00:00SPEAKER- Look, man, I've been up until like three or four o'clock
00:03SPEAKERin the morning for the most of this week.
00:05SPEAKER- Yeah, what is up with that?
00:08SPEAKER- This is game called "Eco".
00:11SPEAKERIt's not "Echo" with the dolphin, it's "Eco".
00:13SPEAKERIt looks like "Minecraft", you do voxel-y cubes
00:17SPEAKERand then you build stuff with them.
00:19SPEAKERBut it's like a, it's not an MMO 'cause it's not like,
00:23SPEAKERit's not massive, but it's a persistent world
00:26SPEAKERand you can have like 50 or 60 people in the server
00:29SPEAKERand it started life as a educational program
00:33SPEAKERto teach middle school kids like how many,
00:37SPEAKERhow much labor goes into everything
00:39SPEAKERfrom like a hamburger up to their phones.
00:42SPEAKER- It's a noble goal.
00:43SPEAKER- Oh dude, it's so cool.
00:45SPEAKERSo like you choose professions
00:48SPEAKERand then you have to tech up the tree, this tech tree.
00:51SPEAKERAnd the tech tree is massive
00:52SPEAKERand it's really, really interconnected.
00:54SPEAKERSo everybody on the server has to be trading
00:57SPEAKERand working with each other constantly.
00:58SPEAKERSo like, if you're a potter,
00:59SPEAKERyou have to be buying mortar from the masonry people.
01:05SPEAKERAnd if you're a steel smelter,
01:07SPEAKERyou have to get miners to work for you.
01:09SPEAKERAnd if you're a smith,
01:10SPEAKERyou have to buy the ore from the smelters.
01:12SPEAKERAnd like it's, and, and, and there are two,
01:18SPEAKERtwo lose conditions and one win condition.
01:21SPEAKERSo there's a meteor.
01:22SPEAKER- Oh.
01:23SPEAKER- And I think the server can configure
01:24SPEAKERhow long it's gonna take to smash into the planet
01:26SPEAKERand kill everybody.
01:27SPEAKERLike you start out pre-agrarian,
01:28SPEAKERpunching trees just like in rust or Minecraft or whatever.
01:31SPEAKERAnd then over a period of like, you know, 30 days,
01:35SPEAKER45 days, whatever, you tech up all the way to the point
01:38SPEAKERthat like you're building skyscrapers
01:39SPEAKERand you have like gas powered cars and stuff like that.
01:43SPEAKERSo like I started playing this thing like two,
01:45SPEAKERthree weeks ago and I had a wooden shovel
01:48SPEAKERthat I was digging clay out of a hole in the ground
01:50SPEAKERand turning into pots and bricks, right?
01:53SPEAKERAnd the other day I got a little Bobcat like skid steer
01:58SPEAKERthat has a bucket on the front and I can scoop up 320,
02:03SPEAKERright, probably, yeah, 320, no.
02:06SPEAKER- Get it right, man, this is your job.
02:07SPEAKER- Look, I can get a lot of clay in one scoop, okay?
02:10SPEAKER- Are you a potter?
02:11SPEAKERIs that, is that your chosen profession?
02:13SPEAKER- Well, I'm a potter, I'm a mason.
02:14SPEAKERI'm a, I wear a couple of different hats, you know.
02:17SPEAKER- You're a skilled tradesman.
02:18SPEAKER- I got my fingers in a lot of pies, Brad, if you know,
02:21SPEAKERBrad, if you know what I mean.
02:22SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
02:22SPEAKER- The other way you can fail is if you cause
02:24SPEAKERecological collapse, like if you over hunt,
02:26SPEAKERif you over pollute, there's all sorts of animals
02:28SPEAKERand trees and stuff in the world.
02:30SPEAKERAnd if you, if you make bad choices in terms of ecology,
02:35SPEAKERthen like the animals start to disappear,
02:36SPEAKERlike the bison start to disappear.
02:38SPEAKERYou can over hunt stuff.
02:39SPEAKERLike we over hunted desert turtle early
02:42SPEAKERbecause they were tasty and they reproduce slowly.
02:46SPEAKERSo we had to introduce laws that prevented people
02:49SPEAKERfrom hunting desert turtles.
02:51SPEAKER- You mean to tell me that destroying your environment
02:53SPEAKERis more deadly than any meteor?
02:55SPEAKER- I mean, it's, look, you die either way.
02:57SPEAKER- Who would have thought?
02:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it's shocking.
02:59SPEAKER- So wait, there's actually a,
03:01SPEAKERis there a codified political component?
03:04SPEAKERCan you actually put laws on the books
03:05SPEAKERand like the game enforces them or is it on YouTube?
03:07SPEAKERDo you have to, do you have to like form a military
03:10SPEAKERand a police department to enforce your laws or do you,
03:13SPEAKERdoes the game just like?
03:14SPEAKER- Look, Brad, we live in a society.
03:17SPEAKER- Oh, go on.
03:18SPEAKER- Yeah, and yes, you have laws.
03:21SPEAKERSo for example, at the beginning of the game,
03:23SPEAKERpeople were chopping down trees
03:24SPEAKERand like the trees make some logs,
03:26SPEAKERbut then they also make a lot of like brushy garbage
03:28SPEAKERand stumps and people weren't cutting the stumps out
03:31SPEAKER'cause it took a lot of work
03:32SPEAKERand you didn't get anything for it
03:33SPEAKERand they weren't cutting out the wood pulp.
03:35SPEAKERThey weren't cutting up the brushy garbage.
03:37SPEAKERSo there was just a bunch of trash everywhere
03:39SPEAKERthat would rot and turn into stinky compost,
03:41SPEAKERwhich was causing the CO2 release.
03:44SPEAKERSo we, our first law, I think,
03:47SPEAKERmay have been the Save the Turtles Act.
03:48SPEAKERI can't remember.
03:49SPEAKERI think the first law was like you have to clean up
03:51SPEAKERthat for yourself, yo.
03:52SPEAKERSo we got charged $1, basically a qubit is the currency.
03:56SPEAKERYou have to establish currency too, dude.
03:58SPEAKERIt is like, this is the nerdiest game I've ever played.
04:01SPEAKERIt's right up there with Stellaris.
04:03SPEAKER- This is wild, man.
04:04SPEAKERWhat kind of government did you form or did you?
04:05SPEAKERLike how, is this entirely communal?
04:07SPEAKERLike what's the?
04:08SPEAKER- So, well, okay, so let me tell you.
04:11SPEAKERSo we had to, when you chop down a tree, you got charged
04:13SPEAKERand when you chopped out the stump,
04:14SPEAKERyou got the money right back
04:15SPEAKERand it all happens automatically.
04:16SPEAKERLike you don't, if you didn't have the money
04:18SPEAKERto chop down the tree, you couldn't chop down the tree.
04:21SPEAKERIt just doesn't let you chop down the tree.
04:22SPEAKER- Like I was wondering if you had to form a revenue service
04:25SPEAKERto collect all the taxes or something.
04:27SPEAKER- So yeah, like we have taxes for driving on roads.
04:30SPEAKERWe have taxes for using things that emit CO2.
04:33SPEAKERWe have taxes for, say there's a sales tax.
04:36SPEAKERIt's a little aggressive, but you know, look,
04:38SPEAKERthis is how it goes sometimes.
04:40SPEAKER- But the game mechanics just debit everybody automatically
04:42SPEAKERlike in the background?
04:43SPEAKER- Yeah, when you have a sale, like you can set up a store.
04:45SPEAKERSo like there's an item in the world
04:48SPEAKERthat you can place that then you hook up to inventories
04:51SPEAKERand you say, okay, I wanna sell this kind of block
04:53SPEAKERat this rate and I wanna sell gold at this rate
04:55SPEAKERand I wanna sell wires at this rate.
04:57SPEAKERAnd when you get down deep in the tech tree,
05:00SPEAKERlike I have, I had to buy, I had to build an upgrade.
05:04SPEAKERSo you can buy these things, the hardest things to make
05:06SPEAKERare usually like the high tier crafting tables
05:09SPEAKERor like the upgrades that make those two crafting tables
05:11SPEAKERmore efficient.
05:12SPEAKERAnd like the upgrade that I needed the other night
05:16SPEAKERneeded like five different professions
05:19SPEAKERand probably an hour of labor across all of them.
05:21SPEAKERAnd in this case, labor doesn't necessarily mean
05:24SPEAKERsomebody's sitting there in front of a table for an hour.
05:25SPEAKERIt means like somebody feeding calories
05:28SPEAKERas like you eat food and jam that work
05:32SPEAKERinto the crafting tables.
05:33SPEAKERThen you can go around and do other stuff.
05:35SPEAKERSo it's like at the base level, it's crafting.
05:40SPEAKERYou have to establish currency.
05:41SPEAKERThe currency is based on some item in the world.
05:43SPEAKERSo we kind of mess that up by doing it in gold flakes,
05:45SPEAKERwhich were rare and hard to get.
05:47SPEAKERAnd that caused us to have a massively deflationary currency.
05:50SPEAKERSo we had to like then go on a huge gold mining spree.
05:54SPEAKERThe government we set up was initially like direct democracy
05:57SPEAKERwhere everybody voted on every single thing.
06:00SPEAKERAs time progressed, we elected a Supreme chancellor
06:03SPEAKERand a treasurer.
06:04SPEAKER- Oh no.
06:05SPEAKER- No, no, it worked.
06:06SPEAKER- You never want to elect a Supreme chancellor.
06:08SPEAKERI saw Star Wars, okay.
06:09SPEAKER- Look, it's fine.
06:10SPEAKERShe has all sorts of power, but she's very responsible
06:12SPEAKERand I'm pretty sure she's good.
06:13SPEAKERShe hasn't taken us to war yet.
06:16SPEAKERThere's no death.
06:17SPEAKERThere's no, because it's educational.
06:18SPEAKERThere's like no death.
06:19SPEAKERYou can't, it's not like rust where somebody can come punch
06:21SPEAKERyou to death and take your shit.
06:24SPEAKERBut it's been like, it really, the kind of community
06:29SPEAKERthat's built up on the server has become really lovely.
06:33SPEAKERLike you, I get neighbors come and visit and they're like,
06:35SPEAKER"Hey, do you need help with anything?"
06:37SPEAKEROr "Look, I brought you some food."
06:39SPEAKER- Can I borrow a cup of glass?
06:41SPEAKER- I mean, kind of, yeah.
06:43SPEAKERLike somebody came by the other day and was like,
06:44SPEAKER"Hey, you have all these bricks for sale."
06:46SPEAKERI was like, "Nobody's buying anything anymore.
06:48SPEAKER"If you need them, just take them and you just open it.
06:50SPEAKER"You authorize your stockpile."
06:53SPEAKERThere's like land ownership.
06:54SPEAKERSo you have to authorize people to use your property
06:56SPEAKERand stuff like that.
06:57SPEAKERIt is an absolute trip.
06:58SPEAKERIt's so many nested layers of systems,
07:02SPEAKERbut it's absolutely fascinating to see it all work together
07:06SPEAKERand actually work together like pretty well.
07:08SPEAKERI was playing with a bunch of PUBG players.
07:10SPEAKERSo like a lot of them were going at it real,
07:14SPEAKERlike sweaty gamer mode and we're putting 18 hours a day
07:18SPEAKERand like digging mine or in the mines.
07:22SPEAKERBut like a bunch of people were just kind of casually
07:24SPEAKERplaying and the game, it worked, right?
07:26SPEAKERLike it balanced out so that everybody was able
07:28SPEAKERto participate and do stuff.
07:29SPEAKERSo.
07:30SPEAKER- That sounds like the, maybe the coolest
07:33SPEAKERand definitely the most elaborate,
07:34SPEAKERlike social experiment I've ever heard of.
07:35SPEAKERAnd like, it sounds like the only other thing
07:37SPEAKERI can think of that is comparable is probably Eve Online
07:40SPEAKERin terms of a game that lets like sociopolitical structures
07:43SPEAKERform like kind of dynamically or emergently like that.
07:47SPEAKERIt sounds so cool.
07:48SPEAKER- It's kind of, it's very similar
07:50SPEAKERand it's been really amazing.
07:52SPEAKERLike I've played on a lot of Minecraft creative servers
07:54SPEAKERwith people before where like you log off one day
07:56SPEAKERand then two days later you come back
07:57SPEAKERand there's like sky palaces and all sorts of cool nonsense.
08:00SPEAKERBut there's something really amazing about the fact
08:03SPEAKERthat like one player staked a city out
08:08SPEAKERlike two weeks ago, right?
08:09SPEAKERIn the desert.
08:10SPEAKERThey just were like, okay,
08:11SPEAKERhere's where the roads are gonna be.
08:13SPEAKERHere's where the buildings are gonna be.
08:15SPEAKERHere's the blocks.
08:15SPEAKERHere's the main drag.
08:17SPEAKERI'm putting my building right here.
08:19SPEAKERAnd then like a week later we needed water
08:21SPEAKER'cause we got to steam engines.
