00:00SPEAKER- So I finally went to throw out the packaging
00:03SPEAKERfor the multimeter that I bought two, three weeks ago.
00:06SPEAKER- Okay.
00:08SPEAKER- First of all, multimeter, multimeter?
00:09SPEAKER- Multimeter. - I've heard, multimeter?
00:11SPEAKERReally? - Multimeter.
00:12SPEAKER- I don't know, I've been saying it wrong all this time.
00:14SPEAKER- Look, there's no shame in that.
00:16SPEAKERThere's no shame in saying words wrong
00:17SPEAKERthat you only know from reading.
00:19SPEAKER- Multimeter sounds cartoonish for some reason.
00:21SPEAKER- Look, is it a biopic or a biopic?
00:24SPEAKER- A multimeter sounds like something from Looney Tunes
00:26SPEAKERthat would say ACME on it and it's like a ray gun
00:28SPEAKERthat you point at things and turn them into chickens
00:30SPEAKERor something. - Look, I would buy
00:31SPEAKERan ACME multimeter.
00:32SPEAKERI have a fluke, my fluke is, I love my fluke.
00:35SPEAKER- I mean, dude, I've looked at flukes briefly.
00:38SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:40SPEAKER- Here's why it took me like a year to buy a multimeter.
00:43SPEAKER- Yeah, this is shocking.
00:46SPEAKERI don't need to know what the answer is gonna be,
00:48SPEAKERbut I know I'm gonna be like,
00:49SPEAKER"Oh yeah, you needed it a year ago,"
00:50SPEAKERand we're like, "Couldn't decide which one to buy."
00:53SPEAKER- No, I didn't need it, that's ultimately why
00:55SPEAKERI didn't buy one, it's 'cause when I bought one
00:57SPEAKERa couple of weeks ago, it's 'cause I finally actually needed
00:59SPEAKERone, but I kept thinking about getting one for like a year,
01:02SPEAKERbut I kept oscillating between the,
01:04SPEAKERthere's like a zillion no-name $10 ones on Amazon,
01:07SPEAKERand then there are the flukes that frickin' start at $300.
01:11SPEAKERWell, not quite.
01:11SPEAKER- You can get a fluke for like 120 bucks now, probably.
01:14SPEAKER- Yeah, like a cheap fluke is like a little over 100,
01:17SPEAKERbut that's the point, you know?
01:18SPEAKERIt's like, "Ah, I can get away with this $10 cheapo.
01:20SPEAKER"No, maybe I should get the really nice one."
01:22SPEAKERLike, anyway.
01:23SPEAKER- Mine was a gift, I did not pay for my fluke.
01:26SPEAKERSomebody gave me the fluke as a,
01:28SPEAKER"Hey, welcome to this new thing," gift.
01:30SPEAKER- That is a, that's a handsome gift.
01:32SPEAKER- It was in, like, yes, it was a good,
01:35SPEAKERI was very excited about it.
01:38SPEAKER- Anyway, I settled on a 25-ish dollar one
01:41SPEAKERthat has been fine so far.
01:42SPEAKER- The big difference is that the $25-ish one,
01:44SPEAKERif you hook it up to too much juice,
01:45SPEAKERwill like explode and stop working,
01:47SPEAKERand the fluke will just blow a fuse,
01:49SPEAKERand you can put a new fuse in it,
01:50SPEAKERit'll be back to nothing in no time.
01:53SPEAKER- But that's why I got the $25 one,
01:55SPEAKER'cause whatever.
01:57SPEAKERThe one I got, this is my true passion in life,
01:59SPEAKERI got the one that all the user reviews said,
02:01SPEAKERlike, "Oh, this thing's way better
02:02SPEAKER"than it should be for this price."
02:03SPEAKER- Oh, I love that, that's my favorite category of product.
02:05SPEAKER- The inexpensive thing that punches above its weight,
02:08SPEAKERfinding that is my greatest joy in life.
02:10SPEAKER- It's the Radio Shack indoor/outdoor speakers in, like, 1992.
02:15SPEAKER- I mean, honestly, it's the Celeron 300A rule to me.
02:18SPEAKERLike, that's what it is.
02:19SPEAKERThe Celeron 300A is the err example of this phenomenon.
02:24SPEAKER- I was a Pentium 3 300 SL2W8 guy, personally,
02:29SPEAKERbut you know, the 300A is fine too, I guess.
02:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, anything that overclocks.
02:34SPEAKERAnyway, okay, so I was about to throw out the packaging,
02:39SPEAKERand then I just happened to glance at this warranty,
02:41SPEAKERfold-out warranty card that it came with.
02:44SPEAKER- A very friendly blue.
02:45SPEAKER- That I was just gonna throw in the trash,
02:47SPEAKER'cause whatever, but then I happened to open it.
02:50SPEAKERI'm gonna quote from it now, here.
02:52SPEAKEROn the front, it just says, "One year warranty,
02:54SPEAKER"need tech support, defective, contact us."
02:57SPEAKEROn the inside, love it.
03:00SPEAKEROne more free gift.
03:03SPEAKERA, test pen.
03:06SPEAKERB, micro cutter.
03:09SPEAKERC, headlamp.
03:13SPEAKER- What, you're getting a free headlamp with this micrometer?
03:16SPEAKER- And then it says, like, how to get,
03:17SPEAKERand it's like, choose your favorite gift, email us,
03:19SPEAKERinclude your Amazon ID, order number, et cetera, et cetera.
03:23SPEAKERLike it's some, whatever, it's some customer retention thing
03:26SPEAKERbut free headlamp, man.
03:29SPEAKERCan you see this?
03:30SPEAKER- That's a free headlamp.
03:32SPEAKEROh, that's a top strap one, I don't know about that.
03:34SPEAKERBut it's got a starter headlamp.
03:36SPEAKER- It looks like it's got side and top strap.
03:38SPEAKER- Well, yeah, you only need the side is the point.
03:40SPEAKERLike you just do it, it's like a, but look,
03:42SPEAKERthis is a starter headlamp, this'll get you on your path.
03:44SPEAKERAnd here's my favorite genre of tweets this week
03:48SPEAKERhave been all the people showing me pictures of situations
03:51SPEAKERwhere it would be nice to have both hands free
03:53SPEAKERand have a light that you can aim still.
03:56SPEAKERAnd there was like a guy that taped his phone to his head.
03:58SPEAKER- Yes, I saw that tweet and whoever you are,
04:00SPEAKERthat is an amazing, amazing photo.
04:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a very good drag.
04:05SPEAKER- I might reply to that person and ask
04:06SPEAKERif we can use that photo for the show art.
04:09SPEAKER- The list of places that headlamps are useful,
04:12SPEAKERlike people were talking about walking the dog,
04:15SPEAKERpeople are talking about working on cars,
04:17SPEAKERpeople are talking about like doing plumbing and stuff
04:20SPEAKERin their crawl space.
04:21SPEAKERHonestly, even plumbing underneath your kitchen sink.
04:23SPEAKERHeadlamps are incredibly useful.
04:26SPEAKER- A coal mine, perhaps?
04:28SPEAKER- Look, man.
04:29SPEAKER- Just throw it out there again.
04:30SPEAKER- Look, the liberals have killed coal mining, Brad,
04:32SPEAKERonce in a while.
04:33SPEAKER- That's true, that's true.
04:34SPEAKER- Yeah, it's all over.
04:35SPEAKERThere's no more working in the coal mine,
04:37SPEAKERgoing down, down, down, working in the coal mine,
04:40SPEAKERsomething, something.
04:41SPEAKER- Okay, so you think free headlamp?
04:44SPEAKERLike that's the thing?
04:45SPEAKER- What were the other options?
04:46SPEAKER- What is a test pen?
04:49SPEAKER- Let me see the picture.
04:51SPEAKER- It's, oh boy, this is really gonna play
04:52SPEAKERon this terrible webcam.
04:54SPEAKER- Oh no, that looks lame.
04:55SPEAKERI would not do that.
04:56SPEAKER- I should probably see what a, what is a micro cutter?
04:58SPEAKER- Is it flush cutter is the other one?
05:00SPEAKER- Micro cutter is what they call it?
05:01SPEAKERIs that just like a little wire snipper system?
05:03SPEAKER- That's a pair of like flush snippers, yeah, you don't.
05:06SPEAKER- When I saw this free headlamp, the process began anew.
05:10SPEAKERI was like, wow, free headlamp.
05:12SPEAKERAnd I was like, wait, maybe.
05:13SPEAKERThen I was like, maybe I should go get the nice headlamp.
05:15SPEAKER- Headlamp.
05:16SPEAKER- Should I get the free headlamp?
05:17SPEAKER- Look, get this headlamp.
05:19SPEAKERIf it ends up being what you dreamed and wanted,
05:21SPEAKERthen perfect.
05:22SPEAKERIf it doesn't, give it to your special lady friend
05:24SPEAKERand you know, there you go.
05:27SPEAKER- Then we'll have two headlamps.
05:29SPEAKER- Then you have his and hers headlamps.
05:31SPEAKERIt's perfect.
05:31SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.
05:33SPEAKER- Headlamp, headlamp, headlamp, headlamp, headlamp.
05:35SPEAKER(upbeat music)
05:49SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
06:05SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
06:08SPEAKERI'm Will.
06:09SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
06:10SPEAKER- Hello, how you doing, Brad?
06:11SPEAKER- You know, Brad, I think-
06:12SPEAKER- Good, good.
06:13SPEAKER- Look, I've been thinking about it.
06:15SPEAKERI think we need to rebrand.
06:17SPEAKERI think it's important.
06:18SPEAKER- Well, this has come up before.
06:19SPEAKERWhat's happened, what's changed?
06:21SPEAKER- I think we need to,
06:22SPEAKERI think past tense is holding us back.
06:25SPEAKERI think people are thinking that this is a project
06:28SPEAKERthat is in the past and is done and is not ongoing.
06:31SPEAKER- It's like one of those limited season long engagements
06:34SPEAKERkind of thing.
06:35SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, we, I like, look,
06:37SPEAKERI like the idea of exclusivity,
06:40SPEAKERbut I think it's important that we have a strong look forward
06:44SPEAKERfor a technology podcast about single topics.
06:47SPEAKER- Brad and Will will make a tech pod.
06:50SPEAKER- Brad and Will are currently making a tech pod.
06:52SPEAKER- Are and will continue to make a tech pod.
06:54SPEAKER- Have been and will continue to.
06:57SPEAKER- Yes, are in the process of-
06:59SPEAKER- We might need to workshop this a little bit.
07:00SPEAKER- Yeah, let's think this over a little bit.
07:03SPEAKER- What it's, you know, I noticed,
07:05SPEAKERI looked at the calendar today
07:06SPEAKERand I noticed that we've blown past the Ides of March
07:10SPEAKERand we're closing in on the end of March.
07:12SPEAKERAnd that can only mean one thing.
07:15SPEAKER- Emails?
07:16SPEAKER- Yes, emails come in like a lamb and go out like a lion.
07:20SPEAKER- I'm impressed you know exactly what the Ides of March are.
07:22SPEAKER- It's March 15th.
07:23SPEAKERI took four years of Latin in high school.
07:25SPEAKER- Aha.
07:26SPEAKER- It's probably not March 15th.
07:27SPEAKERI probably messed that up and people are gonna yell at me
07:28SPEAKERin the comments, but you know, here we are.
07:30SPEAKER- Nope, just act like you knew what you're talking about
07:32SPEAKERand keep going.
07:33SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the end of March,
07:35SPEAKERwhich means it's time for emails.
07:36SPEAKERIf people who sent a missive to techpod@content.town,
07:42SPEAKERthat's techpod@content.town,
07:45SPEAKERthen we can turn those questions
07:46SPEAKERthat they send in into answers.
07:47SPEAKERSometimes it's just comments, I guess, technically.
07:50SPEAKERBrad? - Yes.
07:51SPEAKER- Hold on, I gotta talk about your water cup there.
07:53SPEAKER- Why?
07:54SPEAKER- Is that a raspberry, is that a raspberry jam jar?
07:58SPEAKER- No.
07:59SPEAKER- No, it's a cup?
08:01SPEAKER- My girlfriend bought them, there's a name for them.
08:03SPEAKERI'm trying to remember what it is.
08:04SPEAKERIt's like a working glass, I think is what she calls it.
08:07SPEAKER- It looks really, I like it a lot.
08:08SPEAKERIt has a really nice lip.
08:10SPEAKER- Let me Google that phrase and see if I've got that right.
08:12SPEAKER- It's got like octagonal sides, maybe nonagonal sides
08:16SPEAKERwith a round top.
08:18SPEAKER- We've broken two of them in the last couple months,
08:21SPEAKERwhich sucks 'cause she said she can't get any more
08:23SPEAKERfor some reason.
08:24SPEAKER- It doesn't look like-
08:25SPEAKER- Okay, well, here's some on Williams-Sonoma.
08:26SPEAKERI don't know if those are the ones we have.
08:28SPEAKERThey do look, which you can imagine are quite expensive.
08:32SPEAKERMaybe that's why she,
08:33SPEAKERextra why she was mad when they broke.
