.

1:04:02SPEAKEREvery single service,

1:04:03SPEAKERliterally every service we have tried

1:04:05SPEAKERhas got one or more downsides

1:04:07SPEAKERwhen that's the kind of end goal.

1:04:11SPEAKERWhether it's latency or quality or both

1:04:13SPEAKERor not being able to elegantly capture it into a video,

1:04:18SPEAKERlike an OBS or some kind of compositing system

1:04:21SPEAKERand send it back out.

1:04:22SPEAKERLike everything has got some problem to it.

1:04:24SPEAKER- Or lip flap, lip sync becomes a problem

1:04:27SPEAKERfor no reason whatsoever when you try to ingest it.

1:04:30SPEAKER- Yeah, Skype was the closest.

1:04:33SPEAKERLike this fucking kills me.

1:04:35SPEAKERLike we tried the Skype NDI stuff and it's amazing.

1:04:38SPEAKER- Yeah, but the lip sync is always a problem.

1:04:40SPEAKER- No, it's the audio quality.

1:04:41SPEAKER- Oh really?

1:04:42SPEAKER- I don't know what's going on there,

1:04:43SPEAKERbut like the audio quality was so bad

1:04:45SPEAKERlike people were not having it.

1:04:46SPEAKERAnd like Vinny is absolutely right.

1:04:48SPEAKERThe thing he says about people will forgive bad video

1:04:51SPEAKERway before they will ever forget about audio.

1:04:53SPEAKER- Absolutely, like you could post a 320 by 240 picture

1:04:57SPEAKERof a potato on YouTube and audio is good.

1:04:59SPEAKER- Nobody cares.

1:05:00SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

1:05:01SPEAKER- Like it's not unintelligible.

1:05:02SPEAKERIt just is kind of low quality, low-fi sounding,

1:05:04SPEAKERlike just kind of thin and compressed.

1:05:06SPEAKERBut like how is the audio compression the problem in 2020?

1:05:10SPEAKERLike that's the thing that blows my mind.

1:05:12SPEAKERI think it sounds like the little bit I read about it,

1:05:14SPEAKERit sounds like the Skype is just pretty behind the times

1:05:16SPEAKERon their audio tech.

1:05:17SPEAKER- I mean, the stuff that like Discord uses with Opus

1:05:20SPEAKERand those new audio codecs is really impressive.

1:05:22SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, totally.

1:05:23SPEAKERLike it's just not up to that quality level,

1:05:25SPEAKERbut like the video stuff and particularly getting the video

1:05:27SPEAKERinto OBS is amazing.

1:05:28SPEAKERLike if they just fixed their audio backend,

1:05:32SPEAKERlike that would be the solution.

1:05:34SPEAKER- What if you use--

1:05:35SPEAKER- It kills me.

1:05:36SPEAKER- Discord for audio and Skype for video.

1:05:39SPEAKER- I considered it.

1:05:40SPEAKER- And then you just have to sync each one individually

1:05:42SPEAKERthrough magic.

1:05:44SPEAKER- I didn't try it 'cause again, it takes a lot of time

1:05:46SPEAKERto set up and test this stuff.

1:05:47SPEAKERBut I just, I didn't bother putting the time in

1:05:50SPEAKER'cause I just assumed that the late,

1:05:51SPEAKERthat it would be too off, right?

1:05:53SPEAKERIt would just be off enough that it would look terrible.

1:05:56SPEAKERLike I just assumed there's no way that the video

1:05:58SPEAKERand audio would sync close enough

1:05:59SPEAKERbetween two different services like that.

1:06:01SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the thing that annoys me is that

1:06:02SPEAKERthere's no, like why is there no NDI plugin for Discord

1:06:06SPEAKERor Zoom or Jitsi or one of the other 15 video services

1:06:10SPEAKERexcept for fucking Skype?

1:06:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:06:12SPEAKER- Anyway.

1:06:13SPEAKER- Yeah, it works amazingly.

1:06:15SPEAKERIt's so cool.

1:06:16SPEAKERLike getting, 'cause each person is their own source

1:06:18SPEAKERin OBS, right?

1:06:19SPEAKERLike each person is a separate video feed.

1:06:21SPEAKERYou're not having to like--

1:06:22SPEAKER- If somebody has to leave early, you can just turn them off

1:06:25SPEAKERand it's not like you're capturing a window

1:06:27SPEAKERand then like you're, yeah.

1:06:29SPEAKER- Each person gets their own volume slider

1:06:31SPEAKERso you can control everybody's audio independently.