08:23SPEAKERSo we all got together and everybody got in
08:25SPEAKERand started digging tunnels to run aqueducts
08:28SPEAKERunderneath the city roads in the public right of ways.
08:31SPEAKERAnd then we needed power.
08:31SPEAKERSo we put power on the right of ways.
08:33SPEAKERAnd like now we have like this little bustling downtown area
08:36SPEAKERwith like 40 story skyscrapers
08:38SPEAKERand like people got cranes to build really fast.
08:43SPEAKERAnd like it's incredible.
08:45SPEAKERLike it is so cool.
08:48SPEAKERIt's something like if I play it,
08:51SPEAKERit'll be like once a year at most
08:52SPEAKER'cause it's kind of time intensive and it's a lot.
08:55SPEAKERIt's like going to camp almost, right?
08:56SPEAKERYou like you log into the server
08:58SPEAKERand it's all I played for the last two weeks
08:59SPEAKERexcept for PUBG on streams.
09:02SPEAKERAnd it feels like the end of an MMO right now
09:08SPEAKERas like we're winding down to defeat the meteor.
09:10SPEAKERWe're gonna have a big party tonight on Friday night
09:13SPEAKERand we're gonna shoot down this meteor.
09:16SPEAKERYeah, I'm sure there's no like in-game booze
09:18SPEAKER'cause it's educational,
09:19SPEAKERbut I'm sure like people do stupid stuff.
09:21SPEAKERPeople have built like meteor viewing platforms
09:24SPEAKERso we can sit where the lasers are gonna fire
09:25SPEAKERand like go watch the thing blow up.
09:29SPEAKERRoast some s'mores.
09:30SPEAKERYeah, exactly.
09:31SPEAKERIt's really cool.
09:31SPEAKERListen, I'm heartened to hear that all the PUBG players
09:35SPEAKERwere able to come together and save the world.
09:37SPEAKERIf I could offer a piece of advice,
09:40SPEAKERmaybe don't replicate this experiment with your Dota squad.
09:43SPEAKEROh, you think so?
09:44SPEAKERYou think you have toxic humanity on your Dota squad?
09:46SPEAKERWell, it's just not.
09:48SPEAKER(upbeat music)
09:59SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
10:17SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.
10:21SPEAKERI'm AM Brad, we did it again.
10:23SPEAKERWe said we were not gonna do it again and we did it again.
10:25SPEAKERThis is two days in a row I've recorded early AM podcasts
10:28SPEAKER'cause I recorded this only test with Norman Kishore
10:30SPEAKERyesterday at like eight o'clock too.
10:32SPEAKERI heard they got some dubstep in there now.
10:35SPEAKERMan, they stopped doing the, they got new music
10:37SPEAKERand they don't do the damn dubstep anymore.
10:38SPEAKEROh, they don't do the dubstep anymore.
10:39SPEAKERI'm taking the dubstep back.
10:41SPEAKERWe're gonna have the dubstep theme over here occasionally.
10:42SPEAKEROh God.
10:44SPEAKERIt's a good dubstep theme, man.
10:46SPEAKERThankfully, there was no dubstep version
10:48SPEAKERof the theme song we chose.
10:49SPEAKERWe have agents.
10:50SPEAKERThere is a drum and bass alternate,
10:51SPEAKERwhich I think is pretty good.
10:53SPEAKERI'm gonna tell you a secret.
10:54SPEAKERBy saying that now, somebody is going to make
10:56SPEAKERa dubstep version of our theme song.
10:58SPEAKERSo-
10:59SPEAKERI mean, hey, if we can solicit more music
11:02SPEAKERfrom the community, I'm all for it.
11:03SPEAKERIn any form, do a polka version, I'll take it.
11:06SPEAKEROh man, a polka version of the theme song?
11:08SPEAKERLook, here's my secret, Shane,
11:10SPEAKERbecause you add the music every week
11:12SPEAKERand I don't listen to the podcast again
11:13SPEAKERafter I hand it off to you.
11:14SPEAKEROh no, you don't-
11:16SPEAKERIf you put five songs in a playlist
11:20SPEAKERand we're like, which one is our theme song?
11:21SPEAKERI don't think I can tell you.
11:22SPEAKEROh my God, you're not serious.
11:23SPEAKERYou're, what?
11:24SPEAKERI know.
11:25SPEAKERYou listen- Meanwhile-
11:26SPEAKERYeah.
11:27SPEAKERWould like every Friday or Saturday
11:28SPEAKERor whenever I end up editing the podcasts,
11:30SPEAKERI go around with a theme song in my head
11:32SPEAKERfor a couple hours every week.
11:33SPEAKERIt haunts your dreams, yeah.
11:35SPEAKERThat's, you know, it's cheery.
11:37SPEAKERI liked it when we picked it out a year ago.
11:39SPEAKERIt's a little bleepy-bloopy, and then, you know.
11:42SPEAKERThis is episode 79, dude.
11:44SPEAKER79, yes.
11:45SPEAKERVery nice.
11:46SPEAKERThat's quite a few episodes.
11:47SPEAKERYeah.
11:48SPEAKERYes.
11:48SPEAKERWhat are we talking about this week, Brad?
11:50SPEAKERC-c-controllers?
11:52SPEAKERControllers.
11:53SPEAKERVideo game controllers.
11:55SPEAKEROld SNES game pad, like-
11:56SPEAKERYep, that's the one.
11:58SPEAKERIt's four face buttons and two shoulders
12:01SPEAKERis all you ever need.
12:02SPEAKERRemember when they added the shoulders?
12:03SPEAKERMy parents were like, "I can't use this anymore.
12:04SPEAKERIt's too confusing."
12:06SPEAKERWait, your parents were using controllers at that time?
12:08SPEAKERWere you playing video games?
12:09SPEAKERMy parents would occasionally like sit down with me
12:11SPEAKERand play a game.
12:12SPEAKERLike my grandmother definitely,
12:15SPEAKERlike my grandmother worked on computers in her-
12:17SPEAKERWow.
12:18SPEAKERIn the fifties.
12:19SPEAKERHad an incredibly different family than I did.
12:21SPEAKERWell, like I don't think my dad,
12:23SPEAKERmaybe my dad would watch me play sometimes.
12:25SPEAKEROkay.
12:26SPEAKERAnd mom would sit down and she like would play Mario
12:28SPEAKERand like-
12:29SPEAKERWow.
12:30SPEAKERLater on.
12:31SPEAKERSo one year I brought my OG Xbox back for Christmas
12:35SPEAKERand I brought Karaoke Revolution
12:37SPEAKERand we did a lot of drinking and singing karaoke
12:40SPEAKERin the living room that summer.
12:41SPEAKEROkay, yes, yes, yes.
12:42SPEAKERThat's Christmas, which is awesome.
12:43SPEAKERYes, absolutely.
12:44SPEAKERIn a later era for sure,
12:45SPEAKERwe, you know, the family played some Wii Sports
12:46SPEAKERand some karaoke and stuff like that for sure.
12:48SPEAKERYeah, we definitely did Wii Sports one year,
12:50SPEAKERbut like the-
12:52SPEAKERIn the primordial era though.
12:54SPEAKERI mean, yeah, I feel like it's funny
12:56SPEAKER'cause like when they got me,
12:58SPEAKERmom and dad tell this story, it's really funny,
12:59SPEAKERwhen they got me a TI-99-4A
13:01SPEAKERwhen I was in elementary school as part of like a PTA buy,
13:05SPEAKERwhich was a thing that happened to a lot of Tennessee kids
13:07SPEAKER'cause the state paid for them or subsidized them, I think.
13:11SPEAKERAnd they got it and they hooked it up to the TV
13:14SPEAKERand they, on the night before Christmas,
13:20SPEAKERand they were testing it out to make sure it worked,
13:22SPEAKERand they played Parsec and whatever the other game
13:25SPEAKERthey got, probably Alpiner,
13:27SPEAKERand they were sitting there playing for hours
13:29SPEAKERwith the weird, bad TI joystick.
13:32SPEAKERAnd then I got up the next morning,
13:33SPEAKERI turned on the TV and like to try it out
13:36SPEAKERafter I'd opened the box and was like,
13:38SPEAKERthey were like, oh shit, this thing has sound.
13:40SPEAKERWe had no idea 'cause they just never turned the sound up.
13:43SPEAKERShould not have given the surprise away, but anyway.
13:45SPEAKERAnyway.
13:46SPEAKERThat's wild.
13:47SPEAKER- Video games were something that my dad
13:50SPEAKERmerely rude every single day,
13:52SPEAKERright up until I got a job because of them.
13:55SPEAKERAnd then he thought they were the best thing ever.
13:56SPEAKER- Oh, look, my parents went through,
13:58SPEAKERmy mom, even when I was working at Maximum PC
14:00SPEAKERand was the editor-in-chief
14:02SPEAKERof the number one selling computer magazine
14:04SPEAKERat newsstands in North America,
14:07SPEAKERshe described my career path
14:11SPEAKERas playing Nintendo professionally.
14:13SPEAKER- Yep, yep, yep, that'll happen.
14:15SPEAKERAnyway, we're talking about Joy-Con and PS5
14:19SPEAKERand a little bit of Xbox control.
14:21SPEAKER- I guess the theme of this episode
14:24SPEAKERis the shoddy state of modern controllers seemingly.
14:27SPEAKERAlthough as we get into it,
14:28SPEAKERit seems that maybe these problems have always been around.
14:30SPEAKERSo perhaps the question of this episode to me really,
14:34SPEAKERas we get into this is like,
14:35SPEAKERwhy is this such a story now
14:38SPEAKERif this has always been this way, but we'll get into it.
14:40SPEAKER- Has it always, I mean,
14:42SPEAKERso I feel like in console prehistory,
14:46SPEAKERthe original Atari 2600 controllers, the TI controllers,
14:50SPEAKERall those early '80s when controllers were real weird,
14:53SPEAKERlike they had the, I can't remember which one it was,
14:56SPEAKERthe one, was it ColecoVision that had that pad
14:58SPEAKERwith the cards you slid in and the-
15:00SPEAKER- That sounds right.
15:02SPEAKERAnd Intellivision had the big numeric keypad, right?
15:04SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it was Intellivision that had the,
15:06SPEAKERyou could slide the cards in on, I think.
15:08SPEAKER- Okay.
15:08SPEAKER- But those controllers were actively bad.
15:11SPEAKERLike the TI joystick,
15:14SPEAKEReventually we stopped being able to play games on that thing
15:16SPEAKERbecause all of the joysticks,
15:17SPEAKERboth of the joysticks stopped working.
15:21SPEAKERAnd then the Nintendo, the NES came out
15:24SPEAKERand the Genesis and the Master System came out.
15:26SPEAKERAnd I didn't have a Master System,
15:28SPEAKERbut the NES, like my NES pads still work.
15:31SPEAKER- Those controllers work.
15:32SPEAKERSorry, I was overly generalizing
15:34SPEAKERwhen I said always been a problem.
15:36SPEAKERI meant kind of always in the modern era,
15:37SPEAKERlike the two analog stick
15:42SPEAKERand four shoulder button era, let's say.
15:45SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see that.
15:46SPEAKER- I mean, Joy-Con Drift is the real reason we're here, right?
15:49SPEAKERLet's be honest.
15:50SPEAKER- Well, Joy-Con Drift is the famous example.
15:52SPEAKER- Right, right.
15:53SPEAKER- But it seems like PS5 Drift is a problem,
15:58SPEAKERDualSense Drift.
15:59SPEAKERAnd people are also reporting, seemingly,
16:03SPEAKERlike it's hard to tell what widespread means
16:05SPEAKERwhen everybody has a voice on the internet
16:07SPEAKERand it's easy to, like what would be a 10th of a percent
16:10SPEAKERor 100th of a percent problem.
16:11SPEAKER- Yeah, my litmus test is generally,
16:14SPEAKERare they being sued for it
16:15SPEAKERor have they come out and admitted it as a problem?
16:16SPEAKERIf one or both of those things has happened,
16:19SPEAKERthen that is definitionally widespread enough to me.
16:22SPEAKER- See, I think for me, it's when they will repair it
16:25SPEAKERout of warranty for free.
16:26SPEAKER- Yes, that's the ultimate, yes.
16:28SPEAKERThat is, yeah, for sure, absolutely.
16:30SPEAKERSo Nintendo has definitely crossed all of those bars.
16:32SPEAKER- Yeah, and we won't know whether Sony's in that boat
16:34SPEAKERfor another few months until we reach the end
16:36SPEAKERof the first year, I guess, on the PlayStation.
16:40SPEAKERBut yeah, so we can talk,
16:41SPEAKERI mean, I think we've both suffered Joy-Con drift
16:42SPEAKERat this point.
16:43SPEAKER- Yes.
16:45SPEAKER- And iFixit did a good series on this.
16:48SPEAKERA bunch of people have covered it in length.
16:51SPEAKERThey are, Nintendo did get sued about it
16:54SPEAKERand they are- - Several times.
16:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
16:56SPEAKER- There are three pending,
16:57SPEAKERwell, at least three pending lawsuits at the moment.