08:35SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
08:37SPEAKER- They're very jar-like, obviously people can't see this,
08:39SPEAKERbut it's like a drinking glass that is almost a jar.
08:42SPEAKER- Yeah, it looks like-
08:43SPEAKER- Also we have three, if you've ever seen,
08:44SPEAKERhave you ever seen me drink what looks like
08:46SPEAKERout of like a vase in the stream?
08:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
08:48SPEAKER- That's these, that came in the set.
08:49SPEAKER- That's the tall boy version.
08:51SPEAKER- That's like a foot tall version of this thing.
08:53SPEAKERSo the thing is, they came with a set of lids
08:55SPEAKERthat fit on these things.
08:56SPEAKERSo you can use them as drinking glasses
08:57SPEAKERor as like kind of storage jars.
08:59SPEAKER- I love a storage jar.
09:01SPEAKERWe've gotten rid of all of our like plastic,
09:03SPEAKERdisposable plastic ware and are using glass stuff now.
09:06SPEAKER- Yes.
09:07SPEAKER- And like we do-
09:08SPEAKER- We do that too.
09:09SPEAKER- Mason jars with lids,
09:10SPEAKERbut also we do these,
09:13SPEAKERwe have similar glasses that are like that,
09:15SPEAKERbut not that size.
09:16SPEAKEROurs are way bigger than that and are less useful, I think.
09:19SPEAKERSo.
09:20SPEAKER- Glass, glass, pretty cool.
09:21SPEAKERExcept when it breaks, I've found.
09:23SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, these things happen.
09:26SPEAKER- That's the, what is the kitchen version of pepcak?
09:30SPEAKERProblem exists between glass and throat?
09:36SPEAKERNo, I can't-
09:36SPEAKER- No, it's glass and ground.
09:38SPEAKERI don't know, it's grabbing the problem, man.
09:40SPEAKER- Yes, that doesn't quite-
09:41SPEAKER- Look, when you have an eight-year-old,
09:43SPEAKERshe's less breaky now, but for a while there,
09:45SPEAKERthere was a constant source of destruction,
09:47SPEAKERjust entropy added to our house everywhere.
09:50SPEAKER- Just a few years of buying the cheap glasses.
09:52SPEAKER- We just only gave her plastic cups.
09:54SPEAKERShe was only allowed to handle plastic stuff,
09:56SPEAKERso it was fine.
09:57SPEAKER- That's probably the way to go.
09:59SPEAKERAll right, shall we read these emails?
10:01SPEAKER- Let's turn some cues into A's, Brad.
10:03SPEAKER- Okay, first email is from James
10:07SPEAKERin Grass Valley, California,
10:09SPEAKERwhich has actually been a little bit of an ongoing thing,
10:11SPEAKERbecause he emailed us to about six weeks ago,
10:15SPEAKERbecause he was in the running for getting Starlink,
10:18SPEAKERwhich, do you want to lay out what Starlink is real fast?
10:21SPEAKER- It's Elon Musk's low latency, high speed
10:24SPEAKERsatellite internet service.
10:25SPEAKERThey run it through SpaceX.
10:27SPEAKERThe idea is you're getting like,
10:29SPEAKERit's way better than what we can get in most of rural America
10:32SPEAKERin terms of upload and download speeds,
10:35SPEAKERand the latency is way better than traditional satellite,
10:38SPEAKERwhich goes to geosynchronous orbit and back.
10:40SPEAKERSo you're looking at like 30, 40 millisecond pings,
10:46SPEAKERmaybe up to 150 on a bad moment, but good coverage,
10:50SPEAKERand like, I would say pretty decent DSL-like speeds
10:54SPEAKERversus cable modem speeds.
10:56SPEAKER- That's something, if you can't get anything else.
10:58SPEAKER- I mean, compared to what my parents can get
11:01SPEAKERat their place, it sounds like a godsend.
11:03SPEAKER- Yeah, so yeah, he wrote us like early February saying
11:06SPEAKERhe was going to get it, and then at the end he was like,
11:08SPEAKERyou know what, maybe I'll actually get back to you
11:12SPEAKERwhen I've actually used it, which he has now done.
11:14SPEAKER- This circle is complete.
11:16SPEAKER- Yes, I can deliver his, what is this, a trip report?
11:20SPEAKER- Yeah, I'd say this is like a...
11:23SPEAKER- On the Starlink setup and usage process.
11:25SPEAKER- Yeah, how'd it go for him?
11:27SPEAKER- Like I said, he's in Grass Valley,
11:28SPEAKERwhich I'm not familiar with, but he does say
11:31SPEAKERhe was writing in regards to getting some kind of
11:32SPEAKERreliable internet out in the country,
11:34SPEAKERwhich has been made exceedingly frustrating
11:36SPEAKERwhere I live in Grass Valley by the fact that
11:38SPEAKERa fiber company put in cable a mile down the road,
11:40SPEAKERbut were unwilling to extend service to my house,
11:43SPEAKERwhich is almost criminal.
11:44SPEAKER- Isn't that the story?
11:46SPEAKER- Yes, anyway, he got into the Starlink beta
11:48SPEAKERand he has now written us back with some thoughts.
11:53SPEAKERSo here's the email.
11:54SPEAKEROur Starlink kit arrived early on Monday, February 22nd,
11:58SPEAKERwhich was a full day before the projected mailing date,
12:00SPEAKERso they get points there for under promising
12:02SPEAKERand over delivering.
12:04SPEAKERThe unboxing experience was nice.
12:06SPEAKEREvery component was nicely arranged
12:08SPEAKERand everything looks good and feels high quality.
12:10SPEAKERActually, who is this branded under?
12:11SPEAKERDo you know?
12:12SPEAKER- It's SpaceX.
12:13SPEAKERI think it's Starlink.
12:14SPEAKERIt's literally branded, it's a SpaceX company.
12:15SPEAKER- Oh, it is?
12:16SPEAKEROkay, okay.
12:17SPEAKERBut like no affiliation with Tesla or anything like that.
12:20SPEAKER- I mean, other than Elon is the person
12:22SPEAKERin charge of both of them.
12:23SPEAKER- Okay, this was some other part of the Muskverse.
12:26SPEAKER- Look, the question is,
12:27SPEAKERis Elon Musk a real life Tony Stark or real life Lex Luthor?
12:31SPEAKERWe're gonna find out soon enough.
12:33SPEAKER- Yeah, why not both?
12:35SPEAKEROkay, he continues.
12:38SPEAKERMy only complaint is that the kit only comes
12:39SPEAKERwith a basic tripod, albeit one well made out of metal.
12:44SPEAKERMounts cost extra and the pole mount that I need
12:46SPEAKERwon't be available until April.
12:48SPEAKEROkay, here we go.
12:49SPEAKERGood, I have internet.
12:51SPEAKERI can stream and download stuff, calls over wifi work
12:54SPEAKERand calls to 911 get an address tag somehow.
12:57SPEAKERWe've actually been able to zoom
12:59SPEAKERwithout having to rage quit in frustration.
13:00SPEAKER- That's kind of a minus in my book, but okay.
13:04SPEAKER- Yeah, having an out, having an excuse for not zooming.
13:07SPEAKER- You just don't have good enough internet to zoom.
13:09SPEAKERLet's just use the phone.
13:10SPEAKER- Dude, that was so weird when my internet
13:12SPEAKERliterally went down 10 minutes
13:14SPEAKERbefore the bomb cast started last weekend.
13:15SPEAKER- Why, what happened?
13:17SPEAKER- Nobody's gonna believe me when I say this.
13:19SPEAKER- Did one of the pigs chew through a wire?
13:21SPEAKER- The dog ate my internet.
13:22SPEAKERNo, they had some kind of DNS failure.
13:24SPEAKERLike they were tweeting it.
13:25SPEAKERThankfully there were tweets on their account.
13:27SPEAKERSo I was like, look, they don't even know what's going on.
13:30SPEAKERIt was just, it was the cliche at last minute catastrophe.
13:34SPEAKERAnyway, my three-year-old no longer looks sad
13:38SPEAKERpointing at Sesame Street on the tablet
13:40SPEAKERand dejectedly saying,
13:41SPEAKER"Dad, Cookie Monster is floating forever."
13:42SPEAKER- Man, that's a heartbreaker.
13:45SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's the good, the bad, he says,
13:48SPEAKERother than my personal feelings about Elon
13:50SPEAKERand my contributing to the lining of his pockets,
13:52SPEAKERwhich is a discussion for another day.
13:54SPEAKERCoverage does occasionally drop,
13:56SPEAKERalthough only a handful of times
13:57SPEAKERin the four days we've had it and only for a split second.
14:00SPEAKERHis email's from a little while ago.
14:03SPEAKERBut pages don't load and video stops, et cetera.
14:06SPEAKERTo be fair, we do have some tree cover, which isn't ideal,
14:09SPEAKERbut all in all a mild inconvenience.
14:12SPEAKERAnd then he ran some numbers.
14:13SPEAKER- Ooh, I love numbers.
14:15SPEAKER- I ran speed test a total of 20 times
14:17SPEAKERin the last four days.
14:18SPEAKERMinimum 32.2 megabits per second, maximum 115.3.
14:23SPEAKERThat's download.
14:24SPEAKER- This is way better than I was expecting.
14:26SPEAKER- Yeah, it's pretty good.
14:27SPEAKER- This is in the realm of decent cable, not good DSL.
14:33SPEAKER- Before I got fiber, I had 120 megabit down cable.
14:36SPEAKERSo that's not that long ago.
14:39SPEAKERThat's a pretty decent cable.
14:40SPEAKERSo that's an average of 73, 74 megabits down.
14:43SPEAKER- This is over 20 readings at different times of day,
14:46SPEAKERhe says, so.
14:47SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
14:48SPEAKERHis upload ranged from 5.2 up to 21.8
14:52SPEAKERfor an average of just under 15.
14:55SPEAKERHis pings range between,
14:58SPEAKERI guess he doesn't say what he was pinging,
15:00SPEAKERbut 24 milliseconds and 115.
15:01SPEAKER- I assume this is a speed test ping
15:03SPEAKERto whatever his nearest.
15:04SPEAKER- Oh, they deliver ping along with the throughput.
15:07SPEAKERThat's right.
15:09SPEAKERSo yeah, that's an average ping to them of 36 milliseconds.
15:12SPEAKERThat's pretty good.
15:13SPEAKER- So I think for the download and upload speeds,
15:17SPEAKERthis is amazing.
15:18SPEAKERLike it's where I would put this.
15:20SPEAKERLike assuming this holds and assuming as they put,
15:22SPEAKERassuming they ramp the number of users on this,
15:24SPEAKERlike right now you can't get on the server.
15:25SPEAKERLike you can't just sign up,
15:26SPEAKERyou have to get on a waiting list.
15:27SPEAKERAnd I assume that's because they're adding capacity
15:29SPEAKERin terms of more satellites constantly,
15:32SPEAKERwhenever they have spare launch space or whatever.
15:37SPEAKERThe ping is, it's fine for web browsing
15:42SPEAKERand stuff like that.
15:43SPEAKERAdding 40 milliseconds ping to your game server ping,
15:48SPEAKERversus the five or 10 you're gonna get on cable
15:51SPEAKERor fiber DSL is probably gonna hurt you a little bit
15:55SPEAKERin terms of your game server.
15:57SPEAKER- This is a real, how far we've come moment for me,
15:59SPEAKERbecause when you say that,
16:00SPEAKERwhen you say 40 milliseconds is gonna impact your,
16:04SPEAKERlike all I can think about is my,
16:05SPEAKERthe early days of playing Quake over a modem.
16:07SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
16:08SPEAKER- When a ping under 300 was very good.
16:11SPEAKER- Well, I mean, just to be clear cable,
16:13SPEAKERthe cable companies,
16:14SPEAKERcable labs rolled out a new spec a few months ago
16:17SPEAKERthat reduces the cable networks.
16:20SPEAKERLike the latency cable modem users see
16:23SPEAKERon the cable modem network.
16:24SPEAKER- Interesting.
16:25SPEAKER- Previously, that wasn't something they really optimized
16:27SPEAKERfor and they're reducing it to under,
16:30SPEAKERlike under a millisecond, I think on most cases.
16:33SPEAKER- Whoa, is that a DOCSIS thing?
16:34SPEAKER- It's a DOCSIS thing.
16:35SPEAKERYeah, it's an add on to the DOCSIS spec.
16:38SPEAKER- Does it need a new modem or no?
16:40SPEAKER- Does not need a new modem.
16:41SPEAKERIt's a software upgrade.
16:42SPEAKER- Geez.
16:43SPEAKER- I mean, assuming you're on DOCSIS 3,
16:44SPEAKERI assume it's a DOCSIS 3 ad.
16:46SPEAKERIt's probably not something that rolls back to DOCSIS 2
16:48SPEAKERor whatever, but,
16:50SPEAKERand it's up to the cable companies to implement it.
16:52SPEAKERSo.
16:53SPEAKER- Of course it is.