1:06:33SPEAKERYou're not having to like,

1:06:35SPEAKERlike there are problems now where like

1:06:36SPEAKERwe have to window capture a browser to get people's feed in

1:06:39SPEAKERand like some of those services there are problems

1:06:41SPEAKERwhere it's like, oh, if I put another video window

1:06:43SPEAKERover top of this window I'm capturing,

1:06:44SPEAKERit'll black out all the footage that it's pulling in.

1:06:46SPEAKERYou know, just weird little, like, I don't know,

1:06:48SPEAKERGDI or some like Windows graphics subsystem issues,

1:06:52SPEAKERstuff like that.

1:06:53SPEAKERLike there are so many considerations that people don't see

1:06:55SPEAKERthat are such a pain in the ass

1:06:57SPEAKERand like nobody's figured us out.

1:06:59SPEAKER- The one thing that I will say,

1:07:00SPEAKERespecially I can't imagine for folks like you

1:07:02SPEAKERwho do this like, you know, eight plus hours a day sometimes

1:07:06SPEAKERlike we are very lucky that I'm like,

1:07:11SPEAKERthe setup that I have at home for streaming to Twitch now

1:07:15SPEAKERis basically the same as what we were using

1:07:18SPEAKERto do Whiskey Media stuff in like 2011.

1:07:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:21SPEAKER- Like functionally.

1:07:23SPEAKER- At 10th of a cost, 100th of the cost.

1:07:27SPEAKER- 100th probably, yeah.

1:07:28SPEAKERI mean, I think we spent a quarter of a million dollars

1:07:30SPEAKERall in on all the cameras and everything,

1:07:32SPEAKERlights and all that.

1:07:33SPEAKER- Yes.

1:07:34SPEAKER- So like in that regard, yes, it's amazing.

1:07:36SPEAKEROn the other hand, it's a former coworker of mine

1:07:40SPEAKERwho is now at Nvidia once said that Linux is only free

1:07:45SPEAKERif you value your time is at zero.

1:07:47SPEAKER- If your time is worthless, yeah.

1:07:49SPEAKER- And like, it's very much that same thing.

1:07:51SPEAKERLike you trade, hey, I didn't spend $100,000

1:07:54SPEAKERsetting this stuff up for,

1:07:57SPEAKERit's gonna take me four hours to figure out

1:07:59SPEAKERhow to do something new.

1:08:00SPEAKERAnd then it's gonna be janky for a little while

1:08:02SPEAKERand then it'll eventually work,

1:08:03SPEAKERwhich is why even these streams like are,

1:08:06SPEAKERit's why even people who have thousands and thousands

1:08:08SPEAKERand thousands of live viewers on every stream that they do,

1:08:12SPEAKERit's still start shit with no audio half the time.

1:08:15SPEAKER- Yeah, the potential for things to go wrong

1:08:17SPEAKERand particularly things that seem like they should be

1:08:19SPEAKERexactly like they were the last time.

1:08:21SPEAKER- It's never exactly the same.

1:08:22SPEAKER- But somehow aren't?

1:08:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:08:24SPEAKER- Like it's infinite.

1:08:26SPEAKERLike the number of things that can break

1:08:27SPEAKERis functionally infinite.

1:08:29SPEAKER- So one of the things I've started doing

1:08:31SPEAKERlike as a consulting thing is helping companies

1:08:34SPEAKERfigure out their Twitch streaming stuff.

1:08:37SPEAKER'Cause it turns out nobody knows how to do it

1:08:38SPEAKERand everybody's bad at it.

1:08:39SPEAKERSo I was telling somebody the other day,

1:08:42SPEAKERand this is gonna be one of the rules

1:08:43SPEAKERthat I put into like the here's your cheat sheet

1:08:45SPEAKERfor getting started.

1:08:47SPEAKERNever ever change anything with the setup

1:08:49SPEAKERon the day of a stream.

1:08:52SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely.

1:08:53SPEAKER- Also, it's way easier to stream every day

1:08:55SPEAKERthan it is to stream once a week or once a month,

1:08:58SPEAKERbecause the amount of drift you get on a month

1:09:01SPEAKERfrom like Windows updates,

1:09:02SPEAKERjacking up your audio settings or whatever.

1:09:04SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, it's a weird future we live in.

1:09:09SPEAKER- It's a mess, it's a mess.

1:09:11SPEAKER- I got one future tech I'm stoked about after this year.