16:59SPEAKER- Well, and they are repairing the Joy-Cons out of warranty,
17:04SPEAKERwhich is good, I guess.
17:06SPEAKERIt is insane to me that they didn't fix this
17:10SPEAKERon the Rev 2 switches when they released the Switch Lite
17:13SPEAKERand the Switch B, or whatever it's called.
17:16SPEAKER- The Switch Lite, yeah.
17:17SPEAKERSo yeah, there have been two new switches.
17:19SPEAKERThere's the Switch Lite,
17:19SPEAKERwhich is obviously a handheld only,
17:21SPEAKERactually looks different,
17:22SPEAKERand there's that kind of transparent upgrade
17:24SPEAKERthat looks like the original Switch,
17:26SPEAKERbut it's got slightly different guts.
17:28SPEAKER- Yeah, the no, you can't hack this one version
17:31SPEAKERis what I like to think of that one as.
17:32SPEAKERBut it's slightly faster and a couple other things,
17:35SPEAKERbut they have used the exact same joystick part throughout,
17:41SPEAKERwhich apparently is a pretty standard design
17:44SPEAKERthat's been around for a very long time
17:45SPEAKERis what all the teardowns are seeming to indicate.
17:49SPEAKER- Well, so this is the thing I didn't understand
17:51SPEAKERbefore this, but yeah, apparently,
17:53SPEAKERit's not like when Nintendo and Sega launched consoles
17:57SPEAKERwith analog sticks 20 years ago,
18:00SPEAKERI assumed that Nintendo was making that part
18:03SPEAKERthat was in the N64 controller,
18:06SPEAKER'cause why was there a market for that stuff?
18:08SPEAKERThe controller, the stick that they use in the Joy-Con
18:11SPEAKERis a low profile design that was basically started
18:16SPEAKERaround the time tablets started coming out,
18:18SPEAKER'cause they developed it as a,
18:21SPEAKERthe speculation I read is that they developed it as a,
18:24SPEAKERhey, we have, we're gonna need low profile sticks
18:28SPEAKERfor thin devices like tablets.
18:30SPEAKER- Yeah, the PlayStation Vita was another example
18:31SPEAKERI saw cited as the genesis,
18:33SPEAKERnot that the Vita was especially successful or widespread,
18:36SPEAKERbut like the small joysticks have become enough of a market
18:40SPEAKERthat essentially these are commodity parts
18:44SPEAKERbased on a very old design, right?
18:46SPEAKERLike that's kind of the thing is like this design
18:47SPEAKERhas been around for a while and they are just being made
18:50SPEAKERby parts companies you've never heard of.
18:52SPEAKERThese are off the shelf components.
18:55SPEAKER- I bet our audience has heard of them.
18:56SPEAKERLike Alps makes the stick in.
19:00SPEAKER- Yes, that's how we are doing the right podcast
19:02SPEAKERfor the right audience, because when was it the,
19:06SPEAKERiFixit DualSense teardown that found the Alps logo?
19:10SPEAKERI think it was the DualSense one, right?
19:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
19:12SPEAKER- When they pulled that Alps joystick out of that DualSense,
19:15SPEAKERI was like, oh, I was holding an Alps 3.5 inch floppy drive
19:19SPEAKERthe other day, I know Alps.
19:20SPEAKER- Yep, they've been making parts for a really long time
19:23SPEAKERthat nobody's ever heard of.
19:24SPEAKERSo the Joy-Con controller drift,
19:29SPEAKERso the unfortunate thing about all of this is that
19:31SPEAKERlike they released the switch light
19:33SPEAKERwith the same exact Joy-Con with the same exact joystick
19:36SPEAKERand it has the exact, like my daughter's is starting
19:38SPEAKERto drift and at some point we're gonna have to send it back.
19:41SPEAKER- She have a light?
19:41SPEAKER- She has a light.
19:42SPEAKER- Oh no, so that's like, I mean,
19:44SPEAKERnot to get into their business practices,
19:45SPEAKERwe're here mostly talking about mechanics,
19:47SPEAKERbut like the light blows my mind because you are just
19:50SPEAKERwithout a switch for as long as it takes to get it fixed.
19:52SPEAKERLike at least with the Joy-Con you can use a pro controller,
19:55SPEAKERyou can figure something out, but like that's crazy to me.
19:58SPEAKER- I keep hoping that they'll, that like quarantine will end
20:06SPEAKER'cause like right now that switch light
20:08SPEAKERis kind of a lifeline for her, right?
20:09SPEAKERLike she spends a lot of time in Animal Crossing,
20:11SPEAKERshe plays Minecraft on the PC now,
20:13SPEAKERso that's less of an issue, but like she plays a lot
20:14SPEAKERof games with her friends on that
20:15SPEAKERand it's one of her main social outlets.
20:17SPEAKERAnd also like her islanders are gonna be pissed
20:22SPEAKERif she has to send back the switch for a month, right?
20:25SPEAKERIt's not good.
20:26SPEAKER- Do you think it'll be a month really?
20:28SPEAKER- I don't know, two weeks, a month, whatever.
20:30SPEAKERIf it's more than like three days,
20:31SPEAKERit might as well be a month, right?
20:33SPEAKERLike the way time moves right now.
20:34SPEAKER- What if you just took her switch apart
20:37SPEAKERand swapped the sticks yourself?
20:38SPEAKER- I mean, I've done it on two or three Joy-Cons now.
20:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
20:46SPEAKER- It looks pretty easy on,
20:47SPEAKERI haven't taken apart a switch light yet.
20:48SPEAKERI know I can do it.
20:50SPEAKERIf I broke it, I would be even sadder, I think.
20:54SPEAKER- Can you buy them?
20:55SPEAKERCan they be had?
20:55SPEAKERI mean, you know.
20:56SPEAKER- You can buy it now.
20:57SPEAKERThey're pretty easy to get.
20:58SPEAKERSo I can replace it.
20:59SPEAKER- You buy a new one.
21:00SPEAKER- It's like a $200 gamble, basically.
21:03SPEAKER- Sure.
21:04SPEAKER- 'Cause I even have the, I have spare Joy-Con sticks here
21:06SPEAKERon my desk from the last time,
21:07SPEAKER'cause I just bought a three pack last time.
21:08SPEAKERSo I was like, I'm gonna need more.
21:09SPEAKER- How would she feel?
21:11SPEAKERDo those things have a kickstand?
21:12SPEAKERI guess they don't, right?
21:13SPEAKER- The light doesn't have a kickstand.
21:15SPEAKER- How do you think she would feel
21:16SPEAKERif you, I assume you can sync Joy-Cons to it, right?
21:19SPEAKER- You can.
21:20SPEAKERShe would be pissed.
21:21SPEAKERShe would be pissed.
21:22SPEAKER- If you were like, oh, you can't play it handheld anymore.
21:24SPEAKERHere's a couple of Joy-Cons, just go to town.
21:25SPEAKERShe would, in fact, here's one Joy-Con.
21:28SPEAKER- Yeah, just do the left one here.
21:30SPEAKERShe would be pissed off, and rightly so, I think, so.
21:33SPEAKER- Sure.
21:35SPEAKER- So, okay, so I guess let's,
21:38SPEAKERyou wanna start with why this happens, maybe?
21:40SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I guess it seems like it's similar,
21:44SPEAKERbut not identical between the Joy-Con and the DualSense Stick
21:47SPEAKER- Yeah, well, okay, so the way Joy-Sticks work now,
21:50SPEAKERthey've worked different ways in the past.
21:52SPEAKERThere've been like optical ones and stuff like that,
21:53SPEAKERbut the way most of the modern ones work
21:55SPEAKERis that they have a potentiometer
21:57SPEAKERor a thing that works as a potentiometer on each axis.
22:03SPEAKERSo on up and down and left and right.
22:06SPEAKERAnd if you, the potentiometers work in different ways.
22:09SPEAKERThe ones on the Switch are like,
22:13SPEAKERthey're pads.
22:15SPEAKER- Little linear contact pads, basically, right?
22:17SPEAKER- Yeah, they're flat on the bottom of the joystick module,
22:20SPEAKERand they, there's a little plastic slider
22:24SPEAKERattached to each of the axes
22:26SPEAKERthat moves back and forth on the slider,
22:29SPEAKERand that motion changes the signal
22:32SPEAKERthat that slider sends to the Switch
22:35SPEAKERand lets it detect where the slider
22:38SPEAKERthat's attached to each axis is on that movement,
22:40SPEAKERon that, on its rails, basically.
22:43SPEAKER- Right.
22:44SPEAKER- And it's, the sliders, I've taken those apart.
22:47SPEAKERThe sliders in those are like that white plastic,
22:51SPEAKERit looks like Delrin or one of those type hard plastics
22:54SPEAKERthat you find in computer stuff.
22:56SPEAKERThe reason the Switch has problems,
23:00SPEAKERwell, first off, they're not rated for a bazillion moves.
23:04SPEAKERThey're rated for like a few million moves, I think,
23:06SPEAKERwhich seems low to me given how games work today.
23:10SPEAKER- Yeah, let me take that up.
23:12SPEAKERI don't know that we have the numbers for the Joy-Cons,
23:14SPEAKERbut, sorry, buddy. - There's the PS5
23:16SPEAKERthat iFix is. - Yeah, the iFix,
23:18SPEAKERit's really nice, we'll put that in the show notes.
23:20SPEAKERThey're really nice dual sense teardown
23:22SPEAKERand kind of a repair analysis.
23:23SPEAKERLet me pull that up real fast.
23:27SPEAKERYeah, like they-- - It was two million
23:28SPEAKERon the PS5. - I think you're right.
23:29SPEAKERIt was like two million actions
23:31SPEAKERor however they defined the unit of movement,
23:33SPEAKERbut yeah, that was the Alps part.
23:35SPEAKERThey actually looked it up in a database
23:36SPEAKERand found like the full kind of breakdown
23:38SPEAKERof what it's rated for.
23:39SPEAKER- It's the cool thing about them
23:40SPEAKERusing off-the-shelf commodity parts for this stuff
23:42SPEAKERis that you can, like the spec sheets are available.
23:46SPEAKER- The cool thing is that when they break,
23:47SPEAKERyou can find out why.
23:49SPEAKER- But also, like you can get replacement parts.
23:51SPEAKERIt's not like-- - Sure, well, kind of.
23:56SPEAKER- Well, can you not get the Alps 6?
23:58SPEAKER- No, no, well, I assume you probably could
24:00SPEAKERif you could find a supplier,
24:01SPEAKERbut I mean, we'll get into this,
24:02SPEAKERbut the repair is substantial on the dual sense.
24:06SPEAKER- Oh, look, we can talk about that.
24:08SPEAKERThat repair, they made it look a lot harder than it is.
24:11SPEAKER- Well, it depends on your comfort
24:13SPEAKERwith like significant soldering.
24:16SPEAKER- So having done a de-soldering on my mouse
24:19SPEAKERin recent memory,
24:21SPEAKERthat is worth investing $30 in a reflow station
24:24SPEAKERso that you don't have to do it manually by hand
24:27SPEAKERand it take three days.
24:28SPEAKER- That's what it was for me.
24:29SPEAKERI have limited soldering experience,
24:30SPEAKERso seeing some of the techniques they were using
24:33SPEAKERwas a little foreign to me.
24:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that's one of those ones
24:37SPEAKERthat if you don't have the right tools, it's living hell,
24:39SPEAKERand if you do, then it's about 15 minutes.
24:41SPEAKER- Okay, like that hot air thing they were doing was,
24:43SPEAKERand what was that solder cloth deal that they were?
24:45SPEAKER- So the solder cloth was just to insulate the other stuff.
24:48SPEAKERThe thing that, when they did the dip, the solder bath.
24:50SPEAKER- The dip, the solder bath thing
24:51SPEAKERwas the thing that freaked me out.
24:53SPEAKERI was like, I don't think I'm gonna,
24:54SPEAKERthat looks like a cauldron of boiling mercury.
24:57SPEAKER- Twinkle Twinkie will have things to say about that,
25:00SPEAKERbut you can get on Amazon a reflow station
25:03SPEAKERthat blows hot air on the solder joints
25:07SPEAKERand we'll let it just run out the bottom
25:08SPEAKERand let gravity do the hard part,
25:10SPEAKERand then you can move the pieces out to clean that out.
25:12SPEAKER- Got it.
25:13SPEAKERAnyway, sorry, I didn't mean to jump ahead there, but.
25:15SPEAKER- No, no, no, so, okay, so the Joy-Con,
25:18SPEAKERwhat happens with the Joy-Cons is stuff gets onto the pads
25:22SPEAKERthat the sliders hit and it blocks their action.
25:25SPEAKERIt blocks the, either the,
25:27SPEAKERI can't remember if they're pressure sensitive
25:29SPEAKERor capacitive, it doesn't matter.
25:30SPEAKERThe upshot is either little bits of plastic
25:33SPEAKERor like crumbs of food or skin
25:35SPEAKERor whatever gross stuff gets into your controller
25:38SPEAKERgets down in there and that causes it to stop working.