16:54SPEAKER- Yeah, but my understanding is that some of that stuff
16:56SPEAKERis rolling out fast because the Rona
17:03SPEAKERhas caused an imminent need for that.
17:06SPEAKERSo they're going fast.
17:09SPEAKERAnyway, the upshot is people care about latency now
17:12SPEAKERin a way that they never have before, including the ISPs.
17:15SPEAKER- I don't know, to me still,
17:16SPEAKERif you're under a hundred milliseconds,
17:17SPEAKERlike you're doing pretty good for most games.
17:20SPEAKER- I was going to say, if you're playing,
17:21SPEAKERlike unless you're playing fighting games
17:22SPEAKERor unless you're a really, really good shooter player,
17:24SPEAKERwhich you're probably not,
17:26SPEAKER'cause you lived in the middle of nowhere
17:27SPEAKERand haven't had good internet before, you're fine.
17:29SPEAKER- Geez, that's harsh.
17:30SPEAKER- Well, no, it's nothing you look,
17:32SPEAKERyou gotta stretch those muscles, man.
17:36SPEAKER- Did you see the stuff going on around
17:38SPEAKERthe federal definition of what broadband is
17:40SPEAKERa month or two ago?
17:41SPEAKER- No.
17:42SPEAKER- I don't know if, it went one direction or the other,
17:44SPEAKERI forget which, it was either from the FCC to Congress
17:47SPEAKERor vice versa, maybe it was Congress writing a letter
17:49SPEAKERto the FCC.
17:50SPEAKER- It might've been Congress writing the letter to the FCC,
17:51SPEAKER'cause remember, they wrote that back
17:52SPEAKERduring the Trump presidency,
17:54SPEAKER'cause Obama had said it has to be 20 megabits or something,
17:56SPEAKERand then-
17:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so this was way beyond that,
17:58SPEAKERI should have Googled this before I brought it up.
18:00SPEAKERFederal definition of broadband.
18:05SPEAKER- Does it have upload requirements,
18:06SPEAKERor does it just download?
18:07SPEAKER- Yes, no, it does.
18:09SPEAKER- Obama thing only had download, I think,
18:10SPEAKERwas the problem with that.
18:11SPEAKER- Okay, yes, it was four senators.
18:13SPEAKEROh, this was very recent, it was like three weeks ago.
18:15SPEAKERThis was four senators writing to the FCC.
18:17SPEAKERI guess the current policy for 2015
18:19SPEAKERis that broadband, quote unquote,
18:21SPEAKERis 25 megabits down and three megabits up,
18:25SPEAKERwhich is just absurd.
18:27SPEAKER- That's not enough.
18:28SPEAKER- They specifically in this letter say,
18:31SPEAKER'cause they're talking about the pandemic in here
18:32SPEAKERand just the need for internet in general right now,
18:37SPEAKERthey explicitly say upload speeds far greater
18:40SPEAKERthan three megabits per second are particularly critical.
18:44SPEAKER- Yeah.
18:44SPEAKER- They, well, this article does not,
18:48SPEAKERlet me see if I can pull up the actual letter here.
18:51SPEAKEROkay, our goal for, oh, right, right, right.
18:53SPEAKERThis is like pretty respectable.
18:55SPEAKEROur goal for new deployment should be symmetrical speeds
18:57SPEAKERof 100 megabits per second.
18:59SPEAKER- I think that's appropriate, yeah.
19:01SPEAKER- Like they're saying you should have to hit that.
19:03SPEAKER'Cause I mean, in perpetuity,
19:05SPEAKERthat's gonna be enough for like good clean video conferencing
19:07SPEAKERand stuff like that and streaming video.
19:10SPEAKERLike that's the thing, that's the use case
19:11SPEAKERmost people need covered that they don't have currently.
19:14SPEAKERSo like above that is kind of gravy to me.
19:16SPEAKER- Well, and the thing that, so from personal experience,
19:19SPEAKERtalking to other parents where people have a kid or two,
19:22SPEAKERand then both parents were on Zooms during the day,
19:25SPEAKERif you're on the base Comcast offering,
19:27SPEAKERthat's like four meg, five or 10 megabits up,
19:30SPEAKERyou're gonna max out Zoom with two or three Zoom calls,
19:34SPEAKERor you're gonna max out your upstream
19:35SPEAKERwith two or three Zoom calls.
19:37SPEAKERAnd as a result, the kids get kicked off
19:40SPEAKERor the parents get kicked off,
19:41SPEAKERor you have to turn off your camera or something like that.
19:42SPEAKERIt's not great.
19:44SPEAKER- Yeah.
19:45SPEAKER- This sounds good, like this is much better
19:46SPEAKERthan I was expecting in terms of download.
19:49SPEAKERProps to Elon.
19:50SPEAKERThis is cool.
19:51SPEAKER- He says overall, he's really happy with it.
19:52SPEAKERIs Starlink the one that uses like a zillion tiny satellites
19:57SPEAKERas opposed to like a few big ones?
19:58SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's a zillion tiny satellites
20:01SPEAKERin low earth orbit.
20:03SPEAKERThe astronomers got really pissed off at the beginning
20:05SPEAKERbecause they were making streaks
20:06SPEAKERacross their long duration photos.
20:09SPEAKERThey've started coding the satellites
20:11SPEAKERso that they're not reflective,
20:14SPEAKERbut I don't know how much that has changed
20:17SPEAKERand I don't know what the current state
20:18SPEAKERof the astronomy world is.
20:20SPEAKERBut like having rural internet access
20:25SPEAKERthat's actually usable and good,
20:27SPEAKERit seems especially important right now.
20:28SPEAKERSo like this is maybe there's some good with the bad
20:32SPEAKERor bad with the good, I don't know.
20:33SPEAKERBut thanks to James for sending in the report.
20:37SPEAKERAnd Grass Valley, so people know,
20:39SPEAKERis like on the east side of the Sierras.
20:41SPEAKERSorry, the west side of the Sierras is pretty north
20:44SPEAKERof Sacramento, even with Lake Tahoe,
20:47SPEAKERjust west of Lake Tahoe.
20:48SPEAKER- Okay, pretty rural.
20:50SPEAKER- Pretty rural.
20:52SPEAKERNot like East Valley rural, but close.
20:55SPEAKER- Okay.
20:57SPEAKEROkay, next email.
21:00SPEAKERHere's one from David.
21:02SPEAKERIn your all encompassing and absolute list
21:04SPEAKERof PC building pros, cable specs came up.
21:09SPEAKERWhen personal computers came out, TVs were monitors,
21:13SPEAKERbut then the switch away from TVs to real monitors occurred.
21:16SPEAKERWhat led to this shift and what led us back
21:18SPEAKERto TVs and monitors once again, sharing ports?
21:20SPEAKERSo he's talking about video connectors there.
21:22SPEAKERWe talked about on the podcast, how great it is these days
21:25SPEAKERthat your video card can plug straight into a TV with HDMI.
21:28SPEAKER- Yeah.
21:28SPEAKER- TV can just be a monitor in a pinch.
21:32SPEAKERIs he talked, so is this more of a European perspective?
21:36SPEAKERLike my impression is that early computers in Europe
21:38SPEAKERplugged into TVs really frequently
21:40SPEAKERand not so much in the US, is that accurate?
21:42SPEAKERLike I didn't have firsthand experience
21:44SPEAKERwith a lot of that stuff back then.
21:45SPEAKER- So a lot of the early computers like Commodore 64s
21:49SPEAKERand T994As and all of that kind of like
21:51SPEAKERearly eighties generation, definitely with the exception,
21:55SPEAKERI think the Apple, I think the Apple two
21:59SPEAKERand maybe the Amiga couldn't use a TV, I can't remember.
22:02SPEAKERI didn't have a lot of experience with most of those
22:04SPEAKERother than the Commodore and the TI.
22:07SPEAKERBut yeah, you could plug those into TVs.
22:09SPEAKERThey were kind of like in between
22:11SPEAKERgame consoles and computers, right?
22:12SPEAKERThey had keyboards, you could type programs into them,
22:14SPEAKERstuff like that, but you could, and they sold monitors.
22:18SPEAKERI mean, there was definitely a TI monitor available.
22:21SPEAKERWe had them at school, but for the most part,
22:23SPEAKERpeople just plugged them into their TVs.
22:24SPEAKERIt was easier. - Oh my God.
22:26SPEAKERYou just reminded me, I bought a Commodore monitor
22:28SPEAKERin college 'cause I didn't have a TV
22:30SPEAKERand I needed something to play games on.
22:32SPEAKERAnd they were supposedly quite good for that.
22:34SPEAKER- Wow.
22:35SPEAKER- And the postal service fucking destroyed it.
22:38SPEAKER- Oh boy.
22:39SPEAKER- I never got to use it, it showed up completely broken.
22:42SPEAKERThat's such a bummer 'cause those things were supposed
22:43SPEAKERto be like very good for games at that time.
22:46SPEAKER- Well, so I think in the beginning,
22:49SPEAKERit was a matter of expediency, right?
22:50SPEAKERLike the resolutions weren't very high
22:53SPEAKERfor the computers that they supported.
22:55SPEAKERSo what happened was you started getting
23:00SPEAKERhigher resolution displays, even if they were monochromes,
23:02SPEAKERlike the monochrome displays were a little bit
23:04SPEAKERhigher resolution than the 240 vertical lines
23:07SPEAKERthat TVs could do interlaced.
23:09SPEAKERAnd so people started getting higher resolution
23:12SPEAKERfor better text display and stuff like that,
23:13SPEAKEReven in the DOS days.
23:15SPEAKERAnd then the monitors in the '90s and early 2000s,
23:20SPEAKERthe LCDs came online and all of a sudden,
23:24SPEAKERthere was very little difference
23:25SPEAKERbetween what you were buying on a TV
23:27SPEAKERand what you were buying on a monitor
23:28SPEAKERin terms of resolution.
23:29SPEAKERThe big difference was density and dot pitch, right?
23:33SPEAKERThat makes perfect sense that monitors
23:35SPEAKERjust went way ahead of TVs and resolution for a few years.
23:37SPEAKERAnd then once TVs caught back up,
23:38SPEAKERthen it made sense to just reunify all that stuff.
23:41SPEAKER- Yeah. - That's cool.
23:43SPEAKER- And once, I mean, it was really like DVI,
23:47SPEAKERyou could do HD resolutions,
23:49SPEAKERbut once you had HDMI on the video cards,
23:53SPEAKERthen all of a sudden the PCs
23:54SPEAKERjust all supported TV resolutions.
23:56SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
23:57SPEAKER- For a long time, it took a special piece of hardware
23:59SPEAKERto support TV resolutions on like a post 386 computer.
24:03SPEAKER- Right, weren't there like some early HDTVs
24:06SPEAKERthat had DVI in?
24:08SPEAKER- Yeah, let's see, I had two HDTVs that had VGA in even.
24:13SPEAKER- Oh, wow. - Yeah.
24:15SPEAKERSo the VGA in was great
24:19SPEAKER'cause it meant that you could plug in SCARTS
24:20SPEAKERwith a adapter cable.
24:22SPEAKERSo you could get all sorts of weird Euro friendly resolutions
24:27SPEAKERand stuff like that.
24:28SPEAKER- SCART, everybody loves SCART.
24:31SPEAKER- I just love saying SCART, SCART.
24:33SPEAKER- The thing that I don't understand,
24:34SPEAKERI guess DisplayPort happened
24:36SPEAKERbecause HDMI wasn't moving fast enough
24:38SPEAKERfor post HD resolutions. - Fucking DisplayPort.
24:40SPEAKEROh my God, DisplayF-
24:43SPEAKER- Yeah, and-
24:44SPEAKER- That's what I bought my multimeter for
24:45SPEAKERwas to do continuity testing on some DisplayPort cables.
24:49SPEAKER- Oh God, just buy a new DisplayPort cable,
24:50SPEAKERjust throw out the ones you think are suspect.
24:52SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, it's not about them being bad,
24:54SPEAKERit's a long story, man.
24:55SPEAKER- Okay.
24:56SPEAKER- Do you want me to get into it?
24:57SPEAKER- No, it could be the cold open next week.
24:59SPEAKER- Pen 20 in the DisplayPort spec
25:00SPEAKERfeeds 3.3 volts to adapters.
25:05SPEAKERSo like dongles basically.
25:06SPEAKERSo I've already started, I just have to finish this now.
25:09SPEAKER- I love a dongle.
25:10SPEAKER- So I literally went and downloaded like the 450 page PDF
25:15SPEAKERof the DisplayPort spec from the Visa Foundation
25:18SPEAKERand had to find the pen out guide.
25:20SPEAKER- I didn't just, what was the problem?
25:22SPEAKER- Let me finish, I'll explain that.
25:24SPEAKERSo they built Pen 20 into the spec
25:27SPEAKERto power dongles that need power,
25:30SPEAKERso you wouldn't have to plug those dongles
25:32SPEAKERinto external power, right?
25:33SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems like a smart choice.
25:34SPEAKER- It's stuff like analog digital,
25:37SPEAKERit's stuff like if you had VGA to DisplayPort,
25:39SPEAKERyou need power to do that conversion or whatever.