1:09:15SPEAKERThe ultra wide band stuff that they put in the new iPhones,

1:09:18SPEAKERthe not the 5G fast internet, which seems like snake oil,

1:09:24SPEAKERbut the ultra wide band radio

1:09:26SPEAKERthat they use to 3D position phones with other phones

1:09:29SPEAKERand your AirPods Pro or your AirPods Max

1:09:33SPEAKERwith relation to the phone.

1:09:35SPEAKERSo like one of the things that you can do

1:09:37SPEAKERwith the new iPhone if you have not the original AirPods,

1:09:40SPEAKERbut one of the ones with the UWB chips

1:09:42SPEAKERis that the phone will know where it is

1:09:45SPEAKERin relation to the AirPods.

1:09:48SPEAKERSo you can set the sound up so that it sounds

1:09:50SPEAKERlike the AirPods, like the music you're listening to

1:09:53SPEAKERin your AirPods is coming from your phone.

1:09:55SPEAKER- Weird.

1:09:56SPEAKER- Like the source is in there, like it's completely useless.

1:09:58SPEAKER- Like can you actually wave the phone around

1:09:59SPEAKERand it can keep up with the positioning?

1:10:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:10:02SPEAKER- That's wild.

1:10:03SPEAKER- I haven't actually done it.

1:10:05SPEAKERI don't know if, they may have pulled it

1:10:07SPEAKERfrom the betas to now, I saw people writing about it.

1:10:09SPEAKERI have base model AirPods, not the fancy ones.

1:10:13SPEAKERAnd I definitely didn't buy AirPods.

1:10:15SPEAKERDon't buy AirPods Max also, unless you just wanna,

1:10:18SPEAKERif you wanna burn money, that's fine, I guess.

1:10:20SPEAKERBut anyway, I think that is going to be,

1:10:25SPEAKERthat is my pick for like seemingly useless technology

1:10:30SPEAKERthat's gonna be incredibly important

1:10:32SPEAKERin the next like five to 10 years.

1:10:34SPEAKER- I just started to say that has the sound of a thing

1:10:36SPEAKERthat is novel and useless on the surface.

1:10:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:10:40SPEAKER- Like the thing you're talking about is just like,

1:10:41SPEAKERoh, that's interesting for 30 seconds.

1:10:43SPEAKERBut six months or a year from now,

1:10:45SPEAKERsomebody is gonna come up

1:10:46SPEAKERwith some like life-changing application of that ability.

1:10:49SPEAKER- I mean, hopefully it's life-changing in a good way

1:10:51SPEAKERand not like the, not like, hey, everybody knows,

1:10:54SPEAKERthe store knows where your eyeballs are

1:10:57SPEAKERso they can position ads so that only you see them

1:11:00SPEAKERor something really horrific.

1:11:02SPEAKERBut yeah, it's, I think that's really cool.

1:11:04SPEAKER- Just don't say that out loud.

1:11:05SPEAKER- Look, you have to opt in, it's Apple.

1:11:08SPEAKERThey're going up against Facebook.

1:11:09SPEAKERI think we're gonna be okay.

1:11:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:11:11SPEAKER- Anyway.

1:11:13SPEAKER- Last thing I'll mention real fast,

1:11:15SPEAKERjust since we were talking about some products

1:11:17SPEAKERyou're enjoying.

1:11:18SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

1:11:19SPEAKER- I am really having a good time with this 3080,

1:11:22SPEAKERwhich sounds like, yeah, of course.

1:11:24SPEAKER- Yeah, it turns out having a fast video card

1:11:25SPEAKERis really nice, huh?

1:11:26SPEAKER- It's not, I mean, yes, it's great to have a game,

1:11:27SPEAKERa card that runs games very fast,

1:11:29SPEAKERbut it's the ray tracing stuff for me.

1:11:30SPEAKERIt's the, I have not,

1:11:32SPEAKERthis is my first ray tracing capable card.

1:11:34SPEAKERI didn't have a 20 series card.

1:11:36SPEAKER- Did you do, have you played Quake yet?

1:11:40SPEAKER- Yeah, so I've spent, that was the very first thing

1:11:41SPEAKERI loaded up when I got it was Quake 2.

1:11:43SPEAKERAnd so like, there's been some stuff going on there.

1:11:45SPEAKERLike Minecraft RTX came out of beta and is just out now.

1:11:48SPEAKER- Yeah, you can just use normal ass worlds with it now.