25:42SPEAKER- Yeah, or even the material of the pads themselves, so.
25:45SPEAKER- Yeah.
25:46SPEAKER- I don't know if you looked at this,
25:47SPEAKERiGen's got a nice breakdown entitled,
25:49SPEAKER"All the lawsuits Nintendo is facing over Joy-Con drift."
25:53SPEAKERBut one of the nice things in that
25:54SPEAKERis that they dug into the court documents
25:56SPEAKERand two of these lawsuits have enlisted experts
25:59SPEAKERto actually microscopically analyze what's going on here.
26:02SPEAKERSo they've got some really nice blown up photos here of the,
26:07SPEAKERso the contact pads are made of carbon and the little,
26:12SPEAKERwhat do you call it?
26:13SPEAKERThe little sliders? - Sliders, yeah.
26:15SPEAKER- Are steel according to this?
26:17SPEAKER- That's not, that wasn't the way mine worked.
26:19SPEAKERMine were white plastic.
26:20SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.
26:21SPEAKERWell, the quote here is,
26:22SPEAKER"As the steel brushes inside the joystick
26:24SPEAKER"move back and forth, they rub away
26:25SPEAKER"the soft carbon material that makes up the pad,
26:28SPEAKER"which changes its electrical resistance
26:30SPEAKER"and leads to the drifting phenomenon."
26:31SPEAKERThat's some expert's analysis.
26:33SPEAKERI mean, obviously that, you know,
26:36SPEAKERmaybe grain of salt, but that's what one of these,
26:39SPEAKERone of these suits is alleging.
26:41SPEAKERBut they've got some pictures, you know,
26:43SPEAKERlike some nice up close pictures of like the debris
26:46SPEAKERon those, the sliders that built up.
26:50SPEAKERSo anyway, like.
26:52SPEAKER- That's a trip.
26:53SPEAKER- Oh, you know what, they were metal on mine.
26:55SPEAKERI'm sorry, I've forgotten what it looked like.
26:57SPEAKERIt's been a while since I took it out.
26:59SPEAKERAnd the fact that they used a scanning electron microscope
27:02SPEAKERto see this is bonkers.
27:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.
27:05SPEAKERIt's like, it's the type of photography
27:07SPEAKERyou normally expect to see.
27:07SPEAKERLike, oh, here is a fly's face up close or something,
27:10SPEAKERexcept it's Joy-Con's.
27:12SPEAKER- It's funny because on mine,
27:15SPEAKERon mine you could actually see like little bits of stuff.
27:18SPEAKERIt was, I didn't, I didn't look at it up close
27:20SPEAKERto see what it was, but it looked like just like,
27:22SPEAKERyou know, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny flakes of dead skin.
27:26SPEAKER- Right, I mean, that's, I fix it.
27:27SPEAKERTheir analysis said like, hey, it could be,
27:30SPEAKERit's wearing the pad out.
27:31SPEAKERIt could be that you're getting crumbs of cookies
27:34SPEAKERand your fingernails in there.
27:35SPEAKER- Yeah.
27:36SPEAKER- It could be a lot of things, but at the end of the day,
27:38SPEAKERit's disruption between this detection mechanism
27:40SPEAKERand the mechanical.
27:42SPEAKER- Well, yeah, the slider that makes it,
27:46SPEAKERit makes it detect the electronic signal.
27:48SPEAKER- Something is making this detection not work right,
27:50SPEAKERwhether it's debris or wear or something.
27:52SPEAKERBut the upshot of all this is that it seems like
27:54SPEAKERit's inherent to the design.
27:55SPEAKER- Of that, of that stick specifically, yeah.
27:58SPEAKERI mean, and it seems like those sticks are designed
27:59SPEAKERfor less use than you're gonna see in a gaming console
28:02SPEAKERthat's only designed for playing games.
28:04SPEAKER- Right.
28:05SPEAKER- Which means it means maybe it was a bad choice
28:07SPEAKERfor the hardware.
28:09SPEAKERYou can fix it really easily.
28:11SPEAKERThe nice thing about the Joy-Con drift fix
28:13SPEAKERis replacing those Joy-Cons is literally pulling the,
28:17SPEAKERpulling one like eight pin wire out.
28:20SPEAKER- Well, yes, there's quite a bit of work
28:22SPEAKERto get to that point though.
28:23SPEAKERI did it a couple of weeks ago and I was reminded,
28:25SPEAKERand I've taken Joy-Cons apart to swap the shells
28:28SPEAKERand all kinds of stuff.
28:29SPEAKERAnd I was reminded like there's a lot of very small
28:31SPEAKERribbon cables in here that you need tweezers
28:32SPEAKERto very carefully pull and reinsert and stuff.
28:35SPEAKER- That is absolutely true.
28:36SPEAKER- It's not trivial, but it's not impossible.
28:39SPEAKER- You need a security, it's a special security,
28:41SPEAKERbut Nintendo uses the Tri-Wing, I think,
28:43SPEAKERto open those up too.
28:45SPEAKER- Yes, you do.
28:46SPEAKERBut like you can get those sticks on Amazon
28:48SPEAKERfor next to nothing.
28:49SPEAKERLike I bought a, what was it?
28:51SPEAKERI think I bought a four pack of Joy-Con sticks
28:53SPEAKERfor $16, $15, $16, something like that.
28:56SPEAKER- iFixit sells the actual, the right stick
29:00SPEAKERfrom the OEM with a security bit to open it
29:04SPEAKERand a thing that'll help you get the cable on and off,
29:06SPEAKERlike a spudger and a pair of tweezers, I think,
29:08SPEAKERfor like 15 bucks, so.
29:10SPEAKER- Yeah, those are quite a bit more,
29:11SPEAKERbut maybe that is the official part.
29:13SPEAKERMine were off the shelf.
29:14SPEAKERLike I did the whole Amazon dance of like,
29:16SPEAKERthere's 18 different brands selling Joy-Con sticks
29:19SPEAKERon Amazon and I was like, okay,
29:20SPEAKERwhich one's got the most user reviews?
29:21SPEAKERWhich ones are the most positive?
29:23SPEAKERWhich one is the Amazon recommends?
29:24SPEAKERI don't know which one of these to get
29:25SPEAKERbecause every single one of them,
29:27SPEAKERlike 10% of the user reviews were like,
29:29SPEAKERthese sticks were DOA.
29:30SPEAKERLike it did not work when I got it.
29:31SPEAKER- I just assume that when people say that
29:33SPEAKERon that kind of part, that those people are bad
29:35SPEAKERat putting shit back together.
29:36SPEAKER- That's probably a safe assumption, so.
29:38SPEAKERAnd also, and of course, the conclusion
29:40SPEAKERto every Amazon story, the one that I bought
29:43SPEAKERwas not the one that I got.
29:44SPEAKER- Great.
29:45SPEAKER- I think the brand on my purchase said Starco.
29:48SPEAKER- Okay.
29:49SPEAKER- And yet, and the one I got was like Hekoe, H-E-C-O-E,
29:53SPEAKERwhat's the brand on the sticks that came?
29:54SPEAKER- Well, they're a Starco company, clearly.
29:55SPEAKER- Oh, of course, an affiliate,
29:58SPEAKERa subsidiary of Starco Industries.
30:01SPEAKER- If you really want to live on the edge
30:02SPEAKERwhen you're buying this kind of part,
30:04SPEAKERget it from AliExpress.
30:05SPEAKERYou can get like 200 of them for about five bucks.
30:08SPEAKERIt'll take two months
30:09SPEAKERand you may get something entirely different.
30:12SPEAKERSo who knows?
30:13SPEAKER- As hilarious as that is, like in all seriousness,
30:15SPEAKERthat's why I bought a four pack
30:17SPEAKER'cause like all indications are,
30:19SPEAKERthis is sure to just keep happening over and over.
30:21SPEAKERSo I'm going to have to keep replacing them, right?
30:23SPEAKER- Well, so the thing I'll say,
30:25SPEAKERthe hardest part of this whole process
30:26SPEAKERis doing that ribbon cable, I think.
30:28SPEAKERThe place, let me rephrase,
30:30SPEAKERthe place that you're most likely to do permanent damage
30:32SPEAKERto your Joy-Cons or your switch in general,
30:37SPEAKERif you're doing a switch light,
30:38SPEAKERis messing up the little tiny super thin plastic connector
30:43SPEAKERthat holds that ribbon cable in.
30:44SPEAKER- Yes, they are very small and they're fairly brittle.
30:46SPEAKERAnd if you put it in the wrong angle
30:47SPEAKERand then crunch it when you stick the case back on,
30:50SPEAKERyou could actually break that cable.
30:52SPEAKER- Well, but it's also easy to break the connector
30:55SPEAKERon the mother, on the switchboard,
30:56SPEAKERon the Joy-Con board end of this.
31:00SPEAKEROne of the reasons this happens is like,
31:02SPEAKERif you look at the relative difference in complexity
31:04SPEAKERbetween say a SNES pad or even, you know,
31:09SPEAKERsomething like a second generation or third generation pad
31:15SPEAKERversus like when we started adding analog sticks
31:18SPEAKERis that in order to get the ergonomics right
31:20SPEAKERon the analog sticks, the boards have become
31:23SPEAKERmuch more complicated and sometimes
31:24SPEAKERthey're even multi-planar.
31:25SPEAKERSo for example, the Joy-Con boards,
31:29SPEAKERI think there's like three daughter boards on there
31:32SPEAKERthat aren't necessarily all at the same angle stuff.
31:35SPEAKERWell, the Joy-Con's all one planar board,
31:37SPEAKERbut like the DualSense controller has multiple boards
31:43SPEAKERthat are all at different caddywampus angles
31:44SPEAKERand stuff like that.
31:46SPEAKER- Caddywampus?
31:47SPEAKER- Well, it adds complexity to the design.
31:50SPEAKERIs that a trigonometric term?
31:52SPEAKER- People not say caddywampus?
31:53SPEAKER- I...
31:54SPEAKER- Something my mom always said, maybe it's English.
31:58SPEAKERSo, so yeah, that's the Joy-Cons.
32:02SPEAKER- Did you, did you replace your Joy-Con sticks
32:03SPEAKERfor the same reason I did,
32:04SPEAKERwhich is that you just didn't want to wait?
32:07SPEAKER- No, that's insane.
32:08SPEAKERI replaced mine 'cause they stopped working.
32:10SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.
32:10SPEAKERI'm saying you didn't want to wait for Nintendo
32:12SPEAKERto replace them because they will, they will do it for you.
32:14SPEAKER- Oh, when mine were drifting, they weren't doing that yet.
32:17SPEAKER- Oh, really?
32:18SPEAKER- Yeah, so I did it. - 'Cause I've been doing that
32:19SPEAKERfor a while.
32:20SPEAKER- I did it.
32:21SPEAKERMine started drifting when I was playing Breath of the Wild,
32:23SPEAKERlike two weeks after the game came out.
32:24SPEAKER- What?
32:25SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:26SPEAKER- Dude, what?
32:27SPEAKERThat just sounds like,
32:28SPEAKERthat's a straight up defective part, almost.
32:30SPEAKER- Look, I had, I bought two sets of Joy-Cons,
32:32SPEAKERso I just used the other Joy-Cons.
32:34SPEAKER- Okay, 'cause it took, it took probably a,
32:36SPEAKERit took until Animal Crossing for Drift
32:38SPEAKERto set in around here.
32:40SPEAKER- Oh, well, yeah, I don't know.
32:42SPEAKERIt was, it wasn't great.
32:44SPEAKERThe, the, so I did mine before that,
32:48SPEAKERand I wanted to change the plastic on the housings too.
32:52SPEAKERSo like, once I was taking it apart to destroy the warranty
32:55SPEAKERbased on fixing the Joy-Con, I was like,
32:57SPEAKERI'm gonna put the plastic housings on and did that.
32:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that was a secondary concern for me.
33:01SPEAKERI actually wondered, what do you think they would have done?
33:03SPEAKERBecause I also did the shell swap.
33:05SPEAKER- I bet they would tell you to pound sand.
33:06SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.
33:07SPEAKERI would have put it back in the original housing.
33:08SPEAKERI saved all the, the retail parts.
33:11SPEAKER- I recycled all that stuff.
33:12SPEAKER- I wonder if, oh, really?
33:13SPEAKERI wonder if they would have been,
33:14SPEAKERif I had put it back in the housing before I sent it back in,
33:16SPEAKERI wonder if they would have noticed.
33:17SPEAKER- If these start to drift, I might send it back
33:19SPEAKERin the clear housing and see what they say.
33:20SPEAKER- Ah, that's, in that case,
33:22SPEAKERI bet they would be like, fuck off.
33:24SPEAKER- Yeah, we'll see.
33:25SPEAKER- But, but, but the policy is out of warranty.
33:27SPEAKERThey will repair any Joy-Cons because again,
33:29SPEAKERthey are being sued by numerous people.
33:31SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the right, it's the right response.
33:34SPEAKER- Yeah, totally.