25:40SPEAKERSo the idea was you get a cable that has Pen 20 connected
25:45SPEAKERand then you can power your dongle off of it.
25:47SPEAKERThe thing is for straight PC to monitor DisplayPort cables,
25:51SPEAKERPen 20 is supposed to be disconnected because-
25:54SPEAKER- Do you need a special fricking cable?
25:55SPEAKER- Yes, you have to.
25:56SPEAKERSo yes, it's the fucking USB thing all over again
25:58SPEAKERof you need a special DisplayPort cable
26:00SPEAKERthat can power those dongles
26:01SPEAKERbecause off the shelf regular DisplayPort cables
26:03SPEAKERare supposed to have that pen snipped, like not connected.
26:08SPEAKERBut anyway, where I'm going with this is that
26:12SPEAKERthere are now a bunch of no-name DisplayPort cables
26:14SPEAKERon Amazon that are full of user reviews saying like,
26:16SPEAKER"Hey, they didn't disconnect Pen 20 properly on this cable."
26:21SPEAKERAnd that means that your monitor is potentially
26:22SPEAKERfeeding 3.3 volts back into your graphics card.
26:25SPEAKER- That seems bad.
26:26SPEAKER- Like it is a crazy, you can find all these YouTube videos,
26:30SPEAKERlike it causes like such crazy problems with your PCs.
26:33SPEAKERIf that is the case.
26:34SPEAKER- Weird crashiness and stuff.
26:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, like I bought,
26:38SPEAKERone of my DisplayPort cables broke and I bought a new one
26:41SPEAKERand long story short, it's a 15 foot cable.
26:44SPEAKERI had to run it all behind my desk.
26:46SPEAKERIt would have been a huge pain in the ass to return.
26:47SPEAKERBut as soon as I got all that installation done,
26:50SPEAKERthen I saw all the stuff about people saying like,
26:51SPEAKER"Hey, this thing's not up to Visa spec.
26:53SPEAKERLike it might be feeding juice back into your graphics card.
26:56SPEAKERYou should be careful."
26:58SPEAKERSo I was like, "All right, I can return this cable
27:00SPEAKERand get another one or I can finally use this
27:02SPEAKERas an excuse to buy a multimeter
27:03SPEAKERand continuity test that myself."
27:06SPEAKER- Was it connected?
27:08SPEAKER- So one of the test probes were too fat to fit in the pen.
27:12SPEAKERSo it took me a while.
27:13SPEAKERI stripped, I've got some old broken ethernet cable
27:16SPEAKERthat I saved to strip wire out of for purposes like this.
27:18SPEAKERSo I stripped some copper wire out of that ethernet cable
27:20SPEAKERand wrapped it around the test probes.
27:22SPEAKERThat was not enough.
27:24SPEAKERIt also came without alligator clips though.
27:26SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
27:28SPEAKER- Then I hit on the solution of raiding
27:29SPEAKERmy girlfriend's sewing kit
27:31SPEAKERand grabbing a couple of needles
27:34SPEAKERand alligator clipping those.
27:35SPEAKERAnd those were a way to continuity test.
27:37SPEAKER- Oh, that's a good call.
27:38SPEAKER- Sure enough, the pen 20 is properly disconnected
27:41SPEAKERon that cable.
27:42SPEAKER- Oh, there you go.
27:43SPEAKER- I hope this has not been extremely dull.
27:46SPEAKER- Mission accomplished.
27:47SPEAKER- Anyway, sorry.
27:49SPEAKER- No, no.
27:50SPEAKERI think that's, I'm fascinated by this.
27:51SPEAKERI would have just taken the cable out
27:52SPEAKERand thrown it in the trash and ordered another one probably.
27:55SPEAKER- Well, like I said, it's a 15 foot cable
27:57SPEAKERthat is run through a bunch of stuff like mounting
27:59SPEAKERand like, 'cause I keep everything mounted
28:01SPEAKERto the back of the desk and it would have been a huge pain
28:03SPEAKERto like crawl down on my back and pull it all out again.
28:05SPEAKER- You haven't tried to return anything to Amazon
28:08SPEAKERduring the pandemic, because basically they're like,
28:10SPEAKERif it's under 50 bucks, they're like, no, just keep it.
28:12SPEAKERWe'll send you a new one.
28:13SPEAKER- I did not know that.
28:14SPEAKER- Yeah.
28:15SPEAKER- Huh, okay.
28:16SPEAKER- If it's gonna be a pain for them to pick up,
28:18SPEAKERjust keep it, we'll, no, it's fine.
28:20SPEAKERDon't worry about it.
28:21SPEAKERWe got it.
28:22SPEAKERWe're good.
28:23SPEAKER- Again though, it would still would have been a lot of work
28:24SPEAKERto run a new cable through there,
28:25SPEAKEReven if I got a new one, like that was,
28:26SPEAKERthat's more what I was trying to avoid.
28:28SPEAKERAnyway, let's read another email.
28:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
28:33SPEAKER- How about this one from Tom,
28:36SPEAKERwho has a question about flash memory.
28:39SPEAKERWe've seen pretty good progress in the capacity of SSDs
28:42SPEAKERor solid state storage in general in recent years,
28:44SPEAKERbut I'd like to know what is constraining
28:46SPEAKERthat progress currently.
28:47SPEAKERWith CPUs, we hear a lot about how we're reaching the limits
28:50SPEAKERof how small you can make a transistor for physics reasons,
28:53SPEAKERbut is the same thing true for SSDs?
28:55SPEAKERAlso, how come we can make a 256 gig micro SD card
28:59SPEAKERthat is pretty cheap, but a PC SSD
29:02SPEAKERthat is orders of magnitude larger
29:04SPEAKERin terms of physical volume
29:05SPEAKERcan't be bigger than a few terabytes?
29:08SPEAKERDoes that come down to read-write speed?
29:10SPEAKERI think my question boils down to this.
29:11SPEAKERWhat are the current and future bottlenecks
29:13SPEAKERconstraining progress on solid state storage?
29:16SPEAKER- So this is an interesting one.
29:18SPEAKERI had to do some reading about this
29:19SPEAKER'cause I hadn't really thought about this this way,
29:21SPEAKERbut when a 256 gig SSD card costs like $20 or $30 now,
29:29SPEAKERwhy are we not also seeing commensurately inexpensive SSDs?
29:34SPEAKER- Right.
29:35SPEAKER- And there's multiple parts to it.
29:36SPEAKEROne is that the controllers on SSDs,
29:39SPEAKERthey both use the same kind of NAND flash, right?
29:41SPEAKERNAND flash is basically, think of it like a bucket.
29:43SPEAKERIt's a bucket that you can pour data into,
29:47SPEAKERbut the controllers on SD cards
29:49SPEAKERand the controllers on SSDs are wildly different.
29:51SPEAKERThe controllers on SSDs are a lot faster.
29:54SPEAKERThey're a lot more complicated.
29:54SPEAKERThey're much, much bigger chips,
29:57SPEAKERnot like in that they take,
29:59SPEAKERwell, they do take up more space on the board
30:01SPEAKERthan an SD card controller would take,
30:03SPEAKERbut they're also much more complicated, much more capable.
30:07SPEAKERSo they run faster.
30:08SPEAKERThey're able to deal with more data at any given moment
30:10SPEAKERand they can do things like wear level,
30:15SPEAKERthe NAND flash, 'cause the NAND has a finite lifespan
30:18SPEAKERand an SD card, at least your base level,
30:22SPEAKERentry level SD cards don't necessarily care
30:25SPEAKERabout wear level existence.
30:26SPEAKERYou're gonna write each cell 1,000 times
30:28SPEAKERif it's going into a camera or something like that.
30:31SPEAKER- Yes, everyone seems to treat SD cards
30:33SPEAKERand in fact, SD cards seem to treat themselves as disposable.
30:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
30:37SPEAKER- Like they just die all the time, right?
30:40SPEAKERThey're not, like that's why you see anybody
30:42SPEAKERthat's running anything serious on a Raspberry Pi
30:43SPEAKERis like, hey, don't run this off an SD card,
30:46SPEAKERplug an actual drive into this thing.
30:52SPEAKER- Hold on, I was typing something so I had to mute myself.
30:54SPEAKERSo one of the things that's interesting
30:56SPEAKERis that there are actually different ratings
30:58SPEAKERfor SD cards in terms of writing all the way up to the point
31:02SPEAKERthat there are app rated SD cards.
31:05SPEAKER- Really?
31:05SPEAKER- So like you're supposed to put app rated SD cards
31:07SPEAKERin things that are gonna have a lot of reads
31:08SPEAKERand a lot of rewrites.
31:10SPEAKERSo think about like your Switch SD card
31:12SPEAKERis maybe an app rated one.
31:14SPEAKERIf you're gonna put one in a pie hole
31:16SPEAKERor a home assistant box or something like that,
31:18SPEAKERthat it's gonna have some logs written to it,
31:20SPEAKERprobably use one of the app rated ones.
31:22SPEAKERAnd those are the ones, you know those little symbols
31:25SPEAKERon the front of the SD cards, it's like, yeah.
31:28SPEAKER- I was gonna say that is a whole rabbit hole
31:30SPEAKERof the little symbols on SD cards,
31:32SPEAKERlike the A1 and it's got like a ring around it
31:34SPEAKERand this one is you, whatever,
31:36SPEAKERlike those ratings have a lot of meanings.
31:38SPEAKER- That's it, the A1 is the thing you want
31:40SPEAKERfor the app rating.
31:43SPEAKERHowever, even between like an app rated SD card
31:46SPEAKERand a cheap SSD, you're gonna see a difference
31:49SPEAKERin the amount of rewrite, both the read and write performance
31:53SPEAKERand the number of times it can rewrite
31:55SPEAKERand like how much track the device is keeping track
31:58SPEAKERof which cells are being written to a lot
32:00SPEAKERand which ones aren't.
32:01SPEAKERSo the other thing is the density and price of storage.
32:06SPEAKERSo a lot of the reason we don't see larger
32:08SPEAKERthan one terabyte SSDs at this point
32:10SPEAKERis that people are not willing to pay the 500,
32:14SPEAKERpeople are looking for SSDs in the 100 to $200 price range,
32:17SPEAKERnot the 250 to $500 price range.
32:20SPEAKERSo the cost per gigabyte remains about the same
32:23SPEAKERacross all of those, but it's not cheaper,
32:27SPEAKERthere's not an economy of scale there.
32:28SPEAKERIt's not like you're getting more flash
32:31SPEAKERfor the same amount of money if you pay,
32:33SPEAKERif you buy it in larger quantities.
32:35SPEAKERThe chips are capping out at once at a certain size
32:38SPEAKERand they're not, in order to get a bigger SSD,
32:41SPEAKERyou have to put more chips on.
32:42SPEAKERNow, part of that is that there were process size
32:46SPEAKERlimitations, we were reaching the end
32:47SPEAKERof what we could do with a certain specific process size.
32:50SPEAKERIntel and Micron launched this 3D X point stuff
32:52SPEAKERa few years ago, which is basically like stacked NAND flash.
32:56SPEAKERThat's an oversimplification.
32:59SPEAKERThey, if you look at like the Optane SSDs
33:02SPEAKERthat Intel was selling for a while.
33:03SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the high end stuff.
33:05SPEAKER- Well, it's, but it's also really inexpensive
33:07SPEAKERfor the price, like the price per gigabyte was really low.
33:11SPEAKERSo you could get like a, on say, like they would,
33:13SPEAKERyou would see those Optane SSDs on sale for, you know,
33:17SPEAKER200 bucks for a two terabyte SSD fairly regularly.
33:21SPEAKERAnd there's some downsides in like the write cycles
33:23SPEAKERand stuff like that, but for normal consumer use,
33:24SPEAKERthey're probably fine.
33:25SPEAKERLike you might not want to necessarily put those
33:27SPEAKERin a server and like, I don't know what happened.
33:33SPEAKERI haven't dug into this a lot, but Intel
33:35SPEAKERhas dumped that business off.
33:37SPEAKERThey're selling, Intel and Micron are selling that business
33:39SPEAKERto a third party.
33:40SPEAKERThey're getting rid of the fabs that make those.
33:42SPEAKERSo either the margins haven't been there
33:44SPEAKERor something's not great about that business
33:46SPEAKERand they want out.
33:47SPEAKERMaybe they're just focusing on CPU's instead, I don't know.
33:51SPEAKERThe other thing that happens in SSDs
33:52SPEAKERthat definitely doesn't happen in SD cards is there's cache.
33:56SPEAKERSo there's large amounts of RAM
33:58SPEAKERthat let you transfer way, way faster
34:02SPEAKERthan you can actually write to the flash memory.
34:05SPEAKERAnd that those cache, those large,
34:07SPEAKERsometimes 64 gig caches can make a big difference.
34:12SPEAKERSorry, 64 meg caches can make a big difference
34:14SPEAKERin the performance of the SSD.
34:16SPEAKER- Yes, for sure.