1:11:51SPEAKER- You can just make worlds now in our, with ray tracing,

1:11:54SPEAKERwhich, and it's kind of trivial to an end user,

1:11:57SPEAKERbut Quake 2 got updated to support

1:12:00SPEAKERthe Vulcan ray tracing extensions a week or two ago,

1:12:03SPEAKERwhich is more, you know, again, it looks the same to,

1:12:05SPEAKERyou know, it was using.

1:12:06SPEAKER- Is it faster?

1:12:08SPEAKER- I haven't looked at any benchmarks.

1:12:09SPEAKERI couldn't tell a huge difference in performance,

1:12:12SPEAKERbut it is an indication that like Vulcan

1:12:14SPEAKERhas got all its ray tracing stuff sorted out

1:12:16SPEAKERon the backend now, which is good.

1:12:18SPEAKERBut I just, I mean, whatever, you're the same as me.

1:12:22SPEAKERLike I've been a huge graphics nerd

1:12:23SPEAKERsince the first three effects cards.

1:12:25SPEAKERSo it's like even prior to that,

1:12:27SPEAKERlike I didn't know it at the time,

1:12:29SPEAKERbut I guess it started with Doom,

1:12:30SPEAKERbut it really started with Quake when I got into Quake

1:12:33SPEAKERand realized that the character models were full 3D.

1:12:36SPEAKERAnd I was like slowly panning the camera

1:12:39SPEAKERaround the character models

1:12:40SPEAKERand just like completely blown away from marveling,

1:12:44SPEAKERmarveling at these like perspective, correct characters,

1:12:46SPEAKERinstead of the, you know, the shitty poster board bitmaps

1:12:49SPEAKERthat Doom used, you know what I mean?

1:12:51SPEAKER- For me, it was the 15 HP boxes when I was like,

1:12:54SPEAKERoh shit, this is a cube, not just a sprite

1:12:56SPEAKERthat looks like a cube.

1:12:57SPEAKER- Yes, right.

1:12:59SPEAKERSo it's just that again, yet again, it's like, you know,

1:13:02SPEAKERit was 3D character models and like fully 3D space

1:13:06SPEAKERwith like rooms on top of rooms and Quake 1,

1:13:07SPEAKERand then like color lighting in Quake 2,

1:13:09SPEAKERcurve, transparent water, like curved surfaces, NURBS.

1:13:13SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

1:13:14SPEAKER- The shadowing in Doom, like it's just one thing after,

1:13:17SPEAKERyou know, physics, like material physics behaviors

1:13:20SPEAKERin Half-Life 2, like it's just the latest iteration of that.

1:13:24SPEAKERYou know, like playing around with Minecraft and Quake

1:13:27SPEAKERhas just been like, I like I'm back to being 16 again

1:13:31SPEAKERand just marveling at how far things have come

1:13:32SPEAKERand what they're capable of doing now.

1:13:35SPEAKER- I mean, it's funny 'cause like we talked about DLSS

1:13:37SPEAKERa few weeks ago, but like to me, that is the,

1:13:43SPEAKERI think that's gonna end up,

1:13:44SPEAKERlike the ray tracing stuff is important and it's gorgeous

1:13:47SPEAKERand it's when it works, like even in a game

1:13:49SPEAKERthat is kind of busted in a lot of ways, like Cyberpunk,

1:13:53SPEAKERthe ray tracing stuff looks unbelievable in that game.

1:13:56SPEAKERAnd I think that like that's the, that's the four,

1:14:01SPEAKERlike in the four, if we're doing the 4K as a metaphor here,

1:14:04SPEAKERlike 4K is the thing everybody likes

1:14:06SPEAKER'cause they'll go four times as many pixels

1:14:08SPEAKERas your 1080p set, that sounds great.

1:14:10SPEAKERBut the thing that makes 4K sets look good is HDR, right?

1:14:13SPEAKERAnd I think that the situation we're in with ray tracing

1:14:16SPEAKERis that like ray tracing is really cool,

1:14:17SPEAKERbut it is not performing in completely novel ways.

1:14:22SPEAKER- That's the problem.

1:14:22SPEAKER- And it's not until you flip on the DLSS equivalent

1:14:26SPEAKERthat all of a sudden that stuff works.

1:14:29SPEAKERAnd I think when that stuff comes to the consoles

1:14:31SPEAKERand the AMD chips, we're gonna see a real boom

1:14:34SPEAKERin ray tracing and where it's done and applied

1:14:38SPEAKERand all that stuff.