33:35SPEAKERLike I, that's kind of the real theme of this episode to me
33:38SPEAKERis like, where is all this going?
33:39SPEAKERBecause like, everybody's just using this data design
33:41SPEAKERoff the shelf and it's bad.
33:44SPEAKER- Well, I mean-
33:45SPEAKER- And there's no end in sight.
33:46SPEAKER- Hopefully what'll happen is that Alps
33:49SPEAKERand the other companies that make joystick designs
33:51SPEAKERfor off the shelf use will look at how these are failing
33:54SPEAKERand do better designs in the future.
33:56SPEAKER- Not really in their interest to make products
33:58SPEAKERthat last longer when they can just keep selling
34:00SPEAKERmore of the one that keeps failing.
34:03SPEAKER- Look, if we want to have the conversation
34:05SPEAKERabout what the right way to approach this is,
34:06SPEAKERmaybe Nintendo and Microsoft and Sony should,
34:09SPEAKERinstead of buying the part that costs 10 cents in bulk,
34:12SPEAKERthey should buy the cost, the part that costs 12 cents
34:14SPEAKERin bulk and-
34:15SPEAKER- Well, that's the right call assuming that part exists,
34:17SPEAKERbut it may not, like that's the thing.
34:19SPEAKER- Look, the market will work.
34:21SPEAKERThis is the invisible hand of the market
34:23SPEAKERworking itself out.
34:24SPEAKER- Oh, I see, you're one of those, huh?
34:25SPEAKER- Well, no, but it's costing,
34:27SPEAKERit's costing Nintendo a ton of money to ship those,
34:29SPEAKERlike they saved two cents each on Joy-Con sticks.
34:32SPEAKER- Actually, that's a good point.
34:33SPEAKERIt's really interesting to watch giant corporations
34:36SPEAKERover-correct when something like this happens,
34:37SPEAKERbecause remember the, you know, the 360 red ring
34:39SPEAKERdue to cooling failures?
34:41SPEAKER- Yeah, and why did that happen?
34:42SPEAKER- Look at how the Xbox One turned out.
34:44SPEAKERIt was gigantic and it had a huge vent on the top
34:46SPEAKERand it was whisper, you know what I mean?
34:48SPEAKERLike they freaked out over that stuff
34:49SPEAKERand they over-engineered their cooling forever after.
34:53SPEAKER- The red ring costs them billions of dollars, right?
34:55SPEAKER- That's what I mean.
34:56SPEAKER- On a division that hadn't made money at that point really.
34:58SPEAKER- But I mean, this can't be cheap for Nintendo, right?
35:00SPEAKERLike they're a very opaque company.
35:02SPEAKERI don't know what it is costing them,
35:03SPEAKERbut it can't be nothing.
35:04SPEAKER- Look, Vinyaki's up there opening up Joy-Cons all day,
35:08SPEAKERevery day.
35:09SPEAKER- Got his workstation is just going around the clock.
35:11SPEAKER- Right, he's just so fast.
35:14SPEAKERHis hands are so fast.
35:15SPEAKER- He could swap a stick.
35:16SPEAKER- I mean, he does have tiny hands,
35:17SPEAKERso it does help him get in there and get good.
35:20SPEAKERSo, what's up with the DualShock 5 stuff though?
35:24SPEAKERThis, I wasn't like, as somebody who,
35:26SPEAKERor DualSense 5, as somebody who hasn't blessed
35:29SPEAKERwith a PlayStation 5.
35:30SPEAKER- Yes.
35:31SPEAKER- And all the problems that that seems to entail.
35:33SPEAKER- Oh my God, dude.
35:34SPEAKERWe could do a whole episode just on that.
35:36SPEAKER- Is your thing working?
35:37SPEAKERIs it working again?
35:38SPEAKER- It started working again, what?
35:40SPEAKER- Did you do something to fix it
35:41SPEAKERor did it just fix itself?
35:42SPEAKER- Well, yes, but none of it fixed the problem immediately.
35:45SPEAKERAnd then it just started working.
35:46SPEAKER- What was the problem, I guess?
35:47SPEAKER- Rest mode broke on my PS5.
35:49SPEAKERLike, you know, rest mode, you've got a PS4, right?
35:51SPEAKERLike the light turns orange, it's asleep.
35:53SPEAKERIt downloads patches while it's asleep, that kind of thing.
35:55SPEAKER- And what, it just wouldn't do that?
35:56SPEAKEROr it like hung when you put it in rest mode or something?
35:59SPEAKER- Mine kept crashing as it would go into rest mode,
36:01SPEAKERout of nowhere, just out of the blue.
36:02SPEAKERLike, you know, the light will pulse
36:03SPEAKERas it's going to orange, right?
36:05SPEAKERLike it would do that thing.
36:06SPEAKERAnd then the light would just like blink out
36:08SPEAKERand then the console would not come back on.
36:10SPEAKER- I'm like, when I hear things like this,
36:12SPEAKERat last Christmas, when everybody's playing "Miles Morales"
36:15SPEAKERand like playing their old games in 4K
36:17SPEAKERand like a bazillion frames a second,
36:19SPEAKERI was kind of bummed I didn't have a PS5,
36:22SPEAKERbut now I'm probably okay.
36:23SPEAKERI feel good about this choice.
36:24SPEAKER- Some growing pains, let's say.
36:26SPEAKER- Okay.
36:27SPEAKER- So like when it would crash like this,
36:29SPEAKERit could not be turned back on from the controller.
36:31SPEAKERI had to get up and press the power button twice
36:33SPEAKERon the PS5 and then it would come back on.
36:34SPEAKER- Oh, God.
36:35SPEAKER- It was clearly crashing somehow.
36:37SPEAKER- You had to walk over there to that thing?
36:39SPEAKER- Well, I mean, whatever.
36:41SPEAKERIt's not getting up that's the problem.
36:42SPEAKERIt's the fact that it won't fucking sleep right.
36:44SPEAKERSo it won't download patches.
36:45SPEAKERSo every time I turn it on,
36:46SPEAKERI have to wait for a game to patch before I play it.
36:48SPEAKER- Is it faster downloading patches at least
36:49SPEAKERthan the PS4 was?
36:50SPEAKER- PS5 downloads have been very fast.
36:52SPEAKERI will give them that.
36:53SPEAKERLike they really upped their CDN game.
36:55SPEAKERI have to give them credit there.
36:56SPEAKER- That's good.
36:57SPEAKER- But I tried every fucking thing I could think of
37:01SPEAKERto fix it.
37:02SPEAKERLike you know me, like I went into full on diagnostic mode.
37:06SPEAKERI wiped it, I put new firmware on there from USB.
37:10SPEAKERI tried every combination of settings I could think of.
37:12SPEAKERNothing worked.
37:13SPEAKERAnd then just out of the blue, it started working again.
37:15SPEAKERLike no idea what happened, zero idea.
37:17SPEAKER- That's always a nice,
37:18SPEAKERlike that always makes you feel warm and fuzzy
37:20SPEAKERwhen like something that's been bothering you for weeks,
37:22SPEAKERjust suddenly out of nowhere starts working randomly
37:25SPEAKERwithout you doing anything to fix it.
37:27SPEAKER- Like how do you wipe and reinstall
37:29SPEAKERfrom downloaded firmware and it doesn't fix it?
37:31SPEAKERBut then a few days later it just starts working on its own.
37:34SPEAKERLike what the fuck is that?
37:35SPEAKER- Did they do like a quiet background system patch?
37:38SPEAKER- No, it notifies you every time.
37:39SPEAKERAnd I was watching their release list of firmwares
37:43SPEAKERlike a hawk 'cause I was so mad about this.
37:45SPEAKERAnyway, it's a pretty neat console that's got some issues
37:51SPEAKERthat I am confident they will iron out.
37:54SPEAKER- Well, these machines are really,
37:56SPEAKERlike they're really complex now.
37:58SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, sure, yes.
38:01SPEAKER- But also the whole point of buying a console
38:03SPEAKERinstead of getting a PC is that A, it's a little bit cheaper
38:06SPEAKERbut B, you don't have to futz with that kind of stuff, right?
38:10SPEAKER- Kinda, yeah.
38:11SPEAKERGod, it got me thinking about all this stuff
38:12SPEAKER'cause you know, the PlayStation OS is FreeBSD based.
38:15SPEAKERI assume you knew that.
38:17SPEAKERYeah, it totally is.
38:18SPEAKERAnd like, it got me thinking about like,
38:20SPEAKERwhat is going on under the hood there?
38:22SPEAKERI wonder if there's like some shutdown script
38:23SPEAKERthat they fudged that isn't like,
38:26SPEAKERpowering everything down properly.
38:28SPEAKER- Can you--
38:28SPEAKER- 'Cause like I've messed around with FreeBSD's init system
38:33SPEAKERenough to like have a decent sense
38:34SPEAKERof how stuff like that works.
38:36SPEAKERAnd I wanted to know what was going on under the hood.
38:38SPEAKER- Do they have like a free software thing
38:40SPEAKERwhere they post all their kernel patches and stuff like that?
38:42SPEAKER- No, they don't have to.
38:43SPEAKERThat's why so many, the switch is also FreeBSD based.
38:46SPEAKERI don't know if you knew that.
38:46SPEAKERIt's purely a licensing thing too.
38:49SPEAKER- Is it because of MIT license or something like that?
38:51SPEAKER- They're under the CDDL, the common distribution
38:54SPEAKERsomething, something.
38:54SPEAKERIt was written by Sun.
38:56SPEAKERDude, we shouldn't get into it.
38:59SPEAKERI've spent the last week reading through a giant thread
39:01SPEAKERof people arguing about the GPL versus the CDDL
39:04SPEAKERand how they're incompatible and like, which one is evil.
39:07SPEAKER- Is this scene drama?
39:09SPEAKER- It's super scene drama, dude.
39:11SPEAKERNext week, well, next week's emails,
39:13SPEAKERbut we should probably do a scene drama episode soon.
39:15SPEAKER- Hashtag scene drama.
39:17SPEAKER- Anyway, whatever, I won't get into it.
39:19SPEAKER- Yeah, so what's up with DualSense?
39:20SPEAKER- The license, I'll just, let me just finish real fast
39:22SPEAKERjust to tie a bow on this very interesting subject.
39:24SPEAKERThe license on FreeBSD and a bunch of stuff around it
39:28SPEAKERis that you can take the code, you can modify it
39:30SPEAKERand then use it in commercial products
39:32SPEAKERand not make your changes public.
39:34SPEAKER- Oh.
39:36SPEAKER- That's why everybody likes to use it
39:37SPEAKERfor things like the PlayStation.
39:39SPEAKER- Huh, weird.
39:40SPEAKER- They can take this very robust operating system
39:43SPEAKERthat's very stable and do what they want to it
39:44SPEAKERand not tell anybody what they did to it
39:46SPEAKERand sell it for, and make billions of dollars.
39:48SPEAKER- Like not contributing back to the open source community.
39:52SPEAKER- Exactly.
39:53SPEAKER- Wow, yeah, I can see why the open source people
39:55SPEAKERwould be pissed off about that.
39:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:58SPEAKER- Some of the Linux people take some umbrage to that model.
40:02SPEAKER- But on the other hand, nobody's using Linux
40:04SPEAKERbecause their licensing is overly over,
40:07SPEAKERforces them to really solve their software.
40:08SPEAKERAnd also the other thing is people are concerned
40:11SPEAKERabout the viral nature of the, some of the GPL stuff.
40:14SPEAKERThat's why MIT exists.
40:15SPEAKER- That is the, that is the super paranoid response
40:18SPEAKERto the GPL is that it infects anything it touches
40:20SPEAKERis the, that's the paranoid view of it.
40:23SPEAKERAnyway, DualSense controller issues.
40:27SPEAKERI mean, the, the, the drift here,
40:30SPEAKERit seems to be the same basic situation.
40:32SPEAKERIt's just that the contact mechanism is...
40:34SPEAKER- I got your drift.
40:36SPEAKER- Did I say that?
40:37SPEAKER- No, you said the drift here.
40:39SPEAKER- I know that's okay, I just didn't even realize I did that.
40:41SPEAKER- Yeah.
40:42SPEAKER- Completely unintentional.
40:43SPEAKER- You just got an episode title though.
40:48SPEAKER- Sorry, what was I saying?
40:50SPEAKER- I think you're telling me about your drift.
40:52SPEAKER- Yes, the stick design is, it's, it uses a contact pad
40:55SPEAKERlike the Joy-Cons, it's just that in this case,
40:57SPEAKERthe joy, the, the contact pad is circular.
40:59SPEAKERIt's a ring around the stick, so it, it, you know.
41:04SPEAKER- So instead of sliding based on the movement back and forth
41:06SPEAKERon a, on a linear thing that's on the bottom of the joint.
41:08SPEAKER- Yes, it's not, it's not just two linear pads on,
41:11SPEAKERon one on each axis, it is just one 360 degree pad
41:14SPEAKERaround the stick, but the, but the, according to iFix,
41:17SPEAKERthat the, the, the issue is the same.