34:19SPEAKERYeah, a lot of the buyers guys you see out there
34:21SPEAKERstraight up say don't buy an SSD without a DRAM cache.
34:24SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I wouldn't.
34:25SPEAKEREspecially if you're talking about a big one,
34:26SPEAKERI wouldn't at this point.
34:27SPEAKER- Or for something high performance at least.
34:30SPEAKER- Yeah, and then, well, there's other stuff too.
34:32SPEAKERThere's weird, there's memory out there
34:35SPEAKERthat has performance of RAM,
34:38SPEAKERcloser to the performance of RAM.
34:39SPEAKERSo you think about the speed of access.
34:43SPEAKERSo RAM is really, really fast.
34:45SPEAKERFlash is an order of magnitude slower.
34:48SPEAKERHard drives are a couple of orders
34:50SPEAKERmagnitude slower than flash.
34:52SPEAKERAnd there are some novel forms of RAM
34:54SPEAKERthat show up in enterprise SSDs
34:58SPEAKERthat are the speed of RAM,
35:01SPEAKERbut are non-volatile like flashes.
35:05SPEAKERAnd that stuff, like at some point
35:07SPEAKERthat'll probably trickle down to consumer markets,
35:08SPEAKERbut who knows.
35:11SPEAKER- I can't wait.
35:12SPEAKER- Yeah, give me bigger drives.
35:16SPEAKERAll right, next email.
35:19SPEAKERExcuse me, Alex in New Jersey
35:22SPEAKERwrites in about Brad and his multiple browsers.
35:26SPEAKEROn the last episode,
35:26SPEAKERBrad mentioned he uses multiple web browsers
35:28SPEAKERto log into different accounts so they don't intermingle.
35:32SPEAKERHowever, did you know there's a Firefox add-on
35:34SPEAKERthat can create separate buckets
35:35SPEAKERwith their own cookie profiles
35:37SPEAKERso you can easily manage multiple identities.
35:39SPEAKERIt's called multi-account containers.
35:43SPEAKERAnd I found that it makes managing work
35:44SPEAKERand personal accounts real easy
35:46SPEAKERand also prevents them from crashing together.
35:51SPEAKERI have not heard of that.
35:52SPEAKER- It's turned on by default
35:53SPEAKERwhen you install Firefox now, the containers.
35:55SPEAKER- Oh, that's not a third-party add-on that's built in?
35:58SPEAKER- It's a Firefox.
36:00SPEAKERIt has a little Firefox logo.
36:01SPEAKERIt is made by Firefox, is my understanding.
36:04SPEAKER- Yeah, so I was not familiar with that.
36:07SPEAKERThat particular feature, that sounds really useful.
36:08SPEAKERSome other people had also written in about just saying like,
36:10SPEAKER"Hey, use multiple profiles in Chrome or Edge
36:14SPEAKERto juggle that stuff."
36:15SPEAKER- I don't know that multiple profiles in Chrome still exist.
36:17SPEAKERI think that that went away a few years ago.
36:20SPEAKER- I'm pretty sure it does.
36:21SPEAKER- Maybe it does.
36:22SPEAKERMaybe it's just buried.
36:23SPEAKER- I've never had more than one profile.
36:25SPEAKERMaybe you can't add a second.
36:27SPEAKERI thought you still could.
36:28SPEAKER- Well, okay, so the container that's on by default
36:31SPEAKERis the Facebook container in Firefox.
36:34SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, I have heard of that.
36:35SPEAKER- And it just buckets all the Facebook cookies
36:37SPEAKERinto one profile.
36:38SPEAKERSo anytime that loads, it just goes into a bit bucket
36:41SPEAKERwhere they can't track you across multiple sites.
36:43SPEAKER- Yes.
36:44SPEAKER- But yeah, the rest of it, I don't know.
36:48SPEAKER- I mean, the biggest reason I like multiple browsers
36:51SPEAKERis that at the OS level, at the OS user interface level,
36:55SPEAKERthey are as abstracted as they can be.
36:56SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
36:57SPEAKERLike they are two completely different icons on the taskbar.
36:59SPEAKERLike when I'm all tabbing,
37:00SPEAKERlike it's just the most separate I can keep those things.
37:04SPEAKERIt's like, I know that Edge is only open for work stuff.
37:07SPEAKERAnd when I need to do work stuff,
37:08SPEAKERI can just like thoughtlessly tab over to Edge
37:11SPEAKERand not think about like which Chrome window
37:13SPEAKERam I needing to get to right now?
37:15SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
37:16SPEAKER- Oh, it's more about you not making a mistake,
37:17SPEAKERnot the software not making a mistake.
37:19SPEAKER- Well, it's more just like ease of like navigating.
37:21SPEAKERYou know, it's like, I don't have to think about like,
37:22SPEAKERif I've got eight Chrome windows open,
37:24SPEAKERI don't want to figure out which one is the one
37:25SPEAKERthat has my email in it.
37:26SPEAKERIt's just like.
37:27SPEAKER- That makes sense.
37:28SPEAKERI think that's fair.
37:29SPEAKER- Yeah, but these other tips do sound like a good way
37:32SPEAKERto manage that stuff.
37:34SPEAKER- The Firefox containers are really nice.
37:35SPEAKERI keep my work stuff in one container
37:40SPEAKERand the other stuff in the separate container
37:41SPEAKERand it works well.
37:43SPEAKER- That sounds smart.
37:44SPEAKER- And it just, it does it per tab.
37:46SPEAKERSo it like knows that this tab should always be a,
37:49SPEAKERlike this site is always a work site
37:51SPEAKERand the site is always a normal container.
37:53SPEAKER- Sure.
37:55SPEAKERQuestion from Charlie from Portland.
37:59SPEAKERI have a simple question,
38:00SPEAKERwhich I bet will have a complicated answer.
38:03SPEAKERWhy don't video games take better advantage
38:04SPEAKERof modern multi-core CPU's?
38:07SPEAKER- Ooh.
38:07SPEAKER- This is definitely,
38:08SPEAKERI am not super qualified to discuss this.
38:11SPEAKERThe thing, one thing I have heard fairly steadily
38:14SPEAKERis that it's not the easiest thing to parallelize
38:17SPEAKERthe types of like logic and simulation
38:19SPEAKERthat games need to do.
38:20SPEAKERIs that accurate in your understanding?
38:22SPEAKER- So that's, so there's a technical answer
38:24SPEAKERand there's like an economics answer for this, right?
38:26SPEAKER- Okay.
38:27SPEAKER- The economics answer is easier
38:28SPEAKERand it's that the large platforms
38:31SPEAKERthat people build games for and people buy games on
38:34SPEAKERdon't have enough cores,
38:35SPEAKERhave more cores than it makes sense.
38:37SPEAKERSo like we see games that hit three, four CPU's now, right?
38:41SPEAKERPretty reliably, like Unreal Engine stuff,
38:43SPEAKERhe'll hit four CPU's, four cores.
38:47SPEAKERStuff like control hit multiple cores pretty hard.
38:52SPEAKERBut we're not gonna see stuff that goes beyond that
38:54SPEAKERuntil the next gen consoles
38:56SPEAKERthat actually have a buttload of cores
38:59SPEAKERkind of become mainstream because--
39:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I was surprised that it can go up this generation
39:02SPEAKERbecause the PS4 and Xbox One were,
39:05SPEAKERI think technically eight cores,
39:06SPEAKERalthough I think I wanna say each one shipped
39:08SPEAKERwith like one core disabled or something like that.
39:09SPEAKERSo it's more like seven.
39:10SPEAKER- I think Xbox, yeah, multiples in some cases, right?
39:12SPEAKER- And I think--
39:13SPEAKER- Just like, oh, I scrambled on some stuff.
39:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, totally.
39:15SPEAKERI think like in both cases,
39:16SPEAKERlike one was reserved for operating system stuff,
39:18SPEAKERbut like these new ones are still only eight cores.
39:20SPEAKERI was kind of expecting that to go up,
39:22SPEAKERbut whatever, they need to build these a scale
39:23SPEAKERlike they can't be shooting for the moon on that stuff.
39:27SPEAKER- I was gonna say, the other thing is the way games work
39:29SPEAKERis usually there's one loop, right?
39:31SPEAKERSo each frame represents one cycle on a loop.
39:34SPEAKERAnd that loop does all of the things in the games.
39:37SPEAKERThe AI lives in that loop, the sound lives in that loop,
39:40SPEAKERthe networking stuff lives in that loop,
39:41SPEAKERthe rendering lives in that loop,
39:43SPEAKERthe anything scripted, anything music,
39:46SPEAKERall of that stuff runs inside that one loop.
39:49SPEAKERSo while you can break some of that stuff out,
39:51SPEAKERlike sound is something that's pretty easy to break out
39:54SPEAKER'cause you can maintain a separate sound model
39:56SPEAKERand keep that synchronized fairly easily.
39:58SPEAKERAnything that you break out and run on a separate CPU,
40:03SPEAKERlike you can't run the different parts of those.
40:06SPEAKERThere's only some stuff that you can run in that loop
40:08SPEAKERon different parts of the CPU.
40:09SPEAKERAnd this is just to be clear, I apologize in advance
40:11SPEAKERfor people who know how this stuff works better than I do.
40:14SPEAKERThis is an oversimplification and I acknowledge that,
40:16SPEAKERbut bear with me.
40:18SPEAKERSo, okay, so you have the loop, everything's running.
40:20SPEAKERThere are some parts of the loop that you can pull data out
40:22SPEAKERof at key points, dump it off to another thread
40:25SPEAKERon a different CPU and then pull it back in
40:27SPEAKERin the nanos microseconds between when you send it,
40:31SPEAKERwhen the calculation's done and bring it back.
40:32SPEAKERSo sound is a good example of that, right?
40:34SPEAKERLike if I'm playing PUBG and somebody shoots
40:39SPEAKERa quarter of a mile away from me,
40:41SPEAKERthen the game can say, okay, here's a point of data.
40:45SPEAKERI need to render a sound here and I need to do
40:47SPEAKERall the HRTF stuff and all of the occlusion
40:51SPEAKERand all of the weird, the attenuation and all the stuff
40:53SPEAKERthat happens to that sound and then I need to send back,
40:56SPEAKERhere's exactly what you play into the main loop, right?
40:59SPEAKERAnd it's easy to keep that stuff in sync.
41:01SPEAKERPhysics is another example, something that's pretty easy
41:03SPEAKERto keep in sync and if it's not core to the game,
41:07SPEAKERlike if getting out of sync doesn't break the game,
41:10SPEAKERlike having a rag doll that doesn't render exactly the same
41:12SPEAKERon everybody's multiplayer computers,
41:13SPEAKERyou can kind of just hope that it works itself out
41:16SPEAKERand everybody's computer is gonna see something
41:17SPEAKERa little bit different, right?
41:20SPEAKERNetwork code is one of those things
41:22SPEAKERthat you can't do that with 'cause if the network code
41:24SPEAKERgets out of sync, then you lose connection to the server
41:26SPEAKERand the server's like, hey man, no, you're not right,
41:29SPEAKERgo away, you're cheating and you get kicked off the server.
41:32SPEAKERSo the problem is a lot of the stuff that you do
41:35SPEAKERin a normal game loop has to happen sequentially and yeah.
41:42SPEAKERYeah, so that's why you end up with situations
41:44SPEAKERwhere you wanna have one core that's running really fast
41:49SPEAKERand then the other ones can run slowly and stuff like that
41:51SPEAKERand I think that's stuff that the new consoles do.
41:52SPEAKERI haven't looked at the hardware specs of that too closely.
41:56SPEAKER- I assume so.
41:56SPEAKERI mean, that's what boost mode on at least the Ryzen's,
41:59SPEAKERI assume Intel has an equivalent, that's what that's for,
42:01SPEAKERright, is like if you're basically only on one core
42:04SPEAKERor mostly on one core, that's when it spikes the frequency
42:06SPEAKER'cause it--
42:07SPEAKER- You can turn the others down and generate less heat
42:09SPEAKERwith them and use more of your TDP overhead on those.
42:12SPEAKER- Right, that stuff is fascinating.
42:16SPEAKERIt's like one of my holy grail guests things
42:18SPEAKERis to get like a working games programmer in here
42:20SPEAKERto talk about core logic and stuff like that.
42:24SPEAKER- I was to say, it's one of the reasons a game like Hitman
42:25SPEAKERis really interesting because they're doing things,
42:28SPEAKERlike in most games, as soon as your characters
42:30SPEAKERfall off screen, then they stop running the AI
42:32SPEAKERfor the off-screen characters
42:33SPEAKER'cause it's just wasted cycles.
42:35SPEAKERBut with Hitman, because of the clockwork nature
42:37SPEAKERof those worlds and because the characters need to stay
42:39SPEAKERin sync across the whole world,
42:42SPEAKERthey have to keep running that stuff constantly.
42:44SPEAKERAnd you end up with,
42:47SPEAKERI have to imagine they're using multi-threaded performance
42:51SPEAKERmuch better than everybody else
42:52SPEAKERto run all the different AI threads and stuff like that.
42:57SPEAKER- All right, Joe from New York.