1:14:39SPEAKER- I mean, you know, sticking with your HDR metaphor,

1:14:41SPEAKERlike for me it is, and the reason I keep harping

1:14:43SPEAKERon Quake and Minecraft is for me, it's not games

1:14:46SPEAKERwhere it's like, oh, our reflections are ray traced,

1:14:48SPEAKERyou know, or like, oh, certain types of shadows

1:14:51SPEAKERare ray traced.

1:14:52SPEAKERIt's games where it's just ray tracing and nothing else.

1:14:54SPEAKERAnd like, that's why those games are so impressive to me

1:14:56SPEAKERis that they are both just fully path traced

1:14:57SPEAKERand that is it for their lighting model, you know what I mean?

1:15:01SPEAKERGames that use it, games that are in those games,

1:15:03SPEAKERlike big commercial AAA games that use ray tracing

1:15:05SPEAKERin a fully generalized way like that

1:15:07SPEAKERare probably a good long ways off.

1:15:09SPEAKER- Or they'll be, well, I mean, Metro did that, right?

1:15:12SPEAKER- Kind of. - Metro is all path traced lighting.

1:15:14SPEAKER- They had a global illumination model, I believe,

1:15:17SPEAKERlike Digital Foundry put out a good Cyberpunk video.

1:15:19SPEAKERLike Cyberpunk is using it very extensively,

1:15:21SPEAKERbut there are still hybrid effects.

1:15:24SPEAKER- Right, right, right.

1:15:24SPEAKER- But it's much closer to like a full,

1:15:27SPEAKERfully ray traced situation.

1:15:28SPEAKER- I wanna say it's the inside spaces in Metro

1:15:31SPEAKERthat are fully path traced and anything in the overworld

1:15:33SPEAKERhas a global source from the sun.

1:15:35SPEAKERMaybe, I can't remember.

1:15:36SPEAKER- That might be, you might be right.

1:15:38SPEAKERBut like that, it's just, and again, this is like a,

1:15:41SPEAKERthis is kind of academic.

1:15:42SPEAKERThis is not something that most people are gonna look at

1:15:44SPEAKERand care about, but like just knowing that every,

1:15:47SPEAKERevery single surface is interacting

1:15:48SPEAKERwith every other surface, you know, like all those,

1:15:52SPEAKERall those interactions are sort of quote unquote real

1:15:54SPEAKERor correct or natural or whatever you mean, it's like,

1:15:57SPEAKERwell, yeah, obviously everything has got a limit.

1:16:00SPEAKEREverything is constrained in some way, right.

1:16:02SPEAKERBut you know what I mean though?

1:16:04SPEAKERIt's just like, it's like, oh, the bounce lighting

1:16:06SPEAKERfrom here it's affecting there.

1:16:07SPEAKERAnd like, this is refracting onto that.

1:16:10SPEAKERAnd like all that stuff is just, I don't know.

1:16:12SPEAKERIt's just endlessly fascinating to me.

1:16:14SPEAKER- I mean, anytime there's a complete,

1:16:16SPEAKERthere's a shift in the way that stuff has worked.

1:16:19SPEAKERLike when we went from fixed pipeline 3D renderers

1:16:23SPEAKERto general programmable pipeline 3D renders

1:16:27SPEAKERwith like the DX8, over the course of DX7 to DX9, right?

1:16:33SPEAKERLike it took a while for that stuff

1:16:36SPEAKERto make any kind of impact outside

1:16:39SPEAKERof some really specialized like one-off things

1:16:42SPEAKERthat people could add late in the development pipeline.

1:16:44SPEAKERAnd the thing that's cool about the ray tracing stuff

1:16:46SPEAKERis we're seeing it in all sorts of stuff really,

1:16:49SPEAKERor like even in the console games,

1:16:52SPEAKERlike even in Miles Morales,

1:16:53SPEAKERwhen you watch somebody play Miles Morales,

1:16:55SPEAKERthe fact that if the lighting is right in the room,

1:16:57SPEAKERwhen he goes in and does one of those terminal sequences

1:17:01SPEAKERwhere he has to do the hacking game or whatever,

1:17:03SPEAKERlike you see his reflection in the glass.

1:17:06SPEAKERAnd like, I don't think I'm ever going to get tired

1:17:10SPEAKERof that being right when it pops up.

1:17:13SPEAKER- Totally.

1:17:13SPEAKER- It's so cool.

1:17:15SPEAKERAnd like, that's a bad example

1:17:17SPEAKER'cause it would be an easy thing to fake

1:17:18SPEAKERsince the character and the camera position are fixed.

1:17:20SPEAKERBut like, still, it's just really neat.

1:17:23SPEAKER- I think, yeah.