41:19SPEAKERIt's wear on the pad.
41:20SPEAKERIt's, it's something disrupting the, the, the resistance.
41:23SPEAKER- We need to start, go back to optical joystick designs.
41:26SPEAKERThat was the way the old, the old ones worked,
41:27SPEAKERwas they'd have a light source
41:29SPEAKERand there's a whole ring with lights in it,
41:32SPEAKERwith holes in it, and there would be a light sensor
41:34SPEAKERon the other side.
41:35SPEAKERI mean, not all of them were like this,
41:36SPEAKERbut a lot of them were.
41:37SPEAKER- It seems like that sounds expensive.
41:39SPEAKER- Probably.
41:40SPEAKER- Probably compared to this design.
41:42SPEAKER- You know what else is expensive?
41:43SPEAKERIt's shipping back millions of Joy-Cons to fix them.
41:45SPEAKER- I don't disagree, they should make better sticks.
41:48SPEAKERThey should make better sticks.
41:51SPEAKERAnyway, like the iFix, sorta, I mean,
41:53SPEAKERI'll just read their headline.
41:55SPEAKERHere's why PS5 joysticks drift
41:56SPEAKERand why they'll only get worse.
41:58SPEAKERLike that, the, the professional assessment
42:01SPEAKERof all this stuff is, hey, this is all inherent
42:02SPEAKERto this old design that everybody's using.
42:04SPEAKERIt's not something that is just gonna like magically go away.
42:06SPEAKERIt's just gonna keep happening.
42:07SPEAKER- Well, just to be clear, Xbox,
42:09SPEAKERMicrosoft uses the same exact joystick module, right?
42:11SPEAKER- Yes, and that's really where I get to with this topic,
42:14SPEAKERis why aren't we hearing about this with Xbox controllers?
42:18SPEAKERAnd to extend that out,
42:20SPEAKERwhy did we not hear about this so much last generation?
42:22SPEAKERLike, why didn't we not hear about it all the time
42:24SPEAKERwith PS4 and Xbox One controllers or even 360?
42:27SPEAKER- Well, so, okay, my 360 controllers have started,
42:30SPEAKERthe one that I used most has started to get a little bit,
42:33SPEAKERlike the dead zone is squishy now
42:35SPEAKERin a way that wasn't before.
42:36SPEAKER- I've had, I've got one 360 controller
42:39SPEAKERthat had the same problem, the one I use the most,
42:41SPEAKERbut in that case, the stick itself was physically loose.
42:43SPEAKERLike I could like, it rocked on its own in the well
42:46SPEAKERor the little socket. - Like the spring got,
42:48SPEAKERlost its elasticity or whatever?
42:50SPEAKER- It was physically moving around, so I,
42:52SPEAKERbut I've never had any other issues with controllers.
42:54SPEAKER- So I, like, I think part of this is,
42:57SPEAKERon the 360 controller especially,
42:59SPEAKERit's weird because like that controller
43:00SPEAKERI've now been using for like 14, 13, 14 years.
43:04SPEAKERWell, less than that, it's the twisty D-pad one,
43:06SPEAKERwhich came out in like 2010, so 11 years.
43:08SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds right.
43:09SPEAKER- 'Cause that's the one I use with Steam links
43:11SPEAKERin the living, with the Steam link in the living room
43:13SPEAKERwhere I play, I have fewer games these days,
43:15SPEAKERbut I played for a long time.
43:17SPEAKERThe, the, I think, so first,
43:22SPEAKERthe first thing I'll say is after the Red Ring,
43:24SPEAKERthis is a situation where I think the console manufacturers
43:26SPEAKERhave to touch the fire before they learn
43:29SPEAKERto over-engineer these parts that get so much use.
43:32SPEAKERYou know, Microsoft, the difference between the Joy-Con
43:36SPEAKERbeing a complete debacle and being a wear related issue
43:39SPEAKERis how well sealed that thing is.
43:42SPEAKERAnd since you can rock the stick all the way over
43:44SPEAKERand actually see, see the edge of the little flap
43:48SPEAKERthat keeps crap from getting down in the Joy-Con stick,
43:52SPEAKERlike, you know, Sony just, Nintendo just didn't do
43:55SPEAKERa good job sealing it, I think.
43:56SPEAKERAnd that's like the fact that you can get food in there
43:59SPEAKERis the mistake, not the fact that you can,
44:02SPEAKERthat the Joy-Con can wear down if you use it for too long
44:05SPEAKERto the point that it loses precision.
44:06SPEAKER- Wait, you don't think that counts as a mistake
44:08SPEAKERor a design flaw?
44:09SPEAKER'Cause that's what that lawsuit is alleging exactly that.
44:12SPEAKER- So I think there's two different problems.
44:14SPEAKERThe wear is a real problem, but,
44:17SPEAKERand if they under-spec the sticks for the use case,
44:20SPEAKERthat is an issue and they should have been sued for it
44:22SPEAKERprobably, and they should repair those.
44:25SPEAKERBut the bigger issue is that I can sit and eat
44:27SPEAKERa piece of cake while I'm playing my Switch
44:29SPEAKERwhen it's five minutes old and get a crumb down there
44:31SPEAKERand all of a sudden I have a skip on a two week old console.
44:35SPEAKERIt's not related to wear, it's related to a,
44:37SPEAKERI think that's a shoddy design, honestly.
44:39SPEAKER- That's fair.
44:40SPEAKERI'm just saying that video games should accommodate
44:42SPEAKEReverybody's cake eating habits.
44:43SPEAKER- Look, I'm just saying cake rips.
44:45SPEAKERAnd sometimes I like to eat cake and play video games, okay?
44:48SPEAKER- You know what has less crumbs than cake is pie.
44:51SPEAKER- I mean, pie is undoubtedly my preferred dinner, but pie,
44:55SPEAKERyou know, a nice flaky crust can crumb up pretty good.
44:58SPEAKER- That's true.
44:59SPEAKER- What if you want to eat some chili
45:00SPEAKERand have a little cornbread with it?
45:01SPEAKERThat's not a Switch compatible.
45:04SPEAKERLook, the TLDR here is don't friggin' eat food
45:06SPEAKERwhile you're handling your controllers.
45:08SPEAKERLike the thing that my dad used to yell at me
45:10SPEAKERabout with the remote 40 years ago, is like-
45:14SPEAKER- 40 years ago?
45:15SPEAKER- Did you-
45:16SPEAKER- Did you still have one of the remotes
45:17SPEAKERon a cord at that time?
45:18SPEAKER- No, we didn't.
45:20SPEAKERI don't think we had, so the TV we had for a long time
45:22SPEAKERuntil we got, until the house got hit by lightning
45:24SPEAKERand it blew it up, was a 19 inch Philco with two,
45:27SPEAKERwith three knobs, volume VHF and UHF.
45:31SPEAKERAnd then when they replaced that was the first time
45:34SPEAKERwe had a TV with a remote,
45:35SPEAKERwhich was probably like 1988 would be my guess, '89.
45:39SPEAKER- So definitely infrared by then.
45:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it was infrared for sure.
45:42SPEAKERBut we were absolutely not allowed to touch the remote
45:45SPEAKERunless we had washed our hands.
45:48SPEAKER- Wow.
45:49SPEAKER- Yeah.
45:50SPEAKERSo dad was right.
45:52SPEAKERSorry, dad.
45:53SPEAKER- That's some real like Clark Griswold,
45:54SPEAKERlike stereotypical middle-aged dad shit.
45:58SPEAKER- Look, they didn't have universal remotes back then.
45:59SPEAKERYou couldn't like replace that thing if you jacked it up.
46:02SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.
46:05SPEAKER- So yeah, and then also with the increasing complexity
46:10SPEAKERof these devices, like the mechanism that goes
46:11SPEAKERinto the DualSense 5's trigger assembly
46:14SPEAKERthat gives it the resistive, the variable resistance
46:16SPEAKERand like the ability to lock and all that stuff.
46:19SPEAKERLike that is a crazy complicated mechanical design
46:24SPEAKERthat is like, I'm just waiting.
46:27SPEAKERLike the clock is ticking.
46:29SPEAKERLike if you look at, if you look at how people,
46:32SPEAKERcompanies that do this work long-term,
46:34SPEAKERlike Logitech has this facility that Norm and Joey went to
46:37SPEAKERin Switzerland when my daughter was born.
46:39SPEAKERI was off on paternity leave when my daughter was born,
46:41SPEAKERwhere they are set up to test millions and millions
46:45SPEAKERand millions and millions and millions of hits
46:47SPEAKERon like mouse switches and key switches
46:50SPEAKERand all this stuff to see how a keyboard,
46:53SPEAKERhow keyboard ages over the 20 million impacts
46:56SPEAKERthat it's gonna have over the course of its life
46:58SPEAKERor whatever it is.
47:00SPEAKERAnd I feel like the game console people used to do that
47:04SPEAKERand now they don't as much anymore,
47:06SPEAKERor they're just deciding that it's cheaper to build
47:10SPEAKERfor the person who buys Call of Duty every year,
47:12SPEAKERplays the single player campaign,
47:13SPEAKERand then the console sits unused
47:15SPEAKERfor the other nine months of the year.
47:17SPEAKER- That is, that's a poor business practice, I'm gonna say.
47:21SPEAKER- I think so too.
47:22SPEAKERI think it's bad.
47:23SPEAKER- I'm gonna say that's not acceptable.
47:25SPEAKER- But like, honestly, even Logitech was putting switches
47:28SPEAKERthat fail in their high end mice.
47:32SPEAKERLike I had my G Pro left click conked out
47:37SPEAKERa few months ago, after like a year.
47:39SPEAKER- Right, and so my previous Logitech I used for 10 years
47:42SPEAKERbefore one of the buttons started failing.
47:44SPEAKERLike are people just,
47:45SPEAKERare manufacturing standards just plummeting?
47:48SPEAKER- I mean, I feel like maybe part of it is that we don't,
47:52SPEAKERit's hard to know the expectation that things last long
47:55SPEAKERand the increased use that stuff gets now
47:58SPEAKERis maybe making it age faster than it would have.
48:01SPEAKERLike if you think about the number of clicks
48:02SPEAKERI do on the day-to-day,
48:04SPEAKERI'm probably 10x what I was a decade ago.
48:06SPEAKER- I have a thought even just in the last year,
48:08SPEAKERI wonder if the pandemic has anything to do with this,
48:10SPEAKERthat people are stuck inside,
48:11SPEAKERso they're using these devices much more rabidly,
48:15SPEAKERlike for hours and hours a day
48:16SPEAKERinstead of maybe 30 minutes a day or something.
48:18SPEAKER- I will assure you that my daughter would not have had
48:20SPEAKERas much switch time in the last year.
48:23SPEAKERLike as she has it in the last, like in that regard,
48:28SPEAKERabsolutely, like it is, the switch is a daily thing.
48:31SPEAKERIt is a large part of her social existence
48:33SPEAKERwith her friends.
48:35SPEAKERAnd as a result, like our parenting approach
48:38SPEAKERfor video games and screen time
48:40SPEAKERis that as long as she gets her school stuff done,
48:43SPEAKERlike when she gets her school stuff done,
48:44SPEAKERif she goes outside and plays a little bit,
48:46SPEAKERthen she can do whatever she wants on screens.
48:48SPEAKERAnd we absolutely didn't allow that before.
48:50SPEAKERSo sometimes she'll spend four hours on Animal Crossing
48:52SPEAKERin the late afternoon and evening
48:54SPEAKERif she got her school work done early.
48:56SPEAKERAnd like, I'm fine with that.
49:00SPEAKERAnyway, it's a weird thing.
49:02SPEAKERThere's also this Xbox thing, which we haven't talked about.
49:04SPEAKER- Yeah, there's not nearly as much information around that.
49:07SPEAKER- It's just, it seems like it's only the series controllers,
49:09SPEAKERnot the Xbox One controllers.
49:12SPEAKER- Yeah, they have a face button responsiveness problem.
49:14SPEAKERI'm literally the X, Y, A, B buttons.
49:17SPEAKERApparently some of those buttons
49:18SPEAKERdon't work consistently for everybody.
49:19SPEAKER- I thought they were the same,
49:22SPEAKERI thought they were the same design.
49:23SPEAKER- Like probably the same basic fundamental design,
49:26SPEAKERbut they are definitely a different model.
49:27SPEAKERLike they're not literally just selling
49:30SPEAKERthe Xbox One controllers again, if that's what you mean.
49:31SPEAKERLike they definitely-
49:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I just assumed they'd sunscreen the series logo
49:34SPEAKERon it the whole day. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
49:36SPEAKERIt is a noticeably different controller.
49:38SPEAKERLike it's not profoundly different,
49:40SPEAKERbut they did change stuff.
49:41SPEAKER- Weird.
49:42SPEAKER- Like, you know, there's a share button on it now.
49:43SPEAKERLike the housing is a different shape.
49:45SPEAKERThe triggers maybe feel a little different.
49:47SPEAKERLike there's some stuff there.
49:49SPEAKERBut again, there's no tear downs out there.