43:00SPEAKERIt's a long email, I'm gonna cherry pick
43:01SPEAKERa few of these here.
43:04SPEAKERHe builds a new PC over the weekend.
43:06SPEAKER- Okay.
43:07SPEAKER- I believe this email was in response
43:09SPEAKERto our authoritative ranking of the best development.
43:13SPEAKER- Yes, one true ranking.
43:15SPEAKER- The one and only ranking of the best things
43:17SPEAKERabout building modern PCs.
43:19SPEAKER- I'm glad we took over that so the internet
43:21SPEAKERdoesn't have to worry about that anymore.
43:22SPEAKER- That's right, yep, that's settled.
43:23SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:25SPEAKER- I built a new PC over the weekend.
43:27SPEAKERHere are the things I hated.
43:29SPEAKEROh, I'll just, I'll pull, there's quite a few of these here.
43:32SPEAKERI'll pull a few.
43:33SPEAKERThe modular power supply-
43:34SPEAKER- He hates a lot of stuff.
43:35SPEAKER- Is the first one.
43:37SPEAKERI don't necessarily hate modular power supplies,
43:39SPEAKERbut I prefer semi-modular power supplies.
43:42SPEAKERWith semi-modular, you know,
43:43SPEAKERhe's kind of got a point here to some degree.
43:46SPEAKERWith semi-modular, the things you absolutely
43:48SPEAKERdefinitely need plugged into your power supply,
43:50SPEAKERlike the 24-pin ATX and 8-pin CPU,
43:53SPEAKERare hardwired and everything else is modular.
43:56SPEAKERI find modular cables to be annoyingly stiff
43:59SPEAKERcompared to the hardwired versions.
44:00SPEAKERHe's not wrong about that.
44:01SPEAKER- You don't loosen up your cables before you put them in?
44:03SPEAKERI like, I work them for a little bit.
44:05SPEAKERI put them on a-
44:05SPEAKER- What do you like, sit on them for a while?
44:07SPEAKER- I usually like inky paper, like a mother hen,
44:10SPEAKERjust kind of warm up your cables a little bit.
44:14SPEAKER- This is a fair criticism.
44:15SPEAKERI think the 24-pin should probably be wired.
44:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:19SPEAKER- If you're doing a fancy wiring job,
44:20SPEAKERit's nice to be able to disconnect both ends,
44:22SPEAKERbut it's unnecessary.
44:23SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and depending on the placement,
44:25SPEAKERit can be really annoying.
44:26SPEAKERLike I have to pull my 24-pin every time I want to get
44:28SPEAKERto any of the other connectors on that thing
44:30SPEAKERbecause of the way the shroud is oriented.
44:31SPEAKERIt's just a pain in the ass.
44:33SPEAKER- Well, we've established that shrouds are bad.
44:35SPEAKER- Shrouds are, he's,
44:37SPEAKERI'm skipping ahead to the very end of this email.
44:39SPEAKERPS, power supply shroud, pretty cool.
44:42SPEAKERThat's what he said.
44:43SPEAKERI don't think, I can't agree with that.
44:46SPEAKERHere's a question.
44:48SPEAKERWe're kind of getting a jump on spring cleaning around here.
44:50SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:51SPEAKER- And I'm kind of going through some old computer parts,
44:53SPEAKERtrying to decide what to get rid of and keep.
44:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:56SPEAKER- I found my old mid-2000s DFI board.
44:58SPEAKERDo you remember the DFI LAN party?
45:01SPEAKER- No.
45:04SPEAKER- No?
45:04SPEAKER- What's a DFI LAN party?
45:06SPEAKER- DFI was kind of like the overclockers board at that time.
45:10SPEAKERI don't, I don't know where they came from.
45:12SPEAKERThis sounds crazy.
45:13SPEAKERI have zero way to validate this.
45:16SPEAKERI want to say there was some talk at some point
45:18SPEAKERthat some a bit engineers went to DFI.
45:21SPEAKER- I can see that.
45:22SPEAKERI mean, people bounced around a lot.
45:24SPEAKERI remember DFI, the company, but is it a motherboard?
45:26SPEAKER- They're still, yeah, it's a motherboard.
45:27SPEAKERThey're still around, but they only make
45:28SPEAKERlike industrial motherboards and stuff,
45:30SPEAKERembedded stuff these days, like they got out of gaming.
45:31SPEAKERAnyway, whatever, I'm digressing.
45:33SPEAKERI just, I know some people love the DFI LAN party series.
45:35SPEAKERThey were extremely neon.
45:37SPEAKERLike all the accents on the board
45:39SPEAKERare like neon yellow and orange.
45:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I remember this.
45:42SPEAKER- Anyway, whatever, I'm, I'm rambling here,
45:45SPEAKERbut so I want to keep that thing.
45:46SPEAKERIt's like a good kind of older computer
45:47SPEAKERthat I might want to put like XP on at some point.
45:49SPEAKER- Put it in a shadow box and put up on the wall, dude.
45:51SPEAKER- Or that, you know, anyway,
45:53SPEAKERI've got a couple of power supplies with it.
45:57SPEAKERWould you say power supplies age sitting in a box?
46:01SPEAKERI know they age as you use them.
46:02SPEAKER- If the capacitors haven't cracked,
46:05SPEAKERthere's a period of time when the capacitors were suspect
46:07SPEAKERon every fucking piece of electronics ever made.
46:10SPEAKER- Right, I forgot about that.
46:11SPEAKER- Early 2000s stuff is like we've all had the Xbox one,
46:14SPEAKERoriginal Xbox we had to pop the caps off of.
46:17SPEAKER- Dude, I've got, that's another thing in my spring cleaning
46:19SPEAKERis I've got my old Xbox out.
46:20SPEAKERI'm going to finally take it apart
46:21SPEAKERand see if the acid leaked.
46:23SPEAKERSee if it leaked all over the motherboard.
46:26SPEAKER- I think it's, I mean, you're, you'll plug it in and no.
46:29SPEAKER- Yeah, so I should test it, but, but I mean,
46:31SPEAKERthe bigger thing is like, should I keep the old power supply
46:33SPEAKERassuming it does work or can you still get,
46:36SPEAKER'cause I want to say that thing used,
46:38SPEAKERit might've been a 20 pin at that time.
46:41SPEAKER- The 20 pin and 24 pin are the same connector.
46:43SPEAKERNo, the 24 pin usually has a breakaway on it.
46:46SPEAKERSo you just pop it off.
46:47SPEAKER- Okay, I guess that's maybe the more direct way
46:49SPEAKERto ask this question is like,
46:51SPEAKERif I just keep that motherboard,
46:52SPEAKERcould I always just get a new power supply down the line
46:54SPEAKERthat'll work with it?
46:54SPEAKER- At least as of right now,
46:55SPEAKERI don't imagine they're going to change the ATX connector
46:58SPEAKERunless they just add more ports to it.
47:00SPEAKER- Okay, 'cause it is a different configuration
47:02SPEAKERthan what my current board uses.
47:03SPEAKERIt's not an eight pin CPU and stuff like that.
47:06SPEAKER- It's a four pin CPU probably.
47:07SPEAKER- I think it's four, that's right.
47:09SPEAKEROkay, so.
47:09SPEAKER- So all the four pin, all the eight pin is,
47:11SPEAKERis two of those four pins.
47:13SPEAKER- Okay, so it sounds like there is backwards-
47:14SPEAKER- And the 24 pin is a 20 pin plus four additional pins.
47:16SPEAKER- Okay, okay, that's encouraging.
47:18SPEAKER- You just have to use the right side
47:19SPEAKERor else you'll catch it on fire probably.
47:21SPEAKER- Oh good, well hopefully it's keyed.
47:22SPEAKER- It's commonly keyed, it should be keyed.
47:25SPEAKER- Maybe I'll get rid of that old power supply, I don't know.
47:28SPEAKER- All right, another thing you should do
47:29SPEAKERwith the old power supply is do what people do
47:30SPEAKERwith their old shoes, they're not gonna wear anymore.
47:32SPEAKERJust hook two of them together
47:34SPEAKERand then throw it up over the power lines
47:35SPEAKERand watch what happens.
47:36SPEAKER- No, you don't want to know what that kind
47:38SPEAKERof attention that might bring.
47:41SPEAKERAll right, another thing he hated when he built his PC,
47:44SPEAKERlighting, my case has RGB, my RAM has RGB,
47:49SPEAKERmy all-in-one pump has RGB, my motherboard has RGB,
47:53SPEAKERmy video card has LED lights, that's too much lighting.
47:56SPEAKER- Wow.
47:57SPEAKER- If I could only turn off some of the lighting,
47:58SPEAKERit would be fine, but the software ASUS provides
48:01SPEAKERdoesn't allow me to adjust
48:02SPEAKERdifferent component light settings separately,
48:04SPEAKERit's all or nothing, so it all stays off.
48:08SPEAKERI can kind of see it.
48:10SPEAKER- I mean, look, okay, grandpa, just, you know,
48:13SPEAKERjust 'cause you don't understand
48:14SPEAKERthe ground effects culture that we live in today.
48:17SPEAKER(laughing)
48:18SPEAKER- Feel like it's very on-brand for me
48:20SPEAKERto be kind of like nodding my head along with this email.
48:22SPEAKER- So the RAM and the all-in-one pump
48:26SPEAKERare probably different vendors,
48:27SPEAKERso you probably can turn those,
48:29SPEAKERlike, on mine, those are Corsair
48:30SPEAKERand you can turn those off independently.
48:32SPEAKER- Right.
48:33SPEAKER- You might just not have the right software installed
48:35SPEAKERto turn off the individual components.
48:37SPEAKER- I think RAM might be one step too far for me.
48:42SPEAKER- Oh, the RAM is really cool, it glows,
48:44SPEAKERit makes it look, it looks like Knight Rider,
48:45SPEAKERyou can make it go womp, womp, womp, womp, womp,
48:47SPEAKERor Cylon, whichever, pick your theme.
48:50SPEAKER- For some reason, it feels like you shouldn't be asking
48:51SPEAKERfor extra current out of those sockets or the slots
48:54SPEAKERfor lights you should just be focusing on,
48:56SPEAKER'cause RAM really should be stable and-
48:58SPEAKER- It's, look, it's fine.
49:00SPEAKERThe lights let you know it's working right.
49:02SPEAKERIf the lights don't come on, that means something's broken.
49:05SPEAKER- Of course.
49:06SPEAKERAnother thing he hated, SSD mounts on the back of the case.
49:11SPEAKERSSD mounts on the backside of the case is a great idea,
49:14SPEAKERbut not when the mount points are behind the motherboard.
49:17SPEAKERI'm a little confused.
49:18SPEAKER- This I don't understand, actually,
49:19SPEAKER'cause all you do is take the other side of the case off,
49:21SPEAKERusually, to access those, and it's really easy.
49:23SPEAKER- That's because mine are exactly like that,
49:24SPEAKERthey mount by the motherboard, but you're right,
49:26SPEAKERyou just take the other panel off.
49:28SPEAKERBut he continues, "If I want to add or replace an SSD
49:31SPEAKERon the back of the case,
49:31SPEAKERI would have to remove the motherboard,"
49:35SPEAKERwhich is why all my SSDs are in a pile
49:38SPEAKERat the bottom of my case, and he provided a picture.
49:41SPEAKERHe provided a picture of his new build, and sure enough-
49:43SPEAKER- Pretty good, yeah, they're all there.
49:44SPEAKER- The SSDs are literally just piled
49:46SPEAKERat the bottom of the case, which I guess,
49:48SPEAKERI guess I could never follow you, but I could respect it.
49:51SPEAKER- Brad, I have two SSDs just dangling
49:54SPEAKERfrom the power connectors.
49:55SPEAKER- You know, I had that for a while, but I don't know.
49:58SPEAKERI tried to stick 'em between some stuff
50:00SPEAKERso they were at least kind of secured.
50:02SPEAKER- He zip-tied one in there, which I appreciate.
50:04SPEAKER- Sure, yes. - Yeah.
50:06SPEAKER- One more item I will pull off of this list,
50:10SPEAKERUSB 3 connectors, F these things.
50:12SPEAKER- Oh God, yeah, 100% this.
50:14SPEAKERI can go down this hole.
50:16SPEAKERThe first version of the USB 3 connector is terrible.
50:21SPEAKER- Yes, that's right. - And somehow,
50:22SPEAKERwith the second version, they made it worse.
50:24SPEAKER- I didn't know there was a second version.
50:26SPEAKERI guess we've talked about,
50:27SPEAKERI think we talked about it a week or two ago.
50:29SPEAKERI'm still using a pretty old board,
50:30SPEAKERso I guess I've got the old USB 3 connector.
50:32SPEAKERLike what's worse, I didn't know there wasn't.
50:34SPEAKER- Yeah, the first one had just normal pins
50:36SPEAKERand it was just, they were really narrow kind of fine pins.
50:40SPEAKER- Very fragile feeling.
50:42SPEAKER- Well, it just fell off, was the problem with it.
50:44SPEAKERLike if you jostled your case, it could come loose.
50:48SPEAKERThe second version is like a snap-in thing.
50:50SPEAKERIt's like a center post. - Oh, that is what I have.
50:52SPEAKER- Okay. - It's way worse.
50:55SPEAKERIt is, it sucks.
50:57SPEAKER- Mine snap in, and yeah, they're terrible.
50:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
50:59SPEAKER- If there's like any tension at all on that cable,
51:01SPEAKERwhich like mine is short and stiff,
51:03SPEAKERit feels like it's just gonna break that thing off.
51:05SPEAKER- Yep. - I'm amazed
51:06SPEAKERit still works. - This just pops out.
51:08SPEAKER- Yeah. - All of a sudden,
51:09SPEAKERyour front panel connectors don't work,
51:10SPEAKERand this front panel connectors have a dirty signal anyway,
51:13SPEAKERso it's just a shit show all the way around.
51:15SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.
51:18SPEAKERAnyway, it sounds like he completed a successful build, so.
51:24SPEAKEROh, you know, actually, there's one more thing at the end
51:25SPEAKERthat I do wanna read 'cause I'm kinda curious myself.
51:29SPEAKER- Yeah.
51:30SPEAKER- Also, my motherboard came with a sticker
51:31SPEAKERto put on the CMOS battery.
51:33SPEAKERWhy would I want this?
51:35SPEAKER- I don't know why the sticker is there.
51:36SPEAKERHe asked why there's a CMOS battery, too.
51:38SPEAKER- That's the thing I was really getting to is,
51:39SPEAKERalso, why is there still a CMOS battery, the clock?
51:42SPEAKER- Because of the clock, yeah.
51:43SPEAKERThe real-time clock needs a CMOS battery
51:45SPEAKERso that when you unplug your PC,
51:46SPEAKERit still can keep going and doesn't lose the time.
51:50SPEAKERI assume that you put the sticker on and it has the date,
51:52SPEAKERyou put the date that you put the battery in, maybe?
51:54SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.
51:55SPEAKER- But I think I've only ever had,
51:56SPEAKERin the 25 years I've been building computers,
51:58SPEAKERI've only had one CMOS battery actually run down.
52:01SPEAKER- Same for me, I think.
52:02SPEAKERHow long do you think they typically last?
52:04SPEAKER- Five to 10 years is my understanding.
52:06SPEAKERSo my first home server that was a BSD machine,
52:12SPEAKERI ran for six years,
52:13SPEAKERand I had to replace the CMOS battery once.
52:16SPEAKERBut that was it, sure.
52:17SPEAKER- It's the only one I've ever had a problem with, so.
52:20SPEAKERBut any PC should boot normally without a battery,
52:24SPEAKERit just won't keep the time, is that right?
52:26SPEAKER- It should boot fine, yeah.
52:27SPEAKER- It should be fine, okay.
52:29SPEAKER- Did you see this?
52:30SPEAKER- I think you might lose settings,
52:32SPEAKERI think you might lose BIOS settings when you reboot.
52:33SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, sure.
52:35SPEAKER- 'Cause when you disconnect from power, rather,
52:38SPEAKERso if you turn off your power supply at the switch
52:40SPEAKERon the back, you'll lose your CMOS settings.
52:43SPEAKERIf the battery's dead.
52:44SPEAKER- I guess I'm surprised that's not being stored
52:46SPEAKERin some non-volatile form at this point.
52:48SPEAKER- Well, the CMOS stands for-
52:51SPEAKER- Complementary metal oxide semiconductor.
52:53SPEAKER- Yeah, that's it.
52:54SPEAKERAnd it requires power to store data,
52:56SPEAKERthere's no flash in that, so.
52:58SPEAKER- I used to be kind of into memorizing computer acronyms.
53:02SPEAKER- You don't say.
53:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought it was fun.
53:06SPEAKEROh, the thing I was gonna ask, did you see the FUD?
53:10SPEAKERAre we, is it okay to pronounce FUD?
53:12SPEAKER- You mean food?
53:13SPEAKER- No, FUD.
53:15SPEAKER- Yeah, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
53:17SPEAKER- Yes, that one.
53:18SPEAKER- Food.
53:19SPEAKER- Anyway, it's FUD.
53:21SPEAKER- It's FUD, it's FUD, I apologize for starting this.
53:24SPEAKERGo on.
53:25SPEAKER- Anyway, there was this thing floating around
53:27SPEAKERabout PS3s and PS4s in the kind of console modding community
53:31SPEAKERover the past week.
53:33SPEAKER- No, I miss that.
53:34SPEAKER- So it started because there's this rumor
53:36SPEAKERthat Sony is shutting down the PlayStation store
53:38SPEAKERfor the PS3, PSP, and Vita, did you see that?
53:41SPEAKER- I saw that, yes.
53:42SPEAKER- So that's happening, and then when a bunch of modders
53:44SPEAKERsaw that, they were like, fuck this shit,
53:46SPEAKERbecause the way the kernel works on the PS3 and PS4,
53:49SPEAKERonce the CMOS battery dies on those things,
53:52SPEAKERlike you can replace the battery,
53:53SPEAKERbut it won't let you re-license all your content
53:56SPEAKERuntil you then phone home to their servers again.
53:59SPEAKER- Oh, shit.
54:00SPEAKER- You essentially, like it resets whatever licensing check
54:02SPEAKERhas taken place that validates your ability
54:05SPEAKERto use all the stuff you bought.
54:06SPEAKER- Well, so then they, like if they're gonna turn off
54:08SPEAKERthe store, they're just gonna turn off purchases,
54:10SPEAKERand they're not gonna turn off the validation, right?
54:12SPEAKER- That's probably the case, but immediately
54:14SPEAKEReverybody starts panicking, because Nintendo disabled
54:17SPEAKEReven downloads on the Wii store after they got rid of that.
54:20SPEAKERThere is precedent for more than just purchases
54:23SPEAKERbeing taken away, so then everybody started panicking.
54:26SPEAKERIf they ever take those validation servers offline,
54:28SPEAKERthen you suddenly can't play all the stuff you bought
54:30SPEAKERonce that battery dies.
54:31SPEAKER- So, okay, so on the Wii, I'm not making an excuse
54:34SPEAKERfor Nintendo, 'cause that is unfortunate,
54:36SPEAKERbut nobody bought games, you couldn't really buy games
54:39SPEAKERfor download on the Wii.
54:40SPEAKER- Yeah, that's definitely not a defense.
54:42SPEAKER- Yeah, no, but like, I guess you bought virtual console
54:47SPEAKERstuff for the Wii.
54:48SPEAKER- Yeah, you remember the Wii Shop, that music is classic.
54:51SPEAKER- Yeah, but what did you buy on the Wii Shop?
54:53SPEAKERI don't think I bought anything digital on the Wii.
54:55SPEAKER- There was some stuff, there are actually
54:56SPEAKERa few exclusive games, there's like some version
54:58SPEAKERof "Castlevania" that only came out on the Wii Shop,
55:00SPEAKERit's weird, there is some stuff.
55:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that sucks then, they shouldn't do that, fuck them.
55:06SPEAKER- So it sucks.
55:07SPEAKER- Go buy games digitally, buy discs maybe, I don't know.
55:09SPEAKER- Totally, totally, like when this stuff started going
55:10SPEAKERaround, I was like, oh man, these zealots
55:13SPEAKERabout physical media maybe had a point.
55:15SPEAKER- Look, if there's anything that I've learned
55:17SPEAKERover the last 20 years, it's that the people who seem
55:20SPEAKERlike cranks who yell about DRM and digital rights
55:23SPEAKERare almost always right, even though in the short term,
55:26SPEAKERthey seem like cranks.
55:27SPEAKER- That's right, that's right, just remember that.
55:29SPEAKER- Cory Doctorow was right, I'm sorry, Cory.
55:31SPEAKER- Next time I get up on a soapbox about something,
55:33SPEAKERjust remember that.
55:35SPEAKER- I'm still gonna call you a crank, just for the record.
55:37SPEAKER- Okay, that's how I know I'm right.
55:39SPEAKER- Yeah, if I'm calling you a crank, you're 100% right.
55:42SPEAKER- That's right, okay, last email, it's from Jeff.
55:48SPEAKERHe didn't quite say it in here, but I think he's calling
55:51SPEAKERback to when your water main problem happened
55:53SPEAKERthat we talked about a while back.
55:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
55:55SPEAKER- You had to get the concrete saw out there or whatever.
55:57SPEAKER- I didn't, but the neighbors did it at four o'clock
55:59SPEAKERin the morning, six o'clock in the morning,
56:00SPEAKERso it was great morning, let me tell you.
56:02SPEAKER- Yes, I believe he's writing in in response to that,
56:05SPEAKERbless you, okay.
56:08SPEAKERMy father has worked for the local water municipality
56:11SPEAKERfor my entire life.
56:13SPEAKERHe would take quote call every eight weeks,
56:16SPEAKERwhich back in the 80s required a pager
56:18SPEAKERand later a first-generation cell phone
56:20SPEAKERthat was connected to a car battery-sized pack.
56:24SPEAKERHe used to have to drive down and quote check the water
56:27SPEAKERwhen he was on call every few hours
56:29SPEAKERand make sure all the reservoirs were working correctly
56:31SPEAKERand had proper water volume.
56:33SPEAKERHe would have to go out and repair water main breaks
56:35SPEAKERat any hour of the day and at any temperature.
56:38SPEAKERWe live in Utah.
56:41SPEAKERMany years ago, there was a small plane crash
56:43SPEAKERthat happened over a neighborhood in our town,
56:45SPEAKERwhich is Kearns, Utah.
56:47SPEAKERIt just so happens that they had a line break
56:49SPEAKERdirectly under the crash and debris field that night.
56:53SPEAKERMy father had to work around FAA inspection crews
56:57SPEAKERand plane and body parts.
56:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
57:00SPEAKER- Yeah, and working for the water department,
57:03SPEAKERmy father walked something like 15 miles every Monday
57:06SPEAKERto read meters before they switched to electronic meters.
57:10SPEAKERThis is my favorite part of this email by far.
57:13SPEAKERThings have changed drastically over the years,
57:14SPEAKERbut they used to quite frequently find jewelry
57:17SPEAKERwhen they would do their sewer cleaning work.
57:19SPEAKEREvery diamond in my mother's wedding ring
57:21SPEAKERwas found in the sewer.
57:22SPEAKER- Aw.
57:24SPEAKER- That's incredible.
57:25SPEAKERLike, what are you gonna do?
57:27SPEAKERThere is zero- - You can't find out
57:28SPEAKERwho he belongs to, yeah. - There is zero way
57:29SPEAKERto get that diamond back to its original owner.
57:32SPEAKERThat's just, that's a lost, that's a sewer diamond
57:33SPEAKERright there. - That's a shitty situation.
57:35SPEAKER- Yeah. (laughs)
57:37SPEAKEROh boy, that's good stuff.
57:42SPEAKERInteresting, he didn't talk about any of the other stuff
57:44SPEAKERthey might've found down there.
57:45SPEAKER- So yeah, like hopefully this was pre-Fatbergs.
57:50SPEAKERDo you know about the Fatbergs?
57:51SPEAKER- No, but I can infer from the name
57:53SPEAKERthat I don't want to know.
57:54SPEAKER- So- - I mean,
57:55SPEAKERI think you've said- - Flushable wipes
57:57SPEAKERplus normal sewer debris.
58:00SPEAKER- Oh. - That's gross.
58:02SPEAKER- Aw, plus garbage disposals, I think,
58:04SPEAKERequals giant blockages that are like,
58:07SPEAKERyou know, 10 foot around clumps of wipes
58:12SPEAKERand fat and crap. - Okay, let's-
58:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it's gross.
58:16SPEAKERI used to love when I was a kid going on like,
58:19SPEAKERlike outings with, work outings with my father,
58:21SPEAKERwe would drive up to the coal fields in West Virginia
58:24SPEAKERand South, Southwest Virginia, South,
58:27SPEAKERyeah, Southwest Virginia.
58:29SPEAKERAnd visit customers of his,
58:31SPEAKERand I would like hang out in the car
58:32SPEAKERand read a book or something
58:33SPEAKERwhile he was in talking to customers,
58:34SPEAKERand then we'd go have adventures
58:35SPEAKERand like drive up and look at coal mines
58:37SPEAKERand stuff like that.
58:38SPEAKERIt was a lot of fun.
58:41SPEAKERHis talking about the bag phone is funny
58:44SPEAKERbecause we had one of those,
58:45SPEAKERdad was selling real estate then, he had bought one,
58:47SPEAKERso he could talk, some people could call him and be like,
58:48SPEAKER"Hey, I want to go check out this farm,"
58:50SPEAKERwhatever, wherever he was, and you'd go pick him up
58:52SPEAKERand they'd go out for a ride.
58:54SPEAKERBut before he got the bag phone, he had,
58:58SPEAKERthey shared time on a radio,
59:01SPEAKERlike a private band radio that was up,
59:04SPEAKERthe antenna was mounted on the top of the mountain,
59:07SPEAKER10 miles away, that had line of sight
59:09SPEAKERto the entire valley basically.