49:53SPEAKERWe don't really know what's going on with that,
49:54SPEAKERbut it's enough that Microsoft has given statements
49:56SPEAKERto press outlets saying like, yes, we are aware of this.
49:58SPEAKERWe're, you know, we stand behind, blah, blah, blah.
50:01SPEAKERWe would just, you know.
50:03SPEAKER- And well, it's still under warranty.
50:04SPEAKERSo if it breaks, you'll fix it.
50:05SPEAKER- There are a couple of people on our Discord
50:07SPEAKERhave run into this pretty significantly
50:10SPEAKERand they got new controllers.
50:10SPEAKERLike it seems like they're at least replacing stuff, but-
50:13SPEAKER- What is the symptom?
50:14SPEAKERJust so that one or more of the face buttons
50:16SPEAKERstops working reliably?
50:17SPEAKER- It sounds like, yeah, not stops entirely,
50:20SPEAKERbut just doesn't register every press.
50:22SPEAKERSo you can see why that would be a problem.
50:24SPEAKER- Is it X, Y, A, B and the D-pad or is it just X, Y, A, B?
50:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just those four buttons,
50:28SPEAKERnot the D-pad as far as I could tell.
50:30SPEAKERAnd for whatever reason, anecdotally,
50:31SPEAKERI've mostly seen people talking about the Y
50:33SPEAKERand the A buttons, which are the top and bottom ones,
50:35SPEAKERnot the left and right ones.
50:36SPEAKERSo I don't know what that might say, but-
50:40SPEAKER- Well, have you had the,
50:42SPEAKERthe Switch Pro Controller has a similar problem
50:43SPEAKERwith the D-pad.
50:44SPEAKER- Oh, dude, don't even get me started.
50:46SPEAKERThat has just a design flaw.
50:47SPEAKERLike it's like that out of the box.
50:48SPEAKERLike it's just a bad D-pad, which is crazy.
50:51SPEAKER'Cause I always thought of Nintendo
50:52SPEAKERas having the best D-pads.
50:55SPEAKERAnd here we are, I too, like I love Tetris 99
50:59SPEAKERand I won't play it on a Pro Controller
51:01SPEAKER'cause like I get so many like missed drops and stuff.
51:03SPEAKERYou know, like if it registers a bad up,
51:06SPEAKERit drops your piece and then you're screwed.
51:07SPEAKERLike I only played Tetris 99 handheld because of that.
51:10SPEAKERLike it sucks.
51:11SPEAKER- I put a D-pad left Joy-Con on my Switch
51:15SPEAKERspecifically because of that.
51:17SPEAKERAnd if I'm playing, like if I'm streaming that,
51:19SPEAKERI sit here and I have an 8-bit dough pad
51:20SPEAKERthat I hook up to it.
51:21SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.
51:23SPEAKER- Which by the way, if you want a game,
51:24SPEAKERif you want good D-pads, the 8-bit dough-
51:26SPEAKER- Yes, that's what I used for-
51:27SPEAKER- Pads are rad.
51:28SPEAKER- When I played through that accursed
51:30SPEAKERSuper Mario Brothers the second, a while back.
51:33SPEAKER- The lost levels, the real two.
51:35SPEAKER- Yes, I was using an 8-bit dough.
51:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
51:38SPEAKERLike those old, those old NES and SNES games
51:40SPEAKERare really hard to play on the Pro Controller.
51:42SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, Pro Controller D-pad is a real bummer.
51:45SPEAKERThere's one more thing I was gonna mention
51:46SPEAKERabout, are we wrapping up?
51:48SPEAKERThere's one more Joy-Con thing.
51:48SPEAKER- I guess we can, I don't know.
51:49SPEAKER- I wanted to, I just wanted to throw this in
51:54SPEAKERwhile I can.
51:56SPEAKERWhen I was replacing the Joy-Con sticks,
51:59SPEAKERremember how I said, everybody, you know,
52:01SPEAKERthere's all these reviews or reviews saying like,
52:02SPEAKERoh, mine were DOA or one of these was DOA.
52:04SPEAKERSo I was just like, well, I should test all four of them
52:06SPEAKERjust to make sure.
52:07SPEAKERSo first of all, it was fun to come up with a little
52:10SPEAKERlike sort of test bed set up where I could like
52:13SPEAKERplug and unplug different joysticks
52:15SPEAKERwithout putting the whole thing back together.
52:17SPEAKERSo that was a lot of fun.
52:20SPEAKERBut the thing I found as I was testing those things
52:22SPEAKERis there's, have you ever used the calibration utility?
52:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
52:25SPEAKER- On the Switch?
52:26SPEAKER- That's always, that's where my Joy-Con replacements start.
52:29SPEAKER- Right, so their Amazon page is like, just like frantically
52:32SPEAKERis like, please calibrate these before you call us
52:34SPEAKERand tell us they don't work.
52:35SPEAKER- Oh.
52:36SPEAKER- And so I was like, huh, that's interesting.
52:37SPEAKERSo I went to the calibration utility
52:39SPEAKERafter I put the first one in.
52:40SPEAKERSure enough, there's a little like crosshair thing
52:43SPEAKERthat's supposed to be dead center.
52:44SPEAKERLike it changes shape when it is quote unquote center.
52:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
52:47SPEAKER- So you can tell very easily if it's like,
52:48SPEAKERI think it turns round if it's off center.
52:50SPEAKERSure enough, I go into that calibration utility
52:52SPEAKERwith the first replacement Joy-Con
52:53SPEAKERand it's just like swimming all over the place.
52:55SPEAKER- Bouncing.
52:56SPEAKER- Like it's literally just sort of like
52:58SPEAKERkind of jittering all around the center.
53:01SPEAKER- Yeah.
53:03SPEAKERDid the calibration fix it?
53:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I was like, oh man, I'm screwed.
53:06SPEAKERLike this thing's defective.
53:07SPEAKERIt's just like everybody said.
53:08SPEAKERAnd then I did the calibration and then it was fine.
53:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
53:12SPEAKERSo that made me realize though,
53:14SPEAKERlike there must be some amount of error correction going on
53:16SPEAKERfor all those joysticks, right?
53:17SPEAKERLike algorithmically, they must be correcting
53:20SPEAKERfor some amount of physical.
53:21SPEAKER- Oh, well, yeah, 'cause there's probably variation
53:24SPEAKERin how much resistance.
53:25SPEAKERLike those work by like the potentiometer bits
53:29SPEAKERwork by changing electrical resistance
53:31SPEAKERbased on the position of the slider or the axis.
53:35SPEAKERAnd I'm sure that they all work.
53:37SPEAKERLike a lot of times, my understanding is in the old days,
53:40SPEAKERlike, well, okay, in the really old days,
53:42SPEAKERwhen you was in like a CH flight stick pro
53:44SPEAKERor something like that in the nineties for X-wing
53:46SPEAKERor flight sim or whatever,
53:48SPEAKERthose you would have to calibrate manually
53:50SPEAKEReach time in windows because there was variability on,
53:55SPEAKERlike based on the pot,
53:57SPEAKERlike the individual pots that were interested
53:59SPEAKERin the joysticks.
54:00SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I was curious about.
54:01SPEAKERYeah, 'cause like electricity is notoriously hard
54:03SPEAKERto like correct for and get consistent from part to part.
54:06SPEAKERRight, like what I mean is like,
54:08SPEAKEReven the joysticks that Nintendo themselves are putting in,
54:10SPEAKERthere's gotta be variants just from unit to unit, right?
54:12SPEAKER- I'm sure that there's a calibration process
54:16SPEAKERon the assembly line when they jam it in
54:18SPEAKERand they like figure out where it should be.
54:21SPEAKER- Yeah, it was just interesting to see like something,
54:23SPEAKERthere's software under the hood
54:24SPEAKERthat is correcting for some of this stuff.
54:25SPEAKER'Cause once I did that calibration,
54:27SPEAKERall four of the sticks that are the aftermarket ones
54:29SPEAKERwere fine and they have been fine so far.
54:31SPEAKER- Wow.
54:34SPEAKERWe should talk about,
54:38SPEAKERoh, the desoldering, the soldering workflow.
54:40SPEAKER- Right, yes, yes.
54:41SPEAKERSo with the DualShock, or I'm sorry, the DualSense,
54:44SPEAKERI can't, I keep wanting to call it the DualShock 5.
54:48SPEAKER- So, on the switch taking the Joy-Con modules,
54:54SPEAKERJoy-Con sticks off is a mechanical thing,
54:56SPEAKERthere's no soldering, it's just a cable.
54:58SPEAKER- It's two screws, it's two tiny screws
55:00SPEAKERand a tiny ribbon cable, that's it.
55:01SPEAKER- Yeah, so you're like,
55:02SPEAKERyou don't need to desolder anything to do that.
55:04SPEAKERThe Joy-Con is a lot harder.
55:05SPEAKERI think they said in the iFixit video,
55:07SPEAKERI haven't done this, but the iFixit video
55:09SPEAKERsaid there were 15 solder points, is that right?
55:11SPEAKER- 14, 15, something like that.
55:12SPEAKERI'm trying to find it in the video,
55:13SPEAKERbut it's a lot of solder points.
55:15SPEAKER- In my experience, when you're desoldering
55:17SPEAKERanything more than two soldering points,
55:19SPEAKERyou wanna have the proper tool to do that.
55:21SPEAKER'Cause trying to do it with a soldering iron
55:23SPEAKERand like wick and flux and all that stuff
55:26SPEAKERis just, a solder sucker is living hell.
55:30SPEAKERIt's just a lot of fiddly up close soldering work
55:34SPEAKERthat is really hard to get.
55:36SPEAKERAnd like you need to get all the solder
55:37SPEAKERout of all those points, it takes forever, it sucks.
55:41SPEAKERBut a soldering, a reflow station,
55:44SPEAKERif you're gonna be doing that
55:45SPEAKERwith any kind of frequency at all,
55:46SPEAKERyou can get a cheap one for like 25 or 30 bucks on Amazon.
55:50SPEAKERAnd basically what it is is a heat gun
55:53SPEAKERthat lets you direct the hot air
55:55SPEAKERat a specific point on the board
55:58SPEAKERthat's hot enough to melt the solder.
56:00SPEAKERAnd what that'll do is you put the board flat
56:05SPEAKERso that the solder falls down underneath it
56:08SPEAKERand you aim this hot air at the points where it's an issue,
56:12SPEAKERand then you can pull at the component from the other side
56:14SPEAKERso that it comes out.
56:16SPEAKERWe need to get a soldering expert on
56:19SPEAKERto talk soldering techniques,
56:21SPEAKER'cause I don't know how to use that properly.
56:23SPEAKERThere are bazillion YouTube videos,
56:25SPEAKERand I bet if you're in the Discord,
56:28SPEAKERif you go to the, hey, I made this section
56:31SPEAKERwhere we talk about soldering sometimes,
56:34SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie or one of the other experts in there
56:36SPEAKERwill point you in the direction
56:37SPEAKERof a YouTube video that's good.
56:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a little, like I said,
56:41SPEAKERit was a little frightening watching them do that
56:43SPEAKERin this iFixit video, 'cause it's like you're seeing--
56:45SPEAKER- I've never seen that dipping thing.
56:46SPEAKER- Yeah, like you're just seeing so much molten solder
56:49SPEAKERin one frame, like one solder point at a time is one thing,
56:54SPEAKERbut just watching them all kind of melt
56:56SPEAKERand give way simultaneously is a little bit scary.
56:59SPEAKER- Well, it's funny,
57:00SPEAKERthere's a lot of high-end soldering techniques
57:02SPEAKERthat you don't use normally at home,
57:05SPEAKERbut like when we did,
57:06SPEAKERI wanna say when I made one of the MakerBots,
57:08SPEAKERwe used paste solder,
57:12SPEAKERwhich is like a syringe full of solder and a paste
57:15SPEAKERthat then you heat up to the right temperature
57:17SPEAKERand the solder and the paste,
57:18SPEAKERthe flux boils away and the solder melts,
57:21SPEAKERand like you just syringe these little dots
57:24SPEAKERonto the surface mount components,
57:26SPEAKERso they don't have through holes, right?
57:27SPEAKERThere's no, you're just putting like resistors and stuff
57:31SPEAKERon the board, and then a little tiny drop of solder
57:35SPEAKERon either end of it, and then you heat that up,
57:37SPEAKERand we just did that on a hot plate,
57:40SPEAKERand that process was like keep turning the hot plate up
57:43SPEAKERuntil you see the solder start to smoke a little bit,
57:46SPEAKERwhich means the flux is boiling away,
57:48SPEAKERand then all of a sudden the solder was done.
57:50SPEAKERIt even took like two seconds to solder 400 components
57:53SPEAKERor whatever went on the heated build plate,
57:56SPEAKERwhich was amazing.
57:57SPEAKER- That's cool.
57:58SPEAKER- Yeah, it was really neat.
57:59SPEAKER- That's cool.