59:12SPEAKERAnd the receivers were in the office
59:13SPEAKERand like our kitchen at home.
59:15SPEAKERSo like the people at the office could radio into him
59:20SPEAKERand it was shared.
59:21SPEAKERSo it was like, they paid for the antenna,
59:25SPEAKERlike these 10 people, 10 other realtors
59:27SPEAKERand auctioneers and stuff.
59:28SPEAKERAnd they all split time on it.
59:31SPEAKERSo it was there available to any of them privately,
59:33SPEAKERbut it was just like a private open band radio.
59:35SPEAKERWow.
59:36SPEAKERAnd they had the repeater on the mountain.
59:38SPEAKERAnd like, we had a thing at home
59:40SPEAKERwhere you could couple the phone to it.
59:43SPEAKERLike you could hook a phone up to what looked like
59:45SPEAKERan audio coupler for a modem.
59:47SPEAKERAnd my mom would say, "Hey, you got a call,
59:50SPEAKERare you available?"
59:51SPEAKERAnd he'd be like, "Yeah, over."
59:53SPEAKERAnd then she'd put the phone in the thing
59:54SPEAKERand then you'd hear him talking to each other.
59:55SPEAKERAnd then when it was time to hang up,
59:56SPEAKERshe'd just take the phone off and hang it up.
59:58SPEAKERWow, that's cool.
59:59SPEAKERYeah, it was weird.
1:00:00SPEAKERThat's, huh.
1:00:01SPEAKERAll the things that cell phones have replaced.
1:00:03SPEAKERSure, yeah, that's a long list.
1:00:06SPEAKERI wonder, like, I can't imagine that that was like
1:00:09SPEAKERa vital business thing for him.
1:00:11SPEAKERI think he was just a nerd and liked that kind of stuff.
1:00:13SPEAKERI'll have to ask him.
1:00:14SPEAKERSure, I could see that.
1:00:15SPEAKERYeah, I mean, you know my dad.
1:00:17SPEAKERHe's a-
1:00:17SPEAKERPlenty of other realtors probably got by without that.
1:00:19SPEAKERSo yeah, you're probably more of a-
1:00:20SPEAKERYeah, I'm sure.
1:00:20SPEAKERThat was for funsies, but you know.
1:00:23SPEAKERWell, I mean, it was a big area and it wasn't like,
1:00:25SPEAKERand they were doing mostly like farm stuff.
1:00:26SPEAKERSo who knows?
1:00:27SPEAKERMaybe it was important.
1:00:28SPEAKERI don't know, I'll find out.
1:00:30SPEAKERBut-
1:00:32SPEAKERSomebody who spends way too much time looking at
1:00:34SPEAKERand thinking about home server stuff
1:00:36SPEAKERthat is probably not strictly necessary, I get it.
1:00:38SPEAKERIt's fun.
1:00:39SPEAKERYeah, exactly.
1:00:40SPEAKERYeah, anyway, I am kind of shocked to read
1:00:43SPEAKERthat he had to go like physically check the water every,
1:00:45SPEAKERI would think even in the, what did he say?
1:00:47SPEAKERThe '80s, yeah.
1:00:49SPEAKERI would think even in the '80s,
1:00:50SPEAKERthey must've had some remote way
1:00:51SPEAKERto track the water volume and stuff like that.
1:00:53SPEAKERBut he's saying that he had to like
1:00:55SPEAKERphysically go to the reservoirs,
1:00:57SPEAKERlike every few hours, like that sounds like a lot.
1:01:00SPEAKERWell, no, no, you went to the, oh.
1:01:02SPEAKERHe used to have to drive down and check the water
1:01:04SPEAKERwhen he was on call every few hours
1:01:06SPEAKERand make sure the reservoirs were working correctly
1:01:08SPEAKERand had proper water volume.
1:01:10SPEAKERThat seems right, I mean, I don't know.
1:01:12SPEAKERI don't know that they, like on a small town thing,
1:01:14SPEAKERI don't know, I feel like I always felt like
1:01:17SPEAKERthings were more like efficient and controlled
1:01:21SPEAKERthan they probably were.
1:01:23SPEAKER- Like knowing the people who worked in that space
1:01:25SPEAKERin the '80s was probably just like Bob,
1:01:27SPEAKERBob from the water department just kind of eyeballing it,
1:01:28SPEAKERhey, yeah, this looks fine, it's still going.
1:01:31SPEAKER- I mean like, holy shit, I feel like the history
1:01:35SPEAKERof every complex system that is in the rear view mirror
1:01:37SPEAKERis that it was like much more ramshackle than you think,
1:01:39SPEAKERlike right up to like the automated
1:01:41SPEAKERlike nuclear defense systems and stuff like that.
1:01:43SPEAKERLike the, you read about the number of times
1:01:45SPEAKERthat nuclear war almost happened
1:01:47SPEAKERbased on some like technical scrub.
1:01:50SPEAKER- Well, honestly, if you read about,
1:01:52SPEAKERif you read about the power failure in Texas last month,
1:01:58SPEAKERlike that is ramshackle as hell.
1:02:01SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:02SPEAKER- Like everything is still just on the edge of failing,
1:02:05SPEAKERit seems like.
1:02:06SPEAKER- The potus morons on all that stuff are just terrifying
1:02:08SPEAKERto think about, like how much of the world
1:02:09SPEAKERseems to just be held together
1:02:10SPEAKERwith like scotch tape and bubble gum.
1:02:13SPEAKER- Yep, I guess that'll do it for us this week, huh?
1:02:15SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that's a grip of emails,
1:02:17SPEAKERthanks to everybody who wrote in.
1:02:19SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you, if you have a question for us,
1:02:21SPEAKERthe email is techpod@content.town.
1:02:23SPEAKERWe do questions the last episode of every month,
1:02:26SPEAKERso you can find that out.
1:02:28SPEAKERAnd now is the time of the show
1:02:30SPEAKERwhen we talk about the Patreon.
1:02:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:33SPEAKER- I have to clear my throat again, I'm a little,
1:02:35SPEAKERI got April allergies coming on at the end of March.
1:02:38SPEAKER- Oh God, oh, it's starting, all the eyes are so itchy.
1:02:40SPEAKERAnyway, put on your business voice.
1:02:43SPEAKER- But yeah, if you wanna gain access
1:02:44SPEAKERto the fabulous TechPod Discord
1:02:46SPEAKERand the community that lies we're in,
1:02:49SPEAKERnow is the time to do it, 'cause we're talking
1:02:51SPEAKERabout increasing pricing on the,
1:02:55SPEAKERyou're restructuring the Patreon
1:02:56SPEAKERand anybody who gets in now will be grandfathered in
1:02:58SPEAKERfor as long as you wanna stay on that tier.
1:03:00SPEAKER- That's right, I think restructuring sounds better
1:03:02SPEAKERthan increasing.
1:03:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look, reconsidering maybe.
1:03:06SPEAKERRealistically, we wanna add some new stuff in
1:03:08SPEAKERand we need to figure out ways to structure the payments
1:03:11SPEAKERso that they're commensurate with the value
1:03:13SPEAKERof the new things, so.
1:03:16SPEAKERAnd I think we didn't anticipate how awesome
1:03:19SPEAKERthe Discord was gonna be when we initially set this up
1:03:20SPEAKERa year and a half ago.
1:03:21SPEAKER- It's a lot, real fast, something I meant to mention
1:03:24SPEAKERearlier when we were talking about flash storage,
1:03:26SPEAKERa little tip I picked up from our Discord,
1:03:28SPEAKERif you're running anything critical on Raspberry Pis
1:03:30SPEAKERlike Pi-hole or I've got my nuts server
1:03:32SPEAKERand et cetera, et cetera, log to RAM.
1:03:35SPEAKERI don't know if you've heard of it.
1:03:36SPEAKER- No.
1:03:37SPEAKER- It's just, I think most package managers
1:03:39SPEAKERfor different distros have it,
1:03:40SPEAKERdepending on what you're running on there.
1:03:42SPEAKERAll it is, it just mounts the log directory
1:03:45SPEAKERto a 10 file system in RAM, to a RAM drive kind of situation.
1:03:48SPEAKER- Do you have to do anything to set it up
1:03:50SPEAKERor just install it like from your package manager?
1:03:52SPEAKER- It's basically just a script, so you do have to,
1:03:54SPEAKERthere's some, a little bit of configuration,
1:03:56SPEAKERit's pretty easy, like it's on GitHub, you can find it,
1:03:58SPEAKERit's not hard, so they've got pretty,
1:04:00SPEAKERpretty clear instructions.
1:04:04SPEAKER- That sounds good. - Have to set it up.
1:04:05SPEAKERThere are a couple of snags, but that, you know,
1:04:08SPEAKERwriting to the SD card is what kills it the fastest,
1:04:10SPEAKERso keeping those logs from being written to the card
1:04:12SPEAKERwill hopefully prolong the life of the card.
1:04:14SPEAKER- It's like the number of writes to, not the,
1:04:19SPEAKERI guess it's the number of writes, not the right size.
1:04:22SPEAKERYeah, it's my understanding. - Interesting.
1:04:23SPEAKER- Like lots of small writes are way worse
1:04:25SPEAKERthan one big write every day.
1:04:27SPEAKER- That is logging, right?
1:04:28SPEAKERIt's just nonstop, like a line or two of text.
1:04:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I usually just turn off logging
1:04:33SPEAKERon my SD card things too.
1:04:36SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, the email address is techpod.content.town.
1:04:41SPEAKERThe Patreon, you can get access to the Discord
1:04:43SPEAKERfor two bucks a month right now.
1:04:45SPEAKERThere are 15 or 1600 other beautiful nerds
1:04:48SPEAKERin there that are talking about all the things
1:04:51SPEAKERthat we talk about every week and more.
1:04:54SPEAKERI think we're gonna do a patron spotlight
1:04:55SPEAKERfor our patron episode this month.
1:04:58SPEAKERWe're gonna talk about some soldering, perhaps,
1:05:00SPEAKERsoldering techniques and things like that.
1:05:02SPEAKER- Yes, the most infernal of topics.
1:05:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm excited.
1:05:06SPEAKERIt's stuff that I learned when I was doing
1:05:07SPEAKERa kind of complicated project earlier this year,
1:05:11SPEAKERbut we have some real experts in there
1:05:14SPEAKERand we're gonna tap into their expertise
1:05:16SPEAKERand put them on the spot.
1:05:18SPEAKERAs always, on the last episode of the month,
1:05:20SPEAKERwe wanna thank both our executive producer
1:05:22SPEAKERand associate producer level patrons,
1:05:25SPEAKERstarting with the executive producers,
1:05:26SPEAKERJacob Chappell, James Kamik, and The Bunny Fiend,
1:05:29SPEAKERand our associate producers,
1:05:33SPEAKERAndre Burke, Arthur Geese, Ben Golmy, Brian Raab,
1:05:39SPEAKERI should know this, Cedric Katzenmacher,
1:05:42SPEAKERDan Brockman, Dave Julian, Graham Banks,
1:05:46SPEAKERJad Rita, Jorge Pereira, Sean Talon,
1:05:51SPEAKERTerry Cox, and Thomas Shea.
1:05:52SPEAKERThank you all so much for your support.
1:05:53SPEAKERWe appreciate it, and everyone who supports the show.
1:05:57SPEAKER- Absolutely.
1:05:58SPEAKER- Please let us know how we're doing.
1:05:59SPEAKERSend an email to techbot@content.town.
1:06:02SPEAKERWe should do another survey.
1:06:02SPEAKERWe haven't done one in more than a year,
1:06:04SPEAKERand it was very informative last time,
1:06:06SPEAKERso I would like to know how people think we're doing,
1:06:09SPEAKERwhether they find the Discord valuable,
1:06:10SPEAKERwhether they're liking the patron episodes,
1:06:13SPEAKERwhether they like the normal show.
1:06:14SPEAKERI assume if you're listening,
1:06:15SPEAKERyou probably like the normal show, but.
1:06:17SPEAKER- When you said that,
1:06:17SPEAKERI just, the image that leapt to mind immediately
1:06:20SPEAKERwas the old bumper stickers, the "How's my driving?"
1:06:23SPEAKER- No, that's not the, that's not the, no.
1:06:25SPEAKERNo, we want people to tell us how they like the show.
1:06:27SPEAKERWe don't want them to call 1-800-EAT, you know, whatever,
1:06:31SPEAKERbut yeah, that's it.
1:06:33SPEAKER- No, you're right.
1:06:34SPEAKERNo, yes, we absolutely value all feedback.
1:06:36SPEAKER- Yes, good, bad, or indifferent.
1:06:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's all good, it's all useful.
1:06:41SPEAKER- For sure.
1:06:41SPEAKER- So I guess we'll be back next week
1:06:42SPEAKERwith another episode of the show,
1:06:43SPEAKERand look for that patron episode
1:06:45SPEAKERthis weekend or early next week.
1:06:47SPEAKERBye, everybody.
1:06:48SPEAKER(upbeat music)
1:07:08SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]