58:00SPEAKER- I mean, I don't know much about it
58:02SPEAKERbeyond what the name implies,
58:03SPEAKERbut I've become acquainted with the idea of drag soldering.
58:07SPEAKERDo you know anything about it from the Mr. Scene?
58:10SPEAKERApparently that's the, you know,
58:12SPEAKERall those Mr. Sellers are making,
58:13SPEAKERthey're like the RAM modules, the IO boards,
58:15SPEAKERlike they are literally sitting there
58:16SPEAKERsoldering all these components on the boards.
58:19SPEAKERThey're literally just buying parts in bulk.
58:22SPEAKERI think drag soldering is how they make the RAM module,
58:25SPEAKERis my understanding.
58:27SPEAKERThat's right.
58:28SPEAKERI'm just throwing that out there.
58:29SPEAKER- Do you know?
58:30SPEAKER- I don't know.
58:31SPEAKERLike I haven't read too much about it,
58:32SPEAKERbut that's the, like drag soldering works exactly
58:35SPEAKERas its name implies.
58:36SPEAKERBy dragging a bead of solder across fine pitch pins,
58:39SPEAKERyou can quickly solder an entire row.
58:41SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
58:43SPEAKERSo you just, so you just rely on the, like the,
58:47SPEAKER- Tension or something?
58:48SPEAKER- Surface tension of the solder to hit the pins
58:50SPEAKERand hit the holes.
58:51SPEAKERWow, that's amazing.
58:51SPEAKER- I believe that's what is going on there.
58:55SPEAKERNot to, one more factoid I'm gonna throw out real quick.
58:57SPEAKERI don't know how we could verify this,
58:59SPEAKERbut I've seen suggestions that, you know,
59:00SPEAKERthe Mr. RAM that everybody's buying,
59:03SPEAKERit's old, it's super old SDRAM.
59:05SPEAKER- Wait, is it scene drama?
59:06SPEAKER- It's not scene drama.
59:07SPEAKERNo, it's more just like an interesting
59:08SPEAKERbehind the scenes fact.
59:10SPEAKERLike it's, what is that?
59:11SPEAKERLate nineties RAM, would you say?
59:13SPEAKER- SDRAM would have been late nineties,
59:15SPEAKERlike the first GeForce shipped with a single SDR RAM.
59:19SPEAKER- And then a DDR model.
59:20SPEAKER- And then a DDR model.
59:21SPEAKER- Which was like, what, late '99, something like that?
59:23SPEAKER- No, GeForce One shipped in 2000, I think,
59:26SPEAKERand the DDR shipped in late 2000.
59:28SPEAKER- So this is like what, 140, 133 megahertz SDR
59:32SPEAKERor something like that?
59:32SPEAKER- It is ancient, yes.
59:33SPEAKER- So the suggestion I saw is that the actual ICs,
59:36SPEAKERthe actual RAM, not the PCB that they're putting it on,
59:39SPEAKERbut the actual RAM they suggested are being parted out
59:41SPEAKERfrom old computers from that era.
59:45SPEAKERLike, wow, this was on the Mr. Discord
59:48SPEAKERthat I saw people talking about this.
59:49SPEAKERThey literally suggested like, you know,
59:51SPEAKERthese are old e-machines that are being,
59:52SPEAKERshould you remember e-machines?
59:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:54SPEAKER- So these are old, like, budget Best Buy computers
59:57SPEAKERthat are being shipped off to companies
59:59SPEAKERthat part out all the components for reuse.
1:00:01SPEAKERAnd those are potentially, I can't verify this,
1:00:03SPEAKERbut it's a fascinating idea.
1:00:05SPEAKER- I could have bought my own memory back
1:00:07SPEAKERfrom an electronics recycler.
1:00:08SPEAKER- You might have some in a box somewhere
1:00:10SPEAKERthat you could have used.
1:00:12SPEAKERI don't know if that's accurate or not,
1:00:13SPEAKERbut it's a fascinating idea to me that the RAM in my Mr.,
1:00:15SPEAKERthe actual RAM might be like 20 years old.
1:00:18SPEAKER- I kind of, like, I don't understand why they use
1:00:21SPEAKERthe old RAM for the Mr. instead of...
1:00:24SPEAKER- It's a speed thing.
1:00:24SPEAKERIt's a speed and like a synchronization thing.
1:00:27SPEAKERLike it has to, those, a lot of those cores expect the RAM
1:00:30SPEAKERto be a certain speed that you can't,
1:00:32SPEAKERyou can't just replicate that speed in modern RAM.
1:00:34SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.
1:00:36SPEAKER- The RAM that comes on the DE10 is DDR3.
1:00:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:41SPEAKER- And you can't just like clock that down to the speed
1:00:43SPEAKERthat these old cores, 'cause there's,
1:00:44SPEAKERyou can find a table of what each core runs at.
1:00:47SPEAKERAnd it's like, it's like 96 megahertz, you know,
1:00:50SPEAKERor, you know, I'm just throwing numbers out.
1:00:52SPEAKER- This one is real low.
1:00:53SPEAKERIt's like 25 or something like that.
1:00:54SPEAKER- I think, I think the fast, yeah, I think the fastest one,
1:00:56SPEAKERthere's outside of a couple of the more exotic computers,
1:00:58SPEAKERI think the fastest one is just a little over 100 megahertz
1:01:00SPEAKERis what they expect, but you can't just do that on DDR3.
1:01:03SPEAKER- Wow.
1:01:04SPEAKER- You need, you need the genuine article.
1:01:06SPEAKER- You need the real RAM.
1:01:06SPEAKERWow, that's a trip.
1:01:07SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:01:08SPEAKERAgain, I don't know if that's accurate or not,
1:01:10SPEAKERbut these were like pretty knowledgeable Mr. people
1:01:12SPEAKERthat were talking about it, so it seems...
1:01:14SPEAKER- Possibly apocryphal then.
1:01:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:01:17SPEAKER- We'll call that one.
1:01:17SPEAKERNext week is emails, Brad.
1:01:19SPEAKER- Yes.
1:01:21SPEAKER- Are we sure?
1:01:22SPEAKER- I think so.
1:01:23SPEAKER- 26.
1:01:24SPEAKER- 26, oh yeah, that's right.
1:01:24SPEAKER- Well, is it every four weeks?
1:01:25SPEAKER- 28th.
1:01:26SPEAKER- Well, hang on, what is the, what is the methodology here?
1:01:28SPEAKERIs it every four weeks or is it?
1:01:29SPEAKER- I think it should be the last week.
1:01:30SPEAKER- Or is it open to interpretation or is it,
1:01:32SPEAKERis it based on, okay.
1:01:35SPEAKER- I like last week of the month.
1:01:36SPEAKER- The last Sunday.
1:01:38SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:01:39SPEAKER- Next Sunday will be the last Sunday in March.
1:01:40SPEAKERSo does that pass, does that pass your rubric?
1:01:42SPEAKER- That passes both of our musters.
1:01:43SPEAKER- Okay.
1:01:44SPEAKER- So if you have emails, if you have questions about
1:01:46SPEAKERepisodes you want to give us feedback,
1:01:47SPEAKERlet us know how we're doing.
1:01:48SPEAKERJust, just have a question.
1:01:49SPEAKERWant us to talk about something, somebody asked a really
1:01:52SPEAKERinteresting question the other day in,
1:01:57SPEAKERwhere was it on Twitter or a patron message?
1:01:58SPEAKERI can't remember, but send them to emails rather than the
1:02:02SPEAKERmillion other ways that you can contact us.
1:02:04SPEAKERThe email address is techbaud@content.town.
1:02:07SPEAKER- Yeah, we got our whole,
1:02:08SPEAKERwe got our whole Gmail task workflow figured out now.
1:02:10SPEAKERIt's fantastic.
1:02:11SPEAKER- It's real good.
1:02:12SPEAKERYou can organize them by like, we can,
1:02:14SPEAKERwe can make a playlist of emails.
1:02:15SPEAKER- Actually put them in the order that I want to read them.
1:02:17SPEAKERIt's amazing.
1:02:18SPEAKER- Yeah, it's really nice.
1:02:19SPEAKERThe email address again is techbaud@content.town.
1:02:22SPEAKERAnd if you want to support the show, we don't take ads.
1:02:24SPEAKERSo the only way we support this, you can support the show.
1:02:26SPEAKERThe only way we, we, you know, contribute,
1:02:29SPEAKERmake money for our time here is on the Patreon,
1:02:33SPEAKERwhere you can get in for as little as $2 a month,
1:02:36SPEAKERyou can get access to the fabulous tech pod discord,
1:02:39SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful nerds,
1:02:40SPEAKERfull of awesome stories and information and cool hobbies and
1:02:44SPEAKERfascinating stuff. I'm bummed.
1:02:45SPEAKERThe only bad thing about playing so much eco is that I
1:02:47SPEAKERhaven't spent as much time on the discord over the last two
1:02:49SPEAKERweeks, but since that's winding down, I'll be back.
1:02:52SPEAKERThe, the, we're, we're in the not too distant future.
1:02:59SPEAKERWe're going to revamp the Patreon tiers.
1:03:01SPEAKERSo that $2 entry point for the discord is probably going to
1:03:05SPEAKERbe going away.
1:03:05SPEAKERThe people who are already on that will be grandfathered in
1:03:07SPEAKERand can keep paying $2 indefinitely.
1:03:10SPEAKERSo if you want to get in, get in now while the price is low.
1:03:16SPEAKERAnd as always, thanks to our executive producer,
1:03:20SPEAKERto your patrons, The Bunny Fiend, Jacob Chapel,
1:03:23SPEAKERDavid Allen and James Kamik.
1:03:24SPEAKERThank you all so much for your support.
1:03:25SPEAKERWe really appreciate it.
1:03:26SPEAKER- Thank you to you guys and everybody.
1:03:29SPEAKER- Yeah. Everybody who listens,
1:03:30SPEAKEReverybody who tells their friends the way people.
1:03:32SPEAKERSo one of the other things I want to do this year with the
1:03:35SPEAKERtech pod is do some,
1:03:38SPEAKERbring some guests in from other podcasts who have
1:03:40SPEAKERinteresting things to share.
1:03:42SPEAKERLike somebody suggested the lockpicking lawyer from YouTube,
1:03:44SPEAKERwho I think would be a fascinating tech pod guest to talk
1:03:47SPEAKERabout picking locks.
1:03:48SPEAKER- Sure.
1:03:49SPEAKER- But if you have guests that you think would be good for us
1:03:53SPEAKERto have on or places that you think we would make good
1:03:56SPEAKERguests, hit us up, let us know.
1:03:58SPEAKEREither on Twitter at Will Smith and at Brad Shoemaker or in
1:04:03SPEAKERthe, in the emails or on the Patreon, on the discord.
1:04:05SPEAKER- Those guests episodes we've done tend to be, you know,
1:04:08SPEAKERthe most edifying.
1:04:09SPEAKER- Yeah. It's always fun.
1:04:11SPEAKER- Also the most flattering to me that we can,
1:04:12SPEAKERwe can convince people with this caliber to come and talk to
1:04:15SPEAKERus for an hour. It's very flattering to me.
1:04:17SPEAKER- Well, I want to, so I want to do,
1:04:19SPEAKERI want to do a crypto series where we talk about both like
1:04:23SPEAKERBitcoin and Ethereum and the kind of different,
1:04:25SPEAKERdifferent cryptocurrencies and all the proof of stake versus
1:04:28SPEAKERproof of work and all that stuff.
1:04:30SPEAKERAnd then I also want to do one talking about the
1:04:32SPEAKERapplications that are kind of starting to spin off of that
1:04:34SPEAKERstuff, like the NFT thing,
1:04:36SPEAKERwhich seems like it's funny.
1:04:38SPEAKERMy art community friends are all like, this is amazing.
1:04:40SPEAKERCause we can finally get paid for our, for our stuff that we
1:04:43SPEAKERdo for like our work.
1:04:45SPEAKERBut then when you look at how they actually work,
1:04:46SPEAKERyou're like, this is kind of snake oily and a little weird.
1:04:48SPEAKERAnd I want to get some experts in to talk about that stuff.
1:04:50SPEAKERCause it's,
1:04:51SPEAKERit is complicated and confusing to the point that I don't
1:04:53SPEAKERfeel confident in my ability to distill that down and not
1:04:57SPEAKERfuck it up.
1:04:58SPEAKER- Yes. There's a lot to cover there.
1:05:00SPEAKER- Yeah. But more topic ideas are also welcome.
1:05:03SPEAKERYou can send those in the emails to techbot@contentdontown
1:05:05SPEAKERas well.
1:05:06SPEAKER- For sure.
1:05:07SPEAKER- So yeah. Thank you all. Thanks. Thanks, Brad.
1:05:09SPEAKER- It's always a pleasure, even early in the morning.
1:05:11SPEAKER- Yes. We did it. We made it.
1:05:14SPEAKER- Mission accomplished.
1:05:15SPEAKERWe will be back next week with more tech pod.
1:05:18SPEAKERSee y'all then.
1:05:19SPEAKER(upbeat music)
1:05:39SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]